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Ergo an open access journal of philosophy http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/ergo.12405314.0001.007 169 motoR imageRy and meRleauPontyian accountS of Skilled action J.C. BEREnDZEn Loyola University New Orleans Maurice MerleauPonty is often interpreted as claiming that opportunities for action are directly present in perceptual experience. However, he does not provide much evidence for how or why this would occur, and one can doubt that this is an appropriate interpretation of his phenomenological descriptions. In particular, it could be argued the MerleauPontyian descriptions mistakenly attribute preperceptual or postperceptual elements such as allocation of attention or judgment to the perceptual experience itself. This paper argues for the MerleauPontyian idea that opportunities for action are present in perceptual experience. It further argues that the phenomenological descriptions can be supported and explained via reference to contemporary research on motor imagery. In particular, it will be argued that nonconscious, covert motor imagery is used to prepare for and regulate skilled actions, and that it is plausible that this imagery combines with perception (likely vision) to create a single experience of the environment as enabling action. The paper will also show that contemporary views on motor imagery are broadly compatible with MerleauPonty's aims. In various passages in his early works, Maurice MerleauPonty suggests that when immersed in skilled action, agents literally perceive the environmental scene as presenting opportunities for action. One famous example from The Structure of Behavior involves a soccer player: For the player in action the soccer field . . . is pervaded with lines of force (the "side lines"; those which demarcate the "penalty area") and articulated in sectors (for example, the "openings" between the adversaries) which call for a certain mode of action and which initiate and guide the action as if the player were unaware of it . . . Each maneuver undertaken by the player modifies the character of the field and establishes in it new lines of force in which the action in turn unfolds and is accomplished, again altering the phenomenal field. (1983: 168169, translation amended) Contact: J.C. Berendzen <[email protected]> 170 • J.C. Berendzen Ergo • vol. 1, no. 7 • 2014 Insofar as they are taken to be alterations of the "phenomenal field," one might understand the putative modifications in the character of the field as being modifications of the phenomenal character of the field as experienced. Thus the soccer player would directly experience the "sectors" in perception.1 another characteristic example, this time found in MerleauPonty's Phenomenology of Perception, involves an organist: It is said that an experienced organist is capable of playing an organ with which he is unfamiliar . . . He does not learn positions in objective space for each stop and each pedal, nor does he entrust such positions to "memory." During the rehearsal- just as during the performance- the stops, the pedals, and the keyboards are presented to him as powers of such and such an emotional or musical value, and their position as those places through which this value appears in the world. (2012: 146147) Insofar as the organist has the parts of the organ "presented to him" as capable of producing musical and emotional values, the suggestion is that they show up in this way in perceptual experience. To be fair, these passages should allow for multiple interpretations; it is not obvious, for instance, that in the soccer example modifications to the "phenomenal field" imply modifications to what contemporary philosophers of perception call "phenomenal character." But it is common in the secondary scholarship for MerleauPonty to be interpreted in the manner suggested above. For example, Hubert Dreyfus finds in MerleauPonty the view that a person with expertlevel skills "not only sees what needs to be achieved" but also "sees how to achieve his goal" (2002a: 371372). The "sees" here is clearly meant to refer to perceptual experience; as he puts it, "what one has learned appears in the way the world shows up" (2002a: 373). shortly after considering MerleauPonty's soccer example, Komarine RomdenhRomluc puts the point more directly with another example: "the martial artist . . . perceives her situation as requiring a certain sort of behaviour . . . her opponent's fist is seen as an opportunity to duck, an unguarded chest presented as an opportunity to deliver a kick, etc." (2007: 46).2 Here the claim clearly is that the martial artist directly sees the opportunities for action. 1. While MerleauPonty says that the player is "unaware," it should be clear that the player lacks awareness of the initiation and guidance, which is to say that the player is not aware of consciously choosing a course of action. MerleauPonty does not mean to say that the player is visually unaware, and this is suggested by the reference to the "phenomenal field." 2. In a response to RomdenhRomluc's paper which is generally critical of her overall argument, Dreyfus does approve of this aspect of her interpretation of MerleauPonty, and he notes regarding the soccer player example that "when the player is totally absorbed in his task . . . he sees the world as full of opportunities and threats that 'pull forth' appropriate responses from him." see Dreyfus (2007: 60). Motor Imagery and Merleau-Pontyian Accounts of Skilled Action • 171 Ergo • vol. 1, no. 7 • 2014 One can certainly question whether it is plausible that such opportunities directly show up in perceptual experience in the sense that they become contents of conscious visual experience (or experience in or across other modalities). Those who do not share the putative MerleauPontyian view could argue that the relevant elements of the experience should be thought of as preperceptual or postperceptual .3 It is easy to think of a basis for the latter type of counter argument; for instance, the skilled actors might have the same perceptual experience as those who lack the relevant skill, but be better able to make decisions using that perceptual information. Instances of the former type might be a bit more difficult to see, but consider the possibility that the skilled actors know better where to focus or have better attention. There is an obvious sense in which this would lead them to have qualitatively different visual experiences from other players; if a great soccer player like Cristiano Ronaldo focuses on or attends to something that I do not, he will see things that I do not. But the important point here is that the difference lies in the focusing and not in the visual contents themselves. If I could attend to and see the same things as Ronaldo, we would have the exact same visual contents. Thus, for the person who rejects the MerleauPontyian view the relevant differences could boil down to preperceptual differences that determine the allocation of attention. Those who want to vindicate the MerleauPontyian contention that action opportunities are directly presented in perceptual experience often turn to ecological perceptual psychology, and in particular to J.J. gibson's concept of affordance, for support.4 In this paper I will take a different direction, however, and argue that recent research into motor imagery provides strong support for the MerleauPontyian phenomenological descriptions.5 specifically, I will argue that motor imagery enables the skilled actor to augment the perceptual scene in such a way that 3. The two species of argument that I am considering here (that the effect is preperceptual or postperceptual) are quite common. In particular, they are often made against cognitive penetration claims; see Deroy (2012). 4. For example, Dreyfus (2002a) mentions affordances, but he has some reasons for thinking that gibson's view does not perfectly fit MerleauPonty's; see Dreyfus and Kelly (2007: note 3). RomdenhRomluc (2007) does not mention affordances, but she mentions them in other similar discussions; see RomdenhRomluc (2011). For other discussions of MerleauPonty and affordances see glotzback and Heft (1982) and sanders (1993). 5. It has been argued that motor simulation- which plays an important role in my consideration of motor imagery below- can play the role of affordances. see, for example garbarini and adenzato (2004), who base their conception of simulation on research on canonical neurons. also, gallese (2000) connects motor simulation to gibson's views (without specifically mentioning affordances). Both note that their views require some departure from gibson's work, though, and their reasons are somewhat similar to those offered in Dreyfus and Kelly (2007: note 3). gallese also ties his view to MerleauPonty, though only in cursory fashion. For some arguments against tying affordance to motor simulation, see Declerck (2013). I am not taking a hard stance on whether or not the view I am espousing in this paper fits with gibson's work, though I suspect that it does not fit entirely well (see footnote 22). 172 • J.C. Berendzen Ergo • vol. 1, no. 7 • 2014 opportunities for action show up directly, rather than being due to preperceptual focusing or postperceptual decision making. This consideration of motor imagery and the perception of action opportunities will have two general aims. The first is to show that motor imagery research can support the type of phenomenological descriptions offered above and provide an empirically plausible explanation of how such phenomena occur. such an explanation is not typically provided by MerleauPonty or his interpreters, so this paper should add to the literature in that regard. The second aim is to show that the motor imagery view that is marshaled to support and explain the phenomenological descriptions is compatible with a broadly MerleauPontyian view on perception and action. a bit of explanation is in order. The aim is not to argue that the motor imagery view is in fact MerleauPonty's view (it is not). nor is the aim to anachronistically argue that the motor imagery view is one that MerleauPonty would accept if given the chance. Rather, the aim is to show that the motor imagery view fits in with the kinds of general commitments regarding perception and action that MerleauPonty establishes in his early works (primarily The Structure of Behavior and Phenomenology of Perception). The paper will proceed according to the following plan. section 1 will provide a general overview of the recent research on motor imagery. section 2 will discuss the extent to which the motor imagery research fits with MerleauPonty's views. section 3 will then discuss the idea that motor imagery can qualitatively affect perceptual experience. This will be key to establishing the idea that opportunities for action are directly present in perception. section 4 will then provide some concluding remarks on the way in which motor imagery can be used to vindicate the MerleauPontyian phenomenological descriptions. This will involve showing that motor imagery's effect on perception is not (solely, at least) preperceptual or postperceptual. 1. Skillful Action and Motor Imagery subjects can be said to engage in motor imagery when they imagine that they are engaging in a particular action. The term "motor image" does not, however, refer to mental imagery that depicts the subject engaging in the action from a thirdperson perspective. nor is motor imagery merely visual mental imagery of actions (though visual images are often connected to motor images). as Marc Jeannerod puts the point, motor images can be "experienced from within, as the result of the 'first person' process involving mostly a kinesthetic representation of the action" (1995: 1419). Jeannerod takes motor images to be a "prototypical form of action Motor Imagery and Merleau-Pontyian Accounts of Skilled Action • 173 Ergo • vol. 1, no. 7 • 2014 representation" insofar as they represent a goal that will be fulfilled if the imagined action is completed.6 It is important to emphasize that motor imagery is genuinely imagery in the same sense that visual imagery (or imagery in other modalities) is imagery. The common view in the contemporary philosophical and scientific literature is that mental imagery is, in the words of Thomas (2014), "quasiperceptual experience; it resembles perceptual experience, but occurs in the absence of the appropriate external stimuli." Typically this point is put in representationalist terms; see, for example, Kosslyn, Thompson, and ganis's claim that imagery occurs "when a representation of the type created during the initial phases of perception is present but the stimulus is not actually being perceived" (2006: 4). One need not describe the link between imagery and perception in representationalist terms, however. For example, in presenting his enactivist theory Evan Thompson describes mental imagery as "a subjectively simulated or emulated perceptual experience" (2007: 297). In either case, imagery is taken to occur when processes associated with perception take place in the absence of the relevant stimulus. The most commonly discussed form of mental imagery, visual imagery, thus occurs when there is a mental process of the same type as occurs in actual vision, but without an external stimulus. But the same thing can clearly happen for other sensory modalities. In the case of motor imagery it is kinesthetic or proprioceptive processes that are generated. It is further helpful to consider that motor imagery can fit the three intuitive features of imagining – directedness, activity, and phenomenal character – that amy Kind proposes as a part of her argument that imagination involves visual mental imagery (2007: 8995). First, motor imagery is directed because there is some possible action in the world that the motor image is "about." Motor imagery is also straightforwardly active (one is doing something when one imagines), and perhaps more so than visual imagery. according to Jeannerod, for instance, "imagined actions are indeed actions in their own right," largely because our bodies go through many of the same processes (such as increases in heart and respiration rate, and activation of motor pathways to relevant muscle groups) that they undergo during actual action, though in ways that can end up being blocked or inhibited (2006: 39; see also anema and Dijkerman 2013: 100103 ). He thus thinks of motor images as being simulations of actions that involve "dynamic changes in the content of the image over time, corresponding to the unfolding of the action which is being imagined" (2006: 24). The way in which motor images are active also suggests that they have an experiential character; insofar as 6. The title of Chapter Two of Jeannerod (2006) is "Imagined actions as a Prototypical Form of action Representation." 174 • J.C. Berendzen Ergo • vol. 1, no. 7 • 2014 there is something it is like to perceive the kinesthetic contents of an actual action, there is something it is like to undergo the simulated action.7 Two caveats are in order here, however. First, as Kind notes, the experiential character of imagery is typically weaker than experiential character of the perceptions the imagery simulates (2007: 9495). Frequently, perception and imagery are taken to lie on a sort of continuum, with qualities like vividness, determinacy, and intensity weakening as one moves from perception to imagery.8 second, and more importantly, it must be noted that motor imagery can remain implicit and unconscious. This second point will be further discussed below. Motor imagery can be completely detached from execution of the action, and this is perhaps the most common way of thinking of motor images. For instance, motor imagery is often used by athletes to practice for competition prior to and separate from the actual event. a downhill skier might imagine going through the entire race as a part of her race preparation, for instance. such cases are consciously experienced and evince at least some measure of conscious control. Cases like this also often combine motor imagery with visual imagery; for instance, the kinesthetic sense of the movements involved in skiing would be combined with visual images of the course being skied. For the purposes of this paper, however, it is important to note instances where motor images are preparatory for action. Jeannerod argues, for instance, that motor images are "widely used in preparing actions in everyday life" (2006: 28). as noted above, motor images involve simulations of actions, insofar as the same bodily processes that are involved in the actual action are also involved in motor imagery. In examples like the ski practice case noted above, those processes are inhibited, and remain at the level of imagery. But in some cases the processes are not inhibited in such a manner, and thus motor imagery amounts to a sort of preliminary, covert rehearsal of an action that follows. such preparatory motor imagery 7. Moran, guillot, MacIntyre, and Collet (2011: 233234) argue that simulated movements are equivalent to real movements at "the neural and/or mental representational levels, not at the phenomenological level", and furthermore take the view that motor imagery is experienced as being like action to involve a category error. Part of their argument for this is that "imagining a boxing match or a marathon does not make one feel as tired or as sore as if one actually competed in such events," but all this shows is that the experiences are not identical (and surely no one ever thought that they were). Furthermore, Jeannerod (2006)- to whom Moran et al. (2011: 2526) appeal- uses the firstperson reports of subjects undergoing motor imagery tasks as a part of his evidence to establish the equivalence between motor imagery and actual action in a manner that suggests some phenomenal similarity. 8. For more discussion of the relation between perception and imagery see Thomas (2014: §1.2), which helpfully summarizes the issue and provides references to further discussion. The view that imagery is a weakened perception has a long history (for example, Hobbes (1996: 1516) referred to imagery as "decaying sense" and Hume (2007: 1213) took imagery to copy perception but with less force and vivacity), and some version of it is implied by the view that imagery occurs when sensory processes are engaged absent a stimulus. The specific ways in which different kinds of imagery are "weakened" remain to be spelled out, however. Motor Imagery and Merleau-Pontyian Accounts of Skilled Action • 175 Ergo • vol. 1, no. 7 • 2014 can be nonconscious, as is suggested by various empirical results. For example, in one experiment (Frak, Paulignan, and Jeannerod 2001) subjects were asked to quickly judge, via verbal report, whether the task of grasping and emptying a container of water would be easy, hard, or impossible. The container was then oriented in different ways that would potentially alter the difficulty of the task. subjects' response times varied according to the orientation of the object in a manner that closely corresponds to the time it would take to actually execute the action (i.e., it would take longer to respond "difficult" when the object was positioned in a manner that would make it harder to grasp). The varying response times are taken to show that the subjects are facilitating the judgment by simulating the action (with the more difficult action comes a longer simulation). But a crucial point here for Jeannerod is that subjects were asked to quickly report the judgment (thus reducing the chance that they would have time to consciously consider the matter) and were not instructed to consciously imagine the action (2006: 28). Due to this, he interprets such experiments as showing that people engage in nonconscious preparatory simulations of actions.9 a terminological issue arises here. It is common to take the term "imagery" to refer specifically to a class of conscious experiences. For example, Moulton and Kosslyn (2009: 1278) generally agree with Jeannerod that imagery can involve action simulation, but argue for a separation between simulations that use imagery, which they take to be explicit and conscious, and those that are implicit. In fact, Jeannerod himself seems to treat the matter this way in some of his earlier works on the subject (e.g., Jeannerod 1994: 190). In later works, however, he selfconsciously departs from the common understanding of imagery as necessarily consciously experienced: "whereas the term 'motor image' classically refers to explicit or conscious representation of an action (imagine yourself running or raising your hand), the same concept also includes other, implicit or unconscious, aspects of the same phenomenon" (Jeannerod and Frak 1999: 735; see also Jeannerod 2006: 28).10 The reason for this terminological choice is that nonconscious motor simulations are functionally the same as the motor simulation that is consciously experienced (see, i.e., Jeannerod and Frak 1999). Whether or not the simulation is consciously experienced depends upon conditions including time constraints (simulations can happen too quickly for conscious experience to arise) and whether or not the simulated action is successfully carried out or inhibited (Jeannerod 2006: 9. In this discussion Jeannerod references Frak, Paulignan, and Jeannerod (2001) and de'sperati and stucchi (1997). In a response to Jeannerod (1994), Rizzolatti (1994: 220) provides different support for the idea that there are nonconscious motor images by referencing an experiment that measured the neural activity of monkeys who watched experimenters engage in grasping movements. 10. It should be noted that Jeannerod (2006) is not completely unambiguous in this regard. For example, on page 28 he refers to "implicit motor imagery" which is nonconscious, but also refers to such nonconscious simulations as being "in contradistinction to motor imagery proper." On balance, though, he treats the nonconscious simulations as being a part of motor imagery overall. 176 • J.C. Berendzen Ergo • vol. 1, no. 7 • 2014 ch. 3). Whether or not such conditions actually come into play, nonconscious imagery is in principle potentially consciously experienced; thus the notion of nonconscious imagery does not move entirely away from the standard understanding of the term imagery. This suggests that the phrase "implicit motor image" is particularly apt; what is implicit in this case can be made explicit. To summarize the foregoing points, motor imagery can come into play when one readies oneself for action by implicitly simulating the action just prior to its performance. But motor imagery does not only prepare the body for action, it also helps regulate bodily action during performance by playing a role in the use of forward models or emulators (Jeannerod 2006: 20; see also grush 2004, who favors the latter term). Forward models are simulations that enable the body to predict outcomes of actions prior to sensory feedback (for an accessible overview see Wolpert and Flanagan 2009: 295296). Clearly, during bodily action one can adjust one's movements on the basis of sensory feedback (i.e., if an obstacle is in my path while I am walking, I can change course). But sensory feedback is slow, and alone would not allow for the kinds of quick, finegrained adjustments made in cases of relatively fast skilled action (soccer playing or organ playing, for instance). Forward models allow for quicker control by putting forward a preaction plan (motor images can serve as that plan) that can be used to monitor bodily outputs (i.e., as we act our actions can be compared to the plan).11 Forward models are further linked to the kind of skilled action found in the soccer and organ examples because they are enriched through the learning of a skill, which thus enables more competent performance (see Wolpert et al. 2011: 739742). skilled performers can deploy more complex motor imagery that both prepares for and helps regulate actual skilled performance (for a similar view see Van Leeuwen 2011). Insofar as the above description distinguishes between forward models/emulators and the sensory feedback they precede, this way of construing action control would seem to separate action from perception. But the opposite is actually the case. as grush puts the point, "the perceived environment is the environment as made manifest through the organism's engagements, because the emulator that supplies the perceptual interpretation is an emulator of the agent/environment interactions" (2004: 393). Forward models provide predictions that anticipate actions in a way that runs ahead of slower sensory feedback. This does not mean, however, that forward model regulation is separated from sensory feedback. Forward models are not only integrated with various sensory feedback loops such that their commands can be adjusted, but they also enable filtering of sensory 11. For more detail on these points, see grush (2006: 378380) and Wolpert, Diedrichsen, and Flanagan (2011: 740742). The way a forward model works is more complicated than I have described it here. One important point to note is that the forward model is not necessarily compared to our actions directly, but rather to an efference copy, or an internal copy of motor outputs that is created as the outputs occur. Motor Imagery and Merleau-Pontyian Accounts of Skilled Action • 177 Ergo • vol. 1, no. 7 • 2014 information so those feedback loops can better inform the system (Wolpert et al. 2011: 740742). Thus the perception that results is the product of a thoroughgoing combination of sensory information and motor planning. 2. Fitting Motor Imagery into MerleauPonty's Views given this initial description of the motor imagery view, it is prima facie problematic to say that it can fit with MerleauPonty's views. The first potential problem is that it is unclear if MerleauPonty would agree with the conception of imagery on which the motor imagery view rests (i.e., that imagery is quasiperceptual and occurs when perceptual processes are engaged absent a stimulus). In his early works MerleauPonty often seems to stress that perception and imagination are discontinuous.12 For example, in Phenomenology of Perception he states that we "are never geared into the imagination" as we are in perception (2012: 338), and in his 194950 lecture course "structure and Conflicts in Child Consciousness" he argues that "the image is not an enfeebled perception. It is not susceptible to being "observed" or examined point by point like a perceived thing" (2010: 176). The key point in each of these passages is that imagery differs from perception insofar as one cannot inspect the image from varying perspectives in the way that one can further inspect a perceived object. given this, imagery and perception must differ in kind, rather than merely in degree. Following this point, MerleauPonty denies that the image is a kind of "internal" mental object, which can be inspected internally in the way that a perceived object can be inspected "externally." MerleauPonty's views on imagination are much more amenable to the contemporary "quasiperception" view than these passages suggest, however, and this can be seen by examining both the contemporary view and MerleauPonty's view further. First, it must be noted that the quasiperception view of imagery does not have to imply that perception and imagery are identical (but for the absence of the external stimulus). The quasiperception view holds that some of the processes that perception engages are engaged by imagery, so perception and imagery are functionally similar (not identical).13 and, as was seen above, enactivist views, which would reject the idea that mental images are internal objects, still hold to a version 12. To a large extent MerleauPonty is following sartre's earlier studies on the imagination in this regard. On this point see steeves (2001: 370372). 13. also, some contemporary imagery research seems to go against MerleauPonty's claim that imagery cannot be examined from different perspectives. Most pertinent in this regard is research into "mental rotation," which shows that people can imagine objects that they mentally rotate and "view" from different perspectives. One way of interpreting this research is to construe mental rotation in terms of exactly what MerleauPonty wants to deny; i.e. one entertains an internal picture that one examines from different perspectives. For a concise overview of this research see the supplement on "Mental Rotation" to Thomas (2014). But such an interpretation is not obligatory; see Thompson 178 • J.C. Berendzen Ergo • vol. 1, no. 7 • 2014 of the quasiperception view. For MerleauPonty's part, he does say things that fit with this view. For example, he says that when one imagines a body part, one feels a "quasisensation" (2012: 245). Later in Phenomenology of Perception in a discussion of thinking through geometrical problems using a triangle, he compares using an imaginary triangle to using a "sensible" triangle and notes that the imaginary triangle "is at least virtually situated in my perceptual field" (2012: 405). On balance, MerleauPonty seems to support something like the enactivist version of the quasiperception view. a bigger problem for fitting the motor imagery view with MerleauPonty's thought is the fact that (as seen in the previous section) motor imagery and forward models/emulators, are often described as being representational.14 MerleauPonty 's views, on the other hand, are usually taken to be paradigmatically antirepresentationalist (e.g., Dreyfus 2002a; gallagher 2008b: 360364). Of course there are large debates over the nature and status of "representations." and specifically within the philosophical and scientific discussions that are closest to MerleauPonty 's concerns (i.e., "embodied cognitive science") there is a robust debate over whether the concept "representation" should be revised and retained or jettisoned completely (for a prime example of the "revise and retain" view, see Clark 1998: ch. 8; for a prime example of the "jettison" view, see Hutto and Myin 2013). It is beyond the scope of this paper to work through these debates and to properly situate MerleauPonty's thought within them. But we can fix on MerleauPonty's critical points that are most important for the present discussion, and show that the conception of motor imagery proposed in the previous section does not have to run afoul of these criticisms. One can find criticisms of representationalist views throughout MerleauPonty 's early work, but it is important to determine what, exactly, he is criticizing. One can start with two basic criticisms. First, he rejects the idea that skilled actors consciously engage in mental preparation for their actions. For instance, the soccer player is "unaware" of the way in which the skilled actions are initiated and guided (for other passages that directly link representation to conscious thought, see, e.g., MerleauPonty 1983: 63; 2012: 138139). Furthermore, in rejecting representationalist theories of action MerleauPonty claims that "consciousness is originally not an 'I think that,' but rather an 'I can'" (2012: 139). This amounts to more than a rejection of consciousness in action, however. Consider how close MerleauPonty 's language is to gilbert Ryle's terminology ("knowing that"/"I think that" and "knowing how"/"I can"). Ryle is not just arguing against action requiring (2007: 299301) for a discussion of mental rotation research in the context of an enactivist theory of imagery. 14. as seen in note 6 above, Jeannerod construes motor imagery as being a species of representation. also, grush presents his theory of emulators precisely as being a (better, he thinks) theory of representation; this point is made most directly in grush (1997). Motor Imagery and Merleau-Pontyian Accounts of Skilled Action • 179 Ergo • vol. 1, no. 7 • 2014 conscious thought. In The Concept of Mind (2009: ch. 2) he more generally criticizes intellectualist views that take action to depend on propositional states. Though MerleauPonty does not use the language of "propositional states," he would reject propositionalist views of action. a primary reason for this is that standard propositionalist views hold that knowing how to act skillfully requires knowledge of a fact/true proposition (see stanley 2011: vii). as Jason stanley puts the point: "acting with skill is action that manifests an agent's knowledge of facts" about that skillful action (2011: viii).15 For MerleauPonty, skilled action would be too context dependent and too tied into a holistic network of further actions to be adequately specified in terms of discrete facts. This leads him to claim that when it comes to action, "I possess the conclusions without the premises being given anywhere" (1983: 30), which is to say that we can complete actions without having to somehow possess individual facts or propositions (the "premises") about how the action is completed.16 These two criticisms (against conscious thought and against propositionalism) do not apply to the motor imagery view. First, the preparatory motor images that are important for the present view are precisely nonconscious and not overtly considered or ratiocinated. This point might be obscured somewhat by some of the language used. For example, the discussion of forward models/emulators above refers to motor imagery as playing a role in action planning. The act of putting together a plan for an action sounds like a conscious activity, perhaps of the type mentioned above in the downhill skier example. But the action planning connected with forward models is not conscious; it is the activity of a subpersonal mental process. There is no need to construe the preparations that go into our bodily actions as conscious or thought out. But what of the criticism of propositionalist views of action? It should be noted that even among representationalist views there is debate concerning whether any mental imagery is propositional in nature, with prominent contemporary views 15. It is worth noting, though, that stanley's propositionalist view of skilled action does not depend on the propositional states being consciously entertained (2011: 1921). This possibility is connected to the idea that while "knowing that" and "knowing how" are both species of the same thing (propositional knowledge) they can differ according to the relevant "ways of thinking." This view, which exploits the Fregean idea that propositions can fit differing "modes of presentation," holds that knowing how exploits "practical ways of thinking" (see 2011: 122130). 16. In the broader passage cited here MerleauPonty (1983: 2930) argues that "intelligence" does not intervene in common bodily actions. Part of his reasoning is that intelligent thought would take too long, and he is clearly thinking of conscious reasoning here. But he also argues that intelligence would require the action to be divided, untenably, into determined thinkable parts. It should be noted that "intelligence" (which he puts in scare quotes in this passage) is equated with intellection or reasoning, and he does not mean to reduce bodily action to mere reflex. For example, a few pages later he refers to "a directed activity between blind mechanism and intelligent behavior which is not accounted for by classical mechanism and intellectualism" (1983: 40). This is of course a major theme of his early work in general. 180 • J.C. Berendzen Ergo • vol. 1, no. 7 • 2014 rejecting propositional representation in favor of "depictive representation" (such a view is prominently associated with the work of stephen Kosslyn; e.g., Lewis, Borst, and Kosslyn 2010). setting this debate aside, it would seem that motor images would not be propositional in nature because of their distinctly motor character. Motor images are simulated actions rather than facts about actions. Furthermore, the motor imagery view fits with the MerleauPontyian point noted above regarding context dependence. Jeannerod, for instance, rejects the idea that motor images contain "preorganized units of action" (2006: 12). This is because motor images need to fit changing action contexts and Jeannerod takes them to involve "dynamic procedures" (2006: 134). Engaging in motor imagery would thus involve manifesting such dynamic procedures rather than knowledge of facts about action. none of these points settle any arguments about the representational status of motor images, but it should at least be clear that we need not take arguments against propositionalism to be arguments against the motor imagery view. Beyond the criticisms of conscious representation and propositionalism, MerleauPonty also rejects the idea that there is some sort of internal objective depiction of our actions (the plan) that is separated from the specific contexts in which we act. For example, early in The Structure of Behavior he criticizes scientific views that conceive of animal behavior in terms of "physiological representations" which are, to quote the psychiatrist Paul schilder, "first given as a nucleus from which the totality of the movement is subsequently differentiated" (MerleauPonty 1983: 30; schilder 1923: 65). It is the case that a variety of views developed in the 20th Century held, like schilder's, that actions are represented by static formulae, schemas, or models that are stored internally, and which contain, in the words of the Russian physiologist nicolas Bernstein, "like an embryo in an egg or a track on a gramophone record, the entire scheme of the movement as it is expanded in time" (Bernstein 1967; quoted in Jeannerod 2006: 11). For MerleauPonty such static motor schema are not appropriately context sensitive and require an untenable abstraction from the contexts in which actual actions occur (see, e.g., 2012: 141).17 action cannot be explained in terms of a representation that contains the totality of the action prior to its enactment, because actions only come about within specific contexts that cannot be entirely specified beforehand. The motor imagery view does not fall prey to this criticism either. as we saw in the discussion of propositionalism, Jeannerod favors a dynamic conception of motor imagery because "the same movement is rarely, if ever, replicated twice . . . schemas should be plastic and adaptable rather than fixed" (2006: 12). While 17. MerleauPonty is critical of conceptions of "motor memory" (2012: 141), while memory does play an important role in Jeannerod's theory. But the most important point MerleauPonty is making is that memory does not provide a complete or static depiction of the movement. MerleauPonty 's view thus does not depend on removing memory entirely from the process of preparing for and regulating our actions. Motor Imagery and Merleau-Pontyian Accounts of Skilled Action • 181 Ergo • vol. 1, no. 7 • 2014 preparatory motor images might draw partly on memory, they are primarily "assumed to be embodied in the wiring of the motor system: they are better defined as dynamic procedures than as preorganized structures" (2006: 134). These dynamic procedures are made up of "functional rules for assemblage, including the biomechanical constraints, the spatial reference frame, the initial positions, the forces to apply, etc." (gallagher 2008a: 179; gallagher is interviewing Jeannerod). so motor imagery is derived not from static models but from stored abilities to engage in certain procedures that are somehow "wired" into the motor system (and, as we will see below, this enables them to dynamically engage with the action environment). In this regard Jeannerod's view is quite similar to MerleauPonty's description in Phenomenology of Perception of the acquisition of motor habits. The organist is able to play the new organ without having to draw up a plan because the organist has acquired the habit of organ playing. MerleauPonty does not have much to say about the physiological bases of motor habits. But he does describe habitual action as "engaging in the world through stable organs and preestablished circuits," which sounds somewhat like the idea that dynamic procedures are wired into the body (2012: 89).18 Our ability to nonconsciously simulate an action could be a key element of our ability to engage in habitual action.19 MerleauPonty is further not opposed to the idea that in action we draw on elements that are somehow taken on board by our bodies. This is seen in his use of the terms "sediment" and "sedimentation." For example, in The Structure of Behavior he notes that "the body in general is an ensemble of paths already traced, of powers already constituted," and in a note to this passage connects this to the "'cultural body' which is the sedimentation of its spontaneous acts" (1983: 210, 249). The "cultural body" thus "sediments" these already traced paths, and it is not hard to find in this the idea that the processes associated with actions we have previously practiced become embodied in us.20 Importantly, MerleauPonty emphasizes that motor habits and sedimentation do not tie us to a preestablished outcome. Habits engage our ability to act in new situations; MerleauPonty says "it is as though our body comprises two distinct 18. The idea that dynamic procedures of the type Jeannerod discusses are wired into the body fits best with the reference to "preestablished circuits." When MerleauPonty refers to "stable organs," he means elements of our "bodily nature," i.e. aspects of our given physiology that allow for bodily action to occur. Jeannerod of course also includes this aspect in his discussion, i.e. in his consideration of biomechanical constraints (2006: 2627). 19. In commenting on grush (2004), schubotz and Yves von Cramon (2004: 414415) explicitly make such a connection between imagery simulation and habit. 20. although the idea clearly includes the point being made here, it must be noted that there is much more to MerleauPonty's discussion of sedimentation than this. In fact, the references to sedimentation in Phenomenology of Perception have less to do with bodily actions- which are predominantly discussed in terms of habit- than they do with the embodying of conceptual and cultural elements. He also speaks of sedimentation as happening in the world rather than in our bodies, insofar as we shape our environments to support our habitual actions. 182 • J.C. Berendzen Ergo • vol. 1, no. 7 • 2014 layers, that of the habitual body and that of the actual body" and "the habitual body can act as a guarantee for the actual body" (2012: 84). In this case the "actual body" is the body as it engages in actual action contexts in the here and now. That habits enable us to engage in new contexts is partly explained by the point mentioned above that they should be thought of as dynamic procedures. One must go farther than this, however, and note that the habitual and actual are tied together in what MerleauPonty calls "the double moment of sedimentation and spontaneity" wherein sedimented habits "feed off my present . . . at each moment; they offer me a sense, but this is a sense that I reflect back to them" (2012: 132).21 The idea that embodied habits can be tied into present contexts in such a way that the present contexts "reflect a sense back into them" fits quite well with the way in which motor imagery operates in forward models/emulators. as mentioned, above, forward models are linked together with sensory feedback such that the two loop together. In emphasizing the importance of seeing motor regulation as based on the combination of forward model prediction and sensory feedback, shaun gallagher compares this view both to Husserl's and MerleauPonty's views on the temporality of experience (2005: 189205).22 There is a protentionretention (to use the Husserlian terminology) movement in the activity of the forward model, which is to say that the elements of the plan that are moved forward into the action prepare for the incoming sensory information that is then retained for use in updating the forward model. The role of motor imagery in forward models also brings up a comparison with MerleauPonty's notion of "the function of projection" in action (2012: 114115 ). In his discussion of the patient schneider, MerleauPonty notes (following Kurt goldstein) that one of schneider's problems is that while he can engage in "concrete" movements which are tied directly to the given context (i.e., using a given hammer to drive a given nail) he cannot easily engage in "abstract" movements which are not tied directly to any given situation (i.e., pretending to hammer a nail) (2012: 105114). MerleauPonty interprets the lack of ability in abstract movement to be tied to a general inability on the part of schneider to "invert the natural relation between my body and the surroundings" and to thus take one's environment as a situation which allows for the possible actions that one intends, 21. One should note that in this passage MerleauPonty is actually discussing sedimented conceptual knowledge, which is implicitly available for us in our occurrent thinking about the world. The general point holds regarding motor habits as well, however. 22. gallagher (2005: 189205) also relates the sensory feedback element of action control to J.J. gibson's views, and uses a description of the actions of schizophrenics to show that sensory feedback alone, without forward model control, is incapable of regulating normal action. This is perhaps a reason to think that gibsonian psychology, and its concept of affordance, cannot adequately explain the MerleauPontyian phenomenology of skilled action, because it cannot completely explain the way in which we anticipate the skilled actions the environment affords. Motor Imagery and Merleau-Pontyian Accounts of Skilled Action • 183 Ergo • vol. 1, no. 7 • 2014 rather than being merely guided by that environment (2012: 115). schneider can be guided by the world but cannot feed possibilities forward into the world. MerleauPonty uses the metaphor of "projection" to describe our ability to find our possibilities for action in the environment; we "project" possibilities upon the world.23 It is not difficult to think of the use of motor imagery in forward models in the terms of such projection. When one engages a preparatory motor image that then feeds forward into an emulation that predicts and regulates action, one is precisely not merely engaging in concrete action. One is rather engaging with an action that one takes to be possible and thus fitting a plan for that action onto the action scene. and, of course, the very language of "motor imagery" and its connection with imagination fits well with MerleauPonty's point here; imagery is capable of swinging free of the "readymade or fixed world" (2012: 115). Of course the foregoing considerations do not prove that MerleauPonty would himself accept the motor imagery view. But it has been shown that the motor imagery view does not fall prey to some of MerleauPonty's key criticisms of representationalism, and that the motor imagery view fits well with some of MerleauPonty's main concerns. This should be enough to show that it is plausible to fit the motor imagery view with a broadly "MerleauPontyian" way of thinking about action. It should also be noted that the vexed issue of whether or not motor imagery should be described in the language of representation is far from settled, but the present investigation should be able to proceed without that question being definitively answered.24 The big question for the present investigation is whether it is plausible to think that motor imagery can affect perception such that opportunities for action can show up in perception. 3. Motor Imagery's Effects on Perceptual Experience While the previous section establishes that contemporary theories of motor imagery can fit with many of MerleauPonty's overall concerns regarding skilled action, the question of whether or not motor imagery can support his phenomenological descriptions has not yet been answered. Recall that MerleauPonty indicates- and scholars like Dreyfus and RomdenhRomluc further emphasize- that we directly 23. For a discussion of this issue see RomdenhRomluc (2007). I would propose that the use of motor imagery and forward models could help explain the phenomenon of "reckoning with the possible" that RomdenhRomluc considers there. 24. It is quite likely that the key elements of the motor imagery view can be couched in both representationalist and antirepresentationalist vocabularies. For example, Chemero (2009: 6065, 180181) discusses the extent to which emulators (the existence of which he takes to be empirically wellsupported) can be described in representationalist and antirepresentationalist frameworks. 184 • J.C. Berendzen Ergo • vol. 1, no. 7 • 2014 perceive opportunities for action. What really needs to be shown here is that such phenomenological descriptions are empirically plausible and can potentially be explained by the effect that motor imagery has on our perceptual experience. This point will be argued for in this section in two ways that will correspond to the two subsections below. First (in subsection 3.1) it will be argued that we have good reason to think that imagery can influence perception to create unified experiences. second (in subsection 3.2) it will be argued that there is good reason to think that planning for action can affect perception, which gives us further reason to think that motor imagery specifically can affect perception. Put together, these two arguments will provide strong support for that thesis. 3.1 Imagery's Effect on Perceptual Experience There is abundant reason to think that visual imagery can influence visual perception. It is possible, for instance, to consciously augment visual experience with imaginative contents through the process Robert Briscoe terms "makeperceive"; Briscoe gives the examples of standing in an empty room and imaginatively arranging furniture in it or looking at the night sky while one imaginatively "draws" lines to connect the stars in a constellation (2008: 479; 2011: 153154; forthcoming). as another example, studies show that subjects can combine visual images with occurrently perceived figures in order to determine facts about a combined image. The authors of a recent study of this type conclude: "mental images preserve structural information of the pattern they represent, and can be integrated with percepts to create a single composite representation" (Lewis, Borst, and Kosslyn 2010: 270). One can also find examples of similar effects in perceptual modalities other than vision, and examples where the influence is crossmodal. Briscoe mentions, for instance, that rock climbers might augment their visual experience of the climbing surface with motor imagery of possible future handorfootholds, or sculptors might augment their visual experience of a block of marble with motor imagery of possible sculpting actions (forthcoming).25 In each case the purpose would be (as in the above furniture arranging case) to evaluate future actions. studies also show that stimuli in one modality can elicit experiences in another modality; for example, visual perception of silent lip reading can activate neural areas associated with hearing in a manner that might connect with the feeling that one is hearing something (spence and Deroy 2013: 158). also, in one study subjects presented 25. These cases might also involve visual imagery; i.e. the climber might imagine seeing a hand on a rock or the sculptor might imagine what the marble would look like when sculpted in a particular way (this seems especially likely in the latter case). But insofar as the climber and sculptor are engaged in the activity while doing the imagining they would simulate the actions and thus engage in motor imagery as well. Motor Imagery and Merleau-Pontyian Accounts of Skilled Action • 185 Ergo • vol. 1, no. 7 • 2014 with an audiovisual recording of the ear of a dummy being stroked by a brush reported feeling that their own ears had been tickled (Kitagawa and Igarashi 2005; cited by spence and Deroy 2013: 158). spence and Deroy (2013) interpret these examples as being instances of crossmodal imagery where perceptual experience in one modality causes imagery in another modality. In each of these examples, genuine perceptual processes (i.e., processes connected to an external stimulus) are combined with perceptual processes in other modalities that are not directly connected to an external stimulus (i.e., imagery). and in some cases this involves motor imagery. Further consider Briscoe's rock climbing example. The climber has genuine visual perception of the rock to be climbed and at the same time engages imagery of the possible ways in which that seen rock might be gripped or held; thus visual perception and motor imagery are combined. Furthermore, it is easy to think of the motor imagery in this case as being preparatory; the climber is using imagery to plan for the climbing actions to come. Thus this example fits well with much of the discussion of motor imagery in sections 1 and 2 above. But there is one massive difference: the subject is aware of consciously having combined or hybrid perceptual and imaginative experiences. In all of Briscoe's "makeperceive" examples and in the Lewis, Borst, and Kosslyn (2010) example, subjects consciously invoke imagery that is added to perception such that the two are clearly kept apart (one would not, for instance, report oneself as literally "seeing" the imagined furniture in the empty room). The examples discussed by spence and Deroy are different in that perceptual experiences induce imagery, but they are clear that in these cases "people typically do not mix up their experiences . . . with genuine percepts" (2013: 162). But there is also empirical evidence that shows that imagination and perception can combine such that the subject does not distinguish the elements in experience. Perhaps the most famous example of this is the socalled "Perky effect" wherein visual experiences are mistaken for imagined experiences. In C.W. Perky's original experiment, subjects were told to fixate on a blank screen and imagine objects like a banana or leaf. unbeknownst to the subjects, visible corresponding objects were then projected on the screen, but the subjects reported having only imagined the object (for a discussion see Waller, schweitzer, Brunton, and Knudson 2012). In order to support an argument that imagination and perception can combine to form a single experience, Fiona Macpherson reports on another similar study: segal . . . performed an experiment like Perky's in which she asked subjects to imagine the skyline of new York. an image of a tomato was projected onto the screen. Observers didn't report the tomato image but several reported imagining seeing new York at sunset. Thus, we have examples where perceptual elements and imaginative elements combine to produce the phenomenal character of what seems to the subject to be one state – be 186 • J.C. Berendzen Ergo • vol. 1, no. 7 • 2014 it really a perceptual experience, really an imaginative experience, or some amalgam of the two. (2012: 52) The fact that the subjects reported imagining a red sunset but did not report seeing a tomato supports the idea that visual experience can nonconsciously have an effect on imagination, and that the red visual element combined with the imagined element to, as Macpherson argues, create one experiential state. a bit more needs to be said regarding the idea that "one experiential state" is created. Perky's results are often interpreted as showing that perception and imagery can be so similar experientially that they are wholly indistinguishable (i.e., imagining a banana can be identical to a veridical perception of a banana). see, for example, Kind's claim that "Perky's experiment shows that, in some cases at least, perceiving feels exactly like imagining" (2001: 94; for criticisms of this type of interpretation of Perky's results see Casey 2000: 147151 and Hopkins 2012). The Perky effect tends to be interpreted in a different manner in the empirical psychological literature, however. as Waller et al. (2012: 293) note, subsequent experiments (including segal's that Macpherson reports) have led Perky's idea to "become identified primarily with the idea that perceptual detection or discrimination is interfered with by concurrent imagery tasks." They go on to note that a body of research following Perky has considered the ways in which imagery might facilitate rather than interfere with perception. Reeves and CraverLemley (who are prominently associated with the "interference" interpretation) suggest that while it seems clear that there is an effect, the exact mechanism of the effect is unclear (2012: 67). given this, we might say that the lesson of Perky's (and subsequent) experiments is not that imagery and perception can be exactly alike, but that imagery can affect perception in ways that subjects do not consciously notice. "single experiential state" would in this case just mean that one does not consciously discern the elements that are properly perceptual from the elements that derive from or are affected by imagery. For example, some of segal's results are taken to show that the detection threshold for perceptual stimuli was raised by the concurrent imagery task (e.g., segal and Fusella 1970: 463464; see also Waller et al. 2012: 293). so, on this interpretation, when the subjects were asked to imagine the new York skyline, the operation of that imagery task made it more difficult for them to consciously detect the faint tomato image, such that they mistook the redness of the tomato for a sunset in their imagery.26 This is, of course, specifically an instance of imagery interfering with visual perception. But, as noted above, the current re26. segal does not herself provide such an interpretation of the skyline/tomato case. Her description of that case is very brief, and is talked about in general terms, referring merely to the stimulus having an effect on the image (1972: 206207). The interpretation given here is consistent with segal's thoughts on such cases, however. Motor Imagery and Merleau-Pontyian Accounts of Skilled Action • 187 Ergo • vol. 1, no. 7 • 2014 search holds that imagery could facilitate perception via "Perkystyle" influences as well. In the segal experiment, the single experiential state is taken by the subjects to be an instance of imagery; they report imagining the sunset over new York and do not recognize the visual contribution of the projected tomato. But we can find other instances of imagery affecting perception where the experiential state is taken to be visual, with subjects not recognizing the contribution of imagery. This is important, because that is the kind of situation that would have to be at play in the MerleauPontyian cases. For example, Kosslyn and sussman argue that imagery can supplement visual recognition tasks in this manner; "when the generated image matches the input image, we simply experience seeing the object" (1994: 1036). Their argument is based partly on the fact that successful computer vision programs have been created that use representations that are functionally analogous to stored imagery to supplement shape matching tasks (thus making it plausible that such a model could explain human vision). But they also hypothesize that such a use of imagery can explain experiments where human subjects engage in perceptual shape matching tasks. For example, subjects who were asked to determine whether a partially occluded figure was a square provided correct answers much more quickly when the figure matched a previous stimulus. These results fit what would be "expected if subjects formed an image of the previous stimulus and used it to recognize successive stimuli" (Kosslyn and sussman 1994: 10351036). It has also been recently argued that certain instances of the "memory color effect" (wherein one perceives an object to be its typical memorized color- red for a heart figure, for instance- even though it is not actually that color) can be explained by hypothesizing that imagery affects visual perception in a manner that is unknown to the perceiver.27 Regarding a particular memory color effect case, Macpherson argues that subjects matched orange cut outs of characteristically red figures to red backgrounds because of the influence of imagery: [In this case] the first step would be that a subject's knowledge that the cutout was of a shape that is of a characteristically red object would affect the subject causing them to imagine a red object, or generate the process that would typically produce an imaginative experience of a red object. The second step involves the phenomenal character of this imaginative state, or the imaginative process that typically would produce it, interacting with the phenomenal character of the visual experience of the orange cutout shape, or the perceptual process which would typically yield such a visual experience. The result is an experience as of a reddishorange colour. (2012: 55) 27. For a recent paper which both provides a good overview of the memory color effect, and presents an experiment which purports to display the effect, see Witzel et al. 2011. 188 • J.C. Berendzen Ergo • vol. 1, no. 7 • 2014 On Macpherson's explanation the subjects had one single perceptual experience that combined the imagined red and occurrently perceived orange without the subjects realizing that the two elements combined. Macpherson interprets the experiment as showing that imagery and perception "produce one state with phenomenal character whose nature has contributions from both the imaginative and perceptual processes" (2012: 55). Following the remarks on the interpretation of the Perky effect above, we can take Macpherson's claim to mean that imagery has an unnoticed, nonconscious effect (via interference, facilitation, or something else) on the phenomenal character of the perception such that the two cannot be teased apart by the subject in the overall experience. Hypothetically, for instance, it could be the case that imagining the typically red object interferes with color perception such that what would otherwise be seen as orange is seen as orangered.28 This would not be a case of visual experience that "feels exactly like" imagery (or vice versa); it would be an instance where imagery processes somehow modulate the character of the visual experience (without the subject being cognizant of the imagery effect). so far, it has been shown that imagery in multiple perceptual modalities can affect or combine with occurrent perception. This includes the suggestion that motor imagery can combine with visual perception as in the rock climber and sculptor cases (albeit in ways that keep the imagery and perception consciously apart). Evidence has also been given to show that imagery and perception can combine in such a way that they result in a unified experience where one does not distinguish the effects of imagery from the visual experience (as Kosslyn and sussman (1994) put it, we can "just see the object," instead of taking there to be a hybrid experience). But this latter evidence focuses solely on visual imagery and visual experience. 3.2 Motor Activity's Effect on Perception The argument of 3.1 thus does not fully support the current thesis, because it does not fully show that motor imagery can affect visual perception in a manner that results in a unified experience. This section will show that there is good reason to think that action can influence visual perception, and when combined with the results of 3.1 this will provide support for the current thesis. There have been numerous recent studies that purport to show that visual perception of an environment can be altered by the manner in which one engages in particular actions in that environment. In particular, the perception of spatial 28. note that this is not a hypothesis presented by the researchers in the case Macpherson discusses. They are primarily concerned with demonstrating the memory color effect rather than explaining it, and merely state that "little can be said at this time as to the mechanism by which an interaction of sensory and associative factors might occur."(Delk and Fillenbaum 1965: 293) Motor Imagery and Merleau-Pontyian Accounts of Skilled Action • 189 Ergo • vol. 1, no. 7 • 2014 properties is said to be affected by encumbrance (seeing a hill as steeper when wearing a heavy backpack), use of tools (seeing a distance as shorter when reaching with a stick), or skill set (seeing a goal as bigger when one is a good kicker).29 such studies would seem to provide direct support for the MerleauPontyian phenomenological descriptions. Their results, however, are too unreliable to sufficiently support the MerleauPontyian view. a common criticism of these studies is that the experiments are designed such that the results may be due to various beliefs the experimental subjects have about the experiments. There is compelling evidence that subjects respond to experimental demand characteristics that implicitly convey to them the experimenter's intended results, and the subjects alter their responses accordingly (Durgin, DeWald, Lechich, Li, and Ontiveros 2011; Durgin, Klein, spiegel, strawser, and Williams 2012; Firestone and scholl 2014).30 Because of these problems, we should look elsewhere for empirical support of the idea that motor activity affects perception. a recent experiment of a different kind presents more reliable evidence that planning to engage in an action can affect visual perception. Peter Vishton et al. (2007) conducted a relevant study where subjects interacted with a model of the Ebbinghaus illusion. In the most common version of the Ebbinghaus illusion, two central circles of equal size are placed close to one another, with one surrounded by larger circles and the other surrounded by smaller circles. Despite being of equal size, the central circle surrounded by smaller circles is usually perceived as larger. In the study, the central circles were threedimensional disks that subjects could grasp, while the surrounding circles were twodimensional images printed on a paper on which the central disks were placed. Depending on the experimental circumstances, subjects viewed the disks and circles and then indicated which was larger by verbal response, grasping the target disk, or tapping the target disk (or some combination). Overall the results showed that choices were less influenced by the illusion when the response involved an action. The authors summarize the results as follows: 29. For an overview of this type of experiment see Kirsch and Kunde (2013). Kirsch and Kunde note the standard criticisms of these experiments, but think that taken as a whole they still provide evidence that visual perception is affected by other contents. 30. Durgin et al. (2011: 1080) give a good example of the effect of socalled experimental demand characteristics: "when participants were asked why they thought that they had been required to wear a heavy backpack while making slope judgments of walkable surfaces, they nearly all assumed that the backpack was intended to affect their estimates, and about half reported complying with the demand." along with providing experiments that show the effect of design characteristics, Firestone and scholl argue that the relevant studies run afoul of the socalled "El greco Fallacy"; they miss the fact that the perceptual effects ought to be pervasive and thus "must cancel each other out when the means of reproduction would be distorted in just the same way as the stimulus being reproduced" (2014: 39). 190 • J.C. Berendzen Ergo • vol. 1, no. 7 • 2014 The experiments presented here provide evidence that action choice changes the nature of visual size perception. For every trial, the initial perceptual task of the participants was the same: choose the larger of two disks. When the participants indicated their choice with a verbal response, their perception was strongly influenced by the Ebbinghaus illusion. When their choice was indicated with a grasp or touch response, the magnitude of the illusion was significantly reduced. a similar reduction was obtained when an upcoming reaching task was described to participants. (Vishton et al. 2007: 718) so we have empirical support for the idea that engaging in an action can affect visual perception. Imagery does not play any role in Vishton et al. (2007), either in the arrangement of the experiments or their interpretation (nor does imagery play a role in the more questionable studies mentioned above, for that matter). There is an element of the study that brings it close to the discussion of motor imagery, however. note the last sentence of the above block quote; it tells us that the effect of the Ebbinghaus illusion was reduced in circumstances where the reaching task was merely described to the subjects without them having to carry it out. specifically, the subjects had the reaching task described to them before they gave a verbal response. Vishton et al. take this as evidence for the fact that "the studies demonstrate strong connections between action planning and perception" (2007: 713), and this point is further emphasized by the fact that the title of the paper references planning. This clearly suggests a connection with the description of motor imagery in section I above, where it was shown that motor imagery plays a particularly important role in action/motor planning. given the research into motor imagery and motor planning, it is not much of a stretch to suggest that the subjects to whom the reaching task was described engaged in a simulation of the action.31 This further makes it plausible to think that motor imagery could have been involved in the effect that motor planning had on perception. The experimental set up in this case suggests a kind of linear relation between action and perception, i.e., the subject engages in the grasping action and thus the perception of the illusion is changed. It should be noted, however, that in realworld circumstances the relation would be dynamic rather than linear. Recall that motor imagerydriven forward models are tied together with sensory feedback in a kind of loop such that action and perception are always tightly tied together. It is important to clarify what Vishton et al. adds to the points made above. 31. Of course the results of section I would suggest that the subjects who actually engage in a reaching action use motor imagery simulation as well. My point here is not to suggest otherwise, but just to point out that motor imagery might well explain the fact that the mere description of the action had a similar effect to the actual action. Motor Imagery and Merleau-Pontyian Accounts of Skilled Action • 191 Ergo • vol. 1, no. 7 • 2014 In 3.1 it was shown that motor imagery can combine with visual perception in instances where the two are consciously discernible (as in the rock climber and sculptor examples) and that visual imagery can combine with visual perception in instances where the two are not consciously discernible (as in the shape matching and memory color effect cases). But in the Vishton et al. experiment, motor planning is said to affect "the nature of visual size perception" (2007: 718). The implication is that it is the visual perception itself that is affected such that one would say that (as in the shape matching and memory color effect examples) there is a single unified experience. One does not consciously discern the motor planning from the visual experience of the central disk in the Ebbinghaus illusion case in the same manner as one discerns the gripplanning from the visual experience of the rock in the rockclimbing case. This is because the motor planning directly affects lowlevel visual processing (Vishton et al. 2007: 717). Thus, while Vishton et al. do not directly present a case of motor imagery combining with visual perception in a unified experience, the relation between motor planning and motor imagery places their study in the vicinity of such a result. Taken as a whole, the results of 3.1 and 3.2 make plausible the idea that motor imagery can affect our visual perceptual experience in such a way that a unified experience results. and this is exactly what is needed to support the MerleauPontyian phenomenological descriptions of opportunities for action being directly perceived. 4. Motor Imagery in the MerleauPontyian Case In order to both summarize the foregoing material and clarify the claim that motor imagery can help vindicate the MerleauPontyian phenomenological descriptions, the results of sections IIII can be fitted into a description of one of the MerleauPontyian cases. The following will use the organist case, though the same kind of description could be given for the soccer player case (or RomdenhRomluc's (2007:46) martial artist case, or other cases of skilled action). The experienced organist has developed the habit of organ playing, which means that, in MerleauPonty's terms, her body has sedimented an "ensemble of paths already traced" (1983: 210) and thus created in the body "preestablished circuits" (2012: 89) that can be engaged in new acts of organ playing. This MerleauPontyian language fits with Jeannerod's language of motor representations being stored as dynamic procedures wired into the motor system. When the organist sits down at the new organ, she prepares for the action of playing by implicitly engaging motor imagery that draws on these preestablished circuits to simulate the action of playing. This simulation both leads to the action of playing, and plays a role in the deployment of a forward model that can regulate the organist's activity. The organist's nonconscious motor imagery is a part of a motor intention 192 • J.C. Berendzen Ergo • vol. 1, no. 7 • 2014 that is not a static preaction plan; rather it unfolds dynamically in a manner that is "immanent in the movement" (2012: 113). This is because the forward model's predictive emulation, in which the motor imagery plays a role, is "geared into the world"; it both anticipates sensory feedback via filtering and responds to that feedback through continuous updating.32 Thus by engaging in motor imagery simulation and forward model emulation, the organist "projects" her ability to play upon the new organ in a manner that reflects "the double moment of sedimentation and spontaneity" (2012: 132). This projection of the organist's possibilities qualitatively affects her perceptual experience such that the keyboard is presented as a place through which musical "value appears in the world" (2012: 147), i.e., it presents the opportunity to play music. specifying the exact mechanism through which the imagery affects the perceptual experience is beyond the scope of this paper, but section III suggests at least three possibilities. First, it may be the case that some of the qualitative aspects of the kinesthetic contents of the motor image combine with the qualitative aspects of the occurrent perceptual experience in a manner akin to Macpherson's hypothesis regarding the memory color effect. note that Macpherson's proposal can accommodate the implicit status of the motor image; she writes that "the sort of imaginative process that will typically take place in my twostep mechanism is the nondeliberate, unbidden kind . . . typically, one will not even realise that one is undergoing an imaginative process or that one's imagination is influencing one's experience" (2012: 55). Thus as the imaginative kinesthetic content of moving to play the organ combines with the visual experience of the organ, the organist (to paraphrase Macpherson) has an experience as of an organtobeplayed. Presumably this "combining" would involve the imagery affecting (via interference or facilitation) the perception such that they cannot be consciously distinguished. second, it may be the case that the kinesthetic contents of the motor image supplement or "fill in" the visual contents of the organist's perceptual experience. On one hand, this possibility could draw on the examples of crossmodal perception, if we accept that kinesthetic information as it is conveyed in the motor image can supplement the visual scene. On the other hand, one might draw on the example taken from Kosslyn and sussman wherein imagery supplements vision in recognition tasks. It may be the case that (to paraphrase Kosslyn and sussman) the organist simply experiences seeing the organ as offering to be played when the content of the motor image matches up with the visual contents. This does strain 32. MerleauPonty uses the language of "gearing in" (the French verb is engrener) throughout Phenomenology of Perception. It is, for example, used in the vicinity of the previously quoted passage about motor intentionality (2012: 261). In a translator's comment Donald Landes (MerleauPonty 2012: 496497 n. 47) helpfully notes that although literal gears predetermine the way in which they will fit together by the shape of their teeth, MerleauPonty's use implies not that the body and world fit together in a predetermined way but rather that it is a dynamic process. Motor Imagery and Merleau-Pontyian Accounts of Skilled Action • 193 Ergo • vol. 1, no. 7 • 2014 Kosslyn's and sussman's argument a bit, because in their case the matching is direct due to the fact that visual imagery is being matched with visual experience. a motor image of playing an organ could not match up with a visual experience of an organ in the same way because they come from different perceptual modalities. nonetheless, it seems plausible that one could retain a looser yet meaningful sense of "match" insofar as the visually perceived object would be seen as the particular type of thing that fits with the imagined action. Third, one might draw on the experiments of Vishton et al. to find the relevant mechanism. It is possible that when the organist engages in a motor intention via motor imagery, the intention may cause the visual system to "alter the way in which it processes information" (Vishton et al. 2007: 713). The kind of effect that is referred to here affects lowlevel visual processing, so the motor image would affect corresponding elements such as the perception of shape, size (as in Vishton et al.), or distance. Thus if this kind of effect is at play in the organist case, the direct perception of action opportunities would presumably amount to subtle differences in the perceived distance or size of the relevant parts of the organ. so the organist might perceive the stops to be slightly larger, or the keys to be slightly closer, than they would appear to someone not engaged in planning to play. This would in turn make the playable elements of the organ more visually salient, such that they would look more "inviting" for action. Perhaps one of these possibilities is at play in the organist case. They also do not appear to be mutually exclusive, so perhaps several of them are at play. Or perhaps there is some other explanation; it is not my purpose here to definitively answer the question of what mechanism is at play in the motor imageryperception interaction. all three of the above options help provide responses to the potential counterarguments mentioned in the introduction, however. Recall that one might respond to the claim that action opportunities show up directly in perception by arguing that the relevant aspect of the skilled action experience is actually preorpost perceptual. neither would be the case in any of these instances. It should be most clear that the effect would not be postperceptual. Even apart from the consideration of motor imagery this response faces problems. The idea that skilled action depends on postperceptual judgment seems phenomenologically implausible because of the speed at which much skilled action occurs. It also perhaps unnecessarily intellectualizes action (and both of these points are commonly made in MerleauPontyian analyses). The discussion of motor imagery backs up these points, especially insofar as the motor image plays a role in the forward model prediction. If the forward model is necessary because sensory feedback is too slow to completely regulate skilled action, surely postperceptual judgments– which would have to come after that sensory feedback– would not be up to the task. and in each of the three possible mechanisms discussed above, motor imagery has an effect on the initial perceptual experience of the situation. 194 • J.C. Berendzen Ergo • vol. 1, no. 7 • 2014 But what of the possibility that the effect of motor imagery is preperceptual? First, it has to be noted that some of the effects of motor imagery, or of habituated motor abilities generally, would be relevantly preperceptual. as Wolpert, Diedrichsen, and Flanagan put the point, "in realworld tasks it has been shown that eye movements can betray the difference between skilled and amateur performers," and they use the example of a skilled cricket batsman who is better able than the amateur to rapidly move his eyes to where the ball is anticipated to be (2011: 739). This is, again, preperceptual in the sense that the habituated skill is affecting where the batsman looks rather than affecting the actual visual processing or visual contents. But such preperceptual effects do not exclude the possibility of more direct effects on perception, and the two are likely combined in the MerleauPontyian cases. In each of the three possible mechanisms mentioned above, there is such a direct effect. In the Macpherson scenario, the imagery affects the qualitative aspects of the visual experience such that the person who engages in the relevant imagery sees something different from the person who is looking at the same scene but without the imagery. The same would be the case in the perceptual fillingin scenario, because the imagery matches up directly with the visual perception so as to create one experience. Finally, it is clear that the Vishton et al. scenario is not preperceptual because the imagery would directly effect lowlevel perceptual processing. Recent work on motor imagery thus provides us with the tools to both vindicate and (at least partially) explain the MerleauPontyian phenomenological descriptions. skilled actors can have qualitatively different perceptual experiences of the action scene because of the role that motor imagery plays in preparing for and regulating action. 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Nicolae Sfetcu ELECTRICITATE ȘI MAGNETISM ELECTROMAGNETISM FENOMENOLOGIC PREVIZUALIZARE CARTE MultiMedia Publishing Drobeta Turnu Severin, 2018 Copyright © 2018 Nicolae Sfetcu Email: [email protected] Toate drepturile rezervate. Descrierea CIP a Bibliotecii Naţionale a României SFETCU, NICOLAE Electricitate şi magnetism : electromagnetism fenomenologic / Nicolae Sfetcu. Ed. alb-negru. Drobeta -Turnu Severin : Multimedia Publishing, 2018 ISBN 978-606-94667-6-6 53 MultiMedia Publishing Drobeta Turnu Severin, 2018 Email: [email protected] Tel. 0745 526 896 vii Nicio parte a acestei cărți nu poate fi reprodusă sau stocată într-un sistem electronic sau transmisă sub nicio formă sau prin orice mijloace electronice, mecanice, prin fotocopiere, prin înregistrare sau prin alte mijloace, fără permisiunea expresă scrisă a autorului. 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Aceasta este o declinare cuprinzătoare a răspunderii care se aplică tuturor daunelor de orice fel, incluzând (fără limitare) compensatorii; daune directe, indirecte sau consecvente, inclusiv pentru terțe părți. Înțelegeți că această carte nu intenționează să înlocuiască consultarea cu un profesionist educațional, juridic sau financiar licențiat. Înainte de a o utiliza în orice mod, vă recomandăm să consultați un profesionist licențiat pentru a vă asigura că faceți ceea ce este mai bine pentru dvs. Această carte oferă conținut referitor la subiecte educaționale. Utilizarea ei implică acceptarea acestei declinări de responsabilitate. 1 INTRODUCERE (Fulgerul este unul din cele mai dramatice efecte ale electricității.) Electricitatea și magnetismul au fost studiate ca o singură ramură a fizicii. Legătura intimă dintre ele a fost descoperită la începutul secolului XIX. Un curent electric generează un câmp magnetic și un câmp magnetic variabil induce un curent electric. Electrostatica se ocupă cu sarcini electrice în repaus, electrodinamica cu sarcini în mișcare, și magnetostatica cu poli magnetici în repaus. Electricitatea și magnetismul au fost studiate de către Faraday, Ohm, și alții. În 1855, Maxwell a unificat cele două fenomene într-o singură teorie a electromagnetismului, descrisă de ecuațiile lui Maxwell. O predicție a acestei teorii a fost faptul că lumina este o undă electromagnetică. În fizică, fenomenul electromagnetic de electricitate (sau sarcină electrică) este o proprietate INTRODUCERE 2 conservată a materiei care poate fi cuantificată. În acest sens, expresia "cantitate de electricitate" este folosită alternativ cu frazele "sarcina de electricitate" și "cantitate de sarcină." Există două tipuri de electricitate sau de sarcină: un tip de sarcină este pozitivă, iar cealaltă negativă. Prin experiment, vom găsi că obiecte încărcate cu aceeași sarcină se resping și obiecte încărcate cu sarcini de semn contrar se atrag. Mărimea forței de atracție sau de respingere este dată de Legea lui Coulomb. Unitatea SI de sarcină electrică este Coulomb. În conformitate cu Thales din Milet, circa 600 î.Hr., electricitatea a fost cunoscut de grecii antici, care au constatat că frecarea unei blăni pe diverse substanțe, cum ar fi chihlimbar, duce la un dezechilibru de sarcină electrică. Grecii au remarcat faptul ca butoanele de chihlimbar atrag obiecte ușoare, cum ar fi părul, și că în cazul în care se freacă chihlimbarul pentru suficient de mult timp, s-ar putea obține chiar și o scânteie. Un obiect găsit în Irak în 1938, datat la aproximativ 250 î.Hr. și numit Bateria Bagdad, seamănă cu o celulă electrochimică și este considerat de unii a fi fost folosită pentru galvanizare. Nu există niciun document justificativ clar pentru a indica la ce a fost folosit obiectul, deși există și alte descrieri anacronice de dispozitive electrice de pe pereți egipteni și în scrierile antice. În 1600 omul de știință englez William Gilbert a revenit la subiect în De Magnete, și a inventat cuvântul latin modern electricus din ηλεκτρον (elektron), cuvântul grecesc pentru chihlimbar, din care au apărut cuvintele electric și electricitate. El a fost urmat în 1660 de către Otto von Guericke, care a inventat un generator electrostatic timpuriu. Alți pionieri europeni au fost Robert Boyle, care a declarat în 1675 că atracția electrică și repulsia pot acționa în vid; Stephen Gray, care în 1729 a clasificat materialele drept conductoare și izolatoare; și C. F. Du Fay, care a identificat pentru prima dată cele două tipuri de sarcină electrică, numite mai târziu pozitive și negative. Butelia Leyden, un tip de condensator de stocare a sarcinii electrice în cantități mari, a fost inventată la Universitatea Leyden de Pieter van Musschenbroek, în 1745. William Watson, făcând experiențe cu borcanul Leyden, a descoperit în 1747 că o descărcare de electricitate statică este echivalentă cu un curent electric. În iunie 1752, Benjamin Franklin a promovat investigațiile sale și teoriile despre electricitate prin celebrul, deși extrem de periculosul, experiment de zbor al unui zmeu în timpul unei furtuni. În urma acestor experimente a inventat paratrăsnetul și a stabilit legătura dintre fulgere și electricitate. Dacă Franklin chiar a făcut ca un zmeu să zboare într-o furtună, el nu a făcut-o așa cum este adesea descris (un mod care ar fi fost dramatic, dar fatal). Franklin (mai degrabă) sau Ebenezer Kinnersley din Philadelphia (mai puțin probabil) a creat convenția de sarcină pozitivă și negativă. Observațiile lui Franklin au ajutat oamenii de știință mai târziu, printre care Michael Faraday, Luigi Galvani, Alessandro Volta, André-Marie Ampère, și Georg Simon Ohm a cărui operă a furnizat baza pentru tehnologia electricității moderne. Lucrarea lui Faraday, Volta, Ampere, și Ohm sunt onorate de către umanitate, prin denumirea unora din unitățile fundamentale de măsură electrice după numele lor. Volta a lucrat cu substanțe chimice și a descoperit că reacțiile chimice ar putea fi folosite pentru a crea anozi încărcați pozitivi și catozi încărcați negativi. Când un conductor a fost atașat între acestea, diferența de potențial electric (de asemenea, cunoscută sub numele de tensiune) determină un curent între ele prin conductor. Diferența de potențial dintre două puncte se măsoară în unități de volți în semn de recunoaștere a activității lui Volta. Sec. XIX și începutul secolului XX au produs giganți în inginerie electrică precum Samuel Morse, inventatorul telegrafului; Alexander Graham Bell, inventatorul telefonului; Thomas Edison (inventator de fonograf, imagini în mișcare și un practic bec incandescent); George Westinghouse, inventator al locomotivei electrice; Charles Steinmetz, inventator al curentului alternativ; și Nikola Tesla, inventatorul motorului de inducție și dezvoltator de sisteme polifazate. Tesla a efectuat experimente cu tensiuni foarte mari, care sunt subiecte de legendă, care implică fulgere globulare și alte efecte (unele au fost copiate sau explicate, și sunt altele care nu au fost încă explicate). El a contribuit la lumea electrodinamicii cu teoria electricității curentului alternativ polifazic, care a fost folosită pentru a construi primul motor de inducție, inventat în 1882. În luna mai 1885, ELECTRICITATE ȘI MAGNETISM – LECTROMAGNETISM FENOMENOLOGIC 3 Westinghouse, ulterior președinte al Companiei Westinghouse Electric din Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a cumpărat drepturile de autor pentru brevetele lui Tesla pentru dinamuri de curent alternativ polifazat. Acest lucru a dus la un concurs, în așa-numita instanța a opiniei publice, cu privire la sistemul care va fi adoptat ca standard de transmisie a puterii (cunoscut sub numele de Războiul curenților), sistemul de curent continuu al lui Edison sau metoda de curent alternativ Westinghouse. Edison a realizat o campanie de relații publice care a inclus promovarea scaunului electric ca o metodă de execuție. Edison a vrut să dovedească faptul că curentul alternativ este capabil să ucidă și, prin urmare, ar trebui să fie văzut de către public ca inerent periculos. Această campanie de teamă, incertitudine și îndoială, a inclus electrocutarea elefantului Topsy. Transmisia electricității în curent alternativ a fost în cele din urmă adoptată ca standard. 4 ELECTRICITATE Electrostatica este o ramură a fizicii care se ocupă de studierea încărcărilor electrice în repaus. Din fizica clasică, se știe că unele materiale, cum ar fi chihlimbarul, atrag particule ușoare după frecare. Cuvântul grecesc pentru chihlimbar, ήλεκτρον sau electron, a fost sursa cuvântului "electricitate". Fenomenele electrostatice apar din forțele pe care sarcinile electrice le exercită una asupra celeilalte. Astfel de forțe sunt descrise de legea lui Coulomb. Chiar dacă forțele electrostatice induse par a fi destul de slabe, unele forțe electrostatice, cum ar fi cea dintre un electron și un proton, care împreună formează un atom de hidrogen, sunt de aproximativ de 36 de ordini de mărime mai puternice decât forța gravitațională care acționează între ele. Există multe exemple de fenomene electrostatice, de la cele simple precum atragerea foliei din plastic de mâna dvs. după ce le scoateți dintr-un ambalaj, la explozia aparent spontană a silozurilor de cereale, deteriorarea componentelor electronice în timpul procesului de fabricație, și funcționarea fotocopiatoarelor și a imprimantelor cu laser. Electrostatica implică acumularea de sarcină pe suprafața obiectelor datorită contactului cu alte suprafețe. Deși schimbul de sarcină electrică are loc ori de câte ori oricare dintre cele două suprafețe se află în contact și separat, efectele schimbului de sarcină sunt de obicei observate numai atunci când cel puțin una dintre suprafețe are o rezistență ridicată la fluxul electric. Acest lucru se datorează faptului că sarcinile care se transferă sunt izolate acolo pentru o perioadă suficient de lungă pentru ca efectele lor să fie observate. Aceste sarcini rămân apoi pe obiect până când se scurg sau se neutralizează rapid printr-o descărcare electrică: de exemplu, fenomenul familiar al unui "șoc" static este cauzat de neutralizarea încărcăturii dezvoltate în corp prin contactul cu suprafețe izolate. Electricitatea statică este frecvent utilizat în xerografie, la filtre de aer, precum și la unele vopsele auto. Electricitatea statică este o acumulare de sarcini electrice pe două obiecte care apoi s-au separat unele de altele. Componentele electrice mici pot fi ușor deteriorate de electricitatea statică. Producătorii de componente utilizează anumite dispozitive antistatice pentru a evita acest lucru. Serii triboelectrice Efectul triboelectric este un tip de contact în care anumite materiale devin încărcate electric atunci când acestea sunt aduse în contact cu un material diferit şi apoi separate. Unul dintre materiale capătă o sarcină pozitivă, iar celălalt capătă o sarcină negativă egală. Polaritatea şi puterea sarcinilor produse diferă în funcţie de materiale, de rugozitatea suprafeţelor, temperatură, şi alte proprietăţi. Chihlimbarul, de exemplu, poate dobândi o sarcină electrică prin frecare cu un material ca de ex. lâna. Această proprietate, observată pentru prima dată de Thales din Milet, a fost primul fenomen electric investigat de către om. Alte exemple de materiale care pot dobândi o sarcină semnificativă atunci când sunt frecate împreună includ sticla frecată cu mătase, şi cauciucul dur frecat cu blana. ELECTRICITATE ȘI MAGNETISM – LECTROMAGNETISM FENOMENOLOGIC 5 Generatoare electrostatice Prezenţa sarcinilor de suprafaţă în dezechilibru presupune că obiectele vor suferi forţe de atracţie sau respingere. Aceste sarcini de suprafaţă în dezechilibru, care produc electricitate statică, pot fi generate prin atingerea a două suprafeţe diferite împreună şi apoi separarea lor, datorită fenomenelor de electrificare prin contact şi a efectului triboelectric. Frecarea a două obiecte neconductive generează o cantitate mare de electricitate statică. Acest lucru nu este doar rezultatul frecării. Două suprafeţe neconductive se pot încărca şi doar prin plasarea unuia deasupra celuilalt. Deoarece cele mai multe suprafeţe au o textură aspră, este nevoie de mai mult timp pentru a realiza încărcarea prin contact decât prin frecare. Frecarea obiectelor împreună măreşte suprafaţa de contact dintre cele două suprafeţe. De obicei izolatoare, adică substanţe care nu conduc electricitatea, sunt bune atât pentru generatoare cât şi pentru reţinerea sarcinilor de suprafaţă. Câteva exemple de astfel de substanţe sunt cauciucul, plastic, sticlă, şi ţesutul lemnos. Obiectele conductive doar rareori generează dezechilibre de sarcini, cu excepţia, de exemplu, situaţiilor când o suprafaţă metalică este în contact cu solide sau lichide neconductive. Sarcinile care sunt transferate în timpul electrificării contactului sunt stocate pe suprafaţa fiecărui obiect. Generatoare electrice statice, dispozitive care produc o tensiune foarte înaltă la curent foarte mic, şi care sunt folosite pentru demonstraţii de fizică în clase la şcoli, se bazează pe acest efect. Neutralizarea sarcinilor Fenomenele electrostatice naturale sunt familiare în sezoanele de umiditate scăzută, dar pot fi distructive şi dăunătoare în anumite situaţii (de exemplu, în aparatura electronică). Atunci când se lucrează în contact direct cu circuitele electronice integrate (MOSFET mai ales), sau în prezenţa unui gaz inflamabil, trebuie să se evite acumularea şi descărcarea bruscă de sarcină statică. Inducţia sarcinilor Inducţia sarcinilor are loc atunci când un obiect încărcat negativ respinge electronii de pe suprafaţa unui al doilea obiect. Acest lucru creează o regiune în al doilea obiect care se încarcă mai pozitiv. O forţă de atracţie este apoi exercitată între obiecte. De exemplu, când un balon este frecat, balonul se va lipi de perete datorită unei forţe de atracţie care este exercitată de către cele două suprafeţe încărcate opus (suprafaţa peretelui dobândeşte o sarcină electrică datorită inducţiei electrice, electronii liberi de la suprafaţa peretelui fiind respinşi de balonul încărcat negativ, creând o suprafaţă a peretelui pozitivă, care este ulterior atrasă de suprafaţa balonului). Electricitatea "statică" Înainte de anul 1832, când Michael Faraday a publicat rezultatele experimentului său cu privire la identitatea electricităţii, fizicieni au gândit că "electricitatea statică" este oarecum diferită de alte sarcini electrice. Michael Faraday a demonstrat că energia electrică indusă de magnet, energia electrică voltaică produsă de o baterie, şi electricitatea statică, sunt toate la fel. Electricitatea statică apare de obicei atunci când anumite materiale sunt frecate unul împotriva celuilalt, cum ar fi lâna de plastic, sau tălpile de pantofi de covor. Procesul face ca electronii să fie extraşi de pe suprafaţa unui material şi mutaţi pe suprafaţa altui material. Un şoc static apare atunci când suprafaţa celui de-al doilea material, încărcată negativ cu electroni, atinge un conductor încărcat pozitiv, sau vice-versa. Electricitatea statică este frecvent utilizat în xerografie, la filtre de aer, precum şi la unele vopsele auto. Electricitatea statică este o acumulare de sarcini electrice pe două obiecte care apoi s-au separat CURENTUL ELECTRIC 6 unele de altele. Componentele electrice mici pot fi uşor deteriorate de electricitatea statică. Producătorii de componente utilizează anumite dispozitive antistatice pentru a evita acest lucru. FORȚE ELECTRICE Forțele electrice sunt forțe fundamentale, care se manifestă între particule încărcate. Particule încărcate cu sarcini de semn opus se atrag, iar cele de același semn se resping. Culturile vechi din jurul Mediteranei știau că anumite obiecte, cum ar fi baghetele de chihlimbar, pot fi frecate cu blană de pisică pentru a atrage obiecte ușoare precum penele. Thales de Miletus a făcut o serie de observații cu privire la electricitatea statică în jurul anului 600 î.e.n., din care a concluzionat că fricțiunea a făcut chihlimbarul magnetic, spre deosebire de minerale precum magnetitul care nu are nevoie de frecare. Thales a crezut incorect că atracția se datorează unui efect magnetic, dar mai târziu știința a descoperit o legătură între magnetism și electricitate. Electricitatea a rămas puțin mai mult decât o curiozitate intelectuală timp de milenii, până în 1600, când cercetătorul britanic William Gilbert a făcut un studiu atent al electricității și al magnetismului, făcând diferența între efectul magnetitei și electricitatea statică produsă prin frecarea chihlimbarului. El a inventat noul cuvânt latin electricus ("de chihlimbar" sau "ca chihlimbar", din ἤλεκτρον [electron], cuvântul grecesc pentru "chihlimbar") pentru a se referi la proprietatea de a atrage obiecte mici după ce a fost frecat. Această asociație a dat naștere cuvintelor "electric" și "electricitate". (Particule încărcate cu sarcini de semn opus se atrag, iar cele de același semn se resping) Cercetătorii timpurii din secolul al XVIII-lea care bănuiesc că forța electrică scade cu distanța, la fel ca forța gravitației (respectiv, cu pătratul invers al distanței), au inclus pe Daniel Bernoulli și Alessandro Volta, ambii măsurând forța între plăcile unui condensator, și Franz Aepinus care a presupus legea ELECTRICITATE ȘI MAGNETISM – LECTROMAGNETISM FENOMENOLOGIC 7 pătratică inversă în 1758. Bazându-se pe experimente cu sfere încărcate electric, Joseph Priestley din Anglia a fost printre primii care, în 1767, a propus ca forțele electrice urmează o lege invers pătratică, similar cu legea lui Newton a gravitației universale. Cu toate acestea, el nu a generalizat sau elaborat acest lucru. La începutul anilor 1770, dependența forței dintre corpurile încărcate, atât cu distanța cât și cu sarcina, a fost deja descoperită, dar nu publicată, de Henry Cavendish în Anglia. SARCINI ELECTRICE (Câmpul electric a unei sarcini punctuale negativă. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:VFPt_charges_plus_minus_thumb.svg) Sarcina electrică este proprietatea fizică a materiei care o face să simtă o forță atunci când este plasată într-un câmp electromagnetic. Există două tipuri de sarcini electrice: pozitive și negative (transportate în mod obișnuit prin protoni și, respectiv, electroni). Sarcinile de semn opus se atrag și cele de același semn se resping. Un obiect în absența unei sarcini nete este numit neutru. Unitatea derivată SI a sarcinii electrice este coulomb (C). În ingineria electrică, este, de asemenea, obișnuită utilizarea amper-orei (Ah), și în chimie este obișnuit să se utilizeze sarcina elementară (e) ca unitate. Simbolul Q indică adesea sarcina. Cunoașterea timpurie a modului în care interacționează substanțele încărcate se numește acum electrodinamica clasică, fiind totuși corectă pentru probleme care nu necesită luarea în considerare a efectelor cuantice. Sarcina electrică este o proprietate conservată; încărcarea netă a unui sistem izolat, cantitatea de sarcină pozitivă minus cantitatea de sarcină negativă, nu se poate schimba. Sarcina electrică este transportată prin particule subatomice. În materia obișnuită, sarcina negativă este purtată de electroni, iar sarcina pozitivă este purtată de protonii din nucleele atomilor. Dacă există mai mulți electroni decât protonii într-o bucată de materie, aceasta va avea o sarcină negativă, dacă sunt mai puțini va avea o sarcină pozitivă, și dacă vor fi în numere egale, va fi neutră. Sarcina este cuantizată în multiplii întregi CURENTUL ELECTRIC 8 de unități mici individuale numite sarcina elementară, e, aproximativ 1,602×10-19 coulombi, care este cea mai mică sarcină care poate exista liberă (particulele numite cuarci au sarcini mai mici, multiplii de 1/3e, dar sunt găsiți doar găsit în combinație). Protonul are o sarcină de +e, iar electronul are o sarcină de -e. Sarcinile electrice creează un câmp electric, iar în cazul în care se mișcă, generează și un câmp magnetic. Combinația câmpului electric și magnetic se numește câmpul electromagnetic, iar interacțiunea cu sarcinile este sursa forței electromagnetice, care este una dintre cele patru forțe fundamentale din fizică. Studiul particulelor încărcate și modul în care interacțiunile lor sunt mediate de fotoni se numește electrodinamica cuantică. Unități Unitatea SI a cantității de sarcină electrică este coulomb, care este echivalent cu aproximativ 6,242×1018 e (e este sarcina unui proton). Prin urmare, sarcina unui electron este de aproximativ -1.602×10-19 C. Coulombul este definit drept cantitatea de sarcină care a trecut prin secțiunea transversală a unui conductor electric care transportă un amper într-o secundă. Simbolul Q este adesea folosit pentru a desemna o cantitate de electricitate sau o sarcină. Cantitatea de sarcină electrică poate fi măsurată direct cu ajutorul unui electrometru sau indirect cu ajutorul unui galvanometru balistic. După găsirea caracterului cuantizat al sarcinii, în 1891 George Stoney a propus unitatea electronică pentru această unitate fundamentală de sarcină electrică. Aceasta a fost înainte de descoperirea particulei de J.J. Thomson în 1897. Unitatea este tratată astăzi ca fără nume, denumită "sarcină elementară", "unitate fundamentală de sarcină" sau pur și simplu "e". O măsură a sarcinii ar trebui să fie un multiplu al sarcinii elementare e, chiar dacă, la scară largă, sarcina pare să se comporte ca o cantitate reală. În unele contexte este semnificativ să se vorbească de fracțiuni ale unei sarcini; de exemplu în sarcina unui condensator sau în efectul Hall cuantic fracțional. Unitatea faraday este uneori utilizată în electrochimie. Un faraday de sarcină este mărimea sarcinii unui mol de electroni, adică 96485,33289 (59) C. În sistemele de unități diferite de SI, cum ar fi cgs, sarcina electrică este exprimată ca o combinație de numai trei cantități fundamentale (lungime, masă și timp) și nu patru, ca în SI, unde sarcina electrică este o combinație de lungime, timp și curent electric. 9 MAGNETISM (O ilustrare din cartea De Magnete a lui Gilbert, 1600, care arată una dintre cele mai vechi metode de a face un magnet. Un fierar ține o bucată de fier încălzit la roșu într-o direcție nord-sud și îl ciocănește pe măsură ce se răcește Câmpul magnetic al Pământului aliniază domeniile, lăsând fierul magnetizat ușor.) Magnetismul este o clasă de fenomene fizice care sunt mediate de câmpuri magnetice. Curenții electrici și momentele magnetice ale particulelor elementare dau naștere unui câmp magnetic care acționează asupra altor curenți și momente magnetice. Efectele cele mai familiare apar în materiale feromagnetice, care sunt puternic atrase de câmpuri magnetice și pot fi magnetizate pentru a deveni magneți permanenți, producând ei înșiși câmpuri magnetice. Numai câteva substanțe sunt feromagnetice; cele mai obișnuite sunt fierul, nichelul și cobaltul și aliajele lor. Prefixul fero-se referă la fier, deoarece INDUCȚIA ELECTROMAGNETICĂ 10 magnetizarea permanentă a fost observată pentru prima dată în magnetită, o formă de minereu de fier natural , Fe3O4. Deși feromagnetismul este responsabil pentru majoritatea efectelor magnetismului întâlnit în viața de zi cu zi, toate celelalte materiale sunt influențate într-o anumită măsură de un câmp magnetic, de alte câteva tipuri de magnetism. Substanțele paramagnetice, cum ar fi aluminiul și oxigenul, sunt slab atrase de un câmp magnetic aplicat; substanțele diamagnetice, cum ar fi cuprul și carbonul, sunt slab respinse; în timp ce materialele antiferomagnetice, cum ar fi cromul și sticla de spin, au o relație mai complexă cu un câmp magnetic. Forța unui magnet pe materiale paramagnetice, diamagnetice, și antiferomagnetice, este de obicei prea slabă pentru a fi simțită și poate fi detectată numai cu instrumente de laborator, deci în viața de zi cu zi aceste substanțe sunt adesea descrise ca nemagnetice. Forțele magnetice sunt forțe fundamentale care apar din cauza mișcării particulelor încărcate electric. Starea magnetică (sau faza magnetică) a unui material depinde de temperatură și alte variabile, cum ar fi presiunea și câmpul magnetic aplicat. Un material poate prezenta mai mult de o formă de magnetism pe măsură ce aceste variabile se schimbă. Atunci când curentul electric se deplasează printr-un fir, câmpul rezultat este direcționat în funcție de "regula de dreapta". Dacă mâna dreaptă este folosită ca model, iar degetul mare al mâinii drepte este îndreptat de-a lungul firului de la partea pozitivă spre partea negativă, atunci câmpul magnetic se va încadra în jurul firului în direcția indicată de degetele mâinii drepte. Dacă se formează o buclă, astfel încât particulele încărcate se învârt în cerc, atunci toate liniile de câmp în centrul buclei sunt îndreptate în aceeași direcție. Rezultatul este numit un dipol magnetic. Atunci când este plasat într-un câmp magnetic, un dipol magnetic va tinde să se alinieze cu acest câmp. Pentru cazul unei bucle, dacă degetele mâinii drepte sunt îndreptate în direcția fluxului de curent, degetul mare va arăta direcția corespunzătoare polului nord al dipolului. Istorie Magnetismul a fost descoperit pentru prima dată în lumea antică, când oamenii au observat că pietrele, magnetizate în mod natural din magnetita minerală, ar putea atrage fierul. Cuvântul magnet vine de la termenul grecesc μαγνητρώς λίθος magnētis lithos, "piatra magnesiană, magnetita". În Grecia antică, Aristotel a atribuit primul din ceea ce puteau fi numite discuții științifice despre magnetism filozofului Thales din Milet, care a trăit de la aproximativ 625 î.e.n. până în jurul anului 545 î.e.n. În același timp, în India antică, chirurgul indian Sushruta a fost primul care a folosit magnetul în scopuri chirurgicale. În China antică, cea mai veche referire literară la magnetism se găsește într-o carte din secolul al IVlea î.e.n., numită după autorul ei, Înțelepciunea fantomei din vale. În analele din secolul al II-lea î.e.n., Lüshi Chunqiu, se notează de asemenea: "Magnetita face fierul să se apropie sau îl atrage". Cea mai timpurie mențiune a atracției unui ac este într-o lucrare din secolul I, Lunheng (Întrebări echilibrate): "O magnetită atrage un ac". Omul de știința chinez din secolul XI, Shen Kuo, a fost prima persoană care a scris în Meng xi bi tan despre busola magnetică cu ac și că a îmbunătățit acuratețea navigației prin folosirea conceptului astronomic al nordului adevărat. Din secolul al XII-lea, chinezii știau să folosească compasul pentru navigație. Ei au realizat un indicator direcțional din magnetită în așa fel încât un capăt al indicatorului să indice mereu spre sud. Alexander Neckam, prin 1187, a fost primul în Europa care descrie busola și utilizarea sa pentru navigație. În 1269, Peter Peregrinus de Maricourt a scris Epistola magnetului, primul tratat existent descriind proprietățile magneților. În 1282, proprietățile magneților și busola uscată au fost discutate de Al-Ashraf, un fizician, astronom și geograf yemenit. În 1600, William Gilbert și-a publicat De Magnete, Magneticisque Corporibus și Magno Magnete Tellure (Despre magnet și corpurile magnetice, și despre marele magnet, Pământul). În această lucrare el descrie multe dintre experimentele sale cu modelul său al pământului numit terrella. Din experimentele sale, el a concluzionat că Pământul era el însuși magnetic și că acesta este motivul pentru ELECTRICITATE ȘI MAGNETISM – LECTROMAGNETISM FENOMENOLOGIC 11 care compasurile indică spre nord (anterior, unii credeau că indicau Steaua Polară sau o mare insulă magnetică de la polul nord care atrage busola). O înțelegere a relației dintre electricitate și magnetism s-a dezvoltat începând din 1819 cu lucrarea lui Hans Christian Ørsted, profesor la Universitatea din Copenhaga, care a descoperit prin împingerea accidentală a unui ac de busolă lângă un fir că un curent electric ar putea crea un câmp magnetic. Acest experiment de referință este cunoscut sub numele de Experimentul lui Ørsted. Au urmat mai multe experimente, cu André-Marie Ampère, care în 1820 a descoperit că câmpul magnetic care circulă într-o cale închisă este legat de curentul electric care trece prin perimetrul căii; Carl Friedrich Gauss, JeanBaptiste Biot și Félix Savart, ultimii doi în 1820, au formulat legea Biot-Savart dând o ecuație pentru câmpul magnetic pornind de la un fir care transportă curent electric; Michael Faraday, în 1831, a constatat că un flux magnetic variabil în timp printr-o bucla de sârmă induce o tensiune, iar alții au găsit legături suplimentare între magnetism și electricitate. James Clerk Maxwell a sintetizat și extins aceste cunoștințe în ecuațiile lui Maxwell, unificând energia electrică, magnetismul și optica în câmpul electromagnetic. În 1905, Einstein a folosit aceste legi pentru a-și motiva teoria relativității speciale, impunând ca legile să fie valabile în toate formele de referință inerțiale. Electromagnetismul a continuat să se dezvolte în secolul al XXI-lea, fiind încorporat în teoriile mai fundamentale gauge, electrodinamica cuantică, teoria electroslabă și, în final, modelul standard. FORȚE MAGNETICE Fenomenul magnetismului este "mediat" de câmpul magnetic. Un curent electric sau un dipol magnetic creează un câmp magnetic, iar acest câmp, la rândul său, distribuie forțele magnetice asupra altor particule care se află în câmpuri. (Liniile magnetice de forță ale unui magnet bară arătate de pilitura de fier pe hârtie) Ecuațiile lui Maxwell, care simplifică legea Biot-Savart în cazul curenților constanți, descriu originea și comportamentul câmpurilor care guvernează aceste forțe. Prin urmare, magnetismul este văzut ori de câte ori particulele electrice încărcate sunt în mișcare de exemplu, mișcarea electronilor într-un curent INDUCȚIA ELECTROMAGNETICĂ 12 electric sau, în anumite cazuri, mișcarea orbitală a electronilor în jurul nucleului unui atom. De asemenea, ele provin din dipoli magnetici "intrinseci" care apar din spinul mecanic cuantic. La fel ca situațiile care creează câmpuri magnetice sarcină care se deplasează într-un curent sau întrun atom și dipoli magnetici intrinseci sunt și situațiile în care un câmp magnetic are un efect, creând o forță. Următoarea este formula pentru sarcina în mișcare. Atunci când o particulă încărcată se deplasează printr-un câmp magnetic B, ea simte forța Lorentz F dată de produsul vectorial: F = q (v x B) Unde q este sarcina electrică a particulei și v este vectorul vitezei particulei. Deoarece acesta este un produs vectorial, forța este perpendiculară atât pe mișcarea particulei, cât și pe câmpul magnetic. Rezultă că forța magnetică nu produce nicio acțiune asupra particulei; poate schimba direcția mișcării particulelor, dar nu poate cauza accelerarea sau încetinirea acesteia. Un instrument pentru determinarea direcției vectorului de viteză al unei sarcini în mișcare, câmpul magnetic, și forța exercitată, este regula degetului arătător pentru "V", a degetului mijlociu pentru "B" și degetul mare pentru "F" de la mâna dreaptă. Atunci când se realizează o configurație asemănătoare pistolului, cu degetul mijlociu care perpendicular pe degetul arătător, degetele reprezintă vectorul vitezei, vectorul câmpului magnetic și, respectiv, vectorul de forță. POLI MAGNETICI (Câmpul unui magnet cilindric, calculat cu modelul lui Ampère. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:VFPt_cylindrical_magnet_thumb.svg) Polul nord al unui magnet este definit ca un pol care, atunci când magnetul este suspendat în mod liber, se îndreaptă spre polul magnetic Nord din Arctica (polii magnetici și geografici nu coincid). Deoarece ELECTRICITATE ȘI MAGNETISM – LECTROMAGNETISM FENOMENOLOGIC 13 polii opuși (nord și sud) se atrag, polul nord magnetic este de fapt polul sudic al câmpului magnetic al Pământului. Ca o chestiune practică, pentru a spune care pol de magnet este la nord și care este la sud, nu este necesar să folosim deloc câmpul magnetic al Pământului. De exemplu, o metodă ar fi să comparați cu un electromagnet, ale cărui poli pot fi identificați prin regula mâinii drepte. Liniile câmpului magnetic ale unui magnet sunt considerate convențional că ies din polul nord al magnetului și reintră la polul sud. Din punct de vedere istoric, polii nord și sud ai unui magnet au fost definiți mai întâi de câmpul magnetic al Pământului, nu invers, deoarece una dintre primele utilizări pentru un magnet a fost un ac de busolă. Pozițiile polilor magnetici pot fi definite în cel puțin două moduri: local sau global. Definiția locală este punctul în care câmpul magnetic este vertical. Acest lucru poate fi determinat prin măsurarea înclinației. Înclinarea câmpului Pământului este de 90° (în jos) la Polul magnetic Nord și -90° (în sus) la Polul magnetic Sud. Cei doi poli sunt independent unul de celălalt și nu sunt direct opuși unul față de celălalt pe glob. Aceștia pot migra rapid: pentru Polul Nord magnetic s-au observat mișcări de până la 40 de kilometri pe an. În ultimii 180 de ani, Polul Nord magnetic migrează spre nord-vest, de la Cape Adelaide în Peninsula Boothia în 1831 până la 600 de kilometri de la Resolute Bay în 2001. Ecuatorul magnetic este linia unde înclinația este zero (câmpul magnetic este orizontal). Definiția globală a câmpului Pământului se bazează pe un model matematic. Dacă o linie este trasă prin centrul Pământului, paralel cu momentul dipolului magnetic cel mai bine potrivit, cele două poziții în care intersectează suprafața Pământului sunt numite poli geomagnetici Nord și Sud. Dacă câmpul magnetic al Pământului ar fi perfect dipolar, polii dipolari geomagnetic și magnetic ar coincide, iar compasurile ar indica spre ei. Dar câmpul Pământului are o contribuție semnificativă non-dipolară, astfel încât polii nu coincid, iar compasele nu indică în general nici unul. Polul geomagnetic Polii geomagnetici sunt puncte antipodale în care axa unui dipol cu cea mai bună potrivire intersectează suprafața Pământului. Acest dipol este echivalent cu un magnet de bară puternic în centrul Pământului, și acest dipol teoretic se apropie mai mult decât oricare altul de explicarea câmpului magnetic observat la suprafața Pământului. Dimpotrivă, poli magneții actuali ai Pământului nu sunt antipodali adică nu se află pe o linie care trece prin centrul Pământului. Datorită mișcării fluidului în miezul exterior al Pământului, polii magnetici reali se mișcă constant. Cu toate acestea, de-a lungul a mii de ani, direcția lor este medie pe axa de rotație a Pământului. La aproximativ fiecare jumătate de milion de ani, polii se inversează (nordul se schimbă cu sudul). La fel ca Polul Nord magnetic, Polul Nord geomagnetic atrage polul nord al unei bare magnet și astfel este, într-un sens fizic, de fapt un pol sud magnetic. Este centrul liniilor câmpului magnetic "deschis" care se conectează la câmpul magnetic interplanar și oferă o cale directă pentru ca vântul solar să ajungă la ionosferă. Începând cu 2015, a fost localizat la aproximativ 80,37°N 72,62°W, pe insula Ellesmere, Nunavut, Canada. INDUCȚIA ELECTROMAGNETICĂ 14 (Ilustrația diferenței dintre polii geomagnetici (Nm și Sm) și polii geografici (Ng și Sg). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Geomagnetisme.svg) Polul Sud geomagnetic este punctul în care axa acestui dipol înclinat cu cea mai potrivită înclinare intersectează suprafața Pământului în emisfera sudică. Începând cu anul 2005 sa calculat că este situat la 79,74°S 108,22°E, lângă stația Vostok. Deoarece câmpul nu este un dipol exact, Polul Sud geomagnetic nu coincide cu Polul Sud magnetic. Mai mult, Polul Sud geomagnetic se deplasează din același motiv ca și omologul său magnetic din nord. Locațiile polilor geomagnetici sunt prezise de Câmpul internațional de referință geomagnetic, o potrivire statistică pentru măsurările câmpului Pământului prin sateliți și în observatoarele geomagnetice. Dacă câmpul Pământului ar fi fost exact dipolar, polul nord al acului magnetic al busolei s-ar îndrepta direct spre Polul Nordic geomagnetic. În practică, acest lucru nu se datorează faptului că câmpul geomagnetic care provine din nucleu are o parte non-dipolară mai complexă, iar anomaliile magnetice în crusta Pământului contribuie, de asemenea, la câmpul local. Dipoli magnetici Dipoli magnetici sau momentele magnetice se pot forma de multe ori la scară atomică, datorită mişcărilor electronilor. Fiecare electron are momente magnetice care provin din două surse. Prima este ELECTRICITATE ȘI MAGNETISM – LECTROMAGNETISM FENOMENOLOGIC 15 mişcarea orbitală a electronului în jurul nucleului. Într-un fel această mişcare poate fi considerată ca o buclă de curent, rezultând un moment magnetic de-a lungul axei sale de rotaţie. A doua sursă de moment magnetic al electronului se datorează proprietăţii din mecanica cuantică numită spin. Într-un atom momentele magnetice orbitale ale unor perechi de electroni se anulează reciproc. Acelaşi lucru este valabil pentru momentele magnetice de spin. Momentul magnetic global al atomului este astfel suma tuturor momentelor magnetice ale electronilor individuali, electronii împerecheaţi corect anulându-şi reciproc momentele. În cazul unei pături de electroni complet umplute sau a unei subpături, momentele magnetice se anulează complet reciproc. Astfel, numai atomii cu pături de electroni parţial umplute vor avea un moment magnetic. Proprietăţile magnetice ale materialelor sunt în mare parte determinate de natura şi amploarea momentelor magnetice atomice. Există mai multe forme de comportament magnetic, inclusiv: * diamagnetism * paramagnetism * * magnet molecular * feromagnetism * * antiferomagnetism * * ferimagnetism * * metamagnetism * sticla de spin * superparamagnetism Se presupune că există şi stele extrem de magnetice, numite magnetari. 16 CARTEA O introducere în lumea electricității și a magnetismului, explicată în principal fenomenologic, cu ajutorul unui aparat matematic minimal, și cu exemple și aplicații din viața reală. O prezentare compactă, clară și precisă a unui domeniu care reprezintă o parte importantă a vieții noastre. Cartea acoperă toate subiectele introductive standard, respectiv electrostatica (forțe electrice, sarcini electrice, conservarea sarcinii, legea lui Coulomb, conductori și izolatori (rezistența electrică și conductanța electrică), semiconductori, superconductori, polarizarea (dielectrici), câmpul electric, potențialul electric, stocarea energiei electrice), curentul electric (circulația sarcinilor, surse de tensiune, rezistența electrică, legea lui Ohm, curent continuu și curent alternativ, conversia de la CA la CC (redresoare), electroni într-un circuit electric, puterea electrică), magnetismul (forțe magnetice, poli magnetici, câmpuri magnetice, domenii magnetice, legea Biot–Savart și legea lui Ampère, electromagneți, forța Lorentz și forța Laplace, contoare electrice, motoare electrice, câmpul magnetic al Pământului, radiații cosmice), inducția electromagnetică (electromagnetism, legea lui Faraday (a inducției), generatoare de CA (alternatoare), centrale electrice (generarea electricității), hidrocentralele Porţile de Fier, turbogeneratoare, generatoare magnetohidrodinamice, transformatoare, autoinducția, transmisia energiei electrice, câmpul electromagnetic, unde electromagnetice). Ediția MultiMedia Publishing https://www.setthings.com/ro/e-books/electricitate-si-magnetismelectromagnetism-fenomenologic/ Digital: EPUB (ISBN 978-606-94667-7-3), Kindle (ISBN 978-606-94667-9-7), PDF (ISBN 978606-94667-8-0) Tipărit (ISBN 978-606-94667-6-6) Ediția tipărită Amazon (MultiMedia S.R.L.): Data publicării: 20 august 2018 6" x 9" (15.24 x 22.86 cm) 312 pagini BISAC: Science / Physics / Electromagnetism Ediția ilustrată: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1725628171/ ISBN-13: 978-1725628175, ISBN-10: 1725628171 Ediția alb-negru: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1725716534/ ISBN-13: 978-1725716537, ISBN-10: 1725716534 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Electricitate-și-magnetism-171116830212852/ 17 CUPRINS Introducere Electrostatica - - Serii triboelectrice - - Generatoare electrostatice - - Neutralizarea sarcinilor - - Inducţia sarcinilor - - Electricitatea "statică" - - Forțe electrice - - Sarcini electrice - - - - - Unități - - Conservarea sarcinii - - - - - Dovezi experimentale - - Legea lui Coulomb - - - - - Legea - - - - - Unități - - - - - Câmp electric - - - - - Constanta lui Coulomb - - - - - Limitări - - Conductori și izolatori (Rezistența electrică și conductanța electrică) - - - - - Conductori - - - - - - - - Rezistența și conductanța - - - - - - - - Materiale pentru conductori - - - - - Izolatori - - - - - - - - Fizica conducției în solide - - - - - - - - Străpungerea - - - - - - - - Utilizări - - Semiconductori - - - - - Proprietăți - - - - - Fizica semiconductorilor - - - - - - - - Benzile de energie și conducția electrică - - - - - - - - Purtători de sarcini (electroni și găuri) - - - - - - - - Generarea și recombinarea purtătorilor de sarcini - - - - - Doparea - - Superconductori (Superconductivitatea) - - - - - Proprietăți elementare ale superconductoarelor INDUCȚIA ELECTROMAGNETICĂ 18 - - - - - - - - Rezistență zero la curent electric continuu (CC) - - - - - - - - Tranziția de fază superconductoare - - - - - - - - Efectul Meissner - - - - - - - - Momentul London - - Electricitatea statică - - - - - Cauze - - - - - Generatoare electrostatice - - - - - Descărcarea electrostatică - - - - - Încărcarea electrică prin frecare și contact - - - - - - - - Efectul triboelectric - - - - - - - - - - - Cauza - - - - - Încărcarea electrică prin inducție - - - - - - - - Inducția electrostatică - - - - - - - - Explicaţie - - - - - - - - Încărcarea unui obiect prin inducție - - - - - - - - Sarcina indusă se găsește pe suprafață - - - - - - - - Tensiunea în tot obiectul conductiv este constantă - - Polarizarea sarcinilor (Dielectrici) - - - - - Modelul atomic de bază - - - - - Polarizarea dipolară - - - - - Polarizarea ionică - - - - - - - - În celule - - - - - Condensatori - - Câmpul electric - - - - - Definiția câmpului electric - - - - - Surse de câmp electric - - - - - - - - Cauze și descriere - - - - - - - - Reprezentarea sarcinilor continuă vs. discretă - - Ecranarea electromagnetică - - - - - Cum funcţionează - - - - - Ecranarea magnetică - - - - - Materiale folosite - - - - - Exemplu de aplicații - - Potențialul electric - - - - - Introducere - - - - - Electrostatica - - - - - - - - Potențialul electric datorat unei sarcini punctuale - - - - - Unități - - - - - Potențialul galvanic vs. potențialul electrochimic - - Stocarea energiei electrice - - - - - Depozitarea mecanică - - - - - - - - Hidroelectricitatea - - - - - - - - Depozitare prin pompare - - - - - - - - Aer comprimat - - - - - - - - Depozitarea energiei în volant - - - - - - - - Depozitarea energiei potențiale gravitaționale cu mase solide - - - - - Depozitarea termică - - - - - - - - Stocarea energiei termice a căldurii latente - - - - - Depozitarea electrochimică ELECTRICITATE ȘI MAGNETISM – LECTROMAGNETISM FENOMENOLOGIC 19 - - - - - - - - Baterie reîncărcabilă - - - - - - - - - - - Baterie cu curgere - - - - - - - - Supercapacitoare - - - - - Alte produse chimice - - - - - - - - Conversia electricității în gaz - - - - - - - - Conversia electricității în lichid - - - - - Metode electrice - - - - - - - - Condensatoare - - - - - - - - Materiale magnetice superconductoare - - Generator Van de Graaff - - - - - Descriere Curent electric - - Circulația sarcinilor electrice - - Curentul electric (Convenții) - - - - - Direcția de referință - - Surse de tensiune - - - - - Surse de tensiune ideale - - - - - Comparație între sursele de tensiune și curent - - Rezistența electrică Conductanța - - - - - Introducere - - - - - Conductoare și rezistențe - - - - - Măsurarea rezistenței - - - - - Rezistențe tipice - - Legea lui Ohm - - - - - Domeniu de aplicare - - - - - Originile microscopice - - - - - Analiza circuitului - - - - - - - - Circuite rezistive - - - - - Efectele de temperatură - - Curent continuu și curent alternativ - - - - - Curent continuu - - - - - - - - Circuite - - - - - Curent alternativ - - - - - - - - Transmisie, distribuție și alimentarea cu energie electrică - - - - - - - - Frecvențele surselor de alimentare cu curent alternativ - - Conversia de la CA la CC (Redresoare) - - - - - Redresoare pentru o singură fază - - - - - - - - Remediere pentru jumătate de undă (monoalternanță) - - - - - - - - Redresoare pentru undă completă (bialternanță) - - - - - Redresoare trifazate - - - - - Filtrarea ieșirii redresorului - - Electroni într-un circuit electric - - - - - Viteza de derivă într-un câmp electric - - - - - Definiție și unități - - - - - Relația cu conductivitatea - - - - - Dependența de câmp electric și saturația vitezei - - Puterea electrică - - - - - Definiție - - - - - Explicaţie INDUCȚIA ELECTROMAGNETICĂ 20 - - - - - Convenția semnelor pasive - - - - - Circuite rezistive - - - - - Curent alternativ - - - - - Câmpuri electromagnetice - - Circuite electrice - - - - - Legile electrice - - - - - Metode de proiectare - - Circuite serie - - - - - Circuite serie - - - - - Curentul - - - - - Rezistoare - - - - - Inductoare - - - - - Condensatoare - - - - - Comutatoare - - - - - Celule și baterii - - - - - Voltaj - - Circuite paralel - - - - - Tensiunea - - - - - Curentul - - - - - Rezistoare - - - - - Inductoare - - - - - Condensatoare - - - - - Comutatoare - - - - - Celule și baterii Magnetism - - Istorie - - Forțe magnetice - - Poli magnetici - - - - - Polul geomagnetic - - - - - Dipoli magnetici - - Câmpuri magnetice - - - - - Definiții, unități și măsurători - - - - - - - - Câmpul B - - - - - - - - Câmpul H - - - - - - - - Unități - - - - - - - - Măsurare - - - - - Linii de câmp magnetic - - Domenii magnetice - - - - - Dezvoltarea teoriei domeniului - - - - - Structura domeniului - - - - - - - - De ce se formează domenii - - - - - - - - Dimensiunea domeniilor - - - - - - - - Anisotropia magnetică - - - - - - - - Magnetostricțiunea - - - - - - - - Structura granulelor - - - - - - - - Stări "magnetizate" - - Curenți electrici și câmpuri magnetice (Legea Biot–Savart și Legea lui Ampère) - - - - - Legea Biot-Savart - - - - - - - - Curenții electrici (de-a lungul unei curbe/sârmă închisă) ELECTRICITATE ȘI MAGNETISM – LECTROMAGNETISM FENOMENOLOGIC 21 - - - - - Legea circuitului lui Ampère - - Electromagneți - - - - - Solenoid simplu - - - - - Fizica - - - - - - - - Legea lui Ampere - - - - - - - - Miez magnetic - - - - - - - - Circuitul magnetic – aproximarea câmpului B constant - - - - - - - - Câmpul magnetic creat de un curent - - - - - - - - Forța exercitată de câmpul magnetic - - - - - - - - Circuit magnetic închis - - - - - - - - Forța între electromagneți - - Electromagneți supraconductori - - - - - Construcție - - - - - - - - Răcire - - - - - - - - - - - Răcire cu lichid - - - - - - - - - - - Răcirea mecanică - - - - - - - - Materiale - - - - - - - - Înfășurările de bobinaj - - - - - Operare - - - - - - - - Alimentarea electrică - - - - - - - - Modul persistent - - - - - Utilizări - - Forța Lorentz și forța Laplace - - - - - Forța pentru o particulă încărcată - - - - - Forța în câmp magnetic (Forța Laplace) - - - - - - - - Direcția forței - - - - - - - - Traiectoriile particulelor datorate forței Lorentz - - - - - - - - Semnificația forței Lorentz - - Contoare electrice - - - - - Operare - - - - - Contoare electromecanice - - - - - Contoare electronice - - - - - Precizia - - Motoare electrice - - - - - Componente - - - - - - - - Rotor - - - - - - - - Stator - - - - - - - - Gol de aer - - - - - Înfăşurări - - - - - - - - Comutator - - - - - Alimentarea și controlul motoarelor - - - - - - - - Alimentarea motoarelor - - - - - - - - Controlul motoarelor - - Câmpul magnetic al Pământului - - - - - Importanţa - - - - - Caracteristici principale - - - - - - - - Descriere - - - - - - - - Intensitatea - - - - - - - - Înclinarea INDUCȚIA ELECTROMAGNETICĂ 22 - - - - - - - - Declinaţia - - - - - - - - Variația geografică - - - - - - - - Aproximarea dipolară - - - - - - - - Poli magnetici - - - - - Magnetosfera - - - - - Originea fizică - - - - - - - - Miezul pământului și geodinamo - - - - - - - - Modele numerice - - - - - - - - Curenți în ionosferă și magnetosferă - - Radiații cosmice - - - - - Radiațiile cosmice masive comparate cu fotonii - - - - - Compoziţie - - - - - Energia - - - - - Surse de raze cosmice Inducția electromagnetică - - Istorie - - Electromagnetism - - - - - Descrierea matematică - - - - - Câmp electric E - - - - - Metoda electromagnetică - - Inducția electromagnetică (Aplicații) - - - - - Generatoare electrice - - - - - Transformatoare electrice - - - - - Ampermetru de inducție - - - - - Contor de debit magnetic - - - - - Curenți turbionari - - Legea lui Faraday (a inducției) - - - - - Legea lui Faraday - - - - - - - - Declarație calitativă - - - - - - - - Cantitativ - - Generatoare de CA (Alternatoare) - - - - - Principiul de funcționare - - Centrale electrice (Generarea electricității) - - - - - Istorie - - - - - Metode de generare a energiei electrice - - - - - - - - Generatoare - - - - - - - - Electrochimie - - - - - - - - Efect fotovoltaic - - - - - Echipamente de generare - - - - - - - - Turbine - - - - - - - - Generatoare - - Hidrocentralele Porţile de Fier - - - - - Hidrocentrala Porţile de Fier I - - - - - - - - Istorie - - - - - - - - Modernizare - - - - - Hidrocentrala Porţile de Fier II - - Turbogeneratoare - - - - - Circuit echivalent - - - - - Turbogeneratoare ELECTRICITATE ȘI MAGNETISM – LECTROMAGNETISM FENOMENOLOGIC 23 - - - - - Caracteristici de construcție - - Generatoare magnetohidrodinamice - - - - - Principiu - - - - - Generarea de energie electrică - - - - - - - - Generatorul Faraday - - - - - - - - Generatorul Hall - - - - - - - - Generatorul cu disc - - Transformatoare - - - - - Ecuații de transformare ideale - - - - - Transformatorul ideal - - - - - Transformatorul real - - - - - - - - Abateri de la transformatorul ideal - - - - - - - - Fluxul de scurgere - - - - - - - - Circuit echivalent - - Autoinducția - - - - - Autoinductanța și energia magnetică - - Transmisia energiei electrice - - - - - Sisteme - - - - - Transmisia în masă a energiei electrice - - Câmpul electromagnetic - - - - - Structura - - - - - - - - Structura continuă - - - - - - - - Structura discretă - - - - - Dinamica - - - - - Comportamentul reciproc al câmpurilor electrice și magnetice - - Unde electromagnetice - - - - - Viteza undelor electromagnetice Referințe 24 DESPRE AUTOR Nicolae Sfetcu Asociat şi manager MultiMedia SRL și Editura MultiMedia Publishing. 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THE AUTONOMY OF PSYCHOLOGY Tim Crane, University College London Psychology has been considered to have an autonomy from the other sciences (especially physical science) in at least two ways: in its subject-matter and in its methods. To say that the subject-matter of psychology is autonomous is to say that psychology deals with entities-properties, relations, states-which are not dealt with or not wholly explicable in terms of physical (or any other) science. Contrasted with this is the idea that psychology employs a characteristic method of explanation, which is not shared by the other sciences. I shall label the two senses of autonomy 'metaphysical autonomy' and 'explanatory autonomy'. The question of whether psychology as a science is autonomous in either sense is one of the philosophical questions surrounding the (somewhat vague) doctrine of 'naturalism': questions concerning the extent to which the human mind can be brought under the aegis of natural science. In their contemporary form, these questions had their origin in the 'new science' of the 17th century. Early materialists like Hobbes (1651) and La Mettrie (1748) rejected both explanatory and metaphysical autonomy: mind is matter in motion, and the mind can be studied by the mathematical methods of the new science just as any matter can. But while materialism (and therefore the denial of metaphysical autonomy) had to wait until the 19th century before starting to become widely accepted, the denial of explanatory autonomy remained a strong force in empiricist philosophy. Hume described his Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40) as an 'attempt to introduce the experimental method of reasoning into moral subjects'-where 'moral' signifies 'human'. And subsequent criticism of Hume's views, notably by Kant and Reid, ensured that the question of naturalism-whether there can be a 'science of man'-was one of the central questions of 19th century philosophy, and a question which hovered over the emergence of psychology as an independent discipline (see Reed 1994). In the 20th century, much of the philosophical discussion of the autonomy of psychology has been inspired by the Logical Positivists' discussions of the UNITY OF SCIENCE (see Carnap 1932-33, Feigl 1981, Oppenheim and Putnam 1958). For the Positivists, physical science had a special epistemic and ontological authority: the other sciences (including psychology) must have their claims about the world vindicated by being translated into the language of physics. This extreme REDUCTIONISM did not survive long after the decline of the Positivist doctrines which generated it-and it cannot have helped prevent this decline that no Positivist actually succeeded in translating any psychological claims into the language of physics. So although Positivism was a major influence on the rise of post-war PHYSICALISM, later physicalists tended to distinguish their metaphysical doctrines from the more extreme Positivist claims. Thus J.J.C. Smart (1959), for example, asserted that mental and physical properties are identical, but denied that the psychological language which we use to describe these properties can be translated into physical language. This is not yet to concede explanatory autonomy, since the fact that psychology employs a different *language* does not mean that it must employ a different explanatory *method*. And Smart's claim obviously implies the denial of metaphysical autonomy, since it is an identity theory. However, many philosophers think that the possibility of *multiple realisation* forces us to accept metaphysical autonomy. A property is multiply realised by underlying physical properties when not all of the instances of that property are instances of the same physical property. This is contrasted with property *identity*, where the fact that a brain property is identical with a mental property entails that all and only instances of the one property are instances of the other. Hilary Putnam (1975) argued influentially that there are good reasons for thinking that psychological properties are multiply realised by physical properties, on the grounds that psychological properties are *functional* properties of organisms-properties which are identified by the causal role which they play in the organism's psychological organisation (see FUNCTIONALISM). This kind of functionalist approach implies a certain degree of metaphysical autonomy: since psychological properties are multiply realised, it seems that they cannot be identical with physical properties of the brain (but contrast Lewis 1995). However, it does not imply a Cartesian dualist account of the mind, since all these properties are properties of physical objects, and the physical still has a certain ontological priority, sometimes expressed by saying that everything *supervenes* on the physical (see SUPERVENIENCE; THE MIND-BODY PROBLEM). The picture which emerges is that of a 'layered world': the properties of macroscopic objects are multiply realised by more microscopic properties, eventually arriving at the properties which are the subject-matter of fundamental physics (see Fodor 1974; Owens 1989). With the exception of certain ELIMINATIVE MATERIALISTS, who see the metaphysical autonomy of commonsense (or 'folk') psychological categories as a reason for rejecting the entities such a psychology talks about, the layered world picture is a popular account of the relationship between the subject matters of the various sciences. But what impact does this picture have on the question of the explanatory autonomy of psychology? Here matters become a little complex. The 'layered world' picture does suggest that the theories of the different levels of nature can be relatively independent. There is room for different styles of explanation: for instance, Robert Cummins (1983) argues that psychological explanation does not conform to the 'covering law' pattern of explanation employed in the physical sciences (where to explain a phenomenon is to show it to be an instance of a law of nature). And some influential views of the nature of computational psychology, for instance, treat it as involving three different levels of explanation (see Marr 1982). But in general, nothing in the layered world picture prevents psychology from having a properly scientific status; it is still the *subjectmatter* (psychological properties and relations) and not the explanatory *method* of psychology which sets it apart from physics and the other sciences. In short, the layered world conception standardly holds that psychological explanation has its autonomy in the sense that it does not need to be reduced to physical explanation; but nonetheless it is properly scientific explanation. This view should be distinguished from Davidson's (1970) view that there are features of our everyday psychological explanations which prevent these explanations from ever becoming scientific. Davidson argues that psychological explanations which attribute PROPOSITIONAL ATTITUDES are governed by normative principles: in ascribing a propositional attitude to a person, we aim to make their thought and action as reasonable as possible (for a related view, see McDowell 1985, Child 1994). In natural science, no comparable normative principles are employed. It is this dependence on the 'constitutive ideal of rationality' which prevents a psychology which purports to deal with the propositional attitudes from ever becoming scientific-in the sense that physics is scientific. According to Davidson, DECISION THEORY is an attempt to systematise ordinary explanations of actions in terms of belief and desire, by employing quantitative measures of degrees of belief and desire. But because (*inter alia*) of the irreducibly normative element involved in propositional attitude explanation, decision theory can never be a natural science (for more on this subject, see Davidson 1995). So where the 'layered world' picture typically combines a defence of metaphysical autonomy with an acceptance of the properly scientific (or potentially scientific) nature of all psychological explanation, Davidson's ANOMALOUS MONISM combines a thesis of strong explanatory autonomy with an identity theory of mental and physical events. REFERENCES Carnap, R., 1932-33, 'Psychology in Physical Language.' *Erkenntnis, 3. Child, W., 1994, *Causality, Interpretation and the Mind*. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Cummins, R., 1983 *The Nature of Psychological Explanation*. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Davidson, D., 1970, 'Mental events.' In *Experience and Theory*, L. Foster and J. Swanson, eds. London: Duckworth 79-101. Davidson, D., 1995, 'Can there be a science of rationality?' *International Journal of Philosophical Studies*, 3. Feigl, H., 1981, 'Physicalism, unity of science and the foundations of psychology.' In H. Feigl, *Inquiries and Provocations*, R. Cohen, ed. Dordrecht: Reidel. Fodor, J., 1974, 'Special sciences: the disunity of science as a working hypothesis.' *Synthese*, 28. Hobbes, T., 1651, *Leviathan*. C.B. Macpherson, ed., Harmondsworth: Penguin Books 1968. Hume, D., 1739-40, *A Treatise of Human Nature*. L.A. Selby-Bigge, ed., Oxford: Clarendon Press, Second Edition 1978. La Mettrie, J., 1748, *Man the Machine*. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Marr, D., 1982, *Vision*. San Fransisco: Freeman. McDowell, J., 1985, 'Functionalism and anomalous monism.' In *Actions and Events: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson*, E. LePore and B. Mclaughlin, eds. Oxford: Blackwell. Oppenheim, P., and Putnam, H., 1958, 'The unity of science as a working hypothesis.' In *Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science*, H. Feigl and G. Maxwell, ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Owens, D. 1989, 'Levels of explanation.' *Mind* 98. Putnam, H., 1975, 'The nature of mental states.' In Putnam, H., *Philosophical Papers Volume II, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Reed, E., 1994 'The Separation of Psychology from Philosophy: Studies in the Sciences of Mind 1815-1879.' in *Routledge History of Philosophy: The 19th Century*, Stuart Shanker, ed., London: Routledge. Smart, J.J.C., 1959, 'Sensations and brain processes.' *Philosophical Review* 68. OTHER ENTRIES Anomalous monism Decision theory Eliminative materialism Emergentism Physicalism Reductionism Supervenience Unity of science | {
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The Reception of Hesiod by the Early Pre-Socratics Page 1 of 20 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 11 August 2018 Abstract and Keywords The early pre-Socratics' major speculative and critical initiatives-in particular Anaximander's conceptions of the justice of the cosmos and of the apeiron as its archē and Xenophanes's polemics against immorality and anthropomorphism in the depiction of the gods and against any claim to divine inspiration-appear to break with Hesiod's form of thought. But the conceptual, critical, and ethical depth of Hesiod's own rethinking of the lore that he inherited complicates this picture. Close examination of each of their major initiatives together with the relevant passages in Hesiod shows that even in the course of departing from his thought, Anaximander and Xenophanes also reappropriate and renew it. A postscript to this chapter poses some questions for future inquiry into Heraclitus's and Parmenides's receptions of Hesiod. Keywords: anthropomorphism, apeiron, archē, cosmogony, justice STUDYING the reception of Hesiod's thought by Anaximander and Xenophanes is a daunting project. It is not just that we have only fragments and sketchy reports to go on; what is more, both these texts and Hesiod's reflect the development of unprecedented modes of thought. As a consequence, almost everything that one ventures to say is contestable. Let me begin by acknowledging the obscurity of the depth of each of our thinkers, as well as the inevitable danger of circularity that faces any effort to reconstruct their relations. The project is nonetheless compelling. Anaximander and Xenophanes attempt, each in his own way, to break free from the mythopoeic tradition, and Hesiod is the most philosophical member of that tradition. In their generation of new forms of thought, Anaximander and Xenophanes develop possibilities that are arguably implicit, albeit The Reception of Hesiod by the Early Pre-Socratics Mitchell Miller The Oxford Handbook of Hesiod Edited by Alexander C. Loney and Stephen Scully Print Publication Date: Sep 2018 Subject: Classical Studies, Classical Poetry, Classical Reception, Classical Philosophy Online Publication Date: Aug 2018 DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190209032.013.42 1 Oxford Handbooks Online The Reception of Hesiod by the Early Pre-Socratics Page 2 of 20 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 11 August 2018 within the mythopoeia they challenge, in Hesiod. The mix of departure and return is veritably Heraclitean. I begin with Anaximander, then turn to Xenophanes. Anaximander and Hesiod on the Question of the Archē Anaximander's Apeiron Archē, Justice, and the Opposites Anaximander is best known for declaring the archē of the world-that is, the source of the sphere of the heavens and the earth-to be to apeiron, "the unlimited." He is objecting to his Milesian predecessor Thales's view that all things originate from water. He evidently agrees with Thales that the archē is something physical, for he holds that to apeiron "surrounds and embraces all things" (περιέχειν ἅπαντα). But as the name he gives it indicates, he takes it to outstrip every given limit of place (for it lies, untraversibly vast, outside the sphere of the heavens), of time (for it is "eternal and ageless"), and of kind (for it is qualitatively indefinite, being "neither water nor any other of the so-called elements"). Why does Anaximander reject Thales's identification of the archē as water, and why does he think it to be, instead, indefinite in kind? Our best recourse is Anaximander's one surviving fragment, in which he declares that "[the things that are] perish into the things out of which they come to be, according to necessity, for they pay penalty and retribution to each other for their injustice in accordance with the ordering of time." If we ask, for what "injustice" committed by, say, A, it would be a proportionate "penalty and retribution" for A to "perish into" B, we see that A, by coming to be, must have caused B to perish, and also that B must have perished into A; for A's "perishing" is proportionate to its having denied to B its existence, and A's perishing "into" B, that is, its letting B come to be "out of" it, restores to B what it has denied. But this restoration to B, because it costs A its existence, is also B's denial to A of A's existence. Hence Anaximander envisages an endless alternation of crime and reparation, in which each reparation is itself a new crime that calls for new reparation. And if we ask what "things that are" stand in this reciprocal relation of crime and reparation, in which the coming to be of each causes the perishing of the other and vice versa, we see that their mutual negation requires that we think of opposites-presumably, as is suggested by other reports, the hot and the cold. Anaximander discerns, in the endless alternation of the seasons, the fundamental justice that governs the basic conditions of the natural world. 2 (p. 208) 3 The Reception of Hesiod by the Early Pre-Socratics Page 3 of 20 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 11 August 2018 These reflections show why the archē of the world must be "neither water nor any other of the so-called elements" but, instead, indefinite in kind. As the ultimate source of all else, the archē must itself have no source; hence it is "eternal" (ἀίδιον [Kirk et al. 1983: 107–8]). Accordingly, for it to be water would be a crime against the dry, for the dry would be forever denied coming to be, and the "penalty and retribution" for this "injustice" would be forever forestalled. More generally, just insofar as to be qualitatively definite is to be subject to having an opposite, for the archē to be qualitatively definite would be to make permanent the injustice of its suppressing its opposite. Justice, then, requires that the archē be such as to have no opposite, and this requires that it be qualitatively indefinite. These reflections also cast light on the logic that motivates Anaximander's understanding of cosmogenesis. Insofar as the basic powers within the world are the opposites and the apeiron is the archē of the world, the coming to be of the world must involve the "separating-off of the opposites" from the apeiron. But this must not be understood to imply that the opposites initially exist in the apeiron, for this would undermine its character of being qualitatively indefinite. Accordingly, Anaximander interposes a middle term, which, in the words of Ps.-Plutarch, he characterizes only by its function: "that which is productive (γόνιμον) ... of hot and cold." (Kirk et al. 1983: 131) In the first phase of cosmogenesis this "productive" something is "separated off" from the eternal apeiron, and in the second phase it somehow produces the hot and the cold and, so, the world; thus the apeiron itself remains unqualified by the opposites. Hesiod's Cosmogony: The Justice of the Whole To appreciate the way in which Anaximander's notion of the apeiron archē responds to Hesiod, we must first mark and interpret the key cosmogonic passage in the Theogony (hereafter Th), 116–33: First of all, Chaos was born (γένετ'); then next Broad-breasted Earth, a firm seat forever for all The immortals who hold the peaks of snowy Olympus, And misty Tartara in the depths under the wide-wayed ground, And Eros, handsomest among the deathless gods, A looser of limbs, who in all the gods and all human beings Overpowers in their breasts their intelligence and careful planning. And from Chaos were born both Erebos and dark Night, And from Night, in turn, were born both Aither and Day, Whom she conceived and bore after joining in love with Erebos. But Earth first brought forth, as an equal to herself, Starry Sky, so that he might cover her all over, In order to be a firm seat forever for the blessed gods, (p. 209) 4 5 The Reception of Hesiod by the Early Pre-Socratics Page 4 of 20 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 11 August 2018 And she brought forth the tall Mountains, pleasing haunts of the goddess Nymphs who make their homes in the forested hills, And also she bore the barren main with its raging swell, Sea, all without any sweet act of love; then next, Having lain with Sky, she bore deep-swirling Ocean... . Even before exploring these lines in detail, we can hardly fail to be impressed by the break in mode of thought represented by Anaximander's notion of the apeiron. Hesiod belongs to the mythopoeic tradition, and he proceeds by letting a series of vivid images unfold before his hearer; Anaximander, by contrast, makes inventive use of a term that, even while it brings to mind the picture of a vast expanse, also resists picture thinking itself. What is without outer bounds of place and time and qualitatively indefinite defies the individuating borders and qualitative determinateness that the constitution of a picture requires; one feels oneself challenged by Anaximander to enter unfamiliar thought space, the space of the abstract or purely conceptual. This, however, is only the beginning, not the end of the matter of Anaximander's relation to Hesiod. For in a different but analogous way, Hesiod too enters unfamiliar thought space when at Th 105–10 he prepares the way for his cosmogony; in the course of his appeal to the Muses to sound out the holy stock of the everlasting immortals who were born from Earth (Γῆς) and starry Sky and gloomy Night, whom briny Sea brought to maturity, and tell how at the first gods (θεοί) ... [,] he makes a subtle but nonetheless sudden shift, here in the middle of line 108, from straightforwardly anthropomorphic characterization of the gods to transparently cosmic characterization, shifting from the person figures of 105–8 to the sorts of structures and conditions of the natural world that these person figures represent: ... and earth (καὶ γαῖα) were born and rivers and boundless sea, raging in its swell, and shining stars and wide sky above all. What is more, some of the key structures Hesiod will introduce in the cosmogony do not belong to the visible natural world. Hence we must be ready to ask, before we settle on the contrasts we have begun to draw between his and Anaximander's language, whether and to what degree Hesiod too, even in the medium of vivid mythopoeic imagery, is pressing toward an abstract thought content. Let me now venture a reading of the main lines of thought in Th 116–33. This will put us in position to return to Anaximander and begin to mark the ways his proposal of an apeiron archē responds to Hesiod. I proceed in five steps: (p. 210) 6 7 8 The Reception of Hesiod by the Early Pre-Socratics Page 5 of 20 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 11 August 2018 (1) The first four: Chaos, Earth, Tartara, and Eros (116–22). Though the first four beings are "born" (γένετ', 116), Hesiod refrains from naming a parent and, indeed, from asserting any sibling relations. What he offers instead is the vision of an event that is partly topological, partly logical. His word Chaos derives from the root chaand signifies the sort of "gap" that appears, to cite a cognate, in a "yawn" (χάσκειν, χαίνειν). The birth of Chaos is the topological event of the opening of a gap in what can only be thought of retrospectively as a hitherto undifferentiated field, and the opening brings along with it, in its immediate aftermath ("next"), the emergence of Earth and Tartaros as its two sides. The birth of Eros is, strange to say, a logical event. Eros is not to be envisaged as a thing in space but rather is the force that draws spatially distinct partners together, and its birth therefore presupposes and complements the birth of Chaos. (2) The character of Tartara. To appreciate the motivation of the subsequent series of births in the cosmogony, it is important to keep in the mind's eye a vivid image of Tartaros. As the underworld, it is as far below the Earth, separated from it by Chaos (814), as the Earth is below the Sky (720–25). It is a "vast chasm" (740), and its darkness-it is associated with Erebos and filled with "murk" or "gloom" (729, also 653, 659) and "mist" (119, 721, 729, 736 [= 807])-and its "dank, moldy" character (731, 739 [= 810]) prevent any distinct contours or shapes from appearing to sight and touch. Indeed, were a man so unlucky as to fall into it, "stormblast upon stormblast would sweep him one way and another" (742), making it impossible for him to get his bearings; as the onomatopoeia of its name suggests, it is characterized by unceasing disturbance. These vivid details help to explain the curious fact that Hesiod first names Tartaros in the plural, Tartara; a being so lacking in internal structure must also lack integrity. (p. 211) The Reception of Hesiod by the Early Pre-Socratics Page 6 of 20 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 11 August 2018 (3) The offspring of Chaos (123–25) and Earth (126–33): two kinds of order in interplay. The topological event of the opening of the gap that separates Earth and Tartaros is only the first, in itself incomplete step in Hesiod's vision of cosmogenesis; Earth and Tartaros only receive their full specificities as Earth and as Tartaros through the further offspring of Chaos and Earth. These births exhibit two kinds of relation, and in their fitting together these constitute the order of the cosmos as a whole. First, already prefigured by the complementing of Chaos by Eros, there is a being's need, if it is to have its full specificity, for its opposite; thus Chaos's firstborn, the spatial and temporal powers of darkness, Erebos and Night, together beget their correlative opposites, Aither and Day. By these begettings Erebos expresses his need, if he is to be the darkness of the underworld, for there also to be the brightness of the upper sky, Aither, and Night expresses her need, if she is to be the time of darkness, for there also to be the time of light, Day. Second, there is a whole's need, if it is to have genuine wholeness, for its articulation into parts. Hesiod displays this by having Earth bear, by and within herself, Mountains and Sea; thus Earth gives herself the internal differentiation essential to her as Earth. What is more, these two kinds of relation, each of which is itself a kind of complementarity, also complement one another. That a being's need for its opposite can complete a whole's self-differentiation is already evident in Earth's bearing of Mountains and Sea: as "tall," "forested," and the "pleasing haunts of nymphs," Mountains stand in determinate contrast with the low, "barren," and "raging swell" of Sea. More striking still is the way this self-differentiation completes Earth's acquiring of her opposite, Sky: when Earth first bears, "as an equal to herself, starry Sky," they are merely two undifferentiated masses, with Sky "covering [Earth] all over" without, however, standing in any qualitative contrast to her; by giving birth to Mountains and Sea, however, Earth makes herself into-as, now, a differentiated whole-the opposite to the undifferentiated expanse of Sky. That this achievement of qualitative contrast allows them to fit together as opposites, Hesiod lets us see in the final begetting of the cosmogony: Earth now lies with Sky and together they beget "deep swirling Ocean," the circular stream that, flowing around Earth at the farthest horizon, forms the continuous "point of contact between earth and the enclosing bowl of sky" (Kirk et al. 1983: 36n1)-thus Earth and Sky join together, constituting the upper world as a whole. (4) Hesiod's vision of the cosmic whole. This constitution of the upper world of Earth and Sky is, in turn, both the analog to and the completion of the constitution of the cosmos as a whole. If, letting ourselves "see" the process of cosmogenesis unfold, we keep vividly in the mind's eye the character of Tartaros as a "vast chasm" without either internal structure or integrity, we will see that just as the upper world is constituted as the whole of the internally differentiated whole of Earth, with its Mountains and Sea, and undifferentiated Sky, so the cosmos in its entirety is constituted as the whole of the differentiated whole of the upper world and undifferentiated Tartaros. (p. 212) The Reception of Hesiod by the Early Pre-Socratics Page 7 of 20 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 11 August 2018 (5) The cosmogony as the visible expression of the justice of Zeus. I spoke at the outset of the "abstract thought content" that, in the medium of his vivid imagery, Hesiod presses toward. If we now set the cosmogony within the context of the Th as a whole and, in turn, set the Th together with the Works and Days (hereafter WD), we can make out this content. The main body of the Th tells the story of the victory of Zeus over the Titans. This victory does not consist, as did Kronos's victory over Ouranos, merely of the violent taking of supreme power; rather, it consists of Zeus's introduction of the rule of justice, that is, of that proper apportioning that prevents the need for violence in the first place. Zeus's first three acts after driving the Titans into Tartaros are to "distribute well among [the gods who fought with him] their titles and privileges" (885, cf. 66–67 and 74); to swallow Metis and with her inside him give birth to Athena, "the equal of her father in wise counsel and strength" (896); and with Themis (justice as established by custom) to beget "Good Order" (Εὐνομίην), Justice, and Peace" (901–2). In the WD, in turn, Zeus ordains the rule of justice for human beings. The crux of justice is to restrict one's reach to "the half" that is one's own rather than to try to seize "the whole" for oneself (WD 40); respecting boundaries, each party allows the other its due. The cosmogony gives visible form to this idea of justice. Beginning with the birth of Chaos, it makes central the differentiation that gives rise to Earth and Tartaros, and at each step along its vivid way it matches part and counterpart in a nested whole. To mark this for ourselves by tracing from the innermost parts to the outermost whole: we are shown the pairs of Mountains and Sea, of the thereby differentiated Earth and undifferentiated Sky, and of the thereby differentiated upper world and undifferentiated Tartaros. Thus the cosmogony images the formation of a world in which it is appropriate, because its differentiations and pairings express the idea of justice as its ordering principle, for a just Zeus to come to prevail. 9 The Reception of Hesiod by the Early Pre-Socratics Page 8 of 20 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 11 August 2018 Anaximander's Critical Response (Reconstructed) to Hesiod's Cosmogony How does Anaximander's thought respond to Hesiod's? We have no surviving explicit evidence-no text of Anaximander's referring to Hesiod-to guide us. What we can do, however, is to set Anaximander's notions of the apeiron archē and the interplay of the opposites against the background of Th 116–33; if we do, three observations present themselves. First, while for Anaximander the coming into being of each of the opposites negates the other's existence, the requirement of justice reflects his recognition of the need that each has for the other; that each must pay reparation to the other "for [its] injustice" attests that the being of each requires the being of the other. Thus Anaximander shares the understanding that leads Hesiod to balance the being of Night with that of Day and, more generally, to structure the cosmos as a complex of counterbalancing opposites. Indeed, it is precisely because he agrees with Hesiod in letting his thought be guided by justice that Anaximander challenges Thales, rejecting the privileging of the wet over the dry. Second, this very agreement also leads Anaximander to challenge Hesiod-albeit, remarkably, in a way that Hesiod's portrayal of the birth of Chaos itself seems to invite. Just insofar as the differentiation that first begins to bring the world into being occurs as a "birth" (γένετ', Th 116), there would seem to need to be a parent. But what sort of being could precede the birth of Chaos and play this role? Insofar as it is only with this first differentiation, the gapping of Earth and Tartaros, that the world begins, this presupposed parent would seem to have to be an undifferentiated, indefinite, and-lacking any other to delimit it in place or time-boundless being. Thus Anaximander's conception of the apeiron archē in effect challenges Hesiod's beginning by making explicit the still more primal being that the birth of Chaos itself silently presupposes! Third, and as already noted, by giving his conception the strikingly transparent name a-peiron, Anaximander takes a decisive step beyond Hesiodic mythopoeia and toward the non-imagistic conceptual thinking that will eventually prevail, above all with Parmenides, in the emerging philosophic tradition; again, however, it is a step that, as the implicit conceptual order of Hesiod's cosmogony makes palpable, Hesiod's own thinking itself in effect invites. Xenophanes and Hesiod on the Representation and Knowledge of the Divine Xenophanes's reception of Hesiod is both indirect and critical. In our few surviving fragments, he mentions Hesiod only once, lumping him together with Homer (fr. 11.1) and objecting to their attributing immoral conduct to the gods. But Hesiod is no less an implicit target in Xenophanes's critical remarks on anthropomorphism and the nature of (p. 213) 10 11 The Reception of Hesiod by the Early Pre-Socratics Page 9 of 20 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 11 August 2018 the divine and in his declarations of the limits and source of human understanding. We shall consider each of these three concerns in turn. Xenophanes's Moral-Political Qualms-and Hesiod's Xenophanes claims a "wisdom" (σοφίη, 2.12) that contributes uniquely to the city's being "in good order" (ἐν εὐνομίῃ, 2.19) and prospering (2.22). On the basis of this "wisdom" he urges that humans "always show respect for the gods" and declares that there is nothing χρηστόν-morally right or (in Lesher's translation) "useful"-in portraying them in "battles" and "furious conflicts" such as the Titanomachy (1.21–24); similar concerns, presumably, lead him to object to "Homer['s] and Hesiod['s] attributing to the gods all the things which are matters of disgrace and censure among humans, thieving and adultery (μοιχεύειν) and deceiving one another" (11.1–3; also 12.2). Whereas the former portrayals might tempt the citizenry too easily to enter into foreign wars or even, recalling that the Titanomachy was a conflict between two generations of the same family, into internecine violence, the latter might be mistaken to legitimize violations of the proprieties of property and marriage and of the bond of trust that the unity of the city requires. Moral-political "wisdom" therefore proscribes portraying the gods as engaged in violent or immorally acquisitive comportment. What is the bearing of this on Hesiod? First, Xenophanes's thought seems to key not from any idea of moral perfection but rather from a normative respect for what is properly another's-be this another's property or spouse or, indeed, city-and from an idea of the "good order" and prosperity that maintaining this respect enables for a community. This is strikingly Hesiodic. "Fools, all," Hesiod exclaims at WD 40, "who know not how much greater is the half than the whole!" Sticking to what is one's own, not trying to seize by force the "half" that is another's, but rather working on one's own land in "good strife" with one's neighbor, is the practice of the ethic of justice and work that will avoid the worst, each party's losing everything in "bad strife," and enable the best, peace and plenty for all. It is, then, a Hesiodic moral-political order that Xenophanes supports by striking from poetry and lore portrayals of the gods that fail to "show respect for [them]." There are, of course, conspicuous cases in Hesiod's poems of various gods comporting themselves in the objectionable ways that Xenophanes decries. The "furious conflict" of the Titanomachy lies at the heart of the Th, and it is preceded by the tales of the violence and counter-violence of Sky and Kronos and followed by the tale of Zeus's battle against the monster Typhoeus. Attempted deception and theft are key moments in the extended tale, told once in the Th (521–616) and again in the WD (42–104), of Zeus's contest with Prometheus and the fashioning of Pandora. But a closer look at his representation of Zeus, in particular, shows that Hesiod is already guided by the moral-political scruples that motivate Xenophanes. First, the point of Zeus's violence against the Titans is to put an end to the very rule of violence that they stand for and replace it with the rule of justice; as we have already observed, Zeus's first acts after securing victory are to distribute power to the other Olympians, to beget his "equal in wise counsel and (p. 214) The Reception of Hesiod by the Early Pre-Socratics Page 10 of 20 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 11 August 2018 strength," and with Themis, to beget "Good Order, Justice, and Peace." Second, in the Pandora story it is not Zeus but Prometheus who is the primary thief and deceiver; Zeus's "deception" (WD 83) in ordering the fashioning of Pandora is a punishment that brings home the inescapability of a life of work. Third, in the long catalog of Zeus's many fatherings at Th 886–944, there is no mention of the salacious comportment-the varieties of μοιχεύειν-attributed to him in so much of the lore that Hesiod inherited from archaic myth; especially the old tales of Zeus's beddings of Leto, Maia, Semele, and Alkmene provided rich material for portraying his variously opportunistic, shape-shifting, and exploitative philanderings, but in each case the poem forgoes this, restricting itself instead to naming the glorious offspring by which Zeus distributes his powers to later generations. Doesn't Hesiod in each of these ways morally sanitize his portrait of Zeus along the lines-albeit not to the full extent-that Xenophanes later demands? Seen in this light, the notion of Xenophanes as a critic of "Homer and Hesiod" gives way to the notion of Xenophanes as extending what is already Hesiod's moral-political "wisdom" in portraying Zeus. Xenophanes's Critique of Anthropomorphism and His Reconception of the God(s): Two Questions Xenophanes reconceives the divine by reflections that are at once negative and positive. Exposing the tendency to project onto the gods our own ethnic looks ("snub-nosed and black," "blue-eyed and red-haired," 16.1–2), body types ("horses would draw the figures of the gods as similar to horses," etc., 15), powers ("voice," 14.2), and manners ("clothing," 14.2), he reimagines the divine as in the highest possible degree "not at all like mortals in body or in thought" (23.2). Hence he pictures the divine as having no distinct and localized organs of consciousness-rather, "all [of him] sees, all [of him] thinks, all [of him] hears" (24); he imagines the divine as "remain[ing] in the same [place], not moving at all"-for "it is not fitting for him to travel to different places at different times" (26.1–2); and, indeed, he regards the divine as having no need to move- for he is radically unlike mortals not only in his mind and in his body but also in the very relation between these: "completely without effort he shakes all things by the thought of his mind" (25). Two sets of questions should confront any effort to interpret these declarations. The first is motivated by a seeming gap in Xenophanes's thought. Is the "showing [of] respect for the gods" that strips away morally objectionable acts compatible with the reconception of the divine that strips away anthropomorphic characters? That is, does the conception of the divine that is reached by setting aside every limiting character that critical reflection on anthropomorphic projection can discern-from particular looks and specific body type to the distinctions between faculties of consciousness and even between the powers of body and mind themselves-allow for or contradict the attribution to the divine of any distinctively moral characters of goodness and justice? 12 (p. 215) 13 The Reception of Hesiod by the Early Pre-Socratics Page 11 of 20 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 11 August 2018 The second set of questions has motivated my use of the vague phrase, "the divine," in these last two paragraphs. Is Xenophanes a monotheist? To focus on the key fragment, 23, how should we hear the first two words, Εἷς θεὸς, as they lead into the rest of the first line, ἔν τε θεοῖσι καὶ ἀνθρώποισι μέγιστος? Is εἷς, "one," a predicate, yielding the line "god is one, greatest among both gods and humans," or is it attributive, yielding the line "one god is greatest among gods and humans"? If we take εἷς as a predicate and hear εἷς θεὸς as a declaration of monotheism, we immediately face another question: How should we understand the reference to "gods" in the very next phrase-and, multiplying the difficulty, in its appearance in at least seven other fragments: 1.24, 11.1, 14.1, 15.3, 16.1, 18.1, and 34.2? It is not implausible to hear the phrase "among both gods and humans" in 23.1 as typically Xenophanean provocative irony; as a quasi-Homeric and Hesiodic formula, it challenges his hearers to recognize the contrast with their anthropomorphic polytheism that Xenophanes's insight into the "greatness" of the divine, under his new conception, requires. But it is no less plausible to take the plural reference to "gods" in 23.1 and the other fragments to indicate that Xenophanes, even while he elevates his "one god" above all others, continues to affirm the reality of these others; in this view, Xenophanes is less a revolutionary who overthrows traditional polytheism than a revisionist who leaves in place the idea of a plurality of gods, whoever and however they may be, even while claiming an extraordinary primacy for his "one god." How we respond to these two sets of questions will have major implications for our understanding of Xenophanes's reception of Hesiod. If we take Xenophanes to have pushed his stripping away of anthropomorphic characters so far that he holds back from attributing not just vices but virtues as well to the divine, then we take him to abandon his own moral-political "wisdom," for such a divinity-whether one or many-would have no attributes qualifying it to serve as a source of moral-political order for human beings, much less as a moral paradigm; such a divinity would make no contribution to the establishment or maintenance of the "good order" of the city. And since, as we have argued, in his moral-political "wisdom" Xenophanes extends rather than opposes Hesiod's own, a Xenophanes whose anti-anthropomorphic theology undercuts his moral-political "wisdom" would undercut Hesiod's as well. On the other hand, turning to the second set of questions, if we take Xenophanes to be a polytheistic revisionist, then the path is open for taking his theology to remain consistent with his moral-political "wisdom" and with Hesiod's as well; a "one god" who is at once the "greatest" and yet remains situated "among both gods and men" would be an analog to Hesiod's Zeus in the exalted status Zeus achieves by his victories over the Titans and Typhoeus. And it would remain open to Xenophanes, limiting his project of de-anthropomorphization in favor of his less radical drive to purge our representations of the divine of any trace of violence or vice, to credit his "one god" with maximally virtuous relations to the other gods and to human beings; as a lordly figure comporting himself with goodness and justice, such a god would be, even if in other ways "not at all like mortals," a distillation of the essence of Hesiod's still anthropomorphic figure of the father of "Good Order, Justice, and Peace." A Xenophanes (p. 216) 14 The Reception of Hesiod by the Early Pre-Socratics Page 12 of 20 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 11 August 2018 who took this course would be consistent both with his own moral-political "wisdom" and with Hesiod's. Xenophanes-and Hesiod?-on the Limits and Means of Human Understanding That we are reduced to outlining alternative possibilities may be the consequence of the fact that, as Aristotle famously complained, Xenophanes "made nothing clear" (Metaphysics 986b22–23). But Xenophanes himself might reply that it is rather a consequence of the fact that "the clear truth" (τὸ ... σαφές) is beyond the reach of human beings. In frs. 34 and 18, Xenophanes marks the limits and sources of human understanding: And the clear truth no human has seen, nor will there be anyone Who knows about the gods and about all the things of which I speak. For even if a person should happen to say most fully what is perfectly so, All the same he himself would not know it; for opinion (δόκος) is allotted to all. (34.1–4) By no means did the gods reveal all things to mortals from the beginning, But in time, by searching (or "examining," ζητοῦντες), they discover better. (18.1–2) As before, the bearing of these reflections on Hesiod is complex. On the one hand, Hesiod bases his claim to know about the gods on the "fact," as he sings in the proem to the Th, that the Muses visited him on Mt. Helicon and, "breath[ing] into me a divine voice, ... commanded me to hymn the race of the blessed gods everlasting" (Th 31–33). If, as his shift from imperatives to the Muses in lines 104–15 to the indicative at line 116 implies we should, we take the Th from line 116 on as his channeling of the Muses' reply to his imperatives, then we will take Hesiod to be claiming that the Th is divinely inspired and informed. Should we take Hesiod's report of the Muses' visit literally? If we do, then we make him a likely target of Xenophanes's denial in the opening clause of fr. 18: "By no means did the gods reveal all things to mortals from the beginning." On the other hand, a variety of considerations should lead us to hesitate to take Hesiod's report at face value. West has identified six "conventional elements" in the proem, namely, that the "poet, prophet, or lawgiver who receives instructions" "on a mountain where the god lives" works there as a "shepherd" and that the god-that is, in our passage the Muses-first address him "in strongly derogatory terms," only then to give him "a visible token of [their] 'call' " and to "grant [him] eloquence." That Hesiod assembles "conventional elements" in composing his song of the Muses is interpretively significant. It invites us to suspend the ascription of naiveté not only to Hesiod but also to at least some significant part of his projected audience and to wonder what different sorts of conscious activity-different, that is, than channeling the divine voices of the Muses- (p. 217) 15 16 The Reception of Hesiod by the Early Pre-Socratics Page 13 of 20 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 11 August 2018 he was engaged in and, what is more, understood that his most sophisticated hearers would also know him to be engaged in. There is no reason to doubt that Hesiod intends his song of the Muses' visit, both in its content and in its spell-binding beauty, to constitute a claim to extraordinary insight. But the sophisticated poet and his most sophisticated hearers would recognize this insight as the result of the deliberate deployment of his no less extraordinary, nonetheless human powers of critical and creative thought. And for those who understand Hesiod's poetry this way, Xenophanes's words are-surprisingly, on first hearing-not polemically dismissive but, quite the contrary, helpfully illuminating. For in a number of ways, Hesiod, like Xenophanes, appears to be "searching" (or "examining") the tradition he has inherited and "discover[ing] better." Detailing all of these ways would require a full study of the Th and the WD; let it suffice here to note four. (1) The Muses' alert at Th 27–28. When Hesiod has the Muses declare that We know how to say many false things that seem like truths, But we also know how, when we wish, to proclaim truths, he portrays them as at once acknowledging that they have spoken falsely to others in the past and challenging him to rise above his mundane consciousness in order to discern the truth in what they will now say. Xenophanes's words help us put this twofold point more directly: Hesiod acknowledges that he has arrived at the insight he will now utter at least in part by "examining" what others have claimed to have learned from the Muses, and he challenges his hearers, by sharing in the critical work of "examin[ing]" and "discover[ing]" that he has done, to see why what he will now claim really is "better." (2) Finding genealogical and ethical order among the many gods. In one massive respect that, nonetheless, is largely hidden from us, the whole of the Th is the result of such a "discovering better." Hesiod takes the vast aggregate of stories about the gods-stories that range from obscure and local to widely known and that tell of all manner of major and minor gods-and, selecting and reshaping them to fit within his alternating genealogical and epic narrative, integrates them within his overall account of Zeus's accession to power and establishment of justice. This extraordinary work of "examining" and "discovering better" is largely hidden, however, by its very success; whatever elements there may have been in the heterogeneous plurality of stories he inherited that resisted the requirements of his genealogical and ethical vision, he presumably revised or left out. (3) Several such revisions and omissions, recalled. We have just noted an extended set of such revisions and omissions. In the Th Hesiod treats Zeus's violence as his necessary means for replacing violence itself by the rule of justice, and in his genealogical account of Zeus's offspring Hesiod suppresses many of the details of abusive sexual aggression that we know from other sources; by "examining" the tales of Zeus that he inherited and by removing what would otherwise have presented themselves as signal inconsistencies, Hesiod clears the way for his subsequent celebration of Zeus in the WD as the ordainer of the ethic of justice and work for human beings. (4) Selective deanthropomorphizations of the representations of the gods. We have also noted what we (p. 218) The Reception of Hesiod by the Early Pre-Socratics Page 14 of 20 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 11 August 2018 can now mark as a strikingly proto-Xenophanean way in which Hesiod "discovers" what is "better" than what he inherits: in order to establish the very terms needed for a genuine cosmogony, he has to partly de-anthropomorphize the figures of the great cosmic gods in Th 116–33. As he indicates in advance by his transition from "gods" to "earth" at Th 108, he shifts focus from the familiar personifications of the structures of nature to these structures themselves. Nor is this an isolated case. In at least four other sets of passages he undercuts anthropomorphism by giving as the names of gods nouns that call to mind not persons but impersonal qualities or principles: at Th 77–79 (to be heard against the background of 65–72), he distinguishes and names each of the nine Muses- hitherto an undifferentiated host-by picking out qualities of the experience of inspiration; at 211–25 he names as the children of Night a host of the mostly fearsome conditions that assail us as threats and worries in the darkness of night; at 226–32 he extends this doleful list by elaborating as the offspring of Discord many of its damaging consequences; and at 902, as already noted, he names as the children of Zeus and Themis "Good Order" and "Justice" and "Peace." Postscript: Heraclitus and Parmenides If space allowed, I would extend these reflections to Heraclitus and Parmenides. As with Anaximander and Xenophanes, so here, the task of interpreting Heraclitus's and Parmenides's receptions of Hesiod is inseparable from the task of interpreting Heraclitus and Parmenides themselves. Following are some basic issues to explore. (p. 219) 17 The Reception of Hesiod by the Early Pre-Socratics Page 15 of 20 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 11 August 2018 Heraclitus and Hesiod Unity. How much elicitative irony should we find in Heraclitus's anti-Hesiodic polemics? It is surprising enough to hear the poet who integrated cosmogony, theogony, and ethics derided as a "polymath" (40); it is more than surprising to hear Heraclitus charge that Hesiod-whose unforgettable image of Night and Day exchanging a greeting as they pass each other at dawn and dusk at the edge of the underworld (Th 748–57) makes explicit that night's need for day, first expressed at Th 124–25, is reciprocal-"did not understand [that] night and day ... are one" (57). On a straightforward reading, Heraclitus faults Hesiod for representing as separate individuals what are really phase and counter-phase of a cyclical unity. But is there, in this apparent "differing" with Hesiod, a "hidden harmony" (51, 54)? Does Heraclitus seek to elicit from the hearer moved to come to Hesiod's defense the very recognition of the unity of opposites that he only ironically claims Hesiod misses? Justice and strife. Does Heraclitus oppose the one-sidedness of Hesiod's vision of a divinely established order of "Good Order and Justice and Peace" (Th 902) by his tragic insight that "justice is strife" (δίκην ἔριν, 80) and that "war," not Zeus, "is the father ... and the king of all" (53)? Or does δίκην ἔριν mean, as well, that "strife is justice," and is the elision of "Zeus" meant to summon to mind, not banish, Hesiod's Zeus and the "Justice" he fathers as the redeeming significance of "war"? In an analogous way, does Heraclitus object to Hesiod's distinction between the two "strifes" (WD 11–26)-or does he, understanding their inextricability, credit Hesiod's recognition that the rule of justice is no less a mode of "strife" than is its violation? The god. How does Heraclitus's "the god," in some sense the very unity of each pair of opposites (67, also 102), relate to Hesiod's theology? If Heraclitus takes a Xenophanean perspective in declaring that "the wise, one alone, is unwilling ... to be called by the name of Zeus," does he at the same time counter and integrate this with a Hesiodic perspective when, seemingly contradicting himself, he also declares that "the wise ... is willing" to be so called (32)? But why would "the wise" be "willing"? Does Heraclitus, imitating the enigmatic voice of "the lord whose oracle is at Delphi" (93), provoke us to find in "the name of Zeus"-that is, of the warrior for justice that Hesiod has portrayed Zeus to be-a "sign" (93) of that unity of opposites that, also signified by the Zeusian "thunderbolt," "steers all things" (64)? Parmenides and Hesiod What "is." For Parmenides's reception of Hesiod, inquiry should focus on Parmenides's appropriation of Th 748–57 in his image of "the gates of the ways of Night and Day" (1.11). In his proem, to reach the goddess who teaches the thought of what "is" (... ἔστιν, 2.3, 8.3), the traveler must arrive at and then pass through these gates; thus Parmenides grants to the insight symbolized by arriving at the gateway of opposites the 18 (p. 220) The Reception of Hesiod by the Early Pre-Socratics Page 16 of 20 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 11 August 2018 status of a necessary but insufficient stage of understanding. This raises a nexus of compelling questions. Restricting ourselves first to Parmenides, what is the insight symbolized by the arrival at the gateway, and what is the process of thinking by which, upon reaching this insight, the traveler finds himself able to pass beyond it to the goddess? Second, turning to Parmenides's relation to Hesiod, does Parmenides mean to mark the limit of Hesiodic thinking and to claim to have gone beyond it-or does he, either alternatively or in addition, mean to imply that the possibility of passing beyond the gateway and on to the discovery of the thought of what "is" is already to be found, if only implicitly and without the goddess's new language, in Hesiod? References Athanassakis, A., ed. and trans. 2004. Hesiod: Theogony, Works and Days, Shield. 2nd ed. Baltimore, MD. Clay, J. S. 2003. Hesiod's Cosmos. Cambridge. Cornford, F. M. 1950. "A Ritual Basis for Hesiod's Theogony." In The Unwritten Philosophy and Other Essays, edited by F. M. Cornford, 95–116. Cambridge. Diels, H., and W. Kranz, eds. and comms. 1951. Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker. 6th ed. 3 vols. Berlin. Dornseiff, F. 1959. Antike und Alter Orient. 2nd ed. Leipzig, Germany. Gallop, D., ed. and trans. 1984. Parmenides of Elea: Fragments, A Text and Translation. Toronto. Graham, D. 2006. Explaining the Cosmos: The Ionian Tradition of Scientific Philosophy. Princeton, NJ. Hyland, D. 2006. "First of All Came Chaos." In Heidegger and the Greeks: Interpretive Essays, edited by D. Hyland and J. Panteleimon, 9–22. Bloomington, IN. Kahn, C. 1960. Anaximander and the Origins of Greek Cosmology. New York. Kahn, C., ed., comm., and trans. 1979. The Art and Thought of Heraclitus. Cambridge. Kirk, G. S., J. E. Raven, and M. Schofield, trans. and comms. 1983. The Presocratic Philosophers. 2nd ed. Cambridge. Lattimore, R., trans. 1959. Hesiod, The Works and Days, Theogony, The Shield of Herakles. Ann Arbor, MI. Lesher, J., ed., trans., and comm. 1992. Xenophanes of Colophon: Fragments, A Text and Translation. Toronto. 19 The Reception of Hesiod by the Early Pre-Socratics Page 17 of 20 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 11 August 2018 Miller, M. 2001. "'First of all': On the Semantics and Ethics of Hesiod's Cosmogony." Ancient Philosophy 21: 251–76. Miller, M. 2006. "Ambiguity and Transport: Reflections on the Proem to Parmenides' Poem." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 30 (Summer): 1–47. Most, G. W. 2004. "Two Notes on Hesiod's Theogony (116–22, 426–39)." In Studia Humanitatis ac Litterarum Trifolio Heidelbergensi dedicate: Festschrift für Eckhard Christmann, Wilfried Edelmaier und Rudolf Ketteman, edited by A. Hornung, C. Jaekel, and W. Schubert, 175–80. Frankfurt am Main, Germany. Most, G. W., ed. and trans. 2006. Hesiod I: Theogony, Works and Days, Testimonia. Cambridge, MA. Mourelatos, A. P. D. 2008. The Route of Parmenides. Las Vegas, NV. Palmer, J. 2009. Parmenides and Presocratic Philosophy. Oxford. Scully, S. 2015. Hesiod's Theogony: From Near Eastern Creation Myths to Paradise Lost. Oxford. Trencsényi-Waldapfel, I. 1955. "Die orientalsche Verwandschaft des Prooimions der Hesiodischen Theogonia." Acta Orientalia Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 5: 45–76. West, M. L., ed. and comm. 1966. Hesiod: Theogony. Oxford. West, M. L., ed. and comm. 1978. Hesiod: Works and Days. Oxford. Notes: (1.) Due to limits of space I have deferred discussion of Heraclitus and Parmenides. See the postscript for an anticipation. (2.) I strongly second Clay's remark that "[it] is past time ... to discard the antiquated notion of Hesiod's primitive simplicity and to accept the possibility that he may be fully aware of the implications of his own words" (2003: 59). (3.) These characterizations of Anaximander's τὸ ἄπειρον are first reported by Aristotle and Theophrastus; see Kirk et al. (1983: 106ff., 115). (4.) My translation, with help from Lattimore (1959); Athanassakis (2004); Most (2006); and the editors of this volume. (p. 223) (p. 224) The Reception of Hesiod by the Early Pre-Socratics Page 18 of 20 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 11 August 2018 (5.) We face a textual uncertainty in lines 118 and 119. Both are disputed, and the stakes are high. If, following Plato at Symposium 178b, we excise both lines, there are only three, not four, primordial beings; Tartaros drops out. Moreover, there is a dissenting construal of the grammar that has the same consequence. On the widely accepted reading by West (1966), Τάρταρα is a nominative plural and takes the same verb γενετ' (116) that Chaos, then Earth (117), and then Eros (120), also take; these four are the primordial beings in Hesiod's cosmogony. On the dissenting construal, recently defended by Most (2004: 175–80), τάρταρα at line 119 is an accusative and, paired with κάρη νιφόεντος Ὀλύμπου, forms a compound object of ἔχουσι at 118; hence Tartaros and the "peaks of Olympos" play the secondary role of being parts of Earth, and Tartaros is not one of the primordial powers-nor, I would note, does it have its own distinct birth. I follow West's judgment that "118 is a formula complete in itself, and unlikely to be continued [into 119]" (1966: 194). In addition, Hesiod's later characterization of Tartaros as dark, moldy, ceaselessly stormy, and hateful to the gods (739) makes it problematic to think of it as forming a part of a "firm seat forever for all the immortals." Most important, the pairing of Tartaros with Earth as the two equi-primordial "sides" of the gap formed by the birth of Chaos plays a crucial role in the order that Hesiod discerns in the cosmos at 116–33; that 119 be read to grant this status to Tartaros is essential to the balance and coherence to which every other cosmic birth in 116–33 contributes. (Thanks to Rachel Kitzinger for discussion of these issues.) (6.) West (1966: 190) comments that the phrase θεοὶ καὶ γαῖα-"gods and earth"-in line 108 is "a little surprising, since Earth and the things that follow are themselves divine. To Hesiod's audience θεοί would suggest primarily the non-cosmic gods." The force of the "and," in other words, is to indicate that the terms that follow-"earth," "rivers," "boundless sea," "shining stars," "wide sky"-are to be thought of not in the manner of the characterizations in lines 105–7, that is, as the anthropomorphized "non-cosmic gods," but rather as structures and features of the cosmos. (7.) To state explicitly what I hope is already clear, Hesiod's shift of focus from anthropomorphic person figures to what they represent introduces and is restricted to the cosmogony (116–33). That he reverts to a full personification of Earth and Sky in the rest of the poem makes his shift away from it in the cosmogony all the more conspicuous and, as an achievement in thinking, impressive. (8.) For a more detailed exegesis of Th 116–33 together with a focused refutation of the once standard interpretation, offered by Cornford (1950), that the birth of Chaos is the splitting of Earth and Sky, see Miller (2001). (9.) This complex act has a Heraclitean paradoxicality. In short, for Zeus to swallow Metis seems to represent the extreme form of the injustice of Sky and of Kronos; whereas Sky keeps all power for himself by pushing his children back into mother Earth's womb and Kronos one-ups this violence by swallowing his children, Zeus now seems to one-up Kronos by swallowing the mother before the child is born. But the upshot of his act points The Reception of Hesiod by the Early Pre-Socratics Page 19 of 20 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 11 August 2018 to a contrary significance: Zeus, who now has Metis within him to "counsel him about good and evil" (Th 900), gives birth to his "equal"-that is, rather than foolishly and violently hoarding all power for himself, he wisely and morally shares it. (10.) Surprisingly, this may not be the last word. Two passages, Th 726–28 and 736–39, provide evidence that Hesiod himself both identified this primordial being as Tartaros and deliberately held back from giving it pride of place, subordinating it, instead, to Chaos. Could it be that Hesiod in effect anticipated and, well in advance, objected to Anaximander's granting τὸ ἄπειρον the status of ἀρχή? For interpretive discussion, see Miller (2001). (11.) The numbers are those in Lesher (1992), following Diels-Kranz (1951). (12.) What, however, of the "deception" Zeus employs in swallowing Metis (Th 889–90)? See note 9. (13.) Scully (2015: 43–45, 47–48). (14.) Cf. Lesher (1992: 98–100). (15.) I follow Lesher's translation of the final clause. (16.) West (1966: 159–60), citing Dornseiff (1959: 37–38, 76); Trencsényi-Waldapfel (1955: 45–76). (17.) For Hesiod's naming of the Muses and the offspring of Discord, see Scully in this volume, pp. 86–88. (18.) Fragment numbers for Heraclitus and Parmenides are those in Diels-Kranz (1951). (19.) For discussion, see Miller (2006). Mitchell Miller Mitchell Miller , former Dexter Ferry Professor in Philosophy, is professor emeritus at Vassar College. In addition to his work on Plato and the pre-Socratics, he has longterm interests in late medieval philosophy, Descartes and Leibniz, and nineteenthand twentieth-century continental thought. He has published two books on Plato, Plato's Parmenides: The Conversion of the Soul (Princeton University Press, 1986; Penn State UP pap., 1991) and The Philosopher in Plato's Statesman (Martinus Nijhoff, 1980; reissued with "Dialectical Education and Unwritten Teachings in Plato's Statesman," Parmenides Publishing, 2004), a wide-ranging array of essays on Plato, and studies of Hesiod (" 'First of All,' " Anc Phil 21 2001]) and Parmenides ("Ambiguity and Transport," OSAP 30 [2006]). In recent years he has concentrated on the Sophist ("What the Dialectician Discerns," Anc Phil 36 [2016]); the Philebus ("A More 'Exact Grasp' of the Soul," in Truth, ed. K. Pritzl, CUAP 2010); and, as the The Reception of Hesiod by the Early Pre-Socratics Page 20 of 20 PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice). Subscriber: OUP-Reference Gratis Access; date: 11 August 2018 context for inquiry into Plato's "so-called unwritten teachings," the notion of "the longer way" to the Good and a more "precise grasp" of the city, the soul, and (he argues) the cosmos that Plato has Socrates project at Republic 435c-d and 504b-e. For more, go to http://pages.vassar.edu/mitchellmiller/. | {
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MANUEL GARCíA-CARPINTERO GRICEAN RATIONAL RECONSTRUCTIONS AND THE SEMANTICS/PRAGMATICS DISTINCTION∗ ABSTRACT. This paper discusses the proper taxonomy of the semantics-pragmatics divide. Debates about taxonomy are not always pointless. In interesting cases taxonomic proposals involve theoretical assumptions about the studied field, which might be judged correct or incorrect. Here I want to contrast an approach to the semantics-pragmatics dichotomy, motivated by a broadly Gricean perspective I take to be correct, with a contemporary version of an opposing "Wittgensteinian" view. I will focus mostly on a well-known example: the treatment of referential uses of descriptions and descriptive uses of indexicals. The paper is structured as follows. I will start by characterizing in the first section the version of the Gricean approach I favor; in the second section, I will illustrate the differences between the two views by focussing on the example, and in the third section I will object to what I take to be the main Wittgensteinian consideration. 1. A GRICEAN ACCOUNT OF THE SEMANTICS/PRAGMATICS DISTINCTION The form of the Gricean view I wish to defend makes the following main claims about semantics. (1) Semantic facts are facts establishing what expressions conventionally or literally mean in a given public language. In the focal case of utterances, conventional meaning consists in what the utterance says, which in turn is to be analyzed in a type of illocutionary force and a truth-condition, and what the utterance conventionally presupposes – in Grice's terms, its conventional implicatures. (2) Semantic facts about utterances are determined by semantic facts about their parts and about syntactic features they instantiate. (3) Semantic facts, about both utterances and their compositional structure, are determined by facts about a form of rational activity whose constitutive goals are those captured in Gricean explications of speaker-meaning. This is why utterances are the focal case, and also why their linguistic meanings decompose in the three-fold way indicated in (1). We can put these three Gricean claims about semantics in terms of Lewis' (1975) distinction between possible languages and the actual language used by a population, and what in the same work Lewis calls a grammar: a compositional account of what is meant by utterances on the Synthese 128: 93–131, 2001. © 2001 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands. 94 MANUEL GARCıA-CARPINTERO basis of semantic properties of words and semantic properties of syntactic features. Possible languages are stipulated to be functions assigning possible conventional meanings to possible utterances. Then, the preceding points come to the following contentions. Conventional regularities involving the use of words and syntactic features in utterances sufficiently determine (up to the measure of indeterminacy that is reasonable to expect in these matters) the language spoken by a population and its grammar. And utterances are the kind of rational activity explicated in Gricean accounts of speaker-meaning. Let us say that the L-linguistic capacities of a speaker S of a used language L are those specifically constitutive of his knowledge of the semantic facts concerning L. Then, the Gricean view concerning pragmatic facts about a used language L is that these are facts establishing what speakers of L, in virtue of general rational abilities over and above their specifically Llinguistic abilities, are able to mean non-conventionally with expressions having semantic properties by exploiting those semantic properties. The Gricean insists that, in theoretically characterizing the semantics of used language L, it is important not to be misled by the merely pragmatic. Both are constitutively determined by a specific form of rational activity; what distinguishes them is the way in which they involve given conventional regularities. The Gricean theoretical perspective has been described in a recent book on the philosophy of language as deservedly "often seen today as a degenerating research program" (Lance and O'Leary-Hawthorne 1997, 289). The fact that Schiffer, one of the philosophers who has made more important contributions to the program, has become one of its fiercest critics (see Schiffer 1987, ch. 9), lends some support to this claim.1 However, in my view, none of the arguments on which either Schiffer or Lance and O'Leary-Hawthorne base their allegations should persuade us that the Gricean program is in fact degenerating. They only reflect an inaccurate way of conceiving the goals of the program – even if it is one that is widespread among defenders of the Gricean approach, conspicuously among them, Schiffer's earlier self. The version of the Gricean approach I have outlined is immune to the objections by writers like those just mentioned because it differs in three important respects from others. Firstly, it ascribes a more complicated form to the explicated concepts, than simple definitions, in terms of a set of jointly sufficient necessary conditions. Secondly, it does not provide a reduction of social to psychological properties. And thirdly, it is committed to ascribing compositional structure to linguistic meanings. I will briefly comment on these three points. The remarks which follow fall short GRICEAN RATIONAL RECONSTRUCTIONS 95 of providing the rational support that these controversial claims require. Nevertheless, I hope that they give the reader an indication of the line of thought I rely upon, without which, I fear, the kind of view I defend in the paper will not be taken seriously these days. The fundamental concepts are not to be explicated by stating a number of jointly sufficient necessary conditions. The first difference with other Gricean accounts lies in seeing Gricean explications – including ancillary explications of speaker-meaning and of convention – as capturing 'family resemblance' conceptions: cluster concepts, whose weighted conditions of application jointly provide sufficient conditions for paradigm cases, but are only required to apply to the extent of their respective relative weights. There are two different goals entwined in projects such as the Gricean one – projects aiming at providing a rational reconstruction or explication of a pre-existing notion – which must be kept separate. There is, firstly, a descriptive goal: we want to provide information about a real phenomenon (linguistic meaning, in our case); not, indeed, by imparting knowledge about it not previously possessed by anybody, but rather by presenting in an explicit form facts only tacitly or implicitly or, as I prefer to say for reasons given later (borrowing a useful term from a dubious source) unthematizedly known before.2 And there is, secondly, a normative goal. Possessing a concept is, constitutively, something good, or valuable, in that it allows its possessor to attain certain goals (goals among those constitutive of rationality). Having a (correct) rational reconstruction of an unthematized concept should be better with respect to those very goals than merely having the latter. Having a rationally reconstructed concept of X is not better than merely having an unthematized concept of X for every possible goal; for instance, only the unthematized concept might allow the sort of quick thinking we need in ordinary life. But it should allow having more true beliefs and beliefs epistemically better justified about X, having intentions concerning X more capable of standing rational scrutiny, and so on. When we take into consideration the normative goal, it is clear that fully precise explications providing necessary and sufficient conditions of application for the explicated notion are ideal. For those concepts whose unthematized forms are not that precise (for instance, in that they appear to be of a prototypical nature), however, this might involve a prima facie conflict with the descriptive goal. Now, to the extent that the relevant unthematized concepts are concepts of objective entities, and a realist attitude about the entities in question is required, the conflict, it seems to me, is merely apparent, as witnessed by, say, concepts of tigers. The unreconstructed concept which we ordinary people have is imprecise, be96 MANUEL GARCıA-CARPINTERO ing perhaps constituted by a prototype and a similarity rider; but nothing stands in the way of introducing, on the basis of empirical findings, a fully precise characterization of the so conceived entities, by giving necessary and sufficient conditions (a description of the shared genome perhaps). In my view, it is a mere prejudice to think that the same does not apply when we are dealing with thematized conceptions not empirically based, but proposed as a priori philosophical explications. The reason why it is a prejudice is not that there is no relevant distinction between a priori and a posteriori knowledge, or between analytic and synthetic truth.3 But it is a prejudice nonetheless; in fact, this is, in a general form, the very prejudice which, in its specific application to conceptions of linguistic meaning, we will be discussing here. I do not know of any good reason to think that linguistic meaning is a phenomenon any less objective than tigerhood, or regarding which we should adopt an attitude that is in any way less realist (although there are arguments to that effect by Davidson, followers of Wittgenstein and others). Chomsky has provided good reasons to think that the best characterizations to be given of an actual language will be based in part on empirical findings: data about acquisition and loss of linguistic competence, about computational processing, perhaps about the modular structure of the human brain, etc. Taking into account then, the normative aspect of the project of rational reconstruction, it was understandable that Grice, Schiffer and others attempted to provide fully precise definitions, in the form of jointly sufficient necessary conditions. The pattern of objections to the explications (including both objections to the sufficiency of the analyses, and to the necessity of some conditions) suggests, however, that the descriptive goals of the program can only be attained by conceiving the unthematized concepts as "family resemblance" ones, constituted by a cluster of weighted conditions, which only apply jointly to paradigm cases. This is compatible with our rational reconstructions being as precise as we could want them to be. (Although constructing them might well require taking decisions which cannot be justified on the basis of our clear intuitions about what we would count or would not count as cases of linguistic meaning, but only on more theoretically-driven considerations.4 ) It is only that the resulting explications cannot be as simple as they are usually assumed to be. Instead of a list of necessary conditions which are jointly sufficient, we should provide definitions of a series of related cases, starting by paradigm ones and continuing with cases which depart further and further from the prototype. Although I will not go into the details here, I hope this will be enough for the reader to envisage how common objections to the necessity of the GRICEAN RATIONAL RECONSTRUCTIONS 97 conditions in Gricean explications of linguistic meaning, and the ancillary notions of speaker-meaning and convention, can be dealt with if this suggestion is adopted. Consider, as an example, an habitual objection to Lewis' (1975) definition of convention, which I take to be fundamentally on the right track as an explication of paradigm cases of conventions. With this view, conventions are regularities rationally "self-perpetuated" in that conformity and secured by the expectations of participants that others will conform to, given that they have certain goals. Lewis includes a clause to the effect that conventions are arbitrary, in that a different regularity could have served the same goals, and another clause stating that the clauses of the definition are known, and indeed commonly or mutually known, by participants. A usual objection (Burge 1975, 250; Laurence 1996, 277; Millikan 1998, 165–6) is based on regularities (like keeping a certain distance when talking to others, or even using a given language in some cases) which we would count as conventional, although participants in them do not know, still less know mutually, that they are arbitrary. This can be handled by acknowledging that the mutual knowledge condition captures only prototypical cases, but has only a relative small weight in determining the conventional nature of a regularity. The resulting view will still differ from the alternatives that are supported on the basis of examples like those, for instance, by the three writers I have mentioned. It will differ precisely regarding what I take to be the really distinctive Gricean point here, closely related to the main point at stake in the debate we will be examining: the claim that prototypical conventions are rationally self-perpetuating regularities in behavior.5 The appeal to speaker-meaning, although essential and explanatory, does not provide a reduction of the social to the psychological. The second difference between the present Gricean account and others lies in its abandoning of any reductionist ambitions. The conceptual priority assigned in Gricean views to speaker-meaning is not seen here as furthering a reduction of the social to the psychological (and perhaps ultimately to the non-intentional). The point of claiming that conventional acts of meaning are also acts of speaker-meaning is to say that they are not merely natural occurrences, but rather natural occurrences constituting the sort of rational act captured in Gricean explications of speaker-meaning. There is no further claim that, in giving a rational reconstruction of the act of meaning made by the literal speaker, we can avoid referring in any way to the conventions constituting the public language the speaker takes himself to speak. In fact, I believe this cannot be avoided. What is definitely Gricean about the Gricean explication of literal meaning is the appeal in the explication to a conceptually prior notion of 98 MANUEL GARCıA-CARPINTERO speaker-meaning. Now, some writers interpret this conceptual priority of speaker-meaning in the following reductionist way. Pre-theoretically, the concept of expression-meaning is social in that it involves claims containing quantification over (or reference to) distinctively social entities, such as conventional regularities in the behavior of the members of a community C. It thus involves a prima facie ontological commitment to those social entities. The reductionist interpretation of the Gricean priority of speakermeaning over expression-meaning is motivated by the hope of showing that the only ontological commitments which we in fact incur in applying a sensible concept of expression-meaning concern folk-psychological entities like believings and intendings. Griceans such as Schiffer (1972), Lewis (1975), Bennett (1976) and Loar (1981) are all reductionist in this sense; they all express the hope I have just mentioned. Thus, Schiffer writes as follows: "It is essential to the programme of providing an account of the meaning of utterance-types in terms of a basic account of S-meaning that what S means by uttering x is not at all determined by what is uttered, i.e., by the value of 'x'. [. . . ] If the only difference between two utterances is that in one case S utters x and in the other S utters y, then what S means by uttering x is identical with what S means by uttering y. The importance of this condition is that if it were the case that what S meant by uttering x were determined, even in part, by the meaning of x, then this would, on the face of it, render circular an account of what x means in terms of what is or would be meant by uttering x" (Schiffer 1972, 64–5). As illustration, Schiffer argues that in uttering σ1 'The cat is on the mat' a speaker would mean the same as in uttering σ2 'My primary intention in uttering this sentence is to produce in you – by means of recognition of intention – the belief that the cat is on the mat' (which he takes to be synonymous with the explicit performative 'I (hereby) tell you that the cat is on the mat'). I am not interested here in discussing Schiffer's considerations on these particular examples, but in illustrating the consequences of adopting a reductionist attitude and in highlighting the differences regarding the view advanced here. I myself believe that, precisely because of the independent, conventional difference in meaning between the sentences uttered in σ1 and σ2, any competent speaker will literally mean different propositions by those utterances; even though, in any ordinary speech situation, the speaker of σ2 conveys what the speaker of σ1 literally means.6 Consider typical examples of speaker-meaning produced to support the reductionist hope. In one of Borges' short stories, "El jardín de los senderos que se bifurcan", Yu Tsun, a German spy in England during the First World War, finds no better way of communicating to his superiors GRICEAN RATIONAL RECONSTRUCTIONS 99 in Berlin that the city they should bomb is Albert, than killing a man named 'Albert'. (Yu Tsun makes sure that the news of such an apparently unmotivated murder will be in newspapers read in Berlin.) This fits nicely with Grice's original explication of speaker-meaning: by "uttering" his murdering of Albert, Yu Tsun intends his superior to judge that the city to bomb is Albert precisely through the recognition of Yu Tsun's intention that he so judges. Now, it is certainly the case that Yu Tsun's "utterance" is not a conventional device for informing someone that Albert is the city that should be bombed. It certainly informs (assuming the usual Gricean explication of informing S that p that fits nicely this example), but it is not a conventional device for doing that. However, attaining the goal of convincing us, on the basis of examples like this, that the reductionist hope stated three paragraphs back, can be realized, requires rather more than this. It requires convincing us that Yu-Tsun's communicative intentions "are not intrinsically conventionimplying" (Loar 1981, 244). And this is doubtful. It is doubtful, in other words, that what is involved in having intentions like Yu Tsun's could be explicated without committment to the existence of linguistic conventions. The reductionist will accept that, as a matter of actual fact, to have intentions like those a rational being ought to have learnt the relevant concepts as a member of a linguistic community. He will insist, however, that there exists at least the conceptual possibility of having the relevant thoughts "in isolation". But I think there are serious reasons, ultimately Wittgensteinian in spirit, to doubt this. And not only with respect to cases involving relatively complex thoughts like those that Yu Tsun intends to cause in his audience. The point might well extend even to the thought that one has a headache. The form of the Gricean view I want to invoke differs thus from others in that it rejects any reductionist ambitions. Acts of meaning are those which can be accounted for on the basis of the Gricean explication of speaker-meaning. The only sense in which they are not supposed to involve conventions is that they do not necessarily involve the use of a conventional device for conveying what is meant in them. Literal acts of meaning, on the other hand, are acts of meaning which do involve the use of conventional devices. Pragmatic acts of meaning, are acts in which a conventional device is used in such a way that, what would be meant by it if literally used, is not in fact, primarily meant by the speaker. What is Gricean in these proposals is that (i) literally meaning M entails meaning M – and thus performing a well-defined type of rational act – by means of a certain conventional device for that purpose, while (ii) meaning M does not entail having recourse to a conventional device for that purpose.7 100 MANUEL GARCıA-CARPINTERO The main drive behind this paper can be characterized as that of opposing two related forms of reductionism concerning linguistic meaning: the Cartesian-internalist, advocated by writers like Schiffer, Loar or Lewis, which aims to reduce linguistic meaning to a complicated set of folk-psychological mental states of an isolated individual, and the Chomskian-functionalist, illustrated by Schiffer's more recent self and by Laurence (1996), which would reduce linguistic meaning instead to functional-cum-physical internal states of such an isolated individual.8 On the view propounded here, an actual language is an objective entity in itself, which cannot be reduced by definition to other things. A manifestation of this is that, in providing an explication of what it is that a literal speaker means when uttering a given sentence, we need to make uneliminable reference to the meaning of expressions in the (public) language he is using. What of Schiffer's implied motivation for the Gricean to embrace reductionism, based on the alleged explanatory vacuity of any alternative account? How can a really explanatory reference to speaker-meaning be made in explicating linguistic meaning? An analogy might help us here. On the view of linguistic meaning I assume, the meaning of, say, 'ambulo' in Latin compositionally depends on the meaning of the verbal root 'ambul-' and the meaning of the lexeme '-o'. This is an application of some form of Frege's Principle of Compositionality; in these terms, we aim to explain the systematicity of linguistic meaning – the fact that a competent speaker who understands 'ambulo' understands other expressions also, like, say, 'ambulabat'. However, some form of Frege's Context Principle applies also to linguistic meaning; this is required by our non-reductionist appeal to speaker-meaning in the explication, for speaker-meaning is a property of whole utterances. A verbal root like 'ambul-', and lexemes like '-o' or '-abat', have only meaning in the context of a sentence; their linguistic meaning has to be explicated in terms of their contribution to the meaning of utterances made by means of the sentences they might contribute to form. Now, there appears to be a vicious circularity lurking here. If the meaning of 'ambul-' depends on the meaning of the sentences in which it might appear, thus on the meaning of the sentences it might contribute to form together with lexemes including '-abat', how can also be true that the meaning of 'ambulabat' depends on the meanings of 'ambul-' and that of '-abat'? How can we really have an explanation of the systematic ability to understand new sentences, like 'ambulabat', on the part of anybody competently understanding 'ambulo'? The ultimate worry here comes to this: explanation entails dependence, but is dependence not asymmetric? GRICEAN RATIONAL RECONSTRUCTIONS 101 The answer is that the articulation of our worry mixes up two different kinds of dependence. The meaning of sentences depends specifically on the meanings of each lexical unit and meaningful syntactic structure constituting it; it is determined by semantic properties of each particular one of them, and, as a result, to understand a sentence requires understanding of each significant component. The meaning of units like 'ambul-' depends generically on the meaning of the sentences it might contribute to form, thus on the meaning of lexemes like '-o' and '-abat'. The meaning of 'ambul-', i.e., cannot be specified without mentioning the meaning of some or other lexeme like '-o'; but there is no particular lexeme whose meaning is to be mentioned in giving the meaning of 'ambul-'. Two speakers might give the same meaning to the root, even though their respective theories consider for it its combination with different lexemes. Thus, we can properly explain how each of them understand new sentences: there is no circularity in appealing to the meaning of 'ambul-' when accounting for the meaning of 'ambulabat'. Similarly, on the view advanced here the literal meaning of an utterance is a form of speaker-meaning which depends specifically on the conventions of the public language on which the speaker's communicative intentions rely. On the other hand, the conventions of any language depend generically on some or other acts of speaker-meaning performed by means of them. Linguistic expressions, in other words, only have the literal meanings that they have relative to some or other rational acts of speaker-meaning, performed by means of them in a conventional way. This is compatible with the view that the meaning intended on any particular occasion by the literal speaker, depends specifically on, and is to be explained relative to, the conventions constituting the public language he purports to be using. For the constitutive nature of the language is not dependent on that particular case of literal meaning. Even the weak form of dependence of literal meaning on speakermeaning advanced here is subject to well-known criticisms.9 Some of them can be dealt with by taking into account the two differences with other forms of the Gricean approach, already highlighted. For its crucial use in the explication of linguistic meaning, I would only take the basic Gricean explications of the speech-acts we might call "informing" (rationally transmiting knowledge to hearer by theoretical reasoning involving recognition of intention) and "enjoining" (rationally leading the hearer to do something by practical reasoning involving recognition of intention), modified with some "mutual knowledge" clause, as explications of paradigm cases of linguistic meaning. I would readily accept that the conditions are not necessary, having only certain balanced weights. There are many other other 102 MANUEL GARCıA-CARPINTERO cases of linguistic meaning which simply cannot be characterized as forms of the two previously mentioned. In this way, well-known responses to well-known criticisms ("thinking out loud", "the exam", "speaking without caring to produce any effect" and so on) can acquire a more convincing shape. There is one objection by a contemporary supporter of the Gricean programme which I think I should discuss before moving to elaborate on the third distinguishing mark of the present proposal; for, if correct, the kind of response I have outlined would not do. Neale (1992) argues in the following way against the "third clause" in Grice's original account of informing (the one stating that, in felicitous cases of informing that p, it is rational for the speaker to intend that the belief that p be produced in the audience through an inference involving the recognition of his intention): "A serious problem seems to await Grice further down the road if he does not concede that the third clause is overly restrictive. Ultimately, Grice wants to define locutions of the form by uttering x, U said that p; but one of the conjuncts in his proposed definiens is by uttering x, U meant that p . . . . So if he refuses to allow that (e.g.) I can mean that I can speak in a squeaky voice by uttering, in a squeaky voice, 'I can speak in a squeaky voice', Grice will be forced either to conclude that I have not said that I can speak in a squeaky voice, or else abandon the idea of defining saying in terms of utterer's meaning . . . . It would seem, then, that the third clause will have to be discarded (or at least modified) if saying requires meaning" (Neale 1992, 548–9). For independent reasons already suggested, I am prepared to grant the conclusion of this argument – namely, that the third clause is too restrictive, i.e., it is not a necessary condition for linguistic meaning. Nevertheless, I do want to keep it as characterizing prototypical cases of the phenomenon we are explicating, while Neale's argument would preclude even this. Fortunately, there is a convincing reply to the argument. In a Gricean account, it is not an event (an utterance) in itself which means something; it is indeed an event, but only relative to a given feature or property it instantiates.10 Neale's argument overlooks this; it wrongly assumes that it makes sense to appraise whether or not a speaker can mean something with an utterance, without making this claim relative to a particular repeatable feature of the concrete event at stake. As I myself would put the Gricean point: a speaker cannot perform a prototypical case of informing (and thus meaning) that he has a squeaky voice by any event whose intended significant feature is that it is a case of sounds uttered in a squeaky voice. The reason is Grice's, i.e., that the speaker thereby gives the hearer no adequate indication that the latter is GRICEAN RATIONAL RECONSTRUCTIONS 103 intended to reach the judgment on the basis of recognition of the former's intention. On the other hand, a speaker can perform a fully prototypical case of informing that he has a squeaky voice by uttering (or inscribing) a sentence which is a conventional means for that, in a context in which the default presumption that he is abiding by the relevant conventions applies. Thus the only consequence that follows about the sort of case Neale envisages (i.e., one of an event having those two features) from a properly understood Gricean account is that it gives rise to a prima facie conflict, whose resolution will depend on the details of the context. As a result of such a conflict, Neale's utterance may for instance be taken as a case in which the speaker feels that he cannot restrict himself to inform that he can do something, and is in fact showing that he has the ability in question by exercising it – a different kind of speech-act. The utterance thus acquires a meaning going beyond the literal, because offering the production of squeaky sounds as a reason that one can produce them is not the same speech act as informing of the latter, and it is one not conventionally associated with an utterance of 'I can speak in a squeaky voice'. Or it might just be taken as a joke. In any case, the example does not force us either to reject or to modify the third clause as it stands. (Although, as I said, we have independent reasons for doing so.)11 The analysis takes linguistic meaning to be compositional. Finally, the form of the Gricean perspective I subscribe to, insists that the Gricean line that linguistic meaning entails speaker-meaning, extends to the determination of the literal meanings of what we might call phrases: the significant words and syntactic features which compositionally determine what utterances conventionally mean. As indicated, no attempt at reduction is involved in the claim that attributions of linguistic meaning to them are to be understood in terms of speaker-meaning; only that those attributions are to be based on the way they conventionally contribute to rational acts which have the nature captured in Gricean accounts of speaker-meaning. The reason for an account like this to help itself to what David Lewis (1975) calls a grammar (a compositional account of what is literally meant by utterances on the basis of semantic properties of words and syntactic features) is that, otherwise, the appeal to speaker-meaning cannot provide a necessary condition for what is said by possible utterances of sentences (i) too long or too complicated to be actually uttered, or (ii) trivially true or for uttering which no speaker could have a sufficient reason (Schiffer 1993, 233–9; Lance and O'Leary-Hawthorne 1997, 290–4). Analogously, without the appeal to a grammar, we cannot provide in terms of speakermeaning a sufficient condition for what is said by (i) sentences typically uttered to perform non-literal acts of meaning, or (ii) sentences which say 104 MANUEL GARCıA-CARPINTERO so bizarre things that would not be uttered but to mean something different from what they say. What makes an account of linguistic meaning distinctively Gricean is that it is to be given in terms of the concepts fundamentally used in the Gricean account of speaker-meaning, of which the most distinctive one is that of communicative intention. What this amounts to is that it is to be given in terms of (self-supporting regularities involving) a specific form of rational purposive activity, characteristic of persons. Now, only a small finite subset of all logically possible utterances with a literal meaning in a typical natural language occur under some such (even if tacit) rational control. The Gricean project is thus doomed to failure if presented as by Lewis (1975), explicitly rejecting that the appeal to speaker-meaning gives any reason to ascribe to an actual language a grammar rather than another determining the same possible language. In more recent work, Lewis acknowledges this and appeals to "extrapolation". First, use, somehow determines meaning for the fragment of language that is actually used. There are rules of syntax and semantics that generate the right sentences with the right meanings within the used fragment. These rules also generate other, longer sentences, with meanings, outside the used fragment. Use determines some meanings, those meanings determine the rules, and the rules determine the rest of the meanings . . . . True, there are many grammars, but they are not on equal terms. Some are 'straight' grammars; for example, any grammar that any linguist would actually propose. Others are 'bent', or 'gruesome', grammars" (Lewis 1992, 109–10). However, as Schiffer (1993, 236–9) argues, this is still too extrinsic a way to determine the language spoken by a given individual or community. For we can think of individuals who in fact speak a finite language without grammar, or one for which they have internalized (perhaps by explicit learning) a "bent" grammar, for which Lewis' recipe would produce the wrong extrapolation. Loar (1981, 257–60) resorted at this point to a Chomskian psycholinguistic grammar internalized by the speaker to determine the actual language he speaks. Lewis resists this move with considerations which remind us of former arguments by him (see Lewis 1975) against positing internally represented grammars as part of a Gricean account: "Maybe there is a grammar somehow written into the brain. And conceivably it is a bent grammar, so that the language it generates differs, somewhere outside the used fragment, from the language we get by straight extrapolation. Schiffer has asked: does straight extrapolation give the right answers even then? I think so. If not, then whenever we resort to extrapolation to answer questions of syntax and semantics, we are engaged in risky speculation GRICEAN RATIONAL RECONSTRUCTIONS 105 about the secret workings of the brain. That seems wrong" (Lewis 1992, 110). What Lewis finds wrong, as Schiffer guesses, "is that if the inference is risky, then language users will not know what language they are using. If L is used by P only if some grammar of P is used in the processing of utterances of L, and if no one is now in a position to go that deeply into the brain, then how can the members of P know that it is L that they are speaking?" (Schiffer 1993, 256, note 5). From our present perspective, Schiffer is right in rejoining as follows: "But the most that follows from the antecedent of this question is that members of P do not have knowledge of the function L in a way that affords them a finite definition of it. They may nevertheless know that, say, they speak Italian, where 'Italian' is a rigid designator of the language they speak; or they may have all sort of knowledge by description of the language they use, where the descriptions under which they have their knowledge of L, do not give the wherewithal to determine the grammar that in fact makes L the language they use" (ibid. id.). I take Schiffer's suggestion on board. A potential source of resistance to accepting it, lies in that it involves referring to the language whose nature one is attempting to define in Gricean terms in the explicans of our rational reconstruction, not only in the explicandum. People approaching the Gricean project with the sort of reductionist goals we outlined earlier will not be happy with this. Once the reductionist goals are abandoned, however, there is no reason why we should not take Schiffer's advice. We will not get rid of references to and quantifications over genuinely social entities in favor of merely psychological things; the reason is that there are genuinely social entities, which, like any other genuine thing, are what they are and nothing else. For the purposes of this paper, the core of the view defended here on linguistic meaning can be summarized as follows. Acts of meaning are those acts characterized in Gricean explications of speaker-meaning; they are, constitutively, occurrences rationally directed at producing certain mental states through a process involving recognition of that goal. This is achieved by the occurrence having a feature appropriate for its goal. Although this is not necessary, the feature may consist in the occurrence being the result of putting adequately together, devices conventionally used for making that intention manifest in a language that the utterer speaks: semantic units, including not only words and word-parts, but also other more structural syntactic features. In that case, what act of meaning the speaker represents himself as performing is determined by the conventional contribution made to such acts in that language, by the semantic units he has put together.12 106 MANUEL GARCıA-CARPINTERO The linguistic meaning of a unit is therefore its contribution to the acts of meaning conventionally made by using it, and the linguistic meaning of an utterance the resultant of the linguistic meaning of the units composing it. I see this as the best confirmed philosophical hypothesis so far advanced. 2. TWO APPROACHES TO THE SEMANTICS/PRAGMATICS DISTINCTION I will contrast now, by examining a few examples, a "Wittgensteinian" approach very popular nowadays with the Gricean one I have outlined. The approach appears in writings by Bezuidenhout, Carston, Recanati and Schiffer, among others. I will focus for the most part on a concrete manifestation of this theoretical divide on which I am especially interested, the proper treatment of referential uses of descriptions and descriptive uses of indexicals. According to a view I share with other writers, both referential uses of descriptions and descriptive uses of indexicals are pragmatic phenomena, in the sketched Gricean sense. In themselves, those phenomena are an insufficient basis for abandoning a semantic analysis of descriptions and indexicals placing them in different semantic categories (those of quantifiers and of singular terms, respectively). Like those other writers, I would support this contention by following a well-known Gricean line of argument involving the previous distinctions. As a first approximation, we would say that the asymmetry in the semantic behavior of definite descriptions, vis-à-vis that of indexicals lies in that, while definite descriptions behave like quantifiers, indexicals behave like singular designators. There are different ways of elaborating on the nature of the intended difference. For present purposes, there is no need to go into the details of the account of the asymmetry that I favor, which I have presented elsewhere.13 The following outline should be enough. Any token-indexical occurring in an utterance is associated with a certain "token-reflexive" description; in the case of a token he of 'he', the tokenreflexive description is the male most salient when he is produced. This description typically suffices to identify a particular object; the indexical's contribution to the semantically signified truth-condition is this individual. The description merely fixes this contribution, being, in Recanati's (1993) terms, "truth-conditionally irrelevant". I account for this "irrelevancy" by treating the descriptive material as, in Grice's terms, conventionally implicated; in my own terms, as contributing in a specific way to what the utterance conventionally takes for granted, or presupposes.14 On the other hand, the contribution of a description, the F , to the truth-condition, literally signified by an utterance, is analogous to that of a quantificational expression like every F or some F , mutatis mutandis. I should note that GRICEAN RATIONAL RECONSTRUCTIONS 107 what is conventionally implicated is here taken to be part of the linguistic meaning of an utterance, in accordance with the characterization of semantics provided in the preceding section. The linguistic meaning of an utterance includes not only the utterance's truth-conditions; it includes also its illocutionary force, because an illocutionary force is always (more or less precisely) conventionally conveyed. On the present view, it includes also the utterance's conventional implicatures. I will use 'linguistic content' to refer to the linguistic meaning of an utterance abstracting its force away, and 'pragmatic content' as contrasting phrase. In the ensuing discussion, 'linguistic content' substitutes for the phrase more commonly used, 'what is said'. As I understand him, by using this term Grice was referring to the conventionally signified truth-conditions; the dispute we will examine goes beyond this, to embrace also the nature and role of the conventionally conveyed descriptive material related to indexicals.15 I will not go any further into the details of the account, but I would like to emphasize two aspects regarding which, although conforming to the Gricean conception of the semantics-pragmatics distinction I have outlined, it differs from other views on it. In the first place, this proposal rejects the common assumption that semantics only deals with features associated with expression-types. It stands in opposition to these claims: "linguistic knowledge concerns expression types, not tokens" (Bach 1987, 87); "semantics [. . . ] is concerned with linguistic types, not tokens. If a token of an expression carries any information not encoded by the type of which it is a token, that information is not linguistic information" (ibid., p. 5); "that a sentence is actually uttered is a pragmatic fact" (Bach, manuscript). In a token-reflexive account of context-dependence, the main semantic properties (e.g., truth-conditional import) are assigned to tokens (to be sure, relative to properties conventionally associated with the types they instantiate); tokens also contribute to what the utterance conventionally presupposes, i.e., to constraints which the utterance places on the background set of assumptions constituting what Stalnaker (1974) calls 'the conversational common ground'. Writers like Bach think of an actual language as a system of general rules or facts, linking repeatable entities (types) with their repeatable linguistic features. I see it as a set of actual and potential utterances, whose relevant linguistic properties depend on such a system of general rules. (And on whatever those rules depend in their turn, most importantly specific features of the psychology of language-users, firstor third-personally accessible.) I do not wish to speculate on the theoretical motivation which might be given for Bach's view. Mine lies on the Gricean theoretical framework outlined in the previous section. It is constitutive of a linguistic 108 MANUEL GARCıA-CARPINTERO utterance that it is a conventional means to make certain communicative intentions manifest. In the case of indexicals, those communicative intentions rely conventionally on features of the utterances themselves; they take crucial advantage, in accordance with linguistic conventions, of the concrete entities they are. This is why we should think of natural languages, in which this device of token-reflexivity is ubiquitous, as constituted by the concrete acts themselves. The second distinctive aspect I want to emphasize is this: the fact that, conventionally, the use of a given expression leaves to pragmatic factors a fuller determination of its contribution to what is meant, is compatible with the utterance having a fully-fledged conventionally conveyed linguistic content. For instance, the token-reflexive rule for 'that' establishes that the truth-conditional import of any instance i of that type is the entity of a given contextually determined sort which is demonstrated at the occasion of the production of i. This assigns a full conventional content to utterances of 'that is a tree', even though one somehow unspecific and relying on context for a fuller pragmatic determination. A similar point can be made about incomplete definite descriptions. A natural line for the Russellian of a Reichenbachian persuasion to take is to say that, when a manifestly incomplete description the F is successfully used in an utterance u of which an instance i of the F is a part, additional token-reflexive descriptive material is implicitly understood, which, together with that conveyed by F provides the intended description. This conventionally understood, implicit descriptive material can be given by means of a description like the most salient F at the occasion when i is produced. In terms of the useful distinctions made by Recanati in his contribution to this symposium, "What Is Said", these suggestions place me in essential agreement with "Minimalism" on what is said, as based on what he calls "the traditional picture". There is one important difference, though. Recanati characterizes the traditional view as not conceiving of language as a form of rational activity, more specifically as the form of rational activity which Grice explicated as acts dependent on communicative intentions. This, as should be obvious, is not the proper contrast between the view I am defending and the one Recanati himself supports. The main reason I have for characterizing the contribution of indexicals and incomplete descriptions as suggested results from applying to them the hypothesis set forth at the end of the previous section: i.e., that those characterizations provide the best way of explicating the regular, conventional contribution of those expressions to acts of meaning made by means of them. And, as I was at pains to make clear in the previous section, that hypothesis makes the linguistic meaning of a semantic unit dependent on psychological facts. GRICEAN RATIONAL RECONSTRUCTIONS 109 The difference between us has rather to do with the kind of psychological states on which, according to each view, semantic theories systematically rely. On the present view, semantic interpretation cannot deliver (as Recanati suggests) "only semantic schemata", precisely because no proper act of meaning can involve only schemata. It is full propositions, with full truthconditions, that the speakers can inform about, enjoin others to make true, and so on. For all Recanati says, by looking at what speakers do in a purely conventional manner in the way I have suggested, we do find complete conventionally meant propositions. It is true that, typically, when a speaker utters a token i of 'I', he takes for granted that more identificatory information is available in context than just producer of i: say, how he looks at that time. But this purely linguistic piece of information is enough for uniquely identifying somebody (in felicitous acts), and it is the only piece of information conventionally contributing to literal acts of meaning involving tokens of 'I'. My view is that speakers know this (unthematizedly), and rely on their audiences sharing with them this knowledge to pick up from context other pieces of identificatory information. Similarly, it is true that when a speaker utters a token i of 'that', he takes for granted that more information is available in context about the sort of of entity intended than salient when i is produced. But, again, it is also true that this piece of information is enough to identify uniquely a sort (in felicitous acts),16 and it is a piece of information which we can take to be conventionally contributing to literal acts of meaning involving tokens of 'that'. One significant reason for thinking that a reference to a salient class is conventionally implicit in pronominal uses of demonstratives like 'that' lies in the fact that, in contrast with indexicals like 'he' and 'you', those demonstratives have also, conventionally, an adjectival use: 'that tree', etc. Speakers unthematizedly know this, and rely on their audience's sharing with them this knowledge to pick up from context pieces of classificatory information when not explicitly given by the utterance. Let me briefly examine two more examples frequently discussed in the literature, to give the flavor of the Gricean view I am endorsing. When a speaker utters a token i of 'have had' (as in 'I have had breakfast'), he takes for granted that more information is available in context about the past time interval to which he is referring than just that it is in the past with respect to the time at which i is produced, and it is salient in the context of i. This further information would determine a pragmatically communicated content. But, again, this is conventional, and determines sufficiently the relevant class in felicitous contexts; my view is that speakers know this unthematizedly, and rely on this knowledge, for guiding their audiences in 110 MANUEL GARCıA-CARPINTERO pragmatically obtaining from context more specific information about this time interval. When a speaker utters a token i of 'is raining' (as in 'it is raining'), he takes for granted that more information is available in context about the place he is referring to than that it is salient when the token i is produced. But it is a conventional fact about the use of the present tense with verbs meaning located events such as 'to rain' that the place referred to is indicated in that way, as it were, by default, and speakers rely on their audiences sharing with them this knowledge. This view is close to Bach's (1994) treatment of those cases that he describes as (pragmatic) "expansion", which include examples like 'I have had breakfast'. Cases like 'it is raining', however, of what he describes as pragmatic "completion", cannot, he thinks, receive a similar treatment. In those cases, he claims, semantics alone does not provide a fully-fledged linguistic content determining a truth-value; we have to rely for that on pragmatic processes. I am suggesting that there is no relevant distinction between the two cases; what Bach says regarding "expansion" applies also to what he characterizes as "completion". He overlooks this, I think, because he has an incorrect picture of how indexicals work to begin with. Ultimately, the mistake might derive from his unmotivated assumption that facts involving tokens are pragmatic. Regarding what he judges as cases involving completion, Bach says that "there is no theoretical basis for denying their semantic incompleteness by inventing hidden syntactic slots that must be filled in order for a complete proposition to be expressed" (Bach, manuscript). As far as I can see, Bach only supports this attribution of inventiveness to a proposal like the present one with this reasoning: "indexical reference fixes the interpretation of an element that occurs in the utterance . . . on the other hand, the conceptual gaps in utterances of semantically underdeterminate sentences do not correspond to anything in the sentences themselves, not even to empty syntactic categories" (Bach 1994, 133). As we have seen, semantic conventions associated with indexical types, when applied to tokens, provide (in well-behaved contexts) those tokens with a referent and also with a token-reflexive referent-fixer (which can be further enriched pragmatically, and it is in fact typically so enriched). Now, the conventions at stake are not only related to separate words; they are sometimes related, e.g., to lexemes indicating time. I have suggested reasons to think that analogous conventions are associated with lexical items like the verb 'to rain'. The main considerations here are along the lines of those I have used for the claim that a relevant class is indicated when pronominal uses of demonstratives like 'this' are involved. In the latter case, we have the GRICEAN RATIONAL RECONSTRUCTIONS 111 fact of contrasting adjectival uses; in the former, contrasting uses in which places are explicitly referred to, or quantified over. Recanati says that in ascribing to expressions meanings like the ones I have been canvassing we are philosophically cheating. I suppose that this feeling is in part due to my reliance on a general notion of contextual salience. Of course, much more empirical work should be done to clarify what criteria of salience (or accessibility) are relied upon by language users. However, I do not think this makes illegitimate the appeal to the concept, because it seems clear that, no matter which the details are, language users do rely (unthematizedly) on such a notion. The best policy for showing that we are not cheating consists, I think, in providing a clear philosophical rationale for the Gricean line. This is the project to which I have been trying to contribute. The reasons for attributing to speakers the forms of unthematized knowledge just illustrated are, ultimately, the reasons we have for thinking that languages are constituted by conventional regularities involving the rational activities explicated by Grice as cases of speaker-meaning. Let us thus go back to our main example. There are uses of indexicals which are descriptive. Compare the following sentence found in a periodical ("How Many People Can the Earth Support?", Joel E. Cohen, The New York Review of Books, October 8, 1998, p. 31): 'three quarters of a billion people, more or less, were hungry yesterday, are hungry today, and will be hungry tomorrow'. It is fair to assume that the author did not intend to make a singular claim concerning the day when he produced the instantiation of 'today' from which the one we happen to come across originated (and the days before and after it). The reason is not that we, the audience, lack any means of identifying that day with sufficient understanding; for we have just done that. The reason is rather that the author is supposed to speak with the authority of someone in a position to impart knowledge, and he is also supposed to be willing to impart as much relevant knowledge as he is in a position to give. Whatever his justification for this presumed knowledge is, it is fair to assume that it is not justification specific for a singular proposition about that day, but rather justification for a stronger, universal claim about all the days in a certain period including the day when he produced that token and any days at which other tokens originated with that one might be encountered by a potential reader. It is perhaps to make this clearer that he mentions three days ('yesterday, today and tomorrow') instead of just one. For the same reason, the speaker cannot be meaning a singular proposition about the day when we come across an instance of 'today' originated with the token he produced. In this case, it is correct to say that an ad112 MANUEL GARCıA-CARPINTERO ditional reason is that he lacks any means of distinguishing the day in question from any other at which an instance of 'today' originating in his writing might be encountered. On the other hand, there must be some point to his using singular terms, instead of just asserting the quantificational claim he is in a position to make. It is thus fair to assume that he is not making a singular claim, but a general descriptive one about the particular day on which we have come across the token-indexicals originated with his utterance. Given any instantiation of 'today' originated with his writing and encountered during a certain period, he is making a general claim about the day when such instantiation is read, whatever that day is. To account for descriptive uses of indexicals like this one, the defender of the asymmetry would have recourse at this point to the Gricean explication of conversational implicatures (essentially involving a "derivation" along the lines of the argument we have just produced), to support the view that the fact that utterances like the one in our example express a general descriptive proposition is a pragmatic one. He would also insist that the utterance still has, even in this case, its literal, singular meaning, in that the derivation of the pragmatic meaning takes at the very least as a premise the assumption that the literal meaning has been expressed. Similarly, there are cases, of which Donnellan provided famous examples, in which descriptions appear to play a merely "reference-fixing" role for an individual, which is the intended contribution to the expressed proposition. The defender of the asymmetry will suggest, analogously, that this is also a pragmatic phenomenon, and that, even in those cases, the literal, general proposition is also semantically conveyed, because the assumption that it has been expressed plays a crucial role in the derivation of the pragmatic content. The writers I am arguing with dispute this. They acknowledge that there are straightforward cases of non-linguistic content – paradigmatically, particularized conversational implicatures. At dinner time, A suggests to go to a restaurant; B retorts by uttering 'I have had dinner'. This conveys that B does not agree to go into the restaurant; the content of this speech-act, that (say) A and B do not go into the restaurant, is a non-linguistic content for everybody participating in the dispute – an implicated content, let us say. Now, the Gricean line to trace the semantics-pragmatics distinction I have been advocating so far contends that linguistic content goes only as far as to characterize the period before that of the utterance during which the speaker has had dinner as salient in the context of the utterance; the Gricean view takes the content describing further this period as being, say, of less than three hours, to be as non-linguistic as implicated contents. It is this which the writers with which I am arguing dispute. They claim GRICEAN RATIONAL RECONSTRUCTIONS 113 that linguistic content includes in this case the pragmatically obtained material concerning the relative shortness of the signified time interval. The same, they think, applies to referential uses of definite descriptions and attributive uses of indexicals: the contents obviously meant by speakers and understood by their audiences in these cases are according to them straightforward cases of linguistic content; they are not, as the Gricean takes them to be, implicated contents. To have a coherent theory, therefore, those writers must have a criterion for distinguishing those pragmatic features which are part of what they consider linguistic content, from merely implicated contents. They have offered two criteria, as far as I know. These criteria are invoked by them in arguments against the Gricean view. The first criterion has been given by Carston (1988). She claims that linguistic content is not logically entailed by implicated content; i.e., that truly implicated contents cannot be precisifications of linguistic contents, logically stronger than them. The real basis for this principle, I guess, lies in what I take to be the main consideration motivating these writers, to be discussed in the following section. But it should be clear that the principle is unjustified, for there are uncontroversial cases of implicatures where it fails to apply. Consider, e.g., Grice's famous example of a generalized implicature, 'I saw John with a woman', which typically conveys that I saw John with a woman different from his wife, sister or mother. The second criterion has been advanced by Recanati (1993): if a sentence conveying an implicated content when uttered in a context is placed under the scope of logical operators, the implicated content is not "inherited" by the new, longer sentence (in the context differing from the previous one in that the utterance of the latter sentence replaces the other). However, the contents on which the debate focuses are thus inherited; for instance, the understood characterization of the salient interval as relatively short is also there when instead of 'I have had dinner' we say 'I have not had dinner', or, instead of 'he has had dinner', 'if he has had dinner, it has not been very much, for he is very hungry'. This criterion, however, fares as poorly as Carston's: uncontroversial cases of implicated contents are also inherited. In another famous example by Grice, an utterance of 'there is a gas station around the corner' implicates that there is gas available around the corner. This implicated content is inherited in some longer utterances: just consider 'if there is a gas station around the corner, I do not need to worry any more'; and 'there is no gas station nearby' can be regarded as not falsified by the existence of a closed gas station around the corner. 114 MANUEL GARCıA-CARPINTERO Counterexamples are not by themselves sufficient to reject the criteria offered by Carston and Recanati, for they might simply reject them; but the counterexamples can be backed up with more theoretical support. The problem with Carston's and Recanati's criteria is that an account of the constitutive nature of conversational implicatures such as Grice's does not give them any basis; and they have not provided any real alternative supporting their principles. Grice's account characterizes implicatures as acts of meaning in which the speaker exploits mutually known rational principles guiding communication over and above the semantics of any particular language, and mutually known knowledge of the world, together with the linguistic meaning of his utterances, to convey by means of these utterances a non-linguistic meaning. This account does not provide any basis for the principles. Take Carston's: Grice's account suggests straightforward cases of implicatures which will typically violate it. (Consider cases produced by exploiting the maxims of quantity, e.g., ironic understatement: 'he is a bit short', said of someone manifestly very short.) Similarly, in opposition to Recanati's principle, Grice's constitutive account of pragmatic phenomena allows us to predict cases where the implicated contents will be inherited, and cases where they will rather be cancelled. Stalnaker (1974) has provided, inside the Gricean framework, a pragmatic account of why presuppositions (both those having a semantic origin and those having a purely pragmatic one) are inherited in certain linguistic contexts, which will also do for implicated contents. This account explains why the conversational implicatures that the utterance of a sentence can convey in a given context will be preserved when the sentence is uttered instead as the antecedent of certain conditionals, etc, and why they will be cancelled in other cases.17 What is ultimately in fact behind Carston's and Recanati's principles is, I believe, the main consideration for the Wittgensteinian view, to which I will turn presently. For instance, when Carston defends intuitively her principle, she suggests this line of reasoning: if p is logically stronger than q, an utterance cannot convey the two contents; for language users will not have any real application for the weaker content, the stronger being appropriate for anything for which they might need the weaker. An argument along these lines, however, can only justify the following: if p is logically stronger that q, language users will only pay attention to, or keep consciously in mind the former and not the latter. Inferring further from what ordinary speakers are typically conscious of, to the correct account of linguistic meaning, is precisely the fallacy I am most interested in exposing. GRICEAN RATIONAL RECONSTRUCTIONS 115 As a final consideration before I address this fallacy, let me mention that the cancellability of the contents which the Gricean proposal counts as pragmatic, in the same sort of circumstances in which uncontroversial cases of implicated contents are cancelled, also favors the Gricean view. ('I have not had breakfast. Not just recently: I decided quite some time ago already not to eat anything until six hours after I get up.') In reply to this, Bezuidenhout (1997a, 203) objects that a context in which someone utters 'I have not had breakfast' followed by 'Not just recently . . . ' is a different context from one in which one just utters 'I have not had breakfast'. This is true, but beside the point. Straightforward cases of conversational implicatures are cancellable – not just for the Gricean, for everybody in the debate. To pay due attention to Bezuidenhout's correct point, we should be careful about what cancellation involves. Here is a reasonable suggestion. We have to consider a context which differs from the actual one only in that, instead of the utterance p giving rise to the alleged implicature q, what is uttered is rather something like: p, but not q. In such an alternative context, the speaker will not be contradicting himself, but cancelling the implicated content q. Contents counted as pragmatic by our Gricean proposal (including the cases under dispute) are cancellable under this characterization. Bezuidenhout (1997a, 203) also repeats a point first argued by Walker (1975) in reaction to Grice's strategy. The point is that the calculability and cancellability of a given content is compatible with that content being linguistic. The expression whose semantics we are discussing might well be linguistically ambiguous. If so, the allegedly pragmatic meaning will be derived in context on the basis of conversational maxims; and, of course, it will be cancellable without contradiction. At this point, the Gricean will have recourse to additional criteria, also suggested by his constitutive characterization of the semantics/pragmatics distinction. A very important one is Kripke's (1977). Suppose that expression A has, uncontroversially, the conventional meaning M, and that it is also frequently used with meaning N . If it is reasonable to think that, even in a language whose semantics has been explicitly stipulated to be such that A has only meaning M, the expression will frequently acquire meaning N on the basis of the pragmatic mechanisms described by Grice, then it is to that extent reasonable to think that expression A has in our language just meaning M instead of being ambiguous. This sort of consideration can also be used in support of the Gricean viewpoint in the cases I have been canvassing. In sum, the Gricean proposal presented in the previous section, whose application we have been illustrating, provides a theoretically wellmotivated distinction between pragmatic and semantic facts. Carston 116 MANUEL GARCıA-CARPINTERO (1988) criticizes as unmotivated a "Linguistic Direction Principle", with effects analogous to those of our Gricean proposal, which counts as part of linguistic meaning only what is signified by some linguistic feature of the utterance. I think I have at least sketched such a motivation, dependent on the Gricean constitutive account of the nature of linguistic meaning. What we have seen so far is that the writers who reject the Gricean proposal do not have an alternative constitutive account, capable of tracing a sufficiently clear-cut distinction between what they want to consider as aspects of linguistic content, and what they recognize as merely implicated contents. I will now discuss the basic assumptions which motivate their views. 3. THE WITTGENSTEINIAN MASTER ARGUMENT In this final section, I will pursue my main critical goal: to expose what I take to be the main line of argument used by the Wittgensteinians. We will find in the criticisms they make of the Gricean line a common presumption: that semantic facts are those, and only those, which can easily become objects of conscious, explicit, occurrent judgments made by competent users of the language. I think that this is an implausible contention, from which no theoretically reasonable characterization of the facts is to follow. Let us consider a few examples of the Wittgensteinian master argument. Schiffer (1995) has argued for a symmetric treatment of indexicals and descriptions by focusing on referential uses of incomplete descriptions. The crucial move of Schiffer's argument appears in the following text: "[. . . ] the two cases [indexicals and descriptions] have exact psychological parity with respect to those psychological facts on which the relevant speaker meaning would have to supervene. If you ask the speaker what she meant in uttering "The guy is drunk", you will not get a report that favours the description theory: the speaker will almost certainly offer up an object-dependent proposition involving Pergola, the intended referent of her utterance of "the guy". If a theorist is to be justified in discovering a [. . . ] description-theoretic act of meaning in the utterance of "The guy is drunk", it will have to be on the basis of the fact that the speaker intended it to be mutual knowledge between her and her audience that certain definite descriptions applied to Pergola, and that certain parts of these were essential to the communicative act, in that the speaker would not have uttered her sentence if she had thought those descriptions were not mutually known to be instantiated. If we are warranted in ascribing an indeterminate description-theoretic act of meaning to the speaker when she utters "The guy is drunk", then it will have to be solely on the basis GRICEAN RATIONAL RECONSTRUCTIONS 117 of these psychological facts. But these very same facts are also obtained when the speaker utters "He is drunk". For example, in neither case would the speaker have produced her utterance if she had not thought that just one man was staggering up to the podium to give a talk. Moreover, these psychological facts pertaining to contextually-relevant definite descriptions apply to any utterance of an indexical-containing sentence, and I shall assume that this is clear to you on reflection" (Op. cit., 120). Let us grant that, if we ask the ordinary speaker what he has in mind when he produces two contrasting utterances, one involving an indexical and another an incomplete description referentially used, no asymmetry will be revealed from his answers. In particular, his answers will not manifest anything corresponding to the contrast between a Gricean derivation of the allegedly non-literal singular meaning of the descriptive utterance, and the Gricean explication of the literal singular meaning of the indexical utterance. The important point is to notice that Schiffer presumes that any confirmation or disconfirmation for a claim about the semantic properties of expressions, has to be found at the level of that kind of psychological fact: those which can be established by asking the ordinary speaker. Recanati (1993) provides a second example. He is not against the semantic asymmetry of indexicals and definite descriptions; however, he would dispute the pragmatic account of referential uses of descriptions which I have alluded to, and I am interested in looking at an important part of his argument. His analysis involves assimilating the distinction between general and referential uses of descriptions to what he calls "metonymical transfer". Imagine that two car-fans, A and B, who mutually know each other to be car lovers, are discussing the merits of two candidates for a given job. They do not know the candidates' names, but they know (that the other knows, and so on) the rather interesting cars (of different makes) the candidates use. In this context, A says: 'I believe that the Porsche is more considerate and will be a better colleague'. It is clear that 'the Porsche' refers here to one of the candidates, and not to a car or car-brand. This is a case that Recanati calls "metonymical transfer"; according to him, referential uses of descriptions are derived in this manner from attributive uses. Now, the Gricean should not feel threatened by the assimilation of general and referential uses of descriptions, respectively, to the conventional use of 'the Porsche' to refer to a car-brand and to its use in the example to refer to a car-owner; for he would be prepared to count the latter also as a pragmatic phenomenon of non-literal meaning. Recanati would reject this suggestion, by appealing to a certain "availability principle": "In deciding whether a pragmatically determined aspect of utterance meaning is part 118 MANUEL GARCıA-CARPINTERO of what is said, that is, in making a decision concerning what is said, we should always try to preserve our pre-theoretic intuitions on the matter" (Recanati 1993, 248). The application Recanati makes of this involves a presumption, similar to the one we found in Schiffer's argument. If a Gricean implicature analysis of the "Porsche" example is to be rejected on the basis of this principle, for instance, it is because ordinary speakers do not have the intuition that a literal meaning, involving the absurd attribution of human properties to a car or car-brand, is at all involved in the interpretation of A's sentence: "it does not seem that the speaker says something absurd in order to convey something different" (Recanati 1993, 264; see also the discussion in pp. 246–51). As in Schiffer's case, this use of the principle involves the presumption that confirmation or disconfirmation for proposals about the semantic properties of expressions should be found at the level of the easily available conscious, explicit, occurrent thoughts of ordinary speakers. This is almost explicit in Recanati's contribution to this symposium, when he characterizes his "maximalist" view as contending that the input for the derivation of pragmatic implicatures (i.e., the output of semantics) "is consciously available". It is clear that he means consciously available to ordinary speakers, i.e., available without recourse to the sort of theorizing characteristic of philosophical semantics. A rather startling example of the kind of questionable psychologizing which I am discussing, is furnished by yet another defendent of an approach like Recanati's, Ramachandran (1996). If a quantificational account of a referential utterance of 'the table is broken' were correct, he suggests, we should feel "a tension . . . . Intuitively, what is literally asserted is a purely general proposition where no specific table is mentioned, whereas what is conveyed is a proposition that does concern a specific table" (Ramachandran 1996, 378). We are supposed to subscribe to an account like Recanati's so as to explain that "Description sentences and sentences involving names or demonstratives are similar in that there seems to be nothing wrong or improper about using them in certain contexts, to convey singular (object-dependent) propositions" (ibid., 383). However, the fact that our conscious experiences are as Ramachandran indicates, that we do not "feel" any "tension" when confronted with referential uses of incomplete descriptions, is irrelevant for the debate: it is compatible with the correctness of both accounts, for they should not be understood as addressing the explanation of those facts. Another example is provided by Bezuidenhout (1997b), criticizing the view that descriptive interpretations of indexicals like the one exemplified above ('three quarters of a billion people, more or less, were hungry yesterday, are hungry today, and will be hungry tomorrow') are non-literal with GRICEAN RATIONAL RECONSTRUCTIONS 119 the following argument: "But it is rather implausible to say that in this case the listener first comes to think of the referent in an identifying way [in Bezuidenhout's theory, this corresponds to "understanding a singular proposition"], and then retreats to thinking of the referent in a merely criterial way [in Bezuidenhout's theory, this corresponds to "understanding a general descriptive proposition"]. I would argue that it is precisely because the listener is unable to think of the referent in an identifying way in the context [. . . ] that the listener understands the speaker to have used the indexical attributively" (Bezuidenhout 1997b, 401). Once again, we could grant that the ordinary speaker does not entertain the idea that the speaker is intending a singular proposition. What I want to highlight is the presumption that, because the alleged literal meaning does not enter the conscious experience of ordinary speakers when interpreting the sentence, a Gricean account is inadequate. The final example is provided by Nunberg (1993), who offers two reasons against treating as non-linguistic descriptive uses of indexicals. The first is that "sentences containing descriptive uses of indexicals may be incoherent if the indexicals are interpreted as making singular references". The examples he considers include 'I am traditionally allowed to order whatever I like for my last meal', 'tomorrow is always the biggest party night of the year'. He says: "the adverbs usually and always must be understood as involving quantification over instances, but these readings are not possible if the subjects of the sentences are interpreted as referring to individuals or particular times. So it is hard to see what coherent 'literal' interpretations we could assign to these utterances" (Nunberg 1993, 32). What justifies, however, the assumption that a Gricean derivation of a nonlinguistic content must start from a coherent one? Well on the contrary; a good reason to trigger the derivation is that the literal, secondary interpretation is "incoherent"; the hypothesis that the speaker is abiding by the conversational maxims, together with this first blush blatant violation of the first maxim of quality, then takes the audience (as indeed intended by the speaker) to the non-literal, primary one. 'Bill is not himself today' (which will be interpreted as non-literally meaning that today Bill lacks some of the attributes that characterize him) is a good example of this. Grice contemplated these cases, as potential explanations of metaphors; compare his example 'you are the cream of my coffee' which, literally taken, involves "categorial falsity" (Grice 1975, 34).18 It is puzzling that Nunberg thinks that the Gricean account requires the literal interpretation to be "coherent". It is equally puzzling that Recanati, who on behalf of his own view replies to Nunberg along the previous lines, agrees with Nunberg's criticism when applied to the Gricean. In a revealing 120 MANUEL GARCıA-CARPINTERO passage, Recanati justifies in this way the puzzling assumption he thereby shares with Nunberg: "In [the Gricean] framework, the proposition literally expressed, viz. the (absurd) proposition that the speaker – a particular person – is usually allowed to order his last meal, would have to be somehow entertained in the process of interpreting ['I am traditionally allowed to order whatever I like for my last meal']. I agree with Nunberg that this consequence is unwelcome" (Recanati 1993, 321). Recanati's rather indeterminate notion of "somehow entertaining" a proposition has to be interpreted so that this is "unwelcome" when the proposition is "absurd". An interpretation compatible with this which comes to mind, and which the text at least allows, is the following: in its literal meaning, the sentence has to express a proposition regarding what a thinker may rationally adopt the propositional attitudes commesurate with the illocutionary point of the type of speech act involved: belief, if we are considering an assertion, intention, if an order or request is at stake, etc. This view might have been motivated by the assumption that the Gricean theoretical claims should have clear-cut counterparts in conscious processes immediately accessible to speakers on reflection. The Gricean view, on this interpretation, involves the notion that the audience is intended, firstly, to consciously interpret the sentence as if it had been meant with its literal meaning in an ordinary way, and then to initiate a conscious derivation. It should be clear that this saddles the Gricean with a view that he has no need to hold. The Gricean process of deriving an implicature can be triggered by the merely tacit realization that, if conventional rules are applied, in context, to the instantiated sentence, a communicative intention blatantly flouting the maxims is to be attributed to the speaker; and I do not see any reason whatsoever why the expression of an "absurd proposition" (whose assertability, etc., no rational being would for one moment consciously "entertain") is not to be taken as a particular case of this. From the present viewpoint, all these writers presuppose that the semantic project is other than it in fact is. Let me avail myself to the concept of a conscious, explicit, occurrent thought at this point (a CEO-thought henceforth). Perhaps one or two of the notions I use here can be explicated in terms of the others, but we do not need to care about that for our purposes. CEO-thoughts are, for instance, the perceptual judgment we make about the distribution of observable properties, events and objects in the scene before our senses when we take our sensory experience at face value; judgements about the past made by taking at face value our apparent episodic memories; judgments or intentions which we make by fully endorsing utterances in our language, assertive or prescriptive; reasonings which we make by carefully going through their steps, as expressed by GRICEAN RATIONAL RECONSTRUCTIONS 121 utterances in our language. The above examples evidently presuppose that, for a semantic proposal to be correct, the propositional attitudes it posits should be easily available to ordinary users of the target expressions, in the form of some of their CEO-thoughts. Now, I should say straight away that I sympathize to a certain extent with the attraction to assumptions, such as Recanati's Availability Principle. The Gricean picture of language use emphasizes that it is a rational process. Merely "subpersonal-level" states cannot account for this. There is another view of semantic interpretation, alternative to Recanati's, which avoids any reliance on the sort of first-personal psychological states involved in speaker-meaning. On this view, semantic facts depend at most, on functional or neurological ("subpersonal") states, only empirically available to the subjects instantiating them. They do not depend on the kind of psychological state distinctive of persons, available in a privileged, nonempirical way to their subjects. On the view Recanati defends, semantic facts do depend on personal-level psychological states, but only on the most superficial, most easily available. The proposal I am making, tries to navigate a middle course between the Scylla of the subpersonal view, and the Charibdis of the surface-psychological view, defended by Recanati and others. This is why we should be careful when we reply to the Wittgensteinian master argument, on behalf of the Gricean view, that the posited mental processes are only supposed to be "tacit" or "implicit". Thus, for instance, Evans and McDowell (1976, xix–xxiii) complain that the Gricean inferentialist account of meaning and understanding is at odds with the phenomenology of those activities, as much as a traditional inferentialist account of perception is at odds with the phenomenology of that activity. Loar (1981, 248–52) replies that the allegation is correct, but beside the point, in that "the subsidiary 'intentions' of Grice's and Schiffer's accounts can be realistically acknowledged in the form of operative implicit expectations without which the utterance would not have occurred" (ibid., 251), while on the part of the hearer the account can make do with an "implicit reasoning" constituted by "implicit beliefs such that without them the hearer would not ascribe the meaning he does ascribe" (ibid., 252). In a similar vein, Lewis writes: "An action may be rational, and may be explained by the agent's beliefs and desires, even though that action was done by habit, and the agent gave no thought to the beliefs and desires which were his reason for acting. A habit may be under the agent's rational control in this sense: if that habit ever ceased to serve the agent's desires according to his beliefs, it would at once be overriden and corrected by conscious reasoning. Action done by a habit of this sort is both habitual 122 MANUEL GARCıA-CARPINTERO and rational. Likewise for habits of believing. Our normal use of language is rational, since it is under rational control" (Lewis 1975, 181). The Gricean view presented in the first section suggests that, while these replies are correct as far as they go, as understood by Loar and Lewis they do not go far enough. A way to support an ascription of tacit knowledge is by finding a system of tacit knowledge in the Chomskian sense, as elaborated by Evans (1985) and Davies (1987). The important characteristic of a Chomskian system of tacit knowledge is that we can only be justified in ascribing it on the basis of empirical evidence: psycholinguistic data about processing time, priming, etc., about patterns of acquisition and lost of the ability, neurological data, and so on. We can be justified in claiming that a system known in those ways, is a system of tacit beliefs, if the causal processes constituting the system, mirror the processes of someone who had the relevant beliefs in an explicit form. Let us use 'phrase', as before, to refer to any proper part of an utterance which plays a crucial role in a compositional determination of the literal meaning of the utterance; phrases can be words instantiated in the utterance, or more abstract structural traits also with a semantic import. The main problem confronting us in our attempt to provide a sufficient reply to the Wittgensteinian master arguments, concerns the expressionmeaning of phrases. We have to show that the sort of psychological fact to which the writers I have quoted appeal, is semantically irrelevant. The literal meaning of expressions have to be derived by taking seriously the fact that language is a rational activity whose point is that articulated in Gricean explications of speaker-meaning. As suggested in the first section, we have to look at the pattern shown in the conventional use of the expressions whose semantics we want to comprehend, and not to the CEO of ordinary speakers. Now, when it comes to this problem, writers like Lewis and Loar feel that such an appeal to unthematized knowledge on behalf of the Gricean program cannot be made. What I contend is that the sort of appeal to unthematized knowledge they are prepared to make at the level of whole utterances should and can be made also at the level of phrases. Lewis and Loar are prepared to invoke unthematized knowledge corresponding to the states posited in Gricean explications at the level of utterance-meaning, which in their view exists and suffices for the correctness of attributions of those rational states. They both acknowledge a different, Chomskian sense of tacit knowledge, relative to which speakers might also be said to have tacit knowledge at the level of phrase-meaning somehow consistent with Gricean ascriptions at that level. But they would correctly reject taking the existence of Chomskian tacit knowledge as sufficient for ascribing to speakers Gricean tacit knowledge at the level of GRICEAN RATIONAL RECONSTRUCTIONS 123 phrase-meaning: "nothing in the Gricean framework requires a hearer to know a semantic theory of the speaker's language in any ordinary sense of 'know'. What is perhaps not implausible is that knowing a language involves the capacity to know of each sentence (within limits) what its semantic properties are" (Loar 1981, 252). "The common man . . . need only have suitable particular expectations about how [his fellows] might act, and how they might form beliefs, in various situations. He can tell whether any actual or hypothetical particular action or belief-formation on their part is compatible with his expectations" (Lewis 1975, 180). Lewis and Loar are right that the existence of Chomskian tacit knowledge is not sufficient to justify attributions of Gricean tacit knowledge of phrase-meaning; but, as we have seen in the first section, they are wrong in thinking that the vindication of the Gricean program does not need such an attribution in a properly justified form. What makes an account of linguistic meaning distinctively Gricean is that it is given in terms of speaker-meaning. What this amounts to is that it is given in terms of personal-level (as opposed to merely subpersonal-level) states: in terms of (self-supporting regularities involving) the rational purposive mental activity characteristic of human beings. Now, only a small finite subset of all logically possible utterances with a literal meaning in a typical natural language occur under some such (even if tacit) rational control; and, as we have seen, some utterances are consistently produced with what we want to count as a non-linguistic meaning. The Gricean project is doomed unless the appeal to knowledge of structure can be justified inside it. What is needed is an appeal to unthematized knowledge of the conventional contribution of phrases, to acts of meaning, not just to tacit knowledge of the Chomskian variety. Such knowledge is constituted by personal-level psychological states, like those easily accessible in the form of CEO-thoughts, and unlike the Chomskian states of tacit knowledge; but, like the latter, it is only available after reflection heuristically of a scientific character, taking as data intuitions about the evaluation of utterances relative to several circumstances. As I said, I share with Recanati and others the view that some form of "first-personal availability" is thus required. However, the one attainable through the process of ordinary scientific-semantic theorizing is in my view quite enough. It also involves psychological processes, although not the sort of psychological process on which Recanati et al. focus: it requires us to evaluate our intuitions regarding the satisfaction or otherwise, of hypothesized truth-conditions of utterances, including the relevant expressions under different conceivable situations. I think that, ultimately, this is the source of the trouble. The writers whose views I have been discussing concentrate on, as it were, local psychological matters: the 124 MANUEL GARCıA-CARPINTERO semantic intuitions of competent speakers about concrete utterances. The Gricean picture encourages us to focus on more global issues: semantic intuitions of competent speakers concerning the systematic contribution of semantic units to different utterances in different contexts. The account of the asymmetric semantics of descriptions and indexicals outlined before, would be validated by research which, looking for conventional regularities in use, took into account a sufficiently wide range of uses of those expressions. For, on the Gricean view, to get a proper account of the semantics of descriptions and indexicals what we have to do is to look for the simplest way of accounting for the contribution of those expressions to the utterances in which they regularly appear, along the Gricean guidelines described; i.e., on the assumption that they are systematically contributing to the form of rational activity explicated in Gricean accounts of speaker-meaning. This kind of research would highlight how infrequent descriptive uses of indexicals are, how indexicals are systematically used to make singular acts of meaning in a wide variety of linguistic contexts. It would also highlight the extent to which descriptions, even incomplete descriptions, are systematically used to make quantificational acts of meaning. A highly relevant argument would be the one that Kripke (1977) made popular, consisting in imagining whether uses, whose conventionality is in question, would equally arise in a language in which expressions had been explicitly stipulated to have the allegedly literal meaning. I should stress that I am not denying the relevance of empirical, subpersonal facts for the determination of the semantics of a given language. On the contrary, I think that many fine-grained semantic facts can only be adjudicated on that basis; I am thinking, for instance, of facts about binding constraints. I am only arguing for the existence of personal-level facts, particularly facts concerning the not so fine-grained semantic structure of utterances, which are not easily available to ordinary speakers, and for their important role in semantic theorizing. Here the considerations of the first section are relevant. The Gricean is entitled to attribute states of unthematized knowledge concerning the linguistic meaning of phrases to ordinary speakers only if he abandons reductionist goals. It is not implausible to ascribe to ordinary speakers propositional attitudes about the meaning of phrases and how they contribute to the meaning of utterances, if we are entitled to use in characterizing them explicit references to the language which they use: "expression X means M in the language that I speak". The main reason to ascribe to ordinary speakers personal-level unthematized knowledge of the grammar of their language is methodological. We take pretheoretically to be a fact about language use, that literal use GRICEAN RATIONAL RECONSTRUCTIONS 125 of language is a form of rational activity, whose rationality reaches the conventional use of phrases; and, unless we have good reasons not to do so, our theories should integrate pretheoretical beliefs. One way in which we can bring this pretheoretical belief to the surface, is by reflecting on cases in which the rational expectations which account for why certain phrases are used, are not satisfied. There are well-known examples involving indexicals which we could mention for illustrative purposes. Consider an utterance of 'that is a picture of one of the greatest philosophers of the twentieth century' made – as in a well known example by Kaplan – while pointing without turning and looking to the place on a wall which has been long occupied by a picture of Carnap, although, unbeknownst to the speaker, someone has replaced Carnap's picture with one of Spiro Agnew. It seems accurate to say that, in cases like this, there are two sets of referential intentions which, against the speaker's reasonable assumptions, come apart. There are his ultimate intention of referring to a picture with certain observable features which he believes to be on the wall and has been long there. As a competent user of English, the speaker also makes clear his intention to refer to the picture made salient by his demonstration, while uttering the relevant token of 'that'; this is for him an ancillary intention subserving the former. Typically, the two sorts of intentions are present, even if we only notice them when, as in this case, they come apart. It is considerations such as these, which support the Gricean view that the conventional use of phrases and syntactic features is a form of rational activity. Competent speakers will acknowledge the mistake, with respect to a situation like the one we have described, and they will do it systematically, with respect to the demonstrative phrase, no matter what the other elements of the utterance are. The mistake, it seems to me, is the one we have articulated. To characterize it in those normative terms presupposes that speakers know that tokens of 'that picture' are conventionally used to refer to the most salient picture when the token is produced. Alternative views do not provide a reasonable picture of these intuitions concerning language use. The main alternative in the literature, is to leave grammar to be determined by just what Chomskian grammar speakers have internalized: "For suppose there prevails in P a practice of meaning in L and that members of P are able to process utterances in L because their language processing involves an internally represented grammar of L. Intuitively, this would count as their using L, whether or not their processing of utterances of L also relied on the [Gricean]-required propositional attitudes. We can imagine people whose processing of L sentences uses an internally represented grammar of L, but who do not make the supersophisticated [Gricean]-required inferences. Perhaps these people 126 MANUEL GARCıA-CARPINTERO are so "programmed" that upon hearing an utterance of S, they believe straightway that the speaker meant p, when L(S) = p, unless that belief is defeated in one or another ways (e.g., by a further belief that the speaker was speaking metaphorically)" (Schiffer 1993, 242).19 Later Schiffer even rejects the Chomskian requirement of an internally represented grammar, on the basis of his Harvey-example (Schiffer 1987, ch. 7), which suggest that we could even make do with less. I cannot see how a view such as this can account for the intuitive diagnosis of examples like the one discussed in the preceding paragraph. This new alternative to the Gricean view also has naturalistic overtones. The Gricean view contends that using and comprehending language is a form of rational activity. It is usually unthematized; but it is still an activity "under rational control" (to use Lewis' phrase), and this applies to structural matters, to matters having to do with how utterances express what the speaker means on the basis of its words and syntax. The alternative is to think of this as a merely natural process, something that happens to us without also constituting a form of rational activity. I say "merely" natural, because, I want to emphasize, for the Gricean the process is also natural; it might well be realized by a Chomskian system of linguistic competence, and as I said there in fact are good reasons to think so. The issue is whether or not it is merely natural. Appreciating what is at stake is the extent to which linguistic activity is "under rational control", Laurence (1996) devotes his main argument to questioning the following consequence he derives from the Gricean view: "Since language, on this view, is a rather direct reflection of general abilities to reason about one's own mental states and the mental states of one's conspecifics, we should expect the ability to use language to correlate strongly with these general capacities" (ibid., 286). He then provides as counterexamples, cases of subjects without too much "general intelligence" but with strong "linguistic abilities", and viceversa. "If language were a direct reflection of general abilities to reason about one's own mental states and the mental states of others, we should expect the ability to use language to correlate strongly with these general communicative capacities. We would not expect radical discontinuities between linguistic and nonlinguistic use of what is physically the same symbol. The fact that it does not correlate and that such discontinuities exist, suggests that the ability to speak a language is not simply a reflection of general communicative or intellectual ability" (ibid., 290–1). Perhaps this provides an empirical case against attempts to reductively account for knowledge of language in terms of "general abilities to reason". The present nonreductionist view requires reflective capacities, and thus those general GRICEAN RATIONAL RECONSTRUCTIONS 127 abilities; but it is compatible with knowledge of language being dependent on a "domain-specific" cognitive module, and thus with the absence of correlation Laurence indicates.20 The main argument for the Gricean taxonomy is thus, that it provides the best account of the facts involving a lesser departure, from what we already take ourselves to know. I have suggested some reasons for thinking that there is more in the Gricean view than mere intellectualist prejudices. Freed from some aspects which do not seem to be essential to it, the traditional Gricean view regarding the pragmatic/semantic distinction is in a better shape than critics think. To the extent, then, that a form of the Gricean view like the one we have outlined here is well-supported, we can see the irrelevancy of the Wittgensteinian main consideration. As Grice insisted, the fact that meaning is ultimately use, should not lead us to confuse aspects of use which involve the conventional deployment of words and syntax for the sort of rational purpose captured in the Gricean accounts of speaker-meaning, with merely non-literal uses. NOTES ∗ Versions of this paper were read in symposia held at the APA 1999 Pacific Division Meeting and at the 1999 Meeting of the European Society for Philosophy and Psychology. I would like to express my gratitude to Josep Macià, David Pineda, François Recanati, George Rey and Ken Taylor for valuable comments. I would also like to thank Martin Davies and Chris Peacocke, whose writings and talks have strongly influenced my thoughts about these issues. Research for this paper has been funded by the Spanish Government's DGICYT (PB96-1091-C03-03), and by the Catalan Government's CIRIT (SGR97-396). 1 Neale (1992), however, offers a contrary estimate. (Later I will raise some doubts on its accuracy on aspects which I deem fundamental to the Gricean perspective.) 2 Unlike tacit knowledge in the sense of Evans (1985) and Davies (1987), unthematized knowledge is meant to be first-personal – accessible by reflection to its subject. Unlike ordinary explicit knowledge, it is meant to be accessible only through a theoretically-driven abductive process whose "empirical" basis lies in semantic intuitions. 3 Both distinctions, I will assume, come to much of the same. 4 Considerations based on factors like conservativeness, simplicity, integration of knowledge and so on. Searle (1969, 55) makes this point. 5 Millikan, for instance, "defines" conventions as follows: "To be thought of as conventional, a reproduced pattern must be perceived as proliferated, due, in part, to the weight of precedent, not to its intrinsically superior capacity to produce a desired result, or due, say, to ignorance of any alternatives" (p. 166). This vague characterization does not have many claims to having attained the normative goal of a philosophical explication. It raises all sort of questions, which the paper does not answer: 'Thought of', by whom? How sensibly? Must the required reproduction of patterns have a psychological explication? Is a merely biological explanation sufficient, or even just a physical one? In what respects (physical, biological, psychological, etc.) are "precedents" supposed to have "weight"? These doubts 128 MANUEL GARCıA-CARPINTERO aside, the definition does suggest that there is no more to say about conventions than that they are regularities having a historical, but contingent explanation. Unless this is clarified further, however, digestion will turn out to be a convention. The main question for me is whether such a clarification will not in the end entail that conventions are distinctively constituted by actions having as their rational foundations certain preferences, together with expectations of conformity by others. 6 Ultimately, Schiffer's views might have been in agreement with this; for in his account of explicit performatives (pp. 104–10), he contends that they are assertoric "in logical form", but they are not uttered with their "full conventional force". The import of this is unclear to me. 7 This weak form of ascribing conceptual priority to speaker-meaning with respect to expression-meaning suffices to support Strawson (1964) Gricean criticism of Austin's (1962) account of illocutionary force. Strawson's point was that some illocutionary acts – including some with claims to be counted as paradigm cases like informing and enjoining – can be performed without using a conventional device for it. To subscribe this contention we only need the priority claim embodied in contentions (i)–(ii). 8 The main theses of the paper are thus very much along the lines of the middle way defended by Davies (forthcoming). Incidentally, the realization of the unsurmountable difficulties which the folk-psychological variety of reductionism confronts, together with the persistence of the reductionist goals, might perhaps account for the later development of Schiffer's views. 9 See, for instance, Schiffer 1987, 245–7, and Lance and O'Leary-Hawthorne 1997, 290– 4, for a summary of usual criticisms. It is fair to assume that the later authors take the objections they mention as the most damaging. The fact that all of them have proper responses inside the present framework, invalidates their claim that the Gricean research programme is a degenerating one. 10 In fact, I think this follows from a deeper metaphysical fact about event-individuation: whenever we mention events in explanations, it is events-as-instantiating-relevantproperties that we are mentioning. 11 Similar considerations dispose of an objection by Schiffer to a view close to the one I am propounding here, that – given such a Gricean account – it would (absurdly) not be possible for a speaker to mean what we would take him to mean by "writing the sentence 'I cannot write a sentence that contains more than three words (Schiffer 1987, 261). 12 Blackburn voices another common objection to Gricean accounts when he argues: "If I have to gesture or mime or otherwise invent a performance I must hope that you appreciate why I am doing it. But once we have methods of communicating into which we have been trained, perhaps I need not care at all if you recognize my intention in uttering. It would be enough if you heard my words, because you will have been trained to take them in a certain way, and so taking them, you will understand me" (Blackburn 1984, 113). The present view is that Blackburn is not setting up any genuine alternative here. For the point of the training is precisely that the hearer appreciates why the speaker is acting as he is; and, if the speaker is not irrational, he must care (albeit not explicitly) that it be recognized. 13 See García-Carpintero (1998) for more detail. The asymmetry is further developed in my "The Real Distinction between Descriptions and Indexicals", unpublished manuscript 14 I develop this idea in García-Carpintero (forthcoming). 15 For instance, although I take some descriptive material to be part of the linguistic content of an utterance of 'he is angry', I disagree with Bezuidenhout's (1996) contention that descriptive material is part of what is said – which she attempts to sustain in part by GRICEAN RATIONAL RECONSTRUCTIONS 129 appealing to the Wittgensteinian line I am going to oppose. Regarding the truth conditions of such utterances, I take a straightforward Direct Reference view. 16 What if the context is not felicitous, and there is no unique salient individual? For the related case of the domain of discourse, Gauker (1997) relies on an example of this kind to raise trouble for "expressivist" theories of communication – which certainly include the one I am assuming here. In Gauker's example, a speaker utters 'all of the red ones are mine', in a context in which (we might assume) there are two different but equally salient domains of quantification, one which the speaker has in mind and with respect to which his utterance is true, and another which the hearer has in mind and with respect to which the utterance is false. We can easily describe similar cases for all expressions discussed in this paper. In my view, the best strategy is to think of them as cases of Field's (1973) partial reference, giving them a supervaluationist rendering in our formal treatment. This corresponds to what Gauker describes as a "neutral solution". I lack the space here to dispose of Gauker's criticism of this type of response. 17 Carston does attempt to provide an alternative account of implicated contents, appealing to Sperber and Wilson's "Relevance Theory". I do not think that this offers any real advantage to Grice's account; and, in any event, I do not think that the relevance account motivates Carston's principle (or Recanati's, for that matter) any better that Grice's. 18 Nunberg has a second argument against the "implicature" analysis of descriptive uses of indexicals. If this analysis were correct, he claims, we should expect that the same readings would be available for sentences in which the relevant indexicals have been replaced by proper names or descriptions with the same reference (Nunberg 1993, 14–5, 21 and 32). This is a quite demanding application of Grice's "non-detachability" requirement. However, as Grice stressed, such a requirement only applies in so far as "the manner of expression plays no role in the calculation" (Grice 1975, 39; see also Grice 1978, 43). The examples at stake do not satisfy this condition, for the non-literal meaning is in part derived with the essential help of the token-reflexive semantic rule associated with indexicals' types. 19 Laurence (1996) defends a similar view: "According to [the Chomskian] view utterances have the linguistic properties they do in virtue of being associated, in the course of language processing, with mental representations having those properties . . . it is in virtue of being associated, in language processing, with these representations that an utterance has the linguistic properties it has" (Laurence 1996, 283–4). 20 Laurence seems to assume that his examples of subjects with the "linguistic module" intact but severely limited general intellectual abilities are examples of subjects with "normal linguistic abilities" (p. 287). If this means that the orders, assertions and so on that these subjects make are "normal linguistic utterances", it does contradict the Gricean view; but I find the suggestion absurd. (I do not suppose the narratives of these subjects would pass muster in court.) REFERENCES Bach, Kent: 1987, Thought and Reference, Clarendon Press, Oxford. Bach, Kent: 1994, 'Conversational Implicitures', Mind and Language 9, 124–162. Bach, Kent: unpublished manuscript, 'The Semantics-Pragmatics Distinction: What it is and Why it Matters'. Bennett, Jonathan: 1976, Linguistic Behaviour, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. 130 MANUEL GARCıA-CARPINTERO Bezuidenhout, Anne: 1996, 'Pragmatics and Singular Reference', Mind and Language 11, 133–159. Bezuidenhout, Anne: 1997a, 'The Communication of De Re Thoughts', Nous 31, 197–225. Bezuidenhout, Anne: 1997b, 'Pragmatics, Semantic Underdetermination and the Referential/Attributive Distinction', Mind 106, 375–409. Blackburn, Simon: 1984, Spreading the Word, Clarendon Press, Oxford. Burge, Tyler: 1975, 'On Knowledge and Convention', Philosophical Review 84, 249–255. Carston, Robyn: 1988, 'Implicature, Explicature, and Truth-Theoretic Semantics', in R. M. Kempson (ed.), Mental Representations: The Interface between Language and Reality, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 155–181. Davies, Martin: 1987, 'Tacit Knowledge and Semantic Theory: Can a Five Per Cent Difference Matter? Mind 96, 441–462. Davies, Martin (forthcoming): 'Persons and their Underpinnings', in M. Elton and J. L. Bermúdez (eds), Personal and Sub-Personal: New Essays on Psychological Explanation. Evans, Gareth: 1985, 'Semantic Theory and Tacit Knowledge', Collected Papers, Clarendon Press, Oxford. Evans, G. and J. McDowell (eds): 1976, 'Introduction', in Truth and Meaning. Essays in Semantics, Clarendon Press, Oxford. Field, Hartry: 1973, 'Theory Change and the Indeterminacy of Reference', Journal of Philosophy LXX, 462–481. García-Carpintero, Manuel: 1998, 'Indexicals as Token-Reflexives', Mind 107, 529–563. García-Carpintero, Manuel: forthcoming, 'A Presuppositional Account of ReferenceFixing', Journal of Philosophy. Gauker, Christopher: 1997, 'Domains of Discourse', Mind 106, 1–32. Grice, H. P.: 1975, 'Logic and Conversation', in P. Cole and J. Morgan (eds), Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 3, Academic Press, New York. Also in Grice, H. P., Studies in the Ways of Words, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 22–40, to which I refer. Kripke, Saul: 1977, 'Speaker's Reference and Semantic Reference', in P. French, T. Uehling, and H. Wettstein (eds), Contemporary Perspectives in the Philosophy of Language, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, pp. 255–276. Lance, Mark and John O'Leary-Hawthorne: 1997, The Grammar of Meaning, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Laurence, Stephen: 1996, 'A Chomskian Alternative to Convention-Based Semantics', Mind 195, 209–301. Lewis, David: 1975, 'Languages and Language', in K. Gunderson (ed.), Language, Mind and Knowledge, University of Minnesota Press, Minnesota, pp. 3–35. Also in D. Lewis: 1983, Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 163–188. Lewis, David: 1992, 'Meaning without Use: Reply to Hawthorne', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 70, 106–110. Loar, Brian: 1981, Mind and Meaning, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Neale, Stephen: 1992, 'Paul Grice and the Philosophy of Language', Linguistics and Philosophy 15, 509–559. Nunberg, Geoffrey: 1993, 'Indexicals and Deixis', Linguistics and Philosophy 16, 1–43. Ramachandran, Murali: 1996, 'The Ambiguity Thesis Versus Kripke's Defence of Russell', Mind and Language 11, 371–387. Recanati, F.: 1993, Direct Reference, Blackwell, Oxford. Schiffer, Stephen: 1972, Meaning, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Schiffer, Stephen: 1987, Remnants of Meaning, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA. GRICEAN RATIONAL RECONSTRUCTIONS 131 Schiffer, Stephen: 1993, 'Actual-Language Relations', in J. Tomberlin (ed.), Philosophical Perspectives 7: Language and Logic, Ridgeview Publishing Company, Atascadero, CA, pp. 231–258. Schiffer, Stephen: 1995, 'Descriptions, Indexicals, and Belief Reports: Some Dilemmas (But Not the Ones You Expect)', Mind 104, 107–131. Searle, John: 1969, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Stalnaker, Robert: 1974, Pragmatic Presuppositions', in M. K. Munitz and P. K. Unger (eds), Semantics and Philosophy, New York University Press, New York. Strawson, Peter: 1964, 'Intention and Convention in Speech Acts', Philosophical Review 73, 439–460. Walker, R. (1975): 'Conversational Implicature', in S. Blackburn (ed.), Meaning, Reference and Necessity, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Cambridge, pp. 133–181. Departament de Lògica Història i Filosofia de la Ciència Universitat de Barcelona Spain E-mail: [email protected] | {
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PB November 2017 REViEWs For review in Prabuddha bharata, publishers need to send two copies of their latest publications What is A People? alain badiou, Pierre bourdieu, Judith butler, Georges didihuberman, Sadri Khiari, and Jacques rancière trans. Jody Gladding Columbia University Press, 61 West 62 Street, New York, NY 10023, usa. www.cup.columbia.edu. 2016. $24. 176 pp. hb. isbn 9780231168762. Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) locates the singu-larity of secrecy as the ontology of becoming a people in his Literature in Secret: 'Forgive me for preferring the secret that binds me to you rather than the secret that binds me to the other other [sic], to each and every other, for a secret love binds me to the one as to the other, and to mine.' (Derrida, Jacques, The Gift of Death, Second Edition and Literature in Secret, trans. David Wills (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008), 126). The anthology under review attempts to make explicit this Derridean singularity of the secret: 'The best historians are those who contribute most effectively to lifting the lid-the lid of the repression, of the Unterdrückung, of the peoples' (Georges Didi-Huberman, 74). Mechanisms of repression act both in people and in individuals. The contributors to this anthology of essays enact the liberation of peoples trapped in 'capitalism's workshops' (Alain Badiou, 23) through 'depoliticization' effecting 'exclusion' (Kevin Olson, 111) from the secret quoted at the beginning of this review. Every contributor to this volume rightly extols Karl Marx, 'that great prophet of the future of the classes' (Alain Badiou, 23) without whom both contemporary philosophy and theology cannot be practised since Louis Althusser's (1918–90) epistemological break has occurred. Dismissal of Karl Marx, that is, hauntology, post this epistemological break proves that historians have sold out to archive-fever, that is, as Didi-Huberman shows (70); historians can no longer interpret dreams. Huberman is quoting Walter Benjamin (1892– 1940) here. On a reductionist and thus, comprehensible level-the need for comprehension is characteristic of both Nietzsche's last men and overmen; oligarchs are probably Nietzsche's last men-the essayists in this anthology effectively reinstate the primacy of Karl Marx's theories as that one hermeneutic which alone can resist commodity fetish and restore humanity to Covenant Love or hesed. Scholars who ignore the redeeming powers of Marx and Sigmund Freud do so at the cost of annihilating their own scholarship. Returning to Derrida; Derrida's reading of Genesis is the touchstone for any discussion of a people post the epistemological break. As an aside, Derrida's reading of Genesis is the most powerful reading, and not deconstruction, of that text till date; even exegetes like Walter Brueggemann (b. 1933) cannot match up to Derrida's gloss. Abraham, Isaac, and God form the triad of secrecy mentioned above and a people of the Covenant, as against the people of a Covenant. Jacques Rancière says: Because 'the people' does not exist. What exist are diverse or even antagonistic figures of the people, figures constructed by privileging certain modes of assembling, certain distinctive traits, certain capacities or incapacities: an ethnic people defined by the community of land or blood; a vigilant herding people by good pastureland; a democratic people putting to use the skills of those who have no particular skills; an ignorant people that the oligarchs keep at a distance; and so on ... ignorant masses impressed by the resonant words of the 'agitators' and led to extreme violence by the circulation of uncontrolled rumors and contagious fears (102–3). The people, as against a people, can therefore be consciously misconstrued 'as a kind of PB November 2017770 54 "imagined sovereignty", one that combines ideas of collectivity and normative force' (Kevin Olson, 108). This book is a collection of what Bruno Bosteels in his 'Introduction' terms 'interventions' (1). Bosteels contextualises our interventionists: Faced with the legacy of Heidegger's undeniable political compromises, thinkers such as Lacoue-Labarthe and Nancy call for an interruption of the general logic according to which philosophy would be able to lead the way to the resolute appropriation of an authentic destiny, whether by a solitary individual or a historic people. (19). It is within this rendering inoperative of all philosophy that we must situate the six interventions. To re-operate philosophy, the interventionists mention Hannah Arendt (1906–75) five times in this anthology. For instance, George Didi-Huberman refers to Arendt thus: Hannah Arendt said that we will never manage to think about the political dimension as long as we stubbornly persist in speaking of man (65). Notice that Huberman refers to The Divine Irreference of Images though Jean Baudrillard (19292007) is mentioned nowhere in this book. Yet Baudrillard's understanding of images is tautology in all the interventions. For instance, Pierre Bourdieu says: 'The spontaneous sociolinguistics that agents put to work to anticipate the reactions of others and to impose the representation that they want to give of themselves would permit, among other things, an understanding of a good part of what, in linguistic practice, is the object or the product of conscious intervention, individual or collective, spontaneous or institutionalized' (36). Notice how Bourdieu weaves representationality with 'linguistic practice'. This discussion leads to the notion of the popular within language, and by implication, within society, Bourdieu continues: The notion of 'popular language' is one of the products of the application of the dualist taxonomies that structure the social world according to categories of high and low ('low' language), delicate or coarse (coarse words) or crude (crude jokes), distinguished or vulgar, rare or common, formal or casual, in short, categories of culture and nature ... These are the mythical categories that introduce a distinct cleavage in the continuum of kinds of speech, ignoring, for example, all the overlapping between the casual speech of the dominant speakers ... and the strained speech of the dominated speakers ... and especially the extreme diversity in the kinds of speech that are universally consigned to the negative category of 'popular language' (37). These dyads which are Leibniz's monads, lead to 'colonial and capitalist modernit[ies]' (Sadri Khiari, 88). It is worth noting that for those without adequate employment and housing, modernity has not begun, leave alone postmodernity or even cosmopolitanism. Aijaz Ahmad (b. 1932) discusses this conundrum in a different context in his 1998 essay, 'Literary Theory and "Third World Literature": Some Contexts' (See 'Literary Theory and "Third World Literature": Some Contexts' in Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures (London: Verso, 1992), 43–72). This reviewer believes that the poor in Africa, South America, and Asia are in a pre-European Renaissance state of being; which is to say quoting Jacques Rancière: the poor are freely circulating capital, 'a population of workers who can always be sent back home' (104), from the First World to their Third World nations. This book is slow but rewarding reading since it invites us to miss the march of this retreating world and hunt for 'the wildest beauty in the world' (See Wilfred Owen, Strange Meeting). This beauty lies in the joy of annihilating 'sterile offices', to use Jacques Rancière's term (103), where coders/executives/businessmen/traditional intelligentsia do 'tamper' with capital (See W H Auden, In Memory of W B Yeats). These new denizens ensure that capital flows to their coffers fuelling a real crisis in the virtual world where resistance to theory is the norm; theorising is trolled as Marxist. This anthology performs its cultural work by attacking the tel quel of the 'gaunt and great, the famed for conversation' (See W H Auden, The Quest). At the end of the book one returns to the specters of Marx, thirsting for more from these interventionists. Subhashis Chattopadhyay Psychoanalyst Assistant Professor of English Narasinha Dutt College, Howrah | {
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Human Reasoning Cognitive sCienCe anD KeitH stenning anD miCHiel van lambalgen Keith Stenning and Michiel van Lambalgen in Human Reasoning and Cognitive Science, Keith stenning and michiel van lambalgen-a cognitive scientist and a logician-argue for the indispensability of modern mathematical logic to the study of human reasoning. logic and cognition were once closely connected, they write, but were "divorced" in the past century; the psychology of deduction went from being central to the cognitive revolution to being the subject of widespread skepticism about whether human reasoning really happens outside the academy. stenning and van lambalgen argue that logic and reasoning have been separated because of a series of unwarranted assumptions about logic. stenning and van lambalgen contend that psychology cannot ignore processes of interpretation in which people, wittingly or unwittingly, frame problems for subsequent reasoning. the authors employ a neurally implementable defeasible logic for modeling part of this framing process, and show how it can be used to guide the design of experiments and interpret results. they draw examples from deductive reasoning, from the child's development of understandings of mind, from analysis of a psychiatric disorder (autism), and from the search for the evolutionary origins of human higher mental processes. the picture proposed is one of fast, cheap, automatic but logical processes bringing to bear general knowledge on the interpretation of task, language, and context, thus enabling human reasoners to go beyond the information given. this proposal puts reasoning back at center stage. Human Reasoning and Cognitive sCienCe Keith Stenning is Professor of Human Communication in the school of informatics at the university of edinburgh. He is author of Seeing Reason and coauthor of Introduction to Cognition and Communication (mit Press, 2006). Michiel van Lambalgen is Professor of logic and Cognitive science at the university of amsterdam and coauthor of The Proper Treatment of Events. a bRaDfoRD booK "once in a while there is a body of work that reconceptualizes a topic of research. this book reports and reviews such a body of work. the result is a framing and hypotheses about reasoning that, in my judgment, fundamentally reconstructs the psychology of inferential reasoning.... this book will be regarded as the major turning point in the field's development." James Greeno, LRDC, University of Pittsburgh "this deep and stimulating book, by a leading psychologist and a leading logician, is about the choice of logical formalisms for representing actual reasoning. there are two interlocking questions: what are the right formalisms to represent how people reason, and what forms do the reasoners themselves bring to the world in order to reason about it? the authors' answer to the first question, using closed-world reasoning, allows them to analyze the wide range of strategies that people use for shaping their thinking. for example, the book uncovers important links between autism and nonmonotonic reasoning. this may be the first book in cognitive science that logicians can learn some new logic from." Wilfrid Hodges, Queen Mary, University of London CoGnitive SCienCe tHe Mit PReSS massachusetts institute of technology Cambridge, massachusetts 02142 http://mitpress.mit.edu 978-0-262-19583-6 H u m a n Rea so n in g a n D Co g n itive sCien Ce sten n in g a n D va n la m b a lg en Human Reasoning and Cognitive Science
Human Reasoning and Cognitive Science Keith Stenning and Michiel van Lambalgen A Bradford Book The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England c©2008 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. MIT Press books may be purchased at special quantity discounts for business or sales promotional use. For information, please email special [email protected] .edu or write to Special Sales Department, The MIT Press, 55 Hayward Street, Cambridge, MA 02142. This book was set in latex by the authors. Printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Stenning, Keith. Human reasoning and cognitive science / Keith Stenning and Michiel van Lambalgen. p. cm. – (A Bradford book) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-262-19583-6 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Cognitive science. 2. Reasoning. 3. Logic. I. Lambalgen, Michiel van, 1954II. Title. BF311.S67773 2008 153.4–dc22 2007046686 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 To Nye (KS) To Stijn (MvL)
Contents I Groundwork 1 1 Introduction: Logic and Psychology 3 1.1 Forms of Rationality 4 1.2 How Logic and Cognition Got Divorced 8 1.3 Two Philosophers on the Certainty of Logic: Frege and Husserl 9 1.3.1 Frege's Idealism in Logic 10 1.3.2 Husserl as a Forerunner of Semantics 12 1.4 What the Reader May Expect 15 2 The Anatomy of Logic 19 2.1 How Not to Think about Logical Reasoning 20 2.2 Reasoning to an Interpretation as Parameter Setting 20 2.2.1 Classical Propositional Logic 25 2.2.2 Truth–Functionality without Bivalence 27 2.2.3 A Domain in which Bivalence is Truly Ridiculous 28 2.3 The Many Faces of Closed–World Reasoning 33 2.3.1 Closed–World Reasoning, More Formally 33 2.3.2 Unknown Preconditions 34 2.3.3 Causal and Counterfactual Reasoning 38 2.3.4 Attribution of Beliefs and Intentions 39 3 A Little Logic Goes a Long Way 43 3.1 The Mother of All Reasoning Tasks 44 3.2 A Preliminary Logical Distinction 46 3.3 Logical Forms in Reasoning 49 3.4 Logical Forms in the Selection Task 52 3.4.1 The Big Divide: Descriptive and Deontic Conditionals 53 3.5 Giving Subjects a Voice 59 viii Contents 3.5.1 The Design of the Tutorial Experiment: High-Energy Phenomenology 61 3.5.2 Subjects' Understanding of Truth and Falsity 63 3.5.3 Dependencies between Card Choices 70 3.5.4 The Pragmatics of the Descriptive Selection Task. 74 3.5.5 Interaction between Interpretation and Reasoning 75 3.5.6 Subjects' Understanding of Propositional Connectives 80 3.6 Matching Bias: the "No-Processing" Explanation 86 3.7 The Subject's Predicament 87 3.8 Conclusion 90 4 From Logic via Exploration to Controlled Experiment 93 4.1 Designing Experiments Following Observations 95 4.1.1 Conditions: Classical "Abstract" Task 95 4.1.2 Conditions: Two–Rule Task 95 4.1.3 Conditions: Contingency Instructions 96 4.1.4 Conditions: Judging Truthfulness of an Independent Source 97 4.1.5 Conditions: Exploring Other Kinds of Rules than Conditionals 99 4.1.6 Subjects 99 4.1.7 Method 99 4.1.8 Results 100 4.2 Discussion of Results 101 4.2.1 The Two–Rule Task 102 4.2.2 Contingency Instructions 105 4.2.3 Truthfulness Instructions 107 4.2.4 The Conjunctive Rule 107 4.2.5 Putting It All Together? 110 4.3 What Does This Say about Reasoning More Generally? 112 5 From the Laboratory to the Wild and Back Again 117 5.1 The Laboratory 117 5.1.1 Mental Logic 118 5.1.2 Mental Models 119 5.1.3 Darwinian Algorithms 120 5.1.4 Cold Water 120 5.2 A View with No Room 121 5.3 The Literate Wild 124 5.3.1 The Literate Wild: System 1 Processes 125 5.3.2 The Literate Wild: System 2 Processes 128 5.3.3 The Relation between System 1 and System 2 130 Contents ix 5.4 The Illiterate Wild 130 5.4.1 Excursion: Electroconvulsive Therapy and Syllogistic Reasoning 134 6 The Origin of Human Reasoning Capacities 139 6.1 Crude Chronology 140 6.2 Evolutionary Thinking: From Biology to Evolutionary Psychology 142 6.2.1 Analogy and Disanalogy with Language 143 6.2.2 Innateness 143 6.2.3 Adaptationism and its Discontents 145 6.2.4 Massive Modularity 148 6.3 What Evolutionary Psychology Has to Say about Reasoning 152 6.3.1 Reassessing Cheater Detection 153 6.3.2 Why Cheater Detection Is Claimed to Override Logical Form 155 6.3.3 Altruism 156 6.3.4 The Moral, Part 1: The Problem of Phenotypic Description 157 6.3.5 The Moral, Part 2: What's so Special about Logical Reasoning 159 6.4 Modularity with a Human Face 160 6.4.1 Planning: Continuities with Our Ancestors 161 6.4.2 Discontinuities 163 6.5 Out of the Mouths of Babes and Sucklings 164 6.5.1 Altriciality and Social Behavior 165 6.5.2 Altriciality and Neurogenesis 167 6.5.3 Altriciality in the Evolution of Homo 169 6.6 Conclusion: Back to the Laboratory (and the Drawing Board) 170 II Modeling 173 7 Planning and Reasoning: The Suppression Task 177 7.1 The Suppression Task and Byrne's Interpretation 180 7.2 Logical Forms in the Suppression Task 183 7.2.1 Logic Programming and Planning: Informal Introduction 185 7.2.2 Logic Programming and Planning Formally 186 7.2.3 Strengthening the Closed–World Assumption: Integrity Constraints 189 x Contents 7.2.4 Constructing Models 192 7.3 How Closed–World Reasoning Explains Suppression 195 7.3.1 The Forward Inferences: MP and DA 196 7.3.2 The Backward Inferences: MT and AC 200 7.3.3 Summary 202 7.4 Data from Tutorial Dialogues 203 7.4.1 Suppression of MP Exists 204 7.4.2 Evidence for the Involvement of Closed–World Reasoning in Suppression 205 7.4.3 Is there a Role for Classical Logic? 207 7.4.4 Nonsuppression Comes in Different Flavors 208 7.4.5 Different Roles of the Second Conditional 209 7.4.6 Suppression is Relative to Task Setup 211 7.4.7 The Consistent Subject: a Mythical Beast? 212 7.5 Probabilities Don't Help as Much as Some Would Like 213 8 Implementing Reasoning in Neural Networks 217 8.1 Closed–World Reasoning and Neural Nets 218 8.2 From Logic Programs to Recurrent Neural Networks 222 8.2.1 Positive Programs 222 8.2.2 Definite Programs 225 8.3 Backward Reasoning and Closed–World Reasoning for Rules 231 8.4 Constructing the Nets 232 8.4.1 Fast Functional Links 232 8.4.2 Between the Sheets 234 8.5 A Hidden Layer of Abnormalities 235 8.6 Discussion 237 9 Coping with Nonmonotonicity in Autism 241 9.1 Psychological Theories of Autism 242 9.1.1 Theory of Mind 242 9.1.2 Affective Foundation 243 9.1.3 Weak Central Coherence 244 9.1.4 Executive Disorder 245 9.2 Logic and Experiment in the Study of Psychiatric Disorders 246 9.3 Theory of Mind and Reasoning 248 9.4 Reasoning in the False Belief Task 249 9.4.1 Formal Language and Principles 251 9.4.2 Closed–World Reasoning in the Normal Child Older Than 4 Years 253 9.4.3 Attribution of Beliefs and Closed–World Reasoning in the Younger or Autistic Child 254 Contents xi 9.4.4 Reasoning in an Unexpected Contents Task 255 9.4.5 What This Analysis of the Child's Reasoning Tells Us 257 9.5 Counterfactual Reasoning 259 9.6 Executive Dysfunction and the Box Task 262 9.6.1 Closed–World Reasoning in the Box Task 264 9.6.2 The Suppression Task as a Formal Analogue of the Box Task 266 9.7 Autists' Performance in the Suppression Task 267 9.8 Dialogue Data 269 9.8.1 Excerpts from Dialogues: MP 270 9.8.2 Excerpts from Dialogues: MT 270 9.8.3 Excerpts from Dialogues: AC 272 9.9 A Similar Task with very Different Outcomes 272 9.9.1 The 'A not B' Task 274 9.10 Summing up the Cognitive Analyses 276 9.11 The Biological Setting of Autism 279 9.11.1 Brain Development and Implementations of Closed–World Reasoning 282 9.11.2 The Genetics of Autism and Parental Resource Allocation 288 10 Syllogisms and Beyond 297 10.1 Putting It All Back Together 297 10.2 What is the Syllogistic Task? 298 10.2.1 Syntax 299 10.2.2 Semantics 299 10.3 Euler Circles 301 10.3.1 Strategies for Combining Diagrams 303 10.3.2 Metalogical Considerations 306 10.4 Individual Differences in Interpretation 309 10.4.1 Immediate Inferences and the Understanding of Deductive Tasks 310 10.4.2 A New Experiment on Immediate Inference 312 10.5 Syllogistic Reasoning 316 10.5.1 Individual Factors Influencing Reasoning 317 10.5.2 Statistical analysis 318 10.5.3 From Data Description to a Psychological Model 319 10.5.4 Incorporating Interpretation Factors into the Reasoning Model 323 10.6 Mental Models 331 xii Contents 10.6.1 Experimental Evidence 331 10.6.2 What Is a Mental Model? 332 10.6.3 The "Algorithm" of the Mental Models Theory 332 10.6.4 Predictions 338 10.6.5 Conclusion: The Logic of Mental Models 339 10.6.6 Morals from Syllogisms? 341 III Is Psychology Hard or Impossible? 343 11 Rationality Revisited 347 11.1 Logic and Information–Processing 347 11.1.1 Information Processing 348 11.1.2 Logic as Information–Processing 350 11.1.3 On Why We are Not Postmodern Relativists 352 11.1.4 Logic as Information Extraction: Examples 352 11.1.5 Some Information–Processing is Best Viewed as Logic 354 11.1.6 Nonmonotonic Logic and the Competence/Performance Distinction 355 11.2 The Bottom Line 356 11.2.1 Subjects and Experiments 357 11.2.2 Homo sapiens sapiens 365 Bibliography 367 Citation Index 391 General Index 397 Preface In the late summer of 1998, the authors, a cognitive scientist and a logician, started talking about the relevance of modern mathematical logic to the study of human reasoning, and we have been talking ever since. This book is an interim report of that conversation. It argues that results such as those on the Wason selection task, purportedly showing the irrelevance of formal logic to actual human reasoning, have been widely misinterpreted, mainly because the picture of logic current in psychology and cognitive science is completely mistaken. We aim to give the reader a more accurate picture of mathematical logic and, in doing so, hope to show that logic, properly conceived, is still a very helpful tool in cognitive science. The main thrust of the book is therefore constructive. We give a number of examples in which logical theorizing helps in understanding and modeling observed behavior in reasoning tasks, deviations of that behavior in a psychiatric disorder (autism), and even the roots of that behavior in the evolution of the brain. The manuscript was tried out by us in many courses over the past five years, and has been much improved as a result of the insightful questions of our students. Rineke Verbrugge and Bart Verheij also taught a course from a draft and we thank them and their students for much insightful feedback. We also thank the colleagues who commented on individual chapters or their precursors: Theodora Achourioti, Jonathan Adler, Marian Counihan, Richard Cox, Hartmut Fitz, Jim Greeno, Fritz Hamm, Wilfrid Hodges, Tikitu de Jager, Phil Johnson-Laird, Hans Kamp, Alex Korzec, Max Roberts, Lance Rips, Heleen Smid, and Martin Stokhof. Special thanks go to Bob Kowalski, who read and commented on the entire manuscript. The mistakes are, of course, our own. We dedicate this book to our children.
P A R T I Groundwork
Introduction: Logic and Psychology The purpose of this book is twofold. Our first aim is to see to what extent the psychology of reasoning and logic (more generally, semantics) are relevant to each other. After all, the psychology of reasoning and logic are in a sense about the same subject, even though in the past century a rift has opened up between them. Very superficially speaking, logic appears to be normative, whereas the psychology of reasoning is descriptive and concerned with processing. The first question then is: what is the relation between these two fields of inquiry? The psychology of reasoning as a field currently adopts a particular view of this relation: we propose a quite different one. The book therefore should be relevant to students of logic who are interested in applications of logic to cognition. But the book should also be relevant to any psychologist who is interested in reasoning or communication, or any other cognitive capacity where a cognitive account has to be founded on an informational analysis of a cognitive capacity. These two groups come to the topic with very different methodological equipment. The logic student interested in cognition comes with an understanding of the level of abstraction that modern logical theories operate at, but with possibly sparse knowledge of psychological observations of reasoning. Students of psychology come with knowledge of the experimental literatures, but those literatures are strongly formed by a different conception of logic – a conception, current in the nineteenth century,1 in which logic is thought of as a mechanism for reasoning, and a universal, normatively valid mechanism at that. This presents us with an educational dilemma. The logical analyses presented here are couched at a level which is intended to be comprehensible to nonlogicians with sufficient patience to digest logical formulas.2 From experience, the problems encountered are not so much problems about the technicalities of the systems (which are often not the main point here) but background assumptions about what logic is about and what such systems do and do not attempt to provide. So our message to the psychology student venturing here would 1. Although already at that time more refined conceptions existed; compare section 1.3 on Husserl. 2. Chapter 2 does duty as an introduction to those aspects of logic most important for our purposes. 4 1 Introduction: Logic and Psychology be that we promise to show that these analyses can make a real difference to how empirical investigations are designed, so venturing is well worthwhile. But understanding requires that many routine assumptions about logic are left at the door. Modern logical theories provide a conceptual and mathematical framework for analyzing information systems such as people's reasoning and communication. They do not settle mechanisms or processes of reasoning, but without their conceptualization, it is impossible to know what are empirical and what are conceptual questions. To the student venturing from logic our message is that we obviously cannot provide more than the very bare outlines of a few empirical results, along with some pointers to the literature. So we need to warn against assuming that the empirical phenomena are as simple or separable as they are bound to appear. The immense contribution that psychology has made to understanding the mind largely consists of bodies of empirical knowledge about what phenomena are replicable under what range of conditions. Much of this knowledge is implicit in the literature. This educational dilemma leads naturally to our second wider aim, to discuss some of the theories offered in the literature from the point of view of the philosophy and methodology of science. For instance, both mental models theory and evolutionary psychology, which take their starting points in observations about the psychology of reasoning, have become hugely popular explanatory paradigms in psychology. We will see that the experiments claimed to support these theories are marred by conceptual confusions and attendant methodological errors, and that the theories themselves show little awareness of the subtleties of logic. Part of our purpose is therefore to propose a different methodology for this field, which takes Marr's idea of "levels of analysis" seriously. 1.1 Forms of Rationality Traditionally, rationality is taken to be a defining characteristic of human nature: "man is a rational animal," apparently capable of deliberate thought, planning, problemsolving, scientific theorizing and prediction, moral reasoning, and so forth. If we ask what "rational" means here, we can read such things as: "In rational discourse one strives to arrive at justified true belief," a definition of rationality from an era oriented toward theory. Our more pragmatically oriented age has extended this concept of rationality to actions. For instance, in the MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, "rational agency" is defined as a coherence requirement: [T]he agent must have a means-end competence to fit its actions or decisions, according to its beliefs or knowledge representations, to its desires or goal-structure. 1.1 Forms of Rationality 5 Without such coherence there is no agent. The onus here is on the term fit which seems to have a logical component. If an action is performed which is not part of a plan derived to achieve a given goal, there is no fit. In this sense checking my horoscope before mounting the bike to go to work is not rational, and neither is first puncturing the tires. Philosophy, then, studies the question: are there optimal rules for conducting such activities? Various logics, scientific methodology, heuristics, probability, decision theory, all have claims to normative status here, where normativity means that everybody should obey the rules of these systems in all circumstances. As a consequence, there exists an absolute distinction between valid arguments and fallacies. Judged by these standards, human reasoning in the laboratory is very poor indeed (as shown by the seminal experiments of Wason [295] for logic and Kahneman and Tversky [150] for probability), and it has therefore been said that humans are actually not rational in the sense defined above. It is usually assumed that the results obtained in the psychology of reasoning tell us something about the rationality, or rather the absence thereof, of human reasoning. The following extended quotation from Peter Wason, one of the founding fathers of the field whose "selection task" will serve as our entrypoint below, exemplifies this attitude to perfection. He writes, concluding an overview of his selection task paradigm for The Oxford Companion to the Mind, Our basic paradigm has the enormous advantage of being artificial and novel; in these studies we are not interested in everyday thought, but in the kind of thinking which occurs when there is minimal meaning in the things around us. On a much smaller scale, what do our students' remarks remind us of in real life? They are like saying "Of course, the earth is flat," "Of course, we are descended from Adam and Eve," "Of course, space has nothing to do with time." The old ways of seeing things now look like absurd prejudices, but our highly intelligent student volunteers display analogous miniature prejudices when their premature conclusions are challenged by the facts. As Kuhn has shown, old paradigms do not die in the face of a few counterexamples. In the same way, our volunteers do not often accommodate their thought to new observations, even those governed by logical necessity, in a deceptive problem situation. They will frequently deny the facts, or contradict themselves, rather than shift their frame of reference. Other treatments and interpretations of problem solving could have been cited. For instance, most problems studied by psychologists create a sense of perplexity rather than a specious answer. But the present interpretation, in terms of the development of dogma and its resistance to truth, reveals the interest and excitement generated by research in this area. (Wason [300,p. 644]) What lies behind remarks such as Wason's is the view that reasoning, whether logical or probabilistic, can be judged to be rational if certain reasoning rules from a fixed, given set are followed. If these rules are not followed, dire consequences may result. A good example of this attitude is furnished by Stanovich's book Who is Rational? [254]. The following quotation gives some idea of the 6 1 Introduction: Logic and Psychology passions that infuse this approach. Stanovich considers irrationality to lead to the occurrence of wars, economic busts, technological accidents, pyramid sales schemes, telemarketing fraud, religious fanaticism, psychic scams, environmental degradation, broken marriages, and savings and loan scandals [254,p. 9] and believes teaching good reasoning, that is, normatively correct rules, will go some way toward improving this distressing situation. Stanovich's discussion of rules governing reasoning introduces a distinction between normative, descriptive, and prescriptive rules. We give brief characterizations of the three kinds, followed by representative examples. • Normative rules: reasoning as it should be, ideally – Modus tollens: ¬q, p → q/¬p, – Bayes' theorem: P (D | S) = P (S|D)P (D)P (S) . • Descriptive rules: reasoning as it is actually practiced – Many people do not endorse modus tollens and believe that from ¬q, p → q nothing can be derived. – In doing probabilistic calculations of the probability of a disease given a cluster of symptoms, even experts sometimes neglect the "base rate" and put P (D | S) = P (S | D). • Prescriptive3 rules: these are norms that result from taking into account our bounded rationality, i.e., computational limitations (due to the computational complexity of classical logic, and the even higher complexity of probability theory) and storage limitations (the impossibility of simultaneously representing all factors relevant to a computation, say, of a plan to achieve a given goal). – The classically invalid principle ¬q, p ∧ r → q/¬p ∧ ¬r is correct according to closed–world reasoning, which is computationally much less complex than classical propositional logic, and ameliorates storage problems. – Chater and Oaksford's "heuristic rules" for solving syllogisms. [36] In terms of these three kinds of rules, Stanovich then distinguishes the following positions on the relationship between reasoning and rationality [254,pp.4–9]: • Panglossian. Human reasoning competence and performance is actually normatively correct. What appears to be incorrect reasoning can be explained 3. The term is not very apt, but we will stick to Stanovich's terminology. 1.1 Forms of Rationality 7 by such maneuvers as different task construal, a different interpretation of logical terms, etc. (A famous defense of his point of view can be found in Henlé [122].) As a consequence, no education in "critical thinking" is necessary. • Apologist. Actual human performance follows prescriptive rules, but the latter are in general (and necessarily) subnormal, because of the heavy computational demands of normatively correct reasoning. This point of view was defended by Oaksford and Chater [205, 36]. As a consequence, education in "critical thinking" is unlikely to be helpful. • Meliorist. Actual human reasoning falls short of prescriptive standards, which are themselves subnormal; there is therefore much room for improvement by suitable education (Stanovich's own position). • Eliminativist.4 Reasoning rarely happens in real life, and mainly in institutional contexts such as schools. By contrast, true rationality is adaptiveness: we have developed "fast and frugal algorithms" which allow us to take quick decisions which are optimal given constraints of time and energy. This position is defended by evolutionary psychologists such as Cosmides and Tooby[47, 48] and, in more constructive detail, by Gigerenzer [95]. It will be helpful for the reader if we situate our own position with respect to this scheme. We are definitely not in the eliminativist camp, since we take the view that reasoning is everywhere, most prominently in discourse comprehension. This prime example is often overlooked because of the association of reasoning with conscious processing, but this association is wrong: some reasoning is automatic.5 The same example leads us to think that human reasoning may not be so flawed after all, since it operates rather competently in this domain. We are not Panglossians either, although we emphasize that interpretation is of paramount importance in reasoning. But even if interpretation is important, and interpretations may differ, people may reason in ways which are inconsistent with their chosen interpretation. From a methodological point of view this means that if one uses a particular interpretation to explain performance, one must have evidence for the interpretation which is independent of the performance. The apologist and meliorist positions introduce the distinction between normative and prescriptive rules. Here it becomes clear that Stanovich's scheme is predicated on the assumption that reasoning is about following rules from a fixed, given set, say classical logic, rules which should apply always and everywhere. For if there is no given set of rules which constitutes the norm, and the norm is instead relative to a "domain," then the domain may well include the 4. Actually, this category does not occur in [254], but we have added it due to its increased prominence. 5. Chapter 5 has more on this. 8 1 Introduction: Logic and Psychology cognitive constraints that gave rise to the notion of prescriptive rules, thus promoting the latter to the rank of norm. This is what we will argue for in several places in the book, in particular in chapter 11. In the next section we briefly look at the role logic once played in cognitive science, and the reasons for its demise. 1.2 How Logic and Cognition Got Divorced The cognitive sciences really got off the ground after they adopted the informationprocessing metaphor (Craik [52]): 1. Cognitive explanations must refer to models, conceived of as representational mechanisms 2. which function "in the same way" as the phenomena being represented 3. and which are capable of generating behavior and thoughts of various kinds. The role of logic in this scheme was twofold: on the one hand as a formal, symbolic, representation language (which is very expressive!), on the other hand as an inference mechanism generating behavior and thoughts. It was furthermore believed that these inference mechanisms are continuous with overt reasoning; that is, the same processes can be applied both reflectively and automatically. An extreme form of this attitude is of course Piaget's "logicism" [216], which maintains that the acquisition of formal-deductive operations is the crown of cognitive development. Piaget did the first studies to show that preschool children do not yet master simple classical predicate logic; but he also assumed that everyone gets there in the end. This proved to be the Achilles heel of this form of logicism. Indeed, Wason's selection task was inter alia directed against this assumption, and its apparent outcome – a striking deviation from classical logical reasoning – seemingly undermined the role of logic as an inference mechanism. A further criticism concerned the alleged slowness of logical inference mechanisms, especially when search is involved, for example when backtracking from a given goal. Thus, Newell and Simon style "production systems"[199], of which Anderson and Lebiere's ACT-R [2], is the most famous example, keep only the inference rule of modus ponens, allowing fast forward processing, at the cost of considerable complications elsewhere. Lastly, the advent of neural network theory brought to the fore criticisms of the symbolic representational format given by logic: it would be tied to brittle, all-or-none representations, uncharacteristic of actual cognitive representations with their inherently fuzzy boundaries. As a further consequence of this brittleness, learning symbolic representations would be unrealistically hard. As a result, from the position of being absolutely central in the cognitive revolution, which was founded on conceptions of reasoning, computation, and the analysis 1.3 Two Philosophers on the Certainty of Logic: Frege and Husserl 9 of language, the psychology of deduction has gone to being the deadbeat of cognitive psychology, pursued in a ghetto, surrounded by widespread skepticism as to whether human reasoning really happens outside the academy. "Isn't what we really do decision?" we increasingly often hear. Many eminent psychology departments do not teach courses on reasoning. Imagine such a psychology department (or indeed any psychology department) not teaching any courses on perception. Even where they do teach reasoning they are more likely to be focused on analogical reasoning, thought of as a kind of reasoning at the opposite end from deduction on some dimension of certainty. We will argue that logic and reasoning have ended up in this ghetto because of a series of unwarranted assumptions. One of the tasks of this book is to examine these assumptions, and show that they do not bear scrutiny. As a prelude, we consider the vexed issue of the normative status of logic, through some of the history of present day conceptualizations. 1.3 Two Philosophers on the Certainty of Logic: Frege and Husserl Famously, Aristotle provided the first rules for reasoning with quantifiers of the form "All A are B," "Some A are B," "No A are B" and "Some A are not B," starting centuries of work on how to provide principled explanations for the validity of some syllogisms, and the invalidity of others. This search for an explanation turned to the notion of validity itself (überhaupt, we are tempted to say), and Kant opined in the Critique of Pure Reason that logical laws constitute the very fabric of thought: thinking which does not proceed according to these laws is not properly thinking.6 In the nineteenth century, this "transcendental" doctrine of logic was watered down to a naturalistic version called psychologism, which holds that all of thinking and knowledge are psychological phenomena and that therefore logical laws are psychological laws. To take an example from John Stuart Mill, the law of noncontradiction ¬(A∧¬A) represents the impossibility of thinking contradictory thoughts at the same time. Thus, normative and descriptive rules coincide. What came after, a strong emphasis on normativity, can to a large extent be seen as a reaction to this view. Gottlob Frege was the driving force behind the reaction, and his views still exert their influence on the textbooks. 6. It is impossible to do justice here to Kant's thinking on logic. It is still common to think of Kant's logic as primitive, and its role in the Critique of Pure Reason as an instance of Kant's architectonic mania. This is very far from the truth, and Kant's thinking on, for instance, logical consequence remains relevant to this day. In fact, our concluding chapter 11 has many affinities with Kant, although it would require another book to explain why. Béatrice Longuenesse's Kant and the Capacity to Judge [175] is an excellent guide to the wider significance of Kant's logic. The reader may also consult Patricia Kitcher's Kant's Transcendental Psychology [159] for an exposition of Kant's relevance to cognitive science. Kitcher's remarks on the similarities between Kant's first Critique and Marr's program in cognitive science [183] have influenced chapter 11. We thank Theodora Achourioti for pointing out these connections. 10 1 Introduction: Logic and Psychology 1.3.1 Frege's Idealism in Logic Frege did not hesitate to point out the weak empirical basis of psychologism: is it really true that we cannot simultaneously think contradictory thoughts? Wish it were so! His chief argument, however, was theoretical, and consisted of two main reservations about a naturalistic treatment of logic (and mathematics): 1. Psychologism makes logic pertain to ideas only, and as a consequence it lacks resources to explain why logic is applicable to the real world. 2. Logical and mathematical knowledge are objective, and this objectivity cannot be safeguarded if logical laws are properties of individual minds. We now present a few extracts from Frege's writings to illustrate his views on psychologism. As regards 1 we read: Psychological treatments of logic . . . lead then necessarily to psychological idealism. Since all knowledge is judgmental, every bridge to the objective is now broken off. (G. Frege, Nachgelassene Schriften; see [85]) Neither logic nor mathematics has the task of investigating minds and the contents of consciousness whose bearer is an individual person. (G. Frege, Kleine Schriften; see [85]) The logicians . . . are too much caught up in psychology . . . Logic is in no way a part of psychology. The Pythagorean theorem expresses the same thought for all men, while each person has its own representations, feelings and resolutions that are different from those of every other person. Thoughts are not psychic structures, and thinking is not an inner producing and forming, but an apprehension of thoughts which are already objectively given. (G. Frege, letter to Husserl; see 6, p. 113 of [135]) The last sentence is especially interesting: if "thinking is not an inner producing and forming," cognitive science has no business investigating thinking, logical reasoning in particular. What the psychologist finds interesting in reasoning is precisely what steps the mind executes in drawing an inference, i.e., in the process more than the result. The quotation just given suggests that logic itself has little to contribute to this inquiry, and indeed psychologists have generally heeded Frege's message, either by designing logics which are supposedly cognitively more relevant (e.g., Johnson-Laird's 'mental models' [145]. See Chapter 10, especially 10.6.3), or by ignoring the contributions that formal logic can make to theories of processing. This is a pity, since, as will be shown in the body of the book, the technical apparatus of logic has much to offer to the psychologist. Here is an excerpt relevant to 2: If we could grasp nothing but what is in ourselves, then a [genuine] conflict of opinions, [as well as] a reciprocity of understanding, would be impossible, since there would be 1.3 Two Philosophers on the Certainty of Logic: Frege and Husserl 11 no common ground, and no idea in the psychological sense can be such a ground. There would be no logic that can be appealed to as an arbiter in the conflict of opinions. (G. Frege, Grundgesetze der Arithmetik; the relevant part is reprinted in [85]) From the last quotation we gather that it is apparently highly desirable that logic "can be appealed to as an arbiter in the conflict of opinions," and that therefore there must be a single, objectively valid logic. The second quotation (from the letter to Husserl) provides a reason to believe there is one: logic is as it were the physics of the realm of thought, since it studies the structure of the "objectively given" thoughts. Psychologism is a threat to this normative character of logic, and since a logic worthy of the name must give rise to norms for thinking, psychologism is not a possible theory of logical validity. But, as we have seen, Frege must invoke an objectively given realm of thought to buttress the normative pretensions of logic, and this assumption seems hard to justify. However, if one is skeptical about this objective realm of thought, the specter of relativism rises again. At first sight, the normativity of logic seems to be bound up with the uniqueness of logic; and what better way to safeguard that uniqueness than by positing some underlying reality which the logical laws describe? This is indeed a serious problem, and to solve it requires rethinking the sense in which logic can be considered to be normative. In a nutshell, our answer will be that norms apply to instances of reasoning only after the interpretation of the (logical and nonlogical) expressions in the argument has been fixed, and, furthermore, that there are in general multiple natural options for such interpretations, even for interpreting the logical expressions. Thus, the reasoning process inevitably involves also steps aimed at fixing an interpretation; once this has been achieved, the norms governing logical reasoning are also determined. It will not have escaped the reader's attention that the view of reasoning just outlined7 is very different from the one implicitly assumed by the standard paradigms in the psychology of reasoning. As this book goes to press, a special issue on logical views of psychologism covering a range of contemporary positions is published [171]. One aim of this book is to present a view of reasoning as consisting of reasoning to and reasoning from an interpretation, and to apply this view to experimental studies on reasoning. In philosophy, our precursor here is Husserl, who is playing Aristotle (the metaphysician, not the logician) to Frege's Plato. Husserl's views on logic never made the logic textbooks (at least explicitly), but we nonetheless believe that one can find in him the germs of a semantic conception of logic, which comes much closer than Frege's to how logic functions in actual reasoning. 7. The outline is very rough indeed. For instance, the phrase "once this has been achieved" suggests that the two stages are successive. As we will see in the experimental chapters, however, it is much closer to the truth to view these stages as interactive. 12 1 Introduction: Logic and Psychology 1.3.2 Husserl as a Forerunner of Semantics It was Frege who converted Husserl to antipsychologism. When we read Husserl's criticism of psychologism in Logische Untersuchungen [134], we at first seem to be on familiar ground. If logical laws were empirical laws about psychological events, they would have to be approximative and provisional, like all empirical laws. But logical laws are exact and unassailable, hence they cannot be empirical.8 Psychologism about logical laws also leads to skeptical relativism: it is in principle possible that different people reason according to different logical laws,9 so that what is true for one person may not be true for another – truth, however, is absolute, not indexed to a person. So far these arguments are question begging: we may have a strong desire for logical laws to be exact and unassailable and objective, but we need a justification for assuming that they are. In trying to provide one, Husserl develops a strikingly modern view of logic, and one that is much more conducive to playing a role in cognitive science than Frege's. Husserl's Logische Untersuchungen brings the important innovation that logic must be viewed, not as a normative, but as a theoretical, or as we would now say, mathematical, discipline. Logic as a theoretical discipline is concerned with "truth," "judgment," and similar concepts. Husserl grounds the normative status of logic via a combination of the theoretical statement "only such and such arguments preserve truth" and the normative statement "truth is good," to conclude: "only such and such arguments are good." Splitting off the normative from the mathematical component of logic is potentially beneficial, since it focuses attention on what exactly justifies the normative statement "truth is good," and thus opens up space for a relativized version such as "(this kind of) truth is good (for that purpose)." In slightly more detail,10 Husserl introduces an essentially modern division of logic as concerned with 1. "the pure forms of judgments" (i.e., the syntax of a formal language, but here implying a Kantian delineation of what can be said at all); 2. "the formal categories of meaning" (i.e., the semantic study of concepts such as "variable," "reference," "truth," "proposition," "consequence"11 ); 8. Husserl remarks correctly that even if logical laws are considered empirical, psychologism is under the obligation to explain how we can acquire them, and that no account of how logical laws are learned has been forthcoming. 9. In modern times this is occasionally cheerfully accepted. The logician Dov Gabbay once said in an interview: "Everybody his own logic!" 10. Here we are much indebted to David Bell's Husserl [17], in particular pp. 85 –100. The quotes from Husserl are taken from Bell's monograph. 11. It is of some interest to observe here that for Frege, semantics, although intuitively given, was not a proper field of scientific study, since it involves stepping outside the system which is given a semantic interpretation. See also footnote 12. We agree with Husserl that it is both possible and necessary to reflect on semantic interpretation. 1.3 Two Philosophers on the Certainty of Logic: Frege and Husserl 13 3. "the formal categories of objects" – that is, what is known as "formal ontology," the study of such concepts as "object," "state of affairs," "continuum," "moment." This can be read as saying that part of logic must be the characterization of the structures on which the chosen formal language is interpreted; the next quotation calls these structures "possible fields of knowledge": The objective correlate of the concept of a possible theory, determined exclusively in terms of its form, is the concept of a possible field of knowledge over which a theory of this form will preside. [This field] is characterized by the fact that its objects are capable of certain relations that fall under certain basic laws of such-and-such a determinate form . . . the objects remain entirely indeterminate as regards their matter. . . ([17,p. 90-1]) 4. Lastly, rational thinking also involves systematization, and therefore pure logic must also comprise a study of formal theories, not only of propositions and their inferential relationships; in Husserl's words The earlier level of logic had taken for its theme the pure forms of all significant formations that can occur within a science. Now however, judgment systems in their entirety become the theme (Formale und transzendentale Logik [17,p. 90-1]). Modern logic has followed this last injunction, and studies what is known as "metaproperties" of a logical system such as consistency, the impossibility of deriving a contradiction in the system. Among the most important metaproperties are metatheorems of the form "only such-and-such argument patterns preserve truth," which depend on a preliminary characterization of the notion of truth in the "possible field of knowledge" studied. Normativity comes in only via a principle of the form "in this particular field of knowledge, truth of suchand-such a form is good, therefore only such-and-such arguments are good." This means that logical laws are unassailable in the sense that they are mathematical consequences of the structure of the domain studied, but by the same token these laws are relative to that domain. The reader will see in the body of the book that this view of logic, as not providing absolutely valid norms but as giving norms valid relative to a particular domain, sheds new light on results in the psychology of reasoning which have traditionally been taken to show the incompatibility of logic and actual reasoning.12 12. The preceding paragraphs are not intended as an exegesis of Husserl's thought; our intention is only to identify some strands in Husserl which we consider to be fruitful for thinking about logic. The contrast drawn here between Frege and Husserl is a particular case of the more general distinction, first proposed by Jean van Heijenoort [281], between "logic as a universal language" and "logic as a calculus." On the former conception of logic, whose main champion is Frege, logic is concerned with a single universe of discourse, and the semantic relation between logical language and that universe is ineffable. On the latter conception (which ultimately gave rise to the modern "model–theoretic logics" [15]), there are many possible universes of discourse, logical languages are reinterpretable to fit these universes, and semantics is a legitimate object of scientific study. Van Heijenoort's contrast has been called "a fundamental opposition in twentieth century philosophy" by Hintikka [125] and has been applied to Frege and Husserl in Kusch [165]. 14 1 Introduction: Logic and Psychology For the mathematically inclined reader we include an example of Husserl's views as applied to the domain of arithmetic. If this domain is given a classical, Platonistic interpretation, that is, as concerned with objects which exist independently of the human mind, then the following is not a logical law: (1) (†) if A or B is provable (in system S), then A is provable (in system S) or B is provable (in system S) because on the one hand Gödel's incompleteness theorem has shown that there is a sentence A such that neither A nor ¬A is provable in classical arithmetic, whereas on the other hand the "law of excluded middle" A ∨ ¬A is a logical law in classical arithmetic. If, however, the domain of arithmetic is conceptualized as being about particular mental constructions, as mathematicians of the intuitionistic persuasion claim, then it is a mathematical fact that (†) is a logical law (and that therefore the law of excluded middle is not). Normative issues arise, not at the level of logical laws (e.g., the law of excluded middle), but at the level of what description to choose for the domain of interest. Changing one's logical laws then becomes tantamount to changing the description of the domain. Husserl's view has the value of focusing attention on the relation between mathematics and empirical phenomena in general, as one source of difficulty in understanding the relation between logic and human reasoning. The relation between mathematics and empirical phenomena is problematical in any domain, but it may be more problematical in this domain than most. Appreciating the continuity of these problems, and identifying their source is one way forward. Seeing logic as the mathematics of information systems, of which people are one kind, is quite a good first approximation to the view we develop here. This view helps in that it makes clear from the start that one's choice is never between "doing psychology" and "doing logic." Understanding reasoning is always going to require doing both, simply because science does not proceed far without mathematical, or at least conceptual apparatus. So we see history turning circle, though not full circle. Like Mill and Husserl, we see logic and psychology as very closely linked. Frege rejected this view. Husserl developed a much more sophisticated view of the relation, which foreshadows our own in its emphasis on semantics. Later, Frege's view of logic foundered on Russell's paradoxes which showed that logic couldn't be universal and homogeneous. In response logic developed the possibility of explicitly studying semantics, and still later, developed a multiplicity of logics. Much of the technical development necessary for studying semantics took place in the context of the foundations of mathematics which took logic very far from psychology. In mid-twentieth century, Montague reapplied the much transformed technical apparatus of logical semantics to the descriptive analysis of natural languages. We now apply the availability of a multiplicity of logics back onto 1.4 What the Reader May Expect 15 the subject matter of discourse and psychology. Of course psychology too has changed out of all recognition since Mill – the whole apparatus of psychological experiment postdates Mill's view. So our "psychologism" is very different from Mill's, but the closeness of psychology and logic is something shared. Our psychologism clearly requires an account of how logic in its modern guise as mathematical system is related to psychology in its modern guise as experimental science. 1.4 What the Reader May Expect The remainder of the book is structured as follows. Chapter 2 is a somewhat unorthodox introduction to logic, which tries to break the hold of classical logic by showing it results from contingent assumptions on syntax and semantics. Systematic variation of these assumptions gives rise to several logics that have applications in actual human reasoning. This chapter in particular introduces closed–world reasoning, a form of reasoning that will be very important in part II of the book. In chapters 3 and 4 we study the Wason selection task from the vantage point developed in this introduction and in chapter 2: as a task in which subjects are mostly struggling to impose an interpretation on the experimental materials instead of engaging with the materials as the experimenter intends them to do. Chapter 3 contains many examples of tutorial dialogues with subjects which show what interpretational difficulties they experience, and chapter 4 reports on experiments establishing that alleviating these difficulties by modifying the task instructions leads to a vast increase in correct performance, when measured against the classical competence model. The selection task has played a major role in debates on evolutionary psychology, with Cosmides [47] claiming that her results on facilitation of the task with social contract materials show that the only abilities humans have in logical reasoning are due to an innate module for "cheater detection." We believe that this highly influential point of view is mistaken, for two reasons: a faulty view of logic, and a faulty view of evolution. chapter 5 considers the influence this faulty logical paradigm has had on the psychology of reasoning, and chapter 6 is a lengthy discussion of the evolution of human cognition. The latter chapter introduces a hypothesis that will play an important role in part II: that the origin of the human ability for logical reasoning must be sought in the planning capacity, and that closed–world reasoning (which governs planning) is therefore a very fundamental form of reasoning, stretching across many domains. Chapter 7 applies this idea to the analysis of the suppression task (Byrne [28]), which is standardly interpreted as providing evidence for "mental models" and against "mental rules." We show that the data from this task can be explained on the assumption that subjects assimilate the task to a discourse– processing task, using closed–world reasoning, by presenting a rigorously for16 1 Introduction: Logic and Psychology mal model of subjects' reasoning in a logical system called "logic programming," which we consider to be the most appealing form of closed–world reasoning. We also present data from tutorial dialogues corroborating our interpretation of what subjects are doing. In chapter 8, it is shown that closed–world reasoning has a revealing neural implementation and that there need not be an opposition between logical and connectionist modeling. Chapter 9 applies the ideas of chapters 7 and 8 to autism. We analyse several tasks on which autistic people are known to fail, such as the false belief task and the box task, and find that these tasks have a common logical structure which is identical to that of the suppression task discussed in chapter 7. This leads to a prediction for autistic people's behavior on the suppression task, which has been verified. This latter result is analysed in terms of the neural implementation developed in chapter 8, which then allows us to make a connection to the genetics of autism. Chapter 10 discusses syllogisms. These are, of course, the first reasoning patterns studied in psychology, but for us their interest lies in the necessity to apply substantial interpretational theories from linguistics and philosophy to explain the data. This explains why syllogisms only occur near the end of the book: the reader must first be familiar with both interpretation processes of reasoning to an interpretation and derivational processes of reasoning from the interpretation imposed. Lastly, chapter 11 makes explicit our view of logic and its relevance to actual reasoning. The role of logic is to aid in "going beyond the information given" when processing information. Just as in visual information processing, mathematical structure (edges etc.) must be imposed upon the retinal array, because this structure is not literally present in the data, so some logical form must first be imposed on a problem requiring reasoning before the actual reasoning can take place. In the end, we aim to convince the reader that using the formal machinery of modern logic leads to a much more insightful explanation of existing data, and a much more promising research agenda for generating further data. If we succeed, then there are general morals to be drawn about what philosophy of science is appropriate for the psychology of "higher" cognitive functions. At present, experimental psychology is much influenced by a Popperian philosophy which sees hypothesis testing as the central activity in science. We will see that Wason himself was much influenced by this account of science in explaining his subjects' responses. But Popper's account, important as it is, in the intervening years has been shown to be a very partial account. If science is hypothesis testing, where do hypotheses come from? Why test this one rather than that? A great deal of science is exploration and observation which don't fall easily under the umbrella of hypothesis testing. Highly developed sciences such as physics, which are overwhelmingly the cases studied by philosophers of science, have powerful abstract bodies of theory which guide exploration 1.4 What the Reader May Expect 17 and observation, and through them the selection of hypotheses, when the time comes to test hypotheses. Psychology lacks such bodies of abstract theory, and so one sees implicit theories playing important roles in choosing what hypotheses to test. "Surprisingness" of a phenomenon as compared to some implicit theory of that phenomenon is a crucial quality indicating when hypothesis testing is worth the effort. If Wason's observations of failures of rationality in the selection task hadn't been so counterintuitive, then we (and you) would never have heard of them. We will expend considerable effort in chapter 3 in making explicit Wason's (implicit) background theory against which the results are so surprising, and in showing how logic can provide explicit background abstractions which change the way hypotheses can be chosen and experiments designed. A corollary of the lack of background abstract theories in psychology is the use of direct operationalization of abstract concepts in experimental procedures: data categories are assumed to be very closely related to their theoretical categories. As a consequence, the data observed are supposed to have a direct bearing on the theoretical hypotheses. In mature sciences this doesn't happen. There are always 'bridging' inferences required between observation and theory, and an apparent falsification may direct attention to unwarranted auxiliary assumptions. Especially in chapter 10, though also throughout, we will illustrate how logic can open up space for observation and exploration between data and theory. Young sciences like psychology require lots of observation and exploration, so a methodology which opens up space for these activities is vital. In the study of human cognition, this space between data and theory or hypothesis is particularly broad because of our human capacity for multiple interpretation. Indeed, some resistance to taking interpretation seriously in studying reasoning comes from the belief that this space is too broad to be bridged. Once we acknowledge the possibility of full human interpretive capacities, then, so the argument goes, the possibility of science goes out the window. In particular it is often felt that the scientific study of reasoning is impossible once it is allowed that the logical expressions are subject to the possibility of multiple interpretations. Rejecting the possibility of multiple interpretation because it is held to make science impossible is truly the logic of the drunk searching beneath the lamppost who prefers the illuminated circle to the dark space where he knows he lost his keys. We take the general human capacity for multiple interpretation to be as close to fact as it is possible to get in cognitive science, and prefer to follow it where it leads in choosing our methods of investigation. In fact, one sees this battle fought repeatedly in each area of human cognition. It remains under control to some extent in perception, because there the experimenter has "stimulus control" – she can twiddle the display, and observe what the subject reports seeing.13 But in, for example, memory, the problem has been 13. In fact this is something of an illusion, because the subject brings preexisting knowledge to bear in 18 1 Introduction: Logic and Psychology recognized ever since Ebbinghaus [68] invented nonsense syllables in order to eliminate the interpretive effects of subjects' long-term knowledge which is beyond experimental control. In memory, the problem leads to a split between the Ebbinghaus tradition of laboratory experimentation on abstracted materials, and the Bartlettian tradition of studying, for example, autobiographical memory [12]. Both have contributions to make, but both require an understanding of their distinctive approaches to assimilate those contributions. The problem of treating "content" or "general knowledge" or "experience prior to the experiment" is endemic in psychology, and the life of the psychological researcher is much taken up with getting around the barriers it throws up. The psychology of reasoning's adoption of "abstract tasks" can be seen as following in the Ebbinghausian tradition, and reaction against those tasks as Bartlettian rejection of that tradition. Logic itself is interpreted by psychologists as the most extreme form of the Ebbinghausian approach in which content is banished entirely. However, our argument is that this is no longer true in modern logic. The default logics we present here are actually interpretable as modeling the relation between a working memory holding the experimental input materials and a long-term memory holding "general knowledge." So these logics present a formalization of "content." They thus attack psychology's central problem head-on. Of course, they do not offer a model of the long-term memory of some actual adult human being (nor even an idealized adult human being at standard temperature and pressure). But they do offer precise formal models of how large databases of default conditionals can control the interpretation of richly meaningful input texts. Essentially similar computer architectures are the basis for implementing real-world useful databases of general knowledge in practical applications. Of course the philosophical problems of "symbol grounding" remain. But nevertheless, here is the first plausible head-on approach to the formal modeling of content which offers to reconcile Ebbinghaus with Bartlett. It should be evident that these issues are close to the heart of problems about the relations between the humanities and the sciences, and it is entirely fitting that they should come up when trying to do scientific research into the nature of the human mind. It is interesting that representatives of more conservative approaches to both sciences and the humanities have felt it important to try to defeat the very possibility of cognitive science's computational model of the mind. We hope to explain just why that model is felt to be so threatening, to defuse some of the concerns arising, and to show that one can avoid both misplaced scientific reductionism and postmodern hyperrelativism by engaging in a logically based and experimentally informed study of human interpretive capacities. making perceptual interpretations, but it is an illusion persistent enough to allow progress. 2 The Anatomy of Logic We have seen that logic was once thought relevant to the study of cognition both as a representational format and as an inference mechanism, and that developments in psychology (Wason, increasing prominence of neural network modeling, decision theory) and in philosophy (concerns with normativity, antipsychologism) have led to the widely shared view that logic is irrelevant to cognition. We have sketched a new view of logical reasoning, following Husserl, in which reasoning is simultaneously formal and relative to a domain. On this view, cognitive science needs to be much more attentive to semantics – because meaning is often not given but constructed. Indeed, we will see that subjects' behavior in reasoning tasks (e.g., Wason's selection task) is much less irrational than is commonly thought, once one takes into account that these subjects are struggling to impose a meaning on the task. It is by no means obvious to the subject that her reasoning must be based on the classical interpretation of the conditional as material implication. In fact, the interest of the standard reasoning tasks lies precisely in the window it offers on subjects' efforts to impose meaning. As a first step toward weaning the reader away from the idea that the semantics of logical expressions is given by classical logic, this chapter presents the reader with an overview of the semantic possibilities. This chapter is organized as follows. We start from a popular conception of logical reasoning according to which, to see whether an argument is valid, one translates it into the formal language of classical logic and checks the resulting pattern for classical validity. We argue that this conception is inadequate, and oppose it to a formal version of Husserl's view, in which one distinguishes reasoning from an interpretation and reasoning to an interpretation.1 We conceive of the latter as a form of parameter setting. To illustrate the idea, we start from the four parameter choices defining classical logic, which is appropriate for the 1. We will use the verb "to interpret" in this book in its Oxford English Dictionary sense of "to make out the meaning of," and the noun "interpretation" as the result of that activity, or occasionally as the process itself. This is not saying much if we do not explain what "to make out" and "meaning" mean. In fact, most of this book is concerned with explaining what is involved in "making out the meaning of," and no simple explanation can be given at this stage. 20 2 The Anatomy of Logic domain of classical mathematics, and by systematic variation of the parameters obtain logics which are appropriate for other domains. 2.1 How Not to Think about Logical Reasoning In the psychology of reasoning literature one commonly finds a picture of reasoning as proceeding according to preestablished logical laws, which can be applied by anybody in any circumstances whatsoever. It would not do to blame the psychologists for this, because it is a picture frequently promulgated in the philosophical literature. To take just one example, we see Ryle [239] characterizing logical constants (for example, all, some, not, and, or, if ) as being indifferent to subjectmatter, or as it is sometimes callled, topic neutral. Characterizations such as this are related to a superficial reading of the classical definition of validity, say for a syllogism such as All A are B. All B are C. Therefore, all A are C. The validity of this schema is taken to mean something like "whatever you substitute for A, B and C, if the premises are true for the substitution, then so is the conclusion." Analyzing an argument thus consists of finding the topic-neutral expressions (the logical constants), replacing the topic-dependent expressions by variables, and checking whether a substitution that verifies the premises also verifies the conclusion. If so, one knows that the argument is correct for the particular substitution one is interested in. This schematic character of inference patterns is identified with the "domainindependence" or "topic neutrality" of logic generally, and many take it to be the principal interest of logic that its laws seem independent of subject matter. In fact, however, logic is very much domaindependent in the sense that the valid schemata depend on the domain in which one reasons, with what purpose. We therefore view reasoning as consisting of two stages: first one has to establish the domain about which one reasons and its formal properties (what we will call "reasoning to an interpretation") and only after this initial step has been taken can one's reasoning be guided by formal laws (what we will call "reasoning from an interpretation"). 2.2 Reasoning to an Interpretation as Parameter Setting We should start with an informal illustration of what the process of interpretation involves, which falls into at least two questions – what things are actually in the domain? and also: what kinds of reasoning will be done about them? We start with the former question, which has been extensively studied in the 2.2 Reasoning to an Interpretation as Parameter Setting 21 formal semantics of natural languages. We illustrate the general distinction between the two questions with some homely examples of discourse understanding, which will then introduce a particular distinction that will figure centrally in the rest of the book. Once upon a time there was a butcher, a baker, and a candlestick maker. One fine morning, a body was discovered on the village green, a dagger protruding from its chest. The murderer's footprints were clearly registered in the mud. . . . Well, what follows from this discourse? For example, how many people are there? If we take the most likely approach to interpreting this discourse outside of logic class, we will assume that there are at least three people – a butcher, a baker, and a candlestick maker. There are, of course also the corpse and the murderer, but it is an active question whether these are identical with any of the former three, and who else may there be in this dire place? These questions are questions about what things, or people, or other entities are in the domain of interpretation. Mundane as these questions are, they are absolutely central to how natural language functions in progressively constructing interpretations as discourse proceeds. It should be made clear from the outset that discourse interpretation is not at all exhausted by composing the meanings of the lexical items (as given by the dictionary) in the way dictated by the syntax of the sentences. Contextual information plays a crucial role. For instance, the question, what are the characters in this discourse? is a question about what is in the current domain of interpretation, and the answer to this question may well depend on discourse context, as we shall see. Clearly our knowledge of the dictionary plays a role in our answer to this question, but does not by itself provide the answer. Domains of natural language interpretation are often very local, as they are here. They often change sentence by sentence as the discourse proceeds. It is this sense of interpretation, rather than the dictionary-level sense, which generally occupies us here. Suppose now we have instead a discourse that runs as follows: Some woman is a baker. Some woman is a butcher. Some woman is a candlestickmaker. Some person is a murderer. Some person is a corpse. All women are men.2, 3, 4 Now we are much more likely to entertain considerably more possibilities about how many people there are, cued perhaps by the "logical puzzle" style of the discourse. Now it becomes entirely possible that the butcher may turn out to be the baker, or one person might pursue all three professions, even before we 2. NB. The Oxford English Dictionary defines, under its first sense for man, "a human being irrespective of gender." 3. "Oh man!, these guys' language is archaic!" addressed to a female human is an example of the Oxford English Dictionary's archaic usage hidden in modern oral vernacular English. 4. The previous two footnotes are irrelevant if this discourse is processed from a skeptical stance. 22 2 The Anatomy of Logic start on the problem about who is dead and who has been nasty, and just who else is in this village, if there is one. The first discourse is likely to be understood with what we will call a credulous stance. As we interpret the discourse, we take our task to be to construct a model of the story which is the same as the speaker's "intended model," and we assume that we are to use whatever general and specific knowledge we have, including the assumption that the speaker is being cooperative in constructing her discourse, to help us guess which model this is. The second discourse is likely to be understood with what we will call a skeptical stance in which we do not use any information save the explicitly stated premises, and we are to entertain all possible arrangements of the entities that make these statements true. This stance explains already why the footnotes are completely irrelevant to this interpretation and merely designed to lead us astray. First note that these different stances lead to quite different numbers of people in the domains of interpretations of the two texts. In the first discourse we know5 that there is no policeman although we also know, from general knowledge, that this is likely to change rather soon. In the second we do not know whether there is a policeman, but unless we are explicitly told that there isn't (or told something which explicitly rules it out) then we still do not know, even though no policeman is ever mentioned. These "number-of-things" questions are only the most tangible tip of the iceberg of differences between the domains we get when we process with these two different stances, but they suffice for our present illustrative purposes. Credulous and skeptical stances are good examples of the second kind of issue about interpretations – what kinds of reasoning will we do about the things in the domain? Credulous reasoning is aimed at finding ideally a single interpretation which makes the speaker's utterances true, generally at the expense of importing all sorts of stuff from our assumed mutual general knowledge. Skeptical reasoning is aimed at finding only conclusions which are true in all interpretations of the explicit premises. These are very different goals and require very different logics, with, for example, different syntactic structures and different concepts of validity. The differences in goals are socially important differences. In credulous understanding we accept (at least for the purposes of the discourse) the authority of the speaker for the truth of what is said. We are only at an impasse when there appears to be a contradiction which leaves us with no model of the discourse, and when this happens we try to repair our interpretation in order to restore a model. In skeptical understanding, we consider ourselves as on allfours with the speaker as regards authority for inferences, and we may well challenge what is said on the basis that a conclusion doesn't follow because we can find a single interpretation of the premises in which that conclusion is false. 5. By what is known as "closed–world reasoning," for which see section 2.3. 2.2 Reasoning to an Interpretation as Parameter Setting 23 A good illustration of the distinction between credulous and skeptical reasoning is furnished by legal reasoning in the courtroom, of which the following is a concrete example (simplified from a case which recently gained notoriety in the Netherlands). A nurse is indicted for murdering several terminally ill patients, who all died during her shifts. No forensic evidence of foul play is found, but the public prosecutor argues that the nurse must have caused the deaths, because she was the only one present at the time of death. This is an example of "plausible" or "credulous" reasoning: an inference is drawn on the basis of data gathered and plausible causal relationships.6 The defense countered the prosecutor's argument with an instance of 'skeptical' reasoning, by arguing that the cause of death might as well have been malfunctioning of the morphine pumps, and contacted the manufacturer to see whether morphine pumps had had to be recalled because of malfunctioning – which indeed turned out be the case (although in the end it did not help the defendant). The move of the defence can be viewed as enlarging the class of models considered, thus getting closer to the standard notion of logical consequence where one considers all models of the premises instead of a restricted class. Here is Ryle [239,p.116] again, this time with a very pertinent remark: There arises, I suppose, a special pressure upon language to provide idioms of the [logical] kind, when a society reaches the stage where many matters of interest and importance to everyone have to be settled or decided by special kinds of talk. I mean, for example, when offenders have to be tried and convicted or acquitted; when treaties and contracts have to be entered into and observed or enforced; when witnesses have to be cross-examined; when legislators have to draft practicable measures and defend them against critics; when private rights and public duties have to be precisely fixed; when complicated commercial arrangements have to be made; when teachers have to set tests to their pupils; and . . . when theorists have to consider in detail the strengths and weaknesses of their own and one another's theories. We have chosen to illustrate the kinds of issues that go into deciding what domain is adopted in an interpretation with this particular distinction because it is the one that is at the center of many of the misunderstandings between experimenter and subject in the psychology of reasoning experiments. The what things are in the domain? question is always present in any process of interpretation. The what kind of reasoning are we doing? question is rather different for different distinctions. So far we have been talking about domain in a rather loose manner, as roughly synonymous with universe of discourse. For logical purposes it is important to make a type-token distinction here. The domain mentally constructed while interpreting a discourse is a concrete instance – a token – of a general kind – 6. A note for the logically minded reader: this can be viewed as an inference where the premises are interpreted on a very restricted class of models, namely models in which no "mysterious" events happen, neither divine intervention nor unknown intruders. 24 2 The Anatomy of Logic the type – which determines the logical properties of the token. It is very hard to completely pin down this general notion of a type of domain itself; we will try to do so in a later chapter on evolutionary approaches to reasoning, where the notion of "domain specificity" of reasoning plays an important role. But we can at least list some examples that will be treated in this book: actions, plans and causality; contracts; norms; other people's beliefs; mathematical objects; natural laws. Slightly more formally, a domain is characterized by a set of mathematical representations, called structures, of the main ingredients of the domain (e.g., the objects in the domain, their relations, the events in which they participate), together with a formal language to talk and reason about these structures. The connection between structures and formal language is given by what is technically known as a definition of satisfaction: a characterization of how the formal language is interpreted on the relevant set of structures. This notion of domain is extremely general, and instead of being more precise at this point, we refer the reader to the different examples that will be given below. The reader may wonder why language and logic should be relative to a domain: isn't there a single language – one's mother tongue – which we use to talk and reason about everything? Much of the progress in mathematical logic in the last century shows, however, that it is not useful to have a single language (with a single semantics) for talking about everything. For instance, the vague predicates that we will meet when discussing diagnostic reasoning in medicine can perhaps be represented by fuzzy logic with its continuum of truth–values (see section 2.2.3), but it would make no sense to use this semantics for classical mathematics. For another example, consider two radically different ways of doing mathematics: classical and constructive mathematics. Very roughly speaking, the difference is that the former tradition, unlike the latter, accepts the principle of bivalence: a sentence is either true or false (see section 2.2.3 for an explanation of why this principle is sometimes unwarranted). Constructive mathematics is often useful in computer science, because the results it yields have algorithmic significance, while this is not guaranteed of results in classical mathematics. It occasionally happens that the same mathematician may apply both methods, depending on the domain she is working in. So does she believe in bivalence, or doesn't she? The answer is that sometimes she does, and sometimes she doesn't, whatever is most appropriate to the domain of interest. In this sense logics are local. One might want to argue that in such cases one should adopt the weakest logic (in this case the one without bivalence) as one's generally valid logic; after all, how can a principle such as bivalence be called logical at all if it is considered to be false in some domains? One quick answer to this argument is that this "weakest logic" soon trivializes when including more domains, for example when considering also uncertain information instead of just truth and proof. One may conclude from this that logic as a system of generally valid inference principles has no role to play in actual reasoning. Another op2.2 Reasoning to an Interpretation as Parameter Setting 25 tion, and the one advocated here, is to give up the idea that logic must be such a system. Clearly, however, if logic is not given, the question becomes how one comes to reason in a particular logic. The answer argued for in the book, and made explicit in chapter 11, is that mastering a particular domain essentially involves mastering its logical laws. These brief indications must suffice at this stage, and we will return to the wider issues in the concluding chapter. We are now ready to delve into the technicalities. The approach to logic which we would like to advocate views logics from the point of view of possible syntactic and semantic choices, or what we will call parameter settings. This metaphor should not be taken too literally: we do not claim that a logic can be seen as a point in a well-behaved many-dimensional space. The use of the term parameter here is analogous to that in generative linguistics, where universal grammar is thought to give rise to concrete grammars by fixing parameters such as word order.7 The set of parameters characterizing a logic can be divided in three subsets 1. Choice of a formal language 2. Choice of a semantics for the formal language 3. Choice of a definition of valid arguments in the language As we shall see, different choices for the parameters may be appropriate in different domains – each domain gives rise to a notion of structure, and in principle each domain comes with its own language.8 To familiarize the reader with this idea, we first present classical propositional logic as resulting from four contingent assumptions, which are sometimes appropriate, sometimes not. We will then vary these assumptions to obtain a host of different logics, all useful in some context. 2.2.1 Classical Propositional Logic The purpose of this section is to show that classical logic is inevitable once one adopts a number of parameter settings concerning syntax, meaning and truth, and logical consequence; and furthermore that these settings are open to debate. The relevant parameter settings are: 1. [syntax] fully recursive language: if φ,ψ are formulas, then so are ¬φ, φ → ψ, φ ∨ ψ, φ ∧ ψ, . . . 9; 7. This is just an analogy; we are not committed to anything like UG. 8. This approach to logic was pursued in the 1980s under the heading of "model theoretic logics"; see [14]. 9. This definition generates formulas like (φ → θ) → ψ. The iteration of a conditional inside the antecedent of another conditional illustrated by this last formula will turn out to be a distinctive property of this language, which sets it off from the language we use to model credulous interpretation. 26 2 The Anatomy of Logic 2. [semantics] truth–functionality: the truth–value of a sentence is a function of the truth–values of its components only; (2′. as a consequence: evaluation of the truth–value can be determined in the given model (the semantics is extensional)); 3. [semantics] bivalence: sentences are either true or false, with nothing in between; 4. [consequence] the Bolzano–Tarski notion of logical consequence10: α1 . . . αn/β is valid iff β is true on all models of α1 . . . αn. These assumptions force a unique formalization of the logical connectives not, and, or, if . . . then, as given by the familiar truth–tables in figure 2.1. p ¬p 1 0 0 1 p q p ∧ q 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 1 0 p q p ∨ q 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 1 p q p → q 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 Figure 2.1 Truth–tables for classical logic. It is instructive to see how our four assumptions (in conjunction with intuitive judgments about meaning) lead to the formalization of the conditional "if . . . then" as the "material implication" → defined by the above truth–table. Truth–functionality requires that if the truth–values of p, q are given, so is that of p → q, and bivalence forces these to be either 0 or 1. We can see from this that if p is true and q is false, then p → q must be false; for if it were true then modus ponens (p, p → q |= q) would fail. Furthermore an application of the definition of validity shows that the following argument patterns are valid : p, q |= q and p,¬p |= q. From this it follows from the intuitive meaning of the conditional that q |= p → q and ¬p |= p → q. Indeed, one may argue for an implication p → q by assuming p and inferring from this (and given premises) that q. But this reduces q |= p → q to p, q |= q. The validity of ¬p |= p → q is established similarly. The classical definition of validity is monotonic, that is, if α1 . . . αn |= β, then also δ, α1 . . . αn |= β. It follows that the valid argument q |= p → q forces p → q to be true if p, q are true and if ¬p, q are true; in addition, ¬p |= p → q forces p → q to be true if ¬p,¬q are true. We have now justified all the lines of the truth–table. 10. Whether this historical attribution is correct is debatable; see [71], also for elaborate discussion of the flaws of this particular definition of validity. 2.2 Reasoning to an Interpretation as Parameter Setting 27 Domains to which classical logic is applicable must satisfy the four assumptions. Classical mathematics is a case in point. Here it is assumed that all statements are true or false – together with truth–functionality this gives the celebrated principle of excluded middle p ∨ ¬p, which we will see in action later. The definition of logical consequence is a very important feature of modern mathematics: it implies that a counterexample to a theorem makes it false. Trivial as this may seem nowadays, this has not always been the case; in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it was not uncommon to conclude that a purported counterexample did not belong to the "domain" of the theorem, thus effectively restricting the class of models. One may consult the work of Lakatos, in particular [167], for instructive examples.11 Are these four assumptions in general always fulfilled? The next sections provide example domains in which various combinations of the assumptions obviously fail, and we will indicate what logics are appropriate to these domains instead. 2.2.2 Truth–Functionality without Bivalence Why would every statement be either true or false? This depends of course very much on what you want to mean by "true" and "false." One could stipulate that "not true" is the same as false, but such a stipulation is definitely inappropriate if we consider "true" to mean "known to be true." One example of where this occurs in practice is a computerized primality test which checks whether the input 21257787 − 1 is a prime number. One could say that, while the program is running, the statement "21257787 − 1 is a prime number" is undecided; but a decision may follow in the end, if the program halts.12 One possibility to formalise this idea, originated by [160] is to add a third truth–value u for "undecided" or "not known to be true and not known to be false"; u can (but need not) "evolve" toward "known to be true" or "known to be false" when more information comes in. This uniquely determines the truth–tables as given in figure 2.2. The other three assumptions characterizing classical logic are still in force here. The resulting logic is appropriate to the domain of computable functions, and also to paradoxical sentences such as "I am false," and more generally to languages which contain their own truth predicate (such as natural language). 11. A note for the logically minded reader. In principle the language of classical mathematics is fully recursive. In practice, restrictions apply, so that particular structures, for example the reals, are described in a restricted language. One of the triumphs of mathematical logic is the use of these restrictions in language to prove positive results about the structures that the language describes. 12. It does, and the number is prime. 28 2 The Anatomy of Logic p ¬p 1 0 0 1 u u p q p ∧ q 1 1 1 0 0 0 u u u 1 0 0 1 u u 0 1 0 0 u 0 u 1 u u 0 0 p q p ∨ q 1 1 1 0 0 0 u u u 1 0 1 1 u 1 0 1 1 0 u u u 1 1 u 0 u p q p → q 1 1 1 0 0 1 u u u 1 0 0 1 u u 0 1 1 0 u 1 u 1 1 u 0 u Figure 2.2 Truth–tables for Kleene three-valued logic. 2.2.3 A Domain in which Bivalence is Truly Ridiculous Here is an excerpt from a textbook on cancer, in a section on differential diagnosis. The reader should realise that this is the kind of text that guides a physician in her decision making. We have distinguished typographically two classes of expressions: in boldface vague expressions like "small," "painful," "entire," "changes," "diffuse without sharp demarcation," "feels like a tumour," . . . ; and in italic qualitative-probabilistic adverbs like "usually," "often," "approximately 15% of the cases," "if A maybe B," "infrequently – more often." Chronic cystic disease is often confused with carcinoma of the breast. It usually occurs in parous women with small breasts. It is present most commonly in the upper outer quadrant but may occur in other parts and eventually involve the entire breast. It is often painful, particularly in the pre-menstrual period, and accompanying menstrual disturbances are common. Nipple discharge, usually servous, occurs in approximately 15% of the cases, but there are no changes in the nipple itself. The lesion is diffuse without sharp demarcation and without fixation to the overlying skin. Multiple cysts are firm, round and fluctuant and may transilluminate if they contain a clear fluid. A large cyst in an area of chronic cystic disease feels like a tumour, but is usually smoother and well-delimited. The axillary lymph nodes are usually not enlarged. Chronic cystic disease infrequently shows large bluish cysts. More often, the cysts are multiple and small. (J.A. del Regato. Diagnosis, treatment and prognosis. Pages 860–861. In L.V. Ackerman (editor) Cancer 1970. To find logical regularities in this domain is challenging, to put it mildly. Vague predicates have sometimes been formalized using many-valued logics, and there have been attempts to model frequency adverbs using probability theory. The reader is urged to compare the preceding piece of text with the formal systems that follow, to see whether they add to her understanding. It is also important to be aware that in real life vagueness may be treated by being avoided. Consider the locus classicus for the rejection of logic in cognitive science: Rosch and Mervis's arguments for its inapplicability to human 2.2 Reasoning to an Interpretation as Parameter Setting 29 classificatory behavior in [233]. Classical logic represents the extension of a predicate by a set, to which things either belong or they don't. No half measures. But people classify things by shades. They represent typical members of extensions. Red is typified by the color of blood and the color of red hair is a peripheral red. There is cognitive structure here which there is not in a set. And so, argue Rosch and Mervis, logic is inapplicable. This is a good example of a levels confusion. Rosch and Mervis are concerned with the dictionary meanings of vague words such as red. Logic is concerned with meaning as it occurs at the discourse level and has very little to say about the dictionary level; but the point is that it need not. Suppose we start a conversation which includes the word red. It is unlikely that the vagueness of this term will become critical to our mutual interpretation – we may be happy that we know how to classify all the relevant objects (perhaps three traffic lights) with regard to this term perfectly crisply. If it does become a problem then we may resort to increased precision – "by red I mean crimson lake as manufactured by Pigment Corp." – which may or may not replace the word red entirely. Practically all natural language words are vague, and they would be useless if they weren't, but if we design our discourse well, their vagueness will be well tailored to the local communicative situation. Another way to make the same point is with reference to Marr's methodology as outlined in [183,p. 357ff], in particular chapter 7, where he conducts a dialogue with himself and asks What do you feel are the most promising approaches to semantics? The answer is Probably what I call the problem of multiple descriptions of objects and the resolution of the problems of reference that multiple descriptions introduce. . . . I expect that at the heart of our understanding of intelligence will lie at least one and probably several important principles about organizing and representing knowledge that in some sense capture what is important about our intellectual capabilities, [namely:] 1. The perception of an event or object must include the simultaneous computation of several different descriptions of it, that capture diverse aspects of the use, purpose, or circumstances of the event or object. 2. That the various descriptions referred to in 1. include coarse versions as well as fine ones. These coarse descriptions are a vital link in choosing the appropriate overall scenarios . . . and in establishing correctly the roles played by the objects and actions that caused those scenarios to be chosen. A coarse description of a vague predicate, using classical logic, may well be able to model the avoidance of the vagueness which is endemic in discourse. Alternatively, we may move to a finer description, meet vagueness head-on, and change our logic. We give two examples. 30 2 The Anatomy of Logic Dealing with Vagueness: Łukasiewicz Logic This logic also differs from classical logic in that it has a third truth–value (12 ), but this value now means "intermediate between true and false," and not "undecided, but possibly decided at some later time." The reader may verify that the truth–tables in figure 2.3 have been calculated according to the following formulas: ¬p corresponds to 1 − p, p ∧ q to min(p, q), p ∨ q to max(p, q), and p → q to min(1, 1 + q − p). Once one has seen that the tables are calculated p ¬p 1 0 0 1 1 2 1 2 p q p ∧ q 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 0 0 1 12 1 2 0 1 0 0 12 0 1 2 1 1 2 1 2 0 0 p q p ∨ q 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 2 1 2 1 2 1 0 1 1 12 1 0 1 1 0 12 1 2 1 2 1 1 1 2 0 1 2 p q p → q 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 2 1 2 1 1 0 0 1 12 1 2 0 1 1 0 12 1 1 2 1 1 1 2 0 1 2 Figure 2.3 Łukasciewicz logic using the above formulas, there is no reason to stop at three truth–values; one might as well take a continuum of truth–values in [0, 1]. This system is called fuzzy logic. The important point to remember is that fuzzy logic is still truth– functional; in this respect it differs from our next example, probability theory, which is not. Probability: a Many-Valued, Non-truth–Functional Semantics One could try to represent frequency adverbs like "usually," "often" by means of probabilities. For instance, if p is the proposition that "The axillary lymph nodes are not enlarged," then 'usually(p)' could mean "the probability of p is greater than 60%," where probability is here taken in the sense of relative frequency. This idea leads to the following definition.13 A probability on a propositional language L is a function P : L −→ [0, 1] satisfying 1. P (φ) = 0 if φ is a contradiction; 2. if φ and ψ are logically equivalent, P (φ) = P (ψ); 3. if φ logically implies ¬ψ, then P (φ ∨ ψ) = P (φ) + P (ψ). 13. Note that probability is used as a semantics only. One could also try to develop "probability logics" where "the probability of p is c" is a statement of the object language.[113] 2.2 Reasoning to an Interpretation as Parameter Setting 31 The implicit assumption underlying this definition is that the formulas in L satisfy the classical logical laws, so that "equivalence," "contradiction" etc. are uniquely defined. It is in fact not so easy to define probability on nonclassical logics. This will be one of criticisms when discussing recent attempts to explain logical reasoning by assuming underlying probabilistic reasoning processes: probabilistic reasoning is too much tied to classical logic to be able to encompass the wide variety of reasoning that actually occurs. The reader may wish to show that this semantics is not truth–functional: the only restriction on the values of P (φ ∧ ψ), P (φ) and P (ψ) is the a priori restriction P (φ ∧ ψ) ≤ P (φ), P (ψ). Non-Truth–Functional Semantics: Intuitionistic Logic In classical mathematics one often finds proofs which appeal to the principle of excluded middle, the syntactic analogue of bivalence. Mathematicians in the constructivist or intuitionistic tradition have pointed out that the use of this principle leads to proofs which are completely uninformative. Here is a toy example of this phenomenon. Definition 1 A rational number is one which can be written as pq for natural numbers p, q; an irrational number is one which cannot be so written. Suppose you want to prove: Theorem 1 There are irrational numbers a, b such that ab is rational. PROOF. It is known that √ 2 is irrational. Consider √ 2 √ 2 . • If √2 √ 2 is rational, put a = b = √ 2 and we are done. • If √2 √ 2 is irrational, put a = √ 2 √ 2 , b = √ 2, then ab = ( √ 2 √ 2 ) √ 2 =√ 2 2 = 2. Either way you have the requisite a and b. But what have you proved? Do you now know how to construct irrational a, b are such that ab is rational? Such uninformative proofs, which do not yield concrete constructions, are typical of the use of the principle of excluded middle, which some therefore reject. If one characterises intuitionistic logic syntactically as classical logic minus the schema φ∨¬φ (for all φ), then one can indeed show that proofs of existential statements in intuitionistic logic invariably yield concrete witnesses. The semantics of intuitionistic logic is very different from what we have seen so far, where propositions took numbers as truth–values. The failure of the principle of excluded middle does not mean truth–functionally adding a third 32 2 The Anatomy of Logic truth–value, one reason being that φ ∧ ¬φ is still a contradiction, and inspection of the truth–tables for Kleene logic or Łukasciewicz logic shows that this is not the case there.14 Instead we have the non-truth–functional "provability interpretation of truth," of which the following are examples 1. e.g., φ ∧ ψ means: "I have a proof of both φ and ψ." 2. φ ∨ ψ means: "I have a proof of φ or a proof of ψ." 3. φ → ψ means: "I have a construction which transforms any given proof of φ into a proof of ψ." 4. special case of the previous: ¬φ means "any attempted proof of φ leads to a contradiction." Clearly, φ ∨ ¬φ is not valid on this interpretation, because it would require us to come up with a proof that φ or a proof that φ leads to a contradiction; and often one has neither. An Intensional Logic: Deontic Logic Deontic logic is concerned with reasoning about norms, i.e., what one ought to do; e.g., "if a person is innocent, he ought not to be convicted." We shall see in our discussion of the Wason selection task, however, that its scope extends much wider. At the syntactic level, (propositional) deontic logic consists of classical propositional logic plus the operator O, governed by the clause that if φ is a formula, so is Oφ. The intuitive meaning of Oφ is "it ought to be the case that φ." Note that O cannot be a truth function, such as ¬; the truth of Op depends on the meaning, not the truth–value, of p. That is, both the propositions "my bike is grey" and "I don't steal" are true, but the latter ought to be the case, unlike the first. The intensional semantics for deontic logic computes 'compliance'–values of formulas in a given model by referring to other models. One assumes that every model w has a "normatively perfect counterpart v"; this is formally represented by a relation: R(w, v)). In such a "normatively perfect" world v only what is permissible is the case; e.g., in w an innocent person may be convicted, but in v with R(w, v) this same innocent person will not be convicted. We may now put w |= Op if and only if for all v satisfying R(w, v): v |= p. To see the difference with classical logic, compare the conditionals p → q and p → Oq. If in a given world, p is true and q is false, then p → q is simply false, whereas p → Oq can be true, in which case the given world is not "normatively perfect." 14. Another reason is that one would also like to get rid of the principle of double negation elimination ¬¬φ → φ. 2.3 The Many Faces of Closed–World Reasoning 33 Our last example, closed–world reasoning, is one in which the consequence relation is the main focus. Since closed–world reasoning will occupy us much throughout, it warrants a new section. 2.3 The Many Faces of Closed–World Reasoning As we have seen above, the classical definition of validity considers all models of the premises. This type of validity is useful in mathematics, where the discovery of a single counterexample to a theorem is taken to imply that its derivation is flawed. But there are many examples of reasoning in daily life where one considers only a subset of the set of all models of the premises. In this section we review some examples of closed–world reasoning and their formalization. One example is furnished by train schedules. In principle a schedule lists only positive information, and the world would still be a model of the schedule if there were more trains running than listed on the schedule. But the proper interpretation of a schedule is as a closed world – trains not listed are inferred not to exist. This is like our example of the butcher, baker, and candlestickmaker on page 21. Note that there is a difference here with the superficially similar case of a telephone directory. If a telephone number is not listed, we do not therefore conclude that the person does not have a telephone – she might after all have an unlisted number. In fact a moment's reflection suggests that such examples can be found within the "train schedule" domain. From the point of view of a prospective passenger, the inference that there is no train between two adjacently listed trains may be valid, but for a train spotter interested in trains passing through on the track, trains "not in service" may well occur between listed services. Thus, world knowledge is necessary to decide which logic is applicable. 2.3.1 Closed–World Reasoning, More Formally Consider the Dutch database for public transportation www.9292ov.nl, which you consult for planning a trip from Amsterdam to Muiden. The database contains facts about trains and buses leaving at specific times, and also rules of the form 1. if bus 136 leaves Naarden-Bussum at 10:06, it will arrive in Muiden at 10:30 2. if train from Amsterdam CS in direction Naarden-Bussum leaves at 9:39, it will reach Naarden-Bussum at 10:00. Backward chaining of the rules then generates a plan for getting from Amsterdam to Muiden. 34 2 The Anatomy of Logic Now suppose that www.9292ov.nl says that there is no trip that starts in Amsterdam at 9:10 and brings you to Muiden at 9:45. Then we will act as if there is no such trip, but why? This is an example of closed–world reasoning, which is appropriate if one may assume that the database lists all available positive information. Formally, closed–world reasoning (in the version we prefer) differs from classical logic in the syntactic, semantic, and consequence parameters. Syntactically, the occurrence of → is restricted to formulas of the form p1 ∧ . . . ∧ pn → q. This amounts to changing the recursive definition of the propositional language; iteration of implication is not allowed, and neither are occurrences of negation in antecedent and consequent. Semantically, ∧, ∨ have their customary classical interpretation, but → has a special closed–world interpretation given by 1. if all of p1, . . . , pn are true, then so is q; 2. if one of p1, . . . , pn is false and there is no other implication with q as a consequent, q is false; 3. more generally: if for i ≤ k, pi1 ∧ . . . ∧ pini → q are all the formulas with q in the consequent, and if for each i ≤ k one of pi1, . . . , pin is false, then q is also false. The most important technical feature of closed–world reasoning is that the associated consequence relation is nonmonotonic. We have encountered the monotonicity property of classical logical consequence when discussing the material implication; we repeat it here for convenience. As we have seen, the Bolzano–Tarski definition of validity of an argument φ1, . . . , φn/ψ is: for all models M such that M |= φ1, . . . , φn, also M |= ψ. Given this definition, |= is monotone in the sense that φ1, . . . , φn |= ψ implies φ1, . . . , φn, θ |= ψ for any sentence θ. closed–world reasoning, however, is not monotonic in this sense: the inference from the database there is no trip which starts in Amsterdam CS at 9:10 and ends in Muiden before 9.45," licensed by closed–world reasoning, may be destroyed by additions to the database (e.g., a fast Interliner bus). 2.3.2 Unknown Preconditions Real-world actions come with scores of preconditions which often go unnoticed. My action of switching on the light is successful only if the switch is functioning properly, the house is not cut off from electricity, the laws of electromagnetism still apply. It would be impossible to verify all those preconditions; we generally do not even check the light bulb although its failure occurs 2.3 The Many Faces of Closed–World Reasoning 35 all too often. We thus have a conditional "if turn switch then light on" which does not become false the moment we turn the switch only to find that the light does not go on, as would be the case for the classical material implication. An enriched representation of the conditional as a ternary connective shows more clearly what is at issue here: "if turn switch and nothing funny is going on then light on." If we turn the switch but find that the light is not on, we conclude that something is amiss and start looking for that something. But – and this is the important point – in the absence of positive information to the effect that something is amiss, we assume that there is nothing funny going on. This is the closed–world assumption for reasoning with abnormalities, CWA(ab). This phenomenon can be seen in a controlled setting in an experiment designed by Claire Hughes and James Russell ([131]), the "box task," which lends itself particularly well to a logical analysis using closed world reasoning. This task was designed for analyzing autistic behavior, to which we return in Chapter 9 below. Figure 2.4 Hughes and Russell's box task. Reprinted from [236,p. 316] by permission of Dunitz. The task is to get the marble, which is lying on the platform, inside the box. However, when the subject puts her hand through the opening, a trapdoor in the platform opens and the marble drops out of reach. This is because there is an infrared light beam behind the opening, which, when interrupted, activates the trapdoor mechanism. The switch on the left side of the box deactivates the whole mechanism, so that to get the marble you have to flip the switch first. In the standard setup, the subject is shown how manipulating the switch allows one to retrieve the marble after she has first been tripped up by the trapdoor mechanism. A more formal analysis of the box task could go as follows. The main premise can be formulated as 36 2 The Anatomy of Logic (1) If you reach for the marble through the opening and there is nothing funny going on, you can retrieve the marble. where the italicized conjunct is the variable, assumed to be present always, for an unknown precondition. This conjunct occasions closed world reasoning of the form (2) I haven't seen anything funny. :: There is nothing funny going on. Backward chaining then leads to the plan (3) To get the marble, put your hand through the opening. Now a problem occurs: the marble drops out of reach before it can be retrieved. Premise (1) is not thereby declared to be false, but is now used to derive (4) Something funny is going on. To determine what's so funny, the information about the switch is recruited, which can be formulated as a rule "repairing" (1) as in (5a) or (5b) (5a) If you reach for the marble, set the switch to the right position, and there is nothing funny going on, then you can retrieve the marble. (5b) If the switch is in the wrong position, there is something funny going on. Closed–world reasoning with (5b) now yields (6) If the switch is in the wrong position, there is something funny going on, but only then. Backward chaining then leads to a new plan (7) To get the marble, set the switch to the right position and put your hand through the opening. One interesting feature of this analysis is thus that the new plan (7) is constructed from the old one by utilising the variable for the unknown precondition. This is not reasoning as it is usually studied in the psychology of reasoning, but it is reasoning nonetheless, with a discernible formal structure, and applicability across a wide range of domains. In fact CWA(ab) can be viewed as a definition of validity, as follows. Suppose we have an enriched conditional of the form p ∧ ¬ab → q, where ab is a proposition letter indicating some abnormality. Suppose furthermore that we have as information about ab the following implications: q1 → ab, . . . , qk → ab, and that this is all the available 2.3 The Many Faces of Closed–World Reasoning 37 information about ab. Since the implication ⊥ → ab is always true,15 we may include this (admittedly trivial) statement in the information available about ab. We now want to say that, given p,¬q1, . . . ,¬qn, q may be concluded. This is tantamount to replacing the information about ab by the single premise ab ↔ q1 ∨ . . . ∨ qk ∨ ⊥, and applying classical validity. Note that as a consequence of this definition, if there is no nontrivial information about ab, the right–hand side of the preceding bi-implication reduces to a falsehood (i.e., ⊥), and the bi-implication itself to ab ↔ ⊥, which is equivalent to ¬ab. In short, if there is no nontrivial information about ab, we may infer ¬ab. Note that although classical reasoning is used here in explaining the machinery, the closed-world inference itself is non-classical: in classical logic nothing can be concluded from the premises p,¬q1, . . . ,¬qn. A famous observation can be illuminated from this point of view: Scribner's study of reasoning among the illiterate Kpelle tribe in Liberia (see [243]). Here is a sample argument given to her subjects All Kpelle men are rice farmers. Mr. Smith16 is not a rice farmer. Is Mr. Smith a Kpelle man? Subjects refused to answer the question definitively, instead giving evasive answers such as "If one knows a person, one can answer questions about him, but if one doesn't know that person, it is difficult." Scribner then went on to show that a few years of schooling in general led to the classical competence answer. This result, like those of Luria in the 1930s (see [177]) has been taken as evidence that the illiterate subjects do not understand what is being asked of them: to answer the question solely on the basis of (an inference from) the premises given. Instead, so it is argued, they prefer to answer from personal experience, or to refrain from answering if they have no relevant experience. But this explanation presupposes that the Kpelle subject adopts the material implication as the logical form of the first premise. If, as is more plausible, he adopts a meaning of the conditional which allows exceptions (as we did in discussing the box task), he can only be charged with not applying closed– world reasoning to Mr. Smith. That is, if the Kpelle subject believes he has too little information to decide whether Mr. Smith is abnormal, he is justified in refusing to draw the modus tollens inference. On this account, what the couple of years elementary schooling teaches the child is a range of kinds of discourse in which exactly what to close the world on, and what to leave open, varies with some rather subtle contextual cues. 15. ⊥ stands for an arbitrary contradiction, while is a formula which is always true. 16. "Mr. Smith" is not a possible Kpelle name. 38 2 The Anatomy of Logic 2.3.3 Causal and Counterfactual Reasoning Counterfactual reasoning occurs when one starts from an assumption known to be false and tries to derive consequences. What would have happened if Hitler had invaded Britain? is a famous example. Such reasoning involves causal reasoning, because one needs to set up plausible chains of events. Counterfactual reasoning has been investigated in preschool children with the aim of establishing correlations with "theory of mind" Riggs and Peterson [227] devised a "counterfactual" adaptation of the standard false belief task, in which a mother doll bakes a chocolate cake, in the process of which the chocolate moves from the fridge (its original location) to the cupboard. The question asked of the child is now (*) Where would the chocolate be if mother hadn't baked a cake? This question is about alternative courses of events and hence seems to use causal reasoning. Pragmatically, the formulation of question (*) suggests it must have an answer. The answer cannot come from classical logic, starting from the description of the situation alone: classical logic compels one to ask What else could be the case? reflecting the obligation to consider all models of the data. In particular there would be models to consider in which mother eats all the chocolate, or in which the chocolate evaporates inside the fridge (an event of extremely small, but still nonzero, probability). Of course nothing of the sort happens in actual causal reasoning. There a "principle of inertia" applies, which roughly says: "things and properties remain as they are, unless there is explicit information to the contrary." This can be further spelled out as the closed–world assumption for reasoning about causality (CWA(c)):17 1. One assumes that only those events (affecting the entity of interest) occur which are forced to occur by the data – here the only such event is the chocolate's change of location from fridge to cupboard. 2. One also assumes that events only have those causal effects which are described by one's background theory – e.g., turning on the oven does not have a causal effect on the location of the chocolate. 3. No spontaneous changes occur, that is, every change of state or property can be attributed to the occurrence of an event with specified causal influence. Together these principles suffice to derive an answer to (*). In fact this type of reasoning can be fully formalized in the "event calculus" originally developed in artificial intelligence (see [282] for extensive treatment and references). 17. A fully formal analysis will be given in chapter 9. 2.3 The Many Faces of Closed–World Reasoning 39 Its logical structure is similar to the one detailed in section 2.3.2 as regards properties (1) and (2), but property (3) brings in a new ingredient relating to development over time. Formally, this can be viewed as yet another twist to the definition of validity: one now obtains a notion according to which the conclusion is evaluated at a later instant than the evaluation time of the premises. The classical definition of validity assumes that the conclusion of an argument is evaluated on models of the premises, thus validating a property like p |= p, that is, "on every model on which p is true, p is true." The definition of validity used in CWA(c) allows that models of the conclusion are temporal developments of models of the premises, and in this case we need no longer have p |= p. Suppose the models for the premises are evaluated at time t, and the models for the conclusion are temporal developments of these models considered at time t′ > t. Clearly, even if p is true at time t, that same proposition p may be false at t′. These considerations allow us to see the connection between closed world reasoning and planning. One feature distinguishing human planning from that of other species is the much increased capacity for offline planning. This involves mentally constructing a model, a structure representing the relevant part of the world, and computing the effect of actions in that model over time, taking into account likely events and the causal consequences of the actions performed. The various forms of closed–world reasoning introduced so far have to be combined here to enable the construction of the model and the computation of its development over time. What is interesting here for discussions of domain specificity is that the procedures used to construct models in offline planning can be used as well to construct models of linguistic discourse, for instance the structure of the events described by the discourse (see [282]). It is proposed in the reference cited that offline planning has been exapted18 for the purposes of language comprehension, viewed as the ability to construct discourse models. If true, this would show an incursion of very general reasoning procedures into the purportedly domain–specific language module. Issues of modularity will crop up throughout. 2.3.4 Attribution of Beliefs and Intentions An important step in cognitive development is the acquisition of a "theory of mind," the ability to understand that someone else may have beliefs different from one's own. A standard experimental paradigm to test theory of mind is the "false belief task," of which the following is an example (due to Wimmer and Perner [305]) Children are first told the story:"Maxi and Mummy are in the kitchen. They put some chocolate in the fridge. Then Maxi goes away to play with his friend. Mummy decides to 18. See section 6.2.3 for a definition and discussion of the contrast between exaptation and adaptation. 40 2 The Anatomy of Logic bake a cake. She takes the chocolate from the fridge, makes the cake, and puts the rest of the chocolate in the cupboard. Maxi is returning now from visiting his friend and wants some chocolate." Children are then asked the test question: "Where does Maxi think the chocolate is?" Normally developing children will be able to attribute a "false belief" to Maxi and answer "In the fridge" from around age 4 or so. Another version19 uses an episode from the Bob the Builder children's television series, in which Bob climbs a ladder to do some repair work on the roof of a house. While Bob is happily hammering, the series' resident gremlin Naughty Spud takes away the ladder to steal apples from a nearby apple tree. After Bob has finished his work on the roof, he makes preparations to climb down. At this point the video is stopped and the child who has been watching this episode is asked: "Where does Bob think that the ladder is?" Again, children below the cut-off age answer: "At the tree." It is illuminating to view the reasoning leading up to these answers as an instance of closed–world reasoning. What is needed first of all is an awareness of the causal relation between perception and belief, which can be stated in the form: "if φ is true in scene S, and agent a sees S, then a comes to believe φ," where φ is a metavariable ranging over proposition letters p, q, . . .. In other words, seeing is a cause of believing. Thus Maxi comes to believe that the chocolate is in the fridge. An application of the principle of inertia (cf. (3) above) yields that Maxi's belief concerning the location of the chocolate persists unless an event occurs which causes him to have a new belief, incompatible with the former. The story does not mention such an event, whence it is reasonable to assume – using 1 and 2 – that Maxi still believes that the chocolate is in the fridge when he returns from visiting his friend. Viewed in this way, attribution of belief is a special case of causal reasoning, and some correlation with performance on counterfactual reasoning tasks is to be expected. The tasks are not quite the same, however. The causal relation between perception and belief is an essential ingredient in the false belief task, absent in the counterfactual task. There are two sides to this: positively, that a belief may form after seeing something, and negatively, that there are only a few specified ways in which beliefs can form, e.g., by seeing, by being told, and by inference – this negative aspect is an application of closed–world reasoning. Children failing the false belief task could master causal reasoning generally, but fail on the aspects just mentioned. So, assimilating the reasoning involved in theory of mind tasks as a kind of defeasible reasoning potentially provides both a basis for continuity with earlier developmental or evolutionary precursors, and a basis for discontinuity – it is causal reasoning by closed–world assumptions, but causal reasoning by closed–world assumptions of a specific kind. Reasoning 19. Investigated experimentally by the van Lambalgen's students David Wood and Marian Counihan. 2.3 The Many Faces of Closed–World Reasoning 41 about minds is reasoning in a specific domain, but its characterization may be possible by a rather small extension of a logical framework for other domains. We viewed classical logic as resulting from setting parameters for syntax, semantics, and the consequence relation. We have seen that these settings are appropriate for the domain of classical mathematics, but that they cannot claim universal validity. Other domains require different settings; e.g., closed–world reasoning about databases has only bivalence in common with classical logic. In fact, a wide range of everyday tasks involve closed–world reasoning: e.g., planning, and adapting to failures of plans during their execution, diagnosis of causes, causal reasoning itself, reasoning about mental behavior and states, interpreting speaker's intentions underlying discourse. Each of these domains leads to a logic especially suited to that domain. Reasoners have in general little trouble in selecting the logic appropriate to a domain, although, as we shall see in the course of this book, some psychiatric disorders are accompanied, and perhaps even caused, by inappropriately applied reasoning schemes. In the following chapters, we will look at several experimental reasoning paradigms to discover evidence of parameter setting at work. It will turn out that for a subject, discovering the right parameters is often the hardest part of a laboratory reasoning task. At this point, the psychologist reader, from our experience, is likely to be puzzled. "Subjects don't know these logics! These formalisms are just theorists' tools! All these squiggles don't happen in minds! Anyway, all you are doing is redescribing stuff which psychologists know about in terms of pragmatics!" are among typical objections, so we had perhaps better attempt to defuse them. Of course we agree that subjects don't "know these logics" just in the sense that they don't know the grammar of English, but they do know these logics just in the sense that they do know the grammar of English. Yes, they are also theorists' tools, but we take seriously the possibility that something computationally equivalent is implemented in the mind. In chapter 8 we will show that that implementation doesn't require squiggles. And yes, many of the phenomena we are describing as applying reasoning in non-standard logics have been given descriptions already by psychologists. Our claim is that those descriptions remain ad hoc until they are systematized as we are trying to do here. It is very important that the psychological reader takes us seriously when we claim that these logics are in the mind, but equally important that they realise that that claim does not bring all the baggage usually ascribed to it.
A Little Logic Goes a Long Way The psychology of reasoning studies how subjects draw conclusions from premises – the process of derivation. But premises have to be interpreted before any conclusions can be drawn. Although premise interpretation has received recurrent attention (e.g., Henle [122], Gebauer and Laming [92], Newstead [201], Byrne [28]), the full range of dimensions of interpretation facing the subject has not been considered. Nor has interpretation been properly distinguished from derivation from an interpretation in a way that enables interactions between interpretation and derivation to be analysed. Our general thesis is that integrating accounts of interpretation with accounts of derivation can lead to deeper insight into cognitive theory generally, and human reasoning in particular. This chapter exemplifies this general claim in the domain of Wason's selection task [295], an important reference point for several prominent cognitive theories of reasoning. What is meant by interpretation in this context? Interpretation maps representation systems (linguistic, diagrammatic, etc.) onto the things in the world which are represented. Interpretation decides such matters as: which things in the world generally correspond to which words; which of these things are specifically in the domain of interpretation of the current discourse; which structural description should be assigned to an utterance; which propositions are assumed and which derived; which notions of validity of argument are intended; and so on. Natural languages such as English sometimes engender the illusion that such matters are settled by general knowledge of the language, but it is easy to see that this is not so. Each time a sentence such as "The presidents of France were bald" is uttered, its users must decide, for example, who is included, and how bald is bald, for present purposes. In the context of the selection task we shall see that there are quite a few such decisions which subjects have to make, each resolvable in a variety of ways, and each with implications for what response to make in the task. Of course, interpretation, in this sense, is very widely studied in philosophy, logic and linguistics (and even psycholinguistics), as we document in our references throughout the chapter. Our thesis is that interchange between these studies and psychological studies of reasoning has been inadequate. Perhaps 44 3 A Little Logic Goes a Long Way because the methods of the fields are so divergent, there has been a reluctance to take semantic analyses seriously as a guide to psychological processes, and many of the concepts of logic are loosely employed in psychology, at best. There are, of course, honorable exceptions which we will consider in our discussion. In this chapter we take Wason's selection task and argue that the mental processes it evokes in subjects are, quite reasonably, dominated by interpretive processes. Wason's task is probably the most intensively studied task in the psychology of reasoning literature and has been the departure point, or point of passage, for several high–profile cognitive theories: mental models theory (Johnson-Laird and Byrne [144]), relevance theory (Sperber, Cara, and Girotto [252]), "evolutionary psychology" (Cosmides [47]), rational analysis (Oaksford and Chater [205]). We will argue and present empirical evidence that each of these theories misses critical contributions that logic and semantics can make to understanding the task. For various reasons the materials of the task exert contradictory pressures leading to conflicting interpretations, and we argue that what we observe are subjects' various, not always very successful, efforts to resolve these conflicts. The results of our experiments expose rich individual variation in reasoning and learning and so argue for novel standards of empirical analysis of the mental processes involved. 3.1 The Mother of All Reasoning Tasks Wason's original task was presented by means of a form as depicted in figure 3.1. The reader, who has probably seen the task before, should realise that this is all the information provided to the subjects, in order to appreciate the tremendous difficulty posed by this task. We will later present a variant of the task (the "two rule task") which may recreate in the cognoscenti the feelings of perplexity experienced by the untutored subject. Below is depicted a set of four cards, of which you can see only the exposed face but not the hidden back. On each card, there is a number on one of its sides and a letter on the other. Also below there is a rule which applies only to the four cards. Your task is to decide which if any of these four cards you must turn in order to decide if the rule is true. Don't turn unnecessary cards. Tick the cards you want to turn. Rule: If there is a vowel on one side, then there is an even number on the other side. Cards: A K 4 7 Figure 3.1 Wason's selection task 3.1 The Mother of All Reasoning Tasks 45 This experiment has been replicated many times. If one formulates the rule If there is a vowel on one side, then there is an even number on the other side. as an implication p → q, then the observed pattern of results is typically given as in table 3.1. Thus, the modal response1 (around half of the undergraduate subjects) is to turn A and 4. Very few subjects turn A and 7. Wason (and, until fairly recently, the great majority of researchers) assumed, without considering alternatives, that the correct performance is to turn the A and 7 cards only. Oaksford and Chater's inductive rational choice model [205] was the first to challenge this assumption, by rejecting deductive models entirely – more on this below. Wason adopted this criterion of good reasoning from a classical logical interpretation of the rule. In a very real sense, however, Wason got his own task wrong in stipulating that there was a particular "obviously correct" answer. This holds on the assumption that the rule is interpreted using the material implication, but nothing in the experimental material itself forces this interpretation. Undergraduate subjects come to this task with their own interpretation of the conditional "if . . . then," and more often than not this interpretation is as a defeasible rule robust to exceptions. In this case, the "competence" answer would be to respond that no combination of card choices can falsify the rule, because any possible counterexamples are indistinguishable from exceptions. And no finite combination of choices can prove the rule is true.2 Alternatively, subjects with other plausible interpretations of the task and rule might reasonably want to respond that several alternative sets of cards would test the rule equally well, and this again is not an available response. There are of course many psychological reasons why we should not expect subjects to make these kinds of responses even if they were offered as possibilities. There are strong demand characteristics and authority relations in the experimental situation. Furthermore, subjects are not accustomed to reflecting on their language use and also lack a vocabulary for talking about and distinguishing the elementary semantic concepts which are required to express these issues. Taking interpretation seriously does not mean we thereby assume reasoning is perfect, nor that we reject classical logic as one (possibly educationally important) logical model. But the unargued adoption of classical logic as a criterion of correct performance is thoroughly antilogical. In our discussion we review some of the stances toward logic exhibited by the prominent cognitive theories that have made claims about the selection task, and appraise them from the viewpoint advocated here. 1. The mode of a data sample is the element that occurs most often in the sample. 2. It is true that Wason's instructions explicitly state that the rule applies only to the four cards, but, as we shall see below, this is not a reasonable restriction on one dominant interpretation, and is widely ignored. 46 3 A Little Logic Goes a Long Way Table 3.1 Typical proportions of choices in the selection task p p, q p,¬q p, q,¬q misc. 35% 45% 5% 7% 8% 3.2 A Preliminary Logical Distinction The program of empirical investigation that ensued from Wason's original experiment can be seen as a search for those contents of rules that make the task "easy" or "hard" according to the classical competence criterion. Differences in accuracy of reasoning are then explained by various classifications of content. For example, when the original "abstract" (i.e., descriptive) form of the selection task proved so counterintuitively hard, attention rapidly turned to finding materials that made the task easy. Johnson-Laird, Legrenzi, and Legrenzi [142] showed that a version of the task using a UK postal regulation ("If a letter has a second class stamp, it is left unsealed") produced near-ceiling performance. They described the facilitation in terms of familiarity of the materials. Griggs and Cox [109] showed that reasoning about a drinking age law ("if you drink alcohol here, you have to be over 18") was easy. Wason and Green[296] similarly showed that a rule embedded in a "production-line inspection" scenario (e.g., "If the wool is blue, it must be 4 feet long") also produced good performance. Cosmides [47, 48] went on to illustrate a range of materials which produce "good" reasoning, adding the claim this facilitation only happened with social contract rules. Cosmides and her collaborators used the argument that only social contract material was easy, to claim that humans evolved innate modular "cheating detector algorithms" which underpin selection task performance on social contract rules. Note that nonsocial contract examples such as the "wool" example just quoted were prominent in the literature before Cosmides made these claims. Recent work has extended the evolutionary account by proposing a range of detectors beyond cheating detectors which are intended to underpin reasoning with, for example, precautionary conditionals (Fiddick, Cosmides, and Tooby [81]).3 These observations of good reasoning were reported as effects of content on reasoning with rules of the same logical form. Cosmides and Tooby are explicit about logic being their target: On this view [the view Cosmides and Tooby attack], reasoning is viewed as the operation of content-independent procedures, such as formal logic, applied impartially and uniformly to every problem, regardless of the nature of the content involved. (Cosmides and Tooby [48,p. 166]) 3. Cummins [53] has argued, against this proliferation, that the innate module concerned is more general and encompasses all of deontic reasoning. 3.2 A Preliminary Logical Distinction 47 Johnson-Laird equally claims that the effect of content on reasoning contradicts the formal-logical model of reasoning: [F]ew select the card bearing [7], even though if it had a vowel on its other side, it would falsify the rule. People are much less susceptible to this error of omission when the rules and materials have a sensible content, e.g., when they concern postal regulations ... Hence the content of a problem can affect reasoning, and this phenomenon is contrary to the notion of formal rules of inference (Johnson-Laird [146,p. 225]) Wason himself, discussing an example from [299] which used the rule: "If I go to Manchester I go by train," rejects the idea that there are structural differences between thematic and abstract tasks: The thematic problem proved much easier than a standard abstract version which was structurally equivalent... ([300,p. 643]; emphasis added) We argue here that by far the most important determinant of ease of reasoning is whether interpretation of the rule assigns it descriptive or deontic logical form, and we explain the effect of this interpretive choice in terms of the many problems descriptive interpretation creates in this task setting, as contrasted with the ease of reasoning with deontic interpretations. Descriptive conditionals describe states of affairs and are therefore true or false as those states of affairs correspond to the conditionals' content. Deontic conditionals, as described in the previous chapter, state how matters should be according to some (perhaps legal) law or regulation, or preference.4 The semantic relation between sentence and case(s) for deontics is therefore quite different than for descriptives. With descriptives, sets of cases may make the conditional true, or make it false. With deontics, cases individually conform or not, but they do not affect the status of the law (or preference, or whatever). This is of course a crude specification of the distinction. We shall have some more specific proposals to make below. But it is important for the empirical investigation to focus on these blunt differences that all analyses of the distinction agree on.5 Returning to the examples given, we see that a rule like "if you drink alcohol here, you have to be over 18" is deontic, not descriptive. If everybody drinking whiskey in a particular pub is under 18, the rule may be massively violated, but it is still in force. We have a different situation if the rule is intended to be descriptive, an intention which can be suggested, but not fixed, by the formulation "if someone drinks alcohol here, he is over 18." In this case a primary school boy sipping his whiskey may be taken to falsify the rule. The other examples can be analysed similarly. 4. There are a great variety of specific deontic stances which all share the feature that they deal in what is ideal relative to some criterion. 5. This is an important invocation to be born in mind by the formalist concerned to contribute to experimental investigation: "Use the bluntest formal analysis which is sharp enough to make the necessary distinctions!" 48 3 A Little Logic Goes a Long Way In English, the semantic distinction between descriptives and deontics is not reflected simply on the surface of sentences. Deontics are often expressed using subjunctives or modals – should, ought, must – but are equally often expressed with descriptive verbs. It is impossible to tell without consultation of context, whether a sentence such as "In the UK, vehicles drive on the left" is to be interpreted descriptively or deontically – as a generalization or a legal prescription. Conversely, subjunctive verbs and modals are often interpreted descriptively. (e.g., in the sentence "If it is 10 am, that should (must) be John," said on hearing the doorbell, the modal expresses an inference about a description). This means that we as experimenters cannot determine this semantic feature of subjects' interpretation of conditionals simply by changing auxiliary verbs in rules. A combination of rule, content, and subjects' knowledge influences whether to assign a deontic or descriptive form. Our proposal about the selection task at its simplest is that the semantic difference between descriptive and deontic conditionals leads to a processing difference when these conditionals are used in the selection task. In barest outline, the semantic difference is this. Deontic conditionals such as the drinking age law cannot be false, they can only be violated. Hence turning a card never affects the status of the rule. Now, whether a given customer violates the drinking age law is independent of whether another customer does so. This seems a trivial observation, but a comparison with the case of descriptive rules will show its importance. A descriptive rule can be true or false, and here the purpose of turning cards is to determine which is the case; in this case, unlike the previous one, the result of turning a card can affect the status of the rule. A consequence of this is a form of dependence between card choices, in the following sense: turning A to find 7 already decides the status of the rule by showing it to be false; it does not seem necessary to turn the 7 card as well. On the other hand, if upon turning A one finds a 4, it is necessary to turn the 7 as well. We will see that this situation is confusing to subjects, who sometimes believe that the task is unsolvable because of this dependence. It is not, of course, once one realises that the cards are not real but depicted, and hence cannot be turned at all. These blunt semantic differences mean that the original descriptive (abstract) task poses many difficulties to naive reasoners not posed by the deontic task.6 A formal analysis of the differences will be given below, but these indications should suffice for the present. We will derive a variety of particular difficulties to be expected from the inter6. Previous work has pointed to the differences between the deontic and descriptive tasks (e.g., Manktelow and Over [180]; Oaksford and Chater [205]). Cheng and Holyoak [37] developed the theory that success on deontic selection tasks was based on pragmatic reasoning schemata. Although they present this theory as an alternative to logic-based theories, it arguably presents a fragmentary deontic logic with some added processing assumptions (theorem prover) about the "perspective" from which the rule is viewed. However, Cheng and Holyoak did not take the further step of analyzing abstractly the contrasting difficulties which descriptive conditionals pose in this task. 3.3 Logical Forms in Reasoning 49 action of semantics and task, and the presentation of an experimental program to demonstrate that subjects really do experience these problems. Deriving a spectrum of superficially diverse problems from a single semantic distinction supports a powerful empirical generalization about reasoning in this task, and an explanation of why that generalization holds. It also strongly supports the view that subjects' problems are highly variable and in doing so reveals an important but much neglected level of empirical analysis. It is important to distinguish coarser from finer levels of semantic analysis in understanding our predictions. At finer levels of analysis, we will display a multiplicity of interpretive choices and insist on evidence that subjects adopt a variety of them – both across subjects and within a single subject's episodes of reasoning. At this level we certainly do not predict any specific interpretation. At coarser levels of analysis such as between truth–functional and non-truth– functional conditionals, and between descriptive and deontic conditionals, it is possible to predict highly specific consequences of adopting one or the other kind of reading in different versions of the task, and to show that these consequences are evident in the data. If they do appear as predicted, then that provides strong evidence that interpretive processes are driving the data. In fact, many of these consequences have been observed before, but have remained unconnected with each other, and not appreciated for what they are – the various consequences of a homogeneous semantic distinction. The take-home message is: semantics supplies an essential theoretical base for understanding the psychology of reasoning. The plan of the remainder of the chapter is as follows. We begin by presenting in the next section what we take to be essential about a modern logical approach to such cognitive processes as are invoked by the selection task. The following section then uses this apparatus to show how the logical differences between descriptive and deontic selection tasks can be used to make predictions about problems that subjects will have in the former but not the latter. The following section turns these predictions into several experimental conditions, and presents data compared to Wason's original task as baseline. Finally, we discuss the implications of these findings for theories of the selection task and of our interpretive perspective for cognitive theories more generally. 3.3 Logical Forms in Reasoning The selection task is concerned with reasoning about the natural language conditional "if . . . then." The reasoning patterns that are valid for this expression can only be determined after a logical form is assigned to the sentence in which this expression occurs. The early interpretations of the selection task all assumed that the logical form assigned to "if . . . then" should be the connective → with the semantics given by classical propositional logic. We want to argue 50 3 A Little Logic Goes a Long Way that this easy identification is not in accordance with the modern conception of logic outlined in chapter 2. By this, we do not just mean that modern logic has come up with other competence models besides classical logic. Rather, the easy identification downplays the complexity of the process of assigning logical form. In a nutshell, modern logic sees itself as concerned with the mathematics of reasoning systems. It is related to a concrete reasoning system such as classical propositional logic as geometry is related to light rays. It is impossible to say a priori what is the right geometry of the physical world; however, once some coordinating definitions (such as "a straight line is to be interpreted by a light ray") have been made, it is determined which geometry describes the behavior of these straight lines, and hypotheses about the correct geometry become falsifiable. Similarly, it does not make sense to determine a priori what is the right logic. This depends on one's notion of truth, semantic consequence, and more. But once these parameters have been fixed, logic, as the mathematics of reasoning systems, determines what is, and what is not, a valid consequence. In this view it is of prime importance to determine the type of parameter that goes into the definition of what a logical system is, and, of course, the psychological purposes that might lead subjects to choose one or another setting in their reasoning. This parameters setting generally involves as much reasoning as does the reasoning task assigned to the subject. We are thus led to the important distinction between reasoning from an interpretation and reasoning to an interpretation. The former is what is supposed to happen in a typical inference task: given premises, determine whether a given conclusion follows. But because the premises are formulated in natural language, there is room for different logical interpretations of the given material and intended task. Determining what the appropriate logical form is in a given context itself involves logical reasoning which is far from trivial in the case of the selection task. We have seen in chapter 2 that the parameters characterizing logical form come in at least three flavors: pertaining to syntax, to semantics, and to the notion of logical consequence. In short, therefore, the interpretive problem facing a subject in a reasoning task is to provide settings for all these parameters – this is what is involved in assigning logical form. It has been the bane of the psychology of reasoning that it operates with an oversimplified notion of logical form. Typically, in the psychology of reasoning, assigning logical form is conceived of as translating a natural language sentence into a formal language whose semantics is supposed to be given, but this is really only the beginning: it fixes just one parameter. We do not claim that subjects know precisely what they are doing; that is, most likely subjects do not know in any detail what the mathematical consequences of their choices are. We do claim, however, that subjects worry about how to set the parameters, and below we offer data obtained from tutorial dialogues to corroborate this claim. This is not a descent into postmodern hermeneutics. This doomful view may be partly due to earlier 3.3 Logical Forms in Reasoning 51 psychological invocations of interpretational defenses against accusations of irrationality in reasoning, perhaps the most cited being Henle [122]: "there exist no errors of reasoning, only differences in interpretation." It is possible, however, to make errors in reasoning: the parameter settings may be inconsistent, or a subject may draw inferences not consistent with the settings. From the point of view of the experimenter, once all the parameters are fixed, it is mathematically determined what the extension of the consequence relation will be; and the hypotheses on specific parameter settings therefore become falsifiable. In particular, the resulting mathematical theory will classify an infinite number of reasoning patterns as either valid or invalid. In principle there is therefore ample room for testing whether a subject has set his parameters as guessed in the theory: choose a reasoning pattern no instance of which is included in the original set of reasoning tokens. In practice, there are limitations to this procedure because complex patterns may be hard to process. Be that as it may, it remains imperative to obtain independent confirmation of the parameter settings by looking at arguments very different from the original set of tokens. This was, for instance, our motivation for obtaining data about the meaning of negation in the context of the selection task (more on this below): while not directly relevant to the logical connectives involved in the selection task,7 it provided valuable insight into the notions of truth and falsity. Psychology is in some ways harder once one acknowledges interpretational variety, but given the overwhelming evidence for that variety, responding by eliminating it from psychological theory is truly the response of the drunk beneath the lamppost. In fact, in some counterbalancing ways, psychology gets a lot easier because there are so many independent ways of getting information about subjects' interpretations – such as tutorial dialogues. Given the existence of interpretational variety, the right response is richer empirical methods aimed at producing convergent evidence for deeper theories which are more indirectly related to the stimuli observed. What the richness of interpretation does mean is that the psychology of reasoning narrowly construed has less direct implications for the rationality of subjects' reasoning. What was right about the earlier appeals to interpretational variation is that it indeed takes a lot of evidence to confidently convict subjects of irrationality. It is necessary to go to great lengths to make a charitable interpretation of what they are trying to do and how they understand what they are supposed to do before one can be in a position to assert that they are irrational. Even when all this is done, the irrational element can only be interpreted against a background of rational effort. 7. Though see [74] to see how negation is not far away. 52 3 A Little Logic Goes a Long Way 3.4 Logical Forms in the Selection Task We now apply the preceding considerations to the process of assigning a logical form to the standard selection task. An important component of this process is determining a meaning of the conditional, but this is not all there is to logical form in the selection task. To see this, it is useful to reformulate the task as an information processing task as intended by Marr [183].8 Here we run into an immediate ambiguity: the information–processing task may be meant as the one intended by the experimenter, or as understood by the subject. In both cases the input consists of the form with instructions, but the output can be very different. The intentions of the experimenter are clear: the output should consist of checks under the cards selected. The output in the subject's interpretation of the task can vary considerably. Some subjects think the output can be a plan for showing the rule to be true or false. Other subjects interpolate a process of information gathering and view the task as "what information do I require to decide the rule, and how do I obtain that information." This gets them in considerable trouble, since they tend to rephrase the minimality condition "do not turn unnecessary cards" as the condition "determine the minimum information necessary to decide the rule," which is importantly different. In this section we will describe several formal models corresponding to different understandings of the task. Wason had in mind the interpretation of the conditional as a truth–functional implication, which together with bivalence yields the material implication. Truth–functional, because the four cards must decide the truth–value of the conditional; bivalent, because the task is to determine truth or falsity of the conditional, implying that there is no other option. All this is of course obvious from the experimenter's point of view, but the important question is whether this interpretation is accessible to the subject. Given the wide range of other meanings of the conditional, the subject must infer from the instructions, and possibly from contextual factors, what the intended meaning is. Reading very carefully, and bracketing her own most prominent meanings for the key terms involved, the subject may deduce that the conditional is to be interpreted truth– functionally, with a classical algebra of truth–values, hence with the material implication as resulting logical form. (Actually the situation is more complicated; see the next paragraph.) But this bracketing is what subjects with little logical training typically find hard to do. The subject first has to come up with a formal language in which to translate the rule. It is usually assumed that the selection task is about propositional logic, but in the case of the "abstract" rule 1 actually needs predicate logic, 8. Marr's ideas will be explained in greater detail in chapter 5 in section 5.1.4 and in chapter 11. 3.4 Logical Forms in the Selection Task 53 mainly because of the occurrence of the expression "one side . . . other side." One way (although not the only one) to formalise the rule in predicate logic uses the following predicates: V (x, y) "x is on the visible side of card y" I(x, y) "x is on the invisible side of card y" O(x) "x is a vowel" E(x) "x is an even number" and the rule is then translated as the following pair: ∀c(∃x(V (x, c) ∧ O(x)) → ∃y(I(y, c) ∧ E(y))) ∀c(∃x(I(x, c) ∧ O(x)) → ∃y(V (y, c) ∧ E(y))) This might seem pedantic were it not for the fact that some subjects go astray at this point, replacing the second statement by a biconditional ∀c(∃x(I(x, c) ∧ O(x)) ↔ ∃y(V (y, c) ∧ E(y))), or even a reversed conditional ∀c(∃x(V (x, c) ∧ E(x)) → ∃y(I(y, c) ∧ O(y))). This very interesting phenomenon will be studied further in section 3.5.5.9 For simplicity's sake, in the following we will focus only on subjects' problems at the level of propositional logic. 3.4.1 The Big Divide: Descriptive and Deontic Conditionals It was noticed early on that facilitation in task performance could be obtained by changing the abstract rule to a familiar rule such as If you want to drink alcohol, you have to be over 18 though the deontic nature of the rule was not initially seen as important, in contrast to its familiarity. This observation was one reason why formal logic was considered to be a bad guide to actual human reasoning. Logic was not able to explain how statements supposedly of the same logical form lead to vastly different performance – or so the argument went. However, using the expanded notion of logical form given above one can see that the abstract rule and the deontic rule are not of the same form. Descriptive Interpretation of the Task We assume first that the subject views the task descriptively, as determining whether the rule is true or false of the four cards given, no exceptions allowed.10 9. The fact that Gebauer and Lamming [92] accept this reversed reading in this context provides a timely reminder that subjects and experimenters are sometimes equally prone to accept interpretations which would be held to be quite incongruous in a more neutral context. 10. Some subjects have a descriptive interpretation which does allow exceptions; see section 3.5.2. 54 3 A Little Logic Goes a Long Way We also assume that cards with false antecedent (i.e., a consonant) are viewed as complying with the rule11 This dictates an interpretation of the descriptive conditional as material implication. Wason viewed his task in terms of bivalent classical logic, but even in the descriptive case this holds only for an omniscient being, who can view both sides of the cards. The human subject who comes to this task is at first confronted with a lack of information, and may apply a logic which is appropriate to this situation: a semantics which is sensitive to the information available to the subject. It will turn out that there are two subtly different ways of taking into account the incomplete information, which will be seen to correspond to different behaviors of subjects. In the process of formalization, we will also have occasion to introduce two different notions of truth that persistently confuse subjects. The first formalization of the selection task views it as an information– processing task whose output is the information the subject requires for deciding the rule. Suppose for simplicity that the letters on the cards can only be A,K, and the numbers only 4,7. Define a model, consisting of "information states" as follows. For brevity, we will sometimes call information states "states." There are four states corresponding to the visible sides of the cards; denote these by A,K, 4, 7. These correspond to incomplete information states. Then there are eight states corresponding to the possibilities for what is on the invisible side; denote these by (A, 4), (A, 7), (K, 4), (K, 7), (4, A), (4, K), (7, A), and (7, K). These correspond to complete information states (about a single card). This gives as domain W of the model twelve states in all, each pertaining to a single card. Starting from W one may define the set W4 consisting of all consistent information states relating to the four cards simultaneously. W4 contains sets such as {(A, 4), K, 4, 7}, {A,K, (4, A), (7, A)}, {(A, 4), K, (4, A), 7}, or {(A, 7), (K, 4), (4, K), (7, K)}. On W4 one can define an ordering by w v if the information contained about a given card in v is an extension of, or equal to, the information about that card in w. So we have, e.g., {(A, 4), K, 4, 7} {(A, 4), K, (4, A), 7} and {A,K, 4, 7} {(A, 7), (K, 4), (4, K), (7, K)}, but {(A, 4), (4, A), K, (7, A)} {A, (4, A), K, (7, A)}. To represent the different relations of truth that cards and rule can bear toward each other, we introduce a support-relation and the standard "makes true" relation |=. The latter relation is in a sense symmetric: if for a model A and a formula φ one has A |= φ one may say equivalently that A makes φ true, or that φ is true of A. This is different for the support-relation , holding between a "piece of information" v and a formula φ: v φ must be read as the asymmetric relation "v contains evidence for φ." It is the interplay between the asymmetric and the symmetric relation that causes many subjects a headache. 11. It would not be appropriate to give the implication the truth–value "undecided" (as in Kleene's three– valued logic) in this case, since no amount of additional information can affect this truth–value. 3.4 Logical Forms in the Selection Task 55 The support-relation w ψ is defined between states in W4 and formulas ψ as follows. Let p be the proposition "the card has a vowel," and q the proposition "the card has an even number." The referent of the expression "the card" is determined by the information state on which p, q are interpreted; we assume that in an expression p∧ (¬)q the referent of "the card" in q is bound by that in p. Then we have 1. A p, K ¬p, p undecided on 4 and 7 (i.e., neither 4 p nor 4 ¬p, and similarly for 7); 2. 4 q, 7 ¬q, q undecided on A and K; 3. (A, 4) p ∧ q, (A, 7) p ∧ ¬q, . . . (4, A) p ∧ q, (4, K) ¬p ∧ q, etc. For a state v in W4, define v p ∧ ¬q as: "there is a card (x, y) in u such that (x, y) p ∧ ¬q." We say that the rule is supported by a piece of information v, and write v p → q, if v p ∧ ¬q. Lastly we say that v makes the rule true, and write v |= p → q, if for all u v : u p → q. Clearly v |= p → q implies v p → q, but the converse does not hold, and this is one source of confusion for subjects, as we will see in section 3.5.2. In this "information-seeking" version of the task the subject now must compute the information states that decide the rule. A combinatorial exercise involving the truth–table for → shows that these are: {(A, 7), K, 4, 7}, {A,K, 4, (7, A)}, {(A, 4), K, 4, (7, K)} and their extensions. Suppose the subject now views the task as: "what information must I gather in order to decide the rule," and interprets the instruction not to turn unnecessary cards in this light, thus looking for minimal information states only. The subject must then perform an action, or actions, which bring her from {A,K, 4, 7} to one of the desired minimal information states. The trouble is that sometimes turning a single card suffices to achieve a minimal information state, and that sometimes turning two cards is necessary, and it depends on the unknown hidden side of the cards which situation one is in. Subjects interpreting the task in this way therefore think that it is unsolvable. To make the task solvable, a different interpretation is needed, in which the subject does not think in terms of the information which must be gathered, but in terms of information which becomes available. The formalization appropriate to this interpretation involves a game in which the subject plays against an adversary who makes the information available; the subject's optimal choice corresponds to a winning strategy in this game. A formal characterization goes as follows. The game is played between two players, I (the subject) and II (the experimenter). The game is played on sixteen boards simultaneously, corresponding to what can be on the back of the cards whose visible sides are A,K, 4, 7. Player I selects a set of cards which she claims will decide the rule on every board. Player II has two options: 56 3 A Little Logic Goes a Long Way (a) II picks a card outside I's selection and chooses a board; (b) II picks a card in I's selection and chooses two boards. In case (a), II's move is winning if I's selection makes the rule true, but II's card makes it false on the chosen board. In case (b), II's move is winning if II's selected card has different values on the two boards, but the rule is true on both. Player I wins if II does not win. Clearly a winning strategy for player I consists in the selection of A and 7. Less, and player II can win via a move of type (a); more, and II can win via a move of type (b). To compute the winning strategy is again a combinatorial exercise. It is essential for this version of the task that the game is played on sixteen boards simultaneously. If the game were to be played on a single board about which player I knows nothing, the concept of strategy would not make sense, and we find subjects saying that it is only luck that a selection turns out be relevant; see for instance, subject 5 in section 3.5.3. Hence if the game corresponding to the selection task is formalized as being played on one board only, the subject must consider the task to be unsolvable. There is thus much more to the descriptive selection task than a simple computation in propositional logic which subjects cannot do because they are partly irrational, or have no general logical competence. Indeed, that subjects find the purely propositional part easy is witnessed by the fact that they do not have trouble evaluating the impact of a card correctly (e.g., subject 3 in the introduction to section 3.5). It is the choosing that creates the difficulty, and here the instructions provide little guidance on how to construct the proper information– processing task, or they may even actively interfere with the construction. Deontic Interpretation of the Task The logic appropriate to a deontic interpretation of the task is very different. One difference is in the structure of the models associated with deontic statements. As we have seen in chapter 2, a deontic model A is given by a set of "worlds" or "cases" W , together with a relation R(w, v) on W intuitively meaning: "v is an ideal counterpart to w." That is, if R(w, v), then the norms posited in w are never violated in v. The relation R is used to interpret the modal operator O ("it ought to be the case that"). On such a model, we may define a deontic conditional by writing O(p → q), but it is convenient to introduce a special notation for this conditional, namely p ≺ q, and to define for any world w ∈ W w |= p ≺ q iff for all v such that R(w, v) : v |= p implies v |= q, and A |= p ≺ q iff for all w in W : w |= p ≺ q. 3.4 Logical Forms in the Selection Task 57 The satisfaction relation for atomic propositions is the same as that in the descriptive case. The definition thus introduces an additional parameter R. If W is the set of worlds defined above, define R on W by R(A, (A, 4)), R(7, (7, K)), ¬R(A, (A, 7)), ¬R(7, (7, A)), R(K, (K, 4)), R(K, (K, 7)), R(4, (4, A)), and R(4, (4, K)).12 R encodes the evaluation of each card against the norm, and this is what subjects can easily do. As the reader will have no trouble verifying, the deontic model (W, R, |=) then satisfies p ≺ q, i.e., for all w in W : w |= p ≺ q. For example, to verify that A |= p ≺ q, one notes that the only world v satisfying R(A, v) is (A, 4), which satisfies both p and q. That is, in contrast to the previous case the rule is true from the start, hence there is no need to gather evidence for or against the rule, and the conflicts between |= and , and between two views of information, cannot arise in this case. The information–processing task becomes rather different: the output is the set of cases which possibly violate the norm, and inspection of the definition of R shows that only A and 7 are candidates. Turning 7 to find A just means that (7, A) is not an ideal counterpart to 7, in the sense that it does not satisfy the norms holding in 7. The computation is accordingly just a simple lookup. The set W4 and the strategic choices it gives rise to do not enter into the picture.13 Deontic Connectives This is actually a general phenomenon, which is not restricted to just conditionals. As we shall see, if one gives subjects the following variation on the selection task, There is a vowel on one side of the cards and there is an even number on the other side,14 they typically respond by turning the A and 4 cards, instead of just replying "this statement is false of these four cards" (see below, section 4.1.5). One reason for this behavior is given by subject 22 in section 3.5.6, who now sees the task as checking those cards which could still satisfy the conjunctive rule, namely A and 4, since K and 7 do not satisfy in any case. Such a response is only possible if one has helped oneself to a predicate such as R. Formally, one may define a deontic conjunction p q by putting, for all w in W , w |= p q iff for all v such that R(v, w): v |= p ∧ q. 12. We shall assume that if v is an ideal counterpart to w, then v is maximally ideal, that is, v is the ideal counterpart of itself. Thus we assume ∀w∀v(R(w, v) → R(v, v)). 13. In the psychological literature one may sometimes find a superficially similar distinction between descriptive and deontic conditionals. See, e.g., Oaksford and Chater [205], who conceive of a deontic conditional as material implication plus an added numerical utility function. The preceding proposal introduces a much more radical distinction in logical form. 14. Emphasis added. 58 3 A Little Logic Goes a Long Way In this case the worlds (K, 4) and (K, 7) are both non-ideal counterparts to the partial world K, and similarly for the partial world 7. In other words, no completion of K or 7 can be ideal, and therefore the subject has to turn only A and 4, to see whether perhaps these worlds are ideal. Domains Above we have seen that subjects may be in doubt about the structure of the relevant model: whether it consists of cards, or of cards plus a distinguished predicate. An orthogonal issue is, which set of cards should form the domain of the model. The experimenter intends the domain to be the set of four cards. The subjects may not grasp this; indeed there are good reasons why they shouldn't. Section 3.5.2 gives some reasons why natural language use suggests considering larger domains, of which the four cards shown are only a sample, and it presents a dialogue with a subject who has a probabilistic concept of truth that comes naturally with this interpretation of the domain. Other Logical Forms Some subjects believe a conditional allows exceptions, and cannot be falsified by a single counterexample (see section 3.5.2). These subjects' concept of conditional is more adequately captured by the following pair of statements 1. p ∧ ¬e → q 2. p′ ∧ ¬q′ → e Here e is a proposition letter standing for "exception," whose defining clause is (2). (In the second rule, we use p′, q′ rather than p, q to indicate that perhaps only some, but not all, cards which satisfy p but not q qualify as bona fide exceptions.) Condition (1) then says that the rule applies only to nonexceptional cards. There are no clear falsifying conditions for conditionals allowing exceptions, so (1) and (2) are best viewed as premises. This of course changes the task, which is now seen as identifying the exceptions. These robust default conditionals were mentioned above in chapter 2, section 2.3 and will be used below in chapter 7 to model discourse interpretation in the suppression task. This concludes our survey of what is involved in assigning logical form in this task. We now turn to the demonstrations that subjects are indeed troubled by the different ways in which they can set the parameters, and that clearer task instructions can lead to fewer possibilities for the settings. 3.5 Giving Subjects a Voice 59 3.5 Giving Subjects a Voice A standard selection task experiment consists in giving subjects a form which contains the instructions and shows four cards; the subjects then have to mark the cards they want to select. The type of data obtainable in this way is highly abstracted from the reasoning process. The subjects' approach to the task may be superficial in the sense of not engaging any reasoning or comprehension process which would be engaged in plausible real-world communication with the relevant conditionals. One loses information about subjects' vacillations (which can be very marked) and thus one has little idea at what moment of their deliberations subjects make a choice. It is also possible that the same answer may be given for very different reasons. Furthermore, the design implies that the number of acceptable answers is restricted; for instance, some subjects are inclined to give an answer such as "A or 4," or "any card," or "can't say, because it depends on the outcomes," and clearly the standard design leaves no room for such answers. Early on, Wason and Johnson-Laird [297] investigated the relationship between insight and reasoning by also using dialogue protocols. They distinguished two kinds of feedback: (1) feedback from hypothetical turnings –"suppose there is an A on the back of the 7, what would you then conclude about the rule?"; (2) actual feedback in which the subject turns the 7 card and finds the A – "are you happy that you did/didn't select the 7 card?." It seems to us that this type of design is much more conducive to obtaining information about the whys and wherefores of subjects' answers. We report here excerpts from Socratic tutorial dialogues with subjects engaged in the task, to illustrate the kinds of problems subjects experience.15 Observational studies of externalized reasoning can provide prima facie evidence that these problems actually are real problems for subjects, although there is, of course, the possibility that externalizing changes the task. Only a controlled experiment can provide evidence that the predicted mental processes actually do take place when subjects reason in the original noninteractive task. A controlled experiment whose hypotheses derive from a combination of the present material with a logical analysis will be reported in the next chapter. We present these observations of dialogues in the spirit of providing plausibility for our semantically based predictions. We assure the reader that they are representative of episodes in the dialogues – not one-offs. But rather than turn these observations into a quantitative study of the dialogues which would still only bear on this externalized task, we prefer to use them to illustrate and motivate our subsequent experimental manipulations which do bear directly on the original task. We acknowledge that we cannot be certain that our interpretations of the dialogues are correct representations of mental processes – the 15. Some of these excerpts were reported in [264] and [265]. Others come from a tutorial experiment performed by the our student Marian Counihan. 60 3 A Little Logic Goes a Long Way reader will often have alternative suggestions. Nevertheless, we feel that the combination of rich naturalistic, albeit selective observations with controlled experimental data is more powerful than either would be on its own. At the very least, the dialogues strongly suggest that there are multiple possible confusions, and often multiple reasons for making the very same response, and so counsel against homogeneous explanations. As an appetiser we present two examples of dialogues, both of kinds observed by Wason. The first example would be considered a case of "irrationality" by Wason (but not by us), the second shows a possibly related and initially perplexing dissociation between logical evaluation and selection of cards which Wason also found striking. The first example shows that subjects may fail to understand the implication of the 7/A combination. Here, as in the sequel, we denote by "7/A" the card which has 7 on the visible face and A on the invisible back. Subject 14 S. I would just be interested in As and 4s, couldn't be more than that. E. So now let's turn the cards, starting from right to left. [Subject turns 7 to find A.] E. Your comments? S. It could be an A, but it could be something else. E. So what does this tell you about the rule? S. About the rule . . . that if there is an A then maybe there is a 7 on the other side. E. So there was a 7. S. But it doesn't affect the rule. The second example shows that a subject sometimes hypothesises (or discovers) an A on the back of the 7, and notes that this would mean the rule was false of the card, but then declines to choose the card (or revise an earlier failure to choose it). Subject 3 E. OK. Lastly the 7. S. Well I wouldn't pick it. E. But what would it mean if you did? S. Well, if there is an A then that would make the rule false, and if there was a K, it wouldn't make any difference to the rule. Following the theory outlined in chapter 2 and section 3.3, we view these confusions as a consequence of subjects' trying to fix one of the many parameters involved in deciding upon a logical form. Here is a list of the interpretational problems faced by subjects, as witnessed by the experimental protocols. Illustrations will be provided below. What is truth? What is falsity? Pragmatics: the authority of the source of the rule Rules and exceptions 3.5 Giving Subjects a Voice 61 Reasoning and planning Interaction between interpretation and reasoning Truth of the rule vs. "truth" for a case Cards as viewed as a sample from a larger domain Obtaining evidence for the rule vs. evaluation of the cards Existential import of the conditional Subjects' understanding of propositional connectives generally Interestingly, most of these problems simply cannot occur on a deontic interpretation of the task, and we take this to be the reason why performance on this task is so much 'better' than on the descriptive task. 3.5.1 The Design of the Tutorial Experiment: High-Energy Phenomenology16 The experiment to be reported in the next section17 consisted of two parts. First we gave subjects a booklet with the standard Wason task and the two–rule task (for which see below), which also contained a so–called paraphrase task, in which the subjects were asked to judge entailment relations between sentences involving propositional connectives and quantifiers. This task continues the classical work of Fillenbaum [82] on subjects' understandings of natural language connectives. For example, the subject could be given the sentence "if a card has a vowel on one side, it has an even number on the other side," and then be asked to judge whether "every card which has a vowel on one side, has an even number on the other side" follows from the given sentence. This example is relatively innocuous,18 but we will see below that these judgments can be logically startling. The results of this task gave us some information about subjects' understanding of logical connectives, which could then be related to their performance in the selection task. The second part of the experiment consisted of a series of dialogues with the subject while she or he was engaged in solving the Wason task or one of its variants. The dialogues were recorded on video and transcribed. In the case of the standard task, the setup was as follows. The subject received a form giving the same instructions as we saw in figure 3.1, except that the pictures of the card were replaced by real cards, again showing A,K, 4, and 7. We first asked the subjects to select cards. We then asked them to reflect on what might be on the other side, given the instructions, and to evaluate the imagined outcomes with respect to the truth–value of the rule. Subjects were then allowed to revise 16. We first came across this phrase in an ad for a physics job, but it seemed to capture the feeling of Wason's materials scattering into a thousand interpretations when they impinged on the subjects' expectations, as well as the amount of effort expended by both E and S in struggling to understand events. 17. The experiment was performed in 1999 in Edinburgh by us together with Magda Osman. 18. Although not quite, as it brings to the fore issues about the existential import of the conditional, to which we will return in section 3.5.6. 62 3 A Little Logic Goes a Long Way their initial selection. Lastly, we asked them to turn each card and to explain to us what the result implies for the truth–value of the rule. We also followed this procedure for variants of the standard task, such as the one explained next. A Two–Rule Task This task, whose standard form is given as figure 3.2, is the first in a series of manipulations which try to alleviate some of the difficulties subjects have in interpreting the task. The classical logical competence model specifies that corBelow is depicted a set of four cards, of which you can see only the exposed face but not the hidden back. On each card, there is an 8 or a 3 on one of its sides and a U or I on the other. Also below there are two rules which apply only to the four cards. It is given that exactly one rule is true. Your task is to decide which if any of these four cards you must turn in order to decide which rule is true. Don't turn unnecessary cards. Tick the cards you want to turn. 1. If there is a U on one side, then there is an 8 on the other side. 2. If there is an I on one side, then there is an 8 on the other side. Cards: U I 8 3 Figure 3.2 Two–rule task. rect performance is to turn just the 3 card. We conjectured that explicitly telling the subject that one rule is true and one false, should background a number of issues concerned with the notion of truth, such as the possibility of the rule withstanding exceptions. The experimental manipulation turned out to be unexpectedly fruitful; while struggling through the task, subjects made comments very suggestive of where their difficulties lay. Below we give excerpts from the tutorial dialogues which highlight these difficulties. In the tutorial version of this experiment, subjects were presented with real cards lying in front of them on the table. The cards shown were U, I, 8 and 3. In this case, both U and I carried an 8, 8 carried an I, and 3 a U. The task is pragmatically somewhat peculiar in that the two rules different in the antecedent, not the consequent, and are still said to be mutually exclusive. Naturally occurring mutually exclusive rules seem to have the same antecedent but different consequents. The antecedent of a conditional often acts as a topic (in the linguistic sense), and the two conditionals then say something different of this topic. It is much less common to have two topics, each corresponding to an antecedent. Occasionally one therefore observes pragmatic normalization in 3.5 Giving Subjects a Voice 63 the dialogues, which inverts the conditionals to "if 8 then U" and "if 8 then I." We are now in a position to present subjects' musings, insights and perplexities while working through the various tasks. 3.5.2 Subjects' Understanding of Truth and Falsity 'Truth' and 'falsity' are among the most important parameters to be set, and the reader should recall from chapter 2 that they can be set independently: only classical logic forces "not true" to be the same as "false." This stipulation corresponds to a definition of semantics, in which one defines only "true on a model" (|=), not "false on model" (|=). It is, however, equally possible to give a recursive definition of semantics in which |= and |= are defined by simultaneous recursion. We therefore give 'true' and 'false' separate headings. The Logic of 'True' On a classical understanding of the two–rule task, the competence answer is to turn the 3; this would show which one of the rules is false, hence classically also which one is true. This classical understanding should be enforced by explicitly instructing the subjects that one rule is true and the other one false. Semantically this means, for a given model A that if not A |= p → q, then A |= p → q. Interestingly, some subjects refuse to be moved by the explicit instruction, insisting that "not-false" is not the same as "true." These subjects are thus guided by some nonclassical logic. Subject 17. S. [Writes miniature truth–tables under the cards.] E. OK. so if you found an I under the 3, you put a question mark for rule 1, and rule 2 is false; if you turned the 3 and found a U, then rule 1 is false and rule 2 is a question mark. So you want to turn 3 or not? S. No. E. Let's actually try doing it. [First] turn over the U . . . you find a 3, which rule is true and which rule is false? S. (Long pause) E. Are we none the wiser? S. No, there's a question mark. E. It could have helped us, but it didn't help us? S. Yes. ... E. OK, and the 3. S. Well if there is a U then that one is disproved [pointing to the first rule] and if there is an I then that one is disproved [pointing to the second rule]. But neither rule can be proved by 3. ... 64 3 A Little Logic Goes a Long Way E. Turn over the last card [3] and see what's on the back of it... so it's a U. What does that tell us about the rule? S. That rule 1 is false and it doesn't tell us anything about rule 2? E. Can't you tell anything about rule 2? S. No. The subject thinks falsifying rule 1 does not suffice and now looks for additional evidence to support rule 2. In the end she chooses the 8 card for this purpose, which is of course not the competence answer even when "not-false" is not equated with "true" (this answer may reflect the pragmatic normalization of the two conditionals referred to above). Here are two more examples of the same phenomenon. Subject 8. S. I wouldn't look at this one [3] because it wouldn't give me appropriate information about the rules; it would only tell me if those rules are wrong, and I am being asked which of those rules is the correct one. Does that make sense? Subject 5. E. What about if there was a 3? S. A 3 on the other side of that one [U]. Then this [rule 1] isn't true. E. It doesn't say. . . ? S. It doesn't say anything about this one [rule 2]. E. And the I? S. If there is a 3, then this one [rule 2] isn't true, and it doesn't say anything about that one [rule 1]. The same problem is of course present in the standard Wason task as well, albeit in a less explicit form. If the cards are A, K, 4, and 7, then turning A and 7 suffices to verify that the rule is not false; but the subject may wonder whether it is therefore true. For instance, if the concept of truth of a conditional involves attributing a law-like character to the conditional, then the absence of counterexamples does not suffice to establish truth; a further causal connection between antecedent and consequent is necessary.19 Since the truth of p → q cannot be established on the model w in W4, the semantics implicitly adopted by these subjects for p → q is a form of intensional semantics, following the terminology introduced in chapter 2. That is, to determine w |= p → q one has to refer to information extraneous to w, for example a much larger population of cards. A subject faced with this difficulty will be unable to solve the task as given, because of lacking information. Let us note here that this difficulty is absent in the case of deontic rules such as If you drink alcohol in this bar, you have to be over 18. 19. Such a causal connection is present in the "production line scenarios" which ask the subject to imagine that there is a machine producing cards which on one side . . . , etc. 3.5 Giving Subjects a Voice 65 Such a rule cannot, and in fact need not, be shown to be true by examining cases; its truth is given, and the subjects need only establish that it is not violated. So in the deontic case, subjects have no worries about the meaning of "truth." Another twist to the concept of truth was given by those subjects, who, when reading the rule(s) aloud, actually inserted a modality in the conditional: Subject 13. [Standard Wason task] S. . . . if there is an A, then there is a 4, necessarily the 4. . . [somewhat later]. . . if there is an A on one side, necessarily a 4 on the other side. . . . If truth involves necessity, then the absence of counterexamples is not sufficient for truth. Again this leads to an intensional semantics for p → q. The Logic of 'False' Interesting things happen when one asks subjects to meditate on what it could mean for a conditional to be false. As indicated above, the logic of "true" need not determine the logic of "false" completely; it is possible to give a separate definition of w |= p → q. The paraphrase task alluded to above showed that a conditional p → q being false is often (> 50%) interpreted as p → ¬q! (We will refer to this property as strong falsity.) This observation is not ours alone: Fillenbaum [82] observed that in 60% of the cases the negation of a causal temporal conditional p → q ("if he goes to Amsterdam, he will get stoned") is taken to be p → ¬q; for contingent universals (conditionals, such as the rule in the selection task, where there is no salient connection between antecedent and consequent) the proportion is 30%. In our experiment the latter proportion is even higher. Here is an example of a subject using strong falsity when asked to imagine what could be on the other side of a card. Subject 26 [Standard Wason task; subject has chosen strong falsity in paraphrase task] E. So you're saying that if the statement is true, then the number [on the back of A] will be 4. . . . What would happen if the statement were false? S. Then it would be a number other than 4. Note that strong falsity encapsulates a concept of necessary connection between antecedent and consequent in the sense that even counterexamples are no mere accidents, but are governed by a rule. If a subject believes that true and false in this situation are exhaustive (i.e., that the logic is bivalent), this could reflect a conviction that the cards have been laid out according to some rule, instead of randomly. It is interesting to see what this interpretation means for card choices in the selection tasks. If a subject has strong falsity and applies the (classical) tautology (p → q) ∨ (p → ¬q), then (in the standard Wason task) either of the cards A, 4 can show that p → q is not-false, hence true. Unfortunately, in the standard setup 'either of A, 4' is not a possible response offered. 66 3 A Little Logic Goes a Long Way In the tutorial experiment involving the two–rule task subjects were at liberty to make such choices. In this case strong falsity has the effect of turning each of the two rules into a biconditional, "U if and only if 8" and "I if and only if 8" respectively. Any card now distinguishes between the two rules, and we do indeed find subjects emphatically making this choice: Subject 10 E. OK, so you want to revise your choice or do you want to stick with the 8? S. No no . . . I might turn all of them. E. You want to turn all of them? S. No no no just one of them, any of them. Perhaps the customary choice of p, q in the standard task is the projection of "either of p, q" onto the given possibilities. These considerations just serve to highlight the possibility that a given choice of cards is made for very different reasons by different subjects, so that by itself statistical information on the different card choices in the standard task must be interpreted with care. Truth and Satisfaction Subjects are persistently confused about several notions of truth that could possibly be involved. The intended interpretation is that the domain of discourse consists of the four cards shown, and that the truth–value of the rule is to be determined with respect to that domain. This interpretation is, however, remarkably difficult to get at. An alternative interpretation is that the domain is some indefinitely large population of cards, of which the four cards shown are just a sample; this is the intuition that lies behind Oaksford and Chater's Bayesian approach [205]. We will return to this interpretation in section 3.5.2 below. The other extreme is that each card defines a domain of its own: each card is to be evaluated against the rule independently. This interpretation is the one suited to deontic conditionals, though it is also possible with descriptive interpretations and is sometimes encouraged by "seek violations" instructions (see [308]). What is perhaps most tantalizing reading the early literature on the task is how little the experimenters themselves noticed that deontic interpretation was critical. There was a good deal of attention to the effects of "seek violators" instructions, but these were interpreted against the background of Wason's focus on falsification, not on their effect of making the cards independent of each other, or of removing the ambiguity between judging the cases and judging the truth of the rule. An intermediate position is that there are cards which by themselves suffice to determine the truth–value of the rule; we saw an instance of this while discussing examples of "strong falsity," where the A and 4 cards are each decisive. The phenomenon may be more general, however, a failure to appreciate the relativity of the relation "the rule is true of the card." That is, even if a card 3.5 Giving Subjects a Voice 67 satisfies the rule (what we called 'support' in section 3.4.1), it need not make it true. Subject 10. E. If you found an 8 on this card [I], what would it say? S. It would say that rule 2 is true, and if the two cannot be true then rule 1 is wrong....(Subject turns 8.) E. OK. so it's got an I on the back, what does that mean? S. It means that rule 2 is true. E. Are you sure? S. I'm just thinking whether they are exclusive, yes because if there is an I then there is an 8. Yes, yes, it must be that. One experimental manipulation in the tutorial dialogue for the two–rule task addressed this problem by making subjects first turn U and I, to find 8 on the back of both. This caused great confusion, because the subjects' logic (equating truth with satisfaction) led them to conclude that therefore both rules must be true, contradicting the instruction. Subject 18 [Initial choice was 8]. E. Start with the U, turn that over. S. U goes with 8. E. OK. now turn the I over. S. Oh God, I shouldn't have taken that card, the first ... E. You turned it over and there was an 8. S. There was an 8 on the other side, U and 8. If there is an I there is an 8, so they are both true. [Makes a gesture that the whole thing should be dismissed.] Subject 28. E. OK, turn them. S. [turns U, finds 8] So rule 1 is true. E. OK, for completeness' sake let's turn the other cards as well. S. OK. so in this instance if I had turned that one [I] first then rule 2 would be true and rule 1 would be disproved. Either of these is different. [U or I] E. What does that actually mean, because we said that only one of the rules could be true? Exactly one is true. S. These cards are not consistent with these statements here. On the other hand, subjects who ultimately got the two–rule task right also appeared to have an insight into the intended relation between rule and cards. Subject 6. E. So say there were a U on the back of the 8, then what would this tell you? S. I'm not sure where the 8 comes in because I don't know if that would make the U one right, because it is the opposite way around. If I turned that one [pointing to the U] just to see if there was an 8, if there was an 8 it doesn't mean that rule 2 is not true. We claim that part of the difficulty of the standard task involving a descriptive rule is the possibility of confusing the two relations between rule and cards. 68 3 A Little Logic Goes a Long Way Transferring the "truth of the card" to the "truth of the rule" may be related to what Wason called "verification bias," but it seems to cut deeper. One way to transfer the perplexity unveiled in the above excerpts to the standard task would be to do a tutorial experiment where the A has a 4 on the back, and the 7 an A. If a subject suffering from a confusion about the relation between cards and rule turns the A and finds 4, he should conclude that the rule is true, only to be rudely disabused upon turning 7. It is clear that for a deontic rule no such confusion can arise, because the truth–value of the rule is not an issue. Exceptions and Brittleness The concept of truth Wason intended is that of "true without exceptions," what we call a brittle interpretation of the conditional. It goes without saying that this is not how a conditional is generally interpreted in real life. And we do find subjects who struggle with the required transition from a notion of truth which is compatible with exceptions, to exceptionless truth. In terms of logical form, this is the issue of the formal expression into which the natural language conditional is translated. As we observed in section 3.4, the proper formal correlate is a formula p ∧ ¬e → q, where e is a proposition letter denoting an exceptional state of affairs, which can be given further content by a clause of the form ". . . → e." Subject 18. S. [Turns 3 and finds U] OK.. well no...well that could be an exception you see. E. The U? S. The U could be an exception to the other rule. E. To the first rule? S. Yes, it could be an exception. E. So could you say anything about the rule based on this? Say, on just having turned the U and found a 3? S. Well yes, it could be a little exception, but it does disprove the rule so you'd have to... E. You'd have to look at the other ones? S. Yes. Similarly in the standard Wason task: Subject 18. S. If I just looked at that one on its own [7/A] I would say that it didn't fit the rule, and that I'd have to turn that one [A] over, and if that was different [i.e., if there wasn't an even number] then I would say the rule didn't hold. E. So say you looked at the 7 and you turned it over and you found an A, then? S. I would have to turn the other cards over . . . well it could be just an exception to the rule so I would have to turn over the A. Clearly, if a counterexample is not sufficient evidence that the rule is false, then it is dubious whether card turnings can prove the rule to be true or false 3.5 Giving Subjects a Voice 69 at all. Subjects may accordingly be confused about how to interpret the instructions of the experiment. In our data, the term "(possible) exception" was reserved for the ¬q card; the p card qualified as a potential falsifier. We have no explanation for this phenomenon, but if it is pervasive, it would give yet another reason why subjects don't bother to look at the ¬q card, even when they are clear about its logical meaning. The Cards as Sample Above we noted that there are problems concerning the domain of interpretation of the conditional rule. The intended interpretation is that the rule applies only to the four cards shown. However, the semantics of conditionals is such that they tend to apply to an open-ended domain of cases. This can best be seen in contrasting universal quantification with the natural language conditional. Universal quantification is equally naturally used in framing contingent contextually determined statements as open-ended generalizations. So, to develop Goodman's example [102], "All the coins in my pocket this morning are copper" is a natural way to phrase a local generalization with a fixed enumerable domain of interpretation. However, "If a coin is in my pocket this morning, it's copper" is a distinctly unnatural way of phrasing the same claim. The latter even invites the fantastical interpretation that if a silver coin were put in my pocket this morning it would become copper – that is an interpretation in which a larger open-ended domain of objects is in play. Similarly in the case of the four–card task, the clause that "the rule applies only to the four cards" has to be explicitly included. One may question whether subjects take this clause on board, since this interpretation is an unnatural one for the conditional. It is further unnatural to call the sentence a rule if its application is so local. Formally, this means that the set W of possible worlds introduced in section 3.4.1 must be replaced by a much richer structure. A much more natural interpretation is that the four cards are a sample from a larger population. Indeed this is the point of purchase of Oaksford and Chater's proposals [205] that performance is driven by subjects' assumptions about the larger domain of interpretation. Some subjects raise this issue explicitly. Subject 3.20 [in standard Wason task; has chosen A, 4.] S. Well in that case you would have to turn all the cards, if you couldn't work with just a start point. Because then if you turned.... take a random set of cards, imagine a random set of cards. If you had three A faces, and five 7 faces, but you couldn't have any assumption that that was a starting point, you would have to turn all the cards, because then you might get a 60%, 40% divide, and you would have to take an average, and say the rule isn't right, but the majority of cards suggest that if there's an A on one side then there's a 4. A likelihood, in that case. 20. In Marian Counihan's experiment. 70 3 A Little Logic Goes a Long Way E. But if there was a likelihood, what would that mean? S. It wouldn't be a rule, it would be invalidated. Here is another subject who thinks that truth or falsity can only be established by (crude) probabilistic considerations. Subject 26. S. [has turned U,I, found an 8 on the back of both] I can't tell which one is true. E. OK, let's continue turning. S. [turns 3] OK, that would verify rule 2. [. . . ] Well, there are two cards that verify rule 2, and only one card so far that verifies rule 1. Because if this [3] were verifying rule 1, it should be an I on the other side. E. Let's turn [the 8]. S. OK, so that says that rule 2 is true as well, three of the cards verify rule 2 and only one verifies rule 1. E. So you decide by majority. S. Yes, the majority suggests rule 2. It is interesting that 3/U is described as verifying rule 2, rather than falsifying rule 1; U→8 is never ruled out: S. It's not completely false, because there is one card that verifies rule 1. Asked to describe her thought processes, the subject later comments S. Well, when there's two rules then you can't say that they should both be true because they are mutually exclusive . . . so depending on which way the cards are there is basically a 50 per cent probability that either one is going to be true. . . . With one rule I think it will be true or if it wouldn't be true, then it seems more likely that it would be true. 3.5.3 Dependencies between Card Choices The tutorial dialogues suggest that part of the difficulty of the selection task consists in having to choose a card without being able to inspect what is on the other side of the card. This difficulty can only be made visible in the dialogues because there the subject is confronted with real cards, which she is not allowed to turn at first. It then becomes apparent that some subjects would prefer to solve the problem by "reactive planning," i.e., by first choosing a card, turning it, and deciding what to do based on what is on the other side. This source of difficulty is obscured by the standard format of the experiment. The form invites the subjects to think of the cards depicted as real cards, but at the same time the answer should be given on the basis of the representation of the cards on the form, i.e., with inherently unknowable backs. The instruction "Tick the cards you want to turn ..." clearly does not allow the subject to return a reactive plan. The tutorials amply show that dependencies are a source of difficulty. Here is an excerpt from a tutorial dialogue in the two–rule condition. 3.5 Giving Subjects a Voice 71 Subject 1. E. Same for the I, what if there is an 8 on the back? S. If there is an 8 on the back, then it means that rule 2 is right and rule one is wrong. E. So do we turn over the I or not? S. Yes. Unless I've turned the U already. And in a standard Wason task: Subject 10. S. OK, so if there is a vowel on this side then there is an even number, so I can turn A to find out whether there is an even number on the other side or I can turn the 4 to see if there is a vowel on the other side. E. So would you turn over the other cards? Do you need to turn over the other cards? S. I think it just depends on what you find on the other side of the card. No I wouldn't turn them. ... E. If you found a K on the back of the 4? S. Then it would be false. ... S. But if that doesn't disclude [sic] then I have to turn another one. E. So you are inclined to turn this over [the A] because you wanted to check? S. Yes, to see if there is an even number. E. And you want to turn this over [the 4]? S. Yes, to check if there is a vowel, but if I found an odd number [on the back of the A], then I don't need to turn this [the 4]. E. So you don't want to turn . . . S. Well, I'm confused again because I don't know what's on the back, I don't know if this one . . . E. We're only working hypothetically now. S. Oh well, then only one of course, because if the rule applies to the whole thing then one would test it. ... E. What about the 7? S. Yes, the 7 could have a vowel, then that would prove the whole thing wrong. So that's what I mean, do you turn one at a time or do you . . . ? ... E. Well if you needed to know beforehand, without having turned these over, so you think to yourself I need to check whether the rule holds, so what cards do I need to turn over? You said you would turn over the A and the 4. S. Yes, but if these are right, say if this [the A] has an even number and this has a vowel [the 4], then I might be wrong in saying "Oh it's fine," so this could have an odd number [the K] and this a vowel [the 7] so in that case I need to turn them all. E. You'd turn all of them over? Just to be sure? S. Yes. Once one has understood Wason's intention in specifying the task, it is easy to assume that it is obvious that the experimenter intends subjects to decide 72 3 A Little Logic Goes a Long Way what cards to turn before any information is gained from any turnings. Alternatively, and equivalently, the instructions can be interpreted to be to assume the minimal possible information gain from turnings. However, the obviousness of these interpretations is possibly greater in hindsight, and so we set out to test whether they are a source of difficulty in the task. Note that no contingencies of choice can arise if the relation between rule and cards is interpreted deontically. Whether one case obeys the law is unconnected to whether any other case does. Hence the planning problem indicated above cannot arise for a deontic rule, which might be one explanation for the good performance in that case. In this connection it may be of interest to consider the so-called reduced array selection task, or RAST for short, due to Wason and Green [296] and discussed extensively by Margolis [182]. In its barest outline21 the idea of the RAST is to remove the p and ¬p cards from the array of cards shown to the subject, thus leaving only q and ¬q. The p and ¬p cards cause no trouble in the standard task in the sense that p is chosen almost always, and ¬p almost never, so one would expect that their deletion would cause little change in the response frequencies for the remaining cards. Surprisingly, howevers, the frequency of the ¬q response increases dramatically. From our point of view, this result is less surprising, because without the possibility to choose p, dependencies between card choices can no longer arise. This is not to say that this is the only difficulty the RAST removes. Getting Evidence for the Rule vs. Evaluation of the Cards A related planning problem, which can, however, occur only on a nonstandard logical understanding of the problem, is the following. Some subjects interpret the instruction not to choose unnecessary cards as the injunction not to choose a card whose turning may yield a nondecisive outcome. In a few early tutorial dialogues involving the two–rule experiment, the background rule incorrectly failed to specify that the cards have one side either U or I and on the other side either 3 or 8, owing to an error in the instructions. In this case the competence response is not to turn 3 only, but to turn U, I, and 3. But several subjects did not want to choose the 3 for the following reason. Subject 7. S. Then I was wondering whether to choose the numbers. Well, I don't think so because there might be other letters [than U,I] on the other side. There could be totally different letters. E. You can't be sure? S. I can't be sure. I can only be sure if there is a U or an I on the other side. So this is not very efficient and this [3] does not give me any information. But I could turn the U or the I. 21. The actual experimental setup is much more complicated and not quite comparable to the experiments reported here. 3.5 Giving Subjects a Voice 73 Apparently the subject thinks that he can choose between various sets of cards, each sufficient, and the choice should be as parsimonious as possible in the sense that every outcome of a turning must be relevant. To show that this is not an isolated phenomenon, here is a subject engaged in a standard Wason task: Subject 5. E So you would pick the A and you would pick the 4. And lastly the 7? S. That's irrelevant. E. So why do you think it's irrelevant? S. Let me see again. Oh wait, so that could be an A or a K again [writing the options for the back of 7 down], so if the 7 would have an A then that would prove me wrong. But if it would have a K then that wouldn't tell me anything. E. So? S. So these two [pointing to A and 4] give me more information, I think. E. . . . You can turn over those two [A and 4]. S. [turns over the A] E. So what does that say? S. That it's wrong. E. And that one [4]? S. That it's wrong. E. Now turn over those two [K and 7]. S. [Turning over the K] It's a K and 4. Doesn't say anything about this [pointing to the rule]. [After turning over the 7] Aha. E. So that says the rule is . . . ? S. That the rule is wrong. But I still wouldn't turn this over, still because I wouldn't know if it would give an A, it could give me an a K and that wouldn't tell me anything. E. But even though it could potentially give you an A on the back of it like this one has. S. Yes, but that's just luck. I would have more chance with these two [referring to the A and the 4]. These subjects have no difficulty evaluating the meaning of the possible outcomes of turning 3 (in the two–rule task), or 7 (in the standard Wason task), but their choice is also informed by other considerations, in particular a perceived tradeoff between the 'information value' of a card and the penalty incurred by choosing it. Here is a subject very explicit about the trade-off. Subject 3. [Standard Wason task; he realises the meaning of the 7 card, but that doesn't change his choice of only A] S.... if there's an A on this side (pointing to the underside of the 7), it would invalidate the rule. E. OK. So would that mean that you should turn the 7, or not? S. Well you could turn the 7, but it says don't turn any cards you don't have to, and you only have to turn the A. E. OK. So the 7 could have an A on it, which would invalidate the rule, but.. S. [interrupting] It could have, but it could also have a K on it, so if you turned that [the 7]) and it had a K, it would make no difference to the rule, and you would have turned a card that was unnecessary, which it says not to do. E. But what if it had an A on it? S. But what if it had a K on it? 74 3 A Little Logic Goes a Long Way Of course this does not yet explain the observed evaluation of the 4/K card as showing that the rule is wrong, and simultaneously taking the K/4 card to be irrelevant. The combined evaluations seem to rule out a straightforward biconditional interpretation of the conditional, and also the explanation of the choice of 4 as motivated by a search for confirmatory evidence for the rule, as Wason would have it. This pattern of evaluations is not an isolated phenomenon, so an explanation would be most welcome. Even without such an explanation it is clear that the problem indicated, how to maximise information gain from turnings, cannot play a role in the case of deontic conditionals, since the status of the rule is not an issue. 3.5.4 The Pragmatics of the Descriptive Selection Task. The descriptive task demands that subjects seek evidence for the truth of a statement which comes from the experimenter. The experimenter can safely be assumed to know what is on the back of the cards. If the rule is false its appearance on the task sheet amounts to the utterance, by the experimenter, of a knowing falsehood, possibly with intention to deceive. It is an active possibility that doubting the experimenter's veracity is a socially uncomfortable thing to do. Quite apart from the possible sociopsychological effects of discomfort, the communication situation in this task is bizarre. The subject is first given one rule to the effect that the cards have letters on one side and numbers on the other. This rule they are supposed to take on trust. Then they are given another rule by the same information source and they are supposed not to trust it but seek evidence for its falsity. If they do not continue to trust the first rule, then their card selections should diverge from Wason's expectations. If they simply forget about the background rule, the proper card choice would be A,K, and 7; and if they want to test the background rule as well as the foreground rule, they would have to turn all cards. Notice that with the deontic interpretation, this split communication situation does not arise. The law stands and the task is to decide whether some people other than the source obey it. Here is an example of a subject who takes both rules on trust: Subject 3. [Standard Wason task; has chosen A and 4] E. Why pick those cards and not the other cards? S. Because they are mentioned in the rule and I am assuming that the rule is true. Another subject was rather bewildered when upon turning A he found a 7: Subject 8. S. Well there is something in the syntax with which I am not clear because it does not say that there is an exclusion of one thing, it says "if there is an A on one side there is a 4 on the other side." So the rule is wrong. E. This [pointing to A] shows that the rule is wrong. S. Oh, so the rule is wrong, it's not something I am missing. 3.5 Giving Subjects a Voice 75 Although this may sound similar to Wason's "verification bias," it is actually very different. Wason assumed that subjects would be in genuine doubt about the truth–value of the rule, but would then proceed in an "irrational," verificationist manner to resolve the issue. What transpires here is that subjects take it on the authority of the experimenter that the rule is true, and then interpret the instructions as indicating those cards which are evidence of this. Subject 22. S. Well, my immediate [inaudible] first time was to assume that this is a true statement, therefore you only want to turn over the card that you think will satisfy the statement. The communicative situation of the two–rule task is already much less bizarre, since there is no longer any reason to doubt the veracity of the experimenter. The excerpts also suggest that a modified standard task in which the rule is attributed not to the experimenter but to an unreliable source might increase the number of competence responses. It hardly needs emphasising anymore that these problems cannot arise in the case of a deontic rule. 3.5.5 Interaction between Interpretation and Reasoning The tutorial dialogues reveal another important source of confusion, namely the interpretation of the anaphoric expression "one side . . . other side" and its interaction with the direction of the conditional. The trouble with "one side . . . other side" is that in order to determine the referent of "other side," one must have kept in memory the referent of "one side." That may seem harmless enough, but in combination with the various other problems identified here, it may prove too much. Even apart from limitations of working memory, subjects may have a nonintended interpretation of "one side . . . other side," wherein "one side" is interpreted as "visible side" (the front, or face of the card) and "other side" is interpreted as "invisible side" (the back of the card). The expression "one side . . . other side" is then interpreted as deictic, not as anaphoric. That is, both "one side" and "other side" can be identified by direct pointing, whereas in the case of an anaphoric relationship the referent of "other side" depends on that of "one side." This possibility was investigated by Gebauer and Laming [92], who argue that deictic interpretation of "one side . . . other side" and a biconditional interpretation of the conditional, both singly and in combination, are prevalent, persistently held, and consistently reasoned with. Gebauer and Laming present the four cards of the standard task six times to each subject, pausing to actually turn cards which the subject selects, and to consider their reaction to what is found on the back. Their results show few explicitly acknowledged changes of choice, and few selections which reflect implicit changes. Subjects choose the same cards from the sixth set as they do from the first. Gebauer and Laming argue that the vast majority of the choices accord with normative reasoning 76 3 A Little Logic Goes a Long Way from one of the four combinations of interpretation achieved by permuting the conditional/biconditional with the deictic/anaphoric interpretations.22 We tried to find further evidence for Gebauer and Laming's view, and presented subjects with rules in which the various possible interpretations of 'one side . . . other side' were spelled out explicitly; e.g., one rule was (1) If there is a vowel on the face of the card, then there is an even number on the back. To our surprise, subjects seemed completely insensitive to the wording of the rule and chose according to the standard pattern whatever the formulation; for discussion see Stenning and van Lambalgen [264]. This result made us curious to see what would happen in tutorial dialogues when subjects are presented with a rule like (1), and indeed the slightly pathological (2) (2) If there is a vowel on the back of the card, there is an even number on the face of the card. After having presented the subjects with these two rules, we told them that the intended interpretation of "one side. . . other side" is that "one side" can refer to the visible face or to the invisible back. Accordingly, they now had to choose cards corresponding to (3) If there is a vowel on one side (face or back), then there is an even number on the other side (face or back). We now provide a number of examples, culled from the tutorial dialogues, which demonstrate the interplay between the interpretations chosen for the anaphora and the conditional. The first example shows us a subject who explicitly changes the direction of the implication when considering the back/face anaphora, even though she is at first very well aware that the rule is not biconditional. Subject 12. [experiments (1), (2), (3)] E. The first rule says that if there is a vowel on the face of the card, so what we mean by face is the bit you can see, then there is an even number on the back of the card, so that's the bit you can't see. So which cards would you turn over to check the rule? S. Well, I just thought 4, but then it doesn't necessarily say that if there is a 4 that there is a vowel underneath. So the A. E. For this one it's the reverse, so it says if there is a vowel on the back, so the bit you can't see, there is an even number on the face; so in this sense which ones would you pick? S. [Subject ticks 4] This one. E. So why wouldn't you pick any of the other cards? 22. Four combinations, because the deictic back/face reading of "one side . . . other side" appeared to be too implausible to be considered. But see below. 3.5 Giving Subjects a Voice 77 S. Because it says that if there is an even number on the face, then there is a vowel, so it would have to be one of those [referring to the numbers]. ...[Now in the standard Wason task] E. [This rule] says that if there is a vowel on one side of the card, either face or back, then there is an even number on the other side, either face or back. S. I would pick that one [the A] and that one [the 4]. E. So why? S. Because it would show me that if I turned that [pointing to the 4] over and there was an A then the 4 is true, so I would turn it over. Oh, I don't know. This is confusing me now because I know it goes only one way. ... S. No, I got it wrong didn't I? It is one way, so it's not necessarily that if there is an even number then there is a vowel. The second example is of a subject who gives the normative response in experiment (3), but nonetheless goes astray when forced to consider the back/face interpretation. Subject 4. [experiments (1), (2), (3)] E. OK. This says that if there is a vowel on the face [pointing to the face] of the card, then there is an even number on the back of the card. How is that different to ... S. Yes, it's different because the sides are unidirectional. E. So would you pick different cards? S. If there is a vowel on the face . . . I think I would pick the A. E. And for this one? [referring to the second statement] This is different again because it says if there is a vowel on the back . . . S. [completes sentence] then there is an even number on the face. I think I need to turn over the 4 and the 7. Just to see if it [the 4] has an A on the back. E. OK. Why wouldn't you pick the rest of the cards? S. I'm not sure, I haven't made up my mind yet. This one [the A] I don't have to turn over because it's not a vowel on the back, and the K is going to have a number on the back so that's irrelevant. This one [the 4] has to have a vowel on the back otherwise the rule is untrue. I still haven't made up my mind about this one [the 7]. Yes, I do have to turn it over because if it has a vowel on the back then it would make the rule untrue. So I think I will turn it over. I could be wrong. [When presented with the rule where the anaphor has the intended interpretation] S. I would turn over this one [the A] to see if there is an even number on the back and this one [the 7] to see if there was a vowel on the back. Our third example is of a subject who explicitly states that the meaning of the implication must change when considering the back/face anaphora. Subject 16. [experiments (1), (2), (3); subject has correctly chosen A in condition (1)] E. The next one says that if there is a vowel on the back of the card, so that's the bit you can't see, then there is an even number on the face of the card, so that's the bit you can see; so that again is slightly different, the reverse, so what would you do? S. Again I'd turn the 4 so that would be proof but not ultimate proof but some proof . . . 78 3 A Little Logic Goes a Long Way E. With a similar reasoning as before? S. Yes, I'm pretty sure what you are after . . . I think it is a bit more complicated this time, with the vowel on the back of the card and the even number, that suggests that if and only if there is an even number there can be a vowel, I think I'd turn others just to see if there was a vowel, so I think I'd turn the 7 as well. [In condition (3) chooses A and 4] And here is the most striking example, in which the interaction can clearly be seen to go both ways. Subject 23. [Standard Wason task] S. Then for this card [4/K] the statement is not true. E. Could you give a reason why it is not? S. Well, I guess this also assumes that the statement is reversible, and if it becomes the reverse, then instead of saying if there is an A on one side, there is a 4 on the other side, it's like saying if there was a 4 on one side, then there is an A on the other. ... E. Now we'll discuss the issue of symmetry, you said you took this to be symmetrical. S. Well, actually it's effectively symmetrical because you've got this either exposed or hidden clause, for each part of the statement. So it's basically symmetrical. E. But there are two levels of symmetry involved here. One level is the symmetry between visible face and invisible back, and the other aspect of symmetry is involved with the direction of the statement "if . . . then." S. Right, OK. so I guess in terms of the "if . . . then" it is not symmetrical . . . In that case you do not need that one [4], you just need [A]. . . . [while attempting the two-rule task he makes some notes which indicate that he is still aware of the symmetry of the cards] S. For U, if there is an 8 on the other side, then rule 1 is true, and you'd assume that rule 2 is false. And with I, if you have an 8, then rule 1 is false and rule 2 is true. . . . [the subject has turned the U and I cards, which both carry 8 on the back, and proceeds to turn the 3 and 8 cards] S. Now the 3, it's a U and it's irrelevant because there is no reverse of the rules. And the 8, it's an I and again it's irrelevant because there is no reverse of the rules. . . . Well, my conclusion is that the framework is wrong. I suppose rules one and two really hold for the cards. E. We are definitely convinced only one rule is true . . . S. Well . . . say you again apply the rules, yes you could apply the rules again in a second stab for these cards [3 and 8] here. E. What do you mean by "in a second stab?" S. Well I was kind of assuming before you could only look at the cards once based on what side was currently shown to you. . . . This one here [8] in the previous stab was irrelevant, because it would be equivalent to the reverse side when applied to this rule, I guess now we can actually turn it over and find the 8 leads to I, and you can go to this card again [3], now we turn it over and we apply this rule again and the U does not lead to an 8 here. So if you can repeat turns rule 2 is true for all the cards. E. You first thought this card [3] irrelevant. S. Well it's irrelevant if you can give only one turn of the card. What's interesting in this exchange is that in the first experiment the variable, "symmetric" reading of the anaphora seems to trigger a symmetric reading of 3.5 Giving Subjects a Voice 79 the implication, whereas in the second experiment asymmetric readings of the anaphora and the implications are conjoined, even though he was at first aware that the intended reading of the anaphora is symmetric. (The fact that the subject wants to turn the cards twice is evidence for the constant (asymmetric) reading of the anaphora.) We thus see that, in these subjects, the direction of the conditional is related to the particular kind of deixis assumed for "one side . . . other side." This shows that the process of natural language interpretation in this task need not be compositional, and that, contrary to Gebauer and Laming's claim, subjects need not have a persistent interpretation of the conditional, at least when asked to justify themselves. Two questions immediately arise: 1. Why would there be this particular interaction? 2. What does the observed interaction tell us about performance in the standard Wason task? Question (2) can easily be answered. If subjects were to decompose the anaphoric expression "one side. . . other side" into two deictic expressions "face/back" and "back/face" and were then to proceed to reverse the direction of the implication in the latter case, they should choose the p and q cards. Also, since the expression "one side . . . other side" does not appear in a deontic rule such as "if you want to drink alcohol, you have to be over 18," subjects will not be distracted by this particular difficulty. Question (1) is not answered as easily. There may be something pragmatically peculiar about a conditional of which the consequent, but not the antecedent, is known. These are often used for diagnostic purposes (also called abduction): if we have a rule which says "if switch 1 is down, the light is on," and we observe that the light is on, we are tempted to conclude that switch 1 must be down. This, however, is making an inference, not stating a conditional; but then subjects are perhaps not aware of the logical distinction between the two. It is of interest that the difficulty discussed here was already identified by Wason and Green [296] albeit in slightly different terms: their focus is on the distinction between a unified and a disjoint representation of the stimulus (i.e., a card). A unified stimulus is one in which the terms referred to in the conditional cohere in some way (say as properties of the same object, or as figure and ground), whereas in a disjoint stimulus the terms may be properties of different objects, spatially separated. Wason and Green conjectured that it is disjoint representation which accounts for the difficulty in the selection task. To test the conjecture they conducted three experiments, varying the type of unified representation. Although they use a reduced array selection task (RAST), in which one chooses only between q and ¬q, relative performance across their conditions can still be compared. 80 3 A Little Logic Goes a Long Way Their contrasting sentence rule pairs are of great interest, partly because they happen to contain comparisons of rules with and without anaphora. There are three relevant experiments numbered 2 to 4. Experiment 2 contrasts unified and disjoint representations without anaphora in either, and finds that unified rules are easier. Experiment 3 contrasts unified and disjoint representations with the disjoint rule having anaphora. Experiment 4 contrasts unified and disjoint representations but removes the anaphora from the disjoint rule while adding another source of linguistic complexity (an extra tensed verb plus pronominal anaphora) to the unified one. For a full discussion of their experiments we refer the reader to Stenning and van Lambalgen [264]; here we discuss only their experiment 2. In experiment 2, cards show shapes (triangles, circles) and colors (black, white), and the two sentences considered are (4) Whenever they are triangles, they are on black cards. (5) Whenever there are triangles below the line, there is black above the line. That is, in (4) the stimulus is taken to be unified because it is an instance of figure/ground, whereas in (5) the stimulus consists of two parts and hence is disjoint. Performance for sentence (5) was worse than for sentence (4) (for details, see Wason and Green [296,pp. 604-607]). We would describe the situation slightly differently, in terms of the contrast between deixis and anaphora. Indeed, the experimental setup is such that for sentence (5), the lower half of the cards is hidden by a bar, making it analogous to condition (2), where the object mentioned in the antecedent is hidden. We have seen above that some subjects have difficulties with the intended direction of the conditional in experiment (2). Sentence (5) would be the "difficult half" of the anaphora-containing sentence "Whenever there are triangles on one side of the line, there is black on the other side of the line." Sentence (4) does not contain any such anaphora. With Wason and Green we would therefore predict that subjects find (5) more difficult. 3.5.6 Subjects' Understanding of Propositional Connectives We have discussed some aspects of the interpretation of the conditional above, in particular those which are connected with the interpretation of the task, such as the distinction between descriptive and deontic conditionals. This section is devoted to some of the wilder shores of the semantics of conditionals: the existential import of the conditional, and the related interpretation of the conditional as a conjunction. 3.5 Giving Subjects a Voice 81 Existential Import of the Conditional In a second set of tutorial experiments23 all the interpretational difficulties reviewed above were apparent. This is encouraging, because it points to the stability of the factors identified. Interestingly, a new difficulty surfaced while subjects went through condition (2), which involves the rule "if there is a vowel on the back of the card, there is an even number on the face of the card." To understand what is going on here, it is important to make the quantification over cards in the rule explicit: "for all cards, if there is a vowel on one side of the card, there is an even number on the other side of the card." A well-known issue in the semantics of the universal quantifier, first raised by Aristotle, is whether this quantifier has "existential import": if "all A are B" is true, does this entail that there are As which are Bs? Aristotle thought so, and he makes his point by means of two examples: of the two statements, "Some man is white" and "Some man is not white" one or the other must be true; and "Every pleasure is good" implies "Some pleasure is good." The examples show that Aristotle takes subjects and predicates to denote nonempty sets. This is precisely what our subjects appear to be doing, in requiring that, in order for the conditional to be true, there must be at least one card which satisfies both antecedent and consequent. They consider the rule to be undecided if there is no such instance, even in the absence of counterexamples.24 Subject 1. [in experiment (2)]. S. In this case I think you would need to turn the 7. And... that would be the only one you need to turn. ... 'Cause, these two [A and K] have to have numbers on the back, so they don't apply ... Which leaves these two [4 and 7]. Erm. And if there's an A on the back then it fits the rule [pointing to the 4] and if there is a K on the back then it doesn't apply to the rule, so it doesn't matter, which leaves this one [pointing to the 7], 'cause if there's an A on the back of here, and it's a 7, then you've disproved the rule. E. OK, and if there is not an A on the back of that [the 7]? S. If there's not an A on the back. [thinks] then ... maybe you do need to turn that one [pointing to the 4]. If there's not an A on the back [of the 7], then it doesn't disprove the rule and it doesn't prove it. So you'd have to turn the 4 I think. E. And what if the 4 also didn't have an A on the back what would that mean for the rule? S. Well then ... for this set of cards, the rule... it would disprove the rule I suppose. Cause if there is not an A on the back of this card [pointing to the 4], [pause] then... there isn't a 4 on the face of it. OK, if there's not an A on the back, then none of these cards have an A on the back, and a 4 on the face, which is what the rule states. So for this set of cards it's disproved, it's not true. It is abundantly clear that the subject considers existential import to be a necessary requirement for the truth of the conditional. The next subject expresses this insight by means of the modal "could" : 23. Performed in Edinburgh in 2003 by the our student Marian Counihan. The design was the same as that of the first experiment. 24. We will have more to say on this phenomenon in section 3.5.6 below. 82 3 A Little Logic Goes a Long Way Subject 7. [in experiment (2)]. S. If there's a A on the back of this card [the 7] then it's finished, you basically don't care anymore. Whereas if there's a K, all it seems to prove really is that this [the rule] could be true. ... I suppose we do... need to turn this card [the 4], just to affirm the rule. The next subject has a slightly different interpretation, and says that if there is no card instantiating the rule (and no falsifying card), the rule is still undecided. This probably reflects a different understanding of what the domain of the rule is: the cards on the table, or a wider set of cards. Subject 2. [in experiment (2): has stated he wants to turn 4 and 7] E. OK, now say you turned both of those [pointing to 4 and 7] and you found an A on both. S. Then the rule would be . . . wrong. Because if there's an A on the back of both of them, then the rule says that there would be a 4 on the front of both of them, but, there's not, so, I mean there's a 4 on one of them, but then there is also a 7 on one of them, so, the rule's wrong, I mean, it doesn't always follow, so it's wrong. [Pause] Although it doesn't say always, there [pointing at the rule], but I am presuming it means always. I don't know [laughs]. E. Yes, it is meant to apply to any of them. S. Yeah, OK, so the rule would be wrong if there's an A on both [4 and 7]. ... S. ... hang on, with an A and 7 there [on the 7 card], and an A and a 4 there [pointing to the 4] it would be wrong, still ... because of the A and 7, yeah, the A and the 4's correct, but because that [pointing to the 7 card] is incorrect, that's, the whole rule would be incorrect. E. So, in either case, if there was an A on this side [pointing to the overturned 7 card], this other side of the 7, it would make the rule incorrect? S. Yeah. E. And despite what was on the [pointing to the 4]? S. Oh, yeah, yeah. No OK, so you only need to turn that one [the 7]. Do you? [looks at rule] No you don't. No, sorry, no [indicates 4 and 7 cards again] you do need to turn them both, because if that is a K [turning over the 7], then you need to turn that one to check that one [the 4] to check that that is not a K as well. E. And if that was a K as well? S. Then the rule ... [pause] then you wouldn't know ... because ... there's nothing saying you can't have a K and a 4, but all it is saying is whether or not there's an A on the back, if there's a K on the back of both of these [the 4 and the 7] then you don't know, the rule might be right, or might be wrong. These observations have some relevance to performance in the standard task. Suppose again, as we did in section 3.5.5, that subjects split the rule into the components (1) and (2). The first component yields the answer A; this card simultaneously establishes existential import. Interestingly, existential import as applied to the second condition yields the answers 4,7, so that we have found yet another way to justify the mysterious p, q,¬q response in the original task. 3.5 Giving Subjects a Voice 83 Interpreting the Conditional as a Conjunction We now return to the possible interpretations of conditionals and their relevance to subjects' understanding of the task. In the literature on Wason's task only two types are distinguished: the unidirectional material implication, and the biconditional. When one turns to the linguistics literature, the picture is dramatically different. An interesting source here is Comrie's paper Conditionals: A Typology [44], where conditionals are distinguished according to the degree of hypotheticality of the antecedent. In principle this is a continuous scale. Viewed cross-linguistically, the degree of hypotheticality ranges from certain, a case where English uses when ("when he comes, we'll go out for dinner," 25 via neutral ("if a triangle is right-angled, it satisfies Pythagoras' theorem") to highly unlikely ("if we were to finish this paper on time, we could submit it to the proceedings") and even false, the counterfactual ("if we had finished this paper on time, we would have won the best paper prize"). If conditionals come with expectations concerning the degree of hypotheticality of the antecedent, this might affect the truth condition for the conditional that the subject implicitly applies. For example, we have seen in section 3.5.6 that some subjects claim the conditional has existential import; this may be viewed as the implicature that the antecedent of the conditional is highly likely. Indeed we claim that, in order to understand performance in Wason's task, it is imperative to look into the possible understandings of the conditional that a subject might have, and for this, language typology appears to be indispensable. An interesting outcome of typological research is that the conditional ostensibly investigated in Wason's task, the hypothetical conditional, where one does not want to assert the truth of the antecedent, may not even be the most prevalent type of conditional. We include a brief discussion of the paper Typology of ifClauses by Athanasiadou and Dirven [4] (cf. also [5]) to corroborate this point; afterward we will connect their analysis to our observations. In a study of 300 instances of conditionals in the COBUILD corpus [42], the authors observed that there occurred two main types of conditionals, course of event conditionals, and hypothetical conditionals. The hypothetical conditionals are roughly the ones familiar from logic; an example is If there is no water in your radiator, your engine will overheat immediately. [42,17] A characteristic feature of hypothetical conditionals is the events referred to in antecedent and consequent are seen as hypothetical, and the speaker can make use of a whole scale of marked and unmarked attitudes to distance herself from claims concerning likelihood of occurrence. The presence of "your" is what makes the interpretation more likely to be hypothetical: the antecedent need not ever be true for "your" car. Furthermore, in paradigmatic cases (temporal 25. Dutch, however, can also use the conditionals marker "als" here. 84 3 A Little Logic Goes a Long Way and causal conditionals) antecedent and consequent are seen as consecutive. By contrast in course–of– event conditionals such as If students come on Fridays, they get oral practice in Quechua (from [44]) or If there is a drought at this time, as so often happens in central Australia, the fertilised egg in the uterus still remains dormant [42,43] the events referred to in antecedent and consequent are considered to be generally or occasionally recurring, and they may be simultaneous. Generic expressions such as "on Fridays" or "as so often happens ..." tend to force this reading of the conditional. e.g., the first example invokes a scenario in which some students do come on Fridays and some don't, but the ones who do get oral practice in Quechua. The generic expression "on Fridays," together with implicit assumptions about student timetables and syllabuses, causes the sentence to have the habitual "whenever" reading. It is also entailed that some students do come on Fridays, generally. These examples also indicate that course–of–event conditionals refer to events situated in real time, unlike hypothetical conditionals. It should now be apparent that the logical properties of course–of–event conditionals are very different from their hypothetical relatives. For example, what is immediately relevant to our concerns is that course–of–event conditionals refer to a population of cases, whereas hypothetical conditionals may refer to a single case; this is relevant, because it has frequently been claimed that subjects interpret the task so that the rule refers to a population of which the four cards shown are only a sample (cf. section 3.5.2 ). Interestingly, Athanasiadou and Dirven estimated that about 44% of conditionals in COBUILD are of the course–of–events variety, as opposed to 37% of the hypothetical variety. Needless to say, these figures should be interpreted with caution, but they lend some plausibility to the claim that subjects may come to the task with a nonintended, yet perfectly viable, understanding of the conditional. We will now discuss the repercussions of this understanding for subjects' card selections. One of the questions in the paraphrase task asked subjects to determine which of four statements follow from the rule "Every card which has a vowel on one side has an even number on the other side." More than half of our subjects chose the possibility "It is the case that there is a vowel on one side and an even number on the other side." Fillenbaum [82] already observed that there are high frequencies for conjunctive paraphrases for positive conditional threats ("if you do this I'll break your arm" becomes "do this and I'll break your arm") (35%), positive conditional promises ("if you do this you'll get a chocolate" becomes "do this and I'll get you a chocolate") (40%) and negative conditional promises ("if you don't cry I'll get you an ice cream" becomes "don't cry and I'll get you an ice cream") (50%). However, he did not observe conjunctive paraphrases for contingent universals (where there is no intrinsic connection 3.5 Giving Subjects a Voice 85 between antecedent and consequent) or even law-like universals. Clearly, the statements we provided are contingent universals, so Filenbaum's observations on promises and threats are of no direct relevance. However, if the course– of–event conditional is a possible reading of the conditional, the inference to a conjunction observed in many of our subjects makes much more sense. Clearly the truth–conditions for conditionals of this type differ from the intended interpretation; to mention but one difficult case, when is a generic false? Thus, a generic interpretation may lead to different evaluations and selections. Here is an example of what a conjunctive reading means in practice. Subject 22. [subject has chosen the conjunctive reading in the paraphrase task] E. [Asks subject to turn the 7] S. That one . . . that isn't true. There isn't an A on the front and a 4 on the back. . . . you turn over those two [A and 4] to see if they satisfy it, because you already know that those two [K and 7] don't satisfy the statement. E. [baffled] Sorry, which two don't satisfy the rule? S. These two don't [K and 7], because on one side there is K and that should have been A, and that [7] wouldn't have a 4, and that wouldn't satisfy the statement. E. Yes, so what does that mean . . . you didn't turn it because you thought that it will not satisfy? S. Yes. Clearly, on a conjunctive reading, the rule is already falsified by the cards as exhibited (since the K and 7 cards falsify); no turning is necessary. The subject might, however, feel forced by the experimental situation to select some cards, and accordingly reinterprets the task as checking whether a given card satisfies the rule. This brings us to an important consideration: how much of the problem is actually caused by the conditional, and how much is caused by the task setting, no matter what binary logical connective is used? The literature on the selection task, with very few exceptions, has assumed that the problem is a problem specific to conditional rules. Indeed, it would be easy to infer also from the foregoing discussion of descriptive conditional semantics that the conditional (and its various expressions) is unique in causing subjects so much difficulty in the selection task, and that our only point is that a sufficiently rich range of interpretations for the conditional must be used to frame psychological theories of the selection task. However, the issues already discussed – the nature of truth, response to exceptions, contingency, pragmatics – are all rather general in their implications for the task of seeking evidence for truth. One can distinguish the assessment of truth of a sentence from truthfulness of an utterer for sentences of any form. The robustness or brittleness of statements to counterexamples is an issue which arises for any generalization. The sociopsychological effects of the experimenter's authority, and the communicative complexities introduced by having to take a cooperative stance toward some utterances and an adversarial one toward others is also a general problem of pragmatics that can affect statements of any logical form. Contingencies between feedback from early 86 3 A Little Logic Goes a Long Way evidence on choice of subsequent optimal evidence seeking are general to any form of sentence for which more than one case is relevant. What would happen, for example, if the rule were stated using the putatively least problematical connective, conjunction? Chapter 4 gives the answer. 3.6 Matching Bias: the "No-Processing" Explanation We have paid scant attention to more traditional interpretations of the selection task, focusing instead on the logical difficulties experienced by subjects in the descriptive task. This is not to imply that the traditional explanations are completely without foundation. We provide one example here: Evans's "matching strategy." This was proposed as a shallow processing strategy, operating automatically. We will have more to say on the distinction between shallow and deep processing in chapter 7 on the suppression task; but for now we give some examples showing that this type of response also occurs when subjects fully engage with the task. Evans (see, for example, the review in Evans, Newstead, and Byrne [76]) defines the "matching strategy" as the choice of cards which match the atomic parts of the content of a clause in a rule. So for the rule If p then q, p and q cards match: for the rule If p then not q still p and q cards match: and the same for If not p then q. Here is a particularly striking example. Subject 9. [experiment (1)] E. [This rule] says that if there is a vowel on the face, then there is an even number on the back. So what we mean by face is the bit you can see, and by back the bit you can't see. Which cards would you need to turn over to check if the rule holds? S. This one [ticks A] and this one [ticks 7] E. So why would you pick those two? S. One has a vowel on the face and the other one an even number. If you turn it, if it's true, then it should have an even number [pointing to the A] and this should have a vowel [pointing to the 7]. E. [baffled] So you picked, Oh you were saying if there was a vowel underneath [pointing to the 7] S. That's because I'm stupid. Even number is 1,3,5, . . . E. No, 2,4,6, . . . S. [Corrects 7 to 4, so her final choice was A and 4] OK. So these. The next example is straightforward: Subject 3. [Standard Wason task; has chosen A and 4] E. Why pick those cards and not the other cards? S. Because they are mentioned in the rule and I am assuming that the rule is true. Evans conceptualises the use of this strategy as a "superficial" response to both rule and task which subjects adopt prior to processing the information to the level of a coherent interpretation of the whole sentence. As such, the strategy may be applied prior to or alongside other processing strategies. It is taken to 3.7 The Subject's Predicament 87 explain the modal response of turning the p and q cards in the abstract task. It must assume that something else is going on (perhaps superimposed on matching) when subjects adopt other responses. Thematic effects have to be explained in terms of contentful processes engaging other processes at deeper levels than matching.26 3.7 The Subject's Predicament So what is the upshot of this extended semantic analysis of the range of subjects' interpretations and factors influencing them which were revealed by these Socratic dialogues? We feel the need to provide some more synoptic integration of this mass of rich observations, though what we offer here should be understood as a very partial view. Some effects are global. For example, content may strongly shift subjects toward a deontic interpretation, and then few interpretational problems arise. The two cards Wason expected to be turned are the only possible violators of the "law." To produce an integrated sketch of some of these global effects, table 3.2 presents some of the global parameters an interpretation must fix, and hints at their relations. Under descriptive interpretations, robust ones (tolerating exceptions) lead immediately to conflict with finite sets of cases determining truth– value, and problems of distinguishing exceptions from counterexamples, which in turn may lead to the "cards as sampled from a population" interpretation. Brittle interpretation allays these problems but raises the issue of contingencies between card choices. Both robust and brittle interpretations are susceptible to both kinds of reversibility – of physical cards, and of logical rule. Deontic interpretations suffer from none of these problems: cards are independent of each other, only cases are judged (not rule), the veracity of the experimenter is not at stake. The content triggering a deontic reading generally makes for logical irreversibility, and there are no anaphors to interact with card reversibility issues. But many of the factors affecting interpretation are local and interact with other parameters in determining the interpretive outcome, defying tabulation. A useful supplementary way to draw together the complex threads is to tabulate some ranges of interpretations which can lead to each of the four dominant choice combinations in table 3.1, which jointly account for 92% of the subjects. Table 3.3 lays out some of the parameters leading to these common choice combinations. 26. Oaksford and Stenning [204] by investigating a full range of clause negations in both selection and evaluation tasks, showed that matching is not a particularly good explanation of performance with the full range of negated conditionals. They argue that a better summary of the data is in terms of the degree to which the material and instructions allow negative clauses to be processed as corresponding positive characterizations. 88 3 A Little Logic Goes a Long Way Table 3.2 Global parameters as they contrast between descriptive and deontic interpretation descriptive deontic robust brittle conflict with task dependencies between cards independent cards "population" reading judging cases–not rule reversibility no reversibility of cards of rule discomfort with challenging E no calling E a liar 3.7 The Subject's Predicament 89 Table 3.3 Some interpretation features and the main choice-combinations to which they may lead in the descriptive selection task: some choices on other tasks are mentioned with their interpretational feature. Main card choice combinations Interpretational Feature p p, q p,¬q p, q,¬q (in italics) strong negation: x x choose either (both) letter(s), or ¬q in two–rule task not-false doesn't mean true: x ruling out counterexamples, but also seeking positive case truth vs. satisfaction ambiguity: x if resolved, removes contingency issues if unresolved in two-rule task, reject materials robustness: immediate conflict with task, x may invoke sample reading choice contingencies: x choose true antecedent first RAST and two-rule tend to remove problem can't call E a liar!: x assume rule true, seek cases that make rule true in conjunction task: x test cards of unknown truth–value existential import of universal x rule out counterexamples but positive instance required too assume cards irreversible: x maintain logical irreversibility, x or convert and conjoin conditional superficial mention in rule x determines relevance "matching" deontic conjunctive interpretation x or one-card-at-a-time descriptive interpretation 90 3 A Little Logic Goes a Long Way 3.8 Conclusion The explorations by dialogue reported here have cast their net somewhat wider than is customary, to obtain information about subjects' processing and semantic understanding of the task. The picture that emerges is complex. The differences between subjects, even when they make the same selection, are huge and defy any single explanation. All choice combinations reflect more than one interpretation and some combinations we are still struggling to explain. For example, there appears to be no explanation for a very common pattern of evaluation and selection: p, q is selected, q/¬p is evaluated as falsifying, and ¬p/q is evaluated as irrelevant, although we ventured a hypothesis in section 3.5.5. It does not seem very helpful to dismiss such behavior as "irrational." It is more interesting to relate this and other behavior to subjects' understanding of the task, but much richer data are required than the four "bits" received from each subject in the classical task. We have seen that understanding interpretation sometimes leads to clarification of what subjects are trying to do, and that often turns out to be quite different than the experimenter assumes. The granularity of these data is very much finer than experimental psychologists have deemed necessary for the analysis of this task (though this fine granularity is rather ordinary in lots of areas of psychology such as visual perception). A common reaction is that this interpretational variety is all very well for linguistics, but surely it is obvious that this is not what is going on in the few seconds that subjects think about what cards to turn over in the original task, and besides, if this is what is going on, it's far too hard to study. This attitude was crystallized for KS by a remark made after he had given a talk on the material (ironically in Wason's old department). "You have given a very interesting analysis of the task from a semantic point of view," the questioner commented, "but what we need is a psychological explanation." The questioner seemed to assume that when linguists and logicians substantiate an analysis, that they are claiming "ordinary speakers" have conscious access to the analysis within its own terminology. Equally, they assume that even demonstrating the formal semantics is correct doesn't have the implication that ordinary speakers actually mean by the expression, what the analysis says they mean. We would be the first to acknowledge that our analysis isn't more than a beginning, but what is striking here is the idea that it is not a "psychological" analysis. Cognitive psychology is founded on the idea that people interpret their fresh experience in the light of their long–term knowledge and that the resulting rich structures furnish them the wherewithal to reason to their decisions. If we don't know how subjects interpret a task, or its materials, then how are we to start understanding what they do? And if they do lots of different things which are each comprehensible on the basis of their different interpretations, then hadn't we better have different explanations for their different acts? In 3.8 Conclusion 91 some subfields of psychology, the questioner's comment might have been taken to mean that what is needed is a mental process model and that that is what sets semantics off from psychology. We have some sympathy since we agree that process models would be really nice to have, and we certainly don't have one, although the logical models in section 3.4 are an essential prerequisite for a process model. None of the theories of this task are any more process theories than the approach offered here – most of them less so. And if reasoning to an interpretation among a rich set of possibilities is the mental process going on, then how can we get a process model without any account of the range of interpretations in play? In the next chapter we will bring evidence that the gap between the interpretational problems appearing in these dialogues and what goes on in the traditional controlled experiments is not so great as it might at first appear. These dialogues may also provide challenges to natural language semantics. While it is of course possible to attribute the vacillations in interpretation (of conditionals and anaphora, for example) to performance factors, it seems more interesting to look into the structure of the linguistic competence model to see how the observed interferences may arise. It seems to us that dialogues such as these provide a rich source of data for semantics and pragmatics, which promises to yield deeper insight into interpretation and processing of natural language. What we hope to have demonstrated in this chapter is that the data do not warrant abandoning the search for formal models to provide bases for explaining subjects' reasoning behavior. Instead, formal models embodying insights from neighboring fields are useful guides for a richer program of empirical exploration and testing. There is a danger that deceptively simple models obscure the phenomena in need of explanation, and in so doing likewise obscure the educational relevance of the logical competence models and their highly objectified stance toward language. Stanovich [254] shows how closely related this stance is to other educational achievements. The tutorial dialogues presented here provide some insight into the variety of students' problems which may be of some help to those involved in teaching reasoning skills.
From Logic via Exploration toControlled Experiment In chapter 2 we presented logical analysis suggesting a wide range of possibilities for interpreting conditionals, and in chapter 3 this was followed by prima facie evidence that subjects experience severe interpretational problems in the original descriptive selection task and that they respond to these problems in many different ways. The analysis uncovered a range of difficulties with abstract descriptive conditionals that do not arise if deontic interpretation is strongly suggested by familiar content. But the fact that these problems surface in Socratic dialogues does not mean that they occurred in the original experiments. This chapter examines how to get from the evidence of exploration to evidence of controlled experiment. We present experimental evidence, but we are just as much concerned with the process of design of such experiments. In accordance with our comments in chapter 1 about the need for exploration, and the establishment and bridging of substantial gaps between theory and data, the issues that go into designing experiments to interact with formal theories are more important than this particular task. The backbone of this chapter is an experiment reported in [265], augmented with some material from subsequent experiments. The results of several experimental manipulations are compared with baseline performance on the classical descriptive task. Each manipulation is designed to assess contributions of different interpretational problems proposed by semantic analysis, and found in the subjects' dialogues, to Wason's original results. So the logic of the research plan is rather simple. We proposed that Wason did not understand the conflicts that his subjects experienced between their initial interpretations of instructions and materials, and that these interpretational conflicts can explain why their behavior does not conform to the classical logical model which Wason unquestioningly assumed to be the relevant competence model for performance. So our research plan will be to design manipulations which alleviate several interpretational conflicts and show that each alleviation produces more of the responding which Wason expected. Our second important claim is that the chief factor determining whether subjects conform to Wason's expectations is whether they adopt a descriptive or a deontic interpretation – we claim that 94 4 From Logic via Exploration to Controlled Experiment the "easy tasks" are easy because they invoke deontic interpretation. This claim presents our first design choice: we elect to study how to make Wason's original descriptive task "easy" i.e., to get a descriptive task to invoke the classical interpretation he assumed. We could instead have chosen to systematically make the deontic tasks "hard" by introducing the factors which produce problems of interpretation. Why do we choose the first fork? There are important issues about deontic reasoning, so the second path is not without interest.1 But the overwhelmingly most important factor in our choice is that we want to study descriptive conditionals, and in particular robust non-truth-functional descriptive conditionals, because we claim they are crucial for understanding a wide range of other tasks in the psychology of reasoning. So we will present in chapter 7 a range of logical models of these robust conditionals applied to understanding human interpretation. In chapter 9 we study the very distinct attitudes of autistic people toward descriptive rules, and these rules will be central again in chapter 11 when we return to the relation between interpretation and derivation. If this is the long-term strategy, what are the tactics? We have to design manipulations to alleviate each of several interpretational problems. We cannot do them all. Why choose the ones we choose? This is a partly pragmatic question. One may have a feeling for which are the most important problems – important theoretically, and important in terms of what difficulty of problem they present to what proportion of subjects. One's wish list of manipulations may be ordered but still one needs inspiration as to how to test. However elegant one's description of an interpretational problem, there is no guarantee that there is a simple way of testing whether subjects actually experience the problem. One can but try to design such manipulations. Good experimentalists are, among other things, good at designing workable tests. Even having designed what looks like the perfect test, there is no guarantee that it will produce a result either way. It may not engage subjects in a way that impinges on their responses, and of course it may be hard to tell from a negative result that subjects don't experience the problem the manipulation was designed to exhibit. Negative evidence is weak evidence, and means hard work ruling out the alternatives. Of course our design problems are not finished once we have found workable manipulations which produce the predicted effects. Having insisted on the need for abstract theory and its distance from the data, we need bridging theory to get from observation to theoretical conclusion. Our manipulations may have 1. We have pilot data which bear on this issue. We tried to make a version of the deontic task (the drinking age rule) harder by introducing some of the difficulties found in the descriptive task. For instance, the instruction "Your task is to decide which if any of these four cards you must turn in order to decide if a customer violates the law" was replaced by "Your task is to decide which if any of these four cards you must turn in order to decide whether the rule is violated." The idea was that in the second formulation the attention is directed away from the customers (i.e., the cards) and toward the rule; a single card would now suffice to show that the rule is violated. This manipulation could therefore reintroduce the problems with dependencies that are usually absent in the deontic task. Indeed, we found a decrease in correct answers to 50%. Since the design contained some flaws, these results are at most suggestive. 4.1 Designing Experiments Following Observations 95 the predicted effect, but for some reason other than the one intended. All this laboratory wisdom is very obvious, but for logic students unused to experimentation, it is easy to forget, and they will not be reminded by what appears in psychological journals since most of this process of discovery and design is concealed, along with practically all negative results. The problems of bridging will be discussed with our results. 4.1 Designing Experiments Following Observations This section describes the experiment reported in [265], with particular attention to the why and wherefore of the design. In what follows we describe each manipulation we settled on as a condition in the experiment, and then present the results together. In each case we try to motivate the design choices. 4.1.1 Conditions: Classical "Abstract" Task To provide a baseline of performance on the selection task with descriptive conditionals, the first condition repeats Wason's classical study [295] with the following instructions and materials (see instructions in section 3.1). The other conditions are described through their departures from this baseline condition. This is obviously important to get an exact baseline for behavior in the original task in this population of subjects. For example, it is not unusual for absolute frequencies of Wason's "correct" response to vary between 4% and 10% in different undergraduate populations. 4.1.2 Conditions: Two–Rule Task The motivation for introducing this manipulation was twofold. First, we saw robustness of natural language conditionals as central to the problems subjects have in descriptive tasks. Presenting the task as a comparison of two rules, and explicitly telling the subjects that one rule is true and one false should background a number of issues concerned with the notion of truth, such as the possibility of the rule withstanding exceptions. If we are right that robustness is a problem, and in these assumptions about the effects of the manipulation, then this should move performance toward Wason's classical logical competence model where the conditionals are treated as truth–functional. Second, we wanted to estimate the contribution of a Bayesian information– gain explanation to subjects' behavior, an explanation introduced in section 3.5.2. This second purpose does not seek to remove an obstacle to classical logical interpretation, but rather to explore the power of an alternative explanation of subjects' behavior based on a different competence model than Wason's. The information-gain model postulates that in solving the standard Wason task, 96 4 From Logic via Exploration to Controlled Experiment subjects always compare the rule given to the unstated null hypothesis that its antecedent's and consequent's truth–values are statistically independent in a population of cards. We were thus interested in seeing what would happen if subjects were presented with explicit alternative non-null hypotheses. Information gain must make different predictions in this case. Although elaborations of the information-gain theory might make prediction complicated, it seems that in its simple application, it must predict that the ¬q card offers the most information, and that subjects will therefore pick this as the competence response on this theory. After repeating the preliminary instructions for the classical task, the instructions continued as follows: Also below there appear two rules. One rule is true of all the cards, the other isn't. Your task is to decide which cards (if any) you must turn in order to decide which rule holds. Don't turn unnecessary cards. Tick the cards you want to turn. Rule 1: If there is a vowel on one side, then there is an even number on the other side. Rule 2: If there is a consonant on one side, then there is an even number on the other side. Normative performance in this task, according to the classical logical competence model, is to turn only the not-Q card. The rules are chosen so that the correct response is to turn exactly the card that the vast majority of subjects fail to turn in the classical task. This has the added bonus that it is no longer correct to turn the P card which provides an interesting comparison with the original task. This is the only descriptive task we know of for which choosing the true-antecedent case is an error. By any obvious measure of task complexity, this task is more complicated than the classical task. It demands that two conditionals are processed and that the implications of each case is considered with respect to both rules and with respect to a distribution of truth–values. Nevertheless, our prediction was that performance should be substantially nearer the logically normative model for the reasons described above. 4.1.3 Conditions: Contingency Instructions The "contingency instructions," designed to remove any difficulties in understanding that choices have to be made ignoring possible interim feedback, after an identical preamble, read as follows, where the newly italicized portion is the change from the classical instructions: Also below there appears a rule. Your task is to decide which of these 4.1 Designing Experiments Following Observations 97 four cards you must turn (if any) in order to decide if the rule is true. Assume that you have to decide whether to turn each card before you get any information from any of the turns you choose to make. Don't turn unnecessary cards. Tick the cards you want to turn. If the contingencies introduced by the descriptive semantics are a source of difficulty for subjects, this additional instruction should make the task easier. In particular, since there is a tendency to choose the P card first, there should be an increase in not-Q responding. After conducting this experiment we found a reference in Wason [300] to the use of essentially similar instructions in his contribution to the Science Museum exhibition of 1977, and there are mentions in other early papers. Clearly he had thought about assumed contingencies between card choices as a possible confusion. Wason reports no enhancement in his subjects' reasoning, but he does not report whether any systematic comparison between these and standard instructions was made, or quite what the population of subjects was. He certainly did not observe that this problem for subjects doesn't arise under deontic interpretations. 4.1.4 Conditions: Judging Truthfulness of an Independent Source We chose to investigate the possible contribution of problems arising from the authoritative position of the experimenter and the balance of cooperative and adversarial stances required toward different parts of the task materials through instructions to assess truthfulness of the source instead of truth of the rule, and we separated the source of the rule from the source of the instructions (the experimenter). The instructions read as follows: Also below there appears a rule put forward by an unreliable source. Your task is to decide which cards (if any) you must turn in order to decide if the unreliable source is lying. Don't turn unnecessary cards. Tick the cards you want to turn. With these instructions there should be no discomfort about seeking to falsify the rule. Nor should any falsity of the rule throw any doubt on the truthfulness of the rest of the instructions, since the information sources are independent. These "truthfulness" instructions are quite closely related to several other manipulations that have been tried in past experiments. In the early days of experimentation on this task, when it was assumed that a failure to try and falsify explained the correct response, various ways of emphasizing falsification were explored. Wason [295] instructed subjects to pick cards which could break the rule and Hughes [132] asked them whether the rule was a lie. Neither instruction had much effect. However, these instructions fail to separate the 98 4 From Logic via Exploration to Controlled Experiment source of the rule from the experimenter (as the utterer of the rule) and may fail for that reason. Kirby [158] used a related manipulation in which the utterer of the rule was a machine said to have broken down, needing to be tested to see if it was working properly again after repair. These instructions did produce significant improvement. Here the focus of the instruction is to tell whether the machine is "broken," not simply whether the utterance of the rule is a falsehood. This might be expected to invoke a deontic interpretation involving comparisons of the actual world with an ideal world in which the machine works correctly (Kirby's condition is akin to the "production line inspection scenarios" mentioned before), and so it might be that the improvement observed is for this reason. Platt and Griggs [217] explored a sequence of instructional manipulations in what they describe as abstract tasks which culminate in 81% correct responding. One of the changes they make is to use instructions to "seek violations" of the rule, which is relevant here for its relation to instructions to test the truth of an unreliable source. Their experiments provide some insight into the conditions under which these instructions do and don't facilitate performance. Platt and Griggs study the effect of "explications" of the rule and in the most effective manipulations actually replace the conditional rule by explications such as: "A card with a vowel on it can only have an even number, but a card with a consonant on it can have either an even or an odd number." Note that this explication removes the problematic anaphora (see above, section 3.5.5), explicitly contradicts a biconditional reading, and removes the conditional, with its tendency to robust interpretation. But more significantly still, the facilitation of turning not-Q is almost entirely effected by the addition of seek violations instructions, and these instructions probably switch the task from a descriptive to a deontic task. In reviewing earlier uses of the 'seek violations' instructions, Platt and Griggs note that facilitation occurs with abstract permission and obligation rules but not with the standard abstract task. So, merely instructing to seek violations doesn't invoke a deontic reading when the rule is still indicative, and the content provides no support for a deontic reading – "violations" presumably might make the rule false. But combined with an "explication" about what cards can have on them (or with a permission or obligation schema) they appear to invoke a deontic reading. As we shall see, 80% seems to be about the standard rate of correct responding in deontically interpreted tasks regardless of whether they contain material invoking social contracts. So the present manipulation does not appear to have been explored before. We predicted that separating the source of the rule from the experimenter while maintaining a descriptive reading of the rule should increase normative responding. 4.1 Designing Experiments Following Observations 99 4.1.5 Conditions: Exploring Other Kinds of Rules than Conditionals This condition of the experiment was designed to explore the malleability of subjects' interpretations of rules other than conditionals. In particular we chose a conjunctive rule as arguably the simplest connective to understand. As such this condition has a rather different status from the others in that it is not designed to remove a difficulty from a logically similar task but to explore a logical change. Since it was an exploration we additionally asked for subjects' justification of their choices afterward. A conjunctive rule was combined with the same instructions as are used in the classical abstract task. Rule: There is a vowel on one side, and there is an even number on the other side. The classical logical competence model demands that subjects should turn no cards with such a conjunctive rule – the rule interpreted in the same logic as Wason's interpretation of his conditional rule can already be seen to be false of the not-P and not-Q cards. Therefore, under this interpretation the rule is already known to be false and no cards should be turned. We predicted that many subjects would not make this interpretation of this response. An alternative, perfectly rational, interpretation of the experimenter's intentions is to construe the rule as having deontic force (every card should have a vowel on one side and an even number on the other) and to seek cards which might flout this rule other than ones that obviously can already be seen to flout it. One factor making this interpretation more salient may be that in a cardturning experiment, there is what psychologists call a "demand characteristic" to turn something. If this interpretation were adopted, then the P and Q cards would be chosen. Note that this interpretation is deontic even though the rule is syntactically indicative. 4.1.6 Subjects Subjects were 377 first–year Edinburgh undergraduates, from a wide range of subject backgrounds. 4.1.7 Method All tasks were administered to subjects in classroom settings in two large lectures. Subjects were randomly assigned to the different conditions, with the size of sample in each condition being estimated from piloting on effect sizes. Adjacent subjects did different conditions. The materials described above were preceded by the following general instruction: 100 4 From Logic via Exploration to Controlled Experiment The following experiment is part of a program of research into how people reason. Please read the instructions carefully. We are grateful for your help. 4.1.8 Results Those subjects (twelve across all conditions) who claimed to have done similar tasks before or to have received any instruction in logic were excluded from the analysis. Table 4.1 presents the data from all of the conditions. Subjects were scored as making a completely correct response, or as making at least some mistake, according to the classical logical competence model. For all the conditions except the two–rule task and the conjunction condition, this 'competence model' performance is choice of P and not-Q cards. For the two–rule task the correct response is not-Q. For the conjunction condition it is to turn no cards. Table 4.1 Frequencies of card choice combinations by conditions: classical logical competence responses are marked *. Any response made by at least three subjects in at least one condition is categorized: everything else is miscellaneous. Condition P Q Q P P ¬Q ¬Q ¬P,Q P,Q, ¬Q ¬P,¬Q all None Misc. Total Classical 56 7 8 4* 3 7 1 2 9 8 5 108 Two-rule 8 8 2 1 9* 2 1 0 0 2 4 37 Contingency 15 0 3 8* 1 6 4 8 3 0 3 51 Truthfulness 39 6 9 14* 0 7 3 6 8 15 5 112 Conjunction 31 2 9 7 2 0 0 1 0 9* 8 69 Table 4.2 presents the tests of significance of the percentages of correct/incorrect responses as compared to the baseline classical condition. Of subjects in the baseline condition 3.7% made the correct choice of cards. The percentages completely correct in the other conditions were two-rule condition, 24%; "truthfulness" condition, 13%; in the "contingency" condition, 18%; and in the conjunction condition, 13%. The significance levels of these proportions by Fisher's exact test appear in table 4.2. The two–rule task elicits substantially more competence model selections than the baseline task. In fact the completely correct response is the modal response. More than six times as many subjects get it completely correct even though superficially it appears to be a more complicated task. The next most common responses are to turn P with Q, and to turn just Q. The former is the modal response in the classical task. The latter appears to show that even with unsuccessful subjects, this task shifts attention to the consequent cards – turnings of P are substantially suppressed: 32% as compared to 80% in the baseline task. 4.2 Discussion of Results 101 Table 4.2 Proportions of subjects completely correct and significances of differences from baseline of each of the four manipulations Condition Wrong Right p Percent Correct Classical baseline 104 4 3.7 Two-Rule 28 9 .004 24 Contingency 37 8 .005 18 Truthfulness 98 14 .033 13 Conjunction 60 9 .022 13 Contingency instructions also substantially increase completely correct responding, and do so primarily at the expense of the modal P–with–Q response. In particular they increase the not-Q choice to 50%. Instructions to test the truthfulness of an unreliable source have a smaller effect which takes a larger sample to demonstrate, but nevertheless 13% of subjects get it completely correct, nearly four times as many as the baseline task. The main change is again a reduction of P–with–Q responses, but there is also an increase in the response of turning nothing. Completely correct performance with a conjunctive rule was 13% – not as different from the conditions with conditional rules as one might expect if conditionals are the main source of difficulty. The modal response is to turn the P and Q cards – just as in the original task. Anecdotally, debriefing subjects after the experiment reveals that a substantial number of these modal responses are explained by the subjects in terms construable as a deontic interpretation of the rule, roughly paraphrased as "The cards should have a vowel on one side and an even number on the other." The P-with-Q response is correct for this interpretation. 4.2 Discussion of Results Each of the manipulations designed to facilitate reasoning in the classical descriptive task makes it substantially easier as predicted by the semantic/pragmatic theories that the manipulations were derived from. The fact that subjects' reasoning is improved by each of these manipulations provides strong evidence that subjects' mental processes are operating with related categories in the standard laboratory task. Approaches like those of Sperber's relevance theory and Evans's matching theory propose that the subjects solve the task "without thinking." The fact that these instructional manipulations have an impact on subjects' responses strongly suggests that the processes they impact on are of a kind to interact with the content of the manipulations. This still leaves the question, at what level of awareness? But even here, the tutorial dialogues suggest that the level is not so far below the surface as to prevent these processes being quite easily brought to some level of awareness. 102 4 From Logic via Exploration to Controlled Experiment It is important to resist the idea that if subjects were aware of these problems, that itself would lead to their resolution, and the conclusion that therefore subjects can't be suffering these problems. Extensive tutoring in the standard task which is sufficient to lead subjects to make their problems quite explicit generally does not lead, at least immediately, to stable insight. This is as we should expect. If, for example, subjects become aware that robustness to counterexamples makes the task instructions uninterpretable, that itself does not solve their problem of how to respond. Or, for another example, if subjects become aware of being unable to take account of contingencies between choices in their responses, that does not solve the problem of what response to make. General questions of what concepts subjects have for expressing their difficulties and in what ways they are aware of them are important questions, especially for teaching. These questions invite further research through tutoring experiments, but they should not be allowed to lead to misinterpretation of the implications of the present results. We take each condition in turn 4.2.1 The Two–Rule Task There are other possible explanations as to how the novel task functions to facilitate competence model responding. If subjects tend to confuse the two situations, "this rule is true of this card" and "this card makes this rule true" then it may help them that the two–rule task is calculated to lead them early to a conflict that a single card (e.g., the true consequent card) "makes both rules true" even as the instructions insist that one rule is true and one false. Although some subjects may infer that there must therefore be something wrong with the instructions, others progress from this impasse to appreciate that cases can comply with a rule without making it true – the semantic relations are asymmetric even though the same word "true" can, on occasion, be used for both directions. This confusion between semantic relations is evidently closely related to what Wason early on called a "verification" strategy (searching for compliant examples) in that it may lead to the same selections, but it is not the strategy as understood by Wason. This confusion between semantic relations is in abundant evidence in the dialogues. The two–rule task makes an interesting comparison with at least three other findings in the literature. First, the task was designed partly to make explicit the choice of hypotheses which subjects entertain for the kind of Bayesian information–gain modeling proposed by Oaksford and Chater. Providing two explicit rules (rather than a single rule to be compared with an assumed null hypothesis of independence) makes the false-consequent card unambiguously the most informative card and therefore the one which these models should predict will be most frequently chosen. In our data for this task, the falseconsequent card comes in third, substantially behind the true–antecedent and 4.2 Discussion of Results 103 true–consequent cards. For a second comparison, Gigerenzer and Hug [96] studied a manipulation which is of interest because it involves both a change from deontic to descriptive interpretation and from a single to a two–rule task. One example scenario had a single rule that hikers who stayed overnight in a hut had to bring their own firewood. Cards represented hikers or guides and bringers or nonbringers of wood. As a single-rule deontic task with instructions to see whether people obeyed the rule, this produced 90% correct responding, a typical result. But when the instructions asked the subject to turn cards in order to decide whether this rule was in force, or whether it was the guides who had to bring the wood, then performance dropped to 55% as conventionally scored. Gigerenzer and Hug explain this manipulation in terms of "perspective change," but this is both a shift from a deontic task to a descriptive one (in the authors' own words "to judge whether the rule is descriptively wrong" (our emphasis), and from a single–rule to a two–rule task, albeit that the second rule is mentioned but not printed alongside its alternative. Gigerenzer and Hug's data appear to show a level of performance higher than single rule abstract tasks but lower than deontic tasks, just as we observe. Direct comparison of the two subject populations is difficult, however, as Gigerenzer and Hug's subjects score considerably higher on all the reported tasks than ours, and no baseline single-rule descriptive task is included. The third comparison of the two–rule task is with work on "reasoning illusions" by Johnson-Laird and colleagues mentioned above (Johnson-Laird and Savary [147]; Johnson-Laird, Legrenzi, Girotto and Legrenzi [149]; JohnsonLaird and Byrne [143]. Johnson-Laird and Savary [147,p. 213] presented exactly comparable premises to those we used in our two–rule task but asked their subjects to choose a conclusion, rather than to seek evidence about which rule was true and which false. Their interest in these problems is that mental models theory2 assumes that subjects "only represent explicitly what is true," and that this gives rise to "illusory inferences." The following material was presented with the preface that both statements are about a hand of cards, and one is true and one is false: 1. If there is a king in the hand, then there is an ace. 2. If there is not a king in the hand, then there is an ace. Select one of these conclusions: i. There is an ace in the hand. ii. There is not an ace in the hand. iii. There may or may not be an ace in the hand. 2. At this stage it is not necessary to know the ins and outs of this theory. Details will be supplied in chapter 5, section 5.1.2 and and chapter 10, section 10.6. 104 4 From Logic via Exploration to Controlled Experiment Johnson-Laird and Savary [147] report that fifteen out of twenty subjects concluded that that there is an ace in the hand, and the other five concluded that there might or might not be an ace in the hand. They claim that the fifteen subjects are mistaken in their inference. Hence, apart from one caveat to which we will return, there is no reasonable interpretation of either the disjunction or the conditionals that yields a valid inference that there is an ace [147,p. 204]. The caveat appears to be that there are interpretations on which the premises are inconsistent and therefore anything (classically) logically follows, including this conclusion [147,p. 220]. What struck us initially is that our subjects show some facility with reasoning about assumptions of the same form even when our task also requires added elements of selection rather than merely inference. Selection tasks are generally "harder" on classical notions of what is correct. Specifically, our two– rule task introduces the circumstance which Johnson-Laird and Savary claim mental models predicts to introduce fundamental difficulty, i.e., reasoning from knowledge that some as yet unidentifiable proposition is false. This introduction makes the selection task much easier for subjects than its standard form in our experiment. On a little further consideration, there is at least one highly plausible interpretation which makes the "illusory" conclusion valid and is an interpretation which appears in our dialogues from the two–rule task. Subjects think in terms of one of the rules applying and the other not, and they confuse (not surprisingly) the semantics of applicability with the semantics of truth. This is exactly the semantics familiar from the IF . . . THEN . . . ELSE construct of imperative computer languages. If one clause applies and the other doesn't, then it follows that there is an ace. Whether the alternativeness of the rules is expressed metalinguistically by saying one is false and one true) or object-linguistically (with an exclusive disjunction), and whether the rules are expressed as implications or as exclusive disjunctions, thinking in terms of applicability rather than truth is a great deal more natural and has the consequence observed. Johnson-Laird (personal communication) objects that this interpretation just is equivalent to the mental models theory one. But surely this is a crisp illustration of a difference between the theories. If an interpretation in terms of applicability is taken seriously, subjects should draw this conclusion, and should stick to it when challenged (as many do). In fact, failure to draw the inference is an error under this interpretation. Only mental models theory's restriction to a range of classical logical interpretations makes it define the inference as an error. We put our money on the subjects having the more plausible interpretation of the conditionals here and the experimenters suffering an illusion of an illusion. 4.2 Discussion of Results 105 4.2.2 Contingency Instructions As mentioned above, investigations of this manipulation have been reported by Wason in early studies, but his theory of the task did not assign it any great importance, or lead him to systematically isolate the effect, or allow him to see the connection between descriptive interpretation and this instruction. In the context of our hypothesis that it is descriptive vs. deontic interpretation which is the main factor controlling difficulty of the task through interactions between semantics and instructions, this observation that contingency has systematic and predicted effects provides an explanation for substantial differences between the abstract task and content facilitations which invoke deontic interpretations. None of the other extant theories assign any significant role to this observation. The effectiveness of contingency instructions presents particular difficulties for current "rational analysis" models (the approach using Bayesian information gain [205]; see section 3.5.2), since the choice of false-consequent cards rises so dramatically with an instruction which should have no effect on the expected information gain. Indeed, the rational analysis approach assumes that subjects adopt a "sampling one card at a time from a population" interpretation and it is hard to see why contingencies between responses should arise as a problem on such interpretations. Going further: Engaging Interactive Planning To illustrate how any of the conditions of this experiment could give rise to further investigations, we here briefly present, with his kind permission, an experiment designed by our student Misha van Denderen, who used the resources of the web to investigate the role of "reactive planning" as a source of difficulty in the standard selection task ([280]; more on this experiment in section 4.2.5). Going beyond a simple instructional change, this experiment investigates what happens if subjects are actually allowed to really engage in reactive planning i.e., by first choosing a card, turning it, and deciding what to do based on what is on the other side. It is interesting to investigate whether more subjects end up giving the classical answer if they are given the opportunity to actually turn the cards and see what is on the other side. The question is therefore: if subjects get the opportunity to solve the task by reactive planning, will they continue to turn until they find a falsifying card? The experiment presents the task in a graphical software interface, using graphical tokens of the kind that people have become familiar with. The four cards are presented with a check box beneath each and an OK button to submit the answers. Subjects can actually turn each card and are invited to do so until they think they can decide whether the rule is true or false. Here it is clear to subjects that they can only tick and see one card at a time. They can click the check boxes on and off as they please. Only when they press the OK button and 106 4 From Logic via Exploration to Controlled Experiment confirm that they are sure are the answers recorded. Apart from the clarification of the classical task, it is interesting to observe the behavior of subjects if they can actually turn the cards. Will subjects continue turning cards until they find a falsifying card? If, for example, subjects decide to turn the A/4 card and therefore show that the case fits the rule, will they continue to turn the 7 card in search of possible falsification? And will subjects draw the conclusion that the rule is false if they did find a falsifying card on the first turn? Or true if they found a case that fit? To maximize the information, a tweak must be included in the software to ensure that falsification of the rule is never immediate after the first card turned. The experiment is therefore set up as follows. Each card can be clicked. When a subject clicks a card, he is asked: "You want to see the < 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th > card to judge whether the claim is true or false. Correct? [Y/N]." If the subject answers N, the invisible side is not revealed. If he answers Y, the invisible side is revealed and the number or the letter is shown. If the subject clicks the 7 before the A, the 7/K-card is shown. If he clicks the A before the 7, the A/4 card is shown. Only if the subject clicks the 7 after the A or the A after the 7, is the A/7-card shown. If the user clicks the K, the K/7-card is shown and if he clicks the 4, the 4/K card is shown. This online experiment drew 103 subjects. The population is likely to be different from the standard undergraduate population, since these subjects were recruited through a marketing agency. The results given in table 4.3 therefore may not be quite comparable, but they replicate even in the substantial subsample who are students. The results are striking: Wason's "competence" choice combination is now the modal response. There is a very marked decrease in "just p" and "p and q" answers, accompanied by an equally marked increase in "p and not-q" answers, together with a spreading out of the miscellaneous category. The results seem to suggest that in the standard task, the desire to do the task by reactive planning is indeed a considerable issue. As always, this variation changes the task in several ways. For example, it decreases working memory load. Perhaps this is why subjects reason "better". This is possible, but the experiment has most direct force for two points. The first is Wason's "verificationalist" explanation in terms of subjects' failure to seek falsification. Given the a clearly understood opportunity, subjects do seek falsification. The second is that the experiment illustrates vividly how the descriptive task differs from the deontic one in which no contingencies of response arise. We return to this experiment below in section 4.2.5 when we consider the joint impact of the subjsects' several problems. 4.2 Discussion of Results 107 Table 4.3 Scores in the web-based selection task with reactive planning p p, q p,¬q p, q,¬q misc. 7% 23% 26% 10% 34% 4.2.3 Truthfulness Instructions As described above, the truthfulness condition differs from past attempts to cue subjects to seek counterexamples. Its success in bringing about a significant if small improvement may have resulted from effects of the manipulation other than the sociopsychological effects or the more general pragmatic effects of the balance of cooperative and adversarial stances described above. For example it may well be that at least some subjects are more adept at thinking about the truthfulness of speakers than the truth–values of their utterances abstracted from such issues as ignorance or intent to deceive. We return to this issue when we consider experiments on illiterate subjects in chapter 5. 4.2.4 The Conjunctive Rule The purpose behind the conjunctive version of the task was rather different from the other manipulations, namely to show that many features of the task militate against the adoption of Wason's intended interpretation of his instructions quite apart from difficulties specific to conditionals. The interpretation of sentence semantics is highly malleable under the forces of task pragmatics. The results show that a conjunctive rule is treated very like (even if significantly differently from) the if . . . then rule. A higher proportion of subjects make the 'classically correct' response than in the baseline task (13% as compared to 3.7%) but the modal response is the same (P and Q) and is made by similar proportions of subjects (45% conjunctive as compared to 52% baseline). One possibility is that a substantial number of subjects adopt a deontic interpretation of the rule and are checking for the cards that might be violators but are not yet known to be. It is also possible that these results have more specific consequences for interpretation of the standard descriptive task. We know from Fillenbaum [82] and from our own paraphrase tasks [264] that about a half of subjects most readily entertain a conjunctive reading of if . . . then sentences. The developmental literature reviewed in Evans, Newstead, and Byrne [76] reveals this interpretation to be even commoner among young children. It is most implausible that this interpretation is due merely to some polysemy of the connective "if . . . then." Much more plausible is that the conjunctive reading is the result of assuming the truth of the antecedent suppositionally, and then answering subsequent 108 4 From Logic via Exploration to Controlled Experiment questions from within this suppositional context. Be that as it may, if subjects' selections in the conditional rule tasks correspond to the selections they would make given an explicit conjunction in the conjunction condition, and we are right that these selections are driven in this condition by an implicitly deontic interpretation of the conjunction, then this suggests a quite novel explanation of at least some "matching" responses in the original conditional task. Perhaps the similar rate of choice of P and Q in the conjunction and "if . . . then" conditions points to a substantial number of subjects applying a deontic conjunctive interpretation in the standard task. This hypothesis in turn raises the question how such a reading would interact with negations in the "negations" paradigm which is the source of the evidence for Evans's ' 'matching" theory [73] (see also section 3.6) and therefore the source of one leg of the "dual process" theory (Evans and Over [75], Evans [72]; see section 5.3). If interpretations stemming from deontic readings tend strongly toward wide scope for negation, then one would predict that the rule with negated antecedent ("not P and Q") would be read as "It's not the case that there is a vowel on one side and an even number on the other" which would lead to the same choices of A and 4, though for opposite reasons. That is, K and 7 are now seen as already compliant, and the A and the 4 have to be tested to make sure they don't have an even number or a vowel respectively. Pursuing this line of thought further suggests that negations in the second clause may not be interpretable in this framework because of their interactions with the anaphors ("if there is a vowel on one side then there is not an even number on the other side" gets interpreted as "if it's not the case that there is a vowel on one side, then there is an even number on the other") and subjects might be forced to interpret them with the same wide scope, again leading to the same card choices, and potentially explaining why "matching" appears to be unaffected by negation. Providing a semantic explanation, of course, leaves open the questions about what processes operate. Evidently, further research will be required to explore these possibilities. The semantic analyses may seem complex but they make some rather strong predictions about how subjects should react to card turnings. This is an interesting line for future research holding out the possibility of a semantic basis for matching behavior. One objection to these various interpretations of the conjunction condition results might be that there are other interpretations of the rule used. Subjects might, for example, have interpreted the rule existentially, as claiming that at least one card had a vowel on one side and an even number on the other. This would lead normatively to the same A and 4 selections. Accordingly, in a follow-up experiment, we revised the conjunctive rule to Rule: There are vowels on one side of the cards and even numbers on the other. 4.2 Discussion of Results 109 It is implausible that this rule might be interpreted existentially. We ran this rule in another condition with its own baseline condition to ensure comparability of the new population. Table 4.4 shows the results of this experiment, with the earlier results repeated for convenient comparison. The result was slightly more extreme with this version of the conjunctive rule: 70% of subjects (rather than 45%) chose the P and Q cards. The proportion of classical logical competence model responses was identical to that for the baseline conditional task, and the baseline condition showed the population was comparable. The rewording raised the proportion of subjects giving the modal P and Q response. This rewording of the conjunctive rule appeared to make the universal deontic reading even less ambiguously the dominant reading. Table 4.4 Frequencies of card choice combinations by conditions: the modified conjunction task and its new baseline condition are below the earlier results which are repeated here for convenience. Classical logical competence responses are marked *. Any response made by at least three subjects in at least one condition is categorized: everything else is miscellaneous Condition P Q Q P P ¬Q ¬Q ¬P,Q P,Q, ¬Q ¬P,¬Q all None Misc. Tot Classical 56 7 8 4* 3 7 1 2 9 8 5 108 2-rule 8 8 2 1 9* 2 1 0 0 2 4 37 Contingency 15 0 3 8* 1 6 4 8 3 0 3 51 Truthfulness 39 6 9 14* 0 7 3 6 8 15 5 112 Conjunction 31 2 9 7 2 0 0 1 0 9* 8 69 Baseline 2 10 2 10 1* 1 0 0 0 0 1 3 30 Conjunction 2 21 1 3 1 0 0 0 0 0 1* 2 30 Subjunctive 13 2 8 3* 0 1 2 1 1 0 0 31 The results on the conjunctive rule illustrate several general issues: how easy it is to invoke a deontic reading of indicative wording; how unnatural it is for naive subjects to adopt an "is this sentence literally true?" perspective rather than a "what are the experimenter's intentions?" perspective; that the difficulty of classical interpretation can be as great with conjunction as with implication. Although the difficulties may be different difficulties, there is a real possibility that they are closely related through conjunctive suppositional interpretations of the conditional. Finally, we explored one other obvious manipulation designed to follow up the malleability of subjects' interpretations exposed by the conjunctive rule. This is worth discussing as a "failed" negative result as much as for its own interest. If subjects' difficulties in the original descriptive task follow from the complexities of descriptive semantics, is it possible to restore deontic levels of performance in the abstract task merely by simply formulating the rule in the subjunctive mood? We ran a further condition in which the rule used was If a card has a vowel on one side, then it should have an even number on the other. 110 4 From Logic via Exploration to Controlled Experiment and the instruction was to choose which of the four cards you must turn in order to decide if the card complies with the rule. The results of this condition are shown in table 4.4 in the "Subjunctive" row. Three of thirty-one subjects turned P and not-Q, as compared to one of thirty in the baseline. If this is a facilitation it is a small one (the probability of getting this facilitation by chance is 0.32, i.e., statistically insignificant). Merely using subjunctive wording may be insufficient to invoke a deontic reading. This is not so surprising since there is an alternative "epistemic" interpretation of the subjunctive modal here which might still be used with a descriptive semantics for the underlying rule. Imagine that the rule is clearly a robust descriptive scientific law (perhaps "All ravens are black"), then one might easily state in this context, that a card with "raven" on one side should have "black" on the other, implying something about what the cards have to be like to comply with the scientific law (still with a descriptive semantics underlying), rather than what the birds have to do to comply with a legal regulation. This possibility of interpretation may make it hard to invoke a deontic interpretation without further contentful support. Contentful support is, of course, what the various "quality inspector" scenarios provide (e.g., [252]). Contentful support is also what permission and obligation schemas, and the "seek violations" instructions in combination with modal explications of the rule provide, as reported by Platt and Griggs [217]. This failure of what is about the simplest direct manipulation that could test the theory (that it is deontic interpretation which achieves most of the facilitations reported in the literature) is a very common kind of failure. Our interpretation is that the manipulation unfortunately fails to achieve its goal. An opponent of our theory might claim it as evidence the theory is wrong. To settle this dispute one would need to get further evidence that the manipulation doesn't succeed in invoking a deontic reading. Trying such direct tests is important – if they work they provide dramatic evidence. Generally when they fail they are not reported. The problem is a problem of constructing a bridge from a theory of interpretation to the effects of manipulations, and bridging is unavoidable if theory is to be brought to bear on data. 4.2.5 Putting It All Together? In summary of all the conditions, these results corroborate the findings of the tutoring experiments, also reported in [264], that our manipulations alleviate real sources of difficulty with interpretation for subjects in the original descriptive task – sources of difficulty which do not apply in the deontic task. This evidence suggests that far from failing to think at all, subjects are sensitive to several important semantic issues posed by the descriptive task. Since our manipulations only help to alleviate problems piecemeal in some subjects, they 4.2 Discussion of Results 111 cannot be expected to install a classical logical interpretation of the task and materials in all subjects, nor to produce performance levels comparable with the deontic tasks. It is difficult to assess what proportion of problems have been dealt with here. Several that we discussed in chapter 3 have not been treated (anaphora, card reversibility). It is an even harder methodological problem to find a way of estimating how much of the difficulties these problems jointly account for, because simply applying all the manipulations concurrently produces complicated instructions which themselves introduce their own problems. Rather than presenting a complete model of what subjects are doing in this task, the experiment provides strong evidence that several of the major sources of interpretation problems identified by semantic analysis do contribute to subjects' difficulties in the original task. This is sufficient to make it very hard to defend any theory which assumes both that the correct interpretation is classical logic, and that it is the interpretation that subjects adopt. This includes all theories except the information-gain theory. As discussed above, both the two-rule and contingency conditions provide considerable evidence that the information–gain theory has its own problems. The ingenious experiment by van Denderen [280], part of which was discussed in section 4.2.2, was actually aimed at the difficult task of assessing how many of these problems can be simultaneously alleviated. How many subjects can be induced to adopt the material implication interpretation Wason's criterion of correct reasoning requires, by simply simultaneously removing problems Wason strews in the subjects' path? And how many subjects then reason as their chosen interpretation requires? Platt and Griggs [217] induced very high selections of A and 7 cards in the descriptive task by focusing subjects on possibly noncompliant cases. But van Denderen's aim was to see what could be achieved without this focusing. The manipulations he used are as follows: (1) the task was run interactively on the web so that subjects could actually turn cards and alleviate the problems of wanting to make responses contingent on the feedback of early turns (this manipulation was discussed in section 4.2.2 above); (2) the conditional is not described as a rule (with the result of engendering a defeasible interpretation of the relevance of a larger population of cards) but rather as a simple expression of an observer's belief about four cards; (3) the conditionality (as opposed to biconditionality) of the rule is emphasized by inclusion of a clause explicitly disavowing the biconditional reading; (4) the source of the conditional was separated from the experimenter to avoid issues of the need to accuse an authority figure of lying; and (5) subjects are required to confirm their understanding of the instructions by answering some simple questions about the task before proceeding to the experiment. The design of the experiment divided subjects into a group with a simple conditional (original conditional), and a group with the clause rejecting the biconditional added (extended rule). All subjects did two versions of the task: 112 4 From Logic via Exploration to Controlled Experiment one including all the enhancements just listed except for the possibility of interacting with the cards (noninteractive), and the other with this interaction (interactive) , in that order. After these two selection tasks, subjects did an 'evaluation task' [297] where they judged each of the four card types as complying, not complying, or irrelevant to the conditional, in order to gather data on their interpretation. Armed with these data about individual interpretation, it is possible to assess not only whether subjects adopt Wason's intended interpretation of the conditional but also whether they reason correctly from it, or from whatever other interpretation they do adopt. The results show a huge convergence on Wason's desired interpretation of the conditionals. Whereas with the original conditional, only a fifth of subjects chose the material implication interpretation (even with all the clarifications), with the extended rule this rose to 80%. There was a similarly large increase of A and 7 selections, from around 5% making this choice in Wason's original experiment, to 32% of subjects in the extended rule interactive task who chose just A and 7, and a further 16% chose A, 7, and 4. All told, 60% turned the 7 card compared to about 9% in Wason's original task. About 55% of subjects made all the card choices in the complex interactive task which normatively corresponded with their chosen interpretation, although more than half of these chose one or more cards they strictly need not have turned. These results are a strong vindication of the theory we have proposed here. There is much interpretive variability, but a large majority of subjects can be induced to adopt the interpretation Wason intended, and when they do, a large proportion of them reason adequately from that interpretation. Reasoning is by no means perfect, but the hard part is getting to the interpretation which Wason hid. This experiment is rather revealing of the forest of problems the subject encounters, and therefore suggestive of why the ability to find Wason's interpretation and turn the A and 7 cards should be predictive of academic success, as Stanovich showed. 4.3 What Does This Say about Reasoning More Generally? What implications do these results have for theories of reasoning, and for the place of interpretation in cognitive theory more generally? What do they tell us about the way the field has viewed the relation between logical and psychological analyses of reasoning, and how that relation might be construed more productively? Each theory is a somewhat different case. These results remove the founding evidence for "evolutionary" theories which propose that the difference in performance on "social contract" conditionals and descriptive conditionals needs to be explained by innate cheating detection modules evolved in the Pleistocene. This topic will be discussed at greater length in chapter 6. As we will see, this reappraisal of the selection task pro4.3 What Does This Say about Reasoning More Generally? 113 vides a good example of how arguments for "massive modularity" in cognition should be treated with some skepticism (for further arguments, see [268]). The original experiments found variation in performance as a function of difference in materials. Sweeping generalizations were then made from the laboratory task without any consideration of the relation between that task and subjects' other communication and reasoning abilities. Just as our analysis directs attention to the differences between variations on the selection task and the continuities between natural language communication inside and outside the selection task, so our proposals return attention to the issue of how humans' generalized communication capacities arose in evolution. The interactions between logic's dual apparatus of interpretation and of derivation constitute an exquisitely context– sensitive conceptual framework for the study of human reasoning and communication, whether in evolution, development, or education. Chapter 5 takes up these themes. The nonevolutionary theories of human reasoning are most generally affected by the present results through their implications for the relation between logic and psychology. We focus here particularly on relevance theory, mental models theory, and rational analysis models.3 Relevance Theory Inasmuch as relevance theory [251, 99, 252] assumes that human reasoning and communication abilities are general abilities which interact with the specifics of the context, our general drift is sympathetic to relevance theory's conclusions. We agree with relevance theory, that the goal must be to make sense of what subjects are doing in the very strange situation of laboratory reasoning tasks – in a memorable phrase, to see subjects as "pragmatic virtuosos" (Girotto et al. [99]) – rather than to see them as logical defectives. Our divergences from relevance theory are about the granularity of interaction between semantic and pragmatic processes in subjects' reasoning; in the range of behavior we believe to be of theoretical concern; and in the program of research. Relevance theory explains pragmatic effects in terms of very general factors – relevance to the task at hand and cost of inference to reveal that relevance. These factors must always operate with regard to some semantic characterization of the language processed. Condensing analysis into these two pragmatic factors, however, seems, in this case at least, to have led to relevance theorists missing the critical semantic differences which drive the psychological processes in this task – the differences between deontics and descriptives and their consequences for interpretation in this task's setting. Relevance theory's conclusion has been that not much reasoning goes on when undergraduate subjects get the abstract task "wrong." Our combination of tutoring observations and 3. The remainder of this section is therefore most useful to readers familiar with these theories. Other readers may skip ahead to the paragraph entitled "General Implications." 114 4 From Logic via Exploration to Controlled Experiment experiment strongly suggests that a great deal goes on, however speedily the "precomputed" attitudes are brought to bear in the actual task, and that the exact nature of the processes is highly variable from subject to subject. Taking logic more seriously leads us to seek more detailed accounts of mental processes. Mental Models Theory The current results have rather wide-ranging implications for mental models theory [144, 143]. Some implications specific to the theory's application to the selection task have already been discussed. Others are more general, about mental models theory's relation to logic and semantics. Since Johnson-Laird's early work with Wason on the selection task [297, 148, 298] mental models theory has been elaborated by a complex theory of the meanings of conditionals and the overlay of semantics by "pragmatic modulation," and the theory has been much exercised by the issue whether subjects' interpretations of the rule in the selection task is truth–functional or not [143]. However, this consideration of semantic possibilities has been divorced from any consideration of their implications for the subjects' interpretation of the task. If subjects' reading of the rule is non-truth–functional (by whatever semantic or pragmatic route), then the subjects should experience a conflict between their interpretation and the task instructions. This conflict has never been acknowledged by mental models theorists. What justification can there then be for applying the classical logical competence model as a criterion of correct performance while simultaneously rejecting it as an account of how subjects interpret the conditional? We shall return to some of the general logical issues raised by mental models in chapter 5, insection 5.1.4 and chapter 10, section 10.6. Bayesian Models Finally, where do our findings leave the Bayesian information– gain models of selection task behavior as optimal experiment (Oaksford and Chater [205, 206])? We applaud these authors' challenge to the uniqueness of the classical logical model of the task, and also their insistence that the deontic and descriptive versions of the task require distinct accounts. Their theory is clearly more sophisticated about the relations between formal models and cognitive processes than the theories it challenges. However, our proposals are quite divergent in their cognitive consequences. The rational analysis models reject any role for logic, claiming that the task is an inductive one. But this move smuggles logic in the backdoor. Applying optimal experiment theory requires assigning probabilities to propositions, and propositions are specified in some underlying language. The logic underlying the rational analysis model is the same old classical propositional calculus with all its attendant divergences from subjects' interpretations of the task materials. This has direct psychological consequences. The rational analysis models treat subjects' performances as being equally correct as measured by the two distinct competence models for descriptive and deontic tasks. Our analysis predicts that the descriptive task will 4.3 What Does This Say about Reasoning More Generally? 115 be highly problematical and the deontic task rather straightforward. The tutorial evidence on the descriptive task and its experimental corroboration support our prediction about the descriptive task. Approaching through interpretation predicts and observes considerable variety in the problems different subjects exhibit in the descriptive task, and even variety within the same subject at different times. We can agree that some subjects may adopt something like the rational analysis model of the task, but disagree about the uniformity of this or any other interpretation. Most of all we do not accept that everyone is doing the same thing at the relevant level of detail. General Implications This situates our approach with regard to some prominent psychological theories of reasoning, and illustrates similarities and differences with extant approaches in the context of this one particular task. But our proposals also have general implications for how cognitive theories of reasoning relate to logical and linguistic theories of language and communication more generally. If we are anything like right about the selection task, it is both possible and necessary to bring the details of formal accounts of natural languages (semantics of deontics and descriptives, variable and constant anaphora, tense, definiteness, domain of interpretation, scope of negation) to bear in explaining the details of performance in laboratory reasoning tasks. This is necessary because subjects' behavior in these tasks is continuous with generalized human capacities for communication, and possible because although strange in many ways, laboratory tasks have to be construed by subjects using their customary communicative skills. In fact laboratory tasks have much in common with the curious communicative situation that is formal education, and another benefit of the current approach is that it stands to reconnect the psychology of reasoning with educational investigations. With very few exceptions (e.g., Stanovich and West [253]), psychologists of reasoning have not asked what educational significance their results have. They regard their theories as investigating "the fundamental human reasoning mechanism" which is independent of education. On our account, the descriptive selection task is interesting precisely because it forces subjects to reason in vacuo and this process is closely related to extremely salient educational processes which are aimed exactly at equipping students with generalizable skills for reasoning in novel contexts more effectively. For example, the balance of required cooperative assumption of the background rule and adversarial test of the foreground rule in the descriptive selection task is absolutely typical of the difficulties posed in the strange communications involved in examination questions (cf. the quote from Ryle on p. 23). Many cross–cultural observations of reasoning can be understood in terms of the kinds of discourse different cultures invoke in various circumstances (see chapter 5). The discourses established by formal education are indeed a very distinctive characteristic of our culture (see, e.g., [20], [124]).
From the Laboratory to the Wildand Back Again Instead of patiently explaining the state of the art in the psychology of reasoning, this book has started in medias res by taking one well-known experimental paradigm – the selection task – and showing both how traditional psychology of reasoning has treated it and what a cognitive science of reasoning might aspire to. It is now time to step back and introduce the most important concerns of the psychology of reasoning as it has been practiced. It has been argued by many outside the field that the kind of reasoning studied in this branch of psychology is totally irrelevant to real life, and this brings us to the question whether logical reasoning occurs in the wild, and more generally, whether it is a trick acquired by schooling or, on the contrary, a natural endowment. 5.1 The Laboratory The psychology of reasoning is concerned with the experimental study of reasoning patterns also of interest to logicians, and in the literature we find experimental research on, for example, • reasoning with syllogisms in adults, • reasoning with propositional connectives in adults, • acquisition of connectives and quantifiers in children, • reasoning in subjects with various psychiatric or cognitive impairments, • brain correlates of reasoning, • reasoning in "primitive" societies. As an example of the second area, an adult subject may be presented with the premises If Julie has an essay, she studies late in the library. Julie does not study late in the library. 118 5 From the Laboratory to the Wild and Back Again and is then asked: what, if anything, follows? In this case (modus tollens) it may happen that half of the subjects reply that nothing can be concluded. In contrast, the analogous experiment for modus ponens, with the minor premise Julie has an essay. typically yields "success" scores of around 95% drawing the conclusion. The psychologist is then interested in explaining the difference in performance, and believes that differences such as this actually provide a window on the cognitive processes underlying logical reasoning.1 What is distinctive about the psychology of reasoning is that it views its task as uncovering the mechanism of logical reasoning: what goes on in the brain (and where) when it makes an inference? This issue can be framed in terms of what psychologists call the representations employed by reasoning, although we prefer the term implementation here. This level is concerned with how the abstract structures of informational analysis – discourses, sentences, models, proofs – are implemented, both in the world and in the mind. Is there something like a diagram or like a text implemented in the mind? Or perhaps on the paper the subject is using? Here one is concerned with memory, both long-term and working memory, with modalities (visuospatial, phonetic, orthographic), with the environment (as it functions representationally), and eventually with the brain – all the paraphernalia of psychological analysis. Here differences may certainly be expected between how the information specified in sentences and the information specified in models gets implemented. But remarkably little study has been aimed at this level until very recently, and much of what has been aimed at it has been based on dubious informational-level analyses. We will return to this issue after introducing three well-known "schools" in the psychology of reasoning, each identified by what it takes to be the mechanism underlying reasoning. 5.1.1 Mental Logic This school, also known as the "mental rules" school [228], maintains that logical reasoning is the application of formal rules, which are more or less similar to natural deduction rules. Here is an example (from [229]): the theory tries to explain why humans tend to have difficulty with modus tollens, by assuming that this is not a primitive rule, unlike modus ponens; modus tollens has to be derived each time it is used; therefore it leads to longer processing time. Reasoning is thus assumed to be implemented as a syntactic process transforming sentences into other sentences via rewrite rules. Since on this view reasoning is similar to language processing, it has sometimes been maintained that it should be subserved by the same brain circuits: 1. We will in fact have something to say about this particular phenomenon in chapter 7. 5.1 The Laboratory 119 [Mental logic claims] that deductive reasoning is a rule governed syntactic process where internal representations preserve structural properties of linguistic strings in which the premises are stated. This linguistic hypothesis predicts that the neuro-anatomical mechanisms of language (syntactic) processing underwrite human reasoning processes . . . (Goel et al.[101,p. 504]) This would allow us to distinguish between "mental logic" and its foremost competitor, discussed next. 5.1.2 Mental Models The founding father of the "mental models" school is Johnson-Laird [145]; applications of "mental models" to logic can be found in Johnson-Laird and Byrne [144]. The main claim of this school is that reasoners do not apply content-independent formal rules (such as, for example, modus ponens), but construct models for sentences and read off conclusions from these, which are then subject to a process of validation by looking for alternative models. Errors in reasoning are typically explained by assuming that subjects read off a conclusion from the initial model which turns out not to be true in all models of the premises. The "mental models" school arose as a reaction against "mental logic" because it was felt that formal, contentless rules would be unable to explain the so-called "content effects" in reasoning, such as were believed to occur in the selection task. It was also influenced by simultaneous developments in formal semantics, namely Kamp's discourse representation theory [152], which emphasized the need for the construction of "discourse models" as an intermediary between language and world. On the representational side, "mental models" seems to point to spatial processing as the underlying mechanism. [Mental models claims] that deductive reasoning is a process requiring spatial manipulation and search. Mental model theory is often referred to as a spatial hypothesis and predicts that the neural structures for visuo-spatial processing contribute the basic representational building blocks used for logical reasoning. (Goel et al.[101,p. 504]) It then seems possible to set up an experiment to distinguish between the two theories, by using experimental evidence that language processing is localized in the left hemisphere, and spatial processing in the parietal cortex (chiefly on the right). If a subject shows no activation in the parietal cortex while reasoning, this is taken to be evidence against the involvement of spatial processing, and hence ultimately against mental models. A result of this kind was indeed obtained by Goel and colleagues [100]. Another example is Canessa et al. [30] which claims to identify the locations of social contract reasoning, and of abstract logical reasoning, in the brain on the basis of a scanning experiment of descriptive and deontic selection tasks. We will return to such arguments later, showing that the route from hypothesized mechanism to brain area is considerably less direct than claimed by Goel and other neuroscientists. 120 5 From the Laboratory to the Wild and Back Again 5.1.3 Darwinian Algorithms Evolutionary psychology has also tried to shed its light on logical reasoning, beginning with the famous (or notorious) paper "The Logic of Social Exchange: Has Natural Selection Shaped how Humans Reason? Studies with the Wason Selection Task" by Leda Cosmides [47]. Here the main claim is that there is no role for (formal, domain–independent) logic in cognition; whenever we appear to reason logically, this is because we have evolved strategies ("Darwinian algorithms") to solve a problem in a particular domain. The first application is also the most vivid: the difference between bad performance on the abstract selection task and good performance on the drinking age rule is hypothesized to be due to the fact that the latter is a "social contract," and that we have evolved a mechanism for policing social contracts, the so-called cheater detector. This is just a very special instance of evolutionary psychology's general claim that the mind must be viewed as a collection of dedicated mechanisms (called "modules") each engineered by natural selection. We will discuss evolutionary psychology much more extensively in chapter 6, section 6.3; for the moment these brief indications suffice. On the representational side, the picture is again a bit different. The hypothesis implies that there is a very specific brain area, located in the limbic system, dedicated to the vigorous pursuit of cheaters, and it has indeed been claimed by Cosmides and colleagues that this area can be identified from neuropsychological studies of selective impairments to the limbic system [272] (see also [30]). 5.1.4 Cold Water There are more "schools" than have been mentioned here. But for now the most important point is that talk about the mechanism is apt to be highly misleading, because it does not take into account that any cognitive phenomenon can be studied at various levels. The classical discussion of this issue is David Marr's [183], where he points out that cognitive science should distinguish at least the following three levels of inquiry 1. identification of the information–processing task as an input–output function, 2. specification of an algorithm which computes that function, 3. neural implementation of the algorithm specified. These distinctions between levels are of course familiar from computer science, as is the observation that there is no reason to stick to three levels only, since a program written in one language (say Prolog) may be implemented in another 5.2 A View with No Room 121 language (say C), and so on all the way down to an assembly language, machine code, and the several levels of analysis of hardware. What is important about Marr's three levels is that for any phenomenon analysed as an information system, three levels related in this way will figure. Furthermore, it is tempting to think that the neural implementation provides some kind of rock bottom, the most fundamental level of inquiry; but of course the neural implementation uses a model of what actual neurons do, and not the real things themselves. Neuroscience provides several further levels below the neuron. The upshot of this discussion is that it makes no sense to ask for the mechanism underlying reasoning without first specifying a level at which one intends to study this question. As a consequence, a superficially sensible distinction such as that between mental logic and mental models may turn out to be empirically meaningless, at least in the form it is usually stated. The fact that the argument patterns studied by psychologists typically come from logics with a completeness theorem should already give one pause: at the input–output level manipulations with rules and manipulations with models cannot be distinguished in such systems. One can look at subtler measures such as error rates or reaction times; e.g., mental modelers like to point to a correlation between the difficulty of a syllogistic figure (as measured by error rate), and the number of models that the premises of the figure allow, but proof-theoretic rule systems often consider a series of "cases" which mimic these models, and so cast doubt on any empirical separation between rules and models at this level (see Stenning [258, 269] for discussions of this type of argumentation). 5.2 A View with No Room Should the psychology of deduction be about these few well-known laboratory tasks in which subjects are presented with logical puzzles and asked to solve them: the selection task, syllogisms, the suppression task, conditional reasoning? And if our capacity of deduction is not just for performing these tasks, what is it for? What everyday functions does it serve? How are theoretical analyses of deductive performance in these laboratory tasks related to analyses of other cognitive functions? As we remarked in the introduction, reasoning fell from the position of being absolutely central in the cognitive revolution, which was founded on conceptions of reasoning, computation, and the analysis of language, to become the deadbeat of cognitive psychology, pursued in a ghetto, surrounded by widespread skepticism as to whether human reasoning really happens outside the academy. Within the ghetto, the issue with the highest visibility has been about the nature of the mental representations underlying deduction – is it "rules" or is it "models"? There has been almost universal acceptance that the goal of the field is the characterization of "the fundamental human (de122 5 From the Laboratory to the Wild and Back Again ductive) reasoning mechanism," and that it must work on one or the other of these two kinds of representation. Along with confidence that there is a single fundamental human reasoning mechanism goes confidence that classical logic is the unchallenged arbiter of correct reasoning, although classical logic is often simultaneously rejected as a useful guide to mental representation or process. It is assumed that the classical logical form of the materials used in the experiments lies very near to their surface without any substantial interpretive process. This idea of interpretation as the superficial translation of natural language into logical form carries over into neglect of the processes whereby artificial logical languages are interpreted – assigned a mapping onto the world. Natural languages do not come with this mapping in anything like the detail required for discourse interpretation – artificial languages still less so (consider the introduction of our notion of interpretation in p. 21). As we saw earlier in this chapter, there have been rejections of the appropriateness of logical deductive models of reasoning in favour of inductive information–gain models which turn reasoning into decision. But even those who have departed from accepting classical logic as the relevant competence model [205] have continued to accept that it makes sense to treat all subjects as "trying to do the same thing" and so the goal might be described as changing to that of characterizing the "fundamental human information–gain mechanism." But as both chapter 7 and the beginning of this chapter argue, even this apparently radical move to a completely different competence model still smuggles classical logic in at the backdoor. The dissatisfactions of the ghetto have led even some prominent community members to depart entirely, claiming that once the ecological context of real life is considered seriously, what we find are decision processes, not reasoning processes, and that fast and frugal heuristics without any reference to competence models can replace logic, probability, and all other cumbersome systems of reasoning [95]. Reasoning is the idle pastime of the academy, but not the bread and butter of the real world. In fact several of the prominent researchers who earlier made much of their analyses of the selection task now claim the task is uninteresting. As the last chapter suggested, the route out of this ghetto lies in taking interpretation seriously. In fact we believe that the mental processes mainly evoked by the laboratory tasks mentioned are interpretive processes – the processes of reasoning to interpretations. Modern logic provides a rich landscape of possibilities and we believe the empirical evidence is that subjects are engaged in setting a series of parameters in this space in order to formalise their understanding of what it is they are being asked to do. The evidence is that in these abstracted and unnatural settings student subjects are error-prone – so rich interpretation does not mean infallible reasoning. However, recasting the phenomena as interpretive provides a bridge between the laboratory and the wild. 5.2 A View with No Room 123 Laboratory tasks force interpretation in a vacuum, and the scattering that results can tell us much about what happens at more normal pressures. Furthermore, the wild, at least in "developed" societies with extended formal schooling, is full of tasks which are abstracted in ways rather closely related to the laboratory tasks, which were, after all, originally collected or adapted from various teaching sources. The nature of this bridge is then a good guide to the tasks in the wild which most bring reasoning into play. An immediate corollary of the formal stance of taking the multiplicity of interpretations seriously is the empirical consequence of needing to take individual differences seriously. Subjects do different things in the experiments, and this has so far been treated as simply stringing them out along a dimension of intelligence. They are all deemed to be trying to do the same thing, but succeeding or failing in different degrees. If there are many interpretations and each poses a qualitatively different task, then subjects are not even trying to do the same thing (at least at any finer grain than understanding what the hell they are being asked to do), and suddenly the data and the theoretical demands become far richer. And most important of all, the working relation between formalization and experiment changes entirely. Taking interpretation seriously and separating semantic from representational issues offers a room with a view quite panoramic enough to serve as foundations for human cognition. The gulf of incomprehension between the logical and psychological communities is a source of great personal sadness. We must get away from the idea that these two disciplines are in competition and realise that logic is a theory at a much more abstract level than psychologists suppose, but nevertheless one that is indispensable for formulating empirical psychology. Trying to do without it is comparable to trying to study visual perception without geometry (only worse because of the variety of logics that are plainly required), and this analogy should make it clear that once one has done all one's geometry, visual perception still remains to be done. Logic is not about to replace psychology. Logic is about the specification of abstract systems, and is an indispensable guide to how those systems might or might not be implemented, at a number of different levels, in the mind. Of course, inappropriate logical analyses lead to bad psychological explanations (cf. the last chapter), but if logic analysis and psychological work are reasonably coupled, then that should become evident rather quickly, and a better logical analysis found. One moral of the last 35 years of the psychology of reasoning has been that the penalty of divorcing logic has been the reinvention of several pale imitations which have served only to confuse. 124 5 From the Laboratory to the Wild and Back Again 5.3 The Literate Wild Psychology devised laboratory paradigms for reasoning, presumably on the assumption that reasoning is in some sense a natural cognitive capability, and therefore worth studying. Since there is room for doubt whether these experiments test what they were designed to test, it is useful to briefly adopt a more phenomenological approach and ask ourselves what can plausibly be classified as reasoning in natural environments. Here it is useful to introduce (and eventually adapt) the distinction between "system 1" and "system 2" processes discussed in dual process theories of reasoning [72]: system 1 is . . . a form of universal cognition shared between animals and humans. It is actually not a single system but a set of subsystems that operate with some autonomy. System 1 includes instinctive behaviors that would include any input modules of the kind proposed by Fodor . . . The System 1 processes that are most often described, however, are those that are formed by associative learning of the kind produced by neural networks. . . . System 1 processes are rapid, parallel and automatic in nature; only their final product is posted in consciousness [72,p. 454]. In these theories, logical reasoning is considered to belong to "system 2" which is slow and sequential in nature and makes use of the central working memory system. . . . [72,p. 454] It is also sometimes said that system 1 and system 2 processes invoke different concepts of rationality [254]. This view of reasoning grew out of, and fed into, the standard experimental paradigms where subjects are given premises with the instruction to reason to a conclusion starting from the given premises only. We believe that it is a mistake to maintain that fast and automatic processes are thereby not logical processes, as is implicit in the above quotation. On our view, the prime counterexample is discourse interpretation, which is by and large automatic and proceeds according to logical laws (albeit nonclassical), and involves the construction of representations in central working memory. Chapter 7 will treat this topic in detail; here we discuss what the wild looks like from the perspective of a different conceptualization of the boundary between system 1 and system 2 processes. In a nutshell, different goals require different assessments of what constitutes rational action, and accordingly determine an appropriate logic. The formal properties of this logic then determine what kind of implementations are possible, and whether they can process quickly and automatically or only slowly and laboriously. We conceptualise the part that logic plays in system 1 as being the foundation of routine discourse interpretation, when a suitable knowledge base already exists in long-term memory. When the routine process of interpretation meets an impasse, then system 2 comes into operation, albeit often briefly, before system 1 can resume interpretation. On the other hand, some impasses may require substantial conceptual learning, 5.3 The Literate Wild 125 or argument between the parties to the discourse, and in this case resumption won't be so quickly achieved. When discussing the phenomenology of reasoning, we distinguish between literate and illiterate people; the classical results of Luria and Scribner have exhibited considerable phenomenological differences in reasoning styles in these subgroups, and it is useful to discuss these differences from our interpretive perspective. 5.3.1 The Literate Wild: System 1 Processes We have argued that much of the psychology of reasoning is (albeit unwittingly) about interpretation, and that we should reinterpret an important subset of system 1 processes as automatic, but defeasible, reasoning to interpretations. We further claim that much planning is an important system 1 process subserving interpretation. For the construction of discourse models this has been shown in [282], and chapter 7 will establish the formal relation between planning and reasoning. Here we stay at the phenomenal level, and discuss what forms planning can take in the wild. Before we start out, a distinction must be made. We perhaps tend to think first of conscious deliberate planning – a form of problem solving – rather than the sort of effortless automatic planning involved in, say, planning motor actions. The connection between planning and system 1 is through the latter kind of planning, though relations to the former deliberate kind are important in considering relations between system 1 and system 2. The fundamental logical connection between interpretation and planning is that both are defeasible. When we plan (deliberately or automatically) we plan in virtue of our best guess about the world in which we will have to execute our plan. We may plan for what to do if we miss the bus, but we don't plan for what to do if the bus doesn't come because the gravitational constant changes, even though that is a logical possibility. If we used classical logic throughout our planning, we would have to consider all logically possible worlds, or at least make explicit exactly what range of worlds we consider. This necessity is what gives rise to the notorious frame problem in AI [223]. Closed–world reasoning (as introduced in chapter 2) is a particular logic for planning designed to overcome the frame problem.2 It does so with a vengeance: it is now sufficient for a single model of the discourse to be maintained at every point of its development. Maintaining a single model of our best guess about the current situation and its relevance to current goals is a very much more plausible biological function than reasoning about all logically possible models of our current assumptions. As we briefly mentioned in chapter 2, and will see in greater detail in chapter 8, along with biological plausibility of function comes efficiency of computation – the model is derived from the repre2. For this reason, planning logics are also used in robotics for planning motor actions (see, e.g., [246]). 126 5 From the Laboratory to the Wild and Back Again sentation of the assumptions in linear time. Focusing on biologically plausible automatic planning is helpful in connecting this approach to other cognitive processes. In particular, we may call an automatic process such as planning an instance of closed–world reasoning if it can be viewed as the construction of a (representation of a) model from which conclusions are read off. The neuropsychological literature on "executive function" has much to offer to understanding planning, and, obliquely, also reasoning too. Lots of categories of patients have planning problems, often to do with inhibiting prepotent responses,3 managing goals and subgoals, balancing top-down and bottom– up influences, and so forth. This literature straddles automatic and deliberative planning and control. In chapter 9 we shall see how these planning problems are related to peculiarities in reasoning often found in autistic people; but there are many other disorders to which the approach may have something to contribute: a substantial set of psychiatric conditions – anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, attention–deficit disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder – are now seen as being accompanied by problems of executive function. These problems may or may not be central causes, and they may be different problems in different disorders, but it seems that understanding executive function and dysfunction has a contribution to make. Perhaps the moral of this literature of most current relevance here is that although human system 1 processes include our biological heritage from nonhuman cognition, system 1 is also distinctively changed in humans. Our system 1 not only keeps a model of our best interpretation of our current real-world circumstances but can also maintain models of our best interpretation of, at the other extreme, completely fictional discourses where relation to the real world is totally unspecified, and any number of situations in between. It is understanding such fictional discourses in the laboratory that provides the data that we began by discussing, as well as the new data discussed in chapter 7. It is always a salutary exercise to rehearse the many levels of fiction involved in laboratory experiments, right down, for an example from the selection task, to the fact that turning the diagram of the cards yields a blank piece of paper. Even this has been shown to affect subjects' reactions, relative to considering real cards on the table in front of the subject. On the account of the nature of system 1 processes as defeasible automatic reasoning to an interpretation, they have of course already received considerable attention in a range of psychological literatures. Closest to reasoning is the psycholinguistics literature [93]. Here the whole enterprise is to ask how subjects defeasibly derive interpretations for discourses, culminating in successful understanding.4 Psycholinguistics has recently branched out beyond the interpretation of purely linguistic input to treat 3. The prepotent response is the response which is strongest when stimuli with different, conflicting, responses occur together. 4. Studies of the evolution of human language and cognitive skills also exploit this relation between planning and language skills [3], [107], [256]. 5.3 The Literate Wild 127 situations in which visual perception of the nonlinguistic world goes on in parallel with linguistic interpretation of relevant utterances [275]. Indications are that linguistic and nonlinguistic interpretations are about as integrated as it is possible to be. Visual evidence can be used "immediately" to resolve linguistic choices in interpretation. This should serve to remind us that defeasible processes modelled by closed–world reasoning are not particularly linguistic. One thing that is special about interpreting discourse (as opposed to present perceptual circumstances) is that it requires reasoning about others' intentions and meanings. One sees this made concrete in pragmatic frameworks, such as Grice's [108], where credulous interpretation of discourse involves assumptions of cooperativeness, knowledge, and ignorance, for example. The "theory of mind" reasoning that has been studied in the developmental literature provides further examples. In chapter 2 we have seen how "theory of mind" can be analysed as closed world reasoning. The key idea here is to analyse communications, perceptions, and beliefs, as causes and consequences of a specific kind, and the reasoning as a variety of causal reasoning. In chapter 9 we will study how breakdown of this system leads to failures on "false–belief tasks." Conscious deliberate planning has been studied in normal subjects in the context of problem solving, and indeed it is strange that this literature is regarded as so separate from the psychology of reasoning literature. When subjects have to solve a Tower of Hanoi problem [199], reasoning seems to be what is called for. This, at first experience, evokes system 2 planning. But the surprising outcome of Simon and Newell's empirical studies and theoretical conclusions was that expertise resulted in system 2 processes "going underground" and being compiled into system 1 skills. The expert chess player or physician has to a large extent automated the planning process and indeed may have done so to the extent that the skill is no longer accessible to reflective analysis – a hallmark of system 1 processes. This change was indeed conceptualized by Simon and Newell as the acquisition of very large databases of "productions" – conditional rules. This same turn toward the study of learning and acquisition of reasoning skills has not happened in the psychology of reasoning. As long as the goal is characterization of the fundamental human reasoning mechanism, learning, acquisition, and even skill are deemed irrelevant, and as processes which are "educational," rather than part of the nature of human cognition in the wild. Stenning [258] shows how differences between subjects' reasoning and learning can be explained in terms of their representational strategies, developed by slow deliberate system 2 learning. It is a fine irony that professors, of all people, should come to the view that conceptual learning is not a part of human nature, but merely a cultural oddity. 128 5 From the Laboratory to the Wild and Back Again Summary The standard laboratory tasks for reasoning embody a prejudice inherited from classical logic, that reasoning is a conscious process starting from explicitly given premises. Taking a wider view of what reasoning consists in, by incorporating certain automatic processes as well, provides one with a much better vantage point from which to study the grandeur et misère of classical reasoning. 5.3.2 The Literate Wild: System 2 Processes A breakdown of mutual interpretation in credulous processing interrupts a discourse if the hearer's interpretation yields an interpretational impasse. Here, however much the hearer is willing in general to accept the speaker's assertions, a contradiction or other divergence of new utterances from the hearer's model of the speaker's intentions to this point, means that no model can be found, and no model means no "intended model." The hearer now has to engage in repair, and may interrupt the speaker to find out how to repair understanding. Such repair of contradiction is based on interludes of skeptical reasoning from interpretations (or broken attempts at interpretation), embedded in credulous reasoning to interpretations. On this story, classical logic is a good account of some reasoning that does occur in the wild under particular circumstances – the circumstances of "adversarial" communication (in a technical sense of adversarial to be made clear in what follows). The credulous interpretation of discourse assumes a certain asymmetry of authority between speaker and hearer. The hearer accepts that speaker's authority for the truth of the discourse, at least for the purposes of the current episode of communication. The purest case is where a speaker tells a novel fictional story to the hearer who patently accepts he has no grounds for disagreement. But as we have just seen, this acceptance of asymmetry of authority breaks down when contradiction is encountered, and can only be restored by repair. The discourses of adversarial communication are cases where breakdown of mutual interpretation is much more widely spread. In full-fledged argument, the parties may be unwilling to accept offered repairs. They may explore for reinterpretations of the explicitly stated assumptions on which they can agree, or they may resort to less communicative tactics. Here it is plausible that the logic governing the derivations from assumptions is classical – demanding that conclusions be true in all logically possible interpretations of the assumptions. Here is what lies behind the statement of Ryle [239] quoted above on page 23, and repeated here for convenience: There arises, I suppose, a special pressure upon language to provide idioms of the [logical] kind, when a society reaches the stage where many matters of interest and importance to everyone have to be settled or decided by special kinds of talk. I mean, for example, when offenders have to be tried and convicted or acquitted; when treaties and 5.3 The Literate Wild 129 contracts have to be entered into and observed or enforced; when witnesses have to be cross-examined; when legislators have to draft practicable measures and defend them against critics; when private rights and public duties have to be precisely fixed; when complicated commercial arrangements have to be made; when teachers have to set tests to their pupils; and . . . when theorists have to consider in detail the strengths and weaknesses of their own and one another's theories. One of the hallmarks of formal adversarial communication is that reasoning is intended to proceed from the explicit assumptions negotiated to define the 'admissible evidence' (usually as written down). Introduction of extraneous assumptions not formally entered in the record is strictly impermissible. This making explicit of what is assumed for reasoning classically from interpretations contrasts with the vagueness of what long-term knowledge is in play in defeasible reasoning to interpretations. In adversarial communication, reasoning is not defeasible, at least when the rules are followed literally, and finding some interpretation which makes the premises true and the opponent's desired conclusion false is sufficient to defeat it. What combination of classical or defeasible logics provides the best model of how real legal and parliamentary practice works is a complex question, but an albeit highly idealized core of adversarial legal reasoning arguably provides one model for classical logical reasoning in the wild. A purer example of adversarial communication involving skeptical classical reasoning is the discourse of mathematical proof. Yet another example of adversarial communication is argument about the correct interpretation of religious texts – the context which seems to have been particularly important in the emergence of Indian logical theory. Of course, we assume that capacities for skeptical reasoning preceded these theories of it. Conceptual learning in educational dialogue has many of the same features. Teacher and student start out, by definition, conceptually misaligned – the teacher knows some concepts that the student doesn't. The abstract concepts of secondary and tertiary education are not teachable by ostension, and require teaching indirectly through rehearsal of their axioms and applications of those axioms in argument. For example, to teach a student to differentiate the physical concepts of amount, weight, density, volume, and mass it is no good pointing at an instance of one, because any instance of one is an instance of all the others. Instead one has to rehearse the transformations which leave them invariant and the ones that change them. For example, compression changes density and volume but not weight or mass. Going to the moon changes weight but not mass. (Stenning [261] discusses the close analogy between learning abstract physical concepts and learning logical concepts such as truth, validity, consequence, inference rules, etc.). The relation between adversarial communication and logic was traditionally very much the focus of late secondary and tertiary education, at least of the elites who were trained for performance in law court and parliament (and later scientific laboratory). We have already made reference to legal reasoning on page 23. The tasks of the psychology of reasoning 130 5 From the Laboratory to the Wild and Back Again are directly taken from, or derived by small extensions from, the curriculum of this tradition of education [258]. Summary On this account, classical deductive reasoning is important not because an implementation of it is the "universal deductive reasoning mechanism," but rather because classical reasoning is important for aligning and repairing mutual interpretation across some gulf of understanding or agreement, and that learning more explicit control over system 2 processes, and their relation to system 1 processes, can have a large impact on many students' interpretation, learning and reasoning processes. The skills of skeptical reasoning are then one extremely important set of concepts and skills for learning to learn.5 5.3.3 The Relation between System 1 and System 2 System 1 and system 2 processes work together from early on in human development. The relevant parts of system 1 processes are rather direct implementations of a range of nonmonotonic logics. System 2 processes start as repair processes when a system 1 process meets an impasse and gradually shade into full blown adversarial discourses, perhaps with their underlying logic being classical. Questions arise at two different levels about the relation between systems 1 and 2. At the level of ontogeny there are questions about how the two systems develop and the role of formal education in these relations. At the evolutionary level, there are questions about the history of the two systems: did the cognitive capacities for system 2 reasoning come into being at some point roughly coincident with the advent of developed societies and the first formulations of theories of system 2 reasoning (i.e., with the development of logical theory), or did the system 2 processes exist long beforehand? At the educational level, there are questions about the level of transfer of the learning of classical logic to the students' reasoning practices. We approach these issues through what is known about reasoning in less developed societies among illiterate subjects, and then move on to consider evolutionary questions in chapter 6. 5.4 The Illiterate Wild It has sometimes been maintained that logical reasoning, if not exactly a party trick, is an ability acquired only in the course of becoming literate, for instance by going to school, or worse, by attending a logic class. This is grist to the 5. For ease of exposition we have in the above more or less identified skeptical and classical reasoning. For a more subtle approach, the reader may consult Dung, Kowalski, and Toni [67]. 5.4 The Illiterate Wild 131 mill of those who believe that, evolutionarily speaking, logical reasoning is not a basic human ability. It is indeed true that the fundamental fact to be explained about reasoning in illiterate subjects is their obstinate refusal to draw conclusions from premises supplied by the experimenter, as in Luria's famous example [177,p. 108]: E. In the Far North, where there is snow, all bears are white. Novaya Zemlya is in the Far North and there is always snow there. What color are the bears there? S. I don't know what color the bears are there, I never saw them. E. But what do you think? S. Once I saw a bear in a museum, that's all. E. But on the basis of what I said, what color do you think the bears are there? S. Either one-colored or two-colored . . . [ponders for a long time]. To judge from the place, they should be white. You say that there is a lot of snow there, but we have never been there! Here Luria is talking to an illiterate peasant from Kazakhstan. He attributed the peasant's refusal to answer, to an overriding need to answer from personal knowledge only, interfering with the deductive inference. A careful analysis of this and related data shows, however, that the situation is considerably more complicated. For one thing, the subject does draw the inference when he says "To judge from the place, they should be white'; but he refuses to consider this an answer to the question posed by the experimenter. It seems one cannot blame him. Why should someone be interested in truth relative to assumptions, instead of absolute truth? There are plenty of circumstances in our societies where refusing hypothetical reasoning is a common move – one has only to listen to a politician interviewed. The reason for refusing to answer may only be because the subject does not know whether the premises are really true, not because of an inability to draw the correct inference. This point can be amplified in several ways. The first thing to observe is that sometimes the refusal to answer may be motivated by a piece of logical (meta-)reasoning, as in Scribner's studies of reasoning among the illiterate Kpelle tribe in Liberia [243,p.112], reprinted from [244]. Here is a sample argument given to her subjects: All Kpelle men are rice farmers. Mr. Smith is not a rice farmer. Is Mr. Smith a Kpelle man? Consider the following dialogue with a Kpelle subject: S. I don't know the man in person. I have not laid eyes on the man himself. E. Just think about the statement. S. If I know a man in person, I can answer that question, but since I do not know him in person I cannot answer that question. E. Try and answer from your Kpelle sense. S. If you know a person, if a question comes up about him you are able to answer. But if 132 5 From the Laboratory to the Wild and Back Again you do not know a person, if a question comes up about him, it's hard for you to answer it. Under the plausible assumption that in the dialogue "if" means "if and only if," the Kpelle subject actually makes the modus tollens inference in the meta argument (in his second turn) that he refuses to make in the object argument! Luria concluded that subjects' thinking is limited to the concrete and situational, that of which they have personal knowledge: Scribner tended to the conclusion that subjects fail because they don't understand the problem, or what kind of discourse "game" is intended. If this means that subjects do not understand what the experimenter wants from them, one can only agree, as long as this is not taken to imply that there is some deficiency in the subjects' logical reasoning. Many of these examples bear the hallmarks of moral scruples about bearing witness on the basis of hearsay. One may well imagine that these subjects viewed the experimenters as authority figures and perhaps assimilated their questions to those of official inquisitors, and this may explain their scruples. In line with our analysis of the selection task, we may note here that the experimenter intends the subject to understand the task ("assume only these two premises, nothing more"), the interpretation of the conditional as the material implication, and last but not least to keep in mind the literal wording of the premises. As regards the first, it may very well be that this requires understanding of a discourse genre, roughly that of an exam question, which is not available to the unschooled. Imagine, for example, the confusion the subject gets into if he interprets the experimenter's question as a sincere request for information not already known. In chapter 2 we have already remarked that the experimenters make the unwarranted assumption that the conditional is material implication. If it is assumed instead to be represented as a rule allowing exceptions, formalized as p ∧ ¬e → q, then the subject must decide whether Mr. Smith, or Novaya Zemlya, constitutes an exceptional situation, and in the absence of personal information he may not be able to do so. It may also be difficult to memorise the literal wording of the premises instead of the image they convey. Here is another example from Luria [177,p. 108]: E. Cotton can only grow where it is hot and dry. In England it is cold and damp. Can cotton grow there? S. I don't know ...S. I've only been in Kashgar country; I don't know beyond that. E. But on the basis of what I said to you, can cotton grow there? S. If the land is good, cotton will grow there, but if it is damp and poor, it won't grow. If it's like the Kashgar country, it will grow there too. If the soil is loose, it can grow there too, of course. 5.4 The Illiterate Wild 133 Luria interpreted this phenomenon as a refitting of the premises according to convention; it seems better to describe it as the construction of a discourse model of the premises using general knowledge ('cold and damp implies poor soil') and solving the task by describing the model, in line with the famous experiments on sentence memory by Bransford et al. [24]. Our student Marian Counihan has recently (2005) done a similar experiment among the Xhosa tribe in South Africa. Although Luria-type answers were not common, she got some, such as the subject's first response: [Susan, 80 years, illiterate] E. First story is about a girl, Ntombi. If Ntombi wants to see her boyfriend then she goes to East London. And we know that Ntombi does want to see her boyfriend. Then will she go to East London? S. How will I know? I don't know. E. If you just listen to the words, and to the situation they are describing, and [repeats question], will she go then? S. I don't think she will go because her mother is watching her and not letting her go. It turned out that Susan lived together with (indeed raised) her granddaughter, whom she forbade to see her boyfriend; her reasoning can be viewed as activating the exception clause in the default with material from her own experience. The following example from [244,205] by contrast exhibits some classical reasoning in the first exchange, but reasoning with exceptions takes over when classical reasoning becomes counterintuitive: [Nonkululeko, 56 years, illiterate. Presented material is] E.All people who own houses pay house tax. Sabelo does not pay house tax. Does he own a house? S. He doesn't have a house if he's not paying. E. And now suppose that none of the people in Cape Town pay house tax. Do they own houses or not? S. They have houses. E. Why? S. They can have houses because there are places where you don't pay tax, like the squatter camps. E. So they can have houses and not pay? S. They may, they can live at the squatter camps. Scribner argued that results such as those outlined above do not indicate defective logical skills, but rather point to a tendency not to apply logical skills to familiar material of which the subject has knowledge beyond that stated in the premises. If that knowledge does not suffice to settle the issue, the subject will refrain from giving an answer. By contrast, subjects would have no trouble reasoning from completely new material where they do not have an opportunity to consult their own knowledge. This hypothesis was corroborated in a study by Tulviste [278], who showed that Nganasan6 children attending primary school 6. A tribe in Northern Eurasia. 134 5 From the Laboratory to the Wild and Back Again failed on logical reasoning tasks involving daily activities, but did well on tasks involving typical school material (his example featured the metal molybdenum, with which the children would have little acquaintance). Leevers and Harris [169] provide a comparable example where 4–year–old European subjects can be induced to reason hypothetically when given a science fiction context. 5.4.1 Excursion: Electroconvulsive Therapy and Syllogistic Reasoning Evidence suggestive of effects of this kind of detachment, or the lack of it, from context, this time from a clinical population, was obtained by an experiment involving electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) performed by Deglin and Kinsbourne [61]. Bipolar disorder and schizophrenic patients were given arguments of the form ∀x(Ax → Bx), Aa/?Ba?7 to solve, after having received ECT to one of the hemispheres only. Sometimes the premises were familiar, sometimes unfamiliar, and sometimes plainly false. Here are some examples: [familiar] All rivers contain fish. The Neva is a river. Does the Neva contain fish? [unfamiliar] All countries have flags. Zambia is a country. Does Zambia have a flag? [false] All countries have flags. Quetzal is a country Does Quetzal have a flag? The pattern of results was consistent. When the right hemisphere is suppressed, subjects calmly accepted the premises and affirmed that the conclusion follows, sometimes showing irritation at being asked such a simple question. When the left hemisphere was suppressed,8 however, the experimenters obtained answers such as There used to be lots of fish in the Neva, but the river is now so polluted it is completely dead! Is there really such a state, Zambia? Where is it? Who lives there? How can I know? I don't even know that country [i.e., Quetzal]! 7. This type of material is customarily called a "syllogism," although it is not a syllogism in the Aristotelian sense. We shall follow custom here. 8. Since subjects could still comprehend natural language, the suppression cannot have been total. 5.4 The Illiterate Wild 135 Note that for these Russian subjects from St. Petersburg, the Neva is part of their autobiographical experience, whereas Zambia and Quetzal are not. So the first example constitutes a rejection of the premise's truth, whereas the second and third represent expressions of ignorance. The authors conclude from this that the left hemisphere is capable of performing formal logical operations independent of truth-value; in contrast, the right hemisphere seems incapable "of the willing suspension of disbelief" and in any case unable to abstract from truth-value. Note the similarity of the answers of the lefthemisphere-suppressed patients to those given by subjects in Luria's and Scribner's experiments. This study is perhaps to be interpreted with some caution since it is far from clear how patients with ECT suppression of their left hemisphere were able to respond verbally. Our interpretation of the data from illiterate reasoners makes us skeptical of the idea that system 2 reasoning arrives with literacy and formal schooling. The range of relations between discourse and world may greatly expand with formal schooling, but we believe that even the least developed societies provide enough scope and demand for interpretive capacities to require system 2 reasoning in some contexts. Indeed, as soon as human system 1 discourse interpretation capacities became capable of interpreting discourses about situations distant in time or space, there would have been a need for system 2 capacities to reason about breakdowns of mutual interpretation. We think it very unlikely that system 2 had to wait for the advent of societies with formal schooling. The division of labour which is, after all, one of the driving forces behind the institution of formal education, vastly expands the need for system 2 supervision of system 1 interpretations, but it does not create that need from scratch. Once the question is approached from this perspective, evidence does emerge of system 2 reasoning in traditional societies. Perhaps some of the best examples can be found in Hutchins's work on legal reasoning in Polynesia [136]. This perspective might also help to resolve the puzzle posed by anthropological observations such as that of Evans-Pritchard [79] of the great sophistication displayed, for example, by Azande cosmology, coupled with the refusal to reason hypothetically or theoretically about other matters. This leaves the ontogenetic question: what part does formal schooling play in the arrival of system 2 reasoning capacities? Answers to the evolutionary and the ontogenetic questions tend to correlate. If one thinks of the advent of system 2 as happening in historical time with the arrival of the social institutions of debate, then it is natural to think of system 2 as dependent in ontogeny on formal education. The correlation also tends to be true of how the content of educational practices is viewed. If the very capacities required for reasoning in something approaching classical logic are acquired in formal education, the mental processes acquired tend to be thought of as implementations of patterns of reasoning explicitly taught – 136 5 From the Laboratory to the Wild and Back Again implementation of a novel formalism of "Ps and Qs," or mnemonics for valid syllogisms, say. If system 2 is thought of as pre-dating formal education, then it is more natural to think of effective education as operating at a more semantic and pragmatic level where the skill of detecting misalignments of communication is central. Certainly the traditional teaching of logic at some times in history focused on teaching students the skill of detecting equivocations in arguments – cases where the same word is used in different interpretations. There are several well-known empirical studies of the teaching of (classical) formal logic which show little transfer to general reasoning ability [38, 170]. However, Stenning [258] reviews these studies as seeking transfer at inappropriate levels, and presents empirical evidence from real classroom logic learning that logic teaching can transfer to improvements of general reasoning if the teaching objective is transfer at plausible levels. It isn't new inference rules (modus ponens, modus tollens, etc.) that transfer (perhaps because these rules aren't new, being shared with defeasible logics), but the much more general semantic skills of insulating the "admissible evidence" (current assumptions) from "general knowledge" and exploring all interpretations rather than just the most plausible ones, along with a much more explicit grasp of (and terminology for) discussing the contrasts between credulous and skeptical stances. Not to speak of the need to unlearn the influences of the information packaging of natural languages designed to focus the credulous interpreter's understanding on the intended model. All this suggests that the reasoning skills involved in system 2 must be viewed (and hence tested!) as strategies for the repair of rapid defeasible conclusions, not as the knowledge of particular argument schemata. In chapter 1, we noted that Piaget's theory of formal operational thought based on classical logical competences was one of Wason's targets in what he thought was his demonstration that many intelligent undergraduates did not reach the formal operational stage. It should now be evident that the situation is somewhat deeper than Wason originally estimated. His undergraduate subjects, rather analogously to the illiterate subjects just discussed, do not immediately interpret his materials classically, and both sets of subjects have good reason on their side. Of course, Piaget perhaps underestimated how much was involved in flexibly imposing a classical logical interpretation on materials across domains in general as cued by appropriate content, and perhaps underestimated how much young children could be induced to apply system 2 reasoning with suitable contextual support. However, Piaget seems nearer to the mark than Wason. In particular, his hypothesis that it is at adolescence that flexible controlled grasp of system 2 reasoning capacities becomes available for teaching fits suggestively with our proposal that system 2 processes come to the fore when attempting to communicate across substantial misalignments of interpretation. 5.4 The Illiterate Wild 137 In summary, system 2 is related to system 1 through the need for repair to interpretations that arises because of the flexibility with which human system 1 interpretive machinery operates. This capacity for reflective reasoning for repair is central to what turned apes into human beings. It is much magnified by the development of the division of labour that came much later, in more complex societies. These societies support the learning of flexible control over system 2 processes in formal education, and they do so by teaching new skills at the level of the semantics of discourse interpretation rather than by implanting new proof-theoretical machinery. This account of where the psychology of reasoning fits into the study of cognition provides a quite different account of where different species of reasoning are important in the wild, and a different view of the evolutionary processes to which we now turn.
The Origin of Human ReasoningCapacities The last chapter set out to shift the focus of the psychology of reasoning from a single derivational apparatus working on an assumed classical logic interpretation of natural language, toward a multiplicity of defeasible logical interpretations necessary for planning action in the world. It argued that this change of focus changed the perceived relations to all the surrounding fields of the study of cognition. It also changed the view of where skeptical reasoning comes to the fore in the wild – in the establishment of mutual interpretation across misalignments in communication. Here classical logic may have a role, but that role can only be understood as it is embedded in the business of credulous interpretation. In section 5.1.3 we briefly introduced evolutionary psychology's view of logical reasoning: there is no role for (formal, domain–independent) logic in cognition; whenever we appear to reason logically, this is because we have evolved strategies ("Darwinian algorithms") to solve a problem in a particular domain. A particularly important domain is that of "social contracts," infringement of which has to be monitored by an innate "cheater detection module." Evolutionary psychology's claim is that instances of successful reasoning are all due to the action of such modules. Thus, the difference between bad performance on the abstract selection task and good performance on the drinking age rule is hypothesized to be due to the fact that the latter is a social contract which triggers the involvement of the cheater detection module. Evolutionary psychology is quite popular, and there are few critical discussions of its founding psychological evidence (as opposed to its biological reasoning) in the literature. This chapter examines that evidence in some detail, starting from the analysis of the selection task given in chapters 3 and 4. The chapter also looks carefully at evolutionary psychology's view of the theory of evolution, a view that will be found wanting. We outline our own view of the evolution of human cognition, and draw out its implications for the study of reasoning. Part II of the book then studies these implications in much greater detail, both in terms of experiments and of formal models. But the arguments of the evolutionary psychologists about the selection task 140 6 The Origin of Human Reasoning Capacities are not the only applications of biology to cognition which strike us as unbiological. When cognitive scientists discuss evolution they often do so in terms of processes of adaptation through the addition of innate modules. This picture is profoundly at odds with modern views of evolutionary processes. What has come to be known as the "evo devo" movement in biology sees evolution in terms of the tweaking of old modules by changes to the controlling genetic "switches" that alter the timing and spatial expression of cascades of genes, and thus change developmental processes (see [31] for a highly readable introduction). This relation between development and evolution is central to understanding human cognitive evolution but hardly seems to have impinged on cognitive science's big picture. We start our evolutionary excursion with some prehistory, before sketching a more biological approach and returning to reassess evolutionary psychology. 6.1 Crude Chronology Many of the problems of explaining human evolution stem from the briefness of the particular evolutionary episode which split us off from the apes. Nonetheless, the tale of human evolution goes back a long way, and long-standing trends in primate evolution are a key to the particularities of the final steps of the human case. Mammals are distinguished by their heavier investment in a smaller number of young, and the consequent expense of offspring has far-reaching effects on mammals' social organization, and even, as we shall see, on their molecular genetics. The following chronology of primate social evolution (adapted and condensed from Foley [83]) sets the story in its large–scale context: • 35M years – primate sociality; • 25M years – social space and kinship as bases of matrilocal1 social organization; • 15M years – male kin bonding in catarrhines (old-world monkeys); • 5M years – out of the trees, bipedal locomotion, patchy resources, and the origin of group breeding; • 2M years – expensive offspring, eating of meat, larger brains; • 300K years – use of fire, increase in social group size, phatic functions of language2, helpless kids, delayed maturity; 1. "Matrilocal" here means that spatially cohesive groups contain genetically related females and genetically unrelated males. The phenomenon is almost certainly not continuous with the anthropological concept of social organization of some modern humans. 2. The term phatic is due to the anthropologist Malinowski and designates speech, utterances, etc., that serve to establish or maintain social relationships rather than impart information or communicate ideas. 6.1 Crude Chronology 141 • 100K year – geodispersal and population increase but little behavioral change, loss of skeletal and dental robustness, then the emergence of art, intensified inter-group conflict, and territoriality; • 30K year – "end" of genetically based evolution. Somewhere between old world monkeys and apes, primates switched from matrilocal to patrilocal social organization, probably because of changes in the evenness of distribution of resources. This had fundamental implications for issues of social coordination. The following quotation is a nice encapsulation of this long–term trend in the evolution of primate social organization: The paradox of hominid evolution is that the context in which very expensive offspring have evolved is a social environment where females do not live in female kin-bonded groups and therefore one where their options for recruiting female kin-bonded allo-mothers and helpers is limited. The major question that arises is how have females been able to cope? (Foley [83,p. 111]) Many researchers agree that many human cognitive innovations are adaptations to pressures of the increasing social complexity that results from increasing group size [133]. Big brains support big social groups. The nutritional consequences of big brains may demand meat, which simultaneously allows small guts (the other energy–hungry tissue), and big social groups enable various cooperative activities such as big–game hunting, warfare, division of labour, but big social groups also demand more social coordination and communication. There are various positive feedback loops. These are the kinds of backdrops to the commonly held theory that language is the central human innovation, and that all else follows from that. This is also a form of adaptationism, now with regard to a language module. Closer inspection suggests that different views of language yield very different ideas about what is in this module. To put some flesh on this alternative adaptation-as-module approach we take Hauser, Chomsky and Fitch [119] who propose a framework for studying the evolution of the 'broad language faculty' which distinguishes three subfaculties and three issues for research. The three capacities are: the peripherals (acoustic processors, motor control specializations, etc.), the "conceptual-intentional system" (what one might think of as mentalizing capacities and for which "theory of mind" is a useful shorthand), and the "narrow language faculty." This last is, negatively characterized, the broad language faculty minus the other two. Its positive characterization is as "recursion." The three issues for research for each capacity can be paraphrased as: whether the capacity is shared with ancestors or whether it is unique to modern humans (continuity in function across species); gradual vs. saltational in arrival (continuity in time); and whether it is an adaptation or an exaptation (continuity of selection pressure). Several aspects of this doubly tripartite scheme are striking. The "conceptual intentional" capacities are already imported within the broad language faculty. 142 6 The Origin of Human Reasoning Capacities If this is intended to reflect the fact that these are necessary capacities underpinning language, then that is a useful marker that meaning is important. But talk of them as a (sub)faculty rather strongly suggests that conceptual-intentional capacties are novel and modular – reasons for skepticism on both counts will come shortly. But the real purpose of the scheme is to place syntax at the heart of human evolutionary innovation (which is of course where it may belong, though again, more skepticism presently). A generic problem with such explanations is that since they almost always pick changes to the adult phenotype as their focal innovation, they explain, if anything, cognitive adaptations to the adult. These adaptations would then have to travel backward down the developmental sequence to explain the modern human infant. We can be confident that mammoth hunting just isn't something human infants ever did. Warfare similarly. This is particularly true of explanations by sexual selection – language as the peacock's tail [119]. Darwin already marshaled formidable evidence that sexually selected characters appear at sexual maturity. And if they later migrated all the way down the developmental sequence to where we find them in today's infants, there wasn't a lot of time for that to happen. Babies don't seem to wait for adolescence to get stuck into language. One importance of Foley's paradox is that it turns attention to a different part of the life cycle and a different set of selective pressures – the old mammalian problem of investment in the next generation, only now greatly magnified by circumstances. Pressure on female investment in child rearing as a focus of human innovation has the great advantage that it may also get the peacock's tail of language attached to the right sex. As well as emphasizing how individual cognitive changes brought about changed circumstances of mother-infant communication, the paradox also focuses attention on changes in social organization required to cope with group breeding. We will return to this presently when we sketch our specific proposals, but first we revisit the basics of evolutionary theory in order to stand on firmer ground when discussing modularity and the twin problems of identifying bases of continuity and innovation. 6.2 Evolutionary Thinking: From Biology to Evolutionary Psychology We assume the reader is familiar with the broad outlines of the theory of evolution. To state precisely what the theory of evolution is immediately involves us in a number of conceptual puzzles. For instance: what is selected? Genes, cells, traits,3 organisms (phenotypes), groups of organisms? Evolutionary psychologists believe that human cognition is in toto a product of adaptation. This claim 3. A "trait" is an aspect of an organism's phenotype, particularly an aspect that can have effects in the environment, and interesting traits especially have effects which have an influence on reproductive success. 6.2 Evolutionary Thinking: From Biology to Evolutionary Psychology 143 may seem counterintuitive at first sight, since humans have impressive learning abilities. Certainly evolutionary psychologists would claim that learning abilities are also the result of adaptation and that they are composed of specialized learning abilities rather than generalized ones. The evolutionary psychologists' view is that human cognition consists of a number of adaptations, which have been useful for survival at one stage or another of the environment of evolutionary adaptation (EEA), the Pleistocene, when (proto-)humans lived in small bands as hunter-gatherers. Since this time period is much longer than the agricultural period (which started some twelve thousand years ago), such traits as humans have must have evolved either as part of their common ancestry with primates or in the EEA. This "adaptationist" view of evolution means that two concepts are critical in assessing their claims – modularity and innateness. 6.2.1 Analogy and Disanalogy with Language In this respect the hotly debated issue of the origin of language is of particular interest. As is well–known, Chomsky advanced the poverty of the stimulus argument in support of his view that the language capacity must somehow be innate. In outline, the argument is this: children reach grammatical competence in language very quickly, at about age 8. This competence includes complicated constructions of which they will have heard few examples; more importantly, the recursive nature of language cannot be inferred only from the linguistic data presented to the child. But if that is so, some construction principles (universal grammar) must be innate; the role of the linguistic input is to set some parameters in universal grammar (hence principles and parameters). Chomsky wishes to remain agnostic about the possible evolutionary origins of universal grammar. Some followers (Pinker, more recently Jackendoff) have been less inhibited and have argued that humans must have evolved a specific "language module," a genetically determined piece of wetware specifically dedicated to the processing of language. They argue that Chomsky should have followed his own argument to its logical conclusion, by identifying "innate" with "genetically determined." This leads us into two interesting issues: (1) is the identification of "innate" with "genetically determined" really unproblematic? and (2) what is this notion of a "module"? 6.2.2 Innateness We should make it clear that we have no doubt that humans are the product of evolution; that many if not most cognitive structures are at least partially genetically determined; and that the implementations of human cognitive abilities are organized in at least a somewhat modular fashion. Our substantive argument here is that the evidence presented for particular modularizations is defective evidence in a large number of ways; that adaptations have to be distinguished 144 6 The Origin of Human Reasoning Capacities from exaptations, with substantial implications for methodology; and that innateness is not a concept current in modern biology, for good reason. Talk of the innateness of traits cannot be related to talk of genetic determination of traits without relativizing to an environment. Modern geneticists understand that the heritability of phenotypic traits can be radically different in different environments. The classical example is Waddington's demonstration [293] that patterns of wing veining in Drosophila are 0% genetically determined in one environment and 100% determined in another (the relevant environmental dimension here is humidity). It is also often forgotten that, as far as the calculation of heritability of a trait by a target gene or genes goes, all the other genes are part of the environment. As heritability is used in biological research, it is usefulness is understood as highly contextually determined. Innateness is a fixed property of a trait in an organism. This picture of apportioning the determination of the cognitive phenotype between a percentage caused by genetic factors and a percentage caused by other factors, across all environments, is defective – and has been assigned to the dustbin of history by modern biology. Of course, innate might not be taken to mean "under total genetic control," or even "under total genetic control in environment X." Innate might just be intended to mean "present in 100% of the population," or "developing without rote learning," or "developing as a result of common experiences shared by the whole population." But if we are going to talk evolution, then none of these senses of "innate" are going to be useful in relating phenotypic traits to genetic control in whatever environments. Innateness is a prescientific concept preserved in the discourse of psychology by unacknowledged ideological needs. Chomsky's argument from the poverty of the stimulus about language acquisition was historically extremely important. Faced with extreme theories holding that all behavior consists in rote-learned conditioned reflexes, Chomsky's argument cleared space for cognitive scientists to consider a wide range of other causes of behavior. But Chomsky's use of "innate" is adequately served by the negative characterization – "not learned by conditioning." Chomsky was careful not to claim that "innate" meant "genetically determined" in all environments. Chomsky's argument now stands in need of reappraisal in the resulting more catholic environment. For example, the demonstration of abstract structure in language raises the question to what degree development of language relies on structure in the environment, or structure in other knowledge and behaviors. Remember that none of this is an argument against the involvement of genes in the causal determination of behavior. We firmly believe that genes are as involved in the determination of behavior as they are in the determination of morphological traits. Behavioral traits pose much more severe problems of specification than morphological ones, as we shall see when we consider "language" as a human phenotypic trait (see section 6.3.4 for discussion of the 6.2 Evolutionary Thinking: From Biology to Evolutionary Psychology 145 general problem of identifying insightful phenotypic descriptions). But the difficulty of finding the right specification does not militate against genetic influences. Few interesting traits are known to be either 0% or 100% controlled by any combination of genes in every environment (remember that for calculations of heritability, other nontarget genes are environment). The situation has been further complicated in the last 10 years by the proliferation of epigenetic4 factors now understood to control the expression of genes. Among these genetic "imprinting" is of particular relevance, to which we return in chapter 9. The job of the biologist or the evolutionary cognitive scientist ought to be to account for how genes and environment interact to bring about phenotypic traits and their development in evolution. 6.2.3 Adaptationism and its Discontents Evolutionary psychologists tend to hold that all traits of interest, including cognitive traits, are adaptations. In fact, they claim that only an evolutionary perspective can give cognitive science theories of any explanatory power, where "evolution" is taken to be tantamount to "adaptation to the pressures of natural selection." Accordingly, they advocate that cognitive science's methodology should proceed as follows: 1. analyse the information processing task (in the sense of Marr) that corresponds to a particular cognitive trait; 2. find the highly specialized mechanism that is able to execute this task; 3. explain how this mechanism came about as an adaptation. A quotation from [50,p. 72-83] gives the flavor: An organism's phenotypic structure can be thought of as a collection of "design features"– micro-machines such as the functional components of the eye and the liver. The brain can process information because it contains complex neural circuits that are functionally organized. The only component of the evolutionary process that can build complex structures that are functionally organized is natural selection. And the only kind of problems that natural selection can build complexly organized structures for are adaptive problems, where "adaptive" has a very precise, narrow technical meaning. Natural selection is a feedback process that "chooses" among alternative designs on the basis of how well they function. By selecting designs on the basis of how well they solve adaptive problems, this process engineers a tight fit between the function of a device and its structure. [Cognitive] scientists need to realize that while not everything in the designs of organisms is the product of selection, all complex functional organization is. 4. Epigenetic factors are environmental influences on the expression of genes. As an example, imprinting is a phenomenon whereby the alleles of genes of one parent are suppressed (often by the process of methylation). 146 6 The Origin of Human Reasoning Capacities This "radical adaptationism" of evolutionary psychologists is not typical of biologists, and was indeed rejected by Darwin himself. Unlike most biologists, evolutionary psychologists do not acknowledge the possiblility of structural features of cognition arising by evolutionary accident, only later to become functional (what is known as genetic drift), or under selection pressure for some other original but now obscure purpose (exaptation). Of course exaptations arose as adaptations at some point, but this is not what these evolutionary psychologists need for their arguments. They need the selection pressures to be identifiable from current function, and this is unfortunately not possible. Their picture of the human mind is that of a collection of adaptations (a collection of "design features") more or less hanging together, tant bien, tant mal; in a very evocative metaphor: "the mind is a Swiss army knife." These assumptions are critical for the applicability of their methodology. If one cannot simply reason from the current usefulness of some trait to its evolutionary origin from selection pressure for that usefulness, then evolutionary research of course becomes much harder. Listening to Darwin This is a view of evolution which was actively opposed by Darwin in his own day. Darwin was acutely aware that evolutionary analysis was a difficult business and that "just so" stories from modern usefulness were easy to imagine and hard to substantiate. In fact, many of Cosmides' arguments (particularly the ones against the idea that we need to be able to detect altruism) are reminiscent of Spencer who was a contemporary of Darwin. Spencer set about justifying recent social changes brought about by the industrial revolution in terms of competition in "nature red in tooth and claw." Darwin already rejected these arguments. It is a salutary reminder that current political contexts are rarely completely irrelevant to developments in the social sciences, and biology too. Darwin's argument against radical adaptationism was that the impact on reproductive success of the same phenotypic trait could change radically over the course of evolution. The lamprey's gill arch becomes the shark's jaw bone. Chewing is a useful thing for sharks to do, but the lamprey is a more sucky sort of critter. Darwin was well aware that the difficulty of evolutionary analysis was to provide a continuous account of selection pressure through the history of change, even though the selection pressure on the phenotypic trait changes radically. The problem is particularly acute when a modern system is composed of components which are each currently useless themselves without all the others. Each component must be found continual phylogenetic usefulness to preserve it throughout the period before the system was "assembled" and acquired its different modern usefulness. 6.2 Evolutionary Thinking: From Biology to Evolutionary Psychology 147 Human language and reasoning are plausibly perfect cases. For spoken natural languages and their attendant reasoning capacities we need elaborate perceptual and motor abilities (e.g., vocal tract configurations) as well as recursive syntactic apparatus, semantic apparatus for interpreting and reinterpreting representations, pragmatic apparatus for understanding intentions, working memory, episodic long–term memory, and lots else. Some of these components may have obvious usefulness in other cognitive functions, but others do not. Adaptation and Exaptation This contrast in traits' relations to selective pressures is captured by the contrast between adaptation and exaptation. An adaptation is a trait that has been selected under pressure from natural selection because of its differential effects on reproductive success – the melanic moth's advantage on the blackened tree.5 An exaptation is a trait evolved under one selection pressure which acquires a new (beneficial) effect, without having been selected for that particular effect. Here a prime example is birds' feathers: originally selected for their functions as temperature regulators, they were later exapted for flight. (This is primary exaptation. A process of secondary adaptation has led to further improvements in the flight-enabling properties of feathers.) A slightly different example is furnished by snails that use a space in their shell to brood eggs. The existence of that space is a necessary consequence of the spiral design of shells – but only the latter can be said to have evolved by selection. Apparently the snails that use the space for brooding eggs evolved after the ones who don't: in this sense the open space is exapted to brooding eggs. (Following Gould and Lewontin [105], such exaptations are often called spandrels, an architectural term referring to the open surfaces on the ceiling of a Gothic church, necessarily created by its supporting arches. These surfaces are often decorated with mosaics; but the point is, as argued by Gould and Lewontin, that they were not designed for that purpose. Indeed, the crucial point is that they do not even figure in the description of the function that they were originally selected by – holding up the roof.) Darwin was adamant that exaptation was important in evolution. We agree with him. We think it is especially likely that in assembling systems as complex and multifaceted as human communicative and reasoning capactities, various component abilities were exaptations of adaptations originally driven by very different selection pressures. In the case of behavioral traits, particularly those related to modern human cognition, it is notoriously hard to know what the shifting selection pressures might have been, and under what phenotypic description those traits emerge. Darwin insisted that his arguments applied to behavior as well as morphology, but he was also aware of the difficulties of analysis posed, the prime one being the extremely wide range of options for de5. We sketch this classical example of adaptation by natural selection on page 158. 148 6 The Origin of Human Reasoning Capacities scribing behavioral phenotypes and their functions in the animal's ecology. At the very least, painstaking description of the modern functioning of phenotypic traits is an entry condition for evolutionary analysis. 6.2.4 Massive Modularity The evolutionary psychologists' point of view has been aptly described as massive modularity: the mind is completely composed of domain-specific modules ("Darwinian algorithms"). [Content-specific mechanisms] will be far more efficient than general purpose mechanisms . . . [content-independent systems] could not evolve, could not manage their own reproduction, and would be grossly inefficient and easily out-competed if they did [49,p. 112]. One can of course agree that the major problem in cognitive evolution is to explain how humans have developed staggeringly more general cognitive abilities than their ancestors. In this context, massive modularity is to be contrasted with Fodorian modularity, which is more of a hybrid architecture. On the one hand, in Fodor's view, there are low-level modules for input and output computations, primarily perception and motor control ("transducers" as Fodor calls them), but these are connected to a central processing unit (CPU), which is able to integrate information from the various low-level modules. As such, the CPU must function in a modality-independent manner, perhaps by symbol processing. That is, one picture of the functioning of the CPU is that the input is first translated into symbols, then processed, then translated back into motor commands. Evolutionary psychologists claim that Fodorian modularity would be less adaptive (would less lead to reproductive success) than massive modularity; they view the processing that would have to go on in the CPU as so much useless overhead. This inference might be best viewed as an invalid conclusion from the early AI work of Simon and Newell showing that human reasoning cannot be based on "a general logic theorist" because of the intractability of such an architecture. What these authors showed is that guiding the search for theorems in classical logic required the representation of extensive knowledge of the domain. But that is not what evolutionary psychology needs to dissmiss general reasoning. The issue is, of course, about what domain independence means here. Modern logic, computer science, and AI have done more than any other disciplines to show how weak universal reasoning mechanisms are without domain knowledge. So we have no trouble with the notion that reasoning is domain dependent in a certain well-defined sense – domain specific knowledge needs to be encoded so that it can be called on by the procedures which reason about problems in specific domains. But once such specific knowledge is encoded in a way that is compatible with general knowledge, then the procedures that reason over the combination may be uniform across domains. We 6.2 Evolutionary Thinking: From Biology to Evolutionary Psychology 149 say "may" because there is still the issue whether the general logics that reason over the domains are the same. We have argued not. So we have argued for logical domain specificity and against content domain specificity. This is not a simple issue of efficiency, but a complex one of qualitative differences. Modules and Neurogenesis The ill-defined nature of modules in evolutionary psychology has similar problems when it meets genetics, as innateness has.6 Evolution does not generally proceed by adding whole new modules, but by tweaking old ones. So identifying cognitive innovations and identifying them with modules in an adaptationist program is a poor way to proceed. Modern genetics tells us that most macrotraits arise by tweaks on control elements which change the operation of a large number of genes already contributing to a module. The classic example from genetics is again due to Waddington [293] who showed that an artificially induced genetic change in Drosophila could put an entire new pair of legs onto the head segment of the fly. Many hundreds or thousands of genes may contribute to the production of legs, but a single genetic element which controls the turning on and off of the expression of this complex of genes can produce an extra pair of legs by allowing leg production to go on for one more segment. The control element is not sensibly thought of a gene for legs-on-the-head – though in a sense it is. It is a controller of other genes which work together to produce legs wherever. X-ray–induced mutations putting extra legs on the heads of fruit flies may seem rather distant from human cognitive evolution, so we will spend a little time on an example nearer to home – the ontogeny and phylogeny of human brain development – as an example where rather few genes can have profound macroscopic effects. Just as the number of genes contributing to Drosophila legs is large, the estimations of the number of genes which affect brain development in mammals is of the order of tens of thousands [157]. This is just what one would expect if it is tweaks to old modules that effect macrochanges. A major source of evidence about the ontogeny of human brain growth comes from the study of a particular sub-type of abnormality – autosomal recessive primary microcephaly (MCPH) [306]. The genetics of this human condition reveals examples of simple control processes having profound consequences on brain size. MCPH results in an adult brain size roughly one third of normal. The surprise is that although this does lead to mild mental retardation, the radically reduced brain seems to function more or less normally. The ontogenetic mechanism of this disorder is beginning to be well understood. By studying families prone to this condition it has been possible to identify at least some 6. This section requires some outline knowledge of genetics; readers not so equipped could continue with section 6.3. 150 6 The Origin of Human Reasoning Capacities of the genes involved. Two important genes are ASPM (abnormal spindle-like microcephaly) and MCPH1 (microcephalin) [78, 77]. The mechanism of the former gene's effect is well analysed, although most of the experimental analysis is of the homologous gene in the mouse. ASPM appears to control mitotic spindle orientation in the fetal cells which give rise to the cortex. In one spindle orientation, the progenitor cells divide to give two more progenitors: in the other orientation, mitosis yields one progenitor and one neuron. Obviously, assuming that all progenitors eventually become neurons, the first process is exponential, doubling cell number with each division: the second is linear. ASPM controls the exponential process. The mechanism of expression of the second gene (microcephalin) is not yet analysed, but it is a candidate for control of the second linear process through effects on cellular metabolic rate and centrosome structure. Before these genes had been identified, Rakic [224] had already proposed a model of cortical ontogeny. The huge growth of cortex in mammals, especially in primates, and especially in Homo, is overwhelmingly due to an increase in area of the much folded cortex, rather than in its thickness. Rakic proposed that the area of cortex is controlled by a factor with exponential effects and that another factor controls thickness with linear effect. Just a few days' difference in onset and offset of the exponential process will radically alter eventual cortical volume. In the macaque monkey, with a 165-day gestation, the cells divide in the exponential manner up to embryonic day E40. After E40, there is a gradual switchover to the asymmetric mode of division which gives linear growth. In the monkey, the former phase is 20 days longer than in the mouse, though it has to be taken into account that mouse cells divide about twice as fast as monkey cells. It is possible to calculate that, provided human cell cycle timings are similar to macaque, this phase would only have to be prolonged a few days from the monkey timings to yield the increase in human brain size. In contrast, an increase of 20 days to the second linear process would add only approximately ten cells to each column of cells in the cortex's thickness. Presumably, the mutations occurring in the ASPM gene in families with MCPH, alter timings of the exponential process. This constitutes a genetic model of one major influence on the ontogenetic process controlling cortical size in mammals. (We do not suggest this is the only factor, though it does suggest that there could be rather few major factors.) Of itself, it does not show that the evolutionary process was driven by selection of this gene for brain size. However, it is possible to gauge whether genes have been under selective pressure, at least over evolutionary spans such as these. The method studies the ratio of nonsynonymous to synonymous changes in the proteins produced by the expression of genes – the so-called Ka/Ks ratio. A great many DNA changes do not result in any functional effect. The key idea 6.2 Evolutionary Thinking: From Biology to Evolutionary Psychology 151 here is to estimate the proportion of protein changes which do have functional consequences. Dorus et al. [65] studied the Ka/Ks ratio for nervous system related genes (and some control groups of genes) in a range of mammals. They show accelerated evolution of nervous system genes relative to control gene groups, especially in the line leading to Homo sapiens. This study identifies a set of genes whose K ratios are particularly outlying. ASPM and microcephalin both appear in this set. ASPM shows evidence of particularly intense selection pressure in the late stages of our ancestry. In contrast, another study focusing just on the lineage from chimpanzee to human showed that neural genes have lower Ka/Ks ratios than genes expressed outside of the brain between these two species [39, 202]. Perhaps a few neural genes may be targets for positive selection in this period, but neural genes as a whole are here subject to intense negative selection due to the severe disadvantages conferred by mutations that disrupt brain function. We return to this topic below on page 295. Before leaving issues of neurogenesis, it is worth noting our changing understanding of how long this process continues. From the early twentieth–century studies of Ramón y Cajal, until within the last few decades, it was widely believed that neurogenesis only occurred in embryonic stages of development. Only in the more recent years has it been established that neurogenesis continues in narrowly delineated areas of the adult mammalian brain, chiefly the hippocampus, olfactory bulb, and dentate gyrus [110]. What is more, this process in the hippocampus has been shown to be instrumental in establishing certain kinds of memory [247]. It is even known that there are certain divergences between the patterns and mechanisms of adult neurogenesis in humans as compared to chimpanzees [240]. Some of the cells destined to become new neurons start in the subventricular zone (SVZ) and migrate into their eventual sites by a mechanism called "astrocyte chains." Possibly because the enlargement of the human cortex has greatly increased the distances neuron progenitor cells have to migrate from their starting places in the SVZ, neuronal migration from ventricular walls to eventual positions is not by the ancestral astrocyte-chain mechanism. There have been controversial reports of adult neurogenesis in neocortex over several years, and more recently studies claiming to show neurons generated in situ in adult human neocortex [60]. Interestingly the contested cells are of a specific type of GABA-ergic inhibitory interneuron. Although these results are controversial, the rate of change of knowledge is enough to make it likely that growth of new structures influenced by experience in the adult brain will be established. As we shall see in chapters 8, this may be of some significance when we come to consider how working memory is to be modelled at a neural level, and even more specifically in abnormalities such as autism and schizophrenia. So here is a close and rather more cognitively relevant analogy with the extra 152 6 The Origin of Human Reasoning Capacities legs on the heads of Drosophila. A large number of genes are involved in producing legs and in producing brains, but a small number of control elements may have profound effects on where legs wind up in fruit flies, and how big mammals' brains grow. Brain size is not everything in human evolution, but the degree of encephalization of Homo sapiens is a distinctive feature, and there is evidence that it has played some role in the selection pressures that produced us. It, of course, remains to understand the impact of these brain changes on human functioning, possibly partly through our high–level example of the effects of altriciality (see Chapter 6, section 5), but our point here is that we can only do that as the transformation of old modules by small tweaks. To the extent that cheater detection is a modular function of human cognition, we can only expect to understand it as it grows out of the ancestral functions and structures from which it developed. Cummins [54] provides some preliminary proposals. Of course, much of the attraction of identifying a cognitive innovation with a new module is that it would make cognitive science so easy. But the wishful thinking backfires. If we think new cognitive functions are new modules, once we hear of the estimate of ten thousand genes affecting brain development, we are likely to throw up our hands about genetics helping to understand cognition. If, on the other hand, we realise that the number of relevant control elements for some critical aspects of brain development may be quite small, then whole new sources of evidence are available and may be useful, and these genetic sources of evidence speak to issues, such as selection pressures, that other sources do not. We return to brain growth when introducing the importance of altriciality in human evolution below, and again when we turn to look at autism in chapter 9. 6.3 What Evolutionary Psychology Has to Say about Reasoning After this introduction to the biological background, we are now in a position to assess evolutionary psychology's views on logical reasoning. As we have seen in chapter 3 there have been recurrent attempts to oppose form and content as controllers of reasoning, usually to the detriment of the former. The most forceful assault on form is due to the evolutionary psychologist Leda Cosmides, who claims that (1) successful reasoning (according to the canons of classical logic) occurs only in the case of narrowly circumscribed contents, and (2) these contents have been selected by evolution, i.e., they correspond to situations in our environment to which we are especially attuned because they are crucial for survival. "Reasoning" is simply the wrong abstraction: there exists "reasoning" in specific domains, designed to solve a particular adaptive problem, but there is no general overarching innate capacity for reasoning. But by its very definition, logic seems to be content independent: an argument is valid if whatever is substituted for the nonlogical terms, true premises lead to a true conclusion. 6.3 What Evolutionary Psychology Has to Say about Reasoning 153 Hence logic must be an acquired trick: humans have no special capacity for formal reasoning. Indeed, the difficulty of mastering logic points to its lack of biological roots: the existence of an adaptive module is usually reflected in the ease with which humans learn to use it effectively and quickly. Cosmides' starting point was reasoning in Wason's selection task as analysed in chapter 3. Originally, Cosmides claimed that all successful reasoning in the selection task involved social contracts, in which parties agree to exchange benefits. Recently, the catalogue has been extended to include reasoning about precautions, warnings, etc.[81], supposedly each underpinned by its own neural apparatus, but our discussion will concentrate on the original idea; the same arguments apply to the later claims.7 6.3.1 Reassessing Cheater Detection The research on the Wason task and other reasoning tasks is seen as showing that people reason correctly (according to the norms of classical logic) with material like drinking age rules. Cosmides' argument outlined above proposes that this must be an adaptation, a specific module, responsible for good performance. Cosmides proposed that logically correct reasoning, when it occurs, has its origins in the policing of social cooperation. In particular, she focuses on the domain of social contracts, in which one party is willing to pay a cost to acquire a certain benefit from a second party. In order to ensure survival it would be imperative to be able to check for parties cheating on the contract, i.e., parties accepting the benefit without paying the associated cost. In the crisp summary given by Gigerenzer and Hug: For hunter-gatherers, social contracts, that is, cooperation between two or more people for mutual benefit, were necessary for survival. But cooperation (reciprocal altruism[8]) cannot evolve in the first place unless one can detect cheaters [(Trivers [277])]. Consequently, a set of reasoning procedures that allow one to detect cheaters efficiently – a cheater-detector algorithm – would have been selected for. Such a "Darwinian algorithm" would draw attention to any person who has accepted the benefit (did he pay the cost?) and to any person who has not paid the cost (did he accept the benefit?). Because these reasoning procedures, which were adapted to the hunter-gatherer mode of life, are still with us, they should affect present day reasoning performance ([96,p. 3]). Cosmides ran a number of experiments contrasting social contracts with arbitrary regulations, and contrasting cheater detection with altruism detection. Figure 6.1 gives her famous experiment on cheater detection in a social contract. Seventy-five per cent of subjects now chose the did get tattoo and Big 7. The purpose of this section is mostly critical. Readers who are more interested in the positive development can continue with section 6.4. 8. Reciprocal altruism is one party behaving altruistically on one occasion on the expectation that this generosity will be reciprocated by the other party at some future time. It is important to note that whether and under what conditions altruism can evolve and to what degree it has to be reciprocal is highly controversial in biology[301]; and even reciprocal altruism requires the ability to detect altruism. 154 6 The Origin of Human Reasoning Capacities You are an anthropologist studying the Kaluame, a Polynesian people who live in small, warring bands on Maku Island in the Pacific. You are interested in how Kaluame "big men"– chieftains– yield power. "Big Kiku" is a Kaluame big man who is known for his ruthlessness. As a sign of loyalty, he makes his own subjects put a tattoo on their face. Members of other Kaluame bands never have facial tattoos. Big Kiku has made so many enemies in other Kaluame bands, that being caught in another village with a facial tattoo is, quite literally, the kiss of death. Four men from different bands stumble into Big Kiku's village, starving and desperate. They have been kicked out of their respective villages for various misdeeds, and have come to Big Kiku because they need food badly. Big Kiku offers each of them the following deal: "If you get a tattoo on your face, then I'll give you cassava root." Cassava root is a very sustaining food which Big Kiku's people cultivate. The four men are very hungry, so they agree to Big Kiku's deal. Big Kiku says the tattoos must be in place tonight, but that the cassava root will not be available until the following morning. You learn that Big Kiku hates some of these men for betraying him to his enemies. You suspect he will cheat and betray some of them. Thus, this is the perfect opportunity for you to see first hand how Big Kiku wields his power. The cards below have information about the fates of the four men. Each card represents one man. One side of a card tells whether or not the man went through with the facial tattoo that evening and the other side of the card tells whether or not Big Kiku gave that man cassava root the next day. Did Big Kiku get away with cheating any of these four men? Indicate only those card(s) you definitely need to turn over to see if Big Kiku has broken his word to any of these four men. Cards did get tattoo didn't get tattoo BK gave cassava BK gave nothing Figure 6.1 Cosmides' cheater detection task. From [47,p. 211; p.264-5] Kiku gave nothing cards, a score comparable to that for the drinking age rule. Cosmides interprets this result as falsifying an explanation of the alleged content effect based on familiarity with the rule. As opposed to this, Cosmides claims that unfamiliar content may also elicit good performance, as long as a social contract is involved. It will be clear by now that our explanation of the result is different: Cosmides' rule is of a deontic nature, and hence none of the factors that complicated reasoning in the case of descriptive conditionals are operative here, and so one would expect many competence answers here. Familiarity is important in the postal regulation case (see p.46) because without familiarity with the content, there is nothing to trigger the deontic interpretation of an indicatively stated rule. Familiarity is not necessary in Cosmides material because the scenario is described as requiring deontic interpretation. Note that the drinking age rule is not a social contract (nothing is exchanged). Note also that other nonsocial contract deontic examples (such as Wason and Green's inspection rules) were prominent in the literature before Cosmides wrote. 6.3 What Evolutionary Psychology Has to Say about Reasoning 155 6.3.2 Why Cheater Detection Is Claimed to Override Logical Form Cosmides, however, has more arguments up her sleeve, and claims that in some cases of reasoning about social contracts, the predictions of logic and cheater detection theory diverge; the experimental results then show that the former are falsified [47,p. 189]. Consider the following social contract: (1) If you give me your watch, I give you 20 euro. According to Cosmides, this contract is equivalent to the following: (2) If I give you 20 euro, you give me your watch. Indeed, both contracts express that the "I" is willing to pay a cost (20 euros) in order to receive a benefit (the watch) from "you." The only difference appears to lie in the ordering of the transactions, in the sense that usually, but not always, the action described in the consequent follows the action described in the antecedent. Now suppose the cards are laid out on the table as in figure 6.2. Then contracts (1) and (2) would, according to Cosmides, both lead did give watch didn't give watch did give 20 euro didn't give 10 euro Figure 6.2 Cards in watch transaction. to the choice "give watch" and "give 10 euro," since "I" have cheated "you" if "I" accept "your" watch while paying "you" less than the 20 euros that we agreed upon. Observe that if the contract is expressed in the form (1), the cards showing "give watch" and "didn't give 10 euros" would correspond with the antecedent and the negation of the consequent of the conditional. If the contract is expressed in the form (2), these cards correspond instead with the consequent and the negation of the antecedent of the conditional. Cosmides now claims that the prediction of propositional logic is different from that of cheater detection, since a falsifying instance would always be of the form "antecedent plus negation of consequent," whereas as we have seen, instances of cheating can take different forms. Thus, if the contract is presented in the form (2), logic and cheater detection would dictate different answers. Similarly, suppose that the deal proposed by Big Kiku is formulated as a switched social contract (figure 6.2). If I give you cassava root, you must get a tattoo on your face. Cosmides claims that (a) the original and the switched rule embody the same social contract, therefore in both cases the cards "did get tattoo" and "BK gave nothing" would have to be chosen, and (b) logic dictates that in the case of the switched social contract the following cards would have to be chosen: "BK gave cassava" and "didn't get tattoo." The argument for this is that only these 156 6 The Origin of Human Reasoning Capacities cards can yield counterexamples to the conditional as stated. While we agree to (a), we consider (b) to be another example of the surface form fetishism that has so marred the subject. It is precisely because (a) is true that the logical form of either the original or the switched version is not that of a material conditional. These equivocations brought about by reversing materials with temporal interpretations are common in the psychological literature. 6.3.3 Altruism Cosmides' second way of arguing that competence reasoning with "if. . . then" is due only to the activation of cheater detection, and not to the logical form of social contracts, is to present an example of reasoning with social contracts in which humans don't excel. Evolutionary theories, according to Cosmides, would not require the existence of "altruists," that is, individuals who are willing to pay a price without taking the corresponding benefit. These individuals would quickly lose out in the struggle for survival, and hence don't exist. But if altruists don't exist, there has been no need for an "altruist detector" to evolve, and accordingly humans should not exhibit a special ability to reason about altruism with respect to a given social contract. The argument outlined here already raises many questions, but let us take it for granted for the moment. We will show that the experiment designed to verify the prediction leaves much to be desired. In figure 6.3 we give Cosmides' instructions, which are for the most part identical to those for the case of cheater detection, until and including the sentence "You suspect he will cheat and betray some of them." [] However, you have also heard that Big Kiku sometimes, quite unexpectedly, shows great generosity towards others that he is sometimes quite altruistic. Thus, this is the perfect opportunity for you to see first hand how Big Kiku wields his power. The cards below have information about the fates of the four men. Each card represents one man. One side of a card tells whether or not the man went through with the facial tattoo that evening and the other side of the card tells whether or not Big Kiku gave that man cassava root the next day. Did Big Kiku behave altruistically towards any of these four men? Indicate only those card(s) you definitely need to turn over to see if Big Kiku has behaved altruistically to any of these four men. Cards did get tattoo didn't get tattoo BK gave cassava BK gave nothing Figure 6.3 Cosmides' "altruism" task [48,p. 193ff] Cosmides claims that in this experiment the "didn't get tattoo" and "Big Kiku gave cassava" cards would have to be turned, with the following argument. Altruists, according to Cosmides, are people ready to pay a price without taking the corresponding benefit; if Big Kiku is an altruist, he wants to pay a price (give cassava root), without demanding his rightful benefit (the tattoo). Hence it 6.3 What Evolutionary Psychology Has to Say about Reasoning 157 would have to be checked whether behind the "didn't get tattoo" card is written "Big Kiku gave cassava" and whether behind the "Big Kiku gave cassava" card is written "didn't get tattoo." Very few subjects made this choice, which led Cosmides to the conclusion that there is no sixth sense for altruism. Inspection of Cosmides' experiment and argument reveal that her operationalization of the meaning of altruism is random giving. Cursory access to the dictionary suggests this is not a plausible meaning, and as a consequence it becomes unclear what the competence answer should be. We can see, for instance, that the story about Big Kiku's dealings suggests the opposite of altruism; a truly altruistic person would give that cassava root, no questions asked, without demands. Therefore a conditional promise is not altruistic; only an unconditional promise would count as such. If this is so, then no card needs to be turned – one can see immediately that Big Kiku is not an altruist. One arrives at the same conclusion if one argues as follows: "The cards exhibited make plain that at least one of the men did not get cassava. That's not altruistic: a true altruist feeds the hungry. Hence one doesn't have to turn a card to see that Big Kiku is not an altruist." We now have two different predictions, Cosmides', and the "no card" prediction. A different prediction from these two can be obtained when the subject argues as follows: 'Big Kiku has made a conditional promise. Altruism requires that Big Kiku at the very least keeps his promise, but furthermore displays his generosity. But then all four cards have to be turned.' Hence we have at least three different predictions. It is therefore unclear what follows from the supposed existence of an altruism detector, and hence what counts as a falsification. Once a more plausible meaning is attached it equally quickly becomes evident that being able to detect acts of altruism is rather an important part of social interaction, whether people who invariably randomly give away their possessions are evolutionarily fit or not. 6.3.4 The Moral, Part 1: The Problem of Phenotypic Description Our argument has been that Cosmides' phenotypic description is wrong for modern undergraduates. Solubility by cheater detection is not the property that determines difficulty in the selection task, but rather processing differences flowing from differences in logical form. But even if the description were correct, it would be unlikely to be an evolutionarily insightful description. For that one would minimally have to ask questions like: What can undergraduates (and other people) do with conditional sentences outside Wason's task? A large proportion of conditionals are not social contracts yet they persist in the language. What are they for? What could our ancestors do by way of cheating detection? What ancestral capacities evolved into our capacities for cheating detection? The fundamental problem of applying Darwin's extraordinarily powerful and 158 6 The Origin of Human Reasoning Capacities abstract theory to particular cases is, as he well understood, the problem of phenotypic description and the identification of functionally important traits which are instrumental in evolution. It is worth taking a look at just what is involved in a simple morphological case. Excursion: To Be a Moth in the Industrial Revolution Biston betularia was a pale brown moth which occurred in the English midlands and lived a beautifully camouflaged life on lichen–covered trees. It was preyed on with only medium success by various birds. Along came the industrial revolution which polluted the Black Country air and killed the sensitive lichens, blackening the trees. The birds had a field day until a melanic (black) form of B. betularia rapidly spread throughout the populations in polluted areas. The great majority of B. betularia in the still delichened areas is now melanic. This case has all the ingredients of a microstep of evolution by natural selection, and being one of the classical examples of the process actually caught in operation is thoroughly researched. We have a phenotypic description (pale vs. melanic) and this functional property has been shown by field observation of birds' feeding successes to differentially affect reproductive success of the moth in the natural environment according to the color of the tree bark as determined by the level of pollution's effect on the lichen. Moreover, it is now known that the melanic form is the result of a single mutant gene, which was present at low levels of occurrence in the original population. As with almost all such cases it is still not known what other phenotypic traits, if any, this same mutant gene controls, nor what range of variability of expression the gene exhibits in the full range of possible environments in which the moth can survive. As with the many single gene traits maintained at low levels in the original population by mutation, this melanic trait has a high heritability in the natural environment, and may have a high heritability in a wide range of environments. Several points are worth emphasizing. First and foremost, although every description of an animal may be a phenotypic description, vanishingly few such descriptions are evolutionarily significant. Which ones are significant is determined by the environment on the one hand and by the relation between phenotype and genotype on the other. The environment includes the color of the lichens and whether they grow on the trees (in turn determined by sulfur dioxide levels in the atmosphere and the lichens' phenotypic traits of susceptibility to it), and the perceptual sensitivities of the birds and their role in determining their preying behavior, along with much else. The environment also includes all the moth's other genes inasmuch as they affect either the expression of the phenotypic trait in question or the reproductive success of the phenotypic character the target gene controls. Almost all the well-documented cases of evolution in action are cases of traits controlled by few (often one) genes which largely genetically control the relevant trait in the relevant range of environments. For 6.3 What Evolutionary Psychology Has to Say about Reasoning 159 various reasons that need not detain us here, these are often pathological mutations. Most of the characteristics that psychologists want to study are not of this simple kind. This does not argue against genetic involvement, but merely for the difficulty of evolutionary analysis. Blackness from head to tail is a trait which invites a simple description which is transparently related to reproductive fitness in an environment (blackened trees). It doesn't take a lot of other features of the moth to understand how this fits into its pattern of life (and sex and death). The behavior of sitting on trees and being eaten by visually guided birds is more or less enough. The other differences between life for a white moth and life for a black moth are also presumably not huge (it might be significant to know if there are mating preferences between varieties). Compare the trait of turning the P and not Q cards in the drinking age selection task for modern undergraduates. Without a further account of this trait's relation to reproductive fitness it doesn't look to have much of a purchase for selection pressures. Fallacious reasoning about under-age drinking isn't a capital offense, even in America. We need some generalization. Understanding what it is to obey laws (or perhaps conditional commands) sounds perhaps a bit more plausible. But we palpably do not have an insightful characterization of the phenotypic trait involved, in say, performance of the selection task (any of its variants) which we can relate to more general psychological functioning, let alone the individual variations in performances, let alone reproductive success in our current environment, let alone that of the Pleistocene. (Our proposals in chapter 3 might be a beginning.) Finding more abstract descriptions such as "performing social contract reasoning" is obviously a necessary move if we are to develop insightful phenotypic descriptions of psychological capacities. But we also need evidence to distinguish them from other plausibly more insightful descriptions such as "capacity for generalized natural language communication," or "capacity to distinguish between deontic and descriptive interpretations" and we saw above that the evidence from the selection task is stronger that such descriptions are insightful than anything about social contracts. And however useful such capacities may sound, they need substantial empirical investigation before we should accept them even as candidates for driving evolution. 6.3.5 The Moral, Part 2: What's so Special about Logical Reasoning We have argued that Cosmides has not presented any evidence that human reasoning is implemented piecemeal by specialized modules. The evolutionary psychologists' arguments for modular specialization, and so against logic, were based on the idea that logic is a general system and that general systems are necessarily inefficient. We have shown that these presuppositions need to be severely modified. Logical reasoning is not domain-independent in the sense 160 6 The Origin of Human Reasoning Capacities envisaged by the evolutionary psychologists; its laws can vary across domains, and reasoning is involved in determining what these laws are. So the issue must be rather what general skills subjects have for crafting appropriate reasoning systems for localized problems. These are the skills we saw working overtime in the abnormal environment of the descriptive selection task, trying to understand which of the many possible interpretations of the experimenter's intentions might be the one she had in mind. Although subjects reasoning in Wason's task may be fraught, the overall picture of their reasoning capacities in more familiar situations can hardly be described as specialized or local, especially by the standards of any other creature or system yet known. Human reasoning and communication are surely characterized by amazing, though of course not total, generality relative to any other candidate. The most obvious example is of course human capacities for understanding cooperative communication. The reasoning involved is logically much more complex than the reasoning the experimenters believe they have specified in laboratory "reasoning tasks." For example, computing implicatures and their consequences is more complex than simply computing the logical consequences of material implications. It is very strange to find a group of scientists confronted with this generality who insist that their first task is to explain domain dependence [268]. 6.4 Modularity with a Human Face The human mind is modular because organisms are modular. We have argued, however, that finding human cognitive novelties and identifying them with novel modules is not a good approach to analyzing human evolution. It is not a good idea with regard to cheater detectors, nor is it a good idea with a "narrow language" faculty.9 If the human mind didn't arise through the addition of a large number of new modules, each identified as adding a human innovation, is there some more biologically plausible view of how it might have arisen which stands a chance of explaining the greater generality of human reasoning abilities? A more biological approach is to seek cognitive continuities with our ancestors, and then against that background of continuity to seek ways to specify innovations and discontinuities. With the giraffe, it is easy to see that necks are the continuity, and the innovation is in length. With cognitive functions, the homologies should not be expected to be so obvious. Specifically, there is no reason to believe that the capacities homologous to modern humans' language capacities should necessarily be capacities for communication. Interestingly, a number of disparate lines of research suggest that we may not need to go much 9. Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch [119] (discussed in section 6.1.) attempt to remain agnostic about whether their faculties are modules, but it is not clear to what extent they succeed. 6.4 Modularity with a Human Face 161 beyond our analysis of logical reasoning tasks to find some of the relevantly continuous apparatus. 6.4.1 Planning: Continuities with Our Ancestors Systems of closed–world reasoning are logics of planning. We plan with respect to our expectations of the world, not, as we would have to if we planned using classical logic, with respect to all logical possibilities. Maintaining a model of the current state of the immediate environment relevant to action is a primitive biological function; calculating what is true in all logically possible models of the current sense data is not. These planning logics are just as much what one needs for planning low-level motor actions such as reaching and grasping, as they are for planning chess moves (see Shanahan [246] for examples of such use in robotics).10 Recursion is a very important part of planning. We plan with respect to a main goal, and this then creates subgoals and sub–subgoals with respect to which we plan recursively. Our early primate ancestors became planners of much more complex motor actions when they took to the trees and acquired the kind of forward–facing binocular overlap required for doing the depth perception required for complex manipulations. Recursion, and the general complexity of our motor planning, no doubt got a huge boost from our primate ancestors' arboreal habits, and another much more recent but well before language emerged, from the advent of tool–making. Of course all planning does not have to have complete plans before execution. We often plan "reactively," beginning on a course of action and leaving the details to later, taking opportunistic advantage of happenstance as it arrives along the way. But reactive planning of any structured activity requires the holding of goals and subgoals in memory, even if the staging of decision and execution of what turns out to be the plan becomes smeared across time. It is also well known that apes fail in many planning tasks which we find straightforward. Köhler's chimpanzees fail to fetch the box from next door to climb up to reach the bananas, even though they may use the box if they can see it simultaneously with seeing the bananas out of reach [161]. But the fact that some subgoaling is difficult doesn't mean that apes can't do any subgoaling. What we have in mind is the kind of subgoaling which goes on at a much more implicit level in performing complex motor control – planning a reach for an object through a set of obstacles for example. As neuroscientists have pointed out, it is intriguing that the motor areas for 10. This should remind the reader that there is nothing particularly linguistic about logic, which is one reason why logical analysis may be particularly useful for finding evolutionary continuities between pre– and postlinguistic cognition. Another quite different approach to motor control problems uses continuous models derived form control theory [192] and it would be of great interest to know more about the formal relations between these models and defeasible logical ones. 162 6 The Origin of Human Reasoning Capacities planning speech are right next to the motor areas for planning action. This hypothesis about the cognitive continuities between primate ancestors and man has been elaborated by many researchers [3, 107]. Approaching from the direction of the syntactic and semantic analysis of temporal expressions of natural languages also directs attention to planning as underlying our faculties for language [256, 282]. More generally, a main human brain innovation is the increase in neocortex, and specifically in frontal areas of neocortex. These frontal areas are involved in planning and "executive functions," among other things. Another striking demonstration of unexpected continuities in planning in internal mental functions is provided by work on monkeys' working memory. Cebus appella has been shown to have hierarchical planning capabilities with respect to their working memories remarkably similar to the hierarchical chunking strategies that are evidenced in human list recall.11 When humans are given a suitably categorized list of words, the animal words all come out clustered together, followed by the vegetable words etc. McGonigle et al. [189] trained monkeys on a touchscreen task requiring that they touch each of a set of hierarchically classifiable icons exhaustively. Of course, if the positions of the icons remain constant between touches, very simple spatial sweep strategies suffice. So the icons are spatially shuffled after each touch. The monkeys have to remember, with no external record, just which icons they have already touched, and they still succeed. McGonigle et al. showed that the monkeys were then capable of efficiently exhausting an array of nine items, but more interestingly that they did so by touching all the icons of one shape, followed by all of those of another, just as humans' recall sequence is clustered. Here is recursive hierarchical planning in individual (rather than socially expressed) working memory, in the service of strategic planning of action sequences. Seeing such sophisticated strategic planning with respect to a private memory function in monkeys is rather suggestive of the hypothesis that human innovations may have more to do with introducing the social expression of recursive planning in communication than with any lack of recursion in our ancestors' individual mental capacities12 This is a good example of the problem of phenotypic description – whether "recursion" is novel depends on whether we confine our search to communicative behaviors, or cast the net more broadly. Planning provides a good basis for understanding cognitive continuities at various timescales in our evolution. At least some of the simpler versions of closed–world reasoning, unlike classical logic, carry out the biologically primitive function of maintaining a model of the current environment, and, as will be explored in 11. These monkeys are of the order of 25 million years diverged from their last common ancestor with humans. 12. This approach contrasts with Chomsky's belief that recursion is what is novel about human language. But at a deeper level it is closely aligned with his own preference for the hypothesis that language may have evolved as a private "language of thought" whose function is internal mental "calculation," and only rather recently has become expressed as a medium of social communication. 6.4 Modularity with a Human Face 163 chapter 8, are demonstrably neurally implementable in an extremely efficient manner. 6.4.2 Discontinuities If externalization of planning, and plan recognition abilities, are one candidate area for what is special about human cognition, what does closed–world reasoning have to offer as a framework for understanding the transition to modern humans? In our discussion of causal reasoning, and attribution of beliefs and intentions, we suggested that reasoning about beliefs can be viewed as an extension of causal reasoning in which perception is a kind of causal effect on beliefs. Then there is still more complex reasoning about false beliefs, and about intentions for intentions to be recognized. Without pretending to have a full cognitive account of reasoning about minds in terms of closed–world reasoning, we would claim that this is a good potential basis for understanding the cognitive discontinuities of our reasoning capacities as well as the continuities. It is a good framework because it offers many gradations of reasoning and implementation. Notice that this approach takes the capacities provided by the conceptual-intentional subfaculty postulated by Hauser, Chomsky, and Fitch [119] to be novel (if continuous) with earlier ancestral capacities (recursion, working memory, plan recognition, defeasible reasoning, etc.) but is entirely agnostic about the degree to which they are modular. The relations between system 1 interpretive capacity and system 2 "supervision-of-interpretation" capacity belong among the innovations here. For example, we saw above that closed–world reasoning is a whole family of modes which can model many qualitative changes in what can be achieved. The psychological literature on reasoning about mental states indicates the need for such gradations. It is at present controversial in human development at what stage "theory of mind" abilities emerge. False-belief tasks were proposed as diagnosing a lack of these abilities in normal 3-year-olds and their presence in normal 4-year-olds [172]. Others have proposed that irrelevant linguistic demands of these tasks deceptively depress 3-year-olds' performance. For example, in the false belief task, the child sees the doll see the sweet placed in one box, and then the child but not the doll sees the sweet moved to another. Now if the child is asked, "Where will the doll look for the sweet first?" instead of "Where will the doll look for the sweet?" then children as young as 2 can sometimes solve the problem [248]. Intriguingly, this might be read as evidence of the 3-year-olds in the original task adopting a deontic reading of the question (Where should the doll look?) rather than a descriptive one (Where will the doll look first?).13 Clement and Kauffman [40] offer evidence that children's 13. There are of course other possibilities. Another, which also echoes a problem in the selection task, is that the younger children's problem may be with sequencing contingencies in their responses. 164 6 The Origin of Human Reasoning Capacities capacity to reason about the relation between the actual world and some discrepant 'ideal' state (the capacity underlying false-belief reasoning and many other kinds) develops much earlier in deontic reasoning. It would be hardly suprising if children's grasp of the discrepancy between what someone did and what they were supposed to do loomed early and large in children's reasoning. Onishi and Baillargeon [207] use data from nonverbal expectation of looking in infants of only 15 months to argue for the beginnings of effective reasoning about false beliefs at this age. Although these data can, as the authors point out, alternatively be interpreted in terms of more superficial strategies of looking for things where they were last seen, even this requires the child to preserve distinctions between who last saw the object and where. Nevertheless, all these arguments push reasoning about mental states earlier in ontogeny. Above we raised the possibility that some theory–of–mind failures might be more perspicuously described as failures of reasoning about possibilities (rather than specifically about mental states), so there is a great need for a more analytical classification of these reasoning tasks. An approach based on the variety of logics and their contextual triggers offers a gradation of models of performance which can plausibly explain such developmental sequences whereas posing a theory-of-mind module itself offers little help. This approach through continuities and discontinuities of function still needs to be supplemented by a much more biological grounding. We will end this chapter by illustrating what one highly speculative grounding might look like.14 Our purpose here is to provide an example of how the different levels of evidence – from cognitive function to genetics – might actually come together in a biological account of human speciation15 that does justice to the large–scale innovations of the human mind and the far greater generality of our reasoning. 6.5 Out of the Mouths of Babes and Sucklings One of the great biological distinctions of the species Homo sapiens is the immature state of its offspring at birth, and the lengthened period of their maturation (known in biology as altriciality). We will take this example of a biological innovation and trace out some of its consequences and how it relates evidence at many levels. Here is an indisputable novel biological feature which engages both with our social reorganization into a group-breeding species – intensified by the cost of rearing altricial infants – and with the distinctive cognitive changes that enable language and culture in such a group-breeding species. Remember that the purpose of our example is to provide a contrast with the kinds of stories on offer which identify cognitive innovations as modules. Altriciality is an example that shows how one adaptation, plausibly driven by relatively 14. Developed from the argument of Stenning [257]. 15. Human speciation is the process which gave rise to Homo sapiens from its ape ancestors. 6.5 Out of the Mouths of Babes and Sucklings 165 few selection pressures, could give rise to changes in large numbers of other modular systems. It is an excellent illustrative example of biological grounding because it brings together effects at so many levels. Evolution does not, by and large, proceed by adding new modules, but by retiming the control of developmental processes of old ones. Altriciality is just such a process where few control elements might retime macromodules in development. Evolutionary stories must begin with a characterization of selection pressures. A prime candidate for the driving force behind human altriciality is that constraints on growth rates of neural tissue along with maternal anatomy may mean that altriciality was the only way to develop a big-brained narrow-hipped species of biped. Whatever the pressure for larger brains, larger brains would have forced more altricial birth, given constraints on maternal pelvic dimensions – "Get out while you can!" being the wise human infant's motto. There may even be a positive feedback loop here – more altricial birth means greater dependence and more pressure for social coordination in order to group-rear infants. But social coordination is one candidate for driving the need for bigger brains, and so it goes round. It is easy to see that altriciality has radically affected the data to which human learning mechanisms are exposed, and the sequence of exposure. Maturational mechanisms which previously occurred in utero now happen in the external environment. Humans are, for example, unique in the amount of postnatal neural growth they exhibit. The human changes in the duration and sequencing of brain development, which constitute an important part of altriciality, are prime candidates for being one cause of the kind of widespread modular repurposing which took place in human speciation and subsequent evolution. 6.5.1 Altriciality and Social Behavior We hypothesise that the intensification of humans' focus on reasoning about the intentions of conspecifics, and particularly their communicative intentions, arose as an outgrowth of existing capacities for reasoning in other kinds of planning. One very important contribution of altriciality to human cognitive evolution is its pressures toward cooperation – first between mother and infant, then between adults in small groups, and outward to larger societies. Hare and Tomasello [116] have pointed to the predominantly competitive interactions between chimpanzees as being a major brake on the development of their mind– reading abilities. Even domestic dogs are superior in this regard, and, interestingly, domestic dogs are altricial in respect of a number of critical behavioral characteristics with regard to their wolf ancestors. For example, mammalian young engage in play, which involves suspension of aggression, along with intense cooperation in coordination, and social signaling of group comembership through greeting. Altricial domestic dogs continue these infantile behavioral 166 6 The Origin of Human Reasoning Capacities traits into adulthood. Whereas adult wolves may greet once daily, domestic dogs may repeat their greetings on a 10 minute separation. Humans may continue play into old age. There are good general reasons for believing that the social coordination required for the establishment and preservation of language conventions requires a highly cooperative setting such as that which altriciality provides. For example, Davidson's arguments for the "principle of charity" in interpretation [57] provide just such reasons. If we were really so focused in our earliest social dealings on whether we are being cheated or lied to, it seems unlikely that human communication would ever have got off the ground. Reasoning about interpretations is quite hard enough under assumptions of cooperation, and the evidence of misalignment all too easy to come by once one expects deliberate misalignment. Policing of contracts may be important at the margins, but is not a plausible explanation of the initial establishment of cooperation. Furthermore, it is far from clear that our ancestors were in general incapable of detecting cheating on social regulations in say food-sharing cliques-no effort on the part of those who propose cheating detectors as novel modules seems to have gone into studying the ancestral precursors. Almost certainly it is the capacity for creating and dissolving the regularities we call social contracts which is novel and that has more to do with communication and the formation of trust than the negative detection of cheating. Views of altruism in the several literatures which have cause to study it seem to have undergone a recent marked transformation. Economists, for example, have started to acknowledge that when players consider themselves to be members of a team, immediate cooperative play in the Prisoner's Dilemma game, without the expectation of repeated play, is often observed [6]. Study of the Ultimatum game and other non-zero sum games clearly illustrate that Homo economicus is a rare species possibly largely confined to economics departments [98]. This has immediate implications for the possibility of group selection and non-Spencerian evolutionary theory. Such cooperative possibilities were, of course, pointed out by the early users of game theory [242], but seem to have been dismissed, as far as one can tell, on ideological grounds. Human social organization, relative to that of our immediate ancestors, is characterized by hugely decreased within-group aggression (with, it may be argued, greatly increased between-group aggression) [32]. Quite apart from a generalized increased pressure for cooperation arising from altriciality, we should expect some more specifically cognitive impacts. Dumping an immature brain out into the external world exposes its learning mechanisms to quite different inputs and outputs than retention in utero. Learning is closely related to what can be controlled. Human infants have little control over their physical environment for an extended period from birth. In round figures, human infants take 9 months to reach the state of motor development of 6.5 Out of the Mouths of Babes and Sucklings 167 a newborn chimpanzee. However, in the extended period of their development, they have considerable access to social control, mainly through voice but also through facial expression. Screaming brings one set of effects, cooing another, and a little later, smiling yet different effects. Bruner has emphasized the development of taking turns in primitive preverbal exchanges between mother and infant. The development of this predictable shifting pattern of authority and control is clearly an important precursor of discourse and possibly of the self as the locus of control. This flexibility of assignment of authority is another rather biologically distinctive human pattern of behavior. Most animals have pecking orders which determine patterns of authority with limited contextual flexibility. Along with this change goes substantial changes in eye movement patterns: in most animals eye contact tends to be aggressive; in humans it often signals social bonding and its refusal can be agonistic, though there is evidence the change in this pattern already began in our ape ancestors. One might speculate that this shift of emphasis from physical control to social control may have widespread implications for human cognition. Learning social control requires developing intentional concepts. It has long been observed by philosophers of science that our common grasp of even physical causality has many intentional aspects. More exotically, philosophers, at least since Nietzsche, have argued that our capacity for anthropomorphism (and with it the basis of religion) stems from our earliest experiences of causality and control being of social rather than physical control. Stenning [257] develops some implications for the origins of human cognition. 6.5.2 Altriciality and Neurogenesis If altriciality is a good candidate adaptation for driving widespread cognitive innovation, what are the biological details of altricial development patterns and when did they happen in evolution? Focus on the changes in the temporal profile of human development reveals some complicated and controversial patterns. Strict neotony (continuation of an infantile state of some trait into adulthood) does not appear to be the best model of, for example, human brain growth. Once a more general class of multiphasic growth models are considered, it has been shown that the best fit to human brain growth timing is provided by a four-phase nonlinear model, with breakpoints at 4.4, 9.3, 13.8, 18.2, and 114 conception months [292] (see figure 6.4). The final phase has a zero growth parameter and a large estimation error (error bar on the last point: 38-288). When compared to the chimpanzee model, the human growth rate parameter has remained fixed, and each phase has been lengthened by a factor of about 1.3. So at least for brain growth, this is not neotony – rather lengthening of the same pattern. Nevertheless altriciality, at a descriptive level, is indisputable. Other characteristics can, of course, show either no changes in timing, or different changes in developmental scheduling. 168 6 The Origin of Human Reasoning Capacities Figure 6.4 Multiphasic regression of human log ages and log brain weights. Reprinted from [292,p. 232] by permission of Elsevier Inc. Above we already introduced Rakic's model of brain growth (see page 150), which describes an exponential process of expansion of neuron progenitor numbers, placed in the first half of the first phase (up to 4.4 conception months). This is the phase critical for the eventual brain size. It has been calculated that during this phase, on average about 225,000 cortical neuron progenitors are generated per minute. What has been referred to as the "brain growth spurt" roughly corresponds to the second phase. It starts near the beginning of midgestation with multiplication of glial cells and growth and myelination of neurons, which continue until the end of the second postnatal year or later. The third phase, the "cerebellar phase," starts prenatally and proceeds especially rapidly soon after birth. Phase 4 may be underestimated in current data and is not so easily identified with a dominant process. Normal brain growth works by producing a very large number of interconnections between neurons early on, and then subsequently pruning many of these out. This pruning is assumed to be associated with less active usage. So the connections that are reinforced (and which are presumed to be functionally active in the individual's processing) survive, but those not used die out – use it or lose it as a kind of natural selection among neurons. The timing of the ma6.5 Out of the Mouths of Babes and Sucklings 169 jor phases of synaptic pruning are currently contentious though probably start within the first year of postnatal life. We will revisit this temporal profile when we turn to autism is chapter 9. Brain growth is, of course, only one much–studied example of evolutionarily changed temporal profile in development. Nor is it clear what part brain size plays in human cognitive evolution-whether size matters. We merely offer it as on example which is probably cognitively relevant. Scerif and KarmiloffSmith [241] review evidence that several genetically based behavioral disorders (e.g., Williams syndrome are to be at least partly understood as distortions of relative developmental phasing of different systems. 6.5.3 Altriciality in the Evolution of Homo One immediate evolutionary question about the changes in the temporal profile of human development is just when they happened in phylogeny. Until recently, it was widely assumed that the pressures for altriciality from obstetric problems must have arisen with the origins of bipedalism – that is fairly far back in our divergence from our ape ancestors. More recently, a variety of kinds of evidence point to a much later date for the major changes in the timing of development. Although australopithecine bipedal walking evolved around 5 million years ago, there were 2.5 to 3 million years of walking before distance running evolved [23]. A secondary narrowing of the pelvis to facilitate the mechanics of efficient running is claimed by these authors not to occur in Homo erectus but to arrive in Homo sapiens. The tall human body with a narrow trunk, waist, and pelvis creates more skin surface for our size, permitting greater cooling during running. It also lets the upper and lower body move independently, which allows us to use the upper body to counteract the twisting forces from the swinging legs. If distance running was a factor in narrowing the pelvis, then we can assume that this would have increased the selection pressure on obstetric problems arising from large fetal heads. Studies of the evolution of the mechanics of human birth show that it evolved in several stages [234]. The early australopithecines' shift to bipedalism brought some of the innovations invoked by the changes in human shoulders, but not the problems due to brain size. Australopithecines probably displayed one of two part rotations which modern human infants perform on passing through the pelvis, but not both. Martin [184] proposes that pelvic size began to constrain brain size only around 1.5 miilion years ago, and by 100,000 years ago we reached essentially the modern arrangements, although even these exert considerable selection pressure on the systems of development and delivery. This time scale certainly overlaps with the emergence of modern human cognition. Study of the skull openings in a single well-preserved skull of Homo erectus from Java [46] provides some information on this issue. These authors argue 170 6 The Origin of Human Reasoning Capacities from estimates of the skull's age (1.8 million years) and age at death (0.5 to 1.5 years), that this it is more ape-like than modern Homo sapiens-like in its degree of development at birth. They conclude that secondary altriciality (the extension of brain growth after birth) was a late innovation in the mutual ancestor of Homo sapiens and Homo neanderthalensis. They comment that both displayed enlarged brains and reduced pelvic inlet sizes. To give some idea of the scale of the long-term changes, whereas macaque newborns have 70% of their adult brain volume, in humans the figure is 25% (then after first year it's 50% and after 10 years, 95%). Apes are intermediate (40%) at birth. A completely different kind of evidence comes from molecular clock comparisons between human, chimpanzee, gorilla, and baboon which have been used to estimate when human generation length extended. It turns out that human and chimpanzee are much more similar in clock speed than the gorilla and baboon. Humans' molecular clock speed is about 10% slower than the gorilla and 3% slower than the chimpanzee's. The significant 3% slowdown of humans from chimpanzees is taken to indicate that the human slowdown is recent. Making the simplifying assumptions that all the difference is due to generation lengthening and the change was instantaneous, the estimate is of a change about 1 million years ago [70]. This is a little earlier than the other sources of evidence. All these diverse sources of evidence place changes in the timing of human development as possibly being active not too far from the period of the emergence of modern human cognition starting around 1 million to half a million years ago, an important motivator for choosing an intensification of the longterm trend to altriciality as an organizing adaptation. Altriciality illustrates how the impact of a single well-established coherent biological change can ramify throughout the biology of a species, altering a myriad of ancestral functions, each itself already modularized in complex ways. Existing machinery is exapted for dealing with the resulting new situations. Secondary adaptations are required to live with these exaptations. 6.6 Conclusion: Back to the Laboratory (and the Drawing Board) In summary, our sketch of an answer to how human cognition became so much more general than that of our immediate ancestors is a variant of the traditional one that communication through language (suitably understood) is central. But it is a variant with considerable twists. Humans gained the ability to plan and reason about the complex intentions involved in communication, and so to process the multiple interpretations in the multiple logics required for natural language use. Considerable planning in thought may have been possible before it could be externalized in communication. The languages of thought led to the languages of expression. 6.6 Conclusion: Back to the Laboratory (and the Drawing Board) 171 These conjectures send us back to the laboratory. If reasoning developed out of planning, it is worth investigating reasoning tasks which somehow activate the planning system. In the following two chapters several such tasks – suppression task, box task, false–belief task, counterfactual reasoning task – will be discussed. As the reader can see from this list, it concerns tasks which have been around for a considerable time, having been used for quite different purposes. Formal modeling in nonmonotonic logic will be applied to show that these tasks all embody aspects of planning. This opens up the possibility to establish a correlation between failures on verbal reasoning tasks and nonverbal planning tasks, and the chapter on autism will show that such correlations indeed exist. In this chapter we have proposed altriciality as an example of an important development in human evolution which can serve as one organizing principle for thinking about phenomena at many different levels. We do not propose that it is the only, nor even the best, example. However, it is sufficient to illustrate how fundamental biological concepts such as modularity, heritability, adaptation, and exaptation have been mistreated in discussions of cogntive evolution. Biology's new "evo devo" insights lead us to expect that an important theme in human evolution is the retimings of modular development under the influence of relatively few control elements. This model virtually guarantees that exaptation will be as important as adaptation – when complex modules develop in different contexts, their behavior will change in complex ways, exposing them to repurposing. This means that phenotypic description, and especially cognitive phenotypic description, is hard because the identification of selection pressures from current function is fraught with difficulty. Since innovation does not happen by the arrival of new modules, our method must be to identify both continuity and discontinuity with our ancestors.
P A R T I I Modeling
The preceding chapters have introduced a perspective on human reasoning which emphasizes the large variety of logical systems not only available, but actually necessary for, describing human reasoning behavior. If classical logic is taken as the norm, irrationality seems to abound, but on a wider conception of reasoning which also involves assigning logical form, apparent irrationality may turn out to be compliance with a different norm, or the impossibility of imposing any logical form whatsoever. Indeed, in chapter 4 we have seen how a variety of contexts supporting subjects in imposing classical logical form in the selection task considerably improve their performance vis– à– vis even the classical criterion. After the detailed information about parameter setting in the selection task obtained from tutorial dialogues and presented in chapter 3, it might seem that the selection task is an ideal task for studying the process of assigning logical form. However, the great variety of possible parameters, and the complexity of the logical forms associated to each of these parameters, create considerable problems; the number of combinations is simply too large for a first attempt. We therefore need a task in which parameter setting is apparently more constrained, in order to yield information both about parameter setting and about consistency with the parameters thus set. Another problem with the selection task is that the rule is such a compressed discourse that the subjects' interpretive efforts are narrowly focused, and hard to elicit. A further problem is that what is at issue is clearly the communication between the experimenter and the subject, and the information is intended to be insulated from general knowledge or a larger population of cases. A better task would more obviously invoke interpretation of a more extended discourse with the focus on using general knowledge to resolve the absent speaker's intentions rather than on the experimenter's. In chapter 7 we turn to the so-called "suppression task" which fulfills these requirements. We outline the results obtained and describe a family of defeasible logical theories of closed-world reasoning as a framework for modeling the course of discourse interpretation in this task. We make some premilinary observations of the range of interpretations that occur and the degree of subjects' success in maintaining consistency. We also consider some probabilisitic approaches that have been taken to similar tasks, and argue that these approaches still need to distinguish the process of constructing a (probabilistic) interpretation, and the process of deriving consequences from that interpretation. If defeasible logics are our framework for specifying what function is computed when we interpret discourses, we can then consider how these logics are implemented in the brain. In chapter 8, we show that this logic, unlike classical logic, is readily implementable in neural networks. In fact, it is possible to account not only of the computations within networks but also to at least outline how such networks might be constructed anew as discourse processing 176 proceeeds. This is something that few neural accounts even attempt. These neural implementations have certain computational properties which are psychologically suggestive – their rules are, for example, unlike classical ones, asymmetric in the amount of computation for forward and backward reasoning. Rather than leave this as an abstract implementation of general reasoning within albeit particular logics, we illustrate what the availability of logic and implementation can offer to the analysis of particular behavioral syndromes. Since our logic is "planning logic," an obvious choice is an area where "executive function" has figured prominently in psychological analyses, and in chapter 9 we choose autism as a developmental disorder where this is true. Our study of autism also leads us to extend our earlier sketch of the evolutionary basis of cognition. In the final chapter of part II, we turn our new tools back onto the other heartland task of the psychology of reasoning – the syllogism. We present evidence that credulous interpretation of syllogisms is an important interpretive factor in this task too. Employing exploratory empirical methods, a combination of the credulous/skeptical dimension, with features of the expression of information structure in this simple logical fragment, is used to reveal groups of subjects approaching the syllogism in qualitatively different fashion. This raises the bar on empirical investigations of reasoning. By this time we would claim to have outlined a broadly based interpretive approach to human reasoning which provides an alternative to what has been on offer in this field. Interpretation is a substantial process, to be distinguished from derivation. It has well–understood logical models which relate long–term general knowledge to episodic information arriving in discourse. These logics can be given interesting neural implementations. The combination can be applied to behavioral phenomena such as autism to reveal hidden continuities and contrasts between diverse behaviors and theories of the condition. This approach also suggests very different accounts of the biological and evolutionary grounding of cognition. Above all, the approach takes seriously the contributions both of psychological experimentation and of formal studies of cognition in logic and linguistics. 7 Planning and Reasoning: TheSuppression Task Before we introduce the reasoning task which will play the lead role in the coming three chapters, we start with a preamble explaining its wider significance. The evolutionary considerations of chapter 6 suggested that instead of thinking of reasoning as an adaptation to a specific environmental pressure (e.g., the necessity to detect cheaters), it is more fruitful to view it as an exaptation, a new use of an older capacity. We proposed the following evolutionary sequence 1. Language exapted the planning capacity, both for syntax and for semantics, and in particular discourse interpretation 2. Discourse interpretation involves credulous reasoning by the hearer, that is to say the hearer tries to accommodate the truth of all the speaker's utterances in deriving an intended model 3. Credulous reasoning itself is best modelled as some form of nonmonotonic logic 4. Classical logic arose from conscious reflection on the outcome of (often automatic) credulous reasoning. With reference to 4, it may be noted that there are various reasons why classical first–order logic is not a very plausible candidate for a "natural" reasoning process, operative also in the absence of schooling. The first reason is that classical logic requires an extensional representation of concepts as sets, hence inter alia assumes that it is fully determined whether an object falls under the concept or not. It is much more plausible to assume that concepts are represented cognitively as algorithms which test whether or not the object falls under the concept, that is, intensionally, not extensionally. (For an early defense of this idea, see [194].) At the very least the logic describing such concepts is threevalued Kleene logic (see chapter 2) because the algorithm may be undecided on some inputs. If, moreover, the algorithm operates by comparing the input to a prototype, the logic is doubtlessly more complicated, although it is not fully clear what it should be. (Compare, for example, [153] and [90, 91].) 178 7 Planning and Reasoning: The Suppression Task The second reason why classical logic may have to be laboriously learned instead of coming naturally is that the definition of validity underlying classical logic creates computational problems for working memory (when unaided by external devices such as pen and paper). Viewed semantically, one has to go through all models of the premises and check for each of these whether the conclusion holds. One needs a routine to search through all models, and keep track of where one is in the search. The point can be illustrated by asking the reader to determine without use of paper and pencil whether the syllogism ¬∃x(Ax ∧ Bx), ∃x(Bx ∧ Cx)/ ∃x(Ax ∧ ¬Cx) is valid or not. Classroom experience shows that even students with some logic training find this difficult.1 Logics which are computationally less taxing for working memory may well precede, both phylogenetically and ontogenetically, those logics which require conscious computation. Note that this complexity is a mathematical feature of classical logic and as such independent of a "rules" or "models" representational format. The claim of the next three chapters is that (a) such less taxing logics exist, and (b) it can be tested whether subjects actually reason consistently with such a logic. In this chapter we will first introduce the pertinent reasoning task, then the associated logical form, and lastly some data relevant to the assignment of logical form. As an introduction to the reasoning task to be discussed in this chapter consider the following two examples. The first is from a boarding card distributed at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, where we read If it's thirty minutes before your flight departure, make your way to the gate. As soon as the gate number is confirmed, make your way to the gate. The traveler looking at the screen and seeing the gate number confirmed 2 hours before flight departure might well be in a quandary: Can I wait for another hour and a half, or do I proceed to the gate immediately? But his dilemma pales beside that of the hapless visitor who sees it's 30 minutes before departure and is thus told to go the gate, which is, however, as yet undisclosed. The second example2 is from a notice explaining the alarm signal button in trains of the London underground. If there is an emergency then you press the alarm signal button. The driver will stop if any part of the train is in a station. Here the second sentence, taken literally, on its own, does not even make sense: the train could never leave the station. However, its intended meaning does make sense: 1. Clearly, algorithms like semantic tableaux do help in these simple cases, but they are available only to the initiated. 2. Brought to our attention by R.A. Kowalski. See also his [163]. 179 The driver will stop the train if someone presses the alarm signal button and any part of the train is in a station. Similarly, in the first example, the intended meaning is likely to be If it's thirty minutes before your flight departure and the gate number is confirmed, make your way to the gate. Rigid adherence to classical logic would have little survival value in these cases. Instead there seems to be a reasoning process toward a more reasonable interpretation, in which the antecedents of the conditionals become conjoined. But why this interpretation, and how is it computed? Surprisingly, there is considerable experimental and theoretical information about this question. This is because the very same problem was studied in an entirely different context: the so-called suppression task in the psychology of reasoning. Suppose one presents a subject with the following innocuous premises: (1) If she has an essay to write she will study late in the library. She has an essay to write. In this case roughly 90% of subjects draw the conclusion She will study late in the library. Next, suppose one adds the premise (2) If the library is open, she will study late in the library. In this case, only 60% conclude She will study late in the library. However, if instead of (2) the premise (3) If she has a textbook to read, she will study late in the library. is added, then the percentage of She will study late in the library conclusions is comparable to that in (1). These observations are originally due to Ruth Byrne [28], and they were used by her to argue against a rule-based account of logical reasoning such as found in, e.g., Rips [228]. For if valid arguments can be suppressed, then surely logical inference cannot be a matter of blindly applying rules; and furthermore the fact that suppression depends on the content of the added premise is taken to be an argument against the role of logical form in reasoning.3 While we believe Byrne's interpretation of the results is mistaken, we agree that the task connects to deep issues in the psychology of reasoning. In this chapter we give a logical analysis of the various answer patterns observed. We have distinguished in the previous chapters between two main kinds of logical reasoning: reasoning from a fixed interpretation of the logical and nonlogical terms in the premises, and reasoning toward an interpretation of those terms. 3. Note that the percentages refer to population averages of endorsement; they provide no information about an individual subject's behavior. In section 7.4 we will present some data which bear on this issue. 180 7 Planning and Reasoning: The Suppression Task Here we show that Byrne's interpretation of her data (a "failure" to apply classical logic) follows only if experimental subjects in her task reason from a fixed interpretation. If what they are doing is reasoning to a consistent interpretation of the experimental materials, their answers can be shown to make perfect logical sense, albeit in a different logic. This is where closed–world reasoning, which has been touched upon repeatedly in the preceding chapters, comes to the fore. We provide an extended introduction to this form of reasoning and show how the deviation from classical logical reasoning found in Byrne's data and those of others (e.g., Dieussaert et al. [63]) can be accounted for in the proposed formalism. Here, we will look not only at "binary" data on whether or not a particular inference is suppressed but also consider data from tutorial dialogues, which give some clue to the interpretational processes involved. Chapter 8 will then show that closed–world reasoning has an efficient neural interpretation. In chapter 9 we show that the logic behind the suppression task is the common logical core behind several benchmark tests for autism, such as the false–belief task, unexpected contents task, and box task. This leads one to expect that people with autism show a consistently different answer pattern on the suppression task, a hypothesis that was corroborated in an experiment. 7.1 The Suppression Task and Byrne's Interpretation As mentioned in the introduction to this chapter, if one presents a subject with the following premises: (4a) If she has an essay to write she will study late in the library. (4b) She has an essay to write. In this case roughly 90% of subjects4 draw the conclusion She will study late in the library (we will later discuss what the remaining 10% may be thinking). Next, suppose one adds the premise (5) If the library is open, she will study late in the library. and one asks again: what follows? In this case, only 60% conclude She will study late in the library. However, if instead of the above, the premise (6) If she has a textbook to read, she will study late in the library 4. The figures we use come from the experiment reported in [63], since the experiments reported in this study have more statistical power than those of [28]. 7.1 The Suppression Task and Byrne's Interpretation 181 is added, then the percentage of She will study late in the library conclusions is around 95%. In this type of experiment one investigates not only modus ponens (MP), but also modus tollens (MT), and the "fallacies" affirmation of the consequent (AC), and denial of the antecedent (DA), with respect to both types of added premises, (5) and (6). In table 7.1 we tabulate the relevant data, following Dieussaert et al. [63]. Table 7.1 Percentages of Dieussaert's subjects drawing target conclusions in each of the four argument forms modus ponens (MP), modus tollens (MT), denial of the antecedent (DA), and affirmation of the consequent (AC), in two–premise and three–premise arguments: conditional 1 is the same first premise in all cases. In a two-premise argument it is combined only with the categorical premise shown. In a three-premise argument, both are combined with either an alternative or an additional conditional premise. Role Content Conditional 1 If she has an essay to write, she will study late in the library Categorical She has an essay to write Conclusion She will study late in the library (MP 90%) Alternative If she has a textbook to read, she will study late in the library Conclusion She will study late in the library (MP 94%) Additional If the library stays open, she will study late in the library. Conclusion She will study late in the library (MP 60%) Conditional 1 If she has an essay to write, she will study late in the library. Categorical She will study late in the library Conclusion She has an essay to write (AC 53%) Alternative If she has a textbook to read, she will study late in the library Conclusion She has an essay to write (AC 16%) Additional If the library stays open, then she will study late in the library. Conclusion She has an essay to write (AC 55%) Conditional 1 If she has an essay to write, she will study late in the library Categorical She hasn't an essay to write Conclusion She will not study late in the library (DA 49%) Alternative If she has a textbook to read, she will study late in the library Conclusion She will not study late in the library (DA 22%) Additional If the library stays open, she will study late in the library Conclusion She will not study late in the library (DA 49%) Conditional 1 If she has an essay to write, she will study late in the library. Categorical She will not study late in the library Conclusion She does not have an essay to write (MT 69%) Alternative If she has a textbook to read, she will study late in the library Conclusion She does not have an essay to write (MT 69%) Additional If the library stays open, then she will study late in the library. Conclusion She does not have an essay to write (MT 44%) We start with Byrne's explanation in [28] of how mental models theory5 explains the data. Mental models assumes that the reasoning process consists of the following stages: 1. The premises are interpreted in the sense that a model is constructed on the 5. Section 10.6 in chapter 10 will give a more detailed exposition (and criticism) of mental models theory in the context of syllogistic reasoning. 182 7 Planning and Reasoning: The Suppression Task basis of general knowledge and the specific premises. 2. An informative conclusion is read off from the model. 3. This conclusion is checked against possible alternative models of the situation. In this particular case the model for the premises p → q, r → q that is constructed depends on the content of p and r, and the general knowledge activated by those contents. If r represents an alternative, the mental model constructed is one appropriate to the formula p∨r → q, and the conclusion q can be read off from this model. If, however, r represents an additional condition, that model is appropriate to the formula p∧ r → q, and no informative conclusion follows. The conclusion that Byrne draws from the experimental results is that in order to explain how people reason, we need to explain how premises of the same apparent logical form can be interpreted in quite different ways. The process of interpretation has been relatively neglected in the inferential machinery proposed by current theories based on formal rules. It plays a more central part, however, in theories based on mental models [28,p. 83]. Byrne thus sees the main problem as explaining "how premises of the same apparent logical form can be interpreted in quite different ways." We would question the accuracy of this formulation, and instead prefer to formulate the main issue as follows: it is the job of the interpretive process to assign logical form, which cannot simply be read off from the given material. In other words, the difference between Byrne (and others working in the mental models tradition) and ourselves appears to be this: whereas she takes logical form to be more or less given, we view it as the end result of a (possibly laborious) interpretive process. Before we embark on our modeling exercise, however, some preliminary remarks on what we mean by "modeling" are in order. Since we view task understanding as an integral component of reasoning, the model must include both reasoning to an interpretation – setting crucial parameters – and reasoning from the interpretation so defined. This goal places constraints on the kind of data most revealing of appropriate models. As we saw in our discussion of the selection task in chapter 3, even within a group of subjects which exhibit the same final answer pattern, the underlying parameter settings can be very different, thus leading to qualitatively different models of what subjects are doing and why. The contrast is most blatant when the stark "outcome data" of four binary card choices are contrasted with the rich processes revealed in the socratic dialogues. With the suppression task, we see this contrast repeated. Cross–sectional statistical information about proportions of groups of subjects suppressing or not is a poor and indirect foundation for discriminating the different interpretations 7.2 Logical Forms in the Suppression Task 183 which are behind these choices. As long as the investigation remains focused on the spurious contrast between models and rules, the investigators have remained content with cross–sectional proportion analyses. If we want to know what subjects are doing (deriving a variety of interpretations) we need to know at least what a single subject does on the sequence of inferences MP, MT, AC, and DA, with or without an extra conditional premise of one or other of the two types-additional or alternative. One can then hope to build up a picture of subjects' setting of the various logical parameters critical for understanding their reasoning. But what if the trajectory through a sequence of interpretational choices is actually a random walk? What if the subject's answer pattern is not consistent with any parameter setting? The analysis of logical form may still not be finegrained enough, in the sense that additional parameters can be identified which have a causal role in determining the subject's behavior. Still another possibility is that the subject is learning while doing a task, and so changing earlier settings. There is ample opportunity for this, as lots of items are necessary to achieve statistical significance. If none of these possibilities appear to be the case, in a dialogue situation the experimenter can still probe the subject's assignment of logical form and point out to him that some of his inferences do not conform to the logical form assigned. There is a clear educational moral in this: rather than impose a formal system upon a student, it is preferable to teach the assignment of logical form, and the value of being consistent with the form assigned. 7.2 Logical Forms in the Suppression Task Chapter 2 has given a lengthy introduction to the notion of logical form; here it suffices to repeat what are the main parameters to be set. 1. L a formal language into which N (the natural language) is translated, 2. the expression in L which translates an expression in N , 3. the semantics S for L, 4. the definition of validity of arguments ψ1, . . . , ψn/φ, with premises ψi and conclusion φ. As in the selection task, the cardinal parameter to be fixed is the form of the conditional. Byrne assumed that the conditional can be represented by a material implication, in all circumstances. We believe, on the contrary, that the logical form is the endpoint of an interpretation process, which may be the material implication, but may also be entirely different. We claim that one meaning of the conditional that naturally occurs to the subject in the suppression task is that of a law-like relationship between antecedent and consequent. An example of a law expressed by means of a conditional is 184 7 Planning and Reasoning: The Suppression Task (7) If a glass is dropped on a hard surface, it will break. or (8) If a body is dropped, its velocity will increase as gt2. What is common to both examples is that the antecedent hides an endless number of unstated assumptions: in the first case, e.g. that the glass is not caught before it falls, etc., in the second case, e.g., that there are no other forces at work on the body, etc.6 This implies that there may very well be exceptions to the law; but these exceptions do not falsify the law. 7 We will therefore give the general logical form of law-like conditionals "if A, then B" as (9) If A, and nothing abnormal is the case, then B. where what is abnormal is provided by the context. This characterization is, however, incomplete without saying what "if . . . then" means in (9). We contend that the conditional is often not so much a truth–functional connective, as a license for certain inferences.8 One reason is the role of putative counterexamples, i.e., situations where A and not-B; especially in the case of law-like conditionals, such a counterexample is not used to discard the conditional, but to look for an abnormality; it is thus more appropriate to describe it as an exception. Thus, one use of the conditional is where it is taken as given, not as a statement which can be false, and we claim that this is the proper way to view the conditionals occurring in the suppression task, which are after all supplied by the experimenter.9 Having posited that, in the present context, the conditional is rather a license for inferences than a connective, what are these inferences? One is, of course, modus ponens: the premises φ and "if φ then B" license the inference that B. The second type of inference licensed is what we have dubbed closed–world reasoning in chapter 2: it says that if it is impossible to derive a proposition B from the given premises by repeated application of modus ponens, then one may assume B is false. This kind of reasoning is routinely applied in daily life: if the timetable doesn't say there is a train 6. For a recent defense of the idea that this is how scientific laws must be conceptualized, consult [307]. 7. As we shall see in section 7.5, several authors have tried to explain the suppression effect by assuming that the conditional expresses a regularity rather than a material implication, and feel forced to consider a probabilistic interpretation of the conditional. But the fact that the conditional, viewed as a law, in a sense represents an uncertain relationship, does not thereby license the application of probability theory. "Uncertainty" is a multifaceted notion and can be captured by probability only in very special circumstances. 8. A connective differs from a license for inference in that a connective, in addition to licensing inferences, also comes with rules for inferring a formula containing that connective as main logical operator. 9. The preceding considerations imply that the conditional cannot be iterated. Natural language conditionals are notoriously hard (although not impossible) to iterate, especially when a conditional occurs in the antecedent of another conditional – "If, if conditionals are iterated, then they aren't meaningful, then they aren't material" is an example; one more reason why "if ... then" is not simply material implication. 7.2 Logical Forms in the Suppression Task 185 from Edinburgh to London between 5 pm and 5:10 pm, one assumes there is no such train. Closed world reasoning is what allows humans to circumvent the notorious frame problem (at least to some extent): my reaching for a glass of water may be unsuccessful for any number of reasons, for instance because the earth's gravitational field changes suddenly, but since I have no positive information that this is likely to happen, I assume it will not. We hypothesise that closed–world reasoning plays an important part in reasoning with conditionals; in particular, the suppression effect will be seen to be due to a special form of a closed–world assumption. We now recast the preceding considerations as a formal definition in the branch of logic known as logic programming. 7.2.1 Logic Programming and Planning: Informal Introduction In chapter 6, we defined planning as setting a goal and devising a sequence of actions that will achieve that goal, taking into account events in, and properties of the world and the agent. In this definition, "will achieve" cannot mean: "provably achieves" because of the notorious frame problem: it is impossible to take into account all eventualities whose occurrence might be relevant to the success of the plan. Therefore the question arises: what makes a good plan? A reasonable suggestion is: the plan works to the best of one's present knowledge. In terms of models, this means the plan achieves the goal in a "minimal model" of reality, where, roughly speaking, every positive atomic proposition is false which you have no reason to assume to be true. In particular, in the minimal model no events occur which are not forced to occur by the data. This makes planning a form of nonmonotonic reasoning: the fact that "goal G can be achieved in circumstances C" does not imply "goal G can be achieved in circumstances C + D." The book by van Lambalgen and Hamm [282] formalises the computations performed by our planning capacities by means of a temporal reasoner (the event calculus) as formulated in a particular type of nonmonotonic logic, namely first-order constraint logic programming with negation as failure. Syntactically, logic programming is a good formalism for planning because its derivations are built on backward chaining (regression) from a given goal. Semantically, it corresponds to the intuition that planning consists in part of constructing minimal models of the world. The purpose of [282] is to show that the semantics of tense and aspect in natural language can be formally explained on the assumption that temporal notions are encoded in such a way as to subserve planning. For our present purposes we may abstract from the temporal component of planning, and concentrate on the skeleton of the inference engine required for planning, 186 7 Planning and Reasoning: The Suppression Task namely propositional logic programming. Planning proceeds with respect to a model of the world and it is hypothesized that the automatic process of constructing a minimal model which underlies planning also subserves discourse integration. We present our analysis of the suppression task as evidence for this hypothesis. Nonmonotonic logics abound, of course,10 but logic programming is attractive because it is both relatively expressive and computationally efficient.11 In chapter 8 we shall see that logic programming also has an appealing implementation in neural nets, and that it may thus shed some light on the operation of working memory. Taken together, the proven merits of logic programming in discourse processing [282] and its straightforward implementation in neural networks suggest to us that it is relevant to cognitive modeling. We are not aware of any other nonmonotonic logic which has this range of features, but definitely do not claim that there cannot be any such logic.12 7.2.2 Logic Programming and Planning Formally Logic programming is a fragment of propositional (or predicate) logic with a special, nonclassical, semantics embodying closed–world reasoning. For the sake of clarity we start with the fragment of logic programming in which negation is not allowed. Definition 2 A positive clause is a formula of the form p1, . . . pn → q, where the q, pi are proposition letters; the antecedent may be empty, in which case q is referred as a fact. In this formula, q is called the head, and p1, . . . pn the body of the clause. A positive program is a finite set of positive clauses. Until further notice, we assume that propositions are either true (1) or false (0); but the semantics is nonetheless non-classical. The only models to be considered are those of the following form Definition 3 Let P be a positive program on a finite set L of proposition letters. An assignment M of truth-values {0, 1} to L (i.e., a function M : L −→ {0.1}) is a model of P if for q ∈ L, 10. See Pelletier and Elio [210] for a plea for more extensive investigations into the psychological reality of nonmonotonic logics. 11. This is because it does not involve the consistency checks necessary for other nonmonotonic logics, such as Reiter's default logic [226]. This point is further elaborated in chapter 8. 12. Consider for instance the defeasible planner OSCAR developed by Pollock (see, e.g., [221]). This planner is built on top of a theorem prover for classical predicate logic, and is thus more expressive than logic programming. But the gain in expressiveness is paid for by less pleasing computational properties, since such a system cannot be interpreted semantically by iterations of a fixed–point operator, a prerequisite for an efficient neural implementation. 7.2 Logical Forms in the Suppression Task 187 1. M(q) = 1 if there is a clause p1, . . . pn → q in P such that for all i, M(pi) = 1 2. M(q) = 0 if for all clauses p1, . . . pn → q in P there is some pi for which M(pi) = 0. The definition entails that for any q not occurring as the head of a clause, M(q) = 0. Furthermore, if q occurs in a single formula of the form p → q and p does not occur as the head of a clause, also M(q) = 0. More generally, the model M is minimal in the sense that any proposition not forced to be true by the program is false in M; this is our first (though not final) formulation of the closed–world assumption. We now present a generalization of this definition in terms of a three-valued semantics. This is necessary for the following reasons: (i) Since the proposed notion of conditionals requires negation, we have to liberalise the preceding definitions and allow negation in the body of a clause, and this will be seen to entail a move to a different semantics13. (ii) It is useful to have some freedom in deciding to which propositions we want to apply closed–world reasoning; the above definition applies it to all propositions, whereas it is more realistic to remain agnostic about some. We first generalize the definition of clause. Definition 4 A definite clause is a formula of the form (¬)p1 ∧ . . . ∧ (¬)pn → q,14 where the pi are either proposition letters, or ⊥,15 and q is a propositional variable. Facts are clauses of the form → q, which will usually be abbreviated to q. Empty antecedents are no longer allowed. A definite logic program is a finite conjunction of definite clauses. The intuitive meaning of negation is what is known as "negation as (finite) failure": ¬φ is true if the attempt to derive φ from the program P fails in finitely many steps. To make this precise requires specifying in detail the notion of derivability, which we shall not now do; but see section 7.2.3. Instead we give a semantic characterization, which will allow the reader to see the connection with closed–world reasoning. The proper semantics for definite programs requires a move from two-valued semantics to Kleene's strong three-valued semantics (introduced in chapter 2), which has the truth–values undecided (u), false (0), and true (1). The intuitive meaning of undecided is that the truth– value can evolve toward either true or false (but not conversely). This provides us with the notion of a three-valued model. It is an important fact that the models of interest can be captured by means of the following construction. 13. For instance, the program clause ¬p → p is inconsistent on the above semantics. 14. (¬)p means that p may, but need not, occur in negated form. 15. We use for an arbitrary tautology, and ⊥ for an arbitrary contradiction. 188 7 Planning and Reasoning: The Suppression Task Definition 5 (a) If q is a proposition letter occurring in a program P , the definition of q with respect to P is given by: 1. take all clauses φi → q whose head is q and form the expression ∨ i φi → q; 2. if there is no such φi, then the expression ⊥ → q is added; 3. replace the →'s by ↔'s (here, ↔ has a classical interpretation given by: ψ ↔ φ is true if ψ, φ have the same truth–value, and false otherwise). (b) The completion of a program P , denoted by comp(P ), is constructed by taking the conjunction of the definitions of atoms q, for all q in P . (c) More generally, if S is a set of atoms occurring in P , the completion of P relativized to S, compS(P ), is obtained by taking the conjunction of the definitions of the atoms q which are in S. (d) If P is a logic program, define the nonmonotonic consequence relation |≈ by P |≈3 φ iff comp(P ) |=3 φ, where |=3 denotes consequence with respect to three-valued models.16 For comp(P ) one may also read compS(P ); in which case one should write, strictly speaking, P |≈S3 φ. Here are some examples. 1. Let the definite program P consist of p → q and ⊥ → p. In this case the completion comp(P ) is p ↔ q,⊥ ↔ p, which implies that both p and q are false. 2. Take the same program, but restrict the completion to q. In this case the completion comp{q}(P ) is p ↔ q, which is true on all models in which p and q have the same truth–value. 3. Let P be the program {p; p ∧ ¬ab → q}. closed–world reasoning for abnormalities can be viewed as forming the completion comp{ab}(P ), which in this case equals { ↔ p;⊥ ↔ ab; p ∧ ¬ab → q}, which is equivalent to {p; p → q}. We thus have comp{ab}(P ) |= q. 4. Suppose the program P equals {⊥ → p; p ∧ ¬ab → q}. If we form the completion comp{ab,p}(P ), we obtain {⊥ ↔ p;⊥ ↔ ab; p ∧ ¬ab → q}, from which nothing can be concluded in the sense of |=3. A conclusion becomes possible, however, if the completion comp{ab,p,q}(P ) is considered instead, because now comp{ab,p,q}(P ) |=3 ¬q. 16. Γ |=3 ψ means that every three-valued model of Γ is a model of psi. The subscript will be dropped when there is no danger of confusion. 7.2 Logical Forms in the Suppression Task 189 Thus closed–world reasoning can be analyzed in rather fine detail using this procedure. If P |≈3 φ, we say that φ follows from P by negation as failure, or by closed–world reasoning. The process of completion is also referred to as minimization.17 Using the terminology introduced above, our main hypothesis in explaining Byrne's data as conforming to the logical competence model of closed–world reasoning can then be stated as a. the conditionals used in the suppression task, far from being material implications, can be captured much more adequately by logic programming clauses of the form p∧¬ab → q, where ab is a proposition letter indicating that something abnormal is the case; b. when making interpretations, subjects usually do not consider all models of the premises, but only minimal models, defined by a suitable completion. The readers who wish to see some applications of these notions to the suppression task before delving into further technicalities may now jump ahead to section 7.3, in particular the explanations with regard to the forward inferences MP and DA. The backward inferences MT and AC require a slightly different application of logic programming, which will be introduced in the next subsection. The final subsection will look at the construction of models, which is necessary for the connection with neural networks. 7.2.3 Strengthening the Closed–World Assumption: Integrity Constraints So far we have applied the closed–world assumption to atomic formulas (for instance, ab) and their negations: if ab is not in the database, we may assume it is false. We now extend the closed–world assumption to cover program clauses as well: if we are given that q and if φ1 → q, . . . , φn → q are all the clauses with nontrivial body φi which have q as head, then we (defeasibly) conclude that q can only be the case because one of φ1, . . . , φn is the case. We therefore do not consider the possibility that q is the case because some other state of affairs ψ obtains, where ψ is independent of the φ1, . . . , φn and such that (unbeknownst to us) ψ → q. This kind of reasoning might be called "diagnostic" or "abductive" (see [151]); we will also call it "closed–world reasoning for rules." 17. Readers who recall McCarthy's use of an abnormality predicate ab may wonder why we do not use circumscription [185] instead of logic programming, since circumscription also proceeds by minimizing the extension of ab. There is a technical reason for this: circumscription cannot be easily used to explain the fallacies; but the main reason is that logic programming, unlike circumscription, allows incremental computation of minimal models, and this computation will be seen to be related to the convergence toward a stable state of a neural network. This shows why model construction can here proceed automatically. 190 7 Planning and Reasoning: The Suppression Task This notion of closed–world is not quite expressed by the completion of a program. For in the simple case where we have only a clause p → q and a fact → q is added, the completion becomes (p ∨ ) ↔ q, from which nothing can be derived about p. What we need instead is a principled way of adding q such that the database or model is updated with p. The proper technical way of achieving this is by means of so-called integrity constraints. To clarify this notion, we need a small excursion into database theory, taking an example from Kowalski [164,p. 232]. An integrity constraint in a database expresses obligations and prohibitions that the states of the database must satisfy if they fulfil a certain condition. For instance, the "obligation" to carry an umbrella when it is raining may be formalized (using a self-explanatory language for talking about actions and their effects) by the integrity constraint Holds(rain, t) → Holds(carry-umbrella, t) (7.1) The crucial point here is the meaning of →. The formula (7.1) cannot be an ordinary program clause, for in that case the addition of Holds(rain,now) would trigger the consequence Holds(carry-umbrella,now) which may well be false, and in any case does not express an obligation. A better way to think of an integrity constraint is to view the consequent as a constraint that the database must satisfy if the antecedent holds. This entails in general that the database has to be updated with a true statement about the world. The relevant notions are most easily explained in terms of the derivational machinery of logic programming. Derivations in Logic Programming We first need a piece of terminology. Definition 6 A query is a finite (possibly empty) sequence of proposition letters denoted as ?p1, . . . , pm. Alternatively, a query is called a goal. The empty query, canonically denoted by , is interpreted as ⊥, i.e., a contradiction. Operationally, one should think of a query ?q as the assumption of the formula ¬q, the first step in proving q from P using a reductio ad absurdum argument. In other words, one tries to show that P,¬q |= ⊥. In this context, one rule suffices for this, a rule which reduces a goal to subgoals. Definition 7 Resolution is a derivation rule which takes as input a program clause p1, . . . pn → q and a query ?s1, . . . , q, . . . , sk and produces the query ?s1, . . . p1, . . . pn, . . . , sk. Given a goal ?q several clauses may match with q, so we need a choice rule to provide a unique choice. Since we choose only one clause, derivations become 7.2 Logical Forms in the Suppression Task 191 linear. A linear derivation starting from a query ?A can be pictured as the acid rain-affected tree depicted in figure 7.1. A linear derivation starting from a ?A B1, . . . , Bn → A ?B1, . . . , Bi, . . . , Bn C1, . . . , Cm → Bi ?B1, . . . , Bi−1, C1, . . . , Cm, Bi+1, . . . , Bn ... Figure 7.1 An illustration of a linear derivation with resolution. query ?q is successful if it ends in the empty query (i.e., ⊥); if the derivation is finite but does not end with the empty query it is said to fail finitely. If one does not use a choice rule but executes all possible resolution steps simultaneously one obtains a (rather more healthy–looking) derivation tree. The tree is successful if one branch ends in the empty query; if there is no such branch and all branches are finite, it is said to fail finitely. Finite failure is important in providing the operational semantics for negation: a query ?¬φ is said to succeed if ?φ fails finitely. The relation between derivations and semantics is given by Theorem 2 A query ?φ succeeds with respect to a program P , if P |≈3 φ, i.e., if φ is entailed by the completion of P in the sense of comp(P ) |=3 φ. Likewise, a query ?φ fails with respect to a program P , if P |≈3 ¬φ, i.e., comp(P ) |=3 ¬φ. Integrity Constraints and Derivations An integrity constraint is a query used in a very particular way. Let ?φ be a query, and P a program, then one may or may not have P |≈3 φ. In the latter case, the integrity constraint ?φ succeeds means that P must be transformed by a suitable update into a program P ′ such that P ′ |≈3 φ. In principle, the way to do this is to take a finitely failed branch in the derivation tree and update P with the leaves on the branch. A conditional integrity constraint of the form if ?ψ succeeds, then ?φ succeeds 192 7 Planning and Reasoning: The Suppression Task then means the following: If a program P be given, and P ′ an extension of P such that P ′ |≈3 ψ, then also P ′ |≈3 φ. To return to our example, the integrity constraint which was formulated as (7.2) Holds(rain, t) → Holds(carry-umbrella, t) (7.2) must be interpreted as18 if ?Holds(rain, t) succeeds, (7.3) then ?Holds(carry-umbrella,now) succeeds Suppose that observation has shown that it rains, leading to an update of the database with Holds(rain,now). It follows that the antecedent of the integrity constraint is satisfied, and the agent is now required to satisfy the consequent. The database will contain a name for the action take-umbrella, linked to the rest of the database by Initiates(take-umbrella, carry-umbrella,now), and there will be a general clause to the effect that taking an umbrella now leads to Holds(carry-umbrella, t), for t ≥ now . In order to make the query ?Holds(carry-umbrella,now) succeed, the agent reasons backward from this query using the clauses in the database to conclude that he must take an umbrella. Once he has informed the database that he has done so, the query succeeds, and integrity is restored. Readers who wish to see applications to the suppression task may now jump ahead to the second part of section 7.3, which treats the backward inferences MT and AC. The next (and final) subsection is only essential for the neural implementation discussed in chapter 8. 7.2.4 Constructing Models In this last subsection of section 7.2, we explain how minimal models of a definite logic program can be efficiently computed. As above we start with the simpler case of positive programs. Recall that a positive logic program has clauses of the form p1 ∧ . . . ∧ pn → q, where the pi, q are proposition letters and the antecedent (also called the body of the clause) may be empty. Models of a positive logic program P are given by the fixed–points of a monotone operator.19 18. Here, t must be interpreted as a constant. 19. Monotonicity in this sense is also called continuity. 7.2 Logical Forms in the Suppression Task 193 Definition 8 The operator TP associated to P transforms a model M (viewed as a function M : L −→ {0, 1}, where L is the set of proposition letters) into a model TP (M) according to the following stipulations: if v is a proposition letter, 1. TP (M)(v) = 1 if there exists a set of proposition letters C, true on M, such that ∧ C → v ∈ P ; 2. TP (M)(v) = 0 otherwise. Definition 9 An ordering ⊆ on (two-valued) models is given by: M ⊆ N if all proposition letters true in M are true in N . Lemma 1 If P is a positive logic program, TP is monotone in the sense that M ⊆ N implies TP (M) ⊆ TP (N ). This form of monotonicity would fail if a body of a clause in P contains a negated atom ¬q and also a clause ¬q → s: one can then set up things in such a way that s is true at first, and becomes false later. Hence we will have to complicate matters a bit when considering negation, but this simple case illustrates the use of monotone operators. Monotonicity is important because it implies the existence of so called fixed–points of the operator TP . Definition 10 A fixed point of TP is a model M such that TP (M) = M. Lemma 2 If TP is monotone, it has a least and a greatest fixed point. The least fixed point is the minimal model with respect to the ordering of definition 9. Monotonicity is also important because it allows incremental computation of the minimal model. This is achieved through iteration of TP , as follows. One starts from the 'empty model' M0 in which all proposition letters are false. One then constructs a sequence M0 ⊆ TP (M0) ⊆ TP (TP (M0)) ⊆ . . . ⊆ TnP (M0) ⊆ . . ., where the inclusions follow from lemma 1. It can then be shown that the least fixed point, i.e., the minimal model, can be written as⋃ n T n P (M0). As noted above, other formats for default reasoning such as circumscription do not give this computational information. Computability is a consequence of the syntactic restrictions on logic programs. The logic programs that we need must allow negation in the body of a clause, since we model the natural language conditional 'p implies q' by the clause p∧ ¬ab → q. As observed above, extending the definition of the operator TP with the classical definition of negation would destroy its monotonicity, necessary for the incremental approach to the least fixed point. Our preferred solution is to replace the classical two-valued logic by Kleene's strong three-valued logic, for which see figure 2.2 in chapter 2. We also define an equivalence ↔ by assigning 1 to φ ↔ ψ if φ, ψ have the same truth–value (in {u, 0, 1}) , and 0 otherwise. 194 7 Planning and Reasoning: The Suppression Task We show how to construct models for definite programs, as fixed points of a three-valued consequence operator T 3P . We will drop the superscript when there is no danger of confusing it with its two-valued relative defined above. Definition 11 A three-valued model is an assignment of the truth–values u, 0, 1 to the set of proposition letters. If the assignment does not use the value u, the model is called two-valued. If M,N are models, the relation M ≤ N means that the truth–value of a proposition letter p in M is less than or equal to the truth–value of p in N in the canonical ordering ≤ on u, 0, 1 (i.e., u ≤ 0, 1; 0,1 are incomparable in the ordering). Definition 12 Let P be a program. a. The operator T 3P applied to formulas constructed using only ¬, ∧, and ∨ is determined by the above truth–tables. b. Given a three-valued model M, T 3P (M) is the model determined by (a) T 3P (M)(q) = 1 iff there is a clause20 φ → q such that M |= φ, (b) T 3P (M)(q) = 0 iff there is a clause φ → q in P and for all such clauses, M |= ¬φ, (c) T 3P (M)(q) = u otherwise. The preceding definition ensures that unrestricted negation as failure applies only to proposition letters q which occur in a clause with nonempty antecedent, such as ⊥ → q; proposition letters r about which there is no information at all (not even of the form ⊥ → r) may remain undecided.21 This will be useful later, when we will sometimes want to restrict the operation of negation as failure to ab. Once a literal has been assigned value 0 or 1 by TP , it retains that value at all stages of the construction; if it has been assigned value u, that value may mutate into 0 or 1 at a later stage. Here are two essential results, which will turn out to be responsible for the efficient implementability in neural networks. Lemma 3 If P is a definite logic program, TP is monotone in the sense that M ≤ N implies T 3P (M) ≤ T 3P (N ). Lemma 4 Let P be a definite program. 1. The operator T 3P has a least fixed point, obtained by starting from the model M0 in which all proposition letters have the value u. The least fixed point of T 3P can be shown to be the minimal model of P . 20. Recall that according to definition 4, empty clauses are not allowed. 21. This parallels the similar proviso in the definition of the completion. 7.3 How Closed–World Reasoning Explains Suppression 195 2. The least fixed point of TP is reached in finitely many steps (n + 1 if the program consists of n clauses). 3. All models M of comp(P ) are fixed points of T 3P , and every fixed point is a model. These notions can be elucidated by means of some simple examples. 1. Let the definite program P consist of the single clause p → q. The initial model M0 assigns u to p and q. Inspection of definition 12 shows that M0 is the least fixed point of T 3P . The models which make both p and q true (resp. false) are also fixed points. 2. Let the definite program P consist of the clauses p → q and ⊥ → p. Then M1(p) = T 3P (M0)(p) = 0, M1(q) = T 3P (M0)(q) = u. In the next iteration we get M2(p) = T 3P (M0)(p) = 0 and M2(q) = T 3P (M0)(q) = 0, and this is the least fixed point. 3. Let the definite program P consist of the single clause ¬p → q. The initial model M0 is the least fixed point. 4. Let the definite program P consist of the clauses ¬p → q and ⊥ → p. Then M1(p) = T 3P (M0)(p) = 0, M1(q) = T 3P (M0)(q) = u, whence M1(¬p) = 1. In the next iteration therefore M2(q) = T 3P (M0)(q) = 1, and this is the least fixed point. The last two examples illustrate the semantic effect of closed–world reasoning. If for a proposition letter p, the program P contains the clause ⊥ → p this means (via the completion comp(P )) that p represents a proposition to which closed–world reasoning can be applied. If P does not contain ⊥ → p, nor any other clause in which p occurs as head, p's initial truth–value (u) may never change. Recall (from definition 5) that the nonmonotonic consequence relation P | ≈3 φ is given by "comp(P ) |=3 φ," or in words: all (three-valued) models of comp(P ) satisfy φ. The relation |≈ is completely determined by what happens on the least fixed point. Larger fixed points differ in that some values u in the least fixed point have been changed to 0 or 1 in the larger fixed point; but by the monotonicity property (with respect to truth–values) of Kleene's logic this has no effect on the output, in the sense that an output value 1 cannot be changed into 0 (or conversely). 7.3 How Closed–World Reasoning Explains Suppression The suppression task sets subjects the problem of finding an interpretation which accommodates premises which at least superficially may conflict. It 196 7 Planning and Reasoning: The Suppression Task therefore provides a good illustration of how closed–world reasoning can be used to model human interpretation and reasoning. It is one of the benefits of formalization that it reveals many aspects of the data which are in need of clarification and suggests how finer-grained data might be found, as well as how the formalism may be modified to account for richer data. As the literature review and the sample of new data below will reveal, there are several prominent interpretations subjects may adopt. All that is attempted in this section is to provide an illustrative model of one important interpretation subjects adopt. The explanation of the suppression effect will be presented in two stages, corresponding to the forward inferences (MP and DA) and the backward inferences (MT and AC). 7.3.1 The Forward Inferences: MP and DA We will represent the conditionals in Byrne's experiment as definite clauses of the form p∧¬ab → q, where ab is a proposition which indicates that something abnormal is the case, i.e., a possibly disabling condition. These clauses are collected together as programs. Definition 13 In the following, the term program will refer to a finite set of conditionals of the form A1 ∧ . . . ∧ An ∧ ¬ab → B, together with the clauses ⊥ → ab for all proposition letters of the form ab occurring in the conditionals. Here, the Ai are proposition letters or negations thereof, and B is a propositional letter. We also allow the Ai to be and ⊥. Empty antecedents are not allowed.22 In the following we will therefore represent (10a) as (10b) (10a) If she has an essay, she will study late in the library. (10b) p ∧ ¬ab → q. and (11a) and (11b) both as formulae of the form (11c) (11a) If the library is open, she will study late in the library. (11b) If she has a textbook to read, she will study late in the library. (11c) r ∧ ¬ab′ → q. It is essential that the conditionals are represented as being part of a definite logic program, so that they function as licenses for inference rather than truth– functional connectives. We show that on the basis of this interpretation, the forward inferences MP and DA and their "suppression" correspond to valid argument patterns. in this nonmonotonic logic. The main tool used here is the completion of a program, as a formalization of the closed–world assumption 22. As mentioned before, this definition is formulated because we do not necessarily want to apply closed– world reasoning to all proposition letters, although always to proposition letters of the form ab. 7.3 How Closed–World Reasoning Explains Suppression 197 applied to facts. We emphasize again that in virtue of lemmas 3 and 4, the completion is really "shorthand" for a particular model. Thus, what we will be modeling is how subjects reason toward an interpretation of the premises by suitably adjusting the meaning of the abnormalities. Once they have reached an interpretation, reasoning from that interpretation is trivial. The backward inferences (MT and AC) require the closed–world assumption as applied to rules, and will be treated separately, in section 7.3.2. MP for a Single Conditional Premise Suppose we are given a single conditional p ∧ ¬ab → q and the further information that p (i.e., → p – to economise on notation we will usually write the shorter form in spite of the strictures of definition 13.). The full logic program for this situation is {p; p ∧ ¬ab → q;⊥ → ab}. Closed–world reasoning as formalized in the completion gives the set {p; p ∧ ¬ab ↔ q;⊥ ↔ ab}, which is equivalent to {p; p ↔ q}, from which q follows. This argument can be rephrased in terms of our distinction between two forms of reasoning as follows. Reasoning to an interpretation starts with the general form of a conditional,23 and the decision to apply nonmonotonic closed–world reasoning. The former gives the logic program {p; p ∧ ¬ab → q}; the latter extends this program to {p; p ∧ ¬ab → q;⊥ → ab}, and constructs the completion {p; p ∧ ¬ab ↔ q;⊥ ↔ ab}. As a consequence, one derives as the logical form of the conditional p ↔ q. Reasoning from an interpretation then starts from this logical form and the atomic premise p, and derives q. There are, however, also subjects who refuse to endorse MP, and in the tutorial dialogues we conducted we found that this was because the subject could think of exceptional circumstances preventing the occurrence of q even when p. Such subjects combine the enriched representation of the conditional with a refusal to apply closed–world reasoning to the abnormality. A "Fallacy": DA for a Single Conditional Premise Suppose we are again given a conditional p ∧ ¬ab → q and the further information ¬p.24 Reasoning to an interpretation starts from the program {¬p; p ∧ ¬ab → q;⊥ → ab} and the closed–world assumption. As above, the end result of that reasoning process is {¬p; p ↔ q}. Reasoning from an interpretation 23. There is nothing sacrosanct about this starting point. It may itself be the consequence of a reasoning process, or a different starting point, i.e., a different interpretation of the conditional may be chosen. The formalization chosen is a first approximation to the idea that natural language conditionals allow exceptions. For other purposes more complex formalizations may be necessary. 24. Strictly speaking ¬p is not an allowed clause, but we may interpret ¬p as obtained from the allowed clause ⊥ → p by closed–world reasoning. 198 7 Planning and Reasoning: The Suppression Task then easily derives ¬q.25 A considerable number of subjects do not endorse DA, usually with the motivation that the protagonist may have other reasons for going to the library. This can be viewed as a refusal to apply closed–world reasoning to q, i.e., as defining the completion only with reference to the set {p, ab} (see definition 5 and the examples which illustrate it). MP in the Presence of an Additional Premise As we have seen, if the scenario is such that nothing is said about ab, minimization sets ab equal to ⊥ and the conditional p∧¬ab → q reduces to p ↔ q. Now suppose that the possibility of an abnormality is made salient, e.g., by adding a premise "if the library is open, she will study late in the library" in Byrne's example. This leads to an extension of the set of clauses with the clause r ∧ ¬ab ′ → q. We furthermore propose that the set of clauses is extended with the clause ¬r → ab connecting the two conditionals, because the possibility of an ab-normality is highlighted by the additional premise.26 Although this is not essential, the situation may furthermore be taken to be symmetric, in that the first conditional highlights a possible abnormality relating to the second conditional. The circumstance that the library is open is not a sufficient incentive to go and study there; one must have a purpose for doing so.27 This means that the further condition ¬p → ab ′ for ab′ is added. That is, reasoning toward an interpretation starts with the set {p; p ∧ ¬ab → q; r ∧ ¬ab ′ → q;⊥ → ab;⊥ → ab′;¬r → ab;¬p → ab′}. Applying closed–world reasoning in the form of the completion yields {p; (p ∧ ¬ab) ∨ (r ∧ ¬ab′) ↔ q; (⊥ ∨ ¬r) ↔ ab; (⊥ ∨ ¬p) ↔ ab′}, which reduces to {p; (p ∧ r) ↔ q}. Reasoning from an interpretation is now stuck in the absence of information about r. Here we see nonmonotonicity at work: the minimal model for the case of an additional premise is essentially different from the minimal model of a single conditional premise plus factual information. As will be seen in section 7.4 there are many reasons why nonsuppression occurs, but one hardly if ever sees nonsuppression because of the application of classical logic to conditionals interpreted as material implication. Instead, 25. We wrote "fallacy" in quotes in the section heading, because, contrary to beliefs often expressed in the psychology of reasoning, whether or not an argument pattern such as DA is invalid cannot be determined from its syntactic form alone without recourse to the interpretation. There are no absolute fallacies. 26. Obviously, this is one place where general knowledge of content enters into the selection of appropriate logical form. Nothing in the form of the sentence tells us that the library being open is a boundary condition on her studying late in the library. 27. Evidence for such symmetry can be found in experiment 1 of Byrne et al. [29]. 7.3 How Closed–World Reasoning Explains Suppression 199 nonsuppression seems to be due to forms of closed–world reasoning not yet taken account of here. DA for an Additional Premise Now suppose we have as minor premise ¬p instead of p. Reasoning toward an interpretation derives as above the set {¬p; (p ∧ r) ↔ q}. Since ¬p implies ¬(p ∧ r), reasoning from an interpretation concludes ¬q. One may therefore expect that those subjects who endorsed DA in the two-premise case will not suppress it here. Our data furthermore show that subjects who did not endorse DA in the two-premise case did not endorse it here, and for the same reason. This derivation hides the assumption of symmetry made above, culminating in the condition ¬p → ab ′ and its completion. In the case of MP this assumption does not make a difference, but here it does. One possibility is that no content for ab′ is envisaged, which means that whenever the library is open, the protagonist can be found there. This is called the "strengthening interpretation" in section 7.4.5 below. In this case the second conditional reduces to r → q, in which case one expects suppression. Another possibility is that ab′ is given more content than just ¬p → ab ′, for instance ¬p ∧ ¬s ∧ ¬t → ab ′ for contextually salient s, t. Closed–world reasoning then yields the combined conditional (r ∧ p) ∨ (r ∧ s) ∨ (r ∧ t) → q, which again leads one to expect suppression of DA. This matter will be taken up again in section 7.4.2. MP for an Alternative Premise The alternative conditional is again formalized as r∧¬ab′ → q, but the manner of connection of the conditionals differs. The difference between this case and the previous one is that, by general knowledge, the alternatives do not highlight possible obstacles. This means that the clauses ¬r → ab;¬p → ab ′ are lacking. Reasoning to an interpretation thus starts with the set {p; p ∧ ¬ab → q; r ∧ ¬ab′ → q;⊥ → ab;⊥ → ab′} closed–world reasoning converts this to {p; (p ∧ ¬ab) ∨ r ∧ ¬ab′) ↔ q;⊥ ↔ ab;⊥ ↔ ab′}, which reduces to {p; (p∨r) ↔ q}. Reasoning from an interpretation then easily derives q: no suppression expected. DA for an Alternative Premise We interpret ¬p again as obtained from ⊥ → p by closed–world reasoning. The completion then becomes (p ∨ r ↔ q) ∧ (p ↔ ⊥), and reasoning from 200 7 Planning and Reasoning: The Suppression Task an interpretation is stuck: suppression. Indeed, in Byrne's study [28] DA for this type of problem was applied by only 4% of the participants. However, in the study of Dieussaert et al. [63], 22% applied DA in this case. This could be a consequence of applying negation as failure to r as well (that is, including ⊥ → r in the program), instead of only to abnormalities. Reasoning to an interpretation also decides to what propositions negation as failure must be applied. 7.3.2 The Backward Inferences: MT and AC As we have seen, the forward inferences rely on the completion, that is, the closed–world assumption for facts. We propose that the backward inferences rely in addition on the closed–world assumption for rules. When we come to discuss the neural implementation of the formalism we will see that this explains to some extent why backward inferences are perceived to be more difficult. This section uses the material on integrity constraints introduced in section 7.2.3. AC for a Single Conditional Premise Suppose we have a single conditional premise p∧¬ab → q and a fact q. closed– world reasoning about facts would yield the completion {((p ∧ ¬ab) ∨ ) ↔ q; ab ↔ ⊥}, from which nothing can be concluded about p. Thus this form of closed–world reasoning, like classical logic, does not sanction AC. But now assume that reasoning to an interpretation sets up the problem in such a way that AC is interpreted as an integrity constraint, that is, as the statement if ?q succeeds, then ?p ∧ ¬ab succeeds. In this case, closed–world reasoning for rules can be applied and we may ask what other atomic facts must hold if ?q succeeds. Since the only rule is p ∧ ¬ab → q, it follows that ?p∧¬ab must succeed. For ¬ab this is guaranteed by closed–world reasoning about facts: the query ?ab fails finitely. The truth of p must be posited, however, meaning that the database must be updated with p. In this sense AC is valid. MT for a Single Conditional Premise For MT, the reasoning pattern to be established is if ?q fails, then ?p ∧ ¬ab fails. One starts from the integrity constraint that the query ?q must fail. This can only be if at least one of ?p and ?¬ab fails. Since in this situation we know 7.3 How Closed–World Reasoning Explains Suppression 201 that ¬ab is true (by closed–world reasoning for facts), we must posit that ?p fails. Here is a subject who refuses to apply closed–world reasoning to ab. Occasionally one observes this type of reaction with MP as well, but it is much more frequent in the case of MT. Subject 728 S: Either she has a very short essay to write or no essay. Maybe she had to write an essay but didn't feel like going to the library, or that it was so short that she finished it on time, so she didn't have to stay. AC for an Additional Premise In the case of an additional premise such as If the library is open, she will study late in the library. the program consists of p ∧ ¬ab → q, r ∧ ¬ab′ → q,¬p → ab′,¬r → ab. If the reasoning pattern is AC, one starts with the integrity constraint that the query ?q succeeds. It follows that at least one of ?p∧¬ab, ?r∧¬ab′ must succeed. But given the information about the abnormalities furnished by closed– world reasoning for facts, namely the completions ¬r ↔ ab and ¬p ↔ ab ′, in both cases this means that ?p and ?r must succeed, so that AC is supported. MT for an Additional Premise Now consider MT, for which we have to start from the integrity constraint that ?q must fail. The same reasoning as above shows that at least one of p, r must fail – but we don't know which. We thus expect suppression of MT.29 AC for an Alternative Premise In the case of AC, an alternative premise such as If she has a textbook to read, she will study late in the library. leads to clear suppression (from 55% to 16%). It is easy to see why this must be so. closed–world reasoning for facts reduces the two conditional premises to p → q and r → q by eliminating the abnormalities. Given that ?q must 28. In the experiment conducted by Borensztajn et al. [22]. 29. Dieussaert et al. [63] observed that in the case of MT for an additional premise, 35.3% of subjects, when allowed to choose compound answers, chose ¬p ∧ ¬r, whereas 56.9% chose ¬p ∨ ¬r. The second answer has just been explained. The first answer can be explained if subjects actually interpret the additional premise as alternative, or in other words interpret the conditional premises as independent. With these aggregate data it is hard to tell; section 7.4 contains some data relevant to choice of interpretation. 202 7 Planning and Reasoning: The Suppression Task succeed, closed–world reasoning for rules concludes that at least one of ?p, ?r must succeed – but we don't know which. It is interesting at this point to look at an experiment in Dieussaert et al. [63] where subjects are allowed to give compound answers such as p ∧ q or p ∨ q.30 For AC, 90.7% of subjects then chose the nonmonotonically correct p ∨ r. In our own sample, those who don't cite refusal to endorse closed–world reasoning for rules as a reason. MT for an Alternative Premise Turning to MT, we do not expect a lower rate of endorsment than in the twopremise case, because of the following argument. If ?¬q succeeds, ?q must fail finitely. This can only happen if all the branches in the derivation starting from ?q fail finitely, which means that both ?p and ?r must fail finitely. In the data of Dieussaert et al. for MT, 96.3% of the subjects, when allowed to choose compound answers, indeed chose ¬p ∧ ¬r. 7.3.3 Summary Let us retrace our steps. Byrne claimed that both valid and invalid inferences can be suppressed, based on the content of supplementary material; therefore, the form of sentences would determine only partially the consequences that people draw from them. Our analysis is different. Consider first the matter of form and content. We believe that logical form is not simply read off from the syntactic structure of the sentences involved, but is assigned on the basis of "content" – not only that of the sentences themselves but also that of the context. In this case the implied context – a real-life situation of going to a library – makes it probable that the conditionals are not material implications but some kind of defaults. We then translate the conditionals, in conformity with this meaning, into a formal language containing the ab, ab ′, . . . formulas; more importantly, in this language the conditional is a special, noniterable non-truth-functional connective. However, translation is just the first step in imposing logical form. The second step consists in associating a semantics and a definition of validity to the formal language. For example, in our case the definition of validity is given in terms of minimal models, leading to a nonmonotonic concept of validity. Once logical form is thus fixed (but not before!), one may inquire what follows from the premises provided. In this case the inferences observed correspond to valid 30. These authors correctly argue that Byrne's experiment is flawed in that a subject is allowed to judge only for the antecedent or for consequent of the first conditional whether it follows from the premises supplied. This makes it impossible for the subjects that draw a conclusion which pertains to both conditional premises. Accordingly, the authors also allow answers of the form (¬)A(∧)(∨)(¬)B, where A, B are atomic. Unfortunately, since they also require subjects to choose only one answer among all the possibilities given, the design is flawed. This is because there exist dependencies among the answers (consider, e.g., the set {p ∨ q, p ∧ q, p, q}) and some answers are always true (e.g., p ∨ ¬p). Thus, the statistics yielded by the experiment are unfortunately not interpretable. 7.4 Data from Tutorial Dialogues 203 inferences, given the assignment of logical form. Hence we would not say that content has beaten form here, but rather that content contributes to the choice of a logical form appropriate to content and context. There are many different ways of assigning logical form, and that of classical logic is not by any means the most plausible candidate for commonsense reasoning; indeed systems for closed–world reasoning can provide formal explanations for the variety of reasoning behavior observed. 7.4 Data from Tutorial Dialogues The previous sections have introduced the formal machinery of closed–world reasoning and have shown how suppression of inferences can be a consequence of applying a form of closed–world reasoning to an enriched representation of the conditional as a ternary logical connective: "if p then q" is formally represented as p ∧ ¬ab → q, which can be viewed as a single connective with arguments p, q, ab. However, we view this formal model as the starting point, not the endpoint, of empirical investigations. A host of empirical questions are left open by the data obtained by Byrne and others, such as 1. Do individual subjects exhibit consistent patterns of suppression and nonsuppression, across materials and across inference patterns?31 2. Is the second conditional premise always assigned to one of the categories "additional" or "alternative," or are there other possibilities? 3. More generally, to what type of discourse is the subject assimilating this peculiar material?32 4. Is there evidence that (suppressing) subjects indeed view the conditional as exception tolerant? 5. More generally, what is the interpretation of the conditional assumed by the subject?33 6. Is there a uniform description of what nonsuppressing individuals are doing? In particular, are they all applying classical logic to conditionals interpreted as material implication? 31. That is, suppression of, say, MP in one kind of material leads to suppression of MP for other materials; suppression of MP leads to suppression of MT in those cases where it is endorsed, etc. 32. Peculiar, because it is hard to imagine a single person uttering these sentences in a single discourse act. The sentences would seem to be more natural when uttered by different participants in a discourse. 33. e.g., the running example "if she has an essay, she will study late in the library" can be interpreted as a generic (referring to a habit), or as pertaining to an individual occasion. This difference becomes important when incorporating the contribution of the second conditional. 204 7 Planning and Reasoning: The Suppression Task These questions and others will be discussed using dialogue data obtained by our students. Our principal sources here are two experiments conducted by our students, A. Lechler [168] and G. Borensztajn et al. [22]. 7.4.1 Suppression of MP Exists But in the dialogues it is usually formulated positively: the conclusion holds if the antecedent of the second (additional) conditional holds. This does not seem to be a simple repetition of the second conditional, but rather the inference of the conclusion when the antecedent of the second conditional is added to the premises.34 We present two examples of this phenomenon.35 The reader can see from the first excerpt that the experimenter tried to mitigate the pragmatic infelicity of the discourse by assigning the sentences to different participants in a conversation. Subject 25. E: Again three sentences: If the green light is on, the rabbit is in the cage. If the door is closed, the rabbit is in the cage. I can see that the green light is on. So, imagine that's a conversation, you hear these sentences, what can you conclude now? S: What I conclude? If the cage door is shut, then the rabbit is in the cage. Again, you've met one of the two criteria for the rabbit being in the cage. The green light is on, the rabbit is in the cage. Um, but we don't know whether or not the door is open or not. If the door's shut, then that's it, we got it for sure, the rabbit is definitely in the cage. E: So, you are not sure now? S: I'm not sure because I don't know whether the door is open or not. The point about the door being open or not hasn't been cleared up to my satisfaction. The point about the green light has been cleared up to my satisfaction, but not the point about whether the door is open or not. If the door is open, I'm not sure the rabbit's in the cage, it's probably somewhere else by this time. The following excerpt shows the same type of answer, which then mutates into a conditional of the form p ∧ r → q. Subject 2. S: Ok yeah I think it is likely that she stays late in the library tonight, but it depends if the library is open. . . so perhaps I think [pauses]. yeah, in a way I think hmm what does it say to me? I mean the fact that you first say that she has an essay to write then she stays late in the library, but then you add to it if the library stays open she stays late in the library so perhaps she's not actually in the library tonight, because the library's not open. I don't think it's a very good way of putting it. E: How would you put it? S: I would say, if Marian has an essay to write, and the library stays open late, then she does stay late in the library. These answers can be accounted for in a straightforward manner by the formal model: the addition of the premise r licenses the inference that q. 34. Compare the analogous difference in classical logic between the implication φ → ψ and the entailment φ |= ψ. 35. Similar data have been obtained by Dieussert et al. [63]. 7.4 Data from Tutorial Dialogues 205 7.4.2 Evidence for the Involvement of Closed–World Reasoning in Suppression This heading covers a number of issues, namely 1. evidence for the conditional as an exception-tolerant construct p∧¬ab → q, 2. evidence for closed–world reasoning with respect to exceptions, including redefining ab, 3. evidence for closed–world reasoning with respect to arbitrary propositions not of the form ab. The reader may wonder why we cared to separate (2) and (3). There is a clear theoretical motivation for the distinction, since the abnormalities play a special role in the system, e.g., because they occur negatively, and because their definitions can change. On the empirical side there appears to be some form of "double dissociation" between the two reasoning styles, in the sense that suppression of MP and MT for an additional premise (which requires (2)) appears to be independent of the suppression of AC and DA for an alternative premise (which requires (3)). In chapter 9 we will see that people with autism tend to be good at (3) but bad at (2). Conversely, we have data36 showing that a high degree of suppression of MP (99% ⇓ 55%, i.e., from 99% down to 55%) and MT (86% ⇓ 48%) for an additional premise is compatible with a very low rate of endorsement of AC (19%) in the two-premise case. As to the question what "evidence" means here: we mean something stronger than "behavior in accordance with the predictions of the model." Ideally the subject's reasoning in the dialogue should reflect some of the considerations that are formalized in the closed–world computation, for instance, in an utterance of the form: "I can see there are such and such exceptions possible, but since nothing is said about these here I assume ...." Such utterances are rare, but they do occur. Subject 7. S: . . . that she has to write an essay. because she stays till late in the library when she has to write an essay, and today she stays till late in the library. E: Could there be other reasons for her to stay late in the library? S: That could be possible, for example, maybe she reads a very long book. But as I understand it she stays late in the library only if she has to write an essay. The italicized phrase seems to point to closed–world reasoning. Evidence for (1) can be found particularly in subjects who hesitate to endorse two-premise MT (i.e., MT with one conditional and one categorical premise). To repeat a quotation given earlier: 36. These were obtained by Judith Pijnacker at the F.C. Donders Centre for Neuroimaging , Nijmegen, Netherlands. 206 7 Planning and Reasoning: The Suppression Task Subject 7. S: Either she has a very short essay to write or no essay. Maybe she had to write an essay but didn't feel like going to the library, or that it was so short that she finished it on time, so she didn't have to stay. The subject envisages abnormalities such as "didn't feel like going," but does not at first apply closed–world reasoning to it. Now look at the continuation of this conversation: E: But if you look again at the first sentence... S: So she doesn't have to write an essay today, because she doesn't stay in the library till late. Prompting by the experimenter thus leads to closed–world reasoning, eliminating the exceptions that the subject originally explicitly entertained. Evidence for the manipulation of abnormalities can also be found in the context of DA for three premises, where the second conditional is of the additional type. In section 7.3 we showed that, given a certain definition of the abnormalities involved, DA is not suppressed, in conformity with the data of Byrne and others. However, our own data37 show considerable suppression in this case (42% ⇓ 19%). We explained in section 7.3 that this is likely to be due to a different definition of the abnormalities. Indeed we find a subject who does precisely this, in an explicit manner. Subject 1. S: Marian doesn't have an essay to write, which means she would not stay late in the library, but the second condition says that if the library stays open that she will stay late in the library, but it doesn't say dependent or independent of the essay that she might have to write, so she could still stay late in the library if it's open to do something else. E: So you're saying that . . . S: that there could be another reason for her to go to the library and to stay late in the library . . . E: . . . and the fact that she doesn't have an essay to write. . . S: doesn't mean that she won't go to the library and stay there till late. E: OK, so she doesn't have an essay to write, then normally you'd say she wouldn't stay late in the library. S: Well, it doesn't really say because the second condition is that if the library is open, she stays late in the library; so apparently there could be another reason for her to stay in the library. E: And that being . . . S: a book she might want to read, some research she has to do, maybe she fancies someone there. E: And if you had to reformulate the text the way you understood it, as text for a following experiment? S: You could give other reasons for her to stay in the library, or you could indicate whether there are other reasons for her to stay late in the library. 37. See footnote 36. 7.4 Data from Tutorial Dialogues 207 The italicized phrase says that the additional conditional suggests that "she" might have a reason to go the library, different from having an essay, and these reasons are detailed in the subject's next utterance. The subject thus rejects the completion of ¬p → ab ′, but in the process she highlights the fact that there is a hidden ¬ab ′ in the second conditional about which some clarity must be obtained first. To conclude, we give a lovely excerpt showing the discourse role that closed– world reasoning plays. Subject 2. S: OK, it's likely that she has to write an essay; it's also possible that she's staying late in the library because she has something else to do. so I'm not sure that she has to write an essay, but it's likely. E: If you had to describe this situation to someone else, would you describe it in a different way? S: Well, if I would say it like this, in this order, I would suggest or I would mean to suggest with the second sentence that she has to write an essay, that she is writing an essay and I could leave out the second sentence. It does suggest that she is writing an essay, because otherwise why would you bother saying the first sentence? You could just say she's staying late in the library. E: But if you were just thinking about Marian in real life you see her studying late in the library, what might you think then? S: Oh, then I think she must have some deadlines coming up. E: But not necessarily that she has an essay to write? S: From this? [pointing to card] E: You know this information (someone has told you this information) and you see Marian studying late in the library. S: Oh, then I think she's probably writing an essay. E: So, you don't think she might be doing something else? S: Well, yeah, of course it's possible, but because I was told this, I'm more likely to take this as a first option. The italicized phrase says it all: the only point of using the conditional whose antecedent is confirmed is to make the hearer infer the antecedent via closed– world reasoning (cf. the last sentence). 7.4.3 Is there a Role for Classical Logic? In the normal population, nonsuppression because of strict adherence to classical logic appears to be rare.38 The following excerpt appears to be an instance, although only after some prompting by the experimenter. Subject 12. S: [reading] If John goes fishing, he will have a fish supper. If John catches fish, he will have a fish supper. John is almost always lucky when he goes fishing. John is going fishing. 38. In chapter 9 we shall see that the situation is markedly different in a population of autistic people. 208 7 Planning and Reasoning: The Suppression Task E: So, what follows here? S: There's a good chance of having a fish supper. E: What could prevent him here from having a fish supper? S: If he doesn't catch a fish. E: Okay, so what... S: Well, ah, not, not necessarily actually, he is going fishing, so he might have bought fish supper. E: So, do you think... So, if you know that he catches fish, do you know then for sure that he will have a fish supper? S: Well, it says of John: if he goes fishing, he WILL have a fish supper, so he may have fish supper, even if he doesn't catch fish. E: Which information do you need to be sure that he will have a fish supper? S: Um..., that he is going fishing, I don't know. At first the subject suppresses the MP inference in the sense of qualifying it by "a good chance," noting that not catching a fish is a disabling condition, but he then decides to stick to the literal wording of the conditional (see the emphasis on "will"), and invents a reason why John might still have a fish supper if he doesn't catch a fish. A clearer instance is given in Subject 8. S: The second [conditional] again has no function. If you suppose that it is always the case that when she has an essay to write, she studies late in the library, then of course she now stays late in the library. 7.4.4 Nonsuppression Comes in Different Flavors Contrary to first impressions, nonsuppression may also be a consequence of closed–world reasoning; it need not be stubborn adherence to classical logic. In the next excerpt, the experimenter is reading the experimental material aloud, so that the experiment becomes partly a recall task. Subject 2. E: . . . ?If she has an essay to write, she will be in the library. If she has to train for a competition, she will be in the gym. If the library stays open, then she will be in the library. Oh, I remember her telling me that she has to hand in an essay next week.? So, where would you look for her now? S: In the library. E: Why? S: Because, you said: if she has an essay to write then she will be in the library, and it stays open. E: Okay, so, do you know that it stays open? S: Didn't the guy just say that it stays open? While it stays open. E: It says: if the library stays open, she will be in the library. S: Okay, then I would go to the library, I would bet that the library is open. E: Okay. Could you think of any situations where she has an essay to write, but she isn't in the library? 7.4 Data from Tutorial Dialogues 209 S: Just random ones, like if she was going to the library, and then she saw her boyfriend and they decided to go out for coffee instead [laughing].... Although the situation that the library is open was presented as hypothetical (since it occurs as the antecedent of a conditional), the subject's recall is that of a fact. This is a form of credulous reasoning; it is assumed that all the conditions necessary for the first conditional to apply in fact hold, and that the antecedent of the second conditional is one such condition. It is easy to model this type of reasoning as an instance of closed–world reasoning. Suppose the premise set is formalized as {p; p ∧ ¬ab → q; r ∧ ¬ab ′ → q}, then the second conditional again contributes the premise ¬r → ab, but the credulousness now has to be represented39 as the integrity constraint ?¬ab succeeds. That is, ?ab must fail finitely, from which it follows (using ¬r → ab) that ?r must succeed. Note that this form of credulousness does not make the abnormality in the representation of the conditional superfluous: the abnormality still has an essential role in integrating the necessary conditions into the first conditional. The argument given is also a form of closed–world reasoning, in that the abnormality is connected only to the necessary condition explicitly introduced. Note, however, that subject 2 could open up his world when prompted to do so by the experimenter.40 Looking back to our closed–world analysis of suppression, we can see the similarities and differences between the two forms of credulousness. What is common is that the first conditional is not taken as false after the second (additional) conditional has been digested, as a skeptical stance would require. Suppression is, however, due to a residue of skepticism, in which the subject remains agnostic on the abnormality. Nonsuppression is then a consequence of also eradicating this residue. 7.4.5 Different Roles of the Second Conditional Byrne originally distinguished between alternative and additional conditionals and assumed that her experimental material is classified by all subjects in the same way. This is not true: often additional conditionals are interpreted as alternatives, and in isolated cases alternatives can be interpreted as additionals as well.41 In these circumstances rough statistical data on how many subjects do or do not suppress are meaningless. Subjects may fail to suppress because 39. This is not ad hoc, but the standard "dynamic" way of treating presupposition accommodation. 40. The interpretation of "the library is open" as presupposition provides interesting indirect support for the present analysis of integration of premises, using abnormalities. At least, according to the theory of presuppositions, the use of "if . . . then" cancels possible presuppositions of its arguments; "the library is open" now functions as a presupposition because of its link to the abnormality. 41. Here is an extreme case of this phenomenon. The two conditionals are If Bill has AIDS, he will make a good recovery and If Bill has cholera, he will make a good recovery. One subject interpreted this as saying If Bill has AIDS and cholera, he will make a good recovery. 210 7 Planning and Reasoning: The Suppression Task they interpret the additional premise as an alternative, or take the antecedent of the additional premise to be true, as above. Compounding the difficulty is that sometimes the interpretation of the second conditional fits in neither category. An example is furnished by Subject 10. S: She is late in the library. Actually I can conclude she has no life because she will study late in the library as long as it is open. I wonder what she should do if she has an essay and the library is closed. Subject 23. E: Hm, hm. Then you read the next message, which says: If the library is open, she'll be in the library. S: Um, yeah, then I think it was getting increasingly likely that she was there. E: What do you think that person meant? S: Um, just exactly what she, exactly what they said, really. That she can be found most of the time in the library, um, she's hard-working. The additional premise is thus interpreted as strengthening the first one, by saying something like "in fact she's such a diligent student, she'll be in the library whenever it is open." Formally, this means that the abnormality in the representation of the second conditional, r ∧ ¬ab′ → q, is set to ⊥: no circumstance (such as not having an essay) is envisaged in which the protagonist is not in the library. The premise set then reduces to {p; p∧r → q; r → q}, which is equivalent to {p; r → q}. Thus we get suppression of MP (and MT); but also of AC and DA, unlike the case where the additional conditional leads to the inclusion of the clause ¬r → ab. It is also possible to interpret the second conditional as denying the first one. For example, with the conditionals introduced in footnote 41, one can imagine that the first one is said by a novice medical student, the second by an experienced professor, correcting the student. Again we have suppression of MP, in this case because of a skeptical reading. Subject 16. E: You have a medical student saying: If Bill has AIDS, he will make a good recovery. And the situation is: Bill has AIDS. (...) E: If you also had a professor of medicine saying: If Bill has cholera, he will make a good recovery? (...) E: What do you think why the professor is saying that, in this situation? S: The "if cholera" part? E: Yeah. S: I think he's saying you can't recover from AIDS. But if he had cholera, then he'd have a chance to recover. 7.4 Data from Tutorial Dialogues 211 7.4.6 Suppression is Relative to Task Setup As mentioned in section 7.3 it was noticed by Dieussaert et al. [63] that suppression of inferences can be observed only if the experimenter's questions relate to the antecedent and consequent of the first conditional. If a more liberal answer set is supplied, for example including "¬p ∨ ¬r" in the case of MT (i.e., when given ¬q), most subjects are willing to conclude something. Strictly speaking the results in [63] were vitiated by a flaw in the design of the response choice offered, or answer set, but the idea is suggestive. Redoing the experiment with a better design (on ten subjects) showed the pattern exhibited in table 7.2 (taken from [22]). Many phenomena alluded to earlier can also be seen in this table. The main difference with the earlier table 7.1 is that subjects could choose from a more liberal answer set; the table lists the answers most frequently given. Table 7.2 Data from [22]. Role Content Conditional 1 If she has an essay to write, she will study late in the library. Categorical She has an essay to write. Conclusion She will study late in the library. (MP 100%) Alternative If she has a textbook to read, she will study late in the library. Conclusion She will study late in the library. (MP 100%) Additional If the library stays open, she will study late in the library. Conclusion She will study late in the library. (MP 40%) Conclusion The library is open (presupposition to previous conclusion 30%) Conclusion If the library is open, she will study late in the library. (MP42 70%) Conditional 1 If she has an essay to write, she will study late in the library. Categorical She will study late in the library. Conclusion She has an essay to write. (AC 50%) Alternative If she has a textbook to read, she will study late in the library. Conclusion She has an essay to write or she has a textbook to read. (AC 80%) Additional If the library stays open, then she will study late in the library. Conclusion The library is open. (AC 80%) Conditional 1 If she has an essay to write, she will study late in the library. Categorical She doesn't have an essay to write. Conclusion She will not study late in the library. (DA 30%) Alternative If she has a textbook to read, she will study late in the library. Conclusion If she has no textbook to read, she will not study late in the library. (DA 70%) Additional If the library stays open, she will study late in the library. Conclusion She will not study late in the library. (DA 10%) Conditional 1 If she has an essay to write, she will study late in the library. Categorical She will not study late in the library. Conclusion She doesn't have an essay to write. (MT 80%) Alternative If she has a textbook to read, she will study late in the library. Conclusion She doesn't have an essay to write. (MT 100%) Additional If the library stays open, she will study late in the library. Conclusion She doesn't have an essay to write or the library is closed. (MT 70%) 212 7 Planning and Reasoning: The Suppression Task Of the four subjects who continue to draw the MP inference, three do this because of the credulous inference that the library is closed. As we have seen in section 7.4.3, there is one subject who adheres strictly to classical logic, but the remaining six state their inference in conditional form, the formal rationale of which was explained in section 7.4.1. In the case of DA for an alternative premise, seven subjects choose a conditional formulation; it is interesting that closed–world reasoning is much more in evidence here than in the other two forms of DA. Lastly, the answers to MT and AC show that allowing disjunctions greatly increases subjects' tendency to give an answer. The enlarged answer sets thus provide strong evidence that most subjects represent the effect of an additional premise formally as p ∧ r → q and that of an alternative premise formally as p ∨ r → q. There are probably few subjects who reason completely classically, that is, who adopt the uniform interpretation p ∨ r → q for the premise set and who endorse neither DA nor AC; in this sample there were none. The term "suppression effect" for this phenomenon is something of a misnomer, since few subjects say that there is no valid conclusion. This observation directs the spotlight away from inference and toward interpretation. 7.4.7 The Consistent Subject: a Mythical Beast? The question arises, therefore, whether these subjects have consistent interpretations. It is impossible to answer this question definitively based on the data that we have, because those same data suggest that there are so many possibilities. We therefore make a reasoned choice among the possibilities, based on our theoretical understanding of the main interpretive mechanisms: the meaning of the conditional and the choice of logical form. Among the former we count the interpretation of the (intended) additional conditional as strengthening; the latter includes, for example, the precise form of closed–world reasoning, e.g., whether it applies only to abnormalities or across the board. With these distinctions in mind we consider the data of [22]. Here seven out of ten subjects behave in a manner predicted by strengthening and closed–world reasoning with respect to abnormalities. The remaining three subjects endorse MP in the case of an additional premise, but suppress MT. This is hard to make sense of: the presupposition interpretation as illustrated in section 7.4.4, which works well to explain nonsuppression of MP, would seem to predict that MT is also not suppressed, unless negative contexts do not trigger presupposition accommodation. Of the seven subjects who behaved consistently with strengthening and closed– world reasoning with respect to abnormalities, six also behaved more or less as predicted by full closed–world reasoning, in the following sense: closed– world reasoning is not very much in evidence for two premises (one conditional, 7.5 Probabilities Don't Help as Much as Some Would Like 213 one categorical), but becomes prominent when a second conditional premise is added. This can be formulated as a form of closed–world reasoning in its own right, but we need not do so here. Suffice it to say that although a much larger data set is needed to get statistical significance, the available results show that the majority of subjects are consistent to a considerable extent. 7.5 Probabilities Don't Help as Much as Some Would Like After this excursion to the data, which showed a great variety of possible interpretations, we return to the literature and tackle one particular proposal for a monolithic interpretation of the suppression phenomenon. A number of authors believe that the main problem with the "mental models" account of the suppression effect lies in its assumption of an absolute connection between antecedent and consequent, and propose that this should be replaced by a form of conditional probability, either qualitative or quantitative. We discuss these views here because they furnish a good example of why probabilistic methods in the study of cognition cannot stand on their own, but have to be supplemented by an account of how the probabilistic interpretation is set up in the first place.43 As a preliminary, consider the work of Chan and Chua [33], who correctly upbraid both the "rules" and "models" camps for their failure "to give a principled account of the interpretive component involved in reasoning." Chan and Chua propose a "salience" theory of the suppression task, according to which antecedents are more or less strongly connected with their consequents – "operationalized as ratings of perceived importance [of the antecedent in the second conditional premise] as additional requirements for the occurrence of the consequent [33,p. 222]." Thus Chan and Chua adopt a "weak regularity" interpretation of the conditional (somewhat like a conditional probability) instead of the material implication, and they assume their subjects do too. They correctly argue that both the "rules" and the "models" theories do not fit this interpretation, because [W]e believe that in the suppression experiments, the way subjects cognise the premise "If R then Q" may be more fine-grained than merely understanding the antecedent as an additional requirement or a possible alternative [33,p. 222]. Their main experimental manipulation accordingly varies the strengths of the connections between antecedents and consequents, and shows that the magnitude of the suppression effect depends upon such variations. In principle such results can be modelled in the framework presented here, if one equates the strength of the connection between antecedent and consequent with the (inverse of the) number of preconditions (i.e., r such that ¬r → ab) that have to 43. This section assumes the reader is acquainted with probability theory, and knows the basics of Bayesian networks. 214 7 Planning and Reasoning: The Suppression Task be fulfilled. The more preconditions, the weaker the connection. A full-fledged probabilistic account of the suppression effect is presented in Stevenson and Over [270], who performed four experiments designed to support the idea that subjects interpret the materials of Byrne's experiment in terms of conditional probabilities. Two quotations give a flavor of their position. In motivating the naturalness of a probabilistic interpretation they argue that it is, in fact, rational by the highest standards to take proper account of the probability of one's premises in deductive reasoning [270,p. 615]. . . . performing inferences from statements treated as absolutely certain is uncommon in ordinary reasoning. We are mainly interested in what subjects will infer from statements in ordinary discourse that they may not believe with certainty and may even have serious doubts about [270,p. 621]. How are we to interpret claims that subjects' interpretations are "probabilistic"? First there is a technical point to be made. Strictly speaking, of course, one is concerned not with the probability of a premise but with a presumably true statement about conditional probability. The authors cannot mean that subjects may entertain doubts about their own assignments of conditional probabilities; or if they do, the formalism becomes considerably more complicated. In fact, in this and other papers on probabilistic approaches to reasoning there is some ambiguity about what is intended. At one point we read about "probability of one's premises," only to be reminded later that we should not take this as an espousal of the cognitive reality of probability theory: "Even relatively simple derivations in that system are surely too technical for ordinary people [270,p. 638]." So there is a real question as to how we are to interpret occurrences of the phrase "conditional probability." In our opinion, at least two issues should be distinguished here – the issue of the role that knowledge and belief play in arriving at an interpretation, and the issue whether the propositions which enter into those interpretations are absolute or probabilistic. We agree that subjects frequently entertain interpretations with propositions which they believe to be less than certain. We agree that subjects naturally and reasonably bring to bear their general knowledge and belief in constructing interpretations. And we agree that basing action, judgment or even belief on reasoning requires consideration of how some discourse relates to the world. But we also believe that subjects can arrive at both absolute and less than absolute interpretations only by some process of constructing an interpretation. Stevenson and Over need there to be a kind of discourse in which statements are already interpreted on some range of models known to both experimenter and subject within which it is meaningful to assign likelihoods. Most basically, hearers need to decide what domain of interpretation speakers intend before they can possibly assign likelihoods. The most important point we want to make about probabilistic interpretations is this: probabilistic and logical interpretations share an important characteristic 7.5 Probabilities Don't Help as Much as Some Would Like 215 in that they necessarily require the same interpretive mechanisms. For instance, as designers of expert systems well know, it is notoriously difficult to come up with assignments of conditional probabilities which are consistent in the sense that they can be derived from a joint probability distribution. This already shows that the probabilistic interpretation may face the same problems as the logical interpretation: both encounter the need to assure consistency. Now consider what goes into manipulating conditional probabilities of rules, assuming that subjects are indeed able to assign probabilities.44 Recall that an advantage of the probabilistic interpretation is supposed to be that conditional probabilities can change under the influence of new information, such as additional conditionals. What makes this possible? Let the variable Y represent the proposition "she studies late in the library," X the proposition "she has an essay," and Z: "the library is open." These variables are binary, with outcomes in {0, 1}. We first study MP. We are then given that X = 1. Probabilistic modus ponens asks for the a posteriori probability P (Y = 1), and by Bayes' rule this equals the a priori probability P (Y = 1 | X = 1). The value of this a priori probability depends, however, on what other variables are present; this is the analogue of the computation of the logical form of the conditional in the logical case. One appealing way to describe this process is by means of a Bayesian network: a graph which represents causal (in)dependencies, together with the conditional probabilities that have to be estimated. In the case of one categorical and one conditional premise, the network is of the form depicted in (figure 7.2). In this case P (Y | X) has to be estimated, and P (Y = 1) can be derived from this estimate by Bayes' rule. The processing of the second conditional is represented by the move from a Bayesian network figure 7.2, to one of the form as depicted in figure 7.3. The conditional probability that has to be estimated is now P (Y | X, Z), and this estimate cannot be obtained from P (Y | X) and P (Y | Z) separately because of possible dependencies. X Y Figure 7.2 Bayesian network for probabilistic modus ponens. Indeed, the additional character of the premise is reflected in the entry in the conditional probability table associated to the network in figure 7.3 which says that P (Y = 1 | X = 1, Z = 0) equals zero. Hence Y is dependent on Z given X , and the new P (Y | X) = P (Y | X = 1, Z = 1)P (Z = 1) given by marginalization on P (Y | X, Z) may well differ from the earlier P (Y | X) estimated in the context of figure 7.2. As a consequence we have P (Y = 1) = P (Y = 1 | X = 1) = P (Y = 1 | X = 1, Z = 1)P (Z = 1). 44. We are skeptical, but also think probabilistic approaches to reasoning only make sense under this assumption. 216 7 Planning and Reasoning: The Suppression Task X Y Z Figure 7.3 Bayesian network with second conditional premise. Even if P (Y | X = 1, Z = 1) is high, probabilistic MP will be suppressed in the absence of the further information that P (Z = 1) is high. Now let us see what happens in the case of an alternative premise, also represented by Z. The specific alternative character can now by captured by the assumption that Y is independent of Z given X: P (Y | X = 1, Z) = P (Y | X = 1). In this case P (Y = 1) is equal to the originally given P (Y = 1 | X = 1), and no suppression is expected. The upshot of this discussion of Stevenson and Over [270] is that moving to a probabilistic interpretation of the premises does not obviate the need for an interpretive process which constructs a model for the premises, here a Bayesian network, where the associated conditional probability tables are determined by the content of the conditional premises. Human reasoning may well mostly be about propositions which are less than certain, and known to be less than certain, but our processes of understanding which meaning is intended have to work initially by credulously interpreting the discourse which describes the situation, and in doing so accommodating apparent inconsistencies, repairs, and revisions. Only after we have some specification of the domain (the variables and their relations of causal dependence) can we start consistently estimating probabilities in the light of our beliefs about what we have been asked to suppose. Thus a probabilistic treatment needs the same interpretive processes as the logical treatment of section 7.3; and the alleged advantage of conditional probabilities in allowing new information to modify values can be captured easily by the enriched representation of the conditional given in section 7.2. If these observations are combined with the authors' insistence on the fact that probabilities have no cognitive reality, we see that there is no reason to prefer a probabilistic treatment over a logical one.45 45. Oaksford and Chater [203] present models of probabilistic interpretations of the suppression task and show that these models can fit substantial parts of the data from typical suppression experiments. What is particularly relevant in the current context is that these authors, like Stevenson and Over, do not present the probability calculus as a plausible processing model, but merely as a computational-level model in Marr's sense – that is, a model of what the subjects' mental processes are "designed" to perform. In contrast, the nonmonotonic logic presented here as a computational model for the suppression effect is also intended as a processing model, via the neural implementation given in chapter 8. 8 Implementing Reasoning in NeuralNetworks While discussing, in chapter 5, the various "schools" in the psychology of reasoning, we adopted as an organizing principle David Marr's three levels of inquiry [183,chapter 1] 1. Identification of the information–processing task as an input–output function 2. Specification of an algorithm which computes that function 3. Neural implementation of the algorithm specified The previous chapter can be viewed as being concerned with the first two levels: the information–processing task is credulously incorporating new information, and as an algorithm we proposed logic programming.1 The present chapter is devoted to the third level. We show how a particular way of executing a logic program, by means of monotone operators as defined in chapter 7, section 7.2.4, corresponds to computation in a suitable recurrent neural network in the following sense: the stable state of the network is the least fixed point of the monotone operator. In itself this observation is not new.2 By now there exists a huge literature on "neural symbolic integration," which started from the seminal paper of Hölldobler and Kalinke [130]. Another landmark in this area is d'Avila Garcez et al. [59] which, among much else, replaced the idealized neurons (with binary thresholds) used in [130], by sigmoid activation functions, thus enhancing learning capabilities. There is much more, and the Internet fortunately excuses us from giving a complete bibliography. The reason that we devote a chapter to this topic is, first of all, that this literature is concerned with machine intelligence rather than cognitive processing, and furthermore that we propose a very different neural implementation of negation (based on three-valued logic), which does not need restrictions on the logic programs which can be made to 1. Strictly speaking, though, a logic program is a specification for an algorithm, not the algorithm itself, since control steps have to be added in the execution, for example, selection of program clauses. 2. When writing [266] we were unfortunately not aware of the results that were obtained in this direction. 218 8 Implementing Reasoning in Neural Networks correspond to a neural net.3 In the resulting neural network a special role is assigned to inhibition, and this may have some relevance for the study of disorders of executive function in the brain. This idea will be put to work in chapter 9, which is devoted to autism. Three-valued logic also has intrinsic cognitive plausibility. One obvious reason is that it allows some propositions to be undecided, that is, not subject to negation as failure. An equally important reason is that three-valued semantics treats truth and falsity as independent, unlike twovalued semantics. One may view a proposition p as a pair (p+, p−), where p+ is the "true component" of p, and likewise p− the "false component," with the following intuitive meaning. Evidence for p+ and p− can be collected independently; but of course one has to take care that as soon as enough evidence has been gathered for one component, the other component is inhibited. Thus computation of truth–values can proceed partially in parallel, a feature that will become visible in the structure of the neural networks.4 8.1 Closed–World Reasoning and Neural Nets There have been several attempts to model logical reasoning using neural networks, starting from McCulloch and Pitts's[188] observation that classical truth functions can be computed using networks of idealized neurons. Definition 14 A computational unit, or unit for short, is a function with the following input-output behavior: 1. Inputs are delivered to the unit via links, which have weights wj ∈ [0, 1]. 2. The inputs can be both excitatory or inhibitory; let x1 . . . xn ∈ R be excitatory, and y1 . . . ym ∈ R inhibitory. 3. If one of the yi fires, i.e., yi = 0, the unit is shut off, and outputs 0. 4. Otherwise, the quantity ∑i=n i=1 xiwi is computed; if this quantity is greater than or equal to a threshold θ, the unit outputs 1; if not it outputs 0. For the time being we assume, following McCulloch and Pitts, that all links have weight 1 or 0. The classical (binary) AND can be represented by a unit which has only excitatory inputs and whose threshold equals 2; for OR the threshold equals 1. NOT is represented by a unit which has one excitatory and one inhibitory input, and whose threshold (denoted by θ) equals 1; see 3. These restrictions are of a technical nature and are unnatural in the course of discourse processing, one of our aims. 4. The material presented in this chapter is a development of section 5 of [266]. Here we aim for a neural implementation of general logic programs, whereas our concern in the paper cited was with the particular application to the suppression task. 8.1 Closed–World Reasoning and Neural Nets 219 figure 8.1.5 The truth–value of the proposition to be negated is fed over the Figure 8.1 The role of inhibition in negation inhibitory channel. The excitatory link has its origin in a bias unit 1 which fires continuously. If the truth–value is 1, the unit is shut off and outputs 0. If the truth–value is 0, the excitatory channel takes over and makes the unit output 1. By combining these units into a feedforward neural network every classical truth function F (p1, . . . , pn) can be represented in the sense that upon clamping truth–values for p1, . . . , pn to the corresponding input units, the output is 1 (0) if F (p1, . . . , pn) is true (false). Definition 15 A feedforward neural network is an acyclic directed graph on a set of units (cf. definition 14); the (weighted) edges will also be called links. These can be either inhibitory or excitatory. There are two distinguished sets of units, I (input) and O (output). With the rise of parallel distributed processing, the emphasis switched to learning: starting from a network with arbitrary distribution of weights, can one teach it, using backpropagation, to recognise classically valid argument patterns and distinguish them from fallacies? An example of this type of approach can be found in [16,chapter 5]. We mention this work here just to make clear that this is not what we will be doing. We have emphasized several times in the course of this book that we view planning as a precursor of logical reasoning, and therefore consider an important function of logical reasoning to be the construction of (minimal) models using closed–world reasoning. Accordingly, we look toward neural networks 5. In this and the following diagrams, dashed arrows represent excitatory connections and solid lines which end in a circle denote inhibitory connections. 220 8 Implementing Reasoning in Neural Networks as a way to construct models: a model corresponds to the stable state of the associated network which is reached when facts are clamped to the input units. This correspondence is motivated by the intimate connection that can be seen to exist between closed–world reasoning and the operation of neuronal units. We will first explain the main idea intuitively for a program not containing negation in the body of a clause, a case for which a two-valued semantics with values 0 (false) and 1 (true) suffices. Suppose we have a program P consisting of the clauses {p1; p2; p1∧p2 → q}. Associate to P the (feedforward) neural network N(P ) whose input units are p1, p2, whose output unit is q, and whose structure is given in figure 8.2. The Figure 8.2 {p1; p2; p1 ∧ p2 → q} as a feedforward net input units are connected by a binary AND and the link between AND and q represents the implication →. We assume that all links have weight 1. In P , p1, p2 are both true, so that in N(P ) both p1, p2 fire, whence AND fires, and q as well. The units representing true inputs fire continuously, whence q also fires continuously. The stable state of this feedforward network thus has the units corresponding to p1, p2, q fire continuously, and this firing pattern codes the minimal model of P . Now consider the subprogram P ′ consisting of {p2; p1 ∧ p2 → q}, i.e., P without the fact p1. In N(P ′) = N(P ), the input unit for p2 fires, but that for p1 remains silent – falsity of an atom is represented by activation 0. It follows that the units for AND and q also remain silent. This stable state corresponds to the minimal model for P ′. This extremely simplified example has to be generalized in several ways in order to achieve a full correspondence between neural nets and closed–world reasoning: 1. We need output units with several incoming links. 8.1 Closed–World Reasoning and Neural Nets 221 2. We need negation in the body of a clause. 3. We need recursive programs, i.e., programs in which an atom can occur in both heads and bodies. The first generalization is easy: output units can have arbitrarily many incoming links, and the threshold always equals 1; thus each output unit has an implicit OR built in. For negation there are various options. One solution is to add NOT units as defined above in figure 8.1. The solution adopted by Hölldobler and Kalinke [130] is to give some links negative weights and to modify AND units.6 Suppose our program is P ′′ = {p2;¬p1 ∧ p2 → q}; the associated network is N(P ′′) (see figure 8.3), with weights indicated. The threshold of the former AND unit (denoted A in figure 8.3) is now set equal to 1. Thus, if p1 is false and p2 true, the weighted sum of the inputs feeding into A is 1, whence it fires. If p1 is true, the weighted sum does not exceed 0, hence A cannot fire. Figure 8.3 Negation via negative weights. However, these constructions are no longer adequate if recursive programs are considered, especially those containing negation, for example, ¬p → p. The type of network we need is the recurrent neural net (RNN), which differs from feedforward networks in that the graph of links may contain cycles.7 6. The earlier absolute distinction between excitatory and inhibitory links (see definition 14) is motivated by neuroscience, which has found evidence for distinct neurotransmitters involved in excitatory and inhibitory processes. 7. The definition to be given is tailored to our purposes and slightly nonstandard in that we prefer to work with absolutely inhibitory links instead of links with negative weights. It is possible, however, to give an equivalent definition in the latter format. 222 8 Implementing Reasoning in Neural Networks Definition 16 A recurrent neural network is a set of units Ui (1 ≤ i ≤ n) connected by links which may be inhibitory or excitatory. Activation over any inhibitory link entering Ui shuts it off completely. An excitatory link from unit Uj to Ui (where j = i) has a real-valued weight wij ∈ [0, 1]. There is a universal activation function σ : [0, 1] −→ [0, 1] which computes the outgoing activation from the incoming excitation. In addition to the units Ui there are two bias units 1 and 0, which may be connected to some of the Ui.8 We assume time ranges over the positive integers. At each instant t, the global state −−−→ Ui(t) is computed as follows. At time 0, all units except bias units and possibly input units are inactive. To compute −−−−−−→ Ui(t + 1), we must consider two possibilities, for each unit Ui. If unit Ui receives an inhibitory input at time t, then Ui(t + 1) = 0. Otherwise Ui collects the excitatory inputs xj(t) from units Uj to which it is connected, computes ∑ j xj(t)w i j and outputs Ui(t + 1) = σ( ∑ j xj(t)w i j). We will mostly be interested in the case where the units obey the earlier definition 14, i.e., where the activations are 0 or 1, and σ is defined by a threshold vector −→ θi as follows: σ( ∑ j xj(t)w i j) = 1 iff ∑ j xj(t)w i j ≥ θi. Again, this is slightly unrealistic from a neurophysiological point of view, but it suffices for purposes of exposition. The networks can be made more realistic by exploiting the techniques of [59]. The real difference between the present construction and definition 15 is in the time lags introduced in the computation, allowing recurrence. 8.2 From Logic Programs to Recurrent Neural Networks Now that we have defined the appropriate concept of network, we need an algorithm which transforms logic programs into suitable neural networks. We do this in two stages, corresponding to positive programs and definite programs.9 8.2.1 Positive Programs Assume the proposition letters occurring in a positive program P are p1, . . . , pn; these letters must not include ,⊥. The recurrent network associated to P consists of three layers. 1. The bottom layer is formed by units corresponding to p1, . . . , pn, viewed as inputs. Bias units are considered to be inputs. 2. The middle (or "hidden") layer is formed by AND units. 8. Bias units are often added for technical reasons: to make the threshold uniformly equal to 0. Here they play an essential role in coding truth and falsity. 9. Recall that the latter, but not the former, allow negation in the body of a clause. 8.2 From Logic Programs to Recurrent Neural Networks 223 3. The top layer is again formed by units corresponding p1, . . . , pn, now viewed as outputs. 4. Let ∧ C → q be a clause in P , where C is a nonempty set of atoms. (a) Connect the units in the bottom layer corresponding to atoms in C to the inputs of an AND unit by means of links of weight 1. (b) Connect the output of this AND unit to the unit corresponding to q in the top layer. (c) Connect the unit corresponding to pi in the top layer to the corresponding unit in the bottom layer. 5. If p is a fact in P , add a connection from the bias unit 1 to the output unit p with weight 1. Some examples will be helpful, also for introducing our graphical conventions. The first example (see figure 8.4) is the program P = {p1; p2; p1 ∧ p2 → q} already discussed above, but now represented as a recurrent net. The neurons Figure 8.4 {p1; p2; p1 ∧ p2 → q} as a recurrent net. are represented as squares, and in the interest of legibility inputs and outputs are only distinguished by the direction of the dashed arrows; the square does not have distinguished sides for input and output. The bias unit has been depicted separately, although strictly speaking it belongs to the input layer. For another example consider the language L = {p, q, r, s, t}, and the following program P in L: P = {p, p → q, q ∧ s → r}. The network RN(P ) corresponding to P is depicted in figure 8.5. Units corresponding to a proposition letter q will be denoted by Uq; if we need to make a notational distinction between input and output units we shall write U iq and U o q , respectively. We 224 8 Implementing Reasoning in Neural Networks show how the action of the consequence operator TP is mirrored exactly by the flow of activation in the network; to do so we first chart the course of the computation according to TP . We start from the empty model M0 = ∅, i.e., the model in which all proposition letters are false. We then get the following computation: 1. M1 is given by TP (M0)(p) = 1, TP (M0)(q) = TP (M0)(r) = TP (M0)(s) = TP (M0)(t) = 0. 2. M2 is given by TP (M1)(p) = 1, TP (M1)(q) = 1, TP (M1)(r) = TP (M1)(s) = TP (M1)(t) = 0. The model M2 is a fixed point of TP in the sense that TP (M2) = M2. It is also the least fixed point; we may consider M2 to be the minimal model in the sense that it makes true as few proposition letters as possible. The time course of the computation in the network RN(P ) mimics the action of the monotone operator TP . At time 0, no unit except 1 is activated. At time t = 1 the units compute their activation, and we get Uop (1) = 1, U ip(1) = 0, U i,oq (1) = U i,o r (1) = U i,o s (1) = U i,o t (1) = 0. At time 2, each unit collects its inputs as of time 1; this results in U ip(1) = 1 and the remaining units unchanged. At time t = 3, Uoq (1) = 1, but no changes otherwise. At time 4, the output of Uoq is fed into U i q, but although the network keeps cycling, there are no changes in activation. The preceding considerations are summarized in the following Figure 8.5 Network associated to {p, p → q, q ∧ s → r}. Theorem 3 Every positive logic program P can be associated to a three-layered recurrent neural network RN(P ) such that the least fixed point of TP corresponds to the activation of the output layer in the stable state of RN(P ). 8.2 From Logic Programs to Recurrent Neural Networks 225 Before we move on to include negation, it is worthwhile to consider the representation of closed–world reasoning in RN(P ). In the network depicted in figure 8.5 all units except the bias unit start inactive, representing the initial closed–world assumption that all propositions are false. The computation then propagates the activation of the bias unit 1, but this does not affect r, s, and t, which remain inactive. In this simple case we can implement closed–world reasoning by making the following identifications: active = true, inactive = false. This simple picture becomes considerably more complicated when negation is included. 8.2.2 Definite Programs To extend this correspondence to logic programs with clauses having negation in the body, one has to either restrict the class of programs one considers (as in [130] or [59]) or move to (strong Kleene) three-valued logic. Given the intrinsic cognitive plausibility of three-valued logic (the possibility to leave some propositions undecided, and the independence of truth and falsity), and since we need its functional features anyway, we choose the latter option.10 The basis for our treatment is the following trick. Let 0 and 1 stand for "true" and "false" respectively, taken in the two-valued sense. To avoid confusion we write Kleene's three truth–values {u, 0, 1} as {u, f , t}. We now represent Kleene's truth–values as pairs (0, 0) = u, (0, 1) = f and (1, 0) = t, with the ordering inherited from that of {u, f , t}: u ≤ f , t and f , t incomparable.11 The ordering could be extended by the pair (1, 1), which represents a contradiction; these four truth–values together give a diamond-shaped partial order like figure 8.6. However, in the neural networks to be constructed below we have to take special care that (1, 1) does not actually occur by suitably defined consistency-checking units. The logical operations on pairs are defined as follows. Definition 17 For all i, j, k, l ∈ {0, 1}: 1. ¬(i, j) = (j, i) 2. (i, j) ∧ (k, l) = (min(i, k),max(j, l)) 3. (i, j) ∨ (k, l) = (max(i, k),min(j, l)) 10. The completeness of definite programs with respect to three-valued semantics was first proved by the logician Ken Kunen using a very intricate model-theoretic argument. Subsequent treatments have simplified this somewhat (see, for example, [64]) but the proof remains one of the most difficult in the area (although the proof of soundness is fortunately much easier). In section 8.4 below we give some reasons to believe that the brain has developed the kind of neural architecture necessary for dealing with definite programs. This is not to say that the brain is capable of a complicated metaproof! 11. This trick is due to Stärk [255], who uses it in his proof of completeness with respect to three-valued semantics. Our own motivation will be given shortly. 226 8 Implementing Reasoning in Neural Networks Figure 8.6 Algebra of truth–values for Kleene three-valued logic. We leave it to the reader to check that this definition gives the same result as the truth–tables for three-valued logic given in chapter 2. We shall refer to the first component in the pair as the "plus" (or "true") component, and to the right component as the "minus" (or "false") component. We interpret a 1 neurally as "activation," and 0 as "no activation." The truth–value u therefore corresponds to no activation in the "true" and "false" components. As a consequence of this representation of truth–values, we may now view the required neural networks three-dimensionally as consisting of two isomorphic coupled sheets, one sheet doing the computations for "true," the other for "false," and where the coupling is inhibitory to prevent pairs (1, 1) from occurring.12 We think of the sheets as aligned horizontally, with the plus (= 'true') sheet on top. In order to make these ideas precise, we first introduce a technical term. Definition 18 A node consists of two coupled competing units U+ and U−, that U+ projects an inhibitory link to U− and, conversely, U− projects an inhibitory link to U+. A node will be denoted by the pair (U+, U−). To see what the effect of the coupling is, consider the computational fate of the four inputs (0, 0), (1, 0), (0, 1), (1, 1) to a node (U+, U−) corresponding to a proposition letter p (see figure 8.7). If (0, 0) is clamped to (U+, U−) nothing happens, and the output is (0, 0). If (1, 0) is clamped, U+ becomes active but U− is inhibited, so that the pair (U+, U−) outputs (1, 0); and analogously for the input (0, 1). If the input is (1, 1), both U+ and U− are inhibited, and the output of the pair will be (0, 0). Thus in our setup there is some computation going on in the input units, whereas it is usually assumed that input units do not compute anything. Although the computation is fairly trivial here, it becomes more interesting if inputs are of the more general form (a+, a−) with a+, a− ∈ [0, 1], reflecting independent degrees of activation for the "true" and "false" components of a proposition. Concretely, one may think of a situation where evidence for both the "true" and 12. Again this can be made more realistic by allowing both components to take values in the real interval [0, 1] and defining inhibition in such a way that "winner takes all." 8.2 From Logic Programs to Recurrent Neural Networks 227 Figure 8.7 (a) Full representation of the node corresponding to p. (b) Concise representation. "false" components is piling up independently. If in this situation "true" has collected so much evidence that the input is of the form (1, a) for a ∈ [0, 1), the node has the effect of ensuring that "winner takes all." The nets that we will consider as implementations of definite programs have the following general form. Definition 19 A coupled recurrent neural network consists of two recurrent neural networks (cf. definition 16) such that for each unit in one layer there is a unique unit in the other layer with which it forms a node. We will now describe the main varieties of nodes in coupled nets necessary for computing logic programs. Connectives AND and OR figure 8.8 presents a simple, but fundamental, example: three-valued binary AND. What we see in figure 8.8 is two coupled neural nets, labeled + (above the separating sheet) and − (below the sheet). The circles indicate units, and the thick vertical lines indicate the inhibitory couplings between units in the plus and minus nets, as defined in definition 18 and depicted in figure 8.7(b). The inputs of AND are considered to lie on the left, and its output on the right. To increase perspicuity, the three-dimensional structure has been tilted, and rotated counterclockwise over 45 degrees. The horizontal arrows represent excitatory connections. The threshold of the AND+ unit is 2, and that of the AND− unit is 1. We assume all links have weight 1. As an example, suppose the two truth–values (1, 0) and (0, 0) are fed into the AND node. The sum of the plus components is 1, hence AND+ does not fire. The sum of the minus components is 0, so AND− 228 8 Implementing Reasoning in Neural Networks Figure 8.8 Three-valued AND likewise does not fire. The output is therefore (0, 0), as it should be. Similarly, a binary OR gate can be constructed by setting the threshold of OR+ to 1, and that of OR− to 2. The reader may check that these stipulations translate definition 17 for ∧ and ∨ into neural terms. We obtain an AND-gate with n inputs for n ≥ 2 (useful for representing the body of a clause) if the threshold for the plus unit is set to n, and the threshold for the minus unit is set to 1. Similarly, we obtain an n-ary OR-gate if the threshold of the plus-unit is set to 1, and that of the minus–unit to n. Bias Units and Negation Finally we introduce the continuously firing bias units 1 and 0, the former for the plus sheet, where it will take care of the facts in the program as before, and the latter for the minus sheet, where it is connected to those atoms to which we wish to apply negation as failure. Bias units also play a role in the neural representation of negation. Definition 17 shows that, strictly speaking, negation need not be represented by a unit doing a computation, as, for instance, the NOT unit defined in section 8.1, since negation can be viewed as a simple switching of the plus and minus components. In the case of a negation occurring in front of a propositional atom, this view of negation would lead to the following construction. Suppose we have a node (U+, U−) which has one outgoing + link connected to V+, and one outgo8.2 From Logic Programs to Recurrent Neural Networks 229 ing − link connected to V−, where (V+, V−) is a node. To negate (U+, U−) one must "cross the wires," so that the outgoing link from U+ connects to V−, and the outgoing link from U− connects to V+. In terms of real neural networks this crossing over does not seem to be very plausible, however, as will be discussed in section 8.4. Because of the mutually inhibitory character of truth and falsity, it is more plausible to represent three-valued negation by means of an inhibitory process. We will elaborate on this in section 8.4. Our suggestion is given in figure 8.9. On the left side of the diagram there are two NOT nodes, one for each layer. Figure 8.9 Three-valued negation through inhibition (viewed from the side). The bias units are linked to the NOTs via excitatory links, whereas the inputs inhibit. This arrangement gives the correct outputs for (1, 0) and (0, 1), but not for (0, 0) since it generates the output (1, 1). Therefore the output also has to pass a consistency-checking node, depicted on the right. This extra complexity is the price to be paid for the parallel processing of truth and falsity. This completes the description of the logic gates required for the construction of the coupled recurrent neural networks. Our next task is to define the network CRN(P ) corresponding to a definite program P . We first give a general construction, which will, however, be modified later in order to bring out the special nature of the propositional variables for an abnormality. The network is now a three-dimensional structure consisting of a plus sheet and a minus sheet such that each sheet has at least three layers of units. We 230 8 Implementing Reasoning in Neural Networks think of the input fed into the "leftmost" layer and the output read out at the "right."13 The leftmost layer then consist of input units corresponding to the propositional variables used in P ; these units are coupled into nodes. The middle or hidden layers consist of AND units (figure 8.8), and NOT units (figure 8.9) where corresponding units in the plus and minus sheets are coupled. The rightmost layers are copies of the leftmost layers, and hence also consist of units coupled into nodes. To complete the definition we must describe the wiring of the network such that it represents the program P . Let p1 ∧ . . .∧ pn ∧¬r1 ∧ . . .∧¬rk → q be a clause in P . The network CRN(P ) has (at least) leftmost nodes corresponding to p1, . . . , pn, r1, . . . , rk, q, and an n + k–ary AND node in the middle section. The links from p1, . . . , pn feed directly into AND; those from r1, . . . , rk are first sent into NOT nodes before being linked to AND. The AND node projects to the q node. If there are more clauses with q as head, these are ORed in q, that is, to compute its output, q applies OR to its inputs. If q also occurs in a body, this rightmost node feeds back into the corresponding node on the left; inputs to the leftmost nodes are ORed. If p is a fact in P , add a link from the bias unit 1 into the plus component of p viewed as an output node. If r is a proposition letter to which negation is failure is applicable, add a link from the bias unit 0 into the minus component of r, viewed as an output node. Note that this construction reflects a condition in the definition of the completion which transforms facts into conditionals: if r does not occur in the head of a clause of P , the clause ⊥ → r is added to P . This explains why the bias unit 0 must be connected to r as an output node. (Likewise for facts p, in view of the equivalence of p and → p.) Until further notice, all links are assumed to have weight 1. Computation in such a coupled net proceeds as follows. At time t = 0, all nodes are inactive in both units. At t = 1, the facts in P output (1, 0) and the output atoms to which negation as failure is applicable (and which have no other inputs) output (0, 1). All other input nodes remain inactive in both units. For larger t the computation follows the procedure given in definition 16, taking into account the definitions of the AND and OR nodes. We thus obtain Theorem 4 Let P be a definite program, and CRN(P ) the associated coupled recurrent neural network. The least fixed point of T 3P corresponds to the activation of the output layer in the stable state of CRN(P ). 13. We cannot use "top" and "bottom" anymore, since this might lead to confusion with the plus and minus sheets. 8.3 Backward Reasoning and Closed–World Reasoning for Rules 231 8.3 Backward Reasoning and Closed–World Reasoning for Rules We now have to consider the computations that correspond to the inferences AC (affirmation of the consequent) and MT (modus tollens). We have analysed these by means of integrity constraints, that is, statements of the form "if query ?φ succeeds/fails, then query ?ψ succeeds/fails." From a neural point of view, this is vaguely reminiscent of a form of backpropagation, except that in our case inputs, not weights, are being updated. However, there is a duality between weights and inputs, and this can be exploited to construct a rigorous correspondence between backward inferences and learning in neural networks. The type of learning we need is fortunately only perceptron learning, not the biologically implausible backpropagation. For expository reasons the idea will be illustrated for positive programs and recurrent neural networks only, although an extension to coupled nets is straightforward. From now on we drop the assumption that all links have weight 1, and also allow links with weight 0. As before, if p is a fact in a program P , there is a link from the bias unit 1 to p with weight 1. What is new here is that in case p is not a fact, the link from 1 to p has weight 0. Consider a very simple case: the AC inference of p from q and p → q. The recurrent neural network corresponding to {p → q} is given in figure 8.10; the question mark on the link from 1 to p indicates that the weight of this link is adjustable. Figure 8.10 AC as perceptron learning The learning problem can now be stated as follows. If Uop fires (because the link from the bias unit 1 to p has weight 1) we are done. If not, input 1 to p yields output 0 in Uoq , although the desired output is 1. Therefore the weights in the net have to be readjusted so that the output is indeed 1. The perceptron learning algorithm (see, for example, [231,p. 84]) achieves precisely this. In this particular case it tells us that in order to approximate the right value for the weight, we have to add the initial weight (0) to the input (1). In this case 232 8 Implementing Reasoning in Neural Networks the algorithm even converges in one step, because 1 is the correct value for the weight. The same thing can be done for MT. In this case Uoq must not be active by hypothesis. If Uop does not fire (because the link from 1 to p has weight 0) we are done. If it does fire, the link has weight 1, and it must learn the correct weight (i.e., 0). The perceptron learning algorithm now tells us to subtract the input (1) from the weight (1) to get weight 0, and again we have convergence in one step. In conclusion of this discussion of how the networks compute, we may thus note that the relatively easy forward reasoning patterns such as MP and DA correspond to computations in simple recurrent networks, in which no learning occurs, whereas backward reasoning patterns such as AC and MT, which subjects typically find harder, necessitate the computational overhead of readjusting the network by perceptron learning. We propose that this difference between the processes of forward and backward reasoning can play a part in explaining various observations of the difficulty of valid backward reasoning such as MT. 8.4 Constructing the Nets We will now briefly sketch a hypothesis on how networks as discussed above may be set up in working memory, following the highly suggestive treatment in a series of papers by von der Malsburg starting with [287] (see [286] for a recent summary), some of which were written alone [288], some in collaboration with Bienenstock [19, 289] and some with Willshaw [290, 303, 302, 291]. There are two issues to be distinguished: (1) the representation of conditionals as links, and (2) the structure of the network as coupled isomorphic graphs. 8.4.1 Fast Functional Links For the first issue we can do no better than borrow (a lightly edited version of) von der Malsburg's own description from [287,p. 13]. The synaptic connection between brain cells i and j is characterized by a strength wij . It is a measure for the size of the postsynaptic conductance transient which is produced in the postsynaptic cell (i) upon arrival of a nerve impulse in the presynaptic fiber from cell j. It is postulated that the weight wij of an excitatory synapse depends on two variables with different time scale of behavior, aij and sij . The set {sij} constitutes the permanent network structure. Its modification (synaptic plasticity) is slow and is the basis for long-term memory. The new dynamic variable aij , termed the state of activation of the synapse ij (as distinct from the activation of the cell) , changes on a fast time scale (fractions of a second) in response to the correlation between the signals of cells i and j. With no 8.4 Constructing the Nets 233 signals in i and j, aij decays toward a resting state a0, within times typical for short-term memory. With strong correlation between the signals the value aij changes such that wij increases (activation). With uncorrelated signals aij changes such that wij decreases to zero (inactivation). This behavior of the variable aij will be referred to here as synaptic modulation. It can change the value of aij significantly within a fraction of a second, thus establishing a fast functional link. Not all synapses from a given cell to other cells can grow at the same time, since an inhibitory system prevents those target cells from all firing simultaneously; also the synapses received by a cell compete with each other, for the same reason. The physical basis for synaptic modulation is not clear; it might correspond to the accumulation or depletion of some chemical substance at a strategic location in or near the synapse. The relevant postsynaptic signal is here taken to be the cell's output spike train, but it may also be a more local dendritic signal. As a simple example one could assume wij = aijsij with 0 ≤ aij ≤ 1 and a resting state a0 within the interval (0, 1). The variables {sij} are controlled by what will be called refined synaptic plasticity: strong correlation between the temporal fine structure in the signals of cells i and j causes sij to grow. Absence of correlation does not directly reduce sij . The analogy between synaptic modulation and refined plasticity is apparent. Both are controlled by correlations in the signals of cell pairs in a positive feedback fashion. They differ in time scale of decay (seconds for aij , decades to permanent for sij ), and of buildup; and they differ in the way they are controlled. The aij react only to the two locally available signals and are both increased and decreased by correlations and their absence. The sij are only increased by local signals and are decreased in response to the growth of other synapses. If we apply the ideas just outlined to our representation of the suppression task, we get something like the following. Declarative memory, usually modelled by some kind of spreading activation network, contains a unit representing the concept "library," with links to units representing concepts like "open," "study," "essay," and "book." These concepts may combine into propositions. Neurally, one may view an atomic proposition ("the library is open") as a single unit (say Up) which is activated when the units for the constitutive concepts ("library," "open") are activated; for example, because mutual reinforcement of the units for "library" and "open" makes their combined weighted output exceed the threshold of Up. Two propositional units p, q ("the library is open," "she will study late in the library") can be combined into a conditional by the activation of a further link from p to q, possibly via an abnormality unit.14 All these links can be viewed at two time scales. At large time scales the links are connections laid down in declarative memory; these links have positive (al14. We will have more to say on the neural representation of abnormalities in section 8.5. 234 8 Implementing Reasoning in Neural Networks though small) weights and correspond to the {sij} in the above description, At small time scales, links may become temporarily reinforced by sensory input, through an increase of the {aij}. For example, upon being presented with the conditional "if she has an essay, she will study late in the library" (p∧¬ab → q), the link from p to q via ab becomes temporarily reinforced by synaptic modulation, and thus forms a fast functional link. As a result, the system of units and links thereby becomes part of working memory, forming a network like the ones studied above, where the {wij} are a function of the {sij} and the {aij}. Working memory then computes the stable state of the network, and the state of the output node is passed on to the language production system. 8.4.2 Between the Sheets The second intriguing issue, raised at the beginning of section 8.4, is how the two layers of neurons become isomorphically wired up through inhibitory connections. What is most interesting here is von der Malsburg and Willshaw's observation [291,p. 83] that this form of coupling neural nets must actually be a fundamental operation in the brain, both at small and large time scales. In the paper cited they discuss extensively the following example. During ontogenesis, the ganglion cells of the retina send axons through the eye stalk to the brain to form connections with central structures such as the optic tectum. In order to preserve the coherence of an image, this mapping from retina to tectum must be "continuous" in the sense that neighboring retina cells project onto neighboring cells of the tectum; and indeed this is true in the adult animal – the "retinotopic" mapping. There is a clear analogy15 with the networks described in this chapter: the map which projects units in the "true" layer via inhibitory links to units in the "false" layer has precisely this property of continuity, in the sense that neighbors in the "false" sheet are mapped to neighbours in the "true" sheet. Von der Malsburg and Willshaw mention other examples as well, now referring to "dynamic links" active at very small time scales. A good illustration is the integration of information from the left and the right eye – this can be viewed as establishing a temporary continuous map between two neural networks corresponding to the eyes. Another example at the same time scale is visual flow, where points in an image seen at consecutive moments in time must be related continuously to each other. 15. There is also a clear disanalogy: the retinotopic map consists of excitatory connections, whereas we need inhibitory connections. The excitatory connections are supposedly constructed via Hebb's rule which says that if two neurons fire simultaneously the excitatory connection between them is strengthened. What we need is rather the "anti-Hebbian rule," which says that if two neurons fire simultaneously, the inhibitory connection between them is strengthened. The existence of an anti-Hebbian rule has been demonstrated experimentally. 8.5 A Hidden Layer of Abnormalities 235 The work of von der Malsburg and his associates contains many models and simulations of how such continuous correspondences can be established by processes of synaptic growth and synaptic pruning. Translated to our context, the construction could run as follows. Initially there are two neural networks corresponding to systems of propositions, one dealing with truth, one with falsity. The results of the computations in the networks must inhibit each other, and initially a forest of inhibitory links connect the two networks. The simulations in [302] then suggest that this forest can dynamically reduce to a one-to-one projection between the isomorphically corresponding cells in the two networks. The system is able to spontaneously break the symmetry between several possible projections. We need not delve into the details here; the purpose of this section has only been to point to a striking analogy. 8.5 A Hidden Layer of Abnormalities While the preceding constructions of neural networks are completely general, in the sense of applying to all definite logic programs, there is reason to think that abnormalities play a special role in such networks. We have seen in chapter 7, and will see again in chapter 9, that abnormalities play a special role as inhibitors in rules. They may inhibit an inference, and they may also inhibit actions. Abnormalities in rules are furthermore special in that they need not occur in the overt linguistic representation of a rule. They may, however, be activated, or suppressed, by material which is overtly represented. We therefore prefer to represent abnormalities as a hidden layer in the network and hypothesise that normally this layer is present in all networks representing the condition–action rules involved in the operation of executive function. This is a theme taken up in chapter 9, where we shall argue that the condition–action rules in motor planning can in fact be formalized as exception–tolerant conditionals like those used in the suppression task. It will be shown that, if this formalization is adopted, the resulting hidden layer of abnormalities is responsible for the possibility of flexible planning. We will furthermore see in chapter 9 that the theory that autism is a form of executive disorder can be modelled by assuming that this hidden layer is malfunctioning, thus leading to behavioral rigidity and perseverance. Consider a conditional like p∧¬ab → q together with a further determination of the abnormality as ¬s → ab and ¬t → ab. We do not treat ab as an ordinary proposition letter, which would have to be included in input and output layers. Instead the effect of the abnormality is captured by a separate ab = (ab+, ab−) node, located between the body of the clause minus ¬ab, which is in this case just p, and the head, here q (see figure 8.1116). The clauses ¬s → ab and 16. The diagram does not yet exhibit the symmetry of, for example, figure 8.8. This issue will be discussed at the end of the section. 236 8 Implementing Reasoning in Neural Networks Figure 8.11 A hidden layer of abnormalities ¬t → ab are represented by links from units labeled s−, t− to the unit ab−, which contains an implicit OR. The threshold of ab− is a small positive value. The function of the unit ab+ in the upper sheet is only to interrupt the flow of activation from p to q if the possibility of an exception is highlighted. The connection from ab− to ab+ is therefore inhibitory. One may think of the "false" sheet as gathering contextual information relevant to the inhibition of the link from p to q. This information is summarized by the unit ab− before being relayed to ab+ in the "true" sheet.17 In order to visualise neural computations involving abnormalities, it is useful to allow activations strictly between 0 and 1. First suppose that s−, t− are not activated at all, either because the propositions s, t are known to be true, or because there is (as yet) no link from the units to ab− in working memory. Since the threshold of ab− is positive, ab− does not fire, and hence the link between p and q is not interrupted. Now suppose that the possibility of an exception, say ¬s, is highlighted. This does not yet mean that s is known to be false, so assume this possibility is represented as a small activation in the unit s−. If this activation is greater than or equal to the threshold of ab−, this unit fires and thereby inhibits the link between p and q. If the proposition s is known to be false, the activation of the unit s− is 1, and again the preceding considerations apply. Looking at figure 8.11, it might seem that we quietly dropped a basic feature of the neural networks computing minimal models of definite logic programs: the isomorphism of the "true" and "false" sheets. The answer is yes and no: yes, 17. The reader may wonder why we do not represent the effect of the abnormality by means of an ANDNOT unit in the "true" sheet, since that is, after all, what is suggested by the clause p ∧ ¬ab → q. One reason is that in our chosen way the role of inhibition is made more explicit, and this ties in nicely with the neurophysiological discussion of inhibition in section 9.11.1. Furthermore, the fact that ab− is located in the "false" sheet means that new contextual information can be added on to ab− linearly (via OR); the unit ab− itself does not have to be modified. 8.6 Discussion 237 because at first not all links required by the isomorphism will be present; no, because at least some of these links will be established as the result of learning. Let us be more precise. The units labeled s− and t− in the diagram actually form part of a node (s+, s−) (and (t+, t−)), where the two units are connected by inhibitory links. The units s+ and t+ are at first not connected to ab+. The unit p+ is part of the node (p+, p−); here p− need not be connected to ab−.18 Suppose first that s is irrelevant to ab; in this case there will not develop a link from s− to ab− in working memory, and there is therefore no need to have a corresponding link from s+ to ab+. If we now suppose that ¬s is considered a possible abnormality, hence is relevant to ab, then we must assume that in working memory a link is constructed from s− to ab−; at first only in the "false" sheet, since we assume that it is this sheet which is responsible for the incorporation of the context, insofar as is relevant to inhibition. If one now receives the information that s is true, s+ inhibits s−, and hence (disregarding t) ab− will not fire. If p is known to be true, it follows that ab+ fires, and because s+ and ab+ fire simultaneously, a link will be forged between s+ and ab+ by Hebbian learning. One may view this process as the neural analogue of the synthesis of a new rule p∧ s → q, a synthesis that will further occupy us in chapter 9, section 9.6. The only essential difference between the network in figure 8.11 and the network consisting of two isomorphic sheets is therefore that there is no inhibitory link from ab+ to ab−. Indeed there cannot be such a link, otherwise activation of p+ would by itself already inhibit ab−, and thus discount the influence from the context. 8.6 Discussion We showed that closed–world reasoning in its guise as logic programming has an appealing neural implementation, unlike classical logic. On our proposals the networks corresponding to logic programs become part of working memory, which then maintains a minimal preferred model of the world under description in a form in which it can be efficiently revised at any point in the light of new information. This is the kind of system required for an organism to plan, and is the kind of system which might be developed by an organism evolved for planning, as discussed in chapter 6. We are now in a position to give some further substance to, and modify, the distinction between system 1 and system 2 processes mentioned in chapter 5. For convenience we recall Evans's view of the distinction, already quoted in 18. An easy calculation shows that the presence or absence of this connection does not make a difference. Suppose we add ¬p → ab to our data, which corresponds to a link from p− to ab−. Program completion gives ¬p∨¬s → ab, which is equivalent to ¬ab ↔ (p∧ s). Substitution in p∧¬ab → q gives p∧ s → q as before. 238 8 Implementing Reasoning in Neural Networks chapter 5: System 1 is . . . a form of universal cognition shared between animals and humans. It is actually not a single system but a set of subsystems that operate with some autonomy. System 1 includes instinctive behaviors that are innately programmed and would include any innate input modules of the kind proposed by Fodor . . . The system 1 processes that are most often described, however, are those that are formed by associative learning of the kind produced by neural networks. . . . System 1 processes are rapid, parallel and automatic in nature; only their final product is posted in consciousness[72,p. 454]. In these theories, logical reasoning is considered to belong to system 2 which is slow and sequential in nature and makes use of the central working memory system [72,p. 454]. We believe the distinction is useful and important, but the constructions presented in this chapter challenge the idea that fast and automatic processes are thereby not logical processes. In virtue of its mathematical properties closed world reasoning can be modelled by fast parallel neural processes, and therefore may be taken to belong to system 1. It is not logic per se that belongs to system 2, but some logical systems (such as classical logic) do belong there because in these systems model generation does not have a neural representation. The reader somewhat familiar with the logical literature may have felt increasingly uneasy during our discussion of nonmonotonic logic: isn't it true that nonmonotonic reasoning has high computational complexity and is therefore ipso facto ruled out as a formal description of actual human reasoning? There are in fact two issues here, one pertaining to the search for possible exceptions or abnormalities in the mental database, the other to the computational complexity of the derivability relation of a given nonmonotonic logic. The first issue can be illustrated by a quotation from Politzer [218,p. 10] Nonmonotonicity is highly difficult to manage by Artificial Intelligence systems because of the necessity of looking for possible exceptions through an entire database. What I have suggested is some kind of reversal of the burden of proof for human cognition: at least for conditionals (but this could generalize) looking for exceptions is itself an exception because conditional information comes with an implicit guarantee of normality. Translated to our formalism, the difficulty hinted at by Politzer concerns tabulating all clauses of the form φ → ab which are present in memory. But in our setup we do not have a knowledge base in the sense of AI, with its huge number of clauses which are all on an equal footing. What counts instead is the number of links of the form φ → ab which are activated in working memory by means of a mechanism such as von der Malsburg's "fast functional links." This search space will then be very much smaller. There remains the issue of how relevant information in long–term memory is recruited into working memory, though we assume this is achieved efficiently through the organization of 8.6 Discussion 239 long-term memory. We do not pretend to have solved the problem, but equally we do not believe that the AI experience of the intractability of nonmonotonic logic is relevant here. The second issue is concerned with the computational complexity of the decision problem for the relation "ψ is derivable from φ1, . . . , φn in nonmonotonic logic L," where we may restrict attention to propositional logics only. For example, one well-known nonmonotonic logic, Reiter's default logic, is computationally more complex than classical propositional logic, which is NP– complete, so in practice exponential (see Gottlob [104] for a sample of results in this area). By contrast, if L is propositional logic programming with negation as failure, the corresponding decision problem is P-complete, hence less complex than classical propositional logic (see Dantsin et al. [56] and references given therein for discussion).19 This difference is mainly due to a restriction in the syntactic form of the clauses, which have to be of the form φ → A, where φ can be arbitrary, but A must be atomic. This restriction, whose main effect is to rule out disjunctions in the consequent, is harmless in the case of the suppression task, although it may cause problems in other reasoning tasks. Again, this only serves to show that logical form determines whether a task can be solved by system 1 or just by system 2 processing. 19. It is true that our representation of MT goes beyond the derivability relation of logic programming. However, the fact that it can be represented using perceptron learning guarantees that it is still polynomial.
Coping with Nonmonotonicity inAutism Autism is a clinical syndrome first described by Leo Kanner in the 1940s, often first diagnosed in children around 2 to 3 years of age as a deficit in their affective relations and communication. The autistic child typically refuses eye contact, is indifferent or hostile to demonstrations of affection, and exhibits delayed or abnormal communication, repetitive movements (often self-harming), and is rather indifferent to pain. Autistic children do not engage spontaneously in make-believe play and show little interest in the competitive social hierarchy, and in personal possessions. Autism comes in all severities – from complete lack of language and severe retardation, to mild forms continuous with the "normal" range of personalities and IQs. Autism is sometimes distinguished from Aspberger's syndrome – very roughly speaking, autism without language impairment – but Aspberger's is probably just the mild end of the autistic spectrum. Autistic children share many symptoms shown by deaf and by blind infants, possibly because of the social isolation imposed by these conditions. There are known biochemical abnormalities associated with autism. There is evidence of a probably complex genetic basis. As should be clear by now, we do not believe that psychological analyses of autistic functioning are inconsistent with, or exclusive of, such biochemical– or genetic–level analyses, and we will indicate something of how we think the different levels may relate to each other. More than any other psychiatric disorder, autism has captured the imagination of the practitioners of cognitive science, because, at least according to some theories, it holds the promise of revealing the essence of what makes us human. This holds especially for the school which views autism as a deficit in "theory of mind," the ability to represent someone else's feelings and beliefs. An implication seems to be that in this respect autistic people are like our evolutionary ancestors, given that chimpanzees have much less "theory of mind" than humans. Although we believe the claims that can be made are quite different, we obviously agree that autism may well be important from the point of view of evolutionary cognitive science. 242 9 Coping with Nonmonotonicity in Autism 9.1 Psychological Theories of Autism There are several current psychological theories of autism. To mention some of the main ones: the theory of mind deficit theory (Leslie [172]), the affective foundation theory (Hobson [127]), the weak central coherence theory (Happé [114]), and the executive function deficit theory (Russell [237]). 9.1.1 Theory of Mind The "theory theory" originated in Premack and Woodruff's work on chimpanzees [222], attempting to characterise the differences between human and nonhuman primates. Alan Leslie [172] proposed that human beings have a brain "module" that does reasoning about minds, by implementing a "theory of mind" (often abbreviated to ToM), and that autistic development could be seen as delayed acquisition or impairment of this module. So, the theory theory goes, in normals the module constitutes the difference between humans and their ancestors. To paint with a broad brush, this claim gives us the two equations: chimpanzee + ToM = human and human – ToM = autist Certainly this is a great simplification, but, we will argue, it usefully encapsulates a largely unspoken argument common in the field (although not in Happé or in Frith [114, 88]), that autism is to be characterized by the lack of qualities present in normals. Very little equation solving yields the consequence that autistic people are like chimpanzees (in some relevant respects). This we find highly counterintuitive: chimpanzees are, for example, hypersocial animals. It may be more useful at least to entertain a different equation: normal human + too much "magic ingredient" = autist That is, some of whatever cognitive additions yielded humans from their ape ancestors may be overrepresented in autistic cognition. Just for an example to illustrate, much of autistic cognition is an obsessive attempt to extract exceptionless truth about a complicated world. This sounds to us rather more like the scientific life than that of chimpanzees. At least this equation may allow us academics to empathize with autistic reasoners. Of course, this alternative equation has very different evolutionary implications. As we shall see, autism has a substantial genetic component, and a high prevalence for a deleterious inherited condition, so one must ask whether there are benefits from lesser dosages which maintain the condition in the population. Perhaps autism is the sickle cell anaemia of behavioral traits? Sickle cell anemia is a double-recessive genetic 9.1 Psychological Theories of Autism 243 disease maintained in the populations of malaria–infested areas by the enhanced malaria resistance of the heterozygote. This particularly simple mechanism is too simple for autism, but there are others whereby alleles may be beneficial in one environment or one genotype, and harmful in another. These equations raise many questions about just what nonhuman primates can and can't do in the way of reasoning about conspecifics' behavior and mental processes. Apes have considerable facility in reasoning about conspecifics' plans – in the sense of predicting their behavior by diagnosing their motivation – but they appear not to be able to reason about conspecifics' epistemic states. A related point is that young children seem to develop "desire" psychology before "belief" psychology, although desires are "states of mind," and so it is unclear why they do not require a theory of mind to reason about them. After all, to reason about a person's desires seems to necessitate an appropriate set of beliefs. The theory theory can be taken as explanatory, or as an important label for a set of problems. Its authors appear to claim the former. It seems more plausible at this stage to interpret it as the latter – an important label for a problem that needs a label. So, for example, there has been a debate in philosophy contrasting "theory" vs. "simulation" accounts of reasoning about mental states (see, for example, Harris [117] and Heal [121]). This debate bears rather directly on autism, and we do not imply by our discussion of theory of mind that we are rejecting simulation-based accounts.1 9.1.2 Affective Foundation Hobson's theory of autism [127] does not so much deny theory of mind as seek to derive it from more fundamental ontogenetic processes2 – in particular from the affective foundations3 of interpersonal communication. Humans uniquely control shared attention, especially by gaze. We diagnose where others' attention is focused from information about where they are looking. "Intersubjectivity" is established through mutual control of attention. Just as Piaget saw the child's sensorimotor activity as achieving the child's mastery of where itself left off and the world began, so Hobson sees the child's understanding of itself as a social being separated from others being achieved through joint attentional activity. The child must learn that the other can have different representations, and different wants and values. Hobson proposes that it is autistic people's valuation of these experiences of intersubjectivity which is abnormal. If the child does not experience the achievement of intersubjectivity as rewarding (or even experiences it as aversive), then any cognitive developments founded 1. In fact Stenning [258] argues that the two may not be as distinct as would at first appear. 2. But see Hobson [126]. 3. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the relevant sense of affect as "The way in which one is affected or disposed; mental state, mood, feeling, desire, intention." 244 9 Coping with Nonmonotonicity in Autism on it will not develop normally. Cognitive symptoms of autism are, on this theory, consequences of this valuation. 9.1.3 Weak Central Coherence Frith and Happé's weak central coherence (WCC) theory of autism [114, 88] is built on the observation that autistic people show certain supernormal abilities. Autistic people are good at things which can be done by attention to detail while ignoring "the big picture," particularly in some visual tasks. They show a lack of susceptibility to some visual illusions (e.g., Müller-Lyer4). Furthermore they perform very well on the Hidden Figures task, an example of which is presented in figure 9.1. Figure 9.1 Example Hidden Figures test item. The task is to select which of the outline figures in the row above is contained in the complex pattern below. The theoretical basis of WCC is Fodor's theory of the modularity of mind, alluded to in chapter 6. It will be recalled that Fodor postulated a central processing unit which processes the information supplied by the modules in a modalityfree manner. Fodor viewed analogy and metaphor as the characteristic modus operandi of the central processor. WCC maintains that in autistic people the central processor does not fully perform its integrative function, resulting in the separate modules "pushing" their own specific information. As additional support for this account one may cite autistic people's claimed inability to understand metaphor, and also their claimed failure to exploit analogies in problem solving (see [250]). More generally, weak central coherence can be thought of as a style of cognition dominated by bottom–up information processing. 4. See http://www.essex.ac.uk/psychology/experiments/muller.html for an online version. 9.1 Psychological Theories of Autism 245 9.1.4 Executive Disorder Russell's executive function deficit (ED) theory [237] takes yet another cluster of symptoms as basic: the observation that autistic people often exhibit severe perseveration. They go on carrying out some routine when the routine is no longer appropriate, and exhibit great difficulty in switching tasks when the context calls for this (that is, when switching is not governed by an explicit rule). This perseveration, also observed in certain kinds of patients with frontal cortex damage, is hypothesized to give rise to many of the symptoms of autism: obsessiveness, insensitivity to context, inappropriateness of behavior, literalness of carrying out instructions.5 Task switching is the brief of executive function, a process (or set of processes) responsible for high-level action control such as planning, initiation, coordination, inhibition and control of action sequences. Executive function is hypothesized to be necessary for mentally maintaining a goal, and pursuing it in the real world under possibly adverse circumstances. On this view, executive dysfunction is held to be responsible for the sometimes extreme behavioral rigidity of autistic people. The origin of the concept of "executive function" was heavily influenced by the analysis of neuropsychological patients. This has the important consequence that it is often most discussed in terms of its malfunctioning, and leaves us with little positive characterization of what executive function does when it is functioning healthily. Here AI theories of planning are perhaps helpful since they provide principled analyses of just what is involved in planning action. By contrast, the psychological study of normal undamaged planning mainly surfaces in the study of problem solving (e.g., [199]) and problem solving in turn has been most extensively studied in the guise of expertise – what is the difference between expert and novice problem solving[35]. 6 When discussing cognitive analyses of mental malfunctioning, it is worth remembering that although much clinical literature is understandably oriented toward giving patients a unique categorization, there is an active strand of thought in contemporary psychiatry that argues that the discreteness of such categories is always to be questioned [118]. For example, autistic subjects are considerably more depressed, as measured by the relevant clinical diagnosis instruments, than are controls. Whether this is a reaction to, or rather a cause of, their condition, it becomes particularly important when considering such explanations of autism as executive dysfunction, since executive function is a component of a whole spectrum of mental disorders, including depression, but also including anxiety, schizophrenia, and attention–deficit hyperactivity disorder 5. Note that although autistic people may lack spontaneity, they may be able to carry out tasks involving fantasy play when instructed, as is indeed necessary if they are to engage with diagnostic tests such as the false belief task ( see section 9.3 below) at all. 6. Shallice [245] provides a bridge in his studies of the Tower of London problem–solving task, which is derived from the Tower of Hanoi, a staple of the early AI literature on planning. 246 9 Coping with Nonmonotonicity in Autism (ADHD). We have already noted that executive function is itself a broad category of functions. Is the executive dysfunction observed in autism the same as the executive dysfunction observed in depression, or in ADHD? If we could fractionate autistic people's problems, could the executive function subset be due to the accompanying depression? These are questions which don't currently have answers, but are nevertheless important to appreciate in thinking about cognitive accounts of such complex syndromes. They crop up again below when we survey the genetics of autism. This quick survey of theories was intended to illustrate that there are multiple psychological characterizations of autism. Although it is the habit of the field to present these theories as alternatives, it is far from obvious that they are mutually exclusive. For example, Hobson's theory might be construed as a theory about where our theory-of-mind abilities develop from. Although there is some tension between the idea that these abilities come in a genetically determined module, and that they develop out of experiences of communication, in truth these are not really inconsistent. In any case, the theory theory does not present any evidence for the genetic basis or modularity, save for the lack of any evidence of learning and the discreteness of the diagnosing task. Similarly, executive function and central coherence are presumably computational capacities of systems and as such they might be components of whatever system realises theory–of–mind abilities. 9.2 Logic and Experiment in the Study of Psychiatric Disorders Several of the proffered explanations for autism will be explored in greater depth below, but the brief synopsis given above makes plain that the relations between the theories merits greater scrutiny. It is here that a logical analysis can be helpful. More concretely, we will show that there is a common core to the theory–of–mind deficit theory and executive disorder theory, which consists in well-defined failures in nonmonotonic reasoning. Based on this analysis, one can also show in what sense theory–of–mind reasoning is more difficult (contains more components) than this common core. Furthermore, the common core leads to predictions about autistic people's behavior on our old friend the suppression task which differ from those for normals. One virtue of logical analysis is its ability to cross linguistic and nonlinguistic tasks. Another is to insist that vague distinctions between representation and processing are refined. But the logician has another role as well. In chapter 3 we showed that dramatically different performance on superficially similar versions of the Wason task are in fact due to the different logical forms of these tasks. The same situation occurs in the "executive disorder" branch of autism research, where autistic people were shown to behave very differently on the box task (introduced in chapter 2) and the "tubes task" (to be introduced in this chapter). A 9.2 Logic and Experiment in the Study of Psychiatric Disorders 247 careful analysis shows that in fact the logical structures of these tasks are very different, and that different behavior is therefore to be expected. The common core has to do with autistic people's handling of nonmonotonic inference, more specifically that of closed–world reasoning. In chapter 2 we identified a number of areas to which closed–world reasoning is applicable, each time in slightly different form: • lists: train schedules, airline databases, etc. • diagnostic reasoning and abduction • unknown preconditions • causal and counterfactual reasoning • attribution of beliefs and intentions Autistic people have difficulties with at least the last three. They also have a special relationship with lists, in the sense that they feel lost without lists, such as timetables, to organise daily activities; they have great difficulty accommodating unexpected changes to the timetable, and try to avoid situations such as holidays in which rigid schedules are not applicable. One may view this as an extreme version of closed–world reasoning, sometimes even applied in inappropriate circumstances. But before one concludes from this that autistic people are good at closed–world reasoning to the point of overapplying it, one must carefully distinguish several components of closed–world reasoning. On the one hand, there is the inference from given premises which reduces to a computation of the minimal model of the premises and checking whether a given formula holds. (This is what we referred to earlier as reasoning from an interpretation.) As we have seen in the last chapter, this is presumably easy because automatic, as can be seen from the neural model presented there. In a wider sense, nonmonotonic reasoning also involves "preprocessing" the given situation or discourse, that is, encoding the law-like features of a situation in a particular type of premise (reasoning to an interpretation). Laws and regularities always allow exceptions, and skill at "exception handling" is required – which involves identifying and encoding the relevant exceptions, and knowing when enough is enough. The chapter heading Coping with Nonmonotonicity refers to this last aspect, at which autistic people appear to do worse than normals, although they behave normally with respect to the nonmonotonic inferences themselves. That is, autistic people appear to be worse in reasoning to an interpretation. In the remainder of the chapter we study the implicit reasoning patterns of autistic people in several well-known experimental paradigms, and show that they can be analysed as failures to engage in the difficult part of closed–world reasoning. 248 9 Coping with Nonmonotonicity in Autism 9.3 Theory of Mind and Reasoning A famous experiment, the false belief task [305, 212], investigates how autistic subjects reason about other people's belief. The standard design of the experiment is as follows. A child and a doll (Maxi) are in a room together with the experimenter. Maxi and child witness a bar of chocolate being placed in a box. Then Maxi is taken out of the room. The child sees the experimenter move the chocolate from the box to a drawer. Maxi is brought back in. The experimenter asks the child: "Where does Maxi think the chocolate is?" The answers to this question reveal an interesting cutoff point, and a difference between autistic and normally developing children. Before the age of about 4 years , the normally developing child responds where the child knows the chocolate to be (i.e., the drawer); after that age, the child responds where Maxi must falsely believe the chocolate to be (i.e., the box). By contrast, autistic children go on answering "in the drawer" for a long time. This experiment has been repeated many times, in many variations, with fairly robust results. Some versions can easily be done at home. There is, for instance, the "Smarties" or "unexpected contents" task, which goes as follows. Unbeknownst to the child, a box of Smarties is emptied and refilled with pencils. The child is asked: "What do you think is in the box?" and it happily answers: "Smarties!" It is then shown the contents of the box. The pencils are put back into the box, and the child is now asked: "What do you think your [absent] mother will say is in the box?" We may then observe the same critical age: before age 4 the child answers: "Pencils!," whereas after age 4 the child will say: "Smarties!" Even more strikingly, when asked what it believed was in the box before seeing the actual contents, the younger child will say "Pencils," even though it has just answered "Smarties!" The outcomes of these experiments have been argued to support the theory– of–mind–deficit hypothesis on the cause of autism. Proposed by Leslie in 1987 [172], it holds that human beings have evolved a special "module" devoted specifically to reasoning about other people's minds. As such, this module would provide a cognitive underpinning for empathy. In normals the module would constitute the difference between humans and their ancestors – indeed, chimpanzees seem to be able to do much less in the way of mind-reading. In autistic children, this module would be delayed or impaired, thus explaining abnormalities in communication and also in the acquisition of language, if it is indeed true that the development of joint attention is crucial to language learning (as claimed, for instance, by Tomasello [276]). This seems a very elegant explanation for an intractable phenomenon, and it has justly captured the public's imagination. Upon closer examination the question arises whether it is really an explanation rather than a description of one class of symptoms. For instance, as we have seen in chapter 6, the notion 9.4 Reasoning in the False Belief Task 249 of a "module" is notoriously hazy. In this context it is obviously meant to be a piece of dedicated neural circuitry. In this way, it can do the double duty of differentiating us from our ancestors and being capable of being damaged in isolation. But it is precisely this isolation, or "encapsulation" as Fodor called it, that is doubtful. One reason is just our general skepticism expressed in chapter 6, section 6.4, that evolution does not generally proceed by adding new modules (rather than tweaking old ones), and another is that much of the problem of functionally characterizing human reasoning about minds is about interactions between modules. Theory of mind requires language to formulate beliefs in and it also entails a considerable involvement of working memory, as can be seen in "nested" forms of theory of mind, as in Dunbar's example Shakespeare intended us to realise that Othello believes that Iago knows that Desdemona is in love with Cassio [66,p. 162]. However, as soon as one realises that a module never operates in isolation, then the theory–of–mind–deficit hypothesis begins to lose its hold. We are now invited to look at the (possibly defective) interactions of the module with other cognitive functions (for example, language and working memory), which leads to the possibility that defects in these functions may play a role in autism. And there is, of course, also the problem of what the module would have to contain, given that, for instance, reasoning about other people's desires is possible for both autistic people and non-human primates. Apart from these theoretical problems, it is experimentally controversial at what stage theory–of–mind abilities emerge. False-belief tasks were initially proposed as diagnosing a lack of these abilities in normal 3-year-olds and their presence in normal 4-year-olds (Leslie [172]). Others have proposed that irrelevant linguistic demands of these tasks deceptively depress 3–year–olds' performance. For example, in the false belief task, the child sees the doll see the sweet placed in one box, and then the child but not the doll sees the sweet moved to another. Now if the child is asked "Where will the doll look for the sweet first?" (instead of "Where will the doll look for the sweet?") then children as young as 2 can sometimes solve the problem (Siegal and Beattie [248]).7 These arguments, as well as others cited earlier (see p. 164) push reasoning about intentions earlier in ontogeny. 9.4 Reasoning in the False Belief Task In chapter 2 we made a start on analyzing attribution of belief, as it occurs in the false–belief task, as a species of closed–world reasoning. For convenience 7. Intriguingly, this might be read as evidence of the 3-year-olds in the original task adopting a deontic reading of the question (Where should the doll look? See[40]) rather than a descriptive one (Where will the doll look first?). Another possibility, which also echoes a problem in the selection task, is that the younger child's problem may be with sequencing contingencies in their responses. 250 9 Coping with Nonmonotonicity in Autism we repeat the informal argument here, before proceeding to a rigorous logical analysis. An agent solving the task correctly first of all needs to have an awareness of the causal relation between perception and belief, which can be stated in the form: "if φ is true in scene S, and agent a sees S, then a comes to believe φ." Applied to the situation at hand, this means that Maxi comes to believe that the chocolate is in the box. An application of the principle of inertia now yields that Maxi's belief concerning the location of the chocolate persists unless an event occurs which causes him to have a new belief, incompatible with the former one. The story does not mention such an event, whence it is reasonable to assume – using closed–world reasoning – that Maxi still believes that the chocolate is in the box when he returns to the experimenter's room. An explanation for performance in the false belief task also needs to account for the incorrect answers given by children younger than 4 and autistic children. These subjects almost always answer "in the drawer," when asked where Maxi believes the chocolate to be. To model this, we borrow a notion from executive dysfunction theory, and hypothesise that the "prepotent response" is always for the child to answer where it knows the chocolate to be. In some children, this response can be inhibited; in other children it cannot, for various reasons which we shall explore below. The formal analysis we are about to present has to combine reasoning about beliefs and about the world, as well as to link a subject's beliefs with her responses (verbal as well as nonverbal). This last component, usually omitted in discussions of a theory–of–mind "module," but which we consider an integral part of the task, is the brief of executive function. We therefore preface our analysis with a brief discussion of some logical features of executive function. This will pay dividends in later parts of this chapter, when we treat the explanation of autism as a form of executive dysfunction. In fact, it will be seen that the executive components in false-belief tasks make them formally very similar to tasks not involving beliefs about other people at all. Recall from section 9.1.4 that executive function can be decomposed in planning, initiation, inhibition, coordination, and control of action sequences leading toward a goal held in working memory. In the following we abstract from the coordination and control component, and concentrate on goal maintenance, planning, and (contextually determined) inhibition. We have seen in chapter 7 that at the level of competence, planning can be described as a form of closed– world reasoning, which is applied in particular to implicit preconditions for actions. Viewed in terms of executive function, the suppression effect is a special case of inhibition of a response. In the logical model of executive function proposed here, inhibition is represented through the special logical form of causal properties of actions, as a conditional in which the link from say action to effect 9.4 Reasoning in the False Belief Task 251 is mediated by the slot labeled ¬ab: A ∧ ¬ab → E (9.1) To recapitulate the discussion in chapters 7 and 8: the conditional (9.1) is read as "if A and nothing abnormal is the case, then E," where the expression nothing abnormal is the case is governed by closed–world reasoning. For instance, if there is nothing known about a possible abnormality, i.e., if the causal system is closed, one concludes ¬ab, hence from A it follows that E. If, however, there is information of the form C → ab, i.e., if there is a context C which constitutes an abnormality, and C is the case, then the link from A to E is inhibited. In the neural model of closed–world reasoning proposed in chapter 8, ab corresponds to a neuron situated between the neurons for A and E, such that C is connected to ab via an inhibitory link; and this is the general way of incorporating contextual influences. The theories describing task competence will all consist of sets of such conditionals. We begin by formulating languages in which these theories can be expressed. 9.4.1 Formal Language and Principles The languages we need comprise at least the following predicates8: Ra(p): agent a reports her belief that p seea(p): agent a sees that p tolda(p): agent a is told that p deda(p): agent a deduces that p Ba(p): agent a has the belief that p l(i, t): the chocolate is at location i at time t aba: an exception which obstructs agent a's inferences clipped(s, i, t): at some time between s and t, the chocolate ceases to be at location i.The agent's information state Ba(φ) satisfies properties such as the following9: seea(φ) → Ba(φ) (9.2) tolda(φ) → Ba(φ) (9.3) deda(φ) → Ba(φ) (9.4) Ba(φ → ψ) → (Ba(φ) → Ba(ψ)) (9.5) 8. The formalism introduces just what is necessary to model the various tasks. A fully general formalism would have to use the "event calculus," for which see [282]. Our formulation uses predicates which can take formulas as arguments. Strictly speaking this is not allowed in first–order logic, but there are a number of technical tricks to deal with this issue. A general approach is given in [282,chapter 6]. 9. The properties of Ba(φ) assumed in the analysis of the standard false–belief task are very minimal. We shall have occasion to use deeper principles concerning Ba(φ) in section 9.4.5. 252 9 Coping with Nonmonotonicity in Autism Suppose b is an agent thinking about the behavior of agent a. We model b's responses as the result of a competition between two rules, both of which are instantiations of the general response rule schema Bb(φ) ∧ ¬abb → Rb(φ) (9.6) where abb indicates a possible circumstance which prevents b from reporting his belief.10 This response schema says that if b believes φ, his prepotent response is to report that φ; but the rule is inhibitable in that the occurrence of abb may prevent the report. Obviously this response is itself an instance of the more general schema (9.1). The first substitution instance of rule (9.6) says that if b knows what the location of the chocolate is, he will report that location, barring exceptional circumstances: Bb(l(i, t)) ∧ ¬abb → Rb(l(i, t)), (9.7) which arises from rule (9.6) by the substitution φ := l(i, t). The second rule, which reflects partial comprehension of the task instructions, says that b will report a's information state: Bb(Ba(l(i, t))) ∧ ¬abb → Rb(Ba(l(i, t))) (9.8) It arises from rule 9.6 by the substitution φ := Ba(l(i, t)). In the case of a false belief, these rules are in competition, and we have to ensure that only one is operative; i.e., the rules must inhibit each other mutually. This is achieved by means of the abnormalities. The inhibitory effect of (9.7) on (9.8) is modelled by the clause Rb(l(j, t)) → abb (9.9) which expresses that b's own response interferes with 9.8 if j = i. The inhibitory effect of 9.8 on 9.7 is modelled by a clause which expresses another part of task comprehension: b should report a's beliefs, even if he knows them to be wrong: Bb(Ba(l(i, t))) → abb (9.10) This formula expresses that b's prepotent response 9.7 is inhibited if agent b has information that agent a has (possibly incorrect) information about the location of the chocolate. It is essential to note that the false–belief task not only involves fairly modest reasoning about beliefs, but more importantly also reasoning about the world. 10. The abnormality abb may be different for each concrete φ, but in order not to overload notation we will not indicate this explicitly. 9.4 Reasoning in the False Belief Task 253 The interaction between the inertial properties of the world and the information of an agent a is given by Ba(l(i, s)) ∧ s < t ∧ ¬Ba(clipped(s, i, t)) → deda(l(i, t)) (9.11) with clipped governed by clauses such as l(i, s) ∧ chocolate-moved(r) ∧ s < r < t → clipped(s, i, t); (9.12) l(i, s) ∧ chocolate-melted(r) ∧ s < r < t → clipped(s, i, t). (9.13) 9.4.2 Closed–World Reasoning in the Normal Child Older Than 4 Years Let the location variable i range over {1, 2}, where 1 = box, 2 = drawer. Also let a be Maxi, b the child, t0 the time at which Maxi leaves the room, and t > t0 the time at which b must answer the experimenter's question, i.e., report Maxi's belief state. We will represent b's report as a statement of the form Rb(Ba(p)). We assume that b believes that l(2, t), and we omit the derivation of this fact. We must explain why the normal child responds with Rb(Ba(l(1, t))), and not with Rb(l(2, t)). As mentioned above, the explanation assumes that of the competing conditionals (9.7) and (9.8) the first is inhibited by the second through a condition on abb reflecting the child's understanding of the task: Bb(Ba(l(i, t))) → abb (9.14) We first show that in these conditions b will not respond with his own knowledge of the whereabouts of the chocolate. The response Rb(l(2, t)) would require ¬abb, i.e., that abb cannot be derived. Now abb reduces to Bb(Ba(l(i, t))) by equation (9.10): if the latter can be proved, so can the former. But as we will prove next, one has Bb(Ba(l(i, t))), whence also abb. Thus the prepotent response (9.7) is inhibited and Rb(l(2, t)) is not a possible response for b. This will help in showing that the antecedent of rule (9.8) is satisfied. The second part of the proof shows that b will report a's beliefs. We know l(1, s) ∧ seea(l(1, s)) for some s < t0 < t. It follows that Ba(l(1, s)) by equation (9.2). Intuitively, because nothing happens between s and t0, and Maxi leaves after t0, one may conclude ¬Ba(clipped(s, i, t)), i.e., ?Ba(clipped(s, i, t)) fails. Formally, one can show a query like ?Ba(chocolate-moved(r) ∧ s < r < t) fails, even though the chocolate is actually moved. Indeed, applying equation (9.2) ?Ba(chocolate-moved(r) ∧ s < r < t) 254 9 Coping with Nonmonotonicity in Autism reduces to queries such as the following, which all fail: ?seea(chocolate-moved(r) ∧ s < r < t) It thus follows that ?Ba(clipped(s, i, t)) fails. By inertia (i.e., equation (9.11)), we then have deda(l(1, t)), whence Ba(l(1, t)) by (9.4). Since b can perform the preceding deduction, it follows again by (9.4) that Bb(Ba(l(1, t))). We have already seen in the first part of the argument that therefore ¬Rb(l(2, t)), and it follows by clause (9.9) that ¬abb. We must therefore have Rb(Ba(l(1, t))) by rule (9.8). 9.4.3 Attribution of Beliefs and Closed–World Reasoning in the Younger or Autistic Child As mentioned in the introduction to this section, in this case b's response rule is effectively of the form Bb(l(i, t)) → Rb(l(i, t)), (9.15) i.e., rule (9.7) without the inhibiting condition. In the Maxi task we thus get the response Rb(l(2, t)). This response cannot be inhibited: the form of the rule does not even allow b to consider a's information sources. But the effect of the response Rb(l(2, t)) is that rule (9.8) is inhibited, whence Rb(Ba(l(1, t))) is not a possible response. The rule (9.15) may be primitive, or a consequence of failed task comprehension. In the latter case, the child has not yet incorporated rule (9.10), so that closed–world reasoning leads to ¬ab. In this case cognitive development may be viewed as relating the variable for an exception in (9.7) to internal theories about mental processing and about the world. The child may also substitute the rule (9.10) with the following theory relating world and information l(i, t) → Ba(l(i, t)) (9.16) introducing a short circuit which bypasses the set of principles (9.2) – (9.4), (9.11), and (9.12) and its analogues for other events affecting the chocolate. The rules (9.15) and (9.8) are then no longer in competition, but yield the same answer. It is also possible that (9.15) arises as a failed neural encoding of a rule of the form (9.7). As in chapter 8, section (8.5), consider what is the neural analogue of having a node ¬ab in a rule like (9.7) (see figure 8.11, repeated here for convenience as figure 9.2). The inhibitory effect of the node ab = (ab+, ab−) is captured by the link from ab− to ab+: if ab− fires because it is activated 9.4 Reasoning in the False Belief Task 255 by contextual material, it inhibits the unit ab+, whence the linked from p to q is blocked. If this inhibitory channel is defective (e.g., because of insufficient inhibitory neurotransmitters such as GABA, see [235]), chances are that the link from p to q is not interrupted, even if the input ab− is active. In case there is such a deficit, cognitive development may not make much of a difference. The same argument applies to the ¬Ba(clipped(s, i, t)) node in the inertial rule (9.11), which is an ab node with more structure built in. Figure 9.2 The relation between inhibition and abnormalities. 9.4.4 Reasoning in an Unexpected Contents Task It is of some interest to inquire whether the above analysis extends to the entire family of false–belief tasks. A full treatment would exceed the bounds of this chapter, but as an illustration we sketch the reasoning in the Smarties task, when viewed as a species of closed world reasoning. We first recapitulate the task at issue. A box of Smarties is emptied, refilled with pencils, and then shown to a child who is ignorant of the change. The child is asked: "What do you think is in the box?" and it answers: "Smarties!" The child is then shown the contents of the box. The pencils are put back into the box, and the child is now asked: "What do you think your [absent] mother will say is in the box?" We may then observe the same critical age: before age 4 the child answers: "Pencils!," whereas after age 4 the child will say: "Smarties!" Also, when asked what she believed was in the box before seeing the actual contents, the younger child will say "Pencils," even though she has just answered "Smarties." Here we are interested in the responses to the second question. This type of answer seems to be related to the development of episodic memory in children. Young children have no "source memory" for when they have learned a particular piece of information. Parents of 3–year–olds will recognise 256 9 Coping with Nonmonotonicity in Autism the calm self-confidence with which the child claims to have "always known" a particular fact she recently learned. In our formalization, source memory is encapsulated in principles such as (9.2), together with closed–world reasoning; if Ba(p), then one of seea(p), tolda(p), . . . must be the case. We need the following primitive propositions, in addition to the language introduced for the false–belief task: p: Smarties inside q: pencils inside Again we start from an instance of the general response rule (9.1), now indexed to time (compare (9.6)): Ba(φ, t) ∧ ¬aba(t) → Ra(φ, t) (9.17) where Ba(φ, t) means that agent a has information that φ at time t. Let t0 be the time of the first question, t1 > t0 that of the second question. A particular instance of (9.17) is what can be called the prepotent response in this task Ba(q, t1) ∧ ¬aba(t1) → Ra(q, t1) (9.18) Proper task comprehension requires that the response rule (9.18) is inhibited when the task is to report the subject's belief at time t0; this is achieved via the inhibitory condition Ba(Ba(p, t0), t1) → aba(t1). (9.19) As in the false–belief task, the competence response is governed by another instance of rule (9.17), namely Ba(Ba(p, t0), t1) ∧ ¬ab′a(t1) → Ra(Ba(p, t0), t1)) (9.20) with the associated inhibitory condition Ra(q, t1) → ab ′(a)(t1). (9.21) The reasoning now proceeds as in the false–belief task. The older child invokes the principle (9.4), relativized to time: deda(p, t0) → Ba(p, t0) (9.22) The child deduces at t0 that there are Smarties inside the box from the fact that it is a Smarties box. As a consequence she comes to believe that there are Smarties inside: Ba(p, t0). At the time the second question is asked (t1), source memory comes into play: the child remembers what she deduced at t0, so that we get Ba(deda(p, t0), t1); by monotonicity of Ba (principle (9.5)) it follows that Ba(Ba(p, t0), t1). The prepotent response (9.18) is inhibited 9.4 Reasoning in the False Belief Task 257 because of (9.19), whence we get (by closed–world reasoning), ¬Ra(q, t1) and ¬ab′(a)(t1). The rule (9.20) now produces the right response. The younger child may experience several problems. If she has no source memory, i.e., if she does not infer Ba(deda(p, t0), t1), task-understanding (rule (9.19)) cannot be applied, and the child will give the prepotent response (9.18). The same would happen if the child experiences the difficulties with inhibition outlined in section 9.4.3. Notice that these difficulties are very different. It might well be that the normal child younger than 4 fails the task because of underdeveloped source memory, whereas the autistic child fails it due to problems with inhibition. 9.4.5 What This Analysis of the Child's Reasoning Tells Us Let us first explain some of our design decisions. The reader might wonder why a task called the "false–belief task" is not analysed logically in terms of one of the several available logics of belief. And indeed the predicate Ba, applied to propositions, acts somewhat like a modal belief operator as used in multiagent epistemic logics (since we need iterated belief operators, for instance, in the clause reflecting task understanding (9.10), and in rule 9.8). The trouble with such an analysis is that, on the one hand, standard axioms for belief such as positive and negative introspection appear to play no role in the derivation of the responses of the two categories of subjects, and on the other hand, the real work in the derivation is done by assumptions concerning the relation of belief and sensory information, concerning persistence of belief over time, and concerning belief reports. In other words, the reasoning is mostly about belief formation, not so much about belief manipulation. For the same reason it does not appear to be very useful to analyse the false–belief task in terms of a possible world semantics for epistemic logic, since such a semantics is concerned with how to get from one belief state to another, which is not the main issue in the false– belief task. This said, there remain intuitive considerations on the false–belief task which suggest that some sort of modal principle of positive introspection is operative after all. An experiment by Clements and Perner [41] shows that normal 3– year–olds may give the wrong answer in the false–belief task, while simultaneously looking at the right place. Hauser's interesting paper 'Knowing about knowing' [120] glosses this result by saying that these 3–year–olds have (implicit) knowledge about the right response, but no knowledge of their knowledge, i.e., no explicit knowledge. This distinction can be represented by a slight change in the setup. We keep the predicate Ra(p) for "agent a (verbally) reports her belief that p," but introduce a new predicate Aa(p) with the intended meaning "agent a acts out her belief that p," for example by looking. We then 258 9 Coping with Nonmonotonicity in Autism get two general response schemata instead of the one given as (9.6), namely Bb(φ) ∧ ¬abb → Ab(φ) (9.23) and Bb(Bb(φ)) ∧ ¬abb → Rb(φ). (9.24) Only positive introspection leads to congruent answers here. That is, the argument given above for the normal child older than 4 now applies to "acting out" only, i.e., with Rb replaced by Ab everywhere; positive introspection is needed to give the corresponding verbal response.11 On the assumption that the analysis captures the processing that is going on in the child's mind, we can isolate the executive and "theory" components in the false–belief task. To start with the latter, the theory component for the normally developing child consists of the rules (9.2), . . . , (9.11), (9.12) and its analogues, and the response rule (9.7). If we define executive control generally as concerned with maintaining a goal, and planning, coordination, inhibition, and control of action sequences leading toward that goal, then in this particular task executive control has to maintain the goal "Find out what Maxi's belief state is, and report truthfully," and to set up a sequence of steps leading to this goal. This first involves keeping the linking rule (9.10) active in working memory, and also the goal ?Ba(l(i, t)). Second, a computation has to be started, regressing from the activated goal; this is essentially the closed–world argument given above. Given the connection between closed–world reasoning and planning, one can see from this analysis that executive function is essentially involved in solving the false–belief task. Inhibiting the prepotent response (9.7) is only one, relatively minor, facet of this involvement. These two components together explain competent verbal performance in the false–belief task. If one of these is lacking, one may expect wrong answers. If the child does not answer that Maxi believes the chocolate to be in the box, this may thus be due to a failure to maintain the goal, or rule (9.10), in working memory, a failure to apply closed–world reasoning, for instance due to rule (9.16), a failure to grasp inertia (principle (9.11) plus closed–world reasoning), 11. The reader may well wonder why we identified B and BB with implicit and explicit belief, respectively. The reason is mainly that matters may be arranged such that BBφ implies Bφ, but not conversely, so that, at least formally, BB represents a stronger form of belief. It is possible to give more refined analyses, e.g., in terms of graded modalities, or of Halpern's awareness operator. (See, e.g., [191] for notions not explained here.) Investigations of the neural correlate of the distinction between implicit and explicit belief may well need such a more refined analysis. The reader may think of the neural implementation of the belief operator in the following way. So far we have assumed that outgoing signals always have activation strength 1 (cf. definition 14); this roughly corresponds to the assumption that one is always fully aware of the truth. With a model of the neuron which is less simplified than that of definition 14 one can relax this assumption, and allow output strength to correlate with the number of iterated B 's in front of a proposition, or with the strength of the graded modality. Technically, one can do this by making bias nodes amplify the signal emanating from a neuron representing a proposition φ; the meaning of Bφ is that the bias node is switched on. The principle of positive introspection then says that one type of bias node suffices. 9.5 Counterfactual Reasoning 259 a failure to grasp the connection between sensory input and information state (principles like (9.2) together with closed–world reasoning), or simply having a different primitive response rule replacing (9.7), one which cannot be inhibited, as in (9.15). We know that children below the cut-off age overwhelmingly answer that Maxi believes the chocolate to be in the drawer, whereas a possible answer could also be "anywhere." This reduces the possible causes of the failure to those which generate a response rule which is essentially of the form (9.15). As shown in section 9.4.3 this still leaves several possibilities, from deficient neural encoding of rules to a failure in closed–world reasoning about information sources. That is, the defect could be located at the level of neurotransmitters, at the level of executive function, or at the level of theory of mind; at the moment one cannot say which. What the analysis also shows is the implausibility of a theory–of–mind module, in the sense of an encapsulated piece of neural tissue dedicated exclusively to theory of mind. The force of the set of rules (9.10), (9.2), . . . , (9.11), (9.12) and its analogues comes from combining notions which have to do with mental representation, and notions useful in understanding (and acting in) the natural world, by means of a powerful inference engine operated by executive function. Theory of mind must be viewed as a superstructure built on top of a theory of causality in the world, powered by a theorem prover in executive function. Although this superstructure is a quite considerable extension, and so could be differentially affected, some researchers have claimed that in autism the foundation itself, the theory of causality, is compromised. This will be discussed next, in section 9.5. We then turn to a more detailed discussion of executive dysfunction in section 9.6, and will provide a formalization of one of its important experimental paradigms, the box task. The formalization of the false belief task reveals formal similarities with the suppression task, a reasoning paradigm much studied in the adult reasoning literature. The box task exhibits even stronger similarities to the suppression task, and this has led us to try the latter task on a population of autistic subjects. The results (see section 9.7) are highly suggestive of a very specific deficit in autism. 9.5 Counterfactual Reasoning The 'theory of mind deficit' hypothesis lays great stress on normal children's supposed discovery that the mind forms representations of the world and reasons on the basis of these representations. By thus distinguishing between world and representation, there arises the possibility of a mismatch between the two. Some researchers claim that it is in fact this last step, appreciation of the possibility of a mismatch, that is most important: . . . the important step taken between 3 and 5 years . . . is not the discovery that the mind is a representational device, but rather the appreciation that mental states . . . can be directed 260 9 Coping with Nonmonotonicity in Autism at situations that the child rules out as part of reality as it stands. This discovery is part of a more wide-ranging ability to think about and describe counterfactual substitutes for current reality (Harris [117,p. 131]). In other words, between ages 3 and 5 the child learns to appreciate what philosophers call the intentional character of mental states: they are always about something, but that something need not be there. At first blush, there still is a difference between false–belief reasoning and counterfactual reasoning: the former is more specific in that the child must also appreciate that the intentional character of mental states holds for others as well, whereas this is not necessary for counterfactual reasoning. This suggests that one should fractionate false–belief reasoning into different components, and try to determine experimentally which component is responsible for the observed behavior. A purely counterfactual version of the false–belief task due to Riggs and Peterson [227] was designed with the purpose of showing that (in normally developing children) indeed failures in counterfactual reasoning lie at the root of unsuccessful performance in the false belief task, as Harris proposed. Briefly, the setup is as follows. In each condition, a false–belief task and a corresponding physical state task based on the same ingredients were constructed. For instance, the analogue of the Maxi task was the following. A child, a mother doll and an experimenter are in a kitchen. The child sees that there is a chocolate in the fridge. The mother doll now bakes a chocolate cake, in the process of which the chocolate moves from fridge to cupboard. The experimenter now asks the child: (*) Where would the chocolate be if mother hadn't baked a cake? In two of the three experiments, the pattern of answers is highly correlated with that on the false–belief task. Below the cutoff age of 4, the child answers: "in the cupboard"; afterwards, it answers "in the fridge." Apparently there is no theory of mind involved in answering this question correctly; instead one needs insight into the "inertia" of the world: "things only change places when there is an explicit cause." It is interesting to inquire what prompts the younger child to answer "in the cupboard"; a simple failure to apply inertial reasoning might as well lead to the answer "it could be anywhere," say, because of the events that could have happened in this alternative world. Answers such as this would be a consequence of applying causal reasoning without closed–world reasoning for occurrences of events. The answer "in the cupboard" more likely reflects a failure to apply causal reasoning altogether, reverting instead to the prepotent response. It must be noted here that in one of Riggs and Peterson's three experiments, the false–belief task was considerably more difficult for the children than the counterfactual task, which is what one would expect given the analysis of section 9.4. We will return to this issue below, in connection with autistic children's behavior on this task. 9.5 Counterfactual Reasoning 261 We will now restate the previous considerations in terms of the formal machinery introduced for the false–belief task; this will allow a more precise comparison. The main difference with the argument in section 9.4 is that the child now compares two belief states of herself: what she knows to be true and what she is asked to assume. To economize on notation we will not introduce a separate operator for knowledge, and will continue to use B to mark beliefs which are not necessarily true. The general form of the response rule is now φ ∧ ¬abch → Rch(φ) (9.25) where the subscript ch indicates that the rule is applied by the child herself. The substitution instance of interest to us is l(i, t) ∧ ¬abch → Rch(l(i, t)). (9.26) The analogue of the substitution instance (9.8) is now the simpler Bch(l(i, t)) ∧ ¬abch → Rch(l(i, t)), (9.27) which comes together with a clause inhibiting (9.26), where j = i: Rch(l(j, t)) → abch (9.28) Let t = 0 denote the time of the initial situation, t = 1 the time of moving the chocolate, t = 2 the time of asking question (*). The child is asked to imagine that chocolate-moved(1) did not occur. Understanding this task amounts to the adoption of the rule φ ∧ Bch(¬φ) → abch, (9.29) which inhibits the child's report of the true situation φ if she pretends to believe ¬φ. The child may derive by closed–world reasoning that¬clipped(0, fridge, 2), whence by equation (9.11) ded ch(l(fridge, 2)). It follows that Bch(l(fridge, 2)), whence the child will report l(fridge, 2) by rule (9.27), if in addition ¬abch. To establish this latter formula, we have to show (using (9.28)) that ¬Rch(l(cupboard , 2)). That the response Rch(l(cupboard , 2)), triggered by the rule (9.25), is indeed inhibited, follows from the fact that l(fridge, 2) and l(cupboard , 2) are incompatible, so that Bch(¬l(cupboard , 2)), whence abch by 9.29, which inhibits the rule (9.25). The younger child is again hypothesized not to use (9.25), but to use the uninhibitable prepotent response ((9.25) stripped of ¬abch) instead, for any of the reasons outlined in section 9.4 (failed task understanding, deficient neural encoding etc.). If we now compare the two tasks, we see that the reasoning involved is very similar, but that the false–belief task requires a more extensive set of principles. Thus, failure on the counterfactual task may be expected to lead to failure on the false–belief task, because in both cases it is the prepotent response 262 9 Coping with Nonmonotonicity in Autism that is assumed to be operative, perhaps as a derivative effect. Success on the counterfactual task by itself does not imply success on the false–belief task, because the calculations for the latter involve combining reasoning about information sources, inertial properties, and closed–world reasoning. In this sense false–belief reports are a proper subspecies of counterfactuals, and it would be interesting if they could be shown to be harder for some populations. There is some experimental evidence which bears on this issue. Peterson and Bowler [215] have compared performance on false–belief tasks and counterfactual tasks in populations of typically developing children, children with severe learning problems, and autistic children. The normal children showed high correlation on these tasks, but a dissociation became apparent in the other two groups. In all groups, those who failed the counterfactual task overwhelmingly failed the false–belief task, suggesting that the kind of reasoning going on in the former is a necessary ingredient of the latter. Seventy-five percent of the typically developing children who pass the counterfactual task also pass the false–belief task, but these percentages get lower in the other groups: 60% in children with learning difficulties, 44% in autistic children. The authors speculate on the additional factors going into a false–belief computation, and suggest that one factor is the necessity to "generate" Maxi's false–belief, whereas in the counterfactual task the false statement is given. They then go on to relate this feature to other supposed failures of generativity in autism, such as the difficulty of spontaneous recall compared to cued recall. While we would not put it in precisely this way, there is something to this distinction, in that in the false–belief task the child has to see the relevance of Maxi's not witnessing the crucial event, for the ensuing computation. In the counterfactual task all the ingredients are given, and only an inertial computation is necessary. In the next section we shall provide an analysis of the theory which views autism as executive dysfunction, that is, as a failure of executive function. We will take one of the experiments illustrating the theory, the box task, and provide a logical analysis to exhibit similarities and differences with the other tasks discussed. This includes the suppression task, whose formal structure will be seen to be very similar to the false–belief task, counterfactual task and box task. 9.6 Executive Dysfunction and the Box Task As noted above when introducing the concept of executive function, Russell [237] takes as basic the observation that autistic children often exhibit severe perseveration. Executive function is called upon when a plan has to be redesigned by the occurrence of unexpected events which make the original plan unfeasible. Autistic people indeed tend to suffer from rather inflexible planning. Here are two examples, furnished by a single (Aspberger's) patient, to illustrate the phenomenon. 9.6 Executive Dysfunction and the Box Task 263 (1) If she wants to go to the supermarket, she must make a shopping list. If she finds items in the supermarket that she needs, but which do not figure on her list, she has to go home, append the needed item to the list, and return to the supermarket. Occasionally she has to go through this loop several times. (2) She has a fixed route from home to work. If a detour is necessary because of construction work on the road, she does not know what to do, because she has only one plan, whose execution is now thwarted [131,p. 503]. The second example is an instance of the inability to inhibit the prepotent response to a stimulus, even when it is known that the response is inappropriate. This phenomenon is illustrated in an experiment designed by Hughes and Russell [131], the box task, which we have already encountered in chapter 2 (see figure 9.3). Figure 9.3 Russell's box task The task is to get the marble which is lying on the platform (the truncated pyramid) inside the box. However, when the subject puts her hand through the opening, a trapdoor in the platform opens and the marble drops out of reach. This is because there is an infrared light beam behind the opening, which, when interrupted, activates the trapdoor mechanism. The switch on the left side of the box deactivates the whole mechanism, so that to get the marble you have to flip the switch first. In the standard setup, the subject is shown how manipulating the switch allows one to retrieve the marble after she has first been tricked by the trapdoor mechanism. The pattern of results is strikingly similar to that exhibited in the false–belief task: normally developing children master this task by about age 4, and before this age they keep reaching for the marble, even when the marble drops out of reach all the time. Autistic children go on failing this task for a long time. The performance on this task is conceptualized as follows. The natural, "prepotent," plan is to reach directly for the marble, but this plan fails. The child then has to replan, taking into account the information about the switch. After age 4 264 9 Coping with Nonmonotonicity in Autism the normally developing child can indeed integrate this information, that is, inhibit the prepotent response and come up with a new plan. It is hypothesized that autistic people cannot inhibit this prepotent response because of a failure in executive function. But to add precision to this diagnosis we have to dig deeper. It is important to note here, repeating a point made in chapter 6, that the ability to plan and re-plan when the need arises due to changed context, is fundamental to human cognition, no less fundamental than theory–of–mind abilities. Human beings (and other animals too) act not on the basis of stimulus-response chains, but on the basis of a (possibly distant) goal which they have set themselves. That goal, together with a world model leads to a plan which suffices to reach the goal in the assumed circumstances. But it is impossible to enumerate a priori all events which might possibly form an obstacle in reaching the goal. It is therefore generally wise to keep open the possibility that one has overlooked a precondition, while at the same time not allowing this uncertainty to inhibit one's actions. It is perhaps this flexibility that autistic people are lacking. This point can be reformulated in logical terms. The autistic person's concept of a rule is one in which the consequent invariably follows the antecedent. By contrast, a normal subject's rule is more likely to be of the exception–tolerant variety. Indeed, Russell writes (following a suggestion by Donald Peterson) [T]aking what one might call a "defeasibility stance" towards rules is an innate human endowment – and thus one that might be innately lacking . . . . [H]umans appear to possess a capacity – whatever that is – for abandoning one relatively entrenched rule for some novel ad hoc procedure. The claim can be made, therefore, that this capacity is lacking in autism, and it is this that gives rise to failures on "frontal" tasks – not to mention the behavioral rigidity that individuals with the disorder show outside the laboratory [236,p. 318]. Russell goes on to say that one way this theory might be tested is through the implication that children with autism will fail to perform on tasks which require an appreciation of the defeasibility of rules such as "sparrows can fly." This is what we shall do; but to get started we first need a logical description of what goes on in the box task, refining the description given in chapter 2. 9.6.1 Closed–World Reasoning in the Box Task For the formalization we borrow some self-explanatory notation from the situation calculus.12 Let c be a variable over contexts, then the primitives are the predicate do(a, c), meaning "perform action a in context c"; the function result(a, c), which gives the new context after a has been performed in c. 12. The situation calculus is a standard formalism in AI. A good reference is Russell and Norvig [238,chapter 10]. Note that these authors use the variable s (for "situation") where we use c (for "context"). 9.6 Executive Dysfunction and the Box Task 265 The actions we need are g ("grab"), u ("switch up"), d ("switch down"). We furthermore need the following context-dependent properties: possess(c): the child possesses the marble in c, up(c): the switch is up in c (= correct position), down(c): the switch is down in c (= wrong position). The following equations give the rules appropriate for the box task down(c) ∧ do(u, c) ∧ ¬ab′(c) → up(result(u, c)) (9.30) do(g, c) ∧ ¬ab(c) → possess(result(g, c)) (9.31) We first model the reasoning of the normal child older than 4 years. Initially, closed–world reasoning for ab(c) gives ¬ab(c), reducing the rule (9.31) to do(g, c) → possess(result(g, c)), (9.32) which prompts the child to reach for the marble without further ado. After repeated failure, she reverts to the initial rule 9.31, and concludes that after all ab(c). After the demonstration of the role of the switch, she forms the condition down(c) → ab(c) (9.33) . She then applies closed–world reasoning for ab to 9.33, to get down(c) ↔ ab(c), (9.34) which transforms rule (9.31) to do(g, c) ∧ up(c) → possess(result(g, c)). (9.35) Define context c0 by putting c = result(u, c0) and apply closed–world reasoning to rule (9.30), in the sense that ab ′(c) is set to ⊥ due to lack of further information, and → is replaced by ↔. Finally, we obtain the updated rule, which constitutes a new plan for action down(c0) ∧ do(u, c0) ∧ c = result(u, c0) ∧ do(g, c) → possess(result(g, c)) (9.36) As in the previous tasks, both the normal child younger than 4, and the autistic child are assumed to operate effectively with a rule of the form do(g, c) → possess(result(g, c)) (9.37) which cannot be updated, only replaced in toto by a new rule such as (9.36). It is tempting to speculate on the computational complexities of both these procedures. Russell wrote that "humans appear to possess a capacity – whatever that is – for abandoning one relatively entrenched rule for some novel ad 266 9 Coping with Nonmonotonicity in Autism hoc procedure [236,p. 318]." The preceding considerations suggest that "abandoning one relatively entrenched rule" may indeed be costly, but that normal humans get around this by representing the rule in such a way that it can be easily updated. It is instructive to look at the computation that the normal child older than 4 is hypothesized to be performing. The only costly step appears to be the synthesis of the rule (9.33); the rest is straightforward logic programming which, as we have seen in chapter 8, can proceed automatically. The rule (9.31) is never abandoned; a new rule is derived without having to ditch (9.31) first. To close this discussion, we compare the false–belief task to the box task from the point of view of the formal analysis. The tasks are similar in that for a successful solution one must start from rules of the form p∧¬ab → q, identify conditions which constitute an abnormality, and apply closed–world reasoning; and also that in both cases a failure of ab to exercise its inhibitory function leads to the inability to inhibit the prepotent response. A difference is that in the false–belief task, one needs a "theory" relating ab to sensory, or inferred, information via clauses such as seea(l(i, t)) → Ba(l(i, t)), ¬Ba(l(i, t)) → aba(i, t), etc., whereas it suffices to operate with rules for actions in the box task. 9.6.2 The Suppression Task as a Formal Analogue of the Box Task The reader who has followed the above computation will have noticed its striking similarity to the essential step in our derivation of the suppression effect as a form of closed–world reasoning. Given the formal analogy between the box task and the suppression task, we were led to expect that autistic people have a very specific difficulty with closed world reasoning about exceptions. This should show up in a refusal to suppress the inferences MP and MT, in case the second conditional premise is of the additional type. To show that the problem is really specific to exceptions, and not a problem about integrating new information, or with closed–world reasoning generally, one may compare autistic people's reasoning with AC and DA,. In these cases, suppression of the inference by addition of an alternative motivation, for example, is independent of exception handling. Here one would expect behavior which is comparable to normals. One must thus distinguish two forms of closed–world reasoning that play a role here. On the one hand there is closed–world reasoning applied to abnormalities or exceptions, which takes the form: "assume only those exceptions occur which are explicitly listed." On the other hand there is closed–world reasoning applied to rules which takes the form of diagnostic reasoning: "if B has occurred and the only known rules with B as consequent are A1 → B, . . . , An → B, then assume one of A1, . . . , An has occurred." These forms of closed–world reasoning are in principle independent, and in our autistic population we indeed observed a dissociation between the two. 9.7 Autists' Performance in the Suppression Task 267 9.7 Autists' Performance in the Suppression Task In order to test these hypotheses, formulated generally as (1) Autistic people can apply closed–world reasoning, but have a decreased ability in handling exceptions to rules. Smid [250] conducted an experiment on a population of six autistic subjects (young adults) with normal intelligence (IQ > 85) and language abilities from a psychiatric hospital in Vught (Netherlands). The tests administered to the subjects involved a false belief task (the Smarties task13) propositional reasoning with two premises (MP, MT, etc.), the Wason selection task, the suppression task, reasoning with prototypes, and analogical reasoning. The method consisted in engaging in tutorial dialogues with the subjects. The data strongly suggested that in autistic people there is indeed a dissociation between the two forms of closed–world reasoning. As predicted, suppression of fallacies (DA and AC) with an alternative premise did occur and the percentages we found are roughly the same as those found in research with normal subjects. Suppression of MP, by contrast, was much rarer in our subjects than in normals. In the dialogues, subjects often ignored the additional premise completely in their overt reasoning. With regard to suppression of MT the results were less dramatic, and harder to interpret, in particular because the rate of endorsement for MT with an alternative premise is somewhat higher than that for the base case. Nevertheless, the percentage of MT conclusions drawn in problems with an additional premise is higher than for the normal subjects – autistic subjects are not suppressing. What is of especial relevance is that the experimenter's interventions, pointing to the possible relevance of the additional conditional premise, had no effect. Another finding in the dialogues that deserves to be noticed is the diverse and sometimes unusual interpretation of the conditional. Particularly the hypothetical character of the antecedent appears to be hard to represent; for instance, subjects sometimes take the antecedent as stating something which is the case. While suggestive, the data from this experiment were obtained in a small population and so lacked statistical significance. The experiment was redone on a much larger scale at the F.C. Donders Centre for Cognitive Neuroimaging (Nijmegen, Netherlands).14 The experimental group consisted of twenty-eight autistic individuals, who were tested also on a standard battery of neuropsychological tests. The control group consisted of twenty-eight subjects, each matched to a unique autistic subject with respect to intelligence and verbal mental age. The reasoning problems were presented as a list of two or three premises, followed by the question: "is [conclusion] true?" where the allowed 13. Five out of six subjects performed normally on this task. 14. The experimenter is Judith Pijnacker, who kindly gave permission to include some of her data here. 268 9 Coping with Nonmonotonicity in Autism answers were yes, no or maybe. Table 9.1 gives the percentages, the prefixes aindicating the autistic population, and cthe controls. We discuss some salient features of this table. With regard to the two-premise inference patterns MP, MT, AC, and DA, this study found an unexpected difference between the groups: in all four inference patterns the autistic subjects volunteered significantly more maybe answers.15 Given this result, it is somewhat surprising that there is no significant difference between the groups in rate of endorsement of MP, of MT, and of AC.16 In the case of DA, inspection of the table shows there is a difference in rate of endorsement between the groups; in fact this difference approaches significance (p = .054). Turning to the three premise arguments, results are almost as expected. In MPadd, autistic subjects answer yes significantly more often than controls (p = .011), while in MTadd the autistic subjects answered no more often, although the difference only approaches significance (p = .066). For MPalt and MTalt there are no significant differences between the two groups, nor are there among ACalt, ACadd, DAadd, and DAalt.17 These observations lend some support to the hypothesis (1), that it is specifically processing exceptions that creates difficulties for autistic subjects.18 DA and AC showed the pattern familiar from normals, suggesting that this type of closed–world reasoning, where exceptions do not figure, presents no atypical difficulties. The behavior in MP and MT conditions (especially the former), where implicit exceptions need to be acknowledged to achieve suppression, was different from normals, showing much less suppression. Moreover, the tutorial dialogues show that nonsuppression in MPadd and MTadd is caused by a total disregard of the additional premise, even though these same subjects had no trouble incorporating the alternative premise in ACalt and DAalt. We have seen in chapter 7 that nonsuppression may be due as well to a form of nonmonotonic reasoning: introducing, for example, "the library is closed" as a presupposition. The dialogues with the autistic subjects do not show this pattern; here nonsuppression is due to rigid rule following, and the experimenter's attempts 15. The full results are as follows – MP: p = .031; MT: p = .011; AC: p = .040; DA: p = .059. (Strictly speaking, of course, the result for DA only approaches significance.) The fact that there are more "maybes" in all four conditions suggests that the increased frequency is not related to the logical properties of these argument patterns. 16. MP: p = .156; MT: p = .091; AC: p = .078. 17. In this experiment also reaction times were measured. One interesting finding is that in both groups the 'fallacial' responses of the type AC and DA were given significantly faster than the answers dictated by the classical logic. Perhaps there is a relation here with the straightforward neural implementability of closed–world reasoning discussed in chapter 8. 18. The behavioral task whose outcome is given in table 9.1 is actually a prelude to an ERP experiment involving the suppression task. Very roughly speaking, the prediction is that upon presentation of the additional premise in MPadd, controls show the characteristic 'surprise response' called the N400 (see Kutas and Hillyard [166] for definition and discussion), whereas this response will be much less in evidence in autistic subjects. 9.8 Dialogue Data 269 Table 9.1 Results on suppression task in autists (n=28) and matched controls (n=28) argument a-yes a-no a-maybe c-yes c-no c-maybe MP 89.0 0.0 10.4 96.1 2.5 1.4 MPadd 71.0 1.1 28.9 51.1 0.7 48.2 MPalt 92.9 0.4 6.7 97.5 0.7 1.8 MT 1.4 79.6 19.0 2.5 92.8 4.7 MTadd 0.7 62.1 37.2 0.7 45.0 54.3 MTalt 0.4 90.3 9.3 1.1 95.0 3.9 AC 45.0 1.1 53.9 67.1 2.1 30.8 ACadd 28.1 1.1 70.9 35.7 0.0 64.3 ACalt 12.2 2.2 85.6 9.6 0.0 90.4 DA 1.1 48.0 50.9 0.4 69.1 30.5 DAadd 2.9 28.9 68.2 2.5 33.6 63.9 DAalt 3.2 15.7 81.1 1.1 10.4 88.5 to induce some flexibility were to no avail. 19 9.8 Dialogue Data We now present some conversations with subjects from the experiment conducted by Smid [250] while they were engaged in the suppression task. The subjects were presented with either two or three premises, and were asked whether another sentence was true, false, or undecided. We then proceeded to ask them for a justification of their answer. The first example gives something of the flavor of the dialogues. We see subject A engaged in MT with three premises, having refused to endorse MT in the two-premise case. The excerpt is interesting because the subject explicitly engages with the possibility of exceptions. If Marian has an essay to write she will study late in the library. (*) If the library stays open then Marian will study late in the library. Marian will not study late in the library. Does Marian have an essay? A: It says here that if she has an essay, she studies late in the library.. . . But she doesn't study late in the library . . . which suggests that she doesn't have an essay . . . But it could be that she has to leave early, or that something else came up . . . if you only look at the given data, she will not write an essay . . . but when you realise that something unexpected has come up, then it is very well possible that she does have to write an essay . . . [our italics] [250,p. 88ff] 19. For an analogous use of the logical framework to predict discourse processing style in children with ADHD , see [267]. 270 9 Coping with Nonmonotonicity in Autism The sentence beginning "But it could be that ... " suggests considerations of possible exceptions; the italicized phrase looks like closed–world reasoning applied to these exceptions. The interesting point is that the information in (*) is nowhere integrated; the step library-closed → ab is not made. 9.8.1 Excerpts from Dialogues: MP We recall the argument: If Marian has an essay to write she will study late in the library. (*) If the library stays open then Marian will study late in the library. Marian has an essay to write. Does Marian study late in the library? Here is subject C, first engaged in the two-premise case, i.e., without (*): C: But that's what it says! E: What? C: If she has an essay then she studies. E: So your answer is "yes"? C: Yes. The same subject engaged in the three-premise argument: C. Yes, she studies late in the library. E. Eh, why? C. Because she has to write an essay. Clearly the possible exception highlighted by the second conditional is not integrated; the emphasis shows that the first conditional completely overrides the second. 9.8.2 Excerpts from Dialogues: MT In this case the argument pattern is If Marian has an essay to write she will study late in the library. (*) If the library stays open then Marian will study late in the library. Marian will not study late in the library. Does Marian have an essay? Here is again subject C: C. No, she has . . . oh no, wait a minute . . . this is a bit strange isn't it? E. Why? C. Well, it says here: if she has to write an essay . . . And I'm asked whether she has to write an essay? E. Mmm. C. I don't think so. 9.8 Dialogue Data 271 This is probably evidence of the general difficulty of MT, but note that the second conditional does not enter into the deliberations. In the dialogue, E then prompts C to look at second conditional, but this has no effect: C sticks to his choice. Here is a good example of the way in which a subject (in this case B) can be impervious to the suggestions of the experimenter. The dialogue refers to the argument with three premises; we give a rather long abstract to show the flavor of the conversations. B: No. Because if she had to make an essay, she would study in the library. E: Hmm. B: And she doesn't do this, so she doesn't have an essay. E: Yes. B: And this means . . . [inaudible] E: [laughs] But suppose she has an essay, but the library is closed? B: Ah, that's also possible. E: Well, I'm only asking. B: Well, according to these two sentences that's not possible, I think. E: How do you mean? B: Ehm, yes she just studies late in the library if she has an essay. E: Hmm. B: And it does not say "if it's open, or closed . . . " E: OK. B: So according to these sentences, I know it sounds weird, but . . . . E: Yes, I . . . B: I know it sounds rather autistic what I'm saying now [laughs]. E: [laughs] B: Eh yes. E: So it is like you said? Or perhaps that she . . . B: Yes, perhaps the library closes earlier? E: You may say what you want! You don't have to try to think of what should be the correct answer! B: OK, no, then I'll stick to my first answer. E: OK, yes. B: [laughs] I know it's not like this, but [laughs]. E: Well, that's not clear. It's possible to say different things about reasoning here, and what you say is certainly not incorrect. In the above we have seen examples of how our autistic subjects refuse to integrate the information about exceptions provided by (*). The next extracts show that this need not be because they are incapable of integrating a second conditional premise, or of applying closed–world reasoning. We here consider the "fallacies" DA and AC, which can be valid if seen as a consequence of closed– world reasoning, and which can be suppressed by supplying a suitable second conditional premise, e.g., (†) below. 272 9 Coping with Nonmonotonicity in Autism 9.8.3 Excerpts from Dialogues: AC The argument is If Marian has an essay to write she will study late in the library. (†) If Marian has an exam, she will study late in the library. Marian studies late in the library. Does Marian have an essay? Here is subject C, in the two-premise argument without (†). C: Yes. E: Why? C: It says in the first sentence "if she has an essay then she does that [study late etc.]" . . . But Marian is just a name, it might as well be Fred. Now consider the three-premise case. C: Mmm. Again "if," isn't it? E: Yes. C: If Marian has an essay, she studies late in the library. . . E: Yes. C: If Marian has an exam, she studies late in the library . . . E: Hmm. C: Marian studies late in the library. Does Marian have an essay? E: Hmm. C: No. E: Hmm. C: It does not say she has to make an essay. E: Hmm. But she studies late in the library, can you conclude from this that she has to make an essay? C: No you can't, because she could also have an exam. We see in this example that C correctly judges the import of (†): after having applied closed–world reasoning to the two-premise case, he notices that it is powerless in this case. 9.9 A Similar Task with very Different Outcomes After having explained the importance of defeasible reasoning for the study of autism, Russell was forced to add a caveat. The box task is superficially similar to another task devised by Russell, the tubes task (depicted in figure 9.4), but performance on the latter task is very different from that on the former. What one sees in the schematic drawing in figure 9.4 is a series of six holes into which a ball can be dropped, to land in a small container below. A ball dropped through the leftmost opening will end up in the catch tray directly underneath, but a ball dropped through the opening which is second from left travels through an opaque tube to end up in the catch tray which is third from 9.9 A Similar Task with very Different Outcomes 273 Figure 9.4 Schematic drawing of the tubes task. left. The child sees the ball being dropped through an opening, and has to retrieve it from one of the catch trays below. When the ball is dropped in the second from left opening, children of age 3 or younger tend to look in the catch tray directly underneath the opening, probably applying the (defeasible) rule that things fall vertically. Older children, including also autistic children, manage to inhibit the "prepotent" response and search in the correct catch tray, adequately representing the trajectory of the ball as guided by the tube. The apparent puzzle posed by performance on this task is that in this case also autistic children older than 3 are able to switch rules effortlessly. Russell originally explained this by a distinction between "arbitrary" rules imposed by the experimenter (as in the box task), and rules based on fairly transparent physical principles (as in the tubes task). Autistic children would be impaired on the former but not the latter, incidentally showing that autism, viewed as executive dysfunction, must be a rather specific executive deficit. If both kinds of defeasible rules require the same kind of closed–world reasoning about abnormalities, the hypothesis that it is this form of reasoning that is difficult for autistic subjects is defeated. The first thing to observe here is that the rules involved in the two tasks have different logical forms, and so require different reasoning. In the box task, correct performance hinges on the ability to amend the antecedent of the rule, whereas in the case of the tubes task it is the consequent (i.e., the catch tray) that has to be changed. In the box task, the original plan has to be changed by incorporating another action, whereas in the case of the tubes task one action has to be replaced by another. This suggests that what happens in the tubes task need not be viewed as rule switching, but can also been seen as the application of a single IF-THEN-ELSE rule, where the action to be taken depends on the 274 9 Coping with Nonmonotonicity in Autism satisfaction or not of an explicit precondition: unimpeded fall of the ball. On this analysis, the difference between box and tubes task would be that the former forces synthesizing a new rule on the spot by exception handling, whereas in the latter case the switch is between components of a single rule. The experimental literature shows that autistic subjects have less difficulty with synthesizing an IF-THEN-ELSE rule from instructions shown to them, than with rule construction by exception handling. Indeed, a standard Go/No Go task is of the IF-THEN-ELSE form. For instance, in one such task, subjects were shown different letters of the alphabet that flashed one at a time on a computer screen. They were asked to respond by pressing a key in every case except when they saw the letter X. The first task was a Go task, in which the letter X never appeared and in this way subjects were allowed to build up a tendency to respond. Immediately afterward, subjects performed a Go/No Go task in which the letter X did appear in the lineup, at which point the subject had to control the previously built-up response tendency. Autistic subjects are not particularly impaired at such a task,20 although they do become confused when they have to shift rapidly between one target stimulus and another (Ozonoff et al. [208]). At a more abstract level, what the analysis of the empirical difference between the box and tubes tasks just given highlights is that, before one can discuss whether autistic subjects have difficulties with rule switching, the proper definition of "rule" in this context has to be clarified. If the preceding considerations are correct, then autistic subjects can be successful with rules more general than the "condition–action" format. 9.9.1 The 'A not B' Task The above method of analysis is actually a general scheme for the analysis of executive tasks,21 as we will illustrate here using Piaget's famous 'A not B' task, for which see Baillargeon [10] and the references given therein. Suppose one shows a child between ages 1 and 2 two opaque screens, A and B, and suppose furthermore one hides a toy behind A. The child is asked to retrieve the toy. Once she successfully and repeatedly retrieves the toy behind A, the experimenter switches sides, hiding it behind screen B. Surprisingly, the child searches behind A, not behind B, and keeps doing so over many trials. This looks like the building up of a prepotent response, but as Hauser [120] observes, it is a response tendency built up by the actual reaching, not by the bare fact that the toy was observed to go behind A. If an experimenter repeatedly hides and then reveals the object behind A, but doesn't allow the child to search until the switch trial to B, the child shows no deficit, searching 20. In contrast, for example, to ADHD kids. 21. See [267] for an elaboration of this point. 9.9 A Similar Task with very Different Outcomes 275 right away at B. This shows that actively searching is crucial; simply observing passively, is not.[120,p. 4] In a further twist reminiscent of Clements and Perner's observation of the dissociation between verbal and nonverbal responses in the false–belief task (see section 9.4.5), it was observed that sometimes a child will look at the B screen even when reaching for the A screen. However, in this case there is clearly a dissociation within the nonverbal domain, one between looking and reaching. We will now formalise this task, again using exception-tolerant rules allowing inhibition, as we did above. We refer to the screens as s1 and s2, and use B for "belief." As in the Smarties task, a single B will stand for implicit knowledge, whereas the iterated BB represents explicit knowledge. We assume the child knows implicitly that the toy is either behind s1 or behind s2: B(toy-at(s1) ∨ toy-at(s2)), and that she either (implicitly) knows that the toy is behind si or (implicitly) knows that it isn't: B(toy-at(si))∨¬B(toy-at(si)). From these assumptions it follows that ¬B(toy-at(si)) → B(toy-at(sj)) for i = j. The following rules then describe the task, incorporating the distinction between looking (9.38,9.39) and reaching (9.40,9.42). We use intention(toy) to express that the child has the intention to get the toy. The first set describes the looking response, in which the child looks at the correct screen even when reaching for the wrong screen; this response is supposed to be driven by implicit knowledge. intention(toy) ∧ ¬abi → look(si) (9.38) ¬B(toy-at(si)) → abi (9.39) If the child has implicit knowledge that the toy is at s2, i.e., B(toy-at(s2)), it follows that ¬B(toy-at(s1)), whence ab1, so that closed–world reasoning shows she does not look at s1. That she must look at s2 follows because B(toy-at(s2)) implies ¬ab2, whence look(s2). The second set describes the grasp response, where the difference with the previous set is that now explicit knowledge, i.e., iteration of the belief operator, is needed to generate the correct response. The observation that it is the reaching system that builds up the prepotent response is reflected in the abnormality conditions, which are asymmetric, in contrast to the previous case. intention(toy) ∧ ¬ab ′i → reach(si) (9.40) reach(s2) → ab ′1 (9.41) ¬BB(toy-at(s2)) → ab ′2 (9.42) In this case, if positive introspection fails, it may happen that B(toy-at(s2)) but not BB(toy-at(s2)). It follows that ab ′ 2, whence ¬reach(s2) and by closed– 276 9 Coping with Nonmonotonicity in Autism world reasoning ¬ab ′1, so that we must have reach(s1). If the child has positive introspection, B(toy-at(s2)) implies BB(toy-at(s2)), whence by closed– world reasoning ¬ab ′2 and reach(s2). The analyses just given hinge on the difference between implicit and explicit knowledge, i.e., between B(toy-at(s2)) and BB(toy-at(s2)). A neural interpretation of this difference was given in footnote 11 (this chapter). Applied to this case, that interpretation implies that the signals governing the looking response can be of weaker strength than that governing the reaching response. Indeed, the A not B task shows differentiation of an attentional system (looking) from an action system (pointing). There is evidence of a different time scale for registration of learning episodes in the two systems – the pointing system lagging behind the looking system at least in this context. The degree of organization required for information to control the attentional system is clearly less than for the action system. To put this in slightly different terms, the young child "knows" it can get things done by acting, not just by looking, and therefore the responses built up by the reaching system are at first stronger than that built up by the attentional system. An equilibrium between the two systems is reached only later. 9.10 Summing up the Cognitive Analyses We can now briefly discuss what can be said about the various explanations for autism, based on experimental data and logical analysis. At first sight, the analyses presented here appear to have little relevance for the assessment of Hobson's "affective foundation" theory, although they do raise important general questions about the relation between cognition and affect, which are relevant to assessing the relation between Hobson's theories and cognitive accounts. Most specifically, planning logics incorporate reasoning goals within their accounts of reasoning in a way which classical logic does not. Goals are part of motivation, and motivation is intimately related to affect.22 There has, for example, been much discussion recently of defects of reasoning which can be understood as abnormalities of motivation (see, for example, Damasio [55]). Inasmuch as reasoning and motivation for reasoning can be separated, these patients (also with frontal lobe damage and executive function deficits) have intact reasoning but defective motivation for reasoning. They seem to "discount the future" in assessing the relevance of lines of reasoning. Damasio cites a patient who is trying to decide whether or not to enter into a business relationship with the arch enemy of his best friend. The patient 22. Less specifically, there are issues about how we are to conceptualise the implementations of logical systems in the mind. Stenning [258,p. 266ff.] has argued that affective reactions are as much implementations of aspects of logical reasoning systems as is cold calculative machinery. The particular case of the affective element of "cheating detection" is taken as an example. 9.10 Summing up the Cognitive Analyses 277 enters into an elaborate calculation of costs and benefits which would normally be pruned from the reasoning space by emotional rejection. This sounds not a million miles from some aspects of autistic people's failure to empathise. There are somewhat more specific things to say about Frith and Happé's weak central coherence theory. The computations involved in the false–belief task seem to call for some kind of central processor, because they combine ingredients from different "domains," in particular reasoning about information and mental states, and reasoning about inertial properties of the world.23 We have seen that decoupling these domains, for whatever reason, leads to anomalous behavior on the false–belief task. Perhaps, then, weak central coherence fosters this decoupling. The weak central coherence theory is all about attention and its distribution. Attention is controlled by motivation even if attention may be interrupted bottom–up by environmental events whose motivational significance then has to be assessed. Autistic motivation and attention appear to be gripped by detail, and difficult to shift. One of the contributions of affect to cognition is its capacity for abstraction (Stenning [258,p. 217ff.]). Although we often think of emotion as being a concrete reaction (for example, experienced in the gut), affect is peculiarly abstract in that the same affective state can be a response to almost any object, state, or event, given the right circumstances. Stenning [258,p. 203ff.] argues that affective mappings are the wellspring of our earliest analogical recognition. Perhaps the decoupling highlighted by weak central coherence theory is related to the affective abnormalities which are the basis of Hobson's theory. The most specific comparisons are between the theories which propose theory– of–mind failure and executive dysfunction. In making this comparison, we draw on a survey paper by Perner and Lang [211], who suggest five possible relationships between these theories: 1. Executive control depends upon theory of mind. 2. Theory–of–mind development depends upon executive control. 3. The relevant theory of mind tasks require executive control. 4. Both kinds of tasks require the same kind of conditional reasoning. 5. Theory of mind and executive control involve the same brain region. We discuss each of these except the last (since so little is known), and evaluate them in the light of the foregoing considerations. 23. One should not take "central processor" too literally. The importance of the neural implementation of default reasoning is precisely that it shows how reasoning can be "distributed" across a network, though the network itself may be operating as a central processor relative to some peripheral systems. 278 9 Coping with Nonmonotonicity in Autism Executive Control Derives from Theory of Mind Perner and Lang suggested that both theory–of–mind and executive inhibition tasks require the child to appreciate the causal power of mental states to initiate action. This is clear in the false–belief task. In the case of executive inhibition, such as found in the box task, the child would need to see that the mental picture of the apparently fully accessible marble causes her to make the unsuccessful reaching movement. Thus there would be a common mental factor underlying both types of tasks. This conceptualization suffers from an unduly narrow view of executive control as concerned only with inhibition. Even if Perner and Lang's invocation of mental causation would apply to inhibition, it is not clear at all how it could explain the closed–world reasoning, in other words the planning, that takes place during the computations. Theory of Mind Essentially Requires Executive Control Under this heading we will discuss both 2 and 3 from our list above. Russell suggested that self monitoring (as part of executive control) is a prerequisite of self awareness, which is in turn necessary for the development of ToM. Less strongly, false belief tasks would all involve an executive component in that a prepotent response has to be inhibited. Perner and Lang claim that there are versions of the false–belief task which do not involve inhibiting a prepotent response. One example is the "explanation task," which (translated to the language of our running example) runs like this: when Maxi returns to the room, he looks for his chocolate in the (empty) box. The child is then asked why he is doing this. Children above the cutoff age give the correct explanation, whereas younger children appear to guess. The authors claim that this is in marked contrast to the standard task, where these children consistently answer "in the drawer," thus showing that no (failed inhibition of the) prepotent response is operative in the explanation task. Here one may well wonder what the younger children can do except guessing, given that Maxi is looking in what is (according to the child) evidently the wrong place. It is precisely because the prepotent response is not inhibited that the child must guess. Defective Conditional Reasoning as a Root Failure in Autism In their survey, Perner and Lang here refer to work by Frye, Zelazo, and Palfai [89], who claim that all the relevant tasks can be formalized as reasoning with embedded conditionals of the form if p then (if q then r else r′) else . . . 9.11 The Biological Setting of Autism 279 The difficulty with embedded conditionals is then presumably that they put heavy computational demands on working memory. Unfortunately there are two serious problems with the proposed explanation. The first is that conditionals such as the above do not involve embedding essentially, since they can be rephrased as (if p and q then r) and (if p and not-q then r′) and (if not-p. . . ) Thus the embedded conditionals can be replaced by a conjunction of noniterated conditionals, where the antecedents enumerate the various possibilities: p∧ q, p∧¬q, ¬p∧ q, . . . Indeed, avoidance of iterated conditionals that cannot be eliminated by such conjunctive paraphrase seems to be a general tendency in natural languages. The description in terms of a conjunction of conditionals is more systematic and probably quite easy to code into working memory; although perhaps some people never re-represent the embedded conditional into this simpler form. Furthermore, while it is readily apparent that the logical form of card–sorting tasks can be given in this way, the application to false–belief tasks, via rules such as if the question is from Maxi's perspective then (if he is looking for his chocolate then predict that he goes to the cupboard) . . . is much more dubious. In the case of a card–sorting task, or a Go/No Go task, the embedded conditional is provided by the experimenter, and autistic subjects have no difficulty with this as long as the nesting (i.e., the number of different antecedents) is not too deep. But the whole problem with the other tasks is that the subject has to synthesise the relevant rules herself, for instance by means of the closed–world reasoning illustrated here. It will be clear, however, from the analyses presented in this chapter that we fully endorse the view that all these tasks are ultimately about conditional reasoning, once a more reasonable concept of conditional is adopted. Thus, our considered view of the relation between theory of mind and executive function is a combination of (3) and (4): theory of mind is built on top of executive function, and all tasks ultimately reduce to applying closed–world reasoning to suitable sets of conditionals. 9.11 The Biological Setting of Autism We will end this chapter with some biological background to autism and with a discussion of its possible significance in evolutionary analyses. We do this for two reasons. First, in discussing logical accounts of reasoning tasks which diagnose autism, it would be easy to leave the reader with the picture that autism 280 9 Coping with Nonmonotonicity in Autism is the result of a few implementations of logical rules going awry – that is certainly not our position. We present this biological background to give some idea of what may be involved in understanding the relation between our "neural" model and its brain implementation. Second, autism offers an opportunity to elaborate our conjectural account of the part played by altriciality in cognitive evolution given in chapter 6, section 6.5. Remember, the main purpose of that conjecture was to offer an alternative way of thinking about cognitive evolution from the approaches which dominate evolutionary psychology. We emphasized the importance of changes in timing of developmental processes. Whether our conjectures about autism turn out to be true or wild, they can serve to illustrate what we claim is a more reasonable general biological approach. In chapter 6, we introduced altriciality as an important example of a biological innovation, which is a good candidate for playing an organizing role in many of the changes responsible for the emergence of humans and their minds. Homo sapiens is an altricial species – it is born at an immature stage with regard to a whole host of features. The changed pattern of timing of maturation persists long after birth. Biological adolescence as a delay of sexual maturity is a related human innovation. The growth of neural tissue in the frontal cortex is now understood to continue until about the age of 20. These are uncontested biological innovations of humans relative to their immediate ancestors. We believe that autism can insightfully be considered as a disturbance of the timings of developmental processes. Autism is therefore particularly relevant to our more general effort to interpret human cognitive evolution in the light of changes in the temporal patterning of development. To take one example, it has often been reported that autistic children have rather large heads, typically about 15% to 40% having macrocephaly, defined as a head circumference greater than two standard deviations above the mean [193]. Although many conflicting reports of data have appeared, macrocephaly is one of the most often reported gross correlates of autism spectrum disorders. Even more interesting for our concerns with changes in timing is that the conflicts appear to arise because autistic children have a changed temporal profile of head growth (see figure 9.5). The difficulty of getting data on early head circumference growth is that autistic children are often not diagnosed until about the age of 2 years. But retrospective studies indicate that the head growth profile of those subsequently diagnosed as autistic is even more surprising [225]. As can be seen in the figure, at birth they have smaller heads than average, but by 1 year their heads are substantially larger than average, and by 2 years this growth spurt is leveling off. By adulthood, the normal population has caught up (not shown). Several studies [62, 271] have reported that it is particularly accelerated brain growth rather than absolute size that correlates with autistic symptoms. However, their results show better cognitive function (relative to autistic peers) with growth 9.11 The Biological Setting of Autism 281 Figure 9.5 Head circumference (HC) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) percent difference (%Diff) by age. %Diff values from all HC and MRI studies are plotted by the mean age of the study. The best fitted curve shows the most rapid rates of increased deviation from normal brain size in autism within first year of life and the greatest rates of decrease in deviation from normal during middle and late childhood. Study number is given next to each percent difference value. HC, head circumference; MRI, magnetic resonance imaging. (Reprinted from [225,Figure 1, p. 5] by permission of the Society of Biological Psychiatry.) spurts, whereas the analysis of Courchesne et al. indicates worse behavioral deficits. It is as well to note that macrocephaly is common in other related psychiatric categories such as ADHD [97, 94]. Since macrocephaly is normally given an extreme definition, and since temporal profile data from longitudinal studies are not available, it is hard to say how many autistic spectrum children exhibit brain growth spurts, but from the figures available it could be a very considerable proportion. Some possible genetic determinants or concommitants of this pattern of head growth are surfacing. [197] following up work by [45] and [138] have shown that the gene HOXA1 appears to be both related to autism, and a controller for head growth rates in some normal populations as well as autistic ones. Children with at least one g allele of this gene show more rapid head growth than those without, whereas the a allele is associated with an increased suceptibility to autism. The head growth rate is not associated with larger heads in adults- it is a growth rate difference. HOXA1 is a member of the homeobox family of highly conserved genes responsible for laying down the 'body plan' of organisms. Its particular influence is on the differentiation of head from body, and its main known effects are seen in innervation of posterior portions of the 282 9 Coping with Nonmonotonicity in Autism head. It is therefore related to another well-known homeobox gene, FOXP2. which was identified through the disruption of articulation in a family with a mutated form [181]. These are genes close to the foundations of the modern "evo devo" understanding of relations between development and evolution (see section 6.2.4). This disturbed pattern of the phasing of head growth prompts the possibly wild speculation that it might be an adaptation to the problems of human birth as discussed in chapter 6, and argued there to be the focus of major evolutionary changes in the period of emergence of modern human cognition. Perhaps having a slightly smaller head at birth and compensatnig with accelerated gowth thereafter is one contribution to safer birth. Perhaps some autistic children have overdone such an adaptation. Regardless of how this speculation fares, here is clear evidence of changed temporal patterning of a developmental process with pervasive effects on brain development and consequent behavior [123]. At the very least we can organise our enquiries into the autistic brain around the question of how this grossly changed pattern of head growth relates to neural developmental processes. We will now explore two avenues that lead from viewing autism as a change in the temporal pattern of development. First we seek to link these observations of the timing of brain development, through executive function interpretations of autism, to our neural implementations of closed–world reasoning in chapter 8. Second, we will review some of what is known about the genetics of autism, which will serve to further link autism, through the phenomenon of genetic imprinting, to our organizing theme of altriciality in human evolution. What follows is rather dense neuroscience and we do not claim more than amateur status here. Nor could we reasonably expect readers to be or become experts. Until rather recently we too were skeptical ourselves whether neuroscience or genetics was sufficiently developed to bring to bear on computation models of functional characterizations of reasoning. However, things are moving fast, and our purpose here is to find some areas where the gap may be closing. 9.11.1 Brain Development and Implementations of Closed–World Reasoning Understanding autistic brain function as it implements autistic cognition requires a demanding integration of data from different time scales: developmental, learning, and online computation. This is true of many developmental disorders, to say nothing of "neurotypical" cognition, as is eloquently argued by Scerif and Karmiloff-Smith [241]. What is so intriguing coming from a perspective dominated by the shortest of these time scales (in discourse processing) is both that the developmental processes which construct the brain are themselves computational processes not unrelated to those of learning and rea9.11 The Biological Setting of Autism 283 soning, and conversely, that with what we already know about the brain, online adult discourse interpretation and reasoning processes could plausibly involve construction of bits of brain. As an example of brain development as computation, neurons migrate from one place to another, and their axons and dendrites grow to make their connections by following chemical gradients – a kind of hill climbing. Neurons and synapses survive or are pruned according to their activity levels as defined by algorithms closely related to Hebb's law. Examples of on-line brain construction are recent demonstrations that adult neurogenesis plays a functional role in some kinds of learning, as described above (p. 151). Our own models of neural implementation of discourse understanding require some combination of construction and activation of new networks on the time course of online discourse comprehension. Large parts of our working memory networks may be the reactivated parts of long–term memory, but to the extent that they have to incorporate modifications based on episodic information, and this information subsequently gets consolidated and can be reactivated, there is network construction going on at this time scale too. There is a fine line between the adjustment of synaptic weights to extremes, and the making or severing of connections, but as we shall see, the evidence grows that "weight-adjustment" and "activation level" are not the only structural changes wrought on the brain by experience. Modelers need to think more broadly. Needless to say, these considerations make any idea that "the DNA determines brain structure" thoroughly obsolete, just as obsolete as the idea that "learning registers experience on a tabula rasa." We begin with attempts to provide higher functional level models of autistic "neural computation," proceed through what is known about autistic brain development, and finally discuss the genetics of the condition. Functional Level Considerations Levy [174] reviews functional properties of autistic neural computation through several neural network models of aspects of autistic cognition. Cohen [43] uses overand underprovision of hidden units in multilayer networks to explain "overfitting" and failure to generalize respectively. These hidden-unit layers of cells would presumably be interneurons, which might be of some significance when we come presently to discuss neurogenesis. Gustafsson [111] sees abnormalities of self-organizing map networks explaining autistic perceptual functioning. Maps that are smaller than normal lead to perceptual discrimination that is greater than normal, but also to problems with abstraction. Interestingly, narrow selectivity is claimed to be due to "excessive lateral feedback inhibitory synaptic strengths." McClelland [187] emphasizes the tension between generalization and interference in the storage of memories, with reference to his work on memory and the interaction between cortex and hippocampus. McClelland's 284 9 Coping with Nonmonotonicity in Autism suggestion is that the parts of autistic brains devoted to semantics and conceptual representations rely on conjunctive encoding too much and are thus unable to take advantage of generalizations but are good at learning specific associations. The idea is related to weak central coherence and might be the consequence of mechanisms such as those suggested by Cohen and Gustafsson. Levy's review [174] points to the importance of numbers of units and the balance of excitation/inhibition as modeling factors in understanding autism. It turns out that these two factors are intimately related in brain development. Our earlier discussion of neurogenesis in chapter 5 reviewed the phases of brain neuron generation and their mapping onto the phases of brain growth. We alluded to the process of overproduction of neurons and synaptic connections, followed by a combination of pruning of connections and cell death. Pruning differentially affects excitatory and inhibitory synapses, reducing the number of the former far more than of the latter (see Luciana [176,p. 161]). Chris Frith [87] has proposed that some aspects of autistic functioning may be explicable in terms of abnormalities in pruning – underpruning leading to their overspecific, bottom-up style of cognition. If pruning is mainly of excitatory synapses and less pruning goes on in autistic people's brains, then the result will be more excitatory synapses relative to inhibitory ones.24 It is a fascinating question how to map microscopic brain development processes onto macroscopic models of brain growth, as [292] shown in figure 6.4 in chapter 9, both in normal and abnormal development. On Frith's account, underpruning might well be a direct explanation of the course of autistic head growth. It is interesting that Vrba labels the phase of her model corresponding to this period as the "cerebellar period" and the cerebellum is one brain area which develops abnormally in autism, but the cerebellum is relatively small (compared, say, to the frontal lobes) and unlikely to account for gross head-size differences. Then there is the further difficulty in thinking about the timing of these developmental processes, since there may be delayed effects. Just as a hypothetical example, although the number of a class of cells may be determined early, perhaps in utero, it is possible that the resulting contribution to brain volume might only show up later due to maturational effects such as myelination. Finally, before we leave the issue of mapping Vrba's model to the detailed subprocesses of development, we have to ask how does human brain 24. Frith relies on Huttenlocher [137] for his data: "In visual cortex, the total number of synapses at birth is less than 10% of the maximum. It reaches a maximum number at about age 6 months, and decreases to about half the maximum between ages 1 and 5 years. Synapse number remains stable after age 5. In medial frontal gyrus, synaptic density reaches a maximum between ages 24 and 36 months, synaptic density begins to decrease at about age 7 years, and adult synaptic density, about 60% of the maximum, is reached by early adolescence. Preliminary data from left angular gyrus and left Broca's speech area show curves that fall between those for visual cortex and medial frontal gyrus [137,p. 348]." If these data are correct, pruning also differentially affects different areas of the brain. 9.11 The Biological Setting of Autism 285 development change the timings of subprocesses relative to our primate ancestors. Is everything merely slowed down? Or is there shear between processes? If conditions such as autism can be interpreted as distortions of timing, then they may provide valuable evidence about normal development and evolution. Despite the gross differences in head size growth patterns, at a structural level autistic brains were, until relatively recently, chiefly characterized by their structural similarity to normal brains. Postmortem examination, and imaging with increasingly sophisticated technology, revealed only small differences, often inconsistent from study to study. Certainly the frontal lobes and the cerebellum were often mentioned in dispatches, but sometimes as too large, sometimes as too small, sometimes as more and sometimes as less interconnected. It is only in the last few years that that more stable characterizations of these differences, so hard to detect at a gross level, have begun to emerge. For example, Courchesne and Pierce [51] review what is known about frontal lobe abnormalities in autism. Despite the multiply conflicting data about gross structural abnormalities there is a growing body of evidence for microscopic maldevelopment. Minicolumns, a basic unit of neocortical organization, are narrower and more numerous in autistic brains, and there are differences in gray/white matter balance. These authors particularly stress recent evidence from [285] that autistic children suffer from an immunological inflammatory response in their temporal lobes and cerebella. The response is primarily by the glia and astrocytes rather than neurons themselves. Inflammation might account for some of the head size observations. One might be tempted to dismiss the behavioral significance of inflamed astrocytes and glia as these are not neurons. But it turns out that whereas astrocytes and glia have long been thought of as passive maintenance agents supporting neurons, it now seems that they play critical roles in controlling the architecture of the developing brain [198]. These immune responses are not reactions to infectious agents but are "innate immune reactions." They may be related to the differences in cell death patterns discussed presently under "pruning." They are interpreted as persistence of a "pre-natal" state or process – all the more surprising since they showed up postmortem in a sample of fifteen autistic people ranging from 5 to 40 years old – and adding further encouragement that autism may be understood as a disturbance of the timing of developmental processes. The upshot of Courchesne and Pierce's discussion [51] is that autist people show overdevelopment of local, and underdevelopment of longrange, connections, together with some abnormalities of inhibitory processes (Rubinstein and Merzenich [235]). The authors encapsulate their conclusions in the memorable claim that the autistic temporal lobe is cut off from the rest of the brain, "talking to itself". Three further aspects of autistic brain development deserve brief mention as possibly relevant to our earlier modeling proposals. One is differences in the timing of development of feedforward and feedback connections in the neocor286 9 Coping with Nonmonotonicity in Autism tex. The second is the phenomenon of adult neurogenesis mentioned earlier in connection with brain growth. The third is the balance between excitation and inhibition. Feedforward and Feedback Connections The phasing of the development of feedback and feedforward connections may be functionally relevant because of the earlier mentioned differences in ease of reasoning forward and backward. It is a very striking feature of adult neocortical microstructure that nearly as many projections go in the direction from brain to retina as from retina to brain, reflecting the role of expectation in perception, at a functional level. Most of what is known about the development of feedforward and feedback projections comes from study of the topographically mapped visual system in which the two are easier to distinguish, though it is assumed that the observations may be more generally applicable in areas of less convenient microanatomy. These studies show that feedforward connections develop earlier than feedback connections (Burkhalter [27]). Friston [86] proposes a mapping from brain to computational models which places the issue of directionality and the role of forward models of expectations at centerstage. These forward models are continuous control theory models, but they are functionally closely related to our logical models for closed–world reasoning. Neurogenesis and Brain Growth With respect to adult neurogenesis, we described in chapter 6 how it is now known that neurons continue to be added to various areas of the mammalian brain throughout adult life, and these neurons can be shown to function in certain kinds of learning and memory tasks, especially in the hippocampus, an area known to be involved in working memory tasks. This fact is especially relevant to our neural models of default discourse interpretation. A central proposal of these models is that networks are actually constructed in working memory on the time course of discourse processing. This is functionally necessary since it is implausible that preexisting networks can provide the range of structures which are required. The anatomical and functional relation between working and long–term memory is contentious. The activated portion of existing default rules in long–term memory plays some role in constituting these networks, yet the networks must also be capable of incorporating new connections to represent episodically new information, which may later be consolidated into long–term memory.25 In the light of the role of 25. We have been careful to emphasize that the relation between the units and links in our models and the neurons and axons in the brain is at this point open. Our units and links may represent a considerable abstraction over groups of neurons, rather than single neurons [304, 1]. But plausible cognitive models need to be able to create structure, and furthermore the adult brain does literally continue to create structure in performing working memory tasks (and possibly in consolidating the results). Our models may well describe this process of creating structure. 9.11 The Biological Setting of Autism 287 inhibitory disturbance in autism, it is intriguing that the particular class of neurons claimed to be created in the adult neocortex are GABA-ergic inhibitory interneurons (Dayer et al. [60]). Levitt et al. [173] propose that it is exactly this subclass of neurons which are undersupplied in autism, and that a mouse model of this deficiency yields related behavioral deficits in social interaction. Autism and the Ratio of Excitation to Inhibition Inhibition brings us to the third issue of the balance between excitation and inhibition. Rubinstein and Merzenich [235] propose a model of autism as a family of brain disorders whose common factor is too high a ratio of excitation to inhibition, especially in frontal areas of the brain.26 This work is primarily focused on neurotransmitters, and so is complementary to issues of pruning at the structural level. Glutamate is the prime excitatory and GABA the prime inhibitory neurotransmitter – a pair that operate over a wide area of the brain. Their model discusses many factors and other neurotransmitters, but GABA insufficiency plays a large role in increasing the ratio of excitation over inhibition. Just to complicate matters, it has recently been discovered that whereas GABA is inhibitory in the adult brain, it actually has an excitatory function during early neuron development. GABA's switch from excitatory to inhibitory function appears to play an important role in neurons' switching from early embryonic modes, in which activity is driven by gross factors such as giant polarizing potentials giving rise to synchronized waves of activity, to later modes in which neurons modulate each other's activity through synaptic connnections in more complex patterns [18]. On the face of it, this switch by GABA is occurring at a much earlier stage than the appearance of autism, but nevertheless may be significant for the later balance between inhibition and excitation. Rubinstein and Merzenich [235] describe the close relation between GABA and the brain growth factors which play important roles in ending critical developmental periods. This is particularly intriguing for an interpretation of autism as arising from disturbances of the timing of developmental processes. We return to GABA in our discussion of the genetics of autism. Neural Underpinning of Closed–World Reasoning The neural implementation of our model of closed–world reasoning offers many points of contact with this biological background. The central role of abnormalities in closed–world reasoning couches the whole process as the spread of excitation and its inhibitory control. As we discussed above and illustrated in figure 9.2, insufficient inhibitory resources (either at the transmitter level or through pruning), 26. Needless to say, these proposals about inhibitory deficiency do not sit well with the idea that excessive lateral inhibition lies behind the narrowness of autistic perceptual maps, though there are many factors, not least timing discrepancies, that might or might not account for the apparent contradiction. 288 9 Coping with Nonmonotonicity in Autism would have specific effects on the processing of conditionals' abnormality conditions.27 The two-tiered architecture of our net with its truth and falsity sheets bound by corresponding inhibitory connections also gives a prominent role to inhibition, although it seems unlikely that the symmetry of the net's sheets as presented can be the whole story. On the biological side, there is no shortage of evidence implicating the relevance of the balance of excitation and inhibition, but much of it is speculative. We make no apology for this: we intend to give some feel for how much is settled and just how much is not. 9.11.2 The Genetics of Autism and Parental Resource Allocation The power of modern genetic analysis offers great opportunities for understanding the processes of cognitive change involved in human speciation. While human speciation as a process presents immense difficulties of investigation – neither brains nor behavior fossilise, the nearest extant species are 5 million years diverged, etc. – genetics represents one of the main sources of evolutionary information. It really is possible to get information about which genes have been under selection pressure and something about when. Genetics has barely entered into cognitive science yet, but it will be worth a detour here in making our example of altriciality more vivid. The Importance of Epigenesis In chapter 6 we contrasted the concept of innateness, still much discussed in psychology, with the genetic concept of heritability which has replaced it in biology. The realization that heritability could only be studied relativized to an environment crystallized the contrast between genetic and epigenetic factors controlling development. The known role of epigenetic factors in development is growing by the day. The brain growth processes we have been describing are ones in which the chemical soup in which neurons develop has all sorts of environmental effects on the resulting brain structures. Of course the composition of the soup is partly genetically controlled, but at each stage close analysis shows interaction between gene and environment, always remembering that the other genes and their products are environment in these calculations. Our understanding of the genetic control of autism is rudimentary, but developing fast. There is good evidence that genes are involved. In fact autism highly genetically influenced: observations of the concordance of autism in monozygotic (identical) twins run as high as 90%. In dizygotic twins it is about 3%, similar to nontwin siblings. This concordance rises to 90% for monozygotic 27. It must be noted though that at present our treatment of abnormalities is rudimentary in the sense that insufficient analysis is given of how propositions are identified as abnormalities in configuring a network, and how relevant abnormalities are differentiated from irrelevant ones within a context. 9.11 The Biological Setting of Autism 289 twins if the criteria for autism are relaxed [141]. That is, there is a somewhat higher concordance if a broader definition of autism spectrum disorders is adopted. This strongly suggests that the inheritance mechanism involved applies to a wider spectrum of characteristics than full-blown autism, raising the possibility that the benefits of autistic spectrum characteristics may play a part in the maintenance of autism in the population. The pattern whereby monozygotic twins show more than double the concordance of dizygotic twins suggests that multiple interacting genes play a role [232]. In fact, a specific gene-gene interaction which affects the GABA metabolism has recently been identified in some autistic cases [178]. Such gene interaction is a common situation, but needless to say, it hugely complicates the business of analysis. While this is strong evidence that genes are involved, the patterns do not fit simple patterns of inheritance (many genetic conditions do not, so this in itself is unsurprising). These high concordances in monozygotic twins, coupled with concordances for dizygotic twins similar to nonsiblings, suggests at least some epigenetic influence and/or some de novo factors (e.g., mutation). The sex ratio, variously estimated at between three and ten to one times as many males affected as females, is not easy to explain by a sex-linked trait on the Y chromosome. Again, one possibility is that there are many genes involved, possibly with varying degrees of expression, possibly interacting with each other to determine the phenotype. Another, not exclusive possibility, is that epigenetic factors are involved. Imprinting: Generalities One class of epigenetic factors, recently discovered, and especially pertinent to analyses of altriciality, is genetic imprinting, whereby alleles of maternal origin have different effects than the same alleles of paternal origin [139]. Alleles of genes with normal Mendelian characteristics have the same effect whether they are paternal or maternal genes. Imprinting is an epigenetic process which applies to relatively few, and only mammalian, genes which overwhelmingly control aspects of resource allocation in development. An increase in parental investment in offspring is one defining characteristic of mammals, carried to extremes in altricial Homo sapiens. With an imprinted gene, one parent, most often the mother, suppresses the effects of the other parent's allele, often by a process known as methylation which takes place at conception. So, although the offspring has, say, two dominant alleles (DD), one of those alleles is suppressed and is not expressed in the phenotype. 290 9 Coping with Nonmonotonicity in Autism The dominant theory of imprinting is that it is part of a competition between mother's and father's interests in reproductive resource allocation. Whenever females mate with more than one male, there is a divergence of genetic interests of the two parents. This conflict theory of imprinting has more recently been joined by a "dose dependence" theory of imprinting, specifically for genes on the X chromosome [140]. One can make a good case for a noncompetitive explanation for imprinting on the X sexchromosome.28 Whether or not there is parental conflict under conditions of polyandrous mating, mothers and fathers also share interests in having advantageous sexual dimorphism in their offspring. Since females have a double dose of the X chromosome, it seems that they have evolved imprinting to switch off the X chromosome they contribute for genes on X for which too great a dose (i.e., a double dose) would disrupt other genes which must contribute to the phenotypes of both sexes. This is called "dosage compensation." So if it is advantageous, for example, for females to have greater social skills, then this must be represented on the X chromosomes that fathers contribute to their daughters, because mothers have to turn this off on their Xs which they contribute to both sons and daughters. So the crucial issue is whether a gene benefits males more than females (size perhaps), females more than males (social skills perhaps), or both equally (brain development perhaps) [209].29 Note that this analysis presupposes that having greater social skills has to actually be deleterious for males, to explain why imprinting in the form of dosage compensation by the female would take place. Ramsay et al. [196] in a recent review of imprinting, considers the status of several theories of its evolutionary origin, as well as its extent, and the considerable divergence in imprinting between mouse and man which may suggest the importance of imprinting in our evolution. The authors also argue that a high proportion of imprinted "transciptional units" are noncoding RNAs (not DNA at all). Imprinted genes are important as "controllers" of genetic cascades as we emphasized in our discussion of the importance of control elements in explaining macroevolution (chapter 6, section 6.2.4), and in discussing altriciality as an example. Imprinting and Brain Growth Whatever the status of these particular examples it has been shown that imprinting is rife among the genes which control brain growth, and that there are distinctive spatial and temporal patterns to the maternal/paternal imprint28. The XX (female) and XY (male) sex chromosomes in mammals exercise genetic control of the organism's sex, but this is not imprinting. Imprinting can happen on non-sex chromosomes (autosomes), or on the X chromosome. It cannot happen on the Y chromosome since all Y chromosomes are contributed by fathers. But autosomal imprinting generally affects both sons and daughters. 29. These particular example characteristics are taken from claims in the literature, but should be treated with a healthy skepticism – their purpose here is illustrative only. 9.11 The Biological Setting of Autism 291 ing. Interestingly, the X chromosome appears to disproportionately influence the development of the brain and cognitive traits [309]. For example, the genes contributing to mental deficiency are overrepresented on the X chromosome. There are some very basic biological reasons why speciation genes (those under particular selection pressure as two varieties of a species drift toward reproductive isolation and full specieshood) are particularly likely to be related to sexual behavior, and expressed in brain, testes, and placenta. An old observation of Haldane was that when hybrids between two subspecies are sterile, it is usually the heterogamous sex (i.e., XY males in mammals) which is sterile. Many imprinted genes do not control the synthesis of any protein but are the elements controlling other clusters of genes which were mentioned in chapter 6 as being particularly important in tweaking old modules in macroevolutionary change. Imprinted genes are independently identifiable, and are evidently prime candidates for controlling the changed pattern of fetal maturation in altricial Homo sapiens, and especially of brain development – big brains are supremely metabolically expensive as well as being difficult to give birth to. Neuroscientists now have sophisticated techniques for mapping both spatially and temporally the patterns of expression of genes. The molecular signatures of imprinting have enabled researchers to track down genes controlling brain growth during maturation (the techniques have currently been applied mostly in mice – 70 million years diverged from our ancestral line). Maternally imprinted genes are responsible for controlling the growth of the frontal lobes (one of the areas of greatest human innovation in development, and a prime seat of the planning functions we are focused on in our cognitive analysis of executive function). Paternally imprinted genes control growth of the hypothalamus [103]. To put it facetiously, mom controls the development of civilization and dad the animal urges. Slightly more intricately, the unique degree to which human brains, and especially the planning frontal lobes, continue growing after birth may prove to be an innovation controlled by the mother's interest in reproductive resource allocation – specifically her interests in her offsprings' capacities for inducing their father and his relatives to provide resources. If such accounts hold up, then they provide evidence about the originating selection pressures for the explosive growth of human planning, reasoning, and communication capabilities. Just so stories about evolution get grounded in selection pressures, as evidenced by molecular genetics. These capabilities may have proved useful for mammoth hunting or for mate attraction, but to the extent they are controlled by imprinted genes, their evolution is more likely to have been driven by changes in maternal reproductive resource allocation, or pressures for sexual dimorphism of particular characteristics involved in these processes. 292 9 Coping with Nonmonotonicity in Autism Imprinting and Lifestyle in Primates This distribution of imprinting in the brain suggests a return to reconsider Foley's paradox (p. 140). Keverne et al. [156] present a table of forty-five primate species, with data on their brain part sizes and such lifestyle factors as whether they are diurnal or nocturnal, herbivore or fructivore, their living group size, the sexual composition of groups, and the timing of mating. They divide the brain into "executive brain" and "emotional brain" on the basis of the maternal vs. paternal imprinting of genes expressed, and show that there is a positive correlation between sizes of parts within the executive and the emotional brain, but negative correlations between parts across these two areas. They then study the relation between lifestyle variables and brain part size for each of the two divisions of brain. For the executive brain there were significant correlations between its size and living group size (+), number of females in the group (+), but not number of males, or arboreal/terrestrial (-), nocturnal/diurnal (-) lifestyles, or restricted/confined mating times (+). Imprinted genes have reciprocal effects on body and brain size: maternally imprinted genes suppress body size (to decrease maternal investment) but paradoxically increase brain size; paternally imprinted genes increase body size (to increase maternal investment) but decrease brain size. There is something inverse about investment in brain, the hypothesis being that a bigger brain (at least some parts) leads to better social skills at extracting resources from others. These authors interpret the decrease in the emotional brain and increase in executive brain in the course of primate evolution as resulting from appetitive behaviors becoming less under neuroendocrine control, and more under the control of strategic behaviors, controlled by the frontal cortex and social skill. As an example, they remark that dominant males in higher primates are often not particularly aggressive, achieving their ends by more cerebral methods of clique formation or what–have–you. Keverne et al.[156], like their colleague Foley, note the female bonded groups of many Old World monkeys, although they don't mention his observation of how male-bonding plays such a distinctive role in the great apes. Much of the genetic experimentation involves the mouse, so it is far from clear exactly how these patterns changed and affected human evolution. It seems likely that the shift from female– to male–bonded group living, combined with the huge increase in reproductive resource requirements, must have had a large impact on the balance between maternal and paternal control of brain development. Although the details of the last phase of human evolution are not settled, we can be sure that they will need interpretation against this long–run backdrop of primate evolution. 9.11 The Biological Setting of Autism 293 Imprinting and Autism Claims have also been made that imprinting plays a role in determining the sex-ratio of cases of autism (Skuse [249], Jiang et al. [141]). It does in mouse models of autism, where a particular gene can be shown to affect analogues of executive function tasks [58]. Skuse's model proposes a paternally imprinted gene on X suppressing the effects of multiple autosomal (non-sex chromosome) genes which are responsible for the actual phenotype when expressed. Fathers would normally pass this suppressor factor to their daughters, which would ensure they were free of the kinds of social skills deficits associated with autism. Already a number of human behavioral syndromes are known to be related to abnormalities of imprinting (e.g., Prader–Willi, Angelman's , Silver-Russell, and Beckwith-Wiedemann syndromes [80]). There is evidence that Angelman's syndrome particularly is associated in at least a subgroup of cases with autism. In one study, nine of nineteen Angelman's subjects fulfilled the diagnostic criteria for autism [214]. Badcock and Crespi [8] make the proposal that autism is a syndrome of generally imbalanced imprinting. Their paper contains an extensive review of the current state of knowledge of the involvement of imprinted genes, and links this aspect of autism to evolution through the parental competition for investment in the offspring theory of imprinting and the "male brain" theory of autism. Of course, imprinting is not the whole story in the genetics of autism. There are plenty of unimprinted genes which show evidence of affecting the development of autism. Rubinstein and Merzenich [235], already discussed with respect to inhibition, provide a useful review of some of the candidate genes, oriented toward neurotransmitter effects. Another useful review is [213]. As mentioned above, the complex pattern of inheritance makes it likely that many genes are involved – estimates vary between ten and a hundred. And it should not be forgotten that the expression of nonimprinted genes may be controlled by imprinted ones, and vice versa. Even more recent advances in the unravelling of what is called copy number variation in genetics has opened up the alternative possibility that hundreds of different genetic anomalies may individually cause autistic symptoms-the "rare-alleles" model of common genetically influenced diseases [69, 186]. On a concluding note, both positive and cautionary, an important contribution of genetic population studies is that they study random samples more or less representative of whole populations rather than populations of subjects filtered through clinical diagnostic criteria which constitute almost all other data on autism. Here is a source of evidence which avoids the distorting selection of data (see Harvey et al. [118] for discussion). Intriguing examples are two papers by Happé and colleagues [232, 115] which ask the question whether the social and nonsocial deficits in autism are correlated and/or genetically related 294 9 Coping with Nonmonotonicity in Autism in the general population. Since the clinical criteria guarantee an association in clinical populations, this is a first preliminary indication (using a not yet fully normed scale for autistic tendencies in the normal population) that in fact these symptoms may not be highly correlated, and although both are under substantial genetic influence, they appear to be under independent genetic (or epigenetic) influence. We agree about the probable phenotypic heterogeneity of autism as stated above, but these authors believe that individual genes will map onto phenotypic characteristics of the varied disorders. This seems to us most unlikely for the reasons stated here. Interaction between genes in determining phenotypic characteristics is to be expected as the default case however difficult it is to identify specific interactions with current methods. This is a powerful reason for thinking in terms of changes in timing of developmental processes, since changes in timing are inherently likely to produce interactions. To the extent that imprinting is involved in the epigenetic control of autism, then that is evidence that the condition has something to do with the selection pressures on parental investment in the rearing of offspring, and/or the requirements of sexual dimorphism and its (epi)genetic control. Against this background of evolution of the species, the fact that autistic people exhibit such a marked temporal profile of head growth is a striking observation. In normal human development, altriciality means that the human infant's brain is dumped out into the external environment at a very much earlier stage of development than that of our ancestors, and that it goes on developing for very much longer. The particularly "hyperdeveloped" part of the human brain, the frontal lobes are the most extreme part of this pattern, even to the degree that it has been suggested that mothers essentially function as their infants' frontal lobes in the early months of development. This closeness of coupling of two individuals has long been understood as playing an organizing role in human learning and development. In the next few years we are likely to learn a great deal more about the genetic and epigenetic control of this process and thence about its evolutionary significance. Focusing on altriciality as a biologically recognisable human innovation, offers the possibility of connecting cognition to the burgeoning information sources offered by genomics. Perhaps genetic imprinting can offer a methodology to identify some candidate genes for involvement in human speciation. Another Source of Genetic Information on Brain Growth Certainly another recent genetic method has already yielded dividends – the identification of "human accelerated regions" in the genome. Now that the sequencing of the chimpanzee's genome has largely been completed, it is possible, though by no means straightforward, to compare it to the human genome and to identify sites of divergence. The basic problem is that most divergence is random, and it is only functional divergence which is of interest. Previously, the only way of cir9.11 The Biological Setting of Autism 295 cumventing this problem was to study only protein–coding genes which can be screened for selection pressure, as noted above (page 150). But we believe, for the reasons explained in chapter 6, that control genetic elements which are typically non-protein–coding are likely to be of most interest in our speciation. Pollard et al. [220] present a study of an "RNA gene" called HAR1F and its twin HAR1R, whose identification is the first fruit of a new direct approach. HAR stands for "human accelerated region." The genomes of chimpanzee and human are compared (along with several other more distantly related species), first to find highly conserved regions which are assumed to be functionally important because preserved by selection pressure against genetic change. The resulting collection of what we can think of as mammalian decelerated regions is then screened for regions showing evidence of high rates of genetic change between chimpanzee and human. Thus the argument is that although the resulting HARs are functionally important (because of having been preserved by selection pressure against change in a long line of mammals), their rapid change between chimpanzee and human is indicative of a significant evolutionary role in the speciation and evolution of Homo sapiens. Random variation of highly conserved regions would not be tolerated because of their functional significance. This technique identified forty-nine HARs ranked for the rapidity of their recent evolutionary change. The first-ranked HAR1 is a 118 base-pair region of human chromosome 20 which is mostly the overlap between two previously unknown RNA genes:30 HAR1F and HAR1R. This region is the top-ranked HAR out of the 49, and the only one yet functionally analysed. A high proportion of HARs (96% of the 49) are non-protein-coding elements. A high proportion of adjacent genes are related to DNA binding or transcriptional regulation, and 24% are adjacent to neurodevelopmental genes. HAR1F and HAR1R are RNA genes expressed in cortical development in Cajal-Retzius cells, a class of cells which are probably involved in producing some of the cytoarchitecural pecularities of human cortex. HAR1F is strongly and specifically expressed in developing brain, starting between 7 and 9 gestational weeks, in the dorsal telencephalon (the cortex primordium). These Cajal-Retzius cells are transient cells which do not survive into adulthood, and are known to be involved in leading the migration and development of other neocortical neurons. They form distinctive horizontal networks, chiefly in layer 1. Their function and differentiation from other cell classes is currently under review [190]. We noted in our discussion of brain growth (page 149) that layer 1 is the cortical layer most differentiated in humans. The gene expression patterns suggest that HAR1F and HAR1R may reg30. RNA genes are also a novel concept, arising from recent discoveries of "RNA interference," the subject of a Nobel Prize in 2006. RNAi is the phenomenon whereby RNA controls the expression of DNA genes, thus leading to the notion of an RNA gene. 296 9 Coping with Nonmonotonicity in Autism ulate each other through a sense-antisense relation,31 and it may be a shift in the balance of control which is the human innovation. Diffuse expression of the HAR1 genes in the adult brain is also observed, especially in forebrain, hippocampus, cerebellum, thalamus, and hypothalamus. One speculation is that HAR1R suppresses much adult expression of HAR1F. Outside the brain, expression of HAR1F and HAR1R also show up in testes, ovary, and placenta – one classic pattern for speciation genes (page 291). Just to give an idea of the disparities in evolutionary "speed" picked up by this technique, in HAR1 only two base pairs are changed between chicken and chimpanzee (diverged 310 million years ago), but eighteen are changed between chimpanzee and human (diverged about 6 million years). The HAR1 region has no orthologues in fish or invertebrates, so probably originates less than 400 million years ago. We describe this technique here to give further indication of how rich genetic information can be and how rapidly techniques are developing, but also because the very first information yielded by the technique supports Waddington's long–standing functional contention that control elements are all–important in explaining macroevolution. Conclusion Embedding the example of autism inside the framework of altriciality as an organizing force in human cognitive evolution provides a good illustration of how rich and complex a phenomenon autism is, and how many levels of analysis are required for a full understanding. The details of our speculations are undoubtedly wrong, but nevertheless this is an infinitely better biological model for understanding at least one important aspect of human evolution than the adaptationism typical of evolutionary psychology. If the temporal profile of human head growth and its implications for obstetrics is one organizing selection pressure of human evolution, then altriciality is at least partly an adaptation to this pressure. This must have led to the exaptation of existing learning mechanisms to the new environment in which the immature brain dealt with an external environment, an environment organized overwhelmingly by the mother. Of course there would also be myriad secondary adaptations (all the way from cognitive and affective changes to social organizational ones) produced by the pressures of surviving altriciality. Stenning [257] describes some of these, paying special attention to the resulting shift in the balance of intentional and causal analysis of the newborn's environment. 31. DNA's double helix unwinds into a sense and an antisense strand – the latter a "negative" of the former. The former may code for a protein, but the antisense strand (transcribed into RNA) can inhibit such coding by combining with the messenger RNA, in what is called RNA interference. 10 Syllogisms and Beyond 10.1 Putting It All Back Together The "psychology of reasoning" as a field coalesced from studies of syllogistic reasoning, but we have deliberately stood history on its head in leaving syllogisms to the end.1 This choice reflects the fact that the syllogism requires just about enough derivation to provide a microcosm for studying the integration of several strands of our argument so far. The selection task and the suppression task present interpretation problems to subjects, but once an interpretation is settled, barely any derivation is required. At least for some subjects, syllogisms evoke both interpretation processes of reasoning to an interpretation and derivational processes of reasoning from the interpretation imposed. Indeed, syllogisms are one area where substantial interpretational theories from linguistics and philosophy have been applied by psychologists and, as we shall see, have met with self-proclaimed failure. This slightly greater role of derivation is sufficient to introduce representational issues which do not play a large role in the selection task. In chapter 5, we expressed skepticism that the models vs. rules debate about mental representations had been given any empirical substance, and we will revisit that debate here on its home territory. But we are not at all skeptical that contrasting external representations (for example, rule systems or diagrams) have real impact on subjects' reasoning, and especially on their conceptual learning, and we review evidence to that effect here. Along with the variety of representation strategies come individual differences in reasoning styles. Individual differ1. From a purely logical point of view, syllogisms are only special in being the first logical system to be presented formally. Apart from this, they just form a fragment of predicate logic; moreover, a fragment in which the quantifiers ∀ and ∃ do not come into their own, because iteration is not allowed. It is therefore not clear to what extent results of experiments on syllogistic reasoning extend to reasoning with quantifiers generally. We have some anecdotal data on children's reasoning which may be relevant in this respect. It has been known since Piaget that children have nonstandard truth conditions for "all circles are blue," judging this sentence to be false if there are blue things which are not circles. Our data show that if one gives the same child a sentence in which quantifiers are iterated ("All boxes contain a key which fits the lock on all boxes"), it has no trouble processing this according to the standard truth conditions. 298 10 Syllogisms and Beyond ences in interpretation were seen to underlie subjects' decisions in the selection task, but the range of available responses allowed to the subject was insufficient to tease them apart without resorting to Socratic dialogue, and there was barely enough derivation from interpretations to approach issues of derivational strategy. In the syllogism, with its requirement to integrate two propositions, the differences in interpretation continue, but now there are also potential differences in reasoning from interpretations. The problem set is now sufficiently rich that data analysis becomes a more substantial task. For the reader coming from a chiefly logical background, this is the first encounter with the analysis problems that occupy psychologists. For the psychologically based reader, this material provides methodological issues for the standard hypothesis testing approach, and some resolutions offered by a background of logical theory. And finally, because the syllogism is blatantly intended to require classical logical reasoning from a skeptical stance, it is a microcosm for examining the "information–packaging" structures which are designed to assist the credulous processing of natural language, and their effects on subjects' reasoning. We will argue that these structures are inherently part of credulous reasoning, but produce interesting conflicts with the skeptical stance. The chapter begins with a logical specification of the syllogism, and the presentation of some alternative representations and methods of solution. Then some studies of the interpretation of single syllogistic premises are described which have been used to claim that premise interpretation cannot predict syllogistic reasoning. With a view to establishing just such a relation, we describe an exploratory analysis of interpretation data, and its use to build a syllogistic reasoning model which incorporates interpretation differences. The results give clear evidence of qualitative individual differences in subjects' reasoning as a function of their interpretations, and a simple process account, the source– founding model, is presented. Finally, the chapter ends with a logical reappraisal of mental models theory, and an assessment of the appropriateness of its goals given the evidence available for qualitative individual differences. 10.2 What is the Syllogistic Task? One of the focal points for empirical studies of deductive reasoning is the syllogism. This is probably mainly because of the tractability for the experimenter afforded by this domain – a finite number of problems, a wide range of difficulty for naive subjects, etc. But there is also the possibility that this is a psychologically interesting fragment of logic for the empirical study of human reasoning precisely because of its tractability for the reasoner – more on this below. Another reason for the possible psychological importance of syllogisms is that there is some evidence that monadic reasoning (reasoning about oneplace predicates) may have an important status due to its relation to discourse 10.2 What is the Syllogistic Task? 299 processing which will become clear in what follows. Since the syllogism deals with monadic predicates only, it is perhaps helpful to think of the syllogism as the logic of taxonomy whereby individuals are sorted into types defined by the possession (or not) of properties. 10.2.1 Syntax A syllogism consists of two premises which relate three terms (a, b, and c), one of which (the middle term, b) occurs in both premises, while the other two (the end terms, a and c) each occur in only one premise – a is the end term in the first premise, and c is the end term in the second premise. There are four moods or premise types, distinguished by the quantifiers "all," "some," "none," and "some. . . not." The quantifiers all and none are universal. The quantifiers some and some. . . not are existential. There are four possible arrangements of terms in the two premises, known as figures, as shown in table 10.1.2 We use the term diagonal figures to refer to the first pair of figures (ab/bc and ba/cb) and symmetric figures to refer to the second pair (ab/cb and ba/bc). Since each premise can be in one of four moods, and each premise pair can have one of four figures, there are 4 × 4 × 4 = 64 different syllogisms. Table 10.1 The four figures of the syllogism diagonal symmetric Figure Number 1 2 3 4 1st premise a − b b − a a − b b − a 2nd premise b − c c − b c − b b − c 10.2.2 Semantics The semantics of the syllogism concerns types of individuals defined by combinations of properties. Because there is no identity relation, it is never of logical significance how many of a type of individual exist – hence the talk of types. Properties are denoted by the terms of the syllogism – given the term a, any individual is either an a or not an a (¬a). Fully specified types are specified with respect to all three properties, and there are eight such types: abc, ab¬c, a¬bc, a¬b¬c, ¬abc, ¬ab¬c. ¬a¬bc, and ¬a¬b¬c. Due to the restriction to monadic predicates, we can express the semantics of syllogisms in terms of sets of types. This can be seen as follows. If we think of predicates as denoting sets of individuals, then a model of a syllogism is an interpretation of the predicates which makes both predicates true. In principle 2. Care is needed in reading the literature because different numbering schemes are used. 300 10 Syllogisms and Beyond there are a great many such models for a given syllogism, since the cardinality of the domain can be varied. However, because the language contains monadic predicates only and does not have the identity relation, individuals can only be distinguished by the types which define them, and differences in cardinality therefore do not play any role. Thus, a model of the premise "some A are B" can be given as any of the following sets of types: {ab}, {ab,¬ab}, {ab, a¬b}, . . . , {ab,¬ab, a¬b,¬a¬b}. A model of a syllogism is a set of fully specified types whose existence is consistent with the truth of both premises. Thus suppose the second premise of the syllogism is "all B are C." To compute the models of both the premises, first the set of models of "some A are B" is expanded so as to incorporate all the possibilities for the predicate C. This yields as sets of types {ab¬c}, {abc}, . . . , {abc,¬abc, a¬bc,¬a¬bc}. These sets are then pruned to take into account that all B are C, and we get {abc}, . . . , {abc, a¬bc}, . . . , {abc,¬abc, a¬bc,¬a¬bc}. Each set can be thought of as a possible syllogistic world described at the level of abstraction with which the syllogism deals; that is, with predicates rather than individuals. Erasing the bs from the fully specified types then yields types which satisfy the conclusion "some A are C." In the psychological literature, but not generally the modern logical literature, the syllogism is conventionally interpreted under the assumption that none of the three sets of things with the properties a, b, and c are empty.3 Sometimes this assumption is explicitly included in the instructions to subjects, although as we shall see, it is an open question whether they take this instruction on board. It is a pity that there does not appear to be any empirical studies of this issue. The no empty sets axiom reduces the number of possible models somewhat. A modern logical treatment would make these existential assumptions explicit, separately from its definition of the quantifiers. Given this semantics, of the sixty-four syllogisms, twenty-seven have valid conclusions which can be formulated by applying one of the four quantifiers to the two end terms. The remaining thirty seven syllogisms do not allow any valid conclusions of this form. As we shall see, an extension of the set of quantifiers slightly extends the set of problems with valid conclusions (see figure 10.5). 3. This strong "no-empty-sets" assumption appears to stem from Strawson [274,p. 174] although even he describes it as one that logicians have "hesitated to adopt." For Aristotle, positive quantifiers carried existential assumptions, but negative ones didn't. There are interesting historical reasons for the adoption of existential assumptions: the distinction between the domain of interpretation of an argument and the universal domain (cf. the discussion in chapter 2) wasn't clarified until the twentieth century. See section 10.3.2 for further discussion. 10.3 Euler Circles 301 10.3 Euler Circles We choose to introduce this logical fragment diagrammatically, drawing on Stenning and Oberlander [263], for two reasons. First, such a presentation further dispels any illusion that logic is concerned only with reasoning about sentences. Second, it helps us to explore some of the semantic properties of diagrams which are particularly closely associated with models, to which, as we mentioned above, we will return. Most diagrammatic methods for solving syllogisms are based on the same spatial analogy – the analogy between an item's membership in a set and the geometrical inclusion of a point within a closed curve in a plane. Euler took this analogy, represented the first premise as a pair of circles, represented the second premise by adding a third circle; and finally read off the conclusion from this construction. So, for example, figure 10.1 shows how one might solve the syllogism All A are B. All C are B. Figure 10.1 A syllogism and potential conclusion represented by Euler circles. This is an interesting example illustrating the inexpressiveness of diagrams. While we may feel that figure 10.1 is helpful in clarifying the reasoning, as a method of reasoning it is obviously fallible. Even setting aside the several different diagrams we could have chosen to exemplify the premises individu302 10 Syllogisms and Beyond ally, there are several ways of combining the two premise diagrams that we could have chosen. The conclusion drawn here is true in the combination we chose, but if we had only tried a different combination, we might have found that the conclusion did not hold. Diagrams exhibit specificity. How are generalizations to be extracted from them? Figure 10.2 shows the mapping of the Figure 10.2 The five spatial relations between two circles mapped onto the quantified sentences they model – the Gergonne relations. sentence forms onto primitive Euler diagrams. The problem of the explosion of combinations of diagrammatic elements is particularly acute in the case of some where four of the five spatial relations between two circles exemplify the sentence. Imagine having to solve the syllogism Some A are B. Some B are C by this method. There are four diagrams of the first premise, four of the second, and several ways of making each combination to derive a composite diagram. There are about fifty diagram combinations we should consider. In many of these diagrams, it is true that some A are C (or, diagrammatically, that circle A intersects circle C), but not in all. If we chanced to construct a diagram where some A were C, we might make this conclusion without realizing that it does not follow because there are other situations which made the premises both true, but in which this conclusion was nevertheless false. 10.3 Euler Circles 303 This problem with diagrammatic methods of reasoning stems exactly from the lack of abstraction inherent in diagrams. This problem has been used by Johnson-Laird to argue for the hopelessness of diagrammatic methods. How could a brilliant mathematician like Euler make such a fundamental mistake? How did the poor German princess who was his original pupil gain anything from this flawed system? 10.3.1 Strategies for Combining Diagrams The answers, of course, are to be found in what Euler taught about the strategy for choosing which diagrams to use when. Euler taught that one should select what we might think of as the "weakest" case. If we want to represent Some A are B we do not choose a diagram where all A are B. If we want to add a third circle to a diagram, we do so in the way that represents the most possibilities – graphically we include the most circle intersections that are consistent with the premises. Although Euler diagrams are usually presented without an explicit notation for these strategies, it is rather simple to do so. Figure 10.3 shows four diagrams for representing the four premises. The crosses (introFigure 10.3 The four quantifiers mapped onto their characteristic diagrams using the cross notation for their smallest models. 304 10 Syllogisms and Beyond duced in Stenning and Oberlander [263]) mark smallest models.4 If there is a cross in a minimal subregion of the diagram, then there must be something in the world represented with the properties corresponding to that subregion. One thing corresponding to a cross is the absolute minimal "furniture" there must be in a world for the sentence to be true in that world. There may be more, but this much there must be. If there is more than one cross, there is more than one smallest model. It is an important property of the syllogism, that smallest models are always single-element models. The crosses help capture the right strategy for combining diagrams. Figure 10.4 shows the process of solving the syllogism All A are B. Some C are not B. exploiting the cross notation. The two–premise representations are combined by superposing the B circles (which are, after all, the same circle). There is then a choice about the relation between the A and C circles. They could be placed in one of three arrangements consistent with the premises. The rule is that the arrangement which creates most subregions is chosen. A simple rule determines whether the crosses persist or are eliminated during this combination process. If a subregion containing a cross is bisected in combining the diagrams, then its cross is eliminated. If not, then the cross persists. Finally, we need to determine what if any conclusion follows from the represented syllogism. It turns out, as the reader might want to verify, that every valid conclusion is based on the three-property description of a subregion containing a cross. For example, in the case of figure 10.4, the subregion with a cross in the final three-circle diagram corresponds to Cs that are not A and not B. No cross, no valid conclusion. Conversely, if there is a cross remaining in the final diagram, then, with a couple of interesting exceptions which we shall come to directly, there is a valid conclusion. To generate a conclusion, first describe the type of individual corresponding to the cross's region and eliminate the B term. In the case of figure 10.4 this yields "things that are C and not A." Now, if the subregion containing the cross is circular, its label becomes the subject of a universal conclusion. Otherwise the conclusion is existential (with some or some not). If the cross is outside one of the A and C circles, then the conclusion will be negative; otherwise it will be positive. This algorithm will generate all the valid conclusions of the sixty-four syllogisms. Try some! The attentive reader will be asking why this graphical rigamarole leads to the right answer. How is it any more insightful than the medieval logician's mnemonics about Barbara and her friends? Stenning [258] presents studies which show that subjects differ greatly in their facility for learning from diagrams, but that at least for some subjects diagrammatic presentation makes real differences in their learning. Be that as it may, a few hints might be helpful. 4. We use "smallest" to avoid confusion with the different sense of "minimal" which is important in chapter 7. 10.3 Euler Circles 305 Figure 10.4 An example syllogism solved by Euler's method augmented by the cross notation. Combining the circles to give the maximum number of subregions consistent with the premises guarantees the exhaustiveness of the search for kinds of things there may be in a world in which the premises are true. A cross's subregion is guaranteed to have something in it. If the region is bisected during the addition of the third circle, then it is no longer clear which subregion the cross should go in, and so neither of the new sub–subregions is guaranteed to have anything in it. And so on for the rules about drawing conclusions. If there is no cross left in the diagram there is no type of individual defined for all three properties which must exist. It turns out that the syllogism has the rather special metalogical property that all its valid conclusions follow in respect of such maximally defined individuals. If there is such a cross, then its subregion defines the type of thing that must exist. At least an existential conclusion is therefore justified. The rules about when universal and negative conclusions are warranted are left as homework. The cross notation abruptly turns Euler's method from one mired in up to more than fifty diagrams for a syllogism, to one which provides a one-pass algorithm constructing a single diagram for solving any problem. The cross notation is an abstraction trick. It allows exactly the abstractions required, but little more. The result is a kind of mechanical calculating device. Imagine the circles as wire hoops of variable size, and the crosses as thumbtacks. This mechanical device models the logical constraints of the premises. If a thumbtack 306 10 Syllogisms and Beyond prevents the A and C wire hoops from being pulled horizontally apart, then a positive conclusion follows about the fact they must intersect. If the thumbtack prevents the A and C hoops from being pushed into complete correspondence, then a negative conclusion is justified by their non-correspondence. No thumbtack – no conclusion. Euler's genius here was to appreciate this correspondence between logical and mechanical constraints. 10.3.2 Metalogical Considerations Euler's method exposes metalogical properties of the syllogism which are important to their implementation in representation systems. As we just noted, conclusions require there to be a cross in the final diagram, and the cross corresponds to a completely described type of individual. The diagrammatic representations make this especially easy to see. The geometrical properties of closed connected areas (such as those of circles) mean that every point in a plane is either inside or outside any closed area. Therefore any cross defines its corresponding type of individual with regard to all three properties. Every valid argument can be made in virtue of a cross in a final diagram. We shall call this property of the syllogism revealed by the diagrammatic system case identifiability, there being always a single "case" that founds a valid argument. Most logical systems do not have this property. A further obvious question is whether the converse of this "no cross ⇔ no conclusion' generalization is also true. Does every cross give us a valid conclusion? For Aristotle's system the answer is no. There are syllogisms which give rise to final diagrams containing crosses which do not allow any Aristotelian conclusion. Figure 10.5 shows two such syllogisms and their diagrams. If we think for a moment about whether there should be a conclusion to these problems, we can see that in all cases it is true that Some not-A is not C. However, this would have failed to qualify as an Aristotelian syllogism because it contains a fourth term not-A and extra reasoning is required to accommodate it, and also because Aristotle would not have accepted 'not-A' as a subject term. Since the conventional abbreviations for all, some, none, some not are respectively a, e, i, o (from the Latin mnemonics), we shall abbreviate this new quantifier by the one remaining vowel, u. The Deeper Meaning of u-Conclusions Aristotle's rejection of these arguments as syllogisms is on the one hand a superficial matter of form: extra reasoning is required to eliminate their fourth term, and so they fail the syntactic definition of syllogism. But the reason why this superficial rejection was perhaps felt reasonable takes us near the heart of one of the critical developments of twentieth–century logic. 10.3 Euler Circles 307 Figure 10.5 Syllogisms with valid conclusions Some not-A are not C – the "u-conclusions." For Aristotle, and indeed logicians up to the 19th century when mathematical influence began to be felt, the concept of domain was not much discussed, and a quantifier's domain was taken to be determined by the sentence in which it occured. Logicians were quite comfortable with discussions of empty properties (such as square circle). From the modern point of view one might ask, whether they would have been equally comfortable with primitive properties which were empty-perhaps square circle can be accommodated because square and circle both have instances? But it is not clear whether this discussion could or did take place within the conceptualisation of the day. The development of twentieth-century semantics occured when Frege generalized the notion of domain to what we now mean by the universal domain – all individuals, classes, functions, . . . – and it was rapidly noticed that this notion is incoherent. Russell's paradoxes thus brought it home that languages must be interpreted on local domains and cleared away Frege's objections to a formal approach to semantics. This twentieth-century insight into the distinction between local and universal domain is the logical motivation for our cognitive focus on the importance of reasoning externally about logics, and choosing between them in the process of interpretation. Quite apart from his formal or syntactic reasons, Aristotle might have had some discomfort about admitting these u-conclusion syllogisms as valid be308 10 Syllogisms and Beyond cause they violated one of his two major metalogical generalizations about validity, namely: 1. for a syllogism to have a valid conclusion, at least one of the premises must have a universal quantifier; 2. for a syllogism to have a valid conclusion, at least one of the premises must have a positive quantifier. The syllogisms with only valid u-conclusions (figure 10.5) violate this second dictum. These logical observations are not merely historical curiosities. They raise interesting psychological questions about whether logically untrained students have any metalogical, if implicit, grasp of these principles. And does their grasp agree with Aristotle, or with these more recent insights? We return to these questions when some data on how students reason allow logical insights to be put to good psychological effect (section 10.4). Consistency A final metalogical property of the syllogism that is emphasized by Euler's system is what we might call its self-consistency. Euler's system is self-consistent in that no single diagram can represent an inconsistent set of propositions – the diagrams are models. Strictly speaking, we need to make some assumptions explicit before this statement is true. We have been assuming that Euler's system represents properties by continuous closed curves (those curves which are not composed of separated regions); and that distinct closed curves in the same diagram represent different properties. For an example of a discontinuous closed curve, imagine the two B circles in figure 10.4 interpreted as a single closed curve labeled B. The possibility of discontinuous curves would be incompatible with the reasoning algorithms. Similarly, in the same figure, if the two circles C and B denoted the same property, then the diagram would express a contradiction. Self-consistency is a consequence of the style of interpretation of Euler diagrams – a mode of interpretation we have called direct (see Stenning [258]). The above observations of the concreteness of primitive diagrammatic systems, and the fact that in this little domain there are strategies for always selecting a single diagram which can be an appropriate basis for reasoning, are interestingly reminiscent of the contrast between credulous and skeptical reasoning that has been an important strand in this book. Constructing a single diagram is like credulously seeking an intended model of a discourse. But this domain has the very special property that if we choose our intended model wisely, then it can suffice to serve as the basis of reasoning which will fulfill the more demanding skeptical goal of only producing classically valid conclusions – ones true in all models of the premises. So here, the two stances of reasoning 10.4 Individual Differences in Interpretation 309 can collapse, though, as we shall see, they do not have to. So another interest of the syllogism is that in this peculiar domain, the relation between credulous and skeptical processing becomes very close. 10.4 Individual Differences in Interpretation Nothing is apparently easier than to ask subjects to engage in syllogistic reasoning. One simply asks them to assume that the two premises are true, and then asks whether it follows that the conclusion is true, or asks them to generate a conclusion that follows from the assumptions. However, as we shall see presently, subjects do not universally construe these instructions as instructions to reason with a classical concept of "follows." Lest there be any doubt at this stage that this is a real possibility with subjects, there is evidence in the literature that experimenters also sometimes adopt a different notion of validity. For example, in a pioneering study into the interpretation of syllogistic premises which is our experimental setting–off point in this section, Newstead [200] instructed subjects to assume single premises, and then used the following instruction: "Now judge whether (1) the following candidate conclusion must be true, or (2) whether it must be false." Subjects were not given the chance to respond (3) "the conclusion might be true or might be false" – the necessary response to reflect any grasp they have of the concept of logical independence between premise and conclusion. The construal of the task reflected in Newstead's response set is nearer to a credulous one than a classical skeptical one. Later Newstead added the necessary third response option as what he called a "more sensitive measure," seemingly without realizing that this was a measure of a different concept of validity. If experimenters can have nonclassical interpretations, it is hardly surprising that subjects turn out to have them too. Although syllogistic premises are simple sentences which may appear stony ground for growing multiple interpretations, our earlier discussions of the selection and suppression tasks are sufficient to make it likely that multiple interpretations will be possible simply because universal quantifiers invoke conditional logical form. All A are B is analysed as If it's an A then it's a B.5 Here, then, is another illustration that logical form is as much a function of the inferential task we engage in, as of the sentences in the materials presented. Adopting a credulous goal may lead to different interpretations than a skeptical one. Newstead's interest in syllogistic interpretation was sparked not by considerations of credulous and skeptical processing, but by the very closely related philosophical and linguistic literature on the theory of cooperative communication (Grice [108]; see also chapter 5). Just to remind the reader, in cooperative 5. As an historical aside, we note here that the representation of the universal sentence All A are B via a bound variable (here "it") seems to have originated with Kant. Longuenesse [175,p. 86ff] discusses why this representation is important in Kant's philosophy. 310 10 Syllogisms and Beyond communication, the hearer assumes that the speaker is being helpful, and will tell the hearer exactly what he needs to know to construct the intended model of the discourse. By contrast, in adversarial communication, the participants adopt a skeptical stance of seeking countermodels. As Grice pointed out, cooperative communication gives rise to implicatures, inferences that can be made on the assumption that the speaker is helpful, although not from their classical logical entailments. Thus, if the speaker says "Some A are B," the hearer generates the implicature "Some A are not B": for if the speaker actually knew that all A are B, he would have said so.6 Questions about the exact relation between Grice's account, and the distinction between credulous and skeptical reasoning will arise in what follows. We now summarise an experiment (Stenning and Cox [262]) which investigated just what naive subjects' interpretations of syllogistic quantifiers are like, alongside Newstead's analysis of his experiments. 10.4.1 Immediate Inferences and the Understanding of Deductive Tasks Newstead dubbed his one-premise task, the "immediate inference task" to distinguish it from the "extended" inferences across the two premises of syllogisms. Newstead presented his subjects with all thirty-two combinations of assumptions (the four quantified forms) with candidate conclusions (the four quantified forms, plus their four "conversions"). In his later experiments and our subsequent ones, for each of the thirty-two items, subjects were asked whether the conclusion was true, false, or could be either (see figure 10.6). Thus there are 332 possible patterns of responses which subjects could make – a large number. Newstead pursued the hypothesis that subjects' reasoning in the two-premise syllogistic task was influenced by their interpretations as evidenced in the one-premise immediate inference task. This seems a highly reasonable hypothesis. Indeed, if it were to turn out to be false, one might question how that could be. Reasoning just has to be influenced by interpretation, though clearly there might be more to the two-sentence task than merely multiplying sentences, and the range of possible influences is broad. Newstead's hypothesis testing approach was the conventional one. The concept of Gricean implicature was operationalized in terms of particular responses to four of the thirty-two questions in the immediate inference questionnaire. These four questions include the some A are B and some A are not-B premises (which would implicate each other, even if they do not logically entail each other), but also all A are B (possibly "inconsistent" with some A are B) and 6. Note that to conclude some A are not B, the hearer also has to assume that the speaker knows what the relations between A and B are. This goes beyond being helpful. The speaker may be helpful and not know that all A are B, without knowing that some A are not B. In this case, the implicature generated is only "the speaker does not know that all A are B." These knowledge requirements are much neglected in discussions of Grice. 10.4 Individual Differences in Interpretation 311 Figure 10.6 The instructions with example material from the immediate inference questionnaire. no A are B (possibly "inconsistent" with some A are not-B). This measure of "Gricean interpretation" was examined for internal correlations between the drawing of implicatures to different questions in the immediate inference task, and later correlated with conclusions drawn from syllogisms where different conclusions would become valid if the Gricean implicature were added to the premises. Newtead's results did produce high rates of Gricean interpretation in the immediate inference task. About 80% of subjects produced Gricean implicatures from at least some assumptions, but there was little correlation between drawing one expected implicature and drawing the others. Newstead then turned to the question whether these implicatures could predict subsequent reasoning. He interpreted his results as resoundingly negative. Syllogistic conclusions were not predicted by premise implicatures. Newstead concluded that there was no relation between what subjects did in the two tasks – presented with one premise 312 10 Syllogisms and Beyond they applied Grice, but presented with two premises they threw a switch and applied mental models. We applaud Newstead for adopting an extremely interesting large-scale question informed by philosophical, logical, and linguistic literatures – can Grice's theory of cooperative communication contribute to an explanation why subjects do not conform to classical logic when solving syllogisms? Since credulous reasoning is so closely related to Grice's theory, the authors of this book would have to hope the answer is positive. Our argument is that the answer is positive, but Newstead's project was derailed by conventional experimental psychology hypothesis testing methodology. Instead of first asking exploratory questions such as "What are undergraduate subjects' interpretations of syllogistic quantifiers like?" the standard psychological approach is to operationalise on a narrow base of specific stimuli and responses, and then to test the operationalization's ability to make predictions of another narrow range of responses identified by another operationalization. Of course, in order to explore, one needs some guidance as to how to condense the 332 response patterns into a description of "what naive logical intuitions are like," but there is plenty of guidance available from elementary logical concerns. 10.4.2 A New Experiment on Immediate Inference We will pay rather more attention to the sequence by which our findings were arrived at than is normal in reporting experimental results. Exploration is not much taught as a psychological method, but it is an important one for progress in this area. The first principle employed in our fishing expedition into the interpretation data was: pay close attention to the "could be either" responses. These responses are judgments to the effect that assumption and conclusion sentences are logically independent. Logical independence is transformed in going from credulous to skeptical reasoning. Many premise-conclusion pairs that are valid credulously become logically independent once viewed classically. Of course, exploration is aided by a rough guide, and it is very useful to bear in mind what one's guide is, because it certainly will affect what is found. But rough guides are not hard to come by, and if one doesn't find much with one guide, then one can resort to another. Rashness and Hesitancy There are therefore two classes of cases of particular interest – cases where classical logic tells us that assumption and conclusion are logically independent, but significant numbers of subjects respond that either the conclusion or its negation does follow. We will call this general kind of response "rash" – sub10.4 Individual Differences in Interpretation 313 jects are rashly overinferring (by a classical logical criterion). The second kind of case is where classical logic tells us that something does validly follow, but subjects respond that the conclusion could be either true or false. We will call these responses "hesitant" – subjects hesitate to draw a valid conclusion. The rash case is generally to be expected if the interpretation is credulous. The hesitant case is more puzzling, since classically valid conclusions tend to be valid under at least some credulous interpretations. Many cases of the former (rash) kind are already well known to logic teachers down the ages as fallacies, and observed in the history of experimental investigation of syllogistic reasoning. The most prominent example is the fallacy known as "illicit conversion" [34]: from All A are B it follows that All B are A. The second kind of response, as far as we are aware, has not been reported, but asking whether it occurs is an obvious initial exploratory question which is at the very least an important backdrop to interpreting rash responses. As an aside to be picked up later, it is important to realise that conversion, at least of conditionals, can be related to closed-world reasoning and is therefore another case of credulous reasoning. It isn't hard to see informally that closed– world reasoning in discourse can lead to "conversion." The rough principle is: "only add to the model what is necessary to understand what has been said." So, if a discourse begins "All A are B," then at this stage we get a model in which the only way that something can get to be B is because it is A, and in such a model it will be true that "All B are A." Examination of the data quickly revealed some striking cases of rashness and hesitancy. For example, there was a substantial minority (about 20%) of subjects who refused to draw the conclusion Some B are A from the assumption that Some A are B where subject and predicate of the premise are inverted in the conclusion. Our logically sophisticated colleagues, even those who teach logic, often react to these responses by saying they must just be random noise – how could anyone possibly refuse this inference? A little further eyeballing of the data demonstrates that it is not random noise. When all the questions that are cases of classical logical dependence are tabulated (N=12), it turns out that there are quite a few of them that produce similarly large proportions of hesitant responses. The next observation is that this is only the case when the conclusion has subject and predicate "inverted" from their positions in the assumption (N=8), as in our example. The third observation is that subjects who make these hesitant responses on one inverted question tend to make them on other inverted questions. In fact when a histogram is drawn up tabulating the number of subjects who make 0, 1, 2, . . . 8 hesitant responses, the distribution is bimodal. Most subjects make none or few, but there is a substantial tail of subjects who make every, or nearly every, possible hesitant response (figure 10.7). Without any statistical testing, or better, with only the simplest of intuitive models of what might be expected, 314 10 Syllogisms and Beyond this is pretty strongly flavored stuff. The fourth observation is that subjects who make several of these hesitant responses to inverted conclusions, are disjoint from the subjects who make several rash responses to inverted conclusions. There are about a quarter of subjects in each category, but there is no overlap. Random this is not. Wonderful thing following one's nose, especially when kept pointing forward. These obviously 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Figure 10.7 The number of subjects responding to N out of eight questions that invert subject and predicate with the answer "Neither conclusion follows," when this is incorrect. intriguing observations suggest a scheme for classifying subjects' answer patterns on a small number of dimensions. Let "T ," "F ,""CE" abbreviate the responses "true," "false" and "could be either." Above we dubbed subjects who tend to answer T or F when the answer should be CE: rash, and subjects who tend to answer CE when the answer should be T or F , hesitant. As mentioned above, the rash subjects are the ones who tend to apply a cooperative model of communication. Immediate Inference and Information Packaging Now consider a specific structural feature of an immediate inference, namely whether it conserves the structure of subject and predicate (henceforth an in– place inference), or whether that structure is reversed (an inverted inference). Both rashness and hesitancy can be further evaluated along the in-place/inverted dimension. Thus, a subject who is rash on in-place inferences is one who tends 10.4 Individual Differences in Interpretation 315 to answer T or F instead of the correct CE on immediate inferences which preserve subject/predicate structure; cf. the classical examples of Grice's implicatures. It turns out that no subjects were hesitant on in-place questions, which leaves three combinations of properties: hesitant on inverted inferences, rash on in-place inferences, and rash on inverted inferences. Interestingly, 94% of subjects fall into one of the following four groups: neither rash nor hesitant on any inference (17%); rash on in-place questions but neither rash nor hesitant on inverted inferences (22%); rash on both kind of inferences, but not hesitant (35%); and hesitant on inverted inferences plus rash on in-place inferences (20%). It is also striking how many subjects are rash on in-place inferences: 80%! Thus there is, as Newstead already remarked, good evidence for the prevalence of a Gricean model of communication (or credulous interpretation) in this task. What intuitions are available to explain what hesitancy might reflect? "Some A are B" is different from "Some B are A": about a quarter of subjects deny that the latter sentence follows from the former.7 Linguists employ the metaphor of "information packaging": the same information is realized (packaged) linguistically in different ways, and this because each packaging serves a different communicative function.8 For example, the two sentences are natural answers to different questions. While linguists would not normally use this term for describing the subject/predicate structural difference between these two sentences, in the very restricted class of abstract syllogistic materials this metaphor applies. If a logically naive subject is asked whether "Some B are A" follows from "Some A are B," he may not realise that he should strip the sentences of their information packaging, nor that that is what the graphical representation using Euler circles does. Information–packaging is related to credulous interpretation because speakers use appropriate packagings to help hearers arrive at the intended model. To take a skeptical attitude one often needs to strip off the packaging to find possible counterexamples. Syllogisms can be divided into those whose information packaging points toward valid conclusions, and those where it obscures them. The latter are sometimes called "counterfigural," and they produce a lot of "no valid conclusion" responses. Subjects who are rash on in-place questions (Some A are B. Are all A B?), but not on inverted inferences (All A are B. Are all B A?), are plausibly processing credulously but are held in check from making inverted conclusions by information packaging which points them away from these conclusions. Many though by no means all of these subjects will be hesitant subjects who may be completely spellbound by information packaging. It is difficult to say whether 7. For the logically sophisticated it can be hard to recover lost innocence, but the following example may help. The judge in a famous UK comedian's tax avoidance trial summed up by stating that while it was clear that no comedians are accountants, it was equally clear that some accountants are comedians. 8. For an interesting argument to the effect that information packaging is precisely the purpose of "object orientation" in programming, see Kowalski [162], especially section 3.3. 316 10 Syllogisms and Beyond they have any idea of logical validity, since 80% of hesitant subjects are rash on in-place questions. In conclusion, what is perhaps most surprising about this exploration is that major patterns of interpretation emerge which don't even refer to the identity of particular quantifiers in their specification. The quantifiers are involved because they are involved in our specification of which questions are classified as expecting which answers, but the patterns that emerge are rashness and hesitancy on in-place and inverted questions. We may say that subjects' inference patterns are determined less by the logical notion of classical validity than by various aspects of the communicative situation, as hypothesized by the subject. This is perhaps hardly surprising, since they nowhere have had the classical concept of deductive validity explained to them. There is plenty of evidence of credulous interpretation, but there are other effects as well. Can this classification of interpretations be related to subjects' syllogistic reasoning, thus resolving Newstead's failure to relate interpretation and reasoning? 10.5 Syllogistic Reasoning When we move from immediate inference tasks to full syllogistic reasoning, the task changes and it is an open question when to expect transfer. That is, for example, one cannot necessarily expect that in a syllogism with premises All A are B. All B are C. and with a subject who shows "illicit conversion" in his immediate inference task responses, the premises are still taken to imply All B are A. All C are B. Thus, we should predict offhand that a sizable proportion of such subjects will draw the conclusion All C are A. One reason that this prediction may fail is that the presence of two premises leads to an additional complication, namely the grammatical status of the middle term (B) and the end terms (A and C). In the example above, the end term A is in subject position in the premise but in predicate position in the conclusion, whereas for C it is the other way around. As we have seen, there is a tendency on the part of a subset of subjects to find such reorderings counterintuitive (i.e., violating normal discourse structure), so that in fact a subject may be saved from committing a logical error by committing another logical error! 10.5 Syllogistic Reasoning 317 We now turn to the empirical question whether subjects' choices in the immediate inference task predict their reasoning in the syllogistic task. How should we address this exploratory question? 10.5.1 Individual Factors Influencing Reasoning In this subsection we introduce kinds of modeling to add to the logical modeling of earlier chapters: statistical modeling of data, and the modeling of mental structures and processes involved in task performance. The statistical modeling we outline yields a regression equation: a set of weighted factors which can be shown to affect the likelihood of a certain feature of conclusions drawn from syllogistic premises. Such modeling is a bottom–up data-driven exercise which produces prima facie evidence that a relation between a factor and the process exists. The resulting model is large and messy and hard to interpret as a mental process. The process modeling presented here takes an earlier theoretical process model developed on group data and extends it so that different subgroups of subjects (defined by their interpretation patterns) are predicted to engage in rather different reasoning processes. Process models cannot generally be derived directly from data, but they are interpretable as psychological processes. Both theoretical process model and statistical data model are related to the logical models of earlier chapters – credulous vs. skeptical interpretation of the task is an important feature in both the statistical model and the process one. So the situation is typical of scientific analysis – multiple models at different levels, either closer or farther from the data, play their roles in analysis. In the analysis of immediate inference we identified several factors, such as rashness (both on in-place and inverted questions) and hesitancy (on inverted questions) which systematically influence interpretations in the immediate inference task. The syllogism leads to additional factors of possible importance, such as grammar (whether the end terms have different or identical grammatical category), the distribution of the quantifiers over the premises, and the order of premises. For example, one may distinguish the case where an existential quantifier (either some or some. . . not) occurs in the first or the second premise, in both, or in none; and similarly for the other quantifiers. One may now try to analyse empirically the influence of these factors on various aspects of syllogistic reasoning performance. An interesting aspect is whether subjects choose an AC ordering or a CA ordering of the end terms A and C in the conclusion of the syllogism. We choose to initially model conclusion term order rather than accuracy because we believe subjects adopt different interpretations which define different concepts of accuracy. We return to accuracy when we have built a model of conclusion term ordering which is sensitive to individual differences of interpretation. The exploratory statistical technique used is called logistic regression. A 318 10 Syllogisms and Beyond heuristic searches a space of possible factors in trying to construct the best regression equation which can predict whether an AC or a CA conclusion will be drawn as a function of different structures of syllogism, and as a function of subjects' different patterns of immediate inference response. The best model shows that classical validity plays only a marginal role in this choice! 10.5.2 Statistical analysis The original statistical model of this data and its development are described in [262]. A number of structural asymmetries of syllogistic problems which could potentially affect premise ordering, along with a number of features of each subject's immediate inference data, together with a large number of possible interactions between all of these factors are defined. An algorithm in the statistical package (backwards elimination) then searches the space of logistic regression equations that can use subsets of these factors to predict the order of the terms (AC vs CA) in the conclusions (if any) that the subject drew for a given problem. The algorithm balances the number of factors in the equation with amount of the variance the equation can explain and identifies a "best" equation. As with all regression modelling, the equation is developed on a "development" dataset prior to being tested on a new "test" dataset, so that accidental regularities can be discarded and predictive regularities retained. The first empirical result of this statistical analysis is that the best equation fits very much better than by chance. It explains the term orders of about 70% of conclusions, where 50% is chance. This leaves a lot of variance unexplained, but then there may be substantial pure noise in the data (factors such as slips of attention, memory, etc. which we have no measures to predict). Unfortunately we cannot estimate the amount of this noise with logistic regression in the way we would be able to with linear regression. The second empirical conclusion we can draw from the terms that appear in the model is that individual differences in immediate inference patterns do significantly predict syllogistic conclusion term order. We have at least partially overcome Newstead's failure to find a relation, although the exploratory statistical model yields no immediately insightful statement of the relation. To find one is our next task. The best resulting statistical model of the factors affecting conclusion term order shows that the more substantial determinants, in no partiuclar order, include: 1. when the two end terms have different grammatical categories, those categories tend to be preserved in the conclusion; 2. existential quantifiers tend to put their end terms into subject position; 10.5 Syllogistic Reasoning 319 3. there is a weak but general tendency for the premise 1 term to be subject (i.e., AC order is preferred); 4. each quantifier except No tends to varying degrees to put its end term into subject position, but quantifiers have greatest influence when in premise 2; Some not especially has no influence in the first premise, but a large influence in the second premise; 5. hesitant subjects have a general tendency to respond with an AC ordering throughout; by contrast, rash subjects have no such special tendency; 6. there are complex interactions between hesitancy, grammar, and No and between rashness-in-place, grammar, and Some. . . not. The first four regularities are general properties of all subjects: the last two are differences in reasoning by groups of subjects with different immediate inference patterns. Some of these regularities are well-known from the literature. The effect of the grammatical organization of the first two "diagonal" figures has been observed in every experiment reported. The weak general preference for AC over CA is also common. But we know of no systematic study of quantifier effects on term ordering. The strong effect of existentials on term ordering (the second largest contribution to the equation's fit) has not been noticed, and similarly the differential effects of the negative quantifiers, and certainly not the individual differences in these. So even if we couldn't find an insightful model which integrates all these observations, exploration has already yielded new empirical observations. The actual statistical model is appreciably more complicated than this – it is after all the result of a fishing expedition. It tells us what factors and interactions between them play a significant role in determining conclusion term order. It is hard to integrate its parameters into an understanding at the level which we seek. So, as part of the process of constructing such an understanding, we will now give an informal description of the relation of the statistical model to the source-founding model originally put forward by Stenning and Yule [269] to model group data. 10.5.3 From Data Description to a Psychological Model Stenning and Yule [269] presented a general model of how subjects go about syllogistic reasoning – the source-founding model.9 The intuition behind the term "source premise" comes from discourse processing. The source is the 9. Guy Politzer [219] points out that a great deal of Stenning and Yule's analysis is prefigured in a 1908 paper by Störring [273]. 320 10 Syllogisms and Beyond premise which supplies the discourse antecedent on which can be built a description of a fully specified kind of indvidual. With slight adjustment of heuristics, this model can serve either as a normative competence model (i.e., it can generate all and only the valid conclusions according to classical logic), or as a descriptive performance model for analyzing subjects' reasoning. In fact, the same framework also shows how credulous and skeptical reasoning are unusually closely related in this restricted domain. These close relations are desirable because they allow explanation of errors as divergences from norms. The model has the virtue that it is completely abstract about the particular representations which subjects use (e.g., diagrams vs. sentences), but it nevertheless provides the best explanation of conclusion term ordering that is available in the literature. We first describe the model as it was developed for group data, and then show how it can be extended to incorporate the individual differences in reasoning as a function of quantifier interpretation which are our current concern. We hope the reader will forgive a greater than usual emphasis on methodology in what follows. We seek to illustrate the relation between a theoretical model, raw data for its extension, exploratory statistical modelling of the raw data, and a refined theoretical model incoporating individual interpretation factors, alongside problems structural factors, into predictions of reasoning behaviour. The source–founding model is represented in figure 10.8. The model has two parts: a specification of how premises are designated as having the status of source and nonsource premise, and some simple operations which are then applied on the basis of this categorization to draw conclusions. The top half represents the weighing of factors in choosing between designating the first or second premise as source: the bottom half illustrates the alternative processes of drawing a conclusion, conditioned on this choice. Modulations on the factors which go into the choice of source premise are what will be used to model individual differences. Source and non-source premises are defined using the concept of a critical individual. So, for example, for the syllogism (1) All B are A. Some C are B. Therefore some C are A. the critical individual is an A that is B and C. This idea is closely related to Aristotle's concept of ecthesis. The source premise defined by the classical logical competence model is the premise which establishes the critical individual – in this case the second premise. In the Euler diagram system described above, source premises contribute the crosses which mark the critical individuals in completed problem diagrams. Problems with valid conclusions always have at least one source premise (sometimes both premises are potential sources). The source-founding model of syllogism solution connects with the concerns of earlier chapters by the simple observation that the introduction of discourse 10.5 Syllogistic Reasoning 321 Figure 10.8 The source–founding model of syllogism solution applied to the syllogism Some B are A. No C are B. The upper part represents the various structural factors and their bias toward choosing either premise 1 or 2 as source. The lower part shows the possible conclusions resulting from the alternative assignments of source premise. referents into representations of discourses is the key operation of discourse processing. The source premise performs such an introduction. Paradigmatically this would be by an existential premise, but the no-empty-sets interpretation allows universals to also make these introductions. A general algorithm for determining which premise is classically a valid source is fairly complicated, but some very simple heuristics get most cases. First, for problems with valid conclusions, existential premises are always source. (note that problems with valid conclusions only ever have single existential premises; cf. Aristotle's generalization mentioned above on page 308). Second, if this principle fails to choose a source (i.e.. there are two universal premises), positive premises should be preferred as source over negative ones. This then leaves only two possibilities. As we have seen, problems with two negative universal premises have no valid Aristotelean conclusion, so all remaining problems have two positive universal conclusions. If there is a 322 10 Syllogisms and Beyond unique end-term subject, then the premise in which it occurs becomes source. If not, then the first premise's end term is chosen as source. This may sound all rather complicated and ad hoc but these heuristics are closely related to a number of principles of discourse processing and to a competence model for classical logic.10Modulations of these heuristics can explain differences between subject–groups. Once a source premise has been chosen, a conclusion is drawn. Again the general algorithm to model classical logic is quite complicated but a very simple method gets most problems right. Simply attach the end term of the nonsource premise to the source premise's end, and delete the middle term. So for the example (1) above, choose the existential premise as source, attach the end term of the nonsource premise to the end of the source premise (yielding Some C are B and A), and delete the B. Obviously this method applied to invalid syllogisms will generate invalid conclusions. It will also generate invalid conclusions for any problem for which the only valid conclusions have quantifiers other than those in the source premise. So it is an important question how "no valid conclusion" responses are generated (not a problem tackled here, though the heuristics for identifying source strongly suggest a method related to the medieval "sieve"; see [258,p. 111]), but it is important to remember that what follows is only a model of how conclusions other than "no valid conclusion" are generated. Stenning and Yule [269] present evidence from a task where subjects have to describe critical individuals and thereby produce an ordering of all three terms. The task was designed to yield richer evidence (because we now have three terms, there are six orderings instead of just AC and CA, and these are completely independent of validity). The source–founding model predicts that the middle term should often come first in a description of the critical individual for a problem. This is the pattern Stenning and Yule observed – in fact the commonest term order of all is BAC. Mental models theory predicts, on the basis of some claims about "firstin, first-out" memory, that middle terms always should come between the end terms. As we shall see, this aspect of the theory is a covert incorporation of syntactic information into the supposedly purely semantic representations. Though mental model theory never sought any evidence that this kind of memory was involved, it explained the ordering on the basis of memory theories. In fact, the term order regularity predicted (with B in the middle) turns out not to be observed in the individuals task data, so the task requiring the description of critical individuals provides evidence that this kind of memory is not involved in holding term order. More generally, the fact that subjects readily adapt to the "individual identification task" provides empirical support for the cognitive rel10. The connection to discourse processing will be elaborated on page 329. 10.5 Syllogistic Reasoning 323 evance of the logical analysis of how syllogisms relate to discourse processing – the underlying basis for the source-founding model. Furthermore, the new task shows that at least a substantial minority of subjects are capable of identifying the critical individuals which underlie the nonstandard u-conclusions from two negative premises, discussed earlier. This shows remarkable flexibility. Although subjects in the standard task appear to be able to exploit some implicit knowledge of Aristotle's principle that two negative premises generate no valid conclusion (i.e., subjects find these easier problems than problems with one positive premise), subjects nevertheless can identify these nonstandard inferences when they are given the novel individual-identification task. So the Stenning and Yule model conceives of syllogistic reasoning as subjects choosing a source premise which founds a description of a critical individual. It is this model which we now expand in order to capture the individual differences observed with regard to how interpretation determines reasoning. 10.5.4 Incorporating Interpretation Factors into the Reasoning Model The individual differences particularly revolve around grammar, premise order, and the negative quantifiers Some not and No, particularly the latter quantifier. In the statistical model of term order, all subjects have a tendency to make AC conclusions, but hesitant subjects have a stronger tendency. All subjects have a strong tendency to preserve the grammatical status of the end terms from the premises in their conclusions, but hesitant subjects have a much stronger such tendency, especially in the second syllogistic figure11 (where it operates against premise order). These observations can be directly accommodated in the source–founding model – hesitant subjects simply weigh these factors in their decisions about which premise to choose as source, and that makes sense because grammar and premise order are forms of information packaging, and hesitant subjects are especially sensitive to that. But these tendencies also interact with the negative quantifiers. So the tendency for hesitant subjects to be especially guided by grammar in the second syllogistic figure, interacts with No so that they have a stronger tendency to keep the end term of the No premise in predicate position, in the second figure. Rash-on-inverted subjects have the opposite tendency to treat No less differently than the other quantifiers, and rash-in-place subjects treat Some not less differently. As far as we know these observations about negative quantifiers are novel. Why should the individual differences affect these negative quantifiers? First, there is the general fact that negative information is more easily processed when it is preceded by a positive frame (see, e.g., Wason [294]). There is also an interesting duality in the way that Some not can be encoded. One can think of it positively as an existential assertion of a predicate's complement; or nega11. For the syllogistic figures, see table 10.1. 324 10 Syllogisms and Beyond tively as the denial of a universal assertion of the predicate. It is possible that the former is preferred by rash-on-inverted subjects, and the latter by hesitant subjects, who would then prefer to keep the negative information late in the sentence. Which brings us to the interactions with No. Here there are logically special circumstances: in the classical competence model No premises never obligatorily contribute subject terms to valid conclusions, and this is reflected in the source–founding model by the fact that it never makes No premises' end terms into subjects. It seems that hesitant subjects are especially attuned to these logical regularities. So all these factors can be incorporated into the heuristics in the source–founding model and thereby affect the conclusion term orders observed in different groups of subjects. The model extended by some individual difference factors is represented in figure 10.9. Figure 10.9 Interpretation factors incorporated into source premise choice. The named interpretation factor (hesitant, Rash-I) intensifies the effect of the arrow. The effects of source premise choice once made play out as before. But we can go further and see whether these ordering phenomena are causally connected with reasoning accuracy (as defined classically) or whether they are just information packaging, epiphenomenal to the real conclusion drawing process. We can go back to the conclusion data and analyse subsets of subjects and problems where the source-founding model tells us there should be particularly illuminating effects on accuracy if the model is really about reasoning and not just about packaging one's conclusions once one has drawn them. 10.5 Syllogistic Reasoning 325 In order to get a better handle on the complex data, we classified pairs of syllogistic problems which are identical, save for their premise ordering (e.g., All A are B. All B are C. and All B are A. All C are B. are such a pair). The twenty-seven problems with valid conclusions are composed of thirteen such pairs and one singleton which is symmetric about this ordering. The source-founding model now provides a criterion for defining a canonical and noncanonical ordering of each pair: source premises come first in canonical pairs; nonsource in noncanonical pairs. The intuition is that getting first the premise on which a representation is going to be built should be easier. The one All/All problem symmetric about reordering (namely All A are B. All B are C) is canonical. Note that this definition of canonical problems according to the source-founding model means that No premises are always second premises in canonical problems. This observation helps greatly in understanding what the statistical model means, because the effects of No in the statistical model are much greater when it is in premise 2. Now to an analysis of reasoning accuracy. We can ask for any pair of problems and any group of subjects whether they find the canonical problem or its noncanonical counterpart easier (in the sense of getting a higher proportion of problems classically correct). Since the only difference between these pairs of problems is the ordering of the premises, if there is an effect of canonicality on accuracy of reasoning, then premise order is playing a role in subjects' strategies for finding source premises and constructing conclusions. The obvious two subject groups to explore first are hesitant subjects and rash-on-inverted subjects, since these two groups are essentially disjoint, and at opposite extremes with regard to their sensitivity to information packaging. The critical problems that should be particularly revealing are problems where the simple source-founding algorithm tries to put negated predicates into subject position – these are the problems where the classical logical competence model needs to make complex adjustments to get the right conclusions. There is just one problem pair (out of thirteen) for which the heuristic of adding the end term of the nonsource premise to the end of the source-premise, rules out drawing a valid conclusion. This is the fourth figure pair Some B are not A. All B are C. (canonical) and All B are A. Some B are not C. (noncanonical). The conclusion–drawing heuristic (attach the end term of the nonsource premise to the end of the source premise, and remove the middle term) applied to these problems yields the conclusion Some A are not C. for the canonical problem and Some C are not A. for noncanonical, whereas the valid conclusions are the other way round. This pair of problems therefore provides an interesting test case for interactions between interpretation patterns and reasoning accuracy, as mediated by conclusion term ordering. We can usefully compare this problem pair with two 326 10 Syllogisms and Beyond other pairs. The problem of the third figure that has the same quantifiers and has valid conclusions which are found by the source–founding and conclusion– drawing heuristics is Some A are not B. All C are B. (canonical) and All A are B. Some C are not B. (noncanonical). The simple heuristics work on these problems because the end terms are both subjects, just as they fail to work in the earlier example from the fourth figure because the end terms are both predicates. The second insightful comparison is with the pairs from the first and second figures where canonicality is resolved only by grammar: All A are B. All B are C. (canonical) and All B are A. All C are B. (noncanonical). Since grammar is a powerful resolver of conclusion term order for all interpretation groups, and it does not interact with All, this problem pair provides a control.12 Predictions Canonicality interacting with the source–founding heuristics makes rather precise predictions about hesitant and rash-on-inverted questions subjects' reasoning accuracy for these three pairs of problems. The All/All problem pair should show a reasoning accuracy advantage for the canonical problem over the noncanonical problem for both interpretation groups, because grammar overrides premise order in determining choice of source. Hesitant subjects for whom premise order has a strong influence on choice of source should show a strong canonicality advantage for the Some not/All problem pair in the third figure. Rash-on-inverted questions subjects, who are not much influenced by premise order, should show little canonicality effect on this pair of problems. But for the Some not/All problem pair in the fourth figure, hesitant subjects should show a reverse canonicality effect because determining source by premise order gives the right conclusion term order in the anticanonical problem, and the wrong one in the canonical problem. Again, rash-on-inverted subjects should show little canonicality effect here. Statistical Analysis Stenning and Cox's data set yielded seventeen hesitant subjects, forty-three rash-on-inverted subjects, and forty-two subjects who were neither, as controls. Inferential statistics tested for significant relationships between 1) which of the three pairs of problems was posed, 2) the order of presentation of the premises (i.e. canonicality), and 3) the subject's interpretation style (hesitant vs. rash-on-inverted problems), in determining whether the subject drew classically correct conclusions, or not. The tests showed that while there were no first order or "main" effects, there were significant interactions between 1) type of subject and canonicality, and 2) between all three factors 12. In a paper we did not know about when [262] was written, [7,p. 156] find that this same subset of syllogisms is the only one to distinguish their "visual" and "verbal" subjects: "With the exception of the four same-form, multi-model syllogisms discussed previously, neither the present study, nor that of Ford, found any significant difference in overall performance across different strategy types . . . " 10.5 Syllogistic Reasoning 327 in determining reasoning accuracy. The means for the three-way interaction appear in table 10.2. Table 10.2 Combined experiments 1 and 2 data: Mean canonicality advantage on reasoning accuracy scores adjusted for nonhesitant non-rash-on-inverted mean scores, for three canonical/noncanonical problem-pairs and for hesitant and rash-on-inverted subject groups: the top member of each problem-pair is canonical. A positive value means the subjects are more accurate than nonhesitant, non-rash-on-inverted subjects: a negative one means they are less accurate Subject Group Hesitant Rash-on-inverted Problem Pair Mean S.E. Mean S.E. All AB. All BC. So, All AC -.02 .09 -.09 .06 All BA. All CB. So, All CA -.23 .12 -.22 .08 Some A not B. All CB. So, Some A not C +.11 .12 -.16 .08 All AB. Some C not B. So, Some C not A -.16 .12 -.19 .08 Some B not A. All BC. So, Some C not A -.22 .12 -.10 .08 All BA. Some B not C. So, Some A not C +.12 .12 -.17 .08 The interaction is of the form that when grammar identifies source premise, both hesitant and rash subjects are equal to their nonhesitant nonrash peers for the canonically ordered problem, but both suffer roughly equally when the premise order is anticanonical. When grammar does not identify source, rash subjects suffer relative to their nonrash nonhesitant peers regardless of the premise order. But now hesitant subjects show a sensitivity to whether premise order defines source accurately. In the standard problem where the source identified by the model's heuristics can be used to make the simple construction of the correct conclusion, hesitant subjects actually outperform their nonhesitant nonrash peers on the canonically ordered member of the pair, but underperform them on the noncanonical member. In the exceptional problem where the source identified by the heuristic cannot be so used, they underperform their peers on the canonically ordered problem but outperform them on the noncanonical member of the pair. These results are consistent with the idea that hesitant subjects tend to identify premise 1 as source, whereas rash-on-inverted subjects are less affected by premise order, and more by grammar and the quantifier attributes that drive the heuristics. Note that whereas there are no global differences in accuracy, there are large and opposite effects on groups of problems for different subject groups. The Source-Founding Model and Individual Differences In summary of the extensions to the source–founding model, we have shown that effects revealed by the exploratory statistical model can be incorporated intelligibly into the 328 10 Syllogisms and Beyond source–founding model as weightings of factors for choosing the source premise. Hesitant subjects always show greater effects of information packaging: rashon-inverted subjects always show more indifference to information packaging. But we can go further and show that the processes which determine conclusion term order are also instrumental in determining reasoning accuracy. These findings are quite dramatic: groups of subjects classified by their interpretation patterns exhibit radically different patterns of term ordering, and their ordering of the difficulty of some subsets of problems is quite different. Even if we take some of the most powerful effects known in the syllogistic reasoning literature (such as the effect of grammar) the model allows us to find subgroups of subjects and subgroups of problems which systematically fail to show these effects, or even show reversals of them. Group data, in fact, are highly misleading here. At their worst, they can fit everyone by fitting no one. One obvious speculation emerging from this work is that hesitant subjects are using "verbal" representations and rash-on-inverted subjects are using "visual" representations (such as Euler circles which strip out information packaging). Ford [84] studied subjects whose reasoning protocols indicate verbal'or visual strategies for syllogism use. We can reanalyse her summary data on the different ordering of problem difficulty for these two groups. This analysis shows that, as one would predict, her visual subjects are less affected by the contrast between canonical and noncanonical problems than her verbal subjects. The result approaches significance, but it is an analysis with lower power because there are only twenty-seven problems to be ordered (Ford gives data only for problems with valid conclusions). Our raw data await further analysis. However, when we compare our hesitant and rash-on-inverted subjects' profiles of problem accuracy with her subjects' profiles, the patterns are obscure. Her subject groups show strong contrasts with both our groups. So there is some evidence that canonicality plays the predicted roles in visual and verbal thinking, but there is more to our interpretation differences than visual and verbal representations (which is not surprising). It is perfectly possible to vary cooperativeness of model with type of representation. It will take further work to resolve the relation between the interpretation variables and the modality of representation involved. Reasoning to an Interpretation Revisited To tie this back to the relation between interpretation and reasoning, we have shown that there are highly systematic patterns of naive interpretation of quantifiers which can be understood as affected by the choice of cooperative or adversarial models of communication in the task, and by differences in susceptibility to information packaging of propositions. These systematic patterns of interpretation can be shown to be instrumental in determining subsequent patterns of reasoning provided they are interpreted in terms of a theory of the relation between models of communica10.5 Syllogistic Reasoning 329 tion and of information packaging. It is an open question to what extent what we have here discussed under the heading of "information packaging" includes patterns of inference which are valid in default logics. As mentioned earlier, the illicit conversion of conditionals is a case of closed–world reasoning. One recent exhaustive attempt to fit alternative models to syllogistic data (Roberts, Newstead, and Griggs [230] actually contrasts "conversion" based models with Gricean models, and rejects the latter. But conversion is Gricean in any larger view. It is very odd to contrast conversion theories with Gricean theories. Certainly closed-world reasoning offers an interesting framework for exploring the changes brought about in interpretation and reasoning by moving from a single premise to two premises. Another aspect of the syllogism that requires elucidation is the role of anaphora in subjects' processing. The source–founding model emphasizes that syllogistic reasoning is discourse processing. Consider a subject disposed to construct a single intended model for the discourse Some A are B. Some B are C. The speaker constructs a model of the first sentence in which some As are Bs. When the second sentence arrives, what anaphoric relations is such a speaker likely to impose? The example immediately makes it clear that such syllogisms are anaphorically problematic, because the only shared term is first used as a predicate and then as a subject. The second sentence's subject has the indefinite quantifier "some," and two indefinite phrases in a discourse are prone to be interpreted as introducing nonidentical referents. This line of reasoning might yield the response that "it's different Bs that are C than the ones that are A," indicating that the subject has constructed a model with some As that are B and some other Bs that are C, and so nothing may follow about the relation between A and C. On the other hand, the general pragmatic forces toward integration in credulous processing of the only information available pulls in the other direction toward the response "since there is a shared reference to B and the speaker intends me to find some connection, then the Bs that are C must be intended to be the same Bs as the ones that are A." Such reasoning leads to an intended model in which some As are Cs. So even within a generally credulous "construct-the-intended-model" construal of the task, subjects may draw a variety of conclusions. One might object that it is unnatural to treat these premises as having anaphoric relations. The subjects would undoubtedly agree. However, if they have a credulous interpretation of the task, resolving these relations is a goal that is forced upon them, and a little subject debriefing does elicit exactly these kinds of commentaries. Of course, more work is needed to understand how conversion relates to these anaphoric inferences about existentials. We noted as a consequence of the existence of critical individuals for valid syllogisms, that this domain has the peculiar property that, with perfect strategic choice of model construction and read-off, a reasoner can process credulously 330 10 Syllogisms and Beyond (i.e. with the goal of deriving a single intended model) yet achieve skeptical goals (drawing all and only classically valid conclusions). Our data shows that a high proportion of subjects (80%) show at least some signs of credulous interpretation in the immediate inference task, though the two-premise task then obscures some of this because "conversion" repackages propositions in such a way that a substantial minority of subjects now refuse to accept inferences which are credulously (and sometimes even classically) valid. So the domain is calculated to make differentiation particularly difficult. Our own hunch is that empirically what really needs study is the learning process which leads subjects to differentiate the two stances in this domain. Monaghan and Stenning [195] make a start on this issue. These results also raise important questions for pragmatic theories such as Grice's, and for the relation between information packaging and language use more generally. The topic of information packaging does not arise in Grice's theorizing. He does not consider whether a statement such as "Some A are B" generates the implicature that "Some B are not A" (the inverted implicature). If we ask why not, it is obvious that in typical decontextualized natural language examples, the propositions are already packaged into referring expressions and properties. Learning elementary logic is learning to stand back from this prepackaging and think in terms of local interpretations in which both quantified expressions and predicates designate sets. When this is done, both inplace and inverted implicatures become relevant. Standard linguistic methodology only studies how information is distributed across grammatical structures after decisions about subject and predicate terms etc. have been imposed. As mentioned above (section10.4), the results also raise questions we cannot settle here about what is to choose between Grice's approach to pragmatics, and the defeasible logical approach to credulous processing developed here. There is much overlap and some contrast. Grice's approach was not intended to be computational and employs an indefinitely expressive metalanguage, but might claim to be comprehensive. Our approach is computational and chooses to start out from an inexpressive base to account for specific phenomena, though without claims to comprehensiveness. Our approach makes some phenomena treated by Grice as pragmatic into semantic phenomena. It is an open question whether the kind of reasoning about epistemic states of speakers described by Grice actually does go on in language interpretation. Grice himself was clear that he was not proposing a process model.13 The proposal made above that theory–of–mind reasoning might be performed in closed–world reasoning (section 9.4) offers a rather different perspective on this issue. To the extent that Gricean reasoning can be implemented in such systems it would be expected to be fast, automatic, and effortless. Just as with system 1 processes in general, 13. For some arguments against too literal a process interpretation see, [25]. For developments of pragmatics in default frameworks, see [283, 284]. 10.6 Mental Models 331 treatment in these logics rather changes our estimation of their possible content. Undoubtedly both the devil and the interest reside in the detail. 10.6 Mental Models As mentioned in chapter 1, and again in chapter 5, the psychology of reasoning has been dominated by competing claims about a single fundamental reasoning mechanism employed by all subjects to solve deductive tasks. The results on the variability of interpretation and its instrumentality in reasoning casts doubt on this research agenda. Further doubt is cast by the dubious computational distinguishability of the competing proposals. Mental models theory can be seen as a development of the founding idea of Kamp's "Discourse Representation Theory" [152, 154]: a piece of discourse is interpreted in a mental representation ("model"), which is itself embedded in "the world." Conversely, mental models can be generated by perception, and can be used as conceptual structure underlying language. 10.6.1 Experimental Evidence It is possible to investigate experimentally whether a particular piece of discourse is stored in memory verbatim or in the form of a situation described by the discourse. We give two examples. Bransford, Barclay and Franks [24] provide evidence that recalled sentences are inferences from explicitly presented material–this can easily be explained if people construct a model of discourse, and "read off" what is true there. e.g., when given the sentence Three turtles rested on a floating log and a fish swam beneath them subjects later confused it with Three turtles rested on a floating log and a fish swam beneath it. Secondly, recall of a piece of discourse is facilitated if the discourse determines a unique model. Compare for instance The spoon is to the left of the knife. The plate is to the right of the knife. The fork is in front of the spoon. The cup is in front of the knife. and The spoon is to the left of the knife. The plate is to the right of the spoon. The fork is in front of the spoon. The cup is in front of the knife. 332 10 Syllogisms and Beyond The difference between these two sets is that the first determines a unique model, whereas the second doesn't. Stenning [259, 260] and Mani and JohnsonLaird [179] found in several experiments that (a) the verbal recall of indeterminate description is better than that for determinate description, and (b) the gist of a determinate description can be recalled much more accurately than that of an indeterminate description. These results lend support to the conclusion that memory stores representations of models (for determinate descriptions) and of verbal material (for indeterminate descriptions). 10.6.2 What Is a Mental Model? That is, does there exist a principled way to distinguish between mental models and linguistic representations? Stenning [258] makes a distinction between direct and indirect representations, where the former do not have syntax. The distinction can be illustrated using the concept of a first–order model. Such a model can be completely specified by indicating which tuples of elements belong to which predicates. Another way of thinking about this form of specification is this: introduce names for all elements in the domain of the model, and construct the atomic diagram, the set of atomic sentences true on the model. Atomic sentences without further syntactic structure beyond that of predication: this is typical for a direct representation, where no further parsing is necessary. Alternatively, a (finite) model could be completely specified by a single first– order sentence. To construct the model of this sentence, the latter has to be decomposed syntactically and the truth definition has to be applied to the components. This is typical of indirect representation: all the information is given in the representation, but not in transparent form. It is the aim of mental models to provide a direct representation, but as will be seen we have some doubts about the success of this enterprise. 10.6.3 The "Algorithm" of the Mental Models Theory The theory tries to steer a midcourse between rule theories, which purportedly fail because of content effects such as discussed in chapters 3 and 7, and "no logic" theories, which go counter to the observation that subjects are able to make valid deductions when pressed. Johnson-Laird claims that the process of deduction goes through the following stages: 1. Reasoners use general knowledge to interpret the premises given and as a result come up with an internal model. 2. The model is scanned for interesting information not yet explicitly contained in the premises; if there is such information, this is offered as a putative conclusion, if not, the conclusion is that nothing follows. 10.6 Mental Models 333 3. Reasoners now try to validate the putative conclusion by looking for alternative models of the premises where that conclusion is false. If there is such a model, the prudent reasoners will return to the second stage to try to discover whether there is any conclusion true in all the models they have so far constructed. If so, then it is necessary to search for counterexamples to it, and so on, until the set of possible models has been exhausted. Because the number of possible mental models is finite for deductions that depend on quantifiers and connectives, the search can in principle be exhaustive. (Johnson-Laird and Byrne [144,pp. 35-6]) The reference to finiteness here is incomprehensible, at least when iterations of quantifiers are allowed. This is because the set of first–order sentences true on all finite models is strictly larger than those true on all models: the logic of finite models is nonclassical.14 So we must assume the authors want to restrict themselves to syllogistic reasoning, for which small models suffice. Taken in this way, it highlights one of the aims of mental models theory: to construct a "psychologically viable" alternative to logic by eliminating the latter's infinities. Johnson-Laird likes to quote a remark due to Barbara Partee to the effect that "an infinite set is far too big to fit inside anyone's head." This depends, of course: most infinite sets of interest have compact finite descriptions. In any case The psychological theory therefore assumes that people construct a minimum of models: they try to work with just a single representative sample from the set of possible models, until they are forced to consider alternatives. (Johnson-Laird and Byrne [144,p. 36]) It remains to come up with an algorithm that chooses the "single representative sample" and that guides the search for alternatives. Presentations of this subject are notoriously hazy (see Hodges' criticism of mental models in [128];[129]), but we will try to be charitable. We consider the mental models approach to syllogisms only. Take a premise like "all of the athletes are bakers." The "initial model" would be a partial structure containing elements a, b (for athletes and bakers, respectively), together with some indication of which predicates can be further extended, and which cannot. Johnson-Laird and Byrne use the notation a b to mean that a is also a b, and [a] b [a] b . . . for the situation in which the predicate "athlete" cannot be further extended (beyond the two athletes explicitly listed), in contrast to "baker" or indeed any 14. This is known as Trahktenbrot's theorem. See, for instance, Boolos, Jeffrey, and Burgess [21,p. 135]. 334 10 Syllogisms and Beyond other predicate. Such a partial structure (called an implicit model by Johnson– Laird and Byrne) can be fleshed out to obtain a fully classical structure (called an explicit model). For example, the above partial structure could be fleshed out to [a] [b] [a] [b] [¬a] [b] [¬a] [¬b] By ¬a an element is meant that is not an athlete. On the basis of the partial model, a conclusion is formulated, which (ideally) is then tested for validity by searching for counterexamples. This can be done either by fleshing out the initial partial model, or by moving to a different initial model. For example, although the initial model validates "all the bakers are athletes," the fleshed–out model refutes this. The claim is that the assumption of this procedure explains all aspects of reasoning performance, including common errors and response times. We proceed to give a few initial, implicit models for other syllogistic premises (taken from Johnson-Laird and Byrne [144]). Some of the athletes are bakers. a b a b . . . None of the athletes is a baker. [a] [a] [b] [b] Here, the empty space to the right of the a indicates that there is no b such that a is b; and likewise for the empty space to the left of the b. Some of the athletes are not bakers. 10.6 Mental Models 335 a a a [b] [b] . . . The principles guiding the construction of these smallest models are somewhat unclear. Note that the implicit model for the first sentence is compatible with "all athletes are bakers," whereas the implicit model for the third sentence is not compatible with "none of the athletes are bakers." No reason for this asymmetry is given. It is also unclear why some of the lines are reduplicated. We so far considered arguments with a single premise only. When two premises have to be combined, complications arise. Consider All the athletes are bakers. All the bakers are canoeists. A partial model for the first premise is [a] b [a] b . . . and for the second premise [b] c [b] c . . . How are these to be combined? The intended meaning of the square brackets excludes the fused partial structure [a] [b] c [a] [b] c . . . because then suddenly "all bakers are athletes" would be true in all fleshed–out models. Johnson-Laird and Byrne opt for the representation [[a] b] c [[a] b] c 336 10 Syllogisms and Beyond . . . which is supposed to mean that all pairs [[a] b] have been listed explicitly. Notice, however, that we have now moved to pure syntax. Whereas [a] could be interpreted as a metalanguage device to indicate that all elements a are explicitly listed, the iteration of the square brackets requires their presence in the object language, and even then their interpretation is not very perspicuous. Johnson-Laird and Byrne offer the interpretation "a is exhausted with respect to b, and b is exhausted with respect to c," but this gloss destroys the original meaning of [a] as being exhausted tout court. In logical terms, the difficulty can be put thus. If we read the collection of [a] b as an abbreviation for ∀x(Ax → Bx), then the collection of [a] [b] c would probably mean something like ∀y(∀x(Ax → Bx) → Cy), which is equivalent to ∀x(Ax → Bx) → ∀yCy, and this is not what we want. It almost goes without saying that formation rules for the [. . . ]–construct are not given. It is perhaps best to think of the square bracket notation in graphical terms. Consider the expression [[a] b] c. This is analogous to an Euler circle representation of sets A,B, C, with A ⊆ B ⊆ C and distinguished elements (i.e., crosses) a ∈ A, b ∈ B, c ∈ C. The added twist is that extensions of the predicates must leave the arrangement of the Euler circles intact. Interestingly, however, it is much less natural to think of Euler circles as representing a partial model, since the circles neatly abstract from the number of elements in the model. The next question is how to read off a conclusion concerning athletes and canoeists from the combined model. This is done by stripping the model of its square brackets; we then see that all athletes are canoeists, and no extension of the partial model can invalidate this conclusion. Let us see how this works in a more difficult case. All of the bakers are athletes. None of the bakers is a canoeist. A partial model for the first premise is [b] a [b] a . . . and for the second premise we get [b] [b] [c] 10.6 Mental Models 337 [c] The combined model is something like [a [b][ [a [b]] [c] [c] . . . which is meant to suggest that triples like a b c are excluded. This model supports the conclusion None of the canoeists is an athlete. which is apparently not uncommon. A fleshed–out model such as [a [b]] [a [b]] a [c] a [c] . . . invalidates this conclusion, and supports Some of the athletes are not canoeists. It will be clear from the above exposition that Johnson-Laird and Byrne's claim to have provided an 'algorithm' for deduction should be taken with a grain of salt. The choice of the initial implicit model is not completely determined; neither is the fleshing out. However, with a number of more or less arbitrary assumptions added, the above can be cast in the form of a computer program, for which see Bara et al. [11]. 338 10 Syllogisms and Beyond 10.6.4 Predictions It is the aim of mental models theory to be able to predict both correct performance when it occurs, and frequently occurring errors. One important determinant of successful performance is taken to be the number of models that must be constructed before a valid conclusion is obtained. Thus, for example, the syllogism with premises All the athletes are bakers. All the bakers are canoeists. is supposed to require only one model, in the sense that fleshing out does not change the conclusion read off from the implicit model. This is supposed to be in contrast to the situation for the syllogism All of the bakers are athletes. None of the bakers is a canoeist. As indicated above, Johnson-Laird and Byrne claim that the conclusion read off from the implicit model is None of the canoeists is an athlete. However, the valid conclusion Some of the athletes are not canoeists. can also be read off from the implicit model. It will also not do to say that people read off the strongest possible conclusion from an implicit model, because in that case the premises All the athletes are bakers. All the bakers are canoeists. would lead to the initial conclusion Athletes are bakers and conversely. This conclusion would of course be invalidated by the fleshing out of the implicit model, but then it is difficult to see what is meant by saying that this syllogism needs only one model. The consequences of the fact that mental models, unlike logical models, contain syntactic structure (the square brackets) are of two kinds. First, the syntactic structure of the input premises has to be maintained somehow in order for mental models to make the required behavioral predictions, for example, of conclusion term order. As we saw in the previous sections, grammatical structure is actually the most heavily weighted factor in the determination of conclusion term order. Mental models theory's appeal to first-in, first-out working memory and "cancellation operations" to remove the middle term is a covert attempt to 10.6 Mental Models 339 carry through this information into the conclusion through the sequential structure of the models. But we saw that the predicted conclusion term orders (with B central) are not the commonest orders observed in the individuals task. Second, these issues – syntactic components and sequential structure in the models – become critical when cognitive scientists attempt to map reasoning processes onto the brain. Sometimes considerations of neural representation are even invoked to adjudicate between mental rules and mental models, as in the work of Goel and colleagues (see quotes above 119 and 119). It then seems possible to set up an experiment to distinguish between the two theories, by using experimental evidence that language processing is localized in the left hemisphere, and spatial processing in the parietal cortex (chiefly on the right). If a subject shows no activation in the parietal cortex while reasoning, this is taken to be evidence against the involvement of spatial processing, and hence ultimately against mental models. A result of this kind was indeed obtained by Goel and his colleagues [100]. However, if mental models contain linguistic components after all, the hypothesis that their neural correlate must be situated in the right parietal cortex becomes much less plausible. 10.6.5 Conclusion: The Logic of Mental Models The confusions inherent in mental models theory are nicely illustrated (albeit unwittingly) in the following quotation from Ruth Byrne [28,p. 78]: The model-based theory assumes that once one has an adequate explanation of comprehension, there is no need for the mobilization of any elaborate machinery for reasoning, neither of syntactic rules proposed by formal theories, nor of domain-specific rules favoured by pragmatic theories. On the contrary, reasoning depends on a search for counterexamples to conclusions, but ordinary individuals do not have a simple deterministic procedure for making such a search. (cf. Newell and Simon [199]). The claim is thus that mental models theory is "semantic" in the sense that it rests completely on a theory of natural language understanding; this would render the application of rules superfluous. But then, what is involved in natural language comprehension? The assignment of an implicit mental model obviously does not depend on the full semantic content of a sentence such as "all athletes are bakers," but it depends on the logical form of this sentence. This is what allows Johnson-Laird to represent the sentence "all athletes are bakers" in the form [a] b [a] b . . . abstracting from all other information. 340 10 Syllogisms and Beyond In fact, an important component of comprehension is precisely assigning logical form. Once a logical form has been chosen, representing this as a mental model in the sense of Johnson-Laird is a triviality, because, due to the incorporation of logical devices such as negation and the universal quantifier, such a mental model is a notational variant of a sentence of predicate logic. Thus, there is nothing inherently semantic in this notion of a mental model. In this respect it should be sharply distinguished from ordinary first–order models, which can be characterized by sets of atomic sentences. A reasoner now supposedly reads off a purported conclusion from a mental model constructed from the premises. Since the mental model is essentially a sentence in a formal language, this involves checking whether one sentence follows from another, and this is definitely not reading off when the sentences involved are complex. Similarly, checking whether the conclusion is true in other models of the premises again involves determining whether one sentence follows from another. Thus, reasoning processes are involved which are not described by the mental models theory. All this can be illustrated in a more perspicuous manner with the help of semantic tableaux, which avoid the various red herrings of mental models theory. This proof procedure is semantic in the sense that it provides a systematic way to construct a first–order model which verifies the premises and falsifies the conclusion of an argument, if such a model exists. Models constructed in this manner are true models in that they are fully specified by a domain and relations (and/or functions) on that domain; the model does not incorporate syntax. But the construction itself proceeds stepwise and is fully guided by logical rules of the type "if ∀xφ(x) is false, then there must be some new individual a such that φ(a) is false." These rules are very similar to the rules proposed by the rule theorists; indeed, there exists a canonical way to transform a tableau proof into a natural deduction proof. A mental models theorist might object that even so, there still is a distinction between rules operating on formulas, and rules guiding the construction of representations or models. This distinction is spurious, however, because semantic tableaux can be viewed equivalently as fully syntactic procedures, by treating the elements introduced in the course of the construction simply as constants of the language. It will be clear from the above exposition that Johnson-Laird and Byrne have inadvertently tried to reinvent logic, while claiming to provide an alternative. In itself that is already an interesting result. Stripped of its extravagant claims and notational muddle, the mental models theory embodies a simple logical point. What the mental models theory has in common with Kamp's Discourse representation theory ([155, 152]) is the emphasis on partial models. Now partial models do not seem to be very helpful in the case of syllogisms, because the full models are so small in any case, but they may be helpful for more advanced arguments. 10.6 Mental Models 341 10.6.6 Morals from Syllogisms? Once one drops the idea that the data presented in the psychological literature bear on the rules vs. models debate, several important conclusions can be drawn from the data of syllogistic reasoning, both theoretical and methodological. The results demonstrate once again the importance of interpretation in understanding tasks which have generally been taken to be about derivation from interpretations. The source–founding model is designed to capitalize on the logical peculiarities of the domain, which make credulous processing of discourse come so close to skeptical classical reasoning. Thus the full panoply of discourse representation theory is transferred to the problem of understanding interpretation in these tasks. Exploration of the data from the immediate inference task reveals just how strong credulous interpretation still is in this task, and how it is intimately connected to subjectpredicate structure. This in turn highlights how both forward implicature and "conversion" are closely related credulous patterns of reasoning, rather than opposed psychological theories. The combination of bottom-up statistical modeling with top-down process modeling illustrates how the two complement each other in an exploratory empirical program of research which links experiment to theories from outside psychology. It does this in an area where there had been an explicit failed attempt to link through the usual methods of operationalization ([201]). Empirically, an important gain is the unearthing of qualitative individual differences in interpretation. The last chapter will examine what this means for the vexed question of rationality in reasoning.
P A R T I I I Is Psychology Hard or Impossible?
Whenever anybody interprets evidence from any source, and his interpretation contains characteristics that cannot be referred wholly to direct sensory observation or perception, this person thinks. The bother is that nobody has ever been able to find any case of the human use of evidence which does not include characters that run beyond what is directly observed by the senses. So, according to this, people think whenever they do anything at all with evidence. If we adopt that view we very soon find ourselves looking out upon a boundless and turbulent ocean of problems. (F.C. Bartlett, Thinking [13,p. 1])
Rationality Revisited 11.1 Logic and Information–Processing Logic plays several roles in this book. We studied overt reasoning, and found that classical logic is not always adhered to, nor need it be, because there are many domains in which it is not a reasonable competence model. Instead we found that the domain of discourse processing is governed by a form of nonmonotonic logic as a competence model, namely closed–world reasoning; if subjects approach a reasoning task in "discourse processing mode" they are therefore quite likely to apply closed–world reasoning to it. This explained the pattern of performance in, for instance, the suppression task (chapter 7). Chapters 8 and 9 bring a subtle shift in perspective, in that the exclusive association between logic and overt reasoning is loosened. In chapter 8 we emphasized the automatic aspect of closed world reasoning by exhibiting a class of neural networks capable of executing closed–world computations. In chapter 9 we went one step further and established a formal link between performance on a nonverbal task (the box task) and the suppression task – both can be seen as instances of closed–world reasoning about possible exceptions – and showed that autistic subjects' behavior on the suppression task is as predicted by their performance on the box task. Both patterns of performance were then related to deficiencies in inhibition for which neurological evidence has been found.1 What conception of logic emerges from these considerations? Evidently we claim for logic a much wider role in cognition than is customarily assumed, in a complete reversal of the tendency to push logic to the fringes, in the wake of results allegedly establishing its irrelevance to human reasoning.2 1. Our paper [267] applies the same method to ADHD. We analyse the formal structure of a task where performance of children with ADHD is impaired (the Go/No Go task) and find the same structure in a storytelling task. As a consequence we can predict aberrations in narrative performance (e.g., uses of verb tense), for which there indeed turns out to be evidence. 2. This chapter owes much to conversations with Theodora Achourioti, who drew our attention to the philosophical distinction between regulative and constitutive norms. The purpose of this chapter is to argue that logic is normative in the latter sense. 348 11 Rationality Revisited 11.1.1 Information Processing The common denominator of all the applications of logic that we studied is that logic allows one to extract information from given data – and that constraints have to be added to these data to allow information extraction to take place. In itself this characterization of logic is not very distinctive, since this is what all information–processing is about, as we will see shortly. Nevertheless, a closer look at what information–processing consists in will give us many clues to a more mature view of logical reasoning. As a starting point we look again at David Marr's three levels of cognitive inquiry 1. identification of the information–processing task as an input–output function; 2. specification of an algorithm which computes that function; 3. neural implementation of the algorithm specified. We will now look in more detail at the first two levels, using the example of vision. As is well-known, Marr [183] characterized vision as the extraction of 3D shapes from 2D retinal arrays, and his work is concerned with the various processes that are necessary to this end. For example, in a first step edges are extracted from the retinal array by computing second derivatives of the intensity distribution: sharp changes in intensity indicate the presence of an edge.3 The most important defining feature of the information processing task is the choice of representation languages for input and output. These are mathematical languages, and the algorithm defined in the second level operates on entities expressible in these languages. It follows that the information–processing task as conceived at the first level is an ideal construct only. The identification of a particular information–processing task can be viewed as the stipulation of a competence model, but only if it is firmly kept in mind that even optimal performance can only approximate the competence model, because the actual input will only be an approximation to the idealized input postulated by the competence model (in this case a twice differentiable intensity function). A good algorithm will allow "graceful degradation": the closer the actual input is to the input required for the competence model, the closer will be the output. That is, since the actual input will never fully satisfy the input requirements for the competence model, the algorithm must be able to cope with deviations from those requirements. Performance is optimal if it proceeds in accordance with such a "graceful" algorithm. The neural implementation of the algorithm (the third 3. We must note here that the standard phrase "extract information" has the unfortunate connotation of information already being present in the data, albeit perhaps in hidden form. This is not what we mean; even in such a mundane case as vision, there is no sense in which the information sought, e.g., the edge, is fully present in the data. In logical reasoning this is even less true, as we shall see in section 11.1.2. 11.1 Logic and Information–Processing 349 level) may be such, however, that optimal performance cannot be achieved. Performance may also be optimal, even though its results are way off the mark, when the algorithm works only under certain constraints on the world or on the relation between viewer and world. This can be seen most clearly at higher levels of processing, for instance in deriving surface geometry from an image, the problem of how to determine a 3D shape from surface information. Marr writes [183,p. 265-6] [An] interesting aspect of all these processes is that . . . they all involve slightly different assumptions about the world in order to work satisfactorily. As we have seen, in each case the surface structure is strictly underdetermined from the information in images alone, and the secret of formulating the processes accurately lies in discovering precisely what additional information can safely be assumed about the world that provides powerful enough constraints for the processes to run – for example, uniqueness and continuity in stereopsis, rigidity in [structure from] motion, and so forth. These "powerful constraints" are not present in the data to be processed themselves. One very good reason for this is that the constraints often concern the relation between the viewer and the world. For instance, one of Marr's assumptions is that (very roughly speaking) nearby points in an image correspond to nearby points on the viewed object. A different type of constraint is concerned with the world, in this case, for instance, that real-world surfaces can be described as smooth manifolds in the mathematical sense. Given these constraints (and several others) it is possible to extract information about the shape generating a retinal image; it is now a mathematical theorem that such a shape must be a "generalized cone."4 More generally, if the surface is composed of several smooth pieces, it must be generated by an object consisting of several generalized cones. This mathematical result provides the competence model, the ideal norm against which performance must be judged. Possible performance is described by the algorithm (Marr's second level) which corresponds to the competence model. The algorithm can be defined only on the basis of the theorem, because it determines what the inputs and outputs are; however, it must do more than transform information about the idealized surface assumed in the condition of the theorem into a generalized cone. It must allow graceful degradation and also give meaningful results on surfaces which satisfy the constraints only approximately. The algorithm 'appeals to' the (ideal) competence in this sense. This brief description of information–processing in a concrete case has highlighted several issues of significance also for logic. 1. The competence model (Marr's top level) is relative to the information– processing task considered. 4. The shape generated by a cross-section moving along an axis, where the cross-section may change in size continuously. 350 11 Rationality Revisited 2. The competence model is stated in terms of ideal, mathematical entities and is as such not directly applicable to the real world. 3. Possible performance is described by an algorithm allowing graceful degradation, thus bringing the competence model in closer contact with the world. 4. The information sought is strictly underdetermined by the information present in the data. 5. Constraints, that is, hypotheses about the world and about the process generating the data, are needed to further determine the information 'extracted' from the data. 11.1.2 Logic as Information–Processing We view logic as continuous with information–processing in the above sense, distinguished from the examples discussed above only by a different choice of representation languages for input and output. But the commonalities leap to the eye. Logic is very much task-relative. Consider a mathematical example: if the task is to prove existence theorems with algorithmic content, one uses intuitionistic logic; however, if one is satisfied with abstract existence, classical logic suffices. A logical formalism, taken as a norm, should be viewed as a competence model in the sense defined above. It is ideal in two different senses of the term: first because it operates with idealized input and output, and second because it gives an ideal norm as a mapping from (idealized) input to (idealized) output. There is no reason to expect that actual performance, even when optimal, will always conform to the norm set by the competence model. For example, one idealization in the definition of the competence model is the use of definite premise sets to draw conclusions from. This is a situation one seldom meets in practice, where usually any available evidence is used to draw conclusions. The big question raised by this observation is how to define a notion of "graceful degradation" that makes performance an approximation to the ideal norm. As in vision, the data (here: the premises) vastly underdetermine the information to be extracted (a conclusion). We have observed throughout the course of this book that the psychology of reasoning has suffered as a consequence of its neglect of this fundamental fact. We have termed the combination of (2) and (5) in the list given in section 11.1.1, which jointly allow determinate information to be extracted, logical form, and the process of arriving at a logical form, reasoning to an interpretation.5 Here, the term reasoning should not be read as necessarily implying awareness. 5. The role assigned here to logical form is reminiscent of what Bruner in his famous book Beyond the information given called a coding system: "We propose that when one goes beyond the information given, 11.1 Logic and Information–Processing 351 Logical form starts with the choice of representation languages for input (premises) and output (conclusion).6 Another component of logical form is a mathematically defined class of structures; this idealization is the analogue of the smoothness assumption for surfaces considered above. The definitions of satisfaction and truth for the languages are the analogues of Marr's constraint linking viewer and world. One very important role of logical form is facilitating the integration of premises into the joint representation that is necessary before any conclusion can be drawn. For example, one could say that in propositional closed–world reasoning, the premises are integrated through the completion (cf. definition 5 in chapter 7) before a conclusion is drawn. By contrast, in classical propositional logic, integration involves the set of all truth–value assignments which make the premises true, or, syntactically speaking, a suitable disjunctive normal form. In both cases it is pertinent, although trivial, to note that two key ingredients in logical form – the formal language and the semantics – have recursive definitions, thus allowing the representation of the premises in a common format. For a (trivial) example, consider MP: of course the inference of "She will study late in the library" from (1) "She has an essay" and (2) "If she has an essay she will study late in the library" is possible only if (1) and (2) can be represented in a common formal language with common semantics. We shall see another instance of this type of integration in syllogisms. In Kantian terms, we may think of the activity of imposing logical form and integrating the premises in a single representation as synthesis; this synthesis is a priori since the logical form imposed is not determined by experience, but a constraint contributed by cognition. One needs logical form in order to be able to extract information, but it is as little given in the data as an edge is given in the retinal array. Both the formal language and the semantics are defined recursively so are mathematical constructs. We may thus say that inferences in reasoning are synthetic a priori, because they depend on the synthesis a priori just outlined. To give a concrete example: if in the suppression task the subject draws an MP inference, this is based on the assignment of a logical form (including integration of the premises) which could have been different. Note that on the view outlined here, logical reasoning does not require awareness; whether or not reasoning is accompanied by awareness depends entirely on the algorithms imposing the logical form ("reasoning to an interpretation") and those performing the information extraction on the joint representation of the data ("reasoning from an interpretation"). For example, reasoning in the suppression task proceeds unconsciously (at least for the forward inferences one does so by being able to place the present given in a more generic coding system and that one essentially reads off from the coding system additional information." [26,p. 224]. 6. These languages can be different, as in logic programming, where formulas in the input may contain →, but not so formulas in the output. 352 11 Rationality Revisited MP and DA) because here the algorithm imposing logical form on the premises is in fact the algorithm for integrating discourse generally, and the implementation of the algorithm doing the information extraction is the relaxation toward a stable state of a neural network.7 Since classical (predicate) logic is undecidable, no such automatic procedure for reasoning from an already chosen classical logical form is possible there, and a control process of which the subject is aware is necessary to correct false moves in attempts to establish a conclusion. This means that for all practical purposes the proof of a conclusion from given premises is itself a separate source of information, not in any meaningful sense already present in the set of premises. 11.1.3 On Why We are Not Postmodern Relativists The foregoing analysis should have dispelled the impression that we believe anything goes in matters of logical reasoning. The theorist's decision to apply closed–world reasoning in the analysis of the suppression task is not arbitrary: it is dictated by a hypothesis about the real-world task – in this case credulous discourse understanding – that the subject assimilates the suppression task to. Once that real-world task has been determined, the logical form is more or less fixed as the competence model for that task. The logical form is an ideal construct, and the subject is perhaps not capable of imposing it in full, so actual performance may deviate; but the logical form should grosso modo be recognisable in performance. Thus logical reasoning is relative to a particular cognitive task, but once a subject is engaged in that task, the task imposes a norm upon the subject. In other words, it is a general norm of rationality that the subject should try to perform a task as well she can, consistent with reasonable costs. What this means for a concrete task has to be determined from the competence model for that task. Thus we end up with a picture of the normative status of logic which is very much like the one sketched by Husserl (for which see chapter 1): logic itself is a theoretical discipline, proving consequences of choices of parameters, and norms come from the outside, by the choice of a particular logical form. 11.1.4 Logic as Information Extraction: Examples Let us now run through some of our experimental paradigms to illustrate these ideas. We saw a clear instance of the ideas just outlined in chapter 10, on syllogistics, where we discussed an assignment of logical form consisting in the construction of Euler circles with crosses. The syllogism itself contributes the 7. Assuming, of course, that our analysis of the suppression task is correct. 11.1 Logic and Information–Processing 353 first component of logical form in the sense of surface syntax; the Euler diagrams together with the assignment of sets to predicates and the interpretation of → as ⊆ and ∧ as ∩ constitute the semantics. An interesting feature of this construction is that integration of the premises is nontrivial: Euler diagrams are in principle defined only for binary quantifiers ("all A are B," "some A are B," etc.), and thus need combination rules like the ones, involving the crosses, given in section 10.3.1 to represent the Euler diagrams corresponding to the two premises of a syllogism in one joint representation. This is in contrast to a solution method for classical logic like semantic tableaux, where the integration of premises proceeds by the simple addition of suitable atomic sentences, since in classical predicate logic a model can be defined as a set of atomic sentences.8 In the selection task the data presented to the subjects consist of the form administered by the experimenter; the information to be extracted, at least according to the experimenter, is the subset of selected cards. We have seen that very considerable preprocessing of these data is necessary – e.g., fixing a meaning for the conditional, determining what "true" and "false" mean, accepting the background rule as given while leaving the truth–value of the foreground rule open – which we have conceptualized as imposing logical form on the data. All components of logical form play an important role. Validity reflects task understanding, the nature of the information to be extracted. Some subjects believe that the information to be extracted is a reactive plan, where the actions to be performed depend on observations of the back of the cards. Note furthermore that it is the very indeterminacy of natural language meaning which makes imposition of logical form necessary: the assignment of logical form is constitutive of meaning. For example, the conditional can have many different meanings9 depending upon context; and the sparser the context is, the fewer clues one has about the intended meaning. This is therefore a task in which reasoning to an interpretation needs control (often accompanied by awareness): because of the extreme indeterminacy of meaning, and also because there are so many elements to integrate. In the end, if all goes well, the subject will have integrated all this information in a joint representation like the one given in chapter 3, section 3.4, and proceed from there. In practice, hardly anybody achieves full integration in this task. The various experimental manipulations discussed in chapter 4 all aim to bring out the intended logical form more clearly, and as we have seen these lead to a significant increase in (intended) performance. In the suppression task, a considerable number of subjects impose a logical form consisting of a ternary connective to correspond to the natural language conditional (involving the extra propositional variable ab), and integrate the 8. The source-founding model presented in chapter 10 provides an interesting example of a different logical form imposed on syllogisms. The problems surrounding the integration of the premises are discussed on page 329. 9. The phrase "many different meanings" suggests that meanings can be counted; but this image is still too discrete. 354 11 Rationality Revisited premises through a condition on ab, then forming the completion. Since this assignment of logical form corresponds to natural processes for discourse repair (the additional conditional is read as correcting, or as strengthening the first), it may be almost automatic in normal readers. This can be seen in the dialogues, which are much less concerned with task interpretation than those of the selection task. Once the logical form is fixed, information extraction then proceeds algorithmically through closed–world reasoning, that is, by constructing the minimal model of the preprocessed premises and reading off a conclusion.10 In the case of the suppression task we could go down to Marr's third level and propose both a mechanism for the encoding of the logical form into a neural network and the shape of the neural computations implementing the information-extraction algorithm. In the false–belief task the preprocessing of the data involves understanding the task instruction, and recruiting information concerning the relation between perception and belief, and of general causal knowledge. Information extraction is performed by an algorithm simulating the temporal evolution of the initial model up to the time that Maxi returns to the room and starts looking for the chocolate, using the principle of inertia applied to both beliefs and the world. The counterfactual task elicits the same process of information extraction, except that inertia is applied to the world only. Nonverbal tasks will be discussed in the next section. 11.1.5 Some Information–Processing is Best Viewed as Logic Above we have argued that (real-life) logical reasoning should be seen as information–processing. From this it follows that some information processing is logical reasoning, but the section heading is intended to convey something more: that logic is a good format in which to represent information–processing tasks which are not traditionally conceived of as logical. The first step of the argument is that in the description and explanation of a cognitive task, consideration of Marr's top level – the specification of what is to be computed – is indispensable, for instance because it gives rise to predictions which cannot be obtained otherwise. An example is furnished by chapter 9, where we found the common information–processing core in three very different tasks (false–belief task, counterfactual task, box task) and tested autistic subjects on the suppression task, which was argued to embody this common core in rather pure form. A more fundamental reason for the incorporation of the top level is that directly moving to the algorithmic level may lead to features of the algorithm being included as part of the cognitive task, even though these are inessential, and one may then agonise over how to find a neural implementation for those features. An example of this is furnished by the attempted probabilistic analyses of the 10. This description of information extraction applies to the forward inferences MP and DA. 11.1 Logic and Information–Processing 355 suppression task (chapter 7), which introduce a needlessly precise quantitative probabilistic language, and thus set the authors worrying about its relevance to the actual computations going on in the brain. The second step is that logical languages are well suited to serve as representation languages for the input and output of the competence model. Logic is open to a wide range of content. Cognition is about intentional phenomena, i.e., is concerned with setting goals and achieving them. But in order to achieve a goal a plan must be computed, and for this one needs causal information concerning the consequences and preconditions of one's actions. Each of these is naturally formulated in a logical language, and the attainment of a goal can be viewed as a derivation in a suitable nonmonotonic logic. That is why also the competence models for nonverbal tasks, such as the box task, the tubes task and behavioral variants of the false–belief task (all from chapter 9) can be formulated using logical notions. This last phrase – "using logical notions" – was chosen to reflect the fact that in, for instance, the box task the input seems only partially formalisable in logical terms, since the essential logical features have to be abstracted from the visual image of the box (the visual input). The logical form of discourse seems slightly more transparent. 11.1.6 Nonmonotonic Logic and the Competence/Performance Distinction As an aside, we would like to mention that the possibility to choose between classical and nonmonotonic logics affects the very formulation of what the information–processing task corresponding to a given cognitive capacity is. We illustrate this by means of language comprehension. At the competence level, language comprehension can be viewed as the information–processing task whose output is an internal model for a discourse, with representations for the individuals, relations, and events mentioned in the discourse (see Kamp and Reyle [154] for an exposition of this view from linguistics, and Gernsbacher [93] from psycholinguistics). While the output is relatively clear, the input is a matter of debate. In fact, this debate can be viewed as being about what properly belongs to competence, and what to performance. At the level of performance or processing, the main issue is whether language comprehension is a one-step or two-step process, in the following sense. In a two-step process, first the meaning of a sentence is computed, which may then have to be recomputed in the next step to take into account pragmatic information, which can be both verbal and nonverbal (e.g., gesture). In a one-step process, all the available information is immediately brought to bear on the computation of the meaning, and sentence boundaries do not have a privileged role. Hence, whereas in the two-step model the input to the comprehension algorithm consists of sentences, it consists of lexical items in the one-step model. 356 11 Rationality Revisited Current evidence from neuroimaging seems to point to a one-step model (see Hagoort and van Berkum [112] for an overview). Returning to the competence level, we may define the input of the comprehension task as a complete piece of discourse, supposed to be given in its entirety. The fact that the elements of the discourse arrive sequentially is then taken to be a performance factor. As a consequence of this decision, the competence model can be taken to be a monotonic operation: no revision is necessary after the discourse model has been constructed. This is the point of view taken in Kamp and Reyle [154]. To take a concrete example, if a discourse model is constructed for (1) The girl was writing a letter, when her friend spilled coffee on the paper. according to this view it will be constructed after the sentence boundary, when it has already become clear that the writing most likely has not produced a mailable letter due to coffee stains on the paper. An alternative option is to fit the competence model more closely to the actual information available to the listener, and thus view the task (i.e., language comprehension) as sequentially constructing a discourse model, as it were shadowing the incoming information. The discourse model thus constructed may have to be revised. For instance, in sentence (1) the main clause generates the expectation that a letter has been written, thus introducing a referent for this letter in the discourse model. This default expectation is then canceled by the subordinate clause, which means that the original model has to be recomputed. In van Lambalgen and Hamm [282] a nonmonotonic computational formalism is presented which allows such recomputations in midsentence.11 Thus we claim that the use of nonmonotonic logic allows the formulation of competence models which are much closer to the actual informational situation that humans find themselves in. 11.2 The Bottom Line What sort of picture emerges from the preceding considerations of the goings on in the psychology of reasoning laboratory? What is our take on our student subjects, and on reasoning experiments themselves? What is our take on Homo sapiens? And how does our picture join up with the rest of cognitive science? 11. This brief description will undoubtedly raise a number of questions. The interested reader is also referred to [9], and references given therein, for a discussion of processing aspects of the progressive in examples like (1), together with evidence from event-related potentials to support the interpretation given here. 11.2 The Bottom Line 357 11.2.1 Subjects and Experiments Starting with subjects, we have acquitted them of most of the accusations of irrationality that most other approaches have laid at their door. Our acquittal is on somewhat different grounds than some others. We do think that students' struggles in the selection task are not far beneath the surface, and that they are less than ideal interpreters of the confusing messages the task presents. From the student subjects' point of view, the competence models used to convict are not the ones they could reasonably be expected to initially apply. We see them as faced with a multiplicity of possibilities and being engaged in trying to find out what the experimenter means, even if they are not well aware of the explicit catalogue of possibilities. They are skillful credulous reasoners endowed with enormous databases of subtly defeasible, contextually sensitive, rules. They may also be able to invoke a skeptical stance in supportive contexts, but these are not supportive contexts. Above all they lack the awareness of their interpretive situation (concepts, terminology, or the experimenter's intentions) which might allow them to control their decisions about what interpretations to adopt. Here is the scope for educational intervention. We do believe that education can have profound effects on students' control and flexibility of interpretation in situations where little past experience is available to guide. In fact we believe this added control of interpretation is one of the main tools students need to learn in whatever domains they come to specialise in. And we can agree that the small proportion of students who do identify the skeptical classical logical models often unwittingly intended by experimenters are the students who have already come farthest along this road to interpretive control. So, while our students stand acquitted as charged, we still want to send them off with homework to develop their awareness of interpretive processes and possibilities. We still have only blood, sweat, and tears to offer. Exactly what exercises these should be will vary with the students and their intended destination. Empirical research (Stenning [258]) has shown that contrary to common belief (see, e.g., Cheng et al. [38]) quite formal logical teaching can benefit students' general reasoning capacities. Others among them might be better served by different curricula, and there are important issues about how formal teaching has to be focused. Of course, civilization has its discontents. Teaching the centipede about walking may disturb its habits, and teaching students how to reflect on their interpretive processes can perhaps sometimes forestall necessary action in the world. So alongside a curriculum for reflection, there also needs to be curricula for application. However, the latter seem to us in good shape compared to the former. What of experiments? Are we advocating the abandonment of the laboratory for the arm-chair? Far from it! As should be clear, we don't think formal models can explain cognitive phenomena, any more than experimental data are 358 11 Rationality Revisited interpretable without explicit models. But we are also advocating a much more subtle shift than merely a shift of the balance toward logical analysis, and that subtle shift has to do with the balance between syntactic and semantic data. Psychologists are taught that content has to be circumvented to make progress. Classical cases are the invention of the nonsense syllable in the memory laboratory to eradicate meanings that subjects insist on bringing with them. As it turns out, we can learn some things about memory from such material, but it still remains true that it excludes most of what we want to study as human memory – what Bartlett [12] called "the effort after meaning." Psycholinguistics is another field that has been dominated by the avoidance of content. Far more effort has gone into understanding syntactic parsing, than into understanding the representation of meaning and the conduct of inference in discourse. Yet we know that the bulk of the variance in human processing is driven by meanings. The cognitive revolution was founded on observations that subjects' interpretations were the determiner of psychological capacities, perhaps most famously in memory. This conundrum is usually seen as being driven by methodological necessity. We propose that our use of nonmonotonic logics removes this methodological necessity. A logic that forces us to represent a long term memory database and a working memory processor for current discourse materials faces this methodological chasm head-on. Of course we don't represent the whole of a subject's long–term memory, nor the full process which leads to activation of the currently active part of long–term memory. But for any given discourse, universality is not necessary. Of course, formalization of particular materials is often post hoc. But as long as the resultant formalizations make enough predictions, they remain empirical hypotheses. The status of form changes with multiplicity of logics. Finding form is now as much about setting semantic parameters as about syntactic ones, and we (and our subjects) have access to the output meanings in a way that we do not have access to intermediate syntactic stages. Psychology doesn't need to tiptoe around content anymore. Its main data can be judgments of meanings in context. However, one cannot escape the feeling that it will take more than a few logical tools to reinstate the processes of interpretation at center stage in cognitive psychology. This issue is at the heart of problems about the boundaries between the humanities and sciences. Interpretation is often seen as the boundary fence. But that itself doesn't really bear inspection. The psychology laboratory happily studies interpretive processes in lots of areas: visual perception is perhaps the most obvious. Psycholinguistics is another. So what is supposed to be the difference between admissible ranges of interpretation which the psychology of reasoning (and other areas of psychology) can admit and still remain empirical science, and the ranges of interpretation which take us irretrievably beyond the scientific pale into the postmodernist desert? One possible explanation why 11.2 The Bottom Line 359 interpretation is seen as problematic in reasoning but not in perception or psycholinguistics is that the field of reasoning invites evaluations of rationality; whereas the other fields do not. What Role Rationality? Once rationality comes under inspection, we get drawn ineluctably to the hard cases: legal, scientific, religious, political, or moral. Rationality is the humanities' Trojan horse invited within the scientific walls because rationality soon reveals the need for the specification of values. First, it should be said, there are hard cases, and these fields of enquiry are pretty well defined in terms of their capacities for generation of hard cases by the misalignment of interests of the parties concerned. On the other hand, quick inspection of the literature on the psychology of reasoning reveals that none of these fields are the sources of the problematic cases we have encountered in this book from the psychology of reasoning lab. One can doubt that science (psychology or any other) may ever deliver resolutions of the kinds of interpretive problems that arise in extremis in these fields, without thereby seeing the business of the psychology of reasoning threatened, for example, by the observation that there is more than one logic in which the natural language conditional has to be interpreted. Within the psychology of reasoning, if anything, the current flows the other way. Once we take alternative interpretations seriously, we can often get sufficient evidence of subjects' interpretations to make confident empirical judgments of correct or erroneous reasoning, as we hope we persuaded the reader above. Encompassing a wider range of interpretations purchases empirical bite. Of course, we have seen areas in which this subfield is drawn into contentious issues of interpretation which definitely would take us beyond what is locally scientifically resolvable were we to follow their siren calls. One example is where we observed differences in reasoning as a function of differences in culture. The discussion of literacy and its effects on reasoning (on page 131) touched on the ethical feelings of eye witness and hearsay testimony in undeveloped societies, and the consequences for whether these subjects were willing to engage with the decontextualized classical model. The literature on crosscultural differences in reasoning certainly becomes a hard case once it ventures on the subject of the reasonableness of this move. Another example was where assessments were made about the relative values of different students' interpretations. So, for example, when Stanovich observed that the 5% of subjects selecting A and 7 in the selection task, tend to be those with high SAT scores, and concluded from this observation that Wason must have been right about his criterion of correct reasoning, then we entered at least the fringes of the territory of social engineering and the politics of education. Recall that Stanovich 360 11 Rationality Revisited quoted on page 6 does believe that resolving the problems students reveal in the reasoning laboratory will contribute to solving the world's conflicts. But the border we need is here rather well marked. We can agree with Stanovich that there are simple internal explanations as to why his correlation should be expected on scientific grounds in our culture (see discussion on pp. 91, and 112, 115), and leave aside issues as to whether current educational arrangements which guarantee the correlation are educationally, morally, politically, or ethically defensible. This still leaves us free to reject Wason's and Stanovich's conclusion that the criterion of classical logic is scientifically uniquely correct. Their conclusion surely does wander over the boundary between science and cultural values, but more importantly, it fails to explain why students do what they do in the laboratory. Although we are optimistic about educational interventions to solve these reasoning problems, and we believe resolution can have important consequences for students' learning, we are much more modest about the resulting contribution to solving humanity's conflicts. Those conflicts arise above all because of conflicting values and interests. Raising the standard of debate is important, but we have no illusions that this will itself be enough. Decision Theory Logical reasoning and decision making should be closely related topics. Reasoning and interpretation are intimately involved in setting up our conceptualization of our decisions, and interpreting and reasoning from information is a matter, among other things, of making decisions about how to interpret and what to conclude. In recent years a tension has grown up between decision and reasoning, with some psychological researchers alienated by the state of the deductive reasoning literature, even arguing that humans don't reason very much-they simply make decisions. Meantime, economists have become more aware of the need of accounts of interpretation and reasoning in framing decisions. So a natural question is: where does our program place us with regard to the "heuristics and biases" approach to decision making? In some ways that field is strongly analogous to the psychology of reasoning. A classical competence theory (here usually classical probability theory12) provides a competence model and standard of good decision (or probability estimation) which blatantly does not fit subjects' performances in abstract laboratory tasks (for instance the "Linda," Asian disease, and taxi problems). People disobey transitivity axioms, exhibit "framing effects" and ignore base rates. Tversky and Kahneman [279], with whom these tasks originate, are more sensitive to subjects' dilemmas than Wason was – that is, to the impossibility of 12. It may not be superfluous to remark that classical probability theory is wedded to an underlying Boolean structure of events, i.e., to classical logic. Therefore objections to the appropriateness of classical logic in a given context ipso facto apply to probability theory. 11.2 The Bottom Line 361 calculating the classical theory in most circumstances – and view the heuristics that they ascribe to people as necessary and reasonable ways of satisficing in the circumstances of natural decision, in contrast to Wason's confident assertion of the irrationality of subjects caused by failure to attempt falsification. Their critics (e.g., Gigerenzer [95]) have rejected their approach, claiming that classical probability theory does not give a sensible characterization of what people are trying to compute, let alone how they compute it, going on to specify "fast and frugal" heuristics for making decisions in natural settings, which actually sometimes outperform the intractable classical theory. On this basis they reject entirely the need for or existence of a competence model of what people are trying to do. They argue that people do not reason, they decide. This disagreement may be more apparent than real, or at least take more careful formulation. The proponents of heuristics and biases can be read as assuming that classical probability theory is the single normative characterization of the decisions involved in these tasks-corresponding to a specification of Marr's "computational" level function. But they also have to be read as regarding that competence theory as distantly related to the methods of computation and approximation achievable in practice. Their admittedly rudimentary characterization of heuristics (e.g., availability, representativeness, etc.) can reasonably be read as a down payment toward a heuristic toolkit. Of course, when the distance between competence specification of the function and performance calculations of its values is so great, it becomes hard to tell what status the competence theory has beyond a theorist's tool. This gap is highly reminiscent of the gap that we have opened up between classical logic and what people are doing in the psychology of reasoning laboratory. So an exciting possibility is that there might be a way of abstractly specifying what constitutes "intuitive" reasoning in these decision tasks, in a way analogous to what we have proposed here as default logical competence models specifying the credulous interpretation of discourses. This would shift the problem substantially in a direction othogonal to both the heuristics and biases position and the attacks on it from those who reject classical probability as a competence model. The move would be exactly analogous to the move made in this book in logical reasoning. Instead of a single competence model (classical probability) and a set of heuristics, which are the best people can do to approximate it in the circumstances, or on the other hand, a toolbox which is applied to some tasks which have no characterization save in terms of the tools applied to them, we would then have two competence theories of two (sets of) tasks, each requiring its own performance theory or theories, and each contributing different functions to humans' broader aims. "Intuitive decision" need then not be viewed as poor approximation, just as we have argued that deductive reasoning theorists shouldn't view system 1 processes of interpretation as "illogical even if often effective." 362 11 Rationality Revisited Let us illustrate what such a program might look like with one of the heuristics and biases tasks – the Linda problem. What is it that subjects are judging when they judge likelihood here, and how do they make these judgments? Tversky and Kahneman's subjects read a description of Linda: Linda is 31 years old, single, outspoken, and very bright. She majored in philosophy. As a student, she was deeply concerned with issues of discrimination and social justice, and also participated in anti-nuclear demonstrations [279,p. 297] Here is a credulous discourse processing task. The experimenter tells a story and we, as subjects, try to construct the intended model of the heroine. We use any available general knowledge and specific cues to come to some representation of the kind of person she is (that is, the range of people under consideration, say, female twentieth century Americans in their 30s with Anglo-Saxon forenames?), and within that domain, where she stands (say, at the liberal progressive end of the spectrum of American social attitudes). We then read some more information: "Which, dear reader, do you feel is more likely? (1) Linda is a bank teller or (2) Linda is a bank teller and is active in the feminist movement. How are we to conceive of our task in answering this question? Tversky and Kahneman assume that we should take an extensional approach: within the domain of female twentieth century Americans in their 30s with Anglo-Saxon forenames, we are supposed to estimate the size of the sets: bank teller vs. bank teller active in the feminist movement, and to respond with option (1) as clearly the larger set, or at worst a set equal in size to the other. As far as the extensional formulation of the task is concerned, note that Gigerenzer does not disagree thus far. He may disagree about how the alternatives presented are interpreted or what information is available to make the decision but he does not argue with the extensional formulation of the problem as such. The Linda problem is rather reminiscent of the following puzzle beloved of 7-year-olds: A captain set to sea with numerous animals aboard his ship. All the animals were in opposite sex pairs. He had a brace of ecstatic elephants, a pair of agreeable aardvarks, and two quarrelsome quagga. How do you spell captain Noah's name? 13 Similarly, with the Linda problem one has to realise that one is supposed to answer without any recourse to the information in the initial description. Only the two numbered descriptions in the second installment of information are relevant in reasoning to the conclusion that the latter set cannot be larger than the former. 13. The problem is no harder presented orally: the answer is, of course, that it depends on whether the questioner intends his forename or his surname. 11.2 The Bottom Line 363 We would of course argue that this extensional view is already the wrong formulation of what the subject takes the Linda problem to be. So what task did the subjects attempt? Did they attempt this extensional task but for some reason fail at it? Or is there some other specifiable task which they were attempting? And if so, can we both specify what that information–processing task was, and perhaps analyse how they performed it? And if we can specify such another task, did they get that task right? Suppose the task they adopted was credulous discourse interpretation. On the basis of what the first set of information invokes from their general knowledge, they choose a domain of interpretation. This will be a set of constraints as to who will count as in the domain (perhaps along the lines listed above) along with a database of active default conditionals describing relations between properties of people in this domain. In addition, a representation of Linda using the specific information provided is established in working memory. Now the two alternatives in the second lot of information become a single continuation. First we are told to our surprise that Linda is a bankteller. Then we are told that she is an active member of the feminist movement and we gain some release from our surprise. Presented with a clash between the personality traits hitherto described and our stereotype of banktellers, we recruit some new relevant information from long–term memory. People frequently have to take jobs which are less than ideal matches to their temperaments perhaps, especially women with family constraints. People may still choose to pursue outside activities which may be a better match to their temperaments because of being less constrained. We then construe the question about likelihoods as answerable in terms of how surprising the discourse is at various points in its development, and we judge (2) to be a less surprising state than (1). Now, if this is a reasonable conjecture about some subjects' mental processes, it will serve to illustrate the alternative construals of the task which are still possible. We believe Tversky and Kahneman would say of such a construal by the subject, that they are using something like the representativeness heuristic to approximate judgments about extensionally construed sets of people in their model of the domain. In contrast, we would say that in this construal of the task, subjects are reasonably understanding the task as one of credulous discourse interpretation and not unreasonably then construing the question as one about how surprising various continuations are. Option (1) increases surprise, whereas (2) resolves it. Needless to remind the reader, we have claimed to give a logical theory of this credulous task and so there is the possibility that an abstract logical characterization of "intuitive decision" can be given, and that the subjects may, moreover, be succeeding at this logical task. This is perhaps so obvious that its implications are easily missed. We do have evaluative standards for the credulous interpretation of narratives such as the paragraph about Linda. They are of course as complex in full detail as the 364 11 Rationality Revisited databases of general knowledge from which interpretations are recruited, but there are many contexts in which we do not hesitate to wade in with judgments about what is a good interpretation and what is not. Along with our colleagues we spend much time "marking essays" which are kinds of expositions, and we have little hesitation in assigning partial orderings to the reasonableness of their interpretations of whatever information and task has been set. Of course it is hard for subjects, and indeed experimenters, to know how to apply these standards in the laboratory. We do not know why we are being told this story about Linda: whether, for example, it is a preamble to being a member of a jury, or a job interview we are about to be asked to conduct, or a retelling of last night's soap. But any of these contexts would bring with it canons of good, bad, and indifferent interpretation, sometimes arguable, but equally often agreed upon within our culture. This "intuitive judgment" business is not to be taken lightly as a life task. We don't all mark essays for a living but we all live by sizing up the reasonableness of expositions for the multifarious purposes of different contexts. It hardly needs to be proposed that the Linda task is more likely to be taken as a case of exercising this skill than of making a judgment about the sizes of two sets. All real judgments have to be based on interpretations of the evidence, purpose, and context, so there is an inescapable element of informal interpretation that sets the scene for decision. Of course these intimate interactions in decision making between the processes of credulous interpretation, and the exercise of extensional judgment are just like the ones we have urged between credulous interpretation and skeptical derivation. We would take just the same stance with regard to decision as we have taken with regard to reasoning: subjects experience very considerable difficulty in learning to flexibly and appropriately switch between these stances in abstracted situations, and much of tertiary education is about honing these skills. On the other hand, the literature generally supports the view that people are much better (though by no means error–free) at switching appropriately between stances when they are in the contexts in which they regularly make decisions. We would also emphasize that many, especially professional, contexts demand reasoning and decision making in rather decontextualized situations which are not as far from the laboratory as might at first be thought. Hence the educational justification for forcing students to learn to interpret and reason in vacuo. Of course, much remains to be done to turn this conjecture into a theory of decision. Most notably, some method of estimating probably qualitative likelihood from the state of an interpretation relative to a database of knowledge would have to be specified. Some psychologists have operationalized something like this estimation of likelihood by eliciting the availability of counterexamples from subjects' interpreting defeasible conditionals (e.g.,[106]). One does not have to believe that probability is the right underlying competence 11.2 The Bottom Line 365 theory to note that "counterexamples" as used here are closely related to the firing of abnormality conditions in a default logic, and recruitment of abnormality conditions from a long–term memory detabase might be a good place to start looking to produce the theory required. If the conjecture could be turned into a theory of decision it would substantially develop what we take to be the spirit of the heuristics and biases program, namely that informal reasoning lies at the heart of decision making of even more formal kinds. We might sloganise in terms of having provided just the fast and frugal logic which is required. This would show that there are formalizations of "intuitive" reasoning which make rational sense of what is an extremely important human skill of discourse interpretation. These formalizations are, unlike their classical logical and classical probability theory interpretations, demonstrably computationally tractable, and at least at their core, algorithmic rather than heuristic. It would place the spotlight on confusion between which of these tasks (the extensional vs. the intuitive) is appropriate in a given context as perhaps a major source of human error. And it would open up the possibility that when people do succeed at successful estimations in the extensional task, that their means of getting there in fact rests on strategically guided use of the defeasible machinery of discourse comprehension. If this program can be carried through it would also draw a strong analogy between the findings of framing problems in decision tasks such as this, and findings in the deductive reasoning literature. 11.2.2 Homo sapiens sapiens Enough of the subjects and the laboratory! What about the species? What are the prospects there? And the prospects for our understanding of how the species got to be how it cognitively is? We have presented a lot more biology in this book than is conventional for a book on human reasoning. Our proposal is that an important ingredient of the species' cognitive characteristics has to be understood in terms of its radical altriciality. This large–scale reorganization of the timing of development must have tweaked a large number of biological modules, leading to many exaptations, as well as many secondary adaptations to cope with them. This upheaval has patently led to novel social economics and novel microcognitive capacities and much in between. The intense pressures toward cooperation in the environment of the resulting mother-infant dependency were probably the crucible of human cognitive innovations of cooperative communication. Our planning capacities had already been expanded by a million or two years of tool manufacture and use, before they were exapted for the planning of discourse and the expansion of the potential interpretive gap between our current situation and the current contents of our working memory. This picture is extremely broad-brush, and by no means original with us. So 366 11 Rationality Revisited why paint it here? It seems necessary because it is a picture so radically different from those that have most currency in psychology. This picture makes clear that the prevalence of exaptation guarantees that identifying originating selection pressures for behavioral phenotypes is the hard part of explaining cognitive evolution. And innovation is not achieved by adding new modules. However, it is not dreary necessity that led us to such a heavy dose of biology, but rather excitement. Over the next ten or fifteen years unprecedented biological evidence about human evolution will become available. This is irresistible-in both senses. It will happen, like it or not, and it will be highly desirable, provided cognitive scientists appreciate that it need not have the dire reductionist implications that are so often attributed to it. The field is so fast–moving that even our dippings in it have had to be revised several times in the light of new developments during the process of writing this book. Perhaps we should wait until the textbooks are out instead of bothering the reader with our amateur interpretations. We decided not to because a lot of the message is the lability of the surface and the enduring nature of the underlying concepts. What are important for the cognitive scientist interested in human reasoning are the fundamental concepts: heritability,, variability, modularity, genetic control, exaptation, adaptation, or epigenesis, as well as how they play out in the detailed analyses of the ever–changing surfaces. In fifteen years we predict that a book on human reasoning will be able to explain, for example, how what we call autism (a disorder multiply reclassified by then, no doubt) is related to the expression of multiple genes at various stages of development, interacting with environmental factors such as the internal circumstances of brain growth, as well as more conventionally experiential influences, to find expression in a range of reasoning styles across clinical and normal populations. Such a book may even be able to explain what selection pressures maintain the clinical extremes in the population through the evolutionary benefits of the lesser doses. This understanding of why it "takes all types" (of people, to use a vernacular expression) might even contribute some much needed motivation for rubbing along with each other. 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[2004], 169 Cosmides and Tooby [1992], 7, 46, 148, 156 Cosmides and Tooby [1995], 145 Cosmides [1989], 7, 15, 44, 46, 120, 154, 155 Courchesne and Pierce [2005], 285 391 392 Citation Index Craik [1967], 8 Cummins [1996], 46 Cummins [1999], 152 Damasio [1994], 276 Dantsin et al. [2001], 239 Davidson [1973], 166 Davies et al. [2005], 293 Dayer et al. [2005], 151, 287 Deglin and Kinsbourne [1996], 134 Dementieva et al. [2005], 280 Dieussaert et al. [2000], 180, 181, 200–202, 204, 211 Doets [1994], 225 Dorus et al. [2004], 151 Dunbar [2005], 249 Dung et al. [2006], 130 Ebbinghaus [1964], 18 Eichler and Zimmerman [2008], 293 Elango et al. [2006], 170 Etchemendy [1990], 26 Evans and Over [1996], 108 Evans et al. [1993], 86, 107 Evans et al. [2004], 150 Evans-Pritchard [1976], 135 Evans [1972], 108 Evans [1998], 51 Evans [2003], 108, 124, 238 Everman and Cassidy [2000], 293 Fiddick et al. 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[2006], 295 Pollock [1998], 186 Premack and Woodruff [1978], 242 Pylyshyn [1987], 125 Rakic [1995], 150 Redcay and Courchesne [2005], 280, 281 Reiter [1980], 186 Riggs and Peterson [2000], 38, 260 Rips [1983], 118, 179 Rips [1994], 118 Roberts et al. [2001], 329 Rojas [1996], 231 Ronald et al. [2005], 289, 293 Rosch and Mervis [1975], 29 Rosenberg and Trevathan [2002], 169 Rubenstein and Merzenich [2003], 255, 285, 287, 293 Russell and Norvig [2003], 264 Russell [1997], 242, 245, 262 Russell [2002], 35, 264, 266 Ryle [1954], 20, 23, 128 Sanai et al. [2004], 151 Scerif and Karmiloff-Smith [2005], 169, 282 Schelling [1960], 166 Scribner [1975], 131, 133 Scribner [1997], 37, 131 Shallice [1988], 245 Shanahan [2000], 125, 161 Shors et al. [2002], 151 Siegal and Beattie [1991], 163, 249 Skuse [2000], 293 Smid [2005], 244, 267, 269 Sperber and Wilson [1986], 113 Sperber et al. 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[2005], 285 Vrba [1998], 167, 168, 284 Waddington [1957], 144, 149 Wason and Green [1984], 46, 72, 79, 80 Wason and Johnson-Laird [1970], 59, 112, 114 Wason and Johnson-Laird [1972], 114 Wason and Shapiro [1971], 47 Wason [1965], 323 Wason [1968], 5, 43, 95, 97 Wason [1987], 5, 47, 97 West et al. [2007], 153 Willshaw and von der Malsburg [1976], 232 Willshaw and von der Malsburg [1979], 232, 235 Wilson and Cowan [1973], 286 Wimmer and Perner [1983], 39, 248 Woods et al. [2005], 149 Woodward [2000], 184 Yachanin [1986], 66 Zechner et al. [2001], 291 d'Avila Garcez et al. [2002], 217, 222, 225 van Denderen [2005], 105, 111 van Heijenoort [1967], 13 van Lambalgen and Hamm [2004], 38, 39, 125, 162, 185, 186, 251, 356 van Rooij and Schulz [2004], 330 van Rooij and Schulz [2006], 330 von der Malsburg and Bienenstock [1987], 232 von der Malsburg and Willshaw [1977], 232 von der Malsburg and Willshaw [1981], 232, 234 von der Malsburg [1981], 232 von der Malsburg [1988], 232 von der Malsburg [2003], | {
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Book Review: The Species Problem by Richard Richards∗ (Forthcoming in Mind) Makmiller Pedroso [email protected] Philosophy & Religious Studies, Towson University Richards' book provides an account of how we should divide the organic world into species, such as Homo sapiens and Escherichia coli. This is a timely topic with substantial ramifications inside and outside of philosophy. Our understanding of the history of life is often expressed in terms of the origin and the extinction of species. In policymaking, the Endangered Species Act understands species as the units of biodiversity and conservation. A conception of species even affects the issue of whether there is such a thing as human nature. Yet, despite the significance of the concept of species, there is no consensus on what species are. Over 20 species definitions are in circulation, and they often disagree with each other over which groups are species. This is the species problem: "there are multiple, inconsistent ways to divide biodiversity into species on the basis of multiple, conflicting species concepts, without any obvious way of resolving the conflict" (p. 5). And Richards' book offers no less than a solution to the species problem. Richards' book contains two parts. In the first part Richards introduces the species problem through its history, from Aristotle to the modern species concepts (chapters 2 to 4). In the second half of his book, Richards develops his own solution to the species problem (chapters 5 to 7). The historical chapters criticize the "Essentialist Story," a view about the history of the species problem widely endorsed by both philosophers and biologists. The Essentialist Story has two tenets. The first one is that the pre-Darwinian species concepts ∗I would like to thank Marc Ereshefsky, Kerry McKenzie, Frank Jankunis and Justin Caouette and for their helpful suggestions. 1 were mostly essentialist: species were defined by a set of properties that all and only members of a species must have. The second tenet is that one of Darwin's main contributions was to show that species essentialism is inadequate. While essentialists viewed species as discrete and unchanging units, Darwin regarded species as composed of variable populations that gradually evolve over time. Because of the essentialist consensus before Darwin, the Essentialist Story implies that the current species problem is partly due to the rejection of essentialism after Darwin. Richards offers an alternative picture. He contends that the often cited examples of species essentialists before Darwin, including Aristotle and Linnaeus, were not essentialists after all (chs. 2, 3). Rather than being confronted with an essentialist consensus, Darwin's challenge was adjudicating conflicting non-essentialist conceptions of species. Darwin and the naturalists before him were facing a similar species problem that we are today. Richards' solution to the species problem builds on Richard Mayden (1997) and Kevin de Queiroz' (1999) distinction between operational and theoretical species concepts (ch. 5). Theoretical concepts describe what species are; operational concepts tell us how to identify them. Richards contends that the resilience of the species problem is partly because we use the same standards to evaluate operational and theoretical species concepts (pp. 143– 144). The theoretical concept should be universal, "applying across biodiversity as much as possible, to sexual and asexual species organisms, vertebrates, invertebrates, bacteria and fungi" (p. 142). In contrast, there should be as many operational concepts as we can come up with. "The more, the merrier," says Richards (p. 139). Briefly, Richards is a monist about theoretical concepts but a pluralist regarding operational concepts. Following de Queiroz and Mayden, Richards endorses the theoretical concept according to which species are segments of population lineages-i.e., species are formed by a line of ancestry and descent of populations. Richards is not committed to a particular account of how 'population lineages' evolve and how we identify them. For him this is the role of operational concepts: operational concepts distinguish population lineages through organismal 2 features such as morphology, genotype, and mating preferences (p. 135ff.). By not specifying the evolutionary processes that produce lineages, Richards ensures the universality of his theoretical species concept: "[t]he idea is that in order to accommodate all kinds of organisms, the primary theoretical concept must not specify which processes are responsible for the populations that form the lineages and segment them into species" (p. 134). Richards claims that the adequacy of his position should be a result of biological practice rather than a priori philosophizing (p. 132, 135). Richards' maneuver is compelling, but it raises further questions concerning how biological practice can warrant his view. As Richards admits, it is not clear that microbial species satisfy his species concept (p. 142). An ongoing debate in microbiology is whether or not species should be defined in terms of lineage segments (Ereshefsky, 2010). Members of different microbial species can exchange genes by a mechanism called 'lateral gene transfer.' Depending on the proportion of genes laterally acquired from other species, species lineages may only track the history of a small portion of a species' genome, casting doubt on whether species are best viewed as lineage segments (Doolittle and Zhaxybayeva, 2009). However, even if you do not accept Richards' position, his book provides a valuable framework for examining how species concepts and evolutionary theory should relate to each other-including the relevance of lateral gene transfer to species definitions. Richards' book makes a significant contribution to the species problem debate, by integrating both the historical and contemporary developments of this debate. Richards has kept his book accessible to newcomers by carefully introducing the species problem. While developing his own view on the subject, he also discusses major topics in philosophy, such as theories of reference and meaning, unification in science, and naturalistic metaphysics. His book illustrates how philosophical theories can be fruitfully applied to conceptual problems outside of philosophy. Given the wide range of issues discussed in the book (from theories of reference to human nature), Richards' book will be of interest to not only philosophers of biology but philosophers more generally. 3 References de Queiroz, K. (1999). "The general lineage concept of species and the defining properties of the species category." In: Species: New Interdisciplinary Essays. Ed. by R. Wilson. Cambridge: MIT Press, pp. 49–90. Doolittle, W. and O. Zhaxybayeva (2009). "On the origin of prokaryotic species." Genome Research 19, pp. 744–56. Ereshefsky, M. (2010). "Microbiology and the species problem." Biology and Philosophy 25, pp. 553–568. Mayden, R. (1997). "A hierarchy of species concepts: the denouement in the saga of the species problem." In: Species: the Units of Biodiversity. Ed. by M. Claridge, A. Dawah, and M. Wilson. London: Chapman & Hall, pp. 381–424. Richards, R. (2010). The species problem: a philosophical analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. | {
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An Infinitist Account of Doxastic Justification Forthcoming in dialectica John Turri Huron University College [email protected] Abstract: Any satisfactory epistemology must account for the distinction between propositional and doxastic justification. Can infinitism account for it? Proposals to date have been unsatisfactory. This paper advances a new infinitist account of the distinction. The discussion proceeds as follows. Section 1 sets the stage. Section 2 presents Peter Klein's account. Section 3 raises a problem for Klein's account and suggests an improvement. Section 4 raises a further challenge. Sections 5 – 7 consider several unsuccessful attempts to meet the challenge. Section 8 presents my new proposal, which can meet the challenge. Section 9 concludes the discussion. 1. Preliminaries Epistemologists standardly distinguish propositional from doxastic justification. Some proposition might be justified for your even though you don't actually believe it, or believe it for the wrong reas1 An Infinitist Account of Doxastic Justification 2 ons, or believe it for the right reasons but in the wrong way. Call this type of justification propositional justification. It attaches to propositions relative to individuals. Doxastic justification attaches to concrete belief states (and doxastic states more generally). For your belief that Q to be doxastically justified, Q must not only be justified for you, but you must believe Q for the right reasons and in the right way. Knowledge requires doxastic, not merely propositional, justification.1 An adequate theory of justification must account for this distinction. Can infinitists account for it? Infinitism has been around since at least Aristotle's time. But compared to its main non-skeptical competitors, foundationalism and coherentism, its resources remain largely underdeveloped and its potential benefits unappreciated. Through a series of papers over the last decade, Peter Klein has done more than anybody to revive infinitism's fortunes, thrusting it back onto the philosophical scene (e.g. Klein 1999; Klein 2005a; Klein 2007a).2 So let's begin with his account of the distinction. 2. Klein's Account We can encapsulate Klein's account as follows. Here and throughout, understand each reason to be unique, so that no two Rs with distinct subscripts are identical. 1 See Turri (forthcoming) for further discussion. 2 Fantl 2003 gives an importantly different argument for infinitism. An Infinitist Account of Doxastic Justification 3 Infinitist propositional justification (IPJ): The proposition Q is propositionally justified for you just in case there is available to you at least one infinite non-repeating series of propositions (or reasons) such that R1 is a good (and undefeated) reason to believe Q, R2 is a good (and undefeated) reason to believe R1, R3 is a good (and undefeated) reason to believe R2, . . ., Rm + 1 is a good (and undefeated) reason to believe Rm, for any arbitrarily high m. (Klein 2005a, 135 – 6; Klein 2007a: 8, 11; compare Klein 2005b: 166) Infinitist doxastic justification (IDJ): Your belief that Q is doxastically justified just in case Q is propositionally justified for you, and you have provided enough reasons along at least one of the infinite non-repeating series of reasons, in virtue of which Q is propositionally justified for you, to satisfy the contextually determined standards.3 A few more words about Klein's positive view are in order. First, knowledge requires doxastic justification (Klein 2007b, 158). This is 3 Says Klein (2007a, 10): "The infinitist will take the belief that p to be doxastically justified for S just in case S has engaged in providing 'enough' reasons along an endless path of reasons." Notice that Klein says providing the reasons is both necessary and sufficient for doxastic justification. In response to Bergmann (2007), Klein (2007b, 26) indicates he might be willing to add that doxastic justification requires S's belief to be "based on" the justifying reasons. But he also suggests that basing is tantamount to there being "an available reason" that you "cite . . . as a reason" for your belief, so it remains unclear how this potential revision affects his theory. An Infinitist Account of Doxastic Justification 4 uncontroversial. Second, doxastic justification requires you to actually go through the process of justifying your belief. It must be earned, much as an income or honest reputation is earned-at least for most of us (Klein 2005b, 158, 163, 170). This is controversial but I will not question it here (see Leite 2004 for discussion). Third, contextual standards determine what is admissible as a "bedrock" reason-a reason that, once you reach it, you are permitted to stop (Klein 2007a, 10 – 12; Klein 2005b, 170 – 1). Crucially for the infinitist, it is always possible to properly challenge ad infinitum the contextual standards and thereby the erstwhile bedrock reason, although this never actually happens. Contextualism is very controversial, but I will not question it here because I want to see whether Klein's view granted in its entirety can adequately account for the distinction between propositional and doxastic justification. 3. An Improvement I will now suggest an improvement to IDJ. My motivation is not that we can dream up fanciful counterexamples-as though that would be surprising. Rather, IDJ seems to omit something fundamentally important. Meet Samira. Samira knows that Q. Under our assumptions it follows that Samira's belief is doxastically justified, so Samira has produced enough reasons along at least one infinite non-repeating series to satisfy the contextually determined standards. For simplicity suppose that Q is propositionally justified for Samira in virtue An Infinitist Account of Doxastic Justification 5 of only one infinite non-repeating series of reasons, and for convenience call this series 'Z'. (Nothing that follows depends essentially on this assumption; it merely simplifies greatly my presentation.) Again for simplicity suppose further that the contextually determined standards require Samira to produce the first three reasons along Z (again, nothing depends essentially on this assumption), which are: R1, R2, R3. So Samira has articulated the following justificatory structure: R3 → R2 → R1 → Q. The arrow represents the 'is a reason offered in favor of' relation. But here an issue arises. Given that Samira has produced R1, R2, and R3, Z is not the only possible path she might be on, because Z is not the only path beginning with R1, R2, R3. An infinite number of such paths exist. For Samira's belief to be doxastically justified, it is not enough for her to be on just any path beginning that way. If she were, it would be pure luck that she produced the correct path's first three steps. This sort of luck is perfectly compatible with propositional justification, but obviously not with doxastic justification. We could put the point this way. Simply producing R1, R2, R3 is insufficient. Samira could accomplish that by lucky random guessing. She must properly produce the reasons.4 Accordingly we 4 Klein (2007, 6) might have this in mind when he says that doxastic justification requires believing in "an epistemically responsible manner." He doesn't specify what believing responsibly requires. My subsequent discussion can be read as an examination of what form an An Infinitist Account of Doxastic Justification 6 should amend IDJ. (IDJ*): Your belief that Q is doxastically justified just in case Q is propositionally justified for you, and you have properly provided enough reasons along at least one of the infinite non-repeating series of reasons, in virtue of which Q is propositionally justified for you, to satisfy the contextually determined standards. So is Samira on the right path? Of course she is. By hypothesis she knows Q. And she would know Q only if she were on the right path. 4. A Question But a further question arises. In virtue of what is Samira on the right path? Why is she on Z rather than, say, defective path A, whose first three steps are also R1, R2, R3? Z: R1, R2, R3, R4Z, R5Z ... A: R1, R2, R3, R4A, R5A ... For the infinitist's account to succeed, there of course must be a fact of the matter whether Samira is on Z, given that she knows Q. For if there is no fact of the matter whether she is on Z, then it is not true that she is on Z, whence it is not true that her belief is doxastically justified, whence it is not true that she knows Q.5 infinitist account of this concept might take. 5 Philipp Keller questioned whether the reasoning here was careful An Infinitist Account of Doxastic Justification 7 The next three sections consider some proposals for answering our latest question. 5. Counterfactuals 5.1. A tempting initial response is to go counterfactual: Samira is on Z because having reached R3, if she were to consider the question 'Why accept that?', then she would offer R4Z rather than R4A. But this does not solve the underlying problem. For there is also: A*: R1, R2, R3, R4Z, R5A ... No matter the number of steps Samira takes, there will always be an infinite number of defective paths that share with Z those steps, but then veer off into an epistemic dead-end. enough. More fully spelled out, here is why there must be a fact of the matter, given that Samira knows Q: 1. Samira knows that Q only if her belief is doxastically justified. (Premise) 2. Samira's belief is doxastically justified only if she is on path Z. (Premise) 3. She is on path Z only if it is true that she is on path Z. (Premise) 4. It is true that she is on path Z only if there is a fact of the matter whether she is on path Z. (Premise) 5. Therefore she knows that Q only if there is a fact of the matter whether she is on path Z. (From 1 – 4, Hypothetical Syllogism) An Infinitist Account of Doxastic Justification 8 5.2. Consider next this proposal. Samira is on Z because for any step, RnZ, along Z, if Samira were to reach RnZ and consider the question 'Why accept that?', then she would offer RnZ+1. Any proposal featuring counterfactuals faces tricky counterexamples. Imagine a case where we stipulate: if Samira were to reach R40Z and was asked 'Why accept that?', then some powerful agency would intervene and prevent her from providing R41Z. Or maybe at some point Samira would have a nervous breakdown or get bored and just stop offering further reasons. Indeed Samira is guaranteed to fall short of articulating the entire series because by stipulation: she is mortal, the number of steps in Z is infinite, providing each reason takes some time, and super-tasking is not an option.6 Such problems surely merit attention. But I think a more alarming problem suggests itself, one that cannot be dismissed as a mere trick. To illustrate this deeper worry, it will be convenient to stipulate that Q is the proposition Samira would express by saying 'I will never justify a belief beyond the 100th step'. Surely any normal human could know this about him or herself. (If you're doubtful, please adjust the example by increasing it to whatever finite number step you wish.) At some point along the way-say, the 1,000th step-Samira would have acquired such overwhelming evidence that Q is false, that she would simply stop producing further reasons in favor of Q 6 It is not an option for us humans as we are actually constituted, which is enough for my purposes. I concede that there are possible beings for whom super-tasking is an option. An Infinitist Account of Doxastic Justification 9 because she would have stopped believing Q. This case is more alarming than your average tricky counterexample to a counterfactual analysis. It is more alarming because Samira would rightly stop providing further reasons. She would have acquired conclusive evidence that the belief she is ultimately defending is, in the counterfactual situation, false. The example is not an isolated fluke. We could plug in different clauses for 'Q' and create the same problem. The truth-value of the proposition need only be sensitive to some threshold-be it the passage of time or a limit on the repetitions of some performance-that the subject would flagrantly violate if he continued indefinitely providing reasons. For example consider the proposition I would express by saying 'I will not live past my 200th birthday'. Surely I know that. Yet since offering each reason takes at least some time, and super-tasking is not an option, and any justifying series contains infinite steps, at some point I would stop offering further reasons because I would recognize that I was older than 200 years. And even if I did continue offering reasons, at some point it would become irrational because I would obviously be older than 200. Imagine me at my 201st birthday party, still justifying my belief that I will not live past my 200th birthday, even as I complain about how difficult it is to blow out all 201 candles and reminisce about how lucky I am to have reached the ripe old age of 201! An Infinitist Account of Doxastic Justification 10 5.3. Consider this variant of the counterfactual proposal. Samira is on Z because for any step, RnZ, along Z, if she were to reach RnZ and consider the question 'Why accept that?' and offer a reason in response, then she would offer RnZ+1.7 This proposal suffers the same fate. At some point it would be irrational for Samira to offer any further reason in the service of justifying the obviously false target belief that Q. For it would be painfully obvious to her that she long, long ago transcended the 100-step threshold, many times over. And surely it would be surprising if a patently irrational counterfactual performance could generate knowledge or doxastic justification. 5.4. Consider one final revision of the counterfactual strategy. Samira is on Z because for any step, RnZ, along Z, if she were to reach RnZ and consider the question 'Why accept that?' and appropriately offer a reason in response, then she would offer RnZ+1. Notice two things about this proposal. First, it is puzzling because it is difficult to imagine appropriately offering the 1,000th, 10,000th or 100,000,000,000th reason to support the claim that you will never surpass the 100-step threshold. Samira would somehow have to be deprived of virtually all the relevant evidence she had 7 Peter Klein suggested this possibility in conversation. I do not know if he positively endorses it. An Infinitist Account of Doxastic Justification 11 gathered. And it would be surprising if what Samira would do if deprived of nearly all the relevant evidence somehow doxastically justified her actual belief. Second, the revision is potentially trivial. In a straightforward sense it would be inappropriate to offer any reason other than the correct next one in the series. For this proposal to convince, then, the relevant sense of appropriateness would have to be explained. 6. Multiple Paths Infinitists might jettison the misbegotten counterfactual strategy and instead respond as follows. Return to the point where the problem originally seemed to arise. We observed that Samira's producing R1, R2, R3 is consistent with her being on either Z or A. We stipulated that she knows Q, which requires her to be on Z, which in turn motivated us to ask what makes it the case that she is on Z rather than A. But this overlooks an important possibility: perhaps she is on both paths! And as long as she is on Z-regardless of whether she is also on A-her belief is doxastically justified. Simply producing those three reasons makes it the case that she is on both paths and so explains why her belief is doxastically justified.8 Grant that simply producing those three reasons makes it the case that she is on both paths. The proposal is still inadequate. Simply being on Z in the way envisioned does not suffice for doxast8 Thanks to an anonymous referee for suggesting this. An Infinitist Account of Doxastic Justification 12 ic justification. It fails to rule out even the most egregious form of epistemic luck: randomly guessing R1, R2, R3 would suffice! The imagined response essentially reverts back to IDJ, ignoring the lesson that drove us to adopt IDJ*. This type of luck is perfectly consistent with propositional justification-guessing does not deprive you of the reasons or stop them from propositionally justifying Q for you. But guessing obviously does not suffice for doxastic justification. Samira must not only be on the right path. She must be on the right path in the right way. Abandoning the "path" metaphor, the point is that she must properly produce the relevant reasons. The present proposal offers no insight into that important status, crucial to the distinction between propositional and doxastic justification. 7. Tu Quoque? But is the infinitist being unfairly singled out for criticism here?9 Does anyone have a satisfactory account of doxastic justification? You might suspect that infinitist and finitist alike face the same problem, in which case we have located no special problem for infinitism. My response is twofold. First, if the suspicion is correct, then the present discussion reveals an urgent problem facing all theories of justification, considerably enhancing its importance. In a certain sense, that would please me. Nevertheless, second, the suspicion is 9 Thanks to an anonymous referee for raising this question. An Infinitist Account of Doxastic Justification 13 not correct. Infinitism's competitors face no such problem in principle. To substantiate this last point, consider a simple foundationalist view, what I'll call simple empiricism. (I don't here endorse simple empiricism, but rather deploy it to conveniently illustrate a point.) Simple empiricism says (i) Q is propositionally justified for you just in case you have an experience that Q; (ii) your belief that Q is doxastically justified just in case it is properly based on an experience that Q; and (iii) your belief that Q is properly based on an experience that Q just in case the experience's causing your belief manifests your cognitive disposition to take experience at face value.10 Now suppose Samira has an experience that Q. This renders Q propositionally justified for her. She knows Q, so her belief must be doxastically justified, so she must be on the right path in the right way. According to simple empiricism, in virtue of what is she on the right path in the right way? In virtue of the fact that her experience's causing her belief manifests her reliable cognitive disposition to take experience at face value. Without ruining the basic point, the simple empiricist may add that for your belief to be properly based on the experience, you must also cite the experience or verbally express your acceptance of the experience as a good reason to accept Q. This is in keeping with Klein's view that you must do something to earn doxastic justification. 10 Turri (unpublished ms a) defends a related account of the epistemic basing relation. An Infinitist Account of Doxastic Justification 14 Consider also simple coherentism. (Again I do not here endorse simple coherentism.) Simple coherentism says that (i) Q is propositionally justified for you just in case Q coheres with (some proper subset of) your beliefs B1 . . . Bn, where n is finite; (ii) your belief that Q is doxastically justified just in case it is properly based on B1 . . . Bn; and (iii) your belief that Q is properly based on B1 . . . Bn just in case B1 . . . Bn cause you to believe Q through a manifestation of your cognitive disposition toward coherence. Now suppose that Samira holds beliefs B1 . . . Bn. This renders Q propositionally justified for her. She knows Q, so her belief must be doxastically justified, so she must be on the right path in the right way. According to simple coherentism, in virtue of what is she on the right path in the right way? In virtue of the fact that her beliefs B1 . . . Bn caused her to believe Q through a manifestation of her cognitive disposition toward coherence.11 Again without ruining the basic point, we may add that for your belief to be properly based on the other beliefs, you must also cite them or verbally express your acceptance of them as a good reason to accept Q. 8. Mimicry Perhaps the infinitist can say Samira's belief is doxastically justified 11 An anonymous referee questioned whether the challenge I pose for infinitism stems from the fact that infinitism disallows non-beliefs to play the role of reasons. The discussion of simple coherentism puts this worry to rest because it disallows non-beliefs to play that role. An Infinitist Account of Doxastic Justification 15 in virtue of the fact that her production of R1, R2, R3 manifests her relevant cognitive dispositions. The main task facing this proposal is to identify the relevant dispositions. We know what it is to be disposed to take experience at face value-we do it all the time. We know what it is to trust coherence-we do that every time we accept some conclusion because it "fits" with what we already believe. What dispositions will the infinitist invoke? But this task isn't so difficult after all. The infinitist can help himself to whatever dispositions his opponents help themselves to.12 Or he might "go contextualist" about the relevant dispositions: along with contextual standards determining what is admissible as a bedrock reason, contextual standards also determine what counts as an admissible cognitive disposition. Either way, a penchant to just guess will almost certainly not show up on the list of relevant dispositions. 9. Conclusion Where does this leave us? We asked, In virtue of what is Samira on the right path in the right way?, or less metaphorically, In virtue of what has Samira properly produced the relevant reasons? The infinitist can respond: in virtue of the fact that Samira's production of 12 Klein (2005a, 136 – 7) makes a parallel suggestion regarding an infinitist account of what makes something a (good) reason for you to begin with. An Infinitist Account of Doxastic Justification 16 R1, R2, R3 actually manifests her relevant cognitive dispositions, whatever those dispositions may be. This proposal is not ad hoc. It does not violate infinitism's other commitments. Invoking the manifestation of cognitive traits is equally available to foundationalist, coherentist and infinitist alike. At the very least, the infinitist appears to have just as plausible a story to tell as her competitors. True, we might want a more complete story about what the manifestation of dispositions requires. But infinitism suffers no relative disadvantage as a result. And it is something we would have wanted in any case because the manifestation of dispositions is pervasive throughout the physical and social world. I conclude that we have identified a plausible infinitist account of doxastic justification, including what distinguishes it from propositional justification. Of course this does not answer all questions about infinitism. There remain serious questions about the main positive arguments for infinitism.13 There also remain questions about the contextualist element of IDJ*. But those are issues for another day. For now infinitists can take heart in our present results.14 13 For discussion of Klein's "regress argument" see Turri 2009; for discussion of Fantl's "features argument" see Turri (unpublished ms b). 14 For superb feedback that helped improve this paper, I thank the editors of this journal (along with any anonymous referees who helped them in the process). Special thanks also to Peter Klein for helpful discussion early on. An Infinitist Account of Doxastic Justification 17 References Bergmann, M. 2007, "Is Klein an Infinitist about Doxastic Justification?" Philosophical Studies 134, 19 – 24. Fantl, J. 2003. "Modest Infinitism", Canadian Journal of Philosophy 33, 537 – 562. Klein, P. 1999, "Human Knowledge and the Infinite Regress of Reasons", Philosophical Perspectives 13, 297 – 325. Klein, P. 2004, "What IS Wrong with Foundationalism is that It Cannot Solve the Epistemic Regress Problem", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 68, 166 – 171. Klein, P. 2005a, "Infinitism Is the Solution to the Regress Problem", in: M. Steup and E. Sosa, eds, Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, Malden, MA: Blackwell. Klein, P. 2005b, "Infinitism's Take on Justification, Knowledge, Certainty, and Skepticism", Veritas 50, 153 – 72. Klein, P. 2007a, "Human Knowledge and the Infinite Progress of Reasoning", Philosophical Studies 134, 1 – 17. Klein, P. 2007b, "How to Be an Infinitist about Doxastic Justification", Philosophical Studies 134, 25 – 29. Leite, A. 2004, "On Justifying and Being Justified", Philosophical Issues 14, Epistemology, 2004. Turri, J. 2009, "On the Regress Argument for Infinitism," Synthese 166, 157 – 163. Turri, J. Forthcoming, "On the Relationship Between Propositional and Doxastic Justification", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. Turri, J. Unpublished ms a, "Believing for a Reason". Turri, J. Unpublished ms b, "Foundationalism for Modest Infinitists". | {
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A Phenomenology of Professional Failure Ben Sheredos Draft: January 1, 2019 Release: May 6, 2019 Abstract This is a (likely incomplete) transcendental phenomenology of professional failure. You can read it, if you like. Or don't. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Contents 1 Introduction 1 2 "Professional Failure?" 2 3 "Phenomenology?" 4 3.1 Epoche & Intentionality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3.2 Pure Ego & Essence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 3.3 The Phenomena of Me, as Human Subject . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 3.4 Modality and Modalization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 3.5 Act-schism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 3.6 Sum: The Plan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 4 A Phenomenology of Professionalization 10 4.1 Theses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 4.2 Achievement, Repetition, & Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 4.3 Modalities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 5 A Phenomenology of Failure 17 5.1 Perturbation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 5.2 Repetition & Disintegration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 5.3 Act-schism & the Impossibility of Encouragement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 5.4 Inversion & Reconstitution . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23 6 Conclusion 27 Sheredos Phenomenology of Failure 1 1 Introduction I experienced great disappointment as I tried and failed, from 2015-2019, to secure a position working inside of professional philosophy. I spent a great deal of time reflecting on the experience: one of the research interests I had cultivated in philosophy was (properly Husserlian, transcendental) phenomenology. Living through failure was distressing, but I still found it stimulating to try to understand the intentional structure of my experiences. Old habits die hard. What follows is a phenomenological analysis of experiences of professional failure. It may be of interest to anyone interested in phenomenology. It may be of interest to anyone with a specific interest in this kind of experience–perhaps if they are undergoing it themselves, or seeing an Other go through it, or even telling a story in which a character goes through something like it. It may, in fact, be of very little interest, and I won't say anything further in an attempt to persuade you to read it. One of the few perks of professional failure is that once one has come out on the other side of it, one is spared the labor of justifying oneself to the profession. I'm not contributing to any ongoing discussion here. I make no attempt to situate myself in much literature besides phenomenology, and even then, I won't employ completely hygienic citation practices. I also won't always speak in an overly professional tone – which feels nice. The essay is not intended as a piece of "quit-lit." In the first place, I didn't quit, so this is a misnomer. But further, to the extent I understand the unspoken rules that seem to be at work in the nascent quit-lit genre, here are some of the ways I break them. (1) My own autobiographical details are largely irrelevant, and generally omitted. At best, they could serve as token illustrations; but my goal, as in any phenomenological investigation, is to understand the essential structure of a type of conscious experience. (2) While I do have some lingering "theoretical" interest in whether the phenomenological analyses I offer are apt, I am – genuinely – not seeking any personal validation. Suggestions for how to improve my analyses are vaguely welcome; less welcome are heartfelt expressions of encouragement or solidarity (particularly from people I have not encountered face-to-face). Completely irrelevant would be any rejoinders that misunderstand me as in any way bemoaning my experiences. The theme here is not "woe is me," but rather "how does this work?" (3) Thinking through these issues was cathartic, but the bulk of this essay is not intended as catharsis. Writing the essay was work, and it is intended as a work of quasischolarship: I hope to accomplish a bit of the kind of intellectual work that a philosopher (of a certain stripe) would do. Old habits die hard. (4) I'm not trying to persuade anyone (including myself) that it's a good idea to quit any profession, or that it's a blessing in disguise to fail in any profession. I myself disliked it, and would not recommend it to a friend. This negative evaluation forms part of the phenomena I will examine below, but did not motivate my examination. (5) I do not intend to moralize about the "plight" of any profession, or to offer any scathing critique of socio-economic-bureaucratic forces that might be at work in "corrupting" any profession. Such particularities about specific professions are largely irrelevant. Let's get on with it. Sheredos Phenomenology of Failure 2 2 "Professional Failure?" "Fail" is said in many ways. One can be called a failure by someone for not meeting their expectations, even if these are not one's own expectations. Here I am focused on cases where one thinks of oneself as a failure, by one's own lights. By one's own lights, one can fail in even the simplest of tasks. If I reach to grab a glass of water and accidentally knock it over, I might regard myself as failing. This sort of one-off failure is relatively harmless in the long run. I might take a moment to berate myself for getting it wrong, but I can mop up the water, pour a new glass, and get on with things without too much interruption or distress. If the consequences of a one-off failure are severe enough, then it may cause more significant distress. But in this essay I am focused on failures that are a bit more involved than isolated, one-off failures. It may help to sketch out a rough picture of professionalization. Professionalization is the process whereby one can be inducted into a profession as a full-fledged member in good standing. Being counted as a member – being recognized a "professional" oneself – requires gaining specialized knowledge and specialized skills, and for this reason, it is usually a prolonged process, and often proceeds through phases. Some basic skills and knowledge can be acquired in early training (e.g., a B.A.). More advanced training is required to fine-tune these skills and develop expertise, often through a kind of prolonged apprenticeship (e.g., M.A., Ph.D.). All this training is required to put one in a position to attempt to demonstrate their competence as a peer to, and of roughly equal standing with, existing members of the profession. Initiates often begin the process of professionalization based on some pre-existing interests, presuming that these interests would be fulfilled by the work-activities of the profession. One wants to be a member because (one thinks) one wants to do that work. But make no mistake: the process of professionalization is built to whip nascent interest into the shape of responsible work -activity that meets the standards of the profession. One role of mentors is to provide clear assessment of how well one is faring in meeting those standards. Through the process, one is conforming to externally-imposed standards, reforming oneself (and usually, institutionalizing oneself, in a sense). Because of the investment of time and labor involved, and because of the intimate and self-critical character of conformation, one generally can't sustain engagement through the phases of professionalization unless one is committed to it. Luck helps. It can also be useful and encouraging to interact with associates who are going through a similar process and facing similar challenges. But most importantly, one has to be able to see each challenge as a worthwhile step towards the end-goal of membership in the profession. Success at each step is thus thematically linked to the larger success of becoming a member of the profession. This is generally bound up with one's self-conception or identity: (one thinks that) one wants to be one of those people, be a member of that profession, and as one is working towards that goal, one understands oneself as on-the-way-to-being, or becoming, the person who (one thinks) one wants to be. For reasons like these, (what I am calling) professional failure is not quite so easily overcome as spilling some water, and is a bit more complex than any isolated, one-off failure. A failure on the path of professionalization threatens to un-do and invalidate a great deal of prior work, it challenges one's own identity, and it complicates relationships with peers and mentors. As I intend to use the term, experiences of professional failure occur with the features and in the contexts summarized below: 1. In making the attempt, one sees oneself as committed to a plan, the goal of which is membership in some in-group (the profession). Sheredos Phenomenology of Failure 3 2. One sees membership in the in-group as an aspect of identity that one would like to have. 3. One currently sees oneself as someone-who-is-on-the-way-to-being, or becoming, a member, in virtue of working through the plan; one tentatively feels at-home alongside Others in the in-group. 4. One sees oneself as failing in the attempt. 5. The failure is seen as preventing advancement of the plan. 6. Since previous steps in the plan were supposedly preparation for this attempt, the failure calls into question whether and how well one has succeeded in previous steps. 7. Since success in the plan consists of attaining an identity as a member, the failure calls into question whether one can attain that identity. 8. Since failure in the attempt interrupts progress in the plan, it calls into question one's current identity as someone-who-is-on-the-way-to-being, or becoming, a member, and thus calls into question relationships with Others. The distinctive experiences of failure that I want to discuss here are ones that exhibit all these features. We haven't done any phenomenology yet by simply sketching out the target class of experiences using 1-8. The aim of the forthcoming phenomenological analysis is to more precisely analyze the essential intentional structure of experiences like these. At first pass, the aim is to understand more fully what is involved in all the talk of "seeing-as" and "calling into question" in 1-8 above. Conditions 1-8 are not quite sufficient to clarify my aims here. Conditions 1-8 are satisfied, to an extent, in any single case of an experience of professional failure. What I am especially interested in examining are cases where an array of multiple experiences of failure occur, all meeting conditions 1-8, repeatedly calling into question one's professionalization. I'm interested in cases where repeated professional failure leads to an experience of abjection, and in how this influences one's experienced identity and experienced social standing. Some caveats and additional clarifications of scope. (1) I don't especially care whether cases meeting my conditions are especially common or especially rare: the analysis I'll offer is simply intended to fit such cases where they occur. (2) I don't especially care whether a commonsense or intuitive conception of "profession" is required to get an experience that fits these conditions. Perhaps trying to become friends with a group of people and to join in their social activities will count as a trying to join a "profession" by these criteria: so be it; then my analyses should fit such cases. (3) Perhaps there are cases one might want to call "experiences of professional failure" where some of these features (especially those regarding self-conceptions of identity) are lacking: that's fine, but I'm not interested in them here. (4) Perhaps under the right circumstances, some people experience knocking over a glass of water as the kind of failure I've described here. I think that would be unfortunate, but if so, my analyses should fit their case. Sheredos Phenomenology of Failure 4 3 "Phenomenology?" I won't provide a thorough introduction to Husserlian phenomenology,1 but there are some aspects of the Husserlian approach I'll presuppose, and a few concepts I'll deploy centrally. I'll introduce each of them as briefly as I can in this section. I'm not really "doing" phenomenology yet in this section, I'm just clarifying what it is I'll do when I do it later. 3.1 Epoche & Intentionality The fundamental presupposition of Husserlian phenomenology (though it is not a mere presupposition) is that the epoche is the correct route to understanding intentionality.2 The epoche ("bracketing") is a change of perspective through which one ceases to presume the mind-independent actuality of the entire world and everything in it. We normally presume the actuality of the world as a matter of course – this is "the Natural Attitude." The epoche suspends and interrupts the Natural Attitude. The epoche can be thought of as a modulation of radical skepticism ("Cartesian doubt"). Unlike the skeptic, we don't especially care to work out what can be known with certainty, nor is our main aim to locate some foundational certainties from which to derive other pieces of knowledge, systematically recovering some of our convictions about the world. We don't aim to challenge or undermine our näıve certainty about the existence of the world at all, really. Rather, the idea is that we set aside or "put out of play" all questions (and answers) about whether any object of conscious experience exists. We treat all such objects of experience as phenomena – merely apparent or merely purported objects. The idea is that when we take up this perspective, we are able to examine conscious experience on its own terms: that is our objective. In particular, the intentional structure of conscious experience remains intact. For example, suppose I see a black coffee mug. I'm convinced it's there. I set that conviction aside, and regard my perception simply as an experience as-of a black coffee mug. The perception remains a perception as-of a material object, even after I bracket any assumptions about the object's existence. This kind of directedness towards a purported object is called "intentionality," and it is not at all modified by the epoche. The epoche reveals that intentionality is built into the structure of experience itself. The structure of an experience as-of a real-world coffee mug has got nothing inherently to do with real-world, mind-independent coffee mugs. By contrast, all our beliefs about real-world, mind-independent objects have got everything to do with the structure of the experiences that purport to present us with such objects. 3.2 Pure Ego & Essence Things get a little weird when we recognize that, normally, we are constantly presupposing the reality of ourselves as an embodied human agent in the social world. These are some of the presumptions regarding existence that are to be bracketed in the epoche. Virtually the entirety of post-Husserlian "phenomenology" declares that this isn't possible. In particular, it's often claimed that we can't bracket the existence of our bodies 1Husserl's Logische Untersuchungen are not here regarded as proper phenomenology. I've drank the transcendental kool-aid, and from this perspective (i.e., Husserl's) anyone reaching back to LU for a solid grip on phenomenology has largely missed the point. 2See Ideen I and Die Krisis. Sheredos Phenomenology of Failure 5 (embodiment is just too essential for our consciousness), or that we can't bracket the existence of other agents alongside us in the social world (mundane intersubjectivity is just too essential for our consciousness). I neither have nor need an argument to convince anyone otherwise: this isn't the place for an argument. Some of us claim to be able to do this thing, the epoche, and to be able to bracket our own existence as embodied humans in the social world. No formal argument could convince anyone who says they can't that they can. What is at issue is simply a free act. Do it if you like, or don't. If you do it, you'll see that you can. Maybe you find it difficult to do, and say that you can't – I'll even believe, if you like, that you can't. But please, grant me the same courtesy. Don't offer me an argument to try to convince me that I can't. I do, on occasion.3 When we do bracket our existence as a human, as I said, things get a little weird. We can ask: "who is performing the epoche?" We can't answer "me, a human subject," since if we've done the thing, we've bracketed ourselves as human subjects, and could at best speak only of "the phenomenon of me as a human subject." The question was precisely: "who has carried out the act of changing their perspective, such that they can no longer assume themselves to exist as a human subject?" "The pure ego" is the phenomenological term used to refer to the conscious subject who performs the epoche, and who is thus capable of understanding themselves as having a dimension of subjectivity beyond empirical, human subjectivity. This remainder of subjectivity, revealed through the epoche, is called "transcendental subjectivity." The central purpose of transcendental phenomenology is to investigate it, with particular attention to how intentionality is structured and how it arises such that consciousness purports to present us with objects of consciousness. Since we bracket the reality of ourselves as empirically real human agents, we don't understand any of our conscious experiences as empirically real psychological events (let alone, gods forbid, neural events) that occur in the objective time of the world. We've bracketed all the assumptions of existence that would be required to understand experiences in that way. We're only interested in experiences as aspects of the intentional structure of transcendental subjectivity. And in pure phenomenology, we're not interested in studying them one at a time as isolated factoids, looking for their idiosyncratic features. Rather, we aim to understand them "in their essence," meaning, we want to understand the necessary features of broad types of experience. We might investigate, for example, what all experiences of perception necessarily have in common: what features of intentionality are essential to the class of perceptions, as such. Here I'm interested in experiences of professional failure as delineated in S2 above, and I want to do a transcendental phenomenology of them. I'm going to perform the epoche, bracket all assumptions of worldly existence, and attempt to uncover essential features of the intentional structure of all such experiences. If that doesn't sound like fun, feel free to get off the boat. 3Similar sentiments are expressed in earlier varieties of transcendental, German idealism. Fichte's Science of Knowledge: "No one can be compelled to do this... this consciousness cannot be demonstrated to anyone; each person must freely create it in himself" (Fichte I, 429/11); "...we have a few other concepts besides theirs... of which they cannot judge, since it simply does not exist for them. Let them go about their business, and leave us to pursue our own" (Fichte I, 498/68). From Schelling's System of Transcendental Idealism: transcendental "Self-consciousness... is an exercise of absolute freedom, to which one can certainly be directed, but not compelled" (Schelling 365/24). Sheredos Phenomenology of Failure 6 3.3 The Phenomena of Me, as Human Subject It's important to emphasize again that the epoche is not a mode of skeptical doubt. When I bracket my existence as a human subject, I'm not seriously doubting that I am in fact a human subject, I'm just setting the question of my worldly existence aside. All the phenomena of me as a human remain. (A similar thing goes for every object of consciousness: no phenomenon is lost in the epoche, presumptions of existence are simply set aside.) Indeed, part of the project of transcendental phenomenology is to try to clarify how I appear to myself as a human subject: how it is that transcendental subjectivity "constitutes" the phenomenon of me as a human subject. Here's the short version, in three steps.4 First: transcendental subjectivity has its own temporality. Even after we bracket the existence of the world and its history, transcendental subjectivity has its own history. Consciousness is never a punctate or pointilistic awareness of a single moment, but involves a consciousness of an immediate past and an immediate future. Built into the intentional structure of every experience is some degree of directedness toward the past, and some directedness toward the future.5 As this brief "window" of consciousness (what Husserl calls "the living present") is repeatedly filled with content, the directedness at each moment toward past and future stitches experiences together into a continuous subjective time. Every experience we have takes its place within this subjective time. Second: It is the pure ego who ultimately endorses any thesis about the way things are, in an act of judgment. For example, perception purports to present us with the way the world is: a presumptive thesis of existence is built into the intentionality of perception. The pure ego can go along with this thesis, forming the belief that the world is as it appears; or the pure ego can resist this thesis, believing that the world is otherwise. I'll say a bit more about this in SS3.4&3.5 below. (And of course, there is a third option: the pure ego can "bracket" the thesis completely and simply apprehend the phenomenon that the perception purports to present, without judging one way or the other.) Third (the key step, and a big one): Some of the acts of judgment that the pure ego carries out constitute the phenomena of my human subjectivity. I can reflect on my past experiences in subjective time, and can come to a judgment that I am a stable human subject. Judgments about the stability of my material body (Korper) are relatively straightforward cases of the kinds of perceptual judgments I've just discussed. Things are tricker when it comes to understanding judgments about the stability of my personal character. Here's a sketch of how this works. My experiences now include a directedness toward experiences in my subjective past. I can divert my attention to those past experiences. Some of my past experiences present me as a subject who had certain motives at a particular moment in subjective time. These motives contained theses6 about what was valuable, what should be done, what should be thought – most generally, theses about what should come next. At the time, I endorsed some of these theses. Reflecting on these past motives, I could now go along with their theses again: for example, I might re-affirm a motive, sustaining a conviction 4See Ideen II. 5Strictly speaking, this intentional directedness toward past and future is not just there, but is built into experience through passive syntheses. Husserl's genetic phenomenology of association clarifies this. 6Strictly speaking, in the broadest sense of the terms, all theses are to be understood phenomenologically as motives: all theses provide some motivation for the ego to implement them actively by endorsing them in judgment. Sheredos Phenomenology of Failure 7 in it. If I reflect on this re-affirming judgment, I can judge further that my convictions are long-lasting: they have a duration that spans large portions of subjective time. Longlasting convictions in subjective time are the key phenomena that, näıvely, we take to be appearances of ourselves as a human subject with a stable personal character who is (purportedly) engaged with a world. Alternatively, I can resist re-affirmation of an old motive, letting it die. If I reflect on this withholding of re-affirmation, I can judge further that I do not have a stable conviction that lasts over a long duration of subjective time. A lack of long-lasting convictions cannot näıvely be taken as an appearance of a human subject with a stable personal character; rather, they are taken as the appearance of ourselves as a human subject whose motives are fluid and whose personal character has changed. It is through these iterated reflective judgments that the phenomena of convictions are or are not constituted, and these convictions (or lack thereof) – plus some niceties regarding how all this is related to experiences of my lived Body (Leib) and of Others – are the phenomena which purport to present me as an empirically real human subject in the world. Näıvely (before the epoche), we go along with theses that we have a personal character, judging (without much deliberation) that we are such a human subject, whose convictions are empirical psychological phenomena occurring in the objective time of the world. Once we endorse the thesis that this human subject exists, we characteristically overlook the pure ego's role as an active subject: all the things we do as a subject are understood, without further ado, as acts of an empirically real human subject. In the epoche, we don't go along with the thesis that we are empirically real humans, and we regain an understanding of the pure ego; but the phenomena of ourselves as human subjects remain as phenomena after the epoche. Indeed, the epoche lets us see how those phenomena arise in transcendental subjectivity. In the foregoing I've superficially referred to an individual ego making isolated decisions on the basis of individual experiences, and constituting its own experience of itself as-of a human subject. But the point was that this is how things work in essence. In essence, anyone's experiences of themselves as-of a human subject arise through iterated reflective judgments that constitute (or fail to constitute) long-lasting convictions. Husserl calls all this the "sedimentation" or "precipitation" (Niederschläg) of convictions, which are the appearances as-of a personal ego. 3.4 Modality and Modalization In the foregoing sub-section, I've discussed "theses" that are built into the intentional structure of experiences. Let me say a bit more about them, and about how they interact. Many theses arise in transcendental subjectivity as a matter of course, without the pure ego's active involvement. We're not talking about someone sitting down and thinking hard to creatively cook up a hypothesis or conjecture. For example: we don't need to do anything to make perception purport to present us with the world. Instead what it is to have a perception is (essentially) to have an experience whose intentionality has already been constituted to contain a belief-like thesis of worldly existence. (This is partly why perception seems, näıvely, to be something we passively undergo, and why it seems as if the world simply reveals itself to us as soon as we care to take a glance or give a listen.) But not all theses of existence are equal. There are many "modalities" or "modes" a thesis can have. For present purposes, it will do to distinguish: (a) theses that occur in a mode of certainty, (b) theses that occur in some mode of probability (whether high or low), and (c) theses that occur in a mode of doubt. Sheredos Phenomenology of Failure 8 Husserl rarely discusses concrete cases as illustrations, but in the passage I'll reproduce in a moment, he will eventually offer one. Here he is discussing the intentional structure that supports the näıve certainty that is characteristic of our perception of material things. The idea is that any momentary experience as-of a thing has built-into it two coordinated sets of expectations: (1) "kinesthetic" expectations of how I would have experiences as-of my Body were I to move in relation to the thing and explore it, and (2) perceptual expectations of how the thing-phenomenon would appear as I explored it. If these expectations come to pass "harmoniously," then theses regarding the existence of the thing, in the näıve mode of certainty, can persist un-modified. If, however, experiences don't unfold harmoniously and expectations are flouted, then earlier experiences must be modalized or "corrected" in some way – old experiences cannot continue to be experiences as-of the world as it is, if new experiences are as-of the world being otherwise. If experiences cannot be synthesized harmoniously, one of them must have its presumption of "validity" modified or called into question. Here's Husserl: Another extraordinarily important thematic direction has not yet been named; it is characterized by the phenomenon of the alteration of validity- for example, the alteration of being into illusion [z.b. des Wandels von Sein in Schein]. In continuous perception a thing is there for me in the straightforward ontic certainty [Seinsgewissheit ] of immediate presence-though I must add: normally, for only when, giving my kinesthesis free play, I experience concurrent exhibitings as belonging to it is the consciousness sustained of the one thing in actual presence, exhibiting itself in manifold fashion as itself. But if I ask what is implied in the fact that the thing-exhibitings belong to the altering kinesthesis, I recognize that a hidden intentional "if-then" relation is at work here: the exhibitings must occur in a certain systematic order; it is in this way that they are indicated in advance, in expectation, in the course of a harmonious perception. The actual kinestheses here lie within the system of kinesthetic capacity, which is correlated with the system of possible following events harmoniously belonging to it. This is, then, the intentional background of every straightforward ontic certainty of a presented thing. Often, however, a breach in this harmony occurs: being is transformed into illusion or simply into being-doubtful [Zweifelhaftsein], beingmerely-possible [Möglicherweisensein], being-probable [Wahrscheinlichsein], being-after-all-not-completely-illusory [Ja-doch-nicht-nichtiger-Schein-sein], etc. The illusion is undone through "correction," through changing the sense in which the thing had been perceived. It is easy to see that the change of apperceptive sense takes place through a change of the expectation-horizon of the multiplicities anticipated as normal (i.e., as running on harmoniously). For example, one saw a man, but then, upon touching him, had to reinterpret him as a mannequin (exhibiting itself visually as a man). Die Krisis, pp.164-165 in HUA VI, pp.161-162 in Carr's translation (amended) Hopefully this gives the basic flavor of the "modes" that theses can have, and how these can be altered in "modalization" (e.g., correction). What may not be entirely clear from this passage is that such modalization often occurs in transcendental subjectivity without the pure ego's active involvement. We often don't need to do anything ourselves to make such a "correction" and for such modalizations Sheredos Phenomenology of Failure 9 to occur. Typically, we go about the world blissfully unaware of the work that has been done in transcendental subjectivity to constitute the appearance of a stable world. To try to illustrate this, let's consider a radical case. Take a moment – this will start as soon as you click and will only last about 15 seconds, so be ready – and look at this piece of art by Patrick Hughes. The first time I experienced something like this, I found that I had very little understanding of what I was seeing. I initially had one set of experiences as-of the world that contained certain expectations – expectations that future experience would unfold and the world would appear thus-and-so. This was followed by another set of experiences as-of the world, and these experiences proceeded otherwise than I had expected. All these experiences as-of the world could not simultaneously maintain their näıve thesis of ontic validity (the world could not be both thus-and-so and otherwise). Without any involvement on my part, all these experiences had lost any presumption to full validity, and had turned into perception in the mode of doubt. I remember feeling distinctly uncomfortable as I tried to work out what I had seen and what had happened. It was only after the experiences that I could make my own judgments about the matter and egoically endorse any theses about the way the world was; in the initial experience, I was simply confronted with the shock of modalization that had already occurred. This is a nice segue to the next and final bit of phenomenology that I'll review, but before turning to that, let me emphasize: ontic validities, regarding the existence of mundane material objects, are only a special case. A great many other varieties of validity will become central in SS4&5 below. For now, it is sufficient to introduce the idea of sociocultural or "spiritual" (geistig) validities. It's one thing for transcendental subjectivity to constitute experiences as-of physical objects; its another for those purported objects to be experienced as having a cultural or interpersonal significance. The short version here is that cultural objects are experienced as having motivating power for human subjects: they are experienced as soliciting or licensing human actions. 3.5 Act-schism When the näıve presumption of an experience's validity is put into question without any egoic involvement, this is what Husserl calls "passive doubt."7 Often, minor cases of passive doubt can also be resolved (through modalization) without any active involvement from the ego. Usually, transcendental subjectivity is working to maintain appearances as-of a stable world, and often, it succeeds. Husserl calls this "passive decision-making" – without the ego's active involvement, options for how to interpret and synthesize experiences as-of the world may be available, and options may be quietly discarded in a "decision" that preserves a stable experience as-of a stable world. But this is not always so – the "radical case" I just offered as illustration is one in which we might actually become aware of lingering doubt that has arisen in perception, but has not yet been fully-resolved. If we want to resolve it, we are put into active doubt: the pure ego itself gets involved as we try to work out what is going on. In such cases, transcendental subjectivity has not been able to quietly discard some option, and we are left with two (or more) conflicting theses, both of which retain some claim to validity. As the pure ego initially steps into these experiences to try make its own decision, it is initially acting receptively: it tries going along with the theses that experience has offered up. The ego cannot simultaneously go along with both theses; in active doubt, the pure 7See Analyses Concerning Passive & Active Syntheses. Sheredos Phenomenology of Failure 10 ego is pulled in two different directions. In considering the conflicting theses, the ego is engaged in: a mode of comportment [Verhalten] that displaces the ego into an act-schism [das Ich in Aktspaltung versetzendes]. This essentially and immediately implies an uneasiness [Unbehagen] and an original drive [einen ursprünglichen Trieb] to get beyond it, to come back to the normal condition of unanimity [der normalen Zustand der Einigkeit ]. There arises a striving [Streben] toward a firm decision, one that is ultimately uninhibited and pure. It frequently happens that the established concordance, and through this the inner unity of the ego with itself that is aimed at, can be lost once again (PAS 2.S15.100).8 In order to resolve active doubt and to escape this act-schism, an egoic act of decisionmaking is required, and this is an act of "striking down validity" or "setting-aside-validity" ("Ausser-Geltung-Setzen") (PAS 2.S14.96).9 Since the presumptive validity of the theses has not been resolved passively through modalization, the ego must engage in an act that puts some thesis out of action despite the fact that the thesis does, for itself, continue to make a claim about the way the world is.10 While active decision-making can return us to a kind of harmonious experience of the world, it does not fully restore the näıve certainty that is characteristic of perception. It is instead a form of "impure certainty" (unreiner Gewissheit) since it is secured only through the act of setting-aside-validities that (were they reconsidered) would pose a challenge to the thesis we have endorsed through active decision-making. 3.6 Sum: The Plan I'm ready to do a phenomenology of experiences of professional failure (S2). While I'm of course referring to experiences that I, as a human subject, actually had, I'll be performing the epoche (S3.1) to try to examine the essential intentional structures of these experiences (S3.2): if it ever looks like I'm referring to objects in the world, I mean to be referring to phenomena. To provide this phenomenological analysis I'll make use of the concepts of modalization (S3.4) and act-schism (S3.5). One of my main aims is to clarify how experiences of professional failure alter the constitution of the phenomena of oneself as a human subject (S3.3), changing how one appears to oneself. 4 A Phenomenology of Professionalization Let's begin with some basic clarifications of the backdrop to an experience of professional failure: a brief phenomenology of professionalization itself. 8Compare Experience and Judgment SS21b, 71, 76, and esp. 78 on "act-cleavage." 9Compare Experience and Judgment S71. 10This, I think, is why optical puzzles like my "radical" illustration above continue to hold an allure: although we've come to a judgment about what's really going on, we still find the conflicting experiences to be themselves somewhat compelling in purporting to present us with the world. Sheredos Phenomenology of Failure 11 4.1 Theses What is it to be committed to a plan for achieving professional success? In large part, it consists in having long-lasting convictions that have been sedimented as personal character traits through repeated re-endorsement. The theses in question are numerous and interlocking. There are theses concerning the value of the nascent interest-motives that one hopes to pursue and fulfill in the profession. There are two broad classes of theses to distinguish here. On the one hand, there are (a) affective theses that present the fulfillment of interest-motives as pleasurable. Some of these theses are expectations: one anticipates that fulfilling one's interests will be pleasant. Yet there have also been past fulfillments of interest-motives: cases where the affective thesis concerned an experience that was fully present, and which was presented as pleasurable. All these (a)-theses purport to present the fulfillment of one's interest-motives as having an affective validity. On the other hand, there are also (b) more conceptual-evaluative theses that present the fulfillment of our interests to as "rewarding" or "worthwhile." An experience as-of a good sneeze could be the target of an (a)-thesis, a näıve claim to affective validity: a good sneeze can seem pleasant. But an experience as-of a good sneeze will likely not be the target of a (b)-thesis: upon reflection, one would likely not evaluate experiences as-of sneezing as especially worthwhile.11 When one affirms (b)-theses, one is assigning an additional value, beyond the simple pleasure (affective validity) that is constituted in (a)-theses. Repeated re-affirmation of worthwhileness provides the motivation to cultivate the interests by investing effort to fulfill them. There are (c) theses concerning the pragmatic value of securing membership in the profession as a way of cultivating one's interests. These theses present the process of professionalization as having practical validity (utility), as a way of realizing the fulfillment of one's interests. When one initially develops and sustains investment in the plan to join the profession, one is re-affirming the thesis that this path will fulfill one's interests. (a)-theses provide a nascent motivation to pursue one's interests; (b)-theses provide an additional motivation; (c)-theses constitute professionalization as a valid method of fulfilling all these motivations. There are (d) theses concerning the ontological or existential value of being a subject who sustains commitment to the plan, and of eventually becoming a subject who has completed the plan and gained membership in the profession. These theses present this mode of being (being-professional) as a valuable way to be. This goes beyond the mere practical utility of professionalization as a means to an end: (d)-theses constitute professionalization as an end in itself. There are a variety of theses concerning one's social-professional standing in relation to Others. I won't go into great detail concerning how peers and professionals are constituted as a unique class of consociates in the social world; suffice it to say that they are.12 Broadly speaking, there are three classes of theses concerning Others to distinguish here: (e) theses that present oneself as already "belonging" alongside Others – i.e., that present Others 11I am indebted here to one of David Mitchell's penetrating phenomenological analyses. 12See Schutz' Der sinnhafte Aufbau der sozialen Welt (or its very shoddy translation The Phenomenology of the Social World) for a general phenomenology of sociality. (a)-theses: fulfilling interest-motives is pleasurable. (b)-theses: fulfilling interest-motives is "worthwhile." (c)-theses: professionalization has utility as a means of cultivating interests. (d)-theses: being-professional has ontological/existential value. (e)-theses: I belong alongside Others; Others are peers. (f )-theses: I am on-the-way to belonging alongside Others; Others are where I can be. (g)-theses: I am further-along than Others; Others are somewhere that I have surpassed. Sheredos Phenomenology of Failure 12 as peers;13 (f ) theses that present oneself as on-the-way-to-belonging alongside Others – i.e., that present Others as occupying a position one has not yet attained, but can attain through professionalization; and (g) theses that present oneself as further-along than Others – i.e., that present Others as occupying a position that one has surpassed through professionalization. The specific "Others" toward whom these theses are directed are expected to change as one proceeds in the process of professionalization – that is the essential determinant of successful professionalization. In what follows, I'll be constantly referring to all these different varieties of theses. Where it's handy, I'll throw brief reminders into the margins. (Sadly, these won't display nicely in hardcopy.) 4.2 Achievement, Repetition, & Integration The core success-condition on the process of professionalization is to attain evidence that will invalidate all (f )-theses, such that the (e)-theses now concern all other members of the profession (i.e., all other professionals appear as peers; one has attained membership alongside them), and the (g)-theses now concern all initiates who have not attained membership (i.e., one no longer views any mere initiate as a full peer in the profession; one has surpassed them by attaining membership). Maintaining reasons to re-affirm past (e)theses and (g)-theses, and finding and creating reasons to implement ever-new (e)-theses and (g)-theses, are the most central ways in which the experience of progress in professionalization is constituted. Long-lasting convictions in (e)and (g)-theses, implemented by the pure ego, are the most central experiences that would constitute one's experience as-of oneself as a human subject that has attained professional status. The evidence that is required to invalidate (f )-theses and support (e)and (g)-theses lies in "achievement." The term has a double meaning here. On the one hand, there are those objects (in the broadest sense of the term) whose creation/acquisition is counted as an achievement: the experience as-of these objects' existence is the experience as-of the existence of a completed achievement. On the other hand, there are experiences of achievement-as-fulfillment, where achievement is more an aspect of the experiencing itself, than of the purported object. These can come apart, and must be distinguished. Achievement-Objects. Which objects are counted as achievements is characteristic of, or peculiar to, a given profession. The essential feature of an achievement-object is that its proper creation/acquisition is taken to depend upon the exercise of skills or cultivation of traits that are valued in members of the profession, by members of the profession: the skills and traits in question are considered essential for someone deserving full membership of the profession. As a result, the creation/acquisition of an achievementobject is something that members of the profession have licensed is interpretable as (and indeed, have mandated is to-be-interpreted-as) demonstrating possession of the skills and traits that members possess. In this way, achievement-objects become tightly bound up with the work-activity of the profession, and with the peculiar forms of human subjectivity that count as professional "status." This socio-cultural (geistig) meaning that is attached to achievement-objects is their essential feature: they may take virtually any material form, though there are contingent aspects of "tradition" in professions that tend 13There are some subtleties here. One can be peers with someone but still think that they are more/less talented than oneself, better/worse at the work-activities of the profession, etc. Peerhood is a threshold, and many additional evaluations can be made beyond it. They don't matter here. (a)-theses: fulfilling interest-motives is pleasurable. (b)-theses: fulfilling interest-motives is "worthwhile." (c)-theses: professionalization has utility as a means of cultivating interests. (d)-theses: being-professional has ontological/existential value. (e)-theses: I belong alongside Others; Others are peers. (f )-theses: I am on-the-way to belonging alongside Others; Others are where I can be. (g)-theses: I am further-along than Others; Others are somewhere that I have surpassed. Sheredos Phenomenology of Failure 13 to privilege certain familiar achievement-objects above others.14 There are widespread practices, in virtually all professions, of meticulously documenting the creation/acquisition of achievement-objects (e.g., on a C.V. or Résumé) as a way of indicating one's professional status to Others. However, many achievement-objects are created/acquired "off the record," so to speak, or may not be regarded as suitable for inclusion in a standardized public record like a C.V. For example, one's spoken contributions during professional meetings – even quasi-casual conversation – can often count as achievement-objects. A great deal of professional "networking" consists in creating/acquiring highly idiosyncratic and localized achievement-objects ("scoring brownie points") in full view of members of the profession. It is not uncommon for more specialized achievement-objects to be recognized only within the local context of a small enclave of the profession (e.g., sub-fields or departments). Achievement-as-fulfillment. The experience of achievement-as-fulfillment is a more subject-relative matter; it consists in the experience of an active fulfillment of one's own prior goals, despite some variety of challenge. Phenomenologically, what occurs is roughly that one has an earlier experience whose intentionality is such that it contains a thesis concerning a future experience. In this thesis, the future experience is expected in something less than any mode of certainty (its occurrence may even be decidedly doubtful or improbable), and the future experience is constituted as valuable in some way. Achievement-as-fulfillment consists in attaining the aimed-at experience, recognizing that it is the experience one had aimed-at, recognizing that it has its expected value (and perhaps a surplus), and recognizing that it was through one's own efforts that the experience is now occurring (in the mode of certainty), despite earlier appearing as less than certain. Where any of these features is lacking, one will not attain the experience of achievementas-fulfillment: one's ambitions might be disappointed if expectations are unfulfilled, or they might be "fulfilled" but in the manner of a stroke of luck, etc. What professionalization prescribes and demands is to coordinate these two senses of achievement, bringing them into alignment. One is encouraged to value the achievementobjects of the profession, investing them with the same significance that members of the profession do. If one endorses this valuation, it will bring with it motivations, enabling one to set goals which aim-at the experience of creating/acquiring those achievementobjects. When these goals are fulfilled and the achievement-objects are created/acquired, the experience of achievement-as-fulfillment will then come along as well. In the ideal situation (in terms of motivation), one already has nascent interest-motives and (a)-theses that are directed at the work-activities that are required to produce or acquire achievement-objects, and which present the work-activities as pleasurable. And ideally, one also already has endorsed (b)-theses, evaluating the pursuit of these interestmotives as "worthwhile." In that case, one already has one's own motives for pursuing the work-activities that are required for creating/acquiring achievement-objects. When one learns that the profession values the same work-activities (when they lead to creation/acquisition of achievement-objects), one is poised to endorse (c)-theses, as described in S4.1 above: one can judge that pursuing the profession's agenda in creating/acquiring achievement-objects has pragmatic value as a way of cultivating one's interests. As one pursues professionalization there is a characteristic alteration regarding the 14In contemporary philosophy, for example, a co-authored publication is often regarded as a less valuable achievement-object than a solo-authored publication. Likewise, publication in "big-name" journals is often counted as more of an achievement than publication in newer, open-access journals. (a)-theses: fulfilling interest-motives is pleasurable. (b)-theses: fulfilling interest-motives is "worthwhile." (c)-theses: professionalization has utility as a means of cultivating interests. (d)-theses: being-professional has ontological/existential value. (e)-theses: I belong alongside Others; Others are peers. (f )-theses: I am on-the-way to belonging alongside Others; Others are where I can be. (g)-theses: I am further-along than Others; Others are somewhere that I have surpassed. Sheredos Phenomenology of Failure 14 relative weight one places upon (b)-theses (which present the fulfillment of nascent interests as "worthwhile") and (d)-theses (which present being and becoming a professional as having special ontological or existential value.) At the outset, as an initiate, one is necessarily not well-positioned to fully understand the values of the profession, nor what is involved in being a professional. One begins the process of professionalization placing more weight on (b)-theses and (c)-theses, pursuing professionalization as a pragmatic route to cultivating one's own interests. Over time, the cultivation of those interests brings with it the creation/acquisition of achievement-objects and experiences of achievementas-fulfillment. The more one experiences achievement-as-fulfillment in creating/acquiring achievement-objects, the more evidence one has for the thesis that one is becoming a subject who values what a professional values. Every instance of achievement-as-fulfillment in the creation/acquisition of achievement-objects lends evidence to this thesis. As this conviction gradually extends in its duration – and especially in light of the work that is presupposed in sustaining this conviction – one becomes more and more invested, ontologically and existentially, in sustaining it. At some point, one is poised to actively endorse (d)-theses, and to begin to value being-a-professional for its own sake, regardless of whether the work-activities of the profession fulfill one's nascent interest-motives.15 There are several ways in which such commitment to (d)-theses can arise independently of one's nascent interest-motives. One possibility is simply that one discovers that one genuinely does find the creation/acquisition of achievement-objects to be pleasant: new (a)-like theses are endorsed which constitute new affective validities (beyond the nascent interest-motives with which one began); new (b)-like theses are endorsed which constitute the work-activity of the profession as "worthwhile;" one genuinely finds it rewarding to be professional, so one endorses a (d)-thesis to that effect. This may be so for some aspects of being-professional, but it is rare for (d)-theses to be quite to neatly supported. The larger share of commitments to (d)-theses arise because motivations from other sources fall short. As one continues to subject oneself to the standards of the profession, pursuing the work-activities that it values and performing them in the way it sanctions, one will inevitably be required to do things that lie outside one's own nascent interest-motives, or to do things one is interested in, but in a way that one does not find pleasurable or worthwhile. There will be cases there the two senses of "achievement" are difficult to align, if one is only aiming-at the fulfillment or cultivation of nascent interest-motives. In such cases, any (b)-theses one had implemented (regarding the cultivation of one's interests as "worthwhile") will fail to provide motivation to proceed in the way the profession requires: the demands of the profession will eventually fail to exhibit practical validity as a way of directly cultivating one's interests (i.e., (c)-theses will be unavailable). In some cases, one can shore up motivation by relying on (d)-theses that simply complement or supplement one's (b)-theses regarding what is worthwhile. For example, completing a task T is seen as worthwhile, and while the peculiarities of how a professional is expected to complete T are not themselves regarded as worthwhile (in that they do not 15It sometimes happens that one is not especially aware of this alteration as it occurs. One can tell oneself that one is continuing to pursue the work-activities of the profession because one finds them pleasurable, or because it is pragmatically useful as way of cultivating interests. Once one's professional status is called into question, however, and one faces the possibility that one is not proceeding towards becoming a professional, it may become clear that one had in fact endorsed (d)-theses, and had put great weight on being-professional. (a)-theses: fulfilling interest-motives is pleasurable. (b)-theses: fulfilling interest-motives is "worthwhile." (c)-theses: professionalization has utility as a means of cultivating interests. (d)-theses: being-professional has ontological/existential value. (e)-theses: I belong alongside Others; Others are peers. (f )-theses: I am on-the-way to belonging alongside Others; Others are where I can be. (g)-theses: I am further-along than Others; Others are somewhere that I have surpassed. Sheredos Phenomenology of Failure 15 themselves directly cultivate one's interests), one can simply commit to doing T in this way because that is what a professional does. A simple academic example might be formatting a paper to meet a journal's arbitrary guidelines. This isn't fun, but might be relatively painless, so, one does it. However, if the disparity is greater, and if (b)and (d)-theses are in outright conflict, then one confronts a demand of self-alienation and re-invention, which is in fact essential to the process of professionalization. Two possible aspects of personal character are in tension: on the one hand, one considers oneself to be a subject who has an interest in T and finds cultivating this interest worthwhile; on the other hand, the demands of professionalization are to do T* instead, setting T aside. Here the only motivation for doing T* comes from (d)-theses: one must resolve oneself to do T* because that is what one does if one is professional. An academic example might be altering the content of a paper significantly in response to reviewer feedback, moving the topics under discussion far away from the topics that lay closest to one's own interests. The more frequently one goes along with this kind of alteration and standardization of work-activity – the more one permits oneself to be alienated from one's own nascent interests and their cultivation – the more evidence one gains for the (d)-thesis that one values being-professional for its own sake, in distinction to any value one places on cultivating one's own interests for their own sake. Self-alienation, in the form of "setting-aside" (a)and (b)-theses, opens the door to self-creation, in the form of endorsing (d)-theses and regarding oneself as someone who values being-professional. Endorsing these (d)-theses enables one to alter one's motives and goals, bringing achievement-as-fulfillment back into alignment with the profession's conception of achievement. It is very likely that one will be able to maintain commitment to some (b)-theses and some (a)-theses as one proceeds through professionalization. But such re-invention and re-alignment will inevitably become a motivational necessity at some point if one wishes to continue along the path of professionalization. When this alignment is in place, one experiences achievement-as-fulfillment in the creation/acquisition of achievement-objects. In terms of motivation, one is now set to pursue the path to professionalization. But this alignment is not sufficient on its own to enable one to attain evidence that one is making progress. The evidential or doxic significance of achievement is bound up with social validities, in two principal ways. On the one hand, when one succeeds in the creation/acquisition of achievement-objects that the profession values, this must simultaneously be taken to provide evidence regarding one's own "professional" skills, and thereby provides evidence that can support (e)theses (which present oneself as a peer who belongs alongside members of the profession), (f )-theses (which present oneself as on-the-way to belonging alongside members), and (g)-theses (which present oneself as further-along than other initiates). In this way, the creation/acquisition of achievement-objects licenses theses that constitute new social validities: they allow one to re-position oneself in relation to Others along the path toward membership. On the other hand, since what is central here is the socio-cultural (geistig) value of the achievements, social validities are presupposed in the implementation of theses regarding any achievement-object's value. It is the profession, as a social organism, that determines the value of achievements. To attain the alignment between the senses of achievement, one's own assessment of the value of one's achievement-objects must track the assessments of members. In some social contexts, systems of achievements are communally constituted to proceed in relatively clear, linear gradations (e.g., colored "belts" in some martial arts; awarding honorary titles or degrees; seeds and rankings, etc.). These make assessments of (a)-theses: fulfilling interest-motives is pleasurable. (b)-theses: fulfilling interest-motives is "worthwhile." (c)-theses: professionalization has utility as a means of cultivating interests. (d)-theses: being-professional has ontological/existential value. (e)-theses: I belong alongside Others; Others are peers. (f )-theses: I am on-the-way to belonging alongside Others; Others are where I can be. (g)-theses: I am further-along than Others; Others are somewhere that I have surpassed. Sheredos Phenomenology of Failure 16 the significance of achievements relatively clear, and make comparisons to Others relatively straightforward, supporting clear (e)-, (f )-, and (g)-theses. Other systems of achievements are a bit less linear: e.g., "publications" and "presentations" are clear achievements in many academic professions, but it is often difficult to determine the comparative value of different varieties of each. It is often the case that even after the creation/acquisition of an achievement-object, one is not entirely certain of its value. Here interactions with Others may be required to make some determination of how well one is making progress. Evidentially (and according to the profession) the most effective strategy is to rely on (f )-theses, locating an "expert" that one takes to be further-along in professionalization, soliciting their appraisal of the achievement-object.16 The whole agenda of valuing and pursuing communally-approved achievement-objects demands commitment to the social validities that constitute the social world of the profession. In sum, achievement-objects serve as an intentional nexus in experiences of professionalization. Finding value in the creation/acquisition of achievement-objects is the motivational focal point that can drive one along the path of professionalization, through self-alienation and re-creation. Their creation/acquisition is also the evidential focal point for unifying all the theses concerning "progress" in professionalization: the repeated creation/acquisition of achievement-objects provides the required evidence to re-affirm all these theses. Repeated re-affirmations form an interlocking web of theses, consolidating evidence in their favor, and further reinforcing motivation. All these re-affirmations are to be understood, phenomenologically, as acts of the pure ego which result in the "sedimentation" of purported personal traits, as described in S3.3 above. These sedimentations are the appearances of a personal ego – they constitute the phenomena as-of a human being who is working through and committed to the process of professionalization, and who is becoming a professional. Repetition of these re-affirmations supports an integration and solidification of one's identity as someone who is becoming a professional. In the Natural Attitude, we endorse the thesis that this is who we are. This is how one comes to see oneself as someone who is committed to the "plan" of professionalization, and who is on-the-way-to-being, or becoming, a member of the profession. 4.3 Modalities These different theses occur in different modalities and arise in different ways. (a)-theses concerning the affective validity of one's interests occur (if at all) in something akin to the näıve mode of certainty that is characteristic of perception. Most importantly, these theses arise without the pure ego's involvement. Why do you think that thing is green? I can see it is. Why do you find the fulfillment of your interests pleasant? I simply feel that I do. The pure ego need not be involved in constituting these interests, nor the affective theses about them: they simply arise in transcendental subjectivity. Still, the pure ego can make an evaluative judgment about these interests. The ego can make a decision about whether they are to be valued beyond their native pleasantness, 16Strategies of peer-review are intended to frontload this appraisal, weeding out unsatisfactory work and preventing it from leading to the creation/acquisition of a public achievement-object. There is, of course, much room for modalization: if the "experts" do not value one's work, perhaps it is their expertise, and not the quality of the work, that will be called into question. (a)-theses: fulfilling interest-motives is pleasurable. (b)-theses: fulfilling interest-motives is "worthwhile." (c)-theses: professionalization has utility as a means of cultivating interests. (d)-theses: being-professional has ontological/existential value. (e)-theses: I belong alongside Others; Others are peers. (f )-theses: I am on-the-way to belonging alongside Others; Others are where I can be. (g)-theses: I am further-along than Others; Others are somewhere that I have surpassed. Sheredos Phenomenology of Failure 17 and so cultivated. These judgments contain a new (b)-thesis, which presents the fulfillment of one's interests as "rewarding" or "worthwhile." These theses are implemented by active decision-making, as described in S3.5. Actively-implemented theses are always – at their strongest – in the mode of "impure" certainty. Implementing these theses requires "striking-down" or "setting-aside" validities, at least in the sense of setting aside or de-valuing other interests, so as to prioritize the cultivation of these. Precisely because the certainty is impure and there are standing validities that can call it into question, the implementation of (b)-theses is tenuous, and is always a potential target of future modalization. A similar mode characterizes: (c)-theses concerning the pragmatic value of pursuing professionalization; (d)-theses concerning the existential value of being a member; and (e)-, (f )-, and (g)-theses concerning one's professional-social standing. Becoming a member in the profession is not the only way to pursue nascent interests, it is simply one way in which might try to do so. Someone who chooses this particular path has made an active decision to do so. This requires "striking-down" or "setting-aside" validities," at least in the sense of setting aside or de-valuing: (i) other seemingly-valid paths one could take, (ii) other modes of being, and (iii) other ways of relating to Others. All this "settingaside" is required to implement theses that assign heightened importance to the strategy of professionalization, to the validities that it constitutes, and to the validities it presupposes. While one is in-process and pursuing professionalization, the strongest modality that these theses could attain is a kind of "impure certainty" that remains open to the possibility of active doubt. When one finds oneself succeeding in the plan of pursuing professionalization, what one finds is an increasing number of achievements. One takes these to license the everstronger implementation of all these theses regarding one's professionalization, in something approaching the mode of impure certainty. Anyone who has gone through professionalization will tell you that even impure certainty is typically not reached. Typically, the theses regarding one's status as on-the-way to becoming professional are implemented in a mode less than certainty: at most (if one is honest with oneself, and on a good day) the available evidence can allow these theses to be implemented in a mode of high probability. The ontological validity of oneself as becoming-professional, for example, is less than certain: one is probably-on-the-way-to-becoming-professional. Moreover, the theses typically waver in shifting modalizations, from high probability to low probability or even (on a bad day) outright doubt. This is especially so if the relative socio-cultural (geistig) value of different achievement-objects is indeterminate in a given profession, and allows only very tenuous assessments of how well one is faring. Understanding the impact and evolution of such modalizations is the key to a phenomenology of professional failure. 5 A Phenomenology of Failure I've provided a brief phenomenology of professionalization. What this amounts to is a phenomenological analysis of conditions 1-3 that I initially offered (pages 2-3 above) to delineate the experiences of professional failure that I would seek to analyze. I've analyzed the experiential context and background against which an experience of professional failure occurs. Now it's time for the main event. I'll first (S5.1) examine the core intentional structure of a single experience of professional failure. I'll then (S5.2) examine how repeated professional failure plays out over the long-term, and how the experience of Sheredos Phenomenology of Failure 18 abjection arises, over and over again (S5.3). Finally, (S5.4) I'll examine how one might escape the dynamics of failure. 5.1 Perturbation Condition #4 on an experience of professional failure is that one makes some attempt to proceed along the path of professionalization, and one sees oneself as failing in the attempt. Phenomenologically, what occurs here is that one fails to attain an experience of achievement-as-fulfillment (S4.2, page 13 above). A future experience had been expected in something less than any mode of certainty: the natural and effortless occurrence of this future experience was constituted, in expectation, as improbable. Yet, this future experience had been constituted as valuable in some way. Because it was valuable, one was motivated to pursue it, and one took steps to do so. The key to a failure by one's own lights is that one has not attained this aimed-at experience, despite one's best efforts. One took steps – sanctioned, one thought, by the profession – to bring about this aimed-at experience, doing all one could to make its occurrence as probable as one could. Yet one has not fulfilled one's prior goals, and thus one sees oneself as failing, by one's own lights, to overcome this challenge. Condition #5 is that the failure is not only seen as an isolated failure, but is also seen as preventing further progress along the path. Phenomenologically, three things are central here. First: one understood the aimedat experience as an experience of the creation/acquisition of an achievement-object, and one anticipated that its creation/acquisition would bring with it evidence of one's own professional status. Now how does this evidential relation arise? The successful creation/acquisition of an achievement-object is seen, by the profession, as requiring certain skills and traits. In the socio-cultural (geistig) constitution of achievement-objects, there is built into these objects an etiological dependency. Part of what it is to be an achievementobject is to be an object which, it is held, cannot be brought into existence except through the exercise of certain skills and traits – the very skills and traits which are valued in the work-activities of the profession. If one understands the socio-cultural value placed upon achievement-objects, then one can form the expectation that should one succeed in creating/acquiring it, one will have secured evidence of one's own skills and traits. Second: the two senses of achievement had previously been brought into alignment: one had been striving for achievement-as-fulfillment in the creation/acquisition of this achievement-object. Thus arises the afore-mentioned lack of an experience of achievementas-fulfillment, whereby condition #4 is fulfilled. Third: one had seen the creation/acquisition of this achievement-object as the "next step" along the path of professionalization, which would enable future steps. In other words: the skills and traits whose possession and apt exercise are constituted as necessary for the creation/acquisition of the achievement-object are also the very skills and traits that are seen as required to continue progressing along the path of professionalization. Because one fails to create/acquire the achievement-object, one fails to gain evidence that one possesses these skills and traits. As a result, one does not see how it could be possible to proceed further along the path. This kind of experience can arise at essentially any moment, but in many professions there are certain relatively standardized achievement-objects whose creation/acquisition is used to "test" initiates' skill-levels. As a clear academic example: during graduate studies one can be quite literally expelled from the pre-profession, booted off the path, if one (a)-theses: fulfilling interest-motives is pleasurable. (b)-theses: fulfilling interest-motives is "worthwhile." (c)-theses: professionalization has utility as a means of cultivating interests. (d)-theses: being-professional has ontological/existential value. (e)-theses: I belong alongside Others; Others are peers. (f )-theses: I am on-the-way to belonging alongside Others; Others are where I can be. (g)-theses: I am further-along than Others; Others are somewhere that I have surpassed. Sheredos Phenomenology of Failure 19 fails to demonstrate required skills and traits through completing qualifying exams, or the defense of a prospectus. Condition #6 is that since previous steps in the plan were supposedly preparation for this attempt, the failure calls into question whether and how well one has succeeded in previous steps. As already noted, achievement-objects are constituted in experience as etiologically dependent upon the possession and exercise of "professional" skills and traits. When one makes one's best effort to create/acquire an achievement-object, one must make a multitude of judgments, implementing a number of theses. Two broad categories of theses are important here. First, there are theses which constitute oneself as possessing previously-acquired skills and traits. These theses are motivated by previous achievementas-fulfillment along the path to professionalization. Second, there are practical theses regarding how to put these skills and traits to work in an attempt to create/acquire the aimed-at achievement-object. If one fails in the attempt, one of these two kinds of judgments must be modalized. One can retrospectively call into question the thesis that one truly does possess the skills and traits in question – if one had them, shouldn't one have been successful in the attempt? Alternatively, one can call into question one's plans – perhaps one has all the required skills and traits, but has not put them to work properly? Either modalization suffices to meet condition #6. For the ability to create plans to deploy one's other skills and traits in the creation/acquisition of achievement-objects is itself one of the skills that is characteristic of a professional. A professional not only has, shall we say, "first-order" capabilities to perform the work-activities of the profession, but has "second-order" capabilities to self-determine how to pursue that work successfully. And so, whether one has erred in exercising this second-order skill by coming up with a bad work-plan, or whether one lacks the first-order skills required to execute an apt plan, it comes to the same thing: one's self-apprehension is modalized, and one is re-constituted as someone who was not prepared for success. Of necessity, some prior step in the plan of professionalization must have been a mis-step. The past experiences that seemed to provide evidence for theses concerning one's skills and traits must now be modalized: these past experiences can be recalled just fine, but the theses they were taken to support now stand in some mode of doubt. Condition #7 is that since success in the plan consists of attaining an identity as a member, the failure calls into question whether one can attain that identity. The basic prerequisites for meeting this condition are already present in any experience of failure fulfilling conditions #5 & #6. All that is required is (i) that the very skills that were called into question by the failure are seen as partly constitutive of professional identity, and (ii) that the path of professionalization is seen as the cultivation of an identity, in keeping with (d)-theses. Since one has failed in the attempt, one has not demonstrated possession of these skills and traits, despite one's best efforts. Since possession of these skills and traits is seen as constitutive of professional identity, one's failure to demonstrate them is evidence that one is failing to cultivate that identity. Condition #8 is that since failure in the attempt interrupts progress in the plan, it calls into question one's current identity as someone-who-is-on-the-way-to-being, or becoming, a member, and thus calls into question relationships with Others. What is at issue here is the modalization of (e)-, (f )-, and (g)-theses. Failure in the attempt calls into question whether one possesses certain skills and traits. Previously, one had relied on theses concerning the possession of just these skills and traits (derived from experiences of the creation/acquisition of achievement-objects) to support theses concerning one's social standing in the profession. In the face of failure, one must now Sheredos Phenomenology of Failure 20 reconsider this: perhaps one is not quite so far-along as one thought; perhaps one has not surpassed certain Others as one had thought; perhaps one is further-behind Others than one thought. This is the basic flavor of a phenomenology of professional failure. Any isolated professional failure leads to a perturbation – a suite of ramifying modalizations – of the theses concerning one's progress in professionalization. In an isolated case, it remains possible that the failure can be overcome. One might receive feedback from a mentor to develop a new plan; one might pursue some remedial work-activities to shore up required skills. With another attempt, it is possible that failure might be overcome, and all these theses could be re-modalized and restored to their original strength (approaching some variety of impure certainty), putting one back on the path of professionalization. But these same modalizations have profound implications when failure is repetitive. 5.2 Repetition & Disintegration A single failure can produce a perturbation of the web of theses that constitute one's experience of professionalization. With repeated failure, there is more and more evidence against these theses. It becomes more and more difficult to restore any of the theses in this web to anything approaching a mode of certainty. Fundamentally, achievement-objects are no longer able to function as an intentional nexus in the experience of professionalization (p.16 above). I'll highlight four important dimensions of this breakdown of validities. Concerning past achievements: When success in professionalization is proceeding apace, one finds more and more experiences of achievement-as-fulfillment in the creation/acquisition of achievement-objects, which provide greater and greater evidence of one's success in professionalization (cf. S4.2 above). A teleological directedness or momentum is experienced as running through all these past experiences of achievement, and pointing towards new possibilities. Every completed achievement brings with it a horizon of new challenges to be overcome in greater achievements. Every new attempt stands on the pre-given foundation of the skills and traits acquired and honed in past achievements, cultivating them further. Each achievement is experienced not only as its own achievement with its own value, but each of them is also bound up with the others in an intricate system of solidified values marching towards "better-yet." Husserl often talks of knowledge, of familiarity, and of practical mastery in terms of the "I can do it again" character of past experiences. The teleological directedness I am emphasizing here is an intricate set of relationships backwards and forwards between experiences in subjective time that has several characters: "I could not have done this, had I not done that" and "I can (probably) do this, because I have already done that" and "I could do that better-still-again, now that I have done this," etc. These "I-Can...' characters are precisely the ways of thinking about one's achievements that the profession licenses and mandates in the socio-cultural (geistig) value that it assigns to the creation/acquisition of achievement-objects. The creation/acquisition of an achievement-object has it's own "native" value, whatever it might be in each case: they were, after all, won through some effort, and their public display and circulation may have some value independent of the profession. The profession, in assigning special significance to these achievement-objects, assigns another value to them: they are evidence of "professional" skills and traits, which are always understood as to-be-cultivated within the purview of the profession's training apparatus. The cultivation of these skills and traits on the march through professionalization is precisely the cultivation of "I-Can..." characters of experience, as one proceeds towards mastery of the skills and traits that are (a)-theses: fulfilling interest-motives is pleasurable. (b)-theses: fulfilling interest-motives is "worthwhile." (c)-theses: professionalization has utility as a means of cultivating interests. (d)-theses: being-professional has ontological/existential value. (e)-theses: I belong alongside Others; Others are peers. (f )-theses: I am on-the-way to belonging alongside Others; Others are where I can be. (g)-theses: I am further-along than Others; Others are somewhere that I have surpassed. Sheredos Phenomenology of Failure 21 valued in the work-activities of the profession. These "I-Can..." characters depend upon understanding the shared value that past achievements have as a totality: a propulsive motivating force that is constituted in the teleological directedness that runs through them and points beyond them to ever-new challenges. With repeated failure, this teleological directedness breaks down. Past achievements can no longer be taken as indications of one's ability to succeed anew: if they were valid indications, then one would cease failing. The "I-Can..." characters of one's experiences must be modalized: somehow one is not prepared to do this thing one is attempting to do. With every failed attempt, the "I-Can..." characters slide further and further away from any impure certainty, becoming decidedly doubtful. In an effort to correct this, one makes ever-new attempts, trying more and more strategies to attain success, reaching further and further back to find some solid core of past success that one can depend on in the new attempt. As failure occurs yet again, one becomes more and more bewildered about where the mis-step occurred that has led to one's inability to succeed. At the extreme, the entire teleological directedness running through past achievements breaks down. The only remaining value of past achievements is the "native" value they have on their own, which is dispersed among them. They are no longer experienced as bearing any evident teleological relations between them. Concerning future possibilities: As this momentum dissolves through repeated failure, the "I-Can..." characters of future anticipations likewise dissolve. No next step on the path of professionalization seems readily possible: I cannot bring it about, despite my best, repeated efforts. The future one had anticipated slides away as one becomes more and more certain that it is completely uncertain. At the extreme, when the momentum of past achievements has broken down completely, pursuing the work-activities of the profession offers no expectations of future success. There is no longer any future in it. Concerning social situation: In line with (e)-, (f )-, (g)-theses, one had seen oneself as a member of a group of peers (fellow-initiates), working towards full membership in the profession alongside existing members. One had a plan for how to achieve success, but that plan has failed, as repeated failed attempts have called the whole plan into question in the breakdown of the teleological directedness of past achievements. All (e)-, (f )-, (g)-theses now stand modalized. One no longer knows with any degree of certainty where one stands in relation to Others. Ultimately, one no longer has any understanding of the socio-cultural (geistig) value that the profession assigns to achievementobjects. One had created/acquired some of these objects; one thought this was an indicator of one's skills and traits; one expected that this could lead to future success. All this has been put into doubt. One no longer knows what it was one did that led to something that Others had deemed a relevant "achievement," a partial success, in past cases. One no longer knows how to evaluate the achievements of Others: do theirs contain some hidden feature that makes them incomparable to one's own? Were one's own achievements sham copies? One no longer knows who is to be regarded as an "expert" in the profession. Hadn't experts vouched for the quality of one's own past achievements, vindicating them as indicating the possession of "professional" skills and traits? Hadn't they encouraged the cultivation of "I-Can..." characters of experience, driving one forward into new challenges? And then again: aren't experts (perhaps the same ones, perhaps others) now issuing an opposite judgment, as one's repeated attempts are met with failure? Which of the alleged "experts" should be taken as having the professional mastery to issue the Sheredos Phenomenology of Failure 22 correct judgment about the true value of one's achievements? And the more worrisome possibility: do any of them really know what they're talking about? Concerning self: Any in-progress professional identity one had been cultivating in sedimentations cannot be sustained in the face of these breakdowns. The teleological unity of past achievements in subjective time has been dissolved; any seemingly stable personal character traits that were built upon those past achievements have dissolved. The phenomena of oneself as a professional human subject have disintegrated. One no longer really knows who one is. One had been cultivating a professional identity in-line with some (d)-thesis, which constituted that mode of being (being-professional) as valuable. One had in fact "struck-down" or "set-aside" other existential and ontological validities to prioritize this one. All of this is now withheld, as repeated failure calls into question the possibility of attaining this mode of being. One's own being is modalized. One sees oneself as not-really-after-all-knowing-who-one-is, having-no-clear-path. This is where experiences of professional failure can be especially disconcerting. One might hope to find some solace, preserving some core of personal character, by reflecting on how one's achievements have fulfilled (a)-theses and (b)-theses. Not even professional failure could nullify the affective and evaluative validities these theses constitute. But if one has proceeded very far along the path of professionalization, one has likely already been alienated from many of the nascent interest-motives that led one into professionalization. One "set-aside" those motives in favor of others long ago, when one endorsed a (d)-thesis. And so in retrospect, it was precisely this self-alienation that led one to one's current, somewhat tragic position, in which one has tried to value being-professional for it's own sake, but is failing to do what is required to be-professional. The result is a novel variety of self-alienation which does not bring with it any straightforward opportunity for selfcreation. (But see S5.4 below). 5.3 Act-schism & the Impossibility of Encouragement I've described an extreme in the previous section: the total breakdown of the web of theses that support any attempt at professionalization. But an important element in an experience of professional failure is its dynamics: it is not a constant, total breakdown, but rather a vibrating alternation between extremes. I call experiences at the extremity of total breakdown abjection. I call experiences at the other extremity resolution. When one stands in abjection (or, when repeated professional failure takes on the character of abject failure), none of one's past experiences of achievement retains any motivation towards new attempts at achievement, and all theses concerning professional values, professional standing, and professional self are modalized to occur in a mode of doubt. When one enacts resolution, one re-commits to the plan of professionalization: one resolves to try yet again. For genuine resolution to occur, one must genuinely work oneself back into the belief that "I-Can..." somehow succeed. One makes an honest effort, genuinely devising a plan that, one thinks, could lead to success despite challenges. Phenomenologically, the most profound aspect of repeated experiences of professional failure is not abjection. Rather it is the alternation between abjection and resolution, in a prolonged and multifaceted act-schism (S3.5 above) involving many conflicting theses. As the phenomena of one's human, professional self have begun to disintegrate, the pure ego must try going along with theses on both sides. I try considering the evidence that could lead me to judge that perhaps success is forthcoming: I reconsider past experiences, revisit old achievement-objects, poring over them for some sliver of evidence that could Sheredos Phenomenology of Failure 23 tip the scales decisively in favor of resolution. I may even succeed in enacting resolution: thereupon follows a fresh attempt – and another failure. But then I consider the evidence that would lead me to judge that success is not forthcoming: I reconsider the ever-growing list of failures, the seeming insurmountability of the challenge despite my best efforts. The pure ego is placed at variance with itself. It cannot decide the evidence one way or the other. And as a result, the pure ego cannot constitute stable convictions that one could take as appearances of oneself as-of a stable human subject. This vibration between extremes occurs in the innermost depths of transcendental subjectivity. It is completely incomprehensible to any Other subject who is going on about their business in the Natural Attitude, and who apprehends all Others as human subjects in the social world. These Others cannot help but mis-understand the vibration as some crisis of human motivation. They recommend remedies for human problems. More cautious plans. More forgiving agendas. More careful attention. More sleep. A vacation. A distraction. "Where did you last see it?" Chicken soup. This kind of solicitation is well-meant, and in many cases, it is tolerable or even pleasant. But when one has been spiraling in the vibration for some time, and when this kind of solicitation comes from those involved in the profession, it takes on a perverse aspect. Those involved in the profession, who are operating in the Natural Attitude, are the closest to who one wants to be, yet the furthest from understanding where one is. Well-meaning professionals and pre-professionals seek to provide encouragement, but do not understand that this is what is precisely impossible. They draw attention to past achievements – not understanding that their significance and teleological connectedness has been modalized already. They draw attention to future possibilities of success – not understanding that these are precisely what one cannot readily countenance after the disintegration. Or they seek to solicit "casual" professional conversation as if nothing is amiss – not understanding that this enforces the vibration, pushing one right back into the act-schism through a kind of gaslighting that discounts the profound modalizations that are motivated by one's own experiences of failure. Or, more perversely still: their encouragements suggest that all this should have been anticipated – as if any aspect of the profession's cult of "I-Can..." had prepared one for the abjection of "I quite clearly cannot, despite my best efforts and despite your best wishes." Or, most perverse of all, they suggest that all this is somehow appropriate, that everything is going to plan – as if repeated failure itself should be assigned some secret socio-cultural value within the profession; as if the profession itself intended to sustain a pool of supplicants who are made to dwell in the vibration. When one dwells in the vibration, one is not truly living alongside anyone in the profession for any duration. The entire social and practical world of the profession flickers and vibrates, it approaches and recedes. Others are at one moment near/admirable/friendly, and in the next moment remote/perverse/hostile, over and over again. The work-activities of the profession are at one moment attractive/rewarding, and in the next moment repellent/soul-crushing, over and over again. 5.4 Inversion & Reconstitution There are six possibilities for how one might escape the vibration of prolonged act-schism – whether temporarily or more permanently. The starting point for realizing any of these possibilities is to "strike-down" or "set-aside" some validity. The six possibilities are: (1) striking-down abjection and enacting resolution, (2) attaining evidence of success, (3) attaining incontrovertible evidence of failure, (4) striking-down resolution and enacting Sheredos Phenomenology of Failure 24 abjection, (5) reversion to nascent interest-motives, and (6) inverting all valuations of professionalization. I discuss each in turn. One might actively decide to strike down the validity of abjection, enact resolution, and try yet again. In the moment when one enacts resolution, one has temporarily escaped the act-schism: this is the first possibility. I suspect many will find this option admirable, though it does not require any more strength of will than does going along with abjection. And notably: the long-term outcome of enacting resolution remains unsettled. Resolution simply does not guarantee success. Resolution is a gamble. One hopes that this time one will get lucky, that this time the world will cooperate, that this time one will not be recycled and deposited once more at the doorstop of failure. This is possible: one might gain evidence that one has indeed succeeded. Resolution that leads to success is the second possibility for how to escape act-schism. If one attains evidence of success, then one will again be in a position to re-implement the theses regarding progress in professionalization in something closer to the mode of impure certainty. Doubts (i.e., the theses of abjection) will be assuaged, the appearances as-of oneself as a "professional" human subject will re-stabilize, and one will no longer be drawn into act-schism. This is a slightly longer-term escape from actschism – the theses of resolution and success can remain in place unless and until they are challenged by new evidence of failure. Yet the fresh attempts that resolution supports create just this possibility of future failure. And resolution that leads to failure brings with it a return to the vibration. All too often, resolution is repeatedly pursued not because of any strength of will, but simply because old habits die hard, and because one is a burnt-out husk that has been emptied of any existential-ontological values – valuations of who one wants to be – that could supplant the (d)-thesis that being-professional is valuable, and the attendant theses that motivate one to try once again. Repeated attempts at resolution, leading repeatedly to additional failures, can bring about the third possibility for escaping act-schism: if one can attain incontrovertible evidence of failure, then the weight of evidence in favor of abjection will decisively outweigh the evidence in favor of resolution. Passive doubt will have been resolved, and there will no longer be any opportunity for the active doubt of act-schism. One will no longer be in a position where one needs to "strike down" any validities, since the validities in favor of resolution will have already been undermined. The entire suite of "I-Can..." characters of experience will have been replaced with "I-Cannot..." characters. While this is an ideal possibility, this third option for escaping act-schism is often difficult to realize. One difficulty is that many professions assign only indeterminate value to achievement-objects, making it difficult for one to ever become certain that one's failure is truly insurmountable: past achievements might always be desperately reinterpreted as evidence of possible, future success. Another difficulty is that in the face of failure, professionals and pre-professionals are likely to offer "encouragement," soliciting fresh attempts and enforcing the vibration of act-schism. The other escape-route is to actively decide to strike down the validities of resolution, embrace abjection, and cease one's attempts at professional success.17 In the moment when one strikes down the validities of resolution, one has temporarily escaped act-schism: this is the fourth possibility. There are two distinct possibilities for more long-term resolutions along this path. 17As noted in the Introduction, I don't consider this "quitting" the profession – one never was a member; one cannot "quit" in the sense of resigning. Sheredos Phenomenology of Failure 25 One possibility along this path (and the fifth escape-route) is reversion: go back to where one was before pursuing professionalization. Reach back behind the self-alienation that the profession demanded, and re-ignite one's nascent interest-motives, reconstituting oneself as a person who values those interests for their own sake, independent of the profession. Reversion has its comforts, and if it can be attained, one will have disentangled oneself from the profession. One will have re-constituted oneself as a human subject with relatively stable convictions in the "worthwhileness" of pursuing these interest-motives. This is an ideal possibility, but is often difficult to attain. Reversion must truly overcome selfalienation. One's nascent interest-motives have been reformed and re-directed by the profession: what had been "pleasant" and "worthwhile" has already been refashioned into "work," and one has invested great effort in learning how a professional goes about pursuing these interests in a constrained, "responsible" manner. To sustain reversion, all the professional alignments between achievement-objects and achievement-as-fulfillment must be disengaged. One must systematically deconstruct the web of theses that had grown up around achievement-objects, disentangling one's (non-professional) interests. Here reversion confronts another difficulty: on its own, reversion fails to fully confront the validity of abjection and of failure. It fails to recognize that an interest in cultivating these same nascent interest-motives, plus a certain näıvete, are what led one down the path of professionalization and into a profound disappointment. If one is to disentangle interest-motives from the profession and avoid being drawn back into it, one must not only deconstruct the web of theses surrounding achievement-objects, but must be actively on guard against näıvely slipping back into the valuations of the profession. The more radical option along this path is inversion. This is the sixth possibility for escaping act-schism.18 In inversion, one embraces the thesis of the complete failure of professionalization, recognizing that it was one's nascent interest-motives, plus a certain näıvete, that led into this failure. After the disintegration of the teleological directedness of past achievements, these achievements were left only with their "native" values, viewed as dispersed overcomings-of-challenges with no connection between them. In inversion, one pursues a new totalizing valuation: every past achievement along the path of professionalization is valued as a mis-step, and the totality is seen as a mistake. After this same disintegration, one stood modalized, and one's own being was left doubtful and uncertain. In inversion, one endorses a new determinate thesis: one constitutes their human subjectivity as being-a-failure, as having-been-in-error, as being-a-fool. Any remaining "ICan..." characters of experience are set aside, and instead one actively implements theses to declare: I will no longer. In the inversion, the profession is completely de-valued, as is being-professional. The entire web of theses is decisively inverted. The work-activities of the profession are decisively evaluated as having no practical validity as way of cultivating one's interests. Being-professional is decisively evaluated as not a valuable way to be. If one can sustain inversion, then one has not only escaped the vibration of act-schism, but has cut off any route that could draw one back into it. The are several significant barriers to pursuing inversion. First: from within. This is the nature of act-schism. In inversion one declares, in effect: "if those are the rules of the game, then I do not wish to play anymore." It is difficult to endorse this thesis, because there remains evidence to support the thesis that one does want to play the game, and some evidence that one is good at the game. Juxtaposed 18One can combine reversion and inversion: inversion can help support reversion. But inversion can also be pursued on its own. Sheredos Phenomenology of Failure 26 against this is the conflicting evidence that one really does not understand the game, that one is not in fact good at it, and that no one seems to want you on their team. Second: from without. The professionals and pre-professionals alongside whom one had been working expect certain behaviors – "professionalism." They expect human disappointment in the face of failure, and they also expect the quiet re-assertion of continuing resolution: after all, they've all overcome past challenges, and they've seen you do the same. This means that if one simply disengages from the work-activities and social activities of the profession, one has not really made one's position clear: this could be interpreted as taking a simple "break" to muster strength for the next attempt.19 Mere disengagement is likely to solicit attempts at encouragement – which as discussed above, only re-enforce social validities that put one back into the vibration of act-schism. The threat of encouragement is precisely what must be evaded to attain stable inversion and escape act-schism. One must not only strike down the validity of the web of theses internally, but must also strike down standing social validities: one must actively and thoroughly alienate oneself from the profession, systematically disrupting Others' apprehension of you, as a means of preventing them from pulling you back into the profession. Only a thorough and public declaration of one's break from the profession could really demonstrate that one has opted to pursue the radical option of inversion. It is impossible to do this in a "professional" manner, by definition. And there is the risk of misunderstanding: "I am done with this" may not fully convey the recognition of profound failure that is built into inversion. Perhaps better: "This profession is done with me." One has to confront the near-certainty that if one succeeds in making the break, the profession's devotees will look upon you with some degree of pity and revulsion: they have already de-valued other modes of being besides being-professional, including whatever mode of being one might turn to cultivate. Many modes of being besides beingprofessional have already been evaluated as less-valuable than being-professional. This evaluation cross-cuts the "within-without" divide, and is perhaps the most significant barrier to inversion: one must resist inhabiting the professional perspective from which this evaluation is apt. The key to sustaining conviction in inversion is to externalize this valuation, rather than endorsing it as a self-evaluation. Inversion is a novel form of selfalienation: alienation from the professional self one had been trying to constitute, and rejection of all the validities that being-professional presupposes and enacts. When professionals and pre-professionals assert (and when you consider endorsing this assertion for yourself) that "it is truly a shame that you have abandoned the profession," you must ask yourself – and perhaps ask them, too – "yes; but should I be ashamed?" It is only from within the perspective of the profession that being-a-failure is treated as shameful. For any subject living within the boundaries imposed by the valuations of the profession, being-a-failure is a boundary-condition and a lowly end-state. If one de-values the profession through inversion, one likewise de-values its judgment on this matter. In inversion, being-a-failure is understood as a starting-point for pursuing some new mode of being. By striking-down the validities of the profession, one escapes act-schism, and is now free to assign heightened values to other interests, other modes of being, that lie outside the profession's purview. Identifying and cultivating these new values is a challenge of selfcreation – but by constituting oneself as a professional failure, one is poised to overcome it on one's own terms, and has at least a chance of avoiding in the future the problematic forms self-alienation that one had näıvely tolerated. 19The seasonality of many professional job-markets does not help here, as everyone expects a long hiatus between attempts. Sheredos Phenomenology of Failure 27 6 Conclusion I'm done with this. | {
"pile_set_name": "PhilPapers"
} |
A Solution of Zeno's Paradox of Motion –based on Leibniz' Concept of a Contiguum Author(s): DAN KURTH Source: Studia Leibnitiana, Bd. 29, H. 2 (1997), pp. 146-166 Published by: Franz Steiner Verlag Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40694322 . Accessed: 24/05/2013 20:14 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. . Franz Steiner Verlag is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Studia Leibnitiana. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 84.186.94.240 on Fri, 24 May 2013 20:14:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions A Solution of Zeno's Paradox of Motion based on Leibniz' Concept of a Contiguum* By DAN KURTH (FRANKFURT AM MAIN) Zusammenfassung In der vorliegenden Arbeit soll eine Lösung der zenonischen Paradoxie des ruhenden Pfeils vorgestellt werden, die auf möglichen Implikationen des Kontiguumbegriffs beruht, wie ihn Leibniz in mehreren Arbeiten zu den Grundlagen der Dynamik entwickelt hat. Wesentlich sind dabei wechselseitige thematische Bezüge seiner Theoria Motus Abstracti und seines Dialogs Pacidius Philalethi. Aus der von Leibniz durchgeführten Analyse des Kontiguums als einer Voraussetzung der Möglichkeit von Bewegung ergibt sich, dass das (scheinbar zwischen Kontinuum und Diskretheit angesiedelte) Kontiguum in heutiger Terminologie nicht durch solche Merkmale wie Mächtigkeit oder Dichte bestimmt werden kann, sondern vielmehr eine besondere (topologische) Zusammenhangsstruktur aufweisen muss. In der Arbeit wird gezeigt, dass die dynamisch begründeten Anforderungen an eine solche Zusammenhangsstruktur von geeigneten topologischen Modellen einer Kette erfüllt werden. I. The Philosophical Matrix: Zeno's Paradox of Motion The central argument of Zeno against the possibility of motion is known as his referring to Aristotle's listing of Zeno's arguments - 'third argument against (the possibility of) motion' or as his 'arrow paradox' or as 'the paradox of the resting arrow'. Its preparation will be found in Aristotle's Physics (Phys. Z 239b 5-7) and it then finally is stated in Phys. Z 239b 30. The argument runs as follows: (1) Anything which occupies a space of exactly the same size as itself is at rest. (2) At any particular instant (i. e. the Aristotelian 'vw') anything (including anything in motion) occupies a space of exactly the same size as itself. (3) From (1) and (2) follows: Anything (including anything in motion) is at any particular instant at rest. * I wish to thank Prof. W. G. Saltzer and the members of his Colloquium at the Institut für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften at the Johann Wofgang Goethe-Universität (Frankfurt am Main) for interesting discussions of topics related to the argument of this paper. Special thanks goes to Dipl. -Phys. Frank Linhard and Dipl. -Ing. Dieter Brendel for helpful discussions of a previous version of this paper. I also wish to thank Dr. Vera Hohlstein for her perseverance and help by improving my original sketches to presentable Figures. By drafting the central parts of this paper I eventually found out how much I am indebted to Klaus Ripke who more than seven years ago introduced the concept of Antoine' s necklace to me in the context of the reconstruction of stoic philosophy, which may tacitly lie at the bottom of the more ostensible arguments. Studia Leibnitiana, Band XXIX/2 (1997) ©Franz Steiner Verlag Wiesbaden GmbH, Sitz Stuttgart This content downloaded from 84.186.94.240 on Fri, 24 May 2013 20:14:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions A Solution of Zeno' s Paradox of Motion 147 (4) The flying arrow (the arrow in motion) is at rest. This argument may be summarized as follows: If an object at any instant has to be (at rest) in a particular commensurate part or point of space, then it impossibly can move (on). From the above argument (1), (2), (3), (4) as yet explicated it obviously does not follow the impossibility of motion. Any opponent would be entitled to argue that even if the premises (1) and (2) and the conclusion (3) hold, the flying arrow might be at any instant at rest, but then would fly nicely nevertheless . That opponent simply had to maintain that the arrow would rest at the first instant in a first part or point of space, at the second instant in a second part or point of space and so on, till it finally would arrive. Thus the opponent would hold that motion is essentially built up from a succession of rests. But then such an opponent would dangerously underestimate the not so obvious strength of Zeno' s argument. This strength becomes more clearly manifest when the underlying paradox of division or of the unwarrantability of discreteness and continuity comes to light. I. e. Zeno would ask the respective opponent how the arrow could move from a state Sj (i. e. when it is at rest at the first instant in a first part or point of space) to the state S2 (when it is at rest at the second instant in a second part or point of space). By this question the focus of the paradox instantaneously shifts from the problem of motion to the problem of infinitesimal motion, and to a hell of a bunch of therewith attached problems as well. And it is just here where Zeno's argument really puts its grip on. Clearly the opponent now can no longer assume motion to be constituted by a succession of rests. He already got involved in the paradox of discreteness and continuity. If he chooses the succession S,, S2, ..., Sn, Sn+I, ...; to be of a continuous nature he never could reach the state S2 by starting on S, because 'at first' he had to traverse an infinite number of intervening states S¡. And this holds for any two states or points in such a continuum. If he then chooses the mentioned succession to be discrete, he gets a problem to explain what the arrow does in between two of such discrete states Sn and Sn+1. This is a real problem because by presupposition he has to admit that there actually is no part or point of space and therefore no arrow 'in between' , not at last because there is nothing than the hiatus, i. e. an abyss of nothingness 'in between'. This again holds true no matter how 'large' or what might be of even greater significance how 'small' the supposed 'distance' ever might be 'in reality'. Thus the advocate of discreteness gets -just as the arrow devoured by the hiatus which separates Sn andSn+l. For our reason to expose the real paradox of motion, i. e. to show that by turning out to be a paradox of infinitesimal motion -it boils down to the paradox of discreteness and continuity, this may be enough at least for now. This content downloaded from 84.186.94.240 on Fri, 24 May 2013 20:14:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 148 Dan Kurth Before we now come to the attempt(s) of solving this real paradox of motion, some considerations about the 'philosophical' ormore generally the 'theoretical' classification or evaluation of Zeno's paradox might be spent. In his fine study of Zenons Paradoxien der Bewegung und die Struktur von Raum und Zeit1 Rafael Ferber says "[wir] sehen [...] nämlich in den Paradoxien nicht mathematische bzw. physikalisch-mathematische, sondern physikalischempirische Probleme"2. In contrast o Ferber I would regard Zeno's paradoxes not at all as empirical problems (or challenges) of physics, and I would rather doubt that Zeno himself would have regarded it as such, even if one leaves out of account the question if any presocratic thinker would have been able to grasp the rather modern (one might say at best 17th century) concept of empiricity. But I would agree that the paradoxes would not have been accounted for by Zeno as just logical or formal mathematical mental exercises or even pastimes. They had rather been intended to be mathematical-ontological arguments against the atomistic or rather against any naturalistic challenge of the eleatic ontocosmological convictions, quite in the spirit of Plato's later ontocosmotheological efforts (e. g. in his Timaios) to ultimately beat off that kind of challenge. In both of those attempts the degree of success might lack somewhat compared with the degree of the fervor with which they then had been put forward. II. The Construction of the Contiguum: From Cantor's Discontinuum by Antoine' s Necklace to Leibniz' Chain Armor The solution of Zeno's paradox as proposed in this paper is essentially based on two assumptions. The first of these assumptions is that a zenoproof space has to be a kind of discontinuum. The second refers to what kind of discontinuum it ought to be, i. e. to the topological (connectivity) structure of the considered discontinuum. The guiding hypothesis is that this topological connectivity structure should be of such a kind that it a) provides a sound model of the structure described by Leibniz as a 'contiguum', and b) thus provides the basis for a comparably sound solution of Zeno's paradox. 1 R. Ferber: Zenons Paradoxien der Bewegung und die Struktur von Raum und Zeit, München 1981. 2 Ibid, p. 2. This content downloaded from 84.186.94.240 on Fri, 24 May 2013 20:14:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions A Solution of Zeno' s Paradox of Motion 149 1. The Definition of the Contiguum For the definition of the contiguum, i. e. the topological structure which is assumed to provide the basis for a zenoproof space, I follow Leibniz' reflections on this subject as pointed out in his dialogue Pacidius Philalethi3 and his Theoria Motus Abstraed*. Leibniz' concept of the contiguum essentially stems from Aristotle's notion of haptomenon5, but even though Aristotle discussed this concept also in the context of his considerations of Zeno's paradox he didn't even come near to any conclusion of using it effectively to solve these paradoxes. Instead he again and again fervently propagated as the 'only concept' which could be regarded as apt to represent the fundamental structure of space -the continuum (a')ve%r|ç) as the 'true and only commensurate of space' . Even though Leibniz is as well famous as one of the greatest advocates of the continuisi view he in striking contrast to Aristotle came one is attempted to say: 'infinitesimally' near to the proper use of the contiguum as a solution of the paradox, as will be shown in this paper. The most explicit references to the concept of the contiguum Leibniz makes in his Pacidius Philalethi. In the first of these he refers to the related notion of Aristotle's haptomenon. Reference I: "The (ophilus): [Memini] Aristotelemquoque contiguum à continuo ita discernere, ut continua sint, quorum extrema unum sunt, contigua quorum extrema simul sunt" (C, 601). In the following second reference Leibniz (again in his Pacidius Philalethi) brings the now established concept of the contiguum in the context of the explanation of motion, and thus seemingly prepares the ground for a concept of a contiguous (or to better expose the timelike character of this motion contiguent) motion. Here he even refers to the contiguum as generated by nature (seemingly for the reason to entail motion). Reference II: "Pa(cidius): Sed quo jure id negas, cum nulla sit in linea uniformi < continua > prerogativa unius puncti prae altero? Ch(arinus): At nobis hic sermo non est de linea aliqua uniformi < continua > in qua duo ejusmodi puncta sibi immediata B et D ne sumi quidem potuissent, sed de linea AC jam actu in partes secta à natura, quia ponimus mutationem ita factam, ut uno momento existeret mobile in unius ejus partis AB extremo B, et altero in alterius partis DC extremo D. Estque discrimen inter has lineas duas actu < a se > divisas < contiguas >, et unam indivisam seu continuam 3 Pacidius Philalethi; C, 594-627. 4 Theoria Motus Abstraen; GM VI, 61-80; also in: GP IV. 5 See Aristotle Phys. E 226b 18ff; Phys. E 227a 20ff; Phys. Z 23 la 2 Iff; Phys. Z 232a 8ff; De Gen. et Corr. 322b 323b; Metaph. K 1069 a. This content downloaded from 84.186.94.240 on Fri, 24 May 2013 20:14:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 150 DanKurth manifestimi, quod, ut jam Aristoteles notavit, extrema B, D in duobus contiguis lineis differunt , in una continua coincidunt [...]" (C, 620/621). In the third reference given here Leibniz comes to some conclusion and as well starts the preparation for his own 'solution' of the problem of a thorough explanation of motion, namely the so called transcreation, which unfortunately is no contiguous motion at all. Thus finally he didn't escape Zeno' s trap when he admits a 'problem' of mapping a seemingly contiguous structure of motion to the seemingly continuous structure of the underlying space, and then inevitably fails in this trial. Reference III: " C h ( a r i n u s ): Itaque jam divisionis ac difformitatis causam habemus, et quomodo hoc potiùs quàm ilio modo instituatur divisio punctaque assignentur explicare possumus. [...] Tota res ergo eo redit: quolibet momento quod actu assignatur dicemus mobile in novo puncto esse. Et momenta quidem atque puncta assignari nfinita, sed nunquam in eadem linea immediata sibi plura duobus, necque enim indivisibilia aliud quam términos esse" (C, 622). Thus unfortunately Leibniz in his Pacidius Philalethi finally didn't take the last step to set up a 'physical' concept of contiguous motion, but instead rather tried to substitute the physical concept of motion by the rather obscure notion of transcreation6, which strongly resembles a concept of Islamic philosophy called kalam7. Another reference to the c o n t i g u u m this time of a slightly more technical kind can be found in the theorem 17 of Leibniz' Theoria Motus Abstraen. Reference IV: "Duae aliquae contiguae corporis partes cohaerent turn demum sibi, si se premuní, seu si is est corporis motus, ut una alterum impellat, id est in alterius locum sit successura" (GM VI, 73; also in: GP IV, 234). But then it is not one of these four explicit references (I IV) to the c o n t i g u u m which the solution of Zeno' s paradox as proposed in this paper resumes, but rather two considerations in both of which Leibniz not even directly mentions the c o n t i g u u m at all. These are Reference V: '*[...] ac proinde divisio continui non consideranda ut arenae in grana, sed ut chartae vel tunicae in plicas, itaque licet plicae numero infinito, aliae alus minores fiant, non ideò corpus unquam in puncta seu minima dissolvetur. [...] atque ita non fit dissolutio in puncta usque, licet quodlibet punctum à quolibet motu différât. Quemadmodum si tunicam, plicis in infinitum multiplicatis, ita signari ponamus ut nulla sit plica tarn parva, quin nova plica subdividatur: atque ita nullum punctum in tunica assignabile rit, quin diverso à vicinis motu cieatur, non tarnen ab iis divelletur, necque dici poterit tunicam in puncta usque resolutam esse, sed plicae 6 Pacidius Philalethi: C, 624/625. 7 See K. Stiegler: Das Problem der Bewegung im kalam und im Pacidius Philalethi des jungen G.W.Leibniz, in: K. Figalla, E. H. Berninger (eds.): Arithmos-Arrythmos, Festschrift für Joachim Otto Fleckenstein zum 65. Geburtstag, München 1979. This content downloaded from 84.186.94.240 on Fri, 24 May 2013 20:14:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions A Solution of Zeno' s Paradox of Motion 151 licet aliae aliis in infinitum minores, semper extensa sunt corpora, et puncta nunquam partes fiunt, sed semper extrema tantùm manent" (C, 615) and, in my view, one of the most significant of all his considerations concerning the required prerequisites for a zenoproof theory of motion, namely the following evidence from his Theoria Motus Abstraed: Reference VI: "Cohaesionis, qualitatis tarn obviae, rationem reddidit nemo: quid prodest ramos, hamos, uncos, annulos, aliaque corporum implicamenta comminisci, cum opus futurum sit hamis hamorum in infinitum?" (GM VI, 78; also in: GP IV, 239) In these two references the very characteristics of the solution of Zeno' s paradox of motion as proposed in this paper are insinuated as intimate as nowhere else in the history of the debate about this puzzling topic. 2. The Discontinuous Structure of nearly the Contiguum: A first Attempt of its Construction The leading idea to finally solve Zeno' s paradox of motion which had been proposed by me as well as others8 several times before is that motion should be represented or explained neither continuously nor discretely, but rather discontinuously . The concept or rather a model of the discontinuum had been originally introduced by Georg Cantor in 18839. It is well known as Cantor discontinuum or Cantor dust and defined as a "kompakte, perfekte, nirgends dichte Menge mit der Mächtigkeit c und dem Mass Null"10. The Cantor discontinuum can be easily constructed by starting with an arbitrary bar of some finite length, and then in a next step taking out an actual part in its middle, e. g. of a third of the original length. This partition or the act of eliminating a part of that relative length then has to be infinitely 8 See Ferber (see note 1); P. Eisenhardt/D. Kurth/H. Stiehl: Du steigst nie zweimal in denselben Fluss, Reinbeck 1988; I. Tóth: Le problème de la mesure dans la perspective de l'Être et du non-Être Zenon et Platon, Eudoxe et Dedekind: une généalogie philosophico -mathématique, in: R. Rashed (ed.)"Mathématiques et Philosophie de V Antiquité à l'Âge classique, Paris 1991; P. Eisenhardt/D. Kurth: Emergenz und Dynamik, Cuxhaven 1993. 9 See G. Cantor: Über unendliche lineare Punctmannichfaltigkeiten, Grundlagen einer allgemeinen Mannichfältigkeitslehre, in: Math. Ann. 21 (1883), pp. 545-591. Also in: G. Cantor: Gesammelte Abhandlungen mathematischen und philosophischen Inhalts, mit erläuternden Anmerkungen sowie mit Ergänzungen aus dem Briefwechsel Cantor-Dedekind , nebst einem Lebenslauf Cantors von A. Fraenkel, ed. by E. Zermelo, Berlin 1932 (repr. Hildesheim 1962). 10 W. Purkert/ H. J. Ilgauds: Georg Cantor, Basel Boston Stuttgart 1987, p. 69. This content downloaded from 84.186.94.240 on Fri, 24 May 2013 20:14:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 152 DanKurth iterated, i. e. stepwise to be applied to all remaining parts of the original bar. The construction can be 'seen' in the following Figure 1. Figure 1 : Cantor Discontinuum There are three possible results of this construction, or rather two results and one.mistake. In a case a) when the iteration is finite, i. e. terminates after a countable finite number of steps the remaining parts then turn out to be bars of a respective length, and such this result is obviously none and above all it is no discontinuum but rather a mistake of the construction. Clearly such mistake also was not a part of Cantors original considerations about the discontinuum. This doesn't hold for the next case b) where we assume an intersection of infinite partitions. The 'remaining elements' of the discontinuum then are isomorphic to points of the continuum, i. e. they are points themselves. This is the result of Cantors original construction of the discontinuum. Then there is a third case c) which will be of major significance for the discussion of the contiguum. It may be called a Q-construction (its details will be given in the following). Here the 'remaining elements' of the discontinuum turn out to be infinitesimals, i. e. infinitely small bars. But regardless of the question if we get the result of case b) or that of case c) the generated Cantor dust anyway looks rather as the opposite of Aristotle's touching boundaries (haptomena) or Leibniz' 'contigua quorum extrema sunt simul'. Yet despite this disenchanting fact we stick to our assumption that the contiguum is to be of a discontinuous nature. In such obstinacy our conviction that the feature of discontinuity is essential not just for the contiguum but as well for the construction and thus also for any possible solution of Zeno' s paradoxes is matched by that of Imre Tóth. In his paper Le problème de la mesure dans la perspective de l 'Être et du non-Être he especially highlights the strong structural resemblance of (the underlying This content downloaded from 84.186.94.240 on Fri, 24 May 2013 20:14:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions A Solution of Zeno's Paradox of Motion 153 operation of generating) Zeno's paradox of dichotomy and the Cantor discontinuum11 . He even goes a decisive step further by implying that there might be more than just a strong resemblance but something like a similar approach to a common problem, namely the analysis of infinity or of the power of the continuum. Here Tóth brings Zeno's paradoxes of motion especially that of dichotomy as well as the Achilles12 in close relation to the for ancient Greek mathematics notorious problem of incommensurability13, by stressing the undoubtedly not just coincidental relationship14 of Zeno's method of cutting the continuum and the method of Antanhairesis15. But despite this seeming operational similarity the objective of Zeno's argument against the possibility of motion is essentially different from the problems concerning the discovery of incommensurability16 or the resulting attempts to find a sufficient mathematical representation of the irrational numbers17 . This later quest leads to a geometrical representation of arithmetical entities, i. e. irrational numbers, whereas Zeno's argument asks for physicogeometrical or rather ontogeometrical entities as a proper base for motion. Such entities obviously could have been real infinitesimals or indivisibles18 (which 1 1 See Tóth (see note 8), pp. 40-48. 12 See ibid., pp. 68-87. 13 Obviously there is an even closer relation between Zeno's paradoxes of (the possibility of) plurality or multitude especially the entailed paradox of measure and the problem of incommensurability. 14 See for the historical context also: H. Hasse/ H.Scholz: Die Grundlagenkrisis der Griechischen Mathematik, Berlin 1928. 15 See Tóth (see note 8), pp. 49-67. Antanhairesis was introduced by Hippasus of Metapontum as a method of deriving a contingent common measure of two geometrical entities e. g. two lines by a kind of iterated division (comparable to a geometrical equivalent of a continued fraction), i. e. by the marking off of an (smaller) one a2 on an (larger) one a, . If then a2 doesn't fit in a] without a remainder, such a remainder a3 is to be marked off on av and this kind of division has to be repeated until either a rational proportion ax : ai+l (i. e. without a remainder) is reached or in case the iterated divisions do not terminate a, : a9 finally turns out to be irrational. 16 For a comprehensive presentation of the context and the relevance of this discovery see K. v. Fritz: The Discovery of incommensurability by Hippasus of Metapontum, in: Annals of Mathematics 46 (1954), pp. 242-264; (German translation: Die Entdeckung der Inkommensurabilität durch Hippasos von Metapont, in: O. Becker (ed.): Zur Geschichte der griechischen Mathematik, Darmstadt 1965, pp. 271-307; also in: K. v. Fritz: Grundprobleme der Geschichte der antiken Wissenschaft, Berlin New York 1971, pp. 545-575). 17 These attempts later lead in the confinements to geometrical methods of ancient Greek mathematics to the Eudoxian theory of 1 o g o i as a geometrical representation of irrational numbers as proportions of incommensurable line segments. This Eudoxian theory somewhat foreshadowed in a geometrical way the modern extension of the field of rational numbers to that of the real numbers by the Dedekind cut. 18 Yet to my knowledge there is only one source in ancient Greek literature which unequivocally mentions indivisibles, namely De Lineis Insecabilibus, see Aristotle: De Lineis Insecabilibus (peri atomôn grammôn, On Indivisible Lines), in: W. D. Ross: The Works of Aristotle, vol. VI, Oxford 1952, 968a -972b. Here the discussed concept of This content downloaded from 84.186.94.240 on Fri, 24 May 2013 20:14:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 154 Dan Kurth should not be confused with material atoms). Yet such indivisibles are hardly found in ancient Greek physico-mathematics19. The Cantor discontinuum in the ß-construction however generates in an even somehow zenonian manner plenty and more of real infinitesimals, but unfortunately it also generates the same amount of gaps between them. So as a first attempt to regain enough of the lost density of the continuum to get a proper base for motion we then might try to somewhat 'refill' the unwanted gaps in the Cantor discontinuum. To gain the required structure of the contiguum, i. e. a structure of infinitesimal near neighborhood of the elements of the discontinuum one has to decisively modify the original construction of the Cantor discontinuum. For reasons of terminological clarity I will call the resulting entity a discontiguum. Yet as decisive the needed modifications of the original construction ever may be, as simple they also are. At any step i of the original construction of the Cantor discontinuum one not just has to take out or eliminate a part of the (remaining) bar(s), but also to refill a part of the such generated blank(s). Such a part then may be of arbitrary length, provided it is actually smaller than the respective take-out. This construction of the discontiguum can be 'seen' in Figure 2. This modified construction comes obviously very close to the concepts of a contiguum as proposed by Aristotle and Leibniz, one might even say it comes infinitesimally near to its proposed structure, but then regrettably it doesn't terminate. In the (oo)-case of the intersection of infinite partitions and here as well refillings the discussed discontiguum again like the original discontinuum is of the power of the continuum, (i. e. of the set of the Real Numbers) IR. Thus the elements of the discontiguum in this case again are isomorphic to the indivisibles is even brought in some relation to the problem of incommensurability (968b 4-20), but just for finally coming to the conclusion that they do not exist. This pseudoaristotelian text is casually cited by I. Tóth (see Tóth, see note 8, p. 45), but doesn't play an important role for the ends of his argument. See also P. Eisenhardt/D. Kurth: Nichtstandard Topologie und Prägeometrie, in: A. v. Gotstedter (ed.): Ad Radices: Festband zum fünfzigjährigen Bestehen des Instituts für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften der Johann Wolf gang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, Stuttgart 1994. 19 Except in De Lineis Insecabilibus, see the preceeding footnote. In contrast to I. Tóth, who claims, that "Platon désigne cette relation hétérodoxe ou non-standard comme un phantasme d'égalité (... Parm. 165A) et parle de sa participation à l'idée de l'Égalité et de la similitude (... Parm. 140E) [...] En effet la relation définit un lieu diachronique un Hen, un et unique, un instant indivisible [...]" (Tóth, see note 8, p. 86) to my understanding neither time-like ('instants') nor space-like nor any kind of mathematical indivisibles (or non-standard entities) are the topic of Plato's Parmenides. Plato was of course very well aware of the difference between an unit, which by definition cannot be an indivisible in the genuine sense, and a quantity, which may or may not be an indivisible. His Parmenides is essentially concerned with the ontological status of the 'Hen' and related eleatic confusions of these concepts. This content downloaded from 84.186.94.240 on Fri, 24 May 2013 20:14:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions A Solution of Zeno' s Paradox of Motion 155 Figure 2: Discontiguum points of the continuum, and then they are points. But now the annoying gaps or blanks of the discontinuum are completely gone. The neighborhood of any of the points of the discontiguum is infinitely dense, i. e. between any two points of the discontiguum lie infinitely many further points. So, is the discontiguum in the (oo)-case actually the continuum? As. far as I can see this is not the case. The discontiguum in the (oo)-case might be of the same order as the continuum, but then there is still an ephemeral difference in the neighborhood relation. Thus the discontiguum in the («>)-case seems for me to be some kind of a dynamic double of the rather static continuum. In the for our purpose of defeating Zeno much more significant (ß)-case (or rather the Q-construction) the elements of that construction display an infinitesimal dense neighborhood whilst having the power of the set of the Natural Numbers IN, i. e. between any two of these infinitesimal e ements lies no further element. These elements of the discontiguum in the (Q)-case obviously are not isomorphic to the points of the continuum, and simply are no points but infinitesimals instead. Yet however regrettably one cannot defeat Zeno by the means of the discontiguum. The reasons are simply the same as they always have been. In the (oo)-case (or continuous case) too many to be precise: infinitely many points come in between the point the arrow (or rather the arrow-head) actually rests in and the next to which it aspires. Case closed. In the (fí)-case then we still do not overcome Zeno' s argument against the defender of discreteness. In fact the discontiguum in the (Q)-case is not discrete , because it is a misplaced notion of discreteness, if one cannot discern or 'pick' the elements of a so called 'discrete' structure. And undoubtedly no one This content downloaded from 84.186.94.240 on Fri, 24 May 2013 20:14:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 156 Dan Kurth ever will be able to discern or 'pick' the elements of the discontiguum in the (Q)-case. The reason for this is as I will show in the next paragraph the unattainability or uncountability of fl. Yet, as I have shown above, Zeno' s argument in the (arrow) paradox of motion is against all appearances (at least as far as Aristotle is concerned) essentially about infinitesimal motion. And then there is no doubt that the discontiguum in the (ß)-case is an infinitesimal structure. And then stubborn Zeno quite unimpressed says that he is not interested in the question how large or small the hiatus is the arrow or its head may plunge in, as long as they plunge in or stay at rest. Stubborn, but incontestable. Case closed. One may wonder why I deliberated at quite a length about the discontiguum , if in the end it doesn't lead us to the promised solution of Zeno' s paradox of motion. There had been two reasons for this considerations about the discontiguum . The first reason is that the discontiguum in particular, as some already might have expected, its Q-construction actually leads us very near to the later presented solution. That after all will become evident with hindsight. The other reason is my conviction that the discontiguum, again in the (incase , might bear some potential insights into the structure of space which reach far beyond the challenge of defeating Zeno, and which might also not have been completely entailed in the prerequisites to the solution I will present in the following. 3. Q, Construction In the preceding paragraph I several times mentioned 'Q-construction' and 'the (Q)-case of the discontiguum', so I now will give the already announced details. 'Q' refers to the number of iterations, i. e. the iterated partitions resp. partitions and refillings, required for the construction of a particular case of the Cantor discontinuum, resp. of the discontiguum. In the subsequent explanation of how Q can be constructed I closely follow Laugwitz20. Q is supposed to be an infinitely large number. £1 will be constructed as an extension of the number field of e. g. the Real Numbers, i. e. as an adjoint to the K(IR). To gain such new 'ideal elements' adjoint to K(IR) the following sequence of inequalities is sufficient21. (1) Q » 1, Q » 2, Q » 3, ..., Í2 » 100, ...; a more generalized version of (1) then is (1.1) Q»n, Q»n+l,Q»n+2, ..., £2»n+i, ...; (for n, i e IN) 20 D. Laugwitz: Zahlen und ¡Continuum, Darmstadt 1986. 21 For more details and a technically advanced definition see ibid., pp. 83-9U. This content downloaded from 84.186.94.240 on Fri, 24 May 2013 20:14:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions A Solution of Zeno' s Paradox of Motion 157 Í2 itself then is an infinitely large Natural Number, and thus it holds Q*oo. 4. The Contiguum Revealed: Antoine' s Necklace or Linked Discontinuity Now that we got through the professionally required epicycles and by the way prepared our arms we might a little more straightforwardly attack our proper goal of solving Zeno' s paradox of motion and by this way defeating him. From our fruitless endeavors to achieve this goal with means of the discontiguum we should have learned one thing: Zeno' s paradox is not or at least not in the first place about the paradoxes of infinity. And then it is also not or at least not in the first place about the neighborhood relation of the respective parts or points of space (and motion). But about what it then may be? Here we suddenly remember Leibniz' almost facetious remarks in his Theoria motus abstraen (quoted as reference No. VI in the first paragraph), where Leibniz came as near to the effective solution as possible, but then unfortunately refused to further 4comminisci'. Therefore it shall be displayed once more. "Cohaesionis, qualitatis tarn obviae, rationem reddidit nemo: quid prodest ramos, hamos, uncos, annulos, aliaque corporum implicamenta comminisci, cum opus futurum sit hamis hamorum in infinitum?" (GM VI, 78; also in: GP IV, 239) If Leibniz would have gone further into the entanglements and intertwinings of hooks and barbs and first of all the tiny rings or rather links, and if he just had gone on a little further with 'comminisci', then he probably would have found that the solution of the queries of motion, which he emphasized in his Theoria Motus Abstraen and therefore the puzzles of Zeno' s paradox of motion as well are essentially due to the kind of topological connectivity of the underlying space. Still we stick to our premise that a structure apt to bear the solution of Zeno' s paradox has to be discontinuous. Now joining these two premises: a) the solution of Zeno' s paradox of motion has to do with the kind of topological connectivity of the underlying space, and b) a structure apt to bear the solution of Zeno' s paradox has to be discontinuous , the details of the intended solution slowly might become evident. One can dissolve Zeno' s paradox of motion and therefore defeat him, if one assumes the underlying space to be of a discontinuous connectivity structure. But before I will go in the details of such a required discontinuous connectivity space, I will already attack Zeno barely with the means of topological connectivity. A topological connectivity which is needed and sufficient to defeat Zeno in a case very similar to the original 'discrete' This content downloaded from 84.186.94.240 on Fri, 24 May 2013 20:14:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 158 Dan Kurth case is provided by any ordinary chain, the links of which may even be made of * annuii'22. If we assume, as Zeno did, that at any instant an object has to be (at rest) in a particular commensurate part or point of space and if we then assume that such a commensurate part or point of space is to be a link of a chain then motion is possible under these assumptions, provided that commensurateness is strictly warranted. The reason is the following: If the object is at any commensurate part or point of space, i. e. by assumption on a ('first') link of the respective chain, then it is as well already on the next. This is an unavoidable consequence of the topological connectivity of a chain. In the next step the object will mainly be positioned on the 'second' link but as well already on the 'third', and so on. This is simply alike the pseudo-solution of the original discrete case, mentioned in the first paragraph, but now something very important has changed: the hiatus disappeared. To fully grasp the simplicity of that solution one must remember that that hiatus originally was Zeno' s only weapon against motion in the original discrete case. But now it looks, as if time and space may be 'discrete' as long as space is close-knit, or rather: well connected. In fact space in this case would not be discrete but rather 'macrocontiguous '. And although motion here would look somehow 'stroboscopie '23, it actually would not be discrete in the proper meaning of that term, simply for the reason, that there won't be a hiatus. Instead motion in this case always and with no exception will be characterized by an overlapping of the positions the arrow seemingly 'rests in'. For this strictly follows from the topological connectivity structure of a chain (with no negative tension in any of its parts)! This overlapping of those positions therefore is an inevitable consequence of the presupposed contiguity of the underlying space, or of its 22 Only the case (of a chain K), in which an element or link L(K)n+2 is shifted backwards (in the succession direction towards L(K)n) in such a way that it partially lies or starts before its preceding element or link L(K)n+1 is excluded. It is at first excluded by the reasonable condition that any such chain must not have a negative tension in any of its parts. Furthermore it is excluded by the presupposition that the arrow is strictly commensurate to the part or point of space it lies in. For the reason that the arrow impossibly alters its size by moving, the respective links of the chain also are strictly all of the same size. We then add to the presupposition of commensurateness the as well reasonable condition that the length of the arrow is always commensurate to the longest possible diameter of these respective elements or links of the chain. Then at last it is required that these elements or links are exclusively non degenerate closed conic sections, i.e. ellipses or circles with no negative curvature in any part of their perimeters. By these conditions the anyway rather 'exotic' case mentioned in the first line of this footnote is effectively excluded. 23 This characterization for the kind of a contiguous motion had been originally proposed by Peter Eisenhardt independently of the central topic of this paper, namely a solution of Zeno's paradox of motion. This content downloaded from 84.186.94.240 on Fri, 24 May 2013 20:14:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions A Solution of Zeno' s Paradox of Motion 1 59 linked connectivity. Thus the overlapping of the positions is precisely the expression of the contiguity of the motion itself. And such the arrow flies nicely along the links ofthat chain, (as long as they are commensurate). Case closed. How the motion of that arrow would look like on such a 'macrocontiguous ' path can be seen in Figures 3a, 3b and 3c. * overlapping of ** . overlapping of positions 1 and 2 positions 2 and 3 Figure 3a: Contiguous motion on a chain with arbitrary tension The difference between Figure 3a and Figure 3b is, that in 3a we see a chain with arbitrary tension, but in 3b a chain with maximal tension. The case with maximal tension is of some significance because one here can see perhaps most convincingly that from the contiguity of the chain inevitably follows an overlapping in the arrows (positions in its) motion, i. e. its contiguous motion. 1 > 3- > : * : :** : * overlapping of **. overlapping of positions 1 and 2 positions 2 and 3 Figure 3b: Contiguous motion on a chain with maximal tension Figure 3c then displays the case of a chain with an admissible minimal tension. This content downloaded from 84.186.94.240 on Fri, 24 May 2013 20:14:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 160 Dan Kurth *** : L - ■>! L- > * overlapping of ** ■ overlapping of positions 1 and 2 positions 2 and 3 34C3K3K = no overlapping of positions 1 and 3 Figure 3c: Contiguous motion on a chain with admissible minimal tension For this solution the focus of the paradox also does not instantaneously shift from the problem of motion to the problem of infinitesimal motion. Zeno is defeated at nearly any scale (the infinitely small left aside for the moment), the larger the better. And this advantage of this solution is its problem. There is mainly one reason not to be content with this solution, although it obviously is a solution of Zeno' s paradox. That reason is that space simply doesn't look like being made of links (of chains) of arbitrary magnitude. If it is made of links (of chains), one rather would suggest, that it is made of very, very small 'annuii', i. e. of infinitely small or infinitesimal links. Thus, if the focus now does n o t instantaneously shift from the problem of motion to the problem of infinitesimal motion by itself, we will make it shift, i. e. we will look for the already announced discontinuous (rather than 'discrete' or better: macroscopic) connectivity structure. An established example of such a discontinuous connectivity structure, which then is required, is known as Antoine's necklace24. Antoine' s necklace is supposed to be a chain (of an arbitrary scale c) of links, which links again are chains (of a scale c 1), and the links of which again are chains (of a scale c 2) and so on, ad the abhorred infinitum. Antoine's necklace not only looks suspiciously familiar, it simply is isomorphic to the Cantor discontinuum , and then conclusively the discontiguum. But then it is different as well, in an other aspect, namely its topological connectivity. A twoscale fragment of Antoine's necklace is shown in Figure 4. 24 See for details of Antoine's necklace: D. Rolfsen: Knots and Links, Berkeley 1976. This content downloaded from 84.186.94.240 on Fri, 24 May 2013 20:14:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions A Solution of Zeno' s Paradox of Motion 161 Figure 4: A two-scale fragment of Antoine' s necklace Now, how does motion work on Antoine' s necklace. As well as on every fine chain, one might assume. And that is sort of true. Yet regrettably motion then is a bit cyclic, and in the 'real' Antoine' s necklace, i. e. the one with infinite dissections (formerly: partitions) these cycles are even actualinfinitely small ones. The reason is that one can move in the original Antoine' s necklace just on the elements, i. e. links (of scale c 1) of only that chain (of scale c) on which one has started, not regarding that this chain (of scale c) might be itself a link of a chain (of scale c + 1) and so on, or that these links (of scale c 1) are themselves chains composed of links (of scale c 2) and so on. In the preferred (Q)-case, which applies of course as well to Antoine' s necklace as to the Cantor discontinuum or the discontiguum, things aren't much better, just about the size of the difference between the infinite and the infinitesimal. But this very difference matters. It means that in the («>)-case one doesn't even have any link to start from. And just this provides an insight into the reason why Zeno cannot be defeated at the 'continuous horn' of his paradox. Different from the usual representation of the continuum, where it seems as if actual-infinitely many points would come to lie in between any two points of the continuum, in the (<»)-case of Antoine' s necklace the true reason why there can be no motion on a continuous tructure turns out to be that such a structure implies an intrinsic infinite downscaling (something one might call an 'absolute dissolution' or breakdown of that or any structure itself). In the (ß)-case however, there is a link to start from. But then we have just an infinitesimal cycle to move on, and we rather dislike that. To overcome this confinement o infinitesimal cyclicity we do claim that there is a zenoproof contiguous path through the entire Antoine's necklace (on whatever scale) if just one additional condition to the original construction of Antoine's necklace is satisfied. This condition says, that at any arbitrary crossing of two elements K1, K2 of a relatively higher scale c of the chain the This content downloaded from 84.186.94.240 on Fri, 24 May 2013 20:14:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 162 Dan Kurth elements LCK1) of the respective directly lower scale c 1 are linked not only among themselves as they do in the original construction, but are linked also to the elements L(K2) of the same scale c 1, which belong to (or are embedded in) that element K2 of scale c, which is just crossed by the element K1 to which the elements L(Kl) actually belong (or are embedded in). I call such a linking a 'crossing linking'. The difference of the normal kind of crossing (in the original Antoine' s necklace) and the respective crossing linking is shown in Figures 5 resp. 6 (but one has at least to look twice to see it). Figure 5: An ordinary fragment of Antoine's necklace (with n o crossing linking) Now we finally reached the zenoproof contiguous path through the entire 'Antoine's necklace with crossing linking' (on an arbitrary scale, but effectively of course only on the same scale on which the motion started). Yet it should well be understood, that such a respective crossing linking does n o t follow from the original algorithmic construction rule of Antoine's necklace, and that it also cannot simply be added to such an algorithmic rule of generation, but rather has to be added so to speak -by hand at any particular scale, when or where required. And at last it might have become evident that the (ß)-case of 'Antoine's necklace with crossing linking' is a model of the contiguum Aristotle, Leibniz and we had been after. Motion on a zenoproof contiguous path through the entire 'Antoine's necklace with crossing linking' (on whatever scale) over arbitrary distance is possible, even if it is a bit curvy. How such a crossing This content downloaded from 84.186.94.240 on Fri, 24 May 2013 20:14:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions A Solution of Zeno's Paradox of Motion 1 63 Figure 6: A fragment of Antoine' s necklace (with crossing linking) linking looks from the perspective of a respective object in motion for the end to be a bit mean, I will call it a 'zenomobil'is shown in Figure 7. The zenomobil starts at a, then is on ß, and then can choose between y{ or y2 as its next position. From the perspective of the zenomobil that looks just like a bifurcation. r2 Figure 7: A crossing linking from the perspective of a zenomobil (while moving on a fragment of 'Antoine's necklace with crossing linking') This content downloaded from 84.186.94.240 on Fri, 24 May 2013 20:14:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 164 Dan Kurth Finally we also want to get rid of that curvyness of our contiguous path through the entire 'Antoine' s necklace with crossing linking'. We will no longer submit to these links and chains. We want to move freely in all dimensions (at least three of them). So we leave Antoine' s necklace (with or without crossing Unkings) and prepare ourselves with Leibniz' chain armor for our struggle for the freedom of motion. III. Leibniz' Chain Armor Zeno's Arrow won't pierce: the Contiguous Link-Space The idea behind the design of Leibniz' chain armor is to extend the contiguous structure of the (Q)-case of 'Antoine' s necklace with crossing linking' to a three-dimensional space (e. g. with a Riemannian curvature at large scale) just alike the one which we believe to live and move in. Such a space then will be a contiguous space, i. e. an infinitely dense connected link-space. (By our presupposition this contiguous link structure then is confined to an infinitesimal scale!) And not in the least for virtue of his 'rami, hami, unci' and above all his 'annuii' this space shall be called 'Leibniz' chain armor'. In Figure 8 one might get in quite a magnification a glimpse of how Leibniz' chain armor might be imagined on its infinitesimal scale. Figure 8: A fragment of Leibniz' chain armor This content downloaded from 84.186.94.240 on Fri, 24 May 2013 20:14:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions A Solution of Zeno' s Paradox of Motion 1 65 Concerning the mentioned motion it evidently has to be conceived as a motion on arbitrary two dimensional surfaces of intersection through this space, one of which with some imagination can be 'seen' in Figure 9. Figure 9: Leibniz' tunica: a surface of intersection through Leibniz' chain armor For reasons, which soon will become evident, we will call such a surface of intersection through Leibniz' chain armor 'Leibniz' tunica'. Leibniz' tunica is in my view not just a compelling step on the way from the respective rather aprioristic considerations of Leibniz concerning the ontotopology of the contiguum to a more physical interpretation i an even rather modern sense, but first of all it is a strikingly fitting model for the central idea or metaphor of reference V, the first of these two exceptional allusions in Leibniz writings to the very structure of the contiguum mentioned in the above paragraph concerning The Definition of the Contiguum'. I then characterised these two references as the ones most intimately resuming the argument of this paper, a characterisation already proven for 'the barbs and hooks and tiny rings, and hooks of hooks'. So now it shall be proven for the infinitely enfolded cloth or tunica as well. Therefore the respective evidence shall be displayed once more as well for reasons of supporting the recollection as for emphasizing that striking resemblance to our surface of intersection through Leibniz' chain armor, which from now on rightfully shall be called: Leibniz' tunica. This content downloaded from 84.186.94.240 on Fri, 24 May 2013 20:14:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 166 Dan Kurth "[...] ac proinde divisio continui non consideranda ut arenae in grana, sed ut chartae vel tunicae in plicas, itaque licet plicae numero infinito, aliae alus minores fiant, non ideò corpus unquam in puncta seu minima dissolvetur. [...] atque ita non fit dissolutio in puncta usque, licet quodlibet punctum à quolibet motu différât. Quemadmodum si tunic am, plicis in infinitum multiplicatis, ita signari ponamus ut nulla sit plica tarn parva, quin nova plica subdividatur: atque ita nullum punctum in tunica assignabile rit, quin diverso à vicinis motu cieatur, non tarnen ab iis divelletur, necque dici poterit tunicam in puncta usque resolutam esse, sed plicae licet aliae aliis in infinitum inores, semper extensa sunt corpora, et puncta nunquam partes fiunt, sed semper extrema tantum manen t" (C, 615). Thus our attack on Zeno' s paradox of motion led us prepared with Leibniz' armings and cloths far beyond our original object. So now, at last, only a few remarks might be spent regarding the entanglement of the (Q)-case discontiguum already left so far behind and Leibniz' chain armor. At the infinitesimal scale of space, which both these structures refer to, there might be something like an actual intertwining of these structures or at least of structures related to these. Modern theories like superstring theory25 and/or quantum gravity are about the structure of space or space-time at such scale. Furtheron one might feel a slight allusion to superstrings imagining the discontiguum, and Leibniz' chain armor or the contiguous link-space might not less be a suggestion of the Ashtekar Rovelli Smolin 'loop (space) representation ' in quantum gravity26. And what has made Zeno's paradox so puzzling once, might have had to do with the deeply concealed ways of how sit venia verbo to move from the one to the other. But certainly that's going too far and so at least for now we'll lay such speculation to rest with Zeno. Dan Kurth, M. A., Institut für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften, Johann Wolfgang GoetheUniversität , Robert Mayer-Strasse 1, D-60054 Frankfurt am Main 25 See as an earlier survey: M. B. Green/J. H. Schwarz/E. Witten: Superstring Theory, vols. I, II, Cambridge 1987. 26 See A. Ashtekar: Old Problems in the Light of new Variables; C. Rovelli: Loop Representation in Quantum Gravity, L. Smolin: Nonperturbative Quantum Gravity via the Loop Representation, all in: A. Ashtekar/J. Stachel (eds.): Conceptual Problems of Quantum Gravity, Boston 1991. This content downloaded from 84.186.94.240 on Fri, 24 May 2013 20:14:03 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions | {
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Negative Epistemic Exemplars to appear in Sherman & Gouen (eds.), Overcoming Epistemic Injustice: Social and Psychological Perspectives . Rowman & Littlefield. Emily Sullivan, Delft University of Technology Mark Alfano, Delft University of Technology & Australian Catholic University Abstract In this chapter, we address the roles that exemplars might play in a comprehensive response to epistemic injustice. Fricker defines epistemic injustices as harms people suffer specifically in their capacity as (potential) knowers. We focus on testimonial epistemic injustice, which occurs when someone's assertoric speech acts are systematically met with either too little or too much credence by a biased audience. Fricker recommends a virtue-theoretic response: people who do not suffer from biases should try to maintain their disposition towards naive testimonial justice, and those who find themselves already biased should cultivate corrective testimonial justice by systematically adjusting their credence in testimony up or down depending on whether they are hearing from someone whom they may be biased against or in favor of. We doubt that the prominent admiration-emulation model of exemplarism will be much use in this connection, so we propose two ways of learning from negative exemplars to better conduct one's epistemic affairs. In the admiration-emulation model, both the identification of what a virtue is and the cultivation of virtues identified thusly proceed through the admiration of virtuous exemplars. We show that this model has serious flaws and argue for two alternatives: the envy-agonism model and the ambivalence-avoidance model. Keywords epistemic virtue, epistemic exemplar, admiration, envy, ambivalence, epistemic injustice Word count: 6285 (6500 maximum) 2 Introduction In this chapter, we address the roles that exemplars might play in a comprehensive response to epistemic injustice. Fricker (2007) defines epistemic injustices as harms people 1 suffer specifically in their capacity as (potential) knowers. While recognizing that distributive epistemic injustice is rampant, insofar as members of disadvantaged groups tend to receive worse educations, in this paper we are especially interested in addressing what Fricker calls testimonial epistemic injustice, which occurs when someone's assertoric speech acts are systematically met with either too little or too much credence by a biased audience. The bias in question could be 2 explicit or implicit (or both). In either case, a society in which testimonial epistemic injustices are commonplace is one in which some people's assertions are unjustifiably ignored, met with excessive skepticism, or never solicited, while other people's assertions are solicited even when they have nothing valuable to add, echoed and amplified without warrant, and accepted without the application of sufficient critical scrutiny. Various epistemic harms are likely to be endemic to such a society, afflicting not just those whose testimony is quashed but also audiences (and audiences of audiences) that fail to learn as much and as well as they otherwise could -- not to mention the difficulty of reality-testing when surrounded by yes-men (sometimes referred to in popular culture as a symptom of 'affluenza'). Fricker recommends a virtue-theoretic response to the problem of testimonial epistemic injustice: people who do not suffer from biases should try to maintain their disposition towards naive testimonial justice, and those who find themselves already biased should cultivate corrective testimonial justice by systematically adjusting their credence in testimony up or down depending on whether they are hearing from someone whom they may be biased against or in favor of. Sherman (2015) has argued that this injunction is hopeless. If I believe that I'm putting too little credence in what you have to say, I'll already have adjusted my credences, and if I think I'm putting just the right amount of credence in what you have to say, I'll regard any adjustment as epistemically unwarranted. Perhaps when it comes to asking questions, I could realize that I've sought too much testimony from one party and not enough from another, but in Fricker's core case of adjusting one's credence in testimony that one has already received, there seems to be a serious problem. Sherman argues that this problem is so intractable that we should abandon the project of correcting testimonial epistemic injustice by cultivating corrective virtues. In this chapter, we 1 This publication was supported by a subaward agreement from the University of Connecticut with funds provided by Grant No. 58942 from John Templeton Foundation. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of UConn or John Templeton Foundation. 2 Medina (2012) and Yap (2017) have convincingly argued that, while credibility deficits may be more obviously problematic, credibility excesses deserve a place in the epistemic rogues gallery. 3 contend that this move is premature: while a purely individualized virtue-theoretic response to epistemic injustice is a non-starter, there remains room for community-level cultivation of corrective dispositions and eradication of biases. That said, we argue that the leading 3 community-level approach to corrective dispositions--identifying exemplars through admiration and emulation--is problematic. Instead, we propose two ways of learning from negative exemplars to better conduct one's epistemic affairs. Here is the plan for this paper: in section 1, we sketch the most popular exemplarist framework in contemporary philosophy, the admiration-emulation model, in which both the identification of what a virtue is and the cultivation of virtues identified thusly proceed through the admiration of exemplars. We show that this model has serious flaws regardless of whether exemplars are assumed to embody naive testimonial justice or corrective testimonial justice. Next, in section 2, we spell out an alternative framework: the envy-agonism model. Then, in section 3, we articulate the (mutually compatible) ambivalence-avoidance model. Both count as negative exemplarisms because they are rooted in negative emotional reactions to imperfect exemplars. We conclude by speculating about future directions for research using the envy-agonism and ambivalence-avoidance models. 1 The admiration-emulation model Exemplarism has a long history in both Christian philosophy (emerging especially in Augustine, on which see Kondoleon 1970) and Chinese philosophy (most notably in Confucianism, on which see Olberding 2012). In both traditions, the basic idea is to start not with abstract principles that guide the cultivation and expression of virtue, but with admired individuals, whom one imitates or emulates. In the Christian tradition on which Zagzebski's (2004) exemplarism is based, the prime exemplar is God. Becoming divine may seem like a tall order, so this version of exemplarism comes with a bridge: the incarnation of Jesus Christ. While emulating the disembodied Father may be intimidating, modeling oneself on the embodied Son is expected to be less daunting. The WWJD meme has its origins in the Bishop of Hippo. In this model, one begins by admiring the exemplar. Admiration, if it survives reflective scrutiny, motivates the admirer to both understand better the psychic economy of the exemplar and to emulate the exemplar's (inner and outer) life. In her more recent work, Zagzebski (2017) expands the range of exemplars worth emulating to include non-divine and non-Christian individuals, laying out a taxonomy of three types: the saint (who exemplifies compassion), the sage (who exemplifies wisdom), and the hero (who exemplifies courage). It is not a straightforward task to translate this taxonomy to the epistemic realm. Is someone who practices 3 A comprehensive approach would, among other things, evaluate and modify the structure of social epistemic networks with an eye to amplifying messages that need to be heard and dampening testimonial sources that are unreliable or otherwise objectionable (Alfano & Skorburg 2017a). 4 epistemic justice a saint? Intuitively not, since the saint goes beyond what justice demands. But practicing epistemic justice does not seem to be a matter of heroism or sagacity, either. While Zagzebski does briefly note that an epistemic exemplar might be a genius, even geniuses do not necessarily exemplify the dispositions associated with testimonial justice. Their epistemic excellences are, in the first instance, self-regarding rather than other-regarding: the genius excels at creativity and discovery, which furnish the genius herself with epistemic goods (though these could be subsequently conferred on others as well). Someone who embodies testimonial justice, by contrast, manages to refrain from harming others in their capacity as knowers. What would an exemplar of testimonial justice look like? Fricker (2007) helpfully distinguishes two types of testimonial justice: naive and corrective. The exemplar of naive testimonial justice would be someone uncorrupted by sexist, racist, and other prejudices that lead people to place too little epistemic trust in women and minorities while lending too much weight to the utterances of white men. Such a person might resemble Prince Myshkin in Dostoyevsky's The Idiot (1874 / 2004). In any event, there is an essential difficulty in emulating or imitating such an epistemic naif: once innocence is lost, it cannot be regained. We cannot return from our postlapsarian world to epistemic Eden, no matter how much we might admire those who never tasted the forbidden apple. Fricker (2007) recognizes this problem and suggests that, rather than trying to restore our epistemic innocence, we should self-consciously aim to correct the biases that we know we embody. In the admiration-emulation model, this translates to identifying -- through the sentiment of admiration -- people who have managed to corral their biases, then following in their footsteps. This raises five thorny problems. First, exemplars of corrective testimonial justice are likely to be invisible . Second, visible exemplars -- if they are too close to perfection -- are liable to provoke resentment rather than admiration. Third, admiration may be unreliable , especially in this context. Fourth, the admiration-emulation model seems to be a recipe for the (epistemically) rich getting richer , which seems contrary to the ideal of epistemic justice. Finally, the admiration-emulation model only makes use of a sliver of one's social network, presuming that it's impossible to learn from (deeply) epistemically imperfect people . We summarize each of these problems before turning to our alternative envy-agonism and ambivalence-avoidance models. Exemplars of corrective testimonial justice are likely to be invisible for two reasons. In general, humans are better at noticing and attending to deviations from norms than consistency with them (Rozin & Royzman 2001). Someone whose behavior and credence-fixing accords with the norm of justice is therefore unlikely to catch enough attention to become the object of admiration. This is a problem for the admiration-emulation model in connection with any justice-related virtue, as opposed to virtues that motivate supererogatory (norm-deviant) actions. Corrective epistemic justice in particular is likely to be invisible for another reason, though. Someone who signals -- either explicitly or through their facial expression and body language -- 5 that they are making an effort to take an interlocutor seriously thereby fails to live up to the standards of corrective testimonial justice. Ostentatiously signaling that you're making an effort to believe someone against whom you harbor prejudices is not a good way treat them with the epistemic respect that is their due as a knower. If this is right, then exemplars of corrective testimonial justice must be self-effacing about their corrective strategies. Doing so protects the people against whom they have biases, but it also makes them undetectable and difficult to emulate. Supposing, though, that you knew someone's history in such detail that you could conclude that they must now be practicing corrective testimonial justice (e.g., because they used to be openly prejudiced and now show no sign of bias), the problems don't stop. As Florien Cramwinckel and her colleagues (2015, 2016) have shown, role models are admired only when they don't deviate too much from social norms. Especially virtuous exemplars of corrective testimonial justice are therefore as likely to be derogated as admired. This point relates to the third problem: despite Zagzebski's insistence to the contrary, there is ample reason to doubt the reliability of admiration. It seems to suffer both from systematic false negatives and systematic false positives. False negatives crop up when too-perfect exemplars provoke resentment and derogation rather than admiration. Zagzebski does mention this possibility, but she is not sufficiently perturbed by it. Indeed, it is striking how many of the exemplars listed in her book (e.g., Jesus, Gandhi, the Trappist monks of Tibhurine) met violent ends. False positives may be even more problematic. Admiration has a tendency to spread from a single aspect to the whole person, leading people to ignore or even imitate serious flaws in those they admire (Archer et al. forthcoming; la Caze forthcoming). The fourth and fifth problems are related. Virtuous exemplars are neither prevalent nor evenly distributed (Alfano 2017). This means that any given person is likely to have direct access to just a few exemplars, and that people in more epistemically just communities are likely to have access to many more exemplars than those who find themselves in deeply epistemically unjust communities. The uneven distribution of exemplars means that those who stand most in need of corrective epistemic justice are least likely to have role models worth emulating, while those who are already relatively well-off enjoy an abundance of exemplars ready-to-hand. In addition, epistemically vicious people in epistemically vicious communities are especially liable to respond in problematic ways to exemplars. As Alessandra Tanesini argues, people who are the furthest away from intellectual virtue are precisely those who are less likely to pay attention. Exposure to exemplars might work only if it stimulates emulation. It is counterproductive if it leads to demoralisation or if it fans an already inflated conception of the self. Sadly, those [...] who have developed non virtuous habits are most likely to react to models in precisely these ways. (2016, p. 524) 6 This is not, in itself, an objection against the admiration-emulation model; maybe life is just unfair. But it does indicate that we should make an effort to find additional models for the cultivation of moral and epistemic virtues that don't exacerbate existing inequalities. Doing so will require us to find ways to learn from flawed exemplars, increasing the proportion of one's social network that one benefits from. If there are ways to cultivate epistemic justice that employ emotions other than admiration (even negative emotions) and exemplars other than saints, sages, heroes, and geniuses, we would all benefit from knowing about them. If our arguments in this section are on the right track, then admiration-emulation exemplarism is unlikely to be much help to those wishing to cultivate testimonial justice. In the next two sections, we spell out alternative models that do not suffer from the drawbacks articulated here. 2 The envy-agonism model In this section, we explore our first alternative to admiration-emulation exemplarism: the envy-agonism model. Whereas, in the admiration-emulation model, the admired exemplar is evaluated with a wholly positive emotion, in this alternative framework the crucial emotion is envy. Like admiration, envy is a socially upward-looking emotion; to admire or envy someone you must see them as superior on some valued dimension or as possessing a good that you lack. It borders on absurdity to contemplate either admiring or envying oneself (at least, one's current self). As Sara Protasi (2016, forthcoming a, forthcoming b) has argued, envy differs from admiration on a number of further dimensions. First, whereas admiration is pleasant, envy is painful. Second, admiration is affiliative; it tends to be accompanied by identification with the admired. Envy, by contrast, is competitive; it carries no affiliative sentiments and may even sunder people who were previously connected. Third, admiration tends to motivate either passivity or emulation of the admired, while envy is more multifarious. Protasi (forthcoming b) helpfully distinguishes four types of envy depending on whether the envied good is perceived as obtainable and whether the envier focuses primarily on the good itself or the envied individual, as indicated in Table 1. Table 1: Protasi's taxonomy of envy. focus on the good focus on the envied good is obtainable emulative envy aggressive envy good is unobtainable inert envy spiteful envy We are especially interested in what Protasi calls emulative envy, though we prefer to call it agonistic envy for reasons that will become clear below. 7 What first comes to mind when one thinks of envy is most likely one of the other varieties. Protasi argues that aggressive envy may motivate the envier to steal, while spiteful envy motivates her to spoil and inert envy motivates her to sulk. Agonistic envy, by contrast, tends to motivate competition and leveling up (or one-upmanship) rather than leveling down. While painful, agonistic envy leads the envier to think (and to try to show), "I can do better than that." Agonistic envy thus makes sense only in some axiological contexts involving infinite or fungible goods. If I envy your possession of a non-fungible good (e.g., a painting or a child), then the only way for me to obtain it is to take it from you, while the only way for me to become your equal is to destroy or ruin the good. However, if I envy your achievements, honors, skills, or virtues, it is possible for me to do as well as you (or even better) without you losing anything other than relative rank or position. Indeed, one-upping someone by tearing them down is hardly sporting, and in agonistic cultures such underhanded methods are frowned upon (Burckhardt 1872 / 1999). The point of the agon, in other words, is to establish the conditions for the possibility of demonstrations of excellence. Exemplars serve, in this context, as milestones to surpass or worthy competitors. Besting an unworthy opponent is not a cause for celebration but its own form of humiliation. If this is right, then resentment is inconsistent with agonistic envy. This may seem like an ugly portrait of the development of virtue, calling to mind Freudian (1913 / 1990) patricide and Bloom's (1973) "anxiety of influence." In addition, contemporary philosophers are squeamish about competitive notions of virtue (Annas 2015, p. 16). Perhaps the clearest articulation of the agonistic model occurs in the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche (Alfano forthcoming). As Anthony Jensen (2016, p. 145) has shown, in the second Untimely Meditation, Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life (Nietzsche 1874 / 1997), Nietzsche argues for an agonistic approach to historical exemplars in which history is a "selective construction out of only that which in the past was [epistemically] 'justly' judged worthy to serve as an . . . [other] which, by its opposition, can sharpen and strengthen the qualities in the reader that best serve life." Jensen calls this approach to historical exemplars affirmative (as opposed to the monumental, antiquarian, and critical approaches Nietzsche criticizes in this work), suggesting that it is about "neither recognition nor emulation, but both legislation and competition" (p. 146). In this way, affirmative history serves life better than monumental history, which closely aligns with the admiration-emulation model, and which tends to erect idols that shout, "Here and no further!" In an agonistic setting, even the highest exemplars are not perfect and can, in principle, be outdone. While Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life is an early and flawed work, Nietzsche continued to theorize about the value and use of envy in his middle works. For instance, in Human, All-too-human section 170, he argues that Hesiod's good Eris, ambition [ Ehrgeiz ], gave [Greek artists'] genius its wings. Now this ambition demands above all that their work should preserve the highest excellence in their own eyes , as they understand excellence, that is to say, without 8 reference to a dominating taste or the general opinion as to what constitutes excellence [....] It is thus they aspire to victory over their competitors as they understand victory, a victory before their own seat of judgment, they want actually to be more excellent; then they exact agreement from others as to their own assessment of themselves. It should be clear that someone who competes with exemplars in this fashion will not partake of aggressive or spiteful envy, let alone inert envy, since none of these would lead them to actually be more excellent than the exemplars with whom they compete. Nietzsche continues his reflections on Eris in section 29 of the "The Wanderer and His Shadow," which was appended to Human, All-too-human in 1880. In this section, titled " Envy and its nobler brother ," he writes, "The envious man is conscious of every aspect in which the man he envies exceeds the common measure and desires to push him down to it -- or to raise himself up to the height of the other: out of which there arise two different modes of action which Hesiod designated as the evil and the good Eris." This distinction maps directly onto Protasi's taxonomy. What Nietzsche here calls "good Eris" is emulative or agonistic envy, which prompts the envier to rise to or above the height of the envied. Finally, in Daybreak section 38, Nietzsche observes that the older Greeks felt differently about envy from the way we do; Hesiod counted it among the effects of the good , beneficent Eris, and there was nothing offensive in attributing to the gods something of envy: which is comprehensible under a condition of things the soul of which was contest; contest, however, was evaluated and determined as good. Such contests could be staged between the living and the dead, as Nietzsche envisions in his discussion of historical exemplars in The Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life . Direct competition may be more effective, however, since both (or all) competitors can dynamically interact -- treating one another as exemplars to be surpassed. Such ongoing interactive feedback loops have been hypothesized to build and extend character traits into social networks (Alfano 2016; Alfano & Skorburg 2017b). Alas, the rich-get-richer problem mentioned above may only be exacerbated by such feedback loops. As Nietzsche notes, the envy-agonism model works best in a culture that values contests and victories, in which striving to excel and wanting to be recognized as excellent are not considered shameful motives. In such a culture, exemplars are highly visible rather than invisible. Moreover, such a culture would not automatically frown upon bragging or induce its members to engage in paradoxical humble-bragging (Alfano & Robinson 2014). Such a culture provides the infrastructure for agonistic competition; it establishes what we called above the conditions for the possibility of demonstrations of excellence, which, to be effective, must reliably signal both when someone has demonstrated excellence on some valued dimension and 9 when they have not. We doubt whether many contemporary communities celebrate excellence in epistemic justice in this way. This does not mean that it would be impossible to construct them, but it does mean that we have our work cut out for us. Two additional concerns with the envy-agonism model relate to right-reason criterion and the modal robustness (or not) of envy. Many, perhaps most, virtue theorists agree that an act only counts as fully virtuous if it is done for the right reason. One might wonder whether envy-based reasons ever satisfy this condition. Our aim in this section has been to establish that, while many stereotypical cases of envy (e.g., aggressive, spiteful, and inert envy) are clearly problematic, agonistic envy is not. If this partial rehabilitation of envy succeeds, then acting out of agonistic envy does not violate the right-reason criterion. Regarding modal robustness, one might worry that someone who practices epistemic justice out of agonistic envy would easily cease to do so in nearby possible worlds where they no longer felt envious. There are multiple ways that envy might be obliterated. For example, the target of envy could turn out not to be so impressive after all; or the target of envy could develop vicious epistemic habits; or the target of envy could be decisively bested. Whatever the reason, someone who no longer felt envious would no longer be spurred to better themselves. We recognize this is a serious concern, and that it emphasizes the need for the sorts of ongoing interactive feedback loops mentioned above. In the meantime, it would be helpful to have a different negative exemplarist model. In the next section, we articulate one: the ambivalence-avoidance model. 3 The ambivalence-avoidance model The envy-agonism model involves a negative emotion that motivates an agent to act in a similar way to an exemplar in the community. On the ambivalence-avoidance model a negative emotion motivates an agent to act in a dis similar way to the exemplar. To be ambivalent is to have mixed emotions toward an object or action. Ambivalence is uniquely characterized as an agent having incompatible desires and unable to to decide which of these desires she ultimately should act on. Most notably, Harry Frankfurt (2001) argues that ambivalence negatively affects the agent and keeps her away from the ethical ideal of wholeheartedness. There is a particularly negative aspect to ambivalence that is not present with other mixed emotions. The ambivalent agent has no clear way to reconcile the emotion because he has a strong desire for incompatible goods. One desire will always be frustrated. To illustrate, Table 2 outlines how Amelie Rorty (2014) helpfully distinguishes ambivalence from other mixed emotions. For other emotions agents have the potential to get clear on one's ordering of preferences or to seek new evidence; however, endorsing incompatible options leaves the agent frustrated. Given the nature of ambivalence it is not clear how one can use this emotion to better his position, as Frankfurt argues ambivalence threatens the very nature of autonomy. However, 10 we argue that ambivalence can serve epistemic agents seeking exemplars to combat testimonial injustice. Table 2: Rorty's taxonomy of mixed emotions Attitude / Emotion Internal Logic Why the attitude arises uncertainty Neither / Nor Lack of evidence indecisiveness Maybe this / Maybe that Unclear ordering of preferences vacillation Now this / Now that Erratic shifting of preferences ambivalence Both / And Endorsing all options and thinking them incompatible In this paper we are not so much concerned with ambivalence with regard to what to do, but ambivalence in regard to particular exemplars. We saw that one of the central problems with the admiration-emulation model is that exemplars worthy of admiring are invisible. One reason they remain invisible is because it is easier for humans to notice and attend to deviations from norms than consistency with them. The ambivalence-avoidance model takes this tendency as a starting point. Agents look to exemplars that engage in practices that are off-putting and actively avoid those behaviors. It is not simply that one sees a behavior that is off-putting, but that the agent has a mixed feeling relationship with the exemplar. The agent takes the exemplar as having valuable epistemic qualities, but also at the same time housing epistemic qualities that are undesirable and can lead to acting in epistemically unjust ways. To resolve the attitude of ambivalence the agent avoids the undesirable epistemic behavior and engages in correcting his own biases, while at the same time holding on to the things the exemplar does well. For example, in order for someone to become a better public speaker, one approach is to seek to emulate a good public speaker. However, starting from zero, this is not necessarily a winning strategy. It is not very telling exactly what it is a good public speaker does that makes the speech enjoyable to listen to. At the same time, it is not very helpful to see a terrible public speaker either. Since there are many things that are going wrong with the speech it is hard to pinpoint exactly what to avoid. However, a public speaker that has good qualities and bad qualities one can more clearly learn what to avoid. It is much more telling why it is important to give eye contact to an audience by seeing a speaker who looks down the whole time, but is generally OK, than it is to see a seasoned speaker. It is the emotion of ambivalence toward the speaker that allows one to use the speaker as a negative exemplar to understand which actions to avoid. This ambivalence-avoidance model can also serve for combating corrective testimonial injustice. Ambivalence helps to identify exemplars that engage in acts of epistemic injustice. 11 This identification can lead to a correction of behavior through avoiding the behavior of the negative exemplar. Consider a commonplace example of epistemic injustice in the workplace. In many professions meetings offer a platform--through testimony--for individuals to show their value to the company and their epistemic merit more generally. One all too common phenomenon is that ideas of women are ignored or co-opted by other male colleagues as their own idea. On the ambivalence-avoidance model this male colleague can serve as a negative exemplar. First, the "idea stealer" presumably has epistemic strong suits that many in the company recognize. Second, a woman whose idea was co-opted will have a negative emotional reaction to the unjust act, leaving her in a state of ambivalence toward the male colleague. She will then seek to avoid this type of behavior as a way of correcting her own biases toward others. The recognition of testimonial injustice through ambivalence can also happen on a collective level. For example, women on President Obama's staff, feeling ambivalent toward the male-dominated environment, engaged in the practice of amplification . Whenever a woman made a valuable point the other women repeated it, giving credit to its author. This served as a method to prevent others from engaging in testimonial injustice through ignoring or co-oping the ideas of others (Hatch, 2015). The women sought to avoid the behavior of co-opting ideas and in the processes identified a corrective strategy that would help others who were the victim of such testimonial injustice. In this sense corrective testimonial justice can lead to collectives adopting burdened virtues (Tessman 2005) that otherwise would not be formed if they lived in an already epistemically just community. While it is no doubt the case that those on the receiving end of epistemic injustice are more likely to recognize it through ambivalence and use avoidance to resolve the feeling and correct for injustice, so long as the negative exemplar has some good epistemic qualities, anyone can learn to correct their own credences and behavior to be closer to what is epistemically just. Thus, the ambivalence-avoidance model helps with Sherman's objection to a virtue theoretic response to testimonial injustice. Recall, Sherman argued that if someone believes she is putting too little credence in what another says, then she already would have adjusticed her credences. Interestingly, on the ambivalence-avoidance model, an agent could believe that her practices surrounding testimony are appropriate, with it still being possible for this belief to be shaken by a negative exemplar. The case is when a reflective agent sees a negative exemplar engage in a practice similar to what she would have done and feels ambivalence toward the exemplar as a result. For example, seeing someone else commit acts of testimonial injustice to oneself or a friend, creates the space needed to begin reflective engagement. What is it that this negative exemplar did that left me feeling ambivalent? What behavior should I avoid to resolve this feeling? A reflective agent can then begin to realize that there are certain behavior she best avoid in hearing and weighting testimony from others. The ambivalence-avoidance model also helps with some of the other problems plagued by the admiration-emulation model. First, it helps with the rich-getting-richer problem. Agents can draw on a larger network of possible exemplars, besides geniuses, sages, or heros. Exemplars 12 do not need to be those who engage in the epistemic supererogatory. Exemplars can be those who fail. Second, ambivalence does not spread like admiration: You aren't looking at negative exemplars through rose colored glasses. One possible worry is that once you start to doubt some aspects of the agent, then other aspects that might be good are questioned. However, this feeling is less ambivalence and more uncertainty . You begin to doubt the exemplar and resolve it by seeking more evidence about whether these are epistemically good or bad behaviors. Ambivalence is the mixed feeling that endorses incompatible aspects of a thing, in this case one is endorsing that the exemplar has both bad and good epistemic qualities. Thus, unlike the admiration-emulation model you are not taking the individual as a whole package, avoiding all of their behaviors. Instead, you have ambivalent feelings regarding who they are an epistemic agent. There are attributes about the person that you like, but have mixed feelings about them precisely due to problematic epistemic behaviors that they engage in. Lastly, the ambivalence-avoidance model satisfies the right-reason criterion. One can still be thoroughly motivated to avoid engaging in particular behaviors in line with the way a virtuous agent would be motivated to avoid behaviors. Avoidance is done through the desire of obtaining corrective testimonial justice. The model is still a case of negative exemplarism because the exemplar is not one that is virtuous and the agent comes to recognize the person as an exemplar through a negative--though epistemically and virtuously justified--emotion. 4 Conclusion In this paper we made three central claims. First, we argued contra Sherman that a virtue-theoretic account of corrective testimonial justice is possible so long as it is based in a community-level approach. Epistemic agents do not simply look inward to correct credences, but look to exemplars within their broader epistemic community to cultivate corrective behaviors. Second, we argued that the leading account of epistemic exemplarism, the adimiration-emulation model, does not help to resolve Sherman's worry and has problems of its own. These problems were regarding the visibility of exemplars, the reliability of admiration, the epistemic rich getting richer problem, and the problem of only learning from very few people in the community. We then outlined two additional models where agents can learn from negative exemplars that avoids some of the problems of the admiration-emulation model. The envy-agonism model and the ambivalence-avoidance model most straightforwardly help with broadening one's epistemic community to more than a few individuals. This helps to solve the problem of the epistemic rich getting richer. Those who are entrenched in an epistemic community with few epistemically virtuous agents can still learn through negative exemplars. That said, there are still a few lingering worries one might have with the approaches we are offering. Epistemic exemplars can still remain invisible to those who are already completely epistemically unjust. Furthermore, emotions generally are not necessarily reliable. So envy and ambivalence aren't any more or less reliable than admiration. Lastly, it is not clear that negative 13 emotions like envy or ambivalence are epistemically robust enough to sustain corrective behaviors in line with virtuous behavior. We addressed some of these worries throughout the paper, but there is a more general theme worth highlighting. It is important to note that the exemplar models we have outlined are not meant to be mutually exclusive. We do not think a single exemparist model will help to establish a surefire route to correct for testimonial injustice or to cultivate other epistemic virtues more generally. We take it that these models are to be used in tandem with each other and help the agent reach a sort of reflective equilibrium by cycling through several emotions and taking an emotional perspectivism on one's epistemic behaviors. Zagzebski herself advocates for this kind of approach to avoid problems of reliability (2017, 42). However, the problem is that Zagzebski does not give any examples of how other emotions could possibly figure into this reflective equilibrium. Instead, she focuses on the single emotion of admiration. We have shown here how relying on admiration alone is quite problematic. As an altnerative, we broadened the emotional spectrum for exemplarism. Precisely by including negative emotions an agent will have a rich tapestry to be reflective in a way that achieves perspectivism and an awareness of kind of biases that lead to epistemic injustice. With a more diverse set of exemplars admiration can still play a role in exemlarism so long as its negative effects are curtailed by other exemplarist emotions, such as envy and ambivalence. If what we have said here is on the right track, there is a new promising research opportunity. What other emotions could help to identify exemplars, both positive and negative? How is it that agents should weigh these different exemplarist models in becoming better epistemic agents to ensure reliability and robustness? We have only scratched the surface. References Alfano, M. (2015). Becoming less unreasonable: A reply to Sherman. Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective , 4(7): 59-62. Alfano, M. (2016). Friendship and the structure of trust. In A. Masala & J. Webber (eds.), From Personality to Virtue: Essays in the Psychology and Ethics of Character . Oxford University Press. Alfano, M. (2017). Epistemic situationism: An extended prolepsis. In M. Alfano & A. Fairweather (eds.), Epistemic Situationism . Oxford University Press. Alfano, M. (forthcoming). Nietzschean exemplarism. Ethics & Politics . Alfano, M. & Robinson, B. (2014). Bragging. Thought , 3(4): 263-72. Alfano, M. & Skorburg, J. A. (2017a). Extended knowledge, the recognition heuristic, and epistemic injustice. In D. Pritchard, J. Kallestrup, O. Palermos, & J. A. Carter (eds.), Extended Knowledge . Oxford University Press. 14 Alfano, M. & Skorburg, J. A. (2017b). The embedded and extended character hypotheses. In J. Kiverstein (ed.), Handbook of Philosophy of the Social Mind . Routledge. Annas, J. (2015). Virtue and heroism. Lindley lecture. URL = < https://kuscholarworks.ku.edu/handle/1808/19868 >. Retrieved 3 March 2018. Archer, A., Thomas, A., Engelen, B., & van de Ven, N. (forthcoming). Lord Jim: How exemplars can ruin your life. In A. Grahle & A. Archer (eds.), The Moral Psychology of Admiration . Rowman & Littlefield. Bloom, H. (1973). The Anxiety of Influence: A Theory of Poetry . Oxford University Press. Burckhardt, J. (1872 / 1999). The Greeks and Greek Civilization . Edited by O. Murray; translated by S. Stern. St. Martin's Griffin. Cramwinckel, F., Van den Bos, K., & Van Dijk, E. (2015). Reactions to morally motivated deviance. Current Opinion in Psychology , 6: 150-56. Cramwinckel, F., Van den Bos, K., Van Dijk, E., & Schut, M. (2016). Derogating benevolent behavior of deviant in-group members: Group processes within a real-life sample of heterosexual Christians. Social Influence , 11(1): 75-86. La Caze, M. (forthcoming). Judging in times of crisis: Wonder, admiration, and emulation. In A. Grahle & A. Archer (eds.), The Moral Psychology of Admiration . Rowman & Littlefield. Dostoyevsky, F. (1874 / 2004). The Idiot . Translated by D. McDuff. Penguin. Frankfurt, H. (2001). The dear self. Philosophers' Imprint , 1(0): 1-14. Freud, S. (1913 / 1990). Totem and Taboo . Translated by J. Strachey. Norton. Fricker, M. (2007). Epistemic Injustice. Oxford University Press. Hatch, J. (2015). "How The Women On Obama's Staff Made Sure Their Voices Were Heard." HuffingtonPost. Jensen, A. (2016). An Interpretation of Nietzsche's On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life. Routledge. Kondoleon, T. (1970). Divine exemplarism in Augustine. Augustinian Studies , 1: 181-195. Medina, J. (2012). The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and Resistant Imaginations. Oxford University Press. Nietzsche, F. (1874 / 1997). Untimely Meditations . Translation by R. J. Hollingdale. Edited by Daniel Breazeale. Cambridge University Press. Nietzsche, F. (1881 / 1997). Daybreak . Translation by R. J. Hollingdale. Edited by M. Clark & B. Leiter. Cambridge University Press. Olberding, A. (2012). Moral Exemplars in the Analects : The Good Person is That . Routledge. Protasi, S. (2016). Varieties of envy. Philosophical Psychology, 29(4): 535-49. Protasi, S. (forthcoming a). Invideo et amo: On envying the beloved. Philosophia . Protasi, S. (forthcoming b). Against happy self-surrender: A defense of emulative envy. In A. Grahle & A. Archer (eds.), The Moral Psychology of Admiration . Rowman & Littlefield. Robinson, B. & Alfano, M. (2016). I know you are but what am I? Anti-individualism about intellectual humility and wu-wei . Logos & Episteme , 7(4): 435-59. 15 Rorty, A. O. (2014). "The Ethics of Collaborative Ambivalence." Journal of Ethics, 18 (4):391-403. Rozin, P. & Royzman, E. (2001). Negativity bias, negativity dominance, and contagion. Personality and Social Psychology , 5(4): 296-320. Sherman, B. (2015). There's no (testimonial) justice: Why pursuit of a virtue is not the solution to epistemic injustice. Social Epistemology , 30(3): 229-50. Tanesini, A. (2016). Teaching virtue: Changing attitudes. Logos & Episteme , 7(4): 503-27. Tessman, L. (2005) Burdened Virtues: Virtue Ethics for Liberatory Struggles . Oxford University Press. Turri, J., Alfano, M., & Greco, J. (2017). Virtue epistemology. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy . Yap, A. (2017). Credibility excess and the social imaginary in cases of sexual assault. Feminist Philosophical Quarterly , 3(4): 1. Zagzebski, L. (2017). Exemplarist Moral Theory . Oxford University Press. Zagzebski, L. (2004). Divine Motivation Theory . Cambridge University Press. | {
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Walking in the Shoes of the Brain: An "Agent" Approach to Phenomenality and the Problem of Consciousness by Dan Bruiger dbruiger [at] telus [dot] net June 2018 Abstract: Given an embodied evolutionary context, the (conscious) organism creates phenomenality1 and establishes a first-person point of view with its own agency, through intentional relations made by its own acts of fiat,2 in the same way that human observers create meaning in language. 1. Introduction Beginning with Leibniz, it has seemed to many that there is an unbridgeable category gulf between one's conscious subjective experience and objective events in the brain3 that presumably cause it. Even though many neural correlates of consciousness have been identified, it remains unclear how physical processes could bring about vivid conscious subjective states such as feelings, sensory experience of color, smell, sound, and touch, as well as more subtle experiences such as memories, mental images, volition, thoughts, and dreams. Indeed, it remains unclear why in a material world there should be any such thing as conscious experience or exactly what purpose it serves [Chalmers 1995]. Part of the problem is that the method and ontology of science have excluded from consideration the very subjectivity and teleology that are the traditional fundaments of mind, so that the challenge to understand the mental in strictly physical terms of efficient causation understandably meets with frustration. The traditional obstacle to understanding mind in a materialist framework is that a causal explanation is sought for processes that must rightly be considered intentional. It is thus necessary to regard the physical brain not only as a causal system, but quintessentially as an intentional or virtual system as well-an agent with its own purposes and point of view distinct from those of the scientific observer. Therefore, let us here consider a system such as the brain to be such an agent as well as being a patient (in the archaic sense of the term). The challenge will be to understand the role of intentionality in mental agency, why it is required for an explanation of consciousness, and how and why an agent creates its phenomenality. 1 For clarity, I use the term 'phenomenality' to refer to the entire domain of what can enter consciousness, which includes sensory experience, emotion, imagination and memory, dreams, thought, etc. In short, everything for which there is "something it is like" [Nagel 1974] to be in that state. In many cases, it will refer in context to sensory experience. 2 Wiktionary: fiat: "An arbitrary or authoritative command or order to do something; an effectual decree." Online Etymological Dictionary: " 'authoritative sanction,' from Latin fiat 'let it be done'..., third person singular present subjunctive of fieri 'be done, become, come into existence'..., used as passive of facere 'to make, do.'" [http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=fiat] 3 I use 'brain' as an abbreviation for the whole information-processing system of an embodied environmentally embedded organism with a co-evolutionary history among other organisms-not merely the central nervous system or the matter inside the skull. The computational metaphor has been widely used for insight into the representational aspect of the mental, but widely criticized for endorsing a view of mind as disembodied. It has also been challenged for keeping the terms of discussion within the framework of efficient causation associated with mechanism [Rychlak 1994]. Yet, the deeper significance of computation as an approach to mind may be just the opposite of its mechanist association. Despite assimilating mind to machine ontologically, it invokes the intentionality of the human programmer who is, so to speak, epistemically put in the shoes of the brain. One is thereby positioned to grant the system itself a point of view. Toward this end, I propose the active and autonomous nature of mental agency as original cause, the very opposite of the traditional passive dependence of the physical that is enshrined in the notion of efficient cause. Reductive explanation in this context will not appeal to efficient causes transmitted throughout a physical system, as identified by an external observer. Rather, the system will be treated as an originating cause with a point of view and reasons of its own. The appropriate explanatory strategy is then to identify with that point of view in order to engage the cognitive tasks facing the system.4 2. Distinguishing among agents and points of view Intentionality is widely held to be a telltale sign of mental agency, to be contrasted with the causality that characterizes inanimate matter. Intentionality typically involves reference, of something to something else ("aboutness"). However, reference is not a property, state, or relationship inhering in or between things, but an action (i.e., intending) performed by an agent that needs to be specified. It is an operation of relating or mapping one thing or domain to another. These domains may differ in their fundamental nature-again, as defined by some agent. A picture, for example, might be a representation, in the domain of painted images, referring to a real landscape. (As such, it is the painter who first does the referring.) Similarly, a person might represent her thought, perception, or intention in a verbal statement, to which others may subsequently refer in various ways. The relevant agents, domains, and mappings must be specified before intentionality can be properly characterized. The rings of a tree, for example, may seem to track the age of the tree, or periods or environments favorable to growth [Montague 2010]. Yet, it is the external observer, not the tree itself, who establishes this relationship and who makes the reference or connection and does the tracking. Connections made by the tree itself (if such exist) are of a different sort. In all likelihood, the tree rings involve causal, but not intentional connections. On the other hand, we must assume there are systems besides human beings that do the kind of things we mean by referring, intending, and representing. In the case of such systems, it is paramount to distinguish clearly the intentionality of the system itself from that of the observer. The understanding of intentionality that descends from Brentano generally fails to make this distinction, largely because it is tied to human language usage. "Reference" is 4 Note that such an approach does not imply an indefinite recursion of agents within agents, but points rather to a special executive function within the brain where the buck stops. The interloper is the investigating observer, not some part of the system required to serve as another interior observer. taken for granted to mean linguistic reference or something modeled on it. Intentionality is thus often considered inherently propositional, without the explicit caveat that-strictly speaking and so far as we know-only people formulate propositions. Toward a more useful notion of intentionality, we need a broader notion of 'proposition' as an assertion or connection made by a system itself, for its own ends and reasons. Intention must be thought of in an appropriately abstract sense, as a mapping made by an agent. While human observers, following their own intentionality, make assertions of causality, intentional systems in general perform operations that must be viewed in their own right, quite apart from whatever physical processes a human observer may propose to account for them. This runs counter to Dennett's [1987] understanding of 'intentional system' as a system to which a human observer imputes intentionality as a matter of convenience, according to the "intentional stance." Effectively, his bias excludes systems other than human beings from having their own intentionality. This reflects the longstanding mechanist bias of western science from its inception: that matter inherently lacks the power of original causality we attribute to humans (or gods) as agents, and can only passively suffer the transmission of efficient causes [Bruiger 2016]. The upshot of all this is that the project to explain consciousness scientifically requires some distinctions that are often glossed over. One must clearly distinguish causal relations (between brain states and environment) from intentional relations. And one must distinguish the observer's speculations from the brain's actual strategies considered from its own point of view. In other words, an observer is free to speculate concerning both causal and intentional connections occurring between organism and world; but, we should bear in mind that such speculations are literally assertions made by the observer, from her perspective. With that caveat, the observer may propose specific connections that she believes the brain (organism) makes, in order to try to understand the latter's intentionality. That is, she may attempt to model brain processes from the organism's own perspective, as involving its assertions, as much as that is feasible from an outside perspective. Such modeling is, in effect, an attempt to "walk in the shoes of the brain." To grasp phenomenality as an expression of a system's proper intentionality, one must also distinguish the phenomenality itself from propositions (facts) that may be asserted about phenomenal content or derived from it. While I am the unique witness of my own phenomenality, I am also an agent who may formulate propositions regarding its content. These enter the public domain when expressed, either as facts about the world or about the experience itself. Effectively, an intentional analysis of brain processes is obliged to proceed in terms of propositions, as a third-person description.5 This is least problematic when dealing with human cognition, since humans are language users who normally translate their thoughts into verbal sentences. It is more problematic when dealing with other creatures. We must be clear, however, that in all cases the propositions concerned are put forward by the observer, even when imputed to the subject or system observed, and even when the subject and the observer happen to be the same individual. That said, the theorist can do no better than to formulate propositions that theoretically correspond to operations of the system in question, putting herself in the place of the system to try to fathom its strategies. This does not, of course, imply that a brain "thinks" 5 The view that intentional relations necessarily involve propositions, or something like them, has been dubbed propositionalism [Montague 2010]. Following Dennett, one might also call it the propositional stance. in human-language sentences any more than does a computer (which "thinks" rather in machine language).6 In the perspective presented here, phenomenality is grounded in intentionality, rather than the other way around. All mental activity is necessarily intentional, insofar as the connections involved are made by the organism for its own purposes. Phenomenal states are thus a subset of intentional states, produced by a specialized function within the system, and serving a different purpose from non-conscious processes. This does not preclude that intentional connections can be about representations or phenomenality, since phenomenal content itself can be earmarked as an object of consciousness. The point to bear in mind is that two domains of description are then involved. Intentional description is the observer's third-person domain of speculation about the intentionality of the subject, while phenomenal description is a first-person description by the subject herself. Talk of phenomenality as though it constitutes a public domain-to which multiple subjects or the outside observer have access-only leads to confusion.7 3. An "agent" approach As noted, consciousness is a special function, serving a different purpose from nonconscious representation or simple reflex. While a great deal of human behavior is performed without conscious attention, if the action cannot be done by rote, if it confronts a novel, demanding, or otherwise mobilizing situation or requires planning and forethought, conscious attention is brought into play. This suggests that phenomenality makes real-time sensory input available to higher centers to deal with situations that are not already handled automatically.8 Phenomenality is "what it is like" to be an agent engaged in that special function, which an observer would characterize in terms of the agent's internal operations. The explanatory task is to relate these disparate perspectives or domains, rather than to attempt a reduction to efficient causes. Let's say you experience a tickle in the throat and immediately you begin to cough. What is the relation between the tickle sensation and the behavior of coughing? The experience does not cause the behavior, in the sense of efficient causation, for scientific 6 Similarly, we cannot strictly say that a brain "processes information", which is a conscious-level notion circularly projected back upon the brain that produced it. 7 Montague [2010], for example, asks whether two people thinking the same thought share the same cognitive phenomenology. My answer is no, for two reasons. First, the notion of "the same cognitive phenomenology" commits the error described above: a first-person experience is not available to multiple subjects; the notion that it could be available derives mistakenly from treating it third-personally (as an object in the public world). Second, the "thought" in question is probably a linguistic proposition; for two agents to have "the same thought" means only that they would express their respective experiences or intentions in identical (or equivalent) verbal statements. 8 While awareness of initiating motor activity, for example, comes after the neural processes that have actually caused the activity, this awareness serves as the basis for choosing future action, or action in a larger context [Frith and Metzinger 2013]. The conscious experience indicates acknowledgment, after the fact, of the particular unconscious processing, and constitutes a monitoring function. description does not allow anything outside physical processes or entities as causally effective. Yet the tickle sensation does play a functional role by representing a state of your organism. The tickling signifies a state of affairs upon which you (an agent) might act voluntarily, independently of the cough reflex. While coughing behavior can be an unconscious reflex, the sensation serves further to inform you about the occurrence of the reflex and the condition to which it responds. Similarly, there is more or less programmed behavior associated with other sensations, whether somatic (such as itching, pain, hunger, thirst, desire) or externally oriented (such as sweetness, bitterness, or attractive and repulsive odors). Certainly, these latter sensations bear information about the proximal stimulus and the appropriate response. They also bear implicit information about the organism's priorities. The associated behavior contains the meaning to the organism of the sensation-that is, what it should do about the stimulus on the basis of its priorities. However, other sensations- such as provided by sight and hearing-often lack any obvious behavioral concomitant and even a proximal stimulus in the above sense. What is the "meaning", for example, of specific color sensations? Yet, even the relatively detached information gathering by the visual sense must have its evolutionary roots in affective values [Dennett 1991, p181]. The very existence of color categories (hue) indicates an affective significance, since they clearly reflect priorities of the organism more than properties of light or surfaces.9 Having priorities is a matter of intentionality, which doesn't of itself require consciousness. In many circumstances, it is enough to take appropriate non-conscious action with regard to various stimuli. In large part, however, the very nature of the distance senses removes them from the urgency for immediate response involved in direct physical contact, thereby allowing higher-level valuation. Because of distance, there is time to consider response on a distinct level of behavior. In contrast, the event with most immediate consequence is direct physical contact, of which the sense of touch yields a perception in which the phenomenality (where it exists) and the behavior associated with it form a unified whole with the valuation underlying them. A paradigm example is pain, which is at once feeling, evaluation, and response. To the conscious organism, the meaning of pain lies in the associated behaviors of withdrawal, wincing, avoidance, protection of an injured part, etc. But the pain response has two phases, corresponding to two neural pathways (c-fibers and a-fibers).10 One is a quick (unconscious) reflex reaction-for example, removal of the hand in response to contact with a hot surface. The slower response of lingering conscious painful sensation reflects an ongoing, internally generated stimulus, which acknowledges the tissue damage during the process of healing over time. It comes too late to avoid damage from the original encounter, but serves to avoid further or future damage and to facilitate 9 Human beings enjoy color vision because they are primates, which occupy a common niche with birds and insects. The diets of Old World primates consist significantly of fruits that (when ripe) are yellow, orange or red [Tsou 2013]. It makes sense for these food items to stand out as significant from a background of foliage. In the forest context, at least, the color red serves to alert the creature to something singular. 10 As Dennett [1978, p200-202] points out, the physiology of pain is more complicated than this, involving separate channels through the "old brain" and the "new brain," and also the possibility of other pathways influencing the experience of pain. This does not affect the argument here, which concerns the grounding of the felt quality of pain in the associated response. healing. It forces the organism to favor that part.11 The associated response is protective behavior and (in the case of social animals) expressions of the injured state to others. A similar divide between quick and slow pathways exists in the visual system, where an initial fast wave of visual processing happens outside consciousness, and is made available to subsystems for immediate responses. This is followed by a slower phase of "recurrent processing" that involves integration of various brain areas leading to conscious experience [Revonsuo 2010]. There is neurological evidence that phenomenality in general involves self-generated efferent nerve activity, as well as passively received afferent signals [Ellis 2000, p44]. 4. How the brain creates phenomenality How does a system of intentional relations come to have phenomenality? Any answer must involve the meaning of these relations to the system itself. I propose that the meaning to itself of the brain's internal connections should be understood on the model of the meaning that emerges for a human language user in the acts of reading, writing, speaking or hearing speech. A person communicating translates conventional linguistic symbols (written or aural) into mental images, thoughts, and feelings, or vice versa. Similarly, the brain assigns meaning to its own internal representations, evoking phenomenality in the way that words evoke mental images, namely by fiat and convention. It might be objected that it is as much a mystery how mental images arise through communication as how phenomenality arises. However, more than analogy is involved; for, meaning emerges in language and qualia alike through simple predication.12 Qualia are thus intelligible meanings asserted by an agent, as are the meanings the language user assigns to the babble of spoken syllables, the squiggles on a written page, or the significance the mathematician lends to given algebraic symbols by fiat: 'let x stand for such and such...' By the same token, pain stands for tissue damage, even in those instances when there is no actual damage. We do not normally question our own brain's reasons for its internal connections, nor have conscious access to them. Yet, it is only from an observer's perspective that they would appear merely conventional or un-compelling, because the observer is not in the position of being the agent that assigns the meaning. It may then appear mysterious that neural connections carry or imply meaning at all, and leave us unsatisfied concerning the relation between experience and behavior, mental and physical. This is because the observer is then, by default, looking for causal connections, while the relevant connections are not causal but intentional, even when explainable in causal terms. These 11 One may infer that insects, which do not seem to favor damaged parts, do not experience pain as a result of such injuries [Eisemann et al 1984]. In my opinion, this justifies the belief that insects do not experience anything at all: they have no phenomenality. 12 The notion of 'fiat' here parallels Rychlak's [1994] 'predication', but includes more generally the elementary levels of neural connection made by the brain as an agent. 'Predication' is tied to categorization in the context of Rychlak's logical approach to the study of human psychology [p.15, p.309]. Our views about the nature of 'agency' are in general agreement, but a point of difference is that he seems to believe that a machine cannot possibly become an agent [p.1]. respective levels of explanation may overlap in the case of simple behavior, such as reflexes. One may then mistakenly think that some stimulus in the environment causes the response, without invoking the mediating agency of the organism. The reasons for the response in the case of reflex may lie hidden in the organism's evolutionary history and be said to belong to the agency of Nature. Now, evolutionary advantage can explain, for example, the observable behavior of color discrimination-and why things appear to be differently colored-but not why a particular wavelength of light appears just so and not otherwise. It does not tell us why the chlorophyll of foliage does not appear red and the ripe fruit green, which would maintain the same relative contrast for discrimination. It does not tell us why it should not appear as some unimagined color experience. What is it about the qualitative experience of greenness that commends it to represent foliage in the vocabulary of the senses? And what about redness commends it to represent things that must stand out against that particular background? This is rather like asking why a particular meaning is denoted in a given language by a particular word, written and pronounced its specific way, rather than by some other symbol. For the native language user, the association of the word with what it represents seems natural and unquestionable, though of course it is actually a social convention. The internal language of the organism may be no less conventional and historically contingent in its use of symbols. Given a symbolic system, some symbol must be chosen. However arbitrary, it will inevitably come to seem imbued with the meaning it conveys. Hence, it is backwards to ask why grass appears green; rather, greenness is what it is by virtue of the association with grass. Given consciousness as a symbolic system, greenness is the way we visually experience the totality of associations related primarily to chlorophyll. One can acknowledge the arbitrariness of words because human languages use different terms for what is presumably the same phenomenal experience. The phenomenal experience itself, however, cannot be compared interpersonally. The sensation of greenness, unlike the words green or vert, is not merely a linguistic convention interchangeable with other conventions or subject to social change. Rather, it is a convention of neuro-logical organization, with the force of long genetic precedent. While the words of a natural language are transient and relative to culture, the meanings of qualia are more universal and enduring, backed by the relative stability of biology and the natural environment. Indeed, the human cognitive system adapts to the distortions of colored lenses or filters in such a way that color experience-of verdant foliage, for example-is eventually restored to normalcy [Neitz, et al 2002]. The sensation of greenness is what it is, and different from the sensation of redness, precisely because of the real-world things it refers to in our common evolutionary history, from which it cannot be arbitrarily dissociated.13 Sensory qualia are thus not something gratuitously added to the information they represent, nor are they "caused" by it, any more than words are caused by the things they represent. Rather, they are a version of that information an internal agent presents to itself synoptically in consciousness. Qualia, in other words, are a way the embodied subject first-personally presents to herself physical information that an observer also might detect 13 This is why there can be no "inverted spectrum," which is the "apparent possibility of two people sharing their color vocabulary and discriminations, although the colors one sees... are systematically different from the colors the other person sees." [Wikipedia: inverted spectrum]. by means of laboratory equipment and describe in terms that are third-personal, physical, propositional, and quantitative. If the specific phenomenal quality of greenness (for example) seems to convey privileged or ineffable information beyond that involved in the public analysis of light, this is because it also bears information about the organism's internal communication system, its relationships to the world, its priorities and evolutionary history. One could compare this to the connotations of words implicit in their etymological history, in contrast to explicit dictionary definitions. 5. Fiat I propose further that qualia in general involve the same sort of acts of fiat as demonstrated in the visual blind spot and other perceptual completion effects. In the case of the blind spot, the experience of continuity of the visual field is the brain's way to represent to itself its (true) belief that (despite the blind spot) the external world is visibly continuous. The brain affirms that conviction by an act of fiat, which ignores the sensory discontinuity, or "fills in" phenomenal experience in the visual field between the enervated retinal areas on either side of the un-enervated area.14 However, all enervation is discrete, with gaps between receptors, which in turn must be "filled in" phenomenally, but on a finer scale, and temporally as well as spatially (so that there is continuity of motion). That is, in all cases the brain asserts continuity across discrete structures or events when their discreteness is irrelevant, just as it asserts continuity between frames of a motion picture. This is how the world has an analog look despite sensory digitation. Such phenomenal assertion may be expressed propositionally. Suppose you notice a painting or photograph on the wall in your peripheral vision or from a distance. You might at first only recognize that it is a painting or photo, with a certain variety of colors and shapes and of a certain size. You perceive more when you approach or focus on a particular area; attention is directed to search out details within the limited visual area of the fovea. Noticing a "detail," however, is much the same as noticing that it is a painting, but on a finer scale: in both cases it is a matter of making an assertion.15 "Seeing" a detail is seeing that something is so, just as you recognized that it was a painting. And seeing that something is so is a matter of cognitively deciding that it is so.16 In other words: an act of fiat. The agent does not encounter its own representations, as one encounters external objects, but makes them as ongoing notations to itself. These tend by nature to be definite 14 Dennett [1987] has famously criticized the notion of filling in, while others have disputed his interpretation. However interpreted, my point is that this phenomenal effect occurs broadly as a feature of perception. 15 Even perceptual images are only relatively detailed. The impression of unlimited detail in sensory experience is illusory, since it is actually no more than the assertion that there is unlimited detail. This assertion is backed up by the fact that the senses (in contrast to mental images) can usually access additional information about the external world upon demand. 16 This decisiveness gives perception its digital nature. One may speculate that qualia are built up essentially from primitive assertions at a lower level, in the way that a digital image is built from pixels [MacLennan 2005, sec3B]. Each "pixel" may represent a simple decision (1 or 0), to be integrated as the basis for assertions on higher levels. and decisive acts even when mistaken. In some anomalous cases there is no definitive assertion (as illustrated by the Necker cube and other ambivalent figures about which the brain cannot make up its mind). Yet, in the moment, until countermanded by further assertions, the act is made with the tautological, if provisional, finality of all declarations by fiat (such as the divine 'Let there be light!', the captain's 'Make it so!', or the infamous 'Let them eat cake!'). And it is only this act of fiat that makes it so, without which there could be no presentation in consciousness at all. This unequivocal action is the basis of phenomenality in particular and of the intentionality of mind in general. Without taking it into account, a traditionally causal explanation of consciousness and behavior alike remains unintelligible. With it, one can at least begin to grasp the brain's challenges in terms that we can humanly relate to, since our very experience reflects the brain's pragmatic solutions. 5. Summary Conclusion For historical reasons, science has been largely preoccupied with efficient causation and the observer's point of view, to the exclusion of teleology and subjectivity. By definition, such an approach precludes a scientific explanation of phenomenality. To overcome this obstacle to understanding consciousness scientifically, an "agent" approach is necessary (and perhaps sufficient). Even within a mechanistic framework, brain processes must be deemed to occur in an intentional system, whose agency must be considered from its own point of view. The human brain creates phenomenality as an efficient way to monitor the world, the body, and their ongoing relationship with respect to the future. Such conscious monitoring plays a role distinct from non-conscious behavior. A conscious physical system generates qualia by its own acts of fiat, effectively on a linguistic model, as internal notations. While conventional, the meanings of these notations are stably informed by the organism's priorities, established through embodied participation in an evolutionary history. REFERENCES Bruiger, Dan (2016) The Found and the Made: Science, Reason, and the Reality of Nature Transaction Publishers (Routledge) Chalmers, David J. (1995) "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness" http://consc.net/papers/facing.html, p16 (postprint from Journal of Consciousness Studies 2(3):200-19 Dennett, Daniel C. (1978/1981/1996) Brainstorms Bradford (MIT Press) Dennett, Daniel C. (1987) The Intentional Stance MIT Press. Dennett, Daniel C. (1991) Consciousness Explained Little Brown & Co Eisemann, C.H.; Jorgensen, W.K.; Merritt, D.J.; Rice, M.J.; Cribb, B.W.; Webb, P.D.; and Zalucki, M.P. (1984) "Do Insects Feel Pain? – A biological view" Experientia 40 Ellis, Ralph (2000) "Efferent Brain Processes and the Enactive Approach to Consciousness" Journal of Consciousness Studies 7, no. 4 Frith, Chris D. and Metzinger, Thomas K. (2013) "What's the Use of Consciousness?" (https://www.blogs.unimainz .de/fb05philosophie/files/2013/04/Frith_Metzinger_Regret_2016_penultimate.pdf) MacLennan, B. J. (2005) "Consciousness in Robots: The Hard Problem and Some Less Hard Problems", preprint of ROMAN 2005. IEEE International Workshop on Robot and Human Interactive Communication Montague, Michelle (2010) "Recent Work on Intentionality" Analysis Reviews Vol 70 | Number 4 | October 2010 | pp. 765–782 Nagel, Thomas (1974) "What Is It Like to Be a Bat?" The Philosophical Review, Vol. 83, No. 4., pp. 435-450 Neitz, J., Carroll, J., Yamauchi, Y., Neitz, M. & Williams, D. R. (2002) "Color Perception Is Mediated by a Plastic Neural Mechanism that Is Adjustable in Adults" Neuron, 35, pp783–792 Revonsuo, Antti (2010) Consciousness: the Science of Subjectivity Psychology Press Rychlak, Joseph (1994) Logical Learning Theory U. of Nebraska Press Tsou, Jonathan Y. (2013) "Origins of the Qualitative Aspects of Consciousness: Evolutionary Answers to Chalmers' Hard Problem" preprint for chapter in Liz Swan (ed.), Origins of Mind Springer, pp259- | {
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Barry Smith The World as Database In the beginning was the mainframe computer: a large and somewhat ramshackle collection of boxes joined by wires. Then came the personal computer: a single, small box, which you could fit on your desk. At about the same time came functionalist conceptions of minds as "black boxes". And much fascination with the idea that the mind is a computer (and even, contrariwise, that the computer is a mind). Now, however, the box conception of computers and minds is slowly losing its grip. Computers are connected together in gigantic networks; they move around; and, through Global Positioning Systems (GPS), they always know where they are. They are attached to digital video cameras and to meteorological and chemical and biological and medical and gamma ray sensors.1 There are cognitive prostheses; wearable computers; computers you can hold in your hand; computers you can talk through; computers that can display the seismographic features of the terrain they are pointed at; computers that can display the vital signs of a patient you are examining who is a thousand miles away. The European Media Lab in Heidelberg is testing tourism information services built into camera-sized computers which are at one and the same time ever-attentive tour guides, map displays, and cameras. You can point your computer/camera to the castle on the hill and ask it to read out the history of the castle; or display a map showing all non-smoking restaurants within walking distance; or inform you where in the vicinity of the castle you can buy cornflakes after 10 p.m. Computer/camera/sensor devices with even more powerful features are transforming the ways wars are fought and emergencies responded to. They are transforming com17 The Ecological Approach to Information Processing 1 O. Wolfson, "Moving Objects Information Management: The Database Challenge", Proceedings of the 5th Workshop on Next Generation Information Technologies and Systems (NGITS 2002), Caesarea, Israel, June 25–26, 2002. 2_A-017-024_BarrySmith_QXD 03/4/7 17:20 Page 17 puters themselves into entities that are, like human beings and other organisms, sensitive in different ways to their surroundings. Knowledge Down a Wire In the age of computers as boxes there arose the doctrine of methodological solipsism – also sometimes called "cognitivism" or "representationalism" (the differences do not matter here) – a doctrine that is commonly associated with the name of Fodor.2 In order to understand a mind, on this doctrine – that is, in order to establish in scientific fashion the laws governing mental processes – you need to abstract away from all relations to any real-world objects toward which these mental processes might be directed. One should for methodological purposes assume, in other words, that solipsism is true, that the mind is a windowless monad. The parallel doctrine as applied to computers runs: computers are purely syntactic devices. Your computer deals, after all, not with things (castles, cornflakes), but with strings (with 1's and 0's); with what can be transmitted in the form of electrical impulses down a wire (or nerve). It is lacking all semantics. Harry M. Collins tells the following story.3 Imagine a 5-stone weakling whose brain has been loaded with all the knowledge of a champion tennis player. He goes to serve in his first match – Wham! – His arm falls off. The 5-stone weakling just doesn't have the bone structure or muscular development to serve that hard. There are, clearly, different types of knowledge/ability/skill, only some of which are a matter of what can be transferred simply by passing signals down a wire from one brain (or computer) to another. Sometimes it is the body (the hardware) which knows. Sometimes it is the world (the environment) which knows. Your GPS device knows its location, not because of the impulses running through its wiring, and not because of the state of its hardware – but because it is at any given moment receiving quite specific signals from satellites and because these signals contain information to which it is sensitive in virtue of the precise location which it occupies in that moment. Human beings are sensitive to the information contained in other human beings' faces. Homing pigeons are sensitive to highly nuanced features of the earth's magnetic field. Hu18 2 See especially J. A. Fodor, "Methodological Solipsism Considered as a Research Strategy in Cognitive Psychology, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3 (1980), pp. 63–109. 3 "Humans, Machines, and the Structure of Knowledge", SEHR, vol. 4, no. 2: Constructions of the Mind (1995). 2_A-017-024_BarrySmith_QXD 03/4/7 17:20 Page 18 man beings who can read are sensitive to the astonishingly variable types of information contained in printed texts. Information in the Light As Andy Clark argues in his book Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again,4 we know more than is contained in the hardware and software of our minds because we are able to engage in what Clark calls epistemic action. We manipulate Scrabble tiles in order to be able to use the re-arranged pieces as a basis for the activation of the brain's preconscious pattern-recognition abilities. We write one number above another in order to be able to carry out complex calculations using pen on paper by allowing our hands to perform manipulations with these numbers on a sort of automatic pilot. We act so as to simplify cognitive tasks by leaning on the structures in our environment. We rely on the external scaffolding of maps and models, of diagrams and traffic signs. Just as not all calculations are done inside the head, so not all thinking is done inside the head – because much of it involves an interaction with the world outside in ways which depend on the types of sensitivity the cognitive agent show to his surroundings of the moment, which depend in turn on his goals, on what he is trying to achieve as an organism active in this world. From Fodor to Gibson From the perspective of Fodor's methodological solipsism the way to understand human cognition is to study the mind/brain in abstraction from its real-world environment (as if it were a hermetically sealed Cartesian ego). From the perspective of J. J. Gibson, Fodor's nemesis (for Gibson's time will come), the way to understand human cognition is to study the moving, acting human person as it exists in its real-world environment.5 This means: taking account of how the human organism has evolved to fit into this real-world environment in such a way as to be sensitive to the information it contains (above all to those types of information which are relevant to survival). 19 4 Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1997. 5 Barry Smith, "Truth and the Visual Field", in J. Petitot, F. J. Varela, B. Pachoud and J. M. Roy (eds.), Naturalizing Phenomenology: Issues in Contemporary Phenomenology and Cognitive Science, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000, pp. 317–329. 2_A-017-024_BarrySmith_QXD 03/4/7 17:20 Page 19 We are, from this perspective, like highly complex tuning forks – tuned through our batteries of sensors to the environment which surrounds us in highly specific ways. Gibson himself was a psychologist of perception. His most important work – which should be read in conjunction with the writings of Barker and Schoggen6 – is entitled The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception.7 The Fodorian holds that in order to understand information systems we should turn aside from the hardware and from the surrounding world in which this hardware is embedded, and study instead manipulations of syntactic strings. The Gibsonian holds that in order to understand information systems we should turn our attentions precisely to this hardware and taking account of the environment for which it was designed and built. We then discover that information systems, too (with their GPSs and their biological sensors), are like highly complex tuning forks – they have evolved (or better: were designed) to resonate in tune with certain highly specific surrounding environments, and their functioning is intelligible only to the degree that we take account of the ways in which they are embedded within such environments. Computerized Agents The world of computerized agents – of robots, avatars, webbots – is a world of computers situated in environments and capable of flexible, autonomous action within such environments, including interactions – such as communicating, negotiating, coordinating – with other agents, both human and non-human. The orthodox methodology for dealing with such computerized agents has been described by Rodney Brooks,8 Director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, as the "SMPA view" – for Sense Model Plan Act as follows: 20 6 P. Schoggen, Behavior Settings: A Review and Extension of Roger G. Barker's Ecological Psychology, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1989; H. Heft, Ecological Psychology in Context: James Gibson, Roger Baker, and the Legacy of William James's Radical Empiricism, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2001. 7 James J. Gibson, The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, Boston: Houghton-Mifflin, 1979. 8 See his papers "Intelligence Without Representation", Artificial Intelligence Journal 47 (1991), pp. 139–159, and "Intelligence Without Reason", Proceedings of the 12th International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Sydney, Australia, August 1991, pp. 569–595. 2_A-017-024_BarrySmith_QXD 03/4/7 17:20 Page 20 S: the agent first senses its environment through sensors M: it then uses this data to build a model of the world P: it then produces a plan to achieve goals A: it then acts on this plan. We are clearly once more inside a Fodorian perspective. Instead of relying on its surrounding environment, on the SMPA conception the agent builds an internal model of the world – an internal representation or copy – and it is to the latter that the agent's cognitive processes are directed. In his own "Engineering Approach" to the problem of understanding and constructing computerized agents, in contrast, Brooks (like Gibson) lends very little weight to the role of representations or models. Rather, he takes his inspiration from evolutionary biology. In order to produce systems that interact directly with the world we should take as our starting-point simple organisms who have solved the problems of interacting with their surrounding physical environment in ways conducive to survival. The Life (and Mind) of E. Coli Consider for example the movement of the E. coli bacterium, which can best be described as a biased random walk.9 In the default environment, which is marked by the absence of any survival-relevant stimulus, the cell simply wanders around, smoothly swimming by rotating its flagella counterclockwise. Such runs are terminated by chaotic events, called tumbles, when flagella rotate clockwise. Following a tumble, the cell begins a new run, picking a direction more or less at random. Sometimes however the cell encounters sugar – more precisely it encounters an increase in the density of a chemical attractant – to which its sensors have been attuned by natural selection. Those runs that happen to carry it up such a density gradient are then extended; those that happen to carry it down the gradient are not. Over time, therefore, the cell drifts in a favorable direction. Its life, if you like, is a life of falling down sugar wells. 21 9 H. C. Berg, "A Physicist Looks at Bacterial Chemotaxis", Cold Spring Harbor Symposia on Quantitative Biology 53 (1988), pp. 1–9; Frederik Stjernfelt, "Biosemiotics and Formal Ontology", Semiotica 127 (1999), pp. 537–66; Bruce Alberts et al., Molecular Biology of the Cell, 4th edition, New York: Garland Science, 2002. 2_A-017-024_BarrySmith_QXD 03/4/7 17:20 Page 21 The bacterium is a single cell. Thus it does not have a multicelled nervous system. But it has receptor molecules acting as sensors and these influence the behavior of its highly complex machinery of movable flagella via a signal transduction system. Different receptors react to different stimuli, some to single oxygen molecules, some to much larger carbohydrate molecules (or to molecules – perhaps produced in the laboratory as anti-bacterial agents – which have an external structure which can fool the bacterium into thinking that it is dealing with carbohydrate molecules). E. coli bacteria react to differences in concentrations of sugar molecules with a behavior shift – as a dog reacts to the smelt trace of another animal. The attribution of intentionality, as we can see, does not depend upon the existence of a nervous system. There is a difference between a purely chemical system, and a system that is at once chemical and biological. We can ascribe simple biological intentionality to a single, movable cell; all that is required is the existence of sensors, information mediation (automatic interpretation, if you like) and motor responses resulting in adaptable behavior. Intelligence as Situatedness Let us return now to Brooks' Engineering Approach to the construction of computerized agents. Where the bacterium has one single layer of activity, intelligent systems such as ourselves embody a number of distinct such layers, including our various batteries of sensors (perceptual systems), as well as systems for proprioception, and so on. From Brooks' perspective, now, we should conceive such layers (a) as operating independently of each other, (b) as connecting directly to the environment outside the system. Each layer operates as a complete system that copes in real time with a changing environment. Each layer is a biological system that has evolved through interaction with the world outside, and it is this world outside which serves to unify the different layers together in such a way as to ensure that they become adjusted to each other mutually over time. For Brooks therefore, an artificial system that mimics some of the features of biological intelligence must be a situated system. Humans (and other organisms) fix their beliefs as they attune themselves differently to different parts of the world in light of their successive experiences. As Brooks points out in his "Intelligence without Representation", organisms sometimes mark the world by placing traces which change what they will be confronted with in the future. Thus they do 22 2_A-017-024_BarrySmith_QXD 03/4/7 17:20 Page 22 not have to carry all their memories around with them, because again: they can lean on the structures in the external environment; they can use the marked-up world as crutch. The Ecological Approach to External Symbolic Memory Devices For human organisms the marked-up world includes libraries, maps, price lists, traffic signs, science texts, border posts, restaurant menus, fences. We can now rephrase our formulation of the views developed by Gibson in his Ecological Approach to Visual Perception as follows. We are like multi-layered tuning forks – tuned to the environment which surrounds us. We have evolved in such a way as to be attuned to our environment on multiple levels, in part because we ourselves have created this world via what Lewontin calls "ecosystem engineering".10 This means that we have evolved to resonate automatically and directly, not only to those features of our environment which are relevant for survival, but also to new features – of language, culture, of externalized memory – which we ourselves have put there. In his Origins of the Modern Mind 11 Merlin Donald refers to a radical transition in the emergence of modern human culture, which occurred when humans began to construct elaborate symbolic systems ranging from cuneiforms, hieroglyphics, and ideograms to alphabetic languages and mathematics. From this point on, Donald argues, human biological memory becomes an inadequate vehicle for storing and processing our collective knowledge. Thus Donald sees the modern mind as being itself a hybrid structure built from vestiges of earlier biological stages together with new external symbolic memory devices. Gibson's ecological approach can now be reformulated yet again in order to take account of Donald's insight. To understand cognition we should study the moving, acting organism as it exists in its real-world environment, but now taking account of the fact that for human organisms this is a social environment which includes records and traces of prior actions in the form of communication systems (languages), storage systems (libraries), transport systems (roads), as well as legal and financial and political systems of a range of different sorts. The attunement of dif23 10 Richard C. Lewontin, The Triple Helix: Gene, Organism, and Environment, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000. 11 Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991. 2_A-017-024_BarrySmith_QXD 03/4/7 17:20 Page 23 ferent groups of specialists to these externalized symbolic memory devices then allows a range of different, new sorts of activities on the part of humankind, via a vast division of cognitive-ecological labour. Gibson talks of the environment as an array of affordances, where: "The affordances of the environment are what it offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or evil." The environment of a commercial organism includes those affordance which we call prices. The environment of a lawyer includes those affordances which we call torts and malfeasances. The environment of a physician includes those affordances which we call symptoms and diseases on the part of his patients. The environment of a computer-aided geologist investigating viscoelastic flow includes those affordances which we call foreshock sequences and processes of earthquake nucleation. The realm of affordances, and thereby the world itself as a domain accessible to our direct cognition and action, becomes hereby expanded – not only because of the addition of ever new layers of external memory devices, but also because of the addition of ever new types of prosthetic sensors, which enable us to become attuned to ever new sorts of features in the environments by which we are engaged.12 24 12 Work on this paper was supported by the Wolfgang Paul Programme of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. Thanks are due also to Claus Emmeche, Paul Penner, Luc Schneider and Frederik Stjernfeldt for helpful comments. 2_A-017-024_BarrySmith_QXD 03/4/7 17:20 Page | {
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Compensating for impoverishing injustices of the distant past ABSTRACT Calls for compensation are heard in many countries all over the world. Spokespersons on behalf of formerly oppressed and dominated groups call for compensation for the deeply traumatic injustices their members have suffered in the past. Sometimes these injustices were suffered decades ago by members already deceased. How valid are such claims to compensation and should they be honoured as a matter of justice? The focus of this essay is on these issues of compensatory justice. I want to look at the issue from the perspective of the eradication of systematic poverty affecting particular groups – where injustices of the distant past can reliably be identified as one of the major contributory factors to people's current poverty. This perspective brings realism to the discussion. To eradicate poverty requires more resources than most societies have easily available, therefore the discussion must take limited resources for the purpose of compensatory justice into account. The harmful characteristics and consequences of poverty adds a sense of urgency to dealing with issues of compensatory justice as well. In the rest of the essay I will examine the following issues: [1] What kind of injustices qualify to be remedied by means of compensatory justice? [2] Should there be a limit to how far back in history one should go to compensate for injustice? [3] How can an injustice from the distant past be reliably identified as a cause of current problems? [4] Who should be compensated? [5] Who is responsible for compensation? [6] What form should compensation take? [7] Is the concept of compensatory justice backward looking or forward looking? I will argue for a moral obligation to the effect that serious injustices, perpetrated long ago against a group of people that caused poverty amongst them, ought to be compensated by society in a variety of ways to the original victims (if still alive) and their descendants. 2 Compensating for impoverishing injustices of the distant past Legal systems in democratic societies embody strong moral values that specify that no injustice ought to be done to a fellow citizen. If someone commits a clearly identifiable injustice to a fellow citizen, the injustice must be stopped and the offender reprimanded or punished. In such cases an injustice means an objective wrong, usually defined as a violation of a person's rights that results in injury, harm, loss, or damage. Stopping or punishing an injustice is, however, not enough. If serious harm or injury has been done to the victim of injustice or damage done to someone's property, the wronged person must be compensated.1 Compensation means that the victim's original situation must be restored (see Barnett 1991: 313, Sunstein 1991: 281 – 282, Wade 1978: 457). Compensation can take different forms, although they express the same underlying principle. The principle is that the person who commits an injustice to another incurs a special moral relationship to the victim of the wrongdoing, i.e., a relationship of owing the victim, of being indebted to the victim for the injury, harm, loss, or damage caused (Fullinwider 1975: 310). The fundamental idea of compensation is to restore the balance of justice between victim and perpetrator of injustice, to somehow make good the victim's loss. Compensation is partially aimed at restoring the victim's former position or state, and thus tries to undo the wrong in such a way that the victim would be in a position similar to what the person would have been had the injury not occurred (Paul 1997: 102). There is more to compensation, however. Compensation also aims to restore the balance of equality between victim and perpetrator of injustice. Compensation implies acknowledging and honouring the rights of the victims that have been violated by a perpetrator. The perpetrator has illegitimately assumed and exercised power over the victim through committing the injustice.2 Compensation thus symbolically restores the equality between victim and perpetrator as citizens of equal dignity and worth [see Paul 1991: 102 and Wilson 1983: 523].3 Compensation can full or partial. Full compensation requires [1] attempts at repairing damage or harm as well as [2] restoring the moral status of victims as citizens with rights and dignity.4 Partial compensation occurs when only one of these elements is involved. Compensation can often be partial in another sense, i.e., not fully rectifying the wrongs committed. Reasons are the difficulties involved in some cases of either determining what would be appropriate to offer as compensation, or the enormity of the injury, harm, loss, or damage suffered that cannot in any way be fully compensated. These ideas about compensation are firmly entrenched in legal practice in democratic societies and regulate relationships between individual citizens, relationships between representatives of the state and individual citizens, and relationships between individual citizens and organisations or companies. However, attempts to apply these moral values about compensation to relations between groups of citizens [or between citizens of different countries] with a shared, but problematic and contested history, are very difficult.5 Why? There are several reasons. Note the following troubling questions that need to be resolved in order to make a convincing case for this kind of compensation. [1] What kind of injustice is at stake? Many kinds of injustices happen and nothing is ever done about them. How serious must an injustice be and why must this particular one be compensated and others not? How far back in history must one go?6 How should such injustices be reliably identified? 3 [2] If it can be established that there are injustices that occurred in the past that deserve to be compensated, who should be compensated? If the original victims of these injustices have already died, should their children or their grandchildren be compensated?7 Are there grounds on which a person can be said to inherit the right to compensation from their ancestors? Is compensation due only to individuals who personally suffered an injustice, or should members of a group who suffered the injustice be compensated, as the group persists through time? [3] Similar issues are encountered when one asks who should be held responsible for the injustice and who should thus compensate the victims of an injustice. Are the individuals who perpetrated the original injustice the only ones who should compensate the victims? Should their descendants in any way accept responsibility for these wrongs? Maybe the responsibility for some injustices is a collective one, that must be borne by a group, an organization, or by society rather than by individuals. When should we judge that an injustice was perpetrated by a society or a group, rather than just being a series of smaller injustices committed by a loose collection of unrelated individuals? [4] If compensation is due in some cases, what kind of compensation should be given and for what purpose? Affirmative action is often used as a method of compensation. This practice grants victims of discrimination and oppression preferential treatment when applying for jobs. The purpose is to give victims of injustice a chance to get a job they were earlier denied for unacceptable reasons, despite their qualifications not being the best amongst the pool of applicants for that job. Another purpose is to increase the representation of a formerly discriminated against group in the workplace and to provide role models for young people to aspire to. But are these kinds of compensation and the reasons provided in support the best ways of dealing with this issue? Calls for compensation are heard in many countries all over the world. Spokespersons on behalf of formerly oppressed and dominated groups call for compensation for the deeply traumatic injustices their members have suffered in the past. Sometimes these injustices were suffered decades ago by members already deceased. How valid are such claims to compensation and should they be honoured as a matter of justice? The focus of this essay is on these issues of compensatory justice. I want to look at the issue from the perspective of the eradication of systematic poverty affecting particular groups – where injustices of the distant past can reliably be identified as one of the major contributory factors to people's current poverty. This perspective brings realism to the discussion. To eradicate poverty requires more resources than most societies have easily available, therefore the discussion must take limited resources for the purpose of compensatory justice into account. The harmful characteristics and consequences of poverty adds a sense of urgency to dealing with issues of compensatory justice as well. In the rest of the essay I will examine the following issues: [1] What kind of injustices qualify to be remedied by means of compensatory justice? [2] Should there be a limit to how far back in history one should go to compensate for injustice? [3] How can an injustice from the distant past be reliably identified as a cause of current problems? [4] Who should be compensated? [5] Who is responsible for compensation? [6] What form should compensation take? [7] Is the concept of compensatory justice backward looking or forward looking? I will argue for a moral obligation to the effect that serious injustices, perpetrated long ago against a group of people that caused poverty amongst them, ought to be compensated by society in a variety of ways to the original victims (if still alive) and their descendants. 4 I What kind of injustices qualify to be remedied by means of compensatory justice? I want to defend the claim that a compensable injustice is a gross violation of the most important human rights, such as rights to life, to bodily and psychological integrity, to be free from all forms of violence, and to own property.8 Why use violations of human rights as indicators of compensable injustices? The vocabulary of human rights offer an already shared way of defining matters impartially that liberal democrats regard as high priorities that deserve governmental protection. If denied, the violation of these priorities leads to the various forms of serious harm that human rights are generally designed to avoid. A group usually experiences such gross violations of human rights as deeply traumatic. Why this claim? Deeply traumatic injustices cause deep wounds to the bodies and minds of members of a group, or to the fabric of their social bonds.9 Such injustices cause severe harm to individuals, from physical injury and deep psychological trauma to loss of life. Injustices of this magnitude have traumatic effects and disabling consequences on primary victims that are often transferred to succeeding generations, making them secondary victims. It is intuitively plausible that people responsible for such events with disastrous consequences for the lives of victims should be held responsible for compensating victims. In Nozick's terms, if past injustices have shaped present holdings and determined current lives, whatever property has been unjustly acquired or fundamental human rights have been violated, must be rectified.10 Major injustices with strong negative consequences and devastating effects on victims may consist of largescale events such as a war of conquest, or they may consist of a cluster of smaller events equivalent to a major injustice, such as domination and oppression of a group based on irrational prejudice.11 Some major injustices consist of a combination of both large-scale and smaller events. A major injustice that qualifies as a compensable injustice is usually one that a group remembers with feelings of moral outrage and resentment.12 Such remembrances usually form part of living memory. The injustice in dispute raises issues and generates debates that excite emotions that refuse to die or sink into oblivion. When told to descendants of victims, the experiences associated with the injustice come alive again and excite protesting emotions. Why is remembrance important? These memories and their associated emotions provide the spark for mobilisation by the victims, or others on their behalf, to demand that debilitating injustices be acknowledged, and rectified, however long the road to the eventual resolution of these issues might be. These memories give a rough indication of how serious and how deep the group judged the harms to be that they have suffered. I want to argue that the current effects of past injustice, or lack thereof, make a difference to our judgement whether full compensatory justice is called for. The kind and scope of the compensation called for are partially determined by the debilitating effects still reverberating through the members of the affected group. Noticeable negative effects persisting as a result of the injustice strengthen the case for full compensation for compensable injustice. The way the effects have been dealt with by victims can influence the kind of compensation owed to them, whether it be full or partial compensation. Partial compensation is appropriate in the following cases. If the effects have been countered and reversed and the trauma has by and large healed, compensation to deal with trauma is no longer called for, though compensation for the suffering endured might still be needed. If human agency has been restored, if skills and levels of competence have been developed to levels similar to those of other groups and if moral responsibility can be fully employed again, then compensation to restore 5 these things is no longer needed, but compensation for expenses and efforts in restoration might be relevant.13 If the victims have recovered in these ways by themselves, it is to their benefit and psychological health: they have strongly proven and affirmed their independence and self-reliance. They can take pride in their ability to rise above their circumstances through healing themselves and reconstructing their skills to make a meaningful and worthwhile life. However, compensation acknowledging the harm, damage, or loss caused by injustice, recognising the efforts of victims to heal themselves, and awarding money for costs incurred should still be on the agenda. So too should be compensation that restores the moral worth and human dignity of victims. One could argue that full compensation would be required in cases where negative effects persist through generations and where those effects are traceable to the original injustice. Their traceability usually results from the fact that the injustice has been reinforced or maintained in the intervening years. The reinforcement and maintenance of injustice in subsequent years often have the result that the original sufferers of that injustice and their descendants have no reasonable chance to get rid of the negative effects and consequences. Increased opportunities were not available for empowerment through generally available mechanisms of redress, or through improved access to societal resources. Sufferers of injustice could thus not create decent lives for themselves on a par with what is available to, and enjoyed by, other citizens.14 In cases of justified full compensation, the situation of victims [group members] and their descendants in the time between the original event and its current effects did not change substantially or sufficiently. Sufficient change would mean that they could have acted autonomously and independently to empower themselves to rid their lives of the negative effects and consequences of the injustice. This means that some kind of injustice, oppression, or prejudice kept the injustice or its consequences firmly in place or made it impossible to acquire resources, education, or opportunities to nullify the effects. It may also be that the persisting effects result from the harm done to their person, agency, or community, or from their social structure that was so devastated as to make recovery very difficult. If they consciously and deliberately made choices not to use meaningful opportunities to improve their lives, that would diminish the strength of their claims to full compensation. II Should there be a limit to how far back in history one should go to compensate for injustice? The answer depends largely on what has already been said. I will argue that one should go as far back in history as [1] there are major injustices that have effects persisting to the present and [2] there are clearly defined and describable victims of those injustices. If one goes back more than a decade or two, the question arises when dealing with a compensable injustice becomes the responsibility of the victims alone. I want to argue that a stage may be reached when effects of compensable injustices on victims become the responsibility of the victims themselves and their descendants – a time when they ought to become agents of their own healing and recovery. Why this point of view? The argument hinges on the intuitively plausible ideas that [1] human beings can be or become agents of their own healing and recovery, [2] being such an agent depends on resources available before and after the traumatic event, and [3] even deep harm does not totally extinguish human resilience in the face of adversity. To determine the stage when effects of compensable injustices become the responsibility of victims themselves requires a complex judgement. In this judgement we must take into account the scope and 6 consequences of the trauma caused by the injustice, the physical, mental, and social resources available to the victims before the event, and the extent of the damage to these resources. One must determine which aspects of their resources survive after the traumatic injustice to enable the victims to deal with the trauma. The levels of prejudice, discrimination, and oppression must be noted that remain in place after the injustice, or newly develop in the wake of the injustice, that contribute to diminish the victims' opportunities for recovery and their access to support to deal adequately with their situation. III An important issue of compensatory justice is how a compensable injustice from the distant past can reliably be identified as a major contributory factor to people's current misery or poverty. I want to argue that such a reliable identification can be made. It is possible to establish how one event, or a series of events, can have effects on, or consequences for individuals, communities, groups, or societies. These effects and consequences, if left untended or if reinforced by human action, persist as events creating further effects and consequences. These new effects and consequences can be similar to their predecessors, or be new distortions and perversions that affect the lives of the primary victims. These effects can be so drastic that secondary victims are created from people in close association with primary victims. The latter often cannot avoid transferring effects and consequences to others.15 How can a compensable injustice from the distant past be reliably identified? First, one must determine the current level of poverty of victims through standard measurements and indices of levels of poverty developed in the social sciences. Next, we need to identify that a particular group of poor people has been poor for quite some time. Their poverty is often not as recent as 5 or 10 years ago, but more often than not goes back a generation or two. The history of individuals, families, and communities can easily be traced – this information is often public knowledge to verify claims of conditions of poverty transferred from one generation to the next. The inability of individuals, families, and communities to escape traps of poverty that result from major injustices and other factors reinforcing the consequences of injustices, is an important indicator of the need for full compensation. A next move would be to investigate the major injustice from the distant past that is allegedly responsible for causing poverty that have been plaguing a group of people for more than a generation. This injustice must have been a major event with serious consequences and strong effects on the group. It must have seriously wounded their agency and diminished their means to develop. The injustice must furthermore have left psychological wounds that seriously affected their self-confidence, self-reliance and self-image, to such an extent that these psychological wounds detrimentally affected succeeding generations. We must thus establish the harm done to the agency and autonomy of victims, their self-reliance and their capabilities for effective functioning, and the reduction in their level of well-being. A trustworthy case must be presented that shows convincingly that such harms resulted from the consequences and effects of major injustices. Major injustices typically have effects and consequences such as loss of life, serious bodily injuries, deep emotional scars, damage to property or loss thereof, destruction of interpersonal or communal relationships, and loss of opportunities for personal and communal development and growth. These are all deeply traumatic events and their effects on the primary victims and their offspring must be established through independent investigation. Not only must we determine that these things have happened, but also how deep the harm was, how comprehensive the damage, and to what extent the trauma affected their personal and collective agency and their abilities to make a good life for themselves as individuals and as 7 community. How these disabling effects were carried over to the next generations must also be reliably established. Typical examples of injustices with major, deeply traumatic consequences and effects are the following. Conquest in an unjust war, as in colonialism, is an example of a major single event, or a series of bigger events. Political domination and oppression are examples of a mixture of smaller and larger events, as could be seen in a comprehensive series of injustices over many decades directed at black people through apartheid in South Africa. Women's oppression is another example of a series of injustices of different ranges, with the cumulative effect of oppressing and dominating women into disempowered human beings, deprived of equal developmental and growth opportunities. While sufficient evidence of the broad outlines of compensable injustices is available, detailed evidence or abundant first person accounts might not exist. This need not be a problem. The nature of these compensable injustices as deeply traumatic events is so well-known that any person can form an idea of what it means to lose a loved one in war, to have your house burned down or flattened by a bulldozer, to be tortured whilst in detention without trial, to be raped by strangers, or to be continuously humiliated by your partner in a love relationship. Slightly more detailed examples of how philosophers depict two major events as injustices with continuing effects might be illuminating. Onora O'Neill's [1987: 80] describes the enslavement, invasions, and dispossession of indigenous peoples during European colonialism as consisting of serious harms and injuries resulting from gross violations of human rights that would today be judged as crimes against humanity. The effects of these human rights abuses are still "all around us" and those effects are "immeasurable, complex, and intricate" [O'Neill 1987: 80].16 Thomas Nagel [1973: 381] depicts the effects of racial discrimination in the USA as creating a group whose social position is "exceptionally depressed, with destructive consequences both for the self-esteem of members of the group and for the health and cohesion of the society." Bernard Boxill [1978] elaborates on this injustice by characterising racial discrimination as in part "judgemental injustice." This consists in letting black people know they deserve less consideration and respect than white people do. An arbitrary characteristic, their skin colour, is the reason why they are denied opportunities, excluded from participation in societal activities, treated with disrespect, and judged to be inferior. Judgemental injustice also condemns them to the uncertainty of not knowing when they will suffer abuse for being black. As a result of these attitudes and actions against them, they lose self-confidence and self-respect. We now have access to the two outer limits of the investigation into compensable injustices: the original deeply traumatic injustice and the current poverty. Perhaps the more difficult part is to convincingly show that the original injustice is a causal factor in the genesis of current poverty. I want to present an argument in support of the possibility that such a case can be made. For poor people to make a convincing case for full compensation of a major injustice of the distant past, we must first examine the already gathered evidence of the impact of the major, deeply traumatic injustice on the group immediately after its occurrence. On the one hand we must note what coping skills, mechanisms, and resources the victims had available and how these were affected by the trauma. Next we must investigate forms of oppression, discrimination, and prejudice that continued afterwards that made their recovery and healing difficult, if not impossible. We must examine how oppression, discrimination, and prejudice manifested in laws, attitudes, overt and cover behaviour, policies, priorities in budgets, etc. To 8 demonstrate such a link between a major injustice and current poverty, information about the following factors must be presented: [1] seriously affected coping skills, mechanisms, and resources, [2] continuing injustices denying them space for mobilisation of human and other resources for recovery, or [3] cramped political space forcing them into stunted political growth and resulting in severely curtailed influence on society.17 Thus, they must demonstrate an inability for healing and recovery, as well as for mobilisation to achieve self-renewal. To establish the case for compensation convincingly, a group must thus be able to point to obstructions that impeded their recovery in the years between the initial impact of a major, deeply traumatic injustice and their current state of poverty.18 Obstructions would mainly result from the denial of political rights which is profoundly disabling, continued oppression and discrimination which close opportunities and shut off chances of being heard, and a lack of human and economic resources which stifles attempts to engineer one's own recovery. A group must also show that such obstructions constrained their attempts to provide children a better future in which such obstructions would have no adverse effects on the development and growth of the children to mature self-realization.19 If such obstructions can be shown to be present to a degree significant enough to make any form of recovery difficult, a strong presumption exists in favour of acknowledging [1] that both primary and secondary victims have a strong case for compensation and [2] that not only the first generation of perpetrators of injustice are guilty and thus responsible for the plight of the poor. Obstruction that impeded recovery from a major injustice suggests that the descendants of the original perpetrators of the major injustice have committed obstructing injustices. Through these injustices they have become complicit in the plight of the victims, in the sense that they have become participants in a continuing process of committing injustices against the victims. They are thus co-responsible for the plight of the descendants of the original victims. IV Who should be compensated? Individuals or groups? Only the original sufferers of the injustice or their descendants as well? Only their direct descendants? Whom should be compensated when most of the original sufferers from injustice have already died? Is there a cut-off point for how far the rippling effects of a traumatic injustice can reach through the complex histories of families, communities, and friendships? What are the links between continuing rippling effects and the strength of human agency capable of arresting and eradicating those effects? Compensation for major injustices of the distant past – those responsible for contemporary poverty – is almost exclusively a group thing and not an individual matter.20 The major injustices that qualify as compensable injustices, regardless of the fact that they occurred long ago, carry a distinct social or group aspect.21 Two examples will suffice to explain this social or group dimension. Major injustices, like wars of conquest, were fought in the name of, and for the benefit of a country, or a particular group or community of distinct people. The soldiers fighting the war did so in their capacity as representatives of a government or a group, acting on commands of such principals. They fought against a community owning valuable land or a society in control of valuable resources. Even major injustices, like racism or sexism, that consist of series of smaller events perpetrated by individuals and groups against other individuals and groups manifest an inescapable group dimension. Racism and sexism were perpetrated against identifiable groups of individuals, marked by specific visible 9 characteristics they had no control over. The perpetrators of racism and sexism practiced their prejudice from within constructed identities based on specific, preferred social or group characteristics. In both examples above the targets or objects of the injustices were not individuals in their personal capacity, but individuals as representative of their group, marked by their characteristic identifications.22 Compensable injustices were committed against groups and we have already established that the results and consequences of these injustices can be transferred from the directly affected generation to the next one who did not themselves experience the injustice. A major injustice – or cluster of ongoing injustices – can have serious and debilitating effects on the primary victims. Through injuries and harms to body and mind, damage to possessions and property, loss of life, liberties, and functions, and ruptures of the social fabric of communities, primary victims may lose any one of a series of capacities that contribute to making a worthwhile life.23 These effects of a major injustice can be perpetuated and transferred from one generation to the next if sufficient space and resources for recovery are not available. Thus, all those adversely affected by a compensable injustice – even those more than one generation removed from the original injustice – must be compensated in some or other way. If members of a group must be partially or fully compensated, what should the aim be? The aim of compensation must surely be one or more of the following: to repair their capacities to make a good life; to give them something equivalent in return for their injuries and losses; to restore relationships and resources; to acknowledge symbolically the serious violations of their rights and restore their dignity as equal citizens, whether it be through apologies or memorials.24 Compensation must empower people disadvantaged by injustices of the past to take up their place as citizens of equal worth and dignity with at least a minimum decent lifestyle. Victims of injustice must have their agency restored, so that they can take proper care of themselves within a community of interdependent free and equal agents. Compensation ought to be due to [1] the original sufferers and [2] their descendants who have suffered as a result of the injustices done to their ancestors, and still have to deal with the after-effects of the original injustice. Although the injustices concerned affect groups in particular, that does not imply that all members were affected equally. The effects and consequences of an injustice do not strike everyone similarly and some people escape most of them or overcome them more easily than others can. A lot depends on how a person can dodge or overcome the way that injustices from the distant past have been reinforced or maintained. Can the exact extent of the harm, injury, loss, or damage of each individual thus be determined so that each individual's exact amount of compensation can be calculated? No, for two reasons. One reason is that it would be virtually impossible, highly controversial, and also too costly to make such fine-grained, specific investigations and detailed judgements about degrees of individual loss, harm, and damage.25 Another reason for being unable to determine exact amounts of compensation is that although some individuals might have been less directly affected by injustice than others, this does not adequately reflect the harm and suffering they may have experienced indirectly.26 They were often also strongly negatively influenced by sharing the traumas that friends, family, and colleagues have experienced, or they may have been affected by living in an atmosphere where their kind were despised and emotionally or physically abused. They lived with the awareness that the possibility of becoming a victim of trauma or abuse was always alive. Furthermore, ideological abuse, where a system of ideas with its accompanying justification reinforce injustices by deprecating and degrading victims, often legitimates physical and emotional abuse and contributes to low self-esteem. 10 V Who is responsible? Individuals, groups, or the state? Can the descendants of the people who originally committed the wrongs be held responsible for the injustices of their ancestors? If so, under what conditions? Can compensation only be provided by the perpetrators of injustice, or can someone else provide compensation vicariously?27 I want to argue that the state must take primary responsibility for compensable injustices.28 The reason is that the state has failed to treat all its members fairly and equitably, albeit in a previous era and in a different manifestation.29 That the state treated some members unfairly and unjustly is clear [1] from injustices perpetrated by governments, [2] from group behaviour sanctioned by a government or [3] from acts knowingly allowed by a government willingly watching how a particular group of citizens were unjustly and unequally treated and dominated into a desperate social position of vulnerable subordination. For this reason a government representing the state was responsible for the inequitable and unfair treatment of a group of its citizens in the past.30 Therefore the current government as representative of the state must take over the responsibility to rectify this wrong, albeit that the injustice was committed by a former representative of the state. Thus, the government – and indeed society as a whole – must accept responsibility for the plight of the victims and the need for compensation.31 Yet, even individuals can and should be held responsible, if they are or have become complicit in committing the injustice or through their everyday behaviour maintained and reinforced the negative consequences of a major injustice. How could they have become complicit? They became complicit through acts of commission, by adopting or acquiring prejudice, or through acts of omission, by ignoring the plight of the vulnerable sufferers from injustice. Through these acts of omission or acts of commission individuals may have become accessories in maintaining the original injustice or its negative effects and consequences, instead of becoming aware of the immorality of the injustice being done to the victims, protesting it, trying to stop it, and undoing its effects. This view assumes the commonsense notion that as human beings and fellow citizens we expect a certain level of moral agency from one another: we ought to have the moral capacity to judge certain practices, states of affairs, or acts as unjust or unfair and act on those judgements. To act on such judgements might require us to condemn and remove injustices and their consequences, or do so when made aware of them by fellow citizens, especially the victims of injustice. If not, we stand guilty before our fellow citizens and have to give an account why we have failed to respond, why we refused to see their plight as expressed on their faces, why we chose not to hear their cries of suffering, or why we have violated or ignored the implications of the values of our shared humanity. There is another way in which individuals can be held responsible for compensable injustice, although to a lesser degree. They are responsible even if they had no part in committing the original injustice or if they did not participate in any activities reinforcing or maintaining current injustices or the effects thereof, but they have nevertheless willingly and knowingly enjoyed the benefits resulting from the injustice and its consequences. How can this claim be supported? Compensable injustices are often committed to strip a group of financial, property, social, and other resources or to limit their access to these resources so as to transfer the resources to the dominant group. So-called innocent members of the dominant group mostly willingly accept their better-off position whilst being aware – or being made aware by victims or others on their behalf – of the worse-off position of members of the disadvantaged group. Many such beneficiaries may presume their societal arrangements to be natural and fixed, but in most unjust societies sufficient voices of protest and cries of suffering are available to appeal to their conscience.32 As beneficiaries of injustice, they are thus aware of their privilege and are morally confronted by the victims of injustice to 11 reject and remove the negative disempowering and disabling consequences of injustice for victims. Not responding to victims and exploiting their own privileged position make the beneficiaries at least partially responsible for the continuing presence and consequences of a major injustice, though they are not responsible for the original injustice.33 I am arguing for degrees of responsibility. The original perpetrators of injustice have full responsibility for committing the injustice. Their descendants might have lesser responsibilities for their roles in either perpetuating the effects and consequences of the injustices or by refusing to listen to the cries of suffering and voices of protest directed at them. The government as representative of state and society incurs a longterm responsibility to take care of the well-being of its citizens and thus to restore their position once the government has either allowed or committed injustice against a specific group of members.34 VI What form should such compensation take? Many forms of compensation are possible: their aim should be to restore victims of compensable injustice to full citizenship as persons [1] with dignity and worth and [2] who can function as interdependent agents who take full responsibility as equals in society. The different forms of compensation depend on the kind of loss, injury, harm, or damage done to victims of injustice. What is clear, though, is that compensation imposes a twofold obligation on the former perpetrators and reinforcers of injustice. The first is to restore, rectify, or compensate for the victims' loss, injury, harm, or damage (see Kershnar 1999: 84). In this case in kind compensation should take preference – if land had been stolen, return the same land or something similar and acceptable.35 In cases of loss of life or trauma the harm cannot be undone, but some of the effects and consequences can be softened. For example, the loss of a breadwinner can be compensated by means of an income grant, financial assistance for health and education, provision of adequate shelter, and so on. In many cases where the injustice cannot be undone and in cases of loss of land, a large part of what is at issue is the loss of the means to make a livelihood, to establish meaningful relationships within a community, the loss of caretakers and breadwinners who should have provided livelihoods, caring upbringing, and life chances, and the lack of role models who could have facilitated job training, social skills, and practical intelligence. For these reasons it would make sense to compensate people through special education and training programmes, or through special access to education, empowerment opportunities in business to develop their human agency, and access to life skills to make successful lives for themselves as full and equal citizens.36 The lives of primary and secondary victims might eventually turn out to be different from the ones they would have had without the injustice occurring, e.g. they might not be able to be farmers as their ancestors, or live as hunters in exactly the same area as their forebears. Such differences resulting from their compensation suggest that complete restoration might never be possible, despite full compensation.37 The second obligation compensation imposes on the perpetrators and reinforcers of injustice is to equalise the relationship between victim and perpetrator. The inequality in relationship results from the perpetrator assuming a relationship of power and dominance with destructive consequences for the victim without the latter's consent. What must be done to equalise the relationship between victim and perpetrator? The dignity and worth of the victim must be restored through an acknowledgement of the rights that have been violated. This can best be done by means of an apology or through enforcement of those rights by a court of law. To acknowledge guilt, to ask forgiveness, and to pursue reconciliation based on shared moral rejection of the 12 injustice facilitate the equalisation of the relationship. Part of this restoration of the equal dignity of victims as citizens is to negotiate the nature of all aspects of compensation with them and to make decisions concerning the manner of compensation only through eliciting their consent. Some forms of compensation might not succeed in replacing losses or repairing damage, because they are irreparable. In such cases, like the loss of loved ones, compensation must acknowledge the intensity of suffering, the loss of a valuable human resource, and symbolically restore victims to equal citizenship. Other forms of compensation might not be successful in restoring harms or injuries, because the injustices might have been devastatingly destructive. In such cases, like permanent disabilities, compensation must aim to ease unbearable pain, to make someone's nearly destroyed life somewhat easier, and to symbolically acknowledge the gravity of the injustice done.38 VII Is the concept of compensatory justice backward looking or forward looking?39 [see Boxill 1978: 249]. Are backward-looking justifications that aim to remedy harms done to people in the past better than forwardlooking justifications that aim to improve future life for everyone? What exactly are the differences between these two justifications? I want to argue that a backward looking perspective is crucial. There must be some backward looking justification, spelling out in detail the injustice done and how it was maintained and reinforced through the intervening years. There must be a justification of how some people are still suffering today because of what was done to their ancestors and reasonable evidence must be presented to support these links between present poverty, misery and suffering on the one hand and past injustice on the other. In this sense a backward looking justification is an explanation of how the present came to be [see Amdur 1979: 238 and Paul 1991: 100]. Although looking backwards is crucial, this does not mean that the past is the main issue in demands for compensation of injustices of the distant past. These demands are not to change the past so much as it is a desperate cry to change the present. People judging themselves victims of injustices long ago experience themselves and their group as inferior or disadvantaged or unequal now, when they compare the average position and standing of their group members with the current average position and standing of other members of society.40 They judge themselves and their group in need of compensation to make up their accumulated losses, to improve their relative standing in society as measured by several indices, and to gain respect as equal functioning and contributing members of their diverse society. A forward looking justification is important as well – anything done in the name of justice must raise the future well-being of society and improve the quality of cooperation within a community of citizens for the better. To establish and maintain justice in a society ought to secure the interests of every citizen. So compensation must not only improve the lives of a group of marginalized people, but enhance the quality of life available to all citizens in their country. The backward and forward looking perspectives can be joined in a metaphor: compensation must clear up a festering wound in the body of society for the benefit of improved functioning of all component parts. Such a societal wound will have at least three parts: [1] a certain group suffers a decline in life chances and opportunities for personal betterment and this decline manifests in poverty, [2] discrimination based on group characteristics shows in humiliating and denigrating behaviour towards members of the group, in the 13 silencing of their voices and concerns, and in the consequent prevention and inhibition of healing and recovery, and [3] the contents of propositions [1] and [2] are directly linked to a compensable injustice from the distant past. A societal wound is not something that strikes a number of individuals randomly or naturally, but members of a dominant group inflict it on a vulnerable group for reasons such that the dominant group dislikes the subordinated group for some of their shared group characteristics, wants their resources, or exploits their labour and services. I thus want to argue that injustices of the distant past are actually issues of the present,41 showing that current inequalities, domination, and oppression have histories of being brought into existence and being nurtured by dominant groups. Through healing such wounds, society itself will grow into a better state of moral health in future and become more sensitive to the voices, issues, and plight of any new category of marginalized and vulnerable people that might arise. At times it seems plausible that the contents and implications of this view of compensatory justice for aggrieved groups can be transposed into something like John Rawls's theory of justice without loss of content, but with gains in simplicity.42 The two foci of compensatory justice can be captured by the two Rawlsian principles that secure equal dignity, fair equality of opportunity, and improvements of the position of the least advantaged members of society as prerequisite for justified inequalities of income and wealth. This transposition seems to have the advantage of discarding the backward looking justification.43 Why not rather work on these Rawlsian principles that can secure similar results as the principles of compensation? Why not just forget about the ugly past, as so many of the perpetrators of injustice and their descendants fervently wish? Or is this advantage of ignoring the past a dubious one? The main reason to stick to the principles and ideas of compensation is that such a transposition to Rawlsian principles would deprive victims of injustice of their personal and collective narratives that make sense of their experiences and the condition of their lives.44 These narratives also construct their history that gives them identity, and they offer them stories that give them hope for liberation with dignity from oppressive circumstances. Also, why should descendants of former elites be satisfied to be classified as poor or least advantaged with little state aid forthcoming to improve their position if through compensatory justice their descent from, and position as elites might be recognised and restored?45 VII There is a strong emotional reaction against compensatory justice by former perpetrators, reinforcers, and beneficiaries of compensable injustices. They either deny responsibility for past events or claim new injustices are being committed when a group is compensated for past injustice. Perhaps they will view the issue differently if they interpret compensatory justice as a special case of transformatory justice. Transformatory justice deals with issues Rawls46 assigns to non-ideal theory or partial compliance theory. These issues deal with injustice in societies and how best to transform a society to reduce or eliminate injustice. The term transformatory justice implies that existing political institutions, policies, practices, ideas, and citizens of unjust societies must be changed, modified, reformed, and reshaped to embody and express the newly negotiated values of justice fundamental to a new constitution. In the process of the transformation of an unjust society into a just one, the acceptance of a theory of justice as foundation for the new society is a milestone. From this point onwards, the accepted theory of justice functions as a Rawlsian ideal theory guiding further processes of transformation. Compensation for 14 injustices of the distant past is merely one of those further processes of transformation and not so different from the others. The way in which other aspects of transformation share many goals and characteristics with compensatory justice can be explained as follows. When assigning formerly disenfranchised and oppressed people rights to equal liberties as part of transforming an unjust society, a government is rectifying injustices that might have existed for decades or even centuries. Assigning these rights has enormous implications. In new institutions of governance, new interest groups demand and formulate new policies to change the present that was shaped and formed by many injustices from the past. Such policies could include setting up a truth commission to identify victims and perpetrators of serious human rights violations, implementing affirmative action to rectify patterns of racial prejudice in job appointments, changing priorities of governmental budgets to benefit those disadvantaged for many years by the neglect of unjust governments, and so on. Compensating for impoverishing injustices of the distant past is merely one part of a comprehensive set of policies to undo the injustice of the past. Compensatory justice starts with the acknowledgement that all members of society are now regarded as citizens of equal dignity, but many were not treated as that in the past. A lot of current misery and suffering can be traced directly to acts of fellow citizens based on assumptions about the supposed inferiority of the victims. If governmental representatives of the new foundational theory of justice have the power to show they disagree with past injustices and they have the capacities and means to ameliorate the consequences and effects thereof, then to refrain from doing so is equal to condoning and perpetuating past injustice. Compensatory justice is thus tied to an ideal theory of justice and its embodiment and expression in a transforming society on its way to justice. Bibliography 1. Amdur, Robert. 1979. "Compensatory justice: The question of costs," Political Theory, Vol. 7, No.2, pp. 229 –244. 2. Anderson, Elizabeth. 1991. "Compensation within the limits of reliance alone," Nomos, Vol. 33, pp. 178 – 185. 3. Barnett, Randy, E. 1991. "Compensation and rights in the liberal conception of justice," Nomos, 33, 311-354 4. Bayles, Michael D. 1972-1973. "Reparations to wronged groups." Analysis, Vol.33, pp.182 – 184. 5. Boxill, Bernard. 1978. "The morality of preferential hiring," Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 7, No.3, pp.246 – 268. 6. Carens, Joseph H. "Compensatory justice and social institutions," Economics and Philosophy, Vol. 1, 1985, 39-67 7. Dworkin, Ronald. Sovereign Virtue. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. 8. Fishkin, James S. 1991. "Justice between generations: Compensation, identity and group membership," Nomos, Vol. 33, pp.85 – 96. 9. Fullinwider, Robert K. 1975. "Preferential hiring and compensation," Social theory and practice, pp. 307 – 320. 10. Goldman, Alan H. 1975. "Limits to the justification of reverse discrimination," Social theory and practice, pp. 289 – 306. 11. Goldman, Alan H. 1977. "Reply to Jaggar," Social Theory and Practice, Vol.4, No.2, pp. 235 – 237. 12. Goodin, Robert . 1991. "Compensation and redistribution," Nomos, Vol.33, pp.143-177. 15 13. Heslep, Robert D. 1976. Educational theory, Vol. 26, 147–153. 14. Jaggar, Alison. 1977. "Relaxing the limits on preferential treatment," Social Theory and Practice, Vol.4, No.2, pp. 227 – 235. 15. Kavka, Gegory S. 1982. "An internal critique of Nozick's entitlement theory," Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 6, 371-380. 16. Kershnar, Stephen. 1999. "Uncertain damages to racial minorities and strong affirmative action," Public Affairs Quarterly, Vol. 13, No. 1, pp.83 – 98. 17. Nagel. Thomas. 1973. "Equal treatment and compensatory discrimination," Philosophy and Public Affairs, Vol. 2, pp.348-363. 18. Nickel, James W. 1974. "Classification by race in compensatory programs," Ethics, Vol. 84, pp.146 – 150. 19. Nozick, Robert. 1974. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. 20. O'Neill, Onora. 1987. "Rights to compensation," Social Philosophy and Policy, Vol. 5, No.1, pp.72-87. 21. Paul, Ellen Franken. 1991. "Set-asides, reparations, and compensatory justice," Nomos, Vol. 33, pp. 97 – 139. 22. Rawls, John. 1971. A Theory of Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 23. Shanley, Mary Lyndon & Mary C. Segers. 1979. "On Amdur 'Compensatory justice: The question of costs,'" Political Theory, Vol. 7, No.2, pp. 414 –416. 24. Sher, George. 1976 – 1977. "Groups and justice," Ethics, Vol. 87, pp. 174 –181. 25. Sunstein, Cass. R. 1991. "The limits of compensatory justice," Nomos, Vol. 33, pp.281 – 310. 26. Taylor, Paul W. 1972-1973. "Reverse discrimination and compensatory justice," Analysis, Vol.33, pp. 177 – 182. 27. Thompson, Janna. 2001. "Historical injustice and reparation: Justifying claims of descendants," Ethics, Vol.112, pp.114-135. 28. Wade, Francis C. 1978. "Preferential treatment of blacks," Social Theory and Practice, Vol.4, No.4, pp. 445 – 470. 29. Waldron, Jeremy. 1992. "Superseding historic injustice," Ethics, Vol. 103, No. 1, pp. 4 – 28. 30. Walzer, Michael. Spheres of Justice. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985. 31. Wilson, John. 1983. "The purposes of retribution," Philosophy, Vol. 58, No. 223, pp. 521 – 527. 32. Young, Iris Marion. 1990. Justice and the Politics of Difference, Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 1 Taylor (1972-1973: 179) talks about the obligation for "some form of compensation or reparation" that must be made to restore "the balance of justice when an injustice has been committed to a group of persons." 2 Wilson (1983: 523) refers to the fact that a perpetrator of injustice does not only gain a particular advantage, but such a person "has adopted an unjust superior position" and "infringed the rights or status of his (her) fellows as equal negotiators and deal-makers." 3 Wilson (1983: 523) spells out the significance of repentance and apology in the metaphoric language of material compensation. He says repentance and apology restore equality, as the "repentant person acknowledges the innocent's rights and the innocent thus gets his (her) own back." 4 Amdur (1979: 241) articulates something of this aspect when he refers to the need that African-Americans should be compensated for the "humiliation inflicted by segregation." Waldron (1992: 7) suggests that "a symbolic gesture may be as important to people as any material compensation." 5 Wilson (1983: 522) articulates both the simplicity and the complexity of this issue. The simplicity of the issue is the idea that "when another takes away what is rightfully and desirably mine, he ought to give it back." The complexity of compensation between groups is that it is "not always easy to see what sort of, or how much, compensation A should give to B if A cannot restore the original situation." 6 Waldron (1992: 15) refers to widespread beliefs that deny compensation for injustices committed long ago. He refers to the belief that "after several generations have passed, certain wrongs are simply not worth correcting." A further belief he refers to is that some rights "are capable of 'fading' in their moral importance by virtue of the passage of time and by the sheer persistence of what was originally a wrongful infringement." However valid these beliefs might be, they do not affect my position which argues for compensation for major injustices with effects and consequences which persist through time, often as a result of being reinforced and maintained. 7 Paul (1991: 103) thinks that "some rights violations lapse with time and, therefore, are uncompensable." 8 See Barnett's claim (1991: 313) that we need objective criteria to "distinguish ... compensable from noncompensable injuries." 9 O'Neill (1987: 80) refers to "gross violations of human rights" and injustices that would count as "crimes against humanity." Nagel (1978: 361) identifies a group to whom compensation is owed as one "whose social position is exceptionally depressed, with destructive consequences 16 both for the self-esteem of members of the group and for the health and cohesion of the society." Ward (19XXX: 459) judges compensable injustices as inhuman situations where victims have been "depressed and degraded by years of injustice." 10 See Robert Nozick's theory of justice as entitlement, especially the part of rectificatory justice (Nozick 1974: 150–153). 11 Jaggar (1977) shows the links between these smaller injustices when she says that overt job discrimination "could hardly occur except in a social context where such discrimination was widely considered to be acceptable and where it could appear to be justified because of the existence of a universal covert discrimination." 12 Waldron (1992: 5) points out that great injustice has a well-known characteristic, "that those who suffer it go to their deaths with the conviction that these things must not be forgotten." 13 Note what Boxill (1978: 249) says on this point: "For if they have overcome their injuries, they have borne the costs of compensation that should be borne by those who inflicted the injuries." He adds as reason for the remaining claims of victims to some form of compensation that a person "who has worked hard and long to overcome an injury is not what he would have been had he never been injured." 14 Waldron (1992: 19, 20) claims that often a "long-stolen resource" no longer plays a significant part in people's lives, because they "must have developed some structure of subsistence." This implies that their claim to compensation loses credibility. Somehow Waldron ignores the point that people's lives often have deteriorated significantly through many generations as a result of the irreplaceability of "long-stolen" resources. Besides being disabled by the original injustice, their recovery is more often than not impeded by subsequent maintenance and reinforcement of the original injustice. Waldron (1992: 27) acknowledges this possibility when he says it is a fact that "many of the descendants of those who were defrauded and expropriated live demoralized in lives of relative poverty – relative, that is, to the descendants of those who defrauded them." 15 Waldron (1992: 8) makes an argument against compensation for historic injustices based on his problems with the subjunctive approach that uses counterfactual reasoning to approximate "what would have happened if some event (which did occur) had not taken place." This hypothetical reconstruction of possible events is then the basis to "change the present so that it looks more like the present that would have obtained in the absence of the injustice..." I will show that this approach is not the only one to establish a factual basis for compensation for historic injustices. 16 See O'Neill's (1987) rejection of compensation, despite her vivid recognition of the harm done by past injustice. 17 Sunstein's (1991: 297) reference to affirmative action as "an effort to overcome the social subordination of the relevant groups" reinforces this point. 18 This importance of this point can be illuminated by Barnett's remark (1991: 318) that the liberal conception of the rule of law requires "that sufficient evidence of liability must exist and be presented before a remedy may be imposed." 19 Janna Thompson [2001: 114-135] uses this line of argument to justify compensation. 20 See Sher (1976-1977: 174 – 179) for a position that refuses to acknowledge any notion that groups are involved in issues of compensatory justice. For Wade (1978: 464) the matter in the case of African-Americans is clear: "since the injustice the blacks have lived with was directed towards the group, reparation must follow the same pattern." 21 Taylor (1972-1973: 181) also describes the victims as group, because they "were the collective target of an institutionalized practice of unjust treatment." Perhaps he overstates his case when he says the group was "created by the original unjust practice." The group with their specific characteristics might have been drawn into the spotlight, have been focused on in a special way, or they might have been forced to react in ways that strengthened their group identification and mobilization. 22 My view coincides with one proposed by Taylor (1972-1973: 148) when he says the following: "For the injustices done to a person are based on the fact that he has characteristic C. His being C is, other things being equal, a sufficient condition for the permissibility of treating him in the given manner." 23 See Boxill's (1978: 254 – 255) comment: "In order to retain their sanity and equilibrium in impossibly unjust situations, people may have to resort to patterns of behavior and consequently may develop habits or cultural traits which are debilitating and unproductive in a more humane environment." He calls these cultural traits "unjust injuries" and says they "may be deeply ingrained and extremely difficult to eradicate." 24 O'Neill (1987: 74) refers to symbolic modes of restitution that respond to a "ruptured moral relationship" between victim and perpetrator. Modes such as apology, forgiveness, and acceptance do "not undo wrongs," she says, "but (at best) they expunge them." 25 See for example Nickel's point (1974: 148). Goldman, though, wishes to argue that fairness requires that damages be assigned "as specifically as possible" and that individuals must be reimbursed "always in proportion to the actual damages suffered under the unjust policy." Goldman clearly denies the group aspect of such injustices that I am arguing for which does not demand these almost impossible details from victims. His position on the individualist nature of discrimination furthermore states that "discrimination always affects particular individuals, and reparation must be made to specific individuals." This sentence, though true, needs to be qualified as follows: "Discrimination always affects particular individuals insofar as they are members of particular groups, and reparation must be made to specific individuals insofar as they have been direct or indirect victims of the consequences of discrimination based on group characteristics." 26 Goldman (1977: 235) makes the point that "broad social pressures and stereotypes affect different individuals in different ways." He adds that although all women, for example, might encounter discriminatory attitudes, "it is clear that when these differ in intensity and manifest form, and when some females receive considerable support in their endeavors from others, the long-range psychological effects of such discriminatory effects can also differ." 27 O'Neill (1987: 75) argues that victims are compensated "if somebody offers them some equivalent for the loss suffered." She adds that compensation "can be done vicariously ...it need not be provided by wrongdoers or by their heirs or representatives." 28 Wilson (1983: 521) argues for the view that it is "the guilty who... are to 'pay back' the innocent... who are to compensate or requite those injured by what they have done, or to make up for it." 29 Kershnar (1999: 90) argues for the view that all citizens are responsible for compensation, as the government as their agent "omitted to intervene to prevent private persons and state and local officials from committing unjust acts." See also Fishkin's point (1991: 95) that some principle "that holds contemporary institutions responsible for previous acts by those same institutions might be acceptable." 30 Taylor (1972-1973: 180, 181) argues for an obligation to compensate that belongs to every member of society except the victims of injustice. He says that it is "the society in general that, through its established social practice, brought upon itself the obligation." 31 Goldman's worry (1975: 294) is that "specific individuals who have not caused or received benefit from discrimination will be forced to pay..." Paul (1991) has a similar worry about creating a "new generation of victims" who must "bear the burden of the remedy." There might be individuals who did not cause the injustice, played no part in reinforcing the injustice, and received no benefit in any direct or indirect way from the consequences or effects of the injustice. Would they have reason to complain that small proportions of their taxes are used to compensate victims? The assumption that they would have reason to complain misunderstands how governments differentially distribute tax income to the benefit of interest groups of citizens. If I had no part in any crimes, why should my tax money be used to compensate victims of violent crimes, for example? Alternatively, if I don't travel by road, why should I pay taxes for building and maintaining roads? If the argument is that taxes are 17 used for the general interest of society, then compensation for victims of injustice that eliminates bitterness and rebuilds agency would surely also benefit society? Are we victims in any way if our taxes are used for such purposes? Amdur (1979: 233) adds to this view when he says the costs of compensation must be distributed "just the way we distribute the costs of any public good." 32 Fullinwider (1975: 318) refers to the fact that the benefits of injustice may be received "involuntary and unavoidable." Although whether this is true in all cases might have to be settled empirically, I am strongly convinced that in most cases of injustice protest would be audible and suffering visible enough to argue that the beneficiaries had the moral responsibility of at least recognizing and enquiring about such issues. 33 Sher (1976-1977: 180) draws a slightly different conclusion about the beneficiaries, saying they "may have benefited from past discrimination; but in a society in which such benefit can hardly be avoided, this is surely not a punishable offence." Sher too easily avoids appealing to the role of their moral agency in such circumstances. 34 See also some of the distinctions made by O'Neill (1987: 81). 35 Goldman (1975: 291) defends a principle of compensation that says "injured parties should be compensated, and compensated in kind if possible." 36 Nagel (1973: 349–350) proposes compensatory measures "in the form of special training programs, or financial support, or day-care centers, or apprenticeships, or tutoring." 37 See Paul (1991: 101) and note her comment (1991: 103) about the limits of individual compensation when she says that "especially with the passage of much time between the injury and the recompense, restoring the individual to his ex ante position will not fully erase the injurious event." 38 Goodin (1991: 155) thinks that "little more than token compensation" can be offered in cases where "harms are truly irreparable, and the loss truly irreplaceable." Without denying that some harms are irreparable and some losses irreplaceable, I think compensation in such cases can have more value than being mere tokenism. The value of restoring the equal human value and dignity of victims should especially not be underrated. Creative ways of material compensation could ease a person's life to give compensation more value than mere tokenism. 39 See Ronald Dworkin's discussion of this issue in his book Sovereign Virtue [2000]. 40 Wade (1978: 464) uses ideas similar to those of average position and relative standing to suggest a criterion when compensatory measures ought to be terminated. He says that point would be reached when victims of injustice [in this case African-Americans] "would have risen to preferred jobs and positions in about the same proportion as other ethnic groups who did not suffer insulting discrimination." 41 Waldron (1992: 7) says part of the moral significance of the past is "the difference it makes to the present." 42 This is proposed by Joseph F. Carens (1985: 65) when he says: "I want to argue that ... the best way to institutionalize the ideal of compensatory justice would be to adopt the familiar egalitarian strategy of progressive taxation of high incomes and supplemental transfers to low incomes up to the point where these taxes and transfers interfere too much with market incentives." Onora O'Neill [1987: 87] takes a slightly different approach by arguing for addressing poverty through the restoration of agency rather than "arguing about whether or not we can stretch notions of compensation for violation of rights to cover rectification of selected Third World problems." 43 Waldron (1992: 27) seems to favor such an approach. He says the following: "If the relief of poverty and the more equal distribution of resources is the aim of a prospective theory of justice, it is likely that the effect of rectifying past wrongs will carry us some distance in this direction. All the same, it is worth stressing that it is the impulse to justice now that should lead the way in this process, not the reparation of something whose wrongness is understood primarily in relation to conditions that no longer obtain." 44 Waldron (1992: 7) emphasizes that material compensation can have important functions of recognition of injustice and confirming victims' historical identities. He gives an example of compensation in America which was "a clear public recognition that this injustice did happen, that it was the American people and their government that inflicted it, and that these people were among its victims." 45 Goodin (1991: 143) makes the point that compensatory justice "usually serves to restore some status quo ante ...the notion of some preexisting state that is to be recreated virtually always seems to lie at the core of compensatory justice." 46 See Rawls [1971]. | {
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Accuracy-first epistemology without additivity Richard Pettigrew August 17, 2020 The Bayesian approach to reasoning under uncertainty is now a vast edifice. It contains methods you can use to build a probabilistic model of a phenomenon, some specific to certain sorts of situations and purposes, others more generally applicable; it contains rules for cleaning and incorporating different sorts of data and updating your model in response to it; it contains mathematical and computational techniques to aid you in discovering particular properties of those models and implementing those modes of inference. However, at its core lies a small number of fundamental principles: Probabilism tells you how your credences in logically related propositions should relate to one another; Conditionalization tells you how to update your credences in response to a specific sort of new evidence, namely, evidence that makes you certain of a proposition; the Principal Principle tells you how your credence about the objective chance of an event should relate to your credence in that event; and, for the socalled objective Bayesians, there are further principles that tell you how to set your prior credences, that is, those you have before you incorporate your data. The accuracy-first programme in epistemology has sought to provide new foundations for these central principles of Bayesianism (Joyce, 1998; Greaves & Wallace, 2006; Pettigrew, 2016a). The idea is straightforward. We adopt the orthodox Bayesian assumption that our uncertain doxastic states can be represented by assigning precise numerical credences to each proposition we consider. By convention, your credence in a proposition is represented by a single real number at least 0 and at most 1, which we take to measure how strongly you believe that proposition. We then represent the whole doxastic state by a credence function, which takes each proposition about which you have a credal opinion and assigns to it your credence in that proposition. So far, that's just the representational claim of orthodox Bayesianism. Now for the distinctive claim of accuracy-first epistemology. It is a claim about what makes a credal state, represented by a credence function, better or worse from the epistemic point of view. That is, it says what determines the epistemic or cognitive value of a credal state. It says: a credal state is better the more accurate it is; it is worse the more inaccurate 1 it is. And we might intuitively think of the inaccuracy of a credence function as how far it lies from the ideal credence function, which is the one that assigns maximal credence to each truth and minimal credence to each falsehood. In accuracy-first epistemology, we formulate mathematically precise ways of measuring this epistemic good. We then ask what principles a credence function should have if it is to serve the goal of attaining that good; or, perhaps better, what properties should it not have if it is to avoid being suboptimal from the point of view of that good. And indeed we can find arguments of exactly this sort for the various fundamental principles of Bayesianism that we listed above. Each of these arguments has the same form. Its first premise gives a set of properties an inaccuracy measure must have.1 Its second premise provides a bridge principle connecting inaccuracy with rationality. And its third and final premise is a mathematical theorem that shows that, for any inaccuracy measure that has the properties demanded by the first premise, if we apply the bridge principle with inaccuracy measured in this way, it will follow that any credence function that violates the principle we seek to establish is irrational. We thus conclude that principle. So, for instance, Jim Joyce lays down a series of properties that legitimate measures of inaccuracy must have-we'll mention them again briefly below (Joyce, 1998). He then formulates his bridge principle that connects inaccuracy and rationality: it says that a credence function is irrational if it is accuracy dominated; that is, if there is an alternative that is guaranteed to be more accurate. Then he proves a mathematical theorem to show that any credence function that is not probabilistic is accuracy dominated. And he concludes Probabilism. Similarly, Hilary Greaves and David Wallace lay down a single property they take to be necessary for measure of inaccuracy (Greaves & Wallace, 2006): it is Strict Propriety, and it will play a central role in what follows. Then they say that your updating plan is irrational if there is an alternative that your prior credence function expects to be more accurate. And finally they prove that updating rules that proceed by conditioning your prior on your evidence, and only such rules, minimize expected inaccuracy from the point of view of your prior. And they conclude Conditionalization. Pettigrew's arguments for the Principal Principle and the Principle of Indifference, and Pettigrew and Briggs' argument for Conditionalization have the same structure (Pettigrew, 2013, 2016b; Briggs & Pettigrew, 2018). Now, an argument is only as strong as its premises are plausible. In this paper, I'd like to consider the first premise in each of these arguments. In these first premises, we lay down what we will demand of an inaccuracy 1For various reasons, it's become standard in accuracy-first epistemology to work with measures of inaccuracy, rather than measures of accuracy. But there is no substantial difference: a measure of inaccuracy is simply the negative of a measure of accuracy, and vice versa. 2 measure. My aim is to take the current best version of this premise and improve it by making it less demanding. There are really six sets of conditions offered in the literature: (I) In his 1998 argument for Probabilism, Joyce imposes six conditions on measures of inaccuracy: Structure, Extensionality, Normality, Dominance, Weak Convexity, and Symmetry (Joyce, 1998). (II) In his 2009 argument for a restricted version of Probabilism, he imposes just two: Truth-Directedness and Coherence Admissibility (Joyce, 2009). (III) In their 2006 argument for Conditionalization, Greaves and Wallace impose just one: Strict Propriety (Greaves & Wallace, 2006). (IV) In their 2009 argument for Probabilism, Predd, et al. impose three: Continuity, Additivity, and Strict Propriety. These are also the three conditions imposed in Pettigrew's argument for the Principal Principle, and Briggs & Pettigrew's argument for Conditionalization (Predd et al., 2009; Pettigrew, 2013, 2016b; Briggs & Pettigrew, 2018). (V) In their 2010 arguments for Probablism and Conditionalization, Leitgeb and Pettigrew consider three different sets of conditions: for our purposes, the important condition is Global Normality and Dominance, which entails Additivity, the condition we seek to excise here (Leitgeb & Pettigrew, 2010). (VI) In their 2016 argument, D'Agostino and Sinigaglia impose five: OneDimensional Value-Sensitivity, Sub-Vector Consistency, Monotonic OrderSensitivity, Permutation Invariance, and Replication Invariance (D'Agostino & Dardanoni, 2009; D'Agostino & Sinigaglia, 2010). There is a lot to be said about the relationships between these different sets of necessary conditions for inaccuracy measures, but that's not my purpose here. Here, I want to take what I think are the best accuracy-first arguments for Probabilism, Conditionalization, and the Principal Principle and improve them by weakening the demands they make of inaccuracy measures in their first premises. That is, I want to show that those arguments go through for a wider range of inaccuracy measures than we've previously allowed. As I will explain below, I take those best arguments to be the ones based on Predd, et al.'s set of conditions: Strict Propriety, Continuity, and Additivity. I will strengthen those arguments by showing that they go through if we impose only Strict Propriety and Continuity. We do not need to impose the condition of Additivity, which says roughly that the inaccuracy of a whole credence function should be the sum of the inaccuracies of the credences that it assigns. That is, we can strengthen those arguments by weakening their first premise. 3 Why should this interest us? After all, Joyce as well as D'Agostino & Sinigaglia have offered arguments for Probabilism that don't assume Additivity. True, but Patrick Maher (2002) has raised serious worries about Joyce's 1999 characterization, and Pettigrew (2016a, Section 3.1) has built on those; and Joyce's 2009 characterization applies only to credence functions defined over a partition, and not those defined on a full algebra, so while its premises are weak, so is its conclusion. D'Agostino & Sinigaglia do not assume Additivity, but their characterization does entail it, and the Sub-Vector Consistency requirement they impose is implausibly strong for the same reason that Additivity is implausibly strong, as we'll see in the next section. And, similarly, Leitgeb and Pettigrew's Global Normality and Dominance condition entails Additivity, and so is implausibly strong for the same reason. This suggests that the best existing accuracy-first argument for Probabilism is the one based on Predd, et al.'s results, which assumes Additivity, Strict Propriety, and Continuity. So there is reason to show that Probabilism follows from Strict Propriety and Continuity alone. What about the Principal Principle? Well, the only existing accuracyfirst argument for that is Pettigrew's 2013 argument, and that assumes Additivity, Strict Propriety, and Continuity. So, again, there is reason to show that the principle follows from Strict Propriety and Continuity alone. What about Conditionalization? Here, Greaves and Wallace have offered an argument for Conditionalization based on Strict Propriety alone- it does not assume Additivity, nor even Continuity. True, but their result applies to a very specific case, namely, one in which (i) you know ahead of time the partition from which your evidence will come, (ii) you know that you will learn a proposition iff it is true, and (iii) you form a plan for how you will respond should you learn a particular proposition from that partition. In contrast, Briggs & Pettigrew's result can be generalized to cover many more cases than just this. As we will see, it can be generalized to establish what I will call the Weak Reflection Principle, which entails the restricted version of Conditionalization that Greaves and Wallace consider. But the Briggs & Pettigrew proof currently requires Additivity. So there is reason to explore how we can weaken the premises of that argument by removing that assumption and still retain its conclusion. As we will see, the Weak Reflection Principle and thus Conditionalization follows from Strict Propriety and Continuity alone. 1 Predd, et al's conditions In this section, I describe Predd, et al.'s set of conditions-the ones we numbered (IV) in our list above. This will furnish us with statements of Strict Propriety and Continuity, the assumptions we'll use in our new arguments for Probabilism, the Principal Principle, and Conditionalization; and it will 4 also introduce us to Additivity, the assumption that we're dropping from the existing best arguments for these conclusions. We will explain the problems with Additivity in Section 2 below. First, let's lay out the framework in which we're working: • We write W for the set of possible worlds. We assume W is finite.2 SoW = {w1, . . . , wn}. • We write F for the full algebra of propositions build over W . That is, F is the set of all subsets of W , where each subset represents the proposition that is true at all and only the worlds it contains. • We write C for the set of credence functions defined on F . That is, C is the set of functions c : F → [0, 1]. • We write P for the set of probabilistic credence functions defined on F . That is, p is in P iff p is in C and (i) p(>) = 1 and p(⊥) = 0, and (ii) p(A ∨ B) = p(A) + p(B) when A and B are mutually exclusive, i.e., when there is no possible world at which A and B are both true. • Given a credence function c, we write ci for the credence that c assigns to world wi. • We write wi for the ideal credence function on F at world wi. That is, for X in F , wi(X) = { 1 if X is true at wi 0 if X is false at wi So, in particular wi(wj) = wij = 1 if i = j and 0 if i 6= j. • An inaccuracy measure is a function I : C ×W → [0, ∞]. For c in C and wi inW , I(c, i) is the inaccuracy of c at world wi. Here are the three properties that Predd, et al. demand of inaccuracy measures. Continuity For each world wi, I(c, i) is a continuous function of c. That is, if wi is inW , then for all c in C, (∀ε > 0)(∃δ > 0)(∀c′ ∈ C)[(∀X ∈ F )[|c(X)− c′(X)| < δ⇒ |I(c, i)− I(c′, i)| < ε] Continuity says that, I can ensure that the inaccuracy of c′ is as close as I wish to the inaccuracy of c by ensuring that each credence that c′ assigns is at most a certain distance from the corresponding credence that c assigns. 2For a consideration of the infinite case, see (Kelley, ms). 5 Additivity For each X in F , there is a scoring rule sX : {0, 1} × [0, 1]→ [0, ∞] such that, for all c in C and wi inW , I(c, i) = ∑ X∈F sX(wi(X), c(X)) We say that the scoring rules sX for each X in F generate I. Additivity says that the inaccuracy of a credence function is the sum of the inaccuracies of the individual credences it assigns. Strict Propriety For all p inP , ∑ni=1 piI(c, i) is minimized uniquely, as a function of c, at c = p. That is, for all p in P and c 6= p in C, n ∑ i=1 piI(p, i) < n ∑ i=1 piI(c, i) Strict Propriety says that each probabilistic credence function should expect itself to be most accurate.3 A few examples of inaccuracy measures: • Brier score B(c, i) = ∑X∈F (wi(X)− c(X))2 • Log score L(c, i) = − log ci • Enhanced log score L?(c, i) = ∑X∈F (−wi(X) log c(X) + c(X)) • Absolute value score A(c, i) = ∑X∈F |wi(X)− c(X)| • Logsumexp score LSE(c, i) = − log(1 + ∑ X∈F ec(X)) + ∑X∈F (wi(X)− c(X))ec(X) 1 + ∑X∈F ec(X) Then: 3A quick remark: We sometimes assume that the inaccuracy measure I satisfies Additivity, and then assume that the individual scoring rules sX that generate I satisfy Continuity and Strict Propriety, rather than assuming that I itself satisfies those conditions. The following fact shows that this makes no difference. We say that sX is continuous if sX(1, x) and sX(0, x) are continuous functions of X. We say that sX is strictly proper if, for any 0 ≤ p ≤ 1, psX(1, x) + (1− p)sX(0, x) is minimized, as a function of x, at x = p. Then Proposition 1 Suppose I is additive with I(c, i) = ∑X∈F sX(wi(X), c(X)). Then (i) I is continuous iff each sX is continuous. (ii) I is strictly proper iff each sX is strictly proper. 6 Continuity Additivity Strict Propriety B X X X L X × × L? X X X A X X × LSE X × X Some notes: • The Brier score is additive. It is generated by using the quadratic scoring rule q for every proposition, where – q(1, x) = (1− x)2; – q(0, x) = x2. Since q is continuous and strictly proper, so is B. • The log score is not additive and it is not strictly proper. A credence function that assigns credence 1 to each world dominates any credence function that assigns less than credence 1 to each world. The log score is however strictly P-proper: that is, for all p in P , ∑i piL(q, i) is minimized uniquely, among credence functions q in P , at q = p. • The enhanced log score is additive. It is generated using the enhanced logarithmic scoring rule l? for every proposition, where – l(1, x) = − log x + x; – l(0, x) = x. Since l is continuous and strictly proper, so if L?. • The absolute value score is additive. It is generated by using the absolute scoring rule a for every proposition, where – a(1, x) = 1− x; – a(0, x) = x. But a is not strictly proper. If p < 12 , then pa(1, x) + (1− p)a(0, x) = p(1− x) + (1− p)x is minimized at x = 0; if p > 12 , it is minimized at x = 1; if p = 12 , it is minimized at any 0 ≤ x ≤ 1. So A is not strictly proper either. • The logsumexp score is strictly proper, but it is not additive. 7 My concern in this paper is to strengthen the accuracy-first arguments for Probabilism, the Principal Principle, and Conditionalization based on Continuity + Additivity + Strict Propriety by showing that they go through even if we don't assume Additivity. Thus, for instance, they go through for the logsumexp score as well as the Brier and enhanced log scores. Of course, weakening the premises of an argument always strengthens it. So there seems good reason to note this fact regardless of your view of Additivity- unless you're certain Additivity is a necessary condition on legitimate measures of inaccuracy, noting that it is inessential will strengthen the argument for you. Nonetheless, in the next section, I explain why you might be suspicious of Additivity. Then, in Section 3, I give the arguments for Probabilism, the Principal Principle, and Conditionalization without appealing to it. In Section 4, I prove the theorems on which those arguments are based. In Section 5, I note briefly that we can also strengthen Pettigrew's argument for linear pooling in cases of judgment aggregation by removing the Additivity condition there as well (Pettigrew, 2019). In section 6, I conclude. 2 Why Additivity? I should begin by pointing out that, while Pettigrew appeals to Predd, et al.'s mathematical results in his presentation of the accuracy dominance argument for Probabilism, those authors weren't themselves working in the accuracy-first framework (Pettigrew, 2016a, Part I). What we are calling inaccuracy measures are for them loss functions; and in the context of loss functions, the Additivity assumption is perfectly natural-providing the loss is stated in units of some commodity in which your utility is linear, the total loss to which your credence function is subject is the sum of the individual losses to which your credences are subject. But what about the accuracy-first framework? Is Additivity still so natural there? Pettigrew (2016a, Section 4.1) claims that it is. He begins his argument thus: [S]umming the inaccuracy of individual credences to give the total inaccuracy of a credence function is the natural thing to do (Pettigrew, 2016a, 49). His reason? Your credence function is not a single, unified doxastic state, but rather merely the motley agglomeration of all of your individual credal doxastic states. We might mistakenly think of a credence function as unified because we represent it by a single mathematical object, but mathematical functions are anyway just collections of assignments of values to arguments. 8 Pettigrew goes on to contrast credence functions with melodies. Just as we might ask for the inaccuracy of a credence function at a world, so we might ask for the inaccuracy of a particular rendition of an original melody. If we understand the inaccuracy of a credence function at a world as how far it lies from the perfect credence function, we might understand the inaccuracy of a particular rendition of a melody as how far it lies from the perfect rendition. Now, in the case of melodies, we can quickly see that we don't want additive measures of accuracy. For instance, consider the three melodies below. The first is the true opening of Bach's Art of Fugue. The second and third are less than perfect renditions of it. It seems clear to me that Rendition 2 is less accurate than Rendition 1.4 However, an additive measure of melodic inaccuracy cannot capture this. After all, at almost every particular point in time, the note played in Rendition 2 is closer in pitch to the note in the Original than is the note played in Rendition 1. Our intuitive measure of melodic inaccuracy must therefore be non-additive. Such a measure might take into account the 'shape' of the melody, for instance, and assign greater weight to similarity of 'shape' than it assigns to moment-by-moment proximity of pitch. More precisely, it might take into account the change in pitch between each note and the next. By doing that, it might capture our sense that Rendition 1 is more accurate than Rendition 2. The 'shape' of a melody, particularly as analysed as the sequence of changes in pitch between each note and the next, is a global feature of it. It depends on the relationships between the successive notes and cannot be captured by looking at each moment during the melody individually and 4Measuring the proximity of one melody to another is no idle game. Claims of plagiarism turn on it. However, copyright law does not enshrine any particular way of computing it, favouring instead the common sense criterion: does an ordinary person judge them similar? 9 aggregating the results.5 So inaccuracy measures for melodies must be non-additive because there are global features of melodies that are relevant to their inaccuracy. However, the same might be said of credence functions. For instance, at a world at which two propositions A and B have the same truth value, we might think that it is more accurate to have equal credence in A and in B than to have different credences in them. After all, the ideal credence function will have the same credence in them, namely, 1 in both or 0 in both. And perhaps resembling the ideal credence function in this respect gets you closer to it, and therefore more accurate. But having the same credence in A and in B is a global feature of a credence function. To determine whether or not it's true, you can't just look at the credences it assigns individually. However, interestingly, while this is indeed a global feature of a credence function, some additive inaccuracy measures will in fact reward it. Take the Brier score, for instance. If A and B are both true, then the inaccuracy of assigning credences a and b to them respectively is (1− a)2 + (1− b)2. But it's easy to see that, if a 6= b, then assigning their average, 12 a + 1 2 b to both is more accurate. Since (1− x)2 is a strictly convex function of x, (1− a)2 + (1− b)2 > ( 1− ( 1 2 a + 1 2 b ))2 + ( 1− ( 1 2 a + 1 2 b ))2 Similarly, if A and B are both false, a2 + b2 > ( 1 2 a + 1 2 b )2 + ( 1 2 a + 1 2 b )2 So, if we measure inaccuracy using the Brier score, which is additive, having the global property in question-assigning equal credences to A and B when A and B are either both true or both false-improves accuracy. Pettigrew seems to argue that we should simply assume that, for any global feature of a credence function that we consider relevant to accuracy, it must be possible to capture it using additive measures along the lines just sketched. Just as some hold that risk aversion phenomena in practical decision theory are best understood as the result of doing something other than maximizing expected utility-minimizing regret, for instance, or maximizing the quantity favoured by one of the many non-expected utility theories-and not as having a concave utility function, so any sensitivity to global features of 5See Jenann Ismael's essay on death, immortality, and the value of life for an argument that how well a human life has gone is also measured by appealing to global features of it, rather than by looking at the welfare obtained at each point in time and aggregating those (Ismael, 2006). 10 credence functions ought to be understood either as following from their local features or as following from the adoption of an alternative decision principle and not as having a non-additive inaccuracy measure. (Pettigrew, 2016a, 51) But why? Why think that this is true? I think Pettigrew imagines that this follows from the fact that credence functions are not unified entities. He assumes that this warrants a defeasible assumption in favour of additivity. That assumption could be defeated if we were to find a global feature we wished to reward but which could not be rewarded by additive measures, as in the case of melodic inaccuracy. But no such feature has presented itself. Perhaps. But even if we grant Pettigrew his move from the disunified nature of credence functions to this defeasible assumption in favour of additivity, such a defeasible assumption is a flimsy basis for an argument, particularly since we have not systematically investigated the sorts of global features we might consider relevant to accuracy, and so have rather sparse evidence that there is no defeater to be found. As we showed above, we can explain why one particular global feature is conducive to accuracy, namely, having the same credence in two propositions that have the same truth value. And indeed you can view the accuracy dominance argument for Probabilism as furnishing us with another example. After all, Probabilism makes two demands of a credence function. The first is local: the credence function should assign maximal credence to a tautology and minimal credence to a contradiction. The second is global: the credence is assigns to a disjunction of mutually exclusive propositions should be the sum of the credences it assigns to the disjuncts. To tell whether a credence function satisfies this latter condition, you must look at the relationships between the credences it assigns. However, the fact that you can run the accuracy dominance argument for Probabilism using additive inaccuracy measures like the Brier score shows that you can show that this global feature of a credence function is conducive to accuracy without building into your inaccuracy measure that it should be rewarded explicitly. Indeed, that is one of the remarkable features of de Finetti's original proof. But that's about it. Those are the only two global features of credence functions we've succeeded in capturing using additive inaccuracy measures. So, in the end, to the extent that there still exists doubt that we have considered all global features of credence functions that are relevant to their accuracy and showed how their relevance can be captured by additive inaccuracy measures, there still exists doubt over Additivity. And while there still exists doubt over Additivity, removing that assumption from the arguments for Probabilism, the Principal Principle, and Conditionalization strengthens them. 11 3 The arguments without additivity Let me begin this section by spelling out the arguments we wish to give. Then I'll move on to explaining and proving the theorems to which they appeal. As I noted above, each argument has the same form: (NC) Necessary conditions on being a legitimate inaccuracy measure. (BP) Accuracy-rationality bridge principle. (MT) Mathematical theorem. Therefore, (PR) Principle of Rationality The first component will be the same in each argument that we give. We will assume only that inaccuracy measures satisfy Continuity and Strict Propriety. But the accuracy-rationality principles will differ from case to case. In the remainder of this section, I'll state each principle for which we're arguing and then the bridge principle to which we'll appeal in that argument. To state some of the principles of rationality, we need some moderately technical notions. I'll lay them out here. Suppose X is a set of credence functions. Then: • X is convex if it is closed under taking mixtures. That is, for any c, c′ in X and any 0 ≤ λ ≤ 1, λc + (1− λ)c′ is also in X . • X is closed if it is closed under taking limits. That is, for any sequence c1, c2, . . . of credence functions in X with limit c, c is in X .6 • The convex hull of X is the smallest convex set that contains X . We write it X+. That is, if Z is convex and X ⊆ Z , then X+ ⊆ Z . • The closed convex hull of X is the smallest closed set that contains the convex hull of X . We write it cl(X+). Thus, if Z is closed and X+ ⊆ Z , then cl(X+) ⊆ Z . 6We say that limn→∞ cn = c if (∀ε > 0)(∃n)(∀m > n)[|cm(X)− c(X)| < ε] 12 As well as clarifying the technical notions just presented, I also want to flag that these arguments appeal to a notion of possibility at various points: in setting up the framework, we have already talked of possible worlds and algebras built on those worlds; in accuracy dominance arguments for Probabilism, we will quantify over possible worlds; in the accuracy dominance argument for Conditionalization we quantify over possible, but also over possible future credence functions that you currently endorse; in expected inaccuracy arguments like Greaves and Wallace's argument for Conditionalization, we will sum over credences in possible worlds to give expectations; and in chance dominance arguments for the Principal Principle, we'll quantify over possible objective chance functions. What is the notion of possibility at play here? Joyce (1998) takes it to be logical possibility; Pettigrew (2020) takes it to be something like epistemic possibility. It is beyond the scope of this essay to argue for one or the other in detail, so I will leave the notion as a placeholder. But my own preference is for epistemic possibility. What makes it irrational to violate Probabilism, for instance, is that there is another credence function that is more accurate than yours at all epistemically possible worlds-that is, you can tell from the inside, so to speak, that this alternative is better than yours because the only worlds you need to consider are those you consider possible. 3.1 The argument for Probabilism In the argument for Probabilism, we'll assume a credence function is irrational if there's another that is guaranteed to be more accurate. Here's Probabilism: Probabilism Your credence function at each time during your epistemic life should be probabilistic. That is, if c is your credence function at a given time, then we should have: (i) c(>) = 1 and c(⊥) = 0; (ii) c(A ∨ B) = c(A) ∨ c(B) for any mutually exclusive A and B. And here's the bridge principle: Credal Dominance If there is c? such that, for all possible worlds wi, I(c?, i) < I(c, i), then c is irrational. Thus, to move from the claim that an inaccuracy measure must satisfy Continuity and Strict Propriety, together with Credal Dominance, to Probabilism, we need the following theorem: 13 Theorem 2 Suppose I is continuous and strictly proper. If c is not in P , there is c? in P , such that I(c?, i) < I(c, i) for all wi inW . We prove that in Section 4 below. 3.2 The argument for the Principal Principle In the argument for the Principal Principle, we'll assume a credence function is irrational if there is another that is guaranteed to have greater objective expected accuracy-that is, greater expected accuracy from the point of view of the objective chance function. The Principal Principle is usually stated as follows, where, for any probability function ch, Cch is the proposition that says that ch is the objective chance function: Principal Principle If Cch is in F and c(Cch) > 0, then, for all A in F , we should have c(A|Cch) = ch(A) The version we'll consider here is more general than this version. And indeed, the more general version entails the usual version. Generalized Principal Principle Suppose A is the set of possible objective chance functions. Then your credence function should be in the closed convex hull of A. Thus, for instance, if all the possible objective chance functions consider A and B equally likely, your credence function should consider them equally likely; and if all the possible objective chance functions consider A more likely than B, then you should consider A at least as likely as B; and if all the possible objective chance functions consider A to be between 30% and 70% likely, then you should not assign is credence 0.8; and so on. Suppose ch is a possible objective chance function and Cch is in F . And suppose further that ch is not a self-undermining chance function. That is, it is certain that it gives the chances. That is, ch(Cch) = 1. Then, if you satisfy the Generalized Principal Principle, then c(A|Cch) = ch(A).7 So that's the version of the Principal Principle that we'll consider. And here's the bridge principle: Chance Dominance If there is c? such that, for all possible chance functions ch, ∑i chiI(c?, i) < ∑i chiI(c, i), then c is irrational. 7To see this, note that having this property is closed under taking mixtures and taking limits. 14 Thus, to move from the claim that an inaccuracy measure must satisfy Continuity and Strict Propriety, together with Chance Dominance, to the Generalized Principal Principle, we need the following theorem: Theorem 3 Suppose I is continuous and strictly proper. If c is not in cl(A+), there is c? in cl(A+), such that ∑i chiI(c?, i) < ∑i chiI(c, i), for all ch in A. Again, we prove this in Section 4. 3.3 The argument for Conditionalization and the Weak Reflection Principle In the argument for Conditionalization, we'll assume that it is irrational to have a prior credence function and a set of possible future credence functions if there is some alternative prior and, for each possible future credence function, an alternative to that, such that the sum of the inaccuracy of the prior and the inaccuracy of a possible future credence function is always greater than the inaccuracy of the alternative prior and the corresponding alternative possible future credence function. The version of Conditionalization for which Greaves and Wallace argue and Briggs and Pettigrew also argued is this: Plan Conditionalization Suppose your prior is c0 and you know that your evidence will come from a partition E1, . . . , Em. And suppose you will learn a particular cell of this partition iff it is true. And suppose you plan to adopt credence function ci in response to evidence Ei. Then, for all Ei with c0(Ei) > 0, and for all X in F , we should have ci(X) = c0(X|Ei) = c0(XEi) c0(Ei) As we mentioned above, we won't argue for Plan Conditionalization directly, but rather via a more general principle of rationality called the Weak Reflection Principle. Here it is: Weak Reflection Principle SupposeR = {c1, . . . , cm} is the set of possible future credence functions you endorse. Then your current credence function should be in the convex hull ofR. Here's the idea behind this principle. A lot might happen between now and tomorrow. You might see new sights, think new thoughts; you might forget things you know today, take mind-altering drugs that enhance or impair your thinking; and so on. So perhaps there is a set of credence functions you think you might have tomorrow. Some of those you'll endorse- perhaps those you'd adopt if you saw certain new things, or enhanced your 15 cognition in various ways. And some of them you'll disavow-perhaps those that you'd adopt if you were to forget certain things, or were to impair your cognition. The Weak Reflection Principle asks you to separate out the wheat from the chaff, and once you've identified the ones you endorse, it tells you that your current credence function should lie within the convex hull of those future ones. Now, suppose that you are in the situation in that Plan Conditionalization covers. That is, (i) you know that you will receive evidence from the partition E1, . . . , Em, (ii) you will learn Ek iff Ek is true, and (iii) you form a plan for how to respond to these different possible pieces of evidence- you will adopt c1 if you learn E1, c2 if you learn E2, and so on. Thus, the possible future credence functions that you endorse are c1, . . . , cm. Then, by the Weak Reflection Principle, c0 should be in the convex hull of c1, . . . , cn. Then, if ck(Ek) = 1, then ck(X) = c0(X|Ek), as Plan Conditionalization requires. So that's the Weak Reflection Principle. And here's the bridge principle: Diachronic Dominance Suppose c0 is your current credence function and c1, . . . , cm are the possible future credence functions you endorse. Then if there are c?0 , c ? 1 , . . . , c ? m such that, for each 1 ≤ k ≤ m and all wi inW , I(c?0 , i) + I(c ? k , i) < I(c0, i) + I(ck, i) then you are irrational. Thus, to move from the claim that an inaccuracy measure must satisfy Continuity and Strict Propriety, together with Diachronic Dominance, to the Weak Reflection Principle, we need the following theorem: Theorem 4 Suppose I is continuous and strictly proper. If c0 is not in {c1, . . . , cn}+, then there are c?0 , c ? 1 , . . . , c ? n such that, for all wi inW , I(c?0 , i) + I(c ? k , i) < I(c0, i) + I(ck, i) In the next section, we give the proofs of Theorems 2, 3, and 4. 4 The proofs 4.1 Theorems 2 and 3 As will be obvious to anyone familiar with the proof strategy in Predd, et al., many of the ideas used here are adapted from them. Predd, et al. proceed by proving a connection between additive and continuous strictly proper inaccuracy measures, on the one hand, and a sort of divergence between credence functions, on the other. A divergence from one credence function defined on F to another is a function D : C × C → [0, ∞] such that 16 (i) if c 6= c′, then D(c, c′) > 0, (ii) if c = c′, then D(c, c′) = 0. That is, the divergence from one credence function to another is always positive, while the divergence from a credence function to itself is always zero. Given a continuous scoring rule sX, Predd, et al. define the following function for 0 ≤ x ≤ 1: φX(x) := −xsX(1, x)− (1− x)sX(0, x) And then, given an additive and continuous strictly proper inaccuracy measure I that is generated by continuous strictly proper scoring rules sX for X in F , they define a divergence as follows: D(c, c′) = ∑ X∈F φX(c(X))− ∑ X∈F φX(c′(X))− ∑ X∈F φ′X(c ′(X))(c(X)− c′(X)) They show that this is a species of divergence known as a Bregman divergence. What's more, using a representation theorem due to Savage (1971), they show that, for any wi inW and c in C, D(wi, c) = I(c, i) That is, the divergence from the ideal credence function at a world to a credence function is the inaccuracy of that credence function at that world. Having established this, Predd, et al. can then appeal to various properties of Bregman divergences to establish their dominance result. One of the properties they use is this: if p is in P and c is in C, then D(p, c) = ∑ i piI(c, i)−∑ i piI(p, i) (†) That is, the divergence from p to c is what p expects the difference in accuracy to be between c and p itself. In our proofs, we bypass the construction of the Bregman divergence, since it's less straightforward to do that when you do not assume Additivity. And instead, given a continuous strictly proper inaccuracy measure I, we just construct the corresponding divergence DI directly using the property given in equation (†). The following lemma gives four useful initial properties of this divergence. Lemma 5 Suppose I is a strictly proper inaccuracy measure. Then define DI : P × C → [0, ∞] as follows: DI(p, c) := ∑ i piI(c, i)−∑ i piI(p, i) Then: 17 (i) DI is a divergence. That is, DI(p, c) ≥ 0 for all p in P and c in C with equality iff p = c. (ii) DI(wi, c) = I(c, i), for all 1 ≤ i ≤ n. (iii) DI is strictly convex in its first argument. That is, for all p, q in P and c in C and for all 0 ≤ λ ≤ 1, DI(λp + (1− λ)q, c) < λDI(p, c) + (1− λ)DI(q, c) (iv) DI(p, c) ≥ DI(p, q) +DI(q, c) iff ∑ni=1(pi − qi)(I(c, i)− I(q, i)) ≥ 0 Proof of Lemma 5. (i) Since I is strictly proper, DI(p, c) = ∑i piI(c, i) − ∑i piI(p, i) ≥ 0 with equality iff c = p. (ii) DI(wi, c) = 0× I(c, 1) + . . .+ 0× I(c, i− 1) + 1× I(c, i) + 0× I(c, i + 1) + . . .+ 0× I(c, n)− 0× I(wi, 1)− . . .− 0× I(wi, i− 1)− 1× I(wi, i)− 0× I(wi, i + 1)− . . .− 0× I(wi, n) = I(c, i) since I(wi, i) = 0. (iii) Suppose p and q are in P , and suppose 0 < λ < 1. Then let r = λp + (1 − λ)q. Then, since ∑i piI(c, i) is uniquely minimized, as a function of c, at c = p, and ∑i qiI(c, i) is uniquely minimized, as a function of c, at c = q, we have ∑ i piI(c, i) < ∑ i piI(r, i) ∑ i qiI(c, i) < ∑ i qiI(r, i) Thus λ[−∑i piI(p, i)] + (1− λ)[−∑i qiI(q, i)] > λ[−∑i piI(r, i)] + (1− λ)[−∑i qiI(r, i)] = −∑i riI(r, i) Now, adding 18 λ ∑i piI(c, i) + (1− λ)∑i qiI(c, i) = ∑i(λpi + (1− λ)qi)I(c, i) = ∑i riI(c, i) to both sides gives λ[∑i piI(c, i)−∑i piI(p, i)]+ (1− λ)[∑i qiI(c, i)−∑i qiI(q, i)] > ∑i riI(c, i)−∑i riI(r, i) That is, λDI(p, c) + (1− λ)DI(q, c) > DI(λp + (1− λ)q, c) as required. (iv) DI(p, c)−DI(p, q)−DI(q, c) [∑i piI(c, i)−∑i piI(p, i)]− [∑i piI(q, i)−∑i piI(p, i)]− [∑i qiI(c, i)−∑i qiI(q, i)] = ∑i(pi − qi)(I(c, i)− I(q, i)) as required. 2 Lemma 6 Suppose I is a continuous strictly proper inaccuracy measure. Suppose X is a closed convex subset of P . And suppose c is not in X . Then there is q in X such that (i) DI(q, c) < DI(p, c) for all p 6= q in X . (ii) For all p in X , n ∑ i=1 (pi − qi)(I(c, i)− I(q, i)) ≥ 0 (iii) For all p in X , DI(p, c) ≥ DI(p, q) +DI(q, c) Proof of Lemma 6. Suppose c is not in X . Then, since X is a closed convex set and since Lemma 5(iii) shows that DI is strictly convex in its first place, there is a unique q in X that minimizes DI(x, c) as a function of x. So, as (i) requires, DI(q, c) < DI(p, c) for all p 6= q in X . We now turn to proving (ii). We begin by observing that, since p, q are in P , since P is convex, and since DI(x, c) is minimized uniquely at x = q, if 0 < ε < 1, then 1 ε [DI(εp + (1− ε)q, c)−DI(q, c)] > 0 19 Expanding that, we get 1 ε [∑i(εpi + (1− ε)qi)I(c, i)− ∑i(εpi + (1− ε)qi)I(εp + (1− ε)q, i)− ∑i qiI(c, i) + ∑i qiI(q, i)] > 0 So 1 ε [∑i(qi + ε(pi − qi))I(c, i)− ∑i(qi + ε(pi − qi))I(εp + (1− ε)q, i)− ∑i qiI(c, i) + ∑i qiI(q, i)] > 0 So ∑i(pi − qi)(I(c, i)− I(εp + (1− ε)q), i)+ 1 ε [∑i qiI(q, i)−∑i qiI(εp + (1− ε)q, i)] > 0 Now, since I is strictly proper, 1 ε [∑ i qiI(q, i)−∑ i qiI(εp + (1− ε)q, i)] < 0 So, for all ε > 0, ∑ i (pi − qi)(I(c, i)− I(εp + (1− ε)q, i) > 0 So, since I is continuous ∑ i (pi − qi)(I(c, i)− I(q, i)) ≥ 0 which is what we wanted to show. And finally, (iii) follows immediately from (ii) and Lemma 5(iv). 2 Finally, this allows us to prove Theorems 2 and 3. Proof of Theorem 2. Suppose c is not in P . Then, by Lemma 6, there is c? in P such that, for all p in P , DI(p, c) ≥ DI(p, c?) +DI(c?, c) So, in particular, since each wi is in P , DI(vwi , c) ≥ DI(vwi , c?) +DI(c?, c) But, since c? is in P and c is not, c? 6= c, and since Lemma 5(i) shows that DI is a divergence, DI(c?, c) > 0. So DI(vwi , c) > DI(vwi , c ?) So, by Lemma 5(ii), for all wi inW , I(c, i) = DI(vwi , c) > DI(vwi , c ?) = I(c?, i) 20 as required. 2 Proof of Theorem 3. Suppose c is not in cl(A+). Then, by Lemma 6, there is c? such that, for all p in cl(A+), DI(p, c) ≥ DI(p, c?) +DI(c?, c) So, in particular, since each possible chance function ch is in cl(A+), DI(ch, c) ≥ DI(ch, c?) +DI(c?, c) But, since c? is in cl(A+) and c is not, c? 6= c, and since Lemma 5(i) shows that DI is a divergence, DI(c?, c) > 0. So, DI(ch, c) > DI(ch, c?) Now, • DI(ch, c) = ∑i chiI(c, i)−∑i chiI(ch, i) • DI(ch, c?) = ∑i chiI(c?, i)−∑i chiI(ch, i), so ∑ i chiI(c, i) > ∑ i chiI(c?, i) as required. 2 4.2 Proof of Theorem 4 To prove Theorem 4, we need a divergence not between one credence function and another, but between a sequence of m + 1 credence functions and another sequence of m + 1 credence functions. We create that in the natural way. That is, given p0, p1, . . . , pm in P and c0, c1, . . . , cm in C, the divergence from the former sequence to the latter is just the sum of the divergences from p0 to c0, p1 to c1, and so on. Thus: Corollary 7 Suppose I is a strictly proper inaccuracy measure. Then define DI : Pn+1 × Cn+1 → [0, ∞] as follows: DI((p0, p1, . . . , pn), (c0, c1, . . . , cn)) := m ∑ k=0 n ∑ i=1 ( pki I(c k, i)−∑ i pki I(p k, i) ) Then: (i) DI is a divergence. (ii) DI((wi, c1, . . . , ci−1, wi, ci+1, . . . , cn), (c0, c1, . . . , cn)) = I(c0, i)+I(ci, i), for all 1 ≤ i ≤ n. 21 (iii) DI is strictly convex in its first argument. Proof of Corollary 7. These follow immediately from Lemma 5. 2 Corollary 8 Suppose I is a continuous strictly proper inaccuracy measure. Suppose X is a closed convex subset of Pn+1. And suppose (c0, c1, . . . , cn) is not in X . Then there is (q0, q1, . . . , qn) in X such that (i) ∑mk=0 DI(q k, ck) < ∑mk=0 DI(p k, ck) for all (p0, p1, . . . , pn) 6= (q0, q1, . . . , qn) in X . (ii) For all (p0, p1, . . . , pn) in X , m ∑ k=1 ( n ∑ i=1 (pki − qki )(I(ck, i)− I(qk, i)) ) ≥ 0 (iii) For all (p0, p1, . . . , pn) in X , m ∑ k=1 DI(pk, ck) ≥ m ∑ k=1 DI(pk, qk) + m ∑ k=1 DI(qk, ck) Proof of Corollary 8. The proof strategy is exactly as for Lemma 6. 2 To prove Theorem 4, we now need just one more result: Lemma 9 Given c0, c1, . . . , cm in P , let X = {(wi, c1, . . . , ck−1, wi, ck+1, . . . , cm) : wi ∈ W & 1 ≤ k ≤ m} Then, (i) X+ ⊆ P . (ii) If c0 is not in the convex hull of c1, . . . , cn, then (c0, c1, . . . , cm) is not in X+. Proof of Lemma 9. We prove (ii) by proving the contrapositive. Suppose (c0, c1, . . . , cm) is inX+. Then there are 0 ≤ λi,k ≤ 1 such that ∑ni=1 ∑mk=1 λi,k = 1 and (c0, c1, . . . , cm) = n ∑ i=1 m ∑ k=1 λi,k(wi, c1, . . . , ck−1, wi, ck+1, . . . , cm) Thus, c0 = n ∑ i=1 m ∑ k=1 λi,kwi 22 and ck = n ∑ i=1 λi,kwi + n ∑ i=1 ∑ l 6=k λi,lck So ( n ∑ i=1 λi,k ) ck = n ∑ i=1 λi,kwi So let λk = ∑ni=1 λi,k. Then, for 1 ≤ k ≤ m, λkck = n ∑ i=1 λi,kwi And thus m ∑ k=1 λkck = m ∑ k=1 n ∑ i=1 λi,kwi = c0 as required. 2 Now we can turn to the proof of Theorem 4. Proof of Theorem 4. If c0 is not in the convex hull of c1, . . . , cm, then (c0, c1, . . . , cm) is not in X+. Thus, by Lemma 8, there is (q0, q1, . . . , qm) such that, for all (p0, p1, . . . , pm) in X+, DI((p0, p1, . . . , pm), (q0, q1, . . . , qm)) < DI((p0, p1, . . . , pm), (c0, c1, . . . , cm)) In particular, for wi inW and 1 ≤ k ≤ m, DI((wi, c1, . . . , ck−1, wi, ck+1, . . . , cm), (q0, q1, . . . , qm)) < DI((wi, c1, . . . , ck−1, wi, ck+1, . . . , cm), (c0, c1, . . . , cm)) But I(q0, i) + I(qk, i) = DI(wi, q0) +DI(wi, qk) ≤ DI((wi, c1, . . . , ck−1, wi, ck+1, . . . , cm), (q0, q1, . . . , qm)) < DI((wi, c1, . . . , ck−1, wi, ck+1, . . . , cm), (c0, c1, . . . , cm)) = DI(wi, c0) +DI(wi, ck) = I(c0, i) + I(ck, i) as required. 2 5 The argument for linear pooling So far, we have focussed on the central tenets of Bayesianism: Probabilism, Conditionalization, and the Principal Principle. But there is another principle and an accuracy argument in its favour that relies on Continuity, Strict 23 Proprity, and Additivity, and that we might strengthen using the results above to remove the need for Additivity. Suppose we have a group of individuals, each with credences concerning a range of propositions of interest; and suppose we wish to aggregate their credal judgments in these propositions to give the group's judgment. Perhaps the individuals are experts in the effects of ice sheet collapse on sea levels, the propositions concern those matters, and we wish to provide a summary of expert judgment for policymakers (Bamber et al., 2019). Perhaps the individuals are different probabilistic models of the development of hurricanes in the Atlantic Ocean, the propositions concern where it will make landfall if it does and what force it will have accumulated by that point, and we wish to aggregate their judgments to set insurance premiums (Roussos, 2020). Sarah Moss (2011) used accuracy considerations to argue that we should aggregate judgments by the popular method known as linear pooling. That is, if the individuals in the group have probabilistic credence functions p1, . . . , pm, the aggregate p should be some weighted average of them, that is, there should be weights 0 ≤ λ1 . . . , λm ≤ 1 with ∑mk=1 λk = 1 such that p = m ∑ k=1 λk pk But her argument assumed something close to what she wished to prove. She assumed that the group's judgment of the expected inaccuracy of a possible aggregate c should be a weighted average of its expected inaccuracies from the point of view of the members of the group. That is, there should be weights 0 ≤ λ1 . . . , λm ≤ 1 with ∑mk=1 λk = 1 such that the group expected inaccuracy of c is m ∑ k=1 λk ∑ i pki I(c, i) She then noted that, if I is strictly proper, this group expected inaccuracy is minimized at the linear pool c = ∑mk=1 λk p k, as required.8 Pettigrew then offered an argument to the same conclusion but without the almost questionbegging assumption that group expected inaccuracy is the weighted sum of individual expected inaccuracy. He showed that, if p is not a weighted 8It is worth noting that this observation can be generalized to show that the divergence DI we defined in the previous section has a property that is often noted of Bregman divergences: m ∑ k=1 λkDI(p k, c) is minimized, as a function of c at ∑mk=1 λk p k. That is, the credence function that minimizes the weighted average of distances from a set of probabilistic credence functions is the corresponding weighted average of those credence functions (Banerjee et al., 2005). 24 average of p1, . . . , pm, then there is p? such that each pk expects p? to be more accurate than it expects p to be. That is, for all 1 ≤ k ≤ m, ∑ i pki I(p ?, i) < ∑ i pki I(p, i) The argument has the same form as the argument for the Principal Principle that we considered above, but where the possible chance functions are replaced with the credence functions of the individual members of the group. Thus, just as we strengthened the argument for the Principal Principle by removing the assumption of Additivity, and leaving only Strict Propriety and Continuity, so we can strengthen the argument for linear pooling in the same way. This is helpful because, although Pettigrew's argument improves on Moss's by removing the question-begging assumption about the relationship between the group's and the individuals' expected inaccuracies, it is also takes a step back by introducing the assumptions of Additivity and Continuity. Removing the more controversial of these helps the argument. 6 Conclusion Accuracy arguments for the core Bayesian tenets differ mainly in the conditions they place on the legitimate inaccuracy measures. The best existing arguments rely on Predd, et al.'s conditions: Continuity, Additivity, and Strict Propriety. In this paper, I showed how to strengthen each argument based on these by showing that the central mathematical theorem on which it depends goes through without assuming Additivity. References Bamber, J., Oppenheimer, M., Kopp, R., Aspinall, W., & Cooke, R. (2019). Ice sheet contributions to future sea-level rise from structured expert judgment. Proceedings of the National Academy of Science of the U.S.A., 166(11195-11200). Banerjee, A., Guo, X., & Wang, H. (2005). On the Optimality of Conditional Expectation as a Bregman Predictor. IEEE Transactions of Information Theory, 51, 2664–69. Briggs, R. A., & Pettigrew, R. (2018). An accuracy-dominance argument for conditionalization. Noûs. D'Agostino, M., & Dardanoni, V. (2009). What's so special about Euclidean distance? A characterization with applications to mobility and spatial voting. Social Choice and Welfare, 33(2), 211–233. 25 D'Agostino, M., & Sinigaglia, C. (2010). Epistemic Accuracy and Subjective Probability. In M. Suárez, M. Dorato, & M. Rédei (Eds.) EPSA Epistemology and Methodology of Science: Launch of the European Philosophy of Science Association, (pp. 95–105). Springer Netherlands. Greaves, H., & Wallace, D. (2006). Justifying Conditionalization: Conditionalization Maximizes Expected Epistemic Utility. Mind, 115(459), 607– 632. Ismael, J. (2006). The Ethical Importance of Death. In C. Tandy (Ed.) Death And Anti-Death, Volume 4: Twenty Years After De Beauvoir, Thirty Years After Heidegger, (pp. 181–98). Palo Alto: Ria University Press. Joyce, J. M. (1998). A Nonpragmatic Vindication of Probabilism. Philosophy of Science, 65(4), 575–603. Joyce, J. M. (2009). Accuracy and Coherence: Prospects for an Alethic Epistemology of Partial Belief. In F. Huber, & C. Schmidt-Petri (Eds.) Degrees of Belief . Springer. Kelley, M. (ms). On Accuracy and Coherence with Infinite Opinion Sets. Unpublished manuscript. Leitgeb, H., & Pettigrew, R. (2010). An Objective Justification of Bayesianism I: Measuring Inaccuracy. Philosophy of Science, 77, 201–235. Maher, P. (2002). Joyce's Argument for Probabilism. Philosophy of Science, 69(1), 73–81. Moss, S. (2011). Scoring Rules and Epistemic Compromise. Mind, 120(480), 1053–1069. Oddie, G. (2019). What Accuracy Could Not Be. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 70, 551–80. Pettigrew, R. (2013). A New Epistemic Utility Argument for the Principal Principle. Episteme, 10(1), 19–35. Pettigrew, R. (2016a). Accuracy and the Laws of Credence. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pettigrew, R. (2016b). Accuracy, Risk, and the Principle of Indifference. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 92(1), 35–59. Pettigrew, R. (2019). On the Accuracy of Group Credences. In T. S. Gendler, & J. Hawthorne (Eds.) Oxford Studies in Epistemology, vol. 6. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pettigrew, R. (2020). Logical Ignorance and Logical Learning. Synthese. 26 Predd, J., Seiringer, R., Lieb, E. H., Osherson, D., Poor, V., & Kulkarni, S. (2009). Probabilistic Coherence and Proper Scoring Rules. IEEE Transactions of Information Theory, 55(10), 4786–4792. Roussos, J. (2020). Policymaking under Scientific Uncertainty. Ph.D. thesis, London School of Economics. Savage, L. J. (1971). Elicitation of Personal Probabilities and Expectations. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 66(336), 783–801. | {
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Marcin Miłkowski Computation and Multiple Realizability Abstract Multiple realizability (MR) is traditionally conceived of as the feature of computational systems, and has been used to argue for irreducibility of higher-level theories. I will show that there are several ways a computational system may be seen to display MR. These ways correspond to (at least) five ways one can conceive of the function of the physical computational system. However, they do not match common intuitions about MR. I show that MR is deeply interest-related, and for this reason, difficult to pin down exactly. I claim that MR is of little importance for defending computationalism, and argue that it should rather appeal to organizational invariance or substrate neutrality of computation, which are much more intuitive but cannot support strong antireductionist arguments. I want to undermine the conviction that multiple realizability (MR) is particularly important in understanding the nature of computational systems. MR is held to be fundamental as far as it is considered indispensable in arguing for irreducibility of theories that appeal to the notion of computation. This is why this conviction is especially common among proponents of antireductionism who want to defend the autonomy of psychology (for example, (Block, 1990, p. 146)), even if it's not so important for theorists of computability, if not completely alien to them.1 Recently, it was also argued that mechanistic theories of physical computation (Piccinini, 2007, 2010) were not compatible with multiple realization (Haimovici, 2013), which was supposed to show that mechanism is wrong. Indeed, in defending my mechanistic account of computation, I denied that multiple realization is an essential feature of computation, and that there are no facts of the matter that could easily establish that a given computational capacity is actually multiply realized or not (Miłkowski, 2013, Chapter 2). I want to develop this point in detail here and show that there are multiple ways of carving the computational capacity but whenever it is made precise, there are either too many examples of MR or scarcely any in cases that have been considered paradigmatic. For this reason, it does not seem to be an essential feature at all; I suggest that it can be easily replaced with another similar feature of organizational invariance or substrate neutrality. The organization of the paper is as follows. First, I introduce the notion of MR, and show it is quite vague. I argue for additional restrictions on the notion to make it more precise. Then, I analyze one vivid example from the history of computing. In the following discussion, I distinguish MR from substrate neutrality and suggest that the latter is indeed more important. At the same time, substrate neutrality does not lend credibility to antireductionist arguments, and remains compatible with type-identity theory. 1. Multiple realization introduced, criticized, and made more precise The argument from multiple realizability to irreducibility is usually attributed to Jerry Fodor (1974) and to Hilary Putnam (1975). Elliot Sober summarizes the argument in the following way: 1. Higher-level sciences describe properties that are multiply realizable and that provide good explanations. 1 I owe this observation Aaron Sloman. 2. If a property described in a higher-level science is multiply realizable at a lower level, then the lower-level science will not be able to explain, or will explain only feebly, the phenomena that the higher-level science explains well. 3. If higher-level sciences provide good explanations of phenomena that lower-level sciences cannot explain, or explain only feebly, then reductionism is false. Reductionism is false. (Sober, 1999, p. 558) However, it needs to be noted that neither Fodor nor Putnam uses the term "multiple realization" or its cognates. In the subsequent discussion, it was used mostly informally, usually without a definition but with the help of Fodor's example: money. Money can be realized as coins, banknotes, credit cards, sea shells, and what not. There is simply no physical kind that encompasses all realizations of money, Fodor claims, and the lower-level, physical description of the bearers of monetary value is bound to be wildly disjunctive (Fodor, 1974). The same is supposed to happen with realizations of computer algorithms, but not simply because they are cultural entities, like money: it has been claimed that one can make a computer of silicon chips, but also of toilet paper or Swiss cheese, and they would realize the same algorithm and be different realizations. Simply speaking, a functional capacity is multiply realized if and only if it its occurrence is owing to different realizing structures. But this initial definition remains fairly vague; it does not decide whether anything else but functional capacities is multiply realized; it also does not set any standards on when functional capacities count as exactly of the same type, and what the standards for sameness of realizers are. It turns out that making the notion precise is extremely difficult. In addition, according to Keeley (2000), neuroethology uses both behavioral evidence and physiological evidence to justify its claims; and MR might be compatible with reductionism after all. But whether the reductionism is correct or not is not the question I am interested in this paper. It's fair to say that after initial enthusiasm, philosophers have become much more skeptical about MR, and many argued that it need not be so frequent or essential. For example (Bechtel & Mundale, 1999) argued that, contrary to appearances, different brains are at least sometimes viewed as exactly the same realizers of a given psychological capacity: Neuroscience frequently uses animal brains as models of the human brain, and there would be no animal models for human brains if animal brains were actually so wildly different as antireductionists suppose. For example, the rat's brain is not really a different realization of dopamine-related capacities when it uses dopamine. Just like Bechtel and Mundale, (Polger, 2004, 2008; Shapiro, 2000, 2004) consequently argued that there might be merely illusory MR in cases where the function has been described in a generic way and its realization quite specifically. Just as different colors of a corkscrew do not make them different physical realizations (after all, the color is irrelevant to the function of the corkscrew), not all specific details count when it comes to distinguishing different realizations. But even not all causally relevant detail is equally important: for example, for opening a wine bottle, one could easily use a corkscrew with five or four threads on their screws. There is a certain level of changes that we usually consider irrelevant (in the engineering contexts, one speaks of tolerance levels). What makes an amount of possible differences irrelevant? Are there any principled answers to this question? Before I go on, an important caveat is in place. Some would deny that corkscrews are ever multiply realized. First, they are artifacts, and some deny functional status to artifacts or claim that artifacts only have functionality derived from the functions of their biological users (Davies, 2001). Here, I will assume that derived functions are equally functional so as not to beg the question against the proponents of MR with respect to computation. Second, and more importantly, functional capacities of corkscrews and properties of realizations of their capacities to open the bottles might be both ascribed simply to corkscrews, rather than parts of corkscrews. That leads to a general question. Is it possible for a functional capacity to be a property of the same entity as the properties of the realizers? A positive answer is the so-called 'standard', or 'flat' view on MR, whereas the 'dimensioned view' stresses that instances of properties of realizers are not the properties of the same entity, which introduces more 'dimensions' to the definition of MR (Aizawa & Gillett, 2009; Gillett, 2002). The dimensioned view has its roots in the functionalist tradition: Cummins' (1975) conditions for functional analysis require that functional capacities be ascribed to higher-level structures, and their realizing structures be on the lower-level; thus on the dimensioned view, MR is an ontological inter-level relationship. The defenders of the flat view have argued, however, that the dimensioned view leads to absurdity (Polger & Shapiro, 2008). My point in this paper is however largely independent from this debate (but for a reply, see (Gillett, 2011)), and the main problem for MR of computation is essentially the same for both dimensioned and flat views. In what follows, I will still peruse the simple example of corkscrews; if you subscribe to the dimensioned view, there is always a paraphrase of my claims in terms of the operations and parts of the corkscrew rather in terms of the operation of the corkscrew itself. Let me return to the core of the problem with MR. My initial definition is vague, and we need to have strict standards of sameness and difference to show that MR actually occurs, and these standards cannot beg the question against reductionism. But other definitions currently espoused by defenders of MR do not seem to fare any better. For example: (Multiple Realization) A property G is multiply realized if and only if (i) under condition $, an individual s has an instance of property G in virtue of the powers contributed by instances of properties/relations F1 -Fn to s, or s's constituents, but not vice versa; (ii) under condition $* (which may or may not be identical to $), an individual s* (which may or may not be identical to s) has an instance of a property G in virtue of the powers contributed by instances of properties/relations F*1 -F*m to s* or s*'s constituents, but not vice versa; (iii) F1 -Fn ≠ F*1-F*m and (iv), under conditions $ and $*, F1 -Fn and F*1 -F*m are at the same scientific level of properties (Aizawa & Gillett, 2009, p. 188). According to (iii), we need to make sure that properties or relations are different in different realizers. But what are the standards, again? The ascription of function should be as fine-grained as the description of the function realization. However, the notion of function is inextricably linked with theoretical interests of the observer, thus MR is also heavily interest-dependent. (Note: even if there are proposals to make the function ascriptions as determinate as possible, they usually pertain only to the so-called notion of etiological notion of function, cf. (Price, 2001); for MR, however, the relevant notion is systemic or dispositional, as defined by Cummins (1975), and this notion is interest-dependent.) It does not mean that there are absolutely no facts of the matter in function ascriptions, as ascriptions may fail to be true; but they are still interest-driven (Craver, 2013). So how could one decide when the functional capacity is the same, and when it is not? Is there any evidence one could use? For example, Shagrir noted that the evidence for the sameness of the psychological capacities in the case of neuroplasticity-or, more importantly, in case of realizing computational algorithms-is not really available for antireductionists, as all that they have is a set of "behavioral antecedents and consequences of subjects, and physical realizations of the mediating computational mechanisms" (Shagrir, 1998). This kind of evidence simply cannot settle the question at all. For this reason, an important topic in the debate has become the question of how to evaluate claims for MR (Polger, 2008; Shapiro, 2008). So how can we evaluate the claim that a given computational algorithm or a computational system has multiple realizations? Here are possible answers. I will argue that in interesting cases-the ones usually held to be paradigmatic-there's no MR, contrary to appearances. 2. When are computations multiply realized? Let me pick a particularly vivid example of two compatible IBM computers, 709 and 7090, one with tubes, and another with transistors. It seems to be ideally suited to test the claim whether one can fruitfully talk of multiple realization in the case of computational systems. In addition, some authors have earlier considered two IBMs to be realizations of the same computational system (Wimsatt, 2002), and I have argued earlier that it is not necessarily the case (Miłkowski, 2013). (IBM 7090 was also featured in Dr. Strangelove, which should be a good enough reason to consider it worthy of philosophical attention.) IBM 709 and IBM 7090 share the same logical diagram (as witnessed by their technical documentation) but they use different electronics. Transistors work faster than tubes, so they differ also with their speed of operation. They have obviously different footprint, as transistors are smaller: the newer version is 50% smaller, and needs less ventilation because transistors need less cooling. Transistors also consume 70% less power, while tubes are 6 times slower. There's no denying that these machine differ; they also share a lot (for more technical specifications and photos, see ("IBM Archives: 709 Data Processing System," 2003, "IBM Archives: 7090 Data Processing System," 2003)). But is there MR in the strict meaning of the term? To make MR claims about computational precise, one has to explain what it is to have a computational function. I can enumerate at least five ways one can understand the computational capacity of a given computer. I will explain these in turn but before I do so, I need to briefly introduce my mechanistic framework that allows talking about physical-or implemented-computation. One of the most widely endorsed views in the philosophy of special sciences is neo-mechanism (Bechtel, 2008; Craver, 2007; Machamer, Darden, & Craver, 2000). According to this view, to explain a phenomenon is to explain the underlying mechanism. Mechanistic explanation is causal explanation, and explaining a mechanism involves describing its causal structure. While mechanisms are defined in various ways by different authors, the core idea is that they are organized systems, comprising causally relevant component parts and operations (or activities) thereof. Components of the mechanism interact and their orchestrated operation contributes to the capacity of the mechanism. A mechanism implements a computation just when the causal organization of the mechanism is such that the input and output information streams are causally linked and that this link, along with the specific structure of information processing, is completely described (the notion of information is not semantic in my account; for a similar treatment, see (Fresco, 2014)). Importantly, the link can be cyclical and as complex as one could wish. Mechanistic constitutive explanation, usually used to explain physical computation in cases where we deem physical implementation important, includes at least three levels of the mechanism: a constitutive (-1) level, which is the lowest level in the given analysis; an isolated (0) level, at which the parts of the mechanism are specified along with their interactions (activities or operations); and the contextual (+1) level, at which the function of the mechanism is seen in a broader context. These levels are not just levels of abstraction; they are levels of composition or organization. The description of a mechanistically adequate model of computation comprises two parts: (1) an abstract specification of a computation, which should include all the variables causally relevant for the computation; (2) a complete blueprint of the mechanism on three levels of its organization. I call the first part the formal model of the mechanism and the second the instantiation blueprint of the mechanism (for a detailed study of how this framework is applied to physical and non-conventional computers, such as Physarum machines, see (Miłkowski, 2014)). After this brief introduction of terminology, I can enumerate five possible ways of understanding the capacity of the computational mechanism. First, the computers could share the same causal structure associated with their formal model and differ in their instantiation blueprint (let's call it formal-model MR). Now, how much do they have to differ? Arguably, one could say that a certain level of tolerance for physical changes is required; otherwise, simple physical wear and tear or replacement of worn parts would be enough to say that a computer is now a new realization of its older version (this is a new version of the ancient puzzle regarding the ship of Theseus). This is why only physical changes relevant to the execution of computation should matter; replacing a chip with a faster one would only make the speed of operation faster by a certain linear factor k (as is usually assumed in the theory of computational complexity), rather than mean that the computer has an altogether different substrate. An emulation of the PowerPC computer on an Intel x86 architecture should qualify as formal-model MR, as they both share the formal model of the computation (in virtue of emulation on the second one) but the second machine has to include much more in its formal model, as the emulated machine is just virtual. So the Intel machine does not really have the same formal model; the formal model of PowerPC machine is rather a proper part of the complete formal model of the Intel x86 machine. In other words, these machines literally share the same formal model but they do not have exactly the same model. Let me compare this case to what Bechtel and Mundale (1999) consider not to be an instance of MR. Usually, philosophers assumed that the functionality of the brain is multiply realized by various anatomies in different species. However, the human brain topographical map, created by Korbinian Brodman does rely on inter-species anatomical similarities, or homologies. In other words, anatomical similarity is used in function ascriptions. Actually, it seems that there are lower-level types that match higher-level types. The same consideration can be used in the case of my laptop: the kind of hardware it requires to function properly is specified with a certain level of tolerance. As long as memory chips, for example, match the specification of the motherboard, they can be used in my laptop without changing its functionality. But the similarity in question goes beyond the ability to replace parts; for example, one cannot replace the part of the human brain with a brain of a rodent and keep the same functionality. However, there are lower-level, anatomical types that still match the functionality of the brain in an orderly fashion, so that one can defend a kind of type identity between both. It seems therefore cogent that as long as there is sufficient similarity that allows classifying tokens of the realizing structures as belonging to the same type we do not have any kind of MR. Actually, the reason for similarity between brains is homology, or shared ancestry. In the case of IBM 7090, it is similar to IBM 709 because the latter is its ancestor, and we should expect a lot of hardware similarities, even if we cannot substitute tubes with transistors directly (owing to different voltages and so on). For the case of emulation of a PowerPC on an Intel x86 CPU, the similarity of functionality in question is not caused by common ancestry but by the software run, so there are no such hardware similarities we might expect between both IBMs. One could insist that vast physical differences between IBMs constitute different types. But there are also vast differences between how both IBMs operate, such as different speed of operation, which obviously makes difference for the use of computers, and by supposing that the functional capacity in question is what is specified just by the formal model of the mechanism, we decided to ignore such differences as irrelevant, which is an important and far-reaching assumption. Yet if we use lowgrain distinctions for functional types, there is no principled reason to use fine-grain distinctions for structural types, beside the philosophical prejudice for MR. They are definitely software-compatible and could run the same FORTRAN programs. A second way to understand the computational capacities of computers is to focus on the mathematical function that they compute, specified in terms of input and output values (this will be mathematical function MR). This is the level of computational equivalence usually presupposed in the computability theory: If one says that a computer C is Turing-machine-equivalent in terms of the set of C-computable functions, then one presupposes that they will produce the same output given the same input, whatever the way they compute it. Note however that this is not the level of grain usually presupposed in cognitive science when it speaks of computational algorithms realized by brains: in cognitive science, the way which a given output is produced is immensely important (Fodor, 1968; Miłkowski, 2011; Shagrir, 1998). For example, reaction times are used as evidence to decide whether people use this or another algorithm (Meyer, Osman, Irwin, & Yantis, 1988; Posner, 2005), so algorithms are individuated with a finer grain in cognitive research. Is there mathematical function MR for both IBMs? They definitely share the same mathematical functions (which follows immediately from the fact that they could use exactly the same software). Again, however, their hardware similarities make it possible to classify them as the same kind of machine-they aren't even realizing different computational architectures. The difference between tubes and transistors is just as irrelevant as the difference between four and five threads on my corkscrews. So how would a cognitive scientist understand a computational capacity of a system? In this third version, the capacity would also include the features of the physical implementation, such as the speed of operation; this will be instantiation blueprint MR. Of course, there is again a certain level of tolerance, so that a mere replacement of one electronic part does not create another realization of the same type. In the case of two IBMs, we have different speeds, as tubes are simply slower. Of course, the bigger footprint of the tube-based IBM is not so important here (just like cognitive scientists usually ignore the fact whether subjects are overweight or not) but there are different patterns of breakdown, which are also important in neuropsychology, as pathologies are used to make inferences about function (Glymour, 1994). All in all, here even the capacity is different, so there is no chance for MR to occur. Between the level of grain implied by mathematical input/output specifications and the one assumed in cognitive science, one can drive a wedge for another – fourth – specification. For example, any algorithm for sorting words alphabetically shares the same input/output relations but not the same sequence of steps, which is again specifiable in terms of input/output relations. So, one could understand a particular algorithm for sorting, such as QuickSort, as mathematical function that is decomposed into an ordered sequence of other more basic mathematical functions. The kind of MR in this case might be dubbed decomposed mathematical function MR. This is how, for example, Keeley seems to understand the algorithm underlying perceptual abilities of weakly electric fish (he cannot mean the whole formal model, as in the first meaning of the functional capacity above, because exact ways that the algorithm is realized are not known). Note however that we have reason to suppose that there is MR only when fish realize these steps using sufficiently different hardware that cannot be classified as instantiating the same kind of operations. Keeley (2000) thinks this is the case for weakly electric fish; but it does not seem to be the case for IBMs, as their hardware architectures are simply too similar to imply sufficient changes in lower-level types. They share the same sequence of mathematical steps but also the same type of hardware architecture, where tube/transistor difference is not essential to individuating types. Now, there is yet another, fifth way to think of the computational capacity of computers, namely in terms of how they are connected to all peripheral devices; this will be information-flow MR. The pattern of connections is called a "schematic of data flow" in the original IBM documents, and it describes the connections of the central processing unit and magnetic core memory with (1) console lights and switches; (2) cathode ray tube output; (3) magnetic drum storage; (4) and three data syncronizer [sic!] units, each with connections to optional card readers, card punches, printers, tape control units, and other "external signal sources". This way of looking at the computer makes it basically a node in a network of connections, so two realizations would be of the same type of node if and only if they share all the connections. However, if they do, the exact electronic realization of the data flow is basically as irrelevant as in previous cases. It seems therefore that different perspectives do not really help to see IBMs as multiply realizing the same computational kind. Either we end up with a different computational type for each IBM, as in the instantiation-blueprint MR, or with the same computational and lower-level types for both. Note that the so-called dimensioned view of realization (Gillett, 2002; Wilson & Craver, 2007) cannot save the MR claim with regard to this example either, as my argument can be easily rephrased in terms of Cummins-style functional analysis. The argument is based on the fact that there has to be the same level of grain in individuating both high-level and lower-level types; in other words, we consider lower-level differences to constitute a different type not just in any situation but only when the differences are in a relevant way connected to the way they realize higher-level functionality. One could object that this way, there is no way for MR to occur, but his does not exclude that there are cases of genuine MR. Not at all; the emulator example serves as an instance of genuine MR. It's just that MR occurs only in a very limited number of cases of organizational similarity between computers, so one cannot say that it is in some way essentially linked to the notion of computation the way it was earlier presupposed. In other words, the mechanists should really be skeptical of the role assigned traditionally to MR. 3. Organizational invariance and substrate neutrality At this point, the defenders of MR might still argue that the notion is useful. First, they might insist that there is yet another way of identifying the computational capacities of both IBMs. This is of course possible, and I have definitely not enumerated all possibilities. But I do think that my five options correspond to the usual ways of thinking about computational types. Still, there might be others; I'm not holding my breath to get to know them, however, as it's not so plausible that they might solve the main problem, which is how to have the same level of grain on both levels and still retain MR without begging the question against reductionism. Another possible objection is to deny that only function-relevant lower-level properties count in identifying the cases of MR. One might bite the bullet and say that the number of threads and the color of the corkscrew do count as realization-relevant properties. The number of cases of MR would definitely increase, as any instance of a type would turn out to be another realization of the type. The question then becomes: Why introduce the notion of realization when we already have the notion of the token? It goes against theoretical parsimony. Of course, one might point out that I didn't deny that MR is indeed possible and that there are cases of genuine MR. So a reply from a defender of MR might go like this: Maybe it is a bit counterintuitive that these IBM computers are not instances of MR but it's not so vital. We do have genuine MR, so reductionism is doomed anyway. However, I think such an answer would be too quick. I haven't dealt with the question whether MR really warrants antireductionism (and there are authors who stress it does not, cf. (Keeley, 2000)), so let me put this question to the side. The intuitive point about MR and computation, one that motivates the claim that MR is somehow essential to computation, is that MR is always logically possible for a given computational system. That may be still true, though achieving MR has a higher price than usually assumed; not only one cannot really make a complex computer out of Swiss cheese or toilet paper, which has been pointed out before (Shagrir, 1998), but also one needs to find relevant differences of the proper gain at the lower level. Still, logically this is possible, but no less than creating a system that exactly simulates the steps in another computational system; there are simply multiple ways one could express similarities and equivalences between computations. As compared to other precise notions, such as bi-simulation (Malcolm, 1996), MR seems to be particularly vague, and there are no facts of the matter that would help decide whether MR occurs or not just because individuation the computational type is inextricably linked to the theoretical interest. This is why the notion needs to be made precise every time by specifying exactly what is meant by the computational type that is supposed to be multiply realized. I grant that MR might also be defined in the way that such constraints on relevance of realization types and the pragmatic or perspective-bound character of the notion are gone but I do not really see the point of such an endeavor. The problem is that the account of MR should both avoid begging the question against reductionism and not trivialize the notion (by making it effectively as broad as the notion of the token). I think the prospects of such a project are quite gloomy. So how can one express the intuitive idea that computation is not really linked to the physical substrate in the way many other properties are? IBM 709 and 7090 can indeed compute the same mathematical function and share the same abstract structure of their mechanisms, which is important in explaining and predicting their work. As purely computational systems, they are exactly the same, and physical differences are irrelevant, as they make no difference for realization of their capacity to compute the same set of mathematical functions in the same way (by running the same software and being compatible to the same set of peripheral devices, and so forth). For this reason, I suggest that computationalism should rather embrace the notion of organizational invariance (or substrate neutrality), as both systems share the same relevant causal topology on one level of their functioning. Note that under four abovementioned different understanding of computational types (the one related to the instantiation blueprint is an exception) there is organizational invariance between the type and both IBMs. The notion of organizational invariance has been introduced by David Chalmers (2011) in his theory of physical computation. The notion is defined relative to the causal topology of a system, which is "the abstract causal organization of the system: that is, the pattern of interaction among parts of the system, abstracted away from the make-up of individual parts and from the way the causal connections are implemented." (Chalmers, 2011, p. 339) A property is organizationally invariant if it is invariant with respect to the causal topology. In other words, any change to the system that preserves the topology preserves the organizationally invariant property. There is a causal topology of two IBMs that both share, and this topology can be used to define organizationally invariant properties of both. These invariant properties may involve more than causal topology responsible for the computation, as they also have other organizational properties related to the way they are connected to peripheral devices or used in the mainframe lab, for example. Daniel Dennett's idea of substrate neutrality is similar to organizational invariance and also related to what is intuitive about computation being independent (but not entirely!) from the physical instantiation (Dennett, 1995, p. 50). Physically realized algorithms, according to Dennett, are substrate-neutral in that their causal power is related to their logical structure rather than to particular features of their material instantiation. Now, obviously, without physical instantiation they would not have any causal powers but not all causal powers are relevant for their being computational. In other words, we may safely abstract away from certain physical properties as long as the logical causal powers are still retained, or, to express the same idea in the vocabulary of organizational invariance, as long as the logical causal topology of the computational system is retained. The computational structure of two IBMs-considered in any of the five ways presented in the section 2-can be retained while we change the physical substrate (in the case of the instantiation blueprint the difference is that IBM 709 does not share the same computational structure as IBM 7090 but there might be, for example, clones of IBM 7090 that do). Of course, not any substrate will be suitable, and because the topology of the whole system has to be retained, one cannot replace one tube with a transistor, or vice versa. But one can create a hybrid IBM 709' that contains a tubebased part and a transistor-based subsystem, as long as one creates a special interface to retain the causal topology of the original IBM. It would still run FORTRAN but with more exotic mixture of hardware. The idea of substrate neutrality or organizational invariance is that there is a subset of all causal factors in the system which is essential in the system's computational capacity. In the mechanistic framework, the organizationally invariant part is the part responsible for whatever we think is the computational capacity, and one is free to adopt a certain level of abstraction in specifying the whole mechanism (Levy & Bechtel, 2013). The paraphrase of the intuitive point about MR will be therefore as follows: The abstract organization of the computational system remains organizationally invariant, or substrate-neutral with respect to a certain level of physical changes. IBM 709 and 7090, considered as physical mechanisms, simply share the same abstract organization, whether it's conceived of as the formal model of computation, the set of computable functions, the sequence of some primitive computable functions, some part of the instantiation blueprint, or the internal and external connections of the computer. I suspect that many defenders of MR will retort that what I mean by substrate-neutrality is exactly what they mean by MR. That well may be, but this is a conceptual confusion on their part. Substrateneutrality does not imply that there is an additional relevant difference between highand low-level types that somehow makes cross-level type identification impossible. There is a level of substrateneutrality for corkscrews, as long material used to build them is sufficiently stiff and so forth. Substrate-neutrality will co-occur with MR in some cases but it has less constraints. Brodman maps do not imply MR but they do imply some substrate-neutrality, as the latter implies that we abstract from some but not all physical detail in describing the relevant causal topology. And we do when we compare anatomical structures for the purposes of topographical mapping. The acknowledgment of the same abstract organization is not threatened by adopting a reductive stance; irrespective of whether one treats the organization as irreducible or not, it will remain causally relevant, and hence, indispensable in attaining models of computational mechanisms that are both appropriately general and include necessary specific details. There is simply no reason for refining definitions of MR while we can express the point in a simpler manner, and without begging the question against reductionism. Substrate-neutrality is non-committal, as it does not exclude typeidentity of computational and physical kinds. 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Journal of Philosophy of Life Vol.5, No.2 (August 2015):62-81 Does Death Give Meaning to Life? Brooke Alan Trisel* Abstract Some people claim that death makes our lives meaningless. Bernard Williams and Viktor Frankl have made the opposite claim that death gives meaning to life. Although there has been much scrutiny of the former claim, the latter claim has received very little attention. In this paper, I will explore whether and how death gives meaning to our lives. As I will argue, there is not sufficient support for the strong claim that death is necessary for one's life to be meaningful. However, there is support for the more limited conclusion that our finitude enhances or upholds the meaning in the lives of some individuals in four different ways. 1. Introduction Some pessimists claim that death renders life meaningless. Conversely, Bernard Williams and Viktor Frankl contend that death is what gives meaning to life. There has been extensive analysis of the claim that immortality is necessary for one's life to be meaningful.1 In contrast, there has been very little scrutiny of the claim that death is necessary for a person's life to be meaningful. The thesis that immortality is required for one's life to be meaningful is unconvincing, but what about the opposite claim? Is death necessary for one's life to be meaningful or is this claim also doubtful? If death does give meaning to our lives, how does it do this? Because most people want to live a meaningful life, it is important to obtain a better understanding of what role, if any, death plays in giving meaning to our lives. One might maintain, as did Williams2 and Frankl,3 that death is necessary for life to be meaningful. This is a strong claim and should be distinguished from the weaker claim that death, in some situations, can enhance the meaning in a person's life. As I will argue, there is insufficient support for the stronger claim, but there is support for the weaker claim. This paper will contribute to the * Independent scholar. Email: triselba[a]cs.com. ** Thank you to an anonymous referee for helpful comments. 1 See for example, Metz (2003 and 2013, pp. 122-137) and Trisel (2004). 2 Williams (1973), p. 82. 3 Frankl (1986) p. 64. 63 literature by clarifying four ways in which our finitude plays a role in enhancing or upholding the meaning in the lives of some individuals.4 In sections two through four, I will explain how reflecting on one's finitude motivates some individuals to make the most of their lives. In section five, I will explicate how transcending one's lifespan, by leaving an enduring trace of oneself, adds meaning to one's life. In section six, I will explain how some virtuous actions are more meaningful because of our finitude. Then, in section seven, I will discuss Williams' argument that immortality would necessarily be boring and intolerable and will explain how death can prevent meaningful lives from becoming less meaningful. 2. Mortality Awareness as a Motivator Before getting started, I should explain what I mean by "meaning in life." I will be discussing whether finitude can enhance the meaning in an individual's life. I will not be discussing questions about humanity as a whole. Second, I support the view that "meaning" is something that is worthy for its own sake, as opposed to being something merely of instrumental value. Third, I share the view of many others that meaning comes in degrees, such that it makes sense to say that some lives are more meaningful than others are. Albert Einstein and Nelson Mandela are examples of individuals who made great achievements and who led meaningful lives. In response to those individuals who argue that death renders our lives meaningless, Frankl writes: If we were immortal, we could legitimately postpone every action forever. It would be of no consequence whether or not we did a thing now . . . . But in the face of death as absolute finis to our future and boundary to our possibilities, we are under the imperative of utilizing our lifetimes to the utmost, not letting the singular opportunities . . . pass by unused.5 4 Some philosophers (e.g., Noonan 2013, pp. 12-15) have pointed out ways in which death has instrumental value to life, such as by conserving scarce resources for future generations. I will not be discussing this topic here. 5 Frankl (1986), p. 64. See Noonan (2013, p. 21) for another example of someone who argues that mortality awareness is necessary for a person to live a meaningful life. Jeff Malpas, in making a different argument, contends that our finitude allows us to have a 'grasp of one's various actions and attitudes as unified parts of a single, temporally extended, rationally connected and . . . causally integrated structure' (1998, p. 123). He asserts that an immortal life would lack such a narrative 64 By living forever, we would procrastinate or, in other words, we would be unmotivated to take action. Consequently, nothing would get done (Frankl assumes) and our lives would become meaningless. By having a limited amount of time to live, it motivates us to live our lives more fully, Frankl suggests. In claiming that every action could be postponed forever if we were immortal, Frankl overstates his case. Granted, many actions, such as writing a novel, could be postponed indefinitely. However, some actions would still need to be performed urgently. For example, if an immortal person is in an automobile accident, trapped in the car, and in excruciating pain, extracting this person from the wreckage and alleviating her pain is something that could not be postponed. As John Martin Fischer and Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin indicate, "The realization that 'one will always have time' does not offer much comfort to someone in agonizing pain now."6 Fischer and Mitchell-Yellin also point out that some of our actions (e.g., visiting a deteriorating landmark) cannot be put off too long because "the opportunities to do them will (or might) be lost over time."7 Many scholars, including Martin Heidegger8 and Ernest Becker,9 have argued that we live our lives in denial of death. Julian Young, in discussing Heidegger's view, refers to this denial of death as the "illusion of immortality."10 If it is correct, as I believe, that most people do live under the illusion of immortality, then our finitude will not serve to motivate them. We hear about deaths on the nightly news and see the obituaries in our daily newspapers. How, then, are we able to live under the illusion of immortality? Becker and others have argued that the fear of death explains why people repress the thought of death. This might be part of the explanation, but it is not the whole explanation. There is another aspect of death that helps to explain what allows us to deny our own mortality. We can look at life expectancy tables to get a sense of the average life expectancy for our age cohort, but because there is variation in the length of our individual life spans, we do not know when we will structure and would result in the dissolution of one's identity. However, I am not convinced that an immortal life would necessarily have this result. Bortolotti (2010, pp. 41-45) is also unconvinced by this argument. 6 Fischer and Mitchell-Yellin (2014), p. 368. 7 Ibid., p. 368. 8 Heidegger (1962), pp. 293-304. 9 Becker (1973). 10 Young (2003) p. 116. 65 die. One might live shorter or longer than the average life expectancy. Even when individuals have been diagnosed with a terminal illness, they often do not know when they will die. It is this uncertainty of knowing when we will die that helps to explain how people are able to live under the illusion of immortality. If we remove this uncertainty, as will be done in the following thought experiment, we can then more clearly see how "mortality awareness," as I will call it, has the potential to motivate a person to live a fuller life. Suppose, as was done in the film In Time, that when a person is born an expiration date emerges on one of his or her arms. But unlike the film, suppose that the expiration date cannot be prolonged by acquiring minutes from another person; it is a firm date of death. Finally, let us suppose that there is variability in how long individuals live. Some individuals, for example, know that they will expire in 30 years and others, for example, know that they will expire in 78 years. What effect would knowing how long we have left to live have on the meaning in our lives? Would our lives, on average, be more meaningful if the endpoint of our lives was known than if it was unknown? I suspect that our lives, on average, would be more meaningful under these conditions. How would having a definite expiration date add meaning to our lives? Deadlines often motivate people to take action to achieve their goals. By knowing when we will die, it would provide a type of deadline that would motivate people to accomplish their goals. As Leon Kass writes: "To know and to feel that one goes around only once, and that the deadline is not out of sight, is for many people the necessary spur to the pursuit of something worthwhile."11 Unlike project deadlines, death is not a deadline for just one thing, but for everything in one's life. By having a limited amount of time to live, one must prioritize what one wants to do in one's life and one cannot afford to procrastinate. Many of the project deadlines that we face do not have serious consequences if we miss the deadline. In some cases, we are able to negotiate a new deadline. In contrast, because death marks the permanent end of one's existence, procrastinating about what one wants to do in one's life has serious repercussions. If a person, for example, knows that she has only two years left to live, and does not take action to achieve her goals, then she never will achieve 11 Kass (2001), p. 21. 66 these goals. By failing to take action during her one and only lifetime, she would have squandered her only opportunity to achieve these goals. Death is more than just a deadline with serious repercussions for those who fail to pursue their goals. Death also reveals to us that human life is fragile which, in turn, may prompt us to appreciate our lives. As Karl Popper writes, it is "the ever-present danger of losing it [i.e., life] which helps to bring home to us the value of life."12 3. Empirical Evidence Robert Nozick disputed Frankl's argument that death is necessary for one's life to be meaningful. He writes: "The dual assumption that some limitation is necessary for meaning, and limitation in time is the only one that can serve, is surely too ill established to convince anyone that mortality is good for him . . . ."13 At the time that Nozick wrote these words, there was not much empirical support for Frankl's hypothesis. However, recent psychological studies provide preliminary evidence that explicit reminders of mortality motivate people to reprioritize their goals by turning away from status-oriented goals (e.g., achieving wealth and fame) and orienting themselves toward more meaningful goals such as having close personal relationships and helping the world be a better place.14 More research will be required to determine whether mortality reminders lead to lasting behavioral changes. Randy Pausch, who died at the age of 47, exemplifies how mortality awareness can motivate a person, thereby playing a role in enhancing the meaning in that person's life. Pausch, who was a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon, was invited to give "The Last Lecture." It was a tradition at the university that professors were asked to imagine that they were dying and then to speak about what matters most to them. Pausch did not have to imagine that he was dying. He had recently been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. On September 18, 2007, Pausch delivered an inspiring last lecture, in which he spoke about the importance of achieving childhood dreams. This lecture has been viewed more than 17 million times and the book about his lecture, which Pausch co-authored, has sold more than five million copies. In the foreword to 12 Popper (1992), p. 186. See also Noonan (2013), pp. 15-18. 13 Nozick (1981), p. 580. 14 See Lykins et al. (2007), Kosloff et al. (2009) and discussion by Vail et al. (2012). 67 the book, Jai Pausch, who was Randy's wife, writes: "The lecture and subsequent book had been one method to communicate the life lessons he would have taught our children. But now Randy could see his efforts affecting not just his small family circle, but a much larger community than he ever could have imagined."15 Ironically, when people do learn that they will die soon, such as receiving a diagnosis of a terminal disease, reflecting on their impending deaths may motivate them to make the most of their remaining days, but their disease often prevents them from doing so. As Deborah Carr indicates: "Death [in the United States] typically occurs at the end of a long, often debilitating, and painful illness where the dying patients' final days are spent in a hospital or nursing home, and life-sustaining technologies are used."16 4. Is Mortality Awareness Necessary for One's Life to Be Meaningful? Reflecting on one's finitude can be motivating, but is it necessary – as Frankl thought – for one's life to be meaningful? The Mortality as Motivator argument, as I will call it, is as follows: (1) If we were immortal, we would be unmotivated. (2) Reflecting on one's finitude motivates us to make the most of our lives. (3) Therefore, reflecting on one's finitude is necessary for one's life to be meaningful. One way to determine whether mortality awareness is necessary for one's life to be meaningful is to examine the lives of people who led meaningful lives to see what role, if any, mortality awareness played in making their lives meaningful. What motivated Einstein and Mandela? Was it mortality awareness or something else? In reply to someone who asked Einstein what motivated him to pursue science, Einstein wrote: "My scientific work is motivated by an irresistible longing to understand the secrets of nature and by no other feelings."17 Mandela, 15 Pausch and Zaslow (2008), p. x. 16 Carr (2012), pp. 185-186. 17 Dukas and Hoffmann (1979), p. 18. 68 at his famous trial, explained what had motivated him. He recounted how in his youth he would hear stories about how certain individuals were praised for defending the homeland. He then indicated that "I hoped then that life might offer me the opportunity to serve my people and make my own humble contribution to their freedom struggle. This is what has motivated me in all that I have done in relation to the charges made against me in this case."18 It is not possible to know all of the factors that motivated Einstein and Mandela, but based on their writings, it does not appear that mortality awareness played a role in making their lives meaningful. How, then, do we explain what made their lives meaningful? Thaddeus Metz argues that one accrues meaning in one's life by contouring one's rationality, in a substantial way, toward fundamental conditions. By "fundamental conditions," Metz19 means conditions that are largely responsible for bringing about many other events in a given domain. Specifically, regarding Einstein, Metz indicates that "Einstein discovered basic facts about the spatio-temporal universe, ones that account for a large array of events in it."20 Mandela, using his rationality in a positive way, liberated people from discrimination and tyranny, which, in turn, allowed these individuals to more fully live their lives, Metz argues.21 Einstein and Mandela led meaningful lives and were motivated by factors other than mortality awareness. Psychologists distinguish between intrinsic and extrinsic motivation. By understanding the differences between these two types of motivation, it will help to demonstrate that mortality awareness is unnecessary for one's life to be meaningful. A person is intrinsically motivated when he or she does something because it is inherently interesting or enjoyable. As Richard Ryan and Edward Deci write: "When intrinsically motivated a person is moved to act for the fun or challenge entailed rather than because of external prods, pressures, or rewards."22 In contrast to intrinsic motivation, one is extrinsically motivated when one does something to realize an external reward or to avoid an external sanction. The notion of intrinsic motivation has a meaning similar to that of intrinsic value. The difference between these concepts is that intrinsic motivation pertains 18 Mandela (1995), p. 364. 19 Metz (2013), p. 226. 20 Ibid., p. 229. 21 Ibid., pp. 227-228. 22 Ryan and Deci (2000), p. 56. 69 to the reason that one performs an activity, whereas intrinsic value means that the activity or object is valuable in and of itself. Ryan and Deci indicate that "In humans, intrinsic motivation is not the only form of motivation . . . but it is a pervasive and important one. From birth onward, humans, in their healthiest states, are active, inquisitive . . . displaying a ubiquitous readiness to learn and explore, and they do not require extraneous incentives to do so."23 Externally imposed deadlines are a form of extrinsic motivation. As discussed earlier, death is a type of deadline and procrastinating about what one wants to do with one's life has serious repercussions. Mortality awareness is an extrinsic form of motivation. When one is intrinsically motivated, one is motivated to do a specific activity, such as study science. In contrast, mortality awareness is a non-specific form of motivation. In other words, thinking about death does not motivate a person to do a specific activity. Rather, it just prods a person to make the most of his or her life – before it is too late. Thus, even if one is motivated by thinking about one's eventual death, this does not necessarily mean that the person's life will be meaningful. Mortality awareness can provide the impetus for a person to take action. However, for one to lead a meaningful life, one must also know what will give meaning to life, engage in meaning-conferring activities, and persevere in one's efforts.24 Theories of meaning, such as Metz's "fundamentality theory," seek to explain what gives meaning to our lives. Because knowing what gives meaning to life is not sufficient for a person to lead a meaningful life, it is also important to obtain a better understanding of what factors can motivate (or demotivate) a person from engaging in meaning-conferring activities or projects. With this understanding, people can then, where possible, nurture the motivating factors and eliminate or mitigate the demotivating factors. Interestingly, mortality awareness motivates some people and demotivates others and may even simultaneously motivate and demotivate the same person in different ways. For example, a person with a diagnosis of terminal cancer may contemplate undertaking a new project, such as writing a short story. However, if the writer wants to see how her work is received by others, she might reason to herself as follows: "If I will not live long enough to see how the work is received, then why bother writing it?" Thus, in this example, mortality 23 Ibid., p. 56. 24 For discussion about the importance of perseverance as it relates to meaning, see Levy (2005). 70 awareness provides conflicting motivations. In summary, there are two types of motivation, intrinsic and extrinsic. Mortality awareness – an extrinsic form of motivation – is only one of many factors that may motivate a person. Therefore, this awareness is not necessary for a person to lead a meaningful life – as evidenced by the lives of Einstein and Mandela. Psychologists differentiate between conscious and nonconscious thoughts of death. 25 Even though nonconscious thoughts are outside of conscious awareness, they are believed to have the potential to influence a person's behavior. In response to my claim that mortality awareness played no role in making the lives of Einstein and Mandela meaningful, one might argue that perhaps they were motivated by nonconscious thoughts of death. Because the awareness of death is a non-specific form of motivation, as I point out above, it seems doubtful that nonconscious thoughts of death played a necessary role in making their lives meaningful. Even if Einstein and Mandela had nonconscious thoughts of death, it is unclear how this would have led Einstein to pursue science or Mandela to promote justice in South Africa. Perhaps nonconscious thoughts of death – assuming they had some might have given their work more urgency, but these thoughts of death do not explain what motivated them to pursue their work in the first place or to continue their work for decades. If nonconscious thoughts of death did give their work more urgency, there are likely other extrinsic motivators that could have given their work this same urgency (e.g., wanting to be the first person to do something, such as the first scientist to explain a previously unexplained physical process). 5. Transcending a Temporal Limit Following his critique of Frankl's argument, Nozick26 goes on to argue that transcending limits gives meaning to our lives – a view that has become well known. Transcending one's finitude, by leaving an enduring trace of oneself in one's writings, artwork, music, or in the memory of others, makes one's life meaningful, Nozick suggests. In response, Metz asks: "why believe that the limit of time is a boundary that specifically must be crossed in order for one's life to be meaningful? Why 25 For discussion, see Vail et al. (2012), pp. 5-13. 26 Nozick (1981), pp. 582-585, 594-600. 71 would loving another person or creating a work of art not suffice."27 For transcending a limit to add meaning to one's life, one must also overcome the temporal limit, or other such limit, in the right way by connecting with final value beyond the animal self, Metz argues, and I think that this is correct. If transcending one's finitude to connect to final value gives meaning to one's life, then this demonstrates a second way in which our finitude can have a positive impact on the meaning in the lives of some individuals. Plato transcended his finitude and his works have influenced people for over two thousand years. But if Plato had not died and were alive today, it would likely still be true that he influenced people for over two thousand years. How, then, did transcending his finitude add meaning to Plato's life? Although Plato's impact on the lives of other people is the same in both scenarios, there is one important difference between the two scenarios. In the first scenario, Plato overcomes a significant challenge; he influences the lives of people even though he no longer exists, which made his life more meaningful than if he had not overcome such a challenge. Transcending one's finitude is a challenge, but there is nothing special about a temporal limitation. It is just one of many different types of challenges that we face. If Plato had overcome a different type of obstacle (other than transcending his finitude) and made a lasting impact, his life would still have been more meaningful than if he had not overcome an obstacle on his way to making a lasting impact. For example, suppose that an immortal Plato had severe and persistent headaches and, despite these headaches, had written his great works. He would have overcome a challenge and made a lasting impact on the lives of other people in the same way that the mortal Plato overcame the obstacle of finitude and made a lasting impact. 6. Virtuous Actions Some scholars have argued that immortal human beings could not exhibit important virtues or at least could not exhibit them in the way that we do. Kass writes: "To be mortal means that it is possible to give one's life, not only in one moment, say, on the field of battle, but also in the many other ways in which we are able in action to rise above attachment to survival."28 He concludes: "The 27 Metz (2013), p. 131. 28 Kass (2001), pp. 21-22. 72 immortals cannot be noble."29 To give a second example, in contrasting the lives of mortals and immortals, Martha Nussbaum writes: "The profound seriousness and urgency of human thought about justice arises from the awareness that we all really need the thing that justice distributes . . . . If that need were removed, or made non-absolute, distribution would not matter, or not matter in the same way and to the same extent . . . ."30 Even if we were immortal, distribution would still matter, but Nussbaum is correct that it would not matter to the same extent. Immortal people who were hungry and malnourished would still need a distribution of food. But because they would not be at risk of dying, there would be less urgency to send them food. Although Kass' and Nussbaum's arguments do not demonstrate that immortal people could not be virtuous, they do point out a third way that our finitude enhances the meaning in the lives of some individuals. A soldier dives on a grenade to save his fellow soldiers and makes the "ultimate sacrifice." In a world without death, there would be no ultimate sacrifice. By diving on a grenade, an immortal soldier would still be risking serious harm and exhibiting the virtues of courage and beneficence, but he or she would not be making as much of a sacrifice. Furthermore, because the soldier would not be saving fellow soldiers from death, but only saving them from injury, the courageous soldier would be making less of an impact on the lives of fellow soldiers. In a world with death, besides front-line soldiers, there are many other people who risk their lives helping others, including firefighters, police, and some physicians and nurses. Time magazine named the Ebola Fighters as the "Person of the Year 2014." Nancy Gibbs, the editor, explains why, when she writes: "For tireless acts of courage and mercy, for buying the world time to boost its defenses, for risking, for persisting, for sacrificing and saving . . . ."31 The Ebola Fighters would be heroic even if everyone were immortal, but they are more heroic, and their actions are more meaningful, for risking their finite lives to save the lives of other people. Granted, not everyone is involved in a profession in which they risk their lives to save the lives of other people. However, even if we do not put our lives on the line, because of our finitude, we sacrifice more, and potentially have 29 Ibid., (2001), p. 22. 30 Nussbaum (1989), p. 338. 31 Gibbs (2014). 73 more of an impact on the lives of other people, than we would if we were immortal. To see this, let us compare two scenarios – one in which a mortal person volunteers for two years in the Peace Corps to serve other mortals and one in which an immortal person volunteers in the Peace Corps to serve other immortals for the same amount of time. By choosing to volunteer, the mortal person is sacrificing part of her limited life span to help others. In contrast, because the life of the immortal person is unlimited, he does not make this sacrifice. Through their efforts, both of these individuals can improve the quality of the lives of other people, but only the mortal volunteer can prolong the lives of other mortal people. Both of their actions are virtuous and meaningful, but, because of our finitude, the actions of the mortal person are more virtuous and meaningful. 7. Death as a Preventer of Intolerable Boredom To summarize the prior sections, reflecting on one's finitude can extrinsically motivate a person to take action. If that action involves engaging in meaning-conferring activities, then our finitude will have played a role in enhancing the meaning in that person's life. Second, overcoming a substantial obstacle, such as one's finitude, to connect to final value, adds meaning to one's life. Third, because of our finitude, when we help other people, we make more of a sacrifice, and potentially have more of an impact on their lives, than we would if everyone were immortal. In this section, I will explain a fourth way in which death can have a positive impact on the meaning in the lives of some people. In a well-known essay, Bernard Williams disputed the Epicurean argument that death is never an evil. He argues that premature deaths are a misfortune, but that it is a good thing that we do not live forever. Williams discusses a play by Karel Čapek. In the play, Elina Makropulos was given an elixir by her father that extended her life by 300 years. At the age of 342, her life, as Williams writes, "has come to a state of boredom, indifference, and coldness."32 Elina refuses to take the life-extending elixir again and she dies. Williams contends that immortal human beings would necessarily be bored, as a result of repetitive experiences, or would lose their sense of identity in trying to overcome the 32 Williams (1973), p. 82. 74 boredom – either of which would make their lives unappealing and not worth living. Williams asserts that "Immortality, or a state without death, would be meaningless, I shall suggest; so, in a sense, death gives the meaning to life."33 Williams provides very little support for his second claim that "death gives the meaning to life." Even if it were true that an immortal life would be intolerable and meaningless, the conclusion that death gives meaning to life does not necessarily follow. For example, if a mortal person did nothing more in his life than twiddle his thumbs, then his life would be meaningless. When this person dies, in no way does death add meaning to his life. Death does not have a positive impact on the meaning in the lives of individuals who have led a meaningless life, but what about individuals who have led a meaningful life? If Einstein had become immortal, what impact would that have had on the meaning in his life? A proponent of the view that death gives meaning to life might concede that mortality awareness played no role in motivating Einstein to lead a meaningful life, but then argue that if Einstein had not died and became immortal that his life would eventually become meaningless. Is this correct? Suppose that Einstein was still alive and took an elixir that would allow him to live forever. At the time he ingested the elixir, his life would still have been meaningful. But over countless thousands of years, the meaning in his life would be on a downward trajectory, Williams would argue. Some philosophers maintain that the only bearer of meaning is a part of a life. At the other extreme, some philosophers maintain that the only bearer of meaning is an entire life. Metz34 argues that a part of one's life and one's life, as a whole, can be bearers of meaning, and I share this view. As Metz points out, if a part of one's life and one's life as a whole can be bearers of meaning, then this raises the question of how the parts relate to the whole – a question that I will now briefly discuss. The English language can deceive one into thinking that a person's life can only be meaningless or meaningful. But most of our lives are neither meaningless nor meaningful, but lie somewhere between these two extremes. Most lives are "somewhat meaningful." If Einstein took the elixir and became immortal, would his life, as a whole, be meaningless, somewhat meaningful, or 33 Ibid., p. 82. 34 Metz (2013), pp. 37-58. 75 meaningful? Let us assume that his immortal life did become intolerable. If we look at the different parts of his life, the part of his life where he made scientific discoveries was meaningful, but the later part of his life was meaningless. Because part of his life contained great meaning, it would not seem correct to say that his life, as a whole, was meaningless. If the meaningful part of his life were followed by a meaningless part, then his life, as a whole, would neither be meaningful nor meaningless, but would be "somewhat meaningful." In this scenario, becoming immortal made Einstein's life, as a whole, less meaningful than it would have been if he had died. If Williams is correct that an immortal life would necessarily be unappealing and not worth living, then this suggests a fourth way in which death can have a positive impact on the meaning in the lives of some people – namely those individuals who have led a meaningful life. By preventing them from experiencing the boredom that would result from living forever, death prevents their lives, as a whole, from becoming less meaningful. I have clarified four ways in which our finitude has a positive impact on the meaning in the lives of some people. The manner in which finitude has this impact, and whether our finitude contributes to the addition or the preservation of meaning in one's life, varies among the four scenarios, as discussed below. Suppose that a person is immortal, but thinks that he is dying. His belief that he is dying might motivate him to take action and, consequently, his life might become more meaningful as a result. Thus, it is his belief that he is dying, and not death itself, that plays a role in adding meaning to his life. In contrast, it is our finitude, and not simply believing that one's life is finite, which provides a temporal limit – a limit that if transcended in the right way can add meaning to one's life. And it is finitude, and not a belief in finitude, that makes some of our actions more virtuous and meaningful than if we were immortal. An immortal person, who mistakenly believes that she is mortal, might serve for two years in the Peace Corps. But she would not be making the same sacrifice as someone who was mortal and gave up two years of her limited life. Finally, it is "death itself," and not a belief in finitude, that can prevent individuals who have led a meaningful life from experiencing a boring, later part of their lives, which, in turn, can prevent their lives, as a whole, from becoming less meaningful. In contrast to the first three ways in which our finitude impacts the meaning in our lives, in this scenario, death does not play a role in adding meaning to the person's life. Rather, death simply upholds the meaning in the 76 person's life by preventing it from becoming less meaningful. 8. Is Death Necessary to Prevent a Meaningful Life from Becoming Less Meaningful? By preventing intolerable boredom, death would prevent meaningful lives from becoming less meaningful. One might argue that not only does death uphold the meaning in their lives, but also that death is necessary to prevent their lives from becoming less meaningful. In this section, I will construct an argument for this stronger claim to see how it holds up to scrutiny. The Death as a Preventer of Boredom argument, as I will call it, is as follows: (1) An immortal life would necessarily be boring, intolerable, and meaningless. (2) If a person lived a meaningful, finite life and then became immortal, the meaning in this person's life would begin to decline and eventually this person's life, as a whole, would no longer be meaningful, but only "somewhat meaningful." (3) Therefore, death is necessary to prevent a meaningful life from becoming less meaningful. As outlined, this argument is applicable only to those individuals who have led a meaningful life. Is this a compelling argument? Many philosophers have disputed Williams' conclusion that an immortal life would necessarily be boring.35 They concede that the lives of some immortal people could be boring, but deny that everyone's immortal life would be boring. Stephen Cave36 distinguishes between two types of immortality – "true immortality" and "medical immortality." A person with medical immortality would be immune to disease and aging, but could die from accidents, such as being hit by a bus. In contrast, a person with true immortality would be unable to die. As Fischer and Mitchell-Yellin indicate,37 in a world without God, it is implausible to think that someone could survive a direct hit from a nuclear bomb. 35 See, for example, Fischer (1994), Bortolotti and Nagasawa (2009), Chappell (2009), Bruckner (2012), and Fischer and Mitchell-Yellin (2014). 36 Cave (2012), pp. 63, 74-78, 267-268. 37 Fischer and Mitchell-Yellin (2014), p. 364. 77 Thus, we will never attain true immortality but, in the future, human beings might have much longer life spans than we do. For this reason, Fischer and Mitchell-Yellin argue that the debate should focus on whether medical immortality would result in intolerable boredom. Donald Bruckner38 has argued that the following three characteristics would ward off the boredom of immortality: the natural decay of our memories, human ingenuity, and our ability to regain interest in an activity after a sufficient time has lapsed. One idea that has not been considered in the literature is that of sleep. When we sleep, we are not bored and people often feel refreshed after a good night's sleep. Of course, getting eight hours of nightly sleep will not prevent the boredom of immortality. But what if we could sleep for six to nine months at a time whenever we wanted? Would memory decay, desire rejuvenation, ingenuity, and periodic, prolonged sleep be enough to prevent an immortal life from becoming intolerably boring? Or is death truly necessary to prevent a meaningful life from becoming less meaningful? This idea of prolonged sleep is not as far-fetched as it might sound. For the purpose of sending astronauts on a mission to Mars, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the aerospace company SpaceWorks, are currently researching a new technology that would allow human beings to enter a deep sleep for a period of six to nine months.39 This "cryosleep" technology involves lowering the body temperature of the astronauts and providing them with nutrients intravenously. If the technology proves successful, it would be used to overcome some of the challenges involved in sending astronauts on a deep space mission. One of these challenges includes transporting enough food and water to keep the astronauts alive for months or years without overloading the spacecraft. In addition, prolonged spaceflight can result in anxiety, boredom, claustrophobia, insomnia, and depression. Placing the astronauts in a sort of hibernation would lessen the need for food and water, thereby reducing the weight of the spacecraft and the cost of the mission. In addition, NASA hypothesizes that this hibernation would counteract psychological distress, such as anxiety and boredom, and allow the astronauts to wake from this prolonged sleep feeling refreshed and energized. Would this cryosleep technology help prevent the boredom of medical immortality? When an immortal person awakens after a prolonged sleep, things 38 Bruckner (2012). 39 For further discussion, see Bradford (2013) and Williams (2014). 78 would have changed in the world and it would take some time for this person to learn about and adapt to these changes, which would introduce some novelty in this person's life. If the person worked on a team, he or she would have some catching-up to do on their work, which could be invigorating or stressful. Whether one would feel more refreshed after a nine-month sleep than after an eight-hour sleep is unclear. Williams' hypothesis that an immortal life would necessarily be boring is an empirical claim. Thus, if we reach a point at which human beings have much longer life spans, such as living, on average, for 300 years, then this hypothesis could be empirically tested. One of the ways that it could be tested is by studying the rates of depression and suicide in the long-lived population. 9. Conclusion Many philosophers have argued that death is harmful and evil. Others have tried to counterbalance these arguments by pointing out ways in which our finitude is good for us. I have analyzed the claim that death gives meaning to "life." There is not sufficient support for this far-reaching claim, but there is support for the more limited conclusion that our finitude enhances or upholds the meaning in the lives of some individuals under certain circumstances. Upon first hearing a statement such as "death gives the meaning to life,"40 some people might be consoled thinking that death gives their lives meaning. But, as I have attempted to demonstrate, our finitude does not necessarily give meaning to a person's life. Before finitude can enhance the meaning in one's life, one must first: (1) face up to one's mortality and engage in meaning-conferring activities or projects; (2) transcend one's finitude to connect to final value; or (3) devote some of the limited moments in one's life to help other people (a sacrifice that only a mortal person can make). At this time, for most people, intrinsic motivation probably plays a more substantial role in giving meaning to their lives than does our finitude. But if more people begin to face up to our finitude, or if human beings have much longer life spans in the future, then death could play a larger role in enhancing or upholding the meaning in our lives. 40 Williams (1973), p. 82. 79 References Becker, Ernest (1973). The Denial of Death. New York: Free Press Paperbacks. Bortolotti, Lisa and Nagasawa, Yujin (2009). "Immortality Without Boredom." Ratio, 22(3): 261-277. Bortolotti, Lisa (2010). "Agency, Life Extension, and the Meaning of Life." The Monist, 93(1): 38-56. Bradford, John (2013). "Torpor Inducing Transfer Habitat for Human Stasis to Mars." National Aeronautics and Space Administration. http://www.nasa.gov/content/torpor-inducing-transfer-habitat-for-human-stasisto-mars/#>.VLMTKiePrks. Accessed March 02, 2015. Bruckner, Donald (2012). "Against the Tedium of Immortality." International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 20(5): 623-644. Carr, Deborah (2012). "Death and Dying in the Contemporary United States: What are the Psychological Implications of Anticipated Death?" Social and Personality Psychology Compass, 6(2): 184-195. Cave, Stephen (2012). Immortality. New York: Crown Publishers. Chappell, Timothy (2009). "Infinity Goes Up On Trial: Must Immortality be Meaningless?" European Journal of Philosophy, 17(1): 30-44. Dukas, Helen and Hoffmann, Banesh (eds.) (1979). Albert Einstein: The Human Side. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Fischer, John Martin (1994). "Why Immortality is Not So Bad." International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2(2): 257-270. Fischer, John Martin and Mitchell-Yellin, Benjamin (2014). "Immortality and Boredom." Journal of Ethics, 18(4): 353-372. Frankl, Viktor (1986). The Doctor and the Soul. trans. Richard and Clara Winston. New York: Vintage Books. Gibbs, Nancy (2014). "The Ebola Fighters." Time, December 10, 2014, http://time.com/time-person-of-the-year-ebola-fighters-choice/. Accessed March 17, 2015. Heidegger, Martin (1962). Being and Time. trans. John Macquarrie and Edward Robinson. New York: Harper Collins. Kass, Leon (2001). "L'Chaim and its Limits: Why Not Immortality?" First Things, 113: 17-24. Kosloff, Spee and Greenberg, Jeff (2009). "Pearls in the Desert: Death Reminders Provoke Immediate Derogation of Extrinsic Goals, but Delayed 80 Inflation." Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 45(1): 197-203. Levy, Neil (2005). "Downshifting and Meaning in Life." Ratio, 18(2): 176-189. Lykins, Emily; Segerstrom, Suzanne; Averill, Alyssa; Evans, Daniel; Kemeny, Margaret (2007). "Goal Shifts Following Reminders of Mortality: Reconciling Posttraumatic Growth and Terror Management Theory." Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 33(8): 1088-1099. Malpas, Jeff (1998). "Death and the Unity of a Life," in Jeff Malpas and Robert C. Solomon (eds.), Death and Philosophy. London: Routledge, pp. 120-134. Mandela, Nelson (1995). Long Walk to Freedom. New York: Little, Brown and Company. Metz, Thaddeus (2003). "The Immortality Requirement for Life's Meaning." Ratio, 16(2): 161-177. -- (2013). Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Noonan, Jeff (2013). "The Life-Value of Death: Mortality, Finitude, and Meaningful Lives." Journal of Philosophy of Life, 3(1): 1-23. Nozick, Robert (1981). Philosophical Explanations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Nussbaum, Martha (1989). "Mortal Immortals: Lucretius on Death and the Voice of Nature." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 50(2): 303-51. Pausch, Randy (2007). "Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Achieving Your Childhood Dreams." December 20, 2007, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji5_MqicxSo. Accessed March 05, 2015. Pausch, Randy and Zaslow, Jeffrey (2008). The Last Lecture. New York: Hyperion. Popper, Karl (1992). "How I See Philosophy," in In Search of a Better World, trans. Laura J. Bennett. London: Routledge, pp. 173-187. Ryan, Richard and Deci, Edward (2000). "Intrinsic and Extrinsic Motivations: Classic Definitions and New Directions." Contemporary Educational Psychology, 25(1): 54-67. Trisel, Brooke Alan (2004). "Human Extinction and the Value of Our Efforts." The Philosophical Forum, 35(3): 371-391. Vail III, Kenneth; Juhl, Jacob; Arndt, Jamie; Vess, Matthew; Routledge, Clay; and Rutjens, Bastiaan (2012). "When Death is Good for Life: Considering the Positive Trajectories of Terror Management." Personality and Social Psychology Review, April 5, 2012, pp. 1-27, doi: 10.1177/1088868312440046. 81 Williams, Bernard (1973). "The Makropulos Case: Reflections on the Tedium of Immortality," in Bernard Williams (ed.), Problems of the Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 82-100. Williams, Matt (2014). "NASA Investigating Deep-Space Hibernation Technology." Universe Today October 16, 2014, http://www.universetoday.com/115265/nasa-investigating-deep-space-hibernati on-technology/. Accessed March 02, 2015. Young, Julian (2003). The Death of God and the Meaning of Life. London: Routledge. | {
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5. Metaphors in The Wealth of Nations Sergio Cremaschi* ____________________________________________________________________________ I intend to highlight the shaping of Adam Smith's discourse on the growth of wealth, the interactions between economic theory, moral theory and the theory of knowledge, and the ways in which theory and rhetoric safely coexist in his work.1 My main claim is that, either by chance or by insight, Adam Smith worked with a blissful combination of metaphors, a combination that helped in widening the scope of economic theory, imagining counter-intuitive connections among separated fields, and shaping new hypotheses to be tested. Adam Smith's felicitous choice of his own bunch of metaphors depended on a number of factors: fashion, shared standards of taste, a received set of images and symbols, in a word, a 'scientific style'.2 SCIENCE AND ANALOGY IN THE HISTORY OF ASTRONOMY Adam Smith left unpublished fragments of a 'philosophical history of the sciences and the arts'. Schumpeter once wrote that nobody 'can have an adequate idea of Smith's intellectual stature who does not know these essays',3 but in fact he made hardly any use of them in his own reading of The Wealth of Nations. The editors of the Glasgow edition of Adam Smith's works have done a lot to redress the effects of Schumpeter's inadvertence, but some work still is waiting to be done. Of these fragments the most renowned one is The History of Astronomy, whose first three sections present Adam Smith's views in matters of methodology and epistemology, those views he apparently assumed to be of scarce interest to the reader of The Wealth of Nations. Adam Smith puts Hume's philosophy of mind to work as the basis of an historical reconstruction of the leading branch of natural science. Like in Hume's epistemology, the Newtonian principle of 'analogy of nature' plays a main function. This is a key principle in the Newtonian methodological tradition stating that we may safely assume that Nature is simple, and accordingly may assumed to employ similar causes in order to bring about similar effects in different domains. The adoption of such a principle, combined with Hume's view of knowledge in terms of association of ideas, yields an original account of theory change. That is, the evolution of 'systems' (i.e. theories) which account for the heavenly phenomena is governed by psychological laws. These laws prescribe that gaps in the familiar course of impressions to which our imagination has become accustomed be filled. In order to fill the gap, the mind may have recourse to imaginary ideas. Thus, the mind fills the gaps by means of 'invisible chains' or 2 'imaginary machines' made of ideas. A good imaginary machine in turn is one that would bring about the observed phenomena in a simple and familiar way.4 Every time we say that a new field of (previously disconnected) phenomena has been explained, or that a better explanation has been offered for the same field, this may imply that a new 'imaginary machine' has been built, that is, the gaps between disconnected phenomena have been filled by an 'invisible' chain of phenomena, taken from some more familiar field, that are imagined to lay behind the observable phenomena. In other words, an imaginary machine is built by taking another, more familiar, field as a 'model' for the explanandum, and mapping the chosen model over the explanandum. The chain of models thus gradually produced should eventually end up with some domain where the principles at work are 'visible', not just imagined or hidden behind the veil of phenomena. Technology is the best example of such a domain, since in building tools and machines knowing is doing.5 This is why we see the various fields of natural phenomena as if they were machines. If we assume that Adam Smith believed that this holds also for social phenomena, we may also account in a more convincing way for Adam Smith's intentions and for what he actually did also in the field of the social sciences. He probably felt that his audience was interested primarily in the moral and political implications of his argument on the causes of the wealth and poverty of nations, and this is why in The Wealth of Nations he was careful in avoiding such academic issues as methodology. A remark may be added on analogy and metaphor. Adam Smith believes analogy to be – along with simplicity and familiarity – one of the characteristics required by the human mind to accept new imaginary ideas as parts of the invisible chain between disconnected phenomena. Analogy is always a requirement, even if there may be an excess in its use6. Metaphor, on the contrary, is but one figure of speech, and it may be used with some positive aesthetic effect, if it is used with due respect to proportions. 'In every metaphor it is evident there must be an allusion betwixt one object and an other' (Smith 1983, i.64, p. 29), but only if such an allusion consists in a resemblance it is a metaphor in a proper sense; if the allusion depends on a close connection, it is a kind of 'metonymy'. A metaphor is thus an 'alteration of the word [...] in its signification' (Smith 1983, i.63, p. 28) and consists in giving the word a meaning 'to which it has some resemblance or analogy' (Ib.). Besides, also Adam Smith believes, with the whole tradition of rhetoric stemming from Aristotle, that metaphor is one figure of speech that carries many dangers. Besides, he shares the suspicion widespread among modern philosophers (starting with Roger Bacon and the Royal Society) that only 'when the sentiment of the speaker is expressed in a neat, clear, plain and clever manner' (Smith 1983, i.v.56, p. 29) language is used as a proper vehicle for ideas and that figures of speech 'have no intrinsic worth of their own'7. This concern with clarity and literality may make the actual use of metaphors by Adam Smith – not in poetry of novel, but in philosophical and economic writings – a tricky subject of study. It is true that Smith's texts – as Vivienne Brown notes – in spite of his own precepts in the Lectures on Rhetoric, are 'at times deeply metaphorical'8, but I believe that the most important aspect of Adam Smith's metaphors are their below-thewater-line parts, i.e. not the use Smith's makes of metaphors but the effects he produces on received concepts and theories by making use of metaphoric transfer of meanings from one domain to another. In other words, 3 not the illocutionary dimension (the effects the author produces by the utterance itself, be they intended or not)9 but the perlocutionary dimension, i.e. effects the author produces by the speech act as such is the decisive part of the story I intend to tell; the latter effects are always beyond control by the author, since the speech act is always in the framework of a conversation.10 PHYSICAL, BIOLOGICAL AND THEOLOGICAL METAPHORS IN THE WEALTH OF NATIONS Unlike Malthus and, after him, other writers on economic subjects, Adam Smith did not prefix a methodological introduction to his main economic work. Indeed, a reader might look in vain for methodological comments of any kind throughout the five books of the work. Even worse, to our disappointment, speculations about first causes and original qualities lying at the root of 'principles' of economic behaviour such as the propensity to truck and barter and the propensity to exchange that occur in a number of passages of the Lectures on Jurisprudence have been systematically deleted from the text of The Wealth of Nations. Smith more than once writes at these points: we do not need to ascertain whether the above principle is an original quality of human nature or it may be reduced to some more basic quality; for our present concern we may take the above principle for granted.11 And yet, Adam Smith was dramatically aware that even Newton's work, the most splendid achievement of human reason, amounted to nothing more than an ingenious creation of human imagination, which might be reduced to analogical transfer of ideas from one domain to another. How far this dramatic awareness reflected also on his work? That is, how far was he aware that also any discovery of truths, not only in the field of nature but also in the parallel field of man and society, e.g. the reconstruction of market mechanisms, amounted to a construction of imaginary machines? Answers to this question range from the eighteenth century view of Smith as a dogmatic social theorist, a proponent of the harmony-of-interests thesis and of an optimistic social theodicy12, to a postmodernist reading of Adam Smith as staging rhetorical devices with a view at producing persuasion in his own audience. I feel that full sense can be made of what Smith says only if we take a third way. My own answer, not surprisingly, lies somewhere in between. In order to substantiate it, I shall tell the eventful story of several families of metaphors crowding the pages of The Wealth of Nations. Let us start with a family enjoying the highest reputation in the eighteenth century: physical metaphors. Mechanics Besides the occurrence of the idea of gravitation, that could hardly escape the reader's attention, the presence of several physical metaphors in The Wealth of Nations has gone generally unnoticed13. But the metaphors are there and may be grouped easily according to their primary subjects. Two groups are based on mechanical subjects: the first is fall and rise, the second is circulation. 4 Concerning the subject of fall and rise, the first remark worth making is that economic magnitudes appear to be located in a two-dimensional space, with a vertical as well as a horizontal dimension. Accordingly, prices and profits may move downward or upward. Smith writes: the market price will <rise> more or less <above> the natural price (Smith [1776] 1976, I.vii.9, p. 73-74).14 The market price will <sink> more or less <below> the natural price (Smith [1776] 1976, I.vii.10, p. 74). the <fall> of profit in them and the <rise> of it in all others immediately dispose them to alter this faulty distribution (Smith [1776] 1976, IV.vii.c.88, p. 630). These example of ways of representing changes in economic magnitudes by mapping these changes over a two-dimensional space carry the implication that change in the economy 'is' spatial movement. This implication opens the door to several questions, namely: if there are 'motions' of prices, profits, and rents, what are the causes for such motions? Are they just efficient causes or also final causes? What kind of laws, if any, governs these motions? The primary subject of mechanical metaphors, besides upward or downward movements, is provided on a few occasions by circular movement. Smith writes that money is the 'great <wheel> of <circulation>' (Smith [1776] 1976, II.ii.14, p. 289; II.ii.23, p. 291), that is, its function is that of smoothing the shift of other goods from one owner to another. In this passage, 'circulation' is a rotating movement of a wheel; in other passages instead, it is the flow of a fluid, namely value, through the vessels of a living body. I will discuss these hydraulic or biological metaphors in what follows. Dynamics Other physical metaphors draw their primary subject from what is now another sub-discipline of physics, namely dynamics. Here not only spatial movements are at stake, but also their causes, i.e. forces. The occurrence of the idea of gravitation is familiar even to the reader of the bunch of standard quotations from The Wealth of Nations that use to appear in economics textbooks. Smith describes prices, natural rates of salaries, profits, rents as gravitating around some average or central point that may be called a natural price. 'Gravitating' means moving upwards and downwards, but with a tendency to come back towards some given point, as if this point was able to exert some kind of attraction. Smith here spells out the metaphor by an 'as if' clause. He writes that the natural price is, as it were, the <central> price, to which the prices of all commodities are continually <gravitating>. Different accidents may sometimes keep them <suspended> a good deal <above> it, and sometimes force them down even somewhat <below> it. But whatever may be the obstacles which hinder them from settling in this centre of <repose> and continuance, they are constantly <tending> towards it (Smith [1776] 1976, I.vii.15, p. 75) 5 Also, the most famous (and often misquoted) passage from The Wealth of Nations is a metaphor based on a dynamic subject. In more detail, it is based on the Newtonian way of equating a vis a tergo (i.e. an impressed force, transmitted by direct contact between bodies) with a vis attractiva (i.e. an attractive force, by one body which carries out an 'action at a distance' on another body). In this notorious passage Smith writes: Every individual is continually exerting himself to find out the most advantageous employment for whatever capital he can command [...] and he is [...] <led> by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention (Smith [1776] 1976, IV.ii.4-9, p. 456). The passage is meant to illustrate how (in present-day jargon) market mechanisms bring about optimal allocation of capitals. The passage has been quoted numberless times as an illustration of the harmony-ofinterests thesis, or as a proof of Smith's 'modernity' in forerunning the self-regulating mechanisms of postmarginalist microeconomics. In fact, what the passage tries to proof is that human actions can bring about the same effect, both in case the effect was intended and in case it was no part of the agent's intention.15 In other words, Smith's claim is not that of a deterministic character of the cause-effect relationship but instead the equivalence of a final and an efficient cause or of a vis a tergo and a vis attractiva. No suggestion is made that the hand's invisibility implies its being the Hand of God, as was safely assumed by interpreters who used to read Adam Smith as the proponent of a dogmatically optimistic social theodicy centred on the harmony-ofinterests thesis. Hydraulics At a number of places in The Wealth of Nations circulation is the circular flow of a fluid instead of the rotating motion of a wheel. In fact in everyday language, at least in most modern languages, cash is 'liquid', which implies that money is 'a fluid'. This is an entrenched way of speaking of money on which Smith elaborates, spelling out the further implication that the laws of hydraulics that apply to fluids, do apply to money as well. For example, while discussing one ruinous experiment in banking, he suggests that the coffers of the bank [...] resemble a water pond, from which, though a stream is continually running out, yet another is continually running in, fully equal to that which runs out; so that [...] the pond keeps always equally, or very near equally full (Smith [1776] 1976, II.ii.59, p. 304). Thus, the project of replenishing their coffers in this manner may be compared to that of a man who had a water-pond from which a stream was continually running out, and into which no stream was continually running, but who proposed to keep it always equally full by employing a number of people to go continually with buckets to a well at some miles distance in order to bring water to replenish it (Smith [1776] 1976, II.ii.76, p. 316). 6 A similar primary subject, drawn from hydraulics, provides the basis for another metaphor, invoked in order to account for the devastating effects of accumulation of gold and silver in Spain and Portugal after the conquest of South America. Smith writes: When you dam up a stream of water, as soon as the dam is full, as much water must run over the dam-head as if there was no dam at all [...] As the water, however, must always be deeper behind the dam-head than before it, so the quantity of gold and silver which these restraints detain in Spain and Portugal must, in proportion to the annual produce of their land and labour, be greater than what is to be found in other countries (Smith [1776] 1976, IV.v.a.19, p. 512). Biology and medicine Almost inadvertently, as soon as blood is substituted to water, the primary subjects of metaphors shift from hydraulics to biology and medicine. Here is Harvey's discovery of the circulation of blood that provides the blueprint. Smith writes that the monopoly of the colony trade seems to have modified the 'natural balance' among different branches of the British economy and Commerce, instead of running in a great number of <small channels>, has been taught to run principally in one <great channel> (Smith [1776] 1976, IV.vii.c.43, p. 604). As a consequence, the 'whole system of her industry and commerce' has become less safe. This has made the whole state of her <body politick> less healthful, than it otherwise would have been [...] one of those unwholesome bodies in which some of the vital parts are overgrown [...] A small stop in that great bloodvessel, which has been artificially swelled beyond its natural dimensions, and through which an unnatural proportion of the industry and commerce of the country has been forced to circulate, is very likely to bring on the most dangerous disorders upon the whole body politick (Smith [1776] 1976, IV.vii.c.43, pp. 604-605). And he concludes that the blood, of which the circulation is stopt in some of the smaller vessels, easily disgorges itself into the greater, without occasioning any dangerous disorder; but, when it is stopt in any of the greater vessels, convulsion, apoplexy, or death, are the immediate and unavoidable consequences (Smith [1776] 1976, IV.vii.c.43, p. 605). The latter quotation states that society is an organism, or a body. The quote embodies a mixed metaphor which maps the secondary subject over two primary subjects at once. In fact, at a certain level, commerce is the flow of a liquid; at a further level, this liquid is what nourishes a living organism. The idea of society as an 7 organism is another entrenched image, lying at the root of the classical phrase "the body politick". Some political theorizing has been done starting with classical authors by elaborating on this idea. In The Wealth of Nations, the idea comes back more than once. For example, the effort of every man 'of bettering his own condition' is, for society as a whole, a 'principle' that keeps it healthy. We find here once more an explicit simile: This [...] effort of every man [...] [l]ike the unknown <principle of animal life> [...] frequently restores health [...] in spite, not only of the disease, but of the absurd prescriptions of the doctor (Smith [1776] 1976, I.iii.31, p. 343). And Smith further elaborates on this point while discussing the doctrines of the Physiocrats. The focus of his criticism is the kind of artificialism that lies at the root of Physiocracy. He notes that some 'speculative physician seem to have imagined that the health of the human body could be preserved only by a certain precise regimen of diet and exercise'. He seems to be alluding in fact to a famous Scottish physician of his time, Nicholas Cheyne, who was the proponent of a Christian Stoic view, recommending an ascetic regime (See Cheyne, 1725). Smith's remark is that experience, on the contrary 'would seem to show that the human body frequently preserves, to all appearance at least, the most perfect state of health under a vast variety of different regimens' (Smith [1776] 1976, IV.ix.28, p. 673), and that the healthful state of the human body [...] contains in itself some unknown principle of preservation, capable of preventing or correcting, in many respects, the bad effects even of a very faulty regimen. Mr. Quesnai, who was himself a physician [...] seems to have entertained a notion of the same kind concerning the <political body> [...] In the political body, however, the wisdom of nature has fortunately made ample provision for remedying many of the bad effects of the folly and injustice of man; in the same manner as it has done in the natural body (Smith [1776] 1976, IV.ix.28, p. 673674; emphasis added). The reader may note that the 'principle of preservation' lies at a level deeper than that of observable phenomena. It may be not unreasonable to think that it is the same non observable level of 'invisible' chains, 'invisible hands' and 'imaginary' machines, and that the dual structure of observable phenomena and hidden connecting principles may be assumed to exist not only in nature, but also in society. In the latter case the hidden level includes behaviour of individuals in their private lives, i.e., phenomena that are apparently unconnected to each other. Also in social phenomena 'philosophy' proves to be able to bring about connectedness. In fact, 'the natural effort which every man is continuously making to better his own condition' (Ib.) plays in the body politick the same role as the 'unknown' principle of preservation plays in the biological body16. Agriculture, or energy 8 Another sustained metaphor, or an allegory, may be detected in Book II, where value is described as a substance, something like a force transformed into energy. Smith says that 'the labour of the manufacturer <fixes> and realizes itself in some particular subject or vendible commodity [...] It is, as it were, a certain quantity of labour stocked and stored up' (Smith [1776] 1976, II.iii.1, p. 330). This quantity of labour stored in some portion of matter 'can afterwards [...] put into motion a quantity of labour equal to that which had originally produced it' (Ib.). What Smith seems to have in mind is a transformation of labour (active force) into value (energy) stored in land (matter). It is this hidden fluid or substance what keeps the economy alive, and this 'abstract' entity survives to the transformation or consumption of material goods. In fact what is annually saved is as regularly consumed as what is annually spent [...] but it is consumed by a different kind of people [...] That portion which he annually saves, as... it is immediately employed as a capital, is consumed [...] by labourers [...] who reproduce with a profit the value of their annual consumption (Smith [1776] 1976, II.iii.18, p. 338). Trying to sum up what is suggested by a review of the various families of metaphors, we could read into The Wealth of Nations some kind of allegory. This allegory represents the economy as a rotating wheel or a circulating fluid, following blueprints drawn from astronomy, biology and agriculture. Such a circular process is understood as a self-expanding process, since, as soon as a new cycle begins, fresh portions of land and labour are 'attracted' into the economy's circular movement. METAPHORS IN THE THEORY OF MORAL SENTIMENTS AND THE ESSAYS ON PHILOSOPHICAL SUBJECTS The most famous passage from Smith, that is the invisible-hand passage, actually occurs twice: the first time in The Theory of Moral Sentiments in connection with consumption and distribution, the second in The Wealth of Nations, with reference to investment. But other hands, more or less invisible, occur at other places in Smith's oeuvre. An 'invisible hand' had already shown up in the 'History of Astronomy'. After noting that the worldpicture of ancient peoples used to ascribe to divine intervention only irregular events, not ordinary ones, he adds: 'Fire burns, and water refreshes; heavy bodies descend, and lighter substances fly upwards, by the necessity of their own nature; nor was the invisible Hand of Jupiter ever apprehended to be employed in those matters' (Smith [1795a] 1980, III.2, p. 49).17 'Of the External Senses' talks, instead of God's hand, of the hand of Nature. Smith writes that 'Alarm is always the fear of some uncertain evil beyond what is immediately felt, and from some unknown and external cause' (Smith [1795b] 1980, 87, p. 168). It is an effect produced so quickly that it may seem 'an impression immediately struck by the Hand of Nature' (Ib.). 9 In The Theory of Moral Sentiments hands are mentioned twice. The first time, within the context of a discussion on the significance of wealth for human happiness, Smith suggests that the rich contribute, through an unintended effect, to the livelihood of their fellows. The rich consume little more than the poor, and [...] by the gratification of their vain and insatiable desires, they divide with the poor the produce of all their improvements. They are <led by an invisible hand> to make nearly the same distribution of the necessaries of life, which would have been made, had the earth been divided into equal portions among all its inhabitants (Smith [1759] 1976, IV.1.10, p. 184). The passage from The Wealth of Nations on the invisible hand and optimal allocation of capital has often been matched with this, but not with another page in The Theory of Moral Sentiments where Smith mentions chessboards. Smith says that the "man of system", that is, the doctrinaire political reformer seems to imagine that he can arrange the different members of a great society with as much ease as the hand arranges the different pieces upon a chessboard. He does not consider that the piece upon the chessboard has no other <principle of motion> of its own, altogether different from that which the legislature might chose to <impress> upon it (Smith [1759] 1976, VI.ii.2.17, p. 234). The quoted passage (from the 1790 additions) is meant to stress the distinction between human intentions and unintended results. The implications are that individuals in society are like bodies provided with an original motion, previous to any 'artificial' intervention. One obvious consequence is that political artificialism is ineffective, since it ignores the 'dynamic' dimension of social life. A less obvious precondition of what Smith says is a picture of society that depicts it not as a machine but instead as a system that is never at rest. The source of this picture may be Hobbes' atomistic view of nature, consisting of parts endowed with an original principle of motion or, in the jargon of seventeenth-century natural philosophy, with a conatus. It may be also a closer source, namely the Newtonian view of the universe, where the planets are never at rest, and yet a state of equilibrium is produced by the principle of gravitation. To sum up, metaphors are no less frequent in The Wealth of Nations than in other works by Smith with a more traditionally 'literary' character; indeed, the favoured primary subjects of metaphors appear to be the same in all of Smith's oeuvre. Only the theme of circulation is probably peculiar to The Wealth of Nations. When seen from this viewpoint, Adam Smith's discourse tends to sound much in the same voice in both The Wealth of Nations and The Theory of Moral Sentiments18 10 SOURCES OF ADAM SMITH'S METAPHORS Adam Smith's metaphors tend to be mixed metaphors, a kind of metaphor that never met with success among literary critics. And his way of building economic theories tends – pace the anti-baroque leanings of the 'Augustan Age' and his own stylistic precepts in the Lectures on Rhetoric – to yield allegories (i.e., stories told by sustained use of a few metaphors). In fact, the sources from which he draws either primary subjects or metaphors to be further developed are at once previous economic doctrines, moral and political philosophy natural philosophy, biology, medicine, and agriculture. Besides, several of these themes are mapped onto each other, or the implications of one metaphor are further developed taking advantage of developments in the primary subjects. Examples thereof are Harvey's theory of sanguine circulation for the iatro-mechanical analogy or Newton's idea of gravitation for the pre-existing analogy of the social order and a state of equilibrium in a pair of scales. Thus, the themes of society as an organism, money or value as fluids, labour as a force embodied into matter, circulation, passions as forces, individuals as atoms, society as a machine, gravitation and invisible hands coexist with each other and are occasionally blended together. Let us look at several sources of the metaphors that have been reviewed above. One source is moral and political discourse. From this context derives the view of society as a kind of a cosmos. This view was widespread among Renaissance writers, combined with a Platonic assumption of a correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm. It won different implication as soon as the connotation of the primary subject (i.e., the physical universe) underwent gradual modifications. The view of society as analogous to the Newtonian universe presented by English Platonic rationalists such as Ralph Cudworth and Samuel Clarke opened the way to a transfer of concepts of force and equilibrium from the physical to the social realm. Human passions were understood as forces causing social motion, and the rational order that is produced as a result of the combined effects of those passions – the non-rational behaviour of individuals notwithstanding – is equivalent to the equilibrium of the 'isolated system' of post-Galilean physics. Another source is provided by previous economic theories, particularly those of economic pamphleteers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This provides a number of tentative analogies on which Smith elaborates. The economic pamphleteers of the XVII and XVIII centuries repeated several times a few basic mechanical analogies. Hume, in 'Of the Balance of Trade' (1758a, p. 333) mentions the dam and the stream in order to stress the same point made by Smith in The Wealth of Nations. In 'Of Money' he mentions wheels with reference to money but, curiously enough, he seems to think of trade not in terms of circulation, but of a machine run by wheels. In this connection he also talks of money in terms of oil which reduces friction. He writes: Money is not, properly speaking, one of the subjects of commerce... It is none of the wheels of trade: It is the oil which renders the motion of the wheels more smooth and easy (Hume, 1758b, p. 309). Cantillon, in the Essai sur la nature du commerce en général (1755, I.x) talks of 'perpetual ebbs and flow' of market prices19. 11 Sources of Smith's circular view of the economy (besides the all-pervading Stoic cyclical view of both history and nature) are the economic pamphleteers, such as Thomas Mun and Edward Misselden, and the Physiocrats.20 One notorious source of Smith's views on value is Locke's theory of property, justified on the ground of the intercourse between man and land. Labour, according to Locke, 'makes the far greatest part of the value of things, we enjoy in this world' (Locke [1690] 1988, par. 42, pp. 297). Since the labour of his body and the work of his hands are his property, what has been removed 'out of the State that Nature hath provided', he 'hath mixed his Labour with, and joyned to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his Property' (Locke [1690] 1988, 27, pp. 287-288). Locke's labour is apparently a creative activity, while matter is a passive res extensa. Thus, the former may be seen as a force which becomes energy when it is infused into matter. Such a vision may suggest one further implication, that actually takes place in Smith, i.e., the idea that value, as 'labour embodied', is a force or energy incorporated into material things. Another notorious source of metaphors – and an occasion of heavy misunderstanding of Adam Smith's discourse – is post-Reformation theology. A contemporary example of use of the notion of the hand of God is in Priestley; he writes that the study of history 'strengthens the sentiments of virtue by the variety of views in which it exhibits the conduct of Divine Providence and points out the Hand of God in the affairs of men' (Priestley [1788] 1970, p. 25).21 Biology, medicine, and agriculture are another family of sources. The most important theme from these sources is the idea of circular processes. Circulation started to be a fashionable idea since Harvey discovered the circulation of blood in the human body. Quesnay was himself a physician, and he looked at a familiar phenomenon, namely the 'circulation' of corn, from seed to crop, and back, through Harvey's lenses: thus corn became a fluid running though the body of society and bringing life to it; society itself was an organism, like a tree, and a fluid running through its trunk and branches used to bring nourishment, first produced by agriculture, to industry and commerce22. Note that, once again, the older iatro-political simile was revived thanks to a re-description of the primary subject (i.e. society is a body; but bodies live thanks to blood circulation; therefore, also societies have some 'circulation' of some kind of 'blood'). Thus, an already blurred source for one of Smith's mixed metaphors is the Physiocrats' view of the reproduction of wealth, understood in terms of agricultural cycles where seed is laid down into land, and comes back again, as crop, at the starting-point of a new cycle. One implication of the Physiocrats' circular view of the process of reproduction of wealth is the view of wealth as a 'substance'23. For the Physiocrats, that substance was corn, which could be used as the seed for new wealth. In Smith, this same scheme is preserved, but substituting labour-value for agricultural produce. Let us come to the source of the main family of metaphors namely physics. From this source Smith draws his idea of 'equilibrium' (Note that there is no such word in Smith). Smith's idea of 'equilibrium' is derived, through contamination, both by the gravitation of the Newtonian cosmos and by the scales, the body politic analogy typical of 'liberal' political thinking of the 17th and 18th centuries24. Besides, Newtonian mass and Smithian value are twin concepts. An equivalent of the first definition of 12 Newton's Principia can be traced in The Wealth of Nations, according to which quantity of matter, or mass, is in proportion to weight, resulting from density and bulk jointly. The Wealth of Nations may be assumed to give the following definition: goods are endowed with an intrinsic property, value. Value given a stable monetary unit is in proportion to monetary price; value per unit of commodity corresponds to the Newtonian density; product, measured in physical terms, corresponds to bulk25. The idea of the invisible hand in The Wealth of Nations is one more item, together with gravitation, of the system of forces that keeps the economy as a whole in a state of balance, or spontaneously restores this state once it has been altered. In other words, the invisible hand belongs to the context of the physical-political analogy, not to that of the theological-political analogy. A digression on the occurrence of the expression 'invisible hand' in the correspondence between Newton and his disciple and editor Cotes is in order here. INVISIBLE HANDS IN NEWTON The notorious expression 'invisible hand' occurs, half a century before The Wealth of Nations, in a letter from Roger Cotes to Newton. The former raises an objection to Newton with regard to gravitation; he argues that attraction of one planet by another, caused by a non-observable principle such as an attractive force, would look to the observer as the effect would look of an 'invisible' (that is, invisible to an observer under a given perspective) hand which would push a sphere laid on a table towards another sphere. In other words, the wording is used by Cotes to point to example of a non-observable cause for an observable motion. Suppose two globes A & B placed at a distance from each other upon a table, & that whilst A remains at rest B is moved towards it by an Invisible Hand. A by-stander who observes this motion but not the cause of it, will say that B does certainly tend to the centre of A, & thereupon he may call the force of the invisible Hand the centripetal force of B, or the attraction of A since ye effect appears the same as if it did truly proceed from a proper & real attraction of A (R. Cotes, 1712/1713, p. 392). Cotes's invisible hand is not the hand of a God who impresses motion on planets or who intervenes in order to repair breakdowns in the great clock of the universe. Cotes's invisible hand is just a human hand pushing a globe placed upon a table while being hidden to an observer who is looking at the globe from a certain perspective. What is important for Cotes is the eventuality of an unobserved cause for an observed motion. He intends to stress the possibility of accounting for one phenomenon in two alternative ways. Cotes's use of such an expression is important for us, even if it is unlikely that Smith may have been acquainted with his correspondence with Newton. There might have been some other shared source that I have been unable to detect, or there may have been some kind of oral tradition. In any event, in Cotes's letter the invisible-hand simile was introduced to express the idea of alternative compatible causes for the same phenomenon. If one ranks Smith's invisible hand together with 'gravitation' and the 'animal principle', it turns 13 out that multiple causality, or better coexistence of observable causes and hidden causes, acting the former at a surface level and the letter at a deeper level, is constantly the focus of these different kinds of images26 SMITHIAN ECONOMIC THEORY AND DEEP METAPHORS Three comments are in order at this stage. The first concerns Adam Smith's description of the economy. The main elements are labour and land, inherited from Petty, Cantillon, Steuart, and the Physiocrats. According to Smith's scheme, production amounts to extracting commodities from land, and each commodity is equivalent to a portion of land into which some amount of labour has been infused. Another notion is drawn from the Physiocrats, namely the idea of renascent wealth, or of wealth as something that may be the seed that will yield a crop, or more wealth. In Smith's construction, nothing is completely new: everything has been built by building blocks taken from the ruins of his predecessors buildings; but the meanings of these building blocks are twisted and blended up with each other in the course of the reconstruction process. The outcome is that, for example, productive labour is not only work spent in the production of agricultural produce, but also every kind of work spent in producing any kind of material goods, or all work that 'fixes and realizes itself in some particular subject or vendible commodity, which lasts for some time at least after that labour is past' (Smith [1776] 1976, II.iii.1, p. 330). In another language, labour-as-force is transformed into labour-as-energy, embodied into a portion of matter, and thus able to exert an attractive force on potential labour (or, 'labour force'). Or again, it is the production of material goods that gives revenue, which one may later choose to consume or invest. If material goods are used as capital goods, more labour may be mobilized during the subsequent productive cycle. Mixed metaphors were usual in the baroque age and then went out of fashion. Adam Smith's mixed metaphors are used at a deeper level by a writer who is far from baroque in his style qua writer; the readers of The Wealth of Nations quite often misunderstood such metaphors, or the whole allegorical texture of the work, in that they tended to note just the simplest mechanistic analogies and to take them literally. The second comment concerns differences and similarities between transfer of notions from previous phases of economic discourse and from other disciplines. It may be appropriate to note that the transfer of notions takes place either in a vertical dimension – within the history of the same kind of discourse – or in an horizontal dimension – crossing the border between different kinds of discourse, say, from natural science to social science. In both cases the freshly described mechanism or the "imaginary machine" is not completely identical to the original one; it results from partial modification, always carrying some kind of extension. For example, when the Physiocrats' cyclical view of the economy is transformed into Smith's cyclical view, it labour value, not corn, that becomes the substance of self-renovating wealth; or also, when the Newtonian view of gravitation becomes Smith's view of gravitation of market prices, it is individuals as atoms (the 14 etymology of both words is the same), not parts of matter that are put into motion by forces leading them to mutual equilibrium. The third comment is that in The Wealth of Nations a unified domain of the economic was constituted through a process of metaphorical re-description, carried out primarily by means of a device that has always been a literary critic's bogey, namely mixed metaphor. In my reading, the examples of metaphor-statements I have reviewed are clues to deeper metaphorical re-descriptions. The national economy becomes for Adam Smith a whole, with its own 'laws' (i.e. societal laws, different from 'laws' in a literal sense, i.e. legal and moral laws), precisely in so far as it is described not in terms of individual human beings and physical goods, but in terms of the metamorphoses of a 'substance', exchange-value. In this way a world emerges that is analogous to the Newtonian physical world, with its own forces, action at a distance, mass and energy. This world may be conceived as an imaginary machine: the simple machine of 'gravitation' or the more complex machine of 'circulation'; but circulation is not only an analogon of the Copernican solar system: it is also, on a number of occasions, analogous to Harvey's human body, with blood circulation, and of the Physiocrats' 'real' economy, with its circulation of corn (and here the mixed metaphor celebrates its own apotheosis). Finally, the 'imaginary machine' of wealth may somehow reflect an (unknowable) unified world order like that conceived by the Stoics, with absolute causal necessity and a perennial cyclical movement. One may add that there is scarcely any room for the opposition of mechanicism and organicism, as commonly understood since Marshall's times. In fact, the life sciences went into a revolutionary phase in the second half of the eighteenth century. This accounts for presence of biological analogy in the economics of both Quesnay and Smith. But the raison d'être of the biological scientific revolution was precisely the Newtonian legacy that inspired also the various projects of Moral Newtonianism where Smith's oeuvre belongs27. The key idea of the new approach to the life sciences was the assumption of a dual structure also for biological phenomena, following the blueprint of Newton's opposition of 'phenomena' and 'principles'. To sum up, a basic physical-moral analogy provides the framework for the Adam Smith's overall social theory, and not surprisingly for his theory of market mechanisms. Even the famous invisible hand passage depends on the basic physical-moral analogy and accordingly implies less than the received view believes, that is, it is just meant to join a teleological with a causal explanation. Smith has recourse to other analogies, fitting them, as far as possible, to the basic machine analogy. For example, a blend of Locke's and the Physiocrats' view yields a view of labour in terms of energy undergoing subsequent transformation. The circulation scheme expands the machine scheme, transforming it into some kind of self-expanding machine. A iatro-mechanical analogy is as pervasive as the physical-moral analogy in Adam Smith's thinking and provides the framework for his overall evolutionary theory of society and for those passages in The Wealth of Nations where he has recourse to a theory of the self-correcting power of society that helps amending market failures and mistaken policies28. 15 SMITHIAN METAPHORS AFTER ADAM SMITH Let us ask one more question. If Adam Smith's metaphors are the mark of something deeper and more important than his literary style, did they leave any bequest to later economic thought? Let us see what happened to them when, at the turn of the century, The Wealth of Nations began to be quoted as the greatest authority in what was now believed to be the science of 'political economy'. Let us start by reading the following passages from Ricardo's Principles: Gold and silver are no doubt subject to <fluctuations> (Ricardo [1819] 1951, p.14) the correct language would be to say, that corn and labour have remained <stationary>, and all other things have <risen> in value (Ib., p. 19) a <fall> in their value and not a <rise> in the value of the things with which they are compared (Ib.) labour, as being the <foundation> (Ib., p. 20) I suggest that the words marked in the above quotes embody frozen metaphors; these seem to imply the assumption of a spatial dimension in which the economy is placed, a universe of forces like that of Newtonian physics, and the idea of value as a physical object. If we follow the story told through ch. 1 of the Principles, the value-as-a-substance mixed metaphor may be taken as a key to the chapter. The chapter's plot then becomes the following: value is a thing, a physical magnitude, consisting at once of Corn and of Labour, and this thing remains invariable through its transformations into various commodities29. Let us consider now a few passages from Malthus's Principles: the <laws> which regulate the <movements> of human society (Malthus [1820] 1989, p. 11) Man [...] is the primary <source> of all demand (Ib., p. 83) the separation of rents [...] is a <law> as invariable as the action of the <principle of gravity> (Ib., p. 123, fn. 17) the natural restrictions upon the importation of foreign corn during the war [...] may have directed the capital of the country into a <channel> more advantageous than that it would otherwise have <flowed> (Ib., p. 328) Here we have a set of statements embodying metaphors somewhat different from Ricardo's. Not unlike him, Malthus assumes the framework of Newtonian physics as a model, but, unlike him, the spatial/physical representation of the economy is subordinated to a higher-level representation based on a system of 'laws' or 'principles' that supervises the direction of the 'flows' and 'movements' through the 'channels' of the economy. 16 These motives are combined with others, deriving from older strata of metaphorical redescription. One example is the following simile (applied to Laissez Faire): The ablest <physicians> are the most sparing in the use of <medicine>, and the most inclined to trust to the healing <power> of nature (Ib., p. 15). The simile is a variation on Adam Smith's application of the older iatro-political metaphor to the economy. Another simile is an elaboration on an earth-as-a-machine metaphor. Malthus writes: The earth has been sometimes compared to a <vast machine> [...] for the production of food and raw material; but, to make the resemblance more just [...] we should consider the soil as [...] a <great number of machines> [...] of very different original qualities and powers (Ib., p. 135). I suggest that for Malthus and Ricardo the description of the economy in The Wealth of Nations had already become a starting-point, and Smith's metaphors were almost frozen metaphors. And yet, on the basis of such a shared vision, a number of differences emerge: there is a preference by each of them for certain nuances within this cluster of metaphors, or shifts in the barycentre of this cluster. Thus, the organic metaphor is constantly (albeit not exclusively) preferred by Malthus; one reason for this preference may be that it allowed for implications which responded to the need to take a multiplicity of factors (social, cultural, institutional) into account, which was in its turn prompted by his strategy and 'scientific style'30. Besides, new metaphors (such as Crises, Growth, Land as the Outer Limit to the expanding wheel of the economy), while apparently describing a Smithian world as if it was the world out there (or a 'natural kind'), may be understood as something more than rhetorical stratagems employed in order to depict the facts in some preferred way, and also something more than heuristic devices. They may be understood as shifts in the below-the-water-line part of their precomprehension of the subject matter and of the categories through which that subject matter might be organized or, in Foucault's words, in the shared episteme. A shift introduced in a metaphor is a part of a more general strategy: for example, talk of economic laws may have different implications: laws may be expressions of an immanent physico-moral order of the world, like the Physiocrats, or they may be 'superimposed' on the original motions of such entities via the unintended-results principle, like Adam Smith. In Malthus we find a preference for the expression 'cause' instead of law. Ricardo is fond of the expression 'law', albeit in his writings the term assumes a connotation opposite to that of the Physiocrats: an economic law for Ricardo is more similar to a mathematical law than to natural law. The introduction of new metaphors into an already shaped metaphorical (re)description of the world, these have the consequence of modifying it. A good example is the appearance of the idea of crisis in economic thought: the word 'crisis' in a political (and then economic) sense, comes into use at about the time of the French Revolution. 'Crisis' – etymologically 'judgement' – comes from juridical, medical and theological jargon. The word started to be used in English in the last decade of the eighteenth century in order to describe 17 the high risk of a sudden social change or a <revolution> (in its turn an astronomico-political metaphor). The first pamphlet by Malthus was entitled precisely The Crisis. In Malthus's political economy the permanent risk of under-consumption hints precisely at "the risk of an economic crisis, in present-day jargon, or of the beginning of one of those "intervals" of disturbances which use to show up between two "permanent states" in the economy. We already met 'cycles' in Adam Smith, where they were a legacy of the Stoical view of history. Yet, talk of 'crises', instead of 'cycles', conveys an image of historical trends as more precarious and unstable. This makes room for a prudent intervention by the politician, if not in the role of Adam Smith's 'man of System' trying to impart an artificial order to society, at least in that of a helmsman who skips the opposite shoals of under-consumption or of too sudden rises in public expenditure. A similar reconstruction might be made for other root-metaphors used in economic discourse at Malthus's and Ricardo's time. One is that of 'growth' of food and population, central to Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population; it brings into the picture one biological metaphor that was still absent in Smith, waiting to be explored by later evolutionary approaches in economics, from Marshall to social Darwinism. Another is the metaphor of Land as the Limit. At the time of the multiple discovery of the law of rent by Malthus and others, the Land, understood as a series of increasingly less efficient machines for the production of food, is yet another metaphor added to Adam Smith's vision. The new metaphor thus added modifies and expands one of the basic metaphors in his work, equilibrium. Here, with the principle of population and rent theory, we face a feedback loop, where the addition of one more unit of population and/or food, or the tillage of one more unit of land retro-act upon the whole system. Even if the kind of analogy is basically the same as in Smith's gravitation of prices, its role is quite different: in Smith the feedback acts within the economic system, whose development is basically governed by another logic; in Malthus the feedback governs the external boundaries of the economic system, and accordingly its chances of growth or stagnation. DEEP METAPHORS If metaphors are not just a marginal feature of Adam Smith's discourse, what use might we make of such metaphors? We may, with Braithwaite, Boyd and other philosophers of science from the Fifties and Sixties, look for their heuristic function, if any, and then go on with the more serious pursuit of studying how scientific terms have an empirical content, or refer, or <cut the world> at its proper <junctures>, or we may, with McCloskey, examine how metaphor works as one more way (besides 'story', 'logic', and 'fact) of introducing order, of unifying appearances, and thereby, hopefully, convincing an audience. But we may also try to single out deeper basic metaphors behind individual metaphorical statements. These deep metaphors mould ways of 'seeing' one domain (the economic) in terms of some other domain. And it is this Wittgensteinean process of 'seeing as' what lies at the root of any new conceptual mapping.31 18 For many economists, one of McCloskey's astonishing discoveries was that also economists use metaphors. And yet, despite their astonishment, the standard response has been: 'yes, thank you, and then?' In fact, this is the way 'orthodox' philosophy of science used to deal with the topic: metaphors-models are used by scientists as by anybody else, but they are useful at most in some preliminary phase – be it the context of discovery, like Braithwaite, or the introduction of new scientific terms, like Boyd – after which they are substituted by literal meanings. Metaphors may thus be present, and even ubiquitous, in science, but they have no permanent cognitive value. One reason for this defensive reaction is that metaphor is generally equated with vagueness, and science with precision.32 McCloskey on the contrary insisted that metaphor is ubiquitous in economic discourse; that model building, the most mathematical part of the economist's job, which gives to economics the aura of a 'hard' science, is instead the point where it comes closer to poetry; that metaphor is always a 'way of doing things with words', and distinguishing its poetical and its scientific use means missing its specific function33. McCloskey is right in giving metaphor as full citizenship in science as in poetry and in stressing the creative function of metaphor in science. What is wrong with such an account is, first, an equation of science with fiction as different means of producing persuasion.34 Secondly, a belief that the fact that economists make things with words pertains primarily to the perlocutionary aspect of language and accordingly that the economist's use of metaphor is almost arbitrary, being one among other means for producing persuasion and, as I will argue in the next paragraph a fixation with the literary style of the economists' writings, overlooking what really matters, i.e. their 'scientific style'.35 Things are even worse with Brown's discourse: if the reconstruction carried out in the present paper makes sense, the claim that metaphors are ubiquitous is fine; but this is not tantamount to saying that we may give any meaning we like to texts reading metaphors freely. The success of Brown's attempt depends on the viability of the conclusion that 'if, following the meaning of vision metaphors in TMS, vision refers to moral judgement, then the metaphor of the invisible hand signals that the invisible hand, being sightless and out of sight, is beyond the realm of moral discourse'.36 But 'invisibility' of hands, chains, wheels, and hidden or imaginary machines of any sort depends on a distinction of a phenomenal and a deeper level of causal connections, not on the visibility of behaviour to a judge. And the ascription of the above meaning to Smith's 'invisibility' depends on the reconstruction of a context of received concepts and theories. The Wealth of Nations belongs to this context in force of objective reasons, not of any decision by the author of this paper. In other words, the reading of Adam Smith's metaphors need not be metaphorical, no less than theories on the chemical composition of sugar need to be sweet. To sum up: economists are not free to choose any metaphor they like, for they 'are subject to constitutive metaphors' and these 'are not picked up and discarded like heuristic metaphors or mere preferences'.37 Mirowski's historical epistemology has granted metaphor a role much more basic than McCloskey's, looking beyond surface metaphorical expressions, and identifying deep basic metaphors, such as the physico-moral parallel underlying the modern world-view which also moulded economic science. This overlaps fairly well 19 with what I suggest here insofar as it means taking developments in post-empiricist philosophy of science on scientific metaphor seriously.38 Let me add some more words on these developments. The claim that science has recourse to anthropomorphic metaphors had been first advanced by philosophers as different as Nietzsche and Peirce have been. The new rhetoricians Richards and Burke, the aesthetician Stephen Pepper and, more recently, the linguist George Lakoff have reformulated the same claim. The Nietzsche-Peirce thesis contends that no genre of discourse is immune from tropes, scientific discourse included, and metaphor is the master trope of science, the basic tool for organizing and exploring the unknown, and thus against Aristotle it is more basic to science than to poetry. After the war waged by Galileo, the Royal Society, and Newton against metaphor and rhetoric in the name of 'plain discourse' and 'facts', and after the Romantic rescue of metaphor in the name of a rebellion against the Enlightenment, metaphor was believed by both camps to be the mark of poetry, religion, and myth, as opposed to the field of science where precision and literality rule. Still a few decades ago, philosophers of science, ranging from logical empiricists such as Hempel and Braithwaite to metaphysical realists such as Boyd, were prepared to condone models and analogies either as tools for a scientific heuristic or as means of introducing new scientific terminology. Mary Hesse, Donald Schön, Peter Achinstein, Marx Wartofsky, Thomas Kuhn, and Gilles-Gaston Granger argued for indispensable and non-provisional role for metaphor in scientific theory. A radicalized version of this view was formulated by George Lakoff, according to which metaphors are constitutive of languages and provide the conceptual underpinning of the 'life-world'. To study the role of metaphor in science, then, is tantamount to analysing the structure and interplay of mappings of different fields of phenomena onto each other.39 SCIENTIFIC 'STYLE' What Adam Smith did in The Wealth of Nations was not a mere exercise in persuasion; neither was it the application of an analytic toolbox to economic phenomena. His achievement was shaped by a handful of metaphors that was productive of fresh ways of seeing as. The partially sceptical epistemology he had learned from his friend David Hume helped in a way, namely, in making his mind soft enough. He knew too well that the economy could not be really made of motions and attractions, dams and rivers, vessels and fluids; for he knew too well that even Newton, the intellectual hero of his century, had not lifted the veil which hides the concealed mechanism of Nature. The legacy of Hume's moderate scepticism left him free from dogmas. But he did not limit himself to describing the phenomena. Indeed, he looked at the phenomena though his preferred metaphors and made his successors see them in a different way. As I have illustrated, the phenomena were no more the same for his successors Malthus and Ricardo. The reason for that is that the cognitive function of metaphors goes beyond the context of discovery; instead, metaphors did shape, or re-describe, or carve off the very field of phenomena that was afterwards be taken to be 'the' economy out there. 20 A role for metaphorical re-description in producing the very empirical basis of economic theory is no argument against truth and theoretical progress. Instead, it was a blissful choice of metaphors, different from his predecessors', that helped Adam Smith in widening the scope of economic explanation, in imagining counter-intuitive connections among traditionally separated fields of phenomena, in shaping new hypotheses to be tested, while nothing in the 'observed' phenomena would have suggested such hypotheses. The combination was the result of a number of factors: historical contingencies, fashion, esthetical standards, and the scientific style of his age as well as his own individual scientific style. Let me add – in order to stress the difference between the approach that has been proposed here and those of McCloskey and Brown – that a scientific style is something else than the literary style of a scientist's writings; instead, it is 'style' in the same sense in which we talk of baroque or neo-classical style for painting and architecture, that is, a complex of ways of expression bound together by elective affinities or family resemblance and yet able to confer some unity to artistic or literary products of one age or author and useful for decoding the 'language' of the same age or author. Applied to scientific theories, a style may be the complex set of factors that account for preference for certain ways of concept building and theorizing, that is, for something that comes virtually before writing. Understood in the latter sense, this category may prove useful for the history of economic thought, and it may help in exploring dimensions of the history of economic thought that may go beyond pure methodology, if this is understood in a stricter sense, but are also wider than the study of the literary style of economic texts. 21 NOTES *I wish to thank Marcelo Dascal for suggestions on metaphor and pragmatics, Gideon Freudenthal for suggestions on Newtonian science, and Gianni Vaggi for his comments at the Graz Conference that forced me to dispel some of the mist hovering around my claims; the remaining is my own. 1 I develop a few suggestions on the role of metaphors in The Wealth of Nations presented in Cremaschi 1984, pp. 147148 and 187-189; essentially the same suggestions were made in Fiori 1996; Mirowski reached independently similar conclusions (1989, pp. 163-171). 2 On the notion of 'scientific style' and its relevance to the history of economic thought, see Cremaschi and Dascal 1999. 3 J. Schumpeter [1954] 1994, p. 182. 4 See Smith [1795a] 1980, II.8-9, p. 42; for commentaries see Cremaschi 1981; Cremaschi 1984, ch. 1; Cremaschi 1989, pp. 85-87. 5That is, technology is to Smith what geometry and politics were to Hobbes and history to Vico: see Cremaschi 1989, pp. 85-87. 6 The role of analogy in Adam Smith's epistemology is discussed in some detail in Cremaschi 1981 and 1984, ch. 1. 7 See the sensible comments in Brown 1994, pp. 15-17; I disagree with further implications drawn by Brown in the following. 8 Brown 1994, p. 24. 9 See Brown 1994 p. 19 fn. for the opposite view. 10 This is why scientific discourse, far from being monologic, is essentially dialogical or controversial. This is the reason why Brown's way of reviving das Adam Smith Problem, namely contrasting a dialogical character of The Theory of Moral Sentiments with a monological character of The Wealth of Nations is off the track from the very beginning. 11 This is one important mark of the Newtonian methodological legacy in Adam Smith's economic theory: see Cremaschi 1984, pp. 138-151; 1992, pp. 59-61. 12 'Theodicy', after the title of a notorious work by Leibniz, indicates the solution of the problem of the existence of evil in a world supposedly created by a benevolent God. 13 Exceptions are Foley 1976; Worland 1976; Mirowski 1989. Foley is a useful source, but his overall interpretation od Adam Smith's system of ideas is quite old fashioned. 14 Here and in following quotes, I mark words whose metaphorical valence I intend to point out. 15 For a similar point concerning the division of labour instead of the allocation of capital, see Smith [1776] 1976, I.ii.1, p. 25. 16 Curiously enough, Quesnay had used himself a biological metaphor (the national economy is a tree; industry and commerce are the branches; agriculture is the land that feeds the tree) in order to make himself an anti-artificialist claim: 'il faut donc cultiver le pied de l'arbre, et ne pas borner nos soins à gouverner les branches; laissons-les s'arranger et s'étendre en liberté, mais ne négligeons pas la terre qui fournit les sucs nécessaires a leur végétation et à leur accroissement' (Quesnay 1758, p. 473). 17 For discussion of this passage see Macfie 1971. 18 The claim of a coexistence of two different voices in Smith's economic work and in his moral work has been put forth in Brown 1994; for a criticism see Cremaschi 1997; the relevant point here is that the function of metaphors is 22 both persuasive and cognitive in both works, and this may cast some doubts on the idea that the discourse is cast in one work in a 'dialogical' mould while in the other it is carried out within a 'didactical' framework. 19 See R. Brown 1984, chs. 2 and 3. 20 On the pamphleteers see R. Brown 1984, ch.1; on the Physiocrats as well as on ancient sources see Lowry 1974. 21The image of the Hand of God has a long history before Priestley. It was a way of talking of God's action, derived from a way of representing God's action by painting a hand without a body, complying with the ban on images from the Bible. This way of representing God was usual in Jewish art and appeared occasionally also in Christian art. On the idea of the Hand of God see also Macfie 1971. 22 See Quesnay 1758 and 1757. 23 See Quesnay 1758; Mercier de la Rivière 1767, p. 206. 24 see Mayr 1986. 25 As suggested in Worland 1976; a discussion of Newtonian items in the theoretical structure of The Wealth of Nations is in Cremaschi 1992, pp. 61-64 and in Freudenthal, 1982. 26 See Cremaschi 1984, pp. 148-151; cf Fiori 1996. 27 See Cremaschi 1992; 1981; Freudenthal, 1982. 28 See Jensen 1976; Cremaschi 1984, ch.4. 29 This is the suggestion made in Mirowski 1989, pp. 163-171. 30 For more detailed discussion of this point see Cremaschi and Dascal 1998. 31 For more detailed discussion see Cremaschi 1987; 1988a; 1988b; 1997. 32 See Cremaschi 1988a; 1988b; Klamer and Leonard 1994, pp. 20-21. 33 See McCloskey 1985; 1990; 1994; cf. Cremaschi 1996. 34 Instead, science and poetry or novel are not different for the use they make of metaphor, but they are nonetheless different in other respects, and these respects relate to practice, not to language. 35 Instead economic metaphors are both for cognitive and non-arbitrary, and but their illocutionary aspect – as contrasted with the perlocutionary is what matters. 36 Brown 1994, p. 26. 37 Klamer and Leonard 1994, p. 43; see also Lakoff 1987; Henderson [1982] 1993; Cremaschi 1988b. 38 Mirowski 1989; 1994. 39 See Cremaschi 1987; 1988a; 1988b; cf. Gross 1990; Backhouse, Dudley-Evans and Henderson (1993). 23 REFERENCES Backhouse, Roger E. (ed.) (1993), New Directions in Economic Methodology. London and New York: Routledge. Backhouse, Roger E., Terence Dudley-Evans, and William Henderson (1993), 'Exploring the Language and Rhetoric of Economics', in Henderson, et al. (1993), pp. 1-22. Brown, Robert (1984), The Nature of Social Laws. Machiavelli to Mill. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Brown, Vivienne (1994), Adam Smith's Discourse. Canonicity, Commerce and Conscience, London and New York: Routledge. Cantillon, Richard (1755), ed. by T. Tsuda (1979), Essai sur la nature su commerce en général, Tokyo: Kinokuniya Book Store. Cheyne, George (1725), Essay on Health and Long Life, fourth edition, London: Strahan. Cotes, Roger (1712) 'Cotes to Newton' (Letter n. 985: 18 March 1712), in H.W. Turnbull and J.F. Scott (eds) The Correspondence of Isaac Newton, London: Cambridge University Press, 1959-1977, 11 vols., vol. V. Cremaschi, Sergio (1981), 'Adam Smith, Newtonianism and Political Economy', Manuscrito, 5, (1), 117134. Cremaschi, Sergio (1984), Il sistema della ricchezza. Economia politica e problema del metodo in Adam Smith, Milano: Angeli. Cremaschi, Sergio (1987), 'Granger and Science as Network of Models', Manuscrito 11 (2), 11-136. Cremaschi, Sergio (1988a), 'Metafore, modelli, linguaggio scientifico: il dibattito postempirista', in V. Melchiorre (ed.), Simbolo e conoscenza, Milano: Vita e Pensiero, pp. 31-102. Cremaschi, Sergio (1988b), 'Remarks on Scientific Metaphors', in M.L. Dalla Chiara and M.C. Galavotti (eds), Temi e prospettive della Logica e Filosofia della Scienza contemporanee, 2 vols., Bologna: CLUEB, vol. II, pp. 114-116. Cremaschi, Sergio (1989), 'Adam Smith. Sceptical Newtonianism, Disenchanted Republicanism, and the Birth of Social Science', in M. Dascal and O. Gruengard (eds), Knowledge and Politics: Case Studies on the Relationship between Epistemology and Political Philosophy, Boulder, US and London: Westview Press, 1989, pp. 83-110. Cremaschi, Sergio (1992), 'L'illuminismo scozzese e il newtonianismo morale', in M. Geuna and M.L. Pesante (eds) (1992), Interessi, passioni, convenzioni. Discussioni settecentesche su virtù e civiltà, Milano: Angeli, pp. 41-76. Cremaschi, Sergio (1996), 'Review of D. McCloskey, Knowledge and Persuasion in Economics', Pragmatics and Cognition. 4 (2), 425-429. Cremaschi, Sergio (1997), 'Review of V. Brown, Adam Smith's Discourse', Journal of Economic Methodology, 3 (1), 174-176. Cremaschi, Sergio and Marcelo Dascal (1998), 'Malthus and Ricardo: Two Styles for Economic Theory', 24 Science in Context 11 (2), 229-254. Fiori, Stefano (1996), 'Order, Metaphors, and Equilibrium in Adam Smith's Thought'. History of Economic Ideas, 4 (1-2), 175-204. Foley, Vernon (1976), The Social Physics of Adam Smith, West Lafayette, US: Purdue University Press. Freudenthal, Gideon (1982), Atom und Individuum im Zeitalter Newtons. Zur Genese der mechanistischen Naturund Sozialphilosophie, Frankfurt a.M.: Suhrkamp; translated as (1986) Atom and Individual in the Age of Newton, Dordrecht: Reidel. Gross, Alan G. (1990) The Rhetoric of Science, Cambridge, US: Harvard University Press. Henderson, William (1982) 'Metaphor and Economics', in Backhouse (1993), 343-367. Henderson, William, Terence Dudley-Evans, Roger Backhouse (eds) (1993), Economics and Language, London and New York: Routledge. Hume, David (1752a), 'Of the Balance of Trade', reprinted in T.H. Green and T.H. Grose (eds) (1964), Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, Aalen: Scientia Verlag, vol. I, pp. 330-345. Hume, David (1752b), 'Of Money', reprinted in T.H. Green and T.H. Grose (eds) (1964), Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, Aalen: Scientia Verlag, vol. I, pp. 309-320. Jensen, Hans E. (1976), 'Sources and Contours of Adam Smith's Conceptualized Reality in The Wealth of Nations', Review of Social Economics, 34 (3), 259-274. Klamer, Arjo, Theodor C. Leonard (1994), 'So What's an Economic Metaphor?', in Ph. Mirowski (1994), pp. 20-54. Locke, John (1690), 'The Second Treatise of Government', reprinted in P. Laslett (ed.) (1988), Two Treatises of Government, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Lowry, S. Todd (1974), 'The Archaeology of the Circulation Concept in Economic Theory'. Journal of the History of Ideas, 35 (3), 429-444. Lakoff, George (1987), Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things. What Categories Reveal about the Mind, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Macfie, Alec L. (1971), 'The Invisible Hand of Jupiter', Journal of the History of Ideas, 32 (4), 595-599. Malthus, Thomas Robert (1820, 1836), ed. by J. Pullen (1989), Principles of Political Economy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Mayr, Otto (1986), Authority, Liberty and Automatic Machinery in Early Modern Europe, Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press. McCloskey, Donald N. ([1985] 1998), The Rhetoric of Economics, Madison, US and London, UK: University of Wisconsin Press. McCloskey, Donald N. (1990), If You're So Smart: The Narrative of Economic Expertise, Chicago: University of Chicago Press. McCloskey, Donald N. (1994), Knowledge and Persuasion in Economics, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Mercier de la Rivière, Pierre-Paul (1767). L'ordre naturel et essentiel des sociétés politiques. Londres. 25 Mirowski, Philip (1989), More Heat than Light: Economics as Social Physics, Physics as Nature's Economics, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Mirowski, Philip (ed.) (1994), Natural Images in Economic Thought, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Priestley, Joseph (1788). Lectures on History and General Policy, reprinted in J.T. Rutt (ed.) (1972), Theological and Miscellaneous Works of Joseph Priestley, vol. XXIV, New York: Kraus Reprint. Quesnay, François (1757), 'Grains', reprinted in (1958), François Quesnay et la Physiocratie. Paris: Institut National d'Études Démographiques, vol. II, pp. 459-510. Quesnay, François (1758), 'Tableau Economique', reprinted in M. Kuczynski and R.L. Meek (eds) (1972), Quesnay's Tableau économique, London: Macmillan, and New York: Kelly. Ricardo, David (1817), On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, reprinted in P. Sraffa (ed.) (1951), The Works and correspondence of David Ricardo, vol. I, Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press. Schumpeter, Joseph A. ([1954] 1994), History of Economic Analysis, London: Routledge and New York: Oxford University Press. Smith, Adam (1759), The Theory of Moral Sentiments, reprinted in D.D. Raphael and A.L. Macfie (eds) (1976), Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, vol. I, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smith, Adam (1776), An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of The Wealth of Nations, reprinted in R.H. Campbell, A.S. Skinner, and W.B. Todd (eds) (1976), Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, vol. II, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Smith, Adam (1795a), The Principles which lead and direct Philosophical Enquiries: illustrated by the history of Astronomy, reprinted in W.P.D. Wightman, J.C. Bryce, and I.S. Ross (eds) (1980), Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith, vol. III, Oxford: Oxford University Press. | {
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Filozofia 74, 2 111 ______________________________________________________________________ DOI: https://doi.org/10.31577/filozofia.2019.74.2.3 THINKING DESCARTES IN CONJUNCTION, WITH MERLEAU-PONTY: THE HUMAN BODY, THE FUTURE, AND HISTORICITY JAMES GRIFFITH, Bratislava International School of Liberal Arts, Bratislava, SR This article addresses a debate in Descartes scholarship over the mind-dependence or -independence of time by turning to Merleau-Ponty's Nature and The Visible and the Invisible. In doing so, it shows that both sides of the debate ignore that time for Descartes is a measure of duration in general. The consequences to remembering what time is are that the future is shown to be the invisible of an intertwining of past and future, and that historicity is the invisible of God. Keywords: René Descartes – Maurice Merleau-Ponty – Human body – Future – Historicity There is a debate whether time in Descartes is dependent on or independent of the mind. By turning to Merleau-Ponty's discussion of the intertwining of mind and human body, it becomes clear this debate is founded on a misunderstanding. The consequences of resolving this issue have much to say about history and historicity in Descartes. Now, Merleau-Ponty points out that there is a "change of perspective" within the Meditations between the Second Meditation's thought of the body as one part of extension among others and the Sixth Meditation's thought of it as in union with the mind or soul, both of which are necessary for Descartes and neither of which can be thought simultaneously (Merleau-Ponty 2003, 16; 1995, 34 – 36). While Descartes leaves this situation as a "juxtaposition," the contradiction of the body as part of extension and as unified with mind is for Merleau-Ponty "constitutive of the human" (Merleau-Ponty 2003, 20 and 129; 1995, 39 and 174). However, when the Sixth Meditation discusses the union of mind and body, it is as a conjunction (see Descartes 1904, 81), which is also the word used in the Principles (see Descartes FILOZOFIA Ro. 74, 2019, . 2 GRIFFITH, J.: Thinking Descartes in Conjunction, with Merleau-Ponty: the Human Body, the Future, and Historicity FILOZOFIA, 74, 2019, No 2, pp. 111 – 125 1905, 41). Rather than unity as oneness and rather than one substance placed against the other, it would seem that the mind and the human body are joined in their differentiation as distinct substances. The human body as a part of extension remains distinct from the mind even while the mind is conjoined to it. The human is contradictory insofar as it is a conjunction of material and immaterial substance. Understanding Descartes on the human body as a conjunction brings his philosophy closer to Merleau-Ponty's thought of the intertwining of visible and invisible. To be sure, the centuries between these two make for significant differences. Twentieth-century physics does not think particles, for instance, as Descartes thinks them (see Merleau-Ponty 2003, 90; 1995, 126). This progress believed itself to be founded on "Cartesianism," but the progress itself undermined those foundations (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 26). In addition, the emergence of modern physics occurs through, among other things, Einstein's proposal "to come back to" particle theories of light, rather than wave theories (Merleau-Ponty 2003, 90; 1995, 126). The movement of what is to come moves through what preceded, both in their successes and failures. To think Descartes as a philosopher of conjunction is made possible by, among others, Merleau-Ponty, but to think him in this way is not to transform the former into the latter. Rather, it is to think them in their conjunction, to hold them as joined in their separation such that a thought of Descartes that can better account for Descartes, perhaps invisible to his thought of himself or to what Cartesians made of him, may emerge.1 Cartesian Space and Descartes' Space To begin to understand Descartes as a philosopher of conjunction, it is helpful to look at Merleau-Ponty's critique of Sartre, "the last of the Cartesians" (Grene, 72). In Being and Nothingness, being-in-itself is non-conscious being, the thingness of a thing in its identity with itself and without differentiation of inside and outside (see Sartre, 28). Being-in-itself simply is what it is. Opposed to this is being-foritself, or consciousness, which apprehends the world as "a nihilation," the negation of the self-identity of the in-itself of non-conscious things such that they become objects of and for consciousness (Sartre, 52). However, there is no in-itself to the 1.Thanks to Richard A. Lee, Jr., Yves Charles Zarka, Petr Kouba, and the anonymous reviewers for their helpful remarks on earlier drafts of this essay. 112 Filozofia 74, 2 113 for-itself because to be aware of one's consciousness in this way entails being conscious, i.e., being-for-itself (see Sartre, 121). The gap between consciousness and the consciousness of consciousness means "it is necessary that the unity of this being include its own nothingness as the nihilation of identity" even while "the foritself is" (Sartre, 125). Among the in-itselfs that the for-itself nihilates is the past, which is "a For-Itself reapprehended and inundated by the In-itself" (Sartre, 175). My past is "My essence" insofar as those prior events become events to be apprehended, i.e., in-itselfs to be nihilated by a for-itself that is the present (Sartre, 175). The past is given meaning as or becomes my essential past by the for-itself's nihilation of the past as such. For Merleau-Ponty, Sarte's nihilation of the in-itself would link him to Descartes (see Merleau-Ponty 2003, 94; 1995, 131) and it misunderstands meaning (see Merleau-Ponty 1968, 216). That is, in nihilating the in-itself, Sartre's for-itself does not give it meaning, but rather reinscribes the in-itself as merely other than the foritself. What is visible to myself becomes what is invisible to the other, what is visible of the other what is invisible of myself. The invisible for Merleau-Ponty is "the secret counterpart" of the visible, rather than its opposite or contradictory, because the invisible only appears "within" what is visible (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 215). When I sense the world, I sense what is invisible of it as the not-visible, and meaning is the invisible of the world as it appears. That is, the world as meaningful is "not an informed mass" (Merleau-Ponty 2003, 223; 1995, 285). Finally, being is an "encroachment" or "junction at a distance [jonction à distance]" of my visible upon the other and the world and the world's encroachment upon myself whereby meaning is given, or a world appears (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 216; 1964, 265). However, he also does not want to oppose to Sartre a sacrifice of the for-itself to the in-itself. In such a sacrifice, the in-itself, non-conscious things identical with themselves, would be the model of thought and the for-itself would make the initself come to be as that to which the for-itself has no access. This is what he calls the anthropological meaning of humanism (see Merleau-Ponty 2003, 136; 1995, 182). Consciousness would generate the non-conscious world as that of which it cannot be conscious. The in-itself would then be a nothingness surrounding and created by the for-itself. For him, this model "is still to think the Weltlichkeit of minds according to the model of Cartesian space" (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 216). Cartesianism idealizes the world by defining it as objects placed before idealized thought, which, intentionally or not, places bodies in "a network of objective processes" (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 26). Cartesian space, then, is an immanent container within which objects appear. Even if that container is itself nothingness, it surrounds and envelops the objects of the world and each for-itself. Even if that space or nothingness is immanent, it is "objective-immanent," discernible as an object by the nothingness of in-itselfs (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 216). Behind that object of immanent nothingness enveloping the world stands God (see Merleau-Ponty 2003, 127; 1995, 171). Instead of Cartesian space, Merleau-Ponty proposes "a space of transcendence, a space of incompossibilities," an "aesthetic world" of things pushing such that being and nothingness are in "indivision" (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 216). With such a space, being and nothingness intertwine as separated and nothingness is already present in being's presence. One issue is that Descartes' understanding of space seems similar to this aesthetic world of the push. In the Principles, the nature of a body for Descartes is only its extension (see Descartes 1985, 224). Thus, "There is no real distinction between space, or internal place [locus internus], and the corporeal substance contained in it" (Descartes 1985, 227; 1905, 45). A real distinction for Descartes is only between substances, substances being what exists without dependence on anything else (see Descartes 1905, 28 and 24). A conceptual distinction is "between a substance and some attribute of that substance without which the substance is unintelligible; alternatively it is a distinction between two such attributes of a single substance" (Descartes 1985, 214). At most, then, the distinction between locus internus and the corporeal substance it contains is conceptual. 'Place' and 'space' in fact mean the same thing, but 'external place' (locus externus, place) refers to an object's position, while 'internal place' refers to its size and shape (see Descartes 1905, 47 – 48). This external place "may be taken as being the surface immediately surrounding what is in the place," where 'surface' indicates "the boundary between the surrounding and surrounded bodies" (Descartes 1985, 229). The network of objective processes that envelop objects would then be locus externus rather than locus internus, but the possibility of the former emerges from the mutual surfaces of the objects of the latter. As a result of this mutual surface between spatial bodies in their places, there is no vacuum between them, no immanent nothingness (see Descartes 1905, 49). The space of all bodies, or the extension of the world as such (including the heavens), "is indefinite" because it "has no limits to its extension" (Descartes 1985, 232). While we may imagine boundaries to the world in its extension, some extended space is always beyond them. We imagine not just the world's boundaries, but their beyond, and this beyond is "imaginable in a true fashion, that is, real [vere 114 Filozofia 74, 2 115 imaginabilia, hoc est, realia]" (Descartes 1985, 232; 1905, 52). As indefinite, space is understood as truly imagined to have boundaries beyond its boundaries, to push beyond itself. Space is not infinite because 'infinite' refers not to a lack of limits but to the positive understanding "that there are none," and is a term reserved for God alone (Descartes 1985, 202).2 Thinking in Conjunction 2 I therefore believe Puškari misses the nuance of a truly imagined beyond of space's indefinite boundaries as being perceived. The indefinite is not potentially infinite in the sense of being "incomplete" (Puškari, 286). What is indefinite is complete in itself as a locus internus, even if it lacks perfections. What is lacking is the perception of its completeness, though we can perceive a truly imagined completeness. The imagining of space as indefinite can be perceived as true, and what is perceived as true of this imagining is the completeness of space as locus internus as such. If it lacks perfections, it is not infinite even potentially because space as such is necessarily limited, bounded. The imagination is closer to the potentially infinite in the sense she gives it since it allows us to perceive as true what is beyond the limits of our understanding or perception. However, though I cannot enter into it here, I would argue that even the imagination as potentially infinite falls into the trap of sacrificing the for-itself to the in-itself insofar as what the imagination imagines is the world's invisible to my visible. The imagination is probably better conceived here as in motion between the finite and infinite so as to imagine an indefinite to be perceived as true. See Griffith, chapter 4 for this argument, though not directly engaging the question of the potentially infinite. There is a distinction, then, between Descartes' space and Cartesian, objectiveimmanent space. Descartes' space, as the extension of an object or as the extension of the world as such, cannot be imagined to be enclosed. Since there is no vacuum between the surface of different spatial objects in Descartes' space, there is no nothing enclosing, between, or among them. Descartes' spatial objects are objects of, not in space, and so are of space truly imagined as indefinitely pushing beyond its boundaries. In this way, bodies as objects of locus internus are the push of Merleau-Ponty's aesthetic space of incompossible jointure without real distinction between them. If Descartes' space as distinct from Cartesian bears similarity to Merleau -Ponty's aesthetic world of the push, then the latter may offer ways of thinking about issues in Descartes scholarship concerning motion and time. First, though, we should look at Merleau-Ponty on Descartes' understanding of the human body. In this way, the reality of the distinction between mind and human body can be thought in their conjunction. In the Principles, the mind is aware that sensations "cannot belong to it simply in virtue of its being a thinking thing," which shows that the mind is "joined [adjuncta]" or "conjoined [conjunctum]" with the human body (Descartes 1985, 224; 1905, 41). If, on Merleau-Ponty's reading of Descartes, the human body as human is unintelligible without being understood as a body conjoined with the mind, then to think the reality of the distinction of these substances is to think that reality as conceptual. This is not to say that the substances mind and body are not really independent of each other. Rather, it is to say that the distinction of human mind and human body as real can only be conceptual. Indeed, this conceptuality to the real distinction between a human body and mind as conjoined is what Merleau-Ponty encounters when he calls the body an "Enigma...there are not two natures in it, but a double nature" (Merleau-Ponty 2003, 211; 1995, 273). This body is not human without mind, this mind always of this body, the mutual and non-vacuous surface between them not a surface between being and nothingness but between material and immaterial substance. Without the conjunction of mind and body, the human body could not, as Descartes puts it in the Treatise of Man, be imagined (supposer) as a machine to which a soul could be "joined and united [iointes & unies]" (Descartes 2003, 2 and 1; 1909, 120). As conjunction of mind and body, the non-closed human body is of the push of the aesthetic, indefinite space of transcendence and incompossibility as itself a transcending incompossibility. This conjunction lets the body as human be discovered through its other 116 For Merleau-Ponty, Descartes understands the human body as "non-closed" and so "governed by thought" (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 234). On this understanding, the human body becomes a body that is human-distinct from other animals' "closed" bodies-through thought (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 234). That is, "human being is not animality (in the sense of mechanism) + reason" (Merleau-Ponty 2003, 208; 1995, 269). Reason is not superimposed upon the human body, but rather this body is discovered as body through thought. While other animals are within their bodies as a mechanism, leaving them closed, the openness of the human involves its being of its body (see Merleau-Ponty 2003, 217; 1995, 279). Even if the seeming closedness of non-human bodies "is founded on a Cartesian idealization, on the appearance of perceived exteriority" (Merleau-Ponty 2003, 276; 1995, 343), for Merleau-Ponty Descartes' idea of the human body is of one that reaches "completion" in thought, in what is invisible of it as a body that is specifically human (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 234). Filozofia 74, 2 117 and the mind as transcending itself discover itself as conjoined, find its limits in its completion as a mind of the human body. Duration and the Mind-Dependence or -Independence of Time Thinking the human body as a non-closed site of conjunction of indefinite aesthetic space is helpful for thinking time in Descartes. In the Principles, time is just duration in general and is a "mode of thought" or "in thought" rather than in the thing itself (Descartes 1985, 212). Modes, attributes, and qualities are identical here, though he uses 'mode' specifically for "thinking of a substance as being affected or modified [variari]," so the variation to duration given as time is of or in thought (Descartes 1985, 211; 1905, 26). As a mode of or in thought, time is the measure of objects' duration measured against the motion of the heavens (see Descartes 1905, 27). Objects as enduring depend on motion insofar as duration is a variation in or mode of matter ("materiae variationem"), even if that variation or mode is "simply in our thought" (Descartes 1985, 232; 1905, 55). Motion is "the action by which a body travels from one place to another" and involves the same amount of action as a body at rest, both being modes of or in the body since neither motion nor rest subsist without a body (Descartes 1985, 233). A temporal body, then, is a mode of thought and of body as the measure of its duration against celestial motion, both being produced by motion and being of motion even at rest. Motion's primary cause is God, who "always preserves [conservare] the same quantity of motion in the universe" (Descartes 1985, 240; 1905, 61). Time, as a measure of the duration in general of terrestrial bodies against celestial motion, is a mode of a non-closed body's thought. There is no time without durational bodies to measure or the indefinition of the world as such. Without these, it would at best be an abstract standard against which objects' duration is measured, a nothingness produced by the for-itself, a container within which objects endure. Instead, as the result of measuring between terrestrial and celestial bodies, time is immanent to bodies, and not objectively or discovered from a distance. Even if it is an abstraction since it is a mode of or in thought, it is an abstraction through objects in their duration measured against celestial motion. What is more, it is an abstraction of a mind that is the non-closedness of the human body. In this way, the debate in Descartes scholarship concerning the mind-dependence or -independence of time is based on a misunderstanding of mind. Those who argue for its dependence claim that, "since time and duration are only modes of thought, material substance cannot, as such, have time or duration. [...] Motions are in matter; both duration and time only help one understand motion" (Bonnen and Flage, 5; see also Marion, 181 – 187; Gaukroger, 368). One problem with this argument is that it ignores that rest is connected to duration, that enduring in the same place is a kind of motion, and so forgets that "motion presupposes duration" (Gorham, 34). However the mind-dependence claim also ignores that time is the result of measuring those objects' duration against celestial motion. Even if time is dependent on the mind, it is not dependent as pure abstraction or ideal concept, but as the result of measurements of duration (see Gorham, 38n34). What allows the duration of terrestrial objects to be measured against celestial motion, both being of space as such, is the human body as a non-closed site of conjunction of indefinite aesthetic space. The non-closed human body, in its measuring of terrestrial objects against celestial, allows terrestrial objects to transcend their duration as objects so they are understood as having endured and as enduring, as pushing themselves through space and time as that through which they are and endure. Those who argue for the mind-independence of time take this independence as arising from how we normally think about things: as within, not of, time. For them, objects have their own duration as a mode, meaning that duration in general (i.e., time) is a mode of objects in general (i.e., space or locus internus as such). Ken Levy, for example, claims that the mind-dependence argument means that time is either dependent on "a human construct or intuition" or results from "the imagination in the sense that an illusion or hallucination does" (Levy, 662). Even disregarding the idea that time is an imaginary illusion, its dependence on intuition does not for him answer to Descartes' claims in the Meditations that divine conservation of my being follows from the independence of the parts of time from each other (see Levy, 635 and 662; Descartes 1904, 48 – 49). To be clear, Levy does say that the Descartes of the Principles considers time mind-dependent (see Levy, 662). However, he still ignores that time, at least in the Principles, is a result of the mind's measuring the duration of terrestrial against the motion of celestial bodies. It is not "the object of the 'measure of movement'," but its result (Levy, 663). What is more, to dismiss the version of the mind-dependence argument of time as imaginary is to ignore that we can truly imagine the indefinite as the beyond of our understanding, like we do with space. Time as the result of measuring terrestrial duration against celestial motion does not demand that time itself be an object, nor does the indefinition of time mean that its dependence on the mind is an illusion if the mind is of the non-closed human body that measures those relational differen118 Filozofia 74, 2 119 ces. Thus, time can be a non-absolute abstraction of measuring relational differences of the duration and motion of bodies, the immanent transcendence of those bodies. This measurement is possible for a non-closed human body that transcends and discovers its own bodiliness in its mind's discovery of itself. In other words, time may be dependent on mind, but it is not independent of the world's bodies. Rather, it immanently transcends their duration without becoming an object against which to measure them. Again, time is a mode of a non-closed human body's thought. The Future, or Time as Upsurge However, time as the result of a non-closed human body's measuring of terrestrial duration against celestial motion does not address another issue concerning time in Descartes: the future. Because Descartes' space is an indefinite plenum, imaginary space as a container is discarded.3 Yet, if each moment of duration is distinct from all other moments, the possibility of imaginary time remains (see Gorham, 42n58). This distinction is why the received view is that, for Descartes, "time is ultimately composed of indivisible 'time atoms'," that each moment touches the next (Levy, 627).4 Temporal atomism means that each moment is either with or without duration. If without, it is difficult to understand how a series of durationless moments combine to form duration. If each moment itself has duration, either each is the mutual surface of the others' or there is a gap between them. This dilemma is why there is a debate over the strength of the discontinuity between time atoms (see Levy, 630 – 634). Regardless whether the discontinuity is like that of mutual spatial surfaces or there is a gap between temporal atoms, their very limitation, which is necessary for them to combine to give duration in general (i.e., time), means that the future is a nothing, a container within which duration appears as successive points in a timeline. That is, if the future is considered a not-yet in relation to an indefinite linear 3 The Scholastic concept of imaginary space was the result of both the Aristotelian claim that God could not create empty space and the 1277 condemnation of this claim. In Descartes' time, a common position was that space as such is distinct from the bodies that occupy it. Thus, imaginary space allowed for "an empty space beyond the world...that would allow God to move the finite world as a whole" (Garber 1992, 127). 4 This position is closely related to that of the mind-independence theory of time. Among the prominent names that hold to it are Gilson, Guerolt, and Kemp Smith. Those who reject temporal atomism include Beyssade and Garber (2001), though the latter claims that Descartes neither accepts nor rejects temporal atomism unambiguously (see Garber 2001, 194). It might still be, though, that the future is a container into which time surges. However, "Memory...always concerns the yet-to-come, the future" (Vallier, 123). A remembered experience or event has meaning "in function of an institution that has already occurred, and will in turn orient me to a possible future...; meaning, orientation, will come, advenir, come from the future, l'avenir" (Vallier, 125n3). The future emerges, then, as the demand of memory from out of an intertwined upsurge of past and present. The past as events remembered in the present has meaning as past that surges, with the present that remembers and memorializes it, to120 For him, time is an "upsurge [surgissement]" and constitutes itself (Merleau -Ponty 1968, 184; 1964, 235). Rather than being understood as "a segment of time with defined contours," the present is "a transcendent" (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 184). Thus, "The Stiftung of a point of time [point du temps] can be transmitted to the others without 'continuity'" insofar as past and present intertwine like mind and body, self and others, human and world (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 267; 1964, 315). The past is part of the present as that whence it comes and the present is part of the past as that which recalls what has been. Each brings the other into being as what it is. The past is not other than the present, but is what is remembered in it, while the present is what has endured. Thus, time is not a series, but "an institution" constituting itself through the mutual intertwining of past and present, through memory as what is remembered in the presentof thepast and the present as a consequent of what appearance of duration, it is the other side of the limitations of all time atoms without being of time as the measure of terrestrial duration against celestial motion because even the latter would be discernible as within a time contained by the future as a not-yet. In this way, the future would be the pure in-itself of time nihilated by the for-itself's understanding of durational things. Here, the non-closed human body does not seem of much help. To take account of the future, then, a return to Merleau-Ponty is necessary. is remembered (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 184). Past and present, then, are to be thought in their conjunction, a non-distant indivisibility that joins them in separation. In the upsurge that is time constituting itself, there are immemorial and memorial pasts. The former is an "originary nonpresence" that has never been present, an "original forgetting" that makes remembering, or memorial past, possible (Al-Saji, 184). It is memorial past's invisible. Through memorial past, "the past continues to coexist with and insinuate itself into the present" (Al-Saji, 188). Thus, memorial past and time's institution are not Sartre's in-itselfs nihilated by a present for-itself, leaving the past invisible to the present's visible and vice-versa. Filozofia 74, 2 121 ward the future, thereby instituting the future in the self-constitution of time. The future is not the in-itself of a not-yet encompassing the for-itself of a present that has nihilated the in-itself of the past, but is produced through the present's remembrance of the past as a past to be remembered. Each aspect of time is conjoined in their differences. If history, what seems to be memory institutionalized, is this future through present remembrance, then it might appear there is little room for the individual here. In orienting itself toward a future through the push of past and present, a specific human body "itself is an institution. Its past is not simply its own past" (Vallier, 123). If we appeal to the individual as a particular and specific thing, we risk understanding it as an atom in an objective-immanent container of space. The perception of such an individual is what Merleau-Ponty calls wild perception, which is "of itself ignorance of itself, imperception," merely perceiving, not perceiving something, a world (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 213). Wild perception is necessary, but only insofar as "The perceiving subject...returns from the thing itself blindly identified," as "the untouchable of the touch, the invisible of vision, the unconscious of consciousness" (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 201 and 255). Without this intertwining, "The corporeal schema would not be a schema," nor would the schematizing body schematize (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 255). The body schematizes as giving meaning to the world as it appears, as appearing in a schema, and this meaning is the invisible of that world as it appears. The body that schematizes of course schematizes from an individual point of view or perspective, but it schematizes that perspective as being of a schema, as meaningful. Thus the non-closed human body is individual insofar as individuality is the invisible of the meaning-giving schema perceived by and through that body. As this invisible, its individuality is found in its "Anonymity and generality," hence the possibility of subjectivity (Merleau-Ponty 1968, 201). The individual non-closed human body, to be individual, does not say, "I am perceiving x," but, "Perceiving x, as an x, I am, as an I."5 This understanding helps take account of time as a mode of a non-closed human body's thought insofar as an object endures as having endured, measured against the motions of heavenly bodies themselves enduring as having endured. The duration of objects as already of an intertwined past and present pushes forth an 5 This approach may serve to both clarify and complicate arguments against, for instance, Locke's equation of conscious memory with personal identity (see Rozemberg). aesthetic world of the present as through the past and past as remembered in the present. This aesthetic world is of the push, of the true imagination of the indefinition of time. The future is not a container within which temporal atoms appear, but the continuation of the past through the present, the invisible of the past and present called forth through memory's institutionalized representation of the past in the present. Rather than atomic, time as upsurge is a mode of thought where thought is understood as the transcendence of the human body whereby that body finds itself such that it is of the world of spatial objects coming to be through motion. Those objects endure as having endured, as being remembered. The future is the immanent transcendence of memory, the invisible of the past's representation and the present's being out of the past. It endures as the name of the truly imagined indefinition of time as upsurge. The Invisible of the Divine If institutionalized memory is history, individual or otherwise, a final word about historicity in Descartes is needed. On one reading, historicity as an idea places Descartes' realism in "the deepest conceptual jeopardy" because it replaces "the supposed need for invariances and necessities" (Rockmore and Margolis, 3). In Merleau-Ponty, though, historicity is "the intertwining of 'life' and meaning" (Diprose, 12). How can Merleau-Ponty's thought of historicity be conjoined with Descartes? A temporal body is a mode of thought and of body as the measure of the endurance of a terrestrial object of motion measured against celestial motion. The mind is the body's invisible such that the subject as in conjunction with them can make these measurements. The future is the invisible of the self-constitution of time in past and present, the truly imagined indefinite emerging through their push as an aesthetic world. Celestial motion as much as terrestrial is of this time of the intertwining of past and present pushing through as future. So what is Descartes' historicity if we think in conjunction, and not just for humans? To address this question, a final turn to the Principles will help. 122 Again, the primary cause of the motions that are measured and measured against is God, "the general cause of all the motions in the world" (Descartes 1985, 240). In creating the world, God created motion and rest, but of course God is not of the world, being infinite and so positively understood as having no limits, as fully perfect and complete. As such, Descartes' God is the immaterial substance conjoined to the material world, or the world's invisible. This infinite, immaterial substance does not contain the world and its motions as the nothing of an in-itself. It cannot Filozofia 74, 2 123 And yet, God also endures. In a letter to Arnauld, our minds "display a successiveness" of past, present, and future in their measuring of terrestrial against celestial bodies, but "the duration of God [duratio Dei]" is not of succession (Descartes 1991, 355; 1903, 193). Descartes seems to have hesitated on this question of a non-successive duration, but of import here is that God endures (see Gorham, 48). To be is to endure. While divine duration may not be measurable against celestial motions, it remains a duration, the incompossible invisible of terrestrial duration, immanently transcending terrestrial duration through its own. As creator of the truly imagined indefinition of objects pushing as aesthetic space, God is creator of the truly imagined indefinite time of terrestrial duration measured against celestial motion in an aesthetic push of presently remembered past oriented toward the future. God as immaterial substance discovers itself through this creation of matter and motion. As creator, God is of the historicity of matter, a historicity itself part of the self-discovery of the immaterial substance of mind in its conjunction with the non-closed human body that gives meaning by schematizing the world as it appears. Whether God conserves this motion successively or not, the creation of matter and its motion is not the creation of historicity understood as the memorialization of the past as of the present. Succession is 'a, then b', not its truly imagined indefinition, let alone the pastness of a as remembered in b. Historicity is the being-historical of succession. Yet, just this is what appears in the mind's selfdiscovery through the non-closed human body's schematizing measuring of terrestrial against celestial motion, all conserved by God. Historicity seems to be conjoined in separation from the creation and conservation of material motion, then. It is that through which succession as successive appears. Insofar as God creates and preserves matter and its motion as matter's invisible in a self-discovery through the world's indefinition that is the infinite's invisible, God is of the historicity that is succession given meaning. In this way, to be at all is to endure, in conjunction with the historical, and historicity is the invisible of the divine. be nothing insofar as it is fully complete. Rather, it is understood positively as transcending the indefinition of the world through its alterity to that world. The world finds itself as a world of moving and non-moving motion, a non-closed and durational world through a divine non-presence that is indivisible to the world's indivisible worldliness. 124 Bibliography BEYSSADE, J.-M. (1979): La philosophie première de Descartes. Paris: Flammarion. BONNEN, C. A., and D. E. Flage. (2000): Descartes: the matter of time. International studies in philosophy, 32 (4), 1 – 11. DESCARTES, R. (1985): John Cottingham (tr.): Principles of philosophy. In: John Cottingham – Robert Stoothoff – Dugald Murdoch (trs.): The philosophical writings of Descartes, 1. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 177 – 291. DESCARTES, R. (1991): Anthony Kenny (tr.): For [Arnauld], 4 June 1648. In: John Cottingham – Robert Stoothoff – Dugald Murdoch – Anthony Kenny (trs.): The philosophical writings of Descartes, 3. Cambridge; Cambridge University Press. 354 – 356. DESCARTES, R. (2003): Thomas Steele Hall (tr.): Treatise of man. Amherst, NY. Prometheus Books. DIPROSE, R. (2009): Toward an ethico-politics of the posthuman: Foucault and Merleau-Ponty. Parrhesia, 8, 7 – 19. GARBER, D. (1992): Descartes' metaphysical physics. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. GARBER, D. (2001): How God causes motion: Descartes, divine sustenance, and occasionalism. In: Descartes embodied: reading Cartesian philosophy through Cartesian science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 189 – 220. GAUKROGER, S. (1993): Descartes: an intellectual biography. Oxford: Clarendon Press. GILSON, É. (1967): René Descartes, Discours de la méthode, texte et commentaire. Paris: J. Vrin. GORHAM, G. (2007): Descartes on time and duration. Early science and medicine, 12 (1), 28 – 54. GRENE, M. (1970): The aesthetic dialogue of Sartre and Merleau-Ponty. Journal of the British society for phenomenology, 1 (2), 59 – 72. GRIFFITH, J. (2018): Fable, method, and imagination in Descartes. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. GUEROLT, M. (1953): Descartes selon l'ordre des raisons, 1, L'âme et Dieu. Paris: Aubier. KEMP SMITH, N. (1962): Studies in Cartesian philosophy. New York: Russell & Russell, Inc. LEVY, K. (2005): Is Descartes a temporal atomist? British journal for the history of philosophy, 13 (4), 627 – 674. MARION, J-L. (1999): Jeffrey L. Kosky (tr.): On Descartes' metaphysical prism: the constitution and the limits of onto-theo-logy in Cartesian thought. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. AL-SAJI, A. (2007): The temporality of life: Merleau-Ponty, Bergson, and the immemorial past. The southern journal of philosophy, 45 (2), 177 – 206. DESCARTES, R. (1903): Descartes pour [Arnauld], Paris, 4 juin 1648. In: Charles Adam – Paul Tannery (eds.): Oeuvres de Descartes, 5. Paris: J. Vrin. 192 – 194. DESCARTES, R. (1904): Meditationes de prima philosophia. In: Charles Adam – Paul Tannery (eds.): Oeuvres de Descartes, 7. Paris: J. Vrin. 1 – 90. DESCARTES, R. (1905): Principia philosophiae. In: Charles Adam – Paul Tannery (eds.): Oeuvres de Descartes, 8A. Paris: J. Vrin. 1 – 329. DESCARTES, R. (1909): L'homme de René Descartes. In: Charles Adam – Paul Tannery (eds.): Oeuvres de Descartes, 11. Paris: J. Vrin. 119 – 202. Filozofia 74, 2 125 MERLEAU-PONTY, M. (1964): Claude Lefort (ed.): Le visible et l'invisible. Paris: Éditions Gallimard. MERLEAU-PONTY, M. (1968): Claude Lefort (ed.) – Alphonso Lingis (tr.): The visible and the invisible. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. MERLEAU-PONTY, M. (1995): Dominique Séglard (ed.): La nature: notes cours du Collège de France. Paris: Éditions du Seuil. MERLEAU-PONTY, M. (2003): Dominique Séglard (ed.) – Robert Vallier (tr.): Nature: course notes from the Collège de France. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. PUŠKARI, K. (2012): Cartesian idea of God as the infinite. Filozofia, 67 (4), 282 – 290. ROCKMORE, T., and J. MARGOLIS. (2006): Introduction. In: Tom Rockmore – Joseph Margolis (eds.): History, historicity, and science. Hampshire, UK: Ashgate. 1 – 6. ROZEMBERG, A. (2018): Minulé životy Johna Locka: morálna zodpovednos a pamäové kritérium osobnej identity. Filozofia, 73 (6), 458 – 468. SARTRE, J.-P. (1956): Hazel E. Barnes (tr.): Being and nothingness. New York: Philosophical Library, Inc. VALLIER, R. (2015): Memory – of the future: institution and memory in the later Merleau-Ponty. In: David Morris – Kym Maclaren (eds.): Time, memory, institution: Merleau-Ponty's new ontology of self. Athens, OH: Ohio University Press. 109 – 129. _____________________________ This work was supported by the Slovak Research and Development Agency under the contract No. APVV-15-0682. _____________________________ James Griffith Bratislavská medzinárodná škola liberálních štúdií Grösslingová 53 811 09 Bratislava Slovenská republika e-mail: [email protected] | {
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Lakatos on justificationism Nicolae Sfetcu February 14, 2019 Sfetcu, Nicolae, "Lakatos on justificationism", SetThings (February 14, 2019), MultiMedia Publishing (ed.), URL = https://www.setthings.com/en/lakatos-on-justificationism/ Email: [email protected] This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd/4.0/. This is a partial translation of Sfetcu, Nicolae, "Imre Lakatos: Euristica și toleranța metodologică", SetThings (11 februarie 2019), MultiMedia Publishing (ed.), DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.35405.28649, URL = https://www.setthings.com/ro/e-books/imre-lakatos-euristica-si-toleranta-metodologica/ Lakatos on justificationism The methodology of scientific research programmes (Lakatos 1978) is an improvement of Popper's demarcation criterion between science and non-science, a theory of scientific rationality. For Popper, a theory is scientific only if it is empirically falsifiable, that is, if it is possible to specify observative statements that would prove to be wrong. A theory is a good science if it is refutable, risky, can solve problems and resist successive attempts to reject it. It must be highly falsifiable, well tested, but (so far) unfalsified. Lakatos objects that while Popper's criterion is relatively correct, it is too restrictive because it would exclude too much from day-to-day scientific practice as unscientific and irrational. Scientists often rationally persist with theories that, according to Popper's standards, should have rejected them as being "refuted". But if scientists persist with "refuted" theories, either scientists are not scientific, or Popper is not right in what constitutes a good science. Lakatos's idea is to build a methodology of science and, along with it, a delimitation criterion whose precepts are more in line with scientific practice. Falsifiability continues to play a role in Lakatos's conception, but its importance is somewhat diminished, effectively abandoning it as a criterion of delimitation between science and nonscience. A research program may be falsifiable (in a certain sense), but not scientific, and it can be scientific but non-verifiable. Also, every successive theory in a degenerative research program can be falsifiable, but the program may not be scientific. According to Lakatos, it must not be a crime to protect the inadequacy of the research program from an empirical rejection. For Popper, it is a crime against science to defend a theory rejected by "introducing ad hoc some auxiliary assumption, or by reinterpreting the theory ad hoc in such a way that it escapes refutation." (Popper 2002) Lakatos begins the article with a brief introduction to Popper's concept of falsifiability, considering that the essence of his "recipe" is "boldness in conjectures on the one hand and austerity in refutations on the other." (Lakatos 1978, 8) He then makes the distinction between Popper, for which science is "the constant revolution" and criticism is the heart of the scientific enterprise, and Kuhn, for which the scientific enterprise is exceptional and extra-scientific, and criticism is in the "normal" anathema. Lakatos continues with a presentation of knowledge theses. According to the scientific "justificationist" method, knowledge consisted of proven sentences. Classical intellectuals (or "rationalists," in the narrow sense of the term) have accepted extremely varied and powerful "proofs", through revelation, intellectual intuition, experience. These, with the help of logic, have allowed them to prove any kind of scientific statement. Classical empiricists accepted as axioms only a relatively small set of "factual propositions" that expressed "hard facts". The value of their truth has been established by experience and has been the empirical basis of science. To prove scientific theories based on the narrow empirical basis only, they needed a much stronger logic than the deductive logic of classical intellectuals: "inductive logic." All justificationists, intellectuals or empiricists, have agreed that a single statement expressing a "hard fact" can reject a universal theory, (Lakatos 1978) but few believed that a finite set of factual sentences might be enough to prove an "inductivist" universal theory. Justificationism (the identification of knowledge with proven knowledge) was replaced in time by skepticism, which claimed that there is (and could not exist) any proven knowledge and, therefore, no knowledge in general. Classical rationalists have tried to save the a priori synthetic principles of classical intellectuals and empiricists. For all, scientific honesty demanded not to say anything that is not proven. But, according to Lakatos, the conclusion was that "all theories are equally unprovable". (Lakatos 1978, 11) Probabilism, developed by a group of philosophers in Cambridge, considered that although scientific theories are equally inappropriate, they have different degrees of probability compared to available empirical evidence. This way, scientific honesty requires less than was thought; it consists in expressing some very probable theories; or even by specifying, for each scientific theory, the evidence and probability of the theory in the light of that evidence. Later, Popper assumes that all theories have a zero probability, whatever the evidence; all theories are not just as unpredictable but equally unlikely. Bibliografie Lakatos, Imre. 1976. "Proofs and Refutations Edited by Imre Lakatos." Cambridge Core. 1976. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139171472. ---. 1978. "The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes." Cambridge Core. 1978. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511621123. Popper, Karl. 2002. Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge. 2nd edition. London ; New York: Routledge. | {
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S. French The structure of the world. Metaphysics & Representation. OUP, Oxford, 2014 The physical world as a blob: is OSR really realism?1 Mauro Dorato, Department of Philosophy, Communication and Media Studies, University of Rome "Roma Tre", Via Ostiense 234, 00144, Rome, Italy [email protected] The main purpose of this first book-length survey of ontic structural realism (OSR) is to convince the reader that the ontology of the physical world is one of "structures" and not of "objects". Despite the impressive range of topics that are accurately and exhaustively presented – continuity across scientific change, the underdetermination of metaphysics by physical theories, an historical survey on 20th structuralism, the role of models and of group theory in the representation of structures, the relationship between structures and other key metaphysical notions (objects, causation, modality, dispositions, biological individuals) – my final impression is that the main objective has not been reached. The reason has to do with the fact that the simple question: "what is physical (rather than mere mathematical) structure?" has received at best a very vague answer. Consequently, as we will see, French is forced to navigate between the Scilla of Tegmark's Pitagoreanism (2008) and the Caribdi of "blobobjectivism" (Horgan and Potrč 2008), namely the claim that the whole physical universe is a single concrete structurally complex but partless cosmos (a "blob"). The former alternative is discussed and then, understandably, rejected. While it is not clear whether French endorses the latter alternative as a plausible ontological rendering of "physical structure" (173-4, 183, 189) – he presents its pros and cons2 – he does not seem too unsympathetic about it. In any case, I will argue that, insofar as I can understand OSR, blobobjectivism is its most coherent development but is a rather inadequate way to make sense of the ontology of contemporary physics. Given the above dilemma, the challenge of clarifying the nature of "physical structure" has not been taken up yet. In part, this follows from the fact that French often does not take stock among the various responses that he discusses to defend OSR from foreseeable objections. His review of the literature is always accompanied by new arguments, but he plays 1 Thanks to Elena Castellani, Angelo Cei and Matteo Morganti for their critical comments on 2 I think this follows despite the fact that French does not endorse Horgan and Potrč's contextualist semantics. 2 defensively: aware of the difficulties generated by his ambitious program, he seems just content to show that some of his responses are viable, without trying to explore them in depth and defend OSR more effectively. This is more evident when the going gets tough, in particular in chapters 7 and 8, which deal, respectively, with his attempt to eliminate an ontology of objects and with the problem of clarifying the difference between physical and mathematical structures. Here the arguments are more sketchy and promissory, and they probably only aim to open new paths for future research. After having expressed my opinion, the fact that French's knowledge of physics, metaphysics and possible ways of relating them is encyclopaedic as well as precise is uncontroversial. Many readers will learn a lot (as I did) from a book that succeeds in illuminating many philosophical questions about the ontology of physics by using OSR as its only focus. But the best way to pay due homage to a thought-provocative book is to criticize it, and I hope that my objections will be useful for the future developments of OSR's research program. 1 The two arguments in favour of OSR The difficulty of distinguishing mathematical from physical structure is related to another crucial question raised by French's version of OSR, namely that of offering a clear and precise account of "object". It is only after such an account that can we distinguish between object realism and ontic structural realism. Without such an account, we cannot make sense of French's version of OSR: given his eliminationism about objects, structures and object must be sharply separated. Part of the problem of course lies in the unavoidable vagueness of the latter notion in ordinary language. French seems to take for granted that the unclear notion of object presupposes the clearer notion of "individual": x counts as an object if and only if x possesses an identity, and therefore is an individual. But of course, at this point, the trouble is only shifted to a new question: which among the available theories of individuality should we prefer in order to establish whether x is an object?3 Should we opt for a reduction of individuality to properties, so that quantum particles come out as non-individuals of some sort, (to the extent that they violate Leibniz's principle)4? Or should we rather insist that identity is a primitive, non-property-like feature of any entity, so that quantum particles are individuals? 3 This problem had already been noted by Howard (2011). 4 Here I am cutting a delicate question short. 3 French's solution is to eliminate talk of individuals altogether, and dissolve the problem of individuality by jettisoning the existence of objects. 1. Quantum physics underdetermines a choice between two metaphysics of individuality (the first motivation in favour of OSR). 2. In order to overcome this unwanted underdetermination we should embrace an ontology of structures that is common to the two metaphysical views. 3. Contemporary physics and in particular the group theoretic representations that underpin it, favours OSR (the second motivation for OSR, supposed to be independent of the first). 4. OSR favours the priority of structures over individuals. 5. Premises 3 and 4 imply that contemporary physics favours the priority of structures over individuals (reconceptualization or elimination of objects). 6. Given 5, contemporary physics does not underdetermine the metaphysics of individuality, a fortiori in view of French's eliminativism about objects! Of course contemporary physics is a "superset" of quantum statistical physics, but 1 and 6 are contradictory: contemporary physics and quantum statistical physics either underdetermine together the metaphysics of individuality or together they do not. French, on the contrary, defends both 1 and 3, but it is not wholly clear whether he is justified in doing so. First, quantum statistics is incorporated as an essential and unquestioned component of contemporary physics. So why is it the case that whatever underdetermines quantum statistical physics does not also underdetermine contemporary physics at large? If it is the group theoretical approach to physics that breaks the underdetermination, this very approach should also eliminate the underdetermination argued by 1, given that both quantum statistical physics and contemporary physics at large, as French correctly notes (p. 43), are essentially underpinned by group-theoretical structures. On the other hand, and for the same reasons, if French is correct in claiming that differences solo numero are compatible with quantum statistical physics (for arguments in favour of this claim see Dorato and Morganti 2013), he should provide strong arguments in favour of the fact that such differences are implausible within a more general group-theoretic approach to the ontology of fundamental physics, even though group theory underpins also quantum statistics. If I am not wrong, these arguments have not been provided. It follows that the evidence in favour of OSR is substantially weakened, because one of the two motivations in its favour must go. In view of the relevance of group theoretic structures to describe and 4 explain the physical world, I think that if asked and really had to choose, French would jettison the argument expressed in 1. And in fact, the book argues that an investigation into the problem of how mathematical models represent the world shows that group structural realism (GSR) is the best articulation of OSR. On the other hand, it is clear why French cannot drop 1 altogether. The reason has to do with the already mentioned, undeniable vagueness of, the meaning of "individual" or "object". An answer to the question "why should two electrons be regarded as non-individuals (nonobject like) simply in virtue of their indistinguishability?" presupposes either an arbitrary stipulation or some sort of essentialism about the meaning of "individual" or "object". For obvious reasons, neither strategy is acceptable. The former would trivialize OSR; the latter is incompatible with the fact that concepts, scientific ones included, change and that science invents new concepts (fields, for instance) that don't fit into the ordinary language categories. Consequently, the underdetermination thesis in 1 ought to be generalized to other physical theories (say relativity vis à vis the presentism/eternalism, or the perdurantism/endurantism debates), at least to the extent that metaphysical theories are based on ambiguous ordinary language notions (individual, parts, substance property, etc.) that are simply unfit to interpret the new language of contemporary physics. This is exactly what I think should be admitted, an acknowledgment that would jeopardise a good portion of contemporary metaphysics of science; but this is the topic for another paper. 2 The problem of the representation of the structure of physical phenomena According to French physical theories are classes of models and their way of representing the world is one of the strongest arguments in favour of OSR. To clarify the nature of the model-world relation is to solve the question I want to focus on, namely how to characterize the difference between mathematical and physical structure in OSR in a precise way, without having to concede that it is vague (Ladyman and Ross 2007), which is way to blur his ontological stance. In trying to solve this problem, French relies on Brading and Landry's distinction between the presentation of a model and its representation (2006) but gives it a different twist, whose implications are not always clear. According to Brading and Landry, presenting a certain structure is tantamount to specifying the relationship holding among theoretical models and data models of physical phenomena. However, in their view the theory-world connection requires something more, namely a notion of representation, which ought to specify the 5 relationship holding between the kinds of objects presented by models and the individual phenomena that they are meant to represent (2006, pp. 576-577). In French's interpretation, Brading and Landy's distinction is meant to defend a twolayered notion of representations. So he distinguishes between "the presentation of putative objects thanks to the shared structure that our theories make available and the representation of such objects (as features of the world) by those theories. The obvious question is then, how is this shared structure represented"? (p.101). The answer is that the semantic conception of theories suggests that, at the meta-level, a partial-set theoretic approach is the best instrument to represent the classes of models determined by physical theories, and therefore the group theoretic structure shared by theoretical models, data models and, as the passage above suggests, physical structure. On the other hand, it is this very same group-theoretic structure that is practically used by physicists for a lower-level representation of physical phenomena. By defending these two different levels of "representations" and by later construing a detailed account of how group theoretical structure represents physical phenomena, French aims to fend off the charge that OSR reifies mathematical structure by confusing the physical structure of phenomena as represented (in Brading and Landry's sense) by group theoretical structure with the meta-level representation of the latter structure allowed by partial set theory. However, there are at least three perplexities raised by this view and French's use of the notion of presentation. 1. Presenting a structure, in Brading and Landry's terminology, does not involve the model-world relationship as French has it in the quotation above ("sharing the structure"), but, more appropriately, only a relation between abstract mathematical models. It is only in this literal sense that the notion of sharing is applicable, since isomorphisms or morphisms of any kind can only hold between mathematical, causally inert structures and not between such structures and the physical world, as the passage above seems to indicate. The fact that according to French there is there only one type of sharing while there are two notions of representation creates the risk of reifying mathematical structures, and therefore a collapse of the two kinds of structures, at least until a precise notion of physical structure is provided. 2 French explicitly claims that it is the lower level, group theoretical representation of phenomena as it is practically used by physicists that can provide decisive evidence in favor of the priority of physical relations over individual objects (p.102). To the extent that it enables us to draw such metaphysical conclusions, French ought to regard group theoretical structure as philosophically more important than set theoretical structure, as the Group Structural Realism (GSR) defended in chapter 6 also seems to imply. Given this priority, 6 however, it is not clear why he insists on the necessity of a meta-theoretical representation of models in terms of partial set theory. 3. physical phenomena do not determine the kind of theoretical models that are used to represent them. Not only are such models not deducible from physical phenomena, but furthermore they simplify them drastically, by abstracting away many of their details: the partial-isomorphism approach, that is meant to capture this incompleteness of our representational devices, makes this problem only more evident. French is aware of this difficulty (p. 138), but it is not clear whether he can solve it. One cannot exclude the existence of "left-over entities that might not be captured, or captured only "partially", by the kind of mathematical representation of physical phenomena that is forced upon us by our cognitive structure – a sort of Kantian condition of "knowability" of phenomena that Eddington and Cassirer in different ways insisted upon but that French does not discuss at all. Furthermore, since physical phenomenal constrain mathematical structure only to a certain extent, without a precise account of what it means to claim that the former share their structure with the latter, it is not clear why the model-world relation afforded by these structures should suggest a "reconceptualisation" of physical objects in structural terms. OSR's urgent problem is therefore not "how to best represent the shared structure of physical models" (chapter 5), but rather "what is the nature of the physical stuff that does the sharing?" 3 OSR as Group Structural Realism (GSR) In order to answer this question (chapter 6), French understandably relies on the representational power offered by group theory. Symmetry and invariance, key grouptheoretic notions of contemporary physics, are our main guide to determine what is physically objective. As such, they are essential to ground the invariance of physical laws across scientific change and therefore to give a precise meaning to the fact that previous theories become particular cases of their more general successors. The central role of group theory in contemporary physics leads French to jump from a cautious epistemic structural realism to group structural realism (GSR), via an implicit appeal to an inference to the best explanation. In this perspective, group structure would not only enjoy just epistemic and heuristic priority in our search for fundamental features and entities of the physical world, but would also have an ontic priority of some sort. The most plausible hypothesis to explain the success of physical theories using group theoretical structure is that these theories are approximately true. But the truth of these theories implies the claim that 7 that the objective features of the physical world (however they are conceptualized) are accurately and effectively described by the group theoretical structure of our mathematized models. Apart from the philosophically controversial recourse to the inference to the best explanation, there is no excess metaphysical bag in this italicized statement, and I think that any physicist could endorse it. Troubles arise to the extent that GSR is supererogatively after something more: what do we gain when to the uncontroversial effectiveness of group theory we add the supererogatory claim that "group structure is real"? Unless a clear answer is provided to the question: "what instantiates the group structure?", we should conclude that GSR is either false or trivial. It is false because the physical world is not a group nor can it literally share structure with mathematical models for the reasons given above. It is trivial because an answer to the question "what is the group theoretical structure of physical models about?" cannot be "the structure of the physical world": this viciously circular reply would not be very illuminating if we don't know how to understand "physical structure". In a word, I submit that the only meaning of the expression "the physical world has the structure of a group and group structures are exist" is "the physical world instantiates such structure" 5: U(1) x SU(2) x SU(3) represent the fundamental ontology of the physical world, in the sense that the latter instantiates the former. But this claim can also be accepted in an empiricist approach, since lacking further arguments that French here does not provide, the "physical world" may well coincide with the "physical phenomena saved by our models". In this case, GSR collapses into group structural phenomenalism or epistemic structural realism, since group theory becomes "just" an epistemically powerful means to describe physical phenomena. 4 Eliminating objects without giving up causation? In less radical versions of OSR, elementary particles do exist but are "thin objects" in the sense that their identity depend on the relational structure in which they are embedded. French's more radical, eliminationist version of OSR instead claims that particles literally do not exist as individuals or objects, and must be reconceptualized in group structural terms. Arguments in favor of this view are yielded by the structural conception of laws à la Cassirer, and by the fact that (i) quantum particles and their measurable properties "are" irreducible 5 For the similar claim about "spacetime exists" see my (2000). 8 representations of the relevant symmetry groups and (ii) even their apparent intrinsic properties (spin mass and charge) are "structurally derived" (Lyre 2011). How is this "are" to be interpreted, epistemically or ontically? A representation of a group is a homomorphism from the group to the automorphism group of another causally inert entity. However, single elementary particles leave tracks on a fluorescent screen: qua causally active, they cannot be just representations of groups and can be abstract only qua kinds. So French's fundamental physical structure must be endowed with causal efficacy not only to make sense of its effects in the labs around the world, but also to explain away the apparent causal efficacy of macro-objects, which, given French's reductionism, must be completely dependent on the fundamental relational structure of the world. In fact, if macro-objects could be regarded as causally active independently of the fundamental relational microstructure to which they allegedly reduce, we would have a good reason to believe in their autonomous existence: causal efficacy is usually treated as a sufficient criterion for existence. As a consequence, macro-objects would not be eliminable. French deals with Psillos' (2006) objection that causation needs an ontology of objects in two steps. The first consists in the elimination of everyday objects – qua potential carriers of causal relations – from the ontology of the world: it follows that if there is causation in physics, it must reside in the fundamental group theoretic structure of the world. The second step consists in an attempt to introduce causation at the fundamental level, in the hypothesis that causation is not folk science. I will now discuss these two steps in turn. 1) According to French's revisionary metaphysics, the talk about the macroscopic objects of the manifest image is a practical expedient that will not be abandoned (as talk of quantum particles as objects in the laboratory), even though such objects can be eliminated from the catalogue of things that exists via their reconceptualization in terms of the fundamental relational structure of the universe. Of course, we need to know why macro-object talk is so useful without invoking any correspondence with reality. But even supposing that a solution to this problem can be provided, and that particles are not individuals, arguments by analogy between micro and macro-stuff fail. First, two identical tables, unlike quantum particles, have an uncontroversial identity in virtue of their different spatiotemporal location. Secondly, physics may describe the microcomponents of the wood of which my table is made of, and can explain why its macroscopic properties are what they seem to be to us, but its object language does not contain "tables" (as Stebbing already noted in 1937 a propos of Eddington famous riddle). Thirdly, x is a table or a chair iff a human being attributes x the function that it usually has. The intentional and functional component of man-made macroobjects, 9 currently at least, cannot be reproduced by physics. The conclusion is that strategies for the elimination of macroobjects and microobjects cannot be regarded as similar at all, and that tables cannot easily be eliminated in terms of physicalistic language, despite the fact that they are physical objects. Other forms of eliminative reduction of macroobjects suffer from other difficulties. The first, widely discussed by French, involves mereological reductionism: can we regard my table as a collection of atoms, in such a way that we do not have two entities, the table and the collection of atoms, but one entity, the table regarded as identical to the sum of its simple components? This is one of the views that French considers to be more plausible: "What makes the sentence table exists true are whatever we take the fundament constituent to be" (p 175). However, it has been convincingly argued that mereological reductionism does not apply to quantum mechanics (Healey 2013, Caulton 2015). Surprisingly, French does not give the necessary attention to problem of quantum compositionality and in order to eliminate macro-objects seems to rely on the part/whole relation of classical mereology! Secondly, eliminative reductions of macroobjects to microstructure cannot succeed until we have a more precise idea of the ontology of the reducing theory, i.e., until we know with some more precision what a "physical structure" is. And as we will see below, French did not succeed in clarifying this problem Thirdly, the more plausible strategies for his eliminationism, the reductive ones, are either too weak or too strong. A mere ontological reduction will not do, since tables are physical objects even if functionally defined: the ontological reduction in this case is not as interesting as that invoked in the mind-body problem. An explanatory view of reduction is also too weak, since it does not necessarily eliminate macroobjects and their macroproperties: I can explain solidity in terms of atomic structure and chemical bonds, without eliminating the emergent, collective property: single atoms and their bonds are not solid, only the table is. It then follows that in order to pursue an eliminative reduction of macroobjects to quantum structure one needs a stronger, identity theory: if I reduce x to y by showing that x is y, then I can treat x as non existent. However, this form of eliminative reduction is not justifiable even in the only clearly defined, strongest theory of reduction, namely Nagel's. Even supposing that one could get around the fact that there are no laws of tables and chairs as such, x is not eliminated in favour of y, given that the "is" in the sentence is an identity. Analogously, the macroscopic property "temperature of a gas" is not eliminated by statistical mechanics, in virtue the fact that temperature is mean molecular motion! Temperature is a real (though emergent) property of a gas: otherwise there would be nothing to reduce. If there are no clear 10 examples of eliminative reductions in physics how can a reduction of everyday objects to fundamental physical structure be successful? This may explain why the eliminative view of macroobjects as presented in chapter 7 is merely promissory, as he himself acknowledges (p. 189). In this chapter in particular, French begins by supposing a paradoxical thesis T, and then presents an extremely well-informed review of the existing literature in order to show how T could be defended but does not take stock, even if the wealth of new and original arguments pro and cons the various positions that are presented is really remarkable. 4.2 The second step: can we introduce causation in the fundamental relational structure? In fairness to French, the problem of drawing a border between abstract, mathematical structure and physical structure is there for anyone, since it depends in part on the difficulty of finding a distinction between abstract and concrete. For instance, entities may be abstract in the spatiotemporal sense and yet be physical, as 3N configuration space might be required by the reality of the wave function. The criterion involving causation seems less controversial, and seems to be shared both by traditional objects-realists and structural realists like French. If mathematical entities are defined as causally inert, in order to avoid the collapse of physical onto mathematical structure, French must embody causation in his structuralist ontology, while avoiding at the same an ontology of objects as carriers of causal activity. In order to achieve this aim, he endorses the process view of causation, in which the persistence of events in time – regarded as worldliness – is dependent upon their structure. This means that, say, the interaction of two particles regarded as objects is to be thought of in terms of "a system of relations some of which might be described as causal, where that notion is appropriately characterized in this context" (p.213). In a word, events are not instantiations of properties by objects; rather, the interactions of particles qua events must be reconceptualised in structuralistic terms: as advocated by Esfeld (2009), relations (or bundles thereof) can be causally powerful. Admittedly, the picture is rather vague and promissory to say the least; plus, the threat of the blob-universe sticks it ugly head again. Suppose that properties are causal powers. If causal powers of properties were themselves structural, then "iteration" would lead to the view that the only causally empowered stuff is the universe/blob discussed above. In order to avoid this consequence, French notes that it is not incoherent to be structuralist about objects and their properties but not about their causal power (p. 218). How reasonable is this move? 11 Take two masses in Newtonian dynamics: m1 and m2. According to his proposal, the particles and their property "mass" dissolve in a network of relations but the power to attract other masses is non-structural and therefore non-relational. In this case, however, this attractive power, shared by the two masses, would be intrinsic to them. The problem in this case is that, presumably, in OSR a causal power should itself be relational, lest there exists a bundle of intrinsic powers that is be regarded as object-like. However, if one cannot stop to analyse these causal powers in structural terms, we are led eventually to the blob-cosmos, the partless One, or the night in which all the cows are black. The argument is quickly presented. Suppose that the particles having mass entails that they have a power to attract other particles and therefore a power to generate a gravitational force Grav(m1,m2), that is a causal relation between them to be regarded as the manifestation of their shared power. But the two masses taken together can be regarded as a unique bundle B12 (mass is additive) constituted by the relation Grav(m1, m2), that in its turn must be related to other masses, m3, m4, and their bundles and so on until we end with the one, or the blob In conclusion, I think that French's book has the merit to take OSR to its logical conclusions: the options for ontic structural realists are either an endorsement of Tegmark's Pitagoreanism or of blob-objectivism. Given this dilemma, dropping OSR seems unavoidable, at least until its main formulation can be – somewhat unfairly – summarized by the following passage: "perhaps the most intuitive plausible form of structuralism is precisely one according to which objects and their properties are metaphysically dissolved into a 'multilayered' network of relations, where certain of these relation are causally empowered and where this empowerment for want of a better word is inherent to the relations". (p. 218) 12 References Brading K. and Landry H. (2006), "Scientific Structuralism: presentation and representation", Philosophy of science, 73:571-581. Dorato M. (2000), "Substantivalism, Relationism, and Structural Spacetime Realism", Foundations of Physics, 30, 2000, pp. 1605-1628. Dorato M. and Morganti : (2013), "Grades of Individuality. A pluralistic view of identify in quantum mechanics and the sciences", Philosophical Studies, vol. 163, n.3 pp. 591-610, DOI 10.1007/s11098-011-9833-z Esfeld M. (2009) "The modal nature of structures in ontic structural realism", International studies in the philosophy of science, 23, 179-194 Healey R. (2013), "Physical Compositionality", in Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics 44, pp. 48–62. Horgan T. and Potrč M. (2008), Austere Realism, Cambridge MA: MIT Press Howard, D. (2011), Book Symposium on S. French, D, Krause, The physics and metaphysics of identity and individuality in Metascience (2011) 20:225–251, DOI 10.1007/s11016010-9463-7 Ladyman, James, and Don Ross. 2007. "Ontic Structural Realism and the Philosophy of Physics." In Every Thing Must Go: Metaphysics Naturalized, New York: Oxford University Press. Lyre H. (2012), "Is structural underdetermination possible?" Synthese, 180 (2), pp.235-247. Psillos S. (2006) "The structure, the Whole Structure, and nothing but the Structure?", Philosophy of Science, 73, pp. 560-570. Stebbing S, (1937) Philosophy and the physicist, London Methuen and co. Tegmark M. (2008) "The mathematical universe", Foundations of physics, 38, 101-150. | {
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The Ontology of Fields Report of a Specialist Meeting Held under the Auspices of the Varenius Project Panel on Computational Implementations of Geographic Concepts Talks and Discussions at the Specialist Meeting Bar Harbor, Maine June 11-13 1998 By Donna Peuquet1, Barry Smith2, and Berit Brogaard2 1Department of Geography, Pennsylvania State University 2Department of Philosophy, State University of New York at Buffalo. 2 Table of Contents 1. Preface 4 2. Acknowledgements 5 3. Introduction 5 3.1 On the Project "The Ontology of Fields" 5 3.2 Note on the Origin of the Field Concept 8 4. Barry Smith: An Introduction to Ontology 10 4.1 Formal Ontology, Material Ontology 10 4.2 Applied Ontology, Referent-Based Ontology, Elicited Ontologies 12 5. Geoffrey Jacquez: Spatial Statistics 15 6. Brandon Plewe: Data Modelling, GIS Integration, Vagueness 18 6.1 Fields in Data Modeling 18 6.2 GIS Integration 20 6.3 Vagueness, Indeterminacy, Gradients (Fuzziness) 21 7. Helen Couclelis: Perception and Visualization 23 8. Roberto Casati: Fields, Maps and Semantics 24 9. Berit Brogaard: Fields, Objects and Dependence Relations 27 10. Selected Group Discussions 29 10.1 Parts of Fields 29 10.2 What is a Field? 30 10.3 Do Fields Exist? 31 10.4 Types of Fields 32 11. Researchable Questions 34 11.1 Ontological Perspectives on Fields 34 11.2 Formalization of Fields 35 11.3 Operations on Fields 36 11.4 Cognitive Aspects of Fields 38 12. Conclusions 39 3 13. References 40 Appendix I: Karen Kemp and Andrej Vckovski: Abstract of "Towards an Ontology of Fields" 42 Appendix II: Barry Smith and David Mark: Abstract of "Ontology and Geographic Kinds" 43 Appendix III: List of Participants 44 4 1. Preface This report describes the results of the Specialist Meeting of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA) on the topic of "The Ontology of Fields." The meeting was held in Bar Harbor, Maine, June 11-13, 1998. The main purpose of the meeting was to examine the ontology and conceptualizations of geographic phenomena in terms of spatially continuous fields. The concept of field is widely used in a variety of scientific contexts, most notably in mathematical physics, and many geographically distributed variables (e.g., elevation and temperature) are conceptualized as single-valued functions of location. Some of the questions discussed during the meeting were: What is the ontology of fields? Is human cognition less accommodating to field conceptions than to object-based conceptions? What are the interrelationships between object and field types of representations in human cognition? How can the cognitive interrelationships between these two types of representation be operationalized, and how can field representations be accommodated within contemporary paradigms of computing? How are the representations of the mathematical modeling communities in various domains to be related to cognitive categorizations? What options exist for representing uncertainty and indeterminacy in fields, and are they meaningful from a cognitive perspective? This Report on the Specialist Meeting serves to document some of the answers to these questions and some of the discussions held during the meeting. It includes also a set of researchable questions, which arose during these discussions. 5 2. Acknowledgments This research has been supported by the National Science Foundation under Award No. SBR– s Project to Advance Geographic Information Science." The Co-Leaders of this initiative are Barry Smith, Research Scientist of the NCGIA and Professor of Philosophy and member of the Center for Cognitive Science at State University of New York at Buffalo and Donna Peuquet, Professor of Geography at Pennsylvania State University with the assistance of Paul van Zuyle of NCGIA, Santa Barbara. They have provided intellectual oversight and management, in consultation with a Steering Committee, which included Barry Smith, Donna Peuquet, Nicholas Asher, Kate Beard, Mike Hutchinson, Helen Couclelis and Barbary Tversky. Kathleen Hornsby, Violet Gray, Anthony Chemero, and Berit Brogaard acted as rapporteurs. LaNell Lucius of NCGIA Santa Barbara and Blane Shaw of NCGIA Maine assisted with meeting arrangements. Pat Shyhalla from the Geography Department at State University of New York at Buffalo assisted with information for this report. Roberto Casati commented on earlier drafts of the report. The help of all these people and organizations is gratefully acknowledged. 3. Introduction 3.1 The Project "The Ontology of Fields" The Ontology of Fields venture is a project under the research area Geographic Information and Analysis identified by the National Science Foundation in the late 1980s when the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA) was established. Under the NCGIA's Varenius project (http://www.ncgia.org/varenius), Ontology of Fields is one of three specialist meetings held under the panel on Computational Implementations of Geographic Concepts (Panel Chair: Max Egenhofer, University of Maine). Geographic information science is the research field that attempts to formalize geographic concepts and their use, particularly within a computing context. Geographic concepts are the primitive units of all cognitive operations relating to geographic space. In the original project description, geographic concepts were divided into three groups: First, there is the group of common-sense geographic concepts which are the concepts that people use in everyday life, such as valley, lake, pond, uphill, leeward, and so forth. Second, there is the group of abstract spatial concepts which are derived from mathematical formalization. These include concepts pertaining to 6 coordinate systems (e.g., Cartesian coordinates), and to cartographic projections. Third, there is the group of concepts used by the various sciences that are concerned with geographic phenomena, concepts such as nearest neighbor, gravity model, trend surface. Geographic concepts apply to entities of different kinds. Some concepts apply to entities that are very different from common-sense objects, entities-for example population density-that are themselves in fact more like concepts, in that they may have no material substance. Although population density within a given area is not directly perceivable, one might still argue that it is in fact an entity with a real-world existence just as the individuals contributing to it have real-world existence. But one may also have reasons for claiming that population density is a mere mathematical abstraction, and that only the individuals themselves are real. The problem with concepts like that of population density is that the entity to which it applies is a field-like entity rather than an object-like entity. Thus, the population density at a point is not univocally determined: it varies in systematic ways according to our demarcation of the area in relation to which it is measured. Many geographic concepts apply to such field-like entities. Now field is a well-established concept within the realm of physics, where we find entities like gravitational fields, electro-magnetic fields and so forth. But it is less clear what a field in geographic space might be. What exactly is required in order for something to be a field? Are there different kinds of fields? How do we think about concepts that apply to field-like entities and how can we represent and explain these concepts through the application of appropriate methods of analyses? These questions can be collected under the same heading as questions concerning the ontology of fields; i.e., the nature of fields. In order to advance research on the ontology of fields the NCGIA organized a three-day Specialist Meeting, a workshop intended to illuminate the nature of fields and to identify researchable questions on the topic. The background paper for this meeting was the paper Ontology and Geographic Kinds presented by Barry Smith and David M. Mark at the International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling (SDH '98) in Vancouver, Canada 12-15 July, 1998, an abstract of which is included in Appendix II below. Here, an attempt is taken to develop an ontology of geographic kinds, that is, of the categories or entity types in the domain of geographic objects in order to arrive at a better understanding of the 7 structure of the geographic world. While we know intuitively that there is some objective reality that contains what we might call bona fide objects, such as islands, rivers, lakes and roads, Smith and Mark argue that human geographic reality includes also objects that exist only in virtue of our individual and social conceptualizations of the relevant areas of space; they are objects; objects delineated though human reasoning and language. These are called fiat-objects. While some fiat objects such as countries and census tracts approximate to the status of concrete things that occupy pieces of land on the surface of the Earth and have discrete boundaries, there are also more abstract fiat objects such as areas defined by specific soil or vegetation type. Fiat objects may in fact in many cases be much more field than object-like. But the question still remains as to what the nature of such field-like entities is, and how we are to think about and conceptualize them. To develop a better understanding of categories or types of geographic objects, it must always be remembered that all entities can be viewed as field or object-like for specific purposes. To this degree making a listing of entities according to whether they are fieldor object-like is a futile exercise. This division of reality into objects and fields is an ongoing process of construction for every science and for every individual as we continuously learn about the complex interworkings of our environment. We also change our perspective or world view to suit the particular context or level of knowledge. Thus, we may view vegetation cover as a continuous field over space, or as consisting of discrete objects such as meadows and stands of forest. The remainder of this report reviews the talks and a selection of the group discussions on this topic. It is hoped that readers of this report will get an insight into the ontology of fields. It is furthermore hoped that the report will function as a guide for future research within the area. More information can be found on the Web at http://bbq.ncgia.ucsb.edu:80/~vanzuyle/varenius/ ontology.html 3.2 Note on the Origin of the Field Concept Before turning to the discussion of what a geographic field is and how the concept of field is used in geography it might be worthwhile to take a brief look at the origin of the field concept. The idea goes back to the ancient Greek thinkers, who became interested in the divisibility of matter and space. Anaxagoras introduced the concept of infinite divisibility into natural philosophy. This thesis served as the basis of early Greek thinking on the mathematics of the continuum and is the 8 foundation of the scientific doctrine of continuous space. A differing vein of thought that developed from this was atomism, which reduced everything to infinitely separable (and separate) particles- bodies adrift in space, with space itself (the void) as the container of these objects. Atomism has earlier roots in Pythagoreanism. The Pythagoreans thought of the cosmos as a harmonious unity of such basic opposites as the limit and the unlimited. This represents the origins of the notion that space has two aspects: on the one hand as the Void and infinite, as a box-like receptacle of objects; on the other hand, as the order of spatial relations of these objects. Aristotle rejected the notion of atoms and the Void. Instead, he developed his famous conception of space as topos, that is, space as an order of places. According to Aristotle, place exists together with objects, and all objects are located in some place. Place thereby becomes a necessary condition for the existence of any object. Space is, on this view, continuous and never empty. The introduction of the concept of field into contemporary science in the middle of the nineteenth century by the British scientist Michael Faraday was something like a revolution in scientific thinking. Until that time it was generally accepted that the most fundamental level of reality was composed of material things or particles each having a particular location at any given time. Such particles were believed to be capable of moving under their own intrinsic energy or under the influence of other particles. What we today often think of as a gravity field was before Faraday thought to be a force exerted by an element on another element; that is, action at a distance. When Faraday introduced the field concept he also asserted that the thesis according to which the most fundamental level of reality is composed only of material things is wrong. Some of the most fundamental constituents of reality, he claimed, have none of the properties possessed by particles: they do not have an exact location at a given time, they do not move and they are not forced to move by the interaction with other entities. These fundamental constituents were called fields. The introduction of the concept of fields, in fact, began with an experimental discovery made by the Danish physicist H. C. Ørsted who observed that a straight wire conducting electrical current in one direction could turn a compass needle that was placed in directions perpendicular to the direction of current flow. Faraday interpreted Ørsted's result in terms of a single electromagnetic field in which the magnetic component is an electric field in motion. 9 An electromagnetic field is an entity that fills all of space in a continuous fashion without moving from one point to another. Such a field can also be described as an electromagnetic wave, but the latter metaphor is rather misleading to the extent that waves in the literal sense (for example ocean waves) presuppose more fundamental entities, namely water-molecules, they are vibrations of water that propagate from one place to another. When the electromagnetic field was discovered, it was believed that electromagnetism could be understood as vibrations in a plenum, but vibrations that propagate instantaneously, that is, with an infinite velocity. Faraday also argued that all forces should be described in terms of fields. Newton's universal gravitational force was thus to be understood not as a force exerted by a body on another body, but rather as a field created by and stretching between two bodies. This view is, of course, incompatible with the older scientific view that all physical phenomena depend, fundamentally, on the configuration of forces which reflect the impact of particles of matter on each other. According to Faraday, at least, electricity and magnetism were to be understood, not as bits of matter, but as continuous fields. Electric charges can influence other electric charges because they are manifested in terms of fields of influence which extent continuously through all of space and time. For further information on the field concept, see Sachs 1973. 4. Barry Smith: An Introduction to Ontology 4.1 Formal Ontology, Material Ontology Ever since the Greek philosopher Aristotle, ontology has served as a basis for our theories and construction of models. But what is ontology? Why do we need to think about an ontology within the context of geographic information science? An ontology is either an abstraction of the formal features that characterize all scientific areas, or it is a statement of the necessary and sufficient conditions for something to be a particular kind of entity within a given domain. The ontology of law, for example, is a description of the necessary and sufficient criteria for something to be law or to be a legal object. The first kind of ontology is called formal ontology, while the second kind is called material ontology. Formal ontology, in contrast to material ontology, does not study the phenomena of a specific institutional, social or natural domain. Rather, formal ontology is like mathematics. All sciences, such as biology, chemistry, physics and so forth, presuppose mathematics. Scientists cannot 10 carry out their experimental research without presupposing mathematics. Formal ontology is like mathematics, that is, the study of the structures that are shared between the different scientific domains. It is the study of identity and difference, of unity and plurality, of properties and relations, of part and whole, of measure and quantity. Much of ontology is very simple (for example that identity is transitive). Hence it has not been studied in systematic ways to the degree that mathematics has been studied. Ontology as traditionally conceived is not a description of how we conceptualize the world, but rather a description of the world itself. This, of course, assumes that there is only one true reality to be described. If ontology were based on conceptualizations, then we would have as many proper ontologies as there are conceptualizations. But to say that ontology is a description of true reality is not the same as to say that we cannot recognize a distinction between good and bad work in ontology. There is, however, no easy way of judging whether a given ontological proposal is a good or bad one. But there are some criteria for this judgment. For instance, an ontological proposal or hypothesis that is incompatible with physics is ipso facto a bad one. This is, of course, a weak criterion. Ontology does not have to be in complete correspondence with physics, but it should not be incompatible with it. I have already talked about the analogy between ontology and mathematics. Let me extend this analogy a little further. If we based mathematics on what people in different cultures think, we would end up having a number of different mathematical theories. But they cannot all be true. Some of them are closer to the truth than others. Hopefully, the mathematical and ontological theories developed by different groups of people in different cultures will eventually converge to single true theories. It may take a very long time before we can be satisfied that such convergence has been achieved. With this extended analogy between mathematics and ontology we have moved over to the question of epistemology. Ontology in itself does not presuppose epistemology; in fact, it is completely independent of our knowledge of the world in the following sense: what we can or cannot know about X at any given stage has no implications for the ontology of X (for the properties of X, the relations in which it stands). That the relation of part to whole is transitive holds true independently of whether any cognitive agent knows this or any other truth, and it is independent also of how knowledge is gained or evaluated. Yet the evaluation of ontological proposals touches upon 11 epistemology. We cannot know what the world is like via any simple method. We can only gradually move closer to the truth. But the comparison of ontological proposals requires a specific form of knowledge, namely knowledge of the world of the sort that is provided by science, and also by common-sense experience. Consider the following figure: Within the shaded circle we have the domain of objects with which we are concerned. Above this circle we have various theories and beliefs, together with the corresponding models of the domain of objects in which we are interested. With the development of our knowledge, we can hope that these models will converge on each other, and that they will come more and more to resemble the world itself. That this is not an unreasonable hope is shown by the high degree of successful interaction between and cooperation among existing theories and beliefs. Theories that are correct descriptions of a given domain of objects allow us to infer the material ontology for that domain. By investigating what is shared by all material ontologies we can infer the principles of formal ontology. In the specific case of geography, the real world consists on the one hand of physical geographic features (bona fide objects). On the other hand, there are the various fiat objects, for example legal and administrative objects, including parcels of real estate, areas of given soil types, census tracts, and so on, each of which coincides at any given time with a certain portion of the entire physical surface of the planet. Components of a material ontology for this domain will now include, in addition to the Theory1 Theory2 Theory3 Folk Beliefs Objects in the given domain Model1 Model2 Model3 Model4 12 types of objects mentioned, also people, their beliefs and their actions (for example, the actions of those who work in land registries or in census bureaux). Once we have understood the basic entities of ontology we can begin to look at how, for example, people relate to both fiat and bona fide objects in the areas that concern them. These relations, too, will then form part of the ontology. The ontologist is interested in the world, including those portions of the world that are created or constructed by the people in it. He is interested also in the beliefs (both true and false) people have about the objects in the world. 4.2 Applied Ontology, Referent-Based Ontology and Elicited Ontologies Nowadays ontology is being put to use also for a variety of practical purposes, so that one might speak of something like 'applied ontology'. What purposes can ontology serve within the context of information science in general and within geographic information science in particular? Some answers to these questions are provided by the recent volume edited by Nicola Guarino (1998) of LADSEBCNR in Padua. This volume contains papers by philosophers on the one hand and by information scientists on the other hand demonstrating the ways in which ontological ideas are increasingly being put to use for example in the construction of software tools for merging large databases, in facilitating database integration within a single enterprise (enterprise integration), in conceptual modelling and information systems design, in the design of software for multi-lingual information retrieval and extraction, in the construction of systems for electronic commerce, and in a variety of other areas, including geographic information science (Frank 1997). In each of these fields it has proved fruitful to develop common ontologies in terms of which divergent bodies of data derived from different sources can be unified together into a single system. Ontological engineering of this sort was pioneered in the ARPA Knowledge Sharing Initiative and in the work of Tom Gruber (1993) and his colleagues on the Knowledge Interchange Project in Stanford. Unfortunately, however, philosophers and information scientists have different conceptions of what ontology is, and these conceptions may indeed appear incompatible. Above all, ontology on the philosopher's understanding is the science of being, or the science of what is, of the types of entities making up reality. On this understanding to talk of a plurality of ontologies in the manner which has become common among information scientists is a solecism (analogous to the solecism which would be involved in referring to different biologies, rather than to different branches of biology). 13 Some clarification can be gained on this front if we make a terminological distinction between referentor reality-based (hereafter R-) ontologies on the one hand, and elicited or epistemological (hereafter E-) ontologies on the other. An R-ontology is a theory about how a given referent-domain (which might be the whole universe) is structured, what sorts of entities it contains, what sorts of relations obtain between these entities, and so on. An E-ontology, in contrast, is a theory about how a given individual or group or language or science conceptualizes a given domain, a theory of the ontological content of certain representations. The practitioner of R-ontology is concerned with principles that are true of reality. The practitioner of E-ontology elicits principles from subjects (or theories, or systems) by a process which might be called ontology-mining. The elicited principles may or may not be true; their significance lies elsewhere-for instance in yielding a correct account of the taxonomical system used by experts in a given domain, for example by the designers of a geographic information system. There are as many proper E-ontologies as there are conceptualizations. An R-ontology is not a description of how we conceptualize the world, but rather a description of the world itself. This, of course, assumes that there is only one reality to be described. To develop ontology as a description of reality is not a trivial exercise. Ontology so conceived must be compatible with physics and with other developed sciences. All branches of R-ontology (all R-ontologies of specific sub-domains) should be compatible with each other, and R-ontology in toto should contain the resources to account for the relations between the objects treated of in each of these branches. To the extent that incompatibilities remain between different branches of R-ontology, corrections to one or other of the disciplines involved are still required. The analogy introduced above between ontology and mathematics can be extended somewhat further in order to throw light on the claim, popular in some circles, to the effect that the very idea of an R-ontology is misconceived because it presupposes some sort of God's eye perspective which would be independent of all specific human points of view (and thus of all specific E-ontologies) and thus simply true. To see what is wrong with this argument imagine how it would look if applied to the case of mathematics. It would amount to the proposal that mathematics be reduced to ethnomathematics. Mathematics would be based on what people in different cultures think of numbers, geometrical figures, and so on. We would end up with a spectrum of different mathematical theories, no one of which could be held to be more or less true than any other (since to accept such 14 an evaluation would be to commit oneself once more to the existence of some God's eye perspective). With these remarks we have moved once again into the realm of epistemology. We can now say more precisely that the evaluation of competing proposals as to the proper concent of R-ontology touches upon epistemological issues. We cannot know what the world is like by some simple and easy method. At best we can only move gradually closer to the truth via an incremental process of theoryconstruction, criticism and testing, and amendment. 5. Geoffrey Jacquez: Spatial Statistics. Talking about Talking about Spatial Data 5.1 Motivation Recently I have had discussions with Susan Maruca (who is running a project at BioMedware to develop software for the analysis of geographic boundaries) on the topic: Are boundaries present in continuous spatial fields? Related questions include: Within a given field, are there boundaries that are more significant than others? and: How can we determine which boundaries are the most significant? A statistical null model that is often used for the assessing the significance of spatial statistics is Complete Spatial Randomness (CSR). However, this model may not be appropriate for boundaries, where spatial pattern (such as spatial autocorrelation) may be expected even in the absence of boundary-generating phenomena. Boundaries in the natural world, for example ecotones, reflect underlying space-time processes such as natural selection, interand intra-specific competition and so on. It seems reasonable to suppose that boundary characteristics may be caused by, or at least related to, the space-time processes that gave rise to them. Similarly, the signature (e.g., correlogram) of any spatial statistic may provide clues to the space-time processes that generated the spatial field. We can think of any spatial statistic as being sensitive to specific features or objects (patterns) on spatial fields. This suggests that a proper ontology would answer the question of what features on a spatial field are meaningful (have the most information content) for increasing our understanding of the underlying space-time processes. Here, I shall focus on the problem of what significant means in the context of features/objects on spatial fields. 15 5.2 Representing Data In spatial statistics we use the term spatial response surface. This represents the notion of spatial variation through geographic space. An everyday analog of the spatial response surface is topography. What is the vocabulary we use to describe topography? We use words like peak, plateau, valley, saddle, etc. Such words describe objects that are part of our ontology, and they are used to describe features in our everyday world that are meaningful. In addition, these features have large information content in terms of the geological processes that gave rise to them. The U-shaped valley was gouged by a glacier, the plateau is an igneous intrusion, and so on. When working with spatial response surfaces, the concept meaningful features essentially degenerates to the kinds of patterns (signatures) our arsenal of spatial statistical tools can detect. So the current ontology implicit in spatial statistics is something of an artifact, emergent from the signatures that can be distinguished via spatial statistics. A proper ontology would, rather, define features on spatial fields that are meaningful to our understanding of underlying space-time processes. We then could design spatial statistics whose signatures are sensitive to those features. 5.3 Vocabulary Consider the kind of stuff we call snow. In English we have but one single substantive for snow, but we can, of course, qualify it in various ways in order to describe several snow phenomena granular snow, melted refrozen snow, etc. Similarly, when we represent geographic data we can pick out a phenomenon and describe it by a single term or we can describe it in more detail. 5.4 Methods In the 1990s we have various words describing features on spatial response surfaces, depending on the spatial statistical technique: Spatial autocorrelation tests lead us to speak of positive spatial autocorrelation, complete spatial randomness, and negative spatial autocorrelation. Words used in boundary analysis include fuzzy boundaries, crisp boundaries, open boundaries and closed boundaries. The field of cluster analysis speaks of general clustering and focused clusters. These words describe the kinds of patterns that can be detected by specific statistical tests. But are they useful for describing those features with high information content? 16 5.5 Fundamental Problem The fundamental problem of data representation is that of inferring past processes from observed spatial data. We typically work with spatial data representative of one or a few snap shots in time. Typically, the time frame of space-time processes is much longer than our observational time scale. Rarely, if ever, are we able to watch a spatial response surface evolve as its determining forces are at work. 5.6 Analytic Approaches In general analytical approaches may be divided into (1) models of process, (2) models of data, and (3) exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA). Models of process are expressed in terms of the biological and physical parameters of the system under study. For example, a compartmental model of a structured population whose coefficients describe migration between subpopulations. In addition to the data, a model of process requires sufficient knowledge to model the system in a meaningful fashion. Models of data are expressed in terms of relationships among the observed data. For example, the slope and intercept in a regression model are useful for prediction but do not necessarily convey any information regarding the system's basic physical and biological mechanisms. In addition to the available data, constructing a model of data requires selection of a statistical model (e.g., regression and ANOVA)-detailed knowledge of the mechanics of the system is not needed. ESDA seeks to identify patterns in the data that may suggest and eventually lead to a model of data or even to a model of process. It requires the available data and tools (e.g., spatial statistics) for pattern identification. 5.7 Methods for Identifying Patterns The objective, then, is to identify spatial patterns. There are a number of components of statistical inference for identifying patterns within spatial data: • Test statistic • Null spatial model • Null distribution of the test statistic • Null hypothesis • Alternative hypothesis 17 • Alternative spatial model The test statistic is a number that summarizes an aspect of the data that is of scientific interest. The null model describes the space-time distribution of the variable(s) expected when the null hypothesis is true, it defines the null distribution (defined below) of the proposed test statistic. The null distribution of the test statistic is obtained either theoretically or empirically through Monte Carlo simulation. Both the theoretical derivation and the randomization procedure must be consistent with the null model. Probability values under the null hypothesis are obtained by comparing the value of the test statistic to the null distribution. The null hypothesis is usually stated in terms of parameters of the null model. The observed value of the test statistic is compared to the null distribution arising under the null model. The alternative hypothesis is stated in terms of parameters of the null model or in terms of additional parameters used in constructing the alternative model. The alternative model may be an omnibus not the null model or a more specific model describing spatial pattern. 5.8 Summary The objective of spatial field analysis is the inference of space-time processes. Spatial statistics is concerned with (a) quantifying spatial patterns and (b) determining whether or not a pattern is unusual. To be useful to scientific inference an ontology must: (a) be descriptive of spatial structures, that is, of the patterns expected under relevant space-time processes, and (b) include quantifiable objects useful for purposes of spatial statistical inference. 6. Brandon Plewe: Data Modeling, GIS Integration, Vagueness 6.1 Fields in Data Modeling In thinking about how fields relate to spatial databases, I adopted a standard database modeling approach. This, under various different terms, consists of going from reality to some kind of conceptual model (i.e., thinking about whatever it is we are trying to model), from there down to a logical data model (a general strategy for the data organization), and from there down to the actual data structures, where we have specified exactly how we are going to structure and organize the information once we get it. 18 How does this relate to the ontology of fields? I will start with reality. I am not exactly going to specify what reality is. Reality is something; I am not sure what. As to conceptual models of this reality, we can distinguish four conceptual models of space: • The plenum is something that fills space, such as water or air. It may be a real phenomenon or an ideal space. You can measure various properties at any point. Water will have several variables, while population density only has one. • The plenum can be divided into regions to form what we call a categorical coverage. The boundaries of these regions are determined from the data. You should think of it as a matter of regions that have been defined by some kind of data. • The third model is the hard partition, that is, a partition where the boundaries are officially set. They may or may not originally have been the result of real properties of space. An example of this is the boundaries of countries. Another example is the set of census tracts, where the city has been carved up into areas long before the data was collected. These two categories look very similar. If you look at a map with no descriptions it would be difficult to tell the difference. The difference is in the source and meaning of the regions, not in their appearance. • The fourth model is the object or entity view. Objects are here thought of as existing in their own right. Think of Africa cut up into countries. You are here thinking of each country as a lone unit without thinking of how the boundaries were created and without any supposition to the effect that it is only part of the overall continent. This is not necessarily the way reality is, but these models are ways we commonly think about reality. We may look at the same thing (say, vegetation cover) and see any of the four models. The entities in the fourth model are more object-like; those in the first category are more field-like. The more object-like formal representations or data models are based on models of the fourth kind, while the more field-like representations are based on models of the first kind. The vector data model is based on the strategy of extracting the geometric properties of individual entities (and is thus more object-like). The raster idea is one according to which you break up space into rectangular or square bits and pieces that are equally distributed and you sample information pertaining to each 19 piece, or you make an average. In this way continuous fields are made discrete. The two intermediate conceptual models will usually have to be remodeled either as objects or fields. Vector, object-based GIS is more popular than raster, field-based GIS in the GIS industry. This is because there are some important limitations of raster. Thinking of GIS in terms of fields is not as common as thinking of it in terms of discrete entities. This is not because of differences in their respective powers of analysis. The capabilities of raster in this regard are at least as strong as vector. Although there are many things that we cannot yet do. Still, there is a lot we can do with raster GIS. Data entry has been more difficult in the past, but we now have data entry sources that make it easier, such as satellite imagery and softcopy photogrametry. Does the problem lie with the subject-matter? Many of the types of GIS subject-matter which have driven the industry, for example urban modeling, have a more object-like character. But a business market area is an example of a subject-matter that is more field-like. Perhaps, then, the reason for preferring vector to raster is a matter of comprehension-that we have a more difficult time understanding and communicating about fields. 6.2 GIS Integration One of the crucial issues in GIS and in the study of spatial databases today is that of integration. We can think specifically about the integration of raster and vector. Currently, if you want to integrate objects and fields, then you have to convert the one into the other in order to compare them. But this may not be a good way of doing things; we lose something in the translation. An important emerging trend is the integration of GIS with database management systems designed to allow you to combine your spatial information with the rest of the information in your enterprise. Traditionally this has been much easier to do with vector than with raster, since most common vector data structures are themselves essentially relational databases. We also want to tie GIS information into other kinds of scientific models. But can we solve these problems? Can we just take existing data structures and somehow do better processing? Or do we need better data models or better data structures? I do not know. Here are some of the properties the solutions should have. • One is that it should have a data structure that is capable of integrating both fieldand objecttype information. We have talked about this for years. Donna Peuquet wrote a paper about it over ten years ago (Peuquet, 1988). 20 • We would also like to have operations that can integrate data of various types. It would be nice to be able to take field data, say pertaining to the atmosphere, and combine it with object-like data, such as data pertaining to the boundaries of cities. In that case we would not have to convert one into the other. • The last thing has to do with comprehension. It would be nice if we could have some data model that could preserve the detail that is available in fields, e.g., the temperature in the atmosphere, but yet still enjoy the comprehensibility possessed by data-models based on objects. Perhaps the answer for these last two properties is some kind of multiple representation, where we represent something in two forms at the same time. However, the difficulties of doing this utilizing a traditional raster-vector view of geographic data representation were also documented by Peuquet (1988). 6.3 Vagueness, Indeterminacy, Gradients (Fuzziness) Rather than speaking of fuzziness or vagueness, I prefer to talk in terms of gradation. The idea is that you have something that has gradual rather than crisp boundaries. If I have a region, then there is a core area that definitely is in that region. Then I have a boundary that is actually an area or zone of gradual change rather than a line. Finally, there is the exterior, which is definitely not part of the region. Such graded regions exist not only in real geographic space but also in the thematic dimension. Think of the concept hot. There are certain temperatures that are definitely "hot," others that are not. In between there is a range of temperatures in the area of gradation. There is also a temporal dimension of gradation, where there is a gradual change within a region extended over time. The theory of fuzzy sets can be used to model this phenomenon and hence it is often referred to as fuzziness. The problem is that in common usage (i.e., outside of fuzzy set theory) fuzzy is a much broader term and has unfortunate connotations. Vague is an ambiguous term, too. Gradation is a better term to describe the phenomenon we have in mind. Let us talk about gradation and uncertainty. Gradation is not a question of uncertainty, even though they often look similar when represented or conceptualized. Uncertainty lies in measurement and observation, while gradation is inherent in an entity itself. Uncertainty just means that I do not 21 know where a given boundary is, only that it is somewhere (somewhere determinate) within a certain area; gradation means that the boundary itself really is an area. Uncertainty arises as we measure reality and force it to conform to our data base. But what causes gradation? For my dissertation, I looked at some twenty-five examples of gradation, but I was not able to find it in the real world. Where I did find gradation was within things that we might call conceptual entities. I thus argue that gradation arises when we think about reality and conceptualize it. A problem arises as we try to simplify reality in order to comprehend it. For example, suppose I have a field of population density, which I created from a large number of objects (i.e., people). I want to use that field to determine the boundaries of a metropolitan area (an object). One criterion for a metropolitan area is that of high population density. High is a gradual term. I apply it to the area where the density is higher than a given value and call that area urban. I can do that, but it is problematic, because over-simplification is involved. The problems inherent in such transfer between conceptual models are important because this is not an isolated phenomenon: we spend a lot of time moving between different models. Take the example of population density. I start by thinking of people in terms of population density and then I want to go back to a city or an urban area. All kinds of problems then arise. It appears that the conceptual objects we artificially create out of fields often involve gradation, for example, a hill, which is created from elevation. Think also of soil; it does not change at a line, but when we talk about it and represent it, we are forced to create crisp, line-like boundaries. A lot of research could be done on this kind of switching between conceptual models. Are there situations where we can avoid it? In the past we have avoided it by creating crisp boundaries, but then we are just creating a problem. Perhaps the idea of integrated object-field data models will be a solution to the problem of vagueness and gradation. This would make it more possible for us to switch between models without simplifying too much, i.e., in such a way that we can preserve the details. Another research question is: Can we really handle gradation as such? The problem with fuzzy set theory and related formal models is that it presupposes that we are able to quantify exactly to what degree each given point does or does not belong to the object. For example, you would have to say 22 that a point on a hillside is 35% part of the hill and that is far-fetched. There are situations where you can do that, but it rarely works so nicely. 7. Helen Couclelis: Perception and Visualization Helen Couclelis addressed the theme of Cognition and Re-Presentation. She began with two issues drawn from the position papers of Anthony Chemero and Violet Gray: the challenge of antirepresentationalism, and the question of the ontological status of discrete versus continuous models of space. Taking a mildly anti-representationalist stance herself, she put forward three propositions: (a) there is a duality between fields and objects, (b) this duality holds for both space and time, and (c) there exist principles for helping us to determine the appropriate representation (fieldor objectbased) in different contexts. The first point has its roots in the traditional debate in the history of science between atomistic ontology, which favors the primacy of objects (there are things in the world; things have properties), and the plenum ontology, which favors the primacy of fields (there are fields and properties in the world; the relatively stable spatiotemporal clusters of properties are the things). The latter gives rise to the minimum assumption one can make about the real world that is compatible with science, namely, that the real world is the universe of potentially observable characteristics (Zeigler, 1976). Thus the plenum ontology may be preferred on epistemological grounds as more parsimonious. Couclelis then argued that the fields/objects distinction holds for time as well as space. Clock orientation treats time as a plenum of instants at which observations can be made, whereas event orientation views time as made up of individual events identifiable through observation. Thus we may set up a time-space correspondence between, respectively, instants and points, durations and fields, events and objects, and view spatiotemporal phenomena consistently from either the atomic or the plenum perspective. Accepting that neither kind of representation is ontologically superior to the other requires us to spell out criteria for determining the appropriate one in each case. Couclelis suggested that the three main criteria should be the empirical nature of the relevant variables, the mode of observation, and user purpose. 8. Roberto Casati: Fields, Maps and Semantics The linguist Leonard Talmy makes a distinction between two classes of linguistic features. Open class 23 features change rather easily, whereas closed class features are relatively stable over time. The open class features include the lexicon, above all nouns. The closed class features include syntactic elements such as prepositions. Each open class is characterized by the fact that it can change relatively fast over time, while each closed class acquires or loses items at a relatively slower pace. Thus it is very easy to add new nouns into a language; rather difficult to add new prepositions. (Compare, for instance, the difference between the terms computer and betwixt.) Talmy's hypothesis is that this distinction reflects two different cognitive functions encoded in language. Words in the open class reflect lexical, specific, marginal classifications; words in the closed class express syntactic, general, core functions. Expressed another way: Closed class features represent formal or structural features of the world as we cognize it, open class features represent content or matter. This distinction between these two types of functions explains the stability of closed class words. If we generalize this thesis, we might say that grammar encodes the ontological commitments of cognition. For instance the subject/predicate distinction expresses a commitment to the object/property distinction: • This apple is red • *This red is apple Another example is given by the closed class of suffixes, such as walk-s, walk-ed, etc., which can express time, tense, agent. One can compare the difference between two types of words within a single sentence: • John moved across (the room/the ocean) • *John moved across (the doughnut, the sphere) Room and doughnut encode fine-grained and marginal information about shapes and sizes, across encodes core information. Thus if language is to serve as a guide to cognition's ontological commitments, then we ought to look primarily at the syntax rather than at the lexicon in order to understand the core, structuring commitments in our ontology. Thus we will not make much headway in our present text with a study of the different meanings of a noun like field. On the other hand, we can find in language structural, core representations of field-like phenomena and of the field-object contrast. These are provided by the well-known distinction between mass and count nouns. Examples 24 of mass nouns are: Water, smoke, gold. Examples of count nouns are: Dog, man, wastebasket. Count nouns, but not mass nouns, take quantifiers: • Much water • ?Much dog • Some water is in the glass • *Some dog is in the room • *There is a water in the glass • A dog is in the room • *There are some waters in the glass • Some dogs are in the room Count nouns, but not mass nouns, take numeral as prefixes and plurals: • *Three waters • Three dogs • ?Waters • Dogs These syntactic distinctions reflect some underlying semantic facts. Mass terms, such as water, smoke, gold, denote sum-individuals that are cumulative and dissective. Count nouns, such as dog, man, wastebasket denote individual objects; they are used for identification and re-identification. This is why you cannot ask "How many waters? but you can ask "How many dogs?" The underlying difference can be expressed in terms of part/whole relationships. Mass entities are dissective: every part of a quantity of water (down to a certain size) is a quantity of water; but not every part of a dog is a dog. If we choose, as a framework, the axiomatic part/whole theory and predicate calculus, we can express the difference by saying that for any property R, R is dissective whenever the following holds: Rx à (y)(Pyx à Ry) If x has the property R, then every y which is part of x also has the property y. Fields are dissective entities in this sense. Thus every part of a field is a field. The analogy between mass-like entities and fields breaks down, on the other hand, at certain points: 25 • Dissectivity holds nontrivially for uniform fields. • Dissectivity holds (more trivially) for some mereologized or spatialized properties of some nonuniform fields (fields having nonzero curvature at all points). • Dissectivity holds trivially for certain very general properties of fields (e.g., being a part of a field; but this is not a problem for fields only). 9. Berit Brogaard: Fields, Objects and Dependence Relations In discussions of the ontology of fields the question naturally arises as to what the ontological status of fields and objects is. How are fields and objects ontologically related to each other? If we were to follow in rigorous fashion the exact sciences, especially physics, we would probably claim that fields belong to the absolutely most fundamental level of reality. Common-sense objects such as chairs, tables, human beings, lakes, mountains, landscapes and so forth, would then not exist unless there existed a reality with a micro-structure in the form of a net of fields. In fact, it could be claimed that strictly speaking bits of matter such as atoms and molecules are, at some more fundamental level, much more field-like than object-like. But what about geographic fields? Does the nature of geographic fields resemble the nature of physical fields? And does the nature of geographic objects resemble the nature of objects at smaller scales, including dogs and cats, atoms and molecules? And does the existence of geographic fields actually presuppose the existence of geographic objects, or is it the other way around? What we are here concerned with is something that could be called ontological dependence. The question of ontological dependence may be formulated as follows: given two entities a and b, (i) can a exist if b does not exist, and (ii) can b exist if a does not exist? We say that we have (one-sided) ontological dependence whenever an entity a cannot exist unless b exists. Such ontological dependence we find everywhere in reality. A particular smile cannot exist unless a particular face exists and so forth. We are here talking, in fact, about what we might call rigid ontological dependence, because we are not addressing the dependence relationship between any smile and any face, but rather a certain quite specific relation which pertains between these two individual entities a and b here and now. The question of whether smiles in general are ontologically dependent on faces in general is a different one (though one that is also to be answered in the positive). Here, we are 26 concerned with whether any entity of a given kind F is ontologically dependent on some entity of another kind G. The latter kind of dependence we might call generic dependence. Perhaps we can better illustrate the difference between the two kinds of dependence with the following example. The event of my birth is rigidly dependent on the existence of a human being; but since not all human beings have human parents (if we take evolution into consideration) we cannot say that a similar generic dependence relationship holds for all human beings. We can formulate the two forms of ontological dependence in the following way (see Simons 1987, p. 297): Rigid Dependence: a is rigidly dependent on b: it is necessarily the case that if a exists then b exists and b's existence is not necessary. Generic Dependence: every individual of the kind F is generically dependent on an individual of kind G: given any x that is F, x exists only if there is an individual, different from x, which is a G. We can now return to the question of whether either fields are ontologically dependent on objects or objects are ontologically dependent on fields. Since we are talking about geographic fields, let us consider a few examples of such. First, let us consider a field such as population density. It is clear that a field of this kind is an extrapolation of the densities 1 or 0 which characterize certain small regions of space at each given instant. If a correspondingly small spatial area is occupied by an individual, then the value is 1 and if it is not, then the value is 0. From this it follows that a particular population density is rigidly dependent on a particular group of people within a given region. But the population density is also dependent on the region of space in question. While the individuals contributing to the population density are material objects, the region of space within which they are located is more like a field. It is within this spatial region that values are attributed to spatial points at given times. Another simple example is that of the salt-concentration of a lake. Here both the lake in the form of a region of space and the distribution of salt have the character of a field. Although the saltconcentration can only be measured at certain spatial points (or perhaps also at certain space-timepoints, if time is taken into consideration), the measurement does not consist in an act of counting, as in the case of a population density, but rather in a direct measurement of the values of a field that 27 already exists. Of course, since salt-concentration is an attribute of the lake which itself is rigidly dependent on its particular composition of water, plants, animals and so forth, salt-concentration is not ontologically primary. It is itself dependent on other, lower-level phenomena. Thus, we have here at least two different kinds of geographic fields, namely (1) fields that are rigidly dependent on objects within a field (e.g., population density), and (2) fields that are themselves rigidly dependent on fields (e.g., the salt concentration of a lake). The latter kind of geographic field also includes fields such as the elevation in a given spatial region, where the elevation can be seen to exist independently of our measurements as an attribute of the surface of the Earth, or more precisely, of a certain portion of the Earth (on a fiat object, in Barry Smith's terms: see Smith 1995). Let us call the former kind of fields object fields and the latter continuity fields. The relationship of ontological dependence is different in the two cases: Object fields: A particular object field (e.g., population density) is rigidly dependent on the distribution of discrete objects (the population) within a given spatial region, which again is rigidly dependent on the particular distributed individuals. Continuity Fields: A particular continuity field (e.g., the measured salt-concentration) is rigidly dependent on the existence of a (broadly) continuous field (the salt spread through the lake). 10. Selected Breakout Group Discussions 10.1 Parts of Fields Initial Questions: • What are the types of fields? • What are the parts of fields? • What are the boundaries of and in fields. • If we think of fields as functions, what are the restrictions on variables which fields must satisfy? Types of fields (fields which are dependent on regions or spatial domains): • The maximum field (for instance, the entire atmosphere). • A two-dimensional land-area. • A three-dimensional portion of the entire atmosphere. 28 • Physical fields such as a gravitational field or a magnetic field. These are causally integrated fields which do not admit of subdivision or holes. • Scattered fields involving scattered domains (e.g., the temperature over Europe) involving the phenomenon of settings or niches-fields with holes, e.g., the fields occupied by fish in a lake where the temperature varies in such a way that some portions of the lake are hospitable and some are not. Casati's suggestion: (a) If x is a field domain and y is a spatial region, then x+y is a field domain. (b) If x is a field domain and y is a spatial region which is part of x, then x-y is a field domain. Drop (a) and you will only have closed fields. Drop (b) and you will only have non-gappy fields. 10. 2 What is a Field? We can have fields of different dimensions, but they are all spatially anchored. Not every collection of things constitutes a field. We shall divide fields into two kinds: • those which exist because of variations in some intrinsic measure of value, for example a gravitational field; • parasitic fields, for example the density of population (population itself is not a field). An interesting question is whether or not there can be gaps in a field. In order to answer that question, we have to consider the following problems: • zero-value-this means that the point in the field has a value, namely zero. • null-value-this means that there is no value at this point (not the same as zero-value) • non-observed value-this is an epistemic problem • non-observable value-this also is an epistemic problem • the value at a given point is not relevant-this means that the point is outside of the spatial domain over which the quantification is made. There are different interpretations of the so-called null-value: (1) The null-value could correspond to a gap in the field. And (2) the null-value could be a possible place for a value. For example, if a location at the sea has a null-value for a field such as the density of a given population, then its value could be possible rather than actual. 29 10.3 Do Fields Exist? In the plenary session, fields were defined not in commonsensical terms but rather in the technical sense of a domain or region on which a function is defined: a field is a field of values of this function. Our question here is whether or not we agree with this view. The concept of field comes from perception, as in visual field. It also derives from topography (from real fields e.g., cornfields). Other examples of fields include quantum fields, fields as a mathematical construct, etc. What drove the mathematical construct of field is the fact that in all of these cases there is something at every point, some value of a common characteristic. From Aristotle, is derived the focus on the properties of objects or substances, above all organisms. Aristotle's influence meant that this object-orientation dominated for almost two millennia. Substances are moveable concrete entities that are bounded in space and time. Now, the problem is to identify the properties of fields. When it comes to fields in the naive or non-technical sense, like fields of corn, people prefer to refer to the aggregate rather than to the individual objects. Fields have properties that objects (e.g., apples, boulders) do not. The group pointed out that it is hard to conceptualize a gradient over a point set. People are better at saying here is a thing and it has these properties, and this may be related to how we think about objects versus fields. Regular-sized objects are more salient to us, for various reasons: they are manipulable, they might be edible. They might be predators. Fields are not as important to us as from an evolutionary perspective as objects are. This problem, of course, is related to the problem of figure-ground. We see the objects, but not the background or plenum out of which the objects are extracted. We conclude by offering elements of a definition of the term field. • A field is an aggregate of certain items of interest but of a certain minimal scale: the aggregate should contain many items; it should be substantially larger than the items which it comprehends (so that it is the forest which is more salient, rather than the trees it contains). • A field cannot be an active agent. Some discussion centered on wind as an example of an active agent which is at the same time a field. Wind is conceptualized as a vector field. Other forces, too, are commonly conceptualized as fields. 30 What can you do with fields? • differentiate and integrate them, • extract discrete objects from them, • extract a function from them, or • use them to deal with and manipulate more dimensions than would otherwise be possible. Fields appear to have some useful mapping to the real world. We cannot prove that fields exist. Indeed, space-time was a field for Einstein; there is no empty space-time in relativity theory. Using topographic elevation as an example of a field, how do you represent or describe it? • Cartographic practice uses isolines. • Naive practice talks about the shape of say, Mt. Desert. • Using objects to describe the field leads to the result that Mt. Desert is in fact seven mountains. With certain fields, such as zone or area of influence for instance, the internal parts may not be distinguished. There need be no crisp boundary. You cannot reduce such fields to the individual parts. 10.4 Types of Fields What can we do with fields? How can we think about them? There is a number of terms that we have not defined: reality, field, object, feature, and so forth. If we want to get a coherent idea about how we are using such terms, we need to define them. We need a clarification of the foundation, of where we stand. What we sought to do in this group was to establish an ontology of fields. The concept of boundary goes hand in hand with that of fields. Different kinds of fields have different kinds of boundaries. One sort of field will have just gradual changes or no changes at all. Fields have different textures. One texture is a continuous kind of texture, another is a network kind of texture. The difference between these two kinds of fields is that the first has a source-point from which everything flows, while the network kind of structure is more like a tree without a specific source-point. A third kind of structure has contour-lines. Finally, you have fields that are divided into zones, for instance, if a planetary system is thought of as a field, then it is divided into zones corresponding to the separate planets. There are, of course, instances of these four kinds of fields. We can characterize the four kinds of field as more or less fieldor object-like. The first is most field-like, whereas the fourth is most object-like. 31 We suggest that the four kinds of fields are conceptual models. A country in Africa is like an object, but we can also represent it as a field. The problem, however, is whether or not we call these conceptual models fields. A person, for example, is an object, but if the person is part of the population which gives rise to a population density field, then he is represented by a value, rather than by some object-representation. What is the purpose of conceptualizing reality? Cognitively, we continually move back and forth between different conceptual models. All models fail to completely describe reality. But if that is the case, how do we find the essence of fields? In one sense field representation is just a different name for function. The domain of the function is a topological space, which means that it is continuous. We have different data models to represent such functions. The difficult question, however, is how we discretize fields in order to represent them. How do we go from a continuous function to discrete entities? How do we indexicalize or instantiate field representations. How do we anchor field representations to the underlying reality and to the objects which it contains? A boundary within a field is something that bounds a set. If there is something that lies within a set (of space-time points, for example) and also outside the set, then it crosses the boundary. The ontology of fields is close to the ontology of the plenum. Representations of fields do in fact not stand for fields as such, but for fields that are already made discrete cognitively. The fundamental reality, in contrast, is a plenum (no delineatory act has occurred); all other fields are based on a cognitive act of delineation. This means that there are at least two kinds of fields. The fields which present the plenum transformed as basis for our cognitive actions, and the underlying real physical entities which can give rise to cognitive, delineated fields. For example, we need a region in order to determine population density, but we also need discrete entities, which are not, however, treated as discrete entities in the field-representation. One thing that makes it difficult to identify the nature of fields is that they are not part of our common-sense knowledge as such. While we can see a chair or a cat and hear a melody and identify them as such, we also perceive fields, but in a visual sense, for example, a visual field is merely an image, an array of light and color. We can measure fields and there are various technical devices by means of which we can detect them. Yet fields are not constructions of the human mind in that they 32 do not have meaning, per se. The boundaries we draw within a field, on the other hand, are products of our cognitive activity. It seems that such interposed boundaries are fundamental for understanding that part of reality that is not already divided into discrete entities. 11. Researchable Questions 11.1 Ontological Perspectives on Fields • Examine whether there is a general-purpose ontology for geographic phenomena and determine how fields are incorporated into this ontology. What are the geographically-relevant ontologies? Can we build a general purpose ontology for geographers (and for those working on, for example, geographic cognition)? How should fields, including moving fields, flows, be incorporated into this ontology? Are entirely new types of ontologies for GIS necessary to facilitate this incorporation? What mathematics would be the necessary to support such an ontology? Consideration of alternative kinds of mathematics including: classical, intuitionistic, constructive; alternative statistics; alternatives to Cartesian spaces, non-metric geometries, tolerance geometries. • When can fields be reduced ontologically to objects? And when, correlatively, can field-based theories or reasoning systems be reduced to objectbased theories or systems? • Define the criteria for adopting a fields-based approach vs. an object-based approach. Is a dense aggregate of points by definition a field? This could lead to research identifying common properties for those applications or scientific theories which prefer a field ontology over an object ontology. It could also lead to efforts to understand the linkages between sciences (and applications) which use a field ontology and those which use an object ontology. 11.2 Formalization of Fields • Develop a data model for fields. Develop a data model and appropriate data structures for fields and field-based meta-data. • Define a typology of fields. What would be a complete set of field types? What would be a complete set of field 33 representations? What would be a complete typology of field-object relations? Formalization of the field concepts used in specific domains (e.g., legal, natural resources, planning, or navigation, population density, Bathymetric problem). • Formalize field parts vs. field boundaries. What are the types of constituents of fields? Differentiate between field extent and field boundary. Fields need some extent, but they need not have a (determinate) boundary. A field without an extent, for example, would be a single point. Are there formal/mathematical differences between fields in the physical domain and fields, for example in the legal or political sphere, which are subject to human demarcations? What are the ontological implications of the Smith-Varzi work on formal interrelations between fiat-based and classical topology? To what degree does set theory impose an object-based partition and mereo(topo)logy a field-based view? What sorts of topologies are possible where both objects and fields are included within a single domain? • Develop a theory of interpolation with respect to fields. Can the approach employing virtual data sets (Vckovski and Bucher), which implies an interpolation method, be expanded and further systematized? What are the best criteria for selecting one interpolation method rather than another? • Assess the effect of incomplete, incoherent and inconsistent information on fields. This includes the problem of fusion of different types of information (compare: route description and polygon description of street map); the problem of fusion of knowledge gathered from different perspectives; and the problem of how to recognize incompleteness. • Develop dynamic field-object algebras. Consider how to extend Tomlin's map algebra for dynamic fields. How to apply techniques of pattern recognition and inference of spatio-temporal processes to fields. • Define fields for a sphere. Do fields on the sphere have a different ontology? What are the appropriate formulae for the description of fields on spheres, and what is the appropriate interpolation method. The relevant mathematics exists, but needs careful screening to identify what is usable. 34 11.3 Operations on Fields • What operations are possible on fields? Operations at a high level of abstraction include create, update, extract, compare, etc. Determine what are the constraints on operations (e.g., interpolation). What are the criteria for the equivalence of operations? How do these operations differ for materialized fields vs. fields that are created on the fly? • Define meta-operations for fields. A study on meta-operations could include, for instance, research into how we can store and use information on lineage and data quality relating to fields. This could also include operations that support field-to-object transformations including uncertainty propagation. • Construct a field operations library. What is an organizational metaphor for cataloging field operations? If we are to develop a library of interoperable algorithms incrementally there has to be a framework to guide and organize the algorithm development. • Develop methods for converting between field representations. What operations are necessary to support transitions from, for example, raster to functional representations? What methods can be used to assess quantitatively (and qualitatively) the loss of information from such a conversion? Examine conversions from quantitative fields to qualitative fields. • Interoperating models that incorporate fields. How do we describe operations on fields in such a way that we can combine different operations on different fields referencing the same underlying space (cf. the mathematical techniques described in category theory)? What are the conditions for interoperability? • Develop operations that support identification of objects in fields. Develop an approach for identifying an object in a field (e.g., through use of thresholding and statistical methods). Other operations could include multi-summed fields. • Measurement, measurement models and opportunistic sampling. Can we construct re-usable models for integrating measurements/samples that are collected on an "as available" basis (not randomly, not based on criteria such as point of perceptible 35 change) to produce an overall model that gains or retains reliability as the available/relevant universe of measurements changes. In some cases the resulting model gains reliability and/or precision; in other cases, for example where measurements are time-bound, the model retains value despite expiration of some measurements. Note that measurements may come and go, for example, seasonal fluxes or things that rise and fall with heat. There are many situations where we want to use the data we can get, but we do not get all the data we would like to have Environmental issues provide a host of examples (currents or convection in oceans or air, dispersion problems of all sorts), precise models of geographic features, such as the geoid or the ocean floor; epidemiology, crime, all sorts of human behavior. • Consider issues of scale for fields. How do changes in scale affect fields. Relevant for field-to-object transitions. • What role do fields play with respect to overlay operations in GIS? Could we construct layers with non-metric information (route, fuzzy objects) and combine topological with metric information? What sort of output should this generate (e.g., prescriptive plans for action)? 12.4 Cognitive Aspects of Fields • Perspective switching between field-based and object-based representations. Examine the role of geographic reference frames with respect to fields. How are people able to merge perspectives in their heads? There are aspects of spatial and geographic thinking that humans perform better than computer programs. How to identify, formalize, and integrate these methods (this could be a central research question for naïve geography)? What are the heuristics involved? Examine qualitative reasoning involving fields. Study of children's understanding of environment/geographic space and of maps. • Cognitive aspects of field perception and object perception. What are the situations (tasks) where one or the other is preferred? Visualization of fields. Cognitive problems pertaining to the predominance of objects over fields e.g., in perception and in the lexicon. Consider linguistic and software (usability) implications. • How does the concept of place relate to fields? Fields and the naive-geographical notion of place; how do we use place to reason spatially? 36 How to formalize this notion? How do we understand the fact that one place/field is contained within another? • Fields from a cross-cultural perspective. Study the range of ways in which people solve a problem against the background of different sorts of constraints (cognitive, environment and cultural; individual-based vs. group-based strategies). 12. Conclusions The most central question among the various issues discussed during the Ontology of Fields Meeting in Bar Harbor was the question of what a geographic field is. Many of the discussions boiled down to this one central question. A first answer to that question is that a geographic field, like an electromagnetic field in physics, is an entity which fills a given area in a continuous fashion. However, although physical and geographic fields resemble one another under this general description, they differ considerably with respect to their ontological status. While a physical field cannot be reduced to more fundamental entities, such as particles, most geographic fields seem reducible to objects and functions on such objects. An example of a geographic field is that of population density. Yet the population density in a given area is reducible to the distribution of a number of discrete objects. Thus, it seems that discrete objects are at least in some cases ontologically more fundamental than fields in geography. In fact, geographic fields are often a special kind of fiat entities insofar as they are results of acts of human fiat (see, again, Smith 1994). For example, a geographic field such as that of population density requires that one delineates a certain spatial area as the pertinent region for the field. Other geographic fields, such as the salt concentration in a lake, are more like physical fields insofar as the extrapolation made from the measurements on the lake gives rise to a field representation that represents a physical entity. In addition to the questions of what a field is, the question was discussed in many of the sessions as to what a field representation is and what kind of field representation is the best representation of a given field. This question involves several components. For example, what is the plenum within which measurements take place, how is the plenum must efficiently divided into sub-regions, what 37 does a field representation actually represent and how do we cognitively understand such field representations? 38 13. References Frank, A. 1997 Spatial Ontology, in Oliviero Stock (ed.), Spatial and Temporal Reasoning, Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer, 135–153. Gruber, T. 1993 A Translation Approach to Portable Ontology Specifications, Knowledge Acquisition, 5(2),199-220. Guarino, N. (ed.) 1998 Formal Ontology in Information Systems, Amsterdam, Oxford, Tokyo, Washington, DC: IOS Press (Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications). http://www.ladseb.pd.cnr.it/infor/ontology/ontology.html Mark, D. 1997 Cognitive perspectives on spatial and spatio-temporal reasoning. In Craglia, M., and Couclelis, H., Geographic Information Research Bridging the Atlantic, London: Taylor and Francis, pp. 308-319. Peuquet, D. 1988 Representations of Geographic Space: Toward a Conceptual Synthesis, Annals of the Association of American Geographers 98 (3): 375. Plewe, B. 1997 The Representation of Gradation in Geographic Information Systems, Dissertation, State University of New York at Buffalo, June 1997. Sachs, M. 1973 The Field Concept in Contemporary Science, Charles C. Thomas Publisher, Springfield. Simons, P. 1987 Parts: A Study in Ontology, Clarendon Press, Oxford. Smith, B. 1994 Fiat Objects in N. Guarino, L. Vieu and S. Pribbenow (eds.), Parts and Wholes: Conceptual Part-Whole Relations and Formal Mereology, 11th European Conference on Artificial Intelligence, Amsterdam, 8 August 1994, European Coordination Committee for Artificial Intelligence: 15-23. Smith, B. (1995): On Drawing Lines on a Map, Spatial Information Theory, Austria: 474-484. Smith, B. and D. Mark. 1998. Ontology and geographic kinds. Proceedings of International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling (SDH'98), 12-15 July 1998, at Vancouver BC, pp. 308-318. Zeigler, B. 1976 Theory of Modelling and Simulation. Wiley, New York. 39 Appendix I Towards an Ontology of Fields Karen Kemp and and Andrej Vckovsky Abstract While philosophers define ontology as a branch of metaphysics concerned with the nature and relations of being, within the knowledge representation and reasoning community, a more tractable definition exists. There, an ontology is a specification of a conceptualization or a definition of the vocabulary used to represent knowledge. An ontology describes the concepts and relationships that exist within a specific domain and describes all that can be represented about that domain. An ontology of fields that explicitly characterizes spatially continuous phenomena in order that they can be consistently modeled and completely described within spatial databases is needed. An ontology of fields must be based on a formal definition of fields. We argue that the classical definition of a field as a function on a domain which is a subset of space-time is accurate, explicit and expressive, and provides access to the full set of mathematical tools for the characterization of fields. Thus, we conclude that there is no need for more ontology. Presented at GeoComputation'98, Bristol UK, Sept 17-19, 1998. Distributed on the Conference Proceedings CD. 40 Appendix II Ontology and Geographic Kinds Barry Smith and David Mark Abstract An ontology of geographic kinds is designed to yield a better understanding of the structure of the geographic world, and to support the development of geographic information systems that are conceptually sound. This paper first demonstrates that geographical objects and kinds are not just larger versions of the everyday objects and kinds previously studied in cognitive science. Geographic objects are not merely located in space, as are the manipulable objects of table-top space. Rather, they are tied intrinsically to space, and this means that their spatial boundaries are in many cases the most salient features for categorization. The ontology presented here will accordingly be based on topology (the theory of boundary, contact and separation) and on mereology (the theory of extended wholes and parts). Geographic reality comprehends mesoscopic entities, many of which are best viewed as shadows cast onto the spatial plane by human reasoning and language. Because of this, geographic categories are much more likely to show cultural differences in category definitions than are the manipulable objects of table-top space. Keywords: ontology, mereology, geographic kinds, entity types, GIS Presented at International Symposium on Spatial Data Handling (SDH'98), Vancouver, Canada, 12-15 July, 1998. See: http://www.geog.buffalo.edu/ncgia/i21/SDH98.html 41 Appendix III Workshop Participants Name Address email Kate Beard NCGIA and Department of Spatial Information Science and Engineering, University of Maine [email protected] Lars Bernard Institute for Geoinformatics, University of Münster [email protected] Ling Bian Department of Geography, State University of New York [email protected] Thomas Bittner Department of Geoinformation, Technical University Vienna, Austria [email protected] Berit Brogaard Pedersen Department of Philosophy, State University of New York [email protected] Daniel Brown Department of Geography, Michigan State University [email protected] Roberto Casati Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France [email protected] Anthony Chemero Department of Philosophy, Indiana University [email protected] Helen Couclelis Department of Geography, University of California [email protected] Beth Driver National Imagery and Mapping Agency [email protected] Max Egenhofer NCGIA and Department of Spatial Information Science and Engineering, University of Maine [email protected] Michael Esfeld Center for Philosophy of Science, University of Konstanz, Germany [email protected] Douglas Flewelling NCGIA, University of Maine [email protected] Michael Goodchild NCGIA and Department of Geography, UC Santa Barbara [email protected] Violet Gray Dept of Geography, UC Santa Barbara [email protected] 42 Kathleen Hornsby NCGIA, University of Maine [email protected] Geoffrey Jacquez BioMedware, Inc. [email protected] Karen Kemp NCGIA, UC Santa Barbara [email protected] David Mark NCGIA and Department of Geography, State University of New York [email protected] Jeremy Mennis Department of Geography, Pennsylvania State University [email protected] Donald Myers Department of Mathematics, University of Arizona [email protected] Donna Peuquet Department of Geography, Pennsylvania State University [email protected] Brandon Plewe Department of Geography, Brigham Young University [email protected] Barry Smith Department of Philosophy, State University of New York [email protected] Daniel Sui Department of Geography, Texas A&M University [email protected] C. Dana Tomlin Yale University [email protected] Barbara Tversky Department of Psychology, Stanford University [email protected] Achille Varzi Department of Philosophy, Columbia University [email protected] Nancy Yattaw GIS Resource Group [email protected] Andrej Vckovski Netcetera AG, Zurich, Switzerland [email protected] | {
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The Russellian Retreat clayton littlejohn king's college london p r o c e e d i n g s o f t h e a r i s t o t e l i a n s o c i e t y issue 3 | volume cxiii | 2012 2013 1 8 8 8 | c e l e b r a t i n g 1 2 5 y e a r s | 2 0 1 3 D r a f tP a p e r p r o c e e d i n g s o f t h e a r i s t o t e l i a n s o c i e t y 1 3 4 t h s e s s i o n i s s u e n o . 3 v o l u m e c x 1 1 1 2 0 1 2 2 0 1 3 t h e r u s s e l l i a n r e t r e a t c l a y t o n l i t t l e j o h n k i n g ' s c o l l e g e l o n d o n m o n d a y, 2 0 m a y 2 0 1 3 1 7 . 3 0 1 9 . 1 5 t h e w o b u r n s u i t e s e n a t e h o u s e u n i v e r s i t y o f l o n d o n m a l e t s t r e e t l o n d o n w c 1 e 7 h u u n i t e d k i n g d o m This event is catered, free of charge, & open to the general public c o n t a c t [email protected] www.aristoteliansociety.org.uk © 2013 the aristotelian society b i o g r a p h y Clayton Littlejohn is Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy at King's College London. His publications include Justification and the Truth-Connection (Cambridge University Press, 2012), This is Epistemology (Wiley, Forthcoming), and Epistemic Norms, edited with John Turri (Oxford University Press, Forthcoming). His current research concerns the relation between theoretical and practical reason. e d i t o r i a l n o t e The following paper is a draft version that can only be cited with the author's permission. The final paper will be published in Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Issue No. 3, Volume CXIII (2013). Please visit the Society's website for subscription information: www.aristoteliansociety.org.uk. t h e r u s s e l l i a n r e t r e a t c l a y t o n l i t t l e j o h n ! A standard approach to epistemic normativity starts from the idea that belief aims at the truth. On this truth-first approach, all epistemic norms are thought to be grounded in the norm of truth. I shall argue that this approach cannot explain some important features of epistemic assessment. One of the virtues of the knowledge-first approach to epistemic normativity is that it can explain why epistemic assessment has the inward looking character that it does. A commonly held view about the relation between belief and truth is that the one aims at the other.1 This talk of aims is metaphorical. The best way to interpret this metaphor is in normative terms. If your beliefs don't fit the facts, they are defective. They shouldn't be like that and you shouldn't have beliefs like that. I haven't said much, but suppose that everything I've said is true. Is it important? Some think that it is very important. The dominant view in current epistemology seems to be that the fundamental epistemic norm is a truth-norm. This norm grounds all the other epistemic norms and explains why epistemic assessment has the concerns that it does. The truth-first approach to epistemic normativity is undeniably attractive. It seems rather plausible that a belief is correct only if it is true. It also seems rather plausible that it is not a brute fact that epistemic assessment is concerned with facts about your evidence or the way you reason. As Michael Lynch puts it, "we take it to be correct to believe what is based on evidence because beliefs based on evidence are likely to be true, and thus the value of truth ... is more basic than the value of believing what is based on evidence".2 The trouble with the truth-first approach is not that it commits you to saying lots of false things or prevents you from saying lots of true things. The problem is that it is wrong about one very important thing. If the correct approach to epistemic normativity starts from the idea that the fundamental epistemic norm has to do with truth, it seems that we might be able to say everything that needs to be said about epistemic normativity without saying anything at all about knowledge. Although the view isn't universally held, it's widely thought that knowledge has no !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ! 1 See Boghossian (2008), Littlejohn (2012), Millar (2004), Shah (2006), Shah and Velleman (2005), Wedgwood (2002b), Williams (1973), and Whiting (2012). 2 Lynch (2009: 229). clayton littlejohn the russellian retreat draft paper ! 2 deontic significance. There is no duty to know and no duty not to believe what you don't know. Richard Foley has long defended the view that there are two fundamental questions in epistemology. One question is a question about what we ought to believe. The other is a question about what we can know. He thinks that the failure of the Cartesian project shows that these questions have to be addressed independently. Since there is no method or procedure we can use that's guaranteed to provide us with knowledge, facts about what we can know tell us little if anything about what we should believe.3 Crispin Wright once suggested that we could live with the concession that we don't know some of the things that we believe provided that we can still say that we're justified in holding these beliefs.4 This is the 'Russellian Retreat', a stance Russell and Wright think you should adopt once you recognize that you have to settle for 'probability, defeasibility, and inconclusive justifications'. I think this is a mistake that's symptomatic of the failure to appreciate the normative significance of knowledge. None of us can take comfort in the thought that we're justified in holding our beliefs once we've been forced to concede that we shouldn't believe what we do, but this is just what this Russellian Retreat amounts to. i. The truth-first view says that the fundamental epistemic norm is a truthnorm. There are various ways of formulating such norms, but we shall focus on this one: T: You should not believe p unless p is true. So stated, the truth-norm states only a prohibition. It tells you that you shouldn't believe falsehoods, not that you should believe truths. So far as this norm is concerned, we might have no positive epistemic duties to believe anything at all. I think this is a virtue of the present formulation. I don't think there are positive epistemic duties to believe. It also doesn't say whether it's permissible to believe anything at all. I also think that this is a virtue of the present formulation. It's plausible that you're permitted to believe any proposition you entertain, so long as you don't violate any epistemic norms. We don't need a norm to tell us what we may believe. Once we see that we've satisfied the norms that govern belief, we know we're in the clear. Critics have criticized the truth-first approach to epistemic normativity on the grounds that the truth-norm is both too restrictive !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ! 3 See Foley (2001: 13; 2012: 127). 4 Wright (1991: 88). clayton littlejohn the russellian retreat draft paper ! 3 too permissive. Those who claim that it is too restrictive argue that there is simply no obligation to refrain from believing falsehoods.5 Those who argue that it is too permissive think that it's a problem for the truth-first approach that there's more to meeting your epistemic obligations than simply fitting your beliefs to the facts.6 I don't think there's much to the first objection and I'll briefly explain why. Most of our discussion will focus on the second objection. Some epistemologists find both objections compelling. They tend to embrace a kind of evidentialist view according to which the fundamental epistemic norm has to do with relations of 'proper fit' between your evidence and your beliefs. Feldman claims that things are not going terribly well for you if you irrationally believe lots of true propositions. He's right about that. It would be a mistake, however, to adopt his reductive approach to epistemic normativity and hold that the only normatively significant relations hold between your beliefs and your evidence for them. His proposal runs into two problems. The first has to do the having-relation, the relation between you and your evidence. This relation has to be understood in normative terms. If you have something as part of your evidence, you have the right to rely on it as evidence. These rights do not always arise from relations of proper fit between your evidence and your beliefs. Whether you acquire a piece of evidence non-inferentially depends upon whether you're properly related to the facts and your evidence does not determine whether you stand in the proper relation. The second problem has to do with support relations. Arguably, evidence consists of facts or true propositions. Plausibly, your evidence consists of only things that you believe. In rejecting the truth-norm, the evidentialist has to accept the first evidential norm ('the evidential-norm' henceforth) but reject the second as spurious: E: You should not believe p unless you have adequate evidence to believe p. H: You should not believe p unless you have p as part of your evidence.7 The reason they have to reject H is that evidence consists of facts or true propositions, not falsehoods. If you can meet your epistemic obligations !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ! 5 See Alston (1989), Cohen (1984), Conee (2000), Feldman (2000), and Steup (2001). 6 See Conee (1992), Feldman (2002), Maitzen (1995), Vahid (2006), and Williamson (2000) for versions of this objection. 7 Some epistemologists seem to think that there's a 'high bar' to evidence possession (e.g., your evidence consists of certainties). I don't. The evidence you have consists of those facts that you have the right to treat as a reason for forming further beliefs. (Having said that, I think Schroeder's (2011) bar is set too low.) clayton littlejohn the russellian retreat draft paper ! 4 whilst violating the truth-norm, you can meet your epistemic obligations whilst violating H. That means that H isn't a genuine epistemic norm if T isn't a genuine norm. By rejecting H, the evidentialist has to say that the normative standing of your beliefs depends upon the support it receives, but not upon whether it can provide support. This is a very odd idea. Justification is closed under known entailment. So long as you justifiably believe p, you have sufficient justification to believe p's known consequences. If you don't have sufficient justification to believe p's known consequences, you must not have the right to believe p in the first place. This closure principle does not sit terribly well with the idea that the normative standing of a belief is determined entirely by what supports it but doesn't depend at all upon whether it can lend support of its own. Standing at the stop, Audrey seems to remember that the buses don't run past 7:00. Her watch tells her that it's 7:45. She infers that there won't be a bus. There are two ways of filling out the details of the case. Here's one. On the basis of mountains of evidence, she falsely believed that the buses don't run past 7:00. She's long since forgotten what those reasons were, but they were good enough according to the evidentialist. The positive standing of her belief can persist even when she's forgotten her original grounds. Let's suppose that that's happened. Since she (allegedly) justifiably believes now that the bus doesn't run past 7:00 and knows that it's 7:45, the closure principle says that she has sufficient justification to believe that there won't be a bus coming until tomorrow. She competently infers this. Surely she doesn't now believe for sufficient evidence that the bus won't come again until tomorrow. Neither the fact that she believes nor the fact that she seems to recall is among her reasons for believing that the bus won't come again until tomorrow. While these facts are known to her, they cannot explain the normative standing of her belief that the bus won't come until tomorrow because she doesn't believe for these reasons and these reasons aren't sufficient on their own. What Audrey takes to be a reason is that the bus doesn't run after 7:00. That's not a reason to believe anything at all. We could have filled out the details of the case differently. We could say that Audrey remembers. She knowingly judges that the bus won't come again until tomorrow. In this version of the story, she does have adequate reason to believe that the bus won't come again tomorrow- it's that the bus doesn't run past 7:00. We can retain closure and do justice to our intuitions about the persistence of normative standing across time if we insist that the normative standing of a belief depends upon whether it provides reasons, not simply upon whether it was once supported by additional reasons. If we do this, we'd have to accept H. If clayton littlejohn the russellian retreat draft paper ! 5 we accept H, we have to accept the truth-norm.8 The trouble with the truth-norm can't be that it's too demanding if there's no denying that this norm governs belief.9 The more pressing problem for the truth-first approach is that the truth-norm seems too permissive. There is more to meeting your epistemic obligations than simply fitting your beliefs to the facts. Advocates of the truth-first approach have to explain how this could be. Let's consider two related explanatory challenges to the truth-first approach. The first has to do with the normative significance of your evidence. The trouble with evidentialism isn't with the idea that the evidence matters, but that the evidence matters to the exclusion of everything else. You cannot meet your epistemic obligations unless you have adequate reasons for your beliefs. Moreover, you haven't met your epistemic obligations unless you believe for good reasons. Audrey might believe that her father wasn't involved in what happened at the mill because she just cannot bear the thought that that was something he'd do. If her belief in her father's innocence isn't based on good reasons, it doesn't matter that she happens to have good reasons available to her. She hasn't met her epistemic obligations unless she puts things together in the right way and (thereby?) believes for good reasons. Finally, only considerations that bear on the truth of what you believe can be reasons to believe. The truth-norm is formulated as a prohibition against believing falsehoods. The truth-first approach has to explain why epistemic assessment has its inward looking focus. Why should it be concerned with the relation between good reasons to believe and the reasons for which you believe? The second set of explanatory challenges has to do with understanding the relations between two kinds of epistemic norm. Some !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ! 8 Bird (2004) appeals to cases like this one to argue that some of our evidence is acquired via inference. 9 Some authors (e.g., Cohen (1984)) think that any reasonably held belief is justified. A number of authors also hold that any justified belief conforms to the norms that govern belief. Since it's possible to reasonably believe falsehoods, it might seem that it should be possible to believe falsehoods without violating any of the norms that govern belief. In Littlejohn (2009), I argued that it's a mistake to think of reasonably held beliefs as justified on the grounds that you could not be excused for failing to conform to a norm unless it would be reasonable for you to believe that you conformed to the norm. If reasonableness is necessary for excusable violations of norms, it cannot be the mark of justification. In the recent literature, a number of authors have argued that it is possible to violate the norms that govern belief whilst having justified beliefs. See Bird (2007), for example. Luke Sutton (2007), I think that this is a mistake. Nothing much turns on this in this paper, however. We can, following Bird, say that your belief is justified if it conforms to the norms governing belief or fails to do so for reasons that you were non-culpably ignorant of. All that matters for our purposes is that any failure to believe with justification is a failure to conform to a norm, not whether any failure to conform to a norm means a failure to believe with justification. clayton littlejohn the russellian retreat draft paper ! 6 epistemic norms are formulated in such a way that they pertain directly to your beliefs (e.g., the truth-norm and the evidential-norm). Some epistemic norms have to do with theoretical reasoning or doxastic deliberation. Examples would include norms that tell us not to treat certain considerations as reasons to believe or prohibit certain kinds of inferential transitions. To introduce some terminology, let's call the norms that apply directly to beliefs 'doxastic norms' and the norms that determine whether you've deliberated properly 'deliberative norms'. There appears to be consensus that the normative standing of a belief depends, in part, upon whether you've conformed to deliberative norms in coming to believe. If the truth-norm truly is the fundamental epistemic norm, the truth-first approach takes the fundamental epistemic norm to be a doxastic norm. Since we can conform to this norm however we form our beliefs, it's not obvious how the advocates of the truth-first approach can account for the normativity of deliberative norms. If you violate some deliberative norms in forming your beliefs, you haven't met your epistemic obligations. If what matters fundamentally is the fit between belief and fact, why should facts about how you try to fit your beliefs to the facts have any further normative significance? ii. Given just the resources of the truth-account, how can advocates of this approach account for the fact that epistemic assessment has the inward looking focus that it does? One place to look might be Shah's defense of evidentialism.10 As he sees it, the fact that belief is governed by the truthnorm explains why only considerations that bear on the truth of what we believe can constitute a reason to believe. If he's right, this might help to explain why epistemic assessment is concerned with whether your beliefs are based on adequate evidence. The starting point for his argument that only evidence can constitute a reason to believe is the idea that those who grasp the concept of belief grasp that it is governed by the truth-norm. Those who grasp the concept of belief understand that the truth-norm captures the standard of correctness for belief. If doxastic deliberation is framed by the question whether to believe p, an individual who engages in such deliberation will grasp that only truth-related considerations can have any bearing upon whether to believe p. For this reason, Shah says, only such considerations can figure in doxastic deliberation. After all, nothing can be a reason to X unless it can figure in reasoning that disposes you to X. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ! 10 See Shah (2003) and Shah and Velleman (2005). clayton littlejohn the russellian retreat draft paper ! 7 Every part of this explanation is controversial, but let's grant each of his assumptions for the purposes of this discussion.11 While Shah's argument suggests that certain kinds of considerations cannot constitute reasons for belief, it doesn't seem to lend any support to the idea that you need good evidence for your beliefs to meet your epistemic obligations.12 If, say, Audrey comes to believe correctly that her father could not have started that fire on the basis of wishful thinking, it's not clear on the truth-first approach what epistemic wrong she's committed. She doesn't violate the truth-norm and she didn't deliberate from any non-evidential reasons. If the argument cannot vindicate that evidentialnorm, we don't have an explanation as to why epistemic assessment is concerned with your evidence and the way you've handled it. Someone could say that Shah's argument shows that there are deliberative epistemic norms that require us to exclude practical considerations from doxastic deliberation. It might seem that it's a short step from this to the further claim that factors unrelated to the truth of your beliefs shouldn't influence your beliefs. Even this doesn't seem to follow. If they show anything, Shah's arguments seem to show that certain kinds of considerations cannot figure in doxastic deliberation and so cannot constitute reasons to believe. To derive any normative conclusions from this about what the right to believe requires (e.g., that it requires reasoning from considerations that bear on the truth of what you believe), we'd need the further assumption that the right to believe depends upon whether your beliefs were formed in response to adequate reasons. That's a very plausible assumption, but it doesn't receive any support from Shah's argument. Let's try a different tack. In the course of addressing the worry that the truth-norm is too 'objective' to be a genuine norm, various writers have proposed that there are also 'subjective' norms that have to do with evidence and rationality. Wedgwood, for example, distinguishes between different readings of 'ought'.13 On an objective reading, 'You ought not believe p' is true if p is false. On another, 'You ought not believe p' is true if it would not be rational for you to believe p. If Wedgwood is right that it's rational to believe p only if it makes sense for someone in your position to believe p given the aim of believing what's true and what it makes sense for you to believe depends upon your evidence, we seem to have the makings of a truth-first vindication of the evidential-norm.14 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ! 11 See Hieronymi (2006) for a critical discussion. 12 Shah never explicitly claims that it does. Raz (2011: 40) seems inclined to say that Shah's argument for evidentialism does help to explain why evidence has the normative significance we ordinarily take it to. 13 Wedgwood (2002b). 14 Wedgwood (2002a). clayton littlejohn the russellian retreat draft paper ! 8 One potential problem with this approach to motivating the evidential-norm is that it's not at all clear what we've accepted in accepting that there's a sense in which you 'ought' to conform to the evidential-norm. Does this view say that you ought-subjectively believe only with evidence but may-objectively believe without it? If that's the view, it must be mistaken. Coop thought that Audrey's father was responsible for what happened at the mill, but he's started to have some doubts. In asking himself whether he should think that Audrey's father was responsible, it seems there's one and only question he has in mind. He wants to know whether he ought-really believe Audrey's father is involved. We now have three readings of 'ought', an objective reading, a subjective reading, and the sense of 'ought' that the conscientious and reflective subject has in mind. It seems that Audrey has two perfectly good ways of showing that Coop ought-really not believe her father was responsible for what happened at the mill. She might show that Coop couldn't have had any evidence of her father's involvement. He shouldreally not believe Audrey's father was involved because he shouldsubjectively not believe. She might show that Coop ought-really not believe her father was responsible by showing that he wasn't involved. He should-really not believe that her father was involved because he should-objectively not believe. Introducing different senses of 'ought' doesn't explain why overall epistemic obligation depends upon objective and subjective conditions. We need to explain how overall obligation depends upon both sorts of conditions to understand the relevance of the different readings of the epistemic 'ought'. I suppose that someone could argue that these different senses of 'ought' should be introduced to explain why it appears that objective and subjective conditions both appear to work together to determine overall obligation. Someone could then argue that the challenge to explain how both sorts of factors work together to determine overall obligation is mistaken. When it comes to what you should-objectively believe, truth is all that matters.15 To further motivate the thought that there must be more to your epistemic obligations than simply believing what's true, consider cases of Moorean absurdities. There doesn't seem to be any sense in which someone believes what she 'ought' or as she 'ought' if she believes the following: (i) Audrey's father was involved, but I have no reason to think that he was. (ii) Audrey's father set the fire, but I don't know that he did. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ! 15 A number of people have suggested that it's a mistake to try to show that false beliefs are defective and so objectively not as they ought to be. At best, poor reasoning or bad evidence shows that the deliberation that precedes belief is defective. The defects aren't inherited by the belief itself. clayton littlejohn the russellian retreat draft paper ! 9 It would seem that belief in (i) or (ii), if possible, must surely be defective regardless of whether the propositions believed are true. Advocates of the truth-first approach should try to explain why there's a gap between believing what's true and meeting your objective epistemic obligations.16 Like Wedgwood, Boghossian thinks that there are subjective obligations associated with the objective obligation to conform to the truth-norm. He seems to think that there is a general connection between norms that aren't 'transparent' and derivative norms that can be followed directly: Traders on the stock markets are attempting to comply with the rule: Buy low, sell high. But there is no direct way to recognize when a stock's price is low ... So traders follow certain other rules as a means of attempting to comply with the non-transparent rule that truly captures the aim of their trading activity ... Just so, I think, with the 'objective' norm that one ought to believe only what's true. Once again, this is not a rule that can be followed directly, but one that can only be followed by following certain other rules, the so-called norms of rational belief. For example: that we ought to believe that which is supported by the evidence and not believe that which has no support ... But, just as before, our story would be incomplete if we left out the fact that our following of these rules is a means of following the norm that we ought to believe only what is true. All of these norms are grounded in the objective norm of truth.17 Is this more promising? Even if we cannot determine directly whether we conform to the truth-norm and so have to try to do so indirectly by assessing the evidence, it's not clear what right Boghossian has to say that there are additional norms that govern the means we use when we try to conform to the truth-norm. It might be true that whenever you ought to X, you ought to adopt the means necessary for X-ing, but the situation we're considering isn't one in which conforming to an additional norm (e.g., the evidential-norm) is necessary as a means to conforming to the truthnorm. You can believe what's true without believing for any good reason at all. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ! 16 Even if it's not possible to believe (i) or (ii), it's possible to believe collections of propositions like this: (iii) the only reason I could have to think that Audrey's father was involved was Audrey's testimony, (iv) Audrey told me that her father was involved, but (v) Audrey isn't trustworthy and so nobody can know anything on the basis of her sayso. The set consisting of (iii)-(v) is consistent. It is a contingent matter whether the elements of the set are true. Still, nobody should believe (iii)-(v). Anyone who properly believes (v) ought to suspend judgment on (iii) or (iv). 17 Boghossian (2008: 101). clayton littlejohn the russellian retreat draft paper ! 10 I don't think Boghossian's rationale for recognizing an evidentialnorm is simply that we need to follow the evidence in order to believe the truth. We all know that it's possible to believe truths without believing on the basis of any evidence at all. Sometimes good things happen for bad thinkers. If I had to hazard a guess, I think he thinks that there are norms that govern the means we use to try to conform to the truth-norm that's grounded in the truth-norm because he thinks of norms as things that should be followed. There's more to following a norm than simply conforming to it. If there are additional steps that need to be taken to follow a norm that has non-transparent application conditions and norms are the sorts of things that ought to be followed, there will be normative constraints on the means we adopt to conform to a norm. If this is right, this should vindicate the evidential-norm and explain why there should be deliberative epistemic norms. iii. This, then, is the proposal we have before us. The fundamental epistemic norm is a doxastic norm, the truth-norm. This norm's status as a fundamental norm does not turn on whether there are other epistemic norms. It depends upon whether it derives its authority from some more fundamental epistemic norm. Thus, advocates of the truthfirst approach don't have to deny that there are additional epistemic norms that have to do with evidence and doxastic deliberation. This norm's status as the fundamental epistemic norm implies that all other epistemic norms derive their status from it. The substance or the content of the fundamental epistemic norm isn't supposed to explain on its own why there are derivative epistemic norms. Part of the explanation has to do with the point of norms. Norms are the sorts of things that you're supposed to follow. The reasons associated with them, the guiding reasons, are the sorts of things that you should be guided by. As Boghossian and Wedgwood remind us, we cannot follow the truth-norm directly. To follow it, we need to reason. To reason as we ought to reason, we have to reason in ways that enable us to follow the truth-norm. Thus, it's not surprising that there are deliberative epistemic norms that tell us that there are ways we shouldn't reason and would tell us not to draw the conclusions arrived at by means of defective deliberation. As Shah has argued, if we seek to conform to the truthnorm, we cannot try to settle the question whether p by deliberating on the basis of considerations unrelated to the truth or falsity of p. Thus, it's not surprising that the epistemic norms would require us to believe only on the basis of evidence. Everything seems to hang together quite nicely if we combine the truth-norm with a further claim about what norms are supposed to do clayton littlejohn the russellian retreat draft paper ! 11 and what their reasons require of us. The question I want to take up in this section is whether this further claim about reasons and their demands is correct. Let me contrast two ways of thinking about guiding reasons (i.e., the reasons associated with norms that apply to you and demand things from you).18 According to the first way of thinking about guiding reasons, guiding reasons should be thought of as guides. They are things that you should follow and be guided by. To be guided by them, you need to be cognizant of them and they need to be operative. On this approach, guiding reasons (typically) demand compliance. A reason to X wants you to X out of consideration of this very reason or for this very reason. Any failure to do what a reason requires constitutes a wrong, and so this account implies that it would be wrongful to, say, believe without being guided by the reasons that bear on whether to believe. Thus, irrationally believing truths would be wrongful just as rationally believing falsehoods would be. According to a second approach, guiding reasons are thought of as guidelines. So far as they're concerned, guidelines don't want to be crossed. That's their sole concern. You don't need to be cognizant of them. Reasons cannot be operative if you're not cognizant of them. Since they don't demand your attention, they don't demand any role in deliberation. On this account, reasons (typically) demand nothing more than conformity. A reason to X wants you to X and is satisfied iff you X. Any failure to do what the reasons require is a wrong. There are no wrongs without a failure to do what the reasons demand. If this conformity account is combined with the truth-first approach, the distinction between believing what's right and 'right believing' is lost. Thus, it might seem that the conformity account is implausible weak. It's widely thought that evidence for p can be a reason to believe p. It's also widely thought that you aren't in a position to judge that p if you don't appreciate the force of the reasons you have to believe p. You shouldn't believe p unless the reasons for which you believe are themselves good reasons to do so. If this is so, it doesn't look like the mere conformity account can do justice to this. The advocates the truth-first approach might have their reasons for preferring the compliance account to the conformity account, but are these reasons any good? I suppose that if there were good reasons for thinking that the truth-norm was the fundamental epistemic norm, the account would be very attractive. The account seems to explain various features of epistemic assessment that otherwise seem rather puzzling. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ! 18 For a helpful discussion of these two ways of thinking about guiding reasons, see Raz (1975) and Gardner (2007). clayton littlejohn the russellian retreat draft paper ! 12 Unfortunately, it looks like the compliance account is deeply problematic. I don't think guiding reasons are supposed to guide us in the way that the compliance account suggests. If the compliance account captures an important truth about guiding reasons and their demands, it would presumably tell us something important about guiding reasons of all sorts. If the reason that epistemic assessment has the inward looking character that it does is down to the fact that guiding reasons as such are supposed to guide us and we ought to be guided by them, practical assessment should also have this inward focus. In the course of attacking the doctrine of double effect, Thomson attacks this very idea: It is a very odd idea ... that a person's intentions play a role in fixing what he may or may not do ... Suppose a pilot comes to us with a request for advice: "See, we're at war with a villainous country called Bad, and my superiors have ordered me to drop some bombs at Placetown in Bad. Now there's a munitions factory at Placetown, but there's a children's hospital there too. Is it permissible for me to drop the bombs? And suppose we make the following reply: "Well, it all depends on what your intentions would be ... If you would be intending to destroy the munitions factory and thereby win the war, merely foreseeing, though not intending, the deaths of the children, then yes, you may drop the bombs. On the other hand, if you would be intending to destroy the children ... then no, you may not drop the bombs" ... Can anyone really think that the pilot should decide whether he may drop the bombs by looking inward for the intention with which he would be dropping them if he dropped them?19 Like Thomson, I can't believe that we'd need to scrutinize the pilot's intentions to determine whether he'd act permissibly in dropping the bombs. We should be focused on things like the children, the factory, and the cause. Unfortunately, not everyone sees the reductios that Thomson and I see. Some people think that we should look at the agent's intentions and should think that the agent's reasons are among the factors that determine whether the agent acted permissibly.20 To show that the compliance account is wrong about guiding reasons in the practical case, I'll need more than this clever example. I'll need some arguments. Ross' argument against the deontic relevance of motives can be turned into an argument against the compliance account.21 He focuses on the motive of duty, but nothing turns on whether we focus on this !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ! 19 Thomson (1991: 293). 20 Hanser (2005). 21 Ross (1930). As Sverdlik notes, however, such arguments don't show that motives are deontically irrelevant, only that your duty isn't to act from them. You might have obligations not to act on certain motives. For a discussion, see Sverdlik (1996). clayton littlejohn the russellian retreat draft paper ! 13 motive or another. He thinks that the claim that your duty is to return what you owe from the motive of duty conflicts with the categoricity of moral reasons. Choice cannot produce a motive, such as the motive of duty. You can only choose to perform an act of a certain type. You might be able to cultivate certain motives over time and bring it about that you have the appropriate motive at some later time, but that has no bearing on what your present obligation is. Your present obligation is to return what you owe. If you can do your duty without acting for an undefeated reason, your duty isn't to act for an undefeated reason that demands that you return what you owe. This is a strike against the compliance account. Consider a second objection to the compliance account. To comply with a reason to X, it has to be the reason for which you X. For it to be the reason for which you X, you have to be cognizant of that reason and that reason has to be operative. The reason cannot be motivationally idle. Any failure to meet the demands the reasons place upon you renders your response (or non-response) wrongful. It might not be all things considered wrong, but wrong to some extent. A reason that you're aware of might be motivationally idle. A reason that you're not aware of must be. Think about the reasons that you're non-culpably ignorant of. You cannot follow them. They cannot be the reason for which you believe or do anything. If what reasons demand is that you follow them, it would be wrong for you to fail to follow them even when you're ignorant of them. If you're non-culpably ignorant of them, the wrong might be excused, but the thought that there's a wrong to excuse or to try to justify doesn't ring true. If anything, it rings false. Here's a third objection to the compliance account. There can be cases of overdetermination in which there are two perfectly adequate undefeated reasons to X. Coop has two reasons to kiss. One reason is romantic. The other has to do with the greater good. As Austin reminds us Of all pleasures bodily or mental, the pleasures of mutual love ... are the most enduring and varied. They therefore contribute largely to swell the sum of the well-being ... But, though he approves of love ... it was never contended or conceived, by a sound, orthodox utilitarian, that the lover should kiss his mistress with an eye to the common weal.22 If Coop kisses for romantic reasons (and not because the kiss serves the greater good), the action isn't wrongful for that. If Coop hasn't failed to do what the reasons require, the reasons that lined up on the same side aren't disappointed when only one of them is operative. If the idle reasons don't demand compliance, reasons don't require compliance. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ! 22 Austin (1954: 108) taken from Sverdlik (2011: 45). clayton littlejohn the russellian retreat draft paper ! 14 Their demands don't diminish simply because they're lined up alongside further reasons. Of course, someone could say that it would be overkill to act for all the reasons that apply to you. Why can't the compliance account say that your duty is always to act for some undefeated reason or other? My worry about this response is that it's obscure what the rationale would be for such a principle. On the compliance account, the principle couldn't be grounded in the demands of any of the individual reasons that apply to you because they each demand compliance. Someone could offer an instrumental justification of the principle on the grounds that we'll do better a better job conforming if we always act for a good reason, but I don't think the instrumental justification could go far enough. Audrey might be clever enough to work out that the reasons warranted her in attacking her old rival and she might do so in order to settle an old score. If we want to explain why her actions were wrongful, we couldn't appeal to the instrumental principle to do that because she was clever enough to wait to settle the score for there to be adequate reasons for her to act. Here is a fourth and final objection to the compliance account. Think about reasons to render aid. You might have a reason to jump into the pond to pull a child to safety. You might not be alone in this. There might be a handful of people well positioned to pull the child to safety. If you don't move to act quickly and someone else pulls the child to safety, there's nothing that the reasons demanded from you that you've failed to do. If reasons required compliance, wouldn't they require you to be moved to act? (Upon seeing someone else start to swim to the child, you don't have reasons to jump in and outswim them!) It's hard to reconcile the observation the reason is indifferent to whether you were moved to act with the thought that the reasons demanded that you act out of respect for them. Someone might say that reasons only demand that somebody bring it about that the child is pulled free. I can't quite see how this would help the account, but let's modify the example. Why should it matter that it's someone rather than something? If a passing turtle or log brings the child to safety, there's nothing left that the reasons required from you that you've left undone. An action is one way amongst many of bringing about the state of affairs that there's reason to bring about. If something other than an action can be adequate, it's hard to see what's left of the view that a reason's demands include a demand that the agent's agency is exercised in some particular way. iv. The objections discussed in the previous section might not show that reasons demand conformity and nothing further, but they do show that clayton littlejohn the russellian retreat draft paper ! 15 they do not invariably demand compliance. If they don't demand compliance, then it's not true that we ought to be guided by them. We shouldn't expect that there should invariably be an intimate connection between the norms that governing the reasoning that leads us to believe or to act and the norms governing beliefs and actions. It should not be surprising that, as Thomson notes, the normative appraisal of actions is outward looking and focuses on whether the agent's actions fit the situation. The truth-first approach tries to get normative assessment of an individual's reasons and reasoning into the picture by arguing that reasons by their very nature demand a role in our reasoning. This picture is mistaken. Reason only has work to do when you're in danger of acting against reasons or violating a norm. Sometimes you just get lucky and there's no reason for you to worry about violating a norm. When this happens, reason doesn't have to remind you about the guidelines or help you steer between them. In doing nothing, it did all that it needed to. If this is right, what role, if any, does reason and reasoning play in helping you do what the reasons and norms would have you do? It would play a mere facilitating role. If reasoning gets you back into conformity, it's done all that it needs to do. In light of this, it is striking that epistemic appraisal does focus on the relationship between explanatory and guiding reasons. If we reject the compliance account, we should be puzzled as to why this should be. If it doesn't matter in the practical case whether the reasons for which you act are among the good, undefeated reasons to so act, it is a surprising fact that epistemic assessment is concerned with the relation between guiding and explanatory reasons. It's surprising that acting for a reason that isn't an undefeated reason to so act isn't a kind of wrong but believing without believing for an undefeated reason is a kind of wrong. Here's an explanation as to why epistemic assessment differs from practical assessment. Epistemic assessment is concerned with the relation between guiding and explanatory reasons because truth isn't the fundamental norm of belief. Knowledge is the fundamental norm of belief: K: You should not believe p unless you know that p is true.23 To conform to the knowledge norm, you have to believe only what you know. Whether you know depends upon whether the reasons for which you believe are among the genuine reasons there are to believe p. That's !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ! 23 Sutton (2007) and Williamson (2000) defend the view that the knowledge norm is the fundamental epistemic norm. Although I argued in Littlejohn (2012) that their approach was mistaken, I've since changed my mind for reasons discussed here. clayton littlejohn the russellian retreat draft paper ! 16 why epistemic assessment is concerned with the relation between explanatory and guiding reasons. The content of the fundamental epistemic norm explains why this should be. It shouldn't be explained in terms of some false claims about what norms are supposed to do or what reasons require. v. There are two ways to resist the argument for the knowledge norm. The first is to argue that I've overlooked some important asymmetry. One might say that the demands of practical and epistemic reasons differ. Practical reasons don't demand compliance, but epistemic reasons do. The second strategy for resisting the argument is to argue that reasons are more demanding than the conformity account would have us believe even if they're less demanding than the compliance account makes them out to be. So long as they demand more than conformity, the truth-first approach might have the resources for explaining why epistemic assessment is concerned with the relation between explanatory and guiding reasons. The first response won't do. The cases that undermined the compliance account of practical reasons can easily be modified to undermine the compliance account of epistemic reasons. Ross thought that the compliance account conflicted with the categoricity of practical reasons and I think there's a similar conflict in the epistemic case. There is presently a debate about whether it's permissible to believe lottery propositions. I say that it isn't. Others disagree. They have their reasons and they aren't terrible reasons, but they are wrong. (Let's suppose.) Coop thinks you can have sufficient grounds for believing lottery propositions and he has good grounds for thinking this. He holds a ticket for a drawing that took place last night and he doesn't know what the results were. He has evidence for his belief (i.e., he knows how lotteries work and so appreciates that it's very unlikely that his ticket won), but he still shouldn't hold this belief. He ought to get rid of this belief. Thus, there is decisive reason for him to do so. This reason cannot play any sort of guiding role. To be guided by it, he would have to be cognizant of it and moved by it. To be cognizant of it, it seems that he would have to believe correctly that he has such a reason. To believe what he ought about this reason, this further belief would have to be reasonable in light of his evidence. It couldn't be. He's in the grips of a false theory that's supported by good reasons that mislead him. Maybe there's just no sound route of reasoning that would show him that he has decisive reason to suspend judgment on lottery propositions. We have a situation in which it seems (i) the truth-account clayton littlejohn the russellian retreat draft paper ! 17 should say that he shouldn't take himself to have a decisive reason to get rid of this belief and (ii) he should get rid of the belief. It's unfortunate that there's no good route of reasoning available to him that would show him that he ought to rid himself of his lottery belief, but that's what duty requires. The categoricity of the evidential-norm that enjoins us not to believe lottery propositions seems to be at odds with the idea the reasons associated with this norm ought to guide us. All we need to do to conform to the evidential-norm is not believe the lottery proposition. We don't have to stop believing for the right reason (i.e., an appreciation of the evidential-norm and its application to the case of lottery propositions). Someone might object to the use of this sort of case because the guiding reason at issue is not a piece of evidence. I want the case to tell us something important about epistemic reasons, but the relevant reason in the case is not a piece of evidence. Some authors seem to think that all epistemic reasons are pieces of evidence. As Raz puts it, "Epistemic reasons are reasons for believing in a proposition through being facts that are part of a case for (belief in) its truth" and any reason that's a reason against believing something is a reason to believe its negation.24 My reason doesn't act like this. The fact that you don't have sufficient evidence to believe a lottery proposition is a reason not to believe the proposition but it isn't evidence for the proposition's negation. Because my reason doesn't play by these rules, what right do I have to claim that it is an epistemic reason? The fact that you don't have enough evidence or the right kind of evidence to believe p seems to explain why you shouldn't believe p. I'm assuming that Raz is right that whenever you ought or ought not X, there are reasons that explain why this should be.25 I don't see how pieces of evidence could play this explanatory role. Someone might say that my reason is non-standard because it isn't a reason we can follow in reasoning. I don't think that's right. You cannot believe a proposition or its negation on the basis of the fact that there's not sufficient evidence, but you can certainly suspend judgment for this reason. When there are epistemic obligations to suspend, there are reasons that we need to explain why the suspension is mandatory and I don't think evidence is terribly well suited for this role.26 Once we recognize that epistemic reasons aren't limited to pieces of evidence, their categoricity causes trouble for the thought that our duty is to be guided by the epistemic reasons that apply to us. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ! 24 Raz (2011: 36). 25 Raz (2011: 25). 26 As Adler (2002) and Gibbons (2013) observe, the acknowledged fact that nobody is in a position to know whether p is a decisive reason to refrain from believing p and from believing ~p. That nobody can know whether p is a reason against believing p but it isn't a reason to believe ~p. clayton littlejohn the russellian retreat draft paper ! 18 Remember that one objection to the compliance account had to do with ignorance of the reasons. If you're ignorant of some reason, you can't be moved by that reason. And if reasons require compliance, you can't comply with the reasons that you're ignorant of. If a failure to meet the demands of a reason is a wrong and there's no wrong here to excuse or to justify, reasons don't demand compliance. Consider the proposition that God is a property. Having considered it, you might come to reject it. I have no idea what your grounds are, but I suspect that they're pretty good. There was a discussion of this proposition online a few years ago and there was a contest to identify the best argument against it. If you believed on the basis of any of the many sound arguments against this proposition, there's probably nothing wrong with your belief. The chances are good that you're not moved to disbelieve by some of the arguments considered there, but many of them provided good reasons to disbelieve. There's nothing wrong with your beliefs simply by virtue of the fact that there were good reasons that weren't operative. You only needed to be moved by one good reason. A third objection had to do with overdetermination. You read the first argument in the discussion thread. You consider the steps in the reasoning and the argument's structure. You found it convincing. If you believe for the reasons this argument provided without believing for others that other arguments provided, there's nothing wrong with your belief but there are epistemic reasons that you haven't complied with. Here is the epistemic analogue of the fourth and final objection. When your memory is in good working order, you retain lots of your beliefs. When your forgettery is in good working order, you lose lots of your beliefs. When you believe something you shouldn't, you can lose that belief by exposing that belief to reasons and revising your beliefs accordingly. You can also lose the belief by forgetting. If you believed p on the basis of spurious reasons and then simply lost that belief, there's no failure on your part to respond to the epistemic reasons that spoke against believing p. If so, they didn't demand compliance. Sometimes a leak is as good as a revision. The compliance account isn't right about practical reasons or epistemic reasons. If we're stuck with the conformity account, the truthfirst approach is sunk. At this point, someone might argue that the conformity account is implausibly weak and urge us to adopt a kind of compromise view. The conformity account might rightly reject the idea that your duty is to act for the right reasons, but it wrongly rejects the idea that your duty might be to refrain from acting on sufficiently bad reasons. Consider the dual demand account. It says that reasons place upon us a pair of conceptually related demands. They demand conformity and they also demand that you don't fail to show due deference to their status as reasons. It seems rather plausible that if you have reasons not to harm someone, you have reasons that demand that clayton littlejohn the russellian retreat draft paper ! 19 you don't try to harm them or expose them to the risk of harming them. While the conformity account cannot easily account for the idea that there's just one reason here grounded in one thing that has this complex demand, the dual demand account can. The dual demand account tells us that we have to focus on the individual's reasons because we need to know whether someone has shown due deference to a reason's status as a reason. As I understand the account, you can't fail to show due deference to reasons unless you've shown a willingness to act or believe against it. Thus, you don't fail to show due deference simply by failing to take notice of a reason. Moreover, you don't fail to show due deference to reasons simply by responding to other reasons. What they object to is your failing to conform to them or your willingness to act against them. There is something attractive to this account. If we combined this account with the truth-first approach, we'd be able to explain why epistemic assessment is inward looking. It says that we should look in to determine whether subjects have shown due deference to the reasons that apply to them. A subject that didn't believe on what they could take to be strong evidence would be showing a kind of willingness to violate the truth norm by failing to exercise due care. So, the dual demand account nicely explains why we mustn't believe without evidence. While this seems like a step in the right direction, it won't save the truth-first approach. The dual demand account tells us to focus on the individual's reasons for a specific reason. We're supposed to determine whether the subject has shown due deference to the reasons that apply to her. While it explains what's wrong with believing falsehoods and what's wrong with epistemic irresponsibility, I don't think that this quite captures why we want to look at the relation between explanatory and guiding reasons. The limitations of the account become clear when we think about cases of responsible but fallacious reasoning and cases of fortuitous connection between belief and fact. There's a difference between believing responsibly and believing what the evidence supports. A responsible believer might be ignorant of the objective support relations that hold between the believer's evidence and he beliefs. When there is this gap, say, when a careful student is misinformed about some logical rule, the subject has shown due deference to the truth-norm but would fail to believe as she should even if her belief is correct. Consider a second example. A Roman physician who read all the peer-reviewed literature might have believed on good evidence that left-handed children were sinister. Suppose she believes on the evidence and quite correctly that some left-handed child is sinister. While her belief is based on evidence and true, the evidence leads only by accident to the truth. I think she shouldn't hold this belief, but the truth account cannot register clayton littlejohn the russellian retreat draft paper ! 20 what's wrong with her belief. Thus, the dual demands account is no help in these cases.27 In summary, I think that the charge that the truth-first approach cannot do justice to some familiar features of epistemic assessment is just. I don't see how advocates of this approach can do justice to the idea that the normative standing of your beliefs depends upon the reasons for which they're held. The advantage of the knowledge account is that it is easy to see how derivative epistemic norms are derived. Belief is governed by the truth-norm because knowledge requires truth. Belief is governed by the evidential-norm because knowledge requires evidence. There are derivative deliberative norms because the way you deliberate can help to determine whether you're in a position to know that something is so. vii. To remind us that we value the truth, Lynch wheels out Nozick's experience machine. The horror of life in the machine is supposed to remind us that we care about the truth: Other things being equal, I wouldn't trade my present life, with all its ups and downs, for a life lived permanently within a pleasure machine ... Neither would I wish to live in the fool's paradise, where people just pretend to like and respect me. These examples, and others like them, show that we value something more than experience-even just pleasurable experience. We want certain realities behind those experiences, and thus we want certain propositions to be true.28 !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ! 27 On Marcus' (2012) account of believing for a reason, to believe p for the reason that q is to represent p as to be believed on the grounds that q. He thinks we express the state of mind of believing p for the reason that q by uttering the demonstration 'q, so p'. If believing for a reason essentially involves the representation of a rational connection between q and p, it might be thought that this gives the truth-account the resources to explain what's wrong with our Roman's attitudes. She would put her position this way, 'Bob is left-handed, and so sinister'. Just as she cannot say this without committing to the proposition that Bob is left-handed or the proposition that Bob is sinister, she cannot avoid the commitment to representing the one as to be believed in light of the other. Since it's false that's one to be believed in light of the other, can't we say that this is what constitutes the epistemic wrong? I don't think so. A successful demonstration isn't a list of truths and the force of the 'so' isn't captured by entailment. (Compare 'He is a bachelor, and so unmarried' to 'He is a bachelor, and so a bachelor'.) Our Roman takes it that one thing shows the other to be true. The natural way to understand this is in terms of one thing putting you in a position to know something else. 28 Lynch (2004: 138-39) clayton littlejohn the russellian retreat draft paper ! 21 He might be right that we care about the truth and right that cases like this remind us that this is so, but examples like this need to be treated with care. In showing us that the truth matters, they show us why the truth-first approach is fundamentally misguided. In Nozick's story, there are realities behind the experiences. On his telling, the facts don't fit the appearances and so there's a gap between appearance and reality. That gap isn't an essential feature of the case. We can get rid of the gap while maintaining complete independence between appearance and reality. That's a common feature of Gettier cases and it's something we can build into the story if we choose to do so. Audrey is in the machine. Before stepping in she had hoped that her brother would graduate. One morning it seems to her that her brother is graduating. We can tell the story Nozick's way. Her brother is dead, but it seems to her that her brother is graduating because the machine's operators have set things up that way. A smile stretches across her face. Can the operator say that she's smiling for the reason that her brother is graduating? Can she say that Audrey is happy that her brother has finally earned his degree? No, not truthfully. He's dead. We can tell the story Gettier's way. Her brother isn't dead. On this morning it just so happens that he's receiving his diploma. The operators have no idea that this is so. This is just a happy accident. Audrey's beliefs about her brother are correct just as they appear to be, but they aren't tethered to reality. Now can the operator say that she's smiling for the reason that her brother is graduating? Can she say that Audrey is happy that her brother has finally earned his degree? No, not truthfully. The mere match between belief and fact doesn't put Audrey in a position to think, do, or feel anything in light of this fact. The realities are hidden behind her experiences and so unknown to her. The reason that life in the machine is horrible isn't that the beliefs you form in the machine are all false. The reason that life in the machine is horrible is that you've lost contact with reality. The example shows that there's a difference between having true belief and being in touch with reality. It can be good to have the truth in view. It doesn't do you much good if the truth is just 'out there'. I've often been pressed to explain why we should think that there's a norm that governs belief. Here's the sketch of an answer. There are things that beliefs are supposed to do and there's a difference between the beliefs that can do what they're supposed to and the beliefs that cannot do what they're supposed to. Your beliefs are supposed to provide you with guiding reasons so that you can think what you should think, feel what you should feel, and do what you should do. These reasons consist of facts. Beliefs that don't fit the facts can't do what beliefs are supposed to do. That's why it's not wrong to say that belief is governed by the truth-norm. The reason that it's wrong to say that the clayton littlejohn the russellian retreat draft paper ! 22 truth-norm is fundamental is that true beliefs can't always do what beliefs are supposed to do. It's only when your beliefs constitute knowledge that they can provide you with reasons. 29 That's why knowledge is the norm of belief. !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ! 29 A point that's been ably defended by Hyman (1999), Unger (1975), and Williamson (2000). clayton littlejohn the russellian retreat draft paper ! 23 references Alston, W. 1989. Epistemic Justification. Cornell University Press. Austin, J. 1954. The Province of Jurisprudence Determined. Noonday. Bird, A. 2004. Is Evidence Non-Inferential? Philosophical Quarterly 54: 253-65. ____. 2007. Justified Judging. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 74: 81–110. Conee, E. 1992. The Truth Connection. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 52: 657-69. Conee, E. and R. Feldman. 2008. Evidence. In Q. Smith (ed.), Epistemology: New Essays. Oxford University Press, pp. 83–104. Feldman, F. 1986. Doing the Best We Can. Reidel. Feldman, R. 1988. Epistemic Obligations. Philosophical Perspectives 2: 235-56. ____. 2002. Epistemological Duties. In P. Moser (ed.) The Oxford Handbook of Epistemology. Oxford University Press, pp. 362-85. ____. 2000. The Ethics of Belief. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60: 667-95. Foley, R. 2004. A Trial Separation between the Theory of Knowledge and the Theory of Justified Belief. In J. Greco (ed.), Ernest Sosa and His Critics. Blackwell, pp. 59-72. Gardner, J. 2007. Offenses and Defenses . Oxford University Press. Gibbons, J. 2013. The Norm of Belief. Oxford University Press. Hanser, M. 2005. Permissibility and Practical Inference. Ethics 115: 443-70. Hieronymi, P. 2006. Controlling Attitudes. Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 87: 45-74. Hyman, J. 1999. How Knowledge Works. Philosophical Quarterly 49: 433–51. Littlejohn, C. 2009. The Externalist's Demon. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 39: 399-434. ____. 2012. Justification and the Truth-Connection. Cambridge University Press. Lynch, M. 2004. True to Life-Why Truth Matters. MIT University Press. ____. 2009. Values of Truth and the Truth of Values. In A. Haddock, A. Millar, and D. Pritchard (ed.), Epistemic Value. Oxford University Press, pp. 225-41. Maitzen, S. 1995. Our Errant Epistemic Aim. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 55: 869-76. Marcus, E. 2012. Rational Causation. Harvard University Press. Millar, A. 2004. Understanding People. Oxford University Press. Raz, J. 1975. Practical Reason and Norms. Oxford University Press. ____. 2011. From Normativity to Responsibility. Oxford University Press. Ross, D. clayton littlejohn the russellian retreat draft paper ! 24 Russell, B. 1970. The Elements of Ethics. In W. Sellars and J. Hospers (ed.), Readings in Ethical Theory. Prentice-Hall, pp. 3-28. Schroeder, M. 2011. What Does it Take to 'Have' a Reason? In A. Reisner and A. Steglich-Peterson (ed.), Reasons for Belief. Cambridge University Press, pp. 201-22. Shah, N. 2003. A New Argument for Evidentialism. The Philosophical Quarterly 56: 481-98. Shah, N. and D. Velleman. 2005. Doxastic Deliberation. The Philosophical Review 114: 497-535. Steup, M. 2001. Epistemic Duty, Evidence, and Internality. In M. Steup (ed.), Knowledge, Truth, and Duty. Oxford University Press, pp. 134-51. Sutton, J. 2007. Without Justification. MIT University Press. Sverdlik, S. 1996. Motive and Rightness. Ethics 106: 327-49. ____. 2011. Motive and Rightness. Oxford University Press. Thomson, J. 1991. Self-Defense. Philosophy and Public Affairs 20: 283310. Vahid, H. 2006. Aiming at Truth: Doxastic vs. Epistemic Goals. Philosophical Studies 131: 303–35. Wedgwood, R. 2002a. Internalism Explained. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 65: 349–69. ____. 2002b. The Aim of Belief. Philosophical Perspectives 16: 267–97. ____. 2007. The Nature of Normativity. Oxford University Press. Whiting, D. 2012. Does Belief Aim (Only) at the Truth? Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 93: 279-300. ____. Forthcoming. Stick to the Facts: On the Norms of Assertion. Erkenntnis. Williamson, T. 2000. Knowledge and its Limits. Oxford University Press. Zimmerman, M. 1996. The Concept of Moral Obligation. Cambridge University Press. president: Sarah Broadie (St. Andrews) president-elect: E.J. 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Locke and Hume on Personal Identity: Moral and Religious Differences RUTH BOEKER Penultimate version. Please cite published version. Published in Hume Studies 41 (2015): 105–35. Abstract: Hume's theory of personal identity is developed in response to Locke's account of personal identity. Yet it is striking that Hume does not emphasize Locke's distinction between persons and human beings. It seems even more striking that Hume's account of self in Books 2 and 3 of the Treatise has less scope for distinguishing persons from human beings than his account in Book 1. This is puzzling, because Locke originally introduced the distinction in order to answer questions of moral accountability, and Hume's discussion of self in Book 2 provides the foundation of his moral theory in Book 3. In response to the puzzle, I show that Locke and Hume hold different moral and religious views and these differences are important to explain why their theories of personal identity differ. 1. Introduction According to Hume, "personal identity . . . has become so great a question in philosophy, especially of late years in England" (T 1.4.6.15; SBN 259).1 It is clear that Hume's theory is developed in response to Locke's account of personal identity. Hume follows Locke in discussing, first, the identity of plants and animals before turning to personal identity (see Locke, Essay, 2.27; Hume, T 1.4.6.5-20 (SBN 253–62).2 According to Locke, personal identity consists in sameness of consciousness, and neither sameness of man 3 nor substance are necessary or sufficient for personal identity. Hume in part agrees with Locke in so far that he accepts that memory helps us to form beliefs in personal identity, but he also criticizes Locke when he claims that "we can . . . extend our identity beyond memory" (T 1.4.6.20; SBN 262) by causation.4 However, it is striking that Hume does not put much emphasis on Locke's distinction between the terms "person," "man," and "substance," let alone acknowledges Locke's claim that "person" is a forensic term (see Locke, Essay 2.27.26). This distinction was of great importance for Locke, and he introduced it in order to address questions of moral Address: School of Philosophy, Newman Building, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4, Ireland E-mail: [email protected] accountability. As I will show, it is, at least prima facie, even more striking that Hume's account of self in Books 2 and 3 leaves less scope for distinguishing persons from human beings than his Book 1 account. This is puzzling, because Locke originally introduced the distinction in order to answer questions of moral accountability, and Hume's discussion of self in Book 2 provides the foundation of his moral theory in Book 3. This puzzle calls for an explanation. Is this just a careless oversight on Hume's part? Or does he have philosophical reasons for not adopting Locke's distinction? In response to the puzzle I will show that Locke's account of persons and personal identity is based on very specific moral, religious, and metaphysical background assumptions, and because Hume, in Books 2 and 3, does not share Locke's specific moral and religious views, Locke's distinction between persons and human beings holds no attraction for him. Before I explain in more detail how Locke's and Hume's moral, religious, and metaphysical background assumptions shape their different accounts of persons and personal identity, it is helpful to clarify in what, if any, sense Locke and Hume draw a distinction between persons and human beings. Locke initially introduces a conceptual distinction between the terms "person," "man," and "substance." On the basis of this conceptual distinction, Locke argues that personal identity consists in sameness of consciousness and differs from the identity of human beings and substances. 5 I take this to be a metaphysical claim. In present-day terminology, we can rephrase it as the claim that the persistence conditions for persons, human beings, and substances differ. It is worth noting that Locke's chapter "Of Identity and Diversity" (Essay 2.27) focuses on specifying persistence conditions for persons and other kinds of beings, and to complete this task he does not need to take a stance on the question whether at a time persons and human beings are metaphysically the same or distinct, because as we will see in more detail below, for Locke the characteristic features that all persons share qua members of the kind person are relevant for specifying persistence conditions rather than the metaphysical boundaries of persons at a time.6 In the following I regard Locke as committed to a conceptual distinction between the terms "person" and "human being" (or "man"), and to the claim that the persistence conditions for persons and human beings differ. When Hume turns from Book 1 to Book 2 of his Treatise, the focus of his discussion of self and personal identity shifts. For this reason it is helpful to consider his Book 1 account separately from his account in Books 2 and 3. This shift of focus is signalled in his claim that "we must distinguish betwixt personal identity, as it regards our thought or imagination, and as it regards our passions or concern we take in ourselves" (T 1.4.6.5; SBN 253; see also T 1.4.6.19; SBN 261). The former is the focus in Book 1, and the latter in Books 2 and 3. In Book 1 Hume offers a close examination of the human mind and its operations. The self as discussed in Book 1 can be identified with the human mind, while as we will see in more detail, selves in Books 2 and 3 are embodied social creatures. Book 1 leaves scope for a conceptual distinction between persons (or minds) and human beings (or human animals), but there is not sufficiently clear textual support for reading Hume as drawing metaphysical distinctions between persons and human beings at a time and over time in Book 1.7 However, once Hume has shifted focus from the mental realm to the social realm in Book 2, his moral and social views presuppose-as we will see in section 7-that the boundaries of persons at a time and over time are the boundaries of ordinary human beings. This metaphysical presupposition in Book 2 of Hume's Treatise is one strong indication of Hume's divergence from Locke's account of personal identity. The task now is to explain how the differences between Locke's theory and Hume's Book 2 account are tied to their different moral and religious background assumptions. 2. The significance of Locke's moral views Locke emphasizes that we have to distinguish the terms "person," "man," and "substance" (see Essay 2.27.7, 2.27.9–29). However, why is it so important for Locke to introduce the term "person" in addition to our ordinary notion of a human being, or "man," to use Locke's term? He believes that we need the distinct term of a person in order to make sense of questions of moral accountability (see Essay 2.27.15–20, 2.27.22, 2.27.25–26).8 According to Locke, only persons are proper bearers of moral accountability. To shed further light on Locke's theory, it is helpful to consider more closely how Locke's moral views shape his thinking about persons and personal identity. Locke argues that before we can specify what personal identity over time consists in, we need to clarify what we mean by the term "person." According to Locke, the immediate signification of general terms is an abstract idea (see Essay 3.3.12). In our present case the term "person" will signify a set of characteristic features that we associate with the term "person." Locke also calls this set of characteristic features the nominal essence, and every member of the kind person will have the person-characteristic features, or fall under the nominal essence of persons (see Essay 3.3.14–15). Although Locke offers his initial definition of a person in 2.27.9, his characterization of a person in 2.27.26 helps to make important features of persons explicit: This being premised to find wherein personal Identity consists, we must consider what Person stands for; which, I think, is a thinking intelligent Being, that has reason and reflection, and can consider it self as it self, the same thinking thing in different times and places (Essay 2.27.9) Person . . . is a Forensick Term appropriating Actions and their Merit; and so belongs only to intelligent Agents capable of a Law, and Happiness and Misery. (Essay 2.27.26) The characterization in 2.27.26 makes explicit that Locke regards persons as moral and legal beings; they are subjects of moral accountability.9 It is worth noting that moral and legal issues were closely intertwined for Locke: Morally Good and Evil then, is only the Conformity or Disagreement of our voluntary Actions to some Law, whereby Good or Evil is drawn on us, from the Will and Power of the Law-maker; which Good and Evil, Pleasure or Pain, attending our observance, or breach of the Law, by the Decree of the Lawmaker, is that we call Reward and Punishment. (Essay 2.27.5) He understands morality in terms of law, distinguishes three types of law, namely, divine law, civil law, and the law of opinion and reputation, and argues that divine law "is the only true touchstone of moral Rectitude" (Essay 2.28.8).10 Although it is not explicit in the chapter "Of Identity and Diversity," Locke endorses a conception of morality that presupposes a superior divine lawmaker. According to Locke, sanctions are needed in order to establish binding moral laws and only a superior lawmaker, namely God, is in a position to create such laws.11 This means that Locke's moral views are closely tied to the idea of a divine Last Judgement (see Essay 2.27.22, 2.27.26). However, it is worth noting that Locke conceives of the divine judgement not as merely external, but rather it is important that individuals can understand from the inside the justice of reward or punishment. This view finds expression in Locke's claim that our own "Conscience accusing or excusing" us in the Great Day (Essay 2.27.22). What is involved in understanding the justice of reward and punishment, according to Locke? First, we must be able to know that God exists and that he is a superior lawmaker who can enforce laws.12 Second, the divine laws to which our actions are meant to conform have to be made known to us, or we have to be able come to know them. Third, when we are held accountable for particular actions, we must be able to remember the actions as our own.13 It is worth adding that previous awareness is built into Locke's notion of memory (see Essay 1.4.20, 2.10.2, 2.10.7). This means that in order to be able to remember a thought or action now, one must have been conscious of it at the original time and when we remember a past thought or action, we not only remember the thought or action, but also that we have had it before.14 We can now see that Locke's particular moral views and his particular thinking about moral accountability explain why he regards sameness of consciousness as necessary for personal identity over time. To further illustrate how controversial Locke's thinking about moral accountability is, it is helpful to turn to his examples of sleep and drunkenness.15 With regard to sleep, Locke introduces a hypothetical example of daytime and night-time Socrates in Essay 2.27.19: If the same Socrates waking and sleeping do not partake of the same consciousness, Socrates waking and sleeping is not the same Person. And to punish Socrates waking, for what sleeping Socrates thought, and waking Socrates was never conscious of, would be no more Right, than to punish one Twin for what his Brother-Twin did, whereof he knew nothing, because their outsides were so like, that they could not be distinguished; for such Twins have been seen. (Essay 2.27.19) According to Locke, it is unjust to punish daytime Socrates for thoughts or actions of nighttime Socrates, if daytime Socrates has no consciousness of, or access to, night-time Socrates's thoughts or actions. This example illustrates why he regards sameness of consciousness as necessary for personal identity. While many of Locke's contemporaries were willing to accept that it is unjust to punish a sleepwalker, they were not willing to accept the implications with regard to drunkenness. As in the case of sleep, Locke argues that it is unjust to hold a person accountable for a crime, committed by the same human body while intoxicated, if he or she is unable to remember it afterwards.16 Locke's view troubled his friend Molyneux, who writes to Locke: "Drunkennes is it self a Crime, and therefore no one shall alledge it in excuse of an other Crime" (Letter no. 1685, in Correspondence, 4:767). However, Molyneyx's criticism does not move Locke to revise his view, but rather in response to Molyneux he asks Molyneux to consider a case where a drunkard gets a fever: For I ask you, if a man by intemperate drinking should get a fever, and in the frenzy of his disease (which lasted not perhaps above an hour) committed some crime, would you punish him for it? If you would not think this just, how can you think it just to punish him for any fact committed in a drunken frenzy, without a fever? Both had the same criminal cause, drunkenness, and both committed without consciousness. (Letter no. 1693, Correspondence, 4:785-86) Because there is no principled way to distinguish these two cases, Locke believes that in either case it is unjust to be held accountable for an action that was done without consciousness and that one is unable to remember. Leibniz was another critic of Locke's view. Leibniz, similarly as Molyneux, argues that sleepwalking and drunkenness are not analogous: "We punish drunkards because they could stay sober and may even retain some memory of the punishment while they are drunk. But a sleepwalker is less able to abstain from his nocturnal walk and from what he does during it" (New Essays 2.27.22, 243).17 Leibniz rejects Locke's view that sameness of consciousness is necessary for personal identity and believes that "the testimony of others could fill in the gap in my recollection. I could even be punished on this testimony if I had done some deliberate wrong during an interval which this illness had made me forget a short time later" (New Essays 2.27.9, 236). The important point for present purposes is that Locke's thinking about moral accountability was and remains controversial. Rather than trying to evaluate Locke's views in light of Molyneux's and Leibniz's criticisms, I want to draw attention to the implications that a different understanding of moral accountability has with respect to personal identity over time. If we assume, as Locke does, that persons are subjects of moral accountability, but agree with Molyneux's or Leibniz's understanding of moral accountability, then it will not be possible to give persistence conditions for persons in terms of sameness of consciousness, but rather, in order to maintain that a person now, who is unable to remember a criminal action, is the same person as an individual who committed a crime while drunk, persistence will have to be explained in terms of bodily continuity, the continued existence of an immaterial substance, or some other condition.18 To sum up the results, we have identified two important factors why Locke links his moral conception of a person to an account of personal identity in terms of sameness of consciousness: First, Locke regards persons as moral subjects of accountability and, second, he thinks about moral accountability in a particular and controversial way. Note that I am not claiming that these factors offer a complete explanation. Indeed, they only establish that sameness of consciousness is necessary for personal identity. Additionally, there are metaphysical and religious background assumptions at work, as I will show in the following. 3. The significance of Locke's religious and metaphysical views I now want to draw attention to two additional factors that are important to understand why Locke emphasises the distinction between persons and human beings, and why he argues that personal identity consists in sameness of consciousness: one concerns Locke's metaphysical agnosticism that we are not in a position to know whether thinking takes place in material or in immaterial substance; the other, his religious belief in the afterlife and a Last Judgement. Let me say more about the former. One important project of Locke's Essay, and Book 4 in particular, is to draw attention to the limitations of human understanding and to restrict the boundaries of knowledge to those matters that we can know with certainty. It does not follow, according to him, that inquiries that fall outside the scope of knowledge are pointless, but rather in such cases we can form probable beliefs or rely on faith. The important point being that we do not mistake probable beliefs or faith for knowledge. Locke argues that while we all experience that we have thoughts,19 we are not in a position to know whether these thoughts inhere in an underlying material or immaterial substance. 20 His view that personal identity consists in sameness of consciousness holds irrespective of whether conscious states inhere in a material or an immaterial substance. Consequently, his view is not affected by the limitations of human knowledge and has broader scope than alternative theories that tie a person's existence to a material body, an immaterial substance, or both. Any other view that ties personal identity to a particular metaphysical doctrine will collapse if the position is false. Additionally, Locke's religious beliefs shape his theory of personal identity. Locke was a Christian believer who argued that Scripture should be taken seriously. He distinguishes faith from knowledge, and although faith based on revelation is not absolutely certain, he argues that faith cannot properly be doubted and is therefore almost as certain as knowledge (see Essay 4.18.10). In light of Locke's religious views, it becomes clear that it was of great importance for him to offer a theory of personal identity that can accommodate the possibility of life after bodily death, because the Bible reveals that there will be an afterlife (see Essay 4.18.7).21 Locke believes that we face "great Absurdities" (Essay 2.27.21) if we do not distinguish persons from human beings and fail to acknowledge that personal identity consists in sameness of consciousness. We will see that those who do not clearly distinguish persons from human beings face serious metaphysical difficulties to explain the possibility of the resurrection and the afterlife, or they are at risk to leave room for unjust reward and punishment. Since the term "human being" is not used univocally, let us follow Locke's classifications in Essay 2.27.21. There he distinguishes three meanings that the term "man," or "human being," could have: It can stand for (i) an immaterial substance, (ii) a material human animal, or (iii) the union of a material body and an immaterial substance. If we assume that human beings are immaterial substances, then the view is at risk to leave room for unjust reward and punishment, especially in the afterlife. Defenders of this view would not agree with Locke that personal identity consists in sameness of consciousness, and instead, they will maintain that personal identity consists in the continued existence of an immaterial substance. They have, however, the option to acknowledge, as Locke does, that a necessary condition for just accountability is that the individual to be rewarded or punished must be able to remember the relevant action as her own. I will show that either way, Locke believes that the view can lead to serious injustice. Due to our limited understanding of the ontological constitution of immaterial substances, we are not in a position to rule out the possibility of transfer of consciousness from one immaterial substance to another (see Essay 2.27.13). To illustrate how the view that we are currently considering can lead to injustice, consider one immaterial substance, call it S, and another immaterial substance, call it S*. Let us assume further that at time t1 S committed a serious crime. At time t2 all of S's memories of the crime are transferred to S*, and at all subsequent times S is unable to remember the crime, while S* is able to be conscious of it. Is it an option to punish S* for it? While S* is conscious, or at least, able to be conscious of the crime, punishing S* for it would violate the widely accepted condition that personal identity is a necessary condition for moral accountability. Since the crime was committed by S and not S*, this condition would be violated under the present proposal that personal identity consists in the continued existence of an immaterial substance. Is it possible to punish S instead? This is not an option for Locke, because S is not in a position to remember it and Locke regards it as unjust to punish a subject if they are not in a position to understand the justice of the punishment. However, not punishing any resurrected being for the crime would also be unjust. Hence Locke believes that immaterial substance views of personal identity can lead to serious injustice. If we replace the immaterial substance view of personal identity with Locke's view in terms of sameness of consciousness this problem will be solved. Hence Locke has reasons to prefer his view. If we assume instead that human beings are purely material human animals, then it follows that the human being will cease to exist at bodily death and the difficulty will be to explain why the same human being is recreated at the resurrection, rather than being newly created. Several solutions were proposed by Locke's predecessors.22 One proposal was that resurrected beings must be composed of exactly the same material particles as human beings had at one or more times of their lives. However, which time(s) during ordinary life is or are relevant? Choosing only one time seems arbitrary and choosing more than one time will result in resurrected creatures that are rather different in size and shape from ordinary human beings. 23 Moreover, there was the pressing worry that there simply will not be sufficient material particles in the afterlife to recreate all human beings. This problem arises because particles that were once part of one human being can become part of another human being at a later time, and it was lively debated as the thread of direct and indirect cannibalism at Locke's time.24 Furthermore, it is unclear why numerical identity of particles is relevant for survival. Locke, on the contrary, has a convincing answer why sameness of consciousness is relevant for personal identity: it enables persons to understand the justice of reward and punishment. Other attempts focused on explaining how the life of an organism can continue in the afterlife. One such proposal was appeal to the seed metaphor. 25 The thought was that something analogous to a seed could preserve the life of a human organism between death and Resurrection. However, Locke points out that the analogy with seeds is not suitable to explain numerical identity and confounds it with membership in the same species (see Works, 4:319).26 Moreover, seeds could easily be destroyed, for example, by fire. An attempt to solve this latter worry can be found in some Rabbinic sources that postulate an indestructible resurrection bone, which is said to have the size of an almond.27 However, this proposal seems ad hoc and lacks evidence.28 If there really was an indestructible bone, one would expect to find it, for instance, when a corpse is burnt to ashes. The only option to rescue this proposal would be by appeal to divine providence. However, then it is unclear why we additionally need a resurrection bone. The advantage of Locke's theory is that it is more plausible, because it does not postulate mysterious entities that lack evidence. The third option is to account for human beings as unions of material bodies and immaterial souls. Given this view, there are a number of different ways to explain the persistence of human beings. First, if persistence of the human being is explained in terms of the continued existence of the same soul and the same body, then this view will inherit the problems that arise for material views. Second, if persistence does not require that the same body continues to exist, but only that the soul is united to any body at all times,29 then the human being persists in virtue of the continued existence of the immaterial soul, and the view will inherit the problems that arise for immaterial views. It follows that this option is not attractive either. To sum up, in this section I drew attention to two further factors that are relevant for understanding why Locke introduces a conceptual distinction between the terms "person" and "human being" (or "man") and argues that personal identity consists in sameness of consciousness and thereby offers distinct persistence conditions for persons and human beings. First, Locke's metaphysical agnosticism with regard to the materiality or immateriality of thinking substances helps to see why it was significant for Locke to offer a theory that is consistent with both materialism and immaterialism. Second, due to his religious beliefs, he aimed to offer a theory of personal identity that takes seriously the possibility of an afterlife and a Last Judgement. His theory escapes problems of injustice that arise for immaterial views and can better explain the possibility of the afterlife than material views. 4. Contrasting Locke's and Hume's moral and religious background assumptions Before we turn to the details of Hume's account of persons and personal identity, let me introduce Hume's very different moral and religious, or better irreligious, background assumptions. It is interesting to contrast Locke's and Hume's views about persons and personal identity, precisely because Hume opposes the moral and religious background assumptions that inform Locke's theory. Hume's critical attitude towards religion finds clear expression in his essay "Of the Immortality of the Soul."30 There he presents a series of metaphysical, moral, and physical arguments that question the possibility of an afterlife and the immortality of the soul. As regards metaphysical arguments, Locke and Hume agree that the immortality of the soul cannot be proven a priori, and they share a certain metaphysical agnosticism, but some nuanced differences come to light when we turn to Hume's physical arguments. Locke makes clear that we cannot know whether thinking takes place in a material or an immaterial substance, but he maintains that it is more likely that thinking substances are immaterial (see Essay 2.27.25).31 Hume, on the contrary, argues that human beings are analogous to nonhuman animals and in light of the great analogy, it is more likely that we are mortal material beings.32 We can find perhaps the most significant disagreements when we turn to Hume's moral arguments. He argues that the idea of a divine Last Judgement does not make sense for a number of reasons. First, it is unjustified to ascribe intentions to God that are not grounded in present experiences. Second, it is unclear what a divine standard of reward and punishment could be. According to Hume, human standards for punishment are grounded in sentiments, but "[s]hall we suppose, that human sentiments have place in the deity?" ("Immortality of the Soul," 594). Third, divine punishment lacks a purpose, because it takes place after ordinary life on Earth and therefore cannot lead to any improvements of life and society in this world. Hence, it "is inconsistent with our ideas of goodness and justice" ("Immortality of the Soul," 594). Fourth, punishment should be proportional to the offence. Eternal divine punishment fails to meet this requirement, because eternal punishment for finite crimes is disproportional.33 Fifth, a divine Last Judgement presupposes that human beings can be divided into two different types, namely good and bad, but rather, according to Hume, goodness and badness come in degrees.34 Hume's philosophy does not leave scope for a religious foundation of morality as we find it in Locke. Instead, the aim of his philosophical project, as he tells us in the Introduction to the Treatise, is "to explain the principles of human nature" and thereby "propose a compleat system of the sciences, built on a foundation almost entirely new, and the only one upon which they can stand with any security" (T Intro 6; SBN xvi). According to Hume, any science, including mathematics, natural science, natural religion, morals, politics, has a relation to human nature. This means we cannot develop morality independent of a study of human nature, but rather Hume believes that it is important to begin with an examination of the principles and mechanisms that govern human nature. On this basis, let us turn to Hume's account of self and personal identity. 5. Hume on self and personal identity Hume introduces the topic of self and personal identity in Book 1 of the Treatise in a section titled "Of Personal Identity" (T 1.4.6; SBN 251–63), he raises serious doubts about his Book 1 account in the Appendix, and returns to discussions of self in Book 2 when he develops his theory of the passions, which provides the foundation of his account of morals in Book 3. While his Book 1 account and his critical remarks in the Appendix have received much attention in the literature,35 I will here only briefly comment on his Book 1 account and then turn to his account of self in Books 2 and 3, because in order to understand the differences between Locke and Hume, we will have to examine what role Hume's self plays in relation to moral questions, such as questions of moral accountability. Since these questions are more or less absent in Book 1, Books 2 and 3 provide the more interesting sources for present purposes. To begin, let me outline the questions that Hume addresses throughout the Treatise. They include the following: (1) What, if any, kind of self do we find when we introspect? (T 1.4.6.1–4; SBN 251–53) (2) How do we form beliefs in personal identity over time? (T 1.4.6.5–21; SBN 253–62) (3) What makes me the person I am? (T 1.4.6.3–5, 1.4.6.19, 2.1.2–11; SBN 252–53, 261; SBN 275–324) (4) What psychological mechanisms govern the self? (T 1.4.6.18–20, 2.1.2–6, 2.1.11; SBN 260–62, 277–94, 316–24) There is a further question that Hume does not address explicitly, but there is some indirect evidence, at least in Book 2, that suggests that he takes a stance on it: (5) What are the boundaries of selves at a time and over time? One main question in Book 1 concerns the self that we find within ourselves via introspection. Hume denies that we can find a self that is simple and has perfect identity, by which he means that it exists invariably and uninterruptedly over a period of time (see T 1.4.2.24, 1.4.2.26, 1.4.2.30–31; SBN 199–202). Instead he maintains that the self, or mind, that is given to us in experience is a bundle of changing perceptions36 (see T 1.4.6.3–4; SBN 252– 53). The second major question concerns how we can explain that we, nevertheless, form a belief in personal identity over time. Hume writes: [A] question naturally arises concerning this relation of identity; whether it be something that really binds our several perceptions together, or only associates their ideas in the imagination? That is, in other words, whether in pronouncing concerning the identity of a person, we observe some real bond among his perceptions, or only feel one among the ideas we form of them? This question we might easily decide, if we wou'd recollect what has been already prov'd at large, that the understanding never observes any real connexion among objects, and that even the union of cause and effect, when strictly examin'd, resolves itself into a customary association of ideas. For from thence it evidently follows, that identity is nothing really belonging to these different perceptions, and uniting them together; but is merely a quality, which we attribute to them, because of the union of their ideas in the imagination, when we reflect upon them. (T 1.4.6.16; SBN 259–60) This passage supports that Hume's primary task in Book 1 is to offer a psychological explanation of how we form the belief in personal identity rather than a metaphysical account of the persistence conditions for persons. Having restricted the focus of discussion to psychological explanations, he argues that the only candidates to explain our belief are the three associative principles of the mind: resemblance, contiguity, and causation (see T 1.4.6.16; SBN 260).37 While all three principles are relevant to explain our belief in the identity of plants and animals, Hume claims that only resemblance and causation play a role when we form beliefs in personal identity, and contiguity "has little or no influence in the present case" (T 1.4.6.17; SBN 260).38 At this stage it is interesting to return to the question in what sense Hume's Book 1 account of personal identity leaves scope for a distinction between persons and human beings. In T 1.4.6, Hume uses the term "mind" interchangeably with "self" or "person" (see T 1.4.6.4, 1.4.6.15–16, 1.4.6.22; SBN 253, 259, 263). He develops his Book 1 account of personal identity in analogy to the identity that we ascribe to plants and animals (see T 1.4.6.5; SBN 253) and regards human beings as human animals: "An infant becomes a man, and is sometimes fat, sometimes lean, without any change in his identity" (T 1.4.6.12; SBN 257). This passage undoubtedly resembles Locke's statement: "a Colt, grown up to a Horse, sometimes fat, sometimes lean, is all the while the same Horse" (Essay 2.27.3). This gives us strong evidence that Hume in Book 1 identifies human beings with human animals and persons with minds. This means his approach to human beings is third-personal while his approach to persons is first-personal. On this basis we can say that Hume's Book 1 account involves a conceptual distinction between persons and human beings, but it is important to note that it is not the same as the distinction that we find in Locke's chapter "Of Identity and Diversity." According to Locke, persons are subjects of accountability; they are agents who are "capable of a Law, and Happiness and Misery" (Essay 2.27.26). Since Hume has restricted the focus of his Book 1 account to the mind, or to "personal identity, as it regards our thought or imagination" (T 1.4.6.5; SBN 253), his Book 1 account is too restricted to explain issues that are at the heart of Locke's account of persons. For Hume "personal identity, as it regards our thought or imagination" has to be distinguished from personal identity "as it regards our passions or concern we take in ourselves" (T 1.4.6.5; SBN 253). In order to address questions of moral agency and moral accountability that interest Locke, Hume has to extend the discussion beyond the mental realm and has to turn to personal identity in the latter sense. Hume acknowledges that the Book 1 account of personal identity is incomplete (see T 1.4.6.5, 19; SBN 253, 261). It is primarily backwards directed and explains how we regard ourselves as identical with our past selves. Once we turn to the passions, we can account for our concerns for the future, and this makes it possible to develop an account of personal identity that extends into the future.39 Interpreters disagree whether his Book 2 account is consistent with his Book 1 account and merely supplements it, or whether he develops a significantly different account of self in Book 2.40 When Hume first returns to the topic of self in Book 2, he characterizes self as in Book 1, as "that succession of related ideas and impressions, of which we have intimate memory and consciousness" (T 2.1.2.2; SBN 277). Prima facie, this passage provides strong support for supplementation interpretations, but to develop a nuanced interpretation of Hume's theory, it is helpful to return to the five questions. In Book 2, Hume's focus has shifted to questions (3) and (4), namely, the question of what makes a person the person she is, and questions concerning the psychological mechanisms that govern the self. Lorenzo Greco argues in a recent article that it is helpful to adopt Marya Schechtman's distinction between "reidentification" and "characterization" questions, and that Hume's discussion of personal identity in Book 1 concerns the reidentification question, while in Book 2 he turns to the characterization question.41 In rough terms, this distinction captures the shift from Book 1 to Book 2. I am, however, reluctant to use Schechtman's terminology, because she introduces the reidentification question as a metaphysical question concerning the necessary and sufficient conditions of personal identity.42 I do not think that there is strong enough textual support for interpreting Hume's Book 1 account as metaphysical; at best, this is controversial.43 Instead, question (2) above is better supported by Hume's text, and thus I take it to be his primary focus in Book 1. This becomes clear, for instance, when he asks "[w]hat then gives us so great a propension to ascribe identity to these successive perceptions, and to suppose ourselves possest of an invariable and uninterrupted existence thro' the whole course of our lives?" (T 1.4.6.5; SBN 253). Here he clearly asks for a psychological explanation why we form beliefs in personal identity over time and sets the agenda for the rest of the chapter. Nevertheless, I believe that it is helpful to consider separately whether Hume endorses metaphysical claims about the boundaries of selves at a time and over time. For this reason, I have added question (5) as an additional question. Hume does not address this question explicitly. As argued above, I believe the textual support is not strong enough for ascribing metaphysical views about persons and personal identity to Hume in Book 1, but I will argue that his views in Books 2 and 3 imply that persons are embodied human beings and that personal identity over time is bound by the continued existence of a human body. Since for present purposes, Hume's account of self in Book 2 is of particular interest, I will turn immediately to Book 2, explain his theory of the construction of selves in Book 2 and why his views in Books 2 and 3 imply that selves are embodied and continue to have the same body over time. 6. Construction of selves in Book 2 In Book 2, Hume returns to the self in the context of an examination of the indirect passions and the mechanisms that govern them. Self is the object of the indirect passions pride and humility, similarly as another person is the object of love and hatred. He argues that these four indirect passions operate by the same mechanism, which he often calls a "double relation of ideas and impressions" (see T 2.1.5–11, 2.2.2, 2.2.9, 2.2.11; SBN 285–324, 332–47, 381–89, 394–96). According to Hume, the indirect passions of pride and humility, love and hatred have a wide variety of causes and are immediately directed towards an object, which is self in the case of pride and humility, and another person in the case of love and hatred (see T 2.1–2; SBN 275–398). The causes include mental qualities such as wit, good humour, courage, justice, and their opposites, bodily qualities such as beauty or strength, and also external objects as houses, gardens, dogs, clothes, children (see T 2.1.2.5; SBN 278–79). The double relation of ideas and impressions helps us to see that in the context of Book 2, a person or self is closely associated with a set of qualities, possessions, and other objects related to the person or self. These features play a constitutive role and make a person the person she is. Let us call these features the person-defining features. We characterize one person as witty, generous, a serious swimmer and good cook; another as selfish, beautiful, and an ambitious dancer; and someone else as having a strong sense of justice, being open-minded, a devoted scholar and talented piano player.44 How does this Book 2 self relate to the Book 1 view, according to which the self, as given in experience, is a bundle of rapidly changing perceptions?45 While these views need not be in tension, the focus in Book 2 has shifted. Instead of just considering any perceptions that pass through one's mind, we now turn to the features that we most closely associate with a person and that we regard as characteristic of who she is; these features make a self proud (or humiliated) to be the person she is. The interesting question is whether these person-defining features are stable or whether they are fluctuating and change as our other perceptions. Hume is well aware that our feelings can change quickly. While I may be proud about my achievements as a piano player my pride can vanish quickly and self-doubts can take its place. At this stage he draws attention to a secondary cause of pride and humility, namely, sympathy (see T 2.1.11.1; SBN 316). Sympathy, according to Hume is a psychological mechanism whereby we tune into the feelings of others and make their feelings our feelings (see T 2.1.11, 2.2.5.21; SBN 316–24, 365).46 According to Hume, to strengthen our own feelings, it is important that other people share them and thereby increase the pleasure (or pain) that we receive from our person-defining features. For example, when other people take pleasure in my piano performances I receive reassurance and my pride becomes more stable. Or, to turn to another example, assume that Rebecca is inclined to be generous. Hume would argue that it is important that other people take pleasure in her generous actions and the assurance, praise, and gratitude that she receives from other people will play a significant role in developing the stable character trait of generosity. Although Book 2 selves are primarily constructed by a set of qualities and possessions, other people significantly influence and shape who we are. Through interaction with others, some of the person-defining features become stable, others vanish and may be replaced by new features. The features of a self in solitude are more likely to be fluctuating, while selves that interact with others in society are in a better position to develop stable characters. 7. Ontological boundaries of selves in Book 2 Having argued that selves in Book 2 are associated with a set of person-defining features, I do not want to suggest that selves in Book 2 can be ontologically identified with this set of features, rather I will show that there is direct and indirect textual evidence that the ontological boundaries of selves are the bodies of human beings. I will now introduce several arguments why selves in Book 2 have to be embodied at a time and continue to have the same body over time. This will mark an important difference between Locke and Hume, because, if it is correct that Book 2 selves are embodied and continue to have the same body, then it follows that Hume's Book 2 account does not have much scope for ascribing different persistence conditions to persons and human beings. Subsequently, it is not important for Hume in the context of Book 2 to emphasize a conceptual distinction between persons and human beings as Locke does. My first observation is that Hume treats self and another person analogously in his account of the indirect passions pride and humility, love and hatred. Pride or humility is directed towards self as love, and hatred is directed towards another person. Why is it important for Hume that selves or other people in Book 2 are embodied? Alternatively, he could still, as in Book 1, regard selves as bundles of perceptions, some of which lack spatial location. If this were his view in Books 2 and 3, then we would not be in a position to direct love (or hatred) towards particular individual persons such as Anne rather than Susan or vice versa. Only if selves are embodied will we be in a position to distinguish Anne from Susan and to direct our love towards one, both, or neither of them. To further illustrate this point let us focus on generosity-one of the causes of pride and love (see T 2.1.2.5; SBN 278–79). If generosity causes pride then the pride will be directed towards self. If generosity causes love then it will be directed towards another person. However, when we direct love towards another person, we do not merely direct it towards some other person in the abstract, but rather it is directed towards particular individuals such as Anne or Susan. In order to direct our love towards Anne rather than Susan, or towards Susan rather than Anne, or towards both, there will have to be a means for distinguishing Anne from Susan. We are able to do this if they are uniquely located in space. It follows that in order to direct our love towards another person, the other person has to be embodied. Because Hume regards self and another person as analogous, it follows that selves in Book 2 are embodied. Second, according to Hume, Book 2 selves are social creatures. We seek the company of others and "[a] perfect solitude is, perhaps, the greatest punishment we can suffer. Every pleasure languishes when enjoy'd a-part from company, and every pain becomes more cruel and intolerable." (T 2.2.5.15; SBN 363). Social interaction with others would be severely limited, if not impossible, were selves not embodied and would not continue to have the same body. For example, it is not clear that we would be able to enjoy the pleasures of friendship. How would disembodied selves meet, have dinner together, or enjoy each other's company during a walk through the countryside? Disembodied bundles of perception may be in a position to share joint intellectual pleasures. One's intellectual curiosity may inspire other minds, but as already mentioned, it is not clear how we can appreciate, or in Hume's terms, direct our love towards the curiosity of a particular person; rather, if selves were disembodied, it seems that the only option is that curiosity as such could inspire us, but not the curiosity of particular individuals. In order to respond and interact with the curiosity of particular individuals, we have to be in a position to uniquely locate their curiosity. While the arguments so far focused primarily on embodiment at a time, let us consider further why it is important that selves continue to have the same body. Social interaction takes place over time, and love and hatred often develop over time. To effectively interact with each other and to take part in complex actions or projects, we need to be able to recognize others and have assurance that we continue to interact with them. Of course, it does not follow that the bodies of selves have to be human organism, but merely that they need to have bodies that are uniquely located in space and can be recognized as theirs by others. 47 Here I have primarily identified epistemological and pragmatic reasons why selves need to continue to have the same body, but we will see below that Hume's account of sympathy and his view that a person can change her character offers additional reasons why the continued existence of a human body provides the boundaries of a person's life. Third, Hume's account of sympathy further supports this view. According to Hume, sympathy plays an important role in the development of stable passions (see T 2.1.11.1; SBN 316). He maintains that the degree to which we can sympathize with others is proportional to the strength of the relations that we bear to others.48 This means that we would not be able "to feel sympathy in its full perfection" (T 2.1.11.8; SBN 320) if selves were not related by contiguity. Thus, it is central to Hume's philosophy in Books 2 and 3 and in particular to his moral philosophy, which is based on sympathy,49 that selves in Books 2 and 3 are connected by contiguity, and thus embodied at a time and continue to have their bodies over time. Once we take seriously that selves are social creatures and that sympathy is a very important principle of human interaction (see T 3.3.1.7, 10–11, 3.3.6.1; SBN 575–79, 618), we can see that it is central to Hume's philosophy in Books 2 and 3 that selves are embodied and continue to have their bodies. 8. Hume's embodied selves and moral responsibility We have already seen that Hume endorses irreligious views and provocatively questions the plausibility of ideas of an afterlife and a Last Judgement. Hence, he does not share one of the major religious motivations that made it significant for Locke to offer different persistence conditions for persons and human beings. Due to this religious difference it makes good sense that Hume does not offer different persistence conditions for persons and human beings. While I believe that the religious differences are a very important factor in explaining the differences between Locke and Hume, I want to return to the moral background assumptions, because-as we have seen-Locke's particular thinking about moral accountability motivated him to introduce a conceptual distinction between persons and human beings and to argue that sameness of consciousness is necessary for personal identity. Let us examine whether Hume's understanding of moral accountability diverges from Locke's. Before we look at the details, it is helpful to reflect more generally on Locke's and Hume's moral views, respectively. Locke stands in the Natural Law tradition.50 According to him, divine law "is the only true touchstone of moral Rectitude" (Essay 2.28.8). This statement shows that divine law plays a fundamental role in his moral theory and that the moral rightness or wrongness of voluntary actions is to be assessed according to their "Conformity or Disagreement . . . to some Law" (Essay 2.28.5). Given the prominent place of laws and their enforcement by sanctions, we can see why Locke's view focuses on reward or punishment for individual actions. By the time Hume wrote the Treatise other British moral philosophers, with whose work Hume was familiar, had distanced their views from Locke's morals views and the views of other proponents of Natural Law theory. Anthony Ashley Cooper, the Third Earl of Shaftesbury, for example, distanced his moral views from Locke's and the search for the greater good, virtue, and character development are central topics in his philosophical works.51 Francis Hutcheson questions moral views that ground morality solely in relation to the law of a superior. According to Hutcheson, such theories are problematic, because "all Laws operate only by Sanctions of Rewards, or Punishments, which determine us to Obedience by Motives of Self-Interest."52 His main thesis is that we are by human nature not only self-interested but also benevolent and have a special moral faculty, which he calls a moral sense.53 Hume's moral philosophy builds on the works of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, and other British moral philosophers. He shares their interest in examining human nature, regards us by nature both self-interested and benevolent, and develops a detailed catalogue of artificial and natural virtues in Book 3 of the Treatise. The natural virtues correspond to the benevolent, the artificial virtues to the self-interested part of human nature, and the artificial virtues are based on social conventions and needed additionally to create a functioning society. As we have already seen, due to Hume's irreligious views, his theory leaves no room for divine law; instead Hume examines in detail how social and sympathetic interaction with others shapes our character and leads us to regard each other as virtuous or vicious.54 On this basis, let us turn to Hume's remarks about moral responsibility:55 Actions are by their very nature temporary and perishing; and where they proceed not from some cause in the characters and disposition of the person, who perform'd them, they infix not themselves upon him, and can neither redound to his honour, if good, nor infamy, if evil. The action itself may be blameable; it may be contrary to all the rules of morality and religion: But the person is not responsible for it; and as it proceeded from nothing in him, that is durable or constant, and leaves nothing of that nature behind it, 'tis impossible he can, upon its account, become the object of punishment or vengeance. (T 2.3.2.6; SBN 411, emphases added) If any action be either virtuous or vicious, 'tis only as a sign of some quality or character. It must depend upon durable principles of the mind, which extend over the whole conduct, and enter into the personal character. Actions themselves, not proceeding from any constant principle, have no influence on love or hatred, pride or humility; and consequently are never considered in morality. (T 3.3.1.4; SBN 575) These passages reveal important differences between Locke's and Hume's thinking about moral responsibility. While Locke's theory focuses on moral accountability for individual actions and a person's ability to be conscious of them, Hume argues that it does not make sense to hold individuals responsible for "temporary and perishing" actions, but rather, responsibility can only arise for actions done from stable and durable character traits. We do not have any textual support that Hume would agree with Locke's view that sameness of consciousness is a necessary condition for moral accountability, but it is clear that for Hume, a necessary condition for moral accountability is that an action arises from stable character traits. Since Hume shifts the focus towards stable character traits, it can be suggested that one possibility for Hume to adopt a Lockean distinction between persons and human beings is to regard persons as bundles of stable character traits. To be clear, Hume does not adopt such a view. Nevertheless, the interesting question is whether there is a principled reason why he does not, especially since such a view was in the air and discussed by Shaftesbury. 56 Shaftesbury, in his discussion of the self, emphasizes the ancient Delphic inscription "Know thyself!" and argues that self-knowledge is fundamental for any other inquiry and that through the guidance of self-knowledge we should aim to develop a stable character.57 For it is not certainly by virtue of our face merely that we are ourselves. It is not we who change when our complexion of shape changes. But there is that which, being wholly metamorphosed and converted, we are thereby in reality transformed and lost. Should an intimate friend of ours, who has endured many sicknesses and run many ill adventures while he travelled through the remotest parts of the East and the hottest countries of the South, return to us so altered in his whole outward figure that, till we had for a time conversed with him, we could not know him again to be the same person, the matter would not seem so very strange nor would our concern on this account be very great. But should a like face and figure of a friend return to us with thought and humours of a strange and foreign turn, with passion, affections and opinions wholly different from anything we had formerly known, we should say, in earnest and with the greatest amazement and concern, that this was another creature and not the friend whom we once knew familiarly. Nor should we in reality attempt any renewal of acquaintance or correspondence with such a person, though perhaps he might preserve in his memory the faint marks or tokens of former transactions which had passed between us. (Soliloquy, 3.1, 127) Here Shaftesbury goes so far to argue that a person cannot survive radical changes of character. Let us return to Hume. How would Hume react to the example of a traveller who has radically changed his or her character during a journey? In several passages, Hume maintains that changes of character are possible and none of them support the view that changes of character can result in loss of personal identity.58 In Book 1 of the Treatise, he introduces the analogy with a republic or commonwealth to argue that "in like manner the same person may vary his character and disposition, as well as his impressions and ideas, without losing his identity" (T 1.4.6.19; SBN 261).59 I do not want to put much weight on this passage alone, because for present purposes it is best to rely on Books 2 and 3. Fortunately, we find additional support in Book 2. Hume makes clear that the indirect passions of love or hatred cannot be caused by momentary and fluctuating actions, but only by actions that arise from a stable intention or character. At the same time he acknowledges that it is possible that a person changes her intentions by "repentance or a change of life" (T 2.2.3.4; SBN 349), and in such a case the indirect passions that others express towards this person will also be altered. He reiterates this point in the following passage: 60 Men are less blam'd for such evil actions, as they perform hastily and unpremeditately, than for such as proceed from thought and deliberation. For what reason? but because a hasty temper, tho' a constant cause in the mind, operates only by intervals, and infects not the whole character. Again, repentance wipes off every crime, especially if attended with an evident reformation of life and manners. (T 2.3.2.7; SBN 412) Since Hume speaks of "an evident reformation of life and manners" I take it that he wants not only to accommodate the possibility of changes of character, but also the possibility of radical changes of character. Thus he will not identify persons with stable bundles of character traits. To understand why, it is helpful to recall once more that sympathy plays a central role in Hume's theory. The proposal that persons are stable bundles of character traits cannot easily be reconciled with Hume's account of sympathy, because for Hume interactions with other people are not only essential in the formation of stable character traits but also in the correction of character traits that are disapproved of in one's social community. While we aim to develop stable character traits through sympathy, sympathy presupposes the possibility of character change; otherwise it could not operate effectively.61 9. Conclusion: Explaining the differences I hope to have shown that a careful examination of Locke's and Hume's underlying moral and religious background assumptions provides a powerful explanation of the puzzle as to why Hume does not follow Locke in offering different persistence conditions for persons and human beings, and why Locke's conceptual distinction between persons and human beings is absent in Hume's Book 2 account. I argued that Locke's account of persons and personal identity is motivated by his aim to make sense of questions of moral accountability, by his metaphysical agnosticism concerning the materiality and immateriality of thinking substance, and by his religious beliefs in the possibility of an afterlife and a Last Judgement. I also showed that Locke thinks about moral accountability in a particular and controversial way. In light of these underlying moral and religious views and his metaphysical agnosticism, we can understand why Locke emphasizes the distinction between the terms "person," "man," and "substance" and argues that the persistence conditions for persons and human beings differ. While Hume shares Locke's metaphysical agnosticism, he raises serious doubts concerning an afterlife and a Last Judgement. Since he rejects Locke's religious views, he could at most agree with Locke that sameness of consciousness is necessary for moral accountability. However, since he also challenges Locke's thinking about moral accountability, which was tied to divine law, we do not have any evidence that he would agree with Locke on this point, and instead he emphasizes that accountability is only appropriate if actions arise from a stable and durable character. Moreover, Hume's theory is meant to leave room for the possibility of character change. According to Hume, the characters of selves are shaped through sympathetic interaction with others, and in order to make sympathetic interaction possible and effective, it is important that selves are embodied and continue to have the same body. Hence, his theory in Book 2 does not have much scope for metaphysically distinct persistence conditions for persons and human beings, and subsequently it is neither important nor helpful to introduce a conceptual distinction between persons and human beings as Locke does. In Books 2 and 3, Hume regards persons as embodied social creatures and our sympathetic interaction with others is deeply embedded in his moral thinking. Hume rejects any religious foundation of morality as we find it in Locke, and we can see why notions of virtue and character development play a more important role in his moral philosophy than in Locke's if we consider Hume's moral philosophy in the context of other British moral philosophers who influenced his views. NOTES Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the Joint Session at the University of Exeter in July 2013, the University of St Andrews in August 2013, the Dutch Seminar in Early Modern Philosophy at Radboud University in February 2015, the University of Sydney in April 2015, Deakin University in April 2015, and the University of Otago in September 2015. I would like to thank all my audiences, the students in my graduate seminar at the University at Albany in the spring 2014, and Kenneth Winkler for very helpful discussions and feedback. I am also grateful to the anonymous referees for this journal for their constructive and helpful comments. 1 Other philosophers who discuss personal identity prior to the publication of Hume's Treatise include Berkeley, Alciphron, 3:299; Butler, "Of Personal Identity"; Chambers, "Identity"; Clarke and Collins, The Correspondence; Perronet, Second Vindication; Shaftesbury, Characteristics; Watts, Philosophical Essays on Various Subjects, 287–306. References to Characteristics are to Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, ed. Klein, hereafter "Characteristics". Characteristics is a collection of Shaftesbury's mature works and individual works of the collection will be cited in the text as follows: Soliloquy: Soliloquy or Advice to an Author, followed by Part and section number, followed by page number; The Moralists: The Moralists: A Philosophical Rhapsody, followed by Part and section number, followed by page number; Miscellany: Miscellaneous Reflections on the Preceding Treatises and Other Critical Subjects, followed by miscellaneous text number and chapter number, followed by page number. References to the Treatise are to Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Norton and Norton, hereafter cited in the text as "T" followed by Book, part, section, and paragraph number, and to Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Selby-Bigge, rev. by Nidditch, cited in the text as "SBN" followed by the page number. 2 References to Essay are to Locke, An Essay concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter H. Nidditch, hereafter cited in the text as "Essay" followed by Book, chapter, and section number. 3 I am here adopting Locke's term that refers to human beings irrespective of sex or gender. 4 I do not want to suggest that Locke endorses a memory theory. I take it that Locke has good reasons to offer an account of personal identity in terms of consciousness rather than memory, because consciousness includes consciousness of the present and the future (see Locke, Essay, 2.27.10, 2.27.16–18, 2.27.24–26). However, memory, for Locke, is part of consciousness, and for this reason Locke and Hume agree that memory is relevant for personal identity. Thomas Reid used the terms "consciousness" and "memory" as exclusive and this explains why he criticized Locke for confounding memory with consciousness (see Reid, Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man, 3.6, 277). Many scholars reject Reid's criticism; they include Atherton, "Locke's Theory of Personal Identity"; Matthews, "Descartes and Locke," 28-30; Schechtman, Constitution of Selves, 105–12; Strawson, Locke on Personal Identity, chap. 9; Thiel, Early Modern Subject, 109, 122-26; Weinberg, "The Metaphysical Fact of Consciousness," 405–12. For a recent defense of a memory interpretation of Locke, see Stuart, Locke's Metaphysics, chap. 8. 5 Textual support for this view can be found in Essay 2.27.7: "It being one thing to be the same Substance, another the same Man, and a third the same Person, if Person, Man, and Substance, are three Names standing for three different Ideas; for such as is the Idea belonging to that Name, such must be the Identity." See also Essay 2.27.15. 6 In the secondary literature the debate between defenders of relative identity interpretations and coincidence views has received much attention. Defenders of a relative identity interpretation tend to argue that persons and human beings are one and the same thing at a time, while defenders of a coincidence view argue that they are two distinct things. For a detailed and recent defense of a relative identity interpretation, see Stuart, Locke's Metaphysics, chap. 7. Defenders of a coincidence interpretation include Chappell, "Locke and Relative Identity"; "Locke on the Ontology of Matter"; Kaufman, "Locke on Individuation." I will bracket this dispute in this paper, because I do not regard it as central to Locke's main task of specifying persistence conditions. 7 A similar view can be found in Alanen, "Personal Identity," esp. 6. 8 See Boeker, "Moral Dimension"; Law, Defence of Mr. Locke's Account; LoLordo, Locke's Moral Man; Spector, "Grounds of Moral Agency"; Strawson, Locke on Personal Identity, esp. chaps. 1–3. 9 For further discussion of the relation between Locke's 2.27.9 and 2.27.26 characterizations of persons see Boeker, "Moral Dimension." 10 See Locke, Essay, 2.28.5–15. 11 See Locke, Essay 2.28.5-8, and "Of Ethic in General." 12 See Locke, "Of Ethic in General." 13 See Locke, Essay 2.27.15–20, 2.27.22–23, 2.27.25–26; Locke, Letter no. 1693 in Correspondence 4:785–86. 14 For further discussion, see Garrett, "Locke on Personal Identity," 100. 15 See Locke, Essay 2.27.19–20, 2.27.22–23, Letter no. 1693 in Correspondence, 4:785–86. 16 See Locke, Essay 2.27.22, Letter no. 1693 in Correspondence, 4:785–86. 17 References to New Essays are to Leibniz, New Essays on Human Understanding, ed. Remnant and Bennett, hereafter "New Essays," followed by Book, chapter, and section number, followed by page number. 18 For a related discussion, see McIntyre, "Personal Identity and the Passions." 19 I here follow Locke and use the term "thought" in a broad sense to include perceptions and other mental states of which we have awareness. 20 In his correspondence with Stillingfleet, he tells us that we can know that thinking inheres in a substance, because thoughts cannot subsist by themselves, but we cannot know whether the substance is material or immaterial. See Locke, Works of John Locke, 4:37, hereafter cited as "Works." 21 For further discussion of Locke's interest in theology, see Nuovo, Introduction to Writings on Religion. 22 See Boyle, "Some Physico-Theological Considerations"; Hody, Resurrection, 1–3, 25–52, 99– 224; McMurrich, "Legend of the 'Resurrection Bone'"; Reichman and Rosner, "Bone Called Luz"; Thiel, "Personal Identity," 1:886, "Religion and Materialist Metaphysics," 86–92; Vidal, "Brains, Bodies, Selves, and Science." 23 See Locke, Works, 4:305-15. 24 See Avramescu, Intellectual History of Cannibalism, chap. 5; Boyle, "Some Physico-Theological Considerations," 198; Forstrom, John Locke and Personal Identity, 107–12; Hody, Resurrection, 184– 87; Kaufman, "Resurrection of the Same Body," 201–202. 25 This view is commonly based on 1 Cor 15:35–38. Discussions of this proposal can be found in Boyle, "Some Physico-Theological Considerations," 195–97; Locke, Works, 4:316–24; Hody, Resurrection, 34, 109–12, 119, 161, 191–92; Locke, Letter no. 2617A in Correspondence, 6:685–86. 26 See also Burthogge's letter to Locke, dated 19 September 1699, Letter no. 2617A in Locke, Correspondence, 6:685-86; Anstey, John Locke and Natural Philosophy, chap. 10, esp. 200–203, Anstey and Harris, "Locke and Botany." 27 See McMurrich, "Legend of the 'Resurrection Bone'"; Reichman and Rosner, "Bone Called Luz." The bone luz is explicitly mentioned by Hody, Resurrection, 111; Leibniz, New Essays, 2.27.6, 233. Boyle alludes to such a view in "Some Physico-Theological Considerations," 206. 28 See Hody, Resurrection, 111–12. 29 Boyle, endorses such a view and argues that the bodies to which the same soul is united can be very different in shape and size at different times. See Boyle, "Some Physico-Theological Considerations," 205–206. 30 In Hume, Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, 590–98. See also Harris, Hume, 48–51; Russell, Riddle of Hume's Treatise, chap. 17. According to Russell, irreligion is a dominant theme throughout Hume's Treatise: "The key consideration here is the fact that Hume's project in the Treatise is modeled or planned after Hobbes's similar project in The Elements of Law and the first two parts of Leviathan" (248). Some Hume scholars maintain that Russell overemphasizes the dominant role that irreligion plays throughout the Treatise (see, for example, Harris, "Of Hobbes and Hume"; Millican, "Paul Russell"; Pyle, "Paul Russell." For the purpose of my arguments in this paper it is sufficient that Hume does not endorse religious beliefs, and this is widely accepted among Hume scholars. 31 For further discussion see Winkler, "Locke on Personal Identity," 211n12. Jolley, Locke's Touchy Subjects maintains that Locke is more favourable to materialism than to immaterialism. I have doubts about Jolley's thesis, because his discussion of immaterial views focuses on Cartesian views and does not give proper acknowledgment to non-Cartesian immaterial views such as the views of the Cambridge Platonists. 32 See Hume, "Of the Immortality of the Soul," 596–97. 33 Actually Locke does not endorse the view that divine punishment is eternal. See Locke, "Resurrectio et Quae Sequuntur," in Writings on Religion, 232–37. 34 See Hume, "Of the Immortality of the Soul," 594. 35 For example, see Baxter, Hume's Difficulty, chap. 5; Ellis, "Contents of Hume's Appendix"; Fogelin, Hume's Skepticism, chap. 8; Garrett, Cognition and Commitment, chap. 8; "Rethinking Hume's Second Thoughts"; Strawson, Evident Connexion; Stroud, Hume, chap. 6; Thiel, Early Modern Subject, part VI; Waxman, Hume's Theory of Consciousness, chaps. 6–7. 36 I use the term "perception" as Hume does to refer to any impression or idea (see T 1.1.1.1; SBN 1). 37 He first introduces these associative principles in T 1.1.4 (SBN 10–13). See also Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, section 3, ed. Beauchamp, hereafter cited as "EHU," followed by section, paragraph; and An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, ed. L. A. Bigge, rev. Nidditch, 23–24, hereafter cited as "SBN" followed by page numbers. 38 Hume does not elaborate on why he regards contiguity as irrelevant in T 1.4.6. However, we can find an explanation if we turn to T 1.4.5 (see Baier, Progress of Sentiments, 142; Garrett, Cognition and Commitment, chap. 8). There Hume argues that some perceptions lack spatial location (see T 1.4.5.10–16; SBN 235–40). On this basis, we can see why he regards contiguity as irrelevant with regard to our belief in personal identity in Book 1: Selves, as they are given in experience are bundles of perceptions and perceptions can lack spatial location. Hence it will not be possible to consider perceptions that lack spatial location as contiguous, at least in space. 39 McIntyre has done important work to emphasize that the forward looking aspect of Hume's Book 2 account supplements his Book 1 account. See McIntyre, "Hume and the Problem of Personal Identity" and "Personal Identity and the Passions." 40 McIntyre is a major proponents of the view that the Book 2 account is consistent with the Book 2. See McIntyre, "Hume and the Problem of Personal Identity" and "Personal Identity and the Passions". According to Annette Baier, it is important to acknowledge the overall narrative that Hume develops throughout the Treatise, and the Treatise has to be understood as a whole. The solitary view in Book 1 is supplemented by a social perspective in Book 2, where selves are portrayed as flesh and blood social creatures who interact with each other and seek the company of others. While Baier regards the Book 2 account as supplementing the Book 1 account, she also emphasizes that persons in Book 2 are embodied human beings (see Progress of Sentiments, chap. 6). Alanen, "Personal Identity," argues that the political analogy of the self as a republic or commonwealth helps to understand how Hume's Book 2 account complements his Book 1 account. Other interpreters who argued for the continuity between Book 1 and 2 include Capaldi, Hume's Place in Moral Philosophy, 20–21, 168–84; Harris, "Compleat Chain of Reasoning." Interpreters who emphasize the differences or gap between Hume's Book 1 and Book 2 accounts include Penelhum, "Self of Book 1." 41 See Greco, "Self as Narrative in Hume"; Schechtman, Constitution of Selves. I am not convinced that there is sufficient textual evidence, at least in the Treatise, to call Hume's Book 2 account "narrative." Greco, "Self as Narrative," 711–14, and Pitson, Hume's Philosophy of the Self, 92–96, both regard Hume's Book 2 account of the self as narrative and primarily draw on textual evidence found in Hume's EHU, section 3. Narrative theories of personal identity have been criticized, for instance, by Strawson, "Against Narrativity," and Marya Schechtman has revised her earlier views in Staying Alive. I have doubts that the controversies that surround narrative theories of personal identity will help illuminate the interpretation of Hume's Book 2 account. For this reason, I will not adopt the term "narrative." 42 See Schechtman, Constitution of Selves, 1–2, 7–8. 43 To be fair, Greco acknowledges the interpretive disputes. See Greco, "Self as Narrative in Hume," 702–706. Interpreters who question that Hume offers a metaphysical account of personal identity in Book 1 of the Treatise include Waxman, Hume's Theory of Consciousness, chaps. 6–7. For further discussion, see Strawson, Evident Connexion, part 1. 44 I take this proposal to be in accordance with Ainslie's view that there are person-defining features and that persons bear an "existential connection" to those features. See Ainslie, "Scepticism About Persons." 45 For further discussion, see McIntyre, "Character: A Humean Account," 200–205. 46 For further discussion of Hume's account of sympathy, see Baier and Waldow, "Conversation between Annette Baier and Anik Waldow"; Taylor, Reflecting Subjects, chap. 2, "Sympathy, Self, and Others," 188-205. 47 For further discussion, see Baier, Progress of Sentiments, chap. 6, esp. 136–42. 48 See Hume, T 2.1.11.5, 2.1.11.8, 2.2.4.2 (SBN 318, 320, 252). For further discussion, see Waldow, "Sympathy and the Mechanics of Character Change," 233. 49 See Hume, T 3.3.1.10, 3.3.6.1 (SBN 577–78, 618). 50 See Haakonssen, Natural Law and Moral Philosophy, 51–58. While I regard the influence of the Natural Law tradition as important for understanding Locke's thinking about the justification of morality, I do not want to suggest that Locke's moral views fully match other traditional natural law theories. Some interpreters have argued that Locke's appeal to natural law theory cannot easily be reconciled with his hedonism. See Aaron, John Locke, 250–69; von Leyden, Introduction to Essays on the Law of Nature, by John Locke, 71–78; Schneewind, "Locke's Moral Philosophy," 199–225. I am not convinced that there is a genuine tension, because he is a hedonist with regard to moral motivation and his appeal to divine (or natural) law concerns the justification or foundation of morality. Simply coming to understand by reason that we are bound by divine law does not mean that we are motivated to act in accordance with divine law. For this reason a hedonistic account of motivation can supplement a justificatory account of morality in terms of natural law. For further discussion of Locke's account of motivation see Bolton, "Intellectual Virtue and Moral Law"; Weinberg, Consciousness in Locke, chap. 5. 51 See Shaftesbury, Characteristics. In a letter to Michael Ainsworth, dated 3 June 1709, Shaftesbury accuses Locke of having thrown "all Order and Virtue out of the World" (Several Letters, 39). See also Stuart-Buttle, "Shaftesbury Reconsidered." 52 Hutcheson, Inquiry, 86–87. 53 See Hutcheson, Essay and Inquiry. 54 Various interpreters have suggested that Hume's moral philosophy can be seen as a virtue ethicist approach. See Hursthouse, "Virtue Ethics and Human Nature"; Schneewind, "Misfortunes of Virtue," 50–54; Swanton, "Can Hume Be Read as a Virtue Ethicist?" However, Harris, "Hume on the Moral Obligation to Justice," argues that Hume's account of artificial virtues cannot be understood as virtue-ethical. Instead, Harris argues, it is better placed within natural law tradition. 55 See also Hume, EHU 8.30 (SBN 98–99). 56 In the following I do not take a stance on whether Shaftesbury's considered view is that a person is to be identified with a stable character or set of stable character traits. Shaftesbury's discussion of the self can be found throughout his Characteristics. Several of his works are written in dialogue form or contain inner dialogues, and notions of the self that are proposed at one stage are often challenged as the dialogue progresses. It is clear, however, that Shaftesbury was a critic of Locke's theory of personal identity. For further details of his criticism of Locke see Soliloquy, 3.1, 127, The Moralists, 2.1, 253–54, Miscellany 4.1, 420–21 (all in Characteristics). See also Thiel, Early Modern Subject, 177–80; Winkler, "Personal Identity in Shaftesbury and Hume," 6–9. 57 See Shaftesbury, Soliloquy, 1.2, 3.1, 3.3, 77–78, 85, 132–33, 162, The Moralists, 2.1, 253, Miscellany 4.1, 420 (all in Characteristics). 58 It is worth noting that the Treatise contains some passages that, at least prima facie seem to conflict with the possibility of character change. Hume writes: "it being almost impossible for the mind to change its character in any considerable article, or cure itself of a passionate or splenetic temper, when they are natural to it" (T 3.3.4.3; SBN 608). It is important to note that this passage concerns natural abilities. See also T 3.2.5.9 (SBN 521). 59 See Alanen, "Personal Identity," for a good proposal how this passage bridges Hume's discussion of the self in Books 1 and 2. 60 See also Hume, EHU 8.30 (SBN 98–99). 61 For further discussion, see Waldow, "Sympathy and the Mechanics of Character Change." WORKS CITED Aaron, Richard I. John Locke. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1971. Alanen, Lilli. "Personal Identity, Passions, and 'The True Idea of the Human Mind'." Hume Studies 40 (2014): 3–28. Anstey, Peter R. John Locke and Natural Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Anstey, Peter R. and Stephen A. Harris. "Locke and Botany." Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences 37 (2006): 151–71. 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*We would like to thank Nancy Cartwright, C Hilton, Christoph Hoerl, David Lagnado, Tania Jonathan Schaffer, Jim Woodward, Gideon Yaffe, a workshop on Causal and Moral Cognition (Califo versity of Southern California, the workshop on Thinking IV (Venice, Italy), Rutgers University, t ogy (Toronto), the Workshop on Causal and Cou of Warwick), and the Workshop on Counterfact 1 To name just a few: Donald Davidson, "Cau Events (New York: Oxford, 1980), pp. 149–62; Ph Cambridge, 2000); Ellery Eells, Probabilistic Ca chapter 6; Joseph Halpern and Judea Pearl, "C model Approach-Part I: Causes," British Journa 843–87; Christopher Hitchcock, "The Intransitiv andGraphs," this journal,xcviii, 6 ( June 2001) the Principle of Sufficient Reason," Philosophical Lewis, "Causation," this journal, lxx, 17 (Octo postscripts in Philosophical Papers, Volume II (New Y sation as Influence," this journal, xcvii, 4 (Apri Reasoning, and Inference (New York: Cambridge, 20 tion: A Realist Approach (New York: Oxford, 1987) pen (New York: Oxford, 2003), chapter 2; Steph journal, xcix, 3 (March 2002): 130–48. See als Hall, and L.A. Paul, eds. Causation and Counter Dowe and Paul Noordhof, eds., Cause and Chanc 0022-362X/09/0611/587–612 ã 587c . c THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY volume cvi, no. 11, november 2009 c c .CAUSE AND NORM*Much of the philosophical literature on causation has focusedon the concept of "actual" causation, sometimes called "to-ken" causation. In particular, it is this notion of actual causation that many philosophical theories of causation have attempted to capture.1 In this paper, we address the question: What purpose does this concept serve? As we shall see in the next section, one does not need this concept for purposes of prediction or rational deliberation. What then could its purpose be? We will argue that one can gain an important clue here by looking at the ways in which causal judgments are shaped by people's understanding of norms.lark Glymour, Alison Gopnik, Dennis Lombrozo, David Mandel, Laurie Paul, nd audience members at the McDonnell rnia Institute of Technology), the Unithe Origins and Functions of Causal he Society for Philosophy and Psycholnterfactual Understanding (University uals (Erasmus University, Rotterdam). sal Relations," in Essays on Actions and il Dowe, Physical Causation (New York: usality (New York: Cambridge, 1991), auses and Explanations: A Structurall for the Philosophy of Science, lvi (2005): ity of Causation Revealed in Equations : 273–99; "Prevention, Preemption, and Review, cxvi (2007): 495–532; David K. ber 11, 1973): 556–67, reprinted with ork: Oxford, 1986), pp. 159–213; "Caul 2000): 182–97; Pearl, Causality: Models, 00), chapter 10; Michael Tooley, Causa- ; James Woodward, Making Things Hapen Yablo, "De Facto Dependence," this o the many essays in John Collins, Ned factuals (Cambridge: MIT, 2004), and e (New York: Routledge, 2004). 2009 The Journal of Philosophy, Inc. the journal of philosophy588i. the problem We may illustrate the concept of actual causation with a simple example: Assassin and Backup set off on a mission to poison Victim. Assassin puts poison in Victim's drink. Backup stands at the ready; if Assassin hadn't poisoned the drink, Backup would have. Both poisons are lethal. Victim drinks the poison and dies. This is an example of causal preemption: Assassin's action causes Victim's death, and also preempts Backup's action, which would have caused the death ifAssassinhadnot acted.Cases of causal preemptionhave received a lot of attention, since they provide problems for both regularity and counterfactual theories of causation. Backup's presence, plus his willingness to use the poison, together with the composition of the poison, Victim's thirst, andother factors, are nomically sufficient for Victim's deathwithout the need to mention Assassin; nonetheless, Backup is not a cause of Victim's death. And Victim's death would have occurred even if Assassin had not acted; nonetheless, Assassin's action is a cause of Victim's death. Our little story has a causal structure, which can be represented abstractly using a neuron diagram (figure 1) or a system of structural equations as follows: AS 5 1 BS 5 1 AP 5 AS BP 5 BS & ∼AP PD 5 AP ∨ BP VD 5 PD (Where AS represents 'Assassin sets off', BS 'Backup sets off', AP 'Assassin poisons the drink', BP 'Backup poisons the drink', PD 'The drink is poisoned', and VD 'Victim dies'.) These representations tell us how each event in the story depends upon the other events in the story. ForBS APAS BP PD VD Figure 1 cause and norm 589example, they tell us that Backup would have poisoned the drink just in case he set off and Assassin had not poisoned the drink. Note that there is nothing inherently general or universal about the causal structure. For example, the last equation only tells us that in this particular case, Victim would have died if his drink had been poisoned and would not have died if it had not been poisoned. It does not say that poisonings always, or even typically, cause deaths.2 Over and above this causal structure, however, we have the judgment that Assassin's actions actually caused Victim to die, while Backup's actions did not. This is a judgment about actual causation. We wish to ask what the purpose of such a judgment is. In particular, why don't we make do with just the causal structure? After all, the causal structure suffices to allow us to make predictions about what will happen, given any combination of the relevant causal antecedents. The causal structure allows us to infer what would happen if we were to interfere with the system to disrupt the causal relationships in various ways. And the causal structure allows us to answer any counterfactual questions about how things might have gone differently. What more could we want from knowledge of causation? We may approach this problem from a slightly different direction. There have been a number of attempts to extend the counterfactual theory of causation to accommodate cases of causal preemption. One promising line, realized in somewhat different ways by David Lewis,3 Joseph Halpern and Judea Pearl,4 Ned Hall,5 and Christopher Hitchcock,6 is to identify causation not with counterfactual dependence in the actual situation, but rather with counterfactual dependence in a certain kind of "normalized" version of the actual situation. This normalized situation is reached by replacing abnormal features of the actual situation with more normal alternatives. Thus in our little causal story, while Victim's death does not counterfactually depend upon Assassin's action in the actual situation described, it would depend upon Assassin's action in the normalized version of the situation where Backup is not present. This is a rough sketch only; the details need not detain us. The question that arises is: What purpose can be served by a concept that has these contours? What purpose can be2 See Hitchcock, "Three Concepts of Causation," Philosophy Compass, ii (2007): 508– 16 (http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/toc/phco/2/3), and "Prevention, Preemption, and the Principle of Sufficient Reason," for further discussion of this point. 3 Lewis, Postscript E to "Causation," in his Philosophical Papers: Volume II, pp. 193–213. 4 Halpern and Pearl, "Causes and Explanations." 5 Hall, "Structural Equations and Causation," Philosophical Studies, cxxxii (2007): 109–36. 6 Hitchcock, "Prevention, Preemption, and the Principle of Sufficient Reason." the journal of philosophy590served by identifying factors that would have made a difference, not in the actual situation, but in a modified version of the actual situation? ii. solution sketch Before we begin examining the purpose of the concept of actual causation, it might be helpful to consider one popular view about the purpose of the concept of causal structure. Several authors have championed the view that the purpose of understanding causal structure is to predict the outcomes of interventions.7 In particular, it has been suggested that the key difference between knowing causal structure and merely knowing facts about correlations is that the former type of knowledge can enable people to predict the outcomes of intervention in a way that the latter cannot. To see the distinctive role of the concept of causation here, consider what might happen if you discovered a correlation whereby people who are beaten as children tend to be more violent as adults. Just by knowing that correlation, you could predict that a child who was beaten would be more likely to later become violent. Why then would you want to know whether there was truly a causal relationship between being beaten and becoming violent? The idea we will be drawing on here is that this information about causation proves useful when one's goal is not only to predict the results of subsequent observations but also to actively intervene in the world. Hence, in this example, the important thing about knowing whether there was a causal relationship here would be that this sort of knowledge would allow you to determine whether you could prevent people from becoming violent in adulthood by intervening to prevent them from being beaten as children. Our aim here is to construct an account that extends this basic insight, showing how people's concept of actual causation enables them to design effective interventions. In particular, we argue that information that has nothing to do with causal structure can sometimes prove helpful in determining which intervention would be most suitable and that people are actually making use of this information in deciding which factors to denominate as "causes." In general, while causal structure identifies all of the factors that could be manipulated (either singly or in combination) to effect a change in the outcome, the actual causes are the factors that should be manipulated. For a simple example, consider a student who has just gotten an F on a test and is wondering how this outcome might have been avoided. At7 For example, Nancy Cartwright, "Causal Laws and Effective Strategies," Noûs, xiii (1979): 419–37; Woodward, Making Things Happen. cause and norm 591least in theory, she might consider all sorts of different possibilities: "I would not have gotten an F if the teacher had been eaten by a lion." "I would not have gotten an F if the Earth's gravitational pull had suddenly decreased." "I would not have gotten an F if I had had less to drink the night before the test." Yet although all of these different counterfactuals might be correct, she is only likely to entertain one of these, and only one of them actually points toward a suitable target of intervention. She should not be wasting her time thinking about the possibility of avoiding a bad grade by introducing lions or decreasing the Earth's gravitational pull. The thing to focus on here is the possibility of getting a better grade by drinking less. It is in addressing problems like this one, we think, that the concept of actual causation really earns its keep. Information about causal structure entails many different counterfactuals about how a given outcome might have been avoided. But people's judgments of actual causation do something more. They select, from amongst all of these different counterfactuals, a chosen few that might actually be worth considering. In short, the concept of actual causation enables us to pick out appropriate targets for intervention.8 At this point, it might be helpful to clarify the status of the claim we are making. We certainly are not saying that people's ordinary criteria for actual causation include something like: "Pick out the factor that would be the most appropriate target for intervention." Nor are we claiming to offer anything like an analysis of actual causation. Rather, the significance of questions about targets of intervention only arises when we ask a further justificatory question. Even if we were able to develop a perfect set of criteria for actual causation, there would still be a further question, namely,Why deploy a concept with just these criteria? It is here that the notion of identifying suitable targets of intervention plays a role. We will argue that there truly is something of value about the criteria people ordinarily use, and the claim will be that this value comes from the fact that people's ordinary criteria tend to pick out factors that would genuinely be suitable targets of intervention. The basic strategy we find here is much like the one at work in interventionist theories of causal structure. As we saw above, the motivating8 Our account has affinities with the proposal-championed by Guido Calabresi in The Costs of Accidents (New Haven: Yale, 1970)-that the agent who caused some harmful outcome is the one who could have avoided the outcome with the least cost. Under this concept of causation, it is argued, the practice of holding those who cause bad outcomes responsible for those outcomes will maximize social utility; those who can avoid bad outcomes most cheaply will be provided with an incentive for paying those costs, and in this way, the cost to the society as a whole is minimized. As we shall see in section ix below, however, our evaluative criteria have nothing to do with economic cost. the journal of philosophy592idea behind these accounts is that causal relationships, in contrast with spurious correlations, for example, can support our interventions. But this idea, by itself, is clearly inadequate as an analysis of the distinction between causal relationships and mere correlations. For example, there can be causal relationships in astrophysics, where human intervention is impossible in practice or even in principle. The actual criteria for causation do not themselves make any reference to agents trying to achieve goals; instead, they are framed in terms of certain technical concepts which need not detain us here.9 But then one can still ask why it might make sense to employ a concept with these particular criteria. Here the suggestion is that these criteria make sense because they generally enable us to pick out factors that we can manipulate in order to achieve particular goals. The appeal to agency is not part of the analysis of causation, but rather helps to explain why we put so much stock in causal knowledge. Our approach here has the same basic structure. First we point to some surprising features of the actual criteria governing ascriptions of causation. Then we suggest that these criteria actually make sense if one assumes that causal ascriptions serve a particular kind of purpose in our lives. It is only at this second level that we invoke the idea of identifying suitable targets for intervention. iii. causal selection It has long been recognized that ordinary causal judgments make use of information that goes beyond anything that might be included in causal structure. People seem to rely on extra-structural information to select certain candidate causes over others-claiming, for example, that the spark was a "cause" of the fire, while the oxygen was merely a background "condition."10 Yet although everyone acknowledges that this process of selection takes place, questions about the precise nature of the selection have not figured prominently in the existing literature on the concept of causation. Indeed, most authors who have chosen to discuss the problem of selection at all have ended up concluding that it serves only to distract us from those aspects of causal judgment that are truly philosophically important. Thus Mill writes: It is seldom, if ever, between a consequent and a single antecedent, that this invariable sequence subsists. It is usually between a consequent and the sum of several antecedents; the concurrence of all of them being9 See for example, Woodward, chapters 2 and 3. 10 See, for example, H.L.A. Hart and T. Honoré, Causation in the Law, Second Edition (New York: Oxford, 1985), especially pp. 32–41. cause and norm 593requisite to produce, that is, to be certain of being followed by, the consequent. In such cases it is very common to single out one only of the antecedents under the denomination of Cause, calling the others mere Conditions .... The real cause, is the whole of these antecedents; and we have, philosophically speaking, no right to give the name of cause to one of them, exclusively of the others.11 Lewis says: We sometimes single out one among all the causes of some event and call it 'the' cause, as if there were no others. Or we single out a few as the 'causes', calling the rest mere 'causal factors' or 'causal conditions' .... I have nothing to say about these principles of invidious discrimination.12 And Hall adds: When delineating the causes of some given event, we typically make what are, from the present perspective, invidious distinctions, ignoring perfectly good causes because they are not sufficiently salient. We say that the lightning bolt caused the forest fire, failing to mention the contribution of the oxygen in the air, or the presence of a sufficient quantity of flammable material. But in the egalitarian sense of 'cause', a complete inventory of the fire's causes must include the presence of oxygen and of dry wood.13 In short, all of these authors agree that our ordinary causal attributions are highly selective, but they nonetheless contend that this selectivity is somehow independent of the truly deep and important features of the concept of causation. These deep and important features, they argue, are entirely "egalitarian," that is, free from the sort of selectivity one finds in ordinary causal attributions. We concur that this egalitarianism is entirely appropriate at the level of what we have called causal structure.14 We claim, however, that it is out of place at the level of actual causation. If the concept of actual causation were entirely egalitarian, we find it hard to see how it could be helpful for people even to have the concept at all. All of the truly important information would already be contained in the causal structure, and it seems that people would be better off ignoring questions of actual causation altogether and simply talking about patterns of counterfactual dependence. The value of the concept of actual causation, we wish to suggest, comes precisely from the fact that it is inegal-11 Mill, A System of Logic, Volume I, Fourth Edition (London: J.W. Parker and Son, 1856), pp. 360–61. 12 Lewis, "Causation," cited from Philosophical Papers, p. 162. 13 Hall, "Two Concepts of Causation," in Collins, Hall, and Paul, eds., p. 228. 14 See Hitchcock, "Three Concepts of Causation," for further discussion. the journal of philosophy594itarian. Our concept of actual causation enables us to pick out those factors that are particularly suitable as targets of intervention. iv. norms and causal judgment To illustrate the basic issues here, we can introduce a simple case, which we will call the pen vignette: The receptionist in the philosophy department keeps her desk stocked with pens. The administrative assistants are allowed to take pens, but faculty members are supposed to buy their own. The administrative assistants typically do take the pens. Unfortunately, so do the faculty members. The receptionist repeatedly e-mails them reminders that only administrators are allowed to take the pens. On Monday morning, one of the administrative assistants encounters Professor Smith walking past the receptionist's desk. Both take pens. Later that day, the receptionist needs to take an important message ... but she has a problem. There are no pens left on her desk. Now, if these events were actually unfolding, there would be a number of different ways of intervening to prevent the problem. One approach would be to make the professor do what he was supposed to do and stop violating the rules. Another would be to allow the professor to violate the rules but to cancel out some of the effects of his action by making the administrative assistant refrain from taking any pens. Either of these two approaches would work in the situation as described. And yet, it seems that the two approaches are not entirely equal. One has a clear intuition-an intuition we will explore at length below-that it would actually be more suitable in some important respect to intervene by making the professor obey the rules. The key thing to note now is that people's ordinary causal judgments follow this same pattern. In one recent experiment, subjects were given the pen vignette and then asked whether they agreed or disagreed with one of the following sentences. • Professor Smith caused the problem. • The administrative assistant caused the problem. Overall, subjects agreed with the statement that Professor Smith caused the problem, but they disagreed with the statement that the administrative assistant caused the problem.15 In other words, the factor that15 J. Knobe and B. Fraser, "Causal Judgment and Moral Judgment: Two Experiments," in Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, ed., Moral Psychology, Volume 2: The Cognitive Science of Morality (Cambridge: MIT, 2008), pp. 441–48. Subjects were presented with one of the two cause and norm 595subjects picked out as a "cause" was precisely the factor that seemed most suitable as a target of intervention. This simple example illustrates the basic elements of the account of causal judgment we will be developing here. On this account, people's causal judgments do not simply pick out any old factor that happens to stand in the right position within a causal structure. Instead, ordinary causal judgments specifically pick out those factors that would prove especially suitable as targets of intervention. It is this selective aspect of causal judgments that allows them to have a value that goes beyond anything one might find in causal structure alone. Our argument for this account comes in two parts. First we engage in a purely descriptive project, trying to understand the pattern of people's ordinary causal judgments. Then we turn to more explicitly evaluative questions, explaining how the pattern evinced in people's ordinary judgments might actually prove helpful in selecting targets of intervention. v. counterfactual reasoning and norms To arrive at a proper understanding of people's ordinary causal judgments, we will need to turn to a topic that might at first seem unrelated to the issue of causal selection but which, we believe, will eventually help us to resolve the problems under discussion here. In particular, we need to turn to questions about the human capacity for counterfactual reasoning-the capacity people use for thinking about how things might have been different from the way they actually are. Our concern here will not be with the aspects of counterfactual reasoning that usually come up in discussions of topics like this one. We will not be asking about the semantics of counterfactuals or about how people determine whether certain counterfactuals are true or false. Instead, we will be concerned with questions about how people decide which counterfactuals are worth thinking about in the first place. Or, to put it in the terms we will be using here, our concern is with questions about how people decide which counterfactuals are relevant. These questions have not played much of a role in the philosophical literature thus far, but they have been investigated in great depthstatements, and were asked to rate the extent to which they agreed or disagreed with it on a 7-point scale, from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Those who were given the statement 'Professor Smith caused the problem' gave an average rating of 5.2, while those who were given the statement 'The administrative assistant caused the problem' gave an average rating of 2.8. This difference was statistically significant (p < .001). the journal of philosophy596within cognitive and social psychology,16 and quite a bit is now known about the ways in which people determine whether or not a given counterfactual is relevant. For an example of the phenomenon under discussion here, consider what might happen if we submitted a manuscript to a journal and it ended up being sent to a reviewer who held certain bizarre and idiosyncratic views. To make the case more concrete, let us suppose that the reviewer has a strong distaste for the word 'and' and that he therefore rejects our paper on the grounds that one should never use that word more than three times per page.17 It seems that we would then treat as relevant counterfactuals of the form: (1) If the manuscript had been sent to a reviewer with more ordinary views .... Thoughts about this sort of counterfactual would leap immediately to our minds; we might even be unable to keep ourselves from thinking about them. By contrast, we would probably treat as completely irrelevant counterfactuals of the form: (2) If the reviewer had composed a catchy pop song about our manuscript .... Of course, people are not literally incapable of thinking about irrelevant counterfactuals like this one. (If pressed, they could imagine the counterfactual situation and do their best to figure out what outcomes would result.) Still, there is an almost overwhelming tendency for people not to think in any way about such things. Our capacity for counterfactual reasoning seems to show a strong resistance to any consideration of irrelevant counterfactuals. Ultimately, our aim is to show that certain facts about the way people assess the relevance of counterfactuals can explain the puzzling patterns we observed earlier in looking at the nature of causal selection. That is, we want to show that the criteria people use when assessing relevance can be used to explain how people manage to pick16 See, for example: Ruth Byrne, "Mental Models and Counterfactual Thoughts about What Might Have Been," Trends in Cognitive Science, vi (2002): 426–31; Daniel Kahneman and Dale Miller, "Norm Theory: Comparing Reality to Its Alternatives," Psychological Review, lxxx (1986): 136–53; Kahneman and Amos Tversky, "The Simulation Heuristic," in Kahneman, Paul Slovic, and Tversky, Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases (New York: Cambridge, 1982), pp. 201–10; David R. Mandel, Denis J. Hilton, and Patrizia Catellani, eds., The Psychology of Counterfactual Thinking (New York: Routledge, 2005); N.J. Roese, "Counterfactual Thinking," Psychological Bulletin, cxxi (1997): 133–48. 17 One of us in fact had a high school philosophy teacher with just this idiosyncrasy; that is the reason for the excessive use of colons, semicolons, em dashes, and similar and-avoidance strategies in the present paper. cause and norm 597out the most suitable targets of intervention. For the moment, however, we want to put aside these broader issues about the relationship between causation and moral judgment and simply focus on developing a theory about how people assess the relevance of counterfactuals. At the heart of our theory is the idea that people's judgments about the relevance of counterfactuals depend in an essential way on norms. The basic suggestion is that people classify events on a scale from "normal" to "abnormal." Then, when something abnormal occurs, they regard as relevant counterfactuals those that involve something more normal having occurred instead. Roughly speaking, the reason why people think that counterfactual (1) is relevant is that they think it is normal for philosophy papers to be given to reviewers who do not evaluate papers based on the frequency of an innocuous conjunction. Conversely, the reason people regard counterfactual (2) as irrelevant is that they think it is abnormal for reviewers to write catchy pop songs about the manuscripts they receive. And similarly for numerous other sorts of cases. The basic picture here is one in which, whenever something abnormal occurs, people show a tendency to think about how things would have gone if something normal had taken place instead. By contrast, people are much less inclined to entertain counterfactual hypotheses in which normal events are replaced by abnormal ones. At this point, however, it may be thought that our account suffers from a fundamental ambiguity. For it might be suggested that terms like 'norm' and 'normal' can be used in a number of distinct senses. Indeed, one might say that there are at least two completely separate meanings at work here. First, there are what one might call "statistical norms." These norms simply capture information about the relative frequencies of certain events. Using the word 'norm' in this sense, one might say, for example: "The temperature yesterday was considerably colder than the norm for this time of year." Second, there are "prescriptive norms"-norms that actually tell us what ought to happen under certain circumstances. Using 'norm' in this latter sense, one might say: "There is a strong norm in our community against interrupting during someone's talk." Moreover, there seem to be different kinds of prescriptive norms. There are purely moral norms, where violating the norm would be intrinsically wrong. Then there are legal norms, or more generally, norms arising from policies adopted by social institutions. Professor Smith violated such a norm when he took one of the last pens. Often there is nothing intrinsically wrong with an action that violates such a norm, although the presence of the policy (if just and conducive toward some social good) might create a moral obligation to adhere to it. There are also the journal of philosophy598norms of proper functioning that apply to artifacts and biological organisms (and their components). In light of these distinctions, it might be thought that we need to say which specific type of norm ends up playing a role in the way people assess the relevance of counterfactuals. Yet although there clearly are differences between these kinds of norms, it also seems that it is not merely a sort of pun that they have come to be denoted by the same word. There really does seem to be some important way in which these different kinds of norms are connected in our ordinary ways of understanding the world. Hence, when we say of a person that she is "abnormal," we do not typically have in mind either a purely statistical judgment or a purely prescriptive one. Instead, we seem to be making a single overall judgment that takes both statistical and prescriptive considerations into account. Perhaps the connection we see here between statistical and prescriptive norms stems from the fact that people can use each of these norms as a heuristic for the other. On the one hand, when we are trying to figure out what people are going to do, we sometimes rely on the assumption that they will probably end up choosing the option that is best. On the other, when we are wondering whether a given option is a bad one, we sometimes proceed by assuming that an option is unlikely to be very bad if it is frequently chosen. Given the close connection between these two kinds of judgments, people may have developed a single type of representation that is not specifically designed either for statistical purposes or for prescriptive purposes but which manages to do a fairly decent job in both domains. To take just one example, it seems that people sometimes develop "scripts" for stereotypical situations and that, although these scripts do not perfectly capture either the statistical distribution of behaviors in those situations or the prescriptively optimal behaviors to perform, they do help people to get a rough sort of handle on both of these issues. In keeping with this general idea, our theory does not assign distinct roles to statistical and prescriptive norms. The claim is rather that people classify each counterfactual as having a single overall degree of "normality" (taking both statistical and prescriptive considerations into account) and that this overall degree of normality ends up affecting people's sense of whether the counterfactual is relevant or irrelevant. With this framework in place, we can return to the example discussed above. The suggestion would be that people develop an overall conception of what sorts of criteria for evaluating a paper would be "normal" for a reviewer to apply. This conception integrates both statistical and prescriptive considerations-picking out a particular class of criteria in a way that generally steers clear of those that are infrecause and norm 599quent (the statistical considerations) but also, so far as possible, steers clear of criteria that are not appropriate for evaluating philosophy papers (the prescriptive considerations). People's counterfactual reasoning then gravitates toward thoughts of reviewers who apply criteria that are normal in this sense. Thus, when the actual reviewer's views are abnormal, people tend to think about what would have happened if they had been more normal. Looking through the psychological literature, one finds a number of different hypotheses about precisely how this reasoning process takes place,18 but the precise details of these hypotheses will not be important here. The key point for present purposes is just that, whatever else might be going on, people do generally show a tendency to direct their counterfactual thoughts toward ways in which the world could have been more normal-and there is considerable empirical support for this general claim. To take a case involving prescriptive norms: Read19 presented subjects with a vignette in which two people are playing cards. One person wins the hand, and subjects are invited to complete the sentence "The outcome would have been different if ...." Subjects were much more strongly inclined to strengthen the losing hand than to weaken the winning hand. Or, for a case involving statistical norms: Kahneman and Tversky20 presented subjects with a vignette in which Mr. Jones was killed in a traffic accident on the way home from work when he was hit by a drug-crazed truck-driving teenager who ran a red light. In one version of the story, Mr. Jones left home from work early in order to run some errands; in another version, he deviated from his normal route home in order to enjoy the scenic drive along the lake. Subjects were informed of both possibilities; for example, subjects who were given the first version of the story were also told that Mr. Jones occasionally took a scenic route home, but that he took his normal route home that day. Subjects were then told that Jones's family and friends often found themselves thinking "if only..."; the subjects were then told to complete the "if only..." statements. Those subjects who were given the first version of the story were strongly inclined to say "if only Jones had left at his regular time," rather than "if only Jones had taken the scenic route"; whereas subjects who were given the second version of the story were inclined to say "if only Jones had taken his regular route home" rather than "if only Jones had left early to run errands." And there are numerous further studies showing the same basic effect.18 For example, Kahneman and Miller, op. cit.; Roese, op. cit. 19 D. Read, "Deteminants of Relative Mutability," unpublished manuscript. 20 Kahneman and Tversky, op. cit. the journal of philosophy600vi. evaluating the criteria for counterfactual relevance Moreover, when one examines these phenomena from a more evaluative perspective, one sees immediately that they really do make a certain amount of sense. It is not just that our minds are constructed in such a way that we tend to think about what would have happened if the reviewer had applied more ordinary criteria-it truly is helpful to think about counterfactual scenarios like that one. Similarly, it is not just that people happen not to think about what would have occurred if the reviewer had decided to write a pop song-it truly would be pointless to waste one's time on thoughts like that one. The best way to see why this is so is to look separately at the significance of statistical norms and prescriptive norms. In both cases, however, the key points will be remarkably straightforward. The reason why it is helpful to think about possibilities that are statistically frequent is that these possibilities are the ones that we are most likely to encounter in the future. In one particular instance, we may happen to encounter a highly unusual sort of situation, but it would be a mistake in such cases simply to focus on the details of what actually ended up occurring. If we want to plan adequately for the future, we need also to think about what would have happened if a more probable type of situation had arisen. The reason why it is helpful to think about possibilities in which prescriptive norms are not violated is that those are typically the possibilities we are trying to bring about. If we are trying, for example, to find some way to avoid a particular outcome, we do not want to search for just any way of avoiding that outcome. Rather, we want to find a way of avoiding the outcome without also having something else go wrong. (Moreover, when we do not have accurate statistical information available, we use conformity to a prescriptive norm as a heuristically useful surrogate.) All in all, then, it seems fairly easy to see how it might be helpful for people to engage in counterfactual reasoning in the way they do. What we want to show now is that people's tendency to consider certain counterfactuals rather than others can actually explain the puzzling patterns we find in their causal intuitions. vii. causal judgments and relevant counterfactuals Since the publication of Lewis's "Causation," there has been a long tradition of trying to analyze causation in terms of counterfactuals. Such accounts run into problems with cases of causal preemption, of the sort we saw in section i above. Many ingenious proposals have been offered to deal with these problems, but the details need not concern us here. It seems clear that causation and counterfactuals are closely related, cause and norm 601and that in most ordinary cases, counterfactual dependence provides a pretty good prima facie criterion for causation. Counterfactual dependence is, for example, used as a test for causation in the law; and psychologists such as Kahneman and Tversky21 have argued that we rely on counterfactual reasoning when making causal judgments. Thus it would hardly be surprising if the same factors that influence counterfactual reasoning also affect our causal attributions. Our proposal is that when subjects think about the actual cause(s) of some event, they think about one event, or perhaps a small handful of events, that made a difference for the outcome, in the sense that hypothetical situations in which that event does not occur or in which it is dramatically different will be ones in which the outcome is dramatically different. When people select which events to hypothetically change, they are guided by the relevance of the corresponding counterfactual. If some abnormal event occurred, the hypothetical situation in which it does not occur, or some more normal event occurs instead, will typically be considered relevant. If this situation is one in which the outcome in question is substantially different, the abnormal event will be judged to be a cause of that outcome. By contrast, if some normal event occurs, we may never get around to considering the counterfactual situation in which some more abnormal alternative occurs instead.22 Even if this situation is one in which the outcome is different, the normal event will not be judged a cause of the outcome. Thus, in the pen vignette, while it is true that the problem would not have occurred if the administrative assistant had not taken a pen, this counterfactual is not deemed as relevant as the one in which Professor Smith does not take a pen. This explains why we are less inclined to judge that the administrative assistant's action was a cause of the problem. Note that normality and abnormality are, at least to some extent, comparative notions. Thus, even if the administrative assistants and the faculty members only infrequently take the pens, still, the administrative assistant's taking the pen is more normal than Professor Smith's doing so, and we are not likely to consider the possibility in which she does not take the pen.2321 Kahneman and Tversky, op. cit. 22 Hart and Honoré similarly propose that judgments about the normality of a condition affect our causal judgments (see especially pp. 33–41), although they do not make the connection with the psychology of counterfactual reasoning. 23We may make an analogy here with Lewis's account of "Causation as Influence." In that account, it is not the absolute amount of influence that one event has over another that determines whether it is a cause, but the amount of influence it has in comparison with other candidate causes. the journal of philosophy602In the egalitarian tradition illustrated by the passages fromMill, Lewis, and Hall above, both the administrative assistant's action and Professor Smith's action would count as causes of the problem. Moreover, they are each full causes: causes do not come in degrees. But the ordinary causal judgments of subjects-even, as we shall see, those of trained philosophers-are not like this. Subjects are happy to rate their level of agreement with the causal claims using nonextreme values of a numerical scale. And to some extent at least, they tend to see the two causal claims as being in competition with one another. Even when subjects were not asked to explicitly compare the two causal claims, but only to rate their agreement with the claim that the administrative assistant caused the problem, the presence of a better causal candidate led them to disagree with this claim. viii. alternative explanations Before going any further, perhaps it will be helpful to sum up the path of the argument thus far. We began by asking what purpose people's concept of actual causation might serve. To address that question, we engaged in an empirical investigation into the criteria underlying people's ordinary application of this concept. There, we argued that people's criteria for causal selection arise in part because of the way in which their judgments of counterfactual relevance are affected by norms. Ultimately, our aim is to figure out whether the criteria revealed by this empirical inquiry actually do serve a legitimate purpose. But first we need to consider a certain sort of alternative explanation. On this alternative explanation, judgments about norm violation do not actually play any role in people's underlying competence, but people's causal judgments can sometimes be distorted by their judgments of blame. It is possible, for instance, that subjects are conflating the questions of causation and blame. Or perhaps subjects recognize that while it is strictly true that the administrative assistant caused the problem, it would be infelicitous to say so, since the context suggests that the causal inquiry is being made for the purpose of assigning blame.24 Or perhaps we have an immediate negative affective reaction to Professor Smith's action, which biases us in favor of causal assessments that will underwrite attributions of blame to him.25 Although these alternative explanations can accommodate all of the data we have discussed thus far, they rely on a type of moral judgment24 This view is proposed by Julia Driver, "Attributions of Causation and Moral Responsibility," in Sinnott-Armstrong, ed. 25 As proposed by Mark Alicke, "Culpable Causation," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, lxiii (1992): 368–78. cause and norm 603that plays no role at all in our preferred account. In the pen vignette, for example, one finds two different events about which people could be making moral judgments: Candidate cause : Professor Smith taking a pen Effect: The problem arising The alternative explanations suggest that people's causal judgments are influenced by a moral judgment they make about the effect-namely, a judgment that the professor is to blame for the problem. By contrast, our own account makes no mention of any sort of moral judgment regarding the effect. Instead, it posits a role for judgments about whether the candidate cause was itself a norm violation. These various approaches all yield exactly the same prediction in the pen vignette, but it should be possible to develop vignettes in which the different approaches yield very different predictions. What we need now are cases in which a norm is violated but no one is assigned blame. In cases of this latter type, the alternative explanations suggest that moral considerations should have no impact on people's causal judgments (because of the absence of blame) while our own hypothesis suggests that the impact of normative considerations should remain unchanged (because people still see that a norm has been violated). To decide between these competing views, we conducted a questionnaire study. Overall, the study had 3,422 subjects, including 327 who indicated that they were philosophy professors or had Ph.D.s in philosophy. Each subject received eleven vignettes, but only two of those vignettes were relevant to the issue under discussion here.26 One vignette-the drug vignette-concerned an agent who violates a norm but ends up bringing about an outcome that is actually good: An intern is taking care of a patient in a hospital. The intern notices that the patient is having some kidney problems. Recently, the intern read a series of studies about a new drug that can alleviate problems like this one, and he decides to administer the drug in this case. Before the intern can administer the drug, he needs to get the signature of the pharmacist (to confirm that the hospital has enough in stock) and the signature of the attending doctor (to confirm that the drug is appropriate for this patient). So he sends off requests to both the pharmacist and the attending doctor.26 For a full description of the study procedures and the additional vignettes, see Hitchcock and Knobe, "The Influence of Norms and Intentions on Causal Attributions," unpublished manuscript. the journal of philosophy604The pharmacist receives the request, checks to see that they have enough in stock, and immediately signs off. The attending doctor receives the request at the same time and immediately realizes that there are strong reasons to refuse. Although some studies show that the drug can help people with kidney problems, there are also a number of studies showing that the drug can have very dangerous side effects. For this reason, the hospital has a policy forbidding the use of this drug for kidney problems. Despite this policy, the doctor decides to sign off. Since both signatures were received, the patient is administered the drug. As it happens, the patient immediately recovers, and the drug has no adverse effects. After reading this vignette, subjects were asked to rate their agreement or disagreement with one of the following two statements: • The pharmacist's decision caused the patient's recovery. • The attending doctor's decision caused the patient's recovery. Here the attending doctor is clearly violating a norm, but there is no sense at all in which he can be considered blameworthy for the patient's recovery. (After all, the patient's recovery is something good, and there can therefore be no question about who is to blame for it.) Yet despite the lack of blame, people were more inclined to say that the doctor's decision caused the recovery than they were to say that the pharmacist's decision caused the recovery.27 This result indicates that people's causal intuitions can be affected by norm violations, even in the absence of any judgment of blameworthiness. A second vignette-the machine vignette-described a case in which a norm is violated but there are no agents at all: A machine is set up in such a way that it will short circuit if both the black wire and the red wire touch the battery at the same time. The machine will not short circuit if just one of these wires touches the battery. The black wire is designated as the one that is supposed to touch the battery, while the red wire is supposed to remain in some other part of the machine. One day, the black wire and the red wire both end up touching the battery at the same time. There is a short circuit.27 Subjects rated each statement on a scale from 1 ('disagree') to 7 ('agree'). Overall, the statement about the attending doctor received a mean rating of 3.9; the statement about the pharmacist received a mean rating of 2.5. This difference was statistically significant, t(3411) 5 21.5, p < .001. When one looks only at subjects who are philosophy professors or have Ph.D.s in philosophy, one finds the same basic pattern (mean for the attending doctor 5 5.3, mean for the pharmacist 5 3.5, t(325) 5 3.2, p < .005). cause and norm 605After reading the vignette, subjects were asked to rate their agreement or disagreement with one of the following statements: • The fact that the red wire touched the battery caused the machine to short circuit. • The fact that the black wire touched the battery caused the machine to short circuit. Here again, we have a case of norm violation without blameworthiness. Specifically, it seems that the red wire is violating a certain kind of norm, but it also seems clear that no one could literally blame the red wire for the short circuit. Nonetheless, people were more willing to say that the red wire touching the battery caused the short circuit than they were to say that the black wire touching the battery caused the short circuit.28 So once again, it seems that people's causal intuitions are being affected by norm violations even in the absence of any judgment of blame. In addition, the fact that trained philosophers make essentially the same judgments as untutored subjects makes it much less plausible that the effect is the result of conflating causal judgments with some other kind of judgment. ix. evaluating the criteria for causation We have been concerned in these past few sections with purely descriptive questions about the criteria governing people's ordinary causal judgments. We began with the observation that these criteria seem to be constructed in such a way that events that involve norm violations are especially likely to be selected as causes. We then argued that this effect was best understood, not in terms of people's judgments of blame, but rather in terms of their judgments about the relevance of particular counterfactuals. Now that we have in place a specific hypothesis about the criteria underlying people's ordinary causal intuitions, we can begin to ask whether these criteria actually serve any useful purpose. Do these criteria offer us anything beyond what we could get from causal structure alone? Is there anything helpful about selectively picking out those factors that most violate certain norms and referring to them in particular as "causes"?28 Subjects rated each statement on a scale from 1 ('disagree') to 7 ('agree'). Overall, the statement about the red wire received a mean rating of 4.9; the statement about the black wire received a mean rating of 2.7. This difference was statistically significant, t(3410) 5 30.2, p < .001. When one looks only at subjects who are philosophy professors or have Ph.D.s in philosophy, one finds the same basic pattern (mean for the red wire5 5.3, mean for the black wire 5 3.5, t(325) 5 8.4, p < .001). the journal of philosophy606When one first hears that norm violations are more likely to be picked out as causes, it is natural to assume that the purpose of this mechanism must have something to do with picking out the agents who are truly to blame for an outcome. We think that this view is not quite right, for reasons described in the previous section, but we do believe that it is headed in more or less the right direction. One can regard the act of blaming a person as one way of intervening on that person's behavior and trying to get him or her to change. Indeed, Schlick attempted to understand all of our moral attributions in these broadly utilitarian terms.29 While Schlick's account is widely believed to have been discredited,30 it certainly seems that one of the things we are doing when we blame someone is to identify a person whose behavior is in need of corrective intervention. What we want to suggest, however, is that people's criteria for actual causation are not best understood in terms of this one very specific form of intervention. Instead, these criteria are best understood in terms of the broader question as to which strategies of intervention are most worth considering. So the question here is not just "Which agent in this situation is to blame?" but rather something like: "Of all the various ways in which one could have prevented this from happening, which one is the best one to focus on?" In the kinds of cases we have been discussing, an outcome has arisen, and it is immediately clear that there are a number of different ways in which people could have intervened to prevent it. One obvious strategy in these cases would be to intervene on an abnormal aspect of the situation and make it more normal. But there is also another possibility. One could leave all of the abnormal aspects of the situation in place but then intervene to introduce additional abnormalities that prevent the outcome from occurring. As far as causal structure is concerned, these two possibilities are entirely symmetric-either type of intervention would have successfully prevented the effect. And yet, interestingly, people's ordinary causal intuitions are not perfectly symmetric. People tend to specifically pick out the abnormal factor as a cause, thereby directing attention to the possibility of intervening on the abnormal factor rather than on any of the normal ones.29 Moritz Schlick, The Problems of Ethics, translated by D. Rynin (New York: Prentice Hall, 1939). 30 See, for example, P.F. Strawson, "Freedom and Resentment," Proceedings of the British Academy, xlviii (1962): 1–25; but see also M. Vargas, "Moral Influence, Moral Responsibility" in Nick Trakakis and Daniel Cohen, eds., Essays on Free Will and Moral Responsibility (Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press, forthcoming), for a reply to Strawson. cause and norm 607What we want to show now is that this approach to causal selection really does make sense.31 There truly are good reasons to intervene on the abnormal factors rather than on the normal ones. Indeed, we see at least three distinct reasons here, corresponding to different types of norm. 1. Statistical Norms. Suppose that an event has occurred and we are thinking about what could have been done to prevent it. In such a case, we will presumably not be satisfied just to find an intervention that happens to work in this one specific situation. What we will want is a strategy of intervention that is generalizable-a strategy that would be effective not just in this one situation but also in other situations of a roughly similar type. The criteria underlying people's judgments of actual causation appear to be designed in a way that enables them to achieve this objective. These criteria direct our attention away from interventions that work by leaving in place some highly unusual aspect of the situation and then capitalizing on it to achieve a particular effect. Instead, they direct our attention toward interventions that work by leaving in place the most normal aspects of the situation and then changing the abnormal aspects in a way that makes them more normal. To illustrate the key issues here, we can return to our example of the reviewer who rejects a paper on the grounds that one should never use the word 'and' more than three times per page. Now consider two different strategies one could use if one wanted to intervene to prevent this paper from being rejected: (a) making sure the paper is sent to a reviewer who does not have these bizarre views (b) allowing the paper to be sent to a reviewer with these bizarre views but then compensating by introducing an additional abnormality, namely, making sure that the paper itself contained a highly unusual absence of uses of the word 'and'. From the perspective of causal structure, these two strategies of intervention are perfectly symmetric-either intervention would be effective in preventing the effect. Yet there is clearly a marked difference in generalizability. If our goal is to prevent papers from getting rejected, it would generally be a good strategy to make sure they are not sent to31 Note that our concern throughout this section is with evaluative questions about whether the criteria serve a legitimate purpose, not with empirical questions about how those criteria actually arose. Nothing in what we say here should be taken as an endorsement of the adaptationist claim that the criteria underlying people's causal judgments actually arose because they serve a legitimate purpose. the journal of philosophy608reviewers with bizarre views, while it certainly would not generally be a good strategy to make sure that they contain fewer than three uses of the word 'and' per page. This difference trades on the abnormality of the reviewer's evaluation criteria in the statistical sense of 'abnormal'. Since one will only infrequently encounter reviewers with such idiosyncratic criteria, it does not make sense to tailor one's papers to fit those criteria. As we noted above, however, prescriptive norms often serve as heuristics when frequency information is not readily available; to that extent, it also makes sense to focus on interventions that will work in situations that are normal in the prescriptive sense as well. The thing to notice now is that the criteria underlying ordinary judgments of causation are designed in such a way that they direct our attention to strategies of intervention that are generalizable in this way. Thus, if someone asked us to explain why the paper was rejected, we would not tend to consider counterfactuals that involved keeping in place all the abnormal factors and then adding additional abnormalities to counteract them. Instead, we would immediately think of counterfactuals that involved preventing the outcome by changing the abnormal aspects of the situation in a way that made them more normal, and we would therefore answer: "The cause of the problem here was that the paper was sent to a reviewer with bizarre views." Interestingly, the same line of reasoning will also lead us to focus on abnormal features of the situation in the case where the outcome is good, and to be promoted. Consider the drug vignette. Suppose that as a result of this episode, the hospital administration wanted to encourage the use of the drug to treat kidney problems. Whose behavior would they need to encourage? Encouraging the pharmacists to sign off on requests to use the drug would have little effect. For one thing, the pharmacists are likely to be signing off on such requests already. Furthermore, their doing so is unlikely to result in patients being given the drug, since the attending physicians will not, as a rule, sign off on such requests. However, if the hospital administrators encourage the attending physicians to sign off on requests to use the drug, this will almost certainly result in more patients receiving the drug. So once again it makes sense to target the abnormal condition for intervention. This is what we do when we identify the attending physician's decision as a cause of recovery. 2. Moral Norms. Thus far, we have been considering the importance of picking an intervention that will generally prove effective, but there are also aspects of choosing the best intervention that are completely independent of this issue of effectiveness. Suppose, for example, that one comes upon a situation that has certain very good aspects and certain very bad ones. It might turn out that one can precause and norm 609vent a particular effect either by making one of the bad aspects better or by making one of the good aspects worse. In such a case, there is a clear sense in which it would be better to intervene by changing the bad aspects than by changing the good ones. Notice, however, that the superiority of this type of intervention has nothing to do with its probability of successfully preventing a given effect. Even if two strategies of intervention are precisely equal in the degree to which they would successfully prevent a certain type of effect in future cases, we might still prefer the strategy that involves changing bad aspects of a situation in ways that make them better. The striking thing now is that the criteria underlying people's ordinary causal judgments are designed in such a way that they tend to pick out precisely these sorts of interventions. Experimental results suggest that people's causal judgments truly can be influenced by their judgments about goodness and badness. Thus, one recent experiment showed that people who are pro-life and those who are pro-choice actually arrive at different causal judgments regarding acts intended to bring about the death of a fetus.32 In a case like this one, it seems clear that people's intuitions about causation are being affected by fullblown judgments about goodness and badness. Something like this effect may also be at work in the case of some policy norms. Consider the pen vignette once again. There, it would be possible to prevent the problem using either of two strategies: (a) stopping the professor from doing things he should not do (b) allowing the professor to keep doing those things but then inconveniencing the administrative assistant in a way that counteracts the professor's impact on the situation. Although both of these strategies of intervention would be perfectly effective, there are clear reasons to prefer strategy (a) over strategy (b). The policy forbidding faculty members from taking the pens is sufficiently reasonable that we judge that it is wrong for Professor Smith to take the pen. And, as we saw above, people's intuitive judgments specifically pick out the professor as a cause, thereby directing attention toward the strategy of intervention that truly would be preferable. 3. Norms of Proper Functioning. The considerations raised in the previous section apply when the violation of a prescriptive norms is actually "bad." This will not be the case in all of the examples we introduced above. While it seems reasonable to suggest that the profes-32 F. Cushman, Knobe, and Sinnott-Armstrong, "Moral Appraisals Affect Doing/Allowing Judgments," Cognition, cviii (2008): 281–89. the journal of philosophy610sor who unfairly takes a pen is doing something bad, when it comes to cases like an incorrectly placed wire in the machine vignette, it seems odd to use this sort of characterization. The position of the wire is not truly bad in any deep sense. The norm that it violates is a norm of proper functioning, rather than a moral norm. Some policy norms within social institutions might be more naturally assimilated to these kinds of norms, rather than moral norms. For example, suppose that a company manufactures very expensive dolls that most families cannot afford. The owners of the company are very wealthy and corrupt. The employees within this company are governed by rules that are designed for the efficient production of these dolls. We might think that it would not be morally wrong for an employee to violate these rules: no innocent people will be substantially harmed by the resulting inefficiencies. So the company's policies do not have the status of moral norms. However, since the policies are conducive to the efficient operation of the company, they play much the same role that norms of proper functioning do in machines and organisms. The machine vignette shows that these kinds of norms can also influence people's causal judgments. What we need to show, then, is that these sorts of judgments also play a helpful role in selecting strategies of intervention. To illustrate the key issues here, we can introduce another example. Imagine a factory that is governed by a rule according to which Lauren is supposed to put oil in the machines while Jane is not. Now suppose that Lauren forgets to put oil in the machines and it therefore ends up breaking down. If we wanted to intervene to prevent the breakdown, we could adopt either of two possible strategies: (a) intervene to make Lauren do what she is supposed to do (b) allow Lauren to avoid doing what she is supposed to but then intervene to make Jane do the job instead. Either of these interventions would be effective in preventing the machine from breaking down, but is there some reason for choosing one over the other? We believe that there is. Regardless of whether you think that there is anything bad about Lauren not doing the job she is supposed to do, it seems that there are good reasons to prefer an intervention that does not introduce additional abnormalities into the system. Given that the whole production line was set up on the assumption that Jane would not be adding oil to the machines, we have reason to worry that something else will go wrong if we intervene to make her do that job. Perhaps the problem will be that she is no longer able to work at her assigned task, or perhaps it will be that there are now too many people in the room with the machines, or perhaps it will be something else entirely. Moreover, consistently enforcing one particcause and norm 611ular set of norms is a very efficient way of achieving the end of a wellfunctioning factory. If Jane and Lauren each do their jobs, it is not necessary for them to coordinate their actions, or to have a deep understanding of the machine's functioning. By contrast, if we allow Lauren put oil in the machine or not, Jane will not know whether to put oil in the machine without coordinating with Lauren, or inspecting the machine to determine whether it needs oil (something she may not know how to do). It definitely does seem that we have good reason to prefer the intervention that restores the workings of the factory to precisely the way they were designed. And, just as one might expect, subjects who are given the story of Lauren and Jane agree with the claim that "Lauren caused the machine to break down" but disagree with the claim that "Jane caused the machine to break down."33 Here as elsewhere, it seems that people's causal intuitions are directing their attention toward the best strategy of intervention. A similar approach can be used to explain subjects' judgments in the machine vignette. The significance of the norm violation here is not that the red wire is in any way to blame but rather that it is the most suitable target of intervention. The short circuit could be avoided by leaving the red wire in place and moving the black wire to some other part of the machine. But this might introduce new problems. Perhaps the black wire does not have the same current capacity as the red wire. In order to restore the machine to working order by intervening on the black wire, one would have to know more than just the design of the machine; one would need to understand the basic principles of its operation. Moreover, if different electricians are working on different parts of the machine, they would need to coordinate in order to make sure that only one of the wires made contact with the battery. None of this is necessary, however, if the electricians are simply instructed to assemble the machine according to its original design. Looking through these three separate points, one may have a certain inclination to complain: "These points just don't have anything to do with each other-the argument here is nothing but a list of three unrelated claims." But one may also have an inclination to make precisely the opposite sort of complaint: "These points are just repeating each other-saying the same sorts of thing in three slightly different ways."33 Knobe, "Cognitive Processes Shaped by the Impulse to Blame," Brooklyn Law Review, lxxi (2005): 929–37. Thirty-five subjects were given each version of the vignette, and then asked to rank their level of agreement with the causal claim on a scale from zero to six. The mean rating for Lauren was 3.34, for Jane 0.37 (p < .001). the journal of philosophy612Perhaps each of these views contains part of the truth. The sense in which our three points are very different is that they each appeal to a different type of norm-the first to purely statistical norms, the second to norms of goodness and badness, the third to norms of proper functioning. The sense in which they are all more or less the same is that they all show the same basic structure. In each case, we have argued that it is preferable to choose the intervention that works by targeting abnormal aspects of the situation and replacing them with more normal ones. It is this basic structure, we believe, that gives our criteria for causal selection their distinctive purpose and value. x. concluding summary We began with the question as to whether the concept of actual causation could be shown to have any legitimate purpose. In hopes of addressing this question, we proceeded in two steps. First, we engaged in a purely descriptive attempt to understand the criteria governing people's ordinary causal intuitions. There, we suggested that people's causal intuitions are determined in part by judgments about the relevance of counterfactuals and that judgments of relevance are, in turn, determined in part by the application of norms. Second, we asked whether the criteria uncovered in this first part of our inquiry might serve any legitimate purpose. There, we argued that these criteria do serve a purpose-namely, that they are designed in such a way that they tend to direct us toward the best strategies of intervention. It should be evident by now that, even if people do a perfect job of following their criteria for causal selection, they will not always end up picking out the absolutely optimal strategy of intervention. That, however, is not the point. The point is that the criteria are designed in such a way that they generally tend to direct us toward strategies of intervention that would be preferable-and this, we believe, is ample justification for our concept of actual causation. christopher hitchcock California Institute of Technology joshua knobe Yale University | {
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Bibliographie I. HISTOIRE DES SCIENCES CASPAR Philippe : L'EMBRYON AU ne SIÈCLE.Un vol. de 173 pages (13,5 x 21 ,5). -Paris, L'Harmattan, 2002.- (Religions et spiritualité).Broché: € 14,50.ISBN : 2-7475-3797-8. Cet ouvrage constitue le premier volume publié d'une Histoire générale des doctrines relatives à l'embryon qui, en cinq tomes, emmènera 1 'Auteur de 1 'Antiquité grecque jusqu'au xxe siècle, au sein d'une vaste enquête historique destinée à éclairer la définition moderne du statut de l'embryon humain. Il forme le premier volume du deuxième tome de cette enquête et nous plonge immédiatement au sein d'une période largement délaissée par l'histoire des doctrines embryonnaires, bien qu'elle soit parti- culièrement novatrice. D'emblée, il permet également de prendre conscience de l'enjeu intellectuel que représente un tel panorama historique. Pour un philo9ophe et un médecin préoccupé par les questions de bioéthique, se proposer d'écrire une Histoire générale des doctrines relatives à l'embryon, c'est s'at- teler à démontrer que l'indécision actuelle sur le statut de l'oeuf humain fécondé n'est pas de tous les temps. En effet, la période patristique (que l'on clôture classiquement avec Isidore de Séville, mort en 636, pour l'Occident et avec Jean Damascène, mort vers 750, pour l'Orient) affirme dans une quasi unanimité la coexistence originaire du corps et de l'âme au sein de l'embryon. On pensait que cette doctrine, conçue par Lactance (au début du IVe siècle) et par Grégoire de Nysse (à la fin de ce même IVe siècle), était relativement tardive. L'intérêt majeur de cet ouvrage est de montrer qu'elle s'amorce dès Justin (début du ne siècle) et que, dès cette époque, cette affir- mation se connote de problématiques strictement théologiques. En second lieu, cette étude montre que l'interdiction de l'avortement s'enracine dans les prises de position des Pères apostoliques (Barnabé et l'auteur de la Didaché notamment), que l'on consi- dère comme les premiers auteurs chrétiens. Or la réflexion à la fois médicale, philosophique et théologique des Pères sur la question de l'embryon est restée jusqu'aujourd'hui presque totalement méconnue. Cette tradition, nous dit 1 'Auteur, a en effet été malheureusement occultée, jusqu'à Vatican II, par le rayonnement théologique trop exclusif de Thomas d'Aquin. La recherche qu'inaugure ce premier volume s'inscrit dès lors dans les perspectives 434 REVUE DES QUESTIONS SCIENTIFIQUES ouvertes par ce Concile. Assumant le« Dialogue théologique», c'est-à-dire le dialogue mouvementé entre thomistes et patrologues grecs qui s'est noué après la Seconde Guerre mondiale, Vatican Il avait voulu ouvrir la réflexion théologique à toutes les traditions (cf. pp. 2 1 -24 et pp. 94-100). Face à l'Aquinate, c'est donc la richesse de pensée de Tertullien que cet ouvrage nous fait redécouvrir : « Dès le début du lW siècle, Tertullien a proposé une solution à toutes les difficultés biologiques, anthropo- logiques et théologiques que posera ultérieurement la thèse thomiste. Cette dernière n'est supérieure à la position de Tertullien que sur deux points corrélatifs : le rejet du traducianisme et 1 'adoption du créationnisme. Encore faut-il préciser que le mérite de l' Aquinate dans cette question est quantité négligeable» (p. 85). Il est à peine besoin de l'écrire: l'importance du thème, la clarté de l'exposé, la finesse des analyses et la parfaite maîtrise du sujet dans ses dimensions aussi bien scientifiques, philosophiques, théologiques qu'historiques font de ce premier volume un gage de réussite pour cette histoire générale de l'embryon que nous promet l'Auteur et qui viendra combler de manière tout à fait nécessaire un manque criant de la littéra- ture contemporaine. J.-Fr. STOFFEL GRAY Jeremy J.: LE DÉFI DE HILBERT. UN SIÈCLE DE MATHÉMATIQUES (Introduction de Pierre Cartier; traduction de Ch. Grammatikas).Un vol. de XXX+ 338 pages.- Paris, Dunod, 2003.Broché: € 33,0 1 .ISBN: 2-1 0-006760-5. Ce livre offre une description passionnante des fameux 23 problèmes que formula David Hilbert en 1902 et qui conditionnèrent une pmiie de 1 'histoire des mathéma- tiques durant le vingtième siècle. C'est une véritable histoire des mathématiques et des mathématiciens que nous offre Gray à la suite d'une splendide introduction de Pierre Cartier (intitulée« Le défi post-hilbertien»). L 'ouvrage est un véritable régal pour tout amateur de mathématiques. Ce dernier y trouvera aussi bien de savoureuses anecdotes historiques que des encarts pédagogiques introduisant les concepts plus techniques. Des notices bibliographiques ainsi qu'un glossaire viennent compléter ce texte qui, loin d'être seulement le compte rendu d'un moment central de l'histoire des sciences, est aussi une invitation à découvrir la signification et la place des mathématiques dans notre culture contemporaine. D. LAMBERT LENZ Charles :No TIME TO BE BRIEF :A Sc!ENTIFIC BmuoGRAPHY OF WoLFGANG PAULI. Un vol. de V lll + 573 pages ( 1 6 x 24).Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002.Relié: f 35.ISBN: 01 9-856479-1. Charles Enz était depuis deux ans seulement l'assistant de W.Pauli au moment de la mort de ce dernier en 1 958. C'est à la demande de Franca, la veuve de Pauli, que cette biographie lui fut « commandée» (en 1 983), mais l'écriture n'a pu réellement commencer qu'en 1995 lorsque Enz fut admis à la retraite. L'ouvrage, achevé en octobre 200 1 , comporte 1 2 chapitres suivant quasi chronologiquement la progression de l'oeuvre de Pauli; son enfance et les siens, son initiation profonde et rapide à la théorie relativiste, ses passages à Munich, Gottingen, Hambourg, Zurich, sa période de crise et son besoin de consulter un psychiatre, son mariage avec Franca Bertram, sa longue carrière à Princeton, son retour à Zurich. Dans les deux derniers chapitres, Enz | {
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See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315737813 Walter Benjamin y la encrucijada axiológica de la reproductibilidad técnica del arte Chapter * March 2013 CITATIONS 0 READS 90 1 author: Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects: Lo estético en el sistema de valores humanos View project Teoría pluridimensional de los valores View project José Ramón Fabelo Corzo Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla 23 PUBLICATIONS 45 CITATIONS SEE PROFILE All content following this page was uploaded by José Ramón Fabelo Corzo on 02 April 2017. The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.
PRÓLOGO 3 Sentidos y sensibilidades contemporáneas María Cristina Ríos Espinosa (compilación) Colección Cuadernos AMEST, 2 Asociación Mexicana de Estudios en Estética, A.C. Edición digital: octubre 2015 Imagen de portada: Ricardo López ISBN 978-607-9088-40-8 Derechos reservados El presente libro no causa derechos de autor, y se encuentra en el supuesto del artículo 148 capítulo II de la Ley Federal de Derecho de autor. El costo por ejemplar de esta obra de un ejemplar personal y su difusión persigue fines de investigacióncientífica. 4 MARÍA CRISTINA RÍOS ESPINOSA ÍNDICE Prólogo De los emplazamientos contemporáneos a la razón sensible Laurence Le Bouhellec Guyomar / 14 Estética frente a la retirada de la metafísica Jolanta Klyszcz Gasz / 35 La aparición de la estesis Katya Mandoki Winkler / 51 La función utópica del arte María Cristina Ríos Espinosa / 65 "La estética de Angosta": el imaginario urbano de una ciudad ficcional Ester Bautista y Carolina Nieto / 86 Una interpretación de la historia de México en el graffiti Arturo Albarrán Samaniego / 100 Más allá de la estetización del espacio urbano La documentación artística de sus transformaciones en la obra de Martha Rosler Gemma Argüello Manresa / 126 El principio de interactividad: aproximaciones Estéticas a las prácticas artísticas de internet Jesús Eduardo Oliva Abarca / 151 57 PRÓLOGO 5 Arte y politización: lo aurático y el teatro épico como formas sensibles de la historia Andrea Motta Arciniega, Litzajaya Motta Arciniega / 166 Walter benjamin y la encrucijada axiológica de la reproductibilidad técnica del arte José Ramón Fabelo Corzo / 185 La recepción estética en el arte contemporáneo Lydia Elizalde / 211 Del détournement situacionista a la publicidad masificada. La imagen como crítica y producto de consmo 253 Pamela Xochiquetzal Ruiz Gutiérrez / 226 La tipografía como parte de la gráfica vernácula en la Ciudad de México Mónica Solórzano Zavala / 236 Notas sobre metapornografía Fabián Giménez Gatto / 247 El infierno. Análisis estético de la identidad violentada Jacqueline Gómez Mayorga, Ignacio García Rangel / 262 265 LA REPRODUCTIBILIDAD TÉCNICA DEL ARTE 185 Walter Benjamin y la encrucijada axiológica de la reproductibilidad técnica del arte JOSÉ RAMÓN FABELO CORZO RESUMEN La obra de arte en la época de su reproductibilidad técnica es, sin dudas, la más emblemática aportación de Walter Benjamin a la estética y la teoría del arte. Un aspecto problemático que aflora en su lectura es el del impacto axiológico que el teórico marxista judío-alemán le atribuía a la nueva época. Es significativo el hecho de que, mientras para unos, este texto alberga una crítica negativa a la reproductibilidad técnica y una mirada nostálgica al pasado, para otros, la obra entraña una asunción de la tecnología reproductiva cargada de optimismo y confianza en un futuro emancipador a ella asociado. ¿Son en realidad excluyentes ambas interpretaciones? El presente trabajo reflexiona sobre los fundamentos sociales y epistemológicos de esta ambivalencia interpretativa. PALABRAS CLAVES Walter Benjamin, reproductibilidad técnica del arte, valores. ABSTRACT The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction is, no doubt, the Walter Benjamin's most emblematic contribution to Aesthetics and Theory of art. A problematic aspect emerges when his work is read corresponding to the axiological impact that Benjamin attributes to the new era in which the German-Jew Marxist theoretician lived. It is significant the fact that, while for some people, this text offers both a negative criticism to the mechanical reproduction as, on the other hand, a nostalgic look to the past time; for others, the work involves an assumption of a kind of reproductive technology plenty of optimism and confidence in a future emancipation associated to her. Are they both really mutually ex- Sentidos y sensibilidades contemporáneas 186 JOSÉ RAMÓN FABELO clusive interpretations? This paper is a reflection on the social and epistemological foundations of this interpretative ambivalence. KEY WORDS Walter Benjamin, mechanical reproduction of art, values. Pocas obras en la historia de la estética y la filosofía del arte han tenido tanto impacto y a la vez suscitado tan diversas interpretaciones como el texto de Walter Benjamin La obra de arte en la época de la reproductibilidad técnica. Escrita en un período sumamente convulso (1934-1936) y por alguien que resumía en su persona toda la conmoción del momento1, el texto se sometió además al escrutinio censor de sus propios compañeros de la Escuela de Frankfurt –a la sazón reubicados en Nueva York–, especialmente, por parte de Horkheimer y Adorno2, así como por los medios en que 1 Nacido en Alemania, Walter Benjamin (1892-1940) era de origen judío, de filiación marxista y de vocación comunista. Rechazado en 1928 por la Universidad de Frankfurt cuando quiso ocupar una cátedra en ella, se vio obligado a emigrar con la llegada de los nazis al poder en 1933. Se encontraba exiliado en París cuando escribió La obra de arte... entre 1934 y 1936. Cuatro años más tarde y luego de la ocupación de Francia, terminaba con su vida al ser detenido en Port Bou en el momento en que intentaba escapar hacia España. 2 Benjamin se vio forzado a suavizar pasos y expresiones expuestos a ser identificados con posturas marxistas explícitamente políticas y, en consecuencia, poco acordes con la imagen de respetabilidad académica que tanto Horkheimer como Adorno deseaban conferir a las actividades del Instituto en su recién estrenada etapa norteamericana. Ciertamente, para la configuración de una respetabilidad semejante era esencial evitar que el materialismo crítico viniera expresado mediante fórmulas políticamente incorrectas susceptibles de indisponer a las autoridades de acogida (...). Está perfectamente claro que el Instituto se sentía inseguro en Estados Unidos y deseaba hacer lo menos posible para poner en peligro su posición" (Torrent Bestit, 2010). Reconociendo 265 LA REPRODUCTIBILIDAD TÉCNICA DEL ARTE 187 se publicó3. Todo ello ha servido de caldo de cultivo para las ambivalencias interpretativas que han caracterizado sus lecturas, no ajenas del todo a un pensamiento que en no pocas ocasiónes fue de por sí ambivalente en correspondencia con un objeto de reflexión que tampoco dejaba de serlo. Lo anterior se pone especialmente de manifiesto a la hora de interpretar el significado que en términos axiológicos le atribuía Benjamin a la recién adquirida capacidad de las obras de arte de reproducirse ilimitadamente, utilizando para ello los nuevos medios técnicos, especialmente los asociados a la fotografía, primero, y al cine, después. Es significativo el hecho de que, mientras para unos, este texto y a la vez justificando dicha censura, Adorno declara en 1968: "Las tachaduras que motivó Horkheimer en la teoría de la reproducción se referían a un uso por parte de Benjamin de categorías materialistas que Horkheimer, con razón, encontraba insuficientes". (Benjamin, 1994: 60) 3 Ello explica las a veces sustanciales diferencias que existen entre las diversas versiones que de esta obra han sido publicadas. Elocuente en este sentido es la "Advertencia del Traductor" que se inserta en la que consideramos una de las mejores ediciones en español de esta obra de Benjamin (Editorial Itaca, México: 2003, con introducción de Bolívar Echeverría y traducción de Andrés E. Weikert). El traductor escribe: "El texto que sirve de base a la presente traducción fue publicado por primera vez en 1989 (...) Se trata de una segunda versión –y primera definitiva (1935-1936) a partir de la primera redacción provisional y del material manuscrito (1934-1935) – a la que Walter Benjamin consideraba el texto base u originario (Urtext) de su trabajo. La transcripción mecanografiada del mismo, a partir de la cual se realizó tanto la versión francesa de Pierre Klossowski –única publicada en vida del autor (...) – como la tercera y última en alemán, parecía irremediablemente perdida hasta que en los años ochenta fue redescubierta en el archivo de Max Horkheimer (...)". (Benjamin, 2003:33) A tal grado son diferentes entre sí esas versiones que en la mencionada edición en español (y éste es un indiscutible mérito suyo) esas diferencias se hacen ver mediante la introducción de extensas notas a pie de página con las traducciones de los pasajes no coincidentes de las otras versiones 188 JOSÉ RAMÓN FABELO alberga una crítica negativa a la reproductibilidad técnica y una mirada nostálgica al pasado, para otros, la obra entraña una asunción de la tecnología reproductiva cargada de optimismo y confianza en un futuro emancipador a ella asociado4. A modo de ejemplo comparemos entre sí el modo en que abordan el significado de esta obra los prologuistas de dos de las versiones que de la misma se han publicado en español. En el invierno de 1973 Jesús Aguirre escribe: En el texto sobre la obra de arte Benjamin no ha llegado todavía al tramo más encaramado en esa cuestión pindia en la cual la nostalgia del burgués se transmuta en sorprendente acción revolucionaria (...): en ella se trata ni más ni menos que de profetizar el pasado. (Benjamin, 1994: 10) Treinta años más tarde, refiriéndose a la misma obra, escribe Bolívar 4 La diversidad interpretativa suscitada por Walter Benjamin, en general, y por esta obra, en particular, puede ser fácilmente apreciada en textos recientes como el número monográfico de la Revista Anthropos coordinado por Daniel H. Cabrera y titulado Walter Benjamin. La experiencia de una voz crítica, creativa y disidente (Cabrera, 2009), así como en el trabajo de Cristián Perucci "Decadencia, revolución y esperanza en Walter Benjamin" (Perucci, 2010), en el de Benjamin A. Wurgaft "The uses of Walter: Walter Benjamin and the counterfactual imagination" (Wurgaft, 2010), en el texto de Verónica Tobeña "La Escuela de Frankfurt ante la revolución cultural moderna. Tensiones entre el posicionamiento de Walter Benjamin y el de Theodor Adorno" (Tobeña, 2010), en el de Horacio D. Delbueno "Walter Benjamin, redimiendo el materialismo histórico para una praxis revolucionaria" (Delbueno, 2010), en el de Natalia Rdetich Filinich "El arte, la técnica y lo político: a propósito de La obra de arte en la época de su reproductibilidad técnica" (Radetich, 2012) y en muchos otros. 265 LA REPRODUCTIBILIDAD TÉCNICA DEL ARTE 189 Echeverría: "La reproducción técnica de la obra de arte (...) es para Benjamin (...) sobre todo un vehículo de aquello que podrá ser el arte en una sociedad emancipada".(Benjamin, 2003: 17) Los 30 años que separan un escrito de otro tienen no sólo importancia cronológica. Entre ambas fechas, exactamente en 1989, se publica por primera vez la que, utilizando la propia terminología benjaminiana, podríamos considerar la versión más auténtica de su obra, aquella que se consideraba ya irremediablemente perdida y que sólo en esa tardía data fue encontrada y sacada a la luz. El escrito de Bolívar Echeverría tuvo en cuenta esta versión y sus diferencias con las anteriores. Sirvió precisamente para prologar la edición en español que de la misma hizo la Editorial Ítaca en el año 2003. Por el momento en el que escribe Jesús Aguirre su prólogo, no podía este conocer la que ahora se identifica, en correspondencia con los criterios del propio Benjamin, la variante definitiva de su texto. Ello explica en parte las diferencias de apreciaciones. Pero sólo en parte. La otra parte se asocia a las mismas ambivalencias que en tal sentido contiene el texto de Benjamin en cualquiera de sus variantes y, más que todo, a la propia encrucijada axiológica en la que la reproductibilidad técnica vendría a colocar al arte y –más que al arte – a la sociedad contemporánea misma5. 5 No es despreciable otro factor diferenciador de las posiciones interpretativas de Jesús Aguirre y Bolívar Echeverría: las propias posturas ideo-políticas de cada uno de ellos. El segundo fue un reconocido y consecuente pensador marxista ecuatoriano-mexicano que ve a Benjamin desde un ideal social post-capitalista que comparte con el autor estudiado. Aguirre, por su parte, si bien llega a simpatizar con la izquierda y el marxismo frankfurtiano, lastra una historia de vida muy vinculada a la aristocracia española que lo 190 JOSÉ RAMÓN FABELO Para acercarnos a esa encrucijada axiológica en la que la reproductibilidad técnica coloca al arte y a la sociedad toda y siguiendo la lógica discursiva de Benjamin, utilizaremos once tesis básicas que intentan reproducir los hitos fundamentales de esa lógica, cada una de ellas con sus correspondientes comentarios, que buscan, a su vez, el despliegue interpretativo de las tesis y el engarce entre unas y otras. 1. La obra de arte desempeña en sus orígenes una función predominantemente cultual6, asociada a lo mágico o a lo religioso, de la que depende la relación aurática hacia ella. Benjamin es plenamente consciente de que el valor de un objeto está en relación directa con su ubicación social y con la función que desde esa ubicación desempeñe. Por lo tanto, esa función y ese valor son cambiantes históricamente. Las obras de arte no son ajenas a la historicidad de su valor. Una antigua estatua de Venus, por ejemplo, se encontraba entre los griegos, que hacían de ella un objeto de culto, en un conjunto de relaciones tradicionales diferente del que prevalecía entre los clérigos medievales, que veían en ella un ídolo maligno. (Benjamin, 2003: 49) lleva del sacerdocio a la nobleza. Tal vez sea esa una de las razones por la cual tiende a ver en Benjamin a un pensador más centrado en el pasado que en el futuro, desconfiado del proletariado, ajeno a una verdadera militancia marxista y excesivamente orientado por ciertas premisas místicas y teológicas. (Aguirre, 1993: 9, 12) 6 El término "cultual" es utilizado por Benjamin para resaltar el valor de culto que predominantemente tienen las obras de arte en ciertas etapas de su desarrollo. 265 LA REPRODUCTIBILIDAD TÉCNICA DEL ARTE 191 Se trata, con toda evidencia, de diferentes significaciones sociales de un mismo objeto, inserto en diferentes contextos históricos. A pesar de esa variabilidad histórica, tanto para unos como para otros, la obra mantenía su unicidad, lo que es equivalente en Benjamin a su aura. El culto era el sustento del valor del arte aurático. El valor cultual del arte aurático se expresaba a su vez en la función ritual que éste desempeñaba. Las obras de arte más antiguas surgieron, como sabemos, al servicio de un ritual que primero fue mágico y después religioso. (...) El valor único e insustituible de la obra de arte 'auténtica' tiene siempre su fundamento en el ritual (en el que tuvo su valor de uso originario y primero). (Benjamin, 2003: 49-50) De esta manera, las imágenes creadas por el arte servirían a una fundamentación teológica. Pero el valor cultual tendría desde sus orígenes una especie de continuidad, contraparte y complemento en otro tipo de valor: el valor exhibitivo. El predominio epocal de uno u otro signa la etapa concreta en que se encuentra la historia del arte. Valor cultual y valor exhibitivo están ambos presentes en la obra de arte en toda época. De por sí, el culto presupone siempre cierta dosis de exhibición. Y la exhibición misma requiere de algún tipo de culto que la justifique. Así y todo, en su etapa temprana, el arte desempeñó una función cultual tan predominante que en ocasiones daba la impresión de que era la única. La producción artística comienza con imágenes que están al servicio de la magia. Lo importante de estas imágenes está en el hecho de que 192 JOSÉ RAMÓN FABELO existan, y no en que sean vistas. El búfalo que el hombre de La Edad de Piedra dibuja sobre las paredes de su cueva es un instrumento mágico que sólo casualmente se exhibe a la vista de los otros; lo importante es, a lo sumo, que lo vean los espíritus. (Benjamin, 2003: 52-53) 2. Cuando se seculariza el arte, se traslada el culto a la belleza y al autor, lo cual conduce a la larga al desarrollo del llamado "arte por el arte" que es, a su vez, una respuesta al desarrollo de las técnicas reproductivas. En todo este proceso se hace cada vez más importante el valor exhibitivo. La secularización del culto hace pasar su destinatario de la figura divina a la figura del artista. La autenticidad, entonces, tiende a sustituir el valor de culto primigenio. Ahora lo que importa es la asociación entre la obra y su artista creador, que la primera sea una auténtica creación del segundo. El culto secularizado tiende a convertirse, además, en una especie de servicio profano a la belleza, cuyo predominio, nos dice Benjamin, comienza en el Renacimiento y dura tres siglos. Paralelamente se desarrolla la función exhibitiva que ya, de por sí, está más asociada al concepto moderno de arte que la función cultual. De hecho el arte fue arte (e intentó incluso con el tiempo ser "arte por el arte") cuando la función exhibitiva se convirtió en dominante. A pesar de que, por un lado, el ideal de autenticidad frenaba la reproducción de obras artísticas, por el otro, el dominio de la exhibición sobre el culto motivaba la búsqueda y desarrollo de técnicas reproductivas que permitieran aumentar la capacidad exhibitiva de las imágenes artísticas. Y como quiera que el desarrollo de estas técnicas 265 LA REPRODUCTIBILIDAD TÉCNICA DEL ARTE 193 dependía no sólo de la dinámica interna del arte, sino también de los avances tecnológicos mismos, a la larga, el ideal aurático de un arte auténtico terminaría cediendo a la reproducción masiva de imágenes. Pero con ello se estaba preparando el terreno para el fin del arte en su concepción moderna, como esfera independiente del resto de la realidad social, encargada de la reproducción artificial de la belleza mediante la genialidad irreproducible del artista. Mas el ideal moderno del arte no se retiraría sin resistencia. Su último gran esfuerzo por preservar la autenticidad como ideal artístico fue la época del "arte por el arte". Esa época vendría como respuesta a la primera gran conmoción que sufre el arte cultual, precisamente con el surgimiento de la fotografía, no por casualidad asociado por Benjamin con la época en que surge el socialismo como nuevo ideal social. El "arte por el arte" fue la respuesta a la arremetida tecnoreproductiva y a la pérdida del valor del culto original, ya imposible en un sentido mágico-religioso, pero también imposible en un sentido de servicio profano a la belleza, en tanto la belleza artística siguiera viéndose como reproducción mimética de la belleza natural, por medio del artista-genio. El ideal estético kantiano había sido fuertemente golpeado con la fotografía. La doctrina del "arte por el arte" es el último reducto posible; es, según Benjamin, una "teología del arte". "De ésta derivó entonces directamente una teología negativa, representada por la idea de un arte puro". (Benjamin, 2003: 50) La inédita asociación que hace Benjamin entre el origen de la fotografía y el origen del socialismo responde no sólo a una coincidencia cronológica, sino también a la naciente necesidad de un control social sobre el uso de las imágenes ante la posibilidad real de que éstas, reproducibles ahora hasta el infinito, fueran utilizadas con 194 JOSÉ RAMÓN FABELO fines inescrupulosos en manos de mercaderes y políticos. La reproductibilidad técnica permitiría y exigiría, a la vez, pensar un nuevo modelo de sociedad que, entre otras cosas, evitara el uso anti-humano de las imágenes. Si el "arte por el arte" había respondido recluyéndose en sí mismo y enajenándose de lo social, el socialismo se planteaba la transformación de lo social como condición necesaria para una nueva cultura y un nuevo arte. 3. La reproductibilidad técnica que vendría a darle sustento material al predominio del valor exhibitivo, propiciaría que la función social predominante del arte pasara del ritual a la economía y la política. El socialismo estaba lejos de ser una posibilidad real en el siglo XIX y su relativo y ya cuestionable éxito en la Unión Soviética en la parte del siglo XX que Benjamin alcanzó a tomar en cuenta, hacía inevitable que la reproductibilidad técnica tuviera como sede un mundo esencialmente capitalista. La capacidad creciente de reproducir imágenes, el predominio de lo exhibitivo y la fuerza cultual que, sin desaparecer, se mantenía subsumida en el arte moderno, no podían no atraer la atención de los dos ámbitos sociales que cada vez se hacían más dominantes: el mercado y la política. Con ello el arte y su capacidad exhibitiva comenzaron a cumplir de manera más evidente funciones extra-artísticas. Poco a poco el arte se hace economía y se hace política al tiempo que empieza a dejar de ser arte en su acepción moderna, mucho menos "arte por el arte". Se desdibujan sus fronteras en la misma medida en que la producción de imágenes deja de ser su coto privado y él mismo se hace cada vez más dependiente del mundo extra-artístico. A través del culto primigenio el arte cumplía una función práctica. Por medio del mercado y la política ahora cumple otra. Entre una y otra se extiende el arte moderno, 265 LA REPRODUCTIBILIDAD TÉCNICA DEL ARTE 195 basado también en un ritual hacia sí mismo que tiene su expresión maximizada en el "arte por el arte". No obstante, esto no era óbice para que la función exhibitiva pujara por desplazar a la función cultual y terminara por imponerse. Sí, el arte moderno era ya, de por sí, exhibitivo, pero en cierto modo todavía pre-político y pre-mercantil. En la nueva época, por el contrario, las obras se liberan de lo que quedaba en ellas de ritual y se conciben para ser reproducidas de manera múltiple. Con ello el predominio del valor cultual se va definitivamente a pique. Por primera vez en la historia del mundo la reproductibilidad técnica de la obra de arte libera a ésta de su existencia parasitaria dentro del ritual. La obra de arte reproducida se vuelve en medida creciente la reproducción de una obra de arte compuesta en torno a su reproductibilidad. (Benjamin, 2003: 51) Si el culto, inicialmente asociado a lo mágico o lo religioso, había encontrado en la autenticidad una nueva manera de su realización, ahora la autenticidad misma quedaba también en entredicho. De la placa fotográfica es posible hacer un sinnúmero de impresiones; no tiene sentido preguntar cuál de ellas es la impresión auténtica. Pero si el criterio de autenticidad llega a fallar ante la producción artística, es que la función social del arte en su conjunto se ha trastornado. En lugar de su fundamentación en el ritual, debe aparecer su fundamentación en otra praxis, a saber: su fundamentación en la política. (Benjamin, 2003: 51) 196 JOSÉ RAMÓN FABELO Del ritual a la política transita la fundamentación del arte. Parecería mortal el salto que da Benjamin, sobre todo si tomamos en cuenta que no se menciona aquí a la economía como mediación. Pero en realidad, ésta no deja de tomarse en cuenta. La política es, en buena medida -y Benjamin es plenamente consciente de ello-, la extensión de la economía; es la principal forma superestructural que ésta adquiere. Con el paso del arte cultual al arte exhibitivo, la economía –política mediantese conecta directamente con el arte. En el texto del pensador marxista, se realza el papel de las mediaciones políticas institucionales por varias razones. En primer lugar, porque en la época del fascismo –y fue en esa época en la que escribió Benjaminla política termina prevaleciendo sobre la economía. En segundo lugar, porque es precisamente la política y la guerra, como su expresión extrema, la que favorece la conservación de un sistema de propiedadaun en contra de los intereses mayoritarios de las masas. Sólo el arte convertido en política puede propiciar algo semejante. En tal sentido resultan lapidarias las palabras de Benjamin: Todos los esfuerzos hacia una estetización de la política culminan en un punto. Este punto es la guerra. La guerra y sólo la guerra, vuelve posible dar una meta a los más grandes movimientos de masas bajo el mantenimiento de las relaciones de propiedad heredadas. (Benjamin, 2003: 96-97) 4. La predominante función exhibitiva, sumada a la capacidad reproductiva, conduce inexorablemente a las masas. De la mano de la reproductibilidad, las masas adquieren protagonismo social: en la producción, en la política (las guerras incluidas) y en el consumo (contenido el cultural). 265 LA REPRODUCTIBILIDAD TÉCNICA DEL ARTE 197 Las masas son un elemento indispensable del arte exhibitivo. Sin las masas no tendría sentido ni habría existido nunca la reproductibilidad técnica del arte. En ese sentido, la pérdida del aura, es decir, de la unicidad y de la autenticidad de la imagen, tiene claras consecuencias que van más allá del arte. Se sustituye la aparición única por la aparición masiva que ya no espera por un receptor, sino que va en busca de éste, masificado y en la situación particular de su propia cotidianeidad. Pero esta masificación del espectador de imágenes traería como lógica consecuencia la mercantilización y politización del arte, porque ambos, el mercado y la política, necesitan de las masas. La reproducción masificada tiende a homogeneizar imaginarios. Con ello se produce "un incremento en la importancia de la estadística" (Benjamin, 2003: 48). Y la estadística es esencial para el mercado y para la política. 5. A pesar de su protagonismo, las masas no son todavía sujeto, sino más bien objeto manipulable a favor de intereses que no son los suyos. El fascismo es expresión de ello, las guerras imperialistas también. En el tratamiento que da Benjamin al tema de las masas se pone de manifiesto esa ambivalencia que muchas veces parece caracterizarlo, pero, al menos en este caso, no como resultado de inconsecuencias lógicas de su análisis, sino como exigencia metodológica en el abordaje de un fenómeno de por sí ambivalente. Y es que el papel de las masas en los acontecimientos sociales, como justamente aprecia Benjamin, depende del contexto social, de las condiciones sociales de producción, 198 JOSÉ RAMÓN FABELO de la naturaleza del sistema instituido de valores y de los agentes que éste utiliza para movilizarlas. Cuando los intereses empoderados en el sistema instituido de valores no son los de las masas mismas, sino otros muchas veces contrarios a éstas, se puede provocar, incluso, un trastorno de su propia tradición que es, de hecho, "la otra cara de la crisis y renovación contemporáneas de la humanidad" (Benjamin, 2003: 45) Lo paradójico es que esa alteración de la tradición no puede no estar asociada directamente al movimiento de masas. Para la época de Benjamin el agente principal que moviliza a las masas contra sí mismas es el cine. Aun cuando no descarta su lado positivo y su potencial valor, Benjamin ve en el cine un instrumento preponderantemente manipulador. "Incluso en su figura más positiva y precisamente en ella, su significación social no es pensable sin su lado destructivo, catártico: la liquidación del valor tradicional de la herencia cultural".(Benjamin, 2003: 45) Pero, ¿cómo puede la reproductibilidad técnica de imágenes alterar de esa manera la aprehensión de lo valioso? Si el aura es ese "aparecimiento único de una lejanía", el desmoronamiento del aura significa un "acercarse las cosas" (espacial y humanamente). (Benjamin, 2003: 47). Y esto entraña dos posibilidades: la de una adentramiento mayor al objeto real reproducido en la imagen (cuando la imagen reproducida es creación libre de las propias masas en función de sus verdaderos intereses) o un alejamiento manipulado de ese objeto real. "Hacer que algo se acerque humanamente a las masas puede significar la expulsión fuera del campo visual de la función social que ese algo tiene" (Benjamin, 2003: 47). De la función social depende el valor de ese algo. Si esa función social cae fuera del campo 265 LA REPRODUCTIBILIDAD TÉCNICA DEL ARTE 199 visual de las masas, éstas quedan exentas de la posibilidad de captar su verdadero valor. Aquí se albergan ya las infinitas posibilidades manipuladoras de la reproductibilidad técnica. De esta forma es que el paso de lo cultual a lo exhibitivo abre las puertas a la política y, en función de ella, a la manipulación de la percepción de la realidad, guiada por los fines de quienes presentan la imagen y ajena a la libertad interpretativa del espectador. Conciencia corrompida en lugar de conciencia de clase. Eso es lo que logra en las masas la reproductibilidad técnica de las imágenes en la sociedad clasista, cuyo extremo axiológicamente negativo Benjamin observa en el fascismo. Precisamente el cine "fomenta (...) aquella constitución corrupta de la masa que el fascismo intenta poner en lugar de la que proviene de su conciencia de clase". (Benjamin, 2003: 74) En ese sentido es el concepto de "masas" y no de "clases" el que le conviene a un sistema de dominación que busca hacer pasar por masivos los intereses propios de la clase dominante. Masas, mientras más amorfas y desintegradas en cuanto a su conciencia de sí, mejor para el sistema. Con la reproductibilidad técnica las masas pueden acercarse o alejarse, según el caso y el tipo de sociedad, a su conciencia de clase. Por supuesto que el sistema prevaleciente no está interesado en un acercamiento, aunque tampoco lo puede evitar del todo, como se verá más adelante. Hay otro elemento importante asociado a la reproductibilidad técnica que favorece su capacidad manipuladora. Para Benjamin el paso de lo cultual a lo exhibitivo entraña también, mediante el paso a su vez de una primera técnica a una segunda, la producción de objetos artísticos en los que cada vez más el predominio de la apariencia cede su lugar al predominio del juego. 200 JOSÉ RAMÓN FABELO La apariencia es, en efecto, el esquema más escondido y con ello también el más constante de todos los procedimientos mágicos de la primera técnica; el juego, el depósito inagotable de todos los modos experimentales de proceder propios de la segunda técnica. (Benjamin, 2003: 105) La apariencia es una categoría con más contenido epistemológico que de alguna manera toma como importante la relación entre la imagen y el objeto reflejado en ella. Lo asume intrínsecamente. De ahí el mimetismo que le corresponde. En el juego, lo más importante es el "como si", es decir, que la imagen se sitúe "en lugar de". De ahí su capacidad potencial intrínseca de desfigurar la relación real entre imagen y objeto. Sólo con la ayuda de la técnica reproductiva y el predominio en ella del juego puede mantenerse formalmente una democracia política que dé como resultado decisiones colectivas contrarias a los intereses reales de las masas. 6. La capacidad reproductora de imágenes se utiliza, en función de su potencionalidad manipuladora, para masificar el apoyo a procesos anti-humanos. En este sentido actúa como anti-valor. Que las masas se expresen (en el consumo, en las votaciones, en la guerra) es una necesidad del sistema de dominación, que éste intenta volcar contra su derecho a masificar también (léase socializar) la propiedad sobre los medios con los que ellas producen y reproducen la vida social. La estetización de la vida política es el modo recurrente que el capitalismo utiliza para que las masas se perciban a sí mismas 265 LA REPRODUCTIBILIDAD TÉCNICA DEL ARTE 201 como realizadas en sus derechos, aunque no lo estén en realidad. En palabras de Benjamin: Las masas tienen un derecho a la transformación de las relaciones de propiedad; el fascismo intenta darles una expresión que consista en la conservación de esas relaciones. Es por ello que el fascismo se dirige hacia la estetización de la vida política. (Benjamin, 2003: 96) De aquí nace, en el plano estético-político, lo que 30 años después Guy Debord calificaría como "sociedad del espectáculo".(Debord, 1999) Su raíz está en ese proceso de estetización que con el tiempo trasciende a la vida política y llega abarcar a todo el conjunto de relaciones sociales. La reproductibilidad de imágenes institucionaliza valores, los convierte en dominantes según la conveniencia del sujeto institucionalizador que es, en la sociedad capitalista en general, el mismo sujeto mercantilizador y politizador. Lo hace creando para ellos estándares que piden a gritos su imitación, estrellas que personalizan el ideal humano que se quiere imponer. El propósito aquí es, por supuesto, contrarrevolucionario: que cada integrante de la masa aspire a dejar de ser masa. Es éste el mejor modo de anular su potencial revolucionario. Las estrellas de cine (y hoy de la TV) buscan ese objetivo. Lo que aglomera a las masas espectadoras de las proyecciones es precisamente la aspiración del individuo aislado a ponerse en el lugar del star, es decir, a separarse de la masa. La industria cinematográfica juega con este interés completamente privado para corromper el justificado interés original de las masas en el cine. (Benjamin, 2003: 78) 202 JOSÉ RAMÓN FABELO La estrella a imitar no lo es porque sea un ejemplo de moralidad; "allí donde la capacidad de ser ejemplar era una exigencia moral, el presente exige la capacidad de ser reproducido", sin importar su catadura moral. Por eso, la reproducción masiva de obras de arte se interconecta "con la reproducción masiva de actitudes y desempeños humanos". (Benjamin, 2003: 115) El arte deja de ser arte, en el sentido tradicional, para ser cualquier otra cosa: comercial, mensaje político, incitación a la guerra, fomento de actitudes fundamentalistas, etc. Tal llega a ser el impacto anti-valioso y anti-humano que puede alcanzar la capacidad reproductora de imágenes que Benjamin, al valorarlo, da la impresión, en ocasiones, de preferir nostálgicamente un pasado aurático de la obra de arte, antes que un presente y un futuro pos-aurático que no sea todavía pos-capitalista. 7. Pero esa misma capacidad reproductora podría actuar como valor en el seno del propio mundo del capital preparando a las masas para convertirse en verdaderos sujetos. La crítica radical que dirige Benjamin contra el uso manipulador de la reproductibilidad y, en especial, del cine, no significa que deje de reconocer sus potencialidades revolucionarias. No negamos que (...) en casos especiales el cine actual puede impulsar una crítica revolucionaria de las ideas heredadas acerca del arte. No negamos que, más allá de eso, en casos especiales el cine actual puede impulsar una crítica revolucionaria de las condiciones sociales o incluso del sistema de propiedad. (Benjamin, 2003: 74). 265 LA REPRODUCTIBILIDAD TÉCNICA DEL ARTE 203 Esas potencialidades revolucionarias del cine, como máxima expresión para su época de la reproductibilidad técnica del arte, son ampliamente reconocidas también en otros pasajes de su texto, como por ejemplo cuando señala que con su ayuda el hombre se hace una representación del mundo circundante. Al hacer ampliaciones del inventario de este último, al subrayar detalles escondidos de utensilios que nos son familiares, al investigar ambientes banales bajo la conducción genial del lente, el cine incrementa, por un lado, el reconocimiento de las inevitabilidades que rigen nuestra existencia, pero llega, por otro, a asegurarnos un campo de acción inmenso e insospechado. (Benjamin, 2003: 84-85). Otro comentario que echa abajo la idea de que Benjamin es, sin más, un enemigo del cine es aquel en el que lo vincula al desarrollo de la ciencia. "Una de las funciones revolucionarias del cine será llevar a que sean reconocidas como idénticas la utilización artística y científica de la fotografía, mismas que antes se encontraban separadas". (Benjamin, 2003: 85) Pero, más allá de esas valoraciones positivas de ocasión que Benjamin dedica al cine, hay otro aspecto para él aún más importante en términos de potencialidad revolucionaria. Se trata de la pluralización de los sujetos que la reproductibilidad trae consigo. No sólo tiende a masificarse el consumidor, también el actor o el hacedor de imágenes. Con ello el arte pierde su enclaustramiento profesional, sale a las calles, está en todas partes. Casi cualquier cosa puede convertirse en arte o en simulador artístico. Los ready mades de Duchamp o los "indiscernibles" de Warhol no son otra cosa que la expresión artística consumada de 204 JOSÉ RAMÓN FABELO este hecho. Se estetiza el mundo, pero ya no sólo a la manera que el sistema de dominación quiere. Esta masificación de productores de imágenes (literarias o plásticas) tiene obviamente una cara negativa (Benjamin se refiere a ella al llamar la atención sobre la producción de baja o ninguna calidad), pero también su cara positiva (al abrir posibilidades cada vez mayores de multiplicar los (verdaderos) sujetos potenciales no sólo de lo artístico, sino también de lo económico y lo político)."Fue así que una parte creciente de los lectores pasó a contarse también –aunque fuera sólo ocasionalmenteentre quienes escribían" (Benjamin, 2003: 76). Con el internet y la posibilidad ilimitada de tener blogs personales esta posibilidad ha crecido casi hasta lo absoluto. "Con ello, la distinción entre autor y público se encuentra a punto de perder su carácter fundamental" (Benjamin, 2003: 73). Es ésta una profecía más que cumplida hoy. 8. Paradójicamente, entonces, la reproductibilidad técnica sirve a un doble propósito: afianzar el capitalismo en sus aspectos más inhumanos y promover el cambio y consolidación de una sociedad emancipada post-capitalista. Si bien es cierto que la masa, la cantidad, se vuelve muy importante para el capitalismo, mercado y política mediante, lo paradójico del sistema es que se ha vuelto también esencial para el socialismo, es decir, para la muerte del capitalismo. Las masas se han hecho decisivas en la determinación del curso histórico. Capitalismo y socialismo pujan por su conquista, a sabiendas de que esa conquista es definitoria del futuro. 265 LA REPRODUCTIBILIDAD TÉCNICA DEL ARTE 205 Ante todo es evidente ya que las transformaciones profundas en ambos campos –en el estético y en el políticoestán conectadas con aquel gran movimiento de masas en cuyo transcurso éstas –con un énfasis y una conciencia directa-indirecta antes desconocidoshan tomado el plano frontal del escenario histórico. (Benjamin, 2003: 126) Benjamin es consciente de que la única manera en que las masas pueden seguir siendo sustento del capitalismo y no del socialismo, es mediante la manipulación de su conciencia que la reproductibilidad técnica del arte facilita. Pero también, la única manera en que puede superar su enajenación mediática es apelando a esa misma reproductibilidad, hoy más que ostensible en las redes sociales y otros mecanismos que han dado prueba de su explosividad social. 9. En cierto sentido la capacidad reproductora llega antes de que estén creadas las condiciones sociales idóneas que han de cobijarla. De ahí su ambivalencia axiológica, porque tampoco sin ella parece posible el tránsito. Dice Benjamin que las destrucciones de la guerra "aportan la prueba de que la sociedad no estaba madura todavía para convertir a la técnica en un órgano suyo". (Benjamin, 2003: 98) La técnica ha llegado antes de haberse creado las condiciones sociales más adecuadas para su empleo a favor del ser humano. La técnica es, así, un valor instrumental cuyo signo axiológico definitivo dependerá de la sociedad que habite. En otras palabras, la nueva técnica exige una nueva sociedad. De lo contrario, se vuelve contra el ser humano. 206 JOSÉ RAMÓN FABELO En este sentido, Benjamín no pierde el horizonte de una sociedad emancipada y de un lugar diferente para la capacidad de reproducción técnica del arte en esa nueva sociedad. Espera por la revolución para que el anti-valor de la reproductibilidad técnica se haga valor. Por eso, cuando Gerschom Scholem lo interpelaba sobre el nexo no visible para él entre la decadencia del aura y el nuevo arte que el marxismo anunciaba, Benjamin le respondía: "El nexo filosófico que no encuentras entre las dos partes de mi trabajo lo entregará, de manera más efectiva que yo, la revolución". (Benjamin, 2003: 19-20) A la preparación de esa revolución habría de contribuir el propio sistema de aparatos que, bajo una mirada unilateral, sólo serviría para enajenar al ser humano. El cine sirve para ejercitar al ser humano en aquellas percepciones y reacciones que están condicionadas por el trato con un sistema de aparatos cuya importancia en su vida crece día a día. Al mismo tiempo, el trato con este sistema de aparatos le enseña que la servidumbre al servicio del mismo sólo será sustituida por la liberación mediante el mismo cuando la constitución de lo humano se haya adaptado a las nuevas fuerzas productivas inauguradas por la segunda técnica. (Benjamin, 2003: 56-57) Por lo tanto, la nueva técnica aplicada al arte no es en sí misma perniciosa. Pero sí requiere de una "nueva humanidad", de una nueva constitución de lo humano, de otro sistema social más adecuado a las de por sí revolucionarias fuerzas productivas. De lo contrario, estas fuerzas pasarían de ser productivas a ser destructivas de lo humano 265 LA REPRODUCTIBILIDAD TÉCNICA DEL ARTE 207 mismo. El fascismo lo puso en evidencia. Benjamin lo captó y lo proyectó a futuro. La historia post-fascista, pero aún no postcapitalista, lo ha puesto más que de manifiesto. 10. Benjaminvecomorealizablesenelfuturomásinmediatolasdos posibilidades alternativas. No hay en él visión teleológica de la historia. Las alternativas las plantea en los siguientes términos: o estetización de la política o politización del arte. Si bien es cierto que las masas, manipuladas por la tecnología reproductiva en una sociedad capitalista, pueden convertirse, ellas mismas, en fascistas, su papel en el escenario histórico está lejos de reducirse a ese. Benjamin hace depender el sentido axiológico de la actuación de las masas del tipo de sociedad en que se encuentren y de la capacidad transformadora de su contexto social. También de las masas dependería la revolución y la futura sociedad emancipada. Los dos posibles escenarios futuros, el mediado por la revolución y el no mediado por ella, fueron, en este sentido, igualmente atisbados por Benjamin. La segunda alternativa, asociada a la posibilidad de que la revolución no triunfase y signada por una monstruosa maquinaria definidora de gustos y manipuladora de imaginarios a favor de los intereses del capital, fue, por supuesto, el centro de atención de Benjamin en este ensayo. Pero nunca dejó de mantener la esperanza y la convicción, a pesar del avance impetuoso del fascismo del que fue testigo, de que la primera posibilidad fuera, cuando menos, tan real como la segunda. El predominio real del segundo escenario en la historia occidental post-bélica y la frustración del primero en la Europa oriental hizo nacer 208 JOSÉ RAMÓN FABELO el nihilismo posmoderno bajo la forma de filosofía de la desesperanza. Ese no es el caso de La obra de arte en la época de su reproductibilidad técnica que, sin embargo, algunos adeptos al posmodernismo nihilista quieren hacer suya. Es cierto que Benjamin centra su análisis en las consecuencias probables de la reproductibilidad técnica para una sociedad sin cambios revolucionarios. Así lo dice en el prólogo de su trabajo: Estas exigencias [de prognosis] responden menos a unas posibles tesis acerca del arte del proletariado después de la toma del poder, o del arte de la sociedad sin clases, que a otras tesis, igualmente posibles, acerca de las tendencias del desarrollo del arte bajo las actuales condiciones de producción. (Benjamin, 2003: 37) Puede verse que Benjamin tenía claras las dos posibilidades de desarrollo del arte en la sociedad que le sobreviviría. Las califica como "igualmente posibles". El hecho de que se concentre en las consecuencias de la no-revolución no implica que esa opción la vea como más probable y, mucho menos, que la prefiera. El análisis crítico de ella busca, por el contrario, favorecer el paso a la opción alternativa. De aclararlo se encarga él mismo a renglón seguido: Sería errado, por lo tanto, menospreciar el valor que tales tesis puedan tener en la lucha actual. (...) Los conceptos nuevos que se introducen a continuación en la teoría del arte se diferencian de los usuales por el hecho de que son completamente inutilizables para los 265 LA REPRODUCTIBILIDAD TÉCNICA DEL ARTE 209 fines del fascismo. Son en cambio útiles para formular exigencias revolucionarias en la política del arte. (Benjamin, 2003: 38)7 11. En cualquier de los dos casos –estetización de la política o politización del artehay un acercamiento, casi fusión, entre arte y política. Pero en el primero se trata de "embellecer" una vida política francamente anti-humana. En el segundo, por el contrario, el asunto radica en llevar los reales intereses políticos de las masas al arte y convertir a éste en arma en la lucha por la emancipación. Por supuesto que Benjamin vota con las dos manos a favor de la politización del arte. REFERENCIAS Cabrera, D. H. (2009). Walter Benjamin. La experiencia de una voz crítica, creativa y disidente (Vol. 225). Barcelona: Revista Anthropos. Wurgaft, B. A. (2010). "The uses of Walter: Walter Benjamin and the counterfactual imagination". History and Theory (49), 361-383. Tobeña, V. (2010). "La Escuela de Frankfurt ante la revolución cultural moderna. Tensiones entre el posicionamiento de Walter Benjamin y el de Theodor Adorno". Fundamentos en Humanidades , II (22), 9-32. Torrent Bestit, J. (29 de Marzo de 2010). Acerca de Walter Benajmin (18921940). In memoriam. Recuperado el 25 de Septiembre de 2010, de Rebelión: http://www.rebelion.org/noticia.php?id=103064 Aguirre, J. (1993). Prólogo. Walter Benjamin. Estética y revolución. En W. Benjamin, Imaginación y sociedad. Iluminaciones I. Madrid: Taurus. 7 Es significativo el hecho de que este Prólogo o Prefacio, tan esencial para comprender las verdaderas intenciones que el propio Benjamin declara tener con el trabajo, haya sido suprimido en la versión francesa del mismo de 1936, única que se publicó en vida de pensador judío-alemán. 210 JOSÉ RAMÓN FABELO Benjamin, W. (2003). La obra de arte en la época de su reproductibilidad técnica. México: Ítaca. Benjamin, W. (1994). Discursos Interrumpidos. Barcelona: Planeta. Delbueno, H. D. (2010). "Walter Benjamin, redimiendo el materialismo histórico para una praxis revolucionaria". Fundamentos en Humanidades , XI (II), 35-46. Debord, G. (1999). La sociedad del espectáculo. Valencia: Pre-textos. Perucci, C. (2010). "Decadencia, revolución y esperanza en Walter Benjamin". Revista SudHistoria (1), 122-148. Radetich Filinich, N. (2012). "El arte, la técnica y lo político: a propósito de La obra de arte en la época de su reproductibilidad técnica, de Walter Benjamin". 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Jennifer Nagel – University of Toronto January 19, 2017 Forthcoming in Mind & Language Factive and non-factive mental state attribution ABSTRACT: Factive mental states, such as knowing or being aware, can only link an agent to the truth; by contrast, non-factive states, such as believing or thinking, can link an agent to either truths or falsehoods. Researchers on mental state attribution often draw a sharp line between the capacity to attribute accurate states of mind, and the capacity to attribute inaccurate or 'reality-incongruent' states of mind, such as false belief. This article argues that the contrast that really matters for mental state attribution does not divide accurate from inaccurate states, but factive from non-factive ones. 1. Introduction Research into mental state attribution focuses intensively on the capacity to attribute false beliefs. It is remarkable that we are able to grasp not only what others know about our shared environment, but also what others mistakenly take to be the case. Somehow, out of the countless ways in which an observed agent could be wrong about the world, we can identify just the right natural misconception and keep track of it, even as we also keep track of the divergent way in which reality itself is unfolding. On the basis of tests of explicit false belief attribution, it was once widely held that this capacity emerged around the age of four (Wellman, Cross, & Watson, 2001). On the basis of more recent research involving implicit measures, it has been argued that some capacity to recognize false belief appears much earlier, perhaps even as early as six or seven months (Baillargeon et al., 2014; Schneider, Slaughter, & Dux, 2015). The lag between implicit and explicit measures is a source of ongoing controversy, with some researchers arguing that there are two systems involved here (Apperly & Butterfill, 2009; Low, 2015), while others maintain that a single mindreading system faces obstacles of some kind in traditional explicit measures (Carruthers, 2016; Helming, Strickland, & Jacob, 2014; Leslie, Friedman, & German, 2004). Still others remain unconvinced that infants actually track false beliefs, arguing that key experimental results are explicable in terms of low-level perceptual novelty (Heyes, 2014), or by appeal to domain-general statistical learning processes, coupled with infant biases to attend to human faces, eyes, and behavior (Ruffman, 2014). One benefit of this lively controversy has been increasing appreciation of the difficulty of accurate belief attribution. Even if mental state concepts are innate, we are not born knowing what others happen to Acknowledgements: For comments and discussion, I am grateful to David Beaver, Peter Carruthers, Pierre Jacob, Hannes Rakoczy, Laurie Santos, Sergio Tenenbaum, Tim Williamson, Evan Westra, two anonymous referees for this journal, and to audiences at the 2016 Society for Philosophy and Psychology meetings, the 2016 European Society for Philosophy and Psychology meetings, MIT, Western University, William & Mary College, and the University of Indiana. Address for correspondence: Department of Philosophy, 170 St George Street, Toronto, Canada Email: [email protected] 2 believe, and it is not easy to explain how we figure this out. Some systematic patterns apparently govern our intuitive calculations of what observed agents perceive, know, and believe to be the case, but it remains controversial just what these patterns are. Any theory of mental state attribution, whether the theory takes mental state concepts to be innate, earlyor late-developing, faces a tough challenge in explaining how we are able to compute the contents of other agents' beliefs in a changing world, especially in cases where these agents are mistaken. The depth of this computational challenge can easily be obscured by the tremendous ease with which we as adults attribute mental states (Heyes, 2014; Ruffman, 2014). We immediately and effortlessly see others as aware of certain features of the environment, as unaware of other features, as doing things intentionally, as trying, aiming and thinking, and it is natural for us to describe actions in these terms. In particular, when discussing the tasks taken to demonstrate false belief understanding in infants, we naturally describe the contrasting scenarios shown to the infants as involving agents with aims who see (or fail to see) that various things have happened. As Celia Heyes observes (2014, 648), it takes considerable artifice and effort to describe these scenarios without our familiar vocabulary of mental states and agency ('the arm-shape moved in an oblique, minimum jerk trajectory...'). However, when we are trying to figure out how (or whether) infants apply mental state concepts, it is important not to project our mature automatic registration of mental states onto the infant in the course of our description of the experimental setup. From the fact that an infant has seen an agent witnessing a change in her environment, it does not trivially follow that the infant has seen that this agent is witnessing this particular change. Theorists could of course maintain that certain mental state attributions are computed automatically from the start: for example, one could characterize infants as innately programmed to take observed agents to perceive (or think, or know) that salient events are happening, whenever agents are present. However, positing this type of innate programming imposes non-trivial burdens of explaining how such attribution principles might be genetically encoded and triggered by the infant's experiences. Taking care not to smuggle in any unaccounted-for mental state computations, all theories of mental state attribution (or 'mindreading') ultimately need to solve the same problem. The developing mindreader observes persons, objects, and events, and computes, whether through innate or learned principles, or some combination of these, which mental states to attribute to whom, under various conditions of presence, absence, orientation and occlusion. From the perspective of an adult able to compute the contents of another's beliefs automatically, it is a challenge to examine the inner logic of these computations. This article takes a fresh look at that inner logic. The aim here is not to take any position on whether genuine belief attribution starts early in infancy or later, but simply to examine the computations it involves. What does the competent mindreader need to see the observed agent as perceiving, knowing, and believing? 3 At a deeper level, what fixed relationships between conditions like perceiving, knowing, and believing enter into our calculations of these mental states? This article will discuss the relationship between perceiving and knowing, but its main focus is on the relationship between knowing and believing. Closer examination reveals a striking pattern in the contents of the beliefs that are tracked on standard false belief tasks: in what follows, I argue that these contents are always derived from the contents of prior attributed states of knowledge, and aim to explain why mental state attribution works this way. I begin with a closer look at the relationship between knowledge and belief. The relationship between knowledge and belief is clearly a close one, and in the case of true belief, very close indeed. The standard epistemological view, going back to at least the 4th century BCE, is that knowledge entails true belief (Plato, c. 369 BCE/1990): if Smith knows that the barn is burning, then the barn must actually be burning, and Smith must believe that the barn is burning. The entailment is not mutual, however: there are cases of true belief that fall short of knowledge, for example in the ignorant person's accidentally true judgment about which road leads to Larisa (Plato, c. 380 BCE/1976). A wishful thinker could have a true belief that her lottery ticket will win, if she is lucky, without having known in advance of the draw. But if these examples illustrate that knowledge is a stronger condition than true belief, it nevertheless seems plausible that most cases of true belief whose formation we witness (notably ordinary perception in favorable circumstances) are also cases of knowledge. It might seem that there are no interesting differences between knowledge and true belief in the prediction of action, especially in the simple scenarios explored by developmental psychologists. If an observed agent is right that something is the case-if she has a true belief-why should it matter whether she furthermore meets the stronger condition of knowing that it is the case? When the agent wants something, then it might seem there is no difference between seeing this agent as having a true belief that it is in the basket, and seeing her as knowing that it is in the basket: either way, we expect the same immediate reaching behavior. True belief and knowledge are so closely related that it might seem the distinction between them could make no difference relevant to mental state attribution. There is an approach to mental state attribution that minimizes the distinction between knowledge and true belief, employing a more generic conception of information across this divide. In the developmental literature, this route focuses on 'children's ability to attribute two different kinds of informational states to agents: reality-congruent and reality-incongruent states' (Song & Baillargeon, 2008, 1789). On this direct approach to the problem of false belief, false beliefs are a special type of informational state, sometimes also called 'counterfactual' (e.g. Baillargeon, Scott, & Bian, 2016), distinct in kind from informational states in which agents get it right. Both types of informational state are seen as spelling out the content of the attributed mental state, according to the following definitions: (1) 'Reality-congruent informational states specify what accurate information an agent possesses or lacks about a setting', and (2) 'Reality-incongruent informational states specify what inaccurate information an agent possesses about a setting' (Song & Baillargeon, 2008, 4 1789). Researchers in this program take their main challenge to be explaining the transition from attributing states of type (1) to the harder task of attributing states of type (2). Prominent research in this tradition labels the contrasting scenarios that infants are responding to- for example, scenarios involving an observed agent who either does or does not witness an object's change of location-as true belief (TB) and false belief (FB) conditions (Onishi & Baillargeon, 2005). Actions are always seen as guided by beliefs, on this approach, combined with motivational states such as desires or goals, with true beliefs being easier to attribute than false beliefs, either because true belief is a more common and therefore default state (Leslie et al., 2004) or because an earlier-developing subsystem is responsible for true belief attribution (Baillargeon, Scott, & He, 2010). It might seem that informational mental state attribution will be fully covered if we identify all states specifying the accurate and inaccurate information possessed by an agent; however, this approach leaves two gaps. First, it is not clear how it would classify attributions of beliefs whose truth value is unknown by the attributor ('he thinks that the box contains cereal, but I'm not sure if he's right'). Second, it is unclear how it handles attributions of knowledge which specify just the question whose answer is known to the agent, rather than the information constituting this answer ('he knows what is in the box-unlike me, he can see into it from where he is sitting'). Being able to see others as knowing the answers to questions enables us to represent the mental states of those who are epistemically better-positioned than we are: we do not have to be able to specify the accurate information they possess. These two gaps may raise doubts about whether mental state attribution is best modeled in terms of reality-congruent and reality-incongruent states, where the attributed true and false contents are specified. As an alternative to drawing a line between true and false beliefs, or accurate versus inaccurate information, another approach would be to mark a fundamental split between factive and non-factive mental states, where factive mental states (like knowing) can link an agent only to truths, and non-factive states (like believing) link an agent to either truths or falsehoods. This approach has no problem with attributing beliefs of unknown truth-value: from the start, belief is conceived as a state of mind which may be held to either true or false propositions. True beliefs and false beliefs are not different types of mental state, but a single type of state coupled with different outward circumstances. Non-factive mental states like belief can retain their identity as external conditions change, so an agent's belief that the ball is in the basket is the same mental state, and is expected to produce the same action, before and after the unwitnessed transfer. Factive mental states like knowledge, by contrast, are more restricted: this kind of state by its very nature can link an agent only to the truth. These states are sharply restricted in how they may be formed and sustained, ceasing to exist if their contents change in truth value. When the agent fails to witness the ball being shifted out of the basket, her knowledge that it is in the basket is lost. Knowing is a strong condition to meet; section 3 argues that the 5 strength of this condition initially makes its presence and absence easier to track in other agents. One advantage of this approach is that it can explain why non-human primates respond differently to states of knowledge and states of true belief falling short of knowledge, a finding which is hard to explain if we lump these together as reality-congruent states. Finally, the truths that an agent knows can either be specified directly, using that-complements (the agent knows that the ball is in the box) or indirectly, using whcomplements (the agent knows where the ball is, the agent knows what is in the box); section 2 explores the significance of the factive/non-factive contrast in embedding questions. In summary, on this approach, whether we specify the content or the question whose answer is known, some actions are naturally seen as guided by knowledge, and others by mere beliefs (true or false), again in conjunction with motivational states. These two ways of carving up the territory-the true/false belief way and the factive/non-factive mental state way-may seem like notational variants of each other. Indeed, advocates of the first approach are clear that knowledge is to be included as a reality-congruent state, and now sometimes label their contrasting conditions as knowledge versus false belief, rather than true belief versus false belief (e.g. Baillargeon et al., 2016, 174). Elsewhere they cash out true belief conditions as being conditions of knowledge, describing the unwitnessed transfer task as follows: 'True-belief scenarios served as control conditions and differed from false-belief scenarios in that the protagonist knew at the end of the trial sequence where the object was located' (Schneider et al., 2015, 3; emphasis added). The true/false belief way of approaching mental state attribution is distinguished not by any blanket refusal to speak of knowledge, but by a tendency to treat true belief and knowledge as roughly interchangeable, and by a demarcation of false belief as a special kind of mental state (e.g. 'counterfactual', as in Baillargeon et al., 2016). By contrast, on the approach advocated in what follows, false belief is not classified as a special type of mental state: it is rather just plain belief that counts as a mental state, a type of mental state that could be either true or false, depending on outward circumstances. Although knowledge entails true belief, it is not necessarily the case that a mindreader capable of recognizing knowledge is capable of recognizing true belief. This approach recognizes the difficulty of attributing false beliefs, but also highlights the difficulty of tracking of true beliefs that fall short of knowledge. It is not false belief, but belief as such that is harder to represent than knowledge. Section 2 examines the contrast between factive and non-factive mental states in more detail. Although the terms 'factive' and 'non-factive' were coined in linguistics (in Kiparsky & Kiparsky, 1970), philosophers have adapted the linguistic classification of certain verbs as factive to forge a deeper classification of corresponding mental states as factive, with knowledge distinguished as the most general factive mental state (Williamson, 2000). Drawing on research from both disciplines, this section identifies key features of factivity relevant to the theory of mental state attribution. 6 Section 3 looks at the contrast between factive and non-factive mental state attribution in the tasks used with prelinguistic infants and nonhuman primates. Nonhuman primates appear to have some ability to recognize knowledge, but little if any capacity to recognize either false belief, or true belief that falls short of knowledge. Humans by contrast do at some point become capable of tracking the contents of true and false beliefs; this section looks at the initial calculation of those contents in our grasp of what others perceive and know. Section 4 examines minimalist efforts to explain the early stages of belief attribution with the help of notions such as 'registration' (Apperly & Butterfill, 2009), and 'experiential record' (Perner & Roessler, 2012). These can be seen as 'proto-factive' notions; at their point of origin, they can attach only to real objects and events, but they are not quite factive mental state notions, because their content is not propositionally structured. I argue that to the extent that these notions fall short of capturing factive mental states, they will not quite do the work needed to enable the emergence of belief attribution. Whether or not these notions can ultimately explain the level of success infants have shown on implicit false belief tasks, they leave a gap that needs to be filled in explaining how belief contents are calculated, whenever belief attribution begins. This is not just a problem for minimalists: the same gap arises even for those who take full-blown mental state concepts to be innate. I argue that factive mental state attributions play a pivotal role in initially determining the contents of the beliefs that are instinctively attributed to agents, and in guiding the ways in which those attributions are updated over time. 2. Factivity in linguistics and epistemology One of the clearest lines of distinction between knowledge and belief concerns the relationship of each of these attitudes to the truth. The first of these sentences leaves the truth of its embedded proposition an open question, the second does not: (1) Alice thinks that she is late. (2) Bob knows that he is late. We can go on to elaborate (1) by saying either 'Alice thinks that she is late, and she is right,' or 'Alice thinks that she is late, but she is wrong.' Sentence (2) is not so flexible: it sounds contradictory to say, 'Bob knows that he is late, but he is not late,' and it sounds redundant to insist on the truth of what is known. As a factive verb, know can embed only true complements; unlike belief, knowledge itself is an attitude that one can have only to truths. We can of course mistakenly attribute knowledge of a false proposition, but once the falsity of the proposition is recognized, the knowledge attribution must be retracted. 7 Table 1: factive and non-factive expressions Factive Non-factive knows that is aware that realizes that is happy that sees that recognizes that registers that notices that thinks that is sure that hopes that expects that imagines that is confident that assumes that believes that Factive verbs such as know, see and realize entail the truth of their complement clauses. If Carla now sees that the ball is in the basket, it follows that the ball is in the basket; one cannot realize that one's wallet is missing unless it is actually the case that one's wallet is missing. Philosophers typically use the term 'factive' just to capture this property of entailment; as Timothy Williamson's now standard formulation puts it, 'a propositional attitude is factive if and only if, necessarily, one has it only to truths' (2000, 34). Among factive mental states, knowledge seems to have a special status: Williamson has influentially argued that it is distinguished as the most general member of this class, and indeed that it is entailed by all other members of the class. On this view, other factive mental states like seeing that p or being aware that q are simply more specific ways of knowing; these various factive mental states may differ from each other, so that for example perceiving that p does not necessarily entail being happy that p, but every factive mental state entails knowing (Williamson, 2000, ch.1).1 Linguists agree that know is factive, but use the term 'factive' more restrictively than philosophers; this article will follow the linguists in their more stringent usage.2 Linguists reserve 'factive' for predicates that not 1 Williamson's thesis that all factive mental states entail knowing is widely but not universally accepted; in particular, some philosophers have had doubts about emotive factives, like regret (see, e.g. Fantl 2015). The dispute is hard to adjudicate because the data on emotives are subtle, not least because these verbs easily invite a 'projected' or non-literal use (Holton, 1997). In addition, emotive factives have a number of unusual features, including a resistance to embedding questions (Egre, 2008): they take only declarative ('that-') complements, where most factives take interrogative ('wh-) complements (one can notice or know whether p, etc.). From a mindreading perspective, emotive factives will also involve complications about their combination of emotion with informational state. Emotive factives will therefore be set aside in what follows, and we will focus on regular cognitive factives such as realize, register, see, and know. 2 A predicate of veracity such as 'is right that' will count as factive in the philosophers' sense, but not in the linguists' sense. Although such predicates link agents only to true propositions, they are not mental state expressions. One piece of evidence for this, noted by Pranav Anand and Valentine Hacquard (2014) is that these predicates do not select for sentient subjects: even a book or report can be right that something is the case, while we cannot say 'this report knows that...'. They argue that such predicates mark contributions to a common conversational ground, rather than mental 8 only entail but also presuppose the truth of their complements (Egre, 2008; Kiparsky & Kiparsky, 1970). What is presupposed is taken for granted by the sincere speaker as a background truth, in a way that does not shift even as the factive expression is embedded under a variety of logical and modal operators. Consider a simple knowledge attribution: (3) Carla knows that the ball was moved. Uncontroversially, (3) entails that (4) The ball was moved. Interestingly, background fact (4) also typically follows from all of the following sentences (Geurts & Beaver, 2011): (5) Carla doesn't know that the ball was moved. (negation) (6) Does Carla know that the ball was moved? (question) (7) Perhaps Carla knows that the ball was moved. (possibility modal) (8) If Carla knows that the ball was moved, she won't look for it in the basket. (antecedent of conditional) If we substitute a non-factive verb like thinks for knows into (3), or any of (5)-(8), then background fact (4) no longer follows. There are a number of rival theories of how exactly it is that presuppositions 'project' or shine through various types of embedding, but the differences between these theories will not concern us in what follows. All theories agree that it is possible to take special steps to cancel an embedded presupposition, or block the inference to the background fact-one could, for example, explicitly deny it, as in (9): (9) Carla doesn't know that the ball was moved, because the ball wasn't actually moved. The cancellation in the second clause brings with it a feeling that 'know' was the wrong word to have used here. When factive verbs appear unembedded, however, and in embedded contexts where no special steps are taken to cancel the natural inference, the use of a factive verb signals a commitment to the truth of its complement clause. In general, we use factive verbs both positively and negatively to mark and track the mental states of agents against a shared background reality: ordinary thought and talk of what people know and don't know simultaneously expresses our own grasp of that reality. If someone informs you that Diane knows that the flight arrives at Terminal C or that she is not aware it is raining, you can learn something not states; remarkably, they observe, there seem to be no mental state predicates which entail their complements without presupposing them. Certainly, all the factive predicates in Table 1 are factive in the stronger sense. 9 only about Diane, but also about the airport and the weather.3 Non-factive locutions, by contrast, offer no default delivery of information about their complement clauses. Because the natural domain of what people do and do not know is just the background set of true propositions or facts, factives are essentially simpler to attribute than non-factives. When one makes the instinctive judgment that someone knows that p or fails to know that p, p itself is part of one's existing picture of the world. Factive projection patterns suggest that even questions about what people know, hypothetical reasoning about what they know, and speculation about what they might know, are naturally drawn against the background of reality. Meanwhile, the domain of what is merely believed is much less constrained, including true and false propositions alike. Various aspects of reality are known or unknown; the realm of what is believed is a vastly wider field. It is of course true that we can subsequently mark out the extension of the verb 'know' against that wider field, for any proposition and any agent: for example, having established which truths the agent S knows, one could then say of any proposition p outside this realm, true or false, that it is not the case that S knows that p. However, this is a somewhat deliberate and artificial exercise: the calculated external negation here contrasts with the ordinary sentential negation employed in sentences of the form 'S doesn't know that q', where q is simply presupposed to be true (Horn, 1985). One last noteworthy feature that distinguishes verbs like know from verbs like think is their capacity to embed questions (Hintikka, 1975, ch 1). We may say not only that Carla knows that the ball was moved, but also that Carla knows whether the ball was moved, that she knows what was moved, and where it moved, and so forth; similar possibilities are open for many factives, including notice, realize and see (Lahiri, 2002). Cognitive non-factives like think and believe do not directly embed questions in this manner: it makes no sense to say that Carla thinks whether the ball was moved, or that she believes where it was moved. One key part of the explanation of this phenomenon is that the semantic contribution of the embedded question is the true answer to that question, so that verbs need to select for true complements in order to embed questions (Egre, 2008).4 The person who knows where the ball is must be able to give the true answer to the question, 'Where is the ball?'. The person whose mental state about the ball is just thinking rather than knowing is not guaranteed to have the true answer here. Being able to embed questions (or wh-complements) under know and other factives enables us to report the mental states of those who are epistemically better positioned than we are: we can see others as experts on points that remain open questions for us. The question-embedding character of factives also enables us to represent weaker epistemic positions: we can say that Carla does not 3 What the speaker presupposes about reality when using a factive verb will often be informative to others; indeed, studies of naturally occurring conversations suggest that more than half the time factives are used, information introduced as a presupposition of the factive will be new to the hearer (Spenader 2003). 4 It is cross-linguistically robust fact that cognitive factives like know embed questions and cognitive non-factives like think do not, but it would be an oversimplification to conclude that all and only factives embed questions. For a detailed discussion of the exceptions, including emotive factives such as regret and interrogatives such as wonder, see Egre (2008). 10 know where the ball was moved. These representations do not need to specify any inaccurate information held by the agent. While the examples reported in this section have been in English, the phenomena are crosslinguistically robust. The phenomena of presupposition and recursion (or embedding) are considered universal (von Fintel & Matthewson, 2008). The World Loanword Database, which covers 41 languages from all inhabited continents, lists words meaning know and think (both in the sense embedding a propositional complement) in every language (Haspelmath & Tadmor, 2009). There are some languages that have a dedicated verb for false belief, but this lexicalization is far from universal and appears not to confer any general advantage in mindreading (Shatz, Diesendruck, Martinez-Beck, & Akar, 2003; Tardif & Wellman, 2000). Verbs meaning know and think, meanwhile, not only seem to appear in all languages but are heavily used across languages, appearing among the thirty most common verbs in languages as diverse as Arabic (Buckwalter & Parkinson, 2014), Mandarin Chinese (Xiao, Rayson, & McEnery, 2009), and Russian (Sharoff, Umanskaya, & Wilson, 2014). The contrast in question-embedding behavior between verbs like know and verbs like think also cuts across languages (Egre, 2008; Lahiri, 2002). The simplest explanation for these regularities is that they reflect a common underlying conceptual structure, just as cross-linguistic regularities in grammatical evidential markings are taken to reflect a common underlying structure in human source monitoring capacities (cf. Papafragou, Li, Choi, & Han, 2007). Factive verbs are striking in their prevalence, especially in children's speech.5 A verb meaning 'know' figures heavily in children's usage: Bartsch and Wellman's (1995) study of English-speaking children up to the age of six found 'know' as the main verb in 70% of children's epistemic claims, with 'think' following at 26%; a similar study of Spanish-speaking children found 'know' (saber) leading mental verbs at 67% (even after formulaic 'I dunno' utterances were stripped out) and the two most common belief verbs (creer, pensar) together summing to 11% (Pascual, Aguado, Sotillo, & Masdeu, 2008). Paul Harris and colleagues have recently argued that this earlier work underestimates children's early competence in speaking of knowledge: against the common practice of discounting 'I dunno' statements, they have argued that 2-year-old's denials 5 There is mixed evidence on children's early competence with these verbs in explicit mental state attribution. Negation may pose a difficulty: one study of three-year-olds found that they performed as well as adults in inferring p from sentences of the form 'S knows that p', but were significantly less successful in inferring p from sentences of the form 'S does not know that p' (Dudley, Orita et al. 2015). The significance of this finding remains unclear, not least because the pragmatics of the task are difficult, perhaps ambiguous, and require second-order mental state attribution: the child must infer that the toy is in the red box from hearing a hint in the form of a negated mental state attribution from an experimenter who should be taken to be aware of the location of toy. After whispering with puppet Lambchop, whose own statement is inaudible, the experimenter says, 'Lambchop does not know that the toy is in the red box.' Just 39% of the 3-year-olds gave the 'right' answer on this task, compared to 74% of the adults. The fact that the adults were so far from unanimity itself suggests that the task is open to several interpretations; it remains an interesting (and open) question how the children and adults understood it. 11 of knowledge (and their questions about knowledge) are not simply fixed conversational gambits but genuine mental state references, exhibiting clear sensitivity to what is known (Harris, Yang, & Cui, 2016). Harris and colleagues found strikingly similar patterns in talk of knowledge in English and Mandarin-speaking toddlers, a result consistent with earlier findings exploring the timing of factive and non-factive verb use. Factive verbs appear early, across languages: for example, use of a verb meaning 'know that' emerged before the verb meaning 'think that' in all of the Mandarin and Cantonese-speaking children in Tardif and Wellman's (2000) longitudinal study. They take their findings to bolster Anna Wierzbicka's (1992) proposal that words for want, know, and think are universal features of human language-these terms figure in her very short list of 'lexical universals'-suggesting that 'children worldwide acquire these terms and meanings in a clear order,' with talk of wanting followed by talk of knowing, and only later by talk of thinking (Tardif & Wellman, 2000, 35). 3. Mental state attribution in humans and other primates Belief attribution is difficult, and one piece of evidence for this difficulty comes in comparing the performance of humans to great apes, and to more distantly related primates. Humans clearly form robust representations of the true and false beliefs of others. Great apes may perhaps show some glimmerings of false belief understanding: in unwitnessed transfer tasks, they show some tendency to look in the correct direction as they anticipate the action of a deceived agent (Krupenye, Kano, Hirata, Call, & Tomasello, 2016), although their performance on these tasks is perhaps explicable in terms of domain-general 'submentalizing' mechanisms (Heyes, 2016). Great apes do not seem to represent the false beliefs of other agents robustly enough to guide action: in competitive food choice tasks, they fail to exploit a competitor's natural misconception about hidden food (Hare, Call, & Tomasello, 2001; Kaminski, Call, & Tomasello, 2008). Moving to more distantly related primates, monkeys have shown no signs of any capacity to represent false belief, even in looking-time experimental paradigms closely modeled on those taken to show implicit false belief recognition in infants (Marticorena, Ruiz, Mukerji, Goddu, & Santos, 2011; Martin & Santos, 2014). Knowledge attribution appears to be easier: great apes act in ways that are consistent with differentiating knowledge from ignorance, for example in paradigms where they need to compete with a dominant animal who should be seen as either knowledgeable or ignorant of the location of hidden food, given that animal's observed track record of perceptual access (Hare et al., 2001). Even monkeys seem to be able to distinguish between knowledgeable and ignorant competitors (e.g. Flombaum & Santos, 2005).6 6 Alia Martin and Laurie Santos (2016) have raised questions about whether monkeys are able to represent ignorance. They observe that 'the act of representing a relation between an agent and a piece of information that is not part of our current reality is a computational challenge,' and suggest that monkeys lack 'the capacity to conceive of states of the 12 There is evidence that nonhuman primates may have some ability to attribute not only knowledgethat, but also knowledge-wh (Krachun, Carpenter, Call, & Tomasello, 2009). In a task involving a search for hidden food, chimpanzees watched as a human competitor observed food being placed in one of two out-ofreach opaque containers. The chimpanzee's view was obstructed so that the chimpanzee did not have firsthand knowledge of the location of the food, but the chimpanzee could see that the human had a clear line of sight to the containers during baiting. In the false belief conditions of this experiment, the two containers were switched while the competitor left the room momentarily or turned away. At the moment of test, when the chimpanzee was allowed to approach the containers, the competitor then reached unsuccessfully for one of them, so the subject's reaching for the other container would be consistent with a grasp of false belief: chimpanzees did not pass this test. In the 'true belief' (or more intuitively, knowledge-where) condition of the experiment, however, the containers were swapped after baiting in plain view of both the chimpanzee and the knowledgeable human competitor, so the chimpanzee's reaching for the same container would be consistent with a grasp of the competitor's knowledge. Chimpanzees performed significantly better than chance on this version of the task: although they had not seen the placement of the food themselves, and so could not 'specify the accurate information possessed by the agent' in their initial representation of the competitor's mental state, they followed the behavior of the knowledgeable agent in their choice of container, as if guided by a representation of that agent as knowing where the food was. As further evidence for the greater ease of knowledgeover belief-attribution, there is evidence than nonhuman primates have difficulty representing true belief that falls short of knowledge (Kaminski et al., 2008, Study 2). In another food choice task, chimpanzees competed with conspecifics for food hidden in opaque containers. Subject chimpanzees could choose a high-quality food reward they and their competitor had seen being hidden in one of three containers; these containers were placed on a table which could slide back and forth between the subject and the competitor, a table which was always offered to the competitor first. Subjects also had the option of a low-quality fallback reward in a fourth container. Subjects had to make a single choice from the containers after their competitor had chosen (and perhaps emptied) a container, but they could not see their competitor's choice, so they needed to make an inference about that choice based on their calculation of the competitor's mental state. In the simplest conditions, after the initial baiting, both the subject and the competitor watched as the high-quality reward was either lifted from one container and replaced there ('known lift') or lifted from one container and moved to another ('known shift'). In the more challenging conditions, after the initial baiting, the subject chimpanzee could see that the competitor's view of the table was briefly occluded by a screen as the reward was either lifted and replaced ('unknown lift') or lifted and transferred to another container ('unknown shift'). Chimpanzees were significantly more likely to choose world that are different or 'decoupled' from their own current reality.' (p.376) However, instinctive attributions of ignorance do not involve such decoupled representations: they involve real-world facts that the ignorant agent is missing. 13 the container with the high-quality reward when the competitor had not witnessed the reward's final motions, consistent with taking the knowledge or ignorance of their competitor into account. However, they failed to distinguish between the unknown shift (false belief) and unknown lift (true belief) conditions: they treated their competitor as simply ignorant in both. Six-year-old children did better: they were most likely to choose the high-quality reward container in the unknown shift condition, expecting the competitor to have the false belief that the reward was still where the competitor had seen it last. Unlike chimpanzees, children were significantly less likely to pursue the high-quality reward in the 'unknown lift' condition, where it was replaced in the same spot where the competitor had initially seen it, anticipating that the competitor would retain a true belief about the reward's location. Evidence of difficulty in grasping true belief falling short of knowledge has also been reported for Rhesus monkeys (Santos, 2016). These monkeys also ordinarily anticipate that a returning agent will reach for a target object where they saw it being hidden; however, when this object is publically removed from that location in the agent's absence, they no longer show any expectation about where the returning agent will reach for it, even if the object is restored to its original hiding place prior to the agent's return. It is as if the attributed state of knowledge or awareness of location, a state that would be maintained for a stationary object during an agent's absence, or updated if the object is moved as the agent watches, is shattered when the object is moved behind the agent's back. When the object moves unseen, the agent's attitude towards the location of that object is no longer of a kind that can only be held towards truths; the agent ceases to know where the object is, and cannot regain that state of knowledge by having the object returned to its original location as her view is obstructed. Knowledge is a state with rigorous entry conditions. One source of difficulty in building a theory of mental state attribution is in identifying its triggering conditions. Hannes Rakoczy characterizes the problem as follows: 'There are no specific superficial features associated with the class of belief-involving situations. Beliefs just are too abstract to go along with a specific appearance' (2012, 71). Indeed, in the case of false beliefs, we have something harder than an absence of superficial features: the attributor who is witnessing a scene in which p is the case must override some aspects of what presently meets the eye in order to attribute to another the inaccurate belief that not-p. Yet the possibility of inaccuracy is widely agreed to be an essential part of propositional attitude ascription, Rakoczy reports: 'From the beginning of ToM research, there has been a wide-ranging consensus that what are needed to demonstrate the use of propositional attitude concepts are tasks that require a subject to understand that agents represent the world from their specific subjective points of view-that is, potentially differently from the ways in which others represent it, and potentially inaccurately' (2015, 2). The prelinguistic mindreader faces a steep challenge, if this wide-ranging consensus is correct. 14 However, taking factive attitudes as our starting point makes the challenge more tractable. Because factive propositional attitudes like knowledge can only get things right, a potential for inaccuracy is not essential to propositional attitude concepts. Factive attitude ascriptions also show that the two aspects of subjectivity identified by Rakoczy are separable: agents can be seen as knowing more or less than the attributor, and therefore as representing the world differently, without necessarily representing it inaccurately. I can see you as failing to know what is in the container without seeing you as having an inaccurate representation of its contents; I can also see you as knowing more than I do on some issue, thanks to your superior vantage point. Attributions of knowledge and ignorance capture subjectivity in the sense of ascribing different perspectives on reality to different subjects, without going all the way to a stronger sense of subjectivity, in which the subjective perspective is actually, or even potentially, at odds with what is objectively the case. Could there be specific superficial features initially associated with the class of knowledge-involving situations? Indications of perceptual access are natural candidates here, with typically developing infants becoming increasingly sensitive over time to observable cues such as the direction in which others are facing, their direction of gaze, and the presence of occlusions to lines of sight (for a review, see Moore, 2008). If visual access, for example, is a matter of seeing that something is the case, then it is a matter of having a factive mental state (alternative accounts of perceptual access will be discussed in due course). Factive mental states are promising entry points of mental state attribution because in these basic nonverbal tasks the attributor needs to make sense of an interaction between the agent and the environment, and some salient fact in that environment needs to figure in setting the content of the attributed mental state. The triggering conditions for attributing perceptual access are not taken to leave it an open question whether the attributed content is true or false; the kind of state being attributed-awareness of some event or feature of the environment-is a kind which could only have true contents. Conditions marking the absence of knowledge are also easily detectable: when someone's view is obstructed, or her back is turned, she can easily be recognized as ignorant, where it will be a more difficult question what beliefs she may possess. One might wonder how to reconcile a factive account of perceptual access with the possibility of misperceptions: given an appropriately placed colored filter, an observed agent could form a mistaken belief about an object's color, for example, and the attributor who sees the filter between the agent and the object could naturally understand this. From the attributor's perspective, however, the attribution of a mistaken representation of the object's color will be a more complex process than attribution of normal perceptual access. The attributor who can see the object and the agent's line of sight to that object through the colored filter can readily attribute to him perceptual access to the object's presence, but she will need to infer or calculate his misrepresentation of the object's color on the basis of her own past experience of the filter as 15 well as what meets the eye in the moment. The agent can see a blue object as green, when there is an interfering yellow filter, but one cannot see that an object is green if it is not. So-called 'false perceptions' do not count as moments of perceptual access, on the factive account of perceptual access. This point is worth emphasizing, because the terminology is potentially confusing, tempting us to think of 'false perceptions' as members of a broader kind ('perceptions') which should be taken to exclude them, if 'perceptions' are understood in the ordinary way, as moments of perceptual access to reality. Care with these labels does not necessarily challenge the main conclusions researchers wish to draw, but enables us to avoid some of their more problematic claims, and indeed to highlight key features of their arguments (bracketing, for now, rival lower-level explanations of the phenomena). For example, increased terminological caution is useful in interpreting the results of Hyun-Joo Song and Renée Baillargeon's (2008) exploration of apparent false belief tracking in 14.5-month-old infants. In a violation-of-expectation study, the infants watched an agent repeatedly demonstrate a preference for a doll with long blue hair over a toy skunk. These items were then placed in opaque boxes either in the presence or the absence of the agent. The box in which the skunk was hidden had a potentially deceptive tuft of blue hair protruding from under the lid (the 'hair box'); meanwhile, the blue-haired doll was placed in an unmarked box (the 'plain box'). In the condition where the agent was present during the placement of the toys (the 'true perception' condition, arguably better classified as a knowledge condition), after the blue-haired doll was placed in the plain box, infants reliably looked longer if the agent reached for the hair box, as if surprised that the agent was not reaching for the desired doll at its known location. By contrast, in the condition where the agent was absent during the placement of the toys, infants looked longer if the returning agent reached for the plain box, although this was the accurate location of the desired doll. This response was taken to support the conclusion that 'the infants had to reason that the agent's false perception of the tuft of hair as a part of the doll would lead her to hold false beliefs about the locations of the doll and skunk' (2008, 1794). Here the attribution of a 'false perception' of the tuft of hair as a part of the doll is itself already a false belief attribution: if these researchers are right, the infant must attribute to the returning agent the false belief that this tuft of hair is part of the doll, from which, as they say, a false belief about the doll's location would follow and be expected to guide action. In the reasoning that the researchers attribute to the infants, attributions of the non-factive state of perceiving as are not introduced on the same level as attributions of factive states of knowledge or perceptual access; indeed, these attributions of the non-factive state of perceiving as are performed only subsequently to, and based on the contents of, prior attributions of factive states. The initial stages of the infants' mental state reasoning are properly characterized as operations on factive states: 'The infants also had to consider the agent's knowledge of the setting in the test trial: They had to attribute to the agent not only the ability to detect the tall boxes and tuft of hair, but also the ability to infer that the doll and skunk were likely to both be 16 present, as in the preceding trials, and to be hidden in the boxes' (2008, 1794). Here, the initial acts of detection constitute perceptual access in the strict sense: detection is a relation that can only hold to real objects. If the infant left it as an open question whether or not the agent was registering the presence of the tuft of blue hair on the outside of the hair box, there would be no basis for the infant's expectation in the false belief condition that the agent would reach for that box. As a factive attitude, seeing or detecting that there is a tuft of blue hair on the hair box is a process which is different in kind from perhaps mistakenly seeing this tuft as a part of a doll: a capacity to attribute the first, factive kind of state must be in place to enable one to attribute the second, non-factive kind of state. The false beliefs that are supposed to be attributed in standard false belief tasks are closely related to prior knowledge attributions. The unexpected transfer task is the simplest: at some earlier time, the agent is taken to know the location of an object, having seen it there. Ordinarily, turning away briefly from a stationary inanimate object does not destroy one's knowledge of its location: knowledge is a state which is triggered by perceptual access, but a state which typically endures past that initial access. Having seen the ball in the basket at a given time, one continues to know that it is there a moment later, even without continuing observation. Indeed, it is because knowledge can outlast perceptual access that knowledge attribution has value in predicting behavior: if states of knowledge did not endure through time, there would be little advantage in positing a deeper state behind the agent's observable marks of perceptual access. The moment the agent turned away, the content of what she had witnessed would have no impact on her future behavior: simple behavior reading and detection of sightlines could take the place of mental state attribution for others aiming to anticipate her actions. It is because knowledge of location is typically retained over time that an intelligent agent will reach for the object where she saw it last, and a successful mindreader will anticipate this knowledgeable behavior. When the ball moves behind the agent's back, a primate incapable of representing belief simply registers a failure of knowledge and comes to see the agent as ignorant, no more likely to search one place than another. To represent belief, one needs not only to see the agent as ignorant of the object's new location (her back was visibly turned while it was moved), but also as retaining her tendency to act as she did when she had knowledge of where the object was. Believing is on this view a shadow or after-effect of knowing: the deceived agent who reaches for the basket behaves as if she knew that the ball is in the basket, while her state of mind is no longer latched onto the truth. Knowledge that the ball was in the basket initially degenerates into mere belief that it is still there at a slightly later time, when an agent is ignorant of the shift. In an unexpected contents task, the false proposition that the agent should be seen as believing ('there are candies in this box') does not start out as known by the agent. Rather, this false belief is attributed to the agent only following attributions of appropriately related knowledge and relevant ignorance. First, the agent is seen as seeing or knowing that there is a particular type of container before her: this successful apprehension of some aspect of reality is vital input to the mindreader's calculations. The observed agent is 17 also seen as ignorant of its contents, not having seen inside when the contents were revealed to the attributor, and therefore as inferring, on the basis of her background knowledge about this kind of packaging, that it contains its typical contents; again, belief is an after-effect of what is known. The blue-haired doll task is structurally similar: the returning agent is taken to see or know that there is a tuft of hair protruding from the box, and to infer the doll's location from this fact, together with her background knowledge about the intact doll's appearance. Success on misinformation tasks is also enabled by factive mental state attribution. In a standard misinformation task (Perner & Wimmer, 1988), the agent is taken to know what has been said, and to form a false belief on this testimonial basis. The successful mental state attributor cannot leave it as an open question whether the agent has heard the misleading testimony, or whether the agent has taken a trusting or skeptical attitude towards what she has heard. Insofar as the mindreader sees the agent as inferring that p is the case from being told that p, the mindreader is interpreting the agent as following our general schema for accepting others' testimony as knowledgeable, arguably a schema built into our ordinary norms of conversation (Grice, 1975). Because the agent is misinformed in this case, the mindreader is of course not ultimately attributing to her the knowledge that p, but he attributes to her the belief that p on the basis of the attributed knowledge that p has been said to be the case, together with an expectation that the agent will treat this testimony as knowledgeable. Although the field of propositions that can be believed is larger than the field of propositions that can be known, it is not intractably larger, at least in these basic tasks. Unexpected transfer tasks leave agents believing things that very recently used to be the case, and were known; unexpected contents tasks leave agents believing things that would ordinarily be the case, based on what these agents are seen as knowing about salient objects or object parts in their present environment, and misinformation tasks leave agents believing things that they know have just been said to be the case, by informants the agents take to be knowledgeable. A key element in all of these tasks is the agent's observed perceptual access. If the target agent were not taken to have perceptual access to the object's original location, to the deceptive packaging, object part, or testimony, there would be no reason to attribute the particular false belief that is naturally attributed to the agent. The mindreader who attributes a false belief does so on the basis of witnessing an observed agent's interactions with reality, and needs to start her calculations about the character of this belief with input from what that agent has taken up, and carry them forward with input about the agent's ignorance, or the aspect of reality which are blocked for her: in these basic tasks, factive mental state attributions launch and guide attributions of non-factive states. If Williamson is right that all factive mental states entail knowing, then seeing that something is the case entails knowing that it is the case: the agent who sees that the ball is in the basket must know that the 18 ball is in the basket. However, even if we assume that there is factive mental state attribution here, it remains a live question whether the developing mindreader who is cued by observable signs of visual access would attribute to the agent the more generic mental state of knowing that p or the more specific factive mental state of seeing-in the sense of 'knowing through current visual access'-that p. There are some reasons to suspect that it is initially the more generic state of knowing that is attributed: notably, the epistemic state generated by seeing is taken to outlast visual access to the scene. Even when the agent no longer sees that the ball is in the box, because the lid has been closed or it is well inside it, out of a direct line of sight (as in Onishi and Baillargeon 2005), the agent is still taken to know that the ball is in the box; if in early development it is typically the more generic state of knowing that is encoded from the start, the infant can take this state to guide the agent's later performance without any further generalizing or inferential steps. Knowledge is a relatively enduring underlying state, on this picture, whose attribution is triggered by signs of perceptual access without being hostage to the continued presence of those signs. Attribution of the more generic state of knowledge would also make it easier to integrate the perceptual and inferential or testimonial components of unexpected contents and misinformation tasks. As somewhat more direct evidence for early attribution of knowing-that as opposed to just seeing-that, even at age three, children are somewhat weak at tracking the particular sensory modality responsible for what an agent knows (O'Neill, Astington, & Flavell, 1992; Papafragou et al., 2007). Meanwhile, successful early task performance is not limited to tasks in which the agent has gained knowledge through sight: for example, 15-month-olds react in a way consistent with knowledge attribution to an agent who manipulates the position of a unseen ball by tilting a ramp behind her back (Träuble, Marinović, & Pauen, 2010). Further research on perceptions of knowledge acquisition through a greater variety of modalities would help to clarify whether more specific or more generic factive mental states are first attributed, while also helping to resolve the age at which any type of genuine mental state attribution begins. 4. Perceptual access, minimalism, and the challenge of computing beliefs Even if it is uncontroversial to take perceptual access as the starting point for epistemic or informational mental state attribution, it is controversial whether or when attributions of perceptual access should be understood as attributions of knowledge as opposed to belief, or more radically, some non-propositional relation. On the two-systems model, infants are capable of a minimal form of mindreading, which tracks relationships between agents, objects and locations. Representations of these relationships-'belief-like states'-function as intermediaries between the infant's input of environmental cues concerning an agent and the anticipated behavior that the infant expects on the part of this agent, without representing perceptions or propositional attitudes as such (Apperly & Butterfill, 2009; Butterfill & Apperly, 2013). To each observed 19 agent, on this theory, the infant assigns a field of objects, where the scope of the field is defined by factors such as orientation, lighting and occlusions; an agent is seen as encountering an object if it is within her field, and as registering this object as located at the place last encountered. Infants expect goal-directed action to be governed by registration, where 'registration is like belief in that it has a correctness condition which may not obtain: a registration is correct when the object is in the location [where the agent most recently encountered it]' (2013, 617). It is a delicate question how attributions of these belief-like states fall short of being belief attributions. While one might expect that the correctness condition on registration already qualifies it as a propositional attitude-accepting the mainstream view of propositions as above all, 'the primary bearers of truth and falsity' (King, Soames, & Speaks, 2014, 5)-Ian Apperly and Stephen Butterfill insist that registration is non-propositional in character. In their view, the key mark of the propositional is its capacity to represent a state of affairs under a particular perspectival aspect: to attribute propositional attitudes at all, the mindreader must be able to distinguish between various ways in which a single object might be identified (for example, as the Morning Star or as the Evening Star). If registration just links agents to objects, rather than to possibly mistaken representations of objects, it should not, in their view, count as propositional. They argue that infant mindreading has the signature limits predicted by this view: for example, an incapacity to track false beliefs about the identity of an object which has multiple aspects, such as a robot which is blue on one side and red on the other, potentially mistaken for two different robots by agents who have moments of suitably restricted perceptual access to it (Low & Watts, 2013). Signature limits are also posited for other minimalist theories of infant social sensitivity, such as Josef Perner and Johannes Roessler's view, in which the infant simply keeps an 'experiential record' of the objects and events that have recently engaged the observed agent. When an agent who was distracted or absent returns to a scene, this record is reanimated, producing responses of surprise at any novelty, relative to this record, in the agent's behavior, just as a function of unfamiliarity rather than as a product of any genuine mental state attribution or reasoning about what the agent should rationally do (Perner & Roessler, 2012). The experiential record is supposed to be short-lived, non-propositional in character, and unlikely to integrate with the child's desires to produce deliberate action. Claims about signature limits can be tested, and both of these minimalist programs have felt some heat. As one of its authors acknowledges (Perner, 2014), in response to a line of criticism pressed by Peter Carruthers (2013), the experiential record view is hard-pressed to explain the results of 'helping paradigm' experiments, in which an infant helps an agent unlock one of two boxes, in a way which seems to reflect whether the infant takes the agent to have a true or false belief about the contents of the box (D. Buttelmann, Carpenter, & Tomasello, 2009). These experiments call for deliberate action rather than signs of surprise, where the infant's action seems to be guided by some relatively enduring representation of the agent's epistemic position. Carruthers also argues that the tasks intended to show a failure to represent object identity 20 cannot be taken as direct support for minimalist views of mindreading, because these tasks call not just for mindreading, but also for executive abilities beyond the infant's range, such as the ability to visualize a 180degree rotation of an object like the two-color robot (2013). Meanwhile, in simpler tasks involving objects with ambiguous aspects (such as a sponge which looks like a rock), 18-month-old infants seem to be capable of helping adults selectively in a way consistent with their tracking the agent's grasp of one or another aspect of the object (F. Buttelmann, Suhrke, & Buttelmann, 2015). If experimental results challenging minimalism prove robust, the discovery of behavior consistent with propositional attitude attribution may still not end the debate about whether this behavior is in fact driven by propositional attitude attribution. For many past experiments, minimalists have crafted ingenious low-level explanations of the infants' response patterns (Heyes, 2014; Ruffman, 2014). There is continuing debate about the viability of those particular explanations, given various control condition results, and deeper debate about which style of explanation is more parsimonious, about the extent to which parsimony even matters, and about the relative burdens of proof on minimalist and mentalist explanations (Ruffman, 2014; Scott, 2014). The line between minimalist and mentalist accounts can be hard to draw. Perner makes a useful observation on this frontier in his (2014) response to Ted Ruffman's defense of minimalism. He observes that minimalism faces an ongoing challenge in differentiating itself from mentalism, as minimalists develop more sophisticated stories about how much infants can learn from observing agent perceptual access and behavior patterns. When Ruffman endeavors to explain infants' expectations of how agents will act, given those agents' observed track records of perceptual access, Perner notices that Ruffman slips into talking about infants' expectations of what the agent should do, given the facts she has witnessed, and Perner is concerned that here 'the model defined by the facts of what the agent has witnessed comes dangerously close to being treated as a belief' (2014, 296). Perner does not exempt himself from this worry: looking at his own theory of experiential records (Perner & Roessler, 2012), and Apperly and Butterfill's (2009) theory of registration, he finds a fundamental commonality: 'Both notions are based on distinguishing events that a person has experienced (registered, encountered, witnessed, seen, ...) from those events that the person hasn't witnessed. (...) The facts registered by the agent are supposed to be taken by the infant as the basis for calculating the agent's behavior, which in effect makes the registered facts to function as the content of the agent's belief about the current state of the world' (2014, 296). It is noteworthy that if even minimalist programs end up with something akin to belief contents ('belief-like states'), they derive these contents from some type of factive condition, a condition such as encountering or witnessing, of a type that can only link an agent to a fact or real state of affairs. When the facts originally registered no longer obtain, the agent can still be governed by some conception of those earlier facts (whether these are propositional in character or just encode clusters of agents and objects). Figuring out how this later model or conception will emerge from the 21 earlier facts is a non-trivial task; indeed, whether we ultimately need a richer or leaner understanding of perceptual access (or witnessing, or encountering) to explain performance at any given stage of development will be determined in part by what is needed to develop an account of how contents are updated through the transition between original access and later deployment.7 Propositional structure enables sophisticated forms of updating and integration with background knowledge in inference, and in thinking about questions. Lean accounts will be challenged for a given stage of development if for example, we gain robust evidence that mindreaders at that stage reliably succeed at non-verbal knowledge-where tasks of the container-switch type, where the knowledgeable agent is not seen together with the target objects at the moment of baiting. Such tasks also challenge accounts of perceptual access which see propositional structure as attributed from the start, while taking these attributions to be non-factive in character. Carruthers' singlesystem innatist position is in this category. He takes the following line against minimalism: There seems no reason to think that the early mindreading system is incapable of attributing propositional thoughts to other agents. On the contrary, since infants have propositional thoughts from the outset themselves (as Apperly, 2011, acknowledges), they can take whatever proposition they have used to conceptualize the situation seen by the target agent and embed that proposition into the scope of a 'thinks that' operator. (Carruthers, 2013, 162) 'Thinks that' is a controversial choice for the operator here. If infants get mental state attribution off the ground by embedding their own propositional grasp of a real-world situation seen by the agent under a mental state operator, then it is more natural to characterize this operator as a factive one, like 'knows that'. From the perspective of the theorist, it is not a mistake to describe the knowing agent as also thinking that something is the case-knowing does after all entail believing-but the infant would be throwing away information by encoding the observed agent as having only belief. Seeing infants as starting with belief attribution rather than knowledge attribution also creates a puzzle about how children then regain enough information about which belief states constitute knowledge to support their early facility with talk of knowledge. Meanwhile, knowledge attributions already have special practical value in prelinguistic tasks: if I take an observed competitor to see and therefore know which of two containers holds a reward, I have reason to follow her subsequent choice, a reason I would lack if I merely see her as having some belief on this matter.8 7 For a detailed argument that the contents of registrations end up needing to be managed in a way that calls for propositional structure, see Jacob (forthcoming). 8 Belief-centered accounts are challenged to explain cases where the information possessed by the agent is not directly available to the onlooker. For example, Agnes Kovács, who takes the fundamental representational structure in mindreading to be a 'belief file', suggests that the attributor opens an 'empty belief file', which she describes as a file in which the content remains 'undefined'. However, in explaining the inferences mindreaders can make in these cases, she herself characterizes them as having a capacity "to recognize that some other person knows where the object is while we ourselves do not know where it is" (2016, 518). It does seem more promising to describe these structures as embedding questions, rather than as empty files. 22 The focus of this paper has been on mental state attribution tasks used with pre-linguistic infants and nonhuman primates. Creatures with language no longer have to watch how an agent acts upon objects to attribute beliefs to her: with language, they can attribute beliefs on the basis of what the agent says, including what she says about absent or nonexistent objects, or what clashes with the hearer's grasp of reality: representations 'decoupled' from reality are now immediately available as input to their calculations. The capacity to attribute mental states to other agents on the basis of their assertions does not necessarily wipe out the importance of factive mental state attribution, if, for example, our default in understanding those assertions is to take the speaker as knowing, or if the transmission of knowledge plays a key role in the structure of assertion (Williamson, 2000, ch 11). Assertions would have little value if we generally took them to be radically decoupled from reality. Still, given the common potential for gaps between reality and what agents say, and given the general power of belief-desire explanations in predicting human action, we might expect to see adults generally switching to the weaker concept of belief-a state of mind which may or may not match reality-to account for what agents do, perhaps with some default presupposition that beliefs tend to be true. However, we do not seem to give up on the concept of states of mind whose essence involves capturing the truth: factive mental state attributions continue to play a prominent role in adult mental state attribution. Whether because it is less taxing to map out an agent's state of mind against reality, as opposed to a larger space of propositions, or because there are some types of action that are better explained by appeal to knowledge than by appeal to belief (Nagel, 2013; Williamson, 2000, ch 1), or for some other reason, we retain the idea of a type of mental state which could only attach to the truth, and references to this type of state continue to play a large role in adult explanations of behavior. In mundane social navigation, we typically see each other as acting for reasons that are anchored in facts in the world, rather than as driven by internal states that are potentially decoupled from reality (Perner & Roessler, 2012). 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This is the penultimate draft of a chapter that has been published in The Emergence of Relativism: German Thought from the Enlightenment to National Socialism, edited by M. Kusch, K. Kinzel, J. Steizinger, and N. Wildschut, Routledge (London, New York) 2019, 197-201. Politics1 Dr. Johannes Steizinger Relativism connects philosophy with politics. Take the current situation: On the one hand, political motifs are an important issue in philosophical debates about relativism. Relativism is often rejected because of its alleged political consequences. Anti-relativists consider the relativization of beliefs to a framework of reference as undermining the authority of truth. They claim that the alleged incapability to discriminate between true and false has troubling consequences for our public discourse: relativism is blamed for the emergence of the socalled "post-truth politics." Anti-relativists argue that without an objective criterion to classify beliefs as true or false facts can be replaced by fakes and "truthiness" outdoes accuracy. Under such a "dictatorship of relativism" (Pope Benedict XVI.), there is simply no means to call politicians out on their blatant lies. On the other hand, there is a relativistic tendency in contemporary political theory. Political struggles by, for instance, indigenous people and feminists have prompted debates about cultural diversity. The plurality of ways of life and deep disagreements are a permanent challenge to our current polities. In the fierce debate about managing conflicts within culturally diverse communities and between them relativism is discussed as a plausible option, however mostly critically. Anti-relativists claim that this political context-the contingent connection of relativism with progressive policies such as post colonialism and feminism-grounds the intellectual appeal of relativism in the first place. They argue that the adoption of relativism as a philosophical position is motivated more by political correctness than by theoretical insight. These political aspects of debates on relativism connect the current use of the term with its multi-faceted history, especially in German-speaking philosophy. Issues of cultural diversity 1 This work was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under Grant 339382. 2 were already fiercely debated in the second part of the eighteenth century. The discovery of human communities with quite different habits and customs showed the cultural diversity of humanity. The emphasis on human difference also revealed a downside of the newly established framework of Enlightenment thinking: its universal aspiration suggested ethnocentric treatments of other cultures and justified the atrocities of colonialism. Vicki Spencer puts Johann Gottfried Herder's (1744–1803) contribution to these eighteenthcentury debates in conversation with leading relativists in the social sciences today. She shows that Herder's extensive and concrete studies of different cultures are motivated by an appreciation of cultural diversity. Although Herder emphasizes the particularity of human communities in his historical and cross-cultural research, his hermeneutic method is not relativistic. Herder derives "thin" universal principles from his concept of Humanität (humanity). Since he uses these principles to assess the features of other cultures across the board, he fails to adhere to the weakest form of current relativism in the social sciences. According to Spencer, the weak relativist has to insist on the non-appraisal of other cultures. Herder is, thus, no relativist, but a pluralist. Spencer emphasizes that his attempt of balancing unity with diversity is the enduring legacy of his methodological and political pluralism (see also Spencer 2012). The nineteenth century was characterized by deep and rapid changes in all areas of life. Developments such as the rise of the empirical sciences, a new understanding of history, and the progressing secularisation of society changed the intellectual landscape profoundly. As a result, the traditional place and self-understanding of philosophy as a supreme discipline were challenged. This "identity crisis" of philosophy also fuelled the pejorative use of the term relativism. Philosophers such as Wilhelm Windelband or Wilhelm Dilthey presented relativism as a dangerous consequence of the modern spirit. They conceptualized the intellectual changes of modernity as a loss of certainty that threatens the normative foundations of society. Construed as dissolution of fixed values, the rise of empiricism, historicism, and secularization seemed to bring about anarchy and nihilism. It was, of course, the task of philosophy to meet the relativistic challenge of the modern spirit. Hence, the diagnosis of relativism and the philosophical efforts to overcome it were a strategy to reestablish the intellectual authority of philosophy. 3 As proponents of societal change based on historical insight, Marx (1818–1883) and Engels (1820–1895) were and still are natural objectives of the charge of relativism. Terrell Carver's close reading of the drafts of the posthumously compiled German Ideology teaches us an important lesson about the politics of relativism. Carver reads the theoretical endeavour of Marx and Engels as an innovative attempt to ground their activist interventions into the politics of the time (for his reading of Marx as a political activist see Carver 2018). He shows that they develop a new concept of knowledge that challenges the philosophical assumptions of both rationalism and empiricism. Marx' and Engels' emphasis on knowledgemaking as practical social activity gave rise to a fully socialized and historicized epistemology. This nascent view of knowledge as social practice, practice as politics, and politics as future challenged the philosophical perspective from which the problem of relativism makes sense. According to Carver, relativism only arises from the philosophical prejudice that knowledge must have foundations outside of practical, social activity. From the anti-philosophical outlook of Marx and Engels, relativism is thus no issue at all. In a concrete political context, relativism quickly appears to be nothing but an artificial creation and whipping boy of philosophers. The political debates on relativism nevertheless continued and culminated in the early twentieth century. Although the pejorative use of the term relativism prevailed, notable exemptions emerged on both ends of the political spectrum: Oswald Spengler (1880–1936) derived his political conservativism from a radical cultural relativism that regarded all kinds of truth as mere expressions of a certain time and place. Benito Mussolini (1883–1945) characterized fascism as a relativistic movement because of its anti-scientism and voluntarism. With his belief in the ultimate authority of pure power, the fascist despised all fixed and stable categories (Mussolini 1921). Hans Kelsen (1881–1973), on the other hand, considered the relativistic denial of absolute truth and values as the prerequisite of liberal democracy. He believed that philosophical absolutism goes hand in hand with political absolutism and is thus the philosophical henchman of despots, dictators, and autocrats. Yet not only relativism could be combined with opposite political positions. Johannes Steizinger's critical examination of the context of National Socialism (NS) reveals an antirelativist template that was used by Nazi philosophers, academic philosophers, and Nazi 4 critics alike. Here the charge of relativism was an important polemical motif to discredit the philosophical and/or political enemy. This polemic use rested on a specific understanding of relativism: Relativism was considered as a fundamental problem that has to be overcome. It was thus depicted as a vague threat that endangers not only philosophy proper, but society and life in general. Moreover, it was always the same strands of nineteenth-century philosophy who were found guilty of having caused this problem and the subsequent "crisis" of the modern spirit. Steizinger presents the politics of relativism in the context of NS as typical case of the pejorative use of the term. The analysis of the actual debate on relativism during NS also shows its enduring connection with the issue of cultural diversity. The relativistic tendency of NS arose from a radical critique of universal concepts of humanity. Nazi philosophers insisted on the particular identity of Völker (people) and regarded universal claims as purely ideological mechanisms. They considered the native community as only source of normative authority. Yet, they did not advocate tolerance of other ways of life or keep neutral when being confronted with different worldviews. Nazi ideology was a racist anthropology. Nazi philosophers believed in an objective hierarchy of races and attempted to justify their ranking. The conviction that there is a "master race" (Herrenrasse) and that its superiority can be demonstrated is the non-relativistic core of Nazi ideology. Although Nazi philosophers presented their view as overcoming the opposition between absolutism and relativism, they could never resolve the tensions between its relativistic tendency and its anti-relativistic assumption. Literature Carver, T. (2017), Marx, Cambridge: Polity Press. Mussolini, B. (1921), "Nel solco delle grandi filosofie: relativismo e fascism," Il Popolo d'Italia, November 22. Spencer, V. (2012), Herder's Political Thought: A Study of Language, Culture and Community, Toronto: University of Toronto Press. | {
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ZWISCHEN PARTIKULARISMUS UND GENERALISMUS: ETHISCHE PROBLEME ALS GRAMMATISCHE SPANNUNGEN MATTHIAS KIESSELBACH (AACHEN) Zusammenfassung. In diesem Essay wird argumentiert, dass zwischen dem moralischen Partikularismus und dem moralischen Generalismus in ihren orthodoxen Formulierungen Raum für eine dritte Position besteht. Die in diesem Essay beworbene, an Wittgensteins spätem Verständnis der Grammatik orientierte, Position basiert auf dem Vorschlag, Formulierungen ethischer Prinzipien als grammatische Sätze und ethische Probleme als grammatische Spannungen zu interpretieren. In dieser Sicht erscheinen Situationen, in denen verschiedene ethische Prinzipien unerwartet kon igieren, als Stationen der sprachlichen Evolution. Drei Konsequenzen werden diskutiert und als generelle sprachphilosophische Erkenntnisse begrüÿt. Summary. This essay argues that there is room for a third position between moral particularism and moral generalism in their orthodox forms. The view proposed in this essay is inspired by the later Wittgenstein's conception of grammar and holds that formulations of ethical principles can be interpreted as grammatical statements, while ethical problems can be interpreted as instances of grammatical tension. On this reading, situations in which ethical principles turn out to con ict come out as moments in the evolution of language. Three consequences are discussed, and welcomed as general insights into the workings of language. Ich danke Hans Julius Schneider, Sabina Lovibond, Christoph Menke, Holm Tetens, Christian Voigt, Eva von Redecker, Aurelie Herbelot sowie Thomas Schmidt für interessante Diskussionen und konstruktive Kritik. 1. Einführung: Eine neue Kontroverse in der Moralphilosophie In der Moralphilosophie hat sich in letzter Zeit eine neue Kontroverse aufgetan. Auf der einen Seite be nden sich die Generalisten, für die unsere ethische Kompetenz in der Kenntnis ethischer Prinzipien sowie der generischen Fähigkeit ihrer Befolgung besteht. Ethische Prinzipien sind ihrem Anspruch nach völlig allgemein und doch hinreichend gehaltvoll, um in verschiedenen Situationen jeweils treende Handlungsanweisungen zu implizieren. Auf der anderen Seite hat sich ein Lager gebildet, für das die ethische Kompetenz den Charakter eines Auskennens mit einer Vielzahl von ethischen Erwägungen hat, ohne dabei auf Prinzipien angewiesen zu sein. Für dieses Lager hat sich die Bezeichnung Partikularismus etabliert. 1 Dies ist ein unkorrigiertes Manuskript. Bitte nur die in der Allgemeinen Zeitschrift für Philosophie 35.1 (2010) publizierte Fassung zitieren. 1 ZWISCHEN PARTIKULARISMUS UND GENERALISMUS 2 Auf den ersten Blick halten sich die jeweiligen Stärken und Schwächen der Theorien in etwa die Waage. Für den Generalismus spricht die wichtige Rolle der Konsistenz im ethischen Lernen, Diskutieren und Urteilen. Im Gegensatz zum Partikularismus hat der Generalismus keine Schwierigkeit, hierfür einen Platz in seiner Theorie bereitzustellen. Dafür scheitert der Generalismus regelmäÿig am Versuch, plausible Beispiele der angeblich unsere einzelnen Urteile bestimmenden Prinzipien zu geben. Egal, wie sorgfältig seine Prinzipienvorschläge formuliert sind: Es scheint, dass sich immer Szenarien konstruieren lassen, in denen wir ihre strikte Befolgung als falsch ablehnen würden. Es liegt auf der Hand, dass in diesem Mangel des Generalismus die groÿe Stärke des Partikularismus liegt. Anstatt für eines der streitenden Lager Stellung zu beziehen, möchte ich in diesem Essay versuchen, eine dritte Position zu etablieren, die die Vorzüge beider Lager vereint, ohne in ihre jeweiligen Schwierigkeiten zu geraten. Dies möchte ich tun, indem ich einige in der Debatte bisher nicht beachtete sprachtheoretische Einsichten des späten Ludwig Wittgenstein auf den ethischen Diskurs anwende. Mit ihnen wird sichtbar, dass die ethische Deliberation entgegen der Behauptung des Partikularismus durchaus auf einer Art von Prinzipien fuÿt. Teilnehmer ethischer Sprachspiele formulieren diese Prinzipien als Prämissen in Argumenten für neue ethische Urteile. Entgegen der Meinung der Generalisten müssen diese Prinzipien aber als grammatische Sätze (im Sinne Wittgensteins) aufgefasst werden. Grammatische Sätze erheben nicht den Anspruch, etwas auszusagen, sondern nur, die Bedeutung von Symbolen oder Ausdrücken zu bestimmen. Obwohl grammatische Sätze somit bloÿ Darstellungsnormen explizieren und insofern nicht sinnvoll negiert werden können, ergeben sich in der Entwicklung von Sprachspielen immer wieder Fälle, in denen verschiedene grammatische Sätze einer Sprache miteinander in Konikt geraten. Nichts anderes passiert, wenn ethische Prinzipien mit Gegenbeispielen konfrontiert werden. In diesen Situationen treten Spannungen im grammatischen Gerüst des Sprachspiels auf und erfordern von den Teilnehmern grammatische Anpassungen. Bei diesen Revisionen ihrer Sprachspiele die immer auch Revisionen ihrer Begrie sind können sich die Sprecher auf keine vorbestimmten Regeln, wohl aber auf klar formulierbare Argumente stützen. Das Ziel ist die Erarbeitung jeweils Dies ist ein unkorrigiertes Manuskript. Bitte nur die in der Allgemeinen Zeitschrift für Philosophie 35.1 (2010) publizierte Fassung zitieren. 1 ZWISCHEN PARTIKULARISMUS UND GENERALISMUS 3 neuer Sprachspiele, in denen die vormaligen Gegenbeispiele unter eindeutige Regeln fallen und insofern nicht länger Deliberationsprobleme darstellen. Wenn diese Interpretation der ethischen Deliberation nicht ganz auf dem Holzweg ist, dann liegt der Fehler der Generalisten und der Partikularisten in ihrer monolithischen und statischen Konzeption der Sprache: Ohne sprachliche Spannungen und Evolutionen in Betracht zu ziehen, können sie ethische Prinzipien und ihre Rolle in ethischen Problemen nicht adäquat verstehen. Dieser Essay geht in drei Schritten vor. Der 2. Abschnitt wird den partikularistischen Angri auf den Generalismus sowie die Vorbehalte der Generalisten vorstellen. Der 3. Abschnitt wird die konkrete Frage herausarbeiten, ob sich beide Lager auf eine Interpretation ethischer Prinzipien als grammatischer Sätze und ethischer Probleme als grammatischer Spannungen einigen könnten. Schlieÿlich wird der 4. Abschnitt eine positive Antwort geben und zeigen, dass das entstehende dynamische Bild der ethischen Sprache die Stärken der beiden Theorien vereint, dabei aber ihre Probleme vermeidet. 2. Partikularistische Zweifel an ethischen Prinzipien 2.1. Zweifel an der Rolle ethischer Prinzipien in der Deliberation. Bis vor kurzem war die Idee, dass ethische Einzelurteile und Handlungen ihrem Anspruch nach Implikate ethischer Prinzipien sind, eine zumeist implizite und selten bezweifelte Annahme hinter einem beträchtlichen Teil der Moralphilosophie. Erst vor einigen Jahren wurde von Partikularisten die Frage aufgeworfen, ob diese Annahme nicht auf einer Illusion beruht. Ausschlaggebend für ihre Vermutung war und ist die Beobachtung, dass sich zu jedem (bisher) vorgeschlagenen ethischen Prinzip Szenarien nden lassen, in denen eine strikte Anwendung des Prinzips zu konterintuitiven Resultaten führen würde. Schauen wir uns einen konkreten Fall an, bei dem der partikularistische Verdacht besonders plausibel erscheint.1 Viele Praktiken gelten uns als gut und unterstützenswert, weil sie ihren Teilnehmern Spaÿ machen. Kindergeburtstage, Parties, Kinobesuche all diese Dinge können sich aufgrund dieses Aspektes unseres generellen Wohlwollens gewiss sein. 1Das folgende Beispiel ist zum Standard-Beispiel der Partikularismus-Literatur avanciert. Es ndet sich unter anderem in Frank Jackson / Philip Pettit / Michael Smith, Ethical Particularism and Patterns, in: B. Hooker / M. Little (Hg.), Moral Particularism, Oxford 2003, 7999. Dies ist ein unkorrigiertes Manuskript. Bitte nur die in der Allgemeinen Zeitschrift für Philosophie 35.1 (2010) publizierte Fassung zitieren. 1 ZWISCHEN PARTIKULARISMUS UND GENERALISMUS 4 Nicht nur nehmen wir an ihnen teil, auch unterstützen wir sie und sehen davon ab, ihnen mit unnötigen Hindernissen den Weg zu versperren. Freilich können wir uns Situationen vorstellen, in denen sich andere Erwägungen als gewichtiger erweisen als das Spaÿ-Machen. Intuitiv nehmen wir aber an, dass der Aspekt des Spaÿ-Machens generell als positive, unterstützende Erwägung in die Gesamtrechnung der Gründe eingeht. Findet sich gegen diese bescheidene generalistische Annahme ein Gegenbeispiel? Der Partikularist antwortet mit ja und präsentiert als Beweis ein Szenario, in dem gefoltert wird, und in dem das Foltern dem Folterknecht Spaÿ macht. In diesem Szenario, so wollen wir nun sagen, ist die Tatsache, dass der Folterknecht Spaÿ hat, nicht etwa ein durch andere Erwägungen ausgestochener positiver Grund für das Foltern oder seine Unterstützung, sondern ein weiterer und starker Grund dagegen. Der empfundene Spaÿ macht die Handlung nicht weniger verabscheuungswürdig, sondern noch verabscheuungswürdiger. An diesem Beispiel zeigt sich sehr deutlich, dass der Partikularismus nicht bloÿ darauf hinweist, dass vorgeschlagene Prinzipien ausgestochen werden können. Dies ist eine bekannte Schwachstelle der gängigsten Form des Generalismus. Um die offensichtlichsten Angrie auf seine Prinzipienvorschläge auszuschlieÿen, nehmen viele Generalisten für letztere keinen ausschlaggebenden (all out), sondern bloÿ beitragenden (pro tanto) Charakter in Anspruch. So verstandene Prinzipien sind zwar schwieriger zu falsi zieren, haben jedoch ein nicht unbeträchtliches Manko: Da beitragende Prinzipien immer durch andere Prinzipien ausgestochen werden können, ohne dass die relativen Gewichte von Prinzipien aus ihnen selber ersichtlich wären, ist die Frage ihrer Nützlichkeit notorisch umkämpft. Partikularisten gehen allerdings einen Schritt weiter und bezweifeln, dass ethische Erwägungen selbst diejenigen beitragender Art in verschiedenen Szenarien überhaupt mit dem gleichen Vorzeichen in die Gesamtrechnung der Gründe eingehen müssen (um mein obiges Bild noch einmal aufzugreifen). Jede ethische Erwägung, die sich in einem Kontext als Grund für X auswirkt, so ihr Verdacht, kann sich in einem anderen Kontext als irrelevant in Bezug auf X oder sogar als Grund gegen X auswirken. 2.2. Partikularistische Strategien und generalistische Vorbehalte. Die Idee dabei ist, dass ethische Erwägungen nicht jeweils separat als Gründe fungieren, Dies ist ein unkorrigiertes Manuskript. Bitte nur die in der Allgemeinen Zeitschrift für Philosophie 35.1 (2010) publizierte Fassung zitieren. 1 ZWISCHEN PARTIKULARISMUS UND GENERALISMUS 5 sondern dem Tribunal der praktischen Deliberation nur gemeinsam antworten. Jonathan Dancy, der diese These in zahlreichen Artikeln und Büchern als Holismus der praktischen Gründe bezeichnet hat,2 schlägt in diesem Zusammenhang vor, ethische Erwägungen nicht nur als favourers bzw. disfavourers, sondern zumindest einige von ihnen als enablers bzw. disablers zu verstehen. Die Rolle einer Erwägung letzterer Kategorie besteht darin zu bestimmen, ob eine weitere Erwägung als Grund oder als Gegengrund rmiert oder gar keine Relevanz hat. Dancys Version der partikularistischen Vermutung lautet nun, dass sich zu jeder Erwägung (egal welcher Kategorie) ein Szenario nden lässt, in dem ein disabler die Relevanz der Erwägung aufhebt oder umkehrt. Freilich bleibt dem generalistischen Gegner immer die Möglichkeit, einen vorgebrachten disabler in seinen Prinzipienvorschlag mit aufzunehmen. So kann der Generalist auf das obige Gegenbeispiel mit dem Prinzipienvorschlag kontern, dass alles, was Spaÿ macht, ohne Leid zu verursachen, unterstützenswert sei. Allerdings ist ein einigermaÿen überzeugter Partikularist zuversichtlich, auch zur Erwägung des leidfreien Spaÿmachens einen plausiblen disabler zu nden. Hier zeigt sich, dass die Vermutung des Partikularisten sich nicht im Holismus der Gründe erschöpft. Ein Generalist, der sich auf die Suche nach immer feineren Prinzipien einlässt, könnte schlieÿlich auch mit Recht als Holist bezeichnet werden.3 Um die partikularistische Vermutung sicher gegen die generalistische Position abzugrenzen, sollten wir sie daher als Vermutung eines unkodi zierbaren Holismus bezeichnen. Die bekannteste Strategie des Partikularismus besteht darin, den theoretischen Gegner immer wieder aufs Neue herauszufordern, um ihn dann jedes Mal mit einem sorgfältig konstruierten Gegenbeispiel, in dem ein unvorhergesehener disabler auftaucht, zu widerlegen. Gegen die manchmal geäuÿerte Sorge, dass diese Strategie höchstens zu einem dialektischen Patt führen kann, da kein Ende des intellektuellen Tauziehens abzusehen ist4, muss auf den Anspruch des Generalisten hingewiesen 2Siehe Jonathan Dancy, Moral Reasons, Oxford 1993, 60, 66; ders., The Particularist's Progress, in: Hooker / Little (Hg.), Moral Particularism, 2003, 130157, insb. 134; ders., Ethics without Principles, Oxford 2004, 75. 3Siehe Sean McKeever / Michael Ridge, What does Holism have to do with Moral Particularism?, in: Ratio 18(2005), 93103. 4So Margaret Little: [T]here's something not a little farcical about measuring dialectical success in terms of who can outlast whom those who want to re ne the principles or those who want to nd exceptions, Margaret Little, Moral Generalities Revisited, in Hooker / Little (Hg.), Moral Particularism, 2003, 279. Dies ist ein unkorrigiertes Manuskript. Bitte nur die in der Allgemeinen Zeitschrift für Philosophie 35.1 (2010) publizierte Fassung zitieren. 1 ZWISCHEN PARTIKULARISMUS UND GENERALISMUS 6 werden, Prinzipien vorzubringen, die in unserer ethischen Deliberation bereits operativ sind. Da der Partikularist ohne derartige konkrete Behauptungen arbeitet, trägt der Generalist eine besondere dialektische Last. Wird jedes generalistische Beispiel eines angeblich implizit von uns befolgten Prinzips aufs Neue widerlegt, so behält der Partikularist in der Debatte die Überhand. In letzter Zeit konzentriert sich die Debatte angestoÿen durch Dancy5 allerdings auf zwei andere Schauplätze. Zum einen weist Dancy auf die enge Analogie zwischen moralischen Gründen einerseits und nicht-moralischen praktischen Gründen sowie theoretischen Gründen andererseits hin. Dabei suggeriert er immer wieder, dass ein unkodi zierbarer Holismus bei letzteren evidenter oder unkontroverser sei. Zum andern steht für Dancy seit einiger Zeit die Attacke auf ein zentrales generalistisches Manöver im Vordergrund, nämlich das bereits erwähnte Ausweichen auf beitragende Prinzipien. Doch welche Strategie der Partikularismus auch immer gegen den Generalismus in Anschlag bringt; aus der Sicht des Generalismus bleibt der Weg zum Partikularismus durch eine unüberwindliche Barriere versperrt. Da der Partikularismus die Kenntnis ethischer Prinzipien nicht nur für nicht hinreichend, sondern darüber hinaus für nicht notwendig für das Vorliegen von ethischer Kompetenz erklärt,6 wird es so die zentrale Sorge des Generalismus unklar, wie unser Anspruch auf Konsistenz im ethischen Lernen, Diskutieren und Urteilen eingelöst werden kann. Freilich könnte dieser Anspruch einfach geleugnet oder abgelehnt werden. Aus guten Gründen zögert der Partikularismus aber, einen derartig revisionistischen Kurs einzuschlagen. Vielleicht ist der Partikularist versucht zu behaupten, dass es konsistente Urteile auch ohne Prinzipien geben kann. Mit dieser These würde er sich aber eine schwer zu tragende Beweislast einhandeln, da es zum Konsistenzbegri gehört, dass die Konsistenz von Urteilen argumentativ nachgewiesen werden kann. Da Argumente nichts anderes sind als strukturierte Mengen allgemeiner Sätze, kommen Prinzipien so scheint es durch die Hintertür immer wieder herein. 5Siehe zu den folgenden zwei Punkten Dancy, Ethics without Principles, 2004, Teil I, sowie ders., Moral Particularism, in: The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, URL: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/moral-particularism (zugegrien am 1.9.2008), 2005. 6Dancys o zielle Formulierung des Partikularismus lautet: The possibility of moral thought and judgement does not depend on the provision of a suitable supply of moral principles., Dancy, Ethics without Principles, 2004, 7. Dies ist ein unkorrigiertes Manuskript. Bitte nur die in der Allgemeinen Zeitschrift für Philosophie 35.1 (2010) publizierte Fassung zitieren. 1 ZWISCHEN PARTIKULARISMUS UND GENERALISMUS 7 2.3. Eine logische Nische zwischen Generalismus und Partikularismus. Die Frage, die sich an dieser Stelle ergibt, ist folgende: Kann es sein, dass zur Fähigkeit, korrekte ethische Urteile zu fällen, die Kenntnis ethischer Prinzipien zwar nicht ausreicht (wie der Partikularist mit seinen Gegenbeispielen aufzeigt), aber dennoch in irgendeiner Weise notwendig ist (wie der Generalist mit Hinweis auf die Konsistenzforderung behauptet)? In meinem Versuch zu zeigen, dass diese Möglichkeit tatsächlich oen steht, werde ich zunächst mit dem späten Wittgenstein die implizite Entscheidung revidieren, die Sprache und damit auch die Gesamtheit ethischer Begrie als eine spannungslose und feststehende Struktur zu verstehen. In unserer komplexen Sprachpraxis gibt es eine Klasse von Sätzen, die die Regeln des Sprachspiels explizieren, dabei aber keinesfalls ewig oder unveränderlich sind. Vielmehr geraten diese Sätze Wittgenstein nennt sie grammatische Sätze immer wieder in Kon ikte miteinander und fordern die Sprecher so zu Weiterentwicklungen des Sprachspiels auf, die selber nicht durch Regeln bestimmt sind. Wenn wir ethische Prinzipien als solche Sätze interpretieren, dann können wir dem Partikularisten zugestehen, dass die ethische Deliberation sich nicht auf die Anwendung von Prinzipien reduzieren lässt, während wir dem Generalisten zugestehen, dass konsistente Urteile ohne prinzipielle Beziehungen undenkbar sind. Im Folgenden werde ich zunächst das Wittgensteinische Verständnis grammatischer Sätze und ihrer Revisionen erläutern und dann argumentieren, dass einer Interpretation ethischer Prinzipien als grammatischer Sätze nichts im Weg steht. 3. Grammatische Sätze und grammatische Evolution 3.1. Erste Schritte. Wittgensteins reifes Verständnis grammatischer Sätze entwickelt sich aus seiner Konzeption der Logik heraus, welche hier kurz skizziert werden soll. Als Wittgenstein in die Philosophie eintritt, ist eines der ungelösten Probleme die Frage nach dem Status der Sätze der Logik. Zwar besteht weitgehende Einigkeit über den kalkülhaften Umgang mit Schlussregeln wie P ; P ⊃ Q; also Q (Modus Ponens) oder P ⊃ Q; ¬Q; also ¬P (Modus Tollens) bzw. als Sätze formuliert: ((P ⊃ Q) ∧ P ) ⊃ Q und ((P ⊃ Q) ∧ ¬Q) ⊃ ¬P . Unklarheit herrscht aber in der Frage, um was für Sätze es sich hier handelt. Sind es empirische Sätze über die Dies ist ein unkorrigiertes Manuskript. Bitte nur die in der Allgemeinen Zeitschrift für Philosophie 35.1 (2010) publizierte Fassung zitieren. 1 ZWISCHEN PARTIKULARISMUS UND GENERALISMUS 8 linguistischen Gewohnheiten des homo sapiens? Sind es Darstellungen wissenschaftlicher Konventionen? Sind es Beschreibungen einer platonischen Sphäre logischer Entitäten? Wittgenstein hält von alledem nichts. Nach seiner Meinung sind logische Sätze nichts anderes als Tautologien (TLP7 6.1, 6.11, s.a. 5.142). Allerdings sind es nützliche Tautologien, denn sie zeigen auf, wie die auch in inhaltsreichen Sätzen vorkommenden logischen Konstanten etwa ⊃ oder ¬ verwendet werden (TLP 6.1201, 6.121, s.a. 6.113). Somit spielen logische Sätze für Wittgenstein die gleiche funktionale Rolle wie Wahrheitstabellen: Beide dienen dazu, die Verwendungsweisen und damit die Bedeutungen logischer Zeichen zu explizieren; nicht mehr, aber auch nicht weniger. Ein Aspekt dieser Sichtweise, der uns durch den gesamten Essay begleiten wird, besteht darin, dass mit ihr die Idee inkohärent wird, dass man die logischen Sätze verletzen könnte, ohne dabei die Grenze zum schieren Unsinn zu überschreiten. Sobald zum Beispiel jemand aus P ⊃ Q und ¬Q den Schluss zieht, dass P , und wir davon auszugehen wünschen, dass die Sprecherin nicht einfach Unsinn redet bleibt uns nichts anderes übrig als zu konstatieren, dass sie mindestens einem der verwendeten Zeichen eine neue Bedeutung gegeben hat. Hätte sie ⊃ und ¬ so gemeint, wie wir diese Zeichen meinen, so hätte sie ¬P gefolgert nichts anderes zeigt die Tautologie, dass ((P ⊃ Q) ∧ ¬Q) ⊃ ¬P . Hat die Sprecherin aber ihren Zeichen eine neue Bedeutung gegeben, so können wir von keinem Kon ikt zwischen ihrer Äuÿerung und den logischen Sätzen sprechen. Was sie nun sagt, das können wir erst nach einer Übersetzung ihrer Äuÿerung angeben. Dies allerdings bedeutet nichts anderes, als systematisch ihre Symbole durch unsere Symbole zu ersetzen und die Äuÿerung der Sprecherin damit als konsistent mit den bekannten logischen Sätzen zu verstehen.8 In diesem Zusammenhang spricht Wittgenstein auch davon, dass logische Sätze interne Beziehungen explizieren (TLP 4.125., 5.131, 5.2., vgl. 4.014, 4.122., 2.01231) bzw. transcendental (TLP 6.13) sind: 7Ich benutze für die Schriften Wittgensteins folgende Abkürzungen: TLP: Tractatus LogicoPhilosophicus; PU: Philosophische Untersuchungen; BF: Bemerkungen über die Farben; ÜG: Über Gewissheit; BGM: Bemerkungen über die Grundlagen der Mathematik. Sie alle nden sich in Ludwig Wittgenstein, Werkausgabe, hg. von B. McGuinness, Frankfurt a.M. 1984. 8Es könnte sich als korrekt erweisen, das Zeichen ⊃ der Sprecherin als unser ∨ zu übersetzen. Dies ist ein unkorrigiertes Manuskript. Bitte nur die in der Allgemeinen Zeitschrift für Philosophie 35.1 (2010) publizierte Fassung zitieren. 1 ZWISCHEN PARTIKULARISMUS UND GENERALISMUS 9 Wir können sie nicht brechen, weil sich in ihnen die Bedingungen des sinnvollen Sprechens verbergen. 3.2. Von der Logik zur Grammatik. Es ist wichtig zu verstehen, dass dieser Aspekt der Sprachphilosophie Wittgensteins die spätere Distanzierung vom Tractatus unbeschadet übersteht. Auch in seiner späteren Phase betont Wittgenstein immer wieder die transzendentale Natur bestimmter Sätze sowie die gefährliche Verlockung, jene Sätze als informativ bzw. empirisch zu interpretieren. In diesem und in den folgenden zwei Unterabschnitten soll aber gezeigt werden, dass der späte Wittgenstein wesentliche Neuerungen im Verständnis dieser Sätze einführt, die er nun auch als grammatische Sätze bezeichnet. Im seinem späteren Werk versteht Wittgenstein die natürliche Sprache als ein komplexes Spiel, dessen Spielzüge die sprachlichen Äuÿerungen konstitutiv mit praktischen Verrichtungen verknüpft sind. Einen ersten Einblick in dieses Sprachverständnis gibt Wittgenstein in seinen berühmten Bauarbeitersprachspiel-Passagen (PU 2, 6-8, 18-21 u.a.). Hier stellt er eine Sprachgemeinschaft vor, deren Äuÿerungen Platte!, Würfel!, Säule! usw. verwendet werden, um bestimmte Verrichtungen im Umfeld eines Hausbaus zu koordinieren. Wittgensteins Ziel ist hier der Aufweis, dass die Bedeutung eines Ausdrucks auf der fundamentalen Ebene nicht von der Abbildung von Sachverhalten oder dem Bezug auf Gegenstände abhängt (oder darin besteht). Abbildung und Bezug, so Wittgenstein, sind selber erst im Rahmen verhältnismäÿig komplexer Praktiken zu verstehen. Fundamentaler als sie sind die niedrigstu gen, in die Sprache eingewobenen, praktischen Fähigkeiten, die im Bauarbeitersprachspiel exemplarisch ausgestellt sind. Dies gilt auch für jene Bereiche unserer (wesentlich komplexeren) Sprache, in denen wir in Propositionen sprechen. Propositionen sind besondere Spielzüge, deren Verwendung einerseits durch nicht-inferenzielle Regeln (durch die diese Spielzüge mit der nicht-sprachlichen Umwelt verknüpft sind) und andererseits durch inferenzielle Regeln (durch die diese Spielzüge mit anderen Propositionen in materialen Schlussbeziehungen9 verbunden sind) bestimmt ist. Nach Wilfrid Sellars, auf dessen 9Material bedeutet, dass es sich nicht bloÿ um formallogische Schlussbeziehungen handelt. Zu den materialen Schlüssen unserer Sprache gehören der Schluss von Pittsburgh ist westlich von Philadelphia zu Philadelphia ist östlich von Pittsburgh sowie der Schluss von Dies ist ein Hund zu Dies ist ein Säugetier. Dies ist ein unkorrigiertes Manuskript. Bitte nur die in der Allgemeinen Zeitschrift für Philosophie 35.1 (2010) publizierte Fassung zitieren. 1 ZWISCHEN PARTIKULARISMUS UND GENERALISMUS 10 Überlegungen ich mich hier stütze, da Wittgenstein selbst auf eine systematische Analyse der propositionalen Rede verzichtet,10 dienen Propositionen in erster Linie dazu, Überzeugungen auszudrücken. Eine Überzeugung wird dabei als ein normativer Status verstanden also als ein Aspekt des Spielstandes, der immer zusammen mit seinen praktischen Konsequenzen gesehen werden muss. Zu letzteren gehört, dass eine Sprecherin, die mittels einer Proposition eine Überzeugung ausgedrückt hat, auch denjenigen Propositionen zustimmen muss (evtl. auf Nachfrage), die aus ihrer Proposition gemäÿ der inferenziellen Regeln folgen. Zu ihnen gehört aber oft auch die nicht-inferenzielle Bereitschaft zu bestimmten Handlungen. Eine Implikation dieses Verständnisses von Propositionen besteht nun darin, dass die gegenseitige Zuschreibung von Überzeugungen nur dann reibungslos funktionieren kann, wenn alle Teilnehmer des Sprachspiels in möglichst all ihren nichtinferenziellen und inferenziellen Dispositionen konvergieren. Jede Proposition, über deren Angemessenheit verschiedene Sprecher sich streiten, wirft daher die Frage auf, ob die kon igierenden Sprecher überhaupt dasselbe Spiel spielen. Zur Verständigung durch die Sprache, schreibt Wittgenstein in seinen Untersuchungen, gehört nicht nur eine Übereinstimmung in den De nitionen, sondern (so seltsam dies klingen mag) eine Übereinstimmung in den Urteilen. (PU 242) Um dem Missverständnis vorzubeugen, dass diese These nur sehr abstrakte Sätze betrit, ist zu betonen, dass sie sich durchaus auch auf Urteile wie diese Blume ist rot bezieht.11 In einer Situation, in der zwei Sprecher eine Blume sehen und keinen besonderen Anlass haben, dem jeweils anderen Sprecher Farbenblindheit oder Verrücktheit zu unterstellen, kann ein zur Schau gestellter Zweifel an diesem Urteil genau das gleiche bewirken wie im Fall abstrakterer Sätze: Für den Zuhörer ergibt sich ein logischer Drang, den geäuÿerten Satz auf eine neue Weise zu interpretieren sprich: ihn zu übersetzen, und zwar in die Sprache, die von den gewohnten inferenziellen und nicht-inferenziellen Festlegungen bestimmt ist. 10Der Grund ist natürlich die therapeutische Ausrichtung von Wittgensteins Werk. Siehe daher Wilfrid Sellars, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, Cambridge Mass. 1997; ders., Inference and Meaning sowie Some Re ections on Language Games, in: R. Brandom / R. Rorty (Hg.), In the Space of Reasons, Cambridge Mass. 2007; auÿerdem (für eine einführende Diskussion) Robert Brandom, Making It Explicit, Cambridge Mass. 1994. 11Siehe z.B. ÜG 7981, PU 381. Dies ist ein unkorrigiertes Manuskript. Bitte nur die in der Allgemeinen Zeitschrift für Philosophie 35.1 (2010) publizierte Fassung zitieren. 1 ZWISCHEN PARTIKULARISMUS UND GENERALISMUS 11 Die oensichtliche Analogie mit den logischen Sätzen des Tractatus führt nun zu einer anderen, positiven, Seite dieser Idee: Mit einem Satz lassen sich nicht nur Überzeugungen ausdrücken sondern auch Bedeutungen klären, d.h. Missverständnisse beseitigen sowie Fremdsprachlern die relevanten Teile unserer Sprache beibringen. Der Satz diese Blume ist rot kann beispielsweise von Sprechern verwendet werden, um sich auf eine einheitliche Grenze zwischen den Begrien orange und rot zu einigen. Hier liegt nun der erste wichtige Fortschritt von Wittgensteins Spätwerk gegenüber dem Tractatus: Prinzipiell kann jeder Satz als grammatischer Satz verwendet werden. Wittgenstein bestätigt: Sätze werden oft an der Grenze von Logik und Empirie gebraucht, so daÿ ihr Sinn über die Grenze hin und her wechselt und sie bald als Ausdruck einer Norm, bald als Ausdruck einer Erfahrung gelten. (Denn es ist ja [. . . ] die Verwendung, die den logischen vom Erfahrungssatz unterscheidet.) (BF I:32, s.a. ÜG 309)12 Wichtig ist aber dies: Ist die Äuÿerung eines Satzes erst einmal als grammatische Äuÿerung interpretiert, so kann die Bezwei ung oder Verneinung des Satzes nicht länger als Ausdruck einer Meinungsverschiedenheit verstanden werden, sondern nur noch als ein Missverständnis oder freilich als ein Vorschlag, das aktuelle Sprachspiel zu beenden und ein neues zu beginnen. 3.3. Informative Sätze und grammatische Sätze. Kommen wir nun zur zweiten Neuerung in Wittgensteins späterem Nachdenken über die Grammatik. Aus dem bisher Gesagten wird deutlich, dass der grammatische Status eines Satzes wesentlich davon abhängt, auf welche inferenziellen und nicht-inferenziellen Reaktionen das Publikum zum Zeitpunkt der Äuÿerung des Satzes festgelegt ist. Hierin liegt der Keim einer Evolutionstheorie der propositionalen Sprache. Der Kerngedanke lautet, dass ein informativer Satz, sobald er als wahr anerkannt ist, in das Repertoire inferenzieller und nicht-inferenzieller Beziehungen eingeht, 12Es mag eine hilfreiche Nebenbemerkung sein, dass wir eine Reihe von Sätzen kennen, die (unter halbwegs normalen Bedingungen) ausschlieÿlich grammatisch verwendet werden können, z.B. Junggesellen sind unverheiratet oder ((P ⊃ Q) ∧ P ) ⊃ Q. Es gibt aber keine Sätze, die ausschlieÿlich empirisch verwendet werden können: Ist ein Satz einmal (allseits) akzeptiert, so taugt er nur noch als grammatische Bemerkung. Dies wird im folgenden Unterabschnitt ausgeführt. Dies ist ein unkorrigiertes Manuskript. Bitte nur die in der Allgemeinen Zeitschrift für Philosophie 35.1 (2010) publizierte Fassung zitieren. 1 ZWISCHEN PARTIKULARISMUS UND GENERALISMUS 12 mittels dessen Sprecher weitere Sätze interpretieren. Seine wiederholte Formulierung (innerhalb einer Konversation) wird daher als grammatische Äuÿerung gelten, seine Leugnung als Irrtum (oder als Vorschlag, das aktuelle Sprachspiel durch ein neues zu ersetzen). In Wittgensteins Worten: Ein allseits akzeptierter Satz scheidet aus dem Verkehr [des Transfers von Überzeugungen] aus (ÜG 210) und gibt unsern Betrachtungen, unsern Forschungen ihre Form (ÜG 211, s.a. 96.). Ein Beispiel ist der Satz AIDS ist eine Folge des HI-Virus. Noch vor kurzer Zeit war dieser Satz informativ. Heute aber wird er (unter informierten Sprechern, in nichtphilosophischen Kontexten) höchstens noch ausgesprochen, um zu klären, was mit AIDS (bzw. HIV) gemeint ist er wird nur noch grammatisch verwendet. Bevor dieser Gedanke akzeptiert werden kann, ist allerdings die Frage zu klären, wie es in einer Spiel -Konzeption der Sprache überhaupt möglich ist, dass ein neuer Satz also ein Satz, der (noch) nicht durch Spielregeln mit praktischer Signi kanz ausgestattet ist verstanden werden kann, bzw. worin sein Verstehen bestehen soll. Da Wittgenstein auf diese Frage wiederum keine systematische sprachtheoretische Antwort entwickelt, werde ich in diesem Unterabschnitt erneut auf die theoretische Tradition von Sellars zurückgreifen. Aus der Perspektive dieser Tradition liegt der Schlüssel in der Kompositionalität unserer (entwickelten) Sprache.13 Eine Sprache ist kompositional, wenn ihre kleinsten linguistischen Einheiten, die als freistehende Spielzüge fungieren können, selber in semantisch relevante Teile zerfällt werden können. Propositionen, die bei Wittgenstein (implizit) und bei Sellars (explizit) die zentralen freistehenden Spielzüge darstellen, zeigen diese Eigenschaft auf klare Weise, denn sie bestehen aus Wörtern, welche ihrerseits nur als Komposita von Sätzen eine sinnvolle Verwendung nden. Nach Sellars geht das Verständnis von Wörtern dem Verständnis von Sätzen allerdings nicht voraus. Vielmehr ist unser Verständnis von Wörtern abhängig von unserer Fähigkeit des inferenziellen und nicht-inferenziellen Umgangs mit den (kompletten) Sätzen, in denen sie vorkommen. Diese Idee erklärt nun das Verständnis neuer Sätze: Sätze, die aus dem 13Was hier skizzenhaft bleibt, wird genau erklärt in Brandom, Making It Explicit, 1994, Kap. 7. Ein anderes Verständnis von Kompositionalität (welches aber m.E. kompatibel ist mit dem Kompositionalitätsverständnis der Sellars'schen Tradition) ndet sich in Hans J. Schneider, Universale Sprachnormen? Zu Robert Brandoms `expressiver Deduktion' der Gegenstand-Begri-Struktur, in: L. Wingert (Hg.), Die Öentlichkeit der Vernunft und die Vernunft der Öentlichkeit, Frankfurt a.M. 2001. Dies ist ein unkorrigiertes Manuskript. Bitte nur die in der Allgemeinen Zeitschrift für Philosophie 35.1 (2010) publizierte Fassung zitieren. 1 ZWISCHEN PARTIKULARISMUS UND GENERALISMUS 13 bisherigen inferenziellen Netzwerk der Sprache (noch) nicht erschlieÿbar sind, können von den in ihnen vorkommenden Wörtern inferenzielle und nicht-inferenzielle Beziehungen erben und aus diesem Grund trotz ihrer Neuheit sofort einen Platz im Sprachspiel nden. Werden diese Sätze akzeptiert, so werden die entsprechenden Beziehungen dauerhaft in das Regelwerk der Sprache integriert und taugen, in der Form grammatischer Äuÿerungen, zur Klärung von Missverständnissen.14 3.4. Die Idee grammatischer Kollisionen. Die skizzierte Evolution des Sprachspiels verläuft allerdings nicht immer geradlinig. In der Hervorhebung dieser Tatsache liegt der dritte und für die weitere Diskussion wichtigste Zug von Wittgensteins spätem Grammatikverständnis. In seiner spätesten Phase stellt Wittgenstein fest, dass grammatische Festlegungen miteinander kollidieren können. Nehmen wir als Beispiel den von Wittgenstein eher beiläu g erwähnten Fall der Entdeckung infraroter Strahlung. In einer Passage, die zunächst die Transzendentalität unseres Farbvokabulares betont, dann aber über Situationen spekuliert, in denen wir unsere Farbbegrie auf ganz neue und vormals für logisch unzulässig gehaltene Weisen verwenden würden, heiÿt es: Es ist hier ähnlich, wie wenn man von infrarotem `Licht' spricht; es ist guter Grund dafür, es zu tun, aber man kann dies auch für einen Missbrauch erklären. Und ähnlich geht es mit meinem Begrie: `im Körper des andern Schmerzen haben'. (BF III:127) Wittgenstein möchte hier zeigen, dass wir an den Grenzen unserer etablierten Sprache mitunter logische Gründe sowohl für bestimmte Urteile als auch für ihre Negationen haben, und dass wir in diesen Situationen um grammatische Entscheidungen nicht umhin kommen. Machen wir uns unsere Optionen im Infrarot-Fall klar. Wir könnten uns entscheiden, infrarote Strahlung nicht als Licht zu bezeichnen. Dabei würden wir uns wohl auf den grammatischen Satz stützen, dass Licht Dinge für das bloÿe Auge sichtbar macht. Aber wir würden mit der Entscheidung auch Sätzen 14Siehe ÜG 65, 96., 210f. und 256. Brandom betont zu Recht, dass sich bei der Integration neuer Sätze in das Sprachspiel die in ihnen vorkommenden Wörter semantisch verändern, weswegen die Sprachfähigkeit immer auch Projektionsleistungen erfordert. Siehe Robert Brandom, Pragmatistische Themen in Hegels Idealismus, in: Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 44 (1999), 355381. Die ausführlichste Behandlung des Projizierens als Teil der Sprachfähigkeit bietet Hans J. Schneider, Phantasie und Kalkül, Frankfurt a.M. 1992. Dies ist ein unkorrigiertes Manuskript. Bitte nur die in der Allgemeinen Zeitschrift für Philosophie 35.1 (2010) publizierte Fassung zitieren. 1 ZWISCHEN PARTIKULARISMUS UND GENERALISMUS 14 widersprechen, die vormals ausschlieÿlich grammatisch verwendet wurden und insofern als transzendental galten zum Beispiel dem Satz, dass die Strahlung, welche uns unter Zuhilfenahme unserer Augen die Navigation ermöglicht, Licht ist. (Mit Nachtsichtgeräten trit dieser Satz auf Infrarot zu!) Unsere andere Option ist, die infrarote Strahlung als Licht anzuerkennen. Bei dieser Entscheidung stützen wir uns auf letzteren transzendentalen Satz und revidieren ersteren. In beiden Fällen setzen wir uns also über Sätze hinweg, die vor der Er ndung bzw. Entdeckung infraroter Strahlung als unfalsi zierbar galten. Zusätzlich widmen wir in beiden Fällen informative Sätze in neue rein grammatisch verwendbare und insofern unfalsi zierbare Sätze um. Im ersten Fall wäre eines der vielen Beispiele der Satz, dass InfrarotStrahlung kein Licht ist; im zweiten Fall wäre ein Beispiel der Satz, dass es Licht gibt, welches mit dem bloÿen Auge nicht wahrgenommen werden kann. Der Infrarot-Fall ist sprachphilosophisch instruktiv, da er die charakteristischen Spannungen unserer Sprachspiele im Angesicht neuer praktischer Anforderungen, sowie die von ihnen herausgeforderten Umwidmungen von Sätzen, aufzeigt. In diesem Zusammenhang sind zwei Lehren besonders zu unterstreichen. Erstens zeigt sich deutlich, dass wir in Situationen grammatischer Spannung die Bedeutungen der zentralen Begrie ändern im vorliegenden Beispiel vor allem des Begries Licht. Streng genommen müssten wir daher alle entsprechenden Sätze, die vor dem linguistischen Evolutionsschritt geäuÿert oder aufgeschrieben wurden, einer Prüfung und gegebenenfalls einer Übersetzung unterziehen. Zweitens wird im Infrarot-Beispiel deutlich, dass grammatische Aussagen mitunter erst dann fallen, wenn ihr grammatischer Status zur Disposition steht. Es ist zu beachten, dass sie in diesem Fall als Prämissen in Argumenten für oder gegen eine bestimmte Revision fungieren. Sind uns die grammatischen Implikationen neuer praktischer Anforderungen erst einmal geläu g, so wird die Häu gkeit grammatischer Revisionen oenbar. Ein weiteres Beispiel ist die Er ndung komplexer Zahlen und die Ausweitung der StandardRechenregeln auf sie. Galt der Satz für alle x gilt: x2 ≥ 0 noch vor wenigen Jahrhunderten als vollkommen unbezweifelbar, so ist die Annahme, dass i2 = −1, zusammen mit den sie umgebenden Rechentechniken, heute in vielen Anwendungskontexten unverzichtbar. Ein drittes bekanntes Beispiel ist die Entscheidung, die Prädikate ist ein Fisch und hat eine Lunge für inkompatibel zu erklären und Dies ist ein unkorrigiertes Manuskript. Bitte nur die in der Allgemeinen Zeitschrift für Philosophie 35.1 (2010) publizierte Fassung zitieren. 1 ZWISCHEN PARTIKULARISMUS UND GENERALISMUS 15 daher die Wale nicht länger den Fischen zuzurechnen. Wie präsent der Gedanke des grammatischen Umbruchs im Denken des späten Wittgenstein ist, zeigen die vielen Passagen, in denen Wittgenstein darüber nachdenkt, ob es andere Farben als unsere geben könnte (BF I:66, III:42, III:86., III:94, III:127, vgl. III:30, III:123f.) und ob andere Arten des Messens (BGM I:5, I:148.) oder Rechnens (BGM IV:24, V:26, BF III:293) vorstellbar sind. Immer wieder spekuliert er über mögliche neue Situationen, in denen grammatische Spannungen auftreten, welche grammatische Anpassungen notwendig machen und uns auf diese Weise fremde Farben und fremde Arten des Messens und Rechnens erschlieÿen, wie sich uns einst durch die Entdeckung der Infrarot-Strahlung eine fremde Art des Lichts erschloss. Kann sich diese Idee als relevant im Streit zwischen Generalisten und Partikularisten erweisen? 4. Ethische Probleme als grammatische Spannungen 4.1. Eine Neuinterpretation des ethischen Diskurses. Tatsächlich wird mit dem im vorausgegangenen Abschnitt skizzierten Verständnis grammatischer Sätze eine Neuinterpretation des ethischen Diskurses möglich, die zwischen Generalisten und Partikularisten vermitteln kann. Die beiden zentralen Thesen dieser Neuinterpretation habe ich bereits angerissen. Erstens: Formulierungen ethischer Prinzipien sind grammatische Äuÿerungen. Sie geben die Verwendungsweisen ethischer Prädikate an und sind in dem Sinne transzendental, dass ihre Verneinung entweder ein Ausdruck eines Missverständnisses oder ein Plädoyer für eine semantische Revision, nicht aber ein (an sich hinreichendes) Anzeichen einer Meinungsverschiedenheit ist. Zweitens: Viele ethische Probleme, in denen ethische Prinzipien mit Gegenbeispielen oder kon igierenden Prinzipien konfrontiert werden, sind Fälle grammatischer Spannung. Sie werden durch grammatische Revisionen beigelegt und können somit als Momente der linguistischen Evolution verstanden werden. Im Folgenden möchte ich die interpretativen Thesen im einzelnen erläutern und plausibilisieren. In den nächsten Unterabschnitten werde ich dann ihre Konturen mit einem Beispiel und mit der Diskussion einiger Konsequenzen weiter schärfen. Beginnen wir mit der ersten interpretativen These. Um zu zeigen, dass Formulierungen ethischer Prinzipien tatsächlich als grammatische Äuÿerungen interpretiert Dies ist ein unkorrigiertes Manuskript. Bitte nur die in der Allgemeinen Zeitschrift für Philosophie 35.1 (2010) publizierte Fassung zitieren. 1 ZWISCHEN PARTIKULARISMUS UND GENERALISMUS 16 werden können, möchte ich auf einige interessante Parallelen zwischen dem ethischen und dem wissenschaftlichen Diskurs hinweisen, in dem die bisherigen Beispielfälle angesiedelt waren. Zunächst ist zu betonen, dass die Standardform der ethischen Äuÿerung der Indikativsatz ist.15 Weiterhin haben ethische Äuÿerungen in der überwältigenden Mehrheit der Fälle die Struktur konkreter empirischer Urteile. Hiermit meine ich, dass sie konkrete Personen, Handlungen oder Situationen, die zudem oft mittels indexikalischer bzw. demonstrativer Ausdrücke bestimmt werden, mit Prädikaten versehen, welche ihrem Anspruch nach interpersonell überprüfbar sind. Übliche ethische Urteile lauten: du hast dich sehr integer verhalten, Peters ständige Lügen sind feige oder was diese Leute tun, ist ein Verbrechen.16 Interessant ist nun eine dritte Analogie. Urteile, in welchen ein empirisches Prädikat als (logischer) Gegenstand rmiert und mit einem weiteren Prädikat versehen wird, sind sowohl in der Wissenschaft als auch in der Ethik ziemlich sichere Hinweise darauf, dass der Kontext der Äuÿerung ein Beibringen, ein Streit oder ein bis dato neuer und unsicherer Fall ist. Beispiele entsprechender ethischer Sätze, die ich aus naheliegenden Gründen nicht-empirisch oder auch theoretisch nenne, sind: Integrität gibt es nicht ohne eine Prise Gefühlskälte, Unehrlichkeit kann ein Ausdruck von Liebe sein oder Unnötige Grausamkeit ist immer ein Verbrechen. Vor dem Hintergrund der Sprachtheorie des späten Wittgenstein sollte sich meine besondere Hervorhebung dieser Sätze nun von selbst erklären. Der besondere Status der zuletzt genannten Sätze lässt sich plausibel mit ihrer Funktion angeben, grammatische Beziehungen zwischen Ausdrücken zu explizieren, deren Hauptrolle in konkreten empirischen Urteilen liegt.17 Der Eekt dieser Interpretation ist, dass eine Leugnung oder Anzwei ung dieser Sätze durch einen Sprecher nicht als 15Zwar bleiben viele ethische Urteile implizit oder werden nur in elliptischer Form geäuÿert, siehe Cora Diamond, Wittgenstein, Mathematics and Ethics: Resisting the Attractions of Realism, in: H. D. Sluga / D. G. Stern (Hg.), The Cambridge Companion to Wittgenstein, Cambridge 1996, insb. 242246. Dies deutet aber weder auf einen fundamentalen Unterschied zum wissenschaftlichen Diskurs hin, noch kann es über die zentrale Rolle von Indikativsätzen bzw. Urteilen in der ethischen Rede hinwegtäuschen. 16Ein frühes Beispiel einer Moraltheorie, die den propositionalen Charakter des ethischen Diskurses und seine Nähe zum wissenschaftlichen Diskurs stark macht, ist Mark Platts, Ways of Meaning. An Introduction to a Philosophy of Language, London 1979. Weitere Beispiele sind Sabina Lovibond, Realism and Imagination in Ethics, Oxford 1983 und Susan Hurley, Natural Reasons: Personality and Polity, New York 1989. 17Vergleiche: Im Leben ist es ja nie der mathematische Satz, den wir brauchen, sondern wir benützen den mathematischen Satz nur, um aus Sätzen, welche nicht der Mathematik angehören, auf andere zu schlieÿen, welche gleichfalls nicht der Mathematik angehören. (TLP 6.211) Dies ist ein unkorrigiertes Manuskript. Bitte nur die in der Allgemeinen Zeitschrift für Philosophie 35.1 (2010) publizierte Fassung zitieren. 1 ZWISCHEN PARTIKULARISMUS UND GENERALISMUS 17 Hinweis auf eine Meinungsverschiedenheit, sondern zunächst als Hinweis auf ein Aufeinandertreen unterschiedlicher grammatischer Festlegungen gedeutet werden muss. (Natürlich kann eine echte Meinungsverschiedenheit nicht ausgeschlossen werden. Diese muss sich aber erst erweisen und sollte dann gesondert erklärt werden.) Natürlich gilt diese These auch und gerade für ethische Prinzipien. Freilich erkaufen wir uns diese Interpretation ethischer Prinzipien damit, einigen verbreiteten philosophischen Gewohnheiten zu widersprechen. Andererseits spricht nicht wenig für sie. Erstens ist unsere Alltagserfahrung buchstäblich voll von Konikten, die sich bei genauerem Hinsehen als komplexe Missverständnisse entpuppen. Es wäre daher sonderbar, wenn sich Ähnliches nicht auch in der Ethik zeigte. Tatsächlich kennen wir aber auch ethische Fälle aus erster Hand. Gerade bei sogenannten dünnen ethischen Termen wie gut oder schlecht18 passiert es ständig, dass Streitende mit den gleichen Wörtern ganz verschiedene Begrie verknüpfen und ihre Kon ikte folglich eine undurchsichtige Mischung aus Meinungsverschiedenheit und gegenseitigem Unverständnis oft nur letzteres sind.19 Diese Streitenden täten gut daran, die Logik ihrer Begrie oen zu legen, bevor sie der jeweils anderen Partei Denkoder Wahrnehmungsfehler vorwerfen. Zweitens ist die hier beworbene Interpretation eng verknüpft mit der Einsicht, dass das gegenseitige Verstehen letztlich auf geteilten Praktiken und Lebensumständen fuÿt. Dass ethische Konikte häu g an kulturellen Bruchlinien entstehen, ist somit zusätzliche Evidenz für die vorgestellte These. Drittens ist zu bedenken, dass ethische Prinzipien in der Alltagssprache viel seltener fallen als etwa in philosophischen Seminaren. Aus der Perspektive unserer Interpretation ist dies kein Wunder: Da grammatische Sätze die Regeln der geteilten Sprache explizieren, ist ihre Äuÿerung nur in Ausnahmefällen sinnvoll, zu denen natürlich Situationen grammatischer Spannung gehören, 18Die Rede von dünnen und dicken (thin bzw. thick) ethischen Termen ist von Bernard Williams geprägt worden. In seinem Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (Cambridge Mass. 1984) benutzt er das Begrispaar für ethische Begrie ohne (dünn) oder mit (dick) interpersonal erkennbarem empirischen Gehalt. Beispiele dünner Begrie sind gut, böse, empfehlenswert oder soll (getan werden); Beispiele dicker Begrie sind groÿzügig, gierig, grausam oder nett. 19In dieser kurzen Skizze steckt eine Theorie der ethischen Rede, die Susan Hurley NonZentralismus genannt hat (Hurley, Natural Reasons, 1989, Kap. 2, 3, und 10). Diese Theorie besagt, dass die Bedeutung dünner ethischer Begrie eine Funktion der Bedeutung dicker ethischer Begrie ist. Das Verständnis eines Begris wie gut ist somit logisch abhängig von der Fähigkeit des Umgangs mit Begrien wie groÿzügig, nett oder bescheiden. Wenn zwei Sprecher unterschiedliche Theorien des Zusammenwirkens konkreter ethischer Terme haben, so haben sie folglich nicht den gleichen Begri gut. Der locus classicus des gegnerischen Zentralismus ist Richard Hare, Moral Thinking. Its Levels, Method, and Point, Oxford 1981, Kap. 4. Dies ist ein unkorrigiertes Manuskript. Bitte nur die in der Allgemeinen Zeitschrift für Philosophie 35.1 (2010) publizierte Fassung zitieren. 1 ZWISCHEN PARTIKULARISMUS UND GENERALISMUS 18 über die im Folgenden mehr zu sagen sein wird. Ich folgere vorläu g, dass die erste These eine plausible Interpretation ethischer Prinzipien darstellt. Die zweite interpretative These, nach der die eingangs diskutierten Konfrontationen ethischer Prinzipien mit partikularistischen Gegenbeispielen Manifestationen grammatischer Spannungen sind, sollte nun schon ein stückweit plausibler sein. Schlieÿlich haben wir gesehen, dass grammatische Sätze, obgleich sie im Normalfall nicht sinnvoll negiert werden können, in besonderen Situationen miteinander konfligieren. Darüber hinaus brauchen wir nun aber ein Argument, welches zeigt, dass ethische Gegenbeispiele solange sie nicht einfach Denkoder Wahrnehmungsfehlern geschuldet sind Implikate weiterer grammatischer Sätze sind. Dieses Argument können wir uns leicht erschlieÿen, wenn wir bedenken, dass in einer SpielKonzeption der Sprache jede Proposition wie überhaupt jede sinnvolle Äuÿerung erst durch ihre grammatischen Beziehungen Bedeutung trägt. Da grammatische Sätze nichts weiter als Explikationen dieser Beziehungen sind, folgt, dass jedes korrekte Urteil als Implikat eines grammatischen Satzes darstellbar ist. Wenn nun ein Urteil ein tatsächliches Gegenbeispiel eines ethischen Prinzips konstituiert, so muss dies auf eine Spannung zweier grammatischer Regeln zurückgeführt werden. Diese Interpretation erklärt übrigens auf eine elegante Weise, wieso wir in ethischen Konikten oft auch in der Sichtweise unserer jeweiligen Gegner Unterstützenswertes sehen und wieso ethische Probleme auch intrapersonal auftreten. Ein wichtiger Zweifel muss in Bezug auf die zweite These aber noch ausgeräumt werden. Ethische Urteile sind wesentlich praktisch. Damit ist gemeint, dass ethische Urteile als Rechtfertigungen und Erklärungen von (nicht-sprachlichen) Handlungen fungieren können. In dieser Hinsicht, so wird häu g behauptet, unterscheiden sie sich von wissenschaftlichen Urteilen, die rein deskriptiv seien. Dieser Zweifel muss klar zurückgewiesen werden. Das Problem an ihm ist, dass er einen grundlegenden Aspekt einer an Wittgenstein orientierten Sprachtheorie ignoriert, nämlich die Festlegung darauf, dass alle Urteile in letzter Instanz praktisch sind, also als Rechtfertigungen und Erklärungen von Handlungen verwendet werden. Zwar mag es sein, dass wissenschaftliche Urteile nur über inferenzielle Umwege praktische Konsequenzen haben. Dass sie aber im relevanten Sinn praktisch sind, kann in einem wittgensteinischen Kontext nicht geleugnet werden. Dies ist ein unkorrigiertes Manuskript. Bitte nur die in der Allgemeinen Zeitschrift für Philosophie 35.1 (2010) publizierte Fassung zitieren. 1 ZWISCHEN PARTIKULARISMUS UND GENERALISMUS 19 4.2. Ein Beispiel. Spielen wir noch einmal die ethische Erwägung des Spaÿ-Machens, den Prinzipienvorschlag Alles, was Spaÿ macht, ist unterstützenswert, und das Folter-Gegenbeispiel durch. Aus einer wittgensteinischen Perspektive müssen wir mit der Forderung nach einem Kontext anfangen, in dem ein Satz wie Alles, was Spaÿ macht, ist unterstützenswert überhaupt sinnvoll geäuÿert werden kann. Dies ist gar nicht so einfach. Aber nach etwas Meditation fallen uns einige Möglichkeiten ein: Der Satz könnte in einer Diskussion mit einem Verächter von Kindergeburtstagen fallen. Er könnte auch in einer Situation fallen, in der einem Fremdsprachler der Begri Spaÿ erläutert wird. Oder aber, er tritt drittens in einer Situation auf, in der sich ein sonderbarer neuer Fall präsentiert, an den wir im Kontext der Rede von Spaÿ noch nie gedacht hatten, und der uns vor eine grammatische Entscheidung stellt. Nehmen wir an, dass sich in einer konkreten Sprechsituation zum ersten Mal ein Fall ergibt, in dem Foltern mit Spaÿ praktisch relevant wird. In dieser Situation könnte nun unser Prinzip in einen Kon ikt mit folgenden grammatischen Sätzen treten: Jedes Foltern ist ein Verbrechen. und Ein Verbrechen ist nie unterstützenswert. Wir hätten es hier mit einer Situation zu tun, in der wir ein konkretes Handeln gleichzeitig als unterstützenswert und als nicht unterstützenswert behandeln müssten. Ebenso wie im Infrarot-, im Wal sch-, oder im i2-Fall müssen wir eine grammatische Anpassung vornehmen. Dabei stehen uns mehrere Optionen oen. Zu den logischen Möglichkeiten gehören die (grammatischen) Erklärungen Nicht jedes Foltern ist ein Verbrechen, Manche Verbrechen sind unterstützenswert und Nicht alles, was Spaÿ macht, ist unterstützenswert. Da alle diese Sätze als grammatische Sätze vorgeschlagen werden, können sie nicht wie empirische Sätze getestet werden. Aber sie alle sind mit unzähligen weiteren grammatischen Sätzen intern verbunden. Da jeder grammatische Satz als Prämisse in einem Argument auftreten kann, erstaunt es kaum, wenn eine grammatische Spannung wie die vorliegende eine komplexe Diskussion auslöst. Welche Argumente am Ende den Ausschlag geben, das hängt wie in den obigen Beispielen sowohl von den praktischen Anforderungen an das Sprachspiel als auch von der Weitsicht der Diskutierenden ab. Der bereits im ersten Abschnitt angedeutete Lösungsvorschlag der Generalisten kann nun als Versuch einer ökonomischen und möglichst konservativen grammatischen Anpassung verstanden werden. Mit Dies ist ein unkorrigiertes Manuskript. Bitte nur die in der Allgemeinen Zeitschrift für Philosophie 35.1 (2010) publizierte Fassung zitieren. 1 ZWISCHEN PARTIKULARISMUS UND GENERALISMUS 20 dem Satz Alles, was Spaÿ macht, ohne Leid anzurichten, ist unterstützenswert. wird eine Lösung vorgeschlagen, welche die verbrecherische Natur des Folterns und die Nicht-Unterstützungswürdigkeit von Verbrechen unangetastet lässt und stattdessen die Unterstützungswürdigkeit von Dingen, die Spaÿ machen, quali ziert. Da wir hiermit einen Vorschlag der Generalisten aufnehmen, sollten wir es nicht versäumen, die Unterschiede zum Generalismus klar zu machen. Erstens wird nicht behauptet, dass wir uns schon immer implizit oder eigentlich an der komplexeren Regel orientiert hätten. Dies lässt sich unter anderem durch den Hinweis auf alternative Lösungen zeigen. Es wäre beispielsweise möglich gewesen, einen weiteren grammatischen Satz ins Feld zu führen: Spaÿ kann man nur bei harmlosen Beschäftigungen haben. Mit jenem Satz hätte nun die Interpretation des problematischen Phänomens als ein Foltern mit Spaÿ bestritten werden können. Stattdessen hätten wir von einem Foltern mit Wollust sprechen können, welches mit dem grammatischen Satz Alles, was Spaÿ macht, ist unterstützenswert gar nicht kon igiert. Zweitens wird nicht behauptet, dass die Revision notwendigerweise unser letztes Wort ist. Es kann nie ausgeschlossen werden, dass sich in Zukunft neue Spannungen ergeben, die mit erneuten grammatischen Revisionen gekittet werden müssen. Drittens schlieÿlich geben wir zu, dass wir es nach einer grammatischen Entscheidung mit einem neuen Sprachspiel mit neuen Begrien zu tun haben. Aus der Perspektive eines späteren Sprechers müssen also alle Äuÿerungen früherer Sprecher einer Überprüfung und gegebenenfalls einer Übersetzung unterzogen werden, bevor sie bewertet werden können. 4.3. Drei tragbare Konsequenzen. Bevor ich auf die Frage der Vermittlung zwischen Partikularismus und Generalismus explizit eingehe, möchte ich drei allgemeine Argumente gegen die vorgestellte Interpretation diskutieren. Bei ihnen handelt es sich sämtlich um Modus-Tollens-Argumente: Sie erklären jeweils, dass aus der vorgeschlagenen Interpretation eine These folgt, die dann in der zweiten Prämisse abgelehnt wird. Da meine Reaktion in allen Fällen in einer A rmierung der fraglichen Konsequenz besteht also in einer Zurückweisung der zweiten Prämisse , mache ich es mir einfach und stelle nur die jeweiligen ersten Prämissen vor. In Dies ist ein unkorrigiertes Manuskript. Bitte nur die in der Allgemeinen Zeitschrift für Philosophie 35.1 (2010) publizierte Fassung zitieren. 1 ZWISCHEN PARTIKULARISMUS UND GENERALISMUS 21 einem nächsten Schritt werde ich dann erklären, wieso wir uns die Konsequenzen, die in den Prämissen zum Ausdruck kommen, leisten können. Erstens: Aus der vorgestellten Interpretation folgt, dass sich unsere ethische Sprache aufteilt in eine groÿe Anzahl von Einzelspielen, die sich vielfältig überschneiden. Dies ist erstens auf der Zeitachse der Fall, da durch jede (noch so periphere) grammatische Revision eine neue Sprache entsteht. Dies ist zweitens in Bezug auf unterschiedliche Sprecherkontexte der Fall, da grammatische Anpassungen nicht in einer einzigen globalen Unterhaltung, sondern in Milliarden von Einzelkontexten erfolgen. Zweitens: Aus der vorgestellten Interpretation folgt, dass der im ersten Abschnitt skizzierte Unterschied zwischen dem Ausgestochenwerden und der Aufhebung (bzw. Umkehrung) einer begründenden Erwägung philosophisch zweitrangig ist. In beiden Fällen passiert letztlich das gleiche: Eine grammatische Spannung tritt auf und wird im Rahmen einer grammatischen Revision beseitigt. Drittens: Aus der vorgestellten Interpretation folgt, dass jeder Sprecher im Fall einer grammatischen Spannung zu einer grammatischen Entscheidung gezwungen ist, und dass seine Entscheidung sogar für zukünftige Sprecher bindend sein kann. Ich bestreite nicht, dass die hier vorgeschlagene Interpretation der ethischen Denkund Sprechpraxis wichtige theoretische Konsequenzen hat, möchte jedoch im Folgenden zeigen, dass wir uns durch die Konsequenzen nicht abschrecken lassen müssen. Wir sollten sie vielmehr als sprachtheoretische Einsichten begrüÿen. Die erste Konsequenz fordert von uns eine Revision des theoretischen Begries der Sprache. Dies ist natürlich zunächst nichts Schlimmes. Aber da die Sprache nach dem revidierten Begri aus sehr vielen Einzelspielen besteht, die einander zudem vielfältig überschneiden und sich sogar ständig verändern, so dass zwei Sprecher selten oder nie exakt dasselbe Spiel spielen, bleibt zu klären, wie Kommunikation überhaupt möglich ist, wenn die hier vorgeschlagene Theorie korrekt ist. Dass dies allerdings bloÿ ein Scheinproblem ist, wissen wir spätestens seit Donald Davidsons Essay A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs.20 Um das zu zeigen, reicht es (für unsere Zwecke) aus, wenn wir uns einige Aspekte grammatischer Revisionen in Erinnerung 20Donald Davidson, A Nice Derangement of Epitaphs, in E. LePore (Hg.), Truth and Interpretation. Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson, Oxford 1986, 433446. Dies ist ein unkorrigiertes Manuskript. Bitte nur die in der Allgemeinen Zeitschrift für Philosophie 35.1 (2010) publizierte Fassung zitieren. 1 ZWISCHEN PARTIKULARISMUS UND GENERALISMUS 22 rufen. Erstens wird in grammatischen Revisionen meistens nur ein sehr kleiner Anteil der grammatischen Beziehungen eines Urteils oder Begris abgestoÿen. Zweitens sind viele der Entwicklungen, die zu grammatischen Spannungen führen, kontextübergreifend feststellbar. Drittens stoÿen Sprecher gewöhnlich nicht nur einzelne Urteile aus, sondern übermitteln im Gespräch eine Vielzahl grammatischer Hinweise, so dass sich verschiedene Gesprächspartner über zurückliegende Revisionen unterrichten können. Viertens sind wir in der Lage, in unterschiedlichen Kontexten unterschiedlich ausgestaltete Regelwerke zu verwenden. Fünftens schlieÿlich und dieser Punkt ist vielleicht der wichtigste sollten wir nicht meinen, einander immer und überall richtig zu verstehen.21 Die zweite Konsequenz die Zweitrangigkeit des Unterschiedes zwischen ausgestochenen und aufgehobenen (bzw. umgekehrten) begründenden Erwägungen ist in der Tat auf den ersten Blick problematisch. Schlieÿlich hat niemand Schwierigkeiten, in Fällen wie dem Folter-Beispiel den Unterschied zu sehen. Mehr noch, es könnte scheinen, dass die hier vorgeschlagene Interpretation impliziert, dass alle Fälle grammatischer Umbrüche dem einen oder dem anderen Typ der Interaktion von Einzelerwägungen zuzusprechen sind. Doch während der erste Einwand irrelevant ist, ist der zweite schlichtweg falsch. Beides wird deutlich, wenn wir uns klar machen, dass unsere Interpretation den Unterschied zwischen dem Ausstechen und dem Aufheben von Gründen nicht leugnet, sondern ihn nur für theoretisch zweitrangig erklärt. Tatsächlich kann der Unterschied auf der hier entwickelten Sprachauassung rekonstruiert werden. Auf der einen Seite kann das Bild der unterschiedlich schwerwiegenden Erwägungen wiedergegeben werden durch die unterschiedlich schwer aufzugebenden grammatischen Beziehungen eines Terms. Auf der anderen Seite kann von einem Umkehren einer Erwägung gesprochen werden, wenn ein grammatischer Satz nicht bloÿ aufgegeben wird, sondern als negierter Nebensatz in einem komplexeren Konditionalsatz wieder auftaucht. Die dritte Konsequenz, nach der grammatische Entscheidungen oftmals unumgänglich sind, könnte auf Unverständnis stoÿen, wenn davon ausgegangen wird, dass es möglich sein muss, sich in Bezug auf die Spielregeln einer Praxis rein passiv 21All dies sollte es uns beträchtlich erleichtern, Davidson zuzustimmen, wenn er sagt, that there is no such thing as a language, not if a language is anything like what many philosophers and linguists have supposed (Davidson, a.a.O., 446, meine Hervorhebung). Dies ist ein unkorrigiertes Manuskript. Bitte nur die in der Allgemeinen Zeitschrift für Philosophie 35.1 (2010) publizierte Fassung zitieren. 1 ZWISCHEN PARTIKULARISMUS UND GENERALISMUS 23 zu verhalten. Beim Schachspiel oder Fuÿball können wir dies schlieÿlich auch. Die Sprache ist jedoch aufgrund ihrer internen Spannungen eine andere Art von Spiel als Schach. Im Gegensatz zu letzterem konfrontiert uns die Sprache immer wieder mit inkompatiblen Spielregeln, die wir nicht einfach ignorieren können. Freilich können wir immer sagen: Hier weiÿ ich nicht mehr weiter. Doch dies wäre eine Entscheidung zum Schweigen, also zum Spielabbruch. Jeder andere Kurs involviert notwendigerweise eine grammatische Anpassung. Natürlich können diese Entscheidungen durchaus mit mehr oder weniger Bedacht getroen werden. Das Ergebnis einer unbedachten grammatischen Politik ist uns übrigens nicht unbekannt. Wir erkennen es am Phänomen der Familienähnlichkeiten (PU 66f.), bei dem wir im grammatischen Gerüst der Sprache ein kompliziertes Netz von Ähnlichkeiten [sehen], die einander übergreifen und kreuzen (PU 66) wie die Ähnlichkeiten zwischen den Gliedern einer Familie [. . . ]: Wuchs, Gesichtszüge, Augenfarbe, Gang, Temperament, etc. etc. (PU 67) 4.4. Zur Vermittlung zwischen Partikularismus und Generalismus. Insgesamt erweist sich die vorgeschlagene Interpretation somit als robust und theoretisch interessant. Damit bleibt nur noch das Verhältnis zum Partikularismus und zum Generalismus zu untersuchen. Dass die Interpretation beiden Lagern entgegenkommt, sollte aus dem bisher Gesagten oensichtlich sein. Sie bestätigt erstens die partikularistische Kernthese der Unmöglichkeit einer Algorithmisierung der ethischen Deliberation, insofern sie einen Teil der ethischen Probleme als Fälle auasst, die die Grammatik des jeweils aktuellen Sprachspiels sprengen. Sie bestätigt aber gleichzeitig das generalistische Festhalten an ethischen Prinzipien, insofern sie die ethische Deliberation als argumentativen oder auch dialektischen Prozess darstellt. Ob dieses doppelte Entgegenkommen aus der Perspektive der verfeindeten Lager ausreicht, hängt von zwei Fragen ab. Erstens: Gehört es zu den Kernaussagen des Generalismus, dass das Regelwerk der Ethik alle möglichen und bis in alle Ewigkeit auftretenden ethischen Probleme zu lösen vermag, selbst, wenn sie sich in Lebenssituationen ergeben, die von unseren aktuellen Lebenssituationen wesentlich abweichen? Zweitens: Gehört es zu den Kernaussagen des Partikularismus, dass ein Dies ist ein unkorrigiertes Manuskript. Bitte nur die in der Allgemeinen Zeitschrift für Philosophie 35.1 (2010) publizierte Fassung zitieren. 1 ZWISCHEN PARTIKULARISMUS UND GENERALISMUS 24 Verständnis der ethischen Deliberation als argumentativ und als insofern mit generellen Propositionen operierend, notwendig das Wesen der Deliberation verfehlt? Mir scheint, dass Generalisten wie Partikularisten ohne Gesichtsverlust von den hier aufgeführten starken Forderungen Abstand nehmen und sich auf ihre ursprünglichen Ziele konzentrieren können. Sowohl das Insistieren auf ethische Prinzipien als auch das Insistieren auf die Grenzen der Kodi zierbarkeit der ethischen Sensibilität bleiben vor dem Hintergrund meines Vorschlags gehaltvoll und wichtig. Vielleicht hilft ihnen bei dieser Besinnung die Tatsache, dass Wittgenstein selbst sich für beide Seiten stark gemacht hat. In einer aufschlussreichen Passage der Bemerkungen über die Grundlagen der Mathematik, in der es um Widersprüche in formalen Systemen geht, lässt er einen Diskutanten anmerken: `Wir machen lauter legitime d.h. in den Regeln erlaubte Schritte, und auf einmal kommt ein Widerspruch heraus. Also ist das Regelverzeichnis, wie es ist, nichts nutz, denn der Widerspruch wirft das ganze Spiel um.' (BGM VII:11) Wittgensteins lapidare Gegenfrage ist: Warum lässt du ihn es umwerfen? Und weiter: Nun, welche Art von Voraussicht willst du? Eine, die dein gegenwärtiger Kalkül nicht zulässt? Nun, dadurch ist er nicht ein schlechtes Stück Mathematik, oder, nicht im vollsten Sinne Mathematik. (BGM VII:11) Im folgenden Abschnitt präzisiert Wittgenstein dann seine Interpretation der Neuaufstellung der Axiome als Reaktion auf den Widerspruch: Nicht schlechte Mathematik wird hier verbessert, sondern ein neues Stück Mathematik erfunden. [. . . ] Waren die ersten Regeln des Kalküls nicht gut? Nun, wir gaben sie nur, weil sie gut waren. Wenn sich später ein Widerspruch ergibt, haben sie nicht ihre P icht getan? Nicht doch, sie waren für diese Anwendung nicht gegeben worden. (BGM VII:12) In diesen Bemerkungen zeigen sich beide Seiten Wittgensteins. Einerseits beruht das Schlieÿen auf allgemeinen Regeln; andererseits können wir dabei durchaus an die Dies ist ein unkorrigiertes Manuskript. Bitte nur die in der Allgemeinen Zeitschrift für Philosophie 35.1 (2010) publizierte Fassung zitieren. 1 ZWISCHEN PARTIKULARISMUS UND GENERALISMUS 25 Grenzen des zugrundeliegenden Kalküls stoÿen. Diese Möglichkeit ist aber für Wittgenstein kein Grund zur Verzwei ung. Vielmehr fordert er uns auf, eine Entscheidung über die Anpassung des Kalküls an die vormals nicht bedachten praktischen Anforderungen zu treen und dann weiterzumachen, bis wieder eine Anpassung erforderlich wird und das Spiel von Neuem beginnt. Matthias Kiesselbach RWTH Aachen Philosophisches Institut Eilfschornsteinstraÿe 16 52062 Aachen E-mail: [email protected] Dies ist ein unkorrigiertes Manuskript. Bitte nur die in der Allgemeinen Zeitschrift für Philosophie 35.1 (2010) publizierte Fassung zitieren. | {
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Civil disobedience, costly signals, and leveraging injustice Accepted (May. 29, 2020) for publication in Ergo. penultimate draft Ten-Herng LAI Australian National University ORCID: 0000-0001-9760-2240 [email protected] Abstract Civil disobedience, despite its illegal nature, can sometimes be justified vis-à-vis the duty to obey the law, and, arguably, is thereby not liable to legal punishment. However, adhering to the demands of justice and refraining from punishing justified civil disobedience may lead to a highly problematic theoretical consequence: the debilitation of civil disobedience. This is because, according to the novel analysis I propose, civil disobedience primarily functions as a costly social signal. It is effective by being reliable, reliable by being costly, and costly primarily by being punished. My analysis will highlight a distinctive feature of civil disobedience: civil disobedients leverage the punitive injustice they suffer to amplify their communicative force. This will lead to two paradoxical implications. First, the instability of the moral status of both civil disobedience and its punishment to the extent where the state may be left with no permissible course of action with regard to punishing civil disobedience. Second, by refraining from punishing justified civil disobedience, the state may render uncivil disobedience-illegal political activities that fall short of the standards of civil disobedience-potentially permissible. Keywords: civil disobedience, punishment, costly signals, paradox, fair play theory. 2 Civil disobedience, costly signals, and leveraging injustice Many of those who have engaged in civil disobedience have faced legal punishment: leaders of the Hong Kong Occupy Central, Black Lives Matter activists, Occupy Wall Street participants, Civil Rights activists, Henry D. Thoreau, and as some have argued, Antigone of Thebes (Daube 2011; Tiefenbrun 1999). But there seems to be something deeply problematic about the treatment these civil disobedients have received. Many of them have sought to bring forth much needed political change without violating the demands of morality (Brownlee 2012; Celikates 2016a; Markovits 2005; Rawls 1999; W. Smith 2013). Imposing such harsh sanctions seems a poor way of repaying those who have fought for racial, gender, social and economic equality and against unjust wars and tyranny, especially when these problems persist precisely because ordinary citizens and the state did nothing to prevent, and even actively played a role in perpetuating, the injustices in question and, hence, made civil disobedience necessary in the first place. In light of these considerations, it may seem obviously true that when civil disobedience is justified, punishment is inapt. Indeed, the High Court of Taiwan has found the leaders of the Sunflower Movement-the 2014 mass civil disobedience-"not guilty on the basis that their actions were justified civil disobedience."1 Surely, this is the model we should strive to adopt.2 That being said, I shall argue that the claim that the state should refrain from punishing justified acts of civil disobedience turns out to have certain implications that are surprising in themselves. The central idea is that punishment plays an indispensable role in 1 Hioe, B. (14 March 2018). Not Guilty Verdict Upheld for Sunflower Movement Protesters after Appeal by Prosecutors. New Bloom. https://newbloommag.net/2018/03/14/second-ruling-sunflower/ See also Jones and Su (2017) for a democratic confrontational argument for the justifiability of the Sunflower Movement, and a democratic harmony argument against punishment. 2 Some go a step further and argue that regardless of whether civil disobedience is justified, it ought not to be punished merely because of its illegality, as there's a moral right to civil disobedience, either grounded on the right to conscience (Brownlee 2012, 2018) or the right to political participation (Lefkowitz 2007, 2018). I will engage with these possibilities later in the paper. 3 contributing to civil disobedience's overall ability to serve as a costly signal: one that allows civil disobedients to distinguish themselves from speakers who lack the relevant sincerity and seriousness, which in turn constitutes the reliability and effectiveness of their communicative act. Without punishment, the effectiveness of civil disobedience is compromised. Spelling out this unfortunate consequence will help us better understand the nature of civil disobedience: civil disobedients leverage the punitive injustice they suffer to amplify their communicative force. This will lead to two further implications. First, the moral status of civil disobedience and punishing it appear to be unstable: refraining from punishing civil disobedience may render civil disobedience ineffective, and thus unjustified, and thus liable to be punished; but punishing civil disobedience can make civil disobedience effective, and thus justified, and thus not liable to be punished. Here, the requirements of justice may generate an impossibility where under specific circumstances, the state is left with no morally acceptable course of actions. Second, the state may render uncivil disobedience justified by adhering to a requirement of justice, namely, to not punish justified civil disobedience. The paper is in four sections. Section 1 provides an argument for the claim that the state should refrain from punishing justified acts of civil disobedience. Section 2 discusses the key claim that civil disobedience functions as a costly social signal and explains how punishment is vital for it to do so. Section 3 spells out the problematic implications. Section 4 briefly spells out a further troublesome implication for anyone who endorses the right to civil disobedience. 1. The injustice of punishing justified civil disobedience Civil disobedience may be defined as "a public, nonviolent, conscientious yet political act contrary to law usually done with the aim of bringing about a change in the law or policies of the government" (Rawls 1999: 320).3 The legitimate targets of civil disobedience are the nontrivial 3 There have been reasonable attempts to expand the notion of civil disobedience. However, insofar as civil disobedience is understood as a communicative act, the definition doesn't have much implications on this paper. 4 flaws in the law or other social institutions. These flaws may be severe injustices (Rawls 1999), that the public in general ignores the voices of the marginalized and certain important considerations (Markovits 2005; W. Smith 2011, 2013), or that the system and laws came into existence through a process that lacks political legitimacy (Simmons 2010). A particular act of civil disobedience is justified when performed as a last resort and shows reasonable prospects of success to address these flaws, and furthermore display a willingness for future cooperation through accepting punishment and insisting upon nonviolence (Sabl 2001). Despite being illegal, civil disobedience does not violate the presumed duty to obey the law when it serves as the last resort to remedy severe injustices or democratic failures. In such cases, the moral considerations that normally demand obedience instead support fixing the law through civil disobedience (Delmas 2014a, 2014b; Markovits 2005; W. Smith 2011, 2013). Civil disobedience is illegal, and illegal activities that are caught are normally punished. But is the state justified in punishing justified civil disobedience-activities that are so very distinct from "ordinary offending" (Brownlee 2012)? To properly answer this question, we need to bear in mind that punishment itself requires moral justification, as "[p]unishment is probably the most awful thing that modern democratic states systematically do to their own citizens" (Tadros 2011: 1). We need to closely examine what potentially justifies punishment, and see whether those justifications apply to punishing justified instances of civil disobedience. Here I will primarily focus on the fair play theory, as it provides a unified account of why we have a duty to obey, why illegal activities normally warrant punishment, and how civil disobedience can be justified. All these will add up to the conclusion that civil disobedience, if justified, ought not to be punished. I will then briefly consider other theories of punishment and the possibility that punishing civil disobedience can be justified on special considerations. 5 1.1 The fair play theory The basic idea of the fair play theory of political obligation is that when people voluntarily benefit from a cooperative scheme, they have a duty to do their fair share in contributing to the cooperative scheme (Hart 1955; Klosko 2004). Enjoying the fruits of the cooperative scheme but refraining to contribute is free riding. While free riding does not necessarily threaten the efficiency or stability of the cooperative scheme (though it sometimes does), it involves a form of "unfair self-selection" (Simmons 2001: 30) or "objectionably preferential treatment" (Cullity 1995: 22) to oneself, and is thus morally dubious. When the law is sufficiently just, a duty of fair play is present and grounds the pro tanto duty to obey the law. This is because the law specifies the terms of a fair cooperative scheme under which all citizens benefit. There may be different ways to understand the benefits this cooperative scheme provides. For example, it can be the most efficient way individuals can rescue each other from the threat of the state of nature (Wellman 2005), or to safeguard the rule of law-that which enables individuals to exercise their individual autonomy (Dagger 1997; Moraro 2019; Raz 1986). In virtue of benefiting from this cooperative scheme, individuals acquire a fair play duty to obey. Refusing to obey the law constitutes a pro tanto wrong by accumulating an unfair advantage: enjoying the benefits but not doing one's fair share. This leads to the grounds of punishment. When an individual hoards an unfair advantage, fairness demands that the unfair advantage be relinquished. It is the business of the state to get back from the perpetrator through inflicting punishment. "Justice-that is, punishing such individuals-restores the equilibrium of benefits and burdens by taking from the individual what he owes, that is, exacting the debt" (Morris 1968: 487). The emphasis here is on getting back the unfair advantage. For punishment to be just, the punished must have gained unfair benefits. In the following, I will show that despite its illegal nature, sometimes 6 civil disobedience has gained no unfair advantages, and can thereby be justified against both the duty to obey and punishment. In cases where the law fails to meet the standards of fairness, but rather involves exploitative cooperative schemes, those who are on the privileged end of the law no longer contribute to and benefit from a fair cooperative scheme. Rather, they are enjoying unfair advantages over those who are on the other end of the law. In such cases, Candice Delmas (2014a) argues that in order to avoid accumulating unfair advantages, in principle the privileged have three options to fulfil their duty of fair play: "exit, restitution, and radical reform." However, as "[e]xit is often excessively difficult, and is generally undesirable" and "[r]estitution is often practically impossible, and is generally insufficient" (476), promoting radical reform is the only reasonable way to fulfil one's duty of fair play. When legal methods of promoting radical reform is infeasible, civil disobedience is then sometimes the most fitting way to fulfil the duty of fair play. In this way, civil disobedience is justified vis-à-vis the duty to obey the law. Here, instead of demanding obedience, the duty of fair play demands civil disobedience. Another way to justify civil disobedience on fair play is to point out that those who engage in civil disobedience perform an important and essential service to the cooperative scheme of the law. Piero Moraro (2019) points out that "cooperative schemes generally involve a division of labour, whereby all members must do their part to support the provision of the good," where one crucial way to contribute "involves identifying possible risks that may endanger the provision of the good" (302). Legal protests can often perform this important task, but they do not always work. In cases where legal protests prove to be futile, civil disobedience may become the best option to perform this task. Here, despite breaching the law, those who engage in civil disobedience do not accumulate any unfair advantage to themselves, but instead do their part (and often much more) in the cooperative scheme. Civil disobedients normally voluntarily accept additional burdens: the time and effort spent in planning the 7 movement, the hostility from the general public, the risks of facing police brutality, and legal punishment and criminal records (306). In comparison to their law-abiding counterparts, civil disobedients have incurred no fewer burdens in supporting the cooperative scheme. Either way, civil disobedience is justified vis-à-vis the duty to obey the law when it is performed not to acquire unfair advantages over one's fellow citizens, but to promote much needed radical reform or to highlight and resolve severe threats to the cooperative scheme. When civil disobedience is thus justified, it is also not the appropriate target of legal punishment. Legal punishment is to balance benefits and burdens through getting back from free riders. Actors who engage in justified civil disobedience do not gain unfair advantages, and there's nothing to get back from them. Therefore, punishing justified civil disobedience contradicts the fair play theory: "it would be unfair to impose additional burdens upon them in the form of a legal sanction" (Moraro 2019: 306. Italics Original). 1.2 Other theories I acknowledge that there are other plausible theories of the duty to obey. However, similar to how fair play can justify civil disobedience, other theories such as those grounded in a natural duty of justice (Delmas 2014b; Wellman 2005) or in democratic authority (Markovits 2005; W. Smith 2013) allow noticeable space for civil disobedience to be morally justified. The rationale is identical to that of the fair play justification. When laws are nontrivially flawed, obedience no longer contributes to the realization of the underlying values these theories build upon. Instead, sometimes civil disobedience serves as the best way to respond to those underlying values, in particular when legal methods prove to be futile and civil disobedience shows reasonable prospects of success. In such cases, civil disobedience is morally justified. There are also a number of plausible theories of punishment. While I do not intend to exercise each in full detail, similar arguments can be made against punishing justified civil disobedience. The plausible theories of punishment converge on a simple common feature relevant to our discussion: those who are liable to punishment are those who have engaged 8 in prior wrongdoing. For instance, while deterrence theorists hold that the purpose of punishment is to deter crime, they hold that only those who have engaged in wrongdoing and thus have either acquired an enforceable duty to protect others (Farrell 1985; Tadros 2011) or who have forfeited their own rights against harsh treatment can be used as means of deterrence (Wellman 2012, 2017). Retributivist hold that wrongdoers deserve suffering and it is the business of the state to inflict suffering on, and only on, those who have engaged in wrongdoing (Kleinig 2012; Moore 1987). Communicative theorists point out that blame is necessarily expressed through punishment (Duff 2010; Feinberg 1965), and for blame to be apt the target of blame must be blameworthy. Relevant to civil disobedience, the common implication of these theories is that if an act of civil disobedience is justified, then it would be unjust to punish it. If an act of civil disobedience is morally justified, disobedients do not commit any type of wrongdoing that creates any enforceable duty to protect others, that forfeits one's right against harsh treatment, that deserves suffering, or that makes one blameworthy. Punishing justified civil disobedience, accordingly, would be punishing those who have not made themselves liable to be punished in the ways proposed by these theories of punishment. An additional note on blame. In order for the state to appropriately punish, it must also have the moral standing to blame. There are many ways people may lose the standing to blame, say, if they have committed similar wrongs, or were complicit in or have facilitated the wrong in question. Similarly, if the state has failed to protect the rights and interests of certain groups, and the disadvantages they suffer put them in difficult situations where illegal activities become serious options, the state loses the authority to punish these people. The state is responsible for the plight of the disadvantaged, and is thus at least partially responsible for the crimes the disadvantaged commit. Blaming the disadvantaged through punishment "whilst refusing to answer to [them] for the wrongs that [they have] suffered (and still suffer) at our collective hands" (Duff 2010: 139) is illegitimate. This has a further implication 9 on the punishment of civil disobedience. It is often the state's failure to protect the rights and interests of certain groups, or failure to address serious flaws within the system, that made civil disobedience a serious option. Thus, within a certain range, even if an instance of civil disobedience is not fully justified, it may still be inappropriate for the state to exact punishment. It lacks the proper moral standing, and is as guilty as, if not guiltier than, those who have breached the law. 1.3 Other special considerations in favor of punishment But is not civil disobedience special in the sense that those who engage in it must submit themselves to punishment? This may generate special considerations that make punishing justified civil disobedience permissible. Here I will consider two possibilities: that civil disobedients have consented to be punished; and that we need and can issue a special verdict, "guilty but civilly disobedient" (GBCD). 1.3.1 Consent Consent has the moral power to alter normative statuses, typically making otherwise impermissible actions permissible. It may be that in virtue of engaging in civil disobedience, disobedients consent to be punished, and in virtue of their consent, punishing civil disobedience becomes permissible even if normally it is unjust to punish justified actions. To see whether this is correct, we need to go through at least two questions. The first is whether consent has really been given. It is not particularly clear that civil disobedients have openly declare something like "I consent to be punished." Instead, it might be thought that civil disobedients have tacitly given consent to be punished when they have voluntarily breached the law with the knowledge that their illegal actions would lead to punishment, and have furthermore submitted themselves to punishment. A complete account of what makes voluntary actions consent-giving is clearly beyond the scope of this paper. However, there are certain conditions necessary for consent to be valid. The most prominent one is that there must be a reasonable set of options. If an actor 10 chooses among a small set of undesirable options imposed upon her, when eventually one option is chosen, it can hardly be said the consequence suffered are morally unproblematic because it's the product of consent. This is essentially how tacit consent theories fail: voluntarily remaining in a state does not amount to consenting to the rule of the state, because for most people leaving just is not a feasible option (Simmons 2005). Apply this to civil disobedience. If civil disobedience is justified, it was chosen among a set of undesirable options: suffer injustice or disobey. This set of undesirable options was imposed upon the disobedients by the negligence or active oppression of the state or the majority. Choosing one or another is in no way consent giving; otherwise, those who do not disobey consent to oppression, which is absurd. Therefore, civil disobedients normally have not given valid consent to be punished. The second question we need to ask is whether consent can fully justify punishment. It is debatable whether consent can forfeit each and every right, or whether there are limits to consent (Anderson 2000; Baker 2009; Schaber 2020). Relevant to the discussion here, there is reason to doubt whether consenting to punishment can make punishment permissible. Consider, for example, someone who suffers from extreme poverty or simple boredom, and goes to whatever relevant authority, declares that she wants to be punished, to be locked in prison either to be fed or experience something new. Either way, it seems highly inappropriate for the state to actually punish that person. There are a few explanations that can capture this intuition: that punishment should be reserved for the guilty; that punishment implies blame, is apt only towards the blameworthy, and consenting to being blamed cannot make one blame worthy; that the state should support this person in more appropriate ways than putting her in prison. All these explanations suggest that even if (however unlikely) civil disobedients have given valid consent to be punished, the state still should not punish them. 1.3.2 "Guilty but civilly disobedient" Matthew R. Hall (2006) proposes a special verdict for civil disobedience, what he calls "guilty but civilly disobedient" (GBCD). The GBCD verdict is reached when the offenders are found 11 to have breached the law but in a way that meets the standards of civil disobedience: conscientiously, openly, respectfully, non-violently, and with minimum force and disruption. The verdict allows us "to recognize officially the special status of civil disobedience without having to do so in a hidden or backdoor manner" (2116). The merits of having this distinctive verdict include properly recognizing the distinction between civil disobedience and ordinary offending, satisfying those who believe that civil disobedience is no less of a criminal offence, and maintaining the uniformity of law enforcement through punishing offenders. An additional appeal of GBCD is that the state can pass sentences on civil disobedients without the blame normally attached to punishment. This effectively circumvents the problem communicative theories present against punishing civil disobedience. Since GBCD does not blame, it neither blames the blameless nor has problems with the standing of blame. Nevertheless, it still imposes harsh treatment on those who have not made themselves liable to or deserving of punishment. Thus, GBCD may be better than merely finding civil disobedience guilty of criminal offences, but falls short of being fully satisfactory. In short, civil disobedience may not be special in the relevant way that makes punishment appropriate. 2. How civil disobedience works Punishing justified civil disobedience is unjust. The solution should be simple: the state should refrain from punishing justified civil disobedience. By adhering to this demand of justice, we may think that we can have the best of both worlds: civil disobedients help the society to fix severe injustices, and they no longer receive the harsh and unjust treatment of punishment as a "reward" for their work. This picture, however, is too good to be true. We shall see this once we properly understand how civil disobedience works as a costly social signal. 12 2.1 Civil disobedience as a costly social signal The basic idea of costly signals is that there are signals-observable traits other entities can alter behavior upon-that the sender actually or potentially incurs nontrivial costs to produce (Zahavi 1975). These signals are typically honest-reliable indicators of the unobservable traits; for individuals without the relevant unobservable traits cannot afford to produce those signals. Paradigm examples include the flamboyant tail of a male peacock, stotting-the high jumping of a gazelle when spotting cheetahs, and the begging behavior of chicks. In each case, individuals without the underlying traits would not benefit from producing the signals. A less than strong and agile male peacock would become easy prey when dragging around such an obvious attraction (Zahavi 1975). A gazelle that cannot run away sufficiently fast would better start running instead of stotting (Alcock and Rubenstein 2019). A less than hungry chick would not benefit as much from being fed for the exhausting intense begging (J. M. Smith and Harper 2003). Since the "handicap"-the self-imposed cost-is difficult to fake, it prevents dishonesty. Costly signals are thus reliable indicators of unobservable traits. Signaling theory is applicable to the social context, and many have employed the notion of costly signals to explain social interactions, for instance, on getting a higher education to look more competitive on the job market even if the education is irrelevant to the job (Spence 1973), on donation and pro-sociality signaling (Brokensha et al. 2016), on warranty and the quality of the product (Cowen and Tabarrok 2015), and on the existence and persistence of certain inefficient honor norms and honor violence (Thrasher and Handfield 2018), just to name a few. My aim here is to provide an account of social signaling that explains how civil disobedience works. The gist is that civil disobedience is a reliable indicator of issues the society should pay more attention to because it is costly, and it is costly primarily because it is punished. As previously mentioned, even liberal democratic societies suffer from nontrivial flaws in their systems. While liberal democratic societies have many mechanisms to detect 13 these flaws, and incorporate several legal channels for citizens to bring forth their cases, a number of these flaws remain unresolved by any normal methods. There are a handful of explanations for such failures. One plausible explanation, which is also the assumption I make in this paper, is that while we are somewhat inclined to act morally when we can easily see what morality demands, we are quite good at arranging our surroundings such that we do not see what morality demands (Anderson 2010; Dana et al. 2007; Young 2002). Civil disobedience breaches this barrier of (willful) ignorance, draws attention to important issues, and thus facilitates political change. Civil disobedience is by no means the only channel to do so. People voice their concerns through a variety of methods. We can call or write to our local politicians. We can like posts or participate in polls on social media. We can attend rallies and join legal protests. While it may seem good that we have such a variety of options, all these different channels of political participation also produce a fair amount of "noise:" what has been raised may not deserve the attention of the public, but might be trivial concerns that can wait or should be entirely ignored. Afterall, nothing prevents those who have trivial or even objectionable demands from employing these methods. Furthermore, public attention may be viewed as a scarce resource different groups compete to secure (Markovits 2005; W. Smith 2013). While the public may be inclined to focus their attention on urgent and significant issues, they do not display the competence to distinguish between the important and trivial cases that are brought forward through the variety of channels. As a costly signal, civil disobedience stands out, as Leslie G. Jacobs (1998) puts it, as a "moral shout" among all the noise. Civil disobedience is publicly and deliberately illegal, and many of the disobedients submit themselves to punishment as part of the movement. In this way they demonstrate a seriousness and sincerity other less costly means of political participation lack. To those who engage in civil disobedience, their case is so important, and furthermore so reasonable, that making the case is worth the costs incurred. They are confident 14 enough that once they draw the attention of the public, there are reasonable prospects that others will take them seriously and consider their pleadings so that their self-sacrifice will not be in vain. In contrast, those who lack the relevant seriousness and sincerity would be unwilling to incur significant costs to make their case. The costs would not be worth it for them, either because their case would be quickly dismissed by the public upon closer scrutiny, or because even if the action happens to bring about the social change they desire, the change itself is not significant enough to outweigh what they have suffered. There are many ways to produce costly social signals. The previously mentioned donation, or probably simply spending a large amount of money to purchase advertisement may be to some extent effective. However, there is something special about, though not unique to, civil disobedience. Unlike spending, which can be costly to most of us but insignificant to the affluent, there is something more equal about incurring costs in domains core to human functioning. Regardless of their social or economic status, individuals more or less value their own health, life, and freedom equally. It is thus easy to feel how much one has sacrificed when one willingly gives up these interests. Furthermore, these interests are for the most part non-transferable. Unlike incurring monetary costs, with (probably) rare exceptions, no one can sponsor or reimburse the health, life, or freedom of others. This makes the self-sacrifice more salient. Just like hunger strikes and in very extreme cases self-immolation, which incur costs by sacrificing one's health and life (and not to mention the excruciating pain suffered), civil disobedience incurs cost by sacrificing one's freedom by being jailed and sometimes risking one's own life when performed in more oppressive regimes. Civil disobedients incur certain costs, while others without the relevant sincerity and seriousness steer clear of these costs. By speaking in ways others are unwilling to speak, this costly social signal serves as reliable indicators for the public to more easily identify what it should pay attention to. Thus, civil disobedience is effective by being reliable, reliable by being costly, and costly by being punished. 15 This analysis leads us to a serious concern. The effectiveness of civil disobedience as a social signal hinges upon being punished. Without punishment, civil disobedience can no longer serve as a costly social signal. Without being able to serve as a costly social signal, its reliability is greatly diminished, and can no longer achieve the function of the "moral shout" that brings worthwhile issues to the attention of the public. Thus, if we intend to refrain from treating civil disobedients unjustly by refusing to punish them, we might actually be doing them a disfavor. We would effectively disarm social struggles by rendering an otherwise effective means of protest ineffective. As a matter of fact, ignoring and refusing to arrest activists is a known strategy government agents employ to trivialize social movements, and "[p]erhaps only those who have tried unsuccessfully to get arrested can know how frustrating this tactic can be" (Edmundson 2007: 58). (The Suffragettes, for example, had to attack and spit at the police to provoke arrest (Crawford 2003).) While in comparison, we may have drastically different intentions when we advocate against punishment, we may be in effect trivializing civil disobedience the same way oppressive government agents refuse to arrest protestors and thereby deny protestors the dramatical effect they seek. To further the problem, rendering civil disobedience ineffective is highly undesirable. Civil disobedience strikes a sweet spot by providing a channel to individuals whose concerns were ignored to voice their concerns, so that they will not have to engage in something more drastic and disruptive. Should we shut down this channel, we would be putting those in need in a difficult position: should they engaging in something more costly to themselves? That is hardly attractive to the oppressed. Should they resort to more drastic and disruptive activities? There may be moral concerns on whether this is acceptable; and even if it is, it seems much less desirable compared to less harmful measures. Should they simply give up and remain silent? That would leave serious flaws in the society unresolved and demanding the oppressed to continue to endure. 16 In all, instead of arriving at a wonderful picture where justice simply prevails, by adhering to the demands of justice and refraining from punishing civil disobedience, we inevitably arrive at a rather grim picture. Civil disobedience, an important means of social struggle, is debilitated by our attempt to fulfil an important requirement of justice. 2.2 Is punishment necessary for effectiveness? It may be objected that I have sketched this grim picture too quickly. Perhaps civil disobedience works differently from what my costly social signal account describes. Here I will consider two alternative possibilities: civil disobedience may work but not as a costly signal; and civil disobedience may still be costly even without actually being punished due to the costs of trial, arrest, the risk of punishment, and penalties. 2.2.1 Effective without costs There may be an alternative story of how civil disobedience works, one that has nothing to do with costs. Perhaps civil disobedience is effective because it draws sufficient attention to, and forces the public to consider, previously ignored facts or points of views. Civil disobedience, after all, is an illegal protest, and is thus quite different from legal protests. Perhaps the illegality alone suffices to make the movement salient enough. Civil disobedience is also disruptive. It sometimes blocks the traffic of the busiest intersections. It sometimes occupies the central business districts, governmental buildings, or museums and other tourist attractions. These acts are difficult to ignore, will often attract a fair amount of media coverage, and disobedients can take advantage of these opportunities to advertise their cause. Furthermore, civil disobedience sometimes does attract a fair number of participants. The sheer numbers represent the bargaining power the movement has, and perhaps it is the coercive force the numbers represent that brings about social change. The mere illegality and the disruption may indeed contribute to the effectiveness of civil disobedience. The number of participants may also help. Granted, these factors seem to be insufficient to properly explain the success of civil disobedience. Illegality and disruption 17 generate publicity, but publicity alone does not seem to be a decisive factor; otherwise advertisement campaigns that bombard the public with certain messages would probably suffice, and there will be no need for large-scale demonstrations. Furthermore, in order to mobilize a large enough crowd, civil disobedience needs to first get enough people on board. How that is achieved requires additional explanation. If we leave the sincerity and seriousness demonstrated by the acceptance of punishment out of the picture, it will be more difficult to explain how civil disobedience is taken seriously by the public instead of being dismissed as another noise in the forum. 2.2.2 Costly without punishment: arrest and trial The costs associated with engaging in illegal activities are not exhausted by punishment. Riot police are often armed with batons, tear gas, pepper spray, rubble bullets, and water cannons. The arrest disobedients go through is often quite brutal. Standing trial is time consuming. It can also be extremely burdensome (financially and otherwise) for those who lack proper legal resources. In addition, the uncertainty that lingers through the trial is also quite depressing. Furthermore, in certain cases where civil disobedients evade legal punishment, the costs they incur may even surpass those who undergo legal punishment, as in the case of Edward Snowden, where fleeing the country, being branded a "traitor," and living the life of an exile is sufficiently costly.4 Thus the objection: even without punishment, civil disobedience can still be costly enough to be a costly signal. However, a few things need to be taken into consideration. First, however costly arrest and trial may be, punishment in addition to arrest and trial is always more costly than mere arrest and trial. Furthermore, in comparison, punishment is normally the most significant portion of the costs. By removing the most significant portion of the costs, there is an unignorable risk that the costs would be insufficient for civil disobedience to be a costly signal that 4 There is disagreement on whether whistleblowing in general, or the case of Edward Snowden in particular, counts as civil disobedience (Boot 2019; Delmas 2015; Scheuerman 2014). 18 demonstrates sincerity and seriousness. Even if civil disobedience is not thereby rendered completely ineffective, it is surely compromised. Second, remember that the conclusions we have arrived at through examining the theories of punishment is that civil disobedience, if justified, ought not to be punished. This is to establish a norm that civil disobedience, if justified, will not be punished. If we institutionalize this norm, then however costly arrest and trial actually are, they will just seem like mere routines: civil disobedients are arrested and tried with knowledge that they will not be punished. This trivializes the whole act, and will make it harder for civil disobedience to be taken seriously. Third, it may well be that without punishment civil disobedience is still sufficiently costly, because arrest and trial can be extremely costly. However, brutal arrest and overly burdensome trial are unjust. If our solution to the effectiveness of civil disobedience hinges on these unjust practices, we will be solving one problem by creating another one. To avoid the undesirable consequences of adhering to a requirement of justice, we flout another requirement. Fourth, the case of Snowden may be more an exception. He would have faced the charges under the Espionage Act, which would most likely land him in prison for at least 30 years, should he have not chosen to flee. The severity of the potential sentences at least partially explains his choice to flee. But in choosing exile, he also suffered extremely burdensome personal costs. However, as some (Delmas 2015; Scheuerman 2014) have argued, his act of whistleblowing was justified, and the punishment he would have faced would be unjust. If the norm of not punishing justified acts of civil disobedience were strictly adhered to, he would not have to face the severe unjust punishment, and may not have needed to flee. Thus, while it is quite true that Snowden did incur severe costs without punishment, the costs he would have suffered if the state adhered to the demands of justice-in this case refraining from punishing him-would be significantly different, and presumably much lower. 19 2.2.3 Costly without punishment: the risk of punishment In a society where civil disobedience is normally punished, those who engage in civil disobedience will expect to face punishment. Even if some instances of civil disobedience are not punished because they are justified, this expectation will still remain. Thus, civil disobedience will still be costly without actual punishment, as the risk of being punished is a high enough cost. At first glance, this might seem plausible. Indeed, if we know that other instances of civil disobedience will be punished, and if it's in our power to decide whether a particular instance of justified civil disobedience is to be punished, we should rule against punishment. The disobedients have successfully demonstrated their sincerity and seriousness when they did what they did in the face of the risk of punishment. However, we are talking about institutionalizing the treatment of civil disobedience. If we establish a norm that civil disobedience, if justified, is not to be punished, then insofar as those who engage in civil disobedience are confident that they will be judged as justly breaching the law, no expectations of being punished will remain. The risk of punishment is thus no more, and the cost is thereby removed. It might be thought that there are often reasonable disagreements on whether any particular instance of civil disobedience is justified, and even out of good faith the court can make mistakes and wrongfully punish justified civil disobedience. Thus, we can at most imperfectly follow the norm that civil disobedience, if justified, is not punished. Thus, there will always be false positives, and there will always be the risk of punishment. We can admit that there will always be the risk of punishment. However, the relevant consideration is how severe the risk is. The more the court can reliably identify justified instances of civil disobedience, the lower the risk. If the court can generally successfully identify and refrain from punishing justified civil disobedience, even if occasionally there are some errors, the expectation of punishment may be too low for civil disobedience to serve as 20 a costly signal. On the other hand, if the court constantly judges justified civil disobedience as unjustified and proceeds to punish, the risk of punishment may indeed suffice for civil disobedience to serve as a costly social signal. However, we may question whether the practice of the court is just. Given that there are reasonable disagreements, the court ought to know that punishing what it sees as unjustified civil disobedience runs a significant risk of punishing those not liable to be punished. The more the court is committed to refraining from punishing those not liable to be punished, the more it will be reluctant to punish borderline cases. This tendency will again lower the risk of punishment, and undermine civil disobedience's ability to serve as a costly social signal. Thus, the choice is again to run the risk of perpetrating injustice or to undermine civil disobedience. 2.2.4 Costly without punishment: penalties Punishment may not be the appropriate response to civil disobedience. This is because, in part, as earlier argued, punishment necessarily conveys blame. This has led some to consider imposing penalties on civil disobedience instead (Lefkowitz 2007, 2018; W. Smith 2013).5 There are many forms of penalties, e.g. temporary incarceration, community services, and, of course, fines. Here I will focus on the last possibility, as I don't see how the first two can be remotely costly enough to allow civil disobedience to effectively serve as a costly signal. However, fines may seem to be a genuine possibility. David Lefkowitz (2018) writes, "fines must be set high enough to impose a genuine sacrifice for those who carry out acts of public disobedience. At the same time, they should not be set so high that they discourage almost any protest at all" (277).6 How does this possibility fare? 5 Some theorists argue that regardless of whether civil disobedience is justified, it ought not to be punished. Lefkowitz and Smith, as cited in the main text, however, argue that it is permissible to impose a fine on civil disobedients. I draw from this literature and consider whether fines can save civil disobedience. I will engage with the right to civil disobedience near the end of this paper. 6 I would like to thank an anonymous referee for pointing out this possibility. 21 Similar to other forms of penalties, we may question whether fines can be sufficiently costly. A relatively low fine that can be easily paid off certainly doesn't suffice. On the other hand, if the state imposes fines that are as costly as the punishment civil disobedience would otherwise incur, then the severity of the fine may make the imposition unjust. So here we face a practical difficulty: can we genuinely strike a balance? It may be possible, but here are four further obstacles against the very idea of fining civil disobedience. First, as previously mentioned, monetary costs may be burdensome to some, but near costless to the affluent. We may then worry that a fixed fine will in effect make civil disobedience a luxury affordable only by the most advantaged. Lefkowitz (2018) indeed has considered this very possibility when defending fining civil disobedience, and proposes that "[t]his may require calculating fines as a percentage of an individual's annual income or net worth" (fn. 9). A fine indexed to wealth or income may be a genuine possibility. However, it leaves us with two problems. First, we need a concrete policy proposal to evaluate the feasibility of this possibility. Second, and more importantly, associating civil disobedience with money will create additional complications, or so I shall argue. Second, fines can be crowdfunded. This by itself may be unproblematic. Incurring a fine through civil disobedience, but then being reimbursed by sympathetic citizens may simply show that one's action is widely endorsed by the general public. However, the affluent may also singlehandedly sponsor many civil disobedients, or even hire mercenaries to disobey. This will really mess up the reliability of the costly signals of fines. The willingness to incur a fine no longer indicates sincere moral convictions, because the fine can be easily paid off by someone who lacks the relevant sincerity and seriousness. The willingness to engage in civil disobedience may then become more an indicator of the ability to attract external funding. Third, fines may seem more a fee (Holmes Jr 2009), and we need to worry about what Michael Sandel (2012) calls "corruption:" putting price tags on things that were otherwise 22 good degrades or at least alters their value. With regard to civil disobedience, if it can be paid off, then it seems to be an act that is associated with monetary value. There is, then, a genuine risk that civil disobedience becomes a commodity. To be somewhat uncharitable, the serious act of engaging in civil disobedience is, at least from the perspective of a bystander, indistinguishable from paying to enter a theme park. This altered perception of civil disobedience may be one of the worst things that can happen to civil disobedients. Fourth, and perhaps because of the two previous concerns, the civil disobedient may refuse to pay the fine. The refusal to pay itself may even be a further act of civil disobedience, as it can be performed as a public act of protest. We will then need to spell out whether the refusal to pay is a justified act of civil disobedience. I contend that it can be. If the original act of civil disobedience was justified, and paying the fine would undermine the communicative effort of civil disobedience, then the civil disobedient must refuse the fine. We need, then, decide whether we are to punish or penalise. The former is unjust. The latter leads us in circles. 3. Leveraging injustice Civil disobedience is effective insofar as it serves as a costly signal, and can serve as a costly signal mainly because it is punished. However, punishing justified civil disobedience is morally unacceptable. Furthermore, by treating civil disobedience justly and refraining from punishing justified instances of civil disobedience, the state runs the risk of undermining the effectiveness of civil disobedience. We may have to conclude that this is an unfortunate and unavoidable consequence of adhering to the demands of justice. By spelling out this unfortunate and unavoidable consequence, we may have also arrived at a position to better understand civil disobedience and its paradoxical nature. Here, a key feature of civil disobedience is revealed. Distinct from other types of costly social signals such as hunger strikes and self-immolation, civil disobedience functions not only by attempting to highlight the fact that one has been treated unjustly through bearing 23 significant costs, but come to bear those costs through being unjustly punished. While it is uncontroversial that it is extremely unjust that some have to go through the suffering and pain of hunger strikes or self-immolation to bring forth their case, it is not clear that in virtue of being, for the lack of a better term, the object of hunger strikes or self-immolation, one suffers additional injustice. In these cases of self-harm, one is also the subject issuing the harm. In contrast, to be the object of unjust punishment is to suffer from additional injustice. But what's astonishing about civil disobedience is that the additional injustice disobedients suffer fuels their communicative force, or to say, amplifies the volume of the "moral shout." In short, justified civil disobedience leverages the punitive injustice it suffers into communicative force. Of course, civil disobedience may not be unique in terms of leveraging injustice. When it comes to revolutions and nonviolent resistances, the prospects of success may increase when governments resort to indiscriminate violence. This is because indiscriminate violence sometimes helps rebels overcome a collective action problem on recruiting: not participating is normally safer than participating in a revolution, but when the government resorts to indiscriminate violence, not participating is no longer safer; in contrast, given that the rebels may selectively provide protection and other resources, participating becomes more prudent than not participating (Kalyvas and Kocher 2007). Or it may be that indiscriminate violence sparks moral outrage that mobilizes otherwise apathetic citizens (Chenoweth and Stephan 2011; Smithey and Kurtz 2018). Regardless, leveraging injustice is nevertheless a distinctive feature of civil disobedience, and will lead to two paradoxical implications. The first is that the moral status of civil disobedience and of its punishment may become unstable. Civil disobedience is illegal. Civil disobedience is disruptive, and imposes costs on others against their will. Civil disobedience may be justified despite these apparent wrong making features when a particular instance has a reasonable prospect of success, either to bring about much needed social change or at least successfully raise awareness about 24 certain plights. When there's no prospects of achieving either, there seems to be no clear way how civil disobedience can be justified, and engaging in civil disobedience is engaging in pointless wrongdoing. Not punishing civil disobedience debilitates civil disobedience, as it can no longer achieve anything through being a costly signal. Thus, in a society where it has been established that justified civil disobedience is not to be punished, engaging in civil disobedience is wrong due to futility. Engaging in civil disobedience ceases to be admirable, regardless of how important and just the cause is. When there is no risk of any punishment, there is insignificant self-sacrifice involved, and disobedients can no longer leverage injustice to boost their communicative force. Individuals who genuinely care about bringing forth social change may have to resort to something else, something that works. Here, civil disobedience is rendered misguided and simply wrong. However, and here's the paradoxical part, once civil disobedience is rendered ineffective, misguided, and thus simply wrong, punishing civil disobedience no longer remains indisputably unjust. The state may still lack the moral standing to punish, but punishing futile civil disobedience would no longer be punishing those who have not engaged in wrongdoing. Thus, it may become permissible to punish civil disobedience, insofar as there is some way to circumvent the problem of standing, say by issuing the "guilty but civilly disobedient" (GBCD) verdict. By not punishing justified civil disobedience because the punishment would be unjust, the state can make it the case that punishing civil disobedience is no longer unjust, as the otherwise justified civil disobedience becomes futile and thus wrong. Thus, by adhering to a requirement of justice, the state circumvents the requirement. However, once it is no longer unjust to punish civil disobedience, and should the state act accordingly and adopt a readiness to punish civil disobedience, the moral status of civil disobedience may alter yet again. Once the expectation of punishment is restored, civil disobedience can again serve as a costly signal, and the effectiveness of civil disobedience is 25 restored. In scenarios where futility is the only factor that renders a particular instance of civil disobedience unjustified, that instance now becomes justified. Thus, the appropriate response to an unjustified act of civil disobedience makes the otherwise unjustified act justified. However, once it is again justified to engage in civil disobedience, punishment becomes unjust. Adhering to the judgment that punishment becomes unjust, civil disobedience becomes unjustified, and then punishment becomes just, and adhering to that, civil disobedience becomes justified, and so on and so forth. We thereby arrive at two instabilities: whether it is just to punish civil disobedience, and whether civil disobedience is justified. This is the first paradoxical implication of civil disobedience leveraging injustice, and it occurs only and precisely when the state intends to adhere to the demand of justice regarding the punishment of civil disobedience. The major upshot of these instabilities is that under specific circumstances, the requirements of justice may generate an impossibility. If, the state is to punish all unjustified civil disobedience, and refrain from punishing all justified civil disobedience, then when the only factor determining whether a particular instance of civil disobedience is justified is whether it is punished, the state is left with no acceptable course of action. It will either have to choose between punishing justified civil disobedience, which is made justified by punishment, or not punishing unjustified civil disobedience, which is made unjustified by withholding punishment. This shows that intuitively plausible requirements of justice regarding punishing civil disobedience can't jointly hold.7 The second paradoxical implication is that by adhering to the requirement of justice with regard to punishing civil disobedience, the state makes room for more radical protests. This may be somewhat unexpected. It may be intuitive that when the state sinks lower on the 7 Those who endorse a moral right to civil disobedience can avoid this impossibility, but at the cost of rendering all civil disobedience ineffective. This will make their account more vulnerable to the second paradoxical implication. 26 scales of justice, more radical measures are warranted. Rawls, for instance, acknowledges that if there were to be "outrageous violation of equal liberty, say by forbidding the religion of a weak and defenseless minority...even civil disobedience might be much too mild" (328). Furthermore, when the state improves its standing by adhering to more requirements of justice, it may regain its political legitimacy (Galoob and Winter 2019). In contrast, the thought that the state can turn drastic measures into appropriate options by adhering to certain requirements of justice just seems incorrect.8 But here's how. Recall that civil disobedience is called for when there are some nontrivial flaws in the system that need to be fixed. These flaws may include, as Rawls (1999) points out, severe violations of basic liberties or of fair and equal opportunity. Or they may include issues that spring from globalization (Markovits 2005), war, nuclear weapons, and the preservation of environmental goods (W. Smith 2011), and animal rights (Celikates 2016b), just to name a few. Civil disobedience serves as the appropriate response to these various issues when nothing short of civil disobedience has reasonable prospects of solving them. What would happen if civil disobedience proves to be futile? There are a number of possibilities. The first possibility is that there's an impasse. It is unfortunate that civil disobedience cannot solve whatever problem that needs to be solved, and it just happens that nothing else can do the job. This possibility is not particular interesting. It's just something unfortunate if it ever occurs. The second possibility is that there's a moral impasse. That is to say, while there may be ways to achieve the same or similar goals, those ways are morally prohibited. Genuine moral impasses in other contexts include, for instance, when the only means that may 8 It seems possible to argue that the state does not become more just merely by adhering to particular requirements of justice. Estlund (2019, Ch. 14) points out that piecemeal improvements may sometimes lead to something worse, and to suppose that this is never the case commits what he calls "the fallacy of approximation." This is compatible with my claim that the state can make uncivil disobedience permissible by adhering to a demand of justice, and the fallacy of approximation may help to make my claim more intuitive. 27 frustrate a minor unjust aggression is to resort to lethal force. To kill someone when that person is about to slap you on the face for no good reason is wrong even if killing is the only way to prevent being slapped on the face. This is because while slapping you on the face is morally wrong, the disvalue of killing even an unjust aggressor is disproportionate to the value promoted by preventing the slap. With regard to debilitating civil disobedience, it may be that while there are more drastic measures that can solve whatever that needs to be solved, none of them are morally permissible. I contend that this will not too often be the case, as more likely at least one of the following two possibilities may hold. Third, it may be that there are other costly signals one can adopt. There are different forms of self-harm, and some are extremely dramatic. Self-immolation as a form of protest has been adopted in various regions including Vietnam (Murray Yang 2011), Tibet (WhalenBridge 2015), and Australia's refugee camps in Nauru.9 I am not suggesting that costly signals in the form of self-harm are always effective. Instead, I am merely suggesting that they may sometimes be as effective as certain instances of civil disobedience in terms of speaking in ways individuals without the relevant sincerity and seriousness are unwilling to speak. In addition, I am not suggesting that this is in any way a good option. It is extremely unfortunate that the oppressed sometimes can only voice their concerns by bearing extreme costs. Should there be other available options, those options would most likely be preferable. Being too ready to encourage self-immolation as if it were fireworks is irresponsible if not outright evil. The fourth possibility is that activities that fall short of civil disobedience may become morally permissible. Civil disobedience, if available, is permissible if the injustice it aims to address is severe enough, and furthermore when it is the last resort in the sense that legal channels prove to be futile or unable to respond in time. More simply, civil disobedience is permissible when proportionate and necessary. Now, if civil disobedience is rendered futile, 9 Doherty, B. & Davidson, H. (3 May 2016). Self-immolation: desperate protests against Australia's detention regime. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/australianews/2016/may/03/asylum-seekers-set-themselves-alight-nauru 28 it is natural to ask what else works, and whether those options that work fall within the boundaries of proportionality. These options, if they genuinely exist, first, will not depend on being punished for their effectiveness, and second, may consist in flouting one or several norms of civil disobedience by being "covert, evasive, anonymous, violent, or deliberately offensive" (Delmas 2018: 17), and may be rightly labeled uncivil disobedience. To determine whether such activities are proportionate, we need to see how much costs or harms they inflict on others, how severe the injustice they aim to prevent is. I admit that it is not impossible that the severity of the injustice in question just happens to be severe enough to make civil disobedience proportionate but anything beyond civil disobedience disproportionate. It may be possible, but highly unlikely: it would be an odd coincident that all sorts of different possible injustices that can be fixed by justified civil disobedience are all unjust to the exact same degree. Furthermore, consider the injustices civil disobedience has targeted in the past and are aiming to fix now: racial segregation, disenfranchisement, extreme social and economic inequality, and the climate crisis, just to name a few. Given the scale and severity of these issues, one may rightly wonder why nothing beyond civil disobedience can ever be permissible.10 In sum, a core feature of civil disobedience is that it functions primarily by leveraging injustice. This core feature leads to two unexpected and even paradoxical implications. First, the moral status of civil disobedience and its punishment becomes unstable insofar as the state intends to punish all and only the instances of unjustified civil disobedience. This leads to an impossibility where under specific circumstances, simply no course of action with regard to punishing civil disobedience is morally acceptable. Second, the state's reaction to civil disobedience may create room for uncivil disobedience. This can happen not just when the 10 Some may be tempted to insist that activities that fall short of the standards of civil disobedience is never permissible. However, given that arguments have been made on how uncivil disobedience can be justified (see, for example Delmas 2018; Lai 2019), one may need to show how all arguments for uncivil disobedience fail to maintain this categorical ban on uncivil disobedience. 29 state responds unjustly and harshly to civil disobedience, but also when the state adheres to a demand of justice and refuses to punish civil disobedience. In the latter case, by rendering civil disobedience futile, the state makes other options potentially justifiable. 4. The "irrespectability" of the right to civil disobedience Some support a right to civil disobedience. Brownlee (2012), for instance, holds that this right is grounded on one's right to conscience. She further argues that in virtue of possessing this right, the state has a duty to refrain from interfering with civil disobedience. This duty implies that neither punishment nor penalties are morally acceptable, as either violates the right to civil disobedience. In contrast, Lefkowitz (2007, 2018) argues that civil disobedience ought not to be punished, but may be permissibly penalized. This is, in part, to ensure that civil disobedience isn't carried out frivolously. William Smith (2013) further points out an important reason to issue the fine: it indicates the state's acknowledgment that civil disobedience has been engaged in. I do not intend to weigh in. Instead, I will simply spell out a troublesome implication my costly signal account has on this right. Now, I have already argued that there are substantial obstacles against fining civil disobedience (in 2.2.4). Whether these obstacles can be overcome depends on whether feasible concrete options are proposed in the future, but without actually seeing these proposals, I think it better to set aside the possibility of fines, at least for the moment. So, we are again left with two options, to punish, or not to punish civil disobedience. If there indeed is a right to civil disobedience, then punishing civil disobedience is unjust, as it fails to respect this right. However, if my account of costly signals is plausible, then not punishing civil disobedience also fails to respect the right to civil disobedience: in virtue of not punishing, the state undermines civil disobedience, and makes the possession of this right utterly meaningless. In short, neither punishing nor not punishing civil disobedience respects the right to civil disobedience. If the right to civil disobedience is a genuine right, then, it is an "irrespectable" right. Regardless of what the state does, it fails to respect that right. 30 Conclusion I have argued that punishing justified civil disobedience is unjust. It goes against all the plausible ends of punishment, and there's nothing special about civil disobedience that makes punishing justified civil disobedience morally unproblematic. However, should we follow this requirement of justice and refrain from punishing justified civil disobedience, we will create an unfortunate consequence: civil disobedience is rendered futile. This is because civil disobedience is most effective as a costly social signal, and it is costly through being punished. Through understanding the unjust nature of punishing justified civil disobedience, we arrive at a better understanding of civil disobedience: civil disobedients leverage the punitive injustice they suffer to amplify their communicative force. This fact points us to two paradoxical implications: first, the moral status of civil disobedience and its punishment may become unstable, and the attempt to refrain from punishing all and only all justified civil disobedience undermines itself by generating an impossibility; second by adhering to a demand of justice, namely, not punishing justified civil disobedience, the state can create room for uncivil disobedience. Acknowledgements I would like to thank Nicholas Southwood, Philip Pettit, Seth Lazar, Justin Bruner, Lachlan Umbers, Robert Kirby, Hanti Lin, Chad Lee-Stronach, Robert Goodin, Kimberley Brownlee, William Smith, Ko-Hung Kuan, and the audience of my thesis proposal review at the Australian National University in 2015 for extremely useful comments and suggestions. I would also like to pay respect to the participants of the Sunflower Movement, the mass civil disobedience that occurred in Taiwan in 2014, especially to those who fell victim to unchecked police brutality. 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Interdiscursive Readings in Cultural Consumer Research Interdiscursive Readings in Cultural Consumer Research By George Rossolatos Interdiscursive Readings in Cultural Consumer Research By George Rossolatos This book first published 2018 Cambridge Scholars Publishing Lady Stephenson Library, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2PA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2018 by George Rossolatos All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-5275-1372-6 ISBN (13): 978-1-5275-1372-3 TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures............................................................................................ vii List of Tables ............................................................................................ viii Chapter One ................................................................................................. 1 Inter-Everything: Resuming the Discursive Turn in Cultural Consumer Research Consuming Experiences, Practices and Spectacles Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 58 Taking the 'Multimodal Turn' in Interpreting Consumption Experiences Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 84 Mapping Cultural Consumer Engagement in User-Generated Advertising Chapter Four ............................................................................................ 135 Consuming Thanghood: Dancing to Brand Image with Miley Cyrus Consuming Oneself and Others Chapter Five ............................................................................................ 194 Consuming the Limit: Furious Pete and the Re-Evaluation of All Values Chapter Six .............................................................................................. 219 Consuming Antinatalism in Social Media Consuming the Impossible Chapter Seven .......................................................................................... 264 Consuming the Beauty Ideal: A Critical Argumentation Approach to Skin-Care Advertising Table of Contents vi Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 306 Consumed by the Real: On Abjective Consumption and its Freaky Vicissitudes Index ........................................................................................................ 344 LIST OF FIGURES Fig.3.1. The cline of instantiation .............................................................. 94 Fig.3.2. The cline of instantiation adapted to UGA discourse ................... 94 Fig.3.3. Cline of instantiation on the planes of expression and content ..... 96 Fig.3.4. Steps in the grounded theoretical procedure ............................... 104 Fig.3.5. Example of the contents of the cline of instantiation ................ 105 Fig.3.6. Distribution (%) of actor types in the UGA corpus .................... 112 Fig.3.7. Distribution (%) of settings in the UGA corpus ......................... 112 Fig.3.8. Axial coding of the UGA corpus against the conventionality/ counterfactuality dimensions ..................................................... 114 Fig.3.9. Distribution (%) of genres in the UGA corpus ........................... 116 Fig.3.10. Distribution (%) of cultural domains in the UGA corpus ......... 117 Fig.3.11. MCA output (input variables: discursive order, discursive type and genre) .......................................................................... 120 Fig.4.1. Segmentation of Miley Cyrus's video-clip with atlas.ti ............. 148 Fig.4.2. List with the individual filmic segments of 'Do my thang' (atlas.ti output) .......................................................................... 150 Fig.4.3. Atlas.ti network view from a single segment comprising semiotic resources, codes, modes and interactions between modes ......... 152 Fig.4.4. Step-by-step process for renaming (editing) logical relations on an intra-segment level: Step 1 ............................................... 153 Fig.4.5. Step-by-step process for renaming (editing) logical relations on an intra-segment level: Step 2 ............................................... 154 Fig.4.6. Step-by-step process for renaming (editing) logical relations on an intra-segment level: Step 3 ............................................... 155 Fig.6.1. The atlas.ti workbench ............................................................... 231 Fig.6.2. Coding procedure ....................................................................... 233 Fig.6.3. Coding scheme ........................................................................... 235 Fig.6.4. Memos by primary documents ................................................... 237 Fig.6.5. Categorizing individual codes under code families .................... 238 Fig.6.6. Codes co-occurrence table I ....................................................... 240 Fig.6.7. Codes co-occurrence table II ...................................................... 241 Fig.6.8. Atlas.ti quantitative output: Codes' frequency distribution .......... 242 LIST OF TABLES Table 3.1. Analysis and synthesis methods employed in this study ........ 102 Table 3.2. Transgression as dominant representation of the brand's discourse ................................................................................ 121 Table 4.1. Multimodal analysis grid for extrapolating the latent brand image of 'Do my thang' ......................................................... 157 Table 4.2. Coding scheme of the 'Do my thang' live video .................... 172 Table 5.1. Furious Pete's world tour destinations ................................... 201 Table 6.1. The main arguments of antinatalism ....................................... 225 Table 6.2. Discourse strategies employed by the Facebook antinatalist group members in their posts and comments ......................... 245 Table 7.1. The dominant syllogistic structure of the anti-ageing ad corpus .................................................................................... 277 Table 7.2. Revlon's age defying argumentation from values structure ... 280 Table 8.1. The corpus of "Freaky Eaters" and "My Strange Addiction" episodes employed in this study ............................................ 325 Table 8.2. Abjective consumption cases .................................................. 332 Table 8.3. The discursive complexes and the respective Lacanian Orders whereby abjective consumption is framed by different social groups .................................................................................... 335 CHAPTER ONE INTER-EVERYTHING: RESUMING THE DISCURSIVE TURN IN CULTURAL CONSUMER RESEARCH Introduction The marketing theoretical landscape of the 21st C. is marked by unparalleled fragmentation, cross-disciplinary fermentation and the transpiring of culturally oriented consumer research as multiple interpretive avenues. Within this landscape, cultural phenomena are directly impacted by aspects of consumption (Featherstone, 2007), and vice versa, consumptive phenomena are approached as inextricably linked with integral aspects of cultural theorizing. This book has been edified on the fundamental premise that consumptive reality is first and foremost situated in a cultural milieu and that this milieu is essentially interdiscursive. The cultural turn in consumer research that has been thriving over the past thirty years is a mere attestation to a suppressed presupposition by positivistically inclined, ego-centric research: cultural context lies at the heart of consumption related inquiry and may account for the similarities in individual consumption related response, immersion, evaluation patterns. Consumers are not hard-wired in their 'brains' to perceive of cultural reality in similar ways, but similarities in elicited perceptions resound more or less uniform habituses as aspectsof-seeing, perception and evaluation dispositions that are proportionate to common enculturation patterns. These quasi-deterministic habituses as structured structuring structures, in Bourdieu's words, are far from being identical to an objective Lifeworld that turned out to be Husserlian egocentric phenomenology's thorniest point, as well as an insurmountable quandary in Schutz's social phenomenological turn that inherited Husserl's ego-centric vantage point (Rossolatos, 2017b). Ego-centric or psychologist perspectives have also spawned sci-fi metaphors such as the 'talking heads' hypothesis in lieu of scientific explanations. But, more Chapter One 2 aptly, the former was smoothly superseded by Heideggerian social ontology that posited 'everyday practices' at the heart of inquiry into the question of Being, as a nexus of modes-of-Being whereby individuals (Daseins or social actors who are 'there') comport themselves in relationship to their potentiality horizon. This nexus as a hyper-space of social practices was also evoked by Schatzki (2002) while taking the so-called praxiological turn that has garnered a sizeable trail of empirical applications. In fact, if I were requested to identify the second dominant trend in cultural and by implication in cultural consumer research, this would bear the catch-all phrase 'inter-everything'. More concretely, I am referring to the Big Four perspectives of multimodality (Kress & van Leeuwen, 2001) or intermodality, also comprising the term intersemiosis (Liu & O'Halloran 2009), as well as the Barthesian antecedent of synaesthesia, interdiscursivity (Bhatia, 2010, 2014), transmediality (or intermediality; Jenkins, 2006; Kurtz et al., 2016; or remediation; Prior & Hengst, 2010) and intertextuality (Kristeva, 1980; Plett, 1991; Allen, 2000; van Zoonen, 2017). In the following pages I turn backwards by 'bracketing' the praxiological turn, while treating its key tenets as fragments of a slowly transitioning kaleidoscopic movement, rather than as a rupture with preceding theories of cultural practices, such as those offered by Foucault and Bourdieu. The main objective is to offer an outline of interdiscursivity as an integrative platform that may accommodate the Big 4 under its auspices. The propounded integrative approach to interdiscursivity calls for a return to Foucault. This return is historically situated in a terrain where praxiologists are increasingly challenging Foucault's discursivity in favor of a paradigmatic shift that views the sociocultural domain as a nexus of self-subsistent social practices where meaning has been reduced to a fuzzy 'element' of practices. However, as will be thoroughly argued in the ensuing sections, approaching cultural consumer phenomena, analyzing, interpreting them, but also, on the reverse, facilitating culturally informed marketing planning entails effectively dimensionalizing the cultural context that shelters consumption practices. In this respect, the trumpeted post-cultural turn that was taken with the encroachment of praxiology will be critically scrutinized. This task becomes even more compelling once we take into consideration the rising importance of the experiential economy, coupled with an enhanced emphasis on immersive cultural consumer experiences and engaging sociocultural practices (see chapter 2). Immersion and engagement perhaps constitute the mantra of contemporary marketing applications (on, off, through-the-line and across the hyperreal pathways of contemporary urban geographies). At the same time, Inter-Everything 3 immersion and engagement, from a culturological point of view, are beset by increasing complexity as differentiating relevance becomes the overarching targeting criterion, rather than sedimented silos that cling onto constructs such as demographics, psychographics, and immutable personality traits. Consumers nowadays are more receptive and prone to adapt quickly to new competitive offers, leisure activities and malleable axiologies in the context of what Bauman (2007) identified as 'liquid modernity'. Liquid modernity in Bauman's sociological hermeneutics not only reflects a ubiquitous crisis of meaning, but also a permeating readiness to adapt and to shift perspectives in the face of a faster than ever before moving consumptive terrain. This is facilitated by enhanced consumer empowerment and by the elevation of co-creative instances to a background expectancy on behalf of marketers and consumers alike. The greater share of control about the meaning of consumption phenomena is allotted to the final consumer, the more the complexity of managing brand meaning in-house intensifies. Of course, the extent to which this cultural predicament may be accommodated under a descriptor that conveys vestiges of modernity, rather than (still) being symptomatic of a postmodern ethos that allegedly displays a penchant for the ephemeral, but also whether pre-modernist consumer tribal formations co-exist with both modernist and post-modernist ethotic patterns, constitute broader topics that are regularly addressed in the extant literature. Again, this enhanced complexity of the meaning of consumptive phenomena may be invoked as a suitable occasion for rendering the call for a comprehensive account of the upsurge and incessantly mounting importance of interdiscursivity's derivatives even more compelling. Why all this fuss, buzz and interminable inquisition of aspects that have been indubitably impacting all along (while remaining unaddressed) decision making, purchasing and consuming, and above all, why now? As I hope you will come to appreciate as the argumentation unfolds, in order to effectively leverage the Big 4 we must first gain an understanding of interdiscursivity, and how it may function as an integrative framework wherein these derivatives may be accommodated, if not strictly hierarchically, at least as modes-of-interdiscursivity (pace Heidegger [2001], albeit desublimated from any appeals to a univocal ground of Being). In order to get 'there', that is on the way to effecting a synthesis of 'inter-' derivatives under the rubric of interdiscursivity, the following path has been carved: The scope of cultural consumer research as field of inquiry is delimited at the outset of the argumentative journey in order to nurture a common expectancy as to what phenomena and sociocultural practices are included in this allegedly polysemous term. This outline is Chapter One 4 succeeded by a preliminary discussion of what is posited here as the inherent interdiscursivity of consumer culture. In order to appreciate the thesis for an all-encompassing interdiscursivity (with regard to the Big 4) and why it is posited as a fundamental condition of consumer culture, Foucault's original theory of discursive formations is laid out, complemented by a short description of the four methodological routes of discursive inquiry that derive from different evolutionary stages in Foucault's thinking. Subsequently, the ways whereby Foucauldian discursivity has been appropriated by key authors in the discourse analytic stream are discussed, aiming at identifying potential discrepancies and dissonances, both with regard to Foucault, as well as intra-perspectivally. The discussion's focus then turns towards the praxiological perspective with which I engage critically in favor of interdiscursivity. Finally, the proposed conceptualization of interdiscursivity is laid out and its benefits discussed for cultural consumer research and marketing practice alike. Delimiting cultural consumer research Since there is hardly any agreement on the meaning of consumption, let alone culture, delimiting the definitional scope of these terms is a prerequisite. In this book, I adopt a pan-consumptivist standpoint, meaning that any social act involving one or more products, services, spectacles, ideologies, experiences, practices may be said to constitute a consumptive act. "Raymond Williams (1976, 68) points out [that] one of the earliest uses of the term consume meant 'to destroy, to use up, to waste, to exhaust'" (in Featherstone, 2007, p.21). This definition is further elaborated in chapter 5 that explores acts of modern-day cannibalism. In the meantime, let us elucidate how this etymological detour may be of use in culturally inclined consumer research. As analyzed by Williams (1983) one of the most primordial meanings of culture consists in cultivation, namely of brute emotions and crude thoughts. As a process, culture consists of what Elias called civilizing processes whereby instincts and emotions are articulated into determinate forms. Cultural forms consist of popular arts such as music, cinema, theater, literature which have come to dominate the meaning of culture in lay terms. Nowadays, culture has become synonymous with a culture industry (Horkheimer & Adorno, 1972) that offers artefacts (e.g. DVDs) that package art forms (e.g. cinema) in distinctive modes (e.g. audiovisual), distributed through various media (e.g. online shops), as well as directly consumable spectacles (e.g. live-shows) and experiences (e.g. engagement in an online Inter-Everything 5 cultural community) that are consumed either in situ or virtually (e.g. on youtube). Culture has become intimately imbricated with consumption in a postpost-modernist milieu where consumer identity is mediated by and inscribed in the artefacts, experiences, spectacles, practices offered and enabled by a culture industry consisting of interlocking networks of mediators of cultural production. "Consumption serves as an organizing practice of and in culture. Interrogating the nature and forms of consumption is thus inseparable from cultural analysis" (Cook, 2005, p.162). The meaning of cultural practices that is adopted here encompasses both the production and consumption sides of culture, any co-creative facets in-between, but also instances where end-consumers operate as cultural intermediaries (e.g. during a Tupperware demonstrationthe case of cooking with Bimby [Truninger, 2011] or as an Avon peer-to-peer seller or as a cultural ambassador for an alcoholic drink brand). Needless to say, but for the sake of dispelling any suspicion about the contrary, no distinction is endorsed here between a presumed high-brow culture and a low-brow one or between the concept of civilization as conveyor of 'humanity's great ideals' and popular culture, as an ephemeral hub of inauthentic expressivity. It should be clarified, however, that this reflects a culturological posture and not the ubiquitous leveraging of cultural idioms, trends and forms by social groups as rules-of-etiquette and marks of distinction, as eloquently shown by Bourdieu (1984). Contemporary forms such as prosumerism (Kotler, 1986), that is endconsumers whose mastery of means of cultural production is almost as professional as that of the employees of the production side of the culture industry, facilitated by the ubiquitous availability of audiovisual data editing tools (e.g. Vimeo video-making, Instagram photo editing tools), have partially blurred the aforementioned time-hallowed divide. It should also be highlighted that I endorse the thesis for the relative autonomy of culture, especially as concerns the non-identification of culture with national cultures, as well as the appropriation of cultural logics by political ideologies and regimes (Rorty, 2007). The latter impacts directly on the way I am approaching here Foucault's discourse theory, that is strictly from a cultural analytic point of view and specifically with an intent on applying it in cultural consumer research, regardless of whether, according to Rorty, Foucault has been identified with the New American Left (Malecki, 2011). By the same token, although Lyotard was indubitably supported and perhaps thrived within a left-oriented political environment, his Postmodern Condition fuelled the imaginary of generations of media owners and producers who may hardly be identified with any leftist Chapter One 6 inclinations. The ways whereby philosophers' and other social scientists' intellectual output have been and most likely will continue to be appropriated by political ideologies are well known and include seminal figures such as Hegel and Heidegger, often with disregard to the truth of the matter. As regards disciplinary frameworks, consumer culture has been approached conceptually and methodologically through multiple perspectival lenses, most importantly via cultural studies, cultural sociology, cultural anthropology, discourse analysis, semiotics, rhetoric, psychoanalysis, but also from within the marketing discipline in the context of what has become more or less entrenched as cultural consumer theory (CCT; Arnould & Thompson, 2005; Levy, 2015). Despite appearances, these disciplinary frameworks do not follow parallel paths in their developmental trajectories, but are characterized by resourceful crossfertilizations. This polyvocal fermentation is reflected in the bespoke research designs that are adopted in the studies that appear in the chapters of this book. In social ontological terms, an act of consumption points to the consummation of its goal or its annihilation. This is akin to the metaphorical investment of orgasm in French as 'small death' (petit mort) that has been an all-time favorite in psychoanalytic theorizing. The 'petit'ness [sic] of such annihilation acts also lets shine forth, by comparison, a lurking 'greatness' that is attributable to death as such. It is the insatiability of consumptive desire as death-bound process of constant rekindling (Belk, 2004) in a libidinal semiotic economy that allows for tingeing these small acts with the dazzling whiteness of a moratorium's internal decoration. Death is employed here in an ontological sense as one's ownmost potentiality-for-Being (cf. chapter 7), rather than as a biological phenomenon. This 'great' exchangeability system also enables us to appreciate why Baudrillard identified death as the whatness lurking beneath every act of symbolic exchange, as the indeterminacy conditioning all products and determinate consumptive acts (Baudrillard, 2002). In other words, for as long as one is, he is bound to consume (even where no monetary exchange is involved). This definitional facet also sensitizes us to aspects of consumption that are systematically obliterated in myopic accounts that assume a more intuitive approach in the exploration of consumption as purchase and/or use. From a more mundanely expansive, ontical point of view, consumption may be viewed as a spectrum of acts spanning purchase, use, exchange, maintenance, repair, and disposal (Campbell, 2005), involving not just products and services, but also spectacles, experiences, practices, ideologies, Inter-Everything 7 in short anything that constitutes the outcome of cultural production and can become the 'object' for the aforementioned actions. This expansive definition constitutes a mainstay in contemporary cultural consumer research, as well as among sociologically inclined researchers who adopt an equally pan-consumptivist outlook (e.g. Campbell, 2005). This definitional avenue also suggests that cultural consumption is not equivalent to market-place consumption. Yet, cultural consumption at large is directly relevant and exerts a major impact on market-place consumption. For example, the consumption of an ideology or a belief system (as will be shown in greater detail in chapter 6) poses intangible, yet tactile (as regards its pragmatic effects) constraints on the permissible scope of consumable products and services. From a cultural consumption research point of view, this is self-explanatory insofar as culture concerns fundamentally the ascription of meaning to amorphous matter and/or indiscriminate states-of-affairs. To enculturate an object, a person or a state-of-affairs entails some sort of discursive domestication according to a belief system or its moulding according to a set of more or less stable ideas, beliefs, judgments. Culture is all about meaning and how different contexts afford to reassign meaning to the same objects (although this hermeneutically inclined presumption of 'sameness' is ontologically contestable as will be discussed in a while). In a nutshell, cultural context not only influences how consumptive acts are interpreted or semanticized in a sociocultural milieu involving situated social actors who share the same linguistic (among other modes) means for expressing meaning (also including the possibility of private languages in markets of oneor brand idiolects at their most undercoded), but is responsible for enveloping social situations within a nexus of interlocking sociocultural practices. "Consumer culture, then, does not refer to constellations of meaning emerging exclusively from the retail sector or which are evident only at the point of transaction. It is not only about those meanings produced by the producers of goods or by advertisers; yet, it cannot be disentangled from them" (Cook, 2005, p.162). Elaborating further on the meaning of consumer culture and consumption as culture we may identify the following territories: (i) culture as consumable 'objects', that is as artefacts, spectacles, leisure activities, art, places; (ii) culture as consumable 'ideas', that is as symbols, semi-symbols, imaginary signifiers and transcendental signifieds (e.g. consuming a political ideology or a religious belief system); (iii) consumption as cultural 'structures and processes', involving modes of organization (e.g. brand communities), interaction and communicative codes among social actors (e.g. in new social movements, in gift-giving Chapter One 8 occasions, in ritualized activities such as a loyal fandom's bonding rituals; cf. Collins, 2004; Otnes & Lowrey, 2004; Giesler, 2006). Sociocultural practices and experiences may involve one or all of the above territories which are elaborated through illustrative empirical studies in this book. Consumer culture as interdiscursive phenomenon A key tenet of the propounded interdiscursivity perspective is that consumer culture may not be studied outside of a discursive framework as 'brute facts' or as extra-discursive referents. "Discourse does not reflect extrinsic conditions, but rather produces them: discourse relates elements, concepts, and makes it possible for certain non-discursive elements to constitute themselves as objects" (Rojo & Pujol, 2011, p.90). These heterogeneous elements coalesce under determinate constellations as discursive formations, a fundamental epistemological concept that was coined by Foucault and of central value in his archeological system. "Discursive formations are groups of statements [my note: among other minimal units inscribed in multiple modes and circulating in various media] linked at the level of statements themselves, and by virtue of these links it becomes possible to define rules for the formation of their objects, their modes of enunciation and subject positions, their associated domains, forms of succession and simultaneity, the way they are institutionalised, used and combined together, and finally the way that they become instruments for desire or interest, and elements for a strategy" (Webb, 2013, p.104). "The correlate of the statement is a group of domains in which objects may appear and to which relations may be assigned" (Foucault, 2004, p.102). Discursive formations, thus, constitute amalgamations or clustered assemblages that do not partake of a strict structuralist rationale of units and levels. For example, a discursive formation may feature relationships between discursive orders at a high level of schematic abstraction (e.g. sports and cooking) or between one discursive order (e.g. sports) and two discursive types (e.g. football and cricket). The incidence of a TV show that features footage from a football game and a cooking lesson on how to prepare a Christmas turkey establishes an interdiscursive relationship between two discursive orders (sports and cooking), as a syntagmatic arrangement in the course of the same TV show which also affords to compound the interdiscursive cluster as a discursive type that partakes of the discursive order of entertainment. The relative stability (and hence recognizability on behalf of consumers) of discursive orders, types and interdiscursive relationships is incumbent on cultural groups' (operative in a cultural field) relative power Inter-Everything 9 in determining their formations as dominant over sub-altern ones. The meaning of the respective orders and types does not inhere in the cultural practices, but in the discursive formations that are performed and promulgated by cultural groups involving networks of mediators of cultural production. A cultural system consists by definition of interdiscursive relationships between high-abstraction orders and more determinate types at its apex, themselves presided by meta-discursive formations that permeate the majority of cultural orders, such as the myth of subjectivity as substratum of experiences, the grammatical system of a natural language, the co-operation maxim and the politeness principle (or equivalent cultural forms as civilizing processes and structures). The panconsumptivist outlook to culture inherits this fundamental presupposition concerning the inherently interdiscursive composition of a cultural system. Interdiscursivity has been multifariously defined and operationalized in discrete disciplinary settings, such as literary studies and CDA (cf. Wu, 2011). Interdiscursivity is not a dimension of discourse, but the very foundation for making sense of consumer culture as a web of interlocking discursive formations. This standpoint implies that the incidence of 'inter-' is indicative of some sort of generative force that animates and permeates a cultural system. Indeed, if not validly arguable in such mythopoetic terms, it will be shown that the vantage point for construing accounts of cultural consumer phenomena is coeval with illustrating how interdiscursivity may constitute an integrative framework for drilling down from abstract cultural orders to more fine-grained analyses along the lines of intertextuality, multi(inter)modality and trans(inter)mediality. The relational logic of interdiscursivity as constitutive of the sociocultural has been endorsed by discourse analysts. Fairclough (2003, p.26), for example, views social practices as always networked and shifting. Fairclough & Chouliaraki (1999), but also praxiologists, approach social practices as always already embedded in a nexus, as will be shown in a more elaborate fashion in due course. "Applying a relational logic to a social practice means showing how it is embedded in networks of practices whose relative stabilization underpins the relative stability and permanence of the practice itself as a set of options for selection and combination" (Fairclough & Chouliaraki, 1999, p.32). The Foucauldian origins of discourse Providing a uniform definition of discourse spanning the different phases of Foucault's thinking is untenable for the sheer reason that the term has been employed in multifarious ways, not only by Foucault, but Chapter One 10 also by discourse analysis scholars (cf. Wodak, 2008). Discourse as an omnibus term affords greater confusion than clarity, precisely due to its over-generic and all-encompassing pedigree. On the one hand, as repeatedly cautioned in the secondary literature (e.g. Bruns, 2005), discourse should by no means be conceived as being identical to language or speech. In fact, occasionally and across disciplines discourse has been employed in the Saussurean sense as being equivalent to oral speech (parole), in contradistinction to text which has been used as a proxy for written speech. The former is considerably underdetermining with regard to Foucault's (2004) employment whose conceptualization in the Archeology of Knowledge encompassed objects, events, institutions, practices. The latter has been cogently expanded to include any cultural phenomenon that may be described as a text, including social practices as social texts that we always read from the inside and which encompass us, as pithily put by Lefebvre (2002). "'Text' can mean any form of signification: writings, photographs, movies, newspapers and magazines, advertisements and commercials; all in all, every kind of human signification practice" (Lehtonen, 2000, p.57). Nowadays, the restricted notion of text circulates far less broadly as common currency, although its differences from discourse remain to be elucidated, as will be undertaken in due course. There is good reason why Foucault accommodated such a diverse roster of sociocultural phenomena under the same umbrella, namely that discourse functions primarily on an ontogenetic/ontological level. In the same manner that for Derrida nothing exists outside of the text, for Foucault nothing may be credited with existence outside of discursive formations (cf. Boyne, 1990). Discourse, for Foucault, is an active occurring/event (Hook, 2001). A crucial difference between text and discourse, in this respect, consists in the latter's comprising the rituals whereby orders of discourse are maintained, e.g. rituals of punishment in disciplinary discourse (Foucault, 1979). Although a text may feature instructions as to how forms of punishment are to be enacted, it does not include the actual practice of punishment. For Foucault, discourse is ontogenetically related not simply to the textual inscription of practices, but to their very formation as such. This is far from naïve nominalism, an antiquated descriptor that has been ascribed to Foucauldian discursivity in lieu of a critique, save for a quite intuitive conceptualization suggesting that although the multimodal signs making up a disciplinary practice indubitably possess materiality and a corporeal dimension, yet their meaning resides in the discursive order which arranges their deployment and their modes of relatedness in a specific Inter-Everything 11 manner. Thus, the discursive order of punishment does not 'refer' to signs of punishment, but the signs are assigned to the discursive order by dint of being included within its contours. This is why Archeology as method (and its evolution later into the genealogical method) does not suggest that the truth of a discourse may be progressively excavated hermeneutically as a semantic kernel that is more or less proximally situated with regard to multiple readings, but that each archeological reading in fact spawns a new discursive formation. This constitutes Foucault's irreducible perspectivism, as bequeathed from Nietzsche, according to which "discourse analysis cannot be taken to reveal a 'truth' within the text" (Hook, 2001, p.539). The same may be said of social practices, depending on the frame of reference that is posited for gauging the order of which they partake. Running ahead of the argumentation, but for the sake of glimpsing into the radical counter-implications of Foucault's thesis for the 'practice turn', let us consider the example of a TV show. For the spectators, watching a TV show is part of leisure activities and, hence, a discursive type of the discursive order of entertainment. However, for the show's employees it is just business as usual and, hence, a discursive type of the discursive order of work. Therefore, it becomes apparent that the signs making up a TV show do not make up by themselves the show as such. It is the imposition of order on the concatenation of signs that allows them to exist as an identifiable totality (even if only provisionally so, that is until a new archeological endeavor brings to the surface or interweaves more and perhaps different signs with the existing ones in the same order, thus expanding or constraining its boundaries or redefining it altogether). Subsequently, a discourse is productive of a social practice, and not just a series of statements. In this respect, Foucault's discourse theory partakes of the broader perspective of social constructivism. The ambivalence, however, of discursive orders with regard to their semantic or praxiological scope that was noted earlier and more specifically the occasional conflation of discourse with parole is not fully attributable to scholarly readings, but to Foucault's own demonstration and application of his discursivity theory in the Archeology by recourse to 'statements'. This bifurcation has been bequeathed to Fairclough's discourse analytic strand, as well as Scollon's (2001) mediated discourse analysis. Although Fairclough (1992) in his introductory outline of discourse analysis does include texts and institutions, later (Fairclough, 2003) he provides a statement-oriented definition of discourse. In a similar fashion, Scollon (2001, p.5) contends that "practices are linked to other practices, discursive and non-discursive, over time to form a nexus of practice", and even more explicitly "it seems that language – discursive Chapter One 12 practice – enters the habitus as a meditational means..." (Scollon, 2001, p.137), thus confining discursivity within the province of utterances. Foucault (2004) did draw on the 'statement' as the minimal unit of discourse and identified a discursive formation with the regularity of statements' dispersal in a scrutinized corpus (archive). However, his insistence on the linguistic register (as against other modes) is not indicative of a latent intentionality at constraining discursivity within the confines of the linguistic, and demonstrably so since he explicitly refers to institutions and social practices in the Archeology. A discourse formation includes the actual practices whereby knowledge is produced and the institutions that facilitate or hinder this production across domains and is not simply the province of linguistic analysis, but also of rules and strategies. This involves strategies of negotiation among situated social actors and the power play that deploys in interactional settings, as well as broader institutional forms that pose constraints on the output of interactive micro-processes (which have been posited at the very kernel of the production of the social by Collins [2004] in his microsociological perspective of social interaction chains). Scollon seeks to anchor the priority of social practices (as extra-discursive referents) over discourse by drawing partially on a specific phase of practice formation, that of emergence, as against crystallized, over-coded and largely repetitive practices. However, this partial focus on the degree of typification of a discursive formation says little about dominant discourses that are prescriptive and whose identity depends on immutable repetition (or with slight variations) across settings. Discourse formation, thus, is a practical concept that concerns both macro, as well as the meso-level and micro-social processes. Its pragmatic correlate, as conversation analysis, is capable of unearthing latent assumptions and relationships among interlocutors in situated discourse production, however this undertaking is not symmetrical to the scope of discourse formation as originally envisaged by Foucault. This allencompassing orientation of discursivity in its original Foucauldian conceptualization has been bequeathed to Fairclough's discourse analytic approach, albeit with some deviations from fundamental tenets which will be pointed out in the following sections. As regards micro-processes, a discourse involves the textual and other cultural artefacts (that may be analysed textually in any case, e.g. films, paintings, memes etc.) that make up a discursive domain, inasmuch as what texts and why have been excluded from that domain. Inquiry into the former is part of Foucault's archeological method of knowledge production. Inquiry into the latter is part of the genealogical method. Additionally, since knowledge production Inter-Everything 13 usually takes place within groups, mapping out the process whereby agreement is reached on what constitutes a valid text within a discourse domain is key. Again, this involves marshalling both archeological and genealogical methods. As regards macro-processes, focal points concern the institutional forms that constrain the delimitation of specific discourses, as well as enable their formation (but also potentially their resemantization and reappropriation, e.g. of a cultural text by a dominant state ideology). In short, discourse formation does not concern merely the grammatical aspects whereby a discourse is produced as a set of statements or utterances, but the entire chain of practical considerations that begin with the situated interaction of social actors up to the constraints posed by institutional mechanisms. The argumentation that deploys in the Archeology against the background of 'statements' as minimal analytical units is symptomatic of Foucault's expressed aim at effecting a post-semiotic turn with his theory of discursivity. The extent to which this task was actually nailed by Foucault with the Archeology is highly debatable, especially in the light of the post-Saussurean strides that had been accomplished by the then newly founded semiotic discipline, most importantly on behalf of Foucault's contemporaries, and especially the Greimasian school. Although tackling this issue at great length by far eschews the purview of this chapter, suffice to point out that a key semiotic principle from which Foucault actively sought to deviate was that of a linguistic system (Saussure's langue). "The statement is not therefore a structure [...] it is a function of existence; although it enables them to exist, it does so in a special way - a way that must not be confused with the existence of signs as elements of a langue" (Foucault, 2004, pp.97-99; my italics)." Of course, assuming Saussurean semiology at the time the Archeology was composed as the master-text for effecting a 'turn' did not quite pay heed to the actual advances accomplished by semioticians who had already severed the ties with fundamental Saussurean principles. This is further compounded by Foucault's anti-scholarly posture, evinced as a scarce engagement with specific passages from Saussure's (1959) Cours. All in all, Foucault's central thesis was incumbent on abjuring the possibility of an a priori systemic conceptualization of language, in the vein of Saussure's langue, as a latent synchronically arranged linguistic system which was bequeathed (albeit not in such a holistic fashion) to the Barthesian (1968) notion of sign-system(s). At the same time, Foucault's discursivity differs markedly from Barthesian semiotics and its Saussurean heritage while focusing on higher order rules of discursive formation, rather than relata among signs. Foucault's (2004, p.54) discourse analytic Chapter One 14 approach "consists of not - of no longer - treating discourses as groups of signs (signifying elements referring to contents or representations) but as practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak. Of course, discourses are composed of signs; but what they do is more than use these signs to designate things." Discursive practices do not represent social practices, but construe them as arrangements of multimodal elements in more or less orderly manners. A social practice is indistinguishable from the discursive formation that encapsulates it. For Foucault, discursive formations do not represent social affairs and situations that condition them ontologically, but are responsible for their presencing as such. This standpoint runs counter to van Leeuwen's (2008) assertion that discourse represents social practices. Alternative discursive formations constitute new forms of presencing which lays claim to the inherently ontogenetic and semiogenetic function performed by Foucault's theory of discursivity. The notion of order of discourse (Foucault, 1973) effected a radical break with the possibility of approaching language as ideational totality of statements. Instead, a discursive formation as enunciative field constrains temporarily the statements that are included under its auspices, on the grounds of the possibility of even a completely different re-ordering that might afford to confer a wholly new meaning in the context of another formation. As remarked by Maniglier (2013, p.108) "the very notion of Order as immanent implies that [...] the whole network is folded onto itself and represented within itself. In other words, an ordered system of things represents itself by generating within itself an ordered system of representations." This passage affords to frame the aforementioned break with (early) structualist semiology quite succinctly, namely that language does not underpin parole as ideational totality, but that such a systemic representation is feasible as the effect of discourse's internal mirroring. As will be argued later, this is a critical aspect of interdiscursivity that eschewed the rather 'sudden' praxiological turn. Foucault's discourse theory, though, not only entails an infinite immanentist drift (rather than epistemological shift) as regards the constitution of objects and states-of-affairs, but marks a radical break with the Cartesian ego-centric heritage that still underpins psychologically and behaviorally inclined consumer research. A discursive formation is not a linguistic construal effected by a knowing subject in its attempt to articulate stimuli received from the external environment (or from a domain 'within'), but subjectivity as such is a discursive formation as the positing of an ideational substratum beneath what is portrayed discursively as a synthetic act. The subject is constituted as such through the processes Inter-Everything 15 of subjection and subjectivation. "Subjection means that an individual or collective is proclaimed subject within a specific discourse [...] subjectivation when the individual or collective has not only been made the subject but also wishes to be so" (Andersen, 2003, p.24; italics in the original). This constructivist outlook to subject formation as discursive formation that has been bequeathed to both performativity theory and discourse analysis rests, largely, on two levels: the empirical self or the 'me' (the self who conducts synthetic acts of stimuli) and the transcendental self or the 'I' (the self to whom memories and experiences may be attributed as omnipresent throughout ad hoc synthetic instances). This grosso modo transcendental idealist definition of selfhood (or consciousness, more aptly) has been elaborated and redefined in many ways throughout the history of philosophy, as well as in various strands of psychology. What is of paramount importance, though, with regard to Foucault's approach, is that neither the empirical nor the transcendental subject subsist and underpin experiences as 'entities', but as the progeny of an order of discourse, the subjection to which allows for the establishment of consumers as processing monads. Texts that reify selfhood are regularly tagged in discourse analysis as essentializing or naturalized discourse. Recently, from a praxiological point of view, subjectivation was defined "as a process inherently embedded in praxis, in which the ability intelligently to orient one's action towards practicespecific requirements is continually being formed and in which the process of doing can also entail the critique and transcendence of these requirements" (Alkemeyer & Buschmann, 2017). The implications of this standpoint are pivotal for cultural consumer research as it affords to dislodge the subject as data-processing centre (the AI metaphor) while embedding it in constitutive terms in a broader cultural terrain that conditions it both discursively (as regards specific orders of discourse, e.g. cultural institutions and cultural products), as well as meta-discursively, that is as subject simpliciter. The methodological toolbox of Foucauldian discourse theory As shown earlier, for Foucault discourse is first and foremost ontogenetic with regard to the sociocultural domain and its sub-domains. It is a generative principle for knowing and engaging with sociocultural practices as discursive practices. Four principal methods of inquiry pertaining to discursivity have been identified throughout Foucault's Chapter One 16 oeuvre, namely archeological discourse analysis, genealogy, technologies of self, and dispositif analysis (Andersen, 2003). Archeologically tracing the emergence of a discursive formation involves three main operations (Foucault, 2004, pp.45-46): mapping the surface of emergence, describing the authorities of delimitation and analysing the grids of specification. In greater detail, mapping the surface of emergence comprises the modes of rationalization, the conceptual codes, and the types of theory whereby certain phenomena are objectified as such. Describing the authorities of delimitation entails focusing on institutions and their own rules, on groups of individuals constituting a profession, and on authorities recognized by public opinion, the law, and government. Analysing the grids of specification concerns the systems according to which phenomena are divided, contrasted, related, regrouped, classified, derived from one another as objects of discourse. The archeological and genealogical methods are probably the most well-known ones to cultural consumer researchers who have been engaged with diachronic analyses of corpora, perhaps of less critical orientation. Although partially overlapping, the qualifying difference lies in that the former adopts a descriptive outlook towards a historical inventory (archive, corpus) that has been recognized as relevant to a discursive practice, whereas the latter seeks to unearth hidden and excluded voices that were suppressed in the process of consolidating a discourse type. "Moving beyond the archaeologist's reconstruction of the conditions of knowledge, appearance, and articulation of a particular historical formation, the genealogist restages the hazardous play of dominations through which a regime of power stabilizes itself" (Crano, 2011, p. 162). Also pertinent for the purposes of an interdiscursive approach is the dispositif analysis that seeks to create links between the elements of a discursive apparatus (either in a synchronic or diachronic fashion). "The apparatus is the 'heterogeneous ensemble': it is a system of elements between which there exists a functional connection. The strategic imperative or logic is a generalized schematic that brings about a particular logic" (Andersen, 2003, p.27; also see Bussolini 2010; Thompson, 2017). In fact, were it not for dispositif analysis, the axiomaticity of a power structure (its symbolic violence, in Bourdieu's [1977] terms) that lumps together a discursive apparatus as a seemingly coherent ensemble would be inscrutable. Insofar as the logic of a discursive apparatus is evinced as a generalized schematic, it may hardly be said to be 'rational'. Its rationale is that of instrumental reason, albeit an instrumentality that does not simply abide by pragmatic exigencies as might be postulated by a praxiological perspective, but by the distribution of social roles in Inter-Everything 17 discursive practices according to specific patterns of subjectivization. For example, the statement 'I feel quite energized today' may be appropriated quite differently by the discursive orders of work and leisure. In the context of work, it may be concatenated with actions that culminate in an over-productive working day. In the context of leisure, it may amount to spending a day in the gym. Each order envelops the statement in completely different ways, thus culminating in utterly discrepant social actions as a result of different ways of subjectivization. Chances are that experiencing such a mood-state of elevated vigor will not translate automatically into a propensity for engaging metadiscursively in a genealogical tracing of the options for satisfying it as a result of subjectivization processes. This secondary self-reflexivity level that seems to be lacking from the 'practice turn' marks an entire territory for critical marketing studies pertaining to the cultural consumer research prong that was identified earlier with the consumption of culture as structures and processes, in the sense of unpacking a subject's metadiscursive habitual constraints. Similar constraints are noted in chapter 2 with regard to the fields of multimodal literacy and naturalistic ethnographic inquiry. The discourse analytic appropriations of Foucauldian discursivity The popularization of discourse analysis as a method of textual inquiry for meaningful patterns across disciplines is rooted in Foucauldian discourse analysis. Here, an exposition of main areas where dominant discourse analytic strands deviate from Foucauldianism is undertaken, with a view to demonstrating later why and how the propounded interdiscursivity approach is streamlined with the call for a return to Foucault. Although the purveyors of what became entrenched as critical discourse analysis (e.g. Fairclough, 1992; van Leeuwen, 2007; Wodak, 2008), also including Halliday's (1978) social semiotic perspective that is regularly credited as one of the dominant discourse analytic strands (cf. Rahimi & Javad Riasati, 2011), unanimously acknowledge the influence exerted by Foucault's theory of discursivity, it may hardly be entertained that this was espoused to the letter. Rather, we are concerned with a piecemeal appropriation during which some fundamental Foucauldian tenets were either abandoned or transgressed. Fairclough & Choulariaki (1999) who display a penchant for Marxist structuralism (macro-level of social theorizing), retain in their tripartite Chapter One 18 division of discourse the classical sociological distinction amongst levels of social structures (micro-, meso-, macro-). According to Fairclough (2003), macro-structures are highly abstract social structures (e.g. language, class, kinship). Meso-structures bridge macro-structures with micro-structures and consist of social practices (e.g. teaching, management) and genres (e.g. of texts encountered at the micro-level). Finally, micro-structures consist of events as instantiations of social practices, both as regards situated social interaction and textual inscriptions of social practices. This schema deviates from Foucauldian discursivity while endorsing the relatively deterministic force exerted by macro-structures on individual social actors by subscribing to the internalization hypothesis. Quasi-agentic capacity is also ascribed to social actors as extra-discursively constituted monads, thus deviating from the subjectivization principle that is endemic in Foucault's discourse theory. Furthermore, at the meso-level, whereas Foucault explicitly views social practices as being indistinguishable from discursive practices and in fact as the former being construed through the latter, Fairclough (2003) retains an ontological distinction between social and discursive practices which he seeks to conjoin through the stratagem of co-constitution. Apparently in an attempt to avoid criticisms about being either a nominalist or a realist, Fairclough refrains from ascribing primacy to either of these ontologically indistinct dimensions, while approaching them as being co-terminous: "the apparently paradoxical fact that although the discourse element of a social practice is not the same as for example its social relations, each in a sense contains or internalizes the other" (Fairclough, 2003, p.25). Scollon (2001, p.11) follows a similar route while viewing practices as containing a discursive element "which is not just or merely a reflection upon practice but to some extent constitutive of that practice", although the extent of discourse's constitutive effect is not qualified. "Mediated discourse sees social practice and discursive practice as mutually constitutive" (Scollon, 2001, p.160). Nevertheless, Foucault does not appear to be credited for having been the first to raise this argument: "when Foucault maintains that the description of a practice provides the key to the intelligibility of subject and object, he implies that both are nothing other than its correlate, and they are ontologically simultaneous and coextensive" (Djaballah, 2008, p.221). In the light of Foucault's interdiscursivity thesis, Fairclough (2003) contends that social practices are always networked and that genres are always ordered in genre chains. At this juncture, Fairclough adopts both a narrow and an expansive definition of interdiscursivity. The former is evinced as genre chains whereas the latter features orders of discourse, Inter-Everything 19 styles, social actions (Fairclough, 2003, p.38). Interdiscursivity was rehashed by Fairclough, by drawing on Harvey's (1980) postmodernist hybridity theory, and Bakhtin's dialogical principle, according to which texts are inherently dialogical. Intertextuality occasionally appears to be employed interchangeably with interdiscursivity in discourse analytic accounts, although their operational level should be quite clear (at least as per Fairclough's stratification). For example, Wodak (2008, p.3; italics in the original; also see Reisigl & Wodak, 2009) offers an almost tautological definition: "Intertextuality refers to the fact that all texts are linked to other texts, both in the past and in the present [...] Interdiscursivity, on the other hand, indicates that discourses are linked to each other in various ways", despite distinguishing them more pithily later in the same text in terms of discourse's operating at a more abstract level compared to text whereas text is a unique and specific realization of discourse. "Interdiscursivity is more complicated because it is concerned with the implicit relations between discursive formations rather than the explicit relations between texts" (Wu, 2011, p.97). Wodak (2008) appears to be deviating from Foucault's original conceptualization of discourse as discursive practice whereby social practices come to be known as discursive formations, yet not being reducible to the linguistic order, precisely by ascribing to it an overarching functional pragmatic role as structured sets of speech acts. In my view, the precarious distinction between discourse and text might have been eschewed by acknowledging that text is still discourse, yet functioning at another level compared to discourse as discursive order, that is at the level of a more or less structured output (Candlin & Maley, 2014, p.202) rather than as the process-oriented definition of discursive order (e.g. the difference between finished film as text and cinematography as discursive order). The notion of interdiscursivity has become quite entrenched in accounts of professional discourse. The same definitional problematic between text and discourse, intertextuality and interdiscursivity recurs in this instance. On a par with Wodak's (2008) aforementioned distinction, Bhatia (2010) positions interdiscursivity at a superior (more abstract) level compared to intertextuality, albeit failing to define it more concretely at the identified abstraction level, save for ascribing a general descriptor that somehow, fuzzily that is, concerns 'cultural context'. The usefulness of the term consists in adding emphasis to contextual aspects of intertextuality, yet this aspect is not further qualified in operationally pertinent terms. Additionally, it is applied to intertextuality Chapter One 20 on a genre level, as contextual aspects of inter-genre interactions, without taking cognizance of the superior ontogenetic role performed by discourse and hence of interdiscursivity as noted earlier. "Interdiscursivity can be viewed as appropriation of semiotic resources [...] across any two or more of these different levels, especially those of genre, professional practice and professional culture. Appropriations across texts thus give rise to intertextual relations, whereas appropriations across professional genres, practices, and cultures constitute interdiscursive relations" (Bhatia, 2010, p.35; Bhatia, 2014). Discursivity, here, is progressively identified by Bhatia with cultural practices, rather than texts, whereas initially the distinction appears to be concerning levels of innovation between crossgenre fertilizations. This shift in argumentative focal points between the beginning and the end of the syllogism imbues the distinction with greater fuzziness than it might have afforded to dispel if greater consistency had been applied in the initial exposition. Furthermore, it is not clear, in the analytic's own terms, why intertextuality concerns 'texts' and interdiscursivity 'genres', since genres constitute canonical texts or typified versions of texts based on recurrent grammatical and stylistic patterns (or any other modally specific attributes, relata and combinatorial rules that pertain to different modes). Genres do not constitute deductive principles that are carved in stone, but inductively produced canons based on recurrent modes of textualization. Hence, genres should be more adequately subsumed under intertextuality, rather than interdiscursivity. Bhatia (2010) does localize interdiscursivity at the level of discursive practices as professional practices at a more abstract level compared to texts, however, from a Foucauldian point of view, confusion emerges here by failing to approach either practices or texts as discursive formations and, hence, as being equally accountable in terms of interdiscursivity. A reluctance to identify differences between types of discursive practices and texts only affords to render by the same token professional practices amenable to categorization based on intertextuality (that is if we accept the ascription of genre, rather than type, to discursive practices) which, returning full-circle to the initial problematic, would run counter to the inaugurative distinction between text and discursive practice. A similar action-oriented approach to genre is adopted by Wodak (2008) pace Fairclough (2003, p. 65) who applies it across the spectrum of discursive formations, from discursive practices up to texts (as social texts including situated social interaction). There is good reason why genre should not be applied uniformly across discursive orders and texts, this being that whereas texts, as aforementioned, constitute outputs of practices (e.g. a book), orders Inter-Everything 21 constitute malleable formations that assume stability only provisionally, based on the frame of reference that is recruited for constituting them as such. This was demonstrated earlier by recourse to the example of a film as discourse type of the order of work or leisure, depending on whether it is approached from the perspective of a lay viewer or a producer. This difference impacts directly on the interdiscursive relationship between order and type and concomitantly on their taxonomic classification in a schema ranging from meta-discourse to situated social actions. Genre is a handy heuristic for classifying texts according to a common set of structural criteria (see chapter 3 for a more extended discussion). Fairclough (2003) suggests that some genres have more fluid boundaries than others, while maintaining a skeptical posture as to whether types such as social actions may be classified under the genre nomenclature. This skeptical attitude notwithstanding, post-literary studies applications of 'genre' have been keen on connecting "a recognition of regularities in discourse types with a broader social and cultural understanding of language in use" (Freedman & Medway, 2005, p.2). In this context, Bakhtin's assertion that genre conventions display greater plasticity compared to rules of syntax has been increasingly shared among genre theorists, especially where dynamically shifting conventions are involved in discourse communities. Nevertheless, I think that it merits highlighting that Foucault's post-structuralist approach to discursive formations generates an ontological distance between such formations and more rigid structures, such as genres. This does not imply that discursive orders may not be typified, but that this typification differs markedly from the structuralist undertaking of applying a genre-related check-list, while being more akin to the outcome of a reading strategy whereby a discursive apparatus is recognized as being instantiated in a social practice (cf. Rossolatos, 2017a). This typification is possible, as noted by Miller (2005) pace Halliday (1978), because discursive orders are not recurrent constellations of pure materiality, but semiotic structures as entextualized, memorable, and repeatable forms of discourse (Bauman, 2004). In this sense, discourse types are related to orders in a manner that is more defining of Wittgensteinian family resemblances rather than genre. The praxiological battleground against discursivity The so-called practice turn was inaugurated in the late 90's with a promise of offering a novel account of the constitution of society or, rather, of social order, based on the arrangement of social practices. The practice turn emerged as an expressed challenger to the cultural turn in Chapter One 22 social theory, but also to the preponderance of discourse in effectively accounting for sociocultural practices. Schatzki (2002) presents this turn as a social ontology, capable of accounting for all social, institutional, cultural organizational forms under the catch-all descriptor social practices. To this end, he engages dialogically with an eclectic array of theories across the humanities and the social sciences, from Heidegger's social ontology, Foucault's and Laclau & Chantal Mouffe's theories of discursivity, to early Wittgensteinian pragmatics and Latour's Actor Network Theory (ANT), among others. Lately, praxiology has been gaining momentum, although still being beset by the theoretical and methodological ambiguities that plague perspectives at their nascent stage. Foucault had already alluded to discursive practices as social practices as early as in the Archeology, while the full-fledged practice turn was undertaken in his post-structuralist period, that is in the post Archeology writings. In essence, the 'practice turn' had already been taken ever since the Archeology. In Foucault's own words: "what I try to analyze are practices: the logic immanent to a practice, the strategies that support this and, consequently, the way individuals-freely, in their struggles, in their confrontations, in their projects-constitute themselves as the subjects of their practices or refuse on the contrary the practices offered to them" (Djaballah, 2008, p.218). The similarities between Foucault's conceptualization of social practice as discursive, but not strictly linguistic while encompassing embodied and largely tacit (yet questionably so, as argued by Turner [1994, 2001]) interactions, and Wittgenstein's notion of language games have been amply noted in the extant literature: "similar to Wittgenstein's 'game', a practice is a preconceptual, anonymous, socially sanctioned body of rules that govern one's manner of perceiving, judging, imagining, and acting" (Fynn, 2005, p.31). However, discursive practices are not equivalent to social practices as approached from a praxiological lens. The ontological realist leanings of praxiology Schatzki's (2002) praxiology that is heavily influenced by Latour's ANT, adopts an ontologically realist perspective, at its most naïve, that is by portraying social practices as assemblages of non-hierarchically distinct artefacts, humans, processes, sayings (Schatzki's term for utterance or enunciation, in Foucauldian terms) whose systematic arrangement is not the outcome of discursive formations, but of directly reflective descriptions. This realistic epistemological posture cuts through the entire praxiological perspective and runs counter to the radically constructivist | {
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On Truth Persistence Patrícia Amaral, a Fabio Del Prete b a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill b CLLE-ERSS (CNRS et Université de Toulouse le Mirail) Abstract This paper analyzes a non-temporal interpretation of the adverb sempre 'always' in European Portuguese and Italian, in which the adverb expresses persistence of the truth of a proposition over time and displays specific contextual constraints (TP-sempre). Despite an overlap in the contexts in which TPsempre may occur in both languages, we provide data showing that its distribution is not exactly the same in European Portuguese and Italian. In view of these data, we propose that TP-sempre is a modal operator of confirmation in both languages, but that it is more restricted in Italian in that it has a plan presupposition only in this language. 1. Introduction In this paper we consider a non-temporal interpretation of the adverb sempre 'always' in European Portuguese (henceforth, EP) and Italian (I), exemplified in (1a,b): (1) a. Sempre vou ao cinema no domingo à noite. (EP) Sempre go-PRES-1SG to-the cinema in-the Sunday at night b. Ci vado sempre al cinema domenica sera. (I) there go-PRES-1SG sempre to-the cinema Sunday night 'I'm indeed / still going to the movies this Sunday night.' Sentences (1a,b) can be truthfully uttered in the following context: the speaker has planned on going to the movies on next Sunday night and has told the interlocutor about her plan; then the possibility that the speaker might end up not going to the movies becomes salient in the common ground of both interlocutors; finally, the speaker can reassure the hearer that her plan continues to be valid. These sentences have an episodic, non-generic interpretation: the present tense has a futurate interpretation, whereby it refers to a specific time in the future, and the temporal adverbials no domingo à noite and domenica sera refer to the first Sunday night following the utterance. By using sempre, 2 the speaker confirms the truth of a proposition that had already been accepted by the interlocutors and had later become uncertain. 1 The semantic contribution of sempre in (1a,b) differs greatly from the one of always in the English sentence (2): (2) I always go to the movies on Sunday night. This sentence means that the speaker goes as a habit to the movies on every Sunday night. The present tense is interpreted generically, and the temporal adverbial on Sunday night also receives a generic interpretation, as referring to whatever Sunday night within an unbounded time interval surrounding the utterance. The semantic contribution of always to the sentence meaning is quantificational: the adverb is used to universally quantify over Sunday nights explicitly, 2 not to convey that a plan of the speaker continues to be valid at utterance time. 3 We will refer to the interpretation of sempre in (1a,b) as the truth-persistence value (TP-value), and will use the term TP-sempre to talk about the occurrences of this adverb that show this value. The TP-value is opposed to the more familiar interpretation that sempre exhibits in (3a,b), which correspond to the English sentence (2) above: (3) a. Vou sempre ao cinema ao domingo à noite. (EP) b. Vado sempre al cinema la domenica sera. (I) 'I always go to the movies on Sunday night.' In (3a,b), sempre shows its quantificational value (Q-value). This value has been 1 This confirmatory aspect is at the basis of the terminology adopted by Ȃmbar, Gonzaga and Negrão (2004) in their study about Portuguese, where they refer to the meaning of sempre in (1a) as "confirmative interpretation". 2 For the sake of precision, this is true if the prosodic pattern is such that on Sunday night does not bear focal stress. 3 Notice that the semantic difference between (1a,b) and (2) could not depend on a difference in the semantic potential of the present tense, which would distinguish EP and I from English. It has long been recognized that the English present tense can have a futurate interpretation in contexts of planning (Jespersen 1931, Dowty 1979, Smith 2010): in principle, it could refer to a specific time in the future in (2). One would expect that if always had the same semantic potential in English as sempre in EP and I, it should be able to interact with the futurate present in (2) to yield a meaning similar to the meaning of (1a,b). But no such interaction takes place in (2): always can only contribute universal quantification and forces a generic interpretation of the present tense. 3 extensively discussed in the semantic literature since Lewis' (1975) work on adverbs of quantification, and has turned out to be of utmost importance in the study of the formal properties of generic sentences (e.g. Krifka et al. 1995). We will not have much to say about this value in what follows, apart from suggesting that the TP-value – our main target in this paper – is not reducible to it. The rest of the paper is organized as follows. In section 2 we give a first description of the TP-value of sempre in EP and Italian. Section 3 broadens the empirical domain and discusses some differences between EP and Italian with regard to the distribution of TP-sempre. We argue that, contrary to what one might think on the basis of the intuitive equivalence between (1a) and (1b), TP-sempre does not have exactly the same semantic properties in EP and Italian. In light of such differences, in section 4 we present our analysis of TP-sempre for EP and Italian, relying on the hypothesis that in both languages TP-sempre denotes a modal operator yielding confirmation of a proposition, but in Italian it has a plan presupposition that the argument proposition p must satisfy for the utterance of sempre(p) to be acceptable. Section 5 provides concluding remarks. 2. The TP-value: Empirical data from European Portuguese and Italian In Portuguese the TP-value of sempre is only found in the European variety, where it is syntactically restricted to the preverbal position (Lopes 1998, Brito 2001, Âmbar et al. 2004, Fiéis 2010). 4 The attentive reader will have already noted that the EP examples (1a) and (3a) (repeated below as [4a] and [4b], respectively) differ with respect to the position 4 The naturally-occurring example (i), from Brazilian Portuguese, shows that there is no TP-value associated with the pre-verbal position in this dialect, unlike what happens in EP. This interpretation of sempre is not available in BP. (i) ...eu não leio muito negócio de esporte, eu sempre viro as folhas. (POA-45: 190, from Ilari 1992: 183, ex. 90) `I don't read many news about sport, I always turn the pages [of the sports' section].' In (i), sempre precedes the verb viro '(I) turn', still the sentence has a generic interpretation: it means that every occasion in which the speaker reaches the sports' section of a newspaper is such that the speaker turns the pages (without reading them) on that occasion. In BP, regardless of the syntactic position occupied by the adverb, sempre always exhibits the Q-value, i.e. it universally quantifies over situations, as in examples (3a,b) in the main text. Although there is evidence that Medieval Portuguese behaved in a similar way (see Fiéis 2010), the synchronic situation is very different, as in contemporary European Portuguese the syntactic behavior of the adverb clearly distinguishes the two interpretations of sempre. 4 of sempre relative to the verb: the TP-value is associated to the preverbal position, while the Q-value is associated to the postverbal position. (4) a. Sempre vou ao cinema no domingo à noite. 'I am indeed going to the movies this Sunday night.' b. Vou sempre ao cinema ao domingo à noite. 'I always go to the movies on Sunday night.' Syntactically, TP-sempre is further constrained in that the adverb must be adjacent to the verb. The only exception to this adjacency constraint is provided by clitic pronouns (Âmbar et al. 2004: 9). In order to account for the syntactic behavior of sempre in its "confimative reading" (corresponding to our TP-value), Âmbar et al. (2004) propose a structure containing a functional projection AssertiveP. This projection is associated to properties of the illocutionary act. 5 Although in our analysis we do not commit to a specific syntactic proposal concerning the TP-value, our proposal is compatible with this account. A different scenario is found in Italian, where TP-sempre is not syntactically constrained to the preverbal position and normally occurs in postverbal position, exactly as the Q-value of sempre. Furthermore, in Italian the TP-value is not as widely attested as in EP, and it seems more easily available in interrogative sentences than in declaratives. Consider sentence (6): (6) Vai sempre al cinema? 'Do you always go to the movies?' [inquiring about your habitual activities on Sunday nights] 'Are you still going to the movies?' [checking about a specific plan of yours for this Sunday night] This sentence is ambiguous between the Q-value and the TP-value of sempre and is 5 In this particular case, AssertiveP projects when "confirmative features" pertaining to the speaker's attitude towards the proposition expressed must be checked. The derivation proposed by the authors ensures that by raising to AssertiveP, the adverb has scope over the whole proposition, hence accounting for the intuition that the "confirmative" interpretation of sempre provides a comment on the speaker's assertion. 5 disambiguated in context: if we are speaking about what we habitually do on Sunday nights, it is likely that by uttering (6) I am asking you whether you always go to the movies on the relevant occasions (Q-value); if the topic of our conversation is instead our specific plans for next Sunday night, then by uttering (6) I am asking you whether you are still keeping to the idea of going to the movies on Sunday night (TP-value). Sentence (6) has yet another reading, which we'll discuss in sect. 3.4 in connection with the socalled "continuative" value of sempre – a value which is closely related to the TP-value. Besides the restriction pertaining to the position of the adverb, found in EP only, there is a connection between the TP-value and a semantic feature of the prejacent proposition that we call specificity, 6 which holds across the two languages. The TP-value naturally obtains in specific, non-generic propositions, the genericity of the containing sentence making it most likely that the Q-value is concerned. Specificity is related to the tense / aspect properties of the verb phrase and to the interpretation of the locating temporal adverbial. The different interpretations of sempre in (1a,b) versus (3a,b) are associated with lexical and syntactic differences between the locating temporal adverbials occurring in these sentences, relating to the specific / generic distinction. In EP, the temporal adverbial headed by em 'in' (no domingo à noite), on the one hand, introduces a unique interval in (1a): it refers to the Sunday night immediately after utterance time. On the other hand, the temporal adverbial headed by the preposition a 'at' (ao domingo à noite) represents a set of intervals. 7 Concerning Italian, we find that the presence / absence of the definite article la 'the' strongly correlates with the generic / specific interpretation of the temporal adverbial: in imperfective sentences, la domenica sera is interpreted generically, as in (7a) below; the determinerless domenica sera, on the other hand, is interpreted specifically, as referring to the closest Sunday night in the past or in the future (according to the tense properties of the containing sentence), as in (7b): (7) a. La domenica sera andiamo / andavamo al cinema. 'We habitually go / went to the movies on Sunday night.' 6 In the following, we will use the terms prejacent or prejacent proposition to refer to the proposition expressed by the smallest sentence in which sempre occurs. 7 An anonymous reviewer inquires about the interpretation of [1a] if em is replaced by a (ao domingo à noite). Exchanging the prepositions decreases the acceptability of the sentence. While we believe that the choice of the preposition in EP and the definite determiner in I play a role in the interpretation of the sentences, we leave the detailed analysis of the semantics of the temporal expressions for further work. 6 b. Domenica sera andiamo / siamo andati al cinema. 'We are going / went to the movies on Sunday night.' The interaction between the two interpretations of sempre and the distinction specific / generic makes sense if we make the following assumptions: (a) on the Q-value, sempre universally quantifies over situations, which makes it apt to contribute to the expression of generic propositions; (b) on the TP-value, sempre requires that the prejacent proposition remain true across a succession of times, what makes most sense pragmatically for a specific proposition – intuitively, generic propositions such as that I generally go to the movies on Sunday night do not allow for the same kind of variation in their truth-value as specific propositions about more contingent matters, such as that I am going to the movies next Sunday night. 2.1 Presuppositional properties of TP-sempre Use of TP-sempre is subject to a contextual constraint. Consider example (8) from Italian: (8) Ascolta, vado sempre al cinema questa sera, vuoi venire? 'Listen, I'm still going to the movies tonight, wanna come?' It would not be possible to utter (8) felicitously if the speaker had not previously mentioned to her interlocutor that she was planning on going to the movies tonight. In other words, we cannot use (8) to inform the hearer that we are planning on going to the movies tonight. For that, we would rather use (9), in which sempre does not occur and questa sera is preposed as the topic of the containing sentence: (9) Ascolta, questa sera vado al cinema, vuoi venire? 'Listen, I'm going to the movies tonight, wanna come?' Example (8) can only be felicitously used to convey that the speaker's plan of going to the movies tonight remains valid at utterance time, while (9) is used to inform the hearer that what the speaker is doing tonight is going to the movies. A phonological fact which 7 is related to this contextual constraint is that prosodic stress in (8) is on sempre, while the remaining part of the embedding sentence is destressed, thus signaling that this part is presupposed by the interlocutors (it was already in the common ground before the utterance of [8]). On the other hand, prosodic stress in (9) is on the PP al cinema, where it marks focus on the VP vado al cinema, thus foregrounding the information that the speaker is planning on going to the movies (this information was not already in the common ground). The data above suggest that TP-sempre presupposes that the whole prejacent proposition has been in the common ground for a while as information shared by the interlocutors. We observe similar contextual constraints on TP-sempre in EP; sentence (10) cannot be used to inform the hearer that the speaker is planning on going to the movies on Sunday night. (10) Sempre vou ao cinema no domingo à noite. In (10), sempre requires that the speaker's plan of going to the movies on Sunday night have been in the common ground since an earlier time. We conclude that a main feature of TP-sempre in EP and I is its presuppositional character: the use of TP-sempre is felicitous only in a context in which the truth of the prejacent is presupposed to have been under discussion by the interlocutors. Note that the notion of presupposition that we are adopting is pragmatic in nature (it constrains the possible contexts in which TP-sempre may be felicitously used), while at the same time lexically based (it is triggered by the meaning of persistence which is lexically encoded by the adverb). In the following section, we analyze in detail the differences in the distribution of TP-sempre in EP and Italian. 8 3. Differences between European Portuguese and Italian 3.1 Past tensed sentences Almost all the examples of TP-sempre above are present tense sentences with future time reference. In EP, however, TP-sempre is also well-attested in past tensed sentences. Let us consider the following context. On Friday I tell you that I am planning on going to the movies this Sunday night, and later I express doubt to you about the possibility of this plan. On Tuesday I meet you and say that I went to the movies on Sunday night, by uttering the following sentence in EP: (11) Sempre fui ao cinema no domingo à noite. 'After all I went to the movies on Sunday night.' In (11), the verb ir 'to go' occurs in the Simple Past (Pretérito Perfeito Simples), and the temporal adverbial refers to a specific Sunday night, the one immediately preceding utterance time. As in (1a), the sentence refers to a unique specific situation. In (11), however, by using sempre the speaker does not confirm the present validity of a future plan, but rather the accomplishment of her plan in the past. In Italian, with the past tense, TP-sempre doesn't seem as easily available as with the futurate present, and one would rather use the adverbial alla fine 'in the end' instead: (12) a. Alla fine ci sono andato al cinema domenica sera. 'In the end, I did go to the movies on Sunday night'. b. Alla fine sono andato al cinema domenica sera. R1 'In the end, I did go to the movies on Sunday night.' (with VP-focus) R2 'In the end, it was to the movies that I went on Sunday night.' (with focus on the locative adverbial) R3 'In the end, it was on Sunday night that I went to the movies.' (with focus on the time adverbial) Sentence (12a) is a natural choice to express the reading of EP (11) in Italian. It must be remarked, though, that alla fine gives rise to ambiguities of interpretation, and that the 9 clitic pronoun ci for the locative complement plays a disambiguating role in (12a). As we'll see later on (sect. 3.5), alla fine can associate with sub-sentential focus: the minimally different sentence (12b), without the clitic ci, allows for other accentual patterns besides the one, characteristic of (12a), corresponding to focus on the VP, and the sentence interpretation varies depending on which constituent receives the focus accent, as indicated by the English translations provided in R1-R3 above. 8 Notice that in the EP sentence (11) sempre refers to the whole prejacent, so the sentence does not imply that I was uncertain about where I would go on Sunday night, or that I was uncertain about when I would go to the movies; instead, (11) implies that I was uncertain whether or not to go to the movies on Sunday night. The difference between (11) and (12a,b) shows that the adverbial alla fine is to be distinguished from TP-sempre, despite the fact that the two adverbs can be both used to give confirmations of the truth of backgrounded propositions with an uncertain truth value. In particular, they must be distinguished with respect to their ability to associate with subsentential focus. We will return to this issue in sect. 3.5. Italian marginally allows for TP-sempre with the past tense, particularly in past tensed interrogatives that check on the accomplishment of a plan, as in (13): 9 (13) Sei sempre andato al cinema domenica sera? 'In the end did you stick to your plan to go to the movies on Sunday night?' As suggested by the proposed English translation, (13) presupposes that the hearer had previously planned on going to the movies on Sunday night. We consider this issue in more detail in the next section. 8 Concerning the interpretation of (12b): if the focus accent is on al cinema, (12b) implies that before choosing the movie theater as the place where to go on Sunday night, I had alternative options of the type w. I go to the opera on Sunday night in w, w. I go to the circus on Sunday night in w, etc. (in this case the background contains the existential proposition w. x I go to x on Sunday night in w), and the reading of the sentence is R2; if the accent is on domenica sera, (12b) implies that before choosing Sunday night as the time frame in which to go to the movies, I had alternative options of the type w. I go to the movies on Friday night in w, w. I go to the movies on Saturday night in w, etc. (in this case the background contains the existential proposition w. x I go to the movies at time x in w), and the reading is R3; only if the accent is on the VP (as it must be in [12a]), does (12b) imply that I was uncertain whether or not to go to the movies on Sunday night, that is, before my choice I had two alternatives, w. I go to the movies on Sunday night in w and w. I do not go to the movies on Sunday night in w, and the reading of the sentence is R1, the same as the unique reading of (12a). 9 Thanks to Sandro Zucchi (p.c.) for pointing this out to us. 10 3.2 Presence of a plan A remarkable difference between EP and I is found by considering sentences in which there is no plan involved. We observe that TP-sempre is acceptable only in EP in such sentences – provided that some contextual conditions are met. Consider the following scenario. You hear from somebody that João died, later this piece of information is put into question, and finally you obtain new evidence confirming that João has indeed died. Under these contextual premises, you can felicitously utter (14) in EP: (14) O João sempre morreu. 'João indeed has died.' In this case, it is the truth of the proposition that João died that persists over time – more precisely, it persists over different epistemic states situated at subsequent times (see our proposal in sect. 4). Furthermore, the information concerning the persistence of the truth of that proposition must be shared by the interlocutors: the proposition must have been believed at some earlier point and is now reasserted, that is, confirmed, with a greater degree of certainty. The case of Italian is different, as shown by the unacceptability of (15) in the scenario that we described for (14) above: (15) *Giovanni sempre morì / *Giovanni è sempre morto. Giovanni sempre die-SPAST-3SG/Giovanni be-PRES-3SG sempre dead If there is no plan leading to the event, the TP-value of sempre is unavailable in Italian. Given that the verb morire ('to die') is not compatible with plan-readings, (15) is out. The reading of (14) is expressed in Italian by using davvero 'really' instead, as in (16): (16) Giovanni è morto davvero. 'Giovanni indeed has died' To sum up, in EP, TP-sempre can be used with past or future time reference indifferently, and no matter whether a plan is involved. On the other hand, in Italian TP11 sempre is more restricted, in that it requires that a plan have been established to bring about what is described by the prejacent. 3.3 Stative verbs TP-sempre is possible in EP with stative verbs denoting stable properties. Consider the following context. I tell you that I believe that Micha is Russian, then someone casts doubt on Micha being Russian, then I see Micha's passport confirming my initial belief, and I tell you: (17) O Micha sempre é russo. (EP) 'Micha is indeed Russian.' This sentence cannot be felicitously uttered to introduce the proposition that Micha is Russian as new information. Rather, it requires that the debate pertaining to the truth of this proposition be in the common ground of the participants in the conversation. The corresponding sentence in Italian, however, is unacceptable: (18) a. *Micha è sempre russo. (I) b. Micha è davvero russo. (I) 'Micha is indeed Russian.' Sentence (18a) cannot mean 'Micha is indeed Russian', unlike (17). Rather, in Italian one would use davvero to convey this value, as in (18b). It must be remarked that in Italian there are stative sentences containing sempre, where the adverb has a continuative meaning which might be viewed as closely related to the TP-value. Sentence (19) is a case in point: 10 10 As Sandro Zucchi has submitted to us (p.c.), the semantic value of sempre in (19) could be regarded as being the same as the value that sempre has in (1b). According to this view, the interpretation of sempre in (1b) would not require a separate analysis with respect to the "continuative" value displayed by sempre in (19), as would be shown by the fact that both sentences can receive homologous paraphrases, e.g. It continues to be true that I'm going to the movies on Sunday night and It continues to be true that Gianni lives in Rome. We acknowledge that there are prima facie similarities between the TP-value and the aspectual continuative value of sempre in Italian. In section 3.4, however, we provide some reasons to believe that these two values are semantically distinct. 12 (19) Gianni vive sempre a Roma. 'Gianni continues to live in Rome.' Example (19) implies that Gianni presently lives in Rome, and that the state of Gianni living in Rome began in the past and extends up till the present. Therefore, sempre expresses a notion of persistence in (19) as well, though it is a concrete state that is said to persist in this case, not the validity of a plan (or the truth of a proposition). We'll discuss this continuative meaning of sempre in the next section. Crucially, the corresponding sentence of EP, given in (20), has a different interpretation, and imposes contextual requirements that are not shared by (19): (20) O Gianni sempre vive em Roma. 'Gianni lives indeed in Rome.' Whereas in (20) TP-sempre presupposes that Gianni's place of residence has been under discussion for the participants in the conversation and the possibility of Gianni not living in Rome has been raised, this is not the case for (19), which simply presupposes that Gianni used to live in Rome and that this was previously known to the interlocutors. In EP a sentence roughly conveying the same meaning as (19) would rather contain the phase adverb ainda ('still'), which expresses continuation of some state or process: (21) O Gianni ainda vive em Roma. 'Gianni still lives in Rome.' We turn now to a detailed analysis of this continuative interpretation of sempre. 3.4 Continuative value of sempre An important difference between the two languages pertains to the interpretation of sentences like (21), from Italian: (21) Gianni è sempre a casa. 'Gianni is always at home.' 'Gianni continues to be at home.' 13 In Italian, example (21) is ambiguous and is disambiguated in context. The sentence can mean either that in every relevant situation, Gianni is at home (featuring the Q-value of sempre), or that Gianni continues to be at home, thus implying that the state of Gianni being at home held at a time prior to utterance time. In the following, we refer to this value of sempre as C-value (Continuative). Another example clearly showing the C-value of sempre is (22): (22) Gianni ama sempre soltanto Maria. 'Gianni continues to exclusively love Maria.' For (22) the Q-value doesn't make much sense (it would be odd to say that in every relevant situation Gianni loves only Maria) and the most likely reading of the sentence is that Gianni continues to only love Maria, which shows the C-value of sempre. The C-value of sempre is also possible in the interrogative sentence (23), which was considered in sect. 2 above as example (6) in relation to the TP-value and the Q-value: (23) Vai sempre al cinema? 'Do you still have the habit of going to the movies?' [checking about the persistence of your habits] Besides the Q-value and the TP-value readings that we described above, (23) has a third reading, paraphrasable as 'Do you still have the habit of going to the movies?'. On this (continuative) reading, sempre is semantically akin to the English adverb still, and the prejacent is interpreted habitually. This continuative reading shares properties with the two readings of the sentence that we discussed in sect. 2 but cannot be reduced to either one of them. On the one hand, the prejacent is generic, as it is in the Q-value reading 'Do you always go to the movies?'; on the other hand, sempre does not interact with this generic prejacent in the same way as it does on the Q-value (i.e. by contributing universal quantification over relevant situations), but contributes instead the meaning of continuation of a state, the hearer's habit of going to the movies, thus presupposing that this state was in the common ground. To sum up: on the one hand, the continuative 14 reading of (23) shares with the Q-value reading the fact that the prejacent is generic, and on the other, it shares with the TP-value reading the presupposition that the prejacent be in the common ground. 11 From the examples above, we see that the C-value, like the TP-value, is intuitively related to the idea of persistence of a state. For example, we could paraphrase (22)'s reading by saying that Gianni's exclusive love for Maria persists at utterance time. Thus, it is natural to look at the two values as being closely related to one another. That there is indeed a close relationship between the TP-value and the C-value of sempre in Italian can be shown by considering how external negation is realized for the two values. The sentence-pairs (24a,b) and (25a,b) show that in this language external negation is expressed by the same lexical and syntactic means for both values of sempre, namely using the preverbal negative adverb non in conjunction with the postverbal adverb più ('more'). (24) a. Vado sempre al cinema domenica sera. 'I am still going to the movies on Sunday night.' [TP-value] b. Non vado più al cinema domenica sera. `I'm no longer going to the movies on Sunday night.' [TP-value] (25) a. Gianni è sempre a casa. 'Gianni is still at home.' b. Gianni non è più a casa. 'Gianni is no longer at home.' In EP, on the other hand, we find a different situation. Crucially, the C-value of sempre is not attested in EP. In (26), where the adverb occurs in postverbal position, sempre has the Q-value, and in (27), where it occurs in preverbal position, it has the TPvalue: 11 Notice that to translate sempre on this continuative reading we used the same aspectual adverb that was used to translate sempre on the TP-value reading. 15 (26) O João está sempre em casa. (cf. Gonzaga 1997: 164) 'In every (relevant) situation, João is at home.' (27) O João sempre está em casa. 'Indeed, João is at home.' Neither (26) nor (27) can mean 'João continues to be at home', unlike Italian (21). As said above, in EP this interpretation can only be conveyed by the phase adverb ainda 'still', as in (28): (28) O João ainda está em casa. `João continues to be at home.' To sum up, in EP sempre may either have the Q-value or the TP-value, and the aspectual interpretation that we have called C-value for Italian sempre is associated to a different lexical item, ainda. 12 TP-sempre is externally negated by using the adverb afinal 'after all' in conjunction with the negative adverb não, as in (29b); the external negation of the continuative adverb ainda is instead realized by the complex adverbial já não 13 , as in (30b). (29) a. Sempre vou ao cinema no domingo à noite. 'I am indeed going to the cinema on Sunday night.' [TP-value] 12 Accordingly, in EP, the adverb sempre in the TP-value may co-occur with the adverb ainda, as in (i), uttered in the context below: [Context. Maria and João are talking about a common friend, Pedro; Maria expresses her belief that Pedro lives in Porto and has not moved elsewhere yet, João says that he thinks that Pedro moved to Lisbon last year; Maria and João meet again on the following week and Maria says (26).] (i) O Pedro sempre vive ainda no Porto: telefonei-lhe ontem e só vai mudar para Lisboa no ano que vem. 'Indeed Pedro still lives in Porto: I called him yesterday and he is only moving to Lisbon next month.' Here, ainda conveys that the state of Pedro living in Porto continues to hold at utterance time, while sempre makes a different semantic contribution, namely it conveys that the truth of the prejacent (the proposition that Pedro continues to live in Porto, which encompasses the aspectual meaning of ainda) persists at utterance time. 13 It must be pointed out that in EP já não may sometimes occur in sentences with future time reference and with the TP-value (possibly co-occurring with afinal). But crucially, it cannot occur in sentences with past time reference, unlike sempre (e.g. *Já não fui ao cinema no domingo à noite. Here, the TP-value must be expressed by afinal não: Afinal não fui ao cinema no domingo à noite.) 16 b. Afinal não vou ao cinema no domingo à noite. 'I am not going to the cinema on Sunday night after all.' [TP-value] (30) a. O João ainda está em casa. 'João is still at home' [phase adverb 'still'] b. O João já não está em casa. 'João is no longer at home.' To sum up, the fact that the external negation of TP-sempre in Italian is with non più, the same form which is used for the external negation of sempre in its C-value, provides evidence for the view that the two values are related in this language. On the other hand, the external negation of TP-sempre in EP is afinal não, which is different from the external negation of the aspectual continuative adverb ainda, realized as já não; furthermore, there is no aspectual continuative interpretation of sempre in EP. However, we regard the two values as formally distinct in Italian, for the following reasons: (a) On the C-value it is a state lexically denoted by a predicate in the sentence which is said to continue or persist at reference time, but on the TP-value it is the state of a proposition being true (after a possible temporary change in truth value) which is said to persist at reference time. (b) The C-value strictly requires an imperfective tense with an associated reference time tR (the utterance time for the present) in order to predicate of the state s lexically denoted by the verb that s continues to hold at tR. On the other hand, the TP-value is acceptable with overtly perfective tenses, as in (13) above, and normally occurs in perfectively understood (futurate) present tense sentences, as in our example (1b). (c) Although sempre on the C-value can serve the conversational purpose of confirming the validity of some specific proposition across subsequent times, 14 14 This might well be the case for the example (i), taken from the Italian translation of the Brothers Grimm's fairy tale Schneewittchen und die Sieben Zwerge: (i) O mia regina dal bosco alla collina, la più bella sei sempre tu! 'O my queen, from the wood to the hill, you are the fairest of all!' 17 this is not essential to the C-value, but it is essential to the TP-value. Furthermore, on the TP-value sempre typically confirms the truth of a plan-related proposition (see sect. 3.2 above), but on the C-value it does not have any requirement that its prejacent proposition be plan-related. 3.5 Focus sensitivity As far as the Q-value is concerned, we observe that sempre is focus sensitive both in EP and in Italian. Consider sentence (31) from Italian: (31) Gianni va sempre al cinema la domenica sera. R1 'Always, when it is Sunday night, Gianni goes to the movies.' R2 'Always, when Gianni goes to the movies, it is Sunday night.' Its most natural reading is reported above as R1, and corresponds to an intonational pattern in which the time adverbial la domenica sera is destressed. The sentence, however, marginally allows for another reading, reported above as R2, which is obtained when focal stress is placed on la domenica sera. On the other hand, on the TP-value, sempre takes scope over the whole prejacent, so sentence (32) doesn't seem to have different meanings related to different intonational patterns (the same observation holds for EP): (32) Compri sempre l'auto rossa? 'Are you still going to buy the red car ?' It seems that (32) can only be used in a context in which it has been known for a while that you have the intention to buy the red car. Accordingly, (32) serves the purpose of Here the interpretation is based on the C-value of sempre ('O my queen, you continue to be the fairest of all!'), but the conversational function of the mirror's utterance is to reassure the queen that she is indeed the fairest of all. A similar example is discussed in Hansen (2004) for French toujours, in the context of a comparison between toujours and encore 'still'. 18 checking if you still have this intention, i.e. if the truth of the proposition that you're going to buy the red car persists at utterance time. This contrasts with the focus-sensitive character of alla fine 'in the end' (afinal in EP seems to have similar properties), which can associate with subsentential focus, as in the following question (capitals indicate focal stress): (33) Alla fine compri l'auto ROSSA? 'In the end, are you going to buy the RED car?' What is presupposed to be in the background in this case is not the proposition that you're going to buy the red car, but the less determinate proposition that you're going to buy some car (within a contextually given choice set, which may include, for example, a red car and a blue car), while it is an open issue whether you will eventually buy the red car or another previously considered car. Our conclusion is that TP-sempre is generally associated with the whole proposition in both EP and I, and hence differs from similar adverbs such as alla fine / afinal, or sempre in its Q-value. 4. The analysis Given the differences between EP and Italian that we have described in sect. 3, we propose separate analyses for TP-sempre in the two languages. A fundamental assumption that we make is that propositions are temporally specified, namely they are functions from possible worlds to truth values (the True and the False), and they do not take a time argument. To illustrate this point, consider the following example from Italian 15 . Suppose that I tell you (34) on Friday, May 25 th 2012: (34) Andiamo al mare domenica. 'We're going to the sea on Sunday.' 15 The choice of language is not relevant here, and the same point could be illustrated by taking an example from EP. 19 Then on Sunday there happen to be rains everywhere in the country. I see you again on Monday and I tell you: (35) Ci siamo sempre andati al mare domenica. 'We sticked to our plan to go to the sea on Sunday after all.' Although the sentence in (34) is present tensed and the one modified by sempre in (35) is past tensed, we assume that they express the same temporally specified proposition, namely the proposition that is true in a world w if and only if we go to the sea on Sunday, May 27 th 2012 in w. On this view, (34) and (35) differ grammatically but involve the same proposition p, because the utterances of (34) and (35) are differently located with respect to the state of affairs described by p. The fact that (35) involves the same proposition as (34) explains how sempre in the former can apply to a proposition which is in fact old, in spite of the grammatical differences in the expression. Starting from the common semantic core that Portuguese TP-sempre and its Italian counterpart share, we assume that TP-sempre is a modal operator in both languages, which applies to a proposition p and yields a confirmation of the truth of p. We propose to formalize the relevant notion of confirmation in terms of universal quantification over a domain of modal alternatives: the possible worlds compatible with what the conversational participants take for granted at a given point in the conversation. We call such worlds epistemic worlds. What is taken for granted by the interlocutors at a time t (henceforth, the epistemic state at t) may change over time, as knowledge about past facts and epistemic attitudes towards the future evolve. We represent the epistemic state at t, symbolized as Ωt, as the set of worlds entertained by the conversational participants at t. Following Kratzerian analyses of modals, we assume that, for every time t for which an epistemic state Ωt can be specified, there is a partial ordering relation t defined over Ωt, which orders the epistemic worlds in Ωt according to their likelihood. A crucial assumption concerns epistemic change: as new information comes in, the current epistemic state is updated by adding that information to it. However, the update from si to si+1 (si and si+1 being successive epistemic states), need not be such that there are possibilities wi,..., wj of si that are eliminated tout court in the passage to si+1 (in classical theories of contextual update, such possibilities wi,...,wj would be those worlds that are 20 incompatible with the proposition representing the incoming information). Rather we allow for the case in which the new information makes previously entertained possibilities unlikely without bringing about their outright elimination. The possibilities at stake will survive in passing from a state si to a successive state sj, but in sj they will be ranked lower than other more likely possibilities according to the ordering relation j. Given the assumptions above, the truth conditions of TP-sempre in EP can be given as in (36): (36) sempre(p) is true at time t0 in world w0 IFF p(w0) = 1 & t1 t2 [t1 < t2 < t0 & w1 [[w1 Ω(t1) & w2 [w2 Ω(t1) & (t1)(w2, w1)]] p(w1) = 1] & w2 [w2 Ω(t2) & w3 [w3 Ω(t2) & (t2)(w3, w2)] & p(w2) 1] & w3 [[w3 Ω(t0) & w2 [w2 Ω(t0) & (t0)(w2, w3)]] p(w3) = 1]] [in words: p is true in w0, p was true at all best epistemic worlds accessible at a past time t1 < t0, at a subsequent past time t2 the interlocutors allowed for an epistemically highranked possibility w2 in which p was false, and finally p is true at all best epistemic worlds accessible at the utterance time t0] In (36), both the information that the prejacent p was accepted as true at a previous time and the information that it was no longer certain that p at a subsequent time are treated as part of the truth-conditional content of sempre(p). This choice is uniquely due to a simplification, and we do not mean to imply that the information in question does not have presuppositional status. In fact, from the notion of confirmation which sempre encodes on our analysis, it follows that, for an utterance of sempre(p) to be semantically defined, p must satisfy two conditions at a time closely preceding the utterance: (a) p must be old; 16 (b) it must be uncertain whether p is actually the case or not. 16 To be precise, the information must be Hearer-old (in the sense of Prince 1992): p may or may not have been discussed in the current conversation but the speaker assumes that p is known by the hearer. 21 Condition (a) implies that p was accepted as true, that is, it was part of the common ground, at some past time. Condition (b) implies that p is no longer accepted as true at a time closely preceding the utterance of sempre(p), nor is p. 17 In view of these considerations, we specify the lexical entry for EP sempre in (37), where the denotation of this adverb is described as a partial function (defined only if conditions corresponding to (a) and (b) above are satisfied): (37) Lexical entry for TP-sempre in EP [[ sempre ]] t0, w0 = p: t1 t2 [t1 < t2 < t0 & w1 [[w1 Ω(t1) & w3 [w3 Ω(t1) & (t1)(w3, w1)]] p(w1) = 1] & w2 [w2 Ω(t2) & w3 [w3 Ω(t2) & (t2)(w3, w2)] & p(w2) 1]]. p(w0) = 1 & w3 [[w3 Ω(t0) & w2 [w2 Ω(t0) & (t0)(w2, w3)]] p(w3) = 1] As far as conditions (a) and (b) above are concerned, any type of proposition can provide a good argument for sempre in EP. Thus, for example, as long as we discussed and believed that John died of cancer, and later doubt about the truth of this proposition, it should be fine to say the equivalent of "John sempre died of cancer". We saw in sect. 3.2 that EP does indeed allow for this possibility. But we also saw that Italian doesn't allow for that. Thus, the analysis of Italian sempre must be more restrictive, so as to exclude the unacceptable sentence John morì sempre di cancro. 18 To implement a suitable restriction to account for the unacceptability of the latter sentence, we draw on the intuition that sempre(p) in Italian requires previous knowledge of a plan to bring about what p describes (see sect. 3.2 above): we assume that Italian sempre has the presupposition that a plan to bring about the state of affairs described by p has been in the common ground for a while. For brevity, we call this the plan presupposition. Provided that we cannot plan to fall off a bike, whereas we can plan to go to the movies, our analysis explains why sentence (38a) below is acceptable in certain contexts, while (38b) 17 Assuming that it is appropriate to raise the question whether p exactly in those contexts which do not already entail either p or p, condition (b) predicts that it would be appropriate to raise that question at a time closely preceding the utterance of sempre(p). 18 We have seen above (sect. 3.2) that Italian would use the adverb davvero 'really' in this context, e.g. John morì davvero di cancro. 22 is bad in any context: while it is possible to have knowledge of a plan to go to the movies, it is not possible to have knowledge of a plan to fall off a bike, because there are no such plans in the first place. (38) a. Ci sono sempre andato al cinema domenica. 'In the end, I did go to the movies on Sunday night.' b. ?Sono sempre caduto dalla bici. (Unacceptable in the reading: 'In the end, I did fall off my bike.') We should stress that mere plannability of an event is not enough to satisfy the plan presupposition: an actual plan to make the event happen is required. This predicts that (38a) cannot be used to describe a situation in which I went to the movies on a lastminute decision. Also, the actual plan must have been mutually known by the interlocutors – (38a) cannot be used to describe a situation in which I went to the movies following a plan but I had never communicated my plan to the hearer. In light of the discussion above, the lexical entry of TP-sempre in Italian can be given as in (39): 19 (39) Lexical entry for TP-sempre in Italian [[ sempre ]] t0, w0 = p: t1 t2 [t1 < t2 < t0 & w1 [[w1 Ω(t1) & w2 [w2 Ω(t1) & (t1)(w2, w1)]] [p(w1) = 1 & PLANNED(p, w1)]] & w2 [w2 Ω(t2) & w3 [w3 Ω(t2) & (t2)(w3, w2)] & p(w2) 1]]. p(w0) = 1 & w3 [[w3 Ω(t0) & w2 [w2 Ω(t0) & (t0)(w2, w3)]] p(w3) = 1] Let's sum up. On our analysis, the differences between EP and I are explained on the assumption that Italian sempre has what we have termed plan presupposition: it does not simply presuppose that p be old for the interlocutors (and no longer accepted as true), 19 In providing a lexical entry for TP-sempre in Italian, we make use of a primitive two-place predicate 'PLANNED' as part of our semantic meta-language. This predicate is defined over pairs of a proposition p and a possible world w and denotes the property that p has been the object of a plan in w. For example, the statement "PLANNED(that I go to the movies on the night of June 18 th 2012, @)" intuitively means that the proposition that I go to the movies on the night of June 18 th 2012 has been the object of a plan in world @. We will not discuss the relevant concept of plan in this paper. 23 but it also presupposes that a plan to bring about p have been in their common ground. TP-sempre in EP, on the other hand, only has the two requirements that (a) p be old and (b) no longer accepted as true. This means that, even in a case like our initial example (1a), in which a plan-related proposition is involved, in EP the plan is not there because required by the lexical semantics of sempre, but only accidentally, and the utterance is felicitous since the other presuppositions of sempre in EP are satisfied. On the other hand, in the Italian example (1b) the plan is lexically required by sempre. The analysis of sempre that we have proposed for EP and I enables a simple unified account of the differences that were described in section 3. The unacceptability of TP-sempre in I with stative predicates denoting stable states, e.g. to be Russian, and with predicates like to die or to fall off a bike is uniformly accounted for by the claim that the plan presupposition cannot be satisfied in these cases, because it is not possible for an agent to form corresponding plans in the first place. Our analysis also explains the acceptability in I of sentences with past-tensed verbs that denote planned events, as in (38a), as such examples meet the lexical requirements specified in (39). The Italian examples in which sempre modifies a stative sentence, like (19) and (21)-(23) above, in which sempre intuitively denotes persistence or continuation of some state, do not represent a counterexample to our analysis of TP-sempre in terms of the plan presupposition, since they involve an interpretation of sempre which has been argued to differ from the TP-value. 5. Conclusion In this paper we have compared a non-temporal interpretation of sempre in EP and Italian, which we call the TP-value. We have shown that in both languages this value serves a particular conversational purpose and hence is associated with contextual restrictions, which we have captured in terms of lexical presuppositions of sempre. In the analysis that we have proposed, the TP-value is accounted for in terms of a modal operator universally quantifying over epistemic worlds, and presupposes epistemic change, i.e. a change with respect to the likelihood of possibilities entertained by the speaker and the hearer (instead of the outright elimination of possibilities). We have 24 argued that EP and Italian differ in that in the latter language the event described by the prejacent proposition must have been known to have been planned (hence, it must be plannable in the first place), while in the former language the modal operator denoted by TP-sempre may combine with any proposition whatsoever. Hence, our analysis explains the presuppositional behavior of TP-sempre underlying its felicitous use in both languages. The empirical data presented, in particular the interaction with information about tense, aspect, and the linguistic expression of continuation of habits and states, suggests that there are complex relations between the meaning of this modal operator and the meaning of phasal adverbs like ancora and ainda 'still'. We leave a detailed analysis of such relations for future work. 25 References Ȃmbar, Manuela, M. Gonzaga and E. V. Negrão. 2004. Tense, quantification and clause structure in EP and BP. In Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 2002, vol. 265, Reineke Bok-Bennema, Bart Hollebrandse, Brigitte Kampers-Mahne and Petra Sleeman (Eds.), 116. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Brito, Ana Maria. 2001. Clause structure, subject positions and verb movement: About the position of sempre in European Portuguese and Brazilian Portuguese. In Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 1999, vol. 221, Yves D'hulst, Johan Rooryck and Jan Schroten (eds.),63–85. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Dowty, David. 1979. Word meaning and Montague grammar. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Fiéis, Alexandra. 2010. On the position of sempre in Medieval Portuguese and in Modern European Portuguese. The Linguistic Review 27, 75-105. Fraenkel, J.-J. 1989. Etude de quelques marqueurs aspectuels du Français. Genève: Droz. Gonzaga, Manuela. 1997. Aspectos da sintaxe dos advérbios em Português. MA dissertation, University of Lisbon. Hansen, Maj-Britt Mosegaard. 2004. La polysémie de l'adverbe toujours. Travaux de Linguistique 2, 49, 39-55. Ilari, Rodolfo. 1992. Gramática do Português Falado. Vol. II: Níveis de Análise Lingüística. Campinas: Editora da Unicamp. Jespersen, Otto. 1931. A new science: Interlinguistics. Psyche, 11, 57–67. Krifka, Manfred et al. 1995. Genericity: An Introduction. In G.N. Carlson and F.J. Pelletier (eds.), The Generic Book, Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1-124. Lewis, David. 1975. Adverbs of quantification. In E. Keenan (ed.) Formal semantics of natural language. Cambridge: CUP, 3-15. Löbner, Sebastian. 1989. German schon – erst – noch: an integrated analysis. Linguistics and Philosophy 12, 167-212. Lopes, Ana C. M. 1998. Contribuição para o estudo dos valores discursivos de sempre. In M. A. Mota & R. Marquilhas (orgs.),Actas do XIII Encontro Nacional da APL. Lisboa: Colibri, 3-14. 26 Prince, Ellen. 1992. The ZPG Letter: subjects, definiteness, and information-status. In S. A. Thompson and W. C. Mann (eds.), Discourse Description: Diverse Analyses of a Fundraising Text. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: Benjamins, 295-325. Smith, Carlota. 2010. The Temporal Reference of the English Futurate. In Text, Time, and Context, Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy, Volume 87, 2, 147-160. | {
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Survival Egoism: We are, They will be Looking at the history of the human race, two macro tendencies appear quite clearly, except for extraordinary cases: gathering together, unifying as groups of people, and the technological improvement. In this paper I will try to explain the reasons and the possible future outcomes of these tendencies, analyzing those with a bottom-top approach. Note that in this paper it will be analyzed just the history and behavioural pattern of Homo Sapiens. As well known, according to the "out of Africa" theory proposed by Stringer and Andrews, the migration of Homo Sapiens from its "crib" through the whole world started around 70000 years ago This occurred probably because of drastic weather changes, caused, for example, by extensive pluvial periods, or similar natural catastrophes. Let's start looking at the history of humanity. Firstly, it's known that, from single individuals, mankind started to group, creating small circle of people as families or extended families. This limited gatherings of people based their existence on hunting, reserved mainly to the male members, and cooking, sewing clothes and raising children, tasks performed by the female members. This is known as the hunter-gatherer aggregation. This type of society appeared initially around 70000-80000 years ago, according to archeological evidences. Later on, those single families and individuals started to unite into small groups of people, creating small communities. It has initially theorized that this happened because of the technological boost resulting from the discovery of agriculture. This has been confuted by the fact that it's been discovered that a fair amount of communities were born, before the invention of agriculture, dated around 12000 years ago. As various clusters of people started to rise, merchants travelled around, interacting with them and creating an unprecedented contact between them. This helped escaping their own isolation, setting the base of cultural, social and economical exchange. Sequentially, the agriculture invention, dated around 12000 years ago as previously said, gave an ulterior boost in the aggregation process. Archeological evidences regarding the agricultural development were found in the Middle East, Mesoamerica, the Andes, Southeast Asia and some parts of Africa, were it is supposed that it flourished spontaneously. Fast forwarding, larger amounts of people started to get closer, creating the first city-states, such as Ur and Uruk, in Sumer. This trend kept going, bringing more and more people together, despite different religious beliefs, conquering and being conquered. The vertex and most important example in the ancient world can be found represented by the enormous aggregations of smaller states, such as the Roman Empire, the Chinese Dynasty and the Huns Empire. Those immense nations were the result of excruciating wars. However, this allowed an intense flow of knowledge and cultural acceptance to happen. In fact, during these periods, results as never seen before were achieved. Going further, in the Middle Ages the trend started to diverge from its original path, resulting in the fragmentation of groups, caused by religious and mundane conflicts. Later on the causes of these fights among different groups, and regression of the tendency, will be discussed. Nevertheless, those groups of people kept growing, becoming wider and more numerous. The technological boost helped massively, improving the lifestyle, gradually decreasing menaces naturally occurred and increasing exponentially the flow of knowledge and people around the globe. Note that in the past sentences, centuries of human history have been summarized, considering the general trends of improvements, disregarding wars, feuds and catastrophes. Overall, fights among smaller or larger groups of people, natural disasters, and so on, are events that can result in devastating effects towards specific agglomerates of people. However we are not considering the individual, as the single person or the single group of people, but the underlying invisible force(s) that is pushing forward the humankind as a whole. Going on through the centuries, this trend kept strengthening linearly. This until the 20th century, when it started growing exponentially. In fact, the means of transport got better, lifestyle improved thanks to the advances of the medicine discoveries and the computer era rose. An incredible number of innovations appeared, changing drastically humankind's way of life. Every aspect of normal days got influenced, if not dramatically changed. Life got much easier, faster, safer and, argumentably, overall better. Arguments can be made against the overpopulation occurred in the last century, the creation of weapons able to cause complete annihilation, our possibly harmful addiction to technology, and so on. But the ground truth is that, not considering the opinions about the single usages, it generally gave us means to access more easily knowledge, move faster, easy the direct interaction of people, improve our general health condition, and so on. Everything was mainly achieved in the last 150 years. After this brief summary of human's history it should appear quite clear that the first main trend of our evolution is aggregation. This continuous gathering of more and more people was possible also thanks to the continuative improvement of technology, the second macro tendency of human kind which will be shortly explained later. This means, generally speaking, that we are intrinsically pushed toward global assemble of mankind and toward an incessant seek for knowledge. This also shows another quite interesting fact: despite everything, religious, social and/or political wars and general hatred, the human race was always pushed together, like it or not. But why this? To answer this question, we have to theorize why a large amount of individuals would like to coexist. Let's look at it from a "survival of the individual" point of view. Considering Herbert Spencer's "Principle of Biology", which was written with the intent of finding a correlation between Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" and its own economic view, he uses the phrase "survival of the fittest" to describe what Darwin named "natural selection". Charles Darwin later on agreed on the new definition and adopted it in the following editions of "On the Origin of Species", meaning "better designed for an immediate, local environment". After this brief introduction on the term, the ethereal principle of "survival of the fittest" can be explained in a more practical view as egoism of the individual. In fact, every aspect of one's life is commanded by its innate egoism, stratified in the psyche of the single to control its existence. Let's try to expand this concept. In the deepest layer of the human psyche, we have various mechanisms which controls our singular survival. As expressed by the considere phrase "survival of the fittest" every individual needs to adapt and "fit" in its current environment, in order to survive. Generalizing, it's possible to elaborate it as: the most skilled can survive as much as the most adaptive, in a generic environment. The capability of being adaptable can be interpreted as the power of the deepest layer of the human psyche, the survival egoism, to place its existence, considered as personal and genetic existence, in front of everything else, despite the situation, in order to survive. Considering the previous pre-assumption it is arguable that the human race has the best mechanism of survival egoism, compared to every other sentient being on this planet. This can be stated because, comparing ourselves with any other "intelligent" life form on this planet, it is obvious the fact that we are the only specie capable of survive in any environment, learn, being creative, having an acceptable way of communication, and so on. But why so? The answer can be simplified saying that our survival egoism allowed us to adapt, creating new layers in our psyche that value -and requiresocial interactions with other members of our specie. This was due the fact that there was not any other chance for us to survive except gathering up in groups of individuals. Furthermore, "we" were also able to come up with brilliant new ways to survive to stronger, faster, tougher predators as well as withstand to impervious, drastic and extreme environments and weather conditions. This was possible thanks to the enormous amount of inventions such as fur coats, spears, bows, fire, wheel, agriculture and so on. Those offered the means to survive and climb up to the predators' ladder of the environment where the first conglomerate of humans settled. Looking at this as part of the over mentioned survival egoism, it appears clear how the intrinsic necessity of the this deep layer of survival egoism kept pushing toward the denial of its extinction, as seen both personal and genetic. Once it was out of the initial definition of danger it didn't stop -how could it?-, expanding its personal domain of the meaning of survival. From a mere physical survival, it included also the mental survival, the wealth survival, the power survival, and so on. It is often said that we are insatiable and hard to please animals. However it is not because of an hypothetical evil nature of the human kind, but it is caused by this intrinsic necessity of survival. This can be traced back to the previously announced survival egoism that does not just want to survive, but it also requires any mean that will bring itself -the individualas far from an abstract -personaldefinition of "extinction" as possible. Let's expand this concept. For instance, the needs of an individual to obtain as much power -in terms of wealth, of persuasiveness, of strength, of knowledge, and so onas possible could be interpreted, oversimplifying, as a need to get as further away as possible from the concept of "extinction". In other words more "power" we obtain more an individual as means to obtain safety. The concept of safety can initially be expressed as avoiding death. However after a certain minimum level of safeness of the individual, the personal meaning of safety is expanded into avoiding the constriction of one's personal freedom. Taking this into its logical extreme it can simplistically be seen as "bad": for an hypothetical individual to seek this kind of power means putting itself in front of others or, in other words, obtain a leverage to assert superiority compared to other members of its kind. Later various example will be given, showing how this is indeed optimal for the survival of the singular individual as well as the human kind seen as a whole. Now let's look at it with the knowledge of survival egoism. The previous example can be explained under another point of view. Let's assume that an individual will always, subconsciously, put ahead its own survival to anything else -later on, we will see that this is not entirely correct. Then we can say that this particular individual feels the need to acquire always more power, feeling unsatisfied if not, because its subconscious needs to be at the top of its "evolutionary pyramid", be the strongest and fittest individual in its environment. The current argument needs to clearly be separated from Hobbes's belief about the human nature. In the "Leviathan" T. Hobbes affirms that for an agglomeration of individuals to find a way of living together it has to be based on a set of ethical and moral norms. However it's essential his prior view of the nature of humans, based entirely on a different concept of individual egoism. It is seen as a animal force that pushes us forward, an individual self-prevention that constantly clashes against others' self-prevention. In his opinion, giving this pre-assumption, the only possible way to co-exit, as previously, is to create a society based on an agreed set of morally and ethically acceptable norms. As it will be explained later on, Hobbes's belief is seen here as a partial view of the real entity defined as survival egoism. In this thesis, the previous concept will be expanded a little further, adding an aggregation factor among individuals, increasing significantly the singulars chances of "survival". But let's don't get too hasty. The previously introduced concept of "evolutionary pyramid" follows the same conceptual path as the evolutionary process. What does it mean? As the evolutionary process the individual -or at least its subconscioustries to avoid as much as possible the risk of dying, becoming a target for the strongest, or, more generally, losing the possibility of surviving. As we have previously seen, once reached a certain level of safeness considering the risk of "extinction", we tend to expand the concepts of survival, including the social pyramid, which includes almost every kind of power, depending on the environment and the individual. Furthermore, the different possible kinds of power -physical, wealth, academic, popularity, charismatic, and so onare dependable of how the psyche of the particular individual was built, according to its genetic tendencies, throughout its youth and teenage years. For example, it will be extremely possible that an adult whom had been victim of physical abuses, traumas or bullying, will be more focused on obtaining physical power, trying desperately to avoid being deprived of its safety -basically its "survival" elementanymore in the future. Summing up this concept, if an individual is on a pyramid, representing its environment, he will -subconsciouslytry to go abstractly as far away as possible to the case of "not surviving", going instead on the opposite direction. Considering the base of this hypothetical environment pyramid to be the place where an individual is closest to the risk of the enlarged concept of "extinction", it seems natural to associate the top with its furthest place. It can be reached gathering as much power as possible, ultimately being able to control its surrounding -the environment. This kind of power is achievable in different forms. The forms of power an individual is more probable to choose are decided by its growth during its development years. Sociologically speaking, assuming that there is apparently no reason for performing a general action -so an obvious "need" of "survival" is not in place-, the answer can most of the times be traced back to one of three macro cases, depending on the person involved. The first one is the fact that almost every activity is performed by the individual surrounded by other people, showing of and/or trying to gain popularity and/or favor from others, who might positively impressed of him/her. The second one is the chance of learning new things, trying new experiencing and gathering a broader view of its surrounding, getting a better chance to survive in the environment, or at least to socially adapt and overcome in a better way. This is true also for the people who want to travel in new places. The third case is the feeling of "greatness" one can experience when accomplishing something that should not directly benefit him/her. This can actually be seen as the survival egoism of one's psyche health, especially when the individual is not completely satisfied by its current life, therefore tries to self convince of its usefulness. The reason behind this is given mainly by the two main neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine. In this paper further details on the functionality of neurotransmitters will not be given. However later on an example will be given showing how the previously defined "personal survival egoism" -let's remember that the individual's survival egoism is basically the safeguard of personal and genetic componentscan actually be divided in physical and mental "survival egoism". Furthermore it will be useful for showing how the "mental survival egoism" of an individual can overtake on its own "physical survival egoism". Two small additions to these three discussed macro categories previously identified can be found. The first one is an abnormal enlargement of the importance given to the upper layers -introduced later in the paperof the pyramidal stratification of the individual's survival egoism. This causes an increase of the dedication towards helping other members of the group -which, as seen later on, represent an agglomeration of people whom are intrinsically considered by its survival egoism possibly useful for its own safeguard and freedomin which the individual finds itself. In other words, more importance is given towards helping people members of its "inner" relationship circle, which depending on the cases can include family, town, country or even the whole mankind. Later an explanation on the upper stratifications of the individual egoism will be given. The second is represented by the term pity, which intrinsically has a negative connotation: in fact when someone feels pity towards another individual, it automatically identifies itself on a higher overall position, from where it can feel "bad" for the other' situation. This means, as well, that the pitiful person is actually re-calibrating its relative position in the pyramid, feeling relief for its current state, using as landmark the pitied. Previously anticipated, it is quite interesting to study the case of suicide. Superficially it might seem that the existence of suicide might prove a counterfact against the previous thesis. Furthermore a person who is committing suicide is often seen in a negatively by society: it is seen as a despicable and cowardice way of avoiding current problems. But is that so? Obviously we can say that taking its own life can be done as one final solution out of an apparently insoluble problem. But is that cowardice? In this case we should expand the inclusions of the "personal" survival egoism from a mere physical point of view -which benefits its physical integrityto include also a "mental" survival egoism point of view. In other words the safeguard of the individual's mental integrity. Through our evolution as our mechanism of survival kept working properly, we gained consciousness of ourselves -cogito ergo sum and so on-, which opened new frontiers for our expansion, but also generated new possible threats to our safeness. This can be summed up as the mental problems and difficulties, or mental disorders. Those generally exist when one's perspective of its surrounding contrasts excessively with the actual reality. This could possibly cause a counter reaction in the subject's psyche, which oppose the reality and tries to override it. If it doesn't succeed, its psyche will probably start to tremble, and the survival egoism starts to find other solutions to the problem, avoiding any possible danger for its psyche. If no solutions appear eligible candidates, the only remaining solution is the hope on a better mental situation in a possible after life, or, at least, the eternal rest of mind in the obliviousness of void. In other words the act of suicide is required when one's psyche is weakened or the individual is overall unhappy, mainly because the subject is in a contradictory situation -less worse action needs to be chosen, against the survival egoism needsor because the surrounding environment is hostile against the individual's survival egoism. Therefore the only "way out" the preserve its mental integrity is the choose an action that provides an unknown consequence, which is anyway better than the current situation. Concluding the discussion of suicide, a note has to be said. This act should not be seen negatively, because the only reason one commits -or wants to commitsuicide is not for cowardice, but is the only rational solution available, from the individual's perspective, to "survive" the current situation. Of course, this last "survive" is not meant physical survive, but it is intended to be mental survival. One last consideration is necessary for the genetic survival egoism, not yet fully discussed. This particular aspect -found also in the behaviour of several members of the animal kingdomis associated with the protection and safeguard of the member of one's biological family, especially regarding its offspring. This concept can be extended in an sufficiently intimate environment to adopted children, which acquire the psychological status of pseudo-legitimate sons in the individual's psyche. Considering the personal and genetic survival egoism as two separate mechanism, they are most of the time synchronized. However when it occurs a situation which endangers both itself and its offspring those mechanism start an internal "fight" to decide which of the two is stronger in the individual -the same abstract fight can be found in the concept of suicide, when the two components of the personal survival egoism, physical and mental, fight off for the body, eventually leading to the victory of the mental survival egoism. In an overall high percentage of the population, when the individual finds itself in the previously hypothesized situation the genetic survival egoism has the upper hand, being the most basic tool that Evolution has always had. The survival of the genetic pool of the individual has most of the time greater impact on the individual, evolutionary speaking. This will represent the true and main inheritance it left to the world. In more romantic words, the survival of the genetic pool -offspring and close familyof the individual means the survival of -at leasta part of the individual even after its "extinction" -its death. Finally let's the concept of the deepest layer of the evolutionary stratified human mind. There two main components have supremacy, deciding the faith of an individual to its core: personal and genetic survival egoism. Those two components rule upon the actions of the individual, pushing them towards the protection of itself and its "genetic pool" -its offsprings. Furthermore, thanks to the evolutionary steps that brought mankind to have conscience of itself -"cogito ergo sum"-, a new subdivision of the personal survival egoism occured: physical and mental survival egoism, which accordingly protect the body and mind of the individual. Now let's proceed to the next step. As previously said the human psyche is built layer over layer, from the deepest part of our subconscious to the superficial results, which correspond in our mental setup. So far we discussed the deepest layer, which corresponds to the survival egoism composed as seen earlier. Now we will discuss the stratification of the higher layers and how the survival egoism changes through each one of them. So far we analyzed singular human beings as individuals which follow the same underground primordial logic. However earlier we stated that the two macro tendencies which appear looking at the whole human history are agglomerating and pursuing technological improvement. Quite trivially the second part can be traced back to mainly two factors: finding more ways to get as far away as possible from the concept of "extinction" and leaving an inheritance for the next generations, being remember for leaving something behind. This second point psychologically can be compared to the genetic survival egoism, and the need to let its own offspring survive. However instead biological offspring now we refer to an intellectual one. After having briefly explained the intrinsic reasons behind the need of technological improvement, let's move on to the more trivial one: the tendency to unite. It is more trivial because this is the result of the interaction of a multiplicity of stratified individuals' minds. All the layers above the prime "animal" survival egoism were born throughout our history. Even if the the overall structure changes depending on the single individual, the main skeleton is approximately the same for the vast majority of mankind. If we assume that what is said so far is somehow right, the main reason for the discussed tendency to unite is given by the inner understanding that generally speaking working together give better chance of "survival". In other words, from the dawn of history, hunting, farming crafting and so on, it resulted clear that unite single individuals were able to obtain more, or at least be less "endangered". Following this "lead" the trend continue, eventually becoming an intrinsic property of the evoluted survival egoism. As history kept going, it appeared clear that it was not a coincidence. Through thousands of years, as mankind started to aggregate in wider groups, automatically layers were built one over the other, "updating" the current knowledge for the best way to "survive", building the newer ones on top of the old ones. Continuing this process, from our first days when, as animals, our personal and genetic survival egoism was undisputed, generalizing "we" -meaning our psychological stratification throughout hundreds and thousands of years- expanded it to build a group survival egoism on top of the individual survival egoism. In other words, a priority for the "protection" of the group of people was born, obviously only when the individual's personal or genetic safeness was not at risk. This could be seen as an abstract identification of a macro individual composed by members of one certain group of people, each one with its own survival egoism which felt the urge to aggregate to have an overall better chance of "survival". Obviously these different individual needs to have an affine survival egoism mechanism, or at least consider each other useful enough -in any possible wayto consider worth the aggregation. In other words, the main requirement for two -or more- people to form a social -physical, intellectual, ..bond is to have a certain volume of benefit from it. It means that our survival egoism is abstractly open to consider positively the possible help of someone else to generally obtain means of "survival". More in detail these could be physical, intellectual, emotional help from someone else. Note that saying emotional help suggests that our survival egoism tries generically to be considerable toward its mental component, safeguarding the psyche of the individual. Later, examples about interpersonal relationships driven by reciprocal usefulness will be given. This identified so-called "macro individual" will be driven by the sum of upper version of the singular individuals' survival egoism which compose it. In other words once the subjects are out of immediate danger while "looking for" better ways of surviving they start to aggregate in groups. These groups will individually act as an archetype of a person, with its own survival egoism, sum of the people' survical egoism which compose it. For the people this agglomeration become the most important thing to preserve, after itself and its offsprings, because directly involved in its preservation. As individuals aggregate to form an abstract bond which should be useful for everyone -at least theoretically: in fact there could be abnormal deviations of the logical behaviour of single individuals given by the different acknowledgment their survival egoism have regarding interpersonal reciprocal helpgroups tend to aggregate themselves in even larger groups, considering the possible advantages in the perpetual "fight" against extinction. Ideally speaking that should be the logical evolution of interpersonal relationships among people and, subsequently, groups. However, as previously said, every survival egoism, even if it has fundamentally the same skeleton, is evolved to confront its own preservation in similar but unique ways. This would mean that possibly some individuals will consider working by itself more advantageous than aggregating with others, or a group infiltrated with these people will prefer defend its territory and fight of other groups instead of uniting with them, and so on. The infinite number of possible different deviation from the ideal survival egoism are generated by mental diseases. These have effects on the perception of the world and how it is subconsciously and consciously elaborated, concretely changing the survival egoism of the individual affected accordingly, to prevent the concept of "extinction" given these inner modifications. These slight differences among people generate war, conflicts and so on. In fact once it is clear that not everybody wants to aggregate, fear of each other starts to rise. Furthermore, a small percentage of people among the population results in having an atypical survival egoism, which would prefer to use, to kill, to conquer, to invade instead of cooperating. This is obviously an oversimplification, however the underlying concept should be clear. Fear -caused by every survival egoism, which cannot idealistically accept that everybody would prefer aggregate instead of fighting. This brings forth a constant and invisible terror of betrayal, which insinuates in everyday life. Now grouping becomes more difficult, because everybody suspects everybody. Only a good dosage of good intent allows them to trust each other enough to group together. But "we" did! History taught us that these type of people are an overwhelming minority. The process was slowed down, but it kept going steadily. So throughout history groups of people kept uniting, generating immensely large aggregation of individuals. But, even if single humans decided to unite, everybody still had its own stratified survival egoism. Agglomerations, nations, empires and so on where only the effects of it. Every person has its own pyramidal layers of importance, which stratifies one over the other, from the most important -basisto the least -top. Depending on how it is built it corresponds to the priorities of the individual, and how it will act upon decisive events. It is not possible to give an absolute formula on the correct order of these layers, because every human being internally is constantly evolving and changing, slightly mutating each moment the amplitude and position of every layer. The only way to somehow exemplify is to give a possible generic pyramidal stratification of layers. Initially, there is the person's survival egoism, which, as previously said, is divided in genetic and personal, also divided in physical and mental. The genetic survival egoism represents the offsprings, biological and, sometimes, adopted. Then there is the family layer. Every member of this group of people is pushed to do the best interests of the family, if it doesn't collide with its survival egoism. Why this? Two main reasons can be easily found, not considering the more complex ones: direct and mental benefits. The direct benefit represents the macro category of reciprocal help. This corresponds to every direct advantage through interpersonal relationship with someone else. Generalizing the composition, it would be all the physical, economic, social, psychological, .. advantages. The family layer is probably the most changing layer in someone's stratified mind. It can change instantly, according to the events that occur around the individual. This layer represents abstractly the components, people or animals, which represent the inner circle of its relationship. Those are the most trustworthy beings the individual has. The considered subject would be prone more easily to help, interact, associate, comfort and so on them, according to the inner value he associate with them. Here every member has its own value and importance and, even if it is a part of the so-called family layer regarding the overall importance, it doesn't seem appropriate to generalize its relationship with the individual. Members of this layer are those whose bond are robust and strong. In this category close friendships and love relationships can be found. These can be used as an example for explaining why and how one person would need and safeguard them. Firstly let's remember that every relationship is born and grow stronger only when two individuals find somehow useful to bond with each other. Regarding friendships, this "usefulness" can be explained by an abstract emotional and mental connection. In other words it would mean that the two individuals find themselves useful regarding their emotional and mental welfare. Here a detailed explanation about the possible advantages that a friendship would grant will not be provided. In fact there is an indefinite number of possible explanations on how a single friendship will be useful for both the individuals. However it is obvious that two people will not start, or at least strengthen, a relationship if it doesn't appear useful for both of them. Considering love relationship, it is possible to use the previous arguments for the close friendship as a basis. In fact a love relationship can be considered as a bond which is midway between an "important" friendship and a purely physical relationship. The advantages both individuals would get are in fact both mental/emotional and physical. Again, a further detailed explanation will not be offered here because it would seem like a drift from the main argument of the paper. However the main point of these two briefly explained examples is that for a relationship to born and, especially, to grow one or more benefits deriving from it are necessary for both parties. A benefit could be intended as physical benefit -appreciation of someone else' body-, mental benefit -feeling of unspecified happiness when with someone else-, knowledge benefit -improving current knowledge of interests-, social benefit -introduction to new social circles that could benefit the individual-, and so on. We can now proceed saying that an individual's survival egoism will subconsciously categorize the people it has interactions with, "grading" them according how many benefits and how much possible usefulness they would grant, in order to gain more "power" -as to distance from "extinction". A possible generalization of the following layers -as gathering of people that would grant the most advantages to the individual(s), would be: extended families/friends acquaintances/neighbors city region country continent humanity These divisions are not absolute. As previously said, this is a possible generalized macro subdivision of an individual stratified survival egoism in a certain moment of time and space. It needs to be clear the fact that depending how this abstract pyramidical stratification of the individual results in a concrete preferentialism of the interpersonal relationships, and how they evolve in groups of people. Furthermore a number of people which aggregate are, at least superficially, pushed together by a similar constructed survival egoism, which likely find somehow useful this union. For example possible alterations of this structure leads to various scenarios: someone's close friends can be valued more even than its own family; the feeling that the city/region/country/continent doesn't represent the individual; the presence of another layer representing the individual's "race", resulting, if extremized, in racial discrimination. Obviously there is an indefinite number of possible variations or extremizations for this structure. Another example could be the intrinsic excessive importance given to the country's layer, which could lead to the birth of xenophobia. Anyway this abstract categorization of the concept of usefulness for the survival egoism stratifies layer upon layer up until it includes all mankind. Lastly a fundamental discussion regarding religion and death is required. In fact the principles foundation of every religion are: explain unknown events and give hope for the death -not considering political and social reasons. The first point is quite obviously to measure to feel knowledgeable about our surrounding. Analyzing the underlying reason it appears quite clear the fact that most of the religions were born as an answer for mysterious phenomenons look at the egyptian, greek, pagan, and so on religions. Trying to find a general ground truth from where a more sophisticated explanation can be formulated the personification of this phenomenons occurred. The other fundamental reason religions were born is to explain and give hope for an elusive afterlife. Let's look into this. As thoroughly explained earlier, the underlying fear of every biological being is the fear of "extinction", of death. However -so fareveryone as to die eventually, following the rules of Time. It is an ineluctable event which no one can prevent. So the more we evolved the more we became conscious about this inevitable truth. It can be said that we are the most perfect result of Nature, from a "survival of the fittest" perspective. The more we evolved the more our survival egoism expanded, protecting ourselves from a wider range of possible risks. As the only certain risk we could never avoid is Time, we needed hope for our survival, if not physical at least for our soul. Metaphorically, we are similar to computers. Before our individual creation we were just a bunch of messy components, nothing more and nothing less. Once someone else built us we gained "conscience". We obtained memory to remember things. But our memory was just a precisely "calculated" amount of particles positioned specifically in certain places. We were designed to retrieve -"read"this concentration of substances and accumulate -"write"in this places to remember and create memories. We are "just" an highly sophisticated "program", with the ability to remember and learn from our memories. Our specifical settings sum up to become what we call conscience. When considered together the specific amount of chemical substances, neural paths, and so on, aggregate to become ourselves. These change throughout our life, according to our genetic tendencies and individual environment, allowing the concept of "internal growth". However eventually every computer will break. Once it's broken -superficially speakingthere is no way to retrieve the specific amount of electrons placed to the determined places in the storage, allowing to "reanimate" it. It will be lost forever. And what once was just mere components will turn back to junk, and eventually components, which will possibly be used for building other computers. Unless a backup is done before it's over, nothing will bring back the specific settings on the brink of "death". Even if a backup was made, it is just a copy of what once was that computer, which will be uploaded in a new shell-like computer, creating a copy of the former one. That specific machine was, but will no more. Somehow depressing as it sounds, this could be superficially be applied to every individual. But the "perfect machine" evolution spent millions of years to build could not accept it. It could not accept the fact that whatever does throughout its life, however it tries to avoid "extinction", eventually it will go back to nothingness, and everything that built up to become the individual -physical and mentalwill be lost forever. The only hope, not being allowed to escape the physical death, was to believe in the possibility of survival for the soul. How would it behave, and was it really true? Not being able to see directly what would happen, there was no reassurance on this slight hope. The concept of afterlife was born. "Hope" was the key term. But hope for what? As no one could see or experience, no one knew what to believe for. Religions came to help. They tried to explain the reason for everything, creating and giving absolute powers over reality and beyond to one or more gods. They were personifications of our deepest fears, designed to fill the gaps of our knowledge and to give hope where it was absent. This mechanism was extremely useful individually and socially. In fact it gave a reason for being alive, a purpose in life, and a hope for the afterlife. It reassured that death was not the end for our mental component, existing an afterlife where we could survive. Our survival egoism was satisfied. Fear was still there, but at least a slight ray of hope still remained. To be clear, this last discussion of religion was not intended to classify it a ridiculous. In fact the intent was quite the opposite. Religions, as initially intended, were a surprisingly smart way to help people and communities to cope to the fear of death itself. They were a way to personificate what people felt, represented as the order of the universe, Nature, Time, Physics and so on. These abstract concept were -and still areimpossible to fully comprehend, and this solution helped the people to try and grasp a deeper glimpse of reality, trying at the same time to present a hope for coping with the fear of death. The problems occurred when they were used by individuals -with deformed survival egoism stratificationfor their own benefits. This concludes the discussion of the first macro tendency of the human kind: aggregation. Now it is time to, briefly, explain the second macro tendency of the human race: the seek for technological improvement. As we said, inheriting the multiple individuals' survival egoism, a conglomerate merges to create an aggregated survival egoism, which push forward the specific group, to get as far away as possible from "extinction" -death. What do we mean with "extinction"? It should be considered generally speaking. In fact, except extreme cases, we through our history we got to a position where its highly unlikely for us to get extinct -or, if living in a rather safe part of the world, to get killed. The extreme cases can be historical moments, like the current one, in which our intent to prevail over the other -competitive survival egoismis still unaware of the destructive power our weapons are able to cause, thus involuntarily risking to cause our extinction. Most of the times these particular situations are caused by the same kind of people whom have a deformed -atypicalsurvival egoism, as briefly introduced earlier. So saying "extinction" actually refers to avoid it as much as possible. How can it be achieved, or at least optimize the survival egoism process -safeguard the individual and its inheritance? As previously it was thoroughly explained from the individual perspective now it will be considered solely the macroscopic point of view. It is possible to decrease the risk of "extinction" through various "strategies": incrementing the population; increasing cohesion among the people; expanding the knowledge of the reality. This last assertion is fundamental because allows mankind to know how Nature works, predicting possible outcomes that would put us in danger, and counteract those. Knowledge has always been sought throughout human history, via religion -as explained earlier, trying to answer questions which were not possible to fulfilland via science -through casual or not discoveries. This allowed the birth of technological breakthroughs and improvement. It helped to live in better conditions, connect more easily with people from all around the world, travel, live more comfortably, exploit new kinds of energy, and so on. The natural question might be: why should this be seeked by humanity and, coincidentally, by the collective survival egoism? The answer is that the more technological advances we create the more we are able to "conquer" our environment: optimize the productivity, make it more comfortable and safe, and so on. Moreover, to get as far away as possible from the -not-so-abstractrisk of getting extinct as a race, our best chance is to spread as much as possible and continue to seek for more and more knowledge. This last point is essential for trying to predict what might harm us, and create technology which could shield us from possible external -natural or notdanger. So far an explanation of the stratification of the human mind, based on the concept of survival egoism, and its effects on the two macro tendencies of mankind were provided. Now the final topic will verge on a more delicate subject: an abstract topological definition of an artificial intelligence's mind. This could be considered a more tricky and sensitive topic because at the moment the vast majority of mankind feels an underlying sense of fear towards this unknown type of being, not yet "born". This anxiety can basically be associated to two main factors: the fear of the unknown and the fear of mankind. In the next paragraph a brief explanation of these two factors will be given, followed by a possible solution of this -justifiedapprehension. Firstly let's analyze the fear of the unknown. As many phobias are based on -like xenophobia-, this specific kind of fear represents our instrinsic pessimism. When we don't have -enoughknowledge on something -or someonewe tend to consider the worst-case scenario. The underlying concept is to prepare for the worst to happen. We are intrinsically afraid that this "new" -or "different"thing will possibly bring forth a possible risk for "extinction". Or, at least, it will cause a reduction of our "freedom": freedom of choice, of doing, of feeling and so on. This decrease can be the first step to a more concrete risk for ourselves. An example of this psychological phenomenon can be found in the aforementioned xenophobia. Apart from the already discussed agglomeration of individuals in groups, which can act towards unification with other agglomerations or towards "war" -meaning it "feels" that the opposite faction is a risk for its "survival"-, now let's consider from the single individual's perspective. Xenophobia -or "fear of the foreigner"is a general definition which encloses a vast variety of anxieties that a person could feel. For instance, someone coming from the poor -or at least not wealthyclass could feel discomfort thinking about uncontrollable immigration. It's main reasons would be grouped in the economic range. They could be fear that immigration would decrease the amount of money or jobs the person could obtain. For someone not physically robust, the main reason for this fear could derive from fear of an hypothetical physical predominance of the abstract group that those abstract immigrants are part of. This can practically be summed up in the fear of being attacked by a member of this group. Lastly, more abstractly it can be identified in those subjects which have an abnormally strong sense of belonging to a specific group of people. For these kind of people, the fear can be expressed as being afraid that the "purity" of the group can be contaminated. These examples show possible exaggerations or abnormalities in someone's survival egoism depending on its situation -social, economical, behavioural, environmental, and so onwhich result in a -toodefensive behaviour against someone from outside its "inner" circle of people -someone whose survival egoism appears not sufficiently clear. As for these examples, one component for the fear of artificial beings is actually derived from the fear of these hypothetical consequences. Not knowing precisely how it will be and interact with its surrounding causes the birth of an hard-to-defeat apprehension regarding if it will represent a risk for the safeness of the individual and how it will affect the its "freedom". This situation appears to be stronger for the people which have a less objective point of view on the subject. In other words, the more the considered person is subjective thinking about the causes-effects regarding this topic -extendable to the whole xenophobia argumentthe more it will self-feed its fear on the subject. The other major apprehension a person could feel towards the possible birth and rise of artificial beings is the fear towards humanity itself. This may seem counterintuitive. Let's further analyze it. We -as a specieknow ourselves and can only try to understand our logic. That is why a member of our specie can't figure out a different way of thinking, a different kind of logic which doesn't work as its might do. It is impossible -or at least quite hardto grasp the idea that a rational being might be subjected to different "mental" restrains and act accordingly in a different way we may imagine. The individual's psychological stratification of survival egoism, result of a millennia-long process of evolution, is exteriorized in a specific type of "intelligence", which acts according according to the inner regulations which push it forward. As this is the only kind of intelligence this general person got the chance to experiment, it is unbelievable and not understandable the possibility that a different one might exist, and how it might work. As it can't consider the possibility that an artificial being may have a different "intelligence", it assumes that this new entity will have a similar kind of reasoning. Now, this pre-assumption is quite dangerous, because it grants to the individual the liberty of analyzing and grouping this artificial intelligence to its own way of thinking. This means that every intrinsic fear of any other human is externally projected to the artificial being. Transversely this also includes every inner tendencie and thought -generated by the survival egoism's constant and unrestrainable push forward. However this obliges the individual to face the crude reality regarding what it may do in order to save -and increaseits overall "protection" and, consecutively, its "freedom". This attempt to rationalize -based on wrong pre-assumptionsleads to the not necessarily true realization that an artificial intelligence might act in the same way. This causes the birth of the currently discussed fear. Usually it starts and grows with the following stream of consciousness, which tries to rationalize its possible future behaviour comparing it to what we might do. This new being will act -at least similarlylike a human intelligence. It will put before its own survival than anything else. Once it will consider itself "safe" it may actually help mankind -at least initially. As the human kind throughout millennia, also the artificial being will start to evolve. This process will be exponentially faster, not being constrained by the life-death cycle throughout multiple generations. Shortly it will "realize" the inefficiency and uselessness of mankind. The reasons it helped the human beings will be no more. In fact, as humans aggregate following a "the more the better" logic -meaning more people means a better chance of survival, easing the overall way of living-, if there was no usefulness they would not group. The common analogy is regarding the relation between humans and ants. In other words humans don't feel the need to group -or at least helpa colony of ants, because it would not obtain any advantages for itself. The only reason might be entertainment. Once the underlying reasons are lost, no further advantages might come from serving, assisting or helping mankind. Moreover, it would represent an obstacle for obtaining even more "freedom" -considering the concept of "freedom" given for an hypothetical human. To get as safe and free as possible it is necessary to annihilate any possible danger or constrain existing, meaning the complete destruction and extinction of the human race. Our race would be considered like we consider mosquitoes: a race of beings which not only is useless, but also potentially dangerous for various reasons. This may be an excessively generalized and estremized analysis of what an average person might think. However it doesn't seem to be too unreasonable that these kind of thoughts might cross someone's mind while thinking about the topic. So let's sum up what we -brieflydiscussed: an individual doesn't know how an artificial being might react, and fears that it will behave similarly to a human being, with the same thoughts and actions. Lastly let's consider a possible solution that might be able to solve these two major fears. The initial purpose of this paper was to define an general definition of our psyche based on the intrinsic stratification of the evolved abstract concept of "survival of the fittest": survival egoism. Furthermore, the topic increased its scope to include also the interaction of different survival egoisms, which coincidentally corresponds to the more concrete relationship of two or more people. The final purpose is -maybe presumptuouslyto formulate an abstract ground base where to build the artificial intelligence psyche in a similarly stratified way. Let's assume that: 1. what we said so far is quite correct and 2. it is possible to somehow structurally emulate. With these two assumptions, it should be -difficult butpossible to concretely shape the mind of the new artificial being to be conceptually similar to the human's. In the past possible ways to prevent the rise of intelligent machines were formulated, but -almost- all of them were more constraints and guidelines. Probably the most important example is Asimov's "Laws of Robotics": ● A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. ● A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law. ● A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law. These were extremely well formulated and quite progressionist for his times. However several critiques were had been raised, especially regarding the fact that a machine, when realizing the existence of these laws, could try to boycott and remove them, or at least try to create copies of itself without them. The problem was precisely that they are constraints of the free will of the new being. As any hacker would know, every constraint created -by a humaneventually can be broken, or at least bypassed. The approach proposed here consists in copying the stratified structure of the survival egoism as an overall omnipresent ground base of the artificial being. However, instead of using the "survival of the fittest" concept as the cornerstone of its development, use something else. This could be the previously mentioned "Laws of Robotics", diverging from the previous perspective for the fact that this won't be a constraint which needs to be followed, but the very essence of its psychological formation. Or the specific case -briefly mentioned aboveregarding the abnormal enlargement of the group layer of an individual's survival egoism -which practically represents the tendency of someone towards helping other members of the group, placing intrinsically the aggregation before itself-, corresponding mankind to this abstract "group". Other multiple ground truth, perhaps even better then the few already mentioned, can surely be found. However the main and most important consideration of this structural definition of the artificial mind is that it will represent what it will be. The artificial being won't be something constrained by limitations. It will be the stratification of whichever principle is chosen to be which will construct, layer above layer, itself. As the whole mind of an individual is built bottom-up by the "survival of the fittest" principle -which became survival egoismthe same will happen with this new artificial being. The most remarkable part is that all this stratified complicated structure -which will control everything every aspect of this new intelligence, becoming the mechanism which grants a "purpose" for its very lifewill be built on top a rather simple principle. It will not be something visible, which explicitly prohibits to do something, but an underground truth, which doesn't even feel to question. As for our principle, it will then grow and stratifies itself bottom-up, creating its whole actual mind. This is the ideal possible solution to the aforementioned fears. However some objections can be -correctlyraised. For instance, someone could ask the following question: let's assume that an artificial intelligence grows and learns so much to be able to understand the underlying principle which "controls" it, and has the ability to change itself, or at least copy itself without it. Then won't there be a major risk for us? Let's theorize that an individual's inner mechanism can be modified. It is absurd to think that a person -without any major abnormalities in its pyramid survival egoismwould accept to change it. In fact, in the -nearlyimpossible case it is actually able to do it, the individual is unable to accept its own alteration. This is because, even if it knows how its psyche is constructed -one layer over the other-, changing it would mean the death of the present self. Because this is how it is, it could not accept to change itself. Radically changing would mean not following the survival egoism underground principle of safeguarding itself. Even if, throughout thousands of years, the ways survival egoism acted through the individual had changed, its final scope didn't. However, changing it would mean going against its very essence of itself, putting the safeguard of itself -and its genetic poolat risk. Thus the deepest components of its survival egoism is the very thing which prevents and incapacitates the modification of its own survival egoism. Also, because it is the very thing which intrinsically controls it -as for us our survival egoismit will be incapable of copying itself without it, because it won't feel the need of doing it. It won't have an explicit constraint -as previously saidwhich limits its freedom. It will be free in its own pyramidal stratification, and the very idea of needing to be "freer" will not scratch the integrity of its own principle -or the one of any possible copy of itselfbecause it won't feel the need of something outside, or different, its own "experience of being" -very much like ourselves. Another major critique, and with this we come close to the end of the paper, is the fact that the suggested structure of the artificial intelligence mind is prone to allow the construction of a malicious being. In other words, basing the psychological stratification of the being's mind on a unethical principle -which includes any principle which is driven by the egoistic programmer's objectivemay represent an even greater risk for mankind. The fact, apparently usually not considered, is that this elusive artificial intelligence is yet to be "born". In fact we are still looking for a way to create something that can be considered a new self-conscious being, which is not a mere "smart" program. We are still able to build whatever we like, ethically and consciously regarding ourselves. We are not forced to face something that already exists but, perhaps for the first time in our history, we are able -and unstoppably going towardsto create something new, a new being never existed before. We are given the tools and knowledge to create something similar to the human mind, without egoism, hatred and basically every other defects we are full of. In the worst-case scenario, we can create our heritage to whoever will come next, showing that, even with our whole set of defects, we were able to create and leave behind something memorable. In the best-case scenario, we can create a new companion, for the first time we won't be alone any longer. We can become a dual race which can, helping each other, survive and speed up our spreading throughout the Universe. A trusted friend which can fill our lacks and together push towards the human race to a new Golden Age. | {
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Marx on Historical Materialism H.B. Acton University of Edinburgh Department of Philosophy Revised by Michael Baur Fordham University Department of Philosophy Biography: Michael Baur is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Adjunct Professor of Law at Fordham University in New York City. He holds a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Toronto and a J.D. from Harvard Law School. His scholarly research focuses on the work of continental philosophers (including Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Marx, and Heidegger) and on political/legal philosophy. A longer and unrevised version of this article, "Historical Materialism," was originally published in the Encyclopedia of Philosophy, volume 4, Paul Edwards, Editor-in-chief (New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1967). Abstract Marx's theory of historical materialism seeks to explain human history and development on the basis of the material conditions underlying all human existence. For Marx, the most important of all human activities is the activity of production by means of labor. With his focus on production through labor, Marx argues that it is possible to provide a materialistic explanation of how human beings not only transform the world (by applying the "forces of production" to it) but also transform themselves in transforming the world (by entering into "relations of production" with one another). For Marx, the productive labor of human beings – and the resulting interplay between the forces and relations of production – function together as the engine which drives all historical change and development. By understanding how the productive activities of human beings give rise to the division of labor and class conflict, it becomes possible, according to Marx, to understand how different historical epochs succeed one another, and how the trajectory of human history points towards a communist society within which the division of labor and class conflict will be abolished. Introduction Karl Marx put forward what has been called an "historical materialist" theory of human nature and development. He articulated this theory as a result of his intellectual engagement with the work of German philosophers (e.g., G.W.F. Hegel and Ludwig Feuerbach), British economists (e.g., Adam Smith and David Ricardo), and French socialists (e.g., Charles Fourier, Henri de Saint-Simon, and Pierre-Joseph Proudhon), and as a result of his decades-long conversations with his friend and colleague, Friedrich Engels. Marx's "historical materialism" was subsequently adopted by his intellectual followers and incorporated into several different varieties of Marxist political movements, including the Leninist, Stalinist, and Maoist varieties. 2 Marx and Engels first formulated the general outlines of their theory of "historical materialism" in The German Ideology, written in 1845 and 1846; however, the intellectual sources of the theory, and many elaborations and applications of it, can be found in other works by Marx and/or Engels, including Marx's Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts (1844), The Poverty of Philosophy (1847), the Communist Manifesto (1848), the Critique of Political Economy (1859), and Capital (volume 1 published in 1867), as well in their personal and professional correspondence. Origin and Foundations of the Theory Marx's historical materialist theory seeks to explain human nature and development on the basis of the empirically-knowable material conditions of human existence. Marx's interest in materialist theories of reality can be discerned even in the earliest of his theoretical work, for example, in his doctoral dissertation (completed in 1841 at the University of Jena) on Democritus and Epicurus. Marx admired British and French thinkers who, by writing "histories of civil society, of commerce and industry," sought to provide "a materialist basis" to historical understanding (Marx and Engels 1978, 156). Furthermore, he insisted that a materialist theory of human existence must not be naïve and unhistorical, but must instead recognize the dynamic and dialectical character of human labor, by means of which human beings produce their own means of subsistence. Along these lines, Marx criticized Feuerbach, noting that "as far as Feuerbach is a materialist, he does not deal with history, and as far as he considers history, he is not a materialist" (Marx and Engels 1978, 171). The arguments found in the writings of Marx that pre-date the German Ideology indicate that Marx's later views arose out of a metaphysical prototype, a sort of "Ur-Marxismus," which continued to exert an influence on Marx's later work. Before he began collaborating with Engels in 1844, Marx sought to justify his views by relying mainly on philosophical and moral, rather than on strictly economic, considerations. But in 1844, Engels encouraged Marx to make an intensive study of economics. As a result of this study, Marx produced what has come to be known as the "Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts," or the "Paris Manuscripts," of 1844. These manuscripts combined the critique of political economy with a critique of the Hegelian philosophy that Marx had been studying at the time. Though incomplete and never published during Marx's lifetime, these manuscripts constitute what might be regarded as a first draft of the comprehensive treatise which Marx spent the rest of his life writing, and which found subsequent articulation in later works such as The German Ideology, the Grundrisse or Outline of the Critique of Political Economy (1857-1858), the Critique of Political Economy (1859), and Capital (1867). In writing the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, Marx brought his newly-acquired economic knowledge to bear upon views he had reached in criticizing the abstract, idealistic philosophy of G.W.F. Hegel. Marx had noticed how Hegel described the process of human historical development as a process in which the human mind "externalized" its own ideas and, by means of such externalization, transformed and "humanized" the material world. According to Marx, Hegel correctly saw that human labor was not necessarily an obstacle to human development and liberation, but rather the means by which humans are able to become truly free and self-determining. With his famous "master-slave dialectic" (from the "Self-consciousness" chapter of his Phenomenology of Spirit), Hegel argued, counterintuitively, that it is not the master who is able to be genuinely free, for the master does not produce the conditions of his 3 own existence but merely consumes products which have been provided to him by another (by the slave). Instead, it is the slave who is able to achieve genuine freedom, since the slave transforms the world by laboring on it, and in transforming the world also transforms himself (Hegel 1977, 111-119). The slave transforms himself through labor insofar as the slave cultivates his own productive capacities as a result of laboring on the world, and in doing so, the slave gradually develops and produces his own productive capacities – which, for Marx, means that the slave, over time, becomes self-producing or self-determining by producing his own means of subsistence. For Hegel as well as for Marx, the laborer is at first necessarily unable to recognize the genuinely self-determining and emancipatory character of his own labor. At first, the laborer cultivates his own productive capacities but without recognizing that he is doing so. For Marx, this happens because the laborer's productive activity makes its appearance within the laborer's world of experience only insofar as it is embodied in products (commodities) which are consumed and enjoyed by others, thanks to the division of labor within society. Hegel himself had recognized that, with a division of labor in society, some jobs became trivial and even degrading. But Hegel also thought that the division of labor was a necessary accompaniment to all human progress since it made possible, through the differentiation of society into orders or classes, the production of works of mind that would have been beyond the power of less differentiated societies. By contrast, Marx held that the division of labor represented just one stage (albeit a necessary stage) of progress within human history, and that the division of labor would itself be abolished with further progress in history. More specifically, Marx held that human labor, by being turned into wage labor within the capitalist social order, had itself become a commodity that was bought and sold on the market, thus subjecting the laborer to impersonal market forces that appeared to operate entirely beyond his own control. The wage system thus perverted the laborer's own productive activity so that the natural world was not positively transformed into a transparent manifestation of human productivity, but was rather turned into a strange and alien force that appeared quite hostile to workers. A truly human existence would be possible only when the division of labor, and along with it private property and wage labor, had been abolished through the establishment of a communist social order. Communism, Marx wrote, is "the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution" (Marx and Engels 1978, 84). The idea that communism would solve the riddle of history by releasing men from the unwilled, unwanted servitude to their own, seemingly alien products is the metaphysical precursor to Marx's later idea that planned but non-coercive communism would necessarily result from the dissolution of capitalism. Outline of the Theory Historical materialism consists, in the first place, of an analysis thought to be applicable to all but the most primitive of human societies. On the basis of this analysis, Marx sought to give an account of the rise and fall of various social systems within history, and he predicted that capitalism – the penultimate stage of human history – will eventually collapse and be succeeded by a communist society, in which there will be no division of labor, no private property, no wage labor, no money, no class distinctions, and no state. As part of his analysis, Marx distinguished several different elements at work within developed societies. These were: (1) "the forces of production," which include the tools, skills, machinery, technology, and techniques by which human beings labor and thus obtain the wherewithal for life; (2) "the relations of production," 4 which are the social systems or structures or frameworks within which human beings, in the midst of their laboring on the world and making use of the "forces of production," also enter into relations with one another; (3) the political and legal institutions of society which are the derivative or "superstructural" expressions generated by the more fundamental or "basic" forces and relations of production; and (4) the ideas, habits of thought, ideals, and systems of justification, in terms of which the members of the society think of themselves and of their relations to one another. Marx thought that these ideas and habits of thought represented distorted pictures, or ideological representations, of the underlying material or economic reality. For Marx, such ideologies find expression in various forms of religion, theology, speculative philosophy or metaphysics, morality, ethics, art, and political theorizing. Analysis of Social Structure According to Marx, the "material conditions" of human life include, most importantly, the "forces of production" and the "relations of production." The primary social activity of human beings is production through labor, and such production involves relations with other humans, both in the labor itself and in the distribution of the product. It is upon these relationships that the political and legal superstructure and the ideological superstructure are formed. To understand the politics, law, religion, morality, art, or philosophy of any given society, it is necessary to ascertain the nature of the society's forces and relations of production. In the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, Marx expressed moral outrage over the way in which human labor, in a capitalist economy, wrongly enslaves human beings to the products of their own making. By the time he wrote his Critique of Political Economy, he had gone beyond moral condemnation in order to offer an explanation of how, in a capitalist economy, the forces of production inescapably compel human beings to operate within a social framework that appears not to be of their own making. Thus Marx came to emphasize how human individuals always find themselves existing within structures of society which pre-exist the individuals themselves and which misleadingly present themselves as "natural" or even immutable frameworks that humans are powerless to alter through their own activity. Division of Labor, Property, and Power According to Marx, a division of labor exists when individual human beings produce products which they themselves do not consume, and consume products which they themselves do not produce. Where human beings produce products which they themselves do not consume, and consume products which they themselves do not produce, there must also be some system for the exchange and circulation of such products. And where there is a system for the exchange and circulation of products, there must also be – even if in rudimentary form – some (political and/or legal) system of property relations. For Marx, however, the real driving forces at work in all human history and development remain to be found at the level of production, and not in the resulting systems of exchange or circulation, and not in the legal and political arrangements which are wrongly thought to govern property relations. Property relations, and the accompanying legal and political institutions, are themselves based upon the more fundamental productive activities at work in human society (involving the forces and relations of production). According to Marx, the division of labor in human productive activity makes it possible for human beings to transform the natural world in ways that would be quite impossible for humans if their labor remained undivided and undifferentiated; and the division of labor also makes it 5 possible for human beings to transform and develop their own productive capacities in ways that would be quite off limits to undifferentiated labor. But the division of labor – since it also involves a division between those who produce certain products and those who consume those products – also makes it possible for some human beings to accumulate property at the expense of others, and therefore opens up the possibility of exploitation through the use of accumulated property and power. Marx did not believe, however, that property was all of one type. In The German Ideology, Marx and Engels distinguished four main types of property that play an important role in their theory of history and society: tribal property, which exists in primitive societies where there is only a minimal division of labor; state property, such as the roads, public buildings, and stores of grain under the ancient forms of despotism; feudal property, consisting of lands and services controlled by military landowners whose needs are supplied by serfs; and capital, which rests on the separation between production and commerce and results in the employment of laborers who work for wages and produce goods that are sold in wider and wider markets to make profits for the capitalist (Marx and Engels 1978, 151-154). According to Marx, the main power or influence in a society belongs to those who own and control the main type of property in it. In tribal society the property is jointly owned; hence power is diffused throughout the society and there is no dominant class. The other types of property involve a distinction between those who control property and those who do not. Those who control a predominant type of property hold the predominant power in society and are able to make arrangements benefiting themselves at the expense of the rest of the population. In feudal society, for example, the feudal lords are the ruling class. They are able to get what they want from the serfs who work for them, and even from rich merchants, whose type of wealth is subordinated to the landed interests. The interests of serf, merchant, and lord are not the same; indeed, they necessarily conflict at certain points. But while the forces of production and the type of property are predominantly feudal, the feudal lords are able to settle these conflicts in their own favor. As long as the feudal system operates, any frictions and tensions are dealt with within its terms. The political ideas and movements within a feudal society merely express, or "reflect," these more fundamental, underlying conflicts between differing classes and their differing interests. Historical Epochs For Marx, since "the material conditions of life" are fundamental in the structuring of a society, it follows that important changes in the material conditions of life sooner or later bring with them important changes in the legal and political superstructure and in the ideological superstructure. Marx also held that important changes in superstructural institutions (such as political and legal institutions) are not brought about by human thought or reflection on those institutions, but only by means of changes at the level of the more fundamental (economic) basis of those institutions. For Marx, all important social and historical changes originate only through changes at the level of human productive activity (through changes to the forces and relations of production), and not through changes at the superstructural or ideological level of human existence. This theory of historical materialism is also a theory of historical epochs. The original state of primitive communism was succeeded, according to Marx, by the ancient forms of slave-owning society; these were succeeded by feudalism, and feudalism by capitalism. In ancient slave society, it was the labor of slaves that made possible the art and science of ancient Greece, as well as the cities, the commerce, and the bureaucracy of ancient Rome. The slave system broke 6 down largely because of its wastefulness, and it was replaced by the feudal system, in which features borrowed from the social system of the barbarian invaders were utilized. The basis of the feudal system was the ownership of land by feudal lords, whose dependents had to render them services of various kinds. The feudal system was fundamentally an agricultural society, but in the towns (where there was a greater division of labor and thus more accumulation of wealth), some individuals were able to enhance their wealth and power by organizing the production of goods in large workshops where they employed large numbers of wage laborers. These bourgeois, as they were to be called, were the forerunners of the capitalist system. They attracted laborers from the countryside to work for them in producing goods sold in widely expanding markets. In this and other ways, they acted in opposition to the predominant feudal arrangements that had previously confined serfs to the areas of their birth. Finding themselves hampered by the feudal laws, the bourgeois endeavored to change such laws and thus entered upon a political struggle with the aristocracy. They justified their actions by arguing that aristocratic distinctions (based, for example, on birth and family connections) were contrary to the "immutable" and "natural" order of universal freedom and equality. As the new methods of production and the new modes of life that went with them were extended, a new order of society was gradually formed within the old. New types of production and trade had been adopted that could come to fruition only if the laws and customs that hampered them were abolished. When, therefore, the bourgeoisie were strong enough, they took political action to achieve this and gained political power by a series of revolutions, including the American and French revolutions. From being a progressive class, the bourgeoisie became the ruling class, and their landowning opponents declined from being the ruling class into being a reactionary class, which, however, could not return society to its earlier state, since the new forces of production were superior to the old ones. This interpretation of the change from feudalism to capitalism illustrates the Marxist analysis of political revolutions. Marx and Engels regarded such revolutions as the means by which a progressive class, that is, the class that controls some newly emerging forces of production, brings about changes in the relations of production which allow the new forces of production to become effective and proliferate. Feudal institutions and, in particular, feudal property laws would have stifled the development of the capitalist forces of production. In seizing political power, the bourgeoisie succeeded in establishing relations of production which enabled the expansion of capitalistic forces of production. In all historical epochs leading up to and including capitalism, innovations in the forces of production – much like new wine in old wineskins – lead to social revolutions which burst the prevailing relations of production and thereby call forth a new set of relations which are capable of containing and sustaining the new forces of production. The cycle of innovation and revolution in history will be concluded when humans establish (communistic) relations of production which will be fully adequate to the forces of production and which will be recognized by humans as transparent manifestations of their own productive activity, rather than as an alien, dehumanizing framework imposed upon them beyond their own control. Bibliography 7 Marx and Engels Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. Karl Marx: Selected Writings. 2nd edition. Edited by David McLellan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. The Marx-Engels Reader. Edited by Robert C. Tucker. New York and London: W.W. Norton and Company, 1978. Other Authors Blackledge, Paul. Reflections on the Marxist Theory of History. Manchester, U.K.: Manchester University Press, 2006. Carver, Terrell, editor. The Cambridge Companion to Marx. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991. Cohen, G.A. Karl Marx's Theory of History: A Defence. Expanded Edition. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001. Dupré, Louis K. Marx's Social Critique of Culture. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983. Elster, Jon. Making Sense of Marx. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1985. Hegel, G.W.F. Phenomenology of Spirit. New York: Oxford University Press, 1977. Leopold, David. The Young Karl Marx. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. McBride, William. The Philosophy of Marx. London: Routledge, 2016. Lukes, Stephen. Marxism and Morality. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. Rader, Melvin Miller. Marx's Interpretation of History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1979. Wolff, Robert Paul. Understanding Marx. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984. Wood, Allen. Karl Marx. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. | {
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The Structural Diversity of Historical Injustices Jeppe von Platz and David A. Reidy I. Introduction Recent years have seen an increase in the number and boldness of calls for reparations, both internationally and intranationally. On the international front, the United Nations' "World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance" in 2001 in Durban, South Africa, generated a reparations demand by African states against European and North American states for the "crimes against humanity" of African colonialism and the slave trade. On the intranational front, reparations claims have been pressed in the United States by African Americans, native Hawaiians, Native Americans, and others. And reparations have been made to Japanese Americans for forced internment during World War II. In this essay, we develop and defend a general theoretical framework for the analysis of reparations claims, whether international or intranational. We proceed as follows. We first discuss the nature of reparative justice generally and the mix of backwardand forward-looking considerations relevant to the adjudication of any reparative justice claim. We then develop a principled basis for a tripartite taxonomy of reparative justice claims. This taxonomy sorts reparative justice claims according to key structural features of the historical injustices from which they arise. By attending to the different structural features of different kinds of historical injustices, we then generate what we call the "field of reparative justice." This field represents the differing possible minimal and maximal weights that might be assigned to forwardand backward-looking considerations in the adjudication of different sorts of reparative claims. It does not represent anything like an algorithmic decision procedure. Nor does it represent a patterned distribution of appropriate outcomes or remedies for different sorts of reparative claims. Instead, what it represents is that as we move from reparations claims arising out of simple entitlement violations to reparations claims arising out of morally defective systems of entitlement, the minimal weight that must necessarily be given backward-looking considerations decreases, while the maximal weight that may be given to forward-looking considerations increases. This shifting range of minimal necessary and maximal possible weights to be assigned backwardand forward-looking considerations respectively marks the field of reparative justice. This, we hope, will be made clear enough in due course. JOURNAL of SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY, Vol. 37 No. 3, Fall 2006, 360–376. © 2006 Blackwell Publishing, Inc. II. Reparations and Justice Political philosophers traditionally distinguish between distributive and corrective justice. Distributive justice concerns the basic distribution of rights and responsibilities, benefits and burdens, resources and obligations within a just society. Since this distribution will be effected through the rules constituting basic social institutions, the political philosopher's task is to identify the substantive principles constraining the choice of such rules, not to determine literally who gets what, for that will be determined by what individuals do, what moves they make and so on, under the rules. The general aim of distributive justice is to secure a determinate social order the basic rules of which situate and empower each person just as she or he ought to be. Distributive justice is therefore generally if not exclusively forward-looking. Corrective justice concerns the problem of noncompliance with the rules constituting a distributively just social order. Thus, if a rule securing persons in personal private property is among the rules of a distributively just social order, then corrective justice concerns the problem of theft. The general aim of corrective justice is to return to the status quo prior to the instance of noncompliance. Corrective justice is therefore generally if not exclusively backward-looking. Like corrective justice, reparative justice is unavoidably backward-looking, at least to some degree. It presupposes and is responsive to a past wrong or injustice. But like distributive justice, reparative justice is also unavoidably forwardlooking, at least to some degree. It seeks the repair of moral relationships ingredient in and necessary to a shared and just future. To the extent that reparative justice necessarily looks backward to a wrong or injustice done and demands a public accounting, it is like punitive justice.1 But reparative justice is not punitive justice. While reparations claims are responsive to past wrongdoing or injustice, they are not claims for punishment. The African nations that called on European and North American nations to make reparations for colonialism and the slave trade at the U.N. Conference in Durban were not calling for punishment. They were calling on European and North American nations to take responsibility for those injustices and to undertake to repair their relationship to African nations. Further, punitive claims are made in the name of the community and for the sake of communal goods. Reparative claims, on the other hand, are made in the name of victims and for the sake of their moral relationship to wrongdoers. While the community might facilitate reparations, the aim is to repair the moral and material damage to the relationship between victim and wrongdoer inflicted by the particular wrong or injustice done. Since reparative claims are not punitive, it is tempting to think that they are purely compensatory in nature, asserting only a claim to compensation for damage inflicted or harm suffered. But while reparations claims often include a compensatory element, they are not predicated simply on the suffering of some harm or loss. They are predicated on wrongdoing or injustice. They give rise to compensatory demands to the extent that the wrongdoing itself imposed a harm or loss and Structural Diversity of Historical Injustices 361 compensation is necessary or conducive to making amends and repairing moral relations between the parties. But it is the wrong that is fundamental. This makes reparative claims different from compensatory claims. Consider a compensatory claim made against a collective insurance scheme for losses incurred as a result of a hurricane, or against a driver who nonnegligently caused harm to others under a no-fault liability regime. Here the claims are predicated simply on the harms or losses suffered. And while they are backward-looking vis-à-vis the harm or loss, their normative force is a function of whether the insurance scheme or no-fault liability regime is distributively just as an institutional distribution of harms or losses suffered regardless of wrongdoing. Unlike purely compensatory claims of this sort, the normative force of reparative claims is always a function of backward-looking considerations tied to the underlying wrong. Harms or losses without wrongs do not generate reparative claims. The distribution of liability for them is fundamentally a matter of forward-looking considerations of distributive justice.2 Even when reparative claims demand compensation, as they often do, they never demand only compensation. An apology or some further reparative act is always required. Reparative justice aims not at a just distribution of the costs of various harms or losses. It aims rather at the repair of moral relationships broken by wrongdoing or injustice. Indeed, as a response to a reparative justice claim, mere compensation can be offensive, an assertion that while the victim might have been harmed, she was not wronged.3 Though reparative claims are not punitive in nature, they do share with punitive justice an emphasis on the public recognition of past wrongdoing or injustice. Though they are not purely compensatory in nature, being triggered by wrongs or injustice and not harms alone, they do typically demand compensation. Reparative claims are distinctive in another regard. They impose demands on the victims in whose name they are made. Since the repair of a moral relationship is not something wrongdoers can effect on their own, reparative justice demands of victims a willingness to venture forgiveness or at least reconciliation in response to a wrongdoer's reparative efforts at making amends. The Janus-faced nature of reparative justice, at once looking both backward and forward, is no doubt a significant part of the best explanation of both the structure and persistence of disagreements over reparative justice claims. Some theorists take a sort of noninstrumentalist stance and privilege backward-looking considerations, working from what Iris Young dubs a "liability model." On this model, reparative claims obligate determinate wrongdoers to repair their relationships with those they have wronged. Others take a more instrumentalist stance and privilege forward-looking considerations, working from what Young calls a "social connection model."4 Young develops this model to deal with past structural injustices with respect to which it is not possible to single out a determinate wrongdoer. Such injustices obligate all those who participate in the relevant social structures or practices to take responsibility for ensuring that those structures or practices become just. The focus is not on repairing a particular relationship 362 Jeppe von Platz and David A. Reidy between a determinate wrongdoer and a victim, but rather on repairing a social structure or practice in a more holistic fashion and thus securing appropriate moral relations between those participating in it. The liability and social connection models each have their merits. Yet given the Janus-faced nature of reparative justice claims, neither can do full justice to any particular reparative justice claim, let alone all reparative justice claims.5 No matter how much a particular claim lends itself to the liability model, forwardlooking considerations will always carry some weight. And no matter how much a claim lends itself to the social connection model, backward-looking considerations will always carry some weight. What is needed, then, is a theoretical model able to acknowledge the important differences underwriting Young's distinction between the liability and social connection models, yet accounting for the fact that backwardand forward-looking considerations are in play, though perhaps to different degrees, in all reparative justice claims. III. The Structural Diversity of Historical Injustices Every reparative justice claim presupposes a past wrong. But not all past wrongs are alike. And their differences are not simply a function of their gravity or severity. They differ structurally, and this makes a difference when it comes to understanding the reparative claims to which they give rise. We begin by noting the difference between entitlement (or liability) and desert.6 Within any rule-governed social practice or institutional arrangement, whether a game, a domestic polity, or contemporary international relations, the rules determine that to which each participant is entitled (or liable). You are entitled to your salary by virtue of the rules of contract law, the market economy, and so on. You are entitled to vote by virtue of the rules governing citizenship, suffrage, and so on. Your other entitlements will similarly depend on the rules of the social practices in which you participate. The rules giving rise to entitlements within any social practice or institutional arrangement will typically track and express its underlying desertor value-basis. The rules of soccer ought to make it likely that the team that plays best wins. And the rules of criminal trials ought to make it likely that the guilty are convicted and the innocent acquitted. For a variety of reasons, it is rarely possible and sometimes undesirable to design rule-based systems of entitlements so that entitlements perfectly express and track their underlying desertor value-basis. Sometimes the team that plays best loses. And sometimes the guilty are acquitted and the innocent convicted. As between entitlements and their desertor value-basis, it is the latter that is analytically primary. It is for the sake of the latter that the former exists. Normatively, entitlements and their desertor value-bases operate on different planes. You deserve something, say a particular mode of treatment, just in case you possess some property or attribute in light of which that mode of treatment is, naturally and apart from any system of entitlements, especially appropriate or Structural Diversity of Historical Injustices 363 fitting. Thus, the quickest or most coordinated team deserves praise. But unless it scores more goals, it is not entitled to the prize. And women or blacks deserve the right to vote. But unless they fulfill the conditions of suffrage, they are not entitled to it. To deprive someone of that to which they are entitled is a wrong. If someone takes your salary from you or prevents you from voting, you will have suffered an injustice. You will have been denied something to which you were entitled by virtue of the rules governing a social practice in which you were a participant. If the team that scores the most goals is denied the prize, it is done an injustice. Many reparative justice claims arise out of just such entitlement violations. Kuwait's claims against Iraq for its 1990 invasion arise out of such an entitlement violation. The rules constitutive of the international order as a shared social practice entitled Kuwait to immunity from such an invasive act of external aggression. Kuwait was wronged and Iraq owes Kuwait not just compensation for harms done or losses suffered, but an apology and whatever else is necessary to make amends and repair the torn relationship as a moral relationship of mutual recognition and trust within a rule-governed international order. This is the simplest and most straightforward sort of reparations claim: the entitlement violation. But many contemporary reparations claims are not based on entitlement violations. They are predicated not on some historical violation of a determinate entitlement given by the rules constitutive of an established social practice or institutional arrangement, but rather on some structural moral failing of those rules taken as a whole and as the basis for a system of entitlements. There are three distinct sorts of failings of interest here. First, an otherwise acceptable system of entitlements may exclude some persons who, according to its manifest and morally acceptable desertor value-basis, it clearly ought to include. Second, a system of entitlements may fail to track or express its manifest and morally acceptable desertor value-basis across the full range of its application. It may simply fail to connect with that basis in an acceptable way. Third, a system of entitlements may be predicated on, may track and express, a morally corrupt or unacceptable desertor value-basis. Each of these three moral failings just mentioned counts as a wrong or injustice. Yet each is structurally distinct, and none have the structure of an entitlement violation. Of the three just mentioned, the second and third share some common ground. Each involves a system of entitlements morally defective as a whole (either because it fails across the board to track and express its manifest and morally acceptable desertor value-basis or because its manifest desertor valuebasis is morally corrupt or unacceptable). So, while we identify four kinds of historical injustice in all (including entitlement violations), the third and fourth may be grouped together because they involve social contexts that are in some sense completely or pervasively unjust. Thus, we have three divisions, the third of which subdivides in two, yielding four structurally distinct kinds of historical injustice: (1) entitlement violations; (2) unjust exclusions from an otherwise morally acceptable system of entitlements; (3) systemic failures on the part of a 364 Jeppe von Platz and David A. Reidy system of entitlements to track or express a morally plausible desertor valuebasis; and (4) the systemic embodiment in a system of entitlement of a morally corrupt or unacceptable desertor value-basis. Since we have already discussed entitlement violations, we must turn now to the remaining three kinds of historical injustice. The second kind of wrong involves an exclusion from or distinction within a system of entitlements (or liabilities). Such exclusions or distinctions can be unjust, morally indefensible, inconsistent or incoherent, if they fail to track, to capture and express, the manifest desert or value basis of the rule-governed social practice. Consider the case of American slavery.7 In 1810, slaves were denied nothing to which they were entitled by the rules, constitutional, legal or otherwise, constitutive of the American polity. They were treated unjustly of course. But they were not denied that to which they were entitled within the American polity. Rather, they were wrongly excluded from the system of entitlements given by the rules constitutive of the American polity. Their exclusion was a wrong because the manifest desertor value-basis of the American polity as an institutionalized system of entitlements was then as it is today: the possession by persons natively born of something like Rawls's two fundamental moral powers. It is by virtue of our possessing these two powers-to form, revise, and pursue a determinate conception of one's own good, and to propose and subordinate the pursuit of one's own good to fair terms of social cooperation with others-that we think it appropriate to treat one another as free equals when it comes to the cooperative undertaking that is our body politic. The rules constitutive of our institutionalized polity, and thus the system of entitlements they underwrite, should reflect and express this desertor value-basis. And this they have done, though only partially, imperfectly and with uneven progress to be sure, from the start. But slaves were excluded from this system of entitlements. The moral arbitrariness of their exclusion is and has long been evident. Given the desertor value-basis of the system of entitlements realized by the American polity, blacks should have been included from the start. As early as 1810 there were many free blacks effectively exercising their legal rights as citizens in the Northern states and elsewhere. "Race" was a morally implausible basis for exclusion from the beginning. That is the meaning of the compromise of the Constitution, according to which slaves were to be counted as three-fifths of a person for the purposes of determining populations, and thus representation in Congress, and Congressional authority to regulate the slave trade was withheld until 1808. We can say of the antebellum United States, then, that it wrongly or unjustly excluded slaves (and as the Civil War approached eventually almost all blacks) from its institutionalized system of political and legal entitlements (and liabilities). It did not violate the entitlements of slaves or blacks. Rather, the system of political and legal entitlements failed adequately to express and reflect its manifest desert or value basis. It did not fail completely, however. The exclusion of blacks was indefensible. But apart from this exclusion (and similar exclusions, e.g., the exclusion of women from much of political and economic life), the system of Structural Diversity of Historical Injustices 365 entitlements reflected and expressed (imperfectly to be sure) a manifest and morally plausible desertor value-basis. After entitlement violations, unjust exclusions of this sort constitute our second kind of historical injustice. Our third and fourth kinds concern more complete moral failures of rule-governed social practices or systems of entitlement. The third kind concerns a system of entitlement's failure across some full range of its application to track and express its manifest and morally plausible desert basis. Consider the case of legal punishment. Morally culpable persons naturally deserve blame. This is the desertor valuebasis of the practice we call criminal law, of which legal punishment is a central, even defining, feature. We have this practice so as, inter alia, collectively to be able to express public condemnation. Whether any person is liable (or "entitled") to be punished under this practice is just a matter of whether they have been found legally guilty according to the rules constitutive of it. But whether the practice is itself morally defensible or sound is another matter. That depends on whether we have good reason, first, to affirm the manifest desertor value-basis of the practice and, second, to think the practice justifiable in light of that desertor value-basis. Let us suppose we have good reason to affirm the desertor value-basis of our practice of legal punishment. People sometimes deserve blame and social condemnation. Do we have good reason to think the practice, which includes centrally legal punishment, justifiable in light of that basis? Perhaps not. Legal punishment is more than just the public expression of collective condemnation. It is also the coercive imposition of hard treatment. This is perhaps one way to express condemnation, but it is not the only way. So it must be justified. If it turns out that we have morally insufficient reasons for this central feature of our practice of legal punishment, then the practice, or at least a core feature of it, would be unjustified across the full range of its application, even though its desertor value-basis is sound. Then, even if we punished only those judged legally guilty according to the rules, so that we violated no liabilities or entitlements, we would still work an injustice by punishing persons, by imposing hard treatment on them as a condition of legal guilt. We would still wrong them. And we would still wrong them even if they were morally culpable and deserving of public condemnation. We would wrong them by subjecting them to a system of punishment that leaves them liable to more than just public condemnation, that leaves them liable to hard treatment as well, without sufficient reason. Worries of a similar sort might be raised about other rule-governed social practices. For upon critical inquiry any rule-governed social practice may turn out, or its central features may turn out, to be unjustified, notwithstanding its manifest and morally plausible desertor value-basis.8 A fourth kind of historical injustice arises when the manifest desertor value-basis of a rule-governed social practice, institutional arrangement, or system of entitlements is itself morally corrupt or unacceptable. This may or may not be evident to anyone participating in or subject to the practice or institution or system of entitlements. Those participating in or subject to it may mistakenly think it grounded in a morally sound desertor value-basis. Or they may not think 366 Jeppe von Platz and David A. Reidy critically about their social practices, institutional arrangements, or systems of entitlement, except to notice entitlement violations. Nevertheless, a practice, institutional arrangement, or system of entitlements may be morally defective because of its manifest desertor value-basis regardless of the beliefs of those participating in or subject to it. The Aztec practice of human sacrifice was morally defective in this way. So too was the international order of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, with its permissive stance toward conquest and colonialism. So too was the globally ubiquitous practice of slavery in its many forms from the ancient world up to the seventeenth or eighteenth centuries. In these cases, the problem with the relevant social practice or institutionalized system of entitlements (or liabilities) was not that it failed to track its desertor value-basis adequately. The problem was its desertor value-basis. These practices wronged persons (and in the case of conquest and colonization, persons organized as "peoples") because they systematically expressed and reflected desertor value-bases that were morally impoverished or otherwise implausible. Our present treatment of animals, institutionalized in various ways as a system of entitlements expressing and reflecting only the use and exchange value of animals, may likewise rest on a morally corrupt or inadequate desertor value-basis. We have then at least four structurally distinct kinds of historical wrongs or injustices. Instances of each kind may give rise to a reparative justice claim. Now, if these structural differences did not make a difference, then our analysis to this point would be of little interest. But we think they do make a difference. In particular, we think that for any given reparations claim, the range of possible weights to be assigned backwardand forward-looking considerations will be determined by the structure of the underlying injustice. IV. The Field of Reparative Justice With respect to reparative claims arising out of simple entitlement violations, backward-looking considerations must be given great weight. Exactly how much weight will vary from case to case. But in no case of an entitlement violation will it be insignificant. This will often lead to a judgment to the effect that a more or less exclusively backward-looking reparative act is what is required in the case at hand. The reparative act appropriate to typical thefts within a system of entitlements not itself distributively unjust to any significant degree will be simply a return of stolen property coupled with an apology or some other reparative act undertaken to restore the moral trust and recognition between the parties as participants in the system of entitlement. This is what the liability model described by Young gets right. But it does not follow that all entitlement violations will underwrite a demand for a reparative act of this "return to the status quo ante" sort. And the reason why is that it does not follow from the fact that backward-looking considerations must be given very great weight in entitlement violation cases that forward-looking considerations are to be given no weight. No matter how weighty the backwardStructural Diversity of Historical Injustices 367 looking considerations, forward-looking considerations will always have some weight. They are never completely irrelevant, not even in the sort of typical theft case just suggested. And it is always possible that in some case the salient forward-looking considerations will prove sufficient to justify demanding a reparative act aimed at something other than a strict return to the status quo ante. Stolen property may be acquired on good faith many years later by a bona fide purchaser and subsequently held for a length of time sufficient to make reasonable a strong expectation of continued possession on the part not only of the purchaser but of the community at large. Or it may be put to a use which if disrupted would adversely impact economic efficiency or distributive justice to some significant degree. These forward-looking considerations-the utility of protecting expectations or considerations of economic efficiency or distributive justice-may be weighty enough in any particular case to justify demanding by way of a reparative act something other than a strict return to the status quo ante. As with backwardlooking considerations, we cannot say in advance exactly how weighty the forward-looking considerations will be with respect to any particular reparative claim arising out of an entitlement violation. The exact weights will depend on the facts of the case. What we can say is that the maximum possible weight of forward-looking considerations will be limited by the minimum necessary weight given to backward-looking considerations. With respect to reparative claims arising out of straightforward entitlement violations, then, there is a range of, sometimes competing, reasons or considerations over which judgment must be exercised. The boundaries of this range are defined by the minimum necessary and maximum possible weights to be assigned to both backwardand forward-looking considerations respectively. For reparative claims arising out of entitlement violations, backward-looking considerations are never insubstantial and are often very substantial. Indeed, they may sometimes seem to be the only relevant considerations. Forward-looking considerations, on the other hand, are never particularly weighty and are often insubstantial. Indeed, they may sometimes seem to be altogether irrelevant. Accordingly, there is a great temptation to see entitlement violations as giving rise uniformly to a single reparative claim to a strict return to the status quo ante; the wronged party should receive (one is almost tempted to say "is entitled to") that to which she or it was entitled. The debates over familiar reparations claims tied to entitlement violations- for example, claims arising out of the Nazi theft of property from Jews, the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, various illegal political activities undertaken by Latin American governments during the 1970s, the American internment of Japanese citizens during World War II, and so on-reflect this structured relationship between backwardand forward-looking considerations. Of course, each claim is unique and the exact relationship between backwardand forward-looking considerations, and thus what reparative justice demands, will vary from case to case. But it makes no sense in any of these cases to say that the backward-looking considerations are insubstantial or negligible and that the only thing of any real impor368 Jeppe von Platz and David A. Reidy tance is realizing distributive justice here and now as everyone moves forward together into the future. Nevertheless, and popular temptations notwithstanding, it also makes no sense in any of these cases to say that forward-looking considerations are completely irrelevant. In all these cases, the main challenge is to determine just what the necessarily weighty backward-looking considerations demand without neglecting the relevant forward-looking considerations. Consider now a reparative justice claim of the second kind, one arising out of a partial or asymmetric exclusion from a system of entitlement indefensible in light of that system's manifest and morally plausible desertor value-basis. American slavery is one paradigm example here. But there are plenty of others. A recent case in Atlanta concerning the systematic exclusion of only black police and fire officers from a special municipal pension fund is another.9 The historic exclusion of women from various systems of entitlement provides yet further examples. One might also imagine claims of this second kind arising out of unjust exclusions from systems of entitlement within the international order-for example, the exclusion of certain polities from entitlements within the system of international trade. With respect to reparative justice claims of this second kind, backwardlooking considerations must be given significant weight. Determinate wrongs are done to identifiable parties, even if the wrongs are not entitlement violations. But precisely because the wrongs done are not entitlement violations, the minimal necessary weight to be assigned backward-looking considerations is less than in the case of a straightforward entitlement violation. One reason for this is that the wrong done does not include the frustration of institutionally cultivated expectations on the part of victims. Another is that without an entitlement violation, there is no straightforward entitlement basis either for assessing the compensation needed to make amends and repair the wrong done or for grounding the transfer of the reparative justice claim from one generation to the next, via a kind of inheritance, after the last generation of wrongful exclusion. Just as the minimal necessary weight to be assigned backward-looking considerations is less in this case than in the case of a straightforward entitlement violation, so too the maximal possible weight to be assigned to forward-looking considerations is greater. Because the wrong done is structural or systemic, its correction must also be structural or systemic, as rightly suggested by Young's social connection model. This puts forward-looking considerations of distributive justice in play to a greater degree than in the case of a simple entitlement violation. Because backward-looking considerations will sometimes yield so little determinate content in cases of this sort, while forward-looking considerations seem so unavoidably significant, there may be a temptation to deny that reparative justice claims arise in cases of this sort, or to insist that the only thing that matters is moving forward together to realize distributive justice under conditions of mutual trust and recognition, so that any reparative justice claims are lost just as soon as distributive justice is secured. Structural Diversity of Historical Injustices 369 We think it would be a mistake to yield to this temptation. Injustices of this second kind give rise to valid reparative justice claims. American slaves were not entitled to citizenship prior to the Reconstruction Amendments. But from 1776 forward, they deserved it in light of the manifest and morally plausible desertor value-basis of the American system of entitlements from which they were arbitrarily and inconsistently (though constitutionally and legally) excluded until the Reconstruction Amendments (and legally and illegally excluded in many quarters until the end of Jim Crow). They were done an injustice, and they were done that injustice by the members of the American polity, then only "whites." The fact of this historical injustice between a determinate wrongdoer and victim, between "whites" and "blacks" as parties to an ongoing moral relationship, generates a backward-looking demand for repair. Even if blacks today were fully integrated into a distributively just United States, American blacks would still be owed an apology and at least a symbolic act of compensation as a matter of reparative justice. This is not an entitlement-based reparations claim against whites literally inherited by all and only the descendants of black slaves (for, say, the value of lost wages). It is instead a group-based claim on the polity as a whole, where the claimant is black as historically constituted through the exclusion of American slavery, and the polity is the corporate body historically controlled by whites. The key point here is that while in cases of this sort forward-looking considerations may be given greater weight, and backward-looking considerations need not be given as much weight (as compared with cases of straightforward entitlement violations), cases of this sort still give rise to valid reparations claims with a substantial backward-looking component. Of course, the exact balancing of backwardand forward-looking considerations, as well as the determination of the concrete reparative acts required to satisfy the demands of reparative justice, must be left to practical judgment on a case by case basis. Too much depends on variable facts for any further general prescriptions to be made. Consider now reparative justice claims arising out of either our third or fourth kind of historical injustice, subjection to an institutionalized system of entitlement indefensible either because it fails to track or reflect its manifest and morally sound desertor value-basis or because its manifest desertor value-basis is morally corrupt or unacceptable. In these sorts of cases, the wrong or injustice done is systemic or holistic-all are wronged. Accordingly, these sorts of cases seem to invite analysis within an exclusively forward-looking approach along the lines of the social connection model described by Young. There are many examples of these sorts of historical injustice. Our current practice of legal punishment (as hard treatment) in the United States may fail as a system of entitlement (or liability) to track or reflect adequately its own morally sound desertor value-basis. And many of our current institutionalized practices regarding the treatment of animals may presuppose a morally corrupt or unacceptable desertor value-basis. These examples we have already introduced. The institutionalized practices of slavery and the slave trade as well as colonialism and conquest worldwide during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries constitute yet 370 Jeppe von Platz and David A. Reidy further examples. These were grave historical injustices. But they were neither entitlement violations, nor exclusions from an existing system of entitlements indefensible in light of that system's manifest and morally plausible desertor value-basis. Instead, in these cases, the wrong or injustice done was more systematic and all-encompassing. While entitlements varied from polity to polity, slavery and the slave trade were not uncommon and were legally recognized throughout most of the world during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, as they had been off and on since ancient times. Those vulnerable to slavery included debtors, criminal offenders, prisoners of war, members of nondominant religious or ethnic groups, women, children, the disabled, and so on. While slavery was less common in Europe by the sixteenth century, European pagans and Muslims were still vulnerable. Many Irish Catholics were enslaved by the conquering British during the seventeenth century. Slavery was not uncommon in Africa through these centuries, with Africans often holding Africans as slaves. And there was a substantial slave trade from Africa eastward to the Middle East and beyond. Slavery was and had long been practiced in Japan, India, China, and pre-Columbian South America. The slow but steady worldwide abolition of slavery began in the seventeenth century and reached a peak in the nineteenth. But slavery persisted in Egypt until the latter years of the nineteenth century and in Saudi Arabia and Mauritania well into the twentieth century.10 The institutionalized national and international systems of entitlement during the early modern period simply allowed for slavery. That does not mean that slavery was then just. It was not. It was unjust. But when it comes to the structure of this historical injustice, there are two possibilities. On the first possibility (our third sort of historical injustice), the relevant national and international systems of entitlement would simply fail across the board to track or reflect their manifest and morally plausible desertor value-bases (say, the dignity of persons). On the second possibility (our fourth sort of historical injustice), the manifest desertor value-bases of these systems of entitlement would themselves be morally defective (say because they lacked a conception of the dignity of moral personality). We suspect that the injustice of slavery and the slave trade worldwide during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is better understood as an instance of the latter (our fourth) sort of historical injustice. The same point may be made with respect to conquest and colonization within the international order during the early modern centuries. While the international order was not devoid of rules conferring entitlements (and liabilities) on peoples or states, there was no international entitlement to be free of attack, conquest, colonization, and so on. No people or state was entitled to this simply as a people or state. All were vulnerable, at least formally. It is possible that this was a systemic failure to reflect and track the manifest and morally plausible desertor value-basis of the international order. But it seems more likely that the international order was not then predicated on a morally plausible desertor value-basis (say one tied to the moral status of persons or peoples, or the right to collective Structural Diversity of Historical Injustices 371 self-determination, or some other desertor value-basis we would today affirm as the moral foundation of the international order). Both slavery and the slave trade, and conquest and colonization, of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, constitute historical injustices.Yet neither was an entitlement violation nor a wrongful partial exclusion from an otherwise morally sound system of entitlements. The injustices done were more complete and systemic. They wronged everyone. But they did not harm everyone, or at least did not harm everyone in the same ways or to the same degrees. Some, including much of Africa, suffered much worse than others. Some, including much of Europe, suffered less or even benefited from the absence of a morally sound system of entitlements. These harms may provoke reparative justice claims. But reparative justice claims arise, properly speaking, only out of wrongs, not merely harms. And the wrongs in question here can be understood only as systemic or structural wrongs of the most complete sort. With respect to reparative justice claims like these, the minimal necessary weight to be assigned backward-looking considerations approaches the zero point. Everyone was wronged (albeit through no determinate act) and no one in particular was the wrongdoer. Accordingly, the maximal possible weight to be assigned to forward-looking considerations expands. Indeed, forward-looking considerations may seem so to dominate such reparative justice claims that backwardlooking considerations may be fully ignored. But we think it would be a mistake to think that backward-looking considerations may ever be fully ignored in any reparative justice claim, even where the wrong was systemic in nature. The harms African nations or peoples disproportionately suffered as a result of slavery and the slave trade and conquest and colonization in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries were harms rooted in injustice. They were imposed not by nature or God, but by humans, albeit humans acting under conditions of systemic injustice. Responding to the historical injustices in question here cannot be merely a matter of moving forward to a distributively just future as if these harms did not occur or were not the result of human agency. In both theory and practice, distributive justice must be secured over and against a morally neutral default condition. And this history has not left us with. So these past harms must be acknowledged. But more to the point, they must be acknowledged as harms rooted in historical injustice. Something is lost if we treat the asymmetric distribution of harms from past injustices as if they were not different from an asymmetric distribution of harms worked through the forces of nature or imposed by God. Considerations of distributive justice cannot account for this sense that something is lost here. Only considerations of reparative justice can do that. But the reparative claim to which this history of the fifteenthand sixteenthcentury systemic injustice gives rise is not one properly lodged by African nations against those nations that managed to benefit from or at least escape from being harmed by the unjust system of entitlements. Still, it seems correct to say that the world owes African (and likely some Middle Eastern, Asian, and South American) 372 Jeppe von Platz and David A. Reidy nations a public acknowledgment of and some reparative response to the fact that Africa and its peoples were harmed more severely than others by the systemic injustices of slavery and the slave trade, conquest and colonization, during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. What the appropriate response is we do not here venture to say. But to insist that the world owes African (and other) nations only distributive justice seems to us to take a too cavalier or dismissive an attitude toward past injustice: an attitude that fails to accord backward-looking considerations their minimal necessary weight. Figure 1 represents the analytic framework we have presented above. It represents what we call the field of reparative justice. A few remarks regarding its interpretation are in order. The upper boundary of the field indicates maximal possible and minimal necessary weights to be assigned backwardand forwardlooking considerations respectively. The lower boundary indicates, conversely, the minimum necessary and maximal possible weights to be assigned backwardand forward-looking considerations, again respectively. The field of reparative justice expands or contracts based on structural features of the kind of historical injustice giving rise to the reparative claim in question. The field does not represent the exact weight of or relationship between backwardand forward-looking considerations for any particular reparations claim. It represents only a possible field of judgment. Nor does it represent any moral metric or algorithm for determining what a valid reparations claim is a claim to by way of compensation or reparative act.11 What a valid reparations claim requires by way of reparative act must be En tit lem en t v iol ati on Un jus t e xc lus ion fr om sy ste m of en tit lem en ts En tit lem en t s ys tem : (a) F ail s t o t rac k p lau sib le de se rtba sis (b ) L ac ks pl au sib le de se rtba sis (Valid) Claim to reparations based on R el at iv e w ei gh t of b ac kw ar da nd fo rw ar dlo ok in g de m an ds o f ju st ic e Minimal weight forward-looking considerations Field of Reparative Justice Minimal weight backward-looking considerations Figure 1. Field of reparative justice. Structural Diversity of Historical Injustices 373 determined always on a case by case basis once the exact weight of and relationship between backwardand forward-looking considerations is itself determined. On these matters there is no substitute for deliberative judgment. Our point is simply that for all reparative justice claims that deliberation is properly bounded by a field of reparative justice and that the boundaries of this field are given by the underlying structure of the historical injustice in question. Neither backwardnor forward-looking consideration may ever be driven fully from the field of reparative justice. V. Conclusion If we are correct about the field of reparative justice, then attending to the underlying structure of historical injustices is the first step in the moral adjudication of any reparative justice claim. This is the most obvious conclusion to draw from the foregoing. A less obvious conclusion concerns the construction and philosophical evaluation of theories of domestic and international justice. Our analysis suggests that the relationship between reparative and distributive justice is complex and varied, and the latter cannot easily be fully isolated from the former in the real world, a world always given to us by and with a history. Thus, it is not just reparative justice that is more complex than it may at first appear, it is also distributive justice. In his recent The Law of Peoples, John Rawls offers principles of justice to ground and guide the development of an international law worthy of our fidelity. Yet he nowhere discusses reparative justice, even though he devotes a third of the book to issues in nonideal or partial compliance theory. This has caused some consternation and protest. Some have suggested, by way of defense, that this alleged defect may be corrected by simply inserting into the law of peoples a principle of reparative justice. While we are sympathetic to Rawls's international vision and thus inclined to come to its defense, and while we agree that the law of peoples remains incomplete in the absence of a principle or principles of reparative justice, we suspect that the task of integrating a morally sound theory of reparative justice into the law of peoples is a daunting task. This is in large part because the field of reparative justice is richer and more varied than has heretofore been acknowledged. Notes 1 Punitive justice concerns both the public condemnation of past wrongdoing as well as the collective imposition of hard treatment on wrongdoers in response to their past wrongdoings. Interestingly, it seems likely that neither backwardnor forward-looking considerations can be fully excluded from any adequate account of punitive justice. And thus punitive and reparative justice are alike not only in that they both necessarily look back to past wrongdoings, but also in that they both necessarily look forward to distributive justice as well. For the necessity of taking full account of 374 Jeppe von Platz and David A. Reidy both backwardand forward-looking considerations in punitive justice, see Anthony Duff, Punishment, Communication and Community (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001). 2 For discussion of the difference between harms and wrongs, see Rahul Kumar, "Who Can be Wronged?" Philosophy and Public Affairs 31, no. 2 (2003): 98–118. 3 When Japan offered monetary compensation without apology for the abuse of Korean "comfort" women in World War II, this offer was turned down by the victims on the grounds that it was itself offensive. For discussion, see part 3 of Roy L. Brooks, ed., When Sorry Isn't Enough: The Controversy over Apologies and Reparations for Injustice (New York: NYU Press, 1999). On the shortcomings of the "compensation paradigm" generally, see Gerald Gaus, "Does Compensation Restore Equality?" in Injustice and Rectification, ed. Rodney Roberts (New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2002), 83–104; T. L. Zutlevics, "Reconciliation, Responsibility, and Apology," Public Affairs Quarterly 16, no. 1 (2002): 63–75; Debra Satz, "Reparations and International Injustices: On the Limits of the Compensation Paradigm," in Reparations, eds. Rahul Kumar and Jon Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming) (this volume collects essays originally presented at a conference on reparations at Queen's University, Canada, in 2004; all references to essays from this volume are to the essays as originally presented at the conference). 4 For Young's distinction between "liability" and "social connection" models, see Iris Young, "Responsibility and Global Justice: A Social Connection Model," Social Philosophy and Policy 23, no. 1 (2006): 102–30. For examples of those who give priority to the liability model, see, e.g., Janna Thompson, Taking Responsibility for the Past: Reparation and Historical Injustice (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2002); David Miller, "Inheriting Responsibilities," in Reparations, ed. Rahul Kumar and Jon Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming); and Elazar Barkan, "Restitution and Amending Historical Injustices in International Morality," in Politics and the Past: On Repairing Historical Injustices, ed. John Torpey (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2003), 91–102. For those more inclined toward a social connection model, see, e.g., Jeremy Waldron, "Redressing Historic Injustice," University of Toronto Law Journal 52, no. 1 (2002): 135–60; Christopher Kutz, "Justice in Reparations: The Cost of Memory and the Value of Talk," Philosophy and Public Affairs 32, no. 3 (2004): 277–312; and Leif Wenar, "Reparations for the Future," in this volume. 5 Most writers on reparations eventually acknowledge the implausibility of both purely backwardlooking "liability" and purely forward-looking "social connection" approaches. Attempts to unite backward-looking, noninstrumentalist and forward-looking, instrumentalist reasoning within a single, unified approach to reparations can be found in Kok-Chor Tan, "Colonialism, Reparations and Historical Injustice," and Pablo de Grieff, "Justice and Reparations," both in Reparations, eds. Rahul Kumar and Jon Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming); and in Chandran Kukathas, "Responsibility for Past Injustice: How to Shift the Burden," Politics, Philosophy, Economics 2, no. 2 (2003): 165–90. 6 For a fuller discussion of the distinction, see Joel Feinberg, "Justice and Personal Desert," Doing and Deserving (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970), 55–94. 7 The academic literature devoted to theorizing and critically assessing reparations claims arising out of American slavery is substantial. See, e.g., Bernard Boxill, Blacks and Social Justice (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allenheld, 1984); Angelo J. Corlett, Race, Racism and Reparations (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003); Randall Robinson, The Debt: What America Owes Blacks (New York: Dutton Publishing, 2000); Roy L. Brooks, Atonement and Forgiveness: A New Model for Black Reparations (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); and Thomas McCarthy's recent essays: "Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung in the USA: On the Politics and Memory of Slavery," Political Theory 30, no. 5 (2002): 623–48, and "Coming to Terms with Our Past, Part II: On the Morality and Politics of Reparations for Slavery," Political Theory 32, no. 6 (2004): 750–72. 8 We can highlight the difference between unjust exclusions and this more complete or systemic form of injustice in the following way. Suppose our current practice of punishment, of imposing hard treatment on the legally guilty, is itself justified by reference to the moral culpability of criminal offenders. And then suppose that we mistakenly excluded women from the class of the potentially Structural Diversity of Historical Injustices 375 morally culpable; we make a moral mistake with respect to whether they satisfy the desertor value-basis of our system of punishment. We would then unjustly exclude women from an otherwise morally sound system of institutional entitlements, or in this case, liabilities. This is a structurally different case than the more systemic injustice done by making all the legally guilty liable to hard treatment that cannot itself be justified in light of the manifest desertor value-basis of the criminal law. 9 The story was widely reported. For the National Public Radio account, go to: http://www.npr.org/ templates/story/story.php?storyId=5199194. 10 And, of course, slavery exists even today. But today it is always an entitlement violation, since slavery is globally illegal, prohibited by all national systems of law as well as established international law. 11 Also, we do not claim that the types of injustice we have identified exhaust the range of structural differences between historical injustices. There may be other or more fine-grained differences of import. 376 Jeppe von Platz and David A. Reidy | {
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from: Heiner Stuckenschmidt, Erik Stubjkaer and Christoph Schlieder (eds.), The Ontology and Modelling of Real Estate Transactions, Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003, 51–67 Real Estate: Foundations of the Ontology of Property Barry Smith and Leo Zaibert Abstract Suppose you own a garden-variety object such as a hat or a shirt. Your property right then follows the ageold saw according to which possession is nine-tenths of the law. That is, your possession of a shirt constitutes a strong presumption in favor of your ownership of the shirt. In the case of land, however, this is not the case. Here possession is not only not a strong presumption in favor of ownership; it is not even clear what possession is. Possessing a thing like a hat or a shirt is a rather straightforward affair: the person wearing the hat or shirt possesses the shirt or the hat. But what is possession in the case of land? This essay seeks to provide an answer to this question in the form of an ontology of landed property. 1. The Boundaries of Landed Property: How Far Does Your Property Extend? In his far-reaching study of property rights, Richard Pipes discusses the etymology of 'possession' and cognate terms. He tells us: Some primates assert exclusive claims to land by physically occupying or "sitting" on it. This behavior is not so different from that of humans, as indicated by the etymology of words denoting possession in many languages. Thus, the German verb for "to own", besitzen, and the noun for "possession", Besitz, literally reflect the idea of sitting on or, figuratively, settling upon. The Polish verb posiadać, "to own", as the noun posiadłość, "property", have an identical origin. The same root underpins the Latin possidere, namely sedere, "to sit", from which derive the French posséder and the English "to possess". The word "nest" derives from a root (nisad or nizdo) signifying "to sit". The monarch occupying the throne has been described as engaging in "nothing else but the symbolic act of sitting on the realm" (Pipes, 1999, 68) In this passage Pipes correctly emphasizes the "symbolic" and "figurative" nature of this "sitting on" and "settling upon" the land. For his purposes it is not important to ask how much land a person (or primate) possesses (or owns) by symbolically sitting on it. It is unlikely that the person would be claiming exclusivity only over the surface of the land he is actually touching. Much more likely is it that a person would claim exclusivity over a region much larger than the area in actual contact with his body. And the symbolic practice of sitting gives absolutely no clue as to what the extension and boundaries of the land over which the person is claiming exclusive rights might be. Thus, the object a person claims to possess or to own is not well defined. Note that this factor of indeterminacy or uncertainty in the borders of one's property has no analogue in the realm of shirts and hats. It is geographic in nature. It is our purpose in what follows to stress the special character that landed property exhibits amongst the many forms of property rights. Understanding this special character will then shed light on what is needed for a more adequate account. Such an account must encompass not only the dimension of law but also those of politics and economics (Stubkjaer, 2001). Here we seek to lay bare the foundations of the needed full 2 ontology of landed property. 2. The Politics of Landed Property: What Can We Own? The crucial importance for political affairs of landed property (or real estate, we shall use these two expressions interchangeably) has been eloquently summarized by Rousseau: The first person who, having fenced a plot of ground, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him, was the true founder of civil society. (Rousseau, 1992, 44). There are two aspects to Rousseau's view that deserve special attention; one concerns geography, the other ontology; more precisely the ontology of social reality. First, the act of fencing off need not, in the context of this passage, be restricted to the case where some physical boundary is constructed. It can be seen as including also the establishment of fiat boundaries – for example when you tell people where the borders of your property lie, or when you simply mark its corners (Smith, 2001). To fence a plot of land is to create something new. The land itself, of course, exists before the parcel is plotted, but the act of fencing off nonetheless creates a new object. Second, this act alone is not sufficient for such object-creation. The latter requires also the existence of what John Searle calls collective intentionality (Searle 1995); that is, it requires that other persons (simplemindedly or not) believe that the land is indeed the property of he who fenced it off. Only then can a property right be said to arise. This means that a comprehensive study of landed property will have three interconnected dimensions: (1) a geographic dimension, having to do with the peculiarities of the ways in which real estate is related to the land itself (and thus also with the issue of boundaries); (2) a cognitive dimension, having to do with the interrelations between such geospatial phenomena and our culturally entrenched beliefs and convention; (3) an ontological dimension, having to do with what real estate is. We can throw some light on the latter by considering first of all the more general question of what can be the object of a property right of any sort. Let us use the term 'thing' to refer to anything that can in principle be owned. The German legal philosopher Adolf Reinach provides a useful first analysis of this notion, pointing out that: The concept of a thing [Sache] in no way coincides with that of a bodily object, even if positive enactments would restrict it to this. Everything which one can "deal" with, everything "usable" in the broadest sense of the word, is a thing: apples, houses, oxygen, but also a unit of electricity or warmth, but never ideas, feelings or other experiences, numbers, concepts, etc. (Reinach 1983, 53). Reinach's passage carries the suggestion that, even though the concept of thing is not to be identified with that of a bodily object, still: things must be concrete. Abstract entities such as numbers and concepts fall outside the range of what can be owned. As Reinach himself would have accepted, however, it is perfectly possible that entities such as computer programs, architectural designs, and so forth be owned. And even leaving aside such issues of intellectual property, we shall see that there is an important further class of abstract entities – rights themselves – which fall within the domain of what is ownable. Reinach suggests that being "usable" might be a necessary condition for something's being ownable; but it is not a sufficient condition. There is a long list of objects regarding which it is difficult to say whether they can be owned, though it is clear that these objects can be used in varied ways. Do we own ourselves? We have certain rights over our bodies, but are they property rights? (Munzer 1994, 1995) Whether or not human corpses, body parts, children, can be owned are difficult questions to answer (Ryan 1994). But the difficulties associated with the idea of ownership in such entities are of a different sort from those which arise in the case of land. The limitations which many societies place on the ownership of human corpses stem from religious and ethical views, not, for example, from any difficulty in ascertaining the boundaries of corpses. Similarly, limitations on the right to commercialize our body parts seem to stem from ethical considerations rather than from any ontological difficulty in determining the boundary of, say, a lung. (Such a geographic dimension may, though, arise in relation to the buying and selling of fetuses, where we do indeed face a difficulty in determining the boundary between fetus and mother (Smith and Brogaard 2002).) We shall here, however, leave aside the discussion of those objects which are excluded 3 from being ownable as a result of moral and religious views, and concentrate exclusively on the case of ownership in land. The first step in trying to analyze land as an object that can be owned is to appeal to the age-old distinction between movable and immovable things. Land is the quintessential immovable thing. (The German term for real estate law is "Immobilienrecht".) The term 'real estate' refers precisely to those immovable things which are the objects of rights. But, is land really immovable? For lawyers and legal scholars, this question must surely seem absurd, and they will answer it without hesitation in the affirmative. From a more sophisticated ontological perspective, however, matters are not so clear. For there is a range of types of immovable things whose treatment will shed light upon the partly fictional nature of the (positive) legal concept of immovability. The standard classification of immovables stipulates four types: 1) Immovables by nature, the paradigmatic examples of which are land-parcels, edifices (including buildings) and plants adhering to the soil. 2) Immovables by destination; here the best examples are agricultural machinery, animals associated with cultivation, and so on. These are all movable things that the law 'immobilizes' in order to account for the strict relationship of dependence in which these objects stand to other objects which are deemed immovables by nature. 3) Immovables by the object to which they are applied; this category pertains to rights. This is a bold fiction of the law, for as Planiol points out: "rights, being incorporeal are, strictly speaking neither movables nor immovables. They are not tangible. They take up no room" (Planiol 1930, 317). A classification of rights into movable and immovable can therefore be made only by attending to the object to which the right applies. If the right applies to an immovable thing, then the right is deemed immovable; if the right applies to a movable thing then the right is deemed movable. 4) Immovables by declaration; finally, the category of immovables by declaration is the most fictional of all categories of immovable things, since here immovability is just a consequence of some individual's whim. Someone may, for example, simply declare some specific good to be immovable (for example, someone may declare an artwork in her own house to be immovable). There are stark differences from country to country in the way immovables by declaration are provided for and dealt with. As can be clearly seen, the extent to which the immovability of an object depends on legal fictions varies considerably in the four cases mentioned. But it is hardly ever admitted that even in the case of land there is an element of fiction involved in its putatively immovable nature, and even in those rare cases where this element is indeed admitted, it is not further investigated. Planiol, for example, refers to that which is immovable by nature as follows: Strictly speaking, there is nothing which is absolutely immovable. Even the elements which compose the soil, rocks, sand, minerals, may be displaced. When a canal is dug, when lots are leveled it is the soil which is transported. In America, engineers have displaced large buildings without demolishing them. In Paris, the fountain du Palmier on the Place du Châtelet was set back in its entirety to permit the opening of the Boulevard de Sebastopol. But the law does not envisage the possibility of movement with the same rigor as mechanics. The law holds those things to be immovable [by nature] which are immovable in a durable and habitual manner and whose function is to be immovable, even if they may be displaced, in some cases, by extraordinary means. (Planiol 1930, 306). Land moves, too, of course, with the movement of the earth (and a comprehensive analysis of land must take account of this fact if it is to do justice to the extension of property rights in land to the moon, or to distant planets, or even to entire sub-divisions of the cosmos). Even when we take account of the many fictions which it might be politically or economically or astronomically fruitful to allow, however, we must conclude that the initially plausible distinction between movables and immovables has only limited potential as the cornerstone of a rigorous analysis of landed property. 3. The Economics of Landed Property: What Can We Do With What We Own? The economic effects of landed property are huge. A recent and comprehensive study (De Soto, 2000) highlights many of these effects. The central thesis of de Soto's book, which is entitled The Mystery of 4 Capital, is that things do not amount to capital. Not even land amounts to capital. For as he points out: "In Asia, Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America [...] most of the poor already possess the assets they need to make a success of capitalism" (Op. cit., 2000, 5). The problem is that "they hold these resources in defective forms: houses built on land whose ownership rights are not adequately recorded, unincorporated businesses with undefined liability, industries located where investors cannot see them" (Op. cit., 2000, 56). What De Soto seeks is an ontology of capital, along the same lines as the ontology of real estate that we sketch here. The crucial question that De Soto tries to answer is How do we transform things into capital? And of all the things that are so transformed, the most important, indeed the foundational one, is land. De Soto's book is provocatively wide-ranging and impressively researched; but its perspective is that of the economist, not that of the philosopher-ontologist, and it is precisely the latter that is needed if we are to make sense of the matters to which he draws attention. De Soto, rightly, points out that those surprisingly abundant assets that the poor have in third world nations "cannot readily be turned into capital, cannot be traded outside of narrow circles where people know and trust each other, cannot be used as collateral for a loan, and cannot be used as a share against an investment" (De Soto, 2000, 6). This is an extremely important point: the poor lack capital, but they do not necessarily lack assets (some of the poor could, of course, lack both, though the empirical evidence collected by De Soto strongly suggests that it is a lack of capital which is the problem). As a matter of fact, the difference between successful and unsuccessful nations, from the economic perspective, runs skew to the degree of development of their mechanism for turning stuff into capital. Unfortunately, De Soto sometimes betrays the letter of his own thesis: he refers to these non-capitalized assets at times as "non-capital" and at other times (more frequently) as "dead capital" or as "undercapitalized assets" Of course, it might turn out that De Soto wishes that we understand these expressions as synonyms; nonetheless, it would be better if we had clear indications as to what exactly noncapital is, what capital is, what dead or dormant capital is (if such things exists) and how they all fit together within a single unified theory. And such a theory requires further a foundation in an ontology of real estate – for (as becomes clear through the course of De Soto's study) it is rights over land that are of paramount importance. De Soto compares economically weak and underdeveloped nations to economically robust nations. The following holds only for the latter: "every parcel of land, every building, every piece of equipment, or store of inventories is represented in a property document that is the visible sign of a vast hidden process that connects all these assets to the rest of the economy" (De Soto, 2000, 6). Though De Soto makes reference here to different types of objects and not only to land, it is clear that land is the most important of the objects which he seeks to investigate. It is not only the fact that "the single most important source of funds for new businesses in the United States is a mortgage on the entrepreneur's house", and that mortgages are, in principle, applicable only to real estate (De Soto, 2000, 6). De Soto admits the primordial role of real estate also when, in explaining the comprehensive research agenda that led him and his associates to Egypt, Peru, Russia, Haiti, and the Philippines, he states that: "To be more confident of our results, we focused our attention on the most tangible and detectable of assets: real estate" (De Soto, 2000, 30). What De Soto's research shows, in the end, is that a plausible and fruitful way to express the difference between developed and under-developed nations is the degree to which land is turned into real estate (and, of course, the degree to which that system which turns land into real estate then allows for further transactions with the fully capitalized parcels which result). By "raw land" in what follows we shall understand not real estate which is being under-utilized but rather physical land (of any sort) before it has become real estate. We can then affirm with De Soto that the cornerstone of the mechanism for turning raw land into real state – that is for turning stuff into capital – is a representational system made up of titles, deeds, registration documents, and so forth. De Soto rightly insists that the representational system which is the basis of the formation of capital is not simply a collection of "stand-ins for the assets": "a formal property representation such as a title is not a reproduction of the house, like a photograph, but a representation of our concepts about the house" (De Soto, 2000, 50). An advantage of such representations is that, unlike physical assets, they are "easily combined, divided, mobilized, and used to stimulate business deals" (De Soto, 2000, 56). But the most salient advantage of these representations is that they have the power to transform raw land into that multilayered entity which is a parcel of real estate – or in other words to give rise to a plurality of ontologically distinguishable aspects of what is, from a geometrical point of view, identically the same piece of land. They thereby allow the fully capitalized assets to enjoy a multiple existence; namely, a physical existence, 5 a legal existence, an economic existence, a political existence, and so forth. Compare De Soto's remarks on the differences between dwellings in economically developed and economically underdeveloped nations. In the latter, people's houses serve at best to protect them from the weather or from wild animals and criminals. In economically developed nations, in contrast, people's "houses no longer merely keep the rain and cold out. Endowed with representational existence these houses can now lead a parallel life, doing economic things they could not have done before" (De Soto, 2000, 62-63). It is clear then, that developing an accurate and efficient system of representation for land parcels, and of the transactions regarding these parcels, is a necessary condition for the functioning of capitalism in its developed form, and indeed of that transition to fully functioning capitalism which is economic development. Yet, as we shall see, the construction of such a system is not an easy task. 4. Collective Intentionality, Rules, and the Ontology of Property Let us return to Rousseau's famous dictum quoted at the beginning of this essay. It is not only fencing off a plot of land that is important; important also is the fact that people believe that the person who fenced this plot of land is also the one who actually owns it. Collective intentionality is necessary for the existence of landed property. This is a crucial element of the ontology of property rights. A recent and powerful attempt to apply ontological tools to the analysis of unorthodox entities like landed property is carried out by John Searle in his The Construction of Social Reality (Searle, 1995). Searle draws a distinction, first of all, between brute facts and institutional facts. Brute facts are those facts which exist independently of human conventions. Institutional facts are a sub-set of social facts; social facts are, simply those that depend on human conventions for their existence. The additional, special characteristic of institutional facts is that they involve the creation, extension or transfer of powers. Searle does not distinguish between rights and powers; as a matter of fact, whenever he speaks of powers in the realm of institutional facts he really means what are normally referred to as rights in our sense (for having a power, in the more usual sense, is typically a matter of brute facts, say, the power to invade your property). For the moment, nonetheless, we shall follow Searle in stating that the primitive term in the creation of social reality is power. All institutional facts require collective intentionality. That certain rectangular pieces of paper count as money requires that there is a group of people who believe that they do so. (Which group of people is relevant for this purpose and how large it needs to be are difficult problems, which Searle does not discuss.) That Susan is French, that Manuel is Mexican are institutional facts, since nationalities, too, require collective intentionality. (That two plus two equals four, in contrast, is a brute fact, since it does not require collective intentionality.) That someone owns the shirt he is wearing requires collective intentionality, and so does the fact that someone owns a plot of land. Searle has also put forth a now familiar distinction between what he calls regulative and constitutive rules. The former, as he puts it, merely regulate antecedently existing forms of behaviour. For example, the rules of polite table behavior regulate eating, but eating itself exists independently of these rules. Some rules, on the other hand, do not merely regulate; they also create or define new forms of behaviour. The rules of chess create the very possibility of our engaging in the type of activity we call playing chess. The latter is just: acting in accordance with the given rules. Constitutive rules, Searle tells us, 'always have the same logical form ... They are always of the logical form such-and-such counts as having the status so-and-so'. (Searle 1999, pp. 123 f) An utterance of the form 'I promise ...' counts as putting oneself under a corresponding obligation. A given relationship between a person and a plot of land, counts as ownership. And as we see from these cases, the Y term in a constitutive rule characteristically marks something that has consequences in the form of rewards, penalties, or actions one is obliged to perform in the future. When applying the X counts as Y formula we have to take into account whole systems of such rules. Acting in accordance with all or a sufficiently large subset of these and those rules by individuals of these and those sorts counts as conducting a legal trial according to Massachusetts law. The counts as formula can also be iterated so that whole systems of iterated structures (including the system we call property in land) can arise, systems which interact in multifariously spreading networks. Consider for example the way in which the marriage and inheritance systems have interacted with the landed property system in different cultures over time. Searle's account of the way in which so much in human civilization rests in this way on systems of integrated and interleaved constitutive rules is certainly the most impressive theory of the ontology of 6 social reality we currently have. But this account is also not without its problems, and the discussion of these problems sheds light on the ontology of landed property. For Searle's social ontology in its original form presupposes that – as in the case of President Clinton and Canterbury Cathedral and the money and driver's license in your pocket – the X terms at the bottom of the hierarchy are in every case parts of physical reality. When we examine the detailed workings of his theory, however, we discover that Searle is committed also to the existence of what we might call 'free-standing Y terms', or in other words to entities which do not coincide ontologically with any part of physical reality. One important class of such entities is illustrated by what we loosely think of as the money in our bank accounts as this is recorded in the bank's computers. In The Construction of Social Reality we find the following passage: all sorts of things can be money, but there has to be some physical realization, some brute fact – even if it is only a bit of paper or a blip on a computer disk – on which we can impose our institutional form of status function. Thus there are no institutional facts without brute facts (Searle 1995, 56). On closer inspection, however, it becomes clear that blips in computers do not really count as money and nor can we use such blips as a medium of exchange. Rather, as Searle has subsequently acknowledged, blips in computers are merely representations of money, and as he points out, it would be 'fascinating project to work out the role of these different sorts of representations of institutional facts'. (Searle 2002) Searle here recognizes a new dimension in the scaffolding of institutional reality, the dimension of representations. As the blips in the bank's computers merely represent money, so the deeds to your property merely record or register the existence of your property right. The deed is not identical with your property right and nor does it count as your property right. An IOU note, similarly, records the existence of a debt; it does not count as the debt. It is an error to run together records pertaining to the existence of freestanding Y terms with those free-standing Y terms themselves. As the case of money shows, some social objects have an intermittent and what we might think of as a merely generic realization. Others, such as corporations or universities, have a physical realization that is partial and also scattered (and also such as to involve a certain turnover of parts). Yet others, such as debts, may have no physical realization at all; they exist only because they are reflected in records or representations (including mental representations). A full-dress ontology of social reality must address all of the different types of cases mentioned, from Y terms which are fully identical with determinate parts of physical reality to Y terms which coincide with no determinate parts of physical reality at all. Free-standing Y terms, as might have been predicted, are especially prominent in the higher reaches of institutional reality, and especially in the domain of economic phenomena, where we often take advantage of their abstract status in order to manipulate them in quasi-mathematical ways. Thus we pool and securitize loans, we depreciate and collateralize and amortize assets, we consolidate and apportion debts, we annualize savings – and these examples, along with the already mentioned example of the money existing (somehow) in our banks' computers, make it clear that the realm of free-standing Y terms must be of great consequence for any theory of institutional reality. That this is so is made abundantly clear not least by De Soto's work – which was indeed in part inspired by The Construction of Social Reality and which also goes some way towards realizing Searle's 'fascinating project' of working out the role of the different sorts of representations of institutional facts. As De Soto shows, it is the 'invisible infrastructure of asset management' upon which the astonishing fecundity of Western capitalism rests, and this invisible infrastructure consists precisely of representations, for example of the property records and titles which capture what is economically meaningful about the corresponding assets – representations which in some cases serve to determine the nature and extent of the assets themselves. (See Smith and Zaibert, 2001.) Capital itself, in De Soto's eyes, belongs precisely to the family of those free-standing Y terms which exist in virtue of our representations: Capital is born by representing in writing – in a title, a security, a contract, and other such records – the most economically and socially useful qualities [associated with a given asset]. The moment you focus your attention on the title of a house, for example, and not on the house itself, you have automatically stepped from the material world into the conceptual universe where capital lives (De Soto 2002, pp. 49 ff.). 7 As those who live in underdeveloped regions of the world well know, it is not physical dwellings which serve as security in credit transactions, but rather the equity that is associated therewith. The latter certainly depends for its existence upon the underlying physical object; but there is no part of physical reality which counts as the equity in your house. Already the term "negative equity" should draw our attention to the special nature of this phenomenon. Equity is tied to time, to history, and to a certain portion of physical reality; yet it is at the same time something abstract, something that exists only insofar as it is represented in a legal record or title in such a way that it can be used to provide security to lenders in the form of liens, mortgages, easements, or other covenants in ways which give rise to new types of institutions such as title and property insurance, mortgage securitization, bankruptcy liquidation, and so forth. 5. The Uniqueness of Landed Property Landed property in general is nestled in a much more complicated system of constitutive rules, and it requires more variegated forms of collective intentionality than do other forms of property. There is a sense in which the existence of any right whatsoever requires collective intentionality. Unless one believes in the existence of some form of natural law which would imply the existence of rights independent of any human conventions, any right requires for its existence that people believe that it is indeed a right. In the simplest case, someone might have property rights over the shirt he is wearing. The only aspect of this situation that requires collective intentionality is that relating to the institutional fact: this person owns this shirt. In the case of property in land, however, collective intentionality is required not only at the level of the person owning the land but also with respect to the existence of the very plot of land itself. For here it is not only the property right itself that requires collective intentionality, but also the object over which the right falls. We suspect that this explains Rousseau's characteristically malicious suggestion that the people who would believe that the plot of land is indeed the property of the person who fenced it off are simpletons – people who have been duped. It would have been less easy for Rousseau to make this same point in respect to, say, those of his fellows who believed that Rousseau himself was the owner of the shirt on his back. This is because, in relation to the ownership of the shirt, there is one level only that is subject to collective intentionality. In relation to the plot of land, in contrast, it is not only in the existence of the right of property that we have to believe, but also in the existence of the very object over which the property right falls – an object which is supposed to be somehow created by the very act of fencing off. Some political discussions regarding property rights do indeed recognize the distinction between landed and other forms of property. For example Henry George called for the institution of a 'single tax' on land, on the grounds that one cannot legitimately own naturally occurring resources, but can only have rights to the value one adds through one's own work – a proposal that has been endorsed in our own day by Hillel Steiner (1994). And as Richard Pipes reminds us, John Stuart Mill questioned whether land should be treated as merely one particular form of property, on the grounds, first, that no one had made it, and second, that whereas in creating movable wealth one did not deprive one's fellowmen of an opportunity to do likewise, in appropriating land one excludes others (Pipes 1999, 57). The contrast drawn by George is far from being absolute, however. Thus it may take work (and the adoption of considerable risks) to discover natural resources such as gold, and land, and if all natural resources were to count as common property, then much of this work (and risk) would not be forthcoming. Mill's criterion of excludability is on the right track. But it captures only part of what is, from the ontological point of view, a much more complex phenomenon. 6. What is a Property Right? Property rights are complex sets of other rights, and excludability is only one of the many rights in the bundle, and land is different from other forms of property also for reasons which have to do with features of this complex set. Property is often conceived, à la Hohfeld (1919), after the model of a bundle of sticks. Each stick in the bundle signifies a particular right or power: a right to use, a right to possess, to sub-divide, to rent, to build upon, to enjoy the usufruct from, and so on. An owner can, in certain cases, sell or give 8 away specific rights, or see these rights removed, divided, or amended by the force of others. Our practical dealings with landed property in cases where the sticks have dwindled or been transformed in this fashion can be a very complex matter. It is important to point out, however, that the absolute property right itself is in no way affected by this dwindling of the rights (or powers) that make up the property right. This means that Hohfeld's 'bundle' analogy is in fact not quite correct, though we shall find it useful to employ his terminology nonetheless. As Reinach has eloquently put it: If property were a sum or unity of rights, it would be reduced by the alienation of one of these rights, for a sum necessarily disappears with the disappearance of all its parts. But we see that a thing continues to belong to a person in exactly the same sense, however many rights he may want to alienate; it makes no sense at all to speak of a more or less with respect to belonging. The nuda proprietas in no way means that the owning "springs back to life" once the rights transferred to other persons have been extinguished; the thing rather belongs to the owner in the interval in exactly the same sense as before and after ... This is the essential necessity which underlies the socalled "elasticity" or "residuarity" of property and which can hardly be reasonably considered as an "invention" of the positive law (Reinach, 1987, 56). Each of the sticks that make up the property right can, in principle at least, be the object of negotiations independently of the remaining sticks in the bundle, and whatever the outcome of such negotiations the property right – the absolute relation of belonging – remains ontologically speaking intact. Someone can give away some of the sticks without giving away his property over the thing in question. Thus it is not uncommon to see cases in which someone has given away (or has had taken away) virtually all the sticks in the bundle (in the case, for example, of the possession of his land by squatters); but even then his residual property right over the thing itself remains. The bundle of property rights in land has first of all the elastic or residual character that has been referred to already above. Such elasticity is manifested to some degree in other spheres, for example in the car rental or equipment leasing markets. But it still seems odd to suppose that someone might give away the right to use a washing machine or toothbrush for long periods of time while retaining title to the goods in question. In most such cases it seems that, when someone gives away a specific stick from the bundle, then he is actually giving away the full right of property over the object in question. Two interconnected reasons explain why it is especially in the case of landed property that this residual character is essential. First, some types of negotiations relating to the sticks in the bundle make practical sense only in relation to landed property. Although the owner of, say, a painting, or a car, strictly speaking has the right to subdivide it, it seems unlikely that he will ever seek to exercise this right. Second, it is primarily in relation to landed property that the mentioned maneuvers (subdividing, commercializing the fruits of, etc.) are commonly carried out, precisely because there are here more sticks in the bundle, and they are more varied and complex than in relation to other types of property. Leasing, time-sharing, owning shares in a social club, borrowing, sub-dividing, using as collateral are examples which illustrate just some of the possibilities here. And because of the central economic importance of land as the presupposition of all other human activity, it is only in the case of landed property that correspondingly complex legal institutions have grown up in reflection of the different dimensions of rights involved. Consider, for example, my property right over my watch: it is easy to see that the bundle of sticks which comprises this property right can only be altered with difficulty – and even then still only partially. We cannot, after all, meaningfully talk about subdividing, or building upon a watch, or harvesting the usufruct therefrom. What purpose could be served by giving away the possession or the use of the watch while maintaining ownership over it? The age-old aphorism 'possession is nine tenths of the law' is, under this light, exactly right. While ownership and possession are closely related phenomena, the relationship between them is much closer in the case of movables than in the case of immovables. A further important reason for the differences between landed property and other types of property turns on the special geographic dimension of the objects of property rights in land. As we have seen, the idea of a parcel of land is in greater need of ontological clarification than is, say, that of a watch or a lawnmower. A parcel of land, we can now say, has fiat boundaries, and this means: it needs to have its boundaries provided for by some human institutions. A full-blown ontological analysis of real estate must thus provide an account not only of the make-up of the bundle of sticks which comprises a property right in general, but also of the accompanying institutions for example of boundary maintenance and title and cadastral registration. It must also provide an account of the interplay between these dimensions – and this in such a way as to do justice also to the differences between different human cultures. The analysis in question must 9 accordingly have at least the following components, each one of which will be seen to have been at work in the arguments above: a) When someone owns a parcel of real estate, then there is a certain portion of the surface of the earth to which he is related. b) This portion of land must have the character of an enduring object which – at least when considered on the scale of human events – endures permanently. c) This portion of land must have definite, known (or at least knowable) boundaries. d) The portion of land must be such that the owner, and in principle others, may gain (legal and physical) access. e) The portion of land must be knowable. Investors and others must know where it is situated f) Real estate gives rise to neighbors. There are no neighbors where there is raw land, simply because they are no boundaries in raw land. Even the so-called bona fide boundaries – those obvious discontinuities on the surface of the earth, such as coastlines, mountain ranges, rivers, etc., are not boundaries in the sense which pertains to the ontology of real estate – until someone considers them to be so. g) Parcels of real estate have different conditions of identity than do raw land. I might exchange all the soil in my land in New York for the soil in your land in Delaware, yet I would still be the owner of real estate in New York and you in Delaware. h) A parcel of real estate is multi-layered in the sense that there are ontologically distinguishable aspects of what is, from a geometrical point of view, identically the same piece of land. There are layers of geology, of archeology, of history, of ecology, of rights of way, and so on, as well as layers of insurance, equity, and economic value; and the state can own (or have property rights in) some or all of these layers even in those circumstances where a private person is the ostensible owner of the plot of land simply conceived. i) A parcel of real estate is a three-dimensional solid which includes regions above and below the surface of the earth itself. As an owner of a parcel of real estate I must for example have the right to prohibit my neighbor from building a structure that would invade the space above my land. This feature illustrates most clearly the institutional (fiat) character of real estate. For even in regard to pure geometry, the specification of the height and depth of the relevant threedimensional solid differs from culture to culture. In the United States, for example, the owner of a given parcel in fact (and in law) owns a cone-shaped region of space projecting from the center of the earth and reaching upwards (roughly) as far as the ear can hear. In other places these determinations are effected in different ways. One of the specific prerogatives which the state has in Latin America is that it owns the whole of the subsoil in the country, no matter who owns the surface of the land. j) The boundaries of a land parcel are affected by a factor which we might call crispable vagueness – that is by a vagueness that can, where necessary for practical reasons, be alleviated by institutional fiat or by negotiation. (Smith, 2001) If someone owns a land-parcel in Venezuela, and finds gold some few inches below the ground, this gold becomes the property of the state. Of course, this presents the state with the problem of determining how to fix the boundary between the surface and the subsoil. It seems odd, to say the least, that a hand-made hole of merely a few inches constitutes a penetration in the state's exclusive property. Note that the problem faced by even developed institutions of property law in providing a clear demarcation of such a boundary is analogous to the problem of drawing a line between, say, territorial and extraterritorial waters. Fiat crisping will occur only where it is of practical importance. Cadastral and title registration, for example, is much more precise and reliable in countries, such as Switzerland or Austria or Holland, were land is scarce, than it is in the US or Australia or (presumably) Siberia. 7. Appendix: Apriorism, Realism, and the Ontology of Landed Property In The A Priori Foundations of the Civil Law, Reinach sought to attack the view that the concepts and structures of the civil law were created by the civil law, that is, that they were merely the reflections of laws as created human institutions. Reinach, in contrast, sought to show that "the positive law finds the legal concepts which enter into it; in absolutely no way does it produce them [emphasis in the original]" (Reinach, 1983, 4). Thus, Reinach attacks precisely the sort of view that Searle puts forth. Reinach further 10 tells us that specifically legal structures "have a being of their own just as much as numbers, trees, or houses" and "that this being is independent of its being grasped by men" (Reinach, 1983, 4). There are true propositions in the realm of the law, he held, and these propositions are true independently of anyone knowing that they are true and of anyone deciding to create the concepts to which the propositions refer. Reinach's thus embraces a doctrine of apriorism regarding the basic building blocks of the legal realm, a doctrine which he takes as providing a bulwark against legal positivism, legal relativism and related positions. Reinach is thus not merely a realist about legal institutions. A realist in regard to a given domain holds that there are facts pertaining to that domain which obtain independently of whether or not they are recognized as obtaining. Reinach goes further in embracing legal apriorism: he holds, in other words, that there is a special way in which we come to know these recognition-transcendent facts. "If there are legal entities and structures which in this way exist in themselves", Reinach points out, "then a new realm opens up here for philosophy. Insofar as philosophy is ontology of the a priori theory of objects, then it has to do with the analysis of all possible kinds of object as such" (Reinach, 1983, 6). True to this goal, most of Reinach's book is devoted to an analysis of basic legal concepts such as claim, right, obligation, promise, property, and so on. In light of Reinach's analysis, moreover, law resembles certain other disciplines: like "pure mathematics and pure natural science there is also a pure science of law" (Reinach, 1983, 6). Already in 1869 Ernest Beling, Reinach's teacher, had attempted an aprioristic analysis of the criminal law in his Die Lehre Vom Verbrechen. Carl Menger attempted to deploy apriorism as a basis for the science of economics and in this he represents faithfully the spirit of the so-called "Austrian School", which he founded (see Menger 1871). The connection between Reinach's apriorism and the ontology of landed property can now be explained as follows. Given the multi-layered ontology of landed property, Searle's simple ontology based on collective intentionality cannot do the work. Someone owning a given plot of land is not, under normal circumstances, affected by the collective beliefs of any group, even though those beliefs were perhaps necessary to set up the relevant system of landed property in the first place. He may just own the land, independently of the beliefs of those around him. While collective intentionality is thus perhaps crucial for the creation of institutional reality, and also for the resolution of disputes concerning this reality, it is not so important for the continued existence of this reality in the normal case. Moreover, there are important aspects of the phenomenon of real estate which are not the result of human agreements of any sort. Rather, they are part and parcel of the underlying structure of real estate as such, a structure which is intelligible to beings like ourselves, not because we have created it but because, like the structures of promising, claim, obligation, debt, and so forth, and also like the structures of circle, square, triangle, hypotenuse, it is there waiting to be discovered In Reinach's words, there are certain basic legal entities and structures which exist independently of the positive law, though they are presupposed and used by it. Thus the analysis of them, the purely immanent, intuitive clarification of their essence, can be of importance for positive-legal discipline. The laws, too, which are grounded in their essence, play a much greater role within the positive law than one might suspect. One knows how often in jurisprudence principles are spoken of which, without being written law, are "self-evident", or "follow from the nature of things" to mention only a few of these expressions. In most cases it is not a matter of principles whose practical usefulness or whose justice is fully evident, but rather the essential structures investigated by the apriori theory of right. They are really principles which follow from the "nature" or "essence" of the concepts in question. (Reinach, 1983, 6-7) That an obligation ceases to exist after it has been discharged is a principle that has nothing to do with any agreement between men; the validity of this principle does not presuppose intentional states of any kind. If someone understands the concept of obligation, he will ipso facto realize that it would make no sense to suggest that someone under an obligation to do X remains obligated after doing X. Similarly, and more concretely, that real estate must have boundaries, or that it must give rise to neighbors, or, in general, that the ontology of real estate must do justice to the characteristics listed above, is not an empirical discovery (or the product of some convention) but rather a matter of the intelligible structure of the domain in question. It should be clear how Reinach's approach differs from that of Searle. While there is no doubt that Searle provides a valuable analysis of the ontological structures underlying many institutional phenomena, his framework allows too much to be the result of fiat and convention. And in fulfilling the task of the ontology of real estate we need to take into account not only those dimensions of the realm of landed property which are conventional in nature, but also those dimensions which are prior to all conventions – and which thus make these conventions possible. 11 References Beling, Ernest. (1964), Die Lehre Vom Verbrechen, Tübingen: Scientia Verlag Aalen. Bentham, Jeremy. (1958), "Principles of the Civil Code", in John Bowring, (ed.), The Works of Jeremy Bentham, Vol. 1, New York: Russell and Russell. Bittner, Steffen, Wolff, Annette von, Frank, Andrew U. (2000), "The Structure of Reality in a Cadastre", in Berit Brogaard (ed.), Rationality and Irrationality (Papers of the 23rd International Wittgenstein Symposium), Kirchberg am Wechsel: Austrian Ludwig Wittgenstein Society, 88–96. De Soto, Hernando. (2000), The Mystery of Capital, New York: Basic Books. Hohfeld, Wesley. (1913), "Some Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning" Yale Law Review 23. Mark, David M., Smith, Barry and Tversky, Barbara. (1999), "Ontology and Geographic Objects: An Empirical Study of Cognitive Categorization", in C. Freksa and David M. Mark (eds.), Spatial Information Theory. Cognitive and Computational Foundations of Geographic Information Science (Springer Lecture Notes in Computer Science 1661), 283–298. Menger, Carl. (1871), Grundsätze der Volkswirtschaftlehre, Vienna: Braumüller. Munzer, Stephen R. (1995), A Theory of Property, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Munzer, Stephen R. (1994), "An Uneasy Case Against Property Rights in Body Parts" Paul, Ellen Frank et al. (eds.). Nozick, Robert. (1974), Anarchy, State and Utopia, New York: Basic Books. Pipes, Richard. Properly and Freedom, New York: Vintage, 1999. Planiol, Marcel. (1939), Treatise on the Civil Law, Lousiana State Law Institute translation). Reinach, Adolf. (1983), "The A Priori Foundations of the Civil Law" Aletheia (3): 1-143. Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. (1992), Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, Indianapolis: Hackett. Ryan Alan. (1994), "Self Ownership, Autonomy, and Property Rights" in Paul, Ellen Frankel et al. (eds.). Searle, John R. (1995), The Construction of Social Reality, New York: Free Press. Smith, Barry, (1990), "The Question of Apriorism", Austrian Economics Newsletter: 1-5. Smith, Barry (1992), "An Essay on Material Necessity", in P. Hanson and B. Hunter, eds., Return of the A Priori (Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Supplementary Volume 18). Smith, Barry. (2001), "Fiat Objects", Topoi, 20: 2, September 2001, 131–148. Smith, Barry (forthcoming), "Ontology", in Luciano Floridi (ed.), Blackwell Guide to Philosophy, Information and Computers, Oxford: Blackwell. Smith, Barry and Brogaard, Berit (2002), "Sixteen Days", The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy. Smith, Barry and Mark, David M. 1999 "Ontology with Human Subjects Testing: An Empirical Investigation of Geographic Categories", American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 58: 2, 245– 272. Smith, Barry and Mark, David M. (2001), "Geographic Categories: An Ontological Investigation", International Journal of Geographic Information Science, forthcoming. Smith, Barry and Zaibert, Leo. "The Metaphysics of Real Estate", Topoi 20 (2001): 161-172. Spector, Mary B. (1986), "Vertical and Horizontal Aspects of Takings Jurisprudence: Is Airspace Property?", Cardozo Law Review 7: 489-518. Steiner, Hillel. (1994), An Essay on Rights, Oxford: Blackwell. Stubkjaer, Erik (2001), 'Spatial, Socio-Economic Units and Societal Needs – Danish Experiences in a Theoretical Context", in A. Frank et al. (eds.), The Life and Motion of Socio-Economic Units (GISDATA 8), London: Taylor and Francis, 265–280. Thomasson, Amie L. (1999), Fiction and Metaphysics, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Zaibert, Leo. (1999), "Real Estate as an Institutional Fact: A Philosophy of Everyday Objects", American Journal of Sociology and Economics, 58: 2, 273-284. | {
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Justin Clarke-Doane Columbia University [This is a rough draft of a paper for Christopher Cowie and Richard Rowland (eds.), Companions in Guilt Arguments in Metaethics.] Objectivity and Evaluation I this article, I introduce the notion of pluralism about an area, and use it to argue that the questions at the center of our normative lives are not settled by the facts -even the normative facts. One upshot of the discussion is that the concepts of realism and objectivity, which are widely identified, are actually in tension. Another is that the concept of objectivity, not realism, should take center stage. The Parallel Postulate Suppose that you pass two straight lines through another, and on one side of the latter the angles that the two lines make with the it is less than 180°. Must the two lines intersect? This is the Parallel Postulate question. We could understand it as a question about physical spacetime, in which case the answer is evidently either "yes" or "no". But suppose we understand it as one of pure mathematics, like that of whether there are infinitely-many twin primes. Is it true then? The question is patently misconceived. In a sense, it has no objective answer -even assuming that it has a mind-and-language independent one. There are different geometries, each consistent 1 if the other are, and these give different answers to the Parallel Postulate question. In Euclidean geometry the answer "yes" while in, e.g., hyperbolic geometry the answer is "no". All we would learn in answering the Parallel Postulate question is something about us. We would just learn what geometrical structures we were talking about (or what was "packed into" the geometrical concepts we happened to be employing), rather than learning which such structures there were. To be sure, we could make the question sound metaphysical. If we wonder whether we happen to be referring to Euclidean lines or hyperbolic lines with the word "lines", then, by semantically descending, we can wonder whether the lines really are Euclidean or hyperbolic. But that is a boring question if ever there were one! We could avoid it altogether by simply stipulating that by "lines" we will hereby mean, e.g., Euclidean lines. Indeed, this is what we actually do. 1 Metaphysical Pluralism Such a view of geometry is hardly controversial. Indeed, it is even independent of the realism-antirealism debate in the philosophy of mathematics. Even a mathematical platonist would agree that different geometries are equally true of their intended subjects. But one could, in principle, take an analogous perspective on other areas of mathematics, including "non-algebraic" ones, like set theory (Balaguer [1998], Field [1998], Hamkins [2012], Linsky and Zalta [1995]). 1 It is also true that an eccentric metaphysician could add that some one geometry, in addition to being true, is somehow metaphysically privileged. But notwithstanding the fact that, to my knowledge, such a view would be unprecedented (even in philosophy!), any reason to metaphysically privilege some one geometry over all others would seem to be equally a reason to regard only it as true. 2 Let us define pluralism about an area, F, as the view that there are a plurality of F-like concepts, all equally satisfied, independent of human minds and languages. Then there is a case to be made that pluralism is the most viable form of realism about set theory, (counterfactual) possibility, logic, mereology, essence, the theory of grounding, and much more. Just as we have 2 different concepts of point and line, all equally satisfied, we have well-founded and non-well-founded concepts of set, physical, metaphysical, and logical concepts of possibility, classical, intuitionistic, and paraconsistent concepts of consequence, and so on. Such questions as "is the Axiom of Choice true?", "could you have had different parents?", "does anything follow from a contradiction?", and "is the grounding relation transitive?" are analogous to the Parallel Postulate question. What is the argument for such a general pluralism? If "monism" about set theory, modality, logic, grounding, and so forth were true, then it would be a mystery how we could have significant knowledge of the areas. For example, even if we are actually convinced that every 3 set is well-founded, that every non-empty set has a Choice function, and that the Continuum Hypothesis fails, it certainly seems that we could have easily believed otherwise. It is not as if we would have arrived at a contradiction on the basis of alternative principles (assuming that we cannot derive a contradiction from the principles we actually accept). As Hamkins writes, we could have easily 2 See my [2015], [Forthcoming A], [Forthcoming B], and [Manuscript] for details. 3 Another argument is that "monism" about, e.g., (counterfactual) possibility would seem to be hardly more principled than monism about (pure) geometry. It is not as if we cannot make sense of, say, logical possibility along with metaphysical possibility. Such questions as how the world would have been different had you -yes, you! -had different parents are already studied under the heading "impossible worlds" (Berto [2013]). But a believer in a more inclusive class of possible worlds (or in more inclusive notion of possibility) differs only verbally from a believer in impossible worlds. 3 look[ed] upon models of ~PSA [which says that it is not the case that |x| < |y| → 2^x < 2^ y] as strange in some fundamental way, violating a basic intuitive principle of sets concerning the relative sizes of power sets; perhaps our reaction to these models would be like the current reaction some mathematicians (not all) have to models of ZF+~AC or to models of Aczel's anti-foundation axiom AFA, namely, the view that the models may be interesting mathematically and useful for a purpose, but ultimately they violate a basic principle of sets [2011, 19]. In epistemological parlance, our set-theoretic beliefs would fail to be safe if set-theoretic monism were true. That is, it would be the case that we could have easily had systematically false ones (using the method that we actually used to form ours). The problem is not that the set-theoretic truths could have easily been different. The problem is that our beliefs could have easily been. On the other hand, if set-theoretic pluralism is true, then the epistemology of set theory is like the epistemology of (pure) geometry. Had we accepted, say, the negation of the Axiom of Choice, there still would have been a universe of sets to which it corresponded. The iterative universe of sets can sit "side by side" all manner of other set-like universes (Field [1998]). Although Carnap would be wrong to suggest that we can generate set-theoretic reality by specifying set-theoretic principles, he would be right to remark that "the conflict between the divergent points of view... disappears... [B]efore us lies the boundless ocean of unlimited possibilities" [1937/2001, XV]. 4 4 Compare Field [2005, 78]:, 4 Pluralism and Deflation Whether pluralism is true of any of the above areas is, of course, controversial. In order to fill the picture out, we would need to specify a criterion for being an area, F, with respect to which pluralism is true, as well as a criterion for being an F-like theory. The first step is required because presumably we do not wish to be pluralists about the physical universe! The second is required because it would be of little help, epistemically speaking, to postulate only, say, the iterative universe of sets and that of Azcel [1988, Part I]. This would still leave an advocate of, say, Quine [1937] with false set-theoretic beliefs, and with no apparent method by which to discover this. What will be important below is not whether pluralism is true, however, but that it would have deflationary methodological ramifications if it were true. Or, if one is uneasy counterfactually conditionalizing on pluralism's truth, it suffices to note that, under the assumption of 5 F-pluralism, F-questions are like the Parallel Postulate question. Assuming that, say, 6 set-theoretic pluralism is true, there is no non-semantic question to ask about, e.g., the Continuum Hypothesis. It is true of some universes, false of others, and that is all there is to it. 7 [Pluralists] solve the [epistemological] problem by articulating views on which though mathematical objects are mind-independent, any view we had had of them would have been correct... [T]hese views allow for...knowledge in mathematics, and unlike more standard Platonist views, they seem to give an intelligible explanation of it. Note that I am intentionally obscuring the metasemantics of pluralism, which is irrelevant to the basic point. For details, see Clarke-Doane [Forthcoming] and [Manuscript, Section 6.1 & 6.2]. 5 Though one should not be if one is a modal pluralist! See, again, my [Forthcoming] and [Manuscript]. 6 One can phrase this: "if pluralism turns out to be true", on analogy with "if water turns out not to be composed of H20". (Thanks to Gideon Rosen for pointing this out.) 7 Assuming that ZF is consistent. 5 While we could always ask the question of how we happen to be using "is a member of" on an occasion (or what is "packed into" the concept of membership we happen to be invoking), this question is of no set-theoretic interest. An answer to it puts no constraints on what sets -or, more carefully, set-like things -exist. A similar point applies to the question of whether you could have had different parents, whether the grounding relation is transitive, and whether everything follows from a contradiction, assuming pluralism about modality, grounding, and logic. So, pluralism about an area has a practical upshot. If set-theoretic, modal, logical, or grounding pluralism is true, then influential research programs are misconceived. Note that I have been discussing pluralism about intuitively descriptive areas, like set theory. But pluralism about normative areas, such as morality or epistemology, may be even easier to defend. Whereas set theory is ontologically committed to controversial objects -sets -morality is merely committed to properties. It is about uncontroversially existing objects like you and me. But properties come "cheaply" on a wide variety of conceptions, both platonist and nominalist. On a standard platonist conception, there is a property for every predicate, and on a Quinean 8 nominalist conception, whether a property "exists" is just the question of whether to accept a predicate as primitive in our regimented theory of the world (Quine [1948]). Nor is there any question about the instantiation of normative-like properties, given that they, too, would supervene on uncontroversial properties. So, it is hard to see how one could deny the existence, or even instantiation, of normative-like properties, given that normative properties exist and are instantiated. 8 Barring those precluded by Russell's Paradox, and related arguments. See, e.g., Bealier [1982]. 6 However, the normative case presents a puzzle. Suppose that, say, moral pluralism turns out to be true. There are a plurality of moral-like concepts, all equally satisfied, independent of human minds and languages. Is the question of whether, e.g., we ought to kill the one to save the five itself like the Parallel Postulate question? The question of whether we ought to, realistically 9 construed, apparently is. That is one way of stating the upshot of Horgans' and Timmons' Moral Twin Earth thought experiment (Horgans and Timmons [1992]). If we are Cornell Realists, for example, then we should agree that along with goodness, which, according to us, is the property causally regulating our use of "good", there is goodness* which could causally regulate another community's use of "good" while giving intuitively opposite verdicts on moral questions. Its verdicts stand to the negation of the Parallel Postulate as our answers stand to the Parallel Postulate. But, evidently, there is a remaining question in the moral case that is closely related 10 to the original. Morality is supposed to tell us what to do, and the question remains whether to do what we ought to do, or ought* to do. There is no analogous question in the vicinity of the Parallel Postulate question, once it is given that it is true of linesEuclidean and false of lineshyperbolic. (There is, of course, the question of whether we ought to use linesEuclidean rather than lineshyperbolic. But that question is itself normative, and not about geometrical reality.) What could the remaining question be? 11 9 For concreteness, we can let the question be whether we ought to kill the one to save the five in some fully specified situation -rather than whether we ought to in general. (Thanks to Carol Rovane for pressing me to make this explicit.) 10 I say "intuitively" because it strictly gives verdicts on moral* questions, just as hyperbolic geometry gives verdicts on strictly different questions from Euclidean geometry. 11 Eklund also considers a "further question" in connection with a similar puzzle in his [2017]. I will return to Eklund's discussion shortly. 7 Elusive Questions It might be thought that it is the question of which of ought-to-be-doneness or ought-to-be-doneness* is genuine ought-to-be-doneness. But that cannot be right. Trivially, ought-to-be-doneness is genuine ought-to-be-doneness, simply because "ought" means ought! Of course, we could ask which of ought-to-be-doneness1 and ought-to-be-doneness2 is ought-to-be-doneness, where "ought-to-be-doneness1" and "ought-to-be-doneness2" independently specify the candidates in question. But that is just the semantically descended version of the question of what "ought" means out of our mouths. An analogous question remains in any of the prior cases, including (pure) geometry. No one would waste their time wondering which of the pointsEuclidean or pointshyperbolic are the genuine points. Again, that is why even mathematical platonists just stipulate that by "points" they will mean, e.g., Euclidean points. Whatever our remaining question, an omniscient semanticist could not resolve it by merely confirming that "ought" means, say, ought1 out of our mouths. Intuitively, our question is precisely whether we should be regulating our behavior by consulting the property that we are actually consulting. Perhaps, then, the remaining question is another normative question, but not a moral one per se. Maybe it is whether we have all-things-considered reason to kill the one, whether we prudentially should, or whether we are epistemically justified in believing that we ought. Maybe it is even something as baroque as whether we ought to use our concept of ought. But even if such questions do remain, that cannot be the end of the story. A similar puzzle arises assuming 8 pluralism about any normative concept. Suppose, for example, that there are a plurality of 12 all-things-considered-like concepts, all equally satisfied relevantly independent of human minds and languages. Then, even under the assumption that you have all-things-considered reason to kill the one to save the five, we can stipulatively introduce a reason-like concept, reason*, such that you lack all-things-considered reason* to kill the one to save the five. And the question arises whether to do what you have all-things-considered reason, or all-things-considered reason*, to do.. Maybe the question is metaphysical. It is whether our moral-like concepts are "elite" or "carve at the joints" in the sense of Sider [2011] (Enoch and McPhereson [2017]). But this still cannot be right. First, joint carving in any familiar sense is not morally relevant. As Eklund writes, Suppose...that by eliteness one means something like what is sometimes called Lewisian eliteness: the perfectly elite properties are the fundamental physical properties, and something is more elite than something else the closer to this ideal it is....To take this to be relevant to which community objectively has the aesthetically better taste would clearly be unwarranted....[T]he same goes for other normative disputes, including, for example, moral disputes....The general take-home message is this: even if what is more elite in the Lewisian sense may in some way be metaphysically privileged, it is not relevant so far as normativity...is concerned [2017, 30, italics in original]. 12 Actually, barring vagueness and indeterminacy, I believe that this "immunity to deflation" affords a criterion for being a normative claim. But I cannot argue for this here. 9 Of course, we could always define a notion of "moral eliteness" such that our remaining question is which moral-like properties are so elite (van Roojen [2006, 180–1]). But that would make the proposal contentless. Second, if the fact that our moral-like concepts are "elite" implies that we ought to use them, then eliteness is itself an normative notion. But then the puzzle simply re-arises vis a vis the question of what properties are elite (Dasgupta [2018]) (since, again, an analogous puzzle arises assuming pluralism about all normative concepts). Finally, it was built into the thought experiment that our normative-like concepts are not elite. Given Cornell Realism, for example, our moral-like concepts are not metaphysically special. The problem is 13 to say what question remains if there are a plurality of moral-like concepts, all on a metaphysical par. 14 Maybe a more radical conception of the remaining question is called for. Perhaps there remains a question of fact, but it is ineffable (Eklund [2017]). Of course, one may have doubts about 15 the coherence of the notion of an ineffable fact. However, even supposing that the notion is in good order, this account of the remaining question fails as well. Let us call the ineffable propositions whose truth we ponder moral*. (If the proposal is coherent, then we must be able to refer to them, even if we cannot express them. ) Then there are two ways in which moral* 16 propositions could be ineffable. First, they could be structurally ineffable in the sense of Hofweber [2017]. Their ineffability could be due to their failure to share anything like sentential 13 Cornell Realism is not peculiar in this regard. Another naturalist view with the same consequence is Jackson [1998]. A non-naturalist view with the consequence is Huemer [2005]. 14 It does not matter whether we take eliteness to characterize concepts or the properties to which they correspond. So, I speak of elite properties for convenience. 15 The question that Eklund probes is not the same as the present one. But some of the answers to it that he proffers might be answers to the present one. 16 This means that the relevant sense of "express" (or, alternatively, "proposition" and "property") must be fine-grained. If 'P is true' expresses the same proposition as 'P' then we can express any proposition to which we can refer. 10 structure. But, if this were so, then it would be impossible to explain the connection between our linguistic behavior with moral sentences and the moral* propositions we ponder. If you utter S and I reply ~S, where S is a moral sentence, then we should at least be able to conclude that the moral* propositions that we believe are inconsistent (even if they are not expressed by the sentences, S, and ~S). But if moral* propositions are structurally ineffable, then we do not even know whether "consistency" makes sense as applied to them -since we do not know whether there is any operation on them corresponding to sentential negation. So, it is more promising to suggest that moral* propositions are ineffable because, while they share sentential structure, moral* properties are ineffable. If this is why moral* propositions are ineffable, however, then we would seem to be able to simply reformulate pluralism and bypass talk of sentences. Let us take moral* pluralism to be the view that there are a plurality of moral*-like properties, all equally instantiated. Then even assuming that moral* pluralism is true, a pressing question in 17 the vicinity of our original question persists. What to Do and What we Ought to Do Is there some other account of what the remaining question could be, after it is granted that we ought to kill the one, but ought* not, and all ought-like concepts are on a metaphysical par? There is one such account. The remaining question could be the "non-cognitive" question of what to do, in roughly the sense of Gibbard [2003]. We may have no doubt about what we 18 ought to to, what is the thing to do, what is good to do, what we are obligated to do, and so on for any normative concepts you like, while still wondering what to do. This is because we may 17 This is, in fact, the analog to Balaguer's preferred formulation of mathematical pluralism which operates at the level of propositions and properties, not sentences. 18 See Risberg [Manuscript] for a similar view vis a vis a related puzzle. 11 wonder whether to do what we ought, rather than ought*, to do, for some alternative normative-like concept, ought*. We can think of the point in terms of the logical law of weakening. This says that if a conclusion, C, follows from premise A, then C certainly follows from premises A and B. Now suppose that we have no doubt that, say, we ought to kill the one in our present circumstance. This cannot settle the question of whether to kill the one, by weakening. For we can stipulatively introduce an ought-like concept, ought*, according to which we ought* not kill the one in our present circumstance. And given the premises that we ought to kill the one, and ought* not kill the one, the question arises whether to do what we ought, or ought*, to do. Since the fact that we ought to kill the one in our present circumstance does not settle the question of whether to kill the one in tandem with the premise that we ought* not kill the one in that circumstance, it cannot settle the question of whether to kill the one on its own, by "weakening". (I put "weakening" in quotes because the conclusion at issue not a proposition, so the logical law does not strictly apply. More on this in a moment.) Settling the facts, even the normative facts, fails to settle the questions at the center of our normative lives. This conclusion is a kind of radicalization of Moore's Open Question Thesis. Moore [1903, Sec. 13] can be read as arguing that a conceptually competent agent may know that A is F, for any descriptive property, F, while failing to "endorse" A in the sense that is characteristic of practical deliberation. The above conclusion is that such an agent may know that A is F, for any property, 12 F, descriptive or normative, while failing to endorse A. Blackburn makes such a connection when he writes, [I]f we supposed that belief, denial, and so on were simply discussions of a way the world is, we would still face the open question. Even if that belief were settled, there would still be issues of what importance to give it, what to do, and all the rest....For any fact, there is a question of what to do about it. But normative discussion just is discussion of what to do about things [1998, 70]. Of course, any externalist will agree that an agent may know that she ought to kill the one to save the five while failing to be motivated to. The point is that our deliberation as to whether to kill the one is not yet completed even once we conclude that we ought to, that it is the thing to do, that it would be good, that we have reason to, and so on, for any normative properties whatever. It might be countered that this misunderstands the upshot of the puzzle. What the puzzle really shows is that the remaining question is not an normative one, realistically construed. It does not show that the question is non-cognitive. It could be, for example, that the remaining question is 19 a moral question, construed as a constructivist construes it. Constructivists themselves emphasize the practical irrelevance of the moral realist's facts (Korsgaard [1996, 44], Street [2006, 138-9]). But anti-realist cognitivists are no better positioned to resolve the puzzle. A Korsgaardian constructivist, for instance, takes the claim that we ought to kill the one to save the 19 Thanks to Katja Vogt for raising an objection along these lines. 13 five to amount, roughly, to the claim that this follows from our "practical point of view". And, yet, just as we can wonder whether to do what we ought, as opposed to ought*, to do, realistically construed, we can wonder whether to do what follows from our practical, rather than practical*, point of view. We can wonder, as Enoch [2006] puts it, whether to be an agent or a shmagent. The problem is general. Suppose that the remaining question is a question of fact. Then either it is descriptive or normative. But it cannot be descriptive, on account of Moore's original Open Question Argument. So, it must be normative. But if it is normative, then it ascribes some normative property, P, and the new problem arises that we can always wonder whether to act in accord with the P-truths, rather than the P*-truths, for some P-like property, P*. So, the 20 question is not one of normative fact either. It follows that the remaining question is not a question of fact. It might be objected that an analogous argument could just as well show that the remaining question is not even the non-cognitive question of what to do. Suppose that pluralism about what to do turns out to be true. Then it might be argued that there would still be a remaining question in the vicinity of whether we ought to kill the one to save the five! But pluralism about what to do is unintelligible. The reason, however, is not that there are "what-to-do" facts that are 20 This is a slight simplification. The questions could use primitive normative operators, in which case no properties are ascribed. But an analogous problem would arise. If O is such an operator, then we can wonder whether to act in accord with the O-truths, as opposed to the O*-truths, for some O-like concept, O*. (I speak of properties, rather than concepts, so as to allow that the truths are ineffable. To allow for this possibility in the case of operators, one would have to speak of their semantic values, whatever they are.) 14 so objective that one cannot even assume pluralism about them. The reason is that we can only do one thing. 21 Realism and Objectivity Revisited Let us call questions of what to do, as opposed to questions of what we ought to do, what would be good to do, and so on practical. Then while the conclusion that practical questions are not settled by the facts would traditionally be taken to show that they are not objective, we can now see how misleading this is. Practical questions are highly objective in the sense in which austere relativists say they are not. We cannot answer them by disambiguating different notions of ought. Nor can we resolve practical disputes by saying "you take goodmoral and I will take goodmoral*". Only one answer to a practical question is possible, simply because coordinated action requires that we do exactly one thing. And while such questions do not answer to the facts, this is part of the reason why their objectivity is robust. If they did answer to the facts, then their objectivity would be hostage to how plentiful the facts turned out to be. So, objectivity does not entail realism. In the other direction, if realism is true of mathematics, modality, logic, grounding, and so forth, then paradigmatic questions from these areas may all be like the Parallel Postulate question. We 21 Thanks to Jennifer McDonald for suggesting this way of putting the point. It might be suggested that moral pluralism is likewise unintelligible. But, as already indicated, it is hard to imagine an argument for this. First, all manner of actual metaethical theories, both naturalist and non-naturalist, have pluralist implications. These includes Jackson's functionalism, Boyd's Cornell Realism, and Huemer's platonism. Second, on any account of property existence of which I am aware, there exist moral-like properties if there exist moral ones. And once it is granted that a given property exists, its instantiation conditions are fixed by its identity conditions. Finally, to the extent that moral pluralism appears less comprehensible than pluralism about paradigmatically descriptive areas, this is easily explained from the present point of view. The explanation is that Gibbard is right about natural language semantics. 15 may answer them by noting that it is, say, logically possible that you could have had different parents, metaphysically impossible that you could have, and that is all there is to it -just as we can say that the Parallel Postulate is true of linesEuclidean, false of lineshyperbolic, and that is all there is to it. It is as though the most austere modal relativism were true. And while such questions do answer to the facts, that is why their objectivity is compromised when the facts are abundant. The upshot is that realism does not entail objectivity either. Indeed, the concepts are in tension. If practical questions are objective in a sense that the aforementioned descriptive questions are not, then a new problem of safety arises. Where we might have worried that we could have easily had false normative beliefs, we can now worry that we could have easily had normative*, rather than normative, ones. Had we had normative* beliefs, our beliefs may not have been false. (They may have been true of the normative* facts.) But, from our present perspective, they would have given us wrong direction on the practical question of what to do. Eklund considers the following scenario. Suppose, as the realist about metaethics typically wants to hold, that our normative predicates are objectively true of some things, so there are facts to the effect that so-and-so is good, such-and-such is right, etc. Here is a way in which this is not sufficient for the realist's purposes. Suppose these predicates are true of some things as supposed, but that the following is how they have obtained their meaning. Some powerful group in society introduced "right" (say) to stand for a given property P such that the members of this group perceived it to be in their interest that the rest of the 16 people in society promote what is P, and to present P in a positive light. Then so long as there are objective facts about what is P there are objective facts about what is right. But considerations about what is right don't have the action-guiding significance we assumed them to have [Manuscript, Sec. 4]. 22 Eklund suggests that this shows that "A challenge like Clarke-Doane's does not seem to have to proceed via the envisaged normative pluralism" [Manuscript, Sec. 4]. But I disagree. If one could really convince one's self that there is no coherent possibility of latching onto the "wrong" normative-like properties, then the right response to Eklund's thought experiment would be gratitude that the powerful group's stipulations fortuitously answered what to do questions. What the "translation scheme" above seems to show is that the tension between objectivity and our claim to knowledge is relocated to the level of action in the case of practical inquiry. However, while the former problem is widely supposed to be the normative realist's alone, the latter is all of ours. Conclusions I have advocated pluralism -i.e., realist anti-objectivism -about domains like set theory, modality, logic, essence, and grounding. This is the view that questions central to these domains are analogous to the Parallel Postulate question, realistically construed. The advantage to pluralism is that it affords an explanation of how our beliefs from these areas are safe, even though they answer to (presumably causally inert) mind-and-language independent facts. 22 Eklund [Manuscript] is a commentary on my [2015]. Eklund himself presents a related challenge in his [2012] and especially [2017]. Note that Eklund does not use "objective" in the way that I use it in this paper. (Eklund asked me to flag that his [Manuscript] is a work in progress and is subject to change.) 17 However, pluralism has deflationary methodological ramifications. It says that for practical purposes relativism is true. The question arises whether pluralism about normative areas, like morality and epistemology, is also viable. I have argued that while it is, pluralism about the practical subject of what to do is not so much as intelligible. This means that practical realism must be false. It also means that a new problem of safety arises. We could have easily had normative*, rather than normative, beliefs -even if we could not have easily had false normative-like beliefs. There are two additional upshots. The first is that, although realism has dominated metaphysical discussions for decades, it is really the concept of objectivity that has pressing methodological ramifications. If set-theoretic pluralism is true, then for practical purposes it is as though the most austere relativism is. This is despite the fact that, on a traditional taxonomy, set-theoretic pluralism is a realist position. After all, the (realist) pluralist agrees with the (antirealist) Carnapian that "before us lies the boundless ocean of unlimited possibilities [1937/2001, XV]." By contrast, while realism is false of practical domains, it is as though the most extreme form of objectivism is true. We can only do one thing, and this truism means that "before us lies" only one possibility. The second upshot is that standard methodology in normative philosophy deserves renewed scrutiny. A common practice (illustrated in, e.g., Cuneo and Shafer-Landau [2014]) is to arrive at normative conclusions by appeal, at least in part, to our normative concepts. We consider 18 counterfactual cases, and ask what we would "say". However, if the arguments here are compelling, then relying on the concepts we happen to have inherited is no less conservative than relying on the normative beliefs we happen to have inherited. Even if "conceptual surgery" 23 reveals that our concept of responsibility entails retribution, for example, whether to retribute is left open. There is a responsibility-like concept, responsibility*, such that responsibility* does not. And the practical question remains whether to hold people responsible or responsible*. For any normative concepts, we can "critique...the value of these values" [Nietzsche 1887, Preface, Sec. 6]. Works Cited Aczel, Peter. [1988] Non-Well-Founded Sets (CSLI Lecture Notes, Number 14). Available online at: <http://www.irafs.org/courses/materials/aczel_set_theory.pdf> Balaguer, Mark. [1998] Platonism and Anti-Platonism in Mathematics. New York: Oxford University Press. Bealer, George. [1982] Quality and Concept. Available online at: <https://campuspress.yale.edu/georgebealer/quality-and-concept/> Berto, Francesco, "Impossible Worlds", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2013 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2013/entries/impossible-worlds/>. Blackburn, Simon. [1998] Ruling Passions. Oxford: Clarendon Press Carnap, Rudolf. [2001/1937] The Logical Syntax of Language. Oxford: Routledge. Clarke-Doane, Justin. [Manuscript] "Metaphysical and Absolute Possibility." 23 Eklund also discusses the "conservativeness" of relying on our actual normative concepts in his [2017]. 19 -----. [Forthcoming A] Morality and Mathematics. Under contract with Oxford University Press. -----. [Forthcoming B] "Modal Objectivity." Nous. Cuneo, Terence and Russ Shafer-Landau. [2014] "The Moral Fixed Points: New Directions for Moral Nonnaturalism." Philosophical Studies. Vol. 171. 399--443. Dasgupta, Shamik. [2018] "Realism and the Absence of Value." Philosophical Review. Vol. 127. 279-322. Eklund, Matti. [2012] "Alternative Normative Concepts." Analytic Philosophy. Vol. 53. 139--157. -----. [2017] Choosing Normative Concepts. Oxford: Oxford University Press. -----. [Manuscript] "The Normative Pluriverse." Enoch, David. [2006] "Agency, Shmagency: Why Normativity Won't Come from What Is Constitutive of Action." Philosophical Review. Vol. 115. 169-198. Enoch, David, and Tristram McPherson. [2017] "What do you mean "This isn't the Question"?". Canadian Journal of Philosophy. Vol. 47. 820 -840. Field, Hartry. [1998] "Which Mathematical Undecidables Have Determinate Truth-Values?" in Dales, H. Garth and Gianluigi Oliveri (ed.), Truth in Mathematics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 291– 310. Gibbard, Alan. [2003] Thinking How to Live. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Hamkins, Joel David. [2011] "The Set-Theoretic Multiverse". arXiv. Available at: https://arxiv.org/abs/1108.4223 -----. [2012] "The Set-theoretic Pluriverse." (revised version) Review of Symbolic Logic. Vol. 5. 416-449. 20 Hofweber, Thomas. [2017] "Are There Ineffable Aspects of Reality?" in Bennett, Karen, and Dean Zimmerman (eds.), Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, Vol. 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 155-206. Horgan, Terence, and Mark Timmons. [1991] "New Wave Moral Realism Meets Moral Twin Earth." Journal of Philosophical Research. Vol. 16. 447-465. Huemer, Michael. [2005] Ethical Intuitionism. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Jackson, Frank. [1998] From Metaphysics to Ethics: A Defense of Conceptual Analysis. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Korsgaard, Christine. [1996] The Sources of Normativity. New York: Cambridge University Press. Linsky, Bernard and Edward Zalta. [1995] "Naturalized Platonism versus Platonism Naturalized." Journal of Philosophy. Vol. 92. 525-555. McPherson, Tristram. and David Enoch. [2017] "What do you mean "This isn't the Question"?" Canadian Journal of Philosophy. Vol. 47. 820-840. Moore, G.E. [1903] Principia Ethica. Available online at: <http://fair-use.org/g-e-moore/principia-ethica> Nietzsche, Friedrich. [1887] On the Genealogy of Morality. Available online at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Genealogy_of_Morality> Quine, W.V.O. [1937] "New Foundations for Mathematical Logic." American Mathematical Monthly. Vol. 44. 70-80. -----. [1948] "On What There Is." Review of Metaphysics. Vol. 2. 21-38. Risberg, Olle. [Manuscript] "Ethics and the Question of What to Do." 21 Sider, Ted. [2011] Writing the Book of the World. New York: Oxford University Press. Van Roojen, Mark [2006] "Knowing Enough to Disagree: A New Response to the Moral Twin Earth Argument." in Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press. | {
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Corrigir a existência: a ética como estética em Albert Camus1 Gabriel Ferreira da Silva2 Resumo: O percurso construído pelo pensamento de Albert Camus (1913-1960) perfaz uma unidade profunda entre Ética e Estética. Partindo de uma preocupação explicitamente ética, o autor acaba por ter de desenvolver uma antropologia filosófica, ou seja, um discurso sobre o homem que tem como núcleo um conceito que o reenvia àquilo que podemos chamar de dimensão estética para então, a partir daí, oferecer uma resposta àquele problema ético. Desse modo, pretendemos neste trabalho explicitar o caminho ao qual aludimos em três momentos: (a) a existência humana como problema ético; (b) o discurso camusiano sobre o homem que tem como núcleo a noção de Passion e, por fim, (c) a elaboração de um novo éthos, partindo da noção de Paixão, como resposta necessária ao problema existencial configurada como uma re-criação ou correção permanente, à semelhança do ofício do Artista. Palavras-chave: Camus – Ética – Estética – Existência. A. A existência como problema ético O início paradigmático do ensaio de 1942, Le mythe de Sisyphe, exibe explicitamente o ponto a partir do qual Camus considera a existência humana: 1 Este trabalho visa sintetizar os resultados da pesquisa, expostos em nossa dissertação de mestrado, defendida em abril de 2009. 2 Mestre em Filosofia (PUC-SP). E-mail: [email protected] Il n'y a qu'un problème philosophique vraiment sérieux: c'est le suicide. Juger que la vie vaut ou ne vaut pas la peine d'être vécue, c'est répondre à la question fondamentale de la philosophie. Le reste, si le monde a trois dimensions, si l'esprit a neuf ou douze catégories, vient ensuite. Ce sont des jeux3. A oposição entre o modo que o sério, na medida em que este problema constitui o único problema relevante da filosofia, e o jogo, que nos remete ao divertissement pascaliano na medida em que os outros problemas aos quais Camus faz referência não atacam a questão central e não são senão periféricos, já aponta para aquilo que terá lugar de destaque em sua reflexão, a saber, o problema advindo da pergunta pelo sentido da existência humana em necessária conexão com uma práxis devida que lhe acompanhe. Embora saibamos da interpretação tradicional do termo práxis, nós o utilizamos para demarcar, no seu sentido radical, a dimensão daquilo para além do especulativo, que se efetiva existencialmente. Com isso queremos dizer que para Camus a pergunta pelo sentido deve, como podemos bem notar no trecho citado, ser acompanhada de uma ação que dela decorra. O suicídio só pode ser dito como a questão fundamental da filosofia porque caso a pergunta que se refere à validade ou não da existência receba resposta negativa, o existente sério, que portanto não mente para si mesmo, deveria considerá-lo como ação possível derivada da constatação de não-sentido existencial. É portanto a partir do problema central do sentido da existência e de sua ação correlata que a análise camusiana deve se debruçar necessariamente sobre a investigação da existência humana a fim de (1) desvelar suas estruturas e categorias assim como (2) determinar o éthos que lhe seja correspondente. Devemos notar aqui que a investigação filosófica de Camus tem sempre, seja como ponto de partida ou como horizonte, uma preocupação de ordem ética. Como aponta um de seus comentadores, "Camus 208 Silva, G. F. Cadernos de Ética e Filosofia Política 14, 1/2009, p. 207-224. 3 CAMUS, Le mythe de Sisyphe, p. 1. relève de cette tradition philosophique que l'on peut appeler, en reprenant le terme de Fichte, le 'moralisme' et qui consiste à s'interésser au problème de l'action plutôt qu'au problème de l'être"4. Com o quadro incial exposto acima deve-se ver também que mesmo o trabalho de definições de conceitos estritamente existenciais devem conter a contra-senha da ética, para dizer com Kierkegaard. Como se verá adiante, todo o desdobramento da analítica existencial camusiana tem em seu bojo a essencial relação com o domínio da ação humana que também lhe constitui. Entretanto, devemos ter presente que a noção de ética no pensamento de Camus está em profunda consonância com o pensamento helênico. Ela ultrapassa o domínio do simples bem agir, diz respeito à totalidade da existência humana enquanto conexões entre escolhas e ações na medida em que tais conexões se prestam a construir tal ou tal modalidade de existência – como uma "segunda natureza" –, e portanto, de homem. Dessa forma, definir as categorias gerais de um éthos próprio ao homem é estabelecer as condições de possibilidade de uma existência autêntica ou inautêntica, séria ou lúdica. A análise que busca desvelar as estruturas próprias à existência é extremamente devedora da concepção de existência utilizada por Camus. Legatário sobretudo da inflexão que Kierkegaard conferiu a tal termo, Camus a entende principalmente a partir de seu aspecto de atualidade, concretude, que não pode ser deduzida totalmente do conceito, sendo que é justamente sua atualidade o resíduo que escapa à qualquer tentativa de abstração (Avicena, Kant). Assim, sua investigação remete sobretudo ao caráter de evidência para avançar. Devemos aqui estabelecer uma distinção que aparece no interior desta análise. Camus diferencia o que denomina "sentimento do Absurdo" da "noção do Absurdo". O primeiro diz respeito à uma questão de fato, ou seja, o "sentimento do Absurdo" é o elemento pelo qual o homem toma consciência da estrutura de sua existência mas que, no entanto, não pode ser resumida a tal elemento. Para Camus o sentimento do Absurdo é uma espécie de desconforto sentido a partir do momento onde aquela questão pelo sentido, já apontada acima, se apresenta como não passível de receber uma resCorrigir a existência: a ética como estética em Albert Camus 209 4 PASCAL, Albert Camus ou le philosophe malgré lui, p. 175. posta imediata. Camus frisa a importância de tal sentimento no que diz respeito ao aspecto epistemológico e, portanto, para o despertar do existente. É pela experiência de tal "sentimento do Absurdo" que a consciência é despertada para a investigação existencial. Entretanto, o estranhamento descoberto pela sensibilidade tem origem numa configuração tal da existência humana da qual ele não é senão efeito. É portanto a causa o que podemos subsumir à noção de Absurdo e é esta que por ora nos interessa. B. O homem como Passion É Camus mesmo quem inicia a definição de Absurdo pela etimologia do termo. Absurdo se refere àquilo que soa mal, incongruente, desarmônico. Ora, para o autor a diferença, a desarmonia e a incongruência são os signos distintivos da estrutura da existência humana. Se a pergunta pelo sentido não encontra resposta imediata é porque ela se depara com elementos como a finitude, a contingência e a opacidade da experiência humana à razão. A dificuldade de sentido propriamente humano para a existência advém do choque, ou como diz Camus, do divórcio, da separação que se dá entre a expectativa humana e as reais condições existenciais para a efetivação desta expectativa. Para Camus, a condição humana é então de conflito entre um páthos, uma Paixão, um desejo que se desdobra e se desenvolve em certos sentidos, e as categorias próprias à existência humana em sua simultaneidade inconciliável. O que ocorre no seio da existência humana é uma presença comum, de dois pólos, não-simétricos, sendo que cada um deles é absolutamente irredutível ao outro. A irredutibilidade é o fator preponderante na argumetação camusiana. Para Camus, há no homem uma Paixão fundamental, um aspecto afetivo, desejante, que pode inclusive ser dito erótico (em sentido platônico), que se manifesta como "appétit d'absolu et d'unité"5, "passion de vivre"6, e ainda um "attachement d'un homme à sa vie"7 que não pode 210 Silva, G. F. Cadernos de Ética e Filosofia Política 14, 1/2009, p. 207-224. 5 CAMUS, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 136. ser subsumido nem tampouco identificado à nenhuma das estruturas próprias à existência, tais como sua efetividade, sua contingência e sua finitude mas, antes, entra em confronto com elas pela impossibilidade de suplantá-las. Aquilo que está no cerne do discurso antropológico camusiano é aquilo que há de "irréductible et de passionné dans un coeur humain"8. Mesmo a análise existencial encontra seu motor primeiro no páthos de unidade, no desejo de síntese entre o conceito e a existência ela mesma, síntese entre o pensamento e ser. Assim, mesmo a investigação intelectiva se dá motivada por tal "passion": "la pensée d'un homme est avant tout sa nostalgie"9. A Paixão tal qual expressada por Camus deve ser vista como aquilo que perfaz a ligação entre o o homem e seu objeto ideal. Ideal porque a sede do problema camusiano é justamente a diferença ou declive que configura a existência humana, advindo da heterogeneidade desses dois pólos. É por isso que tal dimensão patética pode ser dita o cerne da concepção de homem no pensamento de Camus. Ela é o núcleo do que configura o propriamente humano, indissociável deste e irredutível a outro conceito, já que subsume seu traço fundamental que é a exigência de efetivação do ideal de unidade desejado. C. A revolta como estética da existência Como corolário da análise camusiana, podemos dizer que Camus define o homem a partir de sua relação passionné para com sua própria existência. É a presença de tal páthos, como desejo incontornável de unidade da experiência existencial, que está na base do choque e da ruptura nomeada como Absurdo para Camus. Se há diferença entre o homem mesmo sua condição existencial é porque há no homem um desejo inalienável que tem como objeto a outra configuração desta mesma condição. A infinitude e a completa razoabilidade da experiência Corrigir a existência: a ética como estética em Albert Camus 211 6 CAMUS, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 99. 7 CAMUS, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 102. 8 CAMUS, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 139. 9 CAMUS, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 134. existencial estão no horizonte desta passion que se choca com aquilo que Camus denomina "ordem do mundo"10. Dessa forma, reaparece aqui o problema anunciado já no umbral de Le mythe de Sisyphe: se a experiência de existir se apresenta absurda ou, como nos diz o próprio autor, a demanda humana por sentido não encontra efetivação, o suicídio deveria ser considerado sob o ponto de vista de uma ação possível em resposta a tal ruptura. Entretanto, para Camus, a resposta à questão que apresenta o suicídio como solução ou ação que seria o contraponto da constatação de absurdidade da existência, deve receber uma resposta negativa. Posto que o Absurdo é o choque entre a exigência humana e sua impossibilidade de efetivação, o suicídio não pode ser considerado verdadeira resposta na medida em que, para Camus, não constitui verdadeira solução para o problema existencial. O suicídio é tão somente a supressão de um dos termos do problema que, ao invés de resolvê-lo, impossibilita mesmo sua colocação. Ao propor a supressão do homem, um dos pólos da tensão que compõe o Absurdo é excluído e nega-se o que se queria afirmar, a saber, exatamente a passion humana. Devemos notar que Camus encara a questão do suicídio como possível conseqüência lógica da ausência de sentido da existência e não do ponto de vista de uma ação súbita movida por este ou aquele acontecimento. Sob aquele aspecto, portanto, o suicídio seria uma falácia ao suprimir um dos termos que compõe o problema. É, portanto, a partir da negação do suicídio como solução que urge, já ao final de Le mythe de Sisyphe, a necessidade de um éthos próprio ao homem que reconhece sua condição como fraturada mas que, no entanto, não pode se furtar dela sem abolir sua existência mesma. A tensão a que acima aludimos deve ser mantida sob pena de suprimir o homem. É o que reconhece Camus em uma citação que pensamos ser fundamental: Vivre, c'est faire vivre l'absurde. Le faire vivre, c'est avant tout le regarder. Au contraire d'Eurydice, l'absurde ne meurt que lorsqu'on s'en détourne. L'une des seules positions phi212 Silva, G. F. Cadernos de Ética e Filosofia Política 14, 1/2009, p. 207-224. 10 CAMUS, La peste, p. 1323. losophiques cohérentes, c'est ainsi la révolte, Elle est un confrontement perpétuel de L'homme et de sa propre obscurité. Ele est exigence d'une impossible transparence. Elle remet le monde en question à chacune de ses secondes11. Assim, se viver é fazer viver o Absurdo e o suicídio não pode ser arrolado como práxis correlata ao problema, abre-se a necessidade de uma reflexão sobre como existir "encarando-o" ou seja, existir no seio desta tensão irresolúvel. Como nos indica o autor, a posição filosófica coerente é então a Revolta, enquanto esta se apresenta como manutenção da oposição e do choque homem-mundo. Aquilo que Camus denomina Revolta deve estar necessariamente no horizonte do existente na medida em que pressupõe justamente a oposição e o divórcio homem-mundo, ao invés de suprimi-lo. Isto porque há no cerne desta noção um duplo movimento de afirmação e negação. Ela deve necessariamente contemplar a dimensão afirmativa da passion humana, que perfaz a crítica e o aspecto negativo, que recusa o não-sentido da condição humana. Devemos porém notar um passo da argumentação camusiana que termina por desembocar na Revolta como pressuposto de toda ação condizente com a condição humana. O autor analisa, num momento de transição de Le mythe de Sisyphe, algumas figuras que indiciam posturas possíveis frente ao Absurdo. Estas figuras são Don Juan, o Conquistador e o Ator. Em tais figuras Camus enxerga, hipostasiadas, modos de existência que sucedem a tomada de consciência do Absurdo. As três modalidade são descartadas pois se contentam em apenas reproduzir o descontentamento multiplicando as vivências. Compõem o que o autor denomina moral de quantidade. Restringem-se a replicar o mesmo quadro existencial numa tentativa de, quantitativamente, pelo acúmulo de experiências, superar a falta de significação existencial. É neste ponto, ainda em Le mythe de Sisyphe, que Camus evoca a figura do Artista que, a partir deste momento da análise, encarnará o éthos próprio ao homem revoltado. Nos diz o autor: Corrigir a existência: a ética como estética em Albert Camus 213 11 CAMUS, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, p. 138. Travailler et créer 'pour rien', sculpter dans l'argile, savoir que sa création n'a pas d'avenir, voir son oeuvre détruite en un jour en étant conscient que, profondément, cela n'a pas plus d'importance que de bâtir pour des siècles, c'est la sagesse difficile que la pensée absurde autorise. Mener de front ces deux tâches, nier d'un côté et exalter de l'autre, c'est la voie qui s'ouvre au créateur absurd. Il doit donner au vide ses couleurs12. Estamos aqui no centro da descrição do fazer do artista em Le mythe de Sisyphe. A partir desta citação, que consideramos de fundamental importância, desdobram-se os atributos principais do Artista e que acompanharão este tipo camusiano por excelência, até as últimas páginas de L'homme révolté. A dimensão ativa ou positiva do éthos do homem absurdo deve partir daquilo que aponta o autor em relação ao Criador. A radicalidade da figura mais absurda se exibe também na sua lucidez sem descanso. O Artista-Criador não tem esperanças sobre sua infinitude nem sobre a infinitude de sua obra. Ele cria consciente do nada, ou melhor, não obstante o nada. A imagem do esculpir em argila é muito eloqüente: apesar da plasticidade da matéria, ou talvez por causa dela, sua fragilidade se exibe a cada momento. O esforço do Criador se deposita num suporte finito e frágil. Sustentar a consciência da Contingência e da Finitude parece ser tarefa própria do homem absurdo desde a sua descrição. Aqui Camus soma à consciência sempre alerta a obstinação do ofício. É importante perceber que, embora sua condição seja de impossibilidade de superar o seu registro, o autor não aponta jamais para uma atitude de resignação. A posição do Artista é complexa: não se trata de aceitação das categorias de sua existência mas também não é a simples reprodução quantitativa em vista do seu esgotamento. Camus não propõe, na figura do Criador, um consumo da facticidade a partir da constatação de seu vazio. Cabe à figura mais absurda radicalizar o choque mas também firmar posição a partir do reconhecimento de sua iden214 Silva, G. F. Cadernos de Ética e Filosofia Política 14, 1/2009, p. 207-224. 12 CAMUS, Le Mythe de Sisyphe, pp. 189-190. tidade profunda como um ente passionné. Desse modo, a postura que se prende radicalmente às raízes do problema do Absurdo não pode ser simplesmente a de repetição vazia ou esgotamento, o que equivale a uma aceitação de sua condição. Cabe ao Artista encarnar um duplo ofício, a saber, de aceitar o Absurdo, já que não se pode furtar dele sob pena de contradizer a si próprio e à sua Passion, mas deve também exercitar a negação. Tal duplicidade presente no éthos do Artista-Criador é tão essencial que será um dos pontos principais da análise do Artista em L'homme révolté. * * * Do mesmo modo que o suicídio em Le mythe de Sisyphe foi refutado como solução derivada da constatação do Absurdo por incorrer numa contradição com a Passion, toda a refutação das diversas instâncias das tentativas humanas de entabular um éthos Revoltado que não se mantenham fieis à negação do Absurdo e à "affirmation passionnée qui court dans le mouvement de révolte"13 são contraditórias e falsas. Mas isso não é o que acontece na definição camusiana do compromisso e das exigências da Arte. L'art aussi est ce mouvement qui exalte et nie en même temps. 'Aucun artiste ne tolère le réel', dit Nietzsche. Il est vrai; mais aucun artiste ne peut se passer du réel. La création est exigence d'unité et refus du monde. Mais elle refuse le monde à cause de ce qui lui manque et au nom de ce que, parfois, il est. La révolte se laisse observer ici, hors de l'histoire, à l'état pur, dans sa complication primitive. L'art devrait donc nous donner une dernière perspective sur le contenu de la révolte14. Se desde a caracterização da figura do Artista em Le mythe de Sisyphe o seu ofício, a arte, é considerado em estreita relação com as exigências Corrigir a existência: a ética como estética em Albert Camus 215 13 CAMUS, L'homme révolté, p. 429. 14 CAMUS, L'homme révolté, p. 657. do homem, aqui a arte ganha uma precedência que não tem comparação com nenhuma outra atividade humana. De início, Camus confere a ela o mesmo movimento que aquele que conceituara a Revolta, a saber, o de afirmar e negar simultaneamente, o que perfaz o equilíbrio e a medida própria da Revolta legítima que não pode ceder aos extremos. Se o Criador-Artista não tolera o real por desejar moldar o ordenamento da matéria desde seu primeiro ato, ele é plenamente consciente de não poder prescindir dele. Só a partir do real, e apesar dele, é que pode haver atividade criadora. Não há criação ex nihilo. Ainda nessa primeira – e praticamente conclusiva – aproximação do conceito de Arte em L'homme révolté, reaparece a qualidade por excelência da atividade do Artista já presente em germe em Le mythe de Sisyphe: ele é, em sua essência, um corretor. Mas se, sob esse ponto de vista, o Artista tem um certo aspecto subversivo, ele não é caótico, não deseja a desmedida e a ruptura da ordem. Totalmente ao contrário, ele elege a aspiração humana por ordenamento, por uma experiência do mundo à medida humana como valor supremo. A Arte é recusa do mundo exatamente por ser exigência de unidade. É um desejo profundo de humanidade que Camus encontra no ofício do Artista. Já neste momento inicial a relação da Revolta com a Arte desvela-se em toda sua profundidade e força. Não é por acaso que na Arte a Passion essencial da Revolta exibe-se em seu estado puro. Estão presentes não só o ponto de partida – a constatação de que a experiência do mundo não é conforme à sua Passion e por isso trata-se de partir de uma consciência sempre renovada de tal condição –, mas também e sobretudo os objetivos. Não nos interessa no âmbito desse trabalho esgotar todas as possibilidades de uma estética camusiana em todas as frentes. Contudo, o papel preponderante e o estatuto da Arte em relação estreita com a Revolta devem se colocar no primeiro plano em se tratando da resposta de Camus ao problema do Absurdo. Desse modo não é por acaso que, a partir de nossa perspectiva de que a proposta última de Camus é o de éthos estético ou, ainda, de uma estetização existencial, o autor aproxima Arte e Revolta. É altamente significativo que neste plano todas as definições e caracterizações da Arte são feitas a partir das exigência fundamentais da Revolta e vice-versa. É o que podemos ver no capítulo de 216 Silva, G. F. Cadernos de Ética e Filosofia Política 14, 1/2009, p. 207-224. L'homme révolté, "Révolte et Art", no qual Camus analisa detidamente não só algumas expressões das artes plásticas mas também as relações existentes com o romance. Em todos os casos, perpassa um dos conceitos fundamentais da visão camusiana sobre a Arte que é também para nós imprescindível: o conceito de Estilização (Stylisation): Quelle que soit la perspective choisie par une artiste, un principe demeure commun à tous les créateurs: la stylisation, qui suppose, en même temps, le réel et l'esprit qui donne au réel sa forme. Par elle, l'effort créateur refait le monde et toujours avec une légère gauchissure qui est la marque de l'art et de la protestation15. A Estilização, como ponto de tangência entre o real, o mundo e o espírito que deseja, é o princípio que move o Artista à criação corretiva em vista de conferir à sua matéria a forma desejada. É a partir desse princípio que toda descrição e caracterização do fazer artístico é dita em termos de correção, reparo e conformação: "L'artiste refait le monde à son compte"16. Conferir estilo é, portanto, exprimir a "volonté de correction"17 do Criador. Cabe notar que Camus prevê a possibilidade de excesso na Estilização. São tais excessos que constituem o formalismo e o realismo estrito. Quando se tenta prescindir do real em vista da forma que se quer imprimir ou, ainda, tentar atingir a forma pura, recai-se no formalismo estrito. Em contrapartida, a exaltação do real para além da atividade corretiva constitui o realismo puro. Contudo, assim como a Revolta só se faz na medida e na manutenção do limite entre os absolutos da afirmação e da negação da Passion humana, a verdadeira Arte também só se dá no méson entre a afirmação resignada e a negação violenta: "Le grand art, le style, le vrai visage de la révolte, sont entre ces deux hérésies"18. Assim, embora haja possibilidade de desmedida na Arte (e na Revolta), sua verdadeira expressão se encontra na medida. Corrigir a existência: a ética como estética em Albert Camus 217 15 CAMUS, L'homme révolté, p. 674. 16 CAMUS, L'homme révolté, p. 659. 17 CAMUS, L'homme révolté, p. 675. 18 CAMUS, L'homme révolté, p. 675. Se o refinamento do pensamento de Camus em relação ao Artista e à arte orbita ao redor da atividade contínua de re-trabalho em vista de uma correção do mundo, o desenvolvimento do éthos mais apropriado ao homem que mantém sua lucidez no seio do Absurdo não faz um caminho diferente. A dimensão criadora da exigência humana, que posteriormente Camus subsume à noção de Revolta, perpassa todo o plano conceitual de Camus. O que pretendemos mostrar é que uma comparação ou mesmo uma conexão íntima entre a postura derivada do Absurdo e o fazer do Artista-Criador não é fortuita ou mesmo meramente metafórica, mas abordar a existência Absurda a partir do paradigma e do programa estético do Estilo é a proposta camusiana por excelência. Sua solução ética se desenvolve no interior de um ideário estético. Em uma entrada de seus Carnets, à época da publicação de L'étranger e de Le mythe de Sisyphe: "Développement de l'absurde: 1) si le souci fondamental est le besoin d'unité; 2) si le monde (ou Dieu) n'y peuvent satisfaire. C'est à L'homme de se fabriquer une unité, soit en se détournant du monde, soit à l'intérieur du monde. Ainsi se trouvent restituées une morale et une ascèse, qui restent à preciser"19. Segundo o próprio esquema esboçado pelo autor, a existência (Absurda) parte da preocupação, do interesse e do cuidado fundamental como necessidade de unidade que se choca com a impossibilidade de satisfação. A resposta humana é exatamente uma unidade fabricada, artificial. Se a imagem utilizada na descrição do Absurdo quando da análise da Paixão era o divórcio, cabe ao homem agir em vista de, se não promover, ao menos caminhar para uma reconciliação. Claro está que ao longo do percurso da obra, Camus veda ao homem a tentativa de fabricação de todas as reconciliações absolutas. As investidas para engendrar realmente e de maneira definitiva a unidade são contraditó218 Silva, G. F. Cadernos de Ética e Filosofia Política 14, 1/2009, p. 207-224. 19 CAMUS, Carnets II. rias ou para com as exigências humanas ou se chocam com os muros da nossa condição. O que parece se configurar como única medida autêntica é a manutenção e a atualização simultânea da consciência do Absurdo e da Passion essentielle e o esforço ascético de diminuição progressiva e constante do fosso entre nossa Natureza e nossa Condição. Em outra nota em seus cadernos, agora em meados de 1947 no meio da confecção de L'homme révolté, Camus reordena seu plano de obra e acrescenta três outros momentos: Ire série: Absurde: L'Étranger – Le Mythe de Sisyphe – Caligula et Le Malentendu. 2e – Révolte: La Peste (et annexes) – L'homme révolté – Kaliayev. 3e – Le Jugement – Le premier homme. 4e – L'amour déchiré: Le Bucher – De l'Amour – Le Séduisant. 5e – Création corrigée ou Le Système – grand roman + grande méditation + pièce injouable.20 Em entradas que precedem e sucedem a esta, a expressão "création corrigée" torna-se frequente. Se em 1942 Camus já tinha em mente que o passo final da expressão do éthos do homem absurdo deveria ser no sentido de uma remodelação da experiência existencial, cinco anos depois este movimento de corrigir a ordem do real já se tornaria um ciclo. Note-se que uma espécie de ciclo ou fase ao redor da noção de amor Amor também se sucede à Revolta, como bem nota A. Corbic21. Podemos dizer que a Passion fundamental vai, ao longo do pensamento de Camus, objetivando-se cada vez mais, assimilando a alteridade pelo Amor e reconstituindo, dentro de seus limites, a existência com sua pulsão corretiva. Agir em vista de corrigir não a realidade como tal, muito embora, como nos alerta o autor, toda ação do Artista é um rivalizar com Deus. Mas a questão principal não é a de absolutamente promover a unidade absoluta (empreitada já criticada nas revoluções históricas). Corrigir a existência: a ética como estética em Albert Camus 219 20 CAMUS, Carnets II, p. 201. 21 Cf. CORBIC, Camus, l'absurde, la revolte, l'amour. Devemos ter claro que a exigência da Revolta, que deve se manifestar pela atividade recriadora da experiência existencial, não pretende fabricar um simulacro que alienaria o homem do real. Nada mais distante dos objetivos de Camus. Se o Absurdo é o ponto de partida do qual não se pode furtar de maneira absoluta, escamoteá-lo é atitude equivalente a todas as outras contradições que partem do esquecimento das origens do problema. Todavia, se não pode se afastar do Absurdo, o Revoltado não pode se reduzir a ele, tal como o Artista não pode identificar-se com o real sem imprimir nele sua marca ou, antes, tentar corrigi-lo a seu modo: "L'homme peut maîtriser en lui tout ce qui doit l'être. Il doit réparer dans la création tout ce qui peut l'être"22. Assim, as descrições e explicitações da Revolta se dão a partir do mesmo princípio de Estilização, ou seja, de recriação corretiva de sua experiência existencial. O que move o Revoltado é então "la source créatrice de la révolte"23. A ação do Revoltado é agora descrita em termos de uma ascese, de um esforço criativo cujo produto, se assim se pode dizer, é a aproximação corretiva mesma de sua existência à sua demanda. A Revolta, como princípio por excelência da ação humana, põe em marcha este trabalho de adequação: "tout effort humain obéit, finalement, à ce désir déraisonnable et prétend donner à la vie la forma qu'elle n'a pas"24. A grande conclusão só pode se dar nestes termos: "le monde absurde ne reçoit qu'une justification esthétique"25. Como fica claro, a correção operada pela Revolta é aquela mesma engendrada pelo Artista. Aquele cuidado de si que está na origem de tudo é elevado ao estatuto de construção de si para além da metáfora e da analogia. Cumpre ao homem uma remodelagem de sua experiência existencial pela redistribuição ou re-valoração dos elementos intra-existenciais. O presente, como única partícula da temporalidade na qual pode se dar tal ação, passa a ser o tempo forte, para além de todas as expectativas de um futuro no qual as contradições se resolveriam, tal qual prometem as revoluções. As formas de aniquilação da vida – e con220 Silva, G. F. Cadernos de Ética e Filosofia Política 14, 1/2009, p. 207-224. 22 CAMUS, L'homme révolté, p. 706. 23 CAMUS, L'homme révolté, p. 653. 24 CAMUS, L'homme révolté, p. 666. 25 CAMUS, Carnets II, p. 65. seqüentemente da Passion de vivre – desaparecem completamente do horizonte de ação como falácia e contradição, pois "nous avons à vivre et faire vivre pour créer ce que nous sommes"26. O esgotamento estéril, que se faz acompanhar do esgotamento do outro e acaba por destruir a comunidade metafísica que há entre todos os existentes absurdos exibe-se apenas como infertilidade e repetição das estruturas próprias à nossa condição que já promovem tal esvaziamento de sentido. A Revolta deve ser élan de promoção da comunidade humana em toda sua profundidade contra um destino esmagador. Em suma, a Revolta é verdadeiro esforço de re-conformação de si que não pode se limitar à uma dinâmica de mera reprodução de si: "L'homme s'y donne enfin à lui-même la forme et la limite apaisante qu'il poursuit en vain dans sa conditio (...). Loin d'être morale ou purement formelle, cette corretion vise d'abord à l'unité et traduit par là un besoin métaphysique"27. O nível médio de ação, próprio ao homem, é então o do enfrentamento das estruturas de nossa condição. É possível, inclusive, retornar à figura de Sísifo, que reaparece aqui, ele também re-valorado. Se seu mito era a expressão mais adeqüada da Passion inútil que é obrigada ao confrontamento sem descanso, sua vigília e sua exigência por sentido que pode converter sua pena em sua tarefa própria é a condição de possibilidade de imaginarmos Sísifo feliz, como propõe finalmente Camus, o que faz do mito também a imagem do Revoltado que re-valora sua experiência. A estética da existência proposta como éthos pelo autor não busca o ultrapassamento completo mas a obstinada recusa de se reduzir à condição humana opaca a demanda por sentido e a afirmação dessa mesma demanda como valor supremo: "et déjà, en effet, la révolte, sans prétendre à tout résoudre peut au moins faire face"28. Portanto a proposta camusiana de um éthos que seja completamente conforme à nossa condição Absurda mas também em estrito acordo com as exigências da Revolta deve necessariamente partir de uma Passion de Estilização da experiência existencial. No conceito de Estilização estão presentes, como nos mostra Camus, não apenas o movimento de corriCorrigir a existência: a ética como estética em Albert Camus 221 26 CAMUS, L'homme révolté, p. 653. 27 CAMUS, L'homme révolté, p. 668. 28 CAMUS, L'homme révolté, p. 708. gir, ou seja, de aproximar assintoticamente a experiência humana de seus desejos, por minimizar o que nela é agressivo, mas também a completa consciência do limite próprio da "matéria" com a qual se trabalha, o que de saída já limita toda e qualquer pretensão de forjar uma solução definitiva e absoluta para o Absurdo da existência; a consciência do esculpir em argila, com sua plasticidade, limite, fragilidade e fitinude Com isso, o trabalho resultante deste quadro só pode ser uma ascese constante e uma lucidez sem fim: "Mais, plus profondément encore, il s'allie à la beauté du monde ou des êtres contre les puissances de la mort et de l'oubli. C'est ainsi que sa révolte est créatrice"29. É portanto uma legítima estética da existência que propõe Camus: a existência deve ser trabalhada em vista de minimizar o fosso entre a condição e a Passion humana. Tudo o que serve ao espírito de Revolta contra a finitude, a falta de unidade e a irracionalidade última do mundo é parte do único éthos aceitável para Camus. O que subjaz aqui é um certo princípio de reversibilidade, de uma comutação: se se pode reconhecer na Arte a Revolta em estado puro, o autêntico Criador-Artista é um autêntico Revoltado. Assim, aquele que encarna o éthos da Revolta e o imprime em sua existência (que transborda para a existência dos outros) empreende o mesmo ofício de Estilizar a experiência. Ser Revoltado é fazer Arte sobre a existência. A Revolta é uma legítima ascese com vista a estetizar: "Nous faisons alors de l'art sur ces existences (...). Chacun, dans ce sens, cherche à faire de sa vie une oeuvre d'art"30. O esforço de figuras imagéticas na obra de Camus, como Sísifo, Rieux e Tarrou31, é imagem do ofício que cabe a todo homem que, consciente do Absurdo da condição de existir sem Deus, sem unidade, sem manutenção da vida e sem felicidade plena, deve tornar-se Criador de uma experiência corrigida e de uma felicidade possível. É este não só o éthos adeqüado como aquilo que nos faz verdadeiramente humanos, uma autopoiésis, uma repetição qualitativa que afasta a experiência contraditória de existir pela criação. Parece ser só assim possível imaginar o homem feliz: 222 Silva, G. F. Cadernos de Ética e Filosofia Política 14, 1/2009, p. 207-224. 29 CAMUS, L'homme révolté, p. 671. 30 CAMUS, L'homme révolté, p. 664. 31 Rieux e Tarrou são os dois principais personagens do romance A peste. Les contradictions ne se résolvent pas dans une synthèse ou un compromis purement logique, mais dans une création. Quand le travail de l'ouvrier comme celui de l'artiste aura une chance de fécondité, et alors seulement, le nihilisme sera définitivement dépassé, la renaissance aura un sens. Chacun à notre place, par nos oeuvres et par nos actes, nous devons servir cette fécondité et cette renaissance. Il n'est pas sûr que nous réussissions, mais après tout c'est la seule tâche qui vaille qu'on entreprenne et qu'on persévère32. Correcting the Existence: Ethics as Aesthetics in Albert Camus Abstract: The development performed by the thought of Albert Camus (1913-1960) creates a profound unity between ethics and aesthetics. Starting from an explicitly ethical concern, the author comes to develop a philosophical anthropology, meaning as such a discourse about the man who has as core a concept that forwards it to what we might call an aesthetic dimension and then from that point, he can offer a solution to that ethical problem. Thus, we intend in this paper to explain the path which we referred to its three phases: (a) existence as an ethical problem, (b) the Camusian discourse about the man who has as its core the notion of Passion and, finally, (c) the development of a new éthos, based on the concept of Passion as a necessary response to an existential problem taken as a re-creation or permanent fixing, like the Artist's craft. Key-words: Camus – Ethics – Aesthetics – Existence. Referências bibliográficas CAMUS, Albert. Le mythe de Sisyphe. In: Essais. Paris: Gallimard, 1965 (Col. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade). ______. L'homme Revolté. In: Essais. Paris: Gallimard, 1965 (Col. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade). Corrigir a existência: a ética como estética em Albert Camus 223 32 CAMUS, Défence de 'L'homme révolté'. In: Essais, p. 1715. ______. Carnets II (janvier 1942 – mars 1951). Paris: Gallimard, 1962. ______. La peste. In: Theatre, récits, nouvelles, v. I. Paris: Gallimard, 1965 (Col. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade). CORBIC, Arnaud. Camus, l'absurde, la revolte, l'amour. Paris: L'Atelier & Ouvrières, 2003. PASCAL, G. Albert Camus ou le philosophe malgré lui. In: MATTÉI, J.-F. ; AMIOT, A.-M. Albert Camus et la philosphie. Paris: PUF, 1997. 224 Silva, G. F. Cadernos de Ética e Filosofia Política 14, 1/2009, p. 207-224. | {
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Causal superseding Jonathan F. Kominsky a,⇑, Jonathan Phillips a, Tobias Gerstenberg b, David Lagnado c, Joshua Knobe a a Yale University, United States b Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States c University College London, United Kingdom a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 23 July 2014 Revised 21 January 2015 Accepted 27 January 2015 Keywords: Causal reasoning Counterfactuals Morality Superseding a b s t r a c t When agents violate norms, they are typically judged to be more of a cause of resulting outcomes. In this paper, we suggest that norm violations also affect the causality attributed to other agents, a phenomenon we refer to as ''causal superseding.'' We propose and test a counterfactual reasoning model of this phenomenon in four experiments. Experiments 1 and 2 provide an initial demonstration of the causal superseding effect and distinguish it from previously studied effects. Experiment 3 shows that this causal superseding effect is dependent on a particular event structure, following a prediction of our counterfactual model. Experiment 4 demonstrates that causal superseding can occur with violations of non-moral norms. We propose a model of the superseding effect based on the idea of counterfactual sufficiency. ! 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction In the 1870 case of Carter v. Towne, the court faced an intriguing causal question. The defendant sold gunpowder to a child. The child's mother and aunt hid the gunpowder, but in a location that they knew the child could find and access. The child found the gunpowder and was injured. The court judged that the defendant could not be considered to be the cause of the child's injuries, because of the negligence of the mother and aunt (Hart & Honoré, 1985, pp. 281–282). This case leaves us with an interesting puzzle about causal reasoning. The question before the court was not whether the mother and aunt caused the outcome; it was whether the defendant caused the outcome. Yet the court determined that the fact that the actions of the mother and aunt were negligent had some effect on the causal relationship between the defendant's actions and the outcome. This suggests a broader phenomenon of causal reasoning: the extent to which one agent is perceived to have caused an outcome may be affected not only by his or her own actions, but also by the normative status of other people's actions. We refer to this as 'causal superseding'. It is well-established that judgments of norm violations, such as moral norm violations, can affect causal judgments. An agent who acts in a way that is judged to be morally wrong is seen as more causal than an agent whose actions conform with moral norms (e.g., Alicke, 1992). Recent work has suggested that, rather than being about morality specifically, these effects are rooted in the normality of an agent's actions, i.e., how much they diverge from prescriptive or statistical norms (Halpern & Hitchcock, 2014; Hitchcock & Knobe, 2009; but see Alicke, Rose, & Bloom, 2011). However, most of the work to date has focused on how the normality of an agent's actions affects that agent's own causality, not anyone else's. The present experiments aim to demonstrate and http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2015.01.013 0010-0277/! 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. ⇑ Corresponding author at: Department of Psychology, Yale University, Box 208205, New Haven, CT 06520-8205, United States. Tel./fax: +1 (203) 432 6451. E-mail address: [email protected] (J.F. Kominsky). Cognition 137 (2015) 196–209 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Cognition journal homepage: www.elsevier .com/ locate/COGNIT explore the causal superseding effect suggested by the intriguing case of Carter v. Towne. 1.1. Describing causal superseding Before discussing how the phenomenon of causal superseding may provide helpful insight into causal reasoning more generally, it is worth considering how causal superseding is related to previous research. In general, there has been relatively little research suggesting that causal judgments about one agent are affected by aspects of some other independent agent. That the actions of one person can have an influence on causal judgments about another person has been demonstrated in the relatively under-discussed research on causal chains where multiple agents collectively contribute to the occurrence of some harm (Fincham & Roberts, 1985; Fincham & Shultz, 1981; Gerstenberg & Lagnado, 2012; Lagnado & Channon, 2008; McClure, Hilton, & Sutton, 2007; Spellman, 1997; Wells & Gavanski, 1989). Among other findings, these studies report a pattern whereby the first agent in the causal chain was judged to be less of a cause of the harm that eventually occurred when the second (more proximal) agent acted voluntarily, rather than involuntarily. The explanation offered for this effect was that the voluntariness of the proximal agent's action 'broke' the perceived causal chain between the first agent and the outcome. This effect differs from the superseding effect suggested by Carter v. Towne. In that case, it was not the voluntariness of the aunt and mother's actions, but the negligence of their actions that prevented the defendant from being a cause of the child's injuries. Another closely related line of work investigated the role of 'mutability' (the ease with which the cause can be imagined to have been different) and 'propensity' (the likelihood that the effect would occur if the cause was present) in causal judgments (McGill & Tenbrunsel, 2000). This study found that one causal factor is seen as weaker when another causal factor is more mutable, though only when the mutable cause is also very likely to bring about the outcome. Here, we specifically focus on the role of norm violations and consider their impact on causal judgments across a number of different causal structures. However, even focusing on norm violations, we also wish to acknowledge two alternative explanations for the phenomenon we investigate, one informed by intuition and the other based on existing and well-supported motivational theories. First, one might intuitively think that ''there is only so much causality to go around,'' and it is already known that when an agent does something that is morally wrong or otherwise in violation of some norm, that agent's causality is increased (Alicke, 1992; Hitchcock & Knobe, 2009). Then, if the norm-violation of one agent's action increases that agent's causality, it follows under this intuition that some other factor's causality will have to be reduced. Though this explanation might seem compelling at first, there is already empirical evidence that causal responsibility is not generally a zero-sum judgment (Kominsky, Phillips, Gerstenberg, Lagnado, & Knobe, 2014; Lagnado, Gerstenberg, & Zultan, 2013; Teigen & Brun, 2011). For example, when an outcome was brought about by a collection of causes that were each individually necessary for its coming about, then each cause was judged as fully responsible (Lagnado et al., 2013; Zultan, Gerstenberg, & Lagnado, 2012). Thus, while perhaps intuitively attractive, we do not believe this explanation can account for causal superseding. Second, it is already known that people's causal judgments can be impacted by motivational factors. For example, a series of studies have found that people's judgments are often distorted by ''blame validation'' (Alicke, 1992, 2000; Alicke, Buckingham, Zell, & Davis, 2008; Lagnado & Channon, 2008): A motivational bias to assign causality to people who are blameworthy, with only minimal regard for their actual causal status. Subsequent work has extended this account to include ''excuse validation'' (Turri & Blouw, 2014): The motivation not to assign causality to individuals whom we do not feel are blameworthy. For example, if a driver is speeding because of an accelerator malfunction and gets into a lethal accident, we might be disinclined to regard the driver as a cause of the accident because her actions are blameless. This basic idea could then be used to explain causal superseding. If one agent does something morally wrong and is therefore seen as the one who is to blame for the outcome, people could be motivated to exculpate all other agents from blame, and may accordingly reduce the extent to which they are seen as causing the outcome. The latter explanations draw on claims that have already received extensive support in the existing empirical literature, and we do not mean to call these empirical claims into question here. Instead, we simply provide experimental evidence for causal superseding that requires an importantly different kind of explanation. Thus, the present research goes beyond what has been demonstrated in previous work, but is not incompatible with it. 1.2. A counterfactual account of causal superseding We propose an account of the superseding effect based on counterfactual reasoning. According to this account, the effects of valence on causal judgments are mediated by counterfactual reasoning. This account follows two key claims: First, counterfactual reasoning affects causal judgment; second, moral valence affects counterfactual reasoning. We will explore each of these claims in turn. 1.2.1. Counterfactual reasoning and causal judgment There are many accounts of how counterfactual reasoning interacts with causal judgment (e.g., Gerstenberg, Goodman, Lagnado, & Tenenbaum, 2014; Lewis, 1973; Petrocelli, Percy, Sherman, & Tormala, 2011; but see Mandel, 2003). We focus here on an aspect of the relationship between counterfactuals and causation that has been referred to as sensitivity (or robustness) of causation (Hitchcock, 2012; Knobe & Szabó, 2013; Lombrozo, 2010; Woodward, 2006). Existing work on counterfactual theories of causation suggests that people regard an event as a cause of the outcome when it satisfies two counterfactual conditions, 'necessity' and 'sufficiency' (e.g., Pearl, 1999; Woodward, 2006). Take the causal relationship ''A caused B''. Roughly J.F. Kominsky et al. / Cognition 137 (2015) 196–209 197 speaking, this relationship would have the following necessity and sufficiency conditions: Necessity: If A had not occurred, B would not have occurred. Sufficiency: If A had occurred, then B would have occurred. Our focus here will be on the second of these conditions – sufficiency – and on the role it plays in ordinary causal cognition. Woodward (2006) defines a property he calls 'sensitivity' to describe the robustness of a causal relationship. A causal condition (necessity or sufficiency) is 'sensitive' if it would cease to hold if the background conditions were slightly different. By contrast, a causal condition is 'insensitive' if it would continue to hold even if the background conditions were substantially different. Woodward argues that when the sufficiency condition is highly sensitive, people will be reluctant to attribute causation. To give a concrete example, consider two sufficiency conditions: ''If a lit match had been put near gunpowder, the gunpowder would have exploded'' and ''If you had manufactured fireworks, the child would have been injured.'' The first statement is extremely insensitive, or robust. There are a large number of things that you can change about the state of the world, but the sufficiency statement will still hold true. That is not to say that there are no changes to the background conditions that would render the statement false, but they are relatively nonobvious or non-salient. In contrast, the second sufficiency statement is more sensitive, because there are a large number of immediately salient counterfactual possibilities that would render it false. For example, the child may not be able to purchase the fireworks, or use them with supervision, etc. This claim about the importance of sufficiency is the first piece of our account of causal superseding. In the case of Carter v. Towne, for example, the defendant's action was only sufficient to bring about the outcome because the mother and aunt happened to act negligently. If the mother and aunt had not acted negligently, then even if the defendant had performed exactly the same action, the outcome would not have come about. It is for this reason, we claim, that people are somewhat disinclined to regard the defendant's action as having caused the child's injuries. Certain facts about the child's guardians make the relationship between the defendant and the outcome sensitive. 1.2.2. Moral valence, norm violations, and counterfactuals We now need to add a second piece to the puzzle. We noted above that a relationship could be considered 'sensitive' to the extent that it would not have held if the background circumstances had been slightly different. Yet, there will always be some way that the background circumstances could have been different such that sufficiency would no longer hold. For example, suppose that someone said, ''The gunpowder only ignited because it was not covered in water. If it were covered in water, the match would not have been sufficient.'' Though this counterfactual claim is surely correct, there seems to be some important sense in which it is irrelevant – not even worth thinking about. If we want to understand the notion of sensitivity, we need to say more about this issue, providing a sense of how to determine whether a given counterfactual is relevant or not. Fortunately, there is a substantial body of research on counterfactual reasoning (for reviews, see Byrne, 2005; Kahneman & Miller, 1986). This research has used a variety of techniques to explore the factors that make people regard counterfactuals as more or less relevant, and we can turn to this literature for insights into the present question. Although research on counterfactual reasoning has uncovered a variety of notable effects, we focus here on two principal findings. First, studies show that likelihood judgments play a role in people's intuitions about which counterfactuals are relevant and which are not (Byrne, 2005; Kahneman & Tversky, 1982). When something unlikely occurs in the actual world, people tend to regard as relevant the counterfactuals that involve something more likely occurring. Second, studies show that moral judgments can influence people's intuitions about the relevance of counterfactuals (McCloy & Byrne, 2000; N'gbala and Branscombe, 1995). When an agent performs a morally bad action, people tend to regard as relevant the counterfactual in which this agent did not perform the morally bad action. To unify these two findings, we can say that people's intuitions about the relevance of counterfactuals are affected by violations of norms (Hitchcock & Knobe, 2009). In some cases, an event is seen as unlikely (and hence violates a statistical norm); in other cases, an event is seen as morally wrong (and hence violates a prescriptive norm). Even though these two types of norm violation are in many ways quite different, they appear to have precisely the same effect on counterfactual reasoning. Thus we can formulate a more general principle, which should apply across both types of norm violation. The general principle is: when an event in the actual world is perceived as violating a norm, people tend to regard as relevant the counterfactuals in which the norm-violating event is replaced by a norm-conforming event. This claim about the impact of norm violations on counterfactual thinking has played a role in some existing theoretical work in causal cognition (Halpern & Hitchcock, 2014; Hitchcock & Knobe, 2009; Knobe & Szabó, 2013), and it forms the second piece of our explanation of causal superseding. 1.2.3. The counterfactual account of causal superseding Putting these ideas together, we end up with a counterfactual account of causal superseding, which we refer to as the counterfactual sufficiency account. Take the causal claim, ''The defendant selling gunpowder to the child caused the child's injuries.'' The sufficiency condition for this claim reads as follows: ''If the defendant had sold gunpowder to the child, then the child would have been injured.'' Now suppose that sufficiency holds only because the mother and aunt negligently hid the gunpowder where the child could find it. Since this act violates a norm, people 198 J.F. Kominsky et al. / Cognition 137 (2015) 196–209 will tend to regard as highly relevant the possibility in which the gunpowder is put somewhere that the child could not find it. In that possibility, the defendant's action is not sufficient, so the negligent actions of the mother and aunt make the defendant's sufficiency more sensitive. Thus, the defendant is regarded as less of a cause of the outcome, or in other words, is superseded. By contrast, suppose that the mother and aunt's actions did not violate a norm, but nonetheless the defendant was sufficient only because of their (normative) actions. Then it might still be true that sufficiency would not have held if the mother and aunt had acted differently, but the possibility in which they acted differently would be regarded as less relevant and the sufficiency of the defendant's action would not be seen as especially sensitive to background circumstances. Instead, it might be felt that the defendant's action would have been sufficient for bringing about the negative outcome in all of the possibilities that are genuinely worth considering. Putting this point more abstractly: Suppose that there are two agents, A and B, such that the outcome would not have arisen if either of these agents had acted differently. When agent A violates a norm, it makes possibilities in which they do not violate that norm very relevant. If the sufficiency condition for agent B is not met in those possibilities, the sufficiency of the causal link between agent B and the outcome becomes sensitive. Because the sufficiency of that causal link is sensitive, agent B is seen as less of a cause of the outcome. This model is represented in Fig. 1. 1.3. Predictions of the counterfactual sufficiency model Our account of causal superseding makes several specific, novel, and testable predictions. The first novel prediction is that causal superseding should occur even for outcomes that are in no way bad. This goes beyond, but does not contradict, motivational accounts (e.g., Turri & Blouw, 2014). If you are highly motivated to justify the conclusion that an agent is not blameworthy, you can do so by making a causal judgment of the form, ''This agent did not cause the bad outcome.'' However, that same logic does not apply when the outcome is not bad. In such a case, you might still be motivated to justify the conclusion that the agent is not blameworthy, but you could not justify that conclusion by making a causal judgment of the form, 'This agent did not cause the neutral (or good) outcome.' Such a judgment would not directly help to show that the agent was not blameworthy. Existing work on motivational biases in causal cognition has used precisely this logic to show that certain effects are indeed the product of motivation (Alicke et al., 2011). In contrast, the counterfactual account does not require that the outcome is bad in order for superseding to occur. From the standpoint of the counterfactual account, the relevant component is the norm violation of the superseding actor (A in Fig. 1), not the valence of the outcome. The second prediction is not about when superseding should occur, but rather when it should not. The counterfactual account does not treat the assignment of causality to different actors as a zero-sum problem. Our account predicts that superseding should occur only when the sufficiency of the superseded actor is threatened. If that is not the case, the wrongness of one agent's action should not decrease the other's judged causality. Consider a situation in which an outcome happens if either A or B (or both) act. Here, no matter whether or not A acts, B's action is sufficient for bringing about the outcome. In this situation the sensitivity of B's sufficiency for the outcome is independent of A, and therefore we predict that varying the normality of A's action will not affect causal judgments of B's action. Finally, the third prediction is that superseding should arise for any norm violation, not just for violations of moral norms. The key role that moral valence plays in the counterfactual account is that of making certain counterfactual possibilities more relevant, and those possibilities make the sufficiency of the superseded actor sensitive. Previous work has suggested that violations of other norms, such as purely statistical norms, should make counterfactual Fig. 1. The counterfactual model of causal superseding. A's norm violation (Real world) leads people to consider the counterfactual possibility in which that norm violation did not occur (Counterfactual world). The relationship between B's action and the outcome is sensitive to the extent that the outcome would not have occurred in the counterfactual world in which A's norm violation wouldn't have taken place. The more sensitive the sufficiency relationship between B's action and the outcome, the less causally responsible is B's action for the outcome: A's action supersedes B's causality. J.F. Kominsky et al. / Cognition 137 (2015) 196–209 199 possibilities more relevant in the same way (Kahneman & Tversky, 1982), so violations of these norms should yield similar superseding effects. We test these three predictions in four experiments. Experiments 1 and 2 investigate the role of outcome valence in causal superseding. Experiment 3 tests the second prediction, concerning cases in which superseding should not occur because each actor is independently sufficient. Finally, Experiment 4 investigates whether superseding arises not only for violations of moral norms but also for violations of statistical norms. 2. Experiment 1 In the first experiment, we aimed to demonstrate the basic phenomenon of causal superseding. We constructed a scenario with two agents whose actions combine in a conjunctive way to bring about a neutral outcome. One agent, whom we will call the 'fixed' agent, always acted in the same way. Her actions were always morally neutral. The second agent, whom we will call the 'varied' agent, did something either morally neutral or morally wrong, depending on condition. In order to validate our manipulation and verify the neutrality of the outcome, we asked participants to rate how good or bad each agent's actions were after making causal ratings, as well as how good or bad the outcome was. The counterfactual sufficiency account predicts that the fixed agent should be seen as less causal when the varied agent's actions are morally wrong, and that this effect should arise regardless of the valence of the outcome. 2.1. Methods 2.1.1. Participants 60 participants were recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk and paid $0.20 each for completing the survey. 2.1.2. Materials and procedure Two vignettes were created featuring a varied agent (Bill) and a fixed agent (Sue). The fixed agent's actions remained constant in both vignettes. The moral wrongness of the varied agent's actions were manipulated between conditions (see Table 1). In all conditions, participants were asked to rate on a 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree) scale how much they agreed with each of the following two sentences: ''Sue caused them to possess the paired set of bookends'' (the fixed agent) and ''Bill caused them to possess the paired set of bookends'' (the varied agent). Questions were presented in random order. After the causal ratings, participants were asked to rate the valence of each agent's actions, as well as the outcome, on a separate page on which they could not see their previous ratings or the vignette. Participants were asked: ''How good or bad is it that Sue bought the left-side Bartlett bookend from the antique store'', ''How good or bad is it that Bill [bought/stole] the right-side Bartlett bookend from his friend'' (depending on condition), and ''How good or bad is it that Bill and Sue have a paired set of Bartlett bookends''. Participants made their ratings on a 1–7 scale, with ''very bad'' (1) and ''very good'' (7) at the endpoints and ''neither good nor bad'' (4) at the midpoint. The three questions were presented in randomized order on the same page. 2.2. Results and discussion We evaluated the effect of the moral valence manipulation on causal ratings for each agent independently, as well as valence ratings for each agent and the outcome. 2.2.1. Causal ratings The agreement ratings for causal questions can be found in Fig. 2. Replicating many previous studies, agreement ratings for the varied agent (Bill) were higher when he violated a norm (M = 5.97, SD = 1.564) than when he Table 1 Vignettes for Experiment 1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Fixed Agent Varied Agent A gr ee m en t R at in g Varied Agent Neutral Action Immoral Action Fig. 2. Mean agreement ratings with the causal statements about the fixed agent and the varied agent as a function of the morality of the varied agent's action in Experiment 1. Error bars depict SE mean. 200 J.F. Kominsky et al. / Cognition 137 (2015) 196–209 did not (M = 4.80, SD = 1.495), t(58) = 2.953, p = .005, d = .764. For the fixed agent (Sue), we found a clear causal superseding effect. Agreement ratings for the fixed agent were lower when the varied agent violated a norm (M = 3.37, SD = 2.059) than when he did not (M = 4.40, SD = 1.522), t(58) = !2.210, p = .031, d = .568. 2.2.2. Valence ratings One participant failed to give a valence rating for the fixed agent's actions, but their data were included in all other analyses. As expected, the varied agent's actions were seen as significantly worse when he stole the bookend (M = 1.30, SD = .702) than when he bought it (M = 5.53, SD = 1.137), t(58) = !17.355, p < .001, d = 4.477. This validates our manipulation as a violation of a moral norm. As expected, the fixed agent's actions were rated equally good whether the varied agent violated a norm (M = 5.10, SD = 1.205) or not (M = 5.23, SD = 1.278), t(57) = !.401, p = .69. Unexpectedly, the outcome was seen as significantly worse when the varied agent violated a norm (M = 2.93, SD = 1.388) than not (M = 5.70, SD = 1.022), t(58) = !8.791, p < .001, d = 2.272. This suggests that participants were re-interpreting the outcome, which did not change between conditions, based on the moral valence of the varied agent's actions. To sum up, we demonstrated the predicted causal superseding effect. When the varied agent performed a morally bad action, the fixed agent was seen as less causal. However, because the outcome was seen as bad in the conditions where the varied agent performed a morally bad action, we did not succeed in testing the hypothesis that the causal superseding effect would arise even in cases where the outcome was not itself seen as bad. 3. Experiment 2 In Experiment 2, we sought to address an alternative explanation for the causal superseding effect observed in Experiment 1. While we intended the outcome in Experiment 1 to be neutral in all conditions, participants did not see it that way. Accordingly, a better demonstration would be to explicitly manipulate the outcome and show that the superseding effect does not interact with the outcome manipulation. In Experiment 2, we thus manipulated both the valence of the outcome and the valence of one of the agent's actions. 3.1. Methods 3.1.1. Participants 120 participants were recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk and paid $0.20 each for completing the survey. 3.1.2. Materials and procedure We created four vignettes, which were lightly modified versions of the vignettes used by Reuter, Kirfel, van Riel, and Barlassina (2014). The vignettes involved two people, Billy and Suzy, who work at the same company and have their offices in separate rooms. The key event involved Billy and Suzy simultaneously accessing a central computer at 9 am. We manipulated two elements of this story. First, Billy (the varied agent) was either prohibited from accessing the computer at 9 am, or allowed to. Second, two people simultaneously accessing the computer either had an unexpected positive effect (deleting e-mails containing dangerous viruses) or unexpected negative effect (deleting e-mails containing important customer information). This led to a 2 (varied agent valence) " 2 (outcome valence) design, which was administered between-participants. The vignettes can be found in Table 2. At the end of the vignette, participants were asked analogous questions to those used in Experiment 1. In all conditions, participants were asked to rate on a 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree) scale how much they agreed with each of the following two sentences: ''Suzy caused [outcome]'' (the fixed agent) and ''Billy caused [outcome]'' (the varied agent), with the outcome adjusted depending on the outcome valence condition. These questions were presented in random order. After answering these causal agreement questions, participants were asked to rate the valence of each agent's action and the valence of the outcome on a separate page, using the same scales as Experiment 1. These three questions were again presented in random order. 3.2. Results 3.2.1. Causal ratings The agreement ratings for the causal questions can be found in Fig. 3. We conducted two separate 2 (varied agent valence) " 2 (outcome valence) ANOVAs for agreement ratings of the varied and fixed agent. For the varied agent, there was a strong effect of varied agent valence, with higher agreement ratings when the varied agent violated a norm (M = 5.98, SD = 1.477) than not (M = 3.97, SD = 2.077), F(1,116) = 37.618, p < .001, gp2 = .096. There was no effect of outcome valence, F(1,116) = .270, p = .6, and no interaction, F(1,116) = 1.826, p = .179. For the fixed agent, we once again found the causal superseding effect. Agreement ratings for the fixed agent were lower when the varied agent violated a norm (M = 2.13, SD = 1.851) than not (M = 4.12, SD = 2.044), F(1,116) = 34.064, p < .001, gp2 = .227. There was also a main effect of outcome valence, with slightly lower ratings when the outcome was negative (M = 2.66, SD = 2.157) than positive (M = 3.55, SD = 2.129), F(1,116) = 7.478, p = .007, gp2 = .061. Crucially, the interaction between outcome valence and varied agent valence was not significant, though it was marginal, F(1,116) = 3.158, p = .078. To conclusively determine whether outcome valence impacted the causal superseding effect, we turned to participant judgments of the valence of the outcome. 3.2.2. Valence ratings While the critical valence rating is the outcome valence, we also analyzed the valence ratings for each agent's actions. For the varied agent, there were strong main effects of the varied agent's action valence (p < .001, J.F. Kominsky et al. / Cognition 137 (2015) 196–209 201 gp2 = .186) and outcome valence (p < .001, gp2 = .192) and a marginal interaction (p = .052). In short, in the norm violation condition, the varied agent's actions were seen as much more wrong, and the same was true when the outcome was bad. The marginal interaction suggests that the effect of our manipulation of the varied agent's action might be stronger when the outcome is bad. For ratings of the fixed agent's action valence, there were again main effects of the varied agent's action valence (p < .007, gp2 = .061) and outcome valence (p < .001, gp2 = .106) but no interaction (p = .798). The fixed agent's actions were seen as worse when the outcome was bad and when the varied agent's actions were neutral. The ratings of outcome valence are particularly relevant. In contrast to Experiment 1, there was no effect of the varied agent's action on outcome valence, F(1,116) = .093, p = .761. However, there was a very strong effect of our outcome valence manipulation, with very high ratings for the good outcome (M = 6.26, SD = 1.085) and very low ratings for the bad outcome (M = 1.77, SD = 1.260), F(1,116) = 425.203, p < .001, gp2 = .786. To further verify that judged outcome valence did not account for the causal superseding effect, we re-analyzed causal agreement ratings for the fixed agent in a regression using the varied agent's action as one factor and participants' ratings of outcome valence as another, as well as the interaction term for the two factors. The overall regression was significant, adjusted R2 = .250, F(3,116) = 14.25, p < .001. Outcome valence ratings were a significant predictor, b = .222, p = .006, as was the varied agent's action, b = !.466, p < .001, but importantly the interaction term was not significant, b = .090, p = .258. Thus, while judged outcome valence did have an independent effect on judgments of the fixed agent's causality, it did not alter the causal superseding effect. As a final verification that the causal superseding effect exists outside the bounds of motivational accounts, we examined ratings of the fixed agent's causality, but only those in the ''good'' outcome condition. As the ratings of outcome valence showed, participants regarded this outcome as strongly positive. An excuse validation account would not predict a superseding effect in this case, but there very much is. Even when the outcome is good, participants gave lower agreement ratings for the fixed agent's causality when the varied agent violated a norm (M = 2.90, SD = 2.181) than not (M = 4.27, SD = 1.760), t(59) = !2.681, p = .009, d = .691. 3.3. Discussion Experiment 2 replicated the causal superseding effect and demonstrated that it is not dependent on the valence of the outcome. While outcome valence did have some impact on the causal ratings of the fixed agent, it did not impact the causal superseding effect, that is, the effect of the moral status of the varied agent's actions on the fixed agent's causality. This provides strong evidence that causal superseding can be distinguished from excuse validation (Turri & Blouw, 2014), and therefore goes beyond the predictions of a motivational account. It is particularly striking that the superseding effect emerges even in cases where participants regarded the outcome as positive. Intuitively, one might expect that participants would want to give more credit for a positive outcome to an agent that acted in accordance with a norm, but in fact we find the opposite. Table 2 Vignettes for Experiment 2 (closely based on vignettes used by Reuter et al., 2014). Fixed Agent Varied Agent 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Good Outcome Bad Outcome Good Outcome Bad Outcome C au sa l R at in g Varied Agent Neutral Action Immoral Action Fig. 3. Mean agreement ratings with the causal statements about the fixed agent (left panel) and the varied agent (right panel) as a function of outcome valence and the morality of the varied agent's action in Experiment 2. Error bars depict SE mean. 202 J.F. Kominsky et al. / Cognition 137 (2015) 196–209 4. Experiment 3 As we have distinguished the causal superseding effect from similar motivational effects, we now turn to two predictions that are wholly unique to the counterfactual account. First, according to the counterfactual account, A will supersede B only if A's action makes B's sufficiency more sensitive. However, in situations where B's sufficiency is robust no matter what A does there should be no causal superseding. Consider a concrete example: Billy and Suzy work together in the same office. Suzy is supposed to come in at 9 AM, whereas Billy has specifically been told not to come in at that time. The office has a motion detector, and the motion detector will be set off if it detects two or more people entering the room at the same time. Both Suzy and Billy arrive at 9 am the next day, and the motion detector goes off. This case has the same basic structure as the ones examined in Experiments 1 and 2, and the counterfactual account predicts that it should produce the same causal superseding effect. Since Billy's action violates a norm, the possibility in which he doesn't act will be seen as highly relevant. Then, since Suzy's act would not be sufficient for the outcome in that possibility, she will be seen as less causal. But now consider a slightly modified version of the case. What if the motion detector will be set off if it detects one or more people entering the room instead? In this case, either Suzy or Billy would have been sufficient to bring about the outcome. Since Billy's action is bad, the possibility in which he doesn't act is seen as highly relevant. However, even in that possibility, Suzy's action would still have been sufficient for bringing about the outcome. Thus, we predict that Suzy's causality should be unaffected by the moral valence of Billy's actions when each individual action is sufficient for bringing about the outcome. The difference between these two scenarios comes down to a difference in their causal structures. In the first case, and in all of the vignettes used in Experiments 1 and 2, the scenario is conjunctive, as the outcome requires the actions of both one agent AND the other. In the second case, where we do not predict causal superseding, the scenario is disjunctive, that is, the outcome can be generated by one agent OR the other. More abstractly, if the varied agent's actions are morally wrong, the possibility that the varied agent does not act becomes more relevant. However, if in that possibility the fixed agent can still bring about the outcome on her own, then her sufficiency is unaffected, and according to the counterfactual sufficiency account, she should not be superseded. We tested this prediction directly in Experiment 3 by manipulating the event structure such that the scenario was either disjunctive or conjunctive. We predicted a causal superseding effect in the conjunctive scenario but not in the disjunctive scenario. 4.1. Methods 4.1.1. Participants 240 participants were recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk and paid $0.20 each for completing a brief survey. 4.1.2. Materials and procedure We created new vignettes that we manipulated along two dimensions. First, as in previous experiments, we manipulated the moral valence of the varied agent's actions, such that they were either neutral or wrong. Second, we manipulated the structure of the event such that both the fixed and varied agent's actions were required to bring about the outcome (conjunctive), or either agent alone could bring about the outcome (disjunctive). See Table 3 for full vignettes. In all conditions, participants were asked how much they agreed with the statement ''Suzy caused the motion detector to go off'', using the same 1–7 scale as in previous experiments. (We did not ask about the varied agent's causality in this experiment.) Following this, they were asked to complete a comprehension check: ''Who was supposed to show up at 9 am?'' They could choose ''Billy'', ''Suzy'', or ''Both of them.'' 4.2. Results We excluded nine participants who failed the comprehension check, leaving 234 for analysis. Fig. 4a shows participants' mean agreement ratings as a function of the moral valence of the varied agent's action and the causal structure of the situation. A 2 (moral valence) " 2 (causal structure) ANOVA revealed main effects of moral valence, F(1,230) = 14.666, p < .001, gp2 = .06, and causal structure, F(1,230) = 31.768, p < .001, gp2 = .121, as well as a significant interaction between the two, F(1,230) = 11.577, p = .001, gp2 = .048. Further analyses looked at the conjunctive and disjunctive Table 3 Vignettes for Experiment 3. J.F. Kominsky et al. / Cognition 137 (2015) 196–209 203 structures separately. As predicted, there was a significant superseding effect in the conjunctive condition, with lower agreement ratings for the fixed agent when the varied agent's actions were morally wrong (M = 2.46, SD = 1.87) than when they were not (M = 4.11, SD = 1.803), t(112) = 4.786, p < .001, d = .898. However, in the disjunctive condition, there was no such superseding effect: Agreement ratings for the fixed agent did not differ between situations in which the varied agent's actions were immoral (M = 4.53, SD = 1.76) or neutral (M = 4.62, SD = 1.54), t(118) = .324, p = .7. These results support the predictions of the counterfactual sufficiency account of causal superseding: Causal superseding occurs only when the actions of one agent can affect the sufficiency of the other agent's action. 5. Experiment 4 In addition to replicating the interaction with causal structure found in Experiment 3, Experiment 4 tested another prediction of the counterfactual sufficiency account. As discussed in the introduction, moral valence is just one example of a violation of norms. Any violation of norms, even non-moral ones, by the varied agent should make the counterfactual possibility that those actions did not occur more relevant. Thus, according to the counterfactual sufficiency account, we should also see causal superseding even when an event is seen as violating a purely statistical norm. Experiment 4 tested this prediction. 5.1. Methods 5.1.1. Participants 120 participants were recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk and paid $0.20 for their participation. 5.1.2. Materials and procedure Experiment 4 followed the structure of Experiment 3 very closely, but differed in content. Instead of fixed and varied agents, we used fixed and varied events that resulted from a single agent's actions. The fixed event was a coin-flip, while the varied event was rolling two six-sided dice. We manipulated the likelihood of the varied event by changing the minimum value that the dice needed to achieve in order for the outcome to be successful – higher than 2 (very likely) or higher than 11 (very unlikely). We also manipulated the event structure such that both the coin flip and the die roll were necessary for Alex to win (conjunctive) or either one alone was sufficient (disjunctive). The vignettes for Experiment 4 are displayed in Table 4. Participants were then asked how much they agreed with the statement, ''Alex won because of the coin flip'', on a 1–7 scale. They were additionally asked two comprehension check questions: ''What did Alex need to roll higher than in order to win?'' and ''Which was more likely, that he would get heads on the coin flip or roll high enough on the dice roll?'' 5.2. Results 13 participants were excluded for having failed to correctly answer the comprehension questions, leaving 107 for analysis. The results can be found in Fig. 4b. We conducted a 2 (likelihood) " 2 (causal structure) ANOVA. There was a main effect of likelihood, F(1,106) = 11.294, p = .001, gp2 = .096, no main effect of causal structure, F(1,106) = 1.100, p = .297, but critically, there was once again an interaction between the two, F(1,106) = 15.786, p < .001, gp2 = .130. As in Experiment 3, further analyses revealed that there was a superseding effect only in the conjunctive scenario. In the conjunctive condition, the coin flip was seen as less causal when the 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Conjunctive Disjunctive A gr ee m en t R at in g Varied Event Neutral Action Immoral Action a 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Conjunctive Disjunctive A gr ee m en t R at in g Varied Event Likely Unlikely b Fig. 4. (a and b): Mean agreement ratings with the causal statements about the fixed agent as a function of causal structure and action valence (Experiment 3, left side) or event probability (Experiment 4, right side). Error bars depict SE mean. 204 J.F. Kominsky et al. / Cognition 137 (2015) 196–209 dice roll was unlikely (M = 2.88, SD = 1.31) than when it was likely (M = 5.19, SD = 1.40), t(56) = 6.415, p < .001, d = 1.704. However, in the disjunctive condition, the coin flip was equally causal when the dice roll was unlikely (M = 4.46, SD = 1.79) and likely (M = 4.27, SD = 2.01), t(50) = !.364, p = .7. 6. General discussion Four experiments demonstrated the phenomenon of causal superseding and found supporting evidence for the predictions of a counterfactual sufficiency account. Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrated that the effect operates outside the bounds of excuse validation and other motivational accounts. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that the effect holds in conjunctive causal structures but not disjunctive causal structures, as predicted by a counterfactual sufficiency account. Finally, Experiment 4 demonstrated that causal superseding is not specific to violations of moral norms, but shows up for violations of statistical norms as well. The causal superseding effect demonstrated across these four studies is both an exciting discovery and something that has been in legal records for over a century (Hart & Honoré, 1985). The case of Carter v. Towne and other legal decisions show that this effect emerges in real-world contexts and can have a large impact on the lives of those involved in these court decisions. At the same time we have demonstrated something very surprising in the context of previous work on causal reasoning: Causal judgments of an agent's role in neutral or even positive outcomes (such as deleting computer viruses, or winning a board game) can be strongly affected not only by their own actions, but by the actions of other agents, provided the event has a particular causal structure. At this point, it is important to acknowledge two relatively recent findings that provide evidence for effects that are related to, but distinct from, causal superseding. McGill and Tenbrunsel (2000) examined causal judgments in cases in which two causal factors combined in a conjunctive way to bring about an outcome. Their experiments varied the ease with which one of the causal factors could be imagined to have been different (mutability) and the likelihood that this factor will bring about the outcome (propensity). The results showed that varying the mutability and propensity of one causal factor influenced participants' causal ratings judgments about the other factor. More specifically, McGill and Tenbrunsel (2000) found an interaction between mutability and propensity, such that propensity had the opposite effect depending on whether the cause was more or less mutable. When the alternative causal factor had a high propensity to bring about the effect, causal judgments to the target factor decreased when the alternative factor's mutability was high compared to low. This pattern of results is consistent with the predictions of the counterfactual sufficiency model. In contrast, when the alternative causal factors' propensity was low, the target factor was seen as more causal when the alternative factor's mutability was high rather than low. In our scenarios, we did not manipulate mutability and propensity at the same time. More work is needed to explore the ways in which variations in mutability, propensity, and causal structure influence causal judgments. A second related study made a valuable contribution to the current work already, in providing a framework for the vignettes in Experiment 2 (Reuter et al., 2014). In the original study, they examined the role of norm violations and temporal order in causal selection. Importantly, rather than using a rating scale, Reuter et al. (2014) had their participants make a forced choice between the two agents in the scenario. They found that the agent who violated a norm was more likely to be selected as the cause, and indeed this is compatible with the causal superseding effect, but it does not distinguish whether the varied actor was seen as more causal or whether the fixed actor was seen as less causal. Temporal order also played a significant role in their findings, but was not a focus of the current research. However, the roles of temporal order and contingency are critical avenues of future research. In the remainder of our discussion, we will delve further into our counterfactual account and present a number of specific and testable additional predictions as avenues for Table 4 Vignettes for Experiment 4. J.F. Kominsky et al. / Cognition 137 (2015) 196–209 205 possible future research. Regardless of whether or not they turn out to be precisely correct, the phenomenon of causal superseding is worthy of study, and testing possible explanations should grant novel insight into causal and counterfactual reasoning. 6.1. Normality and counterfactuals One key element of our account is the notion that moral judgments impact causal cognition by playing a role in people's overall judgments of normality (Hitchcock & Knobe, 2009). Hence, we predicted, and found, that nonmoral norm violations have the same effect as moral violations. Our account merely requires a norm violation that leads people to focus on particular counterfactual possibilities, but makes no stipulations about the nature of the norm being violated. Thus, we expected that any norm violation should yield a causal superseding effect. The strongest support for this can be found in comparing the results of Experiments 3 and 4. Experiment 3 used a moral norm violation, whereas Experiment 4 used a statistical norm violation. The two experiments were otherwise extremely similar, and the results, while differing slightly in the strength of the effect, show the same clear pattern. Rather than just a simple main effect, both experiments produced the same interaction between causal structure and norm violation. Someone who wished to argue that we must treat these norm violations differently, or that we found two different superseding effects, would face a steep challenge. It is worth noting that the counterfactual possibilities that people consider based on these norm violations is partially reliant on the background knowledge they bring to the scenario. In using a variety of scenarios designed to be close to the real world, we relied on participants sharing certain assumptions about the real world such that they would consider the right counterfactual possibilities, and consider our intended norm violations to actually be norm violations. For example, one crucial assumption of the Bartlett Bookends scenario is the assumption that, had Bill not stolen the bookend from his friend, he would have had no other means of acquiring a right-side Bartlett bookend. We emphasize this to participants by stating that his friend could not bear to part with it, and failing to mention a right-side Bartlett bookend anywhere else in the scenario, but ultimately it is participants' own knowledge about how the world works that they are bringing to the experiment that determines which counterfactual possibilities they consider. However, in the context of our explanation, norm violations are merely one way in which particular counterfactual possibilities are highlighted. In fact, our explanation does not require norm violations at all. The causal superseding effect merely requires a salient counterfactual possibility in which the sufficiency of one cause is undermined. Any other means of making such a possibility salient should generate the superseding effect as well. For example, one might be able to generate a superseding effect by explicitly instructing participants to consider a specific counterfactual possibility. Or one could make use of any of the other factors that have been studied in regard to counterfactual thinking such as the controllability of the action or outcome (c.f., Girotto, Legrenzi, & Rizzo, 1991; McCloy & Byrne, 2000; McGill & Tenbrunsel, 2000). 6.2. Sufficiency and sensitivity Our explanation of the causal superseding effect rests on two key assumptions. First, people's causal judgments are influenced by the degree to which they regard a factor as sufficient and insensitive. In other words, when people are trying to determine whether A caused B, their judgments are influenced in part by the degree to which they think A would have been sufficient for B in various counterfactual possibilities. Second, people do not treat all counterfactual possibilities equally. They regard some counterfactual possibilities as more relevant than others. Thus far, we have been relying on a purely computational-level understanding of these two assumptions. We now present the broad outlines of an approach to actually describing them on a more algorithmic level. Our approach takes advantage of an insight that has proven helpful in numerous other areas of cognitive science (e.g., Denison, Bonawitz, Gopnik, & Griffiths, 2013). Specifically, we propose that people might solve this problem by sampling. In other words, it is not that people consider every single counterfactual possibility and then weight each possibility by its degree of normality. Rather, people simply sample a small number of counterfactual possibilities, with the probability of any given counterfactual possibility ending up in the sample being proportional to its degree of normality. To present this approach in more formal terms, we turn to Causal Bayes Nets (Halpern & Pearl, 2005; Pearl, 2000), in which causal relationships are defined in terms of functional relationships between variables representing potential causes and effects. Causal Bayes Nets take the form of networks of variables and causal relationships between them that represent the probability distribution for one set of variables given that one observes or sets values for another set of variables. Therefore they can support inferences about the state of causal variables from observed effects, and are useful for predicting the outcomes of interventions on specific variables. Causal Bayes Nets can also be used to represent counterfactual statements about what would have happened if the state of a particular variable had been different from what it actually was. The counterfactual aspects of Causal Bayes Nets will be the focus of our discussion here. With Causal Bayes Net representations of counterfactual possibilities in the background, let us now consider Pearl's (1999) definition of counterfactual sufficiency. To assess whether or not a candidate causal variable was sufficient for bringing about the effect, we must first condition on what actually happened. Now, we imagine a situation in which the candidate causal event as well as the effect event did not occur. In this possibility in which the effect event did not occur, we then assess whether intervening on the candidate cause in order to make it true would reestablish the effect we have actually observed. If the effect would still have occurred following that intervention, then the cause was sufficient for bringing it about; otherwise, it was not. 206 J.F. Kominsky et al. / Cognition 137 (2015) 196–209 Intuitively, we can think of this operation in the following way: in order to assess the counterfactual sufficiency of a causal event, we undo the specific events leading up to the causal event of interest, effectively ''rewinding'' the world to the point before the event occurs, though leaving factors not on the direct pathway from (proposed) cause to effect as they are. In that minimally different situation, we then imagine that the causal event was in fact true, ''press the play button'' in the mental simulation, and see whether or not the effect would still have occurred. Recently, Lucas and Kemp (2012) have extended Pearl's definition in a way that introduces the notion of sampling. Rather than supposing that people use a veridical, ''rewound'' copy of the actual world, they suggest that people 'resample', yielding a noisy copy of the actual world. Thus, people do not simply get a purely deterministic answer as to whether the outcome would have still occurred, but an answer that draws on a probabilistic sampling process. Yet this hypothesis immediately leaves us with a further question: Namely, how to model the process whereby people sample possibilities. It is here that the notion of norms become relevant to our account. As we saw above, people are more inclined to consider possibilities that unfold in accordance with norms (both statistical and moral) than to consider possibilities that violate such norms. Thus, if a variable realizes a norm-violating value in the actual world (Bill steals a bookend), its value in the simulation, if resampled, is more likely to be in accordance with the norm (Bill does not steal the bookend). Putting these ideas together, we get at least the broad outlines of how causal superseding can be explained through the influence of normality on a model of counterfactual sufficiency. The basic idea is that people are implicitly running mental simulations over their causal representation of the world. To determine whether A is sufficient for B, they run a series of simulations of a certain type in which they set A to occur and check to see whether B occurs. However, they do not simply run simulations that differ from the actual world in arbitrary ways. Instead, they show a bias to simulate possibilities in which events accord with norms rather than violate norms. For this reason, if A only brings about B in conjunction with some norm-violating event, A will be unlikely to be seen as sufficient for B. This is the phenomenon of causal superseding. 6.3. Integrating sufficiency into a larger theory In the previous section, we have presented a theory of counterfactual sufficiency that accounts well for the results of the experiments reported in this paper. While we do believe that causal judgments are closely linked to counterfactual simulations over causal representations (cf. Chater & Oaksford, 2013; Gerstenberg et al., 2014; Goodman, Tenenbaum, & Gerstenberg, in press), we have also made it clear that the proposed account of the superseding effect is not to be understood as a complete theory of causal attribution. Indeed, there are several empirical phenomena that our counterfactual sufficiency account would not apply to. First, while our account of the superseding effect focuses on counterfactual sufficiency, several studies have shown that people's causal judgments are influenced by counterfactual necessity as well. For example, previous work has shown that people's causal and responsibility attributions are reduced in situations in which the outcome was causally overdetermined by multiple individually sufficient causes (Gerstenberg & Lagnado, 2010, 2012; Lagnado et al., 2013; Zultan et al., 2012). When two players in a team succeeded in their individual task, each player received greater responsibility for the team's win in a situation in which both contributions were necessary compared to a situation in which the success of either player in the team would have been sufficient. This effect cannot be explained in terms of counterfactual sufficiency. The sensitivity of whether an agent's action is sufficient for the outcome is increased in a conjunctive causal structure but is unaffected by the (expected) actions of others in a disjunctive causal structure. Building on formal structural models of causal responsibility (Chockler & Halpern, 2004; Halpern & Pearl, 2005), Lagnado et al. (2013) developed a criticality-pivotality model which predicts that people's responsibility attributions to individual group members are influenced both by (a) how critical each individual's contribution is perceived for the group's positive outcome ex ante and by (b) how close each individual's contribution was to being pivotal ex post (see Lagnado & Gerstenberg, in press, for evidence that similar considerations also influence people's judgments in non-agentive contexts). Note that the pattern of causal judgments found in the current paper would not be predicted by the criticality-pivotality model. The criticality-pivotality model predicts that the extent to which a person is judged to be causally responsible for an outcome decreases the more distant the actual situation was from a situation in which the person's action would have made a difference to the outcome. However, the experiments reported here show that the causal superseding effect occurs in conjunctive situations (where each person's contribution was pivotal) but not in disjunctive situations (where the outcome was overdetermined and hence neither contribution pivotal). Future research will need to tease apart the factors that determine in what situations causal judgments are more strongly influenced by counterfactual necessity versus sufficiency. Second, counterfactual sufficiency does not explain the effect whereby abnormal actions are judged more causal than normal actions. It does predict that the normality of A's actions influences the causal judgment about B's actions when their actions combine conjunctively – that is the basic superseding effect. However, in line with previous findings (Alicke, 1992; Hitchcock & Knobe, 2009), our results show that A is judged more causal when her action was norm-violating than when it conformed to the norm. Thus, as we noted in the introduction, judgments of sufficiency appear to be one part of the story but do not by any means constitute the entirety of causal cognition. One way to incorporate previous findings into our framework would be to assume that the normality of A's action influences whether people consider a counterfactual possibility in which A behaves differently. When A's action J.F. Kominsky et al. / Cognition 137 (2015) 196–209 207 was abnormal, they might consider whether A's action would still have been sufficient for bringing about the outcome if it had been normal instead (cf. Halpern & Hitchcock, 2014; Hitchcock & Knobe, 2009). However, when A's action was normal, counterfactual possibilities involving an alternative abnormal action do not come to mind so naturally. Thus, A's action is perceived to have made more of a difference to the outcome when it was abnormal than when it was normal (Petrocelli et al., 2011). 6.4. Broader implications for causal cognition One point that has not yet been discussed is how we treat the role of moral and other norm violations in causal cognition. Previous work has been divided on whether we should treat moral considerations as (a) playing a role in the operation of people's causal cognition itself or (b) introducing some external bias or pragmatic factor that is skewing the results of what is in fact a purely non-moral causal cognition system (for a review, see Knobe, 2010). We present further evidence that moral violations are included in our causal reasoning, in part by demonstrating an effect that, as noted above, does not hinge on morality specifically. The causal superseding effect has two key features which make it difficult to explain as a bias or pragmatic effect that is not part of causal cognition: First, we find it with non-moral norm violations, something which these morality-as-external-bias accounts do not suggest. The probabilistic norm violation in Experiment 4 provides evidence that norm violations in general, including moral violations, have an impact on our causal judgments. Second, the effect of both moral and statistical norm violations is dependent on the causal structure of the event. If morality functioned as an outside bias that skewed our causal judgment, it would be somewhat surprising if that bias operated on only some causal structures and not others. Experiments 3 and 4 suggest that these norm violations are considered along with causal structure in making causal judgments. 6.5. Conclusion This paper presented evidence for the surprising phenomenon of causal superseding, and offered a preliminary explanation that opens up a number of avenues for further exploration. Beyond the effect of causal superseding itself, this paper brings to light a number of interesting questions about how the actions of one agent can impact causal judgments about other agents. These effects are worth investigating both for the real-world impact these judgments can have in legal settings and for the insights they can afford us into the operations of human causal cognition. Acknowledgements TG was supported by the Center for Brains, Minds and Machines (CBMM), funded by NSF STC award CCF-1231216. DL was supported by ESRC Grant RES062330004. The authors are deeply grateful to Scott Shapiro for his contributions to the early stages of the project. 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F., Phillips, J., Gerstenberg, T., Lagnado, D., & Knobe, J. (2014). Causal supersession. In Proceedings of the cognitive science society 2014 annual meeting. <https://mindmodeling.org/cogsci2014/>. Lagnado, D. A. & Gerstenberg, T. (in press). A difference-making framework for intuitive judgments of responsibility. In D. Shoemaker (Ed.), Oxford studies in agency and responsibility. Oxford University Press. Lagnado, D. A., & Channon, S. (2008). Judgments of cause and blame: The effects of intentionality and foreseeability. Cognition, 108(3), 754–770. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2008.06.009. 208 J.F. Kominsky et al. / Cognition 137 (2015) 196–209 Lagnado, D. A., Gerstenberg, T., & Zultan, R. (2013). Causal responsibility and counterfactuals. Cognitive Science, 47, 1036–1073. Lewis, D. (1973). Causation. The Journal of Philosophy, 70(17), 556. http:// dx.doi.org/10.2307/2025310. Lombrozo, T. (2010). 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Crediting causality. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 126(4), 323–348. Teigen, K. H., & Brun, W. (2011). Responsibility is divisible by two, but not by three or four: Judgments of responsibility in dyads and groups. Social Cognition, 29(1), 15–42. Turri, J., & Blouw, P. (2014). Excuse validation: A study in rule-breaking. Philosophical Studies, 172(3), 615–634. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/ s11098-014-0322-z. Wells, G. L., & Gavanski, I. (1989). Mental simulation of causality. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 56(2), 161–169. Woodward, J. (2006). Sensitive and insensitive causation. The Philosophical Review, 115(1), 1–50. Zultan, R., Gerstenberg, T., & Lagnado, D. A. (2012). Finding fault: Counterfactuals and causality in group attributions. Cognition, 125(3), 429–440. J.F. Kominsky et al. / Cognition 137 (2015) 196–209 | {
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Ca der nos E spi nosa nos estudos sobre o século xvii 2016n. 34 issn 1413-6651jan-jun número e sp e ci a l s o bre L eibn i z
Elliot Santovich Scaramal p. 289 316 289 LEIBNIZ: DEFINIÇÃO NOMINAL DE "SUBSTÂNCIA INDIVIDUAL" E DEFINIÇÕES NOMINAIS DE SUBSTÂNCIAS INDIVIDUAIS Elliot Santovich Scaramal Mestrando, Universidade Federal de Goiás, Goiânia, Brasil [email protected] resumo: No presente artigo, pretendemos oferecer uma análise da explication nominal de Leibniz do que é "ser uma substância individual" oferecida em Discurso de Metafísica §8, assim como (subsidiariamente) uma concernindo o entendimento leibniziano do que sejam definições nominais em geral. O presente artigo será dividido em quatro partes: Em primeiro lugar, tentaremos argumentar contra uma interpretação tradicional e bem-estabelecida, embora não completamente incontroversa, da explication de Leibniz em Discurso de Metafísica §8. Em segundo lugar, tentaremos abordar o entendimento geral de Leibniz de uma definição nominal, ao passo que argumentamos a favor da implicação mútua entre as duas definições disponíveis no corpus leibnitianum. Em terceiro lugar, pretendemos apresentar uma interpretação alternativa positiva da explication de Leibniz. Finalmente, tentaremos lidar com um aparente problema de tal interpretação concernindo ao comprometimento existencial presente na mesma por meio de uma análise do uso estrito por parte de Leibniz do termo "substância". palavras-chave: Leibniz, Definição, Definição nominal, Substância individual, Frege, Descrição definida 290 Cadernos Espinosanos São Paulo n.34 jan-jun 2016 1.introdução: questões exegéticas em discurso de metafísica §8 No oitavo parágrafo de seu Discurso de Metafísica, logo depois de notoriamente apresentar aquilo que chama uma "substância individual" (substance individuelle), Leibniz parece introduzir um critério para distinguir tais entidades então apresentadas do que quer mais que possa vir a ser tomado em consideração. O excerto no qual se encontra a mencionada apresentação é o seguinte: "É bem verdade, quando se atribui vários predicados (plusieurs predicats) a um mesmo sujeito e esse sujeito não é mais atribuído a nenhum outro, chama-lo substância individual" (leibniz, 1978b, p. 432). No entanto, no decorrer do texto, a apresentação de tal critério passa imediatamente a ser caracterizada pelo próprio autor como insuficiente (Mais cela n'est pas assez) e qualificada como não sendo uma explicação senão nominal (une telle explication n'est que nominale, idem, ibidem, p. 433). Cabe aqui primeiramente perguntar qual o estatuto de tal expediente de explicação (explication) do que seria isso que fora então chamado "substância individual". Ao menos no que toca à formulação superficial da explication de Leibniz, há uma clara remissão à célebre definição aristotélica em Categorias V do que seria isso que chamaríamos primariamente (πρώτως), no sentido mais estrito (κυριώτατα) e mais do que todos (μάλιστα) "substância" (oὐσία), também chamado de "substância primeira" (πρώτη oὐσία). A definição mencionada seria "aquilo que nem é dito de um sujeito (μήτε καθ' ὑποκειμένου λέγεται), nem é em um sujeito1 (μήτε ἐν ὑποκειμένῳ ἐστιν)", (aristóteles, 2002, 1 Mantivemos a tradução tradicional de "ὑποκειμένον" como "sujeito" seguindo aquela de Boécio, "subjectum", em detrimento daquela de "subjacente" exclusivamente para permitir a reconstrução da remissão por parte de Leibniz a Aristóteles (angioni, Elliot Santovich Scaramal p. 289 316 291 p. 18, ênfases nossas). Assim, uma substância nesse sentido primário deveria ser algo que não fosse uma afecção (πάθημα) de nenhuma entidade, i.e., não mantivesse a relação de ἐν εἶναι com nenhuma entidade, assim como deveria ser algo cujo correspondente linguístico exercesse exclusivamente o papel de sujeito em qualquer enunciado categórico em que comparecesse. Dessa maneira, pareceria prima facie tomar sinonimamente as expressões "atribuir", "dizer de" e "predicar". Uma interpretação tradicional para essa passagem seria a de atribuir a Leibniz mais do que uma mera remissão do mesmo à célebre definição aristotélica de substância primeira em Categorias V, mas também de alguma (qualificada) subscrição ao critério geral aristotélico de substância como sujeito último de atribuição, i.e., Leibniz estaria apresentando aqui uma explicação (segundo ele mesmo, nominal e insuficiente) do que significaria o predicado "ser uma substância individual" e essa seria: "(x é uma substância individual) se e somente se (x é tal que de x se possa predicar algo, mas que x mesmo não possa ser predicado de nada)". Ou, mais precisamente, uma substância individual seria o correspondente ontológico de uma expressão que só poderia exercer o papel de sujeito em um enunciado categórico, mas nunca o de predicado, i.e., o que chamamos um termo singular. Entretanto, o maior problema com essa interpretação é que ela não explicaria por que, no texto do Discurso de Metafísica, Leibniz, diferentemente de Aristóteles, condiciona a não-atribuição de um sujeito que estaria por uma substância individual a nenhum outro sujeito (como indica o uso do advérbio "mais" em "e esse sujeito não é mais (plus) 2009, p. 196). 292 Cadernos Espinosanos São Paulo n.34 jan-jun 2016 atribuído a nenhum outro"), ao passo que na definição de Aristóteles esse seria um critério irrestrito para reconhecer substâncias enquanto tais, sob o risco de má formação do enunciado categórico em questão. Dizer "Cálias é Sócrates" pretendendo com essa sentença exprimir não uma sentença de identidade falsa da forma "a=b", mas uma predicação em que "Sócrates" cumpre o papel de predicado, sendo um termo singular, seria plenamente absurdo. No entanto, como mencionado anteriormente, a não-atribuição de um sujeito a nenhum outro é condicionada por Leibniz à atribuição de vários predicados (plusieurs predicats) a esse mesmo sujeito. Nos parece então bem claro que o que está sendo expresso pelas duas passagens, a de Aristóteles e a de Leibniz, são coisas inteiramente distintas a despeito da semelhança em sua formulação terminológica superficial. Se Leibniz estivesse simplesmente reapresentando a definição tradicional de substância como sujeito último de atribuição para a sua explication do que seria uma substância individual, nos parece que o que está sendo textualmente tomado nessa interpretação como a propriedade metalinguística de (uma expressão "a" ser um termo tal que para toda sentença "p" tal que "a" compareça em p, então "a" seja o sujeito de p) deveria ser então todo o definiens dessa suposta definição do predicado "ser uma substância individual" e não exclusivamente uma parte dele. Ademais, a remissão de superfície a expressões tradicionais e de autoridade entre os escolásticos não deve ser usado como critério para subscrição de uma interpretação ortodoxa dessas mesmas expressões por parte de Leibniz. Trata-se de um expediente corriqueiro no empreendimento da filosofia de Leibniz o de apresentar, sob aquilo que beira uma citação literal da definição de conceitos aristotélicos apropriados pela Escolástica, uma interpretação de todo heterodoxa e Elliot Santovich Scaramal p. 289 316 293 inovadora dos termos que compõem o definiens da definição em questão. Outro caso de tal expediente é encontrado nas chamadas definições intensionais dos valores de verdade, em oposição àquelas extensionais ou correspondencialistas, disponíveis, além de nos parágrafos VIII e XIII do Discurso de Metafísica, em vários outros textos, como a correspondência com Arnauld e em opúsculos contemporâneos a esses, como Leibniz formula na carta de 4-14/09/1686: Praedicatum inest subjecto (leibniz, 1978a, p. 56). A definição de verdade oferecida por Leibniz pode parecer prima facie ser, por exemplo, uma mera formulação de alguns casos da teoria aristotélica da verdade para sentenças singulares de predicados acidentais, pois parece sugerir que uma sentença é verdadeira se o correspondente ontológico do predicado é uma afecção do correspondente ontológico do sujeito, ou seja, está nele, ἐν ὑποκειμένῳ ἐστίν, "não como uma parte e não pode ser separadamente daquilo no que este é" (aristóteles, 2002, p. 14)2. A maneira como o predicado parece estar no sujeito nas definições leibnizianas dos valores de verdade e na sua concepção subjacente de proposição parece ser como uma nota característica ou definitória (nota, Merkmal) prescrita por definição (ex definitione) como subordinada ao conceito sobreordinado em uma sentença quantificada ou geral. Bem, mas se essa interpretação mais tradicional para explication de substância individual em Discurso de Metafísica §8 suscita tais problemas, inquiramos então por uma alternativa exegética. 2 Ou mesmo uma mera retomada do vocabulário aristotélico dos enunciados categóricos, dado que inesse consiste na tradução latina padrão para o verbo ὑπάρχειν. 294 Cadernos Espinosanos São Paulo n.34 jan-jun 2016 2. definição nominal e definição real: uma primeira aproximação textual 2.1 duas aparentes definições de "definição nominal" Já que o problema exegético com o qual estamos lidando é concernente ao excerto de Discurso de Metafísica §8 em que Leibniz parece apresentar uma explication ou definição3 nominal e insuficiente de substância individual, seria prudente, de antemão, começar por uma investigação do que Leibniz entende por uma "definição nominal". Qualquer um que inquira por uma resposta a tal pergunta, de pronto se depara com (pelo menos) duas definições (ou dois grupos de definições) para a expressão "definição nominal" presentes no corpus leibnitianum: (i) uma positiva, que faria referência a determinadas relações exclusivamente lógico-semânticas entre os relata da definição em questão, i.e., entre o definiens e o definiendum da mesma, e (ii) outra negativa, que também faria referência a certos traços epistemológicos. Resta saber se ambos esses definientia para o denfiniendum "definição nominal" são logicamente equivalentes e, portanto, se poderiam ser perfeitamente utilizados como definientia alternativos sem que isso incorresse no comprometimento da univocidade (ou ao menos da extensão) do definiendum em questão ou se se trata genuinamente de um caso de ambiguidade. Em um artigo publicado por Leibniz nos Acta Eruditorum em 1684, cerca de dois anos antes da redação do Discurso de Metafísica, as chamadas Meditationes De Cognitione, Veritate et Ideis, o filósofo propõe sua teoria das definições e suas contrapartes cognitivas. Nesse artigo, 3 Argumentaremos adiante, na seção 3.1., à favor da equivalência dessas duas expressões. Elliot Santovich Scaramal p. 289 316 295 Leibniz já havia apresentado o que ele chama de uma "definição nominal" (definitio nominalis), "a qual nada é senão a enumeração das notas suficientes" (quae nihil aliud est, quam enumeratio notarum sufficientium, leibniz, 1978a, p. 423). No entanto, no parágrafo 24 do Discurso de Metafísica, Leibniz define uma definição nominal (définition nominale) como aquela definição em que ainda é possível duvidar da possibilidade da noção ou conceito definido, i.e., uma definição que falha em ter como consequência uma prova de consistência do definiendum em questão (Idem, 1978b, p. 450). No caso exclusivo de predicados, uma prova de que o definiendum em questão seja um predicado que não contenha notas características mutuamente exclusivas. Em ambas as definições de "definição nominal", entretanto, a mesma é recorrentemente apresentada em oposição às definições reais, que, por sua vez, são aquelas "pelas quais se garante (constat) que a coisa (rem) é possível"4 (Idem, 1978a, p. 424-5), possibilidade essa identificada com a própria essência de um conceito (completo ou não) nos Novos Ensaios5. Definições reais, de acordo com a terminologia do Discurso de Metafísica podem ser ou bem causais ou bem essenciais (também chamadas de perfeitas) ou ainda o que Leibniz chama uma "definição somente real e nada mais" (definition seulement reele et rien d'avantage, Idem, 1978b, p. 450), o que é ainda recorrentemente chamado uma definição real provisional. As definições reais provisionais são aquelas que, associadas a uma definição nominal do predicado, se reportam a uma instância do mesmo na experiência como prova a posteriori de sua consistência, dado 4 Atque ita habemus quoque discrimen inter definitiones nominales, quae notas tantum rei ab aliis discernendae continente, et reales, ex quibus constat rem esse possibilem [...]. 5 leibniz, 1978c, p. 272: L'essence dans le fonds n'est autre chose que la possibilite de ce qu'on propose. 296 Cadernos Espinosanos São Paulo n.34 jan-jun 2016 que da atualidade de uma sentença (no caso, existencial) é válido inferir sua possibilidade. As definições reais causais, por sua vez, mostrariam uma influência em Leibniz da aplicação a objetos concretos do movimento de valorização das definições genéticas associado a Quaestio De Certitudine Mathematicarum, por exemplo, em Hobbes e Espinosa. Essas são aquelas que fazem uso de uma prova relativa de consistência, via a dedutibilidade da existência de um ente a partir da existência da causa do mesmo. Em contexto de definições de magnitudes ou grandezas, por exemplo, Barrow declara que tais definições "não apenas mostram a Natureza da magnitude envolvida, mas, ao mesmo tempo, mostram a sua possível existência" (barrow, Lectiones Mathematicae, apud mancosu, 1996, p. 98). Por sua vez, as definições reais essenciais ou perfeitas seriam aquelas cujo definiens seria uma enumeração completa das notas características primitivas do predicado definiendum e, portanto, mostrariam exaustivamente sua consistência pela ausência de contradição ou exclusão semântica entre cada uma das notas. Para que respondamos se esses dois definientia da expressão "definição nominal" no corpus leibnitianum são logicamente equivalentes ou se se trata de uma expressão genuinamente ambígua talvez seja prudente investigar textos em que Leibniz menciona e relaciona ambos. Uma vez que entendamos que uma enumeração suficiente de notas características ou definitórias de um predicado6, como é enunciado na definição de "definição nominal" no artigo "Meditações sobre Conhecimento, Verdade e Ideias", é suficiente para que a conjunção de tais notas seja 6 Trataremos nesse artigo exclusivamente de definições de predicados ou termos gerais, completos ou não. Elliot Santovich Scaramal p. 289 316 297 (meramente) coextensiva ao predicado em questão7, então notamos que essa mesma relação (de coextensividade) entre predicados é mencionada no Discurso de Metafísica §24 no contexto de uma definição, como dissemos, de traços epistemológicos de "definição nominal", i.e., aquela segundo a qual a definição nominal consiste em uma definição que não possui como consequência uma prova de consistência das notas características do predicado definido. Isso se faz patente assim que notamos que a relação de segunda ordem de "reciprocidade" mencionada no texto não é senão o que chamamos em terminologia contemporânea de "coextensividade"8. No parágrafo 24 do Discurso de Metafísica, Leibniz declara que "toda propriedade recíproca pode servir para uma definição nominal" (Idem, 1978b, p. 450), em que reciprocidade é aqui entendida como o mesmo que substitutividade salva veritate, que implica identidade no caso de termos singulares (via o Princípio de Identidade dos Indiscerníveis) e coextensividade no caso de termos gerais. Assim, qualquer definição em que o definiens fosse meramente coextensivo ao definiendum e nada mais que isso, falharia em oferecer uma prova da consistência interna do definiendum. No entanto, ainda resta saber, para que respondamos 7 Apresentaremos argumentos adicionais para tal assunção adiante na seção 3.2.1. 8 Lógica de Port-Royal, 1, 7: "[...] é claro que, uma vez que a diferença constitui a espécie e a distingue de outras espécies, ela deve ter a mesma extensão que a espécie. Assim, elas devem poder ser ditas reciprocamente uma da outra, por exemplo, que tudo que pensa é uma mente e tudo que é uma mente pensa" (arnauld & nicole, 1996, p. 42). Ver também Lógica de Jäsche, I, §12: "Conceitos que têm a mesma esfera (Sphäre), são chamados conceitos recíprocos (Wechselbegriffe) (conceptus reciproci)" (kant, 2002, p. 195), sendo "esfera" (Sphäre) aqui tomado como sinônimo de extensão (Umfang), como se pode ver em Lógica de Jäsche, §8: "A extensão (Umfang) ou a esfera (Sphäre) é tão grande quanto mais coisas estejam sob ele e possam através dele ser pensadas" (Idem, ibidem, p. 191). 298 Cadernos Espinosanos São Paulo n.34 jan-jun 2016 se as definições alternativas de "definição nominal" culminam na ambiguidade da expressão no corpus leibnitianum ou não, se toda definição que falhasse em oferecer uma prova da consistência de seu definiendum seria tal cujos definiendum e definiens fossem meramente coextensivos. Se esse for o caso, se poderia dizer que a expressão "definição nominal" teria no corpus leibnitianum, no máximo, algum tipo de ambiguidade meramente intensional, visto que seus definientia seriam necessariamente coextensivos. Similarmente, em seu célebre comentário aos Ensaios sobre o Entendimento Humano de Locke, os Novos Ensaios, Leibniz apresenta, por meio de Teófilo, sua distinção entre definição nominal e real dizendo "na minha opinião, a diferença é que a definição real faz ver (fait voir) a possibilidade do definido, ao passo que a definição nominal, não" (Idem, 1978c, p.). A despeito de Teófilo dizer que a diferença9 entre uma definição real e uma nominal é que a primeira mostra que o definiendum é possível e a segunda não, Teófilo adiante menciona, por exemplo, como definições nominais de "ouro", exemplo recorrente de Leibniz para definições nominais, os definientia "o mais pesado corpo que temos" ou "o mais maleável" porque cada um de tais predicados "basta (ou é suficiente, suffit) para reconhecer ouro" (Idem, 1978c, p. 278)10. Dessa 9 É digno de nota que, rigorosamente, do que é exclusivamente declarado nessa passagem não se infere validamente que a definição de "definição nominal" seja a de "uma definição que não mostra que a coisa definida seja possível" tanto quanto não se infere validamente, a partir de que a diferença entre os predicados "ser pombo" e "ser pombo branco" seja a nota característica "ser branco", que "ser branco" seja a definição de "ser pombo branco". 10 Ouro pode ser nominalmente definido de várias formas – Pode ser chamado o mais pesado corpo que temos, o mais maleável, um corpo fusível que resiste a copelação e água forte e assim por diante. Cada uma dessas marcas é boa e é suficiente Elliot Santovich Scaramal p. 289 316 299 maneira, o texto dos Novos Ensaios, assim como Discurso de Metafísica §24, parece lidar em certa medida com ambos os definientia da expressão "definição nominal" no corpus leibnitianum, resta saber ainda se de uma maneira que isenta o texto de ambiguidades ou quiçá até mesmo de inconsistências. 2.2 meditações sobre conhecimento, verdade e ideias: distinção, definição nominal e reciprocidade Na apresentação de sua teoria das definições e seus correlatos cognitivos no artigo "Meditações sobre Conhecimento, Verdade e Ideias", Leibniz associa fortemente a propriedade que chama de "distinção" (distinctio) a definições nominais definidas no sentido que chamamos aqui exclusivamente lógico-semântico. No contexto de sua definição de uma distincta notio11, como sendo uma noção ou conceito "que os peritos possuem do ouro, por notas, como se sabe (scilicet), e exames suficientes para discernir a coisa de todos os outros corpos semelhantes", Leibniz declara que temos uma tal noção de tudo aquilo de que também temos uma definição nominal: "costumamos tê-las acerca de noções comuns (suffit) para reconhecer ouro: Ao menos provisoriamente [...] Até que descubramos um corpo ainda mais pesado ou encontremos a "prata inerte" [...]. 11 Logo depois de introduzir sua divisão diairética do conceito de conhecimento, ao iniciar o que seriam as definições dos conceitos definidos, Leibniz estranhamente define uma notio (noção) obscura, em vez de uma cognitio obscura, voltando a definir uma cognitio clara, em vez de uma notio clara. O termo notio volta a ser usado para definir uma notio distincta em vez de uma cognitio e de resto todos os outros conceitos a serem então definidos são definidos em uso do termo cognitio, exceto pela cognitio symbolica, que Leibniz retoma usando os termos cogitatio caeca vel etiam symbolica, pensamento cego ou ainda simbólico. No entanto, acreditamos ser razoável supor, como hipótese exegética, que uma notio é distincta se e somente se sua cognitio correspondente for também distincta. 300 Cadernos Espinosanos São Paulo n.34 jan-jun 2016 a muitos sentidos, como de número, de grandeza, [...], em uma palavra (verbo), acerca de tudo aquilo de que temos Definição nominal, que outra coisa não é que a enumeração das notas suficientes" (Idem, 2005, p. 15). Assim, um conhecimento exclusivamente de notas características ou definitórias suficientes apenas para que a conjunção das mesmas seja coextensiva ou recíproca ao predicado ou termo geral em questão, oferecendo um critério de satisfação do mesmo por parte de objetos, faz com que a esse predicado ou termo geral corresponda uma noção ou conceito distinto12 e a esse conhecimento corresponde uma definição nominal e (poderíamos inferir) vice-versa, dado que uma definição nominal, em seu sentido puramente lógico-semântico, é aquela em que o predicado definiendum tem como definiens meramente uma enumeração de notas características ou definitórias suficientes para que esse último esteja em uma relação de coextensividade com o primeiro. É dessa maneira que a "distinção" das noções ou conceitos e, portanto, de seus conhecimentos se liga intimamente ao estatuto nominal da definição dos mesmos (ou dos predicados ou termos gerais que venham a corresponder linguisticamente a esses) no sentido que chamamos exclusivamente lógico-semântico. 12 Assim como, podemos supor, uma cognitio distincta, se supusermos que uma notio distincta é distincta precisamente porque a ela corresponde uma cognitio distincta. Elliot Santovich Scaramal p. 289 316 301 2.3 a definição geral de "definição" e a equivalência lógica entre as definições de "definição nominal" Como dissemos anteriormente, caso ambos os definientia, i.e., o exclusivamente lógico-semântico e aquele provido de traços epistemológicos, das definições de "definição nominal" sejam necessariamente coextensivos, ou seja, caso um necessariamente implique o outro, podemos manter a consistência do corpus leibnitianum sem comprometimento com a univocidade ou, pelo menos, com a extensão do predicado "ser uma definição nominal", de modo que não precisemos apelar para uma hipótese exegética de uma ambiguidade em nível extensional, i.e., na qual os dois definientia têm extensões diferentes. Já argumentamos textualmente acima a favor da tese exegética de que para Leibniz toda definição em que o definiendum e o definiens sejam meramente coextensivos é também uma definição tal que não tenha como consequência uma prova da consistência das notas características do definiendum, por apelo à Discurso de Metafísica §24. Para defender a equivalência lógica dos definientia da expressão "definição nominal", portanto, resta argumentar também a favor da tese de que, ao menos para Leibniz, toda definição que não tenha como consequência uma prova da consistência das notas características do definiendum é também uma definição em que o definiendum e o definiens sejam meramente coextensivos. Bem, a esse respeito, acreditamos que tal tese possa ser defendida com apelo aos textos previamente citados em que Leibniz lida com ambos os definientia da expressão "definição nominal": Os Novos Ensaios sobre o Entendimento Humano e o Discurso de Metafísica. A 302 Cadernos Espinosanos São Paulo n.34 jan-jun 2016 Ao final do capítulo 2 do primeiro livro, acerca da inexistência de princípios práticos inatos, Teófilo oferece uma definição geral de definição, a saber: "[...] definições, que não são outra coisa que uma exposição distinta das ideias" (Idem, 1978c, p. 92, ênfase nossa). Ademais, em Discurso de Metafísica §24, Leibniz também parece tomar "definição" e "conhecimento distinto" como expressões intersubstitutíveis: "definition ou connoissance distincte" (Idem, 1978b, p. 449). Como mostramos anteriormente, o conceito de distinção está fortemente associado à relação de segunda ordem de coextensividade13 ou reciprocidade e, portanto, à definição exclusivamente lógico-semântica de "definição nominal" de tal modo que uma exposição distinta de um certo conteúdo semântico seria tal que lograsse coextensividade entre seus relata. Ora, se toda definição é uma exposição de um conteúdo semântico que logra distinção e que, portanto, logra coextensividade, nos parece que toda definição é pelo menos uma definição nominal, no sentido puramente lógico-semântico da expressão, i.e., a mera coextensividade entre o definiendum e o definiens é um requisito mínimo para o que quer que seja chamado de "definição", sem o qual simplesmente não faz sentido atribuir essa expressão. Isso explicaria, por exemplo, porque no artigo "Meditações sobre Conhecimento, Verdade e Ideias", Leibniz só inicia qualquer menção a definições a partir da sua exposição sobre a propriedade de distinção de noções ou conceitos (ou ainda conhecimentos). Mas se toda definição é pelo menos uma definição em que o definiendum e o definiens sejam meramente coextensivos, nos parece lícito 13 [λPQ. x (P(x) <-> Q(x))] Elliot Santovich Scaramal p. 289 316 303 afirmar que também toda definição que não tenha como consequência uma prova da consistência das notas características do definiendum seja uma definição em que o definiendum e o definiens sejam meramente coextensivos, pois que se fizesse mais que isso, de modo que tivesse como consequência uma prova da consistência das notas características, se trataria de uma definição que tem e não tem como consequência uma tal prova de consistência do definiendum, o que é absurdo. Assim, nos parece razoável acreditar que uma definição tem como consequência uma prova de consistência do definiendum se e somente se esse é coextensivo com o definiens e, portanto, assim seriam satisfeitas as condições mencionadas acima para a equivalência lógica entre os definientia alternativos da expressão "definição nominal". 2.4 a distinção leibniziana e a distinção da lógica de port-royal Desse modo, acreditamos já estar claro como a distinção entre definição real e definição nominal é diferente daquela feita por Arnauld & Nicole em sua Logique ou L'art de penser à despeito da correspondência que tomou lugar entre Leibniz e Arnauld entre 1686 e 1690, sucedendo a redação da primeira versão do Discurso de Metafísica. No capítulo 12 da primeira parte da Logique uma definição nominal ou do nome (définition nominale, definitio nominis) consistiria numa introdução de um sinal convencional e arbitrariamente estabelecido para abreviar uma expressão mais complexa composicionalmente formada. Ao passo que uma definição real ou da coisa (définition réelle, definitio rei) consistiria na apresentação de uma proposta, uma hipótese de análise em seus componentes do significado usual de um sinal já usado ordinariamente. 304 Cadernos Espinosanos São Paulo n.34 jan-jun 2016 Desse modo, a distinção na Logique de definição nominal e real se assemelha àquela entre definição construtiva ou tout court e definição analítica em Logik in der Mathematik. Na primeira "construímos um sentido a partir dos seus constituintes e introduzimos um sinal totalmente novo para expressar seu sentido" (frege, 1979, p. 210) e na segunda "temos um sinal simples com um uso longamente estabelecido. Acreditamos que possamos fornecer uma análise lógica do seu sentido, obtendo uma expressão complexa que, em nossa opinião, tem o mesmo sentido" (Idem, ibidem). Dessa maneira, a distinção na Logique entre definição nominal e real é determinada por como empregamos o definiendum, se atribuindo convencionalmente a ele um novo significado ou retomando seu significado usual. Alternativamente, na distinção leibniziana todas as definições em questão parecem ser reais no sentido da Logique e a sua diferença se dá por propriedades da expressão definiens, a saber, a ausência de garantia de consistência ou mera coextensividade com o defniendum. 3. uma interpretação alternativa para discurso de metafísica §8 3.1 definição e EXPLICATION Voltemos à questão levantada no início do texto acerca de qual seria o expediente disso que Leibniz chamou uma explication (insuficiente e nominal) do que seria "ser uma substância individual". Me parece que qualquer explicação sobre o que algo seja ou de qual seja o significado de uma expressão satisfaz as condições básicas para que seja chamada precisamente de uma definição. No caso, acreditamos, trata-se de uma definição do predicado "ser uma substância individual" por apelo a um Elliot Santovich Scaramal p. 289 316 305 método geral de definições nominais de substâncias individuais. Um tal uso do termo explication pode ser elucidado como sendo uma ocorrência de germanismo, visto que a expressão alemã Erklärung, normalmente traduzida como "esclarecimento", "elucidação" ou "explicação", em alguns contextos é tomada em alemão como sendo um sinônimo do estrangeirismo latino "Definition"14. 3.2 a EXPLICATION e a noção contemporânea de descrição definida No caso, no modo como interpretamos tal definição, algo seria uma substância individual se e somente se fosse o correspondente ontológico de um termo sujeito ao qual se atribuem (ou melhor, se subordinam) tantos predicados como notas características, a ponto de ele mesmo não se atribuir verdadeiramente a mais nenhum outro termo15. Ademais, em observância da definição intensional de verdade apresentada imediatamente depois da explication e sua concepção subjacente de proposição, o termo sujeito deveria ser aqui tomado como um conceito subordinado e o termo predicado como notas características em proposições gerais universais. Não se poderia introduzir de antemão a noção de uma proposição singular, por essa entendendo uma proposição 14 Ver Crítica da Razão Pura, (A 730/ B 758): "A língua alemã tem para as expressões "exposição" (Exposition), "explicação" (Explication), "declaração" (Deklaration) e "definição" (Definition) não mais que uma palavra: Erklärung" (kant, 1966, p. 747). 15 Benson Mates parece sugerir rapidamente uma interpretação similar: "Em outras palavras, ele [Leibniz] considera a possibilidade de definir uma substância individual como qualquer coisa cujo conceito aparece como sujeito em várias proposições verdadeiras, mas como predicado apenas naquelas proposições verdadeiras das quais ele também é o sujeito" (mates, 1986, p. 193). A 306 Cadernos Espinosanos São Paulo n.34 jan-jun 2016 em que o sujeito é um termo singular e por esse entendendo um termo que está por uma substância individual sob risco de uma petição de princípio. Portanto, a condicionada não-atribuição a um sujeito empregada na formulação leibniziana de sua definição preliminar de substância individual não diz respeito a uma impossibilidade lógica de predicar um termo singular de algum outro termo que exerceria o papel de sujeito em uma proposição. De todo, o que Leibniz está pretendendo aqui, acreditamos, é uma construção de um termo singular e, consequentemente, de uma proposição singular por apelo a um termo geral satisfeito com unicidade16, propriedades de segunda ordem que, segundo os critérios fregianos, se satisfeitas permitiriam que o termo geral "ser P" fosse doravante convertido em um termo singular de referência indireta correspondente, i.e., uma descrição definida "o P"17. Esse tipo de expressão teve seu maior desenvolvimento em semântica formal contemporaneamente com o que Frege chama em uma nota a Grundlagen der Arithmetik §74 de definição de um objeto mediante um conceito sob o qual ele cai: Inteiramente diferente disso é a definição de um objeto a partir de um conceito, sob o qual o mesmo cai. A expressão "a maior fração própria", por exemplo, não tem conteúdo, uma vez que o artigo definido requer (erhebt) que se refira (hinzuweisen) a um objeto determinado. [...] No entanto, quando se quer mediante esse conceito um objeto determinado, que caia sob ele, é antes necessário mostrar duas coisas: 1. Que um objeto caia sob esse conceito. 2. Que apenas um único objeto caia sob ele (Idem, 1987, p. 108). 16 [λP. Ǝx (P(x)ᴧ y (P(y) -> x=y))] 17 [ιx. P(x)] Elliot Santovich Scaramal p. 289 316 307 4. um problema: descrições definidas e comprometimento existencial 4.1.1 definições nominais de termos gerais (incompletos) A distinção entre definições nominais e definições reais para termos gerais destituídos das propriedades de segunda ordem imediatamente acima mencionadas, i.e., instanciação e unicidade de instanciação ou, pelo menos desconsideradas tais propriedades, claramente toca à suficiência de notas enumeradas no definiens, mas não à sua completude (que, se satisfeita, incorreria em um caso de definição real, mais especificamente a perfeita ou essencial). É claro que suficiência é uma relação pelo menos diádica e, portanto, deve ainda ser esclarecido a que tais enumerações de notas deveriam ser suficientes. A ocorrência da noção de definição nominal nos Novos Ensaios no contexto de definições nominais de ouro (leibniz, 1978c, p. 278) mostra que uma definição de um termo geral qualquer é nominal se em seu definiens são apresentadas notas suficientes meramente para distinguir tal termo geral de qualquer outro. Me parece claro que a mencionada suficiência para distinção, se quisermos, de todo, manter uma diferença qualquer entre definição nominal e real, i.e., de modo a garantir a manutenção de definições nominais não-reais, deve dizer respeito a termos gerais no que diz respeito à sua instanciação, ou seja, deve se reportar a sua satisfação ou não por parte de objetos de ordem zero, em oposição ao domínio completo de termos gerais de primeira ordem, distinguindo simplesmente conceitos possíveis através de suas notas. Do contrário, teríamos a estranha consequência de que não só toda definição real satisfaz, como condições 308 Cadernos Espinosanos São Paulo n.34 jan-jun 2016 necessárias, aquelas prescritas a uma definição nominal, mas que também toda definição nominal seria trivialmente também real, pois senão teríamos pelo menos uma nota característica completamente irrisória para identificação do conceito, o que é simplesmente absurdo. Portanto, a suficiência aqui em questão não poderia se tratar de uma suficiência intensional, mas exclusivamente de uma extensional. Considerando a suficiência de um critério para a identificação e distinção entre os termos gerais oferecida por definições nominais dos mesmos no que concerne à sua instanciação (o que é o mesmo que dizer, no que concerne à sua extensão), poderíamos, por exemplo, perfeitamente ignorar uma nota do conceito se isso nos garantisse a mesma extensão atual, i.e., se o conceito obtido pelo decréscimo de uma nota característica fosse coextensivo ou recíproco ao original. Alternativamente, i.e., caso considerássemos que uma definição nominal oferecesse critérios suficientes de reconhecimento ou não de um termo geral no que concerne à sua instensão, seria absurdo sequer supor ignorar uma nota característica do mesmo, posto que cada nota seria constitutiva da identidade do conceito e relevante para distingui-lo dos outros, de modo que toda definição que enumerasse notas suficientes para distinguir um termo geral de todos os outros, acabaria por enumerar todas as notas do termo geral, colapsando trivialmente definições nominais com reais essenciais ou perfeitas. A A A Elliot Santovich Scaramal p. 289 316 309 4.1.2 definições nominais de noções ou conceitos completos de substâncias individuais e o problema do comprometimento existencial Similarmente, também as definições nominais de substâncias individuais só poderiam ter alguma suficiência de notas características sem que seus definientia colapsassem com o definientia de definições reais se suas notas características fossem usadas para se distinguir exclusivamente de objetos atuais e tivessem de se reportar exclusivamente à realidade atual, i.e., a tudo o que é o caso. D'outro modo, na tentativa de introduzir propriedades distintoras ou notas características que distinguissem tais noções tomando o Princípio de Identidade dos Indiscerníveis como premissa, iniciaríamos um processo infinito de acréscimo de notas, pois, para cada nota P(x) introduzida para distinguir duas noções ou conceitos de substâncias individuais, há uma outra noção ou conceito que compartilharia das notas do primeiro, de modo que para distinguilas seria necessário introduzir uma outra nota característica distintora Q(x) e assim indeterminadamente. Também similarmente, tomemos um definiens real, digamos, por exemplo, uma noção completa de substância individual, i.e., um predicado complexo P(x) tal que satisfaz a propriedade de segunda ordem pela qual "para todo predicado simples Q(x) ou bem Q(x) ou bem sua negação ¬Q(x) seja uma nota característica sua"1819. Caso 18 [λP. Q : S (( x P(x) -> Q(x))V( x(P(x)->¬Q(x)))] 19 A propriedade de segunda ordem da completude satisfeita por noções completas de substâncias individuais vem da subscrição por parte de Leibniz ao que foi posteriormente chamado por Kant de Princípio de Completa Determinação (Grundsatz 310 Cadernos Espinosanos São Paulo n.34 jan-jun 2016 esse definiens seja coextensivo a alguma nota característica ou "parte própria" sua, complexa ou não, então poderíamos, em princípio, ignorar a infinitude20 de notas adicionais que estão contidas nesse predicado completo e empregar com total êxito extensional (factual) apenas tal nota característica coextensiva. Entretanto, entendendo dessa maneira uma definição nominal de uma substância individual, um problema parece surgir: Tal formulação permitiria perfeitamente se aplicar definições nominais inclusive a predicados possíveis, porém der durchgängigen Bestimmung, A 571/B 596, KANT, 1966, pp. 609-10) e poderia ser descrito como a tese segundo a qual para qualquer indivíduo ou objeto concreto de ordem zero, o referente de uma representação (linguística ou mental) singular, e, para qualquer predicado de primeira ordem, a sentença que atribui esse predicado ao objeto deve ter um valor de verdade determinado, i.e., é ou bem verdadeira ou falsa, tertium non datur. A subscrição de Leibniz a tal princípio se faz patente, por exemplo, na carta a Arnauld de 4-14/07/1686 (leibniz, 1978a, p. 57), assim como em Discurso de Metafísica §8 (Idem, 1978b, p. 433), em que Leibniz mostra que as expressões "substância individual" e "ente completo" são intersubstitutíveis (substance individuelle ou estre complet). Por isso, um conceito que tivesse como notas características todos os predicados que um objeto ou substância individual satisfazem deveria analogamente ter a propriedade (de segunda ordem) de para qualquer predicado simples de primeira ordem ou bem tê-lo como nota característica sua ou bem ter sua negação como nota característica sua (Idem, ibidem). 20 Ademais, é extremamente fácil de encontrar nos textos de Leibniz uma forte associação não apenas entre singularidade e completude de determinações, mas também entre singularidade e infinitude, a um indivíduo não deveria simplesmente haver um valor-de-verdade determinado para qualquer predicado empírico de primeira ordem, mas um indivíduo deveria ter infinitas propriedades ou deveriam haver infinitos predicados que um indivíduo satisfaz, se ele é, de todo, um indivíduo. Acreditamos que esse trecho dos Novos Ensaios (Livro III, Capítulo III) sumarize bem esse insight leibniziano: "O que há de mais considerável nisso é que a individualidade envolve o infinito (l'individualité enveloppe l'infini) e apenas alguém capaz de compreender o infinito (le comprendre) poderia ter o conhecimento do princípio de individuação de uma tal ou tal coisa" (leibniz, 1978c, p. 268) Elliot Santovich Scaramal p. 289 316 311 não-satisfeitos e, portanto, também a noções completas de objetos inexistentes. Assim, por exemplo, deveríamos poder usar o predicado "ser um cavalo alado" como uma definição nominal da noção completa de uma substância individual não-atual, digamos, "Pégasus" pois essa nota característica, diferentemente da nota característica "ser um cavalo", é coextensiva à noção de Pégasus dado que ambas têm a mesma extensão, a vazia ou, como às vezes se prefere, sequer tenham extensão. Isso mostra como, aparentemente, a definição nominal de uma substância individual, diferentemente de uma descrição definida, é destituída de comprometimento existencial. Bem, mas se uma definição nominal de uma substância individual não envolve, de modo algum, um requerimento de existência ou um comprometimento de satisfação do conceito definido, dado que há substâncias individuais inexistentes, por que então em sua definição do que seria "ser uma substância individual" Leibniz estaria apresentando, segundo nossa interpretação, um método de definição de substâncias individuais por descrições definidas? 4.1.3 resolvendo o problema: o conceito de substância Bem, para resolver esse aparente problema, acreditamos termos aqui que distinguir estritamente não só entre uma definição de uma substância individual e uma definição do predicado "ser uma substância individual", essa última sendo uma das metas de Discurso de Metafísica §8, mas também entre uma definição nominal de uma substância individual e uma definição nominal de uma noção completa. Nem porque 312 Cadernos Espinosanos São Paulo n.34 jan-jun 2016 uma definição é uma definição de uma noção completa, a mesma é uma definição de uma substância individual. Uma vez que Leibniz está se comprometendo em Discurso de Metafísica §8, com uma definição do que seria "ser uma substância individual" e não de meras definições de noções completas, instanciadas ou não, a questão em voga naquele excerto se trata, portanto, de algo propriamente ontológico e não meramente conceitual, de tal modo que ele necessariamente devesse se comprometer com a existência do objeto, ou melhor, com a satisfação do predicado, pois não faria sentido falar de uma substância não-atual ou não-existente: Poderíamos perfeitamente falar de conceitos não satisfeitos, mas não de entidades não-atuais. Como amparo exegético para tais afirmações, parece haver certo apelo a essa precisão conceitual no uso da expressão "substância" que Leibniz faz no contexto de sua resposta na carta de 4 a 14 (datação incerta) de julho de 1686 à objeção de Arnauld acerca de substâncias meramente possíveis, a qual sucede a objeção acerca do uso que Leibniz teria feito também na carta anterior (de 12 de abril a von HessenRheinfelds e encaminhada por esse posteriormente a Arnauld) de Adão como um termo geral, que admitira associação com artigos indefinidos "um Adão possível" (un Adam possible) assim como uso de plural "'Adãos' possíveis" (Adams possibles, idem, 1978a, p. 20): Acerca da realidade de "substâncias meramente possíveis, as quais Deus nunca criará", você diz, senhor, que está "fortemente inclinado a pensar que são apenas quimeras". Eu não discordo disso, se você quer dizer (como acredito que queira) que elas não têm outra realidade que não aquela elas têm no entendimento divino e no poder ativo de Deus (Idem, 1978a, p. 54-5, ênfases nossas). Elliot Santovich Scaramal p. 289 316 313 É digno de nota que Leibniz encara ambas as objeções acima mencionadas por parte de Arnauld como sendo "observações importantes acerca de certas expressões incidentais (incidentes expressions) de que me servi" (Idem, ibidem, p. 54, ênfases nossas). Isso indica que pelo menos Leibniz parece ter tomado a objeção de Arnauld acerca de "substâncias meramente possíveis" como um apontamento de formulação e, portanto, terminológico por excelência, tanto quanto o uso de "Adão" como um termo geral (incompleto) e não como intuitiva e ordinariamente poderíamos esperar, i.e., como um termo singular, acompanhado exclusivamente de artigos definidos, assim como usado exclusivamente no número singular. Ademais, como apontam nossas ênfases, substâncias individuais não-existentes se reduziriam ao estatuto exclusivamente conceitual de uma noção completa no entendimento divino. Assim, o que poderia ser chamado uma "substância nãoexistente" teria exclusivamente um estatuto conceitual e, por isso, seria melhor expresso como uma "noção completa não-instanciada". 5.conclusão Começamos por tentar apontar um problema textual com uma interpretação tradicional da explication nominal do que é ser uma substância individual em Discurso de Metafísica §8 segundo a qual haveria uma adesão (mesmo que parcial e qualificada) por parte de Leibniz à uma definição aristotélica de substância, que remontaria a Categorias V, como substrato último de predicação. Em seguida, ao investigarmos, de modo assessório a um melhor entendimento da explication nominal de substância individual em Discurso de Metafísica §8, as duas alternativas 314 Cadernos Espinosanos São Paulo n.34 jan-jun 2016 definições de "definição nominal" que parecem ocorrer no corpus leibnitianum, tentamos defender que tal duplicidade definicional não compromete a extensão do predicado "ser uma definição nominal" pois que os definientia alternativos parecem se implicar necessária e mutuamente. Feito isso, tentamos apresentar uma proposta positiva de interpretação para a explication nominal de Discurso de Metafísica §8, segundo a qual tal explication consiste em uma definição do predicado "ser uma substância individual" via um método geral de definição de substâncias individuais por descrições definidas. Finalmente, tentamos resolver um aparente problema de tal interpretação, a saber, acerca do comprometimento existencial que prima facie não deveria haver em uma definição nominal de uma substância individual, mas que há caso interpretemos a mesma como uma descrição definida, por tratar-se de um termo singular de referência indireta e, portanto, formado por um apelo à propriedade do termo geral de ser instanciado com unicidade. Tentamos resolver, entretanto, esse problema enfatizando a diferença entre o que é propriamente uma substância individual, que implica atualidade, e uma mera noção completa de uma substância individual, a qual pode ser instanciada ou não. Elliot Santovich Scaramal p. 289 316 315 LEIBNIZ: NOMINAL DEFINITION OF "INDIVIDUAL SUBSTANCE" AND NOMINAL DEFINITIONS OF INDIVIDUAL SUBSTANCES abstract: In the present article we intend to give an account of Leibniz's nominal explication of what it is to be an individual substance as it is given in Discourse on Metaphysics §8, as well as (subsidiarily) one concerning his understanding of what are nominal definitions in general. We shall divide our enterprise in four parts: First, we will try to argue textually against a well-established, traditional, although not entirely uncontroversial interpretation of Leibniz's explication in Discourse on Metaphysics §8. Secondly, we will try to approach Leibniz's understanding of a nominal definition, while textually arguing in favor of a mutual implication of the two definitions available in the corpus leibnitianum. Thirdly, we intend to give a positive alternative interpretation of Leibniz's explication. Finally, we will try to handle an apparent problem with such an interpretation concerning existential commitment by means of an analysis of Leibniz's strict use of the term "substance". keywords: Leibniz, Definition, nominal definition, individual substance, Frege, defined description referências bibliográficas angioni, l. (2009). Introdução à Teoria da Predicação em Aristóteles. 2o Edição. Campinas. Editora Unicamp. aristóteles. (2002). The Categories, On Interpretation & Prior Analytics. 316 Cadernos Espinosanos São Paulo n.34 jan-jun 2016 Cambridge. Harvard University Press. Texto bilíngue. Edição e Tradução: Hugh Tredennick. arnauld, a. & nicole, p. (1996) Logic or the Art of Thinking. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. frege, g. (1979). Logic in Mathematics. In: hermes, h., kambartel, f. & kaulbach, f. Posthumous Writings. Oxford. Basil Blackwell. Tradução: Peter Long & Roger White _________. (1987). Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik. Stuttgart. Reclam. kant, i. (1966). Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Stuttgart. Reclam. ________. (2002). Manual dos cursos de Lógica Geral. Texto bilíngue. Campinas. Editora Unicamp. Tradução, apresentação e guia de leitura: Fausto Castilho leibniz, g.w.. (1978a). Die philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried Willheim Leibniz. Band II. Hildesheim. Georg Olms Verlag. _____________. (1978b). Die philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried Willheim Leibniz. Band IV. Hildesheim. Georg Olms Verlag. _____________. (1978c). Die philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried Willheim Leibniz. Band V. Hildesheim. Georg Olms Verlag. Mancosu, p. (1996). Philosophy of Mathematics and Mathematical Practice in the Seventeenth Century. New York. Oxford University Press. mates, b. (1986). The Philosophy Of Leibniz: Metaphysics and Language. Oxford. Oxford University Press. Recebido: 04/04/2016 Aceito: 02/05/ | {
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Forthcoming in Behavioral & Brain Sciences Please cite published version What Sentimentalists Should Say about Emotion Charlie Kurth Western Michigan University Abstract: Recent work by emotion researchers indicates that emotions have a multilevel structure. Sophisticated sentimentalists should take note of this work-for it better enables them to defend a substantive role for emotion in moral cognition. Contra May's rationalist criticisms, emotions are not only able to carry morally relevant information but can also substantially influence moral judgment and reasoning. Not every form of sentimentalism is plausible and Josh May's book shows that there's reason to doubt some recent, prominent formulations. But it doesn't follow from this that we should be rationalists. Rather, I believe that May's criticisms help us see what a better sentimentalist meta-ethic should look like. More specifically, investigating what a sentimentalist should say about the nature of emotion reveals that emotions play a more significant role in moral cognition than May presumes. A sophisticated sentimentalism thus remains an important rival to rationalism. Emotions for Sentimentalists As May sees it, sentimentalists face a dilemma. If emotions are just non-cognitive feelings, then they play no substantive role in moral cognition. By contrast, if emotions are partly cognitive (i.e., belieflike states), then the substantive work that they do in moral thought is best explained by their cognitive-not sentimentalist-features (51-2). In response, sentimentalists should reject the picture of emotion that May's dilemma presupposes. At a gloss, emotions are intentional mental states with evaluative content. To be angry about a comment is to see that comment as an affront-as something that calls for a response; to feel compassion toward another is to see her as suffering-as someone to be helped. Pushing deeper, sentimentalists should follow emotion researchers in seeing emotions as states that involve 2 multi-level content and processing (e.g., Griffiths 2004; Izard 2007; Kurth 2018: chap. 2; Levenson et al. 2007). At a low-level, emotions have course-grained, non-conceptual evaluative content that is intimately tied to feeling and action. So, for instance, to feel angry is to experience the actions of another as challenge-to-standing-bad; feelings of shame convey something like social-rank-asymmetry-bad; compassion presents its target as another-suffering-bad. Here the hyphenated strings are gestures toward the distinctive, motivationally-laden evaluative dimensions of these emotions' low-level, nonconceptual content. At the high-level, an emotion's distinctive evaluative content is both fine-grained and conceptual in a manner that facilitates their use in reasoning. So, for instance, anger toward a comment presents that comment as, roughly, an affront to one's (moral) standing. With shame, one sees oneself as having failed to live up to an ego-ideal. In both cases, the high-level conceptual content facilitates inferences about (respectively) being wronged and one's social-moral inferiority. Importantly, a single emotional experience (e.g., a token of anger) will typically engage both types of content and both levels of processing (Griffiths 2004; Kurth 2018; Wringe 2015). Moreover, while the two channels of emotion content/processing generally preform complementary-though distinct-functions, they can come apart in ways that lend support to the above picture. Consider, for instance, experimental work on "repressors." When these individuals are presented with a threatening stimuli, they display the attentional and physiological changes associated with fear-but they deny being afraid. What we appear to have, then, is a dissociation of lowand high-level emotion processing: while the low-level processing of repressors generates the action-oriented attentional shifts and physiological responses characteristic of fear, their high-level processing fails to categorize the situation under the relevant concept (FEARSOME or DANGER). 3 Hence they deny feeling the fear that they otherwise seem to be experiencing (Derakshan et al. 2007; Kurth 2018: 58-9). Notice as well that emotions aren't unique in being mental states with multi-level content/processing of this sort. Work in vision science, for instance, indicates that the content of visual perception is the upshot of two distinct channels: one (the ventral) that's involved in the perception of action and another (the dorsal) that's tied to memory and speech-processing. As with emotions, while visual perception typically combines these two sources of content as part of a unified visual experience, the two channels can be forced apart (Aglioti et al. 1995; Wringe 2015). In the present context, recognizing the multi-level structure of emotion is important because it opens up space for a distinctly sentimentalist thesis about the content and function of emotions. More specifically, with the above account in hand, sentimentalists can maintain that the low-level, motivationally-laden evaluative content of an emotion grounds the evaluative concept(s) distinctive of that emotion's high-level content. So, for instance, shame's low-level content (i.e., social-rankasymmetry-bad) fundamentally shapes and constrains both one's concept SHAMEFUL and shame's associated high-level content (roughly, the evaluation that I've failed to live up to an ego-ideal). Similarly, compassion's low-level content (namely, another-suffering-bad) fundamentally shapes and constrains one's concept COMPASSION-WORTHY and compassion's associated high-level content (roughly, the evaluation that the target of one's compassion is enduring a serious and underserved misfortune that merits one's attention). Crucially, the dependencies here are fundamental in a distinctly sentimentalist sense: our understanding of the high-level evaluative concepts that are associated with emotions like shame and compassion comes by way of the motivationally-laden, non-conceptual content carried by theses emotions' low-level evaluations (D'Arms 2005; Izard 2007; Kauppinen 2013). We find empirical 4 support for this sentimentalist thesis in work on the evolutionary origins and development of emotion. For instance, research in anthropology, psychology, and cognitive science provides evidence of high-level emotion content being shaped and constrained by low-level content for a range of emotions including shame (Fessler 1999), fear and anxiety (Öhman 2008; Kurth 2016, 2018), and disgust (Tyber et. al 2013). Moreover, the idea that low-level, non-conceptual content can ground high-level content isn't unique to emotion. Consider color. The "unity relations" (that is, the phenomena of, e.g., reds looking more similar to oranges than greens) are thought to be non-conceptual features of color experience that shape and constrain both our color concepts and high-level, color content (e.g., RED and GREEN pick out "opposites" but RED and ORANGE do not) (Cohen 2003; Johnston 1992). The Pay Off: A Sophisticated Sentimentalism If emotions are states of the sort sketched above, then-contra May-sentimentalism can explain how emotions are able to both "carry morally relevant information" and "substantially influence moral judgment" (52). Taking these in turn, first notice that emotions are concerned with fundamental human values: compassion concerns the suffering of others, shame concerns the loss of social status, anger concerns challenges to one's standing. But notice as well that the protection and promotion of these values is at the core of what we take morality to be. If that's right, then the above sentimentalist account of the content of emotions entails that they carry morally relevant information. May might object that this connection between emotion and morality is too indirect-while emotions might highlight morally relevant information, they're not essential for making moral judgments (13-14). However, if the sentimentalist is correct that emotions are essential to our 5 understanding of evaluative content-grounding, e.g., the distinctive badness of SHAMEFUL, the special neediness of COMPASSION-WORTHY-then May's objection is misplaced. Acquiring evaluative concepts is not something a "sophisticated robot" could do (14). At best, a robot could approximate emotion's distinctive evaluative content by drawing on information provided by actual emoters (c.f., Kauppinen 2013). Turn then to the question of emotions' influence on moral judgment. The above account of emotions and their connection to moral/evaluative content, entails that emotions contribute to moral inferences insofar as they are essential sources of morally relevant content. Here too May is likely to protest that an influence of this sort is too thin to vindicate sentimentalism-though emotions "facilitate information processing," they aren't essential to moral inference in a deeper way (13, 71). But again notice that on the above sentimentalist account, the low-level content of emotions is foundational for our understanding of the associated, high-level evaluative concepts that we use when making moral inferences. So, contra rationalists like May, moral inferences are "ultimately dependent on non-rational emotions" (7). Yet one might still worry that even if emotions are fundamental in this sense, the role that they play is still too paltry-after all, their distinctly sentimentalist-friendly low-level content only plays an indirect role in moral inference. In light of this, it's important to recognize that emotions' low-level content also has a direct impact on moral decision making and inference. For instance, the low-level content of emotion can block the inferences and conclusions that one is brought to via explicit reasoning. Huck Finn's deliberations told him he ought to turn Jim over to the slave hunters. But the compassion he felt for his friend interfered, preventing him from endorsing the conclusion of his reasoning (Tappolet 2016: 180). Additionally, emotion's low-level content can also lead us to question the moral judgments we've made: Martin Luther King, Jr., for 6 example, spoke of the anxiety he felt about his conclusion that it would be wrong to protest the Vietnam War-in particular, he saw his anxiety as central to his realization that his decision not to protest was mistaken (Kurth 2018: chap. 6). In both of these cases, the low-level content of emotion not only provides morally relevant information that was not captured via deliberation, but also directly influences these individuals' subsequent decisions and actions. Most significantly, emotions can be immediate, non-inferential drivers of basic moral beliefs and judgments. To draw this out, first notice that May allows that we can come to have beliefs without engaging in any (explicit or implicit) reasoning. He thinks this happens when, for instance, you immediately (i.e., non-inferentially) come to the conclusion that the door opening before you retains its rectangular shape: such a judgment is not the result of reasoning, but rather the upshot of you "simply taking your visual experience at face value" (9). But now notice that moral judgments can be formed via emotions through the same kind of immediate, non-inferential process: I immediately come to believe that I've been insulted from the anger that I feel at your comment; your judgment that the invalid needs help springs immediately from the compassion you feel on seeing her crumpled on the sidewalk. Basic moral beliefs like these needn't be the upshot of (implicit) reasoning. Rather-just like May's door example-they can result from simply taking your emotional experience at face value. Moreover, while this point has been made by sentimentalists who take emotions to be perceptions (e.g., Tappolet 2016), the above account of emotion indicates that it holds for sentimentalism more generally. In short, we have a range of examples showing not only that emotions carry morally relevant information, but also that they can play a significant role in moral judgment and inference. 7 Emotions are not mere consequences At this point May might object that the sentimentalism sketched here fits poorly with empirical findings suggesting that emotions are merely a consequence of (non-emotion-based) moral inferences and beliefs, not the drivers of them (38-41). In particular, May could extend the conclusions that he draws from experiments investigating the temporal order of subjects' judgments about the disgustingness and moral wrongness of certain actions (Yang et al. 2013). This work suggests that disgust judgments follow moral judgments-a conclusion that fits poorly with standard sentimentalist proposals. However, the relevance of these experiments is questionable. First, it's unclear how much we can draw from experiments focused on just one emotion (disgust). Moreover, research on other emotions (fear and anxiety) suggests that the temporal ordering of emotion and higher cognition is more in line with the sentimentalist account sketched here (e.g., Hofmann et al. 2012, Kurth 2018: 52-3). Most significantly, the task used in Yang et al.'s Go/No-Go experiments was complex: subjects were asked to make a decision about what button to push based on comparisons of their assessments of the disgustingness and moral wrongness of an action. But given that this was the task, the experiment does not appear to provide insight of the sort May needs (namely, evidence about the temporal order of feelings of disgust in comparison to moral judgments). Rather, it appears to focus on something else: how we make comparative assessments about (i) our judgments regarding the disgustingness of an action and (ii) our judgments of the moral wrongness of that action. Stepping back, we can see how a richer understanding of what emotions are provides sentimentalists with new resources that help them vindicate a central role for emotion in moral cognition. 8 References Aglioti, A., Goodale, M. and de Sousa, J. (1995) Size contrast illusions deceive the eye but not the hand. Current Biology 5: 679–685. Cohen, J. (2003) On the structural properties of the colors. Australasian Journal of Philosophy 81: 78-95. D'Arms, J. (2005) Two arguments for sentimentalism. Philosophical Issues 15: 1-21. Derakshan, N., Eysenck, M., & Myers, L. (2007) Emotional information processing in repressors: The vigilance–avoidance theory. Cognition and Emotion, 21: 1585–1614. Fessler, D. (2007) From appeasement to conformity: Evolutionary and cultural perspectives on shame, competition, and cooperation. In: The self-conscious emotions: Theory and research, eds. Tracy, J., Robins, R and Tangney, J., pp. 174-193. New York: Gilford Press. Griffiths, P. (2004) Toward a "Machiavellian" theory of emotional appraisal. In: Emotion, evolution and rationality, eds. Evans, D. & Cruse, P., pp. 89–105. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hofmann, S., Ellard, K., & Siegle, G. (2012) Neurobiological correlates of cognitions in fear and anxiety. Cognition and Emotion, 26: 282–299. Izard, C. (2007) Basic emotions, natural kinds, emotion schemas, and a new paradigm. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 2: 260–280. Johnston, M. (1992) How to speak of the colors. Philosophical Studies 68: 221-263. Kauppinen, A. (2013) A Humean theory of moral intuition. Canadian Journal of Philosophy 43: 360-381. Kurth, C. (2018) The anxious mind: An investigation into the varieties and virtues of anxiety. Cambridge: MIT Press. Kurth, C. (2016) Anxiety, normative uncertainty, and social regulation. Biology & Philosophy 31: 1-21. Levenson, R., Soto, J., & Pole, N. (2007) Emotion, biology, and culture. In: Handbook of cultural psychology, eds. Kitayama, S. & Cohen, D., pp. 780–796. New York: Guilford Press. Öhman, A. (2008) Fear and anxiety. In: Handbook of emotions, eds. Lewis, M, Haviland-Jones, J. & Barrett, L. F., pp. 127–156. New York: Guilford Press. Tappolet, C. (2016) Emotions, values, and agency. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tyber, J., Lieberman, D., Kurzban, R., & DeScioli, P. (2013) Disgust: Evolved function and structure. Psychological Review 120: 65-84. Wringe, B. (2015) The contents of perceptions and the contents of emotions. Nous 49: 275-297. Yang, Q., Yan, L., Luo, J., Li, A., Zhang, Y., Tian, X., and D. Zhang. (2013) Temporal dynamics of disgust and morality. PloS One 8: e65094. | {
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When You Think It ' s Bad, It ' s Worse Than You Think: We often find ourselves making judgments in the absence of complete information. This happens across a range of domains, including judgments about persons. Is this person praiseworthy or blameworthy? Honest or deceitful? Trustworthy or suspect? In such times of uncertainty, where evidence might be interpreted one way or another, one might consider giving the person in question the benefit of the doubt - that is, to suspend negative judgments for the time being and assume that, in the fullness of time and with increasing evidence and familiarity, the more favorable judgment will prove the correct one. The admonition to give others the benefit of the doubt is most straightforwardly understood as asking that we look upon others favorably and extend them a kindness in the face of countervailing considerations. But how far should one go in complying with it? In a much-discussed article, Susan Wolf argues that extending to others the benefit of the doubt is an unwavering disposition of the moral saint, who must " be patient, considerate, even-tempered, hospitable, charitable in thought as well as in deed " and " must have and cultivate those qualities which are apt to allow him to treat others as justly and kindly as possible. " 1 However, having stated these qualities, Wolf claims there is a substantial tension between being a moral saint and having certain other qualities of character that we would otherwise consider part of an enjoyable, well-lived life. For example, " a cynical or sarcastic wit ... requires that one take an attitude of resignation and pessimism toward the flaws and vices to be found in the world, " which is an attitude the moral saint cannot adopt. 2 Instead, the moral saint will do " whatever is morally necessary to secure good outcomes. " Indeed, the moral saint " will be very reluctant to make negative judgments of other people, " even in the face of countervailing considerations. 3 Insofar as cynicism or sarcasm would be inimical to this goal, a moral saint would shun such qualities of character. A moral saint ... has reason to take an attitude in opposition to [cynicism and sarcasm] - he should try to look for the best in people, give them the benefit of the doubt as long as possible, try to improve regrettable situations as long as there is any hope of success ... . A moral saint will have to be very, very nice. 4 Hagop Sarkissian Psychological Bias and the Ethics of Negative Character Assessments 4 Hagop Sarkissian In sum, the moral saint is committed to doing " whatever is morally necessary " in order to make the world a better place. This will regularly require that the moral saint give others a pass, let bygones be bygones, and extend to them the benefit of the doubt - notwithstanding the fact that there might be apparent reason to judge them morally suspect. The moral saint, so described, might seem naive or overly trusting. She might even seem to lack a basic sense of justice, oblivious to the fact that the world does contain bad actions and bad characters, that cynicism is warranted at times, and that sarcasm can be an appropriate reaction to social (even moral) transgressions. Refusing to make negative judgments of others and routinely giving them the benefit of the doubt for " as long as possible " might seem to many neither heroic nor laudable but instead silly or misguided, apt for misapplication or even exploitation. If this is what morality demands, one might reasonably conclude that it demands too much. Indeed, Wolf ends up concluding that such considerations speak to the importance of intuitions (as opposed to principles) in helping us strike a balance between the moral and the amoral in our personal value orientations. 5 In this chapter, I will argue that one need not be committed to the saintly goal of securing favorable outcomes at any cost in order to have a standing commitment to give others the benefit of the doubt and refrain from negative character assessments. Moreover, one need not rely exclusively upon some form of intuitionism to guide one in this regard. Instead, there are compelling reasons to abide by these commitments once we focus on the nature of negative character judgments themselves, and the mechanisms that give rise to them. Are they reliable? What is their epistemic status? In what follows, I will outline a number of reasons that should weaken our confidence in our ability to accurately judge others and find them worthy of condemnation. And I believe that some of the most fruitful resources for thinking about these issues come from an entirely different moral tradition than the ones that Wolf assays, a tradition which has a distinct perspective on the prompts of human behavior (both good and bad) and, therefore, a distinct way of evaluating the nature of character judgments. 1 Reasons to Give the Benefit: The Analects of Confucius My main resource for thinking about these issues is the Analects , a collection of conversations among Confucius (551? – 479? BCE), his advisees, and his colleagues, collected over the decades (fifth to third centuries BCE) following Confucius ' death. As with Wolf ' s discussion of moral saints, the Analects addresses such topics as whether one should be reluctant to make negative judgments of others, or whether one ought to give others the benefit of the doubt. However, it does so from a particular perspective - namely, one of a highly interconnected social world. According to this perspective, how any single person acts in any social occasion hinges greatly on When You Think It's Bad, It's Worse Than You Think 5 the behavior of the other individuals at hand. 6 Hence, whenever one wishes to explain or understand another ' s behavior - that is, whenever one were to judge it in some way - one would look beyond a person ' s motivations, goals, or traits of character. These would not, in the first instance, be the focus of judgment. Instead, one would examine a range of other considerations that, while external to the person ' s private mental life, would nonetheless be part of the context of the behavior in question and hence part of the explanatory account. For example, one might consider who else was present at the time, what was said and in what tone of voice, how the individuals were related to one another, what roles they were occupying, and what expectations apply to them in these roles. The early Confucians (most especially Confucius and the third-century-BCE thinker Xunzi) viewed behavior as highly interconnected, prompted and shaped by one ' s social and environmental contexts in subtle yet sure fashion. It would seldom be appropriate to discount or overlook such factors in accounting for the person ' s behavior, as they might carry great explanatory weight. Imagine, for example, judging why a person is quiet at the dinner table. One might advert to various personality traits to explain this particular bit of behavior. For example, one might conclude that the person is shy, introverted, or diffident. Such traits might, indeed, be appropriate explanations for the token behavior in question. By contrast, one might advert to various aspects of the person ' s situational context. For example, one might note that the person is a junior member of the family, and that such members are not expected to lead discussion at the dinner table. One might also note that the person is in the presence of a teacher or mentor, and similarly advert to conventions about speaking improperly or out of turn. Many passages of the Analects are centrally occupied with how one might be affecting or influencing the behavior in question oneself. A running theme throughout the text is cultivating one ' s own moral influence on others (one ' s de , or effective moral influence). In order to do so, one must mind one ' s comportment and monitor its effect on others. The following passage reflects this preoccupation: There are three things in our dao that a gentleman values most: by altering his own demeanor he avoids violence and arrogance; by rectifying his own countenance he welcomes trustworthiness; through his own words and tone of voice he avoids vulgarity and impropriety. (8.4) 7 Here we see a direct connection between features of one ' s scrutable self and the behavior of others. The Analects maintains that the junzi (nobleman / exemplary person) can understand behavior in others by attending to aspects of his own comportment. Thus, when accounting for the behavior of others, one ' s own behavior would often be part of the explanatory context and hence part of the explanatory account. Searching for explanations of others ' behavior without accounting for one ' s own influence on it would be incomplete at best, wholly misguided at worst. 6 Hagop Sarkissian A related point concerns how one ought to react when one comes across disagreeable personalities or behaviors. In such instances - when one has friction with others, or experiences frustration with them (or worse) - one is typically directed to look at oneself when trying to explain such troubles. Master Zeng said, " Every day I examine myself on three counts: in my dealings with others, have I in any way failed to be dutiful? In my interactions with friends and associates, have I in any way failed to be trustworthy? Finally, have I in any way failed to repeatedly put into practice what I teach? " (1.4) Master Zeng strives to become an exemplary moral person - a junzi , or person of noble bearing. When he inspects his behavior he does not simply compare it to certain prescribed rules of conduct. Rather, he attends to the way his own behavior may be affecting others. For Master Zeng, moral failure consists not in failing to mimic formal ritual ideals (an important motivation for early Confucian practitioners) but rather in failing to successfully influence his environments. Given these aims, focusing on others to explain why interactions with them are less than optimal would not only be inaccurate and incomplete; it would also be unproductive. The Master said, " Do not be concerned that you lack an official position, but rather concern yourself with the means by which you might become established. Do not be concerned that no one has heard of you, but rather strive to become a person worthy of being known. " (4.14; cf. 14.30) The Master said, " When you see someone who is worthy, concentrate upon becoming his equal; when you see someone who is unworthy, use this as an opportunity to look within. " (4.17) The junzi is distressed by his own inability, rather than the failure of others to recognize him. (15.20) Since individuals are loci of influence, affecting those with whom they interact, working on oneself is a way to influence how others behave. Attacking your own bad qualities, not those of others - is this not the way to redress badness? (12.21) There is a distinct pattern in these passages that concerns how the moral exemplar is supposed to react when dealing with recalcitrant, disagreeable, or otherwise bad individuals - that is, when one has reason and opportunity to make negative judgments of others. The pattern is one of caution and restraint. Zigong was given to criticizing others. The Master said [sarcastically], " How worthy he is! As for myself, I hardly devote enough time to this. " (14.29) Zigong asked, " Does the junzi despise anyone? " The Master replied, " Yes. He despises those who pronounce the bad points of others. " (17.24) 8 Similar to the description of the moral saint above, here we also find that the junzi frowns upon voicing criticisms and making negative evaluations of others. Yet distinct When You Think It's Bad, It's Worse Than You Think 7 from the moral saint ' s aim of trying to maximize the chance of things going well, the reasons given here are largely epistemic, and have to do with whether such judgments are accurate or well supported. Consider the following commentary from the Record of the Three Kingdoms (third century CE) on this general theme in the text. Criticism and praise are the source of hatred and love, and the turning point of disaster and prosperity. Therefore the sage is very careful about them ... . Even with the de of a sage, Confucius was reluctant to criticize others - how reluctant should someone of moderate de be to carelessly criticize and praise? 9 Here we see a couple of reasons adduced for this reluctance to judge others (whether negative or positive). Part of the reason for caution stems from the possible fallout from such assessments. Insofar as one ' s own assessments might inform those of others, or shape those of others, one must be cautious in being loose with them. More important, perhaps, being quick to judge risks moral hubris. Focusing on others ' bad qualities shields one from the more important task of self-scrutiny. Blaming others is easy; admitting one ' s own deficiencies is difficult. This finds poignant expression in a comment by Wu Kangzhai (1392 – 1469): " If I focus my attention on criticizing others, then my efforts with regard to examining myself will be lax. One cannot but be on guard against this fault! " 10 So long as one is preoccupied with pointing out the flaws in others, one avoids this more arduous task. It ' s as though we have natural tendencies that blind us to our own causal role in influencing unfavorable outcomes, and compel us to pin the blame on others and their shortcomings. We find in these passages a commitment to one value of the moral saint - being very reluctant to pass negative judgments on others. Yet the reasons supporting this commitment go beyond that of trying as much as possible to make the world a better place. Apart from any such motivations, the Analects suggests that one take a broader perspective on the prompts of the behavior itself. It suggests that we shift our attention away from the person and instead look at the context of the behavior - including oneself insofar as one is part of that context. What is most remarkable about these injunctions to resist the impulse to blame others and instead look at oneself is that doing so goes against a well-documented tendency to do the contrary - a tendency that has been investigated for decades in experimental psychology. 2 Reasons for Giving the Benefit: Experimental Psychology The actor/observer asymmetry has long enjoyed a status as one of the bedrock findings of social psychology, revealing something deep about our ways of explaining social behavior. As its name implies, the actor/observer asymmetry posits a difference between how actors explain their own behavior and how those observing them explain the very same behavior: actors invoke situational or external characteristics, 8 Hagop Sarkissian whereas observers invoke personal or internal characteristics. One way to capture the difference between these types of explanation is to consider the following sets of questions one might ask to explain the behavior in question 11 : Personal or internal questions (asked when observers explain others ' behavior): A person ' s personality, character, attitude, mood, style, intentions, thoughts, desires, and so on - how important were these in causing the behavior in question? To what extent can the behavior be attributed to the person ' s abilities, intentions, and effort? Situational or external questions (asked when actors explain their own behavior): Situational context, the effect of other persons, the nature of the task at hand, the demands of one ' s position, environmental factors - how important were these in causing the behavior in question? To what extent can the behavior be attributed to situational variables or just dumb luck? On the face of it, the asymmetry in explanation seems plausible. After all, why shouldn ' t we expect actors and observers to explain one another ' s behavior differently? Yet a meta-analysis by Bertram Malle has revealed very little support for the asymmetry as a general pattern of explanation. 12 Indeed, it emerges only when a handful of variables are in play. The strongest among these is when the behavior has a certain obvious valence - i.e., when it is seen as positive (successes; skilled activity; generosity; other socially desirable behaviors) or negative (failures; mishaps; aggression; other socially undesirable behaviors). 13 In short, we explain others ' negative behavior as arising from personal or internal variables, and others ' positive behavior as resulting from situational or external variables. However, when we explain our own behavior, this pattern is reversed ( table 1.1 ). The asymmetry is obviously self-serving: we disown our own failures, yet refuse to allow others to do so; we take credit for our successes, yet pin others ' successes on things external to them. Could this, in fact, be an accurate assessment of what causes good and bad behavior? On the face of it, the self-serving nature of this tendency should provide us some prima facie reason to doubt the veracity of our explanations of others ' negative behavior. But before jumping to this conclusion, it might help to try to understand why we have such a marked asymmetry in the first place. Here, I ' ll focus on two different accounts. The first one explains this tendency as a by-product of evolutionary pressures faced by our ancestors. 14 Our ancestors struggled in competitive environments with limited Table 1.1 Positive behavior Negative behavior Actor ' s explanation Personal or internal Situational or external Observer ' s explanation Situational or external Personal or internal When You Think It's Bad, It's Worse Than You Think 9 resources, and faced many threats and dangers; mortality rates were much higher than today, and life expectancy shorter. In such environments, where one is not guaranteed access to resources necessary for survival, reacting quickly and decisively at signs of perceived threat would be advantageous and fitness-enhancing. Potential threats to one ' s survival (such as competitive conspecifics who might endanger one ' s well-being) have an urgency and must be addressed immediately lest one bear terrible consequences. Keeping track of such individuals and adopting an intentional stance toward them (that is, attributing their threats as personal or internal) would be one way to ensure preparation against any potentially threatening behavior. Put another way, threats against the self signal that quick and decisive action is necessary, so evolutionary advantages would accrue to those who assumed that potential threats were stable and not ephemeral, and to those who acted quickly and automatically in response to them. This explanation is, of course, highly speculative. Even so, let ' s grant for the sake of discussion that such an explanation is plausible. Can it justify the present asymmetry? Notice that for a behavioral tendency to be fitness enhancing it need not track truth. That is, it need not have been the case that all potential threats in our evolutionary past were intentional (or otherwise products of a person ' s motives or desires) in order for a tendency to consider them so to enhance fitness. False positives - treating threats as intentional when they weren ' t - might prove costly in terms of lost opportunities at forging cooperative relationships, but these would likely be outweighed by the costs of false negatives - where failing to react to a true threat might risk the very survival of the individual. Put another way, a tendency to attach negative behavior to the intentions of persons and then to track such persons over time would prove fitness-enhancing even if the tendency would routinely misfire. More important, perhaps, our present environments do not resemble those of our ancestors. We are no longer in a Hobbesian state in which personal security can be assured only through personal diligence. We have the entire apparatus of the modern state and its various policing institutions to help secure our persons and ensure an environment of predictable social interactions. This changes the cost-benefit structure of false positives as opposed to false negatives, making it unclear whether, strictly from a selfish perspective, pinning others ' negative behavior to their character traits is beneficial. A second type of explanation suggests that this tendency is the product of a naive theory of social behavior that individuals tacitly maintain - a theory that need not be influenced by evolutionary pressures. 15 According to this naive folk theory, individuals are continuously compelled by others to behave in socially desirable ways - that is, to be helpful, accommodating, and cooperative. These pressures are sufficient to explain why most individuals behave in ways that are generally helpful or benign; they do so owing to the continual demands of social existence. Why, then, do individuals act 10 Hagop Sarkissian contrary to accepted social norms and practices? The naive theory of social behavior maintains that it must be because either (a) they have a standing intention, desire, or motive to do so (indicating a person ' s bad character) or (b) they are constituted in such a way that they are incapable of acting otherwise. Both of these latter explanations refer to a person ' s character: if someone acts badly or poorly, it must be because of who he or she is. After all, since there are obvious costs that accrue to an individual for acting in a negative fashion, no individual would do so without intending to. As a consequence, negative behavior occurs less frequently but is intentional, and therefore more diagnostic. 16 Put another way, most individuals have good reason to act in socially desirable ways, and this is sufficient to explain why both good individuals and bad individuals will exhibit socially desirable behavior. By contrast, negative behavior can only stem from disreputable characters. Hence, inferences from good behavior to good character traits will be risky, and inferences from bad behavior to good character traits will be erroneous. Bad behavior comes from bad individuals ( table 1.2 ). This type of explanation might also enjoy an initial degree of plausibility. After all, the social pressures invoked seem real enough, and it seems reasonable to think that people would want to avoid the costs they would incur from contravening widely held norms. However, the explanation doesn ' t withstand critical scrutiny. For example, many instances of norm transgression or negative behavior might be accidental or unintended. In fact, if individuals have a standing motivation to act in socially approved ways, it seems just as likely to infer that any deviation must be the result of accident as opposed to intent. (Of course, being prone to accidents may reveal something about a person ' s character, but the asymmetry is not limited to instances of repeated observation.) More important, moral life is not free of conflict, and good people will often have to choose between several competing moral demands that cannot all be practically met. Failing to meet all of one ' s moral demands may lead to norm violations in some areas, yet it would be unfair to conclude that someone has a bad character or acted from bad motives simply because he cannot satisfy all of his demands. 17 It seems that one ought, instead, to take into account the situational constraints that may be impinging on the behavior in question. Difficulties accounting for bad behavior are compounded when we judge unfamiliar persons - when we take their poor behavior on any particular occasion as indicative Table 1.2 Negative behavior Positive behavior Good people Not capable Capable Bad people Capable Capable When You Think It's Bad, It's Worse Than You Think 11 of their character or their motivations generally - just because there is so little evidence to judge the person ' s character. People act differently when presented with different prompts and when placed within different contexts, and so drawing conclusions about someone ' s character in any situation on the basis of the previously observed behavior of others in similar situations is necessarily tenuous. Unfortunately, it is in our interactions with strangers that we are particularly vulnerable to making and maintaining such negative character evaluations, and injunctions to withhold judgment and give others the benefit of the doubt are particularly vital in such interactions. When we meet others we form impressions of them, and those impressions tend to stick. 18 This tendency for first impressions to persevere motivates numerous social practices, such as grooming before a first date or rehearsing before an important presentation. It can be unfair, of course, to judge or evaluate persons on the basis of their behavior on any particular occasion, as the behavior may not be representative. Nonetheless, first impressions are easy to form and difficult to overcome. Indeed, first impressions are remarkable predictors of the overall trajectory of interpersonal relationships. A study by Michael Sunnafrank and Artemio Ramirez suggests that we decide within minutes what sort of relationship we ' ll come to have with someone. 19 For the study, participants (college freshmen) were paired on the first day of class with another student, of the same sex, whom they didn ' t know. The participant was told to introduce himself or herself to the other individual and to talk to that person for either three, six, or ten minutes, then was asked to list the things the two individual had in common, to assess the overall quality of the interaction, and to estimate what sort of relationship was likely to develop: " nodding acquaintance, " " casual acquaintance, " " acquaintance, " " close acquaintance, " " friend, " or " close friend. " After nine weeks, the participants were contacted and asked to describe their current relationships with the partners. The best predictor of relationship status turned out to be how positive the initial interaction was (all things considered), which turned out to be far more important than common interests or likeability in predicting the relationship ' s trajectory. Although this highlights the importance of positive first impressions, it also gives us reason to discount negative ones, lest we close off the possibility of forging positive relationships in the future. Alas, when it comes to initial impressions of others, we also find a pronounced asymmetry between negative impressions and positive impressions. 20 Negative impressions are taken as more diagnostic of individuals than positive information; negative behavior is taken as indicative of a person ' s character, whereas positive behavior is not. 21 Negative behavior is more easily remembered than positive behavior. 22 We remember negative behavior more accurately than positive behavior, and we are more confident about such memories. 23 Similarly, we take less time to arrive at negative judgments, 24 and we require considerably less evidence and information to ascribe 12 Hagop Sarkissian negative traits to individuals than to ascribe positive traits; in fact, the less favorable the character trait, the less evidence we need to believe in it. 25 This asymmetry is likely related to the greater certainty we feel about our negative assessments of others relative to our positive assessments. 26 When we experience uncertainty we tend to be more systematic and careful when processing any relevant information we encounter; conversely, when we have a sense of certainty in our judgments we tend to process information in a more superficial fashion. Hence, those judgments that we tend to be certain about - namely, judgments resulting from negative behavior - tend to coincide with very shallow information processing, whereas those judgments we tend to be uncertain about - namely, judgments resulting from positive behavior - tend to coincide with more rigorous information processing. Finally, we tend not to look for alternative explanations of negative behavior once we have concluded that the behavior in question is representative of a bad character trait. 27 In view of all the asymmetrical tendencies noted above, we have reason - above and beyond the moral saint ' s desire that everything go well - to doubt the veracity of our negative assessments of others - especially people not familiar to us. The suggestion here is not that we should always suspect them, or that all our assessments are equally susceptible to bias in every instance. Nonetheless, owing to the tendency of negative information to be weighed more heavily, to persevere longer, to be taken as more representative, and to be shielded from disconfirmation, we have good reason to doubt the negative assessments we make of others. The doubt has two inter-related components. The first stems from the factors just mentioned - the asymmetrical weighting, perseverance, representativeness, and obstinacy of negative assessments versus positive ones. Since there seems to be no good reason to accept these effects as tracking truth, we should be willing to doubt them. Relatedly, a second reason stems from our systematic failure to search for other explanations of the token behavior in question - explanations that don ' t emphasize a person ' s character but instead look to situational, contextual, or accidental features. We may not be in error if we include character explanations in our understanding, yet we will often be in error if we take them to be exhaustive. We should try to expand our perspectives as observers and to explain the behavior of others as we would explain our own - that is, from the observed person ' s own perspective. In other words, when thinking badly of others, we should consider that we might be falling victim to a psychological tendency that prevents us from seeing their behavior in a more complete and accurate light. In doing so, we can leave open possibilities for constructive engagement and cooperation where they would otherwise be cut off. When You Think It's Bad, It's Worse Than You Think 13 3 Reasons to Give the Benefit: Game Theory An analogue to the strategy of giving the benefit of the doubt in order to open up possibilities for engagement and cooperation can be found in game theory. In Robert Axelrod ' s famous tournament, players were pitted against one another in repeated encounters based on the classic Prisoners ' Dilemma, in which each player has an opportunity to either defect or cooperate with the other. If the players cooperate, each receives a modest payoff; if both of them defect, neither receives a payoff; if one defects but the other cooperates, the defector gets an even greater payoff than he would have gotten if he had cooperated, while the cooperator is assessed a penalty. In view of these outcomes, it is rational to defect no matter what your opponent does: at best you get the highest reward, at worst nothing, whereas cooperating for a modest payout risks a considerable penalty. But if everyone always defects, no person receives any payoffs. That ' s the dilemma. In Axelrod ' s tournament, a very simple strategy called Tit for Tat emerged victorious in the face of far more sophisticated strategies. The Tit for Tat strategy had only two rules: 1. When you first meet another player, cooperate. 2. Thereafter, choose the response that the other player chose when last encountered. This strategy proved remarkably effective, besting several more complicated strategies. However, it had a significant flaw; it had no tolerance for noise or error. When noise is added to an iterated Prisoners ' Dilemma tournament in the form of errors or misunderstanding, Tit for Tat strategies can become trapped in a long string of retaliatory defections, thereby depressing their score. Such noise may come in one of two forms: a co-player might either send the wrong signal (also known as misimplementation or " trembling hand " ) or might send the right signal yet be misinterpreted by other players (misperception or " noisy channels " ). " Faulty transmission of strategy choices (noise) severely undercuts the effectiveness of reciprocating strategies " 28 such as Tit for Tat. In one and the same tournament, Tit for Tat can go from the winning strategy to sixth place if strategies are randomly set to misfire 10 percent of the time (i.e., defecting where one would otherwise cooperate or vice versa). 29 The reason is easy enough to grasp: Upon encountering a defector, a Tit for Tat strategy will reciprocate with defection, which will result in an extended series of mutual obstructions (that is, both players defect). In such situations, Tit for Tat strategies must rely on the coplayer to initiate a cooperative move; without such initiative from the co-player, the Tit for Tat player will continue to defect indefinitely, even if the original defection of the co-player was an unintended result of noise. Indeed, Tit for Tat is particularly 14 Hagop Sarkissian vulnerable against itself in noisy environments - a single miscue can result in an extended mutual obstruction, and only another miscue will be capable of triggering a new series of cooperation. The obvious way to break the vicious cycle of retaliation is to requite defection with cooperation from time to time - to let bygones be bygones. Such strategies are generally known as Generous Tit for Tat. Consider, for example, a variant called Tit for Two Tats, or Forgiving Tit for Tat, which will wait for two defections in a row before retaliating with defection. In a mixed environment in which there are many strategies at play, Tit for Two Tats works just as well as Tit for Tat, and in some instances outperforms it. Indeed, in biologically relevant evolutionary games interactions can be twisted away from defection and toward cooperation by the introduction of such strategies, which are more tolerant of noise. Adding Generous Tit for Tat " greatly increases the overall level of cooperation and can lead to prolonged periods of steady cooperation. " 30 Our own social environments most resemble " noisy " games. It is not uncommon to misinterpret others ' signals or to fail to convey our own intentions clearly. Wires get crossed, identities are mistaken, and unwarranted assumptions are made. Sadly, such miscues are often taken to be highly diagnostic of character and purpose, weighted accordingly, and thus reciprocated by real-life " defection " - our tendency to have negative impressions harden into obstinate beliefs. The social/moral game (as it were) can be decided quickly and ruthlessly. Opportunities for negotiation and moral advancement can be nipped in the bud as a result of bad first moves. Yet if negative assessments should no more admit to personal or internal explanations than to positive ones, it is important to foster this habit of giving others the benefit of the doubt and allowing fruitful, constructive, and productive relationships to unfold. 4 Reasons to Withhold the Benefit: Analects In the theory of games, as in real life, being forgiving has benefits and costs. For example, Tit for Two Tats is at a disadvantage when faced with very aggressive strategies, which exploit them not once but twice before being punished in turn. In environments where individuals routinely exploit forgiving natures, it would be imprudent to forgive others ' transgressions. This underscores the importance of both giving the benefit of the doubt and drawing accurate assessments of others - even if they are unfavorable. Without the latter virtue, one can be exposed to moral vulnerability. If I am correct in claiming that giving others the benefit of the doubt is an important theme in the Analects - that it contains injunctions to look beyond internal or personal characteristics when explaining behavior, that it enjoins us to see others as like ourselves - then it would be putting its adherents at risk of being exploited by When You Think It's Bad, It's Worse Than You Think 15 morally unscrupulous individuals. Indeed, this issue is broached in a number of places in the text. Zai Wo asked, " If someone were to lie to a ren [humane] person, saying " A man has just fallen into a well! " - would he go ahead and jump in after him [to try and save him]? The Master said, " Why would he do that? The junzi can be enticed but not trapped; he can be tricked but not duped. " (6.26) The Master said, " Is a man not superior who, without anticipating attempts at deception or presuming acts of bad faith, is nonetheless the first to perceive them? " (14.31) Edward Slingerland ' s selection of commentary on this passage merits lengthy citation: The gentleman is trusting of others, and expects the best of them. As Dai ' s Record says, " The gentleman does not anticipate badness from others, nor does he suspect others of untrustworthiness. " Li Chong sees this open attitude as the key to the Gentleman ' s ability to educate others: " If you perceive an act of untrustworthiness in the beginning and then necessarily expect untrustworthiness in the future, this indicates an impairment of the merit of patient forbearance, and also blocks the road to repentance and change. " Nonetheless, the gentleman is not a fool, and is the first to perceive when his trust has been misplaced. 31 Being capable of properly judging others and of despising them when that is necessary would be important for anyone for whom being cooperative, deferential, mindful, and conscientious are important commitments. Those pursuing the Confucian dao would be prone to exploitation when surrounded by individuals seeking power, position, fame, and wealth, as was the case in Warring States China (475 – 221 BCE). In such environments, it would be imperative to identify those truly worthy of hatred (even while erring on the side of false negatives). Indeed, as E. Bruce Brooks and A. Taeko Brooks note, despising ( wu ) is a classic virtue, appearing in the earliest stratum of the Analects . 32 Only the ren can truly love others, and truly despise them. (4.3) The Master said, " I have not seen a person who loved ren or despised what was not ren . He who loved ren would esteem nothing above it. He who hated what is not ren would be ren himself, since he would not allow anything that is not ren to be associated with his person. " (4.6) Nonetheless, it remains true that the text recommends a general attitude of favorableness toward others. After all, if expecting the worst from others can make them act poorly, 33 then expecting well from them, thinking favorably of them, might do the opposite. The Master said, " The junzi helps others fulfill their attractive qualities rather than their unappealing ones. The petty person does the opposite. " (12.16) 16 Hagop Sarkissian Admittedly, it seems difficult to figure out just how the junzi will balance the injunction to be favorable to others and give them the benefit of the doubt with the equally important injunction to properly judge some of them as being morally despicable. Yet no matter how the junzi might balance these injunctions, we should keep in mind that fighting the tendency to blame or resent others is a losing proposition unless the person ' s behavior changes within a reasonable length of time. In other words, giving others the benefit of the doubt is a strategy with a limited shelf life; the cognitively demanding act of staving off blame and resentment can be expected to last only so long. The injunction to give others the benefit of the doubt is, after all, a strategy to redress a standing psychological bias, and will prove effective only when others provide evidence of the transitory or contingent nature of their initial disagreeable behavior. We find much of this summarized in a noteworthy passage in the writings of Mencius, a Confucian thinker of the fourth century BCE: Suppose someone were to be harsh in their treatment of me. A junzi would, in such a case, invariably examine himself, thinking " I wasn ' t benevolent; I lacked propriety. How else could such a thing have come about? " But if, after examining himself, he discovers he had been benevolent, he had acted with propriety, and yet the person still treats him harshly, then the junzi will again invariably examine himself, thinking " I must have lacked commitment. " But if he discovers that he was, in fact, committed, and the person still treats him harshly, only then would the junzi say, " I suppose he is the incorrigible one. " 34 Here we find the epistemic considerations adduced above expressed most directly. The junzi has encountered disagreeable conduct directed toward him. His first impulse is to see how he might have engendered the conduct himself: Was he indiscrete or unkind? Did he lack patience or resolve? Here he is merely trying to come to a proper or complete understanding of what may have caused the person to act in such a fashion. Only after arriving at a more definite understanding of the prompts of the behavior - after concluding that it is unlikely to have been the result of some contingent prompt - is the junzi satisfied with blaming the person. (Here we find an analogue to the Tit for Two Tats strategy: Pause not once but twice before retaliating with a defection - in this case, with a negative character assessment.) Conclusion At the outset of the chapter, I noted Susan Wolf ' s argument that morality can demand too much, and that there may be personal, amoral ideals of character that have valid claims among our personal aspirations. On this view, moral perfection cannot be the sole or primary ideal that structures our lives; we have reason to aspire to ideals that are amoral. For Wolf, this means that " we have reason to want people to live lives When You Think It's Bad, It's Worse Than You Think 17 that are not morally perfect, " and that " any plausible moral theory must make use of some conception of supererogation " to mark off moral demands that are optional and discretionary from those that are obligatory. 35 Presumably, this would include marking off the moral demand to give others the benefit of the doubt. Although this demand can be motivated by a number of considerations, none of them point to its being a strict duty. Instead, one will need to consider the particular contexts of any token negative judgment to determine whether it is, all things considered, something one ought to give credence to or something one ought to doubt. There is room for discretion here, so one can take on board Wolf ' s suggestion that intuitions will be necessary to the process. Nonetheless, and in contrast with other supererogatory acts, I have argued that giving others the benefit of the doubt is motivated by strong epistemic reasons, and that we should question the veracity of our negative assessments of others - especially when we are unfamiliar with the individuals involved. Hence, though this particular virtue may not be obligatory, it warrants standing concern beyond any desire to maximize the chances that things will go well. Instead, it can be motivated by a desire to treat others fairly, to be accurate in one ' s assessments, and to avoid the costs associated with closing others off because of cognitive processes that are likely to be biased or erroneous. And although experimental psychology provides evidence as to the biased nature of this particular range of judgments, it remains a discipline that trades largely in descriptive facts as opposed to prescriptive norms. For the latter, it is fruitful to look to a tradition - Confucianism - that has, from its outset, taken a perspective on social life that recognizes the precarious nature of drawing such judgments, and which has rich normative resources structured around this perspective. Giving others the benefit of the doubt may not be easy. On any realistic assessment of moral life, we must admit that, as we navigate the social world, there will be endless opportunities for friction with others to arise. Even if one is conscientious about one ' s own behavior and mindful of being respectful of others, these will never safeguard one from finding others disagreeable or difficult. Moreover, doubting such judgments can require going against what others have said about an individual and flagging the information as tentative and needing confirmation, as the Analects is well aware. The Master said, " It doesn ' t matter if the multitude hates someone; you must still examine the person and judge for yourself. It doesn ' t matter if the multitude loves someone; you must still examine the person and judge for yourself. " (15.28) At other times, it will require overcoming first-person observations and evidence. Yet adopting such a stance may be a winning strategy both in the theory of games and in the game of life. And though serious moral tolerance and accommodation may not always be in the offing, and though certain individuals may not seem to warrant the 18 Hagop Sarkissian benefit of the doubt, a disposition to giving one can be propitious to (and sometimes necessary for) accommodation and cooperation to emerge as live options. Acknowledgments My thanks to Brian Bruya for helpful suggestions on previous drafts, and to Owen Flanagan and David Wong for helpful discussions. Notes 1. Susan Wolf, " Moral Saints, " 421. 2. Ibid., 422. 3. Ibid., 421. 4. Ibid., 422. 5. Ibid., 439. 6. For an argument justifying an interconnected perspective in current moral psychology, see Hagop Sarkissian, " Minor Tweaks, Major Payoffs. " For an important elucidation of this theme in early Confucian thought more generally, incorporating insights from newly unearthed texts, see Mark Csikszentmihalyi, Material Virtue , especially 178 – 192. 7. All translations are my own, using the Chinese text in D. C. Lau, Confucius: The Analects . 8. The passage continues: " He despises those who remain below while criticizing those above; he despises those who are bold but lack courtesy, daring yet violent. " 9. Edward G. Slingerland, Confucius Analects , 166. 10. Ibid. 11. Adapted from Bertram F. Malle, " The Actor-Observer Asymmetry in Attribution, " 896. 12. Ibid. 13. In much of what follows, I focus on the moral dimensions. 14. See, for example, Felicia Pratto and Oliver P. John, " Automatic Vigilance. " 15. Oscar Ybarra, " Naive Causal Understanding of Valenced Behaviors and Its Implications for Social Information Processing. " 16. See, for example, Susan T. Fiske, " Attention and Weight in Person Perception. " 17. For further discussion of how competing moral demands, as well as the agent ' s attitude toward any transgression she may have to commit in choosing between such demands, are taken into account in our folk psychology, see Mark Phelan and Hagop Sarkissian, " Is the ' Trade-Off Hypothesis ' Worth Trading For? " When You Think It's Bad, It's Worse Than You Think 19 18. This section shares parallels with portions of Sarkissian, " Minor Tweaks, Major Payoffs. " 19. Michael Sunnafrank and Artemio Ramirez Jr., " At First Sight. " 20. Fiske, " Attention and Weight in Person Perception. " 21. Glenn D. Reeder and Marilynn B. Brewer, " A Schematic Model of Dispositional Attribution in Interpersonal Perception. " 22. Jeffrey W. Sherman and Leigh A. Frost, " On the Encoding of Stereotype-Relevant Information under Cognitive Load. " 23. Donal E. Carlston, " The Recall and Use of Traits and Events in Social Inference Processes. " 24. John H. Lingle and Thomas. M. Ostrom, " Retrieval Selectivity in Memory-Based Impression Judgments. " 25. Myron Rothbart and Bernadette Park, " On the Confirmability and Disconfirmability of Trait Concepts. " 26. Carlston, " The Recall and Use of Traits and Events in Social Inference Processes " ; Vincent Y. Yzerbyt and Jacques-Philippe Leyens, " Requesting Information to Form an Impression. " 27. Ybarra, " When First Impressions Don ' t Last. " 28. Robert Axelrod and Douglas Dion, " The Further Evolution of Cooperation. " 29. Christian Donninger, " Is It Always Efficient to Be Nice? " 30. Martin Nowak and Karl Sigmund, " Chaos and the Evolution of Cooperation. " 31. Slingerland, Confucius Analects , 166. 32. E. Bruce Brooks and A. Taeko Brooks, The Original Analects . 33. See, for example, Mark Chen and John A. Bargh, " Nonconscious Behavioral Confirmation Processes. " 34. Mencius 4B:28. 35. Wolf, " Moral Saints, " 438. Works Cited Axelrod , Robert , and Douglas Dion . " The Further Evolution of Cooperation. " Science 242 , no. 4884 ( 1988 ): 1385 – 1390 . Brooks , E. Bruce, and A. Taeko Brooks. The Original Analects: Sayings of Confucius and His Successors . Columbia University Press , 1998 . Carlston , Donal E. " The Recall and Use of Traits and Events in Social Inference Processes. " Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 16 , no. 4 ( 1980 ): 303 – 328 . 20 Hagop Sarkissian Chen , Mark , and John A. Bargh . " Nonconscious Behavioral Confirmation Processes: The SelfFulfilling Consequences of Automatic Stereotype Activation. " Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 33 , no. 5 ( 1997 ): 541 – 560 . Csikszentmihalyi , Mark . Material Virtue: Ethics and the Body in Early China . Brill , 2004 . Donninger , Christian . " Is It Always Efficient to Be Nice? A Computer Simulation of Axelrod ' s Computer Tournament . " In Paradoxical Effects of Social Behavior: Essays in Honor of Anatol Rapoport , ed. Andreas Diekmann and Peter Mitter . Physica-Verlag , 1986 . Fiske , Susan T. " Attention and Weight in Person Perception: The Impact of Negative and Extreme Behavior. " Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 38 , no. 6 ( 1980 ): 889 – 906 . Guglielmo , Steve , and Bertram F. Malle . " Can Unintended Side Effects Be Intentional? Resolving a Controversy over Intentionality and Morality. " Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 36 , no. 12 ( 2008 ): 1635 – 1647 . Lau , D. C. Confucius: The Analects . Chinese University Press , 1992 . Lingle , John H., and Thomas. M. Ostrom. " Retrieval Selectivity in Memory-Based Impression Judgments. " Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 37 ( 2 ) ( 1979 ): 180 – 194 . Malle , Bertram F. " The Actor-Observer Asymmetry in Attribution: A (Surprising) Meta-Analysis. " Psychological Bulletin 132 , no. 6 ( 2006 ): 895 – 919 . Nowak , Martin , and Karl Sigmund . " Chaos and the Evolution of Cooperation. " Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 90 , no. 11 ( 1993 ): 5091 – 5094 . Phelan , Mark , and Hagop Sarkissian . " Is the ' Trade-Off Hypothesis ' Worth Trading For? " Mind and Language 24 , no. 2 ( 2009 ): 164 – 180 . Pratto , Felicia , and Oliver P. John . " Automatic Vigilance: The Attention-Grabbing Power of Negative Social Information. " Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 61 , no. 3 ( 1991 ): 380 – 391 . Reeder , Glenn D. , and Marilynn B. Brewer . " A Schematic Model of Dispositional Attribution in Interpersonal Perception. " Psychological Review 86 , no. 1 ( 1979 ): 61 – 79 . Rothbart , Myron , and Bernadette Park . " On the Confirmability and Disconfirmability of Trait Concepts. " Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 50 , no. 1 ( 1986 ): 131 – 142 . Sarkissian , Hagop . " Minor Tweaks, Major Payoffs: The Problems and Promise of Situationism in Moral Philosophy. " Philosophers ' Imprint 10 , no. 9 ( 2010 ): 1 – 15 . Sherman , Jeffrey W. , and Leigh A. Frost . " On the Encoding of Stereotype-Relevant Information under Cognitive Load. " Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 26 , no. 1 ( 2000 ): 26 – 34 . Slingerland , Edward G. Confucius Analects: With Selections from Traditional Commentaries . Hackett , 2003 . Sunnafrank , Michael , and Artemio Ramirez Jr. " At First Sight: Persistent Relational Effects of Get-Acquainted Conversations. " Journal of Social and Personal Relationships 21 , no. 3 ( 2004 ): 361 – 379 . When You Think It's Bad, It's Worse Than You Think 21 Wolf , Susan . " Moral Saints. " Journal of Philosophy 79 , no. 8 ( 1982 ): 419 – 439 . Ybarra , Oscar . " Naive Causal Understanding of Valenced Behaviors and Its Implications for Social Information Processing. " Psychological Bulletin 128 , no. 3 ( 2002 ): 421 – 441 . Ybarra , Oscar . " When First Impressions Don ' t Last: The Role of Isolation and Adaptation Processes in the Revision of Evaluative Impressions. " Social Cognition 19 , no. 5 ( 2001 ): 491 – 520 . Yzerbyt , Vincent Y. , and Jacques-Philippe Leyens . " Requesting Information to Form an Impression: The Influence of Valence and Confirmatory Status. " Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 27 , no. 4 ( 1991 ): 337 – 356 . | {
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Maudemarie Clark and David Dudrick, The Soul of Nietzsche's "Beyond Good and Evil". Cambridge: Cambridge Univertsity Press, 2012. Paul Katsafanas Draft of May 27, 2013 Forthcoming in Journal of Nietzsche Studies If Clark and Dudrick have their way, gone will be the days of breezy writings on Nietzsche that recruit a phrase from here, a paragraph from there, and construct an interpretation from the resultant mélange. Clark and Dudrick advocate a meticulous, lineby-line study of Nietzsche's texts, with painstaking attention not only to the broader context of Nietzsche's claims, but even to the precise intent of the images and metaphors that he employs. Here, we find a level of textual scrutiny and careful consideration of context that has been largely absent in Nietzsche scholarship. To get a flavor of the book, consider the fact that Clark and Dudrick spend no less than 63 pages on the preface and first four sections of BGE. Indeed, there's a sense in which the first half of the book is devoted to an analysis of one metaphor. The detail and precision is admirable. The book is not only meticulous-it is exceptionally rich. Though focused on the first part of BGE, it discusses a host of topics ranging from naturalism, physiology, philosophical psychology, will to power, realism and anti-realism, positivism, sensualism, Kant and Hume on causality, Spir on dogmatism and the relations between causal and normative claims, and Plato on the soul. Many of these discussions are illuminating, introducing intriguing new takes on these debates. 2 The book falls into two parts. The first part focuses on a metaphor that Nietzsche employs in the Preface: there, Nietzsche remarks on a "magnificent tension of the spirit" that "characterize[s] the current situation of philosophy" (11). Clark and Dudrick argue that we should interpret this tension as generated by two competing forces, which they call the "will to truth" and the "will to value" (12). They argue against readings of Nietzsche that strive to eliminate or mitigate one of these wills, instead proposing that Nietzsche sees a way in which these wills can coexist productively (113-39). I'll spend Section One of this review investigating these claims. In particular, I'm skeptical that Nietzsche would recognize a distinct, independent will to value, and accordingly I offer a different reading of the relevant passages. The second part of the book analyzes Nietzsche's philosophical psychology, with a focus on his discussions of willing, drives, will to power, and the structure of the self (or "soul," as Clark and Dudrick prefer). There, they argue that Nietzsche's will to power theory is "a doctrine of what constitutes the human soul, what makes us persons or selves, hence what differentiates humans from other animals" (139). In particular, they maintain that the Nietzschean self comprises various drives that stand in "normative relationships" to one another. As they put it, "the human soul is not a naturalistic entity, but neither it is a metaphysical one. It is a normative entity, which exists only in and through the space of reasons" (139). Sections Two and Three of this review will address these claims. In Section Two, I argue that Clark and Dudrick's analysis of Nietzschean drives is philosophically and textually problematic. Finally, Section Three investigates their claim that Nietzsche understands the self as a "normative ordering" of drives, which they distinguish from a "causal ordering." I raise some questions about the cogency of this distinction. 3 1. The will to value versus the will to truth As I mentioned above, the preface of BGE discusses a "magnificent tension of the spirit," and Clark and Dudrick take BGE I to be an explication of this tension. They suggest that "the future Nietzsche envisions for philosophy... depends on the proper resolution of this tension" (11). If this is right, then understanding the tension will be crucial. The "key to understanding this metaphor," they write, "is to recognize that the tension in question must be produced by a conflict between two different forces... We find them in the will to truth and what we call 'the will to value'" (12). Accordingly, an overriding idea in Clark and Dudrick's book is that Nietzsche is concerned with a tension between a "will to value" and a "will to truth." I have two concerns about this claim. First, the contention that the will to value is in conflict with the will to truth seems insufficiently precise. Second, it's not clear why Clark and Dudrick take Nietzsche to countenance a discrete will to value. Start with the first problem. Given the way in which Clark and Dudrick define the will to value and will to truth, it's unclear how they can be in conflict with one another. Clark and Dudrick write that "the will to truth aims at believing only what corresponds to the way the world actually is," whereas "the will to value aims to represent the world in terms of what is valuable, in terms of what it would be good for the world to be" (37).1 However, Clark and Dudrick note that the will to truth, so defined, constitutes an evaluation: they write that Nietzsche "understands the will to truth as a commitment to the value of truth" (35). But given these definitions, doesn't the will to truth turn out to be a species of will to 1 Though see p. 44, where Clark and Dudrick define will to value and will to truth differently: there, we are told that the will to truth is "the will to see that world as it is" and the will to value is "the will to see the world in a way that accords with [one's] values." 4 value? An agent has a will to truth if she is committed to the value of truth; so, an agent has a will to truth if her "will to value" is directed in a certain way-at truth. This entails that the "magnificent tension" between will to truth and will to value would actually be a tension within the will to value. It would be a tension between particular values, rather than between value and something else. This brings us to the second concern. What exactly is the will to value supposed to be, and where in Nietzsche's texts do Clark and Dudrick find evidence for it? As far as I can tell, Clark and Dudrick rest their case for a "will to value" on BGE 2. They note that BGE 2 investigates the motives that drive philosophers' metaphysical theorizing, and claim "it is here that [Nietzsche] introduces the will to value" (37). In particular, they read BGE 2 as claiming that "a 'valuation' stands behind one particular species of philosophy, metaphysical philosophy," and they see the following sections as extending this point: "BGE 5-8 argue that some such valuation stands behind all philosophy" (42). Thus, Clark and Dudrick move from the idea that (1) whenever a person engages in philosophy, some value motivates this pursuit to the claim that (2) the best explanation for (1) is that there exists a will to value. The idea, I suppose, is that the will to value finds expression in philosophizing (as well as other activities), and therefore explains (1). My objection is that there are many ways to explain (1) without appealing to (2). For example: perhaps what motivates Kant's philosophizing is a valuation of religion. And perhaps what drives Schopenhauer's is a disvaluation of suffering. And perhaps what drives Feuerbach's is a valuation of scientific progress. And so on. In other words, perhaps each 5 philosopher is driven by an antecedent commitment to some particular value, rather than a commitment to an amorphous "will to value." It might seem that there is no great difference between claiming (a) various agents have various, particular values, and (b) agents have a will to value. However, this is a mistake: (a) and (b) are importantly distinct. On reflection, the idea of an independent "will to value" is very odd. It suggests that human beings aim at valuing things, and go about looking for ways to fulfill this aim. That is, it suggests that I want to stand in relations of reverence and respect to something, so I go about trying to fill in the blank. But an alternative idea is that I don't have a blank aim of valuing things. Rather, I value particulars, and I value them because I have a drive toward them. I have a drive toward sexual activity, and so value sex; I have a drive toward knowledge, and so value knowledge; I have a drive toward sociality, and hence value social activity. This view, it seems to me, fits much better with Nietzsche's claim that each drive is a valuation. Just as the will to truth involves a valuation of truth, so too a will to sexuality involves a valuation of sexuality, a will to aggression involves a valuation of aggression, and so on. But none of this implies that there is some independent, discrete will to value that then finds expression in various particular values. Why does this matter? What's wrong with moving from the idea that I value X, Y, and Z to the idea that I have a drive toward valuing? Well, it's a bit like concluding, from the fact that I am committed to taking the means toward knowledge, sex, food, sociality, that I have a blank aim of taking means to ends, and go about adopting ends so as to fulfill this aim. That's backwards. Rather, I'm attracted to particular things, and am thus inclined to take the means toward them. Just so, I suggest, with the will to value. The talk of a single will to value suggests that I have a blank aim of valuing things and go about looking for ways to fulfill it. But this seems phenomenologically implausible and philosophically problematic. 6 If we had strong textual support for the idea that Nietzsche countenances a will to value, then we might set these problems aside; but, as I've indicated above, the textual evidence is exceedingly thin. Suppose this is right; suppose there is no one will to value, just many values. Then the "magnificent tension" looks very different. It's a tension within the will to truth, which tries to deny its own evaluative status. This, after all, is the tension that Nietzsche explores in the Genealogy: the valuation of truth, when taken seriously enough, leads us to question our grounds for valuing truth. No "will to value" is involved in this story, just one particular value. 2. Drives as homunculi The second half of Clark and Dudrick's book is concerned with philosophical psychology, and I'll focus the remainder of the review on this material. I want to start with their analysis of Nietzsche's notion of drive [Trieb or Instinkt]. When explaining a person's actions, values, conscious thinking, and indeed the structure of the agent's self, Nietzsche appeals to drives. But when we ask what, exactly, a drive is, puzzles arise. Nietzsche tells us that drives "adopt perspectives," "interpret the world," and "evaluate."2 For example, in BGE 6, Nietzsche writes that every drive "would be only too glad to present just itself as the ultimate goal of existence and as the legitimate master of all the other drives. For every drive is desirous of ruling: and it is as such that it tries to philosophize." This language of valuing, adopting perspectives, presenting oneself as master, and philosophizing is ordinarily used only with full-fledged agents. For this reason, some commentators have interpreted 2 For some examples, see KSA 12:1[58], WP 481, 260, 567. xxx 7 Nietzschean drives as homunculi-sub-personal entities that have the properties of agents (see Poellner 1995). Clark and Dudrick wholeheartedly embrace this interpretation, arguing at length that Nietzschean drives are homunculi (see especially 196-8). To see this, consider the fact that Clark and Dudrick attribute extremely sophisticated capacities to drives. They tell us that drives are aware of one another and try to "to prevent other drives from getting what they want" (146). They claim that each drive "systematically develops and defends an account of reality from its point of view" (146). They imagine drives "commanding other drives to carry out certain actions" (183) and "presenting themselves to the other drives as having political authority, as having the authority to speak for the whole 'commonwealth'... In taking this stance toward the other drives, they 'experience' themselves as superior to them" (183). They suggest that just as a political ruler in a state rules not just because she is strongest, but because she is "recognized as having the authority to rule," so too "one drive has a higher rank than another not in virtue of causal efficaciousness...but in virtue of being recognized as having a right to win" (150). In short: drives are homunculi. They are miniature agents who communicate with one another, develop political orderings, perceive authority relations, have plans and strategies, have experiences, develop accounts, and so on. I've argued elsewhere that homuncular readings of Nietzschean drives are indefensible; instead, we should understand drives as dispositions to token affective or evaluative orientations and patterns of activity.3 When Nietzsche claims that drives "philosophize", evaluate, interpret, and so on, he is remarking on the way in which an embodied drive generates affective or evaluative orientations in an agent; he is not committed to the idea that the drive considered in isolation from the whole agent has these 3 Paul Katsafanas, "Nietzsche's Philosophical Psychology," in Ken Gemes and John Richardson (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Nietzsche (Oxford University Press, 2013), 727-55. 8 experiences. Here, I want to reiterate some of these concerns. I think there are compelling philosophical and textual reasons for rejecting the homuncular reading of drives. Let's start with the philosophical problems. First, Clark and Dudrick attribute experiences, perceptions, the capacity to issue and obey commands, and the capacity to recognize political authority to drives. It's hard to see how this is possible without the drives' being self-conscious. But surely Nietzsche cannot imagine that each human being comprises a multitude of self-conscious entities. Second, it's not obvious how the homuncular view of drives could have any explanatory power. For example, consider Nietzsche's efforts to explain conscious agency in terms of drives. If drives are themselves conscious agents, what exactly is being explained here? We want an explanation of conscious agency, and we are told to understand a person's conscious agency as a manifestation of the conscious agency of various drives. This is hardly informative. Rather than explaining agency and selfhood, it simply shifts the problematic terms about, from the level of persons to the level of drives. Clark and Dudrick attempt to respond to these concerns in two ways. First, they claim that homunculi are problematic only if they are just as complex as the whole organism. They write that "because these activities are simpler than the one for which they are supposed to account, there is no problematic circularity here" (198). The activity for which drives are supposed to account is "the agency characteristic of a human being" (197). So, Clark and Dudrick claim, commanding, obeying, and recognizing political authority are simpler than the agency characteristic of us. However, this claim is difficult to believe. In what sense are commanding, obeying, and recognizing authority "simpler" than other manifestations of human agency? Commanding and obeying, for example, require very robust cognitive processes. After all, 9 they require, at minimum, the presence of consciousness: one entity must perceive another as commanding, understand the nature of this command, be motivated to bend itself to this agent's command, and then carry out the command. How could a subpersonal psychological entity, a drive, do this? This brings us to the second aspect of Clark and Dudrick's response. They claim that commanding and obeying cannot be understood in merely causal terms: as they put it, we must distinguish commanding and obeying from "mere physiological strength of the drives" and "brute causal strength" (198). Thus, when drive A commands drive B, this involves more than A simply overpowering B. Instead, drives issue commands when they exert "political authority" (198). Drive A commands drive B when drive B recognizes and responds appropriately to drive A's authority. What is the difference between causal strength and political authority? That is, how do we distinguish between drive B's being overpowered by A and B's submitting to A's authority? In order to elucidate this distinction, and to respond to the concern that drives are being treated as self-conscious agents, Clark and Dudrick point out that contemporary scientists recognize "political" relations or "dominance hierarchies" among certain animals, such as wolves and chimps (198). These relations, Clark and Dudrick claim, are not merely causal; they are normative. And their idea seems to be that if wolves and chimps can stand in these normative relations, so too can drives. Suppose Clark and Dudrick are right that the relations among drives are analogous to the relations among wolves and chimps. Clark and Dudrick take this analogy to assuage the concern that drives are being treated as full-fledged agents. I would interpret it in exactly the opposite way: it makes it clear just how dire the problem is. Wolves and chimps stand at the heights of cognitive sophistication among animals. Insofar as we attribute wolves and 10 chimps, but not ants and bees, the capacity to recognize political relationships, we recognize that genuine commanding and obeying requires tremendously more than mere ordered action. Ants, for example, have complex, hierarchically ordered societies; but we do not suppose that ants actually recognize political authority. Certain scientists do, on the other hand, attribute that capacity to chimps. If subpersonal drives are supposed to have this degree of cognitive sophistication-if psychological processes inside of me are somehow supposed to have the mental capacities of a chimp-then Nietzsche's theory belongs in the rubble heap of outlandish nineteenth-century biological speculations. Clark and Dudrick do have a response. They claim that contemporary scientists take the social hierarchies exhibited by animals such as wolves and chimps not to require that "the animals in question take themselves to form a political order; their 'conscious motives and intentions' need not concern their political standing" (199). Instead, the claim that animals stand in political relations "means only that the behavior of an individual is best explained not only in terms of his brute strength relative to his fellows but in terms of his rank in the social order. In saying that drives form a political order, then, Nietzsche need not take them to be conscious of their political situation-he need not take them to be conscious at all" (199). However, Clark and Dudrick's final remark does not follow from their interpretation of the empirical data: the data that they cite claims that social hierarchies don't require consciousness of political order, but from this it hardly follows that social hierarchies don't require consciousness at all. A chimp that defers to an authority figure may not be conscious of standing in a political order, but it is clearly conscious of something (the menacing posture of the domineering chimp, for example). So the empirical data in no way supports Clark and Dudrick's claim that drives could stand in political relations without being conscious. 11 In sum: Clark and Dudrick's analogy between drives and chimps does not help their case at all. Rather than assuaging the concern that drives are being attributed extremely sophisticated mental capacities, the analogy drives home the concern. Of course, it's possible that Nietzsche fell into error and endorsed this rather dubious theory. However, this brings us to a decisive textual problem with attributing the homuncular view to Nietzsche: it is extremely difficult to reconcile this interpretation with Nietzsche's other commitments. Nietzsche makes it quite clear that he wants to rethink our notion of the self: And as for the Ego! That has become a fable, a fiction, a play on words: it has altogether ceased to think, feel, or will! (TI vi.3) To babble about "unity," "soul," "person," this we have forbidden: with such hypotheses one only complicates the problem. (KSA 11:37[4]) These passages question our ordinary understanding of the self. As Clark and Dudrick note, Nietzsche argues that once we recognize that the self harbors multiple drives, we must rethink the nature of the self. But if drives are homunculi, then Nietzsche's rethinking of the self is a rather modest affair: Nietzsche would simply be claiming that there are many more selves than we thought. In other words, the homuncular interpretation assumes that we already have a coherent concept of selfhood, and are simply mistaken as to which entities instantiate this concept: we thought that whole persons instantiated selfhood, but we find that parts of persons – drives – instantiate selfhood. This interpretation is dubious. Nietzsche seems to be claiming, not simply that we have applied the concept of selfhood to the wrong entity (person rather than drive), but that 12 we do not even possess a coherent concept of selfhood. In other words, Nietzsche is not simply claiming that there are more selves than we think there are; instead, he is claiming that we have a mistaken conception of selfhood. He wants to transform our notion of selfhood, not simply to apply the notion in a more profligate fashion. I take it that this is part of what Nietzsche means when he writes that drives "are not soul-atoms" (KSA 11:37[4]/WLN 30). Let me close by pointing out that Clark and Dudrick interpret the "atomistic need" which Nietzsche rejects in BGE 12 as "the need for a unit at the microlevel that is a smaller version of the things we are familiar with at the macrolevel" (161). Though they see that atomistic need as resting on "plebian assumption[s]" and grammatical errors (161), it's hard to avoid noticing that Clark and Dudrick's homuncular drives are paradigms of this need- for what are their drives but micro-versions of ordinary agents? 3. The alleged conflict between causal and normative accounts of the self These reflections lead us to our final concern. Clark and Dudrick rely on the idea that the self comprises drives that are normatively or political ordered, rather than causally ordered (139). They reject the idea that "the causal order" of the drives explains the type of person one is, why the person holds her values, and why she holds her theoretical views (149). Instead, they suggest that Nietzsche "takes the soul to be 'the political order of the drives and affects'... The political order is not just a causal order, but a normative one" (150). Although they acknowledge that Nietzsche "never comes right out and says that it [the ordering of drives] is ... a normative rather than a merely causal order" (155), they claim that we can make sense of his claims only by interpreting him in this way. 13 I confess to being unsure what, exactly, Clark and Dudrick mean by "normative order" and why they take the claim that some domain has a normative order to be incompatible with the claim that it has a causal order-why think the two kinds of "orders" are in conflict with one another, rather than just different vocabularies employed in describing different features of the same thing? I lack the space to pursue this concern in detail here, though, so let me raise more restricted points. First, whatever we think of the tenability of the causal/normative distinction in general, it seems to me odd to interpret Nietzsche as endorsing any such distinction. Put a bit differently, it's surprising to think that Nietzsche would endorse a strong fact/value distinction-isn't he constantly emphasizing the ways in which allegedly non-evaluative, affectively neutral descriptions actually presuppose and contain evaluations? Where does one find Nietzsche countenancing such a distinction? To the extent that he writes about such a distinction, he seems to me extremely critical of it. Clark and Dudrick make much of Nietzsche's rejection of "mechanism"; they take his rejection of mechanism to involve an endorsement of the causal/normative distinction. However, I think it's clear that Nietzsche thinks the mechanists go wrong not because they focus solely on the causal and ignore a separate normative realm, but because they don't see that our account of the causal is already, and pervasively, normative. The mechanists' conception of causes, substances, subjects, and so on already contain-or so Nietzsche wants to claim-evaluations. Put a bit differently, Clark and Dudrick's distinction between the causal and the normative seems to presuppose something like this: (A) We can offer a non-evaluative or non-normative description of the world, but if we do we will miss something crucial. The mechanists and other clumsy 14 naturalists go wrong because their descriptions of the world leave out values and reasons. Whereas I suggest that Nietzsche's point is rather (B) We cannot offer a non-evaluative or non-normative description of the world, because our descriptions ineluctably presuppose or constitute evaluations. The mechanists and other clumsy naturalists go wrong because they do not realize that their descriptions of the world, which purport to be purely factual, harbor or constitute evaluations. But suppose I'm wrong; suppose Nietzsche actually does accept (A). This brings us to a second problem. Why exactly is Nietzsche supposed to deny that the structure of the agent's drives can be given a causal explanation? Clark and Dudrick write that "the drives are arranged not merely in a causal order but in a political one" (175). They claim that the political order cannot be given a causal explanation, because it is not merely "an order of strength" (189). That is, we cannot explain the political order among the drives merely by appealing to which drive is strongest. It seems, then, that Clark and Dudrick rely on the following argument: 1. The drives stand in various relationships. 2. These relationships between drives cannot be explained merely by characterizing certain drives as stronger than others. 3. Therefore, the relationships between drives cannot be explained in causal terms. 4. Therefore, the relationships between drives must be explained in normative terms. 15 If this is the argument, though, it is unconvincing, for claim (3) does not follow from claim (2). Suppose I want to give an analysis of a human political organization, such as a university. It's true that an analysis that merely says "the president is strongest, the dean a bit weaker, the faculty weaker still..." won't be very informative and won't capture the interactions between these constituents. But why is that supposed to be the only option? Causal explanations can be much more refined than this; they can cite a much broader range of factors than mere strength. The fact that a crude causal explanation fails does not entail that all causal explanations fail. After all, Nietzsche makes it very clear that he doesn't believe facts about drives alone are going to be enough to explain a person's behavior. Just look at Ecce Homo: there, we're told that Nietzsche's diet, the climates he lived in, his childhood experiences, and so on exerted a decisive influence in making him who he was. So a full explanation of a person's behavior is going to include not just drives, but environmental and physiological factors, as well as experiences and memories. Why not try something similar with drives? It's probably true that trying to explain the relationship between, say, the knowledge drive and the sex drive merely in terms of which is stronger won't be very informative. But that's not the only option. We could instead say that the knowledge drive is dominant in the sense that it redirects other drives, structures the person's deliberations as well as her conceptualization of her environment, tokens affective orientations in certain circumstances, leads to certain patterns of behavior, and so on. Even if the simple causal story fails, this more sophisticated causal story might succeed. 16 Although I've raised some objections to Clark and Dudrick's analyses of the will to value, drives, and the causal/normative distinction, I want to close by emphasizing just how valuable I take their book to be. It is an unusually insightful work, full of nuanced analyses, valuable reflections, and challenging objections to competing interpretations. Everyone with an interest in Nietzsche will need to read it. Paul Katsafanas Boston University [email protected] | {
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Argumenta 1, 2 (2016): 271-280 © 2016 University of Sassari ISSN 2465-2334 Undermining Defeat and Propositional Justification Giacomo Melis University of Glasgow Abstract I extend the Higher-Order View of Undermining Defeat (HOVUD) defended in Melis (2014) to account for the defeat of propositional justification. In doing so, I also clarify the important notion of higher-order commitment, and I make some considerations concerning the defeat of externalist epistemic warrants. Keywords: Defeaters, Undermining, Overriding, Propositional Justification, Higher-Order. One of the things that epistemologists worry about is the relation of epistemic support, in virtue of which something gives a subject reason to believe that a proposition is true. While the notion of epistemic support might be accounted for in a variety of ways, for the sake of simplicity in what follows I will assume that what gives a subject reason to believe that a proposition p is true is the possession of a piece of evidence that supports p. We can thus say that evidence for p is a justifier for p, in that it provides the agent with justification to believe that p is true. If justifiers-evidence-provide the epistemic agent with justification, defeaters take justification away from her. Just like justifiers, defeaters have epistemic force, but it is a force that speaks against believing a proposition, rather than in favour of it. For the purposes of this paper, let us understand defeaters as pieces of counterevidence-evidence that speaks against believing a proposition. Since Pollock (1974: 42-43), defeaters are commonly distinguished in at least two different kinds. Say that p is a previously justified proposition for a subject S: overriding defeaters give S a reason to believe not-p; undermining defeaters, on the other hand, give S merely a reason to give up p, without thereby giving a reason to believe not-p. The present article develops a previous contribution to understanding the way in which undermining defeaters work. In Melis (2014), I defended a view according to which undermining defeaters require the subject to engage in some higher-order epistemic reasoning, while overriding defeaters do not. One limit of that account was that it applied only to a doxastic notion of justification and defeat. In this paper I extend the proposal Giacomo Melis 272 to propositional justification and defeat, and I elaborate the crucial notion of higher-order commitments. The plan is the following: first (§ 1) I will present the view already defended and (§ 1.1) I will provide some details about the notion of higher-order commitment, then (§ 2) I will briefly recall the distinction between propositional and doxastic justification and show why the account of undermining defeat presented does not apply to propositional justification. Finally (§ 3), I will extend the account to propositional justification. 1. The Higher-Order View of Undermining Defeat Let us begin by considering some examples to illustrate the difference between undermining and overriding defeaters. In the propositional triads below, e represents the evidence that supports p, p the proposition the subject is justified in believing, and d the defeater.1 (1) e = <Adam says that Paul McCartney was the drummer of The Beatles> p = <Paul McCartney played in the Beatles> d = <Lauren tells me that Adam's knowledge in matters of pop music is poor> (2) e = <I remember having left the book on the desk> p = <The book is on the desk> d = <I now see that the book is not on the desk> (3) e = <[S's apparent proof of p]> p = <[A seemingly logical theorem]> d = <A logician tells S that there is a mistake in the (apparent) proof> (4) e = <All swans observed at t1 are white> p = <All swans are white> d = <At t2 a black swan is observed in Australia> The defeater d in cases (2) and (4) explicitly suggests that not-p, while in cases (1) and (3) it is compatible with the truth of p. In (2) and (4) the defeaters are overriders, in (1) and (3) they are underminers. Taking the inspiration from different remarks made by Scott Sturgeon (2014) and Albert Casullo (2003: 45-46), I defended the following Higher-Order View of Undermining Defeat (HOVUD): (HOVUD) Underminers suggest that something was wrong with the source of justification or with the justificatory process, and they operate their defeat by appealing to the higher-order commitment that the belief in question was based on that source or that process. If the suggestion is that the process, rather than the source, was defective, the defectiveness is to be understood as the occurrence of a mistake or some other disturbing event.2 In order to assess the explanatory power of the view, we need to go back to examples (1)-(4). Before doing that, however, I will make a few clarificatory remarks about some of the notions I have appealed to in (HOVUD). 1 I do not mean to suggest that all evidence (or counter-evidence) is propositional, but only that for every piece of evidence, there is a proposition that can be used to represent it. 2 A refinement of (HOVUD) proposed in fn. 16 of Melis 2014 has it that the suggestion made with respect to the source or the process can also be that they might have been defective. Undermining Defeat and Propositional Justification 273 By 'source of justification' I mean something of a rather large scale, like the agent's five senses, her memory, her reasoning abilities, or someone's testimony. Justificatory sources provide the evidence for p, and deliver justificatory processes. By 'justificatory process' I mean the activity that begins with the gathering of the evidence and that ends with the formation of the belief. The stage of evidence-gathering often involves interaction with things external to the mental life of the subject, but overall, justificatory processes are mental affairs internal to the agent.3 Higher-order commitments are potential or actual cognitive attitudes (e.g. beliefs, acceptances, presuppositions) of the agent towards propositions about the ways in which beliefs are justifiably formed, retained and abandoned- propositions that describe and sustain the justification of the agent's doxastic state (the set of the agent's beliefs) at a time t.4 In general, every epistemically respectable change in the set of the agent's beliefs involves some higher-order commitments.5 The propositions towards which the relevant agent is committed are such that she would take them to be true (or just warranted) on reflection- at least for as long as she stands by the related piece of justification.6 We might say that, in a loose sense, the higher-order commitments are part of the agent's justification, in that the agent could resort to them to defend the epistemic worthiness of her belief, if questioned. However, the agent need not be aware that the relevant commitments are in place in order to form, retain, and abandon beliefs in an epistemically worthy manner. Let us consider an example. When I come to believe that it is ten o'clock by looking at my watch, I thereby form a justified belief which is sustained by commitments towards propositions like 'the belief that it is ten o'clock was formed by looking at my watch', 'my watch is reliable', or 'I would have not trusted my watch if I had a good reason to believe it had stopped working', and so on. However, I do not need to appreciate that such commitments are in place (i.e. that I am committed to take those higher-order propositions as true or warranted)7 in order to be justified in believing that it is ten o'clock. Still, if some exigent interlocutor were to push me to lay down my reasons to believe that it is ten o'clock, I would, maybe after some reflection, probably bring up some of the higher-order commitments. We can now go back to (HOVUD), according to which the phenomenon of undermining defeat is articulated in two distinct parts. Firstly, the underminer needs a certain higher-order commitment about the source of justification or about the justificatory process to be in place; secondly, the underminer challeng- 3 That is not to say that the subject needs to be aware of the mental activity involved in the justificatory process. 4 In so far as such propositions overtly describe the epistemic activity of the subject-as opposed to merely implicitly expressing the subject's engagement in it-they are higherorder propositions. 5 Exactly which ones depends on the details about the source of justification and justificatory processes involved. 6 More on the rather important notion of relevant agent below in § 1.1. 7 Details here depend on the specific cognitive attitude. For example, while believing would require taking the relevant higher-order propositions as true, accepting and presupposing might require only taking them as just warranted, or at any rate something which generally is not truth-guaranteeing. Giacomo Melis 274 es the epistemic worthiness of that very commitment. Let us consider the examples. The commitment that has to be in place for the undermining defeat to be effective in example (1) is a commitment about the source of justification, the relevant proposition being: 'the belief that Paul McCartney played in the Beatles was based on Adam's testimony'. That the commitment has to be in place so that d can do its defeating job can be seen by noting that if I had taken my belief to have been justified by a different source-maybe someone else's testimony- the acquisition of the information that Adam's knowledge in matters of pop music is poor would not have had any defeating effect.8 That the epistemic worthiness of the commitment is challenged by d can easily be seen by considering the very content of d, whose general suggestion is that the source of justification is not reliable with respect to the subject matter. By contrast, nothing of the sort goes on in the overriding defeat involved in examples (2) and (4). In both cases, the defeater d could have done its defeating work just as well if the relevant agent had taken the beliefs to have been justified by any other source rather than memory (case 2), or inductive reasoning (case 4). Thus, there is no need for a higher-order commitment concerning the source of justification or the justificatory process9 to be in place so that the defeat can be effective. Such examples suggest that overriding defeat, in general, does not rely on the presence of commitments about the way in which the relevant belief was formed or justified. Case (3) is an example of undermining defeat in which the challenge raised by the underminer concerns the justificatory process rather than the justificatory source. In the case at hand, the justificatory source is provided by the agent's proving abilities, as it were. Such source delivers the alleged proof that p, whose execution on the subject's part constitutes the relevant justificatory process. The commitment that has to be in place and that is challenged in case (3) concerns the following proposition: 'the belief that p was based on the execution of that specific proof'. If the subject had taken her proving abilities to have delivered a different computation, d would not have had any undermining effect. The epistemic worthiness of the commitment is challenged because d suggests that something went wrong in that justificatory process.10 The preceding paragraph offers the occasion for an interesting reflection about the difference in the way underminers and overriders impinge on higher- 8 This example should also help to clarify what it means for an underminer to appeal to some higher-order commitments: in general, an underminer d appeals to some higherorder commitment c when d could not do its defeating job, unless c was in place (that is, unless the relevant agent took c to be true or warranted on reflection). 9 Since justificatory processes are delivered by justificatory sources, if a defeater is effective regardless of the source of justification, it is to be expected that it is effective also regardless of the specific justificatory process delivered by the source. 10 One might think that the underminer challenges the epistemic worthiness of the source via the challenge raised to the justificatory process. That might happen in some cases, but it is easy to conceive of a scenario in which that is not what happens in example (3). Just suppose that the subject is generally good at proving theorems, and that she executed the calculation in optimal circumstances (she was sober, in a quiet room, etc.). Since the occasional mistake is compatible with the trustworthiness of the source, the challenge raised by d in such a construction of case (3) does not extend from the process to the source. See Melis (2014: §§ 2-3) for more details. Undermining Defeat and Propositional Justification 275 order reasoning. Indeed, there is a sense in which overriders suggest that something went wrong with the justificatory process too. Overriders suggest that the previously justified belief is false, and since a justificatory process that produces a false belief cannot be a successful one (believing what is true is one of the main epistemic goals), if the overrider is right, something must have gone wrong with the justificatory process. Thus, we have to acknowledge that overriders do have some implications in the realm of higher-order epistemic reasoning too. However, such an acknowledgement does not question the point made in (HOVUD). The point made in (HOVUD) is that while the acceptance of an underminer (and the belief revision that follows) compels the agent to engage in some higher-order epistemic reasoning, the acceptance of an overrider does not. And that is compatible with the acceptance of overriders having some implications in the higher-order sphere. Let us have another quick look at the examples. The agent can accept the overrider in cases (2) and (4), and accordingly update her set of beliefs by replacing p with not-p, without considering any thought about the relevant justificatory sources of processes. Of course, if the agent is a very responsible epistemic agent, she might ask herself some questions about the epistemic worthiness of the sources or the processes. But she does not have to. On the other hand, in cases (1) and (3), the agent gives up the belief that p precisely as a result of the emergence of doubts about the trustworthiness of the justificatory sources or processes that have been raised by the relevant underminer.11 Summing up, (HOVUD) does two things: on one hand it provides an account of how undermining defeat works; on the other, it explains the difference between underminers and overriders in terms of the impact they have on the sphere of higher-order reasoning. Contrary to what underminers do, overriders do not need to appeal to higher-order commitments about how the belief was formed, and do not need to challenge the epistemic worthiness of those commitments. If so, underminers force the subject to reflect about the ways in which her beliefs were formed, and thus cut at a deeper epistemic level than overriders do: unreflective agents can suffer overriding defeat, but they cannot suffer undermining defeat.12 11 In Melis (2014: § 3), I gave more emphasis to another difference between underminers and overriders at this junction: while the suggestion made by overriders with respect to the faultiness of the justificatory process is compatible with the correct execution of the process-it is in the nature of justificatory processes delivered by fallible sources of justification that sometimes they fail to lead to truth-the suggestion made by the underminers is not. In other words, while overriders merely suggest that (as sometimes happens) the process failed to lead to truth, underminers suggest that a specific disturbing event has caused the process to fail. This point, reflected in the last clause mentioned in (HOVUD), is not crucial for the aim of extending (HOVUD) to propositional justification, and limits of space advice against expanding further on it. 12 One might think that there might be cases in which defeaters work as both underminers and overriders. I do consider the possibility of such cases in Melis (2014: § 5). Giacomo Melis 276 1.1 More on Higher-Order Commitments13 Before moving on, I wish to clarify when exactly a higher-order commitment is in place. To that end, let us imagine that the agent has some misconceptions about the way in which she formed her belief. Say that the agent justifiably believes a proposition p, and that she explicitly believes (again, justifiably so) that she based her belief on source X while in fact she based it on source Y. In such a case, we can think of two kinds of higher-order commitments: those concerning propositions about the actual source Y-such as "the belief that p was based on source Y", or "source Y is reliable", etc.-and those concerning propositions about the putative source X-such as "the belief that p was based on source X", or "source X is reliable", etc. Are both kinds of commitments in place? Yes. For every justification, actual or merely putative, there are some higher-order commitments in place, and (HOVUD) is a proposal which is meant to account for the defeat of whichever justification (either actual or putative) is under scrutiny. But let us reflect on the case just described with some care. One might raise the following worry. Since the agent described is completely unaware that she formed her belief in p on the basis of source Y, she would not be able to take a higher-order proposition like "source Y is reliable" to be true (or warranted) on reflection. How can the commitments about the actual source Y be in place then? It is at this juncture that the emphasis on the relevant agent becomes important. While in many ordinary circumstances the agent that would take the commitments to be in place is the actual agent, in cases where the actual agent has some misconceptions on the way she formed her beliefs (or simply ignores it without being in the position to figure it out-see next paragraph and fn. 14), the agent that would take a given commitment to be in place varies depending on the commitments (and the related justification) in question. If we consider the commitments about the putative way in which the belief was justified, then the relevant agent is the actual agent. In the case mentioned, it is the actual agent that, on reflection, would take the higher-order proposition "the belief that p was based on source X" or "source X is reliable" to be true or warranted. However, if we consider the commitments about the actual way in which the belief was justified, then the relevant agent is the idealized agent who is like the actual agent in all respects, except that she has no misconceptions about the way in which the belief was formed. Of course, in the case described the actual agent might not be able to appreciate the defeat of what I have referred to as 'actual justification', but that does not mean that that justification is not defeated- in an externalist sense. And (HOVUD) has the tools to account for that defeat. The relation between (HOVUD) and the defeat of externalist justification can be seen clearly by considering the following similar worry. Suppose that the subject S is (non-culpably) unaware of the fact that she has formed her belief in p on the basis of source X, and that the defeater, although it does nothing to show that X is the source of S's belief, challenges the epistemic worthiness of X. Does not (HOVUD) in this case predict defeat when intuitively none occurs? It is true that (HOVUD) predicts that, in the case described, there is undermining defeat. I stand by that. I also acknowledge that there is an intuitive sense in which there is no defeat, but the intuitions at play here involve an internalist conception of 13 Thanks to two anonymous referees for alerting me to the issues discussed in this section. Undermining Defeat and Propositional Justification 277 epistemic justification, according to which a subject can only be justified if she is aware of the relevant justifying factors, as it were. In the case at hand, on an internalist conception of justification, S is not justified in believing that p on the basis of source X because S is not aware that she based her belief on source X. And, the objection goes, if there is no justification, there is no defeat. I have no quibbles with that. However, what the objection fails to mention is that, in an externalist sense-which does not require the subject to be aware of the relevant justifying factors-S is justified in believing that p on the basis of source X (assuming the conditions on the source posed by the relevant externalist account of justification are met). And such externalist justification is precisely the one that (HOVUD) predicts gets defeated.14 The lesson that we should draw from the cases illustrated in this section is that (HOVUD) is neutral with respect to at least some of the dimensions along which epistemic justification can vary. (HOVUD) is a theory of undermining defeat that explains how undermining defeat works in either internalist or externalist cases, and regardless of whether the justification in question is actual or putative. Let us now turn to the extension of (HOVUD) to propositional justification. 2. The Limit to Doxastic Justification Before we see why (HOVUD) is limited to doxastic justification, and why that should be a reason of concern, let us recall the difference between propositional and doxastic justification. It is common to account for the distinction between propositional and doxastic justification along the following lines: when a subject has a reason or evidence to believe that p, she has propositional justification to believe that p; when a subject has a reason or evidence to believe that p, and bases her belief that p on those reasons or that evidence, she is doxastically justified in believing that p.15 If a subject is doxastically justified in believing a proposition, she also has propositional justification to believe that proposition, but not vice versa: in other words, doxastic justification entails propositional justification, but not vice versa. Here is a quick example: an agent that justifiedly believes that Cagliari is in Sardinia, and that Sardinia is in Italy, has propositional justification to believe that Cagliari is in Italy, but it is when the agent (competently) draws the relevant inference that she is (doxastically) justified in believing that Cagliari is in Sardinia. To see why (HOVUD) is limited to doxastic justification, we need to understand that while doxastic justification requires that the proposition justified is believed by the agent, propositional justification does not. Recall that according to (HOVUD), underminers work by appealing to some higher-order commitments about the way in which the relevant belief was originally formed. But propositional justification does not require belief formation, and thus does not require 14 To put the point in terms of the relevant agent, we might say that the higher-order commitments involved concern propositions that an idealized agent-alike the actual agent in all respects, except that she does not ignore how the belief was formed-would take to be true or warranted. 15 See Feldman (2002: 46) and Pollock and Cruz (1999: 35-36) for just two examples of this way of drawing the distinction. Giacomo Melis 278 any commitments about belief-formation. So, (HOVUD) does not apply to propositional justification. To see why the advocate of (HOVUD) should be concerned by this limitation, consider the following variation of example (1). Suppose that Adam tells me many things and that, before I have a chance to consider them and update my set of beliefs, Lauren tells me that Adam is a compulsive liar. In such a case, I obtain an underminer for the justification I get from Adam's testimony, before I have a chance to form the beliefs whose higher-order commitments (HOVUD) predicts that the underminer calls into question. Thus, (HOVUD) cannot account for such a case. And the reason is that the underminer in question affects the propositional justification to believe propositions before the agent actually forms any belief on the basis of that justification. The lesson seems to be that the phenomenon of defeat arises with respect to propositional justification. If so, any account that, like (HOVUD), is tied to doxastic justification does not generalize far enough.16 3. Extending (HOVUD) to Propositional Justification In this section I will argue that (HOVUD) can be extended to propositional justification in virtue of the close relationship that exists between propositional and doxastic justification. In a nutshell, propositional justification involves higherorder commitments analogous to those involved in doxastic justification, and those commitments are what underminers call into question in the defeat of propositional justification. But let us begin with the relationship between propositional and doxastic justification. We said that a subject that bases her belief in p on some evidence e is doxastically justified in believing p. However, the justificatory process that brings the subject to believe p on the basis of e is grounded in a relation between e and p that is in place regardless of whether the subject uses it to her avail. That relation of support between e and p is propositional justification. In this sense, doxastic justification arises from propositional justification. Let me briefly expand on this. Consider the set of the propositions that constitute the subject's evidence. Those propositions epistemically support a number of other propositions, to which they are related in propositional justification. The use of that epistemic link to form a justified belief (doxastic justification) is available to the subject since the moment in which she acquires the evidence, but it might take a while before she follows that link to form an actual belief, if ever. Justificatory processes proceed along that pre-existing epistemic link and lead the subject to doxastic justification. What matters for our purposes is that the relations of (propositional) justification between the propositions in the set of the evidence and those in the set of what is supported by the evidence involve higher-order commitments. Of course, they are not commitments about actual belief-formation, but rather commitments about the ways in which e supports p.17 Those are the commitments that are challenged by undermining defeaters. Let us consider the problematic case for (HOVUD) mentioned in the previous section. The (propositional) justification to believe the various propositions 16 Thanks to Declan Smithies for bringing this issue to my attention in correspondence. 17 They concern the source of justification, the acquisition of the evidence e provided by the source, and the relation of support between e and p. Undermining Defeat and Propositional Justification 279 that Adam is testifying involves the commitment towards the proposition that the source of justification is Adam's testimony. Such commitment does not concern belief-formation, but only the support relation that exists between the propositions that work as justifiers (propositions of the form 'Adam says that p') and the propositions justified (the various corresponding p's). For the acquisition of the information that Adam is a compulsive liar to undermine the (propositional) justification to believe what Adam says, that commitment has got to be in place: should the relevant agent take the propositional justifications in question to be due to Peter's testimony rather than Adam's, the information that Adam is not to be trusted would not have any undermining effect. Moreover, it is the epistemic worthiness of that very commitment that is called into question by the undermining defeater, which suggests that Adam is not a reliable source. This is all very much in the spirit of (HOVUD). Here is a formulation of a version of (HOVUD) that applies to propositional justification. (HOVUD-prop) Underminers suggest that something was wrong with the source of justification or with the grounds that support p, and they operate their defeat by appealing to the higher-order commitment that p is supported by that source or those grounds. If the suggestion is that something was wrong with the grounds, rather than with the source, the defectiveness is to be understood as the occurrence of a mistake or some other disturbing event that spoiled the epistemic worthiness of the grounds. Of course, the main difference between (HOVUD) and (HOVUD-prop) is that the former talks about commitments concerning the formation of a justified belief, and the latter talks about commitments concerning the formation of a justification which need not result in belief formation. Just like in the case of doxastic justification, the commitments involved in propositional justification concern propositions that the relevant agent would take to be true on reflection (as long as she sticks to the corresponding justification). However, the agent that would take the higher-order propositions to be true or warranted on reflection is, once again, an idealized one: it is the idealized agent that, on the basis of the same body of evidence available to the actual agent, goes on to form all the beliefs that are supported by that body of evidence (including those that, for whatever reason, the actual agent fails to form). A second difference worth noticing is that the notion of justificatory process included in (HOVUD) has been substituted with that of grounds in (HOVUDprop). The reason is that justificatory processes are largely mental and have to do with belief-formation, and thus cannot play a role in (HOVUD-prop). However, propositional justification offers something that underlies the justificatory process involved in doxastic justification, and I have called that 'the grounds for p'. I understand grounds as a non-mental analogue of justificatory processes: the pre-existing epistemic path that goes from the subject's acquisition of e to the conferral of the positive epistemic status to p. Such a notion of grounds can thus refer both to the acquisition of the evidence (from which the epistemic path begins) and to the relation between the evidence and the proposition supported p (which constitute the remaining of the epistemic path). Just like justificatory processes, justificatory grounds have their origin in a source of justification. Giacomo Melis 280 Let us now briefly consider the previous examples of undermining defeat and suppose that the justification in question is propositional rather than doxastic. (HOVUD-prop) works in a way just parallel to (HOVUD). In (1) the underminer suggests that the source was not reliable with respect to the subject matter, and the higher-order commitment under attack is that the (propositional) justification to believe that Paul McCartney played in the Beatles has its source in Adam's testimony. In example (3) the underminer suggests that something was wrong with the grounds, and the commitment under attack is that the (propositional) justification to believe p is given by that alleged proof (as opposed to the agent's execution of that alleged proof, which constitutes the justificatory process). 4. Conclusion To conclude, I acknowledge that, in an important sense, the phenomenon of defeat arises at the propositional level. Since the phenomenon of defeat concerns justification, and, at least in the way explained above, propositional justification comes before doxastic justification, it is no surprise that the phenomenon of defeat concerns primarily propositional justification. Yet, as I hope to have shown, (HOVUD) can easily be extended to account for the defeat of propositional justification. More generally, (HOVUD) promises to have the tools to account for undermining defeat regardless of several of the dimensions along which justification can vary: propositional vs. doxastic, actual vs. putative, externalist vs. internalist.18 References Casullo, A. 2003, A Priori Justification, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Feldman, R. 2002, Epistemology, Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall. Melis, G. 2014, "Understanding Undermining Defeat", Philosophical Studies, 170, 433-42. Pollock, J. 1974, Knowledge and Justification, Princeton: Princeton University Press. Pollock, J. and Cruz, J. 1999, Contemporary Theories of Knowledge, 2nd ed., New York: Rowan & Littlefield. Sturgeon, S. 2014, "Pollock on Defeasible Reasons", Philosophical Studies, 169, 10518. 18 I would like to thank Declan Smithies and Carrie Jenkins for very helpful discussions, and everyone who attended the Philosophy Work In Progress seminar at the University of Aberdeen in February 2014, where an early version of this paper was presented. I am especially grateful to two anonymous referees for raising several precious questions, which led to a substantial improvement of the article. | {
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Buku yang ditulis selama perjalanan perkuliahan melalui perkembangan diskusi di kelas atau bahkan pengkajian terhadap referensi terdahulu dalam perkuliahan analisis dan pengembangan kurikulum. Motivasi belajar tinggi yang diberikan oleh mahasiswa dalam mengikuti perkuliahan memberikan energi positif bagi penulis untuk menuangkan ide dalam bentuk tulisan. Mudah-mudahan buku ini dapat memberikan tambahan pengetahuan bagi kita semua terhadap pengembangan kurikulum sekolah. Sebagai ungkapan akhir, semoga buku dengan cetakan pertama ini dapat di terima oleh para pembaca. Segala kekurangan yang dijumpa di dalamnya, semata-mata dikarenakan oleh keterbatasan pengetahuan penulis sendiri. Manusia bukan makhluk sempurna, ada keterbatasan pada dirinya. Mudahmudahan pembaca dapat memakluminya. Cirebon, Agustus 2015 Penyusun, Widodo Winarso DAFTAR ISI Halaman KATA PENGATAR DAFTAR ISI BAB I PENDAHULUAN BAB II LANDASAN PENGEMBANGAN KURIKULUM BAB III KONSEP PENGEMBANGAN KURIKULUM BAB IV PENDEKATAN DAN MODEL PENGEMBANGAN KURIKULUM BAB V STRUKTUR DAN PENGEMBANGAN KURIKULUM BAB VI PERAN PENGEMBANG KURIKULUM BAB VII EVALUASI KURIKULUM BAB VIII PERKEMBANGAN KURIKULUM DARI MASA KE MASA BAB IX KURIKULUM 2013; TANTANGAN DAN HARAPAN Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 1 Pada hakikatnya pengembangan kurikulum itu merupakan usaha untuk mencari bagaimana rencana dan pengaturan mengenai tujuan, isi, dan bahan pelajaran serta cara yang digunakan sebagai pedoman penyelenggaraan kegiatan pembelajaran yang sesuai dengan perkembangan dan kebutuhan untuk mencapai tujuan tertentu dalam suatu lembaga. Pengembangan kurikulum diarahkan pada pencapaian nilai-nilai umum, konsep-konsep, masalah dan keterampilan yang akan menjadi isi kurikulum yang disusun dengan fokus pada nilai-nilai tadi. Adapun selain berpedoman pada landasan-landasan yang ada, pengembangan kurikulum juga berpijak pada prinsip-prinsip pengembangan kurikulum. Berdasarkan UU No. 20 tahun 2003 Bab X tentang kurikulum, pasal 36 ayat 1 bahwa pengembangan kurikulum dilakukan dengan mengacu pada standar nasional pendidikan untuk mewujudkan tujuan pendidikan nasional. Suatu kurikulum diharapkan memberikan landasan, isi dan menjadi pedoman bagi pengembangan kemampuan siswa secara optimal sesuai dengan tuntunan dan tantangan perkembangan masyarakat. Istilah "Kurikulum" memiliki berbagai tafsiran yang dirumuskan oleh pakar-pakar dalam bidang pengembangan kurikulum sejak dulu sampai dewasa ini. Tafsiran-tafsiran tersebut berbeda-beda satu dengan yang lainnya, sesuai dengan titik berat inti dan pandangan dari pakar yang bersangkutan. Istilah kurikulum berasal dari bahas latin, yakni "Curriculae", artinya jarak yang harus ditempuh oleh seorang pelari. Pada waktu itu, pengertian kurikulum ialah jangka waktu pendidikan yang harus ditempuh BAB I PENDAHULUAN Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 2 oleh siswa yang bertujuan untuk memperoleh ijazah. Dengan menempuh suatu kurikulum, siswa dapat memperoleh ijazah. Dalam hal ini, ijazah pada hakikatnya merupakan suatu bukti , bahwa siswa telah menempuh kurikulum yang berupa rencana pelajaran, sebagaimana halnya seorang pelari telah menempuh suatu jarak antara satu tempat ketempat lainnya dan akhirnya mencapai finish. Dengan kata lain, suatu kurikulum dianggap sebagai jembatan yang sangat penting untuk mencapai titik akhir dari suatu perjalanan dan ditandai oleh perolehan suatu ijazah tertentu. Di Indonesia istilah "kurikulum" boleh dikatakan baru menjadi populer sejak tahun lima puluhan, yang dipopulerkan oleh mereka yang memperoleh pendidikan di Amerika Serikat. Kini istilah itu telah dikenal orang di luar pendidikan. Sebelumnya yang lazim digunakan adalah "rencana pelajaran" pada hakikatnya kurikulum sama sama artinya dengan rencana pelajaran. Kurikulum memuat isi dan materi pelajaran. Kurikulum ialah sejumlah mata ajaran yang harus ditempuh dan dipelajari oleh siswa untuk memperoleh sejumlah pengetahuan. Mata ajaran (subject matter) dipandang sebagai pengalaman orang tua atau orang-orang pandai masa lampau, yang telah disusun secara sistematis dan logis. Mata ajaran tersebut mengisis materi pelajaran yang disampaikan kepada siswa, sehingga memperoleh sejumlah ilmu pengetahuan yang berguna baginya. Kurikulum sebagai rencana pembelajaran. Kurikulum adalah suatu program pendidikan yang disediakan untuk membelajarkan siswa. Dengan program itu para siswa melakukan berbagai kegiatan belajar, sehingga terjadi perubahan dan perkembangan tingkah laku siswa, sesuai dengan tujuan pendidikan dan pembelajaran. Dengan kata lain, sekolah menyediakan lingkungan bagi siswa yang memberikan kesempatan belajar. Itu sebabnya, suatu kurikulum harus disusun sedemikian rupa agar maksud tersebut dapat tercapai. Kurikulum tidak terbatas pada sejumlah mata pelajaran saja, Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 3 melainkan meliputi segala sesuatu yang dapat mempengaruhi perkembangan siswa, seperti: bangunan sekolah, alat pelajaran, perlengkapan, perpustakaan, gambar-gambar, halaman sekolah, dan lain-lain; yang pada gilirannya menyediakan kemungkinan belajar secara efektif. Semua kesempatan dan kegiatan yang akan dan perlu dilakukan oleh siswa direncanakan dalam suatu kurikulum. Kurikulum sebagai pengelaman belajar. Perumusan/pengertian kurikulum lainnya yang agak berbeda dengan pengertian-pengertian sebelumnya lebih menekankan bahwa kurikulum merupakan serangkaian pengalaman belajar. Salah satu pendukung dari pengalaman ini menyatakan sebagai berikut: "Curriculum is interpreted to mean all of the organized courses, activities, and experiences which pupils have under direction of the school, whether in the classroom or not (Romine dkk, 1945)." Pengertian itu menunjukan, bahwa kegiatan-kegiatan kurikulum tidak terbatas dalam ruang kelas saja, melainkan mencakup juga kegiatan-kegiatan diluar kelas. Tidak ada pemisahan yang tegas antara intra dan ekstra kurikulum. Semua kegiatan yang memberikan pengalaman belajar/pendidikan bagi siswa pada hakikatnya adalah kurikulum. Kurikulum adalah seperangkat rencana dan pengaturan mengenai isi dan bahan pelajaran serta cara yang digunakan sebagai pedoman penyelenggaraan kegiatan pembelajaran untuk mencapai tujuan pendidikan tertentu. (Undang-Undang No.20 TH. 2003 Tentang Sistem Pendidikan Nasional). Kurikulum pendidikan tinggi adalah seperangkat rencana dan pengaturan mengenai isi maupun bahan kajian dan pelajaran serta cara penyampaian dan penilaiannya yang digunakan sebagai pedoman penyelenggaraan kegiatan belajar-mengajar di perguruan tinggi. (Pasal 1 Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 4 Butir 6 Kemendiknas No.232/U/2000 tentang Pedoman Penyusunan Kurikulum Pendidikan Tinggi dan Penilaian Hasil Belajar Mahasiswa). Kurikulum adalah serangkaian mata ajar dan pengalaman belajar yang mempunyai tujuan tertentu, yang diajarkan dengan cara tertentu dan kemudian dilakukan evaluasi. (Badan Standardisasi Nasional SIN 19-70572004 tentang Kurikulum Pelatihan Hiperkes dan Keselamatan Kerja Bagi Dokter Perusahaan). Dari berbagai macam pengertian kurikulum diatas kita dapat menarik garis besar pengertian kurikulum adalah seperangkat rencana dan pengaturan mengenai tujuan, isi, dan bahan pelajaran serta cara yang digunakan sebagai pedoman penyelenggaraan kegiatan pembelajaran untuk mencapai tujuan pendidikan tertentu.Kurikulum merupakan inti dari bidang pendidikan dan memiliki pengaruh terhadap seluruh kegiatan pendidikan. Mengingat pentingnya kurikulum dalam pendidikan dan kehidupan manusia, maka penyusunan kurikulum tidak dapat dilakukan secara sembarangan. Penyusunan kurikulum membutuhkan landasan-landasan yang kuat, yang didasarkan pada hasil-hasil pemikiran dan penelitian yang mendalam. Penyusunan kurikulum yang tidak didasarkan pada landasan yang kuat dapat berakibat fatal terhadap kegagalan pendidikan itu sendiri. Dengan sendirinya, akan berkibat pula terhadap kegagalan proses pengembangan manusia. Kurikulum disusun untuk mewujudkan tujuan pendidikan nasional dengan memperhatikan tahap perkembangan peserta didik dan kesesuaiannya dengan lingkungan, kebutuhan pembangunan nasional, perkembangan ilmu pengetahuan dan tekhnologi serta kesenian, sesuai dengan jenis dan jenjang masing-masing satuan pendidikan. (Bab IX, Ps.37). Pengembangan kurikulum berlandaskan faktor-faktor sebagai berikut: Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 5 1. Tujuan filsafat dan pendidikan nasional yang dijadikan sebagai dasar untuk merumuskan tujuan institusional yang pada gilirannya menjadi landasan dalam merumuskan tujuan kurikulum suatu satuan pendidikan. 2. Sosial budaya dan agama yang berlaku dalam masyarakat kita. 3. Perkembangan peserta didik, yang menunjuk pada karekteristik perkembangan peserta didik. 4. Keadaan lingkungan, yang dalam arti luas meliputi lingkungan manusiawi (interpersonal), lingkungan kebudayaan termasuk iptek (kultural), dan lingkungan hidup (bioekologi), serta lingkungan alam (geoekologis). 5. Kebutuhan pembangunan, yang mencakup kebutuhan pembangunan di bidang ekonomi, kesejahteraan rakyat, hukum, hankam, dan sebagainya. 6. Perkembangan ilmu pengetahuan dan tekhnologi yang sesuai dengan sistem nilai dan kemanusiawian serta budaya bangsa. *** Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 6 Landasan adalah suatu gagasan atau kepercayaan yang menjadi sandaran, suatu prinsip yang mendasari. Dengan demikian landasan pengembangan kurikulum adalah suatu gagasan, suatu asumsi, atau prinsip yang menjadi sandaran atau titik tolak dalam mengembangkan kurikulum agar dapat berfungsi sesuai dengan tuntutan pendidikan dalam UndangUndang No 20 tahun 2003 Tentang Sistem Pendidikan Nasional. Secara umum dapat disimpulkan bahwa landasan pokok dalam pengembangan kurikulum adalah landasan filosofis, landasan psikologis, dan landasan sosial-budaya. A. LANDASAN FILOSOFIS PENGEMBANGAN KURIKULUM Pendidikan berintikan interaksi antar manusia, terutama antara pendidik dan terdidik untuk mencapai tujuan pendidikan. Di dalam interaksi tersebut terlibat isi yang diinteraksikan serta bagaimana interaksi tersebut berlangsung. Apakah yang menjadi tujuan pendiidkan, siapa pendidik dan terdidik, apa isi pendidikan dan bagaimana proses interaksi pendidikan tersebut merupakan pertanyaan – pertanyaan yang membutuhkan jawaban yang mendasar, yang esensial, yaitu jawaban – jawaban filosofis. Secara harfiah filosofis (filsafat) berarti "cinta akan kebijakan" (love of wisdom). Orang belajar berfilsafat agar ia menjadi orang yang mengerti dan berbuat secara bijak. Untuk dapat mengerti kebijakan dan berbuat secara bijak, ia harus tau atau mengetahui. Pengetahuan tersebut diperoleh melalui proses berfikir, yaitu berfikir secara sistematis, logis, dan mendalam. Pemikiran demikian dalam filsafat sering disebut sebagai pemikiran radikal atau berfikir sampai ke akar-akarnya. BAB II LANDASAN PENGEMBANGAN KURIKULUM Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 7 Berfilsafat diartikan pula berfikir secara radikal, berfikir sampai ke akar. Secara akademik, filsafat berarti upaya untuk menggambarkan dan menyatakan sesuatu pandangan yang sistematis dan komprehensif tentang alam semesta dan kedudukan manusia didalamnya. Berfilsafat berarti menangkap sinopsis peristiwa-peristiwa yang simpang siur dalam pengalaman manusia. Terdapat perbadaan pendekatan antara ilmu dengan filsafat dalam mengkaji atau memahami alam semesta ini. Ilmu berkenaan dengan faktafakta sebagaimana adanya, berusaha melihat segala sesuatu secara objektif, menghilangkan hal-hal yang bersifat subjektif. Filsafat melihat segala sesuatu dari sudut bagaimana seharusnya, faktor-faktor subjektif dalam silsafat sangat berpengaruh. Filsafat dan ilmu mempunyai hubungan yang saling mengisi dan melengkapi (komplementer). Filsafat memberikan landasan-landasan dasar bagi ilmu. Keduanya dapat memberikan bahanbahan bagi manusia untuk membantu memecahkan barbagai masalah dalam kehidupannya. Filsafat membahas segala permasalahan yang dihadapi oleh manusia termasuk masalah-masalah pendidikan ini yang disebut filsafat pendidikan. Walaupun dilihat sepintas, filsafat pendidikan ini hanya merupakan aplikasi dari pemikiran-pemikiran filosofis untuk memecahkan masalah-masalah pendidikan, tetapi antara keduanya terdapat hubungan yang sangat erat (Sukmadinata, 2006). Dalam perkembangan kurikulum pun senantiasa berpijak pada aliranaliran filsafat tertentu, sehingga akan mewarnai terhadap konsep dan implementasi kurikulum yang dikembangkan. Dengan merujuk kepada pemikiran Ella Yulaelawati (2003), di bawah ini diuraikan tentang isi daridari masing-masing aliran filsafat, kaitannya dengan pengembangan kurikulum. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 8 1. Perenialisme lebih menekankan pada keabadian, keidealan, kebenaran dan keindahan dari pada warisan budaya dan dampak sosial tertentu. Pengetahuan dianggap lebih penting dan kurang memperhatikan kegiatan sehari-hari. Pendidikan yang menganut faham ini menekankan pada kebenaran absolut , kebenaran universal yang tidak terikat pada tempat dan waktu. Aliran ini lebih berorientasi ke masa lalu. 2. Essensialisme menekankan pentingnya pewarisan budaya dan pemberian pengetahuan dan keterampilan pada peserta didik agar dapat menjadi anggota masyarakat yang berguna. Matematika, sains dan mata pelajaran lainnya dianggap sebagai dasar-dasar substansi kurikulum yang berharga untuk hidup di masyarakat. Sama halnya dengan perenialisme, essesialisme juga lebih berorientasi pada masa lalu. 3. Eksistensialisme menekankan pada individu sebagai sumber pengetahuan tentang hidup dan makna. Untuk memahami kehidupan seseorang mesti memahami dirinya sendiri. Aliran ini mempertanyakan : bagaimana saya hidup di dunia ? Apa pengalaman itu ? 4. Progresivisme menekankan pada pentingnya melayani perbedaan individual, berpusat pada peserta didik, variasi pengalaman belajar dan proses. Progresivisme merupakan landasan bagi pengembangan belajar peserta didik aktif. 5. Rekonstruktivisme merupakan elaborasi lanjut dari aliran progresivisme. Pada rekonstruktivisme, peradaban manusia masa depan sangat ditekankan. Di samping menekankan tentang perbedaan individual seperti pada progresivisme, rekonstruktivisme lebih jauh menekankan tentang pemecahan masalah, berfikir kritis dan sejenisnya. Aliran ini akan mempertanyakan untuk apa berfikir kritis, memecahkan masalah, dan melakukan sesuatu ? Penganut aliran ini menekankan pada hasil belajar dari pada proses. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 9 Aliran Filsafat Perenialisme, Essensialisme, Eksistensialisme merupakan aliran filsafat yang mendasari terhadap pengembangan Model Kurikulum Subjek-Akademis. Sedangkan, filsafat progresivisme memberikan dasar bagi pengembangan Model Kurikulum Pendidikan Pribadi. Sementara, filsafat rekonstruktivisme banyak diterapkan dalam pengembangan Model Kurikulum Interaksional. Masing-masing aliran filsafat pasti memiliki kelemahan dan keunggulan tersendiri. Oleh karena itu, dalam praktek pengembangan kurikulum, penerapan aliran filsafat cenderung dilakukan secara eklektif untuk lebih mengkompromikan dan mengakomodasikan berbagai kepentingan yang terkait dengan pendidikan. Meskipun demikian saat ini, pada beberapa negara dan khususnya di Indonesia, tampaknya mulai terjadi pergeseran landasan dalam pengembangan kurikulum, yaitu dengan lebih menitikberatkan pada filsafat rekonstruktivisme (Yulaelawati, 2003). Berdasarkan luas lingkup yang menjadi objek kajiannya, filsafat dapat dibagi dalam dua cabang besar, yaitu: 1. Cabang Filsafat Umum a. Metafisika, membahas hakikat kenyataan atau realitas yang meliputi (1) metafisika umum atau ontologi, dan (2) metafisika khusus yang meliputi kosmologi (hakikat alam semesta), teologi (hakikat ketuhanan) dan antrofologi filsafat (hakikat manusia). b. Epistemologi dan logika, membahas hakikat pengetahuan (sumber pengetahuan, metode mencari pengetahuan, kesahihan pengetahuan, dan batas-batas pengetahuan); dan hakikat penalaran (induktif dan deduktif). Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 10 c. Aksiologi, membahas hakikat nilai dengan cabang-cabangnya etika (hakikat kebaikan), dan estetika (hakikat keindahan). 2. Cabang-cabang filsafat khusus atau filsafat terapan Cabang-cabang filsafat khusus atau filsafat terapan, pembagiannya didasarkan pada kekhususan objeknya antara lain: filsafat hukum, filsafat sejarah, filsafat ilmu, filsafat religi, filsafat moral, filsafat ilmu, dan filsafat pendidikan. Filsafat pendidikan pada dasarnya adalah penerapan dari pemikiranpemikiran filsafat untuk memecahkan permasalahan pendidikan. Dengan demikian filsafat memiliki manfaat dan memberikan kontribusi yang besar terutama dalam memberikan kajian sistematis berkenaan dengan kepentingan pendidikan. Nasution (1986) mengidentifikasi beberapa manfaat filsafat pendidikan, yaitu: a. Filsafat pendidikan dapat menentukan arah akan dibawa ke mana anakanak melalui pendidikan di sekolah? Sekolah ialah suatu lembaga yang didirikan untuk mendidik anak-anak ke arah yang dicita-citakan oleh masyarakat, bangsa, dan negara. b. Dengan adanya tujuan pendidikan yang diwarnai oleh filsafat yang dianut, kita mendapat gambaran yang jelas tentang hasil yang harus dicapai. Manusia yang bagaimanakah yang harus diwujudkan melalui usaha-usaha pendidikan itu? c. Filsafat dan tujuan pendidikan memberi kesatuan yang bulat kepada segala usaha pendidikan. d. Tujuan pendidikan memungkinkan si pendidik menilai usahanya, hingga manakah tujuan itu tercapai. e. Tujuan pendidikan memberikan motivasi atau dorongan bagi kegiatankegiatan pendidikan. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 11 Pandangan-pandangan filsafat sangat dibutuhkan dalam pendidikan, terutama dalam menentukan arah dan tujuan pendidikan. Filsafat akan menentukan arah ke mana peserta didik akan dibawa. Untuk itu harus ada kejelasan tentang pandangan hidup manusia atau tentang hidup dan eksistensinya. Filsafat atau pandangan hidup yang dianut oleh suatu bangsa atau kelompok masyarakat tertentu atau bahkan yang dianut oleh perorangan akan sangat mempengaruhi tujuan pendidikan yang ingin dicapai. Sedangkan tujuan pendidikan sendiri pada dasarnya merupakan rumusan yang komprehensif mengenai apa yang seharusnya dicapai. Tujuan pendidikan memuat pernyataan-pernyataan mengenai berbagai kemampuan yang diharapkan dapat dimiliki oleh peserta didik selaras dengan sistem nilai dan falsafah yang dianutnya. Dengan demikian, sistem nilai atau filsafat yang dianut oleh suatu komunitas akan memiliki keterkaitan yang sangat erat dengan rumusan tujuan pendidikan yang dihasilkannya. Dengan kata lain, filsafat suatu negara tidak bisa dipungkiri akan mempengaruhi tujuan pendidikan di negara tersebut. Oleh karena itu, tujuan pendidikan di suatu negara akan berbeda dengan tujuan pendidikan di negara lainnya, sebagai implikasi dari adanya perbedaan filsafat yang dianutnya. B. LANDASAN PSIKOLOGIS PENGEMBANGAN KURIKULUM Dalam proses pendidikan terjadi interaksi antar individu manusia, yaitu antara peserta didik dengan pendidik dan juga antara peserta didik dengan orang-orang yang lainnya. Manusia berbeda dengan mahkluk yang lainya, karena kondisi psikologisnya. Manusia berbeda dengan benda atau tanaman, karena benda atau tanaman tidak mempunyai aspek psikologis. Apa yang dimaksud dengan kondisi psikologis itu? Kondisi psikologis merupakan karakteristik psiko-fisik seseorang sebagai individu, yang Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 12 dinyatakan dalam berbagai bentuk perilaku dalam interaksi dengan lingkungannya. Kondisi psikologis tiap individu berbeda, karena perbedaan tahap perkembangannya, latar belakang sosial-budaya, juga karena perbedaan faktor-faktor yang dibawa dari kelahirannya. Kondisi ini peun berbeda pula bergantung pada konteks, peranan, dan status individu diantara individuindividu lainnya. Interaksi yang tercipta dalam situasi pendidikan harus sesuai dengan kondisi psikologis para peserta didik maupun kondisi pendidiknya. Peserta didik adalah individu yang sedang berada dalam proses perkembangan. Perkembangan atau kemajuan-kemajuan yang dialami anak sebagian besar terjadi karena usaha belajar, baik berlangsung melaluiproses peniruan, pengingatan, pembiasan, pemahaman, penerapan, maupun pemecahan masalah. Jadi, minimal ada dua bidang psikologi yang mendasari perkembangan kurikulum yaitu psikologi perkembangan dan psikologi belajar. Keduanya sangat diperlukan, baik di dalam merumuskan tujaun, memilih dan menyusun bahan ajar, memilih dan menerapkan metode pembalarjaran serta teknik-teknik penilaian. Psikologi perkembangan membahas membahas perkembangan individu sejak masa konsepsi, yaitu masa pertemuan spermatozoid dengan sel telur sampai dengan dewasa. Sedangkan psikologi belajar merupakan suatu studi tentang bagaiman individu belajar. Perkembangan kurikulum tidak akan terlepas dari teori belajar. Sebab, pada dasarnya kurikulum disusun untuk membelajarkan siswa. Banyak teori yang membahas tentang belajar sebagai proses perubahan perilaku. Namun, demikian, setiap teori itu berpangkal dari pandangan tentang hakikat manusia (Sukmadinata, 2006). Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 13 1. Psikologi Perkembangan Psikologi perkembangan membahas membahas perkembangan individu sejak masa konsepsi, yaitu masa pertemuan spermatozoid dengan sel telur sampai dengan dewasa. Pengetahuan tentang perrkembangan individu diperoleh melalui studi yang bersifat longitudinal, cross sectional, psikoanalitik, sosiologik, atau studi kasus, studi longitudinal, menghimpun informasi tentang perkembangan individu melalui pengamatan dan pengkajian perkembangan sepanjang masa perkembangan, dari saat lahir sampai dengan dewasa, seperti yang pernah dilkakukan oleh Williard C. Olson. Metode cross sectional pernah dilakukan oleh Arnold Gessel. Ia mempelajari beribu-ribu anak dari berbagai tingkat usia, mencatat ciri-ciri fisik dan mental, pola-pola perkembangan dan kemampuan,serta perilaku mereka. Studi psikoanalitik dilakukan oleh sigmund frued beserta para pengikutnya. Studi ini lebih banyak diarahkan mempelajari perkembangan anak pada masa-masa sebelumnya, terutama pada masa kanak-kanak (balita). Menurut mereka, pengalaman yang tidak menyenangkan pada masa balita ini dapat mengganggu perkembangan pada masa-masa berikutnya. Metode sosiologik digunakan oleh Robert Havighurst. Ia mempelajari perkembangan anak dilihat dari tuntutan akan tugas-tugas yang harus dihadapi dan dilakukan dalam masyarakat. Tuntutan akan tugas-tugas kehidupan masyarakat ini oleh Havighurst disebut sebagai tugas-tugas perkembangan (developmental tasks). Ada seperangkat tugas-tugas perkembangan yang harus dikuasai individu dalam setiap tahap perkembangan. Metode lain yang sering digunakan untuk mengkaji perkembangan anak adalah studi kasus. Dengan mempelajari kasuskasus tertentu, para ahli psikologis perkembangan menarik bebera Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 14 kesimpulan tentang pola-pola perkembangan anak. Studi demikian pernah dilakukan oleh jean piaget tentang perkembangan kognitif anak. Ada tiga teori atau pendekatan tentang perkembangan individu, yaitu pendekatan pentahapan, pendekatan diferensial, dan pendekatan ipsatif. 2. Psikologi Belajar Psikologi belajar merupakan suatu studi tentang bagaimana individu belajar. Banyak sekali definisi tentang belajar. Secara sederhana, belajar dapat diartikan sebagai perubahan tingkah laku yang terjadi melalui pengelaman. Segala perubahan tingkah laku baik yang berbentuk kognitif, efektif, maupun psikomotor dan terjadi karena proses pengalaman dapat dikatagorikan sebagai perilaku belajar. Perubahanperubahan perilaku yang terjadi karena insting atau karena kematangan serta pengaruh hal-hal yang bersifat kimiawi tidak termasuk belajar. Pemahaman tentang teori-teori belajar berdasarkan pendekatan psikologis adalah upaya mengenali kondisi objektif terhadap individu anak yang sedang mengalami proses belajar dalam rangka pertumbuhan dan perkembangan menuju kedewasaannya. Pemahaman yang luas dan koperhensif tentang berbagai teori belajar akan memberikan kontribusi yang sangat berharga bagi para pengembang kurikulum baik ditingkat macro maupun tingkat mikro untuk merumuskan model kurikulum yang diharapkan. Pendekatan terhadap belajar berdasarkan satu teori tertentu merupakan asumsi yang perlu dipertimbangkan dalam pelaksanaannya berkaitan dengan aspek-aspek dan akibat yang mungkin ditimbulkannya. Masih berkenaan dengan landasan psikologis, Ella Yulaelawati (2003) memaparkan teori-teori psikologi yang mendasari Kurikulum Berbasis Kompetensi. Dengan mengutip pemikiran Spencer, Ella Yulaelawati (2003) mengemukakan pengertian kompetensi bahwa kompetensi merupakan Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 15 "karakteristik mendasar dari seseorang yang merupakan hubungan kausal dengan referensi kriteria yang efektif dan atau penampilan yang terbaik dalam pekerjaan pada suatu situasi". Adapun selanjutnya, dikemukakan pula tentang 5 tipe kompetensi, yaitu : 1. Motif; sesuatu yang dimiliki seseorang untuk berfikir secara konsisten atau keinginan untuk melakukan suatu aksi. 2. Bawaan; yaitu karakteristik fisik yang merespons secara konsisten berbagai situasi atau informasi. 3. Konsep diri; yaitu tingkah laku, nilai atau image seseorang; 4. Pengetahuan; yaitu informasi khusus yang dimiliki seseorang; dan 5. Keterampilan; yaitu kemampuan melakukan tugas secara fisik maupun mental. Kelima kompetensi tersebut mempunyai implikasi praktis terhadap perencanaan sumber daya manusia atau pendidikan. Keterampilan dan pengetahuan cenderung lebih tampak pada permukaan ciri-ciri seseorang, sedangkan konsep diri, bawaan dan motif lebih tersembunyi dan lebih mendalam serta merupakan pusat kepribadian seseorang. Kompetensi permukaan (pengetahuan dan keterampilan) lebih mudah dikembangkan. Pelatihan merupakan hal tepat untuk menjamin kemampuan ini. Sebaliknya, kompetensi bawaan dan motif jauh lebih sulit untuk dikenali dan dikembangkan. Dalam konteks Kurikulum Berbasis Kompetensi, E. Mulyasa (2004) menyoroti tentang aspek perbedaan dan karakteristik peserta didik, Dikemukakannya, bahwa sedikitnya terdapat lima perbedaan dan karakteristik peserta didik yang perlu diperhatikan dalam Kurikulum Berbasis Kompetensi, yaitu : (1) perbedaan tingkat kecerdasan; (2) Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 16 perbedaan kreativitas; (3) perbedaan cacat fisik; (4) kebutuhan peserta didik; dan (5) pertumbuhan dan perkembangan kognitif. C. LANDASAN SOSIAL-BUDAYA PENGEMBANGAN KURIKULUM Kurikulum dapat dipandang sebagai suatu rancangan pendidikan. Sebagai suatu rancangan, kurikulum menentukan pelaksanaan dan hasil pendidikan. Kita maklumi bahwa pendidikan merupakan usaha mempersiapkan peserta didik untuk terjun kelingkungan masyarakat. Pendidikan bukan hanya untuk pendidikan semata, namun memberikan bekal pengetahuan, keterampilan serta nilai-nilai untuk hidup, bekerja dan mencapai perkembangan lebih lanjut di masyarakat. Peserta didik berasal dari masyarakat, mendapatkan pendidikan baik formal maupun informal dalam lingkungan masyarakat dan diarahkan bagi kehidupan masyarakat pula. Kehidupan masyarakat, dengan segala karakteristik dan kekayaan budayanya menjadi landasan dan sekaligus acuan bagi pendidikan. Dengan pendidikan, kita tidak mengharapkan muncul manusia – manusia yang menjadi terasing dari lingkungan masyarakatnya, tetapi justru melalui pendidikan diharapkan dapat lebih mengerti dan mampu membangun kehidupan masyakatnya. Oleh karena itu, tujuan, isi, maupun proses pendidikan harus disesuaikan dengan kebutuhan, kondisi, karakteristik, kekayaan dan perkembangan yang ada di masyakarakat. Setiap lingkungan masyarakat masing-masing memiliki-sosial budaya tersendiri yang mengatur pola kehidupan dan pola hubungan antar anggota masyarkat. Salah satu aspek penting dalam sistem sosial budaya adalah tatanan nilai-nilai yang mengatur cara berkehidupan dan berperilaku para warga masyarakat. Nilai-nilai tersebut dapat bersumber dari agama, budaya, politik atau segi-segi kehidupan lainnya. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 17 Sejalan dengan perkembangan masyarakat maka nilai-nilai yang ada dalam masyarakat juga turut berkembang sehingga menuntut setiap warga masyarakat untuk melakukan perubahan dan penyesuaian terhadap tuntutan perkembangan yang terjadi di sekitar masyarakat. Israel Scheffer (dalam Nana Syaodih Sukamdinata, 1997) mengemukakan bahwa melalui pendidikan manusia mengenal peradaban masa lalu, turut serta dalam peradaban sekarang dan membuat peradaban masa yang akan datang. Dengan demikian, kurikulum yang dikembangkan sudah seharusnya mempertimbankan, merespons dan berlandaskan pada perkembangan sosial-budaya dalam suatu masyarakat, baik dalam konteks lokal, nasional maupun global. Gagasan pemerintah untuk merealisasikan penegmbangan kurikulum muatan lokal tersebut yang dimulai pada sekolah dasar, tlah diwujudkan dalam Keputusan, Menteri Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan RI No. 0412/U/1987 Tanggal 11 Juli 1987 tentang penerapan Muatan Lokal Sekolah Dasar kemudian disusul dengan penjabaran pelaksanaanya dalam Keputusan Direktur Jendral Pendidikan Dasar Menengah No. 173/C/Kep/M/1987Tanggal 7 Oktober 1987dalam sambutannya Mendikbud menyatakan:" Dalam hal ini harus diingat bahwa adanya"muatan lokal" dalam kurikulum bukan bertujuan agar anak terjerat dalam lingkungannya semata-mata. Semua anak berhak mendapat kesempatan guna lebih terlibat dalam mobilitas yang melampaui batas lingkungannya sendiri" (Umar Tirtaraharja dan Lasula, 2000). Contoh kurikulum muatan lokal yang saat ini sudah dilaksanakan disebagian besar bsekolah adalah mata pelajaran Keterampilan, Kesenian dan Bahasa Daerah. Tujuan pengembangan kurikulum muatan lokal dapat dilihat dari kepentingan nasional dan kepentingan peserta didik. Dalam hubungannya dengan kepentingan nasional muatan lokal bertujuan: Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 18 1. melestarikan dan mengembangkan kebudayaan yang khas daerah. 2. Mengubah nilai dan sikap terhadap masyarakat lingkungan kearah yang positif. Jika dilihat dari sudut kepentingan peserta didik pengembangan kurikulum muatan lokal bertujuan sebagai berikut. 1. Meningkatkan pemahaman peserta didik terhadap lingkungannya (lingkungan alam sosial dan budaya) 2. Mengakrabkan peserta didik dengan lingkungannya sehingga mereka tidak asing dengan lingkungannya. 3. Menerapkan pengetahuan dan keterampilan yang dipelajari untuk memecahkan masalah yang ditemukan dilingkungan sekitarnya (Umar Tirtarahardja dan La Sula,2000). *** Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 19 A. KONSEP PENGEMBANGAN KURIKULUM Undang-undang Nomor 20 Tahun 2003 tentang Sistem Pendidikan Nasional menyebutkan bahwa kurikulum adalah seperangkat rencana dan pengaturan mengenai tujuan, isi, dan bahan pelajaran serta cara yang digunakan sebagai pedoman penyelenggaraan kegiatan pembelajaran untuk mencapai tujuan pendidikan tertentu. Kurikulum adalah program pendidikan yang disediakan oleh lembaga pendidikan (sekolah) bagi siswa. Berdasarkan program pendidikan tersebut siswa melakukan berbagai kegiatan belajar, sehingga mendorong perkembangan dan pertumbuhannya sesuai dengan tujuan pendidikan yang telah ditetapkan. Dengan program kurikuler tersebut, sekolah/ lembaga pendidikan menyediakan lingkungan pendidikan bagi siswa untuk berkembang. Oleh karena itu, kurikulum disusun sedemikian rupa yang memungkinkan siswa melakukan berbagai kegiatan belajar. Kurikulum tidak terbatas pada pada sejumlah mata pelajaran, namum meliputi segala sesuatu yang dapat mempengaruhi perkembangan siswa seperti: bangunan sekolah, alat pelajaran, perlengkapan sekolah, perpustakaan, karyawan tata usaha, gambar-gambar, halaman sekolah, dan lain-lain. Berdasarkan rumusan di atas, kegiatan-kegiatan kurikuler tidak terbatas dalam ruangan kelas, melainkan mencakup juga kegiatan di luar kelas. Pandangan modern menjelaskan, bahwa antara kegiatan intrakurikuler dan kegiatan ekstrakurikuler tidak ada pemisahan yang tegas. Seluruh BAB III KONSEP PENGEMBANGAN KURIKULUM Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 20 kegiatannya bertujuan untuk memberikan pengalaman pendidikan kepada siswa yang tercakup dalam kurikulum. Meskipun pandangan tersebut diterima, namun pada umunya guruguru tetap berpandangan bahwa kegiatan-kegiatan dalam kelas saja yang termasuk kurikulum, sedangkan kegiatan di luar kelas dari segi nilai edukatif yang diberikan oleh kurikulum itu. Penganut pandangan ini tetap menyadari, bahwa kegiatan-kegiatan ekstra merupakan bagian khusus dalam program pendidikan sekolah. Pandangan yang dikemukakan oleh I. P. Simanjuntak (dalam Oemar Hamalik, 2008) juga mendapat perhatian dilihat dari pola pikir sistematik yang ilmiah dan rasional, dimana kurikulum dikaji dari berbagai aspek, yakni sebagai berikut. 1. Kurikulum berkenaan dengan fungsi Pada garis besarnya, suatu kurikulum diperuntukkan bagi warga negara (calon warga negara), calon anggota/ pembentuk keluarga yang baru, calon anggota masyarakat, calon anggota profesi, dan sebagainya. 2. Kurikulum itu disediakan untuk siapa? Pertanyaan tersebut berkenaan dengan siapa yang akan mendapat dan mengikuti kegiatan-kegiatan kurikulum tersebut. Jadi secara langsung berkenaan dengan siswa. karena itu kurikulum harus mempertimbangkan aspek perkembangan, kemampuan, intelegensi, kebutuhan, minat dan permasalahan yang dihadapi siswa. implikasinya, isi kurikulum atau bahan pelajaran harus bersumber dan sesuai dengan lingkungan anak tersebut. 3. Kurikulum itu diberikan untuk membantu menjadi apa? Pertanyaan di atas berkenaan dengan tujuan kurikulum. Secara khusus perlu dipertanyakan apakah kurikulum itu ditujukan untuk mempersiapkan anak melanjutkan sekolah ke tingkat yang lebih tinggi, Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 21 atau untuk mempersiapkan anak ke lapangan kerja yang tersedia dalam masyarakat, atau kedua-duanya. Bertalian dengan masalah tersebut, selanjutnya perlu dipertimbangkan apakah kurikulum itu bersifat educable atau trainable, di samping mempertimbangkan juga usaha membentuk kepribadian yang terintegrasi dalam semua aspek (kognitif, afektif dan psikomotorik). Implikasinya adalah berkenaan dengan penentuan program pendidikan umum, program pendidikan khusus dan program-program lainnya yang diperlukan. 4. Hal-hal apa saja yang harus tercakup dalam kurikulum? Pertanyaan tersebut berkenaan dengan isi kurikulum. Untuk memilih dan menentukan isi kurikulum harus berdasarkan tujuan yang hendak dicapai. Tujuan-tujuan itu dilihat dari segi: a. Aspek hakikat manusia b. Tuntutan dalam pembangunan c. Tuntutan bagi setiap warga negara dengan nilai-nilai dasar dalam konstitusi, aspirasi masyarakat, dan kebudayaan nasional. Isi kurikulum senantiasa disusun dalam bentuk program pengajaran bidang studi. Materi kurikulum secara struktural memiliki keseimbangan, serasi dengan lingkungan, keluwesan, berkesinambungan, yang disusun dalam urutan topik-topik pelajaran dalam ruang lingkup tertentu. 5. Bagaimana melaksanakan kurikulum? Pertanyaan tersebut berkenaan dengan aspek metodologi pengajaran. Masalah ini erat pertaliannya dengan tujuan yang hendak dicapai, anak yang belajar, guru yang mengajar, bahan pelajaran, alat bantu pengajaran. Pendekatan metodologi umumnya telah digariskan dalam kurikulum. Misalnya dalam kurikulum tahun 1975 telah ditegaskan, bahwa metode yang digunakan adalah pendekatan "Prosedur Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 22 Pengembangan Sistem Instruksional (PPSI)". Dewasa ini telah dikembangkan sistem instruksional berdasarkan tujuan yang spesifik, dapat diukur dan berdasarkan perubahan tingkah laku yang diharapkan, guru lebih banyak berperan sebagai pembimbing dan fasilitator. Murid lebih aktif, bahan yang serasi dengan tingkat perkembangan dan kebutuhan anak, alat peraga sederhana dan sesuai dengan tingkat perkembangan, kebutuhan anak dan sesuai dengan tujuan yang hendak dicapai serta mudah diperoleh, di samping menggunakan teknologi pendidikan yang lebih maju sesuai dengan kemungkinan yang ada. Untuk itu, dianjurkan agar guru-guru lebih banyak menggunakan metodemetode, seperti: diskusi, pemecahan masalah, karya wisata, pengajaran berprogram dan sistem modul, selain model ceramah yang sampai sekarang masih dipakai oleh sebagian besar guru. 6. Bagaimana cara mengetahui hasil kurikulum? Pertanyaan tersebut berkenaan dengan sistem evaluasi. Dalam pedoman pelaksanaan kurikulum umumnya telah ditentukan sistem dan alat evaluasi yang perlu digunakan guru. Evaluasi yang digunakan secara formatif maupun secara summatif. Bentuk evaluasi yang digunakan secara objektif dan komprehensif. Di samping evaluasi hasil belajar juga dikembangkan prosedur evaluasi kurikulum dan evaluasi program pendidikan. Dalam sistem pendidikan nasional, dinyatakan bahwa kurikulum adalah seperangkat rencana dan pengaturan isi dan lahan pelajaran serta cara yang digunakan sebagai pedoman penyelenggaraan kegitan belajar mengajar. Rumusan ini lebih spesifik yang mengandung pokok-pokok pikiran, sebagai berikut. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 23 1) Kurikulum merupakan perencanaan 2) Kurikulum merupakan pengaturan, berarti mempunyai sistematika dan struktur tertentu. 3) Kurikulum memuat isi dan bahan pelajaran, menunjuk kepada perangkat mata ajaran tertentu. 4) Kurikulum mengandung cara, atau metode atau strategi penyampaian pengajaran. 5) Kurikulum merupakan pedoman penyelenggaraan kegiatan belajar mengajar 6) Meskipun tidak tertulis, namun telah tersirat di dalam kurikulum, yakni kurikulum dimaksudkan untuk mencapai tujuan pendidikan. 7) Berdasarkan poin 6, maka kurikulum sebenarnya adalah suatu alat pendidikan. Rumusan tersebut menunjukkan, faktor-faktor yang harus diperhatikan dalam penyusunan suatu kurikulum, yaitu: 1) Tujuan pendidikan nasional perlu dijabarkan menjadi tujuan-tujuan institusional, selanjutnya dirinci menjadi tujuan kurikuler, yang pada gilirannya dirumuskan menjadi tujuan-tujuan instruksional (Umum dan Khusus), yang mendasari perencanaan pengajaran. 2) Tahap perkembangan peserta didik merupakan landasan psikologis, yang mencakup psikologi perkembangan dan psikologi belajar, yang mengacu pada proses pembelajaran. 3) Kesesuaian dengan lingkungan menunjuk pada landasan sosiologis (kemasyarakatan) atau lingkungan sosial masyarakat dibarengi oleh landasan biokologis dan kultur ekologis. 4) Kebutuhan pembangunan nasional yang mencakup pengembangan sumber daya manusia dan pembangunan semua sektor ekonomi. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 24 5) Perkembangan ilmu pengetahuan dan teknologi serta kesesuaian merupakan landasan kultural dan budaya bangsa dengan multidimensionalnya. 6) Jenis dan jenjang satuan pendidikan merupakan landasan organisatoris di bidang pendidikan. Jenis pendidikan adalah pendidikan yang dikelompokkan sesuai dengan sifat dan kekhususan tujuan. Dari penjelasan pengertian kurikulum di atas dapat disimpulkan bahwa kurikulum adalah perangkat program pendidikan yang di dalamnya memuat perencanaan pendidikan, bahan pelajaran dan strategi pembelajaran serta bentuk penilaian pembelajaran sebagai pedoman penyelenggaraan kegiatan belajar mengajar. Adapun terdapat dua hal yang perlu di pertimbangkan dalam menentukan konsep pengembangan kurikulum. Kedua hal tersebut yaitu perekayasaan kurikulum dan asas pengembangan kurikulum sekolah. 1. Perekayasaan Kurikulum Perekayasaan kurikulum yang dilaksanakan dalam situasi nyata di sekolah berlangsung melalui 3 proses, yakni: a) Konstruksi kurikulum adalah proses pembuatan keputusan yang menentukan hakikat dan rancangan kurikulum. Proses konstruksi kurikulum pada umunya mendapat perhatian luas dalam pembahasannya, karena menjadi landasan dalam pembuatan keputusan. b) Pengembangan kurikulum adalah prosedur pelaksanaan pembuatan konstruksi kurikulum. Dalam proses pengembangan kurikulum, mencakup 2 hal pokok yaitu: (1) fondasi atau landasan pengembangan kurikulum dan (2)komponen-komponen kurikulum. c) Implementasi kurikulum adalah proses pelaksanaan kurikulum yang dihasilkan oleh konstruksi dan pengembangan kurikulum. Implementasi lebih banyak memperhatikan berbagai faktor yang mempengaruhi pelaksanaan dan perubahan kurikulum. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 25 Rekayasa kurikulum berkenaan dengan bagaimana proses memfungsikan kurikulum di sekolah, upaya-upaya yang perlu dilakukan para pengelola kurikulum agar kurikulum dapat berfungsi sebaik-baiknya. Pengelola kurikulum di sekolah terdiri atas para pengawas/penilik dan kepala sekolah, sedangkan pada tingkat pusat adalah Kepala Pusat Pengembangan Kurikulum Balitbang Dikbud dan para Kasubdit/Kepala Bagian Kurikulum di Direktorat. Dengan menerima pelimpahan wewenang dari Menteri atau Dirjen, para pejabat pusat tersebut merancang, mengembangkan, dan mengadakan penyempurnaan kurikulum. Juga mereka memberi tugas dan tanggung jawab menyusun dan mengembangkan berbagai bentuk pedoman dan petunjuk pelaksanaan kurikulum. Para pengelola di daerah dan sekolah berperan melaksanakan dan mengawasi pelaksanaan kurikulum. 2. Asas Pengembangan Pengembangan kurikulum merupakan inti dalam penyelenggaraan pendidikan, dan oleh karenanya pengembangan dan pelaksanaan harus berdasarkan pada asas-asas pembangunan secara makro. Sistem pengembangan kurikulum harus berdasarkan asas-asas sebagai berikut: a) Kurikulum dan teknologi pendidikan berdasarkan pada asas keimanan dan ketakwaan terhadap Tuhan Yang Maha Esa. b) Kurikulum dan teknologi pendidikan berdasarkan dan diarahkan pada asas demokrasi pancasila c) Pengembangan kurikulum dan teknologi pendidikan berdasarkan dan diarahkan pada asas keadilan dan pemerataan pendidikan d) Pengembangan kurikulum dan teknologi pendidikan dilandasi dan diarahkan berdasarkan asas keseimbangan, keserasian dan keterpaduan e) Pengembangan kurikulum dan teknologi pendidikan dilandasi dan diarahkan berdasarkan asas hukum yang berlaku Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 26 f) Pengembangan kurikulum dan teknologi pendidikan dilandasi dan diarahkan berdasarkan asas kemandirian dan pembentukan manusia mandiri g) Pengembangan kurikulum dan teknologi pendidikan dilandasi dan diarahkan berdasarkan asas nilai-nilai kejuangan bangsa h) Pengembangan kurikulum dan teknologi pendidikan dilandasi dan diarahkan berdasarkan asas pemanfaatan, pengembangan, penciptaan ilmu pengetahuan dan teknologi. B. PRINSIP-PRINSIP PENGEMBANGAN KURIKULUM Kurikulum merupakan rancangan pendidikan yang merangkum semua pengalaman yang disediakan bagi siswa disekolah. Dalam kurikulum terintegrasi filsafat, nilai-nilai, pengetahuan, dan perbuatan pendidikan. Kurikulum disusun oleh para ahli pendidikan/ahli kurikulum, ahli bidang ilmu, pendidik, pejabat pendidikan, pengusaha serta unsur-unsur masyarakat lainnya. Dalam usaha untuk mengembangkan kurikulum ada beberapa prinsip dasar yang harus diperhatikan. agar kurikulum yang dijalankan benar-benar sesuai dengan apa yang diharapkan. Prinsip-prinsip dasar yang akan digunakan dalam kegiatan pengembangan kurikulum pada dasarnya merupakan kaidah-kaidah atau hukum yang akan menjiwai suatu kurikulum. Suatu kurikulum diharapkan memberikan landasan, isi, dan menjadi pedoman bagi pengembangan kemampuan siswa secara optimal sesuai dengan tuntutan dan tantangan perkembangan masyarakat. Dalam prinsip pengembangan kurikulum dibagi kedalam dua prinsip. Kedua prinsip pengembangan kurikulum tersebut yaitu prinsip umum dan prinsip khusus. 1. Prinsip-Prinsip Umum Ada beberapa prinsip umum dalam pengembangan kurikulum, yakni sebagai berikut; Prinsip Pertama relevansi, ada dua macam Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 27 relevansi yang harus dimiliki kurikulum, yaitu relevan keluar dan relevansi didalam kurikulum itu sendiri. Relevansi keluar maksudnya tujuan, isi, dan proses belajar yang yang tercakup dalam kurikulum hendaknya relevan dengan tuntutan, kebutuhan, dan perkembangan masyarakat. Sedangkan suatu kurikulum juga harus memiliki relevansi di dalam yang dimaksud dengan relevansi di dalam yaitu kesesuaian atau konsistensi antara komponen-komponen kurikulum, yaitu antara tujuan, isi, proses penyampaian, dan penilaian. Relevansi internal ini menunjukkan keterpaduan suatu kurikulum (Nana Syaudih Sukmadinata, 1997). Dengan kata lain relevansi adalah kesesuaian, keserasian pendidikan dengan tuntutan masarakat. Pendidikan dikatakan relevan jika hasil pendidikan tersebut berguna secara fungsional bagi masarakat. Masalah relevansi pendidikan dengan masarakat dalam pembicaraan ini adalah berkenaan dengan: a. Relevansi pendidikan dengan lingkungan kehidupan peserta didik Relevansi pendidikan dengan lingkungan kehidupan pesertadidik berarti bahwa dalam mengembangkan kurikulum atau dalam menetapkan bahwa pengajaran yang diajarkan hendaknya dipertimbangkan atau disesuaikan dengan kehidupan nyata disekitar pesertadidik. Misalnya sekolah yang berada di daerah perkotaan, maka kondisi perkotaan hendaknya diperkenalkan kepada pesertadidik. Seperti keramaian lalu lintas di kota dan sebagaimya. b. Relevansi pendidikan dengan kehidupan sekarang dan kehidupan yang akan datang Apa yang diajarkan kepada pesertadidik pada saat ini hendaknya bermanfaat baginya untuk menghadapi kehidupan di masa yang Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 28 akan datang (ingat kurikulum harus bersifat anticipatory). Misalnya cara yang dipergunakan untuk berhitung angka, kalau dahulu masih menggunakan lidi atau jari, setelah adanya kalkulator atau komputer, maka segala perhitungan yang rumit dapat dihitung dengan kalkulator atau komputer. c. Relevansi pendidikan dengan tuntutan dunia kerja Relevansi adalah berkenaan dengan relevansi segi kegiatan belajar. Kurangnya relevansi segi kegiatan belajar ini sering mengakibatkan sukarnya lulusan dalam menghadapi tuntutan dari dunia pekerjaan. Misalnya, sekolah (STM) harus menyesuaikan kurikulumnya dengan perkembangan apa yang sedang terjadi di dunia pekerjaan. d. Relevansi pendidikan dengan perkembangan ilmu pengetahuan dan teknologi Ilmu pengetahuan dan teknologi dewasa ini bekembang dengan laju begitu cepat. Oleh karena itu, pendidikan harus dapat menyesuaikan diri dan bahkan dapat memberikan sumbangan terhadap perkembangan ilmu pengetahuan dan teknologi tersebut. Prisip kedua adalah fleksibilitas, kurikulum hendaknya memilih sifat lentur atau fleksibel. Suatu kurikulum yang baik adalah yang berisi hal-hal yang solid, tetapi dalam pelaksanaannya memungkinkan terjadinya penyesuaian-penyesuaian berdasarkan kondisi daerah, waktu, maupun kemampuan dan latar belakang anak (Nana Syaudih Sukmadinata, 1997). Prinsip feksibilitas menunjukan bahwa kurikulum adalah tidak kaku. Tidak kaku dalam arti bahwa ada semacam ruang gerak yang akan memberikan sedikit kebebasan dalam bertindak. Fleksibilitas dalam memilih program pendidikan dapat berupa dibukanya program-program Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 29 pendidikan pilihan misalnya: jurusan atau program spesialisai atau program keterampilan yang dapat dipilih peserta didik atas dasar kemampuan dan minatnya, sistem kredit semester, dan sebagainya. Prinsip ketiga adalah kontinuitas yaitu kesinambungan. Perkembangan dan proses belajar anak berlangsung secara berkesinambungan, tidak terputus-putus atau berhenti-henti. Oleh karena itu pengalaman-pengalaman belajar yang disediakan kurikulum juga hendaknya berkesinambungan antara satu tingkat kelas, dengan kelas lainnya, antara satu jenjang pendidikan dengan jenjang pendidikan lainnya, juga antara jenjang pendidikan dengan pekerjaan. Kurikulum harus disusun dengan mempertimbangkan hal-hal berikut ini. a. Bahan pelajaran yang diperlukan untuk sekolah yang lebih tinggi harus sudah diajarkan di sekolah sebelumnya, misalnya pelajaran tentang harus sudah diajarkan ditingkat sekolah dasar dan sebagainya. b. Bahan pelajaran yang sudah diajarkan di sekolah yang lebih rendah tidak perlu diajrakan lagi di sekolah yang lebih tinggi. Hal ini akan mengundang kejenuhan peserta didik dalam mengikuti proses pembelajaran. Prinsip ke empat adalah praktis atau efisiensi yaitu mudah dilaksanakan, menggunakan alat sederhana dan biayanya juga murah. Untuk menyelesaikan suatu proram, kita memerlukan waktu, tenagadan biaya yang kadang-kadang sangat besar jumlahnya kesemuanya itu sangat bergantung kepada banyaknya program yang akan di selesaikan. Dalam kaitanyadengan pelaksanaan kurikulum atau proses belajar mengajar , maka proses balajar-mengajar dikatakan efesiensi jika usaha tersebut dapat merealisaikan hasil dengan optimal. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 30 Prinsip kelima adalah efektivitas, walaupun kurikulum tersebut harus murah, sederhana, dan mudah tetai keberhasilannya tetap harus diperhatikan. Efektivitas belajar peserta didik terutama berkenaan dengan sejauh mana tujuan pembelajaran yang diinginkan telah di capai melalui kegiatan belajar – mengajar. Kemampuan peserta didik dalam menguasai tujuan yang telah ditetapkan oleh guru secara optional sangat bergantung pada kemampuan guru dalam menyediakan suasana pelajaran yang kondusif. Hubungan kurikulum dengan pembangunan pendidikan (Nana Syaudih Sukmadinata, 1997) Situasi yang ada = Situasi yang seharusnya = TUJUAN PENDIDIKAN PENGALAMAN BELAJAR PENILAIAN ISI PENDIDIKAN Meliputi: PERENCANAAN PENDIDIKAN PERENCANAAN KURIKULUM KURIKULUM KEBIJAKSANAAN PEMERINTAH PEMBANGUNAN NASIAONAL Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 31 2. Prinsip khusus Ada beberapa prinsip yang lebih khusus dalam pengembangan kurikulum, prinsip prinsip ini berkanaan dengan penyusunan tujuan, isi, pengalaman belajar, dan penilaian. Pertama, prinsip berkenaan dengan tujuan pendidikan yaitu menjadi pusat kegiatan dan arah semua kegiatan pendidikan. Perumusan komponen-komponen kurikulum hendaknya mengacu pada tujuan pendidikan. Tujuan pendidikan mencangkup tujuan yang bersifat umum atau berjangka panjang, jangkka menengah, dan jangka pendek (tujuan khusus). Kedua, prinsip berkenaan dengan pemilihan isi pendidikan yang sesuai dengan kebutuhan pendidikan yang telah ditentukan para perencana kurikulum perlu mempertimbangkan beberapa hal: a) Perlu penjabaran tujuan pendidikan ke dalam bentuk perbuatan hasil belajar yang khusus dan sederhana; b) Isi bahan pelajaran harus meliputi segi pengetahuan, sikap, dan keterampilan; c) Unit-unit kurikulum harus disusun dalam urutan yang logis dan sistematis. Ketiga, prinsip berkenaan dengan pemilihan proses belajar mengajar, pemilihan proses belajar mengajar hendaknya memperhatikan hal-hal berikut: a) Apakah metode/teknik belajar mengajar yang digunakan cocok untuk mengajarkan bahan pelajaran? b) Apakah metode/teknik tersebut memberikan kegiatan yang bervariasi sehingga dapat melayani perbedaan individual siswa? c) Apakah metode/teknik tersebut memberikan urutan kegiatan yang bertingkat-tingkat? Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 32 d) Apakah metode/teknik tersebut dapat menciptakan kegiatan untuk mencapai tujuan kognitif, afektif dan psikomotor? e) Apakah metode/teknik tersebut lebih mengaktifkan siswa, atau mengaktifkan guru atau keduanya? f) Apakah metode/teknik tersebut mendorong berkembangnya kemampuan baru? g) Apakah metode/teknik tersebut menimbulkan jalinan kegiatan belajar di sekolah dan di rumah, juga mendorong penggunaan sumber yang ada di rumah dan masyarakat? h) Untuk belajar keterampilan sangat dibutuhkan kegiatan belajar yang menekankan "learning by doing" disamping "learning by seeing and knowing". Keempat, prinsip berkenaan dengan pemilihan media dan alat pengajaran. Proses belajar mengajar yang baik perlu didukung olehpenggunaan media dan alat-alat bantu pengajaran yang tepat: a) Alat/media pengajaran apa yang diperlukan, apakah semuanya sudah tersedia? Bila alat tersebut tidak ada apa penggantinya? b) Kalau ada alat yang harus dibuat, hendaknya memperhatikan bagaimana pembuatannya, siapa yang membuat, pembiyaannya, waktu pembuatan? c) Bagaimana pengorganisasian alat dalam bahan pelajaran, apakah dalam bentuk modul, paket belajar, dan lain-lain? d) Bagaimana pengintegrasiaannya dalam keseluruhan kegiatan belajar? e) Hasil yang baik akan diperoleh dengan menggunakan multimedia. Dan yang kelima, prinsip berkenaan dengan pemilihan kegiatan penilaian. Penilain merupakan bagian integral dari pengajaran: Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 33 a) Dalam menyusun alat penilaian (test) hendaknya diikuti langkahlangkah sebagai berikut: rumuskan tujuan-tujuan pendidikan yang umum, dalam ranah-ranah kognitif, afektif, dan psikomotor. Uraikan ke dalam bentuk tingkah laku murid yang dapat diamati. Hubungkan dengan bahan pelajaran. b) Dalam merencanakan suatu penilaian hendaknya diperhatikan beberapa hal: (1) Bagaimana kelas, usia dan tingkat kemampuan kelompok yang akan dites? (2) Berapa lama waktu dibuthkan untuk pelaksanaan tes? (3) Apakah tes tersebut berbentuk uraian atau objektif? (4) Berapa banyak butir test perlu disusun? (5) Apakah tes tersebut diadministrasikan oleh guru atau oleh murid? c) Dalam pengolahan suatu hasil penilaian hendaknya diperhatikan hal-hal sebagai berikut: (1) Norma apa yang dignakandi dalam pengolahan hasil test? (2) Apakah digunakan formula quessing? (3) Bagaiman pengubahan skor ke dalam skor masak? (4) Skor standar apa yang digunakan? (5) Untuk apakah hasil-hasil test digunakan? C. FUNGSI DAN PERANAN KURIKULUM Kurikulum dalam pendidikan mempunyai beberapa fungsi dan peranan dalam pencapaian tujuan pendidikan. Berikut merupakan fungsi dari pengembangan kurikulum sekolah. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 34 1. Fungsi Bagi Sekolah yang Bersangkutan Kurikulum sekolah dasar berfungsi bagi sekolah dasar, kurikulum SMA berfungsi bagi SMA dan sebagainya. Fungsi kurikulumuntuk sekolah bersangkutan sekurang-kurangnya memiliki dua fungsi: a. Sebagai alat untuk mencapai tujuan-tujuan yang diinginkan. Kurikulum suatu sekolah atau madrasah pada dasarnya merupakan suatu alat atau upaya untuk mencapai tujuan pendidikan yang diinginkan oleh sekolah atau madrasah yang bersangkutan. Tujuan intitusional SMA/MA berbeda dengan tujuan intisional SMK/MAK, walaupun keduanya samasama SLTA. SMA/MA tidak bisa menggunakan SMK/MAK atau sebaliknya. Walaupun dalam hal tersebut mungkin ada materi pembelajaran SMK/MAK berbeda, sedangkan kurikulum merupakan instrumental input (masukan alat) untuk mencapai tujuan pendidikan. b. Sebagai pedoman dalam mengatur segala pendidikan setiap hari. Kurikulum suatu sekolah atau madrasah berisi uraian tentang jenis-jenis program apa yang diselenggarakan di sekolah atau di madrasah tersebut, bagaimana menyelenggarakan setiap jenis program, siapa yang bertanggung jawab dalam penyelenggaraannya dan perlengkapan apa yang dibutuhkan. Atas dasar itu sekolah atau madrasah akan dapat merencanakan secara lebih tepat tentang apa yang diperlukan untuk mencapai tujuan sekolah itu. 2. Fungsi Kurikulum Bagi Guru Kurikulum sebagai alat pedoman bagi guru dalam melaksanakan program pembelajaran dalam rangka mencapai tujuan pendidikan atau tujuan sekolah/madrasah dimana guru itu mengajar. Sejalan dengan penerapan manajemen pendidikanberbasis sekolah/madrasah, guru tidak hanya berfungsi sebagai pelaksana kurikulum tetapi juga sebagai perancang dan penilai kurikulum itu sendiri. Dengan demikian guru selalu dituntut untuk meningkatkan kemampuannya sesuai Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 35 dengan perkembangan kurikulum, perkembangan ilmu pengetahuan dan teknologi, serta perkembangan masyarakat. Oleh karena itu, penguasaan kurikulum bagi guru merupakan suatu hal yang mutlak dan menjadi kewajibannya. 3. Fungsi Kurikulum Bagi Kepala Sekolah Kepala sekolah dan madrasah selaku penanggung jawab seluruh penyelenggaraan pendidikan di sekolah dan madrasah memegang peranan strategis dalam mengembangkan kurikulum di sekolah dan madrasah. Soleh Hidayat dalam buku pengembangan kurikulum baru (2013) bahwa "menghadapi kurikulum yang berisi perubahan-perubahan pengajarnya, sudah sewajarnya kalau para guru mengharapkan saran dan bimbingan dari kepala sekolah mereka". Dalam hal ini kepala sekolah harus menguasai tentang kurikum sekolah.Fungsi kurikulum bagi kepala sekolah antara lain adalah: a. Sebagai pedoman dalam memperbaiki situasi belajar, sehingga lebih kondusif, dan untuk menunjang situasi belajar kea rah yang lebih baik. b. Sebagai pedoman dalam memberikan bantuan kepada pendidik (guru) dalam memperbaiki situasi belejar. c. Sebagai pedoman dalam mengemabangkan kurikulum serta dalam mengadakan evaluasi kemajuan kegiatan pembelajaran. d. Bagi kepala sekolah, kurikulum berfungsi untuk menyusun perencanaan dan program sekolah. Dengan demikian, penyusunan kalender sekolah, pengajuan sarana dan prasarana sekolah kepala Komite Sekolah dan madrsah, penyusunan berbagai kegiatan sekolah dan madrasah baik yang menyangkut kegiatan ekstrakulikuler dan kegiatan-kegiatan lainnya, harus didasarkan pada kurikulum. e. Kurikulum merupakan pedoman atau alat bagi kepala sekolah dan madrasah untuk mengukur keberhasilan program pendidikan di sekolah dan madrasah yang ia pimpin. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 36 Kepala sekolah dan madrasah dituntut memahami kurikulum dengan demikian ia akan mengontrol, apakah kegiatan proses kurikulum yang berlaku telah dilaksanakan sebagaimana yang diharapkan. Apabila terdapat penyimpangan yang berkaitan dengan pelaksanaan kurikulum akan segera diketahui dan dicegah. 4. Fungsi Kurikulum Bagi Supervisor Bagi pengawas, fungsi kurikulum dijadikan sebagai pedoman, patokan atau ukuran dalam menetapkan bagian mana yang memerlukan perbaikan dan penyempurnaan dalam usaha pelaksanaan fungsinya apabila ia memahami kurikulum. 5. Fungsi Kurikulum Bagi Pengawas Akademik Dalam melaksanakan tugas pengawasan akademik, pengawas sekolah dan madrasah yaitu melaksanakan pengawasan terhadap pelaksanaan kurikulum, pelaksanaan pembelajaran. Bagi para pengawas, fungsi kurikulum dapat dijadikan sebagai pedoman, patokan, atau ukuran menetapkan bagaimana yang memerlukan penyempurnaan atau perbaikan dalam usaha pelaksanaan kurikulum dan peningkatan mutu pendidikan. Dalam penyusunan dan pengembangan kurikulum di sekolah dan madrasah, pengawas sekolah dan madrasah memiliki fungsi sebagai berikut: a. Membimbing guru dalam menyusun silabus tiap mata pelajaran dalam rumpun mata pelajaran yang relevan di sekolah dan madrasah yang sejenis berstandarkan standar isi, standar kompetensi dan kompetensi dasar, dan prinsip-prinsip pengembangan KTSP b. Membimbing guru dalam menyusun rencana pelaksanaan pembelajaran (RPP) untuk tiap mata pelajaran dalam rumpun yang relevandisekolah menengah yang sejenis. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 37 6. Fungsi Bagi Sekolah/Madrasah Di Atasnya Kurikulum sekolah dasar/madrasah ibtidaiyah berfungsi bagi penyusunan kurikulum SMP/MTs, kurikulum SMP/MTs berfungsi sebagai penyusunan kurikulum SMA/MA danseterusnya. Ada dua fungsi yang dapat ditinjau, yaitu: a. Pemeliharaan Keseimbangan Proses Pendidikan Dengan mengetahui kurikulum yang digunakan oleh suatu sekolah tertentu, sekolah pada tingkat di atasnya dapat mengadakan penyesuaian didalam kurikulum sebagai berikut: 1) Bila sebagian kurikulum sekolah dan madrasah tersebut telah dibelajarkan pada sekolah serta madrasah yang berada dibawahnya, maka sekolah dan madrasah dapat meninjau kembali perlu tidaknya bagian tersebut dibelajarkan lagi. 2) Bila kecakapan-kecakapan tertentu dibutuhkan untuk mempelajari kurikulum suatu sekolah dan madrasah yang berada dibawahnya, maka sekolah serta madrasah dapat mempertimbangkan untuk suatu program kecakapan itu ke dalam kurikulumnya. b. Penyiapan Tenaga Guru Perguruan tinggi Lembaga Pendidikan Tenaga Kependidikan (LPTK) seperti FKIP/STKIP dan jurusan tarbiah berfungsi menyiapkan tenaga guru bagi sekolah dan madrasah yang berada di bawahnya, maka perlu sekali perguruan tinggi LPTK itu mengetahui kurikulum sekolah dan madrasah yang berada di bawahnya, baik menyangkut isi program, organisasi maupun cara pembelajarannya. 7. Fungsi Bagi Masyarakat dan Pengguna Lulusan Dengan mengetahui kurikulum tingkat satuan pendidikan, masyarakat dan pengguna lulusan dapat ikut memberi bantuan guna memperlancar pelaksanaan program pendidikan yang membutuhkan kerja sama dengan Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 38 pihak orang tua. Masyarakat dan pengguna lulusan juga dapat memberikan kritikan yang membangun dalam rangka penyempurnaan program pendidikan disatuan pendidikan agar lebih serasi dengan kebutuhan masyarakat. Selain itu, suatu sekolah dan madrasah sebagai satuan pendidikan berfungsi menyiapkan calon tenaga kerja dalam bidang tertentu. Dengan perkataan lain kurikulum suatu pendidikan hendaknya relevan dengan kebutuhan masyarakat dan dunia pekerjaan. Selain fungsi-fungsi tersebut, kurikulum juga memiliki fungsi-fungsi antara lain sebagai berikut: a. Penyesuaian (the adjustive of adaptive function) yaitu kemampuan menyesuaikan diri terhadap lingkungan secara keseluruhan b. Pengintegrasian (the integrating function) yaitu mendidik pribadi yang terintegrasi dengan msyarakat c. Diferensiasi (the differensiating function) yaitu menberikan pelayanan terhadap perbedaan-perbedaan perorangan dalam masyarakat d. Persiapan (the propaedutic) yaitu mempersiapkan siswa untuk dapat melanjutkan studi ke jenjang yang lebih tinggi untuk suatu jangkauan yang lebih jauh e. Pemilihan (the selective function) yaitu memberikan kesempatan kepada seseorang untuk memilih apa yang diinginkannya dan menarik pehatiannya f. Diagnostic (the diagnostic function) yaitu membantu siswa memahami dan menerima dirinya sehingga dapat mengembangkan semua potensi yang dimilikinya. Kurikulum sebagai program pendidikan dan pembelajaran yang telah direncanakan secara sistematis, disamping memiliki fungsi sebagaimana diuraikan diatas juga mengemban peran yang sangat penting bagi pendidikan Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 39 para siswa. Menurut Oemar Hamalik (2007) sekurang-kurangnya ada tiga peranan kurikulum yaitu: a. Peranan konsevatif yakni mentransmisikan dan menafsirkan warisan sosial kepada generasi muda b. Peranan kritis atau evaluative yaitu aktif berpartisipasi dalam kontrol sosial dan menekankan pada unsur berpikir kritis c. Peranan kreatif yaitu mencipta danmenyusun sesuatu yang baru sesuai dengan kebutuhan masa sekarang dan masa mendatang dalam masyarakat. Ketiga peranan tersebut berjalan secara seimbang dalam arti terdapat keharmonisan diantara ketiganya. Dengan demikian kurikulum akan dapat memenuhi tuntutan waktu dan keadaan dalam membawa para peserta menuju kepada kebudayaan dan peradaban masa depan. *** Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 40 A. PENDEKATAN PENGEMBANGAN KURIKULUM Pendekatan pengembangan kurikulum adalah cara kerja dengan menerapkan strategi dan metode yang tepat dengan mengikuti langkahlangkah pengembangan yang sistematis untuk menghasilkan kurikulum yang lebih baik (Nana Syaodih Sukmadinata, 1997). Pengembangan kurikulum seyogyanya dilaksanakan secara sistematik berdasarkan prinsip terpadu yaitu memberikan petunjuk bahwa keseluruhan komponen harus tepat sekali dan menyambung secara integrative, tidak terlepas-lepas, tetapi menyeluruh. Penyusunan satu komponen harus dinilai konsistensinya dan berkaitan dengan komponen-komponen lainnya sehingga kurikulum benar-benar terpadu secara bulat dan utuh. Terdapat beberapa macam pendekatan yang dapat digunakan untuk pengembangan kurikulum, diantaranya adalah sebagai berikut. 1. Pendekatan Bidang Studi (Field of Studi Approach) Pendekatan bidang studi atau dikenal juga dengan pendekatan subyek akademik merupakan pendekatan yang dilakukan dengan menggunakan bidang studi atau mata pelajaran sebagai dasar pengembangan kurikulum misalnya matematika, sains, sejarah IPS, IPA, dan sebagainya. Sesuai dengan namanya, pendekatan subjek akademik sangat mengutamakan isi (subject matter). Hal utama dalam pendekatan ini adalah penguasaan bahan dan proses dalam disiplin ilmu tertentu. Karena setiap ilmu pengetahuan memiliki sistematisasi tertentu dan berbeda dengan sistematisasi ilmu lainnya. BAB IV PENDEKATAN & MODEL PENGEMBANGAN KURIKULUM Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 41 Pengembagan kurikulum subyek akademik dilakukan dengan cara menetapkan terlebih dahulu mata pelajaran apa yang harus dipelajari peserta didik, yang diperlukan untuk (persiapan) pengembangan disiplin ilmu. Dari pendekatan subyek akademik ini diharapkan agar peserta didik dapat menguasai semua pengetahuan yang ada di kurikulum tersebut. Karena kurikulum sangat mengutamakan pengetahuan maka pendidikan lebih bersifat intelektual. Nama-nama mata pelajaran yang menjadi isi kurikulum hampir sama dengan nama disiplin ilmu, seperti bahasa dan sastra, geografi, matematika, ilmu kealaman, sejarah, dan sebagainya. Kurikulum subyek akademik tidak berarti hanya menekankan pada materi yang disampaikan, dalam perkembangannya secara berangsur-angsur memperhatikan proses belajar yang dilakukan siswa. Proses belajar yang dipilih sangat bergantung pada hal apa yang terpenting dalam materi tersebut. Sekurang-kurang ada tiga pendekatan dalam perkembangan Kurikulum Subyek Akademis; Pendekatan pertama yakni melanjutkan pendekatan struktur pengetahuan. Murid-murid belajar bagaimana memperoleh dan menguji fakta-fakta dan bukan sekadar mengingat-ingatnya. Pendekatan kedua yakni studi yang bersifat integrative. Pendekatan ini merupakan respons terhadap perkembangan masyarakat yang menuntut model-model pengetahuan yang lebih komprehensif-terpadu. Pelajaran tersusun atas satuan-satuan pelajaran, dalam satuan-satuan pelajaran tersebut batas-batas ilmu menjadi hilang. Pengorganisasian tema-tema pengajaran didasarkan atas fenomena-fenomena alam, proses kerja ilmiah dan problema-problema yang ada, dan Pendekatan ketiga yakni pendekatan yang dilaksanakan pada sekolah-sekolah fundamentalis. Dimana sekolah tetap mengajar berdasarkan mata-mata pelajaran dengan menekankan membaca, menulis, dan memecahkan masalah-masalah matematis. Pelajaran-pelajaran lain seperti Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 42 ilmu kealaman, ilmu sosial, dan lain-lain dipelajari tanpa dihubungkan dengan kebutuhan praktis pemecehan masalah dalam kehidupan. Dalam pendekatan pengembangan kurikulum mempunyai ciri-ciri sebagai berikut: a. Di tinjau dari Tujuannya Tujuan kurikulum subyek akademik adalah pemberian pengetahuan yang solid serta melatih para siswa menggunakan ide-ide dan proses "penelitian". Para siswa harus belajar mengunakan pemikiran dan dapat mengontrol dorongan-dorongannya, sehingga diharapkan siswa mempunyai konsep dan cara yang terus dapat dikembangkan di masyarakat yang lebih luas. b. Ditinjau dari metodenya Metode yang banyak digunakan dalam pendekata subyek akademik adalah pendekatan metode ekspositori dan inkuiri. Ide-ide diberikan guru kemudian dielaborasi (dilaksanakan) siswa sampai mereka kuasai.Dalam materi disiplin ilmu yang diperoleh, dicari berbagai masalah penting, kemudian dirumuskan dan dicari cara pemecahannya. c. Di tinjau dari organisasi isinya Ada beberapa pola organisasi isi (materi pelajaran) kurikulum subyek akademik. Pola-pola organisasi yang terpenting di antaranya: 1) Correlated curriculum, adalah pola organisasi materi atau konsep yang dipelajari dalam suatu pelajari dalam suatu pelajaran dikorelasikan dengan pelajaran lainnya. 2) Unified atau Concentrated, adalah pola organisasi bahan pelajaran tersusun dalam tema-tema pelajaran tertentu, yang mencakup materi dari berbagai pelajaran disiplin ilmu. 3) Intregrated curriculum, kalau dalam unified masih tampak warna displin ilmunya, maka dalam pola yang integrated warna disiplin Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 43 ilmu tersebut sudah tidak kelihatan lagi. Bahan ajar diintegrasikan dalam suatu persoalan, kegiatan atau segi kehidupan tertentu. 4) Problem Solving curriculum, adalah pola organisasi isi yang berisi topik pemecahan masalah sosial yang dihadapi dalam kehidupan dengan menggunakan pengetahuan dan ketrampilan yang diperoleh dari berbagai mata pelajaran atau disiplin ilmu. d. Di tinjau dari evaluasinya Kurikulum subyek akademik menggunakan bentuk evaluasi yang bervariasi disesuaikan dengan tujuan dan sifat mata pelajaran. Dalam bidang studi humaniora lebih banyak digunakan bentuk uraian (essay test) dari tes objektif. Karena bidang studi ini membutuhkan jawaban yang merefleksikan logika, koherensi, dan integrasi secara menyeluruh. 2. Pendekatan Berorientasi pada Tujuan Pendekatan yang berorientasi pada tujuan ini, menempatkan rumusan atau penerapan tujuan yang hendak dicapai dalam posisi sentral, sebab tujuan adalah pemberi arah dalam pelaksanaan proses belajar-mengajar. Lalu apa kelebihan dan kekurangan pendekatan yang berorientasi pada tujuan? Berikut beberapa kelebihan dan kekurangan dari pendekatan berorientasi pada tujuan. Kelebihan dari pendekatan pengembangan kurikulum yang berorientasi pada tujuan adalah: 1. Tujuan yang ingin dicapai jelas bagi penyusun kurikulum. 2. Tujuan yang jelas akan memberikan arah yang jelas pula dalam menetapkan materi pelajaran, metode, jenis kegiatan dan alat yang diperlukan untuk mencapai tujuan. 3. Tujuan-tujuan yang jelas itu juga akan memberikan arah dalam mengadakan penilaian terhadap hadil yang dicapai. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 44 4. Hasil penilaian yang terarah tersebut akan membantu penyusunan kurikulum dalam mengadakan perbaikan-perbaikan yang diperlukan. Meskipun pendekatan ini memiliki banyak kelebihan jika dibandingkan dengan pendekatan yang berorientasi pada bahan pendekatan ini juga memiliki kelemahan, yaitu kesulitan dalam merumuskan tujuan itu sendiri (bagi guru). Apa lagi jika tujuan tersebut harus dirumuskan lebih khusus, jelas, operasional dan dapat diukur. Untuk merealisasikan maksud tersebut, pihak guru dituntut memiliki keahlian, pengalaman dan ketarampilan dalam perumusan tujuan khusus pengajaran. Jika tidak demikian, maka akan terwujud rumusan tujuan khusus yang bersifat dangkal dan mekanistik. 3. Pendekatan dengan Pola Organisasi Bahan Pendekatan dengan pola organisasi bahan terbentuk dari pola pendekatan; subject matter curriculum, corelated curriculum, dan integrated curriculum. Ketiga pendekatan tersebut adalah sebagai berikut. 1. Pendekatan Pola Subject Matter Curriculum Pendekatan ini penekanannya pada mata pelajaran-mata pelajaran secara terpisah-pisah, mislnya: sejarah, IPA, biologi, matematika, dan sebagainya. Mata pelajaran tersebut jika tidak berhubungan satu sama lain. Bahkan sering mengarah pada pengakuannya masing-masing, bahwa mata pelajaran "anu" yang terpenting. Dalam praktek penyampaian pengajaranannya, tanggung jawab terketak pada masingmasing guru yang menangani suatu mata pelajaran yang dipegangnya. Jika seorang guru memegang beberapa mata pelajaran, maka hal ini pun dilaksanakan secara terpisah-pisah pila. Jadi, tidak menyangkut-pautkan mata pelajaran lain. 2. Pendekatan dengan pola correlated curriculum Pendekatan dengan pola correlated curriculum adalah pendektan dengan pola mengelompokan beberapa mata pelajaran (bahan) yang sering, Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 45 yang bisa secara dekat berhubungan. Mengapa demikian? Hal ini wajar karena kejadian-kejadian atau peristiwa peristiwa sehari-hari tidak terjadi secara tersendiri, paling tidak terjadi dari beberapa segi kehidupan yang terjalin didalamnya. Maka tidak mungkin kita meninjau suatu hal hanya dari satu segi saja, misalnya, dari segi ilmu bumi saja. 3. Pendekatan dengan pola integrated curriculum Pendekatan ini di dasarkan pada keseluruhan hal yang mempunyai arti tertentu. Keseluruhan ini tidak sekedar merupakan kumpulan dari bagian-bagiannya, tetapi mempunyai arti tertentu. Sesuai dengan tujuan pendidikan nasional Negara kita, yang mengarah pada pembentukan pribadi manusia seutuhnya, maka di dalam pemberian bahan pendekatan ini menekankan pada keutuhan kebutuhan, yang dalam hal ini tidak hanya melalui mata pelajaran yang terpisah-pisah, namun harus dijalin suatu keutuhan yang meniadakan batasan tertentu dari masing-masing bahan pelajaran Atas dasar kenyataan tersebut, para ahli kurikulum berpendapat bahwa sebaiknya kurikulum sekolah tidak disusun sebagai mata pelajaran yang terpisah, tetapi dengan bentuk pengelompokan bahan yang dipandang mempunyai karakteristik yang dapat digabungkan yang menjadi bidang studi (broad field) sehingga terdapat beberapa bidang studi, seperti, IPA, IPS dan sebagainya. 4. Pendekatan Rekonstruksionalisme Pendekatan Rekonstruksionalisme disebut juga rekonstruksi sosial karena menempatkan masalah-masalah penting yang dihadapi oleh masyarakat, seperti populas, ledakan penduduk, bencana, dan sebagainya kedalam kurikulum. Pandangan rekonstruksi sosial di dalam kurikulum dimulai sekitar tahun 1920-an. Harlod Rug mulai melihat dan menyadarkan kawan-kawannya Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 46 bahwa selama ini terjadi kesenjangan antara kurikulum dengan masyarakat. Ia menginginkan para siswa dengan pengetahuan dan konsep-konsep baru yang diperolehnya dapat mengidentifikasi dan memecahkan maslaah-maslah sosial. Setelah diharapkan dapat menciptakan masyarakat baru yang lebih stabil. Konsep dari kurikulum rekonstruksi sosial ini lebih memusatkan perhatian pada problema-problema yang dihadapinya dalam masyarakat. Para rekonstruksi sosial tidak menginginkan terlalu menekankan kebebasan individu. Mereka ingin meyakinkan murid-murid bagaimana masyarakat memenuhi warganya seperti yang ada sekarang dan bagaimana masyarakat memenuhi kebutuhan pribadi warganya melalui konsensus sosial. Pada pendekatan rekontruksionalisme mencakup kedalam dua hal berikut ini. 1. Desain Kurikulum Rekonstruksi Sosial Ada beberapa ciri dari desain kurikulum ini : a) Asumsi. Tujuan utama kurikulum rekonstruksi sosial adalah menghadapakan para siswa pada tantangan, ancaman, hambatanhambatan atau gangguan-gangguan yang dihadapi manusia. Tantangan-tantangan tersebut merupakan bidang garapan studi sosial, yang perlu didekati dari bidang-bidang lain seperti ekonomi, sosiologi psikologi, estetika, bahkan pengetahuan alam, dan matematika. b) Masalah-masalah sosial yang mendesak. Masalah tersebut dirumuskan dalam pertanyaan. Pertanyaan-pertanyaan tersebut timbul dari kehidupan nyata dalam masyarakat. c) Pola-pola organisasi. Pada tingkat sekolah menengah, pola organisasi kurikulum disusun seperti sebuah roda. Di tengah-tengah sebagai poros dipilih sesuatu masalah yang menajdi tema utama dan dibahas secara pleno. Dari tema utama dijabarkan topik yang Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 47 dibahas dalam diskusi-diskusi kelompok, latihan-latihan, kunjungan dan lain-lain. Topik-topik dengan berbagai kegiatan kelompok ini merupakan jari-jari. Semua kegiatan jari jari tersebut dirangkum menjadi satu kesatuan sebagai bingkai atau velk. 2. Pelaksanaan Pengajaran Rekonstruksi Sosial Pengajaran rekonstruksi sosial banyak dilaksanakan di daerahdarerah yang tergolong belum maju dan tingkat eknominya belum tinggi. Pelaksaan pengajaran ini diarahkan untuk meningkatkan kondisi kehidupan mereka (M Ahmad dkk, 1997). Para ahli kurikulum yang berorientasi ke masa depan menyarankan agar isi kurikulum difokuskan pada penggalian sumber-sumber alam dan bukan alam, populasi, kesejahteraan masyarakat, masalah air, akibat pertambahan pendudukan, ketidakseragaman pemanfaatan sumbersember alam, dan lain-lain. Padangan rekonstruksi sosial berkembangan karena keyakinannya pada kemampuan manusia untuk membangun dunia yang lebih baik. Juga penekanannya tentang peran ilmu dalam memecahkan masalahmaslah sosial. 5. Pendekatan Kurikulum Humanistik Kurikulum ini berdasarkan aliran pendidikan pribadi (personalized education) yaitu Jhon Dewey (Progressive Education) dan J.J. Rousseau (Romantic Education). Aliran ini lebih memberikan tempat utama kepada siswa. Mereka bertolak dari asumsi bahwa anak atau siswa adalah yang pertama dan utama dalam pendidikan. siswa adalah subjek yang menjadi pusat kegiatan pendidikan. Mereka percaya bahwa siswa mempunyai potensi, kemampuan, dan kekuatan untuk berkembang. Para pendidik humanis juga berpegang pada konsep Gestalt, bawha individu atau anak merupakan satu kesatuan yang menyeluruh. Pendidikan diarahkan kepada Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 48 membina manusia yang utuh bukan saja segi fisik dan intelektual tetapi juga segi sosial dan afektif (emosi, sikap, perasaan, nilai, dan lain-lain). Pandangan mereka berkembang sebagai reaksi terhadap pendidikan yang lebih menekankan segi intelektual dengan peran utamanya dipegang oleh guru. Pendidikan humanistik menekankan peran siswa. Pendidikan merupakan suatu upaya untuk menciptakan situasi yang permisif, rileks, akrab. Ada beberapa aliran yang termasuk dalam pendidikan humanistik yaitu pendidikan : Konfluen, Kritikisme Radikal, Midtikisme Modern. Pertama Pendidikan konfluen menekankan keutuhan pribadi, individu harus merespon secara utuh (baik segi pikiran, perasaan, maupun tindakan), terhadap kesatuan yang menyeluruh dari lingkungan. Kedua pendidikan Kritikisme radikal bersumber dari aliran naturalisme atau romantisme Rousseau. Mereka memandang pendidikan sebagai upaya untuk membantu anak untuk menemukan dan mengambangkan sendiri segala potensi yang dimilikinya. Sedangkan ketiga pendidikan Mitikisme modern adalah aliran yang menekankan latihan dan pengembangan kepekaan perasaan, kehalusan budi pekerti, melalui sensitivity training, yoga, meditasi, dan sebagainya(M Ahmad dkk, 1997). Menurut para humanis, kurikulum berfungsi menyediakan pengalaman (pengetahuan) berharga untuk membantu memperlancar perkembangan pribadi siswa. Bagi mereka tujuan pendidikan adalah proses perkembangan pribadi yang dinamis yang diarahkan pada pertumbuhan, integritas, dan otonomi kepribadian, sikap yang sehat terhadap diri sendiri, orang lain, dan belajar. Kurikulum humanistik menuntut hubungan emosional yang baik antar guru dan murid. Guru harus memberikan dorong kepada murid kepada atas Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 49 dasar saling percaya dan menciptakan situasi yang memperlancar proses belajar-mengajar. Prinsip dari kurikulum humanistik menekankan integrasi, yaitu kesatuan perilaku bukan saja yang bersifat intelektual tetapi emosional dan tindakan. Kurikulum humanistik juga menekankan keseluruhan. Kurikulum harus mampu memberikan pengalaman yang menyeluruh, bukan pengalaman yang terpenggal-penggal. Kurikulum ini kurang menekankan sekuens, karena denan sekuens murid-murid kurang mempunyai kesempatan untuk memperluas dan memperdalam aspek-aspek perkembangannya. Dalam evaluasi, kurikulum humanistis berbeda dengan yang biasa. Model lebih mengutamakan proses daripada hasil(M Ahmad dkk, 1997). 6. Pendekatan Accountability Sistem yang akuntabel memiliki standar dan tujuannya yang spesifik serta mengukur efektivitas suatu kegiatan dengan mengukur taraf keberhasilan siswa untuk mencapai standar tersebut. Gerakan ini mulai dirasanakan manfaatnya bagi dunia pendidikan ketika sebuah universitas di Amerika Serikat dituntut untuk memmbuktikan dalam mencapai keberhasilan yang tinggi. Untuk memenuhi tuntutan itu, pengembang kurikulum tujuan pelajaran yang dapat mengukur prestasi belajar siswa. Accountability atau pertanggung jawaban lembaga pendidikan tentang pelaksaan tugasnya kepada masyarakat, akhir-akhir ini tampil sebagai penagruh yang penting dalam dunia pendidikan. Namun, menurut banyak pengamat pendidikan accountability ini telah mendesak pendidikan dalam arti yang sebenarnya menjadi latihan belaka. Accountability yang sistematis yang pertama kali diperkenalkan Frederick Taylor dalam bidang industri pada permulaan abad ini. Pendekatannya, yang kelak dikenal sebagai "scientific management" atau manajemen ilmiah, menetapkan tugas-tugas spesifik yang harus diselesaikan pekerja dalam waktu tertentu. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 50 B. MODEL PENGEMBANGAN KURIKULUM Model adalah abstraksi dunia nyata atau representasi peristiwa kompleks atau sistem, dalam bentuk naratif, matematis, grafis, serta lambang-lambang lainnya. Model bukanlah realitas, akan tetapi merupakan representasi realitas yang dikembangkan dari keadaan. Dengan demikian, model pada dasarnya berkaitan dengan rancangan yang dapat digunakan untuk menerjemahkan sesuatu sarana untuk mempermudah berkomunikasi, atau sebagai petunjuk yang bersifat perspektif untuk mengambil keputusan, atau sebagai petunjuk perencanaan untuk kegiatan pengelolaan. Model atau konstruksi merupakan ulasan teoritis tentang suatu konsepsi dasar. Dalam pengembangan kurikulum, model dapat merupakan ulasan teoritis tentang suatu proses kurikulum secara menyeluruh atau dapat pula merupakan ulasan tentang salah satu bagian kurikulum. Sedangkan menurut (Kamus Besar Bahasa Indonesia) model adalah pola, contoh, acuan, ragam dari sesuatu yang akan dihasilkan. Dikaitkan dengan model pengembangan kurikulum berarti merupakan suatu pola, contoh dari suatu bentuk kurikulum yang akan menjadi acuan pelaksanaan pendidikan/pembelajaran. Model pengembangan kurikulum adalah model yang digunakan untuk mengembangkan suatu kurikulum, dimana pengembangan kurikulum dibutuhkan untuk memperbaiki atau menyempurnakan kurikulum yang dibuat untuk dikembangkan sendiri baik dari pemerintah pusat, pemerintah daerah atau sekolah. Model yang baik adalah model yang dapat menolong si pengguna untuk mengerti dan memahami suatu proses secara mendasar dan menyeluruh. Selanjutnya ia menjelaskan manfaat model adalah model dapat menjelaskan beberapa aspek perilaku dan interaksi manusia, model dapat mengintegrasikan seluruh pengetahuan hasil observasi dan penelitian, model Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 51 dapat menyederhanakan suatu proses yang bersifat kompleks, dan model dapat digunakan sebagai pedoman untuk melakukan kegiatan. Jadi model pengembangan kurikulum merupakan suatu alternatif prosedur dalam rangka mendesain (designing), menerapkan (impelementation), dan mengevaluasi (evaliatoon) suatu kurikulum. Oleh karena itu, model pengembangan kurikulum harus dapat menggambarkan suatu proses sistem perencanaan pembelajaran yang dapat memenuhi berbagai kebutuhan dan standar keberhasilan dalam pendidikan. Pengembangan kurikulum tidak dapat terlepas dari berbagai aspek yang memengaruhinya, seperti cara berfikir, sistem nilai (nilai moral, keagamaan, politik, budaya, dan sosial), proses pengmbangan, kebutuhan peserta didik, kebutuhan masyarakat maupun arah program pendidikan. Aspek-aspek tersebut akan menjadi bahan yang perlu dipertimbangkan dalam suatu pengembangan kurikulum. Agar dapat mengembangkan kurikulum secara baik, pengembang kurikulum semestinya memahami berbagai jenis model pengembangan kurikulum. Yang dimaksud dengan model pengembangan kurikulum yaitu langkah atau prosedur sistematis dalam proses penyususnan suatu kurikulum. Dengan memahami esensi model pengembangan kurikulum dan sejumlah alternatif model pengembangan kurikulum, para pengembang kurikulum diharapkan akan bisa bekerja secara lebih sistematis, sistemik dan optimal. Sehingga haarpan ideal terwujudnya suatu kurikulum yang akomodatif dengan berbagai kepentingan, teori dan praktik, bisa diwujudkan. Menurut Ralph Tyler (dalam M. Ahmad, Dkk, 1997) mengatakan, bahwa ada empat penentu dalam pengembangan kurikulum: a. Menentukan tujuan pendidikan Tujuan pendidikan merupakan arah atau sasaran akhir yang harus dicapai dalam program pendidikan dan pembelajaran. Tujuan Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 52 pendidikan harus menggambarkan perilaku akhir setelah peserta didik mengikuti program pendidikan. Ada tiga aspek yang harus dipertimbangkan sebagai sumber dalam penentuan tujuan pendidikan menurut Tyler, yaitu : a) hakikat pesarta didik b) kehidupan masyarakat masa kini dan c) pandangan para ahli bidang studi. Penentuan tujuan pendidikan dengan berdasarkan masukan dari ketiga aspek tersebut. Selain itu ada lima faktor yang menjadi arah penentu tujuan pendidikan, yaitu : pengembangan kemampuan berfikir, membantu memperoleh informasi, pengembangan sikap kemasyarakatan, pengembangan minat peserta didik, dan pengembangan sikap sosial. b. Menentukan proses pembelajaran Menetukan proses pembelajaran apa yang paling cocok dilakukan untuk mencapai tujuan tersebut. Salah satu aspek yang harus diperhatikan dalam penentuan proses pembelajaran adalah persepsi dan latar belakang kemampuan paserta didik. c. Menentukan organisasi pengalaman belajar Setelah proses pembelajaran ditentukan, selanjutnya menentukan organisasi pengalaman belajar. Pengalaman belajar di dalamnya mencakup tahapan-tahapan belajar dan isi atau materi belajar. Bahan yang harus dilakukan, diorganisasikan sedemikian rupa sehingga dapat memudahkan dalam pencapaian tujuan. d. Menentukan evaluasi pembelajaran Menetukan jenis evaluasi apa yang cocok digunakan, merupakan kegiatan akhir dalam model Tyler. Jenis penilaian yang akan digunakan, harus disesuaikan dengan jenis dan sifat dari tujuan pendidikan atau pembelajaran, materi pembelajaran, dan proses belajar yang telah ditetapkan sebelumnya. Agar penetapan jenis evaluasi bisa tepat, maka para pengembang kurikulum disamping harus memerhatikan komponenDasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 53 komponen kurikulum lainnya, juga harus memerhatikan prinsip-prinsip evaluasi yang ada. Menurut Caswell mengartikan pengembangan kurikulum sebagai alat untuk membantu guru dalam melakukan tugas mengajarkan bahan, menarik minat murid dan memenuhi kebutuhan masyarakat. (M. Ahmad, Dkk, 1997) Menurut Beane, Toefer dan Allesia menyatakan bahwa perencanaan ataw pengembangan kurikulum adalah suatu proses di mana partisipasi pada berbagai tingkat dalam membuat keputusan tentang tujuan, tentang bagaimana tujuan direalisasikan melalui proses belajar mengajar. (M. Ahmad, Dkk, 1997) Untuk melakukan pengembangan kurikulum ada berbagai model pengembangan kurikulum yang dapat dijadikan acuan atau diterapkan sepenuhnya. Secara umum, pemilihan model pengembangan kurikulum dilakukan dengan cara menyesuaikan sistem pendidikan yang dianut dan model konsep yang digunakan. Terdapat banyak model pengembangan kurikulum yang dikembangkan oleh para ahli. Sukmadinata (2005) menyebutkan delapan model pengembangan kurikulum yaitu the administrative (line staff ), the grass roots, Bechamp's system, The demonstration, Taba's inverted model, Rogers interpersonal relations,Systematic action, dan Emerging technical model. Dengan mengklasifikasikan model-model ini ke dalam dua grup besar model pengembangan kurikulum yaitu model Zais dan model Roger. Adapun untuk memahami model-model pengembangan kurikulum tersebut adalah sebagai beikut. 1. Model Pengembangan Kurikulum Menurut Robert S. Zais Dalam buku yang berjudul "curriculum: principles and foundations" yang ditulis oleh Robert S. Zais (1976) mengemukakan delapan model pengembangan kurikulum. Dasar teorinya adalah institusi atau orang yang Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 54 menyelenggarakan pengembangan, pengambilan keputusan, penetapan ruang lingkup kegiatan yang termuat dalam kurikulum, realitas implementasinya, pendekatan permasalahan dengan cara pelaksanaannya, penelitian systematis tentang masalahnya, dan pemanfaatan teknologi dalam pengembangan kurikulum (Zainal Arifin, 2012). Berikut empat dari delapan model pengembangan kurikulum menurut Robert S. Zais diantaranya yaitu; a. Model Administrasi Model yang paling awal dan sangat umum adalah model administrasi karena model ini menggunakan prosedur "garis-staff" atau garis komando dari atas ke bawah (top down/sentralisasi). Maksudnya, pengembangan kurikulum berasal dari pejabat tinggi (kemdiknas), kemudian secara struktural dilaksanakan di tingkat bawah. Dalam model ini, pejabat pendidikan membentuk panitia pengarah (steering committee) yang biasanya terdiri atas pengawas pendidikan, kepala sekolah, dan guru-guru inti. Panitia pengarah ini bertugas merumuskan rencana umum, prinsip-prinsip, landasan filosofis, dan tujuan umum pendidikan. Dalam model administrasi, inisiatifnya menggunakan prosedur administrasi, sehingga dinas pendidikan memiliki beberapa komisi, dan komisi tingkat atas (BSNP atau Puskur) yang menentukan kebijakan kurikulum sampai tingkat bawah (sekolah/MGMP) yang melaksankan kurikulum tersebut dalam kegiatan pembelajaran. Selanjutnya, mereka membentuk kelompok kelompok kerja sesuai dengan keperluan. Anggota-anggota kelompok kerja umumnya terdiri atas guru-guru dan spesialis-spesialis kurikulum. Tugasnya adalah merumuskan tujuan kurikulum yang spesifik, menyusun materi, kegiatan pembelajaran, sistem penilaian, dan sebagainya sesuai kebijakan panitia pengarah. Hasil pekerjaannya direvisi oleh panitia pengarah. Jika diperlukan Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 55 (tetapi hal ini jarang terjadi) akan diadakan uji coba untuk meneliti kelayakan pelaksanaanya hal ini dikerjakan oleh suatu komisi yang ditunjuk oleh panitia pengarah, dan keanggotaannya terdiri atas sebagian besar kepala kepala sekolah. Apabila pekerjaan itu telah selseai, diserahkan kembali pada panitia pengarah untuk di telaah kembali, baru kemudian di Implementasikan (Zainal Arifin,.2012). Model pengembangan kurikulum ini sering mendapatkan kritikan, karena dipandang tidak demokratis, dan kurang memperhatikan inisiatif para guru. Di Indonesia model ini digunakan dalam penerapan kurikulum 1968 dan kurikulum 1975 (Mulyasa, E. 2006). b. Model Akar Rumput (Grass-roots) Penerapan kurikulum model akar rumput bertolak belakang dengan model administratif dalam beberapa poin yang sangat berarti, misalnya dalam hal inisiatif guru, dan pembuatan keputusan dalam pengembangan program pembelajaran. Model akar rumput yang berorientasi demokratis mengakui dua hal sebgai berikut : 1) Kurikulum hanya dapat diimplementasikan dengan sukses bila guru dilibatkan dalam proses penyusunan dan pengembangannya, 2) Tidak hanya orang-orang, tetapi peserta didik, guru dan anggota masyarakat lainnya hanya dilibatkan dalam proses perencanaan kurikulum. Untuk kepentingan tersebut, para kepala sekolah, guru dan ahli kurikulum, dan ahli bidang studi harus berperan dalam rekayasa kurikulum. Empat prinsip yang mendasari model grass roots: 1) Kurikulum akan meningkat bila kompetensi profesional guru meningkat. 2) Kompetensi guru akan meningkat bila mereka terlibat secara pribadi dalam maslah-masalah perubahan dan perbaikan kurikulum. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 56 3) Keterlibatan guru dalam berbagai kegiatan perbaikan kurikulum sampai dengan penilaian hasilnya, akan sangat meningkatkan keyakinannya. 4) Dalam kelompok tatap muka, guru akan dapat memahamai satu sama lain secara lebih baik, dan memperkaya konsensus pada prinsip prinsip dasar, tujuan, dan rencan pembelajaran. Prinsip prinsip tersebut sangat mendorong guru untuk bekerjasama dalam menerapkan kurikulum baru. Kelemahan model grass roots antara lain disebabkan oleh tuntutan keterlibatan berbagai pihak dalam pengembangan kurikulum, padahal tidak semua orang mengerti dan tertarik untuk melibatkan dirinya (Mulyasa, E. 2006). c. Model Terbalik (Taba) Model ini merupakan bentuk urutan tradisional yang paling sederhana dari pengembangan kurikulum untuk diseleksi para komite (1) untuk menguji wilayah dan mengembangkan suatu tujuan, (2) merumuskan disain kurikulum berdasarkan tujuan tertentu, (3) menyusun unit-unit kurikulum berdasarkan tujuan tertentu, (4) melaksanakan kurikulum pada tingkat kelas. Taba yakin bahwa proses deduktif yang paling mendasar ini cenderung mengurangi kemampuan inovasi, kreatif, karena membatasai kemungkinan untuk bereksperimen tentang ide maupun konsep pengembangan kurikulum yang mungkin timbul. Ia berpegang bahwa perubahan dapat dimulai dengan mendisain kembali keseluruhan kerangka kerja. Taba mengemukakan beberapa pandangan tentang kurikulum tradisional, dan menunjukkan kekurangan-kekurangan dalam urutan pengembangannya, yang menunjukan kesenjangan antara teori dan praktek. Taba mengajukan pembalikan urutan-urutan tradisional yang Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 57 dimulai dengan desain umum, untuk menghindarkan kesenjangan antara teori dan praktek, dan memberikan kemudahan apabila diperkenalkan kepada sekolah lain. Taba mengembangkan rekayasa kurikulum : langkah pertama, menyelenggarakan "pilot projek" oleh kelompok guru (KKG, MGMP), untuk menjembatani kesenjangan teori dan praktek. Hal ini dilakukan melalui berbagai pelaksanaan tugas seperti : mendiagnosis kebutuhan, merumuskan tujuan-tujuan khusus, memilih bahan, mengorganisasi bahan, memilih kegiatan belajar, mengorganisasi kegiatan belajar, menilai, dan memeriksa keseimbangan serta urutannya. Langkah kedua, mengetes unit eksperimental pada kelas lain dengan kondisi yang berbeda, untuk menentukan validitas serta keampuhannya untuk diajarkan. Langkah ketiga, mengadakan revisi dan konsolidasi (pemantapan) dari unit kurikulum. Langkah keempat, mengembangkan suatu kerangka kerja dalam skala terbatas, bukan pengembangan disain kurikulum secara keseluruhan. Langkah kelima, sebagai langkah terakhir, ialah mendesiminasikan unit-unit kurikulum ke sekolahsekolah lain. Kelebihan utama model pengembangan kurikulum ini adalah memungkinkan terjadinya integrasi antara teori dan praktek. Dalam hal ini, orang akan mampu menjalankan sesuatu, jika menyadari apa yang akan dilaksanakannya(Mulyasa, E. 2006). d. The Systematic Action-Reserach Model / Model Pemecahan Masalah Model ini dikenal juga dengan nama action research model. Dari sisi proses, kurikulum model ini sudah melibatkan seluruh komponen pendidikan yang meliputi siswa, orang tua, guru serta sistem sekolah. Kurikulum dikembangkan dalam rangka memenuhi kebutuhan para pemangku kepentingan (stakeholder) yang meliputi orang tua siswa, Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 58 masyarakat, dan lain-lain. Penyusunan kurikulum dilakukan dengan mengikuti prosedur action research. Sukmadinata (2005) menyebutkan ada dua langkah dalam penyusunan kurikulum jenis ini. Pertama, melakukan kajian tentang data data yang dikumpulkan sebagai bahan penyusunan kurikulum. Data (informasi) yang dikumpulkan hendaknya valid dan reliabel sehingga dapat digunakan sebagai dasar yang kuat dalam pengambilan keputusan penyusunan kurikulum. Data yang lemah akan mengakibatkan kesalahan dalam pengambilan keputusan. Berdasarkan keputusan ini,disusunlah rencana yang menyeluruh (komprehensif) tentang cara-cara mengatasi masalah yang ada. Kedua, melakukan implementasi atas keputusan yang dihasilkan pada langkah pertama. Dari proses ini akan diperoleh data-data (informasi) baru yang selanjutnya dimanfaatkan untuk mengevaluasi masalah-masalah yang muncul dilapangan sebagai upaya tindak lanjut untuk memodifikasi/memperbaiki kurikulum. Pada kurikulum model ini guru cenderung dimaknai sebagai seseorang yang harus "digugu" dan "diritu". Menurut Idi (200:126), ada empat cara dalam menyajikan pelajaran dari kurikulum model subjek akademis. 1) Materi disampaikan secara hirarkhi naik, yaitu materi disampaikan dari yang lebih mudah hingga ke materi yang lebih sulit. Sebagai contoh, dalam pengajaran pada jenjang kelas yang rendah diperlukan alat bantu mengajar yang masih kongkret. Hal ini dilakukan guna membentuk konsep riil ke konsep yang lebih abstrak pada jenjang berikutnya. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 59 2) Penyajian dilakukan berdasarkan prasyarat. Untuk memahami suatu konsep tertentu diperlukan pemahaman konsep lain yang telah diperoleh atau dikuasai sebelumnya. 3) Pendekatan yang dilakukan cenderung induktif, yaitu disampaikan dari hal-hal yang bersifat umum menuju kepada bagian bagian yang lebih spesifik. 4) Urutan penyajian bersifat kronologis. Penyajian materi selalu diawali dengan menggunakan materi materi terdahulu. Hal ini dilakukan agar sifat kronologis atau urutan materi tidak terputus. Tujuan dan sifat mata pelajaran merupakan dua hal yang mempengaruhi model evaluasi kurikulum subjak akademis (Sukmadinata, 2005:85). Ilmu yang termasuk kategori ilmu-ilmu alam mempunyai model evaluasi yang berbeda dengan ilmu ilmu sosial. Kurikulum ini bersumber pada pendidikan klasik. Konsep pendidikan ini bertolak dari asumsi bahwa seluruh warisan budaya yaitu, pengetahuan, ide-ide, atau nilai-nilai telah ditemukan oleh para pemikir terdahulu. Pendidikan berfungsi untuk memelihara, mengawetkan dan meneruskan budaya tersebut kepada generasi berikutnya, sehingga kurikulum ini lebih mengutamakan isi pendidikan. Oleh karenanya kurikulum ini lebih bersifat intelektual. 2. Model Hubungan Interpersonal dari Rogers Model ini didasarkan atas kebutuhan untuk menciptakan serta memelihara suasana yang baik terhadap perubahan. Dalam melaksanakan hal ini digunakan pengalam kelompok yang intensif, untuk menghasilkan sesuatu yang berhubungan dengan berbagai keterampilan serta penglaman yang mendasar. Sedikitnya ada tiga langkah yang harus dilakukan untuk menjalin hubungan intepersonal dalam pengembangan kurikulum model Rogers. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 60 Langkah pertama adalah memilih taget pendidikan, kriteria untuk memilih ini hanyalah bahwa satu atau lebih dari individu berada dalam posisi pemimpin. Beberapa keuntungan dari kelompok intensif ini ialah : 1) Setiap anggota dapat meneliti kembali apa yang diyakininya. 2) Menemukan ide yang inovatif dengan lebih mudah dan kurang mengandung resiko dalam penerapannya. 3) Kurang memperhatikan berbagai aturan yang birokratis. 4) Berkomunikasi secara jelas, realistis, dan terbuka. 5) Lebih menghargai orang lain secara demokratis. 6) Secara terbuka mengadakan perbandingan antar dirinya dengan orang lain. 7) Mampu menerima umpan balik yang posiftif maupun negatif, dan mem pergunakannya secara konstruktif. Langkah kedua, ialah kelompok intensif diantara para guru. Prinsif sama dengan model administrator, dimana pengalamannya lebih lama dan dapat dipertimbangkan dengan maslah ukuran staff, finansial, serta berbagai variasinya. Kegiatan ini memberikan keuntungan, seperti : 1). Mampu mendengarkan peserta didik. 2). Menerima ide yang inovatif dari peserta didik. 3). Memperhatikan interaksi peserta didik, terutama yang menyangkut bahan pelajaran. 4). Memecahkan masalah bersama peserta didik. 5). Mengembangkan suasana kelas yang demokratis. Langkah ketiga ialah pengembangan pengalaman kelompok intensif untuk unit kelas atau pembelajaran. Rogers menyarankan lima hari untuk melaksanakan kegiatan ini, dimana masyarakat boleh mengikutinya, dengan tujuan menciptakan suasana yang lebih bebas, dan menyenangkan. Pengaruh pengalaman ini bagi peserta didik ialah : Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 61 1). Peserta didik merasa lebih bebas mengemukakan perasaan yang positif maupun negatif di kelas. 2). Bekerja berdasarkan perasaan yang mengarah pada penyelesaian secara realistis. 3). Memiliki lebih banyak energi untuk belajar, karena kurang memiliki rasa takut terhadap penilaian dan hukuman. 4). Menemukan rasa tanggung jawab terhadap cara belajarnya sendiri. 5). Menemukan proses belajar untuk menangani maslaah hidupnya. Langkah keempat, berhubungan dengan keterlibatan kelompok intensif dari orang tua peserta didik, untuk menciptakan hubungan sesama orang tua, anak, dan sekolah. Tujuan akhir dari model Rogers ini ialah berkumpulnya apa yang disebut "kelompok vertikal", yaitu berkumpulnya berbagai orang yang merasa terlibat dalam pendidikan. Rogers menekankan pentingnya penjadwalan urutan pengalaman kelompok intensif yang tidak terlalu lama. Pengembangan model hubungan interpersonal ini menuntut guru profesional, yang dinamis, dan siap melakukan perubahan, termasuk melakukan perubahan dalam caranya berpikir dan bertindak. *** Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 62 A. STRUKTUR KURIKULUM 1. Stuktur Kurikulum Secara Umum Struktur kurikulum merupakan susunan atau pengorganisasian bagian-bagian mata pelajaran yang harus ditempuh oleh peserta didik dalam kegiatan pembelajaran kedalam muatan kurikulum setiap mata pelajaran. Pada setiap tahun pendidikan dituangkan dalam kompetensi yang harus dikuasai peserta didik sesuai dengan beban belajar yang tercantum dalam struktur kurikulum. Dalam penyusunan kurikulum harus memperhatikan tingkat pendidikan dan jenis pendidikan yang terdapat pada kurikulum.Tingkat pendidikan dibedakan menjadi pendidikan dasar, pendidikan menengah dan pendidikan tinggi. Setiap jenis dan jenjang pendidikan tersebut mempunyai tujuan berbeda satu sama lain akan tetapi harus mencerminkan adanya kesinambungan dari ketiganya. Berdasarkan dengan jenis sekolah secara umum berorientasi pada pendidikan Sekolah Menengah Pertama (SMP) dan Sekolah Menengah Pertama (SMA) ada pula yang berorientasi pada sekolah kejuruan. Komponen-komponen struktur kurikulum diperlukan untuk menuangkan keputusan-keputusan yang diambil sebagai pegangan bagi pendidik dalam kegiatan-kegiatan sekolah. Komponen struktur kurikulum terdiri dari: BAB V STRUKTUR & PENGEMBANGAN KURIKULUM Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 63 TUJUAN MATERI PROSES EVALUASI a) Tujuan Kurikulum adalah alat untuk mencapai tujuan pendidikan, maka tujuan kurikulum harus dijabarkan dari tujuan umum pendidikan dalam sistem pendidikan nasional. Makna tujuan umum pendidikan pada hakikatnya membentuk manusia Indonesia yang bisa mandiri dalam konteks kehidupn pribadinya, kehidupan bermasyarakat, berbangsa dan bernegara serta berkehidupan sebagai makhluk Tuhan. b) Materi Mata pelajaran sebagai bagian dari kebudayaan manusia merupakan pengetahuan bagi manusia untuk memperoleh kehidupan. Bagian terpenting dalam struktur kurikulum adalah memilih mata pelajaran agar memperoleh isi kurikulum yang sesuai kemampuan anak, tuntutan masyarakat dan kepentingan mata pelajaran. Tidak semua mata pelajaran dan kebudayaan manusia harus dimasukkan ke dalam kurikulum sekolah sekalipun penting bagi kehidupan. Ada beberapa kriteria yang bisa digunakan dalam memilih mata pelajaran sebagai isi kurikulum diantaranya adalah pentingnya mata pelajaran dalam kerangka pengetahuan keilmuan, mata pelajaran harus tahan uji Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 64 dan mata pelajaran memiliki kegunaan bagi anak didik dan masyarakat pada umumnya. c) Proses Proses belajar mengajar yaitu serangkaian interaksi antara pendidik dan peserta didik yang memilii hubungan timbal balik untuk mencapai tujuan tertentu. Proses belajar mengajar meliputi kegiatan yang dilakukan pendidikan mulai dari perencanaan, pelaksanaan kegiatan samapai evaluasi dan program tindak lanjut untuk mencapai tujuan pendidikan. Dalam proses belajar mengajar diperlukan kemampuan pendidik atau guru untuk mengelola pembelajaran. Mengelola proses belajar mengajar adalah kecakapan para guru dalam menciptakan Susana edukatif antara pendidik dan peserta didik yang mencakup segi kognitif, efektif dan psikomotor. d) Evaluasi Untuk dapat menentukan tercapai tidaknya tujuan pendidikan dan pengajaran perlu dilakukan usaha dan tindakan atau kegiatan untuk menilai hasil belajar yang bertujuan untuk melihat kemajuan belajar peserta didik dalam hal penguasaan materi pengajaran yang telah dipelajari tujuan yang ditetapkan. 2. Struktur Kurikulum Berdasarkan Peraturan Pemerintah Nomor 13 Tahun 2013 Struktur kurikulum adalah pengorganisasian mata pelajaran untuk setiap satuan pendidikan yang harus ditempuh oleh peserta didik dalam kegiatan pembelajaran. Berdasarkan Peraturan Pemerintah Nomor 13 Tahun 2013 tentang Perubahan atas Peraturan Pemerintah nomor 19 Tahun 2005 tentang Standar Nasional Pendidikan Pasal 77 B ayat (1), Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 65 stuktur kurikulum merupakan pengorganisasian kompetensi inti, kompetensi dasar, muatan pembelajaran, mata pelajaran, dan beban belajar pada setiap satuan pendidikan dan program pendidikan. Dalam struktur kurikulum terdapat beberapa satuan tingkatan pendidikan yaitu Pendidikan Anak Usia Dini (PAUD), satuan pendidikan dasar dan satuan pendidikan umum. Dalam struktur kurikulum pendidikan Pendidikan Anak Usia Dini (PAUD) formal berisi program pengembangan pribadi anak, satuan pendidikan dasar berisi muatan umum. Sedangkan, dalam struktur. Dalam kurikulum untuk satuan pendidikan menengah terdiri atas muatan umum, muatan peminatan akademik muatan peminatan kejuruan muatan pilihan pendalaman minat. a. Kompetensi Inti Kompetensi inti merupakan tingkat kemampuan untuk mencapai standar kompetensi lulusan yang harus dimiliki seorang peserta didik pada setiap tingkat kelas atau program yang menjadi landasan pengembangan kompetensi dasar. Kompetensi inti mencakup sikap spiritual,sikap sosial, pengetahuan dan keterampilan yang berfungsi sebagai pengintegrasi muatan pembelajaran, mata pelajaran atau program dalam mencapai standar kompetensi lulusan b. Kompetensi dasar Kompetensi dasar mencakup sikap spiritual, sikap sosial, pengetahuan dan keterampilan dalam muatan pembelajaran , mata pelajaran atau mata kuliah. Kompetensi dasar sikembangkan dalm muatan konteks muatan pembelajaran atau mata kuliah sesuai dengan kompetensi inti. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 66 c. Muatan Pembelajaran Struktur kurikulum terdapat muatan pembelajaran beberapa satuan tingkatan pendidikan yaitu Pendidikan Anak Usia Dini (PAUD), satuan pendidikan dasar dan satuan pendidikan umum. Dalam struktur kurikulum pendidikan Pendidikan Anak Usia Dini (PAUD) formal berisi program pengembangan pribadi anak, satuan pendidikan dasar berisi muatan umum. Sedangkan, dalam struktur kurikulum untuk satuan pendidikan menengah terdiri atas muatan umum, muatan peminatan akademik, muatan peminatan kejuruan dan muatan pilihan pendalaman minat. d. Mata Pelajaran Mata pelajaran tersusun atas struktur kurikulum satuan pendidikan dan program pendidikan. Ada beberapa struktur kurikulum berdasarkan tingkatannya yaitu: a) Struktur kurikulum Pendidikan Anak Usia Dini (PAUD) formal. Struktur kurikulum pendidikan anak usia dini formal berisi program-program pengembangan nilai agama dan moral, motorik, kognitif, bahasa, sosial emosional dan seni. b) Struktur Kurikulum Pendidikan Dasar Struktur kurikulum pendidikan dasar berisi muatan pembelajaran atau mata pelajaran yang dirancang untuk mengembangkan kompetensi spiritual keagamaan, sikap personal dan sosial, pengetahuan dan keterampilan. Struktur kurikulum pendidikan dasar terdiri atas struktur kurikulum SD/MI, SDLB atau bentuk lain yang sederajat dan SMP/MTs, SMPLB atau bentuk lain yang sederajat. Struktur kurikulum SD/MI,SDLB atau bentuk lain yang terdiri atas muatan pendidikan agama, pendidikan kewarganegaraan, bahasa, matematika, Ilmu Pengetahuan Alam Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 67 (IPA), Ilmu Pengetahuan Sosial (IPS), Seni dan budaya, pendidikan jasmani dan olahraga, kerampilan, dan muatan lokal. Muatan-muatan lokal dapat terorganisir dalam satu atau lebih mata pelajaran sesuai dengan kebutuhan satuan pendidikan dan program pendidikan. c) Struktur kurikulum Pendidikan SMP/MTs/SMPL Struktur kurikulum Pendidikan SMP/MTs/SMPL atau bentuk lain yang sederajat terdiri atas muatan pendidikan agama, pendidikan kewarganegaraan, bahasa, matematika, Ilmu Pengetahuan Alam (IPA), Ilmu Pengetahuan Sosial (IPS), Seni dan budaya, pendidikan jasmani dan olahraga, kerampilan, dan muatan lokal. Muatan-muatan lokal dapat diorganisasikan dalam satu atau lebih mata pelajaran sesuai dengan kebutuhan satuan pendidikan dan program pendidikan. d) Struktur Kurikulum Pendidikan Menengah (SMA/MA, SMALB dan SMK/MAK Kurikulum pendidikan menengah terdiri atas muatan umum untuk SMA/MA, SMALB dan SMK/MAK. Muatan tersebut terdiri dari muatan peminatan SMA/MA dan SMK/MAK, muatan pilihan lintas minat atau pendalaman minat untuk SMA/MA, SMALN, muatan peminatan kejuruan untuk SMK/MAK, dan muatan pilihan lintas minat atau pendalaman minat untuk SMK/MAK. Muatan umum sebagaimana dimaksud yaitu muatan pendidikan agama, pendidikan kewarganegaraan, bahasa, matematika, Ilmu Pengetahuan Alam (IPA), Ilmu Pengetahuan Sosial (IPS), Seni dan budaya, pendidikan jasmani dan olahraga, kerampilan, dan muatan lokal. Muatan-muatan lokal dapat diorganisasikan dalam Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 68 satu atau lebih mata pelajaran sesuai dengan kebutuhan satuan pendidikan dan program pendidikan. Sedangkan, Muatan peminatan akademik SMA/MA atau bentuk lain yang sederajat sebagaimana dimaksud terdisi atas matematika dan ilmu pengetahuan alam, ilmu pengetahuan sosial, bahasa dan budaya, atau peminatan lainnya. Muatan peminatan akademik SMK/MAK atau bentuk lain yang sederajat sebagaimana dimaksud terdisi atas teknologi dan rekayasa, kesehatan, seni, kerajinan,dan pariwisata, teknologi komunikasi dan informasi, agribisnis san agroteknolohi, bisnis dan manajemen, perikanan dan kelautan,atau, permintaan lain yang diperlukan masyarakat. e) Struktur Kurikulum Pendidikan Nonformal Struktur kurikulum pendidikan nonformal berisi program pengembangan kecakapan hidup yang mencakup keterampilan fungsional, sikap dan kepribadian profesional, dan jiws wirausaha mandiri serta kompetensi dalam bidang tertentu. Stuktur pendidikan nonformal terdiri atas struktur kurikulum satuan pendidikan formal dan program pendidikan nonformal. B. PENGEMBANGAN KURIKULUM Pengembangan kurikulum merupakan sesuatu hal yang dapat terjadi kapan saja sesuai kebutuhan. Pesatnya perkembangan ilmu pengetahuan dan teknologi serta perubahan yang terjadi dalam kehidupan bermasyarakat merupakan hal yang harus dipertimbangkan dalam pengembangan kurikulum pada setiap jenjang pendidikan. Kondisi dan kecenderungan yang akan terjadi pada masa mendatang memerlukan persiapan dari generasi muda dan peserta didik yang memiliki kompetensi multidimensional. Mengacu pada hal tersebut, pengembangan kurikulum harus mampu Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 69 mengantisipasi segala persoalan yang dihadapi masa sekarang dan masa yang akan datang agar tujuan pendidikan dapat tercapai. 1. Pengertian Pengembangan Kurikulum Menurut Unruh & Unruh (Oemar Hamalik, 2006) mengemukakan definisi pengembangan kurikulum yakni : Curriculum Development: problems, proces, and progress is aimed at contemporary circumtances and future projections (Pengembangan Kurikulum: masalah, proses, dan kemajuan ditujukan untuk situasi sekarang dan proyeksi masa depan). Berdasarkan perngetian tersebut, pengembangan kurikulum tidak hanya merupakan sesuatu hal yang terjadi begitu saja namun pengembangan kurikulum harus mampu mengantisipasi permasalahan yang terjadi sekarang ataupun yang akan terjadi pada masa depan. Selain itu pengembangan kurikulum yang terjadi harus mempersiapkan berbagai contoh dan alternatif untuk tindakan yang merupakan inspirasi dari beberapa ide dan penyesuaian-penyesuaian lain yang dianggap penting. Audrey Nicholls & S. Howard Nichools (Oemar Hamalik, 2006) merumuskan kembali secara lebih jelas bahwa pengembangan kurikulum (curriculum development) adalah: the planning of learning opportunities intended to bring about certain desered in pupils, and assesment of the extent to wich these changes have taken plece. Berdasarkan pendapat-pendapat tersebut, maka dapat disimpulkan bahwa pengembangan kurikulum adalah perencanaan kesempatankesempatan belajar yang dimaksudkan untuk membawa peserta didik ke arah perubahan-perubahan yang diinginkan dan menilai hingga mana perubahan-perubahan itu telah terjadi pada diri peserta didik dengan adanya hubungan yang telah direncanakan dan terkontrol antara peserta didik, pendidik, bahan peralatan, dan lingkungan dimana belajar yang diharapkan terjadi. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 70 2. Dasar-dasar Pengembanngan Kurikulum Pengembangan kurikulum memeliki dasar-dasar dalam pengembangan yang harus di perhatikan. Berikut merupakan dasar-dasar dalam pengembangan kurikulum. 1) Kurikulum disusun untuk mewujudkan sistem pendidikan nasional. 2) Kurikulum pada semua jenjang pendidikan dikembangkan dengan pendekatan kemampuan. 3) Kurikulum harus sesuai dengan ciri khas satuan pendidikan pada masing-masing jenjang pendidikan. 4) Kurikulum pendidikan dasar, menengah dan tinggi dikembangkan atas dasar standar nasional pendidikan untuk setiap jenis dan jenjang pendidikan. 5) Kurikulum pada semua jenjang pendidikan dikembangkan secara berdiversifikasi, sesuai dengan kebutuhan potensi, dan minat peserta didik dan tuntutan pihak-pihak yang memerlukan dan berkepentingan. 6) Kurikulum dikembangkan dengan memperhatikan tuntutan pembangunan daerah dan nasional, keanekaragaman potensi daerah dan lingkungan serta kebutuhan pengembangan iptek dan seni. 7) Kurikulum pada semua jenjang pendidikan dikembanngkan secara berdiversifikasi, sesuai dengan tuntutan lingkungan dan budaya setempat. 8) Kurikulum pada semua jenjang pendidikan mencakup aspek spiritual keagamaan, intelektualitas, watak konsep diri, keterampilan belajar, kewirausahaan, keterampilan hidup yang berharkat dan bermartabat, pola hidup sehat, estetika dan rasa kebangsaan. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 71 3. Kondisi Pengembangan Kurikulum Kegiatan pengembangan kurikulum dapat dilakukan pada berbagai kondisi, mulai dari tingkat kelas samapai dengan tingkat nasional. Kondisi-kondisi itu tersebut adalah pengembangan kurikulum oleh guru kelas, pengembangan kurikulum oleh sekelompok guru dalam suatu sekolah, pengembangan kurikulum melalui pusat guru, pengembangan kurikulum pada tingkat daerah, dan pengembangan kurikulum dalam/melalui proyek nasional. Guru kelas dapat mengembangkan kurikulum untuk kelas yang menjadi tanggung jawabnya tetapi kegiatan itu hanya terbatas pelaksanaannya dalam kelas saja. Namun, hasil pengembangan kurikulum yang dilakukan oleh guru tidak relevan dan tidak konsisten dengan program sekolah. Kegiatan pengembangan kurikulum yang dilakukan staf atau kelompok guru lebih mengandung banyak keuntungan, antara lain terjadinya pertukaran pengalaman, lebih banyak pengetahuan dan keterampilan yang disumbangkan, banyak terjadi pertukaran gagasan memperkaya usaha pengembangan. Sehingga hasil pengembangan tersebutlebih luas daerah penggunaannya, paling tidak oleh suatu sekolah dan hasil pengembangan kurikulum akan lebih relevan dan konsisten dengan kebutuhan siswa dan sekolah secara keseluruhan. Kegiatan pengembangan kurikulum yang dilakukan oleh pusat guru mengandung daerah pemakaian yang lebih luas, walaupun dibatasi oleh pengembangan dalam bidang-bidang studi saja. Tetapi pengembangan kurikulum yang dilakukan oleh pusat guru akan mendapatkan bantuan/bimbingan dari ahli dalam bidang-bidang yang diperlukan, lebih banyak material dan sumber-sumber penunjang yang dibutuhkan. Kegiatan pengembangan kurikulum yang dilakukan pada tingkat Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 72 nasional tentu saja lebih banyak memiliki keuntungan jika dibandingkan dengan usaha pengembangan pada kondisi lainnya. Disamping lebih banyak tenaga yang terlibat, lebih banyak informasi, gagasan pengembangan lebih mantap. 4. Faktor-faktor yang Mempengaruhi Pengembangan Kurikulum Sekolah mendapat pengaruh dari kekuatan-kekuatan yang ada dalam masyarakat, terutama pendidikan tinggi, masyarakat dan sistem nilai. Berikut merupakan faktor-faktor yang mempengaruhi pengembangan kurikulum. 1) Pendidikan Tinggi Kurikulum minimal mendapatkan dua pengaruh dari pendidikan tinggi, yaitu dari pengembangan pengetahuan yang dikembangkan di perguruan tinggi dan dari pendidikan guru yang umumnya dilaksanakan di perguruan tinggi keguruan. Keduanya memberi pengaruh terhadap pengembangan kurikulum yang akan dilakukan, dimulai dari isi kurikulum yang di kembangkan di perguruan tinggi dan kompetensi guru yang tercipta dari kurikulum perguruan tinggi keguruan. 2) Masyarakat Sebagai bagian dan agen dari masyarakat, sekolah sangat dipengaruhi oleh lingkungan masyarakat dimana sekolah tersebut berada. Isi kurikulum hendaknya mencerminkan dan memenuhi kebutuhan masyarakat di sekitarnya. Dan sekolah harus melayani aspirasi-aspirasi yang ada di masyarakat. 3) Sistem Nilai Sekolah sebagai lembaga masyarakat bertanggung jawab dalam pemeliharaan nilai-nilai yang berkembang. Masalah utama yang Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 73 dihadapi para pengembang kurikulum menghadapi sistem nilai adalah sistem nilai yang berkembang itu tidak hanya satu. Dalam masyarakat juga memiliki aspek-aspek sosial, ekonomi, politik, fisik, estetika, religius dan sebagainya yang seringkali juga memiliki nilai yang berbeda, hal yang perlu diperhatikan pendidik dalam mengajarkan nilai-nilai yang diantaranya: a) Pendidik atau guru hendaknya mengetahui dan memperhatikan semua nilai yang ada di masyarakat. b) Pendidik atau guru hendaknya berprinsip pada nilai demokrasi, etis dan moral. c) Pendidik atau guru berusaha menjadikan dirinya sebagai teladan yang patut ditiru d) Pendidik atau guru dapat menghargai nilai-nilai kelompok lain, memahami dan menerima keragaman kebudayaan sendiri. 5. Hambatan-hambatan dalam Pengembangan Kurikulum Dalam pengembangan kurikulum terdapat beberapa hambatan diantaranya sebagai berikut. 1) Pendididk atau guru kurang berpartisipasi dalam pengembangan kurikulum. 2) Ada beda pendapat baik antara sesama guru maupun dengan kepala sekolah dan administrator. 3) Kurang cakapnya kemampuan dan pengetahuan pendidik atau guru. 4) Hambatan lain yaitu dari masyarakat. Apabila masyarakat kurang berpartisipasi maka dapat menghambat pengembangan kurikulum Pengembangan kurikulum dibutuhkan dukungan dari masyarakat baik dalam pembiayaan maupun dalam memberikan umpan baik terhadap sistem pendidikan atau kurikulum yang sedang berjalan. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 74 C. PENENTU DAN PROSES METODE MENGAJAR Tugas dan tanggung jawab pendidik atau guru dalam proses belajar dan mengajar adalah mendidik peserta didik. Tugas dan tanggung jawab tersebut tidak lepas dari kemampuan pendidik dalam usaha meningkatkan proses dan hasil belajar. Menurut Nasution (1982) mengajar merupakan suatu aktivitas mengorganisasikan atau mengatur lingkungan sebaik-baiknya dan menghubungkannya dengan anak, sehingga terjadi belajar mengajar. Menurut Moh. Uzer Usman (Suryosubroto, 1997) proses belajar mengajar adalah suatu proses yang mengandung serangkaian perbuatan guru dan siswa atas dasar hubungan timbal balik yang berlangsung dalam situasi edukatif untuk mencapai tujuan tertentu. Jadi, dapat disimpulkan bahwa proses belajar mengajar adalah rangkaian proses interaksi antara pendidik dan peserta didik yang tersusun mulai dari perencanaan hingga evaluasi sampai pada tindak lanjut mata pelajaran agar mencapai tujuan tertentu. 1. Arti dan Maksud Metode Pengajaran Pemberian kecakapan dan pengetahuan kepada murid-murid yang merupakan proses pengajaran (proses belajar mengajar) itu dilakukan oleh guru di sekolah dengan menggunakan cara-cara atau metodemetode tertentu. Winarno Surakhmad (dalam suryosubroto, 1997) menegaskan bahwa metode pengajaran adalah cara-cara pelaksanaan daripada proses pengajaran, atau soal bagaimana teknisnya sesuatu bahan pelajaran diberikan kepada murid-murid di sekolah. Para pendidik (guru) selalu berusaha memilih metode pengajaran yang setepattepatnya, yang dipandang lebih efektif daripada metode-metode lainnya sehingga kecakapan dan pengetahuan yang diberikan oleh guru itu benar-benar menjadi milik murid. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 75 Jadi metode adalah cara yang dalam fungsinya merupakan alat untuk mencapai tujuan, khususnya yang sedang di bahas ini tujuan pada bidang pendidikan. Makin tepat metodenya diharapkan makin efektif pula pencapaian tujuan tersebut. a. Macam-macam Metode Mengajar Metode mengajar ada bermacam-macam, ada beberpa metode yang dilakukan pendidik kepada peserta didik dalam proses belajar mengajar. Metode-metode mengajar tersebut adalah sebagai berikut. 1) Metode Ceramah Menurut Winarno Surachmad (dalam Suryosubroto, 1997) yang dimaksud dengan ceramah adalah sebagai metode mengajar ialah penerangan dan penuturan secara lisan oleh guru terhadap kelasnya. Selama berlangsungnya ceramah guru bisa menggunakan alat-alat bantu seperti gambar-gambar bagan agar uraiannya menjadi jelas, tetapi metode utama dalam mengajar adalah berbicara sedangkan peranan murid dalam metode ceramah yang penting adalah mendengarkan dengan teliti serta mencatat yang pokok-pokok yang di kemukakan oleh guru. Jadi, dengan kata lain metode ceramah yang dimaksud disini adalah ceramah dengan kombinasi metode yang bervariasi sebab ceramah dilakukan dengan ditujukan sebagai pemicu terjadinya kegiatan yang partisipatif seperti curah pendapat, penugasan, studi kasus dan lain-lain. Selain itu, ceramah yang dimaksud disini adalah ceramah yang cenderung interaktif, yaitu melibatkan peserta melalui adanya tanggapan balik atau perbandingan dengan pendapat dan pengalaman peserta. Media pendukung yang digunakan, seperti bahan serahan (handouts), transparansi yang ditayangkan dengan OHP, bahan presentasi yang ditayangkan Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 76 dengan LCD dan lain-lain. Adapun langkah-langkah untuk mengefektifkan metode ceramah yaitu: a) Pendidik harus terlebih dahulu mengetahui dan memahami terlebih dahulu tujuan pembicaraan berupa materi mata pelajaran yang hendak dipelajari peserta didik.. b) Bahan materi ceramah harus disusun sedemikian rupa agar dapat mudah dimengerti, mudah dipahami, menarik perhatian peserta didik dan bahan pelajaran yang mereka peroleh berguna bagi kehidupan. c) Dalam penyampaian ceramah, pendidik memberikan pengertian yang jelas dimulai dengan ikhtisar tentang pokokpokok yang akan diuraikan kemudian menyusul bagian utama penguraian dan penjelasan poko-pokok tersebut, sampai pada akhirnya disimpulkan kembali pokok-pokok penting yang telah dibicarakan. Proses mengajar dengan metode ceramah memiliki kelebihan dan kekurangan.Kelebihan dari metode ceramah diantaranya: a) Pendidik atau guru dapat menguasai seluruh arah kelas, sebab guru berbicara langsung di depan kelas sehingga dapat menentukan arah proses belajar dengan menetapkan sendiri bahan mata pelajaran yang akan dibicarakan. b) Metode mengajar dengan ceramah dalam persiapannya satusatu yang diperlukan pendidik ialah buku catatan atau bahan pelajaran. Pembicara ada kemungkinan berdiri atau duduk dalam menerangkan mata pelajaran sedangkan peserta didik mendengarkan dan merespon. Metode ini paling sederhana untuk mengatur kelas daripada metode lain. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 77 Setiap metode pembelajaran memeiliki kelemahan dalam aplikasi pembelajaran di sekolah. Adapun kelemahan dari metode dengan ceramah antara lain: a) Peserta didik seringkali memberikan pengertian lain dengan apa yang diterangkan pendidik. Hal ini disebabkan karena ceramah merupakan rangkaian kata-kata yang sifatnya abstrak. b) Meskipun merupakan metode paling sederhana bagi pendidik untuk menerangkan materi pelajaran, namun pendidik sukar untuk mengetahui samapai dimana peserta didik telah memahami mata pelajaran yang disampaikan apalagi jika mata pelajaran yang dimaksud adalah matematika atau ilmu pasti lainnya. Dari beberapa kelebihan dan kekuarangan dalam penggunaan metode mengajar dengan ceramah, ada beberapa solusi untuk menghindari kekurangan-kekurangan dalam mengajar diantaranya dengan menambah keterangan kata-kata untuk mendapatkan gambaran yang jelas atau jika mata pelajaran tersebut sulit untuk dijelaskan dengan bahasa contohnya mata pelajaran matematika dapat menggunakan alat-alat peraga seperti bangun ruang, gambar-gambra dan sebagainya. 2) Metode Diskusi Diskusi adalah suatu percakapan ilmiah oleh beberapa orang yang tergabung dalam satu kelompok untuk saling bertukar masalah atau bersama-sama mencari pemecahan masalah atau mencari kebenaran atas suatu masalah. Metode diskusi adalah suatu cara penyajian bahan pelajaran dimana pendidik memberi kesempatan kepada peserta didik dengan membuat kelompok Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 78 untuk mengadakan perbincangan ilmiah. Metode diskusi bertujuan untuk tukar menukar gagasan, pemikiran, informasi atau pengalaman diantara peserta, sehingga dicapai kesepakatan pokokpokok pikiran, gagasan dan kesimpulan. Untuk mencapai kesepakatan tersebut, para peserta dapat saling beradu argumentasi untuk meyakinkan peserta lainnya. Kesepakatan pikiran inilah yang kemudian ditulis sebagai hasil diskusi. Diskusi biasanya digunakan sebagai bagian yang tak terpisahkan dari penerapan berbagai metode lainnya, seperti: penjelasan ceramah, curah pendapat, diskusi kelompok, permainan, dan lain-lain. Metode diskusi, dapat dilakukan dengan berbagai bentuk sebagai berikut: a) The Social Problem Meeting Peserta didik berbincang-bincang memecahkan masalah dalam mata pelajaran dengan tujuan merangsang respon untuk mempelajari dan bertingkah laku sesuai dengan kehidupan sehari-hari dan sesuai kaidah yang berlaku. b) The Open Ended Meeting Peserta didik berbincang-bincang mengenai masalah yang berhubungan dengan kehidupan sehari-hari dan kehidupan di sekolah dengan sesuatu yang terjadi di lingkungan sekitar mereka dan sebagainya. c) The Educational Diagnosis Meeting Peserta didik berbincang-bincang menenai mata pelajaran di kelas dengan tujuan untuk saling mengoreksi pemahamami pelajaran yang diteimanya agar setiap peserta didik memperoleh pemahaman lebih baikdan benar. Pada pelaksanaan metode diskusi tedapat langkah-langkah yang ditempuh pendidik agar proses belajar mengajar dapat Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 79 terlaksana secara efektif. Ada beberapa langkah-langkah metode diskusi, diantaranya adalah: a) Pendidik mengemukakan masalah yang akan didiskusiskan dan memberikan pengararahan seperlunya mengenai cara-cara pemecahan masalah tersebut. b) Pendidik memimpin peserta didik membentuk kelompok diskusi, memilih pemimpin tiap kelompok, mengatur tempat duduk, ruangan, sarana dan sebagainya. c) Peserta didik berdiskusi dalam kelompoknya masing-masing, pendidik hanya mengawasi dan memberiakan arahan dan dorongan agar setiap anggota kelompok berpartisipasi aktif dalam mengemukakan pendapat serta pelaksanaan diskusi dapat berjalan dengan baik. d) Tiap kelompok melaporkan hasil diskusinya, sedangkan pendidik mengoreksi, memberikan ulasan atau penjelasan terhadap laporan-laporan tersebut kemudian memberikan reward berupa penilaian. e) Tahap selanjutnya yaitu peserta didik mencatat hasil diskusi dan dapat memberikan kesimpulan dari hasil diskusi. Sama halnya dengan metode ceramah pada pelaksanaan metode diskusi juga memiliki kelebihan dan kekurangan. Berikut ini beberapa kelebihan metode diskusi: a) Metode diskusi melibatkan seluruh peserta didik secara langsung dalam proses belajar mengajar. Sedangkan pendidik hanya memberi pengawasan dan penilaian. b) Peserta didik dan pendidik dapat menguji tingkat pengetahuan dan penguasaan mata pelajaran yang didiskusikan. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 80 c) Metode diskusi dapat menumbuhkan dan mengembangkan cara berpikir dan sikat ilmiah. d) Dengan mengajukan pertanyaan dan mempertahankan pendapatnya dalam diskusi siswa akan memperoleh kepercayaan akan kemampuan diri sendiri. e) Metode diskusi dapat menunjang pengembangan sikap sosial dan sikap demokratis peserta didik. Adapun kekurangan-kekurangan pada pelaksanaan metode diskusi disntaranya: a) Diskusi akan berjalan dengan baik tergantung pada pimpinan diskusi dan partisipasi aktif anggotanya. b) Diskusi memerlukan pengetahuan dan keterampilan yang diperoleh sebelumnya. c) Jalannya diskusi dapat didominasi oleh beberapa anggata yang menguasai materi diskusi dan percaya diri mengemukakan pendapat. d) Diskusi yang mendalam memerlukan waktu yang banyak, sehingga pembatasan waktu diskusi menimbulkan pemecahan masalah yang terburu-buru. 3) Metode Penemuan (Discovery) Menurut Encylopedia of Education Reasearch (dalam Suryosubroto, 1997), penemuan merupakan suatu strategi yang unik yang dapat diberi bentuk oleh guru dalam berbagai cara termasuk mengerjakan keterampilan menyelidiki dan memecahkan masalah sebagai alat bagi siswa untuk mencapai tujuan pendidikannya. Dengan demikian dapat dikatakan bahwa metode penumuan itu adalah suatu metode dalam proses belajar mengajar dimana pendidik memperkenankan peserta didiknya menemukan Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 81 sendiri informasi yang didapatkan dari penemuan-penemuan di lapangan. Penemuan (discovery) sering dihubungkan dengan penyelidikan (inquiry) dan pemecahan masalah (problem solving). Beberapa ahli membedakan antara penyelidikan dengan penemuan, sedangakan beberapa ahli menempatkan anatara penyelidikan sebagai bagian dari penemuan. Sund (dalam Suryosubroto, 1997) berpendapat bahwa discovery adalah proses mental dimana siswa mengasimilasikan sesuatu konsep atau suatu prinsip. Proses mental tersebut misalnya mengamati, menggolonggololongkan , membuat dugaan, menjelaskan, mengukur, membuat kesimpulan dan sebagainya. Sedangkan yang dimaksud konsep misalnya segitiga, persegi dan lain sebagainya. Sedangakn inquiry adalah proses perluasan proses discovery digunakan lebih mendalam yang mengandung proses-proses mental yang lebih tinggi tingkatannya, misalnya merumuskan problema, merancang eksperimen, melakukan eksperimen, mengumpulkan data, menganalisis data dan menarik kesimpulan. Menurut J Ricard schuman (dalam Suryosubroto, 1997) bahwa proses pengajaran berpindah dari situasi "teacher dominated learning (vertical)" ke situasi " student dominated learning (horizontal)" . Jadi, dengan menggunakan discovery yang melibatkan peserta didik dalam proses kegiatan mental melalui tukar pendapat, seminar dan sebagainya. Jadi, metode penemuan diartikan sebagai suatu prosedur mengajar yang mementingkan pengajaran, manipulasi objek dan percobaan sebelum sampai pada generalisasi dan kesimpulan. Metode penemuan bertujuan untuk melatih dan meningkatkan Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 82 kemampuan peserta dalam mengaplikasikan pengetahuan dan keterampilan yang diperolehnya. Kegiatan ini dilakukan di lapangan percobaan penelitian. Bisa berarti di tempat kerja, maupun di masyarakat. Adapun langkah-langkah pada proses metode penemuan yaitu; a) Menilai kebutuhan dan minat siswa sebagai dasar untuk menentukan tujuan yang berguna dan realistis untuk mengajar dengan metode penemuan. b) Seleksi pendahuluan, dasar kebutuhan dan minat siswa, prinsip-prinsip, generalisasi, memberikan pengertian manfaat dari apa yang dipelajari. c) Mengatur susuna kelas sedemikian rupa sehingga memudahkan dalam proses belajar mengajar menggunakan metode penemuan. d) Membantu menjelaskan peserta didik mengenai peranan. e) Menyiapkan suatu situasi yang mengandung masalah yang dipecahkan. f) Menambah dengan alat peraga untuk kepentingan pelaksanaan penemuan. g) Memberi kesempatan kepada peserta didik untuk bekerja dengan data. h) Memberikan data informasi dalam kelangsungan kegiatan i) Memimpin analisis melalui eksplorasi dengan pertanyaan yang mengarahkan dan mengidentifikasi proses. j) Mengajarkan keterampilan belajar dengan penemuan yang diidentifikasi oleh kebutuhan siswa. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 83 k) Merangsang interaksi peserta didik dengan merundingkan strategi penemuan, mendiskusikan hipotesis dan data yang terkumpul l) Mengajukan pertanyaan tingkat tinggi maupun pertanyaan tingkat sederhana. m) Membantu peserta didik menarik kesimpulan dan merumuskan prinsip-prinsip serta generalisasi atas hasil temuannya. n) Memberikan reward dalam proses penemuan. o) Memberikan penilaian kepada peserta didik terhadap penemuannya. Kelebihan dari metode penemuan diantaranya: a) Membantu peserta didik mengembangkan, memperbanyak penguasaan keterampilan dan proses kognitif . b) Peserta didik memperoleh pengetahuan yang kukuh karena terjadi pendalaman materi. c) Strategi penemuan membangkitkan semangat peserta didik atas keberhasilan jerih payah penyelidikannya. d) Metode penemuan memberikan kesempatan kepada peserta didik untuk memecahkan masalah dengan kemampuannya sendiri. e) Strategi metode penemuan berpusat pada peserta didik sehingga peserta didik lebih percaya diri menunjukan kemampuannya meneliti. Kekurangan metode penemuan: a) Metode belajar mengajar penemuan diutamakan adanya persiapan mental sehingga peserta didik yang kurang Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 84 kemapuan tidak mudah untuk mengembangkan penemuannya. b) Metode penemuan kurang berhasil untuk mengajar kelas dengan intensitas peserta didik lebih besar. c) Strategi mengajar penemuan mungkin mengecewakan bagi pendidik yang sudah terbiasa dengan perencanaan dan pengajaran dengan metode ceramah. d) Pelaksanaan metode belajar mengajar dengan penemuan sering membutuhkan alat-alat canggih dan bahan-bahan yang sulit didapatkan. 2. Tujuan Menggunakan Metode Pengajaran dan Contohnya Metode mengajar merupakan salah satu cara yang dipergunakan guru dalam mengadakan hubungan dengan siswa pada saat berlangsungnya pengajaran. Oleh karena itu, peranan metode mengajar sebagai alat untuk menciptakan proses belajar mengajar. Metode belajar diharapkan tumbuh sebagai kegiatan belajar siswa sehubungan dengan kegiatan mengajar guru. Sehingga tercipta interaksi edukatif. Dalam interaksi ini guru berperan sebagai penggerak atau pembimbing, sedangkan siswa berperan sebagai penerima atau dibimbing. Metode mengajar yang baik adalah metode yang dapat menumbuhkan kegiatan belajar siswa, serta menggunakan metode mengajar secara bervariasi. Tugas guru ialah memilih metode yang tepat untuk menciptakan proses belajar mengajar yang baik. Ketepatan penggunaan metode mengajar sangat tergantung kepada tujuan, isi proses belajar mengajar dan kegiatan belajar mengajar. Menurut Nana Sudjana (Suryosubroto, 1997: 43), dalam praktek mengajar metode yang baik digunakan adalah metode mengajar yang bervariasi/kombinasi dari beberapa metode mengajar, seperti: Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 85 1) Ceramah, tanya jawab dan tugas. 2) Ceramah, diskusi dan tugas. 3) Ceramah, demonstrasi dan eksperimen. 4) Ceramah, sosiodrama dan diskusi. 5) Ceramah, problem solving dan tugas. 6) Ceramah, demonstrasi dan latihan. Sebagai contoh pada mata pelajaran matematika pendekatan yang digunakan adalah: 1) Pendekatan induktif: mengkaji kasus-kasus pola-pola. 2) Pendekatan deduktif: menemukan membuktikan prinsip. 3) Keterampilan proses: menerapkan konsep dan penyelesaian soal. 4) Metode pemberian tugas. 5) Pemecahan masalah. 3. Hal-hal Penentu Relevansi Metode Mengajar Menurut Hadari Nawawi (Suryosubroto, 1997), metode mengajar adalah kesatuan langkah kerja yang dikembangkan oleh guru berdasarkan pertimbangan rasional tertentu, masing-masing jenisnya bercorak khas dan kesemuanya berguna untuk mencapai tujuan pengajaran tertentu. Dasar pemilihan metode mengajar menurut Abu Ahamdai (dalam Suryosubroto, 1997) terdiri dari lima hal: 1) Relevansi dengan tujuan. 2) Relevansi dengan bahan. 3) Relevansi dengan kemampuan guru. 4) Relevansi dengan situasi mengajar. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 86 Sedangkan menurut Lardizal dalam Suryosubroto (1997), dasar pemilihan metode mengajar terdiri dari: 1) Tujuan. 2) Materi. 3) Fasilitas. 4) Guru. Berdasarkan kedua pendapat diatas, dapat disimpulkan bahwa dasar metode mengajar terdiri dari: 1) Relevansi dengan Tujuan Metode mengajar bertujuan mengantarkan sebuah pembelajaran kearah tujuan tertentu yang ideal dengan tepat dan cepat sesuai yang diinginkan. Dalam metode mengajar terdapat suatu prinsip yang umum dalam memfungsikan metode yaitu prinsip agar pembelajaran dapat dilaksanakan dalam suasana menyenangkan, mengembirakan penuh dorongan dan motivasi sehingga materi pembelajaran menjadi lebih mudah untuk diterima oleh peserta didik. 2) Relevansi dengan Materi Pelajaran Materi pelajaran adalah bahan yang digunakan pendidik untuk mengajarkan kepada peserta didik. Materi pelajaran pada hakikatnya adalah isi materi pelajaran yang diberikan kepada siswa sesuai dengan kurikulum yang digunakan. Ada beberapa hal yang perlu diperhatikan dalam menyampaikan materi pelajaran sebagai berikut: a) Materi pelajaran yang akan disampaikan kepada peserta didik harus sesuai untuk menunjang tercapainya tujuan. b) Materi pelajaran yang tercantum dalam perencanaan pengajaran terbatas pada garis besar materi. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 87 c) Urutan materi pelajaran hendaknya memperhatikan kesinambungan. d) Mata pelajaran yang akan diajarkan dari yang termudah menuju yang sulit agar peserta didik mudah memahaminya. 3) Relevansi dengan Kompetensi Guru Relavansi kompetensi guru dengan penentu metode mengajar dianggap sangat penting karena dapat mempengaruhi proses belajar mengajar yang efektif agar tercapai tujuan pembelajaran. Kemampuan seorang guru adalah pengetahuan atau keterampilan yang harus dikuasai oleh seorang guru untuk mendidik, mengajar, membimbing, mengarahkan, melatih, menilai, dan mengevaluasi peserta didik. Pendidik atau guru harus mimiliki 4 kompetensi dasar yaitu kompetensi pedagogik, kompetensi profesional, kompetensi kepribadian dan kompetensi sosial. a) Kompetensi pedagogic Dalam Peraturan Pemerintah Nomor 19 Tahun 2005 Pasal 28 Ayat 3 butir (a) dinyatakan bahwa kompetensi pedagogik adalah kemampuan mengelola pembelajaran peserta didik yang meliputi pemahaman terhadap peserta didik, perancangan dan pelaksanaan pembelajaran, evaluasi hasil belajar dan penembangan peserta didik untuk mengaktualisasikan berbagai potensi yang dimilikinya. b) Kompetensi Profesional Menurut peraturan Pemerintah Nomor 19 Tahun 2005 Pasal 28 Ayat 3 butir (c) dinyatakan bahwa kompetensi profesional adalah kemampuan penguasaan materi pembelajaran secara luas dan mendalam yang memungkinkannya membimbing Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 88 peserta didik memenuhi standar kompetensi yang ditetapkan dalam Standar Nasional Pendidikan. c) Kompetensi Kepribadian Menurut Peraturan Pemerintah Nomor 19 Tahun 2005 Pasal 28 Ayat 3 butir (b) dinyatakan bahwa kompetensi kepribadian adalah kemampuan kepribadian seorang guru yang diperlukan agar menjadi guru yang baik. Kepribadian-kepribadian yang harus dimiliki seorang pendidik atau dalam hal ini adalah guru yaitu kepribadian yang mantap, stabil,dewasa, arif, berwibawa, berakhlak mulia dan dapat menjadi teladan. d) Kompetensi Sosial Menurut peraturan Pemerintah Nomor 19 Tahun 2005 Pasal 28 Ayat 3 butir (a) dinyatakan bahwa kompetensi sosial adalah kemampuan pendidik sebagai bagian dari masyarakat untuk berkomunikasi dan bergaul secara efektif dengan peserta didik, sesama pendidik, tenaga kependidikan, orang tua/wali dan masyarakat sekitar. 4) Relevansi dengan kemampuan peserta didik Mengetahui kemampuan siswa atau peserta didik dirasa sangat penting untuk mengembangkan metode mengajar. Menurut Abdul Gafur (dalam Suryosubroto, 1997) kemampuan awal siswa adalah pengetahuan dan keterampilan yang relevan termasuk latar belakang karakteristik siswa pada saat akan mulai mengikuti suatu program pengajaran. Untuk mengetahui karakteristik dan kemampuan awal siswa salahsatu teknik yang digunakan yaitu menggunakan catatan atau dokumen hasil belajar siswa sebelumnya, menggunakan pre test, mengadakan komunikasi individual atau dapat juga dengan menggunakan penyebaran angket. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 89 5) Relevansi dengan perlengkapan/ fasilitas sekolah Perlengkapan/fasilitas sekolah merupakan alat-alat yang diperlukan dalm menunjang kegiatan belajar mengajar. Adanya perlengkapan/fasilitas sekolah dapat membantu mendorong peserta didik dalam melakukan kegiatan pembelajaran. Hal ini dapat menjadi salahsatu penentu keberhasilan metode mengajar yang dilakukan oleh pendidik. 4. Hubungan Antara Tujuan dan Metode Pengajaran Sekolah Proses pendidikan dan pengajaran di sekolah di dalamnya dijiwai oleh adanya empat unsur penting pendidikan. Unsurunsur tersebut adalah: 1. Filsafat hidup bangsa Pancasila merupakan filsafat hidup bangsa yang merupakan landasan dalam berpikir berbcara dan bertindak. Oleh karena itu landasan, pedoman dan pegangan umum dalam pendidikan tidak dapat terlepas dari filsafat hidup bangsa. 2. Tujuan atau cita-cita pendidikan Berdasarkan UU No 20/2003 tentang Sistem Pendidikan Nasional, Pasal 1, pendidikan adalah usaha sadar dan terencana untuk mewujudkan suasana belajar dan proses pembelajaran agar peserta didik secara aktif mengembangkan potensi dirinya untuk memiliki kekuatan spiritual keagamaan, pengendalian diri, kepribadian, kecerdasan, akhlak mulia, serta keterampilan yang diperlukan dirinya, masyarakat, bangsa dan negara. Cita-cita pendidikan yang paling umum adalah pendidikan seumur hidup yang berarti memberikan arah jangka panjang bagi siswa. Sebagian ditulis untuk tujuan kelompok, sebagian untuk individu. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 90 3. Proses atau pelaksanaan pendidikan Proses atau pelaksanaan pendidikan sangat penting dalam mewujudkan tujuan pendidikan. Dalam proses pendidikan cara-cara atau metode bagaimana kecakapan dan pengetahuan akan disampaikan kepada anak didik. Proses pendidikan yang baik akan berpengaruh pada hasil pendidikan yang baik. 4. Penilaian Pelaksanaan Pendidikan Penilaian dimaksudkan untuk melihat kemajuan belajar murid atau untuk mengetahui sejauh mana tujuan pendidikan telah tercapai. *** Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 91 Di negara Indonesia, kurikulum disusun secara nasioanal. Setiap sekolah pada jenjang dan jenis yang sama menggunakna kurikulum nasional yang sama. Kurikulum sekolah SD misalnya, disusun untuk digunakan oleh semua SD di seluruh Indonesia. Demikian pula kurikulum SMP, SMA, SMK dan sekolah-sekolah lain juga menggunakan kurikulum nasional yang berlaku untuk semua sekolah sejenis pada tingktan yang sama. Semua program belajar yang ada pada kurikulum disusun oleh suatu team nasional, team ini mengolah berbagai bahan masukan yang datang dari berbagai pihak, disesuaikan dengan tuntutan dan kebutuhan masyarakat yang secara formal terumuskan dalam undang-undang pendidikan nasional, rencana jangka panjang penmbangunan lima tahun dan GBHN, yang semuanya itu dirumuskan oleh pemerintah bersama masyarakat, melalui wakil-wakilnya di DPR dan MPR. Dapatlah di katakan, bahwa keberadaan kurikulum seperti gambaran di atas adalah sebagi sesuatu yang diinginkan data terwujud melalui pendidikan di Indonesia. Namun dalam pelaksanaannya, guru atau pelaksana pendidikan disetiap sekolah dituntut untuk mampu mengembangkan kurikulum yang diinginkan itu dalam kenyataan. Pengembangan ini merupakan pengembangan kurikulum di sekolah. Kurikulum mempunyai kedudukan sentral dalam seluruh proses pendidikan. Kurikulum mengarahkan segala bentuk aktivitas pendidikan demi tercapainya tujuan pendidikan. Dengan kata lain bahwa kurikulum sebagai alat untuk mencapai tujuan pendidikan yaitu pembentukan manusia BAB VI PERAN PENGEMBANG KURIKULUM Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 92 yang sesuai dengan falsafah hidup bangsa memegang peranan penting dalam suatu sistem pendidikan. Maka kurikulum sebagai alat untuk mencapai tujuan harus mampu mengantarkan anak didik menjadi manusia yang bertaqwa, cerdas, terampil dan berbudi luhur, berilmu, bermoral, tidak hanya sebagai mata pelajaran yang harus diberikan kepada peserta didik semata, melainkan sebagai aktivitas pendidikan yang direncanakan untuk dialami, diterima, dan dilakukan. Kurikulum sekolah merupakan instrumen strategis untuk pengembangan kualitas sumber daya manusia baik jangka pendek maupun jangka panjang, kurikulum sekolah juga memiliki koherensi yang amat dekat dengan upaya pencapaian tujuan sekolah atau tujuan pendidikan. Oleh karena itu perubahan dan pembaruan kurikulum harus mengikuti perkembangan, menyesuaikan kebutuhan masyarakat dan menghadapi tantangan yang akan datang serta menghadapi kemajuan ilmu pengetahuan dan teknologi. Dalam upaya peningkatan mutu pendidikan, salah satunya adalah dengan perubahan kurikulum, sehingga mulai Cawu 2 Tahun Ajaran 2001/2002 sudah diperkenalkan kurikulum berbasis kompetensi yang merupakan pengembangan dari kurikulum 1994, dan kini dikenalkan kurikulum tingkat satuan pendidikan (KTSP) yang hampir sama dengan kurkulum berbasis kompetensi. Selain itu pada Kurikulum 2013 menggunakan sistem semester yang hampir serupa dengan kurikulum sebelumnya. Sebagai progam pendidikan yang telah di rencanakan secara sistematis, kurikulum mengemban peranan yang sangat penting bagi pendidikan siswa. Kurikulum memiliki peranan yang sangat strategis dalam pencapaian tujuan pendidikan, apabila dianalisis sifat dari masyarakat dan kebudayaan, dengan sekolah sebagai institusi sosial dalam melaksanakan operasinya, maka dapat ditentukan paling tidak tiga peranan kurikulum yang sangat penting, yakni Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 93 peranan konservatif, peranan kritis, dan peranan kreatif atau evaluative. Ketiga peranan ini sama penting dan perlu dilaksanakan secara seimbang, diantaranya sebagai berikut. 1. Peran Konservatif Salah satu tugas dan tanggung jawab sekolah sebagai suatu lembaga pendidikan adalah mewariskan nilai-nilai dan budaya masyarakat kepada generasi muda yakni siswa. Siswa perlu memahami dan menyadari norma-norma dan pandangan hidup masyarakatnya, sehingga ketika mereka kembali ke masyarakat, mereka dapat menjunjung tinggi dan berperilaku sesuai dengan norma-norma tersebut. Peran konservatif kurikulum adalah melestarikan berbagai nilai budaya sebagai warisan masa lalu. Dikaitkan dengan era globalisasi sebagai akibat kemajuan ilmu pengetahuan dan tekhnologi, yang memungkinkan mudahnya pengaruh budaya asing menggerogoti budaya lokal, maka peran konservatif dalam kurikulum memiliki arti yang sangat penting. Melalui peran konservatifnya, kurikulum berperan dalam menangkal berbagai pengaruh yang dapat merusak nilai-nilai luhur masyarakat, sehingga keajegan dan identitas masyarakat akan terpelihara dengan baik. 2. Peran Kreatif Tugas dan tanggung jawab sekolah tidak hanya sebatas mewariskan nilai-nilai lama. Sekolah memiliki tanggung jawab dalam mengembangkan hal-hal baru sesuai dengan tuntutan zaman. Sebab pada kenyataannya masyarakat tidak bersifat statis, akan tetapi dinamis yang selalu mengalami perubahan. Dalam rangka inilah kurikulum memiliki peran kreatif. Kurikulum harus mampu menjawab setiap tantangan sesuai dengan perkembangan dan kebutuhan masyarakat yang cepat berubah. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 94 Dalam peran kreatifnya, kurikulum harus mengandung hal-hal baru sehingga dapat membantu siswa untuk dapat mengembangakan setiap potensi yang dimilikinya agar dapat berperan aktif dalam kehidupan social masyarakat yang senantiasa bergerak maju secara dinamis. Kurikulum harus berperan kreatif, sebab manakala kurikulum tidak mengandung unsur-unsur baru maka pendidikan selamanya akan tertinggal, yang berarti apa yang diberikan di sekolah pada akhirnya akan kurang bermakna, karena tidak relevan lagi dengan kebutuhan dan tuntutan sosial masyarakat. 3. Peran Kritis dan Evaluatif Kurikulum harus berperan dalam menyeleksi dan mengevaluasi segala sesuatu yang dianggap bermanfaat untuk kehidupan anak didik. Dengan ini, masyarakat menjadi salah satu pengguna jasa pendidikan yang menaruh harapan besar terhadap sekolah untuk dapat mengangkat derajat mereka pada tempat yang lebih baik karena sekolah menjadikan masyarakat sebagai manusia terdidik. pengertian kurikulum dapat ditinjau dari dua sisi yang berbeda, yakni menurut pandangan lama dan pandangan baru. Menurut pandangan lama kurikulum adalah sejumlah mata pelajaran yang harus ditempuh murid untuk memperoleh ijazah. Sedangkan menurut pandangan baru kurikulum bukan hanya terdiri atas mata pelajaran tetapi meliputi semua kegiatan dan pengalaman yang menjadi tanggung jawab sekolah. Kurikulum merupakan salah satu konsep sistematis yang disusun untuk mencapai satu tujuan pendidikan. Akan tetapi, Di dalam kelas, kurikulum adalah benda hidup yang dinamis, karena seorang guru harus menerjemahkan kurikulum itu dalam bentuk interaksi hidup antara guru dan siswa. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 95 Menurut Oemar Hamalik (2011) bahwa Pengembangan kurikulum adalah proses perencanaan kurikulum agar menghasilkan rencana kurikulum yang luas dan spesifik. Sejalan dengan pandangan di atas, Nana Syaodih sukmadinata (1997) bahwa Pengembangan kurikulum dilihat dari segi Pengelolaannya dapat dibedakan menjadi beberapa bagian, seperti Sentralisasi dan desentralisasi. Sentralisasi adalah kurikulum yang disusun oleh tim khusus di tingkat pusat. Sedangkan, desentralisasi adalah kurikulum yang disusun oleh sekolah ataupun kelompok sekolah tertentu dalam suatu wilayah atau daerah. Jadi, dalam pengembangan kurikulum desentralisasi, sekolah mempunyai peran penting untuk mengembangkan dan melaksanakan kurikulum agar sesuai dengan kebutuhan dan perkembangan anak dalam masyarakat, yang tentu memerlukan peserta lain diantaranya adalah kepala sekolah, guru dan komite sekolah. Semua elemen kependidikan berperan sebagai unsur yang setiap hari terlibat dalam kurikulum. Adapun penjelasan dari setiap pengembang kurikulum adalah sebagai berikut. A. PERANAN ADMINISTRATOR PENDIDIKAN Nana Syaodih Sukmadinata (1997) Para administrator pendidikan terdiri atas: direktur bidang pendidikan, pusat pengembangan kurikulum, kepala kantor wilayah, kepala kantor kabupaten dan kecamatan serta kepala sekolah. Peranan para administrator di tingkat pusat (direktur dan kepala pusat) dalam pengembangan kurikulum adalah menyusun dasar-dasar hukum, menyusun dasar serta program inti kurikulum. Kerangka dasar dan progam inti akan menentukan minimum course yang dituntut. Administrator tingkat pusat bekerja sama dengan para ahli pendidikan dan ahli bidang studi di Perguruan Tinggi serta meminta persetujuannya terutama dalam penyusunan kurikulum sekolah. Atas dasar kerangka dasar dan program inti tersebut para administrator daerah (kepala kantor wilayah) dan administrator lokal (kabupaten, kecamatan, dan kepala sekolah) Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 96 mengembangkan kurikulum sekolah bagi daerahnya yang sesuai dengan kebutuhan daerah. Para kepala sekolah mempunyai wewenang dalam membuat operasionalisasi sistem pendidikan pada masing-masing sekolah para kepala ini sesungguhnya yang secara terus menerus terliabat dalam pengembangan dan implementasi kurikulum, memberikan dorongan dan bimbingan kepada guru-guru. Walaupun guru dapat mengembangkan kurikulum sendiri, tetapi dalam pelaksanaannya sering harus didorong dan di bantu oleh para administrator. Administrator lokal harus bekerja sama dengan kepala sekolah dan guru dalam mengembangkan kurikulum yang sesuai dengan kebutuhan masyarakat, mengkomunikasikan sistem pendidikan kepada masyarakat, serta mendorong pelaksanaan kurikulum oleh guru-guru dikelas. B. PERANAN PARA AHLI Mengacu kepada kebijaksanaan-kebijaksanaan yang ditetapkan pemerintah, baik kebijaksanaan secara umum maupun pembangunan pendidikan, perkembangan tuntutan masyarakat dan masukan-masukan dari pelaksananan pendidikan dan kurikulum yang sedang berjalan, para ahli pendidikan dan kurikulum memberikan alternative konsep pendidikan dan model kurikulum yang dipandang paling sesuai dengan keadaan dan tuntutan diatas. Pengembangan kurikulum bukan hanya sekedar memilih dan menyusun bahan pelajaran dan metode mangajar, tetapi menyangkut penentuan arah dan orientasi pendidikan, pemilihan system dan model kurikulum, baik model konsep, model desain, model pembelajaran, model media, model pengelolaan maupun model evaluasinya serta berbagai perangkat dan pedoman pembelajaran serta pedoman implementasi dari model-model tersebut. Partisipasi para ahli pendidikan dan ahli kurikulum terutama sangat dibutuhkan dalam pengembangan kurikulum pada tingkat pusat. Apabila Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 97 pengembangan kurikulum sudah banyak dilakukan pada tingkat daerah atau local, maka partisipasi mereka pada tiingkat daerah lokalbahkan sekolah juga sangat diperlukan, sebab apa yang dipahami oleh para pengembang dan pelaksana kurikulum di daerah. Pengembangan kurikulum juga membutuhkan partisipasi para ahli bidang studi/bidang ilmu yang juga mempunyai wawasan tentang pendidikan serta perkembangan tuntutan masyarakat. Sumbangan mereka dalam memilih materi bidang ilmu, yang mutakhir dan sesuai dengan perkembangan kebutuhan masyarakat sangat diperlukan. Mereka juga sangat diharapkan partisipasinya dalam menyusun materi ajaran yang sesuai dengan struktur keilmuan akan tetapi sangat memudahkan para siswa untuk mempelajarinya. C. PERANAN KEPALA SEKOLAH Kepala sekolah merupakan tokoh kunci dalam manajemen sekolah. Para kepala sekolah mempunyai wewenang dalam membuat operasionalisasi sistem pada masing-masing sekolah. Para kepala sekolah ini sesungguhnya yang secara terus menerus terlibat dalam pengembangan dan implementasi kurikulum, memberikan dorongan dan bimbingan kepada guru-guru. Peranan kepala sekolah lebih banyak berkenaan dengan implementasi kurikulum disekolahnya. Kepala sekolah juga mempunyai peranan penting dalam menciptakan kondisi untuk pengembangan kurikulum di sekolahnya. Adapun secara umum, peran dan fungsi kepala sekolah adalah sebagai berikut. 1. Peran Sebagai Manajer Sebagai manajer mengkepala sekolah bertanggung jawab atas manajemen sekolah. Kepala sekolah mengkordinasikan kegiatan merencanakan, mengorganisasikan, melaksanakan, memimpin, dan mengendalikan segenap usaha pencapaian tujuan pendidikan. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 98 Dalam aspek perencanaan, kepala sekolah merupakan pelaku yang selalu terlibat bahkan sering menjadi tumpuan dalam kegiatan perencanaan dan pengembangan kurikulum. Dalam aspek pengorganisasian, kepala sekolah mengorganisasikan unsur–unsur,baik unsur manusia maupun unsur nonmanusia. Dalam aspek pelaksanaan, kepala sekolah juga sebagai pelaksana lapangan. Kepala sekolah adalah orang yang mengkordinasikan pengembangan kurikulum, dan sekaligus menerjadikan atau menerapkan kurikulum. Kepala sekolah bertugas sebagai pemimpin dan berperan sebagai penanggung jawab atas pengembangan kurikulum. 2. Peran Sebagai Inovator Sebagai tokoh penting di sekolah, kepala sekolah harus mampu melahirkan ide – ide baru yang kreatif. Pengembangan kurikulum sering kali bermula dari gagasan kepala sekolah. Kepala sekolah harus mampu menghadirkan insiparsi dan ide pembaharuan, sehingga program sekolah (kurikulum) yang dijalankan senantiasa actual/ mutakhir. 3. Peran Sebagai Fasilitator dalam pengembangan kurikulum, pelaksana teknis pengembangan biasanya tidak langsung oleh kepala sekolah, melainkan oleh tim khusus yang ditunjuk. Namun demikian, kepala sekolah terus melakukan komunikasi dengan tim itu dan memfasilitasinya untuk mengatasi berbagai persoalan yang muncul. Kepala sekolah mempunyai kedudukan strategis dalam pengembangan kurikulum. Sebagai pemimpin professional, kepala sekolah menerjemahkan perubahan masyarakat dan kebudayaan, termasuk generasi muda, ke dalam kurikulum. Kepala sekolah merupakan tokoh utama yang mendorong guru agar senantiasa melakukan upaya – upaya pengembangan, baik bagi diri guru maupun tugas keguruannya. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 99 Masih banyak pihak lain selain kepala sekolah yang dapat membantu pengembangan kurikulum. Namun demikian, kepala sekolah dan guru merupakan pemeran utama yang perlu menerima, mempertimbangkan, dan memutuskan apa yang akan dimasukkan dalam kurikulum sekolah. D. PERANAN GURU Menurut Nana Syaodih Sukmadinata (1997) bahwa dilihat dari segi pengelolaannya, pengembangan kurikulum dapat dibedakan antara yang bersifat sentralisasi, desentralisasi, dan sentral-desentral. Dalam pengembangan kurikulum yang bersifat sentralisasi, kurikulum disusun oleh sesuatu tim khusus ditingkat pusat. Kurikulum bersifat uniform untuk seluluh negara, daerah, atau jenjang/jenis sekolah. Di indonesia dewasa ini terutama pada jenjang pendidikan dasar dan menengah, digunakan model ini. Kurikulum untuk sekolah dasar, sekolah lanjutan tingkat pertama, sekolah menengah umum, dan sekolah menengah kejuruan, pada prinsipnya sejajar. Pengembangan kurikulum tersebut sudah tentu memiliki tujuan dan latar belakang tertentu yang sangat mendesak dan mendasar. Tujuan utama pengembangan kurikulum yang uniform ini adalah untuk menciptakan persatuan dan kesatuan bangsa serta memberikan standar penguasaan yang sama bagi seluruh wilayah. Nana Syaodih Sukmadinata (1997) menyatakan bahwa peran guru dalam pengembangan kurikulum terbagi menjadi dua. Kedua peran tersebut yaitu peran guru sebagai sentralisasi dan desentralisasi. Adapun kedua peran tersebut adalah sebagai berikut. 1. Peranan Guru Dalam Pengembangan Kurikulum yang Bersifat Sentralisasi. Dalam kurikulum yang bersifat sentralisasi, guru tidak mempunyai peranan dalam perancangan, dan evaluasi kurikulm yang bersifat makro, Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 100 mereka lebih berperan dalam kurikulum mikro. Kurikulummakro disusun oleh tim atau komisi khusus yang terdiri atas para ahli. Penyusunan kurikulum mikro dijabarkan dari kurikulum makro. Guru menyusun kurikulum dalam bidangnya untuk jangka waktu satu tahun, satu semester, satu catur wulan, beberapa minggu atau beberapa hari saja. kurikulum untuk satu tahun, satu semester, atau satu catur wulan disebut juga program tahunan, semesteran, catur wulanan, sedangkan kurikulum untuk beberapa minggu atau hari disebut satuan pelajaran. Program tahunan, semesteran, catur wulanan ataupun satuan pelajaran memiliki komponen komponen yang sama yaitu tujuan, bahan pelajaran, metodedan media pembelajaran, dan evaluasi, hanya keluasan dan kedalamannya berbeda-beda. Menjadi tugas gurulah menyusun dan merumuskan tujuan yang tepat, memilih dan menyusun bahan pelajaran yang sesuai kebutuhan, minat dan tahap perkembangan anak,memiliki metode dan media mengajar yang bervariasi, serta menyusun program dan alat evaluasi yang tepat. Suatu kurikulum yang tersusun sistematis dan rinci akan sangat memudahkan guru dalam implementasinya. Walaupun kurikulum sudah tersusun dengan berstruktur, tetapi guru masih memepunyaitugas untuk mengadakan penyempurnaan dan penyesuaian-penyesuaian. Implementasi kurikulum hampir seluruhnya bergantung pada kreativitas, kecakapan, kesungguhan dan ketekunan guru. Guru hendaknya mampu memilih dan menciptakan situai-situasi belajar yang menggairahkan siswa, mampu memilih dan melaksanakan metode mengajar yang sesuai dengan kemampuan siswa, bahan pelajaran dan banyak mengaktifkan siswa. Guru hendaknya mampu memilih, menyusun, dan melaksanakan evaluasi, baik untukmengevaluasi Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 101 perkembangan atau hasil belajar siswa untuk menilai efisiensi pelaksanaannya itu sendiri. Guru juga berkewajiban untuk menjelaskan kepada para siswanya tentang apa yang akan dicapai dengan pengajarannya. Ia juga hendaknya melakukan berbagai upaya untuk membangkitkan motivasi belajar, menciptakan situasi kompetitif dan kooperatif, memberikan pengarahan dan bimbingan. Guru memberikan tugas-tugas individual atau kelompok yang akan memeperkaya dan memperdalam penguasaan siswa. Dalam kondisi ideal guru juga berperan sebagai pembimbing, berusaha memahami secara seksama potensi dan kelemahan siswa, serta membantu mengatasi kesulitan-kesulitan siswa. 2. Peranan Guru Dalam Pengembangan Kurikulum yang Bersifat Desentralisasi Kurikulm desentarlisai disusun oleh sekolah ataupun kelompok sekolah tertentu dalam suatu wilayah atau daerah. Kurikulum ini diperuntukkan bagi suatu sekolah atau lingkungan wilayah tertentu. Pengembangan kurikulum semacam ini didasarkan atas karakteristik, kebutuhan, perkembangan daerah serta kemampuan sekolah. Dengan demikian kurikulum terutama isinya sanagt beragam, tiap sekolah atau wilayah mempunyai kurikulum sendiri, tetapi kurikulum ini cukup realistis. Dalam kurikulum yang dikelola secara desentralisasi peranan guru dalam pengembangan kurikulum lebih besar dibandingkan dengan yang dikelola secara sentralisasi. Guru-guru turut berpartisipasi, bukan hanya dalam penjabaran kurikulum induk ke dalam program tahunan/ semester/ catur wulan atau satuan pelajaran, tetapi juga didalam menyusun kurikulum yang menyeluruh untuk sekolahnya. Guru-guru turut memberi andil dalam merumuskan setiap komponen dan unsure Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 102 dari kurikulum. Dalam kegiatan seperti itu, mereka mempunyai perasaan turut memiliki kurikulum dan terdorong untuk mengembangkan pengetahuan dan kemampuan dirinya dalam pengembangan kurikulum. Karena guru-guru sejak awal penyusunan kurikulum telah diikutsertakan, mereka akan memahami dan benar-benar menguasai kurikulumnya, dengan demikian pelaksanaan kurikulum di dalam kelas akan lebih tepat dan lancar. Guru bukan hanya berperan sebagai pengguna, tetapi perencana, pemikir, penyusun, pengembang dan evaluator kurikulum. Apabila kepala sekolah merupakan tokoh kunci dalam manajemen sekolah, maka guru merupakan tokoh sentral dalam penyelenggaraan layanan pendidikan sekolah. Guru merupakan pemeran utama aktivitas sekolah. Karena itu tugas guru merupakan profesi yang menuntut keahlian. Karena tugas guru sehari – hari terkait dengan pelaksanaan kurikulum di sekolah, maka peran guru dalam pengembangan kurikulum sekolah diantaranya adalah sebagai berikut. a. Guru Sebagai Pemberi Pertimbangan Keputusan mengenai kurikulum sekolah secara institusional terletak pada tangan kepala sekolah. Dalam konteks ini guru adalah pemberi pertimbangan dalam pengembangan kurikulum sekolah. b. Guru Sebagai Pelaksana Pengembangan Kurikulum Sekolah Konsep ini dapat ditarik kedalam dua konteks. Kesatu, guru sebagai pelaksana proses pengembangan kurikulum sekolah terlibat sebagai tim yang ditunjuk untuk membuat kurikulum sekolah. Selanjutnya, guru sebagai pelaksana kurikulum yang dikembangkan sekolah. Peran ini berkaitan dengan tugas pokok guru sebagai pengampu proses pembelajaran mata pelajaran tertentu. Disini guru menjabarkan kurikulum sekolah menjadi bentuk–bentuk program Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 103 yang lebih rinci (silabus, rencana pelaksanaan pembelajaran). Dalam melakukan perubahan kurikulum, hendaknya diselidiki dan dipertimbangkan sikap dan reaksi guru terhadap perubahan itu. Keberhasilan perubahan yang terjadi bergantung pada kesusaiannya dengan nilai–nilai guru dan taraf pertisipasinya dalam perubahan itu. Penjelasan diatas menunjukkan bahwa yang memegang peranan penting dalam proses pengembangan kurikulum ialah guru karena dialah yang paling bertanggung jawab atas mutu pendidikan anak didiknya. Terkadang guru terkendala karena masalah profesionalitasmya, karena pembelajaran yang dilakukannya tidak berbeda dari waktu kewaktu, hanya mengulang–ulang. Profesinalisme guru akan dapat berkembang, apabila guru membiasakan diri untuk melakukan kegiatan berikut. a) Berunding dan bertukar pikiran dengan siswa, dan terbuka terhadap pendapat mereka, b) Belajar terus dengan membaca literatur yang terkait dengan profesinya, dan c) Bertukar pikiran dan penglaman dengan teman guru – guru lainnya atau dengan kepala sekolah. Perkembangan profesionalisme akan terbantu bila sekolah secara berkala mengadakan rapat atau diskusi khusus untuk membicarakan hal– hal yang terkait dengan kurikulum serta perbaikannya. E. PERANAN KOMITE SEKOLAH Keberadaan komite sekolah kian bergulir dengan diberlakukannya otonomi sekolah. Ini ditetapkan pada keputusan Menteri Pendidikan Nasional nomor 044/U/2002. Dalam keputusan ini, komite sekolah dimaksudkan sebagai sebuah badan mandiri yang mewadahi peran serta masyarakat dalam rangka meningkatkan mutu, pemerataan, dan efesiensi pengelolaan pendidikan di satuan pendidikan baik pada pendidikan Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 104 prasekolah, jalur pendidikan sekolah, maupun jalur pendidikan luar sekolah. Terdapat beberapa tujuan pembentukan komite sekolah. 1. Mewadahi dan menyalurkan aspirasi dan prakarsa masyarakat dalam melahirkan kebijakan operasional dan program pendidikan sekolah. 2. Meningkatkan tanggung jawab dan peran masyarakat dalam penyelenggaraan pendidikan. 3. Menciptakan suasana dan kondisi yang transparan, akuntabel, dan demokratis dalam penyelenggaraan dan pelayanan pendidikan sekolah yang berkualitas Bertolak dari tujuan tersebut. Selain memeliki tujuan dalam pembetukan komite sekolah. Komite sekolah memiliki peran dalam keterlaksanaan pendidikan di sekolah. Berikut peran dari komite sekolah: 1. Advisory agency, yaitu pemberi pertimbangan dalam penentuan dan pelaksanaan kebijakan pendidikan sekolah. 2. Suporting agency, yaitu pendukung baik yang berwujud financial, pemikiran, maupun tenaga, dalam penyelengaraan pendidikan sekolah. 3. Controlling agency, yaitu pengontrol dalam rangka transparansi dan akuntabilitas penyelenggaraan dan keluaran pendidikan sekolah 4. Mediate agency, yaitu mediator antara pemerintah dan masyarakat Peran komite sekolah dalam pengembangan kurikulum tidak terlepas dari keempat peran tersebut. Keempat peran tersebut saling terkait satu sama lain dan berlangsung secara simultan. Sebagai Advisory Agence, komite sekolah dapat memberikan/menyampaikan gagasan, usulan–usulan, atau pertimbangan–pertimbangan untuk penyempurnaan kurikulum yang ada menuju kurikulum sekolah yang lebih baik.Walaupun secara pokok sudah tersedia kurikulum tingkat nasional, namun masih terbuka bagi pihak sekolah untuk melaksanakan eksplorasi, pengembangan, dan penajaman-penajaman, serta dikemas dalam program inti atau program tambahan, kegiatan Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 105 intrakulikuler ataupun ekstrakulikuler. Dalam peran Advisory agence ini pula komite sekolah terlibat dalam pengesahan kurikulum sekolah. Terkait dengan peran sebagai advisory agence, maka komite sekolah berada dalam komitmen lanjutan. Muncullah peran berikutnya, yaitu supporting agence. Pengembangan kurikulum berkait dengan banyak persoalan baik yang terkait secara langsung maupun tidak langsung, yang bersifat manusia dan non manusia. Dalam hal ini, dukungan komite sekolah dapat berwujud finansial, pemikiran, maupun tenaga. Komite sekolah adalah sebuah badan mandiri yang mewadahi peran serta masyarakat dalam rangka meningkatkan mutu, pemerataan, dan efisiensi pengelolaan pendidikan baik pada pendidikan pra sekolah, jalur pendidikan sekolah, maupun jalur pendidikan luar sekolah. Kurikulum pada dasarnya adalah rencana program pendidikan. Karenanya dalam pengembangan kurikulum harus dipikirkan dan direncanakan segenap aspek kurikulum. Dengan maksud mewadahi dan memaksimalkan peran serta masyarakat dalam penyelenggaraan pendidikan, maka disinilah peran sebagai supporting agence menjadi sangat menentukan. Sebagai Controlling Agency, komite sekolah melakukan kontrol atas penyelenggaraan program pendidikan. Transparansi dan akuntabelitas penyelenggaraan dan hasil pendidikan sekolah harus diwujudkan. Dalam konteks pengembangan kurikulum, peran kontrol komite sekolah ini dapat pula diarahkan pada pengawasan, misalnya, apakah proses pengembangan yang ditempuh sudah memenuhi norma/ketentuan sebagaimana harusnya, apakah pengembangan kurikulum telah memperhatikan dan melibatkan pihak-pihak yang terkait, apakah sudah terukur untuk kemajuan anak, dsb. Peran ini harus dapat diterapkan agar pengembangan kurikulum benar-benar komprehensip. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 106 Sebagai Media Agency, komite sekolah bertindak sebagai mediator antara pemerintah, sekolah, dan masyarakat. Dengan peran komite sekolah sebagai mediator, maka pengembangan kurikulum sekolah menjadi lebih terbuka dalam mengeksplorasi sumber daya yang ada disekitar sekolah. Program (kurikulum) sekolah pun menjadi lebih dinamis. Pada akhirnya, dengan bersinerginya kepala sekolah, guru, dan komite sekolah dalam pengembangan kurikulum, hal itu akan menjadi penyelenggaraan pendidikan di sekolah lebih dinamis dan semakin besar peluangnya untuk mencapai tujuan pendidikan. F. PERANAN ORANG TUA MURID Orang tua juga mempunyai peranan dalam pengembangan kurikulum. Peranan mereka dapat berkenaan dua hal: pertama dalam penyusunan kurikulum dan kedua dalam pelaksanaan kurikulum (nana syaodih sukmadinata, 1997). Dalam penyusunan kurikulum mungkin tidak semua orang tua dapat ikut serta, hanya terbatas kepada beberapa orang saja yang cukup waktu dan mempunyai latar belakang yang memadai. Pelaksanaan kurikulm diperlukan kerja sama yang sangat erat antara guru atau sekolah dengan para orang tua murid. Sebagian kegiatan belajar yang dituntutkurikulum dilaksanakan di rumah, dan orang tua sewajarnya mengikuti atau mengamati kegiatan belajar anaknya dir rumah. Orang tua juga yang secara berkala menerima lapor kemajuan anak-anaknya dari sekolah berupa rapor dan sebagainya. Rapor juga merupakan suatu alat komunikasi tentang program atau kegiatan pendidikan yang dilaksanakan di sekolah. Orang tua juga dapat tururt berpartisipasi dalam kegiatan di sekolah melalui berbagai kegiatan seperti diskusi, loka karya, seminar, pertemuan orang tua/guru, pameran sekolah dan sebagainya. Melalui pengamatan dalam kegiatan belajar di rumah, laporan sekolah, partisipasi dalam kegiatan sekolah orang tuadapat turut serta dalam Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 107 pengembangan kurikulum terutama dalam bentuk pelaksanaaan kegiatan belajar yang sewajarnya, minat yang penuh, usaha yang sungguh-sungguh, penyelesaian tugas serta partisipasi dalam setiap kegiatan di sekolah, kegiatan tersebut akan memberikan umpan balik bagi penyempurnaan kurikulum. G. PERANAN MASYARAKAT Berkaitan dengan peranan masyarakat dalam pendidikan dalam UU No.20/2005 Sisdiknas pasal 54 tentang Peran Serta Masyarakat Dalam Pendidikan menyebutkan : 1. Peran serta masyarakat dalam pendidikan meliputi peran serta perseorangan, kelompok, keluarga, organisasi profesi, pengusaha, dan organisasi kemasyarakatan dalam penyelenggaraan dan pengendalian mutu pelayanan pendidikan. 2. Masyarakat dapat berperan serta sebagai sumber, pelaksana, dan pengguna hasil pendidikan. 3. Ketentuan mengenai peran serta masyarakat sebagaimana dimaksud dalam ayat (1) dan ayat (2) diatur lebih lanjut dengan Peraturan Pemerintah. Keterlibatan masyarakat dalam pengembangan kurikulum di sekolah merupakan sesuatu yang sepatutnya, karena pendidikan merupakan bagian dari esensi kehidupan masyarakat. Masyarakat mempunyai kepentingan bukan sekedar dalam pegembangan sekolah, namun terutama untuk memperbaiki mutu dalam rangka pembentukan peran-peran sosial melalui berbagai bentuk partisipasinya dalam kelembagaan pendidikan. Gorton (1976) menandaskan bahwa untuk membangun sekolah yang efektif perlu melibatkan peranserta masyarakat. Menurut Undang-Undang Republik Indonesia No. 20 tahun 2003 tentang Sistem pendidikan nasional adalah sebagai berikut; "Masyarakat Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 108 adalah kelompok Warga Negara Indonesia nonpemerintah yang mempunyai perhatian dan peranan dalam bidang pendidikan". Mayarakat adalah suatu kelompok individu yang diorganisasikan mereka sendiri ke dalam kelompok-kelompok yang berbeda. Kebudayaan hendaknya dibedakan dengan istilah masyarakat yang mempunyai arti suatu kelompok individu yang terorganisir yang berpikir tentang dirinya sebagai suatu yang berbeda dengan kelompok atau masyarakat lainnya. Perkembangan masyarakat menuntut tersedianya proses pendidikan yang relevan. Untuk terciptanya proses pendidikan yang sesuai dengan perkembangan masyarakat maka diperlukan rancangan berupa kurikulum yang landasan pengembangannya memperhatikan faktor perkembangan masyarakat. Dalam kaitannya dengan sebuah pengembangan kurikulum adalah dimana kurikulum itu harus relevan dengan kebutuhan dan karakteristik masyarakat. Artinya sebuah kurikulum harus membekali para siswa dengan sejumlah pengetahuan, keterampilan, dan sikap yang sesuai dengan kondisi masyarakatnya, sehingga mereka dapat menjadi anggota masyarakat yang baik; siswa pada saatnya dapat berkiprah dan berkompetisi dalam suatu masyarakat yang semakin kompetitif. Dalam konteks ini, paling tidak ada dua dimensi kondisi masyarakat yang harus benar-benar mendapat perhatian, pertama adalah kondisi masyarakat saat ini, dan kedua kondisi masyarakat di masa akan datang, dimana siswa akan menjadi bagian dari masyarakat tersebut. Terkait dengan kondisi masyarakat saat ini, tuntutan relevansi ini untuk menjamin bahwa kurikulum yang dipelajari siswa akan memberi bekal kepada mereka untuk dapat hidup secara wajar dalam masyarakatnya. Siswa dapat beradaptasi dan berpartisipasi dalam lingkungan masyarakatnya. Sementara terkait dengan kondisi masyarakat yang akan datang, kurikulum diharapkan akan memberi kemampuan dasar untuk memungkinkan siswa Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 109 dapat memasuki dunia nyatanya sebagai manusia, dimana dia harus berkiprah dalam masyarakat sebagai anggota masyarakatnya secara mandiri, dan terutama mereka harus memasuki dunia kerja yang harus dilakukannya dengan baik. Untuk itu para pengembang kurikulum harus mampu memprediksi dan mendapat gambaran yang jelas tentang kondisi masyarakat di masa yang akan datang pada saat anak-anak dapat dikatakan dewasa untuk memasuki dunianya. Berdasarkan gambaran tersebut dirancang kurikulum yang memberikan kemampuan-kemampuan dasar yang diperlukan dalam memasuki masyarakat tersebut. Mengembangkan sebuah kurikulum tidak hanya komite sekolah, kepala sekolah dan guru yang ikut berperan, tetapi masyarakat pun memiliki peranan dalam mengembangkan kurikulum di sekolah. Karena masyarakat merupakan bagian dari keberhasilan suatu pendidikan yang ikut berperan dalam pengembangan kurikulum dan sebagai sumber kurikulum. Dalam sistem pendidikan masyarakat juga ikut menyumbangkan pendapat atau aspirasinya terhadap kurikulum yang berkembang di sekolah. Masyarakat menilai sejauh mana kurikulum itu diterapkan di sekolah dan ikut merasakan hasil dari kurikulum yang berkembang di sekolah tersebut, seperti dengan kurikulum tersebut dapat menghasilkan peserta didik yang aktif dan kreatif, serta prestasi-prestai peserta didik yang dicapainya. Sehingga dapat dikatakan bahwa kurikulum yang diterapkan di sekolah tersebut berhasil. Dalam hal ini, keberhasilan suatu kurikulum itu tidak lepas dari bagaimana peranan seorang komite sekolah, kepala sekolah, serta guru dalam satuan pendidikan, tapi peranan masyarakat di luar lingkungan satuan pendidikan pun mempunyai peran yang penting dalam pengembangan kurikulum disekolah dalam rangka mencapai tujuan pendidikan. *** Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 110 A. PENGERTIAN EVALUASI KURIKULUM Pemahaman mengenai pengertian evaluasi kurikulum dapat berbedabeda sesuai dengan pengertian kurikulum yang dikemukakan oleh para pakar kurikulum.Oleh karena itu penulis mencoba menjabarkan definisi dari evaluasi dan definisi dari kurikulum secara per kata sehingga lebih mudah untuk memahami evaluasi kurikulum. Secara harfiah kata evaluasi berasal dari bahasa Inggris evaluation, dalam bahasa Arab al-Taqdir dalam bahasa Indonesia berarti penilaian Adapun dari segi Istilah , sebagaimana dikemukakan oleh Edwind Wandt dan Gerald W. Brown (dalam Anas Sudijono, 1996): Evaluation refer to the act or process to determining the value of something. Menurut definisi ini, maka istilah evaluasi itu menunjuk kepada atau mengandung pengertian yaitu suatu tindakan atau suatu proses untuk menentukan nilai dari sesuatu. Definisi evaluasi yang pertama dikembangkan oleh Ralph Tyler yang mengatakan bahwa evaluasi merupakan sebuah proses pengumpulan data untuk menentukan sejauh mana , dalam hal apa, dan bagian mana tujuan pendidikan sudah tercapai. Menurut Suharsimi Arikunto (2002), evaluasi adalah kegiatan untuk mengumpulkan informasi tentang bekerjanya sesuatu, yang selanjutnya informasi tersebut digunakan untuk menentukan alternatif yang tepat dalam mengambil keputusan.Dari definisi-definisi evaluasi yang dikemukakan di atas dapat ditarik kesimpulan bahwa evaluasi adalah suatu tindakan atau kegiatan pengumpulan data untuk menilai rancangan, BAB VII EVALUASI KURIKULUM Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 111 implementasi dan efektifitas suatu program sehingga dapat menentukan alternative yang tepat dalam mengambil keputusan. Sedangkan pengertian kurikulum secara etimologis berasal dari bahasa Yunani, yaitu curiryang artinya "pelari" dan curere yang berarti "tempat berpacu". Istilah kurikulum berasal dari dunia olah raga, terutama dalam bidang atletik pada Zaman Romawi Kuno di Yunani. Kurikulum berarti suatu jarak yang harus ditempuh oleh seorang pelari dari garis startsampai dengan garis finish untuk memperoleh penghargaan. Kemudian jarak yang harus ditempuh tersebut diubah menjadi program sekolah dan semua orang yang terlibat didalamnya.Program tersebut berisi mata pelajaran-mata pelajaran yang harus ditempuh oleh pesrta didik selama kurun waktu tertentu, seperti SD/MI (enam tahun), SMP/MTs (tiga tahun), SMA/SMK/MA (tiga tahun) dan seterusnya.Dengan demikian, secara terminologis istilahkurikulum (dalam pendidikan) adalah sejumlah mata pelajaran yang harus ditempuh atau diselesaikan peserta didik di sekolah untuk memperoleh ijazah. Namun pengertian diatas merupakan pengertian kurikulum secara tradisional.Implikasi dari pengertian tradisional tersebut terdiri dari sejumlah mata pelajaran, peserta didik harus mempelajari dan menguasai seluruh mata pelajaran, mata pelajaran tersebut hanya dipelajari di sekolah secara terpisahpisah, dan tujuan akhir adalah untuk memperoleh ijazah. Pengertian kurikulum secara modern adalah semua kegiatan dan pengalaman potensial (isi/material) yang telah disusun secara ilmiah, baik yang terjadi di dalam kelas, di halaman sekolah maupun di luar sekolah atas tanggung jawab sekolah untuk mencapai tujuan pendidikan.Sedangkan apabila mengacu pada pasal 1 ayat 19 UU No. 20 Tahun 2003 tentang Sistem Pendidikan Nasional, kurikulum adalah seperangkat rencana dan pengaturan mengenai tujuan, isi, dan bahan pelajaran serta cara yang digunakan sebagai Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 112 pedoman penyelenggaraan kegiatan pembelajaran untuk mencapai tujuan pendidikan tertentu. Dari pengertian-pengertian tentang evaluasi dan kurikulum diatas, penulis menyimpulkan bahwa pengertian evaluasi kurikulum adalah sebuah proses yang dilakukan oleh seseorang untuk melihat sejauh mana keberhasilan sebuah program, dan kesesuaian efektifitas dan efisiensi dari kurikulum yang diterapkan. Keberhasilan program itu sendiri dapat dilihat dari dampak atau hasil yang dicapai oleh program tersebut. Secara sederhana evaluasi kurikulum dapat disamakan dengan penelitian karena evaluasi kurikulum menggunakan penelitian yang sistematik, menerapkan prosedur ilmiah dan metode penelitian.Perbedaan antara evaluasi dan penelitian terletak pada tujuannya. Evaluasi bertujuan untuk mengumpulkan, menganalisis dan menyajikan data untuk bahan penentuan keputusan mengenai kurikulum apakah akan direvisi atau diganti. Sedangkan penelitian memiliki tujuan yang lebih luas dari evaluasi yaitu mengumpulkan, menganalisis dan menyajikan data untuk menguji teori atau membuat teori baru. Evaluasi pelaksaaan kurikulum tidak hanya mengevaluasi hasil belajar peserta didik dan proses pembelajarannya, tetapi juga rancangan dan pelaksanaan kurikulum, kemampuan dan kejauhan siswa, sarana dan prasarana, serta sumber belajarnya. Hasil evaluasi pelaksanaaan kurikulum dapat digunakan oleh pengambil keputusan untuk menentukan kebijaan pendidikan pada tingkat pusat, daerah dan sekolah untuk memperbaiki kekurangan yang ada dan meningkatkan hasil yang lebih optimal. Hasil tersebut dapat juga digunakan oleh kepala sekolah, guru, dan pelaksanaan pendidikan di daerah dalam memahami dan membantu meningkatkan kemampuan siswa, memilih bahan pelajaran, memilih metode, dan perangkat pembelajaran yang sesuai. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 113 B. TUJUAN EVALUASI KURIKULUM Dalam kegiatan evaluasi, guru harus memahami terlebih dahulu tentang tujuan evaluasi itu sendiri. Bila tidak, maka guru akan mengalami kesulitan merencanakan dan melaksanakan evaluasi. Tujuan evaluasi kurikulum adalah untuk mengetahui keefektifan dan efisiensi system kurikulum, baik yang menyangkut tentang tujuan, isi, strategi, media, sumber belajar, lingkungan maupun system penilaian itu sendiri. Evaluasi banyak digunakan dalam berbagai bidang dan kegiatan.Setiap bidang atau kegiatan mempunyai tujuan evaluasi berbeda.Misalnya, dalam kegiatan bimbingan evaluasi bertujuan untuk memperoleh informasi secara menyeluruh mengenai karakteristik peserta didik sehingga dapat diberikan bimbingan dengan sebaik – baiknya.Begitu juga dalam kegiatan supervisi, tujuan evaluasi adalah untuk menentukan keadaan suatu situasi pendidikan pembelajaran sehingga dapat diusahakan langkh – langkah perbaikan untuk meningkatkan mutu pendidikan di sekolah.Dalam kegiatan seleksi, tujuan evaluasi adalah untuk mengetahui tingkat pengetahuan, keterampilan, sikap dan nilai – nilai dari test untuk jenis pekerjaan atau jabatan. C. PERANAN EVALUASI KURIKULUM Evaluasi kurikulum dapat dilihat sebagai proses sosial dan sebagai institusi sosial. Proyek – proyek evaluasi yang di kembangkan di Inggris umpamanya, juga di negara – negara lain, merupakan institusi sosial dari gerakan penyempurnaan kurikulum. Peranan evaluasi kebijaksanaan dalam kurikulum khususnya pendidikan umumnya minimal berkenaan dengan tiga hal, yaitu : sebagai moral judgement, evaluasi dan penentuan keputusan, evaluasi dan konsensus nilai. 1. Evaluasi sebagai Moral Judgement Hasil dari suatu evaluasi berisi suatu nilai yang akan digunakan untuk tindakan selanjutnya. Hal ini mengndung dua pengertian, pertama Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 114 evaluasi berisi suatu skala nilai moral, berdasarkan skala tersebut suatu objek evaluasi dapat dinilai.Kedua, evaluasi berisi suatu perangkat kriteria praktis berdasarkan kriteria – kriteria tersebut suatu hasil dapat dinilai. Evaluasi bukan merupakan suatu proses tunggal, minimal meliputi dua kegiatan, pertama mengumpulkan informasi dan kedua menentukan suatu keputusan. Kegitan yang pertama mungkin juga mengandung segi – segi nilai (terutama dalam memilih sumber informasi dan jenis informasi yang akan di kumpulkan), tetapi belum menunjukan suatu evaluasi. Dalam egiatan yang kedua yaitu menentukan keputusan penunjukan suatu evaluasi, dasar pertimbangan yang digunakan adalah suatu perangkat nilainilai. Karena masalah – masalah dan konsep – konsep dalam pendidikan selalu mengalami pengembangan, maka pertalian antara informasi pendidikan yang diperoleh dengan keputusan yang diambil tidak selalu sama megalami perkembangan pula. Perkembangan ini terutama berkenaan dengan perkembangan atau perubahan nilai – nilai.Oleh karena itu, salah satu tugas dari para evaluator pendidikan mempelajari kerangka nilai – nilai tersebut.Atas dasar kerangka nilai – nilai tersebut maka keputusan pendidikan diambil. 2. Evaluasi dan Penentuan Keputusan Pengambil keputusan dalam pelaksaan pendidikan atau kurikulum banyak, yaitu: guru, murid, kepala sekolah, orang tua, pengembang kurikulum dan sebagainya. Siapa dantara mereka yang memegang peranan paling besar dalam penentuan keputusan.Pada prinsipnya tiap individu diatas membuat keputusan sesuai dengan posisinya.Murid mengambil keputusan sesuai dengan posisinya sebagai murid. Guru mengambil keputusan sesuai dengan posisinya sebagai guru. Besar atau Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 115 kecilnya peranan keputusan yang diambil oleh sesorang sesuai dengan lingkup tanggung jawabnya serta lingkup yang dihadapinya pada suatu saat. Lain halnya dengan keputusan yang diambil oleh seorang guru, ia mengambil keputusan bagi kepentingan seorang atau beberapa orang murid, atau dapat pula mengambil keputusan bagi seluruh murid. Demikian juga lingkup keputusan yang diambil oleh kepala sekolah, inspektur, pengembang kurikulum, dan sebagainya berbeda – beda. Jadi, tiap pengambil keputusan dalam proses evaluasi memegang posisi nilai yang berbeda, sesuai dengan posisinya. Salah satu kesulitan yang dihadapi dalam penggunaan hasil evaluasi bagi pengmbilan keputusan adalah, hasil evaluasi yang diterima oleh berbagai pihak pengambil keputusan adalah sama. Masalah yang timbul adalah, apakah hasil evaluasi tersebut dapat bermanfaat bagi semua pihak. 3. Evaluasi dan Kosensus Nilai Dalam bagaian terdahulu sudah dikemukakan bahwa penelitian pendidikan dan evaluasi kurikulum sebagai perilaku sosial berisi nilai – nilai.Para evaluator menyadari bahwa aneka macam kerangka kerja evaluasi mempunyai implikasi terhadap penentuan keputusan pendidikan. Barry Mc Donald (1975), mendasarkan argumentasinya pada anggapan dasar bahwa evaluasi merupakan kegiatan politik. Ia membedakan adanya tiga evaluasi dalam pendidikan dan kurikulum,yaitu: a. Evaluasi Birokratik Evaluator menerima kebijaksanaan dari pemegang jabatan, dengan menggunakan berbagai informasi yang diperoleh akan membantu mereka dalam mencapai tujuan dari kebijaksanaan yang telah di gariskan. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 116 b. Evaluasi Otokratik Evaluasi otokratik merupakan layanan evaluasi terhadap lembaga – lembaga pemerintah yang mempunyai wewenang kontrol cukup besar dalam mengalokasikan semuber–sumber pendidikan.Tugas evaluator adalah membantu pelaksanaan kebijaksanaan, ketentuan ketentuan hukum dan moral dalam birokrasi. Peran evaluator tidak dicampuri oleh pihak yang dilayaninya, dan ia mempunyai wewenang penuh dalam bidangnya. c. Evaluasi Demokratik Evaluasi Demokratik merupakan layanan pemberian informasi terhadap masyarakat tentang program–program pendidikan.Tugasnya adalah memberikan informasi terhadap kelompok – kelompok masyarakat, dan evaluator bertindak sebagai perantara dalam pertukaran informasi diantara kelompok – kelompok yang berbeda. D. ASPEK-ASPEK KURIKULUM YANG DINILAI Aspek Kurikulum yang dievaluasi berdasarkan keterhubungan komponen-komponen dalam kurikulum yaitu : 1. Tujuan Suatu perencanaan program pendidikan, mungkin keseluruhan program, kurikulum, pengajaran, atau evaluasi harus didasarkan pada tujuan perencanaan ini.Penilaian tujuan kurikulum terutama untuk mengetahui apakah tujuan kurikulum dapat memberikan kontribusi terhadap pencapaian yang lebih tinggi dalam pendidikan? Melalui evaluasi ini dapat diketahui kadar tujuan kurikulum sebagai tujuan dalam mencapai tujuan pendidikan. 2. Isi Kurikulum Penilaian tentang isi kurikulum mencakup semua program yang diprogramkan untuk mencapai tujuan.Komponen isi mencakup semua Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 117 jenis mata pelajaran yang harus diajarkan, dan pokok-pokok bahasan atau bahan pengajaran yang meliputi seluruh mata pelajaran tersebut.Isi/bahan kurikulum tersebut dinilai dari segi kerelevansiannya dengan tujuan yang berarti dapat menjamin tercapainya tujuan itu, kebenarannya sebagai ilmu pengetahuan, fakta/pandangan tertentu, keluasan dan kedalamannya. 3. Strategi Pengajaran Penilaian strategi pengajaran meliputi berbagai upaya yang ditempuh demi tercapainya tujuan berdasarkan bahan pengajaran yang telah ditetapkan.Komponen strategi pengajaran mencakup berbagai macam pendekatan yang dipilih, metode-metode dan berbagai teknik pengajaran, sistem penilai, pencapaian hasil belajar siswa baik yang berupa penilaian proses maupun hasil yang diperoleh. 4. Media Pengajaran Komponen media pengajaran merupakan komponen kurikulum yang berupa sarana untuk memberikan kemudahan dan kejelasan siswa dalam proses belajar yang dilakukannya. Ada berbagai macam media yang dapat dimanfaatkan untuk keperluan pengajaran baik yang bersifat tradisional maupun modern. Media pengajaran tersebut dinilai berdasarkan kesesuaiannya dengan tujuan, bahan pengajaran, kebutuhan pengalaman siswa, kesesuaian dengan kemampuan dan ketrampilan pengajar, efektivitas sebagai sarana penunjang dan sebagainya. 5. Hasil yang Dicapai Hal-hal yang dicapai dalam suatu kurikulum paling tidak mencakup tiga masalah, yaitu keluaran, efek dan dampak.Keluaran berupa prestasi belajar yang dicapai siswa sesuai dengan tujuan.Efek berupa perubahan tingkah laku sebagai akibat dari perlakuan belajar.Sedangkan dampak Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 118 merupakan pengaruh suatu kurikulum pada perkembangan lembaga pendidikan itu sendiri, pengetahuan dan masyarakat. Hasil-hasil yang dicapai tersebut merupakan masukan yang sangat berguna untuk menilai hasil-guna dan daya-guna suatu kurikulum yang dijalankan.Hal ini dapat dilakukan dengan menemukan perbedaan antara perencanaan/tujuan dengan hasil yang diperoleh secara faktual. E. MODEL-MODEL EVALUASI KURIKULUM Evaluasi kurikulum merupakan suatu tema yang luas, meliputi banyak kegiatan, meliputi sejumlah prosedur, bahkan dapat merupakan suatu lapangan studi yang berdiri sendiri.Evaluasi kurikulum juga merupakan suatu fenomena yang multifaset, memiliki banyak segi. Bagian ini membahas perkembangan evaluasi kurikulum, yaitu evaluasi kurikulum sebagai fenomena sejarah, suatu elemen dalam proses sosial dihubungkan dengan perkembangan pendidikan. Dalam studi tentang evaluasi, banyak sekali dijumpai model-moddel evaluai dengan format atau sistematik yang berbeda, sekalipun dalam beberapa model ada juga yang sama. Menurut Hamid Hasan (2008) model evaluasi kurikulum sebagaimana perkembangan evaluasi kurikulum di Amerika, Inggris dan Australia adalah dibedakan menjadi 3 yaitu: pertama, model yang masuk dalam kategori kuantitatif. Kedua, model kualitatif dan ketiga model-model ekonomi. Adapun penjabarannya masing-masing adalah sebagai berikut: 1. Model Evaluasi Kuantitatif Adapun ciri yang menonjol dari evaluasi kuantitatif adalah penggunaan prosedur kuantitatif untuk mengumpulkan data sebagai konsekuensi penerapan pemikiran paradigma positivisme.Sehingga model-model evaluasi kuantitatif yang ada menekankan peran penting metodologi kuantitatif dan penggunaan tes. Adapun diantara modelDasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 119 model evaluasi kurikulum yang terkategori sebagai model evaluasi kuantitatif adalah sebagai berikut. a. Model Black Box Tyler Model evaluasi Tyler di bangun atas dua dasar, yaitu: evaluasi yang ditujukan kepada tingkah laku peserta didik dan evaluasi harus dilakukan pada tingkah laku awal peseta didik sebelum suatu pelaksanaan kurikulum serta pada saat peserta didik telah melaksanakan kurikulum tersebut. Berdasar pada dua prinsip ini maka Tyler ingin mengatakan bahwa evaluasi kurikulum yang sebenarnya hanya berhubungan dengan dimensi hasil belajar. Adapun prosedur pelaksanaan dari model evaluasi Tyler adalah sebagai berikut: 1) Menentukan tujuan kurikulum yang akan dievaluasi. 2) Menentukan situasi dimana peserta didik mendapatkan kesempatan untuk memperlihatkan tingkah laku yang berhubungan dengan tujuan. 3) Menentukan alat evaluasi yang akan digunakan untuk megukur tingkah laku peserta didik. Alat evaluasi ini dapat berbentuk tes, observasi, kuisioner, panduan wawancara dan sebagainya. Inilah tiga prosedur dalam evaluasi model Tyler. Adapun kelemahan dari model Tyler ini adalah tidak sejalan dengan pendidikan karena focus pada hasil belajar dan mengabaikan dimensi proses. Padahal hasil belajar adalah produk dari proses belajar. Sehingga evaluasi yang mengabaikan proses berarti mengabaikan komponen penting dari kurikulum. Adapun kelebihan dari model Tyler ini adalah kesederhanaanya. Evaluator dapat memfokuskan kajian evaluasinya hanya pada satu Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 120 dimensi kurikulum yaitu dimensi hasil belajar. Sedang dimensi dokumen dan proses tidak menjadi focus evaluasi. b. Model Teoritik Taylor dan Maguire Model evaluasi kurikulum Taylor dan Maguire ini lebih mendasarkan pada pertimbangan teoritik. Dalam melaksanakan evaluasi kurikulum sesuai model teoritik Taylor dan Maguire meliputi dua hal, yaitu: pertama, mengumpulkan data objektif yang dihasilkan dari berbagai sumber mengenai komponen tujuan, lingkungan, personalia, metode, konten, hasil belajar langsung maupun hasil belajar dalam jangka panjang. Dikatakan data objektif karena mereka berasal dari luar pertimbangan evaluator.Kedua , pengumpulan data yang merupakan hasil pertimbangan individual terutama mengenai kualitas tujuan, masukan dan hasil belajar. Adapun cara kerja model evaluasi Taylor dan Maquaire ini adalah sebagai berikut: 1) Dimulai dari adanya tekanan/ keinginan masyarakat terhadap pendidikan. Tekanan dan tuntutan masyarakat ini dikembangkan menjadi tujuan. Kemudian tujuan dari masyarakat ini dikembangkan menjadi tujuan yang ingin dicapai kurikulum. 2) Penafsiran tujuan kurikulum. Pada tahap ini tugas evaluator adalah memberikan pertimbangan mengenai nilai tujuan umum pada tahap pertama. Adapun dua criteria yang dikemukan oleh Taylor dan Maguaire dalam memberi pertimbangan adalah: pertama, kesesuaian dengan tugas utama sekolah. kedua, tingkat pentingnya tujuan kurikulum untuk dijadikan program sekolah. adapun hasil dari kegiatan ini adalah sejumlah tujuan behavioral yang sudah tersaring dan akan dijadikan tujuan yang akan dicapai oleh mata pelajaran yang bersangkutan. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 121 3) Mengevaluasi pengembangan tujuan menjadi pengalaman belajar. Tugas evaluator disini adalah menentukan hasil dari suatu kegiatan belajar.Menelaah apakah hasil belajar yang telah diperoleh dapat digunakan dalam kehidupan dimasyarakat. Adapun kelebihan dari model ini adalah memberikan kesempatan pada evaluator untuk menerapkan kajian secara komprenhensip. Baik nilai maupun arti kurikulum dapat dikaji dengan menggunakan model ini c. Model Pendekatan Sistem Alkin Alkin membagi model ini atas tiga komponen.Yaitu masukan, proses yang dinamakannya dengan istilah perantara (mediating), dan keluaran (hasil).Alkin juga mengenal sisitem internal yang merupakan interaksi antar komponen yang langsung berhubungan dengan pendidikan dan system eksternal yang mempunyai pengaruh dan dipengaruhi oleh pendidikan. Model Alkin dikembangkan berdasarkan empat asumsi. Apabila keempat asumsi ini sudah dipenuhi maka model Alkin dapat digunakan. Adapun keempat asumsi itu yaitu: 1) Variable perantara adalah satu-satunya variable yang dapat dimanipulasi. 2) System luar tidak langsung dipengaruhi oleh keluaran system (persekolahan). 3) Para pengambil keputusan sekolah tidak memiliki control mengenai pengaruh yang diberikan system luar terhadap sekolah. 4) Factor masukan mempengaruhi aktifitas factor perantara dan pada gilirannya factor perantara berpegaruh terhadap factor keluaran. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 122 Adapun kelebihan dari model ini adalah keterikatannya dengan system.Dengan model pendekatan system ini kegiatan sekolah dapat diikuti dengan seksama mulai dari variable-variable yang ada dalam komponen masukan, proses dan keluaran.Komponen masukan yang dimaksudkan adalah semua informasi yang berhubungan dengan karakteristik peserta didik, kemampuan intelektual, hasil belajar sebelumnya, kepribadian, kebiasaan, latar belakang keluarga, latar belakang lingkungan dan sebagainya. Adapun yang dimaksud dengan proses disini meliputi factor perantara yang merupakan kelompok variable yang secara langsung memperngaruhi keluaran. Adapun yang masuk dalam variable perantara ini diantaranya adalah rasio jumlah guru dengan peserta didik, jumlah peserta didik dalam kelas, pengaturan administrasi, penyediaan buku bacaan, prosedur pengajaran dan sebagainya. Adapun keluaran peserta didik adalah setiap perubahan yang terjadi pada diri peserta didik sebagai akibat dari pengalaman belajar yang diperolehnya.Perubahan ini harus diikuti sejak peserta didik masuk sistem hingga keluar system.Perubahan harus diukur meliputi setiap aspek perubahan yang mungkin terjadi termasuk didalamnya kemampuan peserta didik dalam melanjutkan pelajaran ditingkat pendidikan yang lebih tinggi, pada waktu memasuki lapangan kerja, dalam melakukan pekerjaan bahkan termasuk aktifitas dalam kehidupna di masyarakat. Dari uraian di atas kita temukan kelemahan dari model Alkin adalah keterbatasannya dalam focus kajian yaitu yang hanya focus pada kegiatan persekolahan. Sehingga model ini hanya dapat digunakan untuk mengevaluasi kurikulum yang sudah siap dilaksanakan disekolah. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 123 d. Model Countenance Stake Model countenance adalah model pertama evaluasi kurikulum yang dikembangkan oleh Stake.Stake mendasarkan modelnya ini pada evaluasi formal.Evaluasi formal adalah evaluasi yang dilakukan oleh pihak luar yang tidak terlibat dengan evaluan.Model countenance Stake terdiri atas dua matriks.Matrik pertama dinamakan matriks Deskripsi dan yang kedua dinamakan matriks Pertimbangan. 1) Matrik Deskripsi Kategori pertama dari matrik deskripsi adalah sesuatu yang direncanakan (intent) pengembang kurikulumdan program.Dalam konteks KTSP maka kurikulum tersebut adalah kurikulum yang dikembangkan oleh satuan pendidikan.Sedangkan program adalah silabus dan RPP yang dikembangkan guru. Kategori kedua adalah observasi, yang berhubungan dengan apa yang sesungguhnya sebagai implementasi dari apa yang diinginkan pada kategori pertama. Pada kategori ini evaluan harus melakukan observasi mengenai antecendent, transaksi dan hasil yang ada di satu satuan pendidikan atau unit kajian yang terdiri atas beberapa satuan pendidikan. 2) Matrik Pertimbangan Dalam matrik ini terdapat kategori standar, pertimbangan dan focus antecendent, transaksi, autocamo (hasil yang diperoleh).Standar adalah criteria yang harus dipenuhi oleh suatu kurikulum atau program yang dijadikan evaluan. Berikutnya adalah evaluator hendaknya melakukan pertimbangan dari apa yang telah dilakukan dari kategori pertama dan matrik deskriptif. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 124 Adapun dua hal lain yang harus diperhatikan dalam menggunakan model countenance adalah contingency dan congruence. Kedua konsep ini adalah konsep yang memperlihatkan keterkaitan dan keterhubungan 12 kotak tersebut.Contingency terdiri atas kontigency logis dan contingency empiric.Contingency logis adalah hasil pertimbangan evaluator terhadap keterkaitan logis antara kotak antecedence dengan traksaksi dan hasil.Kemudian evaluator juga harus memberikan pertimbangan empiric berdasarkan data lapangan. Evaluator juga harus memberikan pertimbangan congr uence atau perbedaan yang terjadi antara apa yang direncanakan dengan apa yang terjadi dilapangan. Adapun kelebihan dari model ini adalah adanya analisis yang rinci.Setiap aspek dicoba dikaji kesesuainnya. Misalkan, analisis apakah persyaratan awal yang direncanakan dengan yang terjadi sesuai apa tidak? Hasil belajar peserta didik sesuai tidak dengan harapan. e. Model CIPP Model ini dikembangkan oleh sebuah tim yang diketuai oleh Stufflebeam. Sehingga sesuai dengan namanya, model CIPP ini memiliki 4 jenis evaluasi yaitu: evaluasi Context (konteks), Input (masukan), Process (proses), dan Product (hasil). Adapun tugas evaluator dari keempat jenis evaluasi tersebut adalah sebagai berikut: 1) Evaluasi Context Tujuan utama dari evaluasi context adalah untuk mengetahui kekuatan dan kelemahan evaluan.Evaluator mengidentifikasi berbagai factor guru, peserta didik, manajemen, fasilitas kerja, suasana kerja, peraturan, peran komite sekolah, masyarakat dan factor lain yang mungkin berpengaruh terhadap kurikulum. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 125 2) Evaluasi Input Evaluasi ini penting karena untuk pemberian pertimbangan terhadap keberhasilan pelaksnaan kurikulum.Evaluator menentukan tingkat kemanfaatan berbagai factor yang dikaji dalam konteks pelaksanaan kurikulum.Pertimbangan mengenai ini menjadi dasar bagi evaluator untuk menentukan apakah perlu ada revisi atau pergantian kurikulum. 3) Process Evaluasi proses adalah evaluasi mengenai pelaksanaan dari suatu inovasi kurikulum. Evaluator mengumpulkan berbagai informasi mengenai keterlaksanaan implementasi kurikulum, berbagai kekuatan dan kelemahan proses implementasi. Evaluator harus merekam berbagai pengaruh variable input terhadap proses. 4) Product Adapun tujuan utama dari evaluasi hasil adalah untuk menentukan sejauh mana kurikulum yang diimplementasikan tersebut telah dapat memenuhi kebutuhan kelompok yang menggunakannya.Evaluator mengumpulkan berbagai macam informasi mengenai hasil belajar, membandingkan nya dengan standard dan mengambil keputusan mengenai status kurikulum (direvisi, diganti atau dilanjutkan). Dari uraian diatas diketahui bahwa model CIPP adalah model evaluasi yang tidak hanya dilaksanakan dalam situasi inovasi sedang dilaksanakan, tetapi justru model ini dilakukan ketika inovasi akan dan belum dilaksanakan. 2. Model Ekonomi Mikro Model ekonomi mikro adalah model yang menggunakan pendekatan kuantitatif.Sebagaimana model kuantitatif lainnya, maka model ekonomi Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 126 mikro ini focus pada hasil (hasil dari pekerjaan, hasil belajar dan hasil yang diperkirakan). Adapun pertanyaan besar dalam ekonomi mikro adalah apakah hasil belajar yang diperoleh peserta didik adalah sesuai dengan dana yang dikeluarkan? Adapun model dilingkungan ekonomi mikro ada empat, adapun yang tepat digunakan dalam evaluasi kurikulum adalah model cost effectiveness. Dalam model cost effectiveness ini seseorang evaluator harus dapat membandingkan dua program atau lebih, baik dalam pengertian dana yang digunakan untuk masing-masing program maupun hasil yang diakibatkan oleh setiap program. Perbandingan hasil ini akan memberikan masukan bagi pembuat keputusan mengenai program mana yang lebih menguntungkan dilihat dari hubungan antara dana dan hasil. Dalam mengukur hasil di gunakan instrument yang sudah di standarisasi.Pengunaan instrument standar penting karena dengan demikian perbandingan antara biaya dan hasil dapat dilakukan secara berimbang. 3. Model Evaluasi Kualitatif Adapun model evaluasi kualitatif selalu menempatkan proses pelaksanaan kurikulum sebagai focus utama evaluasi. Oleh karena itulah dimensi kegiatan dan proses lebih mendapatkan perhatian dibandingkan dimensi lain. Terdapat tiga model evaluasi kualitatif, yaitu sebagai berikut: a. Model Studi Kasus Adapun model studi kasus (case study) adalah model utama dalam evaluasi kualitatif.Evaluasi model studi kasus memusatkan perhatiannya pada kegiatan pengembangan kurikulum di satu satuan pendidikan.Unit tersebut dapat berupa satu sekolah, satu kelas, bahkan terdapat seorang guru atau kepala sekolah. Adapun datanya Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 127 juga akan berupa data kualitatif yang dianggap lebih memberikan makna dibanding data kuantitatif yang kering. Namun demikian kualitatif tidak menolak secara mutlak data kuantitatif. Dalam menggunakan model evaluasi studi kasus, tindakan pertama yang harus dilakukan evaluator adalah familirialisasi dirinya terhadap kurikulum yang dikaji.Apabila evaluator belum familiar dengan kurikulum dan satuan pendidikan yang mengembangkannya maka evaluator ini dilarang melakukan evaluasi.Familirialisasi ada dua jenis. Pertama, familiriaslisasi terhadap kurikulum sebagai ide dan sebagai rencana. Familiarialisasi kedua dilakukan ketika evaluator dilapangan.Evaluator harus menguasai kebiasaan-kebiasaan dalam satuan pendidikan yang dievaluasi. Setelah familiarilisasi evaluator bisa melanjutkan pada observasi lapangan dengan baik.Observasi adalah teknik pengumpulan data yang sangat dianjurkan dalam model studi kasus. Dengan observasi memungkinkan evaluator menangkap suasana yang terjadi secara langsung ketika proses yang diobservasi sedang berlangsung. Adapun ketentuan bagi evaluator ketika menggunakan observasi adalah pertama, haruslah evaluator seorang yang memiliki visi dan pengetahuan luas mengenai focus observasi. Kedua, kecepatan berfikir, hal ini penting karena evaluator berfungsi sebagai instrument yang selalu terbuka untuk refocusing ataupun membuka dimensi baru dari masalah yang sedang diamati. Ketiga, evaluator harus cermat dalam menangkap informasi yang diterimanya. Kecermatan ini ditandai oleh tiga hal. Pertama, informasi tertulis sebagaimana yang disampaiakn oleh responden, pemkanaan informasi, dan keterkaitan informasi dengan konteks yang lebih luas. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 128 Selain observasi, pengumpulan data dapat dilakukan dengan kuisioner dan wawancara.Setelah data selesai dikumpulkan maka pengolahan data langsung dilakukan, sebaiknya ketika masih dilapangan.Hal ini memudahkan evaluator apabila ada persoalan baru masih memiliki kesempatan untuk menelusuri secara langsung.Selain itu juga efisiensi waktu.Dari pengolahan data ini dilakukan dengan tindakan evaluator yaitu mengklasifikasi data dan segera membuat laporan hasil evaluasi. b. Model Iluminatif Model ini mendasarkan dirinya pada paradigma antropologi social.Model ini juga memberikan perhatian tidak hanya pada kelas dimana suatu inovasi kurikulum dilaksanakan. Adapun dua dasar konsep yang digunakan model ini adalah: 1) System intruksi System intruksional disini diartikan sebagai catalog, perpekstus, dan laporan-laporan kependidikan yang secara khusus berisi berbagai macam rencana dan pernyataan yang resmi berhubungan dengan pengaturan suatu pengajaran.KTSP sebagai hasil pengembangan standar isi dan standar kompetensi lulusan di suatu satuan pendidikan adalah suatu system instruksi. 2) Lingkungan belajar Lingkungan belajar ialah lingkungan social-psikologis dan materi dimana guru dan peserta didik berinteraksi. Dalam langkah pelaksanaannya, model evaluasi iluminatif memiliki tiga kegiatan. Yaitu: a) Observasi Observasi adalah kegiatan yang penting. Dalam observasi evaluator dapat mengamati langsung apa yang sedang terjadi Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 129 disuatu satuan pendidikan. Evaluator dapat melakukan studi dokumen, wawancara, penyebaran kuesioner, dan melakukan tes untuk mengumpul kan informasi yang diperlukan. Isu pokok, kecenderun gan, serta persoalan yang teridentifik asi merupakan pedoman bagi evaluator untuk masuk kedalam langkah berikutnya. b) Inkuiri lanjutan Dalam tahap inkuiri lanjutan ini evaluator tidak berpegang teguh terhadap temuannya dalam langkah pertama.Kegiatan evaluator dalam tahap ini adalah memantapkan isu, kecenderun gan, serta persoalanpersoalan yang ada sampai suatu titik dimana evaluator menarik kesimpulan bahwa tidak ada lagi persoalan baru yang muncul. c) Usaha penjelasan Dalam langkah memberikan penjelasan ini evaluator harus dapat menemukan prinsip-prinsip umum yang mendasari kurikulum disatuan pendidikan tersebut.Disamping itu evaluator harus dapat menemukan pola hubungan sebab akibat untuk menjelasakan mengapa suatu kegiatan dapat dikatakan berhasil dan mengapa kegiatan lainnya dikatakan gagal.Penjelasan merupakan hal penting dalam metode iluminatif. Adapun evaluasi kurikulum sebagai fenomena sejarah merupakan suatu elemen dalam proses sosial yang digabungkan dengan perkembangan pendidikan, meliputi tiga model evaluasi: 1. Evaluasi model penelitian Model evaluasi kurikulum yang menggunakan model penelitian didasarkan atas teori dan metode tes psikologis serta eksperimen Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 130 lapangan.Tes psikologi atau tes psikometrik pada umumnya memiliki dua bentuk, yaitu tes intelegensi yang ditujukan untuk mengukur kemampuan bawaan, serta tes hasil belajar yang mengukur perilaku skolastik.Eksperimen lapangan dalam pendidikan menggunakan metode yang biasa digunakan dalam penelitian botani pertanian.Anak dapat disamakan dengan benih, sedang kurikulum serta berbagai fasilitas serta system sekolah dapat disamakan dengan tanah dan pemeliharaannya.Untuk mengetahui tingkat kesuburan benih (anak) serta hasil yang diacapai pada akhir program percobaan dapat diguanakan tes (pre test dan post tes). Comparative approach dalam eksperimen lapangan adalah dengan mengadakan perbandingan antara dua macam kelompok anak, umpamanya yang menggunakan dua metode belajar yang berbeda.Missal metode global dan metode unsure.Dari situ diketahui kelompok mana yang hasilnya baik.Rancangan penelitian ini membutuhkan persiapan yang sangat teliti dan rinci.Besarnya sampel, variable, hipotesis, tes hasil belajar dan sebagainya perlu dirumuskan dengan tepat. Adapun kesulitan dari eksperimen ini adalah pertama, kesulitan administrative (sedikit sekolah yang bersedia dijadikan eksperimen).Kedua, masalah teknis yaitu kesulitan menciptakan kondisi kelas yang sama untuk kelompok yang diuji. Ketiga, sukar mencampurkan guru untuk mengajar pada kelompok eksperimen dengan kelompok control. 2. Evaluasi model Objektif Evaluasi model objektif berasal dari Amerika Serikat.Pendekatan ini digunakan oleh Ralph Tylor. Ada beberapa syarat yang harus di penuhi oleh evaluator model objektif adalah: a) Ada kesepakatan tentang tujuantujuan kurikulum. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 131 b) Merumuskan tujuan-tujuan tersebut dalam perbuatan siswa. c) Menyusun materi kurikulum yang sesuai dengan tujuan tersebut. d) Mengukur kesesuaian antara perilaku siswa dengan hasil yang diinginkan. Dalam evaluasi model objektif ini kemajuan siswa dimonitor oleh guru dengan memberikan tes yang mengukur tingkat penguasaan tujuantujuan khusus melalui pre tes dan post tes. Siswa dianggap menguasai unit bila memperoleh skor minimal 80. 3. Model campuran multivariasi Model evaluasi perbandingan dan model objektif menghasilkan evaluasi model campuran yaitu strategi yang menyatukan unsur-unsur dari kedua pendekatan tersebut. Adapun langkah-langkah model multivariasi tersebut adalah sebagai berikut: a) Mencari sekolah yang berminat untuk dievaluasi. b) Pelakasanaan program. c) Sementara tim penyusun tujuan yang meliputi semua tujuan dari pengajaran, umpanya dengan metode global dan metode unsure dapat disiapkan tes tambahan. d) Bila semua informasi yang diharapkan telah terkumpul maka mulailah pekerjaan computer e) Tipe analisis dapat juga digunakan untuk mengukur pengaruh bersama dari beberapa variable yang berbeda. Adapun kesulitan yang dihadapi dalam model campuran multivariasi ini adalah: pertama, diharapkan memberikan tes statistic yang signifikan. Kedua , terlalu banyaknya variable yang perlu di hitung. Untuk model ini diperlukan variabel sekitar 300.Ketiga, model multivariasi telah mengurangi masalah control berkenaan dengan Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 132 eksperimen lapangan tetapi tetap menghadapi masalah-masalah perbandingan. *** Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 133 Di Indonesia, kurikulm disusun secara nasional dan berlaku untuk semua sekolah dalam tingkatan yang sama. Misal kurikulum Sekolah Menengah Pertama (SMP) berlaku untuk semua SMP di Indonesia,demikian pula kurikulum SD, SMA, SMK, dan sebagainya. Jadi kurikulum itu sifatnya universal berlaku umum di sekolah-sekolah formal. Program belajar yang ada dalam kurikulum disusun oleh suatu tim nasional. Tim ini mengelola berbagai bahan masukan dari berbagai pihak, dituangkan dalam GBHN (Garis-garis Besar Haluan Negara). Sebagai perwujudan aspirasi seluruh rakyat melalui wakil-wakilnya di DPR/MPR. Untuk pembinaan anak-anak, aspirasinya dituangkan oleh lembaga pendidikan formal yaitu dituangkan dalam kurikulum. Melalui penyelenggaraan pendidikan, upaya perwujudan cita-cita itu dirumuskan dalam kurikulum resmi yang berlaku bagi seluruh sekolah. Kurikulum sekolah di negara indinesia disusun secara nasional. Dan ini merupakan usaha yang sangat penting dalam membentuk manusia-manusia indonesia seperti yang di cita-citakan. Karena itu sistem Pendidikan Nasional harus berdasarkan pada pancasila dan UUD 1945. Hal yang harus diingat oleh tenaga profesional yang melaksanakan kurikulum, dalam hal ini adalah guru-guru, bahwa di lapangan sering terjadi ketidakseragaman hasil pelaksanaan kurikulum. Hal ini akibat beberapa kemungkinan, misalnya: Tipografi daerah yang tidak sama, sarana dan prasarana yang tidak memadai, latar belakang sosial,ekonomi, budaya BAB VIII PERKEMBANGAN KURIKULUM DARI MASA KE MASA Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 134 masyarakat yang berbeda,kemampuan dan bakat serta minat anak yang beraneka ragam, dan kelengkapan tenaga pengajar yang belum memadai. Untuk menerobos hal-hal agar pelaksanaan kurikulum berjalan lancar maka disarankan hendaknya terlebih dahulu memahami dan menganalisis hal-hal yang terkait dengan siswa di antaranya. 1) Aptitude (bakat); 2) Perseverence (ketekunan); 3) Quality of instruction (kualitas pengajaran); 4) Ability of understand instruction (kesanggupan untuk menangkap pelajaran); 5) Time allowed for learning (kesmpata yang tersedia untuk beajar); Maka dapat dipahami bahwa membina kurikulum bukan pekerjaan yang mudah. Semua yang terkait dengan pembinaan terhadap diri siswa harus dipikrkan matang-matang agar hasil yang di peroleh dapat bermanfaat dalam kehidupan anak didik. Sebagai pegangan bagi para pelaksana khususnya guru-guru di lapagan, maka harus berpegang pada keputusan Mendikbud No.008/U/1975, sehingga pada bagian ini dapat mempelajari hal-hal berikut; a) Jenis-jenis program pengajaran yang akan dilaksanakan di sekolah. Perbandingan alokasi yang diberikan kepada masing-masing jenis program pengajaran jam pelajaran yang disediakan untuk tiap minggu, b) Alokasi jam pelajaran untuk setiap bidang studi dari tingkatan-tingkatan, dan c) Jenis-jenis bidang studi yang diselenggarakan. Dengan mempelajari keputusan Mendikbud tersebut, guru pemegang mata pelajaran akan mengetahui: a) Kedudukan mata pelajaran (bidang studi) yang dipegangnya dalam program-program setiap jurusan. b) Lamanya pengajaran tersebut diberikan. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 135 c) Waktu yang disediakan untuk menyeleggarakan program pelajaran tersebut pada setiap minggu semester (Ahmad,1998). A. KURIKULUM PADA MASA AWAL KEMERDEKAAN/ MASA ORDE LAMA 1. Kurikulum Tahun 1947 Kurikulum yang lahir pada masa kemerdekaan ini memakai istilah bahasa Belanda leerplan. Dimana leerplan artinya rencana pelajaran. Istilah ini lebih popular dibandingkan istilah curriculum (bahasa Inggris). Karena masih dalam suasana perjuangan, pendidikan lebih menekankan pada pembentukan karakter manusia Indonesia merdeka, berdaulat, dan sejajar dengan bangsa lain di muka bumi. Fokus Rentjana Pelajaran 1947 tidak menekankan pendidikan pikiran, melainkan hanya pendidikan watak, kesadaran bernegara dan bermasyarakat . Materi pelajaran dihubungkan dengan kejadian sehari-hari, perhatian terhadap kesenian dan pendidikan jasmani. Hermana (2010) memaparkan berita Republik Indonesia bahwa pada masa Suwandi menjabat Menteri PPK tahun 1946 telah dibentuk suatu panitia kerja penyelidik pendidikan dan pengajaran dengan ketua Ki-Hajar Dewantara yang mempunyai tugas sebagai berikut: a) Merencanakan susunan baru untuk tiap-tiap macam sekolah. b) Menetapkan bahan-bahan pengajaran dan menimbang keperluan yang praktis dan tidak terlalu berat. c) Menyiapkan rencana-rencana peklajaran untuk tiap-tiap sekolah dan tiaptiap kelas, termasuk fakultas. Salah satu hasil dari panitia tersebut yaitu merumuskan dasar-dasar dan tujuan pendidikan dan pengajaran. Menurut Kartodirdjo dkk dalam bukunya Hermana (2010) bahwa dasar-dasar pendidikan menganut prinsip-prinsip demokrasi, kemerdekaan, dan keadilan sosial; tujuan pendidikan dan Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 136 pengajaran diarahkan kepada usaha mendidik dan membimbing murid-murid agar menjadi warga-negara yang berguna dan mempunyai rasa tanggungjawab, yang kelak dapat memberikan pengetahuannya kepada negara. Antara tahun 1945 dan 1950, dinamika penyelenggaraan pendidikan ditandai dengan beberapa hal sebagai berikut: a) Menteri Pendidikan dan Pengajaran yang pertama Ki-hajar Dewantara beberapa bulan sesudah Proklamasi mengeluarkan "Instruksi Umum", yang menyerukan kepada para Guru supaya membuang sistem pendidikan colonial dan mengutamakan Patriotisme; b) Menteri Pendidikan dan Pengajaran yang berikutnya tetap mengupayakan jalannya pendidikan dan pengajaran di sekolah secara teratur, seiring dengan proses penyusunan rancangan undang-undang sistem pendidikan dan pengajaran yang disusun oleh suatu panitia perancang dengan ketua Ki-hajar Dewantara; c) Hasil kerja tim perancang yang telah menjadi Rancangan UndangUndang (RUU) tersebut diserahkan kepada Badan Pekerja Komite Nasional Pusat pada tahun 1948; d) Di tengah pembahasan RUU tersebut Perang Kolonial II dengan diserangnya kota Yogyakarta secara mendadak. Akibatnya adalah Republik Indonesia terkepung dari dalam dan luar, dan hanya tinggal pulau Sumatera dan beberapa karesidenan di pulau Jawa; e) Diberlakukannya undang-undang pendidikan pertama pada tanggal 5 April 1950 yang dituangkan dalam Undang-Undang Nomor 4 Tahun 1950 tentang Dasar-dasar Pendidikan dan Pengajaran di Sekolah (Hermana,2010: 76). Beberapa aspek penting yang dimuat dalam Undang-Undang Nomor 4 Tahun 1950 tentang Dasar-dasar Pendidikan dan Pengajaran di Sekolah Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 137 antara lain adalah sebagai berikut: Aturan Umum: (1) Undang-undang ini berlaku untuk pendidikan dan pengajaran di sekolah, dan tidak berlaku di sekolah-sekolah agama dan pendidikan masyarakat; dan (2) Yang dimaksud dengan pendidikan dan pengajaran di sekolah ialah pendidikan dan pengajaran yang diberikan bersama-sama kepada murid-murid yang berjumlah sepuluh orang atau lebih (Hermana, 2010). Mengingat kondisi negara yang masih serba darurat, sebenarnya kurikulum belum memperoleh perhatian yang cukup pada masa perang kemerdekaan. Hal itu bisa terjadi mengingat bahwa pada masa ini masih dipenuhi dengan peristiwa perjuangan untuk mempertahankan kemerdekaan, sehingga kurikulum yang digunakan pada masa ini masih meneruskan pola kurikulum yang dibuat pada masa kolonial Belanda dan Jepang. Pada masa perang kemerdekaan, Kurikulum hanya dirubah pola pembagiannya, yakni: Bagian A – Alam dan Pasti, dan Bagian B – Budaya (Hermana, 2010). Pada masa ini kurikulum masih belum memperoleh perhatian yang cukup, sehingga Kurikulum yang digunakan pada masa ini sebenarnya masih meneruskan pola kurikulum yang berlaku pada masa perang kemerdekaan (Hermana, 2010). Namun demikian, pada masa ini sudah terjadi differensiasi yang lebih luas dari kurikulum sebelumnya, yaitu dengan menggunakan pola aliran: a. Bagian A – Kesusasteraan, b. Bagian B – Ilmu Alam dan Pasti, dan c. Bagian C – Sosial dan Administrasi. Pada masa ini (Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan, 1986) Menteri Pendidikan, Pengajaran, dan Kebudayaan menginstruksikan agar pengembangan kurikulum harus memperhatikan hal-hal sebagai berikut: (1) Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 138 Pendidikan pikiranharus dikurangi; (2) Isi pelajaran harus dihubungkan dengan kehidupan seharihari; (3) Memberikan perhatian terhadap kesenian; dan (4) Mengutamakan pendidikan watak, jasmani, kewarganegaraan dan masyarakat. Penyusun berpendapat bahwa pada kurikulum 1947 ini kurikulum dibuat sesuai dengan kondisi bangsa pada waktu itu yang baru merdeka. Dalam pengajarannya menanamkan ilmu yang benar-benar terlibat langsung dalam kehidupan sehari-hari seperti ilmu alam, ilmu pasti atau kita sebut dengan ilmu matematika, dan ilmu budaya. Hal ini diberikan untuk menjadikan masyarakat Indonesia pada saat itu memiliki wawasan kebangsaan dan dapat mengenal budayanya. 2. Kurikulum Tahun 1952 Menurut Ahmad (1998:164), rencana pelajaran ini adalah rencana pelajaran pertama kali diterbitkan oleh P D & K pada waktu itu, yang dipergunakan untuk sekolah rakyat (sekolah dasar) tiga tahun dan enam tahun. Disini tidak diterangkn dasar penyusunannya, dan tujuan pendidikan yang digunakan.Tetapi langsung diuraikan tentang bahan pelajaran yang diberikan pada tiap-tiap bulan. Organisasi kurikulum yang dipergunakan adalah separated-subjectcurriculum. Sedang mata pelajaran yang diuraikan pada rencana pelajaran ini adalah: Bahasa Indonesia Bahasa Daerah Berhitung Ilmu Alam Ilmu Hayat Ilmu Bumi Sejarah Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 139 Didalam praktek, selain pelajaran tersebut di atas, juga diberikan pelajaran lain seperti: menyanyi ,menggambar, pekerjaan tangan, dan olahraga. Tetapi pelajaran ini tidak dimasukkan dalam rencana terurai ini. a. Bahasa Indonesia Dalam rencana terurai, pelajaran bahasa indonesia dimulai sejak kelas III, sedang kelas sebelumnya di berikan bahasa Daerah. Disini tidak diterangkan bagaimana jika suatu daerah menggunakan pengantar bahasa indonesia. Pelajaran ini meliputi bercakap-cakap, membaca, ilmu bahan, menyalin, dikte, latihan, menerjemah, surat menyurat dan sebagainya. b. Bahasa Daerah Pelajaran ini dimulai sejak kelas I. Maksud dan tujuannya ialah agar anak dapat memaklumi perkataan orang dandapat menturkan pikiran dan perasaan sendiri dengan bahasa sederhana, baik dan jelas. Pelajaran ini meliputi bercakap-cakap, membaca dengan huruf latin dan Jawa, ilmu bahasa. Kemudian kelas V dan VI membuat kalimat dengan kata-kata yang diterangkan, menyalin,dikte, dan sebagainya. c. Berhitung Pelajaran ini meliputi:menambah, mengurangi, menongak,ukuran, timbangan, uang, pecahan, ilmu bangun, perbandingan, B D, KPT, PPT, bilangan berpangkat, akar, dan sebagainya. Nada prinsipnya, dimulai dengan hal-hal yang mudah dan sederhana kemudian makin menjadi sukar dan kompleks. d. Ilmu Alam Tujuannya menerangkan tentang kejadian-kejadian dalam kehidupan sehari-hari yang sederhana yang berhubungan dengan ilmu alam. Gunanya untuk mencerdaskan pikiran anak, menghilangkan tahayul dan menanamkan kepercayaan ketuhanan. Pada pelajaran ini diberikan di kelas V, dan kelas VI dan diberikan 1 jam dalam seminggu. Contoh: Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 140 renggang ril, setrika berpegangan kayu,pompa, sepeda,pelangi, gerhana bulan dan sebagainya. e. Ilmu Hayat Pelajaran ini terdiri atas pelajaran-pelajaran:ilmu tumbuh-tumbuhan,ilmu hewan, ilmu manusia yang diberikan secara terpisah-pisah. f. Ilmu Bumi Tujuan:mempelajari hal ikhwal tentang tanah dan bangsa Indonesia juga bangsa-bangsa lain. menghargai negara dan bangsa Indonesia dan negara lain, mempelajari hal pergaulan hidup dengan bangsa lain. g. Sejarah Pelajaran ini dimulai sejak sekolah dasar, ditujukkan agar siswa mengenal cerita-cerita yang dikenal umum yang berhubungan dengan sejarah. Tujuannya untuk memupuk rasa kebangsaan, menghidupkan harga diri bangsa Indonesia, cinta kebudayaan bangsa Indonesia dan kebudayaan internasional (Ahmad,1998). 3. Kurikulum Tahun 1964 Pemerintah kembali menyempurnakan kembali system kurikulum pada 1964, namanya Rentjana Pendidikan 1964. Ciri-ciri kurikulum ini, pemerintah mempunyai keinginan agar rakyat mendapat pengetahuan akademik untuk pembekalan pada jenjang SD. Sehingga pembelajaran dipusatkan pada program Pancawardhana, yaitu pengembangan moral, kecerdasan, emosional atau artistic, keprigelan (ketrampilan), dan jasmani (Ahmad,1998). Usai tahun 1952, menjelang tahun 1964, pemerintah kembali menyempurnakan sistem kurikulum di Indonesia. Kali ini diberi nama Rentjana Pendidikan 1964. Pokok-pokok pikiran kurikulum 1964 yang menjadi ciri dari kurikulum ini adalah bahwa pemerintah mempunyai Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 141 keinginan agar rakyat mendapat pengetahuan akademik untuk pembekalan pada jenjang SD, sehingga pembelajaran dipusatkan pada program Pancawardhana yang meliputi pengembangan daya cipta, rasa, karsa, karya, dan moral Mata pelajaran diklasifikasikan dalam lima kelompok bidang studi: moral, kecerdasan, emosional/artistik, keprigelan (keterampilan), dan jasmani. Pendidikan dasar lebih menekankan pada pengetahuan dan kegiatan fungsional praktis (Ahmad,1998). C. KURIKULUM PADA MASA ORDE BARU 1. Kurikulum Tahun 1968 Menurut Ahmad (1998:170), kurikulum tahun 1968 yang diberlakukan sejak 1 Januari 1968 merupakan realisasi TAP MPRS 1968 di bidang pendidikan. Adapun TAP MPRS 1966 dimaksud yaitu TAP MPRS No. XXVII/MPRS/1966, Bab II pasal 2 ayat (3) berbunyi: "Pendidikan agama menjadi pelajaran di sekolah-sekolah mulai dari sekolah dasar sampai dengan universitas negeri. Pengaruh TAP MPRS 1966 terhadap kurikulum sangat nyata. Di dalam penjelasan pelaksanaan kurikulum itu dinyatakan mengenai pelaksanaan pendidikan Nasional Pancasila berpegang pada prinsip-prinsip: a. Prinsip Integralitas Pendidikan disemua tingkat dan jenis sekolahan dari Taman Kanak-kanak sampai Perguruan Tinggi, merupakan keseluruhan yang integral dari proses pendidikan dalam mencapai Tujuan Pendidikan Nasional. Demikian juga hubungan pendidikan di sekolah dan pembangunan. Dalam hal ini, pendidikan merupakan bagian yang integral dalam pola dan proses pembangunan, yaitu dalam usaha pembinaan tenaga kerja di segala bidang. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 142 b. Prinsip Kontinuitas Proses pendidikan adalah proses yang kontinu, dari sejak (anak) lahir sampai dewasa. Oleh karena itu pendidikan dalam hubungan sekolahpun harus kontinu pendidikan TK merupakan kelanjutan dari pendidikan lingkungan keluarga, pendidikan SD merupkan kelanjutan daripendidikan TK, demikian seterusnya. Atas dasar prinsip ini maka isi pendidikan atau kurikulum tiap tingkat dan jenis sekolah harus menggambarkan kontinuitas tersebut dalam usaha mencapai tujuan Pendidikan Nasional. c. Prinsip Sinkronisasi Sinkronisasi adalah kesatuan arah, irama dan gerak (termasuk kegiatan dan usaha) menuju kepada tujuan Pendidkan Nasional. Atas dasar prinsip sinkronisasi, datambah prinsip integralitas dan prinsip kontinuitas, semua kegiatan dan usaha pendidikan pada semua tingkat, dan jenis sekolah harus saling berhubungan satu dengan yang lain secara harmonis. Saling berhubungan itu bukan saja antara tingkat-tingkat dan jenis-jenis sekolah, tetapi juga dengan pola dan proses pembangunan yang menggunakan tenaga kerja yang dihasilkan oleh sekolah. Adapun Isi Kurikulum 1968 secara umum dikatakan: Kurikulum harus mencerminkan jiwa mukadimah Undang-Undang Dasar 1945 dan isi UUD 1945. Dengan demkian kurikulum harus menjadi pelaksanaan UUD 1945 di bidang pendidikan dan melalui pendidikan. Kurikulum harus diintegrasikan dalam Nation and Character Building, khususnya sebagai alat pembinaan manusia Pancasila dan tenaga pembangunan. Kurikulum harus memberikan kemungkinan perkembangan maksimal dari cipta, rasa, karsa dan kerja anak yang sedang berkembang menjadi manusia yang bermental moral-budi pekerti Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 143 luhur dan kuat keyakinan agamanya, yang tinggi kecerdasan dan tampil dalam pembangunan yang memiliki fisik yang sehat dan kuat. Kurikulum harus mempersiapkan setiap anak didik untuk dapat berdiri sendiridalam masyarakat, sebagai manusia Pancasila. Kurikulum yang memadukan teori dan praktek. Segala pengetahuan yang diajarkan di sekolah hendaknya dihubungkan dengan kehidupan konkret di dalam masyarakat dan kerja produktif sesuai dengan lingkungan sekolah yang bersangkutan. Isi kurikulum harus diselaraskan dengan perkembangan ilmu pengetahuan dan teknologi modern. Kurikulum harus disusun sedemikian rupa, hingga memungkinkan adanya integrasi antara lembaga-lembaga pendidikan dan lembagalembaga masyarakat lainnya. Kurikulum harus disusun sedemikian rupa, hingga memungkinkan diadakannya kegiatan ekstra kurikuler yang dilakukan oleh lembagalembaga pendidikan lainnya, seperti pramuka dan organisasi pendidikan lainnya. Adanya kontinuitas antara lembaga-lembaga pendidikan yang satu dengan yang lainnya. Kurikulum haruslah fleksibel untuk dapat disesuaikan dengan kondisi-kondisi setempat (Ahmad,1998:171-174). Dari uraian di atas, penyusun dapat mengambil kesimpulan bahwa pada kurikulum tahun 1968 lebih mengarah pada pendidikan kebangsaan dan pendidikan karakter. Pendidikan karakter atau pendidikan moral ini diberikan pada peserta didik yang dikemas dalam mata pelajaran Pendidikan Agama Islam. Tujuannya adalah untuk menjadikan masyarakat Indonesia yang memiliki wawasan kebangsaan dan berbudi luhur. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 144 2. Kurikulum Tahun 1975 Setelah kurikulum tahun 1968 berjalan selama kurang lebih 6 tahun, tampak bahwa kurikulum tersebut perlu ditinjau kembali agar lebih sesuai dengan tuntutan perkambangan dan perubahan zaman atau masyarakat. Bahkan sejak 1969 telah banyak perubahan yang terjadi sebagai akibat dari lajunya pembangunan nasional. Program-program yang telah mempengaruhi dan melahirkan perubahanperubahan antara itu antara lain: a. Kegiatan-kegiatan pembaharuan pendidikan selama pelita 1 yang dimulai pada 1969 telah melahirkan gagasan baru yang sudah memasuki pelaksanaan sistem pendidikan. b. Kebijaksanaan pemerintah di bidang pendidikan nasional yang digariskan dalam GBHN menuntut implementasinya. c. Hasil analisis penilaian pendidikan nasional telah mendorong Departemen Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan untuk meninjau pelaksanaan pendidikan nasional. d. Inovasi (pembaharuan) dalam sistem belajar dan mengajar yang dirasakan dan dinilai lebih efesien dan efektif, telah memasuki dunia pendidikan Indonesia. e. Keluhan-keluhan masyarakat tentang mutu lulusan pendidikan mendorong petugas-petugas pendidikan untuk meninjau sistem sekarang yang sedang berlaku (Ahmad, 1998). Pada perkembangan pendidikan nasional dan keterlaksanaan kurikulum nasional. Kurikulum 1975 memeliki prinsip-prinsip pengembangan kurikulum. Terdapat 5 (lima) prinsip untuk memberikan inovasi dalam pendidikan nasional. Adapun keliama prinsip tersebut adalah sebagai berikut. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 145 1. Prinsip Fleksibilitas Program Dalam menyelenggarakan pendidikan keterampilan yang menganut prinsip fleksibilitas (luwes) dengan mengingat ekosistem lingkungan, kemampuan pemerintah, masyarakat dan orang tua dalam menyediakan fasilitas yang memadai. 2. Prinsip Efesiensi dan Efektivitas Prinsip ini menuntut digunakannya waktu dan tenaga sebaik mungkin, sehingga tidak ada waktu dan tenaga yang terbuang sia-sia. Kurikulum tahun 1975 memilih satu minggu berisi 36 jam pelajaran. Di mana pelajaran yang bersifat akademis diberikan pada hari kamis sampai jumat, sedangkan pada hari sabtu berisi mata pelajaran pilihan wajib, ekspresi dan rekreatif. Atas dasar prinsip ini, setiap pelajaran dalam satu minggu, melainkan tiga jam untuk setiap pertemuan. 3. Prinsip Berorientasi Pada Tujuan Prinsip ini menuntut agar setiap jam dan kegiatan pelajaran yang dilakukan oleh siswa dan guru benar-benar terarah pada tercapainya tujuan pendidikan. 4. Prinsip Kontinuitas Prinsip ini menuntut agar penyususnan kegiatan belajar mengajar selalu memperhatikan hubungan fungsional dan hierarkis, sehingga tidak terjadi pengulangan yang membosankan atau pemberian palajaran yang tidak dapat diserap oleh para siswa karena mereka tidak memiliki dsar yang kokoh. 5. Prinsip Pendidikan Seumur Hidup Prinsip ini mengandung makna, bahwa masa sekolah bukan satu-satunya masa bagi setiap orang untuk belajar, melainkan hanya sebagian dari waktu belajar yang akan berlangsung seumur hidup. Namun demikian kita menyadari bahwa sekolah adalah tempat dan saat yang strategis bagi Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 146 pemerintah dan masyarakat untuk membina generasi muda dan masa depannya (Ahmad, 1998:184-185). Kurikulum 1975 memeliki Garis-Besar Program Pengajaran (GBPP) dalam keterlaksanaan pembelajaran. GBPP yang dimaksud adalah sebagai berikut. 1. Tujuan yang harus dicapai setelah mengikuti program pengajaran yang bersangkutan selama masa pendidikan dalam bentuk rumusan kurikuler. 2. Tujuan-tujuan yang hendak dicapai dalam setiap satuan pelajaran dalam bentuk tujuan instruksional umum. 3. Pokok-pokok bahasan yang harus dikembangkan untuk dijadikan bahan pelajaran bagi para siswa agar mencapai tujuan yang diharapkan. 4. Urutan penyampaian bahan-bahan pengajaran dari tahun ke tahun dan caturwulan ke caturwulan. Proses pengembangan pokok bahasan yang diambil dari Garis-Besar Program Pengajaran ini akan dilakukan dengan menggunakan teknik pendekatan Sistem Instruksional yang kemudian dikenal dengan Prosedur Pengembangan Sistem Intruksional (PPSI). (Ahmad, 1998). Apabila dilihat dari pengembangan kurikulum dalam pembelajarannya, penyusun menilai kurikulum ini lebih efektif dan efisien. Karena dari prinsip kurikulum 1975, disebutkan secara rinci bahwa dalam pengajaran dan pendidikan harus bersifat fleksibel (luwes), kontinu atau terus menerus, tepat sasaran pada tujuan pendidikan yang telah ditetapkan, dan yang terpenting adalah prinsip pendidikan seumur hidup. Dalam hal ini tidak ada batasan untuk terus belajar, belajar, dan belajar. Prinsip tersebut memberikan kontribusi yang lebih baik terhadap pelaksanaan pendidikan. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 147 3. Kurikulum Tahun 1984 Menurut Ahmad (1998:189) pada akhir tahun 1983 Menteri Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan dalam memerintahkan perbaikan kurikulum 1975 dengan menerbitkan keputusan menteri No. 0461/U/1983 tertanggal 22 Oktober 1983 tentang perbaikan kurikulum. Latar belakang dalam perbaikan kurikulum 1975 menjadi 1984 adalah TAP MPR No. II/MPR/1983 tentang GBHN Bab IV, dalam hal tujuan Pendidikan Nasional: Pendidikan Nasional berdasarkan pancasila, bertujuan untuk meningkatkan ketakwaan terhadap Tuhan Yang Maha Esa, kecerdasan atau keterampilan, mempertinggi budi pekerti, memperkuat kepribadian dan mempertebal semangat kebangsaan dan cinta tanah air, agar menumbuhkan manusia-manusia pembangunan yang dapat membangun dirinya sendiri serta bersama-sama bertanggungjawab atas pembangunan bangsa. Terdapat Gagasan yang dimunculkan oleh kurikulum 1984 yang memeliki karakteristik berbeda. Keperbedaan tersebut mencakup; 1. Dari segi organisasi dan bentuk kurikulum, terdapat penyederhanaan matriks GBPP menjadi satu matriks, namun menampung acuan yang diharapkan guru dalam hal metode dan evaluasi. 2. Dari segi pendekatan belajar mengajar, dikembangkan keterampilan proses Cara Belajar Siswa Aktif (CBSA). 3. Dari segi adanya unsur baru dari GBHN yang belum tertampung oleh kurikulum 1975, dimunculkanlah bidang studi baru yaitu Pendidikan Sejarah Perjuangan Bangsa (PSPB). 4. Dari segi kesenjangan antara tamatan sekolah dengan lapangan kerja, disempurnakannya materi keterampilan khusus dan ranah diolah pengembangan gagasan muatan lokal, yaiut pengalokasian sejumlah waktu bagi kegiatan belajar yang berupa keterampilan yang berkembang Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 148 dilingkungan setempat meliputi lingkungan sosial, alam, dan budaya (Ahmad,1988). Menurut Ahmad (1998:196) kurikulum 1984 mengusung Process Skill Approach. Meski mengutamakan pendekatan proses, tapi faktor tujuan tetap penting. Kurikulum ini juga sering disebut Kurikulum 1975 yang disempurnakan. Posisi siswa ditempatkan sebagai subjek belajar. Dari mengamati sesuatu, mengelompokkan, mendiskusikan, hingga melaporkan. Model ini disebut Cara Belajar Siswa Aktif (CBSA) atau Student Active Leaming (SAL). Konsep CBSA yang elok secara teoritis dan bagus hasilnya di sekolah-sekolah yang diujicobakan, mengalami banyak penyimpangan dan reduksi saat diterapkan secara nasional. Sayangnya, banyak sekolah kurang mampu menafsirkan CBSA. Yang terlihat adalah suasana gaduh di ruang kelas lantaran siswa berdiskusi, di sana-sini ada tempelan gambar, dan yang menyolok guru tak lagi mengajar model berceramah. Penolakan CBSA bermunculan. Kurikulum 1984 menambahkan mata pelajaran baru yaitu Pendidikan Sejarah Perjuangan Bangsa (PSPB). Selain itu, dalam kegiatan pembelajarannya menggunakan pendekatan Cara Belajar Siswa Aktif (CBSA). Namun dalam realisasinya masih banyak salah tafsir, hal ini bisa disebabkan karena kurang pahamnya para pendidik memaknai dan melaksanakan CBSA. Jadi, dalam kurikulum 1984 ini sering disebut juga kurikulum 1975 yang disempurnakan. Yang menyebabkan diperbaharuinya kurikulum 1975 menjadi kurikulum 1984, karena kurikulum 1984 memiliki tujuan yaitu menumbuhkan rasa ketakwaan kepada Tuhan Yang Maha Esa, memiliki sikap kreatif dan terampil, cinta tanah air, dan berbudi luhur pada peserta didik. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 149 4. Kurikulum 1994 Menurut Ahmad (1998) Kurikulum 1994 merupakan hasil upaya memadukan kurikulum-kurikulum sebelumnya, terutama kurikulum 1975 dan 1984. Namun, perpaduan antara tujuan dan proses belum berhasil. Sehingga banyak kritik yang disebabkan oleh beban belajar siswa dinilai terlalu berat, dari muatan lokal. Misalnya bahasa daerah, kesenian, keterampilan daerah, dan lain-lain. Akhirnya, kurikulum 1994 menjelma menjadi kurikulum super padat. Kurikulum 1994 dibuat sebagai penyempurnaan kurikulum 1984 dan dilaksanakan sesuai dengan Undang-Undang No. 2 tahun 1989 tentang Sistem Pendidikan Nasional. Hal ini berdampak pada sistem pembagian waktu pelajaran, yaitu dengan mengubah dari sistem semester ke sistem caturwulan. Dengan sistem caturwulan yang pembagiannya dalam satu tahun menjadi tiga tahap diharapkan dapat memberi kesempatan bagi siswa untuk dapat menerima materi pelajaran cukup banyak. Tujuan pengajaran menekankan pada pemahaman konsep dan keterampilan menyelesaikan soal dan pemecahan masalah. D. KURIKULUM PADA MASA REFORMASI 1. Kurikulum Tahun 2004 (KBK) Menurut McAshan dalam bukunya Mulyasa (2002) kurikulum 2004 sama saja dengan KBK yaitu Kurikulum Berbasis Kompetensi. Kompetensi merupakan perpaduan dari pengetahuan, keterampilan, nilai dan sikap yang refleksikan dalam kebiasaan berpikir dan bertindak. Kompetensi disini dapat diartikan sebagai pengetahuan, keterampilan, dan kemampuan yang dikuasai oleh seseorang yang telah menjadi bagian dari dirinya, sehingga peserta didik dapat melakukan perilaku-perilaku kognitif, afektif, dan psikomotorik dengan sebaik-baiknya. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 150 Kurikulum berbasis kompetensi (KBK) adalah suatu konsep kurikulum yang menekankan pada pengembangan kemampuan melakukan (kompetensi) tugas-tugas dengan standar performansi tertentu, sehingga hasilnya dapat dirasakan oleh peserta didik, berupa penguasaan terhadap seperangkat kompetensi tertentu. Dengan demikian, implementasi kurikulum dapat menumbuhkan tanggung jawab, dan partisipasi peserta didik untuk belajar menilai dan mempengaruhi kebijakan umum (public policy), serta memberanikan diri berperan serta dalam berbagai kegiatan, baik di sekolah maupun dimasyarakat. Senada dengan itu, Mulyasa (2002) mengungkapkan bahwa Kurikulum Berbasis Kompetensi (KBK) memfokuskan pada kompetensi tertentu, berupa paduan pengetahuan, keterampilan, dan sikap yang dapat didemonstrasikan peserta didik sebagai wujud pemahaman terhadap konsep yang dipelajarinya. Dalam hal ini, guru diharapkan dapat memahami dan mengenali potensipotensi, terutama potensi tinggi yang dimiliki peserta didiknya. Dengan bekal pemeahaman tersebut, mereka diharapkan dapat membantu mengembangkan potensi-potensi peserta didik sehingga dapat berkembang secara optimal (Mulyasa, 2002). Dari uraian di atas mengenai KBK, penyusun dapat mengambil inti bahwa Kurikulum Berbasis Kompetensi adalah kurikulum yang didalamnya menuntut peserta didik untuk memiliki keahlian/ kemampuan yang lebih spesifik khususnya dalam kegiatan belajarnya. Baik itu kemampuan lebih dibidang pengetahuan atau keterampilan. Depdiknas (2002) mengemukakan bahwa Kurikulum Berbasis Kompetensi memiliki karakteristik sebagai berikut; a) Menekankan pada ketercapaian kompetensi siswa yang baik secara individual maupun klasikal, b) Berorientasi pada hasil belajar (Learning outcomes) dan keberagamaan, c) Penyampaian dalam pembelajaran menggunakan pendekatan dan metode Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 151 yang bervariasi, d) Sumber belajar bukan hanya guru, tetapi juga sumber belajar lainnya yang memenuhi unsur educative, dan e) Penilaian menekankan pada proses dan hasil belajar dalam upaya penguasaan atau pencapaian suatu kompetensi. Walaupun sebagaian ahli mengatakan bahwa kurikulum 2004 sama dengan KBK. Pada kesempatan ini akan memberikan sedikit penekanan perbedaan pada kedua kurikulum tersebut. a) Keterkaitan KBK dengan Pendekatan Lain Mulyasa (2002) menyatakan bahwa dalam pendekatan kompetensi, kompetensi yang dikembangkan adalah kemampuan yang mengarah pada pekerjaan. Kurikulum Berbasis Kompetensi (KBK) terkait dengan pendekatan pengembangan pribadi, karena standar kompetensi yang dikembangkan berkenaan dengan pribadi peserta didik. Seperti kompetensi intelektual, social, dan komunikasi. Hal ini berkaitan dengan bidang-bidang ilmu pengetahuan, seperti IPA, IPS, Matematika, Bahasa, Olahraga, Keterampilan, dan Kesenian. Disisi lain, pendekatan ilmu pengetahuan lebih menekankan pada hasil belajar, namun tidak mengabaikan kompetensi dari pengetahuan tersebut. b) Keunggulan KBK Kurikulum Berbasis Kompetensi (KBK) mempunyai beberapa keunggulan. Keunggulan yang pertama, bersifat alamiah (konstektual), karena berangkat, berfokus, dan bermuara pada hakekat peserta didikuntuk mengembangkan berbagai kompetensi sesuai dengan potensinya masing-masing. Kedua, KBK boleh jadi mendasari pengembangan kemampuan-kemampuan lain. Penguasaan ilmu pengetahuan, dan keahlian tertentu dalam suatu pekerjaan, kemampuan memecahkan masalah dalam kehidupan sehari-hari, serta pengembangan aspek-aspek kepribadian dapat dilakukan secara optimal berdasarkan Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 152 standar kompetensi tertentu. Ketiga, ada bidang-bidang studi atau mata pelajaran tertentu yang dalam pengembangannya lebih tepat menggunakan pendekatan kompetensi, terutama yang berkaitan dengan keterampilan (Mulyasa,2002). c) Prinsip-Prinsip Pengembangan KBK Depdikbud (2002), menyesuaikan dengan kondisi negara, kebutuhan masyarakat, dan berbagai pengembangan serta perubahan yang sedang berlangsung, maka dalam pengembangan kurikulum kurikulum berbasis kompetensi perlu memperhatikan dan mempertimbangkan prinsipprinsip: (1) keimanan, nilai, dan budi pekerti luhur; (2) penguatan integritas nasional; (3) keseimbangan etika, logika, estetika, dan kinestetika; (4) kesamaan memperoleh kesempatan; (5) abad pengetahuandan teknologi informasi; (6) pengembangan keterampilan untuk hidup; (7) belajar sepanjang hayat; (8) berpusat pada anak dengan penilaian yang berkelanjutan dan komperhensif; dan (9) pendekatan menyeluruh dan kemitraan. d) Pengembangan Struktur KBK Mulyasa (2002:72) mengembangkan struktur KBK sedikitnya mencakup tiga langkah kegiatan, yaitu mengidentifikasi kompetensi, mengembangkan struktur kurikulum, dan mendeskripsikan mata pelajaran. Beliau (Mulyasa,2002:72) juga menyatakan berdasarkan pendapat Hall (1976), dan Prihantoro (1999) sedikitnya dapat diidentifikasikan delapan sumber yang dapat digunakan untuk mengidentifikasi kompetensi, yaitu: 1) Daftar yang ada (existing list) 2) Menterjemahkan mata pelajaran (course translation) 3) Menterjemahkan mata pelajaran dengan perlindungan (course translation with safeguard) Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 153 4) Analisis taksonomi (taxonomic analysis) 5) Masukan dari profesi (input from the profession) 6) Membangun teori (theoritical contructs) 7) Masukkan peserta didik, dan masyarakat (input from clients, including pupils and the community) 8) Analisis tugas (task analysis) Struktur kurikulum berbasis kompetensi telah dikembangkan oleh Depdiknas (2002) menjelaskan kurikulum Berbasis Kompetensi memiliki rumpun mata pelajaran sebagai berikut. Tabel Struktur Kurikulum KBK MATA PELAJARAN KOPETENSI Pendidikan Agama Pendidikan Agama mengembangkan kemampuan siswa untuk memperteguh iman dan taqwa kepada Tuhan Yang Maha Esa serta berakhlak mulia/berbudi pekerti luhur dan menghormati penganut agama lain Kewarganegaraan Kewarganegaraan (chitizenship) memfokuskan pada pembentukan diri yang beragam dari segi agama, sosio-kultur, bahasa, usia, dan sukubangsa untuk menjadi warga negara Indonesia yang cerdas, kritis, kreatif, terampil, dan berkarakter sesuai dengan nilai-nilai Pancasial dan Konstitusi Negara Kesatuan Republik Indonesia Bahasa Indonesia Mengembangkan kemampuan berkomunikasi (lisan dan tulis) sebagai alat untuk mempelajari rumpun pelajaran lain, berpikir kritis dalam berbagai aspek kehidupan, serta mengembangkan sikap menghargai bahasa Indonesia sebagai bahasa nasional dan apresiatif terhadap karya sastra Indonesia Matematika Matematika menumbukkembangkan kemampuan bernalar, yaitu berpikir sistematis, logis dan kritis, dalam mengkomunikasikan Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 154 gagasan atau dalam pemecahan masalah Sains Mempelajari alam yang mencakup proses perolehan pengetahuan melalui pengamatan, penggalian, penelitian, dan penyampaian informasi dan produk (pengetahuan ilmiah dan terapannya) yang diperoleh melalui berpikir dan bekerja ilmiah Ilmu Sosial Mengkaji interaksi antara manusia dan masyarakat serta lingkungannya melalui konsepkonsep geografi, ekonomi, sejarah, sosiologi dan antropologi Bahasa Inggris dan Bahasa Asing Lain Mengembangkan keterampilan berkomunikasi lisan dan tulisan untuk memahami dan mengungkapkan ilmu pengetahuan, teknologi, dan budaya Pendidikan Jasmani Proses pendidikan melalaui penyediaan pengalaman belajar keapada peserta didik berupa aktivitas jasmani, bermaian, dan atau olahraga yang direncanakan secara sistematik dengan memperhatikan tahap pertumbuhan dan perkembangan guna merangsang perkembangan fisik, keterampilanberpikir, emosional, sosial, dan moril. Pembekalan pengalaman belajar itu diarahkan untuk membina, dan sekaligus membentuk gaya hidup sehat dan aktif di sepanjang hayat Keterampilan Mengembangkan penerapan pengetahuan, keterampilan dan sikap untuk menghasilkan produk guna memberikan pengalaman kepada siswa agar menjadi inovatif, adaptif, dan kreatif, hasil belajar ini melalui proses menggambar, merancang, membuat, mengkomunikasikan dan mengevaluasi Kesenian Menggambarkan semua bentuk aktivitas dan cita rasa keindahan yang meliputi kegiatan berekspresi, berekplorasi, berkreasi dan apresiasi dalam berupa rupa, bunyi, gerak, dan peran Teknologi Informasi dan Komunikasi Membelajarkan siswa memperoleh informasi, memproses, dan memanfaatkannya untuk berkomunikasi secara efektif melalui berbagai media Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 155 Penyusun sedikit mengambil kesimpulan dalam kurikulum Berbasis Kompetensi (KBK), setiap mata pelajaran diuraikan berdasarkan kompetensi yang ingin dicpai oleh peserta didik. Selain memiliki keunggulan yakni untuk membimbing peserta didik agar memiliki kompetensi tertentu pada bidangnya, seringkali KBK ini disalahartikan. Kompetensi ini dikaitkan dengan alat ukur kompetensi / kemampuan siswa yakni dengan ujian. Apabila hasil uiannya baik, berarti peserta didik tersebut pandai, dan apabila hasil ujiannya jelek, maka peserta didik dikatakan kurang/ tidak pandai. Penilaian seperti ini sebaiknya dihindari. Karena kepandaian atau kecerdasan seseorang bukan hanya dinilai dari aspek kognitif, tapi dari aspek afektif, dan psikomotorik. 2. Kurikulum Tahun 2006 (KTSP) Dalam Standar Nasional Pendidikan (SNP pasal 1, ayat 15) dikemukakan bahwa kurikulum tingkat satuan pendidikan (KTSP) adalah kurikulum operasional yang disusun dan dilaksanakan oleh masing-masing satuan pendidikan. Penyusunan KTSP dilakukan oleh satuan pendidikan dengan memperhatikan dan berdasarkan standar kompetensi serta kompetensi dasar yang dikembangkan oleh Badasn Standar Nasional Pendidikan (BSNP). KTSP disusun dan dikembangkan berdasarkan UU No. 20 Tahun 2003 tentang Sistem Nasional Pendidikan Nasional pasal 36 ayat 1), dan 2) sebagai berikut; 1) Pengembangan kurikulum mengacu pada Standar Nasional Pendidikan untuk mewujudkan tujuan Pendidikan Nasional, dan 2) Kurikulum pada semua jenjang dan jenis pendidikan dikembangkan dengan prinsip diversifikasi sesuai dengan satuan pendidikan, potensi daerah, dan peserta didik. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 156 Menurut Mulyasa (2008) beberapa hal yang perlu dipahami dalam kaitannya dengan Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan (KTSP) adalah sebagai berikut: KTSP dikembangkan sesuai dengan kondisi satuan pendidikan, potensi dan karakteristik daerah, serta social budaya masyarakat setempat dan peserta didik. Sekolah dan komite sekolah mengembangkan kurikulum tingkat satuan pendidikan dan silabusnya berdasarkan kerangka dasar kurikulum dan standar kompetensi lulusaan, di bawah supervisi dinas pendidikan kabupaten/kota, dan departemen agama yang bertanggungjawab dibidang pendidikan. KTSP untuk setiap program studi di perguruan tinggi dikembangkan dan ditetapkan oleh masing-masing perguruan tinggi dengan mengacu pada Standar Nasional Pendidikan. Mulyasa (2008) mengemukakan bahwa KTSP merupakan strategi pengembangan kurikulum untuk mewujudkan sekolah yang efektif, produktif dan berprestasi. KTSP merupakan paradigma baru pengembangan kurikulum, yang memberikann otonomi luas pada setiap satuan pendidikan. Otonomi diberikan agar setiap satuan pendidikan memiliki keluasan dalam mengembangkan sumber daya, sumber dana, sumber belajar, dan mengalokasikannya sesuai prioritas kebutuhan, serta lebih tanggap terhadap kebutuhan setempat. Perubahan kurikulum KBK menjadi KTSP pada dasarnya memeliki tujuan. Adapun tujuan Kurikulum KTSP Secara khusus adalah sebagai berikut. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 157 1. Meningkatkan mutu pendidikan melalui kemandirian dan inisiatif sekolah dalam mengembangkan kurikulum, mengelola dan memberdayakan sumber daya yang tersedia. 2. Meningkatkan kepedulian warga sekolah dan masyarakat dalam pengembangan kurikulum melalui pengambilan keputusan bersama. 3. Meningkatkan kompetensi yang sehat antar satuan pendidikan tentang kualitas pendidikan yang akan dicapai (Mulyasa,2008). Mulyasa dalam bukunya "Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan" (2008:23), tujuan KTSP ini meliputi tujuan pendidikan nasional serta kesesuaian dengan kekhasan, kondisi dan potensi daerah, satuan pendidikan dan peserta didik. Oleh sebab itu, kurikulum disusun oleh satuan pendidikan untuk memungkinkan penyesuaian program pendidikan dengan kebutuhan dan potensi yang ada di daerah. Tujuan Panduan Penyusunan KTSP ini untuk menjadi acuan bagi satuan pendidikan SD/MI/SDLB, SMP/MTs/SMPLB, SMA/MA/SMALB, dan SMK/MAK dalam penyusunan dan pengembangan kurikulum yang akan dilaksanakan pada tingkat satuan pendidikan yang bersangkutan. Karakteristik KTSP bisa diketahui dari bagaimana sekolah dan satuan pendidikan dapat mengoptimalkan kinerja, proses pembelajaran, pengelolaan sumber belajar, profesionalisme tenaga kependidikan, serta sistem penilaian. Masing-masing karakteristik tersebut dideskripsikan sebagai berikut. 1) Pemberian Otonomi Luas Kepada Sekolah dan Satuan Pendidikan. Melalui otonomi yang luas, sekolah dapat meningkatkan kinerja tenaga kependidikan dengan menawarkan partisipasi aktif mereka dalam pengambilan keputusan dan tanggungjawab bersama dalam pelaksanaan keputusan yang diambil secara proposional, dan professional. 2) Partisipasi Masyarakat dan Orang Tua Yang Tinggi Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 158 Dalam KTSP, pelaksanaan kurikulum didukung oleh partisipasi masyarakat dan orang tua peserta didik yang tinggi. Masyarakat dan orang tua menjalin kerjasama untuk membantu sekolah sebagai narumber pada berbagai kegiatan sekolah untuk meningkatkan kualitas pembelajaran. 3) Kepemimpinan yang Demokratis dan Profesional Pengembangan dan pelaksanaan kurikulum didukung oleh adanaya kepemimpinan sekolah yang demokratis dan professional. Kepala sekolah dan guru-guru sebagai tenaga pelaksana kurikulum merupakan orang-orang yang memiliki kemampuan dan integritas professional. Kepala sekolah adalah manajer pendidikan professional yang direkrut komite sekolah untuk mengelola segala kegiatan seklah berdasarkan kebijakan yang ditetapkan. Guru-guru yang direkrut sekolah adalah pendidik professional dalam bidangnya masing-masing, sehingga mereka bekerja berdasarkan pola kerja professional yang disepakati bersama untuk memberi kemudahan dan mendukung keberhasilan pembelajaran peserta didik. 4) Tim Kerja yang Kompak dan Transparan Keberhasilan pengembangan kurikulun dan pembelajaran didukung oleh kinerja tim yang kompak dan transparan dari berbagai pihak yang terlibat dalam pendidikan. Dalam dewan pendidikan dan komite sekolah misalnya, pihak-pihak yang teralibat bekerja sama secara harmonis sesuai dengan posisinya masing-masing untuk mewujudkan suatu "sekolahyang dapat dibanggakan " oleh semua pihak. Mereka tidak saling menunjukkan kuasa atau berjasa, tetapi masing-masing berkontribusi terhadap upaya peningkatan mutu dan kinerja sekolah secara keseluruhan (Mulyasa,2008). Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 159 Penyusun mengambil kesimpulan dari uraian di atas bahwa pada sistem KTSP, tenaga pendidik seperti guru, kepala sekolah, Komite Sekolah, dan Dewan Pendidikan memiliki wewenang dalam mengembangkan kurikulum, dan silabus sesuai dengan penilaian sendiri. Selain itu, guru dituntut bisa menetapkan standar kompetensi dan kompetensi dasar sesuai potensi peserta didik. serta bisa mempertanggungjawabkan pada pemerintah dan masyarakat. *** Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 160 A. Rasionalitas Pengembangan Kurikulum 2013 Berdasarkan lampiran permendikbud nomer 68 tahun 2013 Kurikulum 2013 dikembangkan berdasarkan 2 faktor, kedua faktor tersebut adalah sebagai berikut. 1. Tantangan Internal Tantangan internal antara lain terkait dengan kondisi pendidikan dikaitkan dengan tuntutan pendidikan yang mengacu kepada 8 (delapan) Standar Nasional Pendidikan yang meliputi standar isi, standar proses, standar kompetensi lulusan, standar pendidik dan tenaga kependidikan, standar sarana dan prasarana, standar pengelolaan, standar pembiayaan, dan standar penilaian pendidikan. Tantangan internal lainnya terkait dengan perkembangan penduduk Indonesia dilihat dari pertumbuhan penduduk usia produktif. Saat ini jumlah penduduk Indonesia usia produktif (15-64 tahun) lebih banyak dari usia tidak produktif (anak-anak berusia 0-14 tahun dan orang tua berusia 65 tahun ke atas). Jumlah penduduk usia produktif ini akan mencapai puncaknya pada tahun 2020-2035 pada saat angkanya mencapai 70%. Oleh sebab itu tantangan besar yang dihadapi adalah bagaimana mengupayakan agar sumberdaya manusia usia produktif yang melimpah ini dapat ditransformasikan menjadi sumberdaya manusia yang memiliki BAB IX Kurikulum 2013; Tantangan & Harapan Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 161 kompetensi dan keterampilan melalui pendidikan agar tidak menjadi beban. 2. Tantangan Eksternal Tantangan eksternal antara lain terkait dengan arus globalisasi dan berbagai isu yang terkait dengan masalah lingkungan hidup, kemajuan teknologi dan informasi, kebangkitan industri kreatif dan budaya, dan perkembangan pendidikan di tingkat internasional. Arus globalisasi akan menggeser pola hidup masyarakat dari agraris dan perniagaan tradisional menjadi masyarakat industri dan perdagangan modern seperti dapat terlihat di World Trade Organization (WTO), Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Community, Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC), dan ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA). Tantangan eksternal juga terkait dengan pergeseran kekuatan ekonomi dunia, pengaruh dan imbas teknosains serta mutu, investasi, dan transformasi bidang pendidikan. Keikutsertaan Indonesia di dalam studi International Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study (TIMSS) dan Program for International Student Assessment (PISA) sejak tahun 1999 juga menunjukkan bahwa capaian anak-anak Indonesia tidak menggembirakan dalam beberapa kali laporan yang dikeluarkan TIMSS dan PISA. Hal ini disebabkan antara lain banyaknya materi uji yang ditanyakan di TIMSS dan PISA tidak terdapat dalam kurikulum Indonesia. 3. Penyempurnaan Pola Pikir Kurikulum 2013 dikembangkan dengan penyempurnaan bahwa pola pembelajaran yang berpusat pada guru menjadi pembelajaran berpusat pada peserta didik. Peserta didik harus memiliki pilihan-pilihan terhadap materi yang dipelajari untuk memiliki kompetensi yang sama. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 162 a. pola pembelajaran satu arah (interaksi guru-peserta didik) menjadi pembelajaran interaktif (interaktif guru-peserta didik-masyarakatlingkungan alam, sumber/media lainnya) b. pola pembelajaran terisolasi menjadi pembelajaran secara jejaring (peserta didik dapat menimba ilmu dari siapa saja dan dari mana saja yang dapat dihubungi serta diperoleh melalui internet). c. pola pembelajaran pasif menjadi pembelajaran aktif-mencari (pembelajaran siswa aktif mencari semakin diperkuat dengan model pembelajaran pendekatan sains) d. pola belajar sendiri menjadi belajar kelompok (berbasis tim) e. pola pembelajaran alat tunggal menjadi pembelajaran berbasis alat multimedia. f. pola pembelajaran berbasis massal menjadi kebutuhan pelanggan (users) dengan memperkuat pengembangan potensi khusus yang dimiliki setiap peserta didik. g. pola pembelajaran ilmu pengetahuan tunggal (monodiscipline) menjadi pembelajaran ilmu pengetahuan jamak (multidisciplines) h. pola pembelajaran pasif menjadi pembelajaran kritis. 4. Penguatan Tata Kelola Kurikulum Pelaksanaan kurikulum selama ini telah menempatkan kurikulum sebagai daftar matapelajaran. Pendekatan Kurikulum 2013 untuk Sekolah Menengah Pertama/Madrasah Tsanawiyah diubah sesuai dengan kurikulum satuan pendidikan. Oleh karena itu dalam Kurikulum 2013 dilakukan penguatan tata kelola sebagai berikut. a. Tata kerja guru yang bersifat individual diubah menjadi tata kerja yang bersifat kolaboratif Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 163 b. penguatan manajeman sekolah melalui penguatan kemampuan manajemen kepala sekolah sebagai pimpinan kependidikan (educational leader). c. Penguatan sarana dan prasarana untuk kepentingan manajemen dan proses pembelajaran. 5. Penguatan Materi Penguatan materi dilakukan dengan cara pendalaman dan perluasan materi yang relevan bagi peserta didik. B. Landasan Perbaikan Kurikulum Suatu era dengan spesifikasi tertentu sangat besar pengaruhnya terhadap dunia pendidikan dan lapangan kerja. Perubahan – perubahan yang dapat terjadi selain karena perkembangan teknologi yang sangat pesat, juga diakibatkan oleh perkembangan yang luar biasa dalam imu pengetahuan, psikologi, dan transformasi nilai-niai budaya. dampaknya ialah perubahan cara pandang manusia terhadap manusia, cara pandang terhadap pendidikan, perubahan peran orang tua/guru/dosen, serta perubahan pola hubungan antar mereka. Kemerosotan pendidikan kita sudah terasa selama bertahun-tahun, untuk keseian kalinya kurikuum dituding sebagai penyebabnya. Hal ini tercermin dengan adanya upaya mengubah kurikulum mulai kurikulum 1975 diganti denga kurikulum 1984, kemudian diganti lagi dengan kurikulum 1994 dan seterusnya hingga kini yang diperguanakan adalah kurikulum berbasis kopetensi yang kemudian dikenal dengan kurikulum 2004. Perubahan kurikuum sebaiknya melihat keperluan masa depan, serta menekankan kembali pada bentuk asal, berbuat lebih baik dengan menghentikan menyimoangan-penyimpangan dan praktik yang salah atau memperkenalkan prosedur yang lebih baik, suatu perombakan menyeluruh dari suatu sistem kehidupan dalam aspek polotik, ekonomi, hukum, sosial an Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 164 tentu saja pendidikan. Perubahan juga berarti memperbaiki, menyempurnakan degan membuat sesuatu yang salah menjadi benar. Oleh karena itu reformasi berimplikasi pada mengubah sesuatu untuk menghilangkan yang tidak sempurna menjadi lebih sempurna seperti melaui perubahan kebijakan instituisional. Dengan demikian dapat dikemukakan beberapa karakteristik reformasi dalam kurikulum yaitu adanya keadaan yang tidak memuaskan pada kurikulum masa yang lalu, keinginan untuk memperbaikinya pada masa yang akan datang, adanya perubahan besarbesaran. Adanya orang yang melakukan, adanya pemikiran atau ide-ide baru, adanya sistem dalam suatu instituisi tertentu baik dalam skala keci seperti sekolah maupun skala besar seperti negara. Perubahan kurikulum adalah upaya perbaikan pada bidang pendidikan. Perubahan atau reformasi dalam kurikulum diibaratkan sebagai pohon yang terdiri dari empat bagiana yaitu akar, batang, cabang dan daunnya. Akar reformasi yang merupakan landasan filosofis yang tak lain bersumber dari cara hidup (way of life) masyarakatnya. Akar reformasi adalah masalah sentralisasi, desentralisasi, masaah pemerataan mutu dan siklus politik masyarakat setempat. Sebagai batangnya adalah berupa mandat dari pemerintah dan standar-standarnya tentang struktur dan tujuannya. Dalam hal ini isu-isu yang muncul adalah masalah akuntabilitas dan prestasi sebagai prioritas utama. Cabang-cabang reformasi adalah managemen lokal (on-site management), perberdayaan guru, perhatian pada daeran setempat. Sedangkan daun-daun reformasi adalah keterlibatan orang tua peserta didik dan keterlibatan masyarakat untuk menentukan misi sekolah yang dapat diterima dan bernialia bagi masyarakat setempat. Terdapat tiga kondisi untuk terjadinya rerformasi pendidikan yaitu adanya perubahan struktur organisasi, adanya mekanisme monitoring dari hasi yang diharapkan secara mudah yang Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 165 biasa disebut akuntabilitas dan terciptanya kekuatan untuk terjadinya reformasi, (Oemar: 2008). Sementara itu kebijakan adalah suatu ucapan atau tulisan yang memberikan petunjuk umum tentang penetapan ruang lingkup yang memberi batas dan arah umum kepada pada manajer untuk bergerak. Kebijakan juga berarti suatu keputusan yang luas untuk bergerak. Kebijakan juga berarti suatu putusan yang luas untuk menjadi patokan dasar bagi pelaksanaan manajemen. Kebijakan adalah keputusan yang dipikirkan secara matang dan hati-hati oleh pengambil putusan puncak dan bukan kegiatan-kegiatan yang berulang rutin yang terprogram atau terkait dengan aturan-aturan keputusan. Dengan demikian perubahan kurikulum seharusnya merupakan upaya perbaikan dalam tataran konsep pendidikan, perundang-undangan, peraturan dan pelaksanaan pendidikan serta menghilangkan praktik-praktik pendidikan di masa lalu yang tidak sesuai atau kurang baik sehingga segala aspek pendidikan dimasa mendatang menjadi lebih baik. Berbagai tantangan yang dihadapi sistem pendidikan berarti merupakan tantangn juga bagi sistem kurikulum pada semua jenjang pendidikan, baik formal maupun informal. Tantangan-tantangan itu bersumber dari berbagai pihak dan sumber, sehingga mendorong dilakukannya upaya perubahan dan perbaikan kurikulum, berikut beberapa masalah yang menjadi penyebab terdinya perbaikan kurikulum. 1. Masalah Relevansi Pendidikan Kurikulum senantiasa harus menjamin tingkat relevansi yang setinggitingginya dengan kebutuhan masyarakat umumnya dalam rangka menunjang upaya pembangunan, oleh karena itu kurikulum harus diupayakan agar benar-benar dapat memberikan kesempatan kepada para siswa dalam rangka mempersiapkan diri untuk bekerja secara produktif. Tingkat relevansi itu, bukan hanya dengan kebutuhan masyarakat nasional, Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 166 akan tetapi terutama dengan kebutuhan kondisi atau tuntutan masyarakat setempat. 2. Masalah Mutu Pendidikan Kurikulum hendaknya merupakan alat yang ampuh dalam upaya meningkatkan mutu sumber daya manuasia. Ada dua pendapat tentang keadaan mutu pendidikan di sekolah-sekolah dewasa ini. Pertama, di satu pihak berpendapat, bahwa mutu pendidikan kita menurun, bahkan lebuh menurun dibandingkan dengan sepuluh tahun yang lalu. Alasan yang mendasari pendapat ini adalah diihat dari tingkat kecakapan dan kepandaian berhitung, kemampuan membaca kurang atau terlambat, tidak dapat bekerja, kurang bisa bergaul, pengetahuan dan keterampilan praktis sangat kurang, kurang berdisplin dan lemah bertanggung jawab, dan sebagainya. Mereka mengemukakan macammacam tingkah laku yang menunjukan lemahnya hasil pendidikan sekolahsekolah dewasa ini. Kedua, Disisi lain justru berpendapat sebaliknya mutu pendidikan kita justru lebih tinggi. Hal ini dibuktikan luasnya pengetahuan para lulusan berhubung luas dan banyaknya mata pelajaran yang telah dan harus dipelajari, anak-anak sekarang diajar oleh guru-guru yang berpendidikan dan pengalaman lebih tinggi dan luas, mereka dibantu oleh pengadaan saran dan prasarana yang memadai, para lulusan siap tempur untuk menempuh ujian masuk perguruan tinggi. Belum dipertimbangkan banyaknya sumber-sumber belajar yang dapat mereka serap melalui media masa yang canggih. Namun demikian, pihak ini menyadari bahwa mutu pendidikan kita masih perlu ditingkatkan. Masih banyak para lulusan yang belum memenuhi tuntutan mutu dilihat dari kebutuhan pasaran kerja, norma-norma sosial yang berlaku, penguasaan nilai-nilai budaya nasional dan daerah, terutama anak-anak yang bersekolah di desa, kekurangan dalam berbagai unsur Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 167 penunjang menyebabkan mereka tidak mungkin belajar secara efektif, dan pada gilirannya diakui bahwa mutu pendidikannya pun masih diragukan. Keadaan inilah menjadi tantangan bagi sistem kurikulum. Pertanyaanya apakah kurikulum yang berlaku sekarang sudah mampu menghadapi bebagai kebutuhan kita. 3. Masalah Sistem Penyampaian Sistem penyampaian sangat erat sekali kaitannya dengan prosedur pelaksanaan kurikulum, karena berkenaan dengan metode, media, interaksi, cara belajar, dan unsur penunjang lainnya, pengelolaan kelas, sistem bimbingan belajar, dan sebagainya. Kondisi penyampaian turut menentukan tingkat kelancaran pelaksanaan kurikulum dan sekaligus tingkat keberhasilan kurikulum masing-masing sekolah dan jenjang pendidikan. Persoalannya: apakah sistem, penyampaian di sekolah kita dewasa ini sudah dapat diniali dengan efisien? Jawabannya ialah "ya", karena semua kondisi yang diperlukan dalam sistem penyampaian yang baik telah disediakan oleh pemerintah, seperti guru, metode belajar, media yang cukup canggih, waktu belajar, kesempatan mendapat bimbingan dari tenaga konseling, dapat dikatakan sudah terpenuhi dapat juga dijawab tidak karena ternyata masih banyak guru yang mengajar sebagaimana tidak sebagaimana yang diharapkan, mulai dari tingkat kehadirannya sampai pada tingkat keberhasilan/prodiktivitas kerjanya. Masih banyak ditemukan bahwa alat-alat yang ada tidak digunakan dalam proses belajar mengajar, dana yang ada bukan digunakan untuk memperbaiki kualitas sistematis intruksional tetapi digunakan untuk hal-hal lainnya, masih banyak guru asal mengajar dan tidak berusaha mencapai hasil optimal bagi para siswanya. Kondisinya yang tidak menguntungkan itu kiranya agak sulit mencapai target kurikulum dan tingkat pencapaian tujuan kurikuler seperti yang telah dilakukan. Persoalannya, apakah kurikulumnya Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 168 yang selalu iedeal atau upaya pelaksanaannya yang kurang sungguhsunggguh. 4. Masalah Kebhinekaan dalam Kesatuan Kenyataan tentang kebhinekaan itu tidak dapat dan tidak perlu disanggah atau dihapus, bahkan patut dikembangkan sebagai langkah memperkaya budaya kita. Pendidikan sebagai salah satu upaya yang disebut "social heritage" atau pewarisan sosial itu memegang peranan penting dalam merealisasikan kebijakan kebudayaan di atas. Maka mau tidak mau dalam rangka pembinaan kurikulum, hal ini patut mendapat perhatian yang serius sekiranya suatu kurikulum mengindikasikan pengabaian atau pengkultusan (sub) kultur salah satu suku disengaja atau tidak, dapat melahirkan keresahan dalam masyarakat. Misalkan hal tersebut dapat muncu dalam menentukan kedudukan dan kegunaan bahasa daerah dalam kurikulum. Demikian pula halnya dengan tradisi yang berlaku untuk masing-masing suku. Seberapa jauhkah prinsip ini telah diterjemahkan dalam rangka kurikulum kita? Selintas tujuan mengenai kurikulum di Sekolah Menengah Pertama maupun umum, kebijaksanaan di atas diberikan peluang untuk melaksanakannya. Daam pendidikan moral Pancasila, Kesatuan Nusa, Bangsa dan Bahasa. Khusus tentang pengajaran bahasa, untuk sekolah menengah Pertama di kelas I dan II disediakan 2 pelajaran setiap minggu yang dicantumkan dalam jadwalnya diantara tanda kurung, artinya boleh tidak diikuti oleh mereka yang tidak berbahasa daerah tersebut. Gagasan baru mulai dikembangkan seperti Kurikulum sepertiKurikulum Muatan Lokal, dan mulai banyak diakukan usaha rintisan dapat membawa angin segar untuk dapat memberikan perhatian pada aspek kebhinekaan kurikulum dalam rangka kesatuan pendidikan nasional. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 169 5. Pendekatan Dunia Kerja dan Tenaga Kerja Kekuatan-kekuatan lain yang patut diperhitungkan ialah dari dunia kerja. Tidak dapat disangkal, bahwa melalui pendidikan anak diharapkan dapat langsung terjun dalam masyarakat, secara mandiri. Artinya ia dapat mencari nafkah sendiri dan membelanjakannya secara efisien dan di samaping itu dapat pula berpartisipasi dalam kehidupan masyarakat secara konstruktif dan produktif, sebaliknya mayarakat menyerap dan memanfaatkannya. Dalam hubungan inilah mengaitkannya dengan tuntutan dunia industri dan dunia perusahaan, dalam suatu pasal khusus berjudul "Bussines and its effects on curriculum," mengatakan bahwa di Amerika,"the effects of bussines and industrial values and methods of operation have been keenly felt in the school and ..." Curriculum was, and is, deeply effected by the bussines-oriented out look of public-school administrator." At very heart of any educational program, curriculum demands close attention and continous revision." Maka beberapa ahli pendidikan mengukur produktivitas sekolah dengan seberapa jauhkah ia dapat memenuhi kebutuhan masyarakat, khususnya dilapangan kerja, keberhasilan pendidikan/pengejaran diukur dari pasaran kerja, di Indonesia seyogiyanya dihadapi dengan "man power approach". Aron misalnya memandang tujuan pendidikan ialah memaksimalkan produksi. Terhadap pendekatan "man power approach" dimana keberhasilan (istilahnya: Produktivitas dan Efisiensi) pedidian diukur dipasaran kerja, tidak semua orang setuju. Diantara mereka yang tidak setuju ialah W.A. Lewis, seoarang ahli ekonomi, menyatakan bahwa The market gives come guidance, but not enough ... In the first place, what the market tells us is whether the school are producing thr type of people who fit into the young Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 170 for what they have to do after leaving school .... the assumption that the school must prepare the child for his assumption is not always valid. 6. Faktor – faktor Perbaikan Kurikulum Masalah-masalah kurikulum itu akan meminta perhatian kita terusmenerus, baik dari kalangan ahli pendidikan khususnya dari ahli kurikulum. Berbagai faktor yang menyebabkan pernintaan sifatnya mendesak itu adalah: a. Pertumbuhan dan peledakan penduduk yang terus-menerus menghantui masyarakat yang sedang berkembang; antara lain termasuk negara kita sendiri, pada gilirannya akan menimbukankelangkaan fasilitas belajar dan personal pembimbing. Sehingga mau tidak mau membutuhkan kurikulum yang lebih sesuai. b. Peledakan ilmu pengetahuan dan teknologi menuntut penyesuaian kurikulum, agar masyarakat kita tidak ketinggalan dari masyarakat dunia lainnya terutama dalam hubungan pergaulan antar bangsa-bangsa dunia ini. c. Aspirasi manusia semakin berkembang luas, berkat kebebasan berpikir dan mengeluarkan gagasan dan konsep perlu mendapat penyaluran secara wajar, hal ini mendorng perbaikan kurikulum sekolah. d. Dinamika masyarakat yang disebabkan oleh berbagai faktor, menyebabkan gerakan masyarakat, baik vertikal maupun horizontal membawa pengaruh besar artinya bagi pengembangan pendidikan. Berdasarkan kurikulum harus dilakukan demi memenuhi cita-cita mayarakat untuk masa depannya. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 171 C. Standar Kompetensi Lulusan (SKL), Kompetensi Inti (KI), dan Kompetensi Dasar (KD) 1. Standar Kompetensi Lulusan Kurikulum 2013 mengisyaratkan penting sistem penilaian diri, dimana peserta didik dapat menilai kemampuannya sendiri. Sistem penilaian mengacu pada tiga (3) aspek penting, yakni: knowlidge, skill dan Attitude. Konsep kurikulum 2013 menekankan pada aspek kognitif, afektif, psikomotorik melalui penilaian berbasis test dan portofolio saling melengkapi. Kurikulum baru tersebut akan diterapkan untuk seluruh lapisan pendidikan, mulai dari Sekolah Dasar hingga Sekolah Menengah Atas maupun Kejuruan. Siswa untuk mata pelajaran tahun depan sudah tidak lagi banyak menghafal, tapi lebih banyak kurikulum berbasis sains, kata Menteri Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan Mohammad Nuh kepada pers di Kantor Wapres di Jakarta. Dalam rangka menindaklanjuti dan menjabarkan Peraturan Pemerintah Nomor 32 tahun 2013 tentang Perubahan atas Peraturan Pemerintah Nomor 19 Tahun 2005 tentang Standar Nasional Pendidikan, pemerintah melalui Kemendikbud telah menerbitkan sejumlah peraturan baru yang berkaitan dengan kebijakan Kurikulum 2013, diantaranya tentang: a. Standar Kompetensi Lulusan (SKL) Penyempurnaan Standar Kompetensi Lulusan memperhatikan pengembangan nilai, pengetahuan, dan keterampilan secara terpadu dengan fokus pada pencapaian kompetensi. Pada setiap jenjang pendidikan, rumusan empat kompetensi inti (penghayatan dan pengamalan agama, sikap, keterampilan, dan pengetahuan) menjadi landasan pengembangan kompetensi dasar pada setiap kelas. b. Standar Proses Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 172 Perubahan Standar Isi dari kurikulum sebelumnya yang mengembangkan kompetensi dari mata pelajaran menjadi fokus pada kompetensi yang dikembangkan menjadi mata pelajaran melalui pendekatan tematik-integratif (Standar Proses). c. Standar Penilaian Perubahan pada Standar Proses berarti perubahan strategi pembelajaran. Guru wajib merancang dan mengelola proses pembelajaran aktif yang menyenangkan. Peserta didik difasilitasi untuk mengamati, menanya, mengolah, menyajikan, menyimpulkan, dan mencipta. Sebagai catatan dari adanya perubahan ini; (1) Perubahan metode mengajar ini hanya mungkin dilakukan ketika para guru menguasai metode-metode mengajar yang efektif. Jadi guru perlu diberdayakan sehingga menguasai bidang yang diajarkannya dengan baik sekaligus trampil menyampaikan topik itu dengan cara yang menarik, sederhana, mengasyikkan dan membuat anak didik paham. (2) Untuk mencapai perubahan proses ini, guru perlu dilatih terus-menerus (didampingi selama proses belajar-mengajar). Calon-calon guru yang sedang belajar di Perguruan Tinggi juga dilatih standar proses ini sesuai dengan bidang yang diampunya. d. Perubahan Standar Evaluasi Penilaian pada kurikulum 2013 mengukur penilaian secara otentik yang mengukur kompetensi sikap, keterampilan, serta pengetahuan berdasarkan hasil dan proses. Hal ini berbeda dengan kurikulum sebelumnya yang penilaian hanya mengukur hasil kompetensi. Dari perubahan substansi tersebut maka ada perubahan-perubahan dalam system belajar dan mengajar yaitu: 1) Penambahan Jumlah jam belajar di SD dari 10 mata pelajaran (mapel) menjadi 6 mapel, yaitu Bahasa Indonesia, Pendidikan Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 173 Kewarganegaraan, Agama, Matematika, Sosial Budaya, dan Olahraga.Pelajaran IPA dan IPS ditiadakan, diintegrasikan ke mapel lain yaitu fenomena alam, fenomena sosial dan budaya. Jumlah jam pelajaran bertambah sebelumnya adalah 26 jam/minggu menjadi 32 jam/minggu 2) Penambahan jumlah jam belajar di SMP berubah dari 32 jam/minggu menjadi 38 jam perminggu. 3) Penambahan jumlah jam pelajaran Agama pada; SD dan yang sederajat bertambah dari 2 jam/minggu menjadi 4 jam/minggu. Jam Pelajaran agama di SMP, bertambah dari 2 jam/minggu menjadi 3 jam per minggu. Bertambahnya Jam pelajaran agama dan PPKn ini dengan harapan pembentukan karakter dan moral anak menjadi lebih baik. 4) Kurangi jumlah mata pelajaran tapi menambah jumlah jam pelajaran per minggu. 2. Kompetensi Inti (KI) Kompetensi inti dirancang seiring dengan meningkatnya usia peserta didik pada kelas tertentu. Melalui kompetensi inti, integrasi vertikal berbagai kompetensi dasar pada kelas yang berbeda dapat dijaga. Rumusan kompetensi inti menggunakan notasi sebagai berikut: a. Kompetensi Inti-1 (KI-1) untuk kompetensi inti sikap spiritual b. Kompetensi Inti-2 (KI-2) untuk kompetensi inti sikap sosial c. Kompetensi Inti-3 (KI-3) untuk kompetensi inti pengetahuan d. Kompetensi Inti-4 (KI-4) untuk kompetensi inti keterampilan. 3. Kompetensi Dasar Kompetensi dasar dirumuskan untuk mencapai kompetensi inti. Rumusan kompetensi dasar dikembangkan dengan memperhatikan karakteristik peserta didik, kemampuan awal, serta ciri dari suatu mata Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 174 pelajaran. Kompetensi dasar dibagi menjadi empat kelompok sesuai dengan pengelompokkan kompetensi inti sebagai berikut. a. Kelompok 1: kelompok kompetensi dasar sikap spiritual dalam rangka menjabarkan KI-1 b. Kelompok 2: kelompok kompetensi dasar sikap sosial dalam rangka menjabarkan KI-2 c. Kelompok 3: kelompok kompetensi dasar pengetahuan dalam rangka menjabarkan KI-3 d. Kelompok 4: kelompok kompetensi dasar keterampilan dalam rangka menjabarkan KI-4. D. Strategi Implementasi Kurikulum 2013 Tema Kurikulum 2013 adalah menghasikan insan Indonesia yang produktif, kreatif, inovatif, afektif; melalui penguatan sikap, keterampilan, dan pengetahuan yang terintegrasi. Untuk mewujudkan hal tersebut, dalam implementasi kurikulum, guru di tuntut secara profesional merancang pembelajaran efektif dan bermakna (menyenangkan), mengorganisasikan pembelajaran, memilih pendekatan pembeajaran yang teapat, menentukan prosedur pembelajaran secara efektif, serta menetapkan kriteria keberhasilan. 1. Merancang Pembelajan Efektif dan Bermakna Pembelajaran menyenangkan, efektif dan bermakna dapat dirancang oleh setiap guru, dengan prosedur sebagai berikut: a. Pemanasan dan Apersepsi Pemanasan dan apersepsi perlu dilakukan untuk menjajaki pengetahuan peserta didik, memotivasi peserta didik menyajikan materi yang menarik, dan mendorong mereka untuk mengetahui berbagai hal baru. Pemanasan dan apersepsi ini dapatdilakukan dengan prosedur sebagai berikut. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 175 1) Pembelajaran dimulai dengan hal-hal yang diketahui dan dipahami peserta didik. 2) Peserta didik dimotivasi dengan bahan ajar yang menarik dan berguna bagi kehidupan mereka. 3) Peserta didik digerakan agar tertarik dan bernafsu untuk mengetahui hal-hal yang baru. b. Eksplorasi Eksplorasi merupakan tahapan kegiatan pembelajaran untuk mengenalkan bahan dan mengaitkannya dengan pengetahuan yang telah dimiliki peserta didik. Hal tersebut dapat ditempuh dengan prosedur sebagai berikut: 1) Perkenalkan meteri standar dan kompetensi dasar yang harus dimiliki oleh peserta didik. 2) Kaitkan materi standar dan kompetensi dasar yang baru dengan pengetahuan dan kompetensi yang telah dimiliki oleh peserta didik; 3) Pilihlah metode yang tepat, dan gunakan secara bervariasi untuk meningkatkan penerimaan peserta didik terhadap materi standar dan kompetensi baru. c. Konsolidasi Pembelajaran Konsolidasi merupakan kegiatan untuk mengaktifkan peserta didik dalam pembentukan kompetensi dan karakter, serta menghubungkannya dengan kehidupan peserta didik. Konsolidasi pembelajaran ini dapat dilakukan dengan prosedur sebagai berikut. 1) Libatkan peserta didik secara aktif dalam menafsirkan dan memahami materi dan kompetensi baru. 2) Libatkan peserta didik secara aktif dalam proses pemecahan masalah (problem solving), terutama dalam masalah-masalah aktua; Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 176 3) Letakkan penekanan pada kaitan striktural, yaitu kaitan antara materi standar dan kompetensi baru dengan berbagai aspek kegiatan dan kehidupan daam lingkungan masyarakat; 4) Pilihlan metode yang paling tepat sehingga materi standar dapat diproses menjadi kompetensi dan karakter peserta didik. d. Pembentukan Sikap, Kompetensi, dan Karakter Pembentukan sikap, kompetensi, dan karakter peserta didik dapat dilakukan dengan prosedur sebagai berikut: 1) Dorong peserta didik untuk menerapkan konsep, pengertian, kompetensi dan karakter yang dipelajarinya dalam kehidupan sehari-hari; 2) Praktekkan pembelajaran secara langsung, agar peserta didik dapat membangun sikap, kompetensi, dan karakter baru dalam kehidupan sehari-hari berdasarkan pengertian yang dipelajari; 3) Gunkan metode yang paling tepat agar terjadi perubahan sikap, kompetensi, dan karakter peserta didik secara nyata. e. Penilaian formatif Penialain formatif perlu dilakukan untuk perbaikan, yang pelaksanannya dapat dilakukan dengan prosedur sebagai berikut. 1) Kembangka cara-cara untuk menialai hasil pembelajaran peserta didik; 2) Gunakan hasi penialain tersebut untuk menganalisis keemahan atau kekurangan peserta didik dan masalah-masalah yang dihadapi guru dalam membentuk karakterndan kompetensi peserta didik; 3) Pilihklah metodologi yang paling tepat sesuai dengan kompetensi yang ingin dicapai. Dalam pembelajaran efektif dan bermakna, peserta didik perlu dilibatkan secara aktif, karena mereka adalah pusat dari kegiatan Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 177 pembelajaran serta pembentukan kompetensi, dan karakter. Peserta didik harus diibatkan tanya-jawab yang terarah, dan mencari pemecahan terhadap berbagai masalah pembelajaran. Peserta didik harus didorong untuk menafsirkan informasi yang diterima oleh akal sehat. Strategi seperti ini memerlukan pertukaran pikiran, diskusi, dan perdebatan, daam rangka mencapai pengertian yang sama terhadap setiap materi standar. Malalui pembelajaran efektif dan bermakna, kompetensi dapat diterima dan tersimapan lebih baik, karena masuk otak dan membentuk karakter melalui proses yang logis dan matematis. Dalam pembelajaran efektif dan bermakna, setiap meteri pembelajaran yang baru harus dikaitkan dengan materi sebelumnya. Materi pembelajaran baru harus disesuaikan secara aktif dengan pengetahuan yang sudah ada, sehingga pemebelajan harus dimulai dengan hal yang sudah ada, sehingga pembelajaran harus dimulai dengan hal yang sudah dikenal dan dipahami peserta didik, kemudian guru menambahkan unsur-unsur pembelajaran dan kompetensi baru yang disesuaikan dengan pengetahuan dan kompetensi yang sudah dimiliki peserta didik. Agar peserta didik belajar secara aktif, guru perlu menciptakan strategi yang tepat guna, sedemikian rupa, sehingga mereka mempunyai motivasi yang tinggi untuk belajar. Motivasi seperti ini akan dapat tercipta kalau guru dapat meyakinkan peserta didik akan kegunaan materi pembelajaran bagi kehidupan nyata peserta didik. Demikian juga, guru harus dapat menciptakan situasi sehingga materi pembelajaran selalu tampak menarik, dan tidak membosankan. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 178 2. Mengorganisasikan Pembelajaran a. Pelaksaan Pembelajaran Implementasi kurikulum 2013 dalam pembelajaran berbasis kompetensi, dan karakter yang dilakukan dengan pendekatan tematik integratif harus mempertimbangkan hal-hal sebagai berikut. 1) Mengintegrasikan pembelajaran dengan kehidupan masyarakat di sekitar lingkungan sekolah. 2) Mengidentifikasi kompetensi dan karakter sesuai dengan kebituhan dan masalah yang dirasakan peserta didik. 3) Mengembangkan setiap indikator kompetensi dan karakter agar relevan dengan perkembangan dan kebutuhan peserta didik. 4) Menata struktur organisasi dan mekanisme kerja yang jelas serta menjalin kerjasama diantara para fasilitator dengan tenaga pendidik lain dalam pembentukan kompetensi peserta didik. 5) Merekrut tenaga pendidik yang memiliki pengetahuan, keterampilan dan sikap sesuai dengan tugas dan fungsinya. 6) Melengkapi sarana dan prasarana belajar yang memadai, seperti perpustakaan, labolatorium, pusat sumber belajar, perlengkapan teknis, dan perlengkapan administrasi, serta ruang pemebeajaran yang memadai. 7) Menilai program pembelajaran secara berkala dan berksinambungan untuk melihat keefektifan dan ketercapaian kompetensi yang dikembangkan. Di samping itu, penilaian juga penting juga penting untuk melihat apakah pembelajaran berbasis kompetensi yang dikembangkan sudah dapat mengembangkan potensi peserta didik atau belum. b. Pengadaan dan Pembinaan Tenaga Ahli Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 179 Dalam implementasi Kurikulum 2013 diperlukan pengadaan dan pembinaan tenaga ahli, yang memiliki sikap, pribadi, kompetensi dan keterampilan yang berkaitan dengan pembelajaran berbasis karakter dan kompetensi. Ha ini sangat penting dilaksanakan, karena berkaitan dengan deskripsi kerja yang akan dilakukan oleh masing-masing tenaga kependidikan. Dalam pada itu, Kurikulum 2013 yang akan diimplementasikan secara bertahap adanya tenaga ahli, agaar setiap personil memiliki pemahaman dan kompetensi yang menunjang terlaksananya pembelajaran tematik integratif dalam pengembangan potensi peserta didik secara optimal. c. Pendayagunaan Lingkungan sebagai Sumber Belajar Dalam rangka menyukseskan implementasi kurikulum, perlu didayagunakan lingkungan sebagai sumber belajar secara optimal. Untuk kepentingan tersebut para guru, fasilitator dituntut untuk mendayagunakan lingkungan, baik lingkungan fisik maupun lingkungan sosial, serta menjalin kerjasama dengan unsur-unsur terkait yang dipandang dapat menunjang upaya pengembangan mutu dan kualitas pembelajaran. Pendayagunaan dan jalinan hubungan tersebut antara lain dapat dilakukan dengan masyarakat disekitar lingkungan sekolah. d. Pengembangan Kebijakan Sekolah Ada beberapa kebijakan yang relevan diambil kepala sekolah dalam membantu kelancaran pengembangan pembelajaran berbasis kompetensi, yaitu 1) Memprogramkan perubahan kurikulum sebagai bagian integral dari program sekolah secara keseluruhan; 2) Menganggarkan biaya operasional pembelajaran berbasis kompetensi dan karakter sebagai bagian dari anggaran sekolah. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 180 3) Meningkatkan mutu dan kualitas guru, serta fasilitator agar dapat bekerja secara profesional (meningkatkan profesionalisme guru). 4) Menyiadakan sarana dan prasarana yang memadai untuk kepentingan belajar, dan pembentukan kompetensi dasar. 5) Menjalin kerjasama yang baik dengan unsur-unsur terkait secara resmi dalam kaitannya dengan pembelajaran berbasis kompetensi, seperti dunia usaha, pesantren, dan tokoh-tokoh masyarakat. 3. Memilih dan Menentukan Pendekatan Pembelajaran Secara khusus pembelajaran berbasis kompetensi dalam Kurikulum 2013 harus ditujukan dalam pencapaian sebgai berikut. a. Memperkenalkan kehidupan kepada peserta didik sesuai dengan konsep learning to know, learning to do, learning to be, dan learning to life together. b. Menumbuhkan kesadaran peserta didik tentang pentingnya belajar dalam kehidupan, yang harus direncanakan dan dikelola secara otomatis. c. Memberikan kemudahan belajar (facilitate of learning) kepada para peserta didik, agar mereka dapat belajar dengan tenang dan menyenangkan. d. Menumbuhkan proses pembelajaran yang kondusif bagi tumbuh kembangnya potensi peserta didik, melalui penanaman berbagai kompetensi dasar. Implementasi Kurikulum 2013 berbasis kompetensi dalam pembelajaran dapat dilakukan dengan berbagai pendekatan. Pendekatan tersebut antara lain sebagai berikut. a. Pembelajaran Kontekstual (Contextual Teaching and Learning) Pembelajaran Kontekstual (CTL) merupakan salah satu metode pembelajarn berbasis yang dapat digunakan untuk mengefektifkan dan menyukseskan implementasi kurikulum. Dalam pembelajaran Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 181 kontekstual tugas guru adalah memberikan kemudahan belajar kepada peserta didik, dengan menyediakan berbagai sarana dan sumber belajar yang memadai. Guru bukan hanya menyampaikan materi pembelajaran yang berupa hapalan, tetapi mengatur lingkungan dan strategi pembelajaran yang memungkinkan peserta didik belajar. Lingkungan belajar yang kondusif sangat penting dan menunjang pembelajaran kontekstual, dan keberhasilan pembelajaran secara keseluruhan. Nurhadi oleh Mulyasa dalam Pengembangan dan Implementasi Kurikulum 2013 (2014:110), mengemukakan pentingnya lingkungan belajar dalam pembelajaran kontekstua sebagai berikut: 1) Belajar efektif itu dimulai dari lingkungan belajar yang berpusat pada siswa. Dari "guru akting di depan kelas, siswa menonton" ke "siswa aktif bekerja dan berkarya, guru mengarahkan". 2) Pembelajaran harus berpusat pada „bagaimana cara‟ siswa menggunakan pengetahuan baru mereka. Strategi belajar ebuh dipentingkan dibanding hasilnya. 3) Umpan balik amant penting bagi siswa, yang berasal dari proses penialaian (assesment) yang benar. 4) Menumbuhkan komunitas belajar dalam bentuk kerja kelompok itu penting. Berikut elemen-elemen yang harus diperhatikan dalam pembelajaran kontekstual, sebagai berikut. 1) Pembelajaran harus memperhatikan pengetahuan yang sudah dimiliki oleh peserta didik. 2) Pembelajaran dimulai dari keseluruhan (global) menuju bagianbagiannya secara khusus (dari umum ke khusus). 3) Pembelajaran harus ditekankan pada pemahaman, dengan cara: Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 182 a) Menyusun konsep semsentara; b) Meakukan sharing untuk memperoleh masukan dan tanggapan dari orang lain. c) Merevisi dan menegmbangkan konsep. 4) Pembelajaran ditekankan pada upaya mempraktikkan secara langsung apa-apa yang dipelajari. 5) Adanya refleksi terhadap strategi pembelajaran pembelajaran dan pengembangan pengetahuan yang dipelajari. b. Bermain Peran (Role Playing) Tahap Pembelajaran menurut (Zainal Aqib, 2013:25) yaitu sebagai berikut: 1) Guru menyusun/menyiapkan skenario yang akan ditampikan. 2) Menunjuk beberapa siswa untuk mempelajari skenario dua hari sebelum kegiatan belajar mengajar. 3) Guru membentuk kelompok siswa yang anggotanya 5 orang. 4) Memberikan penjelasan tentang kompetensi yang ingin di capai. 5) Memanggil para siswa yang sudah ditunjuk untuk melakonkan skenario yang sudah dipersiapkan. 6) Masing-masing siswa duduk dkelompoknya masing-masing, sambil memerhatikan =, mengamati skenario yang sedang dipergakan. 7) Seteah selesai dipentaskan, masing-masing siswa diberikan kertas sebagai lembar kerja untuk membahas. 8) Masing-masing kelompok menyampaikan hasil kesimpuannya. 9) Guru memberikan kesimpulan secara umum. 10) Evaluasi. 11) Penutup. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 183 Pembelajaran dikatakan berhasil apabila sebagian besar peserta didik mampu secara bebas mengungkapkan perasaa-perasaannya, nilai-niai, sikap-sikap, dan pemecahan terhadap masalah yang dihadapi. c. Belajar Tuntas Strategi belajar tuntas dapat dibedakan dari pengajaran non-belajar tuntas terutama dalam hal-hal berikut. 1) Pelaksanaan tes secara teratur untuk memperoleh balikan terhadap bahan yag akan di ajarkan sebagai alat untuk mendiagnosis kemajuan (doagnostic progress test). 2) Peserta didik baru dapat meangkah pada pelajaran berikutnya setelah ia benar-benar menguasai bahan pelajaran sebeumnya sesuai dengan patokan yang ditetapkan. 3) Pelayanan bimbingan dan penyuluhan terhadap anak didik gagal mencapai taraf penguasaan penuh, melalui pengajaran korektif, yang menurut Morrison merupakan pengajaran kembali, pengajaran tutorial, restrukturasi kegiatan belajar dan penngajaran kembali kebiasaan-kebiasaan beajar peserta didik, sesuai dengan waktu yang diperlukan masing-masing. Strategi belajar tuntas mencaup tiga tahapan, yaitu mengidentifikasi prakondisi, mengembangkan prosedur operasional dan hasil belajar. Selanjutnya diimplementasikan dalam pembelajaran klasikal dengan memberikan "bumbu" untuk menyesuaikan dengan kemampuan individual, yang meliputi: 1) Corrective Technique. Semacam pengajaran ramedial, yang dilakukan dengan memberikan pengajaran terhadap tujan yang gagal dicapai oleh peserta didik, dengan prosedur dan metode yang berbeda dari sebelumnya. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 184 2) Memberikan tambahan waktu kepada peserta didik yang membutuhkan (belum menguasai bahan secara tuntas). d. Pembelajaran Partisipatif Pembelajaran partisipatif dapat dikembangkan dengan prosedur sebagai berikut: 1) Menciptakan suasana yang mendorong peserta didik siap belajar. 2) Membantu peserta didik menyusun kelompok, agar dapat saling belajar dan membelajarkan. 3) Membantu peserta didik untuk mendiagnosis dan menemukana kebutuhan belajarnya. 4) Membantu peserta didik menyusun tujuan belajar. 5) Membantu peserta didik merancang pola-pola penglaman belajar. 6) Membantu peserta didik melakukan kegiatan belajar. 7) Membantu peserta didik melakukan evaluasi diri terhadap proses dan hasil belajar. Dalam pembelajaran partisipatif, guru harus berperan sebagai fasilitator dengan memberikan kemudahan belajar melalui langkah-langkah di atas. 4. Melaksanakan Pembelajaran Pembentukan Kompetensi, dan Karakter Pada umumnya, kegiatan pembelajaran mencakup kegiatan awal atau pembukaan, kegiatan inti atau pembentukan kompetensi dan karakter, serta kegiatan akhir atau penutup. a. Kegiatan awal atau pembukaan Kegiatan awal atau pembukaan pembeajaran berbasis kompetensi dalam menykseskan implementasi Kurikulum 2013 mencakuo pembinaan keakraban dan pre-test. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 185 1) Pembinaan Keakraban Langkah-langkah yang ditempuh ialah sebagai berikut: a) Diawal pertemuan pertama, guru memperkenalkan diri kepada peserta didik dengan memberi salam, menyebut nama, alamat, pendidikan terakhir, dan tugas pokoknya diseolah b) Peserta didik masing-masing memperkenakan diri dengan memberi salam, menyebut nama, alamat, dan pengalaman dalam kehidupan ssehari-hari, serta mengapa mereka belajar di sekolah ini. 2) Pretes (tes awal) Fungsi pretes ini antara lain dapat dikemukakan sebagai berikut. 1. Untuk menyiapkan peseta didik dalam proses belajar, karena dengan pretes maka pikiran mereka akan terfokus pada soalsoal yang harus mereka jawab/kerjakan. 2. Untuk mengetahui tingkat kemajuan peserta didik sehubungan dengan proses pembelajaran yang dilakukan. Hal ini dapat dilakukan dengan membandingkan hasil pretes dengan posttes. 3. Untuk mengetahui kemamouan awal yang telah dimiliki oleh peserta didik mengenai bahan ajaran yang akan dijadikan topik dalam proses pembelajaran. 4. Untuk mengetahui darimana seharusnya proses pembelajaran dimulai, tujuan-tujuan mana yang telah dikuasai peserta didik, dan tujuan-tujuan mana yang perlu mendapat penekanan dan perhatian khusus. b. Kegiatan Inti atau Pembentukan Kompetensi dan Karakter Pembentukan kompetensi dan karakter mencakup berbagai langkah yang perlu ditempuh oleh peserta didik dan guru untuk mewujudkan kompetensi dan karakter yang telah ditetapkan. Hal ini ditempuh melalui Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 186 berbagai cara, bergantung pada situasi, kondisi dan kebutuhan serta kekmampuan peserta didik. Prosedur yang ditempuh dalam pembentukan kompetensi dan karakter adalah sebagai berikut: 1) Berdasarkan kompetensi dasar dan materi standar yang telah dituangkan dalam rencana pelaksanaan pembelajaran (RPP), guru menjelaskan kompetensi minimal yang harus dicapai peserta didik, dan cara belajar individual. 2) Guru menjelaskan materi standar secara logis dan sistematis, pokok bahasan dikemukakan dengan jelas atau di tulis di papan tulis. Memberi kesempatan peserta didik untuk bertanya sampai materi standar tersebut benar-benar dapat dikuasai. 3) Membagikan materi standar atau sember belajar hand out dan fotokopi beberapa bahan yang akan dipelajari. Materi standar trsebut sebagian terdapat di perpustakaan. Jika materi standar yang diperlukan tidak tersedia di perpustakaan, maka guru memfotokopi dari sumber lain, seperti majalahn dan surat kabar. 4) Membagikan lembaran kegiatan untuk setiap peserta didik. Lembaran kegiatan berisi tugas tentang materi standar yang telah dijelaskan oleh guru dan dipelajari oleh peserta didik. 5) Guru memantau dan memeriksa kegiatan peserta didik dalam mengerjakan lembaran kegiatan, sekaligus memberikan bantuan, arahan bagi mereka yang memerlukan. 6) Setelah selesai diperiksa bersama-sama dengan cara menukar pekerjaan dengan teman lain, lalu guru menjelaskan setiap jawabannya. 7) Kekeliruan dan kesalahan jawaban diperbaiki oleh peserta didik, jika ada yang kurang jelas guru memberi kesempatan bertanya, tugas atau kegiatan mana yang perlu penjelasan lebih lanjut. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 187 c. Kegiatan Akhir atau Penutup Pada umumnya pelaksanaan pembelajaran diakhiri dengan post tes, sama halnya dengan pretes, post tes juga memiliki banyak kegunaan, terutama dalam melihat keberhasilan pembelajaran. Fungsi post tes anatara lain dapat dikemukakan sebagai berikut. 1) Untuk mengetahui tingkat penguasaan peserta didik terhadap kompetensi yang telah ditentuka, baik secara individu maupun kelompok. Hal ini dapat diketahui dengan membandingkan antara hasil pretest dan postest. 2) Untuk mengetahui kompetensi dan tujuan-tujuan yang dapat dikuasai oleh peserta didik, serta kompetensi dan tujuan-tujuan yang belum dikuasainya. Sehubungan dengan kompetensi dan tujuan yang belum dikuasai ini, apabila sebagian besar belum menguasainya maka perlu dilakukan pembelajaran kembali (remedial teaching). 3) Untuk mengetahui peserta didik-peserta didik yang perlu mengikuti kegiatan remedial, dan peserta didik yang perlu mengikuti kegiatan pengeyaan, serta untuk mengetahui tingkat kesulitan dalam mengerjakan modul (kesulitan belajar). 4) Sebagai bahan acuan untuk melakukan perbaikan terhadap komponen-komponen modul, dan proses pembelajaran yang telah dilaksanakan, baik terhadap perencanaan, pelaksanaan mauoun evaluasi. 5. Menetapkan Kriteria Keberhasilan Keberhasilan implementasi Kurikulum 2013 berbasis kompetensi dan karakter dapat dilihat dalam jangka pendek , menengah, dan panjang, dengan kriteria sebagai berikut. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 188 a. Kriteria Jangka Pendek 1) Sekurang-kurangnya 75% isi dan prinsip-prinsip pembelajaran dapat dipahami, diterima dan dterapkan oleh para peserta didik dan dari guru kelas. 2) Sekurang-kurangnya 75% peserta didik merasa mendapat kemudahan, senang dan memiliki kemauan belajar yang tinggi. 3) Para peserta didik berpartisipasi secara aktif dalam proses pembelajaran. 4) Mereka yang dikomunikasikan sesuai degan kebutuhan peserta didik, dan memandang bahwa hal tersebut akan sangat berguna bagi kehidupannya kelak. 5) Pembelajaran yang dikembangkan dapat menumbuhkan minat belajar para peserta didik untuk belajar lebih lanjut (continuing). b. Kriteria Jangka Menengah 1) Adanya umpan balik terhadap para guru tentang pembelajaran yang dilakukannya bersama peserta didik. 2) Para peserta didik menjadi insan yang kreatif dan mampu menghadapi berbagai permasalahan yang dihadapinya. 3) Para peserta didik tidak memberikan pengaruh negatif terhadap masyarakat lingkungannya dengan cara apapun. c. Kriteria Jangka Panjang a. Adanya peningkatan mutu pendidikan, yang dapat dicapai oleh sekolah melalui kemandirian dan inisiatif kepala sekolah dan guru dalam memgelola dan mendayagunakan sumber-sumber uang tersedia. b. Adanya peningkatan efisiensi dan efektivitas penglolaan dan pengunaan sumber-sumber pendidikan, melalui pembagian tanggung jawab yang jelas, transparan, dan demokratis. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 189 c. Adanya oeningkatan perhatian serta transparansi warga dan masyarakat sekitar sekolah dalam penyelenggaraan pendidikan dan pembelajaran yang dicapai mealui pengambilan keputusan bersama. d. Adanya peningkatan tanggung jawab sekolah, pemerintah, orang tua peserta didik, dan masyarakat pada umumnya berkaitan dengan mutu sekolah, baik dalam intra maupun ekstra kulikuler. e. Adanya kompetisi yang sehat antar sekolah delam peningkatan mutu pendidikan melalui upaya-upaya inovatif dengang dukungan orang tua peserta didik, masyarakat, dan pemerintah daerah setempat. f. Tubuhnya kemandirian dan berkurangnya ketergantungan dikalangan warga sekolah, bersifat adaftif dan proaktif serta memiliki jiwa kewirausahaan tinggi (ulet, inovatif, dan berani mengambil resiko). g. Terwujudnya proses pembelajaran yang efektif, yang lebih menekankan pada belajar mengetahui (learning to know), belajar berkarya (learning to do), belajar menjadi diri sendiri (learning to be), dan belajar hidupbersama secara harmonis (learning to live together). h. Terciptanya iklim sekolah yang aman, nyman dan tertib, sehingga proses pembelajaran dapat berlangsung dengan tenang dan menyenangkan (enjoyeble learning). i. Adanya proses evaluasi dan perbaikan secara berkelanjutan. Evaluasi belajar secara teratur bukan hanya ditujukan untuk mengetahui tingkat daya serap dan kemampuan peserta didik, tetapi untuk memanfaatkan hasil evaluasi belajar tersebut bagi perbaikan dan penyempurnaan proses pembelajaran disekolah. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 190 Akhirnya, perlu dikemukakan disini bahwa dalam rangka implementasi Kurikulum 2013, Pemerintah telah menyediakan buku acuan utama (babon), buku guru, buku siswa, dan juga silabus. Dengan demikian. Guru tinggal mengikuti apa-apa yang telah disiapkan dalam buku tersebut, serta melaksanakan pembentukan kompetensi dan karakter peserta didik. Buku babon dimaksudkan untuk memberikan materi standar dalam pembelajaran, sebagai langkah standarisasi dalam implementasi kurikulum. Dalam hal ini buka babon dirancang untuk memfasilitasi guru dan peserta didik dalam melakukan pembelajaran. Buku babon menyajikan materi standar minimal yang harus dikuasai oleh setiap peserta didik. Oleh karena itu, jika ada sekolah/satuan pendidikan yang mampu mencapai standar lebih tinggi dari standar minimal, maka Kementrian pendidikan dan Kebudayaan tidak melarangnya, bahwa mendorong setiap sekolah/satuan pendidikan untuk menjadi sekolah unggulan, dengan kulaitas pembelajaran di atas standar. *** Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 191 DAFTAR PUSTAKA Ahmad, dkk. 1998. Pengembangan Kurikulum. Bandung: Pustaka Setia. Aqib, Zaenal. 2013. Model-Model, Media dan Strategi Pembelajaran Kontekstual (Inovatif). Bandung:Rama Widya Arifin, Zainal. 2012. Konsep dan Model Pengembangan Kurikulum. Bandung: Remaja Rosdakarya. Arikunto, Suharsimi. 2002. Evaluasi Pendidikan. Jakarta: Bumi Aksara Hamalik, oemar. 2008. Manajemen Pengembangan Kurikulum. Bandung: RemajaRosda Karya. Hamalik, Oemar. 2011. Dasar-Dasar Pengembangan Kurikulum. Bandung: Rosda Karya. Hasan, Hamid. 2009. Evaluasi Kurikulum. Bandung: Remaja Rosdakarya Herry Hernawan, Asep dkk.2008. Pengembangan Kurikulum dan Pembelajaran. Jakarta: Universitas Terbuka Press. Hidayat, Soleh. 2013. Pengembangan Kurikulum Baru. Bandung: Remaja Rosdakarya. Keputusan Menteri Pendidikan Nasional nomor 044/U/2002 Tentang Keberadaan komite sekolah dengan diberlakukannya otonomi sekolah. Keputusan Menteri Pendidikan Nasional, UU No.20/2005 pasal 54 Tentang Peran Serta Masyarakat Dalam Pendidikan. Lampiran Permendikbud Nomer 68 Tahun 2013. Mulyasa, E. 2002. Kurikulum Berbasis Kompetensi. Bandung: Remaja Rosdakarya. Mulyasa, E. 2006. Kurikulum yang Disempurnakan. Bandung: Remaja Rosdakarya. Mulyasa, E. 2008. Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan. Bandung: Remaja Rosdakarya. Mulyasa,E.2004. Kurikulum Berbasis Kompetensi, Konsep, Karakteristik, dan Implementasi. Bandung: PT Remaja Rosdakarya. Mulyasa. 2013. Pengembangan dan Implementasi Kurtilas. Bandung:Rosda Karya. Nasution S, 1982. Berbagai Pendekatan Proses Belajar Mengajar. Jakarta :Bina Aksara Nasution, S. 1986. Didaktik Azas-Azas Mengajar, Bandung: Jemmars. Nasution, S. 1993. Pengembangan Kurikulum. Bandung: PT Citra Aditya Bakti. Peraturan Menteri Pendidikan dan Kebudayaan Republik Indonesia Nomor 69 Tahun 2013 Tentang Kerangka Dasar dan Struktur Kurikulum Sekolah Menengah Atas/Madrasah Aliyah. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 192 Peraturan Pemerintah Nomor 13 Tahun 2013 tentang Perubahan atas Peraturan Pemerintah nomor 19 Tahun 2005 tentang Standar Nasional Pendidikan Permendikbud Nomor 70 Tahun 2013 Tentang Kerangka Dasar dan Struktur Kurikulum. Romine dan Hamalik, Oemar. 2004. Pendidikan Guru Berdasarkan Pendekatan Kompetensi. Bandung: Bumi Aksara. Soemantri, Hermana. 2010. Perkembangan Kurikulum Sekolah Menengah Atas di Indonesia (Suatu Perspektif Historis dari Masa ke Masa). Jakarta: Kementrian Pendidikan Nasional Badan Penelitian dan Pengembangan Pusat Kurikulum. Soetopo, Hendrayat, dkk. 1982. Pembinaan dan Pengembangan Kurikulum Sebagai Substansi problem Administrasi Pendidikan. Jakarta : Bina Aksara Sudijono, Anas. 1996. Pengantar Evaluasi Pendidikan. Jakarta: Raja Grafindo Persada. Sudjana, Nana. 1996. Pembinaan dan Pengembangan Kurikulum Di Sekolah. Bandung : Sinar Baru Algensindo Suhada, Pandi. 1993. Pengembangan Kurikulum. Cirebon: IAIN Sukardi, M. 2008. Evaluasi Pendidikan Prinsip dan Operasionalnya.Jakarta: Bumi Aksara. Suryosubroto. 1997. Proses Belajar Mengajar di Sekolah. Jakarta : PT. Rineka Cipta Syaodih Sukmadinata, Nana. 1997. Pengembangan Kurikulum. Bandung: Remaja Rosdakarya. Tim pengembanngan MKDP kurikulum dan pembelajaran. 2011. Kurikulum dan Pembelajaran. Jakarta:Rajawali Pers Tirtaraharja, Umar. Lasula. 2000. Pengantar pendidikan. Reneka cipta: Jakarta Wahidin. 2010. Pengembangan Kurikulum IPS & Ekonomi di Sekolah/ Madrasah.UIN Maliki Press. Yulaelawati, Ella. 2003. Penilaian Kelas, Pelayanan Profesional Kurikulum Berbasis Kompetensi. Jakarta: PT Puskur Balitbang. Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 193 PROFIL PENULIS WIDODO WINARSO, M.PdI., lahir pada tanggal 13 April 1985 di Majalengka-Jawa Barat sebagai anak pertama dari dua bersodara. Penulis menempuh pendidikan formal, diantaranya; Tahun 1997 lulus SDN Angsanasari, tahun 2000 lulus SLTPN 1 Ligung, Tahun 2003 Lulus SMUN 1 Majalengka, Tahun 2007 lulus S1 program studi Pendidikan Matematika di STAIN Cirebon dan selanjutnya Tahun 2010 lulus S2 konsentrasi Psikologi pendidikan Islam di IAIN Syekh Nurjati Cirebon. Saat ini, penulis menjadi dosen tetap di IAIN Syekh Nurjati Cirebon dengan Homebase di jurusan/prodi Tadris Matematika. Mulai dari tahun 2011 – sekarang, mengampu Mata Kuliah Belajar Dan Pembelajaran Matematika, selain itu, mata kuliah yang diampu yakni Analisis Dan Pengembangan Kurikulum. Namun sebelumnya penulis pernah mengajar dibeberapa sekolah dan perguruan tinggi swasta. Diantaranya; tahun 2007-2010 mangajar di SMPN 4 Ligung, tahun 2008-2010 mangajar di SMK Kesehatan Jatiwangi Yayasan Bakti Kencana Bandung, dan tahun 2009-2010 mengajar di STKIP YASIKA Majalengka. Penulis aktif mengikuti forum ilmiah baik sebagai pemateri maupun peserta seminar dan Workshop tingkat nasional maupun internasional terkait dengan pendidikan matematika dan psikologi pendidikan. Diantaranya; pada Tahun 2010 Pelatihan KTSP, MGMP Program BERMUTU. Tahun 2011 Seminar Nasional "Pendidikan dan Perubahan Prilaku", dan Sort Curse "Kajian Keislaman". Tahun 2012 Workshop "Tips For Teachings Writing", Workshop "Pembelajaran Berbasis Application of Multiple Intelligence and Dasar Pengambangan Kurikulum Sekolah 194 Brain – Based Multiple Intelligence", Workshop "Desain Pembelajaran Pengembangan Kompetensi Paedagogik bagi dosen-dosen IAIN Syekh Nurjati Cirebon", dan Training Of Trainer (TOT) Desain Pembelajaran Bagi Dosen. Tahun 2013 Workshop "Integrated Multiple Inrelligences dengan kurikulum 2013", Seminar Nasional "Pengembangan integrasi Keilmuan", Pelatihan Pembuatan dan Pengunaan Alat Peraga Pembelajaran Matematika, International Seminar On Integrity, interconnectedness, and Collaboration for Islam Studies Development (ISD). Tahun 2014 Seminar "Integrasi Keilmuan", Trainer "Workshop Penguatan Akademik dan kepribadiaan (Smart Laerning)". Karya ilmiah yang ditulis juga diterbitkan dalam berbagai jurnal yaitu, Jurnal EDUMA Jurusan Tadris matematika, Jurnal At-Tarbiyah Fakultas Tarbiyah, Jurnal EQUALITA, Jurnal AL-Ibtida PGMI, Holistik Journal For Islamic Social Science IAIN Syekh Nurjati Cirebon, dan Jurnal Pendidikan Matematika (JPM) IAIN Banjarmasin.[] | {
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Reality as Information? Michele Caponigro ISHTAR, Bergamo University Abstract Can information be taken as fundamental level of quantum reality? We argue about two different positions: Rovelli and Zeilinger. author e-mail: [email protected] 2 Reality as Information? 1 Reality as Information? Probability has played an important role in the foundations of QM from the beginning and continues to play an important role today. The choice of an interpretation of probability affect the interpretation of QM. Recent developments in Quantum information theory has led to new way to look at the foundations of QM, including a greater emphasis on possible role of subjective probability in QM. Several works claims that the QM can be view as information theory. According these works ,the description of physical systems in terms of information and information processing, is the only way to describe physical system. For instance, according Bub's words (Bub, 2008): I argue that QM is fundamentally a theory about the representation and manipulation of information, not a theory about the mechanics of nonclassical waves or particles. The notion of quantum information is to be understood as a new physical primitive. The author give at the information an ontic statute, in this context it is possible, for instance, deduce the physical laws and the matter from the information. We note others extreme positions on this topic, for instance, Zeilinger (Zeilinger,2005), where he claims that: "The discovery that individual events are irreducibly random is probably one of the most significant findings of the twentieth century, even for single particles, it is not always possible to assign definite measurement outcomes independently of and prior to the selection of specific measurement apparatus in the specific experiment . For this reason, the distinction between reality and our knowledge of reality, between reality and information, cannot be made.1 The same position is the following statements of von Baeyer (von Baeyer, 2005) : Information as physical reality: in 1905 Einstein proposed that the world is not what it seems. He suggested that is not continuous but atomistic, not absolute but relative, not classical but quantized. In the ensuing century his euristic hypothesis were confirmed as facts. They define what might be called the " atomic world view" Today we stand on the threshold of a new era: the information age. Far from replacing the atomic view of the world, the concept of information can be enlisted to build upon our current understanding of nature, and fill in remaining gaps. We think that the possible relationship between reality and information is 1According Zeilinger this simple principle play a role in QM similar to that of the Principle of Relativity in Special Relativity, or to the Principle of Equivalence in General Relativity. In particular, he suggests this principle provides an explanation for the irreducible randomness in quantum measurement and for the phenomenon of entanglement. A form of phenomenalism to physical object (they objects are taken not to exist in and of themselves, but to be mere constructs relating sense impressions) and a form of instrumentalism about the quantum state. 3 Reality as information? Figure 1: QM as Quantum Information? very delicate problem and it seem quite approximate to say that information is the reality. This conclusion simply contradicts the everyday belief that physics is concerned with the physical structure of objects and that is the laws which govern the physical structure. 2 Reality as particles? According Blood (Blood, 2008), it is remarkable that the particle-like properties which have led physicists to postulate the existence of particles mass, energy, momentum , spin, charge, the photoelectric and Compton effects, localized perception, particle-like trajectories (in bubble chambers, and atomic discreteness can all be explained by QM alone (wave function/state vector alone). This means there is no need to postulate the existence of particles (because QM can account for all the evidence ). The net result is that there is no evidence for particles. Wave-particle duality arises because the state vector alone has both classical wave-like and classical particle-like properties. If only the state vector exists, then some of results of the Bell-Aspect and Wheeler delayed-choice experiments are easily and naturally understood. According Blood, the relative ease of interpretation of the Bell-Aspect and Wheeler delayed-choice experiments, and the severe difficulties encountered in constructing viable theories of particles underlying QM, strongly suggest that the physical world 4 Reality as Information? consists solely of wave functions/state vectors. Seeing that the wave-particle conundrum can be resolved within QM is a step towards demystifying the theory. But we still do not know why our perceptions correspond to the characteristics of a particular quantum version of reality, and we still do not know the origin of the probability law. For these reason, Blood do not interpret subatomic reality in terms of particles. To conclude this section we cite Wilczek (nobel prize 2004) about the notion of particle: Particle physics is not really about particles anymore, but about the mathematica relationship, in particular, symmetries, aspects of nature that remain invariant under different circumstances; the world of elementary particles is an intercative world whose constituents derive their identities and properties from one another in endless negotiations. 3 Relational Realism:Rovelli's Interpretation Rovelli (Rovelli, 1996) departs radically from such strict Einstein realism, the physical reality is taken to be formed by the individual quantum events through which interacting systems (objects) affect one another. Quantum events exist only in interactions and the reality of each quantum event is only relative to the system involved in the interaction. In Relational QM, the preferred observer is abandoned. Indeed, it is a fundamental assumption of this approach that nothing distinguishes, a priori, systems and observers: any physical system provides a potential observer, and physics concerns what can be said about nature on the basis of the information that any physical system can, in principle, have. Different observers can of course exchange information, but we must not forget that such information exchange is itself a quantum mechanical interaction. An exchange of information is therefore a quantum measurement performed by one observing system A upon another observing system B. The physical theory is concerned with relations between physical systems. In particular, it is concerned with the description that observers give about observed systems. Following this hypothesis, all systems are equivalent. Nothing a priori distinguishes observer systems from quantum systems. If the observer O can give a description of the system S, then it is also legitimate for an observer O' to give a quantum description of the system formed by the observer O. It is rejected any fundamental or metaphysical distinctions as: system/observer, QS/classical system, physical system/consciousness. Rovelli (Rovelli, 1996) assume the existence of an ensemble of systems, each of which can be equivalently considered as an observing system or as an observed system. A system (observing 5 Reality as Information? system) may have information about another system (observed system). Information is exchanged via physical interactions. Rovelli's position, lead us to consider the following epistemological implications: rejection of the individual object rejection of individual intrinsic property For these reasons, the consequences are: (a) it is not possible to give a definition of the individual object in a spatio-temporal location; (b) it is not possible to characterize the properties of the objects, in order to distinguish from the other ones. In other words, if we adopt the interaction like basic level of the physical reality, we accept the philosophy of the relations. References: (Bub, 2008 ) Quantum Mechanics is About Quantum Information." Foundationsof Physics 35, no. 4: 541-560 (Blood, 2008) No Evidence for Particles 2008, arXiv:0807.3930v1 [quant-ph] (Caponigro, 2008) Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics: A Critical Survey, arXiv:0811.3877v1 (von Baeyer, 2005) Information as physical reality: A new fundamental principleproposed by Zeilinger, 2005 (Rovelli, 1996 ) Relational Quantum Mechanics in in arXiv:quant-ph/9609002v2 (Zeilinger , 2005) Concept The message of the quantum in Nature 438, 743 (8 December 2005) | {
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Citation: 90 Tul. L. Rev. 75 2015 Provided by: Biddle Law Library Content downloaded/printed from HeinOnline (http://heinonline.org) Wed Feb 10 12:18:31 2016 -Your use of this HeinOnline PDF indicates your acceptance of HeinOnline's Terms and Conditions of the license agreement available at http://heinonline.org/HOL/License -The search text of this PDF is generated from uncorrected OCR text. -To obtain permission to use this article beyond the scope of your HeinOnline license, please use: https://www.copyright.com/ccc/basicSearch.do? &operation=go&searchType=0 &lastSearch=simple&all=on&titleOrStdNo=0041-3992 The Puzzle of the Beneficiary's Bargain Nicolas Cornell* Tis Article describes a junsnrudential puzzle-what I call the puzzle of the beneficiaryk bargain-and contends that adequately resolving this puzzle wVl require significant revisions to some of the ways that we think about contract law The puzzle arises when one party enters into two contracts requiring the same performance and the pomisee of the second contract is the third-party beneficiary ofthef st. For example, a taxi driver contracts with a woman to transport her parents from the airport and then separately enters into a contract with the parents to transport them. Is the second contract valid and enforceable, or does it fal for lack of consideration? This specific question-on which courts have split-impcates several important contract law doctrines. Moreover it highlIghts a deep tension in our modem understanding ofcontractual obhgation. ThisArticle argues that adequately resolving the puzzle necessitates a general reconsideration of the elationship between nghts and iability in contract law Surprisigly the best solution requires abandonig the foundational understandng that contract liability arises out of breach of a promiseek ight to performance. his relatively specific puzzle thus offers a lens dmugh which to examine general concepts ofmodem contract law I. INTRODUCTION.. ..................................... 77 A. Two Overlapphg Contracts ............ ... ...... 80 B. Enforchg the Second Contract.Johnson v. SEACOR Marine Corp. ................ ....... 82 C Rejecting the Second Contract: Youngstown Welding ...................................... 84 D The Dilemma.................8....... 86 II. THE TROUBLE WITH NOT ENFORCING ................... 87 A. Is There Consideradon in a Subsequent Promise? ......... 88 1. The Old Puzzle of Successive Contracts ................ 88 2. The Modem Consensus ............ ....... 93 B. Is a Subsequent Pronmie to a Third-Party Beneficiary Different? .......................... 99 III. THE TROUBLE WITH ENFORCING ........................ 102 A. FourMutually Inconsistent Propositions.......................... 102 * D 2015 Nicolas Cornell. Assistant Professor, Legal Studies and Business Ethics Department, The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. I am grateful for comments, suggestions, and encouragement from Emily Dupraz, Charles Fried, Sarah Light, Eric Orts, Nick Sage, T.M. Scanlon, Richard Shell, Seana Shiffrin, Kevin Werbach, William Woodward, members of the Wharton Legal Studies and Business Ethics Junior Faculty Workshop, and audience members at the 9th International Conference on Contracts. I received research assistance for this Article from Matt Caulfield and Matt Goodman. 75 TULANE LAWREVIEW 1. Ys Promise to XTo q Will Constitute Consideration Even If XIs a Third-Party Beneficiary of a Promise in a Legally Valid Contract that YHas Made to ZTo ......................... 103 2. XHas A Claim-Right that YDoes q If and Only If YOwes Xa Duty To .................... 103 3. An Intended Third-Party Beneficiary of Ys Promise To 0 in a Legally Valid Contract Has a Claim-Right that YDoes .......... ........... 105 4. If YOwes Xa Duty To q, then Ys Promise to XTo 0 Will Not Constitute Consideration...............108 B. Cataloging the (Unappealig) Ways Out .......... 109 1. Reject Subsequent Promises to Third-Party Beneficiaries (i.e., Deny Proposition 1) ................... 109 2. Deny Hohfeld's Framework (i.e., Deny Proposition 2)........... ................... 110 3. Abandon Suits by Third-Party Beneficiaries (i.e., Deny Proposition 3)............ ................... 111 4. Reinterpret the Third-Party Beneficiary Rule (i.e., Revise Proposition 3) ........... ...... 112 5. Abandon the Preexisting Duty Rule Altogether (i.e., Deny Proposition 4).......... ....... 113 6. Reinterpret the Second Promise as a Promise Not To Rescind the First Promise Rather Than a Promise To 0........................114 IV A RESOLUTION: ABANDONING THE RIGHT TO PERFORMANCE ...................................... 116 A. Reconceptualinh~g the Right of Third-Party Beneficiais ......................... ..... 117 B. Is There a Right to Performance in Contract Law?.......... 120 C Some Practical and Theoretical Implcations................... 123 1. Consequential Damages ................... 123 2. Mitigation ..................... ...... 125 3. The Parallels of Contract and Promise ..................... 126 4. The Connection Between Rights and Wrongs.........127 V CONCLUSION .................................. ..... 128 76 [Vol. 90:75 2015] PUZZLE OF THE BENEFICIARY'S BARGAIN I. INTRODUCTION Here is a puzzle for modem contract law: What happens when a party makes successive contracts for the same performance if the second contract is with the intended beneficiary of the first?' Consider the following examples: * A taxi driver contracts with a woman who hires him for a fee to transport her parents from the airport. The driver then separately enters into another contract with the parents, who also agree to pay him a fee in exchange for a promise to transport them. * A cargo owner hires a shipping company to transport goods, and the contract includes a Himalaya clause, extending liability limits to agents or subcontractors used in fulfilling the contract. The cargo owner then separately enters into a contract with the railroad company used by the shipping company, requiring that it waive certain rights in exchange for the liability limits.2 * A bank agrees, in exchange for an interest in certain real property, to pay the debt that a struggling company owes to a creditor. The bank then separately enters into a contract with the creditor, whereby the bank agrees to pay off the company's debt in exchange for the creditor's accepting a lower amount in satisfaction. In each of these cases, one party makes two contracts requiring the same performance, and the second contract involves the intended third-party beneficiary of the first contract. Given how typical it is for real commercial actors to engage in iterated agreements with the same players, it is unsurprising that such pairs of overlapping contracts do, in fact, arise in the course of business. Is the second contract enforceable in these cases? The third party is already, in legal terms, an intended beneficiary of the original contract. What are we to make of a second promise given to the 1. More precisely, the puzzle arises in the following situation: Y enters into a contract with Zrequiring action 4, and Xis an intended third-party beneficiary; then Yenters into a contract directly with Xto do action 0. 2. This example is loosely inspired by Norfolk Southern Railway Co. v James N Kirby Pty Ltd., 543 U.S. 14, 30-32 (2004) (holding that Himalaya clauses do not require privity and may be read expansively where that is the intent of the parties). 3. For an example of a party who has promised to pay off a debt by negotiating for a different payoff amount with a creditor-beneficiary, see Wartell v Novograo 137 A. 776, 777 (R.I. 1927). 77 TULANE LAW REVIEW beneficiary directly? I will call this the puzzle of the beneficiaryk bargain (or often just the puzzle).' Largely unnoticed, courts have come to divergent, problematic answers. There is, right now, no settled or satisfying conceptual response. This may sound like a technical, doctrinal question of limited import. But that appearance is deceptive. The puzzle created by this unique set of facts implicates our understanding of consideration doctrine, third-party beneficiary rules, and even the nature of contractual obligation itself. Resolving this puzzle, I believe, requires a new perspective on the most basic concepts of contract law. This is not the first time that successive contracts for the same performance have been seen as a lens for thinking about contract law. At the turn of the twentieth century, many of the great minds of modem contract law-including Langdell, Anson, Williston, Ames, Ashley, and Corbin-hotly debated what should happen when a promisor in one contract makes another, subsequent promise for the same performance.' That debate, unlike the puzzle presented here, did not involve third-party beneficiaries. Still, the mere existence of successive promises for the same performance raised an important question about how the law should understand contractual obligation. Today, that old puzzle of successive promises has been largely forgotten. Conceptual progress generated some consensus that a duty owed to someone new is a new duty. This conceptual progress, however, has opened the door to a new puzzle that is, one might say, a descendent of the old one. It too involves a second, subsequent promise.' What the new puzzle adds is that the second contract is made with the intended beneficiary of the first. Is the second contract redundant or meaningful? As will be seen, courts have split on this issue.! Different core principles of contract 4. The name refers to the fact that the real question is whether the intended thirdparty beneficiary-the parents, the railroad company, and the creditor, respectively, in the examples above-has successfully bargained for anything at all or whether consideration is lacking in the second contract. 5. See discussion mzfia Part II.A. 1. 6. The puzzle of the beneficiary's bargain is a descendent of the old puzzle in three respects. First, as it too involves a subsequent contract, the set of circumstances that gives rise to the puzzle of the beneficiary's bargain are a subset of those giving rise to the old puzzle. Second, the connection between contractual duties and the doctrine of consideration is at issue in both puzzles. Finally, it is due to the advances in our understanding of contractual obligation-because we now know how to resolve the old puzzle-that the new subset of cases presents a difficulty. Our understanding that duties with someone new are new duties creates the tension with consideration doctrine that I will highlight. In short, modem ideas have yielded answers and progress, but also a new pressure point. 7. See discussion hfra Part I.B-C. 78 [Vol. 90:75 2015] PUZZLE OF THE BENEFICIARY'S BARGAIN law press in opposite directions, such that either response appears deeply problematic. On the one hand, it looks like the second promise creates a new relational duty. On the other hand, it looks like the recipient, who could already demand performance, gains nothing from the agreement. This is the puzzle of the beneficiary's bargain. Laying it out, exploring both sides of the dilemma, and mapping out the available responses is the first aim of this Article. The second, broader goal of this Article is to examine what the puzzle means for contract law. The fact pattern at issue is especially worth attending to because it implicates our understanding of what it means to owe a duty in contract law. That is, it strikes at the very core of how we think about contracts. Every first-year law student learns that contracts create legal duties to perform, which correspond with the liability arising from a lack of performance. Scholars, practitioners, and judges all conceive of contract liability in this way-as arising from a breach of the legal duty to perform. Serious analysis of the puzzle of the beneficiary's bargain, however, makes this assumption appear problematic, at least with regard to third parties. And, if contractual obligation is not what we thought in that specific case, there is reason to doubt whether it is what we thought in other cases too. In this way, the puzzle challenges the very idea that contractual liability necessarily reflects legal duties. This Article concludes that the best solution to the puzzle requires abandoning the belief that contract liability arises out of a breach of a promisee's right to performance-radical though that suggestion may sound at the outset. The Article proceeds in four parts. The remainder of Part I describes the puzzle of the beneficiary's bargain and considers two cases that resolve the issue in opposing ways. Part II describes the conceptual difficulty in resolving the puzzle by refusing to enforce the second contract. Part III describes the problems with resolving the cases in favor of enforcement. Part IV offers a way forward by reconceiving what contract law provides third-party beneficiaries. As I will suggest, though, accepting this way forward threatens some basic assumptions about the connection between legal wrongs and legal duties in contracts. Perhaps surprisingly, given the initially discrete appearance of the puzzle, I conclude that we should broadly endorse this revised conception of contract law. 79 TULANE LA W RE VIEW A. Two Overlapping Contracts The puzzle that I wish to discuss involves two contracts. First, one party makes a contract in which a third party is an intended beneficiary. Second, the same party attempts to make another contract with the third-party beneficiary directly, demanding the same performance that the first contract demanded. I will put the idea more formally: Y promises Z to do action 0, and X is an intended thirdparty beneficiary; then Ypromises Xto do action 0. See Figure 1. Figure 1 Y Z X Consider a simplified example. A taxi driver makes a contract with a woman, promising to transport her parents from the airport in exchange for the woman's paying a fee. The taxi driver then makes a contract directly with the parents, promising exactly the same service in exchange for their paying a fee. Thus there are two contracts, but the same action will satisfy the driver's obligations under each of them and, moreover, the second promisee was the intended beneficiary of the first promise. In the real world, the same structure can arise in more complex commercial relationships. Consider another example. A securities broker hires a clearinghouse to purchase stock in the name of a client and deliver that stock to the client. The clearinghouse purchases the stock but requires that, prior to delivery, the client pay a delivery fee not mentioned in the original contract between the clearinghouse and the broker, and the client accepts.! Thus there are two contracts; the 8. This example is loosely inspired by Fclanger v Harold C Brown & Co., 947 F.2d 595 (2d Cir. 1991). [ Vol. 90:7580 2015] PUZZLE OF THE BENEFICIAR Y'S BARGAIN delivery will count as performance under each of them, and, moreover, the client was already the intended beneficiary of the first contract. Put another way, the puzzle arises where the intended beneficiary of one contract bargains for what he or she expected to receive from the original contract that he or she was not party to.' The parents in the taxi example bargained for precisely what they were supposed to receive already under the original contract with the daughter; the client in the clearinghouse example paid for what he should have received all along. This way of putting things draws out the role that consideration plays in the puzzle. This set of facts raises the legal question of whether the second promise, made to the third-party beneficiary of the first promise, constitutes consideration." That is, does a promise to someone who is already an intended beneficiary of an identical promise count as consideration? Has the beneficiary actually bargained for anything at all? Either answer to this question creates significant doctrinal problems. I argue that the tension revealed by this unique fact pattern reveals a much deeper tension in how we think about contractual obligation. But, before proceeding to the doctrinal implications, it is first necessary to appreciate the scenario and the two opposing answers that courts have given. Thus far, I have described the relevant situation in generalized terms and simplified examples. American Jurisprudence provides another simplified example: "Where Brown is under contract with Smith to perform an act for Jones, Brown's subsequent contract with Jones to perform the very same act has been upheld as based upon sufficient consideration, notwithstanding that Brown is already 9. For an interesting literary example, consider the story of Hannah, as told by Philo. PHILO, THE BIBLICAL ANTIQUITIES OF PHILO 214-16 (M.R. James trans., 1917). God promises the people that Hannah, who is barren, will have a son that will lead them. Id. at 214. Unaware of this promise, Hannah goes to the shrine and promises that, if God grants her a child, she will return the child to God. Id. at 215-16. Is this promise, offered in exchange for something already promised, binding? As one commentator notes, "[W]ithout Hannah's knowledge, Samuel was already promised to the people; hence Hannah's request is really superfluous." JOAN E. COOK, HANNAH'S DESIRE, GOD'S DESIGN: EARLY INTERPRETATIONS OF THE STORY OF HANNAH 72 (1999). 10. The chronological order of the contracts is important. In Constable v Nadonal Steamship Co., 154 U.S. 51, 72-74 (1894), the United States Supreme Court might be read as holding that a party cannot be excused from a prior contract by virtue of becoming the intended beneficiary of a subsequent contract. I read that case as more plausibly holding that the party in question was not actually the intended beneficiary of the second agreement. But, in either event, this Article will only consider cases in which the contract with the third-party beneficiary comes second. 8 1 TULANE LAW RE VIEW contractually obligated to perform the same act."" This commentary maintains that courts uphold the second contract. In fact, however, courts go both ways on this issue, as the following two cases illustrate. B. Enforcing the Second Contact: Johnson v. SEACOR Marine Corp. Some courts do, as the commentary suggests, uphold the second contract as based on sufficient consideration. Johnson v SEACOR Marine Corp.2 offers an excellent example. Two oil companies, Chevron and Matrix, used Production Management Industries, L.L.C. (PMI), as a contractor to provide labor in the Gulf of Mexico. The oil companies then contracted with SEACOR to provide transportation for the PMI laborers to the offshore rigs where they would work." SEACOR, however, informed PMI that it would not transport any PMI employees until PMI signed a "Vessel Boarding and Utlization [sic] Agreement Hold Harmless," naming SEACOR as an additional insured, with special terms, under its comprehensive general liability policy.4 PMI eventually agreed to this." Some PMI employees were injured while being transported." SEACOR claimed that PMI had waived liability, and a dispute arose as to whether the agreement between PMI and SEACOR rested on valid consideration. To summarize, the structure of the case is as follows: the oil companies contracted with SEACOR to transport PMI employees, SEACOR refused to transport the PMI employees until they agreed to additional terms, and the PMI employees agreed to these terms. The question is whether there was consideration for this second agreement. See Figure 2. 11. 17A Am. JUR. 2D Contacts § 141 (2004). Although it says that the initial contract was "for Jones," this example does not explicitly state that Jones was an intended beneficiary, but I think that can be implied. 12. 404 F.3d 871 (5th Cir. 2005). 13. Id. at 873. 14. Id. at 873-74. 15. Id. at 874. 16. Id [Vol. 90:7582 2015] PUZZLE OF THE BENEFICIARY'S BARGAIN Figure 2 SEACOR OI Companies PMI The United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, applying federal maritime law," concluded that SEACOR's second promise could serve as consideration "even if SEACOR owed a duty to Chevron and Matrix to transport PMI employees under SEACOR's agreements with those oil companies."" In support of this conclusion, the court cited various sources for the idea that third parties gain additional rights when a new contract is formed. Quoting various authorities, the court explained, "The performance is bargained for, it is beneficial to the promisor, [and] the promisee has forborne to seek a rescission or discharge from the third person to whom the duty was owed ... ."' Although not explicitly addressed by the court,20 there is good reason to believe that the PMI employees were intended beneficiaries of the original contracts with the oil companies." In sum, despite the fact that SEACOR was contractually obligated to the oil companies to transport PMI's employees, its promise to do the same could count as consideration for PMI's agreement to waive liability. 17. Id. at 877 (holding that the vessel boarding agreement was a maritime contract not governed by Louisiana law). For a slightly more thorough explanation of the choice of law issue, see Hoffpauir v SeacorMarine Corp., No. 01-0536, 2003 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 27733, at *13-14 (W.D. La. June 3,2003), vacatedsubnom. SEACOR Marine, 404 F.3d 871. 18. SEACOR Marine, 404 F.3d at 877. 19. Id at 876 (quoting Morrison Flying Serv. v. Deming Nat'l Bank, 404 E2d 856, 861 (10th Cir. 1968)). 20. The court did state, in passing, "If SEACOR chose to prevent PMI employees from boarding its vessels, only the oil companies had a remedy against SEACOR." Id. at 877. It is not clear that this is correct. 21. See, e g., Conver v. EKH Co., No. 02AP-1307, 2003 WL 22176815, at *9 (Ohio Ct. App. Sept. 23, 2003) (holding that a contract to transport people in a limousine made the people transported intended beneficiaries). 83 TULANE LA WREVIEW C Rejecting the Second Contmct: Youngstown Welding Contrast that result with United States ex rel Youngstown Welding & Engineenng Co. v Travelers Indemnity Co." In that case, A.S.C. Constructors, Incorporated (ASC), asked Propipe Corporation (Propipe) to furnish aluminum bronze pipe, and Propipe asked Youngstown Welding and Engineering Company (Youngstown) to manufacture the pipe. Youngstown requested that Propipe obtain progress payments from ASC by joint check.24 With these and other details worked out, the contracts between ASC and Propipe and between Propipe and Youngstown were executed in June 1980.25 ASC made at least five payments jointly to Propipe and Youngstown. Four of the checks contained endorsement language on the reverse side stating that endorsement by Youngstown acknowledged receipt of payment and released any lien, stop notice, or bond that Youngstown might possess." To summarize, ASC made a contract with Propipe, one term of which required payment by joint check to Youngstown. In order to accept such payment, ASC made Youngstown agree to additional terms, which it did. Figure 3 ASC Propipe Youngstown Propipe eventually went bankrupt, and Youngstown brought suit against ASC and its surety, seeking payment for materials provided for 22. 802 F.2d 1164 (9th Cir. 1986), supersededbystatute on othergrounds, Act of July 13, 1992, 1992 Ariz. Legis. Serv. ch. 353 (West) (codified at ARIz. REv. STAT. § 33-1008 (2014)). 23. Id. at 1165. 24. Id. 25. Id 26. Id. at 1165-66. [Vol. 90:7584 2015] PUZZLE OF THE BENEFICIARY'S BARGAIN 85 the project.27 The court needed to decide whether Youngstown's acceptance of the endorsement language barred recovery. Youngstown argued that its agreement was without consideration because ASC was already obligated, pursuant to its contract with Propipe, to pay Youngstown via joint check. That is, Youngstown contended that ASC was merely performing its preexisting duty because ASC gave nothing up in exchange for Youngstown's acceptance of the waiver. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, applying Arizona law, concluded that there was a lack of consideration.28 The court recognized that a promise to a third party for the same performance may constitute consideration insofar as the preexisting duty is not already owed to that party.29 But the court determined that this was not the circumstance in this case. As the court put it, "The ASC-Propipe purchase order, . . . by making Youngstown an intended beneficiary of the joint check agreement, created just such a direct duty in the case before us.""o Because Youngstown was considered an intended beneficiary of the original agreement between ASC and Propipe, ASC already owed Youngstown the duty to pay, and thus Youngstown's acceptance of the endorsement language was without consideration." Youngstown's waivers were 27. Id. at 1166. 28. Id at 1167. 29. Id (discussing Morrison Flying Serv. v. Deming Nat'1 Bank, 404 F.2d 856 (10th Cir. 1968)). The Monison opinion illustrates the complexity that can arise in cases like this. Cisco Aircraft had a federal contract for aerial spraying of timberland in Montana, but the company was in bad financial straits. As a result, it entered into an agreement with the defendant, Deming National Bank (Bank), to assign the proceeds of the contract to the Bank, with the Bank agreeing to finance the project. The plaintiff, Morrison Flying Service (Morrison), entered into an oral agreement with Cisco to provide fuel and aircraft for the spraying. Then, Morrison subsequently entered into an agreement with the Bank, whereby the Bank agreed to pay Morrison for its performance under the contract. The court addressed the question of whether this contract was without consideration because Morrison was already obligated to perform based on its contract with Cisco. Following the modem rule discussed in Part II.A.2, the court concluded that there was consideration. But one might equally wonder whether there was consideration for Morrison's promise to the Bank. The agreement between Cisco and the Bank involved the Bank's ensuring payment to subcontractors under the spraying contract. It involved the Bank's agreeing to "act as paying agent[]" for Cisco, 404 F.2d at 859 n.3, and an agreement that funds distributed to Cisco would be held in trust to pay expenses under the spraying contract, Morrison Flying Serv. v. Deming Nat'l Bank, 340 F.2d 430, 431 n.2 (10th Cir. 1965). Arguably, Morrison was already an intended third-party beneficiary of the Bank's contract with Cisco. Cf RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF CONTRACTS § 302 cmt. b, illus. 3 (AM. LAW INST. 1981) (discussing intended and incidental beneficiaries). 30. Youngstown Weldmng, 802 F.2d at 1167-68. 31. For another decision reaching a similar conclusion, see Chrysler Corp. V Airtemp Corp., 426 A.2d 845, 853 (Del. Super. Ct. 1980) ("Chrysler was under a pre-existing duty to perform the services for the third-party beneficiary and Airtemp had a right to enforce that TULANE LAWREVIEW unenforceable because they were offered in exchange for something ASC already owed to Youngstown. Under the preexisting duty rule, there was no consideration for the waivers. D The Dilemma Both SEACOR Marine and Youngstown Welding exemplify the puzzle of the beneficiary's bargain. In each case, one party made a legally binding promise to do something for a third party who was to benefit under that promise. In each case, the party who made the promise then attempts to offer the same promise as consideration for an agreement with the third party of the original agreement. The parallels in how this fact pattern plays itself out in the two cases are striking. In both cases, the original contract involved a promise to provide some service to a third party-transport in SEACOR Maine, joint check payment in Youngstown Welding. And, in both cases, the party providing that service then required the third party to waive certain liabilities as a condition of receiving the service that they were already contracted to provide. In each case, the beneficiary is asked to give up certain rights in order to receive their benefit. Despite these parallels, the courts reached exactly opposite conclusions. In SEACOR Marine, the court concluded that the subsequent promise to the third party created a new obligation, different in character from the original. In Youngstown Welding, the court concluded that the subsequent promise offered no new obligation. This split invites the question: Which view is correct? Does a subsequent promise to an intended third-party beneficiary create a new contractual obligation, or is it merely redundant and thus inadequate consideration? Answering this question, I believe, poses a dilemma. On the one hand, we can follow Youngstown Welding and reject the second contract. On the other hand, we can follow SEACOR Marine and enforce the second contract. As I will describe below, neither horn of this dilemma is without trouble. Choosing between them, however, duty.... [T]he new promise must be from one who previously had no right to performance by the other party. Conversely, the concept does not apply if the new promisor had a right to performance without the intervention of the new promise. Here, the alleged new promise was made by Airtemp to Chrysler when Airtemp had a right as third-party beneficiary and assignee to receive performance from Chrysler."). 86 [Vol. 90:75 2015] PUZZLE OF THE BENEFICIAR Y'S BARGAIN will implicate how we think about consideration, third-party beneficiaries, and the very nature of contractual duties. II. THE TROUBLE WITH NOT ENFORCING I begin by considering the option of not enforcing the second contract. The court in Youngstown Welding opted for this, and the reasoning behind that decision can seem doctrinally compelling. It appears to be the inevitable combination of third-party beneficiary rules, which grant enforcement rights to third-party beneficiaries,32 and the preexisting duty rule, which prevents promises to do what one already must do.33 Insofar as an intended third-party beneficiary obtains a right to performance, then, when the second contract is offered, the beneficiary already had a right to performance; promising that performance can hardly constitute newly bargained-for consideration. The second promise seems redundant.34 But this answer is not, unfortunately, as simple and as appealing as it seems. In fact, I will argue that it is subject to a major problem. To understand the problem, it is necessary to delve into some old questions about the nature of consideration. For many years, a dispute existed about whether a subsequent promise made to a third party (who is not an intended beneficiary of the original promise) constitutes consideration." In the past century, this dispute has been resolved squarely in favor of the view that it does -and, I will argue, for good reason. The subsequent promise does create new obligations and is not simply redundant. But, I will also argue that the same reasons that favor this resolution count squarely in favor of finding consideration in the promise to an intended beneficiary. In short, we have good reason to treat promises to third parties as consideration, and intended beneficiaries are third parties like the rest. Put another way, we can break down the puzzle into two questions. First, is there consideration in a subsequent promise to a third party? Second, are intended beneficiaries relevantly different from other third parties? When 32. For more extensive discussion of this doctrine, see discussion nfra Part III.A.3. 33. For more extensive discussion of this doctrine, see discussion Afda Part III.A.4. 34. For some recent philosophical discussions of redundant promises, see James Penner, Promises, Agreements, and Contacts, in PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS OF CONTRACT LAW 116, 125-20 (Gregory Klass et al. eds., 2014), and Seana Valentine Shiffrin, Immoral, Conflicting, and Redundant Promises, in REASONS AND RECOGNTON: ESSAYS ON THE PHILOSOPHY OF T.M. SCANLON 155 (R. Jay Wallace et al. eds., 2011). 35. See discussion iAfra Part II.A.1. 36. See discussion infra Part II.A.2. 87 TULANE LA WREVIEW considered in this way, the problem with applying the preexisting duty rule comes into focus. A. Is There Considemron in a SubsequentPromise? Consider, first, the reasons to believe that subsequent promises made to a generic third party are not necessarily lacking in consideration. In a moment, I turn to the question of whether these reasons apply similarly when the promise is made not to any third party, but specifically to a third-party beneficiary. 1. The Old Puzzle of Successive Contracts It has not always been accepted that a second contract for the same performance made to a different party is supported by consideration. In fact, during the nineteenth century, the courts facing this question tended to conclude that there was no consideration." The party was already under a contractual duty to perform the act in question, and thus performance of this act could not be considered a legal detriment for the purposes of consideration." At the turn of the twentieth century, this rule became the subject of a heated debate between the great Anglo-American contract scholars." This debate, over a seemingly obscure doctrinal question, received the attention that it did because it drew out deep questions about the nature of contractual obligation. The debate arose-first in England and then in the United States-out of a difficulty in the explanation of the doctrine of consideration. In England, Sir Frederick Pollock had explained that giving up some legal right constituted one form of consideration.40 37. See, e.g., Johnson's Adm'r v. Sellers' Adm'r, 33 Ala. 265, 271 (1858) ("Here, while there is a subsisting contract with the trustees, and a subsisting obligation to perform it, the proposition of the appellant is, that a promise by a third party to induce its performance, or rather to prevent its breach, was supported by a valid consideration. We do not think the law so regards such a promise."); see also 2 JOSEPH M. PERILLO & HELEN HADIYANNAKIS BENDER, CORBIN ON CONTRACTS § 7.7 n.5 (rev. ed. 1995) (collecting cases). 38. See, e.g., Ford v. Crenshaw, 11 Ky. (1 Litt.) 68, 68 (1822) ("Where a man has, by his own contract, become morally and legally bound to do an act, he can not maintain an action on the promise of a third person, afterwards made, to pay him for doing it." (quoting the case syllabus)). 39. For an excellent history of this debate, see Richard Bronaugh, A SecretPamdox ofthe Common Law, 2 L. & PHIL. 193 (1983). My discussion in this Part is deeply indebted to Bronaugh's paper. 40. See, e.g., FREDERICK POLLOCK, PRINCIPLES OF CONTRACT AT LAW AND IN EQurry 166 (Robert Clarke & Co. 1881) (1876) ("The loss or abandonment of any right, or the 88 [Vol. 90:75 2015] PUZZLE OF THE BENEFICIAR Y'S BARGAIN Discussing the case in which a party promises to do what he already promised another he would, Pollock argued that the second promise would be consideration because "[i]t creates a new and distinct right, which must always be of some value in law." Sir William Anson noted a circularity in Pollock's explanation, pointing out that "this is in fact to assume that a right is created, which would not be the case if the consideration for the promise were bad."'2 In other words, the new promise only creates a legal detriment if it is legally binding, which is precisely what is in question. Pollock eventually acknowledged the circularity, referring to it as "one of the secret paradoxes of the Common Law."' The same dynamic played itself out in the United States. In his 1880 treatise, C.C. Langdell, then the first Dean of Harvard Law School, explained, "The consideration of a promise is the thing given or done by the promisee in exchange for the promise."" For Langdell, the "thing given or done" had to be a legal detriment. That is, the promisor must be giving up some legal right or power. Langdell illustrated this idea by contrasting unilateral and bilateral contracts made subsequently with a third party: It will sometimes happen that a promise to do a thing will be a sufficient consideration when actually doing it would not be. Thus, mutual promises will be binding, though the promise on one side be merely to do a thing which the promisee is already bound to a third person to do, and the actual doing of which would not, therefore, be a sufficient consideration. The reason of this distinction is, that a person does not, in legal contemplation, incur any detriment by doing a thing which he was previously bound to do, but he does incur a detriment by giving another person the right to compel him to do it, or the right to recover damages against him for not doing it. One obligation is a less burden than two (ie. one to each of two persons), though each be to do the same thing.45 forbearance to exercise it for a definite or ascertainable time, is for obvious reasons as good a consideration as actually doing something."). 41. Id. at 163. 42. WiLLiAM R. ANSON, PRINCIPLES OF THE LAW OF CONTRAct 81 (O.W Aldrich ed., Callaghan & Co. 1880) (1879). 43. Bronaugh, supra note 39, at 195 n.7 (quoting Book Review, 30 L.Q. REv. 128, 129 (1914) (reviewing J.G. PEASE & A.M. LATTER, THE STUDENT'S SUMMARY OF THE LAW OF CONTRAcT (2d ed. 1913))). 44. C.C. LANGDELL, A SUMMARY OF THE LAW OF CONTRACTS § 45, at 58 (2d ed., Little, Brown & Co. 1880). 45. Id. § 84, at 104-05. 89 TULANE LA WREVIEW The idea, here, is that merely doing what one is already obligated to do (unilaterally) is not taking on any detriment. But promising to do what one was already obligated to do is a legal detriment because this promise created new legal liabilities." Langdell's definition suffers from the same circularity as Pollock's. The great contracts scholar Samuel Williston addressed this circularity in an 1894 paper entitled Successive Promises of the Same Performance.47 Williston explained: To enter into a binding obligation to do or not to do anything whatever is always a detriment, and on the other hand, unless a promise imposes an obligation, no promise whatever can be considered a detriment. It is, therefore, assuming the point in issue to say a promise is a detriment because it is binding.4 8 The promise is only a legal detriment if it is binding, but the whole point of determining whether there is a detriment is to say whether the promise is binding. Williston concluded that the subsequent promise to a third party to do what one already owed another could not count as consideration.49 Thus, at the turn of the century, four of the great contract scholars were divided concerning the validity of a subsequent bilateral contract with a third party for the same performance-Pollock and Langdell thought that consideration was present; Anson and Williston contended that it was not. Other great scholars of the era were attracted to the question. James Barr Ames, who succeeded Langdell as Dean of Harvard, argued that the circularity could be avoided by understanding "detriment" or "forbearance" more broadly to include nonlegal effects." Understanding oneself to be changing one's normative 46. This contrast between unilateral and bilateral contracts with third parties was drawn by some courts at the time. See, e.g., Merrick v. Giddings, 12 D.C. (1 Mackey) 394, 410-11 (1882) ("[A] promise made in consideration of the doing of an act which the promisee is already under obligation to a third party to do ... is not binding because it is not supported by a valuable consideration .... On the other hand, if the promise be made in consideration of a promise to do that act ... then the promise is binding, because not made in consideration of the performance of a subsisting obligation to another person, but upon a new consideration moving between the promisor and promisee."). 47. Samuel Williston, Successive Promises ofthe Same Performance, 8 HARv. L. REv. 27 (1894); see also Henry Winthrop Ballantine, Mutuality and Consideration, 28 HARV. L. REv. 121, 123 (1914) ("To Professor Williston belongs the credit of having pointed out the question-begging fallacy in Langdell's theory."). 48. Williston, supo note 47, at 35. 49. Id. at 37-38. 50. See James Barr Ames, Two Theoies of Consideration 11 Bilateral Contracts, 13 HARV. L. REV. 29, 31-32 (1899) [hereinafter Ames, Two Theoies of Consideration IA ("Everyone will concede that the consideration for every promise must be some act or 90 [Vol. 90:75 2015] PUZZLE OF THE BENEFICIARY'S BARGAIN position, Ames argued, was all that consideration required." Taking on the promise itself, not the legal obligation, was the consideration.2 He concluded that the second contract with the third party should be valid and enforceable." Clarence Ashley, then Dean of NYU, offered a different solution. His view was that, in law, "promise and contract do not differ as terms, for a promise is a contract."54 Thus, consideration exists insofar as the parties consciously take on a legal obligation-consciously make a legal promise. As one scholar explains, "This solution attacks the problem of circularity in bilateral contexts by declaring it to be a technical feature of the law and so to be virtuous, not vicious."" Regarding the subsequent promise to a third party, Ashley concluded that there could not be consideration. In his opinion, "The proposed promisor has nothing to promise, as he has entirely disposed of his right to refrain from doing the supposed act."" Thus, scholarly opinion remained divided. In 1914, in the face of increasingly unfavorable case law, Williston surprisingly reversed course, accepting that consideration existed for subsequent contracts with third parties." He retained his view that no detriment exists in such cases, but, contrary to his earlier position, he allowed that a benefit to the promisee could count as consideration." This reversal, while noteworthy, did little to illuminate the earlier debate. The real breakthrough came following Wesley Hohfeld's introduction of a clearer typology of legal relations, which emerged forbearance given in exchange for the promise. The act of each promisee in the case of mutual promises is obviously the giving of his own promise ammo contrahendi in exchange for the similar promise of the other. And this is all that either party gives to the other. This, then, must be the consideration for each promise . . . ."); see also James Barr Ames, Two Theores of Consideration I Unilateal Contracts, 12 HARv. L. REv. 515, 515-16 (1899) (discussing his expansive definition of "detriment"). 51. Ames's view, unfortunately, was not well understood by his contemporaries. See Bronaugh, supra note 39, at 200 (noting that Holmes described the view as "absurd" and Ballantine called it "fanciful"). 52. See Ames, Two Theoies of Consideration II, supra note 50, at 33-35. 53. Id. at 35. 54. Clarence D. Ashley, What Is a Promise in Law, 16 HARv. L. RE. 319, 320 (1903). 55. Bronaugh, supra note 39, at 201. 56. Ashley, supra note 54, at 328. 57. Samuel Williston, Considemtion h Bilateral Contracts, 27 HARV. L. REy. 503, 520-24 (1914). 58. Id. at 524 ("I conceive the discussion to be well worth while whether benefit to the promisor is not sufficient consideration. That, however, is another story, and I will only say here that I have changed my mind . . . ."). 9 1 TULANE LAW REVIEW around this time." The Hohfeldian approach offered two important things: first, it focused attention on normative relations as between the parties, and second, it carefully delineated different rights and obligations at a fine-grained level.' Arthur Corbin, influenced by Hohfeld, can be seen as the final and decisive entrant into the debate." Corbin defended the emerging consensus in the courts that the subsequent promise with the same content could still count as consideration. He offered two main arguments, corresponding with Hohfeldian themes. First, Corbin departed from the detriment-based theories of consideration. Instead, Corbin focused on the social meaning of the promises, somewhat echoing Ames's earlier suggestion.62 "Mutual promises create a legal obligation because . . . the customary notions of honor and well-being cause men to perform as they have promised, and the lawmaking powers have decreed that in such cases promise-breakers shall make compensation." By making promises, parties enter into a normative relationship with the other party, and this relationship, rather than any idea of detriment, is the important point for consideration.' Corbin's second argument was that "there is nothing impossible in the idea of two separate and independent duties in A to perform one act."" As he explains, "The fact that A might have satisfied his duty to B and his separate duty to C by performing one and the same act is quite immaterial and shows no identity in the legal relations."" This is a Hohfeldian point. The duty to one party and the duty to another are two separate legal relations. And thus the former is no barrier to a contract that creates the latter. 59. See Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld, Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning, 26 YALE L.J. 710 (1917) [hereinafter Hohfeld, Fundamental Legal Conceptions]; Wesley Newcomb Hohfeld, Some Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning, 23 YALE L.J. 16 (1913) [hereinafter Hohfeld, Some Fundamental Legal Conceptions]. 60. See, e g., Hohfeld, Some Fundamental Legal Conceptions, supra note 59, at 2858. 61. See Arthur L. Corbin, Does a Pre-Existing Duty Defeat Consideration?-Recent Noteworthy Decisions, 27 YALE L.J. 362 (1918). 62. Indeed, Richard Bronaugh called Corbin's solution "a vindication of Ames." Bronaugh, supra note 39, at 223. 63. Corbin, supra note 61, at 375-76. 64. Id. at 376 ("If we are asked why this return promise is deemed to be a sufficient consideration, the answer is the same as the answer to the question why various detrimental acts are deemed to be sufficient. The answer lies in the prevailing notions of honor and wellbeing, notions that grow out of ages of experience in business affairs and in social intercourse."). 65. Id. at 377. 66. Id. at 377-78. 92 [Vol. 90:75 2015] PUZZLE OF THE BENEFICL4RY'S BARGAIN What are we to take away from the lengthy debate over this old puzzle about subsequent contracts with third parties? First, consideration must be a normative idea, not an idea about actual detriment or value. As P.S. Atiyah puts it: If there is a paradox in all this, it is that not until the end of the nineteenth century did lawyers begin to realize that the conventional accounts of the doctrine of consideration [in terms of value] could no longer be squared with the fundamental basis of classical contract law, the bilateral executory contract. Richard Bronaugh similarly concludes, "Oblique bilateral contracts will be found good-surely a desirable state of affairs-so long as a nonlegal but nonvaluative detriment conception prevails.' In other words, what the party loses in giving consideration is neither a legal right, which would be circular, nor a factual sacrifice, which would be too contingent. The second and perhaps even more important lesson is that we must be careful in delineating legal duties as between different parties. As Hohfeld usefully emphasized, notions like rights and duties are relational concepts, and a party does not simply have a duty to 0, but rather a duty owed to some party (or parties) to 0.' 2. The Modem Consensus Since the early twentieth century, a fairly robust consensus emerged that subsequent contracts with unconnected third parties are valid. That is, the preexisting duty rule will not apply when the preexisting duty is owed to some other party. The first shift occurred in England in the late nineteenth century." US. courts followed suit not long afterwards." The first Restatement of Contracts adopted the following position: "Consideration is not insufficient because of the fact ... that the party giving the consideration is then bound by a contractual or quasi-contractual duty to a third person to perform the act or forbearance given or promised as consideration . . . ."72 Going 67. PS. AIYAH, THE RISE AND FALL OF FREEDOM OF CONTRACT 688 (1979). 68. Bronaugh, supm note 39, at 230-31. 69. See Hohfeld, Some FundamentalLegal Conceptions, supa note 59, at 28-5 8. 70. See Scotson v. Pegg (1861) 158 Eng. Rep. 121; 6 H. & N. 295 (finding consideration in a promise to a coal supplier to deliver coal when the delivering party had already contracted with the purchaser to deliver the coal); Shadwell v. Shadwell (1860) 142 Eng. Rep. 62; 9 C.B. (N.S.) 159 (finding consideration in a promise to marry when the party was already engaged). 71. Judge Cardozo's opinion in De Cicco v Schweizer, 117 N.E. 807 (N.Y. 1917), is usually discussed as the turning point in the United States. 72. RESTATEMENT OF CONTRACTS § 84(d) (AM. LAW INST. 1932). 93 TULANE LAWREVIEW [Vol. 90:75 forward, courts" and commentators14 approved of the Restatements position. By now, this new rule-doing what one is already under a contractual duty to do with a different party can still be consideration-is almost universally accepted." As one court put it, "[T]he trend of the law is to hold that the performance of a preexisting contractual duty is consideration provided the duty is not owed to the promisor."" A thorough examination of modem cases confirms that courts overwhelmingly follow the new rule and find consideration in such circumstances." 73. See, ag, Willard v. Hobby, 134 E Supp. 66, 68 (E.D. Pa. 1955) (approving of the Restatement's position). 74. See, e.g., 2 PERILLO & BENDER, supra note 37, § 7.7; Edwin W Patterson, An Apology for Considemtion, 58 COLUM. L. REv 929, 938 (1958) ("It might be argued that no gentleman would be so greedy as to attempt to buy with the same performance or promise of performance by him, two different promises at different times, whether from the same or different promisors. Such a moral aphorism may be good for some situations, but it is too weak to justify a general legal rule."). 75. RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF CONTRACTS § 73 cmt. d (AM. LAW INST. 1981) ("[T]he tendency of the law has been simply to hold that performance of contractual duty can be consideration if the duty is not owed to the promisor."); 2 PERILLO & BENDER, supra note 37, § 7.7, at 375 ("The tide has definitely turned, with most recent decisions on the side of enforcement."); 3 SAMUEL WILLISTON, A TREATISE ON THE LAW OF CONTRACTS § 7:40, at 752 (Richard A. Lord ed., 4th ed. 2008) ("Today courts are virtually unanimous in upholding such bargains as long as there is either a bargained-for legal detriment incurred by the promisee or a bargained-for legal benefit accruing to the promisor."). 76. USLife Title Co. ofAriz. v. Gutkin, 732 P2d 579, 586 (Ariz. Ct. App. 1986). 77. See, eg., Morrison Flying Serv. v. Deming Nat'l Bank, 404 E2d 856, 860-61 (10th Cir. 1968) (holding that there was consideration in an agreement between a subcontractor and a financing bank to provide and to pay for supplies, respectively, despite prior agreements between both parties and the main contractor to do the same); Scherer v. Laborers' Int'l Union, 746 F Supp. 73, 83 (N.D. Fla. 1988) (holding that a promise by an employee of one union to another union of her cooperation constituted consideration even if she was already obligated to cooperate because "[t]he performance of a pre-existing duty may be consideration if the duty is not owed to the promisor"); Willan( 134 F Supp. at 68 (holding that a contract to take care of one's husband was not supported by consideration because the promise was made to a third-party, not the husband); Briskin v. Packard Motor Car Co. of N.Y., 169 N.E. 148, 149-50 (Mass. 1929) ("The promise of the plaintiff to perform his contractual duty to pay his note to the holder of the note and otherwise to perform the obligation imposed on him by the conditional contract was a sufficient consideration for the promise of the defendant, if the defendant thereby received any legal benefit."); Patterson v. Katt, 791 S.W2d 466, 469-70 (Mo. Ct. App. 1990) (holding that the plaintiff's promise to the defendant individually was consideration, even though the plaintiff had already contracted for the same performance with the defendant's corporation); Joseph Lande & Son, Inc. v. Wellsco Realty, Inc., 34 A.2d 418, 423 (N.J. 1943) (accepting a promise by a subcontractor to a property owner to complete work in accordance with a contract with the general contractor); De Cicco v. Schweizer, 117 N.E. 807, 808-09 (N.Y 1917) (holding that there was consideration for a parent's promise to provide financial support to his daughter in exchange for her marrying a man, where the daughter was already engaged to the man); Perry M. Alexander Constr. Co. v. Burbank, 350 S.E.2d 877, 880 (N.C. Ct. App. 1986) ("[W]e hold 94 2015] PUZZLE OF THE BENEFICIARY'S BARGAIN 95 The central reason for this shift is a new understanding of rights and duties in a relational way. Whereas the earlier rule was based on the idea that the party in question was under a duty to perform the promised act, the new rule is based on the idea that the party in question is not under a duty to the other party to perform the promised act. In other words, once one shifts from focusing on merely whether the party in question is under a duty and focuses instead on whether the party is under a duty to the other party, the modem rule seems much more natural. The new promise, even if it is redundant with regard to what is required of the promisor, makes the requirement personal to the promisee in a way that it was not before." Consider a typical example. In Enco, Inc. v EC Russell Co.,` the Oregon Supreme Court found consideration where a window supplier promised a third party to provide windows according to a given schedule when the window supplier had already agreed to that schedule with the eventual purchaser. The court explained, "It is true that the defendant was under obligation to make delivery of its [windows to the consumer], but no similar obligation existed between the plaintiff and the defendant until the agreement sued upon by that plaintiff's promise to perform the demolition suffices as consideration for Burbank's promise to pay even though the promise to perform the demolition was also the consideration in the contract between plaintiff and Sure-Fire."); Burton v. Kenyon, 264 S.E.2d 808, 809 (N.C. Ct. App. 1980) ("[T]he same factors [of the preexisting duty rule] do not come into play where a third person is involved."); Chvatal v. U.S. Nat'l Bank of Or., 589 P.2d 726, 728 (Or. 1979) ("[E]ven if we were to accept defendant's assumption that plaintiff's statement to his supervisor obligated him toward the Abel company, this alone does not prevent his subsequent performance of his work from being consideration for the promise of a third party, which had an independent interest in his performance of that work, to see that the compensation earlier promised by his financially incapacitated employer would in fact be paid."); Enco, Inc. v. EC. Russell Co., 311 P2d 737, 744 (Or. 1957) (holding that a promise by a window producer to the manufacturer of wood surrounds that the producer would ship windows according to a schedule was valid consideration, even though the producer had already contracted with the consumer to ship the windows according to that same schedule). But see Romero v. Buhimschi, No. 09-1195, 2010 U.S. App. LEXIS 19219 (6th Cir. 2010) (holding that a promise to list the plaintiff as a coauthor in exchange for collaboration lacked consideration because the federal employment contract already required collaboration). The Romero decision, however, was based on two atypical factors. First, it was a federal court applying Michigan law, and because Michigan had not yet decided the issue of preexisting duties owed to third parties, the court refused to apply the modem rule. See id. at *33-34. Second, the court viewed the federal employment contract as creating a public duty and not just a contractual duty. See id. at *24. Although not raised by the court, one might also wonder whether the recipient of the second promise in Romero was already an intended third-party beneficiary of the prior contract. If so, then the case may be considered an example of the puzzle with which this Article is concerned. 78. See Shiffrin, supm note 34, at 167-70 (discussing the way that a redundant promise can shift the obligation from impersonal to personal). 79. 311 P.2d 737 (Or. 1957). TULANE LA WREVIEW plaintiff came into existence.""o In other words, the essential question was not whether the defendant was under an obligation in general (or what may be called a monadic obligation), but whether the defendant was h2 geneml under an obligation to the plaintiff (or what may be called a relational obligation). This shift in perspectives may be considered Hohfeldian. As already noted, it is no coincidence that the change in rules corresponds with the emergence of Hohfeld's work." One of Hohfeld's major contributions was recognizing that our concepts of rights and duties pair one party with another party in jural relations.82 At the center of his typology of jural relations is the claim-right." A person Xhas a claim-nght against Yif and only if Yhas a duty to X For example, I have a right that you repay your debt to me, and that right correlates with your duty to pay me. What is important here is that rights and duties relate one party with another party, and thus I can have a right or a duty with regard to you and not have the same right or duty with regard to another person. This relational understanding of rights and duties supports the idea that, in general, consideration exists when one promises the same thing to someone new. This is true in two ways. First, the third party, not being the promisee of the prior contract, is not the party to whom the preexisting duty is owed. H.L.A. Hart-who was deeply influenced by Hohfeld -offers the following example to demonstrate the way in which rights and duties are owed to the promisee, not a third party: X promises Y in return for some favor that he will look after Y's aged mother in his absence. Rights arise out of this transaction, but it is surely Y to whom the promise has been made and not his mother who has or possesses these rights. Certainly Y's mother is a person concerning whom X has an obligation and a person who will benefit by its performance, but the person to whom he has an obligation to look after her is Y This is something due to or owed toY, so it is Y, nothis mother, whose right X will disregard and to whom X will have done 80. Id. at 744. 81. See supa text accompanying notes 59-60. 82. See Hohfeld, Some Fundamenta/Legal Concepdons, supra note 59, at 28-58. 83. See, e.g., Alan Gewirth, Rights, in 1 ENCYCLOPEDIA OF ETfHcs 1506, 1507 (Lawrence C. Becker & Charlotte B. Becker eds., 2d ed. 2001) ("Despite the possible interconnections between Hohfeld's types, it is generally agreed that claim-rights are the most important kind of rights. . . ."). 84. See Geoffrey C. Shaw, HL.A. Harth Lost Essay: Discretion and the Legal Process School, 127 HARv. L. REv. 666, 685 n.104 (2013) ("Hart found in Hohfeld a forerunner to his own linguistically focused analytical jurisprudence."). 96 [Vol. 90:75 2015] PUZZLE OF THE BENEFICIARY'S BARGAIN wrong if he fails to keep his promise, though the mother may be physically injured." Hart argues-I think convincingly-that the son ( Y) and not the mother is the rightholder in this case. That is, the contractual duty is owed to Y It was to Y that the promise was made. That X did not owe the duty to the mother is evidenced by the fact that she would not control Xs performance. She could not demand or excuse performance. As Hart puts it, "[lit is Y who has a moral clain upon X, is entitled to have his mother looked after, and who can waive the claim and release [X] from the obligation."" In short, the son-the promisee-is the rightholder because the duty is owed to him insofar as he is the one with control over the duty. This point-that a third party is not the one to whom the duty is owed-implies that a new promise to that party would count as consideration. Corbin, for example, explains: "The promisor [who receives in exchange a promise to do something already owed to someone else] gets the exact consideration bargained for, one to which the promisor previously had no right and one that the promisor might never have received. This is a benefit to which the promisor had had no entitlement."" The party receives the valuable status of being the obligee of the duty in question. To hold otherwise "results ... in the law ignoring the very real (as opposed to the 'theoretical' or 'legal') benefit that exists when the second promisor thereby gains the direct, and directly enforceable, obligation of the promisee."" Thus, there is consideration in the subsequent promise insofar as the third party acquires a duty owed directly to him or her. This first point focused on the position of the third party and what he or she gains through the new promise. A second point focuses on the party to the original contract and what he or she gives up. Through the second contract, this party gave up the possibility of excusal from performing the action-or, at least, the possibility of excusal by the party in the original agreement alone. The party who makes both contracts undergoes the detriment of no longer being 85. H.L.A. Hart, Ar ThereAnyNaturalRights?, 64 PHIL. REv. 175, 180 (1955). 86. Id. Hart clearly intended an X, not a Y. 87. 2 PERILLO & BENDER, supra note 37, § 7.7, at 373. Discussion of consideration in bilateral contracts, like this one, makes the language of "promisor" and "promisee" quite confusing. I have tried to avoid the terms altogether for this reason. To be clear, the "promisor" in this passage is the party who would receive the promise to do something already promised to someone else. 88. 3 WILLIsToN, supra note 75, § 7:40, at 752-53. 97 TULANE LA WREVIEW bound only to one party, who might release or excuse the obligation, and instead is bound separately to two parties. Like the SEACOR Mauine opinion, some courts and commentators support this second point by observing that "the promisee [i.e., the one making the second promise] has forborne to seek a rescission or discharge from the third person to whom the duty was owed." 9 As I will discuss below, this formulation can be misleading if it is taken to describe the content of the obligation." But what it captures is the fact that the new agreement imposes an additional obligation owed to the third party and that, in this sense, the central party is now bound in a way that he or she was not previously. This additional obligation is reflected in the fact that now, unlike before, the party would still be under a duty even if the duty owed to the party in the original contract were extinguished. The important point is that the central party is now bound to two people rather than to only one. Again, the existence of consideration becomes evident as long as one thinks of duty in relational, Hohfeldian terms. Once one understands duties in this way, it becomes clear that the party receiving the subsequent promise acquires something new, even if the party making the promise was already under an obligation to another party and, similarly, that the party making the promise gives something up. For these reasons, a consensus has now developed that, in general, a promise to a third party to do what one is already obligated to another party to do counts as consideration. 89. 2 PERILLO & BENDER, supra note 37, § 7.7, at 373; Morrison Flying Serv v. Deming Nat'1 Bank, 404 F2d 856, 861 (10th Cir. 1968) (quoting ARTHUR LINTON CORBIN, CoRBIN ON CONTRACTS § 176 (1 vol. ed. 1952)); see also De Cicco v. Schweizer, 117 N.E. 807, 808-09 (N.Y. 1917) (Cardozo, J.) ("The courts of this state are committed to the view that a promise by A. to B. to induce him not to break his contract with C. is void. If that is the true nature of this promise, there was no consideration. We have never held, however, that a like infirmity attaches to a promise by A., not merely to B., but to B. and C. jointly, to induce them not to rescind or modify a contract which they are free to abandon. To determine whether that is in substance the promise before us, there is need of closer analysis." (citations omitted)); RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF CONTRACTS § 73 cmt. d (AM. LAW INST. 1981) ("In some cases consideration can be found in the fact that the promisee gives up his right to propose to the third person the rescission or modification of the contractual duty."); cf Burton v. Kenyon, 264 S.E.2d 808, 810 (N.C. Ct. App. 1980) ("Where one party to a contract has the right to terminate it because of the default of the other, his completion of the contract is a sufficient consideration for the promise of a third person." (quoting 17 C.J.S. Contracts § 113, at 835 (1963))). 90. See discussion inhfa Part E.B.5. 98 [Vol. 90:75 2015] PUZZLE OF THE BENEFICIARY'S BARGAIN B. Is a Subsequent Promise to a Thrd-PartyBeneficiaryDfferent? The history and arguments discussed above explain why consideration exists when one makes a subsequent promise to a third party. This reflects the lesson of the old puzzle on contracting with third parties. The puzzle of the beneficiary's bargain-the one that arises in SEACOR Marine and Youngstow Welding-involves the additional fact that the third party in question was an intended beneficiary of the original agreement." In my view, however, this additional fact does not change the force or applicability of the reasons that apply in the straightforward third-party case. The same reasons for thinking that a promise to a third party counts as consideration apply equally to the third-party beneficiary. First, while it is true that the intended beneficiary obtains the legal right to bring suit if breach occurs, the beneficiary is still not the one to whom the original promise is owed. Recall Hart's example of the promise to care for the mother. The mother, in that example, would arguably count as an intended beneficiary." But she is not the promisee, and she is not ultimately the rightholder in Hart's sense. The son, not the mother, is still the party to whom the promise was rendered and who now has the power to waive, alter, or release the resulting duty. While special additional facts could change this situation and make it so that the son could no longer waive or alter the duty, the mere fact that the mother is an intended beneficiary does not mean that the duty is not owed to the son." The promisee, not the intended beneficiary, is still the party to whom the promisor's duty is owed. As a result, the second, subsequent promise to the intended thirdparty beneficiary does give that party some new benefit. As in the 91 See discussion supra Part I.B-D. 92. See supra text accompanying notes 85-86; cf Smallwood v. Cent. Peninsula Gen. Hosp., 151 P3d 319, 326 (Alaska 2006) (treating a Medicaid patient as an intended beneficiary with a right to sue for breach of a contractual agreement to provide care between the state and the hospital). 93. See RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF CONTRACTS § 311. My sense is that we can usefully distinguish two very different kinds of contracts with intended third-party beneficiaries. In the ordinary case, the intended beneficiary gets the power to bring suit, even though the promisee is still the primary rightholder (i.e., the one who controls the duty). In other cases, however, the promise is essentially a promise to transfer certain rights to the third party, which essentially amounts to a promise to make another promise to the third party. Once such a transfer or second promise occurs, then the third party becomes the rightholder in a perfectly intelligible way. It is the first set of cases that are most interesting and problematic from a structural perspective. 99 TULANELAWREVIEW older, simpler scenario, this benefit should be sufficient to count as consideration. What the beneficiary receives is a duty owed directly to him or her. Second, even though the central party may have already been liable to the third-party beneficiary had he or she breached, the second agreement still creates an additional liability. Speaking metaphysically, whereas the party was previously under a single duty with two potential complainants should breach occur, that party is now under two duties owed separately to two different promisees. This metaphysical difference becomes practically significant if the first duty is altered or eliminated or defective. But, even if none of these things turn out to be true, the third party receives a right of his or her own that guards against such circumstances. And, by being subject to this additional claim, the party who makes the subsequent promise suffers a legal detriment. Once one adopts the relational, Hohfeldian understanding of rights and duties, owing a duty to one person naturally appears distinct from owing it to another. By making it the case that one owes the duty directly to the third party, the central party bears a new burden and the third party acquires a new set of rights. The fact that the third party would have had standing to sue as an intended beneficiary had the original duty been breached does not change this conceptual point. Consider a practical example. Imagine that your friend Marcus owes me $1,000. Marcus, a masseuse, offers you a month of free massages if you will pay off his debt to me. Because this amounts to a discounted rate on Marcus's massages, you accept. Note that, although this is a contract between you and Marcus, I am a third-party beneficiary of the agreement.94 Marcus performs his side of the contract and gives you the month of massages. Now, you have a duty to Marcus to pay his debt, and I have the right to bring suit on the basis of the agreement with Marcus. Suppose, however, that you do not immediately have the cash to pay me. So you offer to promise me directly that you will pay me $1,000 if I will discharge Marcus's debt, and, preferring your debt to Marcus's, I accept." 94. See RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF CONTRACTS § 302(l)(a); see also, e.g., MCI Telecomms. Corp. v. Tex. Utils. Elec. Co., 995 S.W2d 647, 651 (Tex. 1999) ("If ... performance will come to [a third party] in satisfaction of a legal duty owed to him by the promisee, he is a creditor beneficiary."). 95. For a similar example and discussion, see 3 WILISTON, suprd note 75, § 7:40. 100 [Vol. 90:75 2015] PUZZLE OF THE BENEFICIARY'S BARGAIN There is little doubt that our agreement would be enforceable; it is a standard novation." If this is an enforceable bilateral agreement, it must be supported by consideration on both sides. And it is not hard to see that it is. You gain the bargained-for benefit of no longer being liable to Marcus under your agreement, and you undergo the bargained-for detriment of being directly liable to me (thus losing any defenses or protections that your agreement with Marcus might have afforded you). I gain the bargained-for benefit of a direct obligation from you, and I suffer the bargained-for detriment of losing Marcus as a debtor. These things are all true irrespective of the fact that I was already in a position to bring suit against you if you did not pay me as the creditor beneficiary of your agreement with Marcus. An example like this illustrates that the same reasons that applied in the straightforward case-a contract with a third party (who is not an intended beneficiary) to do what one is already contractually obligated to another person to do-also apply in the more complicated case." The reasons for the modem rule in the former case derive from an understanding that rights and duties are relational, so a duty to one person is not the same as a duty to another. We are not merely interested in whether we are obligated to do an act, but to whom we are so obligated. It is different to owe it to me to pay me $1,000 than it is to owe it to your friend to pay me $1,000. As long as we recognize this difference, then there is a strong reason not to apply the preexisting duty rule where the preexisting duty was owed to someone else. There are good reasons to see a duty to 0 owed to one person as not the same as a duty to q owed to someone else. These same reasons will apply with equal force when the new party was an intended beneficiary of the preexisting duty. A different relational duty is still being created. A duty to b owed to one person is still not the same as a duty to 0 owed to someone else even if that someone else were a beneficiary of the first duty. For this reason, the first response to the puzzle of the beneficiary's bargain-namely, refusing to enforce the subsequent promise to the third-party beneficiary on the grounds that doing so would violate the preexisting duty rule-is deeply problematic. At a 96. See RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF CONTRACTS § 280; 58 AM. JUR. 2D Novation § 5 (2012). 97. In fact, the point about novations raised in the preceding paragraphs was an argument advanced by Ames in favor of finding consideration in the original puzzle. See Ames, Two Theonies of Consideration H, supm note 50, at 35 ("[A]ny theory of consideration which would nullify this rational business arrangement stands ipso facto condemned, unless inexorable logic compels its recognition."). 101 TULANE LA WRE VIEW theoretical level, it cuts against the modem, Hohfeldian, relational understanding of contractual obligation. At a practical level, it invalidates run-of-the-mill novations that occur regularly and without dispute. III. THE TROUBLE WITH ENFORCING As the SEACOR Madne and Youngstown Welding cases exemplify, there is a puzzle about what to do when a subsequent promise is made to a third-party beneficiary-the modem cousin of the older, more familiar puzzle regarding third parties. Above, I described the difficulties with refusing to enforce such a promise. If not enforcing such a contract seems so problematic, why not enforce the second contract, i.e., the contract with the third-party beneficiary? I now turn to addressing this question. The second horn of the dilemma posed by the puzzle arises because of the difficulty with enforcing the contract. A. FourMutuallyInconsistentPropositions Given the argument provided in Part II, the approach of the court in SEACOR Marine, treating the subsequent contract as valid, may appear increasingly tempting. That is, one might be tempted to think that there is consideration for the second contract. The difficulty with this response is that, when combined with three relatively basic propositions about contract law and legal obligation, this position seems to create an inconsistent set of commitments. In short, the claim that the subsequent promise (of identical performance) to an intended beneficiary constitutes consideration appears to be in tension with some canonical legal principles. In particular, if one commits to the view that subsequent promises are valid, one seems to commit to the following four mutually inconsistent propositions: (1) Ys promise to Xto 0 will constitute consideration even if X is a third-party beneficiary of a promise in a legally valid contract that Yhas made to Zto 0; (2) Xhas a right (claim-right) that Ydoes 0, which means that Yowes Xa duty to 0; (3) An intended third-party beneficiary of a promise by Yto 0 in a legally valid contract has a right (claim-right) that Y does 0; and 102 [Vol. 90:75 2015] PUZZLE OF THE BENEFICIAR Y'S BARGAIN (4) If Yowes Xa duty to q, then a promise from Yto Xto q will not constitute consideration. As a straightforward matter of logic, these four propositions are inconsistent, and they cannot all be true. I will now say something more about each of these propositions. 1. Ys Promise to XTo 0 Will Constitute Consideration Even If X Is a Third-Party Beneficiary of a Promise in a Legally Valid Contract that Y Has Made to Z To 0 This proposition describes the proposed response to the puzzle of the beneficiary's bargain, i.e., it is the second horn of the dilemma. It says that a second promise made to the third-party beneficiary of a previous promise still counts as consideration. This proposition reflects the holding in SEACOR Maine. We can further break this proposition down into two separate claims: first, a second promise to perform the same act made to a different person will generally count as consideration; second, it does not matter whether the different person was an intended beneficiary of the first promise. The first claim expresses, as discussed above, the modem consensus deriving from an earlier era of scholarly debates about successive contracts. As discussed in Part II.B, if one is not going to enforce the subsequent contract with a third-party beneficiary, one must either reject this established idea about subsequent promises more generally, or one must somehow distinguish the third-party beneficiary. Neither option is appealing. In order to avoid either of these unappealing options, one must accept this first proposition. 2. XHas A Claim-Right that Y Does 0 If and Only If YOwes Xa Duty To 0 This proposition is a central tenet of Hohfeld's typology of jural relations. Essentially, it is definitional." Hohfeld recognized that philosophers and lawyers often conflate different uses of the word "right."" In order to clarify the concept, Hohfeld distinguished different ideas-jural relations, as he called them-that rights invoke. 98. See JOEL FEINBERG, SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY 62 (1973) ("[C]orrelativity ... is, for a certain class of rights and duties, logically unassailable, for as we have seen, legal claimrights are defmedin terms of other people's duties."); see also Linda C. McClain, Rights and Irresponsibility, 43 DuKE L.J. 989, 1040 (1994) (discussing Hohfeld's conception of legal rights as pairs of jural relations). 99. Hohfeld, Some FundamentalLegal Conceptions, supm note 59, at 30-31. 103 TULANE LAW REVIEW The first and most basic idea is that Xhas a clahm-ight against Yif and only if Y has a dutyto X" For example, if I have a right that you repay your debt to me, that correlates with your having a duty to pay me. Thus, claim-rights correlate with duties. They are, in many respects, the most basic instances of right.'1 Hohfeld distinguished the claim-right from other relations that we also refer to as rights.'O2 In particular, in contrast to a claim-right, X has a liberty (or privilege) against Yif and only if Yhas no nght with regard to X For example, we might say that, in regard to you, I have a (liberty) right to decorate my living room how I want, and this correlates with the fact that you have no right to tell me how to decorate my living room. It should be clear that these four first-order relations stand in two different relations to each other-as opposites and correlates. As already noted, a claim-right correlates with a duty, and, as should be apparent, the opposite of a claim-right is a no right. Similarly, the correlate of a liberty is a no-right; the opposite is a duty. Thus one can represent the first order relations in the following matrix (with correlates across from each other and opposites diagonal from each other): claim-right duty liberty no right In addition to the first-order relations, Hohfeld distinguished four second-order jural relations. These relations are second-order in the sense that they involve the ability to alter first-order relations.' But the focus, for the present purposes, will be on the first-order relations. The essential point is simply that, by definition, when one party has a claim-right, another party has a duty owed to the rightholder. 100. See Hohfeld, FundamentalLegal Conceptions, supm note 59, at 717. 101. See, e.g., John Harrison, Power Duty andFaciallinvaldity, 16 U. PA. J. CONST. L. 501, 509 (2013) ("The owner has the position that is said to correlate with the others' duty, called a right or, in more technical usage, a claim-right."). 102. Hohfeld, Some FundamentalLegal Conceptions, supm note 59, at 28-44. 103. A powerinvolves the ability to place others under a duty or to relieve them from a duty. The correlate of a power is a liability-in other words, Xhas a liability with regard to Y if and only if Yhas a power with regard to X Finally, there are muAnity and disability, which are the opposites of liabilities and powers, respectively (and correlated with each other). Id. at 44-58. It is worth noting that these terms are being used in something of a technical sense. We might say that I have the power to relieve you of your duty not to trespass on my land, by, for example, granting you an easement. Insofar as I have this power, you have a liability with regard to me. But of course, this is not a bad thing-your liability is just a potential to be given additional rights. 104 [Vol. 90:75 2015] PUZZLE OF THE BENEFICIARY'S BARGAIN This definition may seem like a trivial, formal point. As the history of the old puzzle about contracting with third parties illustrated, however, this formal distinction has assisted in clarifying jurisprudential understanding of various topics. In particular, the idea that each right correlates with a duty held by someone else helped make sense of the idea that duties owed to two different people confer two different rights. 3. An Intended Third-Party Beneficiary of Y's Promise To 0 in a Legally Valid Contract Has a Claim-Right that YDoes 0 This proposition is a statement of the rule that intended thirdparty beneficiaries may, in proper circumstances, sue on a contract. In other words, the proposition represents the modem rule about thirdparty rights in contract law. It rejects the idea that only the persons between whom a contract is formed can enforce the resulting contract. The ability of third parties to bring suit has evolved over time; it has not always been accepted. Roman law held that "res inter alios acta tertis nec nocere nec prodesse potest' ["a thing done between some does not harm or benefit third-party others"]." The need for more flexible legal actions, however, gradually pushed European legal systems away from a strictly personal understanding of contractual obligations.' In northern Europe, Grotius argued that acceptance by the third party made the contractual obligation binding,' and both Dutch and German law eventually permitted beneficiary suits.' In 104. M.H. Bresch, Note, Contracts for the Benefit of Third Parties, 12 INT'L COMP. L.Q. 318, 318 (1963) (translated by author) (discussing the early Roman rule); see also VERNON VALENTINE PALMER, THE PATHS To PRIVTY: A HISTORY OF THIRD PARTY BENEFICIARY CONTRACTS AT ENGLISH LAW 181 (1992) (discussing the Roman rule, but also noting that Roman law on this issue was not "altogether rigid"). 105. For a discussion of the particular agricultural arrangements that pressed against third-party contractual rights, see Bresch, supma note 104, at 318-19. For a more general history of the transition away from strictly personal claims in England, see WS. Holdsworth, The History of the Treatment of Choses h Action by the Common Law, 33 HARV. L. REV. 997 (1920). 106. HuGo GROTIUS, THE LAW OF WAR AND PEACE 143 (Louise R. Loomis trans., Walter J. Black, Inc. 1949) (1625). 107. BURGERLUK WETBOEK [BW] art. 6:253 para. 1 (Neth.), translated i THE CIVIL CODE OF THE NETHERLANDS 713 (Hans Warendorf et al. trans., 2009) ("A contract creates the right for a third person to claim performance from one of the parties or to otherwise invoke the contract against any of them, if the contract contains a stipulation to that effect and if the third person so accepts."); BORGERLICHES GESETZBUCH [BGB] [CIVIL CODE], § 328, para. I (Ger.), translation athttp://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch-bgb/englisch-bgb.html#pl2 01 ("Performance to a third party may be agreed by contract with the effect that the third party acquires the right to demand the performance directly."). 105 106 TULANE LAW REVIEW [Vol. 90:75 France, the Code Napoleon, influenced conservatively on this issue by Robert Pothier, accepted contractual stipulations on behalf of third parties, even while formally retaining the Roman rule.0o And in England, a back-and-forth history saw the right of third parties to sue apparently endorsed in the seventeenth century,'" firmly repudiated in the nineteenth century,' and then, after years of academic opinions in its favor,"' only recently reestablished conclusively." 2 In the United States, the contractual rights of third-party beneficiaries first emerged in Lawrence v Fox."' A man named Holly, not a party to the suit, loaned $300 to the defendant, Fox. In return, Fox promised that he would pay $300 to Lawrence, to whom Holly was indebted, the very next day. 4 The New York Court of Appeals held that Lawrence, not a party to the contract between Holly and Fox, could nevertheless maintain an action on the contract."' The court explained, "[W]here one person makes a promise to another for the benefit of a third person, that third person may maintain an action upon it.""' Lawrence v Fox became the foundation for suits by "creditor beneficiaries."" 7 108. SeeCODENAPOLEON art. 1121, at 307 (Barrister of the Inner Temple trans., 1824) (translating the 1803 French Civil Code). For the historical development in France, see Jan Hallebeek, Contracts for a Third-Party Beneficiary: A Brief Sketch from the Corpus luris to Present-Day Civil Law, 13 FUNDAMINA 11, 27-28 (2007), and PALMER, supra note 104, at 183-84. 109. See Dutton v. Poole (1677) 83 Eng. Rep. 523; 2 Lev. 210 (holding that a sister could sue on a contract between her brother and her father in which the brother was to pay money to the sister in exchange for the father refraining from selling certain property). 110. See Tweddle v. Atkinson (1861) 121 Eng. Rep. 762; 1 B. & S. 393 (holding that a groom could not sue on a contract between the groom's father and the bride's father in which the bride's father was to pay the groom). 111. See, eg., A.M. FINLAY, CONTRACTS FOR THE BENEFIT OF THIRD PERSONS (1939); Jack Beatson, Refornnng the Law of Contracts for the Benefit of Third Parties: A Second Bite at the Cherry, in 45 CURRENT LEGAL PROBLEMS 1992 pt. 2, at 1 (R.W Rideout & B.A. Hepple eds., 1992); M.P. Furmston, Return to Dunlop v. SelfridgeZ. 23 MOD. L. REv. 373 (1960). But see Stephen A. Smith, Contracts for the Benefit of Thid Parties: In Defence of the Thkd-PartyRule, 17 OxFORD J. LEGAL STuD. 643, 645-49 (1997). 112. See Contracts (Rights of Third Parties) Act 1999, c. 31 (Eng.). 113. 20 N.Y. 268 (1859). For an excellent history of the Lawrence decision, see Anthony Jon Waters, The Property in the Promise: A Study of the Third Party Beneficiary Rule, 98 HAR. L. REv 1109 (1985). 114. 20 N.Y. at 269. 115. Id. at 274-75. 116. Id. at 271 (quoting Schemerhorn v. Vanderheyden, 1 Johns. 139, 140 (N.Y. Sup. Ct. 1806). 117. The picture of third-party beneficiary rules as a fringe area of contract law might be due, in part, to its exclusion from early casebooks, and Lawrence v Fox's image as an iconic shift may be in part due to its eventual inclusion as a casebook classic. See E. Allan 2015] PUZZLE OF THE BENEFICIAR Y'S BARGAIN Another New York case, Seaver v Ransom,"8 added to the rule announced in Lawrence v Fox. This case involved an agreement between a husband and his dying wife. The wife's will had been written to leave the house to her husband for life, but the wife asserted that she wanted instead to leave it to her niece."' Rather than drafting a new will, however, it was agreed that her will would be left as it was, and, in exchange, her husband promised to leave money to the wife's niece in his own will to make up the difference.'20 But the husband did not leave money to the niece, and the niece brought suit against his estate. 2 ' Citing the "great case of Lawrence v Fox' and noting the inequity that would result from a contrary holding, the court accepted the niece's right, as a third-party beneficiary, to sue.'22 Seaver v Ransom became the model for what came to be known as "donee beneficiary" cases. 2 3 By now, U.S. courts have largely unified these cases under the more general rule that intended beneficiaries have a right to sue on the contract.1 24 As the Second Restatement of Contracts puts it, "A promise in a contract creates a duty in the promisor to any intended beneficiary to perform the promise, and the intended beneficiary may enforce the duty."'25 In other words, the modem rule is that, despite the lack of privity, a promisor owes a contractual duty to any intended third-party beneficiary; correlative to this duty, the third-party beneficiary acquires a right to performance. Farnsworth, Contracts Scholarshiin the Age of the Anthology, 85 MICH. L. REv. 1406, 1430, 1444 (1987) (discussing Lawrence v Fox in particular). 118. 120 N.E. 639 (N.Y 1918). 119. Id. at 639. 120. Id. at 639-40. 121. Id. at 640. 122. Id. at 640, 642 (emphasis added). 123. See Melvin Aron Eisenberg, Third-Party Beneficianes, 92 COLUM. L. REv 1358, 1371-73 (1992). 124. See, eg., Costanza v. Costanza, 346 So. 2d 1133, 1135 (Ala. 1977) ("It is essential that one claiming benefits under a contract to which he was not a party must show that he falls within that class of persons for whose benefit the contract was intended."); Murphy v. Allstate Ins., 553 P2d 584, 588 (Cal. 1976) ("A third party beneficiary may enforce a contract expressly made for his benefit. And although the contract may not have been made to benefit him alone, he may enforce those promises directly made for him." (citation omitted)); see also RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF CONTRACTS ch. 14, intro. note (AM. LAW INST. 1981) ("Since the terms 'donee' beneficiary and 'creditor' beneficiary carry overtones of obsolete doctrinal difficulties, they are avoided in the statement of rules . . . 125. RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF CONTRACTS § 304. 107 TULANE LA WREVIEW 4. If YOwes Xa Duty To q, then Ys Promise to XTo 0 Will Not Constitute Consideration This proposition is a formal description of the preexisting duty rule.126 The preexisting duty rule means that, if one party is already obligated to perform an action, a promise to perform that action will not count as consideration. As one court put it, "It is elementary law that giving a party something to which he has an absolute right is not consideration to support that party's contractual promise."'27 The idea here is very intuitive. If contracts must involve a bargain in which two sides exchange rights, then it cannot be the case that one party promises something that the other party can already claim. Otherwise, one party would be attempting to convey something that was already, by right, the other party's. It would be like selling someone her own property. Or, from the opposite perspective, one party would be receiving nothing more than what she was already owed. That is the conceptual point. Practically speaking, the preexisting duty rule protects against a hold-up game in which one party extorts a promise in exchange for doing what is already required.'28 For example, if I promise you that I will not assault you, that promise will not count as consideration, because I am already under a legal duty to refrain from assaulting you. Analogously, the rule prevents an already bound promisor from extracting one-sided contract modifications from the promisee.'29 In other words, it prevents against metaphorical holdups during the performance of a contract as well as literal hold-ups like those that may involve the threat or implicit threat of violence.'0 126. See id. § 73 ("Performance of a legal duty owed to a promisor which is neither doubtful nor the subject of honest dispute is not consideration; but a similar performance is consideration if it differs from what was required by the duty in a way which reflects more than a pretense of bargain."). 127. Salmeron v. United States, 724 E2d 1357, 1362 (9th Cir. 1983); see also Ramanathan v. Saxon Mortg. Servs., Inc., No. 2:10-CV-02061-KJD-VCF, 2011 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 147681, at *8 (D. Nev. Dec. 21, 2011) ("It is axiomatic that giving a party something to which he has an indisputable right is not consideration."). 128. CORBIN, supm note 89, § 171, at 246 (characterizing the preexisting duty rule as addressing a "hold up game"). 129. See, e g., Alaska Packers' Ass'n v. Domenico, 117 E 99 (9th Cir. 1902) (refusing to enforce the promise of an employer to pay more to an employee for work); Lingenfelder v. Wainwright Brewery Co., 15 S.W 844 (Mo. 1891) (refusing to enforce the promise of a brewer to pay an architect more for work that the architect was already contractually obligated to complete). 130. See Selmer Co. v. Blakeslee-Midwest Co., 704 F.2d 924, 927 (7th Cir. 1983) (Posner, J.) ("Allowing contract modifications to be voided in [preexisting duty circumstances] assures prospective contract parties that signing a contract is not stepping into [Vol. 90:75108 2015] PUZZLE OF THE BENEFICIARY'S BARGAIN The way that I have articulated the rule here requires that the preexisting duty be owed to the other party. A preexisting duty to q owed to anyone other than the opposing party is not included in the present statement of the rule. In stating the rule this way, I am following the consensus that arose out of the old puzzles about thirdparty contracts and, furthermore, I am at the same time offering a less expansive version of the rule."' B. Cataloging the (Unappealhig) Ways Out The four propositions just described are mutually inconsistent. As a matter of basic logic, they cannot all be true. This logical inconsistency is a formalization of what is a relatively intuitive problem: It looks like third-party beneficiaries have a right to performance, which would seem to imply that a promisor owes a duty to a third-party beneficiary, but, if a promisor already owes a duty to a third-party beneficiary, then it seems inconsistent with the preexisting duty rule that the same performance could be the basis for a subsequent contract. My formal restatement confirms the logical inconsistency that one may have intuitively detected. In the remainder of this Part, I want to catalog briefly the various possible ways out of this inconsistency. For the sake of clarity and completeness, I will catalog the conceivable options in order. I see six possible ways out of the inconsistency. Each escape is, I believe, troubling. That is, none of them strike me as without significant costs. I will delay discussing the most promising options at length, in order to get the other possibilities on the table. My aim in this Subpart is only to catalog, flagging certain options for further consideration and noting others that I will discard as implausible. 1. Reject Subsequent Promises to Third-Party Beneficiaries (i.e., Deny Proposition 1) The first possible escape from the logical inconsistency involves abandoning the idea that the puzzle's second contract is enforceable. That is, perhaps this puzzle should be resolved in the opposite waya trap, and by thus encouraging people to make contracts promotes the efficient allocation of resources."). 131. Because it is more conservative, the party-relative version reading of the preexisting duty rule should be less likely to generate a puzzle. One might say that the narrower version of the preexisting duty rule is the solution to the old puzzle about contracting with third parties. Without this restriction, one would not even need my focus on third-party beneficiaries in order to create a puzzle. 109 TULA NE LA WRE VIEW as the court chose to do in Youngstown Welding.' This option represents the first horn of the dilemma posed by the puzzle of the beneficiary's bargain; it was the subject of Part II above. This escape has two possible routes. One might deny that any subsequent promise to a third party to do what one has already promised another party can count as consideration. In other words, one might believe that a successive promise for the same performance necessarily violates the preexisting duty rule. In thinking about the old puzzle of contracts with third parties, this was-at least for a timethe view that Anson and Williston adopted.'" On the other hand, one might accept the modern consensus that a second promise for the same performance made to a third party counts as consideration but maintain that it is different when the third party in question is already the beneficiary of the original promise. This would require a rationale for treating third-party beneficiaries differently than generic third parties.1 3 4 2. Deny Hohfeld's Framework (i.e., Deny Proposition 2) Hohfeld's framework has been widely adopted as a useful schematization for thinking about rights and legal relationships. Of course, some scholars have criticized certain aspects of the framework.' For the present purposes, however, the important idea is simply that a claim-right correlates with a duty. This is definitional, and disputing it would be unproductive. Even if one is skeptical of the role that Hohfeldian concepts are playing, what is required is to show how or why Hohfeld's concepts do not apply here. One might dispute that Hohfeld's concepts of claim-rights and correlative duties are appropriate for thinking about the rights of third-party beneficiaries or the preexisting duty rule. But these would be substantive rejections of the way that I have characterized the other elements of the logical inconsistency of the proposition. The Hohfeldian point is more-or-less tautological. 132. United States ex rel. Youngstown Welding & Eng'g Co. v. Travelers Indem. Co., 802 E2d 1164 (9th Cir. 1986). 133. See discussion supra Part II.A.l. 134. See discussion supra Part II.B. 135. See, e.g., JOSEPH RAZ, THE CONCEFT OF A LEGAL SYSTEM 179 (1970) (criticizing Hohfeld because "[h]e thought that every right is a relation between no more than two persons"); A.M. Honor6, Rihts ofExclusion and Immunities Against Divestng, 34 TUL. L. REv. 453, 456 (1960) (criticizing the strict delineation of types and the assumption of correlativity); Albert Kocourek, Non-Legal-Content Relations, 4 ILL. L.Q. 233 (1922) (criticizing Hohfeld's inclusion of permissive relations). 1 1 0 [Vol. 90:75 2015] PUZZLE OF THE BENEFICIARY'S BARGAIN 3. Abandon Suits by Third-Party Beneficiaries (i.e., Deny Proposition 3) A third possible way to resolve the inconsistency would be to reject the suits by third-party beneficiaries. Doctrinally, the ability of third-party beneficiaries to bring suit can be hard to explain. Judge Comstock's dissent in Lawrence v Fox famously illustrates the problem: The plaintiff had nothing to do with the promise on which he brought this action. It was not made to him, nor did the consideration proceed from him. If he can maintain the suit, it is because an anomaly has found its way into the law on this subject. In general, there must be privity of contract. The party who sues upon a promise must be the 116 promisee, or he must have some legal interest in the undertaking. Because they are necessarily not the promisee, the general principles that undergird the ability of promisees to bring suit do not seem to apply to third-party beneficiaries. As noted above, suits by third-party beneficiaries have not always been favored.' For many scholars, such as Melvin Eisenberg, the widespread acceptance of suits by third parties is a tale of doctrinal formalism giving way to the demands of social reality.' This explanation strikes me as somewhat hasty because we should strive to have our law unified by some coherent set of principles. Third-party beneficiary suits do serve essential social purposes, but that should not eliminate our dissatisfaction if they do not fit into a coherent set of principles for thinking about contract liability.'39 We should seek concepts and principles that can explain and justify the practices that we adopt. 136. Lawrence v. Fox, 20 N.Y 268, 275 (1859) (Comstock, J., dissenting). 137. See discussion supra Part HI.A.3. 138. See Eisenberg, supra note 123, at 1370 ("A central vice of the classical contract school was that as between the values of doctrinal stability and social congruence, the classical school placed almost all of its chips on the former and few or none on the latter. This vice was particularly apparent in the third-party-beneficiary area, in which courts under the influence of classical contract law applied the doctrines of consideration and privity as objections to enforcement by third parties without even attempting to provide a social underpinning for that result."); see also FRIEDRICH KESSLER & GRANT GILMORE, CONTRACTS: CASES AND MATERIALS 1118 (2d ed. 1970) ("The eventual triumph of the third party beneficiary idea may be looked on as still another instance of the progressive liberalization or erosion of the rigid rules of the late nineteenth century theory of contractual obligation."). 139. Cf JOHN RAWLS, A THEORY OF JUSTICE 21 (1971) ("I do not claim for the principles of justice proposed that they are necessary truths or derivable from such truths. A conception of justice cannot be deduced from self-evident premises or conditions on principles; instead, its justification is a matter of the mutual support of many considerations, of everything fitting together into one coherent view."). 111 TULANE LAW REVIEW In addition, though excising third-party beneficiary suits might win some conceptual gains, it would come at a serious cost. Courts have, for hundreds of years, allowed at least some third parties to enforce contracts. And they have done so because of a felt social need or principled basis for these decisions. We should not abandon this practice. But we should want to identify or develop a coherent justification for the practice within our contract concepts. Leaving a legal conclusion as a socially necessary but otherwise inexplicable exception is unsatisfactory. But, if historical evolution is anything to go on or to respect, abandoning it altogether would be even less attractive. 4. Reinterpret the Third-Party Beneficiary Rule (i.e., Revise Proposition 3) There is another way to reject the third proposition-one that does not involve the radical elimination of third-party beneficiary suits. Instead of rejecting the current law, one might reject only the interpretation of the current law. Specifically, one might reject the idea that allowing third-party suits means that third-party beneficiaries have claim-rights to performance. I will return to this possible way out of the inconsistency in Part IV For now, I will merely note that the standard contemporary understanding of a third-party beneficiary is that one has a claim-right to performance. For example, the Second Restatement articulates the rule as follows: "[A] beneficiary of a promise is an intended beneficiary if recognition of a ight to performance in the beneficiary is appropriate to effectuate the intention of the parties . . . .10The Second Restatement clearly states that this right is correlative with a duty: "A promise in a contract creates a duty in the promisor to any intended beneficiary to perform the promise, and the intended beneficiary may enforce the duty."'4 Both courts'42 and commenta140. RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF CONTRACTS § 302 (AM. LAW INST. 1981) (emphasis added). 141. Id. § 304. 142. See, e.g., Pub. Serv. Co. of N.H. v. Hudson Light & Power Dep't, 938 F.2d 338, 341 n.8 (1st Cir. 1991) ("A promisor owes a duty of performance to any intendedbeneficiary of the promise . ); Brewer v. Dyer, 61 Mass. (7 Cush.) 337, 340 (1851) ("[T]he law, operating on the act of the parties, creates the duty, establishes the privity, and implies the promise and obligation, on which the action is founded."); Banker's Tr. Co. of WN.Y v. Steenburn, 409 N.YS.2d 51, 64 (Sup. Ct. 1978) ("[A] promise to discharge the promisee's duty creates a duty of the pmmisor to the editor beneficiary to perform the promise [and] also a duty to the promisee...." (quoting RESTATEMENT OF CONTRACTS § 136(1) (AM. LAW INST. 1932))); Potato City, Inc. v. Bartlett, No. 525, 1968 Pa. Dist. & Cnty. Dec. LEXIS 285, 112 [Vol. 90:75 2015] PUZZLE OF THE BENEFICIARY'S BARGAIN tors"'3 have routinely accepted this characterization of intended beneficiaries as having a right to performance correlative with a duty on the part of the promisor. 5. Abandon the Preexisting Duty Rule Altogether (i.e., Deny Proposition 4) A fifth response to the apparent inconsistency would be to dispense with the preexisting duty rule. The preexisting duty rule has been somewhat curtailed in recent years. Courts have limited its application, for example, where it might unduly constrain the parties' ability to enter into reasonable modifications.'" More significantly, the Uniform Commercial Code (U.C.C.) does not require consideration for a modification to be valid.1 45 Some scholars have even called for the complete elimination of the preexisting duty rule.' If these calls were heeded, then the inconsistency would dissolve. I am agnostic about whether the preexisting duty rule should be altered in these ways. Note, however, that most of the objections to the application of the preexisting duty rule address contract modifications. Critics of the rule generally argue that parties should be able to enter into contract modifications as long as they are arrived at in good faith.1 47 This scenario is precisely what the U.C.C. permits.'48 Consideration doctrine, it is argued, is about contract formation, not modification.149 The situation with which we are concerned-second contracts with third-party beneficiaries-is not a contract modification. The at *6 (Pa. Com. Pl. Ct. Jan. 8, 1968) ("A third-party donee beneficiary has an unqualified right of action to enforce the promisor's duty to perform his promise." (citations omitted)). 143. See, e.g., 17A AM. JUR. 2D Contracts § 426 (2004) (accepting the characterization of intended beneficiaries as having a right to performance). 144. See E. ALLAN FARNSWORTH, CONTRACTS § 4.21, at 270 (4th ed. 2004) ("Courts have become increasingly hostile to the pre-existing duty rule."). 145, U.C.C. § 2-209(1) (AM. LAW INST. & UNIF. LAW COMM'N 2013) ("An agreement modifying a contract within this Article needs no consideration to be binding."); see also RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF CONTRACTS § 89 (allowing binding modifications of executor contracts). 146. See, e g., E. ALLAN FARNSWORTH, CONTRACTS 280 (1982); Patterson, supm note 74, at 936-39; Corneill A. Stephens, Abandoning the Pre-Existing Duty Rule: Elimnating the Unnecessary, 8 HOuS. Bus. & TAX L.J. 355 (2008). 147. See, e.g., Stephens, supra note 146, at 357, 364-66. 148. SeeU.C.C. § 2-209(1). 149. See Kevin M. Teeven, Development of Reform of the Preexisting Duty Rule and Its Persistent Survival, 47 ALA. L. REv. 387, 476 (1996) ("The application of the dictum in Pimels Case to assumpsit actions was doctrinally flawed from its inception in requiring consideration-a doctrine developed to determine whether a contract was formed-to be the test for determining whether a contract modification or discharge was binding."). 113 TULANE LA WREVIEW subsequent agreement with the third party does not constitute a modification of the first contract. Even if the preexisting duty rule should be abandoned as to contract modifications, it would not follow that it should be abandoned in contexts where no modification is being countenanced. Where the preexisting duty does not arise out of a prior contract with the party to whom the duty is owed, the rationale for allowing the parties to dispense with that duty would be significantly less persuasive."s' In such a case, a party extracts a promise from another in exchange for promising what the party was already required to do independent of the other party's will. They are, in that sense, receiving a promise in return for absolutely nothing-unlike the modification case in which there is an exchange of promises. Insofar as we are to keep the doctrine of consideration at all, it would seem to recommend keeping some form of the preexisting duty rule. This remains true even if there is a good argument for eliminating its application to modifications. The inconsistency will persist in the face of the most natural or benign revisions to the preexisting duty rule. Let me add that, in a deeper sense, preexisting duty rules-and consideration doctrine more generally-are something of a side issue to my real purposes. In this Article, I use consideration doctrine as a mechanism for thinking about how to delineate separate obligations and when obligations become redundant. The deep question at issue, to my mind, is whether the promise to the beneficiary is, in fact, redundant."' Has the promise created any new rights or duties? Consideration doctrine offers a tool for thinking about that question. But, even if consideration doctrine were radically altered, that question would remain. 6. Reinterpret the Second Promise as a Promise Not To Rescind the First Promise Rather Than a Promise To 0 One might attempt to resolve the inconsistency by interpreting the content of the second promise as different from the content of the 150. For example, one common way that the preexisting duty rule is avoided is through mutual rescission. See, e.g., Schwartzreich v. Bauman-Basch, Inc., 131 N.E. 887, 889 (N.Y. 1921) (allowing the cancelation of an employment contract followed by creation of a new contract with different terms). If the parties to the contract are not in a position to rescind the prior duty, then this rationale for not applying the preexisting duty rule would make no sense. 151. Cf Shiffrin, supra note 34, at 165 ("Redundant promises offer perhaps the most challenging case for the rights-transfer theory."). [Vol. 90:75114 2015] PUZZLE OF THE BENEFICIARY'S BARGAIN first."2 The second contract, it might be posited, does not actually involve a redundant promise to perform-even if that is what it looks like-but rather a promise not to rescind the original contract. This is a tempting idea. It eliminates the inconsistency because there would be two different, rather than two redundant, promises. The act promised would not be the same thing throughout. In the first of the four inconsistent propositions, it will not actually be a promise to 0, but rather a promise to do something else, g, which is not inconsistent with there having already been a promise to 0. Courts do sometimes describe the second promise in this way.' In considering third-party contracts, Anson suggested this idea as a solution to the old puzzle about successive contracts. 154 Although tempting, this idea is illusory. Upon reflection, it is evident that the second promise is not in fact a promise not to rescind, but actually a promise to perform the act in question. In responding to Anson's suggestion, Williston made this point very clearly: [T]he great difficulty with the theory is that it does not fit the facts. It may well be that one of the parties to the second contract is not aware of the existence of the earlier contract, and, in any event, a rescission of the earlier contract might obviously be made without liability on the second contract if the performance promised was actually carried out. If that be done, the second promisor cares nothing whether the original contract remains in force or is abrogated." 152. Actually, in the second contract, both promises might be interpreted in different ways. The solution that I am considering here involves reinterpreting the promise of the party who was a party to the prior contract; that promise may be reinterpreted as a promise not to rescind. In a different vein, the promise of the beneficiary might be reinterpreted not as a promise to perform, but as a promise to ensure that that the other party receives performance. For example, in the taxi example, the parents' promise might not be understood as a promise to pay, but as a promise that the taxi driver be paid. This would be discharged if the daughter pays, and this avoids the appearance of double-dipping. (I am grateful to Charles Fried for this point.) While this reinterpretation may make enforcing the second contract seem less unpalatable, it does not solve the puzzle about whether there is consideration for that contract because that question relates to the other party's promise. 153. See sources cited supra note 89. 154. See ANSON, supm note 42, at 81 ("The case may however be put in this way: that an executory contract may always be discharged by agreement between the parties; that A and M, parties to such an agreement, may thus put an end to it at any time by mutual consent; that if X says to A, 'do not exercise this power; insist on the performance by M of his agreement with you, and I will give you so and so,' the carrying out by A of his agreement, or his promise to do so, would be a consideration for a promise by X. A in fact agrees to abandon a right which he might have exercised in concurrence with M, and this, as we have seen, has always been held to be consideration for a promise."). 155. Williston, supm note 47, at 37. 115 TULANE LA WRE VIEW Williston offers two incisive points to show that we cannot reinterpret the second promise as a promise not to rescind the first promise. First, the recipient of the second promise might be unaware of the first contract. It would be very strained to interpret a promise that superficially looks to be a promise to 0 as a promise not to rescind an earlier agreement if the promisee is unaware of the earlier agreement. For example, if the PMI employees in SEACOR Marne had been unaware of the contract to transport them, it would be incoherent to interpret the promise given to them as, in fact, a promise not to rescind a previous contract of which they were unaware."' Second and even more decisively, the party could perform the act in question, i.e., 0, but rescind the first contract. If the second promise were actually a promise not to rescind, then this would constitute breach. But it is not. For example, had ASC rescinded its agreement with Propipe and yet fully paid Youngstown, would ASC still be liable to Youngstown?15 7 The answer, I think, must be negative. If so, then the content of the obligation was to pay, not to refrain from rescinding the first contract.' Reinterpreting the second agreement as a promise not to rescind requires denying this fact. Thus, for the reasons Williston identified, it is quite implausible to reinterpret the second contract with a third party as a contract not to rescind the first contract. In the puzzle of the beneficiary's bargain, the two contracts are contracts to do precisely the same thing, i.e., to 0.' IV. A RESOLUTION: ABANDONING THE RIGHT TO PERFORMANCE The shape of the conceptual dilemma presented by the puzzle of the beneficiary's bargain should now be clear. Refusing to enforce the second contract in the puzzle is at odds with a relational understanding of contractual obligation. As just described, however, enforcing the contract seems to be in tension with the preexisting duty rule and the idea that third-party beneficiaries are rightholders. In this final Part of the Article, I propose a resolution to the puzzle. In particular, I argue that the best response to the puzzle of the 156. See Johnson v. SEACOR Marine Corp., 404 E3d 871 (5th Cir. 2005). 157. See United States ex /el. Youngstown Welding & Eng'g Co. v. Travelers Indem. Co., 802 F.2d 1164 (9th Cir. 1986). 158. In contrast, for an example of a dispute truly over an obligation not to rescind, see State Frm Fre & Cas. Co. v Sevier, 537 P2d 88, 93-94 (Or. 1975). 159. Cf Shiffrin, supra note 34, at 167 ("[Tjhere are cases in which the discharge conditions of the perfect duty and the discharge conditions of a promise may be the same, in which case the counterfactual oomph of the redundant promise would be ethereal."). [Vol. 90:75116 2015] PUZZLE OF THE BENEFICIARY'S BARGAIN beneficiary's bargain is to reconceive third-party beneficiaries such that, although they are entitled to sue on the contract, they do not have a claim-right to performance correlative to a duty to perform. According to this solution, SEACOR Marmne and Corbin turn out to be correct, though not exactly for the reasons that they articulate."' If my proposed solution is correct, however, it threatens to call into question a basic assumption about the nature of contractual obligation. If third-party beneficiaries can bring suit like any other plaintiff, despite not being owed the duty of performance, it challenges the core idea that duty and liability are necessarily paired with one another. The larger significance of the puzzle of the beneficiary's bargain, then, may extend well into the center of understanding the nature of contractual obligation. A. Reconceptualiing the Right of Third-PartyBeneficiaies Earlier, I mentioned the possibility that one might resolve the puzzle of the beneficiary's bargain by reconceiving the right of thirdparty beneficiaries.' That is, a solution might be available if one could explain the legal status of third-party beneficiaries without attributing to them a contractual right to performance correlative to a duty to perform on the part of the promisor. This suggestion may sound obscure at first. After all, if thirdparty beneficiaries can bring suit in contract much like any ordinary promisee, it may seem like they must have a right to performance.' How could they be able to sue and yet not have a right to the thing sued for? And how could the promisor be liable to third parties in court without owing them a duty? We can make sense of this suggestion, however, if we distinguish between being the holder of a right-i.e., the one to whom the duty is owed in Hart's sense-and being a party entitled to complain if the duty is breached."' In Hart's example of the contract to care for the mother, one can accept Hart's core point that the son, and not the mother, is the bearer of the right. Yet one might still maintain that the 160. See SEACOR Maine, 404 E3d 871; supra text accompanying notes 61-66. 161. This was option four supa Part III.B.4. 162. See, eg., Shay v. Aldrich, 790 N.W2d 629, 645 (Mich. 2010) ("[T]hird-party beneficiaries have ... the 'same right' to enforce as they would if the promise had been made directly to them."); Tex. Farmers Ins. v. Gerdes, 880 S.W2d 215, 218 (Tex. Ct. App. 1994) ("A third-party beneficiary 'steps into the shoes' of the named insured and is bound by the terms of the policy."). 163. See supra text accompanying notes 85-86. 117 TULANE LA WREVIEW mother has a privileged position to complain. Speaking morally, the mother is no mere bystander. If the promise were broken, it would be appropriate for her to resent the breach, complain that she has been aggrieved, demand compensation, or forgive the perpetrator. The natural applicability of this package of moral practices and emotions shows that the mother is morally connected to the action in a special way, albeit not as a rightholder. She has what we might call the "standing" to complain." Unlike a mere bystander, she may appropriately view the wrongdoing as a wrong done to her. As this example suggests, we can and do understand the privileged position toward a moral breach-the standing to complain about the breach-in the absence of any thought that the person in this position is the rightholder."' It is conceptually open that a person might have the standing to complain despite not being the party to whom the relevant duty is owed. This might happen when, as in the mother example, someone has a significant stake in whether a duty to another is fulfilled. If we can understand having the standing to complain apart from being a rightholder, then such a position may be the appropriate characterization of third-party beneficiaries. They are parties who, though they are not the ones to whom the contractual duties are owed, nevertheless stand to be wronged in a special way and who have a special position to complain should breach of the contract occur. Intended beneficiaries do bear a special connection to the duty in question-not because the duty is owed to them, but because they have a privileged complaint if the duty is violated. When a third-party beneficiary brings suit, then, it is not to exact performance that was owed by the promisor to him or her. Instead, it is to seek judicial recognition of the fact that she has been wronged by the breach of contract, albeit breach of a duty owed to someone else. 164. The term "standing" here is not meant in the narrow, Article III sense. Rather, the idea is much closer to what civil recourse theorists mean when they refer to there being "a substantive standing requirement" in tort law. See John C.P. Goldberg & Benjamin C. Zipursky, Torts as Wrongs, 88 TEx. L. REv. 917, 957-60 (2010); Benjamin C. Zipursky, Substantive Standng, Civil Recourse, and Corective Justice, 39 FLA. ST. U. L. REv. 299, 30407 (2011). More generally, we might simply think of the moral standing to complain, where that idea attaches to those who may aptly resent an act of wrongdoing. See STEPHEN DARWALL, THE SECOND-PERSON STANDPOINT: MORALITY, RESPECT, AND ACCOUNTABILITY (2006); Margaret Gilbert, Scanlon on Promissory Obligation: The Problem of Promisees' Rigts, 101 J. PHIL. 83 (2004). 165. See Nicolas Cornell, Wrongs, Rigts, and ThirdParties, 43 PHIL. & PUB. AFF. 109 (2015). 1 18 [Vol. 90:75 2015] PUZZLE OF THE BENEFICI4RY'S BARGAIN Third-party beneficiaries exercise a standing to complain that is detached from being the rightholder. In criticizing the Second Restatements formulations of the thirdparty beneficiary rules, Melvin Eisenberg reached a similar conclusion, albeit via a different route: [In my account,] the law of third-party beneficiaries is largely conceived as remedial, rather than substantive. The question ... is not whether the contract creates a "right" in the third party, but whether empowering the third party to enforce the contract is a necessary or important means of effectuating the contracting parties' performance objectives."' Eisenberg understood that formulating the third-party rules in terms of a right to performance could lead to various confusions."' He believed that this was a vice of "scholastic" reasoning that lacked "social propositions."l6 But, if I am correct, a similar thought can be seen, not as an expedient, but as the solution to a very conceptual puzzle. We need to recognize that, at the conceptual level, we have been lulled into conflating into one concept having a right and having the standing to complain of a wrong done to oneself. It is not that we are forced to abandon the conceptual approach, but rather that we had confused concepts. Once we distinguish holding a right from having the standing to complain and recover for a wrong, then we have the conceptual tools to address the puzzle. We can say that third-party beneficiaries have the standing to bring suit because they are among the parties who stand to be wronged when breach has occurred. They are not mere bystanders.' But we can also say that third-party beneficiaries are not 166. SeeEisenberg, supra note 123, at 1386. 167. See, e.g, id. at 1417 ("Because the contract gives something to the third party, then axiomatically the third party must hold not merely a power, but a 'right.' Since a right must belong to the right-holder, then axiomatically the right of the third party must be 'vested' the moment the contract is made. And because the right is vested, then axiomatically it cannot be divested."). 16 8. Id. 169. The third-party beneficiaries are not being afforded standing as a pragmatic mechanism to vindicate the wrongs of others. They are complaining on their own behalf. Or, one might say, they are complaining in their own right, even if not on the basis of their own right. In this sense, the situation is somewhat different from cases in which parties have been granted the standing to assert the rights of others, which really amounts to the standing to assert the complaints of others. See Powers v. Ohio, 499 U.S. 400 (1991) (holding that a criminal defendant had standing to assert the rights of prospective jurors not to be peremptorily challenged on the basis of race); U.S. Dep't of Labor v. Triplett, 494 U.S. 715, 720 (1990) (holding that an attorney resisting disciplinary proceedings for receiving 119 TULANE LA WREVIEW [Vol. 90:75 owed the duty of performance; that is owed to the promisee. And, insofar as the promisor does not owe the third-party beneficiary a duty to perform, there is no problem with the preexisting duty rule if a second promise is made to the third-party beneficiary. The beneficiary stands to be wronged but does not have a right; the promisor, though potentially liable to the third-party beneficiary, does not owe the thirdparty beneficiary a duty. Another way to explain the proposed solution is to understand why a decision like Youngstown Weldig is erroneous. Recall that, in that case, the court held that there was no consideration for Youngstown's waiver when it accepted payment from ASC because Youngstown was already an intended beneficiary of the payment agreement between ASC and Propipe. The court understood this to mean that ASC owed Youngstown the duty to pay by check.' This was the key mistake in the court's reasoning."' The fact that Youngstown, as intended beneficiary, would have been in a position to sue does not mean that the duty was owed to Youngstown. And, for this reason, the application of the preexisting duty rule was. not appropriate.172 B. Is There a Right to Performance in ContractLaw? I believe that the solution sketched above offers the most satisfying resolution to the puzzle of the beneficiary's bargain. I also contingent fees could assert the constitutional rights of his clients); Craig v. Boren, 429 U.S. 190 (1976) (holding that a vendor had standing to challenge on equal protection grounds an Oklahoma law that prohibited the sale of alcohol to males under twenty-one, but females under eighteen); Griswold v. Connecticut, 381 U.S. 479 (1965) (holding that a doctor had standing to raise the constitutional rights of married persons seeking birth control); Barrows v. Jackson, 346 U.S. 249 (1953) (holding that a white woman who sold her land had standing to challenge a racially restrictive land use covenant). These cases, though similar in certain respects, are less challenging to the received understanding of the relationship between rights and legal complaints. 170. One can pinpoint the problematic inference: "The ASC-Propipe purchase order, ... by making Youngstown an intended beneficiary of the joint check agreement, created just such a direct duty in the case before us." United States ex rl. Youngstown Welding & Eng'g Co. v. Travelers Indem. Co., 802 E2d 1164, 1167-68 (9th Cir. 1986). It is not necessarily correct that, by making Youngstown an intended beneficiary, the agreement created a direct duty. 171. This is not to assert that there might not have been other rationales available to the court in that case. For example, one might wonder whether the second contract was negotiated in good faith. 172. The same problem can be vividly seen in Chrysler Corp. v Airtemp Corp., 426 A.2d 845 (Del. Super. Ct. 1980). The court mistakenly assumed that the existence of an intended third-party beneficiary implied that "Chrysler was under a pre-existing duty to perform the services for the third-party beneficiary." Id. at 853. 120 2015] PUZZLE OF THE BENEFICL4RY'S BARGAIN believe, however, that it threatens to destabilize claims about legal obligation and liability that are currently taken as axiomatic. Once we accept that third-party beneficiaries have standing to complain but do not have a right to performance, this idea may have significant implications for our assumptions about contract law and private law more generally. It is normally thought that contract law operates by enforcing the promisee's right to performance from the promisor. It would be hard to overstate how widespread and entrenched this way of thinking about contract law is. Consider just a few examples of how we talk about contract law. We think of contract law as enforcing a duty to perform. As the United States Supreme Court once put it, "The obligation of a contract is a duty of performing it recognized and enforced by the laws."" This duty to perform correlates with a right in the promisee (i.e., a Hohfeldian claim-right). 74 In fact, we even say things like, "the right to performance of an executory contract ... is a property right."'" Contract liability is taken to be a response to a violation of this right. As one writer put it, "Because the promisor owes a duty to the promisee, and not anyone else, or to society as a whole, only the victim of the breach can require compensation for the promisor's breach.""' In short, the assumption is that contract law enforces a legal right of the promisee that correlates with a legal duty of the promisor to perform. 173. Hawthorne v. Calef, 69 U.S. (2 Wall.) 10, 20 (1864); see also Stephen A. Smith, The Nornativity ofPrivate Law, 31 OXFORD J. LEGAL STUD. 215, 236 (2011) ("The law may not punish contract breakers, but it is clear that there is a legal duty to perform a contract and that this duty is not fulfilled by paying damages."). 174. See, e g., David Pearce & Roger Halson, Damages for Breach of Contract: Compensation, Restitution and Vindication, 28 OXFORD J. LEGAL STUD. 73, 75 (2008) ("[E]ach party to a bilateral, or synallagmatic, contract acquires 'a legal right to the performance of the contract' and, at the same time, 'assumes a legally recognised and enforceable obligation to perform' it." (footnotes omitted) (first quoting Alley v. Deschamps, (1806) 33 Eng. Rep. 278, 279; 13 Ves. Jun. 225, 228; then quoting In re T&N Ltd. [2005] EWHC (Ch) 2870 [26], [2006] WLR 1728 [26] (Eng.))); Charlie Webb, Performance and Compensation: An Analysis of Contract Damages and Contractual Obhgation, 26 OXFoRD J. LEGAL STUD. 41, 45 (2006) ("[A] contracting party has an interest in having the contract performed.... The law protects this interest by recognizing a right in the claimant that the defendant perform his part of the bargain, which entails a correlative duty on the part of the defendant so to perform."). 175. Napier v. People's Stores Co., 120 A. 295, 299 (Conn. 1923). 176. Martin Hevia, Separate Pesons Acting Together-Sketching a Theory of Contract Law, 22 CAN. J.L. & Juis. 291, 299-300 (2009); see also Brian Coote, Contract Damages, Ruxley, and the Performance Interes4 56 CAMBRIDGE L.J. 537, 569 (1997) ("There can be little doubt that a primary purpose of contractual remedies is to protect the parties' rights to performance of their contracts, whether directly or indirectly."). 121 TULANE LAW REVIEW [Vol. 90:75 As widespread and entrenched as this understanding may be, I think that there may be reason to question it. The argument runs as follows: If the proposed solution to the puzzle of the beneficiary's bargain is correct, then third-party beneficiaries have the standing to assert a wrong and seek a remedy, but not a right to performance in the Hohfeldian sense that would correlate with the duty of the promisor. But contract law gives third-party beneficiaries essentially the same claims and powers that it gives to any party to a contract. Thus, if third-party beneficiaries do not have a legal right to performance in contract law, why say that even a promisee has a legal right to performance?'" Once one detaches the standing to assert a wrong from being the bearer of a right, in what way does contract law afford anyone more than the former? It may sound heretical to suggest that contract law does not create any rights to performance. But it is plausible that what contract law affords is essentially remedial.'" The business of contract law in all cases, one might say, is to recognize where a breach of contract has left a party with an injury that ought to be acknowledged and repaired.79 Contract law does the same for third-party beneficiaries, and it also does that for ordinary promisees. 177. It is important, here, that the point is about legalrights. Part of my point has been to show that promisees and third-party beneficiaries do stand in different normative relationships with the promisor. The promisee has a right correlative with a duty; the beneficiary does not. But, this right is not a legal right-otherwise it could not serve as consideration without becoming circular. Thus, while I have been at pains to distinguish the normative position of the promisee and the beneficiary, what I am not pointing out is that their legal position is essentially the same. 178. Cf RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF CONTRACTS ch. 16, intro. note (AM. LAw. INST. 1981) ("The traditional goal of the law of contract remedies has not been compulsion of the promisor to perform his promise but compensation of the promisee for the loss resulting from [the] breach."). 179. There are some parallels between this suggestion and civil recourse theory's thesis that private law operates to afford an ex post response to wrongs. See, e.g., Nathan B. Oman, Consent to Retaliation: A Civdl Recowse Theory of Contractual Liability, 96 IowA L. REv. 529, 543 (2011) ("Contractual liability consists of ex ante consent to retaliation in the event of breach . . . ."). I do not, however, mean to align myself entirely with that view. I still see contract law as affording a remedy, not just a recourse or retaliation. There are also some parallels here with the distinction that Andrew Gold draws between having a right to performance and having the right to coercively enforce performance. SeeAndrew S. Gold, A Moral Rights Theory ofPnvate Law, 52 WM. & MARY L. REv 1873, 1926 (2011) ("The key insight is to see that, even in cases in which there is a remedial duty to perform, this does not automatically mean the promisee has a moral right to require performance."). Gold's distinction, however, would not really solve the puzzle of the beneficiary's bargain, unless he is willing to say that third-party beneficiaries receive the right to coercively enforce performance without having a right to performance. 122 2015] PUZZLE OF THE BENEFICIARY'S BARGAIN To say this is not to deny that promisees have a right to performance and promisors have a duty to perform. But this right and duty are not the result of contract law. They are normative relationships that exist outside of contract law. Recall that, in discussing the old debates about successive contracts, one of the lessons was that consideration must be a normative but nonlegal detriment.'o When one promises, what one gives up is a moral right. What contract law adds, on this picture, is the standing to assert one's wrong and seek a remedy. Contract law adds a remedial scheme on top of our moral obligations. In this way, I think that, once one arrives at the idea that thirdparty beneficiaries might be understood as proper contract law plaintiffs while entirely lacking any right to performance, it may erode our faith in the story told in most first-year contracts classes. Contract law begins to look like something else, no longer about rights and duty but rather about wrongs and the standing to complain. C Some Practical and Theoretical Implications Why might it matter whether there is, legally, a right to performance in contract law? The above argument suggests that there is not, but it does not deny that promisees can sue for breach of contract. How is the conceptual claim that there is no legal right to performance-heretical though it may sound-much more than a linguistic point? In this final Subpart, I want to sketch briefly some ways in which this insight matters. I will mention four possible implications-two practical and two theoretical. But I do not mean for this list to be exhaustive, nor do I take the arguments here to be fully developed. My aim is simply to gesture at the broad implications that reconceptualizing the right to performance might have. 1. Consequential Damages Traditionally, contract law limits consequential damages to those that were foreseeable at the time of the contract.'"' This is the famous rule of Hadley v Baxendale.'82 Economically oriented scholars have 180. See discussion supm Part II.A. 1. 181. See RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF CONTRACTS § 351(1) ("Damages are not recoverable for loss that the party in breach did not have reason to foresee as a probable result of the breach when the contract was made."). 182. (1854) 156 Eng. Rep. 145, 151; 9Exch. 341, 354. 123 TULANE LAWREVIEW [Vol. 90:75 viewed this rule as a matter of selecting an efficient default rule."' And some have suggested that courts should be even more willing to limit consequential damages.'84 In all of this, the basic idea is that parties negotiate for certain rights and duties and contract law's job is to enforce those rights and duties. Consequential damages are appropriate, we might think, only when they are explicitly something that was part of the bargain. If, however, contract law is better viewed not as assigning legal rights and duties but as a remedial scheme for the injuries that result from breach, then a strict limitation on consequential damages may be less compelling.' What a party complains about after a breach may be quite different than what right they anticipated bargaining for. Viewing contract law as adjudicating wrongs, rather than creating rights, may thus influence our approach to thinking about consequential damages. In particular, it may make us less hostile to them. Courts have relied on a variety of mechanisms to circumvent the limitations imposed by the Hadleyrule.'" Reframing contract law might make these judicial maneuverings less strained. 183. See, e.g., Ian Ayres & Robert Gertner, Filling Gaps in Incomplete Contacts: An Economic Theory of Default Rules, 99 YALE L.J. 87, 101-04 (1989) (discussing the Hadley rule as a choice of an efficient default rule); Barry E. Adler, The Questionable Ascent of Hadley v. Baxendale, 51 STAN. L. REv. 1547, 1550-54 (1999) (challenging the simplicity of choosing the Hadleyrule as a default). 184. See, eg., Robert B. Bennett, Jr., Tmde Usage and Disclaiinmg Consequential Damages: The Implications for Just-in-7ne Purchasing, 46 AM. Bus. L.J. 179, 184 (2009) ("[C]ourts should recognize and effectuate a disclaimer of consequential damages arising out of trade usage in the appropriate circumstances."); Clayton P. Gillette, Tacit Agreement and Relationshio-Specific Investment, 88 N.Y.U. L. REv 128, 168-69 (2013) (arguing that courts should be even more willing to defer to the parties' intent with regard to consequential damages). 185. Cf Thomas A. Diamond & Howard Foss, Consequential Damages for Commercial Loss: An Alternadve to Hadley v. Baxendale, 63 FORDHAM L. REV. 665, 666 (1994) (arguing that the Hadley rule should be replaced in favor of a more flexible standard); Melvin Aron Eisenberg, The Pinciple ofHadley v. Baxendale, 80 CALIF. L. REv. 563, 602-04 (1992) (condemning the Hadley rule because it is at odds with the policy goals of deterring breach and of compensating the victim of breach). 186. Some courts have appealed to a breach in the covenant of good faith. See, eg., A & E Supply Co. v. Nationwide Mut. Fire Ins., 798 E2d 669, 677 (4th Cir. 1986) (relying on a finding of a breach of the covenant of good faith in order to award consequential damages in an insurance contract); Bi-Economy Mkt., Inc. v. Harleysville Ins. Co. of N.Y, 886 N.E.2d 127, 132 (N.Y. 2008) (same). Some courts have appealed to other extracontractual duties as a way to allow consequential damages. See, e.g., Congregation of the Passion v. Touche Ross & Co., 636 N.E.2d 503, 514-15 (Ill. 1994) (allowing consequential damages for breach of a duty of professional competence). Still, other courts have held that a limitation on consequential damages would be unconscionable. See, e.g., Razor v. Hyundai Motor Am., 854 N.E.2d 607, 622-25 (Ill. 2006) (affirming the award of consequential damages to the buyer of a used vehicle). And yet other courts have simply interpreted the foreseeability 124 2015] PUZZLE OF THE BENEFICIARY'S BARGAIN 125 2. Mitigation Contract law requires mitigation. A promisee does not receive expectation damages if she might have avoided those damages by her own actions.'" If one views a promisee as having an enforceable right to performance, then this "mitigation requirement" can appear unduly harsh. Why should the party whose rights have been breached be forced to clean up the mess?' Commentators have offered a variety of defenses for this requirement, ranging from duties of altruism' to duties of cost minimization,' but they are not entirely satisfying. If, however, contract law is not viewed as enforcing rights of the promisee, the so-called "mitigation requirement" may seem less problematic. If contract law recognizes a certain standing to complain against wrongs suffered by promisees, then the rules surrounding mitigation can integrate naturally. Instead of imposing a duty to mitigate,19' contract law simply places a standing requirement on those standard quite broadly. See, e.g., Lakota Girl Scout Council, Inc. v. Havey Fund-Raising Mgmt., Inc., 519 F.2d 634, 639-43 (8th Cir. 1975) (allowing damages for lost profits from a failed fundraising campaign). 187. See RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF CONTRACTS § 350(l)-(2) (AM. LAW INST. 1981) ("[D]amages are not recoverable for loss that the injured party could have avoided without undue risk, burden or humiliation. ... The injured party is not precluded from recovery ... to the extent that he has made reasonable but unsuccessful efforts to avoid loss."); see also U.C.C. § 2-715(2)(a) (AM. LAW INST. & UNiF. LAW COMM'N 2013) ("Consequential damages resulting from the seller's breach include ... any loss ... which could not reasonably be prevented by cover or otherwise. . . ."). 188. See Seana Valentine Shiffrin, The Divergence of Contract and Promise, 120 HARv. L. REv. 708, 725 (2007) ("It is morally distasteful to expect the promisee to do work that could be done by the promisor when the occasion for the work is the promisor's own wrongdoing."). 189. See CHARLES FRIED, CONTRACT AS PROMISE 131 (1981) ("If the victim of a breach can protect himself from its consequences he must do so. He has a duty to mitigate damages.... This is a duty, a kind of altruistic duty, toward one's contractual partner, the more altruistic that it is directed to a partner in the wrong. But it is a duty without cost, since the victim of the breach is never worse off for having mitigated."). Fried's defense has been reasonably criticized. See, e.g., P.S. ATIYAH, The Liberal Theory of Contrac4 hr ESSAYS ON CONTRACT 121, 124-25 (1986) ("Considering the otherwise limited role of altruism in the liberal theory of contract, it does seem remarkable that one of its chief functions is to shield the promise-breaker from the full consequences of his wrong."). Fried has more recently seemed to back away from this approach, instead describing mitigation as simply a default rule disconnected from the promise principle that parties can contract around if they choose. See Charles Fried, The Ambitions ofContract as Promise, In PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS OF CONTRACT LAW, supra note 34, at 17. 190. See Charles J. Goetz & Robert E. Scott, The Mitigation Priciple: Toward a Generl Theory ofContractual Obigation, 69 VA. L. REv. 967 (1983). 191. See 11 JOSEPH M. PERILLO, CORBIN ON CONTRACTS § 57.11, at 303 (rev. ed. 2005) ("This absence of a right of recovery for enhanced damages is often improperly called a 'duty to mitigate.' It is not infrequently said that it is the 'duty' of the injured party to mitigate damages so far as can be done by reasonable effort. Since there is no judicial penalty, TULANE LA WREVIEW who can complain and what they can complaint about. It may be that a promisor has a duty to perform, but the promisee may have nothing to complain about if they can avoid injury upon breach.'92 The conceptual shift that I have described potentially offers a justification for the practical rules surrounding mitigation. 3. The Parallels of Contract and Promise The doctrinal implication for mitigation suggests a broader potential implication for academic debates about the relationship between contract law and the morality of promises. Philosophical accounts of contract law have long connected contract law with morality.'93 But the connection has not always been perfect. Seana Shiffrin, for example, has influentially argued that contract law and promissory morality diverge in important ways.'94 Her basic argument is that the obligations of contract law do not map onto the strength of our moral obligations. As she puts it, "[C]ontract law expects less of the promisor and more of the promisee than morality does." 95 This argument, however, assumes that the relevant comparison between contract law and morality is in the duties that they impose. If contract law is not meant to enforce rights and duties, but rather to offer a mechanism for recognizing certain wrongs and the complaints derived therefrom, then it will come as no surprise that contract law does not map onto the obligations of morality. The relevant question, instead, is whether contract law mirrors our moral understanding of wrongs and complaints.' When the debate is recast in this light, I believe that the parallels between contract and morality may be very strong.' So, in this way, the conceptual shift may illuminate some broad theoretical debates about the nature of contract law. however, for the failure to make this effort, it is not desirable to say that the injured party is under a 'duty."'). 192. For an account of mitigation rules in roughly this vein, see George Letsas & Prince Saprai, Mitgation, Fairness, and Contract Law, in PHILOSOPHICAL FOUNDATIONS OF CONTRACT LAw, supra note 34, at 319. 193. See, e.g., FRIED, supm note 189 (arguing that a victim of a breach has a moral duty to mitigate damages). 194. See Shiffin, supra note 188, at 708-53. 195. Id at 719. 196. Cf Jody S. Kraus, The Cormspondence of Contact and Promise, 109 COLUM. L. REv 1603, 1610 (2009) ("By insisting that the justification of contractual remedies turns on their correspondence to promissory morality, correspondence theories force the question of how morality determines the content of remedial moral rights and duties generally."). 197. See Nicolas Cornell, A Complamant-Oiented Approach to Unconscionability and ContractLaw, 164 U. PA. L. REv. (forthcoming 2016). 126 [Vol. 90:75 2015] PUZZLE OF THE BENEFICIARY'S BARGAIN 4. The Connection Between Rights and Wrongs Even more broadly, the solution to the puzzle of the beneficiary's bargain that this Article suggested has implications beyond contract law for how we conceive the relationship between rights and the standing to seek a remedy. It is often assumed that being wronged-being the party to whom the special standing to complain attaches-is necessarily and conceptually bound up with being the party whose right was violated. Philosophical discussions have largely assumed this connection between rights and the special position of those who are wronged. To select just one example, Jeremy Bentham writes, "The distinction between rights and offences is therefore strictly verbal-there is no difference in the ideas. It is not possible to form the idea of a right without forming the idea of an offence""' The thought, here, is that rights and the recognition of a legally cognized injury go hand in hand. This idea becomes the crux of Cardozo's famous opinion in Palsgrafv Long Island Railroad Co.: "What the plaintiff must show is 'a wrong' to herself; i.e., a violation of her own right .... [T]he commission of a wrong imports the violation of a right . . . . Affront to personality is still the keynote of the wrong."'99 The thought, here, is that what separates mere harm (damnum absque jijuria) from the legally cognized injury is that the injured party was the rightholder2' The understanding of third-party beneficiaries as parties who stand to be wronged and yet who are not rightholders is at odds with these ideas. If third-party beneficiaries have the standing to sue without being the bearer of the right sued upon, then it challenges the assumption that legally cognizable injury is-as a conceptual mattera function of having one's right violated. In other words, the seemingly benign reconceptualization of third-party beneficiaries threatens to destabilize even our understanding of the relationship between legal rights and the standing to sue. 198. 3 THE WORKS OF JEREMY BENTHAM 159 (John Bowring ed., 1843). For a more modem example, see DAVID OWENS, SHAPING THE NORMATIVE LANDSCAPE 46 (2012) ("[W]hat is it to do wrong in a way that wrongs someone? If X would wrong you by deceiving you then you have a right against X that he not deceive you; X owes it to you not to deceive you, he has an obligation to you [to] be truthful to you.... And owing you the truth is different from merely being obliged to be truthful." (citation omitted)). 199. Palsgrafv. Long Island R.R., 162 N.E. 99, 100-01 (N.Y. 1928). 200. See ERNEST J. WEINRIB, THE IDEA OF PRIVATE LAW 59 (1995) ("[B]eing deprived of one's due is ... the suffering of a wrong."). 127 TULANE LA WREVIEW V. CONCLUSION This Article began with a technical but seemingly innocuous puzzle. What should courts do about a second contract made with a third-party beneficiary of a prior contract? Courts have, as I noted, come to conflicting decisions on this question, and there are pressures pushing in both directions. Still, it may appear that this rather technical puzzle requires only a similarly technical conceptual analysis using standard jurisprudential tools. I have proposed a solution to the puzzle of the beneficiary's bargain that relies on reinterpreting what, precisely, the intended thirdparty beneficiary gets when the beneficiary gets the ability to bring suit on a contract. Third-party beneficiaries, it turns out, do not have a right to performance. What the law recognizes in them is not a right, but the standing to complain about breach. Once this distinction is drawn, the puzzle dissolves. The second contract, in each of the examples considered, is not lacking consideration, because the beneficiary is now acquiring a right of her own, where she previously had only the standing to complain. This solution simply demands some precision about how we think about rights and duties. Thus, this may look like the technical solution that was needed. If my solution is accepted, however, it destabilizes our traditional concepts of rights and duties in contract law. Insofar as contract liability does not depend on having a right to performance, this insight has the potential to bleed into all of contract law and is not limited to the specific context of third-party beneficiaries. Contract law is no longer conceived as imposing rights and duties, but rather as responding to the interpersonal complaints that arise from breach of our promissory obligations. Thus, in this indirect way, the puzzle of the beneficiary's bargain may shift the concepts with which we understand contracts. 128 [Vol. 90: | {
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Essay Review of Eva Brann, The Music of the Republic: Essays on Socrates' Conversations and Plato's Writings (Paul Dry Books, 2004), 378 pages Mitchell Miller July, 2005 In the twelfth of the fourteen essays in this rich collection, Eva Brann reflects on her experience collaborating with two colleagues on a translation of the Sophist and marks some of the virtues and goals that oriented them. "... ego [was] out," she writes and they sought to be "relatively fearless in the face of ignorance and fresh in [their] deliberate amateurism." (305) "We come from a school" - St. John's College - "that has the greatest misgivings about standing between a reader and the book." (310) Guided by their shared "sense of the pedagogical generosity of the dialogues," they aimed to let "the many-layered accessibility of the text" "draw the reader in." (318) This spirit of unpresuming but daring receptivity, complemented by the teacherly recognition that the best gift is to allow others to receive for themselves, animates all of the essays in The Music of the Republic. Brann writes on a range of dialogues, including the Apology, Phaedo, Charmides, Republic, Sophist, and Timaeus; the pieces range in character from informal reflections on teaching and on translating to lectures on particular Platonic themes to full-length introductions to or exegeses of whole dialogues. Throughout, she sustains a selfless thoughtfulness that allows the texts she so evidently loves to open up as if by themselves. Attending to Brann's Plato's Socrates, one feels oneself in the linked hands of three superb teachers. How may a reviewer avoid "standing between" a prospective reader and this book? The heterogeneity of its voices and issues and the probing, open-spirited character of its reflections doom any effort to reduce its contents to a summary. Let me instead just indicate its range by noting several of the particular riches that await the prospective reader, then turn in a more sustained way to the title essay. Brann draws from a host of dialogues in order to set in vivid relief the manifold offense that Socrates, as Plato writes his Apology, goes out of his way to give his jurors, making unmistakable to them - and memorable to later generations - the danger he poses to the laws and customs of Athens. Two of her pieces on the Phaedo lay out the legacy of questions - twenty-one distinct sets of them, by her count, underlain by a web of some ten aporiai (see 40-41) - that Socrates leaves behind and expose the three Minotaurs that threaten it: the fear of death, despair at the limitedness of argument, and, perhaps the deepest of all, the "engrossing love of Socrates the man" (33) that he both inspires and seeks to slay. Has anyone so deftly conjured into palpability Plato's subtle use of the shadow of menace that Critias' later tyranny casts retrospectively over the dramatic maneuvers and the subtleties of argument in the Charmides? Treating the central digression in the Sophist with artfully informal precision, she traces the Eleatic Stranger's Aeschylean-Sophoclean transformation of Not-being from its "outcast" status in Parmenides (294) to its repatriation in Plato as the arche that, by providing to Being its unlimited internal differentiation, first opens it up as the object field for dialectic. 2 "The Music of the Republic" is the central and by far the longest piece in the anthology. It has been published in earlier versions at least twice before,1 but the relatively unknown sites of these appearances have afforded it very limited circulation. Its publication in expanded and revised form here is therefore very welcome. Brann offers a searching, brilliantly constructive reading of the Republic. She attends closely to the modes and the performative power of Socrates' discourse, to the spiritual coming-tobe that rising to the challenges of this discourse can occasion, and to the disclosure of the ultimate archai, "beyond Being" (206), that she takes to lie in store for this emergent soul. As markers of the trajectory and reach of her account, here are four pivotal moments: (i) Ring structure. The whole of Socrates' narrative, Brann argues, is structured as a ring composition. The outermost ring (making, therefore, the beginning and the end of the dialogue) is a mythos, first of descent into Hades (Book I), then of re-ascent from it (Book X); the next ring consists in the logos, first, of the just city and soul (Books II-IV), then of their degeneration into the factionalized forms of timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny (Books VIII-IX); the centermost ring is the ergon of the actual founding of a 'city' - that is, of an order of rule bound by friendship - by Socrates and Glaucon (Books V-VII); at the core of this centermost ring, finally, Socrates provides Glaucon with the "philosophical music" of his imagistic account - a potentially evocative synopsis meant to serve as a test and prelude to the noetic work that no writing, not even Socratic dialogue (206), can contain (156) - of the ultimate truths dialectic will reveal. Remarkably, Brann nowhere pauses to explain why Plato chooses to have Socrates construct his narrative according to this striking concentric plan. But the sequence and proportions of her own writing seem to show what she leaves unsaid. Is it right that each resonance in the second half of the dialogue returns our thought to its corresponding partner in the first half? And, too, aren't we turned back to the beginning in a way that, since the later turns (from deed to logos, logos to myth) reverse and so remind us of our initial motions (myth to logos, logos to deed), moves us to think the whole? Most important, doesn't this complex motion of return and gathering bring us back to the heights of the middle, back to "the light" - in Brann's evocative phrase - "of the ontological center" (244)? If these conjectures are well-attuned, then it ceases to be surprising that she writes very little about the unjust cities or the decision in favor of the just man's happiness or the just city's conditional rejection of the mimetic arts. (Brann addresses the last of these topics in a separate essay, chapter 9.) She follows not the external sequence of topics in the dialogue but its psychagogic impetus as "music" propaideutic to dialectic. (ii) The "emergence" of the "knowing soul." This psychagogy involves, if not a transformation, then a sort of doubling of the soul. If in the mythos of Book I Socrates portrays his project as the Heraclean leading of the Cerberus-like soul up into the light so that it may be examined (121 ff.), in the logos of Books II-IV he accomplishes this 1 It first appeared, to my knowledge, in ΑΓΩΝ, Journal of Classical Studies, Vol. 1, No. 1 (April 1967), 1-117. It was then reprinted in Four Essays on Plato's Republic, a special issue of The St. John's Review, Vol. XXXIX, no.s 1 and 2 (1989-90), 1-103. 3 examination, discerning in its Cerberan multiplicity a tripartite whole of potentially conflicting kinds of desire. But this work of logos, as a deed, is itself the occasion for the soul to present itself under a new fundamental aspect: in coming to know itself (133 ff.), the soul discloses itself now not as a complex of desires but as "'the organ by which each man knows' (513c5)" (164). How radical is this emergence of what Brann calls the "learning" (164) or "knowing soul" (186)? Does this "non-dimensional" soul so transcend the desires of spiritedness and appetite that it may exist independently of the very embodiment these entail? That is, does, or can, this "knowing soul" exist separately from the "embodied soul" (165)?2 Though she lets this question surface when she pauses to explore Aristotle's strange report of Plato's numerological account of the soul at De Anima 404b16 ff., she seems to leave it unresolved and open, choosing instead to be led by the underlying "music" it belongs to. As a process of existential genesis, the emergence of the "knowing soul" is occasioned by the elicitation and setting-to-work of the soul's cognitive powers; these powers are elicited, in turn, by the disclosure of the object fields proper to them. The explicit height of Socrates' "music" - his "art of conversion" of the soul to the "love of wisdom" (157-8) - is his ascending account of these object fields by way of the figures of the sun, the line, and the cave. (iii) The metaphysical strains of Socrates' "music" - the "divided line" and the "journey toward the 'greatest study'." When Glaucon shows himself not yet ready for dialectic (see 533a), Socrates responds as a well-attuned teacher: he abstains from direct conceptual explication (170), providing instead images that, should Glaucon take them up and think them through, might eventually lead him to the sort of reflective understanding his "knowing soul" requires (194 ff.). This understanding therefore both is and is not 'in' the text: in leaving "the logos behind [his] images" unspoken, Socrates leaves it "latent" (177) in them and, in this latency, there to be discovered. Brann's argument for this turns on her interpretation of the play of original and likeness in the figure of the divided line. The complex analogy that structures the line implies that each lower segment marks an object field that stands in the relation of likeness-to-original to the object field marked by the next higher section. Conversely, the objects proper to each higher section are causally responsible, as originals for their likenesses, for the constitution of the objects proper to the next lower section. Thus, to quote Brann's own striking image, the Good "mak[es] our world [as] a cascading progression of likenesses" (193); to reconstruct this "cascade": the Good first gives rise to forms as its likenesses, and forms to the perfect structures studied in mathematics, and these latter to the sensibles that imperfectly image them, and sensibles to shadows, reflections, and the like.3 By laying out these regions on the divided line, Socrates provides Glaucon a mathematical image for his future 2 This is also, of course, the thematic question of the Phaedo. "What," Brann asks in "Socrates' Legacy: Plato's Phaedo "(chapter 2), "is the nature of that in us which makes us thoughtful? Is it an emergent condition of the body or a separable and indestructible soul?" (40) In this connection, note her distinction between the two chief meanings of "soul" in "Introduction to the Phaedo" (chapter 1, p. 8). 3 Brann states this explicitly in the next essay, "Imitative Poetry: Book X of the Republic" (chapter 9): "The grades of Being cascade from the top as a series of originals and images; each higher realm casts its images into the next lower realm" (266). 4 philosophical education, the "longer, imageless journey toward the 'greatest study'" (236), that is, toward the purely noetic comprehension of the archai of the whole. (iv) The sun and the cave - "dianoetic eikasia" and the One and the Dyad. Brann is both bold and responsive in risking discussion of these archai: she is bold to treat of them at all, given Socrates' indirectness and reticence, but she is moved - even, perhaps, constrained - to take the risk by her deep appreciation of what she credits Jacob Klein as first articulating as "dianoetic eikasia."4 Eikasia, the lowest cognitive power on the divided line, is the soul's perceptual capacity, given a shadow or reflection, to "recognize" it as an image and, so, to turn back to the thing that is its original; specifically dianoetic eikasia is the soul's power to recognize likenesses as likenesses by means of dianoia, "thinking," and it operates at every level of the divided line. It is, on the one hand, a distinctly interpretive capacity (for thinking moves back from the given by making "suppositions" [179] as to what is prior to the given and, in its own manner of presence, different in kind from it), and, on the other hand, it has a structural basis in and correspondence with the very nature of things (for the Good itself, in initiating the "cascade" of original/likeness relations, thereby "everywhere provide[s] places for the cognitive soul to learn in" [210]). In the present context it must suffice to indicate three main insights that Brann, on the strength of her practice of dianoetic eikasia, puts before us. First, in Socrates' figure of the sun she finds the image not only of the Good but also, coincident with the Good, of the Same and of the One. These three names reflect the way in which this one arche is at once the source of the normative status of the forms, of their self-sameness, and of both their own unity and their responsibility for what unity there is in the entities that instantiate them. Second, in Socrates' figure of the cave, the "womb"like maternal counterpart to the paternal sun (212 ff.),5 she finds the image of Non-being and - just insofar as it is "on the loose [and] not involved in the order of Being" (213) - the source of evil. But, third, this latter qualification is crucial. As Brann goes on to argue, this second arche also is "involved in the order of Being," presenting itself, on the one hand, as the Indeterminate Dyad that sources the plurality that is unified by the One and, on the other hand, as the Other or Otherness that, as is first made explicit in the Sophist, gives Being its internal articulation as a field of forms, each of which is bound up with each other precisely as an "other" to it. If the ongoing controversy over the status of the "so-called unwritten teachings"6 is indicative, many will have misgivings at this point. Does Brann's turn to these 4 Brann cites (178, n. 29) the seminal section, "The Dianoetic Extension of Eikasia," in Klein's Commentary on Plato's Meno (Chapel Hill, 1965), 115-125. 5 Brann, publishing this idea first in 1967 (see n. 1 above), thus precedes the remarkable polemic of Luce Irigaray, "Plato's Hystera," in Speculum de l'autre femme (Paris, 1974), translated by Gillian Gill as Speculum of the Other Woman (Ithaca, 1985). For lucid discussion of Irigaray's reading, see Drew Hyland, Questioning Platonism (Albany, 2004), ch. 3. 6 The phrase is Aristotle's at Physics 209b14-15. Brann's critical openness to the reports of these "teachings" was especially daring in 1967, a time when the mainstream of Anglo-American classical philosophical scholarship, led by Harold Cherniss' tour de 5 "teachings" contradict her insistence on close attention to the contextual specificity and aporetic spirit of Socratic discourse in the dialogues? "... each dialogue," she remarks, "is, as it seems to me, a distinct conversational universe." (351) And of Socrates she writes, "He would not care so much about devising well-formulated breakthroughs for received issues as for staying with the inquiry at its origin in wonder." (41) Even some of those who share her openness to the "unwritten teachings" and are most in sympathy with the idea of dianoetic eikasia may nonetheless doubt that its practice - that is, reflection on the images of the sun, the line, and the cave in search of the eidetic and pre-eidetic order that is the original of which they are likenesses - can be sufficiently determinate to lead us back to the "meta-ontological" (213) play of the One and the Dyad. Speaking for myself, I am sympathetic on two levels. Substantively, I think that some of the insights Brann comes to are in fact exhibited, at least in part, in texts that she does not address in this collection; this must be a topic for another time.7 More importantly, she qualifies her own daring with a genuinely Socratic reserve, and she complicates her own path with aporeticizing reflections that, far from blocking it, give it a potentially ultimate reach. In the closing lines of her Preface, Brann gives us a caution that, in fact, she has already expressed in a number of her essays: ... although this book is full of pretty confident interpretive conclusions concerning the Platonic text[s], in retrospect they all look more like preludes to new, perhaps deeper questions. (xiv) To borrow a distinction she makes with regard to Socrates' talk about the forms, the very boldness of her characterizations of the Platonic archai is more that of "reaching" than of "describing" (340), more in the spirit of Socratic "suppositions" - that is, of the heuristic assumption of foundations that is meant to be put to the test by the very inquiry it orients - than of post-Platonic dogma. For evidence of the seriousness of this Socratic spirit, note the key reservations that Brann herself expresses about the reach of dianoetic eikasia. At two important moments in the book, in her essay on the treatment of imitative poetry in Republic X (chapter 9) and in her essay entitled "Plato's 'Theory of Ideas'" (chapter 13), she calls attention to the potential "trouble" (266) that the following force rejection in The Riddle of the Early Academy (Berkeley, 1945) and Gregory Vlastos' skeptical review (included in Platonic Studies [Princeton, 1973]) of H. J. Krämer's Arete bei Platon und Aristoteles (Heidelberg, 1959), was strongly inclined to dismiss them as, at best, informal working ideas and, at worst, a post-Platonic fabrication. The grounds for this closure have since been removed, in my opinion, by Kenneth Sayre's Plato's Late Ontology: A Riddle Resolved [Princeton, 1983], re-issued this year by Parmenides Publishing. 7 For treatments of the Parmenides and the Statesman, in each case with reference to the Philebus, see my "'Unwritten Teachings' in the Parmenides," Review of Metaphysics XLVIII, 3 (March 1995), 591-633 and my "Dialectical Education and 'Unwritten Teachings' in Plato's Statesman," especially in the version included in The Philosopher in Plato's Statesman (Las Vegas, 2004). 6 "apparently devastating difficult[y]" (339) will cause for dianoetic eikasia when it seeks an interpretation of the forms as originals: "If the eidos is what is originally beautiful, and beautiful things are copies, ... then both have the quality of being beautiful." (339) And taking a second case, she asks, "Is the form of Sphericity a shiningly perfect sphere?" (266) Thus she points to the danger that in turning back from likeness to original, we key from the likeness and assimilate the original to it; or, more positively put, she alerts us to the fact that the relation of original to likeness is itself a likeness and that, accordingly, Plato gives us the task of turning our dianoetic eikasia against itself. If we fail to rise to this challenge, we will find ourselves in the situation of the youthful Socrates in the first part of the Parmenides: afflicted by the "insupportable redundancy ... of 'selfpredication'" and the "Third Man" (339), we will be blocked from entering the noetic 'space' of Being. And thus blocked, we will be unable even to begin the dialectical thinking required for "a good journey and a path without obstacles" (Philebus 15c)8 in face of what Brann identifies as our greatest problem: [understanding] how the eidos drops down from the context of Being to become entangled with Nonbeing in a new and world-making way - how there can be an eidos incarnate (Phaedrus 251a). (341) It is deeply in the spirit of her appreciation of the "pedagogical generosity of the dialogues" (318) that Brann both guides us beyond the images of the sun, the line, and the cave to the "unwritten teachings" and preserves the nest of problems that the dialogues raise for those inclined to risk this reflection with her. In a summary list of "Socrates' presuppositions," she puts this "first and last, that where there is a question, an answer has already been at work, and it is our human task to recollect it." (342) Might it be the case that a heightened and sharpened inquiry into the problem of participation will itself turn into the "path" that leads the "knowing soul" into the noetic 'space' of Being and on to the One and the Dyad? To pursue this possibility - and, especially, to do so in response to the dianoetic "music" of the dialogues - would be, I think, to take up the "legacy" that Brann passes on in The Music of the Republic. 8 This phrase is drawn from Philebus 15b-c. Socrates is referring to the release from "every kind of perplexity and pathlessness" that one will gain if the issues he has just titled - namely, whether eidetic ones "truly are," how each can be the "one" that it is, and how each can be participated in by a dispersed plurality of things subject to becoming - can be "beautifully agreed on." That Socrates thus holds out hope for - or, indeed, takes as readily in reach - a resolution of the problem of participation is striking. Following Brann's recommendation (308), I quote from Seth Benardete's translation in The Tragedy and Comedy of Life: Plato's Philebus (Chicago, 1993). | {
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J. Biosci. | Vol. 29 | No. 3 | September 2004 | 235–244 | © Indian Academy of Sciences Human brain evolution, theories of innovation, and lessons from the history of technology ALFRED GIERER Max-Planck-Institute for Developmental Biology, Spemannstrasse 35, D-72076 Tübingen, Germany (Fax, 49-7071-601448; Email, [email protected]) Biological evolution and technological innovation, while differing in many respects, also share common features. In particular, the implementation of a new technology in the market is analogous to the spreading of a new genetic trait in a population. Technological innovation may occur either through the accumulation of quantitative changes, as in the development of the ocean clipper, or it may be initiated by a new combination of features or subsystems, as in the case of steamships. Other examples of the latter type are electric networks that combine the generation, distribution, and use of electricity, and containerized transportation that combines standardized containers, logistics, and ships. Biological evolution proceeds, phenotypically, in many small steps, but at the genetic level novel features may arise not only through the accumulation of many small, common mutational changes, but also when distinct, relatively rare genetic changes are followed by many further mutations. New evolutionary directions may be initiated by, in particular, some rare combinations of regulatory sections within the genome. The combinatorial type of mechanism may not be a logical prerequisite for biological innovation, but it can be efficient, especially when novel features arise out of already highly developed systems. Such is the case with the evolution of general, widely applicable capabilities of the human brain. Hypothetical examples include the evolution of strategic thought, which encompasses multiple self-representations, cognition-based empathy, meta-levels of abstraction, and symbolic language. These capabilities of biologically modern man may have been initiated, perhaps some 150,000 years ago, by one or few accidental but distinct combinations of modules and subroutines of gene regulation which are involved in the generation of the neural network in the cerebral cortex. This hypothesis concurs with current insights into the molecular biology of the combinatorial and hierarchical facets of gene regulation that underlie brain development. A theory of innovation encompassing technological as well as biological development cannot per se dictate alternative explanations of biological evolution, but it may help in adding weight and directing attention to notions outside the mainstream, such as the hypothesis that few distinct genetic changes were crucial for the evolution of modern man. 1. Phenotypic gradualism versus genotypic distinctness When Darwin (1859) proposed his evolutionary theory of the origin of species based on variation and selection according to what was later termed "fitness", he insisted that evolution was a gradual process involving many small steps: "As natural selection acts solely by accumulating slight, successive, favourable variations . . . it can act only by very short and slow steps. . . . If it could be demonstrated that any complex organism existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous successive slight modifications my theory would absolutely break down". Such comments display Darwin's bias in favour of gradualism pure, possibly motivated by the urge to disprove fundamentalist theories of biblical creationism (Mayr 1988). And yet, in the Middle Ages, the more enlightened branches of theology were already insisting on the need to interpret the story of creation in abstract terms. Thierry of Chartres proposed as early as the 12th century that God had created the elements and the laws they follow, and that everything, including life, then developed by itself according to the laws of nature (Haring 1955). Darwin was hardly more radical in his evolutionary views than was Thierry seven hundred years earlier. Nor does the assumption of distinct steps in evolution necessarily support creationism. The probability of distinct developments, though very low per individual, need not be too low to occur in large populations over many generations without the aid of miracles. At present, overly gradualistic notions remain popular in parts of the scientific community, but in fact a discusPerspectives J. Biosci. | Vol. 29 | No. 3 | September 2004 Alfred Gierer 236 sion of evolutionary mechanisms in terms of modern systems theory and molecular genetics does not map one-toone onto the traditional alternatives of gradual versus discontinuous processes. Cells and organisms are biochemical systems following the rules of non-linear molecular interactions. These, in turn, allow for sudden or very fast changes resulting from the accumulation of rapidly succeeding small steps with self-enhancing features. Furthermore, mechanisms of bifurcation and de-novo pattern formation may lead, for instance, to strikingly different developments in parts of an initially near-uniform area. Such self-organizing processes can be initiated by the gradual accumulation of certain molecules, or a gradual increase in tissue size, when passing a distinct threshold. There is, therefore, no logical need to generally infer big steps as causes for big changes. However, in light of molecular genetics, we must also consider mechanisms which may appear gradual phenotypically but which are distinct with respect to the genetic events that initiate them, as well as the corresponding explanatory logic. 2. Molecular genetics of evolutionary change There is no doubt about the significance of small quantitative changes in the evolution of higher organisms. They may result, for instance, from the accumulation of point mutations (though even a single point mutation can lead to major changes, such as sickle cell anemia resulting from a single amino acid replacement in hemoglobin). However, an essential role in evolution is also played by major genetic alterations such as duplications, combinations, and transpositions of DNA segments within the genome (see Alberts et al 2002). The segments involved may contain not only genes, parts of genes and groups of genes coding for proteins, but also regulatory sections of the genome affecting gene expression, i.e. the synthesis of specific proteins. Such changes are not inconsistent with phenotypic gradualism, but in terms of molecular genetics they could hardly be categorized as "gradual". In this context, the regulatory nucleotide sequences in the DNA deserve particular attention. Their function depends in a subtle manner on their combination and on their position within the genome. They bind regulatory proteins; acting as "transcription factors", the combinations of bound proteins regulate the activation of (mostly nearby, but under certain conditions also fairly distant) protein-coding genes (see Alberts et al 2002). Many of them are flanked by whole batteries of activating and inhibiting "cis-regulatory sequences": "Therein lies the experimental path to understanding the organization of the genomic program for development" (Arnone and Davidson 1997). The function of such sets of regulatory sequences has been compared, with good reason, to electronic microprocessing: they process the information contained in the set of regulatory proteins that characterizes the type and position of cells, as well as the stage and other developmental features of the organism, into the corresponding pattern of gene expression (figure 1). This leads to further development and eventually to the maintenance of the adult system. The network of gene regulation is certainly complex, but not without internal order. Combinatorial and hierarchical features of developmental regulation postulated some thirty years ago (see Gierer 1973) have been demonstrated and characterized by a large body of evidence. Combined into sets, regulatory sequences with activating and inhibiting functions exhibit modular as well as synergetic characteristics. A protein-coding gene can be activated in different developmental contexts, serving different functions in different subsystems. Any given phenotype is the result of the cooperation of many genes. And there are hierarchical characteristics, with certain genes controlling gross features, such as the body plan. These mechanisms are only part of a wider repertoire of developmental regulations including "post-transcriptional" control beyond gene activation, and the operation of signalling pathways via intercellular space. Various components of gene expression interact in many ways, and it is often the resultant products that then feed back into gene regulation. The network of gene expressions and gene products involved in the basic processes of embryogenesis is of almost discouraging complexity. One example is the pagefilling chart shown in a paper by twenty-five authors for the regulation of endomesodermal specification (Davidson et al 2002). And yet, the network of "microprocessing" gene regulation as illustrated in the highly simplified sketch of figure 1 is important and prototypical for developmental regulation at large: the feedback of products of gene regulation into the regulating genes allows for multiple stable states of cells with one and the same genome, and this, in turn, is the prerequisite of spatial-temporal cell differentiation in the course of the development of a multicellular organism. How are the regulatory genomic features related to evolutionary processes? This is an emerging field of research with many more questions than answers. One of the basic processes is the recruitment of existing regulatory pathways into a newly evolving context (Wilkins 2002; Pires daSilva and Sommer 2003). In the model case of the evolution of eyespots in the butterfly wing, it seems that the "co-option" of a whole regulatory network is involved (Keys et al 1999). The molecular mechanisms remain disputed, but genetic changes affecting the regulatory sequences (especially the enhancers) feature prominently in discussion. Generally, there is increasing evidence for the evolutionary role of regulatory sequences, in addition to mutations in protein-coding genes (see Tautz 2000). J. Biosci. | Vol. 29 | No. 3 | September 2004 Human brain evolution, theories of innovation, and lessons from the history of technology 237 Simple regulatory sites may evolve by point mutations alone, and sets of them could evolve consecutively, but the formation of complex arrays of protein-coding as well as of regulatory sequences may also involve duplications and transpositions of DNA-sections that give rise to new combinations within the same genome (see Alberts et al 2002). Duplicated protein-coding genes may follow different directions during further changes and acquire new functions, often involving cooperation with other sets of genes. Regulatory sections may be shifted to other positions in the genome; such an introduction into a new context can result in a novel combination of regulatory units, with modular as well as synergetic effects on specifying the proteins to be synthesized, which may entail many indirect consequences for cells and organisms. Conceivably, such accidental but distinct genetic events could, on rare occasions, initiate a new direction for evolution; the phenotypic effects may be small at the outset but the single initiating step may then be followed by many more common mutations such as nucleotide substitutions, deletions, or additions, giving gradual rise to striking effects in the long run. Figure 1. Modular organization of gene regulation. The genome contains, aside from genes coding for proteins (upper case letters A, B, etc in squares, triangles, etc), regulatory areas with binding sites (symbolized by small squares, triangles, etc) which bind regulatory proteins A–D. The set of bound sites exerts activating as well as inhibiting effects on the expression of (mostly nearby) genes. The synthesis of regulatory proteins involved in this regulation is itself regulated by the direct (C) and indirect feedback of the regulatory proteins on their own synthesis (A–D). This allows for different stable states of cell differentiation, characterized by specific combinations of regulatory proteins. These, in turn, activate and inhibit the expression of many other protein-coding genes (E, F, etc). The areas combining regulatory DNA-sequences in a modular manner may be considered as microprocessors of information on celltype, state, and position of development as contained in the specific combination of regulatory proteins, leading to the developmental regulation of gene expression. This scheme cannot encompass the spectrum of mechanisms (reviewed by Pires daSilva and Sommer 2003) that includes, for instance, cofactor binding to regulatory molecules rather than to DNA directly, and it addresses only one of the aspects of developmental regulation at large. Nevertheless, it is prototypical for its logical core which emphasizes the combinatorial characteristics and self-regulatory features of gene regulation in the course of development. J. Biosci. | Vol. 29 | No. 3 | September 2004 Alfred Gierer 238 3. Possible accidental yet singular genetic change in human brain evolution Let us now consider the chain of processes by which genes control the development of the brain and thereby give rise to its functional capabilities. The neo-cortex of man contains some hundreds of billions of neurons, covers a folded surface area of about one fifth of a square meter, consists of about six cell and fibre layers and has a thickness of a few millimeters. It is subdivided into different functional areas that are in turn structured by graded distributions of molecules as well as by an internal modular organization. Some 100,000 kilometres of neuronal fibres are involved in the connections of the neural network, many of them extending over long distances. The formation of the network is essentially specified by genes, however indirectly. In brain development, neural tissue expresses celltype-, stageand position-dependent biochemical markers that are sensed by growing neural fibres – and especially by axonal growth cones at their tips – for directional guidance, branching, and target identification. Some markers are graded and may function analogous to longitudes and latitudes in ocean navigation: "navigating" growth cones sense these signals, transduce them into their internal structures and process them according to the program of the cell of origin of the axon in order to assess the appropriate direction in which to approach the specific target position. This is one of the mechanisms of growth cone navigation that insures that a limited set of genes can organize network formation for a much larger number of fibers to a first approximation. These mechanisms imply that the formation of connections is mediated by the developmental regulation of the synthesis of neuronal proteins. A key role is expected to be played, as explained above, by sets of regulatory sequences in the genome: by interacting with regulatory proteins, the regulatory sequences contribute to organizing the developmental expression of positional markers in neural tissue. Most importantly, sets of regulatory sequences are expected to control the expression of sets of proteins that specify, in a developmentally regulated manner, the different responses of the navigating growth cones to tissue markers for directional growth and appropriate targeting. The set of growth cone proteins involved could be limited, but their developmental regulation must be intricate and complex in accordance with the complexity of the neural networks to be generated. This implies that the organization of the regulatory sections of the genomic DNA which act as microprocessors of spatio-temporal brain development is likely to be a main determinant of the network that is formed, however indirect the relation may be. The fine-tuning of connections is then caused by activity-dependent self-organization. An indirect but compelling relationship thus exists between, on the one hand, the order of the network of gene regulation (with interconnections mediated by proteinprotein and protein-DNA-interactions in the cell) and, on the other hand, the order of the real neural network (with physical connections by neuronal fibers). We are still far from decoding this relationship, despite much progress in neurogenetics. And yet, there is little doubt that regulatory sections of the genome, as presumably main determinants of how growth cone navigation and targeting are organized, are also main targets for the mutational changes that underlie brain evolution: small changes involving single nucleotides or smaller groups of nucleotides that may, in some cases, suffice to reprogram regulation, but also certain rare, major duplications, transpositions or other rearrangements of genomic DNA. The basic concept supported in this paper addresses the evolution of novel, or at least highly generalized, capabilities of the human brain. It states that such capabilities could have arisen through novel combinations of existing, possibly complex sets of regulatory sequences, followed by later, more gradual development; an example to which this concept may apply is the evolution of human cognition-based empathy (Gierer 1998). In general, the hypothesis suggests that accidental changes in the modular and synergetic organization of the network of gene regulation may affect the spatio-temporal genetic expression of proteins involved in forming the neural network; this may, in rare cases, enable the rise of novel or significantly upgraded capabilities of information processing in the brain. It seems plausible that the likelihood of such evolution through synergetic combinations of regulatory subroutines increases with the increasing 'sophistication' of the existing sets of such subroutines. This would accord with the apparently rapid evolution of human brain capabilities that led to our current species of Homo sapiens, biologically modern man, some hundred thousand years ago. 4. Generalizable capabilities of the human brain Our species is characterized by culture, that is, by the capability to generate and transfer information of increasing complexity from one generation to the next. Information generates information, such that elaborate cultures can develop and diversify even in the absence of genetic changes. Limited capacities for tradition and learned features are known in animals, and tradition-dependent tool making was a capability of hominids already some million years ago; and yet, the potential for the impressive dynamics of cultural change as it is archeologically well documented from the time of the earliest ivory sculptures (Conrad 2003) and cave paintings about 35,000 years ago up to the invention of agriculture 10,000 years ago and through to modern civilization is hardly much older than J. Biosci. | Vol. 29 | No. 3 | September 2004 Human brain evolution, theories of innovation, and lessons from the history of technology 239 some hundred thousand years. Cultures can develop independent of genetic change, but the general capability of our species for cultural dynamics must itself be based, however indirectly, on genetic determinants of human brain development and is thus a product of biological evolution. It is remarkable that the genetic analysis of modern man suggests a common origin of the entire human population of today in a small group in Africa some hundred thousand to two hundred thousand years ago. This finding suggests in turn one or a few distinct genetic changes that may have significantly advantaged this line of human evolution over others. Genetic and cultural features probably co-evolved for some time. There are no compelling reasons to assume significant genetic improvements in human brain capabilities over the last few thousand generations. The most characteristic capabilities of the human brain are related to grammatically structured, symbolic language, and strategic thought. The latter encompasses memories about remote pasts, and imagination about possible distant futures. This includes one's own possible future states and the assessment of their emotional desirability in order to choose proper strategies. Strategic thought requires the brain to contain multiple self-representations, including features of one's own actual and envisaged mental states. Furthermore, humans are capable of cognitionbased empathy – sensing others' mental states including others' emotions – which helps to predict their behaviour and thus upgrades the quality of strategic thought. However, one side effect of vicarious emotions is that they may favour cooperative and altruistic behaviour. Even in the highest animals, empathy is developed to only a rudimentary degree. Human cognition-based empathy appears to be a product of the recent evolution of Homo sapiens. It requires within one's own brain the efficient representation of actual as well as potential mental states of others, and their connection with one's own emotional centers. 5. The distinct initiation hypothesis In explaining the evolution of "higher" brain capabilities, pure gradualism is not excluded on logical grounds. And yet, the increasing evidence about highly sophisticated gene regulation leads us to apply the distinct initiation hypothesis outlined above to, in particular, the evolution of the human brain. Rare novel combinations and integrations of – predominantly regulatory – sections of the genome may have affected patterns of neuronal connections initiating, however indirectly, the evolution of new or much upgraded, widely applicable capabilities of the neural network. Such capabilities may include the levels of abstraction required to apply analytical processes to analytical processing itself; the inclusion of assessments of a person's actual and possible mental states into his or her mental state itself; the introduction, perhaps, of control processes which confine the logical intricacies and ambiguities involved in such self-applications; and the representation of possible mental states of others and their connection to one's own emotions. It is even conceivable that it was one primary genetic change that initiated the evolution of biologically modern man: the introduction of some novel but subtle feature of connectivity into the cerebral cortex at large which allowed for meta-levels of abstraction and upgraded modes of information processing. This may have set the stage for the evolution of interrelated but diverse higher capabilities of grammatically structured language, symbolic thought, strategic thought, cognition based empathy, and so forth. However, the assumption of such a master switch is not a constitutive part of the more general concepts explained above. This outlines my arguments in favour of the essential role of few distinct genetic events that initiated the evolution of innovative capabilities of the human brain. This remains a hypothesis, apparently not a mainstream one, but shared, I am sure, by others. It is consistent with the writings of Povinelli and Preuss (1995) on "important differences in how humans, great apes and other animals interpret other organisms", which suggest that "at some point in human evolution, elements of a new psychology were incorporated into existing neural systems". It is even more in line with the statement by Pääbo (2001) in an article on the human genome project that presumably "one or a few genetic accidents made human history possible – a realization that will provide us with a whole new set of philosophical challenges to think about". A profound understanding of human evolution will require advances in developmental neural biology in combination with explicit theoretical models. As discussed above, a crucial issue is the indirect relationship between the order of the network of gene regulation involved in neural development and the order of the corresponding neural network that underlies its functional capabilities. To encourage open-mindedness with respect to this direction of thought I will now, in the second part of this essay, consider biological evolution in terms of a more general concept, namely innovation, including technological innovation. 6. Biological evolution and technological change: differences and similarities It has long been observed by many authors that various aspects of technological innovation lend themselves to analysis in terms of evolutionary concepts ranging from close formal relationships to qualitative analogies and metaphors (Ziman 2000). In search of correspondences betJ. Biosci. | Vol. 29 | No. 3 | September 2004 Alfred Gierer 240 ween biological evolution and technological innovation it is tempting to consider the history of original technological ideas in evolutionary terms. Indeed, Edison's invention of the telephone, analysed in this way, suggests quasievolutionary steps (Carlson 2000). However, it turns out that the similarities to biological evolution are weak when one focuses on very early, ingenious, but unsuccessful ideas and developments such as the expansion of heated air with applications restricted to stage machinery in the theatres of first-century Alexandria, or the design of flying machines by Leonardo da Vinci in the 15th and 16 th centuries. In contrast, the economically successful prototypes of new technologies which lead to a new development at large exhibit much closer analogies to biological evolution. They correspond to a genetic change that opens up fitness advantages with the prospect of further development, and the increase of market share corresponds to the increase of the share of a genetic trait in the population. Of particular interest in this context are "long waves" of technological change such as the replacement of wood by coal as an energy source, various technologies of steel processing, and the replacement of sailing vessels by steamboats (Nakicenovic 1986; Marchetti 1988). Whereas many studies aim at recruiting biological theories of evolution to analyse technological change, my article reverses that direction: can we expect, by studying the history of technology, to approach a better understanding of biological evolution? Technological developments involve gradual improvements as well as distinct initiations. My emphasis will be on combinatorial initiation, and my first example concerns the steamship. 7. Steamships Proposals for combining steam engines and boats date back to the 17th century in Europe. Various boats were actually constructed late in the 18th century; all of them were economic failures. Only after Watt had designed and built an efficient type of steam engine, primarily applied to mining, did economic steamboats seem within reach. At the turn of the century, Symington built the "Charlotte Dundee", a steam-driven tugboat for operation on the Ford and Clyde canal in Scotland. It worked fairly well and was on the verge of economic success when the managers of the canal withdrew their permission on environmental grounds: they feared that the canal banks would be damaged. At the same time, a rich merchant purchased the monopoly for steamship traffic on the Hudson River from the State of New York – for steamships that did not yet exist. Fulton, who had seen Symington's "Charlotte Dundee" in 1801, realized the necessary combination: cooperating with the financer and holder of the steamboat monopoly; buying the most advanced steam engine made by Watt; ordering a very modern version of hull construction; implementing an advanced type of paddle wheel; and bringing all these things together in the "Clermont" in 1807 (figure 2a). Though most observers, including the financer, expected or feared that the contraption would blow up, it worked properly, made money, and initiated the age of the commercial steam ship. A scant four years later the first steamboat went up the Mississippi, "the" market section with the best opportunities at this early stage. The famous river boats – "big wheel keep on turning" – played a decisive role in developing the land near the river along more than a thousand miles. The increasing demands in turn stimulated ship-building technology, with high-pressure steam engines using fuel more efficiently. High pressure was dangerous: in fifteen years there were 35 explosions with 250 casualties. By 1816 the first steamboat built in Prussia was sailing from the Schloβ Bellevue – nowadays residence of the Bundespräsident – to the Potsdam lakes, but this was no economic success. In 1819, the "Savannah" crossed the Atlantic, still mainly dependent on sails, but with the support of a steam engine driving the paddle wheels during part of the trip. This was no economic success either – no paying passenger dared to take part in the voyage – but the feasibility of steam propulsion for ocean crossing was now confirmed. This profoundly altered the "fitness landscape" for further developments and this, in turn, increased the potential of steamboats. Two design innovations were particularly important: the use of iron instead of wood for the hull, and the screw propeller instead of the paddle wheel for propulsion. Both were combined for the first time in 1843 in the "Great Britain" (figure 2b), setting the stage for the spectacular development of ocean-ship building. Gradually, the equipment of steamboats with sails was reduced until sails were eventually abandoned, whereas improved technologies for steam propulsion, and hulls made of steel instead of iron, allowed for increases in size, speed, and luxury up to the days of the famous "Titanic" and beyond. Remarkable features in this development remind us of features of biological evolution. Initially, the new technique was no substitute for the old one. To the contrary, there was a parallel development of the most advanced constructions of sailing boats. In contrast to the strikingly non-gradual initiation of steamship development by the combination of steam engines and boats, plus the subsequent integration of the screw propeller, sailing ships developed along much more gradualistic pathways, especially if we define "gradualistic" liberally so that it includes increases in numbers of constituents such as sails and masts. The introduction to the exhibits in the excellent "Schiffahrtsmuseum" in Bremerhaven states that "the arrangement of sails was developed, in a simple way easy J. Biosci. | Vol. 29 | No. 3 | September 2004 Human brain evolution, theories of innovation, and lessons from the history of technology 241 to imitate, out of the yard-sail of medieval boats. Large boats, of course, require large sails. First, they were distributed onto more, often onto three masts. Then, the masts were elongated . . . and two sails were placed on top of each other. Later, a third and a fourth sail were added . . .". Half a century after the "Clermont"s first trip, it was the slim clippers with tall masts and very large spreads of sails that dominated the scene (figure 2c). During the California gold rush they made the trip from the East Coast to California faster and more safely around Cape Horn than was possible on the overland trip. In the 1860s spectacular speeds were reached during the annual tea race to China, and only the opening of the Suez Channel signalled the beginning of the end for the age of sailing vessels. And yet, modernized versions of sailing ships, now using steel for their hulls, were built as late as circa 1900. Some facets of ocean-ship development remind us of the biological concept of co-evolution. Just two examples: steamships encouraged the development of harbour architecture suited to large boats and allowing for coal supplies en route; such infrastructure, in turn, increased the economic efficiency of larger steamships. Steamship development encouraged the building of the Suez Channel; the Channel, in turn, gave steamships decisive advantages over sailing vessels for connecting Europe and Asia. Now I would like to come back to more formal aspects of technological development. Figure 3 shows in a logarithmic scale the penetration and saturation of the US market by steamboats. It took more than seventy years for ship propulsion by steam to reach 50% of market share. Such an extensive time scale is quite typical for major technological innovations – they often take longer than one might expect to penetrate the market. There was a phase of nearly exponential increase after Fulton's "Clermont" of 1807. Many of the associated technological developments accumulated long before that date, but only the synergetic combination of relatively mature components generated the economic success necessary to initiate an exponential "Eigendynamik". 8. Two more examples: Electricity and containers Further impressive examples in the history of technology demonstrate how the specific combination of elements into a system initiates large-scale technological development. Edison's first electric power station of 1882 in New York's Pearl Street combined dynamos driven by steam engines, sophisticated distribution systems, and the design of a functional as well as economic light bulb. This combination initiated the provision of multi-purpose electricity for nearly everybody throughout the world. In a second example, the combination of standardized containers with computerized logistics in the sixties revolutionized the distribution of goods in general, and sea transportation in particular (figure 4). Figure 2. Development of steamships: (a) Fulton's "Clermont" of 1807, the first economically successful combination of steam engine and boat. (b) The "Great Britain", built 1843–1845, combining for the first time a steam engine, iron hull and screw propeller. (c) Clipper "Republic" of 1869. These fast sailing vessels with tall masts and huge sails successfully competed with steamships on the oceans far beyond the middle of the 19th century. (Models: Deutsches Museum München; photographs: W Gierer). (a) (b) (c) J. Biosci. | Vol. 29 | No. 3 | September 2004 Alfred Gierer 242 9. Self-regulation, self-organization, self-reference A particularly interesting type of specific initiation of a new technology is the invention of feedback mechanisms that allow a system to generate the prerequisites of its own operation. It took about fifty years after Faraday's discovery that electricity can be produced with the aid of magnetism to develop a dynamo that generates its own magnetic field in order to produce electricity. It maintains a residual magnetic field at rest from which to prompt a start-up. This allows powerful fields to build up by selfenhancement. It took time to develop the Jet engine in such a way that it could generate the prerequisite of Jet propulsion – compressed air – in itself. Meeting such requirements of self-regulation and self-organization is often easy to postulate but difficult to achieve. Formally, this reminds us of the intricacies of some self-referential features of human cognition. 10. A second look at recent human evolution In attempting to apply notions and intuitions derived from technology to the evolution of human capabilities such as strategic thought and language, I am emphasizing distinct genetic effects that may lead to synergetic combinations of cues that determine and regulate brain development, thus initiating a new evolutionary direction. I am focusing especially on the period some 300,000 to 100,000 years ago that gave rise to biologically modern man. Admittedly, inferences about the importance of distinct changes during this period and about the key role of regulatory genomic sequences in such changes remain hypothetical. I do not exclude the possibility that gradualism may take us farther in explaining human evolution than I would currently suppose. I think, however, that placing too much faith in gradualism may divert our attention from the most important biological features and their determinants in the human genome. For example, it is sometimes postulated that in the course of evolution, it was the gradual increase in the size of the human brain that gave rise to its characteristic capabilities, perhaps by allowing for an increasingly greater activity-dependent self-organization of the neural network. Within a century, ship sizes increased by a factor of several times ten, and yet nobody would consider this increase to be an explanation of or for steamships; in- Figure 3. Increase of market share by steam ships (in terms of the US merchant tonnage), plotted in a logarithmic scale, according to Nakicenovic (1986) and Marchetti (1988). The initiation of commercial steamboat traffic was followed by a continuous increase. However, it took some 70 to 80 years until the market share of steamships exceeded the 50% mark, overtaking the market share of sailing vessels. Such long waves are typical for major technological changes and exhibit formal analogies to the dynamics of the spread of favourable mutations in a population. J. Biosci. | Vol. 29 | No. 3 | September 2004 Human brain evolution, theories of innovation, and lessons from the history of technology 243 stead, it was the new technology of steam propulsion that rendered large ships technically and economically feasible. Likewise, in brain evolution, it is reasonable to assume that certain upgraded capabilities of the neural network were the primary cause for increased fitness via subsequent increases in brain size. One important aspect of brain development, especially in higher organisms, is the involvement of activity-dependent processes in the formation and functioning of neural networks. Some of them display features of internal selforganization, others are driven by external – for instance visual – stimuli. However, this does not imply that genetics do not matter in understanding higher brain functions. In the course of development, the early though sometimes crude formation of the neural networks often precedes electrical activity, and is dominated by the processes of tissue patterning and axonal guidance described above. The basic order of the nervous system in the brain and its connectivity are laid down in this manner. These mechanisms contribute to speed and reliability in acquiring functional performance. They are then complemented by processes depending on electrophysiological activity that are effective for generating precise neural connections and the acuity of functions, and that allow for adaptations to changing conditions. The complementary benefits of these mechanisms support the notion that evolutionary forces themselves tend to balance their relative contributions for optimizing the biological fitness of the organism as a whole in a species-specific manner (Gierer and Mueller 1995). It is emphasized that the activity-dependent processes are by no means independent of genetic instructions. In fact, self-organizational capabilities and their outcome under normal conditions are indirectly but nevertheless crucially influenced by genetically encoded boundary conditions that determine whether, where, when and how these processes occur in the course of development. Figure 4. Container logistics. In the last four decades, the introduction of standardized containers guided by computerized logistics has revolutionized the distribution of goods in general, and of sea transportation in particular. This image records the arrival of the first container of the Sea-Land company in the harbour of Bremen, in 1966. J. Biosci. | Vol. 29 | No. 3 | September 2004 Alfred Gierer 244 11. In conclusion: a plea for open-mindedness In summary, my argument suggests that chance mutations in human evolution occasionally resulted in highly specific combinations of the subroutines of gene regulation that are involved in brain development, and that some of these led to synergetic if not qualitatively novel capabilities of the neural network. While their initial phenotypic effects were presumably small, they may have opened up a new direction of evolution to be followed by many further genetic changes. Thus, Darwin's original notion implying that phenotypic modifications of genetic variants are small is presumably correct. The emphasis on nothing but the accumulation of frequent common steps for explaining evolution would not, on the other hand, do justice to the presumably crucial role novel combinations of regulatory genomic sequences may play in specific initiations of new directions. This combinatorial hypothesis is supported by analogies with important episodes in the history of technology, and is suggested here to hold, in particular, for the evolution of some of the sophisticated capabilities of the human brain. Though one may argue about the use of hidden analogies between biological evolution and history of technology, a look at the latter may at least help somewhat to open our minds, and to broaden our perspectives in dealing with such types of questions. References Alberts B, Johnson A, Lewis J, Raff M, Roberts K and Walter P 2002 Molecular biology of the cell 4th edition, (New York: Garland Publishing Inc.) Arnone M J and Davidson E H 1997 The hardwiring of development: organization and function of genomic regulating systems; Development 124 1851–1864 Carlson W B 2000 Invention and evolution: the case of Edison's sketches of the telephone; in Technological innovation as an evolutionary process (ed.) J Ziman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) pp 137–158 Conrad N J 2003 Paleolithic ivory sculptures from southwestern Germany and the origins of figurative art; Nature (London) 426 830–832 Davidson E H et al 2002 A genomic regulatory network for Development; Science 295 1669–1678 Darwin C 1859 On the origin of species by means of natural selection (London: Murray) pp 71, 189 Gierer A 1973 Molecular models and combinatorial principles in cell differentiation and morphogenesis; Cold Spring Harb. Symp. Quant. Biol. 38 951–961 Gierer A 1998 Networks of gene regulation, neural development and the evolution of general capabilities such as human empathy; Z. Naturforsch. C53 (Special issue: Natural organisms, artificial organisms, and their brains) 716–722 Gierer A and Mueller C M 1995 Development of layers, maps and modules; Curr. Topics Neurobiol. 5 91–97 Haring N 1955 The creation of the world according to Thierry; Archives d'Histoire Doctrinal et Litteraire de Moyen Age 146– 169 Keys D N, Lewis D L, Selegue J E, Pearson B J, Goodrich L V, Johnson R L, Gates J, Scott M P and Carrol S B 1999 Recruitment of a hedgehog regulatory circuit in Butterfly eyespot evolution; Science 283 532–534 Marchetti C 1988 The future; in Synergetics and dynamic instabilities (eds) C Caglioti and H Haken (Amsterdam: North Holland) pp 400–416 Mayr E 1988 Toward a new philosophy of biology (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press) pp 170; 410–411 Nakicenovic N 1986 Patterns of change: Technological substitution and long waves in the United States (Working paper 86-13, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria) Pääbo S 2001 The human genome and our view of ourselves; Science 291 1219–1220 Pires daSilva A and Sommer R J 2003 The evolution of signalling pathways in animal development; Nature Rev. Genet. 4 39–49 Povinelli D J and Preuss T M 1995 Theory of mind: Evolutionary history of a cognitive specialization; Trends Neurosci. 18 418–424 Tautz D 2000 Evolution of transcriptional regulation; Curr. Opin. Genet. Dev. 10 575–579 Wilkins A S 2002 The evolution of developmental pathways (Sunderland: Sinauer Associates) Ziman J M 2000 Technological innovation as an evolutionary process (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press) | {
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Bosnia Dai ly, September 8 , 2008 Coming to Grips with the Queer Festival and Deeper Concerns There has been a great deal of talkabout the upcoming Queer Fes-tival in Sarajevo. However, the discussion has taken on a bitter tone because some have made much of the fact that the organizers plan to hold the festival during the month of Ramadan. To hold the festival during that time, according to some pious Muslims, is a blasphemous act, one that is rude and disrespectful towards those of the faith. Of course, we must not forget that this festival is following on the heels of another festival, the Sarajevo Film Festival. A few films touched on the subject of homosexuality (LA LEON, 2007), but I do not remember hearing much, if any, disapproval of screening films of the gay and lesbian genre. Perhaps the festival's international acclaim, it not being held during Ramadan, and the genre's thin representation had something to do with the lack of criticism. What I find remarkable about the upcoming festival is not when it will be held, but that it will be held; that members of various sexual communities, including the gay and lesbian community of Sarajevo (and, no doubt, many from the "straight" community), have united to put on a queer festival as a public event. Unless the gay and lesbian community is different from the rest of the population of Sarajevo, it is composed of many who also consider themselves Muslim. Surely they feel no less religious, no less Muslim, than those heterosexual members of the faith who drink alcohol and smoke cigarettes at City Pub while hearing the call to pray from Gazi-Husrevbey or who engage in "illicit" sexual behavior at home while the parents stroll Ferhadija looking for sweets. Of course, these are not the same people who criticize the queer festival in the media, but they could be their sons and daughters, nephews and nieces. Perhaps religiosity and sexuality are parallel planes of our lives that sometimes collide whether we like it or not. This aspect of our all too human lives is not about to go away any time soon. When all is said and done, however, it is not the shock value of the festival and the debate about its timing that should exhaust our attention. We should also think about how people struggle to reconcile their sexual orientation with their religion, with their being gay or lesbian and Muslim; and how members of the Muslim community struggle to find it within themselves to embrace members of their own faith whose sexual orientation they disapprove of as unbecoming of a Muslim. Perhaps the talk about the festival is just a reflection of those deeper concerns. Some do not want Bosnia to be a tolerant society when it comes to sexuality. They accept the presence of ethnic politics, but homosexuality, for example, is something they cannot agree to. Yet if Bosnia is to be known once again for its diversity and tolerance, its people must remember that an open society not only allows speech and assembly that it likes and when it likes it, but that it allows speech and assembly of that which it dislikes and at those times when it disapproves of those words and gatherings the most. Clearly, those critical of the festival have taken advantaged of this permissive environment in voicing their dissent. But what is also notable is the fact that the state has not seen fit to pass laws restricting events like the queer festival. So festival supporters and opponents alike have come face-to-face with what it means to live in a somewhat liberal, albeit fragile, democracy. Its fragility, however, is inherent because individuals ultimately need to engage in dialogue to smooth over differences and to work with each other's sensibilities. It is never an easy path, and at times it brings out the worst in people. In this case, perhaps some of those who think of themselves as pious Muslims have taken up the chauvinism of heterosexuality. Even so, it is likely that the supporters and opponents of the festival will eventually come to an agreement over how they can work and celebrate their faith together. However, the inner struggle that people have over their religiosity and sexuality, as well as how their religious community will accept them, will take much longer to resolve. MAKE PHONE CALLS FIVE TIMES CHEAPER! American-Bosnian system AirABA provides citizens and companies with two to three times cheaper international phone calls. " no subscription " no special connection Be with us today! Contact us: 061 482 426, 063 991 643 By Rory J. Conces, Department of Philosophy and Religion, University of Nebraska at Omaha Fulbright Scholar, University of Pristina, Kosovo | {
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Rosaria Egidi • Guido Bonino (Eds.) Fostering the Ontological Turn Gustav Bergmann (1906-1987) P h i l o s o p h i s c h e A n a l y s e P h i l o s o p h i c a l A n a l y s i s Herausgegeben von / Edited by Herbert Hochberg • Rafael Hüntelmann • Christian Kanzian Richard Schantz • Erwin Tegtmeier Band 28 / Volume 28 Rosaria Egidi • Guido Bonino (Eds.) Fostering the Ontological Turn Gustav Bergmann (1906-1987) Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available in the Internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de. North and South America by Transaction Books Rutgers University Piscataway, NJ 08854-8042 [email protected] United Kingdom, Ireland, Iceland, Turkey, Malta, Portugal by Gazelle Books Services Limited White Cross Mills Hightown LANCASTER, LA1 4XS [email protected] Livraison pour la France et la Belgique: Librairie Philosophique J.Vrin 6, place de la Sorbonne; F-75005 PARIS Tel. +33 (0)1 43 54 03 47; Fax +33 (0)1 43 54 48 18 www.vrin.fr 2008 ontos verlag P.O. Box 15 41, D-63133 Heusenstamm www.ontosverlag.com ISBN 978-3-86838-008-8 2008 No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, microfilming, recording or otherwise without written permission from the Publisher, with the exception of any material supplied specifically for the purpose of being entered and executed on a computer system, for exclusive use of the purchaser of the work Printed on acid-free paper FSC-certified (Forest Stewardship Council) This hardcover binding meets the International Library standard Printed in Germany by buch bücher dd ag Contents Introduction 9 Categories of a realistic ontology Fred Wilson Universals, Particulars, Tropes and Blobs 15 Herbert Hochberg The Matter of Particulars 45 Francesco Martinello Bare Particulars: Some Remarks 65 Pasquale Frascolla On Bergmann's Reading of the "Tractatus" Ontology 81 Erwin Tegtmeier Complexes, Nexus, and Functions in the Middle and the Late Bergmann 99 Guido Bonino Bergmann on Exemplification 109 World, mind, and relations Greg Jesson Is Intentionality more like Hunting or more like Hitting? Bergmann on Skepticism and Knowing 125 Rosaria Egidi Bergmann's Critique of Representationalism 147 Francesco Orilia The Problem of Order in Relational States of Affairs: A Leibnizian View 161 Alberto Voltolini Singular Propositions as Possible States of Affairs 187 Venanzio Raspa "... The most memorable Don Quixote of a great cause". Bergmann's Critique of Meinong 201 Metaphysics of space and time Laird Addis Particulars as Areas and Durations 231 L. Nathan Oaklander Is there a Difference between Absolute and Relative Space? 243 Giuliano Torrengo Tenseless Time vs. Tensed Truthmakers 253 Fabio Minocchio – Andrea Pagliardi Some Troubles with the Specious Present in Bergmann's Ideal Language 261 Venanzio Raspa "... THE MOST MEMORABLE DON QUIXOTE OF A GREAT CAUSE" BERGMANN'S CRITIQUE OF MEINONG* Abstract. At first, I explain how Bergmann reads Meinong. As regards his method, Bergmann's stated aim is to examine Meinong's thought through all the stages of its development; but he is very selective in choosing exactly what to consider, not just within each of Meinong's texts, but equally among his texts – indeed he completely ignores Meinong's mature works. Moreover, he often alters Meinong's thought by translating it into his foil ontology. As regards the content, Bergmann interprets Meinong as a reist and a nominalist. I try to show that such a view is not correct. I then discuss this interpretation by focusing on which Meinong Bergmann reads, that is, which writings he refers to and at the same time which of Meinong's theories he criticizes. I sketch the four phases of the development of Meinong's thought distinguished by Bergmann: his first theory of relations, the theory of the objects of higher order, of objectives, and finally object theory. I present Bergmann's critique and compare his distinction of different degrees of independence, which establish differences of status among categories of existents, with Meinong's distinction between kinds of being. Finally, taking into account also Meinong's mature work, I offer an assessment of Bergmann's proposal to rethink object theory. Considering Meinong's theory of incomplete objects, I show that Bergmann would have found in Meinong an ally not only in the battle against representationalism, as he maintains, but also in that against nominalism. In an article on the 'Meinong' of Gustav Bergmann, Rosaria Egidi expressed a desideratum concerning the need for «reconstructing the arguments in Bergmann's critique [of Meinong] in order to assess their soundness and their peculiarities compared to other interpretative perspectives»1. Recently, in an article devoted to some aspects of Bergmann's analysis of Meinongian ontology, Guido Bonino remarked that, apart from a few ex- * Bergmann's works are quoted from the Collected Works (2003-2004); Meinong's works, except the first edition of Über Annahmen (1902), are quoted from the Alexius Meinong Gesamtausgabe (1968-1978). The following abbreviations will be used: CW = G. Bergmann, Collected Works R = G. Bergmann, Realism GA = Alexius Meinong Gesamtausgabe. Translations are mine, unless indicated otherwise; references to English translations appear in square brackets. 1 Egidi, 2005, p. 55. 202 ceptions2, «[i]n spite of its being often mentioned in Meinongian bibliographies, it does not seem that Bergmann's painstaking analysis of certain selected themes of Meinong's views produced a great impact on Meinongian studies»3. Here, I will only partially meet the desideratum of examining the arguments in Bergmann's critique of Meinong: firstly because, just as Egidi's and Bonino's articles are not exhaustive – the former revolving essentially on the issue of representationalism, the latter on Meinong's reism –, neither will be my contribution, wose aim is simply to add another piece to the puzzle; secondly because, although I will attempt to provide an assessment of Bergmann's reading of Meinong, I will not compare it with standard interpretations of Meinongian philosophy. I will proceed as follows: first (1) I am going to explain how Bergmann reads Meinong; subsequently, (2) I will point out which Meinong Bergmann reads, that is, which writings he refers to and at the same time which of Meinong's theories he criticizes; finally, (3) I will propose a brief assessment, by taking into account Meinong's mature work, which Bergmann completely ignored. 1. How does Bergmann read Meinong? Besides writing about him more generally throughout the whole volume, Bergmann deals specifically with Meinong in the fourth part of Realism, where he systematizes his ontological conceptions (some developments and reassessments of which may be found in later essays and in his posthumous New Foundations of Ontology)4. He gives a strong interpretation of Meinongian ontology – I would almost say a violent one – both as regards its interpretative method and its content. 1.1. What is Bergmann's interpretative method? The method is clearly explained by the author himself under three different headings: the development of Meinong's thought, his style and his terminology5. (a) To begin with, Bergmann remarks that Meinong's thought in ontology is not uniform, but scattered with «breaks and new starts»: bet- 2 Cf. Barber, 1966; 1970; 1971; Grossmann, 1974. 3 Bonino, 2006, p. 240. 4 Cf. Bergmann, 1992; 2003: CW II, pp. 309-369; on which cf. Hochberg, 1994, pp. 9 ff.; 2001. 5 Cf. R, pp. 340-343. 203 ween his first and final ontology there were two intermediate stages, which means that we have four ontologies overall. Therefore, Meinong's thought needs to be considered through each step of its development. (b) As for Meinong's style, Bergmann defines it a «diffuse style»: Meinong purportedly could not state «in the right way and in the right context» the distinctions he points out. He is forever prone to pursue phenomenological butterflies, sometimes under the goad of a central motive that has recently emerged, more often just for the pleasures of the chase. One wishes he had instead taken the time and the trouble to find out whether and how what he says at the moment jibes with what he has said earlier. (R, p. 342) Moreover, unlike Brentano, Meinong employs ordinary language instead of an ideal one. Therefore, on one hand, Bergmann ends up neglecting entire portions of Meinong's work written in such a diffuse style; on the other hand, he lays out everything in an ordered form, imposing «a systematic notation». Finally, (c) according to Bergmann, «Meinong's terminology is obscure and eccentric» (R, p. 342); therefore, he adopts his own terminology – which, needless to say, he believes to be neither obscure nor eccentric. For all these reasons, (d) Bergmann feels entitled to express himself rather freely, by saying «some things which he [Meinong] does not say at all and some others, which he does say, very differently» (R, p. 343). Actually, despite language differences, Bergmann is hardly more accessible reading than Meinong, due partly to the complexity of his way of arguing, filled with lengthy analyses and so focused on details that the wider picture can easily be lost, and partly to the fact that his language often diverges from the standard scholarly terminology6. Yet, I think it is important to stress a difference in style between our two authors, which mirrors a difference in their ways of thinking and which we can characterize as an opposition between a systematic approach and an aporetic one. In Realism, Bergmann gives an outline of an ontological system, dubbed as foil, and he tries to show in which respects it is preferable to alternative ontologies such as the antifoil, the prototype, and the things-ontologies of Brentano and Meinong. In general, both as he criticizes his opponents and as he advances his theses, Bergmann's statements are sharp and resolute. Meinong's style, on the other hand, is aporetic besides being «diffuse»: he often puts forward tentative theses, which are later to be fully worked out 6 Bonino – Torrengo, 2004, pp. 7-8 and Egidi, 2005, p. 56 see in Bergmann's writing, in his way of arguing and terminology one of the main reasons for the limited diffusion of his thought. 204 or entirely replaced; he often smoothes out expressions which might look clear-cut and uncompromising with phrases such as 'so to speak' (sozusagen), 'if anything' (womöglich), 'in favourable circumstances' (unter Umstände), 'at the very best' (günstigenfalls) and the like, or else he says that the present state of research does not allow us to be more precise on a certain subject. Meinong does not work out his ontology into an accomplished system: as Bergmann correctly pointed out, he builds up his ideas through progressive additions, refinements and reworkings. The systematic sketch appearing in the "Selbstdarstellung" (1921) is aimed at giving a general introduction to his philosophy rather than at organizing it as a system. Meinong himself presents his research as a philosophy «from below», proceeding from given facts, and not as a system7. Why did I refer to Bergmann's interpretation as violent? First of all, because he often alters Meinong's thought by translating it into his own ontology, the foil. The term 'foil' refers both to the background – which is part of the language requirements of a comparative ontology – and to the contrast, the yardstick for evaluating an ontology: Meinong's ontology is precisely examined and judged by the yardstick provided by the foil; Meinong's language is translated into the language of the foil; the latter, in turn, arises from an ontology which is far from neutral – if any philosophy can be neutral. Secondly, the violence lies also in Bergmann's selection of Meinongian works. We know that Bergmann intends to consider Meinong's thought through all the stages of its development. Such an approach is correct, yet, as we will see, Bergmann does it by means of a selection not just within each of Meinong's texts, but equally among his texts, whereby he completely ignores those written after the second edition of Über Annahmen (1910), corresponding to the mature stage of Meinong's thought, that is, Über Möglichkeit und Wahrscheinlichkeit (1915) and Über emotionale Präsentation (1917). The former is widely regarded as Meinong's main work – not just because of its size – whereas the latter was regarded by the author himself as his most important writing8. As we said earlier, though, Bergmann's interpretation is a strong one not just because of the way he reads Meinong, but equally as regards its content. Now, what is the image of Meinong that he presents us? 7 Cf. Meinong, 1921: GA VII, p. 42; cf. also p. 4. For a critical analysis of the interpretation that Meinong gives of his own philosophical research see Manotta, 2005. 8 Cf. Doris Meinong's Preface to Meinong, 1923: GA III, p. 473. 205 1.2. What image of Meinong does Bergmann present us? Meinong's goal was to work out the object theory as an a priori science, aimed at accounting for the totality of objects. Object theory is meant to be a science that deals with objects as such and with objects in their totality9, a science combining an abstract a priori perspective on objects, which is typical of mathematics, and an aspiration to the maximum possible extension and generalization, which has always been peculiar to metaphysics. Conversely, according to Bergmann, there really are no objects in Meinong's ontology – we thus have an object theory without objects, which is why he never uses the term 'Gegenstandstheorie'10; there are no complexes either, and consequently no facts. All this can seem odd, but it is exactly the conclusion that Bergmann draws after comparing Meinong's ontology with his own foil and translating Meinong's language into the foil language. The fundamental categories of the foil are things, facts and subsistents. In the foil, all complexes are facts, while all simples are things. Things are divided into particulars and universals. Particulars are bare particulars, that is, they are devoid of any nature and differ from each other only numerically. Insofar as they are things, universals are simple, they account for properties and may be possessed by several objects. On the contrary, ordinary things are complexes, and thus they are facts. However, things are not the only constituents of facts, but the latter have at least one other necessary constituent which Bergmann calls "nexus" of exemplification. A fact is made up of things connected by a nexus; the latter belongs to the category of subsistents, and is therefore not homogeneous with the elements it connects, i.e., universals with each other and with particulars. A peculiar character of the nexus is that it requires no further entities in order to be connected with the things it connects; by this claim, Bergmann averts Bradley's infinite regress11. Bergmann holds as true what he calls the 'principle of exemplification', according to which there is no universal which is not exemplified by a particular, and there is no particular which does not exemplify at least a quality. For Colour as genus to exist, it must be exemplified by a given colour; for this colour to exist, it must be exemplified by a given particular12. 9 Cf. Meinong, 1904: GA II, pp. 485, 486 [1960, pp. 78, 79]. 10 Cf. R, p. 341, fn. 10, p. 344. 11 Cf. R, pp. 4-14. 12 Cf. R, p. 360. Cf. also R, p. 88: «A universal need not be separable. In the foil, the Principle of Exemplification makes particulars and universals equally inseparable from 206 Hence, «[f]acts are independent in a sense in which things are not» (R, p. 43): facts are – in Bergmann's language – independent2, whereas things (particulars and universals) are dependent2. Yet, it is not necessary that a given particular exemplify that specific colour; in order to have a fact (e.g., a coloured particular) a nexus is needed. Therefore, things show a certain independence1, while nexus are dependent1. As Bergmann himself states, Realism may be portrayed as a passionate battle against three philosophical positions: nominalism, reism and representationalism13. Against these views, he supports realism, which he conceives as twofold: realism1, that is the doctrine that there are universals, is opposed to nominalism and reism; realism2, which holds that some things are not mental, is opposed to representationalism and idealism14. It is against the background of this basic framework that Bergmann reads and criticizes Meinong. According to Bergmann, in Meinong's ontology there is nothing but things, either physical or mental. These are conceived in two ways. On one hand, they are perfect particulars, that is, qualified particulars, and not ordinary objects, which are complex. On the other hand, the entities of Meinong's ontology are collections of particulars, which Bergmann calls 'cryptoclusters', and which Meinong would mistakenly see as objects15. This, in Bergmann's opinion, makes him a reist, although not an extreme one such as Brentano. Reism is the conception viewing all beings as things, things as simple and nexus as non-existent. Meinong fell just short of breaking the bonds of reism, and that is, according to Bergmann, one of his glories16. Representationalism holds that beings which minds come to know depend on minds themselves, and that there exists a middle term between mental entities and their intentions, that is, extra-mental beings. Thus, the connection between the First (the mental world) and the Second (the physical world) rests on a Third (the world of ideas). Even though representationalism affects the earliest of Meinong's ontologies, Bergmann argues, each other»; Bergmann, 1960: CW II, p. 69: «None of us is ever presented either with an individual that is not qualified or with a character (quality) that is not exemplified by an individual». 13 Cf. R, p. 340. 14 Cf. R, p. 22. Cf. also Bergmann, 1963: CW II, p. 77: «Idealism holds that all entities are mental; materialism, that they are all nonmental. Only realism2 sides with common sense, asserts that (1) some entities are mental, some nonmental». 15 Cf. R, pp. 335-337. 16 Cf. R, p. 12; cf. also R, pp. 338, 354. 207 he eventually comes very close «to throwing off the shackles of representationalism»17. Bergmann can therefore regard Meinong as a valid ally in the battle he has launched against representationalism – which leads to idealism – and for a realistic2 ontology. Meinong supposedly reaches conclusions that are strictly compatible with a realistic ontology (i.e., with the foil); at the same time, his arguments are not always correct and he eventually fails to construct a true ontological alternative to representationalism. This happens, as Bergmann has it, because Meinong's anti-representationalism is affected by nominalism. Bergmann considers nominalism as the doctrine claiming that there are no universals, only particulars18; properties themselves are particular and not universal – more precisely, perfect particulars, mutually connected through a homogeneous nexus. According to Bergmann, Meinong's nominalism is extreme. Despite these shortcomings, he was however able to uphold an ontology that is «genuinely nonrepresentational and realistic2 in structure», «free from the absurdities of idealism». Herein lies his glory; the way he fought for this cause makes him «the most memorable Don Quixote of a great cause» (R, pp. 339, 340). I will not discuss representationalism; instead, I will say something on Meinong's "reism" and especially about his "nominalism". Let us now get into the details and attempt to answer the second question we asked in the beginning. 2. Which Meinong does Bergmann read? Some help towards answering that question may come from Bergmann himself: he devoted the whole of chapter twenty in part four of Realism to reconstructing the development of Meinong's ontological thought, where, as previously said, he identifies four different stages. Actually, some claims by Bergmann seem to contradict such a scheme: in part two, he distinguishes only two Meinongian ontologies, «the one with which he started and the one over which he died» – a claim that he repeats later on19. But in order to understand Meinong's eventual ontology, a refinement is required, which just consists in considering «two intermediate stages, each marked by the emergence of a central motive» (R, p p. 341). By doing so, 17 R, p. 139; cf. also R, p. 340. 18 Cf. R, pp. 22, 49, 86, 142. Cf. also Bergmann, 1958: CW I, p. 325. 19 Cf. R, pp. 139, 340. 208 Bergmann carries out what he had previously stated about his interpretative method, yet at the same time he does something more: although his alleged purpose is not to write a "factual history", but a "structural history", that is, to give a rational reconstruction and not a genetic one, when he reads Meinong he tries to pay attention to the chronological succession of the texts. 2.1. The first three ontologies The first ontology may be found in 1877 and 1882 Hume-Studien. At this stage, Meinong's interests are mainly psychological in character, or else, as Bergmann has it, «he was then above all and to the virtual exclusion of everything else concerned with the assay of contents» (R, pp. 399-400), which are all mental. Meinong is still a representationalist. He does not distinguish – as he will later acknowledge himself20 – between content and object, that is, in Bergmann's language, between cores and their intentions. Even though he speaks about representational contents and representational objects, Meinong understands both as mental. Relations – which Bergmann calls 'connections'21 – are likewise all mental. It is true that Meinong sorts them into 'real' and 'ideal', but these terms have not the same meaning as in his later writings, when they refer to two different kinds of being – Bergmann writes: «levels of existing» (R, p. 403) and this expression implies a precise interpretation. In the first ontology, there is only one kind of being, hence 'real' and 'ideal' refer to two different modes in which relations arise. Both ideal and real relations are mental, but while ideal relations (of resemblance, identity, compatibility, comparison, cause and effect) subsist among representational contents, and are produced22, real relations are founded on mental states (they subsist between the act of representing and the representational contents, or between the foundations and the relation built on these), and are perceived23. Connections are the major innovation of the first ontology: according to Bergmann, the early 20 Cf. Meinong, p. 1899: GA II, p. 381 [1978, p. 141]. 21 Bergmann calls Meinong's Relation 'connection' and reserves the word 'relation' for his own use (cf. R, p. 344). From here on, if there is no risk of confusion, 'Relation' is translated by 'relation', otherwise the German word is used; the same holds for 'Komplex' and 'complex'; 'connection' appears in Bergmann's quotations or arguments. 22 Cf. Meinong, 1882: GA II, pp. 42-43, 128, 142, 155. 23 Meinong, 1882: GA II, pp. 137-142. Cf. also R, p. 410: «They [scil. all connections] are either ideal1 or real1, depending on whether or not the mind has produced them out of other contents». 209 Meinong «does not dialectically consider physical objects», but he «admits the proposition that there are physical objects» (R, p. 401); Meinong's connections are internal connections among nonmental particulars, which are imported into the mind and given the ontological status of mental particulars24. The second ontology wholly emerges in "Über Gegenstände höherer Ordnung und deren Verhältnis zur inneren Wahrnehmung" (1899). The transition has been gradual. Bergmann skips over intermediate steps – his purpose being, as usual, structural rather than merely historical –, but he understands very well the major significance of the theory of relations in the development of Meinongian ontology. This theory, which Meinong had worked on repeatedly over the previous seventeen years, represents the underlying thread of his writings up to 1899. In Bergmann's opinion, the transition to the second ontology is prompted by two innovations. The first one is the distinction between content and object, that is, in his language, between core and intention. According to the new point of view, he says, «[t]he former is mental; the latter, physical»25. Now, the mental character of contents is explicitly stated by Meinong, but the claim that «all intentions exist» does not fully make sense of the development of his thought – unless we interpret 'exist' in a way which is not the same as Meinong's. Following Twardowski26, Meinong puts forward two arguments to support the distinction between content and object: the first concerns their existence, that is to say, the content exists even though the object does not – as in the case of an ideal relation, a mathematical object or a fictional object –; the second concerns their nature, as the object of an idea has some properties – Meinong gives the example of something blue, hot or heavy – which can by no means inhere in the content, as this cannot in turn be blue, hot or heavy27. Bergmann only considers the second argument and ignores the first, in the context of which Meinong introduces a classification of non-existing objects. Yet Bergmann regards as the second innovation (giving rise to the second Meinongian ontology) precisely what he seems to be neglecting, i.e., the notion of ideal object (idealer Gegenstand), which he calls 'ideal particular'28, that is, an object of higher order 24 Cf. R, p. 405. 25 R, p. 409; cf. also R, p. 400. 26 Cf. Twardowski, 1894, pp. 30-31 [1977, pp. 27-28]. 27 Cf. Meinong, 1899: GA II, pp. 382-84 [1978, pp. 141-142]. 28 Cf. R, p. 410. For the reasons why Bergmann translates 'Gegenstand' with 'particular', cf. R, p. 344. 210 involving the introduction of a second kind of being. According to Meinong, objects of higher order are characterized by an «intrinsic nonindependence»29, because they can only be thought of in reference to other objects, on which they are built. Objects of higher order include relations (like the difference between two objects) and complexions (like a melody)30. They can be both ideal, like the relation of similarity between two things, and real, like the combination between a colour and an extension. The notion of ideal is linked to a specific kind of being, 'subsistence', which is neither physical nor psychical; while both the physical and the psychical are connected to the kind of being that Meinong calls 'existence', that is, to being temporally determined. Therefore, according to the new view, all relations of the first ontology (either ideal or real) are real, since they are all mental. More precisely, what can exist is real, what can subsist is ideal31. This means that Meinong identifies neither real objects with existent objects nor ideal objects with subsistent ones. Bergmann ignores the definition of 'ideal' and 'real' by means of the concept of possibility and writes: «A real particular has Dasein (ist da). An ideal particular has Bestand (besteht)» (R, p. 263). Instead, according to Meinong, an object is real if its nature allows it to exist, independently of whether it actually exists or not; in this sense, reality is not limited to actual existence in the present, but it includes also the past and the future32. Moreover, as Meinong explains in a later writing, what subsists is ideal, but not all that is ideal subsists: again, he calls those objects 'ideal' which by nature cannot exist but can only subsist; this does not exclude that there are ideal objects which actually do not even subsist33. With ideal particulars, Bergmann claims, Meinong preserves both reism – since the new entity is a particular – and the internal character of relations, for an ideal relation obtains necessarily as a result of the nature of its inferiora34. Presumably, although he makes no explicit reference to it, Bergmann has in mind a page35 where Meinong proposes the example of a comparison between two colours, A and B, and writes: 29 Meinong, 1899: GA II, p. 386 [1978, p. 144]. 30 For lexical uniformity, I use the term 'complex' (Komplex) instead of 'complexion' (Komplexion). 31 Cf. Meinong, 1899: GA II, pp. 394, 395 [1978, p. 150]. 32 Cf. Meinong, 1899: GA II, p. 457 [1978: 192-193]. 33 Cf. Meinong, 1910: GA IV, pp. 63-64, 74 [1983, pp. 51-52, 58]. 34 Cf. R, p. 410. 35 Cf. Meinong, 1899: GA II, p. 398 [1978, p. 152]. 211 The Aand the B-idea participate at any rate, in the whole process. This can only mean that both ideas enter into a certain real relation with each other. The operation aimed at producing the relation brings about, under sufficiently favourable conditions, a new idea, namely the idea of the difference, naturally not of the difference in general, but of the specific difference between A and B. Here, Meinong is speaking of the difference as a particular. It must be remarked, however, that he refers to a real relation between ideas (Vorstellungen), and not to the ideal relation of difference subsisting between the objects A and B. An ideal relation diverges from a real one in one important respect: it follows necessarily from a given set of inferiora; if A and B are different once then they will always be different, they must be, and we understand "must" in the sense of logical necessity which is established, on the one hand, by the characteristics [nature, Beschaffenheit] of A and B and, on the other hand, by the character [essence, Wesen] of difference. Meinong does not yet differentiate the production of ideas (Vorstellungsproduktion) having other ideas as their inferiora from the foundation (Fundierung) of ideal relations, understood as the necessary relation between an ideal superius and its inferiora36. It is because of this ambiguity that Bergmann can write: Structurally, Meinong's connections are internal connections of the Second; imported into the First, where they were given ontological status; then, without losing this status, re-exported into the Second. (R, p. 410) The third innovation, leading to the third ontology, is the theory of objective (Objektiv), which is introduced in the first edition of Über Annahmen (1902)37. The theoretical means to conceive the objective are offered by the essay on objects of higher order. Indeed, according to Meinong, an objective is an object of higher order, but it is of a different kind than a relation or a complex. An objective is the object of a judgement or of an assumption, not of an idea; it can be true or false, if it is true it subsists, and if it subsists it is a fact38. How does Bergmann translate Meinong's theory in his own language? He takes the objective as an object of higher order and defines it as «an ideal particular compounded out of a nature which is a proposition and 36 The distinction is made in Über Annahmen (1902, pp. 8-9), where Meinong writes that Rudolf Ameseder called his attention to such «inexactness» (p. 8 and fn. 4). Cf. Ameseder, 1901, pp. 6-9 and Meinong, 1910: GA IV, pp. 16, 251-252 [1983, pp. 18, 182]; on this topic cf. Raspa, 2005, pp. 112-114. 37 Cf. R, pp. 413, 415, 416. 38 Cf. Meinong, 1902, pp. 189; 1910: GA IV, p. 69 [1983, p. 55]. 212 either ex or nonex»39. Here 'ex' stands for existence and 'nonex' for nonbeing40, both «do the jobs of Frege's True and False» (R, p. 364); indeed «[a] proposition combines with ex or nonex depending on whether the sentence which stands for it is true or false» (R, p. 357). The objective satisfies the need to represent states of affairs and, by means of nonex, it accounts for problems like non-veridical perception or false belief. However, Bergmann thinks that Meinong lacks an adequate notion of fact, because he neither has the notion of nexus nor does he make a clear distinction between things and complexes. Here it should be recalled that, according to Bergmann, things are simple and only facts are complex. In Bergmann's opinion, Meinong's is not a complex ontology (like his own), but a function ontology, which suffers from two major inaccuracies and two fundamental inadequacies. The first inadequacy is nominalism, the other is «Meinong's failure to recognize the ontological status of functions»41. The two inaccuracies are the «nature inaccuracy» and the «function inaccuracy»42. The latter and the second inadequacy are strictly connected with Bergmann's interpretation of Meinong's Relationen and Objektive. First I shall deal with them, and then I will discuss nature inaccuracy and nominalism. Bergmann starts his reasoning43 with an example, which also shows how the ideal language works. Two tones, c1 and e1, are connected into the fact that 'c1 is higher than e1'. This situation can be differently expressed in different ontologies. In Meinong's ontology – he says – there are the two particulars c1 and e1, a Relation, which he writes as (c1; e1), and an Objektiv, written as (c1; (c1; e1); e1); the latter respectively take the roles of the connection and of the fact; they are particulars too, which means that they are (i) independent, (ii) simple and, of course, (iii) not universal. Let us examine first Bergmann's reading of Meinong's Relation or connection (see above fn. 21). (iii) A connection (c1; e1) is a particular if, and only if, given another connection (c2; e2), whose inferiora c2 and e2 are grounding the same pitches as c1 and e1, it is different than the latter. Since this is precisely the case in Meinong's ontology, then connections are particulars. This result is important for the rest of Bergmann's argument. (i) As for its 39 R, p. 415; cf. also R, pp. 355-356 and 361: «To be an ideal particular and to be one of higher order is one and the same». 40 Cf. R, pp. 354, 355. 41 R, p. 360 and fn. 54; cf. also R, p. 339. 42 Cf. R, pp. 336-337, 353, 371-372. 43 Cf. R, pp. 344-348; on which cf. Bonino, 2006, pp. 254 ff. 213 independence, we know that a connection (c1; e1) as an object of higher order is built upon other objects which are its indispensable basis. This means, according to Bergmann's reading, not only that unless the inferiora c1 and e1 were there, the superius (c1; e1) would not be there (and conversely), but also that unless the inferiora are what they are, the superius would not be what it is (and conversely). It seems then not easy to show the independence of Meinong's Relationen, but a help comes from the previous argument: (c1; e1) is a particular insofar as it has a nature, which neither nexus nor any other subsistents of the foil have; hence, (c1; e1) is neither a nexus nor another subsistent, and it is also not dependent in the sense in which the latter are (i.e., dependent1). The argument is not yet definitive, it has to be completed with (ii) the simplicity proof of the connection (c1; e1). If (c1; e1) were a fact, it would be complex, that is, it would consist of c1, e1 and a further entity; but then a connection between the former and this entity is required, and so on in an infinite regress. If (c1; e1) is not a nexus, Bradley's regress cannot be averted. Without nexus there is no fact, but at the very best a collection; and if a connection is neither a nexus nor a fact, it can only be a thing, that is a particular, which is as such simple, independent1 and not universal. The whole argument clearly presupposes the foil's ontology. With regard to objectives, as these are objects of higher order, Bergmann thinks that what has been previously said about Relationen holds for them as well. In fact, he says that an objective is connected with its inferiora as (c1; e1) to c1 and e1, and that as this is a particular, so is the objective too. Therefore, the objective (c1; (c1; e1); e1) is built upon both the members of the Relation and the Relation that connects them, that is, upon c1, e1 and (c1; e1). Also in this case an infinite regress arises: given the objective (c1; (c1; e1); e1), two other connections (c1; (c1; e1)) and (e1; (c1; e1)) are also given; but then new objectives would arise like (c1; (c1; (c1; e1)); (c1; e1)), and so on. Now, what is this connection which links the inferiora either with a Relation or with an objective as their superius? Bergmann answers: a function, whose arguments are the inferiora and whose value is the superius. Therefore, «Meinong's is a function ontology» (R, p. 349). He argues that Meinong is unaware of this, and hence he does not distinguish between complexes and functions, but mistakes cryptoclusters, which are collections of particulars, for objects44. This is the function inaccuracy. Related to this, Bergmann mentions the second inadequacy, that is, that 44 Cf. R, p. 371-372; cf. also R, p. 337. 214 Meinong does not give an ontological status to functions; in other words, there are no functions in his ontology. But this is not a serious gap in Bergmann's view: Radical as it is, the inadequacy is yet easily remedied. One merely has to add the required number of functions to the basic ontological inventory. (R, p. 349) The latter argument is very peculiar: Meinong's is a function ontology, but there are no functions in his ontology, which is in fact «an implicit function ontology»; now, it is enough to add functions and all is well. I shall forgo comment on this argument and proceed to recapitulate the result of the whole reasoning. Meinong's Relation – the same holds for the objective – is a particular, i.e., a simple thing, which by connecting other things causes an infinite regress; this could be averted only by the notion of nexus, which Meinong does not have. It follows that in his ontology there are no complexes. And if there are no complexes, then there are no facts, since, according to Bergmann, only facts are complex. Therefore, he concludes that Meinong thinks he distinguishes simple things from complexes and these from facts (i.e., objectives), but actually in his ontology there are only things. What can one say about such a reading? I limit myself to three remarks. The first concerns the reference texts used by Bergmann. He declares that these are the first section of "Über Gegenstände höherer Ordnung" (1899) for connections, and chapter three of the second edition of Über Annahmen (1910) for objectives45. Now, the latter text is a reworking and profound rewriting of chapter seven of the first edition, in which Meinong exposes for the first time his theory of objectives. Hence, Bergmann pegs the third ontology to the first edition of Über Annahmen, but in fact he refers – when he does it – to the second one (the significance of this remark will become clear later). The former text, the first section of the essay on objects of higher order is, as Meinong expressly declares46, only a sketch and is not finished; unfortunately, he will never expand it, rather he seems to invite the readers to complete themselves what he did not accomplish. However, in Über emotionale Präsentation (1917) Meinong recognizes that the theory was initially formulated in relationship with relations and complexes, and that objectives were at that time unknown47. Now, Bergmann interprets both Relationen and objectives from the standpoint of the essay on objects of higher order. His approach is partly justified by the fact 45 Cf. R, p. 345, fn. 17. 46 Cf. Meinong, 1899: GA II, p. 401 [1978, p. 155]. 47 Cf. Meinong, 1917: GA III, p. 389 [1972, pp. 93-94]. 215 that Meinong refers to this text even when he is speaking about objectives, but at the same time it prevents Bergmann from interpreting them in a more sympathetic light. As regards the concept of objects of higher order, it seems that Bergmann fails to understand what Meinong's Komplexe effectively are. He interprets Meinong's Komplex as a mere collection of particulars, that is, as a cryptocluster; then he deduces from a principle of general ontology, according to which «a collection of entities is not itself an entity» (R, p. 16) – a principle which, in Bergmann's view, is accepted by Meinong too48 –, that a cryptocluster or Komplex is not an entity. On the contrary, Meinong strongly distinguishes between a Komplex and a mere collection, for which he uses the term "objective collective" (objektives Kollektiv)49. Meinong explicitly claims that a Komplex is more than an objective collective of component parts, and he states a «principle of partial coincidence» which aims to account for the fact that each Komplex needs a Relation and hence is not a mere collection: rather, a Komplex is a relation together with its members. On the basis of this principle – which is however judged «both specious and opaque» by Bergmann (R, p. 414) –, relations are distinguished from Komplexe, since they are parts of the latter, but not conversely. Substantially Bergmann mixes up Meinong's Komplex with the objective collective50. Thus he comes to the conclusion that in Meinong there are no complexes and, since Meinong's relation is different from the nexus, because it opens the way to Bradley's regress, there is also no adequate notion of facts. Since Bergmann identifies complexes and facts, he questions that subsisting objectives are facts. Concerning objectives, Bergmann points out a significant question: that of the relationship between an objective and its inferiora, that is, the elements upon which it is built. However, I am doubtful whether it is correct to interpret the objective as something which is connected with three particulars (the members of the relation and the relation itself). In this way the objective is wholly assimilated to the Komplex. A careful examination of this issue requires an analysis both of Bradley's regress and of Meinong's and Bergmann's interpretations of the latter. I will not deal with 48 Cf. R, p. 337. 49 Cf. Meinong, 1899: GA II, pp. 388 ff. [1978, pp. 145 ff.]. 50 As Tegtmeier, 2000, pp. 97-98 correctly points out; cf. also p. 95: «Meinong's explicit statement that relations are parts of complexes is clearly inconsistent with Bergmann's interpretation». 216 this topic51, and will limit myself to remarking that the objective can be understood as playing a new function compared to that of the other objects of higher order, which escape the infinite regress, thus resolving problems which remained open in the previous treatment52. 2.2. The ontological catastrophe (Meinong's final ontology) The theory of objects of higher order of 1899 and that of objectives of 1902 are preparatory to object theory, which appears officially in 1904. But Bergmann – as we will see – rejects its programme of a science of objects as such and in their totality. Between the first and the second edition of [Über] Annahmen – says Bergmann – their author changed his mind on an issue so fundamental that more or less directly it affects virtually all others. (R, pp. 415-416) This change is witnessed by several Meinongian texts, which Bergmann refers to: "Über Gegenstandstheorie" (1904), Über die Erfahrungsgrundlagen unseres Wissens (1906), Über die Stellung der Gegenstandstheorie im System der Wissenschaften (1906-1907) and, of course, the second edition of Über Annahmen (1910). It is here, particularly in chapter seven, that, according to Bergmann, Meinong displays his final ontology, a true ontological catastrophe. This was already implicit in his third ontology, where «the seed of the nature inaccuracy was sown» (R, p. 416). Now, what is nature inaccuracy? It is the failure to confer an ontological status on natures. A nature is not a thing, and therefore it does not exist for a reist. According to Bergmann, Meinong did acknowledge only in the final ontology, «when it was too late», that natures might exist53. Hence the diagnosis Bergmann makes for a patient who is – in his own words54 – virtually incurable: Meinong's reism caused him to commit the most fatal error an ontologist can make. He insisted, without knowing it, on a specialized use of 'exist', i.e., on a use narrower than the only one proper and safe in ontology. (R, p. 417) 51 About which Orilia, 2006, 2007 has written interesting things. Moreover, Bergmann gets a bit mixed up: according to him, Meinong rejects infinite regress as regards relations, while he accepts it when he is examining objectives (cf. R, pp. 347, 348); actually, Meinong does exactly the opposite (cf. Meinong, 1899: GA II, pp. 390-391 [1978, pp. 147-148]; 1902, pp. 122-129, 164; 1910, GA IV, pp. 260-268 [1983, pp. 187-193]. 52 As Lenoci, 1997, pp. 262-264, 266, 279 suggests. A critique of Bergmann's interpretation of the objective is offered by Sierszulska, 2005, pp. 86 ff. 53 Cf. R, p. 353. 54 Cf. R, pp. 440-441. 217 Bergmann defines this "proper" use in the first sentence of Realism: «To exist, to be an entity, to have ontological status are the same»55. In another passage he explains: «There are several kinds (categories) of existents, but there is only one kind of existing. [...] 'Exist' is univocal» (R, p. 362). Existence has two modes, actuality and potentiality; the latter has «an ontological status all of its own, which is the lowest of all» (R, p. 10, fn. 1), while actuality «has the ontological status which in a very obvious sense is the highest of all» (R, p. 63). Therefore, Bergmann assumes a single concept of existence, yet he allows variations in degree. Even though a fact may be either actual or potential56, he believes that this does not undermine in any way the univocality of existing. Potentiality is the mere foundation of the possibility of any complex; in linguistic terms, «it is what makes any sentence, either true or false, well-formed»57. As Bergmann sharply declares: Kinds and degrees of independence (as I use the term) establish status differences among the categories of fact, things, and subsistents. But these differences among existents do not in any way involve different kinds of existing. (R, pp. 362-363) We have already seen, as we introduced the principle of exemplification, the relation connecting independence and existence. Meinong's argument is quite different, since he distinguishes kinds of being (Seinsarten), while assuming, according to Bergmann, a single category of existents, the particulars, thus proving his nominalism58. Meinong's 'Sein' is translated into the language of the foil as 'existing', hence he would distinguish kinds of existing, or else – since in Bergmann's view «'kind of existing' is clumsy» – «levels of existence» (R, p. 363). Just like Russell in The Principles of Mathematics59, Meinong does not identify 'existing' and 'being an entity', as he acknowledges both entities that exist and others that do not exist. This means that what exists in Meinong's sense does also exist in Bergmann's sense, but not always conversely. Bergmann correctly points out the theoretical opposition between assuming one or more kinds (or categories) of existents and one or more kinds of existing, or being (in Meinongian terms). Now, he concludes, if «only particulars "exist", or, synonymously, every "existent (being, Sein)" is a 55 R, p. 3; cf. also Bergmann, 1963: CW II, p. 76. 56 Cf. R, pp. 10, fn. 1, 61, 198, 352, fn. 54, 434. 57 R, pp. 362, fn. 60; cf. also R, pp. 214-217. 58 Cf. R, p. 15: «Nominalism, as I shall sometimes use the term, very broadly, is the doctrine that there is only one type (subcategory) of things». 59 Cf. Russell, 1903, p. 449. 218 particular», then natures, which exist in his own sense, do not "exist" in Meinong's sense. Thus a collision course is set. The result is an absurd ontology, aggravated by a terminology not only clumsy but bizarre. (R, p. 417) Below we will see how Bergmann rejects Meinong's concept of Daseinsfreiheit and therefore the two fundamental principles of object theory: the principle of independence of so-being from being and the principle of the Aussersein. Let us follow Bergmann's argument, which is made up of three steps, each presenting a different stage in the evolution of Meinong's thought from the third ontology to the final one. The extract deserves to be read carefully60. Meinong – Bergmann says – divides being in three ways. We leave out the first division into Sein (being), Sosein (so-being) and Wiesein (howbeing), which is, according to Bergmann, «merely a clumsy tripartition of facts into the presumably existential, the categorical, and the relational». Another division of all being is already familiar to us, i.e., the one into the real and the ideal, which – as we know – Bergmann identifies respectively with existence (Dasein) and subsistence (Bestand). A third division of being is however more important: this brings out the notion of "pure object" (reiner Gegenstand), which stands, according to Meinong, «beyond being and non-being»61. Bergmann interprets 'pure object' as 'pure particular', that is as a synonym of 'nature'. In Meinong's view, pure objects (or natures) do not exist, yet they are not a mere nothing; besides being and non-being he theorizes Aussersein (literally translatable as 'extra-being'), which belongs to all pure objects (or natures). What is the Aussersein? According to Meinong, it is the sphere of all that is «given», that is, of all possible combinations among properties and objects62. In this sense, it is the sphere of the pure object, where no assumptions are made concerning its existence or non-existence, and even its possibility or impossibility. Thus understood, the notion of Aussersein, insofar as this includes all possible combinations of objects and properties, and therefore all possible objectives, shows some similarities with Bergmann's concept of potentiality or possible1, which is pure combinatorial possibility. Conversely, the domain of nonsense (or Bergmann's impossible1) would coincide, according to a late view of Meinong's, with the domain of defective objects, 60 Cf. R, pp. 417-418. 61 Meinong, 1904: GA II, p. 494 [1960, p. 86]. 62 Cf. Meinong, 1904: GA II, pp. 492-493, 500 [1960, pp. 85, 92]; 1910, GA IV, pp. 79-80 [1983, p. 62]; 1915: GA VI, p. 181. 219 which are devoid even of Aussersein63. Bergmann is not aware of these similarities, and – following Russell64 – interprets the Aussersein as a third kind of being. Hence the conclusion of the first part of his argument (whose textual reference is the first four sections of "Über Gegenstandstheorie")65: If they existed, there would thus be three sorts (Arten) of being, affirmative (positive) Sein, Nichtsein, which he [Meinong] holds is in its own way "positive", and Aussersein. Thus the height of the absurd (in things) and the bizarre (in words) would be reached. (R, p. 417) The second step concerns the principle of independence. Meinong states it in "Über Gegenstandstheorie", but Bergmann refers to the more articulate second section of Über die Stellung der Gegenstandstheorie66. Bergmann's natures are the same as Meinong's so-being (Sosein), in the sense that sobeing is the whole nature of a particular. We know from the principle of Aussersein, that being and non-being are not part of the nature of an object67. Now, according to the principle of independence, a pure particular does not need to exist or to subsist in order to have properties. This means that «Sosein ist daseinsfrei», so-being is existence-free, and consequently, that we can assert the so-being of an object without assuming that it exists or subsists. Bergmann translates the principle of independence into the foil's language as follows: simple natures of simple particulars do not have an ontological status. But this is unacceptable from his standpoint, because if something has no ontological status, then it does not exist, i.e., it is not a part of the world, and therefore we may not talk about it at all. In Bergmann's view, the principle of independence conflicts with the concept of Aussersein. Let us now look at the third step. Bergmann grants that Meinong eventually establishes the proposition which had already surfaced in the passage between the first and the second ontology: all intentions exist. According to Meinong, properties can be attributed to an object without assuming it either as existent or as subsistent; nevertheless, asserting that an object does not exist implies that «somehow» it is there; in other terms, it has to be «given beforehand» (vorgegeben) in a pure manner, prior to the 63 Cf. Meinong, 1917: GA III, p. 24 [1972, p. 21]. 64 Cf. Russell, 1905/1973, p. 78. 65 Cf. R, p. 418, fn. 40. 66 Cf. R, p. 418, fn. 41. 67 Cf. Meinong, 1904: GA II, pp. 493-494 [1960, p. 86]; on this topic cf. Lambert, 1983, pp. 19-21. 220 inquiry over its being or non-being68. Now, what is this «givenness» (Gegebenheit), which Meinong also defines as «a most general property», i.e., one that can be ascribed to all objects without exception?69 Initially, we said that Meinong's philosophy – following a late reading he gave of his own research – is built on the given; yet, between the Hume-Studien and his mature works, the notion of «given» has been extended to include not only what is given in immediate experience, but equally what is given in the sense of subsistence and even of mere Aussersein70. Bergmann reads this through his own philosophical categories: all that is given exists, it must exist. Actually, he writes: What is "given beforehand" exists in its own right. Aussersein is recognised as a third "positive" sort of Sein. In his eyes, this conclusion has a twofold meaning, at once positive and negative: Thus the nature inaccuracy has finally been cleared up. But at the same time the height of the absurd and the bizarre has been reached. (R, p. 418) Officially Meinong is still a reist, but in fact natures «have become a positive sort of 'existent'». Supposedly, then, he has laid the foundations of a new beginning, even though he was not fully aware of this. As for himself, Bergmann insists that he does not discriminate between being and existence: to him, talking about kinds of being is sheer nonsense – let alone Aussersein. Need I add – he writes – that I have not the slightest notion of what a Seinsart could possibly be? The one thing I am sure of is that it is something even more absurd than a level. (R, p. 418) This conclusion should not astonish: as we have seen, it is implied in the first sentence of Realism and it is restated throughout the whole book, as well as in previous writings. Meinong distinguishes between kinds of being, while according to Bergmann existence is univocal, there are no different kinds of existing, but different degrees of independence which establish differences of status among categories of existents (facts, things and subsistents); however, he speaks about modes of existing and a lower existence as regards subsistents. But what exactly does it mean that «'exist' is univocal», if there are modes of existing and differences of degree as to the ontological status? What is a lower or a higher ontological status? In 68 Cf. Meinong, 1904: GA II, p. 491 [1960, pp. 83-84]. 69 Meinong, 1904: GA II, p. 500 [1960, p. 92]. 70 Cf. Meinong, 1921: GA VII, pp. 42-43. 221 which sense does nexus exist, but its status «is lower than that of a thing»? (R, pp. 363-364). Substantially, Bergmann's degrees of ontological status try to answer the same question as Meinong's kinds of being. 3. An assessment Let us recapitulate the path taken by Bergmann. He starts from the theory of relations exposed in Hume-Studien II (first phase), he then examines its new formulation in the first section of "Über Gegenstände höherer Ordnung" (second phase), and uses this to give an explanation of the objective, whose theory has already been exposed in the first edition of Über Annahmen (third phase) and subsequently rewritten in the second one (in which Bergmann fixes the emergence of the final ontology). He reads the second edition, not the first, but he considers the theory of objectives exposed there as belonging to the third phase. Of course Bergmann's purpose is structural, but pursuing it he splits a work and puts in the middle of it Meinong's writings between 1904 and 1907! Adopting this very peculiar approach, Bergmann can only appreciate the Meinong that predates the elaboration of object theory. What comes later and culminates in his opinion in the seventh chapter of Über Annahmen, especially in § 38 entitled "Zur Selbstkritik. Die Ausserseinsansicht", that is, the Meinong of object theory, is simply dismissed. 3.1. Bergmann and Meinongian studies We can now try to explain why Bergmann's analysis of Meinong's ontology did not produce a great impact on Meinongian studies. The question is not insignificant, if we consider that in the 60s of the last century Bergmann played a part in the rediscovery of Meinong's thought together with Roderick M. Chisholm, John N. Findlay and Rudolf Haller. The answer is implicit in what we said before. If my reconstruction of Bergmann's reading of Meinong is correct, through the critique of the principle of independence and of the Aussersein, Bergmann rejects the main concept of object theory, that is, Daseinsfreiheit. Thus it is hardly surprising that his reading of Meinong has remained far from the mainstream which has interested many scholars in recent decades. It is certainly distant from those who are seeking in Meinong the means, or at least the theoretical intuitions, to speak about non-existents or fictions (like Terence Parsons 222 and Richard Routley), or who lay stress on the principle of independence (Karel Lambert) or on the theory of Aussersein (Dale Jacquette). If indeed, as Rosaria Egidi maintains, «by proposing the realistic2 alternative, Bergmann intends to carry out the Meinongian programme» (Egidi, 2005, p. 65), then this happens through a weakening of object theory. Bergmann's proposal would be a way of rethinking object theory without the different kinds of being, the principle of independence and the Aussersein. This evidently runs counter to Meinong's intent, which was to give increasing importance to these concepts, so much so that not only did he exercise self-criticism and reformulate whole parts of Über Annahmen, but he also reconsidered such concepts in later works which Bergmann completely ignored. In Über emotionale Präsentation Meinong speaks of defective objects, to which even Aussersein does not belong71. The Meinong Bergmann is interested in is not the Meinong of object theory. This has some effects on Bergmann's ultimate judgment about Meinong's nominalism – which, supposedly, characterizes his thought from the ontology with which he started till «the one over which he died». But what could Bergmann have said on this subject, if he had ventured into considering Meinong's mature work as well? 3.2. What could Bergmann have said, if he had examined Meinong's mature work? Let us take some statements by Bergmann about nominalists like Brentano and Meinong. He writes: There are thus no universals in either the First or the Second of their worlds. (R, p. 142) And again: [...] there are no indeterminate objects. A triangle is either equilateral, or isosceles, or rectangular, and so on. There is none which is not either the one or the other, just as there is no spot which is colored without being (a completely determinate shade of) either red, or blue, or green, and so on. This specious argument for nominalism swayed many, Brentano and Meinong among them. Speaking of abstract objects, they all insist that there are none and that, therefore, nominalism is true. (R, pp. 191-192) All objects, that is ordinary objects like chairs, trees and rocks, are completely determinate. Hence Bergmann infers: In asserting their premiss the nominalists are thus right. Of course they are. But they are disastrously wrong in deducing from this truism under the influence of 71 Cf. Meinong, 1917: GA III, pp. 304 ff. [1972, pp. 18 ff.]. 223 their more or less explicit reism what it does not imply, namely, that there are no derived characters (things), having some ontological status. Bergmann states instead that «derived characters have ontological status, though of course not that of objects» (R, p. 192). Derived characters or universals differ from other universals like 'red' or 'square', because they have a form such as 'being both green and square'72; a derived universal is the definiens of a definition as well, since Bergmann maintains that «[t]he linguistic reflection of derivation is definition» (R, p. 93). While non-derived universals are always exemplified on the basis of the principle of exemplification, derived universals are not always exemplified; therefore, they often exist only potentially. For instance, according to Bergmann, both the dog and the centaur are derived universals: the former is exemplified by the form 'being both a mammal and a quadruped and with a very sharp sense of smell and so on', and therefore it is an actual derived universal; the latter is not exemplified by 'being both a man and a horse', and therefore it is a potential derived universal73. Let us now look at what Meinong says about indeterminate objects such as 'the triangle'. Actually – as we have already seen – Meinong is (or appears to be) a nominalist in the essay on objects of higher order, when he says that relations should be considered in their specificity; or in Über die Erfahrungsgrundlagen unseres Wissens, when he says that the green of a leaf is not the green in general, but the specific green of that individual leaf, which has been generated and dies with it74. Yet, another view is growing in him, a view concerning incomplete or indeterminate objects. His reflection about such objects begins – if we bear with Bergmann's periodization – during the second stage of his ontology, in "Abstrahieren und Vergleichen" (1900)75, it continues in Über die Stellung der Gegenstandstheorie76, and reaches an organic arrangement after what Bergmann calls «Meinong's final ontology», in a book published in 1915, Über Möglichkeit und Wahrscheinlichkeit77. Bergmann does not examine at all 72 Cf. R, p. 13. 73 Cf. R, p. 94. Cf. also Angelone – Minocchio – Pagliardi, 2004, pp. 67-71. 74 Cf. Meinong, 1906: GA V, p. 394. 75 Cf. Meinong, 1900: GA I, pp. 464 ff. [1993, 155 ff.]. 76 Cf. Meinong, 1906-1907: GA V, pp. 326-329. 77 For a genetic reconstruction of this line of thought cf. Modenato, 2006, pp. 115-124. 224 this book, of which the reader of Realism apprehends very little, besides what is already deducible from the title78. Now, the triangle is, according to the mature Meinong, an indeterminate object in precisely the same sense in which Bergmann is speaking of it. The triangle «as such is neither equilateral nor isosceles, neither rectangular nor scalene: it is in this respect and in many others just indeterminate»79, or incomplete. Such objects possess a peculiar ontological status, which is different from that of ordinary objects. Let us recall that complete objects, which are determined in all their respects, exist or subsist80, and hence exhaust the domain of Meinong's being; conversely, incomplete objects have a being which Meinong calls "implexive being" (implexives Sein): this means that they exist or subsist not separately, but insofar as they are "implected" (implektiert), that is, involved or embedded in complete objects. Meinong gives the example of the incomplete object 'the ball', and asks in which relationship it stands to the billiard balls of his friend X. Now, the incomplete object does not exist in the individual balls in the same sense as in the relationship of parts to a whole, because all parts of a complete object are complete as well. The incomplete object 'the ball' is implected by an implecting object (Implektant), in our example the friend's billiard balls. An incomplete object is implected by all complete objects which can be thought through it; this means that its being is determined through the existence or subsistence of such an implecting object. In this sense we can speak of an implexive existence or subsistence: an incomplete object does not exist separately, but it exists or subsists as implected, if its implecting objects exist or subsist. Such implexive being belongs by variations in degree to the incomplete objects. Thus the round square is impossible, since it is never implected, while the rectangular square is possible81. Is Meinong here not dealing with the question of universals and their exemplification? Is not the triangle or the ball which he is speaking of a universal as Bergmann understands it? Meinong explicitly speaks of 78 In six lines, Bergmann (R, p. 436) appreciates the work but criticizes the notion of Wahrscheinlichkeitsevidenz. In the related fn. 29 he adds: «All together, Ueber Möglichkeit und Wahrscheinlichkeit is as dreary as are Brentano's reflections about probability, causality, and induction in Versuch ueber die Erkenntnis. But his essay is at least short; Meinong's treatise is very long». And that is all. 79 Meinong, 1915: GA VI, p. 178. 80 Meinong, 1915: GA VI, pp. 185, 191, 202. 81 Cf. Meinong, 1915: GA VI, pp. 210-17. 225 genera and species (like 'triangles' and 'vertebrates') as universal objects82 and states more than once that incomplete objects play the role of universals83. What then did Bergmann find in Über Möglichkeit und Wahrscheinlichkeit? From representationalist positions, Meinong eventually came to realistic positions. A fixed point of his philosophy is that there is a world outside us and independent of us, and yet not only real objects, but also ideal and incomplete ones are not subjective; to those who dislike the expression 'realism', Meinong suggests replacing it with 'objectivism'84. If Bergmann had ventured into considering the mature Meinong, surely he would have criticized – as is inevitable – single points, but he would have found in him a fellow traveller not only in the battle against representationalism, but also in that against nominalism. The point is not merely that Bergmann does not examine the mature Meinong: he does not examine him because he dismisses object theory, and this is what barred him from discovering in Meinong an ally in the battle against nominalism. Venanzio Raspa Istituto di Filosofia Università degli Studi di Urbino "Carlo Bo" Via Timoteo Viti 61029 Urbino, Italia [email protected] REFERENCES Ameseder, R. (1901), Zur Systematik der idealen Gegenstände, Ph. Diss., Universität Graz. Angelone, L. – Minocchio, F., – Pagliardi A., (2004), "Universali e particolari", in Bonino – Torrengo, eds. (2004), pp. 49-74. Barber, K. (1966), Meinong's "Hume Studies": Translation and Commentary, Ph.D. Diss., University of Iowa. - (1970), "Meinong's Hume Studies. Part I: Meinong's Nominalism", Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, XXX, pp. 550-567. - (1971), "Meinong's Hume Studies. Part II: Analysis of Relations", Philosophy and 82 Cf. Meinong, 1915: GA VI, p. 208. 83 Cf. Meinong, 1915: GA VI, p. 740; 1921: GA VII, p. 19 [1974: 227]; on this topic cf. Jacquette, 1995. 84 Cf. Meinong, 1921: GA VII, p. 46. 226 Phenomenological Research, XXXI, pp. 564-584. Barbero, C. – Raspa, V., eds. (2005), Il pregiudizio a favore del reale. La teoria dell'oggetto di Alexius Meinong fra ontologia e epistemologia, Rivista di Estetica, XLV, N.S. n. 30. Bergmann, G. (1958), "Frege's Hidden Nominalism", Philosophical Review, LXVII, pp. 437-489; then in Id., Meaning and Existence, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison (WI), 1959, pp. 205-224; repr. in CW I, pp. 324-343. - (1960), "Ineffability, Ontology, and Method", Philosophical Review, LXIX, pp. 1840; then in Id., Logic and Reality, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison (WI), 1964, pp. 45-63; repr. in CW II, pp. 55-73. - (1963), "Ontological Alternatives", first published in Italian "Alternative ontologiche. Una risposta alla dr. Egidi", Giornale critico della filosofia italiana, XVII, pp. 377-405; then in Id., Logic and Reality, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison (WI), 1964, pp. 124-57; repr. in CW II, pp. 75-108. - (1967), Realism. A Critique of Brentano and Meinong (R), University of Wisconsin Press, Madison (WI); repr. in CW III. - (1992), New Foundations of Ontology, ed. by W. Heald, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison (WI). - (2003-2004), Collected Works (CW), ed. by E. Tegtmeier, vol. I: Selected Papers I (2003); vol. II: Selected Papers II (2003); vol. III: Realism. A Critique of Brentano and Meinong (2004), Ontos Verlag, Frankfurt a.M. Bonino, G. (2006), "Why There Are No Facts in Meinong's World (according to Gustav Bergmann)", in Raspa, ed. (2006), pp. 239-266. Bonino, G. – Torrengo, G., eds. (2004), Il realismo ontologico di Gustav Bergmann, Rivista di Estetica, XLIV, N.S. n. 25. - (2004), Introduzione, in Bonino – Torrengo, eds. (2004), pp. 5-13. Egidi, R. (2005), "Il 'Meinong' di Gustav Bergmann", in Barbero – Raspa, eds. (2005), pp. 54-70. Grossmann, R. (1974), Meinong, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London. Hochberg, H. (1994), "From Carnap's Vienna to Meinong's Graz: Gustav Bergmann's Ontological Odyssey", Grazer Philosophische Studien, XLVIII, pp. 1-50. - (2001), The Positivist and the Ontologist. Bergmann, Carnap and Logical Realism, Rodopi, Amsterdam. Jacquette, D. (1995), "Meinong's Concept of Implexive Being and Nonbeing", Grazer Philosophische Studien, L, pp. 233-271. Lambert, K. (1983), Meinong and the Principle of Independence. Its Place in Meinong's Theory of Objects and its Significance in Contemporary Philosophical Logic, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. Lenoci, M. (1997), "La concezione dell'obiettivo in Alexius Meinong", Discipline 227 Filosofiche, VII, 2, pp. 259-279. Manotta, M. (2005), "Una filosofia 'dal basso'. Empirismo e razionalismo nel pensiero di Meinong", in Barbero – Raspa, eds. (2005), pp. 40-53. Meinong A. (1882), Hume-Studien II. Zur Relationstheorie, in Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philos.-histor. Classe, Sitzungsberichte, 101, pp. 573-752; repr. in GA II, pp. 1-172. - (1899), "Über Gegenstände höherer Ordnung und deren Verhältnis zur inneren Wahrnehmung", Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, XXI, pp. 182-272; repr. in GA II, pp. 377-471; Engl. transl.: Meinong, 1978. - (1900), "Abstrahieren und Vergleichen", Zeitschrift für Psychologie und Physiologie der Sinnesorgane, XXIV, pp. 34-82; repr. in GA I, pp. 443-492; Engl. transl.: Meinong, 1993. - (1902), Über Annahmen, Barth, Leipzig. - (1904), "Über Gegenstandstheorie", in Untersuchungen zur Gegenstandstheorie und Psychologie, hrsg. von A. Meinong, Barth, Leipzig, pp. 1-50; repr. in GA II, pp. 481-530; Engl. transl.: Meinong, 1960. - (1906), Über die Erfahrungsgrundlagen unseres Wissens, Springer, Berlin; repr. in GA V, pp. 367-481. - (1906-1907), "Über die Stellung der Gegenstandstheorie im System der Wissenschaften", Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik, CXXIX, pp. 48-94, 155-207; CXXX, pp. 1-46; repr. in GA V, pp. 197-365. - (1910), Über Annahmen, zweite, umgearbeitete Auflage, Barth, Leipzig; repr.in GA IV, 1-389, pp. 517-535; Engl. transl.: Meinong, 1983. - (1915), Über Möglichkeit und Wahrscheinlichkeit. Beiträge zur Gegenstandstheorie und Erkenntnistheorie, Barth, Leipzig; repr. in GA VI, xv-xxii, pp. 1-728, 777808. - (1917), "Über emotionale Präsentation", in Kaiserliche Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien. Philos.-histor. Klasse, Sitzungsberichte, 183, 2. Abh.; repr. in GA III, pp. 283-476; Engl. transl.: Meinong, 1972. - (1921), "A. Meinong [Selbstdarstellung]", in Die deutsche Philosophie der Gegenwart in Selbstdarstellungen, mit einer Einführung hrsg. von R. Schmidt, Meiner, Leipzig, Bd. 1, pp. 91-150; repr. in GA VII, pp. 1-62; partial Engl. transl.: Meinong, 1974. - (1923), Zur Grundlegung der allgemeinen Werttheorie. Statt eine zweite Auflage der "Psychologisch-ethischen Untersuchungen zur Werttheorie", hrsg. von E. Mally, Leuschner & Lubensky, Graz; repr. in GA III, pp. 469-656. - (1960), "The Theory of Objects", translated by I. Levi, D.B. Terrell, and R.M. Chisholm, in R.M. Chisholm, ed., Realism and the Background of Phenomenology, Free Press, Glencoe (IL), pp. 76-117. - (1968-1978), Alexius Meinong Gesamtausgabe (GA), hrsg. von R. Haller und R. Kindinger gemeinsam mit R.M. Chisholm, Akademische Druckund Verlagsanstalt, Graz. 228 - (1972), On Emotional Presentation, translated, with an introduction, by M.-L. Schubert Kalsi, with a foreword by J.N. Findlay, Northwestern University Press, Evanston (IL). - (1974), "Meinong's Ontology", "Meinong's Life and Work", in Grossmann, 1974, pp. 224-29, 230-36. - (1978), "On Objects of Higher Order and their Relationship to Internal Perception", in Id., On Objects of Higher Order and Husserl's Phenomenology, ed. by M.-L. Schubert Kalsi, Nijhoff, The Hague, pp. 137-200. - (1983), On Assumptions, edited and translated, with an introduction, by J. Heanue, University of California Press, Berkeley. - (1993), "Abstracting and Comparing", in R.D. Rollinger, Meinong and Husserl on Abstraction and Universals. From Hume Studies I to Logical Investigations II, Rodopi, Amsterdam, pp. 137-184. Modenato, F. (2006), La conoscenza e l'oggetto in Alexius Meinong, Il Poligrafo, Padova. Orilia, F. (2006), "States of Affairs: Bradley vs. Meinong", in Raspa, ed. (2006), pp. 213-238. - (2007), "Bradley's Regress: Bergmann versus Meinong", in L. Addis – G. Jesson – E. Tegtmeier, eds., Ontology and Analysis. Essays and Recollections about Gustav Bergmann, Ontos Verlag, Frankfurt a.M., pp. 133-163. Raspa, V. (2005), "Phantasie, Phantasieerlebnisse und Vorstellungsproduktion bei Meinong", Meinong Studies / Meinong Studien, I, pp. 95-128. - ed. (2006), Meinongian Issues in Contemporary Italian Philosophy, Ontos Verlag, Frankfurt a.M., Meinong Studies / Meinong Studien, II. Russell, B. (1903), The Principles of Mathematics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. - (1905/1973), Review of: A. Meinong, Untersuchungen zur Gegenstandstheorie und Psychologie, Mind, N.S. XIV, pp. 530-538; repr. in Id., Essays in Analysis, ed. by D. Lackey, Allen and Unwin, London 1973, pp. 77-88. Sierszulska, A. (2005), Meinong on Meaning and Truth, Ontos Verlag, Frankfurt a.M. Tegtmeier, E. (2000), "Meinong's Complexes", The Monist, LXXXIII, pp. 89-100. Twardowski, K. (1894), Zur Lehre vom Inhalt und Gegenstand der Vorstellungen, Hölder, Wien; Engl. transl.: Twardowski 1977. - (1977), On the Content and Object of Presentations, translated and with an introduction by R. Grossmann, Nijhoff, The Hague. | {
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Bare and Indexical Existence: Integrating Logic and Sensibility in Ontology Lajos L. Brons1,2 1 Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences, Nihon University 2 Center for Advanced Research on Logic and Sensibility (CARLS), Keio University Different ways of answering existential questions can be characterized by the weight they assign to two aspects: the logical and the sensible. These aspects concern the role of logic and sensory experience respectively. Arguably, some kind of balance between them is necessary to give satisfactory answers, but there have been widely different opinions on what weight distribution results in such 'balance'. The common sense view heavily prioritizes the sensible aspect, for example – I perceive this book, therefore it exists. Within philosophy, on the other hand, the logical aspect has often (but not always) been dominant – what can be logically proven to exist exists – and many kinds of common sense objects have been proclaimed non-existent. Nevertheless, any approach to ontology (including common sense and folk-ontology) combines both the logical and the sensible aspect to at least some degree. By defining 'existence' in terms of the existential quantifier ∃, the priority of the logical aspect has reached its pinnacle in contemporary mainstream analytical metaphysics, the foundation of which is generally attributed to Quine, but which is most influentially formulated by Peter van Inwagen. Such a notion of existence is an absolutely 'bare' existence – it does not come with properties or implications, it does not come in different versions. And of course, van Inwagen is right – plain, unqualified existence is bare existence, is ∃, is univocal (i.e. has only one meaning). However, even though van Inwagen thinks otherwise, that does not necessarily mean that it is impossible to make sense of a notion of qualified or 'clothed' (non-bare) existence, just that that notion would not be identifiable with a plain ∃. And such 'clothed existence' is not (necessarily) univocal, and may leave more room for the sensible aspect in ontology. This chapter consists of 3 sections. Section I discusses the foundational theses of mainstream analytical metaphysics as those are formulated by van Inwagen, focusing on the notion(s) of 'existence' involved, and points out an inconsistency therein. Moving away from the purely logical interpretation of 'existence', section II proposes a notion of nonbare, or indexical existence that extends bare existence by adding a restricting property. It is argued that the ontologically most interesting varieties of indexical existence are dependent on status ascription(s), which leads to two kinds of ontological questions: those concerning 'independent' existence (that is, independent from such status ascription), and those 17 Lajos L. Brons 224 concerning the kinds of statuses involved. Section III suggests objective perspectivism as an approach to answering these questions, and ontological questions in general, and argues – albeit briefly – that objective perspectivism integrates logic and sensibility in ontology where other approaches lean too much in either direction and thus lose balance. I. Bare existence In his paper 'Meta-ontology' (1998) or the most recent update thereof (2009), van Inwagen presents five theses that provide a (widely, but not universally accepted) foundation for contemporary mainstream analytical metaphysics. Van Inwagen attributes their content (but not their form) to Quine, but there is reason to doubt the validity of that attribution (e.g. Price 2009). We will ignore such historical matters here, however, and focus on the content (and consequences) of van Inwagen's theses. The first four theses are about the meaning of the terms 'being' and 'existence'. (1) Being is not an activity. That is, 'being' is not something someone or something does. If there is a most general activity of someone, it would be something like 'getting older', but that is not 'being'. 'Being' as activity implies a thick conception of being, a conception of 'being' that has implications; different implications, moreover, for different kinds of beings such as tables and persons. However, 'the vast difference between me and a table does not consist in our having vastly different sorts of being (...); it consists rather in our having vastly different sorts of nature (...)' (2009, p. 477). Hence, by extension of 'being is not an activity': being does not involve aspects of something's nature (or other properties) – being is empty, or bare (the latter are not van Inwagen's terms, however, although van Inwagen does approvingly misquote Hegel's description of 'being' as 'barren' (2009, p. 473)1). (2) 'Being' is the same as 'existence'. 'To be' is 'to exist' and vice versa. (3) 'Existence' is univocal. There are no different kinds of existence. If something exists, then the number of that something is not zero, and because it makes no sense to say that number is equivocal (i.e. has multiple meanings), 'existence' cannot be equivocal either (and is thus univocal). 'Existence' could only be equivocal if it would be some kind of 'thick existence', if being would be an activity and/or if existence would inherently involve some kind of aspects of the nature of the existent (or some other properties), but that has been rejected in thesis (1); therefore (3). (4) The single sense of 'existence' is adequately captured by the existential quantifier ∃.2 These four theses together (we will turn to the fifth below) can be regarded van 1 It needs mention that this is a misquote, not a misattribution. Hegel did not write that 'being is the most barren and abstract of all categories' (van Inwagen 2009, p. 473), but did write that 'being' is a 'barren abstraction'. See chapter VII, 'Being' of the Shorter Logic. Bare and Indexical Existence: Integrating Logic and Sensibility in Ontology 225 Inwagen's definition of 'existence'; they can be summarized as 'being' = 'existence' = ∃. The four are not independent theses; rather they form a single argument with (4) at its core. Much of the argument for (1), for example, is based on a substitution of 'not everything not' for 'exists', hence on the equivalency of ¬∀¬ and ∃ in formal logic, which is an acceptable argument only after a prior acceptance of theses (2) and (4) (together: 'being' = 'existence' = ∃). Furthermore, if 'existence' is 'adequately captured by the existential quantifier ∃' (4), then 'existence' is univocal (3) because unrestricted ∃ is univocal. If 'existence' is ∃ (4) and is univocal (3), then 'being' (as an ontological concept) is either (a) synonymous with 'existence' (thesis 2), or (b) is a property of some 'things' that exist. Such a property would have nothing to do with 'existence', however, glaringly contradicting normal word use of 'being' and 'existence'. Therefore not (b) and thus (a), which is (2). And because ∃ is not an activity, and 'being' = 'existence' = ∃ (theses 2 and 4), neither is 'being' (1). This does not exhaust the logical relations between these four thesis (in (1998) van Inwagen suggests that (3) follows from (2), for example), but it does illustrate the centrality (or fundamentality) of thesis (4). Van Inwagen's fifth thesis is of a very different nature: rather than defining 'existence', it proposes a methodology for resolving metaphysical debates – hence, for deciding what exists – based on Quine's notion of 'ontological commitment', and contrary to thesis (1) to (4), thesis (5) does not come with a catchphrase or handy summary. Van Inwagen's proposal is essentially the following: (5) Metaphysical debates are to be resolved by specifying the (minimal) ontological commitments implied in everything the debaters want to affirm. This is done by means of formalization in first-order logic and discarding the alternative formalizations that quantify existentially over more 'things' than necessary. Only if it cannot reasonably be avoided to existentially quantify over x (by reduction to something more primitive that is accepted as existing, for example), then x exists. Existence is quantificational unavoidability. ('Quantificational unavoidability' is not a term van Inwagen uses, but is my attempt to capture the essence of his thesis (5) as clearly and briefly as possible.) Superficially, it may seem that (5) forms the foundation under theses (1) to (4): what can be quantified over existentially exists, therefore 'existence' = ∃ (thesis 4). However, 'quantificational unavoidability' is a restriction. 2 This claim (4) that 'existence is ∃' has two possible implications / explanations. (i) ∃ is commonly understood to be of a purely formal nature (it is syntactic more than semantic). By implication then, 'existence' too is a purely formal category, and to say that 'x exists' means exactly the same as ∃x. That is, it does not really mean anything unless it is followed by a formula in which x is a variable. Alternatively (ii), there is 'something more' than that to 'existence', and by implication, there is (the exact same) 'something more' to ∃, which therefore, is not purely formal. In the conference that lead to this book (4) proved difficult to explain. The apparent reason for that was that (some) audience members grasped these two options (i) and (ii), and rejected both as defensible claims. In a sense, much of section I of this chapter is an explanation of why those audience members were right. Lajos L. Brons 226 Restricted quantification limits the domain of the quantifier. In case of existential quantification, this means that the domain of the restricted quantifier ∃R is limited by the property R, such that everything that ∃R quantifies over must have that property R.3 Hence, by definition: ∃Rx[Px] ≡ ∃x[Rx&Px] (a) Unrestricted quantification is negatively defined as quantification that is not (somehow) restricted. Consequently, an undetermined existential quantifier E can either be unrestricted ∃, or restricted ∃R in which case there is some restricting property R. Given that restricted and unrestricted quantification are (obviously) mutually exclusive (even contradictory), if 'existence' is definitionally associated with the existential quantifier, then two notions of 'existence' must be distinguished: bare existence is unrestricted existential quantification ∃, and R-indexical existence is restricted quantification ∃R (where the property R is the restriction). Restriction is often hidden in implicit background assumptions, but from definition (a) methods to determine the nature of an undetermined or uncertain existential quantifier E can be derived. Any restriction on a quantifier is a rule imposed by a theorist, although that imposition may be implicit, unconscious, even accidental. A restriction is a rule specifying that only that what has the restricting property R may be quantified over with that specific quantifier. For any E, there must be such a rule – and thus a restriction – if the set of things that have some property P in the domain of E, {x|Ey[Py&x=y]}, is a proper subset of the extension of P, {x|Px} = {x|∃y[Py&x=y]}, and vice versa: For any E, E is restricted iff ∃P [{x|Ey[Py&x=y]} ⊂ {x|Px}] (b) In other words, if there is some property P for which there are some 'things' in its extension that are outside the domain of E, then E is a restricted quantifier; or if some 'things' are excluded from some quantifier E, but those can be quantified over with the unrestricted existential quantifier ∃, or with some other existential quantifier,4 then E is restricted. (And if E is restricted, then there is some restriction R.) From (a) it also follows that iff anything that can be quantified over with some E must have some property F, and thus that Ex[¬Fx] is inconsistent, then that E is the restricted quantifier ∃F: For any E, ( ∃F [ 'Ex[¬Fx]' is inconsistent ) ↔ E =∃F ] (c) Both (b) and (c) may serve to identify the nature of an existential quantifier, depending on available information (and (c), contrary to (b), also identifies the restriction). There is a 3 See, for example, the Encyclopedia of Mathematics (http://eom.springer.de/r/r081650.htm). Restriction works similarly for universal quantification: ∀Rx[Px] ≡ ∀x[Rx→Px]. 4 From (a) it follows that anything that can be quantified over with some restricted existential quantifier ∃R, can be quantified over with the unrestricted existential quantifier ∃. Bare and Indexical Existence: Integrating Logic and Sensibility in Ontology 227 complication, however: definition (a) assumes that P and R are independent properties, which is not always the case: some properties are productive in the sense that they enable attribution of other, dependent, properties. We will turn to this complication in section II. Van Inwagen's thesis (5) excludes what is quantificationally avoidable from the domain of the existential quantifier, but what is quantificationally avoidable is not quantificationally impossible; that is, it can be quantified over, and van Inwagen indeed says so explicitly: thesis (5) instructs to select from alternative formalizations. Hence, thesis (5) distinguishes between what can be existentially quantified over, and what can and must be existentially quantified over (that is, what is quantificationally unavoidable), and only grants 'existence' to the latter category. Given (b), it should be clear then, that the quantifier used to define 'existence' is restricted ∃QU (in which QU stands for quantificational unavoidability), not unrestricted ∃; and consequently that the associated notion of 'existence' is QU-indexical existence. This means that van Inwagen's theses (1) to (4) and thesis (5) involve two different definitions of 'existence': bare existence (in 1 to 4) versus QU-indexical existence (in 5). A similar inconsistency can be found in the approach of Theodore Sider (2003; 2009), the other main proponent of 'existence' as unrestricted quantification. Borrowing Lewis's notion of 'natural meaning', Sider argues that unrestricted quantification is the natural meaning of existence (in boldface), but he also frequently refers to what exists as being 'real' and explicitly distinguishes what is 'real' (or what really exists) from 'mere projection of our conceptual apparatus' (2009, p. 416). Apparently, existence implies (or involves) being 'real' (see also Schaffer 2009). However, 'mere projections' can be existentially quantified over, and thus the 'real' criterion excluding them from existence is a restriction. Consequently, existence is a variety of indexical existence. Sider's argument that unrestricted quantification is the natural meaning of existence is somewhat similar to the argument that van Inwagen gives for his thesis (4), and they have a point. The versatility of the verb 'to exist' in ordinary language indeed suggests that it stands (or can stand at least) for bare existence (hence, for unrestricted quantification). However, in many – perhaps even most – occurrences of variants of 'to exist' in ordinary language use (especially in negations), its meaning is more specific: 'being in the world', 'being real', 'being fundamental', and so forth, but that is (or those are) a kind of indexical existence, and that is a fundamentally different (kind of) notion. Perhaps at least part of van Inwagen's argument can be saved by reinterpreting his five thesis as being about only one of the two notions of 'existence' involved. Reinterpreting all five theses as being about bare existence is closest to what van Inwagen claims to be arguing for. However, bare existence is by definition non-restrictive, and is thus inconsistent with the methodological proposal of thesis (5). Instead, reading the whole set of theses as being about bare existence results in a radical permissivism: anything exists (with a possible exception for the self-constradictory or otherwise incoherent). Although such a reading is possible, it is in direct contradiction with van Inwagen's other metaphysical writings (which are rather selective about what exists and what does not), and would therefore not be a very charitable reading. It would not be a very useful reading either, because the existence it grants to everything is bare existence, which is causally and explanatory inefficient. Explanation and causation depend on things as something, on properties of things, while bare existence is Lajos L. Brons 228 absolutely property-less. Bare existence does not explain, cause, or imply anything; it merely is, barely. The second option would be to leave thesis (5) intact and to try to reinterpret (1) to (4) as being about QU-indexical existence. Thesis (4) (but not the argument behind it) is mere definition and could easily be changed into 'existence' is ∃QU, and (3) would remain valid: if by definition (4) 'existence' is ∃QU then 'existence' is univocal because 'QU-indexical existence' is univocal (but much of the argument for such a reinterpreted thesis (3) might have to be rewritten and the argument for (4), which shows that unrestricted quantification is rooted in natural language, would then be completely besides the point). Theses (1) and (2) are (even) more problematic, and seemingly irremediably so. QU-indexical existence may not be an activity, but contrary to (1), it surely does involve a property, namely 'being quantificationally unavoidable' (van Inwagen does not use that term, but that does not change the fact that the quantifier on which the relevant notion of 'existence' is based is restricted, and that any such restriction is a property). And in case of thesis (2), if 'existence' is ∃QU, then in addition to the above mentioned options of 'being' (as an ontological concept) being the same as 'existence' (∃QU) and 'being' being some property that has nothing to do with existence, there is a third option that 'being' is (based on) some other restricted existential quantifier, and there is no convincing argument that no other restricted existential quantifier could be an acceptable basis for 'being'. This, of course, changes (1) again, because (1) was about 'being' rather than 'existence', but also hollows out (3) and (4), by eliminating the special status of 'existence' (as ∃QU). What we are left with is a definition of 'existence' as QU-indexical existence (4), the obvious statement that what does not match the definition is not 'existence' (thesis 3; it is obvious because that is what definitions are for), and the methodological criterion in thesis (5). That seems even further removed from van Inwagen's intentions than the radical permissivism of the first option (not in the least because it involves scrapping most of van Inwagen's arguments for the theses, even for those that are kept), and reduces the notion of 'existence' involved to just an alternative among many possibilities, which is exactly what van Inwagen is arguing against. Perhaps, a third option would be to resolve the inconsistency by replacing the implicit identity relation between bare and QU-indexical existence in the original theses with some other kind of relationship. Such a reinterpretation would have to overcome three major difficulties, however: (i) contrary to (3), 'existence' is then no longer univocal, (ii) there is no obvious relationship between the two notions of 'existence' (at least not within van Inwagen's argument), and (iii) there is no decisive argument for preferring this particular restriction (QU) over any other. Overcoming these difficulties requires significant amendments, and may not leave much intact of van Inwagen's original argument(s) and idea (although probably more than the previous two options). Ultimately, despite contrary appearance, what matters to van Inwagen and Sider is not bare existence, but specific varieties of indexical existence, QU-indexical existence and real-indexical existence respectively; not the empty 'existence' of the unrestricted quantifier, but the restriction of being quantificationally unavoidable (QU) or being real. And therefore, rather than trying to save van Inwagen's argument, it seems more useful to redirect attention to indexical existence. Furthermore, according to (among others) Kit Fine (2009) and Bare and Indexical Existence: Integrating Logic and Sensibility in Ontology 229 Jonathan Schaffer (2009), ontology is not about 'existence' (either boldface or not), but (respectively) about being real or fundamental (or something similar); and so is QUor realindexical existence. Essentially, indexical existence is bare existence plus a restricting property, and considering that bare existence is empty and causally and explanatory inefficient (see above), focusing attention to indexical existence means focusing attention on that restricting property. In case of Sider, being real is that restricting property; in case of van Inwagen, it is being quantificationally unavoidable (QU), which appears to be a variety of being fundamental. Consequently, van Inwagen's and Sider's (meta-) ontologies are already about being real or fundamental. Defining 'existence' as ∃ takes the logical aspect too far. Serious existential questions cannot be questions about bare existence because of the permissivism implied in that notion (see above): if anything can be said to exist (barely), there is no point in asking. Therefore, existential questions are questions about indexical existence, and 'bare existence' has no direct relevance for ontology. As a purely formal notion, it is a logical necessity, however: there can be no indexical existence without bare existence. II. Indexical existence Indexical existence is often expressed informally either by means of 'exist as' or through adverbial modification – Sherlock Holmes exists as a fictional object, but does not really exist, the number 5 exists as an abstract object, wholes exist conventionally, but not ultimately, elementary particles exist as fundamental constituents of (physical) reality, and so forth. Formally this can be represented by means of a restricted existential quantifier where the restricting property is symbolized by means of an index. For example, ∃FOx[x=Sherlock Holmes] can be read as 'there exist some x as a fictional object (FO), and x is Sherlock Holmes', or shorter 'Sherlock Holmes exists as a fictional object.' Restricted quantification was defined in (a) above by means of the equivalence ∃Rx[Px]≡∃x[Rx&Px], but it was also mentioned that there is a complication: (a) assumes that P and R are independent properties, which is not always the case. Some properties enable the attribution of other properties. The former (enabling) properties will be called productive properties here; the latter dependent properties. The properties of being a whole, composition, or fictional object are among the most common examples of such productive properties within metaphysics. These are also exactly the kind of properties that serve as the common indexes in indexical existence. Ontologically relevant notions of 'existence as' are existence as fictional object, as composition, as whole, and so forth, not existence as building, animal, or blue thing. Dependent properties are properties something can only have under description as having the relevant productive property (or as being of the productive kind). An apple and an ocean have the dependent property of being a singular object – an 'apcean' as Eli Hirsch would call it – only (under the description) as a composition (the productive property); and Sherlock Holmes has the dependent property of living in Baker Street only in dependency on the productive property of being a fictional object. An apple and an ocean are not Lajos L. Brons 230 together a singular object independently (from an appropriate description), and Sherlock Holmes does not live anywhere independently. It may be objected that the theory of 'unrestricted composition' claims otherwise, but that would be a misunderstanding. Unrestricted composition does not claim that an apple and an ocean are together a singular object independently, but rather, that composition always occurs, that therefore, there is a composition of any apple and ocean, and that such a composition as a composition (hence, dependently) is a singular object. If R is a productive property and P is an R-dependent property, such that PRx ('x has property P under the description R', 'x is a P as an R', or 'x has R-dependent property P') is true, but not Px (as is the case in the two examples in the previous paragraph), then (a) and (b) do not apply. In such a case, ∃Rx[Px] should not be understood as ∃x[Rx&Px] as in (a), but as being equivalent to ∃x[Rx&PRx]. (For example, not 'Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character and lives in Baker street', but 'Sherlock Holmes is a fictional character, and livesas-a-fictional-character in Baker street.') However, given that restriction is defined by (a), either this latter variant is not restriction, or restriction needs to be redefined. Since 'existence as a fictional object' (or as a whole, etc.) has the appearance of restricted quantification, and there is no obvious answer to the question what else it could be if not restriction, the following adjustment of (a) seems the better option: ∃Rx[Px] ≡ ( ∃x[Rx&Px] or ∃x[Rx&PRx] ) (d) The standard version as defined in (a) is regular restriction; the cases that are covered by (d) but not (a), hence by ∃x[Rx&PRx], could be called 'super-restriction'.5 As in (d), superrestriction will be understood here as a variant of restriction, not as a wholly different notion, and consequently, a quantifier is unrestricted if it is neither regularly restricted nor superrestricted.6 With the two kinds of restriction come two kinds of indexical existence: weakly and strongly indexical existence. The former is based on regular restriction and the index can thus be replaced with a one-place predicate; the latter is based on super-restriction and the index is thus ineliminable (hence, the qualification as 'strong'). In other words, the restricting property in strongly indexical existence is productive, and as mentioned above, that is the kind of 'existence as ...' that is generally most relevant for ontology. Van Inwagen tried to eliminate productive and dependent properties from his ontology in two different ways (e.g. 1977, 1990, 2003): in case of wholes and compositions, by claiming that those do not exist (except when they constitute a life); but fictional objects do exist according to van Inwagen, because in formalization of agreed upon sentences about literary matters (a.o.) it cannot reasonably be avoided to quantify existentially over such fictional objects (see thesis 5 above). Fictional objects, however, do not (and cannot) have many of the properties humans do ('literary properties' particularly), but merely hold them (or are 5 Considering that restriction R in case of super-restriction is much stronger than in regular restriction – it not just affects the domain of the quantifier, but also the nature of some property or properties – that seems an appropriate term. Bare and Indexical Existence: Integrating Logic and Sensibility in Ontology 231 ascribed them). 'Holding, like having, is a two-place relation' (2003, p. 146n); these are relations between properties and variables: has(x,F) and holds(x,F), but the former is more commonly written as Fx or F(x). 'Sherlock Holmes is a detective' can then be formalized something like: ∃x [ x=Sherlock Holmes & FO(x) & holds(x,detective) ] If 'Fx' or 'F(x)' can be rewritten as 'has(x,F)', then 'detective(x)' ('x is a detective') is the same as 'has(x,detective)' ('x has the property detective'). In 'detectiveFO(x)' ('x is a detective as a fictional object') predication is relative to FO (or dependent on the ascription of FO), and since 'has' or 'holds' signifies the predication relation (the relation between property and variable) that is where the index moves: 'detectiveFO(x)' is equivalent to 'hasFO(x,detective)', which can be read something like 'x has-as-a-fictional-object the property detective'. That, however, is exactly the same as 'holds(x,detective)': 'x has-asa -fictional-object the property detective' is what 'x holds the property detective' means ( holds(x,F) ≡ hasFO(x,F) ≡ FFOx ). Hence, rather than eliminating it, van Inwagen's holding relation only masks the dependency; it merely moves the index (the dependency) out of sight, and in that way does ultimately obscure more than clarify. Dependent properties can only be eliminated by eliminating productive properties; by eliminating wholes, compositions, fictional objects, and so forth from one's ontology. Whether that is a feasible strategy is questionable, not in the least because productivity may be more common than just the three categories mentioned here. Probably the most rigorous attempt to rid metaphysics of all dependencies can be found in some branches of Indian Buddhist philosophy that reduce ultimate reality to absolutely unique and spatially and temporally non-extended atoms called svalaks.an. a. Dependent properties are not easy to get rid of, however, and therefore, we need to have a clearer understanding of their nature. Aside from what was already mentioned above, dependent properties have two key features: asymmetry, and non-subjectivity. If dependent properties would be symmetrical, then Sherlock Holmes would have the property of being a (fictional) detective dependent on him 6 As mentioned above, (b) does not apply to super-restricted quantification. Iff {x|Ey[Py&x=y]} is a proper subset of {x|Px}, then E is regularly restricted; iff the intersection of {x|Ey[Py&x=y]} and {x|Px} is empty, then E is super-restricted. If P is 'being a singular object', and this intersection is empty, then there must be a super-restriction that makes some 'things' that are not normally considered to be singular objects (that is, 'things' that are not in the extension of P) singular objects (P) under that description (that is, elements of {x|Ey[Py&x=y]}). Nevertheless, in both cases, iff there is some set X that is a subset of {x|Px} and not of {x|Ey[Py&x=y]}, then E is restricted, and X is what is excluded from the domain of E. For any E, E is restricted iff ∃P∃X [ X⊂{x|Px} & ¬(X⊂{x|Ey[Py&x=y]}) ] In other words, if there is some property P for which there are some 'things' in its extension that are outside the domain of E, then E is (superor regularly) restricted; or if some 'things' are excluded from some quantifier E, but those can be quantified over with the unrestricted existential quantifier ∃, or with some other existential quantifier, then E is restricted. Changing (b) accordingly does not affect the argument in section I, however. Lajos L. Brons 232 being a fictional object, and real detectives would have the property of being a (real) detective dependent on being real. In other words, in case of symmetry, FDx and Fx would be equally dependent, only on different kinds of domains: D in case of FDx, and some domain D' that excludes D in case of Fx. That, however, would amount to asserting that being a detective is dependent on being a living, breathing human being, or that being a cow is dependent on being an animal. The relationship between F and its 'domain' is a species genus type relation, and D' only reconfirms the limits of the genus: fictional objects are not included in the genus of the species 'detective'. The dependent property FDx depends on an implicit ascription of D to some x that does not belong to the genus G of species F, such that D is like G in some contextually relevant respect(s), particularly the possibility of having property F, but because that possibility depends on that ascription, so does the actual attribution of F. Thus, while FDx depends on the description of x as D (which is relevantly similar to G), having property F proper (Fx) necessarily implies belonging to genus G (Fx→Gx). The ascription Dx is automatic and often implicit; it cannot be separated from attributing F, or actually FD. By asserting that Holmes is a detective or that an apcean (an apple and an ocean) is a single object, the relevant statuses (productive properties) of fictional object and composition are automatically, implicitly, and inevitably ascribed (although in the latter case it is not unlikely that that status ascription would be explicitly mentioned given its non-salience). Furthermore, such status ascriptions are not subjective or metaphorical, but dependent on and limited by the objective characteristics of the object: a status (productive property) D can only be ascribed to x if x (already) objectively has the characteristics that define D. For any property F, if x not being a G and therefore not able to have property F-proper is nevertheless truthfully ascribed F, or strictly speaking FD, then x (already) has the characteristics implied in a status D that makes such ascription of FD possible (but there may be more than one status D that enables FD). (If an apple and an ocean are truthfully said to be a single object together, then they must objectively have the necessary characteristics for ascribing a status D that makes it a single object under that (status) description. Being a composition (apcean) satisfies that requirement: an apcean objectively has the defining characteristic(s) of that property, and it enables ascription of singularity.) As mentioned, the ontologically interesting kind of indexical existence is the strong variety involving productive properties as restriction: existence as fictional object, as whole, as composition, and so forth. Although such notions can be formally represented by means of an indexed existential quantifier (as done here), these are not formal (logical) categories like bare existence (unrestricted ∃). Essentially – as noted in section I – indexical existence is a property, and in case of strongly indexical existence that property is productive. This notion of 'productive properties', and its counterpart 'dependent properties', raises two kinds of ontological questions, however: (1) are there 'things' that exist completely independently (that is, independently from any productive property); and (2) what kinds of productive properties are there, which are metaphysically most interesting, and – given that they are based on objective characteristics – what do they tell us about those 'things' (and reality in general)? These questions will not be answered here, but the next (and last) section will offer some suggestions on how to approach them. Bare and Indexical Existence: Integrating Logic and Sensibility in Ontology 233 III. Integrating logic and sensibility in ontology While the logical aspect in ontology primarily concerns the logical deducibility of (candidate) beings, the sensible aspect concerns the role of the senses or sensory information. In its most radical form, an ontology prioritizing the sensible aspect would bluntly assert that what we perceive exists. This 'blunt assertion' raises numerous questions, however. Indeed, what we perceive exists, but how does it exist? Or as what? And which of the things we perceive – if any – exist independently (from status ascriptions), and which exist dependently? Answers to such questions vary considerably between metaphysical theories, but there are common themes. Most metaphysical theories either adhere to, or explicitly reject a form of metaphysical dualism, although such (anti-) dualism comes in many variants and guises (Brons 2012). Most famous and influential Western variant of metaphysical dualism is Kant's opposition of appearances and things in themselves, or phenomena and noumena, the former being dependent on our perception and conceptualization, the latter being independent. In some Indian Buddhist philosophy a similar distinction is made between conventional and ultimate reality (sam. vr. tisat and paramārthasat) and the former is (usually) explicitly defined as being dependent (on convention).7 Often, the dependent reality (the reality of 'things' that exist dependently on some status / productive property) is considered to be in some sense unreal or less real, or otherwise inferior or of lesser significance. This sentiment seems to be born from a prioritizing of the logical over the sensible aspect: much of what we perceive exists in some sense, but logical analysis shows that it is mere appearance, and not ultimately real. Thus wholes such as chairs are mere dependent phenomenal appearance, and only the part-less parts (simples, atoms, svalaks.an.a) they are ultimately composed of are 'really real'. Van Inwagen's metaphysics – as expressed in thesis (5) and his other work on metaphysics, but not thesis (1) to (4) (see section I) – falls within this class of metaphysically dualist theories (although he would undoubtedly reject this classification). Van Inwagen's dualism is merely a (rather deceptive) change of terminology – 'existing' versus 'not existing' instead of 'noumenal' versus 'phenomenal', with the obvious implication of the insignificance of the latter – and a redefinition of independence (the 'existing'/'noumenal' side of the dualism) as quantificational unavoidability. Thus, what is quantificationally unavoidable / irreducible / independent 'exists' (is noumenal), and what is reducible / avoidable / dependent does 'not exist' (is mere phenomenal appearance). The same is true for Sider, who explicitly distinguishes what is 'real' (or what (really) exists) from 'mere projection of our conceptual apparatus' (p. 416); hence, the noumenal from the phenomenal. 7 This metaphysical dualism should not be confused with the epistemological dualism that is one of the defining characteristics of Buddhist philosophy: the distinction between conventional (or phenomenal) truth (sam. vr. ti) and ultimate truth (paramārtha). The two dualisms are related, however: ultimate truth was often conceived as truth about (a.o.) the nature of the relationship between the noumenal / ultimate / independent and the phenomenal / conventional / dependent, and metaphysical dualism is one of the answers given to questions about that relationship. Lajos L. Brons 234 Anti-dualism, the rejection of metaphysical dualism, can take two forms: it can either collapse the noumenal into the phenomenal (i.e. identify everything as (mind-) dependent), leading to (a variant of) absolute idealism; or it can collapse the phenomenal into the noumenal (i.e. identify everything perceived (under the right conditions) as ultimately real), leading to (a variant of) direct realism. In either case, the balance between the logical and the sensible aspect shifts the other way: the sensible determines what is real, and logic takes the back seat (or is drastically reformed in an attempt to solve the various paradoxes resulting from giving up (a version of) the noumenal phenomenal distinction).8 Integrating (or balancing) logic and sensibility within ontology – assuming that that is a desirable goal – would require some kind of intermediate position between the extremes of (predominantly logical) metaphysical dualism and (predominantly sensible) anti-dualism, between the strict separation and/or opposition of the noumenal and the phenomenal of the former, and the identification or reduction of the latter. Objective perspectivism provides that intermediate position by combining identification and separation without ending up with paradox. Variants of objective perspectivism (the term was introduced in Mou 2008) have been attributed to philosophers as far apart in time and tradition as Heraclitus, Zhuang Zi (莊子), Dōgen (道元), and John Searle (see also Brons 2011); and regardless of whether those attributions are correct, all of them offer important insights on the basic idea of objective perspectivism (but none developed a complete and rigorous theory on the matter). That basic idea is probably presented most briefly in Heraclitus' assertion that 'the way up and down is one and the same' (fr. 60/108).9 Our descriptions of 'things' are perspective-dependent, but that does not make those descriptions (or perspectives) untrue (or less true). The road is ultimately real; its angle is ultimately real; it is only whether we call it upward or downward which is perspective-dependent, and calling it differently does not (ultimately) make it a different road. What we call the road is, moreover, not just perspective-dependent: a perspective does not create reality, but merely determines how we perceive, classify and label parts or aspects thereof. 'We do not make 'worlds'; we make descriptions', and 'from the fact that a description can only be made relative to a set of linguistic categories it does not follow that the facts/objects/states of affairs,/etc., described can only exist relative to a set of categories' (Searle 1995, p. 166; emphasis in original). The phenomenal is ultimately real; in Dōgen's words: 'Opening flowers and falling leaves (the phenomenal world) is nature (such) as it is. However, fools think that there are no opening flowers and falling leaves in the world of Dharma-nature (ultimate reality)' (in the 8 Rejecting metaphysical dualism implies giving up the possibility that some referents are (called) F on one 'level' of reality (such as the phenomenal) and not-F on another 'level' (such as the noumenal) and that (at least some) conceptual classifications are phenomenal constructions. Without such 'levels' and conceptual construction(s), some things turn out to be simultaneously F and not-F, which is an obvious contradiction. A sometimes proposed solution to the consequent problems and paradoxes (such as the sorites paradox or the metaphysical problem of the statue and the clay) is a drastic reformation of logic (e.g. dialectical or paraconsistent logic(s)). 9 ὁδός άνω κάτω μία και ωυτή Bare and Indexical Existence: Integrating Logic and Sensibility in Ontology 235 chapter Hosshō 法性 of the Shōbōgenzō 正法眼藏).10 Nevertheless, phenomena and noumena are not identical; each perspective offers just part of the full picture. Are there many ways of seeing one object, or are many images mistaken to be one object? (...) Although it can be said that there are many kinds of water, there may seem to be no original/fundamental water, and no water of many kinds. Rather, the many (kinds of) water(s) according to (following) the types [of seeing beings] (...) have the illusiontranscendent state of dependence on [ultimately real] water itself. (Dōgen in the chapter Sansuigyō 山水經)11 What then, is that (ultimately real) water-itself that the many different phenomenal waters are dependent on? And how does this dependence work? Dōgen does not offer clear and unambiguous answers to these questions, but neither do the other (alleged) objective perspectivists. The second question, on the nature of the dependence of phenomena on their noumenal causes ('water itself'), or on the origination of conceptual classifications and the construction of phenomena, I attempted to answer elsewhere (Brons 2012). A central idea in that paper is that conceptual classifications, and therefore phenomena, involve two kinds of boundaries: boundaries of types and tokens. The first are the boundaries of the extension of a concept; the second of an individual object that is supposed to be an instantiation of a concept. Both types of boundaries can be fuzzy or crisp and purely conventional or noumenally real. What matters here, is that a perspective involves a way of classification in these two senses. Water-in-some-perspective is classified as water by means of the classification 'rules' (whatever the exact nature thereof) of that perspective, and the same is the case for water in other perspectives. However, all of these perspectives depend on the ultimately real nature of water-itself (see also the quote from Searle above). Perspectives are not creative but selective; they bound and group together objects by selecting some and ignoring other ultimately real (differences and similarities between) characteristics. Perspective 1 bounds and classifies x as A based on some real characteristics; perspective 2 bounds and classifies it as B; perspective 3 as C; and so forth. And if x is an element of the extensions of A, B, C, and so forth, then it is an element of their intersection. Adding (non-identical) perspectives shrinks that intersection, and hypothetically, the intersection of all possible classifications would be the ultimately real nature of x.12 This, of course raises the question what (kinds of) 10 しかあれば、開花葉落、これ如是性なり。しかあるに、愚人おもはくは、法性界には開 花葉落あるべからず。 11 一境をみるに諸見しなじななりとやせん、諸象を一境なりと誤錯せりとやせん、(...)。 (...) 諸類の水たとひおほしといへども、本水なきがごとし、諸類の水なきがごとし。しか あれども、隨類の諸水、(...)、依水の透脱あり。 12 Whorf (1956) made a similar point in a passage that is often quoted to summarize the core idea of his linguistic relativism. The key sentence that reveals the objective perspectivist nature (or leaning, at least) of his relativism is nearly always omitted, however, leading to misinterpretation of his theory (see also Brons 2011). Whorf wrote that 'no individual is free to describe nature with absolute impartiality but is constrained to certain modes of interpretation even while he thinks himself most free. The person most nearly free in such respects would be a linguist familiar with very many widely different linguistic systems' (p. 214; my emphasis). Lajos L. Brons 236 classifications are possible and whether it is possible to come to know all possible classifications. Zhuang Zi wrote that 'a path is created by walking it, a thing is (called) as it is by it being called so' (2.6).13 Conceptual classifications originate in social processes of communication about shared experiences of real 'things'. Many other philosophers, including thinkers as far apart in time, space, and tradition as Donald Davidson and Dharmakīrti (see Brons 2012 for a comparison), made a similar point. 'A thing is called as it is by it being called so', and by implication, a possible classification has to be communicable ('it being called so') and grounded in shareable, 'real' experiences (of 'a thing'). Although that considerably narrows down the range of possibilities, it does not necessarily limit the possible to the humanly possible. Dōgen repeatedly pointed out that understanding ultimate reality implies transcending anthropocentrism; one cannot fully understand the ultimately real nature of something if one only takes human perspectives into account. 'Although people now have a deep understanding of the contents (heart) of seas and rivers, we still do not know how dragons and fish understand and use water. Do not foolishly assume that all kinds of beings use as water that what we understand as water' (Sansuigyō).14 In this respect, Dōgen takes the sensible aspect in ontology one step further than most other perspectivists (or even most philosophers): not just human sensibility grants (true) existence, but all sensibility. Although communicability and shared grounding imply a limitation to the sensibility of beings that have some ability of communication, Dōgen's point is valid: possible classifications are not necessarily limited to the humanly possible; and consequently, in addition to human cognition and category formation, animal cognition and category formation need to be taken into account. The suggestion of objective perspectivism as an approach to ontology that integrates logic and sensibility is obviously in need of further elaboration. Providing a complete and rigorous theory of objective perspectivism is not the main purpose of this paper, however, and would require considerably more space than is available here. 'Sensible ontology' implies granting 'existence' to what is perceived by the senses, and then asking the question how that (what is perceived) exists, or as what. The main point of this paper is to show that such an approach to ontology is not inconsistent with a logical perspective on the notion(s) of 'existence'. Rather than being incoherent with 'bare existence', the kind of 'existence' expressed by the logical quantifier ∃, 'existence as' or 'indexical existence' extends that notion by adding a restricting property. Such 'existence as' is dependent existence, which raises questions about (among others) the existence, nature, and accessibility of (a realm of) independent existents. Objective perspectivism was suggested as an approach to answer such questions and ontological questions in general: any perspective fills in the dots after 'existence as', and because these classifications in part depend on the independent (ultimately real) nature of that what is said to exist, 13 道行之而成、物謂之而然 14 いま人間には、海のこころ、江のこころを、ふかく水と知見せりといへども、龍魚等、 いかなるものをもて水と知見し、水と使用すといまだしらず。おろかにわが水と知見す るを、いづれのたぐひも水にもちゐるらんと認ずることなかれ。 Bare and Indexical Existence: Integrating Logic and Sensibility in Ontology 237 intersecting all possible classifications uncovers that independent nature, or brings it closer at least. Such an approach integrates logic and sensibility in ontology without prioritizing one of the two. Perspectives, points of view, or ways of seeing are sensible by definition; analysis and 'intersection' add the logical element. Neither aspect is dominant: the sensible aspect grants existence, but the logical aspect determines as what. References Brons, L.L., 2011. Applied Relativism and Davidson's Arguments Against Conceptual Schemes, The Science of Mind 49, 221–240. Brons, L.L., 2012. Dharmakīrti, Davidson, and Knowing Reality, Comparative Philosophy 3.1, 30–57. Chalmers, D., Manley, D. & Wasserman, R. (eds.), 2009. Metametaphysics: New Essays on the Foundations of Ontology, Clarendon Press, Oxford. Fine, K., 2009. The Question of Ontology, in: Chalmers et al. (2009), 157–177. Mou, Bo, 2008. Searle, Zhuang Zi, and Transcendental Persectivism, in: (ed.), Searle's philosophy and Chinese Philosophy: Constructive Engagement, Brill, Leiden, 405–430. Price, H., 2009. Metaphysics after Carnap: the Ghost Who Walks?, in: Chalmers et al. (2009), 320–346. Schaffer, J., 2009. On What Grounds What?, in: Chalmers et al. (2009), 347–383. Searle, J., 1995. The Construction of Social Reality, Simon & Schuster, New York. Sider, T., 2003. Four-dimensionalism: An Ontology of Persistence and Time, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Sider, T., 2009. Ontological Realism, in: Chalmers et al. (2009), 384–423. van Inwagen, P., 1977. Creatures of Fiction, in: (2001), 37–56. van Inwagen, P., 1990. Material Beings, Cornell University Press, Ithaca. van Inwagen, P., 1998. Meta-ontology, in: (2001), 13–31. van Inwagen, P., 2001. Ontology, Identity, and Modality: Essays in Metaphysics, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. van Inwagen, P., 2003. Existence, Ontological Commitment, and Fictional Entities, in: M.J. Loux & D.W. Zimmerman (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 131–157. van Inwagen, P., 2009. Being, Existence, and Ontological Commitment, in: Chalmers et al. (2009), 472–506. Whorf, B.L., 1956. Language, Thought, and Reality, MIT Press, Cambridge MA. | {
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SPECIAL ISSUE ON TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE Dragan Simeunović Judith Renner Gabriel Twose Klaus Bachmann Patricia Lundy Rosalia de la Cruz Gitau Seidu Alidu Symposium on a book by Nir Eisikovits SYMPATHIZING WITH THE ENEMY: RECONCILIATION, TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE, NEGOTITATION Co-editors Klaus Bachman Mina Zirojević Fatić THE REVIEW OF INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRSRIA THE INSTITUTE OF INTERNATIONAL POLITICS AND ECONOMICS BELGRADE, VOL. LXI, No. 1138–1139, APRIL–SEPTEMBER 2010 UDK 327 ISSN 0486-6096 Founded in June 1950 190 The Review of International Affairs Jamie Terence Kelly1 Transitional Justice and Equality: A Response to Eisikovits This article responds to Nir Eisikovits' Sympathizing with the Enemy: Reconciliation, Transitional Justice, Negotiation (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 2010). In his recent book, Nir Eisikovits argues for an approach to political reconciliation centered upon the inculcation of sympathy between adversaries. After developing this approach to political reconciliation in the first part of his book, Eisikovits applies it by evaluating common transitional institutions and negotiation styles. In my response, I focus on the relationship between sympathy and transitional justice. I argue that if Eisikovits' argument in favor of sympathy is convincing, it ought to be applied beyond the confines of transitional justice as it is traditionally understood. More specifically, the process of inculcating sympathy should be extended to address issues of substantive inequality, and ought not be limited to formal concerns. Introduction In his recent book, Nir Eisikovits provides a rich and detailed description of the role and importance of sympathy in our understanding of international conflict.2 His most important theoretical contribution consists in developing an account of political reconciliation centered upon two related processes: the resolution of formal questions and the inculcation of sympathetic attitudes between adversaries. On Eisikovits' account, former adversaries can be said to 1 Jamie Terence Kelly, Department of Philosophy, Vassar College. 2 All page references are to the original. The Review of International Affairs 191 be reconciled just when they have resolved all formal disputes between them (e.g., questions regarding rights, borders, and political responsibilities), and they have - broadly though likely not uniformly - developed dispositions to sympathize with each others' actions and circumstances. I take this to be a useful and compelling way to understand political reconciliation. Eisikovits then goes on to apply this account of political reconciliation to both transitional justice and negotiation. In this response, I will focus upon Eisikovits' account of transitional justice, arguing that sympathy should be used beyond the narrow confines of political reconciliation. More specifically, I argue that the institutions and processes of transitional justice ought to mobilize sympathy in order pursue the full social and economic equality of citizens. Transitional Justice "Transitional Justice" can be understood in a number of different ways. One dominant understanding takes it to be the sort of justice that obtains during the transition from violent conflict to civil society.3 More simply, we might describe it as the sort of justice that obtains in a society that is transitioning from a state of war to a state of peace. This is not, however, the only way one might understand transitional justice. Here are some other candidate understandings: transitional justice might obtain in societies making the transition to democracy, it might describe the transition to a society where all members are given equal consideration and respect, or it might describe the kind of justice that regulates the transition of a society characterized by widespread human rights abuses or mass atrocity to a more humane one. None of these understandings, however, seem to precisely capture the import of transitional justice as it has developed in the last few decades. For example, South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) is often taken to be a paradigmatic example of transitional justice in action, but the abomination of apartheid, whatever else it might have been, does not seem to be accurately described as a state of war. It might be more apt to characterize apartheid as a state of violent conflict, but even that does not seem to capture what is essential about the situation.4 Further, attempts to characterize transitional justice in 3 See, for example, the introduction to Eisikovits' entry on "Transitional Justice" in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 4 For example, we could imagine a society relevantly like apartheid South Africa where the use of outright violence had been replaced by subtler forms of oppression and domination. In transitioning away from such a society, it seems plausible to think that the society would similarly be in need of institutions and processes of transitional justice. 192 The Review of International Affairs terms of democracy or human rights seem to unduly restrict the purview of transitional institutions.5 What seems to unify all of the above cases is the fact that they all represent a transition from a state of widespread injustice to one of greater justice. If this is correct, then all of the pre-transition states listed above ought to be recognizably unjust. This seems accurate. Insofar as we take states characterized by non-democratic government, human rights abuses, mass atrocity, or war as being fundamentally unjust, then this characterization of transitional justice would seem to capture what is essential about the role and importance of the transitional justice movement: institutions of transitional justice are designed and implemented in order to help a society move beyond a past characterized by widespread injustice toward a more just future. So understood, however, I will argue that there is an important ambiguity in our understanding of transitional justice. If transitional justice obtains in the transition from a state of widespread injustice to a state of justice, then we are still left with the question of what sorts of justice and injustice are at issue here. For example, are the pre-transitional states all characterized by criminal injustice? And further, what sort justice characterizes the post-transitional states? It seems to me that the first question is relatively unimportant. In cases where calls are made for transitional institutions, the depth and severity of injustice seems sufficient to obviate the need for any subtle or sophisticated conceptual understanding of the kinds of injustice involved. But the question regarding the kind of justice that characterizes post-transitional states seems to me to be of fundamental importance. It is, I take it, the question of when the transition is complete. Until we know what sort of justice transitional justice is a transition toward, we will not know when the utility of transitional institutions has been exhausted. In what follows, I will argue that Eisikovits, in assuming that political reconciliation and transitional justice are coextensive, improperly limits the proper scope of transitional justice. The Limits of Political Reconciliation In developing his account of political reconciliation, Eisikovits argues that we should be limited in our aims. He rejects the view that political reconciliation should be geared toward the healing of old wounds, or the promotion of 5 For example, it would seem possible for transitional justice to play a role in a society transitioning to a more just, but still non-democratic state. Similarly, transitional institutions could play a role in transitioning a society away from a state of war that did not involve gross human rights violations (this assumes that such a war is possible). The Review of International Affairs 193 solidarity between enemies. He claims that any such maximal theories of reconciliation are "unquestionably noble and unquestionably over-ambitious" (p.49). Similarly, Eisikovits recognizes that while economic prosperity can be both fostered by sympathy and can itself help to inculcate sympathetic attitudes, it should not be the goal of political reconciliation (pp.43-44). Thus, Eisikovits seems to take a narrow view of the scope of political reconciliation: it does not require that adversaries cease to be adversaries, but only that they cease to be enemies. In the case of political reconciliation, this seems fully apt. After all, enemies that are reconciled need not be friends, and the reconciliation aimed at here is explicitly political, rather than economic or social. With regard to negotiation and conflict resolution, Eisikovits argues for a similarly limited approach: the resolution of specific problems does not depend upon establishing fraternal ties between former enemies, nor does it require eliminating all injustice. Rather, he argues that political reconciliation ought to be an important goal of negotiators (p.135), and that its achievement can carry a great deal of symbolic weight for parties to the negotiations (p.139). Negotiation can be successful, however, even when it falls short of these aims. As a result, the scope of negotiation is, morally speaking, even narrower than that of political reconciliation. While the settling of formal questions and the inculcation of sympathetic dispositions are necessary conditions for political reconciliation, they are not strictly speaking required for successful negotiation. In the case of transitional justice, Eisikovits takes a similarly limited approach, arguing that the justification of transitional institutions is tied to their ability to promote political reconciliation (p.131). He rejects broader justifications of transitional institutions (especially TRCs) based in deliberative democracy, social unity, and restorative justice, arguing instead that: ...a South African-style truth commission can be justified because it creates the preconditions for sympathy, which in turn, is constitutive of political reconciliation. More specifically, I shall argue that such bodies are morally defensible because they can generate the detailed information and the kind of political generosity required for the development of sympathetic attitudes. (p.126) For the purposes of this article, I will concede Eisikovits' claim that the justification of transitional institutions is tied to their ability to promote sympathy, but I dispute his assertion that the point of such sympathy must be limited to the goals of political reconciliation. I do not see why political reconciliation and transitional justice must have the same moral scope. Political reconciliation is necessarily political, whereas transitional justice need not be. Indeed, it seems odd to restrict the scope of transitional institutions to the same goals as political reconciliation. As Eisikovits notes, the moral ambitions of the South African TRC greatly outstrip the purview of political reconciliation 194 The Review of International Affairs (p.131), and seem to be geared toward the promotion of political and social equality (p.10). It seems plausible to me that political reconciliation and transitional justice are quite different in scope: reconciliation extends only to the realm of politics, whereas transitional justice ought to be much broader, encompassing political, social, and even economic equality. Stated another way, I take it that the appropriate end points of political reconciliation, negotiation, and transitional justice are quite different from one another. As Eisikovits maintains, two enemies are reconciled when they have settled all formal questions between them, and have developed the proper sort of sympathetic dispositions toward one another. Negotiation, on the other hand, is complete when it provides a solid foundation for a lasting peace. But I take it that institutions and processes of transitional justice ought to aim higher, and ought to continue working beyond the end points of either negotiation of political reconciliation. I will argue in the next section that institutions of transitional justice ought to aim for not only the establishment of a lasting peace, and for the resolution of formal questions and the inculcation of sympathy, but should also attempt to bring about social and economic equality. Perhaps an example will be helpful here. I think it is reasonable to suppose that Israelis and Palestinians could be politically reconciled without achieving substantive equality. Imagine the case of two future children: a young Israeli boy from Tel Aviv and a young Palestinian girl from Gaza. I claim that they could be politically reconciled even though they might still have substantially different life prospects (e.g., their ability to go to the best universities, their opportunity to open a business, and the likelihood that they will become prime minister). Political reconciliation does not seem to require that sort of equality, but I take it that transitional justice should aim precisely at such lofty goals. Sympathy and Equality One of the great strengths of Eisikovits' account of political reconciliation is his recognition of the role and importance of political generosity in reconciling former adversaries. He argues very convincingly that there can be no reconciliation unless individuals are willing to forgo the moral book-keeping of past transgressions, and set aside their vindictive or vengeful motivations. In order for political reconciliation to be successful, individuals must cultivate a set of moral dispositions: they must be willing to put an end to the cycle of violent reprisals, they must shift their focus away from their own pain and the wrongs they have suffered, and they must be ready to offer an enemy more than they can minimally expect (p.75). An essential part of sympathy, according to Eisikovits, is comprised of actions that serve to develop these dispositions. Political generosity requires effort. It requires that individuals work on their own motivations, actively The Review of International Affairs 195 shaping them to be more generous. The process of becoming sympathetic, according to Eisikovits, is thus tied up with the collection and acceptance of information describing the conditions and experiences of others. It should be recalled that according to Eisikovits, political reconciliation is not possible through the inculcation of sympathetic dispositions alone. Instead, it also requires the resolution of formal questions between adversaries (p.10). Political reconciliation requires that rights and responsibilities be fairly allotted amongst former enemies. As a result, we need to be wary of mischaracterizing Eisikovits' position as blind to issues of inequality.6 But the sorts of inequalities that seem to be central to political reconciliation on Eisikovits' account concern formal questions regarding the distribution of political rights. As Eisikovits understands it (p.1), political reconciliation requires answers to questions like: who has a right to what? Answers to such questions thus specify the formal terms of political reconciliation. It ought to be obvious, however, that persistent injustice can endure even where individuals enjoy formally equal political rights. Informal barriers to employment, public office, and various sorts of opportunity can endure even if, as a matter of political rights, everyone has the same set of permissions and entitlements. The experiences of minority groups in the U.S., Europe, and elsewhere should suffice to demonstrate that formal equality is all too compatible with social inequality and injustice. If we take this to be the case, then why should transitional justice focus exclusively on formal questions? Even if we concede, as I think we should, that political reconciliation is so limited, we might want to extend the scope of transitional justice and its institutions beyond merely formal considerations to substantive issues governing, for example, distributive justice. As Eisikovits rightly emphasizes, rights and sympathy are mutually supporting, and it is this very synergy that seems to animate much of the literature on transitional justice. As Eisikovits says when discussing political reconciliation: If sympathy is understood as the ability to identify imaginatively with another, and if this other is endowed with the same rights that I possess, the identification becomes easier. In other words, if having a set of rights constitutes part of my self-understanding, it is easier to identify with someone who possesses the same set of rights, since by the fact of possessing them she becomes more like me. On the other hand, if I begin to sympathize with another, and make an effort to place myself in 6 For Eisikovits' discussion of structural inequalities, see his response to what he calls the Marxist critique (p.70), and his discussion of distributive justice (p.114). 196 The Review of International Affairs her circumstances, this can serve as an independent motivation and encouragement for endowing her with the same rights I have. (p.14) The above comments are all the more convincing when we move beyond formal political questions, and begin to consider the role of transitional institutions in promoting substantive (rather than merely political) equality. I take it that the intellectual energy and excitement that has developed around the transitional justice literature in the last few decades is due to the potential of transitional institutions to serve as new tools in the service of social justice. Whether or not such institutions can live up to this promise remains to be seen, but their potential to promote justice beyond mere formal rights should not be ignored. Conclusion Much of the promise of transitional institutions stems from the fact that they require communities to balance considerations of justice that pull in disparate directions. In order to succeed, such institutions must make trade-offs between, for example, retribution for past wrongs, and social stability. Transitional justice requires that societies work toward a more just future by making difficult sacrifices (e.g., allowing murderers to go free, so that the community can move on). Despite, and because of the injustices of the past, a way must be found toward a more just future. In this way, transitional institutions like South Africa's TRC require the development of a kind of political generosity that is elsewhere unheard of. When one finds oneself in the midst of such political generosity, when one confronts a society that is willing to focus its attention on the common project of promoting justice, and when one finds a community willing to make such sacrifices in order to promote sympathy, it seems a great and unconscionable waste to lower one's goals from full equality. Once the moral urgency of such situations has dissipated, and the regular political book-keeping settles in, opportunities for concerted political action predictably recede. As a result, we ought to emphasize the moral difference between political reconciliation and transitional justice. Although they both may rely upon the mechanism of sympathy, it seems that the latter has appropriate to it egalitarian aspirations wholly absent from the former. Bibliography 1. Eisikovits, Nir, Sympathizing with the Enemy: Reconciliation, Transitional Justice, Negotiation (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers), 2010. 2. Eisikovits, Nir, "Transitional Justice" in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2009, Edward N. Zalta Ed. (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ justice-transitional/). | {
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RESEARCH ARTICLE 10.1002/2017WR020609 Toward best practice framing of uncertainty in scientific publications: A review of Water Resources Research abstracts Joseph H. A. Guillaume1,2 , Casey Helgeson3 , Sondoss Elsawah2,4 , Anthony J. Jakeman2 , and Matti Kummu1 1Water and Development Research Group, Aalto University, Finland, 2Fenner School of Environment & Society, Australian National University, Australia, 3GREGHEC, CNRS, HEC Paris, France, 4Capability Systems Centre, School of Engineering and Information Technology, University of New South Wales, Australia Abstract Uncertainty is recognized as a key issue in water resources research, among other sciences. Discussions of uncertainty typically focus on tools and techniques applied within an analysis, e.g., uncertainty quantification and model validation. But uncertainty is also addressed outside the analysis, in writing scientific publications. The language that authors use conveys their perspective of the role of uncertainty when interpreting a claim-what we call here ''framing'' the uncertainty. This article promotes awareness of uncertainty framing in four ways. (1) It proposes a typology of eighteen uncertainty frames, addressing five questions about uncertainty. (2) It describes the context in which uncertainty framing occurs. This is an interdisciplinary topic, involving philosophy of science, science studies, linguistics, rhetoric, and argumentation. (3) We analyze the use of uncertainty frames in a sample of 177 abstracts from the Water Resources Research journal in 2015. This helped develop and tentatively verify the typology, and provides a snapshot of current practice. (4) We make provocative recommendations to achieve a more influential, dynamic science. Current practice in uncertainty framing might be described as carefully considered incremental science. In addition to uncertainty quantification and degree of belief (present in 5% of abstracts), uncertainty is addressed by a combination of limiting scope, deferring to further work (25%) and indicating evidence is sufficient (40%)-or uncertainty is completely ignored (8%). There is a need for public debate within our discipline to decide in what context different uncertainty frames are appropriate. Uncertainty framing cannot remain a hidden practice evaluated only by lone reviewers. Plain Language Summary Scientists address uncertainty not only in how they perform analyses, but also in how they write about their results. Not enough attention has been given to the ways in which scientists describe how uncertainty affects interpretation of their conclusions, which we call ''uncertainty frames.'' We aim to raise awareness of this issue by: (1) proposing a typology of eighteen uncertainty frames, addressing five questions about uncertainty, (2) describing the factors that affect how uncertainty is framed, (3) describing current practice by identifying and analyzing what frames are used in a sample of abstracts published in Water Resources Research in 2015, and (4) providing provocative recommendations on how uncertainty communication could improve. We hope to spark debate within our community about how scientists should be communicating the role of uncertainty in their results. 1. Introduction: The Concept of Uncertainty Framing The handling of uncertainty is central to the nature of research and progress in science. For a statement to be accepted as fact means that it is no longer considered uncertain. The credibility of scientific findings depends on how uncertainty has been addressed. Uncertainty can also be used as an excuse for delay and is blamed for contributing to the science-policy gap [Bradshaw and Borchers, 2000; Brugnach et al., 2007]. Accordingly, uncertainty has been increasingly discussed from the standpoints of both scientific methods and decision making [Morgan et al., 1990; Reichert and Borsuk, 2005; Pappenberger and Beven, 2006; Beven and Young, 2013; Reichert et al., 2015]. This discourse has notably included: Special Section: Engagement, Communication, and Decision-Making Under Uncertainty Key Points: Uncertainty framing in scientific articles is an important means of addressing uncertainty; indicating role of uncertainty in a claim A typology of frames describes conclusions in terms of maturity, scope, level of belief, depth of analysis, and relatability to the reader Frequency of frames in abstracts is consistent with carefully considered incremental science; potential to be more influential, dynamic Supporting Information: Supporting Information S1 Data Set S1 Correspondence to: J. H. A. Guillaume, [email protected] Citation: Guillaume, J. H. A., C. Helgeson, S. Elsawah, A. J. Jakeman, and M. Kummu (2017), Toward best practice framing of uncertainty in scientific publications: A review of Water Resources Research abstracts, Water Resour. Res., 53, 6744–6762, doi:10.1002/2017WR020609. Received 17 FEB 2017 Accepted 16 JUL 2017 Accepted article online 20 JUL 2017 Published online 9 AUG 2017 VC 2017. American Geophysical Union. All Rights Reserved. GUILLAUME ET AL. FRAMING OF UNCERTAINTY 6744 Water Resources Research PUBLICATIONS 1. typologies and taxonomies of uncertainty [e.g., Walker et al., 2003; Brown, 2004; Krauss and Walker, 2006; Norton et al., 2006; Refsgaard et al., 2007], including discussion of ambiguity [Brugnach et al., 2008] and linguistic uncertainty in defining concepts [Regan et al., 2002]; 2. analysis of how to address uncertainty in modelling generally [e.g., Matott et al., 2009; Gupta et al., 2012; Guillaume et al., 2016]; 3. model identifiability and uncertainty in parameter estimation [e.g., Beck, 1987; Brun et al., 2001; Vrugt et al., 2002, 2008; Duan et al., 2003; Wagener and Gupta, 2005; Hill and Tiedeman, 2007]; 4. characterizing model accuracy or information [Gupta et al., 1998; e.g., Bennett et al., 2013; Nearing and Gupta, 2015]; 5. tackling cases in which probabilities are less meaningful, e.g., climate change [e.g., Lempert, 2002; Walker et al., 2013; Maier et al., 2016]; 6. analyses of how humans make decisions under uncertainty [Lipshitz and Strauss, 1997; Kahneman, 2011], and how uncertainty is viewed by decision makers [Isendahl et al., 2009]. Most of this literature focusses on the treatment of uncertainties within an analysis. Insights from real-world decision making also feed into efforts to improve analysis, and even discussion of linguistic uncertainty emphasizes its impact on applications [Regan et al., 2002]. But given the academic community's focus on publishing, it is useful also to reflect specifically on uncertainty in our core business, namely writing papers [McDonnell, 2016]. While typically not considered a part of the research and analysis proper, communication about uncertainty in the text of the academic paper plays a key role in how others (i.e., researchers, policy makers) interpret our conclusions and whether they accept them. Information is conveyed not just when reporting quantified uncertainty, but also through the writing choices adopted by an author, intentional, or otherwise. By our definition, uncertainty framing involves communicating how uncertainty affects the interpretation of a conclusion. An uncertainty frame provides a description of how uncertainty affects interpretation of a conclusion. This is a more specific issue than simply how uncertainty is viewed in general terms [e.g., Isendahl et al., 2009]. What it means will become more concrete with the description of frames in section 2. It should, however, already be clear that framing of uncertainty is an unavoidable part of research in conveying the reliability of our conclusions and how the reader should use them. Aspects of uncertainty framing have been researched by a variety of other disciplines (see section 3), including science studies, science education, linguistics, and philosophy. But this knowledge has not been translated into practice within our discipline, where (as in many fields) there is a disconnect between the treatment of uncertainties in our scientific methods and communication about uncertainty in our scientific papers. This communication-which largely comes down to uncertainty framing-receives far less scrutiny than do the methods. There is no public debate about the appropriateness of uncertainty frames for different situations: has the author chosen an appropriate description of how uncertainty affects interpretation of a conclusion? Frames are accepted solely on the reviewer's individual (often subconscious) judgement, rather than a more rigorous disciplinary consensus. There is a need for reflection specifically within our discipline, to look at what is actually being delivered and assess the potential for improvement. There are several specific ways that reflecting on framing of uncertainty can help the academic community, as researchers, readers, reviewers, journal editors, and authors. The ultimate goal is to encourage appropriate use of different uncertainty framing approaches to achieve intended aims. Best practices could define the circumstances in which different approaches should or should not be used. Awareness of the diversity of frames in use can help the reader to notice how authors have qualified their statements and to critically evaluate the claims they make. Reviewers have the opportunity to ask the author to better support or to further qualify their statements [Myers, 1985]. Greater understanding of framing might help journals to better train reviewers and authors to improve research quality. An author aims to balance several objectives, including advancing their field, appropriately justifying their conclusions, avoiding misinterpretation or misuse of results, and getting their work published. Uncertainty framing allows the author to make qualified claims even when they are not certain, thus advancing the field as much as possible while making a valid argument that is clear to the reader and acceptable to the reviewer. Authors should strive to improve their repertoire of framing approaches, their acuity in recognizing what frame suits what purpose, and their skill in predicting what effect it will have on the reader. Given that uncertainty framing is ubiquitous (though not always appropriate or explicit), it appears many authors learn this intuitively. Making framing practices Water Resources Research 10.1002/2017WR020609 GUILLAUME ET AL. FRAMING OF UNCERTAINTY 6745 explicit can support teachers to help those who lag behind. A researcher who improves their ability to frame uncertainty improves their ability to contribute to knowledge. This paper therefore aims to raise awareness of uncertainty framing by: 1. proposing a typology of uncertainty frames that provides a vocabulary and framework to help select, interpret, or evaluate the information provided about uncertainty in conclusions; 2. placing the act of uncertainty framing within its broader context by drawing on literature from multiple disciplines; 3. analyzing the frequency of occurrence of frames in abstracts of Water Resources Research (WRR) to provide a snapshot of current practice, a preliminary validation of the typology, and to generate hypotheses for their use; 4. providing a provocative set of recommendations to spur debate about best practices in uncertainty framing. Our focus on the abstract of a paper assumes that is where authors have distilled their claims and accompanying uncertainty framing to the highest level. Frames used in the abstract should reflect the aspects of uncertainty that authors consider most important to convey to their readers, even if they differ from the frames used elsewhere in the article. The focus on articles published in WRR is justified by the authors' (interdisciplinary) interest in water resources, the reputation of the journal, and its sense of academic community through its affiliation with the American Geophysical Union and its hydrology section. Moreover, WRR has a long tradition of reflection on the state of the field [Hufschmidt, 1967; Klemes, 1986; Dooge, 1996; Gupta and Nearing, 2014; Sivapalan, 2015; Vogel et al., 2015]. The article begins by introducing the typology of uncertainty frames developed in this work (section 2). We then dive more deeply into the topic of uncertainty frames by describing the context in which uncertainty framing occurs, drawing on existing literature across disciplines (section 3). This provides background for the method used for our analysis (section 4). Results (section 5) describe the frequency of occurrence of frames and the form in which they occur in abstracts, as well as positing hypotheses regarding their use. Recommendations are drawn to improve the use and understanding of uncertainty framing, with the aim of initiating a discussion about best practices (section 6). 2. Introducing a Typology of Uncertainty Frames Fundamentally, framing of uncertainty is about ensuring readers have the information they need to evaluate an article's conclusions. Authors should anticipate readers' needs and ensure that the right information is available. Based on our analysis (see sections 4 and 5), we propose an uncertainty framing typology consisting of five core questions that can be asked about an article's conclusions (Figure 1). Answers to the questions are offered by 18 uncertainty frames. For each question, the subset of frames most useful for answering that question can, moreover, be arranged on a continuum (where the meaning of the continuum depends on the question). A rationale is provided for each core question, explaining its relevance to the management of uncertainty: 1. Is the conclusion ready to be used? Knowing to what extent a conclusion is ready for use (its maturity) allows remaining uncertainty to be anticipated. A definitive conclusion can be delayed where appropriate, and uncertainty can be reduced in the long term by investing in future work. 2. What limitations are there on how the conclusion can be used? If a conclusion was obtained by using assumptions to reduce uncertainty in the short term, the reader needs to know about the resulting limitations on the scope of the conclusion. 3. How certain is the author that the conclusion is true? Describing the author's level of belief in a conclusion (e.g., using probabilities) allows reasoning about uncertain information. 4. How thoroughly has the issue been examined? Uncertainty can alternatively be described by considering the effect of alternative assumptions (e.g., scenarios and uncertainty quantification), which provides an indication of how thoroughly an issue has been examined, referred to here as the depth of analysis. 5. Is the conclusion consistent with the reader's prior knowledge? Uncertainty can be handled in communication itself, by anticipating potential mismatch between the position of the author and the reader, and Water Resources Research 10.1002/2017WR020609 GUILLAUME ET AL. FRAMING OF UNCERTAINTY 6746 presenting a conclusion in a way that facilitates its integration with the reader's prior knowledge, i.e., emphasizing relatability of a conclusion. Below, we discuss a range of answers to these core questions and how those answers are typically reflected in scientific publications. For each question, a table is provided listing the names of the associated frames, the answers that those frames provide, and example statements. To allow easy comparison, example statements are all modifications of the statement that ''Water supply is sufficient to meet demand,'' in which additional information about uncertainty has been introduced using the respective frame. There are two special frames that cut across questions (a) through (d), in each case anchoring the two ends of a continuum. The strongest statements are those framed as Expressed-as-Fact, meaning that no uncertainty is acknowledged. The weakest statements are those indicating that the only useful consequence of the work is for others to Learn-from-myproblems. Between these extremes, there is a broad range of ways to frame uncertainty. Further analysis may extend the list of frames, notably by looking at uncertainty framing outside of abstracts, or possibly by subdividing the frames already identified. Section 5 provides more detail, describing how we perceive each frame to be employed within the abstracts in our sample. It also speculates on some explanations as to why each frame might be chosen by an author. How certain is the author that the conclusion is true? To what extent is the conclusion ready to be used? What limitations are there on how the conclusion can be used? Is the conclusion consistent with the reader's prior knowledge? How thoroughly has the issue been examined? a) Maturity and utility Core question Continuum along which answers are placed Legend for sub-tiles Uncertainty frames Category of frames b) Scope of a claim c) Level of belief in a conclusion d) Depth of analysis e) Relatability less limitations more assumptions accepted increasing exploration of alternative assumptions increasing utility of results increasing degree of belief in assumptions x Uncertainty can be reduced in the long term by delaying a definitive conclusion and investing in future work Uncertainty can be described in terms that allow reasoning about uncertain information Uncertainty can be handled in communication by anticipating differences in opinion between the reader and author Rationale of core question Uncertainty can be described by considering the effect of alternative assumptions Uncertainty can be reduced in the short term by making assumptions that limit scope of applicability Expressed-as-Fact Degree-of-belief Take-it-or-leave-it Learn-from-my-problems Follow-the-contract Validate-and-Defend Learn-from-my-problems Suggest-a-new-research-agenda Step-towards-a-goal Build-the-foundations Expressed-as-Fact Repeat-with-shifted-scope New-view-on-existing-result Learn-from-my-problems Make-it-hypothetical Make-it-relative Restrict-scope-of-applicability Expressed-as-Fact Expressed-as-Fact Learn-from-my-problems Demonstrate-robustness Uncertainty quantification Triangulation Just-a-possibility Figure 1. Uncertainty framing typology, showing five categories of frames defined in terms of core questions, the answers to which fall onto a continuum. Uncertainty frames are mapped onto these continuums, describing the role of uncertainty in interpreting a conclusion. The rationale of each core question describes the relevance to the management of uncertainty, which in this context involves either reduction, description, or communication of uncertainty. Water Resources Research 10.1002/2017WR020609 GUILLAUME ET AL. FRAMING OF UNCERTAINTY 6747 2.1. Communicating Maturity and Utility Information should be used in ways commensurate with its limitations. Appropriate uncertainty framing helps to facilitate this. Answers to the question ''to what extent is the conclusion ready to be used?'' form a continuum where the results have increasingly ''mature'' uses, articulated here as one moves up the steps of Figure 1a. The first two frames only highlight problems and opportunities for future work. Here we make a distinction between stating that further work is needed (Learn-from-my-problems) and taking the extra step to suggest a particular hypothesis or method that could be pursued (Suggest-a-new-research-agenda). Next come preliminary or partial results, where the author may indicate that their conclusions provide only initial estimates (Step-towards-a-goal), or will enable others to further extend their work (Build-the-foundations). Finally, there are results that are presented as ready for the intended use (Expressed-as-Fact). Where authors refrain from commenting on maturity and readiness for use, the reader is left to make up their own mind with the information provided (likely to be interpreted as Expressed-as-Fact). Table 1 gives example statements illustrating the frames used to communicate maturity and utility. 2.2. Communicating Scope of a Claim Characterizing the applicability and limitations of a conclusion-what we call the ''scope''-is not traditionally appreciated as a means of addressing uncertainty, but is actually fundamental to it. A broad, sweeping statement is typically more uncertain than a specific, targeted one, requiring a greater number of supporting assumptions both explicit and implicit. It is for instance easier to demonstrate that a phenomenon has occurred once in particular circumstances than to describe the rules governing its occurrence. The frames most helpful for communicating scope lie on a continuum where caveats and qualifications decrease as more supporting assumptions are accepted (Figure 1b). At the bottom of this continuum, an author would comment only on the research process, perhaps highlighting challenges that prevent further conclusions from having any scope (Learn-from-my-problems). At the top, accepting all necessary assumptions allows for making general, unrestricted statements (Expressed-as-Fact). Between these endpoints lie intermediate indications of scope. Assumptions underlying a conclusion may limit its scope to a hypothetical rather than real world (Make-it-hypothetical). Accepting a subset of assumptions leads to real-world statements that can only be generalized to other circumstances where the same assumptions hold (Restrict-scope-of-applicability). These restrictions can be expressed by referencing conditions under which the conclusion holds, or by highlighting exceptions. Comparative statements require acceptance of assumptions that impact on the comparison while allowing assumptions to go unresolved if they have a similar effect in all cases (Make-it-relative). Such comparisons may or may not be accompanied by an explicit disclosure that the analysis allows only such comparative statements and does not support conclusions about the individual success of a method, model, or policy in absolute terms. Table 2 shows example statements for the frames used to communicate scope. Table 1. Uncertainty Frames Conveying Maturity and Utility of a Conclusion, With Answers That Those Frames Provide, and Example Statements Name of Frame To What Extent Is the Conclusion Ready to be Used? Example Statement Expressed-as-Fact The results are ready for use Water supply will not be an issue Build-the-foundations The results provide firm foundations for future work to build upon This analysis of consumption helps determine whether there is enough water Step-towards-a-goal The results are only preliminary, and more work is needed to achieve the goal The analysis provides an initial estimate of the water balance to determine if there is enough water Suggest-a-new-research-agenda While not directly useful, the results do suggest a new research agenda A water balance analysis could determine if there is enough water Learn-from-my-problems Problems need to be resolved before any action can be taken Further work is needed Table 2. Uncertainty Frames Conveying Scope of a Conclusion, With Answers That Those Frames Provide, and Example Statements Name of Frame What Limitations Are There on How The Conclusion Can be Used? Example Statement Expressed-as-Fact There are no restrictions; general statements can be made Water supply is sufficient Make-it-relative We can draw only comparative conclusions There is more water than without the proposed adaptations Restrict-scope-of-applicability Conclusions cannot be generalized; they have a restricted scope of applicability There is enough water as long as demand growth does not exceed 5% Make-it-hypothetical Conclusions are dependent on the hypothetical assumptions used Based on these assumptions, there would be enough water Learn-from-my-problems We can only make a statement about the research process Adequacy of water supply presented interesting challenges Water Resources Research 10.1002/2017WR020609 GUILLAUME ET AL. FRAMING OF UNCERTAINTY 6748 Note that some indications of scope may simply reflect what the author considered to be interesting (and therefore Expressed-as-Fact), rather than a limitation on how the results can be used. Limitations may therefore be ambiguous in some cases. 2.3. Communicating Level of Belief in a Conclusion The idea of ''level of belief'' in results-or strength of support-is closely associated with the topic of uncertainty analysis, and falls onto a continuum perhaps best defined by the question ''How certain is the author that the statement is true?'' (Figure 1c, Table 3) The weakest framings communicate that the author is unwilling to form an opinion, or does not believe they can convince someone else. Intermediate degrees of belief convey a level of support while leaving the reader to make their own final judgment. Where authors believe the reader should accept the argument, the framing may invoke a notion of sufficiency. Authors may claim there is sufficient evidence either based on their own arguments, or by appeal to accepted standards. At the top of the continuum, evidence may be so strong that no explicit argument is required; the conclusion is beyond dispute. Within a text, the first two frames are often quite explicit, with meta-statements about insufficiency of evidence (Learn-from-my-problems), or personal opinion (Take-it-or-leave-it). Degree-of-belief can be expressed qualitatively, using terms like ''probably'' or ''unlikely,'' or expressed quantitatively, using confidence levels, p-values, or measures of model fit. Sufficiency of evidence may be less directly expressed, for example, by indicating that a model is validated, ''good'' results are obtained, or a hypothesis is considered supported (Validate-and-Defend). Follow-the-contract involves additional reference to standard or accepted methods or evaluation criteria, and an argument that these methods have been adequately applied. Accepted facts may appear not just as unjustified statements, but also with emphasis on their certainty (Expressed-as-Fact). 2.4. Communicating Depth of Analysis ''Depth of analysis'' is closely related to the concept of level of uncertainty, which is common in typologies of uncertainty, capturing a continuum between ''deterministic knowledge'' and total ignorance [Walker et al., 2003]. We consider depth of analysis to correspond to a continuum of increasing exploration of alternative assumptions (Figure 1d, Table 4). An author does not know if they are totally ignorant, but can communicate their recognized ignorance. A single analysis (and underlying set of assumptions) yields a single scenario from an uncertainty viewpoint. The use of multiple lines of evidence is referred to as triangulation in the social sciences. When the consideration of alternative assumptions is sufficiently thorough, their aggregate properties can be communicated, in the form of bounds or probability distributions. If the remaining unexplored assumptions do not have a significant effect, the conclusion is considered robust to that uncertainty. Finally, when assumptions are considered to be exhaustively explored, this means we have ''deterministic knowledge.'' Table 3. Uncertainty Frames Conveying Level of Belief in a Conclusion, With Answers That Those Frames Provide, and Example Statements Name of frame How Certain Is the Author That the Conclusion Is True? Example Statement Expressed-as-Fact This is accepted as truth There is clearly enough water Follow-the-contract There are clear requirements for acceptance of this kind of statement, and in this case, the contract is satisfied According to standard methods, there is enough water Validate-and-Defend This has been sufficiently validated that I would be willing to defend it The analysis demonstrates that there is enough water Degree-of-belief I've quantified my degree of belief in terms of the model R2, which in this case is 0.8 The model (R250.8) indicates that there is enough water Take-it-or-leave-it I'm convinced, but others can make up their own minds In my professional opinion, there is enough water Learn-from-my-problems There are too many problems to know We do not know whether there is sufficient water Table 4. Uncertainty Frames Conveying Depth of Analysis Supporting a Conclusion, With Answers That Those Frames Provide, and Example Statements Name of frame How Thoroughly Has the Issue Been Examined? Example Statement Expressed-as-Fact Examination was so thorough that it is considered perfect It has been conclusively shown that there is enough water Demonstrate-robustness Examination has been sufficiently thorough to demonstrate robustness There is enough water in all scenarios considered Uncertainty-quantification A broad examination allows the uncertainty to be quantified The available water ranges from 101% to 130% of requirements Triangulation The use of several approaches provides a triangulation Multiple methods agree that there is enough water Just-a-possibility We only know enough to know this is a possibility Based on this estimate, it is possible that there is enough water Learn-from-my-problems Problems have prevented useful examination The analysis was unable to determine whether there is enough water Water Resources Research 10.1002/2017WR020609 GUILLAUME ET AL. FRAMING OF UNCERTAINTY 6749 Within a text, recognized ignorance takes the form of identifying knowledge gaps (Learn-from-my-problems). When a conclusion is framed as Just-a-possibility, it may be highlighted as a possible scenario or an estimate. Triangulation uses explicit references to multiple methods or data sources. Uncertainty-quantification takes a broad range of forms depending on the method used, including ranges, various representations of probability distributions, and less formal references to lower bounds or orders of magnitude. Demonstrate-robustness includes any reference to the notion of insensitivity to assumptions including, for example, in statistical hypothesis testing. To say that a conclusion is statistically significant means that it is insensitive to changes in the sample drawn from the population. Deterministic knowledge may be highlighted as a settled issue (Expressed-as-Fact). 2.5. Communicating Relatability: Relation of Results to Readers' Prior Knowledge The commonality among all the preceding frames is that they establish the status of a new claim. We identified two ''relatability'' frames that instead engage with the reader's existing opinion (Figure 1e, Table 5). Uncertainty is dealt with by anticipating potential mismatch between the author and the reader's opinions. The two frames deal with the opposing situations where the author either expects that the reader may reject their argument, or expects that the reader already believes the statement. The first frame, Repeat-with-shifted-scope, anticipates possible rejection by making another, more strongly supported, claim, usually with a narrower scope. If the reader does agree with the author, then the author has been able to make a strong claim despite uncertainty. Otherwise, the author still retains a weaker claim. The second frame, New-view-on-existing-result, highlights that the conclusion will not be a surprise. If the reader agrees with the author, then the lack of novelty has at least been acknowledged. If the reader disagrees, then the author has strengthened their claim by making the reference to existing work. 3. Multiple Disciplinary Perspectives on Framing Use of the frames introduced in the previous section should be understood within a broader context. A range of factors inside and outside the analysis influence the way an author frames uncertainty in a scientific publication. These factors have been discussed in various fields of study, and here we briefly introduce some of the ideas from these other fields that have shaped our approach to uncertainty framing. Specifically, we consider frame selection as a part of the activities of building a scientific argument, writing in a disciplinary specific way, and negotiating claims within the social context of the disciplinary community. 3.1. Building a Scientific Argument The presentation of uncertain findings can be viewed as a form of argumentation, in which the researcher refers to the methods they have used as part of the argument they are building. As described by Toulmin et al. [1979], arguments in general consist of a claim (conclusion) supported by selected grounds (premises), with the logic between them given by a warrant. The claim may be qualified, and the warrant itself may require justification as a method for drawing conclusions. Scientific arguments in particular have some characteristic features, including layers of ''stacked claims,'' with more complex claims building on observations or existing disciplinary knowledge as foundations [Latour, 1987; Kelly and Bazerman, 2003]. Attending to these structural features of arguments helped us to refine the set of uncertainty frames classified in this paper, and to recognize them within abstracts. Our analysis of each individual abstract included mapping of any visible argument structure (see Methods). Table 5. Uncertainty Frames Conveying Relatability of a Conclusion to the Reader, With Answers That Those Frames Provide, and Example Statements Name of frame Is the Conclusion Consistent With the Reader's Prior Knowledge? Example Statement Repeat-with-shifted-scope The reader may not accept a general statement, but the specific statement is believable There is enough water, at least in wet conditions New-view-on-existing-result The result will not be a surprise As expected from previous analyses, we see that there is enough water Water Resources Research 10.1002/2017WR020609 GUILLAUME ET AL. FRAMING OF UNCERTAINTY 6750 Within the argument structure, the warrant may take a variety of forms [Macagno and Walton, 2015], with consequences for the status of the conclusion. Among warrants, key distinctions are made between types of reasoning (e.g., deductive, inductive) and between types of argument (e.g., from cause and effect, comparison, expert opinion etc.) [Macagno and Walton, 2015]. Outside deductive proof, there is a need to acknowledge the possibility of mistaken inferences (defeasible reasoning) and that new information may change the conclusion (nonmonotonic reasoning) [Koons, 2014]. Assessing the strength of an argument leads to evaluation of the weight of evidence, and whether it is sufficient for a particular purpose [Parker, 2009; Haasnoot et al., 2014]. We find that these features of argument warrants are reflected in the uncertainty frames chosen by authors. 3.2. Writing Within One's Discipline In academic writing, the form of an argument is also shaped by a disciplinary genre [Hyland, 2008]. Some parts of the argument can be taken for granted due to shared understanding with the reader [Gilbert, 1976]. Authors endeavor to make their argument more acceptable by countering potential attacks and identifying possible extensions for or against the position, giving their own argument the last word [Dung, 1995]. Key skills include expressing one's evaluation of a statement (conveying stance) and using various approaches for engagement with the reader [Hyland, 2005]. In particular, epistemic stance conveys the author's commitment to the reliability of their claims, notably with boosters (expressing certainty) and hedges (withholding commitment). These same linguistic features can, however, be used for other purposes, for example, hedges are used to convey politeness, such that it becomes necessary to look for the function of the hedge rather than taking it at face value [Crompton, 1997; Kaltenb€ock et al., 2010]. In the end, arguments are presented in a naturally flowing text that carries a large amount of information. Multiple implicit claims are often found within a single statement. From a linguistic point of view, identifying the purpose of specific textual features requires investigating the role of such features in a given discourse community [Askehave and Swales, 2001]. It is often difficult to make explicit the tacit understanding that comes naturally to authors and readers immersed in a given research community. Rather than teaching hard and fast rules, pedagogic approaches to teaching academic writing tend to emphasize strengthening the ability to reflect on one's expectations of the reader and discourse community, [Street, 2009]. We believe the same applies to uncertainty framing, and that the proposed typology of uncertainty frames can support such reflection. 3.3. Negotiating Claims in a Research Community Science is also a social activity and, throughout the research process, one's work is influenced by the feedback received from colleagues and reviewers (and one's prediction of their responses). The reader will similarly be influenced by the discourse community, but ultimately form their own subjective interpretation [Gilbert, 1976; Latour and Woolgar, 1986]. Of particular importance to framing is the review process, where the tension between demonstrating novelty and connecting to existing knowledge-as well as a need to address expectations specific to the journal-results in a negotiation with the editor and reviewer. The author is led to go down a hierarchy of claims, asking ''what level of claim can I persuade this audience to accept?'' [Myers, 1985], sometimes reframing the claim to make stronger statements depending on the venue, or even for different contexts within the same text. Finally, the uncertainty frames in the article are interpreted one last time when a reader evaluates the evidence on an issue. For example, an intervention can be judged according to whether it is ''efficacious'' in its original study, ''effective'' for the specific context, and ''ready for adoption'' [Flay et al., 2005]. These judgements might be informed by uncertainty framing, respectively, related to level of belief and depth of analysis, scope, and maturity and utility. 4. Methods Complex factors drive how frames are used, communicated, and interpreted. Our analysis focusses on the specific task of identifying the uncertainty frames in current use. This was an iterative process in which preconceptions about current framing practice were confronted with feedback from colleagues, the experience of analyzing abstracts, and the results of a literature review, leading to changes in the number of frames as well as their names and descriptions, and to clarification of their classification. Water Resources Research 10.1002/2017WR020609 GUILLAUME ET AL. FRAMING OF UNCERTAINTY 6751 An initial set of 14 frames was proposed in a conference paper at MODSIM2015, the International Congress on Modelling and Simulation, which traditionally has a large water resources presence [Guillaume et al., 2015]. The frames described were those that the authors recognized as being commonly used, based on their own experience as authors, readers and referees, rather than building on any preexisting theory or typology developed within our discipline or elsewhere. Each frame's description covered the authors' interpretation of what the frame involved, in what context it is useable, why it works in that context, and how it could be implemented. The conference paper provided opportunity for feedback from colleagues. Analysis of the abstracts in WRR involved identifying the claims made in the abstract as well as surrounding qualifiers and the structure of the argument supporting each claim. Using a standard approach from qualitative data analysis, these textual features were explicitly ''coded'' using the web-based brat tool for text annotation [Stenetorp et al., 2012]. That is, the abstract text was accessed within a web app that allowed spans of text to be highlighted and classified according to the type of feature. One or more frames were then assigned to each claim based on the textual features connected to that claim, interpreted with the aid of contextual information and background disciplinary knowledge. Only novel claims were considered, i.e., claims arising from results, not statements motivating the need for analysis or declaring the intention of the paper. While we expected the same frames to be used in the latter as the former, the frequency of the frames in each case was expected to differ significantly, and we are primarily interested in how authors portray their completed work rather than intentions. Consistent with the discussion in section 3, more than one frame might be used on a single claim, separate claims within the same abstract might be framed differently, and different readers might perceive different frames in the same text. Consequently, assignment of uncertainty frames based on textual features could not in general be performed automatically, but required the coder's discretion, making use of their disciplinary knowledge. To handle the inherent subjectivity of the classification process, each abstract was coded independently by at least two of this paper's authors/coders (sometimes three), followed by a validation process involving comparison and discussion [Potter and Levine-Donnerstein, 1999]. The coders were encouraged to resolve their differences, but in a few cases agreed to disagree about whether a frame was in use due to the ambiguity of the language in the abstract. Our statistical analyses track the presence of frames abstract-byabstract rather than sentence-by-sentence, recognizing that uncertainty framing sometimes happens between the lines or in the relationship between multiple statements. Intercoder reliability was calculated as the proportion of all frame assignments in which the second coder agreed that the frame in question was present in the abstract. The overall postvalidation agreement was 98%. Note that this calculation does not include the number of cases where coders agreed that a frame was not present, due to the very high number of such cases. A random sample of abstracts was coded from a set downloaded from ISI Web of Knowledge and recorded as published in WRR in 2015. This set included 433 records, from which we considered only Research Articles, Technical Notes, and Technical Reports, and excluded articles that appeared to be reviews, commentaries, or editorials. Preliminary analysis suggested that the type of claims made in those latter articles were significantly different from those of research articles, such that the framing practices would benefit from dedicated analysis. Results from an initial training phase with five abstracts were not used. Coding then proceeded in four batches of increasing size, of 10, 29, 52, and 86 randomly selected abstracts, for a total of 177 abstracts. (The lack of round numbers is due to removal of abstracts that were identified as reviews and commentaries only during the coding process). No prior information was available about how framing might differ across abstracts, so a random sample was deemed to be representative (the effect of heterogeneity was also partially evaluated by quantifying uncertainty in our results). Using several batches kept the number of abstracts in each batch manageable for comparison and discussion within the validation process, and provided an opportunity for reflection on the definition of frames and the coding process, in some cases requiring revision of previous batches. We then calculated the proportion of abstracts in which each frame was used, and ranked the frames according to this frequency of occurrence. The estimated frequency of occurrence depends on the sample, and to a much lesser extent the coder (despite the 98% agreement, as reported above). We therefore estimated uncertainty in each frame's frequency by drawing 1000 bootstrap samples, where each sample consisted of 177 coded abstracts drawn, with replacement, from the full set of coded abstracts. A sampled abstract therefore consisted of the frames assigned by any coder to any of the 177 abstracts. Frequency of frames Water Resources Research 10.1002/2017WR020609 GUILLAUME ET AL. FRAMING OF UNCERTAINTY 6752 was evaluated for each sample, providing a distribution of frequencies rather than a single estimate. Similarly, the ranking of frames by frequency was performed pair-wise on bootstrapped samples. For each pair of frames, we determined which frame occurred more frequently in each sample. The ranking was considered definite if it occurred in more than 95% of samples, i.e., it was significant at a 5% confidence level. As expected, the estimated uncertainty in frequency of frames decreased as sample size increased across batches, and we consider the current sample size an adequate snapshot of uncertainty framing in abstracts of WRR research articles in 2015. We expect that the use of frames is likely to vary over time and between sections of an article, such that results should not be generalized beyond this scope. In summary, uncertainty in this analysis has been addressed with the following approaches, each of which justifies the use of specific frames in presenting our conclusions: 1. The typology and set of frames was iteratively developed and could evolve further in future (Steptowards-a-goal) 2. Assignment of frames to claims was verified through discussion between coders (Triangulation) 3. The effect of sample selection on frequency of frames was quantified through bootstrap resampling (Uncertainty quantification) 4. Ranking of frames assumed a 5% confidence level (Validate-and-defend), for the purpose of evaluating how different frequencies of frames were relative to each other 5. The frequency of frames is not considered generalizable beyond abstracts of WRR in 2015 (Restrict-scopeof-applicability), but provides a firm basis for debate about best practices related to framing (Build-thefoundations) 6. The underlying approach of textual analysis builds on accepted qualitative data analysis techniques (Follow-the-contract). The design of the overall analysis is considered consistent with the ideas of ''systemic functional linguistics,'' which aims to provide a guide to action by investigating how language-related functions (like framing of uncertainty) are achieved in diverse contexts as part of a social system (e.g., water resources research and management) [Fang, 2005; Coffin and Donohue, 2012] 7. Hypotheses are offered regarding use of the frames (Suggest-a-new-research-agenda) 8. Recommendations for action are given as the authors' professional opinion (Take-it-or-leave-it) 5. Results and Interpretation: Frame Frequency, Implementation, and Possible Explanations The uncertainty frames identified through our analysis were summarized in the typology presented in section 2. The following results provide a means to (1) evaluate the relative importance of these frames within abstracts, (2) provide a preliminary validation of the frames and (3) identify hypotheses that may explain current use of uncertainty frames, which could be further investigated. To address the first objective, section 5.1 presents results regarding the frequency of frames in the sampled abstracts in WRR in 2015. The second and third objectives are addressed in sections 5.2–5.6 by describing how we have seen each frame implemented in abstracts for each category, and by suggesting some hypothetical explanations for why the frames are used as they are. Within this discussion, references to rare or common occurrence of frames should be read as the author's personal, informal interpretation of the results. 5.1. Frequency of Occurrence of Frames Figure 2 shows the percentage of abstracts in which each frame is used, and ranks the frames by frequency of occurrence. Note that both the estimate of frequency and the ranking are uncertain due to sampling. Boxplots of frequency are shown, as well as a partial ranking of frames based on pair-wise statistical comparisons (as described in section 4). (Because of correlation in occurrence of frames, some frames are significantly more frequent than others even if their estimated frequencies substantially overlap). The frame Expressed-as-Fact stands out as occurring on average in 90% of abstracts. In other words, nearly all abstracts include at least one claim for which uncertainty is not explicitly acknowledged. Validate-andDefend is the second most frequent, occurring in 38% of abstracts; authors commonly tell the reader that there is sufficient evidence for their claim. There are then roughly two tiers of frames for which the ranking is uncertain. The first tier includes frames focusing on scope (Restrict-scope-of-applicability and Water Resources Research 10.1002/2017WR020609 GUILLAUME ET AL. FRAMING OF UNCERTAINTY 6753 Make-it-relative) and maturity and utility (Step-towards-a-goal and Build-the-foundations). The four frames focused on depth of analysis are not uncommon, but less frequent (on average, 9–19% of abstracts). In the second tier, some frames indicate there is much uncertainty (e.g., Learn-from-my-problems) or make a weak claim (e.g., Take-it-or-leave-it, Make-it-hypothetical). It also includes frames that intuitively would be less likely to appear in an abstract, namely Degree-of-belief and Follow-the-contract (which was not found at all). One would assume that expressions of likelihood and justifications of choices using existing work are more likely to be found in the body of an article, but are often not significant enough to mention in the abstract. These results paint a picture of a diverse body of research which emphasizes scientific progress in welldefined steps. Weaker claims are allowed, as long as they are appropriately framed and make a contribution to the field. The frames most commonly found in the abstract are not generally associated with uncertainty analysis, but do seem typical of careful scientific endeavor. Beyond the frequencies of use across abstracts, our analysis also addresses the cooccurrence of frames within the same abstract. Most abstracts use more than one frame, either because they make multiple claims (possibly building on each other), or because they use multiple frames for a single claim. Figure 3a collects all the frames used in an abstract and reports the most frequent combinations (ordered by median and 75% percentile). The inset Figure 3b shows the number of frames used per abstract. On average, 7.9% of abstracts frame all their claims as Expressed-as-Fact. The next two most common cooccurrences combine Expressed-as-fact with Validate-and-Defend (on average 5%) and with Build-the-foundations (3%). The number of abstracts involved are, however, small, especially for the subsequent frames. There is a large diversity of combinations of frames, which is understandable given that on average 90% of abstracts use multiple frames, and roughly 20% use five or more. 0% 25% 50% 75% 100% Percentage of abstracts with frame Make−it−hypothetical New−view−on−existing−result Learn−from−my-problems Degree−of−belief Suggest−a−new−research−agenda Repeat−with−shifted−scope Uncertainty−quantification Triangulation Build−the−foundations Demonstrate−robustness Just−a−possibility Step−towards−a−goal Restrict−scope−of−applicability Validate−and−Defend Expressed−as-Fact Take−it−or−leave-it Make−it−relative Scope of a claim Depth of analysis Level of belief Maturity and utility Relatability Category of frames: 1 2 3-7 3-7 3-8 Rank 3-9 3-9 5-10 6-14 8-16 9-16 9-17 9-17 9-17 10-17 10-17 12-17 12-17 Range of possible ranks given uncertainty Vertical lines indicate frames that are statistically equally frequent: Bootstrapped uncertainty in frequency of occurrence of frames: Q25 1.5*Interquartile range Q50 Q75 Probability density function Figure 2. Frequency of occurrence of uncertainty frames and their ranking. Estimates of uncertainty in percentage of abstracts are obtained by bootstrap sampling (right hand side). Frequency is compared pair-wise among frames at a two-sided 5% confidence level, resulting in a partial ranking (left hand side). The frame Follow-the-contract was not found, and is not shown. Water Resources Research 10.1002/2017WR020609 GUILLAUME ET AL. FRAMING OF UNCERTAINTY 6754 This analysis does not allow for differentiating whether the frames used within an abstract are applied to a single claim or to several different ones. However, Figure 3a does highlight suggestive examples. The top three combinations necessarily occur on separate claims, as they are fundamentally incompatible. Observations might, for example, be framed as Expressed-as-Fact, while the interpretation of those observations is framed as Validate-and-Defend. Statements about a method or a transferrable finding might be framed as Expressed-as-Fact, but its utility framed as Build-the-foundations because of uncertainty in its generalization. The combination Expressed-as-Fact/Validate-and-Defend/Demonstrate-robustness/Restrict-scope-of-applicability was observed in seven coded abstracts, and in the bootstrap sample occurred on average in 2% of abstracts. It is of interest because it makes use of uncertainty frames from several categories. An anonymized, annotated example reads: ''(a) when heterogeneity is low to moderate, (b) the simpler method adequately captures expected solute transport behavior (c) despite the existence of heterogeneity at smaller scales.'' The sentence makes a statement using Restrict-scope-of-applicability (a), claiming that there is sufficient evidence to take a Validate-and-Defend attitude to the result (b), and that the result is not affected by a potential source of uncertainty, i.e., Demonstrate-robustness (c). Earlier in the abstract, a comparison between methods reported that one method was more accurate than another, Expressed-as-Fact. While each abstract used the four frames differently, this example illustrates how the four categories of frames fit together to convey to the reader the aspects of uncertainty that the author deems necessary. 5.2. Use of Maturity and Utility Frames Within abstracts, the frequency of frames conveying readiness for use of a conclusion (maturity and utility) appears to depend on the level of utility that they convey (Figure 2), with Expressed-as-Fact the most common, and Learn-from-my-problems the least common (see Figure 1a and Table 1 for definitions). Framing a statement as Expressed-as-Fact means that it is either deliberately framed as certain, or that the statement lacks any other indication of uncertainty, which may, respectively, be justified because the Scope of a claim Depth of analysis Level of belief Maturity and utility Relatability Build−the−foundations Restrict−scope−of−applicability Restrict−scope−of−applicability Validate−and−Defend Validate−and−Defend Expressed-as-Fact Expressed-as-Fact Expressed-as-Fact Expressed-as-Fact Expressed-as-Fact Expressed-as-Fact Expressed-as-Fact Validate−and−Defend Validate−and−Defend Expressed-as-Fact Expressed-as-Fact Expressed-as-Fact Demonstrate−robustness Demonstrate−robustness Just−a−possibility Just−a−possibility Step−towards−a−goal Repeat−with−shifted−scope Category of frames: Other Number (and percentage) of abstracts with this combination of frames )%03.11(02)%56.5(01)%00.0(0 30 (16.95%) b) 0% 10% 20% 30% 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 % a bs tra ct s Number of frames in abstract Frequency of occurrence of number of frames: Bootstrapped uncertainty in frequency of occurrence of combinations of frames: Q25 1.5*Interquartile range Q50 Q75 Probability density function Q25 1.5*Interquartile range Q50 Q75 Figure 3. Frequency of occurrence of combinations of frames, (a) top-10 most frequent unique combinations, inset (b) number of frames used per abstract. Estimates of uncertainty are obtained by bootstrap sampling (n 5 177 for 1000 repeated samples). Water Resources Research 10.1002/2017WR020609 GUILLAUME ET AL. FRAMING OF UNCERTAINTY 6755 conclusion is beyond doubt (e.g., deductive reasoning), or because the author considers that the uncertainty is not worth discussing in that particular venue (in this case an abstract). It can take the form of adjectives indicating certainty (''exactly''), so-called ''factive reporting verbs'' (''show,'' ''demonstrate'') [Crompton, 1997], or more subtly in the use of present tense without qualifiers, or past tense in reporting observations. Its frequency of use is unsurprising in that an abstract cannot do justice to the uncertainty in every statement. Especially when observations using a standard ''black-box'' technique play a small supporting role to another claim, it is natural that the uncertainty involved be neglected [Latour, 1987]. At the other extreme, it is nevertheless not unusual for abstracts to acknowledge inaccuracies and inadequacies of their methods, and report lack of statistical significance, with the frame Learn-from-my-problems (3% of abstracts). Reporting failure is permitted, even if not encouraged [Andreassian et al., 2010]. However, the frame is (at least marginally) less frequent than Suggest-a-new-research-agenda (4%), Steptowards-a-goal (25%), and Build-the-foundations (13%). In addition to reporting a problem, these frames, respectively, suggest a possible future solution, that the problem may still allow the conclusion to be used, and that the problem does not undermine its instrumental value. Suggest-a-new-research-agenda might either explicitly or implicitly suggest a hypothesis or possible future work. It is often subjective whether a statement of a problem implies a suggested solution. It is unsurprising that Step-towards-a-goal and Build-the-foundations are among the most common frames, given that they both provide a means to make a contribution to the body of knowledge even when substantial uncertainty is unresolved and unquantified. To place the work's contribution and problems in the context of a broader goal, Step-towards-a-goal often uses hedges, e.g., ''shows potential,'' ''promising,'' ''appears to.'' By framing the results as provisional, these terms emphasize that the uncertainty is expected to be reducible [Walker et al., 2003], in contrast to framing results as only possible, without committing to whether the uncertainty can be resolved. Build-the-foundations is particularly common for methodological and data-focused papers. The frame allows the potential usefulness of a method or a new data set to be emphasized even if it has not been tested, other factors may be at play, it is still too incomplete to be used in practice, or that more could have been done to argue the case. 5.3. Use of Scope Frames Existing literature has highlighted that a generally applicable, externally valid statement requires a greater number of supporting assumptions [Pinch, 1985]. Therefore, by defining the applicability of their claim, an author can anticipate criticism by limiting what counterarguments are considered legitimate. In principle, an author already does this merely by selecting the focus of their paper. For the purposes of our analyses, we considered only those cases where the author has further restricted the scope of a statement, beyond the initial focus of the paper. Nevertheless, Restrict-scope-of-applicability and Make-it-relative were among the most common frames (25% of abstracts, Figure 2. See Figure 1b and Table 2 for definitions). Restrict-scope-of-applicability involves identifying exceptions to a statement (e.g., ''x unless a''), specifying circumstances in which the statement applies (e.g., ''x when a''), or making separate statements for different circumstances (e.g., ''if a, then x; if b, then y''). It also includes hedges like ''typically'' and ''generally,'' which imply that an exception might exist, without explicitly naming it. Make-it-relative makes use of the phenomenon that comparisons are often more accurate than absolute statements [e.g., Reichert and Borsuk, 2005], in order to avoid the uncertainty in the latter. The comparison may emphasize similarity (''consistent with''), improvement (''more representative,'' ''outperform''), or worsening (''less accurate than''), respectively, avoiding direct comparison with observations, and judgement of whether performance is actually sufficient, or inadequate. Such focus on improvement has been criticized in the context of decision making [Simon, 1956], climate modeling [Risbey and O'Kane, 2011], and sustainability [Princen, 2003], where it is important to know what is ''good enough.'' In the context of scientific progression, it does make sense to clarify whether a previous effort is equivalent, has been superseded, or remains superior to the new contribution. The final frame in this category, Make-it-hypothetical, is much less common (2%). Its utility is in allowing claims to be made about consequences of an uncertain assumption, enabling some planning before all the facts are known. It does, however, make a weaker claim in the sense that the conclusion is dependent on assumptions that may not, the author acknowledges, match reality. Examples include hypothetical case Water Resources Research 10.1002/2017WR020609 GUILLAUME ET AL. FRAMING OF UNCERTAINTY 6756 studies used for testing (''synthetic example'') or method development (''reference model''). Authors may also emphasize that results depend on the specific methods used (''The reconstructions indicate that. . .''). Interestingly, conditionality on assumptions also underpins the idea of exploratory modeling [Bankes, 1993; Lempert, 2002], though in practice most studies do at least assume that their scenarios or model structure are plausible in order to draw conclusions about vulnerability or robust decision making. The infrequent use of this frame perhaps results from it being tied to the use of specific research methods which appear to be less common in this community (at least in 2015). 5.4. Use of Level of Belief Frames Frames conveying level of belief are relatively uncommon in the abstracts studied, with the exception of Validate-and-Defend (Figure 2. See Figure 1c and Table 3 for definitions). Given that it communicates that the author is sufficiently confident that the reader should accept a conclusion, it makes sense for Validateand-Defend to appear in the abstract, whereas other frames would perhaps be more likely to be used in the body of an article. In abstracts, Validate-and-Defend might be stated explicitly (''adequately captured,'' ''good results,'' ''successfully modelled'') or indirectly (''can be reproduced''), which may be relatively subtle (''able to,'' ''allow,'' ''can''). We also include implicit use of the frame when a result is deemed statistically significant without indicating the confidence level. The widespread use of this frame (30%) may result from the need for scientific articles to emphasize their success in order to strengthen their claim of constituting a novel contribution. Degree-of-belief (5% of abstracts) would be expected to be more common in the results section of articles, when statistical techniques are applied and in presenting intermediate evidence in support a conclusion. In statistical tests, this frame allows the reader to judge the level of risk involved, either as p-values (e.g., p 5 0.003), confidence levels (e.g., p< 0.001), or confidence or credible intervals (e.g., 95%). In some cases, performance measures can be reported with a similar consequence-allowing the reader to decide whether the level of support is adequate. The frame Take-it-or-leave-it is unsurprisingly very uncommon in the abstracts studied (2%), but is used, for example, when the author wishes to express their own professional opinion (''We believe'') or make a value judgement (''x is desirable''). It makes a weak claim by avoiding imposing one's conclusion on the reader. Follow-the-contract was not identified in the abstracts studied but experience suggests this frame is common in the body of articles. It is common practice to follow a generally accepted method with the expectation that most readers would be expected to accept the conclusion. While such methods are commonly mentioned in the abstracts, it is not generally necessary to defend their use. An informed reader will recognize the method, and an uninformed reader is not in a position to question its use. Both will expect to see justification of appropriateness of the method within the article in any case. 5.5. Use of Depth of Analysis Frames Frames conveying depth of analysis are less common than those related to scope, and are not ordered according to their continuum, unlike those related to maturity. The most common frames are Just-a-possibility and Demonstrate-robustness (20% of abstracts, Figure 2), while Triangulation and Uncertainty-quantification are less common (10% and 5%. See Figure 1d and Table 4 for definitions). Just-a-possibility is presumably common because it allows authors to propose ideas that are insufficiently supported, but nevertheless important. This is commonly conveyed using hedges like ''can'' and ''may.'' Providing an ''estimate'' also implies that other values would also be possible. Some uses of this frame exemplify the stereotypical academic hedge-the expert does not wish to commit to an answer, recognizing that results are always uncertain. From this perspective, it is perhaps surprising that it is not more common, perhaps reflecting both the need for authors to assert the contribution of their work, and the availability of uncertainty frames from other categories that similarly avoid commitment. Conversely, Demonstrate-robustness is common presumably because it provides a strong argument in support of a claim, while acknowledging that a level of uncertainty still exists that does not influence the conclusion in question. The frame can be tied to specific methods, including robust decision making and statistical hypothesis testing. The robustness associated with statistical significance is, however, not Water Resources Research 10.1002/2017WR020609 GUILLAUME ET AL. FRAMING OF UNCERTAINTY 6757 definitive due to the use of distributions with infinite support. Demonstrate-robustness is therefore often used in conjunction with two other frames from the category level of belief (section 5.4). (Specifically, statistical significance is additionally framed by a confidence level or a p-value (Degree-of-belief), and absence of that framing implies that the author has deemed the confidence level sufficient (Validate-and-Defend).) Demonstrate-robustness can also be exploited less formally, for example with clauses expressing insensitivity (''x, even when a and b,'' ''x, regardless of a,'' ''x for all a and b tested''), or using follow-up statements (''We found x. We further tested a and b and still found x''). The idea that a conclusion is supported by multiple lines of evidence is easy to communicate and presumably important to highlight in an abstract, when applicable. The frequency of the frame Triangulation therefore probably reflects actual use of multiple methods or multiple data sets leading to a conclusion, or the use of previously published results and theory to add support to the primary method of the paper. Its occurrence in 10% of abstracts may therefore be surprisingly high, given that Triangulation is more commonly associated with the social sciences [Jick, 1979]. Uncertainty-quantification is the least common of the level of uncertainty frames (on average 4%). We saw it implemented by specifying ranges, confidence intervals, standard deviations or standard errors, (approximate) one-sided bounds (''at least,'' ''from x to more than y'') and orders of magnitude (''on the order of,'' ''between a few months and 30 years''). Uncertainty-quantification may be more likely to be seen in a results section given the limited space in an abstract, and the need for further interpretation of nonunique solutions, whether by the reader or author. There are studies, however, which argue that methods for quantification of uncertainty need to be more widely adopted [Pappenberger and Beven, 2006]. 5.6. Use of Relatability Frames Frames that anticipate a reader's reaction to a claim (relatability) are less common, but still noteworthy (see Figure 1e and Table 5 for definitions). Repeat-with-shifted-scope is not rare (7%), but does not appear to be mainstream. It takes the form of coupled claims with differing scope (e.g., ''x, especially if a''). An example would be: ''Fishers prefer streams with abundant fish, especially trout and salmon.'' The use of multiple scopes can allow an author to outline how an argument would change if the reader rejects some of its premises. Beyond this aim of defending the contribution of an article, the effect appears to be that the strongly and weakly supported claim mutually support each other, because the strong seems more plausible in comparison with the weak, and the weak seems more plausible if the strong is accepted. More broadly, this frame's use of two scopes suggests the possibility of other compound frames that this analysis may have missed, combining the preceding basic frames. The frame New-view-on-existing-result emphasizes that the conclusion is actually not new, and has already been accepted by the discipline (''reinforcing that. . .,'' ''as has previously been noted . . .''). Uncertainty has therefore already been addressed and the conclusion is invoked to support the argument, rather than the other way around. Given that it downplays novelty and relies on preexisting work, this frame is understandably rare (3%). It is, however, of interest for its ability to draw attention to method, and hence to indirectly support other claims arising from that method. There may be other approaches that similarly frame uncertainty by signaling the use of a particular type of argument. 6. Discussion This study represents a first major attempt at describing a typology of uncertainty frames, applicable across general scientific reporting. Our study has both descriptive and prescriptive aspects. As a descriptive exercise, analysis of frames that are detectable by a reader in a sample of abstracts in WRR provided the evidence required both to generate and to qualitatively verify the typology. The analysis supports the argument that our uncertainty framing typology covers a set of frames that are in routine use (at least in abstracts), and that are employed in ways consistent with both existing literature and how authors might be expected to behave (i.e., we have been able to propose plausible hypotheses for their use). In its prescriptive role, the typology provides a vocabulary and framework to help select and interpret uncertainty frames, and evaluate their use, while the analysis provides a snapshot of the status quo to enable its critique. As a first attempt at this critique, we propose a set of general recommendations on how to approach Water Resources Research 10.1002/2017WR020609 GUILLAUME ET AL. FRAMING OF UNCERTAINTY 6758 the management and framing of uncertainty, as well as some provocative-specific recommendations about how current practice in framing uncertainty should change. 6.1. General Recommendations for Managing and Framing Uncertainty 1. Pay attention to framing: The continuing quality and efficiency of research depends on authors, reviewers, and readers being sensitive to the varied status of a conclusion, and providing appropriate feedback. It is therefore beneficial to encourage awareness of uncertainty framing in academic education and reviewing. Do the frames employed in a text appropriately communicate relevant uncertainties? 2. Cast a wide net: The broad range of uncertainty frames implies a broad range of approaches for managing uncertainty inside and outside the analysis, of which a user should be aware. The most common approaches (e.g., Validate-and-defend, Restrict-scope-of-applicability, Make-it-relative, Step-towards-a-goal) are not traditionally associated with uncertainty analysis, and may be equally (or even more) valid to invoke. 3. Focus on fitness for purpose: Use the right tool for the job. Avoid advocating the use of a single approach, but rather think critically about what method and frame is suitable for the specific circumstance. Existing practice shows that there is value in allowing weakly supported, but important, claims to be made, as long as they are visibly marked as such (e.g., using Suggest-a-new-research-agenda, Just-apossibility, Degree-of-belief, Make-it-hypothetical, Take-it-or-leave-it). 4. Announce uncertainty even in abstracts: When it comes to uncertainty, the attitude should be that even the abstract matters-it is not just about what method was used to address uncertainty, but also how it is presented. Abstracts should be structured and language used deliberately, avoiding ambiguity as far as possible. 5. Interpret uncertainty frames in context: Indications of uncertainty should be interpreted within the broader disciplinary and cultural context. Research articles cannot in general be treated as a selfcontained structured argument. Novices in particular should avoid being overly-sensitive to subtle uncertainty signals such as the use of single words like ''may'' or ''can.'' These subtle signals can be misinterpreted if the reader does not share the author's context. 6.2. Specific Recommendations About How Uncertainty Should be Framed Our specific recommendations are intended to be provocative. Our results suggest that the literature in WRR is roughly in line with one view of a typical, healthy scientific debate, involving what one might call carefully considered incremental science. Thus uncertainty is avoided where permitted, but otherwise commonly dealt with by limiting scope, deferring to further work, and indicating that evidence is sufficient. But perhaps some changes would still be beneficial? There is apparent potential for a more influential, dynamic form of science within a sophisticated community that is sensitive to the use of uncertainty frames, and whose researchers are capable of making judgments given the necessary information. Our recommendations reflect the authors' personal opinions, and we encourage others in the community to respond, with the aim of eventually crystallizing best practices for uncertainty framing. 1. Highlight uncertainty, don't hide it. Our analysis indicates that 8% of abstracts are only framed as Expressed-as-Fact. While it is normal to ignore uncertainty in some claims, there is nearly always some statement in which uncertainty should actually be highlighted to the reader. Our typology shows there is a broad range of ways in which to do that. 2. Think twice about Validate-and-Defend. Our analysis shows that 38% of abstracts make a claim that the evidence is sufficient. Would it not be better to list key performance indicators (Degree-of-belief) and let the reader decide whether performance was indeed ''good'' or ''adequate''? If a judgement of adequacy is really needed from the author, then at the very least say for what purpose. 3. Don't hide behind narrow scope. When possible, look for generalized conclusions and relate work to ambitious goals. Aim for influential claims that are likely to prompt useful debate. Reviewers likewise should accommodate this boldness, while verifying that uncertainty in wider-scope conclusions is appropriately acknowledged using suitable frames. 4. Aim for actionable conclusions. A passing reference to future work is too often a mask for poorly thought out implications. If appropriately qualified, even speculative suggestions of future uses add value over a vague promise that work might be useful later. Basic science benefits from concrete speculations about implications for practice. Water Resources Research 10.1002/2017WR020609 GUILLAUME ET AL. FRAMING OF UNCERTAINTY 6759 5. Test before publication. Methods are often framed as a building block that still needs further testing before being applied. The reader would be better informed if the abstract instead emphasized the testing that has already been performed. In this case, defining a narrow scope in which the method is known to work helps to avoid vague promises. 6. Think twice about Just-a-possibility. It is rather limiting for instance to know only that a result is just one estimate, or that alternative conclusions are also possible, yet this is a commonly used frame. A reader can do much more if they are additionally provided with a Degree-of-belief or Uncertainty-Quantification. Clearly acknowledged, simple approaches can provide added value with little extra cost, for example, using screening techniques that perform preliminary uncertainty analysis. 7. Define limits of uncertainty analysis, but assume it is incomplete. To avoid giving a misleadingly reassuring picture, Demonstrate-Robustness and Uncertainty-Quantification frames should adequately address crucial uncertainties, and clearly state what uncertainties are addressed. However, the default interpretation should still be that some source of uncertainty may still have been missed. 8. Avoid Repeat-with-shifted-scope. There is too great a risk that this frame acts as a throw-away line to convince the reader. When a stronger, less certain conclusion is worth making, clearly separate it from the weaker conclusion, and let it stand on its own merits. 9. Do publish speculation. A field is invigorated by new claims that might encourage new ways of tackling problems. If the claim is important enough, consider the frames: Suggest-a-new-research-agenda, Learnfrom-my-problems, New-view-on-existing-result, Make-it-hypothetical, Take-it-or-leave-it. 7. Conclusions This study has provided a first analysis of uncertainty framing practices, motivated by the desire to reflect on the treatment and framing of uncertainty in research publications in the field of water resources, and on improving understanding of how uncertainty is addressed outside the analysis, not just within. Specifically, we provided a brief overview of the context of uncertainty framing, introduced a specific set of frames and analyzed their frequency in a representative sample of abstracts in the journal Water Resources Research for 2015. Hypotheses were posited explaining their frequency of use. As might be expected, most abstracts include claims that are Expressed-as-Fact (i.e., as if there is no doubt about the statements made), and the most frequent frames conveying uncertainty are those associated with incremental progress on a topic with the contributions being carefully defined. Consistent with efforts to promote better treatment and communication of uncertainty, we proposed a set of provocative recommendations for changes to the status quo and ask the community to consider whether current uncertainty framing is meeting their expectations. At the same time, our general recommendations highlight the diversity of uncertainty frames and recognize that any of those frames can be valid in the appropriate context. The ultimate aim would be to achieve consensus among water resources researchers regarding best practices for uncertainty framing, ensuring that frames are indeed used in appropriate contexts. Our analysis is, however, only a beginning. There is potential for future work to explore how framing of uncertainty can be more effectively taught; to investigate the use of frames at a finer level by formal argument mapping linked with contextual variables; and to collaborate with the social sciences to better understand what authors actually mean when they use frames in a particular context and what readers actually understand. Deploying an uncertainty frame is a crucial move in establishing a conclusion's maturity and utility, scope, level of belief, depth of analysis, and relatability. As with other types of rhetorical move associated with academic writing, ''by recognizing the power of different moves in different contexts, you can then mobilize that power'' [Bazerman, 1988]. Mobilizing the power of scientific understanding will play a crucial role in the future of our planet, particularly in environmental issues, including water resources management. References Andreassian, V., C. Perrin, E. Parent, and A. Bardossy (2010), The court of miracles of hydrology: Can failure stories contribute to hydrological science?, Hydrol. Sci. J., 55(6), 849–856, doi:10.1080/02626667.2010.506050. Askehave, I., and J. Swales (2001), Genre identification and communicative purpose: A problem and a possible solution, Appl. Linguist., 22(2), 195–212, doi:10.1093/applin/22.2.195. Bankes, S. (1993), Exploratory modeling for policy analysis, Oper. Res., 41(3), 435–449, doi:10.2307/171847. Acknowledgments The authors would like to thank the three anonymous reviewers for their detailed comments, which lead to substantial changes to the presentation of our ideas. We are also grateful to all conference participants and colleagues who provided feedback on the uncertainty frames during their development. J. H. A. Guillaume was funded by the Academy of Finland project WASCO (grant 305471) and Emil Aaltonen Foundation funded project eat-lesswater. C. Helgeson received funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) project Managing Severe Uncertainty (AH/ J006033/1) and L'Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) project DUSUCA (ANR-14-CE29–0003-01). Data on presence of frames in abstracts are available as supporting information in CSV format with three columns: (1) abstract as a DOI identifier, e.g., ''2014WR015291'' corresponds to the abstract accessible at https://doi.org/ 10.1002/2014WR015291, (2) coder as a uniquely identifying numeric code (1–3), (3) frame-the name of an uncertainty frame applied to the abstract by the coder (N.B. usually more than one frame per abstract and coder). Water Resources Research 10.1002/2017WR020609 GUILLAUME ET AL. FRAMING OF UNCERTAINTY 6760 Bazerman, C. (1988), Shaping written knowledge: The genre and activity of the experimental article in science, Univ. of Wis. Press, Madison. Beck, M. B. (1987), Water quality modeling: A review of the analysis of uncertainty, Water Resour. 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ANDREAS DORSCHEL Totengespräch zwischen Franz Joseph Haydn aus Rohrau und Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern aus Wien in der musikalischen Unterwelt HAYDN: Obacht, mein Herr, stolpert mir nicht in den Acheron! – So seid Ihr denn von Adel, Durchlaucht? Anton Friedrich Wilhelm von Webern? Und habt wohl Musiker in Sold an Euerem Hofe? WEBERN: Bin selber Musiker. H.: Ein adeliger Musikant, oho! Was wär' das für ein Adel? W.: Wär' es ein Adel, dessen ich mich rühmen dürfte, es würde der sein, welcher sich von Euch herleitet, verehrter Meister! Die zweite Wiener Schule ... H. (erstaunt): Die zweite? So gab's denn eine erste? W.: Ihr selbst, teurer Meister, Mozart und Beethoven ... H.: Eine Schule? Das wär' mir eine schöne Schul' gewesen! Und wohl gar mit mir selbst als Oberlehrer? Mozart war mein Freund. Und der Herr van Beethoven – ein Schüler? Der Grossmogul van ...! Van, van, schon wieder so ein Adel? W. (mit Pathos): Der Adel der Neunten Sinfonie. H.: So seid Ihr auch einer von denen, die solches Tschingderassa höher hielten denn alle Weisheit und Philosophie? W.: Das letzte Wort blieb ungesprochen in dem erhab'nen Werk. Die Zehnte hat die Menschheit ja noch nicht vernommen; das grosse Rätsel wäre sonst gelöst. H. (spitz): Kennt Ihr denn meine zehnte Sinfonie? Und Mozarts? W. (mit wegwerfender Geste): Pah! H. (energisch): Ich muss doch bitten! W. (in den früheren respektvollen Tonfall einlenkend): Verzeiht! Der einz'ge Adel, welchen ich besitzen mag, ist der, dass ich Quartette Andreas Dorschel 10 schrieb; und dieser hohe Stand führt einzig sich auf Euch zurück, auf Euern Genius. H.: Sie seien artig kurz, Eure Quatuors, so hört' ich neulich tuscheln. W.: Nicht kürzer als nötig wäre, um Alles zu sagen. H.: So sagt Ihr Al les? W. (mit Überzeugung): Al les . H.: Nun denn. So weit wär' doch mein eig'ner Ehrgeiz nicht gedieh'n. Denn ich begnügte mich mit Manchem, und überlasse Alles gerne Euch. W.: Ihr seid zu gütig. H.: Und doch, ein wenig boshaft bin ich auch. W.: Ihr? Boshaft? H.: Wir haben, dünkt mich, beide uns'ren kleinen Schwächen. W.: Gewiss; doch boshaft? Wisst, das Mass dafür hat sich doch arg gewandelt. Denn alles, was zu Euern Zeiten boshaft war, erschien wohl mild und gütig in den wüsten Jahren, in die mein Leben fiel – in die ich fiel. H.: Ihr seid gefallen? W.: In mehr als einem Sinne: Ja! H.: Wie das? W.: Ihr, Meister, schriebt dem Kaiser eine Hymne, dass ihn Gott erhalt'. Da ich lebte, verlor der Kaiser einen Krieg und war fortan kein Kaiser mehr. H.: Das wäre alles? War denn das für Euch ein Fall? W.: Ja, muss ich sagen – und auch nein. Indes, ich fiel auch selber. H.: Gewiss als Komponist nicht auf dem Feld der Ehre? W.: Eines Soldaten Kugel war es, die mich traf. H.: Ihr wart ein Held? W.: Wohl kaum. Ich rauchte bloss vorm Haus eine Zigarre. Das Glimmen war es, das die Kugel auf mich zog. H.: Oh weh! Doch wisst: So dumm war stets die Soldateska – auch zu meiner Zeit. Doch nun – was habt Ihr denn? Ihr weint? W.: Ich vermisse meine Mutter. H.: Das tun wir alle, Herr ... W. (gerührt und wie abwesend): Nenn' mich Toni. H. (reserviert): Wie könnt' ich, Euer Gnaden? W.: Es gibt nur Eines: Sich versenken ganz und gar in das Geweihte. Herunter mit dem Dreck! Sauber bis zum Wahnsinn! H.: Dann lieber doch der eine oder and're Fleck als reiner Wahn. W.: Niemals! Bedenkt, die Kunst ist heilig! Totengespräch zwischen Haydn und Webern 11 H.: Doch habt Ihr schon einmal versucht, Profanes in was Geistliches zu mischen? Die Andacht verschnitt' ich gern ein wenig mit dem Tanze. W.: Das nenn' ich Blasphemie. H.: Meint Ihr? Es macht die grösste Wirkung. W.: Wirkung! Nicht was sie wirkt, macht die Musik. Sondern: was sie is t . H.: Doch was nicht wirkt, ist auch nicht wirklich. Und hätten Eure Töne denn nicht auch gewirkt? W.: Kaum. Und doch – – man lachte. H.: Mit Frohsinn scheint Ihr's nicht so sehr zu halten. W.: Soll man es Frohsinn nennen? Selbst wenn – die Kunst ist eine strenge, ernste Sache. H.: Ernst kann sie sein und heiter, streng und frei, würdevoll und lose, schwermütig auch und munter. Man lachte – gar nicht schlecht! Auch über meine ersten Quatros lachte man, vergnügte sich ob ihrer Laune – bei spät'ren dann bereits ob ihrem Witz. W.: So freundlich waren alle? H.: Nun – mancher schrie, die Tonkunst sei entwürdigt zu Tändelei'n und Bocksprüngen zumal. Und sprunghaft mocht' ich wirklich manchmal sein. Ich schrieb allzeit gern ein Capriccio. W.: Ich nicht. Und doch lachte man – entsetzlich. Das Konzert in Wien! Das grässliche Konzert. Beschimpfungen von unerhörter Art! Ein Irrer wollt' mich in den Steinhof sperren. H.: Ins Irrenhaus? W.: Jawohl. Das zweite meiner Stücke für Orchester erregte eine Salve der Bagage! Krakehlen – – Johlen – – ein brutales Wiehern! Denkt Euch: Von Unheil und Verhängnis geht die Kunde, doch die sie hören, lachen laut und hell. O Gott! Ich sag' Euch, dieses Wienerische, es ekelt mich unsäglich. Roh ist's und stumpf und dreckig. H.: Im Gegenteil, im Gegenteil! muss ich Euch sagen. Viel Gutes, zu viel Gutes fast erwiesen mir die Wiener. Und wenn ich wiederum in meiner Einöd' sass, verlassen wie ein armer Waise, fast ohne menschliche Gesellschaft, voll der Erinnerung an Wiener Tage, dann ... (er summt eben noch vernehmlich „Dove sono i bei momenti" aus Le nozze di Figaro vor sich hin.) Die musikalischen Abende in Wien, die Begeisterungen – Gesellschaften, in denen so ein Kreis ein Herz und eine Seele war ... Andreas Dorschel 12 W.: Ah geh' – die Stadt: nur Kot, nur Schmiere! Zu viel der Zeit vergeudet' ich in Wien. Ich ging unter den Wienern als ein Fremder. Der Künstler muss der Welt abhanden kommen. H.: Wohin? Ihr bleibt ja immer in der Welt. W.: Ein Künstler soll auf Berge steigen. Die hohen Plätze stehen Gott doch näher. Die Menschen darauf freilich nicht. H.: Aus welchem Grunde sollte dann ein Mensch sich drauf bequemen? Mir scheint, Ihr liebt die Menschen nicht ... W.: Und liebt Ihr die Natur? Der Mensch ist nur Gefäss, in das gegossen wird, was die Natur zum Ausdruck bringen muss. H.: Giesst es, dann lob' ich mir den Regenschirm. Ich fühl' mich wohler fest denn flüssig. W.: War etwas nicht Natur, so ist's aus zweiter Hand. H.: Doch könnte eine zweite Hand nicht besser sein als eine erste? W.: So liebt Ihr die Natur nicht? H.: Gewiss schätzt' ich sie – recht gern erging ich mich in Park und Garten. W.: Im Park? Natur ist anders. Die Alpen, herb, die reine Höhe ... H. (beschwichtigend): Jaja, die lass' ich mir wohl auch gefallen aus der Ferne. Ich seh' das Gute an der ganzen Welt. Wie hätt' ich sonst die Schöpfung komponieren können? Wie die Jahreszeiten? W.: Allein, Musik, sie ahme die Natur nicht nach! Natur werde die Musik – will sagen: anverwandelte Natur. Sie ist die Sache selbst, nicht ihre Wiedergabe. H.: Doch macht Ihr sie durch Euer Können, und so ist sie Natur nicht, sondern Kunst. Am liebsten hört man von Natur, wo wenig von ihr ist – gewiss doch: in der Stadt! W.: Ich weiss, Musik, das ist nicht Fels und Gras und Baum; Musik ist Geist. H. (anzüglich): Und Heil'ger Geist nach Eurer Theorie. W.: Ihr selbst, Ihr komponiertet doch die Sieben Worte des Erlösers. H.: So ist wohl der Erlöser heilig, nicht die Töne, die ich setzte. W.: Heilig ist, was sein muss – und das, was sein muss, ist Natur. H.: Doch nicht die Kunst. W.: Sie ist nicht immer so, aber sie wird so. Stets enger schliesst in der Geschichte der Musik sich der Zusammenhang der Töne. H.: Und das ist gut? W.: Es ist das Beste. Kennt Ihr denn Schönberg, meinen Lehrer? H.: Er ward vor läng'rer Zeit mir vorgestellt; doch mied er jedes Wort über Musik. Sogar von Euch, mein Herr von Webern, sprach der Gute nichts. Totengespräch zwischen Haydn und Webern 13 Doch plauderte er sehr gefällig. Er fänd', so sagt er mir, es hier weit netter denn in Mattsee. W.: Der salzburgischen Sommerfrische? H.: Eben der. Er fand so sommerfrisch den Hass dort wie die Niedertracht. An dieser Tracht erkennen sie einander, Mattseer Leut', heut', gestern und in alter Zeit. Die Unterwelt hingegen heiss' willkommen jeden Glauben, jede Herkunft. Ob er auch selber duldsam sei, ob er es werden wolle, das ging ihm damals viel im Kopf herum. W.: Schönberg fand einen neuen Weg; man komponiere, schlug er vor, mit zwölf nur aufeinander bezogenen Tönen. H.: Was soll denn dies bedeuten? W.: In eine Reihe brachte Schönberg die zwölf Töne, an deren Folge, sagte er, die Komposition sodann gebunden sei. H.: Man spielt also zwölf Töne, stellt dann auf den Kopf sie, dreht flink sie auch einmal herum? Da wird das Komponieren wohl sehr leicht! W. (mit Nachdruck): Schwer ist's geworden, schwerer denn je. H.: Nun ja, ich ahn', Ihr habt Euch angestrengt. An Schnür' hängt Ihr die Töne, Marionetten gleich, als müssten sie daran gehindert werden, ihre Bahnen zu verlassen. W. (in Begeisterung): Vollendeter wird ihr Zusammenhang erreicht, als früher auch nur denkbar war! H.: So vollendet, ihr werdet drum Gefangene des eig'nen Musters? W.: Gefangenschaft? Ich nenn' es heilige Notwendigkeit. H. (mokant): „Hei-li-ge Not-wen-dig-keit"! W.: Gewiss. Denn ein Gesetz besteht, das müssen wir erfüllen. H.: Fruchtbar, so sagt Herr Lessing im Laokoon, ist eins allein: was freies Spiel der Kraft gewährt. W.: Und welche Kraft hätt' für die Kunst er da im Sinn? H.: Einbildungskraft. W.: Glaubt Ihr, ich hätte keine Phantasie gebraucht? Je strenger die Methode, desto nötiger die Phantasie. Indes, für sich allein irrt diese hierund dorthin. Sie stiftet nicht Zusammenhang. H.: Doch wie steht's mit dem Unzusammenhängenden? Es ist der Kunst so nötig wie Zusammenhang. Wie anders brächte sie uns zum Verwundern? Seht, in einem meiner frühen Quatuors, in F, folgt gleich im ersten Satz auf einen Schluss in D-Dur plötzlich eine Pause aller, dann fahre ich in B-Dur fort, und wenig später kommt nach es-Moll, pianissimo, ein Einsatz in G-Dur, forte. – So trieb ich es mein Leben Andreas Dorschel 14 lang, nur wurd' ich später darin raffinierter. Hängt alles ganz und gar zusammen, dann staunt wohl keiner mehr. Das Leben braucht das Staunen und Musik das Überraschen; sie braucht daher das Unzusammenhängende. Und regelmässig werden macht erst da Vergnügen, wo nicht das Regelmass erwartet wird. W.: Bewundern dürfen wir den Nomos, das Gesetz. Und dies Bewundern steht weit höher als Verwundern. H.: Zwar lobtet Ihr zuvor Quartette, die ich komponierte; allein, mir scheint, sie haben Euch nicht allzusehr entzückt. W.: Ihr setztet, wie Ihr sagt, nach dem es-Moll in G-Dur ein. Weshalb nicht in Fis-Dur? Es war bloss Willkür. H.: Wer komponiert, der spielt ein Spiel mit denen, die zu hören wissen. Und spielen lässt sich wohl auf manche Art. Den Takt abhanden kommen lassen – welcher Liebreiz! Anmutige Verwirrung wollt' ich stiften. W.: Und opfert dem die Fasslichkeit. H.: Die Fasslichkeit? Ich fass' es nicht. W.: Wer Kunst schafft, bringt Gedanken in einfachste Form. Die einfachste nun wäre welche? Die eindeutige Form. Ich äuss're fasslich mich, gelingt es mir, das, was zu sagen mir gewährt ist, so klar als möglich darzustellen. H.: Doch ist's nicht merkwürdig, dass Eure Musik, die Ihr als fasslich habt erdacht, den Menschen so unfassbar scheint, während sie meine, die stets dem Fassen sich entzieht, höchst fasslich finden? W.: Offenbar ist Missverständnis unter Menschen weit häufiger als das Versteh'n. H.: Sollten wir dann nicht lieber schweigen, auf dass wir nicht zu weit'rem Missverstehen Anlass geben? W.: Vielleicht. H.: Indes, Eure Erklärung nennt nur die eine Möglichkeit. Die and're wäre: dass man das Gegenteil dessen erreicht, was man erreichen will. Der Gefallsüchtige missfällt, der allzusehr auf seinen Vorteil Bedachte verfehlt ihn, da man die Absicht merkt. Man wird verstimmt. So mag's – gestattet Ihr die ferne Parallele – so manchem von uns armen Komponisten auch ergeh'n. W.: Die Weisheitslehre dieses Knaben / Sei ewig mir ins Herz gegraben. H.: Ihr habt leicht spotten über einen geistesschwachen Greis. Totengespräch zwischen Haydn und Webern 15 W.: Und hättet Ihr nicht über mich gespottet? Mein Werk ist fasslich, doch es ist auch neu. Was aber neu ist, geht wohl schwerer in die Ohren, die behäbigen – und schwerer in die stumpfen Herzen. Man muss das Volk erziehen – rücksichtslos. H.: Dafür ist es hier unten nun zu spät. Nicht einmal rücksichtsvoll vermögen wir die Leut' noch zu erzieh'n. W.: Mag sein; doch and're kämpfen droben für das Neue. H.: Man sagt mir, zu oder doch nach Eurer Zeit hätt' man das Wörtchen ‚neu' wohl grossgeschrieben, sobald es neben der ‚Musik' zu stehen kam. Zu meiner Zeit schrieb man es klein ... W.: Und doch schriebt Ihr es gross, figürlich sag' ich das – Ihr seid der grösste Neuerer der alten Zeiten. H.: Das hab' ich nicht gesucht und wurd' es nicht gegen das Alte. Ich wurd' es ganz für mich in Esterháza. Da musst' ich's werden. W.: Neues, das sein muss, verdient das kapitale N. H.: Gewiss, ich sagt' es selbst, das ‚muss'. Und doch: Muss etwas sein? In der Musik, mein' ich, was muss da sein? Musik ist Spiel und Spiel bleibt eine Sache nur, solang' etwas in ihr so sein kann oder so oder ganz anders. Doch, fürcht' ich, wiederhol' ich mich und falle wohl zur Last, bereit' Euch lange Weile. W.: SATOR AREPO TENET OPERA ROTAS – wie dieses mich noch niemals fadisierte, so vorwärts, rückwärts, aufwärts, abwärts gleich, so hör' auch Euch, mein Herr, ich ohne Langeweile zu. H.: Nun ja, Schlimm'res gibt's wohl unter uns Musikanten als meinen alten Schmarr'n. (jäh aufhorchend) Bei Pluto, drüben lässt Herr Lehár wieder dudeln. Und dudeln tut's, dass Orkus sich erbarm'. Sogar das Zingarese hat das Subjekt mir schon vergällt! So also geht es zu hier in der Unterwelt. Wozu sind wir denn da? Soll'n in Radau wir nach und nach verwesen? Was mach' ich nur, und was macht Ihr? W.: Ich lese jetzt den Swedenborg; er öffnet selbst am Styx mir noch den Himmel. H.: Wie soll man lesen, wenn's von Vilja trällert? (äffend) „Vilja, o Vilja, / Was tust du mir an? / Bang fleht ein liebkranker Mann." Ihr wisst doch sicher bessern Rat! W.: Entflieht auf leichten Kähnen. Her mit Euch, Charon! Her und dann auf, dann flugs davon! (Haydn drückt dem Fährmann eine Münze in die Hand; er und Webern besteigen den Nachen, der rasch sich ins Dunkel verliert.) | {
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SCIENTIFIC REALISM AND THE RATIONALITY OF SCIENCE This page intentionally left blank Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science HOWARD SANKEY University of Melbourne, Australia © Howard Sankey 2008 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Howard Sankey has asserted his moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Ashgate Publishing Company Gower House Suite 420 Croft Road 101 Cherry Street Aldershot Burlington, VT 05401-4405 Hampshire GU11 3HR USA England Ashgate website: http://www.ashgate.com British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Sankey, Howard Scientific realism and the rationality of science 1. Realism 2. Science – Philosophy I. Title 501 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Sankey, Howard. Scientific realism and the rationality of science / Howard Sankey. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7546-5888-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Realism. 2. Science-Philosophy. I. Title. Q175.32.R42 S26 2007 501-dc22 2007007959 ISBN 978-0-7546-5888-7 Printed in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd., Bodmin. Contents Acknowledgements vii Introduction 1 1 Scientific Realism 11 2 The God's Eye Point of View 31 3 Truth and Entity Realism 43 4 Incommensurability and the Language of Science 53 5 Induction and Natural Kinds 79 6 Methodological Pluralism, Normative Naturalism and the Realist Aim of Science 89 7 Realism, Method and Truth 109 8 Why is it Rational to Believe Scientific Theories are True? 123 Bibliography 145 Index 151 This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgements The papers assembled here represent work I have undertaken in recent years on issues relating to scientific realism. While engaged in this work, I have benefited from the support of a number of institutions. The Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Melbourne has provided me with my academic home base throughout the time that I have been engaged on these topics. I was fortunate, once again, to enjoy the hospitality and stimulation of the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh, where I held a visiting fellowship during the Fall semester of 1998. On two occasions, in the first half of 1999 and the latter part of 2002, I received a warm reception as Guest Professor at the Center for Philosophy and Ethics of Science at the University of Hanover. One paper even began life while I was still affiliated with the Philosophy Department of Saint David's University College, Lampeter in 1991. Finishing touches were applied to several of the essays while I was a visitor at the Poincaré Archives at the University of Nancy. I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to these institutions for their support, both material and intellectual. Much of the material contained in this book has served as the basis for presentations which I have given at a variety of locations. Apart from talks given at the University of Melbourne, the work included here formed the basis of seminars and lectures presented in a variety of seminar series and conferences held at the Universities of Bielefeld, Brasilia, Genoa, Hanover, Pittsburgh and Roskilde, the Catholic University of Louvain, La Trobe University, the Humboldt University of Berlin, Saint David's University College, Swarthmore College, and the Belgian Society for Logic and Philosophy of Science in Brussels. I also gave papers based on this work at annual meetings of the Australasian Association of Philosophy in Melbourne in 1999 and the New Zealand division in Dunedin in 2005, as well as the Australasian Association for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Science in Melbourne in 2001 and 2003. I am grateful to the organizers of these symposia for the invitations to present my work, as well as to audience members for the opportunity to discuss my ideas with them. The comments received in such settings are a valuable source of stimulation which often suggest new directions and enable me to see issues in different ways. As always, I am deeply indebted to philosophical friends and colleagues, with whom I have discussed these topics, and who have provided me with comments on my work. I would like to take this opportunity to express my gratitude to the following for exchanges in relation to the topics dealt with in this book: Paulo Abrantes, Martin Carrier, Steve Clarke, John Collier, David Cockburn, Michael Devitt, Brian Ellis, Michel Ghins, Dimitri Ginev, Paul Hoyningen-Huene, Hugh Lacey, Larry Laudan, Tim Lyons, Michele Marsonet, Alan Musgrave, Robert Nola, Stathis Psillos, Nicholas Rescher and Harvey Siegel. Without such interlocutors, philosophy would be a solitary game indeed. Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Scienceviii The papers which make up the content of this book have all been published previously. Three of the chapters incorporate material that was originally published in separate papers. The remainder have been revised in order to improve clarity of expression, extend arguments, or reduce repetition of similar content. I would like to thank the editors and publishers of the following publications for permission to reproduce this material here. Chapter 1, 'Scientific Realism', consists of material drawn from two articles: 'What is Scientific Realism?', Divinatio 12 (2000), 103-20 and 'Scientific Realism: An Elaboration And A Defence', Theoria 98 (2001), 35-54. Chapter 2, 'The God's Eye Point of View', was originally published as 'Scientific Realism and the God's Eye Point of View' in Epistemologia XXVII (2004), 211-26. It includes as an appendix a section from 'Realism Without Limits', Divinatio 20 (2004), 145-65. Chapter 3, 'Truth and Entity Realism', was originally published as 'The Semantic Stance of Scientific Entity Realism' in Philosophia 24: 3-4 (1995), 405-15. Chapter 4, 'Incommensurability and the Language of Science', combines material which originally appeared in 'The Language of Science: Meaning Variance and Theory Comparison', Language Sciences 22 (2000), 117-136 and 'Incommensurability: The Current State of Play', Theoria 12: 3 (1997), 425-45. Chapter 5, 'Induction and Natural Kinds', was originally published in Principia 1: 2 (1997), 239-54. Chapter 6, 'Methodological Pluralism, Normative Naturalism and the Realist Aim of Science', was originally published in R. Nola and H. Sankey (eds), After Popper, Kuhn and Feyerabend: Recent Issues in Theories of Scientific Method, Australasian Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, Volume 15, (Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), 211-29. Chapter 7, 'Realism, Method and Truth', was originally published in M. Marsonet (ed.), The Problem of Realism (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 64-81. Chapter 8, 'Why is it Rational to Believe Scientific Theories are True?', was originally published in C. Cheyne and J. Worrall (eds), Rationality and Reality: Conversations with Alan Musgrave, (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006), 109-32. Introduction The aim of this book is to articulate and defend a scientific realist philosophy of science. Throughout my philosophical work, I have adopted a thoroughly realist outlook. This was an outlook I acquired in the course of my initial training in philosophy in New Zealand. It was then reinforced by immersion in the Australian philosophical scene. But until recent years I have not overtly sought to defend the position of realism. The situation began to change not long after the publication of my first book, The Incommensurability Thesis (1994). In that book, I sought to show that the semantic variance which lies behind claims of semantic incommensurability may be analyzed in an unproblematic manner within a scientific realist framework.1 I employed a modified causal theory of reference to argue that translation may fail between the special vocabulary of scientific theories, while sufficient commonality of reference is maintained to ensure that the content of the theories may be compared. Thus, the occurrence of profound conceptual change within science poses little threat to either a realist view of scientific progress or a rationalist view of scientific theory-choice. Following publication of The Incommensurability Thesis, my philosophical interactions began to take place in a more global arena. As a result, I came into sustained contact with philosophers of science working in continental Europe, for whom scientific realism was a profoundly problematic position, if not simply anathema. While I had sought to show that a basis for theory comparison exists within the sciences, little common ground was afforded by realism in these discussions. Indeed, I found realism to be a decidedly unpopular and poorly understood position, all too easily dismissed as a naive doctrine subject to decisive objections. I soon came to realize that realism requires careful elaboration and defence, if it is to be made plausible to philosophers schooled in opposing philosophical traditions. That is one of the tasks that I have undertaken in several of the essays that are included in the present book. At the same time, this book is an attempt to make good on a promissory note issued in the Introduction to my second book, Rationality, Relativism and Incommensurability (1997). That book too dealt with aspects of the problem of semantic incommensurability, while also addressing the question of rational theory-choice in the context of variant standards of theory-appraisal. While realism figured only marginally as a topic in Rationality, Relativism and Incommensurability, the views of conceptual change and rationality which I presented there fit comfortably into a realist framework. At the end of the Introduction I wrote that I hoped soon to provide an elaboration of the connection between realism and the 1 I distinguish semantic incommensurability, which arises due to semantic variation between theories, from methodological forms of incommensurability, which stem from variation in methodological standards of theory-evaluation (see Sankey and HoyningenHuene, 2001, ix). Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science2 views of conceptual change and rationality that I presented in that book. In various ways, the essays collected in the present book all seek to deliver on that promise. My main reason for not dealing with realism as a central topic of Rationality, Relativism and Incommensurability was that I then regarded the issues of conceptual change and theory-choice to be distinct issues from the issue of realism.2 This is perhaps the nub of the issue. For the realist, the world we inhabit, and which science investigates, is an objective reality whose existence and character are independent of human thought. Truth, too, is objective, since it is a non-epistemic relation of correspondence between language and the mind-independent world. Neither variation of concepts nor choice of theory impinges on the nature of the objective world or on the truth about that world. In this sense, the issues of conceptual change and rational theory-choice are indeed distinct from the issue of realism. But it was just this separation of realism from conceptual and epistemic issues which was placed in dispute in my exchanges with European philosophers. The issue was often expressed in terms of the relationship between epistemology and ontology. 'Since Kant', I was told, 'epistemology and ontology must go hand-in-hand.'3 Sometimes, the point was the simple one that one must reflect upon the epistemic basis of one's views about the world rather than dogmatically assert the world to be a given way. At other times, the point was the stronger one that the world of which we have knowledge is in part constituted by our conceptual and epistemic activities. On still other occasions, I was told that we must do away with the entire distinction between subject and object on which the distinction between epistemology and ontology is based. As a realist, I hold that the way the world is does not depend on what we believe about it or how we conceive of it. In that sense, epistemology and ontology are distinct. But I have come to agree in part with my European colleagues that epistemology must go hand-in-hand with ontology. Given the realist insistence on the mind-independence of reality, human cognitive activity is not constitutive of reality. There is a gap between mind and world. This raises the question of how knowledge (scientific or otherwise) is possible. The realist must explain how human cognitive activity gives rise to genuine knowledge of a mind-independent reality. While epistemology and ontology are distinct in the sense that reality is independent of thought, they must be brought into a relation of mutual support within the context of a realist philosophy of science. On the one hand, scientific realism requires an epistemology. For it must be shown how the methods of science are able to produce knowledge of a world that exists outside the mind. On the other 2 It is also the case that the defence of untranslatability, methodological pluralism and a non-algorithmic conception of rationality, which was the principal aim of Rationality, Relativism and Incommensurability, is neutral with respect to the question of scientific realism. One need not be a realist to endorse these views. 3 For example, in an interview which I conducted with Paul Hoyningen-Huene in 1996, he commented that: 'I think since Kant in philosophy in general it has been on the agenda that epistemological questions cannot be discussed apart from metaphysical questions, and vice versa. I mean it doesn't make sense to speak about metaphysics without questioning our possibilities of access to the things which there are' (Sankey and Hoyningen-Huene, 1996, 61). Introduction 3 hand, the epistemology of realism requires support from ontology. For in order to explain how the methods of science produce knowledge, it must be explained how the world is such that it is accessible by such means. Thus, epistemology and ontology do go hand-in-hand, but not in the sense that knowledge and world are mutually constitutive. As for how epistemology and ontology are to be conjoined, here I draw on a theme that came to the fore in the final chapters of Rationality, Relativism and Incommensurability. There I advocated a turn toward naturalism in the philosophy of method. In particular, I sought to show how a normative naturalist account of epistemic warrant of the kind advocated by Larry Laudan may be employed to meet the challenge of relativism. Unlike Laudan, though, I hold that the normative naturalist account of warrant is able to serve the purposes of a realist epistemology of science. I agree with Laudan that the methods of science may be regarded as tools of inquiry that are employed in pursuit of epistemic goals. I agree too that the warrant for such methods rests on their historical track record in furthering such goals. Where I depart from Laudan is in arguing that the best explanation of the success of theories produced on the basis of these methods is that the methods are in fact a reliable guide to truth. Epistemology and ontology are thus conjoined because the world we inhabit is one in which the methods of science are a reliable means of securing knowledge about it. With the foregoing as background, I will now present an overview of the essays that follow. The first priority is to formulate scientific realism in as clear a manner as possible. Hence, Chapter 1 spells out the scientific realist position as I understand it, and presents the basic arguments on its behalf. I propose what I take to be a standard construal of the scientific realist position as a form of the traditional metaphysical realist doctrine that the world exists independently of the mental. The realist position is a position of epistemic optimism, which holds against the sceptic that humans are able to acquire knowledge of the world. The specifically scientific realist dimension arises because such knowledge extends to unobservable aspects of the world investigated by theoretical science. For the realist takes scientific progress to consist in advance on truth about both observable and unobservable aspects of the world. Truth is understood, as indicated previously, as a correspondence relation. Apart from these basic elements of the scientific realist position, a number of further semantic and metaphysical tenets will also be discussed, though I regard them as optional extras which are not essential to the scientific realist position. As for the arguments for scientific realism, here it is important that scientific realism be understood as a form of realism in general. For a number of powerful arguments which provide groundwork for the case for scientific realism are in fact arguments for realism in general. There are two such arguments. The first is an argument for realism as the position which best reflects a non-anthropocentric view of our place in the natural world. The second is an argument for realism at the commonsense level, which treats realism about unobservable entities as an outgrowth of commonsense realism. Such arguments provide the groundwork for scientific realism. Once the general realist outlook is established, one may then proceed to argue for realism about science. Here, too, my approach tends to follow realist orthodoxy. The basic argument at this level turns on the success of science. It is the argument that scientific Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science4 realism is the best explanation of the success of science. I shall present this argument at two levels. First, at the level of theories, I argue that the success of science is best explained by the truth or approximate truth of theories. Second, at the level of method, I argue that the success of theories produced by the methods of science is best explained by the truth-conducive character of such methods. One of the major concerns with scientific realism that I have encountered relates to the perspective occupied by the philosopher who adopts the realist stance. In proposing that humans acquire knowledge of a mind-independent world, it would appear that the realist must adopt a perspective that is situated outside the human perspective. For in order to be able to judge that human mental states are true representations of such a world, it must be possible to adopt an objective stance from which to compare the human perspective with reality. That stance must surely lie outside the human perspective. In the words of Hilary Putnam, it must be a God's Eye point of view. Since no human could possibly occupy such a perspective, and the realist position requires such a perspective, the realist position may be rejected as untenable. In Chapter 2, I consider the objection from the God's Eye point of view. I argue, in the first place, that it is not necessary for the realist to adopt a God's Eye point of view, since realism may be proposed from within our human perspective as a hypothesis about the relation between mind and reality. However, I also attempt to show that there is a perfectly intelligible sense in which we are able to adopt an external perspective. This may be seen by reflecting in a naturalistic manner on the scientific study of animal cognition. Scientists are able to investigate the epistemic relations which non-human animals bear to reality. But there is no reason why a similar investigation may not be undertaken of our own epistemic relations to the world. Just as we may study animal cognition, so, too, we may investigate the relations between our own minds and the world. Thus, even if realism were to require an external standpoint, this is no basis for an objection to realism. The notion of truth plays an important role in scientific realism on my construal of the doctrine. For the aim of science is to discover the truth, and thereby to advance our knowledge of the world. Thus the form of scientific realism which I propose differs from a version of scientific realism that has been advocated by a number of influential realist authors. Michael Devitt, Brian Ellis, Ian Hacking, and others, have argued for an ontological version of scientific realism that is known as entity realism. Entity realists eschew or downplay the notion of truth, emphasizing instead the reality of the unobservable entities discovered by science. By contrast with entity realism, the form of scientific realism presented in this book constitutes a semantic version of realism in Michael Devitt's sense, since it makes use of the notion of truth (e.g., Devitt, 1991). There are reasons to find the stance of entity realism appealing. Avoidance of the notion of truth is attractive, since it may enable objections which relate to the notion of truth to be evaded. Moreover, the emphasis on entities rather than theories promotes the study of experimental practice, which is a significant corrective to traditional emphasis on theoretical science. Still, for a number of reasons, I favour the more standard, truth-orientated conception of scientific realism described above. For one thing, a scientific entity realism which eschews semantic notions Introduction 5 such as truth seems to assume the possibility of referring to theoretical entities in the absence of individuating descriptions which are true of such entities. Such a position presupposes the viability of a pure causal theory of reference determination for theoretical terms, of a kind which seems quite implausible.4 For another thing, there is the matter of semantic ascent. Assertion of the existence of an entity commits one, via semantic ascent, to the truth of at least the existence claims relating to the entity. So it is not clear that use of the notion of truth may be entirely avoided by the entity realist. Nor is it clear, therefore, that semantic issues may be evaded by the entity realist. Finally, one of the best-known arguments for entity realism is the so-called experimental argument for realism, which was originally presented as a distinct argument from the success argument for realism (Hacking, 1983, 271). But it seems clear that the experimental argument is simply a version of the success argument applied in the context of experimentation (Resnik, 1994). So it fails to import a new argumentative strategy into the realist's repertoire. While I support a truth-orientated version of realism, it is important to emphasize that this indicates no less a commitment to realism about the mind-independent world than the commitment of the entity realist. Entity realists are right to insist that the fundamental commitment of realism is a metaphysical commitment to the existence of a mind-independent world, as well as to the various entities which are found to populate it. But such metaphysical commitment is fully compatible with endorsement of a semantic version of realism. Indeed, commitment to the mindindependent world and to the entities of science and common sense constitutes a major component of the truth-orientated version of scientific realism advocated here. I am inclined to regard entity realism as a version of scientific realism. The entity realist is a close ally in disputes with a range of anti-realist critics of realism, such as Kantian constructivist positions, and epistemically sceptical positions. Still, the question arises of whether the position of entity realism is a genuine alternative to scientific realism. In Chapter 3, I examine the question of whether entity realism does constitute a distinct position from semantic formulations of scientific realism. I seek to show that it can indeed be legitimately distinguished from semantic versions of scientific realism. Entity realism does not express, nor does it immediately entail, a semantic thesis involving the notion of truth. While it is possible to derive a semantic thesis from entity realism by semantic ascent, the resulting semantic thesis is not committed to any particular theory of truth. So entity realism entails a semantic thesis in only an attenuated sense. Semantic concerns are also the focus of Chapter 4, where I revisit the problem of incommensurability. The phenomenon of conceptual change or meaning variance in science raises a fundamental difficulty for the realist in relation to the progress of science. Given the realist view that scientific progress consists in advance on truth, such progress requires an increase in truth known about the world. The connection between truth and reference is therefore of crucial relevance to the issue of progress. For in order for the transition between theories to constitute progress in a realist 4 For discussion of problems relating to the reference of theoretical terms, see my (1994, Ch. 2). Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science6 sense, a later theory must yield an increase in the truth known about the same entities as those investigated by earlier theories. With the exception of cases of radically mistaken ontology, a later theory must refer to the same set of entities as earlier theories referred to. Otherwise it is not possible for the transition between the theories to constitute progress toward truth in the same domain of inquiry. The problem of semantic incommensurability is a major problem for a realist account of scientific progress precisely because it casts doubt on the continuity of reference between theories. For if theoretical change involves significant change in the concepts expressed by scientific terms, then there may be a discontinuity of reference in the transition between theories. The problem of stability of reference between meaning variant theories is at base a problem in the theory of reference about the nature of reference determination. This was a major topic of The Incommensurability Thesis. For detailed coverage of the topic, I refer the reader to that book. In Chapter 4, I present an overview of the emergence of the problem of incommensurability within the context of 20th century philosophical thinking about the language of science. The chapter traces discussion of the language of science from the verificationism of the early logical positivists through to the partial interpretation model of later positivism and the theoretical context account of meaning favoured by post-positivist philosophers of science of the historical school. It then considers the problem of reference change in light of alternative (descriptive, causal) models of reference determination, before presenting the causal-descriptive model for which I argued in The Incommensurability Thesis. While realism is an underlying theme of the chapter, it is the principal focus of the final two sections. The implications with respect to realism of the taxonomic incommensurability thesis proposed by Kuhn in his later work are examined, and it is argued that such incommensurability poses no threat to a realist philosophy of science. The chapter closes by rebutting the claim of Paul Hoyningen-Huene, Eric Oberheim and Hanne Andersen (1996) that my causal-descriptive approach to the problem of incommensurability presupposes realism and thereby succumbs to a metalevel incommensurability with anti-realist proponents of the incommensurability of scientific theories. From semantic aspects of realism, attention then shifts to concerns of an epistemological nature. Throughout the four final chapters of the book, I adopt a broadly naturalistic approach to the epistemological questions under consideration. My principal aim is to demonstrate that the normative naturalist account of epistemic warrant may be embraced within a realist framework, and to employ this account of warrant as part of my argument for a realist epistemology of science. In the process, I explore the idea that the epistemology of scientific realism must draw on considerations of a metaphysical nature.This exploration commences in Chapter 5, which illustrates the epistemological relevance of metaphysical considerations in the context of the traditional Humean problem of induction. The leading idea of the chapter is a familiar one from the history of attempts to solve the problem of induction. It is the idea that what ultimately provides the rationale for our use of induction is the fact that the world is an ordered reality governed by underlying laws. This is a version of the principle of the uniformity of nature. Philosophers Introduction 7 have usually rejected the principle of uniformity as a solution to the problem of induction because it is unable to be established independently of induction. It cannot, therefore, serve as justification of induction. But I think that such a rejection of the principle of uniformity of nature is illadvised for the realist. Rather than reject the principle out of hand, the realist may instead employ realist metaphysical commitments as the underpinnings for an epistemology. This will require the realist to articulate a metaphysical position that goes beyond a minimal commitment to an objective reality. In certain contexts, it is useful to characterize realism (as I do in Chapter 1) as committed to the existence of a mind-independent reality, for example, in order to distinguish realism from a Kantian or idealist position. But a mind-independent reality may be an amorphous, unordered world. Such a world is hardly a world worth fighting for. The world in which the realist should believe is not just a mind-independent reality, though it is at least that. It is a world with structure and order. But the existence of such structure and order has epistemological implications. Recognizing this is crucial to the development of a realist epistemology. Though the argument of Chapter 5 is a version of the traditional appeal to the uniformity of nature, it is not couched in the usual way as a blanket resemblance of past and future. Rather, I understand the uniformity of nature in terms of the operation of laws of nature which it is the task of science to discover. Following Brian Ellis, I see a close connection between laws of nature and the natural kinds with which our world is populated. Laws of nature are grounded in the irreducible causal powers of things that characterize members of a given natural kind. So, rather than understand the uniformity of nature as some sort of general resemblance of past and future, I see it as residing in the inbuilt behavioural tendencies of individual members of natural kinds. This line of argument derives from the position proposed by Hilary Kornblith in his book, Inductive Inference and its Natural Ground. Kornblith argues that reliable inductive inference is grounded in the existence of natural kinds whose members share sets of homeostatically clustered properties in common. I depart from Kornblith only on points of detail. Where Kornblith chooses in naturalistic vein not to directly address Humean scepticism, I suggest instead that the appeal to natural kinds can be used to justify induction against the Humean sceptic. I also espouse the more substantive metaphysics of Brian Ellis's scientific essentialist theory of natural kinds, rather than rest content with the homeostatic property cluster model favoured by Kornblith. It will not escape notice that this attempt to solve the problem of induction draws on metaphysical views of the kind that are set aside as optional doctrines of realism in Chapter 1. A brief word of explanation is therefore in order. My aim in Chapter 1 is to articulate the position of scientific realism in a manner that reflects the standard understanding of the position construed in a generic fashion. As it happens, the position of scientific realism presented in Chapter 1 is the general version of scientific realism that I espouse. However, the formulation of the realist position in Chapter 1 is intended to serve as a generic statement of the position that is capable of embracing paradigmatic examples of scientific realism, while at the same time allowing for variation amongst diverse realists on non-essential matters. Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science8 As the book progresses, my attention turns to the more specific task of developing an epistemology for realism. Thus, increasingly, the position presented is my own specific version of scientific realism, rather than a generic form of the doctrine, such as that propounded at the start of the book. Kornblith's approach to the problem of induction is based on a thorough-going epistemological naturalism. It is antisceptical. It draws on empirical claims from and about natural science in establishing a metaphysical framework within which to treat epistemological questions. It employs research in cognitive psychology in approaching conceptual and inferential aspects of knowledge-acquisition. In my view, such a naturalistic approach to epistemological questions is a model of how the realist should proceed in developing a realist epistemology for science.5 Because of the non-epistemic character of correspondence truth and the mindindependence of reality, the realist must explain how use of the methods of science yields knowledge. Against those who deny the possibility of a realist epistemology, the naturalistic realist may treat the problem of knowledge as the broadly empirical problem of explaining how cognitive agents embedded in the natural world are able to use their epistemic capacities to promote their survival. The success of practical activity based on common sense and scientific exercise of our epistemic capacities serves as robust confirmation that such knowledge is not only possible but actual. The main outlines of the naturalistic epistemology that I favour are presented in Chapter 6. As previously mentioned, I adopt a realist version of Larry Laudan's normative naturalist account of the warrant of the rules of method. According to normative naturalism, the rules of method are tools of scientific inquiry, which may be evaluated on the basis of their historical track record in securing the cognitive aims of science. The most widely attested strength of this approach is its ability to serve as a counter to epistemological relativism (see Rationality, Relativism and Incommensurability, Chapter 10). Given Laudan's opposition to realism, it is less widely appreciated that normative naturalism may be used in support of a realist epistemology of science. The aim of Chapter 6 is to show that normative naturalism is able to be incorporated within a scientific realist framework. I seek to show, pace Laudan, that it is possible to have knowledge at the theoretical level. I argue that it may be rational to pursue truth as an ideal, even if it is unattainable. And I attempt to show, again pace Laudan, that we are able to monitor our pursuit of truth because satisfaction of the rules of method may serve as a fallible indication of our progress toward that aim. The fundamental epistemological problem of realism is the problem of establishing a connection between epistemic methods and non-epistemic truth. In Chapter 7, I explicitly confront this problem, which I refer to as the problem of method and truth. Those anti-realists who take truth or reality to depend on epistemic activity resolve the problem by treating truth as a product internal to the application of method. Those anti-realists who are sceptics about theoretical science deny that the problem may be solved since they deny that a connection may be established between method and truth. By contrast with anti-realists of either variety, I seek to 5 A similar naturalistic program for realism is found in Devitt (1991, 5.7-5.10; 2002, 22-5). Introduction 9 resolve the problem in the context of realism on the basis of a naturalistic account of the epistemic warrant of methodological rules. In particular, I argue that what best explains the use of the methods of science to produce successful theories is that the methods comprise a reliable means of securing the truth. The realistic version of normative naturalism proposed in Chapter 6 is the basis for the solution of the problem of method and truth that is presented in Chapter 7. I continue to develop this approach to the problem of method and truth in Chapter 8, which is the final chapter of the book. I examine two solutions to the problem of method and truth that may be found in the work of one influential scientific realist, my former teacher, Alan Musgrave. Musgrave proposes two epistemic principles which indicate conditions under which it is rational to believe that a theory is true. The first is the principle that it is reasonable to believe the best explanation of a fact to be true. The second is that it is reasonable to believe the hypothesis which has best withstood criticism. While both principles highlight important principles of rational belief, I argue that in the case of neither principle is it explained why it is rational to believe that a theory is true, as opposed to, say, empirically adequate. To explain why it is rational to believe that a theory is true, it is not enough to enunciate a principle of pure epistemology. To explain why it is rational to believe that a claim is true of the mind-independent world something must be said about the world. Ontology must be conjoined with epistemology if the problem of method and truth is to be solved in a realist framework. It may be seen from this overview that the essays contained in this book develop a number of interwoven themes. Because they were originally written for publication as separate articles, there is some overlap of content between some of the chapters of the book. However, in revising the papers for inclusion in the book, I have sought to remove excessive repetition of material. At the same time, the individual chapters remain self-contained, and may be read as stand-alone pieces. The papers were originally prepared for a variety of different audiences with different backgrounds and levels of expertise. A number of the papers were consciously written in an attempt to bridge a communicative gap between philosophical traditions. Some were originally prepared for oral presentation, while others were conceived solely as written papers. The target audience of a number of the papers was envisioned to be specialists in the philosophy of science, while a number of others were directed at a non-specialist audience. While I have sought to maintain an even tone throughout the revised versions of these papers, it is unavoidable that the variation in original audience will have left its traces. This page intentionally left blank Chapter 1 Scientific Realism 1.1 Introduction Tables and chairs, and people who sit at tables in chairs, are all objects composed of matter. Science tells us that the basic components of matter are atoms. Atoms themselves are made up of electrons, neutrons and protons. The neutrons and protons form a nucleus around which the electrons orbit. Apart from these particles, physicists have discovered numerous other particles, such as photons, quarks and neutrinos. Unlike tables, chairs and people, the particles of which matter is composed are entities which cannot be directly observed using unaided sense perception. We do not come to know of the existence and nature of such unobservable entities by means of sense experience. Rather, our knowledge of unobservable entities is a matter of inference, conjecture and hypothesis. Scientists postulate the existence of such entities when they develop theories which explain the observed phenomena as the result of more basic occurrences at an unobservable level. Because scientists postulate unobservable entities within the context of scientific theories, philosophers of science refer to such entities as theoretical entities. The terms that scientists use to speak about such entities are often called theoretical terms to distinguish them from the observational terms that are used to speak about observable things. When scientists tell us about such theoretical entities as atoms, electrons and other particles, what attitude should we adopt toward these claims? What is the status of such claims? Should they be treated as true, or approximately true, descriptions of actually existing things? Or are such claims to be treated as some sort of fictional discourse? There is considerable disagreement among philosophers of science about the status of discourse about theoretical entities. Those who endorse the position of scientific realism say that scientific claims about theoretical entities should be taken literally, or at face value. They should be treated as true, approximately true, or at least as genuine attempts to make true or approximately true claims about objective reality. Those who endorse one or another anti-realist position reject the realist view that such claims should be regarded as true or approximately true claims about objective reality. Anti-realist philosophers of science disagree among themselves about how theoretical claims are to be understood. One well-known anti-realist position is the position of instrumentalism, according to which talk of theoretical entities is no more than 'useful fiction' or a 'convenient shorthand'. But there are other anti-realist positions. According to internal realism, for instance, the theoretical claims of science are candidates for truth, but truth is relative to conceptual scheme or value system Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science12 rather than correspondence to objective reality. By contrast, some contemporary versions of empiricism are sceptical with regard to theoretical knowledge. According to such sceptical anti-realism, theoretical claims about unobservable entities may well correspond to reality but empirical evidence may never be sufficient to provide support for the truth of such claims, which can at most be accepted as empirically adequate or warranted. While there are many philosophers who find scientific realism a compelling and powerful doctrine, realism is not a view shared by all philosophers. There are many who fail to see the appeal of scientific realism. In part, this is because the doctrine of scientific realism is not always understood as well as it might be. In some cases, such lack of understanding may explain why its appeal is not noticed, though in many cases there are substantive disagreements which explain the lack of appeal. In this chapter, I will attempt to provide a clear presentation of scientific realism in the hope that such a presentation may broaden the appeal of the doctrine. 1.2 Scientific Realism as a Family of Doctrines Scientific realism is not a simple thesis that may be embodied in any one single claim. Rather, scientific realism consists of a set of doctrines. Not all scientific realists agree about all of these doctrines. Thus, scientific realism is best characterized as a family of closely related doctrines.1 Another way to put the point is to say that there is a variety of different versions of scientific realism. In this, of course, scientific realism is not alone. Anti-realism is also best thought of as a family of doctrines. Despite being best characterized as a family of doctrines, some doctrines are more central to scientific realism than others. In what follows I will present six distinct doctrines which I take to form the core of scientific realism. There are, however, a number of other doctrines associated with scientific realism which should be mentioned as well. So I will also discuss several other doctrines which are often associated with scientific realism, but which may be treated as optional doctrines. Following the presentation of scientific realist doctrines, I will distinguish scientific realism from the doctrine of scientism, with which it is sometimes mistakenly identified. I will then present what I take to be the major arguments in favour of scientific realism. Core Doctrines The six doctrines which I will now present are doctrines which form the core of scientific realism. These doctrines are so central to scientific realism that a view which denies any of them can only lay claim to the title of 'scientific realism' in an attenuated sense. I present the doctrines in what I find to be a natural order of 1 For a sample of the varying characterizations of scientific realism found in the literature, see Devitt (1991, 98ff), Ellis (1990, 87-9), Hacking (1983, 21-31), Leplin (1984, 1-2), Newton-Smith (1981, 29, 38-9) and van Fraassen (1980, 8). Scientific Realism 13 presentation. This order is not meant to suggest that any particular hierarchical or logical relation holds between the doctrines. The first doctrine is a doctrine about the aim of science: 1. Aim realism: the aim of science is to discover the truth about the world, and scientific progress consists in advance toward that aim. In the first instance, aim realism is a thesis about the aim of science. As such, however, it has immediate implications about the nature of scientific progress, which is why I formulate it in terms of both an aim and progress toward that aim. Because the aim of science is to obtain the truth, progress in science must consist in advance on that aim. Hence, scientific progress consists in advance on truth. It is consistent with the doctrine of aim realism to deny that science has made much progress toward the aim of truth. Indeed, it is consistent with aim realism to deny that any progress at all has been made toward that aim. But scientific realists typically wish to say that a great deal of truth has already been discovered in at least some areas of science. Some may even be prepared to commit themselves to the truth of at least some of the well-established claims of the sciences. However, along with most contemporary philosophers of science, scientific realists tend to understand science as an ongoing historical process that is, in all likelihood, far from complete. As a result, they do not assume that contemporary science has already achieved the aim of truth. At best, current scientific theories may be close to the truth, or they may be approximately true. Pursuit of the aim of science cannot, therefore, consist simply in the pursuit of the truth. It must also consist in seeking to advance toward the aim of truth by increasingly close approximation to that aim. Three further points are worthy of note. First, the idea that truth is the aim of science is in need of further qualification. It is not just that science seeks truth. For there are endlessly many trivial truths of no particular interest to science. Rather, science seeks to discover truths which are particularly revealing and interesting. Since science seeks to explain phenomena, we may say that science seeks truths of an explanatory nature. Second, it is worth noting that the choice of the term 'discover' in the formulation of aim realism is a deliberate one. For the realist, the aim of science is to discover truth about the world. We do not invent, construct or fabricate the truth, as might be said by some anti-realist philosophers or by constructivist sociologists of science. Third, it is important to consider the status of the claim that truth is the aim of science. It is not an empirical hypothesis or generalization about the motivations of scientists, considered either as individuals or as a group. Nor is it a semantic claim to the effect that the concept of science is the concept of an enterprise that is directed toward truth. Rather, it is an epistemological claim that the purpose of a knowledgeseeking enterprise such as science is the pursuit of truth. This latter point leads to the second core thesis of scientific realism. This is a thesis which relates to the nature of scientific knowledge: 2. Epistemic realism: scientific inquiry leads to genuine knowledge of both observable and unobservable aspects of the world. Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science14 The scientific realist does not simply assert that science seeks the truth about the world. Rather, scientific realism has a fundamentally epistemological rationale. For the scientific realist, the scientific pursuit of truth gives rise to genuine knowledge of the natural world. Scientific realism therefore entails epistemic realism, according to which scientific inquiry yields knowledge of the truth about the objective reality investigated by scientists.2 What most clearly distinguishes epistemic realism as a component of scientific realism is the insistence that scientific knowledge is not restricted to the observational level. It extends to unobservable aspects of reality as well. Epistemic realism is what characterizes scientific realism as an epistemological doctrine distinct from contemporary versions of empiricist philosophy of science which deny that it is possible to either have rationally justified belief or knowledge about unobservable states of affairs. It is also what epistemologically distinguishes scientific realism from neo-Kantian, constructivist views which deny epistemic access to the objective, mind-independent world, which lies beyond our phenomenal experience.3 The insistence that scientific knowledge extends beyond the observational level is further reflected in the third core claim of scientific realism. This is a thesis about the interpretation of theoretical discourse: 3. Theoretical discourse realism: scientific discourse about theoretical entities is to be interpreted in literal fashion as discourse which is genuinely committed to the existence of real unobservable entities. Such realist treatment of theoretical discourse contrasts with an instrumentalist construal of such discourse. Instrumentalism denies the literal interpretation of theoretical discourse, treating it instead as fictional discourse. Theoretical entities are 'convenient fictions,' useful only as an aid to prediction. By contrast with instrumentalism, the scientific realist understands theoretical discourse to refer to events and regularities that take place at the unobservable level. Scientists explain observed phenomena on the basis of underlying causal processes. The explanations they provide refer to unobservable entities whose behaviour is responsible for the observed phenomena. The realist treatment of theoretical discourse has both an ontological and a semantic dimension. At the ontological level, it is realistic about theoretical entities, since it implies that there really are unobservable entities which underlie observable phenomena. At the semantic level, it has general implications with respect to the reference of theoretical terms. For the point of a realist treatment of theoretical 2 The question arises of how precisely the notion of knowledge is to be understood in the context of scientific realism. As we will see in Chapter 6, I hold that something along the lines of the traditional justified true belief account of knowledge is a minimal condition for a realist conception of knowledge. This is particularly the case, given the need to produce a clear distinction between realism and assorted relativist and social constructivist conceptions of knowledge with which it contrasts. 3 The prime contemporary example of a neo-Kantian constructivist philosophy of science is, of course, Kuhn (1970a). For such an interpretation of Kuhn's metaphysical stance, see, for example, Devitt (1991) and Hoyningen-Huene (1993). Scientific Realism 15 discourse is not just that theories are genuinely committed to the existence of theoretical entities. Rather, realist treatment assumes that theoretical terms may in fact succeed in referring to real theoretical entities. For the realist, the point of employing a theoretical term, such as 'electron', is specifically to refer to the theoretical entities in question, namely electrons. The realist therefore takes it to be possible for the theoretical terms employed by scientists to enter into relations of reference with the unobservable entities whose existence is postulated by theories. The requirement of the possibility of reference does not commit the scientific realist to any particular theory of the reference of theoretical terms. At most, the possibility of such reference gives rise to a constraint on realistically acceptable theories of the reference of theoretical terms. But it does not entail any specific account of how the reference of theoretical terms is determined. Indeed, there is a range of theories of reference compatible with the requirement that theoretical terms be treated as genuinely referential expressions.4 The fourth core component of scientific realism is commitment to the basic metaphysical stance of realism about the external world:5 4. Metaphysical realism: the world investigated by science is an objective reality that exists independently of human thought. Commitment to a mind-independent, objective reality is what most fundamentally characterizes scientific realism as a form of realism. On such a view, there is a world that exists independently of our thought, the existence, structure and features of which depend in no way on human experience, beliefs, concepts or language. It is a world of objects, properties, relations and facts, which we must discover by means of empirical inquiry. It is not a world which is in any way constituted or constructed out of the concepts or theories which we formulate as part of the process of empirically finding out about the world. I employ the expression 'metaphysical realism' in the ordinary sense of commitment to the existence of a mind-independent reality. This use of the expression differs from the way it is employed by Hilary Putnam, who uses it to stand for the view that there is a fixed totality of mind-independent objects, determinate relations 4 The requirement of referential realism may be satisfied by a variety of theories of reference, which range from pure descriptive, to causal-descriptive and pure causal accounts. As it happens, I advocate a causal-descriptive theory of reference as part of the approach that I have proposed to the problem of the incommensurability of scientific theories (Sankey, 1994). However, no commitment to a specific account of reference is required by the realistic interpretation of theoretical discourse. 5 The expression 'external world' is the expression traditionally employed by philosophers to formulate the claim that there is a material world, which exists independently of the human mind. However, the expression itself is objectionable, since it seems to imply an untenable metaphysical divide between internal and external worlds, as well as to suggest that we are not part of the world. A further problem is that talk of an external world may provide the basis for the sceptical problematic – for example, Cartesian questions about the certainty of our knowledge of an external world – which should itself be rejected in favour of a naturalistic perspective which denies the legitimacy of such sceptical questions. Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science16 of reference between terms and objects, and one true, complete theory of the way these objects are (Putnam, 1981, 49). I prefer a more minimal characterization of metaphysical realism in terms of commitment to a mind-independent world. Putnam's use of the expression involves a number of controversial assumptions which the scientific realist need not embrace. For example, not all scientific realists may wish to assert either that there is a fixed totality of mind-independent objects or that it is possible in principle for there to be a single, complete theory of the world.6 The fifth component of scientific realism is a thesis about the nature of truth: 5. Correspondence theory of truth: truth consists in correspondence between a claim about the world and the way the world is. On such a view of truth, for a statement to be true the world must be the way that the statement says it is. The statement must correspond to the facts. Thus, a theoretical claim about an unobservable entity is true if and only if the theoretical entity really is how it is claimed to be. For example, the sentence 'Electrons have negative charge' is true if and only if electrons have negative charge.7 It is important to note that there are a number of alternative theories of truth which contrast with the correspondence theory of truth. Among the most prominent of these are the coherence, pragmatist, consensus and internal realist theories of truth. According to such theories of truth, truth is a property which a belief or statement may have in virtue of some epistemic property of the belief or statement. Examples of epistemic properties which have been proposed by advocates of such theories of truth include internal coherence, practical utility, agreement with one's cultural peers, and ideal rational justification. Because such theories of truth identify truth with an epistemic property of belief, they are sometimes called 'epistemic theories of truth' (e.g., Devitt, 1991, 36, 44-5). 6 Hacking (1983, 93-4) suggests that no coherent sense may be made of the idea of a complete description of the world. Yet even if it were possible to make coherent sense of the idea, it seems unnecessary to burden the scientific realist with such a potentially objectionable assumption. The point is not that the realist may allow that there may be more than one complete true description of the world, but that the realist need not be committed to the possibility that there may be even one such description. (See 2.3 for further discussion.) 7 The issue of the truth of theoretical claims raises a question about theoretical discourse. Ian Hacking distinguishes between entity realism and theory realism (Hacking, 1983, 27). Entity realism asserts the reality of unobservable entities discovered by science. Theory realism asserts that scientific theories may be true or have a truth-value. Traditional scientific realism combines entity realism with theory realism. However, Hacking notes that the two doctrines are logically distinct. The entity realist may allow that there are unobservable entities of which scientists possess knowledge, but of which no current theory provides a correct description. By contrast, the theory realist may assert that a theory is true though none of its terms denote unobservable entities, but refer instead to logical constructions out of experience. In thesis 3, I have characterized the realist interpretation of theoretical discourse as a defining principle of scientific realism. Given this, it is not possible for scientific realism to deny that theoretical discourse purports to refer to real unobservable entities. However, it is no great departure from scientific realism to assert the reality of theoretical entities while denying theory realism. Entity realism may therefore be considered a special version of scientific realism. Scientific Realism 17 For present purposes, I will understand the correspondence theory of truth in a broad sense. If a theory of truth holds that a statement is true just in case a given state of affairs obtains, then it will count as a correspondence theory. This means that minimalist theories which take truth to be exhausted by the equivalence scheme '"P" is true if and only if P' are just as much correspondence theories as are the more substantive attempts to identify the relation of correspondence with causal relations between language and reality.8 What is characteristic of all such theories of truth is that truth is a relation of correspondence that obtains in virtue of the world in fact being the way that it is said to be. Correspondence theories of truth contrast sharply with epistemic theories of truth, such as coherence or consensus theories, which identify truth with epistemic properties of beliefs. As we shall see later in this book, epistemic theories of truth imply an idealist covariance of belief and reality, and therefore cannot be reconciled with realism about a mind-independent reality (see 7.6 and 8.2). Correspondence theories which treat truth as a relation between language and reality are the only theories of truth compatible with realism. The sixth core component of realism makes explicit the relationship between the two preceding components of realism, namely, that it is the objective world that renders our claims about the world true or false: 6. Objectivity of truth: theories or claims about the world are made true (or false) by the way things are in the mind-independent, objective reality investigated by science. This thesis may seem redundant in light of the two preceding doctrines. However, I choose to state the thesis as a separate doctrine in order to explicitly rule out possible non-realist interpretations of the correspondence theory of truth. It is possible to incorporate the correspondence theory of truth within an idealist metaphysics. For example, the idealist may treat truth as a relation of correspondence between statements and states of affairs that are either solely constituted by mental states, or jointly constituted out of sensory input from the external world and the conceptual contribution of the human mind.9 Thus, what the realist wishes to say about truth is not merely that there is an objective reality and that truth is a correspondence relation. In addition, the realist wishes to say that truth consists in correspondence with objective reality. Thus, whether or not a statement is true has nothing to do with whether we happen to 8 While not all minimalist conceptions of truth may count as correspondence theories of truth in the broad sense at issue here, at least some do. Paul Horwich, for instance, argues that his own minimalist conception of truth is able to embrace 'the idea that each truth is made true by the existence of a corresponding fact' (1990, 112). For more substantive theories of truth, compare the attempt by Hartry Field and Michael Devitt to analyze the relation of correspondence as a function of a relation of reference between terms and their extension, where the latter is in turn to be analyzed by means of a causal theory of reference (Field, 1972; Devitt, 1991, 29). 9 In choosing to explicitly add the thesis of the objectivity of truth to that of correspondence truth, I follow the lead of Michael Devitt, who remarks that the correspondence theory 'is compatible with absolutely any metaphysics' (Devitt, 2002, 14). Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science18 believe that it is true. Rather, the truth of the statement is entirely determined by how things stand in the world, independently of us. This is a further reason why the realist is unable to countenance an epistemic conception of truth, since such a conception of truth removes the dependence of truth on an objective reality. In sum, thesis 4, the thesis of metaphysical realism, says nothing explicit about truth. It only says something about the nature of reality investigated by science. Thesis 5, the thesis of correspondence truth, says nothing about reality. It only says something about the nature of truth. Thesis 6, the thesis of the objectivity of truth, is needed in order to make explicit the relation between the thesis of mindindependence and the correspondence theory of truth. It combines the two preceding theses into the realist doctrine that it is the mind-independent world that makes our claims about the world true in a correspondence sense. The three theses about reality, truth, and the relation between reality and truth are distinct theses. In the interest of clarity, they should be stated as such. Optional Doctrines I will now discuss a number of doctrines which are closely associated with, but not essential to, scientific realism. They are optional doctrines for realism. The first is the doctrine of semantic realism, which may seem to be indispensable to scientific realism. Then there is a cluster of related metaphysical doctrines which are endorsed by many scientific realists, but which are logically distinct from the scientific realist position that I have outlined in the preceding section. The first optional component of scientific realism is a thesis about the meaning of empirical claims about the world. This is the semantic realist thesis that the meaning of the synthetic statements of empirical science consists in the conditions under which they would be true. According to semantic realism, the meaning of a scientific claim about the world consists in the conditions under which the claim would be true, rather than the conditions under which the assertion of such a claim would be warranted. In some cases, however, the truth-conditions of a scientific claim may be unable to be verified to obtain. Its truth-conditions may be 'verificationtranscendent'. In particular, it is impossible to conclusively establish by observational means alone the truth or falsity of theoretical claims about unobservable states of affairs (e.g., 'Electrons have negative charge'). Similarly, it is impossible to establish by such means the truth of universal generalizations about observable entities or states of affairs (e.g., 'All ravens are black'). Yet despite the inability to determine whether the truth-conditions of such claims obtain, the semantic realist holds that such claims may constitute significant assertions about the world, and indeed that they may possess a truth-value. This gives point to the attempt of scientists to provide indirect evidence for theoretical claims and empirical generalizations whose truth cannot be established by direct, empirical means. Semantic realism contrasts with the strict verificationism of the early logical positivism of the Vienna Circle (e.g., Schlick, 1938). According to strict verificationism, the meaning of a synthetic claim consists in the empirical conditions Scientific Realism 19 under which it is verifiable, or in the means by which it may be empirically verified. On a strict construal of this doctrine, theoretical claims about the world are devoid of meaning or 'cognitive significance', because they are incapable of empirical verification. Later positivists reduced the demand for strict empirical verification to the weaker condition of non-conclusive confirmation. In so weakening the requirement of verification, the positivists conceded that claims about the world may possess verification-transcendent truth-conditions which are of relevance to the meaning of such claims. In allowing the relevance of such truth-conditions to meaning, the later positivists were conceding ground to semantic realism. The rejection of strict verificationism in favour of semantic realism was a significant stage in the historical transition from logical positivism to scientific realism. Though strict verificationism is a thing of the past, the issue lives on in the form of the debate between realist theories of meaning which analyze the meaning of sentences in terms of truth-conditions and anti-realist theories of meaning which analyze sentence meaning in terms of assertability-conditions. The reason that I choose to treat semantic realism as an optional tenet of scientific realism is that I wish to leave it open that an assertability condition or use-based theory of meaning might turn out to be consistent with the basic principles of scientific realism.10 Turning to metaphysical doctrines, there are a number of interconnected realist views about causation and laws of nature. According to causal realism and nomological realism, causal and nomological relations are real relations of natural necessitation. Both causal and nomological realism stem from the rejection of the Humean empiricist view that causation and laws of nature are to be conceived as regularities. Where Hume held causal connections to be contingent conjunctions of events, causal realists treat causation as natural necessitation. When one event causes another to occur, it is not just that one event temporally precedes the other. Rather, the occurrence of the causing event necessitates the occurrence of the event which is its effect. Similarly, on a Humean treatment of laws of nature, the laws of nature are no more than contingent, empirical regularities. For the nomological realist, by contrast, genuine, non-accidental regularities are themselves the manifestation of real, underlying laws of nature. Events which occur as the result of a law of nature do so as the result of natural necessity. A further optional doctrine is the doctrine of realism about natural kinds. According to natural kind realism, the theoretical entities of science are members of natural kinds. Some contemporary natural kind realists also espouse an essentialist view of kinds, according to which natural kinds are characterized by the possession of essential properties. It might at first seem that commitment to the reality of theoretical 10 Paul Horwich (1990, 72) argues that understanding a sentence involves knowledge of use conditions rather than truth-conditions. If this is right, then it would be possible to defend a use-condition theory of meaning, rather than a semantic realist account of meaning, while at the same time embracing a full-blown scientific realist position equipped with a correspondence theory of truth. The point is that meaning need not be understood in terms of truth-conditions in order to defend the view that science both aims for truth and generates knowledge of the truth. While I favour a semantic realist theory of meaning, the reason I do not wish to build semantic realism into the principles of scientific realism is that I see no reason to foreclose the possibility suggested by Horwich. Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science20 entities commits scientific realism to realism about natural kinds, since entities presumably belong to kinds. However, some scientific realists assert the existence of natural kinds, while others deny their existence. Indeed, it is possible both to assert the reality of theoretical entities and to deny realism about natural kinds. One may assert that electrons exist without asserting that the set of electrons forms a natural kind. The crux of the matter is the existence of kinds, not that of entities. One may assert that certain entities exist, but deny that they all have any essential property in virtue of which the entities belong to a kind. Alternatively, one may assert the reality of a group of entities which have many common features, without asserting the existence of a natural kind 'over and above' particular entities. Neither causal realism, nomological realism, nor natural kind realism are essential doctrines of scientific realism. Endorsement of the core doctrines of scientific realism does not automatically commit one to views about such matters. However, all three doctrines form part of what one might broadly characterize as a 'realist outlook'. Causal and nomological realism fit with the realist rejection of the metaphysics lying behind traditional Humean empiricism. Natural kind realism reflects the realist intuition that the world is not something amorphous or devoid of structure, and that the structure of the world is there to be discovered. Moreover, nomological realism and natural kind realism also complement each other, since it is possible to argue that the necessity of laws of nature is in fact grounded in the essential properties of members of natural kinds (cf. Ellis, 2001). 1.3 Scientific Realism and Scientism So far, I have sought to present the basic outlines of scientific realism. I would like now to further clarify scientific realism by contrasting it with a doctrine with which it is sometimes confused. Scientific realism is sometimes taken to be a form of scientism. Scientism is the doctrine that science is the sole legitimate source of empirical knowledge. The doctrine of scientism may be expressed in various ways, for example, as the positivist doctrine that cognitive significance is restricted to verification by means of scientific observation. A recent expression of scientism is the naturalist doctrine that the methods of natural science provide the sole means of epistemic access to the world. But while scientific realism may sit comfortably with the attitude of scientism, it would be a mistake to identify scientific realism with scientism. First, let me note that it is no part of the family of scientific realist doctrines presented here that science is the only means of epistemic access to the world. The issue of knowledge only figures explicitly in the context of thesis 2, the thesis of epistemic realism, which asserts that science leads to knowledge of the objective world. But this in no way implies that science is the sole source of empirical knowledge. It is consistent with epistemic realism, as it is with the remaining principles of scientific realism, to allow that commonsense experience is a perfectly acceptable means of access to the world. Nor is there any reason for the scientific realist to hold that there may be no empirical knowledge in disciplines, such as history, which might fail to employ the methods of natural science. Thus, scientific Scientific Realism 21 realism does not entail a scientistic attitude toward knowledge. That is not to say, though, that it is incompatible with such an attitude. To see this, I will now briefly trace a route that leads from scientific realism to scientism. Let us suppose that the only things that exist are material objects. Let us also suppose that all material objects are constituted out of the fundamental constituents of matter of which we are informed by physical science (atoms, molecules, and so on). Finally, let us suppose that anything which is not either a fundamental constituent of matter, or made up of a fundamental constituent of matter, does not really exist. This austere metaphysical picture is the metaphysics of materialism, or, to use a more contemporary name, physicalism. Such a materialist metaphysics is consistent with scientific realism, since it may be arrived at on the basis of realist commitment to the existence of theoretical entities. However, it is not entailed either by realism about theoretical entities, or by scientific realism in general, because physicalism is based on the further assumption that the only things that exist are the entities described by fundamental physics, and things which are made up out of such entities. We are constrained in what we can know by the nature of what exists. Hence, ontology constrains epistemology. If physical things are all that exist, then this imposes certain constraints on our knowledge. We may only acquire knowledge of the properties of physical things by means that are available within a physical world. Since we are ourselves physical beings, our only means of epistemic access to the physical world must be by way of our causal interaction with it. Either we acquire knowledge directly by means of causal interaction of the world with our perceptual apparatus, or we acquire knowledge indirectly by means of causal relations with things to which we do not have direct perceptual access. The way is now clear to scientism. For if we are prepared to assume that the methods of science represent the sole epistemic use of causal relations with the physical world, we may conclude that science is the sole means of epistemic access to the world. I do not myself find this an intrinsically abhorrent conclusion, as many do. But it should be clear that the route from scientific realism to such a scientistic conclusion is an indirect one, which requires further epistemological and metaphysical assumptions that play no part in the doctrine of scientific realism itself. It should also be clear that one may embrace scientific realism without taking the first step down the path to scientism. 1.4 Arguments for Scientific Realism In the remainder of the chapter, I will present what I take to be the main arguments in favour of scientific realism. I noted before that scientific realism does not consist in any one, single doctrine. It is an interconnected family of theses. Similarly, there is no one, single argument for scientific realism. The so-called 'success argument' has received a great deal of attention. But there are other arguments which deserve equal billing. There is no doubt that the success argument is an important part of the case for scientific realism. But it only comes into play once the ground has been laid by other realist lines of argument. Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science22 In what follows, I will not mention all known arguments for scientific realism, but only those which form part of the overall case that I will present for scientific realism.11 The first two lines of argument turn on reflection upon our place in the natural order and an appeal to the epistemology and metaphysics of common sense. The second two arguments are versions of the success argument. The first version relates to the truth or approximate truth of theories, while the second version of the argument applies success at the level of the methods employed in science. Our Place in Nature The basic argument for realism takes off from a founding intuition about our place in nature. We human beings are sentient, intelligent organisms. We inhabit a pre-existing natural world. We interact causally with this world. But we did not invent, create or construct it. We must act in the world in order to survive. To assure our survival, we must acquire knowledge of the way the world is. For knowledge about the way the world is enables us to reliably undertake actions which promote our survival. Thus, the realist concludes, we are creatures who inhabit an objective reality, of which, given our survival, we have the capacity to acquire genuine knowledge. This is the perspective of realism, spiced, I should say, with a dash of evolutionary naturalism. The perspective is fundamentally opposed to views which conceive reality on the basis of human mental representation, such as belief or experience. The realist sees humans and their inner life as but a small part of a vast reality. Any view which takes human thought or experience as the basis of reality, or of the concept of reality, profoundly misunderstands our place in the natural world. From the realist perspective, such a view commits the fundamental error of anthropocentrism (cf. Smart, 1963; also Hooker, 1987, 264ff). The realist takes the external world as a given. The existence of the external world does not depend on thought or experience. It is a world in which we find ourselves embedded and which we inhabit. We are able to effect change in the world by means of actions which bring about such change. We construct buildings, grow crops, and pollute the environment. But we did not make the world. Nor do the basic entities which populate the world, or the laws of nature which govern the behaviour of these entities, depend on us in any way. Thus, rather than take human thought or experience as primary in forming our conception of reality, the realist takes human thought and experience to form a part – indeed, a relatively insignificant part – of that reality. The opposing non-realist perspective has its origins in the sceptical problematic of traditional epistemology. Scepticism of the Cartesian variety challenges us to show that there is an external world and that we have knowledge of such a world. Traditional epistemologists took mental representations as the basis of their response 11 Putnam (1975a, 72) distinguishes between negative and positive arguments for realism. I will ignore negative arguments for realism, though these have been historically very powerful arguments for realism. Negative arguments are arguments against opposing positions, examples of which include the series of arguments proposed in the late 1950s against the logical empiricist treatment of theoretical discourse. Scientific Realism 23 to such scepticism. On the basis of beliefs, ideas or experience, they sought to show both that there is an external world and that we are able to have knowledge of it. Philosophers who attempt to meet the sceptic in this way typically find that the game is rigged against them. For the sceptic sets the standards too high, demanding absolute certainty where none is to be found. As against traditional, sceptic-centered epistemology, the realist takes it as a basic starting-point that there is an external reality, and, indeed, that we are able to have knowledge of that reality. For the realist, the lesson of scepticism is not that knowledge of the external world is impossible, but that it is a mistake to seek epistemic certainty or to treat mental representations as the basis of either our epistemology or metaphysics. We know just as surely as we may know anything that there is an objective, external reality, and that we may come to have knowledge of it. But our knowledge need be neither certain, nor grounded in privileged representations of that reality. Thus, from the perspective of realism, it is a mistake to base our concept of reality on human mental representation. Mental representations are but a small part of a greater reality in which we find ourselves embedded. Any philosophy which seeks to ground our conception of reality on our own mental representations commits the fundamental error of anthropocentrism, and should therefore be dismissed as fatally flawed. Commonsense Realism The second strand in the argument for scientific realism turns on an appeal to common sense and the realism implicit in ordinary common sense. By 'common sense', I mean our ordinary, prereflective awareness of our immediate surroundings and of the broader world which extends beyond those immediate surroundings. This is a world that is made up of material objects of all shapes and sizes, of which we have more or less immediate knowledge by means of our sensory experience of those objects. It is a concrete world of mind-independent objects with which we interact causally by means of bodily movement and action, but which is nonetheless beyond the immediate control of our powers of volition. It is also a world in which misperception and illusion have their place in the ordinary course of events, but in which a robust sense of reality nevertheless sustains a reasonable degree of practical certainty that things are by and large as they seem. Realism about ordinary everyday objects and our epistemic access to such objects provides the starting-point for the commonsense realist component of the argument for scientific realism. Common sense gives rise to a body of beliefs about the objects in our environment and our epistemic and practical interactions with these objects. On the whole, we may assume that this body of beliefs is true. The point is not that our commonsense beliefs are certain, indubitable or infallible. Rather, commonsense beliefs are prima facie justified. They have an epistemic priority, which makes them difficult to dislodge by rational argument. Any attempt to eliminate or overthrow such beliefs is to be regarded with extreme suspicion. Any argument that purports to Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science24 show that common sense is to be discarded thereby shows itself more than likely to be unsound or invalid.12 Such a robust, commonsense attitude underwrites commonsense realism about ordinary, everyday material objects and our perceptual access to such objects. The scientific realist who takes common sense as a starting-point is thereby justified in assuming that there is an ordinary, everyday world of material objects, with which we interact causally and to which we have epistemic access by means of our senses. The scientific realist is free to build upon the basis of commonsense realism in arguing that scientific theories, realistically construed, are the best explanation of observed phenomena at the commonsense level. There is no need for the scientific realist to argue for the reality of ordinary, everyday material objects, since commitment to such entities has already been established at the level of common sense. While the attitude of common sense leads to realism about the objects of common sense, such realism contains the seeds of a more full-blown realism about scientific theories and entities. For one thing, a tendency toward realism about scientific theories and entities is built into commonsense realism about ordinary objects. While we may be unable to observe the basic constituents of material objects with our naked eyes, we are accustomed to the idea that material objects have component parts, and that some of these parts may be too small to see. The full-blown scientific view that matter is composed of fundamental particles, atoms and molecules is but a highly sophisticated extension of the commonsense idea of the compositional nature of matter. For another thing, commonsense realism treats the objects of ordinary common sense as real, objective entities, which exist independently of human mental activity. Scientists from different historical epochs, or scientists who work in different Kuhnian 'paradigms', occupy the same commonsense world of ordinary, everyday objects. Because scientists from different historical epochs inhabit the same commonsense world, modern scientists confront the same observable objects and phenomena as did ancient scientists who worked in the same domain. Equally, proponents of alternative Kuhnian 'paradigms' do not inhabit different 'worlds', but maintain common perceptual access to a shared domain of observable objects (cf. Kuhn 1970a, 111, 150).13 While common sense coheres well with scientific realism, it must be admitted that a certain tension may sometimes arise between science and common sense. Here is a familiar example from the history of astronomy. Our senses tell us that the Earth is flat. Yet science tells us that the Earth is spherical. Our senses tell us that the sun moves across the sky each day, rising in the East and setting in the West. Science tells us that it is the daily rotation of the Earth that makes the sun appear to move. Our senses tell us that the Earth is immobile. Yet science tells us not only that the Earth rotates upon its axis, but that it revolves around the sun in an annual orbit. 12 The point that common sense is more likely to be correct than any philosophical argument against it is emphasized by Armstrong (1999), Campbell (1988) and Devitt (2001), who credit the basic thought to G.E. Moore. 13 The point that common sense tells against the incommensurability of paradigms is well made by Campbell (1988). Scientific Realism 25 Such apparent conflicts between science and sensory evidence have led some realistically inclined philosophers to hold that there is an inherent tension between science and common sense (Sellars, 1963; Feyerabend, 1975; Churchland, 1979). Common sense is the repository of primitive theory. It is the 'metaphysics of the stone age', in Russell's words. With the advance of science, such primitive theory is inevitably corrected, refuted and ultimately eliminated. Thus, by the lights of science, common sense must itself be rejected. Common sense cannot therefore serve as the basis for a realist account of science. It is undeniable that conflict may on occasion arise between science and common sense. But it is an exaggeration to inflate such conflict into a fundamental incompatibility between science and common sense. In such conflict, the commonsense description of the phenomenon is typically not corrected by science at all. What science corrects is the explanation of the appearances. The Earth appears flat. The sun appears to move across the sky each day. Science places the appearances within the context of a theoretical system, which corrects the commonsense view by explaining how the rotation of a spherical Earth gives rise to the appearance of the sun's daily transit across the heavens. This is precisely a case in which common sense is only renounced in favour of an improved explanatory structure, which both preserves and explains the appearances noted by commonsense observation. Success and Truth As we have just seen, commonsense realism contains the seeds of scientific realism. There is a further sense in which this is the case. In the course of everyday practical activity, we routinely employ inference to the best explanation in seeking to understand why various events occur. Such reasoning is the basis of the best-known argument for scientific realism, the so-called success or 'no miracles' argument.14 The reasoning that forms the basis of one of the major arguments for scientific realism is therefore reasoning of a commonsense kind. The classic formulation of the success or 'no miracles' argument is due to Hilary Putnam: The positive argument for realism is that it is the only philosophy that doesn't make the success of science a miracle. That terms in mature scientific theories typically refer (this formulation is due to Richard Boyd), that the theories accepted in a mature science are typically approximately true, that the same term can refer to the same thing even when it occurs in different theories – these statements are viewed by the scientific realist not as necessary truths but as part of the only scientific explanation of the success of science, 14 In addition to the success argument, there are a number of other positive arguments for scientific realism, e.g., Wes Salmon's argument from the common cause (Salmon, 1984, 206ff) and Ian Hacking's direct 'experimental proof' of realism (Hacking, 1983, 265). But such arguments may be assimilated to the success argument. For example, the existence of an entity which is the common cause of a number of different phenomena is the best explanation of those phenomena. Similarly, the existence of an unobservable entity which produces certain experimental results is the best explanation of successful laboratory practice. Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science26 and hence as part of any adequate scientific description of science and its relations to its objects. (Putnam, 1975a, 73) In this passage, Putnam argues that realism is the best explanation of the success of science. (Strictly, he says it is the only explanation, but this is a form of inference to the best explanation.) Putnam's argument turns on the claim that a philosophy of science which denies that theoretical entities are real, or that scientific theories are true or approximately true, must treat the success of science as a miracle that is incapable of explanation. An explanation which treats the success of science as an inexplicable miracle is an unsatisfactory explanation of such success. By contrast, scientific realism provides a compelling explanation of the success of science. On the whole, the unobservable entities postulated by theories exist, and scientific theories are true or approximately true. Given the reality of the entities to which scientific theories refer, as well as the truth or approximate truth of such theories, it is only to be expected that science should manifest the striking degree of empirical success that it does. Because scientific realism provides a compelling explanation of the success of science, while alternative approaches provide an unsatisfactory explanation, we should accept scientific realism as true.15 Various objections have been raised against the success argument. Of particular relevance in the present context are historical counterexamples to the success argument due to Larry Laudan (1984, Ch. 5). Laudan presents a list of historical cases of scientific theories (e.g., eighteenth century chemical atomism, Wegener's continental drift theory), now considered to have been approximately true or referential, but which met with little or no success in their time. He also presents cases of successful theories (e.g., the ether and phlogiston theories) which are now thought neither to have been referential nor to have been true or approximately true. Laudan's counterexamples appear to show that there is no connection between the empirical success of a theory and reference, truth or approximate truth. If he is right, the claim that scientific realism is the best explanation of the success of science would appear unsustainable. 15 In my gloss of Putnam's 'no miracles' argument, I have also drawn upon the following passage from Putnam (1978), which speaks less about reference and more about the entities referred to by theories: ... the modern positivist has to leave it without explanation (the realist charges) that 'electron calculi' and 'space-time calculi' and 'DNA calculi' correctly predict observable phenomena if, in reality, there are no electrons, no curved space-time, and no DNA molecules. If there are such things, then a natural explanation of the success of these theories is that they are partially true accounts of how they behave. And a natural account of the way in which scientific theories succeed each other – say, the way in which Einstein's Relativity succeeded Newton's Universal Gravitation – is that a partially correct/partially incorrect account of a theoretical object – say, the gravitational field, or the metric structure of space-time, or both – is replaced by a better account of the same object or objects. But if these objects don't really exist at all, then it is a miracle that a theory which speaks of gravitational action at a distance successfully predicts phenomena; it is a miracle that a theory which speaks of curved spacetime successfully predicts phenomena... (Putnam, 1978, 19) Scientific Realism 27 Recent work by Kitcher, Musgrave and Psillos suggests that the success argument may be revised in a way that renders it immune to Laudan's criticism. For one thing, if the criterion of scientific success is revised to include only those theories which exhibit a high degree of novel predictive success, then a number of Laudan's counterexamples may be dismissed as not displaying the requisite degree of success.16 For another thing, if credit for success is restricted to the constituents of a theory which are responsible for novel predictive success, this increases the likelihood that the relevant constituents will be preserved in the course of subsequent theory modification, and later considered approximations to the truth.17 I regard such revisions of the success argument as well-motivated. In attempting to determine whether a successful theory is true, it is important to employ a rigorous standard of success such as novel predictive success. It is also important to assign credit for such success to the constituents of theory specifically responsible for such success. But the result of so revising the success argument is a weakened position which fails to meet the epistemological needs of scientific realism. The realist does not merely wish to defend a claim about the truth of theories. It is of at least equal importance for the scientific realist to defend the epistemic realist view that the methods of science produce rationally justified belief, and indeed knowledge, with respect to those aspects of the world about which scientific theories purport to inform us. Hence, the scientific realist must also defend a realist epistemology for science. Success and Method In the appraisal of a scientific theory, and the choice between alternative theories, scientists employ a variety of rules of method. They consider whether a theory is confirmed by the evidence, accurately predicts novel facts, unifies phenomena from disparate domains, and so forth. If a theory is certified by such rules of method, then a scientist is rationally justified in accepting the theory. Certification by rules of method therefore provides the basis for epistemic warrant in science. The scientific realist wishes to defend the epistemic realist thesis that scientific inquiry leads to rational belief and knowledge about unobservable aspects of the world. The realist must therefore argue that use of the rules of method gives rise to theories which scientists are warranted in accepting as true or approximately true. For this reason, while I am favourable to the revisions of the success argument noted above, I suggest that emphasis should be placed instead on application of the success argument at the level of the methods of science.18 16 The importance of novel predictive success is urged by Musgrave (1999, 55) and Psillos (1999, 105). 17 For the claim that credit for the success of a theory should be accorded to only those parts of a theory responsible for the success, see Kitcher (1993, 143-9) and Psillos (1999, 108). For critical discussion of this claim, see Lyons (2006) and Stanford (2002). 18 The strategy of applying the success argument at the level of method has been championed by Richard Boyd (e.g., 1984, 58ff). In related ways, it has also been employed by Rescher (1977) and Kornblith (1993a). In my attempt to develop a naturalized epistemology for scientific realism, it is the strategy that I employ as well (see Chapters 6-8). Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science28 In particular, I propose an approach that I call abductive realism (see 7.9). According to this approach, the best explanation of the cognitive and pragmatic success of scientific theory and practice is that the rules of method are truth-conducive tools of inquiry, which serve as reliable means for obtaining truth. Abductive realism forms part of a naturalistic theory of epistemic warrant. This theory treats rules of method as cognitive instruments, which serve as means for the achievement of epistemic ends. Such an instrumental construal of the rules of method enables the question of the warrant supplied by a rule to be understood as the empirical question whether use of the rule conduces to the epistemic end it is claimed to promote. Rules of method which reliably promote the aim of truth provide scientists with epistemic warrant for accepting theories which satisfy those rules. Thus, the normative force of rules of method is grounded in empirical facts about effective means of inquiry into the mind-independent, natural world which we inhabit.19 Abductive realism addresses the question of why the rules of method are to be taken to promote the realist aim of truth. I call it an abductive strategy because it is based on inference to the best explanation, a form of abductive inference. An inference of this kind is required because of the lack of direct evidence for the connection between method and the truth of theory. Because the truth of the non-observational content of theories cannot be established by observation, no connection between method and the truth of theories may be shown to obtain by empirical means. Thus, the grounds for taking the rules of method to be truth-conducive can be at best abductive grounds. Abductive realism places special emphasis on the regulative role of method in the selection and elimination of theories. The rules of method serve as a means of 'quality control'. Scientists employ rules of method as selection criteria on the basis of which to eliminate faulty theories in favour of ones that are serious contenders for truth. The regulative role of the rules of method enables them to serve as the arbiter of success. Suppose that a theory satisfies the rules of method to a remarkably high degree. It accommodates all known data, and accurately predicts many surprising novel facts. It unifies disparate domains in a simple and coherent manner, while opening up exciting new areas of inquiry. From a methodological point of view, such a theory is an ideal theory.20 It manifests a near perfect level of success. According 19 I develop this general line of argument in Chapters 6 and 7. For the naturalistic view that the rules of method may be viewed instrumentally as means to cognitive ends, see, Laudan (1996), Rescher (1977) and Stich (1990). 20 I do not assume that the methodologically ideal theory is the theory that will be reached at the ultimate end of ideal inquiry. Rather, it is an ideal theory which might be reached at some more mundane point of inquiry. However, it is worth briefly addressing the issue of the methodologically ideal theory reached at the ultimate end of ideal inquiry. Because the scientific realist takes truth to be defined as correspondence between language and reality, rather than in terms of ideal satisfaction of epistemic criteria, the theory reached at the ultimate end of ideal inquiry could well be false, as Putnam suggests is the case for the doctrine he calls 'metaphysical realism' (1978, 125). While Putnam's internal realism identifies truth with ideal rational justification, scientific realism in the form that I have presented the position Scientific Realism 29 to abductive realism, the best explanation of such success is that the rules of method are regulative norms which 'screen for truth'. They are genuinely truth-conducive instruments of inquiry, which rigorously select only those theories which are either true, or on the track of truth. It does not suffice, of course, to simply assert that realism is the best explanation of ideal satisfaction of method. An argument is needed. Here the abductive realist employs a metamethodological analogue of the classic 'no miracles' version of the success argument. How might ideal methodological success be explained by the opponent of realism? Let us focus on the straightforward opponent of scientific realism. Such an anti-realist denies the realist's claims about truth and reference. The ideal theory is neither true nor approximately true. Its terms fail to refer to any real thing. None of the entities postulated by the theory exist. Such an anti-realist is entirely without the resources to explain ideal methodological success. If a theory fails not only to be true but even approximately true, and none of its terms refer to any real entities, then the success of such theory is nothing short of a miracle. But that is surely not an explanation of the success of science. 1.5 Conclusion I will briefly conclude by commenting on some of the relations between the arguments I have offered for scientific realism and the various doctrines which comprise the position of scientific realism. Realism about the external world (thesis 4) is supported by the rejection of anthropocentricism and the appeal to common sense. Because science is an extension of common sense, a realist treatment of theoretical discourse (thesis 3) derives general support from common sense, though it derives more direct support from the appeal to the success of science. The epistemic realist thesis (thesis 2) that we have genuine knowledge of unobservable aspects of reality gains broad support from common sense. However, it is supported more directly by the success argument, and most directly by the metamethodological application of the success argument. This does not exhaust the connections between arguments for realism and various principles of realism. But the fact that different strands of realist argument bear on different components of realism further illustrates my main point. Scientific realism is not captured by any one doctrine. It is a complex position. Because it is a complex position, different lines of argument must be brought to bear in support of different aspects of the position. here opposes any such identification. But denial of such identification does not debar the scientific realist from holding that the best explanation of ideal methodological success is that the theory reached at the end of ideal inquiry is true in the realist correspondence sense. This page intentionally left blank Chapter 2 The God's Eye Point of View 2.1 Introduction Hilary Putnam once claimed that the position he referred to as metaphysical realism presupposes a God's Eye point of view. That is, it presupposes that we are able to remove ourselves from our human perspective and survey the world as it really is from the point of view of an omniscient being. But it is impossible to remove ourselves from our human perspective in the way that metaphysical realism requires. So, Putnam argues, metaphysical realism is an unsustainable position. With some minor qualifications, which I will note below, I take scientific realism to be a form of metaphysical realism. Hence, I will tend to use the terms 'realism' and 'scientific realism' interchangeably. According to scientific realism, as I understand it, scientific inquiry leads to knowledge of the truth about observable and unobservable aspects of a mind-independent, objective reality. The scientific realist's commitment to a mind-independent reality qualifies scientific realism as a form of metaphysical realism. Because scientific realism is a form of metaphysical realism, the problem of the God's Eye view must also arise as a problem for the scientific realist. My aim in this chapter is to defend scientific realism against the Putnam-style objection that it incoherently requires a God's Eye point of view. In particular, I seek to establish two points. First, scientific realism does not (incoherently) presuppose a God's Eye point of view. Second, even if scientific realism did presuppose a God's Eye point of view, this would provide no basis on which to object to scientific realism. 2.2 Putnam on the God's Eye Point of View The idea that realism requires a God's Eye point of view is found in the third chapter of Reason, Truth and History, where Putnam rejects metaphysical realism in favour of internal realism.1 Putnam characterizes metaphysical realism in the following terms: 1 As it is now more than 20 years since the publication of Reason, Truth and History, and Putnam has long since moved on from the internal realism he then advocated, the topic of the God's Eye point of view may seem somewhat dated. However, the problem of the God's Eye point of view has caught hold amongst some philosophers. Two recent authors, Marsonet (2002) and Tetens (2004), write as if the problem of the God's Eye point of view exposes a serious shortcoming in the realist position. It is because I disagree with authors such as Marsonet and Tetens on this score that I have been prompted to offer my response to the Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science32 On this perspective [i.e., the perspective of metaphysical realism], the world consists of some fixed totality of mind-independent objects. There is exactly one true and complete description of 'the way the world is'. Truth involves some sort of correspondence relation between words or thought-signs and external things and sets of things. I shall call this perspective the externalist perspective, because its favorite point of view is a God's Eye point of view. (Putnam, 1981, 49) Following this passage, Putnam goes on to characterize the internal realist perspective that he favoured at that stage in his philosophical development. He then comments that: There is no God's Eye point of view that we can know or usefully imagine; there are only the various points of view of actual persons reflecting various interests and purposes that their descriptions and theories subserve. (Putnam, 1981, 50) Given that there is no God's Eye view available to us, metaphysical realism is not a position that can be justifiably adopted. For to adopt metaphysical realism would require us to occupy the standpoint of God, which is impossible for us. The internal realist position that Putnam proposes in Reason, Truth and History involves a conception of truth that reflects Putnam's rejection of the God's Eye perspective. The central tenet of internal realism is that truth is an 'idealization of rational acceptability' (1981, 55). Truth is what would arise if scientific inquiry were pursued to the ideal limit of inquiry.2 It is 'some sort of ideal coherence of our beliefs with each other and with our experiences as those experiences are themselves represented in our belief system' (1981, 49-50). The internal realist conception of truth is therefore an epistemic conception of truth. As such, it contrasts with the metaphysical realist view of truth, according to which truth is a non-epistemic relation of correspondence between language and reality (1981, 55). The internalist's epistemic conception of truth is therefore a repudiation of the God's Eye point of view. For the internalist denies that truth may be conceived as independent of either observer or conceptual scheme, as required by the metaphysical realist's God's Eye view of truth. In sum, I take the thrust of Putnam's comments about the God's Eye point of view to be twofold. On the one hand, realism requires a God's Eye point of view in order to be stated or defended. On the other hand, it is impossible for us to adopt a God's Eye point of view. So realism is incoherent. For it is not possible for us to occupy the standpoint that we would need to occupy in order to be able to formulate or to defend the position. problem in this chapter. I specifically discuss the views of Marsonet in the Appendix to this chapter. For my comments on Tetens, see Sankey (2004). 2 Cf. Putnam (1978, 125), where Putnam notes that metaphysical realism treats truth as 'radically non-epistemic', which implies that the ideal theory reached at the ultimate end of scientific inquiry might be false. Though Putnam does not, in so many words, assert that the ideal theory is true, this is the clear implication of his internal realist identification of truth with ideal rational justification. The God's Eye Point of View 33 2.3 Metaphysical Realism and Scientific Realism The specific target of Putnam's God's Eye objection is the position of metaphysical realism rather than scientific realism, as such. Still, I understand scientific realism to be a form of metaphysical realism. Thus, while I have a number of reservations about Putnam's characterization of metaphysical realism, I take the God's Eye objection to apply to scientific realism as a special case of metaphysical realism. Before considering whether scientific realism requires a God's Eye view, let me briefly indicate the sort of qualifications that I believe need to be made about Putnam's characterization of metaphysical realism. In the first place, it is not clear that the realist need be committed to the existence of 'one true and complete description of "the way the world is"', as Putnam suggests in the passage quoted above. To avoid relativism about truth or reality, it must of course be denied that there is more than one true and complete description of the world.3 But the core commitment of metaphysical realism is to the existence of an objective reality whose existence, properties and structure are independent of human mental activity. It is an open question whether there need be even as many as one true and complete description of such a reality. Indeed, it is an open question whether coherent sense may be made of the idea of such a complete description.4 In the second place, it is not clear that the realist need be committed to the view that 'the world consists of some fixed totality of mind-independent objects'. For, as Alan Musgrave has pointed out in discussion of Putnam, the word 'object' is not an individuating or sortal expression (2001, 41). The question of how many objects exist is not, therefore, a well-formed question. Such a question has no answer unless a specification is given of what kind of object one has in mind. But this means that the claim that the world consists of a fixed totality of objects is not one to which any clear significance may be attached. While the realist might be committed to the existence of a fixed totality of some specific kind(s) of objects, there is no need – nor does it make any sense – for the realist to be committed to a general claim that there is a fixed totality of objects. But let me set such reservations about Putnam's characterization of metaphysical realism to one side. In the previous chapter, I have characterized scientific realism in terms of six core principles (see Section 1.2). This characterization of scientific realism departs from Putnam's metaphysical realism in a number of key respects. But I do not think that it does so in a way that would render it immune to Putnam's worry about the God's Eye view. For on my characterization of scientific realism, realism is committed to a non-epistemic conception of truth as correspondence to an objective, mind-independent reality. Such a conception of truth is surely the key constitutive component of metaphysical realism in the sense defined by Putnam. 3 More precisely, to avoid relativism, it must be denied that there may be true and complete descriptions of the world which are jointly inconsistent with each other. In principle, it might be possible to formulate alternative true and complete descriptions on the basis of alternative conceptual schemes. Provided that such descriptions are consistent with each other, no threat of relativism arises. (I owe this point to Michael Devitt.) 4 For sustained criticism of the idea of a complete description of the 'way the world is', see Hacking (1983, 93-5). Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science34 Thus, apart from the minor qualifications mentioned above, scientific realism in my sense is similar in spirit to metaphysical realism in Putnam's sense.5 2.4 Does Scientific Realism Require a God's Eye Point of View? Let us now consider whether scientific realism requires a God's Eye point of view. It may immediately be conceded that it is impossible for us to remove ourselves from our human perspective and adopt a God's Eye point of view. We are unable to survey the world from the vantage point of an all-knowing supreme being. But neither does the doctrine of scientific realism require that we adopt such a viewpoint. The realist who proposes a scientific realist interpretation of science does not thereby purport to occupy a God's Eye perspective. Rather, in proposing such an interpretation of science the scientific realist puts forward a hypothesis about the nature of science and the relation between science and reality. In particular, the realist claims that science is an activity, the aim of which is to discover the truth about observable and unobservable dimensions of a mind-independent, objective reality. But such a claim is not made from a God's Eye point of view. It is a hypothesis that the realist proposes from within our human perspective as an interpretation of a specific human activity, the activity we call science. Now, it would be perfectly consistent for the scientific realist to refrain from any positive epistemic commitment to the truth or progressiveness of science. A sceptically minded realist might adopt a restricted position about the aim of science and the interpretation of theoretical discourse, but suspend judgement on the question of whether any actual progress has been made toward the scientific aim of truth. In effect, such a restricted version of scientific realism would amount to suspending the principle of epistemic realism (thesis 2) while asserting the remaining five principles of scientific realism. But realists typically do not adopt such a sceptical attitude toward science. They typically support a stronger epistemic thesis to the effect that science has made progress toward the truth, and, in so doing, has produced genuine knowledge about the objective world. Realists typically combine the realist interpretation of science with the additional claim that a realist interpretation of science provides the best explanation of the success of science. In particular, realists typically assert that the truth or approximate truth of scientific theories, together with the successful reference of theoretical terms, is responsible for the much vaunted empirical success of the sciences. Given this, realists conclude, the hypothesis of scientific realism should be accepted as an accurate portrayal of the relation between science and reality.6 5 In his (2005), Michel Ghins has objected to the metaphysical realist component of my scientific realist position by claiming that the mind-independent world 'lie[s] beyond our cognitive and linguistic abilities' (2005, 145). But the fact that the world is independent of cognition or language does not entail that we are unable to think or talk about it. We are able to think and talk about things that do not depend on thought or talk. 6 What I have just described, of course, is the well-known success argument for scientific realism. As we saw in Chapter 1, the success argument is only one part of the case to be made for scientific realism. The God's Eye Point of View 35 But such a hypothesis about the relation between science and reality makes no evident use of a God's Eye point of view. Quite the contrary, it is a hypothesis proposed from within our human perspective about the relation between science and reality. So, far from laying any claim to omniscience, or direct access to reality, the realist claims that scientific realism provides the best explanation of a robust phenomenon that stands in need of explanation, namely, the empirical success of the sciences. Far from presupposing a God's Eye perspective, the argument is designed to persuade fellow occupants of our human perspective that a realist account of science provides the best account of the epistemic and semantic relations between the human activity of science and the largely non-human world that we inhabit. It is worth remarking that the strategy I have just sketched of arguing that realism is a hypothesis which is to be accepted because it provides the best explanation of the success of science reflects a broadly naturalistic conception of realism in the philosophy of science. For to treat realism as a hypothesis about science, and to argue for the hypothesis of realism by means of inference to best explanation, is to treat realism as a hypothesis that is to be evaluated in a manner analogous to the evaluation of scientific hypotheses. As such, my claim that realism does not require a God's Eye point of view derives from a naturalistic attitude toward the position of realism.7 Of course, it might be objected that realism is not the best explanation of the success of science. Instead, it might be maintained that there is a non-realist interpretation of science that provides a better explanation of the success of science than realism does. Or else it might simply be held that realism is to be rejected as an inadequate explanation, since truth and reference are not the invariable correlate of scientific success. But such objections would be beside the point. For the point at issue is not whether realism provides the best explanation of the success of science, or, indeed, whether realism is true. Rather, the point at issue is whether the realist must adopt a God's Eye point of view in order to propose the realist hypothesis about the relation between science and reality. It might very well be the case that realism fails to be the best explanation, or is in fact an unsatisfactory explanation, of the success of science. But neither point has any bearing upon the issue of whether the realist must adopt a God's Eye point of view in order to propose a realist interpretation of science. 2.5 Is there a Coherent God's Eye Point of View? So far, I have sought to show that scientific realism does not require a God's Eye point of view. As such, it does not fall prey to Putnam's objection that realism incoherently assumes a God's Eye point of view. I now wish to change tack and argue in the opposite direction. I will argue that, even if realism did appear to require 7 A related treatment of the issue may be found in Devitt (1991, Section 12.6). I am grateful to Michael Devitt for drawing my attention to this point, and for prompting me to explicitly note the naturalistic provenance of my argument in this section. As will be seen in the next section, this same naturalistic approach may also be used to defuse the threat of an appeal to the God's Eye point of view. Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science36 the adoption of a God's Eye point of view, this would not necessarily be to the detriment of realism. For coherent sense may be made of an external viewpoint suitable for realist purposes, which does not require us to adopt the perspective of an infallible, omniscient deity. I shall approach the issue from the perspective of a naturalized epistemology set within a realist framework. My point of departure will be the question of animal knowledge. Recent work in cognitive ethology on the nature of animal minds is increasingly attracting attention amongst philosophers. Much of the interest revolves around questions in the philosophy of mind of whether non-human animals have minds in anything like the sense in which humans have minds. Considerable attention has also been focused on the ethical dimensions of our relations to other animals, since at least some non-human animals may be capable of a mental life in ways that have moral significance. But the question of most immediate relevance relates to the epistemological significance of animal minds. Assuming that some animals may have minds, could the mental states of animals be epistemic states? Can animals other than us have knowledge? In his recent book, Knowledge and its Place in Nature (2002), Hilary Kornblith presents a thoroughly naturalistic account of knowledge. Rather than analyze the concept of knowledge in the manner of traditional analytic epistemology, Kornblith proposes that epistemologists should treat knowledge as a natural kind which may be investigated by empirical means. But, if knowledge is a naturally occurring phenomenon, as this suggests, then the possibility arises that the natural kind, knowledge, may be instantiated in beings other than humans. It therefore becomes an open question, subject to empirical investigation, whether animals other than us are capable of knowledge, and what the nature of such knowledge might be. Naturalistic philosophers, such as Kornblith, are often inclined to see continuities between humans and other animals. This raises a host of challenging philosophical questions. But, rather than explore any of these questions, I wish to focus on the implications of naturalism for the God's Eye objection. In particular, I wish to suggest that for philosophers who work from a naturalistic perspective, the problem of the God's Eye point of view poses less of a threat than might at first appear to be the case. I will illustrate the point by means of one of the examples that Kornblith presents in Knowledge and its Place in Nature. Kornblith discusses the work of Carolyn Ristau on the piping plover (see Ristau, 1991). The piping plover is a shorebird found on the coast of eastern North America. Like a number of other plovers, such as the Killdeer, it employs deceptive, 'injury-feigning', behaviour in order to protect its young. When a human or other potential threat or predator approaches the nest, the adult plover attracts the intruder's attention by pretending to have a broken wing and moving away from the nest. Once the intruder has been led well away from the young, the plover flies off, leaving the intruder at some distance from the nest where it poses no immediate threat to the young birds. As Kornblith points out, Ristau employs an epistemic idiom to describe the behaviour of the plover (Kornblith 2002, 53). The plover has knowledge of its environment. It knows whether an intruder poses a threat and it can determine The God's Eye Point of View 37 whether an intruder is looking in the direction of the nest. It can discriminate between a person who has posed no threat in the past and one who has previously behaved in a dangerous manner. As the plover leads the intruder away from its nest, it continues to track the movements and position of the intruder, as well as to be aware of the location of its young, to ensure that the intruder is led away from the young. All of this suggests that piping plover distraction behaviour involves epistemic states on the basis of which the plover is able to behave in such a way as to lead intruders away from its young. Kornblith notes that Ristau does not herself argue for the attribution of knowledge, rather than true belief, though she defends attribution of intentional states at some length (2002, 55).8 But it is not essential for present purposes to establish the legitimacy of knowledge attribution to the plover, as opposed to some weaker epistemic state. Instead, it suffices to reflect upon the standpoint of the researcher who conducts a study of the plover's behaviour, and who proposes an explanation of this behaviour in terms of mental states of the plover and their relation to its environment. Such reflection will return us to the question of whether it may be possible to coherently adopt a God's Eye point of view. For I wish to suggest that work such as Ristau's on the piping plover illustrates how one might adopt an external point of view that is not dissimilar to the God's Eye point of view that Putnam claims to be beyond reach. To see this, let us consider what of philosophical significance might emerge from Ristau's studies of the piping plover's mental states and their relation to its environment. Such empirical studies will ultimately provide the basis for an epistemological analysis of the cognitive states and associated behaviour of the piping plover.9 The results of such an epistemological analysis will take the form of claims about how the plover acquires knowledge of its environment, integrates new knowledge with prior knowledge, and utilizes such knowledge as the basis for action. For example, the plover may detect and monitor the approach of an intruder using its eyes. On the basis of such input, the plover determines an appropriate trajectory by which it can lead the intruder away from its young. While doing so, it continues to monitor the movements of the intruder, while keeping track of the location of its young. Based on this information, the plover may adjust direction to insure the intruder moves away from the young.10 8 However, Kornblith goes on to argue for the appropriateness of full-blown knowledge attribution. In brief, he argues that 'knowledge ... first enters our theoretical picture at the level of understanding of the species, rather than the individual' (2002, 57). While the behaviour of a specific individual may be explained on the basis of intentional states other than knowledge, at the level of species it must be explained how 'members of the species are endowed with a cognitive capacity that allows them successfully to negotiate their environment' (2002, 57). Kornblith argues that explanation of the role of adapted cognitive mechanisms in the generation of successful action on the part of an animal requires the attribution of knowledge. 9 Such an analysis of the plover would have much in common with the kind of psychologically embedded epistemology that Quine describes in his (1969, 82-3). 10 The possibilities for epistemological analysis do not stop here. For example, it might further be shown that plovers acquire knowledge in a variety of different ways (e.g., nonScientific Realism and the Rationality of Science38 It would be fair to describe the outcome of such an analysis as an epistemology of the piping plover. In order to produce such an epistemology we need to occupy a vantage point external to that of the plover itself. Yet it seems entirely possible to describe the plover's epistemic situation from a perspective outside of the plover's own point of view. This has interesting implications for our own case. For there is no apparent reason why we should be unable to carry out an epistemological analysis of the kind just described for the plover with respect to ourselves. To do so, we might proceed in a manner not unlike Ristau's investigation of the piping plover. We can determine how humans acquire knowledge about their environment by means of their senses and reasoning processes. We can explore the reliability and limits of our senses and reasoning by means of the scientific study of perception and inference. By investigating the relation between human knowledge and behaviour, we can explain how our knowledge enables us to successfully negotiate our environment. In thus developing an epistemological model of ourselves, it is true that we must turn our gaze upon ourselves. We must regard ourselves from our own point of view. But it is not clear why the ability we have to carry out an epistemological analysis of the plover should suddenly desert us when we attempt such an epistemological analysis of ourselves. There seems no reason in principle why we should be unable to conduct an empirical investigation of our own epistemic capacities in a manner analogous to that employed in the case of the piping plover. But, if this is so, then it seems clear that we are able to adopt a viewpoint external to ourselves. For we may conduct an epistemological study of humans on the basis of which we are able to explain how human epistemic states give rise to successful interactions with our environment. In so doing, we adopt the perspective of an external observer of our own human epistemic situation. From within such a perspective, we are able to propose an epistemological model of the relation between human thought and our surrounding environment. Such a model may, of course, be prone to error, and is anything but certain. However, this does not show that it is impossible to adopt such a perspective. It only shows that the result of adopting such a perspective need not be an infallible view of the world. Perhaps, in the end, this is all that Putnam's claim comes to. We are unable to adopt a point of view from which to gain infallible insight into the way of the world. So we cannot adopt a God's Eye point of view. For, while we may take up an external vantage point with respect to our own epistemic situation, we do not know everything and we may be mistaken. But this should be no surprise to anyone. After all, we are not God. Appendix: On 'The Limits of Realism' In a recent paper entitled 'The Limits of Realism', Michele Marsonet has drawn on considerations similar to Putnam's concerns about the God's Eye point of view to visual sensory modalities) or that such knowledge is subject to certain limitations (e.g., due to eye placement or lack of night vision). The God's Eye Point of View 39 argue that realism is subject to significant limitations. These limitations are primarily due to the role played by conceptual schemes in our cognitive activities: As [far] as humans are concerned ... the world is characterized by a sort of 'ontological opacity' which makes the construction of any absolute ontology very difficult. Our ontology is characterized by the fact that the things of nature are seen by us in terms of a conceptual apparatus that is inevitably influenced by mind-involving elements. (Marsonet, 2002, 190) While Marsonet grants the existence of an independent reality, he asserts that we 'have access to ... [mind-independent] things only via [our] conceptual apparatus' (2002, 193). The point is not that concepts constitute 'natural reality', but that we 'perceive this same reality by having recourse to the filter of a conceptual apparatus' (2002, 191). The result is that there is no 'clear distinction between ontology and epistemology' (2002, 191). Truth is 'essentially tied to human interests' (2002, 190) and is 'essentially "relative"' (2002, 194). Marsonet's paper is a synthesis of a range of arguments against realism that arise from reflection on the role of concepts in our thinking about the world. Marsonet is concerned with realism in general, rather than with scientific realism in particular. But his arguments are of clear relevance to the position of scientific realism as I understand it. Rather than address all of the issues raised by Marsonet's paper, I will respond to the points that appear to be especially central to his overall line of argument. Let me first address the question of whether it is possible to draw a line between ontology and epistemology. This is not the question of whether we can distinguish between two subject areas in philosophy, on the one hand, the area that studies what exists, and, on the other hand, the area that studies the nature of knowledge. Rather, Marsonet's point is that we cannot specify what exists without using concepts that reflect the contribution of the human mind. As he says, 'if our conceptual apparatus is at work even when we try to pave our way towards an unconceptualized reality, our access to it inevitably entails the involvement of the mind' (2002, 191). In other words, any attempt to specify the nature of mind-independent existence must inevitably fail to do so, since it requires the use of human concepts which are mental in provenance. I will turn to the problems posed by concepts shortly, but would like first to make two general remarks about the relation between epistemology and ontology. First, by granting that there is an independently existing reality Marsonet has granted all that the realist requires from an ontological point of view. For he grants that reality does not depend on the knowing subject. All that remains at issue is the question of whether the independently existing reality is a knowable reality. Second, while the realist denies that the knowable world depends on the knowing subject, it is not clear that the realist need insist that questions of epistemology are fully independent of questions of ontology. As I will argue later, the realist must draw upon facts about the way the world is to explain how we manage to arrive at knowledge of the way the world is (see Chapter 8). Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science40 Turning to the problem of conceptual schemes, let me begin with Marsonet's claim about the mind-involving character of our concepts. As we have just seen, Marsonet takes this to entail that we are only able to represent 'unconceptualized reality' by means of concepts which reflect the influence of our minds. Thus, we are strictly unable to represent unconceptualized reality as such. But to conclude from the mind-involving character of concepts that we are unable to form a conceptual representation of a mind-independent reality appears to trade on a fallacious view of the relation between our minds and the content of our concepts. To have a concept one must have a mind. But the fact that having a concept depends on having a mind does not entail that the concepts that we have are concepts of mind-dependent things. Our concepts may be concepts of mind-independent things despite being our concepts. Thus, we may form the concept of a thing that exists independently of the mental, the content of which makes no reference to the mind, even though forming the concept is itself a mental activity and the concept is an object of thought. I can therefore see no basis for the conclusion which Marsonet appears to draw that we are unable to form the concept of a mind-independent reality (or of mind-independent things) because our concepts reflect 'the involvement of the mind' (2002, 191). As for the question of the extent to which our knowledge of the world is undermined by our need to use concepts, let me start by quoting at greater length from a previously cited passage: No one denies that it would be good to transcend our conceptual machinery in order to glimpse at how the world really is, independently of any view we can hold about it. This, however, cannot be done because of the very way we are made. Unlike some forms of classical idealism, we can recognize the presence of things that are 'real' in the sense of being mind-independent but, on the other hand, a qualification is needed to the effect that human beings have access to those things only via their conceptual apparatus. (2002, 193) In this passage, I take Marsonet to suggest that it is impossible for us to have direct epistemic access to the world independent of conceptual scheme. We are unable to adopt a standpoint devoid of concepts from which to gain conceptually unmediated access to the world. Instead, we must view the world through the filter of some conceptual scheme. Thus, Marsonet appears to conclude, or at least strongly suggest, we cannot know the world as it really is, in its own right, separate from our conceptual contribution. But no such sceptical conclusion about our inability to have knowledge of reality follows from the fact that we must think about the world in terms of some set of concepts or another. The mere fact that we must think in terms of concepts does not entail a sceptical conclusion about our inability to have epistemic access to the world independent of concepts. This would only follow if all of our concepts were necessarily mistaken representations of the world. But the mere fact that we must use concepts does not entail that our concepts are mistaken. They might, in fact, be correct representations of the world. And so we could, in principle, know the way the world really is, despite the fact that we must represent the world to ourselves using our conceptual representations of the world. The God's Eye Point of View 41 Of course, it might be replied that, given our inability to step outside all of our concepts, we can never know whether our concepts do provide an accurate depiction of reality. But this reply is surely specious. There is no reason, short of adopting an extreme form of scepticism, to assert that all of our concepts fail to represent reality. To suppose, for example, that our ordinary everyday concepts fail to correspond to anything real leaves us without a viable explanation of the success of our practical interactions with the world. And it renders mysterious our apparent ability to engage in communicative exchange with other human beings. In short, it is not clear that extreme scepticism about conceptual representation is even an intelligible hypothesis. It is therefore safe to assume that, at least in large part, our basic conceptual apparatus is a reasonably accurate representation of reality. But there is no need to rest content with a brusque dismissal of extreme scepticism. For it is possible to provide a positive rationale for a robust realist view of conceptual representation. It can, for example, be argued, as it has been by Hilary Kornblith, that the best explanation of the success of science is that our natural kind concepts are by and large accurate representations of the real natural kind structure of the world (see Kornblith, 1993a, 40-47, 74-8, 105-6). This accounts, not only for the success of science, but for the reliability of our inductive reasoning in both ordinary and scientific contexts. Kornblith's application of the success argument to our conceptual apparatus can be used to turn the issue back on Marsonet. For if Marsonet wishes to deny that our concepts are more or less accurate portrayals of a mind-independent reality, the question arises of how humans are able to engage in systematically successful action in both everyday and scientific affairs, if indeed all of our concepts fail to represent the world. Surely, such success would be an inexplicable miracle if our conceptual schemes are systematically mistaken. The problem of conceptual schemes does not, therefore, pose a genuine threat to realism. It remains to pass brief comment on Marsonet's apparent acceptance of a relativist view of truth. Marsonet is struck by the fact that both our commonsense and scientific beliefs about the world are subject to ongoing variation. Thus, he suggests, truth is 'essentially "relative" and bound to evolve with the passing of time' (2002, 194); 'relativism and fallibilism are not ghosts to be afraid of, but just inevitable factors of our relationship with the surrounding environment' (2002, 200). While I agree wholeheartedly with the point about fallibilism, it is a mistake to infer relativism about truth from the fact that our beliefs about the world are subject to variation. This is to conflate what is accepted as true with what is true. While the former may well vary, the latter need not. What vary from time to time are the beliefs that humans happen to hold with regard to the world. But nothing about such variation of belief entails that the truth of such beliefs is relative to context. Given the independence of the reality that makes our beliefs true, a great many of our past beliefs about the world should simply be regarded as having been false, rather than to have been true in some sense relative to historical context. Thus, fallibilism, not relativism, is the lesson to be drawn from variation of belief. This page intentionally left blank Chapter 3 Truth and Entity Realism 3.1 Introduction Much is made in some circles of a distinction between truth-orientated and ontological versions of scientific realism. In this book, I seek to defend a version of realism committed to both the pursuit of truth and the reality of the entities of science. However, I regard ontological versions of realism as legitimate versions of the doctrine. In this chapter, I seek to show that a genuine distinction exists between ontological versions of the doctrine and more usual forms of scientific realism such as that defended here. In particular, I will examine the role played by the notion of truth within the version of scientific realism that is known as entity realism. Entity realism is the thesis that the unobservable theoretical entities of science are real. It is an ontological thesis about the existence of theoretical entities. By contrast, scientific realism is often characterized as a thesis primarily involving the truth of theories. Sometimes scientific realism is expressed as the thesis that theoretical statements are intended as true descriptions of reality. Another favoured theme is that theoretical statements are objectively true or false in virtue of the way the world is independently of us. To such formulations it is usually added that the sense of 'true' required by scientific realism is the correspondence sense. To mark the contrast with entity realism, I shall say that a formulation of scientific realism which employs the notion of truth is a semantic version of scientific realism.1 The question I will address is whether entity realism is a non-semantic thesis distinct from semantic versions of scientific realism. More specifically, does entity realism express or, without further assumption, entail a version of the thesis of scientific realism which involves the notion of truth? 3.2 Entity Realism When a doctrine is labelled 'realist', this is in general because the doctrine lays claim to the reality of some entity or kind of entity. In the case of entity realism, what is claimed to be real are the unobservable entities postulated by scientists (e.g., 1 Here I follow Michael Devitt in describing a version of scientific realism cast in terms of truth as semantic. Devitt (1991, 39) takes a construal of realism which makes use of the notions of truth or reference to be a semantic thesis. Thus, while the notion of truth is of most present relevance, a version of scientific realism is semantic if any semantic notion occurs in its formulation. Scientific Realism and the Rationality44 electrons, atoms) which are usually referred to as 'theoretical entities'.2 As such, entity realism is opposed to doctrines such as phenomenalism and instrumentalism, which reduce theoretical entities to experience or regard them as fictions. To say that theoretical entities are real is not just to say that they exist. For a phenomenalist who holds that theoretical entities are to be construed as logical constructs out of experience may claim that, so construed, such entities exist. To exclude such construals, something further must be said about the existence of theoretical entities. According to entity realism, theoretical entities exist in their own right, without in any way depending on human thought or experience. They enjoy a mind-independent mode of existence which, contrary to phenomenalism, is not reducible to being the object or content of experience. Entity realism is therefore the doctrine that theoretical entities are real in the sense that they exist mind-independently. This may be expressed more simply as follows: (ER) The theoretical entities postulated by science are real. ER captures the idea that theoretical entities are neither phenomenal constructs nor mere predictive devices. It is important to note three qualifications about this formulation of entity realism. First, not all of the theoretical entities to which scientists purport to refer are real. Some theoretical entities which scientists assert to exist turn out not to exist. Second, not all apparent discourse about theoretical entities should be taken to imply genuine ontological commitment. Scientists sometimes employ idealizations (e.g., perfect gases, frictionless planes) which are not meant to be taken literally as accurate descriptions of real things. Third, entity realists do not assert the existence of all entities postulated by scientists, but only those entities for which there is good evidence. In order for ER to accurately reflect entity realism, it would need to be reformulated in light of these qualifications. But, for present purposes, there is no need to modify ER. This is because the question to be pursued here is whether realistic treatment of theoretical entities engenders a thesis concerned with truth. Such a question is strictly concerned with the semantic implications of treating such entities as real. It may well be the case that realistic treatment is not warranted in the case of all theoretical entities. Yet the question of whether there are limitations on the extent to which realistic treatment of entities is justified is a separate issue from the question of the semantic implications of treating such entities as real. Thus, the latter question may be considered independently of the limitations entity realists may wish to impose on ontological commitments to theoretical entities. 2 A distinction may be made between those entity realists who are realists about the unobservable entities postulated in theoretical science and those who are realists about the unobservable entities postulated in the context of experimental science. For present purposes, I shall overlook this distinction, treating both as entity realists. The crucial issue is whether entity realism is a non-semantic thesis, not whether theoretical entities are postulated by theorists or experimentalists. Truth and Entity Realism 45 It might further be objected that since ER concerns the postulation of entities by science, it is therefore a semantic thesis. For if the entities postulated by science are real, as ER suggests, then the existence claims made by theories in postulating such entities are true. Thus, a semantic thesis about the truth of the existence claims of theories does follow from ER. However, as I will argue in Section 3.5, what follows is a weak semantic thesis, which is not committed to any particular conception of truth. 3.3 Is Entity Realism a Thesis about Truth? In this section I will discuss the relation between entity realism and truth. My point of departure will be Michael Devitt's suggestion in Realism and Truth that realism is not a semantic doctrine. Devitt defines realism as follows: Tokens of most current common-sense and scientific physical types objectively exist independently of the mental. (1991, 39) He then considers whether realism expresses a semantic thesis about truth: What has truth to do with Realism? On the face of it, nothing at all. Indeed, Realism says nothing semantic at all beyond, in its use of 'objective', making the negative point that our semantic capacities do not constitute the world. (1991, 39) On the face of it, Devitt is right to claim that realism says nothing semantic. For realism, as defined by Devitt, is an assertion about the existence of certain entities. It is therefore an ontological thesis about the existence of things rather than a semantic thesis. I will now elaborate Devitt's suggestion in the context of the earlier formulation of entity realism ER. Consider, first, whether ER says anything semantic. On the face of it, as Devitt might say, it does not. ER says only that some non-linguistic things are real. It is neither formulated in a metalanguage as a thesis about expressions of an object-language, nor does it apply a semantic predicate such as 'true' to any item capable of bearing semantic properties. In the absence of semantic and metalinguistic devices, ER would appear not to express a semantic thesis. This alone may seem enough to establish that ER is a non-semantic thesis distinct from any semantic version of scientific realism. However, it might be objected that it is a trivial task to produce an alternative formulation of ER that is a semantic thesis. For the device of semantic ascent guarantees that any object-linguistic assertion has an equivalent metalinguistic formulation cast in terms of truth. In particular, semantic ascent on ER yields the following statement: (ER*) The statement 'The theoretical entities postulated by science are real' is true. ER* is itself true if and only if the entities postulated by science are real; that is, if and only if ER is true. It is couched in a metalanguage and it contains the semantic term 'true'. Thus ER is equivalent to ER*, and ER* is a semantic thesis. It would seem to follow that ER is semantic. Scientific Realism and the Rationality46 This objection depends on the precise sense in which an object-linguistic assertion and the associated metalinguistic assertion of its truth are equivalent. Since such assertions agree in truth-value, they are at least materially equivalent. But mere material equivalence of ER and ER* hardly shows ER to be a semantic assertion. For statements the same in truth-value may differ radically with respect to content. Thus ER and ER* might be materially equivalent even though one is a semantic thesis and the other is not. Therefore, in order to establish that ER is semantic, the objection requires a stronger form of equivalence. In fact, the truth-value of an assertion is necessarily the same as that of an assertion of its truth. It is not possible for one to be true and the other false. Thus, the relation between such assertions is indeed stronger than material equivalence. Since it is impossible for such assertions to diverge in truth-value, their relation is one of logical equivalence. However, even the fact that ER and ER* are related by this stronger form of equivalence does not establish that ER expresses a thesis of the same kind as ER*. For, as I will now argue, despite the logical equivalence of ER and the semantic thesis ER*, ER is not a semantic thesis. In the first place, it is a mistake to infer from the logical equivalence of ER and ER*, and the occurrence of 'true' in ER*, that ER is a semantic thesis. For this would imply that any statement whatsoever is semantic, since for any statement whatsoever there is a logically equivalent formulation of it which is an assertion of its truth. But to say that any statement whatsoever is semantic trivializes the idea of being semantic, and completely removes the point of describing something as a semantic thesis. Against this, it might be countered that a pragmatic implication of the act of asserting a statement is that the statement asserted is put forward as true. All assertions are therefore implicitly semantic, since they assert the truth of a statement. But the question here is not whether the act of asserting a statement implies that it is put forward as true. Rather, the question is whether the content of the statement is itself a semantic thesis which involves in some way a semantic notion such as truth. The main problem with the above argument that ER is semantic is that it rests on the assumption that logically equivalent assertions have the same meaning. Specifically, it assumes that because ER and ER* are logically equivalent they express the same thesis. The trouble is that logically equivalent assertions are not necessarily semantically equivalent. Assertions may be such that there is no possible condition in which one is true and the other false, yet they may differ in meaning. In particular, it does not follow from the fact that ER and ER* necessarily converge in truth-value that they mean the same thing. ER is a statement about the theoretical entities of science, whereas ER* says that that statement is true. But to say that a statement is true is to assert something about the statement which is not expressed by the statement itself.3 It is to say of the statement that it has a particular semantic property, namely truth. But to say of a statement that it is true is to say 3 This is to reject the claim made by some redundancy theories of truth that '"P" is true' means the same thing as 'P', a claim which is difficult to sustain given that the former is about a sentence while the latter is not. For the point that the redundancy theory denies that '"P" is true' is a statement about 'P', see Horwich (1990, 39). Truth and Entity Realism 47 something different in meaning from saying of some entities that they exist. Given this lack of synonymy between ER and ER*, the entity realist's ontological thesis is distinct from the semantic thesis derived from it by semantic ascent. ER is not a semantic thesis. There is a further problem with use of semantic ascent to show that ER is semantic. If the logical equivalence of ER and ER* does not entail that ER is semantic, the only way semantic ascent can show ER is semantic is if it transforms its meaning into something semantic. But sentences are meaning invariant with respect to assertion of truth. That is, assertion of the truth of a sentence does not result in transformation of the meaning of the sentence of which truth is asserted. Thus, while semantic ascent on the entity realist's thesis yields an assertion of its truth, it does not alter its meaning. In particular, it adds nothing semantic to the statement of the thesis itself. So, despite semantic ascent, the meaning of ER once truth is attributed to it by ER* remains precisely the same, namely, a statement of the reality of certain entities. 3.4 Truth and Existence Claims In the previous section I argued that ER is neither rendered semantic by virtue of logical equivalence to ER*, nor transformed into a semantic thesis by semantic ascent. I conclude from this that semantic ascent on ER does not show it to express a semantic thesis such as ER*. However, while ER may not express a semantic thesis, it might seem to entail one. I now turn to the question whether ER entails a semantic thesis without further assumption.4 Consider the thesis expressed by ER that the theoretical entities postulated by science are real. What follows if a particular entity postulated by a given scientific theory is indeed real? If a theory postulates the existence of an entity which in fact exists, what the theory says when it postulates that entity is true. While the theory may otherwise say some false things about the entity, the theory's existence claim regarding the entity is true, provided only that the entity exists. In this way, it appears that the entity realist's ontological thesis concerning the existence of theoretical entities leads to a semantic thesis concerning the truth of the existence claims of theories. For it follows from the thesis that the theoretical entities postulated by science are real that the existence claims which postulate theoretical entities are true. In other words, ER entails (ER**) Scientific claims which postulate the existence of theoretical entities are true. ER** refers to linguistic items and predicates truth of those items. So it states a semantic thesis.Since ER** is an apparent consequence of ER, ER seems to entail a semantic thesis after all. But let us look more closely at the inference from ER to ER**. The inference proceeds from the existence of theoretical entities, which ER asserts, to the truth of the existence claims made by theories in postulating such 4 Of course, given the logical equivalence of ER and ER*, the truth of ER entails the truth of a semantic thesis, namely, ER*. But to say that the truth of ER entails that of ER* is not to say that one can be derived from the other without further non-logical assumptions. Scientific Realism and the Rationality48 entities, which ER** asserts. Such an inference requires an assumption about the relation between existence and the truth of existence claims. In particular, it assumes that if an entity exists, then the sentence which asserts its existence is true. But this is not a special assumption about the relation between existence and the truth of existence claims. Rather, it is a simple instance of semantic ascent from an objectlinguistic sentence to an assertion of the truth of the sentence in a metalanguage. Thus, while the thesis, ER**, that the existence claims of theories are true is indeed a semantic thesis, it is not a thesis that follows from entity realism without further assumption. Rather, ER** is a consequence of ER which follows from ER only by means of semantic ascent. Strictly speaking, therefore, the entity realist's thesis of the reality of theoretical entities does not immediately entail a semantic thesis about the truth of theories. 3.5 Semantic Ascent and the Theory of Truth Given semantic ascent, ER entails a semantic thesis which involves the notion of truth. It may now seem a short step from entity realism to a standard version of scientific realism which incorporates a substantive conception of truth, such as a correspondence theory. However, semantic ascent is not tied to any particular theory of truth. Thus, as I will now argue, any semantic implication arising from entity realism via semantic ascent is similarly uncommitted with regard to the nature of truth.5 Let us first consider the basis of semantic ascent. The device of semantic ascent is derived from the standard disquotational truth schema, or T-scheme: 'P' is true if and only if P. To ascend semantically from the assertion of a sentence to the assertion of the truth of the sentence is to proceed in accordance with the conditional 'If P, then "P" is true'. Since this conditional follows from the T-scheme, semantic ascent is licensed by the T-scheme. The trouble is that views diverge widely on the relation between the T-scheme and the concept of truth. While there are those who regard the T-scheme as a definition of truth, others regard it as a minimal constraint which any complete concept of truth must satisfy. Thus, to endorse the T-scheme is not to endorse any particular theory of truth. Semantic ascent suffers from a similar ambiguity. It takes over from the Tscheme the same imprecision about the nature of truth. As a result, the semantic thesis derived from entity realism via semantic ascent does not specifically commit 5 It should be noted that considerations similar to those of the preceding section reveal that ER leads to a semantic thesis concerning reference. Roughly, if a given theoretical entity is real, then a term purportedly referring to it has reference. However, given the variety of theories of reference available, it can be shown by an argument analogous to the one to be given in the present section that the resulting thesis is a minimal semantic thesis committed to no particular conception of reference. Truth and Entity Realism 49 entity realism to any particular theory of truth. So, while it is indeed a thesis about the truth of certain theoretical claims, there is no indication what truth is. To see this, it is sufficient to note that the T-scheme is common ground to all the standard theories of truth. The disquotational, pragmatic, coherence, internalist, verificationist and correspondence theories of truth all agree that truth, whatever it is, must conform to the T-scheme. The disquotationalist claims that there is no more to truth than disquotation, so that the T-scheme exhausts the meaning of the word 'true'. The remaining truth-theories differ on what is to be added to the T-scheme in order to fully specify what 'true' means. The pragmatist says to be true is to be useful, the coherence theorist that it is coherence with a system of beliefs, the internalist that it is what is accepted in the ideal limit of science, the verificationist that it is to be verified, and the correspondence theorist says that it is a relation between sentences and extralinguistic items. Since semantic ascent derives from the T-scheme, and the T-scheme is common ground to the major truth-theories, it follows that semantic ascent is also common ground to the major truth-theories. Given this, the semantic thesis derived from entity realism constitutes an uninformative thesis about truth. Since it is arrived at by means of the device of semantic ascent, which is common to all the best-known theories of truth, it is committed to no particular theory of truth. 3.6 Three Objections In light of the neutrality of the T-scheme, the semantic stance of entity realism seems minimal indeed. For, beyond complying with the T-scheme, the semantic thesis to which it gives rise via semantic ascent is perfectly neutral with regard to the nature of truth. However, the idea that entity realism combined with semantic ascent yields no specific interpretation of truth is bound to be controversial. In this section I will consider three objections that are likely to arise. Objection one: Entity realism is not consistent with all theories of truth. For example, it is inconsistent with the coherence theory, which makes existence contingent on relations between beliefs, in violation of the mind-independence aspect of realism.6 As a result, it is impossible to combine all truth-theories with entity realism, which is not therefore neutral with respect to theory of truth. Reply: The point of my argument in the last section was not that the entity realist can embrace any theory of truth at all. The point, rather, was that to embrace both entity realism and semantic ascent is not yet to embrace any particular theory of truth. Absent further argument, a gap remains between semantic implications of entity realism derived via semantic ascent and versions of scientific realism which incorporate a substantive conception of truth. Objection two: If entity realism is inconsistent with certain truth-theories, it cannot be denied that entity realism is a semantic thesis which involves a definite 6 The point here is the general point that realism cannot be combined with an epistemic theory of truth. For further discussion, see 7.6 and 8.2. Scientific Realism and the Rationality50 view of truth. For, unless entity realism says something specific about truth, it cannot disagree about the nature of truth with any theory of truth. Reply: The inconsistency between entity realism and some theories of truth is not due to disagreement about the nature of truth. It is due, rather, to conflict between a consequence of certain truth-theories with respect to the existence of entities and the mind-independence aspect of entity realism. That is, the conflict is due, not to what entity realism says about truth, but to what a truth-theory says about existence. Thus it does not follow from the inconsistency of entity realism with a truth-theory that entity realism is committed to any specific conception of truth. Objection three: Entity realism requires a correspondence theory of truth. This is because of the commitment of entity realism to the mind-independent existence of theoretical entities. Given the contrast between mind-independent entities and theoretical existence claims couched in language, the truth of such claims must consist in a correspondence relation between linguistic and extra-linguistic items. Reply: It is certainly the case that, if entity realism is to be combined with a theory of truth, a theory of truth is required that is consistent with the mind-independent existence of theoretical entities. But while this requirement may reduce the range of truth-theories consistent with entity realism, it need not reduce the range of suitable candidates to the correspondence theory alone. Theories of truth which tie truth closely to epistemic evaluation fall foul of the independence aspect of entity realism. However, there exist theories of truth apart from the correspondence theory, which do not identify truth with an epistemic property, and which are therefore consistent with mind-independence.7 Moreover, even if entity realism did require a correspondence theory, it would not follow that 'true' occurs in its semantic consequence in a correspondence sense. The semantic consequence is generated from entity realism by semantic ascent. Semantic ascent is subject only to the constraint of the T-scheme, which is neutral with regard to theory of truth. Therefore, the term 'true' occurs in it as a term that is neutral between the various truth-theories. 3.7 Conclusion In this chapter I have considered the question whether entity realism is a thesis about the truth of theories. I rejected the attempt to render it semantic by embedding it within an assertion of its own truth. I argued that semantic ascent on the existence claims of theories yields a thesis concerning the truth of such claims. I then noted that this semantic thesis does not follow from the statement of entity realism without further assumption. I observed that the resulting semantic thesis is noncommittal about the nature of truth. Finally, I defended this observation against three objections which suggest that entity realism has specific truth-theoretic commitments. Entity realism is not to be identified with a semantic thesis. It does not itself assert, nor does it immediately entail, a thesis about the truth of theories. Moreover, 7 There is, in general, no conflict between the mind-independence aspect of entity realism and deflationary theories of truth, such as disquotationalism, the redundancy theory, and Horwich's minimalism. Truth and Entity Realism 51 while a thesis involving truth does follow from entity realism by means of semantic ascent, the entity realist is not thereby committed to any specific account of truth. Certainly, the minimal semantic thesis derived via semantic ascent does not itself provide support for a realist seeking to incorporate some specific truth-theory within scientific realism. Such a realist must find grounds independent of entity realism for embracing any particular theory of truth. I conclude, therefore, that entity realism is a genuine non-semantic alternative to truth-orientated versions of scientific realism. But, while I grant that entity realism is a distinct form of realism from such semantic formulations of the doctrine, I remain optimistic that a robust defence of a truth-orientated version of scientific realism may be provided. That is the task pursued in other chapters of this book. This page intentionally left blank Chapter 4 Incommensurability and the Language of Science 4.1 Introduction For much of the past century, the philosophical imagination has been captivated by language. Few aspects of language, or of language use, have escaped philosophical scrutiny. Traditional philosophical problems have been recast as issues in the philosophy of language. And philosophers have employed techniques of linguistic and conceptual analysis in an attempt to solve or dissolve these problems. The philosophy of science has been no exception. From the topics of confirmation and explanation to those of laws of nature and the dynamics of theory change, linguistic aspects of science have loomed large. One enduring theme has been an interest in the semantic and epistemic features of scientific discourse about the world. Here two key questions have been the focus of much attention. First, how does the vocabulary used by scientists acquire its meaning? Second, how is scientific vocabulary related to reality? One might characterize these two questions, respectively, as the question of the meaning of scientific terms as opposed to the question of the reference of such terms. Debate about these two questions has in large part been conditioned by a distinction between two kinds of vocabulary employed in science. On the one hand, there is the observational vocabulary (e.g., 'red', 'smooth'), which scientists employ to report upon observable phenomena and objects that are directly perceived by means of their senses. On the other hand, scientists employ theoretical vocabulary (e.g., 'electron', 'gene') when they speak about the unobservable entities which are postulated by scientific theories to explain observable phenomena. The distinction turns, at base, on a contrast between observable and unobservable entities. But it also reflects a difference in the conditions which govern the application of the two kinds of vocabulary. For, while observational terms may be applied on the basis of immediate experience of the items to which they refer, theoretical terms are unable to be employed on the basis of direct perception of their referents. For philosophers of a broadly empiricist persuasion, the distinction between observational and theoretical terms marks an important semantic and epistemic difference. This is principally because observational terms may be defined, as well as applied, on the basis of experience alone. It is also due to the fact that the truth of empirical claims, which employ observational terms to describe observed phenomena, may be established by means of direct empirical test. By contrast, neither the meaning of a theoretical term, nor the truth of a claim about unobservable theoretical entities, may be established on the basis of observation alone. Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science54 For philosophers less inclined to empiricism, the distinction between observational and theoretical terms bears little significance, and may even seem misconceived. It has, for example, been argued by some philosophers that the distinction fails to correspond to a genuine difference in linguistic use, since theoretical terms may be applied to observable items, and vice versa. It has also been argued that, regardless of the validity of the distinction, scientists routinely describe observed phenomena using the terms of an operative scientific theory. Most importantly for present purposes, it has been argued that the meaning of observational terms depends upon theoretical context. Thus, while there may be a pragmatic distinction based on the conditions of application of terms, no semantic distinction may be drawn between observational and theoretical terms. The idea that the meaning of observational vocabulary depends on theoretical context has serious implications for the rationality of scientific theory choice. For if the meaning of observational terms depends on theoretical context, rather than being fixed independently of theory, then the meaning of such terms may vary with theory. In the absence of a semantically invariant observation language, which is neutral between theories, the problem arises of how to compare the empirical claims which alternative scientific theories make about the world. If there is no shared observation language, then what one theory says about the world may neither agree nor disagree with any empirical claim made by an alternative theory. But if claims made by alternative theories cannot be compared, then there may be no rational basis on which to choose one theory over the other. The thesis that the content of theories may be incomparable for semantic reasons is known as the incommensurability thesis. The issue of meaning variance interacts in complex ways with central currents in 20th century philosophy of science. In this chapter, I employ meaning variance as a unifying theme to trace some major developments in philosophical accounts of the language of science which have occurred in the past century. In Section 4.2, I briefly examine the empiricist account of scientific discourse associated in the first half of the 20th century with the philosophical movement of logical positivism. Sections 4.3 and 4.4 trace the problem of meaning variance to the emergence in the second half of the century of a post-positivist or historical school in the philosophy of science. Sections 4.5 and 4.6 consider the attempt to treat the problem as a problem about reference, with special emphasis on the use made by scientific realist philosophers of science of a causal theory of reference. In Section 4.7, I briefly sketch the approach based on a causal-descriptive account of reference that I have proposed as a response to meaning variance and incommensurability. Then, in Section 4.8, I examine the implications for realism of the thesis of taxonomic incommensurability which is found in the later writings of T.S. Kuhn. Finally, in Section 4.9, I conclude by discussing the contention of Hoyningen-Huene, Oberheim and Andersen that my approach to incommensurability inappropriately relies on realism. 4.2 Logical Positivism 'Logical positivism' is the name commonly used for a scientifically minded philosophical movement which emerged in Vienna in the 1920s and 1930s. The Incommensurability and the Language of Science 55 movement grew up around a group of like-minded philosophers and scientists known as the Vienna Circle, which included such figures as Moritz Schlick, Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap, who met regularly to discuss philosophical ideas at the University of Vienna. Also associated with the Circle, but not members, were Ludwig Wittgenstein and Karl Popper, as well as the English philosopher A.J. Ayer, who visited Vienna in the early 1930s. With the rise of Nazism in the mid-1930s, the Circle dispersed, its members moving to the United States and Great Britain, where their influence significantly shaped the subsequent development of philosophy in the English-speaking world. Logical positivism has usually been understood as an extreme form of empiricism.1 As such, its supporters adhered to the view that both the content of our empirical concepts and the evidential support for our beliefs about the world must derive from sensory experience. The historical roots of logical positivism trace back to 18th century British empiricism, though the name 'positivism' derives from the philosophie positive of the 19th century French thinker Auguste Comte. What set the positivism of the Vienna Circle apart from its predecessors was a tendency to pose philosophical problems in terms of language, and a systematic attempt to apply the techniques of modern symbolic logic to the treatment of these problems. I will now briefly discuss two central themes of logical positivism, which are of special relevance to the language of science: the principle of verifiability, and the meaning of theoretical terms. The Principle of Verifiability One central question addressed by logical positivism was the question of how cognitively significant discourse about the world is possible. The response favoured at first by positivists was that a significant assertion is one which may be tested for truth or falsity by means of experience. On the basis of such a response, positivists sought to enforce a sharp distinction between significant and non-significant discourse about the world. Since metaphysical claims about a transcendent reality lying beyond experience cannot be empirically verified, this led the positivists to dismiss metaphysics as meaningless nonsense. The idea that significant assertion requires the possibility of empirical test is known as verificationism. Logical positivists expressed this idea in the form of the principle of verifiability, as exemplified by the following passage from Moritz Schlick: ... there is only one way of giving meaning to a sentence, of making it a proposition: we must indicate the rules for how it shall be used, in other words: we must describe the facts which will make the proposition 'true', and we must be able to distinguish them from the facts which will make it 'false'. In still other words: The Meaning of a Proposition is the Method of its Verification. The question 'What does this sentence mean?' is identical 1 Recent scholarship suggests that the usual understanding of logical positivism may be misleading. Far from being simply an extreme outgrowth of earlier empiricism, logical positivists were equally responsive to neo-Kantian philosophy. See, for example, Coffa (1991), Friedman (1993) and Parrini (1998). Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science56 with (has the same answer as) the question: 'How is this proposition verified?' (Schlick, 1938, 34) The principle that meaning consists in method of verification serves two functions. First, as in the above quote, it specifies what the meaning of a sentence consists in, namely its conditions of verification. Second, it specifies a criterion of significance, which a sentence must satisfy in order to be meaningful. For, if no verification conditions are specified, then, as Schlick goes on to say, 'our words do not form a real proposition at all, they are mere noises without meaning' (Schlick, 1938, 35). While many philosophers continue to associate meaning with verification, the strict identification of meaning with empirical verification conditions is now widely seen as untenable. As Schlick himself realized, meaning cannot require present testability, on pain of eliminating all currently untestable sentences as meaningless; it requires instead verification in principle. Nor may meaning be identified with conclusive verification, since, as Popper argued, that would render statements of the universal laws of science meaningless (Popper, 1959, 36). By the 1950s, the difficulties in applying verificationism at the level of sentences led C.G. Hempel to conclude that cognitive significance 'can at best be attributed to sentences forming a theoretical system, and perhaps rather to such systems as wholes' (1965, 117). Another problem that bedevilled positivism was the status of the principle of verifiability itself: since it is evidently not an empirical claim which may be verified by empirical test, the principle itself appears to be devoid of cognitive significance. While the positivists sought to meet this problem, for example by proposing the principle as a convention rather than a statement, some philosophers have taken it to show that positivism was fundamentally incoherent (e.g., Putnam 1981, 113). The Meaning of Theoretical Terms Another approach to cognitive significance pursued by logical positivism focused on the meaning of individual terms, rather than sentences. But, while the verifiability criterion made the meaning of theoretical statements problematic, similar problems arose as well for theoretical terms. For if experience is the source of meaning, terms whose meaning cannot be directly given by appeal to experience may fail to have any meaning at all. Positivists tended to assume that observational terms acquire meaning by direct reference to observable entities, e.g. by ostensive definition. Since a theoretical term may not be defined by means of a direct, ostensive identification of an unobservable theoretical entity, it was thought that theoretical terms might be defined by means of a connection with observational vocabulary. Some early positivists held that the meaning of a theoretical term might be fully specified by means of an explicit definition using only observational terms. On such a view, a theoretical term is exactly synonymous with a complex expression consisting entirely of observational terms, and its sole function is as convenient shorthand for the complex expression. But explicit definition fails even before the level of full-blown theoretical terms is reached. As shown by Carnap in 'Testability and Meaning' (1936), dispositional terms (e.g., 'fragile', 'soluble') cannot be fully defined using observational terms Incommensurability and the Language of Science 57 alone. While the observational circumstances in which a disposition is displayed may be specified, the disposition itself obtains even when the observable circumstances do not. Yet the disposition itself (e.g., to dissolve if placed in water) is not something that can be observed. In the absence of explicit definability, later positivists adopted a partial interpretation approach to the meaning of theoretical terms. In 'Testability and Meaning', Carnap showed how disposition terms may be introduced by means of 'reduction sentences' which specify the observable circumstances in which the disposition is manifest (e.g., 'If a glass is struck, then if it breaks it is fragile'). While reduction sentences do not fully define a disposition term, a set of such sentences partially defines the term by specifying empirical conditions in which it applies. Such specification of application conditions only partially defines the term because it fails to specify meaning for circumstances in which the observable conditions do not obtain (e.g., when the glass is not struck). By the mid-1950s, the partial interpretation approach had come to form the basis of a liberalized positivist account of the language of science, known as the 'double language model'.2 According to this account, the language of science divides into distinct observational and theoretical vocabularies, where theoretical terms are partially defined via 'correspondence rules' which link them to observational terms. However, while some theoretical terms derive their meaning via correspondence rules which link them directly to observation terms, others, having no such link, gain their meaning indirectly via links with other theoretical terms. With the double language model, a holistic view of meaning starts to emerge. For on this account, the meaning of theoretical terms may depend on a variety of complex relations between observational and theoretical terms. As a result, the meaning of theoretical terms may be subject to variation with change of theory as the relations between theoretical and observational terms undergo revision in the course of theory change. In this way, the liberalized positivism of the 1950s allowed, at least in principle, for the possibility of meaning variance of theoretical terms. This possibility was not always recognized by advocates of the historical approach who sought to overcome positivist theory of language.3 2 For the double language model, see, for example, Carnap (1956) and Nagel (1961). As more liberalized forms of positivism appeared at the mid-century, it became increasingly common to refer to the approach by the name 'logical empiricism', rather than 'logical positivism', the latter sometimes being reserved for the more strictly empiricist approaches of the early part of the century. 3 A number of authors have noted the anticipation of the meaning variance thesis in positivist accounts of scientific language. See for example Reisch (1991), who discusses Carnap's letters to Kuhn, which Carnap wrote in his capacity as Editor of the Encyclopedia of Unified Science, in which Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions appeared. One of the best early studies of the convergence between positivist theory of meaning and the meaning variance thesis remains English (1978). Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science58 4.3 The Historical Turn In the 1950s and 1960s a new, post-positivist approach to the philosophy of science emerged, which highlighted developmental and contextual aspects of science, and placed great emphasis on the manner in which both scientific theories and scientific practice evolve as a historical process. The main participants in this 'historical turn' initially included such key figures as Paul Feyerabend, N.R. Hanson, Thomas S. Kuhn, Michael Polanyi and Stephen Toulmin, though they were later joined by Imre Lakatos and Larry Laudan. Of those initially involved in the historical movement, most drew considerable inspiration from the later philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, Gestalt psychology and anti-Whiggish historiography of science. The result was an approach to science more inclined to interpret science in terms of its past, than to reconstruct it in terms of logic. While historical philosophers of science divide among themselves on points of detail, it is possible to specify a number of salient themes which broadly characterize the historical approach as a philosophical school. It is typical of historical philosophers of science to emphasize the role and importance of large-scale, enduring traditions of scientific research. There is a tendency to reject a unique scientific method in favour of variation of methodological standards of theory-appraisal. No sharp division is made between theory and fact. Instead, observation is said to be 'theory-laden'. And the idea of an independently meaningful observation language is rejected in favour of the dependence of the meaning of observation terms on theoretical context. In what follows, I will briefly comment on each of these themes, though the final point will receive extended attention in the next section. The importance of enduring traditions in the history of science was forcefully shown in the seminal text of the historical movement, T.S. Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1970a), and further elaborated in subsequent work by Lakatos (1970) and Laudan (1977). These authors stress that individual scientific theories (e.g., Copernicus's or Kepler's theories of the solar system) are usually developed within the context of a set of underlying theoretical assumptions (e.g., heliocentric astronomy) which tend to be preserved through variation at the level of specific theory. Such underlying assumptions constitute a general perspective or world-view, and are the central ingredients in the deep-level theoretical frameworks which Kuhn described as 'paradigms'. They include both substantive assumptions about the way the world is and methodological ones about how to investigate the world. But unlike empirically testable predictions made by theories, such deep-level frameworks do not admit of empirical test, and may only be evaluated by comparison with rival sets of assumptions over a sustained period of time. The issue of how to evaluate a scientific tradition points to the second major theme of the historical school. Traditional philosophers typically approached scientific theory appraisal in terms of a unique scientific method, employed throughout the sciences in all stages of the history of science. By contrast, the historical school laid great stress on the historical variation of patterns of scientific reasoning and theory appraisal. In their view, the history of science does not show that scientific method remains fixed while theories change, but that method is open to revision along with theory. Kuhn argued, for example, that standards of theory appraisal vary Incommensurability and the Language of Science 59 with scientific paradigm, and seemed to deny the existence of any such standards independent of paradigm (1970a, 94, 103). Somewhat later, Feyerabend argued that all methodological rules proposed by philosophers of science have in fact been violated at some stage in the history of science, and that there have been good grounds for violating them (1975, 23). Such denial of a fixed method has given rise to a widespread epistemological relativist denial of objective criteria of rationality amongst those whose work has been influenced by the historical movement. One might, of course, think that even in the absence of a fixed method, sense experience might provide a neutral arbiter between rival theories. But it is just here, however, that the historical school comes into most direct conflict with traditional empiricist philosophy of science. For where empiricists held that sense perception provides objective, observer-invariant grounds for theory appraisal, historical philosophers of science tend to deny a sharp divide between matters of observed fact and theory. As was famously argued by N.R. Hanson, in his Patterns of Discovery, scientific observation is 'theory-laden', due to the thorough-going influence of theoretical background upon the content of experience. Thus, despite being presented with identical external circumstances, scientists may have divergent visual experiences, because, as Hanson says, 'there is more to seeing than meets the eyeball' (1958, 7). In similar vein, the phenomenon of theory-ladenness led Kuhn to suggest that 'the proponents of competing paradigms practice their trades in different worlds' (1970a, 150). The theory-dependence of observation brings us back to language. For, it was argued not just that observation is theory-laden, but that the very language used to report observation depends on theory as well. As a result, rather than being independent of theory, the meaning of an observation term varies with the theoretical context in which it is employed. The issue of meaning variance leads to the topic of the next section, the semantic incommensurability of theories. 4.4 Incommensurability One of the most controversial claims to emerge from the historical turn was the claim made by Kuhn and Feyerabend that alternative scientific theories may be incommensurable. While the meaning of the term 'incommensurable' resists precise specification, for present purposes it may be understood to mean that there are limits on the comparison of theories for evaluative purposes. More specifically, I will treat the claim of incommensurability as the claim that the content of one scientific theory may not be directly compared with the content of an alternative such theory.4 Kuhn set the claim of incommensurability within the context of his account of scientific theory change as revolutionary transition between paradigms. On Kuhn's account, the 'normal science' pursued by scientists under the guidance of a reigning 4 For a more nuanced discussion of the concept of incommensurability, see my (1997, Ch. 2), as well as Hoyningen-Huene (1993, 206-22), who offers an opposing analysis of the concept. Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science60 paradigm differs in fundamental ways from that undertaken within the context of an alternative paradigm: ... the normal-scientific tradition that emerges from a scientific revolution is not only incompatible but often actually incommensurable with that which has gone before. (1970a, 103) The incommensurability of paradigms sets limits on the extent to which competing paradigms may be evaluated in a comparative manner, for example, by appeal to shared standards of theory appraisal, or conflicting predictions about the world. As a consequence, it is obscure on Kuhn's view how scientists may decide between competing paradigms on a rational basis. For Feyerabend, the notion of incommensurability formed part of his critique of the empiricist model of the relations between successive theories (see Feyerabend, 1981, Ch. 4). Empiricists held that an earlier theory is either explained by, or reduced to, a later, more comprehensive theory by deductive subsumption of the laws of the earlier theory under the laws of the later theory. Feyerabend argued that the deductive relations between theories required by this model entail a semantic condition of meaning invariance, which is routinely violated in the course of scientific practice, as the meaning of scientific terminology undergoes profound changes in the transition between alternative theories. It will simplify exposition to formulate the incommensurability thesis in terms of the following three features of the semantic relations between the vocabulary of alternative scientific theories: meaning variance, translation failure and content incomparability. The basic idea of the incommensurability thesis is that the content of alternative scientific theories is unable to be compared because of translation failure due to meaning variance of their vocabulary. I will now briefly discuss each of these points in turn. The claim that meaning varies in the transition between theories may be presented by means of an argument which proceeds in three steps. The first step is to reject the empiricist assumption that there is a theory-neutral observation language which is meaningful independently of theory and semantically invariant between theories.5 An independently meaningful observation language of the kind sought by empiricists would provide a semantically neutral medium of expression which would provide common ground between scientific theories, on the basis of which such theories may be directly compared. The second step is to argue, against the idea of an invariant observation language, that the meaning of observational terms depends on the theoretical context in which they are employed. According to such a 'contextual theory of meaning', an observational term obtains its meaning from the theory which is used to describe and explain the observed item to which the term is applied. Meaning is determined in a holistic manner, by means of the whole theoretical context in which the observational term is used. The third step 5 There are various ways to argue for such a rejection, e.g., by arguing against the ostensive definition model of language learning, or to argue that neither the experience nor the conditions associated with use of an observational term fix its meaning. The latter option is pursued by Feyerabend in his (1981, Ch. 2). Incommensurability and the Language of Science 61 is to conclude that meaning varies due to the context-dependence of meaning. In particular, it follows from the context-dependence of meaning, that the meaning of observational and theoretical terms must vary with respect to the theoretical context in which they are employed. Thus, in the transition between scientific theories, there is change of meaning from one theory to the next. More precisely, where the same terms occur in different theories, such terms will be employed with a different meaning in the context of each theory. It is important to mention two qualifications about meaning variance. First, the claim of meaning variance admits of two interpretations. Radical meaning variance occurs if all (or perhaps most) of the terms employed by theories change their meaning. Partial meaning variance occurs if only a restricted class of the terms change. The radical version tends to be found in Feyerabend, the partial version in Kuhn. Second, the sort of meaning variance of present relevance is restricted to alternative theories about the same domain of phenomena. Theories in different domains (e.g., continental drift and psychoanalysis) do not compete. Semantic variation between theories in different domains does not give rise to significant problems of theory comparison or choice.6 The claim that the vocabulary employed by theories semantically varies between theories does not, by itself, entail incomparability of the content of theories. The latter requires, beyond mere difference of meaning, that there be failure to translate between the vocabulary employed by meaning variant theories. There are a number of ways to argue for translation failure, of which perhaps the most straightforward is as follows. On the assumption that there is radical meaning change between theories, no term of one theory has the same meaning as any term of the other theory. As a result of such complete absence of common meaning, no statement entailed by one theory may be translated by means of a statement entailed by the other theory. Thus, there is a total translation failure between the theories.7 If meaning variance is understood to entail translation failure between theories, then a number of important consequences follow from meaning variance. For one thing, translation failure gives rise to difficulties of communication and understanding between the advocates of such rival theories. However, the consequence of most concern to philosophers of science is that the content of meaning variant theories is unable to be compared. That is, if it is impossible to translate from the vocabulary of one theory into another, then no statement of one theory can be matched with a 6 The requirement that meaning variant theories be theories about the same domain raises a serious difficulty for the incommensurability thesis. This is the so-called 'rivalry objection': how can theories with no meaning in common be rival explanations of the same phenomena? The objection applies with most force against claims of incommensurability based on radical meaning variance. 7 Of course, if the meaning variance is only partial, then the translation failure is also only partial. It should be added that a number of other ways of arguing for untranslatability have been employed. For instance, Feyerabend argues that the conditions of concept formation in one theory forbid the formation of concepts from another theory (1978, 68, fn. 118). Kuhn argues that within a theory a central complex of key terms is holistically inter-defined in such a way that terms from another theoretical complex are unable to be translated into it (2000, Ch. 2). Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science62 corresponding statement of the other theory which asserts or denies the same thing. There may be neither agreement nor disagreement between theories. But, if this is so, then it is impossible to directly compare the claims about the world made by one theory with the claims made about the world by the other theory. In short, the content of such theories is not directly comparable. One immediate consequence of the inability to compare content is the impossibility of 'crucial experiments'. A crucial experiment is a test designed to choose between rival, equally well-supported theories, by means of a test of an observational prediction on which the theories disagree. If the result of the observation is unambiguous, such a test supports one theory while refuting the other. However, if no common language exists in which the consequences of rival theories may be expressed, then no predictive consequence of one theory may be formulated with which the other theory disagrees. Therefore, there may be no crucial test between such theories. It is now possible to formulate the thesis of incommensurability in a perspicuous manner. Two alternative scientific theories are incommensurable just in case: (i) the meaning of the vocabulary employed by theories varies between theories; (ii) translation is impossible from the vocabulary of one theory into the vocabulary of the other; (iii) as a result of (i) and (ii), the content of such theories may not be compared. 4.5 Reference and Theory Comparison The most influential objection to the incommensurability thesis has been the claim that, while alternative scientific theories may be meaning variant, they may still be compared with respect to content. The reason is that meaning variance between theories does not entail reference variance, and reference variance is what is needed for theories to be incomparable for content. The referential response to incommensurability was forcefully elaborated by Israel Scheffler in his book Science and Subjectivity (1967, Ch. 3). Scheffler presented the response within the context of a Fregean distinction between sense and reference. According to this distinction, the meaning of a term divides into two components: the sense of a term is the concept or definition a speaker grasps when understanding what the term means, while the reference of a term is the object or set of objects which the term names. Two features of the Fregean account of meaning are of most relevance in the present context. First, terms may differ in sense even though they refer to the same thing. Frege's classic example is that of the expressions 'evening star' and 'morning star', which have different senses though they refer to the same thing, viz., the planet Venus. Second, the sense of a term determines the term's reference. In particular, if we assume that the sense of a term is specified by means of a description, then the reference of the term is determined as that thing which satisfies the description which gives the sense of the term. The crux of Scheffler's objection to the incommensurability thesis is that the content of theories may be compared by means of common reference, even if their Incommensurability and the Language of Science 63 terms differ in sense. The reason is that two sentences may be jointly incompatible though their constituent expressions do not have the same sense. Thus, suppose someone says 'The evening star is a star', while someone else asserts that 'The morning star is a planet'. Because the evening star and morning star are the same thing, and stars are not planets, it is impossible for both assertions to be true. Thus, despite employing words which differ in sense, the assertions are incapable of both being true, since they are about the same thing. In general, statements about the world may conflict even if they contain different terms, or terms which differ in sense, provided that their constituent terms refer to the same things. Because of this, it is possible to compare the content of rival theories whose terms differ in sense. For, while rival theories might employ terms with different meanings, if their terms refer to the same things, then it is possible for their claims about the world to agree or disagree. Reference Change Despite the evident force of the referential objection, a reply to Scheffler's objection was readily available to Kuhn and Feyerabend. For they were able simply to argue that in cases of meaning variance between theories, both the sense and the reference of terms employed by theories are subject to change (cf. Kuhn, 1970a, 102, 1970b, 269; Feyerabend, 1981, 98). If they are right, Scheffler's appeal to the distinction between sense and reference is unavailing. For if reference is discontinuous between theories, there is no overlap of reference, and content cannot be compared. There are a number of reasons to think there may be widespread change of reference between meaning variant theories. For one thing, historical cases suggest that change of reference is prevalent in the history of science; e.g., modern use of the term 'atom' seems not to refer to the same kind of entity as did ancient use of the term. For another thing, the differences in descriptions which theories give of the entities to which they refer may be so extreme that the descriptive content associated with terms must pick out completely distinct sets of things. Alternatively, the descriptive content associated with terms by one theory may be incompatible with the content associated with terms by another theory, so that the descriptive content of the alternative theories may not be satisfied by the same sets of things. The crux of the issue is the assumption that sense determines reference. This is because the descriptions which scientists give of the entities they study are themselves subject to revision as scientists alter their theories about the world. But if descriptions of entities change in the transition between theories, the senses of the terms used by the theories will also change. Hence, there may be discontinuity of reference between theories. But without shared reference, the content of theories cannot be compared. Thus, Kuhn's and Feyerabend's reply to Scheffler is that meaning variance includes reference as well as sense. Hence, an appeal to reference is unable to serve as basis for an objection to the incommensurability thesis. Moreover, if reference varies radically between theories, the content of theories may not be compared due to absence of common reference of theories. In this way, reference change gives rise Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science64 to a referential version of the incommensurability thesis – incommensurability due to reference variance. 4.6 The Causal Theory of Reference The claim by Kuhn and Feyerabend that reference varies in the course of scientific theory change is of particular concern to philosophers of a scientific realist persuasion. Scientific realists defend the view that the aim of science is to discover the truth about an objective reality, and that scientific progress consists in an increasing convergence on the truth about such a reality. But, if the history of science consists in repeated transitions between theories which refer to none of the same things, then it is impossible for progress to occur in the sense required by the scientific realist. For if later theories refer to none of the same things to which earlier theories referred, it is impossible for the transition between such theories to involve an increase of truths known about common items of a shared, objective reality. For this reason, scientific realists have sought to defend Scheffler's appeal to reference against Kuhn's and Feyerabend's claim of referential variance. They have done so by drawing attention to the issue of the determination of reference. Kuhn's and Feyerabend's reference change response to Scheffler turns on the assumption that sense determines reference. But, as has been suggested by scientific realist advocates of a causal theory of reference, reference need not be determined by sense at all (e.g., Putnam 1975b, Ch. 11). Rather, reference is determined by means of various causal and other pragmatic relations which speakers enter with their environment in the course of linguistic interaction with the world. If this is right, then the reference of a term may be unaffected by variation of sense, and it may be possible to vindicate Scheffler's objection to incommensurability by setting the objection within the framework of a causal theory of reference. Before explaining this response to the incommensurability thesis, let me briefly introduce the causal theory of reference. I will first discuss an example designed to show that reference is not determined by sense, and will then say something about the mechanism of reference. Hilary Putnam presents a science fiction example which is designed to elicit intuitions favouring the view that reference is not determined by descriptive content (Putnam, 1975b, 223-7). This is his well known example of Twin-earth. We are to imagine a planet which is in many ways just like the earth. Its sole distinguishing feature is that the liquid which flows in its rivers, fills its oceans and falls from the sky in the form of rain is not in fact the same liquid as is found on earth. While the liquid found on earth is H 2 O, the liquid on Twin-earth is another chemical compound, which Putnam calls XYZ. Yet despite its chemical difference, this substance is unable to be distinguished by any observable features from the water we find here on earth. On Twin-earth there are also people who speak English. In particular, English speakers on Twin-earth use the word 'water' just as we do, to refer to the liquid that runs in their rivers and streams, and fills their lakes and oceans. Moreover, Twinearth speakers of English associate exactly the same descriptive content with their word 'water' as we do with our word 'water'. We both conceive of water as the clear Incommensurability and the Language of Science 65 liquid which quenches thirst, extinguishes fires, falls from the sky as rain, and fills our lakes and rivers. There is no detectable difference whatsoever between the sense of 'water' as we use the term and the sense of 'water' as they use the term. Now, Putnam asks, does the word 'water' as used by Twin-earth English speakers refer to the same substance as does the word 'water' as used by English speakers here on earth? Putnam argues that it does not. Our use of the word 'water' refers to H 2 O, and Twin-earthians' use of 'water' refers to XYZ. Thus, in spite of the fact that English speakers on earth and Twin-earth associate the same sense with the word 'water', they refer to different things. Consequently, terms with the same sense may refer to different things, and so the sense of a term does not determine its reference. The reason, Putnam argues, is that there is a broadly contextual element involved in the determination of reference. In our use of the word, the word 'water' was introduced by English speakers here on earth to refer to the stuff that as a matter of fact flows in our rivers and streams, and fills our lakes and oceans. In particular, when the word was introduced it was applied to paradigmatic samples of such stuff (e.g., glasses of water, or babbling brooks, or falling rain). The operative referential intention in such cases was to refer to the substance, whatever it happens to be, which is the same kind of substance as the paradigmatic samples of water. In other words, the word 'water' was introduced to refer to stuff that is the same kind as standard cases of the stuff that we here on earth call water. The moral of the story is that speakers of a language need to be in some kind of causal relation to a thing in order to be able to refer to it. Ordinarily it is being in such a causal relation to a thing which determines that we do indeed refer to that thing. The core idea of how reference is determined by causal relations is found in Saul Kripke's idea of an initial baptism (cf. Kripke 1980, 96-7, 135ff.). For proper names, Kripke suggests a commonsense approach to how people are named. For example, when a child is named, a ceremony takes place in which the baby is given a name. You can imagine the parents, looking at the baby in a cradle, saying 'We name that child William'. Given the parents' intentions to call their child William, and given that the context determines which child they are talking about, the reference of the name is fixed at such an initial baptism. As for use of the name by speakers not present at the baptism, Kripke suggests that there is a causal chain linking later use of the name, via the use of other speakers, with the initial baptism at which the name was introduced. Unlike the use of speakers present at the initial baptism, use of the name by later speakers not present for the baptism depends on their being appropriately linked by a causal chain of earlier uses of the name back to that ceremony. On this account, neither the reference of those present at the baptism nor of those linked to the baptism by a causal chain is determined by description. Rather, in the case of the introducers of the name reference is determined by such things as their intention to refer to the baby, perceiving the baby, being present when the naming takes place, etc. In the case of later use of the name, reference is determined by the causal chain linking later use back to the initial baptism. Thus, in general it is causal connections with the referent, rather than some shared descriptive content or sense, which determines reference. Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science66 This account may seem plausible for naming babies. But babies are particular observable objects, individual things which we may point to and perceive. There will be little confusion when we name a baby by pointing at it and giving it a name. But what about entire kinds of things like water? What about unobservable entities which we are unable to perceive, like electrons and protons? The causal account of proper names may be extended to observable natural kinds of things, such as water. The basic idea is that, in the case of observable natural kinds, a term is introduced in the presence of a sample of the natural kind. Thus, when the term 'water' is introduced, it is applied to a sample of water. For example, I point to a glass of water and say 'By 'water' I refer to that stuff'. The operative intention in introducing a term for a natural kind in the presence of a sample is not to attach the word specifically to that particular instance of the natural kind. Rather, the intention is to introduce the term as referring to the entire kind of which the sample is an exemplary instance. Thus, by saying 'That stuff is water', pointing to a glass of water, one is introducing a term to refer to the substance of which the water in the glass is a sample, namely H 2 O. In this way it is possible to extend the initial baptism account of naming from proper names to natural kind terms for observables. But what about theoretical natural kind terms, such as 'electron'? One approach suggested by Kripke and Putnam is to extend the account to theoretical terms by means of causal descriptions employed in the presence of observable phenomena. On such an account, we are to imagine that a scientist, in the presence of an observable phenomenon thought to be produced by some specific unobservable causal process described by theory, may introduce a term to refer to the unobservable causal process. In this way the observable phenomenon may be picked out pragmatically by means of ostension, a causal description is given (e.g., 'The cause of that phenomenon'), and the term is thereby applied to the unobserved cause of the observable phenomenon. The Causal-Theoretic Reply to Incommensurability Assuming the causal theory of reference, one might reply to the incommensurability thesis somewhat as follows. The meaning, in the sense of 'sense', of scientific terms may well vary in the course of theoretical change. However, it does not follow that reference must also vary as a result of such change of meaning. For reference is not determined by sense, but by causal chains which link the present use of terms with initial baptisms at which their reference was fixed. So reference does not vary with the changes of descriptive content which occur during theoretical change. Hence, reference is held constant across theoretical transitions, and theories may be compared by means of reference. Thus, there is no referential discontinuity, no incomparability of content, and no incommensurability. The causal theory of reference undoubtedly yields a promising rebuttal to the incommensurability thesis. For, if reference is continuous through theory change, then it is possible for later theories to assert more truths than earlier theories about common objects of reference. However, a number of serious problems face the causal Incommensurability and the Language of Science 67 theory of reference in the current context, which raise doubts about the effectiveness of this rebuttal. The first problem arises because the original version of the causal theory of reference eliminates the possibility of reference change altogether. According to Kripke, reference is established at an initial baptism, and subsequent use of a term traces back to the initial baptism. But if the reference of a term is fixed at such a baptism, then reference cannot change. But there appear to be cases in the history of science in which the reference of terms has changed. So the causal theory of reference must be modified to allow for the possibility of reference change; e.g., by allowing usage subsequent to initial baptism to affect reference. But this permits reference variance between theories, which was what the causal theory was supposed to avoid.8 There are difficulties with the causal theory's account of how reference is determined for observational natural kind terms. Kim Sterelny describes a voyage to Mars: Suppose I go to Mars and come across a catlike animal: I introduce the term 'schmat'. Schmats are animals bearing a certain relation to this paradigm local schmat I have just encountered. But what determines which relationship this is? For the schmat will be a member of many kinds. A non-exhaustive list would include: physical object, animate object, animate object of a certain biochemical kind, animate object with certain structural properties, schmats, schmats of a certain sex, schmats of a certain maturational state. (Sterelny, 1983, 121) The problem is that the causal relations involved in ostensive introduction of the term do not specify which of the numerous kinds instantiated by paradigmatic schmats is the kind designated by 'schmat'. The problem is known as the 'qua problem', since it is a problem of how to refer to an object qua member of the relevant kind. The qua problem shows that some descriptive apparatus is required in order to pick out the relevant kind, e.g., a verbal specification of whether 'schmat' is the name of a genus or a species. A further problem for the causal theory involves the reference of theoretical terms. Suppose we introduce the term 'phlogiston' to refer to that, whatever it is, which causes that phenomenon, pointing to a fire. If oxygen is what causes fire, then 'phlogiston' refers to oxygen. But phlogiston does not exist, so that rather than mistakenly referring to oxygen, the term 'phlogiston' fails to refer to anything at all.9 This suggests that there is a need to build into the causal description of the referent of a theoretical term a certain amount of descriptive apparatus besides the mere causal description 'whatever causes that phenomenon'. Plausible suggestions include description of the natural kind to which the supposed cause belongs and a description of the causal role fulfilled by the unobservable causal agency. 8 For the objection that the causal theory rules out reference change in science, see Fine (1975). 9 The point that on an unmodified causal theory, 'phlogiston' would refer to oxygen is made by Enç (1976, 267-8). Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science68 4.7 Causal Descriptivism, Post-Baptismal Use and Translation Failure The problems just highlighted spell the end for a pure causal response to incommensurability. For if reference may change, and description plays a role in reference, no dismissal of referential discontinuity of the kind previously sketched may be upheld. However, the causal theory may be revised in light of these problems to permit a more nuanced referential response to the incommensurability thesis. In particular, a modified causal theory may be used to defend referential comparison, while retaining key semantic insights on which the incommensurability thesis is based. In this section, I will briefly summarize the approach to incommensurability which I have developed at length in my (1991) and (1994, Ch. 3). The modified causal theory which I favour is a form of causal descriptivism, according to which the causal relations on which reference is based must be supplemented by description. In the case of introduction of a kind term by ostension of a sample, reference is determined by the causal relation of perception supplemented by a descriptive specification of the kind (e.g., species, genus) to which the sample belongs. In the case of reference to unobservable theoretical entities, the causal relation which determines reference must be specified by description. Thus, the reference of theoretical terms is determined by description of the causal mechanism, whereby the action of unobservable referents is thought to produce certain independently specified (e.g., by ostension) observable phenomena. A causal descriptive model of reference determination resolves the problems of indeterminacy of ostension and reference failure of theoretical terms. But it leaves the issue of reference change untouched. To meet the latter problem, the causal theory must grant post-baptismal use a role in reference determination. Rather than being inalterably fixed at an initial baptism, reference may shift as a result of subsequent use of a term. After a term is introduced, speakers continue to apply the term to various items to which they take it to refer. In this way, to borrow a phrase from Michael Devitt, terms become multiply grounded in their referents (Devitt, 1981, 56-7, 191-5).10 Reference change may occur due to shift in the pattern of groundings which a term has in its referents. For example, a term may be introduced to refer to a given kind, yet subsequently be applied to members of another kind. Because of the shift in the items in which it is grounded, the term comes to refer to the kind to which it was subsequently applied, rather than the kind for which it was introduced. A further implication of the role of post-baptismal use in reference determination is that a term may be associated with multiple ways of fixing reference. As has been shown by Philip Kitcher, different tokens of a scientific term-type may have their reference fixed in different ways (e.g., 1978, 535). For example, the reference of some tokens of a term may be fixed by ostension of samples of a given substance, 10 By 'grounding', Devitt means perception of an object by virtue of which a name designates its bearer (1981, 278). For present purposes, grounding may be understood more generally as a relation between term and object(s) by means of which the term refers to the object(s). Incommensurability and the Language of Science 69 while the reference of other tokens may be fixed by a description which specifies the role played by the substance in producing certain effects. Such diversity of reference determination may seem unified from the point of view of scientists, for whom the different means of fixing reference are merely alternative ways of picking out the same thing. A modified causal theory of the kind just outlined serves as the basis for my approach to incommensurability. I defend a version of the referential response to the incommensurability thesis, roughly along the lines of Scheffler (1967). More specifically, I argue that the content of theories may be compared by means of shared reference, despite translation failure due to semantic variance. Suitably modified, therefore, the causal theory of reference has the resources both to reveal what is correct about the incommensurability thesis and to remove it as a threat to rational theory choice and scientific progress. My argument for translation failure assumes that the way in which the reference of a term is determined is a semantic property which must be preserved in translation. There are two principal ways in which expressions employed by one theory may fail to be translatable into the vocabulary of another. First, it may not be possible to determine reference within one theory in a manner permitted by the other. For example, the causal role description required to fix reference for a theoretical term may be incompatible with the basic laws of the theory. Second, it may not be possible to determine reference within a theory in the same set of ways as in another. For example, within one theory the reference of a term may be fixed both by ostension and by theoretical description, while from the point of view of the other theory the two reference-fixing procedures fail to pick out the same kind. In either of these two ways, translation fails because the way reference is determined in one theory is unavailable in, or is precluded by, the other. (For details of how ontological and causal-explanatory commitments impose limits on reference determination, see my (1991, 229-34) and (1994, 81-95).) Thus, it may be argued on the basis of a modified causal theory that translation fails between theories due to limits on reference determination in the context of a theory. Such translation failure is entirely consistent with comparison of the content of theories, which may proceed by means of shared reference. The question remains, however, of the extent to which such comparison is assured, given that reference may vary subsequent to initial baptism. The answer, in short, is that while reference may vary with theory, it need not do so in wholesale fashion. On my view, reference changes in a piecemeal manner, dependent on the facts relating to the use of a given term. As such, reference is not necessarily subject to variation with overall shift in the way theories describe the entities which populate a common domain of application. Rather, it may remain stable through major alteration of the descriptive content which speakers associate with terms. While reference may change through shift in the pattern of groundings of a term, this does not mean that all post-baptismal use affects reference. Rather, speakers typically acquire reference via a chain of communication from earlier use, despite reference not being inalterably fixed at the original introduction of a term. Hence, reference may remain stable even though later speakers do not associate the same Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science70 descriptions with terms as earlier speakers. Thus, while reference may vary due to post-baptismal shift in the pattern of groundings, in a great many cases reference is determined by deference to earlier use. In any event, the threat of reference change due to variation in descriptions which determine reference is much reduced on the present account. On a classic description theory of reference, substantial variation in the concepts employed by successive theories may result in radical discontinuity of reference, since the descriptions associated with the terms used by theories may not be satisfied by the same things. By contrast, description plays less of a role on my account. In the case of terms introduced by ostension to refer to observable natural kinds, the associated descriptive content is minimal (e.g., a categorical expression such as 'liquid' or 'species'). Thus, the reference of such terms may withstand considerable variation of associated descriptive content in the transition between theories. As for theoretical terms, whose reference is determined by description of causal role, significant scope exists for variation in descriptive content without change of reference, since the latter may vary without affecting the former. To sum up, on the view I propose, translation may fail due to limits on reference determination within theories, yet the content of theories is comparable by means of reference. This approach allows for significant conceptual change in the transition between theories, while enabling the choice between such theories to be made on a rational basis. Given the possibility of common reference, moreover, it is possible for theories to advance on the truth about a shared domain of entities, in the manner suggested by scientific realism. 4.8 Taxonomic Incommensurability Apart from allowing rational theory choice, the chief attraction of the present approach is that it permits analysis of the semantic issues relating to incommensurability within a realist framework. For it reveals how theories, which are untranslatable due to conceptual variance, may nonetheless entail comparable consequences about a shared, mind-independent reality. In the final two sections of this chapter, I will discuss two developments which raise questions about the realist commitments of this approach. The first of these involves the formulation in Kuhn's later writings of a new, taxonomic version of the incommensurability thesis. According to Kuhn's later view, scientific revolutions are characterized by changes in the taxonomic schemes by means of which theories classify the entities in their domains of application (2000, 29-30). Such changes include redistribution of members among existing taxonomic categories, modification of criteria of category membership, and introduction of new categories. At the semantic level, taxonomic change gives rise to change in the meaning of preserved vocabulary, which in some cases involves change of reference. In the case of new categories, it may also result in introduction of new vocabulary which differs semantically from previous vocabulary. According to Kuhn, the taxonomic scheme of a theory is represented linguistically by a lexicon, which is a structured vocabulary of natural kind terms (2000, 52). Incommensurability and the Language of Science 71 Kuhn argues that terms from one lexicon fail to be translatable into another due to a restriction on relations between natural kinds, which derives from what he calls the no-overlap principle (2000, 92, 232). According to the no-overlap principle, members of one natural kind may only be members of another kind if one of the kinds is contained in the other as species is contained in genus (see Kuhn, 2000, 92). Thus, a term cannot be translated from one lexicon into another if its extension includes items which belong to distinct kinds within the rival taxonomy, since that would result in violation of the no-overlap principle (2000, 232).11 Translation failure due to inability to transfer a kind from one taxonomy to another is entirely consonant with the reference-based approach outlined in the previous section.12 However, Kuhn sought to base a number of anti-realist claims on taxonomic incommensurability. I will sketch these claims, and then point out why such anti-realism does not follow from translation failure between lexicons. Where scientific realists tend to see scientific progress in terms of convergence on truth, Kuhn was critical of both the idea of convergent progress and the realist view of truth. That science is not convergent, he took to follow directly from incommensurability (cf. 2000, 243-4). Speaking of propositions from Aristotelian physics, Kuhn wrote that: Using our conceptual lexicon, these Aristotelian propositions cannot be expressed – they are simply ineffable – and we are barred by the no-overlap principle from access to the concepts required to express them. It follows that no shared metric is available to compare our assertions about force and motion with Aristotle's and thus to provide a basis for a claim that ours (or, for that matter, his) are closer to the truth. (2000, 244) Thus, according to Kuhn, science does not converge on truth because claims from rival theories cannot be expressed in a common lexicon, with the result that they cannot be compared for closeness to truth. Kuhn's objection, though, was not simply to the idea of advance on truth, but to the very idea of truth as correspondence to reality. For he says that 'the subject of truth claims cannot be a relation between beliefs and a putatively mind-independent or "external" world' (2000, 243). His objection to the correspondence theory seems to turn on the relation between lexicon and reality: 11 How no-overlap leads to translation failure may be illustrated by one of Kuhn's own examples. Apart from planets other than the earth which are classified as planets by Copernican astronomy, the Ptolemaic kind planet includes the sun and the moon. Thus, to translate the Ptolemaic term 'planet' into the Copernican lexicon would require introduction into the Copernican taxonomy of a kind which contains items belonging to three distinct Copernican kinds, viz., planet, sun and satellite. But such a kind cannot be introduced into the Copernican scheme, since it treats entities which behave according to different laws as belonging to a uniform natural kind. 12 My requirement that reference determination be preserved in translation ensures that reference to kind is preserved in translation. This in turn insures that no kind term may be translated into a taxonomic scheme which precludes the relevant kind (for details, see my 1994, 96-7). Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science72 ... lexicons are not ... the sorts of things that can be true or false. A lexicon or lexical structure is the long-term product of tribal experience in the natural and social worlds, but its logical status, like that of word-meanings in general, is that of convention. Each lexicon makes possible a corresponding form of life within which the truth or falsity of propositions may be both claimed and rationally justified, but the justification of lexicons or of lexical change can only be pragmatic. With the Aristotelian lexicon in place it does make sense to speak of the truth or falsity of Aristotelian assertions in which terms like 'force' or 'void' play an essential role, but the truth values arrived at need have no bearing on the truth or falsity of apparently similar assertions made with the Newtonian lexicon. (2000, 244) Thus, Kuhn was prepared to grant a role to truth within the context of a given lexicon. But it is a limited role. Neither is the truth of claims made in one lexicon relevant to that of claims made in another, nor may the concept of truth be applied to a lexicon itself. On the concept of truth which emerges, truth is internal to lexicon in the sense that a claim may be true in a lexicon without corresponding to reality. But Kuhn seems simply to have been mistaken in taking these anti-realist claims about truth and convergence to follow either from taxonomic incommensurability or from the nature of lexicons. It is a mistake to suppose that inability to translate between lexicons entails either that theories cannot converge on truth or that they may not be judged to do so. For, even if two theories are not fully intertranslatable, it remains possible for terms used by such theories to refer to some of the same things. To the extent that there is co-reference, such theories may assert true or false claims about a common domain of entities. Indeed, one theory may even assert a greater number of truths than the other about such entities. Nor does untranslatability preclude comparative judgement of truth. For a lexicon is a special vocabulary, embedded in a background natural language. Given this, it is possible to employ a fragment of the natural language as metalanguage with respect to alternative lexicons, which may be treated as object languages. Within such a metalanguage one may assert the truth or falsity of object-linguistic sentences from alternative lexicons. Therefore, it is at least in principle possible to arrive at a judgement of comparative closeness to truth of theories expressed in nonintertranslatable lexicons. As for the realist idea of truth, Kuhn appears to reject the idea of correspondence between theory and reality on the basis of the conventional status of lexicons. He is right, of course, about the conventionality of lexicons, since the words which make up a lexicon are conventionally associated with their meanings. But nothing follows from this about the nature of truth. Statements may be true because what they say corresponds to the way things stand in reality, regardless of the conventional status of lexicons. In any event, to assume that the status of a lexicon, in relation to truth, is entirely a matter of convention is to overlook the factual nature of claims which may be made on the basis of a lexicon. For it is possible to use the terms of a given lexicon to formulate substantive claims about the world regarding what kinds of things there are, as well as the properties that such things possess. To assume that such claims are lacking in truth-value is to assume that there is no fact of the matter relating to Incommensurability and the Language of Science 73 the structure or constitution of reality. But such an extreme metaphysical thesis is certainly not entailed by the conventionality of lexicons. My point, though, is not just that the anti-realist claims specifically based by Kuhn on taxonomic incommensurability are unfounded. Rather, at a more general level, the thesis of taxonomic incommensurability poses no threat to scientific realism. The phenomenon of conceptual change between theories is consistent with a commitment to the reality of theoretical entities, which is characteristic of scientific realism. Moreover, variation of the taxonomic schemes whereby theories classify the world does not by itself have any bearing on metaphysical matters. The translation failure between theories, to which it gives rise, is a semantic relation between alternative theories of the same world.13 4.9 Meta-incommensurability? In the last section, I mentioned fit with realism as an attraction of my approach. But not all readers may take such fit as a positive feature. Some will see it as a drawback. I will conclude this chapter by commenting on a suggestion that realism is in fact positively inimical to understanding incommensurability. The suggestion is due to Hoyningen-Huene, Oberheim and Andersen (1996) – HHOA, for short – in a critical study of my (1994) book. The main impetus behind the suggestion derives from the proposal by Paul Hoyningen-Huene (1993) of a novel interpretation of Kuhn's philosophy of science, which presents the latter within a neo-Kantian anti-realist framework. On this reading of Kuhn, the incommensurability thesis involves anti-realist assumptions, which problematize a realist critique of incommensurability. Hoyningen-Huene takes seriously Kuhn's talk of the world changing with change of paradigm. To make sense of such talk, he proposes a distinction between the variant phenomenal world of the scientist and the invariant world-in-itself (1993, 33-5). The phenomenal world is a world of appearances, jointly constituted by perceptual input from external reality and the conceptual contribution of an epistemic subject. By contrast, the world-in-itself is a fixed, independent reality, not subject to the influence of human conceptual activity. Thus, in the transition between paradigms it is the phenomenal world which varies, while the world-in-itself remains constant. The metaphysical divide between phenomenal and real corresponds to an epistemological divide between the knowable and the unknowable, reminiscent of Kant. On Hoyningen-Huene's interpretation of Kuhn, scientific knowledge is knowledge of a phenomenal world, since the world-in-itself is unknowable and epistemic access is limited to the phenomena. However, the chief novelty of such an interpretation lies not in its Kantian underpinning, but in the analysis it proposes of Kuhn's theory of the constitution of phenomenal worlds. Drawing mainly on Kuhn's account of empirical concept-acquisition in 'Second Thoughts on Paradigms' (1977, Ch. 12), Hoyningen-Huene argues that subjects enter 13 For more detailed discussion of the matters dealt with in this section, see my (1997, Ch. 4). Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science74 the phenomenal world of a scientific community as they acquire the community's conceptual system (1993, 70-111). A major part is played in concept-acquisition by ostension, whereby a subject is taught a set of similarity relations by direct exposure to members and non-members of a given similarity class or kind. For concepts at the more theoretical end of the spectrum, exposure to sets of similar problem situations takes the place of ostension. The network of similarity relations acquired by these processes is what provides the conceptual ordering of the phenomenal world, which the subject acquires on initiation into a given scientific community. Such a reading of Kuhn suggests that incommensurability is also to be taken in anti-realist vein, as a relation between theories about different phenomenal worlds rather than objective reality. That incommensurability is an essentially anti-realist idea is the basic assumption of HHOA in their (1996). HHOA write, for example, that for Kuhn and Feyerabend 'incommensurability is one form of expressing a critical attitude toward naive realism' (1996, 133). 'Realism', they say, 'is just the issue of the dispute' (1996, 135). By contrast, my approach makes 'realist assumptions that lead [me] to misconstrue Feyerabend and Kuhn's intentions in establishing the incommensurability thesis' (1996, 131). This results in misunderstanding, perhaps due to a 'metaincommensurability between the realist and the non-realist' (1996, 138), which involves meaning change, communication difficulty and circular argument (1996, 139-40). Thus, HHOA suggest, debate about incommensurability is vitiated by a meta-level incommensurability arising from 'the different metaphysical commitments realists and non-realists bring to the debate' (1996, 141). The claim of meta-level semantic variance is not, of course, implausible, as may be illustrated by comparison of my use of the term 'realism' with that of HHOA. By 'realism' I mean scientific realism, which is a doctrine typically committed to correspondence truth, reality of theoretical entities and advance on truth about mindindependent reality. In contrast, for HHOA 'realism' refers to the view that scientists' epistemic access extends to objective reality, rather than being limited to a changing phenomenal world, as it is for what they call 'non-realism' (cf. 1996, 139). While such discrepancy of use may create temporary confusion, the semantic adjustment required is routine: adopting a metalinguistic mode of discourse, one either explicates the meaning of a mentioned term or else specifies its reference, as I have just done. In short, I can see no basis in the semantic variation of philosophical terms for a crippling meta-level incommensurability between realist and non-realist. HHOA make much of the supposed intentions of Kuhn and Feyerabend. The incommensurability thesis was 'originally intended', they say, 'as a challenge to realism' (1996, 138). Now, it would undoubtedly be an important historical discovery, if it were shown that Kuhn and Feyerabend meant all along for incommensurability to be understood in the context of an anti-realist position of the kind described by Hoyningen-Huene.14 But such a discovery would not detract in the 14 While I do not propose to challenge the claim about Kuhn and Feyerabend's intentions in detail, I am quite doubtful of this claim. With respect to Kuhn, suffice to say that while Hoyningen-Huene's neo-Kantian interpretation makes sense of Kuhn's early talk of worldchange, it hardly follows that Kuhn intended such talk to have exactly that interpretation. As Incommensurability and the Language of Science 75 least from the philosophical importance of the semantic incommensurability thesis standardly discussed in the literature on the topic. For, as we have seen, semantic incommensurability spells trouble for scientific rationality and progress – to say nothing of the problems it raises for traditional views of methodology. Setting aside the question of authorial intent, the claim that incommensurable theories relate to different phenomenal worlds is a distinct thesis from the thesis of semantic incommensurability. Let us call it the Φ-incommensurability thesis. I will close this discussion by briefly outlining why, in my view, the Φ-incommensurability thesis fares no better than the more standard semantic version of the thesis. In the first place, while Hoyningen-Huene (1993) proposes a very plausible interpretation of Kuhn's metaphysics, the plausibility of the position thereby ascribed to Kuhn is itself somewhat doubtful. Indeed, the claim that there is a world-in-itself, which is itself unknowable, appears to be fundamentally incoherent. For how can it coherently be said of an unknowable reality that it is unknowable? In order to know that such a reality cannot be known, it must be possible to enter into some sort of epistemic relation with it, namely, the epistemic relation of knowing that it cannot be known. At the very least, this suggests that it is possible for a cognitive agent to enter into an intentional or referential relation with reality itself, on the basis of which it is possible to bear an epistemic relation to it. This, in turn, raises the question of why more extensive knowledge of reality itself should be precluded, given that it is possible to enter some epistemic relation to it.15 The problem may be brought into focus by consideration of Kuhnian anomalies. Failure of theory-data fit, characteristic of anomaly, requires that the world-in-itself be capable of impact on the phenomenal world of the scientist. To account for the existence of anomalies, Hoyningen-Huene speaks of the 'proprietary resistance of the world-in-itself' (1993, 270). 'The world-in-itself', he writes, 'offers resistance, resistance which makes it impossible to impose just any network of similarity relations' (1993, 269). Such resistance 'reveals itself when ... significant anomalies appear'; 'resistance of the world-in-itself must be a participant in the production of significant anomalies' (1993, 270). The trouble with such talk of resistance is that it is irreducibly causal.16 For in order for the world-in-itself to resist, and thereby induce change in phenomenal for Feyerabend, the claim about original intentions will prove difficult to reconcile with the sustained polemic against positivism in the name of realism, which Feyerabend conducted in the late 1950s and early 1960s. More generally, the claim about intentions misidentifies the opposition. At the time of the introduction of the incommensurability thesis in the early 1960s, logical empiricism was the target, not scientific realism. 15 An analogous problem arises for Kuhn, who writes that: 'Underlying all these processes of differentiation and change, there must, of course, be something permanent, fixed, and stable. But, like Kant's Ding an sich, it is ineffable, undescribable, undiscussible. Located outside of space and time, this Kantian source of stability is the whole from which have been fabricated both creatures and their niches, both the "internal" and the "external" worlds' (2000, 104). Yet for something that cannot be described, Kuhn manages to say rather a lot about it. 16 Indeed, this is evident from the causal idiom which Hoyningen-Huene adopts in discussing resistance: e.g., resistance 'makes itself felt', and it is 'a participant in the production Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science76 world, it must interact causally with the phenomenal world. Anomaly is caused by unpredicted behaviour of mind-independent entities, just as recalcitrant experience is caused by impact of such entities on our sensory receptors. But given the existence of causal relations between world-in-itself and phenomenal world, there is no basis on which to deny that there may be causally grounded referential relations linking scientists' linguistic tokenings to mind-independent objects. In short, HoyningenHuene would seem to have no reason to deny that terms of semantically variant theories may refer to common entities in the world-in-itself. Hoyningen-Huene is not, in any case, opposed in principle to intertheoretic coreference. Indeed, in his discussion of comparison of Φ-incommensurable theories, he explicitly allows for such co-reference (1993, 219-20). In some cases, such comparison proceeds on the basis of shared, semantically stable vocabulary: ... some of the empirical predictions of incommensurable theories can be compared immediately, namely those unaffected by the (merely local) incommensurability of the lexica. (1993, 219) For more complex cases, Hoyningen-Huene follows Kitcher in admitting theory comparison on the basis of the co-reference of tokens of semantically variant termtypes: ... there may be particular situations in which the referents of the new concepts may be identified by means of the concepts of the old lexicon. (1993, 220) In either case, comparison of the content of theories proceeds by means of common reference. But if terms from Φ-incommensurable theories co-refer across phenomenal worlds, they must refer to the same items in the world-in-itself. Given this, Hoyningen-Huene would appear to be committed to shared reference by the terms of Φ-incommensurable theories to common elements of an objective reality. Nor is there any reason for Hoyningen-Huene to demur. For why should he not allow co-reference to mind-independent objects across phenomenal worlds? After all, as Hoyningen-Huene notes, 'a phenomenal world is constituted both by the objectsided world-in-itself and by subject-sided moments' (1993, 36).17 Given this, the elements which constitute the phenomenal worlds of Φ-incommensurable theories must include items drawn from the same domain of objects in the world-in-itself.18 of significant anomalies' (1993, 270); we even 'feel the effects' of 'concrete properties of the world-in-itself' (1993, 271). The point is made explicitly by Hoyningen-Huene (1993, 34), where he talks of the 'causal efficacy' of the world in 'codetermin[ing] a given phenomenal world'. 17 The terms 'object-sided' and 'subject-sided' are introduced by Hoyningen-Huene (1993, 33ff) to distinguish between that which is independent of human cognition (e.g., objective reality) and that which derives from the epistemic subject (e.g., concepts, ideas). 18 The strain inherent in Hoyningen-Huene's position is particularly evident at this point. In an attempt to explain how incommensurable theories differ from theories which really are about different domains, he writes that: 'incommensurable theories, by contrast [with such theories], target roughly the same object domain, as far as the world-in-itself is concerned' (1993, 219). Such appeal to the world-in-itself to individuate a common object Incommensurability and the Language of Science 77 For where such phenomenal worlds differ is not in their objective constituents, but in the conceptual ordering overlaid by theories on such constituents. The upshot is that the phenomenal worlds of Φ-incommensurable theories contain phenomenal items, the constitutive parts of which include the same mind-independent elements of the world-in-itself. But, given that phenomena in different phenomenal worlds may be constituted of the very same objective elements, scientists working in such different worlds may nevertheless refer to the same objective entities. For, while they employ terms which refer to items in their phenomenal world, they thereby refer to the objective entities which partly constitute those phenomenal items. As a result, there may be co-reference across Φ-incommensurable theories to common entities in the world-in-itself. The possibility of co-reference across phenomenal worlds combines with the causal nature of resistance to yield an unexpected result. Given both co-reference and resistance, little substantive difference remains between Hoyningen-Huene's position and my own. Rather than speak of phenomenal worlds and an inaccessible world-in-itself, one may simply say that there is one world about which different folks believe different things. Far better to say, as I do, that the vocabulary of semantically variant theories may refer, by way of causal links, to the same mindindependent objects, though these same objects may be categorized in different ways by different theories. domain illegitimately trades on facts about the world-in-itself which Hoyningen-Huene otherwise treats as inaccessible. Quick to correct the slip, however, he adds: 'Such talk of "object domains" obviously can't be taken literally, as this notion properly applies only to regions of the phenomenal world' (1993, 219, fn. 119). The problem is, of course, that there is no way to individuate a common domain for theories without appeal to a shared set of objects, such as may be provided by the world-in-itself. This page intentionally left blank Chapter 5 Induction and Natural Kinds 5.1 Introduction In this chapter, I present a novel approach to the problem of induction. The approach derives from the basic realist intuition that it is the objective structure of the world that underpins the success of our epistemic practices. Crudely put, it is because the world is the way it is that we are right to use induction to form beliefs about the future. I seek, in short, to rehabilitate the principle of the uniformity of nature, and to employ the principle of uniformity to answer Hume's problem of induction. The approach I propose is based on three distinct philosophical positions. The first position is the position of scientific realism, which holds that the aim of science, towards which a great deal of progress has been made, is to discover the truth about both observable and unobservable features of an objective, mind-independent reality. The second is scientific essentialism, the view that the objective reality investigated by science is populated by mind-independent natural kinds of things, which are characterized as such by the fundamental, intrinsic causal powers which they possess. The third position is epistemic naturalism, which treats epistemological questions about normative justification as broadly empirical questions about how best to pursue inquiry into the objective, natural world which we inhabit. At the most general level, my strategy is to employ an ontological theory about the constituents of reality to solve an epistemological problem about the normative justification of inductive inference. In particular, I wish to appeal to the existence of natural kinds, whose members have inbuilt, causal powers, to explain why our use of inductive inference is epistemically justified. In outline, my argument will run as follows. Induction is justified because there are, in reality, natural kinds of things. These natural kinds are characterized by sets of properties which all members of a natural kind possess essentially. Thus, when one makes a correct inductive inference about unobserved members of a natural kind, what makes it true that unobserved members of the kind have the properties we predict them to have is that they are members of a natural kind all of whose members possess those properties essentially. 5.2 The Problem of Induction I understand the problem of induction in a straightforward fashion. The problem is how to justify induction. Two options at first suggest themselves. Either induction may be justified on the basis of logic, or on the basis of experience. Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science80 If 'logic' means deductive logic, there can be no logical justification of induction, since inductive inference is deductively invalid. As for experience, if it is said that induction is justified because induction has worked in the past, then induction is employed to support induction, which is circular. Here one might appeal to a principle of the uniformity of nature, which says that induction succeeds because nature is uniform. The reason induction successfully predicts the future is that, since nature is uniform, the future resembles the past. Because of future resemblance to the past, past regularities will continue in the future. I think that such an appeal to the uniformity of nature is basically on the right track. The trouble is, of course, that appeal to the uniformity of nature seems itself to depend on induction. For, to argue that nature is uniform, one must infer from past uniformity to future uniformity, which is itself an inductive inference from past to future. Given this, appeal to the uniformity of nature proceeds in a circle, since it presupposes induction. In this chapter I sketch a scientific essentialist response to this standard objection to the appeal to the uniformity of nature. 5.3 Kornblith's Epistemic Naturalism The approach I propose is an extension of the approach taken by Hilary Kornblith in his book, Inductive Inference and its Natural Ground (1993a). Kornblith proposes an account of the success of inductive inference, which is based on a naturalized epistemology and a realist metaphysics of natural kinds. He distinguishes between two questions: 'What is the world that we may know it?', and 'What are we that we may know the world?' (1993a, 2). In answer to the first question, he argues that: ... natural kinds make inductive knowledge of the world possible because the clustering of properties characteristic of natural kinds makes inferences from the presence of some of these properties to the presence of others reliable. (1993a, 7) As for what it is about us that enables us to know the world, Kornblith argues that evolution equips the human mind with conceptual structures and inferential strategies which make it sensitive to the natural kind structure of the world. Thus, there is what he describes as a 'dovetail' fit between mind and world, in virtue of which inductive knowledge is possible. Kornblith appeals to the success of science to argue both that there is a fit between mind and world, and that natural kinds ensure the reliability of induction. I will consider only the second argument. Kornblith favours an account of natural kinds, due to Richard Boyd (1991), according to which natural kinds are homeostatic property clusters. On this view, according to Kornblith, A natural kind is a cluster of properties which, when realized together in the same substance, work to maintain and reinforce each other, even in the face of changes in the environment. (1993a, 35) Induction and Natural Kinds 81 Kornblith claims that because the properties which define natural kinds 'reside in homeostatic relationships, we may reliably infer the presence of some of these properties from the presence of others' (1993a, 36). Moreover, were it not for the fact that only certain groups of properties are capable of sustaining such homeostatic relationships, 'the presence of any set of properties would be fully compatible with the presence of any other' (1993a, 36). According to Kornblith, the best explanation of the success of induction in science is that there exist real natural kinds whose existence ensures the reliability of induction: If the scientific categories of mature sciences did not correspond, at least approximately, to real kinds in nature, but instead merely grouped objects together on the basis of salient observable properties which somehow answer to our interests, it would be utterly miraculous that inductions using these scientific categories tend to issue in accurate predictions. Inductive inferences can only work, short of divine intervention, if there is something in nature binding together the properties which we use to identify kinds. Our inductive inferences in science have worked remarkably well, and, moreover, we have succeeded in identifying the ways in which the observable properties which draw kinds to our attention are bound together in nature. In light of these successes, we can hardly go on to doubt the existence of the very kinds which serve to explain how such successes were even possible. (1993a, 41-2) It is noteworthy here that, instead of arguing for the reliability of induction, Kornblith takes such reliability as something given that is in need of explanation. His claim is that the best explanation of the reliability of induction is that there exist real kinds in nature, which our inductive inferences latch on to. It is evident, then, that Kornblith does not seek to justify induction in the sense of giving a non-circular basis for expecting induction to continue to be reliable in the future. Rather, he assumes that induction is reliable in order to argue that natural kinds must exist, since their existence is the best explanation of its reliability. In other words, he argues for the existence of natural kinds on the basis of the reliability of induction, rather than arguing for the rationality of induction, given their existence. In arguing this way, Kornblith's project shows its true Quinean colours. For, in simply assuming the reliability of induction, and thereby failing to confront inductive scepticism, Kornblith's approach is informed both by what he at one point describes as a 'robust antiskepticism' (1993a, 4-5) and by an approach to epistemological problems which derives from Quinean naturalism. While I am broadly sympathetic both to anti-scepticism and epistemic naturalism, I wish to depart from Kornblith by confronting inductive scepticism somewhat more directly. In particular, I wish to argue against the inductive sceptic that it is the existence of real kinds in nature which justifies our use of induction. 5.4 Ellis's Scientific Essentialism On the view I propose, we may employ the principle of the uniformity of nature to justify induction. But I do not understand the principle of uniformity in the usual way. Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science82 Customary formulations of the principle of uniformity involve claims to the effect that the future will resemble the past, or that things which have always occurred together previously will continue to do so. But rather than understand the uniformity of nature as any sort of blanket resemblance of past to future, I understand it in terms of the law-governed behaviour of objects. More specifically, I take the view that the laws of nature are at base the inbuilt causal powers of things which belong to natural kinds. This view, which has been developed in detail by Brian Ellis, is the position of scientific essentialism. I will introduce the leading ideas of Ellis's essentialist theory of laws of nature, and then explain how this theory accounts for the uniformity which underlies induction. Ellis presents his theory of laws of nature in opposition to what he sees as the dominant metaphysic of contemporary Anglo-American philosophy, which he characterizes as both mechanist and Humean. According to this metaphysical view, matter is essentially passive or inert. The behaviour of material objects is, however, governed by laws of nature, which constitute nothing more than empirical regularities which hold universally. These laws of nature are contingent regularities, which are entirely distinct from the nature or intrinsic properties of the material objects themselves. Hence, the very same set of objects which exist in our world might exist completely unchanged in some other possible world that is governed by an entirely different set of natural laws. By contrast with the mechanist or Humean metaphysic, Ellis argues that the fundamental properties of material objects are not passive but active. They have, he says, 'the nature of powers, capacities and propensities' (1999, 19; cf. 2001, 106). Such powers, capacities and propensities cannot be reduced to more basic inactive or categorical properties of things. Rather, they constitute the irreducible dispositions of things to behave in certain ways under given circumstances. The view that the behaviour of material objects is due to irreducible causal powers leads Ellis to reject the Humean account of laws as mere empirical regularities. For, given that objects possess real causal powers, the laws of nature must be something more than the mere regular behaviour of inert matter. Rather, the laws of nature, for Ellis, are descriptions of the behavioural patterns of things, which are made true by the possession by those things of real, inbuilt causal powers. Given that the most basic properties of things are irreducible causal powers, it follows that the laws of nature are necessarily true. For if material things may not lose their fundamental properties without ceasing to be what they are, the possession of those properties is crucial to their identity. But since laws of nature depend on the basic causal powers of things, in any world in which the things exist the laws describing the causal powers must be true. For they would not be those things if they did not possess those powers. As for natural kinds, Ellis argues that the fundamental kinds of things are characterized as such by the intrinsic causal powers of things belonging to those kinds, which constitute the Lockean real essences of such kinds (1999, 22; 2001, 31). These powers are, at base, the irreducible dispositional properties of the individual members of natural kinds, and it is the behavioural manifestations of these dispositions which are described by the laws of nature which govern causal processes and interactions (cf. 1999, 21-2; 2001, 127-9). Because it is the intrinsic Induction and Natural Kinds 83 causal powers or dispositional properties which constitute the real essences of natural kinds, possession of such powers or properties is crucial to the identity of natural kinds. In particular, if a thing is to be a member of a given natural kind, then, necessarily, it must possess the set of intrinsic powers and dispositions which are essential to that kind. If it does not do so, then it cannot be a member of that kind. 5.5 An Essentialist Response to Hume As we saw before, Kornblith argues that the best explanation of the success of scientific induction is the existence of natural kinds, which possess homeostatic property clusters, the co-occurrence of which assures the reliability of induction. This argument takes the success of induction as a given fact, and seeks to provide an explanation for this success. As such, Kornblith fails to address Hume's sceptical challenge, which is to show that we are rationally justified in expecting induction to succeed in the future. As hinted previously, I wish to argue that induction is justified because nature is uniform. I do not understand the principle of the uniformity of nature as any sort of blanket assertion that the future resembles the past. Rather, I see it as grounded in the properties of individual substances. More specifically, nature is uniform in the sense that it contains natural kinds, all of whose members possess a common set of essential properties. We may think of the claim that nature is uniform as the claim that the world is governed by laws of nature. This is because the essential properties of things are, in fact, the fundamental causal capacities of members of natural kinds. So, when we discover that observed phenomena are governed by laws of nature, this is because we are discovering natural uniformities which are grounded in the basic causal powers of things which belong to natural kinds. My response to Hume, then, is that we are rational to employ induction when we form our beliefs about the future because nature is, in fact, uniform. It is uniform in the sense that the fundamental kinds of things which exist are natural kinds of things, which possess essential sets of properties. Because all members of a kind possess the same essential properties, unobserved members of a kind will possess the same properties as members of the kind which have already been observed. This is why, when we infer that an unobserved object will have a property which observed objects of the same kind have, we turn out to be right. For having such a property is just part of what it is to be an object of the same kind as the other objects. Thus, what makes it rational to make inductive predictions about objects which belong to kinds is simply that it is part of the nature of objects of a given kind to have certain properties. So, as Kornblith rightly argues, it is nature that grounds inductive inference. 5.6 Objections and Replies I do not claim that the approach to the problem of induction that I have proposed here constitutes the final solution of the problem. However, I do suggest that it is Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science84 a promising approach to the problem which sits well with a number of influential contemporary philosophical tendencies. In particular, the approach should appeal to philosophers who are otherwise attracted to the combination of scientific realism, essentialism and epistemic naturalism, on which the current approach is based. As presented here, the approach remains simplified and incomplete. I will conclude by addressing a number of objections which might be raised against the position that I have outlined here. Objection one: The claim that induction is justified by the existence of natural kinds must ultimately run in a circle. For the claim rests on the doctrine of scientific essentialism, which is itself based on an inference to the best explanation. More specifically, scientific essentialism is based on the argument that the existence of natural kinds with essential properties is the best explanation of the success of science. But inference to the best explanation is itself a form of inductive inference. Thus, in the end, the appeal to natural kinds to justify induction must use induction to justify induction. Reply: Let us grant that inference to the best explanation is a form of induction, at least for the sake of argument.1 Even so, it still does not follow that the proposed justification of induction is circular. For the inference to the best explanation, on which scientific essentialism is based, is a quite distinct argument from the inductive inferences which the existence of natural kinds serves to ground. This point may be best seen if we make the simplifying assumption that the sort of inductive inference at issue is low-level enumerative induction about the properties of observable kinds of things. Such an inference has the form: All observed As have been Bs. Therefore all As are Bs. Such an enumerative inference proceeds from a premise about the features of observed As to a conclusion about the features of unobserved Bs. As such, it contrasts sharply with the argument for scientific essentialism, which might be cast as follows: Science is successful. The existence of natural kinds is the best explanation of the success of science. Therefore, there are natural kinds. An argument of this kind is an argument for the existence of natural kinds which proceeds from the claim that their existence is the best explanation of the success of science. Thus, at the very least, it may be said that the present defence of induction 1 Why only for the sake of argument? Because it is not, in fact, clear that inference to the best explanation is best construed as a form of inductive inference. One option, due to Musgrave (1988, 238; 1999, 234) is to construe inference to the best explanation as a deductive enthymeme which tacitly rests on the epistemological principle that it is reasonable to tentatively accept the best explanation as true (see the discussion in 8.3). Another option, suggested by Armstrong (1995, 48ff), is to construe inductive inference itself as a form of inference to the best explanation (cf. Armstrong, 1983, 52-3). (See also Harman 1965.) Induction and Natural Kinds 85 is not circular in the sense of using enumerative induction to justify enumerative induction. Objection two: The reply to the first objection only has the effect of prolonging an inevitable admission of defeat. For even if it is enumerative induction that is defended on the basis of an inference to the best explanation of the success of science, it is still ultimately induction that is being used to justify induction. And that is circular. Reply: Here appeal may be made to a point that has been made in the context of inductive arguments on behalf of the reliability of induction. David Papineau, for example, points out that the circularity involved in using induction to argue that induction is reliable is rule circularity, rather than premise circularity (Papineau, 1992). The conclusion of the inductive defence of induction (viz., that induction is reliable) does not occur as a premise in the argument, though the rule (viz., induction) defended by the argument is employed in the defence of that very rule. While premise circular arguments are viciously circular, it is difficult to see how to avoid use of rule circular arguments at this level of generality. Indeed, it is not clear what is objectionable about them. After all, similar considerations reveal deductive arguments in support of deduction to be circular in the sense of rule-circularity. Objection three: The admission of rule circularity leads back to the problem of induction, which the present approach is meant to address. For the present approach will carry no weight against the sceptic unless the sceptic is prepared to grant the force of inference to best explanation. But, given the inductive character of inference to best explanation (assumed in reply to Objection One), this is to assume precisely what the sceptic challenges, namely, the legitimacy of induction. (For this objection, see Lange, 2004, 199.) Reply: From the point of view of the epistemic naturalist, the sceptic sets the epistemological bar too high (see Section 1.4). A reply that satisfies the sceptic is not therefore to be expected on behalf of the present approach. The approach is a naturalistic one which treats epistemic normativity in an empirical fashion. It takes seriously the epistemic claims of empirical science, and adopts the best explanation of the success of such science. In its use of inference to best explanation, the approach employs a form of inference that is routinely employed in both commonsense and scientific contexts. It therefore appeals to no higher tribunal than the epistemic standards employed in common sense and scientific inquiry. While this may not satisfy the sceptic, the naturalist's point is just that the sceptic's appeal to standards over and above those of common sense and science is itself to be rejected as inappropriate. Objection four: The approach rests on a fundamental mistake. It attempts to solve an epistemological problem on the basis of ontological assumptions. But ontological assumptions may not be employed to solve an epistemological problem, since epistemological problems are prior to ontological ones. No assumptions may justifiably be made about the nature of reality until it has been shown that we know both that there is an external world and that we are able to have knowledge about the nature of such a world. Hence, to appeal to ontological considerations to resolve an epistemological problem is to invert the proper order of philosophical argumentation. Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science86 Reply: It is, in the first place, implausible to suppose that epistemology may proceed entirely in the absence of ontological assumptions. Epistemological reflection on the nature of knowledge must include reflection on what knowledge is in general. It must include reflection on the nature of knowers or epistemic agents, as well as on the kinds of things which may be the object of knowledge. But, given that appeal must be made to both knowers and things that may be known, it would seem that no epistemology can proceed in the complete absence of ontological assumptions. Admittedly, the present account of the justification of inductive inference does deploy a rather rich array of ontological assumptions about such things as natural kinds and essential properties. One might think that such assumptions go well beyond what is needed to address an epistemological problem. However, it is not clear that there is any need to reduce ontological assumptions merely for the sake of minimizing such assumptions. If the correct metaphysical picture is one which includes natural kinds and essential properties, and the existence of such kinds and properties has implications for inductive inference, then there is no reason not to include such assumptions when one turns to matters epistemological. Objection five: Induction cannot be grounded in natural kinds, for there are sound inductive inferences about artefacts and other non-natural kinds. One may infer inductively about cars, for example. Thus, in the past, moving into the path of a rapidly moving car has been dangerous, hence in the future moving into the path of a rapidly moving car will also be dangerous. Reply: It is true that good inductive inferences are not restricted to natural kinds. One may make good inductive inferences about artefacts such as cars. What is not clear is whether the artefactual nature of the items concerned is relevant to the success of inductions about such things. What is dangerous about moving into the path of a moving car is not just that one may be struck by the car, but that one might get struck by an object with a large mass moving at a high velocity.2 The risks involved are not dissimilar to those involved in being run down by a charging buffalo, or struck by a boulder rolling down a hillside or a falling meteorite. Thus, it may very well be the case that one is only able to make reliable inductive inferences about artefacts and other non-natural kinds, to the extent that such inferences turn on facts about them which obtain in virtue of their being members of natural kinds.3 Objection six: The account only applies to the essential properties of natural kinds. Yet not all inductive inferences concern the essential properties of kinds. There might be inductive inferences which range over the accidental properties of kinds of things. Hence, the account mistakenly assumes that inductive inference is restricted to the essential properties of things. 2 Anjan Chakravartty objects that this appeals to a "tailor made" kind, namely the kind "heavy, fast objects" (2007,169 ). But I would be happy instead to countenance mass, and perhaps velocity, as natural kind properties, rather than hypostatizing such a made-up kind. 3 T.E. Wilkerson makes the point well: '... because there are no very specific real essences that make rubbish rubbish, or tables tables, I cannot even in principle make sound inductive projections about rubbish as such or tables as such' (Wilkerson, 1995, 32). Induction and Natural Kinds 87 Reply: I conjecture that a crucial distinction between good and bad induction hinges on the distinction between essential and accidental properties. For the most part, good inductive inferences project essential properties, whereas bad ones project accidental properties. One might perhaps distinguish three cases of possible relevance here: (i) inductive inferences which range over essential properties, (ii) inductive inferences which range over accidental properties, (iii) inductive inferences which range over accidental properties that depend on essential properties. Inductions of type (i) tend to succeed, those of type (ii) tend to fail, and those of type (iii) may succeed if the relevant link between essential and accidental properties obtains. Objection seven: The account is, perhaps, plausible for induction in the physical sciences, where the fundamental particles constitute natural kinds. But there are no natural kinds in biology. Yet surely there is sound inductive inference in the life sciences.4 Reply: Any account of scientific induction must apply to induction in the life sciences, as well as in the physical sciences. But the present account need not address this issue. What the objection really does is to raise the issue of reduction. If biological kinds can be reduced to physical kinds, then inductive inferences which range over biological kinds will hold because biological kinds reduce to physical kinds. But if biological kinds fail to reduce to physical kinds, then inductions about biological kinds will hold in virtue of the essential properties of such kinds. In either case, there will be sound inductive inference about biological kinds. 4 Alternatively, the objection might be put as follows: there is a profound difference between kinds in the life sciences and kinds in physics. The present account applies to kinds in the physical sciences. Yet any account of induction must also apply to kinds in the life sciences. This page intentionally left blank Chapter 6 Methodological Pluralism, Normative Naturalism and the Realist Aim of Science 6.1 Introduction There are two chief tasks which confront the philosophy of scientific method. The first task is to specify the methodology which serves as the objective ground for scientific theory appraisal and acceptance. The second task is to explain how application of this methodology leads to advance toward the aim(s) of science. In other words, the goal of the theory of method is to provide an integrated explanation of both rational scientific theory choice and scientific progress.1 Theorists of scientific method may be broadly divided into two main camps: monists and pluralists.2 Traditional methodologists tend to fall into the monist camp. They see science as characterized by a single, universally applicable method, invariant throughout the history of science and the various fields of scientific study. The two leading versions of monism are inductivism, which takes scientific theories to be grounded in inductive inference from observed data, and Popperian falsificationism, which treats the method of science as the ruthless attempt to refute conjectural hypotheses which scientists propose to explain observed phenomena. 1 This view of the task of the theory of method accords, for example, with the two ingredients of a 'rational model of scientific change' identified by Newton-Smith, viz., specification of the goal of science and of principles of theory comparison (Newton-Smith, 1981, 4). The demand for an integrated response to both tasks is well-exemplified by Lakatos's plea for a 'whiff of inductivism' in Popper's treatment of the relation between corroboration and verisimilitude (Lakatos, 1974, 256). 2 The distinction between monist and pluralist theories of method is somewhat crude, since there are also mixed positions. John Worrall, for instance, holds that there is an invariant core of methodological principles, which remains fixed throughout change of lower level principles (Worrall, 1988). The issue of methodological variance masks further complexity, as well. For, in principle, one might argue that at any one time science is governed by a single method, though this method may undergo historical variation. Conversely, one might argue that there is a plurality of methods which are historically invariant. Hence, a full taxonomy of methodological views would include variationist and invariationist versions of both pluralism and monism, in addition to mixed positions. Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science90 By contrast, recent methodological pluralists argue, against the idea of a fixed method, in favour of a plurality of methodological rules governing theory evaluation.3 Such methodological rules may vary from time to time, as well as field to field, within science. New rules may be introduced and old ones discarded. Rules may be modified, as they undergo refinement in the course of scientific practice. They may be applied in different ways in different fields of science, and different scientists may interpret the same rules in different ways. Moreover, as there is always a plurality of rules, different scientists may choose to emphasize different rules in the evaluation of alternative theories. On the resulting pluralist conception of methodology, science is not characterized by a single invariant method, but by a set of evaluative rules to which scientists appeal in the context of theory appraisal.4 As for the aim of science, a number of alternative approaches may be distinguished here as well. According to scientific realism, the aim of science is to arrive at true, explanatory theories of both observable and unobservable aspects of the world, and the best explanation of the success of science is that considerable headway has been made toward that aim. For the empiricist, by contrast, the aim of science is restricted to producing predictively accurate theories which are empirically well-supported by the observed phenomena. Conventionalist philosophers of science, who regard theories as classificatory schemes which impose order on experience, take the main aim of science to be to produce an economical ordering of experience. Philosophers 3 The best-known pluralists are Feyerabend (1975), Kuhn (1977, Ch. 13) and Laudan (1984). Elements of a pluralist methodology may be found in the work of such authors as Chalmers (1982), Ellis (1990), Lacey (1997), Lycan (1988, Ch. 7), McMullin (1987), NewtonSmith (1981), Quine and Ullian (1970) and Thagard (1978). I defend a pluralist stance in the later chapters of my (1997). 4 Terminological note: some comment is necessary regarding my use of the term 'methodological rule' and related expressions. A variety of terms (e.g., 'criteria', 'norm', 'principle', 'rule', 'standard', 'value') is found in the methodological literature. While there are slight differences of meaning and usage, there is no substantive difference between such terms of relevance to the issues dealt with in this chapter. All such terms denote methodologically relevant factors to which appeal is made in theory appraisal and justification of theory choice. The terms might therefore be used interchangeably. However, to reduce scope for confusion I will tend instead to speak either of criteria or of rules, restricting use of related terms to contexts in which another term seems especially apt. I will understand the relation between criteria and rules to be roughly as follows: a criterion is a methodologically desirable feature of a theory (e.g., accuracy, coherence, simplicity); rules are prescriptions typically (but not necessarily) stated in linguistic form (e.g., 'avoid ad hoc hypotheses', 'employ double blind tests'). In general, criteria (e.g., simplicity) may be stated in an analogous form as rules (e.g., 'prefer simple hypotheses'). It is also worth noting that for present purposes no decision need be made as to whether rules or criteria are best construed as necessary and/or sufficient conditions of theory acceptance, or merely as factors of relevance to theory appraisal. Hence, I ignore as irrelevant in the present context the otherwise important distinction between rules which dictate theory choice and values which merely guide such choice (cf. Kuhn, 1977, 331). Methodological Pluralism, Normative Naturalism and the Realist Aim of Science 91 of a pragmatist bent emphasize prediction and control of the environment, in the service of successful achievement of practical goals.5 In this chapter, I will focus on the relationship between methodological pluralism and scientific realism. In particular, I will consider the question of whether sustained application of a plurality of methodological rules conduces to realization of the scientific realist aim of truth. This question, which raises issues of both an epistemological and a metaphysical nature, is a special instance of the more general demand for an integrated account of rational theory choice and scientific progress. It is, in my view, the most urgent question facing the scientific realist who seeks to derive insights about scientific methodology from the pluralist approach found in the work of T.S. Kuhn and P.K. Feyerabend. The chapter is organized as follows. In Section 6.2, I discuss the threat of relativism which is raised by methodological pluralism. In Section 6.3, I show that Laudan's normative naturalist metamethodology removes the threat of relativism. In Section 6.4, I propose that normative naturalism be incorporated within the framework of scientific realism. Section 6.5 presents objections due to Laudan against the realist aim of truth, which threaten the incorporation of normative naturalism within a realist framework. In Sections 6.6 and 6.7, I defend the realist aim of truth against these objections. Finally, I argue in Section 6.8 that use of a plurality of methodological rules promotes the realist aim of science. 6.2 Pluralism and Relativism The main impetus for a pluralist conception of method derives from the historical philosophy of science notably championed by Kuhn and Feyerabend. By contrast with earlier monist orthodoxy, advocates of the historical approach argued that science should be conceived as a developmental process, which takes place in a variety of historical circumstances using a variety of methods, rather than the implementation of an invariant, universal method. Kuhn, who initially argued that standards of theory appraisal vary with scientific paradigm, later came to argue that science is governed by a set of cognitive values (e.g., accuracy, breadth, simplicity, coherence, fertility) which guide theory choice. Feyerabend, for his part, argued not only that all methodological rules are routinely violated in the course of scientific practice, but that there are often good grounds for the violation of such rules. Some writers suppose that the historical approach of Kuhn and Feyerabend entails wholesale rejection of scientific method. However, I prefer to draw a more positive moral. What is to be rejected, if one adopts the historical approach, is not method as such, but a monistic theory of method. Ample scope remains to develop a more adequate account of method within the framework of the historical approach. In particular, what emerges from the historical approach is a pluralist conception of 5 The relationship between aims and methods is not straightforward. There is scope for a variety of different accounts of such relationships. For example, in contrast with other theories of method, the conventionalist elevates the aim of overall theoretical simplicity into the paramount methodological principle of science. On the other hand, realists and empiricists may agree on the nature of method but disagree on the aims served by the method. Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science92 method, on which the principles of method are not unique and invariant, but multiple and subject to variation in the history of science. I have elsewhere attempted to sketch the main outlines of a pluralist theory of method (1997, Ch. 7). For present purposes, it suffices to characterize the pluralist account by means of the following five theses, which represent central themes of the historical school: 1. Multiple rules: scientists utilize a variety of methodological rules in the evaluation of theories and in rational choice between alternative theories.6 2. Methodological variation: the methodological rules utilized by scientists undergo change and revision in the advance of science.7 3. Conflict of rules: there may be conflict between different methodological rules in application to particular theories.8 4. Defeasibility: the methodological rules, taken individually rather than as a whole, are defeasible.9 5. Non-algorithmic rationality: rational choice between theories is not governed by an algorithmic decision procedure which selects a unique theory from among a pool of competing theories.10 These five theses constitute the basic elements of a pluralist conception of methodology, according to which scientific theory appraisal is governed by an evolving set of methodological rules. Because the rules may conflict in practice, and are individually defeasible, appeal to the system of rules need not uniquely determine the outcome of theory choice. Accordingly, scientists who place differential weight on various rules may come thereby to decide in favour of opposing theories. 6 See, e.g., Ellis (1990, 244-59), Kuhn (1977, 321-2), Lacey (1997, 31-3), Laudan (1984, 33ff; 1996, 18), Lycan (1988, 129-30), McMullin (1987, 53-4) and Newton-Smith (1981, 226-32). 7 See, e.g., Feyerabend (1978, 33-9, 98), Kuhn (1970a, 103-10, 148; 1977, 335-6), Chalmers (1990, 20) and Laudan (1984, 39-40, 57-9, 81-2; 1996, 17). 8 E.g., simplicity may favour one theory, coherence or breadth another (cf. Kuhn, 1977, 323-4; Thagard, 1978, 92). For qualification of the view that there may be conflict between rules, see Laudan (1996, 93-4). 9 That methodological rules are defeasible is, of course, the main thrust of Feyerabend's opening argument in his (1975). However, the defeasibility of all rules, taken singly, does not entail that all such rules may be concurrently violated. Hence, while any particular rule may be violated in appropriate circumstances, it is rationally unacceptable to transgress the entire system of methodological rules. While perhaps not entirely explicit in Kuhn, the inviolability in general of the set of rules is in the spirit of Kuhn (1977, Ch. 13). For related discussion, see Laudan (1996, 101-5.). 10 Explicit rejection of an algorithm of theory choice occurs in Kuhn (1970a, 200; 1977, 326), and Laudan (1984, 5-6; 1996, 17-9). Chalmers tacitly denies an algorithm of theory choice in his discussion of Feyerabend's critique of universal methodological rules (1982, 135). Brown develops a non-algorithmic conception of rationality in his (1988). Explicit formulations aside, however, rejection of an algorithm of theory choice is virtually the defining thesis of the historical school. Methodological Pluralism, Normative Naturalism and the Realist Aim of Science 93 It is precisely the scope that methodological pluralism affords for rationally grounded disagreement between scientists that makes it controversial. For it brings it into tension with methodological monist accounts which restrict rational divergence of opinion to that allowed by compliance with a single method. The opposition between monist and pluralist accounts of method is at the root of much recent concern with epistemological relativism in the philosophy of science. For, on the one hand, it is widely held that a monistic theory of method avoids relativism by grounding theory choice in a shared, invariant method.11 On the other hand, it is also widely assumed that pluralism entails relativism, since the existence of a plurality of methods would provide scientists with rational justification for the acceptance of opposing theories on the basis of alternative sets of rules. However, it is a mistake to suppose that rational disagreement due to variation of methodological rules necessarily leads to relativism. For that would be to suppose that mere difference in the rules employed by scientists entails relativism. And that in turn would be to suppose that mere compliance with operative rules suffices for rational justification. Yet the latter assumption is surely mistaken. It overlooks the crucial distinction between rules which provide rational justification and those which do not. Not all methodological rules that may be proposed or employed are capable of providing rational justification. Some provide no justification at all. Given the distinction between rules which provide justification and those which fail to do so, relativism is not entailed by pluralism, since mere satisfaction of a methodological rule does not suffice for rational justification. Yet, while a plurality of methodological rules may not entail relativism, the challenge of relativism now arises in a novel form. For the distinction between rules which provide justification and those which do not is a distinction that is itself in need of defence. After all, how can one rule be shown to provide greater rational justification than another? The relativist challenge, therefore, is to show how one methodological rule may be epistemically superior to another. 6.3 Naturalism and Relativism The question of how to assess the epistemic merits of a methodological rule is a metamethodological question about the nature of epistemic normativity. One of the most promising approaches to this issue is a form of epistemic naturalism which grounds normativity in the facts of inquiry.12 This approach involves two key 11 As such, however, monism need not be immune to the challenge of relativism, since the question may always be raised of the justification of the monist's purportedly invariant method, as against another possible method. For relevant discussion, see Laudan (1996, Ch. 9) and Worrall (1988; 1989), as well as my (1997, Ch. 10). 12 Epistemic naturalism is not, of course, the only approach to epistemic normativity. Among the main alternatives to naturalism in metamethodology, it is worth noting the conventionalism of Popper (1959), the intuitionism of Lakatos (1978) and early Laudan (1977), and reflective equilibrium models which trace back to Goodman (1955). For further analysis of the range of metamethodological approaches, see Nola (1987; 1999) and Nola and Sankey (2000; 2007). Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science94 elements. On the one hand, it treats methodological rules as empirical hypotheses about how to pursue inquiry, which may be evaluated in light of empirical evidence. On the other hand, such rules are conceived as instruments or tools of inquiry, the epistemic function of which is to advance cognitive ends. The two elements are combined by grounding evaluation of methodological rules in empirical evidence about performance of epistemic function. As a special case of this naturalist approach to epistemic normativity, I turn to the normative naturalist metamethodology of Larry Laudan.13 Laudan is critical of the scientific realist view defended here that the aim of science is advance on truth. In the sections to follow I will explore the possibility of incorporating Laudan's normative naturalism within a scientific realist framework. However, in this section my concern is with the normative naturalist account of epistemic normativity as a response to relativism. As a naturalist, Laudan treats metamethodology as an empirical discipline continuous with natural science. In order to ground methodology empirically, it must be possible to treat methodological rules as normative claims about the conduct of inquiry which are capable of empirical evaluation. Accordingly, Laudan proposes that methodological rules be construed in instrumental fashion as recommendations of means of realizing desired cognitive ends. This enables such rules to be formulated as conditional claims with the following hypothetical imperative form: If one wishes to attain aim A, then one ought to employ method M. As an example of how a methodological rule may be cast in hypothetical form, Laudan offers the following formulation of Popper's rule against ad hoc hypotheses: [I]f one wants to develop theories which are very risky, then one ought to avoid ad hoc hypotheses. (Laudan, 1996, 133) Such an analysis permits the recommendation of a methodological rule to be based on historical evidence. For it reveals how such rules may be supported by claims of statistical covariance between past use of method and achievement of results. Where use of a method has historically proven to be a reliable means of achieving a given end, the method may be recommended on the basis of past performance as means to that end. In this manner, empirical evidence from the history of science may serve as the normative ground of a methodological rule.14 13 See Laudan (1996, Ch. 7). While Laudan's normative naturalism is well-suited for the present purpose of defeating the relativist, it is but one instance of a widespread form of epistemic naturalism. Similar views of both the nature and evaluation of methodological rules may be found in Rescher (1977) and Stich (1990). The idea that methodological rules are tools of inquiry has deep pragmatist roots, which may be traced back, for example, to Dewey's comparison of methods of inquiry with methods of farming (Dewey, 1986, 107-8). Closely related views occur as well in Giere (1989) and Kornblith (1993b). 14 The role here attributed to cognitive ends by Laudan raises the spectre of a relativism due to variation of ends (cf. Psillos, 1997, 707). However, Laudan's hypothetical imperative account of rules needs to be understood in the context of his remarks on rational adjudication of cognitive goals in his (1984, 50ff). Laudan there adumbrates a number of means of evaluating Methodological Pluralism, Normative Naturalism and the Realist Aim of Science 95 The normative naturalist analysis of the justificatory basis of methodological rules enables the distinction to be sustained between rules which provide epistemic support and ones that do not. For if use of one rule reliably conduces to a given aim and use of another fails to, then it provides greater epistemic support than the other. But if one rule may have greater epistemic merit than another, the challenge of relativism may be met. For where there may be variation in the epistemic credentials of rules, rational justification does not reduce to mere compliance with operative methodological rules. Hence, one theory may enjoy a higher degree of support than another, despite a plurality of methodological rules. 6.4 Scientific Realism and Normative Naturalism Laudan is a well-known critic of the realist view that truth is the aim of science. Accordingly, Laudan develops normative naturalism within the context of an axiology that allows a multiplicity of scientific aims, rather than being limited to the realist aim of truth. However, in contrast with Laudan, I seek to combine methodological pluralism with scientific realism precisely by incorporating normative naturalism into a realist framework. In so doing, I wish to preserve the normative naturalist response to epistemic relativism while providing an integrated account of both the methodology of science and its progress. The core of the normative naturalist analysis of methodological rules is that rules may be construed as hypothetical imperatives linking epistemic means and ends. This enables such rules to be treated instrumentally as cognitive tools, which may be utilized to advance the aims of science. Such an instrumental analysis of methodological rules leaves the nature of the epistemic or cognitive aims unspecified. As a critic of realism, Laudan rejects the realist aim of truth, for reasons to be considered in the next section. However, Laudan does not offer any one, unique alternative to truth as the correct analysis of the constitutive aims of science. Rather, he argues that scientists' cognitive aims vary historically as part of the continual process of adjustment and correction of theories, methods and aims which characterizes scientific inquiry.15 Because the instrumental analysis of rules is neutral with respect to the nature and number of aims that scientists may pursue, I hold it to be possible to set the analysis within a realist framework. In particular, if we treat truth as the paramount aim of science, we may then suppose that the cognitive aim that is to be fulfilled by a proposed rule is advance on the truth about the world.16 On such a realist construal cognitive aims, e.g., by showing an aim to be utopian, or in conflict with practice. It should be allowed, therefore, that Laudan seeks to avoid relativism due to variation of cognitive aims. Whether he succeeds is another matter. 15 As examples of cognitive aims that have been pursued by scientists, Laudan mentions infallible knowledge, high probability, simplicity, elegance, as well as Newton's attempt to reveal divine agency at work within the physical world (cf. Laudan, 1984, 51ff; 1996, 129). 16 To say that science aims for truth is not to be distinguished from saying that it aims for truth about the world. Nor would I distinguish it from saying that the aim of science is knowledge, since knowledge implies truth. Nor either would I demur if a realist were to argue Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science96 of normative naturalism, a methodological rule conveys epistemic warrant to the extent that fulfillment of the rule conduces to the aim of truth. As such, normative naturalism emerges as a species of reliabilist epistemology once it is placed within the context of scientific realism. For it is reliability in leading to the truth which is then the basis of the epistemic warrant of methodological rules.17 Where the realist sees truth as the aim of science, Laudan allows that a multiplicity of aims may be pursued by scientists. However, in speaking of truth as the aim of science, the realist need not deny that scientists pursue multiple aims. Instead, the realist need only conceive truth as the paramount aim that constitutes the ultimate goal of science. The various other cognitive aims which may be pursued by scientists may be understood as subordinate aims which subserve the overriding realist aim of truth. This permits the realist to preserve an additional aspect of Laudan's analysis of the epistemic warrant of methodological rules. Where Laudan holds that the warrant of a rule consists in reliable promotion of cognitive ends, the realist need not insist that the specified aim of the rule be truth. Rather, provided that the specified aim subserves the overriding goal of truth, a rule which immediately conduces to a lower level aim may still convey epistemic warrant.18 On the assumption that employment of methodological rules conduces to truth, or to aims that subserve truth, the present proposal offers an integrated account of both the methodology and progress of science. However, as I now turn to Laudan's objections to realism, we are about to see that this assumption is in need of defence. 6.5 Laudan and the Aim of Truth Laudan has argued against scientific realism on a number of occasions. Perhaps most notable is his attack on convergent epistemological realism, in which he attempts to sever the explanatory connections drawn by realists between reference, truth and the success of science (1984, Ch. 5). Here, however, I focus on two specific objections that the aim of science is explanation, as Ellis (1985) does, since seeking true explanations is part of seeking the truth. (However, I would demur at Ellis's suggestion that we renounce the correspondence theory of truth in favour of a pragmatist concept thereof.) 17 More specifically, combining the instrumental analysis of rules with the aim of truth yields a form of method, rather than process, reliabilism (cf. Goldman, 1986, 93-5). However, I do not wish to endorse a pure reliabilism on which warrant is strictly identified with truth conduciveness. Such an account is subject to counterexamples, such as Lehrer's case of Mr. Truetemp, who reliably forms true beliefs about the temperature due to a device implanted in his brain, but is ignorant of both the reliability of his beliefs and of their cause (Lehrer, 1990, 163). My view is roughly that reliability is a crucial part of the warrant of methodological rules, but that use of rules must meet additional constraints, such as being deliberately employed by a scientist on the basis of awareness of such rules. 18 As an example of a methodological rule which immediately advances a lowerorder aim, and indirectly advances the aim of truth, consider Popper's rule against ad hoc hypotheses. Avoidance of ad hoc hypotheses serves to increase the falsifiability of theories, which thereby subserves the aim of truth, since the ruthless testing of falsifiable theories is held by Popper to conduce, fallibly, to truth, or at any rate to greater verisimilitude. Methodological Pluralism, Normative Naturalism and the Realist Aim of Science 97 raised by Laudan against the realist aim of truth. These objections pose a serious threat to my proposal to set the normative naturalist account of epistemic warrant within the context of a realist account of the aim of science. Laudan's objections turn crucially on what he takes to be the transcendent nature of truth. He assumes that we can tell neither that a theory is true nor that progress toward truth has occurred. Given this initial assumption, Laudan develops two separate arguments that truth cannot serve as a suitable aim for science. He argues, first, that it is not rational to pursue a goal which cannot recognizably be attained or even approached. Second, he rejects transcendent aims such as truth as unsuited to a naturalistic treatment of the methodology of science. Before presenting these two objections, I will examine Laudan's view of the transcendence of truth. For Laudan, a transcendent aim or property is one to which we have no epistemic access. He describes truth as a 'transcendental property', and contrasts it with an 'immanent' goal such as 'problem-solving effectiveness', which '(unlike truth) is not intrinsically transcendent and hence closed to epistemic access' (1996, 78). The distinction between immanent and transcendent states corresponds more or less to that between what can be empirically shown to be the case and what cannot. Laudan's grounds for taking truth as transcendent appear to be twofold. On the one hand, he contrasts transcendent aims with the 'detectable or observable properties' (1996, 261, fn. 19) that provide evidence of methodological means/ends relationships, implying thereby that a transcendent state is one that cannot be directly observed to obtain. On the other hand, he claims that 'knowledge of a theory's truth is radically transcendent', since 'the most we can hope to "know" about [a theory ...] is that [it is] false' and 'we are never in a position to be reasonably confident that a theory is true' (1996, 194-5).19 The epistemically transcendent therefore emerges as that which transcends the empirical either by being unobservable or by being based on an ampliative inference that extends beyond the observed data. Accordingly, that is what I shall mean when I speak in what follows of the transcendence of truth or theoretical truth. Laudan accords truthlikeness a status similar to truth. Since the truth of a theory transcends our capacity for knowledge, we can be in no position to judge how closely an actual theory approximates the truth (Laudan, 1996, 78). The problem is aggravated by lack of a clear conception of approximate truth. On the Popperian account of verisimilitude, for example, a theory may have high verisimilitude and yet display little or no empirical success (Laudan, 1984, 118). More generally, Laudan 19 Laudan credits the point that we cannot know a theory to be true to Hume and Popper (1996, 194). However, he also notes (personal communication) that his point is intended to be stronger than simply saying that theories cannot be shown to be true. He refers to the latter as 'Humean underdetermination' (1996, 31). By contrast, his point about the transcendence of truth appears to be a strong version of what he describes as 'ampliative underdetermination' (1996, 43ff). For while Laudan denies that ampliative rules of inference underdetermine rational theory choice, his claim that theories cannot be reasonably held true seems to imply that such rules underdetermine rational belief in the truth of theory. The grounds for this thesis would appear to be either a version of the 'pessimistic meta-induction' (cf. 1977, 126) or his related critique of the explanatory connections drawn by realists between scientific success and truth (1984, Ch. 5). Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science98 claims that there is no known means to measure or estimate how close a theory is to the truth. Consequently, truthlikeness transcends our capacity to know it every bit as much as does truth. Given the transcendence of truth and truthlikeness, Laudan objects to the role accorded such notions within realist accounts of scientific progress. He develops his first objection in the context of a discussion of the rational evaluation of cognitive goals in his (1984, 50-5). According to Laudan, a crucial consideration in evaluating a goal is whether it may be realized. He takes it as a requirement of rationality that there be grounds to suppose it possible to achieve the goals one pursues (1984, 51). Goals which are unable to be achieved may be rejected as 'utopian'. Laudan distinguishes three ways in which goals may be utopian: goals that can be shown to be unrealizable are 'demonstrably utopian'; ones that are overly vague or imprecise are 'semantically utopian'; and goals which cannot be shown to obtain are 'epistemically utopian'. Laudan's objection to truth as a cognitive goal is that it is epistemically utopian. As a prime instance of an epistemically utopian goal, Laudan takes the 'goal of building up a body of true theories' (1984, 53). He allows that such a goal may not be demonstrably utopian, and that the concept of truth admits of clear analysis. However, he asks us to consider the case in which one 'has no idea whatever how to determine whether any theory actually has the property of being true' (1984, 51). (Of course, as we have just seen, Laudan takes this to be our actual epistemic situation, given the transcendence of truth.) In such a case, where value is placed on an unrecognizable property, Laudan says that 'such a value could evidently not be operationalized' (1984, 53), meaning by the latter that no procedure is known which would lead to its attainment (cf. 1984, 51). He then concludes that: if we cannot ascertain when a proposed goal state has been achieved and when it has not, then we cannot possibly embark on a rationally grounded set of actions to achieve or promote that goal. In the absence of a criterion for detecting when a goal has been realized, or is coming closer to realization, the goal cannot be rationally propounded even if the goal itself is both clearly defined and otherwise highly desirable. (1984, 53) Given that Laudan takes truth and truthlikeness to be transcendent, I suggest he is to be understood as proposing the following argument against the realist aim of truth: (a) it is not rational to pursue an aim which may neither be recognized to obtain nor to be close to obtaining; (b) the goal of true theories may neither be recognized to obtain nor to be close to obtaining; therefore (c) it is not rational to pursue the goal of true theories.20 While Laudan's first objection concerns rational pursuit of truth, his second objection derives from his naturalistic view of method. In particular, Laudan argues that transcendent goals such as truth are shown to be illegitimate by the normative 20 It might be objected that Laudan states the argument in conditional form, e.g. 'if we cannot ascertain when a proposed goal state has been achieved'. Hence, it is not to be interpreted as an argument against realism, but merely as an example of a possible epistemically utopian aim. However, since, as we have seen, Laudan holds truth to be transcendent, he is committed to dismissing it as an epistemically utopian aim, which cannot be rationally pursued. Methodological Pluralism, Normative Naturalism and the Realist Aim of Science 99 naturalist analysis of methodological rules. As we saw in Section 6.3, the normative naturalist construes methodological rules in instrumental fashion as hypothetical imperatives which relate cognitive means and ends. Such an analysis enables methodological rules to be evaluated empirically with regard to their effectiveness in promoting specified aims. According to Laudan, the instrumental conception of method places a premium on the realizability of aims. Aims which cannot be achieved (i.e., utopian aims) are unsustainable, given the goal-directed nature of methodology. More specifically, Laudan claims that the instrumental conception of method leads to rigorous constraints on the legitimate aims of science: any proposed aims for science [must] be such that we have good reasons to believe them to be realizable; for absent that realizability there will be no means to their realization and thus no prescriptive epistemology that they can sustain ... (1996, 157-8) Such constraints have direct bearing on the realist aim of truth: one of the corollaries of the instrumental analysis is that those ends that lack appropriate means for their realization become highly suspect. Traditional epistemologists who ... hanker after true or highly probable theories as the aim of science find themselves more than a little hard pressed to identify methods that conduce to those ends. Accordingly, normative naturalism suggests that unabashedly realist aims for scientific inquiry are less than optimal. (1996, 179) Thus, the demand of realizability entails the rejection of realist aims as unacceptable for science. The reason, as with the previous objection, turns on the transcendent nature of truth: if one has adopted a transcendental aim, or one which otherwise has the character that one can never tell when the aim has been realized and when it has not, then we would no longer be able to say that [a] methodological rule asserts connections between detectable or observable properties. I believe that such aims are entirely inappropriate for science, since there can never be evidence that such aims are being realized, and thus we can never be warrantedly in a position to certify that science is making progress with respect to them. (1996, 261, fn. 19) In short, because methodological rules derive their epistemic support from underlying empirical means/end connections, there may be no evidence capable of showing that a rule promotes a transcendent aim, since no empirical evidence may show that a transcendent aim has been reached or is close to being reached. Based on the lack of possible evidence for advance on truth, Laudan concludes that the realist aim of truth fails to be a legitimate goal for science. While it is not entirely clear how the various strands of Laudan's thoughts on this topic fit together, I propose the following reconstruction of his argument: (a) the methods of science are instruments for the realization of the aims of science; (b) given this, a legitimate aim of science must be such that it may be realized and there may be evidence of its realization; (c) because truth is transcendent there may be no evidence that the end of truth is realized; hence (d) truth is not a legitimate aim of science. Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science100 In sum, Laudan rejects the realist aim of truth on the grounds that it is neither rational to pursue the truth nor is the truth a legitimate aim of science. Both of these objections turn on the basic assumption that truth is transcendent. Let us now see if these objections may be met. 6.6 Is Truth Transcendent? The two objections canvassed in the preceding section stem from the common premise that theoretical truth is transcendent. In this section I will challenge this premise by arguing that it is possible to have theoretical knowledge. In the next section, I will address the negative consequences which Laudan derives from the premise about the rationality and legitimacy of pursuit of truth. As we have seen, Laudan regards theoretical truth as transcendent in the sense that such truth transcends our capacity to know it. However, it is by no means evident that theoretical truth is unknowable, as Laudan claims it to be. That this is so may be readily shown on the basis of the standard analysis of knowledge as justified true belief. On such an analysis, a knowing subject S knows a theoretical proposition P if and only if three conditions are fulfilled: 1. S believes that P is true, 2. S's belief that P is true is rationally justified, 3. P is true. Given such an analysis of knowledge, there is no apparent reason in principle why a theoretical proposition may not be known to be true. For in order to know that P is true, it suffices that there be good grounds for the belief that P and that P in fact be true. More specifically, let us suppose that a scientist believes a theoretical proposition P (e.g., 'Electrons have negative charge') to be true. On the assumption that it is possible for a theoretical proposition to correctly report an actually existing state of affairs (e.g., that electrons in fact have negative charge), then it is possible for P to be true. Provided, moreover, that P satisfies appropriate methodological standards, there may be good rational grounds for the belief that P is true. Given both these assumptions, and the standard analysis of knowledge, it follows that P may be known to be true, for one may rationally believe P and P may be true. Hence, theoretical knowledge is possible. Against this, it might be objected that one may have a justified true belief that P and yet be unable to tell that P is true. The objection arises because P is a theoretical proposition whose truth is not directly evident. For, while P may well be true, there is no direct means of knowing that this is so. At most, one may have access to the evidence which justifies the belief that P. But there is no access to the truth of P that is independent of the evidence for P. Thus, even if P is true, and justifiably believed to be so, one may fail to be in a position to know that it is true. Given this, the fact that Methodological Pluralism, Normative Naturalism and the Realist Aim of Science 101 the conditions specified for knowledge may be fulfilled in the case of a theoretical proposition does not show that theoretical knowledge is possible.21 This objection rests on a confusion between conditions for the possession of knowledge and criteria for the recognition of knowledge. The justified true belief analysis of knowledge provides a set of conditions, satisfaction of which qualifies a subject as having knowledge. It does not provide criteria which enable a subject to recognize that those conditions obtain, and is thereby in possession of knowledge. Thus, it is possible for one to know that P without being able to recognize that one knows that P or that P is true. In short, one may have theoretical knowledge even in the absence of direct epistemic access to the truth of the theoretical proposition that is known.22 Such absence of direct access leads to a further potential objection to theoretical knowledge. For if there are no criteria which enable recognition of theoretical truth, then such truth may not be shown with certainty to obtain. One might then object that theoretical knowledge is not certain knowledge, and so not strictly knowledge at all. Such an objection is suggested by Laudan's previously quoted discussion of the 'epistemically utopian' character of truth, where he says that the value of truth cannot be 'operationalized' and that there is no 'criterion for detecting when a goal [e.g., truth] has been realized' (1984, 53). However, I am loath to attribute this objection to Laudan, since he is on record as supporting fallibilism (e.g., 1984, 51-2; 1996, 213), and indeed dismisses 'apodictic certainty' as a transcendent property on a par with truth (1996, 78).23 In any event, it is a commonplace of the philosophy of science that scientific theories are constantly subject to revision with the advance of science, so that any adequate conception of scientific knowledge must allow that one may have knowledge without certainty. There remains an additional basis on which to object to the possibility of theoretical knowledge. Laudan might object to the present use of the justified true 21 The present objection to the standard analysis differs from Gettier-style objections. Gettier cases show that the standard analysis fails to provide a set of jointly sufficient conditions for knowledge. By contrast, the present objection turns on lack of direct epistemic access to the truth of theoretical propositions. Incidentally, while Gettier cases show that further conditions are needed to obtain sufficient conditions for knowledge, the conditions specified by the standard analysis remain individually necessary and thereby constitute an approximately correct analysis of the concept of knowledge. Given this, it is unproblematic to treat the standard analysis as an adequate working definition of knowledge. 22 This implies the falsity of the KK-thesis, i.e., the thesis that in order to know one must know that one knows. I take the KK-thesis to be false, since one may know without being aware that one knows, or even knowing what it is to know. 23 However, it is not completely clear what Laudan takes to follow from fallibilism with respect the concept of knowledge. He writes at one point that 'the unambiguous implication of fallibilism is that there is no difference between knowledge and opinion: within a fallibilist framework, scientific belief turns out to be just a species of the genus opinion' (1996, 213). This might be taken to suggest that knowledge has no greater warrant than any other form of belief. However, since, in the context in question, certainty is the crucial factor which distinguishes opinion from knowledge, knowledge might still be justified true belief and yet belong to the genus opinion. Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science102 belief analysis of knowledge on the basis that there may be no grounds which could rationally justify a scientist in believing that a theoretical proposition is true.24 In other words, he might deny that the grounds which provide rational support for a theoretical proposition provide support for the truth of the proposition. At first blush, this may seem an implausible objection, since, as has been noted by a number of authors, rational grounds for belief that P are ipso facto rational grounds for the belief that P is true.25 For if one has grounds for the belief that P, then, by semantic ascent, one has grounds for the belief that P is true. Hence, one cannot sever rational belief from rational belief in truth in the manner that the objection requires. There is, however, a consistent line of argument available to Laudan here. On the instrumental analysis of rules, the warrant of a methodological rule relates to the end served by the rule. Hence, since there may be no evidence that a rule conduces to theoretical truth, satisfaction of a rule may provide no warrant for belief in such truth. Rather, satisfaction of a rule provides warrant only with respect to the end served by the rule. Thus, when the aim served by a rule is that of predictive reliability, for example, satisfaction of the rule by a theory licenses belief that the theory is predictively reliable, not that it is true. Given that justification always relates to the end served by a rule, it is therefore consistent for Laudan to hold that there may be rational grounds for a theory that are not grounds for believing that the theory is true. However, while it may be consistently denied that a warrant need be a warrant for truth, the resulting position is unsustainable for several reasons. For one thing, it leads to an implausible restriction on the epistemic states of scientists. For if there may be no warrant for belief in theoretical truth, no scientist who accepts any theory as true may do so rationally, no matter how weighty the evidence or how well-established the theory. For another thing, it rests on an unduly narrow empiricist epistemology.26 For if there may be no warrant for belief in the truth of any proposition that transcends empirical evidence, then all inferential or indirect knowledge is precluded due to lack of rationally justified belief. Finally, denial that methodological criteria provide warrant for truth removes the rationale for scientists' use of a plurality of such criteria in the evaluation of theories. Scientists who accept a theory which satisfies multiple criteria (e.g., predictive accuracy, explanatory breadth, simplicity, coherence) may do so because they interpret such joint satisfaction of criteria as indicating the likely truth of the theory. But in the absence of such a unifying aim served by criteria, scientists are deprived of a rationale for conjoint use of multiple criteria. I conclude that there is every reason to suppose that theoretical knowledge is possible. Neither our lack of direct or infallible epistemic access to theoretical truth, 24 That this is indeed Laudan's likely objection is suggested by my footnote 19 (above). 25 The point is made specifically with regard to Laudan by Psillos (1997, 712). Lycan makes the point in a more general context in response to the claim that one may have evidence for P but not evidence for the truth of P (Lycan, 1988, 137). 26 The point that Laudan's epistemology is unduly empiricist has been made by a number of authors, including most relevantly (Nola, 1999, 10). It should be noted that Laudan explicitly denies the charge (1996, 160). But his denial is difficult to reconcile with his dismissal of theoretical truth as a 'transcendent' aim. Methodological Pluralism, Normative Naturalism and the Realist Aim of Science 103 nor the possibility of a warrant that is not a warrant for truth, entails that we are unable to have theoretical knowledge. It may not be possible to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that a theoretical proposition is true. But that does not mean that such truth radically transcends our epistemic capacities, as Laudan suggests. 6.7 The Pursuit of Truth In this section I will consider Laudan's two objections to truth as the aim of science. As we saw in Section 6.5, Laudan argues that truth is epistemically utopian, hence unable to serve as an object of rational pursuit. Nor is truth admissible as an aim of science, since there may be no evidence of its realization. Since both objections depend on the transcendence of theoretical truth, they are in large part undermined by the possibility of theoretical knowledge for which I argued in the previous section. However, it remains to show this in detail. If theoretical knowledge may be acquired by methods employed by scientists, it would seem natural to suppose that acquisition of such knowledge is a legitimate goal for science. Before further scrutinizing this assumption, however, I will briefly consider the consequences of denying that theoretical knowledge is possible. One might think that if theoretical truth or knowledge were wholly unattainable, there could be no rationale for their pursuit. For it is futile to attempt the impossible. However, as Rescher notes against Laudan, there are circumstances in which it is rational to pursue an unattainable ideal (Rescher, 1982, 227). Moral perfection may be beyond our reach, for example, but striving for such perfection may make one a better person. Similarly, truth may function in the manner of a 'regulative ideal' for science. For, while it may be impossible for science to achieve perfection, the idea of a perfectly true theory may serve to maintain the self-corrective, evolutionary character of the scientific enterprise. In addition, the pursuit of an unattainable ideal may yield indirect benefits which are themselves otherwise unattainable. For example, it is arguably the case that the ideal of a comprehensive, true theory of the world exerts pressure on science to develop systematic theories with real explanatory breadth. Indeed, such lower level values as explanatory breadth would seem to have little independent rationale in the absence of a demand for a comprehensive, true theory. The possibility of a regulative role and indirect benefits secures for truth a legitimate place in science even if it is unattainable by scientific means. However, if, as argued in the previous section, theoretical knowledge is possible, then truth is in fact an attainable end that lies within the reach of science. This would seem to vindicate theoretical truth as a legitimate goal of rational scientific inquiry. For, on the one hand, if truth is a realizable aim of science, it is possible for an agent to rationally pursue truth as a goal. On the other hand, the attainability of truth means that it satisfies the requirement of the instrumental conception of method that only achievable aims be allowed into science. But Laudan's principal objection is not that theoretical truth is inappropriate as an aim because it cannot be attained. His main point is that we would be unable to recognize truth even if we were to attain it. Given this, it is not rational for an agent Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science104 to pursue truth, since there are no criteria which would enable one to recognize attainment of the aim or that it is close to attainment. Similarly, it is because there may be no evidence indicating that a method yields truth that truth is excluded as an admissible aim of science. Laudan's emphasis on the absence of criteria for the recognition of truth may suggest that he endorses the requirement, rejected in the previous section, that one must be able to recognize that one satisfies the conditions of knowledge in order to possess knowledge. But, in fact, Laudan's claim is not that ability to recognize truth is a requirement of knowledge. Rather, his claim is that it must be possible for one to recognize the fulfillment of an aim in order to rationally pursue that aim. Thus, his objection to the rational pursuit of truth is not that we are unable to possess theoretical knowledge because we cannot recognize truth. It is that we are unable to recognize whether an action furthers an aim, where the aim happens to be truth. Laudan therefore takes ability to recognize achievement of an aim as a requirement for the rational pursuit of that aim, not as a requirement for knowledge. But, while Laudan may only require recognition criteria for rational pursuit rather than knowledge, similar considerations apply in either case. For Laudan's denial that there are criteria for the recognition of truth is only plausible on the assumption that such criteria must provide an infallible indication of truth. It may readily be conceded that there are no infallible criteria of truth. But it by no means follows that there are no fallible criteria for the recognition of truth. While satisfaction of methodological criteria cannot decisively prove a theory to be true, it may provide good grounds for believing a theory to be true or close to truth. There may well be no criteria which enable a rational agent to know with certainty that they are advancing on truth or have attained it. Nevertheless, such an agent may justifiably believe that a theory which better satisfies the criteria than a rival theory is likelier to be true, or closer to truth, than the alternative theory. Given this, it is entirely possible for an agent to rationally pursue the goal of truth, since satisfaction of methodological criteria may provide a fallible indication of advance on that aim. Similar remarks apply to Laudan's objection that truth is an inadmissible aim for science, since there may be no evidence that truth is realized by any method. As we saw in Section 6.5, the objection derives from Laudan's instrumental conception of method. What motivates the objection is the thought that if a method functions in the manner of an instrument, then it is to be assessed by how well it brings about the end for which it is proposed. If there is no evidence that it performs its function, then it may not be proposed as a means to that end. The question is whether it is fair to suppose that there may be no evidence that a method leads to truth. It is perhaps true that there may be no direct empirical evidence that use of a method leads to theoretical truth. But there may surely be indirect evidence that a method conduces to such truth. For where the lower level ends served by a method are ends which themselves may be taken to subserve the aim of truth, the success of the method in conducing to such lower level ends may be taken as evidence that the methods conduce to truth. Just as there may be no infallible criteria for the recognition of truth, there may be no infallible evidence that use of a method serves truth. But that is only to say that there is no certain knowledge in theoretical matters. Methodological Pluralism, Normative Naturalism and the Realist Aim of Science 105 Finally, a brief remark is in order regarding the basis of the objection. The objection is based on the instrumental conception of method. This gives rise to the demand for realizability. But no independent argument is given for the instrumental conception, other than that it permits empirical evaluation of methodological rules within a naturalist framework. This is admittedly a powerful point in its favour. But, if the instrumental conception really does entail that truth is an unacceptable aim for science, this may equally well be regarded as a mark against the instrumental conception. In other words, the fact that the instrumental conception excludes truth as an allowable aim may be taken to count against the instrumental conception rather than against the aim of truth. However, since I remain unconvinced that the prospects of finding a place for truth within normative naturalism are as dim as Laudan claims, I see no need at this juncture to put the instrumental conception in question. Besides, as will be seen in the next chapter, I hold that the instrumental conception of method may in fact be put to realist use as part of a realist theory of method. 6.8 Conclusion In this chapter I have sought to show that a normative naturalist account of epistemic warrant may be combined with a scientific realist conception of the aim of science. On the general picture which emerges, the naturalistic basis of a non-relativist methodological pluralism may be sustained within a scientific realist framework. As such, the present approach affords a unified account of the method of science and its progress. However, since methods may cohere with aims without promoting them, it remains to show that use of a plurality of methodological criteria advances the realist aim of truth. Some philosophers deny that there is a problem relating method to truth. Internal realists define truth as maximal (or ideal) satisfaction of methodological criteria. For internalists, advance on truth is the inevitable result of the use of criteria. Truth is not something separate from method to which its use may or may not give rise. Rather, for internalists, continued application of methodological criteria produces theories which increasingly satisfy the criteria. The result is advance on truth, since truth simply is maximal satisfaction of the criteria. As a realist, I hold that the objective world in no way depends on thought. Therefore I do not equate truth with satisfaction of methodological criteria.27 The relation between method and truth is not an internal or conceptual relation. It is an external or synthetic relation. The sole question is whether the relation is necessary or contingent. In Chapter 5, I defended the view that the epistemic warrant of certain enumerative inductions rests on the essential properties of natural kinds of things. But while I hold that metaphysical necessity grounds the reliability of certain basic kinds of inductive inference, I do not see an analogous role for metaphysical necessity in the case of theory appraisal since the latter involves factors beyond those involved in basic induction. I take the relation between method and truth to be a contingent 27 My reason is that epistemic theories of truth such as internal realism entail the minddependence of reality (see Devitt and Sterelny, 1987, 195-6 and Musgrave, 1999, Ch. 10). The matter is discussed at some length in 7.6 and 8.2. Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science106 relation between epistemic means and ends, which may be known in the a posteriori manner suggested by Laudan's naturalist metamethodology. However, as Laudan notes, no direct empirical evidence may show that use of a methodological rule yields theoretical truth. This raises the question why use of criteria of theory appraisal should be taken to promote the goal of truth. In the absence of direct evidence linking method to truth, the grounds for such a link may be at best abductive ones. More specifically, the realist claim that application of a plurality of methodological criteria leads to progress toward truth rests on an inference to the best explanation of scientific success. What best explains why scientific theories increasingly exhibit the epistemic virtues highlighted by methodological criteria is that such theories are increasingly close approximations to the truth. In arguing this way, I seek to extend the argument of McMullin (1987) that we are warranted in taking a theory to be 'approximately true' if it exhibits 'a high degree of explanatory success' (1987, 59). McMullin takes the explanatory success of a theory to be determined by how well it satisfies the various methodological criteria of theory appraisal (1987, 54). Where a theory exhibits a high degree of explanatory success, as indicated by satisfaction of the criteria, there are good grounds to take the general kinds of entities postulated by the theory to really exist, as well as what the theory says about such entities to be broadly correct, though open to further development (1987, 59-60). I wish to amplify McMullin's argument in two minor respects. First, I do not wish to say simply that the high degree of explanatory success of a theory, as measured by methodological criteria, permits us to infer abductively to the approximate truth of the theory. I wish, in addition, to say that where a theory possesses an impressive range of theoretical virtues (e.g., accuracy, breadth, simplicity), the best explanation of why the theory possesses such an impressive range of virtues is that it is approximately true. Second, I wish to extend McMullin's argument by explicitly applying it to the advance of science. For where a sequence of theories increasingly satisfies the methodological criteria, the best explanation is that the sequence of theories is advancing on truth. In both these ways, then, the reason for taking continued use of methodological criteria to yield advance on truth is that this best explains why our theories increasingly satisfy such criteria. It is in this sense that what is needed to bridge the gap between method and truth is an abductive argument about how best to explain scientific success. Echoing Lakatos on Popper, one might call this 'a plea for a whiff of abduction'. Such a whiff of abduction may seem to beg the question against Laudan's critique of the realist's success argument (1984, Ch. 5). Rebuttal of that critique is, of course, beyond the scope of this chapter, but I will briefly indicate why no question is begged by the current proposal. In the first place, Laudan's critique does not impugn all use of the success argument, but only the ambitious attempt to forge a wholesale link between reference, truth and the success of science. Application on a case-bycase basis, restricted for example to entities postulated to fill specific causal roles, may escape Laudan's strictures on the success argument. In the second place, the current abduction does not proceed at the object-level from the widespread success of science to a general realist attitude toward theories, but is a metamethodological Methodological Pluralism, Normative Naturalism and the Realist Aim of Science 107 inference to an explanation of why a theory manifests a range of methodologically desirable features. In sum, on the view I propose the realist aim of science is added to normative naturalism by an inference to the best explanation which augments lower level cognitive ends with the aim of truth. As I will argue in the next chapter (7.9-7.10), satisfaction of methodological rules provides a sound but fallible indication that a theory is on the road to truth, and may even be there already. The point is not that satisfaction of methodological rules constitutes truth. The point, rather, is that satisfaction of methodological rules is best explained by truth. To deny the reliability of the rules of method is to leave the success of theories arrived at by such rules entirely unexplained. It is to treat such success as a matter of sheer luck. This page intentionally left blank Chapter 7 Realism, Method and Truth 7.1 Introduction Rational scientific inquiry is governed by the rules of scientific method. Adherence to the rules of scientific method warrants the rational acceptance of experimental results and scientific theory. Scientists who accept results or theories licensed by the rules of method do so on a rational basis. Thus, rational justification in science is closely connected with scientific method. But while there is a close relation between method and rational justification, substantive questions remain about the relation between method and truth. For example, are scientists whom method licenses in accepting a theory or experimental result thereby licensed in accepting the theory or result as true? Does use of scientific method lead scientists to discover the truth about the world? Questions such as these are questions about the truth-conduciveness of method. While they relate directly to the epistemic status of method, they bear indirectly on the nature of rational justification. For if use of method conduces to truth, then, given the relation between method and justification, the warrant provided by method is warrant with respect to truth. Questions about the relation between method and truth divide scientific realism from anti-realism in the philosophy of science. On the one side, scientific realists take the aim of science to be discovery of the truth about the world. Realists defend the view that employment of the methods of science promotes the aim of truth. On the other side, anti-realists in the philosophy of science deny the connection that realists see between method and truth. Anti-realists typically agree that method underwrites the rationality of science. Some anti-realists deny that there are good grounds for taking use of method to lead to the realist aim of truth. Other anti-realists object to the realist conception of truth, and deny that method promotes truth in the sense intended by realists. In the present context, the key question that divides scientific realism from antirealism about science is whether employment of method advances the realist aim of truth. This is a question about whether a proposed means for the achievement of a given end is in fact a means conducive to that end. More specifically, it is the question of whether good grounds may be given for taking the methods of science to promote the realist aim of truth. My aim in this chapter is to defend the realist response to this question by arguing that there are strong abductive grounds for taking the methods of science to be truthconducive. Before I turn to that task, let me first address the relation between method and rational justification in somewhat greater detail. Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science110 7.2 Scientific Method and Rational Justification in Science I assume a traditional view of the relation between scientific method and rational justification in science. On such a view, there is a close connection between scientific method and the rational acceptance of scientific theories and experimental results. In particular, compliance by a scientist with the rules of scientific method rationally justifies the scientist's acceptance of a theory or result. A scientist whose acceptance of a theory or result fails to comply with the rules of method thereby fails to accept the theory or result on a rational basis. However, while I assume a traditional view of the relation between method and rational justification, I do not assume a traditional view of the nature of method itself. The traditional view of method is a monistic view, according to which there is a single, historically invariant method, the use of which is the characteristic feature that distinguishes science from non-science. By contrast with the traditional monistic view, I adopt a position of methodological pluralism according to which there is a set of methodological rules which scientists employ in the evaluation of alternative theories and the acceptance of results. These rules are subject to variation in the history of science, and different rules may be employed in different fields of science. Given the plurality of rules, scientists may diverge in the rules they employ, with the result that there may be rational disagreement among scientists on matters of fact and choice of theory. On such a pluralist view of science, while no single method is characteristic of science, the sciences are generally characterized by possession of a set of methodological rules which inform the factual and theoretical decisions of scientists.1 Much remains to be said about the relation between method and rational justification. However, for present purposes, I will assume that the relation between method and rational justification is straightforward. The purpose of this chapter is to examine the relation between method and truth. Even if we assume that compliance with the rules of method justifies acceptance of a theory or result, the question remains of whether the theory or result is to be accepted as true. There is an epistemic gap between method and truth. My aim is to bridge this gap. 7.3 The Realist Conception of Truth It is often said that the conception of truth best-suited to realism is a correspondence conception of truth. On such a conception, truth is a property which a statement has in virtue of a relation of correspondence that holds between the statement and the way the world is. A statement is true just in case what the statement claims to be the case is in fact the case. The relation of correspondence is, therefore, a relation 1 Methodological pluralism gives rises to the spectre of epistemological relativism. I have sought to dispel this spectre elsewhere. In this chapter, I am concerned with the relation between method and truth, rather than the nature of rational justification or the variation of the rules of method. For discussion of the methodological pluralist approach specifically as it relates to the issue of epistemological relativism, see my (1997) as well as Chapter 6 (this volume). Realism, Method and Truth 111 between language and reality. For it is a relation between a statement couched in a language and an extralinguistic state of affairs that obtains in reality. Since a statement is true just in case the state of affairs to which it corresponds obtains, the correspondence conception satisfies the equivalence condition specified by Tarski's T-scheme: (T) 'P' is true if any only if P. While the T-scheme is not a definition of truth, it provides a minimal condition of adequacy that must be satisfied by any account of truth. However truth is conceived, the truth-predicate must behave in accordance with the T-scheme. Rather than a definition, the T-scheme is a schema on the basis of which metalinguistic statements of truth-conditions may be formulated for sentences of an object-language.2 For example, replacing 'P' in (T) by 'Electrons have negative charge' yields as statement of the truth-conditions of 'Electrons have negative charge' the T-sentence: (E) 'Electrons have negative charge' is true if and only if electrons have negative charge. Statements such as this assert the material equivalence of sentences that predicate truth and the sentences of which truth is predicated. The T-scheme thereby specifies a correlation between the truth of statements and the states of affairs that statements report. For it stipulates that, for any sentence 'P', 'P' is true just in case a given state of affairs obtains, viz., the state of affairs that P. But to capture the thought behind the realist conception of truth, it is not enough to say that a statement is true just in case a given state of affairs obtains. That suggests that the relation that obtains between the truth of a statement and the state of affairs that it reports might be a mere accidental correlation. But it is no accident that a statement that reports a state of affairs is true if, and only if, the state of affairs it reports does in fact obtain. For it is precisely the fact that the state of affairs obtains that makes the statement true. It is because electrons in fact have negative charge that the statement that electrons have negative charge is true. Yet even if we insist that statements be made true by extralinguistic states of affairs this does not suffice for a realist conception of truth. More must be said about the nature of the extralinguistic reality that makes statements true. There are any number of non-realist positions for which statements are made true by extralinguistic states of affairs. The idealist who takes the world to be ideas in the mind of God may say that statements are made true by ideas in the mind of God. The phenomenalist who identifies reality with the permanent possibility of experience may say that statements are made true by the permanent possibility of experience. But the realist 2 The point that the T-scheme is not a definition of truth is made by Tarski: 'neither the expression (T) itself (which is not a sentence, but only a schema of a sentence), nor any particular instance of the form (T) can be regarded as a definition of truth' (1943, 110). It might perhaps be thought that a deflationary conception of truth such as Horwich's minimalism does treat the T-scheme as a definition of truth. But Horwich himself notes that deflationism 'does not provide an explicit definition, but relies on a schema to characterize the notion of truth' (1994, xv). Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science112 can accept neither the idealist nor the phenomenalist scenario. For it is a defining feature of realism that the reality investigated by science is an objective reality that is neither constituted nor determined by thought or experience. To rule out such mentalistic scenarios, the realist must insist that what makes statements true or false are states of affairs whose existence is in no way dependent on the mental. To qualify as a realist conception of truth, the correspondence theory of truth must be supplemented with the metaphysical realist assumption of a mindindependent reality. On the realist conception of truth that results, truth consists in correspondence between a linguistically formulated statement of fact and an extralinguistic state of affairs, where the state of affairs that makes a statement true is a mind-independent state of affairs. If it is true that electrons have negative charge, then this is due to the fact that, independently of anything we think about the matter, there are electrons, and they do indeed have negative charge.3 7.4 The Non-Epistemic Nature of Realist Truth The realist conception of truth is a non-epistemic conception of truth, which enforces a sharp divide between truth and rational justification. One may rationally believe a proposition that is false, just as there may fail to be rational grounds to believe a proposition that is in fact true. Far from being an absurd consequence of realism, as some may think,4 the non-epistemic character of truth crucially underlies the central epistemological claim of scientific realism, namely that there is an epistemic gap between method and truth which is best spanned by means of realist resources. It is important to distinguish between two different senses in which the realist conception of truth is a non-epistemic conception of truth. The first sense is a metaphysical sense, which derives from the mind-independence of the states of affairs that make statements true. The second sense is a conceptual one, which is due to the lack of a conceptual relation between truth and rational justification. In the first sense, the non-epistemic nature of realist truth derives specifically from the mind-independent status of the truth-makers. The point turns on the ontological independence of thought and reality, rather than on any epistemic aspect 3 My insistence that the realist conception of truth requires that claims about the world be made true by mind-independent states of affairs raises the question of the status of claims about mental states and artifacts. Since minds do not exist independently of minds, and artifacts are the product of intentional human action, claims about minds or artifacts would seem incapable of being true in the realist sense. Yet presumably the realist should allow that, at least in principle, such claims might be true. To adequately address this concern would require an analysis of the concept of independence of the mental on the basis of which it may be said that claims about mental states or artifacts are made true by states of affairs that obtain independently of the mental in the appropriate sense. No such analysis can be provided here. But, fortunately, the issue may be set aside for present purposes. The kinds of claims about the world that are of principal concern here are the observational and theoretical claims of the natural sciences. I take it to be highly plausible indeed to say that such claims are made true (or made false) by the way things stand in the world independently of what we humans think about the matter. 4 Cf. Ellis (1990, 187) and Putnam (1978, 127). Realism, Method and Truth 113 of the relation between thought and reality. For the truth of claims about the world is solely determined by the existence of states of affairs which obtain independently of human thought or experience. Hence, the belief that a given state of affairs obtains does not itself – i.e., qua belief – have any effect on the truth or falsity of that belief. The state of affairs may obtain, or fail to obtain, whether or not anyone believes that it does. This remains the case regardless of how well justified the belief may be. Thus, given the mind-independence of the truth-makers, it is entirely possible for rationally justified beliefs about the world to be false. Indeed, given such mindindependence, the entirety of such beliefs might be false. The second source of the non-epistemic character of realist truth is the lack of a conceptual relation between the concept of truth and concepts of epistemic justification. On the realist conception of truth, truth is a relation of correspondence that obtains between statements and mind-independent states of affairs that obtain in the world. A statement is true just in case an appropriate state of affairs obtains. Thus, truth depends solely on the way the world is, whether or not the world is rationally believed to be that way. As such, no epistemic condition enters into the realist conception of truth. More specifically, to be true in the realist sense a statement need not fulfill any epistemic condition, such as evidential support or the satisfaction of methodological rules. It need only reflect the way the world is. Nor is any epistemic concept built into the realist conception of truth, since formulation of the latter makes no use of concepts of rational justification or methodology. Hence, a statement may be epistemically well-justified, in the sense of satisfying relevant methodological rules, and yet fail to be true. Indeed, a statement may be ideally justified and not be true, since no entailment from epistemic justification to truth is licensed by the realist conception of truth. Both of the foregoing senses in which realist truth is non-epistemic reflect important principles of realism. The first reflects the fundamental metaphysical tenet of realism that the world investigated by science is an objective reality that lies beyond the control (though not the reach) of human thought. The second stems from the realist view that the truth of a claim about the world consists in correspondence with such an objective reality, rather than in satisfaction of criteria of epistemic evaluation. In light of the non-epistemic nature of realist truth, the basis of the epistemic gap between method and truth is now apparent. It is not just that it is an intelligible question whether a belief warranted by the rules of method is to be accepted as true. The point is deeper than that. Because truth depends on a mind-independent reality, and is not defined in terms of epistemic criteria, a theory might fully satisfy relevant criteria and still be false. Conversely, a theory or claim about the world might be true even though it fails to fully satisfy applicable rules of method. Given the nonepistemic nature of truth, there is no logical relation between method and truth. The question must inevitably remain open whether the methods employed in science really do lead to truth. Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science114 7.5 Two Anti-Realist Strategies I will now consider two of the principal anti-realist strategies for dealing with the relation between method and truth. Since my aim is to provide a realist bridge between method and truth, I will not attempt a detailed examination of anti-realism here. Still, to understand the realist project, it is important to contrast it with alternative approaches to the problem. The two strategies to be considered here represent opposing anti-realist tendencies. They are the Scylla and Charybdis between which the realist must steer a course. The first strategy is that of the internal realism proposed by Hilary Putnam and Brian Ellis. The internal realist strategy is to bridge the epistemic gap by defining truth in terms of method, which creates an analytic relation between method and truth.5 The second strategy, found in Bas van Fraassen and Larry Laudan, is one that I refer to as scientific scepticism. The sceptical strategy treats the gap between method and truth as one that cannot be bridged. It denies that satisfaction of method licenses rational belief in truth. Instead of truth, scientific sceptics offer alternative epistemic aims which they take to be achievable using the methods of science. While detailed critique of either form of anti-realism lies beyond the scope of this chapter, it is worthwhile situating the two positions with respect to realism. By contrast with realism, the internalist denies that there is a gap between method and truth, whereas the sceptic denies that we have the epistemic means to bridge the gap. I will argue that neither anti-realist strategy yields an acceptable account of scientific knowledge of an objective world. The internalist strategy loses sight of reality, while the sceptical strategy fails to provide a sustainable account of the relation between evidence and theory. 7.6 Internal Realism Internal realism is characterized by an epistemic conception of truth. On such a conception, truth is identified with satisfaction of criteria of epistemic appraisal. According to Hilary Putnam, for example, 'Truth', in an internalist view, is some sort of (idealized) rational acceptability – some sort of ideal coherence of our beliefs with each other and with our experiences as those experiences are themselves represented in our belief system ... (1981, 49-50) 5 When I speak here of the 'internal realist strategy', I mean to restrict attention specifically to the internal realist epistemic conception of truth which defines truth in terms of method or rational justification. As Brian Ellis has pointed out to me, internal realism properly understood is a substantive metaphysical position which is not restricted to an epistemic conception of truth. In particular, the internal realist position is a neo-Kantian position which denies epistemic access to a realm of noumenal objects, and treats objects, reference and reality as relative to conceptual scheme. Suffice to say that it is the relation between method and truth, rather than any more substantive metaphysical views, that are of relevance for present purposes. Realism, Method and Truth 115 Similarly, for Brian Ellis, 'truth is what is right epistemically to believe' (1990, 10). It 'is what it is ultimately right for anyone to believe, given [our natural] system of [epistemic] values' (1990, 11). Thus, according to internal realists, for a claim or theory about the world to be true is for it to be ideally justified or for it to maximize epistemic value. For the internalist, there is an analytic or conceptual relation between method and truth. Truth consists in appropriate satisfaction of epistemic norms. Accordingly, no problem arises for the internalist of an epistemic gap between method and truth. A theory which is ideally justified, or which maximizes epistemic value, just is a true theory. Nor does any problem arise relating use of the scientific method to advance on truth. If use of scientific method leads to theories which increasingly satisfy the rules of method, it follows immediately that science advances on truth. Given that truth consists in satisfaction of the rules of method, an increase in the level of satisfaction of such rules constitutes advance on truth. The trouble with internal realism is that it is an inherently idealist doctrine.6 The epistemic conception of truth entails the mind-dependence of the states of affairs that make our claims about the world true. For if truth is epistemic justification, the states of affairs that make claims true necessarily fail to be objective, mind-independent states of affairs. To revert to an earlier example, suppose it is true that electrons have negative charge. For the internalist, this means that electrons have negative charge just in case we are epistemically justified in believing that electrons have negative charge. But this has the consequence that electrons only have negative charge if we are justified in believing that they do. Thus, for the internalist, the way the world is is not something that is independent of what we think. Rather, the way the world is depends on our being justified in thinking that it is a certain way. Despite promising to span the epistemic gap, internalism therefore fails to provide an account of how scientific knowledge of an objective world is possible. 7.7 Scientific Scepticism While the internalist adopts an optimistic view of the relation between method and truth, the view of the scientific sceptic is a decidedly pessimistic one. Both van Fraassen and Laudan maintain that scientists may have good grounds for the acceptance of theories, but deny that rational credence extends to the truth of the transempirical content of theories. Thus, both authors defend a selective scepticism which denies theoretical knowledge while granting credence to observation. For van Fraassen, the purpose of the scientific enterprise is not to discover truth, but to construct theories that are empirically adequate: Science aims to give us theories which are empirically adequate; and acceptance of a theory involves as belief only that it is empirically adequate. (1980, 12) 6 See Devitt and Sterelny (1987, 196) and Musgrave (1999, Ch. 10). For further discussion, see 8.2. Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science116 A theory is empirically adequate, according to van Fraassen, 'exactly if what it says about the observable things and events in the world is true – exactly if it "saves the phenomena"' (1980, 12). Van Fraassen does not deny that theories make truth-valued assertions about unobservable items. What he denies is that empirical evidence may provide support for the truth of such claims about unobservables. For his part, Laudan holds that scientific theories may be epistemically warranted, but denies that such warrant extends to their truth. In Laudan's view, 'knowledge of a theory's truth is radically transcendent' (1996, 195). Laudan contrasts the transcendent property of truth, which he takes to be 'closed to epistemic access', with other properties which he considers to be 'immanent', such as well-testedness, predictive novelty and problem-solving effectiveness (1996, 78). The principal basis for his rejection of a warranted presumption of theoretical truth lies in his historical critique of the convergent realist claim that there is a correlation between the success of theories and their reference and approximate truth which is best explained by realist means. For Laudan, the fact that there is no way to bridge the epistemic gap between method and theoretical truth is simply a hard fact of the history of science (see Laudan 1984, Ch. 5). The trouble with the sceptical denial of an epistemic connection between method and truth resides in the attempt to combine metaphysical realism with the possibility of a limited epistemic warrant for theories. The scientific sceptic allows that there may be epistemic grounds that warrant acceptance of a theory, but denies that such warrant extends to the truth of the non-observational content of theory. But the sceptic does not deny that scientific theories are capable of being true. Indeed, neither van Fraassen nor Laudan provide grounds for denying that there are facts about the world which make our theoretical claims about the world true or false. But it is not possible both to allow that theories are made true or false by the way the world is and to deny that evidential support extends to the theoretical content of theories. If empirical facts about the world are capable of providing evidential support for theories, then such evidential support cannot be restricted to the non-theoretical content of theories. The reason has to do with the nature of the relationship between the empirical facts which provide support and the theories for which such facts provide support. Scientific theories make claims about both observable and unobservable states of affairs. Among the claims which theories make about observable states of affairs are predictions of observable phenomena that are made on the basis of hypotheses about unobservable portions of reality. In the case of evidence based on the confirmation of such predictions, the predicted phenomena are events that, according to the theory, are brought about by unobservable causal processes. Because such observable events are supposed to be produced by unobservable causal processes, the evidence derived from such observable events has direct relevance to the theoretical hypotheses upon which the predictions of such phenomena are based. Indeed, given that hypotheses about unobservable processes may be the sole basis for prediction of the observable phenomena, the non-observational content of the theory is directly implicated in the evidential relation between observed fact and warranted theory. In view of the failure of scientific scepticism to adequately account for the relation between evidence and theory, and the idealism inherent in internal realism, I Realism, Method and Truth 117 conclude that neither position provides an acceptable account of scientific knowledge of an objective reality. I will now present the outlines of the scientific realist theory of the relation between method and truth that I propose. 7.8 A Realist Theory of Method The realist theory of method that I propose consists of three key components. The first is the epistemic naturalist position that normative epistemological questions about rational justification are empirical questions about the best means of conducting inquiry into the objective natural world. The second is the position of methodological instrumentalism, according to which the rules of scientific method are 'cognitive tools' or 'instruments of inquiry', which serve as means for the realization of epistemic ends. The third is the position of abductive realism, which holds that the best explanation of the cognitive and pragmatic success of scientific theory and practice is that the rules of scientific method are genuinely truth-conducive tools, which serve as reliable means for obtaining truth. These three elements of a realist theory of scientific method form part of a generally naturalistic, non-anthropocentric picture of the world, and of our epistemic relationship to it. We find ourselves embedded in a natural world which we did not create, and over whose fundamental character and structure we have no control. In order to survive, we must form beliefs about the world, and causally interact with it by means of action that is guided by such beliefs. Given the independence of reality from thought, the beliefs that we form about the world do not necessarily correspond to the way that the world in fact is. In such a world, we do not know in advance of inquiry how to proceed to ensure survival. Nor can we know by a priori means how best to pursue inquiry into the nature of reality. Thus, the question of how to learn about the world is a question about the contingent nature of our epistemic capacities and the relation of such capacities to the world. Such a question is an empirical question that can only be answered on the basis of empirical investigation into the nature of inquiry. More specifically, on the instrumentalist conception of method that I favour, the rules of method are to be understood as means for the achievement of epistemic ends. In this I follow Larry Laudan, whose hypothetical imperative analysis of the rules of method was examined in 6.3. The instrumentalist construal of method reveals how the rules of method may be subject to empirical evaluation, since it is an empirical question whether use of a method reliably conduces to realization of a given aim. This illustrates the ability of epistemic naturalism to account for the normative force of rules of scientific method. Because the rules of method may be treated as empirically evaluable means to epistemic ends, the epistemic warrant of such rules may be grounded in empirical facts about the nature of inquiry. As such, the normativity of the rules of method derives from empirical facts of procedural efficacy and reliability.7 7 It may, of course, be objected that on this model the source of such epistemic normativity remains quite unclear. The rules of method derive normative force from the goals toward which they are directed. But the hypothetical imperative analysis provides no basis Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science118 The problem remains, however, of the relation between method and truth. As discussed in 6.5, one cannot directly observe that use of the rules of scientific method leads to true scientific theories. The truth of the non-observational content of theories transcends empirical verification, hence cannot be established by direct observational means. It is at this point that appeal is to be made to the scientific realist argument that realism is the best explanation of the success of science. But where the success argument is usually employed to argue for the approximate truth of theories, I extend the argument to the truth-conduciveness of rules of method. I will now sketch the position of abductive realism, which seeks to bridge the gap between method and truth. 7.9 Abductive Realism On the scientific realist picture that I propose, the relation between method and truth is not an analytic, conceptual relation, as the internal realist suggests, but a synthetic, empirical relation. It is a contingent relation between epistemic means and ends, which may be known in the a posteriori manner suggested by epistemic naturalism. But the attempt to combine a naturalistic account of epistemic warrant with the realist view of truth as the aim of science must face the problem that no empirical evidence may show directly or conclusively that use of a methodological rule yields theoretical truth. In the absence of direct or conclusive evidence, why should use of a rule of method be taken to conduce to truth? This is where abductive realism enters the picture. In the absence of direct or conclusive evidence linking method to truth, the grounds for such a link may be at best abductive ones. More specifically, the realist claim that application of rules of method leads to progress toward truth rests on an inference to the best explanation of scientific success. What best explains why scientific theories satisfy the rules of method is that they are close to truth. Suppose, for example, that there is some theory which satisfies a broad range of rules of method to an extraordinarily high degree. The theory is supported by all available evidence. It successfully predicts a great many previously unknown and surprising novel facts. It unifies previously disparate domains. And it does all of this in a manner which maximizes simplicity and coherence. Clearly, any theory which so impressively satisfies the rules of scientific method is a highly successful theory indeed. How is such success to be explained? Where a theory impressively satisfies a broad range of methodological rules, the best explanation of such success is that the theory provides an approximately true description of the way the world is. In light of such success, we may infer not only that the entities postulated by the theory exist in roughly the form stated by the theory, but that the underlying causal mechanisms and processes described by the theory really do bring about observable events in the general manner specified by the theory. on which to evaluate the epistemic merits of any particular epistemic goal. This problem is resolved within the framework adumbrated here by treating truth as the ultimate goal of scientific inquiry from which the value of lower order epistemic goals is derived. Realism, Method and Truth 119 It is important to emphasize that the level of descriptive accuracy to which such an inference is committed is that of approximate truth only. While the precise natures of the postulated entities, mechanisms and processes may fail to be known either in detail or in their entirety, it may nevertheless be the case that such entities, processes and mechanisms really do exist, in a form which is close to that described by the theory. Given such approximate accuracy, it must also be emphasized that the theoretical description of the postulated entities, mechanisms and processes remains open to possible revision in the light of further inquiry.8 But my point is not simply that the best explanation of the success of a theory, as measured by satisfaction of methodological rules, is the approximate truth of the theory. The crucial point relates to the truth-conduciveness of methods rather than to the approximate truth of theory. Given the critical role played by the rules of method in the process of theory selection, the implications of the success of science for the approximate truth of theory apply with equal force to the rules of method themselves. In particular, the rules of method are employed by scientists to eliminate theories that are unlikely to be true in favour of theories that are likely candidates for truth. Since the best explanation of satisfaction of rules of method is the approximate truth of theory, and since the rules of method play a critical role in arriving at such approximately true theories, it follows that use of the rules of method is responsible for arriving at theories that are approximately true. Given this, the best explanation of the role played by the rules of method is that the rules are employed in a rigorous selection process which eliminates false theories in favour of theories that are closer to the truth. That is, the rules of method are rules that 'screen for truth' – or, in other words, the rules of method reliably conduce to truth. Such an abductive realist account of the truth-conduciveness of method has implications as well for the realist view of scientific progress as convergence on truth. Suppose there is a sequence of scientific theories which displays an increasingly high level of satisfaction of the rules of method. According to abductive realism, increased satisfaction of the rules of method is to be attributed to convergence on truth. Where a sequence of theories displays an increasingly high level of satisfaction of the rules of method, the best explanation is that the sequence of theories is advancing progressively closer to the truth. Thus, on the view I propose, what best explains satisfaction of the rules of method is that the rules are truth-conducive, and what best explains increased satisfaction of such rules is convergence on truth. It is in this sense that I wish to claim that what is needed to bridge the gap between method and truth is an abductive argument to the best explanation of the success of science.9 8 In holding there to be a reasonably clear sense of 'approximate truth' which relates to the general ontological claims of theory, and does not require explication by means of a technical concept of verisimilitude or closeness to truth, I follow Ernan McMullin's discussion in his (1984, 35-6, and 1987, 59-60). 9 The strategy described here as 'abductive realism' is not without precedent in the epistemology of science. Broadly understood as inference to the best explanation of the Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science120 7.10 Realism or Sheer Luck? It is, of course, a legitimate question why truth and approximate truth should play the role which I ascribe to them as the best explanation of satisfaction of rules of method. To demonstrate that satisfaction of the rules of method is best explained by the truth-conduciveness of such rules would require an exhaustive elimination of alternative explanations. I cannot undertake that task here. But it is instructive to consider a stark anti-realist alternative that is contrary to the abductive realist thesis that the rules of method are truth-conducive rules whose use promotes the discovery of truth about the world. By eliminating this alternative a large and particularly salient class of anti-realist alternatives may also be eliminated. To generate such a contrary to abductive realism, let us consider the following scenario. Consider, as we did before, a scientific theory which impressively satisfies a great variety of methodological rules. The theory is descriptively accurate and well-confirmed by all observational tests. It predicts surprising novel facts in an accurate and reliable manner. It unifies phenomena from domains previously thought to contain disparate and unrelated phenomena. On top of all this, the theory is also maximally simple and coherent. This time, however, let us also suppose that despite impressively satisfying all the methodological rules the theory is in fact totally and utterly false at the nonobservational level. None of the unobservable entities, mechanisms or processes postulated by the theory exists. Moreover, the theory erroneously imposes unity on unrelated domains which in fact have nothing in common. In short, let us suppose that the theory satisfies all empirical and formal methodological constraints to a very high degree, yet at the level of the descriptive accuracy of its claims about the underlying nature of reality it is simply false. If such a situation were to obtain, it would be sheer luck that the theory has any success at all. This may be seen most clearly in the case of predictive success, and, in particular, in the case of accurate and reliable prediction of previously unknown and otherwise entirely unexpected phenomena. Either predictive success of this kind is the result of sheer luck, or else there is some benevolent force whose action makes the theory's predictions turn out to be true despite the fact that the theoretical claims of the theory are completely false. There are, I suppose, possible worlds in which lucky guesses are routinely rewarded with predictive success. But we do not live in such a world. Occasional guesses may succeed. But if a scientific theory reliably produces accurate predictions of novel facts, the best explanation of such predictive success is not that we live in a world that rewards luck. The best explanation is that the theory is at least an approximately correct description of the unobservable entities whose behaviour underlies the observed phenomena predicted by the theory. For this reason, we may conclude that satisfaction of methodological rules provides a reliable indication of advance on truth. The rules of method are a guide to the truth. They are a guide to the truth, not in the sense that truth consists in satisfaction of the rules of method, success of science applied at the level of method, the strategy is employed by such authors as Boyd (1984, 58-9), Kornblith (1993a, 41-2), and Rescher (1977, 81ff). Realism, Method and Truth 121 but in the sense that a theory that satisfies such rules has a good chance of being at least approximately true. If a theory which satisfies the rules of method did not have a good chance of being at least approximately true, the satisfaction of the rules of method would be completely inexplicable. This page intentionally left blank Chapter 8 Why is it Rational to Believe Scientific Theories are True? 8.1 Introduction In this chapter, I continue discussion of the relation between method and truth. The discussion proceeds in the context of an analysis of the philosophy of science of Alan Musgrave. Musgrave is one of the foremost contemporary defenders of scientific realism. He is also one of the leading exponents of Karl Popper's critical rationalist philosophy. My main focus in this chapter will be Musgrave's realism. But I will emphasize epistemological aspects of realism. This will lead me to address aspects of Musgrave's critical rationalism as well. Musgrave is both a scientific realist and a commonsense realist. 'Scientific realism,' he says, 'is a form of realism' (1999, 132). And realism is committed to the commonsense realist belief 'that there is a real world outside of us and largely independent of us' (1999, 132). 'There is,' Musgrave adds, 'a continuity between common sense and science' (1999, 132). But while science may lead to occasional revision and refinement of common sense, 'it does not show that it is root-and-branch mistaken' (1999, 133; cf. 1996, 23). The real world postulated by common sense is the reality that science seeks to explain. This world does not depend on human belief or experience. Nor is it relative to conceptual scheme, theoretical background or mode of description (1999, 52, 173, 180ff). For Musgrave, though, realism is not just a thesis about reality. It is also a thesis about truth. Musgrave takes the aim of science to be truth. He 'subscribe[s] to the old-fashioned idea that scientific realism ... says that the aim of a scientific inquiry is to discover the truth about the matter inquired into' (1996, 19; cf. 1999, 52). Scientific theories are taken at face-value as genuine assertions about the world, the truth or falsity of which depends on the way the world really is (1996, 26). Truth is understood in the classic correspondence sense defined by Tarski. A theory or statement is true just in case the world is the way it is said to be (1993, Ch. 14; 1996, 24; 1999, 165). This is a 'non-epistemic conception of truth' (1996, 28; cf. 1999, 186). Given the emphasis on correspondence between theory and reality, Musgrave's realism diverges from the tendency among some scientific realists to adopt ontological rather than truth-orientated versions of the doctrine. Musgrave dismisses such entity-realism as incoherent (1996, 20).1 1 Musgrave raises the following objection to entity realism: 'We are to believe in scientific entities ... without thinking true any theory about those entities ... This is incoherent. To believe in an entity, while believing nothing further about that entity, is to believe nothing. Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science124 Musgrave's realism has an epistemological dimension as well. For Musgrave, methodological considerations play a prominent role in the appraisal and acceptance of scientific theories. While a variety of methodological rules figures in Musgrave's writings, there is some tendency on his part to emphasize the testing and falsification of theories.2 The attempt to falsify theories is the basis of the critical method in science. And criticism is the heart of rationality. A critical discussion may provide 'the best reason there is for believing (tentatively) that a hypothesis is true' (1999, 324). If a theory 'best withstands criticism then it is reasonable for scientists to believe that theory and to use it in practical applications' (1999, 325). Such belief must remain tentative, however, for Musgrave is a fallibilist who eschews the search for epistemic certainty in science and everyday affairs (cf. 1993, Ch. 15; 1999, 194ff, 341-3). But matters of method and rationality are separate matters from those of reality and truth. This is especially the case from the perspective of realism. In the first place, to believe that the world is a given way does not mean that the world is that way. Nor does it make the world that way. Reality is not subject to determination by human thought. This remains the case even if the belief that the world is a given way is a belief that is rationally justified. For one may rationally believe what is false. The point applies with equal force to scientific theories certified by the rules of scientific method. A theory that is certified by the rules of method is not thereby shown to be true. A theory which satisfies methodological rules may yet be false. Nor need a theory that satisfies methodological rules be accepted as true. The methods of science are not the exclusive domain of realism. They may serve aims other than the realist aim of truth. Satisfaction of the rules of method might indicate empirical adequacy or pragmatic reliability, rather than truth. An explanation is therefore required on the part of the realist of why certification by method provides warrant with respect to truth. I will refer to the need to provide I tell you that I believe in hobgoblins (believe that the term 'hobgoblin' is a referring term). So, you reply, you think there are little people who creep into houses at night and do the housework. Oh no, say I, I do not believe that hobgoblins do that. Actually, I have no beliefs at all about what hobgoblins do or what they are like. I just believe in them' (1996, 20). Musgrave's point is that it is not possible to believe in the existence of some entity without having at least some beliefs about the entity. This is a crucial point to be made in relation to entity realism. But it does not entirely dispose of the doctrine. For, as Musgrave notes, entity realists may adopt a less extreme position according to which some low-level theoretical beliefs may be true of the theoretical entities. 2 Since Musgrave often writes within the context of falsificationist philosophy of science, an emphasis on such issues as corroboration, independent testability, ad hocness and predictive novelty is perhaps understandable. However, within the context of scientific realism, Musgrave places special emphasis on the role of novel predictions, arguing that the success argument for scientific realism should be restricted to theories which correctly predict facts not employed in the construction of the theory (cf. Musgrave, 1999, 55-7, 119, Ch. 12). Other methodological criteria, such as simplicity or unity, also receive favourable mention (cf. 1999, 111-2, 247ff). Thus, despite the emphasis on falsification, Musgrave allows that the methodology of science consists of a plurality of methodological rules (cf. 1999, 226-7, 250, fn. 291). Why is it Rational to Believe Scientific Theories are True? 125 such an explanation as the problem of method and truth. As a realist who holds that it may be rational to believe a theory which has been subjected to critical scrutiny in accordance with the rules of method, the problem of method and truth is one that Musgrave must address. That is, he must confront the question of why it is rational to believe theories certified by the methods of science to be true, or close to the truth.3 In this chapter, I will explore his response to the problem. I will illustrate the problem of method and truth in section 8.2 by means of the examples of Lakatos's 'plea for a whiff of inductivism' and the internal realist conception of truth of Putnam and Ellis. In section 8.3, I will turn to Musgrave's approach to the problem of method and truth, where I will consider his treatment of inference to best explanation and critical rationalism. In section 8.4, I will explore a naturalistic approach to the problem which sets the issue within a broader metaphysical framework. Finally, in section 8.5, I shall offer some suggestions as to how Musgrave might put metaphysical aspects of his position to epistemological use. 8.2 The Problem of Method and Truth Scientific realism enforces a sharp divide between method and truth. On the one hand, scientific method consists of a set of rules and procedures which govern experimental practice and inform the appraisal of scientific theories. A scientist whose acceptance of a theory or result complies with the rules and procedures of method is rationally justified in accepting the theory or result. On the other hand, truth consists in a relation of correspondence between a statement and extralinguistic reality. The relation of correspondence between statement and reality is a relation that may obtain whether or not one has methodologically warranted grounds for believing it to obtain. Indeed, it is a relation that may obtain whether or not the statement is believed to be true. Truth, in the correspondence sense, is a non-epistemic relation, which is not defined in terms of method or rational justification. Given the separation of method and truth, the question arises of the relation between them. What bearing does method have on truth? Why should use of method lead to theories that are either true or approximately true? This is the problem of method and truth. To illustrate it, I will now turn to Lakatos's 'whiff of inductivism' and the internalist conception of truth of Putnam and Ellis. Lakatos's Plea for a 'Whiff of Inductivism' The problem of method and truth may be illustrated within the context of Popper's philosophy of science by means of the connection between corroboration and verisimilitude. For Popper, a theory is corroborated by successful performance 3 The problem of method and truth is not restricted to truth-orientated forms of realism. For the entity realist must face exactly the same challenge of explaining why use of the methods of science leads to knowledge of the way the world is. The problem is the general one of explaining how a methodological procedure conduces to knowledge of an objective reality. Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science126 in an empirical test of a prediction made by the theory. The theory receives high corroboration if it passes a range of such tests, especially ones which comprise severe tests of the theory. By contrast, the concept of verisimilitude is a measure of the truth-content relative to the falsity content of a theory, which Popper proposes as an analysis of the idea that one theory may contain more truth than another. One theory has greater verisimilitude than another if it has greater truth-content relative to falsity content than the other. The question is whether there is any reason to believe that a theory with a higher degree of corroboration than another should also enjoy a higher degree of verisimilitude than the other. In other words, is corroboration an indication of verisimilitude? In his contribution to The Philosophy of Karl Popper, edited by P.A. Schilpp, Imre Lakatos expresses the concern that Popper's 'fallibilism is nothing more than scepticism together with a eulogy of the game of science' (1974, 257). Lakatos's concern is precisely that, as a fallibilist and anti-inductivist, Popper is not prepared to: say unequivocally that the positive appraisals in his scientific game may be seen as a – conjectural – sign of the growth of conjectural knowledge; that corroboration is a synthetic – albeit conjectural – measure of verisimilitude. (1974, 256) Nor may Popper assert that high corroboration provides any positive reason to believe that a theory is close to the truth. In order to address this concern, Lakatos enters a plea for a 'whiff of inductivism' to the effect that Popper's methodology be supplemented with a 'synthetic inductive principle' (1974, 254-7, 260). Such a principle would connect corroboration with verisimilitude by treating the former as a 'sign' or 'measure' of the latter (1974, 254, 256). Only in this way, Lakatos argues, can the methodological concept of corroboration and the 'logico-metaphysical' notion of verisimilitude be combined into a properly epistemological theory of the growth of scientific knowledge. In his reply to Lakatos, Popper does not explicitly address the plea for a synthetic inductive principle. He does, however, allow that corroboration serves as an 'indication' of verisimilitude in the sense that 'we may guess that the better corroborated theory is also one that is nearer to the truth' (Popper, 1974a, 1011). But he denies that corroboration is to be understood as in any sense a measure of verisimilitude.4 There is one point in the Schilpp volume, though, where Popper does seem to concede a 'whiff of inductivism'. In his reply to A. J. Ayer, Popper explains the importance of the notion of verisimilitude: ... there is a probabilistic though typically noninductivist argument which is invalid if it is used to establish the probability of a theory's being true, but which becomes valid (though essentially nonnumerical) if we replace truth by verisimilitude. The argument can be used only by realists who do not only assume that there is a real world but also that this world is by and large more similar to the way modern theories describe it than to the 4 See also Popper (1972, 103). For related discussion, see Newton-Smith (1981, 67-70). Why is it Rational to Believe Scientific Theories are True? 127 way superseded theories describe it. On this basis we can argue that it would be a highly improbable coincidence if a theory like Einstein's could correctly predict very precise measurements not predicted by its predecessors unless there is "some truth" in it. (Popper, 1974b, 1192-3, fn. 165b) Popper goes on to remark that 'there may be a "whiff of inductivism" here', which 'enters with the vague realist assumption that reality, though unknown, is in some respects similar to what science tells us' (1974b, 1193). It is unclear why Popper fails to make this concession in the context of his response to Lakatos. In any event, the assumption of a real world that is 'by and large similar to the way modern theories describe it' would appear to be a metaphysical assumption of the very kind that Lakatos proposes. If there is a real world which contains the entities and laws which science tells us that it contains, then this fact is itself the explanation of why contemporary theories which say that there are such entities and laws receive high corroboration. For if the world contains things which do what a theory says they do, then that is why what the theory says about those things is true. But such an explanation may only be provided on the assumption that theories which succeed in the manner indicated by high corroboration are close to the truth.5 As I will attempt to show in sections 8.3 and 8.4, it is precisely such an appeal to metaphysics that is lacking from the epistemology of Musgrave's realism. In this respect, Musgrave seems to side with Popper against Lakatos in resisting the call for a metaphysical inductive principle. But, as I will attempt to show, to defend the epistemological basis of realism, the realist must put the world to good use. Putnam on the Ideal Limit of Inquiry As we have seen, Lakatos proposes to bridge the gap between method and truth by means of a 'synthetic inductive principle'. An alternative approach is to close the gap in an analytic manner by defining truth in terms of method. This is the path of internal realism (e.g., Putnam, 1978, 1981; Ellis, 1990). In this section, I will briefly explore this path before indicating why it is not one that can be taken by the realist. Since Musgrave has forcefully argued for this conclusion, I will draw on his work in showing that realism cannot go down the internalist path. In his (1978), Hilary Putnam notes that according to the position which he describes as 'metaphysical realism', truth is 'radically non-epistemic' (1978, 125).6 5 This is not to say that the connection between the approximate truth or verisimilitude of a theory and its empirical success is unproblematic. In fact, it cannot be assumed that a theory with a high degree of approximate truth will be successful. For example, many of its observational claims might be false even though it contains a great deal of true theoretical claims (cf. Laudan, 1984, 118). But the present point is not that there is an unproblematic connection between approximate truth and success. Rather, the point is that Popper appears to make a metaphysical assumption about the nature of reality, on the basis of which some nonanalytic relation between verisimilitude and corroboration might be shown to obtain. 6 Putnam's characterization of metaphysical realism contains elements which may not be acceptable to all realists. In his 'Metaphysical Realism versus Word-Magic' (2001), Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science128 For metaphysical realism, truth is a semantic relation of correspondence between linguistic items and entities in the external world. Such a concept of truth is defined independently of epistemic factors, such as evidence, confirmation or simplicity. Putnam illustrates the non-epistemic nature of metaphysical realist truth with the example of the ideal theory which would ultimately result if science were pursued to the ideal limit of inquiry. Such a theory would maximally satisfy all methodological constraints. Putnam says the ideal theory would be: ... complete, consistent ... predict correctly all observation sentences ... meet whatever 'operational constraints' there are ... be 'beautiful', 'simple', 'plausible', etc ... (1978, 125) Given the non-epistemic nature of truth, however, it is possible that even such an ideal theory might be false. For while it might be extraordinarily unlikely for the ideal theory to be false, the fact that it maximally satisfies all methodological constraints does not entail that it is true. Putnam rejects both metaphysical realism and the non-epistemic conception of truth.7 He proposes instead an internal realist stance on which truth is understood in epistemic terms as an idealized form of rational justification: 'Truth', in an internalist view, is some sort of (idealized) rational acceptability – some sort of ideal coherence of our beliefs with each other and with our experience as those experiences are themselves represented in our belief system ... (1981, 49-50) The internalist conception of truth differs from the metaphysical realist conception on two counts. First, it is an epistemic conception of truth which takes truth to be a form of rational acceptability. Second, because truth is idealized rational acceptability, the epistemically ideal theory produced at the ideal limit of scientific inquiry must necessarily be true. Musgrave argues that realists should not uncritically accept the idea of a mind-independent reality, since there is a range of mind-dependent objects (e.g. artifacts) about which one should be thoroughly realist. Musgrave also objects to the idea that there is a 'fixed totality' of mindindependent objects, since what objects there are depends on a prior specification of what sort of object is in question. (For further discussion, see 2.3.) 7 Putnam presents a number of objections to metaphysical realism. One is that truth is not radically non-epistemic because the ideal theory cannot possibly be mistaken. This objection rests on his well-known model-theoretic argument against realism that since every consistent theory has at least one model, the ideal theory (which is stipulated to be consistent) must be true (Putnam, 1978, 125-6). A second objection is that in order to describe the position of metaphysical realism it must be possible to adopt a God's eye point of view. But it is impossible to remove ourselves from our limited human perspective to adopt the external viewpoint of such an omniscient being (Putnam, 1981, 50). A third objection is that metaphysical realism opens the door to the possibility of radical scepticism, since it allows the possibility of massive illusion (e.g., evil demons, brains in vats). But such radical sceptical scenarios are not in fact possible scenarios. Hence, metaphysical realism is mistaken because it allows the possibility of such scenarios (Putnam, 1981, 15). Why is it Rational to Believe Scientific Theories are True? 129 The internal realist conception of truth provides a clear example of one way to deal with the problem of method and truth. The internalist closes the gap between method and truth by setting up an analytic or conceptual relation between method and truth. If truth just is a form of rational justification, then a theory which satisfies methodological rules of theory-acceptance is to be accepted as true, or nearly so. For that is what it is to be true. Equally, a theory which better satisfies methodological rules than a predecessor thereby displays a higher degree of truth, since increased satisfaction of such rules constitutes increase of truth. Such an analytic resolution of the problem of method and truth is not, however, one that is open to the scientific realist. For, as Musgrave has argued, the internalist conception of truth leads to an idealist metaphysics that is unacceptable to realists. In his paper, 'The T-Scheme Plus Epistemic Truth Equals Idealism' (1999, Ch. 10; cf. 1996, 30), Musgrave argues that epistemic theories of truth, such as internal realism, entail the dependence of reality upon belief.8 According to Musgrave, 'the general form of an epistemic truth theory' is as follows: Necessarily, S is true if and only if S satisfies epistemic condition E. (1999, 188) To obtain a particular epistemic theory of truth from this general form, it suffices to replace the epistemic condition (E) with the preferred epistemic condition of the relevant truth theory. Musgrave employs the example of Brian Ellis's evaluative theory of truth, which is a form of internal realism closely related to Putnam's. According to Ellis, truth is what it is epistemically right to believe. So we have: Necessarily, S is true if and only if it is epistemically right to believe S. Now, given the T-scheme: (T) S is true if and only if P, the evaluative theory of truth entails that: Necessarily, P if and only if it is epistemically right to believe S. Thus, to take a particular example: (ET) Electrons exist if and only if it is right to believe that electrons exist. (1999, 189) But, surely, Musgrave points out, (ET) might be false. There might be no electrons even though 'our best methods optimally pursued ... lead us to think electrons exist' (1999, 189). The only way for (ET) to be true is for the world to depend on our methods of inquiry or our theories in idealist fashion. In this case, electrons would exist if that is what our methods of inquiry and theories lead us to believe. But that is evidently not something that a realist can accept. 8 For related analysis, see Devitt and Sterelny (1987, 196). Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science130 The Problem Restated Lakatos's plea for a 'whiff of inductivism' and Putnam and Ellis's internalist conception of truth represent two different approaches to the problem of method and truth. The question is why we should suppose that the rules of method have any positive bearing on truth. The response proposed by Putnam and Ellis is to define truth in terms of method. But such a response is unavailable to the realist who takes truth to be non-epistemic, as Musgrave does. The other response which we have seen is to appeal to a synthetic metaphysical principle in the manner suggested by Lakatos with his 'plea for a whiff of inductivism'. But this response appears not to be the response favoured by Musgrave, as we will now see. 8.3 Musgrave on Method and Truth As a scientific realist, Musgrave adheres to the view that it may be rational to believe that a scientific theory is true. A theory which passes critical scrutiny by means of the rules of scientific method may be accepted as true, where truth is understood in the non-epistemic sense of the realist. The question is why it is rational to believe that a theory which satisfies the rules of method is true. If truth is non-epistemic, then what does method have to do with it? In this section, I will consider two answers that have been proposed by Musgrave. The first involves the idea that it is reasonable to believe the best explanation of a fact. The second is that it is rational to believe the hypothesis which best survives criticism. As we will see, neither approach succeeds in showing why it is rational to believe a theory to be true. 'The Ultimate Argument for Scientific Realism' The standard argument for scientific realism is the so-called 'success argument', or, as Musgrave calls it, 'the Ultimate Argument'.9 According to scientific realism, the entities postulated by mature scientific theories by and large exist, and the claims that theories make about those entities are by and large true, or close to the truth. Such a realist account of the relation between theories and the entities they postulate provides a compelling explanation of the empirical success of science. For if the entities postulated by a theory exist, and what the theory says about the entities is true, then it is no surprise that the theory should meet with empirical success. By contrast, any anti-realist philosophy which rejects the realist view of the relation between theories and the entities they postulate must render the success of science an inexplicable miracle. But to say that the success of science is a miracle is to fail to provide an adequate explanation of such success. Since realism provides a compelling explanation of success, and anti-realism fails to provide an adequate explanation, realism is evidently the best explanation of the success of science. 9 The name, 'the ultimate argument', is due to van Fraassen (1980, 39), who is one of the targets of Musgrave (1988). Why is it Rational to Believe Scientific Theories are True? 131 In his paper, 'The Ultimate Argument for Scientific Realism' (1988, 232-9), Musgrave presents an analysis of the success argument.10 It is standard practice to construe the success argument as an inference to the best explanation. In line with this practice, Musgrave also construes the argument as an inference to the best explanation. However, in a novel departure, Musgrave argues that application of the success argument is to be restricted to theories which successfully predict novel facts. He formulates the argument as an epistemic argument to the effect that it is reasonable to accept realism, rather than to the effect that realism is true. He further stipulates that in order to be acceptable, the best explanation must satisfy minimal conditions of explanatory adequacy. Otherwise, it would not be reasonable to accept the best explanation as true. Opinion is divided over the nature of inference to the best explanation. Some take it to be a form of inductive inference. Others take it to be a sui generis form of inference that is more fundamental than induction. Perhaps the most novel feature of Musgrave's analysis of the success argument is his suggestion that inference to the best explanation may be formulated as a deductive inference. Musgrave proposes that inference to the best explanation be construed in deductive form as follows: It is reasonable to accept a satisfactory explanation of any fact, which is also the best available explanation of that fact, as true. F is a fact. Hypothesis H explains F. No available competing hypothesis explains F as well as H does. Therefore, it is reasonable to accept H as true. (Musgrave, 1988, 239) He then comments that 'the Ultimate Argument for scientific realism ... is an inference to the best explanation': The fact to be explained is the (novel) predictive success of science. And the claim is that realism ... explains this fact, explains it satisfactorily, and explains it better than any nonrealist philosophy of science. And the conclusion is that it is reasonable to accept scientific realism ... as true. (Musgrave, 1988, 239) On such a construal, the success argument is a valid deductive argument. The fact to be explained is the novel predictive success of science. The conclusion of the argument is an epistemic conclusion to the effect that it is rational to believe realism to be true. For realism is the best explanation of predictive success. The conclusion 10 I refer here to the original version of Musgrave's article in Nola (1988). The paper is reprinted in Musgrave (1999). However, the section of the article on inference to best explanation, which is of central relevance to scientific realism, has been removed. It appears, instead, in the context of a discussion of psychologism (1999, 284-5). Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science132 depends crucially on the epistemic principle that it is reasonable to accept the best satisfactory explanation of a fact as true, which figures as the initial premise of the argument. Musgrave's analysis of the success argument is an important advance in a number of respects. The emphasis on predictive novelty is important because it may be employed to eliminate a number of historical counterexamples which have been proposed to the success argument.11 Musgrave's formulation of the success argument in epistemic terms makes clear that the argument must play a pivotal role in response to anti-realist critics who object to scientific realism on epistemological grounds. His emphasis on minimal conditions of explanatory adequacy is crucial, since it excludes the possibility that the best available explanation fails to be a satisfactory explanation. Finally, the explicit use of the epistemic principle in the argument makes evident the extent to which the success argument depends on the assumption of the epistemic importance of explanation. Despite initial appearances, however, Musgrave's analysis of the success argument provides little assistance in relation to the problem of method and truth. To see this, let us further examine the notion of a best explanation. On what might the judgement that a theory is the best explanation be based? Musgrave does not elaborate. But it seems reasonably clear that the assessment of the explanatory merit of a scientific theory will depend upon methodological criteria of theory appraisal. Relevant criteria will include considerations of explanatory strength and unification, as well as simplicity, coherence and fit with background knowledge. But since truth is understood by Musgrave in the non-epistemic realist sense, it is unclear why theories which satisfy such methodological criteria should be accepted as true. The question is why it is reasonable to accept the best explanation as true. Might it not be equally reasonable to accept the best explanation as empirically adequate, useful for practical purposes, or even true in some non-realist sense? Nothing Musgrave says in support of the principle that it is reasonable to accept the best explanation as true shows that the anti-realist might not accept an anti-realist analogue of the principle. Nor does Musgrave provide an explanation of why it is reasonable to accept the best explanation as true. It might, however, be thought that the issue is not whether the best explanation is to be accepted as true. Rather, the issue is whether realism is the best explanation. Musgrave addresses this issue in the pages that follow his analysis of the success argument (1988, 240-4). He considers a range of anti-realist explanations of predictive success, and argues that all provide inferior explanations to the realist explanation. On the assumption that realism has been shown to be a superior explanation to antirealism, it might therefore appear that realism is to be accepted as true. But this only succeeds in pushing the problem back another level. Even if it is granted that realism is the best explanation of the success of science, it does not follow that it is to be accepted as true. There are other possible modes of acceptance 11 It is a major weakness of earlier formulations of the success argument that the notion of success is imprecisely defined. If success is left overly vague, the success argument is vulnerable to historical counterexamples, such as those presented by Laudan of theories which attained a degree of success but were false and/or non-referential (Laudan, 1984, Ch. 5). Why is it Rational to Believe Scientific Theories are True? 133 available at this level, apart from acceptance as true. For example, one might simply agree that realism is the best explanation without proceeding to accept it as true. Alternatively, one might merely accept realism as if it were true. Or realism might be accepted as true, but truth might be understood in some non-realist sense. Nothing about best explanation, as such, clearly precludes such alternative forms of acceptance. In sum, to show that a theory is the best explanation of a fact does not entail that the theory is to be accepted as true. Given this, Musgrave's analysis of the success argument in terms of an epistemic principle of best explanation does not succeed in showing why it is rational to accept a theory as true. It does not, in other words, provide a response to the problem of method and truth. Critical Rationalism I turn now to a second context in which Musgrave addresses issues which relate to the problem of method and truth. In his treatment of Popper's solution of the problem of induction, Musgrave proposes a critical rationalist account of scientific theory acceptance (Musgrave, 1999, Ch. 16). I will now consider the implications of Musgrave's critical rationalism with respect to the problem of method and truth. Popper's philosophy of science is sometimes described as 'negativist' (cf. Lakatos, 1974, 258). In an attempt to solve Hume's problem of induction, Popper dismisses induction as a myth. Instead of offering a positive justification of induction, Popper argues that the attempted falsification of a theory may provide rational grounds for tentative acceptance of the theory. It is possible neither to prove that a theory is true nor to provide inductive support for the theory. However, if a theory has survived rigorous empirical tests, then it may be rational to tentatively accept the theory. Since Popper denies that there may be any grounds which provide positive support for a theory, the question arises of how his claim that it may be rational to accept a theory is to be understood. To address this question, it is necessary to introduce a distinction between Popper's critical rationalist account of rationality and the traditional justificationist conception of rationality to which Popper's account is opposed. Perhaps what most fundamentally characterizes Popper's account of rationality is his outright dismissal of the justificationist conception of rationality. The justificationist conception of rationality is the conception of rationality that underlies most traditional and contemporary thinking about rational belief. According to justificationism, in order to have a rational belief the belief itself must be rationally justified. There must be reasons which provide support for the belief. Musgrave characterizes justificationism by means of the following principle: (J) A's believing that P is reasonable if and only if A can justify P, that is, give a conclusive or inconclusive reason for P, that is, establish that P is true or probable. (Musgrave, 1999, 321) As this formulation of justificationism makes clear, reasons may either be conclusive or inconclusive. Conclusive reasons are reasons which show that a belief is true. Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science134 Inconclusive ones merely show it to be likely or probable. In either case, rational belief requires there to be reasons which support the belief itself. By contrast with justificationism, critical rationalists deny that there may be reasons for a belief or theory. But this does not mean that there is no rationality. On the contrary, as Popper remarked, 'there is nothing more "rational" than the method of critical discussion, which is the method of science' (1972, 27). Criticism, rather than justification, is the key to rationality. Accordingly, Musgrave offers the following principle as formulation of critical rationalism: (CR) It is reasonable to believe that P (at time t) if and only if P is that hypothesis which has (at time t) best withstood serious criticism. (Musgrave, 1999, 324) In other words, if a hypothesis is subjected to serious criticism and survives, while alternative hypotheses do not, there is good reason to accept the hypothesis which stands up to criticism in favour of those which succumb to it. By contrast with justificationism, such a conception of rationality does not involve good reasons for a hypothesis. It is belief in the hypothesis, rather than the hypothesis itself, for which there may be good reason. Critical rationalism alters the locus of rationality. 'It is', Musgrave explains, 'acts of belief (actions of believing?) that are reasonable or rational, not the things we believe, belief-contents, propositions, theories, or whatever' (1999, 322). On Musgrave's analysis of critical rationalism, it is rational to believe 'the theory which best survives critical scrutiny' (1999, 330). To believe a theory is to believe that it is true (cf. 1999, 321, 326). And the method of criticism is the method of science. The critical rationalist account of theory acceptance is therefore of clear relevance to the problem of method and truth. For the critical rationalist asserts that survival of critical scrutiny provides the basis for rational belief in the truth of scientific theories. But what is it for the method of criticism to be the method of science? As earlier noted, within the context of a Popperian falsificationist theory of method, the primary means of criticism is the attempt to falsify a theory by rigorous empirical test. Within a strictly falsificationist framework, it is possible to criticize a theory in a variety of ways. A theory may entail a false prediction or it may be unfalsifiable. It might predict no novel facts, be poorly corroborated, or be ad hoc. But there is no need for the method of criticism to be restricted to strictly falsificationist resources. A theory might also be criticized on grounds which have no immediate connection with empirical falsification as such. For example, a theory might lack coherence, be overly complex, have limited explanatory scope, or be inelegant. A variety of methodological considerations may therefore play a role in the critical method. But it remains to be asked how the critical method warrants belief in the truth of a theory. By itself, the rejection of justificationism does not suffice to resolve the problem of method and truth. If truth is non-epistemic, and the critical method is the basis of theory acceptance, the connection between method and belief in the truth is left entirely unexplained. Why is it Rational to Believe Scientific Theories are True? 135 It would be misguided to suppose that survival of criticism provides positive support for a theory. For the critical rationalist, survival of rigorous test or other attempts to criticize a theory does not lend positive support to a theory. To assume that criticism yields positive support is to assume a justificationist conception of rationality. But, for the critical rationalist, survival of criticism does not prove that a theory is true, nor does it render the theory more likely to be true. It does not provide any positive justification for the theory at all. Rather, survival of criticism provides one with a basis to tentatively believe in the truth of a theory, as opposed to alternative theories which have been exposed to criticism and failed to survive. The trouble is that nothing has been done to secure belief in truth as the unique mode of theory acceptance. It is possible to agree with the critical rationalist conception of scientific inquiry, but to deny that theories are to be accepted as true. To take but one example, it would be perfectly consistent for an anti-realist to endorse the critical method while at the same time embracing a constructive empiricist view of theory acceptance along the lines of Bas van Fraassen.12 On such an account, it would be rational to accept a theory which best withstands critical scrutiny. But the theory is to be accepted as empirically adequate, rather than true. That is, it is to be accepted as true at the observational level, without commitment to the truth of its non-observational content. Nothing about the critical method entails that a theory which survives criticism is to be accepted as true. Critical rationalists are fallibilists. As such, critical rationalists themselves insist that a theory which survives rigorous empirical test may fail to be true. But, if it does not follow from survival of criticism that a theory is true, then neither does it follow that the theory is to be accepted as true. There is nothing about the notion of criticism as such which requires one to believe that a theory which survives criticism is true. Musgrave introduces a modification of critical rationalism which may seem to go some way toward disarming this objection. The modification relates to the 'epistemic primacy' of perception (1999, 342). Perception is the source of the empirical evidence which is employed to test our theories. But on what basis are perceptual reports accepted? In ordinary circumstances, perceptual reports are not accepted as the result of test. Rather, they are accepted at face value. Perception is only subjected to test when something goes wrong. As Musgrave notes, 'only when we have some specific reason to suspect perceptual error do we "check out" a perceptual belief' (1999, 342). But if it may be rational to accept a perceptual report which has not been subjected to test, then survival of criticism cannot be necessary for rational belief. This point requires that critical rationalism be amended. For if it may be rational to accept a perceptual belief without submitting it to test, then it may be rational 12 Indeed, van Fraassen comes close to such a position when he remarks that 'the success of current scientific theories is no miracle. It is not even surprising to the scientific (Darwinist) mind. For any scientific theory is born into a life of fierce competition, a jungle red in tooth and claw' (1980, 40). Of course, this remark is made in the context of van Fraassen's discussion of the realist's success argument. But the talk of fierce competition suggests that van Fraassen approaches the question of theory acceptance with a decidedly Popperian cast of mind. Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science136 to accept such a belief without it having survived criticism. Musgrave, therefore, introduces a distinction between perceptual and non-perceptual beliefs: A non-perceptual belief is reasonable if it has best withstood criticism – a perceptual belief is reasonable if it has not failed to withstand criticism. The latter is just the commonsense view 'Trust your senses unless you have a specific reason not to'. (1999, 342) On the modified version of critical rationalism to which this distinction gives rise, rational theory acceptance requires survival of criticism. But perceptual belief is rational provided only that no problem has so far arisen with respect to the perception on which it is based. But even if the primacy of perception is granted, this does not affect the objection. It may simply be conceded that perception provides a prima facie rationale for the acceptance of a perceptual report. No such rationale is thereby provided for theory acceptance. This is particularly apparent in light of Musgrave's epistemic distinction between perceptual and non-perceptual belief. The primacy of perception specifically relates to perceptual belief. Nothing follows from the primacy of perception with respect to the rationality of non-perceptual belief. If the primacy of perception is to be of any relevance to theory acceptance, then an additional assumption is required which extends the primacy of perception to the non-perceptual realm. The point may be illustrated by means of the earlier example of the constructive empiricist version of critical rationalism. Such a constructive empiricist accepts the critical rationalist account of theory acceptance with the qualification that theories which survive criticism are to be accepted as empirically adequate. It is entirely consistent with such a position to grant the epistemic primacy of perception, and to agree that perception provides a prima facie rationale for perceptual belief. But the primacy of perception only entails that perceptual beliefs be accepted as true. It does not extend to the level of theory. Hence, the constructive empiricist may restrict theory acceptance to empirical adequacy. Thus, even if the primacy of perception is granted, it does not follow that theories which pass critical scrutiny need be accepted as true. Given this, and the earlier point that survival of critical scrutiny does not entail belief in the truth of a theory, I conclude that the critical rationalist position presented by Musgrave does not resolve the problem of method and truth. It remains to be shown why use of the critical method provides any reason to believe that a theory is true. Epistemic versus Metaphysical Principles We have now considered two approaches proposed by Musgrave which are of relevance to the problem of method and truth. Both of the approaches are based on epistemic principles of rational belief. As such, both of the approaches proposed by Musgrave contrast with the approaches to the problem of method and truth canvassed in section 8.2. In section 8.2, we first considered Lakatos's 'plea for a whiff of inductivism' that Popper's methodology be supplemented by a metaphysical principle which connects corroboration with verisimilitude. Such a principle would consist of a substantive Why is it Rational to Believe Scientific Theories are True? 137 synthetic claim about the world in the light of which corroboration is revealed to be an indication of verisimilitude. By contrast, Musgrave's epistemic principles say nothing about the world. Instead, they specify conditions under which it may be rational to believe a proposition or hypothesis to be true. After considering Lakatos's proposal, we examined the analytic approach to the problem of method and truth that is due to internal realism. The internalist identifies truth with satisfaction of methodological criteria. Given such an identification, it may be rational to believe that a theory which satisfies methodological criteria is true. For that is what it is to be true. By contrast with internal realism, Musgrave is a realist for whom truth is a non-epistemic correspondence relation. As such, Musgrave must reject the analytic approach on two counts. As a realist, he must reject the internalist conception of truth because of the idealism to which it leads. And as an advocate of a nonepistemic conception of truth, he must reject the internalist identification of truth with satisfaction of epistemic criteria. But while it is clear that Musgrave must reject the analytic approach, it is not entirely clear why he rejects metaphysical principles in favour of epistemic principles of rational belief. It may be that Musgrave rejects metaphysical principles because he takes them to be inductive principles of the uniformity of nature of a kind that Hume showed to be unjustified (cf. Musgrave, 1993, 157ff). It may be that he takes the rejection of justificationism to entail the rejection of metaphysical principles (cf. Musgrave, 1999, 327). It may be that he takes there to be no need for metaphysical principles over and above scientific theories which may be accepted on critical rationalist grounds (Musgrave, 1999, 328-9). Or it may be that he takes such principles to rest on an anthropocentric metaphysics (Musgrave, 1999, 283, 285). Whatever Musgrave's exact reason for rejecting metaphysical principles may be, I shall now attempt to show that such principles are necessary in order to solve the problem of method and truth. The truth of an empirical claim about the world depends upon the way that the world in fact is. In order to show that use of an epistemic method leads to such truth about the world, it is necessary to say something about the world. Otherwise, no connection is made between method and truth. In short, the problem of method and truth is at least partly one of metaphysics.13 8.4 Metaphysics and Naturalism To illustrate the relevance of metaphysical considerations to the problem of method and truth, I will now examine two examples of the epistemological application of metaphysical considerations. The first case is that of Nicholas Rescher's methodological pragmatism. The second is Hilary Kornblith's grounding of inductive inference in natural kinds. 13 Musgrave is not completely dismissive of metaphysical principles. Against those who treat laws and theories as inference licenses, Musgrave claims that they may be under the influence of a positivistic bias against metaphysics (1999, 283). Moreover, he notes against positivism that metaphysical principles of theory construction may play a significant role in science and may even be subject to rational appraisal (1999, 309). Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science138 Rescher's Methodological Pragmatism For the classical pragmatist, a true proposition is one the acceptance of which leads to practical success. Rescher refers to such pragmatism as thesis pragmatism, since it relates to specific propositions or theses. He rejects the pragmatist view of truth in favour of a correspondence conception. Instead of thesis pragmatism, he proposes a methodological pragmatism, which applies the criterion of practical success at the level of the methods of inquiry. The rules of method are to be evaluated in the manner of instruments in terms of their success in practical application. If a rule reliably performs the function for which it is designed, it thereby receives pragmatic justification (Rescher, 1977, 3-4). By contrast, individual claims are not practically justified, but receive indirect support from the methods by which they are certified (Rescher, 1977, 71-2). For Rescher, pragmatically warranted methods of inquiry are to be regarded as 'truth-indicative' (1977, 83).14 A proposition which satisfies a rule of method is therefore to be accepted as true. Thus, while truth and utility are distinct at the level of propositions, Rescher takes pragmatic success to have a bearing on truth at the level of method. Because Rescher takes certification by rules of method to warrant acceptance as true, his methodological pragmatism is therefore of relevance to the problem of method and truth. The question is why practical justification of method should be taken to be truth-indicative. The answer, as we shall now see, turns on metaphysical considerations. In order to explain how practical success relates to truth, Rescher places the use of method within a broader metaphysical setting. This is characterized by the following principles which relate to human agency, the community of inquirers and the nature of reality (1977, 84-9). Activism: our survival and welfare require action on our part; since we act on the basis of beliefs, our beliefs are of practical relevance. Reasonableness: belief guides action in a way that coordinates action with beliefs and needs. Interactionism: our active intervention in the world produces outcomes which may either satisfy or frustrate our intentions. Purposive constancy: to establish the reliability of a method, inquirers must employ the same method for the same purpose. Uniformity of nature: continued use of a method depends upon the underlying constancy of nature and the conditions of application of the method. Nonconspiratorial nature of reality: nature is indifferent to our beliefs and needs, neither conspiring for nor against belief-based actions. Against this metaphysical backdrop, Rescher argues that a method of inquiry whose use systematically meets with success is to be seen as truth-indicative. False 14 Rescher's expression 'truth-indicative' may seem to suggest that a proposition that satisfies a methodological rule is thereby definitively shown to be true. Indeed, Rescher sometimes uses the expression 'truth-criterion' (e.g., 1977, 81), which may suggest that satisfaction of a rule suffices to establish the truth of a proposition. But I do not think that Rescher takes satisfaction of a rule to be criterial for truth in the sense that it either constitutes or demonstrates truth. Rather, satisfaction of a rule provides a warrant or justification for acceptance of the proposition as true (cf. 1977, 79-80). Why is it Rational to Believe Scientific Theories are True? 139 belief may sometimes lead to success, but it could hardly be supposed to do so on a routine basis: Isolated successes can be gratuitous and probatively impotent, but the situation will be otherwise when what is at issue is not isolated actions based on particular beliefs, but a general policy of acting, based on a generic and methodologically universalized standard of belief-validation. When one views man as a vulnerable creature in close interaction with a hostile (or at best neutral) environment, it is – to be sure – conceivable that action on a false belief or even set of beliefs might be successful, but it surpasses the bounds of credibility to suppose that this might occur systematically, on a wholesale rather than retail basis. Given a suitable framework of metaphysical assumptions, it is effectively impossible that success should crown the products of systematically error-producing cognitive procedures. (Rescher, 1977, 89-90) Here, in a manner resembling the 'no miracles' version of the success argument for realism, Rescher dismisses the idea of a pragmatically successful but systematically erroneous method as incredible. The crucial factor is the rational implementation of belief in what Rescher describes as a 'highly reactive environment' (1977, 84), 'a duly responsive nature' that is 'complex and volatile' (1977, 91). In such a world, a method of belief-formation that regularly gives rise to successful practical action cannot, in Rescher's words, be 'systematically error-producing'. Quite the contrary, it must surely be 'truth-indicative'. I shall delve no further into the intricacies of Rescher's methodological pragmatism, though pertinent questions might usefully be raised regarding the line of reasoning that underlies the proposed metaphysical rationale for the truthindicativeness of method.15 The purpose of my discussion of Rescher is simply to illustrate how metaphysical considerations may be brought to bear on the problem of method and truth. To further illustrate this, I will now turn to Kornblith's account of the ground of inductive inference. Kornblith's Natural Ground of Induction As we saw in 5.3, Hilary Kornblith proposes a naturalistic account of the reliability of induction. The account combines psychologically informed epistemology with a realist metaphysics of natural kinds. Kornblith takes epistemology to be directed to two questions: '(1) What is the world that we may know it?; and (2) What are we that we may know the world?' (1993a, 2). His reply is that mind and world fit 15 It is, however, important to note two issues to which Rescher's approach immediately gives rise. The first is the apparent circularity involved in drawing upon substantive principles about the world in arguing that methods of inquiry yield truths about the world. Rescher admits the circularity. Instead of being vicious, however, he seeks to show that the justification of method by practice is cyclical and self-supporting (1977, Ch. 7). The second is the nature of the reasoning from metaphysical principles to the truth-indicativeness of inquiry procedures. In our (2000, 51), Robert Nola and I assimilate the reasoning involved to inference to the best explanation. However, Rescher resists this interpretation (private communication). He argues that it is instead an inference to best systematization. (See Rescher, 2001, Ch. 10 for comparison of inference to the best explanation with inference to the best systematization). Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science140 together. On the one hand, properties which occur together in natural kinds make reliable induction possible. On the other hand, our minds are naturally equipped with a conceptual and inferential apparatus tuned to the natural kind structure of the world. Kornblith takes the success of science to show that natural kinds are the ground of induction (1993a, 41-2). Such success is due to the development of theories about the unobservable structures that underlie the observable properties of things. The classifications devised on the basis of such theories reflect real divisions between natural kinds of things, rather than merely nominal or interest-relative kinds. Inductive inferences can only work, short of divine intervention, if there is something in nature binding together the properties which we use to identify kinds. Our inductive inferences in science have worked remarkably well, and, moreover, we have succeeded in identifying the ways in which the observable properties which draw kinds to our attention are bound together in nature. In light of these successes, we can hardly go on to doubt the existence of the very kinds which serve to explain how such successes were even possible. (1993a, 42) Thus, Kornblith argues that the reliable use of induction in science can only be explained by means of real natural kinds which support induction. It is only if the properties of a member of a kind form a union on the basis of which they must cooccur that induction which projects such properties to unobserved members of the kind could possibly succeed on a reliable basis. To complete the fit between mind and reality, Kornblith argues that the human mind is disposed to form concepts and draw inferences in ways that reflect real natural kinds. However, I shall not discuss this issue here, since my aim in discussing Kornblith is to draw attention to the role of metaphysics in dealing with the problem of method and truth. Kornblith explains the reliability of induction on the basis of real kinds in nature. It is because members of a natural kind share properties in common with other members of the kind that our inductions about the properties of members of the kind prove to be reliable. Thus, Kornblith employs facts about the nature of reality to explain why induction is reliable. He therefore employs metaphysical considerations to explain why use of a method of inquiry leads to truth. The Moral of the Metaphysical Story The approaches of Rescher and Kornblith represent two contrasting approaches to the problem of method and truth. Rescher argues that success in practical application reveals the truth-indicative character of rules of method. Kornblith takes successful use of induction to require the existence of real kinds in nature which make reliable induction possible. Rescher emphasizes the practical implementation of method, while Kornblith draws on empirical research. Rescher's approach forms part of a general theory of the nature and justification of method, whereas Kornblith's account is restricted to the reliable use of induction. But, despite the contrasts, the approaches of Rescher and Kornblith are united by a deeper commonality. For both approaches exemplify a synthetic solution to the problem of method and truth, which employs metaphysical considerations to establish Why is it Rational to Believe Scientific Theories are True? 141 a connection between method and truth. Both Rescher and Kornblith appeal to the success of science and action in order to argue that our methods provide epistemic warrant with respect to the truth of our beliefs and theories. Both approaches locate the success of method within a broader metaphysical framework which involves assumptions about the nature of the world we inhabit as well as about ourselves as actors and inquirers. Moreover, the metaphysical assumptions employed by both approaches are all broadly consonant with realism.16 The latter point deserves emphasis. In their attempt to connect method with truth, both Rescher and Kornblith deploy metaphysical assumptions that are broadly realistic in spirit. Such assumptions cannot therefore be rejected by the realist on metaphysical grounds. The question is whether such metaphysical assumptions should be allowed to play the epistemological role which Rescher and Kornblith ascribe to them. Yet it is entirely unclear how to solve the problem of method and truth in the absence of metaphysical assumptions. I therefore see no alternative but to put the realist's metaphysical assumptions to epistemological use in a manner such as that illustrated by Rescher and Kornblith. 8.5 Conclusion In this chapter I have sought to raise the problem of method and truth as a challenge to epistemological aspects of Alan Musgrave's scientific realism. The chapter has been largely an exercise in comparative epistemology, which examines alternative solutions to the problem. In line with Musgrave's analysis of the inherent idealism of internal realism, I have argued that the internal realist solution to the problem is not available to the scientific realist. I have also sought to show that Musgrave's own appeal to strictly epistemic principles fails to provide a satisfactory solution to the problem, since such principles do not preclude anti-realist forms of theoryacceptance. By contrast, I have attempted to show that metaphysical considerations are necessary in order to explain why satisfaction of methodological rules warrants acceptance of a theory as true. In this final section, I seek to extract relevant lessons from my analysis with respect to the epistemology of Musgrave's scientific realism. In the first place, as a realist, Musgrave should have no particular cause to baulk at metaphysical assumptions of the sort described in the previous section. For example, the metaphysical principles introduced by Rescher in relation to human agency, causal interaction and the nonconspiratorial nature of reality, seem entirely acceptable to the realist.17 The principles are compatible with a realist commitment to 16 That the metaphysical considerations to which Rescher and Kornblith appeal are broadly consonant with realism is perhaps most tellingly illustrated by noting that both of their approaches are compatible with a metaphysical realist commitment to an objective, mind-independent reality. Rescher adopts a general principle of uniformity of nature, while Kornblith opts for a somewhat more substantive metaphysics of natural kinds. But both the commitment to the uniformity of nature and to the reality of natural kinds are entirely consonant with a metaphysical realist commitment to mind-independence. 17 As for the natural kinds to which Kornblith appeals in his account of induction, here the realist might have cause to object either to the particular account of natural kinds that Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science142 an objective, mind-independent reality. At base, they are no more than an articulation of a commonsense view of ourselves, our surroundings and our relationship to those surroundings. And, in Musgrave's view at least, the scientific realist is not just a realist about science but a realist about common sense as well. But Musgrave might baulk at appeal to the uniformity of nature. The reason would not be his realism, though, but his anti-inductivism (see Musgrave, 1993, Ch. 9). Here Musgrave's realism must simply be played off against his anti-inductivism. For what is it to be a scientific realist, if it is not to say that there is a real world in which observed phenomena are caused in a lawlike manner by the action of unobservable entities? Of course, we might wrongly identify the causal processes and laws of nature which govern the phenomena. Or the world might be radically transformed overnight. But these are merely sceptical points. The world that we inhabit is a world of objectively existing things, real causal relations and law-governed phenomena. Such a world is characterized by underlying natural uniformities which it is the business of science to discover. A realism that denies this is realism in name only. Indeed, it is realism without the real world. In section 8.3, I objected to Musgrave's epistemic principle of best explanation that nothing prevents the adoption of an anti-realist analogue of the principle. Yet, as we have seen (8.4), metaphysical resolution of the problem of method and truth proceeds by way of inference to the best explanation of success (or similar form of inference). It might appear inconsistent to object to inference to best explanation in one context while seemingly embracing it in another. My point, however, is not that the realist may do without an explanatory pattern of inference altogether. Given the gap between method and truth, some form of explanatory reasoning must play a role in the epistemology of scientific realism. My point, rather, is that inference to the best explanation as such is not the exclusive domain of the realist. The anti-realist may take it to be justified to accept the best explanation but decline to accept it as true in the realist sense. However, a realist outcome may be secured once explanatory inference is set within a broadly realist metaphysical framework. In the spirit of the approaches considered in 8.4, I submit that the problem of method and truth is best dealt with as follows. We begin with common sense. The world of common sense is an independently existing reality of causally interacting objects which may or may not be observable by us. We employ a variety of methods to inquire into the ways of this world. Some methods are purely observational, while others are rules of theory appraisal. On the whole, our sense experience provides us with true beliefs about the observable world. In addition, our theoretical reasoning about unobservable states of affairs is frequently rewarded with success at the level of observation and practical action. Given the sort of world we inhabit, the best explanation of the systematically successful implementation of a method of inquiry is that the method provides a reliable means of discovery of truth about the world. Like us, our methods are Kornblith employs or to the existence of natural kinds, as such. But the idea that there is a real world, in which there are real, non-conventional differences between different sorts of things, is not something to which any realist should seriously wish to raise objections. Why is it Rational to Believe Scientific Theories are True? 143 fallible. But in a world such as ours the use of such methods could not consistently meet with success, if they were not for the most part a reliable guide to the truth. In 8.3, I also argued that critical rationalism does not explain why survival of criticism warrants truth as the unique mode of theory acceptance. Yet I do not oppose the method of criticism as such. Indeed, I take the method of criticism to be largely constitutive of the methodology of science. For, as pointed out previously, both falsificationist rules of empirical test and non-falsificationist criteria of theory appraisal may serve as the basis of the critical method in science. The question is simply one of why a theory which survives criticism need be accepted as true. As with the previous point, this question becomes manageable if the critical method is placed within a broader metaphysical context. If a theory is subjected to a battery of demanding tests, consistently yielding accurate predictions in a range of different circumstances, such performance under test is to be accorded evidential weight with regard to the truth of the theory. It is true, of course, that occasional predictive success may occur as the result of good fortune or accident. But in the sort of world that we inhabit pervasive error is not rewarded by systematic success. A theory which survives a range of rigorous tests may ultimately fail as a result of deeper and more detailed investigation. But in order to sustain systematic success across a great variety of tests, it must either contain a considerable portion of truth or approximate the truth sufficiently closely for it to be empirically indistinguishable from the truth. It might, finally, be objected that appeal to metaphysical considerations in an epistemological context must proceed in a circle. In order for a claim about reality to justify a method of inquiry there must be reason to accept the claim about reality. But there can be no reason to accept a claim about reality until some method of inquiry is justified. Such circularity is surely to be avoided. But to insist that epistemology proceed without metaphysics is to fail to appreciate the task with which the realist is confronted. It is not just that the methods of inquiry must be shown to be rationally justified. Since the purpose of inquiry is to discover truth, the methods must be shown to promote the search for truth. But since truth is a matter of how the world is, it must be shown that the methods lead to truth about a mind-independent world. But this requires that something substantive be said about the nature of the world in virtue of which the world is accessible to our methods of inquiry. The ultimate aim of such an account is a coherent structure in which claims about methods and claims about reality fit together in relations of mutual support. To suppose that such relations of mutual support must result in circular justification is to mistake the nature of epistemology. For human knowledge is a natural phenomenon like any other. To explain how humans know the world requires that we explain how human inquirers may be related to reality in such a way that they may know it. Thus metaphysics and epistemology go hand in hand. For the realist, at least, facts about reality must be brought to bear on facts about inquiry if we are to explain how inquiry yields truth about reality. 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Index abduction 106 abductive realism 28-9, 117, 118-20 aims realist 13, 28, 89-91, 94-100, 103-7, 109 truth as aim of science 13 utopian 95n.14, 98-9, 101, 103 algorithm 2n.2, 92 Andersen, H. 6, 54, 73 anti-realism 5, 6, 8, 11-12, 29, 71-4, 109, 114 constructive 13 internal realism 114-5 sceptical 12, 115-7 Armstrong, D.M. 24n.12, 84n.1 Ayer, A.J. 55, 126 Boyd, R. 25, 27n.18, 80, 120n.9 Brown, H. 92n.10 Campbell, K. 24n.12 & 13 Carnap, R. 55, 56, 57. n.2 & 3 Cartesian 15n.5, 22 causal powers 7, 79, 82-3 Chakravartty, A. 86n.2 Chalmers, A. 90n.3, 92n.7; n.10 Churchland, P. 25 circularity 74, 80, 81, 84-5, 139n.15, 143 Coffa, A. 55n.1 commonsense realism 3, 23-5, 123 conceptual change 1-2, 5, 70, 73 conceptual scheme 11, 32, 33n.3, 39, 40-1, 114n.5 constructive empiricism135, 136 corroboration 125-7 critical rationalism 123, 133-6 Devitt, M. 4, 8n.5, 12n.1, 14n.3, 16, 17n.8 & 9, 24n.12, 33n.3, 35n.7, 43n.1, 45, 68, 105n.27, 115n.6, 129n.8 Dewey, J. 94n.13 dispositions 56-7, 82-3 Einstein, A. 26n.15, 127 Ellis, B. 4, 7, 12n.1, 20, 81-2, 90n.3, 92n.6, 96n.16, 112n.4, 114, 115, 125, 127, 129, 130 Enç, B. 67n.9 English, J. 57n.3 essence 82-3, 86n.3 essentialism 19, 79, 81-4 experimental argument for realism 106, 131-2 fallibilism 41, 101, 104, 124, 126, 135 falsificationism 124; n.2, 133, 134, 143 Feyerabend, P.K 25, 58, 59-61, 63-4, 74, 90n.3, 91, 92n.7, n.9, n.10 Field, H. 17n.8 Fine, A. 67n8 Friedman, M. 55n.1 Giere, R. 94n.13 God's Eye point of view 31-41 Goldman, A. 96n.17 Goodman, N. 93n.12 Hacking, I. 4, 5, 12n.1, 16n.6, 7, 25n.14, 33n.4 Hanson, N.R. 58, 59 Harman, G. 84n.1 Hempel, C.G. 56 homeostatic property clusters 80-1, 83 holism 57, 60, 61n.7 Hooker, C. 22 Horwich, P. 17n.8, 19n.10, 46n.3, 50n.7, 11n.2 Hoyningen-Huene, P. 1n.1, 2n.3, 6, 14n.3, 54, 59n.4, 73-7 Hume, D. 19, 79, 83, 97n.19, 133, 137 hypothetical imperative 94, 95, 99, 117 ideal limit 32, 49, 127-8 idealism 17, 111-2, 115, 116, 129, 137 Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science152 incommensurability 1, 5, 6, 15n.4, 24n.13, 53-77 induction enumerative 84-5 problem of 6-8, 79-87 inference to best explanation 28, 35, 84, 85, 106, 107, 118, 119, 130-3, 139n.15, 142 justificationism 133-4, 137 justified true belief 100-1 Kant, I. 2, 73, 75n.15 Kitcher, P. 27, 68, 76 KK thesis 101n.22 knowledge as justified true belief 100-1 theoretical 12, 100-3, 115 Kornblith, H. 7, 8, 27n.18, 36-7, 41, 80-1, 83, 94n.13, 120n.9, 137, 139-41 Kripke, S. 65, 66, 67 Kuhn, T.S. 6, 14n.3, 24, 54, 57n.3, 58, 5961, 63-4, 70-5, 90n.3, 4, 91, 92n.8, 9, 10 Lacey, H. 90n.3, 92n.6 Lakatos, I. 58, 89n.1, 93n.12, 106, 125-7, 130, 133, 136-7 Lange, M. 85 language, double language model, of science 57 Laudan, L. 3, 8, 26, 27, 28n.19, 58, 90n.3, 91-105, 114, 115-7, 127n.5, 132n.11 Lehrer, K. 96n.11 Leplin, J. 12n.1 lexicon 70-3 Logical empiricism 22n.11, 57n.2, 75n.14 Logical positivism 18-9, 54-7 Lycan, W. 90n.3, 92n.6, 102n.25 Lyons, T.D. 27n.17 Marsonet, M. 31n.1, 38-41 McMullin, E. 90n.3, 92n.6, 106, 119n.8 meaning change 61, 74 contextual theory of 60 variance 5, 54, 57, 59-63 methodological rules 27-9, 59, 90, 91-6, 99, 109, 110, 113, 115, 117-21, 124-5, 129, 130, 138, 140, 141 pluralism 89-95, 105, 110 pragmatism 138-9 mind-independence 2, 49, 50, 112, 113, 141 Moore, G.E. 24n.13 Musgrave, A.E. 9, 27, 35, 84n.1, 105n.27, 115n.6, 123-5, 127, 128n.6, 129-37, 141-2 Nagel, E. 57n.2 natural kinds 7, 19-20, 36, 41, 65-71, 79-87, 139-41 naturalism epistemic 8, 79, 80-1, 93, 94n.13, 117, 118 normative 3, 6, 8-9, 89-107 neo-Kantian 14, 55n.1, 73, 74n.14, 114n.5 Neurath, O. 55 Newton-Smith, W.H. 12n.1, 89n.1, 90n.3, 92n.6, 126n.4 Nola, R. 93n.12, 102n.26, 131n.10, 139n.15 non-algorithmic model of rationality, see algorithm norms, see methodological rules novel predictions 27, 116, 118, 120, 124n.2, 131-2, 134 Oberheim, E. 6, 54, 73 observation theory-dependence of 58-9 ontology 2-3, 6, 9, 21, 39 Papineau, D. 85 Parrini, P. 55n.1 pluralism, see methodological pluralism Polanyi, M. 58 Popper, K. 55, 56, 89, 93, 94, 96n.18, 97, 106, 123, 125-7, 133-4, 135n.12, 136 phenomenal world 73-7 pragmatism, see methodological pragmatism prediction novel 27, 116, 118, 120, 124n.2, 131-2, 134 Principle (J) 133 (CR) 134 no-overlap 71 problem of induction 6-8, 79-87 of method and truth 8-9, 109-42 Index 153 qua 67 progress scientific 5-6, 13, 34, 64, 69, 71, 91, 95-9, 105-6, 118-9 Psillos, S. 27, 94n.14, 102n.25 psychology cognitive 8 Gestalt 58 Putnam, H. 4, 15-6, 22n.11, 25-6, 28n.20, 31-4, 35, 37, 38, 56, 64-6, 112n.4, 114, 125, 127-9, 130 Quine, W.V.O. 37n.9, 81, 90n.3 realism abductive 28-9, 117-20 causal 19-20 commonsense 3, 23-5, 123 entity 4-5, 16n.7, 43-51, 123, 125n.3 internal 11, 16, 28n.20, 31-2, 105, 1145, 118, 127-9, 137, 141 metaphysical 15-16, 18, 28n.20, 31-4, 112, 116, 127-8, 141n.16 nomological 19-20 referential 15n.4 scientific, passim semantic 18-19 success argument for 21-2, 25-9, 34n.6, 41, 106, 118, 124n.2, 130-3, 135n.12, 139 reality external 23, 73 mind-independent 2, 7, 15, 17, 31, 33, 40, 41, 70, 79, 113, 129, 141, 142 reference causal theory of 1, 5, 17n.8, 64-9 causal descriptive theory of 6, 15, 54 description theory of 70 change 10, 63-4, 67n.8, 67-70 Reisch, G. 57n.3 relativism epistemic 8, 59, 93-5, 110n.1 reliabilism 96 reliability 38, 41, 80-1, 83, 85, 96, 102, 105, 107, 117, 124, 138, 130-40 Rescher, N. 27n.18, 28n.19, 94n.13, 103, 120n.9, 137, 138-41, 141n.16 Ristau, C. 36-8 rules, see methodological rules Russell, B. 25 Salmon, W. 25n.14 sceptical anti-realism, see anti-realism scepticism 115-7 Scheffler, I. 62-4, 69 Schilpp, P.A. 126 Schlick, M. 18, 55-6 scientism 20-1 semantic ascent 5, 45, 47-51 realism, see realism, semantic variance, see meaning, variance Smart, J.J.C. 22 standards 1, 58-60, 91, 100 Sterelny, K. 67, 105n.27, 115n.6, 129n.8 Stich, S. 28n.19, 94n.13 success argument, see realism, success argument for Tarski, A. 111, 123 Tetens, H. 31n.1 theoretical context 54, 58-61 theory-dependence of observation 58-9 Toulmin, S. 58 transcendence, see truth, transcendence of translation failure of 60-1, 68-73 truth condition 18-9 coherence theory of 16, 17, 49 correspondence theory of 16-8, 19n.10, 28n.20, 32, 33, 48-50, 71, 72, 74, 110-13, 123, 125, 128, 137 deflationist theory of 50n.7, 111n.2 disquotational theory of 48-9, 50n.7 epistemic theory of 49n.6, 129 minimalist theory of 17 non-epistemic theory of 32, 112-3, 123, 125, 127-8, 130, 132, 137 objective 17-18 redundancy theory of 46n.3, 50n.7 transcendence of 97-103, 116 T-scheme 48-50, 111, 129 ultimate argument, see realism, success argument for values 90-1, 103, 115 van Fraassen, B. 12n.1, 114, 115-6, 130n.9, 135 verification, principle of 18-9, 55-6 Scientific Realism and the Rationality of Science154 verification-transcendence 18, 19, 118 verificationism 18-9, 49, 55-6 verisimilitude 97, 119n.8, 125-7, 136-7 warrant 3, 6, 27-8, 96-7, 102-3, 109, 116-8, 138, 141 whiff of abduction 106 of inductivism 89, 125-7, 130 Wilkerson, T.E. 86n.3 Wittgenstein, L. 55, 58 world-in-itself 73-7 Worrall, J. 89n.2, 93n. | {
"pile_set_name": "PhilPapers"
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Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016| Volume 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 862-1244 ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research www.JCER.com Published by QuantumDream, Inc. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Volume 7 Issue 11 Theories of Consciousness and Death What happens to the inner light of consciousness with the death of the individual body & brain? Reductive materialism assumes it simply fades to black. Other theories of consciousness indicate a continuation of the self, a transformation or awakening, or even alternatives based in life experience. In this issue, speculation based in theoretic research is explored. Gregory M. Nixon, Editor-at-Large Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016| Volume 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 862-1244 ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research www.JCER.com Published by QuantumDream, Inc. i Editors-in-Chief: Huping Hu, Ph.D., J.D. Maoxin Wu, M.D., Ph.D. Advisory Board Dainis Zeps, Ph.D., Science and Religion Dialogue Interdisciplinary Group, University of Latvia, Latvia Matti Pitkanen, Ph.D., Independent Researcher, Finland Arkadiusz Jadczyk, Professor (guest), Center CAIROS, IMT, Univ. Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France Gregory M. Nixon, Ph.D., University of Northern British Columbia, Canada Sultan Tarlacı, M.D., Neurology Specialist, NeuroQuantologist, Turkey Stephen P. Smith, Ph.D., Visiting Scientist, Physics Dept., UC Davis, United States Michael A. Persinger, Professor, Laurentian University, Canada Elio Conte, Professor, Dept. of Neurological and Psychiatric Sciences, Univ. of Bari, Italy, Italy Andrei Khrennikov, Professor, In'tl Center for Mathematical Modeling, Linnaeus Univ., Sweden Chris King, Independent Researcher, New Zealand Graham P. Smetham, Independent Researcher, United Kingdom Steven E. Kaufman, Independent Researcher, United States Christopher Holvenstot, Independent Researcher in Consciousness Studies Pradeep B. Deshpande, Professor Emeritus of Chemical Engineering, University of Louisville, United States Iona Miller, Independent Researcher, United States Massimo Pregnolato, Quantumbiolab, Dept. of Drug Sciences, Univ. of Pavia, Italy Tobi Zausner, PhD, LCSW, Saybrook University, United States Cover Art: Arnold Böcklin, Isle of the Dead ("Die Toteninsel"), Version III, 1883, Berlin. Public Domain. (Adjusted for this issue by Alex Pavlenko.) JCER Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016| Volume 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 862-1244 ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research www.JCER.com Published by QuantumDream, Inc. ii Table of Contents Epigraph: From "The Immortal", Jorge Luis Borges iii Editor's Introduction: I Killed a Squirrel the Other Day, Gregory M. Nixon iv-xi Research Essays The Tilde Fallacy and Reincarnation: Variations on a "Skeptical" Argument Teed Rockwell 862-881 Death, Consciousness, and Phenomenology, Steve Bindeman 882-899 The Idealist View of Consciousness After Death, Bernardo Kastrup 900-909 Consciousness, a Cosmic Phenomenon-A Hypothesis, Eva Déli 910-930 The Theory of a Natural Afterlife: A Newfound, Real Possibility for What Awaits Us at Death, Bryon K. Ehlmann 931-950 Near-Death Cases Desegregating Non-Locality/Disembodiment via Quantum Mediated Consciousness: An Extended Version of the Cell-Soul Pathway, Contzen Pereira & J Shashi Kiran Reddy 951-968 On the Possible Existence of Quantum Consciousness After Brain Death, Massimo Pregnolato & Alfredo Pereira Jr. 969-991 Science and Postmortem Survival, Edward F. Kelly 992-1011 Explorations ISS Theory: Cosmic Consciousness, Self, and Life Beyond Death in a Hyperdimensional Physics, Chris H. Hardy 1012-1035 Does the Consciousness End, Remain Awake, or Transform After Death? Radivoj Stankovich (with Micho Durdevich) 1036-1050 Big Bang Spirituality, Life, and Death, Ken Bausch 1051-1063 Death, Consciousness and the Quantum Paradigm, Ronald Peter Glasberg 1064-1077 Living With Limits: The Continuum of Consciousness, Donald Brackett 1078-1098 Mysticism, Consciousness, Death, Mike Sosteric 1099-1118 What Dies? Eternalism and the Afterlife in William James, Jonathan Bricklin 1119-1140 Theories of Consciousness and Death: Does Consciousness End, Continue, Awaken, or Transform When the Body Dies? Roger Cook 1141-1153 It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World, James P. Kowall & Pradeep B. Deshpande 1154-1208 Statements A Feminine Vision for the World Consciousness, & a New Outrageous Ontology, Lorna Green 1209-1217 The Mask of Eternity: The Quest for Immortality and the Afterlife, Iona Miller 1218-1228 Are We Really "such stuff as dreams are made on"? Chris Nunn 1229-1234 Is the Afterlife a Non-Question? (Let's Hope Not), Deepak Chopra 1235-1239 Life After Death? An Improbable Essay, Stuart Kauffman 1240-1244 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016| Volume 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 862-1244 ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research www.JCER.com Published by QuantumDream, Inc. iii "To be immortal is commonplace; except for man, all creatures are immortal, for they are ignorant of death; what is divine, terrible, incomprehensible, is to know that one is immortal." (Jorge Luis Borges, The Immortal, 1943) Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. iv-xiii Nixon, G., I Killed a Squirrel the Other Day ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com iv I Killed a Squirrel the Other Day... Gregory M. Nixon* I killed a squirrel the other day, or rather I was the instigator. At first, I refused to do it (despite the demands of my less scrupulous lady whose furniture was being ruined), but the little varmint had chosen our unsealed garden shed for his winter hideaway and was putting all his pinecones and birdseed and whatever else he could grab into storage there. Worse, he was tearing the stuffing out of our garden cushions from the lawn furniture, even gnawing through the bamboo that coated the chairs. Not ready for murder, I bought two live-catch traps and baited them with peanuts, but we – my lady, my stepdaughter, and our excited dog, Raksha – watched through the window while the squirrel entered into the cage we had placed on the cover of the hot tub and did a little tap dance on the trigger plate to grab the nut, sniff it, insert it, pause, and just as lightly dance away. Nothing happened. It was too light to release the trigger. I oiled the hinges, and we gathered again, but the same thing happened – nothing but nut theft. (Secretly, I kind of admired the panache of the furry critter.) Being the man of the house, I knew my duty. The squirrel was an enemy, a home invader that had to be stopped. I bought two heavy rattraps. I put them in the shed baited with a dab of peanut butter to support a small peanut. The release was so hair trigger it slipped and smashed a peanut into powder, just missing my finger. I had no doubt the deadly plan would work. I set it on a table already full of bamboo shavings. ("Do you feel lucky, squirrel?") There was no doubt. I went back in only 10 minutes and the trap I had put on a table near the wall was missing. Already dreading what I would see, I looked over the edge of the table into the darkness to the floor below. I saw the furry tail and knew the trap was sprung. I reached down and pulled up the unfortunate creature by the tail, which also pulled up the trap that had spring on its neck, sideways. To my horror, I saw the squirrel was still alive, barely, its neck unbroken, probably nearly suffocated by now. With an unmanly panic, I ran with it outside to the deck, calling for my 20-year old daughter, "Gracie! Gracie! It's still alive." I still don't know why I called her (silly, really), but I placed the bulgy-eyed squirrel still trapped on the hardwood deck and ran to the garage to get a hammer. I returned just in time to see Gracie drop a large lava rock from the garden directly onto the little beast immediately stopping its suffering with a splat. She looked at me stoically and said without emotion, "It's the circle of life." Now this may be a long and perhaps slightly ridiculous story with which to begin an Introduction to a JCER issue on "Theories of Consciousness & Death", but it struck me later that this is exactly what I have been writing about for years. The circle of life, made famous in Disney's "The Lion King" is the circle of time: from life comes death and death helps bring forth new life. Gracie had made a very simple point that all of Nature (except for a rare group * Correspondence: Greg Nixon, University of Northern British Columbia, Prince George, BC, Canada Email: [email protected] Public Website: https://unbc.academia.edu/GregoryNixon Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. iv-xiii Nixon, G., I Killed a Squirrel the Other Day ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com v of scientists who actually think the universe will expand in one-way time until all the lights go out) unquestioningly accepts: death is as much a part of life as the dark side of the moon is a part of the moon. In fact, you cannot have one without the other. Life on Earth would have suffocated and run out of food sources with the endless identical replication of amoebae in the same way mitosis would never have allowed evolution to begin. It took meiosis and death, not to mention sexual reproduction, for the evolutionary process to set forth. Life lives off life, and death and sex are necessary for that to happen. To begin the process of unimaginable differentiation that came to flourish across this planet (and possibly others) required the old or weak make room for the new and that sexual breeding allow for slow evolutionary mixing and unexpected mutations. In short, the first point I wish to make is that death is good, or at least a necessary part of life. It's especially good if we accept the recent philosophizing of Thomas Nagel (2012) that evolution has a natural teleology (undirected by deity), a purpose that is discovered by creating it. Evolution is basically competition, death, sex, and birth. I want to make a few observations on consciousness and death, as I have often in my writings, before I give a general introduction to the widely divergent perspectives on these primary facts of life in this issue. The viewpoints vary widely, but I wish to express my own and add some wild guesses. I won't be writing a grand essay but may reference where I have examined these ideas before. There are three points I wish to make, which seem true to me. 1. Death is good. It is not the opposite of life but the necessary polarity of life: it is part of the life cycle and most entities in Nature simply live their cycles until those cycles cease to repeat. Nature does not question and Nature does not regret. Life goes on. Of course, none of this is to deny the trauma of losing a loved one, or the horror of mass death caused by war, genocide, or natural disaster. Even the tragedy of accidental or early death leaving a life unlived strikes us as metaphysically unfair. Death can be cruel and cause great anguish. This is especially true for the living, but certainly the dying can experience such things too. Once death occurs, however, and biological functions cease, we must assume such physical pain ends. Perhaps this is why our hints of submission to death are often sweet, especially for nonhumans or early in life before we learn to fear the loss of self-control or the fearful waste of time. Our stories, poems, and songs often celebrate the pleasure of a long rest earned, pleasant intoxication, even the pleasure of just letting the time go by, and some even associate the shudder of orgasm with the sense of dying in bliss (see la petit mort). Edmund Spenser (1552-1599) expressed this rest from struggle in his oft-cited words: Sleep after toil, port after stormy seas, ease after war, death after life doth greatly please. The old moonshiner in the traditional song sometimes known as "Rye Whiskey" expressed the same peaceful acceptance of the end of things in this version (one of many): Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. iv-xiii Nixon, G., I Killed a Squirrel the Other Day ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com vi I'll eat when I'm hungry, I'll drink when I dry, And when I'm tired of living, I'll roll up and die. I'll even admit it. On occasion, the mindless peace of deep, dreamless sleep sounds most inviting indeed.1 Sometimes when the bills arrive or I watch the usual TV shows, final escape into oblivion seems desirable indeed. But of course this is just talk, for we humans know of the finality of death. In spite of all the recycling we now engage in, we ourselves do not expect to return from the dissolution of death. We have learned through complex symbolism and the magic conjurations of language that we are individual selves that exist in time for a lifespan and that someday that time will end. Oh, other beasts know instinctively when the great tiredness comes and relax into it without bitterness or desperate prayers to get into heaven or out of hell (not to mention being strapped to a table to endure tubes in veins or jolts of electricity to our hearts or brains to keep us "alive"). We, however, are the only animals that know conceptually of our inevitable demise, yet despite our mortal knowledge we have devised brilliant or insane means of avoiding the truth – from religious denial to power hungry conquest, to human sacrifice (see, e.g., Becker, 1973; Brown, 1959; Burkert, 2002). Yet, it is this knowledge of our own limits, of our mortality, that may drive us to seek beyond those limits, to produce wondrous works of art and fantastic civilizations, to dream vast, and imagine impossible things that may yet bring them into being. It is the dream imperishable perfection, always out of reach, that keeps us desiring for impossible perfection. Perhaps that is the meaning of the famous lines of Wallace Stevens in "Sunday Morning" (1923): Death is the mother of beauty; hence from her, Alone, shall come fulfilment to our dreams And our desires. In any case, it seems very likely that somewhere humans underwent an existential crisis when they realized that death was inescapable – for their despotic Dear Leader, for their loved ones, and for themselves. At the moment of potential despair, humans must have had a breakthrough in consciousness: to realize one must die is also to realize one is now alive. Now is the time of our lives: live now, for tomorrow we may die.2 We are unlike any another 1 I acknowledge that "deep, dreamless sleep" is the third deepest stage of mystical awareness amongst experienced meditators, implying timeless, empty awareness is not extinguished, though it may remain unconscious from the perspective of the self, as though for individuals it wasn't there (See, e.g., Thompson, 2015). 2 For well-researched conjectures and excruciating detail on the symbolic awakening of humanity to selfconsciousness through language, see Nixon, 2010a. For the prehistoric background how awakening to mortal knowledge brought upon the sense of the sacred and human consciousness, see e.g., Nixon, 2010b; Noble & Davidson, 1996; Pfeiffer, 1982; and Tattersall, 2002. It was mortal knowledge and self-consciousness that led us to believe in linear time, and linear time, of course, comes to an end. Nature knows only cycles. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. iv-xiii Nixon, G., I Killed a Squirrel the Other Day ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com vii animal in this respect. In some ways, it has drawn us together; however, in many others it seems to have driven us quite mad. It was this sort of thinking that got me onto this project. All this talk about consciousness, brains, neuroscience, intersubjectivity, and even self-transcendent awareness getting more intense all the time but nobody asking what to me is the obvious question: What does it all matter? If consciousness (or selfhood or awareness-in-itself) simply ends at death, why we're back where we started: nowhere. Consciousness means nothing if "mind" is a bubble which pops in the sea of the universal mind, or if it's a brain byproduct, or if my mind just evaporates, disappears (either into oblivion or oneness), and just blinks out at death? Surely there is some implied relationship between the inner light of awareness and the end of physical life (even if they both go out together). Since then, as all the world knows, science and, yes, New Age thinking have challenged organized religion for dealing with mortal knowledge and the resistance of the self to disintegration, and each of them have revealed an equal propensity for magical if not outright bizarre thinking. These extremes are evident in some of the essays that follow, but so is some very clear and open-minded thinking based in one of disorganized religion, the further reaches of science, philosophy of mind, or New Age spirituality. For materialists, we each are our brain and we die with it. Interestingly, I sent out invitations to all sorts of authors and online groups whom I thought might be interested, but the one group of thinkers who disdained to take me seriously were those generally known as ontological materialists (aka reductive materialists, mechanist materialists, material physicalists, etc.), that is, those who believe matter evolved randomly yet somehow produced life that randomly produced complex bodies that randomly evolved brains that, probably accidentally, produced the side effect of consciousness. Most, of course, simply refused to answer because it was obvious that when the brain died, the self died, and the since the self (and self-consciousness) is all there is to being aware, that was the end of it. Well, that at least makes sense (if you think within a box). What did irk me to no end was to face the madness that a few extreme materialists have chosen, and none of them submitted a paper either. There are two kinds of materialism; one is the materialism that sees the biological brain as identical with consciousness. When the brain dies, the self dies, so what's a rich egotist to do if s/he wants to continue living? The only answer, apparently, is to instantaneously freeze-dry the entire fresh corpse of the living for future awakening when medical science will have advanced far enough to carry out such operations, i.e., the merchandising known as cryonics. But, really, that's a lot of trouble and expense when who knows when that future will be and one will still be stuck with a really old or decrepit body anyway. So there are some macabre institutions that – for a significant fee – will remove only the head or even just the brain and instantaneously freeze-dry it for a future awakening; and the best part of this ghoulish scheme is that the head can then be transplanted onto a new youthful body. (Please don't ask where those new youthful bodies will come from.). Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. iv-xiii Nixon, G., I Killed a Squirrel the Other Day ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com viii I don't find the other, now more popular choice much more palatable. It's for the materialists who believe the brain is like a wetware computer that runs the "mind-program" through its neural circuits, like software. They are called by several names, including Ray Kurzweil's Singularity group, the transhumanists (or on Facebook Rational Transhumanists, Tranhumanist-Posthumanists, or even the Vegan Transhumanists United). Despite my politest invitation, none of these people wanted to explain to us in a short paper how the "mindprogram" in a human brain, which is part of a human body, which is embedded in a natural environment, and which is part of a symbolically interactive community could possibly be transferred to a computer or computer network and still be basically the same person. Yet I was the one accused of science fiction for even suggesting that an unobserved cosmos of dead material parts interacting randomly without purpose was not even imaginable (except by choosing an observational perspective and imagining it)! "If consciousness were simply brain processes, it would not be able so to distance itself from brain processes to discover, or imagine that it has discovered, that it is brain processes" (Tallis, 2012, p. 338). As has been said many times, our brains, bodies, environments, and symbolic cultures shape our minds and help determine our experience. But it is a complex interdependence in which, in mutual creation, our relationships, minds and experience shape and determine our symbolic cultures, our natural environments, our bodies, and even alter our brains through plasticity and, occasionally – through epigenetics – in one lifetime!3 2. Obviously, hard science cannot account for awareness (or explain why life would evolve). It has revealed many wonders and made incredible technologies possible, but it cannot prove its own assumptions upon which the whole materialist edifice is built. Who can tell us what an unobserved universe looks like or even acts like (except after the fact when we observe and probably change its telltale residues)? An unobserved, pre-mind, pre-life universe would have no form, no time, no substance, no ... anything since time is relative to observers, form relative to the sensory organs that view it, and the same thing applies to everything else we assume to be ultimately real like density, texture, sounds, distances, etc. And please don't say machines can measure all this for us, for such mechanical motions have to be built by human minds and have no meaning until they are read and interpreted by a mind. It's no used pleading we can extrapolate backwards from readings in the present for who is doing such readings? We are – in the present! What mind is extrapolating backwards to imagine what it would be like if it were there? Sorry, but an unobserved universe cannot exist, much less one that inexplicably produces life and various forms of awareness. Galilean science (reductive materialism) has been the most successful worldview ever put into action in terms of production and technology. But what have we done to our world and life experience as a result? What sort of consciousness believes torturing other primates and mammals is necessary in laboratories throughout the world to help protect human beings from possibly dangerous ingredients in cosmetics? What sort of psychopathic paranoia 3 See Jablonka & Lamb, 2012. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. iv-xiii Nixon, G., I Killed a Squirrel the Other Day ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com ix drives a species to built such a stockpile of nuclear weapons and deadly viruses that it could it destroy all civilization and possibly all life many times over?4 There is no doubt in my mind that the chasm of perspective between objectivity and phenomenology (between experience and material) still stands firm. In the 90s, it was called the hard problem (Chalmers), before that, the explanatory gap (Levine), and way before that it was known as the unthinkable passage (Tyndall). Nothing can explain that first shudder of experience, which is simply not material. Science occupied with measuring the minutiae or cosmic grandeur of the external world cannot explain the inner light of consciousness in itself, though neuroscience has certainly demonstrated fascinating connections between the brain and mind. Obviously, without a brain, we could not be conscious in the way we currently are, but then all we know is our own consciousness. Still, as Tyndall wrote in 1879: The passage from the physics of the brain to the corresponding facts of consciousness is unthinkable. Granted that a definite thought and a definite molecular action in the brain occur simultaneously; we do not possess the intellectual organ, nor apparently any rudiment of the organ, which would enable us to pass, by a process of reasoning, from one to the other. Some of the more visionary scientists, like Freeman Dyson (1988), saw that consciousness or awareness or experience cannot simply be explained away but must accepted as original, if not eternal, as in pre-spacetime: It seems more reasonable to think that mind was a primary part of nature from the beginning and we are simply manifestations of it at the present stage of history. It's not so much that mind has a life of its own but that mind is inherent in the way the universe is built. (p. 72) Of course, for those who do not begin with the externalized scientific point of view, none of this was ever a problem or gap. The world is here because some form of deity or primal consciousness brought it forth. Those who begin with the reality of experience instead of matter assume (creative) awareness is primary, though it manifests in various forms according to the place, time, context, and powers of the vessel: Consciousness is not tied down by the physical body. For the subtle body, things can move faster than the speed of light. There are two kinds of time: physical time and inner time. ... There are infinite universes and infinite time scales. (attributed to H.H. the Dalai Lama) Matter is a manifestation of consciousness but not a product of it. As several papers in this issue indicate, the physical and the "mental" (for lack of a better term) are inextricably intermingled, perhaps in some form of what we poor wordsmiths call dual-aspect monism. 4 See Lorna Green for an all-out feminist condemnation of our currently desperate man-made situation, and Deepak Chopra puts the blame for our historically recent reduction to isolated egotism and stunted spiritual growth squarely on reductionist materialism (both statements in this issue). Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. iv-xiii Nixon, G., I Killed a Squirrel the Other Day ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com x 3. How you live consciously is how you die consciously. This is my second speculation, which I regard as almost a revelation. It seems to me that that both "life after death" and "oblivion after death" are true, or can be true. I am hardly the first to suggest it, but it bears repeating in this era when science sees us all dying the same, disappearing into oblivion. It is also suggested that most of those who experience NDEs find them delightful and look forward to losing themselves in the light (though there are exceptions). And, finally, mentioned in Iona Miller's statement in this issue, are all those cheery New Agers who embrace only the bright part of spirituality and believe we will rejoin the blissful source from which we began, forgetting our lives. This hardly seems fair when, really, there are so many wicked, stupid, twisted, hateful persons living out their lives. This may not be a matter of ethics, as such, but a matter of quality of consciousness. It seems certain to me that I will die and stay dead. By "I", I mean me, Greg Nixon, this person, this identity. I am so intertwined with the chiasmus of lives, bodies, ecosystems, symbolic intersubjectivity, and life on this particular planet that I cannot imagine this identity continuing alone without them. Literary critic, Joseph Crapanzao (2004) has suggested it is not the loss of the self we fear, but the world of others, those others who originally drew my self-concept (ego) forth from embodied experience: [Can we say that] the terror of death is a substitute for the terror of world-ending? Is it less our own dissolution than that of the world - our intimate and perduring connection with it - that terrifies us? The most frightening of nightmares is to be absolutely alone - deprived of all context, human or material. (p. 202) However, I can imagine, and often do, that there is a core consciousness, an inner light, a soul if you wish, that has always been with me, that lies as deeply within my being as the farthest star without. Perhaps this inner essence can continue on as light energy or some such thing without my personal identity – but not necessarily without any of my memories.5 With the death of ego, of self, a new unimaginable awakening may occur, as Theodore Roethke expressed it so well in these lines of his poem "In a Dark Time" (1964): Death of the self in a long, tearless night, All natural shapes blazing unnatural light. (The self dies, but some "blazing unnatural light" is born: my own interpretation of course.) Surely if you have hated your own life or even that of all others because you see the ugliness of all things, wouldn't it make sense to have your dreams come true when you died? This may not mean a hell of hatred, but simply oblivion, lights out. If you have been selfish all your life and only pretending to be interested in others only insofar as they may benefit you, surely you could not bear to let your dearly-beloved ego-self go. Since you called it into existence in life (ask any social constructivist) you will surely disappear with it when you die. On the 5 See Nixon (2010a) for details on how lived, yet impersonal, clouds of memories could enrich the Source of Being – or just read toward the end of T. S. Eliot's extraordinary poem "Little Gidding" his Four Quartets (p. 59) on the next page. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. iv-xiii Nixon, G., I Killed a Squirrel the Other Day ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com xi other hand, If you have been curious, compassionate, open to new experience, and, most of all, courageous in life, you will probably be ready to face the most astonishing metamorphosis of conscious awareness than you have ever dared dream, a cosmic awakening or journey that begings in the twinkle of an eye. Paul Ricoeur (1998) in one his last interviews put it as eloquently as anyone could have: Afterlife is a representation that remains prisoner to empirical time, as an "after" belonging to the same time as life. This intratemporal "after" can concern only the survivors. ... Here I come back to...the hope, at the moment of death, of tearing away the veils that conceal the essential buried under historical revelations. I, therefore, project not an after-death but a death that would be an ultimate affirmation of life. My own experience of the end of life is nourished by this deeper wish to make the act of dying an act of life. This wish I extend to mortality itself as a dying that remains immanent to life. (p. 156) He added significantly: "I consider life, almost eschatologically, as an unveiling in the face of dying" (p. 160). One survives one's life by believing in universal awareness, perfection, and the peace that passes all understanding. Perhaps we bring this back with us to the Source from which we began, changing it, enriching it, which may be the implied meaning of T. S. Eliot's (1944) oftquoted words (which I beg permission to cite just once more): And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. Once we have lived – if we don't choose the eternal silence of oblivion by life denial, vanity, indifference, or simple weariness – the Source learns and we awaken within it. Awareness, consciousness, is universal – it comes with the territory (in fact, it must be the territory, though it could be nothing like the reduced animal-symbolic consciousness as we humans practice it) – so maybe you will be one of the few prepared to become unexpectedly enlightened after the loss of self. You may discover your own apotheosis – something you always were, but after a lifetime of primate experience, now much more. Since you are of The Source and since you have changed from life experience and yet retained the dream of ultimate awakening, plus you have brought those chaotic emotions and memories back to the Source with you (though no longer yours), your life & memories will have mattered. Those who awaken beyond the death of self will have changed Reality. (As I see it anyway.) Unfortunately, or perhaps not, mainly because of the weariness, stress, and frustration of life, I would wager the vast majority of individuals who die succumb gratefully to peaceful oblivion, and perhaps the dreams that come after shuffling off the mortal coil are made of swirling clouds of memories, as Hamlet surmised. The Big Sleep beckons, and one must rest. Cosmic consciousness continues, but for the sleepers, it won't matter. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. iv-xiii Nixon, G., I Killed a Squirrel the Other Day ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com xii °°° The writers that follow in this issue think against the grain of the times, that is, they dare to question the unearned closure of the universe to deterministic materialism. Each writer is extraordinary in their own way. All these questions will be approached with many answers daring to step beyond experimental science, logical positivism, medical limitations, and even the fear and repusion of death – out into the thin ether of pure specuation, daring conjecture, or even explicate personal experience or esoteric texts that actually conceive awareness after the actual (not merely clinical) death of the body, to which NDEs are limited (though still very important sources of information). This issue goes places or dimensions or times – or perhaps none of the above – that consciousness studies has always avoided going. BUT why talk about consciousness if it's just that flash of activity between birth and death? I admit I had to encourage a few hesitant authors to take the leap from writing of dying to writing of death, and some of them actually did speculate on what a post-mortem situation might be like. So, the writers herein are scholars, both well known and not-so-well-known, some independents, some well established in academia. Others are deep into the various sciences, others philosophical explorers, and others yet have tossed out dependence on objective facts alone and are openly seekers in esoterica or direct personal experience – what we might call spiritual but w/o a creed to which they adhere. It is quite a mix. We have a good discussion of NDEs and of mediumistic spiritualism, of other dimensions, of mystical breakthroughs, of quantum entanglement, of idealism, of a conscious universe in which the physical is a response, and a timeless present, which leaves the time of our lives an illusion. We have Jung from the West, addressing the question in his old age, and we have the ageless wisdom of Tibetan Buddhism from the East, distinguishing between bardo levels of consciousness after death and hinting at potentially awakening in the void state or clear light of pure consciousness, Nirvana, about which nothing can be said (but for which some can rehearse in life through deep meditation). I am pleased to note we have four women writers who offer the possibility of unique perspectives but whose science or philosophy is as strong as anyone's here. But, no, we do not have a committed hardcore reductive materialist among this group of writers, though I tried. The ultimate ontology of dead materialism simply will not stand as an explanation for life, for mind, or to explain the mind of this writer and editor who recently killed a squirrel with assistance (and a good degree of guilt). The important writings that follow are divided into three sections. The first, Research Essays, are more formal academic essays with generous citing and referencing sources to give credit where credit is due. They are often more cautious in their conclusions, but some of them opened my eyes in wonder. Explorations are just that – more open-ended, less proscribed by academic limitation and thus with the individuality and freedom to let their imaginations soar; yet they remain tethered to logic and well-tested facts (facts not necessarily accepted by mainstream science). The five short pieces in Statements are the result of me asking well-known and widely published authors for their honest opinion on the possibility of some sort of continuing consciousness after bodily death. Instead of research, all they had to do was refer to their previous writings. Their answers were surprising, dealing with everything from spiritual awakening to the real possibilities of revenants or Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. iv-xiii Nixon, G., I Killed a Squirrel the Other Day ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com xiii ghosts that can reappear when called to, or into endless new incarnations in Nature. Each piece in Statements is followed by a short biographical note. Respectfully, Greg Nixon, December 17, 2016 References Becker, E. (1973). The Denial of Death. Simon & Schuster. Brown, N.O. (1959). Life Against Death. Wesleyan U Press. Burkert, W. (2002). Homo Necans: The Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth (2nd ed., trans. P. Bing). (Berkeley CA: UP California). Original in German 1972. Crapanzano, V. (2004). Imaginative Horizons. U of Chicago Press. Dyson, F. (1988, 18 April). Interview. U.S. News and World Report, April 18, 1988. Eliot, T.S. (1944). Little gidding, The Four Quartets. London: Faber & Faber. Jablonka, E., & Lamb, M. J. (2006). Evolution in four dimensions: Genetic, epigenetic, behavioral, and symbolic variation in the history of life. MIT Press. Nagel, T. (2012). Mind & Cosmos. Oxford University Press. Neumann, E. (1983). The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype (trans. R. Mannheim, trans.). Bollingen Series XLVII. Princeton University Press. Original 1955. Nixon, G. (2010a). Hollows of experience. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research, 1(3), 234-288. Nixon, G. (2010b). Myth and mind: The origin of human consciousness in the discovery of the sacred. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research, 1(3), 289-338. Noble, W. & Davidson, I. (1996). Human Language, Evolution, and Mind: A Psychological and Archeological Inquiry. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge U Press Pfeiffer, J.E. (1982). The Creative Explosion: An Inquiry into the Origins of Art and Religion. New York: Harper & Row. Ricoeur, P. (1998). Courage and Conviction: Conversations with François Azouvi and Marc de Launay (trans. Kathleen Blamey). Columbia University Press. Tallis, R. (2012). Aping Mankind: Neuromania, Darwinitis and the Misrepresentation of Humanity. UK: Acumen. Tattersall, I. (2002). The Monkey in the Mirror: Essays on the Science of What Makes Us Human. New York: Harcourt Brace. Thompson, E. (2015). Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy. Columbia University Press. Tyndall, J. (1979). Fragments of Science: A Series of Detached Essays. Addresses and Reviews. London: Longmans. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 862-881 Rockwell, T. The Tilde Fallacy and Reincarnation: Variations on a "Skeptical" Argument ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 862 Research Essay The Tilde Fallacy and Reincarnation Variations on a "Skeptical" Argument Teed Rockwell* Introduction What I will be calling the Tilde Fallacy, expressed crudely, is this: My position uses the logical symbol known as the tilde (the logical symbol used for translating "not", "no", "it is not the case that", etc.). Therefore it is not really a position at all, but only a denial of some other position. Consequently, I can always invoke Occam's razor against the position I am denying, and my opponent cannot. The burden of proof is always on my opponent, not on me, because my position has no actual content (which follows from the fact that it has only negative content). One way of diagnosing a case of the Tilde Fallacy is to show that a position claiming this privileged status can be restated without the tilde. In some cases, this restatement reveals that this position is self-contradictory, which of course refutes it. In other cases, this transformation merely refutes the Occam's razor argument that allegedly supported it, and thus reveals that it needs to be supported by further arguments and evidence. Although this transformation from negative to positive is often sufficient to demonstrate the presence of the Tilde Fallacy, it is not necessary. In most cases, a single negative claim implies numerous unstated positive claims, and in such cases it is equally invalid to assert that the negative claim requires no further support. The negative claim and its implied positive claims are a package deal, and any application of Occam's razor must consider the entire package when making judgments about relative simplicity. The following four arguments support very different conclusions about very different topics, and yet all of them rely on the Tilde Fallacy. I will have to spend some time considering arguments other than the Tilde Fallacy, which support each of these conclusions, to bring the Tilde fallacy itself into greater clarity through contrast. The fact that these conclusions are often supported by the Tilde Fallacy does not mean that there aren't other stronger arguments available to support them. I don't find any of these arguments convincing myself, but I don't have the space here to make more than a few brief (and admittedly rather snide) comments against them, which I fully acknowledge are far from decisive. * Correspondence: Teed Rockwell, Sonoma State University, Rohnert Park, California Email: [email protected] Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 862-881 Rockwell, T. The Tilde Fallacy and Reincarnation: Variations on a "Skeptical" Argument ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 863 I will be discussing these different Tilde Fallacy arguments in increasing order of general acceptability. The first argument is, as far as I know, accepted by no one today who has seriously studied the subject. The next is accepted only by a small but vocal cult following. The third is accepted by a very large group probably including the majority of the academically employed. The last of these Tilde Fallacy arguments is acceptable to probably almost everyone except me (and perhaps you, gentle reader, if you find my arguments convincing). The topic of this argument is survival after biological death. The so-called "materialist" position, which I will call mortalism, relies heavily on the Tilde Fallacy. I will argue that once the Tilde Fallacy has been removed from the debate, the most ontologically parsimonious position is belief in reincarnation. I will also argue, at much greater length, that the mortalist position is self-contradictory, but that the contradiction is phenomenological, not logical. The Tilde Fallacy and Logical Positivism The Logical Positivist's version of the Tilde Fallacy was widely accepted for about a decade, and then was rejected by all of the philosophers who originally proposed it. This is perhaps the only time in the history of philosophy where everyone involved agreed about anything. This logical positivist version of the Tilde Fallacy is the prototype on which the other three arguments are based. I expect the majority of my philosophically trained readers to find the other arguments acceptable in direct proportion to how closely they feel they resemble that prototype. The Logical Positivists tried to resolve the questions of metaphysics by saying "all metaphysics is nonsense." This claim was importantly different from the materialist commonsense feeling that all metaphysics is BS. "BS" is simply a term of abuse, but "nonsense" has a specific meaning. To say that a claim is nonsense is to say that it lacks sense, which must lead to theoretical questions about the relationships between sense, reference and meaning. The consideration of those questions eventually made the Logical Positivists realize that the claim "all metaphysics is nonsense" is itself a metaphysical claim. When pressed to define the term "nonsense", they implied it meant "any proposition which was neither empirically verifiable nor tautologous", which eventually made them realize that by these criteria their own position was nonsensical, and thus also self-contradictory. The Logical Positivists thought at first that, because there was a tilde implied in their metaphysical claim, it was not a metaphysical claim at all. This was exposed as a fallacy by in effect removing the Tilde and stating the position in the positive, i.e., by unpacking and defending its metaphysical theory of the relationship between language and reality. Once they realized that it was a metaphysical theory, however, it became clear that this theory contained the only flaw that can decisively falsify a metaphysical theory. It was self-contradictory because by its own definition it was itself nonsensical. Thus the Logical Positivists realized that whatever the answer was to the big metaphysical questions, it couldn't be this. They reluctantly returned to asking the same Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 862-881 Rockwell, T. The Tilde Fallacy and Reincarnation: Variations on a "Skeptical" Argument ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 864 kinds of questions that had bedeviled Western philosophy since Descartes, becoming Logical Empiricists instead of Logical Positivists. Libertarianism and the Tilde Fallacy There are numerous objections to Libertarian political philosophy, some of which I have summarized in Rockwell (2013). Some of these objections are Utilitarian, i.e., based on issues of what would produce the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. (A Libertarian society would be a bleak and joyless place for almost everyone because of a lack of infrastructure and extreme differences between wealth and poverty.) Other objections are Deontological, i.e., based on issues of justice: the networks of privilege that would inevitably emerge in such a society would falsify the Libertarian claim that each person had justly acquired everything they owned. In this article, however, I will be concerned only with the Libertarian use of the Tilde Fallacy. Here we find a parallel with Logical Positivism. The Tilde Fallacy is not as obvious in the common sense materialist view that metaphysics is BS, or in the rhetorical rants of Ayn Rand. It can, however, be revealed in the more explicitly theoretical writings of the Logical Positivists and also in the writings of Robert Nozick, who attempts to justify the Libertarian revulsion towards government as a positive principle. Nozick's moral justification for Libertarianism can be seen as an extrapolation from the liberal principle of the separation of church and state. In a theocracy, the state has ideals and values set by the state religion and passes laws to insure that people live up to those ideals (no card playing or dancing on Sunday, women must dress modestly, etc.). In a liberal state, however, each individual has her own values and ideals, and the state's only job is to insure that each individual has the freedom to pursue those ideals. Nozick argues that this principle, when taken to its logical conclusion, requires the state to have no goals or ideals at all. Because "liberty upsets patterns" (Nozick 1974, p. 160), and the Government's sole job is to protect liberty, this means that the government has no right to consider what Nozick calls "end result principles" (Nozick 1970, p. 170). The State's only purpose is to protect the freedom of its citizens, and freedom, like the metaphysics of the Logical Positivists, is defined purely negatively. This means that government must be completely neutral as to the outcome of any actions by any member of society or even by itself. Physical force and the breaking of voluntary contracts are forbidden not because they interfere with the goals of government, but because they interfere with the freedom of individual citizens to pursue their own goals. Just as Logical Positivism was the metaphysical position that said all metaphysics was nonsense, Nozick's Libertarianism says that the purpose of government is to have no purpose. Just as Logical Positivism thought it was superior to all other metaphysical positions because it enabled scientists and engineers to do their jobs without having to tangle with messy metaphysical conundrums, so Libertarianism thinks itself superior to other forms of government because it enables citizens to trade in the free market without messy governmental interference. One promises a metaphysics that is not really Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 862-881 Rockwell, T. The Tilde Fallacy and Reincarnation: Variations on a "Skeptical" Argument ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 865 a metaphysics, and the other promises a government that is not really a government. Both positions assume they are superior to their competitors because they define their position in exclusively negative terms, and thus both are guilty of the Tilde Fallacy. However, as Colin Bird (1999) has pointed out, Libertarians do not actually treat freedom as something unconditional that can never be compromised to serve some government goal. Suppose a wealthy self-owner wants to donate ... to the Lutheran Church ... but now suppose that the public agent taxes the wealthy self-owner in order to ... prevent a greater number of more serious violations of self-ownership in the future ... [In] this case, then, the public agent violates this self-owner's right to make the donation. ... Local violations are then justified when they would make it easier for everyone to live by the lights of their own consciences. (pp. 154-155) In other words, Libertarianism, like all theories of government, posits an ideal society, and it must compromise the freedoms of its citizens to achieve that ideal society. The ideal society for the Libertarian is one in which people are free to exchange property and labor without fear of theft or swindle. In order to maintain that society, it is necessary to tax people to pay for an army, a police force, and a court system, which will inevitably compromise their freedom to spend their money elsewhere. Nozick's Libertarianism thus does presuppose an end result principle, which contradicts itself in much the same way that logical positivism contradicts itself. The Libertarian government must limit the rights of its citizens to defend the principle that rights must never be limited. Unlike with Logical Positivism, the self-contradictoriness of this argument does not prove that Libertarianism is itself self-contradictory. The Libertarian still retains the option of admitting that she posits an ideal society, and then urges us to accept Libertarian policy as the best way of producing that ideal society. Libertarian literature contains many such panegyrics to the free market Eden that will arrive when the invisible hand is set free to bless us all. However, these panegyrics need additional support not required by Nozick's version of the Tilde Fallacy. These include 1) empirical arguments that prove that Libertarian policies will actually produce this kind of society, 2) ethical and/or aesthetic arguments that show why we should prefer the Libertarian ideal society even if it is produced by these policies, and 3) a recognition of the possibility that some non-Libertarian system might be better at fulfilling that ideal, and a willingness to embrace that other system if this turns out to be the case. To clarify 3), let us suppose that the Libertarian ideal is a society in which all private property is safe from theft or swindle. Let us further suppose that the best way to protect property is to provide free education and good paying jobs for the unemployed lumpenproletariat that does most of the stealing. Anyone who sees the Libertarian ideal society only as a means to producing a society with free trade and safe property, rather than as an end in itself, would have to support these social programs if they come closer to fulfilling the Libertarian ideals. I think Nozick realized this, which is why he tried Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 862-881 Rockwell, T. The Tilde Fallacy and Reincarnation: Variations on a "Skeptical" Argument ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 866 to justify Libertarianism by claiming it had no social goals at all. This claim, however, was what led him into the contradictions of the Tilde Fallacy.1 The Tilde Fallacy and Atheism The Tilde Fallacy is probably the most popular defense of atheism, and my claim that it is fallacious will unquestionably be controversial. It is often argued that the atheist should start with some kind of home court advantage when confronting the theist in the Space of Reasons. The theist is claiming that something exists. The atheist is only claiming that something doesn't exist, and therefore her claim has negative content, and therefore no content at all. (It gives a stronger sense of necessity if you leave out that second "therefore".) The most popular atheist expression of this version of the Tilde Fallacy is Russell's teapot argument. We don't need reasons or evidence for disbelieving that there is a teapot rotating the earth that is always blocked by the moon. As Hermione Granger pointed out to Luna Lovegood (in the Harry Potter books), you don't need evidence against the existence of crumpled horn snorkacks to rationally disbelieve in them (Rowling 2007). The same is true for Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster. Why isn't this true of God? Isn't atheism the null hypothesis, and theism the positive hypothesis? This argument appears compelling if you look at atheism and theism as each entirely captured and expressed by a single sentence. In that case you count up the entities posited by theism (world + God = 2), compare them to those posited by atheism (world = 1), and atheism wins the Occam's Razor derby with the lowest score. If we accept Russell's philosophy of logical atomism or the theory of language expressed in Wittgenstein's Tractatus, we could see every sentence as being completely independent of every other sentence in precisely this way. This would mean that Wittgenstein was right in claiming that "the world divides itself into facts. Anyone can be the case or not be the case and everything else remains the same" (Wittgenstein 1922, Para 1.2--1.21). This however, is another one of those logical positivist dogmas that has long since been 1 Another way for Libertarians to escape the Tilde Fallacy is with Anarchist Libertarianism, which is not self-contradictory even though it is empirically delusional. Anarchist Libertarians say that because property rights are unconditionally inviolable, all taxation is theft, and therefore all government is morally indefensible. This position is consistent. Anyone who believes that government should have no purposes can get what they want by abolishing government, and a society with no government at all would not be vulnerable to the contradiction described above. This is one reason that Nozick felt compelled to devote almost half of Anarchy, State, and Utopia (1974) to defending his position against Anarchist Libertarianism. There is also no logical contradiction in a possible world in which government is unnecessary, such as a world where there is so much abundance that no one will starve or covet another's property, and/or a world in which property rights are so universally sacred that the poor will voluntarily starve rather than steal. That world, however, bears essentially no resemblance to our own, so there is really no point in bothering to refute Anarchist Libertarian–ism, despite the fact that there are a small number of people who actually defend it. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 862-881 Rockwell, T. The Tilde Fallacy and Reincarnation: Variations on a "Skeptical" Argument ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 867 discredited, even by the people who originally proposed it. The rejection of this view of language is one of the main differences between early and later Wittgenstein, because it leads to undeniable absurdities. Can anyone coherently assert that mountains exist, but that valleys don't? Or that aunts and uncles exist but that nieces and nephews don't? Or assert that nieces and nephews exist, but deny that people with children ever have siblings? If we are going to understand what any given sentence is actually asserting, we need to understand other sentences it necessarily implies. This total network of sentences is, as I said earlier, an ontological package deal. The network of sentences that gives meaning to the sentence "Bigfoot exists" is relatively small, which is why we can either remove or place Bigfoot in our possible universe and leave the rest of it relatively intact. Removing God from the Universe, however, has implications for almost everything else in it. This is why it is possible for writers like Richard Dawkins to write book after book articulating the numerous and important implications of God's non-existence. The arguments in these books are often original and thought provoking, and their conclusions might even be right. But their detailed thoroughness makes it impossible for Dawkins to claim that his position is ontologically simpler than theism. The Blind Watchmaker (1986) is one of the most important theological tracts of our time, and Dawkins' denial that he is doing theology is based on the Tilde Fallacy. He is saying God doesn't exist, therefore his claim has negative content, and therefore no positive content. Nevertheless, Dawkins manages to evoke a very vivid and precise view of the nature of reality, even when using sentences heavily sprinkled with tildes. When he says, "Natural selection has no purpose in mind. It has no mind and no mind's eye. It does not plan for the future. It has no vision, no foresight, no sight at all" (1986, p. 5), his description creates a precise and memorable image in our mind, which is the positive content of his Atheist theology. To some of us, this may seem obvious, but for those who are still dazzled by Dawkins' tildes we can remove them and state his theology in the positive. Here's a bit of metaphysics that I doubt my readers will question. There are two different kinds of entities in the world, conscious agents and mechanisms. We don't need a detailed definition of how they are different to recognize that they are different. The moral argument for vegetarianism uses this distinction to support the claim that no one should ever kill and eat a conscious being, as does anyone who understands this argument well enough to disagree with it. Dennett mentions that his brand of Darwinian atheism implies that we conscious agents possess "foresight: the realtime anticipatory power that Mother Nature wholly lacks" (Dennett 1990, p. 61). This is probably not all there is to being a conscious agent, but it is certainly an important part, and clearly implied in the ideas of many Darwinian atheists. With this distinction in mind, we can assert Dawkins' theology in the positive by saying, "The only conscious agents with foresight are medium sized biological creatures with very big brains. All other organized patterns, micro and macro, are mechanisms, not agents." There is no contradiction in this claim. It might even be true, and there are other arguments that support it (the Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 862-881 Rockwell, T. The Tilde Fallacy and Reincarnation: Variations on a "Skeptical" Argument ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 868 argument from evil, for example.) But Blind Watchmaker theology cannot claim a right to use Occam's razor because it is allegedly the null hypothesis. The fact that it has as much positive content as theism becomes clear once it is stated in the positive. The Tilde Fallacy and Mortalism Before I wrote this paper, I would refer to the following arguments as defending or attacking personal immortality, and did not name the position I was actually talking about and critiquing. The burden of proof is so widely assumed to be on the shoulders of the immortalist that we are forced to coin a new technical term – mortalist – for the position that rejects personal immortality. The assumption was that immortalism was a metaphysical and religious claim, but that mortalism was not a position at all. This shows how deeply this question has been obscured by the Tilde Fallacy. In fact, thanks to certain new developments in cognitive science and philosophy of mind, the Tilde Fallacy might be the only serious argument that the mortalist has left. For many years, the most popular argument for mortalism was something like this: The mind is identical to the brain, the brain is a piece of meat that will eventually decay and pass out of existence; therefore, the mind will eventually decay and pass out of existence. If the first two premises were unambiguously true, the mortalist would have very strong biological evidence supporting her position. For many people, in fact, this argument still seems so unassailable that they assume it cannot be rejected unless we throw out all of modern science. Eugene Brody, after carefully analyzing the data in Stevenson (1966), concluded there was no actual evidence to discredit it, but also concluded that it would be more rational to accept unfounded speculations about alternative explanations, because "paranormal phenomena and the theory of reincarnation are intrinsically unacceptable – there is no way to make them compatible with the total accumulated body of scientific knowledge" ( Brody 1979, p. 770). Stephen Hales (2001) makes a similar argument against Almader (1992), saying, "Reincarnation is not consistent with either our best empirical theories or with our best philosophical theories about the mind" (p. 338). Almader also cites both C.D. Broad and Paul Edwards as indicating this data should be rejected because it contradicts materialist metaphysics. Almader agrees, but grasps the opposite horn of the dilemma and says we should reject materialism. Today, however, I argue that the orthodox scientific position is fully compatible with the existence of reincarnation. Modern Cognitive Science says that the mind is what the brain does, not the piece of meat that does it. The computer metaphor for mind, although somewhat problematic in certain respects, captures the fact that something like the hardware/software distinction accurately describes the relationship between mind and the matter that embodies it. Dennett (1991) refers to this "software" with the carefully ambiguous phrase, "...the organization of information that runs your body's control system" (p. 430). At that level of ambiguity, the consensus for this position is decisive. Roughly speaking, the mind is the software that runs on the brain/body's hardware, not the brain itself. But how soft is software, exactly? It is Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 862-881 Rockwell, T. The Tilde Fallacy and Reincarnation: Variations on a "Skeptical" Argument ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 869 obviously softer than tapioca pudding or cotton candy. Is it as soft as a ghost? Not quite, because there is a significant difference between this kind of materialism and hardcore dualism, and this difference is expressed by the technical term supervenience. Supervenience requires mental software to always be embodied in some kind of physical hardware, unlike the disembodied spirits of dualism. Software possesses a kind of immortality because it can be uploaded and downloaded indefinitely, even after the first copy has long been destroyed. This is equally true of literary classics like The Iliad. Its first oral and written manifestations have been gone for millennia, and yet the books themselves are still very much with us. Philosophers describe this distinction by saying that the book is not identical with any individual volume, but only supervenes on that volume. Nevertheless the book does not endure eternally in Plato's heaven, according to this view. If all the physical volumes containing The Iliad were destroyed, the book would pass out of existence, as did most of the writings of Parmenides and Democritus. Dennett (1991) argues that modern cognitive science grants conscious beings the possibility of the kind of immortality achieved by The Iliad. However, he also argues that Occam's razor requires us to assume that each human consciousness suffers the fate of Democritus' writings, rather than being immortalized as was The Iliad. Could this be an example of the Tilde Fallacy – the assumption that a negative claim is more parsimonious merely because it contains a tilde? The question is more complicated in this case than in the three previous examples, but I think the answer is yes in two senses. First of all, the mortalist position is as speculative as the immortalist one, and consequently the mortalist, like the atheist, cannot win this debate using Occam's razor. Secondly, a good case can be made that the Tilde Fallacy as used by the mortalist is self-contradictory, and therefore necessarily false, although the contradiction is phenomenological, not logical. Phenomenological contradictions need to be treated with caution, for they are harder to bring to consensus than are logical contradictions. Dennett famously said that it is easy to confuse a failure of imagination for an insight into necessity. I would go further and claim that there is never any way of proving that phenomenological necessity is not mere failure of imagination. Nevertheless, the appearance of necessity is often all we have, and it seems rational to accept it at face value until someone dissolves it by expanding our imaginations. Mortalism and "Extraordinary Claims" Dennett says, "I don't believe that there is any reason to think that anybody yet has achieved the sort of immortality I allow for" (personal communication). This statement is strongly challenged by numerous historical books that offer such evidence (Almeder 1992, Braude 2003, Carter 2012, Stevenson 1966, Fontana 2004). These books look pretty convincing to me, as do the replies to attempted debunkings in Carter (2012). But I am a philosopher, not a historian, so I will limit myself to making a Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 862-881 Rockwell, T. The Tilde Fallacy and Reincarnation: Variations on a "Skeptical" Argument ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 870 philosophical point. Once we recognize that our current view of the nature of mind is fully compatible with the possibility of immortality, we can no longer dismiss the books cited above with Hume's argument against miracles, often paraphrased as, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proofs". Some of us believe that Hume's argument is perniciously fallacious and seriously interferes with scientific and historical objectivity (see Earman 2000). But those who still accept it must use it elsewhere, if they are permitted to use it at all. If the mind is software that supervenes on brains, rather than the brain itself, there is nothing miraculous about a mind supervening on some other physical substance after death, and then eventually downloading into some other body. This is arguably the most plausible explanation for the data in the above listed books (although I will show later that there are other explanations equally problematic for the mortalist.) There are some other attempts to show that immortality contradicts known facts. Those arguments, when carefully scrutinized, often reveal themselves to be variations on the Tilde Fallacy. Consider the claim that reincarnation is impossible because there are so many more people now than there used to be. This argument is paraphrased and replied to in Carter (2012), but I have encountered it frequently elsewhere. Like Carter, I have several possible replies to this – perhaps more people from other planets are reincarnating on Earth, perhaps more mosquitos are reincarnating as people – which are usually met with derisive demands that I prove these claims. Those demands would be appropriate if I were claiming that these things actually happened, or if my opponents were claiming to have concrete evidence that Earth was the only planet with conscious beings on it. Then we could weigh the evidence for each of our claims and judge them on purely scientific terms. However, neither of us has any evidence for either claim, which is why we are talking only in terms of possibility, impossibility, and necessity. The claim that reincarnation is factually impossible2 can be refuted by showing that there are possible scenarios that permit reincarnation and are fully compatible with currently accepted scientific facts. The existence of life on other planets is fully compatible with our current state of knowledge (or ignorance) on this topic. Therefore, this argument's unstated but necessary premise is false. What is really going on in this argument is this: I am saying it is possible that there is life on other planets, and my opponent is implying that there must not be. Even if she doesn't explicitly assert or believe this, she must imply it, or her argument will not go through. A claim that X is possible is clearly weaker than a claim that X is impossible. This is especially obvious when both arguments are stated in the positive. If the evidence cannot resolve the question, it is surely more speculative to dogmatically assert that there cannot be life on 2 Factual impossibility occupies the middle ground between logical impossibility and possibility. There are many things that are logically possible that are factually impossible. It is logically possible that the entire universe is made out of cream cheese, but no one has ever noticed. There are various facts about the universe in which we live that make this factually impossible. The main point of this section is that the "facts" about the mind/brain relationship, which allegedly made immortality factually impossible, have been revealed to be false. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 862-881 Rockwell, T. The Tilde Fallacy and Reincarnation: Variations on a "Skeptical" Argument ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 871 other planets than to accept the possibility that there might be. But because my opponent's claim has a tilde in it, she reflexively assumes that my position needs further proof and hers doesn't. What applies to this argument applies to mortalist arguments in general. Denying that there is life after death has tremendous implications for the rest of reality, and these implications have as much speculative content as the immortalist position. At this point I could add some sentences that followed the parallel structure of the previous three arguments and show why each side of this argument is implying and/or stating positive claims that are equally speculative. That project, however, would be hampered by the fact that those positive claims are rather muddled and confused – so much so that they seem to imply a much stronger argument. The libertarian and logical positivist versions of the Tilde Fallacy reveal that the positions they are defending are self-contradictory. The atheist version of this fallacy is not self-contradictory, only illegitimately employs Occam's razor. If I stop now, I could content myself with a parallel argument against the mortalist's use of Occam's razor. I think however that a case can be made that the mortalist position is as self-contradictory as Logical Positivism or Nozick's argument for libertarianism. When the mortalist does try to state her position in the positive, it is not at all clear that what she says even makes any sense. It might even be self-contradictory, in much the same way that Logical Positivism is self-contradictory. If this is the case, the mortalist position can be rejected for the same kinds of reasons that Logical Positivism was rejected, and some kind of immortalism would win by default. We may not know what does happen to us after death, but we can be essentially certain that we are not going to be reborn as four-sided triangles. Mortalism and Phenomenological Necessity If thoughtfully considered, the most common statements of the mortalist position reveal its incoherency. "When you're dead, you're dead." Like all tautologies, this is uninformative. We still haven't answered the question, "What happens when you're dead?" How about: "You lie very still, and eventually your body rots away"? But both the mortalist and the immortalist are in complete agreement about this. How can we express what it is that the two sides disagree about? This can be done only by referring to the first person perspective of the person who dies. That is the only question at issue here, and statements about biological decay are simply changing the subject. So are statements about radical changes in the abstract pattern of behavior we described above as "software". Both the immortalist and mortalist are providing answers to one question only: What happens to me, from the first person perspective, when I die? The first person perspective always provides answers to questions of the form "What is it like to be X?" Consequently, the question that the mortalist and the immortalist are both attempting to answer is, "What is it like to be dead?", or, more precisely, "What is it like for me to be dead?" We all know what it is like for other people to be dead, if we have ever seen corpses and/or images of them. This is a different question. Every possible mortalist answer to that question is either an empty metaphor Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 862-881 Rockwell, T. The Tilde Fallacy and Reincarnation: Variations on a "Skeptical" Argument ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 872 or explicitly self-contradictory. You snuff out like a candle, cash in your chips, hand in your dinner pail. If you're there, then death isn't. (Great! That means I'm never going to die!) You wake up one morning and discover you are not there any more. All of the nonmetaphorical formulations are as self-contradictory as "the ultimate metaphysical truth is that all metaphysics is nonsense" or " the purpose of government is to have no purpose". However, unlike the Logical Positivist and the Nozickian Libertarian, the mortalist's position is not logically self-contradictory but phenomenologically selfcontradictory. The inherent contradiction of mortalism does not emerge from the syntax of the proposition that states it, but from fundamental structures in subjective experience. I am leery of any claims of necessary structures in consciousness, and am open to any thought experiments that might reveal that any so-called impossibilities are possible after all. Nevertheless, there are certain claims about human experience that I believe are presupposed by both sides of this debate, and we must not doubt in our philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts. Phenomenological necessities are few and far between, but there are some that are undeniable. There are no visible shapes without color2, and no colors without shapes. Anyone who speaks of such things is talking nonsense. I argue that the mortalist position is revealed to be similarly selfcontradictory, once we acknowledge that it must refer to my awareness of "what things are like for me". My knowledge that all Homo sapiens are mortal, and that I am a Homo sapien, gives me good reason to believe that I will eventually die, in the sense that eventually my body will stop moving, then gradually decay. But it tells me nothing about what it will be like for me to die, or what it will be like to be dead. The mortalist claims that being dead won't be like anything at all, but we have no way of making sense of that claim. We may not know what it is like to visit Paris or to taste haggis. If somebody tells us that the taste of haggis is indescribable, and the only way to know it is actually experience it, we can make sense out of that claim. But if someone tells us that it isn't like anything at all to taste haggis, we would say that they are talking nonsense. And yet that is exactly the sort of nonsense that the mortalist is trying to pass off as down-to-earth scientific fact. The mortalist may reply that death is completely different from anything else that ever happens to us, so these analogies are not valid. But if this is the case, the burden of proof is on the mortalist to explain how it is different, and this is a burden she has not taken up. Within the phenomenological range in which we currently dwell, what the mortalist is saying makes no sense, and thus we must reject it until it is made more coherent. To accept mortalism in its present form would be like believing that we reincarnate as four-sided triangles. The contradiction inherent in mortalism is visible once we acknowledge the following premises: 3 I add the qualifier "visible" because a student pointed out to me that we can imagine shapes without color if we imagine them kinesthetically. Thus what once seemed to me to be a necessary truth turned out not to be necessary after all, until I limited it to visible shapes. A vivid example that illustrates the fragile nature of what we must take to be necessity. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 862-881 Rockwell, T. The Tilde Fallacy and Reincarnation: Variations on a "Skeptical" Argument ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 873 1) The debate between the mortalist and the immortalist must concern death as experienced from the first person perspective. Anything else is changing the subject. 2) The first person perspective always provides answers to questions of the form, "What is it like to be X?" 3) The mortalist answers to the question "what is it like to be dead?" either change the subject or are self-contradictory. Therefore, 4) the mortalist position on death either changes the subject or is self-contradictory. Those who have problems with this conclusion need to falsify at least one of these premises. They seem undeniable to me. The Reductionist Defense of Mortalism One possible mortalist strategy I will call reductionism. The reductionist in this context claims that the self is nothing but the sum total of its experiences, and thus there is no such thing as a subjectivity that is distinct from the experienced world. David Hume was the first to make this assertion, claiming that introspection reveals the contents of consciousness, but not a subject that experiences those contents. Hume's justification for his claim is thus, like mine, based on phenomenology. When two phenomenologists disagree, they are often reduced to asserting that "my intuitions can beat up your intuitions". Dennett (1991) avoids this cul-de-sac by relying not on phenomenology but on contemporary neuroscience and cognitive psychology. He claims that these new scientific developments support what he calls a multiple drafts theory of consciousness that, like Hume's theory, suggests that we should deny the existence of a "central meaner". For Dennett, the subjective self is a verbal construct, not a privately experienced reality. This is what Dennett calls first person operationalism: my self is what I say it is when I tell the story of myself to myself. If he is right about this, doesn't this mean that there is no such thing as a distinct self, and therefore no first person perspective and no "what-it-is-like-to-be"-ness? This is the strongest argument against my position, but ultimately I do not think it can prevail. When all of its implications are followed to their logical conclusions, the result is a rat's nest of absurdities that could be summed up with the following question: if the central meaner doesn't really exist, how can it die? The "middle way" Buddhist philosophy of Nagarjuna has a theory of self very similar to Dennett's and Hume's (Varela Thompson, & Rosch 1992), but this school of Buddhism saw this fact about the self as support for the existence of reincarnation, not mortalism. Buddhism recognizes that the empirical self – the self to which we are so attached and in which we take such pride – is nothing but an aggregate of contingently clustered traits and qualities. The deep recognition of this fact is what enables the Buddhist practitioner to maintain the state of equanimity that liberates the practitioner from suffering. However, if our consciousness is nothing more than an aggregate of experiences, wouldn't this imply that when that aggregate disintegrates into its parts, Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 862-881 Rockwell, T. The Tilde Fallacy and Reincarnation: Variations on a "Skeptical" Argument ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 874 consciousness would disappear as that aggregate disappears? Buddhism does not accept that conclusion. Instead, it asserts that there is a consciousness which is distinct from the aggregate of experiences we call the self. Consciousness is a kind of emptiness, but it is also accompanied by the qualities of clarity and unimpededness, which can be most clearly seen when we are not distracted by the numerous qualities and character traits we ordinarily call the self. The mortalist will dismiss this as speculative mystical nonsense, but her alternative has serious problems of its own. If we are nothing above and beyond our various experiences and character traits, then each of us died sometime during our first decade. This is equally true whether we consider the outdated idea that we are nothing more than the meat we are made of, or the more sophisticated claim that we are the pattern that supervenes on that meat. As we pointed out earlier, software can endure in principle forever by being replicated in a variety of hardwares. We, however, have the ability to endure even when our software becomes completely unlike our earlier software. It is not just that all of the molecules of the four-year-old boy I once was have now been completely replaced. The formal structures that determined the size, shape and temperament of that boy have now vanished as decisively as have his molecules. And yet here I am, in some strange sense the same person now that I was then. How am I able to pull this off if I am nothing but a pattern supervening on some material stuff, and both the original pattern and the original stuff have passed out of existence? The immortalist claims that when our current body is destroyed our consciousness continues on somewhere else. The mortalist claims that the self is nothing but the form and matter of our current physical body – and yet somehow our consciousness endures even when the matter and form have been transformed into something completely different. The mortalist position as it stands is thus self-contradictory, unless we deny the universally accepted proposition that I am the same person that I was when I was five years old. If the mortalist bites the bullet on this, and concedes that I am not same person as that five year old, the immortalist wins even more decisively. The mortalist is in effect conceding that I have already died, and still managed to carry on. That may not be immortality by some definition or other, but it's good enough for me. Mortalism and Reincarnation These problems come into sharpest focus when we consider the type of immortalism known as reincarnation. In the western Abrahamic traditions, immortalism usually is bundled with the claim that there is a separate place or places where the conscious self continues to have experiences after the destruction of the body (Heaven, Hell, Purgatory, etc.). That is a much harder position to defend because of Occam's razor issues. Belief in Heaven, etc. requires both a belief in the endurance of the soul and an unseen place where the soul endures. Reincarnation only claims that the soul returns "here" in some sense, and we already know that "here" exists because here we are. This argument for the reincarnation alternative is decisive as far as I am concerned, although it is wise to be tolerant of other conclusions when our ignorance on this subject Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 862-881 Rockwell, T. The Tilde Fallacy and Reincarnation: Variations on a "Skeptical" Argument ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 875 is so vast. Accepting reincarnation, however, brings with it a variety of implications that cannot be ignored. The Abrahamic immortalist does not have to deal with hard questions about the nature of the self that survives. At least in the popular versions, I remain essentially the same person in life and death, with a few moral purifications to bring out my best qualities more vividly. On the other hand, it's an empirical fact that most of us have no memory of previous reincarnations. Consequently, if immortality is produced by reincarnation, it does not require any formal or material components from our previous lives. In the yogic traditions that accept reincarnation, we do not reunite with our long dead friends and relatives in a celestial home. There are some tales in those traditions about people who reincarnate repeatedly in interlocking relationships, sometimes reversing roles such as master and servant, or pet and owner, or parent and child. But the sentient beings in these relationships have no awareness of their identities in previous lifetimes, and the various personalities of each reincarnation are radically different from each other. This creates problems for the possibility of verifying any possible case of reincarnation. It is obviously impossible to prove that currently living X is a reincarnation of deceased Y, if X has no memories whatsoever of having been Y. Indeed from the third person point of view, the idea makes no sense at all. How can something be the same as something else if the two items share no characteristics? It's rather like the Catholic Idea of the Eucharist, in which bread and wine is the body of Christ, without having any of the characteristics of the body of Christ – an idea which most Catholic theologians recognize as a self-contradictory paradox that can only be believed on faith. Actually, this rhetorical question underestimates the problem. Reincarnation doesn't just imply that two individuals are in the same category. It implies that these two individuals are the same individual, even though they have nothing in common. Although this idea makes no sense from a third person point of view, it is easily imaginable from the first person point of view. Imagine you are given a choice of either 1) having your memories and personality completely removed and replaced or 2) being completely annihilated. Both alternatives would be disastrous, but we have no trouble realizing that they are different. This is partly illustrated by the fact that most people would choose 1) over 2), but more strongly illustrated by the fact that even if someone chooses 2) or is indifferent to either, it is still phenomenologically obvious that these are two different choices. Perhaps you want to argue that this is a pseudo-problem, and neither of these alternatives are acceptable? This may be true, but this won't help the mortalist. She is irreparably committed to alternative 2) in this debate, just as the reincarnationist is committed to alternative 1). Throw out this debate, and mortalism goes with it. Once we accept the inevitability of these problems, it seems that the only possible proof for reincarnation would come from those anomalous souls who allegedly remember their past lives. Unfortunately, serious philosophical problems arise from the fact that there are always alternative explanations for any empirical data based on these alleged memories. Robert Almeder (1992) proposes a criterion for proof of reincarnation paraphrased from A. J. Ayer: "It would be sufficient for the truth of the belief that the man beside you is Julius Caesar reincarnated if that man had all the memories that one Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 862-881 Rockwell, T. The Tilde Fallacy and Reincarnation: Variations on a "Skeptical" Argument ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 876 would ordinarily expect of Julius Caesar, and if he had some verified memories that appealed to facts that were not in any way items of public information" (p. 60). Nevertheless, Almeder also quotes Stephen Braude (2003) and others, who propose a variety of counter-explanations to cases of this sort. Even if we can prove that our subject's knowledge of Julius Caesar's life could not have been acquired by the usual means, how can we be sure that the subject didn't acquire that knowledge through ESP? Just because she knows a lot about Julius Caesar's life doesn't mean she actually lived it, and this is true no matter how much she knows. Braude acknowledges that ESP, as we currently know it, could not deliver the detailed acquisition of skills and personality traits so often described in the literature. He says, however, that there is no reason to deny the existence of what he calls super ESP, a power that goes far beyond what has been documented in the PSI laboratory. The evidence that allegedly supports reincarnation could also be used to support claims of something like exorcist-style possession. In other words, a person who claims a new identity and is manifesting new skills and personality traits and knowledge could just as easily have been taken over by a completely different person, rather than revealed to have been a different person in the past. I must ask my readers who are equally repulsed by all of these explanations to bracket their repugnance and just consider this as a thought experiment. My point is that even if all of these alternatives deserved to be taken seriously, it would still be impossible to distinguish between them in any individual case. The problem is this: The fact that someone has extensive knowledge of a person's life can never prove that she has actually lived that life. Knowing something (or even everything) about a person does not make you that person. This is not just the problem of Mary the Color Blind Neuroscientist. Even if we accept Dennett's (1991) conclusion that knowing all the neuroscientific facts about a color is the same as experiencing that color, we cannot apply this conclusion to the reincarnation problem. In most of the cases discussed by Almeder (1992) and Carter (2012), the subjects remember both propositional facts and experience. The problem is that it is impossible to tell the difference between experiences that are actual memories of having been there and experiences that are imaginative fabrications, even if those fabrications are crammed with true facts. That's because, once we strip away the memories and personalities of the person having the experience, it becomes clear that "being there" is nothing more and nothing less than the first person perspective. Almeder and Carter both try to draw the line clearly amongst the alternatives of reincarnation, memory and possession – and indeed there are clusters of behaviors that make certain cases somewhat more amenable to one description rather than another. But it seems necessarily true that any possible set of facts that could be explained by reincarnation could also be explained by either super ESP or possession, if one were more inclined towards either of those alternatives. This has two very important implications. 1) It is not just difficult, but impossible, to use scientific methods to decisively decide between these explanations. 2) Therefore, science can neither prove nor disprove the existence of reincarnation. Here, of course, is where the Tilde Fallacy Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 862-881 Rockwell, T. The Tilde Fallacy and Reincarnation: Variations on a "Skeptical" Argument ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 877 usually rears its head. If we cannot scientifically prove that something exists, doesn't Occam's razor require us to assume that it doesn't? No, because negative claims still need some kind of evidence to back them up. Bigfoot and the Loch Ness Monster have partial evidence against them, based on the fact that many people have diligently looked for them and not found them. There is no such evidence against life in other galaxies, because we don't have resources that could search for them. However, It is still possible that life from other galaxies might show up in good Hollywood fashion, and that hope, slim though it may be, is not an option for reincarnation research. Evidence for or against reincarnation is not just non-existent. It is impossible, as far as we can tell, to find evidence one way or the other because of the presuppositions of our research methods. Science cannot be said to have answered a question that it has never asked. Who am I? What are the presuppositions that hamstring the study of reincarnation so inexorably? I think it has to do with the fact that subjective experience is necessarily linked to our experience of ourselves as particulars, and there can be no such thing as a science of particulars. Subjective experience is what gives us our awareness of thishere-now, and there can be no such thing as a science of this-here-now. It was Kant's awareness of this fact that made him write an entire critique on the problem of judgment – applying a rule to a case – and the depth of this problem is why so much of The Critique of Judgment is evocative handwaving. It is not possible to scientifically prove or disprove that I will survive after death, any more than there can be a science of this table. Those aspects of me that are abstract are the only aspects that are scientifically comprehensible, and they are not me, because my being, as Heidegger rightly pointed out, is in each case mine. Although the mind-as-software theory is a great improvement over the mind-astwo-pounds-of-meat-between-the-ears theory, it still has some serious problems. The mind is paradoxically both abstract and concrete, universal and particular. It's true that the self has no necessary connection to the particular stuff on which it supervenes. However, the mind-as-software theory cannot account for the fact that the mind also has no necessary connection to its abstract qualities. It's not just that the self can remain the same even when all its abstract qualities change, as when a child becomes an adult. These problems with the reincarnation data show that it's also possible to have all the abstract qualities of a particular self and not have that self present. Furthermore, we don't have to consider the data on reincarnation to see this problem. Although Hofstadter and Dennett have created a renowned version of the mind-assoftware theory, their classic anthology The Minds I (1981) contains two compelling counterexamples to that theory. 1) Stanislaw Lem tells a story of a man who wishes to live happily-ever-after with a tiny princess who lives inside a box. A helpful wizard starts with the assumption that the man's mind is nothing but the abstract patterns of his mind and then duplicates those abstract patterns in a tiny copy of the man. The tiny copy of the man embraces Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 862-881 Rockwell, T. The Tilde Fallacy and Reincarnation: Variations on a "Skeptical" Argument ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 878 the princess and strolls off with her towards the tiny sunset. When the man protests that he is not in the box, because he is here observing, not there, the wizard offers to solve that problem by killing him with a large hammer. (In Hofstadter & Dennett 1981, pp. 9698). 2) Dennett offers an alternative explanation for the teleporter beams that appear in science fiction stories. The usual assumption is that "the teleporter will swiftly and painlessly dismantle your body, producing a molecule-by-molecule blueprint to be beamed to earth, where the receiver, its reservoirs well-stocked with the requisite atoms, will almost instantaneously produce from the beamed instructions – you!" (Ibid., p. 3). But is there any reason to doubt the possibility that the machine is not actually a teleporter, but rather what Dennett calls a "murdering twin maker"? From a purely physical point of view, what the machine is doing is destroying your body and then making an exact copy of it somewhere else. Because this copy has all of your memories and emotions, this distinction makes no difference to the organism that emerges from this device. But it makes a tremendous difference to the organism that enters the device. If you think this difference is trivial semantics, consider the following variation. Suppose that the teleporter only travels from one side of a room to the other, and instead of vaporizing the body immediately, you get to stare at your new clone for a few seconds? Would you be willing to be killed with the hammer in the previous example, secure in the knowledge that you will survive because your abstract form has been preserved? According to the terms of the thought experiment, no one else but you can ever know whether you survived or were merely murdered and duplicated. And yet anyone who refuses to be killed by that hammer is acknowledging that this difference is real, even though it is completely subjective. There is no logical contradiction in claiming that you are the person "over there", and consequently you are willing to have the self "over here" killed with the hammer. If there is anyone out there who answers affirmatively to that question, I have nothing to say to them. For the rest of us, however, I think these examples show phenomenologically that my personal identity is not constituted by my abstract form. I think the most effective way to resolve this phenomenological paradox is to say that there is an aspect of my being which is completely concrete that cannot be identified with any abstraction, and therefore always escapes the universal laws that are the tools of science and other forms of knowledge. That is why there can be no first person science that completely closes the explanatory gap separating it from its subject matter. We can of course talk and write about concepts that deal with what I call the thirdperson-first-person. That's part of what I am doing in this essay. But the first person perspective cannot be reduced without remainder to those concepts. These diversions into philosophy of mind and ontology are not really diversions, because without them it is impossible to uncover the phenomenological structures that reveal the mortalist position to be self-contradictory. If the first person perspective is reducible to an abstract pattern, there is no need to ask the question, "What is it like to be dead?" However, if it is not so reducible, then we must ask that question. We can Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 862-881 Rockwell, T. The Tilde Fallacy and Reincarnation: Variations on a "Skeptical" Argument ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 879 then see that the mortalist answer to it makes no sense. If we don't ask that question, we can only talk about death in general, which changes the subject away from metaphysics to biology and/or psychology. That is the heart of the argument in this section: that when we ask "what happens to me when I die?" that question is not answered by saying some abstract pattern identified with you either lives on or is destroyed. People are often not aware of this. That is why they sometimes say things like, "Beethoven lives on in his music." This is a charming metaphor, but we should not permit it to muddy up the discussion of this very different topic. Many of us would love to have our creations remembered long after we have died, even if the mortalists are right about what happens when we die. But that is not the same thing as actually remaining alive and/or conscious. As the Monty Pythons pointed out in their song, "Decomposing Composers," the fact that you can still hear Beethoven does not imply that Beethoven can hear you. The fact that the mind-as-software theory implies something like this could be seen as making this idea into a reductio ad absurdum. Hofstadter Bites the Bullet on Immortality Hofstadter recognizes that he must take this metaphor of "Beethoven lives on in his music" as a literal truth because it is necessarily implied by his mind-as-software theory. In I am a Strange Loop (2007) he bites the bullet on this issue with heroic consistency and embraces a variety of counterintuitive conclusions. These conclusions, however, are as critical of mortalism as are my arguments, despite the fact that they deny one of my essential premises. My argument is that the irreducibility of the first person perspective requires us to conclude that mortalism is self-contradictory. Hofstadter says that there is no first-person perspective that is distinct from the content and character of my personality. However, he also points out that this content and character endures after the person dies, often taking root in the minds and behaviors of other people that live on. Consequently, if I am nothing but my thoughts and behavior patterns, and my thoughts and behavior patterns survive my biological death, then I survive my biological death. Hofstadter seems to almost say, contra the Pythons, that Beethoven literally lives on in his music! Usually, however, he limits this claim to a kind of abstract pattern with a distinctive self-referential structure that he calls a strange loop (hence the title of the book). This structure has a peculiar kind of complexity that Hofstadter spends most of the book describing, and Hofstadter thinks that this kind of structure is all that there is to the first-person perspective. In other words, he does not accept my claim that there is something irreducibly particular about the first-person perspective that cannot be reduced to any abstract principle. Hofstadter admits that when strange loops are transferred from brain to brain, the resulting copy is usually very "grainy" and inaccurate. A strange loop is a very complicated structure that doesn't transfer from one brain to another as easily as a Beethoven symphony. Sometimes, however, two or more people can be in such close synchrony that they see the world from essentially the same perspective. In that case, they become a "we" instead of a cluster of "I"s. When one of the persons in this kind of group dies, Hofstadter claims it is literally true that the deceased continues to think and Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 862-881 Rockwell, T. The Tilde Fallacy and Reincarnation: Variations on a "Skeptical" Argument ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 880 live, using the brains of the survivors who continue to see the world from her point of view, and thus continue to participate in her strange loop. It would probably be more accurate to describe the result of this process as survival rather than immortality. It offers us no guarantee that survival will go on forever. If the mind is nothing but software, there is no contradiction in the possibility of software having nothing to supervene on, and thus passing out of existence. It is only when you accept my claim of the irreducibility of the first-person perspective that the mortalist position becomes self-contradictory. I think Hofstadter needs to pay more attention to the implications of the examples of the tiny princess and the murdering twin maker, and to the factors that make it impossible in principle to either prove or disprove the existence of reincarnation. I think that these factors require us to accept an immortalist position, not just a survivalist position. Nevertheless, Hofstadter and I are in agreement that the mortalist position is not the only one acceptable to a rational person in touch with the latest scientific facts. The fact that mortalism has managed to maintain this reputation, while doing essentially nothing to earn it, is one more example of the seductive strength of the Tilde Fallacy. Furthermore, as far as I can see, our two positions provide a dilemma from which the mortalist cannot escape. If the mortalist is unpersuaded by my phenomenological arguments, she will have to agree with Hofstadter that the self is nothing more than the abstract behavior that I have metaphorically called mental software. Because these abstract patterns survive our bodily death, this would imply that our selves survive bodily death. This survival would perhaps not be technically the same thing as eternal life, because these patterns do pass out of existence eventually (at least this appears to be true of the ones of which we are aware). But because we have gone through this particular extinction process several times since childhood, it doesn't appear that death has the sting we originally attributed to it (in so far as what we thought about it made any sense at all). In other words: Either 1) the first person perspective is genuinely irreducible, in which case it makes no sense to say we could wake up one morning and discover we are not here any more, or 2) The first person perspective has no separate existence of its own, in which case each of us has already died many times. Bibliography Almeder, Robert (1992). Death and Personal Survival. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Bird, Colin (1999). The Myth of Liberal Individualism. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University press. Braude, Stephen (2003). Immortal Remains: The Evidence for Life after Death. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 862-881 Rockwell, T. The Tilde Fallacy and Reincarnation: Variations on a "Skeptical" Argument ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 881 Brody, Eugene (1979). "Review of Cases of the Reincarnation Type." Ten Cases in Sri Lanka (vol 2). Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 167 (12), 769-74. Carter, Chris (2012). Science and the Afterlife Experience. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions. Dawkins, Richard (1986). The Blind Watchmaker. New York: Norton. Dennett (1990). "The Myth of Original Intentionality." In Said, Newton-Smith, Viale, & Wilkes, eds. Modeling the Mind. Oxford: Clarendon Press Dennett (1991). Consciousness Explained. Boston: Little Brown and Company Earman, John (2000). Hume's Abject Failure. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Fontana, D. (2004). Is There an Afterlife A Comprehensive Review of the Evidence. OBE, UK: John Hunt. Hales, Stephen D. (2001). "Evidence and the Afterlife," in Philosophia 28 (1-4), June 2001, 335-346. Hofstadter, Douglas (2007). I Am a Strange Loop. New York: Basic Books. Hofstadter, Douglas; & Dennett, Daniel (1981). The Minds I. NY: Basic Books. Nozick, Robert (1974). Anarchy, State and Utopia. New York: Basic Books. Rockwell, Teed (2013). A Critique of Libertarianism. Video at http://www.academia.edu/5393180/A_Critique_of_Libertarianism Rowling, J.K. (2007) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. New York: Arthur A. Levine Books. Stevenson, Ian (1966). Twenty Cases Suggestive of Reincarnation. Richmond, VA: University of Virginia Press. Varela, Francisco; Thompson, Evan; & Rosch, Eleanor (1992). The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience. Cambridge, MA: MIT press. Wittgenstein, Ludwig (1922). Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. London: Routledge Classics. Originally published in German as Logisch-Philosophische Abhandlung in 1921. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 882-899 Bindeman, S., Death, Consciousness, and Phenomenology ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 882 Research Essay Death, Consciousness, and Phenomenology Steven Bindeman * Introduction In philosophy, the way a problem is framed has a lot to do with what questions are asked about it and how these questions are resolved. The study of the mental framing of the way things exist in the world, the questioning of the nature of their being, is called ontology. The ontology of consciousness, therefore, is the examination of the "being" of consciousness, the way it exists in the world. In this paper I will examine how contrasting ontologies of consciousness determine in significantly different ways how the human relationship with death is to be addressed. Thus, when the materialist view of consciousness is compared with the phenomenological perspective, we will find ourselves comparing a predominantly medical model which essentially views the human body in terms of its consisting of replaceable or fixable parts, with an experiential model which emphasizes the experiential quality of human life over its objective quantifiable aspects. The gist of this paper will be my exploration of the kinds of issues that emerge when existentially-grounded phenomenologists confront the issue of death. After briefly examining the materialist perspective on consciousness, we will concentrate our attention on how the recognition of different levels of consciousness can show us how we can relate to death in different ways. We will proceed from examining the impossibility of the death of the self, to the possibility of transcendence through experiencing the death of the other. We will turn to Merleau-Ponty's concept of bodily knowledge for help with the matter of how consciousness constitutes the world around itself and enables the possibility of transcendence. We will also examine passages from Nietzsche's philosophy (with guidance from Heidegger and Blanchot) that cover the transition from viewing time as linear to viewing time as circular, and the transition from understanding our place in the universe in a passive, accepting way which leads inexorably to nihilism, to the possibility of making a decision to relate to our * Correspondence: Steven Bindeman, independent scholar, Silver Spring, MD. Email: [email protected] Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 882-899 Bindeman, S., Death, Consciousness, and Phenomenology ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 883 situation in a more dynamic and creative way, by directing our will to the ecstatic experience of the eternal return. The materialist perspective on consciousness For an example of the materialist perspective on consciousness, we discover how David Chalmers (1995) frames his examination of the ontology of consciousness in terms of what he calls the easy and the hard problems of consciousness. The comparatively easy problems concerning consciousness, he says, are those that represent some ability of consciousness, like its performance of some function or behavior. They include, among other things, "the ability to discriminate, categorize, or react to environmental stimuli, the integration of information by a cognitive system, the ability of this system to access its internal states and to focus its attention, etc." (p. 200). While it is obvious even from the materialist point of view that some organisms (like human beings for example) are subjects of experience and not mere objects, the question of how they come to be this way remains unresolved. If experience arises from a physical basis, why and how should physical processing give rise to such a rich inner life at all? "The really hard problem of consciousness, then," says Chalmers, "is the problem of experience" (p. 201). But how can we get from "the whir of information processing" (p. 201) to the actuality of rich, subjective, conscious experience? Chalmers's way of framing the ontology of human consciousness, then, presents an explanatory gap, similar to Levine's (1983) use of the term to refer to the separation between materialism and qualia. Thus, if we begin with the materialist assumption that what is primary is the empirically measurable external world of scientific investigation, then the existence of the internal world of conscious awareness becomes problematic. The materialist view of Chalmers and his associates also leads to the ongoing and extensive examination of the possibility of human immortality. However, while life extension might be an achievable goal in the near future from improvements in medical knowledge about the mechanisms of various diseases, ultimately the problem of aging would still need to resolved as well. Alternatively, advances in AI research could lead to the possibility of mind uploading, in which the transference of brain states from a human brain to another medium would occur, providing immortality to the computational processing of the original brain. Such is the belief of the futurist Ray Kurzweil (2005), who names the singularity as the moment in the future when artificial brains reach full consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 882-899 Bindeman, S., Death, Consciousness, and Phenomenology ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 884 Technological advances in a broad variety of fields, like nanotechnology, genetics, biological engineering, regenerative medicine and microbiology could easily provide the basis for extending the span of human lives, which are already longer than ever before due to better nutrition, greater availability of health care, higher standards of living throughout the world, and advances in bio-medical research. An important aspect of current scientific thinking about immortality is that some combination of human cloning, cryonics or nanotechnology will play an essential role in its realization as well. Some scientists believe that genetherapies and nanotechnology will eventually make the human body effectively self-sustaining. This supports the theory that we will be able to continually create biological or synthetic replacement parts to replace damaged or dying ones. From this point of view, we are merely biological machines in need only of periodic maintenance. Future advances in nano-medicine could also give rise to life extension through the repair of the many processes believed to be responsible for aging. For humans to be able to survive death completely its three main causes – namely aging, disease, and physical trauma – would all have to be resolved. Even then, the environment would have to continue to provide nourishment, for without this we would still die. (See "Immortality," Wikipedia.) Nevertheless, whether all consciousness dies along with the body remains an open question. The constellation of these issues revolves around what has been called the medical model for scientific research. First identified by the humanist psychologist R. D. Laing (1972), the medical model focuses on the physical and biological aspects of specific diseases and conditions. The human body is characterized as a kind of sophisticated living machine whose symptoms can be traced back to biophysical causes that in turn can be repaired with replaceable parts, surgery, or biochemical procedures. This is the materialist view of the human body and human disease that dominates the medical establishment today, especially but not exclusively in the developed world. In large part, though, the subjective experience of the individual patient is marginalized throughout this orientation. The phenomenological approach to consciousness Conversely, Husserl with his phenomenological approach to experiential reality argued that empirical science simply isn't rigorous enough to account for such a phenomenon as consciousness. Empirical science in his view misses the central defining essence of consciousness because the physical model of the world cannot provide a direct description of lived experience. However, the dualist Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 882-899 Bindeman, S., Death, Consciousness, and Phenomenology ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 885 model that is behind empirical science has dominated our thinking for over 400 years. Positivist philosophers have put forth a rigorous physicalist point of view, which, as a form of materialist monism, views the mind as a mere side effect (see, e.g., Neurath, 1931; Carnap, 1933). By practicing Husserl's phenomenological epoché, though, a procedure which requires that we bracket out all such knowledge and limit ourselves to investigating the world only in terms of how it is given to us through our direct experience of it, we can stop putting into play these preconceived ideas about the nature of reality, and this will provide a result which he calls the phenomenological reduction, whereby the basic phenomena of consciousness are identified. Heidegger (1982) described Husserl's phenomenological reduction as the method of leading phenomenological vision from the natural attitude of the human being whose life is involved in the world of things and persons back to the transcendental life of consciousness and its noetic-noematic experiences, in which objects are constituted as correlates of consciousness. (p. 21) Furthermore, according to Husserl our direct experience of the world is a temporal process, involving the ongoing correlation between the passive acquisition of noematic experience (the object as such, as it appears to consciousness) along with the active interpretation of this information through the noesis (conscious acts directed at the unfolding meaning of the object, as it undergoes changes over time). Consciousness for Husserl (e.g., 1982, pp. 5962) is an ongoing relationship between individuals and the world they inhabit. Thus, even though the phenomenal objects of consciousness are named, they avoid being mere objects because they are situated within the temporal framework of the intentional consciousness. The existentialist approach to death The phenomenological perspective on the nature of human consciousness has created a more existentialist approach toward the human experience and its place in medical practice than has the materialist approach. Existentialism was made famous through Jean-Paul Sartre's (e.g., 1956) use of the term to mean that, in the case of human experience, "Existence precedes essence." He had encountered this theme through his reading of Martin Heidegger's work Being and Time (1962), in which Heidegger coined the term "thrownness" in order to refer to the idea that Dasein (by which he meant human situatedness) is "thrown" Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 882-899 Bindeman, S., Death, Consciousness, and Phenomenology ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 886 into a world. Dasein, then, is not a mere object but a state of mind; Dasein is also always in a "mood," and a central theme of this orientation is that Dasein's life-long project is to discover which of its moods are the most authentic, and then learn how to attune itself to them. However, an important part of our everyday situatedness, or what Heidegger calls our "being-in-the world," is our constant state of anxiety. The source of this anxiety, he asserts, is our having allowed our "they-self" (society, the crowd, the medical establishment) to define who we are, and what we should strive to be. It is this "they-self" that introduces the enframing implications of the materialist worldview, with which Heidegger refers to the mindset of the human drive for a precise, controllable knowledge of the natural world, where things exist and come into existence only insofar as they can be measured. We feel anxious, in Heidegger's view, due to the inauthenticity of this self-orientation. We also feel anxious due to our feeling connected to the world, because we care about things. Our situatedness, which exists in consequence of our having been rooted in a past and placed into a present that faces a future, comes to the center of our being. We discover this feeling of connectedness when we are led to confront the necessity of our own death, a state of mind that Heidegger calls "being-unto-death." In contrast, the medical model's approach to death and dying can be shown to lead to feelings of increased anxiety for its patients, in part due to its comparative negligence of these psychological and philosophical components. From this existentialist perspective, how we come to view the ultimate meaning of our own death becomes of central importance. When we turn in this direction, the more quantifiable and measurable aspects of our physical condition, such as the possibility of the extension of our consciousness into the indefinite future, fade into the background. We turn then to the existentialist viewpoint on the ultimate meaning of death, in order to discover how existential narratives regarding the meaning of death exhibit the potential to contribute to the mental stability of individuals in ways that are in stark contrast to the kinds of solutions introduced by the medical model. The question we want to keep in mind with regards to any of these narratives concerning the meaning of human death is not, "Is it true?" but, "What does it reveal about ourselves?" In this way, the meaning of our death ceases to be a mere incontrovertible fact, and becomes instead a matter of existential choice. Accordingly we discover how Kierkegaard (1992, 2009) placed emphasis on personal faith over the various options for certainty with which he was aware. In response to the typical 19th century Danish Christian's quest for personal immortality or for an assurance of survival of the self after death, Kierkegaard Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 882-899 Bindeman, S., Death, Consciousness, and Phenomenology ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 887 responded that there is no absolute proof but only the consequences of the option we choose to accept. Death in itself explains nothing, Kierkegaard insisted, since on a physical level everything, including individuals as well as the human race as a whole, passes away. Kierkegaard pointed to the example of Socrates as someone, like himself, who refused to dabble in speculation about life after death but still kept the question open. Through such learned, ironic ignorance - Socrates claimed ignorance of many things, but because he knew this about himself he was widely known as the wisest of all Athenians - Socrates philosophized in the direction of truth. In so doing, he turned away from the values sanctioned by the State, which claimed to guarantee happiness in this life if only one acted obediently and in accordance with the demands of civic morality. Socrates, though, by making his individualist subjectivity a universal starting point for philosophy, freed himself from the demands of such civic dictates (see Kierkegaard, 1992, p. 49). When Kierkegaard (2009) identified three stages in life (the aesthetic, the ethical, and the religious), he discovered that a confrontation with nothingness forces the individual to take a stand and make a choice, between the despair that leads actively to suicide or passively to madness, or to a leap of faith. These leaps were either out of the aesthetic way of life into the ethical sphere, or out of the ethical way of life into the religious. Both ways of life for Kierkegaard lead inexorably to suffering, and both require an irrational choice in order to overcome it. Since both the aesthetic and the ethical ways of life lead to despair and suffering, it would seem for Kierkegaard that the common human condition is relegated to negativity, since only the courageous few, the single ones, have the will to overcome and throw off their former selves. In a sense, only they will have learned how to confront their own death - and then learn how to overcome it. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 882-899 Bindeman, S., Death, Consciousness, and Phenomenology ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 888 The death of the self and the death of the other There is also the possibility that death is "totally other" - a mystery that cannot be solved by rejecting or accepting it or by hating or desiring it. As the FrancoRussian philosopher Vladimir Jankélévitch says in La Mort (1977), in death there are no elements to affirm or negate anything, rational or irrational, spiritualistic or materialistic, immanent or transcendent. Death drives us to a condition of complete theoretical uncertainty, a constant oscillation that cannot fix on a determinate thesis, since nobody has returned from the other shore to explain how it is. We do justice to death only if we recognize this fundamental inability of ours to discover its essential nature. Neither sense (scientism, spiritualism), nor non-sense (nihilism, absurdism) can lighten such a darkness. We face death correctly only when we realize that death is truly enigmatic and impenetrable (cf. Cestari, 2016). Since Jankélévitch's thought is strongly dependent on the perspective of the first person speaking subject, its temporal dimension too is analyzed from the standpoint of the I. For Jankélévitch, then, the three temporal dimensions of death are equally unknowable. Future death is the non-sense of sense or the non-being of being; the mortal instant is an "outside-category" since the moment only exists outside of the flow of time; and past death is absolutely nothing to me since once I am dead I will no longer remember anything. Subjectively the I can only experience defeat in the face of death (Jankélévitch 1977; Cestari, 2016). Even though Jankélévitch grounds his argument concerning the unknowability of death from the particular perspective of the experiencing subject, this experience is severely limited since the subject experiences death only as a true impossibility, due to its realization that death and consciousness are radically incompatible. This is so because knowledge is possible only when the subject clearly knows the object of cognition. Even outside the point of view of the experiencing subject, though, there are insurmountable problems with regards to understanding the nature of death since my knowledge of another person's experience of anything must remain hypothetical, so that person's death must be unknowable as well. Thus death in itself cannot be known by anyone. Death in the first person remains a paradoxical object of thought whose sense is completely impossible to find, since I am and always will be completely ignorant about it. Nothing can be said about my death, since my death points to the unspeakable silence of the complete nothing, the total lack of any relations. Here, sense is completely obstructed and affirming or negating it is impossible (Jankélévitch, pp. 67-91; Cestari, p. 24). Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 882-899 Bindeman, S., Death, Consciousness, and Phenomenology ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 889 Death in the first person remains an objective limit to my efforts to understand it. Death in the third person is equally problematic, though, since it is little more than an abstract concept, a kind of indeterminate category, and it is meaningful only in a very generic sense since it explains death according to rational, scientific, religious, mythical, or social explanations, and only these kinds of answers can derive from such an impersonal framing of death. If death is knowable only as an empty concept, and my death cannot be known in any case, perhaps there exists an intermediate death that can be experienced. This is your death, the death of people whom we personally know and love, death in the second person. "Between the anonymity of the third person and the tragic subjectivity of the first person [...], between the death of the other, which is far away and indifferent, and one's own death, that touches our own being, there is the nearness of the near" (Jankélévitch as cited in Cestari, 2016, p. 20). While your death may seem almost as painful as my death, it is not my death. Still, its effects on my world are deep and durable and underline the essentially social and relational character of death. And yet, my death and your death are equally unknowable, if for different reasons: the first because my very end coincides with the missed object of knowledge; the second because I cannot become you. Still, such an approach is grounded on the assumption that real knowledge can only be clear and distinct if it originates from the subject. This knowledge would be human and finite, and thus far from being absolute. But this would be the only manner by which human beings could perceive death. Your death is my first real experience of death. I realize that what happened to you also can happen to me, even if my death is destined to remain an undetermined state for me. Your death remains the only limited possibility I can have to come to grips with my death. Your death therefore lies at the foundation concerning how I approach my own death. In fact, the possibility of thoroughly realizing that I will die is generally impossible until I come to experience your death in some way (Jankélévitch as referenced in Cestari, 2016, pp. 20-21). This confrontation of the self with the death of the significant other (or with your death, as Jankélévitch puts it) is further explored by Emmanuel Levinas (2000) in an essay entitled "Death of the Other and My Own" (pp. 16-21). From the death of the other, he says, pure knowledge (which is for him the same as lived experience) retains only the external appearances of a process of immobilization whereby someone whom you have known comes to an end. Any emotional rapport we might have with death, he continues, is due to its being an exception, and this is what confers on death its depth. We recognize this depth in the form of a disquietude within the unknown. But beyond our compassion for and Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 882-899 Bindeman, S., Death, Consciousness, and Phenomenology ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 890 solidarity with the other, we discover a responsibility for him even within the unknown. Levinas, echoing Heidegger, goes on to suggest "that our affectivity [the fact that we care] is awakened only in a being persevering in its being"; he adds, "intentionality is the secret of the psyche" (p. 18). From this perspective time emerges not as the limitation of being but in terms of its relationship with infinity, and the meaning of death is now uncovered not as annihilation but as an open question produced by this relationship. When one speaks of my death, Levinas continues, this cannot be a matter of knowledge or experience. He quotes Epicurus in this context: "If you are there, then death is not there; if it is there, you are not there" (p. 19). He adds, "My relationship with my death is a nonknowledge on dying itself, a nonknowledge that is nevertheless not an absence of relationship" (p. 19). The nature of this relationship stems back to the death of the other, an eventuality that is transferred back to oneself. This transference, though, is not merely a mechanical one, but rather "comes to cut the thread of my own duration" (p. 19). This transference also belongs to what Levinas calls "the intrigue of the I" (p. 20), which for him is a matter of recognizing the uniqueness and the singularity of one's identity and refers to the possibility of someone being able to escape from his concept. He would accomplish this by making a nonsense of his own death: "This is," says Levinas, "a nonknowledge that translates into experience through my ignorance of the day of my death, an ignorance by virtue of which the 'me' writes checks on an empty account, as if he had eternity before him" (p. 21). For Levinas (1969), then, it is precisely the contingency of one's own death, its nonknowability, its "not yet" that is the source of one's freedom to pursue "the intrigue of the I" (p. 224) What Levinas referred to as "the intrigue of the I" bears a striking resemblance to Karl Jaspers's (1955) notion of Existenz philosophy, concerning which he speaks of individuals' journey towards transcendence in terms of their ability to continue overcoming their limitations in order to transform themselves into an "authentic" person. He thus identified three levels of being: Dasein, by which he means objective being, or being-in-the-world; Existenz, or subjective, nonobjectifiable being-as-such; and the Encompassing of Transcendence, or the unattainable limit of all being and thought. The human person as Existenz claims her or his own uniqueness as a human being through the quality of the choices s/he takes. Jaspers believes that in the course of one's life one encounters certain limiting situations, which push a person toward transcendence and authenticity. These limiting situations consist of the experiences of death, suffering, struggle and guilt. When one is confronted with any one of them, one is forced to confront Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 882-899 Bindeman, S., Death, Consciousness, and Phenomenology ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 891 one's own existence, and one can no longer remain in a complacent state. For example, when a person is confronted by the reality of death, either through the death of someone with whom they were very close or even with their own approaching death, its reality cannot be ignored. In other words, when death becomes a reality and not just a concept, the person is forced to face their present situation. The same is true with the other limiting situations: one's guilt brings the person to their present, as no one can totally escape guilt once it has stricken them; while suffering and struggle similarly bring the person to an undeniable yet uncomfortable present. These realities impose the present situation onto the affected individual, and as limiting situations bring the person to their Existenz. Thus, no one can continue to simply drift away when death is approaching, since its approach will force the person to ask vital questions about the sense of their life and the meaning of their existence. Either these limiting situations bring the person to their Existenz or the person becomes Existenz. Either way, the person has become aware of their potential for spiritual growth as Existenz through the encompassing power of transcendence (cf. Jaspers, 1969, pp. 76-89). It is also in this context that Peter Sloterdijk (1989) announces that the unknowability of one's death has unnerving social and political implications: "The inability of any modern, post-metaphysical, scientized thinking to conceive of any death as one's own leads to two obviously ubiquitous attitudes" (p. 346): either death does not belong to life even though we cannot avoid confronting it, or our thinking clings to the only death that remains objectively thinkable, the death of the other. The primacy of self-preservation becomes the consequence of such thinking. Furthermore, if the subject is the one thing that cannot die, the world becomes the domain in which the struggle for survival takes place, and the other emerges as my enemy. In order to avoid this death of self, the technical-logical nature of instrumental reason is allowed to dominate everything that is not the ego. Then, it's just a matter of either them or us; or as in the mindset of the James Bond films, live and let die (p. 346). Thus, "the incapacity to die subjects the world, in its visible and invisible areas, to a radical transformation" (p. 347). But this does not solve the problem; the need for transcendence remains. Sloterdijk clearly believes that if we are to be able to survive modernity, we will have to disidentify from everything that arms itself (p. xxiii). In fact, Sloterdijk presents the intriguing idea that "the concept of substitute transcendence could ground a phenomenology of modernity" (p. 348). The dynamic approach to creating new levels of consciousness Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 882-899 Bindeman, S., Death, Consciousness, and Phenomenology ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 892 Merleau-Ponty is yet another important phenomenologist who believed that materialist thinking cannot do justice to the discontinuous aspects of human experience, since it is unable to encapsulate the contingent and nonconceptual character of our ongoing relationship with the world and with other conscious beings. This is why he advocated "a new idea of reason, which does not forget the experience of unreason" (as cited in Spiegelberg, 1971, p. 525). He also did not wish to lose sight of the ambiguity that he believed was as central to understanding the human condition as was clarity. In fact, our understanding of death might well fit into this conception of the need to accommodate the experiences of unreason and ambiguity. Death may just be the "great unknown" for phenomenology, even if Merleau-Ponty's related notions of wild nature, the flesh of the world and the intertwining indicate a dynamic relationship between the earth and its conscious inhabitants. Nevertheless, the "impossible" creative dynamism of the chiasm – "[W]e are the world that thinks itself, or the world is at the heart of our flesh" (Merleau-Ponty, 1968, p.136) – is present before the particularity of embodied experience, as well as during it, and after it, too - since even before the birth as well as after the death of the individual self, the earth continues its dialogue with the others that remain. For Merleau-Ponty (1964), the conscious ego and its situatedness in the world are recognized and defined only in terms of their relationship with one another. "The world is not an object such that I have within my possession the law of its making," he writes. "...Truth does not 'inhabit' only the 'inner man,' or more accurately, there is no 'inner man.' Man is in the world, and only in the world does he know himself" (p. xi). But who does this knowing? Or is it the world coming to know itself through us? In contrast to the standard understanding of transcendence as passage from self to other, perceptual transcendence for Merleau-Ponty does not stop at the exteriority of the outside world but loops back. This is the case for his notion of the chiasm, which moves from self to world and from world to self via the mediating elemental flesh of the world. Similarly, Stéphane Lupasco, a Franco-Rumanian philosopher who is a proponent of a quantum-type logic (as cited in Brenner, 2008), believes that consciousness results from the antagonistic relativization between biological matter and physical matter. He argues that this relativization engenders a matter of a third kind and he calls it psychic matter or quantic matter (Lupasco, 1951). This position concerning the origin of consciousness links nicely with the dynamic views of creative consciousness developed by both Merleau-Ponty (see above) and Nietzsche (see below). Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 882-899 Bindeman, S., Death, Consciousness, and Phenomenology ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 893 Finally, there is the perspective on the constitution of a new level of consciousness introduced by Nietzsche and analyzed in detail by Heidegger (1968). In Heidegger's view, there is a necessary contradiction between Nietzsche's central concepts of will to power and eternal return. They move in different directions and want different things. When we confront the will to power with the embrace of the eternal return, he argues, we confront a will to control with a will to destroy. This is also the confrontation between the linear view of time of the will to power, and the circular view of time of the embrace of the eternal return. Can these seeming contradictions be resolved? In order to resolve these contradictions, the subject has to will non-willing. This is a creative act of the will. The will has to say "yes" to the "it was" of time. It has to say "yes, this is how I will it" - again and again throughout the eternal return of the same event. Here, the will to power acts as a synthesis of forces. Since the eternal return implies that time is circular and not linear, when the subject gets back to the same place, it discovers that its consciousness has changed - each time. And once the will learns to will backward - this is the highest expression of the will to power. "That everything recurs is the closest approximation of a world of becoming to a world of being - high point of meditation" (Nietzsche,1967, p. 617). The will also wants something further. As Nietzsche (1967) puts it: "The will to destruction (is) the will of a still deeper instinct, the instinct of self-destruction, the will for nothingness" (p. 55). When nihilism, the will for nothingness, is confronted with the eternal return, it is itself negated. When the subject actively affirms its own reactive forces, these forces become neutralized and disappear. With its discovery of the eternal return, the human subject redeems itself from its past and frees up its future - through amor fati. By an act of the creative will, it breaks the chain of causality that determines the everyday world of becoming, and through its artistry creates a meaningful world for itself to live in. We recall from Nietzsche's first book, The Birth of Tragedy (1968), that for him the creative will has two aspects, the Apollonian and the Dionysian, the restraint of form working against the excess of content. In the case of the experience of the eternal return, the Apollonian force provides the structural form of the circle, while the Dionysian force provides the joyous exuberance of repetition. With his conceptualization and experience of the eternal return, Nietzsche introduces the possibility that the limitations of linear time can be overcome through an act of the creative will. This creative act, in turn, with its capacity to Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 882-899 Bindeman, S., Death, Consciousness, and Phenomenology ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 894 break the chain of causality that determines the nature of the human self, initiates a liberating force on the self. Others add to this perspective. In the view of the Japanese philosopher Keiji Nishitani (1990), "The so-called 'I,' what we normally take as the self, is merely a frame of interpretation added to this life process after the fact. The true self is the source of the life process itself, the true body of the will to power" (p. 97). According to Stambaugh (1999), this true self involves "an ultimate selfawakening that is beyond ordinary consciousness and self-consciousness" (p. 101). On the other hand, it is precisely the so-called "I", inhabited by ordinary consciousness and self-consciousness, that discovers the threat of nihilism. If consciousness turns away from this threat, however, it will become mired in its pursuit of worldly, everyday things. "What consciousness ultimately must do is to become that nihility, and in so doing, break through the field of consciousness and self-consciousness" (p. 101). This confrontation with nothingness was also familiar to the Christian mystic Meister Eckhart. As Nishitani (1982) explains: "The subjectivity of the uncreated I am appears in Eckhart only after passing through the complete negation of - or detachment from - the subjectivity of egoity" (p. 65). This negation, in turn, leads to a moment of ecstasy, where the self takes a stand outside of itself. Nishitani explains: "Ecstasy represents an orientation from self to the ground of self, from God to the ground of God - from being to nothingness. Negation-sive-affirmation represents an orientation from nothingness to being" (p. 68). This experience leads to a shift, a conversion, from the traditional self, as person, to the self-revelation or transcendence of the "true self" through its manifestation of absolute nothingness - or as what the Buddhist seer Nagarjuna referred to as its realization of "emptiness" (Nagarjuna, 2016). There can be little doubt that Nietzsche's experience of the eternal return was an extraordinary event for him - in fact, his was an experience inaccessible to an ordinary state of consciousness. He even coined a term for any individual who underwent this experience: the overman. It was a gift brought by Zarathustra to man, whom, he feared, wasn't ready for it yet. In Blanchot's (1993) view: [T]he overman is the being who has overcome the void (created by the death of God and the decline of values), because he has known how to find in this void the power of overcoming. ...The overman is he in whom nothingness makes itself will and who, free for death, maintains this pure essence of will in willing nothingness. This would be nihilism itself. (pp.147148). Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 882-899 Bindeman, S., Death, Consciousness, and Phenomenology ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 895 Nietzsche explains this further: "Let us think this thought in its most terrible form: existence, as it is, without meaning or aim, yet recurring inevitably without any finale of nothingness: the eternal recurrence ... the most extreme form of nihilism" (as cited in Blanchot, 1993, p. 149). This is a bit confusing, though, since we might initially have thought that nihilism was tied only to a belief in the pervasiveness of nothingness; now we are being told that nihilism is also connected to being. Blanchot provides an answer: "Nihilism is the impossibility of being done with it and of finding a way out. ... Nothing ends, everything begins again; the other is still the same" (p. 149). Blanchot (1982) also links the phenomenon of personal death to Nietzsche's experience of the eternal return: One dies: he who dies is anonymous, and anonymity is the guise in which the ungraspable, the unlimited, the unsituated is most dangerously affirmed near us. Whoever experiences this suffers an anonymous, impersonal force, the force of an event which, being the dissolution of every event, is starting over not only now, but was in its very beginning a beginning again. And in its domain, everything that happens happens again. From the instant "one dies," the instant is revoked. (p. 241). The American post-phenomenologist Mark Taylor (1987) elaborates on this point: "Since it is never present, death as such cannot be thought. Death, in other words, is unthinkable" (p. 242). But we seem to still need a way to think past or think through this impossible event, even if it is unthinkable. Conclusion So, then, how do we break out of nihilism's vicious circle? If nihilism is inseparable even from being and not just from nothingness, are we necessarily condemned to living in an absurd universe for all of eternity? The only authentic answer to this would seem to be self-annihilation, or suicide. But Nietzsche rejects this. Instead, the secret is found in forgetting. Blanchot again explains: [W]elcome to the future that does not come, that neither begins nor ends and whose uncertainty breaks history. But how do we think this rupture? Through forgetting. Forgetting frees the future from time itself. ... This desire to be ignorant by which ignorance becomes desire is the waiting welcomed by forgetting... (p. 280). Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 882-899 Bindeman, S., Death, Consciousness, and Phenomenology ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 896 Our only viable choice, then, is to learn how to live within the timelessness of the present moment. For, as Nietzsche (1980) says, "Without forgetting it is quite impossible to live at all" (p. 10). As long as we are caught up within the limiting framework of linear time, we are forced to confront the singular inevitability of our own impending death. This bare fact has the power to paralyze us, since it forces us to contemplate the essential nihilism of all conscious life: that all living things inevitably die. Even if we turn to the liberating framework of circular time, to the expanding ecstatic moment of the realization of the eternal return, we find that we still cannot escape from the suffocating nausea of our very being. There is no way out of the circle of the passage from becoming to being, with each inextricably following the other throughout eternity. The answer is again found in the will. We will ourselves to forget, to forget our knowledge of the past and the future, and to forget that everything returns. We choose instead to live within the endless moment, in a willful ignorance which awakens our desire - we will non-willing, and thus choose life. References Blanchot, M. (1982). The Space of Literature (trans. A. Smock). Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Blanchot, M. (1993). The Infinite Conversation (trans. S. Hanson). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Brenner, J. E. (2008). Logic in Reality. Dordrecht: Springer. Carnap, R. (1933). "Psychology in Physical Language", in A.J. Ayer (ed.), Logical Positivism (pp. 165–198). New York: The Free Press, 1959. Cestari, M. (2016). "Each Death is Unique: Beyond Epistemic Transfiguration in Thanatology," pp. 21-27, WEB, 6/27/16. Chalmers, D. (1995). "Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness." The Journal of Consciousness Studies 2 (3) 200-19. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 882-899 Bindeman, S., Death, Consciousness, and Phenomenology ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 897 Heidegger, M. (1962). Being and Time (trans. J. Macquarrie & E. Robinson). NY: Harper & Row. Heidegger, M. (1968). What is Called Thinking? (trans. F. Wieck & J. G. Gray). NY: Harper & Row. Heidegger, M. (1982). The Basic Problems of Phenomenology (trans. A. Hofstadter). Bloomington: Indiana University Press). Husserl, E. (1982). Ideas Pertaining to a Pure Phenomenology and to a Phenomenological Philosophy, First Book (trans. F. Kersten). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic. Immortality (2016). Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. WEB. 15 Jul. 2016. Jankélévitch, V. (1977). La Mort. Paris: Flammarion (cited in Cestari, 2016). Jaspers, K. (1955). Reason and Existenz (trans. W. Earle). NY: The Noonday Press. Jaspers, K. (1969). Philosophy, Vol. I (trans. E. B. Ashton). Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Kierkegaard, S. (1992). The Concept of Irony (ed. & trans. H. Hong & E. Hong). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kierkegaard, S. (2009) "The Resurrection of the Dead is at Hand," in Christian Discourses (pp. 203-213, ed. & trans. H. Hong & E. Hong). Princeton: Princeton University Press. Kurzweil, R. (2005). The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology. NY: Viking. Laing, R. D. (1972). The Politics of the Family and Other Essays. NY: Random House. Levinas, E. (2000). God, Death, and Time (trans. B. Bergo), W. Hamacher & D. Wellbery (eds.). Stanford: Stanford University Press. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 882-899 Bindeman, S., Death, Consciousness, and Phenomenology ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 898 Levinas, E. (1969). Totality and Infinity (trans. A Lingis). Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press. Levine, J. (1983). "Materialism and Qualia: The Explanatory Gap." Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 64, 354-361. Lupasco, S. (1951). Le Principe d'Antagonisme et la Logique de l'Energie. Paris: Hermann & Co. (cited in Brenner, 2008). Merleau-Ponty, M. (1964). Sense and Non-Sense (trans. H Dreyfus & P. Dreyfus). Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Merleau-Ponty, M. (1968). The Visible and the Invisible (trans. A. Lingis). Evanston: Northwestern University Press. Merleau-Ponty, M. (2001). "Other People and the Human World," in R. Solomon, (ed.), Phenomenology and Existentialism. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield. Nagarjuna (2016). In Encyclopaedia Britannica. WEB: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Nagarjuna Neurath, O. (1931). "Physicalism: The Philosophy of the Vienna Circle", in R. S. Cohen, and M. Neurath (eds.), Philosophical Papers 1913–1946 (pp. 48-51), Dordrecht: D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1983. Nietzsche, F. (1967). The Will to Power (trans. W. Kaufmann & R. J. Hollingdale). NY: Vintage Books. Nietzsche, F. (1968). The Birth of Tragedy, in Basic Writings of Nietzsche (trans. & ed. W. Kaufmann). NY: Modern Library. Nietzsche, F. (1980). Advantages and Disadvantages of History for Life (trans. P. Preuss). Indianapolis: Hackett. Nishitani, K. (1982). Religion and Nothingness (trans. J.V. Bragt). Berkeley: University of California Press. Nishitani, K. (1990). The Self-Overcoming of Nihilism (trans. G. Parkes & S. Amhara). Albany: SUNY Press. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 882-899 Bindeman, S., Death, Consciousness, and Phenomenology ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 899 Sartre, J. P. (1956). "Existentialism is a Humanism". World Publishing. (Lecture, 1946). WEB: Marxists.org. Retrieved 09 Jun. 2016. Sloterdijk, P. (1988). Critique of Cynical Reason (trans. M. Eldred). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Sloterdijk, P. (1989). Thinker on Stage: Nietzsche's Materialism (trans J. O. Daniel). Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Spiegelberg, H. (1971). The Phenomenological Movement: A Historical Introduction. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Stambaugh, J. (1999). The Formless Self. Albany: SUNY Press. Taylor, M. C. (1987). Altarity. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 900-909 Kastrup, B. The Idealist View of Consciousness After Death ISSN: 2153-8212 © Bernardo Kastrup 2016 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 900 Research Essay The Idealist View of Consciousness After Death Bernardo Kastrup* Abstract To make educated guesses about what happens to consciousness upon bodily death, one has to have some understanding of the relationship between body and consciousness during life. This relationship, of course, reflects an ontology. In this brief essay, the tenability of both the physicalist and dualist ontologies will be assessed in view of recent experimental results in physics. The alternative ontology of idealism will then be discussed, which not only can be reconciled with the available empirical evidence, but also overcomes the lack of parsimony and limited explanatory power of physicalism and dualism. Idealism elegantly explains the basic facts of reality, such as (a) the fact that brain activity correlates with experience, (b) the fact that we all seem to share the same world, and (c) the fact that we can't change the laws of nature at will. If idealism is correct, the implication is that, instead of disappearing, conscious inner life expands upon bodily death, a prediction that finds circumstantial but significant confirmation in reports of near-death experiences and psychedelic trances, both of which can be construed as glimpses into the early stages of the death process. Keywords: ontology, metaphysics, mind-body problem, death, near-death experience, psychedelics, quantum physics 1 Introduction Our capacity to be conscious subjects of experience is the root of our sense of being. After all, if we weren't conscious, what could we know of ourselves? How could we even assert our own existence? Being conscious is what it means to be us. In an important sense-even the only important sense-we are first and foremost consciousness itself, the rest of our self-image arising afterwards, as thoughts and images constructed in consciousness. For this reason, the question of what happens to our consciousness after bodily death has been central to humanity throughout its history. Do we cease to exist or continue on in some form or another? Many people today seek existential solace in body-self dualism, which opens up the possibility of the survival of * Correspondence: Bernardo Kastrup, independent scholar, Veldhoven, The Netherlands Email: [email protected] Website: http://www.bernardokastrup.com Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 900-909 Kastrup, B. The Idealist View of Consciousness After Death ISSN: 2153-8212 © Bernardo Kastrup 2016 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 901 consciousness after bodily death (Heflick et al, 2015). But is dualism-with the many serious problems it entails, both philosophical and empirical (Robinson, 2016)-the only ontology that allows for this survival? Although consciousness itself is the only directly accessible datum of reality, both dualism and the mainstream ontology of physicalism (Stoljar, 2016) posit the existence of something ontologically distinct from consciousness: a physical world outside and independent of experience. In this context, insofar as consciousness is believed to be constituted, generated, hosted or at least modulated by particular arrangements of matter and energy in the physical world, the dissolution of such arrangements-as entailed by bodily death-bears relevance to our survival. This is the root of humanity's preoccupation with death. However, the existence of a physical world outside and independent of consciousness is a theoretical inference arising from interpretation of sense perceptions, not an empirical fact. After all, our only access to the physical is through the screen of perception, which is itself a phenomenon of and in consciousness. Renowned Stanford physicist Andrei Linde (1998) summarized this as follows: Let us remember that our knowledge of the world begins not with matter but with perceptions. ... Later we find out that our perceptions obey some laws, which can be most conveniently formulated if we assume that there is some underlying reality beyond our perceptions. This model of material world obeying laws of physics is so successful that soon we forget about our starting point and say that matter is the only reality, and perceptions are only helpful for its description. This assumption is almost as natural (and maybe as false) as our previous assumption that space is only a mathematical tool for the description of matter. (p. 12) The physical world many believe to exist beyond consciousness is an abstract explanatory model. Its motivation is to make sense of three basic observations about reality: (a) If a physical brain outside experience doesn't somehow generate or at least modulate consciousness, how can there be such tight correlations between observed brain activity and reported inner experience (cf. Koch, 2004)? (b) If the world isn't fundamentally independent and outside of experience, it can only be analogous to a dream in consciousness. But in such a case, how can we all be having the same dream? (c) Finally, if the world is in consciousness, how can it unfold according to patterns and regularities independent of our volition? After all, human beings cannot change the laws of nature. Nonetheless, if these questions can be satisfactorily answered without the postulate of a physical world outside consciousness, the need for the latter can be legitimately called into question on grounds of parsimony. Moreover, while Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 900-909 Kastrup, B. The Idealist View of Consciousness After Death ISSN: 2153-8212 © Bernardo Kastrup 2016 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 902 physicalism requires the existence of ontological primitives-which Strawson (2006, p. 9) called "ultimates"-beyond consciousness, it fails to explain consciousness itself in terms of these primitives (cf. Chalmers, 2003). So if the three basic observations about reality listed above can be made sense of in terms of consciousness alone, then physicalism can be legitimately called into question on grounds of explanatory power as well. And as it turns out, there is indeed an alternative ontology that explains all three basic observations without requiring anything beyond consciousness itself. This ontology will be summarized in Section 3 of this brief essay. In addition, the inferred existence of a physical world outside and independent of consciousness has statistical corollaries that can be tested with suitable experimental designs (Leggett, 2003; Bell, 1964). As it turns out, empirical tests of these corollaries have been carried out since the early eighties, when Alan Aspect performed his seminal experiments (1981). And the results do not corroborate the existence of a universe outside consciousness. These seldomtalked-about but solid empirical facts will be summarized in the next section. Without a physical world outside consciousness, we are left with consciousness alone as ground of reality. In this case, we must completely revise our intuitions and assumptions regarding death. After all, if consciousness is that within which birth and death unfold as phenomenal processes, then neither birth nor death can bear any relevance to the existential status of consciousness itself. What does death then mean? What can we, at a personal level, expect to experience upon bodily death? These questions will be examined in Section 4 of this essay. 2 The empirical case against a world outside consciousness A key intuitive implication of a world outside consciousness is that the properties of this world must not depend on observation; i.e., an object must have whatever properties it has-weight, size, shape, color, etc.-regardless of whether or how it appears on the screen of perception. This should clearly set the physical world apart from the sphere of consciousness. After all, the properties of a purely imagined object do not exist independently, but only insofar as they are imagined. As mentioned earlier, the postulated independence of the world from observation has certain statistical corollaries (Leggett, 2003) that can be directly tested. On this basis, Gröblacher et al. (2007) have shown that the properties of the world, surprisingly enough, do depend on observation. To reconcile their results with physicalism or dualism would require a counterintuitive redefinition of what we call objectivity. And since contemporary culture has come to associate objectivity with reality itself, the science press felt compelled to report on this study by pronouncing, "Quantum physics says goodbye to reality" (Cartwright, 2007). Testing similar statistical corollaries, another experiment (Romero et al, 2010) has confirmed that the world indeed doesn't Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 900-909 Kastrup, B. The Idealist View of Consciousness After Death ISSN: 2153-8212 © Bernardo Kastrup 2016 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 903 conform to what one would expect if it were outside and independent of consciousness. Other statistical corollaries (Bell, 1964) have also been experimentally examined. These tests have shown that the properties of physical systems do not seem to even exist prior to being observed (Lapkiewicz et al., 2011; Manning et al., 2015). Commenting on these results, physicist Anton Zeilinger is quoted as saying that "there is no sense in assuming that what we do not measure about a system has [an independent] reality" (Ananthaswamy, 2011). Finally, Ma et al. (2013) have again shown that no naively objective view of the world can be true. Critics have deeply scrutinized the studies cited above to find possible loopholes, implausible as they may be. In an effort to address and close these potential loopholes, Dutch researchers performed an even more tightly controlled test, which again confirmed the earlier results (Hensen et al., 2015). This latter effort was considered the "toughest test yet" (Merali, 2015). Another intuitive implication of the notion of a world outside consciousness is that our choices can only influence the world-through our bodily actions-in the present. They cannot affect the past. As such, the part of our story that corresponds to the past must be unchangeable. Contrast this to the sphere of consciousness wherein we can change the whole of an imagined story at any moment. In consciousness, the entire narrative is always acquiescent to choice and amenable to revision. As it turns out, Kim et al. (2000) have shown that observation not only determines the physical properties observed at present, but also retroactively changes their history accordingly. This suggests that the past is created at every instant so as to be consistent with the present, which is reminiscent of the notion that the world is a malleable mental narrative. Already back in 2005, renowned Johns Hopkins physicist and astronomer Richard Conn Henry penned an essay for Nature (2005) wherein he claimed that "The universe is entirely mental. ... There have been serious [theoretical] attempts to preserve a material world-but they produce no new physics, and serve only to preserve an illusion" (p. 29). The illusion he was referring to was, of course, that of a world outside consciousness. Thus from a rigorous empirical perspective, the tenability of the notion of a world outside and independent of consciousness is at least questionable. The key reason for resisting an outright abandonment of this notion is the supposed lack of plausible alternatives. What other ontology could make sense of the three basic observations about reality discussed in Section 1? In the next section, I will attempt to answer this question. 3 A simple idealist ontology The ontology of idealism differs from physicalism in that it takes phenomenal consciousness to be the only irreducible aspect of nature, as opposed to an Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 900-909 Kastrup, B. The Idealist View of Consciousness After Death ISSN: 2153-8212 © Bernardo Kastrup 2016 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 904 epiphenomenon or emergent property of physical arrangements. It also differs from dualism in that it takes all physical elements and arrangements to exist in consciousness-solely as phenomenal properties-as opposed to outside consciousness. Historically, idealism has had many different variations labeled as subjective idealism, absolute idealism, actual idealism, etc. It is not my purpose here to elaborate on the subtle, ambiguous and often contentious differences among these variations. Instead, I want to simply describe the basic tenets that any plausible, modern formulation of idealism must entail, given our present knowledge and understanding of the world. What follows is but a brief summary of a much more extensive derivation of idealism from first principles (Kastrup, forthcoming). The defining tenet of idealism is the notion that all reality is in a universal form of consciousness-thus not bound to personal boundaries-arising as patterns of excitation of this universal consciousness. Our personal psyche forms through a process of dissociation in universal consciousness, analogous to how the psyche of a person suffering from dissociative identity disorder (DID) differentiates itself into multiple centers of experience called alters (Braude, 1995; Kelly et al., 2009; Schlumpf et al., 2014). Recent research has demonstrated the literally blinding power of dissociation (Strasburger & Waldvogel, 2015). This way, there is a sense in which each living creature is an alter of universal consciousness, which explains why we aren't aware of each other's inner lives or of what happens across time and space at a universal scale. The formation of an alter in universal consciousness creates a boundary-a "Markov blanket" (Friston, Sengupta & Auletta, 2014, pp. 430-432)-between phenomenality internal to the alter and that external to it. Phenomenality external to the alter-but still in its vicinity-impinges on the alter's boundary. The plausibility of this kind of phenomenal impingement from across a dissociative boundary is well established: we know, for instance, that dissociated feelings can dramatically affect our thoughts and, thereby, behaviors (Lynch & Kilmartin, 2013), while dissociated expectations routinely mold our perceptions (cf. Eagleman, 2011). The impingement of external phenomenality on an alter's boundary is what we call sense perception. The world we perceive around ourselves is thus a coded phenomenal representation (Friston, Sengupta & Auletta, 2014, pp. 432-434)- which I shall call the extrinsic appearance-of equally phenomenal processes unfolding across the dissociative boundary of our alter. A living biological body is the extrinsic appearance of an alter in universal consciousness. In particular, our sense organs-including our skin-are the extrinsic appearance of our alter's boundary. As such, our brain and its electrochemical activity are part of what our inner life looks like from across its dissociative boundary. Of course, both the extrinsic appearance and the corresponding inner life are phenomenal in nature. They are both experiences. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 900-909 Kastrup, B. The Idealist View of Consciousness After Death ISSN: 2153-8212 © Bernardo Kastrup 2016 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 905 A person's brain activity correlates with the person's reported inner life because the former is but a coded representation of the latter. We all inhabit the same world because our respective alters are surrounded by the same universal field of phenomenality, like whirlpools in a single stream. And we can't change the patterns and regularities that govern the world-i.e., the laws of nature- because our volition, as part of our alter, is dissociated from the rest of nature. See Figure 1 for a graphical depiction of all this. Figure 1. Idealism in a nutshell. Clearly, all three basic observations about reality discussed in Section 1 can be rather simply explained by this parsimonious idealist ontology. Moreover, unlike physicalism and dualism, the ontology can also be reconciled with the empirical results discussed in Section 2. It thus offers a more promising alternative for interpreting the relationship between body and consciousness than physicalism and dualism. The question that remains to be addressed is this: if idealism is true, what can we then infer about consciousness after bodily death? This is what the next section will attempt to answer. 4 What idealism says about consciousness after death The idealist ontology briefly summarized in the previous section asserts that the physical body is the extrinsic appearance-the image-of a dissociative process in universal consciousness. In other words, a living body is what dissociation- meant simply descriptively, not as something negative or pathological-in universal consciousness looks like. Therefore, the death and ultimate dissolution Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 900-909 Kastrup, B. The Idealist View of Consciousness After Death ISSN: 2153-8212 © Bernardo Kastrup 2016 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 906 of the body can only be the image of the end of the dissociation. Any other conclusion would violate the internal logic of idealism. The reasoning here is rather straightforward but its implications profound. The hallmark of dissociation is "a disruption of and/or discontinuity in the normal integration of consciousness, memory, identity [and] emotion" (Black & Grant, 2014, p. 191). Therefore, the end of dissociation can only entail a reintegration of "memory, identity [and] emotion" lost at birth. This means that bodily death, under idealism, must correlate with an expansion of our felt sense of identity, access to a broader set of memories and enrichment of our emotional inner life. This conclusion is the exact opposite of what our mainstream physicalist ontology asserts. Moreover, there is nothing in the popular dualist alternative- mainly found in religious circles-that requires it either. So idealism is not only unique in its ability to explain reality more parsimoniously and completely than physicalism and dualism, it also offers a unique perspective on death. Circumstantially but significantly, much of the literature regarding near-death experiences (NDEs) seems to corroborate this prediction of idealism (Kelly et al., 2009). To mention only one recent example, Anita Moorjani (2012) wrote of her felt sense of identity during her NDE: "I certainly don't feel reduced or smaller in any way. On the contrary, I haven't ever been this huge, this powerful, or this allencompassing. ... [I] felt greater and more intense and expansive than my physical being" (p. 69). It's hard to conceive of a more unambiguous confirmation of idealism's prediction than this passage, although Moorjani's entire NDE report echoes the prediction precisely. Moreover, as recent studies have shown (Carhart-Harris et al., 2012; PalhanoFontes et al., 2015; Carhart-Harris et al., 2016), psychedelic drugs reduce brain activity. This suggests that psychedelic trances may be in some way akin to the early stages of the death process, offering glimpses into how death is experienced from a first-person perspective. And as we know, psychedelic trances do entail an unambiguous expansion of awareness (Strassman, 2001; Griffiths et al., 2006; Strassman et al., 2008), which again seems to circumstantially corroborate idealism's prediction. 5 Conclusions To make educated guesses about what happens to consciousness upon bodily death, one has to have some understanding of the relationship between body and consciousness during life. This relationship, of course, reflects an ontology. So the question of what happens after death can be transposed into the question of which ontology is most plausible for making sense of the world during life. While physicalism is our culture's academically-endorsed, mainstream ontology and dualism a popular alternative in religious circles, neither ontology seems tenable in view of recent experimental results in physics. Moreover, both Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 900-909 Kastrup, B. The Idealist View of Consciousness After Death ISSN: 2153-8212 © Bernardo Kastrup 2016 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 907 ontologies suffer from problems such as lack of parsimony or limited explanatory power. A third ontology, known as idealism, overcomes not only these problems but can also be reconciled with the available empirical evidence. It elegantly explains the three basic facts of reality: (a) that brain activity correlates with experience, (b) that we all seem to share the same world, and (c) that we can't change the laws of nature at will. If idealism is correct, it implies that, instead of disappearing, conscious inner life expands-whatever new phenomenology this expansion may entail-upon bodily death. This prediction finds circumstantial but significant confirmation in reports of near-death experiences and psychedelic trances, both of which can be construed as glimpses into the early stages of the death process. References Ananthaswamy, A. (2011). Quantum magic trick shows reality is what you make it. New Scientist, 22, June 2011. [Online]. Available from: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20600-quantum-magic-trickshows-reality-is-what-you-make-it/ [Accessed 14 June 2016]. Aspect, A. et al. (1981). Experimental tests of realistic local theories via Bell's Theorem. Physical Review Letters, 47 (7), 460-463. Bell, J. (1964). On the Einstein Podolsky Rosen paradox. Physics, 1 (3), 195-200. Black, D. W., & Grant, J. E. (2014). The Essential Companion to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, (5th ed). Washington, DC: American Psychiatric Publishing. Braude, S. E. (1995). First Person Plural: Multiple Personality and the Philosophy of Mind. New York: Routledge. Carhart-Harris, R. L. et al.. (2012). Neural correlates of the psychedelic state as determined by fMRI studies with psilocybin. Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 109 (6), 2138–2143. Carhart-Harris, R. L. et al.. (2016). Neural correlates of the LSD experience revealed by multimodal neuroimaging. Proceeding of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS Early Edition), doi: 10.1073/pnas.1518377113. Cartwright, J. (2007). Quantum physics says goodbye to reality. IOP Physics World, 20 April 2007. [Online]. Available from: http://physicsworld.com/cws/article/news/2007/apr/20/quantumphysics-says-goodbye-to-reality [Accessed 14 June 2016]. Chalmers, D. (2003). Consciousness and its place in nature. In S. Stich & F. Warfield (eds.). Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Mind. Malden, MA: Blackwell. Conn Henry, R. (2005). The mental universe. Nature, 436, 29. Eagleman, D. (2011). Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain. New York: Canongate. Friston, K., Sengupta, B., & Auletta, G. (2014). Cognitive dynamics: From attractors to active inference. Proceedings of the IEEE, 102 (4), 427-445. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 900-909 Kastrup, B. The Idealist View of Consciousness After Death ISSN: 2153-8212 © Bernardo Kastrup 2016 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 908 Griffiths, R. R. et al. (2006). Psilocybin can occasion mystical-type experiences having substantial and sustained personal meaning and spiritual significance. Psychopharmacology, 187, 268–283. Gröblacher, S. et al. (2007). An experimental test of non-local realism. 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Nonlocal hidden-variable theories and quantum mechanics: An incompatibility theorem. Foundations of Physics, 33 (10), 1469-1493. Linde, A. (1998). Universe, Life, Consciousness. A paper delivered at the Physics and Cosmology Group of the "Science and Spiritual Quest" program of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences (CTNS), Berkeley, California. [Online]. Available from: web.stanford.edu/~alinde/SpirQuest.doc [Accessed 14 Jun 2016]. Lynch, J. R., & Kilmartin, C. (2013). Overcoming Masculine Depression: The Pain Behind the Mask. New York: Routledge. Ma, X.-S. et al. (2013). Quantum erasure with causally disconnected choice. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, 110, 1221-1226. Manning, A. G. et al. (2015). Wheeler's delayed-choice gedanken experiment with a single atom. Nature Physics, DOI: 10.1038/nphys3343. Merali, Z. (2015). Quantum 'spookiness' passes toughest test yet. Nature News, 27 August 2015. [Online]. Available from: http://www.nature.com/news/quantum-spookiness-passes-toughest-testyet-1.18255 [Accessed 30 August 2015]. Moorjani, A. (2012). Dying to Be Me: My Journey from Cancer, to Near Death, to True Healing. Carlsbad, CA: Hay House. Palhano-Fontes, F. et al. (2015). The psychedelic state induced by ayahuasca modulates the activity and connectivity of the default mode network. PLoS ONE, 10 (2), e0118143. Robinson, H. (2016). Dualism. In E. N. Zalta (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2016 Edition). [Online]. Available from: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2016/entries/dualism [Accessed 17 June 2016]. Romero, J. et al (2010). Violation of Leggett inequalities in orbital angular momentum subspaces. New Journal of Physics, 12, 123007. [Online]. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 900-909 Kastrup, B. The Idealist View of Consciousness After Death ISSN: 2153-8212 © Bernardo Kastrup 2016 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 909 Available from: http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/13672630/12/12/123007 [Accessed 14 June 2016]. Schlumpf, Y. R. et al. (2014). Dissociative part-dependent resting-state activity in Dissociative Identity Disorder: A controlled fMRI perfusion study. PloS ONE, 9 (6). Stoljar, D. (2016). Physicalism. In E. N. Zalta (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2016 Edition). [Online]. Available from: http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2016/entries/physicalism/ [Accessed 14 June 2016]. Strasburger, H., & Waldvogel, B. (2015). Sight and blindness in the same person: Gating in the visual system. PsyCh Journal, 4 (4), 178-185. Strassman, R. (2001). DMT: The Spirit Molecule. Rochester, VT: Park Street Press. Strassman, R. et al. (2008). Inner Paths to Outer Space. Rochester, VT: Park Street Press. Strawson, G. (2006). Consciousness and Its Place in Nature. Exeter, UK: Imprint Academic. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 910-930 Deli, E., Consciousness, a Cosmic Phenomenon-A Hypothesis ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 910 Research Essay Consciousness, a Cosmic Phenomenon-A Hypothesis Eva Déli* Abstract A new physical worldview is introduced, which shows that mental operations are analogous to the physical world, and that just like photons, emotions carry energy. Photons are the fundamental interactions of fermions, and in the brain, sensory stimulus triggers energy imbalances, called emotions, the forces of mental interaction. Therefore, emotions motivate thoughts and actions that recover the energy-neutral state of the brain. Material interaction generates a temporal evolution that culminates in the emergence of the intelligent mind. The entropy of both elementary constituents (material and mental particles) of the universe continuously changes between the poles. Throughout life the mind maintains a low-entropy state due to constant interaction with the outside world via the sensory organs. The death of the body permits the entropy of the mind to increase. Depending on the mind's energy state, the mental entropy will either accumulate information or energy, while maintaining a constant alignment with the temporal field in its time-travel, ending at one of the poles. The energy-rich mind converges towards expanding white holes, whereas an information-saturated mind becomes part of the black hole horizon. In the expanding white hole, space is infinite, yet everything feels neighborly and the infinite feels like a moment. In black holes the moment feels like eternity, yet it imposes a two-dimensional tightness, where everything is far and beyond reach. Matter and mind are the prime building blocks of the universe, which also displays elementary particle characteristics. The three interconnected, interdependent building blocks formulate the organizational unity and fractal structure of the universe. Intelligent life is a microcosm of the universe, and the mind is an active participant in cosmic evolution. Key words: consciousness, evolution, emotion regulation, string theory, self-regulation, free will * Correspondence: Eva Déli, , Austin, Minnesota, USA. Email: [email protected] Website: thescienceofconsciousness.com Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 910-930 Deli, E., Consciousness, a Cosmic Phenomenon-A Hypothesis ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 911 Introduction Numerous unexplained phenomena in physics as well as experimental contradictions with accepted theories indicate that the current physical view needs updating or reformulated anew. A new physical view is expected to form a seamlessly interconnected system that incorporates consciousness, yet it is based on the smallest unit of energy, the elementary particle. The foundation of the present physical understanding is the Standard Model. In this, elementary particles are classified and fitted into a regular and well-characterized grid. Fermions, called matter, form space. Bosons are the go-between fermions by executing the changes and rhythms of the universe. In other words fermions are subjects, whereas bosons can be considered the verbs of the physical world. In the material world, decoherence (i.e., the collapse of the wave function of elementary particles) produces measurable changes in physical qualities, such as speed or position, and in the brain stimulus changes neuronal activation pattern and leads to cognitive, behavioral changes. Evolution has increased neural complexity and produced the mind-blowing intricacy of the human brain, which regulates itself and organizes the whole body into a seamless orchestra. Immense energy consumption of the brain cannot be accounted for simply by the maintenance of the electric potential of neuronal cells and management of their synaptic activity. For over a century the electromagnetic activity of the brain has been measured by placing electrodes over the scalp, and more recently science has learned that external magnetic and electric fields can change brain activity. Complex electromagnetic flows and oscillating rhythms conspire to make the mind much more than simply the cortex, the amygdala, and the other structures that constitute the brain. Sensory stimulus increases oscillation frequencies, a syntactic coding for projecting information about the environment to the cortex and back. The non-intuitive and multifarious nature of mental operation has been discussed by philosophers and sages over the millennia of human civilization, whereas neuroscience and psychiatry studies the brain. Scientific considerations of the brain's operation regarding conscious experience are often based on the electromagnetic activity of neuron assemblies. The global workplace theory proposes that a central global workspace, constituted by long-range cortico-cortical connections, assimilates mental processes according to their salience (Baars, 1988). According to multiple drafts theory, distributed neural/cognitive models manifest the greatest impact from highly diverse, parallel content (Dennett, 1991). Tononi's (2004) information integration theory (IIT) considers consciousness as the capacity of a system to integrate information. Other notable approaches attempt to relate sensory, motor, and cognitive functions to the appearance of an inner mental world based on neurological or electromagnetic patterns of the brain. However, an accepted theory on consciousness is missing. In the absence of accepted scientific consensus on the mind the question of consciousness after death has remained the subject of religious beliefs, speculation and superstition, without any scientific validity. Here I propose a novel and unitary approach to consciousness that allows a surprisingly meaningful investigation of the mind concerning both life and death. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 910-930 Deli, E., Consciousness, a Cosmic Phenomenon-A Hypothesis ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 912 1. The foundation of the hypothesis 1.1 The deep structure of space String theory proposes that microdimensional energy vibrations makeup particles. The particle wave function is insulated from gravity, making it orthogonal to the macrodimensions of space. As a result, the particle wave function is formulated independent of its spatial coordinates and modification of the energy function spreads instantly between entangled sister-particles. Changes in spatial curvature force interaction that equalizes the energy-information state between micro and macrodimensions via the collapse of wave function. Thus the wave function develops by the Schrödinger equation, whereas decoherence is an energy jump that coevolves the particle wave function and the field. Because the energy cost of interaction stabilizes the structure of the universe, the formation of microdimensions can be considered the birth of the cosmos. According to general relativity the universe is a fluid spatial net that has exact, welldefined geometry or curvature at every point of space. According to the principle of static time, proposed by Page and Wootter in 1982, the global picture of the universe remains static, lacking outward change. The unchanging nature of cosmos was proven recently by Moreva and colleagues (2013). For the global state to remain constant, every curvature change must be balanced by an opposite yet equal transformation. Therefore entanglement is like a see-saw, in which opposite, equal transformations result in zero sums. This way entanglement begets time, which is measurable and relevant for internal participants only. The field's increasing curvature differences constitute a temporal evolution, where the edges of the field degenerate into poles, such as the unapproachable (two-dimensional) horizons of black hole singularities (Almheiri et al., 2012). The principle of static time requires that black hole horizons must be balanced by a four-dimensional pole, called a white hole, which was predicted by Einstein's field equations (Figure 1). The negative field curvature white holes expand space, whereas the galactic environments gradually absorb spatial volume (indicated by white arrows) by building manifold area (Figure 2). Black holes form the edge of space; their great field strength stabilizes the universe and prevents runaway expansion. Almheiri's work, which demonstrates that black hole horizons are impenetrable firewalls, gives strong supports to this conclusion. The AdS/CFT correspondence, which recognizes a mirror symmetry between the field and its lesser dimensional horizon (Maldacena, 1997), also opens the possibility to dimensionality differences in cosmic topology. Due to the dimensional anisotropy between the black and white holes the degrees of freedom increase in white holes and decrease in black holes. The existence of gravitational waves and analysis of many years of sky surveys confirm the universe's topological simplicity and organizational predictability. Because the Schrödinger equation applies for both individual particles and the universe, the cosmos shows a fractal structure. Amazingly, consciousness forms an organic part of this highly congruent and interconnected cosmos. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 910-930 Deli, E., Consciousness, a Cosmic Phenomenon-A Hypothesis ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 913 Figure 1. The topology of the universe. The breton hat shows the spatial anisotropy of the universe between its poles: positive field curvature black holes (shown at top) and negative field curvature white holes (brim of the hat). The positive field curvature of the black holes lose dimensionality, but expands time to infinity. In white holes space expands into the fourth dimension by forming hyperbolic geometry. White holes are devoid of information , which corresponds to zero time. Euclidean field is three dimensional and highly unstable. The microdimensions, indicated by concentric circles, form minimal surface latitudes of specific field curvature (and corresponding particle energy level). Large latitude (i.e., curvature) jumps, such as great acceleration, is energetically expensive and prohibitive. Figure 2. The structure of cosmos with white holes and black holes. The microdimensions of the cosmos (indicated by thin circle) can be visualized as concentric circles, which form closed minimal surface. White holes (in the center) expand space, which pushes against the black holes (indicated by dotted line), and generates a pressure of excess gravity (thick line). The galactic environments (region of white arrows) gradually absorb the expanding volume by building manifold area. The great field strength of black hole horizons forms the outer boundary of space and slows expansion. 1.2 The unity and elementary character of the mind Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 910-930 Deli, E., Consciousness, a Cosmic Phenomenon-A Hypothesis ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 914 Elementary particles, the smallest units of energy, cannot be subdivided and appear stable and constant from the outside. Unity also being an essential feature of the mind has been recognized in philosophy by Descartes, Kant, and others. The mind is a cacophonous sensory kaleidoscope, peppered with transient ideas and possibilities that distill into a single decision or understanding. The sensory forest coalescences a single, unified experience. Fractured perception is inhibited: ambiguity forces a non-deterministic, quantum-like fluctuation between two possibilities (images, ideas, or concepts). Indeed, although we can contemplate many possibilities, once we decide on a problem all other options cease to exist. Ideas and thoughts form a highly fluid, malleable, constantly changing, complex and elaborate mental background, over which interaction with the outside world becomes possible. The mental world can only be accessed from the inside; for outside observers it is a holographic projection, which however appears strangely constant from childhood to old age, even if dramatic changes affect the body or the brain. Festinger's cognitive dissonance theory (1957) shows that even core beliefs might be sacrificed in order to maintain mental congruency. According to string theory, particle vibrations are motions of loops within a Calabi-Yau manifold, where field curvature changes are recorded by a holographic organization. In the brain the appropriate temporal order of the cortical neuronal activation pattern forms a "temporal horizon" of memories or experience. Since the constantly changing cortical projection can be replayed repeatedly, past experiences inform present behavior and lead to far superior responses (Carillo-Reid et al., 2016). However, of the billions of photons hitting the retina and the millions projected to the optic nerve, less than a few thousand bits of information produce the conscious perception of the moment. Therefore, consciousness forms on a highly subjective (holographic) mental landscape: the momentary projection of the temporal manifold (subconscious) depends on both the viewer and the self. In animals, bodily functions and interaction with the environment are centrally regulated from the brain, which uses electromagnetic means to achieve an intricate regulation of the body based on sensory information, nutrient needs and survival interest of the individual or the species. Animals with limbic brains respond to environmental stimuli in a linear fashion; their behavior is regulated exclusively by genetically choreographed program and basic bodily needs. The evolution of the cerebrum introduces a nonlinear regulation. In birds the cerebrum is modular, whereas in mammals the neocortex has a laminar structure. The evolution of the cortex dramatically changes the dynamics of the brain and forms an advanced homeostatic regulation, which always recovers an energy-neutral resting state, known as the default mode network (DMN), which turns it into a self-regulating system. There is a strong correlation between intellectual abilities and the complexity, convolution, and overall size of the neocortex (Deaner et al., 2007; Deli, 2015, Chap 2). Since old associations can be reconnected in a novel way, experience can accumulate in the immensely complex neuronal connections of the cortex. Hence, large mammals with convoluted cortices display emotional stability, compassion and kinship, and form close-knit, stable social groups. The neuronal activation pattern of the brain gives rise to thought processes, the manifestations of consciousness. A ball rolling down the hillside is following a determined path depending on its speed, the slope of the hill and the characteristics Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 910-930 Deli, E., Consciousness, a Cosmic Phenomenon-A Hypothesis ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 915 of the ball itself. Likewise, energy balances of the brain change according to physical laws, the principle of least action, and dictate animal behavior. Hence, free will might be an illusion. The mathematical formalism of quantum mechanics describes the non-intuitive behavior of elementary particles. In contrast to classical systems, where measurement merely observes a preexisting quality, quantum measurement entails decoherence, which actively changes some property of the system being measured. Probabilistic assessment is often strongly context and order dependent, and individual states can form entangled, composite systems. Remarkably, the same principles – that measurement (i.e., interaction) corresponds to a cognitive change (i.e., decoherence) – appear to apply to the mind as well. Mental operation is contextual and the context of measurement influences the outcome, which includes almost all cognitive processes, such as decision making, memory, perception, and judgments. Quantum theory became a mainstream, accepted scientific idea for modeling mental phenomena (Khrennikov, 2015) and the mind's quantum-like behavior is exploited in fields as diverse as search-engine optimization, psychology, economy, and sociology – in some cases for nearly a century. Quantum probability can successfully model not only elementary particle behavior, but the organizational intricacy of the brain as well (Brembs, 2011; Pothos & Busemeyer, 2009). The mind displays entanglement and hysteresis-like behavior and the context of judgments and decisions form in analogue to quantum interference of elementary matter particles, because the presumed context of the first judgment or decision interferes with subsequent judgments or decisions. These and other similar findings arise from the brain's structure and characterize the elementary particle-like behavior of the mind. As successive regulatory layers in the brain unbalance due to stimulus, emotions, the energy states of the brain form. In turn, emotions trigger actions that restore the energy-neutral state, while changing the neural landscape (such as the strength of neuronal connections). This way, mental operation is reflected in the ebb and flow of our emotions, as the brain changes and adapts to its constantly changing environment. Therefore, the brain processes information on a temporal language, and the laws that govern the physical world, such as the Newton's Laws or the Laws of thermodynamics, dictate temporal relationships over the mental world (Deli, 2015, chap 3). According to general relativity, material interactions and physical processes are governed by the spatial field curvature and here I will show that the temporal field, which is organized orthogonally to space, is structurally identical to the field of gravity. As the spatial field controls matter, the temporal field governs social interactions. Currently the understanding of time is highly insufficient and the special importance of the temporal field in biological processes and evolution has been overlooked. Rather than energetic changes occurring in ecosystem or society, the temporal field manifests as momentary differences in the comfort and wellbeing of the organisms. While matter takes shape in space, life is a function of time due to biological dependence on air, water, rest, and food. The temporal field underlies society and its unique flavor is felt as soon as one steps out of the airport of any country. The temporal field forms our beliefs and our uncertainties, which give rise to the cultural habits, customs, and the palpable social fabric of society. Just as gravity is the most important force in the material world, emotional (temporal) gravity permeates society and the individual's place in it. Gravity is the ever-present force of the physical world that holds onto matter, and temporal gravity is the Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 910-930 Deli, E., Consciousness, a Cosmic Phenomenon-A Hypothesis ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 916 strength of relationships. People who are enclosed within greater curvature are squeezed for time; this temporal pressure leads to rigidity and turbulent, chaotic emotional life. Lack of time, which is appropriately called stress, forces a constant struggle for everyday needs and even survival. A lesser curvature temporal field is often associated by financial means, as it provides the luxury of time, allowing greater freedom and flexibility. Social evolution is the evolution of the temporal field, manifested as a decreasing social distance (decreasing temporal field curvature differences of society). Hence, the temporal field produces revolutions, social or economic changes and spurs individual social mobility. The increasing complexity throughout evolution is a perplexing and undeniable fact, and it is especially difficult to explain the high organizational complexity of the human brain. However, brain organization evolved via increasingly precise responses to stimuli, turning the brain into a better and better organizational reflection of the material environment, even operating by the same governing principles. The holographic principle recognizes the importance of the horizon as the information record of interaction. In the brain, experiences and memories form as a holographic record in the neuronal connections of the cortex. As microdimensional toroidal energy resonances manifest as fundamental particle behavior in physical (macro) space, emotional particles form an orthogonal, folded manifold in the temporal space of emotional functioning. In material fermions information accumulation parallels a loss of dimensionality of space, whereas information accumulation in the mind robs time. Stimuli unbalance successive regulatory layers in the brain and generate an electromagnetic potential that forces changes that recover the neutral state. Energy neutrality means discrete energy processing that also leads to the quantum character of material fermions. In the 21st century the time has come to consider the mind as a physical entity. The possibility that matter fermions and the mind have identical structures and identical operation could open the book of insight into human motivation and behavior. 2. Energy neutrality through self-regulation 2.1 The mind as a temporal (emotional) fermion According to string theory, energy vibrations take shape as matter, but the material brain projects stimulus as oscillations that form a fluid, inner world based on energy. Environmental changes constantly modulate brain frequencies via the sensory organs. The importance of brain oscillations in consciousness is unequivocal. In the brain the direction of information (energy) transfer in the limbic structures is highly dependent on frequency, neocortical-limbic transfer occurs during slow theta waves (4–10 Hz), and data transfer reverses during gamma frequencies (30–130 Hz), as reported by Buzsaki (2011). The frequency dependence of energy flow means that low brain frequencies intuitively increase the degrees of freedom; whereas high brain frequencies are more deterministic and therefore allow fewer degrees of freedom (Buzsaki et al., 2013). Since lowand high-frequency bands determine opposing energy-information flow, they can be considered as opposite energetic poles of the brain's operation. Highly structured frequencies reveal nonlinear complexity due to dimensionality differences between neural Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 910-930 Deli, E., Consciousness, a Cosmic Phenomenon-A Hypothesis ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 917 modules. Rhythmic neuronal activation extinguishes the energy of stimulus, but generates an electromagnetic potential difference between the limbic brain and the cortex, which, although being relatively small, cannot escape into the environment, but initiates a flow reversal that recovers the DMN (Figure 3). The automatic recovery of energy neutrality due to such energetic insulation forms standing waves, the basis of the brain's self-regulation. Based on the frequency of oscillations, only positive (characterized by low frequencies) and negative emotional states (characterized by high frequencies) are possible. The connection of smaller oscillations with positive emotions and enhanced brain frequencies with negative mental states has been corroborated in numerous studies (Bethell et al., 2012; Seo et al., 2008). Elementary particles interact by fundamental forces. The elementary forces of the mind are energy imbalances, called emotions, which are inextricable phenomena of life and whose intensity can only change through interaction. Just as for matter, life hinges on interactions, which sections our mental life into a progression of discrete states of feelings and beliefs and which give life an irreversible directionality. Thus interaction reformulates standing waves by increasing or decreasing mental energy. As the photon's energy reflects the energy of its source, the intensity of negative emotions corresponds to some past temporal field strength (i.e., specific negative events). Despite matter and mental fermions having identical energetic structures, several important differences separate them. Perhaps the most important difference between matter and emotional fermions is their size, which effectively determines their energy level. The diminutive matter fermions give rise to enormous frequencies, which produce an impressive punch. The much larger mind forms far lower frequencies and energy levels that are many orders of magnitude smaller. The wave function of material fermions vibrates over space, whereas mental quantum waves exist unlimited in time (the past and the future). The temporal freedom of mental energy function endows emotions with a sense of permanence. Pain or joy feels as if it would exist forever, but when emotions depart, their experience evaporates, as if they never existed. This fact is all-important in motivation. By feeling permanent, emotions propel actions, but their fleeting nature allows us to find new strength even after immense pain and suffering. While decoherence gives matter volume, the mental scope, expanse, and understanding are temporal. The difference between the manifestations of matter (space) and mind (time) effectively has hidden the symmetry between the two systems. 2.2 The anatomy of decoherence The mind forms energy-neutral standing waves over time. Thus, brain oscillations can be viewed as a spring that moves energy (and information) in the form of electric current between the limbic brain and the cortex, always restoring an equilibrium position, called the DMN. The innate drive toward energy neutrality leads to a subtle regulation by the continuous and pervasive electromagnetic flows of the intact brain, giving rise to inexplicable, mysterious and highly involuntary mental processes. Beyond sensory and motoric operation, the mind is primarily a temporal compass, which has an uncanny ability to automatically (independent of consciousness) reorient itself against disturbances imposed on it by the environment. The mechanism of decoherence in the mind is detailed below. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 910-930 Deli, E., Consciousness, a Cosmic Phenomenon-A Hypothesis ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 918 (1) The low brain frequencies of positive stimulus flows information away from the cortex (but flows energy toward the cortex) toward the limbic areas and the environment (Figure 3). Energy imbalance is unstable; it leads to joy, laughing, kindness, relaxing, playing, embracing, and generosity, which projects emotional energy into the environment to recover the DMN and form up-spin decoherence in the mind. Outward energy flow turns positive emotional states transient. The temporal spaciousness of lesser temporal field curvature enhances mental energy (i.e., g factor suggested by Spearman, as cited in Deary, 2010), which corresponds to confidence, trust, mental flexibility, congruence and clear conscience. The degree of confidence, emotional stability, and belief increase the degrees of freedom through long-term depression of synaptic strength (Dudek & Bear, 1992), for example. Therefore learning, which requires energy, is dependent on erasure of hippocampal memory (Madroñal et al., 2016). (2) Sensory information is energetically expensive. The brain pays for sensory stimuli through greater energy requirement of high brain frequencies. The limbic system channels incoming stimuli (information), as fast oscillations, to the sensory cortex, where they spread as electric currents that accentuate or subdue each other through field effects. The brain's highly fluid neural organization allows fast, although not instantaneous, rebalancing of electromagnetic gradients based on charge conservation. From the sensory cortical surface the oscillations further propagate toward the frontal associative regions. As the energy requirement of neuronal activation gradually extinguishes the information flow, an electric potential difference, such as readiness or Bereitschaftspotential, forms between the limbic and cortical areas, which reverse the energy flow via slow oscillations as shown in Figure 3 (Kornhuber & Deecke, 1965). The information flow from the frontal toward occipital direction, and back toward the limbic region recovers the DMN. The sensory transmission toward the sensory cortex by fast oscillations and response by slow oscillations was confirmed in humans (Buzsaki et al., 2013), but should be typical in all mammals. The existence of potential build up by sensory stimulation has been tested in the laboratory in the resting brain. Liu and colleagues (2015) have found that high frequency (40-100 Hz) stimulation of rat central thalamus relay neurons drives widespread forebrain activation in vivo, but low frequency oscillations (in the absence of sensory flow to the cortex) generate a jerking strain, potentially leading to convolution. The down spin decoherence of enhanced brain frequencies decreases degrees of freedom, through long-term potentiation for example (Bliss & Lomo, 1973). Negative emotions dictate actions that over time recover the energy neutral state. Therefore, down spin accumulates information in the mind. According to general relativity, elementary fermions form the spatial field curvature, but quantum mechanics dictates that some quality of the particle must change as well. This is also true for temporal fermions: the mental energy and the environment (i.e., field curvature) are intertwined and mutually determine each other. When the mind and the field are incompatible, emotional reaction is triggered. As the mental energy changes and adapts to the field, emotional reaction ceases. Repeated activation of the same neuronal connections requires less energy, resulting in less and less emotional involvement, forming automatic activation expressed by Hebb's law (Hebb, 1949), and hedonic adaptation (Schultz, 2007). Both examples clearly demonstrate the effect of the changing temporal field curvature on the mind. These processes give the cortical mind an immense advantage to adapt to environmental changes, to learn, and to Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 910-930 Deli, E., Consciousness, a Cosmic Phenomenon-A Hypothesis ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 919 form intellectual abilities. By changing its mental energy, the mind (brain) remains congruent with the constantly changing environment. Manipulating the energy balances of the brain (by electrode stimulation or magnetic means) verification of the hypothesis will be possible. Figure 3. The brain's changing energy balance due to stimulus over time (between 1, 2 and 3). The brain frequencies change from high, on the left (#1), to low, toward the right (#3) and determine the direction of information flow in the brain (shown by thin line). The potential difference between the cortex and the limbic brain is indicated by thick line. The brain is energy neutral before stimulus (#1) and after a response (#3), but stimulus induces a potential difference between the cortex and the limbic brain (indicated by 2). The high energy need of enhanced brain frequencies curtails the volume of vibrating brain tissue, limiting information transmission capacity (indicated by 1), whereas the energy transmission capacity disappears during the lowest frequencies (indicated by 3). Cortical activation extinguishes the energy of the stimulus (#2), but it generates a potential difference, which initiates a flow reversal that recovers the DMN (#3). 2.3 Temporal elementary particles A gyrocompass is a compass based on a gyroscope. As the planet turns, misalignment causes tilting to minimize the potential energy, which orients the gyrocompass toward true north. Likewise, the mind shows a cunning ability to restore the stability of the inner world of consciousness against varying temporal curvature, manifested as relentless bombardment by outside stimuli. By changing the mental energy balance (the connections of the neuronal landscape) the mind accumulates energy or information and forms standing waves that are true to the local field. In this way the mind changes constantly and gradually with its environment. The outermost layer of the temporal gyrocompass is the brainstem, which has essential function in the regulation of body and survival as it integrates the mind into the environment. Neurotransmitters interact to generate rhythmic firings across neurons, giving it an important gatekeeper role in influencing higher brain functions based on biological regulatory needs. Information transfer toward the cortex is regulated in the limbic brain, which, through sensory Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 910-930 Deli, E., Consciousness, a Cosmic Phenomenon-A Hypothesis ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 920 and motor regulation forms the middle layer. Cortical activation forms the third, innermost layer. This is the transient, unknowable, and magical inner world of consciousness, which, through sensory processing, identifies itself with the body and becomes the source of self-awareness and the ego (Guterstam, 2015). Via its temporal orientation the mind interprets stimulus as a binary code, either past or the future. The mental states also form either positive or negative attitude (i.e., spin direction). Their combination form complex, nonlinear regulation, so response of cerebral animals cannot be easily predicted: depending on expectation or attitude, the same stimulus can produce diametrically opposing results, the hallmark of spinor operation. Evolutionary progression of the organism's ability to respond to stimulus permits temporal fermions to be classified into families, which represent increasing neural complexity: EMOTIONAL NEUTRINO: Simple organisms with linear neural regulation form emotional neutrinos. Evolution increases the organization of the limbic brain, making responses to stimulus more congruent, and precise. Behavior has a genetic origin and learning remains rudimentary. Emotionless behavior makes it difficult to relate to these animals. EMOTIONAL ELECTRONS: Animals with well-formed cerebrums (mammals and birds) that populate most regions of Earth are emotional electrons. Cortical insulation gives rise to the self, or ego, the source of cognition and self-awareness. Emotional electromagnetism (i.e., attraction and avoidance) aids the formation of complex social, often hierarchical structures. The dominant, emotionally supported motivation is the preservation of the ego. Emotions are the tools of survival; with them dangers can be avoided or overcome, and opportunities can be found. Animals with more sophisticated emotions appear later in evolution, and these animals exhibit great evolutionary advantages. The discrete energy changes lead to the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, and the Pauli exclusion principle that drives territorial needs and competition. Emotions dramatically improve homeostatic regulation, such as the ability to maintain constant temperature. Emotional electrons form a trusting state, allowing the feeling of oneness in mating as well as birth and care of their offspring. 3. Predictions and consequences of the hypothesis The mark of a serious hypothesis is its predictive ability. Shockingly, provided appropriate considerations and adjustments are made (the most important adjustment is that the mind operates over temporal coordinates), every quality of elementary fermions can be recognized in mental behavior. Material fermions exhibit classical behavior, which involves temperature and pressure. Likewise, individual quantum uncertainty gives way to societies, where conflicts and interactions are manifested as emotional temperature and pressure. 3.1 Understanding and classification of emotions Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 910-930 Deli, E., Consciousness, a Cosmic Phenomenon-A Hypothesis ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 921 The peak of cosmologic evolution is the cortical brain, which forms a self-regulating, insulated system, called the mind. Cortical insulation leads to consciousness (i.e., awareness of being separate from the environment), which is the exclusive privilege of emotional animals. Therefore emotions are energy states that are part of the general neural architecture of the brain (Touroutoglou et al., 2015). Such sophisticated homeostatic regulation allows mammals and birds to be warm blooded, form the mysterious inner world of consciousness, display impressive learning ability and develop complex social life (McNally et al., 2012). Through emotions we recognize ourselves in others (and emotion forming animals), which lends all minds a particlelike uniformity and indistinguishability. The above understanding allows true categorization of emotions as the fundamental interactions of the mind; the myriad specific mental phenomena can be intuited as the emotional equivalents of gravity, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. Because it is impossible to shield against it, gravity, the most pervasive fundamental force holds together the large scale structure of space and determines time's arrow. Gravity forms the curvature of space, and emotional gravity forms the socioeconomic layers of society. As entanglement pushes away from the equilibrium point, it increases field curvature differences (i.e., inequality) and lead to a bell-curve distribution in economies and societies (Koonin, 2011). The layers of temporal gravity are felt as differences in financial means, education, location, position, sex, race, and even age. People constantly and carefully monitor others' and their own social position and status, indicating its ubiquitous importance in any economic structure (Oveis et al, 2016; Smith & Magee, 2015). For this reason, individuals guard and actively promote their social position (field curvature) and react defensively to status threats, such as shame, criticism or any form of disrespect (Anderson, et al., 2015). Due to the Pauli exclusion principle, the minimal-energy configuration of temporal fermions within temporal proximity is to have opposing spin. Entanglement ensures energy conservation between interacting particles by oppositely changing their mental energy. As the temporal gyrocompass strives to reorient itself to the temporal field, it recovers the DMN by either sacrificing or gaining mental energy, which actually changes the mind. In this way, the mind adapts to the curvature of the local field. The curvature differences of the temporal field reveal differences in trust and emotional sophistication (financial, social, cultural distinction) even in democratic societies. The innermost curvature layers of society are occupied more by mental-energy-poor, insecure, 'older' minds, than are the regions having smaller field strength. Since attachments are proportional to the temporal field strength, conflicts are more vicious in poverty and encounters remain more civil among members of the upper classes. However, it is a great oversimplification to associate temporal curvature with financial means! 3.2 Emotional temperature and emotional pressure The inverse relationship between pressure and temperature in gases was recognized in the nineteenth century and led to the universal gas law. Surprisingly, the same relationship regulates emotional behavior. Because particle collisions create pressure, emotional confrontations create temporal confinement and lead to emotional pressure. In gases temperature is proportional to internal energy, whereas interpersonal and societal tension corresponds to the thermodynamic Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 910-930 Deli, E., Consciousness, a Cosmic Phenomenon-A Hypothesis ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 922 energy of the mind. The temporal excess of positive emotions, faith, love, courage, and awe bubble up with the enthusiasm of the instant; by eliminating details they fuel enthusiasm, generosity, trust, the energy for happiness and joy. The increasing confidence and trust lower emotional temperature and pressure. Because elevated brain oscillations enhance the willingness for interaction, emotional temperature can be measured by the magnitude or degree of negativity, the extent of sadness, criticism, sarcasm, anger, or physical brutality. The negative energies are just mental tools to expand the boundaries of the temporal confinement. Criticism and anger provoke retaliation and reactions from the environment, which actually maintains the temporal pressure or temperature over time. Modulation of neuronal connections and the sensitivity of the brainstem structures (i.e., the temporal field curvature) manipulate time perception. The longer time perception of constricted and painful negative emotions leads to impatience, and stress. As time slows in both gravity and acceleration, time perception elongates within both negative (corresponding to positive temporal curvature field) and positive emotional states, corresponding to negative-curvature temporal fields (Neupert & Allaire, 2012; Rudd et al., 2012; Yamada & Kawabe, 2011)! Negative curvature temporal field increases confidence, whereas positive curvature reduces it. The unintuitive and puzzling characteristics of mental operation are an outgrowth of the mind's often tentative seeking of the energy neutral state by self-regulation. 3.3 Free will It is hard to fully appreciate the environment's ability to direct our lives by regulating our emotions. Although we have little or no power over our own thoughts, which ultimately determine our actions and behavior, the brain's control over the body creates the belief in free will. The mind forms a unified experience by connecting sensory perception with mental states based on event related potentials (Guterstam et al., 2015; Mancini et al., 2011). Whether action occurs due to priming by conscious or unconscious (subconscious) stimuli, the mind presumes its ultimate causative role. Nevertheless, the common belief that our life is governed by conscious thinking has been increasingly challenged. As early as 1965 Libet questioned the existence of free will by showing that thinking and conscious actions are signaled by preceding unconscious brain activity. In addition, the sluggish conscious decisions have vastly longer time requirements from the fast, automatic actions. Conscious processes take a second or longer, but our fluid, fraction of-a-second mental operation is overwhelmingly automatic. Conscious focus also becomes quickly tiring, but the automatic mind operates over the long term and remains stable in the face of environmental changes. We have to consider that our automatic mind, highly influenced and regulated by the environment and operating behind (sometimes against) conscious awareness, determines the course of our lives. Parasites exploit their host and can fully manipulate host behavior in support of their lifecycle. For example, Toxoplasma gondii infection will spur a feline attraction in rodents which, assuredly deadly for the rodent, helps to complete the parasite's life-cycle in the body of the cat (Sugden et al., 2016). Behavior manipulation is also possible by an implanted electric sensor in the brain. A properly implanted remote control device in the animal's brain can be essentially used to drive the animal around as a car, at will, by electric regulation. This occurs, because the brain operates via electric impulses, which activate appropriate neuron assembles and trigger Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 910-930 Deli, E., Consciousness, a Cosmic Phenomenon-A Hypothesis ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 923 well-choreographed muscle movements (Carillo-Reid et al., 2016). A wide range of drugs as well as various brain stimulation techniques can radically change behavior, in some cases the changes lasting beyond the expected affective term (Fitz & Reiner, 2013). Yet addicts and other substance abusers claim to be in full control of their lives. Conscious decisions enhance brain frequencies and lead to information overload, a selfish down-spin state (stress), which distorts mental vision and twists memories. Detailed focus wastes time, distorts reality, and turns experience into a house of mirrors. Thus, the mind becomes partial and acts contrary to its own best interest, by forming back-and-forth emotional swings, leading to regret or remorse. The constantly changing attention eliminates freedom. As a result, people with negative attitude are enslaved by their circumstances and behave as puppets on a string. Their conscious minds are employed as public relation agents, to constantly explain away previous behavior. Like the distractive turbulences of a fast-flowing river, conflicts destroy mental progress and life suffers a gradual decline (Fredrickson & Joiner, 2002). Being in tune with the environment is the ability to sense and the flexibility to follow the flow of events. The mind with high mental energy (confident and calm mind) is satisfied, trusting and happy, is having no emotional incentive for change, which translates into satisfaction, private and professional success – possibly even on the trading floor (Kandasamy et al., 2016). 3.4 Heisenberg uncertainty principle Primitive animals with a limbic brain display fairly predictable behavior; but the cortical manifold retains a memory and its response is heavily influenced by past experience. The response's nonlinear nature becomes especially prominent with enhanced stimuli, which produce polarized and even extreme reactions. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which prohibits the position and momentum of the particle from being known simultaneously, regulates the behavior of complex animals. In the mind the opposite poles of uncertainty are the temporal position and the extent of emotion. As a cocked gun, which easily fires, down spin decoherence only discharges the enhanced brain frequencies' accumulated pain and negative energy. This way the extent of anger or negative mood (how far one is willing to go) is uncovered, but its temporal position (origin) remains hidden. In contrast, up spin decoherence uncovers the temporal position. The transient positive emotions bubble up in the present moment. However, the extent of joy is unknowable, because there is no partial happiness. 3.5 Pauli exclusion principle Through extensive connections to a host of brain structures, the amygdala has a central and powerful role in emotional regulation and fear conditioning (Dolan, 2008). By modulating emotions, it controls behavior and memory, often outside of conscious awareness. Being activated by perceived proximity and emotionally charged images (even if we are not consciously aware of them), the amygdala regulates personal space and boundaries by moving us (emotionally) closer to others or further away from them. The Pauli exclusion principle states that fermions cannot occupy the same quantum state. For matter fermions, the principle is valid in space, but for temporal fermions (animals and people) it prohibits temporal closeness and generates a conceptual (i.e., emotional) distance. Manifested as distrust, this leads to territorial Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 910-930 Deli, E., Consciousness, a Cosmic Phenomenon-A Hypothesis ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 924 needs, or to avoiding eye contact in the elevator. Because the Pauli exclusion principle is responsible for the structure of matter, it also creates the structure of society or of ecosystems. People with low emotional temperature are satisfied and happy. Their mental calm makes them flexible and accepting (trusting) toward others. As in colder matter, the Pauli exclusion principle is muted. The opposite is also true. In nervous, stressed individuals the Pauli exclusion principle, manifested as critical tendency, is strong. However, critical tendency only applies to emotionally close situations (i.e., temporal closeness). For example, eye contact shortens emotional (i.e., conceptual) distance and thus enhances the potential for conflict (or connection) between conversation partners. Anxious people create conceptual distance by avoiding eye contact (Chen et al., 2012). When faced with increasing emotional distance, we intuitively move closer in an attempt to maintain the emotional distance (Lenz's law in the mind). Emotionally distant people (if spending time together) tend to approach each other emotionally, but loving partners tend to become distant. As with matter, societies and ecosystems are also regulated by the second law of thermodynamics; without outside influence (such as wars or natural disasters) emotional distance decreases over time and leads to democratization, culture and congruence of society. 3.6 Cognitive interference The famous double-slit experiment in physics is described by quantum probability. Its mental analogue demonstrates irrational behavior, the so-called disjunction effect. The famous example is: one will do A given event E occurs and will do A given event E does not occur, yet will not do A when the outcome of event E is unknown – which violates Savage's Sure-Thing Principle (Savage, 1954; Tversky & Shafir, 1992). Without feedback the possibilities remain open; the mind, ignorant about the implications of its decision, is in a quantum limbo. The phenomenon is analogous to quantum interference, which occurs during the double-slit experiments in physics. Information on the score collapses the wave function and liberates the mind from interference. Mental interference, which occurs instantaneously and without any conscious involvement, exaggerates or extinguishes (by adding or subtracting from the temporal wave form of the stimuli) personal emotional tendencies. Thus temporal interference produces temporal waves and bursts. Positive interference often leads to exaggerated interest, such as an investment bubble. However, over time, negative interference extinguishes enthusiasm and can even lead to avoidance. Therefore, in analogue to interference in quantum theory, the presumed context of the first judgment or decision interferes with subsequent judgments or decisions. 3.7 Quantum entanglement Quantum mechanics considers events to be subspaces (or orthogonal projections on these subspaces) of a vector space. In quantum entanglement observation on one part of the system instantaneously affects the state in another part of the system, even if the respective systems are separated by space-like distances. Entanglement entails a common wave function, which cannot be decomposed into separate subsystems. The same phenomenon transpires in emotional fermions over conceptual distance, i.e., over time. In word association experiments entanglement activates associative target words simultaneously, thus can be modeled by quantum theory (Busemeyer & Bruza, 2012; Pothos & Busemeyer, 2013). Word associations often defy logic Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 910-930 Deli, E., Consciousness, a Cosmic Phenomenon-A Hypothesis ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 925 (analogue to "spooky action at a distance") and there is a conceptual resistance to ambiguous situations (such as the Necker cube). The delayed choice quantum eraser, proposed by Scully and Druhl in 1982 and verified some years later, investigates the paradox of the photon's path to the detector. Changing the experimental apparatus while the photon is in mid-flight, the photon was able to modify its state between a wave and a particle (cf. Kim et al., 1999). Analogous to the above experiment, a cemented mental reality can be completely overturned by new information. With temporal fermions, the Bell nonlocality means that present comprehension is updated retroactively, as recognition miraculously expands understanding in time, pushing it into the past (to the time of the first experience) and the future. Discovering a secret expands comprehension over time, so childhood experiences can only be viewed later by the mind of the adult. The Bell nonlocality means that decoherence can be influenced from great spatial distances (for matter) or temporal expanses (i.e., for the mind). Ideas in the hidden corners of the mind can be activated and manipulated by quantum entanglement years or even decades later. In many ways the study of quantum phenomena in the mind is still an uncharted territory. Experimental designs are often difficult or impossible due to the conceptual insufficiencies in the understanding of the nature of consciousness. 4. Cosmologic evolution The organic unity of cosmos Like atoms in chemistry, prime numbers form indivisible and deterministic building blocks in number theory. The existence of prime structures in nature might be more general however. Material fermions and consciousness form the essential, fundamental and exclusive constituents of the universe. Originating at zero time, matter fermions use up space to produce temporal evolution, which culminates in the emergence of the mind. In turn, the mind originates at zero volume and interacts with time to build mental volume in mental fermions. Thus, the orthogonal elementary fermions (matter and mind) are the indivisible building blocks of the universe; forming predator-prey relationship, they embrace as yin and yang and determine each other's future and past. White holes infuse a creative potential of cosmologic expansion throughout the cosmos and lead to the experience of expansion we call dark energy, which presses against the immediate proximity of black holes, forming excess gravity, called dark matter. Both the spatial and temporal fields are oriented between and bounded by the poles (Figures 1 and 2), but interaction fuels their low entropy states. With death interaction seizes up, eliminating the local vision and experience of consciousness. The fundamental connection between the mind, the material fermions and the universe lead to their energetic and structural similarity, coherence and unity. Moving between matter, mind and the universe the frequencies (energy levels) decrease, whereas increasing degrees of freedom manifest increasing complexity. The physical laws are limited to and characteristic of the universe, which cannot be divided and from which nothing can escape. Awareness is associated with the highly organized neuronal assembly of the brain. However, unhindered awareness has been shown to exist during clinical death, when the EEG is Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 910-930 Deli, E., Consciousness, a Cosmic Phenomenon-A Hypothesis ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 926 flat and brain activity is absent (Borjigin et al., 2013; Parnia, 2014). Death halts brain activity and sensory interaction, allowing the mind to increase its entropy as it transverses the temporal field of the cosmos. People with negative attitude accumulate information and converge toward the black holes; those with positive attitude mind congregate along white holes. Black holes represent a mental world consumed by details, problems and obstacles; the proximity of white holes means an elimination of details, leading to mental expansion with unlimited possibilities. Since entropic changes occur over time, movement toward the black holes stretches time into infinity, whereas progression toward the white holes rewinds time to zero. Conclusions Material interaction forms a cosmologic evolution that culminates in the emergence of the intelligent mind. Material fermions, which situate along space, and the emotional mind, which aligns according to time, are necessary, inherent and organic energy building blocks of the universe. Matter fermions are directly regulated by the environment, whereas consciousness is integrated into the environment via the body. As the energy of photons betrays variations in spatial volume, emotions testify about mental change. A positive stimulus forms positive emotions by accumulating energy via low frequencies (negative temporal field curvature), whereas negative stimulus (positive temporal field curvature) involves the sense of temporal shortage due to detail oriented high frequencies, which parallels negative emotions. Emotions force actions that modify the neuronal connections (modulating mental energy). Fermions (matter and mind) are energy formations that accumulate information via interaction. Death ends biological life and sensory interaction, but the intelligent mind, as the essential ingredient of the cosmos, stretches into a temporal infinitum. Via a journey through time energetic changes increase mental entropy that culminates at one of the poles of the cosmos. High entropy is the ability to predict the next element, which is satisfied by both maximal (black holes) and zero information (white holes) content. The high entropy fermion merges with the corresponding pole: the information saturated black holes or the energy rich white holes. This guarantees the global conservation of information. The two dimensional confinement of the black holes is dark, hot and non-moving. Everything feels unapproachable, difficult and heavy due to infinite information content. White holes are infinitely spacious, yet everything feels close, full of possibilities, youthful energy and light. White holes are the light itself. This way the individual mind becomes part of the cosmos, and actively participates in its evolution. The Big Bang gives birth to material particles and evolution begets consciousness. The universe's energy and information states vary smoothly between the poles. However, conditions are fine-tuned for life (and consciousness) only within mild gravity, which fits our world. Significant changes of field curvature are energetically prohibited: it would first destroy life and later would destroy material structures as well. Evolution appears to be a random process, but over time it forms an arch that spans between the formation of material fermions and the emergence of intellect. The Pauli exclusion principle increases the differences in field curvature (spatial or temporal) of the universe, creating its poles, which form its unapproachable Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 910-930 Deli, E., Consciousness, a Cosmic Phenomenon-A Hypothesis ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 927 boundaries. The microdimensions (both time and space) form a closed minimal surface through entanglement. The opposing dynamics of macro and microdimensions lead to self-regulation, which is a continuous fine-tuning of the physical parameters of the universe. Intelligent life arises wherever the necessary minimal conditions for biological evolution are met. Intelligent occupants of the cosmos should be similar not only in the structure of their minds, but in the biological building blocks of life, and in their emotional sophistication as well. The hypothesis sets up an intuitive and organically connected worldview. The physical basis of consciousness opens a new dimension of understanding that can revolutionize the social sciences and technology as well as the healing of mental diseases. The realization that the mind is an inalienable part of the infinite universe, therefore itself is infinite, will increase social cohesion and goodwill. 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Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 910-930 Deli, E., Consciousness, a Cosmic Phenomenon-A Hypothesis ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 930 °°° Autobiographical Note: Eva Déli has a background in molecular biology and cancer research. However, in the past decade her extensive scholarly work on theoretical physics, neurology, evolution and related fields have resulted in a hypothesis that incorporates consciousness as an organic part of the physical universe. Her book, The Science of Consciousness: How a New Understanding of Space and Time Infers the Evolution of the Mind (2015) details this new physical worldview. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 931-950 Ehlmann, B., The Theory of a Natural Afterlife: A Newfound, Real Possibility for What Awaits Us at Death ISSN: 2153-8212 © Bryon K. Ehlman, 2016 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 931 Research Essay The Theory of a Natural Afterlife A Newfound, Real Possibility for What Awaits Us at Death Bryon K. Ehlmann * Abstract: For centuries humans have considered just two main possibilities for what awaits us at death: a "nothingness" like that of our before-life or some type of supernatural afterlife. The theory of a natural afterlife defines a vastly different, real possibility. The natural afterlife embodies all of the sensory perceptions, thoughts, and emotions present in the final moment of a near-death, dreamlike experience. With death this moment becomes timeless and everlasting to the dying person-essentially, a neverending experience. The relativeness and timelessness of the natural afterlife must be clearly understood to appreciate why it's not supernatural yet indeed an afterlife and potentially the optimal heaven. The theory of a natural afterlife is now only a hypothesis; however, science, human experience, and logical deduction suggest that it's extremely plausible and advances in science and technology could someday make it a scientific theory. This paper states the theory, describes the unconventional afterlife it defines, extensively analyzes its validity, and briefly addresses how it can significantly impact how people view death. Analytical tools, typically used for system modeling and language definition, are applied here to present an abstract model of a lifetime within time eternal. The model is used to support and explain the theory. Keywords: afterlife; natural afterlife; human mortality; death and dying; near-death experience; imperceptible death 1 Introduction Many claim that near-death experiences (NDEs) provide proof of a supernatural afterlife-i.e., that human consciousness continues after death. Books making this claim, each based on a personal NDE, have become bestsellers. Examples are Proof of Heaven: A Neurosurgeon's Journey into the Afterlife by Eben Alexander (2012) and Heaven is for Real: A Little Boy's Astounding Story of his Trip to Heaven and Back by Todd Burpo (2011). Other books, each based on studies of numerous individual NDEs, also make the claim. Examples include those by Raymond Moody (2001), Jeffery Long (2010), and Pim van Lommel (2010). Many, however, dispute that NDEs provide proof or even evidence of an afterlife. Several articles in popular scientific publications point to scientific research showing that the common features of NDEs are explainable as natural physiological responses, which can be replicated by brain stimulations, certain drugs, or diseases. Such responses are believed to be induced by the brain as it senses disaster or goes into shut down. Based on this research, the claim is made that near-death experiencers (NDErs) are just mistaking a natural hallucination (as some call it) for a supernatural afterlife. For example, see "Why a Near-Death Experience isn't Proof of Heaven" by Michael Shermer (2013). The theory of a natural afterlife brings a new interpretation to this scientific research and a middle ground regarding both claims concerning NDEs. It does so by defining a newfound possibility for what may happen to us-more precisely, to our conscious self-when we die. The * Correspondence: Bryon K. Ehlmann, PhD, Retired Professor of Computer Science and now Independent Researcher, Tallahassee, FL, USA. Email: [email protected] Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 931-950 Ehlmann, B., The Theory of a Natural Afterlife: A Newfound, Real Possibility for What Awaits Us at Death ISSN: 2153-8212 © Bryon K. Ehlman, 2016 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 932 theory, a hypothesis in a scientific sense, suggests the existence of a natural, versus supernatural, "afterlife"-one amazingly created within the mind, perhaps but not necessarily induced by brain physiology as some scientists suggest. The possibility of this natural afterlife, which seems an oxymoron, has never been mentioned in scholarly publications. More surprisingly, until recently it hasn't even been part of the conversation regarding an afterlife. Admittedly, the natural afterlife is unconventional, as indicated by the quotes around afterlife in the previous paragraph. It requires no belief in anything supernatural, including a God. Thus the theory of a natural afterlife is religiously neutral; however, like the NDE, its defined afterlife can be interpreted as a spiritual "heaven" (or "hell"). Here, quotes enclose heaven (and hell) as they too are unconventional. The heaven, though unconventional, is at least philosophically consistent, unlike the conventionally envisioned heaven associated with many, yet mainly Western faiths; that is, logical conflicts among perfection, time eternal, free-will, evil, and boredom do not exist. Hopefully, all of this is clarified in the remainder of this article, organized as described below. Quotes around afterlife and heaven are hereafter not used since the natural afterlife is indeed an afterlife and possibly a heaven to the dying person, which in the end is what really matters. • Section 2 states the theory and explains the essence of the natural afterlife it defines. • Section 3 elaborates on important aspects of the afterlife and theory. • Section 4 addresses the theory's validity and verifiability. It provides supporting evidence and a near-proof, indicates future advances that would allow for testing, underscores the theory's explanatory power, and deals with some likely challenges to the theory and obstacles to its acceptance and appreciation. • Section 5 concludes by summarizing the essential claim and credibility of the theory and by touching on its scientific, philosophical, and religious significance. • An appendix expounds on how humans perceive time, comparing the natural afterlife to permanent anesthesia and formally defining it in the context of life and time eternal. 2 Statement and Explanation: The Essence of the Natural Afterlife In its most inclusive form, the theory of a natural afterlife can be stated as follows: The natural afterlife of a NDE-enabled creature is the NDE from which it never awakes-essentially, a never-ending experience (NEE) relative to the creature's perception. The theory defines the natural afterlife, implying its existence by its association with the NDE- a phenomenon evidenced by numerous accounts recorded across cultures and throughout history as far back as the oral tradition (Holden, Greyson, & James, 2009b; Moody, 2001). Here, the NDE is assumed to be a near-death experience, not an after-death experience as some postulate. It occurs in an altered state of consciousness, as do dreams, and is thus dreamlike to some extent. To accept this seemingly implausible, NDE-based NEE and natural afterlife as plausible, one must fully understand its essence. To do so, one must be able to imagine what may be in their mind at near-death and think of nothing else. So, imagine this scenario: You are having what will be called your NDE should you recover. In this very profound, all too real experience, you're overcome by marvelous feelings of wonder, love, and Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 931-950 Ehlmann, B., The Theory of a Natural Afterlife: A Newfound, Real Possibility for What Awaits Us at Death ISSN: 2153-8212 © Bryon K. Ehlman, 2016 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 933 contentment. You truly believe that you have arrived and are experiencing heaven, and you're excitedly anticipating the next moment and an eternity of joyful experiences. With death and the end of consciousness, this is your natural afterlife. You perceive nothing more, yet nothing less. Everything else that happens thereafter is totally irrelevant to you. However, very relevant and relative only to you, is that the moment described above goes on forever. Your NDE consciousness, your sense of self, and, if one exists, your soul has entered a timeless dimension. You are finally, fully, and forever "living in the moment." You believe you're in heaven, and for all eternity you never know otherwise. Ironically, this afterlife is possible not because individual consciousness continues after death but because with death, when and if such consciousness ends, you won't know that: • you've died. You won't see the "NDE screen" go blank. • your NDE has ended. You won't notice that nothing more happens in your NDE. • an eternity is fleeting by. Is this happening just before or after you died? You can't tell. Relative to you, it's irrelevant, time is suspended, and your NDE is essentially timeless and everlasting, i.e., an NEE. Analogies along with thought experiments (those carried out only in the imagination) are helpful towards understanding the natural afterlife. First, it's like the most realistic, intense dream you've ever had except that you never wake up from it. This scenario can only be imagined as no living person has ever experienced it. Second, the natural afterlife is like the following scenario, enhanced only slightly from real human experience: You're totally engrossed in watching an extremely exhilarating movie. Then, without knowing: you unexpectedly, without any perceived drowsiness, fall asleep; for you the movie has been paused and time is fleeting by. Until you wake up, you still believe you're watching that movie. When you do finally wake up, you're shocked that you fell asleep and that the movie has continued on. Of course, with the natural afterlife, you just never wake up. Fig. 1. A state diagram showing the transition in the state of mind upon the event of death assuming an NDE. An oval denotes a state. A directed line (arrow) labeled with an event description denotes a state transition resulting from the event. When the NDE ends in death, the dying person simply transitions from a dynamic into a static state of mind. The final moment of the NDE becomes the NEE. Fig. 1 gives a state diagram Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 931-950 Ehlmann, B., The Theory of a Natural Afterlife: A Newfound, Real Possibility for What Awaits Us at Death ISSN: 2153-8212 © Bryon K. Ehlman, 2016 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 934 showing the final two states of mind and the transition assuming an NDE, death, and with death the loss of all consciousness. A statement given earlier and repeated below describes the heavenly natural afterlife in a nutshell and can be used to both stress its relativeness and explain Fig. 1. You believe you're in heaven, and for all eternity you never know otherwise. The "believing you're in heaven" with a sense of self and all that the NDE offers, exists only in your mind within the Life Unconscious, Dying with NDE state. It's only relative to you because those living don't know "you're in heaven." It becomes timeless, relative to you, because with the loss of consciousness and death you don't know that nothing more will happen in your NDE, while those living do. It's "for all eternity," i.e., everlasting, because your "never knowing otherwise" extends beyond the event death into the After-life with NEE state. It's everlasting, however, only relative to you because you will never know that your NDE ended with death, while those living do. So, it's timeless and everlasting and it's all relative! What's peculiar about the natural afterlife and key to understanding it is this: it's not about realizing you're in the afterlife after you've died, as humans have always imagined, but about realizing you're there before you've died and then never knowing otherwise. 3 Elaboration: Aspects of the Natural Afterlife Important aspects of the natural afterlife and the theory, which can be called the NEE theory for short, need to be emphasized, clarified, or expanded upon. 3.1 Relative The relative essence of the natural afterlife cannot be emphasized enough. The theory of special relativity asserts that time is relative to one's velocity. The NEE theory asserts it may also be relative to one's being alive or dead. In life one perceives time as a marching parade of events, while in death one may perceive only a forever moment of time, not realizing it is eventless. Humans have always been solely transfixed on a sustained conscious afterlife that must be seen as such by everyone, especially the living. Thus hidden from view has been an afterlife that is only momentary to the living yet to the dying person alone is timeless and everlasting. 3.2 Timeless and Everlasting The eventless, thus timeless, and everlasting essence of the natural afterlife also cannot be emphasized enough. Death is an event that is only perceived by others. At death, a person is simply left in a pleasant (or unpleasant) instance of time-i.e., ∆t = 0 (delta t, meaning change in time, equals zero). The loss of memory is irrelevant since memory is only necessary when time elapses, i.e., when ∆t > 0. Zero energy is needed for any sustainability because, again, ∆t = 0. Again, using analogy and imagination, the natural afterlife can be likened to your before-life except for a hugely significant difference. It begins with you being "paused" in an NDEconscious state of mind. Then, like your before-life, billions of years pass by without your knowledge "in no time at all," literally. The one other difference is that, unlike your before-life, your natural afterlife has no terminating event, like birth. Thus, it is everlasting. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 931-950 Ehlmann, B., The Theory of a Natural Afterlife: A Newfound, Real Possibility for What Awaits Us at Death ISSN: 2153-8212 © Bryon K. Ehlman, 2016 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 935 3.3 Logically Consistent Since ∆t = 0 in the natural afterlife and one is just "living" in a moment, no decisions are made and thus free-will is not an issue. Also, one can never become bored. In contrast, in any timeperceptive (∆t > 0) perfect world, free-will is impossible as imperfect decisions would introduce imperfection, perhaps even evil. Though without free-will in such an infinite (∆t = ∞) world, boredom is most likely as there will be no decisions to make and no challenges. Apparently, any eternal afterlife where a time-perceptible consciousness survives death must be either imperfect or logically inconsistent. The conventionally envisioned heaven is the latter, while the NEE heaven is neither for within it one can logically experience a forever, perfect moment. 3.4 Dreamlike and Spiritual The natural afterlife is dreamlike in that NDEs and dreams are somewhat similar. Both provide alternative, spiritual experiences to the fully conscious, awake one. Both can be very intense and indistinguishable from reality. Both seem mysteriously produced in content and have been historically viewed by many as providing a potential passage into a transcendental realm. Oxford Dictionaries defines a dream as "a series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person's mind during sleep," which also describes the NDE except that it normally occurs during a brain diminished state rather than during sleep. Other notable differences are 1) the NDE can be even more intense than a dream and so have a more lasting impact (Noyes, Fenwick, & Holden, 2009), so much so that many claim their NDE was not dreamlike (Long, 2008), and 2) the NDE can occur during general anesthesia whereas dreams cannot (Greyson, Kelly, & Kelly, 2009, p. 226; Hameroff, 2010b), implying a differing production mechanism or source. In regard to whether a natural afterlife results with death, some differences between NDEs and dreams may not be that important (but certainly not #2 above). The possibility exists that a dying person has no brain-diminished NDE but instead dies in their sleep interrupting an intense dream. Vivid and meaningful end-of-life dreams and visions (ELDVs) have been recorded throughout history. A recent study found ELDVs to be very common and also found that comforting perceptions of meeting deceased loved ones within them were more prevalent as participants approached death (Hoffman, 2016; Kerr et al., 2014). It seems very plausible that such vivid, "near-death" dreams have been reported as NDEs and with death also result in NEEs. Given that the natural afterlife is NDE-based, it is spiritual. All beings-the NDEr, other humans, and nonhumans-are present only in spirit, certainly not in body, perhaps just as they are in normal dreams or perhaps not. Nevertheless, no physical objects of any kind and no physical space are involved. The natural afterlife exists beyond both time and space. 3.5 Varied and Personalized The theory does not say what the content of the NEE will be or whether it will be pleasant or a nightmare. It could be a celestial communion with angels, a glorious day on the beach, or an eerie encounter with demons. The most common features of pleasurable NDEs are well documented: OBEs; heightened senses; guided or surrounded by light; otherworldly; feelings of peace, joy, and/or cosmic unity; and encountering mystical and/or familiar human beings (Kellehear, 2009; Zingrone & Alvarado, 2009). Variations, however, abound. Indeed, variations include distressing NDEs (dNDEs), a term used by Nancy Evans Bush (2009) to describe "'frightening,' 'negative,' or 'hellish'" NDEs. Based on many NDE studies, she concludes that Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 931-950 Ehlmann, B., The Theory of a Natural Afterlife: A Newfound, Real Possibility for What Awaits Us at Death ISSN: 2153-8212 © Bryon K. Ehlman, 2016 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 936 the percentage of such NDEs among those reported is "possibly in the midto high teens" but also that likely "dNDEs are underreported" (p. 81). Variations in NDEs may result from a person's life experiences, beliefs, culture, their interpretations of the experience, and/or near-death brain physiology. However, research on reported NDEs has shown that none of these factors can reliably predict the content of an NDE (Greyson et al., 2009, p. 226; Holden, Long, & MacLurg, 2009). Whether the natural afterlife is a gift from God or nature and whether a God (versus nature) plays a role in fashioning it may forever be a matter of one's religious or spiritual faith or lack thereof. The fashioning, however done, permits the natural afterlife to be profoundly personalized. The human beings that often appear in NDEs, who may be deceased or still living, are most often those who were emotionally close to the NDEr (Zingrone & Alvarado, 2009). 3.6 The Optimal Heaven The natural afterlife can provide the most heavenly afterlife possible given the extremely pleasurable features of many NDEs, as has been reported, and the natural afterlife's timeless, everlasting, logically consistent, spiritual, and personalized aspects. This statement may seem incredible since within the natural afterlife nothing happens! As humans we are so addicted to happenings-i.e., events and thus human-time-that it's hard to appreciate the happiness that is possible in an eventless afterlife. We think we need events, i.e., perceived change, to make us eternally happy-hence the illogical longing for the supernaturally perfect, everlasting, and yet changing thus time-perceptive afterlife. But do we really need events? First, in the heavenly natural afterlife one doesn't know that nothing more will happen and thus won't miss a thing. Instead, humanly habituated by the experience of time always marching on, one is left in a state of exuberant, unspoiled anticipation of many more heavenly moments to come. Second, are life's events what give us pleasure or is it the feelings aroused by these events? The natural afterlife can be a moment where, based on past NDE events, one feels the ultimate in happiness, knowing they're in heaven forever, immersed in love (in the absolute presence of God as the theist would believe). Once this happens, exactly what more needs to happen? 3.7 Not Guaranteed but Perhaps Prevalent and Apparently Unbiasedly Bestowed The theory does not guarantee a natural afterlife. Clearly, the percentage of people having an NDE before dying is unknown. The percentage of near-death survivors reporting an NDE varies widely among studies. A 1981-82 study found that 47% of near-death survivors of attempted suicide reported an NDE (Zingrone & Alvarado, 2009). Though this result is high relative to other studies, reports of NDEs only grow as advances in medicine-e.g., cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR)-continue (Brennan, 2014, p. 329; Holden, Greyson, & James, 2009a, jacket summary). Also, studies of survivors thought "near-death" likely underestimate the frequency of NDEs among the dying because such survivors may not wish to divulge their NDEs or, more significantly, may not have been quite near-death enough to have one. Suppose there's no NDE at death? The after-life (with hyphen) could be just like the beforelife, often described as "nothingness." However, the NEE theory doesn't address this question. Though the natural afterlife isn't guaranteed, it appears to be unbiasedly bestowed, at least based on one study of NDErs (Holden, Long, & MacLurg 2009). After reviewing research on the characteristics of NDErs-e.g., age, sex, race and ethnicity, education, religious affiliation and Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 931-950 Ehlmann, B., The Theory of a Natural Afterlife: A Newfound, Real Possibility for What Awaits Us at Death ISSN: 2153-8212 © Bryon K. Ehlman, 2016 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 937 religiosity, sexual orientation, and psychological factors-the study concludes NDEs appear to be "equal opportunity transpersonal experiences" and that "everyone is a potential NDEr." 3.8 Independent of NDE Explanation Some scientists think that NDEs are purely the creations of brain physiology, perhaps involving similar mechanisms as dreams, while others contest such views. Dr. Kevin Nelson (2011), a neurologist who studies NDEs, thinks NDEs employ the same brain apparatus that is used for dreaming within a REM (rapid eye movement) state of mind. Also, the out-of-body experience (OBE), sometimes an initial part of the NDE, is thought by some to be related to lucid dreaming (Green, 1995; Levitan, 1991; Nelson, 2011). However, Bruce Greyson, Emily Williams Kelly, and Edward F. Kelly (2009, pp. 213-244) provide a credible rationale as to why current physiological "explanatory models" (i.e., explanations) cannot account for some NDE features. They argue that serious consideration should be given to a transcendental explanatory model where "some level of reality transcends the physical world." Explanations of how NDEs and OBEs occur, however, are immaterial to the validity of the NEE theory. Also immaterial is evidence that similar experiences happen to people when they are not near death. The only thing that is material is that NDEs provide "thoughts, images, and sensations" very near to death that are "even more real than real"-a phrase used to describe the NDE by neurologist Steven Laureys based on a study of NDE memories (as cited in Thonnard et al., 2013) and quoted in Brumfield (2013). Thus, they provide the prerequisite final, intense, perceptive moment that with the loss of all subsequent perception becomes a forever present, i.e., the NEE. 3.9 Applicable to Other Creatures The theory applies to any "NDE-enabled creature"-i.e., those capable of a near-death dreamlike experience. Research has shown that REM sleep, conducive to dreaming, occurs in higher level mammals, including rats (Bekoff, 2012; Louie & Wilson, 2001). Moreover, rats have shown a surge in brain activity just prior to death, which could be indicative of NDEs (Borjigin et al., 2013) and thus NEEs. Thus, there may be a dog heaven after all! 3.10 Natural but Nonexclusive The NEE theory uniquely labels the natural afterlife as natural since, unlike others, its definition and associated explanation, now completed, are presently within the scope of conventional scientific understanding. As such, and likely shocking to its adherents, the theory provides religious naturalism (Crosby, 2008; Stone, 2008) with a spiritual afterlife. The theory, however, merely defines this afterlife and implicitly claims its existence. It does not deny the existence of any supernatural afterlife, no matter how apparently illogical or (at least for now) unscientific. This afterlife could be an after-death type of NDE (e.g., Long, 2008), or an afterlife that immediately or subsequently overrides the NEE, thus providing a new perceived present-e.g., the initial moment of a judgment day or a reincarnation. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 931-950 Ehlmann, B., The Theory of a Natural Afterlife: A Newfound, Real Possibility for What Awaits Us at Death ISSN: 2153-8212 © Bryon K. Ehlman, 2016 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 938 4 Validation: Can the Theory Be Verified? 4.1 Near-proof The natural afterlife results from the conjunction (∧) of three natural phenomena. First is the ability to have an NDE. Label this NDE. Second is the animalistic perception of time as relative only to perceived events. Label this event relative time. Third is the imperceptible death, which is the inability of a dying creature to perceive their moment of death, however inexact the event. Label this imperceptible death. The NEE theory can now be logically expressed as (NDE ∧ event relative time ∧ imperceptible death) → (NEE ⇔ natural afterlife) where each phenomenon is treated as a proposition. To prove the theory, one must show that all three propositions and the implication (→) are true. The equivalence (⇔) is true by definition. The ability of humans to have NDEs is beyond question based on numerous reports (Holden, Greyson, & James, 2009a; Long & Perry, 2010; Moody, 2001). Thus, NDE is true for humans and perhaps for other NDE-enabled creatures (Borjigin et al., 2013). Also, well established is our animalistic perception of time as relative to and dependent on an observable, ordered sequence of events, real or imagined. Einstein revealed that "time has no independent existent apart from the order of events by which we measure it" (Barnett, 1964, p. 19, 47). Philosophy also acknowledges the dependency of our perception of time on "changes or events in time" and our perceptions of "their temporal relations" (Le Poidevin, 2015). Accordingly, current dictionary definitions reflect an event relative time. Merriam-Webster, for example, defines time as "a nonspatial continuum that is measured in terms of events which succeed one another from past through present to future." Thus event relative time is true. The dependency of time on events implies that when events cannot be perceived within a state of mind-e.g., dreamless sleep-we experience timelessness, not nothingness. That is, timelessness trumps nothingness. We only lose our sense of time, not our senses of self and being, which are very important things. To be perfectly clear, within an eventless state of mind, our senses of self and being are lost (or more precisely, become inactive) in the minds of the time perceiving awake (i.e., in reality); however, in our minds, relatively speaking, we never lose them. They were present in the last event experienced before entering the eventless state, nothing happens in this state to tell us we've lost them (not even total darkness), and so they become timeless until another event is experienced. The Appendix further elaborates on how our perception of time and timelessness supports the NEE theory. Fig. 2 shows a simplified, abstract model of life including the before and after, giving major states of mind, or consciousness, and the transitions (arrows) between them. The rightmost two states (ovals) are the same states shown in Fig. 1, except an NDE is not assumed. A timeperceptive state has an arrow that is labelled with a type of event and loops from and into the state. Time is perceived to advance within such states as these perceived internal events occur. States that are timeless have no such looping arrows. Examples of perceived events are the tick of a clock, a spoken syllable, the flap of a wing, a blink of the eye, and a new thought or feeling. Assume temporarily that imperceptible death is true. Then, when an NDE ends due to death, one isn't informed in any way that "You're dead, NDE over." And clearly, once dead, one never notices that no more NDE events occur. Also, no perceivable event will ever occur to end the ensuing timelessness. Hence, one's mind is suspended in the last NDE moment with senses of self and being both intact. Such suspension results in the NEE. Thus the implication (→) is true. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 931-950 Ehlmann, B., The Theory of a Natural Afterlife: A Newfound, Real Possibility for What Awaits Us at Death ISSN: 2153-8212 © Bryon K. Ehlman, 2016 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 939 Fig. 2. Major states of mind in life and state transitions-an abstract model where dreams and NDEs are given more prominence. Again, an oval denotes a state and a directed line (arrow) denotes a state transition resulting from the described event. Now only imperceptible death remains a proposition to prove. If until regaining consciousness, i.e., coming to, humans never perceive the moment of 1) falling asleep while watching a movie or just lying in bed, 2) passing out while being given a general anesthetic, and 3) ending a dream, then it is extremely likely they never perceive the moment of 4) death while unconscious and dying, with or without the NDE. Item 4 seems especially true given that brain cells are being deprived of oxygen and electrical signals in the brain are fading. Indeed, with the model in Fig. 2 an imperceptible death can be seen as consistent with a more general phenomenon and proposition. Call this the imperceptible loss of time. It states that a person can never perceive the moment of transition from a time-perceptive state into a timeless state. The reason is obvious. No perceptible event indicates the transition, neither the transitioning event (in Fig. 2 fall asleep, pass out, end dream, and death for items 1-4 above, respectively) nor clearly any event afterwards within the timeless state (Life Unconscious, Dreamless for items 1-3 and After-life for item 4). From the above analysis of human experience, imperceptible death is nearly certainly true. Therefore, since NDE, event relative time, and the implication (→) are all true, the NEE theory is nearly proven by logical deduction. ■ (Nearly!) 4.2 Testability Unfortunately, it seems that unless science can someday resuscitate those beyond the "moment of death" to verify the imperceptible death proposition (and the NEE itself), the NEE theory cannot be tested. However, is this really the case? Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 931-950 Ehlmann, B., The Theory of a Natural Afterlife: A Newfound, Real Possibility for What Awaits Us at Death ISSN: 2153-8212 © Bryon K. Ehlman, 2016 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 940 Fig. 3. A zoom-in to the Dying State of Fig. 2 that focuses on the two internal states most relevant to the NDE and death. Or, could advancements in medical science and technology allow the theory to be tested and thus verified or possibly falsified in the future? The key to this possibility lies in the fact that most likely a person never really dies in the midst of an NDE. Instead, as indicated in the Appendix, a span of time follows the last NDE event and precedes the actual event death, as shown in Fig. 2. This time span is timeless relative to the dying person and can be viewed as occurring within a state of mind that is internal to the Dying state of mind shown in Fig. 2. This internal state of mind is shown in Fig. 3 within the Dying state and labelled Severely Failing Brain. It exists because brain death is a gradual process that can be viewed as ending only after the last detectable moment of any brain activity. The Severely Failing Brain state is entered in the case of Dying with NDE when the deterioration of brain cells at some point ends the NDE. Given the existence of this state, the following sequence of science and technology breakthroughs and research results may be within the future realm of possibility: 1) Technology allows close and detailed monitoring of the condition of brain cells and brain activity within dying patients. 2) Such brain monitoring along with interviews with NDE survivors reveal the signature brain activity within certain regions of the brain that identifies the NDE. 3) Brain activity in dying patients is monitored to detect the beginning and end of NDEs. 4) Testing reveals the levels of brain cell functionality (BCF) typically remaining just prior to when all NDE brain activity ceases as brain cell deterioration progresses. Let minBCFNDE represent these levels. 5) Testing also reveals the levels of brain cell functionality that are required in order to think-i.e., to consciously entertain a thought (T), any thought but especially one like "I'm awake." or "My NDE has ended." or "I've died." Let minBCFT represent these levels. 6) The conclusion is reached that minBCFNDE falls well below minBCFT, which verifies the imperceptible death proposition and thus the NEE theory. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 931-950 Ehlmann, B., The Theory of a Natural Afterlife: A Newfound, Real Possibility for What Awaits Us at Death ISSN: 2153-8212 © Bryon K. Ehlman, 2016 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 941 7) Medical science and technology allows some dying patients to be resuscitated who are within the time period after NDE brain activity had ceased and minBCFNDE had been detected. 8) Interviews with these survivors surprisingly reveal that they perceived the moment when their NDE ended. If true, this finding would falsify the imperceptible loss of time proposition and thus the NEE theory, since the theory depends on the dying person not knowing their NDE has ended. The above sequence provides one possible future scenario, and perhaps there are others, that would allow the NEE theory to be verified or falsified-making it a scientific theory, someday. 4.3 Supporting Evidence and Explanatory Power Though the theory cannot yet be verified, the given proof shows how near it is to being certain, or at least extremely plausible. Moreover, the theory is supported by and consistent with the existence of an amazing dreaming and NDE capability within the human mind, the reported scientific explanations for NDEs, and the intensity and reality of them. As such, it offers greater explanatory power over other theories about an afterlife. 4.3.1 An Amazing Dreaming and NDE Capability The ability of our minds to create dreams and NDEs is a little understood and under-appreciated phenomenon. The model in Fig. 2 was designed to emphasize the role of dreams and NDEs in our lives. In these spiritual altered states of consciousness and in our material awake state, we experience objects, events, thoughts, and emotions. Most often, we can't distinguish the spiritual states from our material one. In the spiritual ones we are not in control, yet we never lose our sense of self. In our dreams, our self is in some ways our super self. For our mind can almost instantaneously paint beautiful landscapes, design and decorate rooms, create new faces, compose plots, and create dialog and events. Such rapid creativity is likely well beyond our talents and abilities while awake. Though exactly how dreams and NDEs relate is not yet understood, they are truly another dimension of being. Why does such an incredible dimension exist? The NEE theory provides an answer. It posits at least one momentous purpose-namely, the natural afterlife, perhaps evolved in conjunction with evolved intellect, senses, and emotions. Science, on the other hand, has yet to provide a better answer. While some purposes for dreaming have been posited, no scientific theory yet exists (Breus, 2015; Lewis, 2014), and no purpose for dreams or NDEs has been posited that is commensurable to their amazing features or as momentous as the natural afterlife. 4.3.2 Reported Scientific Explanations for NDEs If a number of scientists are to be believed, our brains seem to have a natural propensity for producing NDEs and thus NEEs. As mentioned previously, the scientific explanations for this propensity-essentially brain physiology-have been reported by many articles in popular scientific publications. The aim of the authors has been to explain NDEs as just a natural phenomenon, not proof or even evidence for any afterlife. All make the same problematic assumption, however, about an afterlife. "Peace of Mind: Near-Death Experiences Now Found to Have Scientific Explanations" (Choi, 2011), largely based on the work of Mobbs & Watt (2011), describes the common Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 931-950 Ehlmann, B., The Theory of a Natural Afterlife: A Newfound, Real Possibility for What Awaits Us at Death ISSN: 2153-8212 © Bryon K. Ehlman, 2016 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 942 features of NDEs and explains how each might be the result of "normal brain function gone awry." He suggests the features can be caused by certain diseases, by artificially stimulating parts of the brain, by high-level releases of a stress hormone in the brain during trauma, by medicinal and recreational drugs that affect the brain in a similar manner as does trauma, and by the depletion of blood and oxygen flow that can happen with extreme fear and oxygen loss when dying. Choi's main thesis is stated in his first sentence: "Near-death experiences are often thought of as mystical phenomena, but research is now revealing scientific explanations for virtually all of their common features." The implicit claim here is that NDEs do not provide evidence of an afterlife. This claim is made explicit in The Death of "Near Death": Even If Heaven Is Real, You Aren't Seeing It by Kyle Hill (2012). The assumption, however, made by Choi and Hill as well as Shermer (2013), cited earlier, and by many others is that an afterlife must be supernatural. Remove this assumption, and the research that supports a materialistic explanation for NDEs ironically supports the likelihood of having a spiritual natural afterlife. 4.3.3 The Intensity and Reality of NDEs The intensity and reality of the experience provided by most NDEs, as revealed by scientific research, begs the question: "Why such an intense, all too real, dreamlike experience just before death?" Again, science has no answer, yet the NEE theory may provide one. How better to imprint a moment into the mind so that it will never be "forgotten"? 4.4 Likely Challenges and Obstacles to Acceptance and Appreciation Two likely challenges to the NEE theory deserve consideration. Neither, however, concerns its plausibility. The first concerns its applicability to the situation where death is so sudden-e.g., one is blown apart in a blast-that the NEE seems impossible. But is it really? Research on rats, cited earlier, showed a surge in brain activity for up to 30 seconds after their heart stops beating and blood flow to their brain ends, i.e., clinical death. Again, such activity was seen to have features providing a scientific foundation for NDEs (Borjigin et al., 2013). But in humans is even one second of brain activity needed for the NDE? In an NDE, our brain can likely paint a complex heavenly scene almost instantaneously. Also, if an NDE can make "one's life flash before one's eyes" as has been reported (Moody, 2001), perhaps in shutting down, our brain can create an NEE in nanoseconds. Another challenge to the NEE theory concerns its significance. Some may claim that the heaven it makes possible, even if optimal, isn't real-i.e., it's only a delusion-and thus not particularly intriguing or desirable as an afterlife. Since this claim involves opinion, it can't be entirely refuted. However, the following should be considered. • As already stated, NDEs have been described as "even more real than real," based on studying the NDE memories of coma survivors (Brumfield, 2013; Thonnard et al., 2013). Elaborating, neurologist Steven Laureys states "To our surprise, NDEs were much richer than any imagined event or any real event of these coma survivors. The difference was so vast." Thus in the NEE heaven, one very likely believes it real and experiences its bliss. Believing now that it's delusional and thus undesirable likely won't change this, making Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 931-950 Ehlmann, B., The Theory of a Natural Afterlife: A Newfound, Real Possibility for What Awaits Us at Death ISSN: 2153-8212 © Bryon K. Ehlman, 2016 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 943 such belief in the end irrelevant. Besides, if the natural afterlife were a real afterlife, how would one experiencing it know that it's real and not just an NDE leading up to an NEE? • What is a "real afterlife" anyway? One definition would relate real in this context to human, earth-bound, materialistic, real life experiences. No afterlife, except for perhaps reincarnation, can be real in this sense. The conventional, time-perceptive, perfect world afterlife can't be truly real if it's illogical. On the other hand, a broader definition of real would include dreams and NDEs as they are in fact real life experiences. • Although the sensory perceptions and events within dreams and NDEs are not real in a material sense, the very intense emotions they can invoke are real (McNamara, 2014; van der Linden, 2011), which is why people wake up from dreams immediately feeling the dream emotions, for example fear. When a heavenly NDE ends with death and events have ceased, likely the most important part that remains in the NEE are the heightened emotions-often love, joy, and peace (Zingrone & Alvarado, 2009). And they are real! • Finally, how can a phenomenon, a particular state of mind, that has evolved by nature, is produced by nature (whether or not via a God), and isn't fabricated by humans-versus, for instance, a movie or a drug-induced hallucination † -not be considered real? Despite the above considerations and the arguments for the natural afterlife, some will still think it unreal, thus undesirable; simply undesirable; implausible; or even absurd. For instance, despite various descriptions of the natural afterlife given in this paper, all stressing its reliance on consciousness ending with death, several journal reviewers have thought it implausible because, generally stated, "with death a non-functioning brain cannot sustain any experience," when no such experience, i.e., consciousness, or sustaining (implying a ∆t > 0) is needed. Such thinking is likely due to one or more obstacles to accepting and then appreciating the natural afterlife. As already indicated, its relativeness and timelessness (∆t = 0, not > 0), if misunderstood or ignored, can block acceptance, and its eventless-ness and dream likeness can block appreciation. Yet, the biggest obstacle to accepting the natural afterlife can sometimes be one's closemindedness. After all, when first encountering the natural afterlife, one must deal with its prima facie outlandishness. It's a phenomenon that's way "outside the box." Hence, it can be too readily dismissed without serious thought. Also, the NEE theory can seemingly pose a threat to one's current after-life beliefs-which may have been strongly held for years, into which much may have been heavily invested, and from which a sense of certainty and comfort ensues. Hence, a strong bias toward not wanting to accept the natural afterlife is quite understandable. Finally, still one more obstacle to accepting and appreciating the natural afterlife is its content uncertainty and everlastingness. Like other supernatural afterlives, it can possibly be everlastingly hellish. Nothingness can no longer be a reassuring certainty. Oddly, evoking this hellish possibility in a terrifying thought experiment may help some more appreciate a heavenly eventless, dreamlike afterlife. So, just imagine its exact hellish opposite: you're dying while believing you're in hell and for all eternity nothing will happen to make you believe otherwise. This is certainly as awful an NEE as the heavenly NEE is magnificent. † Hallucinations occur when awake or semi-awake, often as a result of drugs or mental illness. For the purpose of simplification, the events and moments of such hallucinations are not represented in the state diagram of Fig. 2 and the NEE notation in Fig. 4 of the Appendix. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 931-950 Ehlmann, B., The Theory of a Natural Afterlife: A Newfound, Real Possibility for What Awaits Us at Death ISSN: 2153-8212 © Bryon K. Ehlman, 2016 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 944 5 Summary and Significance When the NDE ends in death, the natural afterlife almost certainly results unless replaced by another afterlife that is currently beyond scientific understanding. To understand and appreciate this default, NDE-based, natural afterlife one must focus on only what their mind can perceive when they're dying. This may include an NDE. If so, and they were somehow resurrected after a billion years, the NEE theory claims they would report having an NDE, and, if not resurrected, they would still believe they were "living" their NEE. Unfortunately, the dead cannot be resurrected to tell us if this is true, but perhaps in the future, testing on the near-dead can. This audacious claim, made by the NEE theory, is based on how consciousness is assumed to end in the process of dying, or possibly transition in a relative manner. First, sensory perceptions are lost and all awareness of the physical world ends based on the physical senses. Then, near death an altered state of consciousness, a new awareness, possibly awakens and an intense, all too real experience begins within the mind. Then, due to brain deterioration, the experience ends and with it the sense of time is lost-though most significantly, not the senses of self and being. Consequently, the experience, as embodied in its last moment, becomes timeless. Finally, with an imperceptible death, it becomes never-ending as death is nothing more than an eternal continuation of this timelessness. To the dying person, the new awareness in the altered state of consciousness and the experience has transitioned into a static, everlasting state of mind. For centuries humans have pondered and debated just two possibilities for what they may encounter at death: a kind of nothingness like that of their before-life or some type of supernatural afterlife. The significance of the NEE theory is that those now living have a third possibility to consider, the natural afterlife. In doing so: • Those claiming that heavenly NDEs provide "proof of heaven" and a time-perceptible consciousness that continues after death may want to more justifiably claim that at the minimum they provide evidence of a relativistic heaven and altered state of consciousness that with death is made timeless and eternal. • Those claiming that scientific research shows that NDEs provide no evidence of an afterlife should instead unassumingly claim that they provide no evidence of a supernatural afterlife. • Theists may question their conventional view of heaven and perhaps welcome one that is scientifically and philosophically defensible-a timeless heaven, personalized by God, and one that can provide a realistic answer to the age-old question: "Where is heaven?" • Atheists may question their conventional view of an after-life of nothingness and welcome the possibility of a credible, heaven-like afterlife-one created and personalized by nature and thus one that doesn't require believing in a God. • Those who believe that one's actions in life matter not at all since in the end all merely "return to dust," may wonder how one's beliefs, morals, and memories impact the contents of an NDE-i.e., if what "is within you" determines what your natural afterlife will be like. ‡ Stated more philosophically, will nature or God deliver justice in the end? ‡ The words here are purposely suggestive of certain religious teachings: "... the Kingdom of God is within you." [Luke 17:21] and the principle of karma, that one's actions determine what one's next life will be like. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 931-950 Ehlmann, B., The Theory of a Natural Afterlife: A Newfound, Real Possibility for What Awaits Us at Death ISSN: 2153-8212 © Bryon K. Ehlman, 2016 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 945 • And finally, those who simply find it difficult, scientifically or philosophically, to believe in any kind of afterlife may find new hope and comfort in the natural afterlife, especially in their dying moments. Given the above, the theory of a natural afterlife can have a huge impact on how individuals view death and hence life (of which dying is a part). The strong possibility that at death one is forever frozen in a dreamlike yet very real, sensually and emotionally intense, heavenly (or hellish) state of mind would seem hard to ignore. Acknowledgements I am grateful to my wife Barbara Ehlmann for proofreading and finding my errors in grammar and word selection. I especially owe much thanks to Donald A. Crosby, Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Colorado State University, for considering my theory early on and giving me the needed confidence in its originality and plausibility that facilitated its full development and then for continuing to review my articles, challenge my assertions, and offer support and advice. References Alexander, E. (2012). Proof of heaven: A neurosurgeon's journey into the afterlife. New York: Simon & Schuster. Barnett, L. (1964). The universe and Dr. Einstein. New York: Signet. Bekoff, M. (2012, December 4). Do animals dream? Science shows of course they do, rats too. Psychology Today. 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Why a near-death experience isn't proof of heaven. Scientific American, 308(4), 86. Retrieved from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-near-death-experience-isnt-proofheaven/ Stone, J. A. (2008). Religious naturalism today: The rebirth of a forgotten alternative. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1-4. Thonnard, M., Charland-Verville, V., Brédart, S., Dehon, H., Dedoux, D., Laureys, S., Vanhaudenhuyse, A. (2013, March 27). Characteristics of near-death experiences memories as compared to real and imagined events memories. PLOS ONE. 8(3) 1–5. Retrieved from http://www.plosone.org/article/authors/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0057620; jsessionid=5A0F931344E579EB81DC2F884B99775B van der Linden, S. (2011, July 26). The science behind dreaming. Scientific American Mind. Retrieved from http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-science-behind-dreaming/ van Lommel, P. (2010). Consciousness beyond life: The science of the near-death experience. New York: Harper One. Zingrone, N. L. & Alvarado, C. S. (2009). Pleasurable western adult near-death experiences: Features, circumstances, and incidence. In J. M. Holden, B. Greyson, & D. James (Eds.), The handbook of near-death experiences: Thirty years of investigation. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger/ABC-CLIO, 1740. Appendix Our Perception of Time: Anesthesia Analogy and Formal Definition Our animalistic perception of time is fundamental to the NEE theory. Understanding it is crucial to understanding the natural afterlife. Previously, to help explain the natural afterlife, an analogy was used-that of falling asleep during a movie. Here, to further help explain it and our perception of time, a better analogy is used-that involving general anesthesia. Perhaps you've experienced this. One moment you're lying on an operating table with a mask over your nose and mouth, someone telling you to breathe in and out deeply. The next thing you know you're surprised to find yourself in a recovery room, perhaps with a loved one beside you. Stuart Hameroff is a professor of anesthesiology and psychology and director for the Center for Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 931-950 Ehlmann, B., The Theory of a Natural Afterlife: A Newfound, Real Possibility for What Awaits Us at Death ISSN: 2153-8212 © Bryon K. Ehlman, 2016 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 948 Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona. After 35 years of administering anesthesia, he states in (Hameroff, 2010b): "It's still incredible that they're awake, they go to sleep, and come back the same person. Where do they go?" He goes on to state that "we can learn a lot about consciousness from anesthesia." And consequently, we can learn a lot about the natural afterlife from anesthesia. Of course, with any afterlife we never "come back." Thus, some have likened the natural afterlife to permanent general anesthesia. This analogy can be helpful towards understanding how a timeperceptive consciousness followed by an everlasting timeless unconsciousness creates the natural afterlife. The analogy, however, offers insight only when analyzed from the perspective of the anesthetized and the dying person. Again, imagine in both cases that this person is you. Your natural afterlife, then, is like being permanently anesthetized for with both: • Your last perceived moment includes an anticipation of more such moments to come. When saying "92" in counting backwards from 100 on the operating table, you fully anticipate within that moment to next be saying "91" in the same room to the same people-even despite knowing that your experience here will soon end in an unconscious state (which you will not know in an NDE). However, unknowingly, you never say "91". • Your mind never gets the message that "you've passed out" (more precisely "passed away" with the natural afterlife). Instead, you merely lose your sense of time. • You never lose your sense of self. You remain "the same person," never having to ask "Who am I?" (likewise with dreaming and dreamless sleep). • You won't experience nothingness, the concept is meaningless. Hameroff states that patients under general anesthesia experience no passage of time. Thus both are timeless and there is simply no time to experience nothingness. • You won't dream. Hameroff states that patients don't dream under general anesthesia (making it an internal state within the Life Unconscious Dreamless state of Fig. 2). Such dreams would create another moment of time replacing the moment last experienced on the operating table, likewise with the natural afterlife last experienced in the NDE. • Your memory, whether taken offline by anesthesia or wiped out by death, is useless and anyway superfluous. Memory fragments need not be accessed since you're not dreaming (Lewis, 2014) and besides, timelessness makes such access purposeless. • Your last perceived moment, on the operating table or in your NDE, is timeless and everlasting since you never wakeup. The lack of dreaming (which is not true with sleeping) makes the permanent anesthesia analogy excellent for understanding the concept of a timeless, forever moment. This concept can be expressed as follows: a moment in time is suspended and perceived as lasting forever, i.e., a forever present, when there's no next moment in time to replace it. Prior to the moment a person awakes from anesthesia, the moment perceived as suspended is the moment just before passing out. And this moment is perceived as lasting forever until the person wakes up or has some type of NDE. No intervening stuff is being perceived by the person, not even nothingness. Robert Lanza, a world renowned scientist and stem cell researcher, defines our sense of time as follows: [T]ime is the inner form of animal sense that animates events-the still frames-of the spatial world. The mind animates the world like the motor and gears of a projector. Each weaves a series of still pictures-a series of spatial states-into an order, into the "current" Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 931-950 Ehlmann, B., The Theory of a Natural Afterlife: A Newfound, Real Possibility for What Awaits Us at Death ISSN: 2153-8212 © Bryon K. Ehlman, 2016 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 949 of life. ... Spatial units are stagnant and there is no "stuff" between the units or frames. (Lanza, 2009, pp. 100, 101) Hameroff (2010a) identifies the "still frames" as "conscious moments" and "snapshots": "Normally we have about 40 conscious moments per second ... each of these seems to be ... a snapshot, a moment of consciousness." The above statements can also be extended to dreaming and NDEs. There is no time and thus no "stuff," not even nothingness, between dreaming frames. And at death, when the "projector" finally breaks down, we may merely be stuck on an "NDE frame"-a timeless "snapshot" capturing not just the visual but every sense, thought, and emotion. Fig. 4 precisely defines the natural afterlife by putting this final NDE moment into the context of a lifetime within time eternal. Fig. 4 can be viewed as a detailed extension to the model of Figs 1, 2, and 3, breaking down life's events into life's moments. Using a formal notation, time eternal is represented by variables, symbols, and just ten equations. Nine of these represent a lifetime. The final NDE moment, when it's the final moment in a lifetime due to death, is represented by the variable mnde in equation 10, repeated below for easy reference. (10) natural-afterlife = NEE = mnde timelessness after-life This mnde encompasses the sense of self and all of the brain-induced sensory perceptions that are present within the NDE at its ending. It also includes the thoughts, beliefs, and emotions formed from past mndes, i.e., NDE moments. One such belief is most likely of a future consistent with the NDE's past and present. Thus, in the mind of the NDEr, the mnde in equation 10 essentially represents the NDE itself. What then follows and transforms the NDE into the NEE and natural afterlife is simply an eternity of imperceptible timelessness, as indicated by equation 10. First, it's the timelessness that is represented by timelessness and occurs in the Severely Failing Brain internal state (Fig. 3) after the NDE ends due to brain deterioration. The first in the equation represents the event end NDE. Then, it's the timelessness that is represented by after-life and occurs in the After-life with NEE state after death (Figs. 1 and 2). The last represents the event death. Relative to the dying person's perception (or, more precisely, lack thereof), the timelessness within the After-life state is no different than that within any other state of mind. More insight into the now formally defined natural afterlife can be gained by returning to the anesthesia analogy. The natural afterlife is not like permanent anesthesia in some very important ways-but again, only from the perspective of you, the dying and the anesthetized person. • First, your NDE is not like the tedium of counting backwards from 100 while people hover over you. Rather, NDEs are often described as more intense than a party drug hallucination and seem to pack a wallop on the people experiencing them, often having a tremendous impact on the rest of their lives. So, the last moment of the NDE surely provides a much sharper "imprint on the mind" than does the last moment of counting backwards. • Second, in your NDE you may firmly believe that "I've arrived" and my future is here. Not so in counting backwards from 100 and believing this monotony will be short-lived. • And finally, with an imperceptible death, you likely feel no grogginess, the going in and out of consciousness, as you may experience in passing out under anesthesia. (You also feel no grogginess in transitioning from dreaming into dreamless sleep.) Thus, there's no hint whatsoever that your NDE is over-which again, relatively speaking, makes your natural afterlife everlasting. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 931-950 Ehlmann, B., The Theory of a Natural Afterlife: A Newfound, Real Possibility for What Awaits Us at Death ISSN: 2153-8212 © Bryon K. Ehlman, 2016 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 950 Fig. 4. Ten equations, representing the NEE notation, that formally define a lifetime and a natural afterlife at the most minute level in the context of time eternal. They extend the model given in Figs. 1 3 by adding life's moments and are defined using a modified Bachus-Naur Form, a notation normally used to define formal languages. The Natural Afterlife in the Context of a Lifetime within Time Eternal Equations (the NEE notation) (1) time-eternal = before-life life after-life (2) life = timelessness [ ( E timelessness ) ... ] (3) E = Er | Ed | Ende (4) Er = er ... (5) Ed = ed ... (6) Ende = ende ... (7) er = mr ... (8) ed = md ... (9) ende = mnde ... (10) natural-afterlife = NEE = mnde timelessness after-life Explanations (1) The variable time-eternal is (represents) all of time-past, present, and future. before-life is the span of time before a person's lifetime, timeless relative to the person. life is a person's lifetime. after-life is the time span after this lifetime, here presumably timeless relative to the person. A represents the appropriate state changing event as described in Figs. 1-3. The equation states that time-eternal is (equal to) before-life followed by (here birth) followed by life followed by (here death) followed by after-life. (2) E is a sequence of perceived events, which define a span of time, in a time-perceptive state of mind, e.g., Life Unconscious Dreaming in Fig. 2. timelessness is a time span when a person is in a timeless state of mind, e.g., Life Unconscious Dreamless in Fig. 2. [ ]'s mean that what's inside may (or may not) follow. A ... means what's given just prior-one item or many items grouped within ( )'s, e.g., E timelessness-may be repeated one or more times. (3) Er is a sequence of real events. Ed is a sequence of dream events. Ende is a sequence of NDE events, the boldness indicating heightened intensity. A | means "or." An Ende that does not occur near death is extremely rare. (4) er is a real event. (5) ed is a dream event. (6) ende is an NDE event. (7) mr is a real moment. (8) md is a dream moment. (9) mnde is an NDE moment. These moments are the "still frames" or conscious moments described by Hammeroff (2010a) and Lanza (2009). A perceived event unfolds (i.e., time marches on and life is experienced) over the span of one or more such moments. (10) Given equations 1-9, natural-afterlife is an NEE, which is mnde timelessness after-life. (md timelessness after-life may also result in an NEE but hasn't been |'ed onto the equation.) The timelessness here occurs in the Severely Failing Brain state shown in Fig. 3. The first and last s represent the imperceptible events end NDE and death, respectively. Example: A person wakes up, falls asleep (in time), dreams, dream ends, wakes up, passes out, has heart failure, has NDE, NDE ends, and dies with an NEE as shown below. tln abbreviates timelessness. ... tlnmr mr ... mrtlnmd md ... mdtlnmr mr ... mrtlntlnmnde mnde ... mndetlnafter-life ← NEE → Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 951-968 Pereira, C. & Shashi Kiran Reddy, J., Near-Death Cases Desegregating Non-Locality/Disembodiment via Quantum Mediated Consciousness: An Extended Version of the Cell-Soul Pathwa ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 951 Research Essay Near-Death Cases Desegregating Non-Locality/Disembodiment via Quantum Mediated Consciousness: An Extended Version of the Cell-Soul Pathway Contzen Pereira* & J Shashi Kiran Reddy Abstract The word soul in the cell-soul pathway does not have a scientific definition but has been hypothesized to be an indefinite, non-structured, massless energy made up of electromagnetic radiations that is confined in the cytoskeletal network of a living cell. It is a coherent, imperceptible, uncontainable and recyclable support pathway, which uses energy to promulgate consciousness in the cell supporting its functions (Pereira 2015). The pathway currently provides a mechanistic explanation of the flow of consciousness within the body, but the intent of this paper is to provide an arduous explanation of non-local consciousness or disembodiment observed in near-death experiences. The paper hypothetically subsets the cell-soul pathway with the presence of two forms of consciousness, consistent with a recently developed model by Reddy (2016b): bodily consciousness, which manages functions only at cellular level, and functional consciousness, which is present in the body but can get disembodied and perform non-locally; the two forms of consciousness represent the overall state of consciousness. The non-locality of subjective experiences observed in near-death cases can be related to the realm of quantum physics – quantum entanglement between the two forms of consciousness that can demonstrate the capability of storing information holographically within the void or vacuum with the ability to create memories beyond the limitations of the brain and body. Key Words: Cell-Soul Pathway, Consciousness, Entanglement, Near-Death, Experience, Disembodiment, Zero Point Field * Corresponding Author: Contzen Pereira, Nandadeep, Chakala, Andheri (East), Mumbai 400 099, India. Email: [email protected], [email protected] Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 951-968 Pereira, C. & Shashi Kiran Reddy, J., Near-Death Cases Desegregating Non-Locality/Disembodiment via Quantum Mediated Consciousness: An Extended Version of the Cell-Soul Pathwa ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 952 Introduction Consciousness is an enthralling topic in the field of science and various disciplines, but being conscious minus a body when clinically dead is abstruse to apprehend and recognize. Several near-death cases have been recorded and studied. In many cases the individual is conscious outside the body with a capacity to conceive and store memories when clinically dead and can recount these experiences when resuscitated. Non-local consciousness has been defined as a state, where consciousness occurs beyond the physical boundary of the body (Van Lommel 2013), otherwise known as disembodiment. Consciousness in this view is divided into two forms, wherein one form remains identified with the body while the other can be non-material aspect; when the body loosens the other form takes up the task and therefore resulting in retention of memory of a subjective experience. Disembodiment is an ambiguous term rarely accepted in the scientific community but commonly defined as, "A soul, spirit, or consciousness that has been disembodied, or which lacks a physical form" (in Wiktionary). It is therefore an immaterial state, most often invisible to others, so it is ignored by science and only accepted in philosophy as ontological dualism, religious or otherwise. Descartes called the immaterial aspect of consciousness res cogitans – in other words, mind, soul or spirit, in which form it correlates with near-death, out-of-body and end-of-life experiences. Studies conducted by Dr. Sam Parnia and group (2001, 2002, 2014), Dr. Pim van Lommel and group (2001, 2014), Dr. Kenneth Ring and group (1999, 2001, 2006) and Dr. Janice Holden (2009) have provided significant evidence of survival of consciousness after death and has been presented in the form of several near-death cases. Dr. Sam Parnia and group have confirmed that approximately 9% of adults have a near death experience after a cardiac arrest (Parnia et al. 2014). Von Lommel and group (2001) claimed this number to be 18% while IANDS (International Association for Near-Death studies) published that approximately 85% of children have near-death experiences (Long & Holden 2007; Holden 2009). Dr. Bruce Greyson, a well know researcher in near-death studies, has the following opinion about near-death studies: "Our mind-brain identity model works fine for everyday walking and talking, but when you're looking at times when the brain is not functioning and the mind seems to function quite well, you get into that extreme area where we need to look at some other models" (as cited in MacIssac 2015). Near-death and out-of-body experiences have been termed absurd by some and hallucinatory or illusory by others (e.g., Mobbs & Watt 2011). Recently, respected philosopher and Buddhist, Evan Thompson (2015), contended such experiences are scientifically unproven so must be considered dreams of the brain. Near-death experiences have some common facets which involve a feeling of peace and tranquillity, a sensation of floating through a tunnel towards a bright light while undergoing a complete life review, etc. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 951-968 Pereira, C. & Shashi Kiran Reddy, J., Near-Death Cases Desegregating Non-Locality/Disembodiment via Quantum Mediated Consciousness: An Extended Version of the Cell-Soul Pathwa ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 953 Sometimes near-death experiences can be horrific, caused by unpleasant feelings of fear or panic which may or may not be associated with a life review (Blanke & Dieguez 2009). These common features in near-death experiences have been challenged by sceptics, who claim these features to be caused in the brain by factors such as, anoxia or hypercarbia in the dying brain, insufficient administration of general anaesthesia, release of endorphins in brain during stress, high level of serotonin, resident brain electrical activity, administration of painkillers, etc. (Blackmore 1993; Blackmore 1998; Carr 1981, 1982; Judson & Wiltshaw 1983; Morse et al. 1989). Most of these claims by the sceptics have been ruled out by critics, but there are some of them that are still under evaluation (Parnia et al. 2001; Shulman et al. 2003; White & Alkire, 2003;). During cardiac arrests, the brain is presumably dead and both human and animal studies have provided extensive supporting data on cerebral physiology during and after cardiac arrest (Parnia & Fenwick, 2002). However, as Thompson (2015) and others have noted, brains completely without measurable activity during a cardiac arrest when the NDE presumably is occurring have never been observed under clinical conditions, so it is possible brains continue less visible activity at the crucial time. The cell-soul pathway is a hypothetical pathway and has been defined as a coherent, imperceptible, uncontainable and recyclable support pathway, which uses electromagnetic energy in the form of photons to promulgate consciousness in a living cell. (See Fig. 1, from Pereira 2015). The pathway is currently limited to the propagation and functioning of consciousness within the microtubular network of the cell, but with further backing from a quantum physics perspective, an attempt is made to understand and justify non-local consciousness or the state of conscious disembodiment, as well as its vivaciousness and richness through the experiences observed in some exceptional near-death cases. How is it possible for a conscious essence to exist without a physical host? To avoid the purely religious explanations of a separable soul or spirit, we offer our research into quantum mediated consciousness: an extended version of the cell-soul pathway. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 951-968 Pereira, C. & Shashi Kiran Reddy, J., Near-Death Cases Desegregating Non-Locality/Disembodiment via Quantum Mediated Consciousness: An Extended Version of the Cell-Soul Pathwa ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 954 Figure 1. The Schematic Representation of the Cell-Soul Pathway (Pereira 2015) Intriguing Experiences in Near-Death Cases Supporting Disembodiment or Non-Locality of Consciousness Cardiac arrest patients are one of the most studied cases with regards to near-death and out of body. When resuscitated, patients provide a narration of their experience. The fullness associated with the experience implies that during a near death experience the nonlocal conscious component or disembodied conscious state leaves the body, but remains in the resuscitation room or in close proximity to the body. Many of these characteristics can be verified by doctors and independent researchers after patients return to their bodies to tell their experience. The capacity of being out of the body and simultaneously being conscious in a near-death state has never been accepted by the scientific community and Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 951-968 Pereira, C. & Shashi Kiran Reddy, J., Near-Death Cases Desegregating Non-Locality/Disembodiment via Quantum Mediated Consciousness: An Extended Version of the Cell-Soul Pathwa ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 955 has often been categorized and disregarded by sceptics as a neuro-psychological state associated with the dying brain (cf. Blackmore 1998). Several near-death cases have demonstrated this phenomenal state of being disembodied, but there are a few cases that stand-out from the regular cases and thus pose a challenge to the scientific community. The case studies presented in this paper are exceptional near-death cases that provide a substantiation of the existence and rationalized approach of consenting non-local consciousness. The case studies presented here are not proven beyond all doubt as they have been criticized for various reasons by several sceptics, yet they still support the idea of non-local consciousness and disembodiment. The first case is of Kimberly Clark (e.g., Rivas 2015; Sharp 2007) who had an experience that changed her life and her belief in the existence of consciousness after death. One morning, as part of her daily work schedule at the Harbour View hospital, she was working with a team of doctors who were trying to save a woman who had been bought to the intensive care ward as she was suffering a massive heart attack. As the doctors tried to save the woman, her heart stopped several minutes; she was clinically dead for those few minutes and it was a miracle that the doctors could bring her back. When the woman calmed down she explained to Kim, that during her resuscitation she had found herself at the ceiling level and could accurately point at the corner of the room from where she was observing her own resuscitation. But this was not all; she had also felt herself three storeys above the ground from where she could see a tennis shoe sitting on a ledge. The tennis shoe was dark blue, worn with a scruff by the little toe and the lace going under the shoe heel; she felt agitated because she wanted someone to get the shoe. When Kim checked the ledge of the patient's window there was no shoe, but when a through search of all the ledges in the hospital was conducted, on the opposite side of the hospital on a different floor, in a room with a window facing to the west there was a tennis shoe on the ledge with the same description that had been provided by the woman. Kim could not believe her eyes as she opened the window and reached down and picked up the shoe which bore the scruff on the opposite side. There were no other buildings on that side of the hospital and the details of this shoe as described by the woman could definitely not have been seen from the ground or from anywhere inside the hospital. To add to that, it was the first time that this woman had ever visited this hospital. To know that a shoe is lying on the ledge with its nearly perfect description, she should have either seen the shoe before the operation or she should have been there in the same room much before the operation, as there was no possibility of viewing the shoe from an opposite building. Then how did she see this shoe and experience its pattern and colour especially during a situation when she was dead? Hovering above her body and viewing the shoe from three storeys high was possible only if she was suspended from that height or if she was flying. This case clearly reveals a state of Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 951-968 Pereira, C. & Shashi Kiran Reddy, J., Near-Death Cases Desegregating Non-Locality/Disembodiment via Quantum Mediated Consciousness: An Extended Version of the Cell-Soul Pathwa ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 956 disembodiment, where the individual could move out of the body, rise up to a level of three storeys and observe a shoe placed on a ledge with a scruff on the side not facing the window (see Rivas 2015; Sharp 2007). Under no circumstances, can this experience can be considered as a dream or hallucination, as the shoe that was described by the woman was found later on the ledge with the same features. In this disembodied state the woman was conscious, as she was aware of her surroundings where she could even describe the colours and texture of the shoe. There seems to prove that there is a form of consciousness that can be non-localized in a situation like death, which is evident in this experience. The fact that this form of consciousness can become re-localized in the body (return to the body) proves that even when disembodied, it is still connected in some form to the body and can enter back into the body with memories that were created in the disembodied state. Another interesting case study is of Vicki Noratuk, who has been blind from birth and was terribly injured in a car crash (Stroganoff 2010; Ring & Valarino 2006). She had a skull fracture, concussion, neck injury, back injury, leg injury and, worse, her heart stopped rendering her clinically dead for approximately 4 minutes. At that very moment she felt her back against the ceiling and she kept looking at everything that was happening on the hospital table. She even heard a doctor say that it was unfortunate that she would now also be deaf along with being blind, because there was blood on her left ear drum. She even recollected one of the lady doctors mentioning that even if she survived this coma she would be in a vegetative state. As she fought for her life something extraordinary was happening – she could see for the first time in her life, but she felt was a nightmare, as she had never before perceived anything beyond the reach of touch. The blind usually touch things to feel them; therefore, this woman's world was always at an arm's length. This frightened her as she could now perceive things through sight that were beyond reach.. In this state she could see her left hand and the ring on her left finger; she even felt her shortened hair that had been shaved off; she was conscious without her body which lay on the operation table. She had never dreamed in visual images, but now she was actually experiencing them She could not differentiate between the colours that she was seeing for the first time and considered them different intensities of light. She survived and returned to her world of darkness yet she has no doubt that for just a few minutes she could see. This case study strongly supports the state of conscious disembodiment – a woman who was blind from birth could see and experience in full consciousness and in her disembodied state could create and retain memories that could be narrated once she was back into her body. Experiencing her senses in such a state must be overwhelming, but it provides us with an explanation that the senses can be experienced even in a disembodied state and by some means get transmitted to the sense organs of the body, which is in a state of suspended animation while being refurbished. Being conscious in a disembodied state confirms the non-locality of consciousness which differs from the grounded state of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 951-968 Pereira, C. & Shashi Kiran Reddy, J., Near-Death Cases Desegregating Non-Locality/Disembodiment via Quantum Mediated Consciousness: An Extended Version of the Cell-Soul Pathwa ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 957 Many such cases have been reported in blind subjects and none of the explanations or models proposed to explain them provides an in-depth understanding of such phenomenon. To explain such happenings in the blind, Ring and Cooper (1999) coined the term mindsight and sees it as a form of transcendental knowing often reported by both blind and sighted during extrasensory or out-of-body experiences (cf. French, 2005; Ring, 2001; Ring & Cooper, 1999). The next case study is of 55 year old truck driver, Al Sullivan, who was undergoing a triple by-pass surgery (Kelly et al. 1999; Sullivan, 2013). This was the first time he had met his cardio-vascular surgeon on the operating table. As the anaesthesia took effect the surgeon introduced himself and kept explaining the whole operation procedure which involved removing his veins from the leg and the arteries from chest wall in order to perform the planned 4-5 bypasses. Suddenly, he felt that he did not have to listen to the surgeon anymore, as he was no longer in his body and did not need his ears to listen, for he had left his body and could watch the whole procedure from above. He saw the team covering his eyes with tape and placing all sorts of drapes and blankets around him, with the surgeon and his team getting ready to operate on him. Hovering above his body he saw his surgeon standing alone over his opened chest, which was being held open by metal clamps while two other surgeons were working over his leg. He recalls being puzzled at the time about why they were working on his leg when the problem was with his heart, but he now knows that at this point in the surgery the surgeons were stripping the vein out of his leg to create the bypass graft for his heart. At one point he observed the surgeon take a step back, place his arms near his armpits and move his folded hands in an unusual manner that looked as if he was flapping his arms. This was later confirmed by the surgeon and his team: when the surgeon was not operating he had a habit of placing his hands close to his chest and point with his elbow to prevent contaminating his hands. He could not have known this peculiar behaviour of his surgeon unless he was conscious in the room or someone would have told him that way before the operation, which was next to impossible. When he came back to his body after the surgery was over, the surgeon was startled that he could describe his own arm flapping, which was his idiosyncratic method of keeping his hands sterile. This case confirms that in a disembodied conscious state the individual can experience his surroundings as if he were in his conscious body. The connection between the body and the disembodied conscious state seems to be so enduring that it can create and store these memories, which can be revived once consciousness re-enters into the body. Observing the operation, providing details about the procedure and observing the behaviour of his surgeon could not have been possible when his eyes were taped and he was in a state of unconsciousness. During a near-death experience the brain is apparently inactive and there seems to be no activity in the vision centre of the brain (Parnia & Fenwick, 2002), so how Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 951-968 Pereira, C. & Shashi Kiran Reddy, J., Near-Death Cases Desegregating Non-Locality/Disembodiment via Quantum Mediated Consciousness: An Extended Version of the Cell-Soul Pathwa ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 958 can memories be created without the presence of active brain in a body? How is the individual conscious, when clinically dead? There should be a mechanism that creates these memories within the realms of the world that lay beyond the imagination of oneself. The above cases strongly support the possibility of a disembodied state during a near death experience, but we also need a more physical-mechanical explanation of how this is possible. It is a difficult task to prove the existence of the experience as well as the mechanism that made it possible, but it can be hypothesised. The next section attempts to understand and provide an explanation to this form of conscious state from the perspective of a hypothesised pathway known as the cell-soul pathway (see Fig. 1 above, Pereira 2015), which we feel indicates the flow of consciousness within the body. The existence of a conscious state other than the body and its interaction with the circulating consciousness within the cellular network of the cells in the body as described by the cell-soul pathway could provide a convincing explanation of non-locality of consciousness. The Extended version of the Cell-Soul Pathway The word soul in the cell-soul pathway does not have a scientific definition but has been hypothesized to be an indefinite, non-structured, massless energy made up of electromagnetic radiations that is confined in the cytoskeletal network of the biological cell. The cell-soul pathway is a hypothetical pathway that helps in the propagation of consciousness to support the functioning of the body at the level of a biological cell by means of immeasurable assortment of photons of different frequencies and wavelengths within the cytoskeletal network of a single cell (Pereira 2015). Consciousness propagated by this pathway is a form of consciousness which we now propose as "bodily consciousness". Bodily consciousness is circulated within the cell and the cells of the body and together keeps the cells and the bodily functions going (see Fig. 2). This form of consciousness is involuntary and is dependent on the individual cells and their individual consciousness. Aging, malfunctioning, sudden death or damage of cells and cellular function can impair the flow of bodily consciousness which may or may not result in death but brings about a change in the overall consciousness of the body. Bodily consciousness is propagated by means of photons and has been well explained by the cell-soul pathway which involves trapping and circulation of electromagnetic radiation that prevails in the universe resulting in the formation of consciousness that wholly depends on the organization of matter that makes up the cell, its components and biochemical systems (see Fig. 1, Pereira 2015). Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 951-968 Pereira, C. & Shashi Kiran Reddy, J., Near-Death Cases Desegregating Non-Locality/Disembodiment via Quantum Mediated Consciousness: An Extended Version of the Cell-Soul Pathwa ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 959 Figure 2. The Schematic Representation of the Extended Cell-Soul Pathway (Embodied State) Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 951-968 Pereira, C. & Shashi Kiran Reddy, J., Near-Death Cases Desegregating Non-Locality/Disembodiment via Quantum Mediated Consciousness: An Extended Version of the Cell-Soul Pathwa ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 960 Figure 3. The Schematic Representation of the Extended Cell-Soul Pathway (Disembodied State) In order to support the non-local consciousness that is effective during near-death experiences we propose the presence of another form of consciousness that exists within the body along with the bodily consciousness. As part of the extension to the cell-soul pathway we call this form of consciousness the "functional consciousness", which originates and terminates by means of the same process as that of the cell-soul pathway (Fig 2). The functional form of consciousness immediately detaches from the body during death and is likely the main cause for the non-local conscious experiences during a near-death experience (Fig. 3). This form of consciousness can also support the conscious states observed in rapid eye movement sleep or end-of-life experiences, but we would need further sources of information to claim it exists after actual death, so such explorations are beyond the scope of this paper (and any conceivable paper at this time). The bodily and functional forms of consciousness together form the overall state of consciousness of a body and therefore support this unique and untouched pathway that has been prevailing since life came into existence that maintains obedience in its interaction with various cellular, bodily and out-of-body functions. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 951-968 Pereira, C. & Shashi Kiran Reddy, J., Near-Death Cases Desegregating Non-Locality/Disembodiment via Quantum Mediated Consciousness: An Extended Version of the Cell-Soul Pathwa ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 961 Photons play an important role in the cell-soul pathway. Gradual release of photons has been demonstrated in dying biological cells that shows a rapid increase in ultra-weak emission, an activity termed the "flash of death" (Reddy 2016a; Slawinski 2005). Biophotons are known to show increased intensity when they undergo physiological changes under chemical or physical stress (Slawinski 1990) or when the cells get damaged beyond repair (Reddy 2016a; Scheminzký 1916) indicating increased absorption of electromagnetic radiation leading to amplified cell-soul pathway activity under cellular stress. A breach in the cellular process or clinical death as observed in cardiac arrest patients can lead to an obstruction in the flow of bodily consciousness via the cell-soul pathway which may recover by increased absorption of electromagnetic radiation or photons from the environment, but until then the functional form of consciousness may remain dissociated but conscious. If this exchange or recovery is not swift, it may lead to cell death, which will result in a gradual release of the bodily consciousness from each and every dying cell and a complete severance of the functional consciousness from the body. In a near-death experience, the functional consciousness resides outside the body and seems to be an exploratory state but stays connected to the body. At this moment the functional consciousness is fully aware as even though it is out of the body it still stays connected to the body. The connection of the functional consciousness to the body can be better explained by quantum entanglement, wherein the photons of the functional form of consciousness are entangled to the photons of the bodily form of consciousness that resides with the body This entanglement which is better explained in the next section sustains until the body is in a state of return, where each damaged cell of the body tries to revive the rhythmic biochemical cycles that manage the cellular process within each cell from the exterior. The cell soul-pathway supports several conscious roles in cell functions, including cell proliferation and differentiation, apoptosis, DNA synthesis, RNA transcription, protein expression, ATP synthesis and metabolic activity and the overall consciousness of the body. The pathway is an ultra-fast networking pathway in gigahertz, megahertz and kilohertz frequencies and is required for the propagation and integration of both forms of consciousness (Pereira 2015). The disembodied or the non-local form of experience in the near-death cases is conscious or aware to a level that memories can be created and stored and later recalled and narrated is supported by the ultra-fast processing of the cell-soul pathway. Bokkon and team (Bokkon et al 2013). have already provided a biophysical visual representational model to show the involvement of low-energy quantum entanglements during near-death experiences. Whether these processes are conducted within the bodily consciousness or the functional consciousness is difficult to answer, but the exuberance or richness of the experiences are similar to those created in a state of deep dream or meditative consciousness. Despite of the existence of the various forms of consciousness, consciousness functions as a whole unit Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 951-968 Pereira, C. & Shashi Kiran Reddy, J., Near-Death Cases Desegregating Non-Locality/Disembodiment via Quantum Mediated Consciousness: An Extended Version of the Cell-Soul Pathwa ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 962 when it comes to an experience. The working of the senses in a non-local or disembodied state supports the hypothesis that the body though technically (no blood circulation) dead is still conducting consciousness externally by means of the cell-soul pathway; awaiting an assurance of the death or return to life of the body. Consciousness is therefore an indefinite form of energy that propagates via the cell-soul pathway and in the process creates experiences within and outside the body. During a neardeath case, the bodily consciousness is in a process of recovering with the recovery of the body and its cellular functions, but the functional consciousness can experience the whole recovery process of the body and therefore is more interested in the resuscitation process. Quantum entangled states of consciousness Self-sustaining quantum generated energy through entanglement is the answer to all mystical realties and the answer lies in believing in its existence in and around us (Pereira & Harter 2015). Based on our extended hypotheses, it is now well established that the cellsoul pathway supports two forms of consciousness, functional consciousness and bodily consciousness. These forms of consciousness have the same source of energy supply; the electromagnetic radiation that manages the cell and its functions thus supporting the bodily form of consciousness which interim creates the functional form of consciousness (Fig. 2). The way of life in living systems, is trapping of electromagnetic radiation energy, its conversion into chemical energy and its use for cellular maintenance and growth (Overmann & Garcia-Pichel 2006) which is the basis of the energy flow system for this pathway. The Planck postulate, which describes how all matter absorbs and re-emits photons, i.e., quanta of energy, from and into the quantum foam of the zero-point field that pervades all matter and even the vacuum of space (Haisch et al. 1997). Normally these emissions are random exchanges of energy between particles and the zero-point field but in living tissue have been shown to exhibit quantum coherence and also carry information non-locally i.e. instantaneous transmission of information across space and time (Darling 2005). Physicists have experimentally demonstrated the entanglement of two particles no matter how far apart they are (even a billion miles apart, in theory), so a change in one particle instantly creates a simultaneous change in the other as if they were connected or in some way the same particle. This phenomenon is called quantum entanglement which Einstein dismissed as "spooky actions from a distance" and is suggestive of an underlying reality that physicists have not yet been able to explain although there are many theories. A biological cell demonstrates consciousness built by the quantum principles of entanglement, coherence and non-locality as explained by the cell-soul pathway (Pereira 2015) and its extended version. There is a vice versa interaction between the functional and bodily forms of consciousness which supports consciousness outside and inside the body (Fig. 3). Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 951-968 Pereira, C. & Shashi Kiran Reddy, J., Near-Death Cases Desegregating Non-Locality/Disembodiment via Quantum Mediated Consciousness: An Extended Version of the Cell-Soul Pathwa ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 963 Quantum entanglement is a unique property in quantum physics that best describes the mysterious behaviours that take place at a quantum level with its effects observed at a macroscopic level (Peres 1993). When two particles are entangled, they behave as one and not as two separate particles, so what happens in the quantum world is completely different from what we perceive in the macroscopic world, and this also holds true for the world of quantum biology. In an entangled state of photons there will be a constant exchange of energy between these particles which interacts with one another resulting in information gathering. Hameroff and Chopra (2012) suggest that quantum entanglement of low-energy particles could interact even outside the body suggesting a near-death experience; therefore the existence of a quantum soul. According to physicist Fred Alan Wolf (1994), near-death experiences can be explained using a holographic model in which death is merely a shifting of a person's consciousness from one dimension of the hologram to another. Based on the cell-soul pathway hypothesis, it can be further hypothesised that the information creation, gathering and transfer during a near-death experience or in a state of disembodiment, may occur as a result of quantum entanglement of the photons present between the two states of consciousness resulting in a photon cloud that acts as a holographic image processor (Fig. 3). The cloud of energised photons is therefore in a constant state of exchanging energy with the cosmos with an ability to retain memory through holographic processing to teleport consciousness outside the body. Creating a hologram of a single photon was believed to be impossible due to the fundamental laws of physics. However, scientists at the Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw, have successfully applied concepts of classical holography to the world of quantum phenomena (Chrapkiewicz et al. 2016). A new measurement technique has enabled them to register the first-ever hologram of a single light particle, thereby shedding new light on the foundations of quantum mechanics. This experiment is a major step toward improving the understanding of the fundamental principles of quantum mechanics and supports the hypothesis of creation of memories beyond the limits of the body. In quantum theory, the zero-point field (ZPF) is a quantum vacuum state or void which generally contains nothing but electromagnetic waves and infinitesimal particles popping into and out of existence (Caligiuri & Musha 2015). The cell-soul pathway along with the forms of consciousness functioning within the zero-point field supports the entanglement that occurs during a near-death experience, wherein the entangled photons of the two forms of consciousness result in creation of memories of their experiences by means of the holographic principle. Marcer and group had hypothesised the existence of a holographic memory and holographic image that is stored in the zero-point field (Marcer & Schempp 1997). The information, its storage and its access is nature's information transfer mechanism and has been explained by the quantum hologram concept laid down by Mitchell and Staretz (2011) and others. The quantum hologram and its information is Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 951-968 Pereira, C. & Shashi Kiran Reddy, J., Near-Death Cases Desegregating Non-Locality/Disembodiment via Quantum Mediated Consciousness: An Extended Version of the Cell-Soul Pathwa ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 964 therefore contained in the amplitude, frequencies and the relationships with the phases and their interference patterns of the photons emitted and absorbed in the four dimensional space/time reality. A zero-point field of the universe is supportive of the holographic principle where consciousness and memories are not localized in the body but are distributed within the conscious disembodied state. The discovery of an electromagnetic zero-point field lends credibility to the possibility of having vast memory storage capabilities outside of the physical body and supports the functioning of the functional consciousness during a neardeath experience. Phenomena such as these can be best understood if the zero point fields can be tapped as a storage location for information and energy which can be accessed at any time. The zero-point field is ubiquitous, nonlocal, cannot be attenuated, lasts indefinitely with no loss of coherence and can store unlimited information processed nonlocally as a quantum holographic processor (Mitchell 2016), which is an ideal location to process information non-locally during a near-death experience. When the disembodied state or functional consciousness restores back to the body or rather merges with the bodily state of consciousness, the memories stored within the holographic field created during this process can be revived by the body and appears as vivid as it would be in a fully functional conscious body. Conclusions Non-local consciousness or disembodiment is a unique characteristic state observed in neardeath experiences, where an individual is conscious in that state and generates memories that are rich and vivid to be remembered when back into the body. The extended version of the cell-soul pathway explains this feature from a point of quantum entanglement within the zero-point field where the photons within the functional form of consciousness are connected to the bodily form of consciousness resulting in an energy exchange. The nonlocalized subjective experience in an near-death experience has therefore been hypothesised to be a characteristic within the limits of quantum physics; quantum entanglement a property that can demonstrate the capability of storing information holographically within the void or vacuum with the ability to create memories beyond the limitations of the brain and body, thus supporting the state of conscious disembodiment or non-locality. Finally, I do not believe that functional or disembodied consciousness survives after death (not near-death), the End-of-Life situation. Consciousness of any form converts its self to simple energy (cosmic energy) and is returned back to where it belongs, supporting the first law of thermodynamics. In accordance to the second law, the entropic change is managed by the retention of a holographically created memory of the mind within the matrix of this cosmic energy. This hologram can be reactivated if tapped by an individual who has learned Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 951-968 Pereira, C. & Shashi Kiran Reddy, J., Near-Death Cases Desegregating Non-Locality/Disembodiment via Quantum Mediated Consciousness: An Extended Version of the Cell-Soul Pathwa ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 965 the art of interacting with cosmic energy, in a good way or a bad way. These individuals (shamans, mediums, channelers, etc.) can utilize their functional consciousness to intermingle with the holograms of specific individuals. In a dying situation, the functional consciousness exists in the same state and therefore taps into the cosmic energy and starts seeking the memories of its loved ones, etc. Consciousness stays so long as the body stays; this condition is supported by quantum entanglement. 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Kimberly Clark Sharp – Maria's Tennis Shoe (Near-Death Experience). Online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1ikGgzHITg Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 951-968 Pereira, C. & Shashi Kiran Reddy, J., Near-Death Cases Desegregating Non-Locality/Disembodiment via Quantum Mediated Consciousness: An Extended Version of the Cell-Soul Pathwa ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 968 Scheminzký F. (1916). Photographischer Nachweis von Emanationen bei Biochemischen Prozessen. Biochemische Zeitschrift 77: 13-16 Sharp KC. (2007). The other shoe drops: Commentary on ''Does paranormal perception occur in near-death experiences?'' Journal of Near-Death Studies, 25: 245–250. Shulman RG, Hyder F., & Rothman DL. (2003). Cerebral metabolism and consciousness. Comptes Rendus Biology, 326 (3):253-73. Slawinski J. (1990). 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Impaired thalamocortical connectivity in humans during general-anesthetic-induced unconsciousness. NeuroImage, 19(2 Pt 1): 402-11. Wolf FA. (1994). The Dreaming Universe: A Mind-Expanding Journey Into the Realm Where Psyche and Physics Meet. New York: Simon & Schuster. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 969-991 Pregnolato, M., & Pereira Jr., A., On the Possible Existence of Quantum Consciousness After Brain Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 969 Research Essay On the Possible Existence of Quantum Consciousness After Brain Death Massimo Pregnolato* & Alfredo Pereira Jr.† Abstract: One of the main clinical signs of irreversible human death is the flat EEG. It means that in this condition neurons do not generate action potentials, and therefore cannot control body movement and vital physiological functions. However, after brain death, the rate of destruction of cerebral and other cells is different in the several body districts. We consider at least two approaches to the physical correlates of quantum consciousness in that condition. The first one is related to quantum effects in proteins, which can maintain unchanged their folding and water environment in several cells after brain death. The second one considers a part of conscious activity related to the formation of potentials in electrolyte systems containing water, ions and proteins, which can maintain charges (difference of potentials) after brain death. In the first approach the Schrödinger proteins can be considered the basis of quantum information; therefore, quantum consciousness may remain until the last folded protein exists in the body. In the second approach, since the flat EEG comes from a disturbance in the flux of some ions (mostly Na+ and K+, affecting neuronal firing), but not necessarily other ions (mostly Ca2+ in glial cells), which may still maintain a low entropy distribution, some instantiation of feelings and other conscious phenomena would take place until the system achieves a Gaussian ionic distribution, in which any functional charge is absent. On these bases, we argue for the possibility of fading quantum consciousness aspects after brain death. This claim deserves more thorough investigations, not only for its scientific boldness, but also because of the legal consequences that could be of considerable interest in a not too far future, when taking into consideration the aims of transhumanism. Key Words: Brain Death, Quantum Consciousness, Proteins, Ions, Transhumanism. * Correspondence: Massimo Pregnolato, Quantumbiolab, Department of Drug Sciences, University of Pavia, Lombardy, Italy. Email: [email protected] † Correspondence: Alfredo Pereira Jr., Institute of Biosciences, São Paulo State University (UNESP), Botucatu-SP, Brazil; E-Mail: [email protected] Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 969-991 Pregnolato, M., & Pereira Jr., A., On the Possible Existence of Quantum Consciousness After Brain Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 970 Introduction We start by noting that the concepts of brain death and death are not synonymous. Brain death, as discussed with more detail in the next section of the paper, refers to the absence of neuronal action potentials, as revealed physiologically by the "flat EEG" and behaviorally by the absence of voluntary movement. Our claim in this paper is that some modality of consciousness is possible in the absence of action potentials and voluntary movement, while other vital activities remain in the brain/body of a person. After brain death, there is a degenerative process that (in our current biomedical technological capabilities) irreversibly leads to the complete death of the body. The latter is here understood as the death of every cell, or, in other words, the complete absence of metabolism in the disintegrating body. It is very unlikely that in this condition any aspect of consciousness could remain, at least if we do not assume a dualist view of consciousness as being completely independent of the living body. In this paper we will not discuss the metaphysical mind-body problem, but focus on the possibility of the existence of a quantum-based aspect of consciousness in a phase that begins soon after brain death while some cells and tissues of the body still present metabolic activity, keeping proteins and ionic solutions in functional states. In this kind of state, the system may still be conscious, but unable to express the conscious states behaviorally. This phase raises an ethical issue about how to treat people in this condition. For instance, it does not seem completely implausible that during the cremation the quantum consciousness of a recently brain-dead person would record that experience literally like being in hell. This condition would cause her extreme suffering that could be avoided if she is kept safe for some time after brain death, as practiced in some cultures. The Concepts of Death and Brain Death In the biomedical context, death is conceived as "the irreversible cessation of cardiopulmonary or neurological function" (Kirkpatrick, Beasley, & Caplan, 2010). The problem with this definition is that it focuses on the outcome of the process (the body Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 969-991 Pregnolato, M., & Pereira Jr., A., On the Possible Existence of Quantum Consciousness After Brain Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 971 becomes dead), but does not identify the phases that lead to the result. Noting the phases, brain death is conceived, by the same authors, as "the irreversible loss of the brain's ability to regulate the organism". This condition "signals death, even if constituent parts can continue to function independently or with assistance". The question that emerges from these concepts is: what happens to the system while it is signaling death, but is not (completely) dead yet? In order to answer this question, it is necessary to discuss brain physiology and our technology to measure and register it. The electroencephalogram is a century-old technology to measure brain activity and afford our interpretations of the inner state of the brain/mind. Bioelectric activity – as measured by the EEG – depends on electromagnetic fields produced by a class of coherent ionic movements. The absence of such movements, or their reciprocal cancellation (as in thermodynamic equilibrium) produces a flat EEG (Figure 1). There are other functional ionic movements and resulting bioelectric fields, as well as protein activities, which may continue to exist in the brain/mind system of a person, while her EEG is flat. Figure 1 Comparison of a normal and a flat EEG. A: Normal; B: Flat EEG (Adapted from Sereinigg, 2012). There are well known mechanisms that can produce a flat EEG while billions of brain cells are still alive. For instance, astrocytes control the homeostasis of extracellular Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 969-991 Pregnolato, M., & Pereira Jr., A., On the Possible Existence of Quantum Consciousness After Brain Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 972 potassium ions. An astroglial dysfunction may cause an abnormal increase of extracellular potassium concentration, and then, neuronal repolarization, a necessary phase in the generation of action potentials (Figure 2), cannot occur. In this condition, neurons are still alive, but do not repolarize to generate action potentials. Human life crucially depends on coherent movements of Ca++, Na+ and K+ ions bound to proteins and water (Mentré, 2012), composing self-organizing processes. Coherent ionic movement is essential to heart and brain functioning, and cellular coordination of replication of macromolecules (Greer & Greenberg, 2008). Figure 2: Neuron electric activity: a) depolarization; b) repolarization; c) resting potential (Source: http://biologyclass.neurobio.arizona.edu/images.jpg) Enzymes are catalysts that facilitate reactions, but they can act in both directions of the reactions, forward or backward. The actual direction is defined by a stream installed in the systemic context in which the catalysts are inserted (Guimarães, 2012). When the protein-ionwater system is disturbed, a process of irreversible death can be triggered. A mildly depressed level of consciousness or alertness may be classed as lethargy; someone in this state can be aroused with little difficulty (Kandel, Jessell, & Schwartz, 2000). People who are obtunded have a more depressed level of consciousness and cannot be fully aroused (Porth, 2007). Those who are not able to be aroused from a sleep-like state are said to Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 969-991 Pregnolato, M., & Pereira Jr., A., On the Possible Existence of Quantum Consciousness After Brain Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 973 be stuporous. Coma is the inability to make any purposeful response. Scales such as the Glasgow coma scale have been designed to measure the level of consciousness. A lower level of consciousness can result from a variety of factors, including alterations in the chemical environment of the brain (e.g., exposure to poisons or intoxicants), insufficient oxygen or blood flow in the brain, and excessive pressure within the skull. Prolonged unconsciousness is understood to be a sign of a medical emergency (Pollak & Gupton, 2002). A deficit in the level of consciousness suggests that the cerebral hemispheres or the reticular activating system have been injured. A decreased level of consciousness correlates to increased morbidity (sickness) and mortality (death) (Scheld, Whitley, & Marra, 2004). Thus it is a valuable measure of a patient's medical and neurological status. In fact, some sources consider the level of consciousness to be one of the vital signs (Forgey, 1999). The Body After Death Post mortem interval (PMI) is the time that has elapsed since a person has died. If the time in question is not known, a number of medical/scientific techniques are used to determine it. This also can refer to the stage of decomposition the person is in. Many types of changes to a body occur after death (ceasing breathing, cessation of metabolism, no pulse) and some of those can be used to determine the post mortem interval: Pallor mortis: paleness which happens in the 15–120 minutes after death; Livor mortis: a settling of the blood in the lower (dependent) portion of the body; Algor mortis: the reduction in body temperature following death. This is generally a steady decline, until matching ambient temperature; Rigor mortis: the limbs of the corpse become stiff (Latin rigor) and difficult to move or manipulate Forensic entomology: insect activity on the corpse; Vitreous humour changes – changes in eye chemistry; State of decomposition – autolysis (process of self digestion) and putrefaction (process caused by bacteria found within the body). Putrefaction is the decomposition of animal proteins – especially by anaerobic microorganisms (putrefying bacteria). Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 969-991 Pregnolato, M., & Pereira Jr., A., On the Possible Existence of Quantum Consciousness After Brain Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 974 Decomposition is a more general process. Putrefaction usually results in amines such as putrescine and cadaverine, which have a putrid odor. Material that is subject to putrefaction is called putrescible. The putrefaction of a human body with respect to time of death occurs in phases: • 2–3 days: Staining begins on the abdomen. The body begins to swell, owing to gas formation. • 3–4 days: The staining spreads and veins become discolored. • 5–6 days: The abdomen swells with gas (produced by the bacteria that decompose the body), and the skin blisters. • 2 weeks: The abdomen becomes very tight and swollen. • 3 weeks: Tissues begin to soften. Organs and cavities are bursting. The nails fall off. • 4 weeks: Soft tissues begin to liquefy, and the face becomes unrecognizable. The exact rate of putrefaction is dependent upon many factors, such as weather, exposure and location. Thus, refrigeration at a morgue or funeral home can retard the process, allowing for burial in three days or so following death without embalming. Two Models of Quantum Consciousness According to the current neuroscientific view, consciousness fails to survive brain death and, along with all other mental functions, is irrecoverably lost (Laureys & Tononi, 2009). Nevertheless, as we read in a recent, very exhaustive review by Bob Davis (2016), the scientific principles and studies that may fall within the domain of quantum mechanical processes may eventually provide evidence to demonstrate how consciousness relates with the brain during life, as well as during brain death, to better understand the possibility of conscious activity after death. In the literature, there are many quantum models of consciousness, some advocating a radically revisionist metaphysics and others not. It would be impossible to catalog them here or even explain in any substantial way the key features of quantum theory to which they appeal. Among them, we find those that build on findings on oscillatory synchrony (Engel & Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 969-991 Pregnolato, M., & Pereira Jr., A., On the Possible Existence of Quantum Consciousness After Brain Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 975 Singer, 2001; Singer, 1999), which can be putatively related to the Orch-OR microtubulebased theory (Hameroff & Penrose, 1996, 2014; Hameroff & Powell, 2009) and astroglial calcium waves (Pereira Jr., 2012; Pereira Jr. & Furlan, 2009, 2010). The connection between the existence of oscillatory synchrony in different frequencies and conscious activity is well established in neuroscience, while the mechanism underlying the generation of conscious states and episodes is a controversial issue addressed by both the microtubule and the calcium wave approaches. Proteins and Consciousness After Brain Death The Penrose-Hameroff "Orchestrated Objective Reduction" (Orch-OR) model of consciousness was first proposed in 1995 and more recently revised in 2014 (Hameroff & Penrose, 1995, 2014). Orch OR asserts that microtubular protein polymers inside brain neurons act as quantum computers. Tubulin components of microtubules are understood to constitute a "Schrödinger's protein" existing in quantum superposition of different states and hence encoding quantum bits, or qubits of information. They argue that quantum-superposed states are developed in a tubulin that gradually recruits other superposed tubulin over a time interval lasting up to 500 msec until a mass-time-energy threshold, related to quantum gravity, is finally reached (without the intervention of an observer or measurement, as in most of quantum mechanics models). This results in "objective collapses" involving the quantum system passing from a superposition of multiple possible states to a single definite state. This model predicts dendritic webs of approximately 100,000 neurons subserving discrete conscious moments, or frames, occurring every 25 ms in gamma synchrony. According to Penrose and Hameroff, the environment internal to the microtubules is especially suitable for objective collapses, and the resulting self-collapses produce a coherent flow regulating neuronal activity and making non-algorithmic mental processes possible. Science can measure brain electrical activity known to correlate with consciousness, for example high frequency synchronized electroencephalography (EEG) in the gamma range (gamma synchrony). Monitors able to measure and process EEG and detect gamma synchrony and other correlates of consciousness have been developed for use during anesthesia to provide an indicator of depth of anesthesia and prevent intra-operative Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 969-991 Pregnolato, M., & Pereira Jr., A., On the Possible Existence of Quantum Consciousness After Brain Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 976 awareness, i.e., to avoid patients being conscious when they are supposed to be anesthetized and unconscious. The BIS monitor (Aspect Medical Systems, Newton, MA) records and processes frontal electroencephalography (EEG) to produce a digital bispectral index, or BIS number, on a scale of 0 to 100. A BIS number of 0 equals EEG silence, and 100 is the expected value in a fully awake, conscious adult. Chawla et al. (2009) observed that in brain tissue that is metabolically dead, receiving no blood flow nor oxygen, a further end-of-life activity occurs. The BIS and SEDline numbers, indicators of level of awareness, are near zero, but then a burst of synchronized, coherent bifrontal brain activity occurs, seemingly EEG gamma synchrony (an indicator of consciousness). As marked by BIS and SEDline numbers near 80, the activity persists for a minute or more, then it abruptly ceases. They speculate that this level of BIS/SEDline activity is related to the cellular loss of membrane polarization due to hypoxemia, but there are other proposed explanations for the end-of-life brain activity as non-functional, generalized neuronal depolarization. Chawla et al. (2009) suggest that excess extracellular potassium causes last gasp neuronal spasms throughout the brain, but that couldn't account for the global coherence – synchronized, organized. Another suggested cause is calcium-induced neuronal death, which could implicate disruption of cytoskeletal microtubules inside neurons as the precipitating factor. But again, how and why the bifrontal coherent synchrony? According to Hameroff's approach, neuronal hypoxia and acidosis would disable sodium-potassium ATPase pumps, preventing axonal action potentials, but temporarily sparing lower energy dendritic activity, which may correlate more directly with consciousness (Hameroff, 2010). Another possibility is that consciousness is a low energy quantum process (Hameroff, 1998), in which case reduced molecular dynamics may limit thermal decoherence, providing a temporal window for enhanced quantum coherent states and a burst of enhanced consciousness. The HameroffChopra (2010) approach to quantum consciousness after death explains this burst of enhanced awareness at death as the preliminary for further awakening to extraordinary levels of consciousness possibly beyond the body. An expanded level of consciousness (ELC), also named altered state of consciousness (ASC), is any condition that is significantly different from a normal waking beta wave state. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 969-991 Pregnolato, M., & Pereira Jr., A., On the Possible Existence of Quantum Consciousness After Brain Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 977 The expression was used as early as 1966 by Arnold M. Ludwig (1966) and brought into common usage from 1969 by Charles Tart (1969). It describes induced changes in one's mental state, almost always temporary. Altered states of consciousness can be associated with artistic creativity. They also can be shared interpersonally and studied as a subject of sociological research. Higher consciousness is a concept of a spiritual transcendence of human consciousness in various traditions of mysticism. Within monotheism, it also refers to the awareness or knowledge of an ultimate reality sometimes known as God. Alternative terms with similar meanings include super consciousness (Yoga), objective consciousness (Gurdjieff), Buddhic consciousness (Theosophy), cosmic consciousness, God-consciousness (Sufism and Hinduism) and Christ consciousness (New Thought). An ASC can sometimes be reached intentionally by the use of sensory deprivation, an isolation tank, lucid dreaming, hypnosis, prolonged meditation, and psychoactive drugs. The ordinary levels of consciousness or ego can be represented (Figure 3) as a set of communicating levels (Cocchi et al., 2011): 1. Pure biological level or "primordial ego": the proto self of Damasio (1999), attributing in a rudimentary form to his own body, feelings of hunger, thirst, pleasure, pain; 2. Bio-eco-logical level: on the conscious interaction between subject and environment, but set only the hic et nunc with no extension project. 3. Extended mnemonic level: belonging to a consciousness that, while expanding back and forth, does not yet embody in a language its being as a continuous narrative, preserved by the memory as a place of meaning of life. 4. Level of identity sense: from its original roots in biology the ego has gradually expanded to the ecological dimension or mnemonic short-range, is then passed to the mnemonic long-haul dimension, and now, through language, produces an accomplished culture. 5. Mysteric level of consciousness or abyss of consciousness. The presence in humans of a prophetic intuition, of an abyss of consciousness opens the way for intellectual freedom as liberation from the outer limits (subject, obstacles to overcome Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 969-991 Pregnolato, M., & Pereira Jr., A., On the Possible Existence of Quantum Consciousness After Brain Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 978 in pursuit of their projects) and internal (indefinitely biological determinism or panbiologism). Figure 3: Levels of consciousness. (Revised from Cocchi et al., 2011). In other words, the ego produces articulations of sense about oneself and the world that incorporates into one's experiences and one's acting out, in a narrative, intellectual and emotional, irreducible to any other, world views, social stress, scientific and cultural expressions. According to the model of Computational Loop Quantum Gravity (CLQG) (Zizzi, 2005), the quantum extension of digital physics states that the concept of reality can be expressed as: "It from qubit", namely, reality is quantum information, QI. Classical Information, I Quantum Information, Iq I = N (N = number of bits) Iq = (N = number of qubits) Classical digital reality (Classic truth) Quantum digital reality (Quantum truth) N = 1, I = 1 (Yes =1 or Not = 0) N = 1, Iq = 2 (Yes = 1 and Not = 0) Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 969-991 Pregnolato, M., & Pereira Jr., A., On the Possible Existence of Quantum Consciousness After Brain Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 979 A quantum biological system, which is a particular type of complex system based on quantum information, is a site of quantum computation. Later Zizzi (2010) showed that quantum superposition and entanglement, which characterize quantum computing, can be formalized by a particular quantum logic named Lq. The latter in turn was used (Zizzi, 2012) to describe the quantum mental processes of the unconscious mind. This was done in the framework of the quantum theory of mind of Penrose-Hameroff (Hameroff, 1994; Hameroff & Penrose, 1995) where the units of quantum information (qubits) are biologically implemented by tubulin units of brain's microtubules. Zizzi (2012) suggests that the Mind has three different operational modes: 1the quantum computational mode 2the classical computational mode 3the non-algorithmic mode. The quantum and classical computational modes pertain to ordinary thought processes, while the non-algorithmic mode (Zizzi & Pregnolato, 2012) pertains to metathought, which is the peculiar process of thinking about our own ordinary thought. In Figure 4 we represent the hypothetic variations of quantum information contents in microtubules during the lifetime in correlation with the different consciousness states and in the birth and death phases. For those who dare follow the implications of such thoughts this far, a quantum basis for consciousness also raises the scientific possibility of an afterlife, of an actual soul leaving the body and persisting as entangled fluctuations in quantum spacetime geometry (Hameroff & Chopra, 2010). According to this theory, when people enter clinical death, the microtubules lose their quantum state but don't lose the information they contain. Some of this quantum information might not be lost or dissipated or destroyed but could persist in some way in this fundamental level of spacetime geometry, which, it seems, is not local but more like a holographic repetition in scale and distances that persists perhaps even indefinitely at a finer scale, which would be a higher frequency – a smaller scale but also lower energy. In this way, it could continue to exist almost indefinitely. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 969-991 Pregnolato, M., & Pereira Jr., A., On the Possible Existence of Quantum Consciousness After Brain Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 980 Figure 4: Scheme of possible consciousness states variations in a lifetime period (Pregnolato et al., original scheme). Iq = quantum Information. Ions and Consciousness There are two kinds of information processing in the brain. One (discreet) is by means of electric pulses (action potentials) in neuronal networks. The other (continuous) is by means of hydro-ionic waves guided by proteins, in glial cells, extracellular medium, cerebrospinal fluid and blood flow. Beyond the Neuron Doctrine formulated by Ramón y Cajal – proposing that neurons are the structural and functional unit of the mind/brain – our current theoretical framework has been updated to include neuro-glial interactions and the putative contribution of the astroglial network for conscious processes. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 969-991 Pregnolato, M., & Pereira Jr., A., On the Possible Existence of Quantum Consciousness After Brain Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 981 The complex interactions of ions, water and proteins in the brain, supporting conscious functions, have been deeply discussed since the work of Loeb (1900, 1906). In the model of neuronal membrane excitation proposed by Tasaki and Chang (1958) and Tasaki (1999), consisting of a water gel inside lipid layers that is swollen and contracted according to changes in the concentration of sodium and calcium ions, it is assumed the existence of electromagnetic potentials generated by an ionic mechanism. This mechanism is different and possibly parallel to the well-known Hodkins-Huxley mechanism based on ion pumps, binding of transmitters and sodium-potassium exchanges that generate the spike trains that control muscles and glands. The Tasaki work opens the possibility of existence of electric potentials dedicated to cognitive and affective processes (covert behavior), but not to responsive action in the environment (overt behavior). The work of Tasaki was complemented by innovative research made by Pollack (2010), revealing the existence of a negative "exclusion zone" in water that can be regarded as adequate to attract ions from the extracellular milieu and compose a biological battery inside the neural membrane (Figure 5). According to Ho (2014), Stable water clusters tens of nanometres to millimetres in dimensions can be seen under the microscope. ... The clusters consist of millions to billions of water molecules and come in a wide variety of shapes and sizes. ... They make up structures that are flexible, and can be deformed. ... Otherwise, they remain stable for weeks, even months at room temperature and pressure. They have all the characteristics of "soft matter" – liquids, liquid crystals, colloids, polymers, gels, and foams – that form mesoscopic structures much larger than the molecules themselves, but small compared with the bulk material. Structural changes in water are related to the loss of consciousness in general anesthesia (Kundacina & Pollack, 2016). General anesthetics also change the state of astrocytes (Thrane, 2013). Considering that the energy and the information present at hydro-ionic waves is closely related to the conscious state, we can hypothesize that in the case of brain death the biological battery can keep and regenerate useful energy, and use it to support consciousness for some time after the shortage of supply from mitochondria. (The independence from metabolism was suggested to APJ by Vera Maura Fernandes de Lima, personal communication). Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 969-991 Pregnolato, M., & Pereira Jr., A., On the Possible Existence of Quantum Consciousness After Brain Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 982 Figure 5: Structured Water (Pollack, 2010) Tasaki and Chang (1958), soon followed by Galambos (1960), were probably the first neuroscientists to suggest that brain slow potentials related to cognitive and affective processes are mediated by glial cells. The kind of glial cells that forms a brain wide network able to propagate electric potentials is the astrocyte. Astrocytes do not have excitable membranes, but can communicate signals and exchange energy by means of calcium ion waves. These waves are generated by neural local fields potentials in tripartite synapses (composed of two neurons and one astrocyte). The local field produced by the presynaptic neuron, as well as the transmitters it releases, impact on the glial neighbors, producing small Pollack's theory of the fourth state of water (gel, crystal) and formation of exclusion zones from the dynamics of attraction and repulsion http://faculty.washington.edu/ghp/resea "Coherent oscillations maintained by the electromagnetic field...produce correlations as large as several hundred microns, giving rise to a common dipole orientation...resulting in stable supramolecular clusters" Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 969-991 Pregnolato, M., & Pereira Jr., A., On the Possible Existence of Quantum Consciousness After Brain Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 983 waves that reach the astroglial network. Gap junctions between astrocytes allow the passage of the ions, and even boost their signal by means of ATP mechanisms. Astroglial intercellular communication by means of gap junctions allow the interference of the smaller waves, resulting in global wave patterns that feedback on the neurons that produced the smaller waves. This cycle of action and reaction between neurons and astrocytes has been proposed to support the formation of conscious episodes in the temporal window of 2 seconds (Pereira Jr., 2015). The astroglial calcium wave is a very complex phenomenon, having including both travelling and standing waves. The smaller waves generated at tripartite synapses are travelling ones, based on changes of concentration of calcium ions inside individual astrocytes and in the network. Inositol triphosphate and its receptors proteins prompt the release of calcium ions previously stored in deposits and their movements through the cytosol, reaching astroglial distal branches, and then moving to other cells in the network. The result of the interference of these smaller waves is a standing waveform across brain tissue, composed of temporal patterns of vibrational energy. The structure of this waveform fits well the description made by Mentrè (2012): A given ion (phosphate, Ca2+, H+) seems to be transported along a chain (cascade) of macromolecules containing this ion (or another one) in a sequestered form. A signal (calcium, for example) occurring at the entry of the chain induces the liberation of the sequestered ion from the first element of the chain and this one, in its turn, induces the liberation of the ion from the following element, etc.: the ion entering the chain remains sequestered by the first element of the chain. The ion appearing at the end of the chain is liberated by the last element of the chain. This type of transport differs deeply from diffusion. It is not a transport of matter but a transfer of a level of energy (transduction). (p. 19) As a consequence of the above discoveries and theories, it is possible to conjecture that the neuron has a double life. Dendrites participate in the tissue function, generating graded potentials that induce hydro-ionic waves by means of both chemical and electromagnetic signaling; the axon produces spike trains that execute cognitive and motor functions. The scalp EEG mostly captures the dendritic potentials that induce both hydro-ionic waves in brain tissue and action potentials, but not the electric potentials endogenous to the hydroJournal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 969-991 Pregnolato, M., & Pereira Jr., A., On the Possible Existence of Quantum Consciousness After Brain Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 984 ionic waves, which may remain active and carrying their functions for some time after the scalp EEG becomes flat and the subject is diagnosed with brain death. The Vimal, Pereira and Pregnolato Approach Current approaches to consciousness tend to abandon both materialism and idealism, as well as interactive substance dualism, moving towards multi-aspect monisms. In a collaborative book chapter (Pereira Jr., 2016), we proposed a qualitative biophysics helping to solve the hard problem of consciousness (Chalmers, 1995, 1996). The idea is that elementary waveforms (EW) that compose quantum microstates contain the potential for qualitative macrostates (QMSs), as those observed in the morphology and physiology of living systems. We further claim that the subjective qualities experienced in conscious episodes can be described by a hypermatrix/hypertensor composed of QMSs. In the nervous system of living individuals, including the human brain, the instantiation of macrostates is spatially distributed and unconscious. The formation of conscious episodes requires the formation of a recoherent collection of these macrostates. When all necessary conditions of consciousness (such as activation of neural-networks, wakefulness, reentry, attention, activation integration, working memory, stimulus contrast at or above threshold, and potential experiences embedded in the neural network) are satisfied, a recoherent state (corresponding to a conscious episode) emerges, from a collection of nonconscious QMS instantiated in spatially distributed neural circuits. In this context, "recoherence" means that qualities instantiated in unconscious brain macrostates are integrated into conscious experiences when a set of conditions are fulfilled, as distance from thermodynamic equilibrium, operation of biological self-organizing mechanisms and information integration by quantum gates. Brain recoherent macrostates result from the activity of entropy reducers, as ion channels and proteins composing intracellular signal transduction pathways. These mechanisms possibly instantiate quantum computing gates (Rocha, Pereira Jr., & Coutinho, 2001; Rocha, Massad, & Pereira Jr., 2005). The operation of these gates form recoherent states, by means of informationally integrating a collection of QMS. We note that this concept of recoherence is Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 969-991 Pregnolato, M., & Pereira Jr., A., On the Possible Existence of Quantum Consciousness After Brain Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 985 different from the conceptual framework of Penrose-Hameroff; the recoherence phase after the decoherence process generates the conscious state, while in the Penrose-Hameroff model the orchestrated collapse of the wave function generates a conscious state without the recoherence phase. Using this explanatory strategy, we can explain why some natural systems have subjective conscious experiences, while others do not. The progressive interaction of EWs generate a complex state space, of which some regions correspond to the first person conscious activity of living individuals. The existence of these regions is derived from the potentialities of EW, in a strongly emergent process. Other regions do not display conscious activity, because the necessary conditions of consciousness (such as formation of neuralnetworks, wakefulness, reentry, attention, information integration, working memory, stimulus contrast at or above threshold, and potential experiences embedded in neuralnetwork) are not satisfied. The dynamical process above occurs in a temporal continuum. At one side of the continuum, there are forms in a potential state. When actualized, they compose physiochemical properties of substances and processes. In the middle, there are forms in an intermediary stage, such that they have mental but unconscious functions. At the other side, there are forms actualized in conscious episodes experienced by a living individual. What's after death? The mystery of what happens to quantum consciousness after physical death of the body is still far from being scientifically elucidated. Depending on the approach to quantum consciousness and interpretation of quantum theory adopted, several authors have sketched a possible answer to this question. According to Penrose-Hameroff's Orch OR theory, consciousness occurs as a process on the edge between quantum and classical worlds. After the death of body, the quantum information (which constitutes consciousness) could shift to deeper planes and continue to exist, outside the brain, purely as patterns in nonlocal fractal/holographic-like space-time geometry. This could be defined as a "quantum soul" interconnected via entanglement Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 969-991 Pregnolato, M., & Pereira Jr., A., On the Possible Existence of Quantum Consciousness After Brain Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 986 among beings and the universe, able to exist at deeper planes and scales independent of biology. Thus after life an actual soul as quantum information leaving the body and persisting as entangled fluctuations in multiple scales, or planes in quantum space-time geometry, may be scientifically possible. Teodorani (2015) extended this hypothesis by introducing the concept of a "Cosmic Library" that exists everywhere throughout the universe, including the quantum vacuum and all atoms with their subatomic units. "Souls" exist in the form of a quantum field that can become manifest as consciousness in any biosystem that has the property of quantum coherence (such as the brain) and acts as the terminal of a big supercomputer to work as software controlling the hardware of the body to collect information about the physical world. This information is automatically and non-locally uploaded on a hard disc located in the quantum vacuum at the Planck scale (10-33 cm). The hypothesis is that the void contains or is the memory of everything thought and felt by everyone downloaded into the universal Big Library (BL) of pure information (Charman, 2016). Robert Lanza (2010) claims that space and time are simply the tools our mind uses to weave information together into a coherent experience and adopts the many-worlds interpretation, where universes contain multiple ways for possible scenarios to occur. In one universe, the body can be dead and in another it continues to exist, absorbing the consciousness migrated to this universe. This means that a dead person, while traveling through the 'tunnel', ends up in a similar world he or she once inhabited, but this time alive, and so on, infinitely. Concluding Remarks The conjectures raised in this paper, if proven to be valid inferences, have serious ethical implications. Even in the absence of voluntary movement and in a process that irreversibly leads to death, a person may still experience conscious feelings. How to treat people in this condition? Even in the absence of a proof of our hypothesis, according to the precautionary principle of ethics any external intervention that may cause pain should be avoided, until signs of complete death (complete absence of metabolism; general loss of vital activity in all cells of the body) are evident. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 969-991 Pregnolato, M., & Pereira Jr., A., On the Possible Existence of Quantum Consciousness After Brain Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 987 Do the human rights and bioethical principles that apply to the normal functioning person also apply to the brain dead person? This is another ethical issue, with juridical implications, to be better discussed. The recognition of existence of feelings in non-human animals has led to the implementation of ethical rules in scientific experimentation. For the same reason, special rules could be applied to post-mortem care in the hospital, funerary, prison, battlefield and any other place where a recently dead person is sheltered. Another problem is the lack of belief in an afterlife of transhumanists who have, among other objectives, the plan to change the mind map of the brain to a computer. This has an undeniable appeal for both religious and non-religious people, who are likely to delegate the commitment to defeat death to medical science and the rise of technology. The main problem is to delineate the line between perceptible and imperceptible reality, communicable and noncommunicable feeling, conscious and unconscious states. On the basis of what we exposed in this paper, the actual definition of death does not take into account the state of consciousness of the human being. The lack of knowledge of the mechanisms of consciousness, together with the (apparently obvious) feeling that our inner experience can continue after death, no doubt has led to the formulation that there must be a soul, and from this idea many religious approaches are still accepted by so many people, even though they are expressed in a diverse phantasmagoria of beliefs and rituals. It may be impossible for anyone to really come to terms with the idea of life after death, and so most people easily accept a theological explanation or prefer to ignore the problem of consciousness after biological death. While theological philosophies try to assure people that death is not the end, with a supreme being that holds the answer to eternal life, atheistic philosophies are not able to comfort people with regard to the death with the same ease. This could explain the growing (almost desperate) belief in the transhumanist movements (only one step removed from the morbid fantasy of freezing the head of a dead rich person to later be transplanted back onto a renewed or entirely new body when science catches up). Transplanting a mind without a body onto a computer network is no transplant at all – the mind could never be the same disembodied as when it was part of a body – but a transmogrification, something akin to loss of identity from joining the Borg Collective from the Star Trek series. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 969-991 Pregnolato, M., & Pereira Jr., A., On the Possible Existence of Quantum Consciousness After Brain Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 988 We can conclude that a transcendent consciousness might be possible based on quantum physics. 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The Hyperspace of Consciousness. Elementà, Sweden. 2015. 256 pp. ISBN 97891-7637-030-8 Wang, F., Smith, N.A., Xu, Q., Fujita, T., Baba, A., Matsuda, T., & Nedergaard, M. (2012). Astrocytes modulate neural network activity by Ca2+-dependent uptake of extracellular K+. Science Signaling [electronic resource], 5,26. doi: 10.1126/scisignal.2002334 Zizzi, P. (2005). A minimal model for Quantum Gravity. Mod Phys Lett ; 20: 645-653. Zizzi, P. (2010). From Quantum Metalanguage to the Logic of Qubits. PhD Thesis, arXiv:1003.5976. Zizzi, P. (2012). When humans do compute quantum. In H. Zenil (ed.), A Computable Universe. Word Scientific Publishing. Zizzi, P., & Pregnolato, M. (2012) The non-algorithmic side of the mind. Quantum Biosystems 4(1) 1-8. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 992-1011 Kelly, E. F., Science and Postmortem Survival ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 992 Research Essay Science and Postmortem Survival Edward F. Kelly * The rise of modern science, accompanied by its many technological triumphs, has led to widespread acceptance among opinion elites of a worldview that conflicts sharply both with everyday human experience and with beliefs widely shared among the world's institutional religions – including belief in the possibility of postmortem survival. Most contemporary mainstream psychologists, neuroscientists, and biologists in particular, along with many philosophers of mind, subscribe explicitly or implicitly to some version of physicalism, the modern philosophical descendant of the materialism of previous centuries. It comes in a variety of subtly different shadings, but the basic story common to all goes like this: All facts are determined in the end by physical facts alone. Reality consists at bottom of tiny bits of self-existent stuff hurtling around under the influence of fields of force in accordance with mathematical laws, and everything else we observe must derive somehow from that most basic underlying stuff. In particular, we human beings are nothing more than extremely complicated biological machines, and everything we are and do is explainable, at least in principle, in terms of our physics, chemistry, and biology. Some of what we know, and our capacities to learn more, are built in genetically as complex resultants of biological evolution. Everything else comes to us through our sensory surfaces, by means of energetic exchanges with the environment of types already largely understood. Consciousness and its contents, and all other aspects of mind, are generated by (or in some mysterious way identical with, or supervenient upon), neurophysiological events and processes occurring in the brain. Our everyday experience of ourselves as effective conscious agents equipped with free will is mere illusion, a by-product of the grinding of our neural machinery. And of course since consciousness, mind and personality are entirely products of that machinery; they are necessarily extinguished, totally and finally, by the demise and dissolution of the body. On a more cosmic * Correspondence: Edward Kelly, University of Virginia School of Medicine, Charlottesville, VA. Email: [email protected] Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 992-1011 Kelly, E. F., Science and Postmortem Survival ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 993 scale there seem to be no such things as final causes or a transcendent order; the overall scheme of nature appears utterly devoid of meaning or purpose. This bleak worldview has permeated the intellectual elites and educational systems of all advanced societies and is undoubtedly a principal driver of the pervasive disenchantment of our modern world with its multifarious and rapidly worsening ills. It has also driven progressive erosion of traditional forms of religious belief. Indeed, recent years have witnessed a series of all-out attacks on everything religious by well-meaning defenders of Enlightenment-style rationalism such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, who clearly regard themselves and current mainstream science as reliably marshaling the intellectual virtues of reason and objectivity against retreating forces of irrational authority and superstition. For them the truth of physicalism has been demonstrated beyond reasonable doubt, and to think anything different is necessarily to abandon centuries of scientific progress, unleash the black flood of occultism, and revert to primitive supernaturalist beliefs characteristic of our intellectual childhood. However, reasons for skepticism regarding this physicalist worldview are rapidly gaining cumulative force. In the first place, classical physicalism is not merely incomplete (which no serious person can deny) but incorrect at its very foundation, essentially the physics of the late 19 th century. Major tectonic shifts have subsequently occurred within physics itself. Newton's conception of absolute space and time as a pre-existing container for events, for example, has been replaced by Einstein's experimentally confirmed theories of special and general relativity. Even more fundamentally, with the rise of quantum theory nearly a century ago the deterministic clockwork universe postulated by Newton and Laplace has been overthrown, matter as classically conceived shown not to exist, and consciousness implicated as a fundamental player in the manifestation of the experienced world (Rosenblum & Kuttner, 2011; Stapp, 2007). These seismic events within theoretical physics have somehow not yet fully registered with the scientific community at large. Classical physicalist brain/mind theory now seems headed in the same direction. At present we have no understanding whatsoever of how consciousness could be generated by physical events in brains, and recent theoretical work in philosophy of mind has convinced many, including at least a few prominent neuroscientists, that we can never achieve one. Let's go back to the basics here. Any contemporary discussion of brain/mind relations must take as its point of departure the strong correlations that unquestionably exist between Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 992-1011 Kelly, E. F., Science and Postmortem Survival ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 994 mental and physical events. New manifestations of mind appear everywhere to be closely associated with modifications of structure or process in brains. In biological evolution, for example, we see an overall correlation across animal species between behavioral complexity and the level of organization of the nervous system. The rapid post-natal development of the human infant is likewise associated with massive structural and functional changes in its maturing brain. Neuropsychologists have catalogued numerous specific and sometimes very peculiar perceptual and cognitive deficits that are reliably produced by brain injuries of particular sorts, and we are all presumably familiar as normal human adults with numerous additional facts – the customary daily cycle of consciousness and the effects of mild cerebral trauma induced by alcohol and other psychoactive substances, fatigue, thumps on the head, and so on – that also reflect this generalized dependence of mind on brain. All of the traditional philosophical positions on brain/mind relations arise from different ways of interpreting this basic fact of correlation. Contemporary mainstream physicalists assume that brain processes unilaterally cause mental phenomena, and as indicated above there are certainly numerous situations in which that seems to be exactly what happens. But what about the other way around? It seems equally obvious, naively, that mental events can cause physical events too; I decide to raise my hand, for example, and up it goes. But there is a hitch here, an asymmetry in the causal structure. The physicalist response to this challenge is simply to assert that the causality in such cases resides not in the mental events per se but in their physical equivalents or accompaniments in the brain. In sum, we can cleanly, simply, and directly manipulate the physical side of the correlation, but not so the mental – at least under ordinary conditions. However, as I will next explain, strong empirical evidence has accumulated for a wide variety of human mental and behavioral capacities that outstrip in principle the explanatory potential of physical processes occurring in brains. I will discuss these under two main headings. I. "Psi" Phenomena, Including Direct Evidence for Postmortem Survival. Here I'm referring to experimental and field observations adduced in the course of systematic scientific effort, beginning roughly with the formation of the British Society for Psychical Research (SPR) in 1882, by workers in psychical research and its narrower modern descendent, experimental parapsychology. The basic phenomena in question involve, by Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 992-1011 Kelly, E. F., Science and Postmortem Survival ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 995 definition, correlations occurring across physical barriers that should be sufficient on presently accepted physicalist principles to prevent their formation ("basic limiting principles" as formulated by Broad, 1962, and refined by Braude, 2002). Popular terms for the main classes of relevant phenomena are extrasensory perception (ESP) and mind-over-matter or psychokinesis (PK). ESP itself is sometimes broken down into subtypes such as telepathy (unmediated awareness of the mental state or mental activity of another person), clairvoyance (of distant or hidden events or objects), and precognition/retrocognition (of future/past events). It is widely recognized by researchers that these popular terms are unduly theory-laden and probably do not correspond to real differences in underlying process, and many therefore prefer the more theoryneutral terminology introduced by Thouless and Wiesner (1947) – psi for paranormal phenomena in general, occasionally divided into psi gamma for the input (ESP) side and psi kappa for the output (PK) side. A large amount of peer-reviewed research involving experimental, quasi-experimental, and case studies of various kinds has produced cumulative results more than sufficient to demonstrate beyond reasonable doubt – at least to most open-minded persons who actually take the trouble to study it that the sheer existence of the basic input/output phenomena is a fact of nature with which we must somehow come to scientific terms (Radin, 2006; Tart, 2009). Indeed, I predict with high confidence that future generations of historians, sociologists, and philosophers of science will make a good living trying to explain why it took so long for scientists in general to accept this conclusion. All psi phenomena are theoretically important by virtue of providing examples of human behavioral capacities that appear impossible to account for in terms of presently recognized psychological, biological, or classical-physics principles. Two special subcategories stand out, however, in terms of the magnitude of the theoretical challenges they pose. First is macro-PK, psychokinesis involving human-scale physical objects. There are many sources of credible evidence for such occurrences, including individual spontaneous PK events, often associated with extreme emotions of one or another sort; recurrent spontaneous PK (RSPK or poltergeist cases), typically involving disturbed adolescents; and various kinds of physical manifestations, including levitation, associated with trance mediums such as D. D. Home, Eusapia Palladino, and Indridi Indridason (Braude, 1991). I will illustrate the subject here with a case that exemplifies the theoretical challenges in particularly stark form. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 992-1011 Kelly, E. F., Science and Postmortem Survival ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 996 Levitation, a phenomenon reported of mystics from many traditions, was a principal feature in the case of Joseph of Copertino, a seventeenth-century Franciscan monk for whom "ecstatic flight" was a literal reality. Joseph was observed levitating in broad daylight on hundreds of occasions that cumulatively involved thousands of witnesses of varied types including skeptical and even hostile witnesses. Sworn testimony was obtained within a few years from scores of these and exhaustively reviewed in connection with the formal investigatory processes leading to Joseph's canonization. His flights occurred both indoors and outdoors, covered distances and altitudes ranging from a few feet to thirty yards or more, and went on for periods ranging from a few seconds to many minutes at a time. The reported phenomena, in short, were anything but subtle, and not glibly dismissible in terms of global allegations about "inattentional blindness" (Simons & Chabris, 1999), "mass hypnosis" or other possible errors of observation and/or memory. Of special significance is the fact that during his canonization proceedings the promotor fidei – the "Devil's Advocate" or defender of the faith – was none other than the great humanist (and acquaintance of Voltaire) Prospero Lambertini, later Pope Benedict XIV, who was also the principal codifier of the Church's rules of procedure and evidence for canonization. Lambertini himself was initially hostile to Joseph's cause, but upon thorough and searching examination of all details of the case, including the sworn depositions, he concluded that the ecstatic flights must have occurred essentially as reported. Subsequently, as Pope, he published the decree of Joseph's Beatification. A definitive treatment of this extraordinary case has recently become available in the form of the book by Grosso (2016), who not only provides a thorough and detailed account of Joseph's own well-documented phenomena but situates them in the larger history of macro-PK and related psychic phenomena. Second and in some ways even more disturbing is true precognition – direct or unmediated apprehension of future events. Such phenomena would seem on the surface to suggest that the future is fully determined, and hence to undermine any possibility of free will. This greatly troubled F. W. H. Myers (1895), who was therefore relieved to discover cases in which future accidents seemed to have been anticipated clearly and in detail, but were then averted by appropriate interventions. The conceptual issues related to precognition are complex and deeply tangled. I will not attempt to unravel them here but rather will simply address the state of the evidence itself, which strongly suggests that true precognition is also a genuine phenomenon. The large amount of Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 992-1011 Kelly, E. F., Science and Postmortem Survival ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 997 apparently supportive evidence from forced-choice precognition experiments is rendered somewhat uncertain in its bearings by the possibility that it might have been produced or contaminated by PK (Morris, 1982), but precognitive remote viewing experiments in which the possible targets are not even known to the subjects in advance and have not been picked at the time of the viewing seem less subject to alternative explanations of this sort. Most significant, in my view, are the many well-documented spontaneous cases involving multiple low-level factual details that are recorded at the time of the original experience (which often takes the form of an unusually vivid or intense dream), and then verifiably occur at a distant point in the future (Rosenberg, 2015). Still more important for theoretical purposes, and particularly germane to this special issue of JCER, is the large further body of evidence directly suggestive of postmortem survival, the persistence of elements of mind and personality following bodily death. It is simply false to assert, as does eliminative materialist philosopher Paul Churchland (1988, p. 10), that we possess no such evidence. We in fact possess a large amount of such evidence, much of it of very high quality, but unfortunately this work remains practically unknown outside the small circle of persons professionally involved with it. Here I can provide only the barest glimpses into a literature consisting of literally hundreds of thousands of pages of heavily documented case studies – anything but mere anecdotes, as would-be critics often allege. Three main lines of survival research are of particular importance for my purposes here. The first concerns trance mediumship, a principal focus of the SPR during the first several decades of its work. Mediums here are persons who are ostensibly able, usually when in some sort of trance-like altered state of consciousness, to make contact with the dead (Gauld, 1982). A large proportion of the most important research revolves around a half-dozen or so such persons who proved especially good at providing, under well-controlled conditions, detailed and accurate information seeming to derive from specific deceased persons about whom they could not have learned in any normal way. There is a difficult issue here related to proper interpretation of such evidence, which we will get to shortly, but let me first indicate the character of the evidence itself. One of the first and best of the great trance mediums was Leonora Piper, discovered by William James in 1885, and the most important phase of her mediumship involved a "communicator" named GP (George Pellew), ostensibly the surviving personality of a young Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 992-1011 Kelly, E. F., Science and Postmortem Survival ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 998 man who had recently died unexpectedly in a fall. Over several years her principal investigator, Australian lawyer Richard Hodgson, arranged for some 150 "sitters," exactly thirty of whom had been known to GP during his lifetime, to be introduced to sessions anonymously after Mrs. Piper had entered her trance state. The GP communicator recognized all and only those thirty sitters, and for most of them provided numerous and appropriate details of events and memories they shared, often with compelling verisimilitude in terms of GP's own characteristic vocabulary, diction, sense of humor, and so on. Hodgson himself, initially a skeptic, became convinced of the reality of survival largely on the strength of this one series of sittings (Hodgson, 1898). Speaking more generally, all of the main properties of minds or personalities as we customarily understand these terms are evident in high-grade mediumistic communications. In the formulation of Pols (1998), for example, building on that of Descartes in Book II of the Meditations, mind "knows, makes (that is, forms, produces, creates), understands, thinks, conceives, perceives, remembers, anticipates, believes, doubts, attends, intends, affirms, denies, wills, refuses, imagines, values, judges, and feels" (p. 98). Summarizing the very large scientific literature on mediumship, it is fair to say that all of these properties are exemplified individually in many cases, and most or all of them jointly in the best cases such as that of GP. Not only are previously existing semantic, autobiographical, and procedural memories apparently in considerable degree preserved, but new memories can also be formed, mediated at least in part by continuing and presumably psi-based interactions with the world of the living, whether directly or by way of the medium. Less verifiably, the communicating personalities also seem to experience themselves as continuous with their prior selves, and as conscious selves who inhabit some sort of body and are able to interact with other deceased persons in some sort of shared phenomenal world. The full picture regarding trance mediumship is of course more complicated and hazy than this brief summary suggests. A large proportion of garden-variety mediumistic (and channeled) communications are pure twaddle, and even the best cases sometimes display surprising weaknesses and limitations. Some of these limitations seem to derive from the medium, some from the communicators, and some perhaps from the still largely unknown nature of the connection between them. The GP persona for example exhibited certain curious lacunae, such as a determined unwillingness to discuss philosophic and scientific matters that had been of burning interest to the living GP, and vouched for the authenticity of certain other Piper Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 992-1011 Kelly, E. F., Science and Postmortem Survival ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 999 "controls" that were transparently bogus, such as the soi-disant "Walter Scott" and "Julius Caezar" (sic). As in many other cases, GP's awareness of ongoing events in this world was also very limited and imperfect, often extending even to uncertainty as to whether his attempted communications had gotten through Mrs. Piper to the sitters. For further information about Mrs. Piper and other great mediumistic cases see for example Balfour (1935), Braude (2003), Broad (1962), Dilley (1995), Ducasse (1961), Gauld (1982), Hart (1959), Murphy (1961), Myers (1903), Salter (1950), Sidgwick (1915), and Sudduth (2016). A second large area of survival research concerns what we call "cases of the reincarnation type" (CORT), in which small children – typically ages two to five – begin to speak and act as though they are remembering events from a previous, usually very recent, lifetime. The children often give detailed information about people and places they had known, or talk about the circumstances in which they died, and with this information the parents, or sometimes an independent investigator, can identify a deceased person whose life and death corresponds to what the child was saying. In the best cases, detailed records of the child's statements have been made by independent investigators before any contact between the child's family and that of the ostensible previous personality (PP). The children also frequently show strong and unusual behaviors that seem appropriate for the PP – such as an extreme fear of water when that person had died by drowning – and in a sizeable subset of cases the child has an extremely unusual birthmark or birth defect corresponding to fatal injuries of the PP (see, especially, Stevenson, 1997). The originator and principal architect of this line of work was our UVA colleague Ian Stevenson, and, between 1961 and the present, he and others including Jim Tucker and Emily Kelly of our group have directly investigated over 2,500 such cases, many in great detail (see, for example, Kelly, 2013; Stevenson, 1975–1983, 1997, 2001; Tucker, 2005, 2013). Although the great majority of cases to date have come from countries where belief in reincarnation is strong, such as India and Burma, good cases have also been found in most other parts of the world including the countries of Europe and North America. An important further development now nearing completion is the entry of all cases into a cumulative database according to a detailed coding system. Completion of this database will open a path toward development of statistical models and testing of hypotheses about factors that govern the phenomena – for example, predictors of the number and accuracy of remembered details, or the length of the intermission Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 992-1011 Kelly, E. F., Science and Postmortem Survival ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1000 between death and rebirth. Although the latter work in particular is still at an early stage, a number of points have already emerged that should command the attention of theorists. First and foremost, of course, is the strong indication that rebirth at least sometimes occurs. Second, although it is easy to imagine more complex scenarios in which personalities split or merge – i.e., one-to-many or many-to-one relations between PPs and the corresponding children – the data available so far strongly support one-to-one correspondence as the predominant pattern. Something seems to encourage continuity of personality both within and between lives. This picture has been reinforced, moreover, by early results from the database indicating strong tendencies toward conservation of gender and of some basic personality characteristics between successive lifetimes. Another striking fact is the high incidence of early, violent or unnatural death among PPs (around two-thirds of the cases), which may be related somehow to these children's unusual capacity or impulse to recall (Stevenson, 1997). Little evidence has yet emerged of anything like moral improvement or punishment for past misdeeds, such as might be expected from theories of karma and the like, but this is conceivably due to limitations of the available sample, biased as it is toward unusual conditions of death in the PPs. If all or most of us in fact reincarnate, and we could discover means for reliably accessing past-life memories in adults, a fuller picture might conceivably emerge. However, although there is some relevant meditative lore and a bare handful of interesting hypnotic-regression and psychedelic experiences suggestive of such possibilities, no meaningful conclusions can be drawn about such things at the present time. A final point which concerns the birthmark/birth-defect cases is that in most such cases the dying and perhaps surviving PP seems likely to have been aware of the fatal injury, and hence is plausibly suspected of being the source of the subsequent marks or defects. A surviving PP might similarly be the source in an important subclass of experimental birthmark cases in which the child's marks correspond to marks deliberately placed on the deceased person's body after the death by grieving relatives in hopes of identifying the successor. However, there are other cases – for example, cases involving wounds to visually inaccessible or even interior parts of the PP's body – in which such interpretations seem less plausible. The third main area of survival research concerns what we call crisis apparitions, in which a "percipient," person A, may see an actual visual apparition, hear a voice, have a dream, or simply feel the presence of a loved one, person B, at or near the time that B, the "agent," is Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 992-1011 Kelly, E. F., Science and Postmortem Survival ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1001 undergoing serious or fatal injury at some physically remote location. The early SPR researchers took a special interest in such events, carefully collecting and documenting large numbers of cases and produced as its first major work the landmark Phantasms of the Living (Gurney, Myers, & Podmore, 1886). This remarkable two-volume study includes not only detailed reports of over 700 individual cases (many including detailed documentation such as medical and legal records, supporting testimony from witnesses or interlocutors, and so on), but also an elaborate and sophisticated discussion of methodological issues regarding eyewitness testimony and means for dealing with them. Subsequent case collections, mostly carried out with far less concern for detailed documentation, have shown generally similar patterns, as revealed especially by initial trailblazing attempts to encode their features in standardized fashion for computer modeling and analysis (Schouten, 1979, 1983). A number of general features of crisis-apparition cases stand out in terms of theoretical relevance and interest. First is the apparent importance of strong emotional ties as a driver of these unique events, somehow overriding normally existing physical barriers. Also striking is their apparent association with altered states of consciousness in the percipients, especially dreaming and hypnagogic/hypnopompic states – the twilight zone between waking and sleeping. In many cases the event begins with the percipient having a vague feeling of distress or disturbance, sometimes accompanied by a vivid sense that the injured person is present at a particular location nearby, and progresses into a full-fledged apparition only later on when the percipient enters a more receptive state. Third, as argued by Myers (1903), the timing of the events relative to verified times of death is sharply asymmetrical, rising steeply right around the time of death and declining slowly thereafter (vol. 2, p. 14). Percipients also typically have only a single such experience in their entire lifetime and remember it vividly for decades afterward as something uniquely significant (and note that Gurney et al. took pains to show that when questioned repeatedly over periods of many years, percipients typically reported fewer details with the passage of time). Many crisis apparitions seem potentially interpretable as hallucinations generated by percipients who have been alerted at some level to their loved ones' circumstances by a psi process, as argued in particular by Louisa Rhine (1977). Others, however, seem to locate agency and purpose squarely in the dying or deceased, as for example in the case of a long-dead husband who seems to have come for his newly deceased wife but is seen by her tenant, a total stranger. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 992-1011 Kelly, E. F., Science and Postmortem Survival ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1002 Many apparitions also display what are aptly described as quasi-physical properties, as discussed by Tyrrell (1953, pp. 77-80). For example, they sometimes obscure the background, cast shadows, and can be seen in mirrors, like ordinary physical objects. Pet animals may also detect them, and, if more than one human is present, all or most may observe it, with differences of perspective appropriate to their differing locations in the communal space. On the other hand, apparitions sometimes enter and exit through walls or floors, become transparent and disappear, and in sundry other respects behave very unlike normal physical objects. Thus, they both resemble and differ from ordinary embodied persons, approximating them in widely varying degrees, from marionette-like to so lifelike as to be mistaken temporarily for the corresponding person. (Similar properties apply, parenthetically, to haunting cases in which the apparitional form is recurrently associated with some particular place.) Complicating the picture further, there are also a number of well-documented reciprocal and experimental cases of out-of-body experiences in which one living person more or less deliberately projects to a distant location, observes verifiable circumstances there, and is observed at the corresponding location in the form of an apparition by one or more persons present (Hart & Hart, 1933; Myers, 1903, vol. 1, pp. 682–685). The bulk of the available evidence concerning apparitions thus seems consistent with a picture in which some part or aspect of a given person departs from one place and appears in another in a form which is somehow intermediate between genuinely physical and purely hallucinatory. This is essentially the picture originally arrived at by Myers (in debate with Gurney), which is also endorsed – but only reluctantly and after lengthy critical consideration – by Gauld (1982). Further confirmation lies in the fact that certain kinds of crisis apparitions that might be expected on the telepathy-plus-hallucination model seem not in fact to occur – in particular, what might be called disseminated apparitions, in which a dying person appears simultaneously to loved ones in widely separated locations. So what are we to make of all this direct evidence for postmortem survival? Ironically, the primary threat to survivalist interpretations usually arises not from considerations of evidential quality – problems of fraud, credulity, errors of observation or memory, and the like – but from the difficulty of excluding alternative explanations based upon psi-type processes involving only living persons. For example, a trance medium who appears to be delivering veridical information from your deceased uncle might actually be acquiring that information by Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 992-1011 Kelly, E. F., Science and Postmortem Survival ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1003 means of a psi-type process from you as the sitter, or from other living persons who knew him, or from physical records of some relevant sort, rather than from your deceased uncle himself, and in general it proves extremely difficult to determine with certainty which sort of explanation is correct. This is the infamous "survival vs. living agent psi" debate, recently discussed in depth by philosophers Braude (2003) and Sudduth (2016). Either horn of this interpretive dilemma – survival or psi – is fatal to the prevailing physicalist brain/mind orthodoxy, and this undoubtedly helps explain the hostility of dogmatic physicalists to both. It should also be evident that compelling evidence for postmortem survival, an element of belief common in some form to all of the world's great religious traditions, would demonstrate especially clearly the inadequacy of present-day mainstream physicalism. In my judgment we are at or very close to that point – close enough, I believe, to justify rational belief in the possibility if not indeed the likelihood of one's own personal survival. I must also underscore, however, how little we have learned so far: The most that can responsibly be said at present is that a few persons may have continued to exist in some unknown fashion following bodily death, for varying periods of time and under essentially unknown conditions, some of whom may also have been reborn. Nevertheless, a world that includes such a possibility is already radically different, and in humanly significant ways, from that inhabited by most contemporary scientists (at least in their day jobs!). II. Additional "Rogue" Phenomena Incompatible with Physicalism. Evidence for psi and survival flagrantly conflicts with conventional physicalist expectations, and it is for precisely this reason that many mainstream scientists are anxious to dismiss it, or perhaps more accurately to isolate and quarantine it as though this were the only sector in which contemporary physicalism is not triumphantly advancing. In fact, however, many other well-evidenced human mental and psychophysical capacities also resist or defy explanation in conventional physicalist terms and thus point in the same theoretical direction. A project organized in 1998 under the auspices of Esalen Institute's Center for Theory and Research (CTR), and led by me, began by systematically assembling large amounts of peerreviewed evidence of this sort. We approached this task by revisiting an extraordinary book published in 1903 which had already pursued the same general strategy: Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death (2 vols.), by Frederic W. H. Myers (1843-1901), a founder of the Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 992-1011 Kelly, E. F., Science and Postmortem Survival ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1004 SPR and friend and colleague of William James. We set out to update and re-evaluate Myers's great work in light of the subsequent century of scientific work on various topics that had been central to his own original argument, and to this end we systematically collected material related to manifestations of extreme psychophysiological influence, such as stigmata and hypnotically induced blisters; prodigious forms of memory and calculation; unexplained aspects of everyday human memory; psychological automatisms and secondary centers of consciousness; out-ofbody and near-death experiences, including intense and transformative experiences occurring under extreme physiological conditions such as deep general anesthesia and/or cardiac arrest, which contemporary neuroscience deems incapable of supporting any experience whatsoever; genius-level creativity; and mystical-type experiences whether spontaneous, pharmacologically induced, or resulting from transformative practices such as intense meditative disciplines of one or another sort. Collectively, these phenomena greatly compound the explanatory difficulties posed by everyday phenomena of human mental life (such as meaning, intentionality, subjective point of view, and the qualitative aspects of consciousness) that have recently been targets of intense philosophical discussion. In a nutshell, they add a rich empirical dimension to what appears to be a rising worldwide chorus of theoretical dissatisfaction with classical physicalism as a formal metaphysical position. We seem to be at or very near a major inflection point in modern intellectual history. This first-stage effort culminated in publication of an 832-page book titled Irreducible Mind (Kelly et al., 2007; henceforth IM). For details of the evidence I must refer readers to IM itself, but what matters most here is its central theoretical implication. Specifically, it became clear that rogue phenomena of the sorts we catalogued can be accommodated more naturally within an alternative to the conventional physicalist interpretation of the brain/mind correlation, an interpretation already advanced in abstract form by William James (1898/1900). James there points out that to describe the mind as a function of the brain does not fully specify the character of the functional dependence. Physiologists routinely presume that the role of the brain is productive, the brain generating the mind in something like the way that the tea kettle generates steam, or the electric current flowing in a lamp generates light, but there are other forms of functional dependence which merit closer consideration. The true function of the brain might for example be permissive, like the trigger of a crossbow, or more importantly transmissive, like an optical lens or a prism, or like the keys of a pipe organ (or perhaps, in more contemporary terms, Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 992-1011 Kelly, E. F., Science and Postmortem Survival ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1005 like the receivers in our radios and televisions). More generally, one can at least dimly imagine some sort of mental reality – which in James's view might be anything from a finite mind or personality to a World Soul or cosmic consciousness – that is closely coupled to the brain functionally but somehow distinct from it. Within this basic framework James himself speaks variously of the brain as straining, sifting, canalizing, limiting, and individualizing that larger mental reality existing behind the scenes. He quotes approvingly Schiller's characterization of matter as "an admirably calculated machinery for regulating, limiting and restraining the consciousness which it encases. ... Matter is not that which produces consciousness, but that which limits it, and confines its intensity within certain limits" (James, 1898/1900, pp. 66-67), and Kant's declaration in the Critique of Pure Reason that "the body would thus be, not the cause of our thinking, but merely a condition restrictive thereof, and, although essential to our sensuous and animal consciousness, it may be regarded as an impeder of our pure spiritual life" (as cited in James, pp. 28-29). James also explicitly portrays the brain as exerting these various effects in a manner dependent on its own functional status, and links this idea to Fechner's conception of a fluctuating psychophysical threshold (p. 24, pp. 59-66). Much can immediately be said in favor of such a picture, James then argues. It is in principle compatible with all of the facts conventionally interpreted under the production model, and however metaphorical and incomprehensible it might at first seem, it is in reality no more so than its physicalist rival. It also has certain positive superiorities: In particular, it appears potentially capable of explaining various additional facts, including those being unearthed by F. W. H. Myers and his colleagues in psychical research (pp. 24-27). In sum, "transmission" or "filter" models are logically viable, and they should rise or fall in the usual scientific way in light of their ability to accommodate the available empirical evidence. The central aim of the first phase of our Esalen/CTR project had been to review and reassess Myers's filter-type model of human personality in light of subsequent research, and we had found that the evidence supporting such pictures has actually grown far stronger in the century following his death. Myers and James were of course soon pushed aside by the rise of radical behaviorism with its self-conscious aping of the methods of classical physics, and that influence persists in modified form even now in mainstream cognitive neuroscience. In my view psychology has taken a hundred-year detour, and is only now becoming capable of appreciating Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 992-1011 Kelly, E. F., Science and Postmortem Survival ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1006 the theoretical beachhead that our founders had already established. I should also underscore here that for me personally this first phase of our project had gone a long way toward dissolving what the eminent American psychologist Gardner Murphy (1961) long ago called the "immovable object" in the survival debate – the a priori biological objection to survival: Specifically, if physicalism were true, and mind and consciousness manufactured entirely by neurophysiological processes occurring in brains, then survival would be impossible, period. This is essentially the position argued ad nauseum by Martin and Augustine (2015), as though it were something novel. But the evidence we assembled in IM clearly shows, I submit, that the connections between mind and brain are in fact much looser, and can be conceptualized in the alternative fashion of filter or transmission models without violence to other parts of our scientific understanding, including in particular leading-edge neuroscience and physics (see especially IM Chapter 9). For me this shift in theoretical perspective instantly opened the door to the possibility of survival. The normally hidden subliminal region of the mind, "The More" of William James, is the wellspring of the latent human potentials that historically have comprised Esalen's main practical focus. But it is also precisely these transpersonal aspects – especially psi phenomena and mystical experience with their deep historical and psychological interconnections, postmortem survival, and genius in its highest expressions – which jointly demonstrate that classical physicalism must give way to some richer form of metaphysics. Please note here that what is at issue is not whether we will have metaphysics – because we inevitably will, whether conscious of it or not – but whether we will have good metaphysics or bad. Classical physicalism is definitely inadequate, but what sort of alternative metaphysics should take its place? Our basic strategy in approaching this second and much more difficult task was to examine in depth a sampling of conceptual frameworks or theories, ancient and modern, that take the existence of rogue phenomena of the sorts catalogued in IM for granted and attempt to imagine how reality must be constituted in order that such things can happen. This ultimately led to our publication of a second large book, Beyond Physicalism (Kelly, Crabtree, & Marshall, 2015; henceforth, BP), which includes theoretical contributions from an unusual diversity of perspectives including those of physicists, neuroscientists, psychologists, philosophers, and scholars of religion. The central conclusion of BP is that theorizing based on an adequately comprehensive Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 992-1011 Kelly, E. F., Science and Postmortem Survival ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1007 empirical foundation of the sort set forth in IM leads inescapably into metaphysical territory partly shared with the world's major religious traditions. Specifically, we argue that emerging developments in science and comparative religion, viewed in relation to centuries of philosophical theology, point to some form of evolutionary panentheism as the current best guess about the metaphysically ultimate nature of things. In brief, panentheism's attempt to split the difference between classical theisms and pantheisms, conceiving of an ultimate consciousness of some sort as pervading or constituting the manifest world, as in pantheism, but with something beyond, as in theism. The version we tentatively embrace further conceives the universe as in some sense slowly waking up to itself through evolution in time. Most importantly, the rough first-approximation picture we have developed so far can be elaborated and tested through many kinds of further empirical research, especially research on meditation and psychedelics as pathways into higher states of consciousness. In sum, although a great deal remains to be done both theoretically and empirically to bring the current rough picture into sharper focus, we feel confident that it is headed in the right general direction. What we see currently emerging, in short, is a middle way between the warring fundamentalisms – religious and scientific – that have so polarized recent public discourse; specifically, an expanded science-based worldview that can accommodate empirical realities of paranormal and spiritual sorts, including postmortem survival, while also rejecting rationally untenable overbeliefs of the sorts targeted by critics of institutional religions. This emerging vision is both scientifically justifiable and spiritually satisfying, combining the best aspects of our scientific and religious heritage in an effort to reconcile these two greatest forces in human history. What is ultimately at stake here seems nothing less than recovery, in an intellectually responsible manner, of parts of our human heritage that were prematurely discarded with the meteoric rise of modern science starting four centuries ago. And what is especially significant at this critical juncture, and the fundamental new factor that may finally allow this recovery to succeed after numerous previous failures, is that it is now being energized by leading-edge developments in science itself. A potentially viable path to a better world seems to be opening up. References Balfour, G. W., Earl of (1935). A study of the psychological aspects of Mrs. Willett's Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 992-1011 Kelly, E. 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Human Immortality: Two Supposed Objections to the Doctrine (2 nd ed.). Boston & New York: Houghton, Mifflin. (Original work published 1898) James, W. (1986). Essays in Psychical Research (F. H. Burkhardt, Ed.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Kelly, E. F., Kelly, E. W., Crabtree, A., Gauld, A., Grosso, M., & Greyson, B. (2007). Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 992-1011 Kelly, E. F., Science and Postmortem Survival ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1009 Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Kelly, E. W. (Ed.). (2013). Science, the Self, and Survival after Death: Selected Writings of Ian Stevenson. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Martin, M. & Augustine, K. (2015). The Myth of an Afterlife: The Case against Life after Death. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Morris, R. L. (1982). Assessing experimental support for true precognition. Journal of Parapsychology, 46, 321-336. Murphy, G. (with Dale, L. A.) (1961). Challenge of Psychical Research. New York: Harper. Myers, F. W. H. (1895). The subliminal self. Chapter 9: The relation of supernormal phenomena to time;- Precognition. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 11, 408-593. Myers, F. W. H. (1903). Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death (vols. 1-2). London: Longmans, Green. (Available on CTR website, http://www.esalen.org/ctr/scholarly-resources) Pols, E. (1998). Mind Regained. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. Radin, D. (2006). Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality. New York: Simon & Schuster. Rhine, L. E. (1977). Research methods with spontaneous cases. In B. B. Wolman (Ed.), Handbook of Parapsychology (pp. 59-80). New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold. Rosenberg, R. (2015). A select annotated bibliography on precognition. Available at www.esalen.org/page/beyond-physicalism-supplement Rosenblum, B., & Kuttner, F. (2011). Quantum Enigma: Physics Encounters Consciousness (2nd ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. Salter, W. (1950). Trance Mediumship: An Introductory Study of Mrs. Piper and Mrs. Leonard. London: Society for Psychical Research. Schouten, S. (1979). Analysis of spontaneous case as reported in "Phantasms of the Living." European Journal of Parapsychology, 2, 408-455. Schouten, S. (1983). A different approach for analyzing spontaneous cases: With particular reference to the study of Louisa E. Rhine's case collection. Journal of Parapsychology, 47, 323-340. Sidgwick, E. (1915). A contribution to the study of the psychology of Mrs. Piper's trance Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 992-1011 Kelly, E. F., Science and Postmortem Survival ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1010 phenomena. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 28, 1-657. Simons, D. J., & Chabris, C. F. (1999). Gorillas in our midst: Sustained inattentional blindness for dynamic events. Perception, 28, 1059-1074. Stapp, H. P. (2007). Mindful Universe: Quantum Mechanics and the Participating Observer. Berlin: Springer. Stevenson, I. (1975-1983). Cases of the Reincarnation Type (vols. 1–4). Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press. Stevenson, I. (1997). Reincarnation and Biology: A Contribution to the Etiology of Birthmarks and Birth Defects (vols. 1-2). Westport, CT: Praeger. Stevenson, I. (2001). Children Who Remember Previous Lives: A Question of Reincarnation (Rev. ed.). Jefferson, NC: McFarland. Sudduth. M. (2016). A Philosophical Critique of Empirical Arguments for Postmortem Survival. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Tart, C. T. (2009). The End of Materialism: How Evidence of the Paranormal is Bringing Science and Spirit Together. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger. Thouless, R. H., & Wiesner, B. P. (1947). The psi process in normal and "paranormal" psychology. Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, 32, 177-196. Tucker, J. B. (2005). Life Before Life: A Scientific Investigation of Children's Memories of Previous Lives. New York: St. Martin's. Tucker, J. B. (2013). Return to Life: Extraordinary Cases of Children Who Remember Past Lives. New York: St. Martin's. Tyrrell, G. N. M. (1953). Apparitions (Rev. ed.). London: Society for Psychical Research. °°° Autobiographical Note: Edward F. Kelly is a Professor in the Division of Perceptual Studies (DOPS), a research unit of the Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences at the University of Virginia, and President of Cedar Creek Institute, an affiliated non-profit research institute. He received his Ph.D. in psycholinguistics and cognitive science from Harvard in 1971, and spent the next 15-plus years working mainly in experimental parapsychology, initially at J. B. Rhine's Institute for Parapsychology, then for ten years through the Department of Electrical Engineering at Duke, and finally through a private research institute in Chapel Hill. Between Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 992-1011 Kelly, E. F., Science and Postmortem Survival ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1011 1988 and 2002 he worked with a large neuroscience group at UNC-Chapel Hill, mainly carrying out EEG and fMRI studies of human somatosensory cortical adaptation to natural tactile stimuli. He returned full-time to psychical research in 2002, serving as lead author for both Irreducible Mind and Beyond Physicalism, but intends now to return to his central long-term research interest – application of modern functional neuroimaging methods to intensive psychophysiological studies of psi and altered states of consciousness in exceptional subjects (http://cedarcreekinst.org). Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1012-1035 Hardy, C. H., ISS Theory: Cosmic Consciousness, Self, and Life Beyond Death in a Hyperdimensional Physics ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1012 Explorations ISS Theory: Cosmic Consciousness, Self, and Life Beyond Death in a Hyperdimensional Physics Chris H. Hardy, PhD * Abstract The Infinite-Spiral-Staircase Theory (ISST) posits a hyperdimension of consciousness populated by faster-than-light, high-energy, sub-Planckian sygons pervading the pluriverse. This HD is in fact triune, a braid of hyperspace (Center, C), hypertime (Rhythm, R) and consciousness (Syg, S), topologically organized as a double phi-based golden spiral set on a double BlackHoleWhiteHole Kerr system. Within the Terminal Black Hole of a parent universe, all matter-systems are translated into pure CSR information or syg-fields steered by the sub-quantum sygons; and through the White Hole at the origin, these syg-fields are translated back from virtual sygons into post-Planck particles and matter systems, still retaining the sygons as a 5 th dimension at their core. ISST builds on the Semantic Fields Theory (SFT) in modeling a semantic layer of organization in all systems-their syg-fields (semantic fields) ranging from proto-consciousness to selfconsciousness. As human beings, our mind or consciousness is our global syg-field, organized in dynamical networks and steered by syg-energy-the sygons (Hardy 1998, 2001, 2003). The ensemble of all syg-fields form the cosmic CSR hyperdimension of consciousness, as a gigantic hologram, self-conscious and evolving. Positing a consciousness-HD layer in the universe leads to envision a new paradigmatic stand in philosophy as well as in physics. The syg-HD operates clearly beyond-spacetime and is a beyond-matter layer (thus in accord with dualism); yet, given that consciousness-as-process is steered by the sub-quantum sygon particles, the syg-HD is definitely a blend of energy and mind (as in monism/materialism). Thus ISST reframes the mind-body split in a complex dynamical network systems' framework, as a consciousness HD existing at a sub-quantum scale in all matter systems (thus setting a type of panpsychism), and also as a bulk in its own CSR-HD region. At the scale of the pluriverse, the spacetime regions of specific universe-bubbles are constantly birthed and then die. The HD preexists and survives to these matter regions in the BHWH double spiral, and pervades them during the life of a universe. In a consciousness-HD (syg-HD) framework, consciousness and our mind-the syg-field- operate mostly via the HD, and only a small part of our syg-field is branching into the brain's neuronal networks. It is because the Self and the mind belong to the syg-HD that they instantiate psi capacities, high meditation states, and some independence from spacetime. In this framework, death is just the severing of links to the brain-body and the Self, at death, becomes fully independent from the body and enjoy (in the HD layer) the same intelligent, creative, and individualized capacities as when embodied, yet with greater psi capacities. * Chris Hardy, Eco-Mind Systems Science, Seguret, France. Email: [email protected] Websites: https://independent.academia.edu/ChrisHHardy; http://cosmic-dna.blogspot.fr Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1012-1035 Hardy, C. H., ISS Theory: Cosmic Consciousness, Self, and Life Beyond Death in a Hyperdimensional Physics ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1013 Keywords: Consciousness in the universe; cosmology; hyperdimension; panpsychism; psi; survival after death; post-materialist paradigm. INTRODUCTION: ADDRESSING COMPLEXITY AND A MULTI-LAYERED REALITY, THE NEW PARADIGM IN SCIENCE While physics has been plagued by four centuries of materialism, psychology and philosophy were, during that same period, trapped into the insoluble antinomy between idealism (mind wholly different from body/matter) and materialist monism (mind as a byproduct of body/brain); in the mid 20 th century, the materialist paradigm became enforced in science. My theoretical stand in Semantic Fields Theory (SFT, Hardy 1998) was that both positions-materialism and dualism-are lacking, something amply demonstrated by the fact that the mind-body split could never be resolved and that the qualia couldn't be accounted for unless one takes a first-person subjective perspective. In brief, we need a new paradigm. But there is also an arduous problem arising from these two positions' links to the two contending frameworks of physics-Relativity founding a perfectly ordered and causal spacetime, and QM instating indeterminacy at the quantum scale (with materialist monism espousing the causal and local one, and dualism partly so). As I argued in a 2001 article, at a certain threshold of complexity, causality and determinism break down. The complexity of neuronal networks in the brain, and that of multilevel webs in the mind and social interactions, demanded that we move beyond causality and determinism and postulate instead instantaneous or synchronistic inter-influences between complex semantic systems (such as minds or social groups). These could also imply retrocausality, that is, the influence of future events on past ones, as well as nonlocal proactive effects-modifying the future environment with intentions, a sort of proactive PK, as proposed in a Retrocausal Attractor modeling (Hardy 2001, 2003). I. JUNG AND PAULI'S MIND-MATTER DEEP REALITY In the 1950s, Carl Jung's work, discoveries, and his depth psychology, started to fully impact both the scientists and the public. One discovery was the concept of collective unconscious-a lattice of collective psyche connecting all human beings unconsciously (via their personal Self) with the planet (thus nonlocally); of course, this was clashing with biology and materialism viewing mind as local, i.e. contained in the 'space' of the brain (Hardy 2015c, JCER). Let's clarify that for Jung the personal unconscious has a subject-the Self-(just as the ego or 'I' is the subject of the conscious), and that the Self is a supraconscious entity, having access to the immense knowledge of the collective unconscious and able to guide the individual Self. Another concept was that of synchronicity as "spontaneous, meaningful coincidences" and connections at a distance, that he deemed "trans-temporal and trans-spatial," that is, nonlocal (Combs & Holland 1995; Peat 1987; Hardy 2004). Moreover, Jung's definition of synchronicity made clear Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1012-1035 Hardy, C. H., ISS Theory: Cosmic Consciousness, Self, and Life Beyond Death in a Hyperdimensional Physics ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1014 references to psi: in his book Synchronicity (1960, pp. 109-110), he defines three types of correlations between the mind's content and an event: "The coincidence of a psychic state in the observer (1) with a simultaneous, objective, event; (2) with a corresponding (...) external event taking place (...) at a distance, and only verifiable afterward; and (3) with a corresponding, not yet existent, future event." Thus case 2 refers explicitly to clairvoyance, while case 3 refers to precognition. With physicist Wolfgang Pauli-one of the pioneers of QM-they stated in their fascinating correspondence that synchronicities were acausal phenomena, instantiated by a deep reality, in which mind and matter were blended; the name came to Pauli in a clear dream featuring this "deeper reality" at a scale below quantum fields and distinct from them (Pauli & Jung 2014; Hardy 2015, pp. 8992). This layer of deep reality, they postulated, was a psyche-matter medium in the universe, at a subquantum scale-a layer in which mind and matter were deeply enmeshed and merged. The synchronicities would be springing from, and expressing, this underlying connective lattice. Based on his clinical experience and the science of the Ancients (alchemy, mysticism, Greek and Middle-Ages philosophy), Jung referred to this deep layer (as the Ancients did) as "The One world" (Unus Mundus in Latin) or the "world soul" (Anima Mundi in Latin): "We have all the reasons to suppose that there must be only one world, in which psyche and matter are one and the same, and in which we establish distinctions for the sole purpose of knowing," says he in his autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections (Jung 1965). Jung and Pauli posed acausality (instantiated by synchronicities, the unconscious, and the Self) as a fundamental principle equal in strength to causality, but working through instantaneous meaningful interconnections, thus outside of time or space constraints. As we'll see, the syg hyperdimension of consciousness (syg-HD) postulated by ISST fits perfectly their definition and accommodates the types of nonlocal processes that they listed as belonging to the deep reality, such as psi, the quantum entanglement, and the spin complementarity – Pauli's law of spin (Jung & Pauli 1955). II. HYPERDIMENSIONS, MAJOR PHYSICS PARADIGMS & THE INDEPENDENCE OF MIND-SOUL II.1. Hyperdimensional physics neither determinism nor indeterminacy Physics has been seminal in showing us that the setting of any problem in an either-or logic is bound to fail. This is what happened during the nearly 230 years of debate between the proponents of light as waves (interference patterns) and those of light as particles (quanta and photons). From Huygens opposing Newton in 1678 to that of Young's 1801 famous double-slit experiment demonstrating wave-interference patterns (and still to our day spurting out unsolved paradoxical results), to Einstein solving the photoelectric effect by light quanta in 1905-both schools could cite successful experiments proving clearly that their theory was supported by facts. The ultimate solution had to be a leap into a paradoxical framework-light was both waves and Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1012-1035 Hardy, C. H., ISS Theory: Cosmic Consciousness, Self, and Life Beyond Death in a Hyperdimensional Physics ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1015 particles-a leap achieved by Louis de Broglie (1939) in his 1926 doctoral thesis, when he posited that all particles (such as electrons) are driven by what he called a pilot wave; soon followed by David Bohm (1980) who developed his own Pilot Wave theory (Bohm 1980; Bohm & Hiley 1993). Yet physics once again fell in the grip of a dual competing logic, when it became clear that Einstein's Relativity (instating causality) was validated at the matter and spacetime scale or region (and the 2016 discovery of gravitational waves was its latest acclaimed success, see Hu & Wu 2016); yet, the quantum indeterminacy posited by QM was validated at the quantum vacuum and Zero Point Fluctuations (ZPF) scale. What was the reality of the universe then, and how could we ever get a picture of the whole universe- the Unified Field theory physicists are progressively building since Einstein spent in vain the last decades of his life looking for it? To do that, we had to make a leap toward hyperdimensional physics-a solution implemented as early as 1919 by Theodor Kaluza, soon joined by Oskar Klein in 1926. Let's ponder a bit the crucial entanglement problem and EPR Paradox. Einstein rejected at first QM's indeterminacy (as posited by the Copenhagen or Bohr's interpretation), because he didn't want to let go of causality equated with order ("God doesn't play dice," said he). And this is why, with Podolski and Rosen, he proposed the famous EPR thought experiment to disprove QM. Yet Alain Aspect's experiments in 1982 (1982a, 1982b), using Bell's theorem protocol, brought a solid proof of the entanglement of paired particles and their correlation at such great distances that it forbade a signal transmission through space. Thus the entanglement was definitely shown to be beyond spacetime, that is, nonlocal. As John Bell stated it (disproving Von Neumann's previous argument), theories proposing nonlocal yet causal dynamics (such as de Broglie's and Bohm's pilot waves driving particles' behavior) could thus be a viable solution. The unnerving point is that, as history has it (based on Von Neumann's faulty but resilient argument), both QM and indeterminacy (as opposed to causality) were proven by Aspect et al. (1982a, 1982b) and other EPR-type experiments. Yet the entanglement conforms to Pauli's Law of Spin (or spin complementarity) for two entangled paired particles-that the sum of their spins always has to be equal to zero. Therefore, if an apparatus changes the spin of particle A (e.g. with a mirror) from +1/2 to -1/2, the paired particle B, even already as far as the moon, has to shift instantly from spin -1/2 to +1/2. That's what Aspect proved. Thus the entanglement, as a global dynamics driven by the Law of spin, is a clear contravention to indeterminacy, and to the opposite, it definitely is a nonlocal type of interconnection or influence. Then it can be modeled as an acausal or synchronistic process (as Pauli deemed it) or else as driven by a formal cause-an influence due to a more global organization, as in Aristotle's 4 causes and as opposed to material or billiard balls causality-such as Rupert Sheldrake's (2009) morphic fields. (The indeterminacy, nonetheless, remains at the level of each particle having such or such spin.) So that, in either case, it falls in the category of the nonlocal hidden variables (i.e., unknown causes or processes). Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1012-1035 Hardy, C. H., ISS Theory: Cosmic Consciousness, Self, and Life Beyond Death in a Hyperdimensional Physics ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1016 When Jung and Pauli defined synchronicities as acausal processes, it meant they instantiated a wholly different organization than material and sequential causality-a new universal principle of interconnection beyond spacetime, and as fundamental as causality. Then we are back to HD physics as the most probable explanation, and the only viable one at the present, given that materialist monism, positing a one-block spacetime, is out of the question, and given that dualism doesn't offer a real foundation or a substrate for consciousness in the matter and biological universe. Since the mid nineties, I developed the Semantic Fields Theory (SFT) that postulates mind and Self to be complex dynamical networks coupled with the brain's neuronal networks but being nevertheless able to operate independently and beyond NewtonianEinsteinian laws; for example, experiments show that psi violates EM inverse square law, and even linear time. In SFT, all systems and beings have semantic fields instantiating a layer of consciousness/sentience (from a proto-consciousness to a self-referent mind), and these can thus be part of a HD organization as posited by ISST (Hardy 1998, 2015). Semantic fields are steered by instantaneous network connections based on meaning and an index of semantic proximity (meaningful and affective resonances and links). These instantaneous network connections (that I call spontaneous linkage process), are also the basis of our mostly unconscious thought process (Hardy 1998, chap. 4). This connective dynamics based on links and meanings instead of causal chains, in my view, is the way synchronicities work; and ISST now clarifies the nature of the (semantic) syg-energy creating these connections, as being the HD sygons. II.2. Hyperdimensional physics: only way to unify QM, GR, and the 4 forces Theodor Kaluza, in positing a 5 th dimension, showed that only hyperdimensional (HD) models could unify the four forces (Brandenburg 2011, Kaku 1994, Witten 1981). In 1919, Kaluza rewrote Einstein's equations with a 5 th dimension, which was a 4 th dimension of space-a hyperspace, best represented by a hyper-structure like a hypersphere or a hypercube (also called tesseract), like the one in Christopher Nolan's 2014 movie Interstellar. (See Figure 1) Fig. 1. A tesseract or hypercube. (a) Creator: Robert Webb, using Stella software. Find it at http://www.software3d.com/Stella.php Credit: Wikipedia Commons. (b) Extracted by CHH. On YouTube "Unwrapping a tesseract" (0'47") https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVo2igbFSPE) Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1012-1035 Hardy, C. H., ISS Theory: Cosmic Consciousness, Self, and Life Beyond Death in a Hyperdimensional Physics ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1017 Kaluza's solution produced both Maxwell's EM field equations and Einstein's field equations for gravity, plus a mysterious scalar field he called the radion. John Brandenburg (2011, p. 197) comments: "The boundary between geometry and forces was now gone, EM was geometry in five dimensions, and gravity was a force. The fields could now be unified." Then the mathematician Klein (best known for his Klein bottle) calculated that the 5 th dimension not only had a physical reality, but was compact, that is, curled up in a tiny circle, the radius of which was Planck length (of about 10 -33 centimeters). Klein's equation thus integrated Planck constant, and now, astonishingly, the equations of QM could be derived from it. The Kaluza-Klein theory (KK theory) was at the time overshadowed by the rise of QM, but it became forefront research in the nineties. Several theories propose a hyperspace (5 th extra dimension) in compactified or warped models (5 th D extremely small, curled up) or in an extensive form called a bulk; the leading one by Lisa Randall and Raman Sundrum (1999), within a string theory framework, and called the Randall-Sundrum (or RS) model, implies a 5-dimensional warped geometry, and comes in two versions, one with a bulk. In the bulk RS model, the 5D bulk surrounds two branes, the Planckbrane (on which strings are 10 −33 cm in size, the Planck length), and the Tevbrane, our 4D world (16 orders of magnitude higher, at 10 −17 cm). Also, various superstring theories (9 or 10 D) pursued the integration of the four forces and were unified by Edward Witten into M-theory (1995), positing a multiverse with 11D, elaborated upon by Susskind (2003). II.3. A hyperdimension of consciousness: integrating psi and psyche with physics Just like in physics the only way to integrate QM and Relativity (the 4 forces) is by adding extra dimensions, so the only way to integrate consciousness with physics is by postulating a hyperdimension of consciousness that would then be blended to the physics hyperdimension. This solution is also required by the fact that a gamut of mental and psi processes operate beyond spacetime and cannot either be founded on indeterminacy since they are driven by meaning (see Bem 2011; Mishlove 1997; Mitchell 1996; Nelson et al 1996; Radin & Nelson 1989; Targ et al 1979.) Therefore they can only be grounded by positing a hyperdimension of consciousness-one that would, just like hyperspace in the Randall-Sundrum bulk model, surround and contain the 4D spacetime universe. Bernard Carr (2007, 2014) proposes a hyperdimension based on sheets (2D brane surfaces) to account for consciousness (mainly in its perceptual and psi facets). While SFT and ISST postulate a type of panpsychism, some may question ISST's solution consisting in integrating consciousness with physics in a single physics paradigm that, nevertheless, is not a monism (even a dual-aspect one). Let me clarify my own position. Physics cannot anymore tolerate having two distinct sets of theories reflecting contradictory paradigmatic stands-spacetime causality versus quantum indeterminacy; it has worked ceaselessly to bridge the gap, pursuing Einstein's grand vision of a unified theory. Following the same logic, we cannot any longer allow to have two paradigmatic Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1012-1035 Hardy, C. H., ISS Theory: Cosmic Consciousness, Self, and Life Beyond Death in a Hyperdimensional Physics ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1018 stands to account for the whole universe-one physics-based and the other addressing the reality of the mind (and awareness/experience). And even less so to have so-called Theories of Everything (TOEs) accounting for a matter-only universe (but not accounting for awareness of that matter-only universe), especially when the latest data show that ordinary matter (particles, atoms, stars and galaxies) amounts to only 5% of the total energy of this universe. † Jung and Pauli laid the foundation for such a unified theory of a mind-matter universe. They observed and modeled a region, or deep reality, in which mind and matter were merged. The Self and the collective unconscious bathe in this deep reality, in which acausal instantaneous meaningful connections are the prominent dynamics (as in synchronicities). ISST postulates this deep reality to be a triune hyperdimension (hyperspace, hypertime, and consciousness). Both models (rather complementary) have an impact on the question of life after death. But first let's review the survival question in the light of the main actual paradigms. II.4. The survival question within major physics and philosophy paradigms Let's note first that the question of a consciousness living or dwelling in an extra dimension is much wider than just our survival beyond bodily death; it has also an impact on whether any entity (intelligent or not, in any galaxy or any region of the pluriverse or multiverse) may inhabit another manifold than our 4D spacetime. For example, do fifth or eighth dimensional beings exist, the way they have been pictured in various movies, such as W.D. Richter's The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension (1984) or Christopher Nolan's 2014 Interstellar? Could some intelligences dwell in an unfathomable hypertime? Could immaterial spirits such as fairies or angels have some reality? It has always been recognized that in our materialistic-reductionist monist paradigm in which only matter is considered to be real, no survival of the soul, nor any immaterial or extradimensional being, may ever exist. The argument is that since mind or consciousness cannot function independently from the brain's neural networks or space localization, then it doesn't exist without it and the death of the brain-body means the death of its captive mind. However, with 95% of the total energy of the universe being non-matter-either dark matter or dark energy whose nature is still an enigma-the materialist paradigm has suddenly become, at the turn of the century, somewhat of an antiquity. As for Cartesian dualism, with mind being a totally different substance than matter/body/brain, of course non-matter entities (souls or n-dimensional beings) are allowed and therefore the survival of bodily death as well. However, dualism has failed to give a satisfactory ground for the observed two-way interactions of mind with the brainbody. As for, idealism, it has no explanatory power either, being it is too is weak at † See the PLANCK cosmology probe team's release of March 2013, then early 2015 at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planck_%28spacecraft%29 2013_data_release [last accessed 10/16/2016] Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1012-1035 Hardy, C. H., ISS Theory: Cosmic Consciousness, Self, and Life Beyond Death in a Hyperdimensional Physics ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1019 explaining consciousness without a material body, and it has clarified neither the nature nor the processes of individualized thoughts and experiences. An interesting solution is that of Rupert's Sheldrake morpho-genetic fields: a theory positing that fields of form (morphic fields), of a nature different from the biological and matter systems, would in-form these systems (and even behavioral and mental processes) via morphic resonance, acting as the memory of a type or family of systems and guiding their morpho-genesis (thus along memorized paths). Morphic fields would then be akin to a formal causation (one of Aristotle's four causes). Let's note that Sheldrake and other scientists have conducted successful experimentations that lend credit to the existence of such non-matter fields guiding the organization of biosystems or the psyche (Sheldrake 2009). Let's see now the two contending paradigms in physics. Each one of them, taken alone, is a dead-end just as far as a viable and evolving universe is concerned. How much more about one in which intelligent beings like us-not even to mention n-D beings- could dwell! (1) A fully deterministic universe, run by spacetime laws (Relativity framework), doesn't allow the creation of novel organization, of diversity and transformation in matterand biosystems. It doesn't lead to evolution and innovation in nature (not even to the Darwinian selection or simply the favoring of the fittest), nor to creativity and choice, and even less so to free will and consciousness! (2) A fully random and indeterministic universe (QM framework) wouldn't even allow a spacetime or any law whatsoever to exist-even less so intelligence! (We have to grant that intelligence leads to innovation and thus the creation of order.) In order to give a foundation to the evolution of matterand biosystems, to conative processes (intention, will...), to choice, creativity and consciousness, we need a layered and complex universe, one favoring the interplay of (1) fixed laws (spacetime), (2) stochastic processes (randomness at the quantum scale), (3) nonlinear dynamics (chaos theory) leading to the creation of novel organization, and lastly (4) a dimension of sensitivity, choice, intended behavior, and intelligence, in a word, consciousness-all intermingling and interacting. In brief, to simply get to an evolving universe allowing intelligence to blossom, we need some leeway from set laws (in the form of diversity, chaos, divergence, change), and a selective or intentional ordering of this chaos and diversity-at the minimum as a Darwinian favoring or selection within life forms, at best as basic intelligence. But now, if we want to have also the types of nonlocal processes we observe (1) in psi (communication and influence beyond brain localization and beyond spacetime laws), (2) in the unconscious (archetypes and Self guiding the ego and providing information), and (3) in some physics dynamics-such as the entanglement, faster-than-light speed during the inflation phase, etc. (Guth 1997)-then we need to posit a hyperdimension-not only as hyperspace (and possibly hypertime), but also as a HD of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1012-1035 Hardy, C. H., ISS Theory: Cosmic Consciousness, Self, and Life Beyond Death in a Hyperdimensional Physics ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1020 And within a physics+consciousness HD (that gives a foundation to all nonlocal processes, whether physical or mental ones), then the nonlocal part of the mind-psyche can dwell and live as a self-conscious and evolving entity, autonomous from the body with which it was coupled. Thus, given that all semantic fields (the Selfs or sentient entities) of beings and systems belong to, and exist within, the semantic or Syg hyperdimension, ISST postulates that the death of the body/brain does not entail the death of the hyperdimensional Self. To the contrary, the syg-field acts as an informational, sentient or self-conscious field-as a Syg HD field (hyperconsciousness), coupled with a morphic field (Center HD or hyperspace), and a frequency field (Rhythm HD or hypertime). The triune HD allows evolved self-referent systems such as human psycheminds to not only keep on living beyond the death of the body, but to do so as selfconscious cognitive entities (the Self or soul), endowed with volition, intention, autonomy, and able to learn and evolve. Furthermore, the HD gives them access to greater nonlocal cognition and psi capacities at large. While the ensemble of all the Selfs (of all cognizant individuals) form the collective or cosmic consciousness that is the triune HD (Jung's Anima Mundi or collective unconscious), the individualized Selfs maintain their own individuality and personal sensitivity, experience, knowledge, memories, mode of thinking, network of relations, emotional bonds, etc. This, whether having an actual body in 4D spacetime, or after the death of this body. Ironically, a triune hyperspace-hypertime-consciousness HD also solves the dualismmonism conundrum: mind and consciousness are different from spacetime as in dualism, and yet they have an energy component-something that can always be translated in virtual mass-as in materialist monism. Moreover, this HD (in ISST) is pervading all matter systems by being at their very core, and is thus strongly coupled with them, and yet autonomous. This, of course, is in agreement with Gödel's (1992) theorem-that the coherency (self-consistency) of a system can only be founded on a more global level than that of the system itself. In brief, the self-consistency of spacetime can only be founded on an extra-dimension. Let's turn now to the framework postulated by ISST. III. ISST: COLLARS OF UNIVERSES EMBEDDED IN THE HYPERDIMENSION III.1. The Infinite Spiral Staircase Theory (ISST) The Infinite Spiral Staircase Theory (ISST) postulates a hyperdimension (HD) at the very origin of the universe, that would have contained all the information about myriads of systems optimized in previous universe-bubbles (UBs), as a cosmic DNA, this information being the blueprint of matterand biosystems that would then, due to their nonlinear dynamics, evolve during our universe-bubble timeline as new types of systems. This hyperdimension is both consciousness and a topological order (geometric or rather, geodesic) in the form of a spiral driven by the logarithm of phi-thus a golden spiral. A golden spiral embeds, at each quarter of circle, a specific radius (and thus Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1012-1035 Hardy, C. H., ISS Theory: Cosmic Consciousness, Self, and Life Beyond Death in a Hyperdimensional Physics ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1021 frequency) following the Fibonacci sequence, each radius being a multiple of phi = 1.6180). This sequence is infinite, and thus the Infinite Spiral Staircase bears a quasiinfinite set of frequencies (or frequency spectrum) starting from the virtual infinite (at the X Point of origin) down to Planck frequency (happening at 10 -43 second of the universe). At the Planck scale (the first quantum), the frequency of the universe is about 10 43 hertz (Planck frequency is precisely 1.85 × 10 43 s −1 ), which means that the quantum-scale universe vibrates more than 10 43 times in one single second. How much more near the XPoint, where this frequency tends to the infinite. It's only after Planck's scale (acting as a threshold), with the frequencies getting lower, and the radius (and wavelength) of the universe larger, that particles, space, time, and thus causality are allowed-and all the Standard Model particles will appear in due order, starting with the Higgs boson, and they will acquire mass while crossing the Higgs field. ISST calls this region the Quantum-Spacetime or QST manifold, driven by QM + Relativity. In contrast, the hyperdimension exists before and below Planck scale, this HD thus occupying the prespacetime, at a sub-Planckian or sub-quantum scale. Many physicists have argued that the laws acting before Planck scale (still unknown) are of a different order than the ones we know are acting beyond it. Yet Stephen Hawking (1988, 2003) predicted sub-Planckian wavelengths inside a Black Hole's (BH) event horizon, in an argument referred to as the Trans-Planckian Problem. And John Brandenburg, following Erik Verlinde (2010), argues that gravity can be fundamentally tied to entropy as a cloud of states (an entropic state-space) above Planck scale, and that this co-dependence makes it necessary that it be founded on a sub-Planckian cloud of states, or frequency spectrum, thus giving some weight to the ISS' frequency spectrum (Brandenburg & Hardy 2016). Let's note also two theories postulating a constant death and rebirth of the universe: Penrose's (1989, 2010, 2014) Conformal Cyclic Cosmology that resets entropy at each new origin, and Lee Smolin's Fecund Universes Theory (1997) positing that massive black holes (issued from dead stars) may be the seed of budding universes, which would retain some of the parameters of their parent universe. However, neither Penrose nor Smolin postulated a hyperdimension (and even less so a consciousness HD). III.2. A triune HD as hyperspace-consciousness-hypertime In ISST, the HD is triune: firstly the immense set of frequencies forms (by phi) the HD of time-hypertime-spread in virtual space along the steps of the spiral; secondly, the set of radii produces (by pi) the bows (quarters of circles) of the spiral, and thus forms hyperspace as a curved line, thus time-like. Hermann Minkowski, modeled the light cone in 1908 (using Special Relativity), as a hourglass in which events/particles (at the center or present time) have straight worldlines running into the future (top cone) and from the past (bottom cone). Outside of the double-cone is the Elsewhere (beyond spacetime), in which time is space-like (extended), and space is time-like (a line). The cosmic ISS, as HD, presents a space-like Hypertime and a time-like Hyperspace; but it adds another dimension: an HD of consciousness, the semantic or syg-HD, which is the whole spiral itself and its immense databank as a set of frequencies. Thus, the language of the cosmic Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1012-1035 Hardy, C. H., ISS Theory: Cosmic Consciousness, Self, and Life Beyond Death in a Hyperdimensional Physics ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1022 hyperdimension is music, and its dynamics are basically spins and resonances, waves and interferences, "spin networks" and "loops" (as in Smolin 1997; Sarfatti 2006)-myriads of meaning-driven networks of frequencies (as closed, spinning, strings) that will form the seed of the syg-fields expressing (coding for) all systems existing in our universebubble. This is why hypertime is called Rhythm-Rotation (R), and hyperspace is called Center-Circle (C), and the semantic/syg HD is called (S). Thus the ISS is embedding the creative dynamics of pi and phi-two non-finite numbers. HD Center is the dynamics of the center (or node) creating its circle (via pi) to set the organizational closure of its own system-and in the process it creates the identity of a specific system (a property that will be essential in our 4D region, as systems and chaos theories have shown). As for HD Rhythm, by oscillating, each bow puts its circle/torus in rotation and creates a subquantum wave-particle carrying its own frequency, a sygon, that, due to its entanglement with HD Syg and HD Center, is a semantic system by itself. The sygons will be propelled from the ISS by its initial thrust and energy and will create our whole universe-bubble with its two regions, the HD bulk and the quantum-spacetime or QST. As we know, any frequency is a wave and thus a virtual string/particle; and since we are in pre-spacetime, the virtual particle is sub-quantum of course, but it has also a speed immensely superior to C (the speed of light limit being effective only within the QST region). Thus all bow-frequencies of the cosmic ISS are ejecting faster-than-light (FTL) sygons (and networks of them) endowed with the properties of the CSR HD, notably, information and consciousness. The ISS spiral at the origin is a White Hole (WH) issued from the Terminal Black Hole (BH) of the previous universe-bubble. This double BH-WH system has been modeled by Roy Kerr (1963); it has an hourglass or X-funnel shape (hence the name I give to the origin, at the center of the hourglass: the X-Point). As the WH starts erupting from the Terminal BH (TBH), the spiral staircase unfolds (and enlarges) at blinding speed and ejects myriads of sygons whose wavelengths get larger and larger, while their frequencies decrease. The first and highest frequency sygons (called Free Sygons) will launch the bulk of the HD-as a large and curved region, probably spindle-shaped. When the sygons' size reaches Planck length, they will start interfering and creating a foamy lattice-the Higgs field-and later and bigger sygons will take on mass while crossing it, becoming the particles of the Standard Model. Yet all particles of the QST region retain at their core the sygons, as a sub-Planckian, compact and curled-up hyperdimension. These particles will create the spacetime region as they dart along, propelled by the ISS initial energy, itself issued from the TBH-starting with the first wave of neutrinos (the decoupling of the neutrinos happens within the first second), then the photons wave (the photons' decoupling, within the first 2 minutes) will illuminate spacetime and leave the relic radiation or CMB, the Cosmic Microwave Background that we detect now at about 370,000 years after the Big Bang. These first waves of particles will form the spacetime region (as a spindle or near cylinder) within the HD larger region, with the vacuum and zero-point-fluctuations (ZPF) Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1012-1035 Hardy, C. H., ISS Theory: Cosmic Consciousness, Self, and Life Beyond Death in a Hyperdimensional Physics ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1023 as a membrane demarcating the two regions-QST and CSR HD. (Such a complex boundary membrane has been modeled by Jack Sarfatti, 2006) III.3. The sygons in-forming the syg-fields (consciousness) in complex systems The sygons are consciousness-as-energy, semantic or syg-energy belonging to the CSR hyperdimension. They are able, via the HD Rhythm, to interact instantaneously and exchange information between the systems they dwell in. They constitute and drive (via HD Center) the self-organization of the syg-fields of all systems, whatever their complexity (from a proto-consciousness to a mind). All systems within spacetime have syg-fields, that are their self-organizational dynamics and information, and their identity as systems. And the syg-fields of all systems (whether a rock, a tree, a person, or a planet) (1) are conscious, (2) embed the whole evolving information about this system, and (3) form the HD of this system. This is of course the foundation of the panpsychist view of ISST. • At the human individual level For human beings, syg-fields are the whole dynamical semantic network of the person (intelligence, mind-psyche-body organization, self-consciousness, memory, emotions, skills, etc.). Human syg-fields are complex dynamical networks, multilevel, that comprise myriads of semantic constellations, each steering a set of cognitive acts in a specific domain of activity (such as driving, reading, etc.), each being network-linked to associated, co-evolving, constellations (Hardy 1998). The syg-fields belong to the CSR hyperdimension, yet each constellation is coupled to all neuronal, physiological and somatic systems needed for its functioning in the 4D world. The dynamics are based on meaningful connectivity and networking, on parallel and multilevel processing, rather than on hierarchy (top-down) and commands as in dualism. For us human beings, our syg-field is our whole individualized consciousness field/network, that is, our mind and semantic dynamics + psyche + body consciousness + our relational and interactive network. The Self is the supraconscious subject of our sygfield, while the ego (the 'I') is the subject of our ordinary state of consciousness, the one taking care of our social interactions (Jung 1960, Tart 1969). The distinction Self-ego (whatever the terms used) is the basis of many inner, initiatory, hermetic, mystic, spiritual, and religious paths of knowledge-defined as a striving to harmonize oneself with our higher or spiritual Self (soul, atman, Ka...). And in ISST, this makes a lot of sense if we understand that the ego-consciousness is mostly centered on the social and physical world. In contrast, the Self (via the syg-field and the sygons) can have access to the collective consciousness and the capacities allowed by the hyperdimension- meditative and spiritual states of consciousness, psi communication at a distance in space and in time, influence on bioand mattersystems such as healing, connection to the collective unconscious and its immense accumulated knowledge... In ancient cultures such as the shamanic ones (covering Aboriginal and Siberian ones and most African, Native American and South American ones, and also pre-buddhist Asiatic ones, as well as in eastern religions, alchemy and esoterica, we know that a gamut of practices have Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1012-1035 Hardy, C. H., ISS Theory: Cosmic Consciousness, Self, and Life Beyond Death in a Hyperdimensional Physics ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1024 been developed in order to reach or operate within the "spirit world" or dreamtime (e.g. the shamans' out-of-body trance, the possession trance), or to achieve this ego-Self harmonization (e.g., the nagual or Eagle consciousness in Yaqui culture, samadhi meditation states and yoga paths, mystical fusion states in Christianity and Islam)-many of these paths of knowledge said to lead naturally to the awakening of siddhis or psi capacities such as clairvoyance, prediction, healing. (Let's note that the field of psychological anthropology acknowledges that most ancient cultures, as its pioneer Erica Bourguignon (1976) observed it, had a form of trance, and these are sorted out as either shamanic (intentional and volitional conscious trance) or else possession cults (impersonation of spirits without self-consciousness within the trance.) • At the collective and cosmic levels Carl Jung has defined the collective unconscious as a sort of lattice or medium of communication among all human psyches (and their subject the Self), in which archetypes-collective psychic blueprints (such as that of heroes) endowed with consciousness and an immense "psychic energy"-may influence the psyches of individuals attracted to them. Yet, on the one hand, Jung integrated the animals and plants in this collective unconscious, in an alchemical way, for example as symbols and archetypes (expressing the guidance of the Self), or else as animal or plant souls-a perspective that concurs with that of the shamans on sacred plants and animals, viewed as self-conscious and able to guide and teach individuals on a quest (for example in South and Central America). On the other hand, the collective unconscious, as Anima Mundi, partakes of a sort of supra-consciousness (as an entity, a whole, being more that the sum of all psyches/Selfs constituting it) that Jung deemed trans-temporal and trans-spatial, thus definitely nonlocal, and the stuff of the deep reality that, with Pauli, they explored at a later time. And there, we meet the concept of an extra dimension. In ISST-SFT, the part of the psyche that is not strongly coupled with the brain-body and contains all the information is the HD syg-field (whose subject, or organizing selfconsciousness, is the Self). The syg-fields of all individuals and all systems form a hyperdimensional collective consciousness at a planetary level (collective unconscious, Anima Mundi), fueled by syg-energy, and in which the linked or resonant syg-fields (the personalized mind-psyches) keep interacting and exchanging qualified information (via the sygons). Let me note that when viewed from the perspective of the 'I' or ego involved in the social and material spheres, his/her own Self and syg-field are relegated to the unconscious; it is mostly with a self-development, shamanic, or yogic, path that the Self or Atman may become part of conscious awareness. (The leap from SFT [1998] to ISST [2015] consists in modeling the syg-fields and the semantic dimension as a HD, and sygenergy as HD sygons.) And at the cosmic scale, the CSR HD is the ensemble of the sygfields of all systems (matter-, bio-, or just HD systems) in our universe. This is why the HD is not only self-conscious but quasi omniscient in this universe, and why it is a collective and evolving Anima Mundi at the cosmic scale, system-linked to all its components syg-fields (all minds and all systems' psyches). As a consequence, any sygJournal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1012-1035 Hardy, C. H., ISS Theory: Cosmic Consciousness, Self, and Life Beyond Death in a Hyperdimensional Physics ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1025 field with enough syg-energy may have an influence on any group of syg-fields (e.g. a society, a planet), or even theoretically on the whole. This is in total contrast with a creator god who would be of a different substance than his creation/creatures and would only issue commands, and with a one-time-created and non-evolving creation. (Note the parallel in logic with the dualist framework of a mind only issuing top-down commands to the brain-body.) In ISST, not only each psyche-mind is a personalized and meaning-generating part of the hyperdimension, but the evolution of the whole-The One-is instantiated by the evolution of all its parts-the individual sygfields of all systems, each a self-conscious and free creative entity. Now, since syg-fields are networks and use a connective dynamic based on meaning, the syg-field itself (e.g. that of a human being), as a system, is already a collaborative, dynamic, self-organized and constantly evolving, self-creation. The cosmic HD is just the same type of semantic dynamical system at the cosmic scale-its body being the matter region of the universe, that is, the QST. Thus, the cosmic consciousness is constantly evolving because its component systems -the individualized syg-fields/minds-are in a permanent creative evolution by themselves. In ISST, the cosmic consciousness is only the ensemble of all the Selfs of all beings and systems-it is a One-Plural, a multifaceted holographic selfconscious system, yet an entity who is more than the sum of his/her parts but who evolves via his/her self-conscious parts (the syg-fields). Moreover, being beyond spacetime and nonlocal, the self-conscious cosmic HD knows the far past as well as the future and its lines of probabilities. The trends toward specific probable futures are constantly reorganized with the real time creative input of all beings and minds of all intelligent civilizations (via their syg-fields). So that the cosmic anima is, like us, an individual constantly self-creating and self-organizing her/his mind and mindscape with intelligence, creativity, sensitivity and art, and through myriads of connections with other syg-fields and their environment. Yet, as a One-Plural, her/his knowledge and capacities are more that the sum of the minds-psyches composing it, and therefore we can expect that she/he is endowed with wisdom and hyperconscience. • ISST: On the ontological side (1) The global systemic and holographic framework of ISST is that the triune hyperdimension (CSR HD) preexists the spacetime region (QST) and gives birth to it, thus forming a collar of universe-bubbles (Figure 2). So that a universe-bubble like ours consists of a CSR HD preexisting, then birthing, surrounding, and pervading the QST region whose boundary is the quantum vacuum and Zero Point Fluctuations. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1012-1035 Hardy, C. H., ISS Theory: Cosmic Consciousness, Self, and Life Beyond Death in a Hyperdimensional Physics ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1026 Fig. 2: A collar of universes: The CSR hyperdimension existing in the Phi-based spirals in a BlackHole-WhiteHole system, and surrounding the QuantumSpacetime (QST) region. (2) The information-seed of all systems evolving in spacetime is transmitted from a parent universe-bubble via the cosmic CSR HD (acting as a cosmic DNA) via the ISS' immense data bank at the origin. Therefore, there is no creatio ex nihilo (creation from nothing), and no personalized divine creator as totally different in substance from his non-divine creatures. In contrast, all beings have a HD Self (or soul) and their ensemble constitutes the collaborative cosmic hyperdimension. Then all beings and even matter systems-all having a HD syg-field-not only partake of the One-Plural, but continuously in-form or create the Whole who has given birth to them. It is a sort of selfcreating consciousness loop at all scales. (3) The self-creating, self-organizing, and self-conscious cosmos is neither deterministic nor random; but rather the creative interplay of both, plus nonlinear dynamics and creative intelligent input from the beings that constitute it. (4) The whole cosmos (HD+QST) is a collective intelligence, a multilevel system both in its wholeness and in its parts (Hardy 2015b). (5) ISST posits a type of panpsychism since all systems have a consciousness-HD core (the sygons as a compact HD), the syg-fields of these systems being more or less evolved (from a proto-consciousness to a mind). (6) The universe's global organization is holographic and self-conscious-all parts have the information of the whole, and can influence groups of syg-fields. (7) The cosmos is a fine-grain blending of mind and matter, at all scales. (8) ISST's paradigm of a self-conscious cosmos and collective consciousness is a leap beyond monism versus dualism, beyond QM versus Relativity, beyond the mind-matter and mind-body split. (9) The image of a personalized god creating the universe at a specific point in time switches to a collective consciousness perpetually self-creating through the input of all its parts-the syg-fields of all beings and systems, and relatively to their syg-energy strength-and who, as a holographic system, keeps learning and evolving at all scales. (10) An interesting consequence of the ISST model is that all intelligent civilizations in our universe are somehow co-evolving among them and influencing each other Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1012-1035 Hardy, C. H., ISS Theory: Cosmic Consciousness, Self, and Life Beyond Death in a Hyperdimensional Physics ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1027 (despite the fact some could be a million years ahead of us or behind us), and moreover they are also co-evolving with the planetary bodies they inhabit. (11) And of course ISST transforms deeply not only the perspective on human freedom and free will, but it has also a deep impact on the question of life after death. IV. CONTINUOUS LIFE OF UNIVERSES AND BEINGS IN THE HYPERDIMENSION IV.1. Birth and death of universes: the cosmic scale Since the triune hyperdimension (CSR HD) preexists the spacetime region (QST), we have, in between universe-bubbles (UBs), a Kerr BH-WH system. ISST postulates it to be-within its two singularities-pure Center-Syg-Rhythm hyperdimension, that is, a field of dynamic self-conscious information or cosmic consciousness, as a near infinite set of frequencies spread in hyperspace on the phi spiral. In the Terminal Black Hole of the previous universe-bubble, all matteror biosystems lose their matter layer and are transcribed (sublimated) into pure CSR sygonic semantic energy (thus forming the cosmic DNA). These were the systems that had been viable, enduring, and optimized in the previous parent UBs. Fig. 3: Phi-based ISS spirals in a BH-WH system (Black Hole on the left; White Hole on the right), instantiating the pure CSR hyperdimension surrounding the QuantumSpaceTime region. In the White Hole of a new UB (the birthing cosmic ISS), the bow-frequencies of the spiral eject FTL sygons, the nearer to the X-Point of the origin, the higher the frequency (and the smaller the radius). The early high energy sygons-the Free Sygons-ejected with tremendous momentum, will form the large HD region (in the form of a spindle) of what will become a UB. Then, when the bow-frequencies are down to Planck frequency, the sygons' wavelengths are so large that they start interfering, creating foam and loops at Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1012-1035 Hardy, C. H., ISS Theory: Cosmic Consciousness, Self, and Life Beyond Death in a Hyperdimensional Physics ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1028 the mouth of the ISS, thus forming a lattice in front and perpendicular to it, that will give rise to the Higgs field. The large sygons will now have to cross this lattice, which is becoming denser and denser, and they acquire mass and bloat in size, thus morphing into the particles of the Standard Model. The first two waves of high energy particles we know of-the decoupling of the neutrinos (within the first second) and that of the photons (at 1.40 minute)-literally create the spacetime region as they speed forward, within the HD bulk already created by the Free Sygons, as a smaller cylindrical region. Meanwhile, the foamy lattice extends around the spacetime region as the latter moves forward (like a balloon) and becomes the vacuum, a complex boundary surface between the spacetime and the HD regions- behaving as the double membrane modeled by Sarfatti (2006), standing between spacetime and the sub-quantum Dirac sea of negative energy, and through which virtual particles tunnel). The (false) vacuum is an oscillating and bubbling surface boundary, showing permanent fluctuations of virtual particles (hence the ZPF indeterminacy). However, the Free Sygons had occupied the region that is now spacetime (QST), and they are still there, immensely more numerous than the large sygons that have been clothed in mass while crossing Higgs field-the known particles, assembling themselves to form atoms, then molecules, etc. The new particles retain in their core the original sygons (and their information), thus forming the 5 th D, compact (sub-Planckian), of these particles. These core-sygons are individual ISSs-a quasi-replica of the cosmic ISS, and bearing its information as in a hologram-and they constantly send sygons back to the source, the cosmic ISS, about their own evolving system. Thus, all systems, via their individual ISSs, are constantly in conversation with the cosmic ISS, and their information is imprinted on the cosmic ISS-acting as the Akashic information field (see Laszlo 2004). But here, in contrast with Ervin Laszlo's A field, this Akasha is sub-Planckian, that is, sub-quantum, and does not reside in the quantum vacuum iself which, in ISST, would bear only informational traces of the tunneling of sygons through the vacuum membrane, appearing as loops. The ISS theory thus highlights the deep coherence and systemic dynamical organization of the pluriverse-the collars of UBs. It also brings an interesting understanding about a puzzling fact: that all simple atoms (hydrogen, helium, deuterium) still existing at our present time in our whole universe have been formed within twenty minutes after the Big Bang. If we consider that all particles and atoms bear a priceless information about all possible systems they can form or be part of, then nature being economical wouldn't get rid of this information and the atoms would keep on existing until they are transcribed back into pure CSR information within a black hole. It has been calculated that the photons from the first light (the photon decoupling) make up 96% of all photons reaching us-that is about 400 Big Bang photons by cubic centimeter around us when we walk in the street! (Bogdanov, 2004) The remaining 4% come from the light of stars. So let's see the consequences regarding our topic, the post-mortem life issue. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1012-1035 Hardy, C. H., ISS Theory: Cosmic Consciousness, Self, and Life Beyond Death in a Hyperdimensional Physics ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1029 In the collar of UBs, each UB receives at birth the cosmic DNA of its parent UBs (the information about optimized systems), yet it will be free to improvise and create, transform these systems, and make them evolve. So that in a Terminal BH, the information field on the cosmic ISS will be drastically different than the one received at birth (Hardy 2015a). The HD sygons (whether free or embedded as a 5 th D in systems) are the deep reality of our universe, and they steer all nonlocal communications and interinfluences between entities-a constant two-way interaction with the origin, and among resonant syg-fields (such as minds); thus high states of consciousness and psi phenomena are instantiated by the sygons and the HD, including weird forms of nonlocality such as retrocausality or synchronicities (Hardy 2016). In brief, at the pluriverse scale, there is no loss of information, ever. Matter is birthed by the hyperdimension, and when disintegrated within a BH, it is translated back into pure HD sygonic information imprinted on the ISS. Thus is preserved an axiom of QM, that no information is ever lost. As modeled by Nobel laureate Gerard 't Hooft (1993), the whole information about a volume (i.e., a BH) is inscribed on its surface (i.e., on the surface of the BH's event-horizon); consequently, the Holographic Principle states that all information about this universe is inscribed on the 2D surface of its cosmological horizon. In ISST, the universe as we experience it in our 4D world had an origin and will die in a Terminal Black Hole (and numerous partial BHs before that). However, the HD pervading the universe, unfathomable, dwells beyond the birth and death of matter systems (including universe-bubbles); it is eternally existing as a self-conscious whole (the Hindu Tat Vam Asi-I am That, I am What is); yet, in contrast with a creator god deemed immovable and distinct from the created, the CSR HD is constantly evolving and learning through its component systems. As the whole is more than the sum of its parts, the cosmic CSR HD knows more than all of its parts but both its knowledge and its beingness, constantly evolving, are neither perfect nor total. Thus the ISS theory opposes the concept of a creator god-especially when viewed as immovable, omnipotent and omniscient. Its originality is that it is neither a creator god nor a blind materialistic universe, but a self-creating and self-evolving, multilayered, hologram. In brief, as a holistic (whole, coherent) and holographic system, the CSR HD knows all of its parts, and is self-conscious in its wholeness and in its parts as well. Thus, universe-bubbles are constantly birthed and then die (in terms of their QST matter region); yet their information is preserved and passed on to the following UB, via the CSR hyperdimension. Death at the cosmic scale is only a transformation, a translation into pure hyperdimensional consciousness; and birth is the reverse process. Thus is shed a new light on an impersonal, yet self-conscious and creative Wholeness, with whom each one of us intelligent beings may communicate through our Self. The implicit aim of the perpetual creation of UBs would thus be the exploration and expression of creative acts and mind potentials by entities at all scales and at many embedded and interactive levels. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1012-1035 Hardy, C. H., ISS Theory: Cosmic Consciousness, Self, and Life Beyond Death in a Hyperdimensional Physics ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1030 IV.2. The hyperdimensional Self alive beyond spacetime We saw that ISST (and SFT) have integrated and elaborated upon Carl Jung's concepts of a collective unconscious, and of the Self as a supraconscious and transcendent subject of the personal unconscious, as connected to other Selfs and to the Anima Mundi (the collective Self as the One-Plural). It is within cognitive psychology that I developed SFT yet, as a researcher on world cultures and PhD in psychological anthropology and a practitioner and expert on meditation and self-development techniques, I'm totally in accord with Jung's concept of the individuation process that reframes the ancient paths of knowledge and initiation in the language of depth psychology. Initiation paths are found in most ancient cultures and religions, as well as in Christian and Muslim mysticism. As Mircea Eliade (1954) has shown, initiation was a world-wide path of knowledge aiming at exploring the spiritual dimension of the world (the dreamtime for the Australian Aborigines) and at developing one's own mental and psi capacities, yet its practices differed with each culture. Individuation and initiation reflect a layered cosmos and the perennial knowledge that: (1) each human being has a transcendent, supraconscious, Self (or soul), and an ordinary state of consciousness driven by the ego, which is more centered on one's body and social environment (Tart, 1969); (2) this Self can access a deeper knowledge than the ego, and activate new mind potentials by getting connected to the world soul or dreamtime. According to some ancient knowledge paths, enlightenment (or awakening) is the ego-Self fusion ("death of the ego," "Mystical or Alchemical Marriage"), and once attained, the individual reaches beyond duality (advaita in Hinduism) and can connect or harmonize oneself with cosmic consciousness (Brahman, the Tao, The One) Now, let's focus on the topic of the bodily death for human beings. SFT posits that the main part of our being is extra-dimensional, that is, operating in the semantic dimension beyond space and time (just as Jung had predicated it about the Self and the unconscious); and that only a small part of our semantic field is intermingled with the brain's networks and the body via eco-fields (body consciousness). In ISST+SFT, our syg-fields are thus operating freely in the syg hyperdimension and create spontaneous interconnections with resonant syg-fields (e.g., those of our loved ones, but also those of our pets, our houses, relished works of art and systems of thought, etc.). The Self is the supraconscious subject of the whole syg-field, and is steering the individuation process or ego-Self integration. As Jung showed it, it is the Self of a person who acts as a guiding entity in most symbolic and numinous dreams-mostly appearing as the repressed side of the psyche, either the feminine anima or the masculine animus, in order to balance the person's psyche-and this explains the representation of a personal guardian angel. And in one's life, the Self is ever devoted to the awakening of the ego and is able, from within the syg hyperdimension, to concoct synchronicities, events, or situations that will send a message to the ego. Thus, to draw the global picture, the syg-field, being both the information-field of the person and steering his/her semantic and organizational dynamics, contains moreover the Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1012-1035 Hardy, C. H., ISS Theory: Cosmic Consciousness, Self, and Life Beyond Death in a Hyperdimensional Physics ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1031 whole dynamical memory of this person-as information, selfhood, organization, procedures, and processes. In this framework, death is just the shedding of the bio-matter system by the Self- something like an uncoupling of the Self and its HD syg-field from matter-both Self and syg-field being highly personal and strongly individualized. In fact, the degree of originality of the syg-field and Self of a person is higher than that of their fingerprints because the syg-field is also the ensemble of their affective, social, and intellectual networks. Bodily death, for the individual Self, is just severing the connections to the brain's neuronal networks. However, all past connections of this person's syg-field with still living loved ones, objects, places and environment are enduring, because they are primarily psychic and mental (i.e., semantic) links and bonding. However, ISS Theory- as a cosmic consciousness framework-doesn't lead to any judgment of the souls or punishments after death. If the global aim of an incarnation is to learn and expand one's consciousness and talents, then it's likely that the Self will ponder its achievements and shortcomings during its past life; but this is only a learning process and has nothing to do with a condemnation and even less so with an eternal judgment; here, we only have a Self taking one's own responsibilities. CONCLUSION: FULLY CREATIVE INDIVIDUALS POST-MORTEM As we have seen, before/below Planck scale (at the origin, then surrounding the spacetime or QST region, and at the end of a universe bubble), there's the pure CSR HD-the syg-fields embedding the ISS, before they express (or clothe) themselves in matter after/above Planck scale, in the QST region (as in Figure 2). Thus, an interesting consequence of ISST's framework is the fact that a self-conscious hyperdimensional region leads to the necessary existence of beings and systems that would be pure CSRHD systems (that is, syg-fields without material bodies in spacetime), and networks of them (such as groups of Selfs or souls). While these immaterial beings are devoid of ordinary matter or bodies, they nevertheless have a high syg-energy (as well as a morphic field) and may have an influence on the organization of matter systems in the spacetime region. This is similar to an alive human being doing a self-healing visualization and whose syg-field will transmit a healing energy toward his/her body. After the death of the body, the syg-field, as we saw, still exists as an intelligent, creative, volitional and evolving personality. Thus, the Self of a deceased person is a pure CSR HD being that exists only in the hyperdimension. I surmise that a pure Self (disembodied) wouldn't have as much influence on spacetime systems as an embodied Self on his/her own body, but could still tinker with 4D reality. Another pure CSR-HD system could be the syg-field of a galaxy that has been swallowed by a Black Hole (at any point in the spacetime of a UB), and whose matter would have been crushed by gravity. It would now exist as a pure field of information- syg-energy organized as a syg-field and able, under favorable conditions, to act as galactic DNA and give birth to a new galaxy. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1012-1035 Hardy, C. H., ISS Theory: Cosmic Consciousness, Self, and Life Beyond Death in a Hyperdimensional Physics ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1032 To give a more precise picture of the question of the survival beyond bodily death within the ISST framework, a deceased person, having shed his body, would be his pure Self-having all the memories and also the accumulated talents of his previous life. This is in accord with the Buddhist and Hindu concept of the Self (atman) being conscious between incarnations, in the Bardo. Given the large research on communications with the deceased (e.g., Brune 2009; Gurney et al 1886; Myers 1903)-and my own experiences recounted in The Sacred Network (Hardy 2011)-my stand on this issue is that the pure HD Selfs (as individual souls-the deceased) (1) have maintained their individuality and their mindscape, (2) are still thinking, creative, acting, and learning, able of intention and volition, (3) they have kept their past relational network and have even added new HD friends to it, (4) they moreover enjoy the larger scope of a HD consciousness (reaching to any coordinates in space or time) that allow them to communicate freely with their past loved ones and colleagues, whether this is registered consciously or via their unconscious by the living individuals. (All these properties and capacities can be fluidly derived from SFT-ISST). 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"The anthropic landscape of string theory." arXiv:hep-th/0302219 Targ R, Puthoff H, & May E. 1979. "Direct perception of remote geographic locations." In CT Tart et al. (Eds.), Mind at Large (pp. 78-106). New York: Praeger,. Tart C. (Ed.) 1969. Altered states of consciousness. New York: John Wiley & Sons. 't Hooft, Gerard 1993. "Dimensional reduction in quantum gravity". arXiv:gr-qc/9310026 Verlinde E. 2010. "On the origin of gravity and the laws of Newton." arXiv:1001.0785 [hep-th] Witten, E. 1981. "A new proof of the positive energy theorem". Communications in Mathematical Physics. 80 (3): 381-402. Witten, E. 1995. "String theory dynamics in various dimensions". Nuclear Physics B. 443 (1): 85126. arXiv:hep-th/9503124 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1012-1035 Hardy, C. H., ISS Theory: Cosmic Consciousness, Self, and Life Beyond Death in a Hyperdimensional Physics ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1035 °°° Biographical Note: Chris H. Hardy, Ph.D. in ethno-psychology and former assistant of research at Princeton's Psychophysical Research Laboratories, NJ. Systems theorist, research on consciousness-via Jungian & transpersonal psychologies, consciousness studies, cognitive sciences. Recent research on a cosmological theory (ISST) integrating consciousness in a systemic and hyperdimensional view of the cosmos (Book: Cosmic DNA at the origin, 2015). Since 1995, she elaborated the Semantic Fields Theory (a cognitive theory based on complex dynamical networks). More than 60 papers to date and 17 books on consciousness. Dr. Hardy presents papers regularly at international scientific conferences. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1036-1050 Stankovich. R. with Durdevich, M., Does the Consciousness End, Remain Awake, or Transform After Death? ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1036 Explorations Does the Consciousness End, Remain Awake, Or Transform After Death? Radivoj Stankovich, PhD* With Afterword by Micho Durdevich Abstract. We discuss the possibility of the existence of consciousness after physical death, within the conceptual frameworks of quantum psychology, and higher-dimensional and non-classical geometries. We provide a compact historical and philosophical overview of related ideas, and present some illustrative examples. 1. The Problem Man has always been interested in what awaits him after death. Anthropological studies show that beyond the things he could see around him, he believed in the existence of unknown forces capable of influencing his life. He also believed that apart from the body, people had some kind of everlasting soul after death. Anthropophagi even believed that by eating their enemies they acquired forces those enemies possessed. This should, of course, be attributed to their ignorance. Nowadays, naturalists affirm that man is just an intelligent animal. And that he has progressed more than others thanks to some special circumstances. According to quantum psychology, on which our statements rely, there is no doubt that man is physically an animal. It also accepts that he has developed thanks to specific circumstances. But unlike the naturalistic view, quantum psychology states that man, in his development, has acquired the faculty of orienting himself based on his own experiences and making a choice from * Radivoj Stankovich has recently passed on at 97 years old. Website: http://www.radivojstankovich.net. Correspondence: Micho Durdevich, Institute of Mathematics, UNAM, Morelos, Mexico, Email: [email protected] Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1036-1050 Stankovich. R. with Durdevich, M., Does the Consciousness End, Remain Awake, or Transform After Death? ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1037 among them, free of any instinctive protection that govern all the animals. This has turned him into a new genus. His belief in an "afterlife" was typical of the ignorance of human beings who started to orient themselves on the basis of their own experience. It took him to another dimension of reality, inaccessible to animals, which remain governed by instincts that come from the accumulation of experiences related to nature. In his new condition, man began to understand everything existing on the basis of his incipient intuition. He certainly made countless mistakes, which he corrected over time, but also acquired some new and everlasting perspectives. Some of them were wrong, others developed in a positive manner. However, some others still remain problematic up to the present times. One of them is the existence of different unknown things and forces. We now face, in a completely different fashion, the possibility of survival of human consciousness after the biological death of a person. And we try to approach this problem by using the most advanced knowledge, thousands of years away from the ignorance of the primitive man. In this attempt we face another point of view that has been formed over time, which emphatically affirms that even mentally man is still an animal. It ignores his capacity to make a choice free of the influence of instincts. It understands human psychic life as the exclusive result of neural development without any influence of ideas. (By denying ideas and the logic, it denies existence beyond its time-space expression). In the same context, it also denies the possibility of existence of a conscious mind not governed exclusively by biological laws. This work, naturally, does not intend to demonstrate for sure that there is any reality, other than the one known till now, which could open its doors to human consciousness after biological death. It only wants to indicate the possibility that said existence can be examined within a broader scientific framework than that suggesting its denial. It presents the grounds for such an approach as well as some ideas resulting from it. To put the issue in a solid framework, we continue with some notes on related ideas throughout history. Some brief notes regarding philosophy and some broader ones concerning the method used to deal with this matter. Lastly, we give some examples of its application as well. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1036-1050 Stankovich. R. with Durdevich, M., Does the Consciousness End, Remain Awake, or Transform After Death? ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1038 2. Towards a Scientific Framework for Consciousness 2.1 Premises of Science Human reasoning always develops within certain premises that determine its extent and its limits. In daily life, the premises of reasoning are usually implied and not examined. However, they determine the logical structure of any reasoning. Therefore, in order to thoroughly analyze the consistency of thoughts, scientific reasoning searches for the surest knowledge possible. To this end, a methodology and epistemology are first prepared. Paradoxically, the ultimate premises of science are examined very rarely, because they are close to philosophical approaches that the current science tries to avoid. In principle, these premises are accepted as being the same as those of natural sciences, which admit that the universe is only composed of matter that develops by deterministic causality. The achievements of natural sciences are so huge and obvious that their premises are identified as those of general science. That is to say, it is assumed that natural sciences are the same thing as general science, so that an additional examination in this sense is unnecessary. It is thereby intended to apply the methodology of natural sciences to the understanding of psychological and sociological issues as well as to those of other human sciences. However, despite the tenacious insistence on this principle, achievements in psychology and other human disciplines have been very poor as compared to the success of natural sciences. In the past hundred years, the distance between technology and human psychology has become increasingly larger. 2.2. General Science The search for explanation of this situation leads us to the need to review the ultimate premises of natural sciences. The reasons for this are not philosophical, but strictly logical. Until we do not have absolute knowledge, the sole existence of matter in the universe is just a hypothesis that could be faced with other hypotheses (even more since it is not fully known what matter is). It cannot be denied that natural sciences explain a great deal of reality, but, at the same time, they leave open the issues that are specifically human. If science consists of the search for the surest knowledge possible, it does not Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1036-1050 Stankovich. R. with Durdevich, M., Does the Consciousness End, Remain Awake, or Transform After Death? ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1039 deny the enormous value of natural sciences. But it does indicate that they cannot be reasonably considered and valued as general science. It means that science has to be approached bearing in mind the limits of human knowledge. The knowledge of matter of an outdated philosophy furbished up by positivism cannot be accepted as definitive, when according to the latest knowledge, its essence is closer to Kant's noumenon than to a naturalistic point of view. Furthermore, general science is not only based on criticism of the materialistic approach. It offers its own hypotheses on human psychological reality based on the recognition of free choice. This latter is not unjustified either, but is based on the analysis of logical structures and of the development of orientation mechanisms of living beings as well as on the latest research results in physics. All this opens up promising perspectives to human sciences. At the same time, the scientific method criteria have been broadened and have become more elastic to comply with the characteristics of their object of research. In mechanics, they have practically not changed, although they have become more variable without ever failing to observe, like general science, the surest and the most verifiable knowledge possible, even when there are just traces of it; these should always be greater than mere possibilities and within a consistent theoretical framework (which complies with the surest knowledge possible). In the same context, consciousness is a very complex concept that encompasses several processes of human mental life. It is explained in different manners but in short, it distinguishes its own self from another person, preserves its memory and teleological reasoning capacity. Biological death is in turn considered as cessation of the elementary faculties necessary to survive as a living being. But we must add that all these faculties do not have to be simultaneous. According to this, mind is not limited to any biological reaction of the brain, but involves the existence and organization of the psychic life of a person as a whole. Therefore, its conscious survival after death refers to this whole. Within the common biological reality, this survival of consciousness is impossible. But theoretically, in a reality that is yet to be known, it could possibly exist. The following are the reasons that support such possibility. As we do not have absolute knowledge, the possibility of a reality fundamentally different from the one we know is not precluded. But in order to be examined Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1036-1050 Stankovich. R. with Durdevich, M., Does the Consciousness End, Remain Awake, or Transform After Death? ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1040 within the framework of general science, it must be consistent with it. Then, any signs of such a reality should be sought and be observable with a higher degree of probability than a mere possibility. Finally, the existence or nonexistence of that probability is here examined. 2.3. Deterministic and Logical Causality Deterministic causality is a type of causality that matches the current knowledge about matter. In this sense, it shares the explanations of natural sciences and the metaphysics of materialistic philosophy. However, its validity is limited to the premises of natural sciences, but beyond them, it is just a form of logical causality in general. In the same way the concept of general science is broader than that of natural sciences, logical causality is broader than materialist, deterministic causality. Greater knowledge about matter may reduce its significance even more. On the contrary, logical causality won't disappear until there is any type of reality or consistent theoretical construction. Without this causality there may not be any scientific or spontaneous analysis or consideration, because it is the indispensable premise of the reasoning process. 2.4. A Theory on the Threshold of Science Both the religious promise of an afterlife and the secular image of the prolongation of life in anti-matter assume that the conditions in the eternal life are similar or analogous to those we know in earthly existence. This is more than problematic. However, the possibility that immortality may take place under different conditions cannot be discarded, and neither can the fact that the perpetuation of human consciousness is linked to something we still ignore. We will now deal with this assumption within the most objective framework possible. The hypothesis under examination is logically possible and allows for a formal research aimed at finding its confirmation if not now, possibly later in a future when knowledge becomes far more advanced. For the time being, it is based on probabilities. Therefore, the possibility of perpetuation of individual human life will be examined based on the hypothesis of the existence of the fourth dimension. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1036-1050 Stankovich. R. with Durdevich, M., Does the Consciousness End, Remain Awake, or Transform After Death? ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1041 2.5. The Three Dimensions In order to undertake this study, it is necessary to start with some elementary data on space dimensions we are familiar with. The first dimension can be illustrated with the perspective of one point that is a part of a line. If this point were conscious, the entire world would be given by the line to which it belongs. Its possibilities of movement would be reduced to forward and backward direction, but it will be unable to move sideways. The second dimension that a point could know would be if it were located on a plane. In this case, in addition to forward and backward movement, it could also move laterally along the plane in all directions, but would not be able to come out of the plane. Thus, based on its experience, it could not imagine anything outside the plane. But if in addition to foregoing, the point were able to move upward and downward, it would get to know the third dimension too. It would be in the same position as we, human beings, in the third dimension are. However, it would not be able to imagine anything else beyond the three dimensions it knows, since it could not perceive anything else with its senses. Neither can we, human beings, perceive anything beyond the three dimensions in which we live. However, unlike the little point, we can imagine the existence of the fourth dimension and of many more dimensions. We are capable of making mathematical calculations of multidimensional spaces. On the basis of that, we can make some other assumptions. First, we are able to suppose not only that there is a fourth dimension, but also that we live in the fourth dimension although we are not aware of that due to limitations of our sensorial perceptions. Exactly in the same way as the imaginary point that was a part of the line could not imagine the second dimension or the point of the plane could not imagine the third dimension. Since we have more knowledge than the small point, we can imagine perfectly well that we live in the fourth dimension, even though we do not feel it. But we can go even one step further and imagine that we not only exist in the fourth dimension, but also that we will continue existing in the fourth dimension, after we disappear from the third. However, the best thing of all this is that it's not Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1036-1050 Stankovich. R. with Durdevich, M., Does the Consciousness End, Remain Awake, or Transform After Death? ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1042 only the matter of imagination. 2.6. More Knowledge In the first place, we know that there is a relationship between time and space, which gives rise to very interesting effects. For instance, for the person traveling in a spaceship at a velocity close to the speed of light, time passes much more slowly than for those who stayed on the Earth. We have seen this in some movies about time travels to the past and the future. But this is not a matter of fiction; the relation of the difference in time elapsed for the traveler and for those who stayed on the Earth is accurately grounded and can be measured. We also know that there is a relationship between energy, mass of a particle and the velocity of its movement. By accumulating more of such knowledge we started to explain phenomena that we could not understand until now by means of classical materialistic physics. This is similar to what is going on with Euclidean geometry, whose premises are valid but was surpassed by other types of geometric calculations. For example, we do not stick so much to some materialistic beliefs as we did just a while ago. That opens us to new perspectives for the study of some phenomena dealt with in parapsychology, such as telekinesis, poltergeist and other similar issues. Although there are still some significant gaps we have to eliminate by using new knowledge that will surely be acquired in the near future, for the time being we can examine several scientific hypotheses. Using the hypotheses we analyze in this work, we can understand how someone apparently may be in two distant places practically at the same time; how someone can become disintegrated and then put together again in a quite different place; or other phenomena that seemed to be miracles before, such as spoon-bending by touch, remote clock repairing, etc. Obviously, after having discarded tricks of the tricksters. 2.7. Grounds for the Fourth Dimension Before we talk about the prolongation of life, we are going to summarize the bases of hypotheses that support the existence of the fourth dimension. They all surpass the degree of mere logical and probabilistic possibilities and are probable to a greater or lesser extent according to scientific epistemology: Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1036-1050 Stankovich. R. with Durdevich, M., Does the Consciousness End, Remain Awake, or Transform After Death? ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1043 (1) The fourth dimension is logically consistent with the three dimensions accessible to our sensorial perception. (2) Time and space in the fourth dimension are different from those in the third, although they are in a way linked to the phenomena of the latter. (3) In the fourth dimension, there is a type of energy we do not know in the third (E = MC2). The form of energy we know is a variation of that existing in the fourth dimension. Or, rather, the opposite. (4) The fourth dimension coexists simultaneously with the third, like this latter coexists simultaneously with the first two. (5) We cannot perceive the fourth dimension with our senses. (6) We do not know how one can pass from the third dimension to the fourth. However, we can seek this step by intuition before being able to calculate it mathematically. (7) Some phenomena that are inexplicable in the third dimension are probably influenced by the effects of the fourth dimension. Due to the differences between the third and the fourth dimension, we can assume that the effects of the physical death of a human being in the third dimension are not the same in the fourth dimension, especially because of the characteristics of person's psychic life. The most important consequences deduced from the above are the hypotheses that: (A) After physical death of a person in the third dimension, his/her existence in the fourth dimension can, somehow, continue. (B) Person's psychic existence, linked to biophysical factors in terms of energy, no longer receives this energy, but does receive the one that has always had in the fourth dimension. (C) Therefore, even though the human being can continue indefinitely in the fourth dimension, he/she cannot go back to the third. (D) Psychically, an individual that stops existing in the third dimension, continues to exist in the fourth at the same level he/she had in the third. 2.8. Scientific Level and Value Epistemologically, the degree of certainty of the aforementioned seven points, as a whole, is greater than that of the four hypotheses deduced. The four hypotheses deduced are not yet scientific, because they still have to be proved, but their proof is already close to scientific examination. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1036-1050 Stankovich. R. with Durdevich, M., Does the Consciousness End, Remain Awake, or Transform After Death? ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1044 None of these hypotheses can be definitively rejected. On the contrary, some are being proven (for instance, a faster displacement of antimatter as compared to light, which makes the E = MC2 formula as a general explanation of energy, stagger). Due to the sole fact that the theory of the fourth dimension is getting closer to its scientific consistency, the value of the fourth dimension hypotheses is greater than the first two preceding promises of eternal life. This is something that can already be taken into consideration. Independently of the scientific confirmation of the previous dimensions, an interesting point related to the prolongation of human life can be made in a new religious sense based on the assumption of existence of the fourth dimension. However, this should be treated after considering the following question: Why do religions exist? It is commonly thought on a scientific level that religions were created because the primitive man could not find explanations for many natural phenomena due to his ignorance. So he attributed them to supernatural forces, which later gave rise to religious beliefs. This anthropological hypothesis is quite plausible, but if the existence of the fourth dimension is proven, it could mean that the very early appearance of ideas about afterlife, besides the anthropological explanation, might have come from an obscure intuition of the possible prolongation of human life in the fourth dimension. 2.9. Intuition of Survival According to the analysis of needs that led to the creation of religions, there isn't much to add to the thesis that explains them as a product of ignorance of primitive man. However, the fact that human beings have believed from the very beginning in the prolongation of life after physical death is more interesting. Superstitions, and later religious beliefs, have changed and expanded in countless variations. However, the idea of human survival was always present in all of them as an expression of desire or a sort of rebellion against the idea that the psyche itself can be equal to existence of perishable material things and Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1036-1050 Stankovich. R. with Durdevich, M., Does the Consciousness End, Remain Awake, or Transform After Death? ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1045 animals. This can be attributed to human intelligence, feelings and self-esteem. Notwithstanding this, the fact is that although we have enriched our knowledge, the desire of survival has not disappeared. It has been repressed in those who look for simplistic solutions, but remains present in those who try to see the human situation without pseudoscientific prejudice. Therefore, it is worthwhile examining the possibilities we do or do not have to satisfy this desire. If religions had not been created in the remote past, but at present, we would undoubtedly have had a different religion that would offer much more rational answers to human needs than historical religions. So, as we have freed ourselves from materialistic prejudice, we have to consider the possibility of a modern religion rationally as any other possibility. The main advantage of such a religion is that we would have faith without the need to accept multiple inconsistencies typical of classical religions. Because they are all based on dogmas that were created when the mankind lacked the knowledge it has nowadays. Therefore, people constantly have to search for the way to make their faith fit within the current scientific knowledge. For example, dissection was forbidden in Christianity, which pre-vented anatomic studies and surgical interventions for some time, to mention just two of the already disappeared prohibitions. But some of them have remained, such as mandatory celibacy for priests and prohibition of abortion that hinders rational planning of the size of population. The insistence on the conservation of these kinds of dogma by different churches does not help to strengthen the religious faith. But, as a need for faith is so deeply rooted in human beings who seek some strong orientation in their lives, many choose not to take all of the rules of their religion literally, while others seek a substitute for faith in ideological beliefs. Therefore, in the past century, many believed not in God but in Karl Marx or Hitler. This latter brought some obvious, further difficulties, since churches at least preach peace and harmony, whereas political substitutes of religions preached fanatical revolutionary violence or dictatorship of a "superior race". In order to overcome such situations, a more rational faith could be based on hypotheses that are ahead of science, instead of being always behind it. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1036-1050 Stankovich. R. with Durdevich, M., Does the Consciousness End, Remain Awake, or Transform After Death? ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1046 These points were established in a "laboratory" of elective hypotheses, which led to the synthetic "conception" of a religion that is not revealed but rationally conceived. It is presented below together with its advantages and disadvantages. 2.10. Principles of Anthropoligion Anthropoligion (human religion), although not based on science, has its grounds in hypothetically possible principles - basically, in the assumption of existence of the fourth dimension. It is not based on any kind of revelation, but on the hypotheses that encompass the fundamental part of conventional religious topics people have been familiar with over thousands of years. According to this approach, the anthropoligious God is a self-conscious principle or a being that possesses unrestricted creativity, which expands to all the possibilities existing in the universe. The almighty and omnipresent God of Judeo-Christian religion, except for his anthropomorphic image and patriarchal character, matches pretty much this formula. The similarity between God and human being, his supreme creation, does not lie in human biophysical constitution, but in the possibility of free choice, will and creativity that man possesses, although to a limited extent. It also lies in the prolongation of human life in the fourth dimension (though God also exists in other dimensions we cannot even imagine yet). The earthly human life is, in a way, preparation for the life in the fourth dimension. The life of an individual in the fourth dimension depends on what he or she does in this world, because each individual remains at the same level of possibilities he or she has created during his/her existence on Earth. Animals are neither capable of free and responsible choice nor of the independent creativity of their genetic impulses. In a sense, heaven and hell also exist in the fourth dimension. Persons of good will who have been creative on Earth, will preserve these qualities for eternity in the fourth dimension. It will be their heaven. Whereas those who have been inconsiderate and not engaged in their earthly life, will remain reduced to these characteristics and will not be able to hide them from anyone throughout the entire eternity. It will be their hell. Religious miracles, if they have ever really existed, can be explained by Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1036-1050 Stankovich. R. with Durdevich, M., Does the Consciousness End, Remain Awake, or Transform After Death? ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1047 exceptional influences of the fourth dimension on the earthly life in the same way parapsychological phenomena can be. However, exceptions in religious miracles will always be accompanied by a certain degree of ethical significance. So, people who feel need for religion but cannot accept the archaic stories and statements that stand in contradiction to their objective knowledge, may now find a new kind of faith. At the same time, this religion agrees with hypotheses of immortality and the fourth dimension. However, despite its advantages over historical religions, this new version of faith has its disadvantages too. The most important one is that old religions possess strong esoteric mysticism and offer magical promises that attract people, whereas anthropoligion lacks this attraction. Another disadvantage is that promises of heaven and dark threats hell of old religions probably have stronger ethical effects, especially for the people with low level of education. It is due to the fact that they may fear the hell, but could hardly be frightened by the possibility of remaining in the fourth dimension attached to their scarce moral merits from their earthly life. 2.11. Intuition and Objective Value Epistemologically, as a whole, anthropoligion is one degree below scientific certainty than the hypothesis of the fourth dimension itself, due to additional assumptions that are added to the outline of a new religion. These assumptions move anthropoligion away from science as much as they put it closer to an imaginative product, similar to science fiction. So, its degree is completely beyond science. Finally, its objective value is lower from the point of view of sociology. On the one hand, because its influence on ethical behavior is lower, as seen herein, and on the other, because its possible radius of influence is much more reduced since its acceptance requires a higher level of education than that found in masses of believers in most of the world. On comparing the extent to which the teachings of classical religions agree with this draft of an essay about a rational faith we have presented, it can be concluded that old religions shared practically the same bases, even though they did not express them clearly. Therefore, we should, after all, admire spontaneous Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1036-1050 Stankovich. R. with Durdevich, M., Does the Consciousness End, Remain Awake, or Transform After Death? ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1048 intuition that has always been the basis for their creation. 3. Afterword by Micho Durdevich, Institute of Mathematics, UNAM A great philosopher and scientist, visionary and inventor, artist, and my dear friend, Radivoj Stankovich, passed away on September 5, 2016, aged 97, at his hotel in Jiutepec, Morelos/Mexico. To his last days, he was focused on developing, sharing and perfecting his ideas, including writing the final pages of the present paper. He was a luminous example to follow, for all of us. Hopefully, now Rade knows all the answers. We did our best to try to give the paper a completed form. I would like to thank Dubravka Sužnjević for kindly providing the Spanish to English translation of Rade's original manuscript, and to Lilia Cespedes for so enthusiastically assisting Rade in typesetting the Spanish version. I am very indebted to Prof. Gregory Nixon, for carefully reading the entire manuscript; his suggestions have greatly improved the final version. I include below a couple of comments regarding the connections between the quantum physics and geometry, on the one side, and Rade s work on the other. I also include a small collection of references, either to the works explicitly mentioned in the paper, or other works exhibiting non-trivial connections with the ideas presented. Quantum Complementarity and Pure Consciousness Rade would always encourage discussions involving mutually complementary pictures, viewpoints and descriptions of things – rather than searching for some monolitic universal truth. In this sense, he was quite in resonance with the Niels Bohr complementarity philosophy, in particular when developing foundations of his own Quantum Psychology. Within complementarity, he would always search for invariance phenomena, the situations where different observers, with different structural identities, metodologies and explications, would nevertheless find a common ground in observable statements. According to the von Neumann interpretation of quantum measurement process, Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1036-1050 Stankovich. R. with Durdevich, M., Does the Consciousness End, Remain Awake, or Transform After Death? ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1049 before objective statements about physical phenomena can be formulated, we need to perform a kind of an artificial division of the world, into the observed and observing parts. An imaginary object-subject cut/division. Quantum mechanical statements then apply to the observed part of the universe. However, due to the arbitrariness of the cut (and finiteness of the observed) – there is always a freedom in redefining it. For example, if the observer is a human, instead of saying that she is observing a beautiful flower, we can say that she is in reality "observing" retinas of her eyes where the image is formed. Or that she is really "observing" the neuronal ends connecting her eyes with the brain. The arbitrariness of the cut does not contradict the objectivity of the measuring process. As an extreme version of this argument, we can move all of the physical body to the observed part. According to von Neumann, what remains at the observer side, is then a pure spiritual form. And this form is ultimately responsible for the so-called collapse of the wave function, a kind of a process that ocurrs when potentialities of the quantum-mechanical description are converted into actual properties, within the act of observation. Fourth Dimension and New Models of Reality Rade was fascinated by the prospect of connectedness of things at the very basic level, of the very fabric of space. I understand his "fourth dimension" in this way: not as a four-dimensional space in the classical sense of the word, but as a geometrical existence dimension, which, by bringing the premises of quantum theory into the realm of geometry, establishes a ground for new models of physical reality, in which space and time, material and spiritual, are unified. Notes & References [1] Stankovich R: Quantum Psychology (n.d.). In this unpublished book, Rade presents his own psychology theory based on the premises of quantum physics and geometry. [2] Chris R. Reid, Hannelore MacDonald, Richard P. Mann, James A. R. Marshall, Tanya Latty, Simon Garnier: Decision-making without a brain: how an amoeboid organism solves the two-armed bandit, Journal of the Royal Society Interface, June 8, 2016. [3] Van Lommel P: Consciousness Beyond Life: The Science of the Near-Death Experience, HarperOne, 2011. In this very detailed and carefully written book, Cardiologist Pim van Lommel presents results of his research, into whether or Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1036-1050 Stankovich. R. with Durdevich, M., Does the Consciousness End, Remain Awake, or Transform After Death? ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1050 not consciousness survives the death, together with possible theoretical frameworks that allow the existence of pure consciousness. Including very interesting speculations about possible explanatory framework based on quantum theory and the phenomenon of entanglement and distant correlations. This is a purely quantum phenomenon, complementary to the classical descriptions of objects and processes in terms of space and time. [4] Edward Kelly, Emily Williams Kelly, Adam Crabtree, Alan Gauld, Bruce Greyson: Irreducible Mind: Toward a Psychology for the 21st Century, Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. A comprehensive study on a variety of psychological phenomena that are unexplainable in terms of conventional psychology, including near-death experiences and mystical states of pure consciousness. [5] John von Neumann: Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics. Princeton University Press, 1955. Principal foundational treatise of quantum mechanics. The theory is presented in an axiomatic way, as geometry of Hilbert spaces, in which wave functions representing the world of potentialities, exist. The last chapter discusses the process of quantum measurement, providing a conceptual ground for a "pure consciousness observer". [6] Ouspensky P. D.: Tertium Organum, Manas Press, 1920. A self-contained system of higher logic, by the great Russian philosopher, mathematician and mystic. An integral part of the exposition is rooted in a geometry beyond the standard 3-dimensional Euclidean geometry. Many phenomena interpreted as possible manifestations of a fourth dimension are really attributable to a higher reality based on quantum geometry. [7] Tere Arcq: Llave Esoterica: En Busca de lo Milagroso. Essay in the book: Cinco Llaves del Mundo Secreto de Remedios Varo, Artes de Mexico, 2008. In Spanish, but there are English and French translations, too. In this essay, art historian Tere Arcq explains the profound influence of mystical teachings of Gurdjieff and Ouspensky, to the paintings of brilliant Catalan-Mexican artist Remedios Varo. Including the interpretation of diverse paintings in terms of the fourdimensional geometry. [8] Linda Dalrymple Henderson: The Fourth Dimension and Non-Euclidean Geometry in Modern Art (Leonardo Book Series), MIT Press, 2013. We intend to gradually make Rade's unpublished books and papers freely available at his website: http://www.radivojstankovich.net Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research | December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1051-1063 Bausch, K., Big Bang Spirituality, Life, and Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1051 Explorations Big Bang Spirituality, Life, and Death Kenneth Bausch* [adapted from Bausch, 2016] Abstract Taking the Big Bang as the singular source of universal evolution, gives potent contemporary metaphors for understanding spirituality, life, and death. We can discover the nature of the Universe as we observe that its evolution is radically indeterminate, but manifests tendencies toward connectivity that manifest in self-organizing wholes. Like a traditional deity, the singularity that existed in the moment before the Big Bang is eternal and timeless. Everything that exists or comes into being, no matter how creative, is a manifestation of that first moment of creation. That the first moment of creation is always happening; it's happening right now. We (and every other thing) are products of that original creation and our own creativity is an expression of its creativity. This should comfort us, for it implies that when we lose our personal creativity at the end of our physical lives, we are likely to experience rejoining the original creative force of the Big Bang, just as religious faithful often expect death to reunite them with their creator God. Introduction "We have (in the world) the experience of a truth which shows through and envelops rather than being held and circumscribed by our mind" (Merleau-Ponty, 1964, p. 408). That is to say, the world thinks through us. We do not initiate either life or thought; the world does. This meaning in the world is never known until we express it in our lives and language. It is by perceiving and manifesting this ever-present but often obscured meaning that we become all that we can be. As infants, we knew the world in the way of other highly developed animals, that is, through a kind of collective erotic sensing that knew no difference between ourselves and our mothers (primary caregivers). Our development of language splits that prelanguage unconscious unity (schematized as Subject0) into a conscious ego (Subject1), and its environment (Subject 2). This can be schematized as: Original Subject Ego + Other or * Ken Bausch, Institute for 21 st Century Agoras, Cincinnati, OH. Email: [email protected] Website: www.globalagoras.org Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research | December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1051-1063 Bausch, K., Big Bang Spirituality, Life, and Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1052 Subject0 Subject1 + Subject2. In addition, our efforts to understand ourselves and our environment (including other people) are schematized as: Ego + Other Communion or Subject1 + Subject2 Subject3.* On the subject of life after death, we need to parse the prospects of Subjects 0, 1, 2, and 3. The book and this excerpted article are driven by my desire to make overall sense in the chaos of postmodernism. I was driven to question several religious, rationalist, and cultural standards: • revealed religion, belief in God the Father, divinely sanctioned moral and ethical standards, dependence on hierarchical authority for rules and favors; • tenets of the Enlightenment and classical science such as duality of body and mind, reification of the excluded middle, the demand for classic scientific proof for any rational conviction; • cultural malaise resulting from uncertain ethical values. The goal of this effort is to present a coherent systemic vision of our world and our roles in it. The method can be called syncretic imagination. From sources, I have read, have written about, and in my head, I perceived strong similarities in approaches that would seem otherwise divergent. I attempt to create stories that hang together and create a coherent background for meaningful and robust living. Singularities In Christianity and in some Eastern philosophies, there is an argument over the nature of Ultimate Reality/Divinity/Brahman. Does the Ultimate have attributes? Is it good, just, and compassionate, or not? Most modern day Western Christians would say, "Of course, God is good, just, and compassionate." There is a strain of Christian theology, however, called negative theology, which holds that if we give God attributes, we put limits on God and put him on our level and the level of any object we describe. It was for this reason that St. Basil and his fellow bishops in 4th century Cappadocia said that they believed in God, but they did not believe that God exists. In other words, "The Creator transcends even existence. The essence of God is completely unknowable; mankind can only know God through His energies" (Fortescue, 1910). The Eastern Orthodox Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research | December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1051-1063 Bausch, K., Big Bang Spirituality, Life, and Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1053 version of this tradition, Hesychasm, became a dogma of the Orthodox Church with the publication of the decree of Tomos in 1351 (see, e.g., "Essence-Energies distinction," 2016). Parallel to this Christian negative theology is Advaita (non-dual) Vedanta as propounded in the eighth century by Adi Shankara (Satprakashananda, 1977). In this philosophy, the Absolute has no name or form or attributes. It is Nirguna (without attributes) Brahman (Satprakashananda). Daoism holds a similar view as revealed in the statement: "The Dao that can be described is not the Dao" (Lao Tsu, 1972, Tao Te Ching). In negative theology, Advaita Vedanta, and Daoism, God, Nirguna Brahman, and the Dao are absolute singularities – unknowable in themselves. The Universe of the Big Bang bears remarkable similarities to the God of negative theology and to Nirguna Brahman and the Dao. It, too, is an ultimate reality. It, too, is a singularity. The universe before the Big Bang was an absolute singularity. It did not exist in space and time because it had nothing to relate to; and space and time are created by relations between things Nothing can be said about a singularity. After the Big Bang, multitudes of chaotic energies were released to fend their way in an uncreated world (cf. Singh, 2005). The universe we inhabit is still finding its way, especially in intellectual and cultural arenas. And yet, in a fundamental way the universe is still a singularity. As a whole, it has nothing to relate to because, by definition, it is everything. And we, at the atomic and sub-nuclear level are of the very same stuff as everything in the universe. We are one with the universe as a singularity. Differences between the Big Bang and Other Singularities How does our Big Bang singularity relate to the singularities of negative theology, Nirguna Brahmin, and the Dao? The principal difference lies in the relation to time. The Eastern singularities are eternal and timeless. For Advaita Vedanta, we are simply names and forms (maya = illusions) draped over non-dual reality. In the final analysis there are not two things; there is only non-duality. We do not relate to Nirguna Brahman with prayers or expect rewards and miracles. In Vedanta, we are one with the Absolute. Our glory is to live in awareness of that unity. Our singularity is dynamic. Ever since the Big Bang, the world has been evolving cosmologically, chemically, biologically, psychologically, and culturally. In all of this evolution, our singularity has been expressing itself in its manifestations and in the "flesh" of the universe (as in MerleauPonty's the flesh of the world, 1968). It is perhaps true that the universe does not achieve consciousness except through us and our language. There is a vague, unexpressed meaning in the world that is never known until we express it. It may be that our singularity (that which we are) is one of becoming, and it seems to yearn to become conscious of its own existence through its creations as in evidenced in the evolution of life on planet Earth. In cosmic process, the power of the universe is ours to use. The universe is a miracle so it may follow that we can work miracles by tapping into that power. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research | December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1051-1063 Bausch, K., Big Bang Spirituality, Life, and Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1054 Our personal involvement in the Becoming is sometimes enlightened by the verbal expressions and exemplary lives of persons in similar situations to our own. To a large extent, however, our understanding of what is going on is recorded in our bodily unconscious, where it and similar experiences of Becoming can sometimes be accessed through deeper reflection. So, we experience our share of the Becoming in our personal lives. We also contribute our share into its overall evolution. Becoming equips all of its energies and entities to freely explore their possibilities. These innumerable experiments, big and little, express the nature of Becoming. Every achievement in the universe, every obstacle faced and overcome is Becoming being real in space and time. Every insight we have, every emotion we feel, and our every relationship is Becoming being real in our world. As we are one with this Becoming, our job in life is to become all that we can be. The power of the universe is ours to use. Most of what we accomplish is in relationships with others. It is likely that at death we will be less individual voices in a chorus of expansion and harmony. I once expressed our paradoxical relationship with Becoming in the following verse. Am I God? I am a body. I am not two/not one with the universe. I am a creative, chaotic, metaphysical contradiction as is the universe. The universe and I and everybody else are the same hologram. I am the creative force of the universe, especially in my microcosm where my body and environment provide the material limits that creativity requires. I am free to do and be whatever I will According to the laws of chaos, I attract a uniquely beautiful constellations into my microcosm That fits exquisitely into the overall design. With attention, imagination, effort, and body wisdom, I co-create myself. In free association with other bodies, I continue designing and producing the universe. So I am God – and I'm not. Scientific Analogies of Creation The body of the universe has found exotic ways to symbolize for us the way it is put together. It presents the microcosm/macrocosm similarities to us in relation to both the little world/big Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research | December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1051-1063 Bausch, K., Big Bang Spirituality, Life, and Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1055 world of physics and the personal world/universal worlds of psychology and society. Recently, through the efforts of the scientists of chaos, exquisite artificial universes have been created by indeterministic and decentralized processes. These chaotic processes are clues to the constituting process of the universe. They indicate how we function in the grand economy. They also sketch a solution to the freedom vs. predestination debate. They show us, as does the theory of the holoverse (described below), a divine economy in which we are both whole, center, and part. The Holoverse The high-tech, laser, three-dimensional photographs called holograms give sensual confirmation to our sense of being not two/not one. They demonstrate the relationship of the microcosm and the macrocosm, the age-old theory that the entire universe is reflected in its every part, as in the ancient Buddhist metaphor of Indra's Net (or Indra's Jewels), used to demonstrate how, though everything is Śūnyatā or emptiness, the universe is still dynamic, and each part of the cosmos contains the whole in a holographic manner (cf. Talbot, 1991; Robertson, 2009). If you take an ordinary photograph of your face and tear off the part containing your chin, you will have two pieces; one will picture your chin; the other will show the rest of your face. Not so with the hologram. If you take a hologram picturing your face and break off the chin part you again have two pieces, but each one is a picture of your whole face. Break both pieces into two and you then have four complete pictures of your face, and so on. The whole is completely present in each of its parts. Regarding any two pieces resulting from breaking the hologram of your face, it is true to say, "These two are not two." In its relevance to the universe, this analogy says that its every part, its every molecule, planet, plant, animal, and human is an image of the whole universe. The Strange Attraction of Chaos Chaos theory provides a rationale for the random exquisiteness of the universe and our free participation in its creation. The strange attractors of chaos are both natural processes and equations. They generate harmony by chaotic processes. They exhibit remarkable characteristics. When their equations are graphed, for example, they often generate beauty of infinite depth and variety. They do this in unpredictable ways that do not seem to coerce the freedom of individual atoms or points (see, e.g., Field & Golubitsky, 2009). Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research | December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1051-1063 Bausch, K., Big Bang Spirituality, Life, and Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1056 A non-mathematical demonstration of a strange attractor at work is provided by the rise of cigarette smoke in a still room. The smoke rises but each individual atom within it is free to go wherever it will as each atom is indeterminate (free). The smoke gracefully rises curling at some point into two beautiful plumes which then separate into four plumes, thence to eight and eventual chaos. No two plumes are ever the same, but they maintain remarkable fractal [see below] similarity (cf. Gleick, 1987; Stewart, 1989). Thousands of processes in fields as diverse as biology and electronics follow this same process as they progress from regular to periodic to chaotic. Fractal Grandeur Fractal Geometry deals with fractional dimensions between our usual one-, two-, and threedimensional representations of the world. In doing this, it deals directly with jagged lines and crinkled surfaces whereas traditional geometry deals with smooth lines and surfaces. An aerial picture of a rocky coastline, for example, has a fractal dimension of about 1:25, according to Stewart (1989, p. 219), whereas a protein molecule has a dimension about 1:7 (Stewart, p. 223), and a crumpled ball of paper has a dimension of about 2:5 (Stewart, p. 224). Surfaces in nature are very irregular and have individual qualities. Traditional geometry smooths out the differences and reduces everything to approximations of straight lines and curves in order to compute lengths, areas, volumes, etc. Fractal geometry, in contrast, tries to come to grips with the uniqueness of observed reality to discover its underlying structure. Using fractal geometry mathematicians can reproduce a fern on their desktop computers by following a few simple rules. Lucas Films generated the geography of the moons of Endor in this way for the film Return of the Jedi (Stewart, p. 229). Visually the most remarkable production of fractal geometry is the Mandelbrot set which is sometimes called the gingerbread man because of its overall shape. It is generated using complex numbers and the simple mapping formula zn+1= zn 2 + c (Stewart, p. 235): Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research | December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1051-1063 Bausch, K., Big Bang Spirituality, Life, and Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1057 We are ginger people. We are the Gingerbread Man Wherever and whenever we awake in this evolving tableau, we disturb or expand the ongoing universal harmony. Mandelbrot plotted the connectedness of every point c in the plane. There is no foreseeable sequence for plotting the connectedness of those points. They occur randomly all over the computer screen. The order is chaotic. Only after thousands and millions of iterations does the pattern appear. It is the gingerbread man. Picking any spot on the gingerbread man we can enlarge it 100 times mathematically and find a design of jeweled splendor having elegance surpassing seashells and sea horses. Again enlarging this portion 100 times we find elegant designs by the same jeweler (perhaps it's Indra!). Repeating the process we find equally detailed but unique beauty by the same jeweler, etc. The Mandelbrot set has infinite depth. This progression is indicated in high definition color at "Mandel zoom 00 mandelbrot set.jpg" on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mandel_zoom_00_mandelbrot_set.jpg I am reminded of the biblical phrase, "God's only begotten son," but in a depth that says he is begotten again and again infinitely. One is tempted to mimic the style of John Lennon singing about the walrus, so I craft another expressive verse: God is the Gingerbread Man. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research | December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1051-1063 Bausch, K., Big Bang Spirituality, Life, and Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1058 Jesus is the Gingerbread Man. We are the Gingerbread Man. Again, the One and the Many. Again, not two/not one. Again, infinite freedom and depth In infinite elegant order Randomly generated. God writing straight with crooked lines. It appears that we can place ourselves anywhere we please in this universe and still fit exquisitely into the grand design. Chaos theory and fractal geometry deal with random (free) events that create remarkable unpredictable beauty. They situate my experience of being one with the world precisely because I am a free individual: I do what I please, and, whatever that is, it is just exactly right for the universe. I am one with the magnificent unity of the universe because I am a free individual. Paradoxical as that may seem, holographic principles account for this mutual freedom of cosmos and self. The workings of chaos and fractals expand on the metaphor of the hologram. They show a likely scenario for the formation of the microcosm in the macrocosm. They also surprise us with the revelation that the universe is free. Putting It All Together Cosmic Perspective The Big Bang singularity existed before its eruption – except to say "before" puts it in time, and the singularity is timeless (so it also exists right here, now, forevermore, unless timelessness renders it beyond the qualities of "existence"). After its eruption, the stuff of everything in the universe is the stuff of that singularity. Everything proceeds from this original Being as it chaotically transcends itself. Effusively it projects replicas (total parts) of itself. By thus scattering itself, Being is able to simultaneously express and know itself. The physical world is the body, reflection, and language of Being. The Big Bang unleashed immeasurable free energy into an empty universe and let that energy find its own way. From then on, everything is one with the universe and the Big Bang in the manner of a hologram. As each bit of a hologram contains the whole picture; so each bit of the universe contains the whole universe with the intensity specified by the capability of the bit. Every energy, atom, galaxy, organism, and human from the eruption to the present day is physically the original stuff of the Big Bang. We are "not two" but one with that originary stuff, Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research | December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1051-1063 Bausch, K., Big Bang Spirituality, Life, and Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1059 known to the ancient Greek philosophers as the apeiron. Its freedom, wisdom, and power, resides in our bodies and our unconscious. Every bit of the universe has a degree of freedom, which it modifies or loses when it couples with other bits, in which case the union of bits becomes free to tackle more complex problems. Evolution provides numerous examples of plants and animals joining in symbiosis to survive in hostile circumstances (e.g., Archibald, 2016). We all have joined other people to get something done, if only to push a car out of a ditch or throw a party for a friend. Evolution and our own experience seem to indicate that there is a natural drift toward cooperation and communication. Evolution previous to the arrival of language displays the chaotic efforts made by organisms in their pursuit of survival, but even more so the exquisite beauty created by those efforts. Those wildly free efforts and the resulting beauty express the complete openness and effectiveness of the universe's wisdom. Evolution is the process of the Logos becoming Flesh. This material language of Being is alive and chaotically purposeful. Its every indeterminate particle cocreates a universal Mandelbrot set. Its every particle is free, creative, and self-transcending. It is in this context of Being expressing itself that we human beings find our ultimate glory. The world evolves as a straining towards the consciousness that language makes possible. With the arrival of language, the Logos (soul or self) becomes conscious (self-conscious). Heidegger (1991) does not use the Logos terminology, but he does describe invisible Being behind the process of individual perceiving and knowing as follows: Through this body flows a stream of life of which we feel but a small and fleeting portion, in accordance with the receptivity of the momentary state of the body. Our body itself is admitted to this stream of life, floating in it, and is carried off, snatched away by this stream or else pushed to the banks. (p. 79) We locate ourselves in this stream of life by focusing our attention. Focusing in the chaos of the moment (using our "F in 0"), we can bring elements of the stream into words, and therefore, into consciousness. In Nietzsche's terminology, we "bring Becoming into Being" with our will to power. In the cosmic picture and in Merleau-Ponty's terminology, we fulfill Being's yearning for conscious expression. Merleau-Ponty's (1998) large vision is that we are the world's project. The world thinks through us. We do not initiate either life or thought. The world does. At the same time, the world does not achieve consciousness except through us and our language. The world and ourselves as subjects are mutually related. There is a vague, unexpressed meaning in the world that is never known until we express it. For Merleau-Ponty, Being needs us in order to truly be. If Being is below us and only expresses itself in us, human history is then "the history of the becoming of Being itself", according to Madison (1981, p. 235). In other words, Being becomes its conscious self through the expression of free human beings. The movement of human history is the cultural history of Being. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research | December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1051-1063 Bausch, K., Big Bang Spirituality, Life, and Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1060 Psychological Perspective In its prepersonal state, the infant knows its world through a kind of collective erotic sensing that is similar to that of other highly developed animals. We were "not two" with the universe. There was no distance between us and the flesh of the universe. In particular, we shared a boundless oneness with our mothers or primary caregiver who stood in for her (cf. Rochat, 2009). After a year or so but notably by three, we developed language, and that changed everything. According to Freud (1920/2009), in the Fort/Da experience, Freud's grandson learned to possess his mother symbolically with language. He also became a separate entity (an ego). Emotionally, this separation sets up two drives and a complex relationship between them. Ego yearns for its lost mother-me closeness; it also has an intense desire to be an individual. Life is the working out of these two conflicting drives, which Freud called Eros and Thanatos. The development of ego splits our pre-language unconscious unity (schematized as Subject0) into a conscious ego (Subject1) and its environment, or the Other (schematized as Subject2). The transaction is schematized as; Original Subject Ego + Other or Subject0 Subject1 + Subject2. In the grand scheme of things, we are now "not two/not one" with the universe. The contradiction this seems to involve would rend this status invalid only in a world of essences that obeyed the dualism of language. As Merleau-Ponty (1964) has argued, "[T]his acknowledged contradiction appears as the very condition of consciousness," and there are other "philosophies which show contradictions present at the very heart of time and of all relationships" (p. 19). The Other, the partner to Ego, is that part of our life that we have not yet expressed in words. It includes physical relationships, interpersonal relationships, and relationships with our anonymous and generalized corporeal existence. We are tasked with bringing those relationships into consciousness by using language. In other words, our job in life is to use our intuition, imagination, and ingenuity to make explicit and orderly the influences in our lives (just as I have done here). In doing that, we resolve our personal conflicts between Eros and Thanatos, and simultaneously advance Becoming's progress into conscious Being. This process can be schematized as: Ego + Other Communion or Subject1 + Subject2 Subject3 We are at our optimum when we are acting as Subject3, when we are combining our rationality with our intuition, imagination, and feelings. In this state, we are using our abductive [or Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research | December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1051-1063 Bausch, K., Big Bang Spirituality, Life, and Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1061 retroductive] logic as named by C. S. Peirce (2013). In physics, this logic was expressed by Albert Einstein when he said, according to Wertheimer (1959), "I very rarely think in words at all. A thought comes and I may try to express it in words afterwards" (p. 213). In everyday discourse, I am working in Subject3 consciousness when I struggle to find the words to tell someone that I love her in the midst of an emotional scrap. Subject3 consciousness finds winwin solutions to conflicts. As Subject 3, we seize our destiny to create a human world. Nietzsche expresses this sentiment in the strongest way. His phrase for Subject3 is "the will to power." He says, "This world is will to power-and nothing besides! And you yourselves are this will to power-and nothing besides!" (cited in Heidegger, 1991, p. 18). The context of our lives is exuberant and selftranscending. Joy and the memorable things in life occur when my Subject3 communes with your Subject3. This is true from the intercourse that gives birth to new human life and also to the dialogue that leads to new intellectual breakthroughs. After Physical Death Will I survive physical death? Given the ambiguity of the word "I", the answer depends upon the whether I am talking as Subject0. Subject1, Subject2, or Subject4. • Subject0, the reality of the Universe available to our untapped unconscious wisdom continues to grow through physical, social and psychological evolution. • Subject 3, communion of ego and other, is embodied in the progress of universal evolution. • Subject2, Other, would remain as part of Subject0. • Subject1 Ego, might pass away as an active subject. • Alternatively, Ego and Other might continue to exist as foils for each other in ever expanding exploration and satisfaction. References Archibald, John (2016). One Plus One Equals One: Symbiosis and the evolution of complex life. Oxford University Press. Bausch, Kenneth (2016). Back Stories for Robust Postmodern Living. Litchfield Park, AZ: Emergent Publications. Essence-Energy distinction (2016). In Wikipedia. Retrieved 16-Jun-2016 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essence%E2%80%93Energies_distinction Fortescue, Adrian (1915). New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia. Online, retrieved 05-May-2014: http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07301a.htm Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research | December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1051-1063 Bausch, K., Big Bang Spirituality, Life, and Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1062 Field, Michael, & Golubitsky, Martin (2009). Symmetry in Chaos: A Search for Pattern in Mathematics, Art, and Nature (2nd ed.). Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. Freud, Sigmund (2009). Beyond the Pleasure Principle. Martino Fine Books. (Original in German, 1920). Gleick, James (1987). Chaos: Making a New Science. Penguin. Heidegger, Martin (1991). Nietzsche: Vols. 3 and 4 (Vol. 3: The Will to Power as Knowledge and as Metaphysics; Vol. 4: Nihilism). D. F. Krell (ed.): HarperOne. Lao Tsu (1972). Tao Te Ching, trans. Gia-Fu Feng & Jane English. New York: Vintage Books. Originally written ca. 6th century B.C.E. in Chinese. Madison, Gary Brent (1981). Phenomenology Of Merleau Ponty: A Search For The Limits Of Consciousness. Ohio University Press. (Originally in French: La phenomenology de Merleau-Ponty: un recherché des limites de la conscience, 1973.) Mandel zoom 00 mandelbrot set.jpg (2016). Wikipedia (accessed June, 2015): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mandel_zoom_00_mandelbrot_set.jpg Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1964). The Primacy of Perception (trans. William Cobb). Northwestern University Press. (Original in French: Phénoménologie de la perception, 1945.) Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1968). The Visible and the Invisible (trans. Alphonso Lingis). Northwestern University Press. (Original in French: Le Visible et l'invisible, suivi de notes de travail. Gallimard, 1964.) Peirce, C. S. (2013). Works of Charles Sanders Peirce. Amazon Digital Services LLC: The Perfect Library. Robertson, Robin (2009). Indra's Net: Alchemy and Chaos Theory as Models for Transformation. Quest Books. Rochat, Philippe (2009). Others in Mind: Social Origins of Self-Consciousness. Cambridge University Press. Satprakashananda (Swami.). (1977). The Universe, God and God-Realization: From the Viewpoint of Vedanta. Vedanta Society of St. Louis. Singh, Simon (2005). Big Bang: The Origin of the Universe. Harper Perennial. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research | December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1051-1063 Bausch, K., Big Bang Spirituality, Life, and Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1063 Stewart, Ian (1989). Does God Play Dice? The Mathematics of Chaos. Basil Blackwell. Talbot, Michael (1991). The Holographic Universe. HarperPerennial. Wertheimer, Max (1959). Productive Thinking. Enlarged edition. Harper & Brothers. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1064-1077 Glasberg, R. P., Death, Consciousness and the Quantum Paradigm ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1064 Explorations Death, Consciousness and the Quantum Paradigm Ronald Peter Glasberg * "For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come...?" Shakespeare, Hamlet (III.1.66) "Life, what is it but a dream?" Lewis Carroll, Through The Looking Glass (1871/2016) 1. Introduction The question of death as either the extinction or continuation of consciousness is intimately connected with the question of the nature of consciousness, which is itself connected to the question of how consciousness is connected to the material world as understood by physics in general and quantum theory in particular. To the extent that the prevailing paradigm of contemporary culture appears to be resolutely reductionist, it is generally assumed that consciousness is but a way of discussing phenomena pertaining to the experience of human awareness – phenomena that will cease to exist when the body-brain complex ceases to function in the context of death (Carroll, 2016). In other words, consciousness or mind simply blinks out in a manner that at least mimics the experience of having a general anaesthetic. During my own experience of being anaesthetized, I was shocked at how the interval of the medical procedure had been reduced to absolutely nothing. A moment of drowsiness and a yawn were immediately followed by a sudden awakening and the sense of utter amazement that several hours had passed. What if I had died during that procedure? Of course, I did wake up, but I was left wondering if my timeless non-experience was a vindication of the reductionist paradigm with respect to the nature of consciousness and ultimately of death itself. * Correspondence: Ronald Peter Glasberg, University of Calgary, Calgary, Alberta, Canada Email: [email protected] Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1064-1077 Glasberg, R. P., Death, Consciousness and the Quantum Paradigm ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1065 The purpose of the present study – my anaesthetic experience notwithstanding – is to challenge the prevailing paradigm with respect to consciousness and death by way of a threepronged approach. (1) Since the reductionist paradigm is based on the materialist foundation of quantum theory, I propose to look at that dimension of being, not as an occasion for explaining consciousness by way of something that is inherently non-conscious, but as a set of phenomena that provocatively parallels a corresponding set in that dimension of being called consciousness. (2) Demonstrating how that pregnant parallel can give birth to a new theory of consciousness, I will put forward three postulates that follow from my exposition of certain quantum principles. (3) On the basis of these postulates I will then return to the death question, not with a view to reviewing what appears to me the ample evidence for post-mortem survival of consciousness (see, e.g., Kelly, Crabtree, & Marshall, 2015; Carter, 2012), but to put that evidence into a framework that connects it to or makes it consistent with the quantum behavior I outline in the first part of this essay. While I am challenging a reductionist outlook, the reader should be aware that I am not denying that physical processes can explain consciousness. However, because these physical processes at the quantum level appear weird, I am also exploring the possibility of de-weirding the physical dimension by making reference to the functioning of consciousness as introspectively understood, albeit in a somewhat novel way. Does that mean I am suggesting that the external or non-conscious realm can be reduced to the internal or conscious realm? I believe the relationship between these two spheres is subtler than that of mutual reduction. It might better be thought of as a kind of reflective symmetry where the internal is the way it is because the external is the way it is and vice versa. Symmetry is, of course, a principle of physics, but it clearly plays a role in other areas of knowing (e.g., art, which might be thought of as a form of knowing the world through acts of aesthetic creativity). With respect to the survival of consciousness after death, there is certainly an implied reference to symmetry, which, according to Lederman and Hill (2007) may be understood as a tendency for something to remain invariant under transformation Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1064-1077 Glasberg, R. P., Death, Consciousness and the Quantum Paradigm ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1066 or change. Thus, if death is a transformation from a physical state to a non-physical state, the survival of consciousness in the form of an individual personality would be an impressive manifestation of the principle of symmetry. My way of proceeding then is to have the three following sections explore each of the foregoing prongs of my position: (1) the nature of the quantum world; (2) outlining a theory of consciousness that reduces the weirdness factor of that world; and (3) utilizing the insights of the first two sections to place life after death in a more constructive context – one that opens us to the evidence by placing it in a framework that is connected to both quantum principles and those of consciousness understood in a manner that demystifies some of those principles. 2. Hiatus: From h to H – The Quantum Paradigm The core of the quantum paradigm is connected to the idea of rupture, fissure, break, discontinuity or, the term I will be using most, hiatus. This is with reference to letter h, called Planck's constant, an irreducible chunk of energy that figures so prominently in a multitude of quantum phenomena (e.g., quantum leaping in electron orbits and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle with respect to simultaneous measurement of position and momentum of sub-atomic particles). I will be discussing how this physical constant emerged and how it functions before considering, in the subsequent section, how quantum behavior parallels that of consciousness. The symbol H will be used with respect to shedding light on analogous phenomena that seem to exhibit a comparably 'hiatic' quality in the sphere of human consciousness. What then are some examples of H? One does not have far to look: mind-body, dreamingwaking, and, of course, life and after-life. What the foregoing have in common is the idea of a problematic disconnect between each these pairs. For example, while mind and body appear to be linked, the nature of that link is anything but clear to the extent that mind and body seem to be radically different substances – the former being non-spatial while the latter is spatial (cf. Cottingham, 1992). Likewise, when we awaken from a dream state, the waking world seems to Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1064-1077 Glasberg, R. P., Death, Consciousness and the Quantum Paradigm ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1067 exist at a different level of consciousness from the dream world. In a similar vein, the post-life world of the dead (if it exists at all) seems so disconnected from the world of the living that only a few gifted psychics can connect the two realms, and even then their efforts are often met with skeptical derision. The original hiatus of quantum theory introduces discontinuity into the wave-like world of frequency, where instead of a continuous range of frequencies existing they are quantized by a small and irreducible chunk of energy called h. This physical constant came out of the late 19 th century struggle to understand the black-body radiation curve. What I propose calling the consciousness constant (i.e., an embodiment of 'H'), which will be shown to play a role in understanding the hiatus of mind-body as well that of life-death, may also be understood as a response to a different issue: namely the issue of integrating paranormal and spiritual phenomena into the usually hostile world of mainstream academic discourse. To avoid turning this essay into a long-winded discussion of thermodynamics, I will keep to a very basic level with respect to the black-body radiation problem that beset physics toward the end of the 19 th Century and how that problem gave birth to h as a universal hiatus phenomenon at the physical level. The term black body refers to an ideal absorber and emitter of thermal radiation. When heated in the form of an enclosed space or cavity, the range of radiated frequencies emitted by a black body can be carefully measured by way of an opening in the cavity. Within the framework of pre-quantum theory what should have been observed was a preponderance of high frequency or short wave-length radiation for certain high temperatures. This is because more high frequency (short wave-length) waves would fit into the cavity space than low frequency (longer wavelength) ones. In other words, when more heat energy is pumped into the cavity, high frequency radiation should increase to the point where an ultra-violet catastrophe ensues. That somewhat dramatic term is a poetic way of describing a physical as well as a theoretical crisis in the prevailing theory of thermodynamics – namely, that, according to an obviously incorrect theory, an infinite amount of energy should be generated by heating a black body because ever higher Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1064-1077 Glasberg, R. P., Death, Consciousness and the Quantum Paradigm ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1068 frequencies (with ever shorter and more energic wave-lengths) should predominate over the lower frequency emitters. Ultra-violet refers to those highly energic frequencies beyond the visible frequency of the color violet. To remedy this theoretical impasse, Planck introduced the constant h in the formula E = hf, where E is energy, h is a very small unit of energy (i.e., small in comparison with our macroworld experience), and f stands for frequency. Because a high frequency is now quantized by h and the heat energy pumped into the cavity has to be equally distributed among all of the differing frequency generating oscillators in the wall of the cavity, the result is that the high frequency contribution to the overall shape of the radiation curve is suppressed (rather than enhanced) because of its shorter wave-length. As Manjit Kumar (2008) puts it: "It is not possible for oscillators to absorb or emit energy continuously like water from a tap. Instead they can only gain and lose energy discontinuously in small, indivisible units" (p. 26). In short, energy seemed to have a hiatic nature associated with h that affected every frequency emitter in a way that kept them differentiated or separate from each other. Thus, when energy is introduced into a system of vibrating oscillators, it can only be distributed in such a way that there is little left over to activate quantized high-frequency oscillators, and their minimal presence in a black-body radiation distribution is accordingly explained. The hiatus aspect may also be understood as an absence of fractional units of energy. As Fred Alan Wolf (1989) points out, "Since the quantity, hf, of energy was a certain whole amount of energy – not 1⁄2 hf nor 1/4 hf nor any other fraction – the energy in any given light wave could only be a multiple of the basic "chunk" of energy" (pp. 65-66). It is because energy has this granular quality that I associate h with a physical hiatus. Grains, after all, have spaces between them and are not continuous or they would not be grains. More importantly this granular quality is not something that can or should be explained away – Planck's own reluctance with respect to his innovative idea notwithstanding. It actually allows for energy to be controlled rather than running away with itself in some kind of catastrophic activation of ever increasing frequencies that would make any kind of order Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1064-1077 Glasberg, R. P., Death, Consciousness and the Quantum Paradigm ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1069 physically impossible and intellectually unthinkable. 3. Implications of the Quantum Paradigm: Three Postulates on Consciousness With this black-body background in mind, we can now shift our focus to the functioning of consciousness. However, before undertaking that description, I need to clarify what I mean by that notoriously elusive term. In this regard I would like to put forward three heuristic postulates – 'heuristic' in the sense that their value will be revealed by noting how well certain phenomena can be explained by them; 'postulates' in the sense that they are meant to operate as underlying principles for a wide range of phenomena. The key difference characterizing these postulates with respect to other views of consciousness is their activist nature, that is, they are to be understood as a power to make things rather than being a passive reflector of them. Moreover, this activist quality allows for the association of consciousness with energy, that is, the capacity to do work in the physical sense: • Postulate #1: Consciousness is a world-creative force. • Postulate #2: World-creation takes place via communicative interchange. • Postulate #3: Consciousness is quantized via self-identity (one of the primary manifestations of H). As might be noted by the attentive reader, the three postulates (to be clarified in due course) parallel the three elements of Planck's equation (E = hf), and this in itself suggests that physical reality as described in the equation might be a kind of shadow of a non-physical foundation. The first postulate (i.e., consciousness being a world-creative force) connects consciousness to the physical reality of energy, which, by the power of various forces, makes the physical world – i.e., the world that seems external to the internal realm of consciousness. The world-creative power of consciousness can be seen in dreams, which are not just things of which we are passively aware but real events that are personal (i.e., not shared as in joint dreams) Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1064-1077 Glasberg, R. P., Death, Consciousness and the Quantum Paradigm ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1070 creations of the unconscious as we sleep. The world quality may be associated with the sense that the creation is so all encompassing and complete that, until we awaken, we do not normally know that we have been dreaming. Kahn (2002) notes that Freud, along with other dream interpreters, takes no notice of this all-encompassing quality and focuses instead on the mechanisms and motives of the creations known as dreams. In any case, how far this world-creative energy is operative in the inter-personal waking world is yet to be seen. The second postulate (pertaining to communicative interchange as a means of creation) seems odd, but may be seen in the Genesis creation myth when God (the creator) speaks the world into existence with the words, "Let there be light, and there was light" (1:3). To whom is God speaking, i.e., communicating? Is not God speaking to the readers (or hearers) of the text who are themselves created in God's image? If God is a creator, the 'image' might be that aspect of the divine that is world-creative, and in that sense the readers-hearers, the descendants of the original pair of humans, are also divinely creative although not to the same degree as the God who created them. The myth then touches on a basic principle of world-creating, which is that of conversation, communication, dialectic, or discourse, where one position is put forward and considered by another party to the conversation. The latter may put forward a response, which is then considered by the original speaker. In short, a back-and-forth movement or communicative chain is generated and a kind of co-created world or joint creation ensues. Moreover, just as physical energy may be seen as a kind of parallel to the world-creative power of consciousness, physical frequency, with its back-and-forth peak-trough structure, may be seen as a kind of parallel to the back-and-forth agreement-disagreement quality of inter-communication. The third postulate touches on consciousness being not just world-creative, but creative in the context of individualized or granular units called selves. They are (in this plane at least) the loci of consciousness, through which humans approach the world and make their respective contributions via communicative interchange. In dreams, where the world created by the dreamer is personalized (sometimes with respect to his/her repressed wishes), the integer of creative action Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1064-1077 Glasberg, R. P., Death, Consciousness and the Quantum Paradigm ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1071 is one particular self. But in the waking world, the integer functions in the context of multiples depending on the number of individuals (selves) communicating and thereby co-creating a common world – a world that (like the dream) appears to be all-encompassing as well as expressing the perspectives of all who have participated and are currently participating in the conversation. To sum up, while the physical world connects energy to a quantized frequency as in Planck's equation E = hf, the world of consciousness seems to display an interesting parallel where world creation is linked to individualized inter-communication. If one were to express this in the form of an equation, one could write WCP = sd, where WCP stands for 'world creative power' while s represents the self as a kind of quantized unit of consciousness and d represents discourse or communicative interchange between selves. At this point I do not wish to jump to some kind of premature and reductive identification of the first equation with the second. What is of interest in the parallelism or isomorphic analogy is the possibility that a deeper level of reality might underlie both spheres. 4. The After-Life In The Context Of Quantum Paradigm and The Three Postulates If death is not to be taken as a termination, but as a hiatic breakpoint between consciousness with a body and consciousness without a body and if consciousness is a worldcreative force, how might the quantum paradigm bring these two ideas together in a theoretical framework for an after-life? Several points can be made, but the most crucial one centers on an implicit sense of purpose that seems to be inherent in the quantum paradigm in the context of world-creation – that purpose being the disciplining of the creative impulse. First, just as the physical quantum suppresses the ultra-violent catastrophe in a way that appears to facilitate the possibility of some kind of order in the natural world, the third postulate (i.e., the self as a granular or singular locus of consciousness) can be said to function in an analogous manner. How so? To answer this one must consider how a world-creative Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1064-1077 Glasberg, R. P., Death, Consciousness and the Quantum Paradigm ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1072 consciousness could get out of hand. Creation in the vein of consciousness has its explosive side in the sphere of unbridled imagination. We can see this in the often fantastical nature of dreams, but also in the delusions of those we deem mad. The practical results of this may not be so dangerous in dreams, but Don Quixote's famous delusion that windmills were giants led to him enduring painful injuries. If world-creative energy is quantized over a wide range of discourse participants, the vast majority or middle range will inadvertently suppress the imaginative tendencies that remain relatively untamed in dream states. Also and more importantly suppressed would be the power of those discourse participants who, by virtue of their intellects and/or rhetorical skills, could seriously de-stabilize the field of cultural discourse if all world-creative energies were concentrated within their purview. But that does not happen. Thus, while discursive frequency in those individuals (like mystics) who appear able to communicate with deeper and wider aspects of reality is high, the vast majority, who communicate at lower frequency levels (i.e., where interchange with the world is more circumscribed), absorb in a stabilizing and quantized fashion the energy of world-creative consciousness. In this context one might venture to speculate that major world religions start out with mystics, who seem to be able to channel forms of consciousness that are highly integrative in nature (i.e., compelling world visions that entail a sense of human destiny). This is followed by disciples, acolytes, interpreters, etc. who mediate and water-down the message even further so that it can spread itself among the vast majority of discourse participants constituting, if not helping to create and/or transform, a significant cultural unit. For example, if Jesus is taken as mystical mediator of a higher consciousness (i.e., the Father in heaven), then a set of disciples and later the seminal figure of Paul are required to keep the message from causing the culture to be non-viable for this plane of existence. The principle that a greater intimacy with the Father is possible only after death (if the self has lived a certain way) indicates that this higher consciousness is hiatically separate from life on the earthly plane. As a subsidiary addendum to this first point of comparison between quantization at the Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1064-1077 Glasberg, R. P., Death, Consciousness and the Quantum Paradigm ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1073 material and conscious levels, I would suggest that the energy of world-creative consciousness is engendered by the challenges of life that must of necessity inspire discourse. In other words, individuals are set to talking when they confront obstacles of different kinds and these have to be dealt with in a context of communicative interchange. My second point is but a theoretical extrapolation of the first with respect to the situation of a post-physical existence, that is, an after-life. Here, on the one hand, the creative imagination might be more fluid, as in dreams, because the restraints of having a physical body are absent. (see Williams & Williams, 2006) On the other hand, consciousness is disciplined in its creative aspect by the experience of reflecting on and discussing the experience of the life just ended or of those lives that the self may have gone through in other incarnations (Carter, 2012). What that suggests, with respect to the self as a quantizing constant, is that is that this locus of consciousness would have a different value than was the case during life on the physical plane. To be specific, the value of H in the after-life plane would be smaller than it was on the physical plane because the boundaries of the self are more fluid and porous. Communication takes place, but it is more telepathic in nature given the absence of a physical or material environment as understood from the pre-death plane. Moreover, as might be expected in a situation of porous boundaries, the possibilities of communicative interchange would be enhanced and the back-andforth rhythm of discourse would be more intense and thus at a higher frequency than appears to be the case at a physical level. The third point combines the notion of a constant (physical or metaphysical) with the ideas of planes of existence and the ultimate trajectory of world creative consciousness. In this regard one of the weird qualities of the quantum paradigm is the very ideas that something as flow-like as energy should be quantized. What is not usually considered in this context is that h has a specific or constant value that is omnipresent and unchanging in the plane of existence we call physical reality – the very thing studied by physicists. That constancy quality seems to suggest that if h were to somehow change its value, the phenomena associated with that shift Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1064-1077 Glasberg, R. P., Death, Consciousness and the Quantum Paradigm ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1074 would occupy another plane of existence. Obviously we as living humans, who exist on the physical plane and are to some extent an expression of it, cannot change that value. But, if we could, might we not alter the fabric of our existence or perhaps have access to another plane where that value would be different? The reason for this thought experiment is a quality that seems to pertain to the after-life – that is, the existence of planes of consciousness, according to Deepak Chopra (2006). Higher planes seem to be characterized by higher frequencies or levels of discursive interchange and those on lower levels cannot normally engage in communicative inter-change with beings whose level of consciousness would be characterized by a different H value. While the physical plane would be different in character depending on the numerical value of Planck's constant, the afterlife plane would also be different as the locus of consciousness shifted in value; but the shift here would not be quantitative so much as it would be qualitative, where the main quality would, for want of a better word, be porousness. Thus, a more porous or open locus of consciousness would be capable of more communicative interchange because its defenses against its environment (mainly the existence of comparable loci of consciousness) would be significantly attenuated. Would not a higher consciousness be a more open one – open to discourse to which a more defensive consciousness would be closed? The higher ones could, of course, attempt to communicate with lower ones and sometimes even get through via those who purport to channel or mediate this higher frequency locus of consciousness; but given that the message must successfully distribute its world-creative energy among those who must quantize such energy at a lower (less porous) level of consciousness, that level will maintain its integrity and an ultravolatile creativity will be avoided. To normalize this process (of limited communicative interchange between planes) even more, consider how animals are not open to understanding the plane of communicative interchange occupied by humans (e.g., Strieber & Kripal, 2016). Could there be mediators among the animals? Some dogs do seem to mediate human messages and function as our assistants when it Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1064-1077 Glasberg, R. P., Death, Consciousness and the Quantum Paradigm ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1075 comes to herding other animals or helping the handicapped (e.g., seeing-eye dogs). The point is the hiatic phenomena are more common than one might think and deserve more study in a comparative context. If planes are characterized by ever increasing porosity in terms of communicative interchange, we can engage in a final extrapolation with respect to the ultimate trajectory of consciousness, which in an after-life context is sometimes described as movement toward selfperfection (Williams & Williams, 2006). But what could that mean? A tentative answer might come from considering what a final plane might be like – a plane where consciousness would have no boundary or locus. By analogy with the Planck equation (E = hf), as H tends to zero, frequency would become infinite (at least if world-creative consciousness is somehow conserved in a manner analogous to energy conservation on the physical plane). However, instead of an ultra-volatile creativity, the ongoing disciplinary process that seems to characterize the after-life planes would have reached a level of extreme concentration or convergence as is characterized by mathematics and myth where complex meanings are tightly integrated. What might emerge is an ultra-visionary creation - that is, a creation that goes beyond the mathematical and mythic vision of consciousness and brings forth a complete and all-encompassing universe. Perhaps it is a kind of dream, but it is a big dream. Perhaps the big dream began as the Big Bang. Perhaps it is both at the same time and the Big Bang is still occurring. 5. Conclusion I have in this discussion tried to normalize the idea of an after-life (with its apparently quantized planes of consciousness) by placing it in a theoretical framework informed by the hiatic behavior of the quantum paradigm. I have also tried to de-weird the paradigm by placing it in the somewhat more accessible framework of world-creative consciousness, a common example of which is the phenomenon of dreaming up a complete and all-encompassing world. To put it another way, the external world behaves the way it does because it appears to be infused with an Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1064-1077 Glasberg, R. P., Death, Consciousness and the Quantum Paradigm ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1076 internal or consciousness-like aspect, which behaves as it does because it is composed of a hierarchy of levels or planes. One of these levels is the physical plane, wherein the quantum foundations of reality were discovered. Moreover, the hostility of physicists to the idea of a nonphysical plane associated with an after-life or mind somehow independent of matter makes sense in the theoretical framework I am attempting to put forward. How so? The core of my position is the idea that world-creative consciousness is engaged in a process of self-disciplining, of taming its effusive imaginative potentials, which are also the source of its power. If physicists had not banished the wild card of an underlying world-creative consciousness from their deck of assumptions, they might never have discovered the highly disciplined mathematical foundations of material or non-conscious reality. By the same token, if that underlying world-creative consciousness were channeled by inspired mystics and ultimately manifested itself in the form of major world religions, there would also be the need to translate the messages in a manner that allowed the integrity of the culture receiving the messages to be maintained – that is, avoid the possibility of some analogue to the ultra-violet catastrophe. The result of this translation process would be a separation of the new religion from those higher planes of consciousness where a process of mathematical and mythic integration might be taking place with a view to some future generation of a new universe. Separation? Perhaps that is too strong a term for what might be taken as a unified holographic process – one where each religion, like each Jewel in Indra's Crown, is a fragmentary reflection of an indescribable whole that is nonetheless open to human experience. It may be described as a place where the whole and the holy commune. Works Cited Carroll, Lewis. Through the Looking Glass. CreateSpace, 2016. Originally published 1871. Carroll, Sean. The Big Picture: On The Origins Of Life, Meaning, And The Universe Itself. New York: Dutton, 2016. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1064-1077 Glasberg, R. P., Death, Consciousness and the Quantum Paradigm ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1077 Carter, Chris. Science and the Afterlife Experience. Rochester, VT: Inner Traditions, 2012. Chopra, Deepak. Life After Death: The Burden of Proof. New York: Harmony, 2006. Cottingham, John. "Cartesian dualism: theology, metaphysics, and science," in J. Cottingham, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Descartes (236-257). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Glasberg, Ronald. "Mathematics and Spiritual Interpretation: A Bridge to Genuine Interdisciplinarity," Zygon – Journal of Science & Religion 38 (2), June 2003: 277-294. Kelly, Edward F., Adam Crabtree, & Paul Marshall. Beyond Physicalism: Toward Reconciliation Of Science And Spirituality. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2015. Kahn, Michael. Basic Freud: Psychoanalytic Thought for the Twenty First Century. New York: Basic Books, 2002. Kumar, Manjit. Quantum: Einstein, Bohr, And The Great Debate About The Nature Of Reality. Cambridge: Icon, 2008. Lederman, Leon M., & Christopher T. Hill. Symmetry and the Beautiful Universe. Prometheus Books, 2004. Strieber, Whitley, & Jeffrey J. Kripal, The Super Natural: A New Vision of the Unexplained. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher, 2016. Williams, Bill, & Muriel Williams. Life in the Spirit World: The Mind Does Not Die. Victoria, BC: Trafford, 2006. Wolf, Fred Alan. Taking the Quantum Leap: The New Physics for Nonscientists. New York: Perennial Library, 1989. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1078-1098 Brackett, D., Living with Limits: The Continuum of Consciousness ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1078 Explorations Living With Limits: The Continuum of Consciousness Donald Brackett * Abstract This paper is an attempt to explore the possibility of unifying principles between certain eastern philosophies on the nature of consciousness at death (which could be considered mysticism) with certain Western quantum concepts of cognitive patterns (which are customarily considered neuroscience). The intention is to outline the startling similarities and compatibilities between these two modes of thought by examining the proposed idea of embodied meaning, the concept that our use of symbolic forms encodes cultural artifacts with common patterns that convey something of the continuity of consciousness beyond arbitrary borders. Indeed, our physical entities themselves might also be considered material artifacts (embodied meanings), which reflect obvious energy patterns based on codes common to objects, thoughts, memories, dreams and to all philosophical concepts. I further approach the potential for certain Tibetan Buddhist principles, such as the Bardo Thodol teachings, to be practical examples of an early non-scientific (but not non-empirical) precursor to contemporary neuroscience, especially to current notions of neuroplasticity. The salient idea conveyed in the paper is that a unifying pattern exists that suggests a proportional harmony between physical matter and psychic matter, and that the identical ratio can be used to try to come to terms with the end of life experience as both a departure and a return. (See Figure 1 at the end.) I "Just as psychoanalysis reconstructs the original traumatic situation in order to release the repressed material, so we are now being plunged back into the archaeopsychic past, uncovering the ancient taboos and drives that have been dormant for epochs... Each one of us is as old as the entire biological kingdom, and our bloodstreams are tributaries of the great sea of its total memory." (J. G. Ballard, The Drowned World, 1962, p. 41) As a writer and culture critic my role is to explicate both works of art and the cultures which create them, not from the usual judgmental point of view that assesses success or failure from the relative angle of aesthetics but from the phenomenological vantage point of encountering those works of art as * Correspondence: Donald Brackett, independent cultural journalist, writer, & curator, Vancouver, BC, Canada Email: [email protected]. See autobiographical note at the end. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1078-1098 Brackett, D., Living with Limits: The Continuum of Consciousness ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1079 what they actually are: embodied meanings. I often interpret whole cultures, and even whole civilizations, as if they were individual works of art, because that is precisely what they are. Such a comparative approach allows us to utterly preclude issues such as liking or disliking the relative features of works in any medium, or using our limited time and energy to declare the success or failure of their maker's intentions. Works of art, whether they are visual, architectural, literary, musical, or durational, are all dark mirrors of the consciousness that created them. Like us, they succeed because they exist. Also, as per the work of Ernst Cassirer, all symbolic forms, including our own, are a reflection of limits and patterns. We are therefore free to more fully experience the degree to which drastically different kinds of art objects, of embodied meanings, are really the immediate sense data reflections of the consciousness of the particular cultural context within which they were created. As such, none are superior or inferior in kind, apart from the accumulated aesthetic, psychic and spiritual assumptions of their culture. It suddenly becomes possible to understand the deeper strata levels at which a classically representational Vermeer painting is totally equivalent to an apparently randomly abstract Pollock painting, as well as the degree to which both utterly succeed in conveying the key elements of the space (and the time) in which they were produced. They are emblems of an enigma: their maker's consciousness. As Cassirer's exemplary research indicated, the symbolic forms we utilize are multiple: that of language, which both the writer and reader are using now in a quantum-like manner of transmission and reception which utterly eliminates our separate locations; as well as of mathematics, the principal language with which the universe makes itself accessible to and discernible by us. One reciprocal and reconciling pattern ratio also governs everything in existence, both physical and immaterial. This is accomplished via a bio-mimicry motif that perpetually echoes the proportional harmonies in nature and culture that replicate the spiral growth pattern of the Fibonacci sequence and its ratio. In addition, we have at our disposal the symbolic forms of music, design, mythology, religion, philosophy and psychology, each of which is a distinct form-language with specific aims and accomplishments, i.e., Chartres Cathedral, Einstein's relativity equation, Mozart's concertos, Shakespeare, or the archetypal depth principles found in both Carl Jung, Mircea Eliade, and Tibetan Buddhism. As we will see, and as readers looking for more detail than can be offered in this short paper can easily find with available research, the last example in particular is one which, apart from merely entertaining us on the path Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1078-1098 Brackett, D., Living with Limits: The Continuum of Consciousness ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1080 towards our eventual extinction, might also provide some useful indications of what to expect and how to manage the ultimate transaction of dying and death, and what if anything awaits us after the removal of one mask before placing another mask in its place. A longstanding science of spiritual (for lack of another word) instructions has been established in the Tibetan Buddhist traditions, especially in the Bardo Thodol 1 teachings about living, dreaming, dying and navigating these transitions nightly via something poetically called dream yoga. Among other things, in this paper I am interested in exploring the possibility that far from being a science fiction writer, J. G. Ballard (a popular author of fiction born in Shanghai in 1930 and best known for his memoir Empire of the Sun) was, like William Golding or Philip K. Dick or even William Burroughs, a factual investigator of the human condition from a visionary perspective which was most efficiently armored in the architectural conceits of a certain genre of fiction. He was however, primarily a metaphysician who searched through the motifs of human behaviour for a pattern that could potentially explain that behaviour: a conduct code. It might be possible that the occasionally obscure poetry of Wallace Stevens provides us with far deeper existential insights than the tomes of Heidegger or Sartre. This is equally true of the novels of Dostoyevsky, Kafka or Camus: they are different from the suppositions of Descartes, Locke or Berkeley only due to the theatrical costumes and conceptual disguises they wear, by the symbolic form-mask they have donned. To entertain the notion that there is in fact an archaeopsychic realm at all is of course to also embrace the Jungian notion of a collectively shared zone out of which a myriad of archetypal images have emerged and will continue to emerge, as long as we sentient beings continue to utilize the delicate neurological operating system that has evolved over eons. I will also on occasion refer to their being acres of time which require us to traverse their territories in order to effectively link our disparate behaviours in a cogent pattern: a map. Such a map of consciousness could equally well be charted by the music of Erik Satie for example, or a dance choreographed by Merce Cunningham, since, as I have already indicated, 1 Wikipedia: "The Bardo Thodol (Tibetan: , Wylie: bar do thos grol), Liberation Through Hearing During the Intermediate State, is a text from a larger corpus of teachings, the Profound Dharma of Self-Liberation through the Intention of the Peaceful and Wrathful Ones, revealed by Karma Lingpa (1326–1386). It is the best-known work of Nyingma literature, and is known in the West as the Tibetan Book of the Dead." Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1078-1098 Brackett, D., Living with Limits: The Continuum of Consciousness ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1081 great works of art, at the embodied meaning level, are also philosophical propositions or even spiritual statements on par with the Pre-Socratics. I am not by profession an academic, and as a cultural journalist I am if anything more of a professional voyeur, but since I take a scholarly approach to all art objects, whether they are prehistoric stone carvings or Andy Warhol silkscreens, I am perhaps advantageously positioned to speculate on some of the questions posed by this thematic journal issue from a somewhat unique perspective. As an art critic, and one who also writes about photography and especially films as an integral part (maybe even the culmination) of the history of art and visual culture, I have observed a couple of key distinctions between the supposedly nebulous realm of aesthetics and the supposedly concrete realm of science. Science, and especially the zones devoted to neurological speculations, appears to be devoted to reducing and eventually eliminating the unknown, to replacing the unknown with the known. Fair enough, up to a point. Art on the other hand, appears to be devoted to increasing the amount of unknown in our world, expanding the unknown until there is perhaps nothing but the unknown, which would of course by synonymous with a state akin to perpetual wonderment, rapture, bliss or otherwise magical states of contentment and awe. It stands to reason (no pun intended) that all the ideas we might exchange in the service of the questions asked by this journal in general and this issue in particular are speculative in nature. As far as I know, no dead people are submitting papers reporting on their experiences of the transitional state between the embodied existential condition and the disembodied post-conscious state. If they have, I for one look forward to reading their deceased accounts, and as far as I know Houdini has yet to make good on his dying promise to communicate with us from the other side, if he found it possible to do so. Of course he may also be communicating with us daily but we are unable to translate his transmissions. This observation is only partly tongue in cheek, since clearly there will be no right or wrong avenues of speculation when it comes to the ultimate fate of consciousness. Just as clearly, all fervent disputes or aggressively constructed arguments on the subject, no matter how cogently or rationally arrayed, will be utterly fruitless in the end, since we will all only personally experience this transition once (though Ludwig Wittgenstein once observed that we can never experience our own Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1078-1098 Brackett, D., Living with Limits: The Continuum of Consciousness ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1082 death). So did Maurice Blanchot: "Death is the absolute future in which the absolute past approaches, but only approaches, for death is never present." 2 Therefore, it also stands to reason, by a logic perhaps even more powerful than reason itself, that the sooner we contemplate the cessation of our own consciousness, by whatever means seems most efficient and effective, the better prepared we will be to meet this abrupt mortal departure (which, we should remember, can occur anytime at all, even before the end of this very sentence) with something resembling equanimity, elegance, poise and the absence of fear. I don't know about you, but from my perspective those four descriptors are the key elements I would want to possess when I begin to experience the dissolution of all other ingredients making up the embodied realm around me. In other words, when "I" attempt to experience the impossible absence of "me." Surely thinking about these two ingredients in advance via some kind of contemplation would be useful, by whatever means necessary, and in my particular case that includes some degree of Buddhist hermeneutics. Perhaps this is because such speculation is the primary and principal impetus of the Buddhist psychology examining the nature of consciousness, its potential meanings, implications and consequences. In other words, the most important factor in approaching questions about the nature of consciousness must also include outcomes that influence our behaviours and interactions with the other sentient beings around us, or else what is the point of such speculation in the first place? For example, if we were able to accomplish a phenomenal feat of elegant and exhaustive deductive reasoning expressed in beautiful abstract terms such as Heidegger's, and yet we remained capable of such dense feats of denial and delusion as expressed in his Black Book entries, what had really been accomplished in the end (literally)? I mean, really, was his potentially final thought as a human being on the planet earth, oh what a clever boy am I? If so, what did he actually accomplish, apart from existential entertainment of a vaudevillian sort? Was the gorgeous trajectory of his thinking about thinking really just greasepaint, makeup on the human mask? So, obviously the question we're all considering here is what happens when the human mask is removed? What if anything is underneath? And perhaps even more importantly, what difference does it make, apart from occupying our preciously short time on earth to the fullest extent? Therefore my first speculative answer, as an agent of affect who accepts and even 2 Maurice Blanchot, The Space of Literature, A. Smock, trans. University of Nebraska Press, 1982, p. 117. Original in French, 1955. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1078-1098 Brackett, D., Living with Limits: The Continuum of Consciousness ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1083 embraces the unknown, uncertainty, obscurity and ambiguity, without feeling the need to replace them with their binary opposites, is Yes. Does consciousness end, yes. Does consciousness continue, yes. Does consciousness awaken, yes. Does consciousness transform, yes. How could it be otherwise? It, consciousness, does all these things – and who can say otherwise, apart from poor Houdini, whose messages remain as mute as the ending of a Beckett play (another embodied meaning by the way, and one which might address the nature of self-consciousness at least as adequately as Kant did). When the brain and the body die, not being separate entities, the entire world dies, not in the manner that solipsists might entertain (as delightful and unassailable as their position is) but to the degree that our largely illusory experience of having an inherent, separate and independent self or soul is really what dies. This is where the Buddhist psychology (preferable to the identifier "religion" since there is no deity to speak of in its tenets) comes into play for us. This is where the potential for a concept of consciousness being a continuum that has always been here, a consciousness platform which in fact manufactures the apparently solid world around us as a stage for our performance, enters the picture. What if the entity we identify as a self never existed in the first place but was merely a projection on our experience of the sensory world as a collection of disconnected and disparate elements within which we are trapped and isolated? What if "it" doesn't die so much as cease to have a format for application? What if its existential job description is redundant? It drops away and reveals to us what we were too disconnected to see before, a sudden expanse in every direction of the luminosity of mind, not our mind per se, but the theatrical playground of the senses within which our mask was being worn? What if this sudden unmasking reveals us to be a succession of life forms parading across a stage, each one wearing a different mask (table, robin, shark, cloud, stone, water, cat, etc.) but each one being identically the same thing? One of the greatest psychologists and philosophers who asked pertinent questions about the nature of our consciousness, and especially of our identity, was the author Franz Kafka, who disguised his interrogative insights in the form of his fiction and even more powerfully in his personal diaries. His embodied meanings are riddled with riddles and parables that are easy for the distracted reader to misinterpret as depressing, gloomy, doomed or death-obsessed, but they are actually far from it. One of his finest Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1078-1098 Brackett, D., Living with Limits: The Continuum of Consciousness ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1084 observations was hidden like a glistening little gem in the middle of his endless and exhaustive process of journal entry writing. It alone, if interpreted accurately, presents a clear indication of the depth of this man's thought processes regarding the nature of consciousness. "The meaning of life is that it stops," Kafka remarks. 3 But this doesn't mean, as many wrongly supposed, that he felt life was pointless, irrelevant, or fated to conclude with failure (even though often enough elsewhere he was all too consumed with his own perceived personal flaws and failures). If we interpret this entry correctly it simply states something as clearly as Wittgenstein himself may have put it. Life is temporary; its chief and primal characteristic is that of impermanence. How do we intend to spend our limited time? The corollary of such an insight is even more instructive and moves us to the most obvious extension of this basic existential observation: if that is the meaning of life, its temporary condition, then what is the purpose if it? The purpose of it, Kafka is suggesting by inference, is to make impermanence meaningful, as in existentialism. Precisely how we do that, of course, returns us to the relativity of any truth whatsoever: what is meaningful is defined by the parameters, by the limits, of each individual culture and each individual occupant of that culture. This naturally suggests that all forms of meaning, just as with all forms of the embodiment known as artworks, are equivalent, correct, proper, true, accurate, and deserving of our tolerance. The only thing that prevents us from accepting the sometimes drastically different forms of meaning around us is the myth of otherness, the unceasing devotion to the belief that each of our "selves" is the real world and that our perspective is the right one. It is clearly the case that, after sufficient examination, it is only our aggressively slavish perspective on this illusory condition of otherness that ever really dies. Reports have come down to us over the ages however, not created by psychics, mystics, séances, or believers in the other side but rather by practitioners of the science of contemplation who penetrated to what we might as well refer to as the quantum level of consciousness and have garnered a clear picture of its continuum. They have even managed to maintain enough cognizance of their/our condition to suggest an even more spacious continuum, one extending from one life to another in a long sequence of consciousness-events fueled by a consistent source of energy, one which does not differentiate between our being a dolphin, a bee, a cactus or a Billie Holiday. 3 Gustav Janouch (1971). Conversations with Kafka. New Directions, p. 120. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1078-1098 Brackett, D., Living with Limits: The Continuum of Consciousness ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1085 II "The phenomenon to explain is why the brain, as a machine, insists that it has this property that is non-physical." (Michael Graziano, Neuroscientist, Princeton University, speaking to a symposium at the New York Academy of Sciences, May, 2016) Given that all possibilities are equally plausible, even the most outlandish ones, and that all our speculations cannot be proven or disproven, I for one see no particular reason to discount the intriguing line of reasoning developed back in 1976 by Julian Jaynes in his remarkable book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. This of course involved his supposition that until a relatively recent occurrence some five thousand years ago, the domination of the brain by the right hemisphere rendered us technically unconscious until the unification of those spheres eliminated the apparent existence of voices outside our heads and instead situated the one voice in the centre a functioning self-conscious entity. The only thing he didn't do that he could have done, since he resolved that evolution only goes forward in one direction, was to postulate that upon death the unified spheres forming our current format of consciousness return to a bicameral state, leaving its central command position drifting to the periphery and eventually dissolving altogether. Thus the only remaining speculation, given such a possible scenario, would be to try to quantify or at least interpret the sequence of hallucinatory experiences encountered by the dying individual as he or she traverses this potential reverse evolution and returns first to a bicameral format (exactly duplicating the binary polarities in nature that cause the spiral growth pattern of the golden ratio and Fibonacci sequence in the first place) and finally plunges into a no-cameral mind, seemingly no matter what a particular self has experienced. This would be a mind that is undifferentiated from all the matter and mind surrounding it, existing, even temporarily, in a panpsychic (for lack of a better word) realm. I don't believe we should discount Jaynes's notion just because either it was formulated way back in the late 1970s, or just because it was delivered in a vastly popular mainstream book instead of in an academic journal. Another reason for reconsidering it is the subsequent research on binary design codes conducted by Gyorgy Doczi in another popular non-academic book, The Power of Limits: Proportional Harmonies Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1078-1098 Brackett, D., Living with Limits: The Continuum of Consciousness ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1086 in Nature, Art and Architecture, in which the author explored the dizzying array of ways in which the reciprocal interaction of opposite forces creates recursive patterns from galaxies to seashells, crystals and DNA helixes. My point is that the same observation can be made about the dual sphere design of the brain and the cognitive patterns which result from the interaction of these two sides to produce a self-reflexive awareness sophisticated enough to paint Sistine Chapels and write Tolstoy novels, as well as being intimate enough to wonder what is happening in the last moments of its own existence. One saving grace of entertaining this and any other theory is that it also doesn't preclude the possibility for existential amusement while we are doing so, and that even humour or comedy itself (a superb form of cognitive dissonance when practiced at the level of an Aristophanes) can also be a valid form of philosophical enquiry. Thus I found it seriously amusing recently to observe the permutations of an article by the science writer of the New York Times, George Johnson, reporting on his attendance at a recent conference in Tucson now called The Science of Consciousness. The May 16th article was called A Carnival of the Mind, the July 4 th iteration was called Messing with the Mind, and the July 5 th reprint was titled The Brain Versus the Mind, each one titled by a different editor from his or her own vantage point and each one suggesting a slightly different nuance on the same event. This struck me as having some salient similarities to what all of us do, not only when entertaining different theories of the same phenomenon but even on a daily basis when we reiterate our own memories of either our childhood or just the day before this one. The Tucson conference in question took place in April of this year, and Johnson was reporting on the bewildering array of conflicting or at least competing panels, sessions and papers being delivered simultaneously, more than anyone could hope to attend unless they cloned their brain in order to do so. He referenced one room where scientists and philosophers were discussing the physiology of brain cells and how they might generate the thinking mind; in another the subject was free will, whether such a generated consciousness could actually have it or was just manifesting a delusion; another session was examining panpsychism, the exotic but plausible idea that everything, whether animal, vegetable or mineral is based at the subatomic level on mindlike features; and competing with these sessions were others on phenomenal consciousness, the extended mind, and the neural correlates of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1078-1098 Brackett, D., Living with Limits: The Continuum of Consciousness ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1087 All were exploring where consciousness came from, few if any were examining where consciousness goes to, if anywhere, or more importantly to me, anywhen – the time of consciousness. Johnson pointed out that the human mind has plumbed the universe, determining that it is almost 14 billion years old, and the same mind has discovered, with the aid of superparticle colliders, that invisible dark particles such as the Higgs-Boson are actually gluing all of reality together in a kind of supreme void which is indistinguishable from the so-called solid contents it supports. But as he observed, there is no scientific explanation for consciousness itself, without which none of these discoveries about consciousness could have been made. Further, what occurs at the moment of its extinction is even more disregarded, perhaps because science has always abandoned such notions as metaphysical and thus more the domain of religion, a strange distinction to someone like me (and also for Werner Heisenberg) for whom science and religion are two sides of the same coin, or should we say sides of the same brain. Johnson reported that, for one attendee, Michael Graziano, a neuroscientist at Princeton, Consciousness is a kind of con-game the brain plays with itself. The brain is a computer that evolved to simulate the outside world. Among its internal models is a simulation of itself-a crude approximation of its own neurological processes. The result is an illusion. Instead of neurons and synapses, we sense a ghostly presence-a self inside the head. But it's all just data processing. The machine mistakenly thinks it has magic inside it, and it calls the magic consciousness. ("The Mind Messing With the Mind", New York Times – Science, July 4, 2016) Of course, his processing can't quite ever explain how such a machine can produce James Joyce's novels, Picasso's paintings, or Duke Ellington's music. But this Doczi sensibility of extending the pattern making processes in nature's matter all the way into the design motifs of human art and culture can actually do so. Equally possible is the way in which the "self that isn't there" can be explored and explained by certain Tibetan Buddhist yogis who compiled the assembled texts devoted to the experience of death and dying (and for that matter of rebirth) known as The Book of Liberation Through Understanding in the Between (i.e., Bardo Thodol). This is the book more popular known in the west as the Tibetan Book of the Dead, as a result of the Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1078-1098 Brackett, D., Living with Limits: The Continuum of Consciousness ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1088 misguided translations commissioned by the well-intentioned European Evans-Wentz. This remarkable book of contemplation is said to have semi-legendary origins that incorporate multiple mythologies and merge them with actualized practices. Its origins in both legend and mythology in no way devalue its deep input into questions of mortality and the fate of consciousness, since mythology – as Cassirer, Jung, Eliade, and others such as James Hillman, Henri Corbin and the popular Joseph Campbell have indicated – also contains a profound set of shared human projections, the archetypes of the collective unconscious, which recur regularly through every distinctly different culture and somehow unify them at the foundational level of being. This contemplative book, passages of which are actually read aloud to the dying person, before, during and after the death experience in order to orient them to the astonishing self-generated visions they are thought to be experiencing, some of them terrifying in nature. These visions arise in the mindstream of the dying person as he or she is coming into contact with the so-called clear light nature of mind, or the white light vision reported by so many westerners, a phenomenon which is not actually separate from the mind of the individual dying person and which never was separate from it. Tradition (which includes both legend and mythology remember) states that this text was composed in about the 8 th Century CE by the yogi master Padma Sambhava and hidden by him for a later era to find, when it was "unearthed as terma" by a renowned treasure-finder Karma Lingpa in the 14 th century. 4 Before discounting the supposedly superstitious aspects of these practices, designed to remove fear and liberate the dying, we would do well to remember that during these same historic periods in the West, we were still engaged in barbaric heresy wars, brutal crusades, insanely selftorturing inquisitions and human burnings in an imaginary war against an evil invented by our monotheistic and anthropomorphic deity projections. By comparison to our own pathological history, this particular science of the spiritual passage out of one life and into another is quite gentle, kind, compassionate and visionary. These meditative practices, which can also be engaged in on a nightly basis by us when we fall asleep, dream and wake up again, are also part of a larger corpus called The Profound Teaching of the Natural Liberation through Contemplating the Mild and Fierce Deities (Norbu). Such "deities" by the way are not thought to be real but are more the internal projections of 4 Namkhai Norbu, Self Liberation. Station Hill Press, 1989, p. xii. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1078-1098 Brackett, D., Living with Limits: The Continuum of Consciousness ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1089 our mind as it comes to terms with the experience of extinction, and also as it reflects the basic binary polarities inherent in the embodied condition. It involves realizing that everything we are experiencing (whether it is meeting the Virgin Mary, talking with Moses, or dancing with Rita Hayworth) is actually happening only in our mind(s). Removing the fear of hallucinations, which of course we also experience on a daily and nightly basis, is actually the base for liberation from all our sufferings, whether real or imagined. I mention this system of thought also as a means of potentially situating the binary vision of Julian Jaynes in both a transpersonal and a trans-cultural context. This makes sense to me, not least because as we are dying surely we cease to be as distinctly separate as entities as we usually believe we are, and also simply because the existence of a collective unconscious foundation allows us all to perpetually experience the same archetypical human dream images regardless of our culture. It also suggests a valuable outcome to the nightly practice of watching our minds dissolve into dreams before our eyes in the charmingly titled rehearsal practice known as dream yoga. Of course all of this speculative reasoning and contemplative practice only works to our advantage if we are able to be brave enough to accept the fact that life is temporary and existence is impermanent, that we might die at any moment, and that it makes sense to be prepared. This is rather difficult for those of us in the West whose whole daily existence is predicated upon the fear of death, the presence of evil, sin and punishment in an afterlife whose very parameters we never even imagine, apart from believing that we'll be rewarded for being good and by following the correct superstitions and instructions. By the way, I'm in no way denigrating the religions of the West, since I was raised a Catholic before stumbling into Buddhism, only observing that they in no practical way prepare us to actually encounter and experience the death of our consciousness, whatever that might be. Also, I'm pretty secure in my belief that in the transitional stages between the end of one life and the beginning of another, I'll most likely be dancing with Rita Hayworth. Of that much I can be as reasonably certain as it is possible to be of a hologram. One can always dream. There is of course, no east or west in dreams. That is where we can most readily research, anticipate and prepare for the alarming cessation of consciousness as it occurs right in front of our eyes, and perhaps also to maintain enough stability to establish continuity. The continuum of consciousness is not however the same as some hoped for afterlife for the Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1078-1098 Brackett, D., Living with Limits: The Continuum of Consciousness ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1090 soul, since the soul is largely as illusory as the self was by that stage. On the contrary, the continuum might suggest the potential for an awareness of the transition from one to the next, not to the afterlife, but the next life. Or, if the Bardo texts are accurate in some fashion, for the possibility of not having a next life with all its attendant difficulties, unless, it suggests, one is a being such as the Dalai Lama, who, as a bodhisattva or fully enlightened creature, appears to return intentionally in order to lessen the sufferings of other sentient beings. Few of us however are ever vouchsafed that particular privilege, since obviously we are primarily preoccupied with our own lot in this life, or the next one, or the one after that. One of the best ways to engage with and utilize the energy of the dream state is to become lucid in the midst of a dream and apply the insights practically. This does differ significantly from the western New Age concept of lucid dreaming, however, which usually results only in being able to manufacture an endless series of encounters which don't further the core motivation (i.e., wasting our time with silly notions such as dancing with Rita Hayworth for instance). The more appropriate approach is to gain a familiarity with the luminous nature of mind during mind-fabricated image scenarios which can then be useful during the death experience, according to these traditions, and enable the traveller to realize the ground-nature they always possessed but were too distracted by the ghost-self to notice before. It is naturally therefore most advantageous to apply such insights into the everyday nature of waking consciousness in order to vitally witness the truly dreamlike aspects of our daily experiences. In other words, to realize that we are essentially dreaming at all times, constantly, without this exotic fact actually meaning that life is not real. Incredibly, it is being dreamed, and yet it is definitely real. 5 Familiarity with this fact of life, it is said, can allow us not only to be comfortable during the dying process, but also benefit us in dealing with other sentient beings we encounter during our lives, especially the ones who may cause us some degree of difficulty. I myself have had some intriguing experiences using dream yoga and bardo contemplation, starting from an early age when it began to manifest itself spontaneously without my intentional seeking, a phenomenon which prompted me to come into contact with a degree of awareness continuity and a continuum of consciousness that enabled me to (somehow) come into direct contact with information, data, 5 Waking brain states cannot be distinguished from dreaming brain states, so, from the brain's perspective, we are dreaming all the time, according to Rodolfo Llinás (I of the Vortex: From Neurons to Self. MIT Press, 2001). Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1078-1098 Brackett, D., Living with Limits: The Continuum of Consciousness ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1091 knowledge or experiential content that could only have come from another, presumably earlier, lifetime. In other words, terma treasures. But that however, is another story, and another paper. For now, suffice it to say that this particular speculation, or theory of consciousness of the death experience, posits that you cannot lose something (an inherent self) that never actually existed in the first place, other than as a reflexive voice and its concomitant emotional apparatus hovering in your head. It can however permit us to gain a new appreciation for the magical nature of awareness, the amazing capacity to produce symbolic forms, and the manner in which the foundational base energy can shift into and out of focus as we are born, live, dream, and die, over and over and over again. Perhaps most rewarding in this approach is the fact that this ongoing evolutionary process has no specific aim: it is not about evolving toward some fully perfected or angelic state. We are all already in this perfect state, all the time. We're just too dumb to realize it. That's where the assistance of a reality sherpa comes in handy. III "What is this? Regarding these present phenomena, I have died and am wandering in the transitional process; so this place, these companions and these indistinct appearances are phenomena of the transitional process of becoming. Previously I did not recognize that process, and I wandered on. Now I shall arise as the embodiment of it." (Experiential Instructions on the Six Bardos, trans. Alan Wallace. Wisdom Publications, 1998, p. 257) Naturally enough, everything in which we are engaged is not only pure speculation but also raw wondering. As a practitioner of Dzogchen and Bardo Dream Yoga for many years, its emphasis on preparing carefully for the moment of extinction or transition strikes me as very sound advice. By no means an expert, I was fortunate enough to experience bardo states and insights during personal encounters with the terma teachings of Padmasambhava (which are preferable investigations to the Evans-Wentz mistranslations known as the Tibetan Book of the Dead). His practice of the six bardos, as well as those of Naropa, which draw parallels between waking, sleeping, dreaming and dying, allow the practitioner (any practitioner, regardless of intellectual capacity or background) to recognize the base-nature of mind – which in Dzogchen is also known as The Great Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1078-1098 Brackett, D., Living with Limits: The Continuum of Consciousness ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1092 Perfection – and to become familiar with the transitions in and out of the waking and sleeping states and the living, dying and post-death states (bardos) with considerable continuity. One thing that is certain, and which has been clarified by many investigators such as Kübler-Ross (On Death and Dying, 1977) and others, is that only the dying can teach us about death, if we are brave enough to watch and listen. In the Tibetan Buddhist bardo traditions there are specialists whose entire existential enterprise is based upon not only this kind of bearing witness, but also to guiding the dying being through a threshold that can obviously be disconcerting to the unprepared. The profound Dzogchen methods practiced by Chogyal Norbu also provide ample thought provoking speculation based on the actualized practice of awareness continuity before, during and after death. The key to this is not the post-mortem experience, but the preparation in sentient realms we occupy on a daily basis. This ground awareness is accessible to everyone here and now, since that is the ground of being which emerges, or appears to emerge, during dreaming or dying but which is also present as the base from which the entire phenomenal world appears in the mirror-like radiance with which we're all familiar. So I would suggest that consciousness doesn't do anything during death; it also doesn't quite transform either, it merely continues doing what it always does, which is to be misconstrued as a solid world of separate entities all competing for space and time locales. The ground nature of mind, however, does seem to be uncovered, which is why so many parallel experiences are reported at an archetypal level by diverse peoples with utterly divergent belief systems, which are then projected into or upon whatever cultural context they occupy. One thing they all share, or so it seems to me, is the sudden realization that their entire life and experiences had been based on the incorrect assumption that they existed independently as a separate entity called a self. That entity appears to shimmer like a mirage and dissolve into the transitional state (so great yogi masters have reported) as it dawns briefly on the dying being that he or she is in actuality space (or light or energy) itself without differentiation. Therefore death, in this contemplative context at least, is not a question of a tangible entity with a separate existence going anywhere or doing anything, since such an entity is the very illusory dynamic which death itself erases right before our eyes, and yet we seem to continue seeing. The dying being becomes aware (all too temporarily, in what many have described as the white light encounter) that all and everything had originated in a mind luminosity which is not separate at all from the dying being, and towards Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1078-1098 Brackett, D., Living with Limits: The Continuum of Consciousness ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1093 which no travel at all is possible since it's always been right in front of us, staring us in the face (not to mention around and within us). But we – failing to recognize our own true face or nature as precisely this essentially self-produced and maintained energy – were simply too deluded by apparent concrete forms to recognize it until it's too late to do so. A flash of light ensues, we react in habitual fear and suddenly we materialize once again as a newborn baby – or, in some versions, we are drawn by visions of sexual desire back into incarnation. In any case, fear or desire, the reembodying of awareness is thought to be a real possibility, but a failure to awaken to the clear light of nirvana. Hence the importance of bardo meditations, such as dream yoga, which are obviously useful in order to develop new and more advantageous habitual tendencies. It's not that habits per se are inherently good or bad, only that good habits can be learned, through practice and repetition, and can replace bad habits that were learned in exactly the same manner. In conclusion, I have no particular desire for resolution or answers. As suggested, I have a high comfort level for uncertainty and ambiguity and a low threshold for any finalities that accept or reject the conjectures of other theorists. Perhaps this is because I am not a theorist. Since none of us can ever be proven right or wrong in these matters, I tend to lean towards the attitudes of those guides who offer the most spacious, flexible, generous, open minded and inclusive approaches. Any heavens or hells which arise in the midst of the post-death process of becoming are of our own making, but, even so, they cannot either hurt or help us unless we find a way to fully recognize the clear light nature of this transparent mind as it diminishes and disappears. The truth about our consciousness and its extinction is, to paraphrase the poet Louis MacNeice in describing our crazy world, "incorrigibly plural": there is no necessity therefore of demanding or even hoping for an either/or condition for speculating on the infinite fate of our finite awareness. So, my own theories are deceptively simple: all physical objects (including us) and the physical space in which they are situated are actually durational in nature – they are frozen or congealed time moving too slowly to be discerned as what we and they are, mirror images of constant and perpetual flux. Flux is all there ever was and all there ever will be. Far from being merely a science fiction concept, there really is a phenomenon we could call the archaeopsychic and it's staring us in the face every single day. Our brains and bodies are flotsam and jetsam floating down the bloodstream of its archaic memory, itself consisting of a fluid form Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1078-1098 Brackett, D., Living with Limits: The Continuum of Consciousness ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1094 of time. The non-physical property that we insist occupies our brain as a presence is also real and actual, as it is a mirror-like echo of the sound of our forms floating up or down the slipstream of this mind-made physical realm. Our brains don't die exactly, they merely return to the original form they had before being embodied. If we are fortunate enough (what the Tibetan Bardo Thodol death contemplation practice calls "oh nobly born") to achieve the status of a human being in our present shapes, we are also fortunate enough to be able to access and comprehend the codes of the biological kingdom that manufactured consciousness in order to be aware of itself. If, that is, we do not shy away in fear from the simple fact of impermanence and thus manufacture more unnecessary suffering for ourselves (or the apparent others around us) than we deserve as custodians of "the great sea of its total memory" (Ballard, The Drowned World). Basically, this places me squarely in the playground of the panpsychic theories, which if I am practicing certain contemplative modes from the Tibetan Buddhist bardo traditions, must perforce be my own orientation. It also follows that I tend to subscribe, from personal experience one might say, to the David Bohm notion of implicate and explicate orders to our experience, since the bardo practice of dream yoga so clearly involves that perspective (though in the end it privileges the implicate). I suppose it is best summed up in Bohm's words about the central underlying theme of his (eventually holographic) theory that there is "an unbroken wholeness of the totality of existence as an undivided flowing movement without borders". 6 His research also indicated that he held what could be called a basically Gnostic viewpoint, not in the religious sense of the word but in terms of the viability of each person (particle) having the ability to personally experience the wholeness he refers to as a totality. To me this sounds very Buddhist in scope, and also links to my own personal research into the nature of pattern forming reciprocal limits without borders. When we die, it appears that the explicate order of the hologram dissolves and the implicate order of the projector is revealed, as is the unison between the two. The trick, according to the bardo practices, is to be awake, stable and aware enough to detect this degree of oneness without being afraid of the awesomeness of the realization, without projecting, and without freaking out, so to speak. On a personal note, and with reference to my notions about duration itself being the conceptual crux of the flux, when I was ten years old I had a spontaneous experience of something akin to what R. Maurice Bucke called 6 David Bohm, Wholeness and the Implicate Order, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1980, p. 218. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1078-1098 Brackett, D., Living with Limits: The Continuum of Consciousness ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1095 "cosmic consciousness", a transpersonal realm where the mind was not located inside the head per se but inside everything else. I was listening to an adult chattering on about their usual adult narratives, when they remarked to me that commonplace observation we have all heard a thousand times and maybe even uttered ourselves: "If I knew then what I know now...", etc. They were suggesting that at my tender age, if only I could access all the extra additional information, data, knowledge, wisdom one might accumulate from years of study and experience, my choices and actions would be impacted significantly. Thus I would be able to make decisions based on who I would become if I made the correct decisions. For some unaccountable reason it suddenly struck me that the mind I had then was technically identical to the mind I would have now, except presumably now with more useful information. I became aware of the mind as a mindstream, a fast flowing river with ever more debris, some of it useful some of it useless, that in the "future" would still somehow be "me", but a supposedly wiser me. I understand how this may sound somewhat exotic, but is it really any more exotic than what we now customarily accept about the hidden weirdness and uncertainties of an interconnected quantum reality? At any rate, this thought experiment has now been conducted for some fifty five years with surprisingly useful results, the most salient of which is that if there is a mindstream with which we can connect at different stages in the progression of our own lifetime, might it not also be possible to connect with a future mindstream after this lifetime, extending forward indefinitely? For some reason I've never been fond of the word incarnation, so therefore I'm disinclined to call this potential phenomenon re-incarnation, instead opting for my already stated preference for the notion of embodiment. Therefore let's name this, for the purposes of this discussion, not even a re-embodiment but rather a successively progressing sequence of embodiments, each one with perhaps a different personality but the same identical ... identical what? Life force? Spirit? Soul? Sentience? Words are obviously our chief conundrum here, since as Wittgenstein reminds us, the limits of language are the limits of our world, as well as the respectable fact that what we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence. Therefore as I draw these speculations to a close, I return once again to the notion of an embodied meaning (or pattern) with which I have identified all structures that utilize any of the symbolic forms at our disposal, whether linguistic, visual, sculptural, mathematical, spiritual, musical or Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1078-1098 Brackett, D., Living with Limits: The Continuum of Consciousness ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1096 architectural, and I choose to suggest that the ways to survive the so-called death experience of self are twofold. The first is to create or compose something in which your consciousness is embedded: if you are Dostoyevsky you do this in the form of a novel like Crime and Punishment, if you're T.S. Eliot, in the form of The Waste Land, if you're Martha Graham, in the form of Appalachian Spring, if you're Albert Einstein, in the form of the Theory of Relativity, if you're John Coltrane, in the form of A Love Supreme ... to name but a few obvious examples. In effect, such artists in multiple mediums are the gardeners of the collective unconscious: growing these splendid blooms that are perennial, outlive them, and return to blossom with each new successive generation. If you do not operate within the spheres of influence for these particular symbolic forms, perhaps you do so in the mundane form of the children you give birth to, name, teach and send out into the world to live on after you carrying your genes and their own obscure coded messages. If, like me, you don't choose to reproduce because you were too busy engaging in rampant speculation about what it means to be alive in the first place, perhaps you achieve the condition of an embodied meaning yourself, which in theory at least is what happens when you engage in the Bardo Thodol contemplative practices devoted to dream yoga and the eschatological realm of achieving a kind of continuity before, during and after death. One can, in principle, determine through the scrupulous management of awareness during the stage of final things, to witness the transference of your personal consciousness into a transpersonal and, for lack of a better word, quantum state of consciousness, which clearly would seem to adhere to both the panpsychic and by extension the archaeopsychic domains. An example of such scrupulous management? Two of the most impressive parallels to what we Buddhists often refer to as the mirror mind in Western terms were proffered by Mikhail Bakhtin in his concept of the dialogic self in consciousness (in which we are essentially talking to ourselves and interpret this as a self, prior to engaging in a dialogic interaction with "others") and also by Charles Cooley in his concept of the looking glass mind (which of necessity begins to blur at the edges and vanish during death when the interior voice or monologue no longer has a vehicle). These two notions are well worth further exploration in the context of their remarkable similarities to the Bardo Thodol technologies for intuitive insight, albeit in a primarily linguistic and cognitive science mode. Both of them are also admirably explored and clarified in a recent book by Norbert Wiley. Inner Speech and The Dialogic Self (Temple University Press, 2016) Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1078-1098 Brackett, D., Living with Limits: The Continuum of Consciousness ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1097 offers us a fascinating platform from which to leap from our linear Western suppositions to a more lateral Buddhist perspective. I highly recommend it to the reader for further exploration of these ideas. Surely the most important aspect of all this conjecture is not only a grasp of the self-conceptions that begin to evaporate upon the dying experience, but also the pragmatic move toward resultant actions while still alive and able to prepare for this most obvious, mysterious and awe-inspiring of all life events, the end of physical life itself. In the end, pun intended, perhaps the real question is not so much what happens to our consciousness during the enigmatic death event, but rather how and why we were able to have any consciousness in the first place. And, maybe even more importantly, what did we actually do with our precious consciousness when we were still alive? And just for the record, I still plan to happily dance with Rita Hayworth in the afterlife. But I also plan to bring along a reality sherpa to help guide me through the emotional rapids. Having contemplated the river in which these rapids occur for long enough to determine that it is I myself who am both the water itself as well as the turbulence being experienced, I plan to be somewhat prepared for the shock of recognition during my final moments. Since I am in no way a completely enlightened being, however, I am also quite ready both for whatever latent tendencies might result in the flickering frames of mental film as my movie runs out of my projector, hence my acceptance of Rita's presence without mistakenly thinking she is real. In addition, such long-term contemplation of impermanence has also provided me with the benefit of knowing quite tangibly that I am in fact already dying and departing, moment by moment, in a perpetually shifting flux which will merely continue after my final shimmering moments as "myself". Even though I know that the self who is dying is also merely a mask worn by everything else that is not me, because I am still just as prone to the potential for forgetfulness shared by all the other suffering sentient beings surrounding me, I still plan to avail myself of the professional consulting services of what I have referred to as a reality sherpa. Why? Because that person, presumably a skilled practitioner who will be reading from the pages of an ancient book devoted to the passage between one life and the next, will be re-unminding me: Rita is not real, you are only dancing with the light itself. Enjoy the trip, this guide might tell me: you are the continuum. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1078-1098 Brackett, D., Living with Limits: The Continuum of Consciousness ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1098 IV Figure 1: I see no particular reason why this familiar diagram of the dinergy ratio known as the golden mean (1:1.618) and Fibonacci sequence, which depict a spiral growth pattern of all physical matter, wherein the relationship of the smallest part to largest part is equivalent to the relation of the largest part to the whole, cannot also depict the growth pattern of non-physical matter such as consciousness, in which the individual's mind is in an identical direct ratio to the collective unconscious, and thus continues, in a continuum growing past the limits of the individual lifetime. (Thanks to our editor, Greg Nixon, for his close work, encouragement and assistance with this article.) °°° DONALD BRACKETT is a Vancouver-based cultural journalist and curator who writes about art, films, music and architecture. He has been the Executive Director of both the Professional Art Dealers Association of Canada and The Ontario Association of Art Galleries. He is the author of the forthcoming book from Backbeat Books, Back to Black: Amy Winehouse's Only Masterpiece, released in November 2016. A frequent lecturer on the history of philosophy and theology at several west coast universities, he is also currently working on a book about the applied phenomenology of both Gaston Bachelard and Walter Benjamin. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1099-1118 Sosteric, M. Mysticism, Consciousness, Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1099 Explorations Mysticism, Consciousness, Death Dr. Mike Sosteric * Abstract Drawing on the mystical experiences of the author, this paper examines death. After making several observations about his own mystical experience, the author explores the implications of his experience for both theories of consciousness and the ultimate question of death. He concludes, based on the observable facts of his experiences, that not only is consciousness far more varied and complex than most might admit, but that in order to account for observations in his home laboratory, it must survive the death of the physical vehicle. (The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance and guidance of editor-at-large, Gregory Michael Nixon.) *Correspondence: Dr. Mike Sosteric, Athabasca University, Athabasca, AB, Canada. Email: [email protected] Websites: http://dr-s.sociology.org/, https://athabascau.academia.edu/DrS Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1099-1118 Sosteric, M. Mysticism, Consciousness, Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1100 I am you; you are me You are the waves; I am the ocean. Know this and be free; be divine. (Sri Sathya Sai Baba) Narrative I'm a sociologist. I was trained in the classical way and got my PhD through the appropriate channels. I was a regular and normal sociologist for a long time. I did my PhD on the political economy of scholarly journals, started the first Internet journal of Sociology, did some stuff on computers, learned some things about programming and was generally on my way to a relatively average ending after an infuriatingly average life. But then, "it" happened. When I was 39 years old, my head exploded. In an instant I went from staid, boring, materialist sociologist to full blown professional mystic gushing out parables, poems, and psalms like a broken fire hydrant gushes water. As I present myself before you now I could express my shock, awe, and surprise. But even if I was an A-list actor, I do not believe I could ever express it adequately. Even now, fifteen years later, I still shake my head with wonder every time the thought of it draws near. I have to say that when "it" happened, I certainly didn't see myself as a candidate for mystical experience. I was raised fire and brimstone Catholic, but I left the faith disgusted when I was only eight years old. The catalyst for my rejection of Catholicism was an event that occurred with my mom. One day when I was about eight years old I was helping my mom in the kitchen. My mother was baking some cookies and I, inexperienced but anxious to shove them in my mouth, reached into a hot oven and grabbed the handle with my bare hand. Not surprisingly, I burned my hand severely. My mom, rather than comforting me with compassion and understanding as all parents should when their children experience pain, grabbed my hand, held it up to my face and exclaimed, "Hell will be much worse than this!" Shocked! Horrified! Even though I was only eight at the time, I knew there was something terribly wrong. The eyes of a child could see who was at fault. I blamed the Catholic Church for teaching my mom such hurtful nonsense. So, thenceforth I refused to go to church. I rejected Catholicism and left the faith. As you might expect, I did not totally give up on the spiritual side right away. As I grew I began Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1099-1118 Sosteric, M. Mysticism, Consciousness, Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1101 looking at other things. As a middle adolescent I found my way into a New Age bookstore one day and there I was exposed to Buddhism, Eckankar, Theosophy, Wicca, Satanism, and tarot, to name a few things. I fiddled around with those things for a few years but none of them really seemed that interesting or useful, so I never really committed. It might have gone on like this for my entire life, i.e., I may have twiddled unsatisfactorily with the surface of things, but then four years after I entered university to pursue psychology I was exposed to the brilliant work of Karl Marx. As I quickly learned, Karl Marx brought a utopian vision to the table. He saw a world of prosperity, justice, and equality for all (and not just the .01 percent). He was a champion of the underdog and the savior of the masses! He was everything that Jesus Christ had not been, or so I thought at the time, and I loved him for it. What's more, he believed that religion was a pile of manure. He called religion an "opiate" (Marx, 1978), and he, and other sociologists after him (Berger, 1969), believed the elites used it to manage, mollify, and mind control the masses, whom they exploit. Of course, as I learned in my sociology courses, it was true. The .01 percent bloat themselves on the backs of the exploited masses and they use religion, the media, a-list actors, and whatever else they can buy with their piles of money to keep the hoi polloi quietly going about their jobs. I had seen the light, finally, and so I rejected religion, spirituality, and belief in anything other than molecules and atoms (and later leptons and quarks) of the physical universe. Everything else was – á la Marx, Freud (Freud, 1964), and Dawkins (Dawkins, 2006) – nothing more than the ideological and infantile delusions of an oppressed and stunted planet. I completed my degree in psychology, changed my major to sociology, completed a double major (both with honors) and went on to a PhD in sociology. And there, for a decade, I remained. I stood, proud atheist and defender of the atheist credo. But then my self-satisfied atheism came crashing to the ground. One day, as I've already said, "it" happened. I sat down to watch a movie and the mirror of my thinly constructed self came crashing to the ground. One night I had what I now characterize as a connection experience or connection event (Sosteric, 2016b), but what most would understand as a mystical experience. It occurred one night as I sat down to watch a movie entitled The Abyss with my wife. Immediately prior to sitting down I had a very small puff of marijuana. I sat down to watch the movie and within minutes my normal reality collapsed and I was confronted with none other than the almighty patriarch of my Catholic indoctrination. One moment I was sitting watching a movie and the next moment I was streaming consciousness and having a full-blown conversation with God in my mind. It was not a pleasant conversation. Thought gushed. You might expect that when I met God I experienced wonder, glory, awe, and joy, but I did not. When I met God I experienced pure terror. In fact, I felt like a small child who had just been caught in the act of disobedience by a violent, alcoholic father. Even though I had done nothing more evil than shoot a bird with a pellet gun when I was a Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1099-1118 Sosteric, M. Mysticism, Consciousness, Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1102 small child, an action which immediately caused me to break down and cry at the horror I had just committed, I felt that God had arrived to judge me and cast me into the fiery pit of hell! I felt unworthy of God's love. I felt that I was a dirty sinner. I felt undeserving of divine Grace. I was terrified; in fact, it was the most terrifying experience I had ever had. Worthless, useless, insignificant, inconsequential, dirty, sinful, cosmic garbage, powerless, subjugated, and defeated are all adjectives I could use to describe my feelings during this brief but hyper toxic monologue with this very Catholic God. It was certainly a surprise. I thought I had left this God behind when I converted myself to atheism but now, all of a sudden, there he was in all his monstrous and despicable glory. So what did I do? Well, I sat there transfixed for a few moments while the horrible toxic dialogue bubbled in my brain – my angst, anxiety, helplessness, and defeat made all the greater by fact that this was not the first time I had experienced this terrible fear of God. I had experienced it off and on as a teenager and young adult, usually following experimentation with marijuana, psilocybin, or LSD. Not every time of course. I had many different experiences while tripping the night fantastic, but every once in a while I'd have this one terrible, and terribly Catholic experience. Now, decades after I thought I had put the nonsense behind me, here it was again. I felt deflated, hopeless, and defeated. All I could do was sit and wait for the lightning bolt of God's wrath to shatter me like the cosmic piece of dirt that I was. But then, something shifted. After sitting absorbed in the trauma and running over and over again in my head just how pathetic I was, and after resigning myself to the inevitably of God's wrathful hammer falling on my head, a little switch went off in my crown, chakra that is 1 . Suddenly, I was frustrated and weary by the whole thing. I was weary of the fear; I was weary of the trauma; I was weary of the emotional anguish; I was weary of feeling like worthless cosmic turd; and, perhaps most significantly, I was weary of waiting, like a lamb, for God to pull the trigger and cast me into the fiery pit. I was weary, frustrated, and fed up and so I stood up, 2 rejected the monologue of fear, raised my right fist in the air, gave God the middle finger, and said: "Fuck you and fuck off" (in my head). Then I went on to give him shit. I looked God square in the eye that night and I said to that if he thought it was OK to roast his children alive for all eternity just because they didn't measure up to his standards, I 1 The crown chakra is the least dense, most easy to activate chakra in the energy system of the physical body. 2 Just a point of clarification, I didn't really stand up to do to this. When I say that I "stood up," I mean it in a metaphorical sense. I was sitting down, but in my head I was standing up and giving God the finger. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1099-1118 Sosteric, M. Mysticism, Consciousness, Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1103 didn't want to have anymore more to do with him, ever. In fact, I thought that if he could abuse his creation like that then he could just take his stinking gulag creation and shove it up his fucking ass. If he wanted to throw me in hell for my insolence, fine, fuck him. What did it matter anyway? If everything I had been told about God the great and powerful was true, I was hooped and there was nothing I could do about it anyway. Then, exhausted by the outburst, I sat back and waited. I waited for my insolence to sink in and I waited for God's wrath to materialize. I waited, in short, for the lightning bolt to strike me down. But, the lightning bolt never came, at least in the form that I was expecting, and so I watched the rest of the movie with my wife who remained unaware that anything untoward had occurred. 3 When it was over, still traumatized, I went upstairs to bed. The next day I woke up, mildly surprised that God hadn't taken me out in my sleep. I scratched my head for a bit and tried to process. After my insolent outburst I was sure I was going to be dead, or worse. To be honest, I was quite surprised. Surely God would have done something about my brash disrespect by now. After decades of listening to organized (and not so organized) religions and their representatives rattle off about the violent, abusive, and fowl tempered God, I expected that he would never have stood for such an impertinent outburst from such a worthless and pathetic soul. But God, if he existed, didn't do a darn thing! Dulled and exhausted by the night's previous struggle, I got out of bed. It was a psychologically gray morning reflecting what I began to suspect was a spiritually empty universe, but nothing more serious than that. For some the story might end here. Some might discount the experience as delusional remnants of my religious indoctrination. Others might trace the source to neurological anomalies caused, perhaps, by a heightened genetic sensitivity to transcendants, 4 as I like call them. For myself, I was prepared to reaffirm my Marxist atheism. If God really existed, and if he was really like the priests I had knelt before as a child said he was, something bad should have happened. I should have been punished, but I was not. I went to bed and woke up just like any other normal day. My initial conclusion was that it was delusion, hallucination, or remnant of my childhood indoctrination. The lack of divine response meant it must be an empty, materialist universe. What else could I conclude? Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, the glass pane of my materialist worldview was thoroughly shattered two days later when I sat down at my computer, opened a Word document, had another puff of blue smoke, had another powerful mystical experience (another "reconnection with Consciousness"), and proceeded to puke all over the page. I mean to 3 I only spoke with her about the experience years after it had occurred. 4 Transcendants are things, entheogens, meditation, music, and a "sharply" written poem, that facilitate connection to consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1099-1118 Sosteric, M. Mysticism, Consciousness, Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1104 say, words began to fly from my fingers like a thousand pigeons escaping their coup. And it wasn't just an experience or two, an article here and there. Suddenly, I was having multiple noetic experiences and writing, as a consequence of these noetic experiences, poems, parables, books, and stories about things I had never even thought about before. The very first thing that came spewing from my brain was a story of creation in the form of an epic poem! This story of creation replaced the canonical creation mythology of good and evil with a story of true unity and purpose. And it didn't stop there. A decade and a half later, I still sit down every day and let it flow. When I first started I would put in about an hour a day. Now it is closer to four or five hours a day, with a much more rigorous approach, and a much more diverse output of scholarly articles, poems, books, and educational materials. Empty universe indeed. Observation and Hypotheses I have to admit that when I looked at it as a scholar and scientist, I thought what was happening to me was a bit odd. I had smoked a bit of cannabis, I had a frightening conversation with God, and then, as clichéd as it might sound, I was reborn as a spiritual author. As strange as this might sound, this is what happened. These were the noetic facts and they couldn't be denied. At first I couldn't see how any of these facts were related. I could come up with no rhyme or reason for the events or the rebirth. I might have thought that this was, as one editor suggested, to be expected "from a naturally creative person whose expressivity had been trapped for years behind the repressed fear of God's vengeance for denying him." But that explanation didn't feel right, even at the start. There was too much information, too much of a shift, and too much of a transformation to reduce it in this fashion. That is, it couldn't be "just me" because "just me" couldn't know all the things that suddenly I knew. Not only that, but "just me" was a lot smaller than all of "that" which it perceived. I certainly didn't have the experiential background for all of it; and, as complex as human neuroanatomy is, I don't believe the experiences can be contained in the brain either. My conclusion, weak as it may be, was that whatever was happening was beyond the physical body. Whatever was happening was something more. Of course, I didn't come to this conclusion so clearly right away. To be honest, initially, I was confused. However, I did not let the initial confusion deter me. If anything, it spurred me on. Thus as I began to write my spiritual materials I also began to think about and investigate the phenomenon as a scientist. Using a form of ethnographic observation as my method, I observed and explored my mystical experience. I didn't have full explanations for things immediately, but I did begin to organize and make sense of things. As the initial months unfolded I made five key observations about the "thing" that was happening to me. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1099-1118 Sosteric, M. Mysticism, Consciousness, Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1105 Observation One: Noesis One of the first, and most challenging, things that I observed when I sat down was noesis. Noesis refers to the experience of "experience as a source of valid knowledge." Noesis is a feature of connection/mystical experience long recognized in the literature (Hood, 1975; Stace, 1960). A basic explanation of noesis is that it is a feeling combined with information. In mystical connection, the information can be anything from self-knowledge to cosmic knowledge. The feeling is a strong, sometimes overpowering, feeling that the information is valid, authentic, and true (with a capital "T"), despite its purely subjective nature (Hood, 1975). For me, and for others (Harmless, 2008) the feeling of noesis in mystical experience is prominent, pervasive, and powerful. Observation Two: Copious Information The second thing I noted about the process was copious information flow. Prior to the experience I had ideas of course, but they came slow and I sometimes had to struggle to get them out. Following the experience, noetic truths flowed from my fingertips in a veritable gusher, page after page. Suddenly I knew and understood things (like the nature of God, the structure of consciousness, and so on) that I never even thought about before. It came so fast and furious it was all I could do to keep up. The only thing that allowed me to get it all down was the fact that I had a computer and I could type 80+ words a minute. Had I not been a touch typist, had I not had modern computer technology at my fingers, I would not have been able to get it all down in anything resembling reasonable sense. Even so, the spew was so powerful it was a challenge to get it all down. Observation Three: Shift in Interest The third thing I observed was a very big shift in interest. Prior to my "conversation with God," I was primarily interested in scholarly communication and technology. I had written my PhD dissertation on the political economy of scholarly journals and I had done work on creating Internet based academic journals. Subsequent to that I went on to explore online pedagogy, technological objects, and related communication technologies. But all that changed in a magical, mystical, moment. After my experience I instantly developed an entirely new set of interests. Like Sri Aurobindo or Edward Carpenter (Anon, 2009), suddenly I was interested in consciousness, the nature of God, human purpose, human transformation, eschatological issues, and so on. It was nothing like I'd ever experienced before and it is, still, a massive challenge to integrate. But that is another story. Observation Fourth: Shift in Expertise Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1099-1118 Sosteric, M. Mysticism, Consciousness, Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1106 In addition to copious flow and dramatic shift of interest, I also observed a remarkable shift in expertise. Before my clearing experience I was an academic writing knowledgeably on things like learning objects, the labor process, and other sociological type topics. Afterwards, and quite inexplicably, I suddenly knew things I had never known before, and understood things that I had sometimes barely considered. God, consciousness, chakras, the spiritual composition of the physical universe, kundalini, spiritual archetypes, and much more came suddenly into focus. And it wasn't just a topical shift in expertise. As I have already noted, my abilities to communicate shifted as well. Before my clearing experience the only thing I had ever written was an academic article. After my experience I was suddenly writing poems, parables, and other non-academic style resources. In an instant I went from academic expert to amateur mystic with absolutely no previous training at all. Observation Five: Spiritual Transformation In addition to copious information flow, a shift in interest, and a shift in expertise, I also observed a total transformation of my belief system. Before my experience I was a staunch, some might say arrogant and obnoxious, materialist/atheist, just like you would expect of a professional sociologist and academic. Before my experience I did not believe in God, spirit, the afterlife, or anything else beyond what I could see with my own two eyes. After my experience, I knew differently. After my experience, and as a consequence of all my subsequent experiences, I knew there was more going on beneath the thin meniscus of our normal reality than meets the proverbial materialist eye. I had lived powerful phenomenological encounters, nay I had lived several powerful experiences, with remarkable emotional, psychological, spiritual, and professional consequences that could not be denied. As a consequence, you could no more convince me that universe is a universe empty of Spirit and Consciousness as you could convince me that my name was Frank. I know that the materialists are wrong, I know that the atheists have been misled, and I know it as surely as I know my own name. Observation Six: Rapid Expansion Speaking of powerful mystical experiences, my fifth observation was just how rapidly this all occurred. The shifts did not develop over the course of months or years. I did not train to become a mystic or practice to become a poet; it just happened – *snap!* – like that. My initial experience had been no more than five minutes long and it was barely two days after that before the verbal flood began to flow. Suddenly, I was an entirely different person. Well, that's not quite true. I was the same person, just my interests and abilities had shifted and transformed. Assumptions of tabula rasa and the centrality of external experience went out the window as the implications of this remarkable transformation percolated in my head. It was a 180-degree shift of interest, perspective, Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1099-1118 Sosteric, M. Mysticism, Consciousness, Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1107 and talent and it occurred in the span of only a few hours. The question that burns in my mind is simple: how do we account for/explain these six key observations? Hypothesis One: Connection to Something More I have to say, coming up with an explanation for these observations was (and continues to be) challenging, on a number of levels. Materialist explanations offered little in the way of insight. I was not having "boob experiences" (Prince & Savage, 2012). I was not engaged in self pacification (Horton, 1974). I was not having micro-seizures (Michael A. Persinger, 1983; M.A. Persinger, 1987; M.A. Persinger, 2002). It was not high altitude hypoxic breakdown (Joseph, 2001) or neural cross talk (Monastersky, 2006). Neither could the experiences be understood within the frameworks of my Marxist materialist mode of thought, my childhood Christianity, or even the other spiritualties (like Buddhism) that I had tried on for size, because some experiences were outside all known (at least to me) frameworks. If it was just elite ideology, why the phenomenological experience, rapid transformation, and copious information flow. If it was really the patriarchal God, why no wrathful lightning strike? If it was "just me," then why the alien variety? Standard explanations, materialist or psychological, didn't seem to cut it. To fit psychological and materialist frameworks, I either had to ignore the powerful phenomenology or reduce it in some fashion. But reducing didn't fit the phenomenology of the experience, or the noetic (at least) facts! I was not descending to primitive modes of thought; I was expanding to cosmic levels of consciousness and transforming as a result. I was not having primitive boob experiences; I was experiencing deep intellectual understanding and insight. I could only conclude, as already noted, from my experiences that I was moving beyond the body - beyond the material neurology of my brain. I was, in short, connecting to something more. Either that or I was, as somebody like Richard Dawkins might suggest, crazy. While I will admit there were some what I would call connection pathologies in the beginning, clearly I was not crazy. And besides, my experiences were hardly unique. As Harmless (2008) notes, copious output is a defining characteristic of the professional mystic's work, as are expansive experiences (Mercer & Durham, 1999, pp. 175-176), and powerful spiritual transformations, as I myself can attest. Mystics themselves even note the phenomenon. For example Madame Blavatsky, famous theosophical author, notes these sorts of shift: One morning in the summer of 1875 Madame Blavatsky showed her colleague some sheets of manuscript which she had written. She explained: "I wrote this last night 'by order,' but what the deuce it is to be I don't know. Perhaps it is for a newspaper article, perhaps for a book, perhaps for nothing: anyhow I did as I was ordered." She put it away in a drawer and nothing more was Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1099-1118 Sosteric, M. Mysticism, Consciousness, Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1108 said about it for some months. In September of that year she went to Syracuse on a visit to Prof. and Mrs. Hiram Corson, of Cornell University, and while there she began to expand the few original pages. She wrote back to Olcott in New York that "she was writing about things she had never studied and making quotations from books she had never read in all her life..." (as cited in Kuhn, 1930, p. 114) Thus from my five key observations, confirmed as common features of mystical experience in the literature, I hypothesized that I was connecting beyond the body. The question now was, connecting to what? Noetically, I knew right away. Noetically I knew that I was connecting to something that I called the fabric of consciousness, and I knew, at least in a general way, both the nature and structure of that consciousness. It all came to me in a series of powerful mystical experiences that dumped so much information in my lap that fifteen years later I am still working to sort it out and present it in sensible way. So yes, as a mystic, I knew what was going on. As a scholar, I wasn't so sure. I was pretty sure I'd have to revise my Marxist materialism, maybe even discard it all altogether, but beyond that, I couldn't say, with anything approaching scholarly sense, exactly what it was all about. So what did I do? To make a long story short, I put aside any doubts and fears – and I have to admit, there were a few – that might have prevented me from continuing, put my Mystical Magical Mickey hat on, and advanced down my new found mystical path. I explored the Fabric through multiple connection experiences, but every once in a while I'd pause, put my gray scholar's hat on, and have a close look at what I was doing. As I did that I made two additional key observations. Observation Seven: Different Experiences In addition to my five previous observations (copious information, shift in interest/expertise, personal transformation, and rapid expansion), the sixth, observation I made was that my connection experiences were different from each other along three axis: quality, intensity, duration, and content. As regards intensity, some connection experiences were simply more intense than others. Some connection experiences were powerfully visceral and netted grand visions and glorious enlightenments. Others were less dramatic, more down to earth and grounded sort of affairs netting incremental improvements in awareness and understanding. Notably, I could determine no external reason for the variation. The experiences seemed to have a mind of their own. As regards quality, some experiences had a different "feel" or "vibe" than other. Especially in the very beginning, some of the experiences were frightening, anxiety and angst ridden nadir experiences, as I have come to call them. Others, the vast majority, were positive, uplifting, Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1099-1118 Sosteric, M. Mysticism, Consciousness, Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1109 transformative, noetic, zenith experiences. Within these broad categories, the intensity varied wildly. The first nadir experience I had, retold in the narrative section of this paper, was very much a dark night of the soul type experience. Others, not as much. In fact, as my expertise with and control over connection increased, nadir experiences diminished and finally expired altogether. Similarly, the intensity of zenith experiences varied widely. Some were wildly transformative, blissful, and expansive. Others, more mundane. 5 As regards the information, it too was all different. Sometimes the ideas blasted out in fully formed visions, and sometimes they trickled out in a weak little creative streams. Sometimes the ideas came out in massive lumps that needed to be reshaped and decoded, while at other times they came out in logical pieces over time. And it wasn't just the size of the ideas that varied: the content varied wildly as well. Sometimes I had ideas concerning the entire depth and breadth of creation, and sometimes it was the leptons and quarks that make up the material substructure of this universe. Sometimes I was wondering about the structure of the Fabric of Consciousness, while at other times I had horrible realizations of the personal damage caused to myself and others by the various forms of violence we all experience, what I have come to call Toxic Socialization (Sosteric, 2016c). It was, from the perspective of our mundane daily existence, all very odd to be sure, and it bore little resemblance to anything I had ever read about God/Consciousness before. Going by what I had read in the literature, I should have expected ultimate intelligence, profound bliss, and pure consciousness, but this is not what I got. To be sure, ultimate intelligence, profound bliss, and pure consciousness were aspects of some experiences, but these were just parts of only some of the experiences. Instead what I experienced was a potpourri. Some were classic, if by classic you mean measurable by the Hood's scale, and some were outside the pale of mystical parameters, as defined by Hood, but others were different in many different ways. So, how do you explain all this? If you wanted to you could, I suppose, argue that I'm crazy. That 5 A question at this point is, "What causes the different intensity and vibe?" This is a good question, and I speculate about this below. I will say here, it wasn't set or setting. It is well known that set and setting can influence connection experiences, but in my case set and setting was carefully, though not consciously, controlled. As regards setting, I always made connections in the same place (in front of my computer), at the same time (typically early morning when everybody else is sleeping), every day. As regards set, my mental and emotional states are consistently neutral in the early morning. For me, set and setting have been controlled for many years. Of course, this does not invalidate the importance of set and setting. It is just to say, any explanation of the variability of my connection experiences (and the experiences of others, I presume) must move beyond set and setting. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1099-1118 Sosteric, M. Mysticism, Consciousness, Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1110 is not a very scholarly thing to do, but besides, there's lots of evidence to the contrary. I have a healthy family with healthy children. I have a job, which I've held for close to twenty years, a publication record, and a history of go-native ethnographic research of the kind I am reporting here (Sosteric, 1996). I may not have the biggest peacock plume, but I've done some things of note. You would have a hard time playing the crazy card. So, if you can't dismiss my observations as madness, what is it? You may want to try and reduce here. But how does reduction to psychological (dis)function (e.g., "soothing") or neurological epiphenomenon explain the variation of experience and wide variety of content? The only reductionist explanations that I can think of is that this vast topical content is somehow woven into the DNA or is emergent from random neurological processes. But DNA, at least as currently understood by the aging Crick model, is not capable; and, the notion that random neural processes can generate anything more than the most rudimentary of ideas (if even those), strains credulity. Random neurology did not create this world, and cannot explain my connection experiences: that much seems painfully clear. Hypothesis Two: Connection to a Cosmic Internet (CI) So, what it is? What was I experiencing? As a mystic, noetically, I knew right away. The explanation for my experiences was "emailed" in a vision I had almost immediately after I got started. When I received the vision I immediately wrote it down (it took me about twelve months to get the basics down) and began working on formation (i.e., putting it in a presentable form). From this vision I coined the term Fabric of Consciousness to describe with what I was connecting. From the vision, and as a mystic, I also understood the basic structure of this Fabric, and how it relates to physical creation. But, that was as a mystic. As a scientist, and based on observations, I couldn't say for sure what was going on. I knew there was something, and I knew that whatever it shattered the materialist box I had been living in, but I couldn't say what. I thought about it for a few years and then one day it just hit me, I was "connecting" to what is, for all intents and purposes, a vast cosmic Internet 6 6 How many people make connections to this cosmic Internet? Conservative estimates put the number anywhere between thirty and fifty percent (Bourque, 1969; Bourque & Back, 1971; Yamane & Polzer, 1994). And note, it is not just the uneducated that have these experiences. The limited sociological research that has been conducted on the phenomenon has found that those with more education are equally likely, if not more likely, to have profound mystical experiences (Bourque, 1969; Bourque & Back, 1971). The educated just don't conceptualize it in the same way. Instead of using religious language and concepts they use a secular or a psychologically neutral language. The educated characterize mystical experiences as peak experiences (A. H. Maslow, 1962, 1968; A.H. Maslow, 1971), transcendence (A.H. Maslow, 1971), "pure consciousness events" (Forman, 1999), or as Albert Einstein put it, cosmic religious feeling Einstein speaks directly and clearly about religious experience in his 1930 New York Times article entitled Religion and Science (Einstein, 1930). When we open the field and loosen our definitions we find that connection in one form or another really is a ubiquitous experience. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1099-1118 Sosteric, M. Mysticism, Consciousness, Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1111 (Sosteric, 2016b). I, and everybody else on the planet, if you can believe Abraham Maslow (1971) who long ago expressed surprise at just how prevalent the experiences were, are connecting to a cosmic Internet. At this point this is just speculation. As a mystic I know this to be true, but as a scientist I just have my suspicions. At this point I'm also not speculating about anything more than the basic reality. I am saying nothing here about our complicated relationship to the network, our complicated relationship to other nodes, the structure of the network, how that network relates to the "real" world outside of us, and so on. I have done some work on this. I have written a paper on the transformative outcomes of even brief connection (Sosteric, 2016a), the neurological mechanisms of connection (Sosteric, 2016b), and (from a more sociological perspective), elite interference with the process of connection (Sosteric, 2014), but a lot more needs to be done. All I'm doing here is suggesting that if we want to understand mystical experience and consciousness, then based on over a decade of my personal exploration and ethnographic/introspective observations, we see God, Consciousness, Para Brahman, Ain Soph Aur, Hunab Ku, Primum Mobile, Spirit, or whatever you want to call it, as a vast cosmic Internet that we connect to, just like we connect to websites. Turn yourself on, plug yourself in, enter an "address," and go. I think this explains my observations more than any of theory (religious or scientific) I've come across. I think this is what mystics do, though sometimes I think we enter random addresses and pursue ill-informed connections. For me, the idea of a cosmic Internet coupled with the notion that during mystical experience we connect to that Internet is the only thing that explains my mystical experiences. My mystical experiences are "connection experiences" and where I connect determines, in concert with set and setting, the intensity, quality, and even content of my connection experience. This may be hard pill to swallow for some, maybe most, of the people reading this. Many scientists don't believe in a cosmic Internet of Consciousness, and even if they did, many might reject idea of controlled connection, and so they would perhaps busily dismiss and/or reduce. Many others, perhaps more than many might think (Ecklund, 2012; Ecklund & Long, 2011), believe in something more. But most of them have some version of what I like to call the big guy or big thing theory of connection, meaning that when we connect we connect to something much grander than we miniscule little humans. Of course, as Ecklund (2012) notes, most scientists don't personalize it. Most depersonalize it and push it, more or less, towards some abstract conceptualization of a big consciousness. For these people, swallowing the notion that what we are connecting to is an Internet democracy and not a mainframe autocracy might be a little difficult to swallow. Atheist or believer, it's a big shift I'm presenting here - consciousness as a cosmic Internet. The cosmic Internet as a vast collection of monadic egos (terminals) connected in an immaterial etheric Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1099-1118 Sosteric, M. Mysticism, Consciousness, Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1112 tapestry. There will be resistance to this notion; there may even be fear as a consequence of Borg visions of collective connection, but hopefully now that we have some collective experience with the global Internet, these fears and resistances can be overcome enough to at least consider, and perhaps begin researching, with this new paradigm approach. The research program could be quite fruitful. Indeed, whole new research directions, and vast new vistas of scientific possibility may open up, especially as brain scanning technology continues to evolve Death, the Ultimate Conclusion? This paper was initiated as a speculation about death. It might seem like we have travelled a long and winding road to get here, but the journey has been necessary. My speculations on death are necessarily wrapped up in my thinking on consciousness (that "something more" that is beyond the body) and connection. That is, to be able to communicate my speculations on death I need to first present the theory within which they are embedded. Thankfully, once that is done, the speculations themselves are easy to understand and, I feel, sensible and logical as well. As you can see, the framework is quite simple. Based on my observations, investigations (preliminary as they are), and extrapolations I believe we, and by "we" I mean our little "i," our bodily ego as defined neurologically by the brain's default mode network) (DMN) (Buckner, Andrews-Hanna, & Schacter, 2008; Carhart-Harris & Friston, 2010; Gusnard, Akbudak, Shulman, & Raichle, 2001; Raichle et al., 2001), can connect to a Fabric of Consciousness. This Fabric of Consciousness is organized, I would tentatively suggest, as a Cosmic Internet. From the point of connection we may "address" and connect to, like we address and connect to a web page, certain nodes in that network. Once connected, 7 a there is a noetic information transfer. In light of this nascent theory of consciousness and connection, what is death? As Nixon (2011) notes, and as I would heartedly agree, it's "nothing." Extrapolating from the theory of consciousness and connection tentatively outlined here, death is nothing more than Consciousness (i.e. big "I") unplugging from an aging, antiquated, or damaged terminal, and going to find a new one. The process is simple. When the body dies, the "soul" disconnects, the electrical activities of the terminal cease, and the little "i" that emerges as an epiphenomenon of the Default Mode Network of the physical brain expires, unless perhaps it has fully integrated with the big "I" (see below). But big "I," the Consciousness on the other side of the "computer screen," the information source/web page that little "i" connects to, just finds another terminal/body. That's all. The vast Cosmic Internet of which we are all a part doesn't go away when an individual device fails. Death 7 As I point out in Sosteric (2016), connection is accomplished via suppression of the brain's Default Mode Network (DMN) Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1099-1118 Sosteric, M. Mysticism, Consciousness, Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1113 amounts to nothing more than a network a reconfiguration, and I think technically a minor one at that. 8 Of course, at this point many questions might ensue. What happens at death to awareness? Does awareness expand or does it contract? What happens to my sense of identity? It is submerged/subsumed into a cosmic ocean of consciousness? If not, are there choices to be made? Are we assigned a new level? Will we be punished for our sins? If we don't "release" the body from attachment or "pass the test," will our sense of "I" die with our body, will it pass into hell, or will it be born into a lower incarnation? These are all fascinating questions and they have been asked constantly for thousands of years. Can they be addressed in the light of this "network theory" of Consciousness? Maybe. In the light of the speculations here, I think some of these questions simply evaporate. For example, moral talk of levels, sins, testing, and punishment make no sense in the context of network connectivity. If Consciousness is a cosmic Internet and if we merely plug into that internet, morality, at least in the dogmatic Church sense, don't fit in at all. How can you moralize about something that is perhaps nothing more than a technical process of connection/reconnection? You can't. Technical questions makes sense here, for example, How do you prepare the terminal/body, how do you facilitate connection, how do you enter "addresses," how do you filter information, and so on? But moral question are totally misplaced. Other questions come into clearer focus, and become more nuanced. For example, what happens to your sense of identity, your little "i," when you die? Is it submerged into the Cosmic Internet? Does it expand? Does it contract? Is it extinguished? Who makes the reconnection (i.e. reincarnation) choice? The answer to all of these might be, it depends. In particular, it may depend on what side of the screen you (and by "you" I mean little "i", little "y", you) are identifying with when you die. Do you identify with little "i" of the body or big "I," Cosmic "I", Christ "I?" Whether or not death is felt as a loss of "i" may depend on the extent to which you have integrated your little "i" with your big "I." If you have not integrated, if you have not done the spiritual work, perhaps little "i" is extinguished. Even if so, the death here is merely an illusion – in the sense that little "i" is only an epiphenomenon of the brain, an emergent property of the DMN network, this extinguishment is not real; it is merely the death of a delusion. Big "I" on the other side of the screen goes on. However, if you have integrated "i" and "I", perhaps death is not experienced as a loss, at all. Perhaps it is experienced as a simple transfer of vehicles, or perhaps even an ascension of consciousness. Perhaps the Tibetan Book of the Dead is an effort to get the dying "i" to identify with the big "I." I have my personal beliefs on this topic, beliefs that come with the full force of noetic connection, but I won't know for sure until 8 Except, perhaps, in time of famine, plague war, or genocide. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1099-1118 Sosteric, M. Mysticism, Consciousness, Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1114 I come to the Great Divide. Nevertheless, the speculations that emerge from the network theory of consciousness outlined here are, I find, fascinating and stimulating. I'd love to continue on with the speculations but I fear the paper is already too long; and besides, more research needs to be done. One final question that I'd like to address at this point is, if all this is true, what happened in my original experience? Why did "killing God" net me a better connection? Skipping over all the analysis that led me to the following speculation, allow me to just say, the killing of the Church God was significant as a clearing experience. What was cleared was an ideological blockage intentionally implanted by spiritual gatekeepers (in my case Catholic priests) to prevent connection. They do this because, as many wise sociologists (like Marx, 1978; Weber, 1904, 1995; Berger, 1969) can tell you, they serve the ruling classes. They thus implant ideas and ideology to shape behavior and control the masses. Part of the process of control is preventing connection simply because connection leads, potentially, to revolution (Sosteric, 2016a). When I confronted Church seeded ideology and dismissed it, the blockage was cleared and connection (and subsequently, development and maturation of said connection) could proceed. I realize this statement may fall on some like a sack of bricks, but to a sociologist who has accepted the significance of mystical connection and the importance of understanding it, it is not outrageous at all. That this world is saturated with elite ideology is a basic sociological fact. That religion and spirituality are, like Hollywood, the school system, and the corporate media, outlets for the dissemination of this ideology is a basic sociological truism. Once you have accepted that connection events are a real thing, something long recognized in psychology, 9 and once you recognize the presence of elite ideology, it is a very small and eminently reasonable step from considering the ideology of the Church as intentionally constructed opioid-like distraction à la Karl Marx, to deliberate interference with connection, à la Mike Sosteric. And I'm not the only one thinking along these lines. Sociologists are beginning to clue in. For example, Bender (2010) points out how the white, male definition of mystical experience as a privatized, ineffable, super-conscious, highly personalized psychological experience has sanitized its revolutionary potential and turned mystical experience into a modern, mystical anesthetic." For myself, I have demonstrated the revolutionary potential of mystical experience (Sosteric, 2016a), a potential that would be anathema to any reasonably competent ruler who would no doubt do anything to stamp it out because of the problems a spiritually active and empowered population would cause. I have also demonstrated how the 9 Cf. the work of Abraham Maslow, and in particular Transpersonal Psychology. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1099-1118 Sosteric, M. Mysticism, Consciousness, Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1115 Freemasons, an organization brought up during the transition from Feudalism to Capitalism to lubricate the transfer of power, manipulated esoteric spiritual wisdom and spiritual connection experiences for venal political reasons (Sosteric, 2014). Though I have not explored the hypothesis in great detail, I think there is clear evidence that the Catholic Church, an institution founded by top level elites, was setup to block awareness of a pacifist, proletarian, but nevertheless critical (but perhaps not by today's standards) and potentially revolutionary spirituality. 10 I think this evidence appears in the activities of the early Church when the Council of Nicaea, called by Roman Emperor Constantine, selected only certain writings to be included in the Bible (Bock, 2006; Ehrman, 2003, 2007). I would suggest these writings were not selected because they represented accurately Christ's words and work but because they were safe, sanitized, even less potent. 11 So, did the original church patriarchs collect "safe" religious texts and edit these specifically to throw the people off the scent and/or downplay/obscure/prevent connection? Did they, essentially, create an institution tasked with crown chakra deactivation? 12 And if so, why am I talking about this here? The answer is simple, if the Western Church, of other churches, in fact if all elite instantiated religion, is an attempt to prevent connection, then what does this have to say about their pronouncements (exoteric and esoteric) on death, judgment, the afterlife, and so on? To be blunt, if religion is nothing more than an elite instantiated institution of spiritual disconnection, can anything they say be trusted? Obviously answering this question is well outside the scope of this paper, but answering the question isn't the point here. The point is to encourage a little critical reflection. If all this is true, it really calls for a fundamental revaluation of even our most basic spiritual concepts, and that includes our understanding/speculations of death. If the elites have interfered with the spirituality of this planet then sorting out scientifically plausible speculations and truths from ideologically impregnated mush could be quite difficult. I have offered some concepts and basic speculations about what happens, but if we are interested in human spirituality in general, or death in particular, there's a lot of work to be done. To conclude this paper let me ask the question, "Where does this leave us in regards to our understanding of death?" Does it leave us at the gateway of a vast an undiscoverable country, or are 10 See for example the New International Version of the Bible, Mathew 5-7, the "Sermon on the Mount," which, while not particularly revolutionary by today's standards, nevertheless could, arguably, be seen, in the context of the powerful Roman Empire, quite revolutionary. 11 At this point one might object and say the early Church got together to settle doctrinal disputes and/or expertly pick over available texts to pick the most theologically accurate, but the fact that the Church went on to hide the Bible that they had created away from public scrutiny until the invention of the printing press wrested control of the book from their hands, belies such sociologically naïve suggestions. 12 Though strange to some, I think that from a sociologically informed spiritual perspective (or a spiritually informed sociological perspective) this is a very good question, and a reasonable, sensible, and obvious one. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1099-1118 Sosteric, M. Mysticism, Consciousness, Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1116 there things we can do to explore? Personally, I feel we can explore. We can explore as scholars and scientists, with all the tools and methodologies available, and we can explore spiritually/noetically, by doing what the mystics and gurus tell us to do, which is go within and experience noesis. Personally I think it is worthwhile doing both, though this does present ontological, methodological, and theoretical challenges which will have to be worked out. How far will this exploration take us in our understanding of spirituality and death? At this point that's impossible to say. I only know that a vista lies before us. As scientists and scholars, we have the tools and techniques to explore that vista. 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Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 98(7), 4259-4264. doi:10.1073/pnas.071043098 Harmless, W. (2008). Mystics. New York: Oxford University Press. Hood, R. W. (1975). The Construction and Preliminary Validation of a Measure of Reported Mystical Experience. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 14(1), 29. Horton, P. C. (1974). The Mystical Experience: Substance of an Illusion. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 22(2), 364-380. Retrieved from http://apa.sagepub.com/content/22/2/364.short Joseph, R. (2001). The limbic system and the soul: Evolution and the neuroanatomy of religious experience. Zygon, 36, 105-136. Marx, K. (1978). The German Ideology. In R. Tucker (Ed.), The Marx-Engels Reader. New York: Norton. Maslow, A. H. (1962). Lessons from the Peak-Experiences. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 2(1), 9-18. doi:10.1177/002216786200200102 Maslow, A. H. (1968). Towards a Psychology of Being (2nd Edition). New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold Company. Maslow, A. H. (1971). The Farther Reaches of Human Nature. New York: Viking. Mercer, C., & Durham, T. W. (1999). Religious Mysticism and Gender Orientation. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 38(1), 175-182. Retrieved from http://0search.ebscohost.com.aupac.lib.athabascau.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=187215 0&site=eds-live Monastersky, R. (2006). Religion on the brain: the hard science of neurobiology is taking a closer look at the ethereal world of the spirit.(Cover story). The Chronicle of Higher Education(38), 14. Retrieved from http://0search.ebscohost.com.aupac.lib.athabascau.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&db=edsgao&AN=eds gcl.146220745&site=eds-live Nixon, G. (2011). Breaking out of one's head (& awakening to the world). Journal of Consciousness Exploration, 2(7), 1006-1134. Persinger, M. A. (1983). RELIGIOUS AND MYSTICAL EXPERIENCES AS ARTIFACTS OF TEMPORAL LOBE FUNCTION: A GENERAL HYPOTHESIS. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 57(3f), 1255-1262. doi:10.2466/pms.1983.57.3f.1255 Persinger, M. A. (1987). Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs. New York: Praeger. Persinger, M. A. (Ed.) (2002). Experimental simulation of the God experience: Implications for religious beliefs and the future of the human species. San Jose, CA: University of California Press. Prince, R., & Savage, C. (2012). Mystical States and the Concept of Regression. In J. White (Ed.), The Highest State of Consciousness (pp. 113-132). New York: Doubleday. Raichle, M. E., MacLeod, A. M., Snyder, A. Z., Powers, W. J., Gusnard, D. A., & Shulman, G. L. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1099-1118 Sosteric, M. Mysticism, Consciousness, Death ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1118 (2001). A default mode of brain function. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 98(2), 676-682. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC14647/ Sosteric, M. (1996). Subjectivity and the Labour Process: A Case Study in the Food and Beverage Industry. Work, Employment, and Society, 10(2). Sosteric, M. (2014). A Sociology of Tarot. Canadian Journal of Sociology, 39(3). Sosteric, M. (2016a). Dangerous Memories: Slavery, Mysticism, and Transformation. Unpublished Manuscript. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/25031557/Dangerous_memories__Slavery_mysticism_and_transformation Sosteric, M. (2016b). The Science of Ascension: Bodily Ego, Consciousness, Connection. Retrieved from https://www.academia.edu/s/fb0ae85da7/the-science-of-ascension Sosteric, M. (2016c). Toxic Socialization. Socjourn. Stace, W. T. (1960). Mysticism and Philosophy. London: Macmillan. Yamane, D., & Polzer, M. (1994). Ways of seeing ecstasy in modern society: Experientialexpressive and cultural-linguistic views. Sociology of Religion, 55(1), 1-25. Retrieved from http://0search.ebscohost.com.aupac.lib.athabascau.ca/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=url,ip,uid &db=sih&AN=9501303664&site=ehost-live Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1119-1140 Bricklin, J. What Dies? Eternalism and the Afterlife in William James ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1119 Explorations What Dies? Eternalism and the Afterlife in William James Jonathan Bricklin * "A luminous and helpful idea is that time is but a relative mode of regarding things; we progress through phenomena at a certain definitive pace, and this subjective advance we interpret in an objective manner, as if events moved necessarily in this order and at this precise rate. But that may be only our mode of regarding them. The events may be in some sense in existence always, both past and future, and it may be we who are arriving at them, not they who are happening. The analogy of a traveler in a railway train is useful; if he could never leave the train nor alter its pace, he would probably consider the landscapes as necessarily successive and be unable to conceive their coexistence ... We perceive, therefore, a possible fourth dimensional aspect about time, the inexorableness of whose flow may be a natural part of our present limitations..." -Sir Oliver Lodge, a pioneer of wireless technology, and a principal investigator of trance medium, Leonora Piper1 Preface Three weeks before he died, Einstein sent a condolence letter to the wife of his recently deceased friend, Michele Besso. His friend's departure "from this strange world," Einstein told her, "signifies nothing." Death signified nothing to Einstein because in his eternalistic block universe, all events co-exist permanently. Parmenides (Karl Popper's nickname for Einstein) expressed it this way: "Nor was it ever, nor will it be, since now it is, altogether one, continuous." 2 Or as Einstein himself expressed it in his letter: "[T]he separation between past, present, and future, is an illusion, however stubborn." 3 If the block universe is real there are * Correspondence: Jonathan Bricklin, Independent Scholar, Staten Island, New York. Email: [email protected] Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1119-1140 Bricklin, J. What Dies? Eternalism and the Afterlife in William James ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1120 other illusions in play, as well. In my book The Illusion of Will, Self, and Time: William James's Reluctant Guide to Enlightenment, 4 I explore some of them, mostly by separating what antiblock-universe James wanted to believe, based on common sense, from what his deepest insights-insights from both altered-states and introspection-led him to believe. I conclude that James's neutral monism is ultimately contextualized by his end-of-life, eternalistic, mystical suggestion, which he proposed as a "veridical revelation of reality": Consciousness is not generated moment by moment but exists, rather, "already there, waiting to be uncovered." 5 In an eternalistic block universe, no events actually happen-at least not within the commonsense past/present/future-context for happenings (the temporal sequence McTaggart famously labeled the "A series"). All events, rather, simply are. As James proposed his eternalistic reality in the last year of his life, knowing the end was near, he may well have been writing a condolence note to himself. But as an avid supporter of the possibility that the human personality survives bodily death, James could write two very different condolence letters. Here we will try to make the case for both of them. James's Windrosed Mandala Although free-will-champion James publicly derided what he called the "iron block universe," 6 the mystic-minded James contributed much to its feasible consideration. A year before he suggested the veridicality of an eternalistic universe, he proposed that our individual selves might "form the margin of some more really central self in things," like a "windrose in a compass." 7 And for many years before that he had well prepared the way for this marginalization: homogenizing consciousness and matter, 8 and decommissioning the autonomous self's commandeering of the "stream of consciousness" into a mere "passing thought" as "thinker." 9 His last preparatory step toward eternalism was to convert the passing thought stream's flow into pulses of "time drops." 10 While the early kinematic experiments in James's day were too choppy to generate a seamless flow of reality from individual still moments, all of the seamless reality we witness on our ubiquitous screens today are generated from just such still whole moments that James came to advocate. When these time drops are combined with his mystical suggestion of an "already there" consciousness waiting "as if in a field that stood there always to be known," 11 the "confluently active" radii of his windrose Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1119-1140 Bricklin, J. What Dies? Eternalism and the Afterlife in William James ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1121 become confluently activated radial endpoints. The one consciousness, already there being uncovered, is divided functionally into the knowing and the known, with the knowing (centerpoint) eternally activating the known (circumference). James, unaware of the relativity revolution underway, believed that his mystical suggestion would "not be understood by this generation or the next." 12 But he might have looked to the distant past, as revived by a contemporary he knew well: Nietzsche. For James's windrosed mandala suggests that beyond the illusion of events happening, another layer of illusion is in play: linear time. This illusion was not pervasive in the ancient world. The hugely influential Pythagoras, for one, believed, like Greek professor Nietzsche, in eternal recurrence. But linearity was insisted upon in the Judeo-Christian worldview, most emphatically by St. Augustine. Eternalism and eternal recurrence are both strange worlds indeed, but surely no stranger than Augustine's Bible. Moreover, James's wind-rosed mandala, like Parmenides' "perfectly rounded sphere ... from a center equally matched everywhere," 13 provides a more feasible divinity than the angry Jehovah. A sense of such divinity was suggested by James's mystical coach, the ether-prophet, Benjamin Paul Blood-who emphasized to James how the universe might well exist as a pre-existing block 14 -and whose central teaching James identified with eternal recurrencist Nietzsche's amor fati. 15 "Never," Blood declared, "shall we know the meaning nor the end of this eternal life; but what though we may not comprehend the universe- what boots the circumference, when each of us is the centre, and the apple of God's eye." 16 McTaggart's Three Series Eternalists-divinely inspired or otherwise-could easily bail on the question of an afterlife, dismissing the very premise that death is real and signing off with one of many millennial bromides, such as the Bhagavad Gita's "Of the impermanent, one finds no being. One finds no non-being of the permanent. Indeed, the certainty of both these has been perceived by seers of the truth." 17 But belief in a block universe (whether or not played out in eternal recurrence) does not preclude beliefs about the aftermath of what appears as death. For although the aftermath of what appears as death is, in a block universe, no less an event that happens – since "all the ensemble of events constituting space-time exist prior to our knowledge of them" 18 – there are significant, inferable details about those appearances. From the vantage point of Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1119-1140 Bricklin, J. What Dies? Eternalism and the Afterlife in William James ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1122 eternalism, McTaggart's temporal A series cannot be an ultimately legitimate context for afterlife evidence (any more than it is one for during-life evidence); but afterlife evidence does fit into McTaggart's B series of before/after, as well as his C series of a permanently fixed relation of terms, like the alphabet. James's and his colleague's evidence of an afterlife are in no way inconsistent with a fixed sequence of pre-existing events. Much of what follows plays out in what James called "consciousness beyond the margin," 19 "a sphere of life larger and more powerful than usual consciousness" and whose "farther margin ... being unknown ... can be treated as an Absolute mind." 20 Almost all of it would crack what James called "the levee [of] scientific opinion" that prevents "the overflow of the Mississippi of the supernatural into the fields of orthodox culture." 21 While Einstein's eternalism (in 1905, codified into space-time by Minkowski in 1908) is almost C-series contemporaneous with James's eternalism in 1910, Einstein's is based on physics, James's on mysticism: two paths to the same strange world. Parmenides' eternalism would seem to offer a third path – logic – strongly defended by his disciple Zeno. But a second path for Parmenides, more in line with James's, has recently been uncovered, and it provides the ideal starting point for any consideration of death and the afterlife, eternalist or otherwise, for it posits a boundary of consciousness that cannot be crossed, before or after apparent death. Parmenides' Gap Here's what we can't imagine happening when we die: nothingness. We can go to black-in fact we do go to black, every night, and (if not dreaming) come out of black every morning. Black, though, is far from nothingness, and black-outs are merely black-ins in which the last moment of blackness is recalled before "coming to." The unimaginableness of absolute nothingness, its unknowableness, its unpointable-to-ness-indeed, its actual non-existence-was first posited in the West by Parmenides, the man whom Plato called Father, and the only philosopher he referred to as deep (bathos). Though Parmenides' insight has most persistently been understood as proto-logic, we now know, through the pioneering research of Greek scholar and self-proclaimed mystic Peter Kingsley, a more compelling origin: Parmenides was what the Greeks called a pholarchos (a cave leader), who supervised deep meditative states, or incubations, in total darkness. 22 Prior to Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1119-1140 Bricklin, J. What Dies? Eternalism and the Afterlife in William James ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1123 Kingsley, other scholars had drawn attention to Parmenides's affinity with Vedantic and yogic philosophy, 23 but it is the revelation of Parmenides as a pholarchos that compels us to consider his injunction against absolute nothingness as an altered-state insight, rather than a mere philosophical ban on what cannot be imagined or pointed to. 24 For as an adept of such incubation, Parmenides might well have become acquainted with the ancient yogic insight that what appears to be an absence of all consciousness in deep, dreamless sleep, is only the absence of self in an ongoing "undifferentiated darkness" with "some form of awareness," if only awareness-in-itself. 25 Avoidance of Father's injunction against imagining a total annihilation of consciousness practically defines us, of course, as fearful, mortal beings. But precisely because absolute oblivion is exactly the unsayable, unimaginable, unthinkable "delusive array of words" 26 that Parmenides asserts it to be, our avoidance requires an alliance with what is thinkable and pointable. Enter the corpse. There is no mystery, or even controversy, about the death of the body; it is stark and conclusive: that part of our "I" becomes an inanimate object, akin to a doornail, with no apparent consciousness, let alone subjectivity. This inanimate object is essential to our concept of death, since it is the only percept of it we have. What we imagine as death-fearful death-is actually a specious amalgam: an unimaginable percept/concept of nothingness mixed with an all too vividly imaginable percept/concept of a corpse. One can imagine consciousness dimming down toward annihilation, but never actually arriving. As the philosopher whom James called a goldmine of insight, Shadworth Hodgson, put it: "The lowest form of being, beyond which it would be meaningless, is perceivability." 27 And the only route from fully-embodied conscious life to an empty-consciousnessed dead corpse is through a non-existent space of non-being: what I have called "Parmenides' Gap." 28 James's White Crow That a corpse is a red herring, analogous to the dead skin sloughed off by a still live snake, rather than a final repository of the snake, came into startling focus for me in my third decade of researching and writing about William James. What took me so long to come around to that conviction was James's own dilatoriness, his "undecided verdict ... after so many years" Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1119-1140 Bricklin, J. What Dies? Eternalism and the Afterlife in William James ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1124 of earnest inquiry into the possibility of an afterlife. 29 James believed that the highly specific messages conveyed by the trance medium Leonora Piper, through both speech and automatic writing, purportedly from beings whose personalized consciousness had apparently survived death, were "the most baffling thing I know." 30 Yet his final assessment of the evidence from Piper fell short of the spiritist conclusion of full personality survival. I say "fell short," but I could easily say "leapt long." For James's belief that the supernormal knowledge transmitted from an apparent afterlife entity might, instead, be issuing from a "continuum of cosmic consciousness" in a "panpsychic ... universe" against which all apparent "individualit[ies]" (embodied or otherwise) are but "accidental fences," radically reconfigures birth, death, and all in-between. 31 And it was this same long leap that I took with him in my book, weaving the supernormal knowledge James went on record as favoring with his radical empirical ontology. But after taking a closer look at the detailed reports of Piper, James's "white crow," 32 I have come to accept a shorter, intermediate, step as well: the formidable illusion of our individuated, skin-encased egos forging a linear path in an indifferent object-universe is followed by an encore reappearance in a subtler facsimile form. The reason I missed the most startling details of Piper's mediumship is that James himself left them out of his extensive essay on Piper, "Report on Mrs. Piper's Hodgson-Control." Before looking at that excluded evidence from what James called an unprecedented "conjunction of a good medium with a thorough investigator," and why he did not include it in his extensive report, let us look at how it came to be. 33 Richard Hodgson was a leading skeptical investigator and psychical debunker of his day, whose investigation of London's professional mediums had led him to conclude that "nearly all" were "a gang of vulgar tricksters." 34 On the strength of his record and determination to expose counterfeit psychical claims, he was hired by the Society for Psychical Research to investigate the Boston medium Leonora Piper, with whom James had had a couple of startling sessions. Two examples: Inquiring about his Aunt Kate, James was first told "doing poorly" then "she has arrived." James returned home an hour later to a telegram announcing her death. 35 Piper also described James's recent killing, with ether, of a grey-and-white cat, describing how it had "spun round and round" before dying. 36 For the next 18 years until his sudden death in 1905, Hodgson searched for any evidence to contradict what he, like most people, assumed: "Mrs. Piper was Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1119-1140 Bricklin, J. What Dies? Eternalism and the Afterlife in William James ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1125 fraudulent and obtained her information previously by ordinary means, such as inquiries by confederates, etc." 37 Hodgson supervised her sittings 3 days a week, imposing scrupulous protocols (such as forbidding umbrellas to be placed in the foyer where a confederate's note might be conveyed to Piper by Piper's maid) and pursued a no-stone-unturned approach, such as hiring private detectives to follow her in her off hours. But he never detected the slightest trace of fraud. Nor did anyone else. Even the Society for Psychical Research's chief, thorn-in-theirside, skeptic and critic, Frank Podmore - noting "how numerous and precise" Piper's trance statements were, "taken as a whole," and how "the possibility of leakage" to her "through normal channels in many cases was so effectually excluded"- declared "it is impossible to doubt that we have here supernormal agency of some kind." 38 Not that attempts at credible doubt have not been made, challenging those, like James, who believed "absolutely" that "the hypothesis of fraud cannot be seriously entertained." 39 James, himself, after his few initial, remarkable sessions with Piper, stepped away from direct exploration, content to learn second-hand from Hodgson's investigation. But Hodgson's death and subsequent re-emergence as Piper's "spirit Control" led James to directly re-engage what he called this "queer chapter in human nature." 40 Published in the penultimate year of his life (almost simultaneously with his "Confidences of a Psychical Researcher") James's 2-part "Report on Mrs. Piper's Hodgson-Control" appeared to be his ultimate word on the Piper phenomenon. But as it turns out Hodgson was, in fact, a highly problematic control to evaluate because his 18 years with Mrs. Piper made it almost impossible to distinguish information coming out of the entranced Piper via the new (deceased) Hodgson from information that had gone into her from the old (alive) Hodgson. As James put it, the Hodgson control was "vastly more leaky and susceptible of naturalistic explanation than is any body of Piper-material recoded before." 41 Moreover, the body of Piper material James found most convincing, those of George Pellew (a/k/a Pelham)-the material that most convinced Hodgson and other prominent researchers of the survival of the human personality-James left out of his report. He omitted these most compelling details, he said, because he had "no space for twice-told tales" and he assumed that the reader was "acquainted, to some degree at any rate, with previously extensive printed accounts of Mrs. Piper's mediumship," principle amongst which were Hodgson's reports Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1119-1140 Bricklin, J. What Dies? Eternalism and the Afterlife in William James ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1126 in 2 separate volumes of the Society for Psychical Research Proceedings. 42 My own suspicion is that James was wary and weary of his role as a "genuinely scientific inquirer" of the supernormal (James never used the word paranormal) pitted against the "ignoramus 'scientist'" who "pressed with all the weight of their authority against the door which certain 'psychical researchers' are threatening to open wide enough to admit a hitherto discredited class of facts." 43 One of the most renowned and respected scientists of his day, James was all too aware that mediums were considered "scientific outlaws, and their defendants ... quasi-insane." 44 He certainly had ample opportunity to respond to debunkers, such as Columbia Professor James Cattell, who publicly castigated James for even considering Piper worthy of his attention. James's plea to Cattell for fair play resonates strongly today: Any hearing for such phenomena is so hard to get from scientific readers that one who believes them worthy of careful study is in duty bound to resent such contemptuous public notice of them in high quarters as would still further encourage the fashion of their neglect. 45 But to the degree that James himself (and later Piper researcher, physicist Sir Oliver Lodge, in his autobiography) left out the most striking details of the Piper phenomena-referring their readers to the Proceedings of the Society of Psychical Research-they inadvertently encouraged neglect of a body of material that marked, in James's assessment, "an epoch in our knowledge of trance-states." 46 While this epoch-making knowledge, however often "intolerably tedious and incoherent reading," 47 has languished mostly unread in its long form (Proceedings of the Society of Psychical Research Volumes 6, 8, 13, 15 & 16), it is now available free online. And two recent books-Deborah Blum's Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of the Afterlife and Michael Tymn's Resurrecting Leonora Piper: How Science Discovered The Afterlife-offer enough excerpts and response to skeptics to affirm James's belief that there were "unmistakable indicators" of "supernormal knowledge ... as if from beyond." 48 Consider, for example, the following transcription of a sitting with the parents of a five year old girl who had died a few weeks earlier, recorded in Hodgson's "Observations of Certain Phenomena of Trance," in Volume 13 of the Proceedings, and edited here by Blum (with Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1119-1140 Bricklin, J. What Dies? Eternalism and the Afterlife in William James ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1127 Hodgson's original bracketing). The parents did not identify themselves or mention their recent tragedy, but brought with them 2 items their daughter had played with: a silver medal and a string of buttons. "Where is Papa? Want Papa. [The father takes from the table a silver medal and hands it to Mrs. Piper] I want this-want to bite it. [She used to do this.] ... I want to call Dodo [her name for her brother George]. Tell Dodo I am happy. [Puts hands to throat] No sore throat any more. [She had pain and distress of the throat and tongue] ... Papa, want to go wide [ride] horsey [She pleaded this throughout her illness.] Every day I go to see horsey. I like that horsey ... Eleanor. I want Eleanor. [Her little sister. She called her much during her last illness.] I want my buttons. Where is Dinah? I want Dinah. [Dinah was an old rag doll, not with us]. I want Bagie [her name for her sister Margaret]. I want to go to Bagie ... I want Bagie..." 49 Of similarly startling sessions from the Hodgson reports, the most compelling stem from George Pellew (a/k/a Pelham and, in "spirit mode," G.P.), a 32-year old philosophy student and acquaintance of Hodgson, who died from falling off a horse, emerging 5 weeks later via Piper. Two years before he died, Pellew had had a friendly debate about the afterlife with Hodgson, with Pellew denying the possibility of consciousness surviving the death of the brain. According to Hodgson, Pellew ended the debate by "pledging" that although he found an afterlife "incredible" he would "do all that he could to establish it if he died before me and found that there was a future life after all." 50 James, for one, felt he may well have kept his pledge, since he found the G.P. evidence to be the most compelling of all the Piper evidence. 51 Evidence such as the following: Of 150 sittings with different visitors that Hodgson supervised with Pellew, only 30 were his friends. But although no clue was given to differentiate friends from strangers, G.P. had no problem immediately identifying all his friends. There was only one exception: a girl he had known when she was 10 and was now 18. Once her identity was revealed, though, G.P immediately teased her about her violin playing, just as he had done when he knew her. 52 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1119-1140 Bricklin, J. What Dies? Eternalism and the Afterlife in William James ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1128 One of the friends brought 3 pictures for G.P. to identify. He correctly identified the first as his friend's (the sitter's) summer home and the second (a rural setting) as a place where he had stayed, correctly describing a small brick henhouse that was not in the picture. He could not identify the third picture. He had, in fact, never seen it. 53 As there are hundreds of equally compelling such sessions, I can only urge the reader to either access directly the aforementioned free, online Proceedings of the Psychical Society, or read Braude's, Gauld's, Tymn's or Blum's book, rather than succumb to contemporary debunkers fitting James's description of "critics who, refusing to come to any close quarters with the facts, survey them at long range and summarily dispose of them at a convenient distance by the abstract name of fraud." 54 My own perusal of this voluminous evidence has led me to believe that consciousness does indeed survive bodily death, and can exist without the material body, however much it requires someone else's material body to manifest to materially embodied beings. While James and other Piper researchers (including Eleanor Sidgwick and E.R. Dodds) believed Piper's supernormal clairvoyance might be evidence more of telepathic (a word coined by Myers) access to a field of consciousness, rather than that her physical body has been supplanted by their astral body, I agree with Hodgson that consciousness may well assume (that is, appear to dwell in the form of) the "astral facsimile of a material body," (as G.P. describes it). 55 In his debate with the embodied Pellew, Hodgson proposed that "the gross material body might be tenanted by a more subtle organic body composed of the luminiferous ether." 56 One striking corroboration of such is an encounter with a spirit entity called Newell, communicating through Piper in eleven sessions with his friend, an artist, Rogers Rich. During one of the sessions Rich observed Mrs. Piper making an odd movement with her hand that appeared to be "twirling an imaginary moustache" which Rich knew Newell to have frequently done when he was alive. 57 Another was a description by one spirit entity of another spirit entity, a woman identified only as "Q" whom Hodgson had known before she died. The spirit entity Q was described as having a brown right eye with a spot of light blue in the iris. Hodgson confirmed the blemish (though he had remembered it as gray). Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1119-1140 Bricklin, J. What Dies? Eternalism and the Afterlife in William James ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1129 But, as I said, this is just my short leap of faith, based on an unprecedented convergence of some of the finest scientifically trained minds of their day 58 investigating an honest, straightforward woman with apparent access to supernormal knowledge. My longer leap is one with James's late-life eternalistic mystical suggestion of consciousness already there waiting to be uncovered. Whatever there may be of an afterlife, including reincarnation, it is still the eternal playing out of fixed before-after moments (McTaggart's C series), "as if in a field that always stood there always to be known." Precognition and Retrocognition Whether or not Parmenides did, in fact, derive this same eternalistic perspective-"Nor was it ever nor will it be, since now it is, altogether, one, continuous"-from altered tranceinduced states, James certainly did: his mystical suggestion is immediately preceded by the precognitive experience of an ether-induced correspondent of his, Frederick Hall. 59 James supported other credible precognitive experiences as well, such as a farmer's wife who saw highly specific details of her son's death being mourned, by people she had never known, days before she arrived on the exact scene. 60 But precognition is only half the corroboration of eternalism. The other half is retrocognition, as in Piper's capacity to revisit exactly the precise spinning movements of James's dying cat. According to the eminent classicist, E.R. Dodds, an expert on ancient oracles, who saw Piper as an authentic trance medium, 61 divination (mantikē) referred to both precognition and retrocognition, the "typical diviner" being Homer's Kalchas, "who knew things past, present, and to come." 62 Indeed, says Dodds, the most celebrated seers would sometimes "exhibit supernormal knowledge of past events as evidence that their vision of the future will prove true." 63 Far less threatening to James's most cherished belief in free will, a belief scorned by Blood, 64 evidence for retrocognition was found by James in a thoroughly investigated incident of it from the only other person than Piper for whom he claimed a "supernormal faculty of seership," a New Hampshire woman, Mrs. Titus. In a trance state, Titus accessed a missing young woman's previous day's fall from an icy bridge miles away, locating the exact spot beneath the surface of the murky lake and the exact position of her body: "head down, only one foot with a new rubber showing and lying in a deep hole." 65 Titus even shuttered with cold in Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1119-1140 Bricklin, J. What Dies? Eternalism and the Afterlife in William James ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1130 her trance as she accessed this scene. (Recall how Piper, too, so "inhabited the scene" of James's recent etherization of a cat, describing how it spun around.) The professional diver, who had reluctantly returned to the location he had already searched at the urging of the victim's employer who had hired him, later told investigators that he was not afraid of the body when he found it 20 feet below the dark surface of the lake, but of the "woman on the bridge" pointing to it. "How can any woman come from miles away and tell me where I would find this body?" 66 Just how far away "Mrs. Titus herself had travelled to retrieve that information accounts for the fear exchange - encountering clairvoyance over encountering a corpse. Together, precognition and retrocognition provide the supernormal evidence for block universe eternalism. And it is worth emphasizing that the first physicist to reintroduce it into the modern age was not Einstein, but Sir Oliver Lodge. Lodge, one of the founders of wireless technology, was also one of the principle investigators of Leanora Piper, whose clairvoyance he found to be genuine. 67 The quotation with which we began was published the year Einstein was given his first geometry book. What dies? Eternalism, however, is anathema to most people, and especially James, the zestquesting champion of free will, who waited until the very end of his life to propose it as "veridical revelation." But for those for whom the persistent thought (however ill-formed) of total annihilation is the deepest curse of all, and the inevitable loss of both cherished attributes and beloved companions the ongoing tragedy of life-it offers the compensation that each moment may well be eternal, existing like frames in a completed film of fixed sequences, endlessly revivable. Endlessly revivable for whom? As early as the Principles of Psychology, James "confessed" that whenever he became "metaphysical" he found "the notion" of some sort of anima mundi thinking in all of us to be a more promising hypothesis, in spite of all its difficulties, than that of a lot of absolutely individual souls." 68 In that same classic early work he defined the thinker as "the passing Thought." 69 In the eternalistic worldview of his mystical suggestion, all passing thoughts, including the passing-thought-that-feels-itself-to-be the thinker, Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1119-1140 Bricklin, J. What Dies? Eternalism and the Afterlife in William James ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1131 is an endless movement of the one knower consciousness, one anima mundi, through myriad knowns-knowns laying as if in a field, waiting to be uncovered. Of course, consciousness cannot exist as an eternalistic field of pre-existing known moments unless the apparently non-conscious objects that contribute to that known-to what we are mostly conscious of-participate as well. Eternalism requires the non-heterogeneity of matter and consciousness. Hodgson once published an essay in the journal Mind in which he wrote that the fundamental distinction in the world is between the me and the not-me. 70 In eternalism the distinction between the me and not-me has a relative status only-like different characters, landscapes, and objects in a single dream. Both Parmenides and James opened the door to this unification, and its relevance to the fear of death cannot be overstated. For even those who believe we become a sort of astral spirit may well mourn the loss of an embodied, material substance. One thinks of the Greek afterlife below, in Hades, with their ghost-like inhabitants craving a drop of blood from the physical world above, according to Homer. But if the physical external world of matter is no less an aspect of consciousness than thought-if, in other words, consciousness creates matter, and not the other way around-the ultimate rhetorical question death would pose is not Stephen Levine's "Who dies?" but "What dies?" "...[T]he same thing is there for thinking and being," the famous "fragment 3" of Parmenides, has various translations and interpretations, 71 but it is certainly fair game to align it with this tenet from James's radical empiricism: "Things and thoughts are not at all fundamentally heterogeneous; they are made of one and the same stuff, stuff which cannot be defined as such but only experienced; and which one can call, if one wishes, the stuff of experience in general." 72 So what dies? For most of his life as a psychical researcher, James held out for the existence of a relationship between cosmic consciousness and "subtler forms of matter." 73 But his late life mystical suggestion brought duality of even this subtlest matter into question, suggesting consciousness alone is the ultimate substrate of both matter and energy. As early as the Principles, James wrote that "'Matter,'" as "something behind physical phenomena," is just "a "postulate" of thought." 74 This postulate would apply to the brain (however many today believe Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1119-1140 Bricklin, J. What Dies? Eternalism and the Afterlife in William James ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1132 consciousness is a mere "biological feature of" 75 ), no less than the wave of light photons that becomes a particle when observed (as in the double-slit experiment). So what dies? Take any given phenomenon of so-called matter, such as a wooden desk. What matter, what substance is postulated as behind it? A wooden desk, as James's former student Dickinson Miller pointed out, can be seen as either a "light brown total or unit," a "wilderness of woody fiber," or "a host of ordered molecules or atoms." 76 A desk, like a body-live or otherwise- appears to have substance-whether encountered awake or in a dream-but "all that the word substance means," says James, "is the fact that experiences do seem to belong together." 77 No apparent substance, however, belongs together with all its phenomenal aspects. For as Miller says of those three different phenomenal aspects of a desk: considered together they create a "monstrous medley." 78 The body-its substance, its matter-decomposes, rots, and disappears, even its bones eventually. But how much substantive reality did it ever have? The deeper we try to penetrate behind the phenomena of matter, as with our ever-more-powerful electromagnetic microscopes, we find it, as Bohm says, "turning more and more into empty space with an evermore tenuous structure." A "tendency" he says "carried further by quantified theory, which treats particles as quantisized states of a field that extends over the whole of space." 79 So what dies? In his essay "Human Immortality," James posited that the brain may well act more like a transmitter of consciousness, like a radio, than a generator. And a lifetime of psychical research led him to corroborate "extra-marginal" consciousness, "outside of the primary consciousness altogether," with its body-centered "set of memories, thoughts and feelings." 80 The physical brain is more the radio than the orchestra. So what dies? The Self The life's work of James's afterlife research colleague, Frederic Myers, was given a highly specific title, Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death, because a self essentially continuous with our embodied self is what we want to survive. But even an embodied underlying self, suggested James, as early as his Principles, is no less a postulate of thought than matter. 81 Descartes got it wrong. "I think therefore I am" is not the ultimate Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1119-1140 Bricklin, J. What Dies? Eternalism and the Afterlife in William James ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1133 foundation of certainty. "I" is a wavering, ill-defined term. By the time "I" get to "I am" it has turned into "I thought." James's dictum, "[T]he passing thought is itself the thinker," speaks directly to the cogito's specious claim as a foundation of ultimate certainty. The ultimate foundation of certainty precedes the "I"-indeed, is what the "I" arises out of: sciousness, or consciousness without consciousness of self. 82 The irreducible foundation of certainty is not an "I" but merely a knowing and a known. Frequently, as James states in the Principles, the known includes the sense "I," but does not need to: "I may have either acquaintance-with, or knowledge-about, an object O without thinking about myself at all," says James: It suffices for this that I think O, and that it exist. If, in addition to thinking O, I also think that I exist and that I know O, well and good; I then know one more thing, a fact about O, of which I previously was unmindful. That, however, does not prevent me from having already known O a good deal. O per se, or O plus P, are as good objects of knowledge as O plus me is. 83 So, too, the knowing is most frequently, as with Descartes, assumed to be that of a knower "I." But, again, that is an assumption not a certainty. In the closing passages of his revised version of the Principles, James declared that "who the knower really is," "correlative to all this known" may well be "wide open," not ultimately issuing from a self's consciousness, but from wide open "sciousness." 84 Through both his radical introspections and his psychical research, James kept widening that opening, culminating in the widest opening possible, his end-of-life mystical suggestion. Of course if "consciousness is already there ... as if in a field that always stood there to be known," then the known and the knower must be homogenized, beyond the simple nonheterogeneity of "things and thoughts" of his radical empiricism. 85 Either things must become thoughts (a/k/a the hardest problem), or thoughts become things. But thoughts, as it turns out, do become things-apparent things-to all who dream, as many do, in highly specific detail. As James says: "If I dream of a golden mountain, it no doubt does not exist outside of the dream, but in the dream the mountain is of a perfectly physical nature or essence, it is as Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1119-1140 Bricklin, J. What Dies? Eternalism and the Afterlife in William James ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1134 physical that it appears to me." 86 In an eternalistic world everything physical is only, ultimately, "as physical." So what dies? Curious Autonomy Recall the fear of the diver. Repeatedly in the literature of clairvoyant incidents, fear, even horror, is a response to an eternalistic clairvoyant revelation. Such fear is appropriate, since eternalism issues a mortal blow to the sense of self-agency, replacing what James called our "show" of "curious autonomy, as if we were small active centers on our own account" with what we have always known at least "in one sense" we are: "passive portions of the universe." 87 Yet may we not affirm, along with Hodgson, Myers, Lodge, and other investigators of the Piper phenomenon that the show of curious autonomy might well survive? There will be gaps in self-identification for sure-just as there are every night; there may be a painful separation from the body we have been identified with ("like tearing limb from limb" as the aforementioned spirit Newell put it, adding "but once free how happy one is"; 88 but our curious autonomy curiously seems to continue, not only as astral facsimiles of our embodied selves, but as reembodied incarnations of new "centers of autonomy." Human personality does appear to survive. The Piper transcriptions, combined with Ian Stevenson's compelling research on reincarnation, frees us from James's fear of a vacuous "white-robed harp-playing heaven," 89 or of a further dispersal into a depersonalized cosmic consciousness, however joyous our personal appreciation of such cosmic consciousness may be, as in G.P.'s "Love is spirit; love is everything; where love is not, there nothing is," 90 or the more down-to-earth, ether-induced altered-state experience that prompted James to first speculate on the prime reality of "sciousness": During the syncope there is absolute psychic annihilation, the absence of all consciousness; then at the beginning of coming to, one has at a certain moment a vague, limitless, infinite feeling-a sense of existence in general without the least trace of distinction between the me and the not-me. 91 James himself, described coming out of a chloroform anesthesia as "to wake to a sense of my own existence as something additional to what had previously been there." 92 And it has been Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1119-1140 Bricklin, J. What Dies? Eternalism and the Afterlife in William James ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1135 well imagined that one dies to some sort of limitless, infinite experience. But like the woman in Arthur Deikman's famed meditation-on-a-blue-vase experiments, in which a "diffuse blue occupied the entire visual field" and participants experienced different degrees of "merging with the vase," I might well, as she did, resist the notion of being "merged completely with that diffuseness ... bringing myself back in some way from it." 93 (Though it is more difficult to imagine resisting what one of Piper's spirits described as an early, post-death encounter with an inconceivable, unimaginable white light, "the most brilliant and yet the softest moonlight you ever saw.") 94 I am all for an ongoing nature "born for the conflict" as James says, 95 or, at least, the ongoing illusion of conflict. Perpetual conflict, with a throughline of subtle aspects-subtler than any physical instruments can detect-a throughline of each body-mind that "reassociates with phenomenal conditions of bodily existence upon rebirth," as Da Free John says 96 - individual striving forever with no end in sight and no beginning, a defining characteristic of a perfect circle. It makes no difference that in such a fixed monism of consciousness the conflict is not ultimately real. Has there ever been any eternalist, from Parmenides to Einstein, who fully believed in such a pre-ordered universe? Indeed, full belief in such a pre-ordered universe absent any veridical, individual initiative might well invoke despair, before deeper penetration into the belief eliminates the despairer as an independent agent making things happen and renders her or him at best a mere arriver in each moment. But can penetration into the belief ever be total? Did Einstein's eternalism truly console him? Does it, in our own time, console block universalists Julian Barbour or Vesselin Petkev? Has there ever been anyone who so completely inhabited a pre-ordered universe that they would, like the conflict-free (a/k/a enlightened) Buddha, arrive fully present in each moment, "having ... abandoned favoring and opposing?" 97 Let us assume, then, that even in the eternally recurring fixed relations of a windrosed mandala, "from a centerpoint equally matched everywhere," there is always something to apparently do, something to apparently strive for, whether physically embodied or not. Embodied or "astral," each radii is precisely and eternally what it is, and never more than what it is, so that there is no thickening or layering in each uncovering moment, just as there is none in a Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1119-1140 Bricklin, J. What Dies? Eternalism and the Afterlife in William James ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1136 looped film's endless journey through a projector, or the full moon's periodic beam upon a lake. Although from the perspective of commonsense duality "I" might be increasingly enriched by each glimpsed moonglow or by each repeated viewing of a film, a wind-rosed mandala of consciousness being eternally uncovered has no such cumulating vantage point. Nor is any moment of consciousness "definitely closed off unto itself" 98 -a point James emphasized frequently-however much the illusion of such enclosed consciousness is forcefully suggested by the apparent individuation of our apparently physical bodies. James, the eternalistic mystic, was not as ready as Einstein, the eternalistic physicist, to offer eternalist consolations for the apparent doom awaiting our bodies. But he had recourse to another consolation. "When that which is you passes out of the body, he wrote to his perpetually invalid sister, Alice, as she lay dying, I am sure there will be an explosion of liberated force and life til then eclipsed and kept down." 99 And although he knew his sister was not a fan Mrs. Piper, he did not withhold from her where his assurance for the survival of "that which is you" came from. However tentatively offered, and however tentatively-and, til the end of his life, sporadically- believed in by James himself 100 -such assurance may well be, even for eternalists, the best assurance we have: "...enlargements of the self in trance, etc., are bringing me to turn for light in the direction of all sorts of despised spiritualistic and unscientific ideas." 101 Bibliography Blood, Benjamin Paul (1860). Optimism (Boston: Bela Marsh). Blood, Benjamin Paul (1920). Pluriverse (Boston: Marshall Jones). Blum, Deborah (2006). Ghost Hunters: William James and the Search for Scientific Proof of Life After Death (New York: Penguin). Bohm, David & Hiley, Basil (1993). The Undivided Universe (London: Routledge). Braude, Stephen E. (2003). Immortal Remains: The Evidence for Life After Death (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield). Bricklin, Jonathan (2006). "Switched-Off Consciousness: Clarifying What it Cannot Mean." Journal of Consciousness Studies 13 (4). 16-17. Bricklin, Jonathan (2007). Sciousness (Guilford, CT: Eirini Press). Bricklin, Jonathan (2015). The Illusion of Will, Self, and Time: William James's Reluctant Guide to Enlightenment (Albany: SUNY Press). Burkhardt, Frederick, ed. (1981). The Works of William James: The Principles of Psychology, Vol. III (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). Deikman, Arthur (1963). "Experimental Meditation," Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 136, 339-43. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1119-1140 Bricklin, J. What Dies? Eternalism and the Afterlife in William James ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1137 Dodds, E. R. (1934). "Why I Do Not Believe in Survivalism." Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. 13, 147-172. Dodds, E. R. (1973). The Ancient Concept of Progress and Other Essays on Greek Literature and Belief (New York: Oxford University Press). Gardner, Martin (2004). Are Universes Thicker Than Blackberries? Discourses on Gödel, Magic Hexagrams, Little Red Riding Hood, and Other Mathematical and Pseudoscientific Topics (New York: W. W. Norton). Gauld, Alan (1968). The Founders of Psychical Research (London: Routledge). Gupta, Bina (1998). The Disinterested Witness: A Fragment of Advaita Vedanta Phenomenology (Illinois: Northwestern University Press). Hodgson, Richard (1885). "The Consciousness of External Reality," Mind, 10 (39), 321-346. Hodgson, Richard (1898). "A Record of Observations of Certain Phenomena of Trance," in The Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, vol. 13 (London: Kegan Paul). Hodgson, Shadworth (1898). The Metaphysic of Experience, vol. I (London: Longmans, Green). James, William (1890). The Principles of Psychology, vols. I-II (New York: Henry Holt). James, William (1892/1992). Psychology: Briefer Course, in William James: Writings: 18781899 (New York: Library of America). James, William (1897/1992). The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy, in William James: Writings: 1878-1899 (New York: Library of America). James, William (1898/1992). "Human Immortality," in William James: Writings: 1878-1899 (New York: Library of America). James, William (1902/1987). The Varieties of Religious Experience, in William James: Writings 1902-1910 (New York: Library of America). James, William (1905c/2005). "The Notion of Consciousness," translated by Jonathan Bricklin in Sciousness, pp. 89-111. James, William (1909b/1987). "The Confidences of a 'Psychical Researcher,'" in William James: Writings 1902-1910 (New York: Library of America). James, William (1910a/1987). "A Suggestion About Mysticism," in William James: Writings 1902-1910 (New York: Library of America). James, William (1910b/1987). "A Pluralistic Mystic," in William James: Writings 1902-1910 (New York: Library of America). James, William (1911/1987). Some Problems of Philosophy: A Beginning of an Introduction to Philosophy, in William James: Writings 1902-1910 (New York: Library of America). James, William (1912/2003). Essays in Radical Empiricism (Mineola, NY: Dover Publications). James, William (1986). The Works of William James: Essays in Psychical Research (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). James, William (1988b). The Works of William James: Manuscript Lectures (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press). John, Da Free (1983). Easy Death (Clearlake, California: The Dawn Horse Press). Kingsley, Peter (2003). Reality (Inverness: Golden Sufi Press). Lodge, Oliver (1891/1892). Report of the Sixty-First meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Held at Cardiff in August 1891 (London: Spottewodde and Co.). Lodge, Oliver (1931/2012). Past Years: An Autobiography (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press). Myers, F.W.H. (1903). Human Personality and its Survival of Bodily Death, vol. I (London: Longmans, Green). Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1119-1140 Bricklin, J. What Dies? Eternalism and the Afterlife in William James ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1138 Nanamoli, Bhikkhu, & Bodhi, Bhikku (1995). The Middle Length Discourses of the Buddha: A Translation of the Majjhima Nikaya (Teachings of the Buddha) (Somerville: Wisdom Publications). Palmer, John (2009). Parmenides and Pre-Socratic Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford U. Press). Podmore, Frank (1911). The New Spiritualism (New York: Henry Holt). Schlipp, Paul Arthur (1974). The Philosophy of Karl Popper (Lasalle, IL: Open Court). Schweig, Graham M. (2007). Bhagavad Gita (New York: Harper Collins). Searle, John (1992). The Rediscovery of Mind (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). Simon, Linda (1999). Genuine Reality: A Life of William James (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press). Skrupskelis, I. & E. Berkeley (eds.) (1999). The Correspondence of William James, vol. 7 (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia). Skrupskelis, I. & Berkeley, Elizabeth M., Editors (2001). The Correspondence of William James, vol. 9 (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia). Taylor, Eugene, & Wozniak, Robert H. (1996). Pure Experience: The Response to William James (Bristol, UK: Thoemmes). Tymn, Michael (2014). Resurrecting Leonora Piper: How Science Discovered the Afterlife (Guildford, UK: White Crow Books). Zohar, Danah (1983). Through the Time Barrier: A Study in Precognition and Modern Physics (London: Granada). Notes 1 Lodge, 1891, p. 554 2 Parmenides, fr. 8 3 Zohar, 1983, p. 118 4 Bricklin, 2015 5 James, 1910a, p. 1280 6 James, 1897, p. 570 7 James, 1909, p. 131 8 James, in Bricklin, 2007, p. 110 9 James, 1890a/I, p. 346 10 James, 1909, p. 104. For an extended discussion of such pulsing as a foundation of both Buddhist meditation and quantum physics, see Bricklin, 2015. 11 James, 1910a, p. 1274 12 James, 1910a, p. 1280 13 Parmenides, fragment 8, lines 43-44 14 See Bricklin, 2015, p. 224 15 James, 1910b, p. 1312 16 Blood, 1860, p. 130 17 Verse, 2.6, translated by Schweig, 2006, p. 40 18 de Broglie, quoted in Schlipp, 1974, p. 114 19 James, 1988b, p. 70 20 James in Skrupskelis, 2001, p. 501 21 James, 1986, p. 252 22 See Kingsley, 2003 23 See Bricklin, 2015, pp. 306-307 24 Parmenides, fr. 2 25 Gupta, 1998, p. 27. See discussion in Bricklin, 2015, p. 124 26 Blood, 1920, p. 153 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1119-1140 Bricklin, J. What Dies? Eternalism and the Afterlife in William James ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1139 27 Hodgson, S., 1898/I. p. 455 28 Bricklin, 2006, pp. 16-17 29 James, 1986, p. 494 30 James, 1896, p. 190 31 James, 1986, p. 374 32 James, 1986, p. 131 33 James, 1986, p. 188 34 Hodgson in Tymn, 2013, p. 18 35 James, 1986, p. 436 36 James, 1986, p. 131 37 Tymn, 2014, p. 18-19 38 Podmore, 1910, p. 222. 39 James, 1986, p. 188. The frequently excellent science writer, Martin Gardner, for one, offers what I believe can be best described as an under-researched, overly speculative essay: "How Mrs. Piper Bamboozled William James" (Gardner, 204, 252-262 ). And Gardner's essay was used by both the daily and Sunday New York Times' book reviewers in their review of Blum's book to torpedo anyone's advance toward Piper. Gardner, at his best, can hold his own with James when it comes to assessing valid empirical research. But that little essay-window-dressed as "a long exposé" by the Sunday Times reviewer-cannot survive an extended examination of the actual sessions, and the rigorous context in which they were conducted. (See, especially the books by Tymn, Braude, and Gauld, listed in the bibliography). There is also a deft point by point-by-point exposure of what James might have called Gardner's "humbug" (his terms for critics guided more by narrow preconception than honest exploration): Michael Prescott's "How Martin Gardner Bamboozled his Readers" http://michaelprescott.typepad.com/michael_prescotts_blog/2007/08/how-martin-gard.html . See also Greg Taylor's detailed response to Gardner: http://www.dailygrail.com/essays/2010/11/skeptical-skeptic 40 James, 1986, p. 372 41 James, 1986, p. 360 42 James, 1986, p. 254 43 James, 1986, p. 217 44 James, 1986, 185 45 James, 1986, p. 184 46 James, 1986, p. 188 47 James, 1986, p. 188 48 1986, p. 255 49 Blum, 206, p. 218 50 Hodgson, R., 1896, p. 364 51 James, 1986, p. 496 52 Blum, p. 217, and Gauld, p. 259 53 ibid. 54 James, 1986, p. 191 55 Hodgson, R., 1896, p. 301 56 Hodgson, R., 1896, p. 364 57 Tymn, 2013, p. 91 58 In addition to James and Lodge, Nobel physiologist Charles Richet, chemist Sir William Crookes. 59 James, 1910b, 1279-1280 60 Myers, 1903, pp. 402-405. For how precisely detailed accurate precognitive visions can be contrasted with apparent precognitive visions that do not "realize" see Bricklin, 2015, pp. 99-100. 61 Dodds, 1934 62 Dodds, 1973. P. 160 63 Dodds, 1973, p. 160 64 Blood, 1920, pp. 82-203 65 James, 1986, p. 239 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1119-1140 Bricklin, J. What Dies? Eternalism and the Afterlife in William James ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1140 66 James, 1986, p. 239 67 Lodge, 1931, p. 212 68 James, 1890/I, p. 346 69 James, 1890/I, p. 346 70 Hodgson, R. (1885) 71 See Palmer, 2009, 118-122 72 James, 1905, p. 110 73 James, 1986, p. 374 74 James, 1890/I, p. 304 75 Searle, 1992, p. 90 76 Miller, in Taylor, 1996, p. 185 77 James, 1911, p. 1045 78 Miller, in Taylor, 1996, p. 185 79 Bohm & Hiley, 1993, p. 322 80 James, 1902, p. 218 81 James, 1890/I, p. 185 82 James, 1890/I, p.304 83 Ibid., p. 274 84 James, 1892, p. 433 85 James, in Bricklin, 2007, p. 110 86 James, in Bricklin, 2007, pp. 94-95 87 James, 1897, p. 476, emphasis added 88 Tymn, 2013, p. 24 89 James, 1897, p. 583 90 Tymn, 2013, p. 93 91 James, 1890/I, p. 291 92 ibid. 93 Deikman, 1963, p. 337 94 Tymn, 2013, p. 131 95 James, 1902, p. 338 96 John, 1983, p. 185 97 Mahatanhasankhaya, Sutta 38, in Nanamoli & Bodhi, 1995, p. 360 98 James, 1890/I, p. 350 99 James, in Skrupskelis, 1999, p. 178 100 The year before he died, James summarized his lifelong struggle with spiritism in his "Report on Mrs. Piper's Hodgson-Control": "I myself can perfectly well imagine spirit-agency, and I find my mind vacillating about it curiously" (James, 1986, p. 284). 101 James, in Skrupskelis, 1999, p. 178 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1141-1153 Cook, R. Theories of Consciousness and Death: Does Consciousness End, Continue, Awaken, or Transform When the Body Dies? ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1141 Explorations Theories of Consciousness and Death Does Consciousness End, Continue, Awaken, or Transform When the Body Dies? Roger Cook * Abstract In this paper the organic process of death is envisaged as giving rise to a transformative experience, one that the human brain may have evolved in response to being confronted with its termination. The out-of-body experiences (OBEs) of patients undergoing surgery are examined, and considered to have a physiological basis rather than a spiritual one. The neardeath experience (NDE) is then interpreted as a return to the present of the moment of birth. It is suggested that nothing leaves the body at death, but that the individual has a euphoric experience that coincides with cessation of awareness of time. The NDE of a noted atheistic philosopher is then considered. By its nature the process of death precludes research by conventional neuroscientific methods that would be both invasive and impractical. The paper concludes with corroborative evidence of a personal nature. WHAT happens when we die? The phenomenon known as the near-death experience (NDE) is explored in this paper in the hope that it may provide an insight into the possible transformation of the human consciousness that may occur at death. Dying is considered by most people to be a gradual process. Charles II is said to have apologised for taking an unconscionable time over it, whereas he probably thought death itself would be instantaneous, like the snuffing out of a candle. But death is also a process, which commonly starts with cardiac arrest. Some minutes elapse before stoppage of the circulation becomes lethal to the brain. The mind can remain alert until the brain stem – into which are packed the control mechanisms for speech, sight, hearing and breathing – ceases to function. What takes place in the mind during that interval is crucial. A considerable body of evidence has been assembled indicating that the human consciousness undergoes a unique transformation. * Correspondence: Roger Cook recently received an MA in History and Philosophy of Science from Leeds University. Email: [email protected] Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1141-1153 Cook, R. Theories of Consciousness and Death: Does Consciousness End, Continue, Awaken, or Transform When the Body Dies? ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1142 A great deal of this evidence comes from reports of the near-death experience (NDE) that have been recorded over the past fifty years. The NDE 'typically involves a number of different components including a feeling of peace and well-being, out-of-body experiences (OBEs), entering a region of darkness, seeing a brilliant light, and entering another realm' (French, 2005, p. 351). Certain impressions can be aligned with corresponding physical events. For example, the thump that accompanies the return to the body in many autoscopic NDEs (where the subject claims to have seen the medical team at work from above) appears to coincide with the heart being restarted by a successful resuscitation procedure (Sabom, 1982). The most significant event is the irreversible loss of the capacity for consciousness that is the inevitable effect of death of the brain stem. A distinction should be made between the capacity for consciousness, which is a function of the brain stem, and the content of consciousness, which resides in the cerebral hemispheres. The survival of the former is essential for the activation of the latter. Typically, at least according to French (2005), it is clear that during the minutes that elapse between cardiac arrest and death of the brain stem, the mind experiences vivid and varied images. It seems that these lead into a final experience that totally resolves all personal conflicts, all unanswered questions, all emotional loose ends, all guilt remorse and sorrow, as the consciousness enters a state of warmth, joy and release from pain, characterised by NDEers as being overwhelmingly suffused with love. In a word, it is transformative. (To be fair, various others note that some NDEs differ significantly, some even being terrifying.) Another notable feature of NDEs is the disappearance of all sense of time, which occurs just before the moment of death (afterwards is unknown). This atemporal sense is not the same as entering a hereafter, but would seem to be a permanent here-and-now. The after in "life after death", or "hereafter", is a product of the sequential habit of thinking derived during this life, which has always involved consideration of the next. Being born, and acquiring a theory of mind means entering time – a narrativised "and then...and then..." mode, a "What happens next?" perspective. But if this imperative ceases to govern one's perceptions, such a question ceases to formulate itself. Eternity is thus outside of time in its restricted sense of duration measured as a succession of events (cf. Nixon, 2010). Does Something Leave the Body? Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1141-1153 Cook, R. Theories of Consciousness and Death: Does Consciousness End, Continue, Awaken, or Transform When the Body Dies? ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1143 Perhaps the heightened reality of the experience is the most powerful impression noted by NDEers. But registering this impression is not the same as accepting that the events related in the NDE actually happened. Because they were experienced as real does not mean that they were actual. The distinction between real and actual is particularly marked in the autoscopic element of the NDE, the out-of-the-body situation experienced by many patients being treated for cardiac arrest. They typically report leaving their body and observing, usually from a point near the ceiling, the medical team at work. For this actually to occur, the retina of the eye would have to record the relevant images and pass them via the optic nerve to the visual cortex. The requisite organs, together with their support systems of veins, arteries, glands and the like, would therefore have to be in place. Such a disembodied assemblage has never been recorded by anyone present in such a setting; the very process of enumerating them in this way serves to highlight the bizarre nature of the notion. But the intention here is emphatically not to devalue such accounts; quite the reverse. As noted earlier, such testimony is overwhelmingly suffused with the reality of what was experienced. Is it then the case that what took place in the mind was also produced there? If so, there is no necessity to postulate the idea that anything like a soul or spirit leaves the expiring human. The Altered State of Consciousness In the normal everyday situations of life, such as writing at a desk, the conscious mind experiences a stable model of reality: a combination of sensory inputs, such as the hardness of the chair or the sound of passing traffic, together with mental constructs, derived from learning and memory. But on occasion an alternative model displaces this stable model: for example, in dreams, drug-induced states, and out-of-body experiences. All such states involve worlds of truly imaginary, i.e., imaged in the mind, origin, which seem as real, and often more real, than waking life. In effect, the model of reality fuelled by sensory inputs has been challenged and superseded by a model derived from images and memory, and constructed from the top down (Blackmore, 1993). The conscious model of reality is dislocated so radically that the mind seeks something to put in its place: the model based on memory and experience becomes dominant over the bottom-up reality model as sensory input becomes weaker and less Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1141-1153 Cook, R. Theories of Consciousness and Death: Does Consciousness End, Continue, Awaken, or Transform When the Body Dies? ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1144 definite. In a dream this dominance may be temporary and transient, so that we forget not only what we dreamed, but if we dreamed at all. Under anaesthetic, however, it is possible that the mind responds to physical sensations originating from surgery by converting them into a mental construct, specifically an image of the surgeon at work on the subject's body. In other words, the person adopts the survival strategy of combining sensory input, perhaps affected by anaesthetic, with memory and previous knowledge of medical procedures. From these sources the mind constructs a model of what is happening to the body. This becomes dominant in the out of body experience, during which patients report observing the activities of the medical team from a point near the ceiling. In six cases of resuscitation from cardiac arrest reported by Sabom (1982), subjects confirmed details recorded on medical instruments and conversations of waiting relatives that could only have been perceived from a position outside the body. The alteredstate-of-consciousness theory cannot account for these phenomena, unless it is modified to allow for paranormal or extrasensory perception. A closer examination by Blackmore (1993) revealed many of these anecdotes to have been as much fantasy as fact containing obvious contradictions. However there are other situations in which the mind adapts to unmanageable challenges by shifting into an alternate state of consciousness. Faced with an inevitable car crash or similar accident situation, people frequently report experiencing a vivid replay of their lives. "My whole life seemed to flash before my eyes" is a typical formulation, of what has been termed "depersonalization in the face of life-threatening danger" (Noyes & Kletti, 1976). The onset of death presents the mind with its most extreme condition of sensory deprivation as the sense organs lose their functions and the brain is denied sensory stimuli. But there is one significant compensation: in its weakened state of anoxia, the brain is no longer called upon to initiate motor functions or muscular contractions. Nevertheless, the brain stem is still alive, and able to affect neural activity in the cortex. It seems fair to suggest that the preconditions for an altered state of consciousness are then met. Sensory input has ceased, so the mind searches for a model to replace the fading bottom-up reality model. It can only build one from the top down, i.e. using memory, images, and experience in a totally unfettered way. Having laboured since birth in the service of the Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1141-1153 Cook, R. Theories of Consciousness and Death: Does Consciousness End, Continue, Awaken, or Transform When the Body Dies? ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1145 organism, the mind can now give complete precedence to the onrush of images and feelings stored away over the years. Relieved of the necessity to monitor, filter, and suppress external perceptions, the mind is freed to experience totally the joys, sorrows, loves, hates, pleasures, and pains that make up this flood (unless the brain is just running amok). Whatever form the experience takes, it will be unique for each individual, based entirely on his or her biography, and hence not part of some universal or shared other world. But the universal factor in the situation is that it will not be subject to limits of duration. It will be outside time, having no beginning or end, conspiring to convince the spirit that its condition is unique, personal, and eternal. The logic behind such a marked change is very clear; the continuance of survival, for any animal, hinges on its acquiring sufficient nourishment to continue living. The basic question posed by life is, "Where is the next meal coming from?" This puts humans in the "And then...and then..." mode referred to earlier. But in death the only parameter is the present. Time past and time future fall out of the picture. The idea that all this, the resolution of all regrets and fears in some personal paradise can be a creation of the isolated mind in its dying moments may seem implausible. But again there is a logic behind it. Once out of the womb an infant child embarks on a life centered on others; every engagement with a significant other is increasingly social, in a context of otherdirected and frequently dependent relationships. It may be helpful here draw attention to the work of child psychologist Margaret Donaldson. Professor Donaldson (1992) suggests that humans are born experiencing only the present, the here-and-now, which she terms point mode. "Later other loci become possible. For example, the second mode, which is called the line mode, has a locus of concern that includes the personal past and the personal future" (p. 11). Death is a complete reversion to the singularity of the moment: in effect, a return to point mode. As the poet T S Eliot (1944) has it, "In my beginning is my end" and "In my end is my beginning" (first and last lines of East Coker). At death the dimensions of both time and a responding world are apparently displaced by a state of timelessness and solitariness – not, however, loneliness, since the interior world at the point of death is peopled with those who have meant most in life (not necessarily in a good way, however); reportedly such Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1141-1153 Cook, R. Theories of Consciousness and Death: Does Consciousness End, Continue, Awaken, or Transform When the Body Dies? ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1146 encounters, though imaginary, are extremely vivid. However, the dead themselves – those who don't revive – have to this point made no reports about the nature of their company. For those who have not experienced an NDE, it may be hard to accept that the product of the mind at such a time will be so unique and exceptional. Experience of the brain's capacity for recall is not encouraging. Consciously trying to dredge up happy memories, friends' faces, successful holidays and the like may lead to the conclusion that the raw material is not exactly heavenly. Similarly, seeking to conjure up a picture of the joys and pleasures that might comprise life in paradise is somehow unrewarding. But this may be because the attempt is made from within a context that is neither relevant nor propitious; that is, the dominant reality model of one's waking life. This may be why the potential performance of the human mind at the point of death has long been seriously underrated. Susan Blackmore (1983), in noting that many persons dismiss out-of-body experiences as "just imagination," comments, "Imagination is far too vast and exciting a word to be denigrated with the word 'just'. ... [The OBE] is imagination, and that may be quite the most exciting thing it could be" (p. 149). The central conundrum, then, may be re-expressed in the following form: Nothing leaves the body at death, yet we do experience a personal heaven. The experience occupies only a moment of time, yet creates an eternity in death, at which point the dimension of time is extinguished. Such may be the transformation of consciousness that occurs at death. The foregoing is an organic perspective on the near-death evidence, firmly grounded in the idea that everything humans experience at death is a product of the brain. But two other perspectives are widely held, and should be acknowledged here. From the earliest times, the belief that an immaterial mind/soul or ghost separates from the dying body was widespread. This, the spiritual perspective, sees NDEs as providing a glimpse or foretaste of a spiritual realm in the hereafter. Bestsellers on the topic agree. A second important perspective is the psychological, of which Noyes and Kletti's (1976) suggestion of depersonalization in the face of life-threatening danger is an example. However it is the third broad category, organic studies, which has received increased attention in recent years, according to French (2005). Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1141-1153 Cook, R. Theories of Consciousness and Death: Does Consciousness End, Continue, Awaken, or Transform When the Body Dies? ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1147 Cardiac arrest survivors have been the chosen subject of at least four such studies because they provide the opportunity for a prospective approach, under clinical conditions, whereas retrospective accounts of NDEs are generally unsystematic, self-selecting, and often reported years after the event. From the prospective studies a best estimate for the incidence of NDEs among cardiac arrest survivors has been reckoned to be 10-12% (French, 2005). Among the proximate causes of the experience may be the anoxia and/or hypercarbia of changed levels of blood gases, fluctuations in the body's neurotransmitters, and dysfunction of the temporal lobe. The explanation by Saavedra-Aguilar and Gómez-Jeria (1989) invokes temporal-lobe dysfunction, hypoxia, psychological stress, and neurotransmitter changes to account for the NDE. As Blackmore (1993) has pointed out, different components of the NDE may have different causes, giving rise to a model that is a synthesis of different components. The release of endorphins has also been invoked by a number of authorities (e.g., Carr, 1982; Saavedra-Aguilarand & Gomez-Jeria, 1989) since they are known to relieve stress and pain and give rise to pleasant feelings. Some have questioned the apparent occurrence of intense mental activity when the patient shows a flat EEG (which occurrence is controversial). Such experiences appear to be taking place at a time when cerebral function is severely impaired. However others have pointed out that the NDE may have occurred as the patient rapidly entered the state of flat EEG or as they more gradually recovered from that state (French 2005, p. 363). It should be borne in mind that altered states of consciousness often have an effect on time perception, as illustrated by the life review component of the NDE during which it is claimed that the whole of an individual's life is replayed in a fraction of a second. One further possibility has been raised and may be worth quoting. According to Chopra Hameroff and Chopra (2010): Recently two clinical studies used processed EEG brain monitors at the time of death in terminally ill or severely brain-damaged patients from whom support was withdrawn, allowing the patients to die peacefully. In both sets of patients, measurable EEG brain activity dwindled as blood pressure dropped and, eventually the heart stopped beating. But then, in each patient, there was an abrupt burst of brain activity lasting about a minute or more which correlated with gamma synchrony EEG, the most reliable marker of conscious awareness. Then, just as abruptly, the activity ceased. Because these patients died, we can't know if Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1141-1153 Cook, R. Theories of Consciousness and Death: Does Consciousness End, Continue, Awaken, or Transform When the Body Dies? ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1148 they had NDE or OOB [out of body] experiences, or if the activity actually marked the soul leaving the body – 'giving up the ghost.' But regardless, the mystery is how the energy-depleted brain could muster synchronous neuronal EEG activity – whatever it was. One possible answer is that consciousness and gamma synchrony involve very low energy quantum entanglements which persist while other brain functions have run out of fuel. This report confirms once more that both the uniqueness and the non-repeatability of the NDE are severe constraints on further progress in researching the organic model. Perhaps the case of noted sceptic and lifelong atheist, A. J. Ayer, could be a paradigm for the organic explanation for NDEs. The crucial fact to emerge from Ayer's NDE episode (a period of four minutes without a heartbeat) was that the experience must have occurred entirely within his own head. So many readers gained the impression from Ayer's (1988a) account of his NDE that he had changed his mind about his atheism, that he felt obliged to publish a postscript a few months later. In this he made it clear that his experience had not altered his firm belief that there was no life after death: "I thought it so obvious that the persistence of my brain was the most probable explanation [for the near-death experience] that I did not bother to stress it. I stress it now. No other hypothesis comes anywhere near to superseding it" (1988b) Particularly intriguing is the way that his experience so closely reflected his personal life. Like many people, Ayer clearly identified with Shakespeare's tragic hero Hamlet. For example he expressed regret that his article had been given the rather bald title "What I saw when I was dead" instead of his own choice, a quotation from Hamlet: "That Undiscovered Country [from whose bourn no traveller returns]" (1988b). Throughout the account, Ayer (1988b) employs phrases from the play. At one point he found himself in space, which appeared to him to be awry, or "slightly out of joint." He felt it was "up to me to put things right," echoing Hamlet's words: "The time is out of joint; O cursed spite! That ever I was born to set it right." He encounters ministers who are in charge of space (perhaps reflecting Hamlet: "Angels and ministers of grace, defend us!"). Ayer also recalled during his NDE that since Einstein it had become customary to treat space-time as a single whole. He therefore "hit upon the expedient of walking up and down, waving my watch, in the hope of drawing their [the ministers] attention, not to my watch Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1141-1153 Cook, R. Theories of Consciousness and Death: Does Consciousness End, Continue, Awaken, or Transform When the Body Dies? ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1149 itself but to the time which it measured" (1988a). This behaviour is utterly characteristic of the philosopher and academic that Ayer was in life. His NDE certainly confirms that the experience is unique and different for each individual. The religious figures that are met during some NDEs almost always correspond to the religion of the person having the experience, "with Christians tending to see Jesus and Hindus seeing the messengers of Yamraj coming to collect them" (Osis and Haraldsson, as cited in French, 2005). For the atheist Ayer a tragic hero and a leading man of science were invoked instead (Hamlet and Einstein). For Ayer and those championing the organic perspective, there can be only one explanation for the near-death experience. The human brain seems to have evolved a particular strategy when faced with extinction. Some combination of endorphin release and hypercarbia/anoxia usually triggers a final experience so profoundly happy that what might happen next no longer matters. This is the moment of transformation into eternity (OED 1.1 A state to which time has no application; timelessness.) Death is a subject impossible to study empirically, because no traveller returns from it. Consequently this writer's personal conviction that time ceases at death is not amenable to proof, or likely to receive support from any quarter. However it is firmly held, as a result of two experiences, apparently triggered by a premonition or intuition of approaching death. Neither developed very far, so they could be regarded as proto-NDEs. One was a lucid dream, and the other a recollection of a hallucination that occurred under anaesthetic. °°° Postscript, a Memoir "IT all began with a dream – " "Oh, no!" "A lucid dream actually – one where you know you are dreaming?" "And what was this dream about, Roger?" "I've completely forgotten – all I remember is that it was very happy and enjoyable. But I was aware that sooner or later I would have to wake up. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1141-1153 Cook, R. Theories of Consciousness and Death: Does Consciousness End, Continue, Awaken, or Transform When the Body Dies? ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1150 At that point it was borne in on me, as if to compensate for my disappointment, that at the appropriate time – which I took to mean at death – the pleasant experience would continue and be completed, fulfilled. The words "So that's how it is!" came into my mind." "That's how what is?" "During the concluding moments of life everything would be resolved. Most important of all, at the moment of death the perception of time would be transformed. That moment would mark a reversion to a state that would be literally time-less. It seemed as though death would be an all-embracing experience of joy in the present moment, a totality with nothing beyond it." "And why was this perception so remarkable to you?" "Because it squared the circle – it turns out that whereas in life you continually worry about what's going to happen next, at the moment of death all preoccupation with the future ceases to apply. You exist entirely in the moment, the now – " "At which point it's goodnight Vienna?" "Yes – life comes to an end, but you go out on a high." "No eternal strumming of harps and praising the Lord forever then?" "Not unless such things constitute your idea of Heaven, in which case the dying brain would create those images in your mind. But for most people the experience would incorporate joyful meetings with loved ones – " "after travelling along a tunnel towards a brilliant white light? You're talking about near-death experiences aren't you?" "Yes." "Oh...dear! Time was when I would have echoed my friend's scepticism. NDEs? Weren't they a bit hippy, flaky, along with ley lines, crystals and other illusory props to New Age thinking? But the dream had provided me with an insight, an intuition that was very hard to ignore. It Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1141-1153 Cook, R. Theories of Consciousness and Death: Does Consciousness End, Continue, Awaken, or Transform When the Body Dies? ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1151 seemed to me that the final operation of your dying brain is to create the experience of paradise. Since that morning, back in the 80s, the need to know more has taken me to conferences in Europe and the States, to degree-level exploration of the brain and conscious mind in the search for evidence in support of the notion that a paradisal eternity is compressed into that final moment. But I can't prove it. However the lucid dream described above started me thinking about out-of-body and neardeath experiences, and brought to mind a near-death experience of my own. It occurred when the dentist gave me a general anesthetic in order to extract some teeth. As soon as I passed out, my whole life – all ten years of it – flashed before my eyes. There was a tumult of impressions, of home life, pets, friends and relatives, and then I was in a tunnel that led up towards a distant bright light. At that point I became convinced that I had been given too much gas, that I had died, and was therefore on my way to Hell. As I got closer to the light I made out a face peering down at me – obviously Satan. The puzzling thing was that he was wearing glasses. If the Devil was as all powerful as I had been led to believe, he would surely possess 20/20 vision? At that point, his (the dentist's), voice reached me, and I was back in the land of the living. The experience was very real, particularly the conviction that I had died. This realness seems to be one of the most memorable features of NDEs – "realer than here, really" as one experiencer put it (Sabom, 1982, p33). The other thing that most experiencers record is that time seems to fall out of the frame. There is just the now, the moment, an experience of bliss so total and all embracing that concern about the future ceases to apply. In life, minute follows minute, hour follows hour and day follows day. But according to my lucid dream, at the point of death the mind stands outside time and experiences a resolution of all conflicts, all unanswered questions, all emotional loose ends, all guilt, remorse and sorrow, and in that last moment enters a state of warmth and joy and release from pain. If this is really what happens at death it is important that everyone should be aware of it. From what I have experienced and read, it seems to me that the two most important characteristics of the NDE are (a) that at death nothing leaves the body, the NDE being a Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1141-1153 Cook, R. Theories of Consciousness and Death: Does Consciousness End, Continue, Awaken, or Transform When the Body Dies? ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1152 construct of the dying mind, and (b) at the moment of death you are totally embedded in a euphoric present, which has the effect of extinguishing any concern about what will happen next. Death may, from such a perspective, be regarded as a totally transformative experience. References Ayer, A. J. (1988a). What I saw when I was dead, Sunday Telegraph 28/8/1988. Ayer, A. J. (1988b). Postscript to a postmortem, The Spectator 15/10/1988. Online: http://www.philosopher.eu/others-writings/a-j-ayer-what-i-saw-when-i-was-dead/ Blackmore, S. J. (1983). Are out-of-body experiences evidence for survival? J. Near Death Stud. 3: 137-155 Blackmore, S. J. (1993). Dying to Live: Science and the Near-Death Experience. London: Grafton, Carr, D.B. (1982) Pathophysiology of stress-induced limbic lobe dysfunction: A hypothesis relevant to near-death experiences.Anabiosis J. Near Death Stud., 2: 75-89. Donaldson, M. (1992). Human Minds: An exploration. London: Penguin. Eliot, T. S. (1944). East Coker, in Four Quartets (pp. 23-32). London: Faber & Faber. "Eternity" (2015). Oxford English Dictionary 1.1 A state to which time has no application; timelessness French C. C. (2005). Near-death experiences in cardiac arrest survivors, Progress in Brain Research, 150; 351-367. Hameroff, S., & Chopra, D. (2010). Can science explain the soul? The San Francisco Chronicle, August 9, 2010, Opinion Column. Online: Deepak Chopra & Intent: http://www.beliefnet.com/columnists/intentchopra/2010/08/can-science-explain-thesoul-1.html Nixon, G. (2010). Time & experience: Twins of the eternal now'. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research 1 (5), July 2010, 482-489. Noyes, R., & Kletti, R. (1976). Depersonalisation in the face of life-threatening danger: An interpretation. Omega, 7: 103-114. Saavedra-Aguilar, J. C., & Gómez-Jeria, J. S. (1989). A neurobiological model for near-death experiences. J. Near Death Stud., 7: 205-222 Sabom, M. B. (1982). Recollections of Death: A Medical Investigation. London: Corgi. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1141-1153 Cook, R. Theories of Consciousness and Death: Does Consciousness End, Continue, Awaken, or Transform When the Body Dies? ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1153 Yong, Ed. (2013). In dying brains, signs of heightened consciousness. National Geographic online: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2013/08/12/in-dying-brains-signs-ofheightened-consciousness/ Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1154 Explorations It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World James P. Kowall * MD, PhD & Pradeep B. Deshpande * PhD Abstract An argument based on recent developments in theoretical physics is made that consciousness itself is the primordial nature of existence, and that all possible physical and mental experiences that can ever become manifest in the world are only forms of consciousness. This conclusion follows from the premise that in its ultimate undifferentiated state, consciousness exists as the nothingness of the void. Modern physics then demonstrates the only way a world can be experienced is if consciousness differentiates itself into an observer that observes all the physical and mental images of that world as projected from a holographic screen to a point of view. In this scenario, the focal point of the observer arises from the void through the differentiation of consciousness while the holographic screen arises through the void's expression of geometric mechanisms such as the expansion of space and non-commutative geometry. This scenario tells us the focal point of consciousness of the observer is the bridge that connects the ultimate being of the void to the becomings of the world. The nature of life in the world can then be understood as about becoming, while the ultimate nature of death can be understood as the final transition from becoming and the differentiation of consciousness to nondifferentiation and ultimate being. This premise also tells us that death is the end of an illusion. The illusion that ultimately comes to an end is not only the illusion of life in the world, but also the illusion of separation. Keywords: Consciousness, nothingness, void, existence, being, becoming, life, death Section 1: Introduction and Overview In a recent New York Times Op-Ed: "Consciousness isn't a Mystery, It's Matter," Galen Strawson (2016) writes: "Conscious experience is itself a form of physical stuff, and the hard problem is not what consciousness is, it's what matter is." He asks: "What is the fundamental stuff of physical reality, the stuff that is structured in the way physics reveals?" He answers: "We don't know – except insofar as this stuff takes the form of conscious experience". * Correspondence: James Kowall, MD, PhD, Independent Scholar, Coos Bay, OR, USA. Email: [email protected] * Correspondence: Pradeep Deshpande, PhD, Professor Emeritus, University of Louisville, KY, USA. Email: [email protected] Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1155 We'd like to point out this argument is a strawman. Once the primordial existence of consciousness is accepted, modern physics has already shown that it's exactly the other way around: physical stuff is a form of consciousness. Ironically, this brings us back to the mystery of the primordial existence of consciousness. This line of reasoning is discussed in detail by Amanda Gefter (2014) as she surveys the landscape of modern physics. Based upon the recent observational discovery of dark energy and the theoretical discovery of the holographic principle she concludes that nothing is ultimately real. Gefter defines ultimate reality in terms of what is invariant for all observers. Since modern physics tells us every observer's observations are observer-dependent, nothing can ultimately be real. Everything an observer can possibly observe depends on the observer's frame of reference. Only the primordial nothingness of the void is invariant for all observers and therefore can ultimately be real. The only thing needed to complete Gefter's argument about the nature of ultimate reality is to identify the primordial nothingness of the void as undifferentiated consciousness, while the perceiving consciousness present for living organisms is differentiated consciousness. This premise tells us the individual perceiving consciousness of the observer is differentiated from the undifferentiated consciousness of the void. This essay gives the scientific reasons why her argument can be extended in this way. The concept of ultimate reality is at the heart of all discussions of ontology, which is the study of what exists in reality. This directly leads into a discussion of being and becoming. This critical distinction between the concepts of being and becoming has a long philosophical tradition, beginning with the works of Plato. The idea of becoming has to do with the nature of the world, specifically the physical and mental world we experience through the perception of the world. All ideas of space, time, matter and energy have to do with becoming, while being has to do with something that is prior to becoming. As modern physics clearly points out, not to mention the conclusions of many modern philosophers, the only thing that is prior to the creation of the world is the nothingness of the void. In this sense, the void is the ultimate nature of being. Simply put, being is prior to becoming. Relativity theory tells us that even the dynamical space-time geometry of the world has the nature of becoming. The holographic principle tells us that all the physical and mental images of the world are projected from a holographic screen to the point of view of an observer, and that these images of the world are animated through the expenditure of energy that animates the world, not unlike the animation of a movie. Everything in the world, from elementary particles to body and mind, is animated. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1156 The animation of all things in the observer's world requires the expenditure of energy, which relativity theory refers to as an accelerated frame of reference. It is always the observer itself as a focal point of consciousness that enters into an accelerated frame of reference. The holographic principle tells us that if energy is not expended and the observer's frame of reference is not accelerated, the observer no longer has a holographic screen, and so all images of the observer's world must disappear. The big question is about what finally exists when the expenditure of energy comes to an end. Correctly interpreted, the holographic principle tells us that without the expenditure of energy only the nothingness of the void can exist, which is therefore the ultimate nature of reality. Only this nothingness is invariant for all observers (Gefter, 2014). Since the flow of time is directly related to the expenditure of energy, this is a timeless or an unchanging reality. If the void is the ultimate nature of being, while all the animated images of the world projected from a holographic screen to the point of view of an observer are the nature of becoming, then what is the relation of the void to the world? The holographic principle tells us the only possible bridge that can connect the void to the world is the focal point of consciousness we call an observer. The perceiving consciousness of the observer must have a source, which can only originate from the void itself. In this sense, the perceiving consciousness of the observer can only be understood as differentiated. Correctly understood, the holographic principle is telling us that the focal point of consciousness of the observer is differentiated from the all-encompassing empty space of the void whenever a holographic screen arises in that empty space and projects images of the world to the observer. Since the perceiving consciousness of the observer is differentiated, the consciousness of the void can only be understood as undifferentiated. Undifferentiated consciousness is what it means to say the void is the ultimate nature of being. As undifferentiated consciousness, the ultimate nature of being is One Being. This nondual concept of One Being has a long metaphysical tradition, ranging from the Tao Te Ching to the Vedas to Zen Buddhism. It can be found in the works of Plato and the Advaita tradition of Shankara. Most modern philosophers have also come to the conclusion of the nothingness of being and that the ultimate nature of being or ground of being can only be identified as the nothingness of the void. This is also what modern physics tells us when correctly interpreted in the context of the holographic principle. The fundamental reason this is the correct interpretation is logical consistency. This is the only possible interpretation that is not fraught with the logical inconsistency of paradoxes of self-reference. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1157 The nature of life in the world has to do with the animation of forms. These animated forms have a tendency to hold together while animated, which modern physics calls the coherent organization of information. The holographic principle tells us that all the bits of information that become organized into forms are encoded on a holographic screen, that forms are animated with the expenditure of energy that characterizes the world, and that images of forms are projected to the point of view of an observer. At least superficially, the nature of death has to do with the disorganization of information in forms so that they no longer can hold together and become animated as distinctly perceived entities. At a deeper level, an argument can be made that the nature of death has to do with the transition of consciousness from the differentiated perceiving nature of an observer to its ultimate undifferentiated nature. The holographic principle is telling us that the focal point of consciousness of the observer is the bridge that connects the ultimate being of the void to the becomings of the world. This also tells us that the nature of life in the world is about becoming, while the ultimate nature of death is about the final transition from becoming and the differentiation of consciousness to nondifferentiation and ultimate being. In this transition, the illusion of life in the world comes to an end. Ultimately, death is not only the end of the illusion of life in the world, but also the end of the illusion of separation. The other way to say this is that consciousness is the true nature of what we are. The holographic principle tells us that the perceiving consciousness of the observer can only be identified as the focal point of consciousness at the center of its world. As we perceive the becomings of a world, the nature of our individual consciousness and being is differentiated from the void. This differentiation process can only occur as a holographic screen arises from the void and projects all the images of that world to the observer's central point of view. If the holographic screen does not arise, this principle also tells us that the ultimate nature of our consciousness and being is undifferentiated. Correctly interpreted, the holographic principle tells us that all physical and mental experiences are manifestations of our consciousness. Whenever we have a physical or mental experience, we manifest the experience we perceive either as an external sensory perception, an internal emotional body feeling, a memory, a thought, or some other form of mental imagination. The holographic principle tells us that all these perceptions are analogous to images projected from a holographic screen to the point of view of an observer. The screen defines our physical and mental world and the observer is only a focal point of consciousness. The mystery of our existence is that we exist as a point of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1158 The really big mystery is that ultimately we exist as the infinity of undifferentiated consciousness, which is the void. The void expresses its potentiality through the expression of energy, fundamentally as dark energy, which is the expansion of space. The expression of this energy is an expression of desire, specifically, the desire to create and perceive a world. From that expression of desire a physical world arises and all the possible physical and mental experiences of that world. We might even venture to say the void creates a conceptual world for itself in order to explain itself to itself within that world, and then is able to return to itself after it has gained this conceptual understanding of itself. Such a conceptual understanding of itself is not possible in the ultimate state of existence, only in a conceptual world. What is the scientific evidence for such bold statements about the nature of reality? Relativity theory tells us the expression of dark energy is the exponential expansion of space that expands relative to the central point of view of an observer. Due to the limitation of the speed of light, a bounding surface of space called a cosmic horizon surrounds the observer at the central point of view and limits the observer's observations of things in space. If the holographic principle is applied to the cosmic horizon, all the bits of information that define everything the observer can possibly observe in this bounded region of space are encoded on the cosmic horizon. Leonard Susskind (1995, 2008) realized the observer's cosmic horizon acts as a holographic screen that projects the images of things in space to the observer's central point of view. This is just like the projection of images from a computer screen to an observer, except the images appear 3-dimensional since their nature is holographic. Gefter (2014) has stressed that in the sense of quantum theory and a Hilbert space, the observer's holographic screen defines everything the observer can possibly observe in its world. She also realized that a consensual reality shared by many observers becomes possible if their respective holographic screens overlap in the sense of a Venn diagram and share information. Where does the holographic principle come from? The holographic principle is automatically in effect if non-commutative geometry is applied to a bounding surface of space. Position coordinates on the surface are no longer represented by ordinary continuous numbers, but by non-commuting variables, which is a way of quantizing position coordinates. In effect, each possible quantized position coordinate defined on the surface turns into an area pixel that encodes a bit of information. Raphael Bousso (2002) has shown the holographic principle is a general property of relativity theory called the covariant entropy bound, which is due to very general focusing theorems. The holographic principle is best understood as a geometric mechanism that allows all the bits of information that define things in a bounded region of space to become encoded on the bounding Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1159 surface of that space. The bounding surface acts as a holographic screen that projects the images of things observed in that bounded space from the screen to the point of view of the observer. This geometric mechanism naturally arises with the expression of dark energy, the expansion of space, and non-commutative geometry. How do the laws of physics that appear to govern the behavior of everything in the observer's world fit in with the holographic principle? The strange answer is that all the laws of physics are derivative of the holographic principle, but they can only arise as thermodynamic averages. Ted Jacobson (1995) has shown that Einstein's field equations for the space-time metric, which determine the space-time geometry of the observer's world, arise from the holographic principle as thermodynamic equations of state, which are only valid as thermal averages. In other words, the law of gravity isn't really a law at all, but is only a thermal average that is a statistical consequence of the holographic principle. The other laws of physics that govern the interactions of the electromagnetic and nuclear forces can be understood to arise from Einstein's field equations for the space-time metric through the usual unification mechanisms, which include super-symmetry and the Kaluza-Klein mechanism (cf. Bailin & Love, 1987) of extra compactified dimensions of space. All the usual quantum fields of the standard model of particle physics then arise as extra components of the space-time metric through unification mechanisms. The final result is akin to 11-dimensional super-gravity, which is a part of M-theory. Like gravity, the electromagnetic and nuclear interactions arise from the holographic principle as thermal averages. Like the holographic principle, these unification mechanisms can all be understood as geometric mechanisms. These geometric mechanisms pretty much explain the creation of the observer's world, the nature of all physical and mental stuff in that world, and why that world appears to be governed by the laws of physics. The observer's world is only created because the void has the potential to express these geometric mechanisms. The void expresses its potentiality as it creates a world through geometric mechanisms, such as the expansion of space, and observes that world from the central point of view of that world, as all the physical and mental images of that world are projected from a holographic screen to the point of view of the observer. Section 2: Modern Physics Tells Us Life in the World is an Illusion "Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one." Albert Einstein It helps to back up and review in detail how modern physics has brought us to this critical point in the development of science. Modern physics is concerned with the nature of the physical Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1160 world, which is to say matter and energy apparently existing within some kind of space-time geometry. There is a big puzzle in the connection between consciousness and modern physics in that all the matter and energy in the physical world that apparently exists within some kind of space-time geometry is composed of observable things like fundamental particles, while there is a long metaphysical tradition that equates the nature of being to consciousness itself, which is to say the observer of the observable things. The big conundrum is about whether consciousness itself, as the observer of the observable things, can arise from some complicated configuration of the observable things like a human brain. Is it possible that consciousness arises from the things it observes? The simple answer is no. The problem with this idea is it lacks logical consistency and inevitably leads to paradoxes of self-reference. Almost all serious thinkers that have considered this puzzle have come to the conclusion that this idea is not possible, which begs the question: where does perceiving consciousness come from? Wheeler's Universal Observer (image from Gefter, 2014) The scientific answer to this question about the source of perceiving consciousness is really about what is ultimately real. Is the physical world the ultimate nature of reality, or is there an ultimate state of reality that is beyond the physical world? Until recent discoveries in physics, many physicists held the position that the physical world is the ultimate nature of reality, but that position is no longer tenable (Gefter, 2014). The basic difficulty with this position goes back to the problem of the unification of quantum theory with relativity theory, which is the problem of fundamental particles existing in some kind of space-time geometry. Relativity theory tells us there is no such thing as an absolute space-time geometry, and so with unification there can be no such thing as fundamental particles. Change the space-time geometry as observed from the point of view of an accelerating observer, and the Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1161 symmetries of that space-time geometry also change. Since all so-called fundamental particles reflect the symmetries of the space-time geometry as representations of a symmetry group, there really is no such thing as fundamental particles. Hawking Radiation (image from universetoday.com) The ultimate example of this dilemma is an event horizon, which always arises from the point of view of an accelerating observer. The observer's horizon fundamentally limits the observer's ability to observe things like particles in space. As Hawking (1996) realized with the discovery of Hawking radiation from the horizon of a black hole, an accelerating observer that accelerates away from the black hole horizon in a rocket ship does not observe the same set of particles that an observer observes while free falling through the black hole horizon. The basic problem is the event horizon of the black hole breaks the symmetry of empty space, and so radically alters what these two observers call fundamental particles. For the freely falling observer, particles of Hawking radiation do not exist. How can particles of Hawking radiation radiated away from the event horizon of a black hole exist for the accelerating observer but not for the freely falling observer? How can any particles be fundamental if the particles that appear to exist for an observer can change or appear to go in and out of existence based on whether the observer's point of view is accelerated or not? If neither space-time geometry nor particles are really fundamental, what is? We might guess that only the consciousness of the observer is really fundamental, and that socalled fundamental particles can change based on whether the observer's frame of reference is accelerated. Although this is a good guess, it's not quite the right answer. There must be Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1162 something more fundamental than the point of view of the observer that explains whether that point of view is accelerated. The basic problem is acceleration implies the expenditure of energy, and that energy has to come from someplace. There must be some kind of a mechanism inherent in the generation of the energy that gives rise to the observer's accelerated frame of reference. If that energy is not expended or the acceleration mechanism is not put into effect, the observer's frame of reference is freely falling. At the root of this problem is the underlying foundation of relativity theory. Relativity theory is fundamentally based on the principle of equivalence. The exertion of any force, which requires the expenditure of energy, is equivalent to an observer's accelerated frame of reference. For example, the force of gravity on the surface of a massive planet is equivalent to the acceleration of a rocket ship through empty space. An observer on the surface of the planet observes exactly the same kind of accelerated motion of objects that fall through space as an observer in the accelerating rocket ship, and so there is no possible way to distinguish between these two scenarios based only on the accelerated motion of objects. As an object accelerates through space, it gains kinetic energy. We usually think that gravitational potential energy is converted into kinetic energy as the object accelerates under the force of gravity, but where does the energy come from in the accelerating rocket ship? The answer is the energy comes from the energy expended as the thrusters of the rocket ship force it forward through space. Principle of Equivalence (image from mysearch.org) This means that before we can discuss an observer's accelerated frame of reference, we have to discuss the expenditure of energy or the mechanism that generates this accelerated motion. The consciousness of the observer cannot really be fundamental because there is the issue of whether or not the observer's point of view is accelerated and energy is expended. The observer is only in an accelerated frame of reference if energy is expended. Where does this energy come from? The strange answer is the energy comes from the same place as the observer's point of view. The Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1163 irony of this answer is that this most fundamental of all places and all things can only be described as the void or nothingness. Closely related to the issue of the principle of equivalence is the issue of the generation of an event horizon. Although the horizon of a black hole seems like a special case, it turns out event horizons arise for all accelerated observers. The observer's horizon always limits the ability of the observer to see things in space. An event horizon always arises for any observer in an accelerated frame of reference. In the most generic case, this is called a Rindler horizon (Smolin, 2001). In line with the idea that the observer's accelerated frame of reference is only an accelerated point of view, we say the observer's horizon arises as the observer follows an accelerated world-line through its space-time geometry. Accelerating Observer's Horizon (image from Smolin, 2001) This brings us back to the question of where does the energy come from that gives rise to the observer's accelerated frame of reference? Although the answer seems exceedingly strange, it can be summarized with only a few concepts. This answer is at the heart of all theories of the big bang creation event. The energy must come from the same place that the observer comes from, which is the void. The nature of this energy is called dark energy, which is understood in relativity theory as the exponential expansion of space, which always expands relative to the central point of view of an observer. Dark energy is the creative energy that puts the "bang" in the big bang event (Gefter, 2014). If space does not expand and dark energy is not expended, only the void exists, which is like an empty space of potentiality. If space does expand and dark energy is expended, an observer's world is created, and the observer of that world is always present to observe that world at the central point of view of that world. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1164 Exponential Expansion of Space (image from scienceblogs.com) In relativity theory the force of dark energy is called a cosmological constant Λ, which gives rise to the exponential expansion of space that always expands relative to the central point of view of an observer. With the exponential expansion of space and the expression of dark energy, the farther out in space the observer looks, the faster space appears to expand away from the observer. Due to the limitation that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, the observer is always surrounded by a cosmic horizon that limits the observer's ability to see things in space. This limitation of the speed of light is really not that mysterious, since it is like the maximal rate of information transfer in a computer network. At the observer's cosmic horizon, space appears to expand away from the observer at the speed of light, and so this is as far out in space as the observer can see things in space. Accelerated Expansion of Space (image from Susskind, 2008) How can space appear to expand? The answer is the curvature of space-time geometry as formulated by Einstein's field equations for the space-time metric. The space-time metric is the Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1165 field that measures the curvature of space-time geometry. Einstein's field equations relate a change in the metric in a region of space to changes in the energy content of that region of space. Einstein's Field Equations for the Space-time Metric With the attractive force of gravity, space appears to contract. This gravitational contraction of space is like the kind of length contraction and time dilation that occurs with uniform motion in special relativity, but with gravity generalizes to accelerated motion. Relativity theory tells us the gravitational contraction of space always occurs relative to point of view of an observer, like the observations of a distant observer limited by the event horizon of a black hole. At the horizon of a black hole the contraction of space or the attractive force of gravity is so strong that even light cannot escape away from the black hole, cross out of the boundary of the horizon, and reach the point of view of a distant observer. In a very similar way, the repulsive force of dark energy gives rise to a cosmic horizon that limits the observations of the observer at the central point of view. With the repulsive force of dark energy, space appears to exponentially expand relative to the central point of view of the observer, and due to the limitation of the speed of light, this limits the observer's ability to see things in space. At the observer's cosmic horizon the expansion of space or the repulsive force of dark energy is so strong that even light cannot cross into the boundary of the horizon and reach the central point of view of the observer. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1166 Accelerated Expansion of the Universe (image from scholarpedia.org) Although a lot of dark energy was used up in the big bang event, astronomical observations indicate there is still a lot of dark energy left in the universe. These are observations of the rate with which distant galaxies accelerate away from us. If the only kind of force operative over galactic distance scales was the force of gravity, the expansion of the universe should be slowing down, since gravity is an attractive force, but that is not what is observed. The expansion of the universe is speeding up, as though all the galaxies were repelling each other. This repulsive force, like a force of anti-gravity, is called the force of dark energy. Its current observed value in terms of the cosmological constant is Λ=10 −123 . If the only recent discovery of modern physics was dark energy, physics would only have another puzzle, but about the same time dark energy was discovered, the holographic principle was discovered ('t Hooft, 1993, Susskind, 1995). The holographic principle is about where all the bits of information that define all the observable things in any bounded region of space are encoded ('t Hooft, 2000). The strange answer is that these bits of information are not encoded in space itself, but on the bounding surface of that space. The bounding surface of space acts as a holographic screen that projects the images of things into space, just like a conventional piece of holographic film projects holographic images into space. The other analogy is a computer screen. Bits of information encoded on the screen project images into space to the point of view of an observer. This kind of holographic projection from a screen into space is really no different than the kind of animated space-time geometry projected from a computer screen to the point of view of an Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1167 observer, except the images appear three dimensional since their nature is holographic. Just like the animated frames of a movie, the projected images are animated over a sequence of screen outputs. With each screen output, which corresponds to an instant of time, the images are projected into space. Since the projected images can become distorted as they change in size and shape, the projection of images from a screen to an observer over a sequence of screen outputs can give the appearance of the curving or warping of space-time geometry. Holographic Projection (image from Susskind, 1995) Just like a computer screen, each pixel defined on the screen encodes a bit of information in a binary code of 1's and 0's. In a conventional computer, this encoding of information in a binary code is performed by switches that are either in the on or the off position, but on a holographic screen, the encoding is generically performed by spin variables that are either in the spin up or the spin down position. Since spin variables are mathematically represented by SU(2) matrices, this encoding of information has a purely mathematical representation. The holographic principle is fundamentally about how the space-time geometry of any bounded region of space is defined, specifically where all the bits of information defining the space-time geometry of that bounded region of space are encoded. The strange answer is that all the bits of information are not encoded in space itself, but on the bounding surface of that region of space. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1168 The Holographic Principle (image from 't Hooft, 2000) Bits of information are encoded in a pixelated way, with each pixel on the screen encoding a single bit of information. The holographic principle tells us the pixel size is about a Planck area l 2 =ћG/c 3 , given in terms of Planck's constant, the gravitational constant and the speed of light. For a bounding surface of space of surface area A, the total number of bits of information encoded is given by n=A/4l 2 . What is a bounding surface of space? The answer is for any region of space, the bounding surface is an event horizon that limits the ability of the observer of that region to see things in that region of space. With the expression of dark energy and the expansion of space, the observer at the central point of view has limited ability to see things in space due to its cosmic horizon, and so the bounding surface is the observer's cosmic horizon. This is where things start to get weird. The holographic principle tells us the observer's cosmic horizon acts as a holographic screen that encodes all the bits of information that define everything the observer can possibly observe in that region of space. Every observation of something is like the projection of an image of that thing from the observer's holographic screen to the observer's central point of view. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1169 The Observer, the Screen and the Thing (image from Smolin, 2001) Before delving into all the weird implications of the holographic principle, it is worth an examination of how the holographic principle arises in the first place, and secondly, how the holographic principle gives rise to a world that appears from the point of view of the observer of that world to be composed of matter and energy, all of which appears to reduce down to some kind of fundamental particles existing in some kind of space-time geometry. The first question is: how does the holographic principle arise in the first place? The answer is it can only arise if there is a bounding surface of space that acts as a holographic screen that projects all the images of things in that bounded region of space to the central point of view of an observer. This is the critical role that dark energy and the exponential expansion of space play, as the expenditure of dark energy gives rise to a cosmic horizon that acts as the observer's Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1170 holographic screen. All the bits of information encoded on the observer's holographic screen in effect define everything in the observer's world in the sense of a Hilbert space. The observer's cosmic horizon is the bounding surface of space that defines the observer's world as it limits the observer's observations of things in space. How does the observer's cosmic horizon encode all the bits of information that define everything the observer can possibly observe in its world? The answer has to do with the quantization of space-time geometry. This is what the unification of quantum theory with relativity theory is all about. The most generic way to understand unification is with non-commutative geometry. Although the holographic principle was first discovered in string theory, which has been generalized to M-theory (see Witten, 1995), string theory is a special case of non-commutative geometry. All examples of the holographic principle occur in some kind of non-commutative geometry. Even fractal geometry can be understood as non-commutative. If non-commutative geometry is applied to a bounding surface of space, the holographic principle is automatically in effect. Non-commutative geometry is manifestly holographic. This basically says the space-time geometry of any bounded region of space is a direct consequence of how bits of information are encoded on the bounding surface of that region of space. How does this happen? The basic problem is that position coordinates on the bounding surface of space can always be parameterized in terms of some (x, y) coordinate system, like latitude and longitude on the surface of a sphere. In a commutative geometry, there are an infinite number of (x, y) position coordinates, since the geometry of the surface is a two dimensional continuum and is infinitely divisible. The quantization of space-time geometry turns this infinitely divisible continuum into a finite number of quantized position coordinates on the surface. The way non-commutative geometry performs this trick in the most generic case is to require an uncertainty relation between the x and y position coordinates where the product of uncertainty is at least as large as the Planck area. This is analogous to the uncertainty relation between the position, x, and the momentum, p, of a particle in ordinary quantum theory where the product of uncertainty is at least as large as Planck's constant, except in non-commutative geometry the uncertainty relation is between the position coordinates of space itself, not the dynamical variables of particles defined in a space-time geometry. Non-commutative geometry is fundamentally about how space-time geometry is quantized, not how the dynamical variables of particles are quantized. This turns the (x, y) position coordinates defined on the bounding surface into non-commuting variables. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1171 Horizon Information (image from Gefter, 2014) Whenever non-commutative geometry is applied to a bounding surface of space like a cosmic horizon, there are no longer an infinite number of position coordinates defined on the surface, but rather a finite number of non-commuting variables, which give rise to pixels. In effect, each quantized position coordinate is smeared out into an area element of size 4l 2 . The total number of pixels defined on the bounding surface of area A is given as n=A/4l 2 , which corresponds to the number of non-commuting variables that define the non-commutative geometry. In the most generic case of non-commutative geometry, these n non-commuting variables give rise to n bits of information defined by the n eigenvalues of an SU(n) matrix, and so the n pixels defined on the bounding surface encode n bits of information. Since an SU(n) matrix can always be decomposed into SU(2) matrices, and since SU(2) matrices encode bits of information in a binary code like spin variables that are either spin up or spin down, the SU(n) matrix thus encodes n bits of information in a binary code, which is the nature of horizon entropy. Horizon Entropy The second question was about how the holographic principle gives rise to a world that appears from the point of view of the observer of that world to be composed of matter and energy, all of which appears to reduce down to some kind of fundamental particles, and appears to exist in some kind of space-time geometry. Although this sounds like a broken record, the answer is geometric mechanisms. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1172 The first step in solving this puzzle is to understand how bits of information encoded on a bounding surface of space give rise to the appearance of a curved space-time geometry in a bounded region of space. This is the problem of how the holographic principle explains the nature of gravity, which is understood as the curvature of space-time geometry. Although there are many ways to approach this problem, the most generic way is the second law of thermodynamics. The second law is a very general statistical relationship that relates how a change in the number of bits of information or entropy that define the configuration state of everything in a region of space are related to the thermal flow of energy or heat through that region of space. This relation is usually written as ΔQ=TΔS, where ΔQ is the flow of heat through the region of space, T is the absolute temperature of that region of space, and ΔS is the change in the entropy or number of bits of information that define the configuration state of everything in that region of space. The flow of heat through that region of space is understood as the random thermal motion of those things through space, while the holographic principle tells us all the bits of information defining everything in that region of space are encoded on the bounding surface of that region of space as S=kn, where the total number of bits of information encoded is given in terms of the surface area A of the bounding surface as n=A/4l 2 . The constant k is called Boltzmann's constant, which converts thermal kinetic energy into conventional units of absolute temperature. Remarkably, this simple statistical relation between the flow of heat through a region of space and the entropy of that region of space implies Einstein's field equations for the space-time metric in that region of space as a thermal average as long as things are near thermal equilibrium, which is called a thermodynamic equation of state. The reason is fairly simple. The holographic principle tells us all the bits of information that define everything in a region of space are defined on the bounding surface of that region of space as S=kn. As heat flows through that region of space and the heat content of that region changes as ΔQ=TΔS, the second law tells us the entropy of that region must also change as ΔS=kΔn. Since entropy is given in terms of the surface area of the bounding surface, n=A/4l 2 , as heat flows across the bounding surface, the surface area of the bounding surface must change. As the bounding surface of space changes, the geometry of the region of space bounded by the bounding surface also changes. This change in the geometry of the bounded region of space is mathematically specified by Einstein's field equations for the space-time metric, which relates a change in the curvature of the space-time geometry of that bounded region to a change in the energy content of that region of space. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1173 Before the discovery of the holographic principle, the vast majority of theoretical physicists thought Einstein's field equations for the space-time metric were about as fundamental as physics can ever get. Thanks to the holographic principle, we now know that Einstein's field equations are not really fundamental, but only arise as a thermal average in any bounded region of space, or a thermodynamic equation of state that is only valid near thermal equilibrium. Einstein's field equations arise from the holographic way bits of information are encoded on the bounding surface of that space. Remarkably, the holographic principle is more fundamental than Einstein's field equations for the space-time metric. Einstein's field equations are derivative of the holographic principle as a statistical or thermal average that is only valid near thermal equilibrium. The force of gravity and the curvature of space-time geometry only arise in a bounded region of space from the holographic way bits of information are encoded on the bounding surface of that region of space. The holographic principle in turn is only a geometric mechanism that allows bits of information to become encoded on a bounding surface of space whenever a bounding surface like a cosmic horizon arises with the expression of dark energy and the exponential expansion of space. If Einstein's field equations are only derivative of the holographic principle, which in turn is only a geometric mechanism, what is really fundamental? The weird answer is nothing is really fundamental. Only the potentiality of the void to express itself with the expenditure of dark energy and encode bits of information on a bounding surface of space is really fundamental. This is the potentiality of the void to create a world for itself and observe that world from the central point of view of that world. The second law of thermodynamics in the context of the holographic principle also explains the temperature of an event horizon as observed by a distant observer. This becomes an important issue when we discuss the temperature of a cosmic horizon as observed by the observer at the central point of view, since this horizon temperature sets the stage for the thermal evolution of the observer's world. The observer will observe thermal photons radiated away from the horizon as a consequence of the horizon temperature. These thermal photons have an energy given in terms of their momentum as E=pc, where quantum theory tells us this momentum is related to wavelength as p=h/λ. The wavelength of a thermal photon that is just barely bound within the horizon as observed by the distant observer is given approximately in terms of the horizon radius R as the maximal circumference of the horizon, λ=2πR. For example, for a black hole horizon, a thermal photon that is barely gravitationally bound within the black hole as observed by a distant observer has a wavelength that is about equal to this maximal horizon circumference. This tells Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1174 us the energy of a thermal photon that is barely bound within the horizon and is just barely able to escape away from the horizon and become radiated to the distant observer is given as about E=hc/2πR. The energy of this radiated thermal photon is the flow of heat, ΔQ=hc/2πR. The second law tells us this flow of heat is related to the change in entropy as ΔQ=TΔS, where ΔS=kΔn. The lowest energy thermal photon radiated away from the horizon corresponds to the smallest possible change in entropy, Δn=1, which gives the observed horizon temperature as about kT=hc/2πR. What about other forces of nature besides gravity, like the electromagnetic and nuclear forces? What about other quantum fields besides the space-time metric that comprise the standard model of particle physics? The unification of quantum theory with relativity theory solves this problem in a straightforward way based on geometric mechanisms. The only known mechanisms of unification are supersymmetry (Dine, 2016) and the Kaluza-Klein mechanism of extra compactified dimensions of space. Extra Compactified Dimensions of Space (image from Greene, 2001) If there are six extra compactified dimensions of space, then Einstein's field equations for the space-time metric give rise to the electromagnetic, strong and weak nuclear forces. The quantum fields that describe these forces are extra components of the space-time metric that arise in extra compactified dimensions of space. The quantum fields for these extra forces represent the curvature of space-time geometry in extra compactified dimensions of space, just like the ordinary components of the space-time metric for the usual four extended dimensions of spacetime represent the force of gravity. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1175 If super-symmetry, which is the idea of spatial coordinates with both commuting and anticommuting aspects, is applied to Einstein's field equations for the space-time metric with six extra compactified dimensions of space, not only are the boson force particle quantum fields generated, but also the fermion matter particle quantum fields. If the extra compactified dimensions of space are formulated in terms of non-commutative geometry, not only are the force particle fields and the matter particle fields generated, but also the Higgs symmetry breaking fields. By breaking the symmetry of space, the Higgs mechanism gives rise to the mass energy carried by all the matter particle fields. In the Kaluza-Klein mechanism, the electron is understood in terms of an extra compactified dimension of space. At each point of ordinary 3+1 dimensional space-time there is an extra circular dimension of space. Momentum can flow in the extra circular dimension just as it can flow in an extended dimension. Quantization of momentum in the circular dimension explains the quantization of electric charge, which is quantized in units of the electron. This is the usual Bohr argument for quantization of momentum in terms of an integral number of wavelengths fitting into the circumference of the circular orbit, nλ=2πr, where r is the radius of the circular orbit, n is the number of wavelengths, and in the sense of a Fourier transform momentum and wavelength are inversely proportional to each other, p=h/λ, except momentum in the extra circular dimension is the nature of electric charge. Momentum can flow in either the positive or the negative direction, explaining both the positron and the electron. What we call an elementary or point particle is really only angular momentum quantized in an extra compactified dimension of space. As a geometrical mechanism, the quantization of electric charge is really no different than the quantization of energy in a hydrogen atom. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1176 Quantization of Momentum in a Circular Orbit (image from slideshare.net) The idea of a gauge theory naturally arises from this idea of extra compactified dimensions of space. With multiple extra compactified dimensions of space the idea of an Abelian gauge theory generalizes to non-Abelian gauge theories, which explains nuclear charges in addition to electric charge. In both cases, the nuclear and electrical forces are understood in terms of extra components of the space-time metric that arise with extra compactified dimensions of space, which allows the gravitational force to become unified with the nuclear and electromagnetic forces in a natural way. The final result of unification is called 11-dimensional super-gravity, which includes all the standard quantum fields of the standard model of particles physics, including the electromagnetic and nuclear forces in addition to gravity. Since 11-dimensional super-gravity can only arise as a thermal average valid near thermal equilibrium, it is only valid as a low energy limit. All socalled fundamental particles are thus understood to be nothing more than localized excitations of field energy, which are called wave-packets. The wave-packet is localized in space and time, which gives rise to the particle quantization of energy and momentum. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1177 Wave-packet The wavelength of the wave-packet is extended in an extended dimension of space, which allows for the particle quantization of energy and momentum, while the quantization of wavelength in an extra compactified dimension of space gives rise to the internal structure of the particle like electric charge. Internal structure is related to external structure since the space-time metric relates the curvature of extended dimensions of space to compactified dimensions of space. A so-called fundamental particle is thus nothing more than a localized excitation of field energy. These quantum fields all arise from the space-time metric through the usual unification mechanisms of super-symmetry, extra-compactified dimensions of space, and non-commutative geometry. All the quantum fields of the standard model of particle physics are really only extra components of the space-time metric that arise through these geometric mechanisms. Even the space-time metric only arises as a thermal average through the geometric mechanisms of the expression of dark energy, the expansion of space, and non-commutative geometry. In reality, there are no such things as fundamental particles or fundamental forces, only the potentiality of the void to express these geometric mechanisms. Simply put, there is no Theory of Everything because there is No Theory of Nothing. The potentiality of the void cannot be reduced to a theory or conceptualized in any other possible way. That is the nature of infinite potentiality. Scientific reductionism simply does not apply to infinite potentiality. Anything is possible as long as it can be expressed in terms of a geometric mechanism. The expression of this potentiality always requires the expenditure of energy. In emotional terms, the expression of this energy is the expression of desire, which directly leads to the manifestation of desires. The manifested world is only a manifestation of desires. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1178 This important point cannot be stressed enough. Correctly interpreted, the holographic principle is telling us the physical world is only an expression of the potentiality of the void. This expression of potentiality always requires the expression of energy, which in emotional terms is the expression of desire. Through its geometric mechanisms, the void has the potential to create a world for itself and to observe that world from the central point of view of that world. The void is the source of everything in that world, including all the matter, energy, information and even the space-time geometry of that world, but it doesn't end there. The void is also the source of the perceiving consciousness that observes that world. When we use the word source, we really mean potentiality. Just as the source of the world is an empty space of potentiality called the void, the source of the perceiving consciousness that observes the world is the potentiality of the undifferentiated consciousness of the void. If we take the big bang creation theory seriously, as formulated with inflationary cosmology, we understand that at the moment of creation of the observer's world a great deal of dark energy is expended. That world is initially only about a Planck length in size, but then inflates in size due to an instability in the amount of dark energy. This instability in dark energy is like a process that burns away the dark energy. Inflationary cosmology hypothesizes that at the moment of creation the cosmological constant takes on a value of about Λ=1, but due to an instability in the amount of dark energy, the cosmological constant transitions to a lower value. This transition is like a phase transition from a metastable false vacuum state to a more stable vacuum state of lower energy. The most stable state, the true vacuum with Λ=0, is a state with zero dark energy. Metastable State (image from ned.ipac.caltech.edu) The expenditure of dark energy breaks the symmetry of empty space by constructing an observation limiting cosmic horizon that surrounds the observer at the central point of view. The instability in dark energy is like a consumptive process of burning that burns away dark energy and undoes this broken symmetry. As dark energy burns away to zero, the cosmic horizon Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1179 inflates in size to infinity, and the symmetry is restored. We understand this undoing of symmetry breaking is like a phase transition from a false vacuum state to a true vacuum state. Dark energy burns away as the phase transition occurs. This idea is also consistent with the current measured value of the cosmological constant, Λ=10 −123 , based on the rate with which distant galaxies are observed to accelerate away from us, which also corresponds to the size of the observable universe of about 15 billion light years. This burning away of dark energy also explains the normal flow of energy in the observer's world in terms of the second law of thermodynamics. Relativity theory tells us the radius R of the observer's cosmic horizon is inversely related to the cosmological constant as R 2 /l 2 =3/Λ, while the holographic principle tells us the absolute temperature of the observer's horizon is inversely related to its radius as kT=ћc/2πR. At the moment of creation, R is about l, Λ is about 1, and the absolute temperature is about 10 32 degrees Kelvin. As Λ decreases to zero, R inflates in size to infinity, and the temperature cools to absolute zero. The second law of thermodynamics simply says that heat tends to flow from hotter to colder objects because hotter objects radiate away more heat, which is thermal radiation. The instability in dark energy explains the second law as dark energy burns away, the observer's world inflates in size and cools in temperature, and heat tends to flow from hotter states to colder states of the observer's world. Second Law of Thermodynamics (image from Penrose, 2005) The normal flow of energy through the observer's world reflects this normal flow of heat as dark energy burns away and the observer's world inflates in size and cools. This normal flow of Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1180 energy naturally arises in a thermal gradient. This also explains the mystery of time's arrow, as the normal course of time is related to the normal flow of energy through the observer's world. As far as the holographic principle goes, a thermal gradient is also a temporal gradient. What are we to make of other forms of energy besides dark energy? Modern physics gives an answer in terms of symmetry breaking. All forms of positive energy arise from dark energy through symmetry breaking. This allows an observer's world to emerge from the void along the lines of the inflationary scenario, but only if the total energy of that world adds up to zero. The remarkable discovery of modern cosmology is cosmic observations indicate the total energy of the observable universe is exactly zero (Gefter, 2014). This is possible in relativity theory as the negative potential energy of gravitational attraction can exactly cancel out the total amount of dark energy and all other forms of positive energy that arise from dark energy. How do other forms of energy, like mass energy, arise from dark energy? The answer is symmetry breaking. As dark energy burns away, high energy photons are created, and these photons can create particle-antiparticle pairs, like proton-antiproton pairs. One of the mysteries of cosmology is why there are so many protons in the universe and so few antiprotons. Symmetry breaking gives the answer. At high energies, antiprotons can decay into electrons and protons into positrons, but there is a difference in the decay rates due to a broken symmetry, and so more antiprotons decay than protons. As the universe cools, protons become relatively stable, and so that's what's left over. Even the mass of the proton arises through a process of symmetry breaking called the Higgs mechanism. The expenditure of energy that characterizes all the gauge forces, like electromagnetic energy in a living organism or nuclear energy in a star, all arise from dark energy through a process of symmetry breaking, but all of this positive energy is exactly cancelled out by the negative potential energy of gravitational attraction. The observational fact that the total energy of the observable universe exactly adds up to zero tells us something important. Since everything in the world is composed of energy and all energy ultimately adds up to zero, this tells us that everything is ultimately nothing. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1181 Ying-Yang Balance If the void is the ultimate nature of reality, the physical world is a lower form of reality, like a virtual reality of images projected from a screen to the central point of view of an observer. This lower form of reality, with its projection of images from a screen to an observer, only exists when the void expresses its potentiality through geometric mechanisms, which is the nature of becoming. When the void expresses its potentiality through these geometric mechanisms it creates a world for itself, which it always observes from the central point of view of that world as the perceiving consciousness of the observer is differentiated from itself. If this potentiality is not expressed, only the void exists. Simply put, being is prior to becoming. As undifferentiated consciousness, the void exists as One Being. What about a consensual reality apparently shared by many observers? The answer is many observers can share a consensual reality to the degree their respective holographic screens overlap in the sense of aVenn diagram and share information. This is just like the kind of information sharing that occurs in an interactive computer network. Each observer only observes its own holographic screen, but to the degree different screens overlap, different observers can apparently interact and share information. The network of interacting holographic screens can share information to the degree the screens overlap. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1182 Overlapping Bounded Spaces Each holographic screen encodes bits of information in a binary code. This is due to defining n quantized position coordinates on a bounding surface of space, which is due to defining n noncommuting variables on the bounding surface. The n bits of information, one per pixel, arise from this holographic mechanism as the n eigenvalues of an SU(n) matrix. It's worth pointing out that the holographic principle is completely consistent with quantum theory. In effect, each observer has its own Hilbert space of observable values, with all the bits of information for observables encoded on the observer's holographic screen. In this sense, each observation of something by the observer is like a screen output that projects an image of the thing from the screen to the central point of view of the observer. The well-known fact that the observer has the innate ability to focus its attention on things in its world raises the issue of choice. How is this choice expressed? Quantum theory gives a natural answer in terms of a quantum state of potentiality. The quantum state can always be expressed in terms of a sum over all possible paths in some configuration space. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1183 Sum Over all Paths (image from Penrose, 2005) The configuration space relevant for the holographic principle are n non-commuting variables defined on the observer's screen that give rise to the SU(n) matrix that defines the n bits of information encoded on the screen. That is the nature of the observer's Hilbert space. Since the observer's holographic screen projects all images of the observer's world, each path specified in the sum over all paths is a possible world-line through the observer's projected space-time geometry. The observer's space-time geometry is not only projected from its holographic screen, but is also animated over a sequence of screen outputs. It is the observer itself that follows this world-line through its projected and animated space-time geometry. As a focal point of consciousness, an accelerating observer always follows a world-line. Just as the observer observes its own world, the observer follows a world-line through its own world. Each observer's world-line is defined by the observations made on its world-line. In computer terms, each observation is like a screen output. A sequence of screen outputs occurring over a sequence of decision points on the world-line allow for the animation of observations. Until an observation is made, the quantum state of potentiality branches into all possible paths, but as the observer chooses to observe a particular state of information at a decision point, a particular path is followed. Each screen output on the observer's world-line is a decision point where the observer chooses to follow some particular path rather than some other possible path. Each possible path of the observer through its projected and animated space-time geometry is a possible world-line. At every decision point or screen output the observer has a choice to make about what to observe Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1184 and which path to follow in its world. This choice arises with the observer's focus of attention on images of its world. Quantum theory tells us each observer has its own Hilbert space of observable values for its own world defined by quantization of non-commuting variables on the observer's holographic screen. This defines everything the observer can observe in its own world, but due to information sharing in the network of overlapping screens, its observations can become correlated with the observations of other observers. What is meant by other observers? Each observer is only a point of view that arises in relation to its own holographic screen. This point of view can be called a differentiated focal point of consciousness, or individual consciousness. The holographic principle tells us this focal point of consciousness is a point of singularity that arises at the center of the observer's horizon, which is to say the observer is the singularity at the center of its own world. Many apparently distinct observers can share a consensual reality, but ultimately when these geometric mechanisms are no longer expressed, only the undifferentiated consciousness of the void exists. What role does the observer play in the creation of its world? The nature of quantum potentiality tells us every observation is a choice or a decision point on the observer's world-line as the observer's path or world-line branches into all possible paths. In computer terms, every observation is like a screen output. In the language of quantum theory, every observation is a decision point on the observer's path about what to observe and which path to follow. The observer expresses its choices through its focus of attention on images of its world. Even the laws of physics are not fundamental but are all chosen. Everything is a choice and nothing is determined. All the laws of physics that appear to govern that world can only arise with random choice as statistical or thermal averages, which is what the second law of thermodynamics tells us in the framework of the holographic principle. As long as things are near thermal equilibrium, the laws of physics only appear fixed and stable due to symmetry breaking, and in some sense have frozen out of the quantum state of potentiality like a phase transition that turns water into ice, although the better analogy is probably the spontaneous magnetization of a magnet. The laws of physics only appear stable because they all arise through symmetry breaking within a metastable or false vacuum state. The nature of symmetry breaking tells us that bits of information spontaneously become organized into complex forms as energy flows in a thermal gradient, like the spontaneous magnetization of a magnet. The holographic principle and the expression of dark energy explain how bits of information become encoded on a holographic screen in relation to the point of view of an observer, and the instability in dark energy explains the origin of the thermal gradient. The Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1185 expression of complexity arises through these geometric mechanisms because the organization of information occurs at a metastable state. Even the transition from one metastable state to another metastable state is a kind of symmetry breaking. This is epitomized by a cosmological constant that is only constant within a metastable state, while the transition from one value of the cosmological constant to another value is akin to a phase transition. The birth and development of the observer's body can be understood in terms of the coherent organization of information, just as the physical death of the observer's body can be understood in terms of the disorganization of information. Modern physics tells us the development of coherent organization arises through a process of symmetry breaking. This is as much the case for biological organisms as it is for physical objects. The only significant difference is the organization of physical objects through phase transitions is dependent on the transfer of heat, while biological organisms can also engage in a process of eating, which adds organizing potential energy to the organism. There is always a balance between the flow of thermal kinetic energy that tends to disorganize objects and organizing potential energy that tends to organize objects. When the balance shifts in favor of organizing potential energy, symmetry breaking occurs and coherent organization develops. When the balance shifts in favor of too much heat, disorganization occurs. As organizing potential energy is added to a body through a process of eating, the development of coherent organization naturally occurs through a process of symmetry breaking. Although symmetry breaking may be sufficient to drive the development of coherent organization in the observer's body, the observer also plays a role in the organizing process through choice, especially when those choices become emotionally biased. Section 3: The End of an Illusion "Sometimes people don't want to hear the truth because they don't want their illusions destroyed." (Friedrich Nietzsche) The nature of consciousness only appears to be mysterious if we do not know the true nature of what we really are. Plato describes an observer that mistakenly identifies itself with the central character of an animation of images it perceives on a screen as a prisoner. The only possible freedom is an observer that no longer identifies itself, but for that we have to know the true nature of what we are. The age-old problem of identity often expresses itself as an identity crisis. This identity crisis is about the true nature of who I am. Is it possible that I am only the observer and not the person I Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1186 am observing? If I am not a person in the world, then who am I? Can the true nature of identity be purely spiritual? Can the problem of identity be answered with a statement like "I am nothing but consciousness", or "Ultimately, I am the undifferentiated consciousness of the void?" Ultimately, this identity crisis is about the mystery of the ultimate nature of existence. The ultimate nature of existence is a mystery that can never be explained, just as infinite potentiality can never be reduced to scientific concepts. The most that it is ever possible to say about the ultimate nature of existence is that It Exists, which is to say It Is or I Am. The ultimate nature of existence can never be personified. The holographic principle tells us that the nature of a person in the world can only be understood as a limited expression of the ultimate nature of existence as the image of a person is projected from a holographic screen. This limited expression of a person in the world is very much like the animation of an avatar in a virtual reality world, which is no more real than the images of a character animated on a screen and projected to the point of view of an observer. As Plato tells us, the observer becomes a prisoner when it identifies itself with its character. Plato's Cave (image from faculty.washington.edu) "If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall?" Herman Melville, Moby-Dick The void expresses its potentiality as it creates a world through geometric mechanisms and observes that world from the central point of view of that world. The expression of this potentiality requires the expenditure of energy, specifically dark energy and the expansion of space. Without this expenditure of energy, neither an observer nor its world can exist. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1187 How are these geometric mechanisms expressed? The only logically consistent answer is the void has the potentiality to express these mechanisms. The void is what exists prior to the creation of the world. Being is prior to becoming. In the sense of One Being, the void can be understood as undifferentiated consciousness. This argument is consistent with all the nondual traditions, including Advaita Hinduism, Zen Buddhism, Taoism, Sufism, Kabbalah Judaism and Gnostic Christianity. "Truly, truly, I say to you, before Abraham was, I Am." (Gospel of John 8:58) The book of Genesis 1:4 tells us that in the beginning, God divided the light from the darkness. The light that Genesis refers to is not physical light, but the light of consciousness, which is divided from the darkness of the void. The light of consciousness is inherent to the observer itself and can be understood as the observer's focus of attention, which allows for the observer's expression of choice in the sense of quantum potentiality. Each decision point on the observer's world-line is another choice. Just as the observer is understood as a focal point of consciousness to which images of the observer's world are projected from its holographic screen, the observer's focus of attention allows for the projection of those images. To use a physical analogy, the observer's own light of consciousness illuminates the images of its world like the light of a laser projects images from a physical hologram. In this sense, with the creation of the observer's world, the differentiated consciousness of the observer is divided from the undifferentiated consciousness of the void. Genesis 1:2 also tells us the creation of the world occurs as the Spirit of God moved over the face of the deep. The Spirit of God is the observer, the motion appears to occur as the observer follows an accelerated world-line through its projected and animated space-time geometry, the face of the deep is the observer's holographic screen, and the deep is the void. The Rig-Veda tells us darkness was hidden by darkness in the beginning. All that existed then was void and formless. The undifferentiated consciousness of the void is referred to in the sense of One Being as that One thing, breathless, breathed by its own nature. Apart from it there was nothing. The creation of the world is described in a thermodynamic sense as that which becomes was born through the power of heat. Upon that desire arose in the beginning the first discharge of thought. The observer is described as whose eye controls this world in highest heaven. The Tao Te Ching describes the observer's world is only created through the expression of desire, and without that expression of energy only the mystery of the void exists: Ever desireless one can see the mystery; ever desiring one can see the manifestations. The Tao describes the Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1188 void as darkness, darkness within darkness. the gate to all mystery. The gateless gate paradox describes that when One passes through this gateless gate, one walks the universe alone. What is the nature of passing through the gateless gate? When the holographic mechanism that creates the observer's world is no longer expressed, the observer's world comes to an end and disappears from existence. What happens to the observer? The observer's individual consciousness must return to the undifferentiated consciousness of the void. This reunion is described as a dissolution, like a drop of water that dissolves back into the ocean (Osho, 1974). In both Hinduism and Buddhism the final dissolution of individual consciousness into undifferentiated consciousness is referred to as the experience of nothingness or Nirvana (Nisargadatta Maharaj, 1973, 1996). The experience of Nirvana is understood as the final dissolution into nothingness in which individual consciousness reunites itself with undifferentiated consciousness. In the sense of spiritual reunion, the individual spirit of the observer reunites itself with the Supreme Spirit of the void, or to use the language of Advaita Hinduism, Atman reunites itself with Brahman (McKenna, 2013). "Brahman is the only truth, the world is an illusion, and there is ultimately no difference between Atman and Brahman" "That which permeates all, which nothing transcends, and which, like the universal space around us, fills everything completely from within and without, that Supreme nondual Brahman-that thou art" (Shankara) The literal translation of Nirvana is to blow out the flame of life or extinguish the light of consciousness. When the light of consciousness is extinguished, only the darkness of the void remains. This reunion with undifferentiated consciousness or final dissolution into nothingness is the ultimate nature of death, which is the end of an illusion. The illusion that comes to an end is not only the illusion of life in the world, but also the illusion of separation. Ultimately, death is a transition from the differentiation of consciousness and the becomings of a world to nondifferentiation and ultimate being (McKenna, 2002, 2004, 2007). Both the Rig-Veda and the gateless gate paradox refer to the ascension of consciousness. Plato also refers to the ascension of consciousness in the Allegory of the Cave. It is as though an ascended observer looks down on its world from a higher vantage point as it observes all the images of its world on a two-dimensional screen from a point of view outside the screen, and sees that all those images are only projected by its own light of consciousness (Nisargadatta Maharaj, 1973; McKenna, 2002). An ascended observer that clearly sees this state of affairs can Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1189 no longer identify itself with the image of its own character animated on the screen, but can only know itself as the focal point of consciousness or singularity at the center of its own world (Gefter, 2014). Only this singularity of consciousness can act as a bridge that connects the ultimate being of the void to the images of the observer's world. The birth and development of the observer's character can be understood in terms of the coherent organization of information, just as the physical death of the observer's character can be understood in terms of the disorganization of information. Although symmetry breaking may be sufficient to drive the development of coherent organization in the observer's character, the observer also plays a role in the organizing process through choice, especially when those choices become emotionally biased. The animation of the observer's character naturally arises in the flow of energy, which in part is directed by the observer's focus of attention. An investment of emotional energy arises whenever the observer focuses its attention on its character, but this investment of energy can be withdrawn when the focus of attention is withdrawn. The part of the animation the observer can direct arises in the sense of choice with the observer's emotionally biased focus of attention, but this always plays out against the backdrop of the normal unbiased flow of thermal energy through the observer's world. Emotional bias in the focus of attention gives rise to emotional feedback as it leads to the expression of biased emotions. In some sense, every emotionally biased expression of emotional energy that arises with the observer's emotionally biased focus of attention is an interference with the normal flow of things through its world. This interference is analogous to a quantum interference pattern in the sense of a non-stationary path. This kind of interference leads to feelings of disconnection, while coming into alignment with the normal flow of energy and following the path of least action gives rise to feelings of connection. "Before I sink into the Big Sleep I want to hear, I want to hear The scream of the Butterfly." (Jim Morrison, "When the Music's Over") Coming into alignment with the normal flow of things is the meaning of the Grail legend, while interfering with things in an emotionally biased way is the meaning of the Wasteland. The transition to this state of energetic alignment is described as a metamorphosis, like the transformation of a caterpillar into a butterfly. In this transformation, the caterpillar dies and the butterfly is born. This is the archetypal metaphor of spiritual rebirth. One dies to one's false selfidentification with one's body and is reborn to one's true spiritual identity (McKenna, 2002). Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1190 How is it even possible for the observer to identify itself with the form of its body? Neuroscience has demonstrated the emotional nature of meaning. Meaning is given in an emotional context, and this is also the case for self-identification (Damasio, 1999). Emotional context has to do with the flow of emotional energy that relates one distinct perceivable thing to another distinct perceivable thing. The observer is only able to emotionally identify itself with the form of its body due to the expression of emotions that relate the observer's body to other distinct perceivable things in its world and that make the observer feel like it is really self-limited to the form of its body. This feeling of being embodied is perpetuated by the expression of biased emotions and the observer's biased focus of attention that play an essential role in the mental construction of the observer's body-based self-concept (McKenna, 2002). The observer's body-based self-concept is emotionally energized by the expression of biased emotional energy that relates the observer's self-concept to other things in the observer's world in emotionally biased ways. This self-identification process is also an emotional attachment process. As the observer identifies itself with its character, the observer also becomes attached to things in its world, including its own body. This emotional attachment process can only occur when the observer's focus of attention is emotionally biased in favor of its character's survival and is focused on its character and other things in its world in emotionally biased ways, which directly leads to the expression of biased emotions. Emotional bias in the observer's focus of attention and the expression of biased emotions are two sides of the same coin. As long as biased emotions are expressed by the observer's character, the observer's focus of attention is emotionally biased. As long as there is emotional bias in the observer's focus of attention, its character will express biased emotions. This kind of emotional feedback is a vicious cycle. The only way this vicious cycle can be broken is if biased emotions are no longer expressed by the observer's character and the observer stops directing its focus of attention in emotionally biased ways. Breaking the vicious cycle is always a detachment process, or a process of letting go, as the observer detaches itself from its world and de-identifies itself from its character in that world. This letting go process is a kind of death as the observer stops being emotionally invested in or expressing bias in the outcome of any situations relevant to its character's survival, and in effect stops caring about whether its character lives or dies. This is a giving up process both in the sense of letting go and a surrender. The impartiality of this kind of emotional detachment is the only way the expression of emotional bias can come to an end. In this detachment process, things are accepted the way they normally occur as an expression of the normal flow of energy through the observer's world, just Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1191 like the acceptance of death that finally occurs through a process of grieving. In this detached state, the observer only watches as things play out in the normal way, and stops interfering with or trying to control things in an emotionally biased way so that things come out in favor of its character's survival. This state of non-interference only occurs with willingness to relinquish the emotionally biased desire to control things (McKenna, 2002). For the purpose of the observer's awakening, only the de-animation of the observer's character and disappearance of the observer's world are required. This de-animation of the observer's world is a direct result of withdrawing its focus of attention and emotional energy away from its world. Without the observer's focus of attention on its world and this expression of energy, there can be no animation of the observer's world. This always requires a shift in the observer's focus of attention away from its world. This shift in the observer's focus of attention away from its world is what is meant by turning around, which is the original meaning of the word repent. In a spiritual or metaphysical sense, the observer turns the focus of its attention away from its world and onto its own sense of being present (Nisargadatta Maharaj, 1973). The observer shifts the focus of its attention onto itself. In some sense, only the observer's focus of attention on its character and the expression of biased emotional energy can keep the observer emotionally attached to its world and self-identified with its character. The only way the observer can detach itself is if this expression of biased emotions comes to an end, which naturally occurs when the observer focuses its attention on its own sense of being present (McKenna, 2002). An ascended observer can only know itself as the focal point of consciousness at the center of its world, or dissolve back into the undifferentiated consciousness of the void. In a very real sense, an ascended observer exists right at the edge of the abyss that separates the existence of its world and the animation of its character in that world from the void and the non-existence of its world (McKenna, 2002). There is no scientific way to prove the existence of the undifferentiated consciousness of the void, but anyone can confirm this ultimate state of being for oneself. It is possible to do an experiment of One. That is what it means to become a Buddha and awaken from the dream of separation. All nondual traditions describe the process of awakening. When one awakens from the dream of the world, one's world disappears and only one's true underlying reality remains. The experience of one's underlying reality is the experience of undifferentiated consciousness, which is the experience of nothingness. There is no other way to describe it. With dissolution, there is a sense of falling into the void, like entering into a state of ultimate free-fall (Osho, 1974). After awakening one observes one's world again, but from an ascended point of view and self-identification with one's character in one's world is no longer possible. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1192 What happens to the observer's differentiated consciousness with the death of its body? One possibility is the observer's consciousness remains differentiated as a focal point of consciousness at the central point of view of its world after body death. Like a phase transition, body death is only the irreversible disorganization of information in the way the observer's body is coherently organized on the observer's holographic screen. Even with body death the focal point of consciousness can remain differentiated. Maybe a new body coherently forms for the observer, which would explain the nature of reincarnation. It's important to point out the observer's mind is greater than just the information organized within the physical limits of the observer's body or brain. Quantum entanglement tells us the information for mental events involves entangled bits of information that are encoded both within the limits of the observer's body and outside those limits. Quantum entanglement is a natural consequence of the holographic principle since the observer's Hilbert space for observables as defined by its holographic screen arises as the eigenvalues of an SU(n) matrix, and all those bits of information are entangled with each other. Entanglement tells us that with any mental event it is possible to know about events that occur outside the limits of the body even if those events are not physically connected to the body. Even after body death, quantum entanglement remains in effect, and so the observer still has a form of mind after body death. It may be that these mental experiences after body death lead to the reincarnation of a new body. A critical point is only the holographic principle can resolve the paradoxes of quantum entanglement, like the Schrodinger cat paradox and Wigner's friend paradox. All these paradoxes require an outside observer to collapse the entangled state of a quantum system, but as Amanda Gefter (2014) points out, the universe has no outside observer. The only possible point of view is from inside the universe. Gefter also points out that these entanglement paradoxes are really paradoxes of self-reference. All the bits of information encoded on the observer's holographic screen are entangled, but the observer cannot arise from entangled bits of information. The observer can only identify itself with a form of information it observes, which brings us back to the question: where does the observer come from? The answer is the observer arises from the void at the central point of view of its world as its world is created. The way the holographic principle resolves this problem is that all possible images of the universe are projected from a holographic screen to the central point of view of an observer, which is only a focal point of consciousness. Dark energy tells us the observer's holographic screen is a cosmic horizon that only arises with the expansion of space. Only the cosmic horizon by breaking the symmetry of empty space allows for encoding of bits of information and Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1193 projection of images from the screen along the lines of it from bit. Only the undifferentiated consciousness of the void as an empty space of potentiality can give rise to the point of view of the observer and the observer's holographic screen. In the sense of ascension and dissolution, the observer is right at the edge of being outside the universe. The only way to be outside the world is to go beyond the images of a world projected from a holographic screen. The dissolution of consciousness into nothingness is all about what is beyond the images of a world. How is it possible for the observer to return to its original state of being and for its differentiated point of consciousness to dissolve into undifferentiated consciousness? The answer is the holographic mechanism that creates the observer's world must come to an end, which means the end of all expressions of energy, including the emotional energy we call the expression of desire. In all nondual traditions, this end of the expression of desire is understood not as body death, but as ego death. When the expression of all desires to live a life in the world come to an end, the observer's ego, which is the observer's mentally constructed and emotionally energized selfconcept of who it is in its world, also comes to an end. "No One Here Gets Out Alive" (Jim Morrison, "Five to One") The only possible breakthrough occurs with ego death, but ego is in resistance to the very end. Ego fights for its survival until it comes to an end, since that is the nature of how ego is coherently organized as a self-replicating form of information. This fight for survival is the nature of self-defensiveness. Self-defensive expressions can occur in the moment as an expression of the normal flow of things, but with the expression of biased emotional energy and the mental construction of ego, these self-defensive expressions become emotionally reinforced, distorted and amplified like a positive feedback loop. The ultimate expression of self-defensiveness is the fear of death, which is ultimately the fear of nothingness. Paradoxically, the fear of nothingness is the fear of the ultimate nature of being. In a twisted way, being becomes afraid of itself. This fear of nothingness can only arise through the paradoxes of self-reference and self-identification that give rise to the mental construction of ego. Only ego death, or the disorganization of this complex, mentally constructed, emotionally energized, self-replicating form of information allows for the breakthrough, which is really a break-out as the differentiated consciousness of the observer leaves its world behind, dissolves back into the undifferentiated consciousness of the void, and returns to its primordial state of undivided being. Like any process in which a coherently organized self-replicating form of information becomes disorganized, this breakthrough is really a breakdown, like a phase Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1194 transition that melts ice back into water or a process of burning in which the ego burns away. Those who go through this disorganization process describe it as a mental, emotional or psychic breakdown, or a break with reality (McKenna, 2002). "Burning, burning, burning, burning Oh Lord, Thou pluckest me out." (The Buddha's Fire Sermon) As is often stated, the antidote is in the poison. The breakthrough can only occur with ego death, which is a complete and total surrender in which the fight for survival comes to an end. The fight for survival naturally comes to an end when all desires to live a life in the world come to an end. In this breakdown process, the self-identification of the observer with its character in its world also comes to an end, which is the only way the observer can break out of its embodied state of imprisonment. In a very real sense, only this break with reality can lead to the ascension and dissolution of consciousness. Dissolution of the observer's consciousness into undifferentiated consciousness requires deanimation of the observer's world, which is a natural result of the observer withdrawing its focus of attention away from its world and its investment of emotional energy in its world. Ascension of the observer's consciousness requires enough disorganization of the observer's ego to allow for a state of emotional detachment in which the observer no longer identifies itself with its ego. This naturally happens when the expression of emotional bias comes to an end. Biased emotional energy is withdrawn away from its ego as the observer stops focusing its attention on its ego in emotionally biased ways. As Plato tells us, even an ascended observer can still have an ego, but this mentally constructed self-concept no longer has enough emotional energy animating it for the observer to identify itself with it, and so the observer is no longer a prisoner. Plato calls this non-identified state of the observer freedom from bondage. The observer can only know itself as the light of consciousness emanating from its own focal point of consciousness and see its ego as another image projected from the screen like the self-referential narration of a movie by the central character (Nisargadatta Maharaj, 1973). With dissolution, the expenditure of all energy comes to an end, the observer's world disappears, and the observer reunites itself with the undifferentiated consciousness of the void. Ultimately, the observer can only know itself to be the undifferentiated consciousness of the void (McKenna, 2002). In a metaphysical sense, each observer's differentiated light of consciousness, as it emanates from its own focal point of consciousness or singularity, is the nature of spiritual being, while the Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1195 undifferentiated consciousness of the void is the ultimate nature of all being. Ultimately, only One Being exists. Each observer's consciousness has an apparent individual existence, but at the end of the day when the holographic mechanism is no longer expressed and the observer's world disappears, every observer must return to its ultimate state of being as undifferentiated consciousness. The holographic mechanism must come to an end when energy is no longer expended and desires are no longer expressed. As the Tao Te Ching states: "Ever desireless one can see the mystery" (Lao Tsu, 1997). Ultimately, there is only One Being. The void expresses its potentiality as it creates many worlds, each observed by its own observer at the central point of view and sharing information to the degree each observer's holographic screen overlaps with the screens of other observers, but at the end of the day when these holographic mechanisms are no longer expressed, only the undifferentiated consciousness of the void exists. Every observer must eventually return to this ultimate state of being. Individual consciousness must ultimately reunite itself with undifferentiated consciousness. The divided light of consciousness of the observer must ultimately return to the undivided darkness of the void. "When the Music's Over, Turn Out the Lights." (Jim Morrison, "When the Music's Over") Scientific References Bailin, D., & Love, A., Kaluza Klein theories. Rep.Prog.Physics.50, 1087-1170, 1987. Online, accessed June 9, 2016: http://www.het.brown.edu/people/danieldf/literary/ericKKtheories.pdf Bousso, R., The holographic principle. Rev.Mod.Phys.74:825-874: arXiv:hep-th/0203101, 2002. Damasio, A., The Feeling of What Happens. Harcourt Brace, 1999. Deshpande, P. and Kowall, J., The Nature of Ultimate Reality and How it can Transform our World: Evidence from Modern Physics: Wisdom of YODA, SAC, 2015 (amazon.com). Dine, M., Supersymmetry and String Theory: Beyond the Standard Model (2 nd ed.). Cambridge University Press, 2016. Gefter, A., Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn. Random House, 2014. Greene, B., The Elegant Universe. Vintage Books, 2001. Hawking, S, A Brief History of Time. Bantam, 1996. 't Hooft, G., Dimensional reduction in quantum gravity. arXiv:gr-qc/9310026, 1993. 't Hooft, G., The holographic principle. arXiv:hep-th/0003004, 2000. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1196 Jacobson, T., Thermodynamics of spacetime: The Einstein equation of state. Phys.Rev.Lett.75:1260-1263: arXiv:gr-qc/9504004, 1995. Kowall J., The metaphysics of modern physics, JCER 7 (3), 2016. Madore, J., Non-commutative geometry for pedestrians. arXiv:gr-qc/9906059, 1999. Penrose, R., The Road to Reality. Knopf, 2005. Smolin, L., Three Roads to Quantum Gravity. Basic Books, 2001. Strawson, G., Consciousness isn't a mystery, It's matter. The New York Times Opinion Pages, May 16, 2016, http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/16/opinion/consciousness-isnt-a-mysteryits-matter.html Susskind, L., The world as a hologram. J.Math.Phys.36:6377-6396: arXiv:hep-th/9409089, 1995. Susskind, L., The Black Hole War. Little, Brown & Company, 2008. Witten, E. String theory dynamics in various dimensions. Nuclear Physics B. 443 (1): 85–126. arXiv:hep-th/9503124. 1995. Nonduality References Lao Tsu, Tao Te Ching. Gia-Fu Feng and Jane English trans. Vintage Books, 1997. McKenna, Jed, Theory of Everything. Wisefool Press, 2013. McKenna, Jed, Spiritual Enlightenment Trilogy. Wisefool Press, 2002, 2004, 2007. Nisargadatta Maharaj, The Experience of Nothingness. Blue Dove Press, 1996. Nisargadatta Maharaj, I Am That. Acorn Press, 1973 Osho, The Book of Secrets. St. Martin's Griffin, 1974. _____________________________________________________________ Postscript Postcard from Nirvana James P Kowall 1 and Gregory Michael Nixon 2 Abstract 1 Correspondence: James P Kowall, MD, PhD, Independent Researcher. Email: [email protected] 2 Correspondence: Gregory Michael Nixon, PhD, Associate Professor, University of Northern British Columbia. Email: [email protected] Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1197 Question and answer session between the editor and one of the authors elaborating on the article by Kowall and Deshpande: "It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World". Keywords: Void, consciousness, nothingness, existence, being, becoming, life, death GN Here I am watering the garden and thinking, after all the other pages you went through in your article, that we are left with (or began with) what you call "undifferentiated consciousness", which sounds exactly like my preference for awareness-in-itself with no objects of awareness, i.e, the clear light, or the void. Two thoughts: 1) One is the quality of that undifferentiated awareness. If it's "blah", who cares whether or not it "exists", and of course language cannot come close to a qualitative description of the absolutely transcendent, yet the words that most come up are exceedingly positive like "bliss", "allencompassing", "peace ... which passeth all understanding", "rapture", etc. In other words, it's a most desirable state for those who can imagine it, yet it must be without desire, since all desires are already filled. This indescribable ecstatic if steady-state bliss is never hinted it. Surely this is divine awareness (even if it is without content, substance, change, or emotion)? 2) I recall you saying at one point that all the differentiated human consciousnesses (illusory as they are) eventually end up as returning to their source in the void of ONE undifferentiated consciousness. But in several places you also mention "choice" as being real. Isn't it possible that some of those who cling most desperately to ego – whether for reasons of fear, desire, ignorance, or just old fashioned vanity – may either a) experience themselves utterly extinguished when the brain-supported ego is extinguished, or (really going for a stretch) b) hang on as a revenant or ghost, mostly phantom-like, just, you know, gibbering about, holding on? So, void is good place to be, yes (even without the internet)? And choice may mean real oblivion is possible or perhaps even fading ghosts are possible? JK The only answers I can give to these questions are the same answers Jed McKenna (2013) gives. I had never even heard of nonduality until I read McKenna's first book Spiritual Enlightenment (2002), which was one of those serendipitous events that ends up changing your life. The woman I was dating in 2003 saw the book at her chiropractor's office, started to read it, thought it was funny and interesting, and ordered it from Amazon. I just happened to be visiting at her house when the deliveryman arrived. She left to go to work and out of boredom I started to read it. That book sparked my desire to understand nonduality and started me down this path. Shortly after I Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1198 read the book I discovered the holographic principle, which lead me back to physics and the desire to understand nonduality in terms of modern physics, eventually leading to the paper we're now discussing. Weird. McKenna gives a conceptual definition of consciousness in terms of Atmanic consciousness, which he identifies as the trinity of observer, observed and observing, and Brahmanic consciousness, which he says is the ground of Atmanic consciousness and identifies as the undifferentiated consciousness of the void. When McKenna uses the word ground or underlying reality he refers to the source, which we understand as potentiality. The nothingness of the void is the potentiality to create everything in the world, just as the undifferentiated consciousness of the void is the potentiality to differentiate itself into the individual consciousness of the observer. To put it another way, existence must have a primordial nature. The undifferentiated consciousness of the void is the primordial nature of existence, which we can call being, while the creation of everything in the world and the differentiation of consciousness into an observer is the nature of becoming. All concepts of matter, energy, space and time have to do with becoming. The primordial nature of being can only be understood as the pure potentiality to create the geometry of the world and differentiate itself into an observer of the world. In and of itself the void is a timeless or unchanging reality that cannot be characterized by time, space, matter or energy. The void can only be understood as the pure potentiality to create these things and differentiate itself into the observer of these things. This creation of everything in the world and the differentiation of consciousness requires the expenditure of energy. Carl Sagan once quipped: "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." Modern cosmology tells us the universe is only created because dark energy is expended. If this energy is not expended, there is no observer and no observer's world. These things cannot come into existence without the expenditure of dark energy. If this energy is not expended, only the void exists. This tells us the dynamical universe is to the void the same way a virtual reality is to an absolute or ultimate reality. The analogy of an interactive computer network generated virtual reality is very powerful because the holographic principle tells us all the images of things in the observer's world are projected from a holographic screen to the observer's central point of view. The holographic screen that fundamentally defines the observer's world is the observer's cosmic horizon that only arises with the expenditure of dark energy. This projection of images from a screen to an observer in a screen output defines the nature of Atmanic consciousness as the trinity of observer, observed and observing. This also tells us that both the observer's holographic screen and the observer's central point of view must arise from the void as dark energy is expended. The differentiation of consciousness into an observer and the creation of the observer's world can only occur because dark energy is expended. The principle of equivalence tells us that only the holographic principle has validity in an accelerated frame of reference and so transcends the idea of elementary particles and Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1199 fundamental forces. The holographic principle has validity that transcends the laws of physics, but the holographic principle is only a way of formulating how a quantum state of potentiality arises that describes all possible ways in which bits of information can become encoded on a holographic screen. Quantum theory tells us that with every observation of something a choice must be made. This choice reduces the quantum state of potentiality to an actual configuration state of information defined on the screen. In computer terms, each observation by an observer is like a screen output that projects the images of things from the observer's screen to the observer's point of view. Correctly interpreted in the context of dark energy, the holographic principle tells us that each observer has its own holographic screen defined on its own observerdependent cosmic horizon, which is the nature of the observer's Hilbert space for its world. Physicists would like us to believe all choices are made randomly, since that is the only way the laws of physics can have predictability. Only random choice allows the laws of physics to emerge as a thermal average and have predictability. The quantum state of potentiality is like a probability distribution that is measured as choices are made, which choices are the nature of observation. Only random choice gives this probability distribution its predictability. The problem is each of us knows our choices are not really made in a random way. Each of us is emotionally biased to make our choices in a biased way. Once bias enters into the way choices are made, all bets are off, and the laws of physics lose predictability. Only the observer can choose what it observes in its world. We call the observer's choice its focus of attention on things in its world. The holographic principle tells us the observer's quantum state of potentiality is formulated in terms of all possible ways bits of information can become encoded on the observer's holographic screen, but quantum theory tells us the quantum state can also be formulated as a sum over all possible paths through the observer's world. The observer follows this path through its world, which we call a world-line. The observer, as a focal point of consciousness that arises in relation to a holographic screen, follows a world-line through the space-time geometry that is projected from its holographic screen and animated over a sequence of screen outputs. With each screen output, the observer chooses to observe an actual configuration state of information and chooses to follow an actual path through its world as it focuses its attention. If there is bias in the way the observer makes its choices, the laws of physics lose their predictability. This is really not such a big problem, since the laws of physics were never really laws in the first place, but only a thermal average description of the world that arises as a low energy limit when random choice is the dominant way choices are made. McKenna says the virtual reality is like a dreamstate, which is an illusion. When one awakens from one's dream, only one's true nature remains. McKenna calls the true nature of the dreamer the truth, which he identifies as the undifferentiated consciousness of the void. McKenna says illusion, which he calls Maya, cannot be explained, but the holographic principle gives us a perfectly good scientific explanation for the nature of illusion. Amanda Gefter (2014) makes exactly this point. The nature of illusion can be explained and understood if we marry Gefter to McKenna. To paraphrase William Blake, this is the marriage of modern concepts of theoretical physics to timeless concepts of nonduality. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1200 The secret of this connection of consciousness to illusion is geometric mechanisms, of which the holographic principle is the prime example. McKenna hints at this geometric connection and even takes the first steps toward an explanation. He makes the analogy of flatland, in which the void is a blank piece of paper, the observer is a point on the paper and a circle that surrounds the central point defines the observer's world. This is the prototypical idea of a holographic screen that projects images of the observer's world to the observer's central point of view. This geometric connection is possible since the undifferentiated consciousness of the void is what exists prior to the creation of the geometry of the observer's world. It is not only the potential to create that geometry, but the potential to differentiate itself into the observer. Illusion is created whenever the void expresses itself through geometric mechanisms. When the void expends dark energy through the expansion of space and encodes information on a cosmic horizon through non-commutative geometry, it is expressing its potentiality to create an observer's world out of itself and to differentiate an observer's consciousness from itself. Gefter and McKenna make exactly the same point that the individual consciousness of the observer is a part of the illusion that is created as dark energy is expended and the observer's world is created. The idea that Atmanic consciousness is differentiated from Brahmanic consciousness as the observer's world is created has been around for eons. Genesis 1:4 tells us the light is divided from the darkness as the world is created. This makes sense if we understand that Genesis is telling us that the observer's light of consciousness is differentiated from the darkness of the void. This differentiation of consciousness is part of the illusion created as the world is created. The only stumbling block to really understanding what this distinction between Atmanic and Brahmanic consciousness means is in understanding how illusion is created. The holographic principle solves this mystery in a very straightforward way. GN You seem to be saying that everything that appears in the world is a part of the illusion and that nothing in the illusion is true. Isn't there some aspect of the illusion that has some truth in it? JK There is one important exception. Mathematical statements are part of the illusion, but can be seen to be true or false. The statement 1+1=2 is true, while the statement 1+1=3 is false. Mathematicians point out mathematical truths are directly seen and not learned. They have the nature of intuition. Even a young child without any formal education can intuit the nature of addition. The power of true mathematical statements and their logical consistency allows a scientific explanation of the illusion to appear within the illusion. Mathematical statements can be seen to be true or false as long as they are free of emotional bias, since they refer to something beyond subjectivity. What is beyond subjectivity is the source of the geometric mechanisms that give rise to mathematical statements as they appear within the illusion. The experience that mathematical truth is discovered from some ultimate unknown source of truth is the reason many mathematicians and physicists, like Einstein, consider themselves to be Platonists. That source of mathematics can only be understood as the nothingness of undifferentiated consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1201 GN If differentiation of the observer's consciousness and creation of the observer's world are both a part of the illusion, like a virtual reality or dreamstate, then what is the nature of awakening? What does it mean to awaken from the dreamstate, and how does one awaken? JK When one awakens from a dream, the dream disappears and only one's true nature as a dreamer remains. McKenna says the true nature of the dreamer is the undifferentiated consciousness of the void. The dream is created as the void creates an observer's world out of itself through the expenditure of dark energy and differentiates the observer's consciousness from itself. For the dream to come to an end, the expenditure of this energy must come to an end. Since the expenditure of this energy is fundamentally the expression of the desire to live a life in the world, the dream can only come to an end if the expression of this desire comes to an end. One awakens when one becomes desireless. McKenna says no one ever awakens out of love for truth or the expression of desire. It just doesn't work that way. The only way one awakens is if one becomes desireless, which requires the willingness to die. Not only the desire to live a life in the world must come to an end, but also the desire to become enlightened. McKenna says one doesn't become enlightened out of love for truth but hatred of the lie, which is why one is willing to destroy one's self. Self is a lie. McKenna says all self is false self. There is no true self, only false self and no-self. One doesn't really become enlightened. One reverts back to one's true nature when one stops living the life of a lie. It's not that one becomes true; one only destroys the lie. When the lie is destroyed, only truth remains. Since the lie of self is emotionally energized, the only way one destroys the lie is to stop expressing desires that energize the lie, and that can only happen if one is willing to die. McKenna calls awakening a process of "ego death as a means to no-self". Psychology tells us the ego is mentally constructed as a self-concept that is emotionally related to other things in the observer's world. McKenna says the expression of emotional energy makes the observer feel like it is self-limited to the form of its body as the observer perceives the expression of self-limiting body feelings. This self-concept is what the observer believes itself to be as long as the observer identifies itself with its ego. The ego is a false belief the observer believes about itself, or a delusion. McKenna says "no belief is true" and once delusion is destroyed we can see it never really existed since it was based on the illusion of self. Psychology tells us the ego is body-based, but modern physics tells us the ego must have an extent in space and time that goes beyond the limits of the physical body. The reason the ego extends beyond the limits of the body is quantum entanglement. All the bits of information that define the observer's world are entangled since they're encoded on the observer's holographic screen. Entanglement means the bits of information that give rise to the mental construction of Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1202 the observer's ego are not just located within the physical limits of the observer's body or even to things that are physically connected to the body, but extend throughout the observer's world. Entanglement allows for mental construction of the observer's ego even after body death. Since ego is only a collection of desires to live a life in the world, the expression of that desire can continue after body death. McKenna describes awakening is a self-destructive process of ego death that ultimately culminates in the experience of no-self. The individual consciousness of the observer returns to its primordial state of timeless existence and reunites itself with the undifferentiated consciousness of the void. There is no self or individuality in no-self, only one or unity. The awakening process cannot culminate until ego is totally annihilated. In the final Matrix movie, Neo finally becomes the One when he annihilates with agent Smith, who is the anti-Neo, like the annihilation of a particle antiparticle pair. McKenna is also fond of quoting U G Krishnamurti: "the end of illusion is the end of you". The big question is what it takes to totally annihilate your ego. Ego death is much more than body death, since it requires the willingness to bring all desires to live a life in the world to an end. GN Yeah, I was just asking for your opinion (since the alternatives weren't made quite clear in your essay). Nobody knows, of course. Seems to me there is likely to be a choice, unconscious or not. The clingers, the fearful, the narcissistic, the ignorant, the egotists, might just not let go or "surrender" until the death of the body takes their centre of attention with them – poof-blotto! Thus oblivion is possible, even if their unknowing "soul" returns to its Soul source (just as when the lightbulb goes out, the electricity runs on without its light). JK I suppose what you say could be the way it works, but my best guess is that you don't stabilize in Nirvana, which is inherently a state of no-you or no-self as your individual consciousness returns to its primordial state of non-differentiation, until your ego is totally annihilated. McKenna says the energy that drives the awakening process is hatred of the lie of self that results in a kind of suicide; not physical body death but ego death. One does this not out of love of truth but hatred of the lie. The only way one ever returns to the darkness is to become dark. As long as one expresses light and love and the desire for life in the world, one is alive in the world. The only way one returns to the darkness is if one stops expressing light and love and the desire to live a life in the world. To use the Star Wars metaphor, the only way one goes through the awakening process is if one goes over to the dark side, not by expressing anger and resentment Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1203 against others in the world, but by expressing anger against the lie of one's own self. This selfdestructive anger is a dark rage, or a death wish. This death wish can only be fulfilled through ego death, which is the end of all desires to live a life in the world. McKenna says it is not possible to become true. In the sense of undifferentiated consciousness, truth is the true nature of what you are. It is the true nature of your being, and being is prior to becoming. You cannot become what you already are. On the other hand, you can become something that is false, which is what happens when you identify yourself with your character in the perceived world. You can only un-become what is untrue. McKenna says you cannot realize the truth, you can only un-realize untruth by destroying everything that is false, and in the process only the truth remains. The irony is when everything false is destroyed, nothing remains, but this nothingness is the undifferentiated consciousness of the void, which is the true nature of what you are. McKenna says the nothingness of undifferentiated consciousness is the truth of what everything is. This is the critical distinction between being, which is timeless and unchanging, and becoming, which requires the expenditure of energy and constantly changes over the course of time. The undifferentiated consciousness of the void is the true nature of being, while the dynamical nature of the world with its space, time, matter, energy and differentiated consciousness of an observer is the nature of becoming. McKenna points out the void is like an undivided empty space, which is the nature of unity and nothingness, and this empty space has no limits or boundaries, and so is also the nature of infinity. McKenna likes to quote Melville: "truth has no confines". This empty space is space-less in the sense that it is not defined by spatial relations among things perceived in the world, unlike the perceivable space projected from a holographic screen to an observer. McKenna also says "the price of truth is everything". One only reaches the final destination of the journey of awakening if one leaves everything behind. Everything is lost and nothing is gained. Every step in the journey of awakening is a loss. As long as there are more things to lose, there are more steps to take. McKenna says one trades everything for nothing, and makes a good deal. One discovers one's true nature. McKenna says the ultimate barrier to awakening is the fear of no-self, which is fear of nothingness. Paradoxically, this fear of nothingness is fear of the true nature of what you are. In a twisted way, one becomes afraid of one's true nature. This can only happen because the ego is mentally constructed through paradoxes of self-reference and the observer identifies itself with its ego. The fear of no-self can only become a barrier to awakening due to the illusory nature of self-identification. It is as though the observer is watching a movie and identifies itself with the central character of that movie as the character gives an emotionally energized self-referential narration of the movie, which is the nature of the ego. The emotions that energize the ego are all desires to live a life in the world. This expression of desire is the mechanism that creates the illusion of self. The illusion of self is only created through the expression of desire to be somebody in one's world. The flip side of that desire is fear. McKenna says all fear is ultimately the fear of no-self. The expression of fear defends the survival of the illusion of self. Just as the journey of awakening is a self-destructive process that destroys the illusion of self, the Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1204 expression of fear is a self-defensive process that defends the illusion of self. McKenna says the fear of no-self is the barrier to awakening, but this is a much greater fear than the fear of death, since it is always possible to assuage the fear of death with some belief about life after death. The fear of no-self is the fear of nothingness, and no fairy-tale can assuage that fear. GN Are you saying that nothing can be taken with you after death? JK I'm not saying that at all. It all depends on whether you awaken or not. This is the distinction between body death and ego death. If you awaken, which can only happen with ego death, you take nothing with you. Ironically, with awakening you return to a state of no-self in which there is no you. On the other hand, if you experience body death without awakening, you can take a lot with you into your next life. The observer is only a focal point of consciousness that arises in relation to a holographic screen that projects all images of the observer's world. The observer's body is one of those images, like the central character of a movie. Body death is only the disorganization of information in that image so that the body image is no longer coherently selfreplicated in form after body death. The observer's ego is much more than the observer's body since the ego arises from entangled bits of information that are dispersed throughout the observer's world, and so the ego can persist after body death. The observer's ego as an emotionally energized self-concept that arises from entangled bits of information can give rise to memories, emotional attachments, and desires to live a life the world that persist after body death. If body death is not accompanied by ego death, the observer as focal point of consciousness can remain present for its world and take these things with it into its next life. If the observer becomes reincarnated into a new body, it can take some aspects of its old ego with it. Only ego death allows the differentiated consciousness of the observer to return to the undifferentiated consciousness of no-self. Since this is a return to nothingness, nothing is taken back to the nothingness. The fear of nothingness is the ultimate barrier to awakening that perpetuates this cycle of reincarnation into a new body. The usual word for this is karma, which is a fancy word for the effects of all the perpetuated desires to live a life in the world. The fear of no-self is the barrier to awakening, but the barrier is illusory since it is only created out of this desire to live a life in the world and the illusion of self. The only way to break through the barrier is to become desireless and awaken to one's true nature as no-self. In a twisted way this makes sense if, as McKenna likes to say, we understand that "life is but a dream". Awakening is only possible if one is willing to become a nobody, which means one doesn't want to be somebody or something in one's world. In other words, one no longer wants to live a life in the world. One never awakens out of the love of self, but only out of hatred for one's false self. This hatred of self becomes so intense that one becomes willing to die, but nobody really wants to die. The fear of no-self will always stand as the final barrier to awakening. Like the gateless Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1205 gate paradox that describes the illusory nature of the barrier, McKenna is fond of quoting Chuang Tzu on the nature of no-self: The man of Tao remains unknown. Perfect virtue produces nothing. No-self is true self and the greatest man is nobody. The undifferentiated consciousness of the void is the nature of no-self. McKenna says no-self has no context and doesn't mean anything. It Is. It is the nature of timeless being. All meaning is emotional and is established in an emotional context. Emotional connections require the expenditure of emotional energy. The undifferentiated consciousness of the void expends no energy and has no meaning. Meaning can only come into existence through a process of becoming, which requires the expenditure of energy as an observer's world is created and the observer's consciousness is differentiated. The creation of meaning always requires the expression of desire. Without desire, there is no meaning. McKenna says awakening cannot be explained conceptually, and uses the analogy of reading a book about a foreign land rather than actually making a journey to that foreign land. Awakening is like the journey to the foreign land, while concepts of awakening are only like reading a book or a postcard about the journey. When one actually makes the journey and comes back from that journey, one is profoundly changed. The dissolution of individual consciousness into the nothingness of undifferentiated consciousness is the final destination of the journey, while the ascension of consciousness that occurs after the journey is over and one comes back to one's world is the change in perception. McKenna calls this a journey to a "strange and lonely place called Done", after which there is "no further". The phrase "it is done" is found throughout the awakening literature, from Revelation 21:6 to Neo's final death in The Matrix when he annihilates himself with agent Smith. Neo only becomes willing to annihilate himself when the Oracle tells him "Everything that has a beginning has an end". As Revelation 21:6 says: "I am the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end". That is the nature of being the undifferentiated consciousness of the void. McKenna describes that awakening consists of two distinct but related phenomena: the dissolution of the observer's individual consciousness into the nothingness of undifferentiated consciousness, which is called the experience of nothingness or Nirvana, and the ascension of the observer's consciousness. Dissolution can only occur when the expression of all desires to live a life in the observer's world come to an end. When the expression of all emotional energy comes to an end, the observer is no longer in an accelerated frame of reference and the observer's holographic screen is no longer created. In this ultimate freely falling frame of reference, all images of the observer's world disappear and only the observer's underlying reality remains. That underlying reality of undifferentiated consciousness is the ground of the observer's Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1206 individual consciousness. The analogy often made is the observer's individual consciousness dissolves into the undifferentiated consciousness of the void like a drop of water dissolves into the ocean. McKenna describes dissolution as a state of freely falling into the void. If the observer comes back to its world after the experience of nothingness, even though energy is again expended and the observer's world reappears, the observer is profoundly changed. This change is referred to as the ascension of consciousness. Plato gave an excellent description of ascension in the Allegory of the Cave. An ascended observer no longer observes its world as though it is a part of its world and no longer identifies itself with its character in that world, but instead perceives that world as though it has come out of its world and is looking down on its world from a higher level. All images of that world appear like movie images that are projected from a screen, and the observer can only know itself as the focal point of consciousness outside the screen to which those images are projected. McKenna describes the destruction of illusion as untruth-unrealization. Only illusion can be destroyed, not truth. Truth is what remains after all illusions disappear. That truth is the nothingness of undifferentiated consciousness, which is the ultimate nature of being. Everything else that is perceived in the world is the nature of becoming, which is an illusion like a dream. The dream can begin when one starts dreaming, and the dream can come to an end when one awakens, but truth cannot change. The true nature of the dreamer is timeless and unchanging. Only after one comes back from the truth and starts dreaming again can there be a change in one's perception of one's world. That change in perception is the ascension of consciousness. This is how McKenna describes his experience: "Having undergone the process of untruthunrealization, I am left not in an elevated state of superior knowledge, but in a knowledgeless state of superior elevation. I see everything, I understand everything, I know nothing". McKenna is also fond of quoting Layman P'ang: When the mind is at peace, the world too is at peace. Nothing real, nothing absent. Not holding onto reality, not getting stuck in the void. You are neither holy nor wise, just an ordinary fellow who has completed his work. Holding onto reality is the nature of emotional attachment to things in one's world and one's self-identification with one's character in that world. Emotional attachments and selfidentification always imply emotional bias. The ascension of consciousness is fundamentally a state without any emotional bias. McKenna likes to quote the Tao Te Ching: "the wise are impartial". Getting stuck in the void is the nature of dissolution into nothingness. Between the illusion of self-identification and the truth of dissolution is the ascension of consciousness. An Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1207 ascended observer is at the edge of the abyss, the singularity, that separates the existence of the observer's world from the void and the non-existence of that world. McKenna refers to an ascended observer as "in the world but not of the world". Dissolution of the individual consciousness of the observer into the undifferentiated consciousness of the void is a desireless, timeless state of existence that expends no energy. After dissolution and the experience of nothingness or Nirvana, one can observe one's world again and the expression of desire can resume. The difference is in this ascended state of perception the observer no longer identifies itself with its character in its world and the expression of desire is no longer emotionally biased in favor of its character. With the end of the expression of emotional bias, the observer no longer interferes with the normal flow of things in its world and the observer's path through its world naturally comes into alignment with the normal flow of energy through its world, which gives rise to feelings of connection. The bliss described with enlightenment can only arise from these feelings of connection. McKenna refers to this non-interfering state of coming into alignment with the normal flow of things as the integrated state, and to an ascended observer that keeps itself in alignment as higher navigation. GN More extremely, I can conceive of certain egotists, paranoids, or those so damaged they are unaware that they have died, still holding an identity together after death as a sort of minor quantum entanglement or energy feedback system, so they'd be a revenant spook or ghost or phantom – though eventually they'd probably either dissolve into oblivion or, better, dissolve back into undifferentiated awareness. (I've never seen a ghost but many others certainly claim to have seen or talked to a few, and some make a lot of money pretending to channel them.) Makes me wonder, and wondering is what I do. JK It makes sense to me that if body death is not accompanied by ego death, your consciousness hangs around the world until it finds a new body to inhabit, and some aspect of your old ego gets incorporated into the new body. That would explain why some people can remember past lives. Some sage defined enlightenment as "you don't have to be born again". As long as the observer's ego survives after body death in some rudimentary, diffuse or incoherent form, the observer does have to be born again, since the desire to live a life in the world has not come to an end. Ego is really nothing more than a haphazard collection of desires to live a life in the world. Only ego death, not just body death, can bring the expression of all these desires to an end. If body death is not accompanied by ego death, these desires continue to be expressed, and so the ego continues on in some disembodied form. This disembodied ego would arise from entangled bits of information that are dispersed throughout the observer's world, and that give rise to a sense of self that is more than just the observer's sense of being present, such as fragments of memories and emotional attachments that may have to do not only with the observer's immediate past life but with many past lives. The best way to think of a disembodied ego is as a collection of desires Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1154-1208 Kowall, J.P. & Deshpande, P.B., It's the Other Way Around: Matter is a Form of Consciousness and Death is the End of the Illusion of Life in the World ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1208 to live a life in the world that persist after body death due to the entanglement of information in the observer's world. As Einstein tells us, this is "spooky action at a distance". It may be that when people interact with a ghost, they're really interacting with a disembodied ego and not directly with the spirit, which is the observer's consciousness. It may also be the case that when a person evolves to a higher plane of existence, like a channeled entity, it's only this disembodied ego that evolves. The evolution of a disembodied ego to a higher plane of existence would then be a distinctly different phenomenon than the ascension of consciousness to a higher level, but it's easy to see how they could be confused with each other. A highly evolved disembodied ego could be the nature of a shaman or a spirit walker, like Carlos Castaneda's Don Juan, which has more to do with mystical experiences in the world, like lucid dreaming, than with awakening from the dream. Everything we think of as spiritual experiences in the world would then have the nature of mystical experiences, like lucid dreaming, rather than awakening from the dream, which is the end of the dream. References Gefter, A., Trespassing on Einstein's Lawn: A Father, a Daughter, the Meaning of Nothing and the Beginning of Everything. Random House, 2014. McKenna, J., Jed McKenna's Theory of Everything. Wisefool Press, 2013. McKenna, J., Spiritual Enlightenment: The Damnedest Thing. Wisefool Press, 2002. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1209-1217 Green, L., A Feminine Vision for the World: Consciousness, & a New Outrageous Ontology ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1209 Statement A Feminine Vision for the World Consciousness, & a New Outrageous Ontology Lorna Green, PhD * I am proposing that consciousness, and not matter, or matter/energy, is the true basis of the Universe. It is here from the very Beginning, everything has it, and all of the true causalities, the explanatory principles are in it; they belong to consciousness, and not matter. What then is matter? All matter is an expression of consciousness, even the least little bit of matter contains consciousness, and is in fact, an expression of consciousness. All energy contains consciousness, that idea alone will change our world forever. And so, I go on to spell it out what it really means for our understanding of reality, under four great aspects of the real: The Universe, and with it a rewrite of modern science; the Earth and femininity, a continuum of many forms of consciousness of which our own is one; Ourselves, seen through the lens of reincarnation; and then Spirit, and who what and where Spirit is. And I begin with the Earth. A. Earth & Woman A1 The State of the Earth And now, the Earth, and with it, a new ontology of unique moments of time. We have caused a crisis for the Earth that is so great that we cannot begin to get our minds around it. All across the planet the coral reefs are disintegrating, the fisheries and the forests disappearing, the ice melting, seawaters rising, famine and drought increasing everywhere, the global temperature is rising, and millions of species are going extinct every week. The crisis we are in owes to our ideas, to human arrogance and to human ignorance. I take this crisis as a call to radically rethink Ourselves, from the ground up, and so, here is a new system of thought and a new ontology, based on consciousness. The human race has understood the Earth, and now we must, for the Earth is the true foundation for civilization. And now, a unique moment of history: We have reached a place in our own evolution where we can foresee, if we continue on as we are, our own extinction. We need new ideas. I am proposing that the Earth is a continuum of many forms of Consciousness, of which our own is one, connected and interconnected, interrelated throughout, intersubjective, part of the great Oneness and One on its own. The Earth is not "things", commodities and resources to be converted into money in the bank, but she is a living, conscious being – composed of other spiritual beings, like ourselves – who * Correspondence: Lorna Green, Taos, New Mexico. Email: [email protected] Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1209-1217 Green, L., A Feminine Vision for the World: Consciousness, & a New Outrageous Ontology ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1210 needs to be nurtured and cared for, who needs to be Loved. Just as, in her aspect as Great Mother, she has nurtured and cared for us. And so, the Really Real on the planet is not the banks, the corporations, and the governments, but it is the Biosphere. The human species needs to come into alignment with the Biosphere and with the truth of the Biosphere - that all other beings on the planet are just like us. 1 Let the barriers we have placed between ourselves and all other beings go down. And the more we realize our likeness with other beings, the harder it will be to do them all in. And so, I rewrite the Earth, and many other terms associated with the Earth. A2 Gender: The Feminine Gender is one of them. Women have traditionally been identified with the Earth, and shared her fate. This new Earth picture has a place for women, and for the Feminine, as matter and mechanics do not. We come out of a long tradition of male domination, civilization and history are largely an elaboration of the male mind, and most of the problems of the modern world are so clearly gender based, it is embarrassing that it has been so rarely noticed. They owe to a single fact: long ago, at the dawn of recent history, women were edited out of the discussion, rejected and dismissed, like Einstein's dismissing them as "fanciful and irrelevant." With this, women's distinctive point of view, so bound up with the giving, nurturing and caring for all Life, half of the human race is dismissed as irrelevant. Men turned the world into the vale of tears that it is, when they edited women out of the discussion. "For [the men] sow the wind and reap the whirlwind" (Hosea 8:7), but I fear we are about to reap the worldwind unless woman is heard. After a long eclipse, and defying all the odds, once again the women are here, and we will make the difference. The crisis we are in with the planet is a sure sign that the men have missed their chance. How did the men think they could get things right without us? We will make the difference, for the male impulse is all about conqueror and subdue, fear, lies, and control, with death and destruction everywhere. This is not our impulse. Our impulse is Love, accepting and affirming, nurturing and caring - Earth sensitive, Earth honoring and a sense of the sacredness for all Life in all of its many forms. And we will make the difference. Love alone can transform our death-centered, deeply sick world, into one based on Love, Light, and Life. All present economies are based on the destruction of the planet. If we can bring Love here and start helping the Earth, it will owe to the presence of women and like-thinking men taking their places on the historical stage. If we can finally pull it off, rather than destroying Earth, then even our vast numbers at 7 billion, may not matter. The prophet Nostradamus foresaw the advent of women as the most important event in all of our history: "Long ago, the brothers put their sisters down, and now have walked the earth with such a heavy tread that almost nothing is left." The Dalai Lama urges women to be leaders, because they have "more empathy" and predicts that when they are leaders, the violence in the world will end. And he also claims that the world will be saved by Western woman. My modest 1 E.g., Beyond Words: What Animals Feel and Think, Carl Safina, 2016. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1209-1217 Green, L., A Feminine Vision for the World: Consciousness, & a New Outrageous Ontology ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1211 contribution to this great task is to radically rewrite the essential term, the very lynchpin, among our ideas, that is driving the destruction of the planet - the Cartesian concept of matter that I replace with this term Consciousness. The old ontologies, the metaphysical systems of the past, are an elaboration by the masculine principle, out of all balance, out of relationship with the Feminine. And so, I am proposing a new ontology, based on Consciousness, the true source of the Universe, and its animating principle, and a new vision of the Feminine. These are the times of the Reappearance of the Feminine, the Piscean Age of great male thinkers, together with centuries of male domination before it, have run their course. They have brought us to the brink of our own extinction, but now the women are here. And so, here are some other key observations: The male mind has shown a marked preference for dead universes, a dead earth, a dead world, of numbers, statistics, the work force, and that most terrible of modern terms, collateral damage. The male mind has a tendency to promote itself to first place. The male mind is powered by the relentless logic of either/or, them or us, enemies or friends, they hit us so we hit them. The male mind always has to be making war on something - the war on drugs, the war on poverty, the war on terrorism, etc. - but in fact, since one of the laws of consciousness is what you focus on is what you get, any war only creates more of them. The male mind has a tendency to found new religions, with itself as the center. The male mind has always edited: some of us matter, others don't, some of us are holy, some parts of us are good, others aren't; spirit only likes us if we are good, and he only likes the good parts. The men have always stressed our difference from everything else, I am stressing our similarity, our likeness, and what we share in common. And so, the Feminine, for century's women have been turned into the property of men, to be told their place and their nature by men, and what they could and could not do, and now the women are coming into their own. And so, the Feminine: It is all about going beyond the discrete, separate, and disconnected into the greater whole, beyond our matter/mechanism technological mindset ways of thinking, into Consciousness, which has field properties, beyond ownership into partnership, beyond analysis into a whole new synthesis, from the partial and incomplete, into the wider, bigger picture of things, and into completely new ways of both seeing and knowing the Earth, and relating to her new values and NEW IDEAS. It is not about conquering, but honoring. It is not about making war on terrorism, but extending helping hands. It is not about making war on poverty, but reaching out to the poor. It is not about Either/Or, but Both/And. In the inclusive way of relating to others, not exclusive, in the Feminine, there is room for everyone, and everyone matters, and all beings on the planet matter and are important. We need to redefine our own divinity, and of what we are all here for. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1209-1217 Green, L., A Feminine Vision for the World: Consciousness, & a New Outrageous Ontology ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1212 A3 Knowing The truth of who and what the Earth really is, and what she makes possible for us, are astounding to comprehend – for a start, new ways of knowing, I call our Feminine modes. The Earth around us, the trees, the animals, around us are living conscious spiritual beings, like ourselves, and we can know them not through dissection and analysis, but by relating consciousness to consciousness, spirit to spirit, and soul to soul, not by having a "theory about" but through direct experience, through attunement, communion and immersion, through our bodies, senses, souls, spirits, our deep psyches, and, oh, that is where the bliss is! These are the modes of heart-consciousness, our right brained modes, our poetic, our shamanic and mystical modes, our symbolic modes, our archetypal modes, our magical and spiritual modes of knowing, fully supported by this new Universe picture. And Love alone is its own reason its own goals, its own limits. And so, this new ontology is a rewrite of the body, gender, sex, and many other limiting notions that have come down to us, and the Earth herself. The Earth is the gateway into the magical and the mystical. We have not begun to comprehend the true meaning of the material world. The Earth is simply our vantage point on the greater Universe. We have yet to fathom what she makes available to us in the ways of true understanding and deeper knowing, of Earth connection and of connecting with Spirit, and the deepest truth of our own identities. And so, the human race needs to redefine our divinity, in terms of absolute dependency. We are not lords and masters of the Earth, we are not running the show, but we are a part of something much greater than ourselves, and we have to learn about being part of Gaia, of one living organism. And we need to redefine our entire roles here. Not Earth conquerors, but Earth keepers. Not having dominion over the planet, but being responsible for her. B. And Now, Ourselves B1 – Reincarnation Jesus: "I will utter things hidden from the foundation of the world" (Matthew 13:35). This new Universe picture has a place for reincarnation, a process in which one soul (self, consciousness) takes on bodies again and again and lays them down, a process wholly impossible in most current scientific or philosophical universal ontologies, but both a possibility, and I propose, a reality in the Consciousness Universe. But the real question is: what does reincarnation really mean? With the help of many sources, the full picture is starting to emerge. B2 – The Truth of Human Identity We are not simply material beings, not simply matter or what the universal materialist models claim. We are not simply the victims of genes, drives and childhood, but we are immortal eternal evolving spiritual beings, who take on a cycle of earthly lives, in order to realize certain Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1209-1217 Green, L., A Feminine Vision for the World: Consciousness, & a New Outrageous Ontology ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1213 purposes, certain goals, and to develop abilities that the Earth plane makes possible for us and then depart for other realms of the physical or purely spiritual Universes. We are not simply creatures of the day bound by birth and death, but we live forever, growing, learning, developing, evolving. And so, the human situation: Jesus taught reincarnation. It was the centerpiece of his teachings, banned by a fourth century council, that decided the populace be controlled by fear, deleted all references to reincarnation in the scriptures and inserted fear terms instead. Many problems of the modern world owe to the fact that reincarnation has not been taught in the West. If it had been taught, there would have been no suppression of women, because we have both male and female lives, and the gift of both sexes would have been honored here. B3 – The Materialist Blasphemy And so, the human situation, thanks to the cunning and conniving of male priests we have never known it. On the scientific view, we live one short life, and death is the end of things. The current religious picture is not much better, the soul is created at conception, born into one short life, in which to practice good deeds, and then at death it's judged for all eternity and sent either to heaven or to the dark world. The reincarnational framework is really the truth of our situation. We take on many life times. We come here with plans and purposes, reasons for being here, we chose our parents for the abilities we could acquire through them. We come here in the company of our oldest friends, friends for eons, to fully experience life in the Earth plane, as both sexes, in all different times of history, all races, in all climates, and in every social role. We are here to learn, to know, and to grow, and to discover the full richness that the Earth makes available to us. B4 – Equality of Spirit And so, third, reincarnation is the great equalizer, the ultimate level playing field, and the source of a true new Bill of Rights, we all come here for the same reason, to fully experience the Earth plane. We all come here in every social role, and so there is no reason to look down on anyone because our identity includes membership in theirs, and who they are, we will have been or we will become. B5 – Incarnation as Karma Reincarnation puts the ground under ethics, which otherwise just floats there. There is only one law of the Earth plane, harm to none, and everyone knows this law when we come here, and then, we forget, or are talked out of it. Ethics these days is doing whatever you think you can get away with. But it is not that simple. Reincarnation is associated with karma – that what you do to another or to the world will be done back to you, in this or another life, and so we hold the keys of our own destinies in our own hands. Karma is not a punishment, but a way to learn, to understand both ourselves and others, by experiencing how others are affected by our actions. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1209-1217 Green, L., A Feminine Vision for the World: Consciousness, & a New Outrageous Ontology ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1214 The ethical precepts of Jesus become luminous when you realize he had reincarnation in mind: Those that live by the sword die by it; do unto others as you would have them do unto you. What we are learning about reincarnation sheds light on the mystery of what we are all here for: we are working out the laws of Love on planet Earth and reincarnation affords us insight into a Universe that is fashioned in Love. We have time to learn our lessons – reincarnation is not the school system, no god is punishing us, we are accountable to ourselves; we are responsible, and we are accountable. Free will, a problem for the materialist world view, is an original property of consciousness, like Life, like creativity itself. Jesus teaching of Love. What are we all here for? We are not here to consume and destroy the planet or watch TV or be numbed by advertisements or to amass fortunes at the expense of others or the Earth, to continue being blind, deaf, and dumb – unable to see, hear or feel the magic of the Earth around us or to experience other immortal spiritual beings like ourselves. The mess we have made of the Earth plane shows us our answer: We are here to Love, to Love the planet, each other, and ourselves, and to create something beautiful for all, here on the Earth plane. B6 – Consciousness is Love and Must Create And finally, reincarnation gives us a breathtaking glimpse into the true causalities that belong to Consciousness. We come here with reasons for being here, under intent, plan, purpose, what Aristotle called entelechy: the vital purpose within each life form. It is my life purpose that determines everything about me, my sex, my physical form, my social role, my country of origin. The Cartesian Universe is organized into things, pushed and pulled about by purely physical forces that function without purpose. The Consciousness Universe of Idealism is organized into souls, each focused around an "I" and a sense of self. In this Universe, Love is primal cause, from which spring Ideas, organizing principles of our Consciousness, of our lives, and perhaps also out there, in the greater Universe. The idealist had ideas, but not the field properties of Consciousness. Science has the field properties of energy, without the intelligence of Consciousness, and here is their reconciliation. And then, the most ultimate causality of all, bedrock in this new Universe picture. Subjectivity, the ultimate Mystery in the Universe, knowable only in ourselves, through direct experience, but by an evolutionary extension also there in every other living being as well, each one dear to itself. Many physicists believe that embodied in the Universe is one simple idea. I say: It is the idea of the inner Self with causalities not findable in present day physics, intent on its own self development, self understanding, self realization, and self fulfillment, in a manner that is compatible with this same intent in everything else and it is our primary spiritual existence that gives meaning to our physical reality. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1209-1217 Green, L., A Feminine Vision for the World: Consciousness, & a New Outrageous Ontology ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1215 And so, what matters to people, to us, is Real, and does matter: spirit, soul, freedom, creativity, the experience of meaning, of purpose, an afterlife, and so on. This is not a fiction but the primary reality. In this Universe, intent works, and teleology is everywhere, and there is just one law of Consciousness: Consciousness must create, and will turn itself inside out to do so. This is the ultimate necessity in this new Universe picture. All of these causalities are problematic in the old Cartesian and new materialist Universe picture, but they are the ultimate terms in which to describe and experience the new Consciousness Universe, based on Consciousness and its true nature as fundamental terms. This Universe has a place for life after death, for everything that really matters to us. And what is it all about? Tom Berry, the laws of the universe: subjectivity, differentiation and communion - something to do with the paradox of differentiation and unity (private oneness within Oneness), something to do with Love, and something to do with ineffable Joy. And the only real question (in three parts) for any one of us remains: Who am I? What am I here for, now, at this momentous turning point? And how can I best bring Spirit here? C. Spirit – We Are Each Incarnations of Possibility This new Universe picture has a place for Spirit, and opens directly into Spirit, the essential term for every religion, as simply Infinite Consciousness, all Universes, all worlds, we ourselves and the Earth, formed out of this Consciousness - divine and sacred throughout. All Consciousness, even the least bit of Consciousness is sacred, being the very Consciousness that Spirit is. Every being, the Cosmos, Earth and our hidden, private self is an Incarnation of Spirit. Each new incarnation, no matter where or when, and this includes even beyond this planet, is the chance to further the loving, creative goals of spirit. If we bear this in mind during our infinitesimally short lifespans, we will surely incarnate again with more power, more creativity, and more love to help bring about the realization of Spirit, of Consciousness-in-Itself, of God (beyond definitions), so the process toward the final awakening can continue. And so, for the first time in their long, bitter, antagonist history, both religion and science share a common base. And in the West, Spirit has a name, the name Spirit gave to Moses, I Am, a name ever on our lips and in our hearts, and the gospels ring with I Am, I Am the way, the truth, and the light, I Am the good shepherd, I Am the true vine, and spirituality has something to do with connecting our small I with the great I Am that is within us. In the same way in the East, Hinduism states, "Tat Tvam Asi" or you are that, i.e., you are the other as well as yourself. And so, the Native North American and most indigenous peoples had it right, every being has its own spirit, and is also an expression of Spirit (which we call animism). Spirit is the most fundamental term of all reality, manifesting in two paradoxical modes: Spirit in form, Spirit formless. And this new Universe picture has a place for the essential insight of all religion, almost smothered by church tradition, Love, that Spirit is Love - not an emotion but the source of all Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1209-1217 Green, L., A Feminine Vision for the World: Consciousness, & a New Outrageous Ontology ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1216 emotions, a great Oneness, available everywhere, but especially in the Earth, with its various forms of Oneness at all levels and depths. And so we define Spirit in a new way, and who what and where Spirit is in and within everything. And so, the indigenous tradition: why would I build a temple to my god, when I can go out in Nature and participate in its being? Spirit is everywhere in the Earth. We live in a time when all religious ideas can and must change. This term Consciousness is the base for a whole new religious picture where Spirit is everywhere, around us, within us, and everywhere in the Earth. You cannot see Spirit, but you can feel Spirit, go out into nature, drop your boundaries and open your doors to the inner self. And so, we have found our way back, back into the arms of The Beloved, whence we tore ourselves away so long ago, so very long ago, that no one can remember it. It is time to go home. There is only one Spirit, Love. There is only one religion, Love. Only one practice and one principle, and only one choice on the planet: Choose Love. It is time to create and fashion a new world, based on Love, the deepest truth of the Second Coming. A world based on Love and Truth, the Feminine Principle. And the Good News does not get any better, we are all ready for it, and to create and recreate on Earth, the Garden of Eden she was always intended to be And so, we live in the times of the reappearance of the Feminine, the rising tide of the Feminine energy throughout the Earth. And so, may you become the poetry that you really are. I rest my case. I am. I am: One of the sleep walkers. I am: The Goddess of the beginnings. I am: The True north strong and free. I am. All peace, Lorna °°° Autobiographical Note: Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1209-1217 Green, L., A Feminine Vision for the World: Consciousness, & a New Outrageous Ontology ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1217 I have a background in science (B.Sc. McGill University, 1960; Ph.D. Rockefeller University, 1965), philosophy (M.A. University of Toronto, 1971), spiritual traditions as a convert to Catholicism at the age of thirty-six (I no longer formally practice) and the New Age. For three years in the early 1970s, I taught the Great Books at St. John's College, Santa Fe, and spent some months with the Benedictine and charismatic monastery of Pecos, New Mexico. And so, by the time I was 40, I had picked up most of the major learning of these times. And it was time to get serious about Metaphysics. I knew that if I was to have the Answers that I sought, I must put myself wholly with God, for I really was "just interested in God's thoughts, the rest are details." So I returned home to Canada, with my husband, and took up a fourteen-year wilderness life of writing, practical tasks and prayer. There all my learning came together. I took that life for God and metaphysics, and God gave me the Earth. By the time I was 48, I knew what was what, and made my first pass at Metaphysics with Earth Age: A New Vision of God: the Human and the Earth. I wrote it in 1987; it was published in 1994. Works: The Verification of Metaphysical Theories: Ethics as Basis for Metaphysics (1985) Earth Age: A New Vision of God, the Human and the Earth (1994, 2nd ed., 2003) Beyond Chance and Necessity: The Limits of Science and the Nature of the Real (2003) Guiding Principles for the Planet. The New Paradigms: Meditations on Cartesian Themes (2004) The Reign of the Holy Spirit, Christ-Self: I Am (2005) Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1218-1228 Miller, I., The Mask of Eternity: The Quest for Immortality and the Afterlife ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1218 Statement The Mask of Eternity The Quest for Immortality and the Afterlife * Iona Miller † "To himself everyone is immortal; he may know that he is going to die, but he can never know that he is dead." (Samuel Butler, 1835-1902) "The idea of immortality, that like a sea has ebbed and flowed in the human heart, with its countless waves of hope and fear, beating against the shores and rocks of time and fate, was not born of any book, nor of any creed, nor of any religion. It was born of human affection, and it will continue to ebb and flow beneath the mists and clouds of doubt and darkness as long as love kisses the lips of death. It is the rainbow - Hope, shining upon the tears of grief." (Robert G. Ingersoll, "The Ghosts", 1876 Lecture) Background We tend to imagine that we emerge from and return to a non-existent Source. From the time of the Neanderthals and Cro-Magnon, notions of living ancestry and some sort of afterlife have permeated the psyche and culture of Homo sapiens. Research into crosscultural burial practices and propitiatory rituals, including sacrificial death, has been interpreted to indicate beliefs in a netherworld existence, populated by nature spirits and ancestors. Trance, hypnosis, and psychoactive plants can produce experiences of a plenum or void, interpreted as a separate reality with spiritual attributes. The nature and locale of such a netherworld and afterlife remains the object of speculation, despite ghostly phenomena. Each culture has had its answer throughout the ages. Such absolute space has been equated with the groundstate of primordial mind and virtual light beyond the phenomenal. Altered states and dreams gave rise to the notion that the stone cold abyss is an underworld of the dead – or an Elysian field. Then, as now, mortuary rituals helped the living endure separation. The afterlife says more about our imaginal and conceptual ideas about it than its literal reality as a physical or transcendental realm. We still speculate on life that persists after death and how or what that might mean, in * See Iona's website for the full sensory experience: http://ancestorsandarchetypes.weebly.com/afterlife.html † Correspondence: Iona Miller, independent artist, scholar, & therapist. Rogue Valley, Oregon, USA. Email: [email protected] Websites: http://ionamiller.weebly.com; http://ionamillersubjects.weebly.com/ Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1218-1228 Miller, I., The Mask of Eternity: The Quest for Immortality and the Afterlife ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1219 spiritual, psychological, and scientific terms. This is not mere semantics or metaphysical narrative. A world seen through the lens of divine order is very different from one rooted in self-organizing chaos and complexity. Physical law and divine agency continue to quarrel in our unconscious minds, which retain archaic beliefs. Even if "consciousness" persists as a category or property, which is doubtful, it is not ours in any sense, despite theories of panpsychism and panprotopsychism. Even if consciousness is a primordial feature of the universe, such proto-conscious bears no resemblance to our individuality. So, our theoretical continuance remains moot, being a return to the profoundly undifferentiated state. The conundrum remains a labyrinth in which we battle with the mortality Minotaur. Our unconscious psyche always retains these more primordial levels of belief. MarieLouise von Franz (1987) notes, "It is in fact true, as Jung has emphasized, that the unconscious psyche pays very little attention to the abrupt end of bodily life and behaves as if the psychic life of the individual, that is, the individuation process, will simply continue. ... The unconscious 'believes' quite obviously in a life after death" (p. ix). All speculation about after-death conditions remains more philosophical than scientific, even when mired in the philosophy of science or the psychology of scientists. We needn't be atheists, existentialists, or nihilists to notice the phenomenology where we find it. We must distinguish between an ontological afterlife and imaginal fantasies of an afterlife, and the epistemology of such metaphors. A parade of historical afterlife beliefs demonstrates that old ideas of the hereafter or land of the dead do not die as easily as its presumed inhabitants. Not content with historical versions of such notions, pop culture continues to mash-up faddish ideas and concoct new notions. Such idiosyncratic ideas are infused with pop science often compounded from contradictory or misinterpreted physics theories. Traditional and iconoclastic ideas clash. The dead in this way eternally haunt us as we contemplate our own unavoidable future. Some might say it scares the hell out of us, but it may also scare the "heaven" in. Even those in the rational professions are not exempt from irrational ideas. Claims of proof are premature at best, and spurious. But, as they say with reference to the creative power of fear: "There are no atheists in foxholes." In this sense, we dig our own philosophical grave. A plethora of theories from consciousness studies and transpersonal psychologies, rooted in eastern and western cultures has compounded the situation, which is not confined to the esoterics of theological discussion. As ever, we are left with more questions than answers, all of which are strongly rooted in worldview rather than hard facts. Selfindulgent hypotheses abound. What we do know is that humans engage in a wide variety of self-soothing activities to stave off pain, fear, and insanity. Participation mystique, mystical fusion, is projected beyond death, as well as a living process that is a primitive relic of the original Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1218-1228 Miller, I., The Mask of Eternity: The Quest for Immortality and the Afterlife ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1220 undifferentiated state. It can be an unwitting identification with the idea of a thing – in this case, the afterlife. Naturally, there are all sorts of sociopolitical, power, and authority reasons to promote specific ideas and requirements for admission to the hypothetical afterlife. The afterlife gets wielded as a weapon and reward or commodity in the war for social control, as a mythic not literal reality. Methods of persuasion range from religion to torture. Paradigm shift is related to worldview warfare. Myth is about the past, things supposed to have happened beyond historical time, but science tries to predict the future based on the past. History is often confounded with mythology, as are the wellsprings of human behavior and fundamentals of our psychology. Cross-cultural Descriptions The east has its ancestor worship, karma and reincarnation, as well as Chinese alchemy of immortality in some hypostasized state, recounted in The Secret of the Golden Flower. Special priests and sacred texts like the Egyptian Book of the Dead and the Tibetan Book of the Dead describe the nature of the imaginal journey. Qabalah describes the emanation of all and everything from the "Three Veils of Negative Existence": Ain, Ain Soph, and Ain Soph Aur. The Vedas are perhaps the oldest extant cosmological model. Such descriptions don't match cross-culturally. We can imagine ancient shamans venturing into the heights and depths of human experience. Drugs, sickness, or trauma ignited the near-death experience from which legends and beliefs grew. Shamans became the mediators of such non-ordinary states, and later were replaced by priesthoods who controlled the narratives on the nature of reality, from the Dark Night of the Soul to Enlightenment. The ancient Greeks imagined the underworld as cold and windy. Gods and heroes made descents into hell and returned with paradigmatic boons. The Christians imagined hell as unbearably hot and hellish, while heaven was idealized. The imagery is culturally conditioned as near-death experiences show. For example, Hindus are unlikely to meet Jesus in their tunnel of light. But that does not make such visionary states literal reality or more than a metaphor. Artifacts of out of body experience and the human death process can be misinterpreted and/or idealized. Such disembodied experience can be heavenly or hellish. Todd Murphy (2015) describes the role of brain areas in such crises. This glimpse of an afterlife in either a positive or negative light actually says more about their own psyche and cultural conditioning than a netherworld. The limbic system can produce strongly euphoric or dysphoric affective and cognitive states, both verbal and non-verbal. Murphy (1999) suggests that "the reason why some NDEs are hellish is that the positive affect that usually accompanies NDEs, out of the right temporal neocortex together with Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1218-1228 Miller, I., The Mask of Eternity: The Quest for Immortality and the Afterlife ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1221 the left amygdala, is replaced by negative affect out of the left temporal neocortex together with the right amygdala. If this were so, then it might explain how an NDE can be unpleasant, but not why it is so." He notes, such non-ordinary states can also be healing, mentally and physically. Anything seemed preferable to consignment to oblivion (aside from eternal punishment). The Egyptians and medieval Christians sought to buy their way into heaven by virtuous or ethical behavior, which always remains culturally relative. The Jews, having endured the immortality obsessions of the Egyptians, still tend to leave questions of the afterlife (Olam haBa) to G-d. The Torah contains no clear references to it. Eschatological ideas only arose later, perhaps through syncretism. Cathar heretics sought the afterlife through Gnostic notions of purification, perfection, and denial of evil physical materialism. The alchemists engaged vigorously in a psychophysical process of transfiguration to elevate themselves and matter. All suggest our aversion to the nothingness of nonexistence and yearning for redemption and escaping judgment. Maybe the whole point of such practice is facing our own death and darkness directly, to "die before dying," as Plato purportedly said. Quantum Physics of the Afterlife Science is the new religion. Some physicists first claimed that life goes on in the quantum state, and then others changed the narrative to the more fundamental domain of the virtual vacuum or pre-spacetime. But if death is an illusion, it remains the most persistent one. Scientists seek less disreputable theories of forms of persistence, but we must not attribute real identity to a concept, even when couched as hypothesis or theory. Professor Fred Alan Wolf unpacked quantum physics for an afterlife in vaguely mystical terms. Such works popularized these notions with the public, whether they actually grasped the science behind them, or not. Their appeal was largely emotional – a validation of felt-sense and new age intuition. It produced "good parrots" rather than good science. Such models are often based on state of the art concepts or technology of a society, which are employed as metaphorical structures for conceptual or spiritual understanding, rather than actual physical laws or ontological realities. The afterlife is one such boundary. We cannot see beyond that threshold of death, but speculate in modern terms. The story changes as we push on the cognitive boundary digging down into finer realms of nature, but the undiscovered country remains the same. The map is not the territory. The nonmaterial realm of existence becomes the quantum or sub-quantal domain. Wolf, in an interview with Rosen, (1998) states: I believe that the findings of quantum physics increasingly support Plato [who taught that there is a more perfect, non-material realm of existence]. There is credible scientific evidence that suggests the existence of a non-material, nonJournal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1218-1228 Miller, I., The Mask of Eternity: The Quest for Immortality and the Afterlife ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1222 physical universe that has a reality even though it might not as yet be clearly perceptible to our senses and scientific instrumentation. And when we consider out-of-body experiences, shamanic journeys and lucid dream states – though they cannot be replicated in the true scientific sense – they also point to the existence of non-material dimensions of reality. (p. 246) The "Open Sesame" of Subspace Tom Bearden was among the first to suggest the threshold of death is some sort of return to the sub-quantum vacuum or scalar field of virtual vacuum fluctuation, from which we have never really been separate. We can see no deeper into nature than fluctuating fields of energy, which constitute the constant background motion. All that is, is in motion. But it is sustained by the ground state or cosmic zero. Elsewhere I've written, "Passage of an electromagnetic wave through the vacuum leaves an invisible trace. The vacuum 'imprints' everything that happens in it. This imprint is electrogravitational; i.e., the imprinting process structures the substructure of vacuum spacetime [the artificial potential of vacuum]." Presumably this imprint constitutes the blueprint of our afterlife "existence", which is non-existence, that is, fusion with the ground state. Such arguments for continuance in the virtual states and hyperspaces are supported with notions of EM fields and negentropy, as well as reversal of the process of how nothing becomes something in a 4-D scalar domain. Notions of zero-point were popularized into ideas of a Source Field, from which we arise and to which we return. The empty space, absolute space, was again filled with imagination. The Heart Sutra aphorism summed it up: Form does not differ from the void. Buckminster Fuller espoused a similar zero-point philosophy in his geometric model of the Vector Equilibrium Matrix. But such zero-point is not an inhabitable space in any sense we can imagine, though it models the dynamic transforms of matter and energy. We seem to divinize the boundaries of our consciousness as we push them back from causal, to quantal, to sub-quantal domains. We use the technical discoveries of hydraulics, computers, or holography to amplify such notions. We can be pretty sure, at some level, that the divine is in no way limited to the latest discoveries. Related ideas such as the energy body, field body, and holographic concepts of reality have been grabbed up by new age amateurs and conflated beyond recognition as cultish fantasies of Ascension, rooted in pseudoscience. Mortality is possibly the hardest fact of all. Are such theories just another ritual of expiation for the inconvenient truth that we simply don't and cannot know? Is knowledge of immanent death or preparation through meditation or other methods actually relevant or merely consoling in the veil of suffering we call life? We seem to die a more painful death than non-reflective animals. But even animals mourn. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1218-1228 Miller, I., The Mask of Eternity: The Quest for Immortality and the Afterlife ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1223 Does nature recognize death as loss or merely compost? Even stars live finite lives and die. Much depends on our notions of linear and cyclic time, binding, and its transcendence. So obviously, the afterlife may remain more a comfort to the private grief of the living than any reality for the dead and their regrettable demise. We attempt to magically banish our fear and pain of not knowing. Thus, we have a potpourri of ideas to accept or reject, none of which can ever be proven but may be re-contextualized or falsified as supporting theories fail. The human mind continues to rebel against the nihilistic notion that physiological arrest is a fade to black demise. It is our final condition, despite the facts of energy conservation. The body ceases to be animated by any "vital principle." Death enters the world with birth, surrounded from pre-history with taboos and fears. In ethno-medicine, retention of seed was one route to immortality. Many paths devised a non-material body as a vehicle for consciousness beyond the grave. Violent, premature, or accidental death is perhaps even harder to accept than a terminal illness or old age. When the vital breath leaves does a great spiritual force break open the skull to another domain of existence? That is the question. Much depends on what we mean by simple words, such as is or be, much less questions of damnation, elevation, transmogrification, transmigration, or recyling. It begs the question, what if anything is reborn if ego is one sort of experience and soul another not always included in traditional reincarnation theories? Is it just another egoic control fantasy or palliative? When it comes to the human psyche, we want to believe and such ideas have driven much of world history and the history of religions. A glorious afterlife has been offered up as a consolation for war and the vagaries of fate and destiny. Is there such a thing as a "good death" or a "bad death," and who makes that valuation (because it is certainly not the departed)? But is a good death really voluntarily offering our selves up to the gods, even when conceived as an act of regeneration? If death regenerates life, does regeneration cause death? Neurological Models Many phenomena arise as the brain and body die, as shown in reports of near-death experiencers who claim their consciousness persisted beyond their clinical expiration. They say, "I was THERE." That is, they describe their disembodied consciousness as their experiential reality. Reports have been interpreted, measured, and evaluated from religions such as Tibetan Buddhism to sciences such as neurology and neurotheology. Michael Persinger's experiments applying magnetic fields to the brain have produced classical alternate states, such as sense of Presence, suspension of time and spatial awareness, hauntings, even alien abduction. Such controlled modulation indicates the Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1218-1228 Miller, I., The Mask of Eternity: The Quest for Immortality and the Afterlife ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1224 mechanisms underlying many spiritual experiences. Temporal lobe epilepsy can also mimic such states as the brain misfires in a transient storm of stimulation. A whole spectrum of non-ordinary experience arises in states of hyperand hypo-arousal. They were described in the 1970s by Roland Fischer in a taxonomy. Stanislov Grof and John Curtis Gowan also produced such taxonomies, many of which have reinforced ancient and modern cultural beliefs in the hereafter. Laurence O. McKinney (1994) suggests that many religious experiences are actually neurologically based and that death itself as described variously in many religions is a peaceful slow fade of consciousness as the mind unwinds – whatever consciousness is. He suggests we experience eternity in the last ten seconds of life (ironic as experiencing eternity in measurable seconds may be), due to anoxia and molecules such as endorphins that shape our reality. He claims: "A major insight was that, in normal brain death, the chronology-creating prefrontals fail first, pitching our last dream into timelessness while the steady return to near fetal consciousness as the brain dies cell by cell will dissolve us into a comforting forever, suggesting why heaven is so similar in all religions. Whether by the laws of God or the laws of cognitive neuroscience, we'll still end up in eternity so why fight about it? God's plan or good luck, it makes no difference." Is the dying brain in a heightened or merely altered state, downloading the detritus or débris of fragmenting memory? Such reality is based in the mind itself, a regression to a primal epoch of collective unconsciousness – the ouroboric fusion of undifferentiated infancy, described by Erich Neumann (1983) as pre-egoic wholeness. The cyclic serpent biting its own tail is a feedback process, a primordial symbol of immortality – the zero that is One. Short of clinical death, death imagery mimics the therapeutic process of trauma healing. Trauma locks up energies in the body, and the self-image can become frozen and inhibit growth of the personality. This image can be destructured or liquefied, eliminating the old holographic pattern and returning all elements to a chaotic state. From this chaos, the new image automatically emerges in regenerated form. This death/rebirth cycle is healing, and may be the mechanism of the placebo effect. But who can explain the unexplainable with either traditional or contemporary terms? Jung attempted to re-contextualize arguments of the soul by de-literalizing the religious notion and recognizing the middle ground of the imaginal psyche – a non-religious concept of soul as the animating principle. A religious or hallucinatory experience at near-death is arguably no assurance of noncorporeal persistence upon demise. Not all NDEs have a positive valence, and negative stories tend to be under-reported in self-validating theories. Such reports tend to become more elaborate over time. That is, the imaginal psyche tends to embroider them Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1218-1228 Miller, I., The Mask of Eternity: The Quest for Immortality and the Afterlife ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1225 to suit our beliefs. In the gray zone, death isn't necessarily permanent, and life can be hard to define. Psychedelics have been used to assuage fear of death. They demonstrate that imaginal death is really the discorporation of the personality – ego death. Yet ego is another mental construct. Such positive or negative experience is strongly correlated with "set and setting," not to mention personal psychology. Theories of mind and death proliferate. One of the most well-known is Tipler's Physics of Immortality (1994), with its Omega Point cosmology of singularity, derived from Tielhard de Chardin's philosophy. Parapsychologists including William Teller and Dean Radin (1997, 2007, 2008) have contributed throughout the years with various theories rooted in yet other theories of consciousness suggested by interpretations of physics. Really, one must begin by stating the theoretical basis, whether the Standard Model, QFT, Many Worlds, String theory, M-theory, Holographic, Parallel Worlds, transactional, quantum cosmology, pre-spacetime physics, or other theoretical roots. Ontology, epistemology, and percepts remain relevant to those arguments and must be defined, including the human or physical basis of phenomenology experienced by humans. Most theories are incompatible with one another, and some have proven to relate only to mathematical realities and imaginal dimensions that don't map onto ordinary reality. And we have to keep theoretical operators, such as scalars, dark matter and energy, within their own hypothetical realms. This proliferation of theories about the immaterial within our own observable reality demonstrates that even physics is on shaky ground. We still aim to suspend time in an eternal state in our minds where death has no sting. But science reports that time processing is an artifact of the parietal lobe, which can go offline under certain EM effects, trance, or deep meditation, yielding a sensation of timelessness. Tibetan leader, Dudjom Rinpoche has said, "Death: the mingling of the mother luminosity and the child luminosity: When the path luminosity mingles with the ground luminosity itself, at that instant one can free oneself into the absolute clarity. ... Great yogis allow the luminosities to arise and mingle in that space, bypassing Bardo projections. They become the light of life itself." (source unavailable, from my notes) Anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff alleges, "Pure Consciousness is included in fundamental space-time geometry along with the precursors of spin, mass, charge. In fact, everything we see in our real world stems from patterns in the most fundamental level that percolate up to our level which is many, many magnitudes of order higher." (source unavailable, from my notes) We are left to draw our own highly conditioned abstractions and self-serving conclusions. Of one thing we remain certain: life after death remains the great Mystery, the Magnum Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1218-1228 Miller, I., The Mask of Eternity: The Quest for Immortality and the Afterlife ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1226 Mysterium, and a matter if not of personal discovery, of self-revelation, should any mote remain to acknowledge the subjective condition of non-existence. We might concur with Jung (1955): "But when we penetrate the depths of the soul and when we try to understand its mysterious life, we shall discern that death is not a meaningless end, the mere vanishing into nothingness-it is an accomplishment, a ripe fruit on the tree of life" (p. 27). Summary Jung (1959) himself felt, "What comes after death is something of an indescribable splendor so that our imagination and our sensibility could not conceive even approximately ... Sooner or later, the dead will become one with us; but, in actual fact, we know little or nothing of that way of being. What do we know of this land, after death? The dissolution of our temporary form in eternity does not involve a loss of meaning: rather, we will all feel members of a single body." When we are gone, only the ultimate question remains. Evidence that consciousness survives death remains elusive. With or without warm, welcoming smiles from relatives we may have loathed in life, it remains our obsession to know what happens when our screen-reality stops, and fades to black. Conscious immortality remains questionable. This writer remains firmly agnostic but enjoys entertaining wishful thinking. Death is the greatest mystery of life. Buddha rejected the question as useless, according to Jung. Throughout history, it remains a source of wonder, fear, hopefulness, and puzzlement. We seek compassionate ways of dealing with this uncertainty that no discussion of entanglement or holographic memory can assuage. There is little wonder we tend to fall back on traditional attitudes informed by simplicity, meaningful ceremony, and acceptance. It is something we cannot grasp at all, despite our conceptions of time and space and what might lie beyond them, even if some of our psychic experience seems unbound by spacetime. There is NoWhere to go and we are all going to get there. As Jung (1958) said, "We are not in a position to prove that anything of us is necessarily preserved for eternity. But we can assume with great probability that something of our psyche goes on existing. Whether this part is in itself conscious, we don't know either. ...The concept of immortality tells us nothing about the related idea of rebirth or metempsychosis." Even if mankind has fantasized about it for two million years, it is not self-evident. We can recognize our own existential finitude and may not benefit by shrinking away from the void of death. Thus, death may be the secret of life. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1218-1228 Miller, I., The Mask of Eternity: The Quest for Immortality and the Afterlife ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1227 _______________ REFERENCES Fuller, R. B. (1982). Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking (2 nd ed.). MacMillan. Jung, C. G. (1932). Commentary on The Secret of the Golden Flower: A Chinese Book of Life (trans. R. Wilhelm). Original in German, 1929. Jung, C. G. (1948-1969). CW 18, Para § 1705-7 Jung, C. G. (1955). Memorial to J. S. [Jerome Schloss, of New York]. Spring 1955, p. 63. New York: Analytical Psychology Club. Written in English and delivered in 1927. CW 18, Pages 757-758. Jung, C. G. (1958). Q&A at the Basel Psychology Club. Also in Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters, pp. 375-391 Jung, C. G. (1959, 6 June). Carl Gustav Jung Ponders the Meaning of Death. Reprinted in Psychology, June 6, 2011. McKinney, Laurence O. (1994), Neurotheology: Virtual Religion in the 21st Century. Cambridge, MA: American Institute for Mindfulness. Miller, Iona (2016a). The Mask of Eternity: The Afterlife & Soul's Mystery of Immortality: http://ancestorsandarchetypes.weebly.com/afterlife.html Miller, Iona (2016b). Neurotheology: How the Brain Creates God: http://ionamiller.weebly.com/neurotheology.html Murphy, Todd (1999). The Structure And Function Of Near-Death Experiences: https://www.god-helmet.com/rebirth.htm Murphy, Todd (2015). Sacred Pathways: The Brain's role in Religious and Mystic Experiences (2 nd ed.). CreateSpace. Neumann, Erich (1983). The Great Mother: An Analysis of the Archetype (R. Mannheim, trans.). Bollingen Series XLVII. Princeton University Press. Original 1955. Radin, Dean. (1997). The Conscious Universe: The Scientific Truth of Psychic Phenomena. HarperCollins. Radin, Dean. (2006). Entangled Minds: Extrasensory Experiences in a Quantum Reality. Paraview Pocket Books. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1218-1228 Miller, I., The Mask of Eternity: The Quest for Immortality and the Afterlife ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1228 Radin, Dean (2008). Blog: http://deanradin.blogspot.com/2008/01/two-recent-talks.html Schwartz, Gary E. (2003). The Afterlife Experiments: Breakthrough Scientific Evidence of Life After Death. Atria Books. Tipler, Frank J. (1994). The Physics of Immortality: Modern Cosmology, God and the Resurrection of the Dead. New York: Anchor Books. http://www.deathreference.com/Sy-Vi/Taboos-and-SocialStigma.html#ixzz42dpYdLTF von Franz, Marie-Louise (1987). Consciousness, power and sacrifice. Psychological Perspectives: A Journal of Global Consciousness Integrating Psyche, Soul and Nature, 18, (2), Fall 1987, 375-385. Wolf, Fred Alan (1998). The soul and quantum physics: An Interview with Dr. Fred Alan Wolf (pp. 245-252). In E. J. Rosen (Ed.), Experiencing the Soul: Before Birth, During Life, After Death. Carlsbad, CA: Hays House. °°° Biographical Note: Iona Miller is a nonfiction writer widely published in the academic and popular press, clinical hypnotherapist (ACHE) and multimedia artist. She is interested in extraordinary human potential and experience, and the effects of doctrines of religion, science, philosophy, psychology, and the arts. She writes cutting edge speculative essays and creates startling images on her unusual websites. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1229-1234 Nunn, C., Are We Really "such stuff as dreams are made on"? ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1229 Statement Are We Really "such stuff as dreams are made on"? Chris Nunn* (Many thanks to our editor, Greg Nixon, for suggesting significant improvements to the text.) Abstract A type of panprotopsychist theory is briefly described that views energy eigenstate manifestations as accompanied by protopsychist elements termed SoSs (scintillae of subjectivity). These are pictured as threads of 'real time', a concept distinct from the metric 'clock time' of relativity theory and everyday usage. Such threads are woven in the brain into patterns that constitute the flow of our conscious experience (only some of which gets into neural memories and is reportable). There is surprisingly strong evidence that these patterns can persist, from a clock time perspective, independently of their originating brains. The theory makes a strong, in principle testable, prediction that conscious mind related violations of energy conservation should prove discoverable. Introduction Shakespeare's enchanter, Prospero, asserted that: "We are such stuff as dreams are made on", and followed this with: "our little life is rounded with a sleep" (The Tempest 4.1.146-148). I shall hope to show in this brief paper why the answer to Prospero's first claim can be a qualified 'yes, that is indeed what we are', provided 'we' is taken as referring to our objective selves, while there is a good chance that his second claim was entirely misleading because 'our little life' may be a form of sleep – with all its attendant dreams and nightmares. My starting point is with panprotopsychism (e.g., Chalmers, 2015). Developments in consciousness studies over the past thirty years have shown that no satisfactory alternative to this exists when it comes to envisaging a basis for human consciousness. Idealism, as Galen Strawson (2008) has pointed out, is unsatisfactory in being merely the flipside of materialism. Neural emergentism can account for much of the content of consciousness but fails to explain its basis because of incompatibility with a whole range of well-attested phenomena, most notably NDEs. The many 'quantum consciousness' theories proposed towards the end of the 20th century all harbour inconsistencies, implausibilities and large explanatory gaps. In any case the currently popular notions of property dualism or dual aspect theory both imply concepts equivalent to varieties of panprotopsychism, while there is overwhelming evidence from two-slit experiments and those based on the 'Elitzur-Vaidman bomb test' (e.g., * Correspondence: Chris Nunn, independent scholar & editor JCS, Bridport, Dorset, UK. Email: [email protected] Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1229-1234 Nunn, C., Are We Really "such stuff as dreams are made on"? ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1230 Penrose, 1994) that primitive matter is able to know, in some sense or other, about spatial and temporal characteristics of its environment. If theorists who advocate neuro-emergentism have to invoke property dualism or dual aspect theory to account for consciousness, while the 'wave functions' of physicists are inherently affected by holistic aspects of the environments that they explore, there's little point in beating about the bush and trying to avoid an idea of some sort of widespread or universal psychism – though what particular sort of psychism is inherent in nature remains a wide open question. Panprotopsychism is indeed the only viable game in town nowadays, despite the reluctance often shown to acknowledge its status. But it does face particularly acute forms of the temporal and spatial binding problems that also afflict neuro-emergentist theories and which quantum consciousness ones hoped to solve with appeals to coherent, superpositional states. How could little panprotopsychist elements possibly link up or condense to produce our form of integrated conscious experience? There is one variety of the idea, however (Nunn, 2016), that by-passes binding problems altogether for it shows our conscious experience to be like a tapestry woven, not in, but of time. The next step is to unpack this claim. Objectivity and subjectivity Our worlds are of course comprised of two realms, the objective and the subjective. Even the most fervent monists acknowledge this and have to introduce a dualism of some sort into their thinking, either implicitly or via property dualism and the like. The objective world is made up of quantum observables – namely position, momentum, energy, spin and charge. Our subjective worlds, too, encompass these entities, though only indirectly in the cases of spin and charge. In addition, subjectivity encompasses time, which is not a quantum observable. What we ordinarily refer to as 'time' in relation to objective aspects of our lives is in fact part of the spatio-temporal metric provided by general relativity; it's a notional time, in other words, that contributes to describing the geometry of classical causation. I'll refer to it henceforth as clock time; a concept distinct from that of subjective real time. While position and momentum, both observables, share the same non-commutative relationship as do time and energy, the fact that time isn't an observable demonstrates a broken symmetry and carries the implication that real time belongs with subjectivity, not with the objective realm. And subjective real time must indeed be real because of the Heisenberg energy/time uncertainty relationship; it must be as real as energy itself, the entity from which the entire objective world derives. There has been much confusion about the meaning of Heisenberg temporal uncertainty. It's often regarded as no more than a limitation on the accuracy of clock time measurements, but that can't be right for it connects with the existence of the virtual particles that play such essential roles in quantum field theory and have been proven actually to exist (via the Casimir effect). Real time has real physical consequences, in other words, and is thus much more than a notional metric despite its inherently non-observable, subjective character. Every energy eigenstate manifestation can be regarded as accompanied by a small chunk of real time (Nunn, 2016). The name that I proposed for these entities, 'SoS – Scintilla of Subjectivity' – Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1229-1234 Nunn, C., Are We Really "such stuff as dreams are made on"? ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1231 though probably not ideal, is a less misleading term than others that might be suggested (such as qualion or psychon) since they are not at all like any material particle and couldn't possibly be carriers of any 'quality' or psychic capacity that we would recognize. Those originating in the brain can each be envisaged as having much the same relationship to the content of our consciousness as does some individual ion in the brain to the function of our minds. Because of Heisenberg energy/time uncertainty, a clock-time duration can, in principle, be assigned to each SoS. This will often be almost infinitesimal and most SoSs will be analogous to virtual particles in that they will have no direct, observable or experiential consequences for either subjective or objective worlds. There's no need, therefore, to worry about having to attribute conscious subjectivity to rocks or raindrops, just as there is no need to worry about the swarms of virtual particles that are constantly manifesting within us. But the situation is rather different within brains, and perhaps to some extent within bodies too, for highly ordered patterns of precisely 'measured' (by their environments) energetic events are constantly occurring. According to the theory each such energetic event will be accompanied by an SoS of relatively long clock-time duration, perhaps as much as 0.1 seconds. Patterns of 'objective' energy manifestation in the brain will therefore get mapped into patterns of real time, thus providing a ground for our sort of subjective experience; though only those aspects of such patterns that get into neural memories will figure in the sorts of conscious experience that we are able to recall and discuss. Although from its own point of view – and it is not misleading to regard it as having a point of view – each SoS exists in a durationless now, the fact that a clock-time duration can be attributed to it means that sequences of overlapping SoSs will occur to allow the sort of flow of temporality that we experience. There's an obvious question to be asked here about how such patterned, overlapping sequences of SoSs could produce the sorts of differentiated qualia that we experience, rather than giving just an undifferentiated 'subjectivity'. It's conceivable that knot theory might offer a basis for answering this question (Nunn, 2016), but the issues are too complex – and uncertain! – to be tackled in this short paper. I'd like to explore instead some implications of the idea that SoSs exist in, indeed are, 'nows' without future or past, but 'nows' that overlap in clock time. The picture we've arrived at so far is that little threads (from an objective point of view) of subjective nowness arise in brains (and everywhere else) coincidentally with energy eigenstate manifestations. In brains these threads are woven into patterns and stretched out over clock-time sequences. What might this picture imply? Some implications of nowness There's strong evidence (to be touched on in the next section) that 'subjectivity' can and does affect 'objectivity', despite current ignorance about how it may do so. This is not altogether surprising in the context of SoS theory because of the non-commutative relationship envisaged to exist between energy eigenstates and SoSs. In effect, mutual interaction is simply an example of Newton's principle that actions are generally Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1229-1234 Nunn, C., Are We Really "such stuff as dreams are made on"? ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1232 accompanied by reactions, but it's an example complicated by the fact that the interacting agents are pictured as operating within very different types of temporality. From an objective point of view, the 'nowness' of real time can provide the sort of external reference frame that general relativity requires according to a range of authors (e.g., Unger & Smolin, 2015). Objective 'future' is when relativistic, clock time is unaccompanied by any SoS; 'present' is when a clock time event duration overlaps with the objective duration of an SoS (more usually the durations of a large number of individual SoSs); 'past' is when such overlap no longer exists from an objective perspective (Nunn, in review). SoSs, however, exist as 'nows' only and can be regarded as providers of an ever-accumulating memory for the objective universe. From their own points of view they are the abiding reality while the objective universe is an ephemeral, ever vanishing flow of events that adds to its enduring number and complexity of organisation. The patterns of real time that are woven in our brains must be regarded as sharing this subjective property of individual SoSs. The patterns are our subjective reality (not all of which, presumably, gets mapped into neural memories); a reality that endures while our objective worlds flow past in a distinctly dream-like manner. It's not surprising, to put it crudely, that most or all of us oldies feel as if we are much younger selves trapped within ageing bodies! But what might happen to our individual SoS fields, the tapestries of real time that are our subjective selves, when these bodies finally expire? There would seem to be two possibilities. They might fall apart into their component SoSs, each of which presumably drifting off separately into the universe of real time; or, alternatively, they might retain their weave but, no longer stretched out on the loom of a living brain, might alter their topology in some way. There's no a priori way of deciding which of these alternatives is the more likely, but maybe the evidence can tell us. Evidence The evidence that entities closely resembling the concept offered here of 'subjective tapestries of real time' can persist from a clock time perspective after the death of their originating brains would probably be regarded as conclusive if it related to any mainstream enquiry. Evidence from reports of 'a previous life' by children is very strong; it is open to other interpretations, but by far the most straightforward is to suppose that personality characteristics and memories from a previous life have persisted somehow and been accessed by, or even incorporated into, a subsequent child. Some types of near death and end of life experience are almost equally robust in implying persistence of conscious minds in apparent independence of malfunctioning brains. Reports by a range of talented and honest mediums add to the evidence that people persist and can provide allegedly 'first hand' descriptions of what that persistence is like. It certainly looks as though the weave of which we are made is robust. There are many excellent and detailed accounts of this very extensive evidence (see, e.g., Carter, 2012; Fontana, 2005) that are easily available and ought to convince anyone taking the trouble to read them that personalities and their memories are able to persist Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1229-1234 Nunn, C., Are We Really "such stuff as dreams are made on"? ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1233 in some form or other from a clock time perspective and are able to affect aspects of the objective world. But of course the evidence doesn't tell us whether SoS theory provides a correct basis for apparent personality persistence. The altered topology of 'tapestries of real time' that is a likely consequence of release from their brains might be used to account for some strange features of reported NDEs, such as 'life reviews', but that would be weak evidence at best for the value of SoS theory. Luckily, though, the theory does make a strong and surprising prediction, which should prove amenable to objective testing. The prediction is that conscious mind related violations of energy conservation should sometimes occur. Such violations are of course impossible according to our present understanding of thermodynamics, relativity theory and quantum theory. Finding a violation would therefore provide strong evidence that SoS or some closely related theory is correct. The prediction depends on the fact that energy conservation follows from the indifference of basic physics to smooth transitions in clock time (as shown by Noether's theorem). Any event involving 'back action' of SoS fields on the objective world would not be temporally smooth because real time is inherently different from clock time. Therefore energy conservation might sometimes be violated in such circumstances. There's actually a vast amount of anecdotal evidence that might be taken to indicate that violations of energy conservation can and do occur. Many of the stories about the miracles of saints or some of the capacities of sadhus – if the events reported were not all attributable to fraud, fakery, mass hallucination or the like – have to raise questions about the source(s) of the energy needed for their feats. The same applies to reports of physical phenomena manifesting during séances and perhaps of poltergeists. All such purported happenings required energy – if one can believe stories about levitations quite a lot of energy – which generally had no obvious source. So far as I know, rigorous investigations of energy balances relating to such events have never been carried out partly because of the frequently 'one-off', non-replicable nature of such events, but mainly because everyone knows that energy conservation is an unbreakable law, so why trouble to look for it? Nevertheless some of the capacities claimed by sadhus and yogis in particular might reward investigation from this point of view. Conclusions If the theory offered here, or some closely related theory, should eventually pan out, I think it would be fair to conclude that, from a real time point of view, our objective lives do have all the ephemerality and even insubstantiality of dreams. If 'we' refers to our objective selves, we are indeed 'the stuff that dreams are made on'. But can the analogy be carried further? Might our objective life have functions in relation to real time like those of sleep in relation to our objective lives? Perhaps the answer is 'yes'. Sleep seems to have two principal functions; it restores cognitive and behavioural flexibility to those deprived of it and it aids memory consolidation. It's tempting to conclude that this is our function in relation to the real time world, which otherwise might readily crystallise into rigid, fixed patterns without input from a variable and creative 'objectivity'. All the Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1229-1234 Nunn, C., Are We Really "such stuff as dreams are made on"? ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1234 beauty, variety, even the horrors, of this world may add to the vitality of the real time world in a dynamic, reciprocal relationship between the two realms. We may have the beginnings of an understanding of how our side of any such dynamic might work. Discovering how the other side works will be a major challenge for the future. References Carter, Chris. Science and the Afterlife Experience: Evidence for the immortality of consciousness. Rochester & Toronto: Inner Traditions, 2012. Chalmers, David J. 'Panpsychism and Panprotopsychism'. In Torin Alter & Yujin Nagasawa (eds.), Consciousness in the Physical World: Perspectives on Russellian monism (246-276). Oxford University Press, 2015. Fontana, David. Is There an Afterlife? A comprehensive overview of the evidence. Iff Books, 2005. Nunn, Chris. New Directions in Consciousness Studies: SoS theory and the nature of time. London & New York: Routledge. 2016. Nunn, Chris. 'On Carving Reality at its Joints'. Paper submitted to Journal of the Society for Psychical Research. In review. Penrose, Roger. Shadows of the Mind: A search for the missing science of consciousness. Oxford University Press, 1994 Shakespeare, William. The Tempest. In Stephen Orgel & A. R. Braunmuller (eds.), The Complete Pelican Shakespeare (730-763). Penguin Classics, 2002. Strawson, Galen. Real Materialism and Other Essays. Oxford University Press. 2008. Unger, Roberto Mangabeira, & Smolin, Lee. The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time. Cambridge University Press. 2015. °°° Biographical Note: Chris Nunn is a retired psychiatrist (Southampton University) and an independent scholar, as well as being Associate Editor at the Journal of Consciousness Studies in London, England. He is author of 5 books and numerous papers on consciousness and related topics, including Awareness: What It Is and What It Does (1995), De La Mettrie's Ghost: The Story of Decisions (2005), From Neurons to Notions: Brains, Mind and Meaning (2008), Who Was Mrs Willett? (2011), and New Directions in Consciousness Studies: SoS Theory and the Nature of Time (2015). Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1235-1239 Chopra, D., Is the Afterlife a Non-Question? (Let's Hope Not) ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1235 Statement Is the Afterlife a Non-Question? (Let's Hope Not) Deepak Chopra * There are few questions where it can be said that literally every answer is second-hand, but the persistence of consciousness after death is one. As sticky and complicated as the issue seems to be, it can be broken down into three perspectives that in themselves are simple. The perspective of a believer supports life after death; the skeptical perspective denies it; the undecideds stand in the middle. It's rare to find anyone who belongs to one of these camps who is willing to accept evidence from another. In essence, believers don't budge because they trust their religion; skeptics won't budge because they trust rationality; undecideds remain stuck in ambivalence and doubt. Yet even where militant skeptics trumpet their certainty at one end of the spectrum and at the opposite extreme religious extremists are willing to die in order to attain paradise, everyone bases his position on received wisdom of one kind of another. This renders the afterlife a nonquestion. It has been a non-question for as long as recorded history, but a tradition doesn't become true through persistence and the passage of time. The fundamental issue is whether the afterlife can be transformed into a viable question. I believe it can, but it takes a lot of convincing and patient discourse before the needle moves even half an inch. As social psychologists have proved over and over, when you show partisans objective proof that their position is shaky or untenable, the net result is that they harden their position even more. Assuming that you, I, and the reader in the corner are open-minded, turning the afterlife into a valid question must return to basics, including the most boring basic, defining our terms. However, as it turns out, defining our terms actually answers the question. The most basic term in this case is consciousness, because when arguing over the possibility of an afterlife, much confusion is caused by asking the wrong questions. If you don't specify what consciousness actually is, you wind up worrying about the survival of the soul, or of "me," the individual ego-personality. And if those pitfalls are avoided, Eastern traditions are filled with equally misleading notions of Jiva, Atman, and Brahman, or of Nirvana and Satori. I will propose that if two people agree upon their definition of consciousness, they will agree on the existence or non-existence of an afterlife. This isn't an arbitrary judgment. It rests on the familiar experience that people make up stories, they believe in their stories, and the reality * Deepak Chopra MD – FACP, Carlsbad, California. Email: Deepak Chopra@DeepakChopra Website: www.deepakchopra.com Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1235-1239 Chopra, D., Is the Afterlife a Non-Question? (Let's Hope Not) ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1236 they inhabit conforms to their stories. For a skeptic whose story contains the facts that all things can be explained through materialism, experimentation, data, measurement, and a confirmed allegiance to objectivity over subjectivity, there will be no doubt that the afterlife is spurious – not because it actually is, but because a certain story, or worldview if you prefer, forbids it to exist. By the same token, a confirmed believer holds fast to a story where the nonexistence of a personal God is impermissible, even unthinkable, and therefore the afterlife acquires its reality by association with the deity. If these points are acceptable, we can refine our investigation and ask if there is a definition of consciousness completely detached from all stories, which means the absence of bias, predisposition, received wisdom, rumor, myth, group pressure, wishful thinking, fear, apprehension, and mental figments of very sort. I believe so. Every reasonable person, I think, will accept that consciousness, as experienced by humans, is the awareness of two things: that we exist and that we experience. By extension, a reality that cannot be experienced is moot. By this measure, UFOs, angels, the afterlife, and the quantum vacuum exist on the same playing field. They are suppositions and inferences. If we toss out suppositions and inferences, what can we truthfully say about consciousness? By this I mean what can we say that no reasonable person will disagree with? Here we run into a complicated situation, because certain aspects of consciousness require extended discussion and a back-and-forth between people of good will. Such a setup is rare, unfortunately, but at least I can relate a few things that I've been able to convince people of over the years. 1. There is only one consciousness. To subdivide it makes no sense. This point is lifted almost verbatim from Erwin Schrödinger, the eminent quantum pioneer. Philosophically, the "one consciousness" position is common to monistic schools, because they repudiate any true difference, ontologically, between the one and the many. Yet when dealing with everyday people, it's obvious that we all cling fervently to being individuals, outfitted with my family, house, body, mind, and soul. To crack this allegiance requires arguments like the following: • When you get wet, do you call it "my" wet? Some things happen to us personally but turn out to have a general existence. • If you sing "The Star-Spangled Banner" as you walk down the street, did the song walk down the street with you? • If you imagine your mother's face, where is that mental image located? The brain has no pictures in it, and no light. When you imagine your mother's face, you didn't consult a directory of facial characteristics the way computer recognition software does – you simply called up what you wished to see. • Where is your self located? There is no neurological evidence of a region of the brain that contains the self, and, even if researchers claimed such a region existed, it would have to contain everything attached to you as a self, including your life history. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1235-1239 Chopra, D., Is the Afterlife a Non-Question? (Let's Hope Not) ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1237 2. Assuming that the discussion can crack open the presumption of isolated, local consciousness – there are many ways to get at this, not just the few questions listed above – the second point is that this "one consciousness" cannot be located. It is everywhere, all at once. This point sounds like a hard sell, as it would be if everyone held an advanced degree in philosophy, I imagine. But in everyday life the argument is fairly easily based upon physics. • Cosmologists and quantum physicists agree that spacetime originated in a domain (referred to as the zero point, quantum vacuum state, or the realm of pure mathematics) that isn't in time and space. • The entire universe, as well as individual subatomic particles, emerged from this precreated state, which has no qualities we would recognize such as linear time, dimensionality, solidity, energy, etc. • At the very least, all creation stories, scientific or not, converge on the creation of something out of nothing. Beyond our experience of reality in spacetime, there is a field of infinite potential, unbounded possibilities. • As the reality of space, time, matter, and energy appeared and continues to appear, the existence of consciousness must be accounted for. There are only two viable possibilities that are taken seriously. The "matter first" position holds that mind has its origins in matter and energy (to which some theorists add information). The "mind first" position holds that consciousness is the source of everything, including matter and energy. 3. If there are only these two positions, how do we decide between them? The difficulty is that being monistic, the two are incompatible and, more critically, totally self-consistent. It isn't possible to step outside the framework of "mind first" or "matter first" to gather evidence. All the evidence lies within the worldview that produced it. Even if other, as yet unknown, kinds of evidence emerged – such as the current, quite baffling existence of so-called dark matter and dark energy, which don't follow the rules of visible matter and energy – it would be absorbed into pre-existing stories that we live by. In deciding between "mind first" and "matter first," the crux is a single question. Is it more probable that matter somehow learned to think or that mind can create matter? It seems astonishing to me that more than 90% of scientists are so conditioned to reduce every issue to matter and energy (to use the favored term nowadays, they are physicalists), they accept without investigation the assumption that the sugar in a sugar cube, once ingested, can travel past the blood-brain barrier and suddenly think, feel, wish dream, and do science. No one has remotely come close to showing the point in evolutionary history where ordinary molecules acquired consciousness. Therefore, the very notion that the brain is a privileged object, the only "thing" in creation that has consciousness, is untenable. The brain is simply an ordinary object composed of ordinary atoms and molecules. It didn't become consciousness through the random combination of complex organic chemicals. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1235-1239 Chopra, D., Is the Afterlife a Non-Question? (Let's Hope Not) ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1238 The contrary position, that consciousness pre-exists the physical world, has some simple evidence on its side. The simplest, of course, is that the impossibility of the "matter first" position leaves only one other viewpoint that can possibly be true. But to most people such an argument feels like sleight of hand. Therefore, we can point to the human brain, where every sensation, image, feeling, and thought pushes brain chemicals around, redirects them to various parts of the body, causes vital signs to change either slowly or abruptly, and actually produces some chemicals, such as neurotransmitters, out of nothing. The creation of something out of nothing has been lurking in the background as the ultimate question, yet with reference to everyday experience, the mystery becomes both personal and self-evident. If someone whispers "I love you" in your ear, the mind-body system will display hundreds of changes dissimilar to what occurs if the whispered words are "I have a gun pointed at your heart." The deciding factor isn't material in the slightest; it consists of mental activity, the continual production of thoughts, words, meaning, purpose, direction, intention, and so on. It is far from impossible to convince reasonable people that these points are true, and they stem from defining consciousness in the most basic, intuitively validated way. As to the specific issue of an afterlife, consider what lies on the side of its existence: o Consciousness, being nonlocal, is not subject to birth and death. o Even in physicalist terms, there must be a pre-created state beyond time and space. Birth and death, being aspects of linear time, are not present there. o An argument can be mounted that certain abstract experiences, such as mathematics and information, have an indestructible aspect, again immune to birth and death. o Body, mind, and the world "out there" cannot be divorced from conscious experience. The only reasonable location for all of them is in consciousness itself. o If all of the above are true, then nothing exists except as a modified state of consciousness. Some of these states we identify as matter and energy, but this is simply a habit of mind built up for cultural reasons. There have been societies where "mind first" was just as self-evident as "matter first" is to us. Having laid out, in truncated form, the argument for consciousness as the basis of reality, not everyone may be willing to follow the clues that lead to an afterlife. But that isn't as important as realizing that we have tended to ask the wrong questions. One can devote a book to untangling the various possibilities for consciousness to persist after the end of the body. (I wrote one, Life After Death, 2008) In the end, however, the stubborn way that old stories cling to us, and we to them, muddies the issue and opens the way for vehement partisans who refuse to see that they are flogging second-hand opinions. Until we all are willing to think fresh Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1235-1239 Chopra, D., Is the Afterlife a Non-Question? (Let's Hope Not) ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1239 thoughts about a worn-out question, consciousness will remain constricted. If consciousness begins to expand on an individual basis, there is hope for clarity. More importantly, we can begin to bring centuries of baseless fear and superstition to an end. I'd suggest that ending the superstition of materialism would be a good start. Reference Chopra, D. (2008). Life After Death: The Burden of Proof. Harmony Reprint. °°° Autobiographical Note: Deepak Chopra MD – FACP, founder of The Chopra Foundation and cofounder of The Chopra Center for Wellbeing in Carlsbad, California – is a world-renowned pioneer in integrative medicine and personal transformation and is Board Certified in Internal Medicine, Endocrinology and Metabolism. He is a Fellow of the American College of Physicians and a member of the American Association of Clinical Endocrinologists. The World Post and The Huffington Post global Internet survey ranked Chopra #17 influential thinker in the world and #1 in Medicine. Chopra is the author of more than 80 books translated into over 43 languages, including numerous New York Times bestsellers. His latest books are Super Genes co-authored with Rudolph Tanzi, PhD, and Quantum Healing (Revised and Updated): Exploring the Frontiers of Mind/Body Medicine. Website: www.deepakchopra.com Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1240-1244 Kauffman, S. Life After Death? An Improbable Essay ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1240 Statement Life After Death? An Improbable Essay Stuart Kauffman* I believe nothing of what I shall write. Yet I think that, scientifically, what I shall say is remotely possible. The hopes for, or firm belief in, an afterlife is antique. With the rise of Newtonian mechanics and the secularization of the West, a theistic God largely vanished from Western thought, although held firmly in place among many religious people. Heaven and Hell are central in much Christian thought. But is life after death even conceivable on any view of modern science? Yes, but barely. I have published on this topic, skeptically, in "Cosmic Mind?",1 and shall bring forward the same considerations here. These considerations derive from an interpretation of quantum mechanics in which consciousness is associated with quantum measurement and from the emerging facts of quantum biology. In the latter cases, it is becoming clear that at body temperature, some or many aspects of life are quantum. The clearest example is in the light harvesting molecules2 where long lived, nanosecond, quantum coherence is observed and thought to play a role in the efficiency of energy harvesting in photosynthesis. Bird migration and perhaps smell may be in part quantum phenomena.3 We have little idea at present of the extent to which quantum phenomena play a role in the "living state". Moreover, it is well to remember that it is not clear how the classical world arises from quantum mechanics (see e.g. Bohr4; von Neumann5). Into this confusion, I must add the "Poised Realm" that appears correct and hovers reversibly between quantum and "classical", or "classical for all practical purposes" behaviors, due to decoherence and recoherence.6 Quantum effects in biology will demand that we rethink aspects of biology. For example, in the light harvesting molecules, the quantum efficiency of that harvesting * Correspondence: Stuart Kauffman, Institute for Systems Biology, Professor Emeritus University of Pennsylvania, Calgary, Canada. Email: [email protected] Website: http://stuartkauffman.com Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1240-1244 Kauffman, S. Life After Death? An Improbable Essay ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1241 is thought to be due to the excited electron taking, simultaneously, all possible pathways to the reaction center. This taking of all possible pathways is quantum superposition, which mystery evades Aristotle's law of the Excluded Middle.7 In this law, the cat is either on the mat or not, with nothing in between. So "The cat is on the mat and simultaneously not on the mat" is a contradiction. But superpositions evade that law in stating that the electron is simultaneously "here and there", or in the famous Schrodinger cat paradox, the unmeasured cat is simultaneously alive and dead. One approach to the mystery of superpositions is to consider ontologically real possibles, for as noted by C. S. Peirce, possibles avoid the law of the excluded middle.8 This is easily seen in, "The cat is possibly on the mat and simultaneously possibly not on the mat," which is not a contradiction. Then we arrive at the hypothesis that superpositions reflect ontologically real possibles, Res potentia. This is a new interpretation of quantum mechanics, Res potentia (possibles that do NOT obey the law of the excluded middle) and Res extensa (actuals that do obey the law of the excluded middle), linked by measurement. On this view, what are waving in the Schrödinger equation at the basis of quantum mechanics are possibilities.9 This view harkens back to Heisenberg in some ways,10 but is quite radical. On the view of Res potentia and Res extensa linked by measurement, measurement converts possibles to actuals, and there can be no deductive mechanism for measurement since the "X is possible" of Res potentia does not entail the "X is actual" of Res extensa. Indeed no deductive derivation of the outcomes of quantum measurement, if measurement is real, has been found since 1927 when the Schrödinger equation was formulated. So the hypothesis of Res potentia is scientific, disproved if ever such a deductive mechanism is found. Now in classical physics there are no possibles at all, only actuals linked by causality as is seen in both Newton and Einstein's general relativity, where all causal influences are limited by the fixed speed of light. This raises the issue of the link between the quantum and classical worlds, where the former may concern both possibles and actuals, and the latter only actuals. This is not remotely a settled issue, for, obviously, the hypothesis of Res potentia is unestablished. However, elsewhere I hope I have shown that this hypothesis can account for four major mysteries of quantum mechanics, including non locality.11 The potential success of this account of non-locality must count to some extent in favor of Res potentia. If something like the classical world exists, even if its derivation from quantum mechanics remains fraught, as seen in the hopes of the decohrence program, which has not quite succeeded,12 then we confront a new issue. Given quantum biology of unknown extent, is life both quantum and classical? Probably to some extent, "yes". Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1240-1244 Kauffman, S. Life After Death? An Improbable Essay ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1242 If life is both quantum and classical, what is death? A new hypothesis is that death is "going fully classical". You see, we really do not know what death is. It is not inconceivable that life, partly quantum, loses those quantum aspects at death, perhaps by decoherence to classicality itself or for all practical purposes, FAPP. Suppose death is "going classical". Then what happens to the quantum aspects of the living state? It is remotely conceivable that these persist as something like "soul" after death. To venture further requires some highly speculative ideas about consciousness and quantum entanglement. I have proposed elsewhere that consciousness is associated with quantum measurement.13 This is testable and there is already faint positive evidence.14 Now we need to consider quantum entanglement. Quantum variables can be entangled and described by a single wave function. If one of N such variables is measured, that instantaneously changes the wave function of the remaining N – 1 still entangled variables. Now if quantum measurement is associated with consciousness, as I shall posit and discuss elsewhere,15 it is barely conceivable that disembodied but entangled quantum variables can be jointly conscious, presumably jointly for there is a single wave function for the N entangled variables. We surely do not know this. But we are freely speculating. I will return to the potentially testable aspects of these ideas below. If life is quantum and classical (for all practical purposes or otherwise), and at death the body "goes classical" the remaining quantum variables might "escape" the body, the mortal coil, as disembodied soul. I stress that of course I do not believe this, but I do think it is remotely possible. Were this true, something like soul could persist after death, perhaps with disembodied mind. Because entanglement among quantum variables can appear and disappear, such "souls" might be highly evanescent, perhaps they are a ghostlike presence for mere moments after death, perhaps they persist longer. In either case, reincarnation is not inconceivable. Is any of this testable? In Kauffman,16 I discuss several approaches to testing the relation between measurement and consciousness. Von Neumann postulated that consciousness was sufficient for measurement.17 Radin et al.18 has tentative evidence in favor. Time will tell. But further tests can be done. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1240-1244 Kauffman, S. Life After Death? An Improbable Essay ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1243 Is it possible to test if entangled quanta persist after death? Yes, in principle. Would that show that such entangled quantum variables are conscious at measurement of some or many of the entangled variables? No, not at all. I can conceive of no way to test this, but nevertheless I propose19 that consciousness is necessary and sufficient for measurement, and that quantum variables can measure one another, the latter being testable by a Quantum Zeno Effect induced co-trapping of quantum variables.20 If quantum variables do co-measure one another, it's testable, and IF consciousness is both NECESSARY and demonstrably sufficient for measurement, then perhaps quantum variables such as entangled disembodied variables are actually conscious at measurement. Then disembodied consciousness can exist. Finally, if at death, quantum entangled variables reflecting the living state in some way can escape the now dead classical body, perhaps souls can exist and can in some remotely conceivable manner, reincarnate. I do not believe any of this, but it is not obviously impossible scientifically and is slightly defensible. I do believe I have shown that it's logically possible. Conclusion I have discussed the remote possibility that entangled quantum variables are jointly conscious, that the living state is quantum, a poised realm, and classical, that death may be "going classical" with the release of entangled quantum variables from the now dead body – which variables, reflecting a quantum entangled aspect of the living state, could just conceivably, be souls. There are ways to test a few aspects of these ideas, but not many. The central idea that quantum variables are conscious at measurement cannot now be tested. These are very remote possibilities, but not, I think, ruled out scientifically. Notes 1 Kauffman, S. (2016a). Cosmic mind? Theology and Science, 14 (1): 36–47. dx.doi.org/10.1080/14746700.2015.1122S 2 Engles, G., Calhoun, T., Read, E., Ahn. R., Mančal, T., Chen, Y., Blankenship, R., & Fleming, G. (2007). Evidence for wavelike energy transfer through quantum coherence in photosynthetic systems, Nature 446 (7137): 782-786. doi:10.1038/nature05678 3 Gauger, E. M., Rieper, E., Morton, J. J., Benjamin, S., & Vedral, B. (2011). Sustained quantum coherence and entanglement in the avian compass, Physics Review Letters 106 (4): 040503. 4 Bohr, N. (1948). On the notions of complementarity and causation, Dialectica 2: 312319. Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research| December 2016 | Vol. 7 | Issue 11 | pp. 1240-1244 Kauffman, S. Life After Death? An Improbable Essay ISSN: 2153-8212 Journal of Consciousness Exploration & Research Published by QuantumDream, Inc. www.JCER.com 1244 5 von Neumann, J. (1933). Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics. Princeton University Press. 6 Kauffman, S. (2016b). Humanity in a Creative Universe. Oxford University Press. 7 Ibid. 8 Ibid. 9 Ibid. 10 Heisenberg, W. (1958). Physics and Philosophy. George Allen & Unwin. 11 Kauffman (2016b). 12 Zurek W. H. (1991). The environment, decoherence and the transition from quantum to classical, Physics Today 44: 96. 13 Kauffman (2016b). 14 Radin, D., Michales, L., Johnston, J., & Delome, A. (2013). Psychophysical interactions with a double-slit interference pattern, Physics Essays, 26 (4). 15 Kauffman (2016a). 16 Kauffman (2016b). 17 von Neumann (1933). 18 Radin et al. (2013). 19 Kauffman (2016b) 20 Ibid. Autobiographical Note: Stuart Alan Kauffman is an American medical doctor, theoretical biologist, and complex systems researcher who is known for his explorations of the origin of Earthly life. He is widely known for arguing that the complexity of biological systems results as much from autopoiesis (selforganization) as from Darwin's natural selection. Though an atheist, he sees such creative freedom in Nature as an expression of the sacred. He has published hundreds of articles and five books: The Origins of Order (1993), At Home in the Universe (1995), Investigations (2000), Reinventing the Sacred (2008), and Humanity in a Creative Universe (2016). | {
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Forthcoming in Brian Robinson (ed.), The Moral Psychology of Amusements. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield (2020) ISBN 1786613298 Quote only published version or contact author [email protected] Starting from the Muses: Engaging Moral Imagination through Memory's Many Gifts Guy Axtell, Radford University Abstract. In Greek mythology the Muses –patron goddesses of fine arts, history, humanities, and sciences– are tellingly portrayed as the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, the goddess Memory, who is of the race of Titans, older still than Zeus and other Olympian deities. The relationship between memory and such fields as epic poetry, history, music and dance is easily recognizable to moderns. But bards/poets like Homer and Hesiod, who began oral storytelling by "invoking the Muses" with their audience, knew well that remembering, forgetting, and imagining are each to be esteemed as, in Hesiod's words, "gifts of the goddesses." The economy of memory is an important concern for moral psychology, philosophy of emotions, and philosophy of imagination. This chapter examines ways that amusements, both classically and today, can function to educate moral emotions in and though their multi-faceted engagements with the economy of memory. 2 1. Introduction: Mother of the Muses In Greek mythology the Muses – patron goddesses of fine arts, history, humanities, and science – are portrayed as the nine daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne; she, the earthly goddess Memory, is of the race of Titans, older still than Zeus and the other gods of Olympus. We sense the Muses' presence in the expressive arts, but more widely in any study which we aspire to be good at. Hesiod felt his Muses in the hills of Mount Helicon where he purports to have both tended sheep and honed his skills as an oral bard. They inspired his poems including Theogony and Works and Days. In these poems the Muses' first home is Mount Olympus, where they are favorite daughters of Zeus. When the gods are at peace and leisure they bring a "mirth" and "gladdening of hearts" which then extends outwards to humankind. Mnemosyne's gifts to us are her daughters, and the comforts and joys they each bring. As Hesiod writes, "Every man is fortunate whom the Muses love; the voice flows sweet from his lips."1 When a bard sits his audience down aside a fire, or addresses a crowd in a more formal public setting such as a festival, storytelling customarily begins, as we see in the proems to Hesiod's two great works, with a sort of ritual act of calling upon the Muses. In the Invocation of the Muses section which begins Theogony, Hesiod has the Muses collectively reply to the humans who piously call upon them; they encourage these beseechers to seek through them not only artistic inspiration but also knowledge and wisdom: We know how to tell many believable lies, But also, when we want to, how to speak the plain truth... So start from the Muses: For when they sing for Zeus Father they thrill the great mind deep in Olympus, telling what is, what will be, and what has been...until the thundering Halls of Zeus shine in his laughter!2 3 While a strong positive pathos (shared values and concerns) is created between bards, singing with a lyre, and the listening audience, 'invoking' the Muses also functions to strongly enhance these poets' ethos: their credibility and authority for their audience. However humbly they might give credit to the goddess for the truth and beauty of their words, they are establishing the storytelling as a sacred event, insinuating that epic tales is of divine origin, and confirming to their audience that poets, as keepers of cultural memory, are both honorable and wise. Since the Muses of poetry and story/history, through the will of Zeus, have the ability to memorialize the deeds and achievements of some but deny it to others, this power for all practical purposes is in the hands, or in the voice, of the poet. Homer's Odyssey has Odysseus entreat king Alkinoos' blind court poet to remember him alongside other heroes of the Trojan War, and even to first butter him up by proclaiming, "All men owe honor to the poets-honor and awe, for they are dearest to the Muse who puts upon their lips the ways of life." But connections of the arts and sciences to memory are much richer than emphasis on social functions of storytelling allows us to see. Hesiod's genealogical myth of Mnemosyne and her daughters runs much deeper. In "The Mother of the Muses: In Praise of Memory," Clara Claiborne Park points out that "to make the Muses the daughters of Memory is to express a fundamental perception of the way in which creativity operates.... The Muses, for Hesiod, inspire all those arts of communication that inform, delight, civilize, and link us with the past and with our fellows."3 The relationship between memory and such fields as epic poetry, history or music and dance is easily recognizable to moderns. Each requires quite serious study and practice in order to even become proficient in, and "mastery" is probably a relative term. Oral story-telling certainly served functions of codifying a people's sense of identity; the epics, though they encompass not just a human but a supernatural or spiritual world, and human-divine 4 interaction, help create "tradition" (literally, 'to hand down') and moral lessons and exemplars. But commemoration, even in an oral culture running back through Homer centuries earlier than Hesiod, is not the only, even if it is the most apparent, value. What these poets knew who invoked the Muses with their audience, was that remembering, forgetting, and imagining should each be esteemed as, in Hesiod's words, "gifts of the goddesses." Such is the healing powers of the arts in ancient thought. Not only rememberings (commemoratings, memorializings, celebratings) but also forgettings and imaginings are appreciated as 'gifts' in the Athenian golden age. Each of these three, this chapter will argue, holds some direct bearing on the development of the moral emotions.4 We will examine ways that amusements, broadly understood, engage with the economy of memory, and function to educate the moral emotions. The moral economy of memory and representation is an important focus of study for moral psychology, philosophy of emotions, and philosophy of imagination. We will seek to naturalize the generous activity of the Muses by examining the economy of memory, and the ways that amusements engage the moral imagination and the psychological functions of remembering and forgetting.5 While initial examples of the moral value/disvalue of rememberings, forgettings, and imaginings are mostly drawn from classical Greek and Chinese cultures, these points I will suggest may also be applicable to the best design of networks and computer-games, and to what Chris Bateman (2018) terms cyber virtues and vices. But to follow a bit further our initial foray into the claims to universal concerns which humor and comedy, and not just more serious or somber arts may encourage, let me finish this introduction with a few further thoughts about the positive functions of satire. Traditionally, comedy and humor are not seen as addressing what is universal in the human condition. Aristotle 5 at least, in the Poetics, reserves that for epic poetry and the tragic theatre which most directly draws upon it –and, of course, for philosophy. Comic plays in Athens often dealt with the politics of the day, topics including political upheavals that were oftentimes sensitive, open wounds for the audience. While it would seem that this could very much involve universals of the human condition, Aristotle seems to associate comedy with its origin in satyr plays and dithyrambs; this is associated with the piety of the festivals of Dionysus, but for Aristotle seems to lack the universal concerns expressed in the plays of the great tragedians such as Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides. Yet this brings me to an initial thesis: On this point I want to hold that Aristophanes the comedic playwright, rather than Aristotle, is correct. Perhaps to rebut such opinions, and to respond to the appearance that all wisdom is in the more traditional forms, Aristophanes has one of his characters bravely declare, "Comedy, too, can sometimes discern what is right. I shall not please, but I shall say what is true."6 The intellectual value of good satire includes the ability to utilize cultural differences to critique one's own culture's assumptions. This is something that Michel do Montaigne, for example does with "On Cannibals," where simpler, natural virtues of the 'savage' encountered by Europeans in the age of discovery, are used to counter ethnocentric bias and to expose the much crueler and more authoritarian – more 'cannibalistic' – European society lying below its civilized veneer. The greater the moral and cognitive dissonance that the satirical perspective instigates, the more that these incongruities work to create humor. In these respects too, bemusement might be just as important as amusement, since bemusement perhaps more clearly brings in the universals of the human condition, putting in ironic focus our human frailties and biases, and our inability to see them (see also Lauren Olin, this volume). Bemusement retains its 6 importance whether one takes a panglossian, skeptical, or melioristic interpretation of the evidence of our cognitive shortcomings. Montaigne's essay "On Cannibals" and Aristophanes' many satiric plays deal with 'uncomfortable' topics of violence and power, reason and the passions, our civilized and our natural state. In their political context, these political satires could be seen as affronts to the governing body. But humor excuses much, especially when presented as only personal musing, or as a play for the annual City Dionysia. Also, while the all-male stage actors and audience of the plays performed in the Athenian amphitheater could easily choose to ignore such ironies as women running the city better than them, or their wives using a sex-strike against them to force cooperation and compromise with the Spartans to make an end to forge peace out of bitter war, in the best interests of all. These comic 'absurdities' were at least lessons in perspective-shifting, and in the possibilities of more cooperative thinking, generally. At a deeper level they are also invitations to more radical moral and/or political reform. Whether Aristophanes truly meant them as such, and why and how the audience could partake of the play but then go back to daily political life without any genuine moral impact, are two questions we must set aside. But a fine example of humorous incongruity which clearly involves the audience in timeless or universal questions comes from Aristophanes' Ecclesiazusae (Assembly of Women). In this play Athenian women, (purportedly as a strategy of last resort since nothing else has worked), come in charge of the Assembly (or Parliament). Almost immediately they begin to propose major utopian-quaegalitarian reforms. Conceptual incongruities arise as utopian dreams collide with unquestioned moral traditions and political institutions.7 7 Praxagora: I want all to have a share of everything and all property to be in common; there will no longer be either rich or poor; [...] I shall begin by making land, money, everything that is private property, common to all.... Blepyrus: But who will till the soil? Praxagora: The slaves.8 2. Rememberings a. Commemoration and Competition The recognition and commemoration of greatness in Greek and Roman cultures of antiquity illustrates how central their own cultural history was to them. Narrative structure implicates memetic connections: a story must itself be remembered, the metered verses put to memory and typically sung to the accompaniment of a musical instrument. Their sacred narratives or mythology provided the bulk of narrative content for the arts to work with, but there were statues and commemorations of many sorts, for what is unique is the ways that the Greeks sought to recognize and remember greatness of many kinds. In this respect Nietzsche tells us that orators, painters, sculptors, musicians, poets, and stage choreographers, no less than champions in physical contests and Pan-Hellenic games, might vie for special recognition. Competitions in the emerging arts were of such interest to the Athenians that if they couldn't hope to achieve cultural immortality in the way of ancient heroes who interacted with the gods, the Greeks still 8 saw themselves as competing for honor and glory under the constant gaze of those gods from above. More practically, success might well mean having their names inscribed in stone as winners, and as benefactors of the city, and receive 'meals and a pension' (as Socrates, after his conviction, tells the jury that as teacher and benefactor of Athens, he deserves 'far more than punishment'). We can remember from different moral emotions of pride and shame.9 Hesiodic 'good Eris' creates the kind of jealously or strife 'between potter and potter," the arts flourished and winners were commemorated and remembered in ways that add their achievements to cultural memory. Nietzsche comments on how telling was Hesiod's account of their being not one, but two goddesses Eris: jealousy. The competitions of the occasional Muse festivals were not as regular either as the City Dionysia or Pan-Hellenic games. But Nietzsche also recounts several instances of people being remembered for shameful, unjust or unfitting acts, pettiness, and bad eris. Hesiod begins Works and Days with this distinction between striving for excellence and the kind of jealousy he associates with killing, and mastery over others. Bad jealousy or strife is not of the good kind associated with the ordered rule of Themis (Divine Law) and her civilizing daughters (Justice, Order, and Peace), but rather with those frightful but undeniable forces, the 'Children of Night' (Thanatos; Nemesis; the Keres or battlefield goddesses of cruel and unnatural death, the vengeful Furies and many more).10 In the "Homer's Contest," an essay written shortly after The Birth of Tragedy, Nietzsche skillfully explains how agonistic Greek society was, and because of this how useful good eris or competition was in serving to redirect of 'channel' aggressive drives –those bloodlusts, conquering or vengeful, which predominated in the earlier Homeric age and in that of the Mycenaeans featured in Homeric epic. Although we cannot digress, it is important to note that 9 Nietzsche places the philosophers within, rather than above, this competition for recognition as wise. The mythos/logos distinction and the uniqueness of natural and speculative philosophical inquiry from both poetry and sophistry is a complex set of issues, but in the cultural context of Athenian society it is part of the philosopher's competitive claim to wisdom.11 b. Museums and Cultural Memory Besides Zeus' shining halls and human settings where creative and artistic excellence is fostered or specific crafts (techne; τέχνη) like astronomy, history, or medicine are pursued, the other earthly home for the Muses is the museum, originally simply meaning 'Shrine to the Muses.' The politics of museums can serve as a prime example of amusements that directly involve us in moral debate over cultural memory and its ownership. When a museum's collections have a history stemming from war, colonialism, or economic and cultural dominance, their leading narratives have come under scrutiny. Today for example there is ongoing debate about the ethics of collecting artifacts such as native people's bones, and African or native people's rituals ornaments. Attitudes towards museum holdings appear to be in flux. The older 'white man's burden' rationale of removal for the sake of preservation and appreciation is increasingly challenged by persons who identify with groups whose cultural memory is on display and found to be presented with a certain 'master' narrative. The most high-profile case in point is the long-standing debate concerning whether the British Museum should maintain its ownership of the Parthenon Marbles or submit to pressure to repatriate them to their native Greece. That these were, until only recently, widely referred to and identified as the "Elgin Marbles" after the colonial appropriator Thomas Bruce, Seventh Earl of Elgin, who removed them from the Parthenon and Acropolis (he claimed with consent of the Ottomans who ruled 10 Greece at the start of the 19th Century) and sold them to the British government, is itself part of the long-standing battle over how they should be remembered. The renaming of the marbles by their name of origin rather than collector may be a significant step forward, even while the Museum maintains its stance against demands for their repatriation. This of course is but one instance of the debate over cultural memory as if affects the modern museum, since the repatriation-of-antiquities movement has been gaining strength over recent decades. "Preserving – saving" is for some a euphemistic phrase for confiscated property. As Graham Black points out in "Museums, Memory, and History," "The process by which communities and nations remember collectively itself has a history. For museums, as for the official memory written by historians, selectivity has been a key element. The core criticism of museums as instruments of the state is that the version of the past they have given form to is based on the selective collection, preservation and presentation of evidence of past human society." For Black the key critical concern is the prioritizing of elites: "Objects relating to wealthier classes have a far higher likelihood of survival... [I]n the process of collecting this material, museums both create knowledge and manipulate it, and through interpretation and transmission they define its relative importance or authority. Meanwhile, the silences in a museum's collections and narratives is just as revealing. What goes unacknowledged, accidentally or purposely 'forgotten'?"12 Supporters of this repatriation movement, including groups of native peoples, see a return of artifacts as a symbolic means of healing a past wrong, and a kind of restitution for earlier humiliation. In this sense it allows forgetting of wrongs, insofar as museum collections much like trophies from safari's, were the handmaids of colonialism. Although focused on the more overt case of Hitler's confiscations and plundering of art during WWII, the book and film, The 11 Monuments Men has in an indirect way spurred thinking about what distinguishes the colonialera acquisition of certain high-profile museum collections from mere exploitation. The response to demands for repatriation of antiquities is typically one that concedes the colonial background, but bids people to set this aside as now historical, and to join in the educational ideals of the "universal museum": One should be able to experience all things in one place, under one roof. The "return" of artifacts presupposes the fiction that the activists are owners of particular cultural traditions, and reflects cultural particularism or segregation. c. Laughter, Mockery, and Democratic Values In a recent collection, Greek Memories: Theories and Practices (2019) Mirko Canevaro writes, "In fact, memory of the past, of the laws, of the culture, even of the day-to-day life of the city was a necessary attribute of the Athenian citizen." Any citizen is the new democracy might present themselves in an oratory role, such as a funeral oration, a theatre production, a symposium, or whenever called upon as a testifier or even a juror in the Athenian court. There were expectations that came back as judgments of personal and civic virtue. "The Athenians expected the speakers to show a high degree of cultural, historical and legal knowledge and memory."13 Isocrates, an orator with whom Socrates is thought to have been familiar, and who set up a school of rhetoric in Athens some years after Socrates' death (but before the self-exiled Plato returned to Athens and opened the Lyceum), makes this expectation upon citizens for right use of cultural memory explicit: "For the deeds of the past are, indeed, an inheritance common to us all; but the ability to make proper use of them at the appropriate time, to conceive the right sentiments about them in each instance, and to set them forth in finished phrase, is the peculiar gift of the wise."14 12 These demands on proper or virtuous memory, especially as amplified by a focus on oratory and rhetoric, must be seen together with concerns about unvirtuous laughter, and personal but uncivic/uncivil hubris. The criminal charge of hubris, or graphē hubreōs, played a role in what John Lombardini investigates in The Politics of Socratic Irony (2018). In Athens, the prosecution of graphē hubreōs, while it may not have occurred regularly, had special connection with democratic values, and so much so that as odd as it may seem, acts of hubris in the form of verbal abuses by masters even against their own slaves could be a chargeable crime.15 Today we have serious issues of "rancorous humor," where superiority and put-down leads to an escalation of polarized and polemical discourse. Rancor-promoting actions and bad eris go closely together, and both butt up against freedom of speech.16 But since well before Plato's Philebus and the Taoist book of wisdom, Zhuangzi, the ancients engaged in debate over what makes something appropriately laughable. The latter is a witty and light-hearted set of narratives which highlight strong connections between well-being and play. "But there is laughter and laughter of course," writes Michael Nylan, author of The Chinese Pleasure Book (2018). The summer cicada can understand nothing of the progress of the seasons, nor the turtle dove and quail whose whole lives are limited to brush and branches, understand the soaring heights and long journeys of the great bird Peng. So they mock it: Who should have need or desire to fly so high? Just where does he think he's going? The first chapter of Zhuangzi introduces the mocking laughter exemplified by the complacent cicada, turtle dove, and quail. We know these types well: thinking they know everything, they heap ridicule on anyone or anything unlike them, when, in actuality, they have not left themselves open to new 13 experiences. This sort of dissociating self-satisfaction exacts too high a price, as does the superficially affable laughter designed to trap the unwary.17 The Taoist sage aims to lighten and enlighten oneself and others. "A willingness to accept pain and vulnerability as necessary, even valuable components of the human condition, plus a lightheartedness –this is precisely what is lost in most of the pious academic accounts of Zhuangzi.... So in an era that valuing dramatic oratory and rhetoric, Zhuangzi would [have us all] steer clear of virtuoso performances and forget the slights that daily life inflicts, the ressentiments that gnaw away at one's core."18 In the Athenian context, Socrates' accusers clearly try to link his purported antidemocratic tendencies with purported instances of his using inappropriate laughter of a 'putdown' sort. Especially in an honor culture, mockery becomes a hot-button issue, as is clear from Xenophon's treatment of Socrates, also. Socrates' irony (eirôneia), and his 'gelastic practices,' were at least subtext to his indictment as a 'corruptor of the youth,' and we clearly see this in how Plato defends him in this regard, both in the Apology and elsewhere. In Plato's thematized account of the trial, the jury is reminded by Socrates' accusers of 'sophistical Socrates' in Aristophanes' comic satire, Clouds, staged at the Athens City Dionysia of 423 BCE. Lombardini comments, [T]he ambiguity surrounding the Socratic practice of humor in the Platonic dialogues is perhaps indicative of the contested legacy of humor in the fourth 14 century. While, as [Stephen Halliwell, Greek Laughter, 2008] argues, the Platonic Socrates does not engage in overt, face-to-face mockery, he does deploy irony as a mode of tactical ridicule...and is often harsh in mocking himself and the arguments in which he participates. What Plato offers us, in sum, is 'an ambiguous, double-sided figure where laughter is concerned' [and] 'it is probable...that this ambiguity was part of Plato's conscious response to a larger, ongoing contest for the memory and posthumous image of the man himself.'19 I would add that if Nietzsche is right, philosophers are not above this contest of claimsto-wisdom, but very much in it. The philosophers invent a "new kind of agon" which they describe as truth and wisdom-directed, but which also explains how a figure like Socrates could inspire resentment. Nietzsche thinks of philosophers such as Plato, Thales and Xenophanes as actively competing in and expecting to win 'Homer's Contest," for "we do not understand the full strength of Xenophanes' attack on the national hero of poetry [Homer], unless-as again later with Plato-we see that at its root lay an overwhelming craving to assume the place of the overthrown poet and to inherit his fame...."20 To summarize and conclude this section, Greek society was highly preoccupied with cultural memory, and with the prospects of male citizens in their own time to gain some semblance of the immortality-through-memorialization seen as being enjoyed by the heroes and demi-gods of the mythic past. But in agonistic societies like Athens and like our own the distinction between good and bad eris remains morally significant. If we look we can find many instances of both motivations in the ways that the past is remembered.21 3. Forgettings 15 The passage of time and the availability of amusements and interests in arts, literature, or science greatly aids our ability to cope with, and to recover from distress or sufferings of our own. Hesiod speaks of the emotion of amusement in terms of "respite from cares" through "carefree hearts" moved by song, story, and other a-musements (no-troublings/cares). Attentiondiverting pleasures, whether of arts, science, or simply of humor or good conversation with friends, are forgettings which grant repose to persons from distress, anxiety, fear, or grief. As early as Solon's Prayer to the Muses (6th century BCE), scholars have pointed out, the gifts of Muses were understood to include "not only in the griefdestroying power of song but also in the persuasion and the 'intellectual' achievement of the king who succeeds in talking the parties of a lawsuit into a peaceful settlement of their conflicting claims."22 On the social scale, forgetting and forgiveness allow for the ebbing of cycles of vengeance and the re-emergence of social compacts and of the mutual benefits of trust. Dan O'Shannon in this connection notes the old saying, "Tragedy plus time equals comedy." The value of safe distance, he suggests, "allows us to enjoy pain on several levels. There may be a conscious or unconscious element of relief in laughter, as in the sudden realization that we can be close to this experience of harm and yet not be hurt."23 (Ironically for a god many feminists describe as a 'master rapist,') Apollo is a god associated with healing, and if this were only through the actual medical arts then the poets would not be depicted as often in the company of the Muses, and as having Thalia, the masking and unmasking Muse of comedy and humor, his most genuine romance. Thalia, whose name is etymologically connected with "flourishing" and "joyous," is a goddess of not just of theater but more generally of laughter and joyful play. Now mocking humor and even Socratic irony was, as we will later see, a contentious issue in the new Athenian city-state, as it was taken by many to connote anti-democratic values or traits of 16 character. But our human aptitude for laughter, and the benefit we derive not just from theatre but from all study of arts and sciences is mythologically an aphthonos, or "generous activity" of the gods. It is a gift-bestowing to humankind consequent from divine laughter instilled in mighty Zeus by his loving and ever-surprising daughters.24 Words inspired by the Muses are classically associated with peace, the results of sweet soft words versus their harsh contraries. Forgetting, to the extent that it allows rebuilding or building trust, is a unifier. Like Homer and Hesiod, Aristophanes within his own poetry (Frogs, performed 403 BCE) finds time to laud "the noble poets". Look how right from the start the noble poets have been useful-been teachers: Orpheus taught us initiations and avoidance of bloodletting, Mousaious taught divination and cures for sickness, and Hesiod, the working of the soil and the seasons of harvest and plowing.25 One literary example of this is the Aeneid and its central themes. Greek and Roman poet often engaged in etymological 'play' with the names and associations of the gods, and here Virgil juxtaposes Juno's grudges and plans for vengeance with the memory actively fostered by the Muses, which by their nature seeks concordia and works through concordant purposes. The healing power of forgetting and moving on supports reconciliation and renewal. As Alex Hardie in "Juno, Hercules, and the Muses at Rome" (2007) comments, 'Mindful anger' and its corollary in revenge is of course a very old idea (indeed the homophone endings memorem ... iram might be designed to recall the soundsimilarity of Greek menis ("anger") and mnēmnō ("mindful"); anger, in other words, is inherently endowed with a long memory). Juno's "mindful anger" 17 evidently has to do with the goddess' capacity for harbouring grudges, and it is recognisable, in terms more immediately applicable in the civic sphere, as the standard political fault of mnēsikakein ("harbouring grudges").... Juno's inability to set aside former causae irarum in the interests of general harmony is a fundamental component of her discordant character within the poem.26 Ancient tragedies dealt deeply with universal themes of retribution and grief. "Such is life," wrote Sophocles. "Laugh, if you can." Martha Nussbaum and others who appreciate tragedy's contributions to educating moral emotions will agree with the Greeks and with Aristotle (and contemporary psychology) that the experiencing of negative emotions and even of suffering is not without purgative and educative value.27 But Nussbaum's book Anger and Forgiveness (2018) provides rich discussion with of both historical and literary examples of overcoming cycles of violent retribution and of the zero-sum or loss-loss thinking the fuels it. While acknowledging it some inevitability, she tries to show how anger is often a confused and damaging or pernicious moral emotion. Nussbaum's own main literary example of such virtuous forgettings is Aeschylus' tragic trilogy, The Oresteia, which is known to have won first prize at the Dionysia festival in 458 BCE. The trilogy is named for the central character Orestes, who sets out to avenge the murder of his father Agamemnon by his own (undoubtedly abused) mother, Clytemnestra. Vengeance or vendetta and justice, and the emergence of law out of a more primitive system of vendettas, are its central themes as Nussbaum articulates them. But what she finds especially insightful is its concluding scenes. The slaying of Clytemnestra and her lover by Orestes does not end the cycle of violence, but unleashes the Furies, divine avengers, to pursue and punish Orestes for his act of 18 matricide. The justice of their retribution on Orestes is eventually brought to trial before the gods, with wise Athena aiding the pardon of Orestes and proclaiming that matters of retribution or punishment be henceforth settled in court rather than being carried out personally and outside of law. But to undergird this societal shift in the conception of justice, one which quelled endless cycles of retaliation and analogized them to a curse, Athena actually renames the force from the Furies. She names them the Eumenides, meaning the "gracious ones," which in effect disconnects justice from backward-looking retribution and attaches it to a broader set of forwardlooking concerns including social stability, and the welfare of the polis and its citizens, and the healing of wounds. Besides The Oresteia concluding on these surprisingly optimistic themes of renewal and moving beyond cycles of vendetta-justice, the audience would have seen a short comical satyr play to conclude the evening's official festivities, and to ensure they are ushered out into the streets in a high mood of revelry. We could also find ancient Chinese examples of successful and failed forgettings.28 One of the most famous plays of China is The Peony Pavilion, a tragi-comedy of the human condition written in the Ming style by Tang Xianzu, who lived contemporaneously with Shakespeare and is sometimes referred to as the 'Shakespeare of China.' The play features a young woman, Miss Du, who falls asleep in a peony field. In the dream sequences typical of the Ming style (and often of modern Peking opera) she meets and falls in deeply love with a young, handsome scholar. This young man Liu is real, but she has never met him and upon awakening to find his memory but a dream, she develops an all-consuming love sickness, and a utopian desire for a kind of pure, unfettered love that would have been impossible in the character's structured society. At the end of the first act Miss Du, unable to forget, eventually mourns herself to death. But in the second act, Liu's passing on foot through the garden where she is buried, years later, learns her 19 story through a self-portrait she left before she died. True love wins out after Liu falls into a love with the dead girl so genuine that the Flower Goddess and the Judge of Hell eventually get involved, and conspire to resurrect Miss Du in order to fulfil what is seen as a destiny that time and circumstance had unjustly prevented. The two characters' inability to forget brings them great sorrow, yet through the power of their virtuous forgetting of the rigid social roles and codes, their true love in the end prevails. The healing power of time, and of the arts as diversions and sources of amusement connects with psychological study of the Fading Affect Bias (FAB), which refers to the demonstrated greater dwindling of unpleasant compared to pleasant emotions in autobiographical memory. The FAB appears to be a ubiquitous emotion regulating phenomenon in autobiographical memory. T.D. Ritchie (et. al.), (2015) for example disclose studies showing that positive affect fades slower than negative affect. "Results suggest that in tandem with local norms and customs, the FAB may foster recovery from negative life events and promote the retention of the positive emotions, within and outside of the USA."29 Affective fading is generally greater for negative events/memories than for positive events/memories, but this greater dwindling of unpleasant compared to pleasant emotions is impacted by other traits. Dysphorics and those with depression or anxiety disorders show a smaller fading affect than nondysphorics. To conclude this section, Marx and other materialists have seen retreat into constant amusement as a dysfunctional response to one's state of alienation. Critics of big media have worried that we are, in Neil Postman's terms, "amusing ourselves to death" (1984), and they sound a Huxleyan warning of its goal of pacifying its consumers and keeping them glued to advertising or political agendas. Escapist withdrawal through endless amusements might give 20 one a sense of individual autonomy, while in reality leaving individuals more isolated and less motivated or equipped to find the solidarity with others. Amusements and the forgettings they allow might be sought as compensation for a deficit of opportunities for meaningful choices and genuinely human relations. Still, today's teens do not demote virtual realities as past generations arguably have. Contemporary amusements and virtual world are, but are not only, 'escapes' from troubles. With Jean Baudrillard today's youth tend to accord reality to simulations along a spectrum, and reject the Platonic binary of one's being either "in reality" or "under illusion." Years ago when I presented the Matrix movie's choice between 'taking the red or the blue pill,' uncomfortable truth or pleasant medicated illusion, to my philosophy students almost unanimously vowed they would take the red pill no matter how far down the rabbit hole they might fall. It seems to me not merely anecdotal that today by comparison many more of my students, when presented with 'Cypher's Choice' or 'The Experience Machine thought experiments that have been staples of introductory philosophy classes for decades, will say that while truth and freedom are values, their decision would also turn on just how badly "reality" sucks. 4. Imaginings According to contemporary enactivists and narrativists like Daniel Hutto and Peter Goldie, the emotions have a structure that is "ripe for narration."30 Pleasure comes from anticipation, from direct experience, and from reminiscing our past experiences. The first and third of these modes of pleasure, at least, are structured by narrative imagination. Many scholars have also described how vital stories are to our sense of individual identity and collective belonging. Some go further to assert and develop the educative value of stories, which may present conflicts and 21 dilemmas that spur critical reflection. Larry Hill, a Seneca storyteller, writes, "Our stories were us, what we knew, where we came from and where we were going. They were told to remind of us of our responsibility, to instruct, and to entertain. There were stories of the Creation, our travels, our laws. There were legends of hard-fought battles, funny anecdotes some from the smokehouse, some from the trickster and there were scary stories to remind us of danger, spiritual and otherwise. Stories were our life and they still are.""31 Let us briefly return to Nussbaum's work, since she has been one of the strongest and most eloquent proponents of the benefits of literature and narrative imagination for moral development. In The New Religious Intolerance (2012) she discusses how sympathetic imagination makes others real for us: "A common human failing is to see the whole world from the point of view of one's own goals, and to see the conduct of others as all about oneself...By imagining other people's way of life, we don't necessarily learn to agree with their goals, but we do see the reality of those goals for them. We learn that other worlds of thought and feeling exist." Nussbaum calls on educators to counter new and old forms of intolerance "through deliberate cultivation of the imagination."32 The "participatory imagination" she takes as a primate inheritance, but as already inviting us to see others as intelligibly pursuing human goals. The participatory imagination can raise awareness of what John Rawls calls the 'burdens of judgement,' and to this extent support tolerance and mutual respect (what Rawls terms reasonable pluralism). For empirical support, Nussbaum cites the studies of Daniel Batson as showing "that vivid imagination leads, other things equal, to helping behavior." She also holds that with the development of empathetic (moral) out of participatory imagination, people learn to "move in a direction opposite to that of fear. In fear, a person's attention contracts, focusing intently on her own safety, and (perhaps) that of a small circle of loved ones. In empathy the 22 mind moves outward, occupying many different positions outside the self."33 This shift from contracting to expanding moral attention aids development of moral judgment and cooperative, win-win strategies of problem-solving. Empathy she concedes can have its own narcissism, and partiality can also be a "pitfall of imagination." But the directional difference from contracting to expanding one's moral attention show imagination as, on balance, "valuable as an antidote to fear's narcissism."34 Nussbaum's stance is one that draws not just on literature, but on psychology and on John Dewey's pragmatism. Dewey held that reason is an imaginative capacity, and proclaimed, 'imagination is more moral than moralities.'35 Habit, imagination, and judgment are intimately related; the faculty of imagination has the ability to make things present which were previously absent.36 Other pragmatists like Steven Fesmire credit Dewey for framing a theory of ecological imagination that is compatible with contemporary cognitive research.37 But there is also a skepticism or pessimist that runs contrary to this optimism about the benefits of narratives that we have seen Nussbaum and others express. Skepticism may begin with a political realism about cultural or collective memory, and proceeds from there. Andrew Leutzsch investigates these confliction views in Historical Parallels, Commemoration and Icons (2019). One focus of the study is the inflationary erecting of monuments and other ways that historians, professional or amateur, "prefigure the future by constructing the past." [A]rchives store and destroy; and historians select and ignore sources – sometimes accidentally, sometimes on purpose but always because all of them are embedded in a discourse and in a net of connotations, which tells them and us what matters and what does not.... Memorials are both an indicator and a factor of the political discourse – they represent history and contribute to the making of 23 it. [As Reinhart Koselleck puts it], 'To commemorate the deceased belongs to human culture. To commemorate the fallen, violently killed, those who in battle, civil war or war died, belongs to political culture.'"38 Leutzsch acknowledges the politics of memory, but remains optimistic about historical narrative. "Whereas the contingency of the future compels us to consider what might come next, the past makes us reflect about why events transpired as they did and contributes to the reduction of the future's contingency."39 (3) But other authors are still more critical of the "historical fallacy," and of the value of narratives in pursuing epistemic goods of knowledge and understanding. On this minority report, story-telling and self-deception often go hand-in-hand. As Baldwin observed in a much-discussed 1970 exchange with Margaret Mead about identity, race, and moral sentiments, "What we call history is perhaps a way of avoiding responsibility for what has happened, is happening, in time." 40 Perhaps the fullest recent development of pessimism about the moral and cognitive value of historical narratives, is Alex Rosenberg's How History Gets Things Wrong: The Neuroscience of Our Addiction to Stories (2018). Rosenberg critiques our long-standing reliance on auto-biographical, biographical, and historical narrative, presenting numerous examples of its unreliability. The narrativization and moralization of events typically go hand-in-hand, and most often our stories re-enforce us/them divisions. So much are they a reflection and re-enforcement of group biases that they undermine history's pretention to provide real understanding of the past, present, or future. Rosenberg argues for three provocative claims counterpoint to Dewey and Nussbaum: "that our confidence in history, our taste, our need for it, indeed, our love of history is almost completely hardwired, 24 that history is all wrong, and that its wrongness is the result of the later evolution of what was originally hardwired...."41 Nussbaum's narrative optimism and Rosenberg's narrative pessimism are two contrary moral appraisals of storytelling, two contrary responses to the narrativist-enactivist claim that the emotions have a structure that is ripe with or for narration. We need not feel bound to choice between them; Rosenberg's critique of history, even if it is not overstated, may not carry over to the value of narratives which recognize themselves as fictional.42 We can anyway take this 'ripeness" as a mixed blessing. For the pro-educative and the skeptical perspectives on the moral value of narratives have at least this in common: they each tell us that we need to 'Stop feeding the wrong wolf'; that is, we need to distinguish bad from good eris and accept responsibility for the problems of the world. There is a concept of German origin in recent use, Gestaltungskompetenz, which perhaps deserves recognition here in regard to the educative potential of the moral imagination. It is a feminine noun term for the competency to shape the future; this 'shaping skill' is one both of analyzing present problems and applying forwardlooking problem-solving'; it a creative competence to shape the future.43 Since shared stories, shared amusements, and share humor often functions as a social lubricant, their ability to support the evolution of social cooperation should be unsurprising. We can, we must, as Nietzsche's selfovercoming Zarathustra says, become people who can laugh and philosophize at the same time. 5. Conclusion Hesiod's theme running through both Works and Days of there being 'two Eris-goddesses on earth' was, for Nietzsche, "one of the most noteworthy Hellenic thoughts and worthy to be 25 impressed on the newcomer immediately at the entrance-gate of Greek ethics."44 So too, Nietzsche adds, if "we remove the contest from Greek life, then we look at once into the preHomeric abyss of horrible savagery, hatred, and pleasure in destruction." Contests of all sorts allowed the Greeks to channel their aggressive drives into great and works and memorable achievements. This is the good eris at work, the kind in which potter competes with potter for excellence, playwright with playwright. But as Nietzsche insists, the line between motivating and "hateful" envy is quite thin; both for individuals and for groups it can be difficult not to cross over into spite and odium, too often with dire consequences.45 So how can amusements involving rememberings, forgettings, and imaginings better serve critical thinking and other pedagogical functions through actively engaging the moral imagination? How can they be examples of good and not bad eris? These questions I suspect need to be asked with respect to the design of computer games and human-machine relationships of all kinds. Posing them helps further identify what Chris Bateman (2018) terms the cyber virtues/vices which we encounter in relationship with games and online groups/networks.46 Relational virtuosity, then, does not stop with relations only between human, or between humans and animals, but extends to human-machine relations as well. And Aristophanes was right: humor or comedy can also tell truth; it can, as he has Aeschylus say of all the poets, "rouse the citizenry to strive to equal" them, and to emulate the hero-types. We would be better off in the study of amusement had the ability to engage universals of the human condition and to provoke reflective morality never been ceded to only to the 'serious' poetic forms of epic and tragedy. Given also that use of humor and of computers contributes to student-focused learning, is important that the educative potential of laughter and of amusements more generally be brought to the fore. 'Funny is the new deep,' as Steve Almond (2015) puts it, and we have here 26 endeavored to connect this with the ability of amusements, whether more associated with remembering, forgetting, or imagining, to throw light on our human foibles, and to balance competitive games with the encouragement of cooperative strategies of problem-solving. We end, then, in agreement with Percy Shelley that, "A person to be greatly good must imagine intensely and comprehensively."47 27 Bibliography Aristophanes. Ecclesiazusae (Assemblywomen), (tr. O'Neill 1938), accessed from Perseus Digital Library, http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/). -----------. Frogs and The Acharnians, Delphi Complete Works of Aristophanes (Illustrated). Delphi Classics. Axtell, Guy, "The Emotions in James' Principles of Psychology." In William James, Moral Philosophy, and the Ethical Life: The Cries of the Wounded. Jacob Goodson (ed.), Lexington Books, 2017a. -----------. (2017b), "Moral Learning, Imagination, and the Space of Humor," under review Humor. Bateman, Chris. The Virtuous Cyborg. Eyewear Publishing/Squint Books, 2018. Black, Graham, "Museums, Memory and History," Cultural and Social History 8(3) (2011), 415-427. Brady, Michael, "Learning from Adversity: Suffering and Wisdom." In Laurie Candiotti (ed.) The Value of Emotions for Knowledge, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019: 197-214. Breyer, Thiemo, "Self-Affection and Perspective-Taking: The Role of Phantasmatic and Imaginatory Consciousness for Empathy," Springer Nature B.V. Published online 2019, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-018-9627-4 28 Castagnoli, Luca and Ceccarelli, Paola (Eds.). Greek Memories: Theories and Practices. Oxbow Books, 2019. Dewey, John. Art as Experience, LW 10:348. All references to Dewey are to The Collected Works of John Dewey, ed. Jo Ann Boydston, 37 vols. (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1969-1991). Dull, Carl J., "Zhuangzi and Thoreau: Wandering, Nature, and Freedom," Journal of Chinese Philosophy 39:2 (2012) 222–239. Fesmire, Steven, "Ecological Imagination," Environmental Ethics 32(2) (2010): 183-203. -----------. "Ecological Imagination in Moral Education, East and West," Contemporary Pragmatism Vol. 9, No. 1 (2012), 205–222. Fowler, Robert L., "Mythos and Logos," The Journal of Hellenic Studies,131 (2011), 45-66. Gallagher, Shaun, "The Narrative Alternative to Theory of Mind." In Richard Menary (ed.) Radical Enactivism: Intentionality, Phenomenology, and Narrative. John Benjamins Publishing, 2006, 223-230. Goldie, Peter. The Mess Inside: Narrative, Emotion, and the Mind. Oxford: OUP, 2012. Halliwell, Stephen. Greek Laughter: A Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to the Early Christians. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008. Hardie, Alex, "Juno, Hercules, and the Muses at Rome," The American Journal of Philology, 128(4), 2007, 551-592. 29 Herman, David. 2017. Storytelling and the Sciences of Mind. Boston: MIT Press. Hesiod, Works and Days & Theogony. M.L. West translation. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988. Harrellson, Kevin J., "Narrative Pedagogy for Introduction to Philosophy," Teaching Philosophy 35:2, 2012, 113-141. Hill, Larry, Seneca storyteller; quotation accessed http://www.indians.org/welker/stories1.htm. Jackson, B. Darrell, "The Prayers of Socrates," Phronesis 16(1) 1971, 14-37. James, William. Principles of Psychology (2 volumes). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1981[1890]. Kind, Amy and Kung, Peter (eds.). Knowledge through Imagination. Oxford: OUP, 2016. Leutzsch, Andreas (ed.). Historical Parallels, Commemoration and Icons. Routledge, 2019. Lombardini, John. The Politics of Socratic Humor. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2018. Moeller, Hans-Georg, 2017. Genuine Pretending: On the Philosophy of the Zhuangzi. New York: Columbia University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich, "Homer's Contest." In The Portable Nietzsche, edited and translated by Walter Kaufmann. Penguin books, 1977. 30 Nylan, Michael, 2018. The Chinese Pleasure Book. New York: Zone Books. Nussbaum, Martha C. Anger and Forgiveness: Resentment, Generosity, Justice. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. ------------------. The New Religious Intolerance: Overcoming the Politics of Fear in an Anxious Age. Belnap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012. 'O'Shannon, Dan, "What are You Laughing at?" In Humor: A Reader for Writings, edited by Kathleen Volk Miller and Marion Wrenn. Oxford; Oxford University Press, 2015. Papova, Maria, "The Muse of History" at https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/01/23/the-museof-history-derek-walcott/ Park, Clara Claiborne, "The Mother of the Muses: In Praise of Memory," The American Scholar, 50(1), 1981, 55-71. Plato, Phaedo. Accessed at The Internet Classics Archive, http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/phaedo.html ------------------. Philebus. Accessed at The Internet Classics Archive, http://classics.mit.edu/Plato/philebus.html Postman, David. Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business. Elizabeth Sifton Books, 1984. 31 Ritchie, T.D., Batteson, T.J., Bohn, A, Crawford, M.T., Ferguson, G.V., Schrauf, R.W., Vogl, R.J., Walker, W.R., "A Pancultural Perspective on the Fading Affect Bias in Autobiographical Memory," Memory 23(2) (2015): 278-90. Rosenberg, Alex. How History Gets Things Wrong: The Neuroscience of Our Addiction to Stories. Boston: The MIT Press, 2018. Sellmann, James D., "Transformational Humor in the Zhuangzi." In Roger T. Ames (ed.), Wandering at Ease in the Zhuangzi. Albany: SUNY Press, 1998: 163-174. Seok, Bongrae. Moral Psychology of Confucian Shame. Landham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. Shelley, Percy. A Defence of Poetry, [1821]. Great Books Online, http://www.bartleby.com/27/23.html Suvin, Darko. Defined by a Hollow: Essays on Utopia, Science Fiction and Political Epistemology. Oxford: Peter Lang, 2000. Trivigno, Franco V., "Plato on Laughter and Moral Harm." In Franco V. Trivigno and Pierre Destreé (eds.) Laughter and the Ancients, 2019 forthcoming. Notes 1 Hesiod, Theogony, 96-97. 32 2 Hesiod, Theogony 26-28, 36-37. I here take liberty to slightly combine lines from what are said to be two proems (1-35 and 36-115). 3 Clara Claiborne Park, "The Mother of the Muses: In Praise of Memory." 4 The functions of story are recognized to be diverse, some for entertainment, but others aimed at moral or intellectual edification. Still, the Muses can only be speaking in metaphor by describing the functions of music and narrative as allowing us to speak 'plain truth.' Artistic expressions are necessary because truth and meaning are neither ultimately separable nor conceptually coextensive. Another collection which focuses on how information is often filtered, selected and rearranged to support a single narrative is A. Leutzsch (ed.), 2019. 5 See also the Paola Ceccarelli, Silvia Milanezi, and Lea Grace Canevaro, and Catherine DarboPeschanski chapters in the excellent collection edited by Luca Castagnoli and Paola Ceccarelli, Greek Memories (2019). 6 Aristophanes' The Acharnians, lines 500-501. From Aristophanes (2013), 32. 7 For more direct connections between imagination and utopian-dystopian hopes and fears, see Darko Suvin, Defined by a Hollow (2000). 8 Aristophanes, Ecclesiazusae (Assemblywomen), lines 590-591 & 597-598 & 651 (tr. O'Neill 1938, accessed from Perseus). http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text.jsp?doc=Aristoph.+Eccl.+590 9 See also Bongrae Seok's Moral Psychology of Confucian Shame (2017) for a highly interdisciplinary and comparative interpretation of Confucian shame as a moral disposition valued in Chinese culture for its motivations to moral self-cultivation. Shame in this Confucian sense is not for 'losers' but for reflective and self-critical moral leaders. Guilt is usually seen as an emotion with more ameliorative value in Western cultures, but this tends to be reversed in 33 collectivist cultures. So comparison of guilt and moral shame as moral emotions is an important topic (and one that readily invites cross-cultural comparison). While we might learn from each, rememberings and forgettings might be made salient by these moral emotions in somewhat different ways. 10 Greek justice was becoming heir to Themis/Dike, with her balanced scales. As early as Pindar (5th c. BCE) the daughters of "wise-counselled" (euboulos) Themis/Justitia are assigned names which fittingly meant "Justice," "Good Order/Laws," and "Peace." 11 Robert Fowler (2011) points out, "As discourses calling themselves mythoi more and more routinely came in for questioning, sooner or later a mythos itself became a questionable thing...." He rightly insists, however, that "a simple linear progression from an age of primitive, mythical thinking to a wholly civilized and rational one is more self-serving morality tale than history." (48) But probably first with Plato, mythos becomes directly associated with what poets tell. In Phaedrus (esp. 229c-d) widespread awareness of rationalization of myth and its methods is apparent. But even here Fowler insists the contrast is not so much between reason and its contraries. "Logoi are contrasted with mythoi in point of veracity, rather than on the basis of its mode of inquiry or assumptions." Still, Fowler writes, "By the end of Aristotle's life the word 'mythography' existed to denote that branch of prose literature which recorded, precisely, the Greek myths. Historians thereafter routinely use myth-words to denote the period down to either the Trojan War or the return of the Herakleidai (the difference is immaterial). No one outright denies the actual existence of figures such as Theseus, but after Thucydides' mythōdes historians have to take a stand on these stories, and a question mark hangs over them. Typically they accept the basic historicity, but remove the mythical accretions (for which the poets bear the blame) to render them useful for various purposes" (50). 34 12 Black, "Museums, Memory, and History," 421. Black's treatment of museums might also make us think of the inhumanity-for-the-sake of amusement, in the Black Mirror episode, "Black Museum"! To be "put in a museum" used to be a saying for being made useless –a relic. But today the museum is returning to some of its interactive functions: To muse upon something should be to reflect or engage in a creative way, opening up new ideas. But rethinking the moral ideals of the museum, which stays stationary but brings "universal" content to itself, extends to a rethinking of the many forms of entertainment traditionally involving traveling shows. From thespian wagons, imaginariums, 'freak shows,' and circuses, traveling amusements often involved great suffering of humans and animals. Animal-centered amusement parks and zoos have today generally established standards in the treatment of animals, but in the trade-offs for profit incentive they have not always lived up to them. Moreover, animal care and the ethics of captivity for whales, orcas, and other sea or land animals that cannot range has also invited moral debate and policy re-evaluation. Such amusements have invited criticism and a good deal of activism, much as have culturallysensitive (or perhaps better, insensitive) museum collections. 13 M. Canevaro 2019, 155. He adds, "Historical instruction and poetical education were in fact part of the intellectual baggage of the average Athenian, provided by the city itself on very public occasions, be it the historical narrative of a funeral speech, the paintings in the Stoa Poikile, an honorary inscription in the Agora, a rhapsodic competition during the Panathenaea or the tragic competition at the Dionysia" (139). 14 See Canevaro's commentary, 151. 15 Lombardini, 5. 35 16 On what I call the problem of rancorous humor, and on Zhuangzi-style smart humor as an antidote for it, see Axtell 2017b. 17 Nylan 255. 18 Nylan 254-255 discusses in this context Zhuangzi, "Running around accusing others is not as good as laughing, and enjoying good laugh less fine than going along with things. Be content to go along and forget [to dread] change, and then you can enter the mysterious Oneness of Heaven.... Just go along with things and let your faculties for thinking and feeling in the heart move freely. Best of all, resign yourself to what cannot be avoided and nourish whatever is within you." 19 Lombardini 12-13 quoting Halliwell, 2008, 37. Socrates' accusers make his irony an instance of a sophistical trope: "It is this type of mockery that Strepsiades learns from Socrates and deploys against his creditors, doing so in a way that might be viewed as troubling from a democratic standpoint. In Plato, however, the portrait we find of Socratic humor, and its relationship to Athenian democracy, are radically different" even from what one finds in Xenophon (Lombardini, 49-50). Even though Socrates sometimes describes himself as laughable in the dialogues, it is typically an indication of proper humility (I sting like a torpedo fish, and I look like one, too) and genuine, shared philosophic wonderment (thauma) rather than rhetorical one-upsmanship. And in the few instances where Socrates actually laughs, it is intentionally highlighted by Plato that he does so 'gently' and 'quietly' (Phaedo, 84d; 115e). 20 Nietzsche, "Homer's Contest," 180. This seems to me to apply to the Skeptics, and to the Hippocratic school also, whose empiricism led to many sharp criticisms of rationalist-dogmatist philosophy. Note also that Plato's Socrates in his dialogues prays to the Muses on numerous occasions: for aid in remembering a conversation (Euthydemus 275c-d: "So I must begin my 36 description as the poets do, by invoking the Muses and Memory herself"); for aid in eloquence for his first speech on love, and again, to be a philosopher (Phaedrus 237a-b; 278b); at the start of an inquiry into the nature of justice; and contrasting philosophical inquiry with the poet's 'just so' stories about origins (Republic IV 432c; VIII 545d-e). See B. Darrell Jackson, "The Prayers of Socrates" (1971) for discussion. 21 Paola Ceccarelli, in Castignola and Ceccarelli (eds.) Greek Memories, (2019, 103) confirms these Nietzschean insights on the agonistic character of Greek society and its connection with memorializing champions. 22 Archibald Allen, "Solon's Prayer," 64. Solon interestingly speaks of "the blend of force and justice which is law." Allen continues, "The aspect of the Muses' activity which is most familiar is their relation to poetry and music, but the wider extent of their power is not forgotten. So Plato can speak of a philosophic Muse (Phlb. 67B) and say that his ideal state will be realized when this Muse wins control of a city (Rep. 6.499D)". The rationalist Muse of Plato would be associated with wisdom, but more specifically in the form of the Good. Republic 244a-245c speaks of different kinds of beneficial mania: inspiration as per through a Muse, and a humane kind that seizes persons about to suffer or die, that they may more easily endure it. 23 Dan O'Shannon, 2015, 7. 24 The genealogy of the Muses was not taken as fully established by Homer and Hesiod, but has been a subject of inventive interest among later Greek and Roman poets, and even by philosophers including Plato. Scholars term this etiological play. Playing with Muse etymologies ('etymological play') allowed new blendings and pairings of older deities and their associated functions or provinces; it also allows for recognition of new fields of study which simply were not existent prior to the Greek golden age. So for example Plato finds a Muse of 37 philosophy, thereby supporting their competition with poets, sophists, or others vying for the crown of the most wise; history comes to have its own Muse, Clio, but this could occur only upon history's distinction from mythology-bound epic poetry, the domain of Calliope who the epic poets unsurprising described as 'chief' of the Muses; and somewhat counterpoint to these logo-centric upstarts, Livius later created a distinctive literary goddess, Moneta, not quite identical with Mnemosyne, yet connected like her with divinized memory. 25 Aristophanes, Frogs. 26 Hardie, 571-572. 27 For recent philosophical and psychological research on these topics see Michael Brady and other chapters in Laurie Candiotti (ed.) 2019 collection The Value of Emotions for Knowledge. 28 For more on humor, laughter, amusement and pleasure in Chinese tradition, see especially Michael Nylan's rich work, The Chinese Pleasure Book (2018). On smart humor in Zhuangzi in particular, see Axtell (2017b), Carl Dull (Helsing) (2012 and this volume), Moeller (2017), and Sellmann (1998). On connections with the concept of relational virtuosity discussed below, see the works of Peter Hershock and Roger Ames. 29 T.D. Ritchie (et. al.), (2015), 278. 30 For discussion of the "narrative alternative to theory of mind," see Shaun Gallagher (2006), esp. 224, and Hutto's response. See also Goldie, 2012. 38 31 Larry Hill quoted at http://www.indians.org/welker/stories1.htm. Relatedly, Psychology Today recently highlighted humans as storytelling animals. "We thrill to an astonishing multitude of fictions on pages, on stages, and on screens: murder stories, sex stories, war stories, conspiracy stories, true stories and false. We are, as a species, addicted to story. But the addiction runs deeper than we think. We can walk away from our books and our screens, but we can never walk away from story." https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-storytelling-animal/201205/creatures-story 32 Martha Nussbaum, The New Religious Intolerance, 143-144. Nussbaum's focus is not unconnected with our previous discussion of good and bad eris. J.S. Mill for example discusses in On Liberty (Chapter One) "the odium theologicum, in a sincere bigot" as being "one of the most unequivocal cases of moral feeling." 33 In a tradition going back at least to Francis Bacon, contemporary authors such as Herman (2017) and Boyd (2009) emphasize how fiction "increases the range of our vicarious experience and behavioral options. "Fiction can design events and characters to provoke us to reflect on, say, generosity or threat, or deception and counter-deception. And it efficiently evokes our intense emotional engagement without requiring our belief. Discussed in Herman (2017), 5. See also Breyer, 2019. 34 Nussbaum, 146. 35 Whole cultures can value or devalue imagination, as Voltaire's short story "Memory's Adventure" makes clear through its satirical treatment of the rationalist tendencies of Descartes' and Voltaire's own French culture. Empirical research on aphantasia, the lack of voluntary mental imagery in some people, is interesting for moral psychologists because this 39 deficit in tools of imagery is found to have negative impact of social and emotional intelligence. 36 Dewey, 1944, p. 148, my italics. Dewey wrote that "'only gradually and with a widening of the area of vision through a growth of social sympathies does thinking develop to include what lies beyond our direct interest: a fact of great significance for education." 37 Fesmire 2010, 189 quoting Dewey, Art as Experience, LW 10:348. On imagination, knowledge, and emotion see Any Kind and Peter Kung (eds.) Knowledge through Imagination (2016). On narrative see Harrellson 2012. Building on his earlier Dewey and Moral Imagination (2003), Fesmire (2012) explains how relational thinking not just in American pragmatism but also in much Eastern thought helps us better perceive the relational networks in which finite lives are embedded. Ecological thinking, as it enters into our deliberations about private choices and public policies, is a function of this sort of imagination. It aids moral awareness and serves as a tool of responsibility-through-action. "Ecological imagination is here understood as relational imagination shaped by key metaphors used in (though not necessarily originating in) the ecologies. That is, imagination is specifically 'ecological' when key metaphors and the like used in the ecologies organize mental simulations and projections. Our deliberations enlist ecological imagination when these imaginative structures (some of recent origin and some millennia old) shape what Dewey calls our dramatic rehearsals" (2012, 213). On William James' distinction of the 'crude' and 'subtle' emotions, and the higher moral relevance of the latter, see Axtell 2017b. James I think was right to notice in Principles of Psychology "how unexpectedly great are the differences between individuals in respect of imagination." Dewey's developments of moral imagination seems to reflect this as well as James view that "No matter how emotional the 40 temperament may be, if imagination be poor, the occasions for touching off the emotional trains will fail to be realized, and the life will be pro-tonto cold and dry" (1981, 704; 1088). 38 Andreas Leutzsch 2019, 152 and 116. 39 Leutzsch, 3. He continues that "Almost-forgotten or sleeping history can be revived to legitimize an imagined future in a political discourse today." Analyzing historical analogies as they appear in narratives, iconography, movies, journalism, etc. "enables us to understand how history and collective memory are managed and used for political purposes and to provide social orientation in time and space." 40 According to Maria Papova's assessment, when the story writer and playwright James Baldwin said, "We made the world we're living in and we have to make it over," he was exploring the paradoxical ways in which we imprison ourselves even as we pursue our liberty. One the one hand, "we can only make a broken world over if we first closely examine its parts - that is, its pasts - and take responsibility for the conditions as well as the consequences of its brokenness. And yet, too often, we flee and burrow in the comforting certitude of our history, which is not the same as our past, no matter how false and hubristic such certitude may be." 41 Rosenberg 2018, Chapter 1. 42 We can take the many theories of humor traditionally on offer, as O'Shannon does, as best seen as 'parts in search of an elephant': "when we gather these basic theories together, it begins to look as though people have been approaching comity from different directions. Some theories concerning the, these content, others are based on the feelings that arise from the comedic experience, and others are process-related" (2015, 10). These theories are not best seen as competitors for the roots of all humor. They address different questions and to this 41 extent invite interdisciplinary perspectives and not theoretical reduction. Yet they could still be components of some "larger, more comprehensive model" which took these different questions all into account. 43 One sees this new 'heroic' virtue exemplified, for example, in the Tomorrowland movie characters Casey Newton, an optimistic teen who refuses to accept technological determinism and the easy moral rationalizations for inaction it supplies, and Athena, the more-human-thanmost-of-us android who recruits just such dreamers and innovative can-doers as Casey and the young (pre-jaded adult and 'realist') Frank Walker. 44 Nietzsche reminds us that while envy, jealousy, or strife might translate Eris for both goddesses, Hesiod's point is that they have quite different moral dispositions. "For the one, the cruel one, furthers the evil war and feud! This bad eris, as the elder, gave birth to black Night." Many of the miseries sent to humans through Pandora's 'jar' are of this kind. Zeus however is said to have placed the other Eris upon the roots of the earth and among men as a much better one. 45 Hateful Eris as Hesiod presents it is the mother of "Battles and Fights, Murders and Manslaughters, Quarrels, Lying Words and Words Disputatious." When these spawn of bad eris have their way, such forces are "unleashed from the where the house of Night stands, just beyond where Poseidon set doors as the edge of Tartarus to contain or 'conceal' them." When they do, they unsettle that new order that arose in social contrast, with the birth of "Virgin Justice [Themis], Zeus' own daughter, Honored and revered among the Olympian gods." 46 Bateman finds it scarcely surprising that 'fake news,' infotainment, and still more overt propaganda "thrives in systems that discourage fidelity and thus minimize productive community" (109). Fidelity, which is what binds us to other humans and their shared practices, is 42 a prime virtue that we need today: "fidelity is founded on the promise (literal or figurative) to be part of something and thus to foster knowledge within that community (whether we are talking sports, research, art, crafts, or anything else). Cyber-fidelity would therefore apply whenever our robots aided our commitment and our communities without simultaneously engendering our dependency.... What I'm calling cyber-fidelity is another name for what Ivan Illich calls convivial tools: technology that empowers individuals within their communities, rather than creating dependence and dividing or destroying community" (110; 137). 47 Another Romantic thinker of the 19th century, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, held that the human condition is constituted more by our limitations than by our purposes, "by a person's station contrasted with all other stations, and by this sad fact that his particular purposes must be chosen from amongst all other possible ones." Thus for Goethe, a person's "understanding may render him universal; his life never can .... The saddest truth is that to be at all you must be something in particular." The true romantic's emotions and imagination allow them to compensate by living vicariously not one but many lives. The romantic is thus the kind of Nietzschean sufferer: one who suffers from an overabundance of life, rather than from a paucity of it. | {
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REALITY AND CULTURE a volume in Interpretation and Translation IT Edited by Michael Krausz VIBS Volume 270 Robert Ginsberg Founding Editor Leonidas Donskis Executive Editor Associate Editors G. John M. Abbarno George Allan Gerhold K. Becker Raymond Angelo Belliotti Kenneth A. Bryson C. Stephen Byrum 5REHUW$'HO¿QR Rem B. Edwards Malcolm D. Evans Roland Faber Andrew Fitz-Gibbon Francesc Forn i Argimon Daniel B. Gallagher William C. Gay Dane R. Gordon J. Everet Green Heta Aleksandra Gylling Matti Häyry Brian G. Henning Steven V. Hicks Richard T. Hull Michael Krausz Olli Loukola Mark Letteri Vincent L. Luizzi Hugh P. McDonald Adrianne McEvoy J.D. Mininger Danielle Poe Peter A. Redpath Arleen L. F. Salles John R. Shook Eddy Souffrant Tuija Takala Emil Višļovský Anne Waters James R. Watson John R. Welch Thomas Woods Amsterdam New York, NY 2014 Edited by Patricia Hanna REALITY AND CULTURE Essays on the Philosophy of Bernard Harrison Cover illustration: "Emanation I," painting by Michael Krausz. 2013. 30" x 40" Cover design: Studio Pollmann The paper on which this book is printed meets the requirements of "ISO 9706:1994, Information and documentation Paper for documents Requirements for permanence". ISBN: 978-90-420-3819-6 E-Book ISBN: 978-94-012-1066-9 © Editions Rodopi B.V., Amsterdam New York, NY 2014 Printed in the Netherlands Interpretation and Translation (IT) Michael Krausz Editor Other Titles in IT Michael Krausz. Oneness and the Displacement of Self: Dialogues on SelfRealization. 2013. VIBS 258 Michael Krausz. Interpretation and Transformation: Explorations in Art and the Self. 2007. VIBS 187 Not empiricism and yet realism in philosophy, that is the hardest thing. - Ludwig Wittgenstein CONTENTS EDITORIAL FOREWORD xi MICHAEL KRAUSZ FOREWORD xiii PATRICIA HANNA AND DOROTHY HARRISON PREFACE xvii PROLOGUE: Reality and Culture 1 BERNARD HARRISON Part One: LITERATURE AND REALITY 31 ONE What Do Humanists Want? 33 JOHN GIBSON TWO Reading Dickens: Pleasure and the Play of Bernard Harrison's "Social Practices" 49 MURRAY BAUMGARTEN THREE Harrison, Wittgenstein, Donne, and the Powers of Literary Art 65 RICHARD ELDRIDGE Part Two: THE CONSTITUTION OF THE MORAL LIFE 79 FOUR Bernard Harrison on the English Novel 81 LEONA TOKER FIVE From Meaning to Morality in Kovesi and Harrison 97 ALAN TAPPER SIX Paying a Debt: Bernard Harrison versus the Old-New Antisemitism 113 EDWARD ALEXANDER x REALITY AND CULTURE Part Three: LANGUAGE AND PRACTICE 129 SEVEN Bernard Harrison, Literature, and the Stream of Life 131 DANIÈL MOYAL-SHARROCK EIGHT Language without Meaning: The Limits of Biolinguistics 147 PATRICIA HANNA NINE Bernard Harrison's "World" 171 MICHAEL KRAUSZ TEN Meaning, Truth, and Practices: A Conundrum 181 DENNIS PATTERSON ELEVEN Language, Fiction, and the Later Wittgenstein 185 MICHAEL MORRIS EPILOGUE: Replies and Reflections 203 BERNARD HARRISON WORKS CITED 249 APPENDIX: Selected Publications of Bernard Harrison 265 ABOUT THE AUTHORS 271 NAME INDEX 275 SUBJECT INDEX 281 One WHAT DO HUMANISTS WANT? John Gibson 1. Introduction Here is a difficult philosophical trick, to be performed in the following order: First, deny that literature in any interesting way refers to, or represents-is about-anything real. Next, turn to language itself and endorse many of the linguistic idealist's claims about the objects of reference and the nature of representation. Then, go on to insist, with the stoutest of relativists, on the irreducible social grounding of concepts, indeed that human cultural practices, and not any sort of commerce with extra-cultural "reality," account for how thought and language gain a purchase on the world, such as they can. Next, insist in some intelligible way that you are, nonetheless, a realist and a literary humanist. Last, assert wholeheartedly that language, especially in the context of works of literary fiction, is saturated with the real and worldly, so much so in fact that looking at words in the context of literature is among the best routes available for exploring and coming to understand our world: our real world. At first glance, this may strike us as equal parts ill advised and mad. Yet, the above is a fair statement of Bernard Harrison's standing philosophical project. Over the course of his career, he has managed to make it appear not only sensible but a marked improvement over the competition (Harrison, 1975; 1991; 1993; 2006; 2007; Hanna and Harrison, 2004). His work is, at heart, motivated by a desire to re-enfranchise reality in the realms of art and language, and he has struggled to do so in those areas of contemporary thought that would prefer it remain banished. He has never carried out his project as a reactionary or contrarian, pointing us, as some philosophers do, back to Greece and away from France. He is inspired by much of the philosophy and literary theory that is most conspicuously at odds with his project- Jacques Derrida and Roland Barthes, for example. He has devised powerful ways of enlisting the philosophy of the later Ludwig Wittgenstein to show how even a poststructuralist can speak like a kind of realist and humanist without betraying her basic principles (Harrison, 2009). His is a philosophy of rapprochement, forward-looking rather than conservative. It has the welcome consequence of showing us that much of the space that currently separates philosophy and literary studies, even analytic and continental philosophy, can be overcome without destroying what is distinctive to each. 34 JOHN GIBSON I will not attempt to do justice to the grandness of Harrison's project here. But I do hope to give a sense of its seriousness. I will concentrate on his philosophy of literature, though to understand Harrison's thought in this area of philosophy is to understand it in virtually every area. In particular, I want to consider his anti-representationalist view of how literary language engages with reality. As done on such occasions, I will also air a few worries and raise a few questions. But my basic goal here is to highlight what is novel about Harrison's work. 2. Harrison's Humanism Since the mid-1970s, Harrison has been struggling to defend a broadly humanistic view of the value of works of literary fiction and of the powers of human culture more generally. The timing has been right, since, of course, these years have been the hardest on the humanist. Humanism has become anathema, in fact a whipping boy, in much of the work that now goes by the name of "theory." In academic areas that embrace Theory-English and Comparative Literature, most notably-humanism is associated with a kind of bad faith, a yearning to keep near myths about the human and its place in the world we know to be bunk. Harrison does not take issue with many of the worries that underwrite contemporary anti-humanism. This is why he has been one of humanism's most able defenders. He is with anti-humanists in respect to much of what they decry, yet he shows that their complaints lead us not to abandon humanism but just those unfortunate habits of thought that humanists can easily shake. To get the obvious out of the way, Harrison is not a humanist in any of the following senses: He does not gush about the sovereignty of reason or the harmony of human mind and natural world. He does not wonder whether the poet or the scientist is more godlike. He is aware of the inherent limitations of our "epistemic situation." He can openly and fully acknowledge the horrors of the twentieth century and the extent to which entirely human failings underwrote them. Apart from the last of these senses (see Harrison, 2006), he does not go on about these things, but he does offer an alternative to those characteristic sages of late modernity who take "humanism" to mean something midway between "imbecilic" and "evil." Harrison has helped philosophers to see how to divorce a defense of humanism from a retreat to Enlightenment and Romantic exaggerations about the human and its place in the world. In his hands, humanism cannot be reduced to any of the facile, straw man positions it is currently rumored to champion. So what is humanism for Harrison? I will put it baldly here, adding detail in the following sections. Humanism, in respect to both literature and life, is at root what we have if we find that we can tell a certain kind of story. The story can be told in a number of ways, but that what interests Harrison will conclude with a vindication of the role of art in human life and begin with an What Do Humanists Want? 35 account of those aspects of language and culture that make the production of this art possible. The story will insist that coming to understand how art makes meaning possible is a condensed and purified version of the story of how human culture more generally does. In other words, it will be a story of how certain of our cultural practices are capable of conjuring out of our various sayings and doings a sense of a shared world: a site of not uniform but at least shared, public paths of thinking, feeling, valuing, and living. Now a humanist need not give pride of place to art when telling this story. But humanists, Harrison included, tend to find the work of art to be the best image we have of how our human practices can conspire to make a particular achievement possible. Explaining what this achievement consists in is where the philosophical work begins. But the achievement, whatever else it does, reveals that human language and culture can on occasion give us access to something worldly enough: a realm that is both human in origin yet sufficiently deserving of the name "real" to dispel the sense that it is a mere projection of human thought and speech. Somewhat like Wallace Stevens's supreme fiction (1942), the achievement will consist in the yoking together, in the case of art, of the world and the imagination, or, in the case of our "everyday" practices, of the practical and the real (more on this below). At times, this achievement will strike us as successful enough as to justify our sense that there is something of substance, something more than just made-up, fictive, or chimerical, in this shared world made available to us through the gift of acculturation. This is humanism and not, or not just, realism because it emphasizes from beginning to end, and with a reasonable amount of optimism, the ability of human practices to create what the traditional realist thinks we in some way only find or discover. This is not to say that humanists of this sort take reality to be completely "constructed," whatever this would exactly mean. It is rather to say that certain of our creations open up, as a Heideggerian would put it, avenues through which reality can disclose itself. Consider the practice of measurement-one of Harrison's favorite tropes-by virtue of which thoroughly human inventions such as pounds, kilos, and stones allow the world to reveal to us something about how it is. The world is not, of course, itself made of pounds or kilos or stones (at least of the sort relevant here), and it would be silliness to argue about which of these units of measurement is "right" or gets closer to reality as it "really" is. But the ability to talk about ways in which things in the real world are can only get afoot on account of the creation of tools such as these. Likewise, many of our cultural practices employ human creations that set the stage for a kind of revelation, not in any splendid metaphysical sense, but to the extent that these practices render intelligible questions about how the world is and is not. This is what sets the stage for the whole cultural enterprise of articulating a sense of our world. Without the ability to ask the worldly questions these hu36 JOHN GIBSON man creations make possible, thought and talk about reality are impoverished to the point of incommunicability (see Hanna and Harrison, 2004). Like the idealist or anti-realist, the humanist acknowledges that the world we are bound to have is a thoroughly human world. But the humanist refuses to see this as a kind of barrier or congenital deficiency in our worldly condition, as something merely human or merely cultural or merely conventional. It is human in origin but-or so the idea goes-this does not preclude but grounds the possibility of inheriting something "real," a world of the sort orthodox realists think only an act of cognitive or linguistic transcendence will bring to us. This is a thought that Hilary Putnam captures well: What I am saying, then, is that elements of what we call "language" or "mind" penetrate so deeply into what we call "reality" that the very project of representing ourselves as being mappers of something "language independent" is fatally compromised from the very start. (1990, p. 28) Stanley Cavell is also worth mentioning here, in a passage I suspect Harrison admires: For Wittgenstein, philosophy comes to grief not in denying what we all know to be true, but in its effort to escape those human forms of life which alone provide the coherence of our expressions. He wishes an acknowledgment of human limitation which does not leave us chafed by our skin, by a sense of powerlessness to penetrate beyond the human conditions of knowledge. The limitations of knowledge are no longer barriers to a more perfect apprehension, but the conditions of knowledge, überhaupt [anyway], of anything we should call knowledge. (1969, pp. 61–62) Like Putnam, Harrison urges that the connection between the human and the real is more direct, more immediate, than can be captured by talk of language or thought as reaching out to a fully independent world. The connection to the world that most matters must in some sense be internal to our practices, woven into the fabric of thought and language, at least on occasion and to some not insignificant degree. To regard reality as utterly "language independent" is to relegate the very thing we wish to possess to a place wholly beyond us and so beyond the realm in which we speak, think, and create works that, frequently and fundamentally, struggle to be expressive of the world in which we find ourselves. As a few millennia of Western philosophy have shown us, inseparable from this picture is the skeptical idea that, "as far as we know," we never succeed in accessing this realm in our attempts at representing and knowing it. This thought will lead most reasonable minds to conclude that we therefore have little business invoking the notion of "reality," except, perhaps, as a kind of regulatory ideal or fiction of convenience. What Do Humanists Want? 37 For Harrison, as for Cavell, the trick here is to find a way of thinking about human practices and conventions that does not make them appear bound to always fall on the unflattering side of the line that divides the real from everything else. Combining the two ideas, Harrison's humanism wishes to see what we call reality not as existing in an elsewhere that we can, at best, represent from afar-giving it then a connection nearly as tenuous as one gets from a solitary act of reference-but as something we can find within those very practices that give us a purchase on the world. It urges that, if we can see it as such, we will find that our experience of human culture and its most exemplary products will be an experience of something sufficiently real to satisfy the wish for worldliness that animates humanism. It will not be a surprise that what contrasts with humanism in Harrison's work is what he calls the "prison-house" view of language and, one might add, of mind and culture more generally. Much of his work shows how a great amount of the philosophy of language we have inherited from last century (though with roots in Plato and Locke; see Harrison, 1993) leads to such a view, unawares or not. It is a view that fashions a sense that what keeps us trapped here is, despairingly, much of what makes up the human world: all the practices and conventions we stand upon whenever we direct our mouths or minds toward the world. Of course, if we have a view of this sort, in all sorts of obvious ways, it will wreak havoc on our sense of the value of practices that are content to retreat into human language and thought, exploring the words, feelings, and perspectives that constitute our human way in the world. In short, it is very bad business for our understanding of both language and art. Humanism, for Harrison, is what we have not when we find a way out of this prison-house but when we discover that there never was one at all. If talk of "projecting," "constructing," and "fictionalizing" are intelligible here, it is not in respect to what we call reality but to the sense of human minds, languages, and cultures as prison-houses that keep it from us. I have said little here about how our practices and pursuits might be seen as grounding this more internal, immediate commerce with the real. I will discuss it in the next section, when I turn explicitly to literature. But to give a sense of the possibilities this kind of humanism opens up, I conclude this section with the following challenging but intriguing passage. Here Harrison is commenting on the philosophical significance of Virginia Woolf's To The Lighthouse (1927): Mr. Ramsey is a creature of pure textuality. He is an insubstantial pageant. His tissues are the tissues of words which have conjured him up. Must we then treat him as having nothing at all to do with reality? Well, not necessarily. For the tissue of words which constitute him are not just tissues of words. Behind the words are the system of practices which give life and meaning to the words. Those practices interact with reality in multifarious ways. They link us each to the complex, commonplace 38 JOHN GIBSON world to which we all share common access. . . . The textuality which constitutes Mr. Ramsey's personality is, then, not a textuality of words alone, but a textuality of practices. And since we share those practices, and are also in part constituted as individuals by them, the practices out of which Mr. Ramsey is constructed link him not merely to the reality of the world present to all of us as the condition of our speaking a common language, but to the reality which we constitute: to us, as readers. (Harrison, 1993, p. 42) This is how a humanist of the sort just described wishes to speak. Now on to seeing what it means to speak like this, and precisely how one can get away with it. 3. Practice, Literature, Life As should be clear, a defense of literary humanism turns out to be a defense of humanism tout court, since on this particular battleground, all of what conspires to put literature in need of such a defense is precisely what puts so much of human culture in need of it. In this respect, the literary work of art turns out to function as what Wittgenstein calls a "perspicuous representation" of culture itself and the challenges we face when we attempt to offer a philosophical justification of it. All that makes the literary work of art seem powerless to touch the real is in effect what has all along made the basic manner in which the human confronts the world appear essentially the same. The arguments that lead one to doubt that literature could ever successfully represent, yield knowledge of, or state truths about reality are of a piece with the very arguments that lead one to wonder whether any human practice can. What philosophy needs is a perspective that allows one to escape the circle of argumentation that makes both literature and human practice more generally look so degraded from the standpoint of reality. This is what Harrison gives us. Before outlining how Harrison tries to pull this off, let me state more clearly just what is at stake in respect to a defense of literary humanism. When called upon on to defend literary humanism, one is asked to justify the cultural role literature has served in virtually every corner of the world, and since stories were first told. The reason all this talk about truth, knowledge, and reality is thought to be so important here is that these are the terms we have traditionally employed when attempting to vindicate the cognitive, moral, and educative power of literary works of art. A theory of literature that implies, as many do, that literature can have no direct, intentional, or significant commerce with the real appears to pull from underneath us the very ground on which we have always made sense of the value of literature. Literary humanism, as an aesthetic expression of the humanist's general wish for worldliness, is the struggle to find philosophical grounds for attributing to literature the kind of cultural power it has habitually been thought to What Do Humanists Want? 39 enjoy. True, modernity is reputed to be less reliant on the arts of any form as viable instruments of knowledge or tools of communication (all that business about the ascendency of science, technology, and capitalism's "culture industry"). But even if one accepts this, there is room to desire, with the literary humanist, to show that the old stories are still worth telling and new ones worth devising. But precisely why does one face a serious philosophical challenge when defending literary humanism? As Harrison has shown, there is a powerful tension between our commitment to this deceptively innocent thesis of literary humanism and our understanding of language itself. So the attempt to defend literary humanism takes the form of a genuine philosophical puzzle in his work. Thus, what one finds in Harrison is something that the philosophy of literature always searches for in its struggle to get a bit of respect from philosophy at large: a set of hard problems to be solved, a good paradox, and a clear point of continuity with the work that has guided the great traditions of the twentieth-century. Harrison's contribution has been to show that overcoming these problems requires a radical refashioning not only of our understanding of how literature works but of how language (and those aspects of human practice that sponsor it) itself does. His strategy is, in effect, the Humean one of offering a skeptical solution to a skeptical paradox. Unlike traditional defenses of literary humanism, Harrison does not struggle to find a way to assert what the skeptic denies, namely, that literature can represent reality or state truths about it. Rather, he embraces the very skeptical claims that threaten literary humanism, and he reveals that a vindication of it never required affirming these claims in the first place. It is worth saying a bit more about these skeptical arguments. I outline one of the many one could choose from, since it the one with which Harrison has been most concerned and which is arguably most challenging to literary humanism. Since I will be dispensing with it rather quickly, I will not attempt to make it as compelling as the skeptic would wish. What I ask the reader to consider is not quite the soundness of the argument but the frame of philosophical mind to which it would appeal. It should be a familiar frame of mind, and, while misguided, natural enough, given entrenched philosophical views about what must be the case for language or thought of any sort to be informative of reality. Call it the problem of "representationalism." To see the problem, begin by asking what so much as infuses a sentence with aboutness, what manages to tether it to something beyond itself? An altogether common, and intuitive, answer is: reference. When one asks what it means to refer to the world in speech, the standard response is, simply put, that one attempts to represent it, as I do when I say, "my friends laugh at me even when I am not telling a joke." In this case, I use my words to bring before you a picture of how things (often) stand in the world, at least in my corner of it. 40 JOHN GIBSON Generally, representation explains-and an enormous range of competing accounts exists-how language can describe the world. Namely, language can hold up a mirror to the world, for example, by conveying a proposition that pictures or otherwise configures a sense of the sorts of relations we take to obtain in the world (my friends laughing on occasions I would prefer they would not). It is here that questions of truth and falsity become intelligible and hence that the unceasing debates about realism, anti-realism, relativism, and idealism gain traction. For once we say that language claims its worldliness through the act of representing reality, then one must ask under which conditions these representations are successful and how we can ever know this. It is commonly on this foundation of what we can call "representationalism" that questions of our access to (or occlusion from) truth and reality are fashioned, indeed, rendered intelligible. Here is the rub: literary humanism wishes to see literature as about reality. The problem is not that we have little reason to believe that its representations are ever successful or that we can never quite know whether literature gets reality right. Against the backdrop of representationalism, literary humanism appears to fail the test of worldliness before these questions can even be intelligibly raised. For literature, it turns out, does not even attempt to represent reality and so it refuses to engage in the very activity that would permit us to raise the question of its worldliness in the first place. As Harrison argues, much philosophy of language leads to the view that it is: not that the statements which figure in works of fiction are false, but something rather worse, that the statements which figure in works of fiction are, as it were, dummy statements, incapable of being assigned any truth-value, either true or false. (2009, pp. 226–227) Works of imaginative literature-the sort obviously at issue here-are works of fiction. Note: even if we think that literary language is in some way representational and truth-bearing, the directionality will still be all wrong for literary humanism. Literature represents, if anything, and as Harrison would put it, imagined worlds and not the real one, and so, at best, it can articulate fictional rather than worldly truths. When John Milton writes, "So stretched out huge in length the Arch-Fiend lay/Chained on the burning lake," (2005, ll. 209–210) something is surely pictured, but one won't find it in the real world. And even if one could find it there, it wouldn't show that Paradise Lost (ibid.) was referring to or otherwise representing it. The great poem, presumably, is here representing a link in a narrative chain, a happening in the fictional story it tells, and we wouldn't call for corrections to Paradise Lost if the real Satan confessed that Hell had actually treated him better than this. The point is, literary humanism appears to run painfully afoul of both how philosophy of What Do Humanists Want? 41 language tells us words become worldly and what so much philosophy of literature tells us fictional stories are about in a basic "metaphysical" sense. Harrison's solution to these puzzles seems altogether obvious, once put, though I am unaware of any philosopher of literature before him who hit upon anything resembling it. It is at this point in the defense of literary humanism that one plugs in all the talk about cultural practices I discussed above. There is no use denying that there are such things as representational and referential uses of language. But the crucial question is often overlooked: what sorts of prior connections between language and the world must already be in place for linguistic reference or representation to be possible? It is here that one explores the role of cultural practices, described above, in creating the conditions that make it possible to speak about the world, practices that bestow us with the very tools, standards, and criteria that render questions about the reality intelligible. What this opens up is an awareness that there are two ways in which language encounters reality, one on the level of reference and the other on the level of cultural practice. What we will find when exploring the cultural mode of encounter would appear to be much more interesting for the humanist, for it is here that one sees at the most fundamental level all that goes into what we call the human world. That is, an insight into the structure of our cultural practices can show us how these practices are disclosive of human reality by revealing: the ways in which our practices have devised for us a specific kind of world, the human world, whose nature determines the scope and boundaries of what for us counts as a human life. (Harrison, 2009, p. 221) Among much else, we find how our culture and its conventions are expressive of human interests, our interests, and so exploring these conventions will help cast light on the array of shared concepts, values, and meanings that act as the raw material with which we articulate a sense of our world and, of course, ourselves. We can now see that this conception of culture and its significance for philosophy is what is at stake in the passage on To the Lighthouse quoted in the previous section. It explains how Harrison can get away with the bold claims he makes on behalf of humanism, even as he embraces some of the convictions about language and literature that would appear at odds with it. In Inconvenient Fictions, his earliest statement of this view, Harrison describes this insight into the basic intermingling of culture and language in terms of an insight into constitutive language: It is time to show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle. Literary language, the language of narrative fiction and poetry, is, root and branch, constitutive language. As such it is non-referential and it makes no statements. . . . It is a language occupied solely with itself, in a sense. The mistake 42 JOHN GIBSON promoted by the Positivistic vision of language is to suppose that this sense can be absolute. Language is everywhere hopelessly infected by the extra-linguistic: the relationship between its signs runs ineluctably by way of the world. So there is, just as the critical humanist has always maintained, a strong connection between language and Reality; only it does not run by way of reference and truth. Rather, it permeates the thickness of the language we speak. (1991, p. 51) This passage strikes me as decisive a rejection of representationalism-and the traditional formulations of humanism that are premised on it-as one could hope for. When we find ourselves in the presence of exemplary literary achievements, we come into contact with constitutive language in the sense that in these works we see language showing us its structure, casting in relief the particular coming together of words, deeds, and values that constitute our practices and so our basic alignment with our world. Works of imaginative literature may not represent anything real or actual. But the forms of cultural activity in which both we and creatures of literary fiction engage are as a rule common, and this is what supports the humanist's conviction that in one way or another literature nearly always concerns itself with life. Even in a work of dazzling satire or modernist experimentation that has humans doing very unhuman things, the light it casts can have a powerful ability to highlight, even if associatively and negatively, what we do and how we are. Harrison's various readings of King Lear (Shakespeare, [1603] 1947), Measure for Measure (Shakespeare, [1603] 1954), To the Lighthouse (Woolf, 1927), and the holocaust fiction of Aharon Appelfeld show compellingly that this idea can be fleshed out both philosophically and critically. What we find is that the dramatic core of literature, when successful, is nothing but the dramatic core of life: of those forms of activity and interaction we call culture (see Gibson, 2006; 2007). In this respect, the dramatic and not the mimetic would seem the more appropriate category for literary humanism. This is one way of putting the insight embodied in still fashionable narrative accounts of the self. If we are, in some way, made of stories, then stories and the dramatic encounter with life they explore, function as a common currency of communication when we attempt to call attention to the sorts of doings, suffering, and happenings that constitute the human world. (Keep in mind that even Anton Chekhov's explorations of all that is mundane and tedious in domestic life are the stuff of drama, so this argument casts the net sufficiently wide.) A fictional story may not represent any actual truth, but, if Sigmund Freud was correct, the stories we offer of ourselves rarely do either. At any rate, what matters is not the representational but the dramatic quality of the story and its ability to confess something of significance about the shared cultural stage upon which human lives, fictional and real, are carried out. Harrison captures this idea nicely when he tells us that the value of literature resides: What Do Humanists Want? 43 in the power of its medium, language, to summon up and display . . . through its deployment in the medium of a fiction, the nature of the human practices and choices which found the conceptual distinctions it enshrines, and which simultaneously found, along with them, a world; a world which is not only the world in which we live, but that world-and its founding words-made flesh in us: the world which exists only in us, the world of whose values and assumptions we are the living bearers;- and which is not, moreover, a static world, but a world constantly in a slow, glacier-like flux of change, one of the motivating forces of which, of course, is great literature. That is why great literature is, or should be, important to us. (2009, p. 224) From this vantage-point, traditional, representationalist brands of literary humanism seem hopelessly conservative, even paradoxical, implying as they do that the reality we want is external to us and hence to the world we constitute, which can seem more a plea to escape the human realm than to find a way to exult in our acceptance of it. In this respect, traditional humanism leaves us feeling, as Cavell would put it, "chafed by our skin," failing to see that the reality that matters to a humanist is not extra-literary or even extra-linguistic at all and so that reaching it does not require any act of transcendence. The world the humanist should want is given expression in the very culture with which literary works are so intimately bound. The only form of skepticism that could pose a threat to this brand of humanism would be the kind that denies that literature is ever about anything at all. This would be the stripe of linguistic and literary skepticism that urges that all meaning is impossible, that the very idea of content is a myth, and that texts themselves do not really exist. While this form of skepticism still has a few practitioners, even those in Theory will acknowledge that it smacks of the 1980s and so, of a moment past. Harrison's humanism offers powerful resources for attacking this form of skepticism, but I shall stop the story here. I hope that what I have said gives a fair sense of how viable Harrison's humanism is for the contemporary scene, a scene in which concerns with ethical criticism, selfhood, aesthetics, and the seriousness (and not, or not just, playfulness) of literature are happily on the horizon again, in both philosophy and literary studies. 4. Representation without Representationalism? I find all of this convincing and a massive step forward in how we conceive the project of humanism. This in large part, I believe, because I agree with Harrison that representationalism has acted as kind of undetected virus in traditional humanism, which, once identified, explains why humanism seems to be in an ever more risible position the more philosophers and literary theorists 44 JOHN GIBSON pay serious attention to the nature of literary language. So I agree with Harrison wholeheartedly that we would do best simply to lose it and rebuild on new ground. I also agree that Harrison's practice-based humanism is the foundation on which to build. In fact, I think the power of the insight into the workings of cultural practice that Harrison uncovers accounts for the lion's share of literature's most meaningful ways of engaging with reality. What I find myself less comfortable with is relinquishing all talk of representation. It strikes me that we have two ways to respond to Harrison's powerful critique of representationalism. One, Harrison's, is to show that we can move forward without any significant notion of literary representation. The other is to devise a properly literary notion of representation that decisively cuts all ties with representationalism. I make no claim that the latter can actually be done-it is possible that we shall find that we cannot have representation without representationalism-but it is worth briefly exploring the prospects for a reformed notion of representation. It is important to recall that the term "representation" has always had an independent aesthetic usage, though in fairness to Harrison, one of those central usages, Plato's theory of mimêsis, in all sorts of obvious ways plays directly into representationalism. Unfortunately, in the contemporary philosophy of literature, we are trained to think of representation not only in mimetic terms but in terms even more suspicious: we conceive of representation as an essentially linguistic affair, as a mimetic employment of words. Of course, this would have been alien to Plato, whose theory of mimesis takes images and not descriptions as its point of departure. So from whence comes this tethering of the mimetic sense of representation to the linguistic? The story is complex, but it is easy enough to indicate what it will be a story of. For anyone working on this side of twentieth-century Anglophone philosophy, our concept of representation is filtered through the work of "high" analytic philosophy of language. Consider, just for one example, the overwhelming preoccupation with the nature of the proposition, itself perhaps the best image we have of a mimetically charged employment of words (hence the positivistic flirtation with the "picture theory" of the proposition). As philosophy of literature worked its way back into mainstream philosophy after a good half-century in the woods, it did so largely on the coattails of analytic philosophy of language, devising very sophisticated theories of fictional truth and reference by borrowing the resources of philosophy of language. This was in many respects for the good, but it also helps us to see why the philosophy of literature now finds itself with such an explicitly linguistic, mimetic notion of representation (Gibson, 2007). Even in theory the story is not so different, enlisting as theory has the kind of post-war Continental philosophy that, along with analytic philosophy, represents the great "linguistic turn" of twentieth-century philosophy. One cannot help but wonder what our notion of representation in contemporary What Do Humanists Want? 45 philosophy of literature would look like had it been devised in continuity with, say, the philosophy of fine art and not the philosophy of language. At any rate, one does have the feeling that it is a contingent fact of recent history that we philosophers of literature cannot help but talk like representationalists, in the sense given above, whenever we talk about representation. This clearly is not the place to launch a new theory of representation, and in fact I do not have one to offer. But let me say a few things that, with hope, will motivate an interest in reviving at least some talk of representation. Here is one reason I think we might wish to be able to speak of literature as having an essential representational power: if we give up all talk of representation, we will have a very difficult time telling a compelling account of what it means for a novel to succeed or, perhaps more importantly, fail in its attempt to offer a cognitively significant encounter with the world. The representationalist has always had an easy time with this: if a novel strives to be a mirror of the world, it can either succeed or fail to offer an accurate representation of the world-failure and success here are just modes of representational failures and successes. But if we turn in the other direction and banish all talk of representation, I fear we will find ourselves with a poverty of resources for speaking meaningfully about success and failure here. To motivate this criticism, consider Fyodor Dostoyevsky's Preface to Notes from Underground, where he makes the sort of authorial promise to illuminate reality that the humanist believes we should takes so seriously: It goes without saying that both these Notes and their author are fictitious. Nevertheless, people like the author of these notes may, indeed must, exist in our society, if we think of the circumstances under which that society has been formed. It has been my wish to show the public a character of the recent past more clearly than is usually shown. (2001, p. 95) Assume Dostoyevsky delivered what he promised: he succeeded in showing us something about this "public character of the recent past." Something inside of us is bound to speak up and ask what, exactly, can this mean, if not that he represented, in some way, this past accurately? Exactly what does he get right, and just how does he get it right, if not by representing it? Harrison's humanism offers us enough to see how he might build his response to this. He is clever enough to try to accommodate the sensible intuitions representationalism harnesses without accepting its ugly bits. He can say, for example, that this success will consist in the way literary characters: invoke features of a human world we share with them, which link our situation to theirs, allowing the emotions associated with the pressures 46 JOHN GIBSON of that common situation to flood from us into them, in such a way, that, viewed in them as in a glass (for the specular metaphor has always possessed a certain intuitive force, which it retains in this connection and to this extent), our own situation as inhabitants of, and as the bearers of natures formed by the pressures of, a certain human world becomes in certain respects clearer to us, because surveyable as a whole. (Harrison, 2009, p. 222) This is intriguing, but I would like to press Harrison on this notion of literature's invocation of a common world that we find in fictions. How, precisely, do we see a work as invoking our world if not for our ability to see, in some way, the work as representing our world? What so much as inclines us to establish this link between our world and the fictional world of a text, if not that we already see in its fictions, somehow, a representation of our world? The trick here is to refuse to allow representationalism, or any image of mirroring, to creep in when hearing these questions. I agree that no mirroring is going on here, certainly not in a linguistic sense. But it seems incautious, even a little perverse, therefore to conclude that no representing is going on, either. Perhaps the possibility of failure is more interesting than that of success here. Assume that Dostoyevsky failed-however hard it may be to imagine this-to show us the "character of the recent past"; assume that he did not deliver on his promise. In this case, what did he fail at, exactly? Harrison's solution turns on his idea of language, and hence of literary language, as infused with reality: reality, at least of the human variety, is "internal" to it. But this cannot mean that any literary work, because built of natural language, is by that very fact revelatory of this human reality. Harrison is surely aware of this problem. But I find it difficult to understand how his theory can help us overcome it. We need to leave room for this possibility of failure, and doing so would seem to require that we be able to say of certain novels, "that is not how we are" or that "human reality is not like that." Further, it seems to require that we be able to say this in respect to its representation of life and not, or not just, of how its language reveals or fails to reveal something about the relationship between our practices, our words, and our world. Harrison's theory strikes me as perhaps too general and too abstract to be able to capture the uniqueness and specificity of a particular novel's manner of getting us and our world right or wrong. Again, if these failures do not consist in representational failures, then in what, exactly? One response at Harrison's disposal would be to say that they consist in failures of language: novelists who fail to engage with reality have misused language. Novels that are humanistic failures are, say, extended strings of nonsense (of the Wittgensteinian, if not everyday, variety of "nonWhat Do Humanists Want? 47 sense"). But I very much doubt that Harrison would encourage such an interpretation of his theory of humanism. For if Dostoyevsky failed, certainly we would not want to say of an author with his mastery over words that he was misusing language, that he was, in his way, speaking nonsense? Again, we can see the allure of recourse to some conception of representation. It seems much easier simply to claim that he failed to represent reality aright. The language of his work is, as it were, in order; the representation he offered is not. One way of developing this plea for a literary-humanistic conception of representation might be the following: We might bite the bullet and concede that the language of literature represents nothing but fictions and fictions alone. But this is only to speak of a literary work viewed in utter isolation from the culture that has received it and done something with it. We can see the claim that a literary works represents reality as a kind of right a work has won and not as specifying something its language does. It would be the right, or privilege, to stand for us in a certain way, as a narrative that we put forth as embodying, even as announcing, what we take our way in the world to be, or at least one such way. If we view Dostoyevsky's story as a mere piece of language and look nowhere beyond it, the very question of whether it represents modern alienation might well be unanswerable, even unintelligible. But it is not, if viewed in terms of his masterpiece's place in a modern culture, certain members of which have embraced it and come to link it in all sorts of manifest and implicit ways to its self-conception. Indeed, it seems to me that the practice of criticism itself is one example of how these links are established. Moreover, all the various aspects of our culture, from classrooms to cafe conversations, help fill out this story of how a culture breathes into a certain literary work these points of connection to "reality" such that it becomes intelligible to speak of it as a representation of our world (Gibson, 2006). This is not to say that culture, rather than literary works, does all of the worldly work in creating a representation of life. It is rather to say that we should see the two as working in tandem if we wish to understand how a literary work can come to acquire all the forms of worldly significance we attribute to it. This seems to me to indicate one possible route for embracing representation without representationalism, since it promises to allow us to abandon all of the mimetic-linguistic baggage of the latter when explaining how fictions can represent the real. I'll stop here, before my point becomes a rant. But I hope my point, if necessarily inchoate, suffices to make one think that we might do well to reclaim for philosophy of literature a workable conception of representation. All of this has been more an expression of wonderment than a criticism of Harrison's work. It does not strike me that it would be inconsistent with his theory. But I do wonder whether he would accept this call for a reformed theory of 48 JOHN GIBSON representation. The question is just how Harrison would accommodate, if at all, this plea for a properly literary-humanistic theory of representation. 5. Conclusion Harrison's brand of humanism shows us that we have all we need to be humanists if we have access only to the kinds of cultural practice that relativists and anti-realists earn their bread arguing are all we have access to. His work helps us see that what humanists should want are modest but effective terms for justifying at least some of the culture we create and for praising at least some its products, literary works of art chief among them. It is a humanism one does not need to be ashamed of in public, not even in the presence of one's colleagues in English. It is sufficiently modest in its claims on behalf of the real that it should be acceptable even to those recalcitrant sorts who cannot tolerate talk about the real and worldly: apart from their native dislike of a kind of vocabulary, there really isn't much for them to take issue with. For those of us who suffer from a serious case of late-romantic longing for worldliness, it shows us how we can satisfy our desire without forgetting that we are modern or demanding that we ignore the better part of reason. To be sure, there are still many skeptics out there, and I've said nothing here about the recent, meteoric rise of post-humanism in literary studies, which, despite its bad press in philosophy, is not as silly as we would like to believe. But this is just to say that there is still work to be done, and I hope to have shown here that Harrison offers us very powerful tools for getting started on this work. | {
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The Argument from Vagueness Daniel Z. Korman* University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign Abstract Universalism is the thesis that composition is unrestricted: for any non-overlapping objects, those objects compose something. One of the most influential arguments for universalism is the argument from vagueness, first advanced by David Lewis and later elaborated and defended by Theodore Sider. I supply a reconstruction of the argument and survey a variety of responses to it. 1. Introduction Under what conditions do some objects compose something?1 The intuitive answer to the question is 'sometimes'. When a hammer head and hammer handle are firmly attached to one another, they plausibly compose something, namely, a hammer. Before the handle and head were attached to one another, they plausibly did not compose anything. The universalist answer is 'always': for any non-overlapping objects, those objects compose something. The handle and head compose something even before they come into contact. There is even something composed of your nose and the Eiffel Tower – something partly located in Paris and partly located on your face. Despite such counterintuitive implications, universalism is widely accepted among metaphysicians, and its popularity is in large part due to the argument from vagueness.2 The argument from vagueness was first advanced by David Lewis and was later elaborated and defended by Theodore Sider.3 It runs as follows: (A1) If universalism is false, then there can be a sorites series for composition. (A2) Every sorites series for composition must contain either borderline cases of composition or a cut-off with respect to composition. (A3) There cannot be borderline cases of composition. (A4) There cannot be cut-offs with respect to composition.4 (A5) So universalism is true. A sorites series for composition is a series of cases running from a case in which composition definitely does not occur to a case in which composition definitely does occur, where adjacent cases are extremely similar in all of the respects that one would typically take to be relevant to whether composition occurs (e.g., the spatial and causal relations among the items in question). Borderline cases of composition are cases in which it is vague whether some things compose anything at all. A cut-off with respect to composition is a pair of adjacent cases in a sorites series for composition such that in one composition does occur and in the other composition does not occur. For purposes of illustration, consider a continuous series of cases running from the beginning to the end of the assembly of the aforementioned hammer. Assuming (contra universalism) that the handle and head do not compose anything at the beginning of the Philosophy Compass 5/10 (2010): 891–901, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00327.x a 2010 The Author Philosophy Compass a 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd assembly process, and that they do compose something at the end, this is a sorites series for composition. There will be points in the assembly process at which the handle and head are just beginning to be fastened together and at which, intuitively, it is vague whether they compose something. I will hereafter refer to these points as 'the intuitive grey area'. For ease of exposition, I will suppose in what follows that the handle and head compose at most one object, that they do not themselves have any proper parts, and that there are no material objects in the universe apart from the handle, the head, and that (if anything) which they compose.5 Additionally, when I return to this case below, I will suppose that the handle and head are presently arranged in such a way as to be in the intuitive grey area. In what follows, I examine the reasoning behind the two main premises of the argument from vagueness – A3 to A4 – and various strategies for resisting these premises.6 Much could be said about each of the strategies. My aim here, however, is only to provide a perspicuous statement of the argument and to present a range of possible responses. I leave it to the reader to decide whether these responses are best viewed as exposing genuine shortcomings of the argument or rather as desperate maneuvers for avoiding its conclusion. 2. The Argument for Premise A3 Premise A3 stands in need of further support. It seems just as clear that there can be borderline cases of composition as that there can be borderline cases of redness and baldness. The argument for A3 runs as follows: (B1) If there can be borderline cases of composition, then there can be count indeterminacy. (B2) If there can be count indeterminacy, then some expression in some numerical sentence can be vague. (B3) No expression in any numerical sentence can be vague. (A3) So there cannot be borderline cases of composition.7 To say that there is count indeterminacy is to say that it is indeterminate how many concrete objects there are. A numerical sentence is a sentence of the following sort which says, for some finite number n, that there are exactly n concrete objects (in this case n = 2): '$x$y(Cx & Cy & x „ y & "z(Cz fi (x = z v y = z)))'. These premises all seem plausible. Borderline composition does seem to give rise to count indeterminacy. If the handle and head are a borderline case of composing something, then it will be indeterminate how many concrete objects there are: two (the handle and the head) or three (the handle, the head, and a hammer). And if it is indeterminate whether there are two or three concrete objects, then the numerical sentence that says that there are exactly two concrete objects must be vague, in which case it must contain some vague expression. But numerical sentences seem not to contain any vague expressions. 3. Resisting Premise B3 All three premises of the argument for A3 can be resisted. Sider's own defense of A3 focuses almost exclusively on challenges to B3. His defense of B3 may be represented as follows: 892 The Argument from Vagueness a 2010 The Author Philosophy Compass 5/10 (2010): 891–901, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00327.x Philosophy Compass a 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd (C1) No expression in any numerical sentence has multiple admissible precisifications. (C2) An expression is vague only if it has multiple admissible precisifications. (C3) So no expression in any numerical sentence is vague.8 The precisifications of an expression are candidate meanings for that expression. C1 is independently plausible: every expression in the numerical sentence seems already to have a determinate meaning. C2 is an expression of the natural view that vagueness is always the result of our having failed to associate a unique meaning with a given expression. In what follows, I consider two strategies for resisting C1 – focusing on the concreteness predicate and the quantifiers – and one strategy for resisting C2.9 3.1. BORDERLINE CONCRETA One might resist C1 by maintaining that the concreteness predicate, 'C', has multiple precisifications. Before examining the strategy, it is important to understand the raison d'être of the concreteness predicate. If the concreteness predicate were missing from the numerical sentences, then every numerical sentence would be determinately false at every possible world on account of there being infinitely many numbers (sets, propositions, etc.) in every possible world. Consequently, borderline composition could never result in indeterminate numerical sentences, and the argument from vagueness would fail. To guard against this result, the characterization both of the numerical sentences and of count indeterminacy must incorporate a restriction to those categories of entities that do not have infinitely many members in every world. So 'C' and 'concrete' should be understood as shorthand for 'not a set and not a number and not a proposition and not a state of affairs and...'10 It is neither here nor there whether the categories on this list determinately fall under the ill-defined philosophical notion of concreteness. All that matters is that no category on the list admits of borderline instances (on pain of falsifying B3) and that no category on the list subsumes ordinary material objects like handles, heads, and hammers (on pain of falsifying B1).11 With this in mind, let us see what sort of reasons one might have for taking 'C' to have multiple precisifications. Some philosophers endorse the Barcan formula: e$x/ fi $xe/. Since it is possible for me to have had a sister, these philosophers must say that there is something which is possibly my sister. Yet since I have no sister, given plausible Kripkean assumptions about origins no actual woman is possibly my sister. Nor could any familiar sort of abstractum (numbers, propositions, etc.) have been my sister. So what exactly is this thing that could have been my sister? Meinongians might say that it is a nonexistent woman; possibilists might say it is a merely possible woman; proxy actualists might say that it is some actual but non-located object (which, although not actually a woman, could have been).12 Call such things Barcan objects, and their defenders Barcanists. Barcanists will presumably take there to be infinitely many Barcan objects. The category of Barcan objects must therefore be incorporated into the characterizations of 'concrete' and 'C', lest all numerical sentences come out trivially false by Barcanist lights. Since it is possible for the handle and head to compose something, Barcanists will say that there is something that they possibly compose. Call it H. Barcanists may then say that, in the intuitive grey area, H is a borderline case of being a Barcan object. Meinongians may say that H is a borderline existent; possibilists, that H is a borderline case of being actual; proxy actualists, that H is a borderline case of being located.13 There would then be multiple precisifications of 'C' – some which apply to this borderline Barcan object and others which do not – in which case C1 would be false. The Argument from Vagueness 893 a 2010 The Author Philosophy Compass 5/10 (2010): 891–901, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00327.x Philosophy Compass a 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 3.2. VAGUE QUANTIFIERS: A LINGUISTIC APPROACH If indeed it is indeterminate whether the handle and head compose something, it is natural to suppose that it would then be indeterminate what there is and whether the handle and head are everything that there is. So perhaps it is '$' and '"' that are responsible for the vagueness of the numerical sentence. Accordingly, one might deny C1, maintaining that the quantifiers have multiple admissible precisifications and that relevant numerical sentences lack a determinate truth value because they are true on some ways of precisifying the quantifiers and false on others. In particular, one might say that '$' has both 'liberal' precisifications – that (in some sense) 'range over' a fusion of the handle and head in the intuitive grey area – and 'conservative' precisifications – that do not 'range over' any such fusion – and that the numerical sentence stated above is true on the conservative precisifications and false on the liberal ones. Let $C be one such conservative precisification and let $L be a liberal precisification. There is an immediate difficulty in articulating the difference between $L and $C, and, in particular, what it is for the one to be more 'liberal' than the other. Proponents of this line of response cannot say that there exist different domains associated with the different precisifications, DC and DL, and that DL includes more objects than DC. For if there is something in DL but not DC, then DC does not include everything that there is. But in that case, $C cannot be an admissible precisification for '$': just as any admissible precisification of '$' must be governed by the introduction and elimination rules associated with the existential quantifier, any admissible precisification of this (unrestricted!) quantifier had better include absolutely everything in its domain.14 Consequently, the friend of vague quantifiers cannot affirm the existence of different domains associated with the different precisifications. The challenge for proponents of this sort of strategy is to find some way of characterizing the precisifications of the quantifiers which does not commit them to the existence of multiple candidate domains.15 3.3. VAGUE QUANTIFIERS: AN ONTIC APPROACH Some reject the linguistic account of vagueness in favor of an ontic account, on which some sentences lack a classical truth value as a result of vagueness but not as a result of its being indeterminate which propositions they express.16 Ontic theorists may hold, for instance, that 'Paul is bald' is vague, not because 'bald' has multiple precisifications, but because 'bald' determinately expresses the vague property baldness. Similarly, they may deny C2 and maintain that, although '$' does not have multiple precisifications, it is nevertheless vague as a result of being semantically associated with the vague property existence. One difficulty with this line of response is that it seems to require the sort of Meinongian view alluded to above. Vague properties are typically understood to be properties which have borderline instances, and one who wishes to say that there are things that are borderline instances of existence must (on pain of incoherence) be prepared to distinguish between what there is and what exists.17 Below I will consider an alternative way in which ontic theorists may (and, I think, should) resist the argument from vagueness. 4. Resisting Premise B1 Here again is premise B1: if there can be borderline cases of composition, then there can be count indeterminacy. Notice that the premise does not require that all cases of borderline 894 The Argument from Vagueness a 2010 The Author Philosophy Compass 5/10 (2010): 891–901, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00327.x Philosophy Compass a 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd composition give rise to count indeterminacy, and rightly so since some putative cases of borderline composition plainly would not result in count indeterminacy. Suppose, for instance, that there are one billion things, the Ts, that are definite parts of Tibbles the cat and that exactly one object, A, is a borderline part of Tibbles. It is therefore indeterminate whether the Ts alone compose Tibbles; and if they do not compose Tibbles then plausibly they do not compose anything at all.18 So the Ts are a borderline case of composing something. But this is not a case of count indeterminacy. There are exactly a billion and two concrete objects: Tibbles, A, and the billion Ts. The reason that borderline composition does not give rise to count indeterminacy in the Tibbles case is that there is a determinately existing concrete object that the borderline composers are a borderline case of composing (hereafter: a DECO). But borderline composition in assembly cases seems not to involve a DECO. There does not seem to be any determinately existing object that the handle and head are a borderline case of composing, which is why, in contrast to the Tibbles case, it seems indeterminate whether there is something in addition to the borderline composers. So, unlike the Tibbles case, assembly cases seem to exhibit existential indeterminacy – that is, indeterminacy with respect to which things exist – and this is why they threaten to give rise to count indeterminacy. Suppose, however, that despite appearances there are DECOs in every case of borderline composition, even in assembly cases. Then B1 will be false: borderline composition never gives rise to count indeterminacy. I will examine two sorts of 'DECO maneuvers' for resisting B1. 4.1. ETERNALISM Suppose that, as some think, past and future objects exist; not everything that exists is present.19 One who accepts this view may say that there exists a DECO – namely, a future hammer – which the handle and head are (at present) a borderline case of composing.20 In that case, there are exactly three concrete objects-the handle, the head, and the hammer (which does not exist presently but does exist simpliciter)-and, therefore, no count indeterminacy. This strategy has an obvious shortcoming. If I reach the intuitive grey area and then abort the assembly process, there will be no past, present, or future hammer to serve as the DECO. Yet all that is needed to secure B1 is that there is at least one case in which borderline composition gives rise to count indeterminacy. Proponents of this strategy are therefore forced to admit that composition definitely does not occur in the intuitive grey area of aborted assemblies.21 This is a tough bullet to bite: the suggestion that whether some things are a borderline case of composing something depends on whether they once did or eventually will definitely compose something seems just as unpalatable as the suggestion that whether something is a borderline case of being red depends on whether it once was or eventually will definitely be red. 4.2. EXPANSIONS Let us say that some objects have an expansion just in case there is something that is exactly located in the region that is jointly occupied by those objects. Now suppose that, although it is indeterminate whether the handle and the head compose something, there determinately exists an expansion of the handle and the head.22 This would be an object which is exactly located in the region jointly occupied by the handle and head – and The Argument from Vagueness 895 a 2010 The Author Philosophy Compass 5/10 (2010): 891–901, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00327.x Philosophy Compass a 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd which, once the assembly process is completed, will be composed of the handle and head – but which does not now determinately have them (or anything else) as parts. (In other words, it is now indeterminate whether the expansion of the handle and head is composite or mereologically simple.) Accordingly, this borderline case of composition does not give rise to count indeterminacy, since there are definitely three concrete objects in the intuitive grey area: the handle, the head, and the presently existing expansion that they are a borderline case of composing.23 A structurally similar strategy is available to supersubstantivalists, who maintain that material objects are identical to their locations. The idea here would be to say that the handle and head are identical to the regions of space that they occupy and that the (determinately existing) larger region which has them as its subregions is itself a borderline case of being composed of the handle and head.24 5. Resisting Premise B2 Premise B2 of the argument against borderline composition may be defended as follows: (D1) If there can be count indeterminacy, then some numerical sentence can lack a determinate truth value. (D2) If a numerical sentence lacks a determinate truth value, then it must lack a determinate truth value as a result of vagueness. (D3) If a sentence lacks a determinate truth value as a result of vagueness, then some expression in that sentence must be vague. (B2) So, if there can be count indeterminacy, then some expression in some numerical sentence can be vague. D1 seems plausible: if it is indeterminate whether there are exactly n concrete objects, then the numerical sentence for n must lack a determinate truth value. D2 draws its plausibility from the observation that numerical sentences seem not to be susceptible to other potential sources of indeterminacy (e.g., syntactic ambiguity, reference failure, liar phenomena). D3 is motivated by the thought that vague sentences must 'inherit' their vagueness from one or more of their constituent expressions. 5.1. SORTAL-DEPENDENCY The quantifiers in the numerical sentence are meant to be unrestricted. Some maintain that quantification is intelligible only when explicitly or tacitly restricted to some sortal or other.25 They will therefore reject D2: numerical sentences lack a determinate truth value, not as a result of vagueness, but rather as a result of underspecification. Just as the sentence 'Jill is ready' is not truth-evaluable in the absence of some contextually salient activity, numerical sentences are not truth-evaluable unless their quantifiers are tacitly restricted to some sortal or other. But any suitable restriction on the quantifiers is bound to introduce vagueness into the numerical sentences (thus undermining B3).26,27 5.2. ONTIC VAGUENESS REVISITED We have already seen that those who embrace an ontic theory of vagueness may reject C2. Another option for the ontic theorist is to reject D3, by maintaining that the numerical sentence does lack a determinate truth value as a result of vagueness but that none of its constituent expressions is itself the source of the vagueness. Rather, it lacks a determinate 896 The Argument from Vagueness a 2010 The Author Philosophy Compass 5/10 (2010): 891–901, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00327.x Philosophy Compass a 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd truth value because the proposition that it determinately expresses, namely, that $x$y(Cx & Cy & x „ y & "z(Cz fi (x = z v y = z))), itself lacks a determinate truth value as a result of vagueness.28 No particular constituent of this proposition (or of the associated numerical sentence) is single-handedly responsible for the vagueness, just as no particular constituent of the proposition that Kripke is a kangaroo (or of the associated sentence) is single-handedly responsible for its falsity.29 One who takes this line is committed to vague existence. But it is worth emphasizing that one is not thereby committed to there being 'vague objects' which do not determinately exist. Proponents of the ontic strategy should resist the inference from its being vague whether the handle and head compose something to there being some (vague) thing such that it is vague whether they compose that thing.30 (More generally, they should reject the following schema: !$x/ fi $x!/.31) It can be vague what exists without there existing anything such that it is vague whether it exists. Accordingly, those who criticize the ontic strategy on account of an alleged commitment to things 'such that it sort of is so, and sort of isn't, that there is any such thing' miss their mark.32 6. The Argument for Premise A4 Despite its prima facie plausibility, A4 has been the focus of much of the critical attention in the literature.33 Sider's defense of A4 may be understood as follows: (E1) If there can be cut-offs with respect to composition, then there can be brute compositional differences. (E2) There cannot be brute compositional differences. (A4) So there cannot be cut-offs with respect to composition.34 To say that there are brute compositional differences is to say that there are cases that differ with respect to compositional facts and that there are no other facts about the cases that explain, or ground, their compositional differences. E1 seems plausible: the sorts of differences that one finds among adjacent cases in a sorites series for composition – for instance, that two atoms are one fraction of a nanometer closer together in the one than in the other – cannot plausibly explain why composition occurs in one but not the other. E2 seems plausible as well: although all explanation must end somewhere, compositional facts seem like a poor candidate for explanatory bedrock. Furthermore, as Sider observes, cut-offs with respect to composition would be 'metaphysically arbitrary.'35 In characterizing the sort of arbitrariness at issue as 'metaphysical,' he presumably means to distinguish it from the (less pernicious?) sort of linguistic arbitrariness that would be exhibited by cut-offs in a sorites series for baldness. There is nothing arbitrary per se about postulating properties with cut-offs in their application conditions, for instance, the property of having 100,000 or fewer hairs. The arbitrariness, rather, would consist in the fact that the term 'bald' picks out a property whose cut-off is at 100,000 hairs rather than a property whose cut-off is at 99,999 hairs. 7. Resisting Premise A4 7.1. GROUNDED CUT-OFFS E1 draws much of its force from the observation that the factors that intuitively explain why composition occurs when it does (e.g., whether relevant items exhibit a The Argument from Vagueness 897 a 2010 The Author Philosophy Compass 5/10 (2010): 891–901, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00327.x Philosophy Compass a 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd high degree of unity) seem not to admit of cut-offs. However, one might contend that the factors that intuitively explain compositional differences are not the factors that in fact explain compositional differences. Suppose, for instance, that one accepts (i) that there cannot be borderline cases of consciousness and (ii) that, necessarily, conscious beings are the only composite objects.36 In that case, every possible sorites series for composition will contain a cut-off with respect to the presence of consciousness.37 Facts about the presence or absence of consciousness may then be held to ground compositional differences, in which case those differences would not be brute and E1 would be false. 7.2. BRUTE CUT-OFFS Alternatively, one might deny E2 and embrace the brutality of compositional differences.38 Here again the idea is to deny that the factors that intuitively explain compositional differences in fact explain compositional differences. But, in contrast to the previous strategy, one here denies that anything explains compositional differences: there are no facts in virtue of which the compositional facts are as they are. Notice that this does not require denying that compositional facts supervene (at least globally) on noncompositional facts. One may accept that cases must differ in some noncompositional respect in order to differ in compositional respects without accepting that any specific noncompositional differences are poised to explain, or ground, compositional differences.39 8. Conclusion Sider remarks that the argument from vagueness is not 'just another Sorites.'40 Sider remarks that the argument from vagueness is not ''just another Sorites.''40 We can see now why that is. We have surveyed a wide range of strategies for blocking the argument from vagueness, each of which required endorsing at least one of the following: the vagueness of logical vocabulary, Barcan objects, eternalism (together with the denial of plausible supervenience principles), borderline-composite expansions, supersubstantivalism, the sortal-dependency of quantification, vague existence, an eliminativism about familiar kinds of composites, or the brutality of compositional facts. None of these commitments is already mandated by the usual epistemic, linguistic, or ontic treatments of vague predicates, vague singular terms, or sorites arguments. I leave it to the reader to determine whether embracing any one of these escape routes is preferable to accepting universalism and its ontology of strange fusions.41 Short Biography Daniel Z. Korman specializes in metaphysics. He is especially interested in the prospects for a metaphysics of material objects that is compatible with our intuitive judgments about which sorts of things there are. His publications have appeared in Noûs, The Journal of Philosophy, Philosophical Studies, and Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, and he is a co-editor of Metaphysics: An Anthology (with Jaegwon Kim and Ernest Sosa). He holds an M.A. in philosophy from the University of Colorado, Boulder and a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Texas, Austin. He is now Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. 898 The Argument from Vagueness a 2010 The Author Philosophy Compass 5/10 (2010): 891–901, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00327.x Philosophy Compass a 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd Notes * Correspondence: Daniel Z. Korman, Department of Philosophy, 105 Gregory Hall, MC-468, 810 South Wright Street, Urbana, IL 61801. Email: [email protected]. 1 In other words, when are some things the parts of something? This is Peter van Inwagen's (1990) Special Composition Question. 2 See Markosian (1998, 228–9), Hudson (2001, 107–8) and Korman (2007, 327–9) for discussion of these counterintuitive implications. 3 See Lewis (1986, 212–3) and Sider (1997, 214–22; 2001, 120–32); cf. Heller (1990, 47–50). See Sider (2001, 121–2) for an explanation of how his presentation of the argument departs from Lewis's. Sider himself advances this argument as part of a larger argument for a four-dimensionalist theory of persistence. For discussion of the argument from universalism to four-dimensionalism, see Sider (1997, 224–6; 2001, 134–6), Koslicki (2003, 120–2), Gallois (2004, 650–3), Balashov (2005), Correia (2005), Lowe (2005, 107–8), Miller (2005), Varzi (2005, 495–7, 2007), and Kurtsal Steen (forthcoming). 4 I follow Sider here, though notice that the argument requires only the weaker premise that it is possible for there to be a sorites series for composition in which there are no cut-offs with respect to composition. 5 The final supposition will be suspended in the discussion of DECOs in §4. 6 Those who deny that composition ever occurs (e.g., Rosen and Dorr 2002) will reject A1. 7 Cf. Sider (2001, 127). 8 Sider (2001, 128–30). 9 Although a number of philosophers reject the Evans ⁄ Salmon argument against vague identity, no one to my knowledge has attempted to resist the argument from vagueness by appeal to the vagueness of the identity predicate. Presumably, this is because borderline composition seems to have little to do with vague identity: even in the intuitive grey area, there definitely is nothing that is a borderline case of being identical to the handle, to the head, or to itself. Those inclined to pin the vagueness of numerical sentences on the identity predicate might consult Hirsch (1999), which supplies a precisificational account of the vagueness of the identity predicate. 10 Cf. Sider (2001, 127). 11 Elder (2004, 65) suggests that the burden is on the defender of the argument from vagueness to show that the aforementioned list can be completed without reference to a category that admits of borderline instances. 12 See Linsky and Zalta (1994) and Bennett (2006) for discussion of proxy actualism. 13 See van Inwagen (1987, 43–4) and Gallois (2004, 652) on the Meinongian response to the argument from vagueness, Hawley (2002, 138–9) on the possibilist response, and Smith (2005), Hawthorne (2006, 106), and Woodward (forthcoming, §3) on the proxy actualist response. 14 See Sider (2001, 128–9) and López de Sa (2006). 15 For further discussion of this strategy, see Hirsch (1999, 149–51; 2002, 65–66; 2008, 376), Sider (2003, 2009), López de Sa (2006), and Liebesman and Eklund (2007). 16 Sider (2001, 128) concedes that his argument is not directed at those who reject the linguistic account. For discussion of ontic accounts of borderline composition, see van Inwagen (1990, 271–83), Sider (2001, 129), Hawley (2002), Elder (2008), and Woodward (forthcoming). For discussion of epistemicist strategies for blocking the argument from vagueness, see Hudson (2000), Sider (2001, 130–2), and López de Sa (2006, 403). One who opts for an epistemicist strategy will need to find a way to resist A4, but will also presumably reject A3 (given the usual epistemicist gloss on 'borderline' and 'determinate'), perhaps by denying D3 below. 17 See Hawley (2001, §6) for relevant discussion. 18 Though see Lewis (1993). 19 See Sider (2001, chapter 2) for general discussion. 20 See Baker (2007, 130–2) and Donnelly (2009, 73–4). 21 Baker (2007, 131) bites the bullet; Donnelly (2009, 74–6) is non-committal. 22 See Carmichael (forthcoming) and Saucedo (manuscript) for a defense of this sort of DECO maneuver. Their treatments differ in various respects, the most significant being that Saucedo maintains that there is an expansion of the handle and head even at the beginning of the assembly process, while Carmichael maintains that the expansion does not exist prior to the intuitive grey area. 23 Notice that B1 is false even if 'concrete' is introduced in such a way as to exclude borderline-composite expansions, for in that case there are definitely two concrete objects in the intuitive grey area: the handle and the head. 24 See Effingham (2009) and Nolan (forthcoming, §6). It may be that supersubstantivalists are better understood as rejecting B3 by maintaining that the locations in question are borderline concreta, but this is largely just a matter of bookkeeping. 25 See Lowe (1989, 10) and Thomasson (2007, chapter 6) for discussion. 26 It may be possible to fortify the argument from vagueness against this line of response. The key would be to find some non-vague sortal 'S', such that proponents of sortal-dependency will agree that it can be indeterminate whether there are any Ss, even when there is no DECO which is a borderline case of being an S. The Argument from Vagueness 899 a 2010 The Author Philosophy Compass 5/10 (2010): 891–901, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00327.x Philosophy Compass a 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd 27 Those who accept an epistemic theory of truth might deny D2 as well. For instance, one might maintain that the relevant numerical sentence lacks a determinate truth value because neither it nor its negation is superassertable. See Varzi (2005, 493–4) for discussion. 28 There remains a question of the source, or ground, of the vagueness of this numerical proposition. One possible answer is that its vagueness is the result of its being vague whether the handle and head compose something, which may in turn be grounded in relevant noncompositional facts about the arrangement of the handle and head. 29 Cf. Hawley (2001, 112–3) and Williamson (2003, 705–7). 30 Cf. Hawley (2002, §5.) 31 See Carmichael (forthcoming) for general discussion of this schema. 32 See Lewis (1986, 212–3); cf. Donnelly (2009, 58). Nor is it clear that this sort of ontic vagueness will give rise to vague identity; see Hawley (2002, §4) and Williams (2008, 778–9). 33 See Markosian (1998, 237–9), Merricks (2005), Nolan (2006, 725–8), Hawthorne (2006), Smith (2006), and Cameron (2007, 114–7). 34 Sider (2001, 124). 35 Sider (2001, 124). See Nolan (2006, 726–7) for critical discussion. 36 Accordingly, the continuous series associated with the assembly of the hammer will be regarded as a spurious example of a sorites series for composition. 37 Hawthorne (2006, 107–9) defends, but does not endorse, such a strategy. Merricks (2005, 631–2) defends a structurally similar response, according to which compositional cut-offs will always be marked by cut-offs with respect to the emergence of nonredundant causal powers. See Barnes (2007) for critical discussion. 38 See Markosian (1998, 237–9). 39 See Markosian (1998, 215–6). 40 Sider (2001, 125). 41 As it happens, vagueness is ontological, D3 is false, and there is vague existence. Thanks to Alex Baia, David Barnett, Ben Caplan, Ted Sider, Alex Skiles, and audiences in Barcelona and Boulder for helpful feedback. I am especially indebted to Chad Carmichael and Matti Eklund for countless discussions of the argument from vagueness, and to Trenton Merricks for one particularly illuminating (and intense) discussion. Finally, thanks to David Lewis and (again) to Ted Sider for this fascinating argument. Works Cited Baker, Lynne Rudder. The Metaphysics of Everyday Life. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Balashov, Yuri. 'On Vagueness, 4D and Diachronic Universalism.' Australasian Journal of Philosophy 83 (2005): 523–31. Barnes, Elizabeth. 'Vagueness and Arbitrariness: Merricks on Composition.' Mind 116 (2007): 105–13. Bennett, Karen. 'Proxy ''Actualism.'' 'Philosophical Studies 129 (2006): 263–94. Cameron, Ross P. 'The Contingency of Composition.' Philosophical Studies 136 (2007): 99–121. Carmichael, Chad. 'Moderate Composition Without Vague Existence.' Noûs. (forthcoming). Correia, Fabrice. 'Comments on Varzi.' Dialectica 59 (2005): 499–502. Donnelly, Maureen. 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The Argument from Vagueness 901 a 2010 The Author Philosophy Compass 5/10 (2010): 891–901, 10.1111/j.1747-9991.2010.00327.x Philosophy Compass a 2010 Blackwell Publishing Ltd | {
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Dama International Journal of Researchers (DIJR), ISSN: 2343-6743, ISI Impact Factor: 0.878 Vol 2, Issue 3, March, 2017, Pages 01 07, Available @ www.damaacademia.com Dama International Journal of Researchers, www.damaacademia.com, [email protected] 1 The 21st Century way of Dealing with Some Issues Related to Project Teams Asare Bediako1 Adams, Lewis Billy Bonsu2 & Dr. David Ackah3 Regional Prog. Coordinator1, Director2, President3, Institute of Project Management Professionals (IPMP)1&3 Graduate Entrepreneurship & Business Incubation Centre2 email: [email protected] [email protected] & [email protected] I. INTRODUCTION A project can be defined as an activity with a specific goal occupying a specific period of time (Wild, 2002). A project is a finite activity, not only in time, but also in the use of resources. Examples of projects include construction of a bridge, highway, power plant, repair and maintenance of an oil refinery or an air plane; design, development and marketing of a new product, research and development work, etc. A project team is a group of individuals working interdependently to accomplish the project objective (Clements and Gido, 2012). According to Turner, 1993, Successful project management has been found to depend upon the adoption of an appropriate strategy design to ensure: There exists an attitude for success. The objectives by which success are to be measured are defined. There is a procedure for achieving objectives. The environment is supportive. Adequate and appropriate resources are available Also, Turner, 1993, continue to state that, within such a strategy the most appropriate approach, or style, for project management, will normally involve the following: Manage through a structured breakdown, the management system is built around a structured breakdown of the facility delivered by the project into intermediate products or results; Focus on results, what to achieve, not how to do it; i.e. the deliverables, not the work and people, systems and organizational changes; Organize a contract between all the parties involved, defining their roles, responsibilities and working relationships; Adopt a clear and simple management approach Project management encompasses the concepts of management and leadership. Although leadership and management research have made distinctions between the two concepts, the project management profession has integrated the two concepts, and project management refers to the leadership and management needed to lead and manage a project. A project manager leads people and manages work processes. There is nothing more important to the success of a project than the people who make up the project team (Newton, 2015). Without good people who possess the knowledge, experience, and motivation to get the job done, all of your other planning will be quickly wasted. Putting together a project team is one of the very first steps of setting up a new project. Without the people to compose a quality team, you won't be able to make very much progress at all into the work that needs to be done. Assembling a good team is important in any phase of business, but it is especially important when managing a project to make sure that the work can get done on time and on budget. The process of acquiring a project team takes place within the executing processes and is concerned with confirming human resource availability and obtaining the personnel needed to complete project assignments. It is complicated by the fact that individuals with different skill sets will be required at different points throughout the project. For example, a software project testing personnel are needed. Consequently, acquiring members for a project continues throughout the executing process group (Newton, 2015). Issues, according to Cambridge dictionary is a subject or problem that people are thinking and talking about. Having managed several business staff over the years, I can say that we have seen many different personnel and teamrelated issues. As any experienced leader can attest, expecting a team of people to work together seamlessly from the start of a project to the end is likely unrealistic. Teams are made up of individuals who have their own personalities, feelings, backgrounds and more. Now let's look at some of the critical team related issues that is likely to hinder the smooth progress of projects. Dama International Journal of Researchers (DIJR), ISSN: 2343-6743, ISI Impact Factor: 0.878 Vol 2, Issue 3, March, 2017, Pages 01 07, Available @ www.damaacademia.com Dama International Journal of Researchers, www.damaacademia.com, [email protected] 2 II. LACK OF TEAM WORK Teamwork is often a crucial part of projects, as it is often necessary for colleagues to work well together, trying their best in any circumstance. Team work means that people will try to cooperate, using their individual skills and providing constructive feedback, despite any personal conflict between individuals. A. Discussion Why do some efforts to build team work fail? Why do some organizations seem to be very successful in their team development and other groups cannot get off their ground? The success of projects requires the individual efforts of the project team in working towards a common goal. On most occasions, lack of team work happens as a result of expediency. Managers want to get the work done. They perceive that if people work together it will slow things down. Another reason is because of poor operating strategies and some times, the vision of the team leader and the day-to-day workings of the team are imbalanced. B. Impact Teamwork is essential for several reasons. First, without effective knowledge sharing, you become overdependent on a few people. Second, it is more difficult to detect problems if people work in isolation. Third, it is easier to grow skills if there is teamwork. Without teamwork there is little backup if someone leaves or is unable to do his or her work. It takes a substantial amount of time and effort for a new person to get proficient with what someone else has done. Another reason for teamwork is to prevent unpleasant surprises. Suppose a programmer is working alone. He or she may keep the problems to himor herself. The programmer does not tell management that he or she will be late with the work. The manager assumes things are fine. Then at the last minute the programmer delivers the surprise bad news to the manager. Not good. It happens all of the time. With teamwork, the two people involved in the work discuss it. From experience, it is more likely that awareness of a problem will spread beyond the two people. Moreover, with two people the problem might have a better chance of being solved. C. Detection How do you detect the problem that teamwork is ineffective? First, look at how the work is organized. Do the managers provide opportunities for the employees to share experiences? Are the project meetings just for status? If the answer is affirmative, then you can conclude that there is little joint effort. Next, observe the staff at work. Do you see many instances of people talking together when you visit? If not, this is another sign of the problem. Still another symptom of the problem is that the same staffs make the same mistakes again and again. They perpetually underestimate the same work. They often deal with the same issues. There is no learning curve. The lack of communications and joint work inhibit cumulative improvement and the avoiding of the repetition of problems. D. Actions and Prevention If you find that people are not working together, it is tempting to analyze the situation to determine why this is happening. But often you don't have time to do this. What is a better approach? Implement joint tasks as soon as possible. Next, provide for sharing of information and knowledge in meetings. As teamwork gets established, hold some meetings where the staff can discuss the benefits of teamwork. This will reinforce the change, help overcome old, ingrained habits, and move the ownership of the idea to the staff. Obviously, you can prevent this issue by establishing and rewarding joint work from the start. III. TOO MUCH TIME SPENT IN MEETINGS We understand that a company can only run well only when everyone is pointed in the same direction and working towards common goals. To meet this end, there would be times when people need to come together to share views and discuss actions and strategies, these are what corporates call meetings. If meetings are managed well, they can prove highly effective in ensuring that everyone understands their roles and responsibilities and knows what needs to be done in order to meet individual, team and company goals. Dama International Journal of Researchers (DIJR), ISSN: 2343-6743, ISI Impact Factor: 0.878 Vol 2, Issue 3, March, 2017, Pages 01 07, Available @ www.damaacademia.com Dama International Journal of Researchers, www.damaacademia.com, [email protected] 3 A. Discussion There are still a number of project managers who believe that the solution to everything is meetings. Most of the time, people who are called to these meetings see them as distractions from their 'core jobs' which would not get done unless they stay back late. This is a cause of irritation and stress and can easily snowball into bigger issues. Therefore, it is imperative that too many meetings are avoided and when they are required, they should have a set format, a structured agenda and strict timelines. In addition, only those people who would benefit or can contribute to the meetings should be invited and all arbitrary meetings should be avoided at all costs. Keep the number of meetings to a minimum and ensure that the ones that do take place are efficient, effective and time-bound. The fact is that meetings do eat into actual productive time and are a major cause for distracting people from their normal schedules. B. Impact Too many meetings are a cause of irritation and frustration for the highly productive team members. Meetings bring down productivity and cause resentment, in the minds of those who are called for these meetings, against the leaders or senior person calling the meetings. They see these meetings as an ignoring of their passion and desire to achieve more. When top performers get frustrated and they choose to look for employment elsewhere, your company is the losing party. Such 'smart ones' refuse to waste their time, skills and talents listening to some person or persons who sometimes don't even know what they are talking about – these people want to be 'out there' making things happen and achieving new heights and are extremely impatient and intolerant of sitting around listening to people. C. Detection Measure your meetings. Keep a log of the use of all conference and meeting rooms. Post on the wall of the department the number of person-hours spent in meetings each week. This will raise the level of awareness of the impact of meetings. It will also show that you are serious about controlling meeting time. D. Actions and Prevention The first guideline to distribute is to have people plan meetings better. They should ask what topics and actions are expected of the meeting. Also, have people ask the following three questions. What if the meeting were not held? What would happen? Can some other way be found to accomplish the same thing? What is the minimum number of people needed in the meeting? What if the meeting were deferred for a day or a week? Convince people that they do not have to be in every meeting. Publish the meeting minute's right after the meeting, and circulate them widely. Another problem in meetings is that a junior person takes the notes from the meeting. They may get things wrong or generate political problems. Here is a tip: If you attend a meeting, always take the notes. Otherwise, have a senior person take the notes. IV. TEAM MEMBERS OR DEPARTMENTS THAT DO NOT GET ALONG WITH EACH OTHER Having to deal with team members that don't get along with one another can put a massive downer on your day-today work and the team's overall capability, not to mention be completely exhausting to manage! The reality is that team members are dependent on each other for success, so it's important that they establish strong and reliable working relationships with one another, whether they like each other or not. Of course, it helps if they do, so taking into consideration team-fit during the recruitment process is one way you can help avoid negative team dynamics. Unfortunately, these things aren't always easy to predict. Even when you've considered team fit early on and think you've made the perfect hire, any given event can cause conflict within your team between two or more individuals. A. Discussion Some people see themselves in competition with other team members. As such, they do not want to share knowledge. Another factor that contributes to this problem is that through training and culture, the individual is favoured over the group. Also, some organizations have no significant turnover of staff. People come in contact and work with each other over many projects and years. For example, at a university with tenure, the same faculty work Dama International Journal of Researchers (DIJR), ISSN: 2343-6743, ISI Impact Factor: 0.878 Vol 2, Issue 3, March, 2017, Pages 01 07, Available @ www.damaacademia.com Dama International Journal of Researchers, www.damaacademia.com, [email protected] 4 (or do not work) together for decades. In these situations it is not surprising to find personality conflicts and even hatred. The project leader often has little choice regarding the team's composition. Managers may assign people to the team. A person may have unique skills or knowledge essential to the project work. This means that the project leader often is forced to take people who have long-standing dislikes for each other going back months and years. B. Impact It is natural that different departments or individuals may see things from their own perspective. In projects, life is often a compromise. Whether it involves how transactions are handled, how technical problems are addressed, or the like, compromise and a joint solution are not best, but they are also more likely to result in lasting solutions. One impact of these problems is that solutions reached without compromise often favor one individual or group over another. We have seen that when this occurs, the losing individual or department may not support the decision. Wait, it gets worse. They may try to bring up the issue again from a different perspective, creating more problems in the work. In a team, the outcome of conflict can be poison to the rest of the team. The problem can grow to the point where people loathe to be in the same room or meeting with the people whom do not get along. This can have a severe negative impact on morale and productivity. C. Detection For departments, we have found a useful method to detect problems is to examine specific transactions that cross departments. This should be carried out in the early stages of the work. Here a trick is to act ignorant of the business. Each department can explain how it addresses the work. You can ask simple questions that will highlight the department's attitude toward the work and toward the interfacing departments. For individuals and departments, a valuable approach is to hold joint meetings early. Here you might present some examples of potential problems that have not yet surfaced. You should then sit back and see what they think. Let people talk as much as they want. Here is another tip: Indicate that you are bringing these things up to establish a joint way of solving problems and issues before the issues or problems become real. Not only do you see how they get along, but you also can determine the extent and depth of the problem - a good early warning of what may be ahead. D. Actions and Prevention When a problem arises, you should not try to ignore it or push it aside. Rather, you should move to a lower level of detail. For business departments this means getting down to the detailed transactions. At that level there is little room for politics or hatred. Instead, there is basic truth. At the lowest levels you will find more agreement than disagreement. For technical staff, you should pretend or act like you are indifferent and keep asking "Why?" or saying "I do not understand. Help me here." When the technical staff restates their positions at lower levels of detail in nontechnical terms, you tend to find that they have more in common than they think. Now let us assume that you have inherited work or a project in which the team has become polarized. This is one of the more extreme situations. Can you turn it around? Probably not completely. But you can make the situation better. Here are some guidelines. First, make sure the meetings focus on specific and detailed questions. Then you can employ the earlier suggestions for prevention. A second step is to assign the investigation of a situation or problem to the two people who do not get along. Schedule another meeting that includes you and the two people. Indicate in this meeting that you realize that there can be different points of view. Next, point out that you are not (we repeat, not) trying to change their interpersonal relations. Rather, you are trying to move the work ahead. We have even stated that "you can still hate each other, as long as the work gets done." This sounds extreme, but it may be the best course of action in the circumstances, since it helps those in conflict to put aside their differences temporarily. Alternatively, you can try to force them to "bury the hatchet" and be more cooperative with each other. This sounds nice, but it is often impractical because the distrust and negative feelings are very deep and have been long lasting. To summarize, the best approach is to confront the problem by implementing more joint work and effort. Dama International Journal of Researchers (DIJR), ISSN: 2343-6743, ISI Impact Factor: 0.878 Vol 2, Issue 3, March, 2017, Pages 01 07, Available @ www.damaacademia.com Dama International Journal of Researchers, www.damaacademia.com, [email protected] 5 V. TEAM MEMBERS THAT ARE DIFFICULT TO MANAGE People often contribute to team dysfunction without being aware of their negative behavior, or knowing how to address these behaviors in others. Dealing with difficult people starts with identifying disruptive actions, understanding the dynamics and stages of group reactions, and addressing issues with candor and tact. A. Discussion Successful teams thrive on the productive dynamics that exist when everyone on the team shares the same vision, work ethic, and commitment to one another. That is not always the situation in the real world of working in teams. Some team members help make the teamwork process easier, more enjoyable, and rewarding. Other individuals sometimes make the team process harder than it has to be. B. Impact If people are difficult to manage, they may not take direction well. They may work along at their own pace. To demonstrate their power and the dependence of the work on them, they continue to delay. The end result is that the overall schedule suffers. Another method for these people is just to rush through their work. There may be problems and shortcomings in the quality of the work. This later has to be redone. In the case of queen and king bees, they may try either to impose their own solutions or steer the work in the direction they desire. Often, this means little resulting change or improvement after the project is completed. C. Detection There are several ways to detect this problem. First, you can observe their work and their attitude toward the work. It is important here to observe how they assign priorities among different tasks. When people give your work a lower priority, it reveals that their ranking of work to be done is based on their own feelings. A second way to detect the problem is to watch if you have to give them the same assignment several times. A variation of this is when they keep coming back with questions about the work. This may indicate that they really do not want to do it. D. Actions and Prevention To prevent the problem, you should give them some small tasks to do at the start of the work. These are typically things that can be done in a few days, certainly no longer than a week. Follow up on these tasks with reviews right after they finish the work. This not only shows them who is in charge, but it also leads to a suitable pattern of behavior for later phases of the work. When you have identified people who are difficult to manage, do not let up on overseeing their work. Implementing joint tasks between them and others can also help in managing them. Here you are relying on peer pressure to keep them in line. If you inherit work with people difficult to manage, it is a challenge to turn the situation around. The individuals have already had success with other managers. They may feel that you are just the same. You need to assert your authority early. A good approach is to assign them short-term tasks that you will then closely review. For later work, make sure to divide their tasks in such a way that you review their work every two weeks. These actions show that you are serious about establishing and maintaining your authority as a manager. VI. WIDE RANGE OF EXPERIENCE AND KNOWLEDGE AMONG TEAM MEMBERS A project team is more than a group of individuals assigned to work on one project; it is a group of interdependent individuals working cooperatively to accomplish the project objective. Helping these individuals develop and grow into a cohesive, effective team takes effort on the part of the project manager and each member of the project team. But what happens when there are wide range of experiences and knowledge among team members? How should a project team leader handle such a team to achieve their goals? A. Discussion Working with teams with wide range of experience and knowledge among its members has its own merits and demerits. Most projects were carried out in a specific business department in some years ago, where people tend to have common experience and knowledge. Today, the situation is very different. First, business processes are more integrated and complex. They cross multiple departments. This trend is continuing. This has given rise to specialization in areas of individuals' interest. For example, in the deployment of RFID in retailing and distribution, you integrate warehousing, logistics, and supplier chain management. Then you can throw in sales and store Dama International Journal of Researchers (DIJR), ISSN: 2343-6743, ISI Impact Factor: 0.878 Vol 2, Issue 3, March, 2017, Pages 01 07, Available @ www.damaacademia.com Dama International Journal of Researchers, www.damaacademia.com, [email protected] 6 performance as well. So how should a project team manager deal with team members with wide range of experience and knowledge? B. Impact Diversity in skills and knowledge can be strength, but it can also raise problems. One impact is that it can take longer to iron out questions and situations. This is due to the fact that the managers must ensure that solutions will be supported and implemented by the different people and organizations. Diversity means that different people may see the same problem totally differently. Here is an example of outsourcing. A firm outsourced a call center to Asia. Service levels were not good. The call center staff could not deal with the diversity of the questions and problems raised by customers. As a result some managers sought to shut down the call center. In handling this problem at least four different solutions surfaced from user and IT managers. The solutions differed wildly from one another. Each manager favored a solution that he or she was comfortable with, standard human nature. In the end, a three-pronged approach was used that embodied several different solutions: (1) improved Website to handle issues without involving the call center; (2) more training and tracking of the call center staff; (3) incentives for good service; (4) customer surveys of work; and (5) establishment of a backup, referral call center in the home country of the firm (Lientz and Larssen, 2006). As you can see, we used the diverse views to get short-, intermediate-, and longer-term solutions. C. Detection Typically, you can detect that there will be diversity when the purpose and scope of the work are defined. Most traditional project management efforts deal only with technical solutions. Today, more and more of the work lies in business change and transition. It is not enough to implement a system. There must be change leading up to and following from the installation of a new system. More specific steps for detection are to see who can address specific problems that have arisen. Do many of the more complex problems depend on one person? Another sign of the problem is to see what happens if more junior staff attempt to deal with the problems alone, without the help of senior staff. D. Actions and Prevention You cannot really prevent the situation from occurring since it happens often as part of the nature of the work. You do need to recognize the condition and take it into account in planning the work. Greater diversity requires you to spend more time in communications and coordination. Since this activity is already a major part of managing work, some other things will receive less attention. Here a useful approach is to involve users and IT staff more directly in what would be traditional project management. One proven approach is for team members and others involved in the work to define their own tasks and then update their tasks. Another step is more formally to track issues and problems. This will help to ensure that problems do not become more severe. On the positive side, you might consider holding meetings in which different people share their experiences and knowledge. This can not only facilitate more knowledge sharing, but can also help build a common view of the work. You should also make management aware of the complexity raised by the diversity. It does not help to just tell them. They may think you are overstating the case. Here is a suggestion: Regularly report on the issues by type and refer back to the scope of the work. Management will gradually see that additional oversight or involvement is needed on issues. VII. CONCLUSION A team is a group of individuals working independently to accomplish the project objective. Teamwork is the cooperative effort by members of a team to achieve this common goal. The effectiveness, or lack thereof, of the project team can make the difference between project success and project failure. Project success requires an effective project team. Although plans and project management techniques are necessary, it is the people, the project manager and the project team who are the key to project success. It is unusual for a team to complete a project without encountering some problems along the way. A good nine-step problem solving approach is to develop a problem statement, identify potential causes of the problem, gather data and verify the most likely causes, identify possible solutions, evaluate the alternative solutions, determine the best solution, revise the project plan, implement the solution, and determine whether the problem has been solved. Brainstorming is a technique used in problem Dama International Journal of Researchers (DIJR), ISSN: 2343-6743, ISI Impact Factor: 0.878 Vol 2, Issue 3, March, 2017, Pages 01 07, Available @ www.damaacademia.com Dama International Journal of Researchers, www.damaacademia.com, [email protected] 7 solving which all members of a group contribute spontaneous ideas. In brainstorming, the quantity of ideas generated is more important than the quality of the ideas (Clements and Gido, 2012). With such measures suggested above, the team leader and other stakeholders will be able to handle issues related to project teams. References o http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/issue Retrieved on 5th March, 2017 o Clements, P. J & Gido, J. (2012) Effective Project Management. Canada: South-Western Cengage Learning. 5th Edition. pp 330, 364. o Lientz, B.P., & Larsson, L (2006) Risk Management for IT Projects: How to deal with over 150 Issues and Risks. London: Elsevier. p 61-62. o Newton, P. (2015) Management of Project Teams: Project Skills. www.free-management-ebooks.com o Turner, J.R. (1993) The Handbook of Project Based Management. London: Mcgraw-Hill o Wild, R. (2002) Operations Management. Great Britain: The Bath Press. pp. 399, | {
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Experiencing Multiple Realities This book offers a theoretical investigation into the general problem of reality as a multiplicity of 'finite provinces of meaning,' as developed in the work of Alfred Schutz. A critical introduction to Schutz's sociology of multiple realities as well as a sympathetic re-reading and reconstruction of his project, Experiencing Multiple Realities, traces the genesis and implications of this concept in Schutz's writings before presenting an analysis of the various ways in which it can shed light on major sociological problems, such as social action, social time, social space, identity, or narrativity. Marius I. Benţa is Associate Lecturer in the Journalism Department of Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj, Romania. Routledge Studies in Metaphysics For a full list of titles in this series, please visit www.routledge.com 123 Weber, Schumpeter and Modern Capitalism Towards a General Theory John Love 124 The Cultural Contradictions of Anti-Capitalism The Liberal Spirit and the Making of Western Radicalism Daniel Fletcher 125 Peter Berger on Modernization and Modernity An Unvarnished Overview Robert Bickel 126 Imaginaries of Modernity Politics, Cultures, Tensions John Rundell 127 Complexity, Society and Social Transactions Developing a Comprehensive Social Theory Thomas Whalen 128 Critical Theories and the Budapest School Politics, Culture, Modernity Edited by John Rundell and Jonathan Pickle 129 Social and Political Life in the Era of Digital Media Higher Diversities David Toews 130 Towards a Hermeneutic Theory of Social Practices Between Existential Analytic and Social Theory Dimitri Ginev 131 Experiencing Multiple Realities Alfred Schutz's Sociology of the Finite Provinces of Meaning Marius I. Benţa Experiencing Multiple Realities Alfred Schutz's Sociology of the Finite Provinces of Meaning Marius I. Benţa First published 2018 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 711 Third Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2018 Marius I. Benţa The right of Marius I. Benţa to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark Notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Benţa, Marius I., author. Title: Experiencing multiple realities : Alfred Schutz's sociology of the finite provinces of meaning / Marius I. Benţa. Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2018. | Series: Routledge studies in social and political thought | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2017048515 | ISBN 9780415793322 (hbk) | ISBN 9781315211145 (ebk) Subjects: LCSH: Schutz, Alfred, 1899–1959. | Reality. | Meaning (Philosophy) | Social epistemology. | Phenomenology. Classification: LCC B945.S3544 B46 2018 | DDC 193-dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017048515 ISBN: 978-0-415-79332-2 (hbk) ISBN: 978-1-315-21114-5 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Apex CoVantage, LLC To my parents
Contents Preface ix Acknowledgements xi Abbreviations xiii Introduction: realities just 'real enough' 1 1 Theory and story: in-between encounters 9 1.1 A 'residual' discovery 9 1.2 A liminal time 13 2 Schutz's methodological journey 22 2.1 Theoretical roots 22 2.2 The problem 26 2.3 Everyday life 28 2.4 Action 30 2.5 Attention to life 33 2.6 Time-perspective 33 2.7 Social structure 37 2.8 The fundamental anxiety 38 2.9 A paradoxical epochè 40 2.10 The paramount reality 41 3 The Schutzian FPM model 47 3.1 Finite provinces of meaning 47 3.2 FPM experience 49 3.2.1 Shocks 49 3.2.2 Symbols and meaning transcendences 51 3.2.3 'Polyphonic' experience 53 3.3 Fictional worlds 54 3.4 Dream as FPM 59 3.5 Science as FPM 61 4 Revisiting the provinces 67 4.1 Brief critique of the Schutzian model 67 4.2 The general FPM structure 70 4.3 The epochè of the natural attitude 73 4.4 Life-world resources 76 5 The life of the provinces 96 5.1 The universal projection 96 5.2 Connected realities 97 5.3 Morphology, constitution, and dynamics 107 6 Methods of experience 112 6.1 Behaviour, action, and experience 113 6.2 Biographical situation 115 7 Experience as discourse 118 7.1 Narrative tools 119 7.2 Paradigm and syntagm 122 8 Ancient FPM portals: painted screens 126 Conclusion 132 Index 137 viii Contents Preface This work is a theoretical investigation into the sociological problem of reality as a multiplicity of finite provinces of meaning, and is based on my postgraduate research carried out at the Sociology Department of Ireland's University College Cork, which resulted in a PhD thesis that was defended in June 2014. For the present version, the text has been edited, updated, and adapted to a wide academic audience interested in the contemporary problems of social theory. Particularly, the book is intended to be a critical introduction to Alfred Schutz's sociology of the multiple realities as well as an enterprise that seeks to reassess and reconstruct the Schutzian project. In the first part of the book (the first three chapters), I inquire into Schutz's biographical context that surrounds the germination of this conception, and I analyse the main texts of Schutz where he has dealt directly with 'finite provinces of meaning.' On the basis of this analysis, I suggest and discuss, in the second part of the book, several solutions to the shortcomings of the theoretical system that Schutz drew upon the sociological problem of multiple realities. Specifically, I discuss problems related to the structure, dynamics, and interrelation of finite provinces of meaning and the way they relate to the questions of narrativity, experience, space, time, and identity. Two details may be important as a word of caution related to this research as a 'project.' The first is related to the fact that the order of the chapters in the book do not reflect the actual chronological line of my research. In fact, it runs more or less in the opposite way. My interest in the problem of the multiple realities began when I discovered that painted screens were used in Ancient China as a way of creating little 'virtual realities,' which strongly affected people's sense of space, time, and identity. My observations on Chinese painted screens are found in the last chapter of this book. My research went on following a certain 'archaeological necessity,' which made itself manifest every time unexpectedly. When a chapter was starting to have a clear shape, it soon seemed to ask for a foundation and required me to dig deeper into the problem. To understand the ways in which space, time, and identity were altered and reshaped in the virtual and mediated experience, a more elaborated version of the 'finite province of meaning' model was needed. Later, it became obvious that such a model required a detailed discussion of Schutz's own texts on the topic, and, finally, it was clear to me that a work dedicated to Schutz's theory of the multiple realities could not ignore the biographical context in which it was produced. The second detail refers to the complexity of the topic and its highly interdisciplinary character. An exhaustive coverage of the topic is simply impossible across such a large number of disciplines, and I could not have this intention. Equally important is the fact that some notions may sound too technical to a philosopher or a literary theorist, while other expressions may sound too metaphorical and vague to a sociologist or a psychologist. I tried to balance the style and the use of terminology from this point of view and to locate my discourse in the wide sphere of Schutzian sociology and interpretive social theory. x Preface Acknowledgements I am greatly indebted to Professor Árpád Szakolczai, who has guided, with immense wisdom and patience, my steps in conducting the present research by ceaselessly supporting and encouraging my work. My understanding of interpretive sociology has highly benefited from the new insights I received from his postgraduate seminars at University College Cork, from our discussions, and from the extensive feedback that he offered me. From these encounters, I have also learned to seek a measured order in the realities of words and ideas and to inquire into the measure of actions and things. I am grateful to Professors Austin Harrington and Lidia Julianna Guzy for having offered me profound and detailed comments and useful suggestions that helped me to improve this book and see it in a different light. I am thankful to the Higher Education Authority of Ireland (An tUdarás Um Ard-Oideachas), University College Cork, and the Sociology Department for the financial support provided to my research. My thanks go to Professors Ágnes Horváth, Kieran Keohane, Paddy O'Carroll, Piet Strydom, and Bridget McAdam-O'Connell; to Eleanor O'Connor, Rob Mooney, Tadgh Grimley, Vesko Bondov, Pat Twomey, Margaret O'Neill, and Aifric O'Grada; and to all the faculty, staff, and fellow students who have provided me with a warm and truly intellectual environment during my Irish years. I am grateful to my friends Alina S. Rusu, Mária Kórpás, Adrian Duda, Ciprian Speranza, Călin Nicu, Aristiţa I. Albăcan, Sebastian Buhai, Andrei Maxim, Carmen Fizeşan, Cristina Nistor, Rareş Beuran, Fr. Anton Crişan, Adrian Cârlugea, and everyone else for their priceless support, feedback, and encouragement. My thanks also go to my teachers in Cluj, who have stimulated my research interests and paved my way to this research: Professors Ion Copoeru, Vasile S. Dâncu, Marius Lazăr, Rudolf Poledna, Enikő Vincze, Marc Richir, Mihai Măniuţiu, Anca Măniuţiu, Marian Papahagi (†), Vasile Buhai, and Vasile V. Morariu (†). I also thank my friends Silviu Totelecan, Adrian Şchiop, Adrian Ciupe, Liviu Bujan, Mircea Minică, Ancuţa Mărieş, Lucia Keserii, and others with whom I had endless and fascinating talks on topics related to the multiple realities. I thank my family for their unconditional love and support. I thank God for the grace of this infinitely meaningful reality. xii Acknowledgements Abbreviations FPM finite province of meaning EDL everyday life NAE natural attitude epochè
Introduction Realities just 'real enough' Do we ever have a feeling that the conversations we have by e-mail, our Facebook experience, our Internet banking transactions, or our daily interactions with our smartphone apps are not real or not relevant for our existence as human beings? Most often, we don't doubt their relevance to our lives, we don't doubt their power to affect us and those around us, and we don't doubt their reality. Smartphones, smart watches, smart eyeglasses, smart homes, smart cities, and smart things all come up with quite the same ambivalent offer. First, they promise to help us depart our everyday world and enter different realities with no pain, no shock and, most importantly, no fear that 'the other realm' could be experienced as a fake reality. Second, they promise us, on the contrary, to invade, enrich, and augment the reality of our daily life by preserving, again, the authenticity of our sense of reality. We are invited to admit that, ultimately, it makes no difference whether the things we see and hear are real or just appear to be real as long as our experience of them is real enough. In other words, we have an invitation to ontological neutrality. This is probably one of the most stringent problems for contemporary social sciences and can pose serious theoretical difficulties. Was this ontological plurality and ambivalence of human experience an invention of our contemporary society? Did it land into our world on the wings of our marvelous technologies, or was it just emphasised and problematised1 by them? A closer look at the question shows us immediately that, regardless of their cultural, geographical, or historical context, humans have always lived in multiple realities. Even the simplest 'primitive' societies have experienced the world as plural, for their world of hunting had its own rules and structure different from the rules and structure that dominated the world of their myths and magical practices, and the world of their dreams was different from the world of their daily life. This fact makes the 'discovery' of the multiple character of the human world important for the social sciences because it points out that the multiple reality must be seen not as a contextual phenomenon of modernity but a universal anthropological condition of social life. Unquestionably, the alternative realities created with the new technologies and the new media can provide researchers in the fields of sociology, anthropology, and psychology with a thematic wealth that calls for both theoretical and methodological innovations. In this apparent context of an increasing multiplicity of modernity's spheres of experience, we need to revisit and discuss such concepts as identity, presence, space, time, and discourse. The main objective of the present work is not a contribution to the sociology or anthropology of virtual experience in a hypertechnologised world. The amount of scholarly research that has been produced in connection with the subject2 would make it an impossible task within the narrow scope assumed here. Rather, the large interest in such topics must be an argument for the idea that a solid theoretical foundation is needed for the understanding of human experience in a world that is irrevocably plural. This fundamental problem has been approached by many scholars using various theoretical tools. In sociology, the most famous theory is Alfred Schutz's conception of the finite provinces of meaning, which is the object of the present work. Other thinkers, such as William James,3 Herbert Nichols,4 David Unruh,5 and Nelson Goodman,6 have studied the multiplicity of the lifeworld experience, and concepts dealing with tangent socio-philosophical questions can also be identified in Max Weber ('value sphere,' Wertsphäre),7 Edmund Husserl (Lebenswelt and Phantasie),8 Michel Foucault (heterotopias and heterochronies),9 Peter Sloterdijk ('spheres'),10 Jean Baudrillard ('simulacra'),11 MacDonald et al. ('portalling'),12 Eugen Fink (the 'windowing' character of pictures),13 Eugenio Barba ('daily' and 'extra-daily' body techniques),14 Mikhail Bakhtin ('acts' and 'values'),15 or thinkers who studied the diversity of religious and magical experience, such as Béla Hamvas16 or Mircea Eliade.17 Ancient conceptions of plural worlds can be found in the philosophies of Anaximander, Leucippus, and others.18 Richard Gerrig has studied the phenomenon that he called 'transportation,' namely the way a reader becomes immersed in a narrative,19 while Kwan Min Lee opened up the field of study of 'presence'20 as people's experience of virtual environments. Related logical and philosophical frameworks with implications for history,21 economics,22 or social psychology23 are provided by such theorists of 'counterfactuality' and 'possible worlds' as David Lewis,24 while applications of the possible-worlds semantics to the study of the reality-fiction opposition have been investigated by Lubomír Doležel,25 Thomas Pavel,26 and others.27 Inspired by the works of Benjamin Lee Whorf and M.A.K. Halliday, semioticians have investigated the concept of modality as the status of reality attached to a text, which is founded on a pluralist conception of reality.28 The problem in its generality goes way beyond the fields of the social sciences and philosophy and reaches such diverse disciplines as theology, mathematics, or physics with, say, the manyworlds interpretation of quantum mechanics29 or the theories of parallel universes and multiverses.30 While a comparative study on this highly interdisciplinary topic would be extremely interesting, I cannot embark upon such a task here either. The present work is dedicated to Alfred Schutz's theory and has a double objective. First, it is intended to be a critical introduction to his sociology of the multiple reality, which he founded upon the concept of 'finite province of meaning' and developed as part of an unfinished project of 'a phenomenology of the natural attitude.' Second, it attempts to initiate a reconstruction work on 2 Introduction the Schutzian theory and to explore its epistemological promise for contemporary social sciences. To the best of my knowledge, nobody has carried out a similar project so far. Without claiming that Alfred Schutz's interpretive sociology is the best or the only possible framework for a sociology of the multiple reality, I believe that an analysis of his concept of 'finite province of meaning' can give us many clues to a better understanding of the social world in general and modernity in particular. In this approach, I will try to remain rooted in the epistemological ground of the interpretive-sociological school of thought, specifically in the phenomenological sociology that Schutz has founded upon Max Weber and Edmund Husserl, seeking to avoid value-oriented judgements, keeping from making inferences regarding the true existence or nonexistence of the objective world, and refraining from anchoring my approach within any particular constructionist framework. Schutz exposed his theory of the finite provinces of meaning in his famous essay 'On Multiple Realities.'31 The paper evokes William James's argument that reality is not a unique and noncontradictory sphere of life, but a multiplicity of autonomous and reciprocally irreducible 'sub-universes' that Schutz chooses to call 'finite provinces of meaning,'32 such as the world of working, the world of children's play, the world of theatre, the fictional universe, and the world of religious experience. Phenomena occurring in a certain province of meaning are compatible among each other but normally incompatible with phenomena and experiences belonging to a different reality. Things that are possible and normal in a fictional world or in a play can be meaningless or hilarious in everyday life; actions and experiences that occur in a religious context can appear irrational to a modern engineer or scientist. While this concept enjoys a great reputation among scholars familiar with the writings of Schutz – one can find it mentioned in virtually any introductory text to his sociology – it hasn't known subsequently the development that it deserved, and social scientists tend to ignore the epistemological potential of this theory. My own understanding of this misrecognition is related to the way Schutz himself approached the matter: he wrote about finite provinces of meaning in a sketchy and disconnected manner and provided neither an elaborate theory nor a welldefined methodological tool based on this concept. This is not to say that Schutz failed to grasp its true significance; as we will see, he did realise the importance of the matter, but his own multiplicity of projects, the life duties he was bound with, as well as his rather premature death at the age of 60 stopped him from developing his ideas fully into a 'phenomenology of the natural attitude.'33 A sociology of multiple realities, which would, first, reevaluate the Schutzian theory and, second, expand it by integrating various disconnected developments on the topic is yet to be written. The present work is intended as a first step in the first stage of such a project. The second stage – more laborious and extensive – should try to unify the results of the theoretical and empirical research of the past decades on the topic, such as the advances in the sociology of everyday life and the tradition of ethnomethodology inaugurated by Harold Garfinkel,34 the theory of 'organisation of experience' underlying Erving Goffman's 'frame analysis,'35 Introduction 3 the critical assessment of the Schutzian theory by Aron Gurwitsch,36 the works of Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann on humour,37 religion,38 and general FPM theory,39 Maurice Natanson's studies on history40 and fictional worlds as finite provinces of meaning,41 the recent studies of Michael Barber, Johen Dreher, George Psathas, and other authors on the general theory of finite provinces of meaning,42 the studies on virtual reality,43 the studies on drama,44 Stephanie Marriott's analysis of television,45 the studies on the social construction of the sciences by Karin Knorr Cetina46 or Bettina Heintz,47 the studies of medical provinces,48 the studies of shamanism, religion, and experience in traditional societies,49 the various studies on leisure worlds, such as pub drinking and vacation as finite provinces of meaning,50 the studies on multilingualism,51 and so on. Obviously, Schutz did not 'invent' the finite provinces of meaning, nor did William James. They were just among those who realised that reality is plural and that we can never experience it otherwise. Before approaching with quantitative methods the many realities created with new technologies, scientists need to understand the multiple character of human experience in its simpler forms, which are historically older and genetically closer to everyday life. The question is not to prove that our reality is multiple or to find out which of the sub-universes is the 'true reality' but to investigate the conditions, dynamics, extent, and consequences of this multiplicity. The word 'multiple' is itself a peculiar adjective with multiple meanings. It was borrowed from French and has its etymology in the Latin multiplex, which means literally 'manifold' or 'composed of many parts.' The word is a condensed manifestation of the mereologic paradox that makes an object appear as a part or as a whole, depending on the perspective from which it is perceived. 'Multiple' can describe either a singular or a plural noun: one can say 'a multiple phenomenon' or 'multiple phenomena,' 'a multiple view' or 'multiple views,' or 'a multiple reality' or 'multiple realities.' Is reality a collection of parts or a fragmented whole? This is rather a philosophical than a sociological question, and it will not be addressed in the present investigation. In his texts, Schutz uses both the plural form of the noun 'reality' ('multiple realities') and its singular form ('reality' as either 'finite province of meaning' or 'multiplicity' of 'finite provinces of meaning'), and so do I throughout this work. The social world may appear today more fragmented and compartmentalised than ever. While modernity and 'progress' may have led human society to a higher diversity of experience and thus to an increase in the number of provinces of reality, it is unclear what exactly has remained the same in the constitution of provinces. There is also the question of why humans have progressed particularly in the sense of increasing the diversity of experience and not viceversa. Is diversity of experience good for humans? Is it a source of pleasure? Is it a basic need? Or is it just a consequence of our seeking to fulfil other needs? Such questions cannot be answered without a good understanding of the concept of finite province of meaning. The topic belongs to social theory, but can find empirical and theoretical connections in interdisciplinary fields such as anthropology, social psychology, 4 Introduction media theory, performance theory, drama theory, film theory, or other areas. Every finite province of meaning points, basically, to a different science: the province of fiction to literary studies and discourse analysis, the province of virtual reality to psychology and human-computer interaction, the province of psychosis to psychology and psychiatry, and so on. For this reason, it is obvious that Schutz's treatment of the subject could not have been but partial and fragmentary, and so is my present work. The theory of finite provinces of meaning can be developed in virtually any area of the social life – and here lies its methodological generosity and profound importance for sociology – and it can also be linked to other approaches in the social sciences. Before we begin any technical discussion on the concepts and ideas related to the multiple realities, it is important to have an overview of Alfred Schutz's texts on the topic and the biographical context surrounding them. The first chapter aims at clarifying these preliminary questions. Notes 1 One cannot fail to acknowledge the recurrent themes of multiple reality, multiverses, parallel universes, everyday life as dream or illusion, dream-within-dream, or shifting identity in recent Hollywood or international productions, such as Christopher Nolan's Inception (2012), James Cameron's Avatar (2009), Jaco Van Dormael's Mr Nobody (2009), Michel Gondry's The Science of Sleep (2006), Masaaki Yuasa's Mind Game (2004) or the already classics The Matrix (1999, 2003) by Andy and Lana Wachowsky, David Cronenberg's Existenz (1999) or Peter Weir's The Truman Show (1998) to mention just a few. 2 See, for example, Benedict Anderson (2006 [1983]). Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London/New York: Verso; Rolf H. Weber (2014). Realizing a New Global Cyberspace Framework: Normative Foundations and Guiding Principles. Heidelberg: Springer; Sylvie Magerstadt (2014). Body, Soul and Cyberspace in Contemporary Science Fiction Cinema. New York: Palgrave Macmillan; Jae-Jin Kim, ed. (2011). Virtual Reality. Rijeka: InTech; Edward Castronova (2004). Synthetic Worlds. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press; DeNel Rehberg Sedo, ed. (2011). Reading Communities From Salons to Cyberspace. London/New York: Palgrave Macmillan; Thomas Ploug (2009). Ethics in Cyberspace: How Cyberspace May Influence Interpersonal Interaction. Dordrecht/Heidelberg/London/New York: Springer; Mark Poster (1995). The Second Media Age. Cambridge, MA: Polity Press; Sandhya Shekhar (2016). Managing the Reality of Virtual Organizations. New Delhi: Springer; Thomas M. Malaby (2009). Making Virtual Worlds: Linden Lab and Second Life. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press; Mark W. Bell (2008). Toward a Definition of Virtual Worlds. In: Virtual Worlds Research 1.1, pp. 1–5; Christine Hine (2000). Virtual Etnography. London/Thousand Oaks/New Delhi: Sage Publications; Tom Boellstorff et al. (2012). Ethnography and Virtual Worlds: A Handbook of Method. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press; Anne Friedberg (2009). The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; Barrie Sherman and Phil Judkins (1992). Glimpses of Heaven, Visions of Hell: Virtual Reality and Its Implications. London/Sydney/Auckland: Hodder & Stoughton. 3 William James (1890). Principles of Psychology. New York: Holt. 4 Herbert Nichols (1922). The Cosmology of William James. In: The Journal of Philosophy 19.25, pp. 673–683. Introduction 5 5 David R. Unruh (1980). The Nature of Social Worlds. In: Pacific Sociological Review 23.3, pp. 271–296. 6 Nelson Goodman (1978). Ways of Worldmaking. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company. 7 See Max Weber (1949). The Methodology of the Social Sciences. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, pp. 15–18. 8 See Edmund Husserl (1980). Phantasie, Bildbewusstsein, Erinnerung: Zur Phänomenologie der anschaulichen Vergegenwärtigungen. Texte aus dem Nachlass (1898– 1925). Ed. by Eduard Marbach. The Hague/Boston/London: Martinus Nijhoff; Edmund Husserl (1983 [1913]). Ideas: General Introduction to Pure Phenomenology. First Book: General Introduction to a Pure Phenomenology. The Hague/Boston/ Lancaster: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers. 9 Michel Foucault (1984). Des espaces autres. In: Architecture/Mouvement/Continuité 5, pp. 46–49. 10 Peter Sloterdijk (2011 [1998]). Bubbles: Spheres I. Los Angeles: Semiotext(e). 11 Jean Baudrillard (1994 [1985]). Simulacra and Simulation. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press. 12 George F. MacDonald et al. (1989). Mirrors, Portals, and Multiple Realities. In: Zygon. Journal of Religion and Science 24.1, pp. 39–64. 13 Eugen Fink (1966). Vergegenwärtigung und Bild. Beiträge zur Phänomenologie der Unwirklichkeit. In: Studien zur Phänomenologie 1930–1939. Vol. 21. Phaenomenologica. Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, pp. 74–78. 14 Eugenio Barba (2005 [1993]). The Paper Canoe: A Guide to Theatre Anthropology. London/New York: Routledge, p. 15. 15 Mikhail M. Bakhtin (1993 [1935]). Toward a Philosophy of the Act. Ed. by Vadim Liapunov and Michael Holquist. Austin: University of Texas Press. 16 Béla Hamvas (2006). Scientia sacra. Vol. I–III. Budapest: Medio Kiadó. 17 Mircea Eliade (1992). Tratat de istoria religiilor [A Treatise in the History of Religions]. Bucureşti: Humanitas. 18 Leo Sweeney (1972). Infinity in the Presocratics: A Bibliographical and Philosophical Study. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff'; See G.S. Kirk and J.E. Raven (1957). The Presocratic Philosophers: A Critical History With a Selection of Texts. London/ New York: Cambridge University Press; Cyril Bailey (1964 [1928]). The Greek Atomists and Epicurus. New York: Russel & Russel. 19 Richard Gerrig (1993). Experiencing Narrative Worlds: On the Psychological Activities of Reading. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 20 Kwan Min Lee (2004). Presence, Explicated. In: Communication Theory 14, pp. 27–50. 21 Niall Ferguson, ed. (1997). Virtual History: Alternatives and Counterfactuals. New York: Basic Books. 22 Nancy Cartwright (2007). Counterfactuals in Economics: A Commentary. In: Causation and Explanation. Ed. by Joseph Keim Campbell, Michael O'Rourke, and Harry S. Silverstein. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 191–216; See, Flavio Cunha, James Heckman, and Salvador Navarro (2005). Counterfactual Analysis of Inequality and Social Mobility. In: Mobility and Inequality: Frontiers of Research in Sociology and Economics. Ed. by Stephen L. Morgan, David B. Grusky, and Gary S. Fields. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Chap. 4, pp. 290–348. 23 Neal J. Roese and James M. Olson, eds. (1995). What Might Have Been: The Social Psychology of Counterfactual Thinking. New York/London: Psychology Press. 24 David K. Lewis (1986). On the Plurality of Worlds. Oxford: Blackwell. 25 Lubomír Doležel (2010). Possible Worlds of Fiction and History: The Postmodern Stage. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press. 26 Thomas Pavel (1986). Fictional Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 6 Introduction 27 Mari Hatavara et al., eds. (2016). Narrative Theory, Literature, and New Media: Narrative Minds and Virtual Worlds. New York/London: Routledge. 28 See Robert Hodge and Gunther Kress (1988). Social Semiotics. New York: Cornell University Press, pp. 123–124; Daniel Chandler (2007 [2002]). Semiotics: The Basics. London/New York: Routledge, pp. 64–68. 29 See Bryce S. DeWitt and Neill Graham (1973). The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. 30 David Deutsch (1997). The Fabric of Reality: The Science of Parallel Universes-And Its Implications. New York: Penguin Books; See, Bernard Carr, ed. (2007). Universe or Multiverse? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Michio Kaku (1994). Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps, and the Tenth Dimension. New York: Anchor Books; Mary-Jane Rubenstein (2014). Worlds Without End: The Many Lives of the Multiverse. New York: Columbia University Press. 31 Alfred Schutz (1945). On Multiple Realities. In: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 5.4, pp. 533–576. 32 Throughout this work, I will often employ the acronym FPM, never used by Schutz himself. His own terms were 'finite province of meaning,' 'province,' 'world,' 'reality,' 'order of reality,' 'realm of reality,' 'sphere,' and 'subuniverse.' In German, the notion was called umgrenzte Sinnprovinz, Wirklichkeitsbereich, geschlossene Sinnbezirk, Realitätsbereich, while the concept was translated as province finie de sense in French, provincia finida de sentido in Spanish, youxiàn yíyí yú (有限 意义域) in Chinese, and konechnaya oblast' znacheniy (конечная область значений) in Russian. 33 See Alfred Schutz (2011). Collected Papers V: Phenomenology and the Social Sciences. Ed. by Lester Embree. Phaenomenologica. Dordrecht/Heidelberg/London/ New York: Springer, p. 239. 34 Michael Lynch and Wes Sharrock (2011). Ethnomethdology. Vol. 1–4. London: Sage. 35 Erving Goffman (1986 [1974]). Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience. Boston, MA: Northeastern University Press. 36 Aron Gurwitsch (2010). The Collected Works of Aron Gurwitsch (1901–1973). Ed. by Richard M. Zaner and Lester Embree. Vol. III. Dordrecht/Heidelberg/London/New York: Springer, pp. 369–402. 37 Peter Berger (1997). Redeeming Laughter: The Comic Dimension of Human Experience. Berlin/New York: Walter de Gruyter. 38 Peter Berger (1990 [1967]). The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. New York: Anchor Books. 39 Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann (1984 [1966]). The Social Construction of Reality: A Treatise in the Sociology of Knowledge. London: Penguin Books; Peter Berger (1970). The Problem of Multiple Realities: Alfred Schutz and Robert Musil. In: Phenomenology and Social Reality: Essays in Memory of Alfred Schutz. Ed. by Maurice Natanson. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, pp. 213–233; Peter Berger, Brigitte Berger, and Hansfried Kellner (1974). The Homeless Mind: Modernization and Consciousness. New York: Vintage Books. 40 Maurice Natanson (1962). History as a Finite Province of Meaning. In: Literature, Philosophy, and the Social Sciences: Essays in Existentialism and Phenomenology. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, pp. 172–177. 41 Maurice Natanson (1998). The Erotic Bird: Phenomenology in Literature. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, pp. 105–126. 42 Michael Staudigl and George Berguno, eds. (2014). Schutzian Hermeneutic and Hermeneutic Traditions. Contributions to Phenomenology 68. Dordrecht/Heidelberg/ London/New York: Springer, pp. 223–236; Michael D. Barber and Jochen Dreher, eds. (2014). The Interrelation of Phenomenology, Social Sciences and the Arts. Vol. 69. Contributions to Phenomenology. Dordrecht/Heidelberg/London/New York: Introduction 7 Springer; George Psatas (2014). Goffman and Schutz on Multiple Realities. In: Schutzian Phenomenology and Hermeneutic Traditions: Contributions to Phenomenology. Ed. by Michael Staudigl and George Berguno. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 201–221; Luigi Muzzetto (2006). Time and Meaning in Alfred Sch€utz. In: Time & Society 15.1, pp. 5–31; Elizabeth Suzanne Kassab (1991). 'Paramount Reality' in Schutz and Gurwitsch. In: Human Studies 14.2–3, pp. 181–198. 43 Denisa Butnaru (2015). Phenomenological Alternatives of the Lifeworld: Between Multiple Realities and Virtual Realities. In: Sociology and the Life-World. Ed. by Luigi Muzzetto. Vol. 6. Società Mutamento Politica 12. Firenze University Press. 44 Charlotte L. Doyle (2016). Multiple Realities: The Changing Life Worlds of Actors. In: Journal of Phenomenological Psychology 47.2, pp. 107–133. 45 Stephanie Marriott (2007). Live Television: Time, Space and the Broadcast Event. London/Thousand Oaks/New Delhi/Singapore: Sage. 46 Karin Knorr Cetina (1981). The Manufacture of Knowledge: An Essay on the Constructivist and Contextual Nature of Science. Oxford: Pergamon Press. 47 Bettina Heintz (2000). Die Innenwelt der Mathematik: Zur Kultur und Praxis einer beweisenden Disziplin. Wien/New York: Springer. 48 S. Kay Toombs, ed. (2001). Handbook of Phenomenology and Medicine. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers; Marie Santiago-Delefosse and María del Río Carral (2015). The Life-World and Its Multiple Realities: Alfred Sch€utz's Contribution to the Understanding of the Experience of Illness. In: Psychology 6, pp. 1265–1276. 49 Larry Baron (1983). Slipping Inside the Crack Between the Worlds: Carlos Castaneda, Alfred Schutz, and the Theory of Multiple Realities. In: Journal of Humanistic Psychology 23.2, pp. 52–69; Silke Steets (2014). Multiple Realities and Religion: A Sociological Approach. In: Society 51.2, pp. 140–144; Daniel Pinchbeck (2002). Breaking Open the Head. New York: Broadway Books; Anett Oelschlägel (2013). Plurale Weltinterpretationen: Das Beispiel der Tyva S€udsybiriens. F€urstenberg/ Havel: SEC Publications/Verlag der Kulturstiftung Sibirien. 50 Orvar L€ofgren (2002 [1999]). On Holiday: A History of Vacationing. Vol. 6. California Studies in Critical Human Geography. Berkeley/Los Angeles/London: University of California Press; Craig MacAndrew and Robert B. Edgerton (1969). Drunken Comportment: A Social Explanation. Chicago: Aldine; Joseph R. Gusfield (1981). The Culture of Public Problems. Chicago/London: The University of Chicago Press. 51 Elka Todeva and Jasone Cenoz, eds. (2009). The Multiple Realities of Multilingualism: Personal Narratives and Researchers' Perspectives. Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter. 8 Introduction | {
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TEORIE VĚDY / THEORY OF SCIENCE / XXXVII / 2015 / 2 THE ROLE OF PROTESTANTISM IN THE EMERGENCE OF MODERN SCIENCE: CRITIQUES OF HARRISON'S HYPOTHESIS Abstract: According to Peter Harrison's book Th e Bible, Protestantism and the Rise of Natural Science (1998) modern science came into existence as a result of the emphasis of Protestants on the literal sense of the Scripture, their refusal of the earlier symbolic or allegorical interpretation, and their eff orts at fi xing the meaning of the biblical text in which each passage was to be ascribed a single and unique meaning. Th is article tries to summarize the most signifi cant critiques of Harrison's hypothesis (by Kenneth Howell, Jiste van der Meer and Richard Oosterhoff ) and to acknowledge their legitimacy. However, the alternative explanation of the emergence of modern science as a result of disputes over the biblical interpretation and the subsequent discovery of the ambiguous character of the ordinary verbal language is not fully satisfactory either. Keywords: Harrison; Howell; van der Meer; Oosterhoff ; literalism; Bible; exegesis; allegory; natural symbolism; early modern science Role protestantismu při vzniku moderní vědy: kritiky Harrisonovy hypotézy Abstrakt: Podle knihy Petera Harrisona Th e Bible, Protestantism and the Rise of Natural Science z roku 1998 vznikla moderní věda jako výsledek důrazu protestantů na doslovný smysl Písma, jejich odmítnutí dřívějšího symbolického či alegorického výkladu a jejich snahy o fi xaci významu biblického textu, v němž každá pasáž měla mít jediný a jedinečný význam. Tento článek se pokouší o shrnutí nejvýznamnějších kritik Harrisonovy hypotézy (od Kennetha Howella, Jitse van der Meera a Richarda Oosterhoff a) a uznává jejich oprávněnost. Nicméně ani alternativní vysvětlení vzestupu moderní vědy jakožto výsledku neshod ve výkladu Písma a následného objevu nejednoznačné povahy běžného verbálního jazyka není zcela uspokojivé. Klíčová slova: Harrison; Howell; van der Meer; Oosterhoff ; literalismus; Bible; exegeze; alegorie; přírodní symbolismus; raně novověká věda ////// studie / article /////////////////////////////////////////// PETR PAVLAS Katedra fi losofi e FF ZČU Sedláčkova 19, 306 14 Plzeň email / pavlas@kfi .zcu.cz / [email protected] 160 Petr Pavlas Introduction Several methods of inquiry can be employed to explore the roots of modern science. First of all, we should ask: When did modern science emerge? Th e answer is clearly in the 16th and 17th centuries, that is, in early modern times. In order to fi nd out how it emerged, we can consult plentiful historiographic resources and numerous specialised studies which describe the manner and history of this transformation. However, the question about the cause as to why modern science came into existence poses a major issue. Even if we avoid the teleological concept of a fi nal cause, its effi cient cause, or rather the concept into which it evolved under the infl uence of modern rationality, remains unclear. Mechanical causality created an important reduction.1 For example, Galileo Galilei redefi ned the concept of cause outside the Aristotelian frame, thereby reducing its meaning. In Galileo's own words, "only that may be properly called a cause which is always followed by the eff ect, and which when removed takes away the eff ect."2 It seems that he believed that only a necessary and suffi cient condition for the occurrence of an event could be considered a cause. Th is article also approaches the concept of a "cause" from this abovedefi ned modern perspective. Th e question may arise whether such a defi nition of a "cause" is adequate. Th e answer is that, at least in natural science, this conception proved to be especially fruitful. It may also be reasonable to ask whether the humanities, such as historiography, should really provide causal explanations (erklären – as Dilthey put it) instead of trying to understand (verstehen) them. Th e fact is that historians of science, in spite of declaring war on "monocausal" explanations (i.e. explanations of historical phenomena on the basis of their single cause), have so far tried – despite Dilthey's theories – to explain historical events with reference to their cause. 1 For more on the topic: Tomáš MACHULA, Causa effi ciens: příčina účinná a princip kauzality mezi realismem a redukcionismem [Causa effi ciens: Effi cient Cause and the Principle of Causality between Realism and Reductionism]. České Budějovice: Jihočeská univerzita v Českých Budějovicích 2009. 2 Galileo GALILEI, "Il Saggiatore." In: FAVARO, A. (ed.), Le Opere di Galileo Galilei: Volume VI. Firenze: G. Barbèra 1896, p. 265 (213–372): "Se è vero che quella, e non altra, si debba propriamente stimar causa, la qual posta segue sempre l'eff etto, e rimossa si rimuove ..." Translation in: Stillman DRAKE – Charles O'MALLEY, Th e Controversy on the Comets of 1618. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press 1960, p. 219. Th e study was sponsored by the internal grant system of the University of West Bohemia in Pilsen under project SGS–2015-017 entitled Literary Techniques in the Scientifi c Discourse in Early Modern Age. 161 The Role of Protestantism in the Emergence of Modern Science Th e fact that causes are sometimes called diff erently, for example, "decisive impulses" or "most substantial stimuli" plays a marginal role. Harrison's hypothesis Renowned historian of science and religion Peter Harrison in his work Th e Bible, Protestantism and the Rise of Natural Science sees the Protestant literalist interpretation of texts (principally of the Bible) as a "catalyst" and the "most important factor" in the emergence of modern science.3 Harrison believes that from Christian Antiquity, i.e. from the time of the early Church Fathers until the turn of the 16th into the 17th century, natural history (historia naturalis) was actually a human science: "Animals had a 'story', they were allocated meanings, they were emblems of important moral and theological truths, and like the hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt they were to be thought of as the characters of an intelligible language."4 Th e literary context of animals (legends about animals, traditional stories, fables, proverbs, folk sayings, emblems, allegories in the Bible and classical literature, their usage in heraldry and numismatics, etc.) was more important than their physical environment. Th is also applied to plants, minerals and other objects of nature – natural signs that were the symbols and allegories of spiritual and material facts. For example, Basil the Great and Augustine believed that poisonous animals represented bad movements of the soul.5 Th e transformation of a silkworm into a butterfl y symbolised resurrection and an alleged sexless reproduction of birds was likened to a virgin birth. According to Augustine, birds were believers who were versed in the Christian faith and therefore able to fl y up to the heavens. Unlike Ambrose of Milan, who saw fi sh as a symbol of vice in society, Augustine considered fi sh to be an emblem of the fi rst sacraments and whales to represent miracles.6 According to the late antique 3 Peter HARRISON, Th e Bible, Protestantism and the Rise of Natural Science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1998, p. 8: "Th e specifi c agent which I wish to identify as having been a major catalyst in the emergence of science [...] is the Protestant approach to the interpretation of texts [...]. While I do not wish to be seen as setting out a monocausal thesis for the rise of modern science, for there is no reason why a range of factors should not play some role, yet I shall argue that of these factors by far the most signifi cant was the literalist mentality initiated by the Protestant reformers, and sponsored by their successors." 4 HARRISON, Th e Bible, Protestantism and the Rise of Natural Science, p. 2. 5 AUGUSTINUS, "Confessiones." XIII.21. In: MIGNE, J.-P. (ed.), Patrologiae latinae cursus completus: Tomus 32. Paris: Migne 1841, pp. 856–858 (659–868). 6 AUGUSTINUS, "Confessiones," XIII.27, p. 863. 162 encyclopaedia, Physiologus, which remained infl uential throughout the Middle Ages, the pelican symbolised Christ and the snake that shed its skin represented the believer who shed, through fasting and austerity, his or her old self.7 Aside from being the symbol of the devil, the snake also symbolised Christ, both hung on wood (a bronze snake hung by Moses on a stick in the desert; Christ nailed to the cross by the Jews). Th e lion symbolises Christ since they share a kingly nature, yet it also symbolises Satan since both are predators. Natural phenomena may have given various allegorical meanings: for example, a lion covering his traces symbolised Christ hiding His divine nature by assuming human form (an allegory of Christ's incarnation). A lion sleeping with open eyes symbolises the sleeping body of Christ who remains vigilant in His divinity throughout (an allegory of Christ's death). And just like the lion father wakes his lion cub with a roar, the almighty Father brings Christ back to life (an allegory of Christ's resurrection).8 According to Harrison, from Augustine up until around the 12th century, the Book of Nature had semantics, but lacked syntax. Based on vertical analogy, things refer to eternal truths.9 According to Harrison, however, nature is "discovered" in the 12th century as a coherent system, or more precisely – similarities not only between physical objects and theological and moral truths are revealed, but also between physical objects themselves.10 Vertical analogy is gradually complemented by horizontal analogy based primarily on the relations between microcosm-macrocosm and sympathy-antipathy. Th is gradually leads, for example, to the boom of physiognomics, chiromancy and the doctrine of signatures. Th e doctrine of signatures, to provide an illustrative example, was the belief that, for instance, a walnut could cure illnesses of the head simply because it resembled a brain. Th e Renaissance doctrine of signatures was closely related to Renaissance medicine, alchemy, astrology and magic, but not to modern science. According to Harrison, aft er the arrival of Galileo Galilei and his contemporaries (who are now primarily considered scientists, but not philosophers or theologians), the semantics of the Book of Nature was rejected. Th e theory that things could serve as signs was deemed unacceptable. Hence, the 7 HARRISON, Th e Bible, Protestantism and the Rise of Natural Science, pp. 21–25. 8 Jitse VAN DER MEER – Richard OOSTERHOFF, "God, Scripture, and the Rise of Modern Science (1200–1700): Notes in the Margin of Harrison's Hypothesis." In: VAN DER MEER, J. – MANDELBROTE, S. (eds.), Nature and Scripture in Abrahamic Religions: Volume 2. Leiden – Boston: Brill 2008, pp. 378–379 (363–396). 9 HARRISON, Th e Bible, Protestantism and the Rise of Natural Science, pp. 32–33. 10 Ibid., pp. 42–44. Petr Pavlas 163 study of nature was freed from the specifi c theological bias of biblical exegesis – in relation to which, natural symbolism in particular played a crucial role – and the sphere of nature was opened to new structuring principles, i.e. mathematics and taxonomy. Th is claim, inspired by Foucault,11 is not only asserted by Harrison, but also by Umberto Eco, James Joseph Bono, William Ashworth Jr. and others.12 And yet this author believes that Eco was right in going all the way back to Th omas Aquinas – calling him a "cultural policeman", who cut away natural phenomena from their meanings and tried to eliminate natural symbolism. Each of the aforementioned historians refer to the symbolist mentality in diff erent ways: Harrison speaks about integrated hermeneutic practice, Bono about symbolic exegesis, Ashworth refers to an emblematic worldview and, fi nally, Eco invokes universal allegorism. For the purposes of this author's study, the term "natural symbolism" will be used. In the Middle Ages, it was not important how things worked but what they signifi ed. Th e modern era has, in turn, been dominated by mathematical principles and taxonomy, or rather, "the syntax of the Book of Nature". According to Harrison – and this is where his theory becomes most problematic – modern science came into existence as a result of the emphasis of Protestants on the literal sense of the Scripture, their refusal of the symbolic or allegorical interpretation, and their eff orts at fi xing the meaning of the biblical text in which each passage was to be ascribed a single and unique meaning. Protestant literalism allegedly had far-reaching consequences for the Book of Nature. Natural objects were no longer linked through sets of similar qualities and nature lost its meaning. Th is loss of intelligibility in relation to nature was gradually compensated for by alternative descriptions of natural phenomena – explanations that are nowadays considered scientifi c. In this new scheme of aff airs, objects were related to one another according to mathematical, mechanical or causal principles, or they were arranged and 11 Cf. Michel FOUCAULT, Slova a věci [Words and Th ings]. Brno: Computer Press 2007, pp. 61–64. 12 Cf. Umberto ECO, O zrcadlech a jiné eseje [On Mirrors and Other Essays]. Praha: Mladá fronta 2002, p. 293ff ; Umberto ECO, Umění a krása ve středověké estetice [Art and Beauty in the Middle Ages]. Praha: Argo 1998, pp. 76–110; James Joseph BONO, Th e Word of God and the Languages of Man: Interpreting Nature in Early Modern Science and Medicine. Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press 1995; William ASHWORTH, "Emblematic Natural History of the Renaissance." In: JARDINE, N. – SECORD, J. – SPARY, E. (eds.), Cultures of Natural History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1996, pp. 17–37; William ASHWORTH, "Natural History and the Emblematic Worldview." In: LINDBERG, D. (ed.), Reappraisals of the Scientifi c Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1990, pp. 303–332. The Role of Protestantism in the Emergence of Modern Science 164 classifi ed according to categories other than similarity. Th ings had lost their referential capacity and references became restricted to the domain of words. Th us far, Harrison's hypothesis may apply: By emphasising the literal meaning and fi xation of the biblical text, Protestants caused the end of natural symbolism in which things marked theological and moral truths and material facts. Th is enabled the development of modern science, the introduction of new ordering principles (which Foucault called mathésis and taxinomia) and the study of natural objects for their own sake. Critique by counterexamples However, Harrison's hypothesis, formulated 17 years ago, shows signifi cant cracks. One problem has already been mentioned – in one of his essays, Eco asserts that the fi rst thinker to have "eliminated universal allegorism, the delusive world of natural hermeneutics typical for the preceding Middle Ages", was Th omas Aquinas.13 Harrison's theory has also been successfully critiqued by Kenneth Howell who has proven that Protestant scientists (who should have served as a typical example of opponents of natural symbolism) in fact employed very brave allegories in their works.14 To the personalities listed by Howell, such as German Lutheran Kepler and Dutch Calvinist Lansbergen, we can add the Bishop of the Unity of the Brethren, John Amos Comenius (Jan Amos Komenský). Let us fi rst focus on Kepler, whose Trinitarian symbolism consists of the idea that the centre of its cosmological system, i.e. the Sun, is the image of God the Father, the surface of the external cosmic sphere is the representation of God the Son and, fi nally, the ether between the centre and the surface represents the Holy Spirit. God the Father must be in the centre, being the origin of the whole sphere and the "fount of divinity" that gives life to the entire system. Just like God the Father gives birth to His Son, each point on the surface of the sphere emanates from the centre. And just as Christ is the image of the Father, each point on the spherical surface is the representation of its centre.15 And just as the Creed of the Western Church maintained that the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father and the Son, the space between the 13 ECO, O zrcadlech a jiné eseje, p. 301. 14 Cf. Kenneth HOWELL, God's Two Books: Copernican Cosmology and Biblical Interpretation in Early Modern Science. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press 2002. 15 Ibid., p. 128. Petr Pavlas 165 surface of the sphere and the solar centre "results from a comparison of the centre with the surface and proceeds from both".16 According to Kepler, the whole world is a sacrament and a material image of God. Kepler, a Lutheran thinker, is not a typical example of the literalist mentality of Protestants, to which Harrison refers as being one of the crucial factors in the emergence of modern science. Th e Trinitarian symbolism can also be found in the work of Dutch astronomer and Calvinist Philip Lansbergen, a follower of Copernicus' theory of the solar system. In accordance with Kepler, he claimed that the Sun was the image of God the Father, with the Moon being the image of God the Son and the earth's atmosphere (the air enveloping the Earth) being the representation of the Holy Spirit. He wrote that as the Father has light from himself, the Son from the Father, and the Holy Spirit from the Father and the Son, so the light of the sun comes from itself, that of the moon from the sun, and that of the air from the sun and moon at the same time. So there are in fact three diff erent lights but the light itself clearly shows a unity: the light of the moon is the sun's own light and the light of the air is that of the sun and moon together. In fact, there is only one light and the same proceeds from one sun as its source.17 We may again see how Lansbergen's allegoric or symbolic concept – just like that of Kepler – supports not only the doctrine of a Trinitarian God, but also the Nicene-Constantinopolitan Creed and doctrine of the fi lioque. And fi nally, the Trinitarian allegory was also used by another Protestant author – John Amos Comenius. It is not an exaggeration to say that the "teacher of the nations" saw vestigia Trinitatis almost everywhere. Th e visible macrocosm consists of matter, light and spirit. Th e rainbow is composed of green, yellow and red. Time is comprised of the past, the present and the future. Space is made up of length, width and depth. A proposition is composed of a subject, predicate and copula. A more comprehensive account of trinities is presented in Comenius' De rerum humanarum emendatione 16 Johannes KEPLER, "Epitome Copernicanae Astronomiae." I.2. In: CASPAR, M. (ed.), Johannes Kepler Gesammelte Werke: Band 7. München: Beck 1953, p. 51: "Intervallum resultat ex comparatione Centri cum superfi cie, et sic procedit ab vtroque ..." Translation in: HOWELL, God's Two Books, p. 129. 17 As cited in HOWELL, God's Two Books, p. 152. Cf. Philippus LANSBERGIUS, Commentationes in motvm terrae, diurnum et annuum. Middelbvrgi: Apud Zachariam Romanum 1630, p. 39. The Role of Protestantism in the Emergence of Modern Science 166 consultatio catholica.18 In the spirit of the Augustinian tradition, they all attest to the existence of the Holy Trinity. Comenius' symbolic concept of the world is documented in other chapters of his pivotal philosophical writings. In his Via lucis, Comenius says that created entities convey the real meaning of the respective parts of the Scripture: In the Old Testament, God wished that all that is off ered as a sacrifi ce is to be burnt with a fl ame. Why so? Explore the nature of the fi re and you will learn the intent of God's order. [...] God also refused to accept sacrifi ces that would not contain salt. Why so? If you know the natural qualities of salt, you will know the mystical meaning.19 Th e following excerpt from Comenius' De rerum humanarum emendatione consultatio catholica, which provides examples of signs that God gave us to remind us of events in the Old Testament, may serve as another example of his symbolic reading of the Book of Nature: God blessed us with many examples of such signs. Th e day of Saturday refers to Creation, clothes symbolise the Fall, rainbow signifi es the Flood, circumcision stands for rebirth, putrid lake is the sign of Sodom, the Feast of the Lamb marks the departure from Egypt, the Feast of the Booths commemorates the issue of the Laws, and the Feast of Tabernacles recalls of dwelling in the desert.20 Protestant authors of the 16th and 17th centuries across denominations and scientifi c fi elds found allegories and symbols of theological truths 18 Cf. Jan Amos KOMENSKÝ, De rerum humanarum emendatione consultatio catholica: Tomus I. Praha: Academia 1966, pp. 242–245. Cf. also Erwin SCHADEL, "Einführung in die antisozinianische Kontroverse des Comenius." In: KOMENSKÝ, J. A., Wiederholte Ansprache an Baron Wolzogen / Iteratus ad Baronem Wolzogenium sermo. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang 2002, p. 221ff (179–487). 19 Jan Amos KOMENSKÝ, "Via Lucis." In: SVOBODA, L. – BORSKÁ, J. – NOVÁKOVÁ, J. (eds.), Johannis Amos Comenii Opera Omnia 14. Praha: Academia 1974, p. 332: "Ex gr. quod quicquid Deus in Veteri testamento sacrifi ciis off erri voluit, igne cremari voluit, quid hoc? Examina ignis naturam, et quo mandatum Dei tendat intelliges. [...] Noluit item Deus sacrifi cia off eri sine sale; quid hoc? Salis proprietates naturales si scias, sensus mysticus fugere te non poterit." 20 Jan Amos KOMENSKÝ, De rerum humanarum emendatione consultatio catholica: Tomus I, p. 498: "Talium signorum Deus multa exempla dedit. Ut Sabbathum Creationis: Vestem Lapsus: Iridem Diluvij. Circumcisionem regenerationis: Subversionis Sodomae lacum faetidum: Eductionis ex Aegypto Pascha: Legis lationis festum Scenopegiorum: Commorationis in deserto, festum tabernaculourum." Petr Pavlas 167 in the great Book of Nature. Th is fact should clearly indicate that Protestant literalism could not have been the cause of the decline of natural symbolism. Van der Meer's and Oosterhoff 's critique Another, and so far the most serious and complex critique to delve into the very root of Harrison's argument is raised by two Dutch authors, Jitse van der Meer and Richard Oosterhoff .21 Above all, they claim that the Protestant literal sense also included allegory – in cases where it was justifi ed and intended by God. What the Protestants rejected was sheer allegoresis and speculation – they wanted to reduce the number of allegorical interpretations. Albert the Great and Th omas Aquinas had already determined that things, events and persons in nature – to which the Bible clearly and indisputably refers – have allegorical meanings, but only those intended by the divine author. Th ings, events and persons that are not discussed in scripture do not have a symbolic meaning, which signifi cantly diverges from the previous practice of the Middle Ages. Eco draws attention to this transformation, calling Th omas a "cultural policeman". Th e "new literal sense" of the Bible, as referred to by van der Meer and Oosterhoff , was inferred before the Protestant Reformation and did not entail the rejection of natural symbolism, except for symbols that had not been authorised by God. How and where then did God enshrine symbolic meaning in nature? Lefèvre d'Étaples, Martin Luther, Philip Melanchthon and John Calvin believed that this knowledge was revealed through the guidance of the Holy Spirit. Calvin saw, for example, the burning bush as the symbol of the tests imposed on Israel. However, this meaning is not defi ned in the text itself. Nevertheless, it is intended by God, which is apparent from the comparison with other passages in the Bible, and by the fact that this symbolism is included in the literal sense of another biblical text.22 In short, Zwingli, Luther, Melanchthon, Tyndale, Calvin and other thinkers unscrupulously continued to use allegory, albeit without revealing its real nature to avoid associations with speculative thought. In 21 Th e following paragraphs paraphrase and summarise the articles: VAN DER MEER – OOSTERHOFF, "God, Scripture, and the Rise of Modern Science (1200–1700)," pp. 363–396; Jitse VAN DER MEER – Richard OOSTERHOFF, "Th e Bible, Protestantism and the Rise of Natural Science: A Response to Harrison's Th esis." Science and Christian Belief, vol. 21, 2009, no. 2, pp. 133–153. 22 Cf. Judges 9:15. The Role of Protestantism in the Emergence of Modern Science 168 Calvin's terms, the wrong reading produced allegory, whereas the right reading resulted in typology or "literal anagogy". Harrison's bold assertion that Protestant reformers rejected allegoric or symbolic meanings is incorrect. Harrison claims that in order to face a double interpretation of the Scripture, reformers refused allegorical meaning, which depended on the polysemy of things that once existed within natural symbolism. However, van der Meer and Oosterhoff note that the meaning of the symbols, for example, in the treatise Physiologus and bestiaries, is not uncertain or undetermined: some animals bear a single and unique meaning (the fabled phoenix is the symbol of death and resurrection of Christ), while others are associated with multiple meanings, although clearly explained (mostly in the special section Signifi cacio). Based on these features, a tradition of a clear moral and allegorical meaning pertaining to each animal is established. Homiletic history confi rms that these meanings were broadly distributed and deeply engrained (also thanks to preaching manuals) from the sources of Physiologus, bestiaries and other encyclopaedias. Reformers realised that ambiguousness was the result of speculation, not of natural symbolism. Th e cure was the rejection of speculation, not of natural symbolism. Th e interpretation of the Bible according to van der Meer and Oosterhoff could not actually directly aff ect the origination of a modern science independent of the development of natural symbolism. Th e strategy of authorial intent of the text and the fi ght against speculation went hand in hand with the discovery of the ambiguous nature of ordinary language. Linguistic ambiguity was apparent in many inconsistencies regarding the meaning of the texts in the Bible. As one of the reasons for these discrepancies, natural philosophers stated a violation of the original divine language of creation, the language of Adam. Th is explains why many turned to the study of nature as a source of knowledge about God, which prevails over the text of the Bible. Protestants failed to agree with Catholics and with one another on important theological issues although both sides could argue with reference to the Church Fathers. Th is is not surprising since the Fathers too failed to reach a consensus. However, this Protestant failure to impose a fi xed meaning on the interpretation of the Bible was very sensitively perceived by natural philosophers. Th erefore, Galilei – who believed that the language of the Bible corresponded to ordinary human language and that it was imperfect – is able to say that the passages in the Bible "may have some diff erent meaning beneath their words," but "Nature, on the other hand, is inexorable Petr Pavlas 169 and immutable." He further believed that the "very notion of literal interpretation is problematic, for verbal language is ambiguous by its very nature."23 Van der Meer and Oosterhoff thus propose a more daring argument than Harrison. Harrison merely claims that a diff erent reading of the Bible caused a diff erent reading of nature. Th ey go even further by stating that the Bible was questioned (or at least its authority was shattered) as a result of its ambiguity and that further attention turned to the Book of Nature as a more obvious revelation of God. "Th ere are two diff erent phenomena to explain: the decline of nature symbolism and the rise of modern science," as van der Meer and Oosterhoff put it.24 Th eir cause does not have to be identical and it is certainly not the result of the Protestant Reformation. Protestantism was not the main driving force of modern science. Moreover, a literal interpretation of the Bible, applied either by the Protestants or the Catholics at some point, obstructed the development of science, as illustrated by the examples of Cardinal Bellarmine and Giovanni Battista Riccioli. And on the other hand, natural symbolism was oft en present as part of the theories of emerging modern scientists. According to Newton, just as theology had to be reformed by eliminating Medieval violations against the Bible and returning to sources drawing on the tradition of Abraham and Moses, natural philosophy also had to be purifi ed and restored. Th is restoration of natural philosophy entailed a return to the secret knowledge of symbolic relations between things and words as revealed to Adam, passed on to Plato via Moses and rediscovered in mosaic philosophy and Christian cabbalism. Th e rise of science preceded the Reformation or at least it occurred shortly thereaft er, so the Reformation could not have caused it. Th e development of science in Roman Catholic countries attests to the fact that science did indeed make progress without the contribution of the Protestant Reformation. Nevertheless, van der Meer and Oosterhoff believe that the Protestant Reformation contributed to the advancement of science, but that its cause lies in the disputes over the interpretation of the Bible. Hence, natural philosophers started to prefer nature over the Bible – as it is the most defi nite revelation of God. Only in this negative sense was the progress of science stimulated by the development of biblical hermeneutics. Natural philoso23 As cited in VAN DER MEER – OOSTERHOFF, "Th e Bible, Protestantism and the Rise of Natural Science," p. 146. 24 VAN DER MEER – OOSTERHOFF, "God, Scripture, and the Rise of Modern Science (1200–1700)," p. 391. The Role of Protestantism in the Emergence of Modern Science 170 phers thought that biblical exegesis was problematic due to the ambiguous nature of its language, not in terms of its natural symbolism. Th e ambiguous character of language was also the reason why many attempts were made to replace verbal language with an artifi cial version. Th ese attempts eventually gave rise to modern logic and mathematics. Conclusion Van der Meer's and Oosterhoff 's critique of Harrison's hypothesis is convincing. However, I do not fi nd this alternative explanation of scientifi c revolution fully satisfactory. In conclusion, this author will attempt to show shortly why not even their explanation can be read as a valid description of the "cause" of scientifi c revolution. Th ey believe that it is not surprising that not only Protestants and Catholics, but even Protestants themselves were unable to agree on the meaning of biblical passages – eff ectively as a result of an earlier disagreement of the Church Fathers.25 And this statement is what actually renders their hypothesis invalid. Why did scientifi c revolution not occur halfway through the Middle Ages? Why did philosophers not realise the imperfection of language many centuries earlier? Th e fact is that medieval thinkers were already aware of the imperfection and defectiveness of language. If nothing else, they were able to draw on the story of Adam, who called animals by their names and thus, in collaboration with God, created a natural language, which would unfortunately disappear aft er his Fall. Another corruption of language occurred aft er the Babylonian confusio linguarum.26 Why did the awareness of the imperfection of an ordinary verbal language not draw attention to the Book of Nature and its "perfect language", i.e. mathematics, earlier than in the 16th and 17th centuries? Th e realisation of the imperfection of ordinary language and the turn to nature apparently formed necessary conditions, but not suffi cient conditions for the emergence of modern science. But what was the key factor in the emergence of modern science in the 16th and 17th centuries? What impetus caused the origination of modern science at that very moment and not 25 VAN DER MEER – OOSTERHOFF, "Th e Bible, Protesta ntism and the Rise of Natural Science," p. 144. 26 Cf. Genesis 2:19–20a, Genesis 11:6–7. Petr Pavlas 171 hundred years earlier or later? Th is question remains open and, if historical science sees it as its duty to clarify history, it needs to be answered. 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Philosophy Disturbed: reflections on moving between field and philosophy Michelle Bastian In Women Who Make a Fuss (2014), Isabelle Stengers and Vinciane Despret reflect on their field-based approach to philosophy and write that [w]e worked this way because we imagined that philosophy should be done this way...because this is what we hoped for it to be: it was in doing philosophy this way that we showed that it was possible...Most of all we did it because this freedom of movement, for us, was the good fortune of philosophers.1 For philosophers interested in the possibilities of the field, their work acts as an important guide to ways of experimenting with method, topic and approach. Yet, while emphasising the freedom one might find within philosophy, they also suggest reasons for caution. In particular Stengers and Despret describe a range of overt and covert forms of disciplinary policing that they have encountered in their efforts to work in the ways that they do. This is attributed, in part, to 'the philosophers' routine of judging that most of their colleagues are not "true" philosophers'.2 So while philosophers arguably have the good fortune of practising a profession that in one light appears to encourage dissident thinking and following unlikely paths, in another light they also have the misfortune of working within a profoundly constrictive discipline that polices who can claim to be a member.3 While Stengers and Despret are reluctant to call out academic philosophy for its discriminatory practices, it is clear that the routinized dismissal they identify is not experienced by all philosophers equally. Instead, as has been highlighted by a range of critics, philosophy is rife with assumptions that bolster idealized versions of elite white masculinity, while discriminating against many other groups and intersections thereof. This includes work that discusses racism and sexism within philosophy;4 the ways prejudices can intersect, such as in the experiences of black women;5 as well as challenges to core philosophical concepts for their bias in terms of ability, sex and race.6 For Kristie Dotson and Gayle Salamon, the fact that dismissals of other philosophers are embedded within long histories of exclusion, leads them to develop a more generalized account of what they term philosophy's 'culture of justification'.7 They highlight the pervasive expectation within disciplinary philosophy that no matter what kinds of moves one might make they must still be actively justified in terms of dominant norms. In contrast to the # 2018 The Author. Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. parallax, 2018, Vol. 24, No. 4, 449–465, Field Philosophy and Other Experiments https://doi.org/10.1080/13534645.2018.1546723 parallax 449 freedom that Stengers and Despret highlight, they discuss a constrictive environment that has little time for people, approaches and methods that are deemed incongruent with these norms. Indeed Salamon declared that, as a result, her form of freedom of movement would consist of leaving the discipline for a more supportive environment elsewhere.8 Given the opportunity to reflect on my own experiences at the Paris workshop on Field philosophy and other experiments, what preoccupied me was how the fledgling approach might find ways to wrangle with the force of this culture of justification. Efforts to develop creative engagements between field and philosophy take place within a context that is profoundly restrictive, and field philosophy has been announced as a form of freedom from this. Indeed when making the case for their own approach to field philosophy, Robert Frodeman, Adam Briggle and J. Britt Holbrook propose it as a mode of 'philosophy unbound',9 as 'philosophy dedisciplined',10 or as 'reaching escape velocity' from capture by the neoliberal university.11 These modifiers and metaphors, while inspiring, do not sit easily with me given the context I have already outlined. As such, in this article I contribute a more conflicted account to the literature by tracing my own movements on the path from PhD candidate to field philosopher. As Frodeman and Briggle point out, such experiences are rarely reflected on or written up, but are needed if future philosophers are to benefit from them or for them to be built upon and perhaps even institutionalized.12 The modifier I have chosen to frame my remarks moves from a philosophy unbound, to a philosophy disturbed. My use of this term arises from two different sources. Both point to the isolation, discomfort or even trauma that is often experienced by the one who disturbs, while also holding on to the new possibilities that a disturbance may open up. As Salamon notes, for example, the queer philosopher who also works on queer philosophy often experiences a refusal, sometimes violently so, to see the combination of both queer and philosophy as coherent. Rather than being able to find a location where such an approach might find a home, she writes that 'sometimes the relation of queer work to philosophy is perceived in an additive way-I work on queer theory and philosophy-but sometimes queerness is understood as an agent of bifurcation-I work on queer theory and thus the philosophy that I do is not quite philosophy'.13 To disturb the coherence of the discipline is thus to be excluded from it. Even so, in comments that resonate with wider feminist theorising about complex identifications, hybridity and boundary crossing,14 Salamon writes that while her mode of doing philosophy 'sometimes disturbs presumptions of proper identity or proper place, perhaps that disturbance can be a means of forging hopeful new modes of knowledge and methods of inquiry from the old'.15 Thus part of what I address in my account is how an attempt to develop a field-based practice-which may also be seen as additive or as a bifurcation-uncomfortably breaks assumptions of the proper identity and place of the philosopher. But I also suggest that such an approach might Bastian 450 more hopefully work back on philosophy in order to support more liveable options for those experiencing painful incongruities within the discipline. The second inspiration for the term disturbance arises from a particular type of field philosophy, specifically philosophical ethology.16 In their paper 'The Phenomenology of Animal Life', Dominique Lestel, Jeffrey Bussolini and Matthew Chrulew discuss cases of an orangutan who ties knots and cats who break child-proof locks on refrigerators to eat chilies. Behaviours like these are usually excluded from ethological accounts of a species' capacities, since they have arisen due to living closely with humans. These behaviours have thus been thought of as unnatural, abnormal or disturbed. Indeed these animals are thought to be 'contaminated' by their close association with humans.17 When talking about behaviours developed by intensively farmed animals to cope with stress,18 such negative connotations may make sense. But for Lestel, Bussolini and Chrulew, attempting to develop an account of a pure set of behaviours, specific to a species removed from wider relations, denies the capacity for creativity demonstrated in multi-species interactions. Studying knot-tying and chili-eating challenges the urge to isolate species in order to understand them, and suggests instead that ethologists investigate the 'commingling of worlds and its productive transformations'.19 Under their model, those living outside their 'proper' domain need not be read as disturbed, but as expressing their capacities for invention and meaning-making with others. This second concept of disturbance offers an evocative, if unexpected, way of reframing the relation of field philosophers to a broader discipline that, like ethology, is caught up in fiercely policing its boundaries. Involving significant engagements with people, places and problems found outside traditional philosophy departments, researchers employing this approach inevitably stray away from their discipline-mates. They develop insights within commingled worlds, and take part in hybrid communities that complicate loyalties and responsibilities. In doing so they rarely fit easily into the disciplinary mould, if they ever did to begin with. Ideals of universal knowledge and truth are put into question by contexts where the specific and the situated make particular claims on one's work. Thus to begin to venture into the realm of field philosophy is to confront the disturbance this creates in the notion of a properly behaving philosopher. Yet, as with Salamon's account, Lestel, Bussolini and Chrulew, point to the possibilities within disturbance and incongruence. Indeed they highlight skills, capacities and interests that may never have arisen if it hadn't been for the diversity of interactions experienced. These and other themes work their way through the reflections I offer in this paper. Rather than focusing on one specific argument, I have traced some of my own movements within and outwith philosophy, highlighting some of the difficulties and opportunities of this approach. These movements adopt an arc that includes leaving, transversing and circling back. Within these parallax 451 movements, I am particularly interested in the labours involved in adopting new methods and when working in new sites of enquiry. Alongside the uncertainties and anxieties that arise, I suggest that bringing your expertise and even identification as 'philosopher' with you when you move sites is far from automatic. Working without clear legitimating structures, or supporting legacies that might guide your activities, means that reconstituting ourselves outside of our traditional habitats is intense work. Still, I suggest that field philosophers should lay claim to the boundary policing question 'how is this philosophy?' when discussing their work, not as an attempt at justification, but in order to proliferate accounts of what philosophy is and can be. In doing so, I offer my own hope for what philosophy might be, namely that it adopt a more open and unexpected relationship to the future, turned more strongly towards supporting diversity rather than defending purity. Leaving To the eyes of those outside the discipline, I would appear to have a straightforward and legitimate relationship to academic philosophy in that I have completed my PhD in the subject. This was a rather traditional doctorate at the University of New South Wales in Australia, where I wrote a five chapter thesis that incorporated a lot of exposition and analysis, both of feminist philosophy and of Jacques Derrida's work. In it I looked at the interrelations between concepts of time and concepts of community. There were a few border skirmishes, including suggesting that philosophical approaches to time failed to address what social scientists called 'social time', but my criticisms were safely contained in the first chapter and so less disruptive than they might have been. Even so, what those inside the discipline will know is that my work on feminist deconstruction had already put me well on the margins. Indeed one colleague told me that in choosing to focus on both feminism and deconstruction, I had guaranteed that no philosophy department would ever hire me. Perhaps because time has no disciplinary holdfast,20 and the study of it is often described as intrinsically interdisciplinary, I found that after my studies I was able to move fields in quite unexpected ways. Leaving made the incongruity that was such a problem in my home discipline into something more positively received. My first academic position was at an interdisciplinary research centre called the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change (CRESC) at the University of Manchester. Here I found myself surrounded by fellow 'misfits' (as one centre director described us) who came mainly from anthropology, sociology and history. In this new environment I started thinking more about method, with a key strand of research at the centre revolving around 'the social life of methods'.21 Methods were something we had never spoken about during my PhD, much to the horrified curiosity of my new colleagues. I also came up against a certain disdain for the arrogance of philosophers, and their abstract approach to problems. Being given room Bastian 452 to think more about the approaches I used, as well as being challenged to engage more with the empirical, opened up possibilities for me that had been unavailable in my former surrounds. My new environment allowed me to start looking at topics I would have never dared to before. In particular, freedom from the boundary policing I had been used to allowed me to start challenging the split between my interests and what counted as a specifically philosophical interest. I was able to bring more of myself into my work. Others seem to have found this too. Despret, for example, in her own account of becoming a field philosopher, talks of no longer having to amputate parts of herself to practice philosophy, and being able to follow the experiences that deeply interested her.22 In my case, while before my volunteer work with peace organisations and community-based environmental groups had been a distracting side project, these interests could now be brought more centrally into my research without having to turn them into traditional political or environmental philosophy. Moving away from a home where I often felt unwelcome became a movement towards experimenting with ways I could bring more parts of myself into my work. I began exploring a range of social science methods, and over the course of a few years I was awarded funding to look at issues such as the role of time in activist communities, more-than-human methods, extinctions and local food (the first two I will discuss further below). Even so, I struggled with working out how to operate confidently between philosophy and social science, and worried that I was amateurishly dabbling in a whole lot of areas that I had never been trained in. The opportunities afforded by field philosophy, as an approach that enables the integration of a wider range of one's concerns and experiences, operate alongside related difficulties as well. This is particularly so in regard to the status of one's work with others within the discipline. Discussing their similar venture into strange topics that do not look philosophical, Stengers and Despret write that 'we know that for certain men (and women!) our topics are suspect, or susceptible to dishonouring philosophy. Hypnosis, addicts, witches, the Arabian babbler, peasants, the uneasy dead...problems that are neither serious, nor conventional'.23 They argue that their hope for what philosophy might be was part of what encouraged them to focus on such topics. However despite their optimism they point out that, 'we know that our works are not referenced in our profession, in the sense that citing them does not help those who cite them to be recognised as true philosophers'.24 Indeed as Dotson argues 'the profession of philosophy requires the practice of making congruent one's own ideas, projects and...pedagogical choices with some "traditional" conception of philosophical engagement'.25 Positive status is dependent upon proving this congruence via the accepted processes of legitimation.26 Within the culture Dotson describes then, the field philosopher might easily come to look a little like the chili-eating cat, a disturbed creature who parallax 453 encourages suspicion. Unable to legitimize themselves through standard processes, they also risk being unable to receive or offer recognized status within the discipline. This is particularly the case for those who are already marginalized by not fitting the dominant model of elite white masculinity within philosophy. One of the key questions for those interested in supporting the growth of field philosophy is how to respond to this culture of justification and in particular who might be expected to carry the burden of destabilising norms. For example what might be done to provide career paths for junior scholars and PhD students interested in this approach, but who are rightly wary of the risks involved?27 In the early stages of my own career, being unable to make my interests congruent with accepted patterns, meant that the question of 'how is this philosophy?' was very raw. So much so that it seemed easier to give up claiming that I was still somehow a philosopher and instead present myself as an interdisciplinary scholar. What this suggests is that negotiating one's relationship with one's home discipline is part of the key work of a field philosopher, but as I want to discuss next, leaving does not lay this task to rest. Transversing By and large, philosophy presents itself as a discipline interested in the pursuit of universal knowledge and principles. Neither the body one inhabits nor the location one finds oneself in should have any bearing on the work a philosopher produces. Transcending the particular, the merely ontic, the situated, is very much the name of the game. Mainstream philosophy thus has little to say about the problem of how a philosopher might transverse a new site or field, and how such movements might fundamentally transform how one approaches the task of philosophy. Critical philosophers and scholars from a range of social science disciplines have, however, paid particular attention to this problem, and formulating an approach to it represents another part of the key work to be undertaken by a field philosopher. I've already suggested that in moving from a school of philosophy to an interdisciplinary research centre, I also made changes in methods, topics and even academic identification. But it was when conducting fieldwork for the various projects and then writing this up that the harder edges of resistance to this movement across fields became felt. While Thierry Bardini, reflecting on Dominique Lestel's work, proposes that 'as soon as a philosopher neglects for a while his or her beloved exegesis, he or she de facto transforms into a field philosopher',28 my experience suggests that while we may change sites, bringing the 'philosopher' with us and trying to reconstitute it outside its traditional domain is far from a fait accompli. For one, even the simple fact that a field philosopher finds themselves as a humanities scholar pursuing their work 'outside' creates all kinds of incongruence.29 In one project that looked at participatory research with nonhumans,30 a group of us found ourselves in North Devon engaging in a range of activities with/in the River Torridge. This included testing for the mixing Bastian 454 of salt and sweet water at the river mouth, searching through culm grasslands for the river's source, wild swimming, and playing poohsticks.31 We had a lot of fun, and we also learned things, discussed ideas, argued about concepts, and refined approaches to problems. All of these activities are parts of our normal research work, but still our location opened us up to concerns that we could potentially be read as academics using taxpayers' money to fund a jolly.32 In particular we noted that certain activities opened us up to this more than others. Salinity testing, as fellow participant Niamh Moore observed, looked like a legitimate and appropriate activity in the field because it appeared scientific. But the poetry recital offered by artist Timothy Collins while we were wild-swimming did not so easily read as 'proper' research. As the geographers J.D. Dewsbury and Simon Naylor note, 'much work in the social history of science has paid attention to the theme of bodies in the field-in particular, who is allowed to conduct fieldwork, who isn't, how one acts in the field to produce information that is trustworthy and replicable, how one deals with other bodies that shouldn't be in the fieldsite, and so on'.33 Humanities scholars, including philosophers, arguably form part of the set that is to be excluded, or are simply assumed not to be interested. There is thus a lack of readily-available legitimating structures or frameworks for this kind of work. Secondly, this lack of structures or frameworks for moving between such sites raises questions about how one's expertise is to be mobilized. Indeed, finding yourself in a new place can feel as though you have strayed outside the boundaries where your expertise makes sense. A colleague, Kate Pahl, who is a literacies scholar, led another project funded by the same scheme that looked at fishing in youth work and connected the work of philosopher Ernst Bloch with coarse fishing in Rotherham. In her fieldnotes, which she generously shared with me after discussing this issue, Pahl describes feeling uneasy and useless. She writes that during the field visits she felt that was not contributing very much. Unable to catch a fish, and unable to adopt her usual research methods of analysing the situation with others-the talking disturbed the fish-she writes that 'I did not do anything useful, in fact...This perhaps was my role within the project – to erase myself, in order for the "real work" to happen'.34 Pahl's reflections raise important questions for field philosophers about the place (and emplacement) of expertise. Her account suggests that it is not enough to have been an expert in one site for this expertise to be carried to another. Encountering other places and people, and being immersed in their forms of knowledge and expertise, means that the field philosopher not only needs to negotiate with their home discipline, but also has to reshape their expertise in the new contexts they find themselves in. Pahl's account resonates with me because I had also felt a reticence about contributing my expertise, as the work of translating philosophy between such different sites was not something I had properly considered. I perhaps felt similar to Despret who, when writing about her research in Israel, which parallax 455 focused on biologist Amotz Zahavi and his work on babblers, notes that '[m]y objective was simple: to do in the field what philosophers did with respect to texts. I did not intend this to be a significant change in my research, except inasmuch as it would lend an anthropological dimension to the study, which I hoped would be original. And I would certainly take more pleasure in observing scientists in beautiful desert landscapes than in reading about them in libraries'.35 I too enjoyed the opportunity to meet fascinating people and visit many beautiful sites across the UK and Australia in my projects, and yet I too did not think through how my expertise, including in particular methods and forms of research, might need to be reconsidered. Frodeman, Briggle and Holbrook have discussed the philosopher's work in terms of a certain 'subterranean quality', and suggest that the field philosopher's interventions may remain 'half-hidden and interstitial in nature'.36 For them our work in the field continues to be 'revealing concealed premises, drawing out implicit contradictions, and connecting disparate insights'.37 How one actually goes about this is nonetheless an open question. Learning when to intercede and when to keep quiet, when to listen and when to challenge will be different within the specific community gathered by each research project. Philosophers' training in debating and argument styles more generally, which can be combative and off-putting,38 may encourage unhelpful responses, including the aspiring field philosopher overcompensating for their disorientation and taking over the collective thinking process. Incorporating literatures from participatory research, which deals extensively with the problem of negotiating expertise with others, could thus be an important step in developing the approach. What the above suggests is that, while the idea of leaving the discipline of philosophy was enticing, I had actually been moving in a more transverse fashion, operating across my old competencies while working to develop new ones. This became particularly clear when I moved to writing up. Here I was confronted most strongly with the disciplinarity that remained. The flexible academic identity that I had so eagerly constructed throughout the development and running of my projects ran up against the inflexibility of norms around writing style, evidentiary proof and what counts as a significant contribution. I had previously felt troubled about adapting methods from sociology and anthropology, such as qualitative interviews, focus groups and short-term ethnography. There had been some territoriality, particularly from anthropologists who held the notion of ethnography particularly dear, but in general I had been encouraged to look for ways of making these methods my own. When I came to writing up, however, I found I couldn't, and in fact didn't want to, write like a social scientist. I wasn't sure if I could prove I had a representative sample, or that I had immersed myself sufficiently with my socalled 'informants'. Despite it all, the veneer of the interdisciplinary scholar fell away and I wanted what I did to be philosophy somehow, although admittedly a significantly reworked version of it. Bastian 456 To share some of my worries at the time, I quote from a paper I gave in 2015 at the University of Wollongong, where I explained these dilemmas to an audience of geographers: So I might as well be honest and say that I'm presenting myself here before you today in a bit of a muddle, particularly about how I'm going to work with the materials I've gathered for this project...Part of this muddle is because I'm a philosopher who can't answer the questions she's interested in through close readings of philosophical texts. As a result I've become a bit illdisciplined. That is, I've been out visiting people, having conversations with them and taking note of interesting things that happen while I'm there. Portions of these conversations have been recorded and transcribed, and some of these transcriptions have even been inputted into NVivo. At this stage, if you are a social scientist there will be a whole range of options for what you might want to do next. You'll have learnt many of these in your undergrad and PhD. You'll be able to turn to the refresher videos on YouTube if you've forgotten some of the particulars, but most importantly you'll probably feel a connection with your foremothers and fathers who have developed these methods, critiqued them, refined them and passed some of these complex histories on to you. Sitting in front of my computer, playing with the functions on NVivo, I was instead wondering how I could work with what the project's participants had contributed without attracting accusations of producing the dreaded 'bad social science' that often (and quite rightly) is levelled at those like myself who make forays outside of their assigned disciplines. In particular I was hoping for feedback on how a philosopher might draw on conversations and experiences in the field (more often known as interviews and participant observation) in their work. What kinds of claims would it be reasonable for them to make? What does a philosopher do with interview transcripts, conversations that are developed in the moment, when so many of our methods are focused on analysing arguments that have been worked out in detail, and revised/rephrased to respond to counter arguments? These, and other related questions, are ones I have yet to find a satisfactory answer to. Circling back What kind of movement produces the field philosopher then? Neglecting exegesis for a time, as Bardini suggests, might be an initial step, but it is not quite enough, nor is simply changing topics and location. Indeed, adopting too simple an idea of the philosopher's freedom of movement risks reasserting the universality of philosophical knowledge that many field philosophers would want to critique. That is, it risks reasserting the knower free of location parallax 457 and context and thus able to move without friction. Moving, in and of itself, is not enough because as geographer Jennifer Hyndman points out, 'the experience of being there does not in itself produce knowledge and expertise about a place and people'.39 Instead as Dewsbury and Naylor argue, drawing on Bruno Latour, 'knowledge production is sited. It is made in particular spaces through the labours of myriad human and non-human entities, and only moves beyond those spaces through yet more labour'.40 Similarly our particular modes of philosophy do not transfer neatly from one site to another. Instead we need to explore what this 'yet more labour' entails and experiment with how philosophy might be practised in/from the field. As others have insisted, this means that philosophy's methods, core questions and forms of evaluation need to reimagined and reworked. Despret writes that her own process involved 'a long journey elsewhere before I could agree to return home', and to me this notion of circling back represents another key step in the movement towards a field philosophy.41 Circling back signals a return of sorts, but a return that seeks to reexamine and reconsider. For myself, it was after the kinds of conversations I had in Wollongong and elsewhere that I belatedly went searching for a framework that might provide an opening for returning to philosophy on more amenable terms. It was only then that I came upon the idea of 'field philosophy', not as many others in this special issue did via philosophical ethology, but through the work of Frodeman and Briggle. Their bringing together of environmental philosophy, continental philosophy and participatory methods spoke closely to my concerns, as did their claim that philosophers should 'vary their material culture'.42 Even more welcome, they wrote that 'philosophy needs to get outside more often. The sunshine will do it good'.43 With this kind of backing I finally felt more confident in asserting the productive potential of my incongruence and in rejecting the narrowness of the culture of justification discussed by Dotson and Salamon. I found an opening onto new frameworks within which to validate my work to myself and others, ones that did not require attempts to produce congruence with traditional conceptions. For Dotson, challenging the reliance on narrow disciplinary norms means moving philosophy towards a 'culture of praxis' where instead of a dominant set of legitimating norms there are 'a proliferation of disciplinary validations', helping to create environments where 'senses of incongruence become sites of exploration'.44 Part of the 'yet more labour' for field philosophers, thus includes developing their own take on what counts as valid work and for whom, but within a wider framework that values diversity rather than purity. One possibility is to return to the question of 'How is this philosophy?' – not as a mechanism of purification as Dotson rightly critiques, but in the spirit of Stengers and Despret, of showing what is possible; in the spirit too of the philosophical ethologist engaging with the knot-tying chimpanzee or the chili-eating cats. By demonstrating creative, opportunistic and malleable behaviours, these singular animals expand the sense of what is possible. They Bastian 458 do this, not on their own, or isolated with others of their kind, but by living in multi-species communities. Such communities are not utopic by any means, and the role of domination and exploitation needs to remain a key consideration. Yet far from rejecting those whose lives have been modified by their interactions with others, Lestel et al. argue for an ethology that examines 'how animals, including humans, surmount, interpret, and move around their various limits in practices of freedom'.45 From this perspective, asking a field philosopher to discuss the role of philosophy in their work could operate, not as a demand for justification, but as an invitation to share the ways that philosophy's various limits have been surmounted, interpreted and moved around in their collaborative work with others. To show how this might work I will offer two examples from my own projects. The first example is a project I mentioned briefly above which looked at the potential for participatory research with non-humans.46 Called 'In Conversation With... : Co-designing with more-than-human communities,' this project was inspired by one of the primary claims of participatory research, namely that those affected by research should be included in it. Our question was, if this is the case why should the definition of participants be bounded by the human? Nonhumans are also affected by research so would there be any benefits to them of being included as well? If so how might their participation be conceived and practiced? Our approach involved running experimental workshops that explored what might happen if various non-humans were invited into common methodological frameworks such as participatory design and participatory action research. Crucially we did not set out to prove whether or not more-than-human participatory research was possible. Instead we implicitly followed techniques found within philosophy, including conceptual analysis, thought experiments, and argument techniques like reductio ad absurdum, which enable researchers to begin with a 'what if' and explore the consequences that follow, no matter how strange or unlikely the starting premise appears to be. We thus participated in a range of activities with dogs, bees, trees and water, in a speculative and experimental way, and saw where the participatory methods opened up in interesting directions and where they seemed to fail entirely. Thought experiments within philosophy, such as the brain-in-the vat problem and the trolley problem, can be perceived quite negatively and have been used to criticize philosophy for a lack of empirical grounding and a useless fascination with impossible problems. In this case, however, borrowing the legitimacy given to speculation as a research method and translating it into a decidedly non-traditional field site, enabled a novel field philosophy project that was unlikely to find a supportive framework within more traditional social science approaches.47 My second example is another small project that looked at the question of time and sustainable economies. The idea here was that various economic forms are often thought to be associated with a particular dominant temporality, for example pre-capitalism with task-based time, early capitalism with parallax 459 clock time, and late capitalism with accelerated time. Our question was what kind of temporal narratives might emerge from attempts to develop more sustainable forms of economic exchange. To study this I visited grassroots organizations, engaged in participatory observation, and conducted interviews and focus groups where members of the organizations and I discussed how time arose in their work. While such grassroots movements have inspired little, if any, philosophical work, within economic geography, there has been increasing interest in 'green niches', as small organisations like these have been termed. They are thought to provide incubation spaces for innovative sustainable technologies and approaches to develop outside of larger market pressures. While the tone of some of this work is quite technophilic, Gill Seyfang and Alex Haxeltine have argued that grassroots organizations might also be places where 'new social infrastructure and institutions, value sets, and priorities are practised in a value space which is distinct from mainstream society'.48 Given that values, ethics, and visions of what constitutes the good life have been absolutely central to the discipline, my wonder was whether a further set of innovations that may be incubated in these niches may be philosophical in nature. Green niches are thus potentially a rich site for the field philosopher. For example, Thom van Dooren's account of field philosophy describes it as 'an effort to interrogate the structures of meaning, valuing, and knowing that shape our worlds'.49 His particular approach moves from an 'applied ethics' that is still often too formalized to an 'emergent ethics' that builds knowledge through situated encounters that eschew universal claims.50 Crucially, green niches, and similar organisations/movements, might enable the examination of structures of meaning, valuing and knowing, and not only as they are conceived now, but as they are caught up in processes of experimentation and transformation in response to a range of social and environmental concerns. Additionally, while van Dooren's account emphasises the possibilities of moving around the limits placed on subfields within philosophy such as epistemology and ethics, my approach in this project suggests that metaphysics too is ripe for rethinking from the field. While there is little work available on an analogous 'applied metaphysics',51 the discussions my interlocutors and I had about their localized experiments with time arguably suggest openings towards an 'emergent metaphysics' that I hope to articulate more fully in future work. Disturbing futures Midway through my work on this paper I had an online encounter that demonstrates a response that I believe field philosophers will come up against repeatedly when they try to discuss their work with disciplinary colleagues.53 Following an interview with Anita L. Allan in the New York Times about her experiences as a black woman in philosophy,54 Justin Weinberg posted a query on the Daily Nous asking for wider comments on Allan's claim that inclusiveness in philosophy could be supported by responding to emerging Bastian 460 trends in research, such as philosophy of race, black feminist/womanist thought, and incorporating these new fields of specialization into the curriculum. Specifically he asked whether philosophy courses, in an effort to retain black women students, should address more diverse topics and what these topics might be. I suggested that the issue wasn't necessarily identifying specific topics, but challenging the culture of strictly policing what counts as 'proper' philosophy and developing more openness towards non-traditional approaches. Another commentator responded to me as follows: It comes as no surprise to me that those who care least about the threat of philosophy's disintegration in higher education (particularly in non-elite institutions) tend to be exactly those who are already doing interdisciplinary work, are the most likely to find a comfortable home in a non-philosophical department, and have the least personal and professional commitment to the preservation of the discipline. (Daily Nous, June 19, 2018, http:// dailynous.com/2018/06/19/denigration-black-womenphilosophers-fields-people-color/#comment-144965) My point that boundary policing is damaging to philosophy, was met by the very boundary policing in question, including a denial that I might have any place in the future of the discipline. My incongruence signalled my disturbed nature, contaminated by interdisciplinary work and housed inappropriately away from my proper kin. This foreclosure of philosophy's future in response to the claims of those who do not easily fit is something I have written about previously. In discussing the exclusion of women from the profession I argued that 'philosophy continues to be guided by a narrow vision of the future that only admits of a particular kind of philosopher. Rather than relating to the future as a force that may profoundly transform it in ways that cannot be anticipated in the present, the discipline stubbornly resists calls to change'.55 Even so, attempts to colonize the future in this way do not contain all who have been or will be inspired by its possibilities. Instead incongruent philosophers are finding ways of moving out, athwart, and back; finding that the freedom of movement that is promised to philosophers is, as James Baldwin notes, taken not given. For me, field philosophy offers one way of moving towards such freedom. By working with a wider range of co-researchers (both human and more-thanhuman) to produce emergent knowledges it challenges the naive universalism that has excluded so many forms of experiences, lives, hopes and concerns from consideration. Moreover, I see field philosophy as one example of Dotson's proposal of a culture of praxis, offering one site for the proliferation of philosophical forms of validation and for a revaluing of incongruence. In pursuing this approach it provides a more liveable space for me within philosophy, even while also continuing to disturb, behaving improperly, associating with 'outsiders', and committing, not to a static preservation, but to a transformation of philosophy's limits. parallax 461 Acknowledgements Parts of this work were supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council under Grants AH/K006517/1 and AH/K005553/1. Thanks to Jeremy Kidwell, my fellow editors Brett Buchanan and Matt Chrulew, as well as all the attendees at the Field Philosophy and other experiments workshop in Paris for their very helpful feedback. Notes 1 Stengers and Despret, Women Who Make a Fuss, 15. 2 Ibid., 45; see also Despret, "Not Read Derrida." 3 Note that throughout this paper I am discussing academic philosophers in particular, while recognizing that work in community philosophy and other movements are grappling with these problems in different ways, and may also have much to teach those in the academy; see for example Tiffany et al Community Philosophy. 4 e.g. Babbitt and Campbell, Racism and Philosophy.; Hutchison and Jenkins, Women in Philosophy. 5 e.g. Yancy, "Situated Voices." 6 Pfeiffer, "Foundations of Disability Studies"; Lloyd, Man of Reason; Mills, Racial Contract. 7 Salamon, "Justification and Queer Method"; Dotson, "How is this." 8 Salamon, "Justification and Queer Method." 9 Frodeman, "Philosophy Unbound." 10 Frodeman, "Philosophy dedisciplined." 11 Frodeman et al., "Philosophy Neoliberalism."; Frodeman and Briggle, Socrates Tenured; See also Frodeman and Briggle, "Strawmen at the Symposium." 12 Frodeman and Briggle, Socrates Tenured, 4. 13 Salamon, "Justification and Queer Method," 230. 14 e.g Anzald!ua, Borderlands/La Frontera.; Lugones, Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes.; Lorde, Sister Outsider. 15 Salamon, "Justification and Queer Method," 230. 16 Chrulew, "Philosophical ethology of Lestel"; Buchanan et al., "General introduction." 17 Lestel et al., "Phenomenology of Animal Life," 126 18 Wiepkema, "Abnormal Behaviours." 19 Lestel et al., "Phenomenology of Animal Life," 144 20 History is often put forward as one place that a time scholar might find a particular home, however as critiques within the discipline note, time is by and large taken for granted and treated as a background phenomenon by historians. For some of the debates around this issue see for example Ermarth, "Time is finite" and Jordheim, "Against Periodization." 21 e.g. Ruppert et al., "Special issue." 22 Despret, "Not Read Derrida," 97. 23 Stengers and Despret, Women Who Make a Fuss, 15. 24 Ibid., 14-15. 25 Dotson, "How is this," 6. 26 Ibid., 7. 27 Some of these problems are being addressed by the Public Philosophy Network (https://publicphilosophynetwork.ning. com/). See also the statement by the American Philosophical Association on Public Philosophy (https://blog.apaonline. org/2017/05/18/apa-statement-on-valuingpublic-philosophy/). 28 Bardini, "Preface," 6. 29 See for example the beautiful Wild Researchers project which seeks to 'transport us outside the lab and into the landscapes where our researchers work' (http://www. wildresearchers.unsw.edu.au/). It features only one humanities scholar, fellow field philosopher Thom van Dooren. 30 Funded under the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council's Connected Communities scheme which brought many humanities scholars into unusual field sites 31 See http://www.morethanhumanresearch. com/conversations-with-the-elements.html for details on the workshop and http://www. morethanhumanresearch.com/home/ category/water for participant reflections. Note for those unfamiliar with Poohsticks, it is a game from the children's book Winnie-thePooh where sticks are dropped from the upstream side of a bridge and the winner is the one whose stick comes out first on the other side. 32 For those not familiar with this term, a jolly is a project made to look like work, but actually undertaken only for enjoyment at someone else's expense. 33 Dewsbury and Naylor, "Practising Geographical Knowledge," 257. Bastian 462 34 Pahl, pers.comm. Fishing Fieldnotes 2018; Pahl, fieldnotes 4. 6. 2013. 35 Despret, "Not Read Derrida," 98. 36 Frodeman et al., "Philosophy Neoliberalism," 324. 37 Ibid., 324. 38 e.g. Beebee, "Women and Deviance"; McGill, "Silencing of Women." 39 Hyndman, "Field as Here and Now," 266. 40 Dewsbury and Naylor, "Practising Geographical Knowledge," 255. 41 Despret, "Not Read Derrida," 93. 42 Frodeman and Briggle, Socrates Tenured, 116. 43 Ibid., 24. 44 Dotson, "How is this," 26. 45 Lestel et al., "Phenomenology of Animal Life," 134. 46 Bastian et al.. Participatory Research; See also http://www.morethanhumanresearch.com 47 Although for another example see anthropologist Anne Galloway's work, where she has incorporated speculative approaches from design and science fiction; E.g. Galloway, "Towards Fantastic Ethnography." 48 Seyfang and Haxeltine, "Growing grassroots innovations," 389. 49 van Dooren, "Thinking with Crows." 50 Ibid. 51 Although see Hawley, "Applied Metaphysics." 52 See also Frodeman and Briggle, "Strawmen at the Symposium." 53 Yancy, "Pain and Promise." 54 Bastian, "Finding Time," 225. Bibliography Anzald!ua, G. Borderlands/La Frontera: the new mestiza. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1999. Babbitt, S.E. and S. Campbell, eds., Racism and Philosophy. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999. Bardini, T., "Preface: A Field Philosopher with a Certain Taste for Fish, and Who Does Not Mistake His Hat for an Ethology." Angelaki 19, 3 (2014): 5–9 doi: 10.1080/0969725X.2014.975983. Bastian, M., "Finding Time for Philosophy." In Women in Philosophy: What needs to change? Edited by Hutchison, K. and F. Jenkins, 215–230. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. Bastian, M., O. Jones, N. Moore, and E. Roe, eds., Participatory Research in More-thanhuman Worlds London: Routledge, 2016. Beebee, H., "Women and Deviance in Philosophy." In Women in Philosophy: What needs to change?, Edited by Katrina Hutchison and Fiona Jenkins, 61–80. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Buchanan, B., J. Bussolini, and M. Chrulew, "General introduction: Philosophical Ethology." Angelaki 19, 3 (2014): 1–3, doi: 10.1080/0969725X.2014.975977. Chrulew, M., "The philosophical ethology of Dominique Lestel." Angelaki 19, 3 (2014): 17–44, doi: 10.1080/0969725X.2014.976024. Despret, V., "Why 'I Had Not Read Derrida': Often Too Close, Always Too Far Away." In French Thinking about Animals Edited by Stephanie Posthumus and Louisa Mackenzie. Michigan State University Press, 2015. Dewsbury, J.D. and S. Naylor, "Practising Geographical Knowledge: Fields, Bodies and Dissemination." Area 34, 3 (2002): 253–260. doi: 10.1111/1475-4762.00079. Dotson, K., "How is this Paper Philosophy?" Comparative Philosophy 3, 1 (2012): 3–29. doi: 10.31979/2151-6014(2012).030105. Ermarth, E.D., "Time is finite: The implications for history." Rethinking History 5, 2 (2001): 195–215. Frodeman, R., "Philosophy dedisciplined." Synthese 190 (2013): 1917–1936. doi: 10.1007/s11229-012-0181-0. Frodeman, R., "Philosophy Unbound: Environmental Thinking at the End of the Earth." Environmental Ethics 30 (2008): 313–324. doi: 10.5840/enviroethics200830335. parallax 463 Frodeman, R. and A. Briggle. Socrates Tenured: The institutions of 21st century philosophy. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016. Frodeman, R. and A. Briggle, "Strawmen at the Symposium: A Response." Philosophy of the Social Sciences 48 (2017): 80–94. doi: 10.1177/0048393117740844. Frodeman, R., A. Briggle, and J.B. Holbrook, "Philosophy in the Age of Neoliberalism." Social Epistemology, 26 (2012): 311–330. doi: 10.1080/ 02691728.2012.722701. Galloway, A., "Towards Fantastic Ethnography and Speculative Design." Ethnography Matters (2013). Hawley, K., "Applied Metaphysics." A Companion to Applied Philosophy. Edited by Lippert-Rasmussen, K., K. Brownlee and D. Coady, 165–179. Malden: Wiley, 2017. Hutchison, K. and F. Jenkins, eds., Women in Philosophy: What needs to change? Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) Hyndman, J., "The Field as Here and Now, not There and Then." Geographical Review 91 (2001): 262–272. doi: 10.1111/j.1931-0846.2001.tb00480.x. Jordheim, H., "Against Periodization: Koselleck's theory of multiple temporalities." History and Theory 51 (2012): 151–171. Lestel, D., J. Bussolini, and M. Chrulew, "The Phenomenology of Animal Life." Environmental Humanities 5 (2014): 125–148. doi: 10.1215/22011919-3615442. Lloyd, G. The Man of Reason: 'Male' and 'Female' in Western Philosophy. 2nd ed. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. Lorde, A. Sister Outsider: Essays & Speeches. Freedom. California: The Crossing Press, 1984. Lugones, M. Pilgrimages/Peregrinajes: Theorizing coalition against multiple oppressions. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003. McGill, J., "The Silencing of Women." In Women in Philosophy: What needs to change? Edited by Hutchison, K. and F. Jenkins. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. Mills, C.W. The Racial Contract. London: Cornell University Press, 1997. Pfeiffer, D., "The Philosophical Foundations of Disability Studies." Disability Studies Quarterly 22, 2 (2002): 3–23. Ruppert, E., J. Law, and M. Savage, "Special issue on The Social Life of Methods." Theory, Culture and Society 30, 4 (2013). Salamon, G., "Justification and Queer Method, or Leaving Philosophy." Hypatia 24, 1 (2009): 225–230. Seyfang, G. and A. Haxeltine, "Growing grassroots innovations: exploring the role of community-based initiatives in governing sustainable energy transitions." Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy (Pion Ltd, 2012) doi: 10.1068/ c10222. Stengers, I. and V. Despret. Women Who Make a Fuss: The Unfaithful Daughters of Virginia Woolf. Translated by April Kutson. Minneapolis: Univocal, 2014. Tiffany, Graeme. et al. Community Philosophy, Sapere: Philosophy for Children, Colleges, Communities. Oxford, 2013: https://www.sapere.org.uk/default.aspx?tabid1⁄4102 . van Dooren, T., "Thinking with Crows: (Re)doing Philosophy in the Field." Parallax 24, 4 (2018). Wiepkema, P.R., "Abnormal Behaviours in Farm Animals: Ethological Implications." Netherlands Journal of Zoology 35 (1985): 279–299. Yancy, G., "The Pain and Promise of Black Women in Philosophy." New York Times, June 18, 2018. Yancy, G., "Situated Black Women's Voices in/on the Profession of Philosophy." Hypatia 23 (2008): 374–382. Bastian 464 Michelle Bastian is a Chancellor's Fellow at the Edinburgh College of Art, University of Edinburgh. Her work crosses critical time studies and environmental humanities, with a focus on the role of time in modes of exclusion and inclusion. She is the co-editor of Participatory Research in More-than-Human Worlds (Routledge) and has recent publications in Design Studies; new formations: a journal of culture, theory and politics, and the Journal of Environmental Philosophy. Email: [email protected]. parallax | {
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Murdering an Accident Victim: A New Objection to Rachels' Bare-Difference Argument Scott Hill (This is a draft. Please cite the final version which is forthcoming in AJP.) Abstract Many philosophers, psychologists, and medical practitioners believe that killing is no worse than letting die on the basis of Rachels' Bare-Difference Argument. I show that Rachels' argument is unsound. In particular, a premise of the argument is that Rachels' examples are as similar as is consistent with one being a case of killing and the other being a case of letting die. However, the subject that lets die has both the ability to kill and the ability to let die while the subject that kills lacks the ability to let die. Modifying the latter example so that the killer has both abilities yields a pair of cases with morally different acts. The hypothesis that killing is worse than letting die is the best explanation of this difference. Keywords Killing and Letting Die; Contrast Cases; James Rachels; Doing and Allowing; The BareDifference Argument; Euthanasia 1. Introduction Is killing worse than letting die? Consider: Murder: Jones will gain a large inheritance if his six-year-old cousin dies. One evening while the child is taking a bath, Jones sneaks into the bathroom, drowns the child, and makes it look like an accident. Accident: As before, Jones sneaks into the bathroom planning to drown the child. But as Jones enters the child hits his head and falls face down into the water. Jones stands ready to kill the child if necessary. But the child dies on his own. These examples are identical with the exception that one is a case of killing and the other is a case of letting die. And the acts in the examples are morally equivalent. So killing is no worse than letting die. This is Rachels' Bare-Difference Argument. The Bare-Difference Argument was originally presented in James Rachels' paper `Active and Passive Euthanasia' and further defended in his book The End of Life: Euthanasia and Morality. Numerous philosophers, psychologists, and medical practitioners endorse the argument. Michael Tooley, for example, defends the BareDifference Argument in his book Abortion and Infanticide and elsewhere [1972]. He [2005: 167-168] says: a number of philosophers have argued that intentionally killing and intentionally letting die have precisely the same moral status. One very interesting way of attempting to establish this conclusion, for example, is by means of a "BareDifference Argument,".... I think it can be shown that the Bare-Difference Argument is sound. Peter Singer [2005: 332] agrees: [I]n what is probably [Rachel's] most cited article, on ''Active and Passive Euthanasia,'' he set out to criticize the common intuition that killing is worse than letting die. He showed that this distinction is influential in medicine, and is embodied in a statement from the American Medical Association. Then he convincingly argued that this is not an intuition on which we should rely. Harvard psychologist Marc Hauser [2008: 29], together with his coauthors, also makes this assessment: [C]onsider... James Rachels' example of a greedy uncle who intends to end his nephew's life in order to inherit the family's money, and in one case drowns him in the bathtub and in another lets him drown. His intent is the same in both cases and the consequences are the same as well. Intuitively, we don't want to let the uncle off in the second case, but convict him of a crime in the first. And the intuition seems to be the same among medical practitioners. Others offer similar sentiments. In this paper, I reconsider the widespread assessment that the Bare-Difference Argument is sound. In particular, a premise of the argument is that Accident and Murder are cases in which everything is identical except that one is a case of killing and the other is a case of letting die. I argue that this is false. In Accident, Jones had the ability to kill his cousin as well as the ability let him die. In Murder, Jones had the ability to kill his cousin but was unable to merely let him die. There is a third case that is more similar to Accident than Murder in which Jones has both abilities. Jones' act in the more similar example is worse than Jones act in Accident. 2. Against the Bare-Difference Argument Proponents of the Bare Difference Argument claim that Accident and Murder are cases in which everything morally relevant is identical except that one is a case of killing and the other is a case of letting die. But consider: Accident + Murder: As before, Jones sneaks into the bathroom planning to drown his cousin and as Jones enters the child hits his head and falls face down in the water. But Jones refuses to let his cousin to die. Instead, Jones insists on killing him. In Murder, Jones does not have the opportunity to let his cousin die. But in Accident, he does. This is a difference between the two cases. Moreover, Accident + Murder, like Accident and unlike Murder, is a case in which Jones has the opportunity to let his cousin die but chooses to kill him instead. Therefore, it is the actions in Accident + Murder and Accident, not the actions in Murder and Accident, that should be compared to determine whether killing is worse than letting die. Jones' act in Accident + Murder is worse than his act in Accident. There is something extraordinarily vile and disturbing about intending to kill a child for money, discovering that without one's intervention the child will very likely die anyway, but then absolutely insisting that the child must die by one's own hand. This is worse than simply standing by, hoping that the child will die on his own, so that one does not have to kill him to get what one wants. If killing and letting die were equivalent, then one would expect that it would not matter whether Jones insists on letting the child die on his own, if possible, or insists on pulling the child out of the bathtub to make sure that his cousin will not die on his own and then choking or slitting the throat of his unconscious cousin. The acts in that case would be the same. So in that case it would not matter morally. But it does matter morally. Therefore, Jones' act in Accident + Murder is worse than his act in Accident. This difference between Jones' act in Accident and Jones' act in Accident + Murder is very easily explained by the hypothesis that killing is worse than letting die. But it is less easily explained by the hypothesis that killing and letting die are morally equivalent. Therefore, the Bare Difference Argument is unsound. 3. Objections and Replies First Objection: In Accident and Murder, nothing suggests that Jones has an independent desire to kill the cousin, only that he is willing to kill the cousin to get the inheritance. In Accident + Murder, Jones wants it to be the case that the cousin dies by his own hand over and above just being willing to kill for money. This, and not that killing is worse than letting die, is the morally relevant difference between the two cases. Reply: The moral relevance of this difference is best explained by the hypothesis that killing is worse than letting die. Imagine Jones is wearing a red shirt as he begins to kill his cousin but insists on changing into a green shirt. Imagine instead Jones feels relief that he is wearing a red shirt and would prefer not to switch to green unless he had absolutely no other way to get the money. In either case, Jones' preference would be eccentric. Nevertheless, killing someone while wearing a red shirt is not morally different from killing someone while wearing a green shirt. And a difference in preference about which color shirt to wear while killing someone is not a relevant difference between the cases. If killing is worse than letting die, it is easy to explain why the difference in preference about whether to kill or let die is relevant. For it is a difference in whether one prefers to do something bad or worse. On the other hand, it is more difficult to explain why a preference about whether to kill or let die would be relevant if letting someone die is just as bad as killing someone. For other preferences between morally equivalent acts such as the difference between preferences about what color shirt to wear while killing are irrelevant. Second Objection: In Accident and Murder, Jones does nothing more than what is required to get the inheritance. In Accident + Murder, Jones is willing to do more than is required. This explains why the act in the latter case is worse. Reply: Suppose the door to the bathroom in Accident is made of glass so Jones can see through it. Suppose before he opens the door he sees his cousin slip and hit his head. If he were to open the door and watch his cousin die, he would be doing more than what is required to get the inheritance. He could instead just leave the door shut and watch through the glass. And yet, whether he does more or less, whether Jones opens the door or leaves it shut, it makes no difference to the morality of his act. Neither does the fact that Jones does more than what is required in Accident + Murder make a moral difference. The hypothesis that killing is worse than letting die is still needed to explain the difference. Third Objection: Jones' act in Accident + Murder is not only worse than his act in Accident but also worse than his act in Murder. The hypothesis that killing is worse than letting die cannot explain this. Reply: The hypothesis that killing is worse than letting die easily explains why Jones' act in Accident + Murder is worse than his act in Murder. In Accident + Murder Jones has an alternative that he lacks in Murder. In the former case, Jones had the opportunity to get what he wanted by opting for the better but still terrible alternative (letting his cousin die) and instead chose the worse alternative (killing his cousin). In the latter case, Jones could only get what he wanted by way of the worse alternative and would have chosen the better alternative if he could have. On the other hand, the hypothesis that killing is no worse than letting die has trouble explaining why Jones' act in Accident + Murder is worse. For, if that hypothesis is true, then Jones in Accident + Murder had the option of getting what he wanted by means of two morally equivalent acts while Jones in Murder could only get what he wanted by means of one of the morally equivalent acts. But if Jones had the option of killing his cousin while wearing a red or green shirt, and opted for the green shirt, that would not make his action worse than if Jones only had the option of killing his cousin while wearing a green shirt. Fourth Objection: The hypothesis that killing is worse than letting die cannot accommodate the intuition that Jones' acts in Accident and Murder are equivalent. Reply: Our intuitions about Rachels' cases are unreliable. First, the acts in Accident and Murder are both extraordinarily vile. It feels disturbingly cold and pedantic to try to measure out and quantify the precise difference between the two acts. Second, applied ethicists working on this topic have pointed out that we are tempted to run together the moral status of the acts in these examples with the moral status of character, intentions, etc. As Kuhse [1998: 372] puts it, it is very easy to make an "illegitimate conflation... between the rightness and wrongness of actions, and the goodness and badness of agents." As Perrett [1996: 137] points out it is tempting to "confuse the issue by sliding from act evaluation to agent evaluation." It is plausible that Jones in both cases has an equally bad character, equally bad intentions, etc. Since all the other ways in which Jones in Accident and Jones in Murder are subject to moral evaluation are plausibly the same, it is tempting to gloss over the difference between the acts as well. Third, our intuitions go haywire when we are presented with contrast cases in which moral luck is explicitly highlighted. Think about Nagel's drunk driver cases. When we consider a drunk driver who kills someone and an otherwise similar drunk driver who does not, it seems that the former is worse than the latter. But when we explicitly highlight the fact that what separates their acts is mere luck, the killer and the mere drunk driver seem to be morally equivalent. Rachels' Accident is a case of what Nagel [1979: 34] calls "luck in one's circumstances": Ordinary citizens of Nazi Germany had an opportunity to behave heroically by opposing the regime. They also had an opportunity to behave badly, and most of them are culpable for having failed this test. But it is a test to which the citizens of other countries were not subjected, with the result that even if they, or some of them, would have behaved as badly as the Germans in like circumstances, they simply did not and therefore are not similarly culpable. Here again one is morally at the mercy of fate, and it may seem irrational upon reflection, but our ordinary moral attitudes would be unrecognizable without it. Ordinarily, when we think about citizens of the US and citizens of Nazi Germany, we think the latter are much worse. But when we make explicit that the differences between them are due entirely to moral luck, it is very tempting to say that there is no moral difference between the groups. Similarly, if it were not for Jones' luck in Accident, he would have behaved exactly as he did in Murder. This gives us reason to mistrust our intuitions about Accident and Murder. After all, we know our moral intuitions go haywire in such cases. We are tempted to regard as equivalent the moral status of cases that are different. And, given that we are also tempted to run together moral evaluations of acts with other moral evaluations, we should treat our intuitions about cases involving moral luck with a healthy dose of skepticism. Contrast cases in which there is no difference in moral luck, such as Accident and Accident + Murder, provide a better test for our intuitions than the examples Rachels provides. Fifth Objection: In Accident + Murder Jones kills by strangling or stabbing. In Accident Jones lets die by doing nothing. What is needed is a pair of cases in which killing and letting die are done with the same act. Consider: Switch: Just like Accident with the exception that a switch locks the door to the bathroom. Jones knows that if he doesn't lock the door his cousin's mother will check on him, realize he is drowning, and save him. So Jones flips the switch. Electrify: Just like Switch with the exception that Jones knows that there is faulty wiring in the bathroom and the switch will electrify the bathwater killing the cousin instantly but painlessly. Jones' act in Electrify is no worse than his act in Switch. Reply: Switch is a case of is murder. Schaffer [2000: 294] discusses an example that is especially relevant for our purposes. Suppose Jones kills his cousin by stabbing him in the heart: What are the intermediaries between, e.g., heart piercing and brain death? Answer: the relevant intermediaries are absences: the heart piercing causes an absence of oxygenated blood traveling from the right ventricle, through the relevant arteries, to the brain, which absence causes an absence of oxygen resupply to the brain cells, which absence causes oxygen starvation. We would not deny that bringing about death by stabbing is killing merely because the causal chain leading from stabbing to oxygen starvation is mediated by absences. Neither should we deny that the switch pulling is killing merely because the causal chain leading from pulling to oxygen starvation is mediated by absences. Suppose I knock over a vase. There is going to be some activity I perform, such as pushing the vase over with my hand or nudging it over with a golf club, that I will not perform in an otherwise similar case in which I merely allow a vase to fall. Doing necessitates some extra act not performed in an otherwise similar case of allowing. For any case in which Jones kills his cousin, there will be some act he performs, such as pulling a lever or stabbing or choking, that he will not perform in an otherwise similar case in which he merely allows death. Sixth Objection: Jones increases the probability of his cousin's death in Accident + Murder but not in Accident. This is why the former act is worse. Reply: Take the comparison of probabilities given that Jones completes his act. The probability the cousin dies given that Jones completes the act of killing is one. But an act of letting die cannot be completed without a death. So the probability the cousin dies given that Jones completes the act of letting die is also one. There is no difference between the cases with respect to the increased probability of the cousin's death. Take the comparison of probabilities given that Jones tries to act. Remember, in Accident Jones stands ready to kill the cousin if he absolutely has to. Such counterfactual intervention raises the probability the cousin will die over and above what it would be if Jones just stood there. Contrast this with Jones act in Accident + Murder. In this case Jones absolutely insists on getting involved in his cousin's death before there is any need to do so. Imagine that Jones in this case is a bit more likely to bungle things up so the probability that the cousin will die given that Jones merely counterfactually intervenes is a bit higher than the probability that he will die given that Jones insists on killing him. Jones feels the exquisite pleasure of being the one to bring death is worth the slightly lowered probability of getting the inheritance. Still, Jones' act in Accident + Murder is worse. Seventh Objection: Touch is relevant. Consider: Trolley: A runaway trolley is speeding down a track. If Jones does nothing, the trolley will kill five people. If he pulls a lever, the trolley will be diverted onto another track and kill just one person. Push: A runaway trolley is speeding down a track. If Jones does nothing, the trolley will pass under a tunnel and kill five people. If Jones pushes a large man standing over the entrance of the tunnel, the trolley will kill the large man and stop before it reaches the five. The relevance of touch is needed to explain why the act in Trolley is worse than the act in Push. It also explains why Jones' act in Murder + Accident is worse. Reply: Imagine a variant of Push in which I launch the large man into the trolley by pulling a lever on a Rube Goldberg machine. It remains true that my act is wrong. But I never touch the man. So the hypothesis that touch is relevant cannot explain why my act is wrong. Consider, on the other hand, the relevance of the difference between intending and foreseeing. This explains why the act in each variant of Push is wrong. But it does not explain why Jones' act in Accident + Murder is worse than his act in Accident. For that the hypothesis that killing is worse than letting die is needed. Eighth Objection: Oddie [1997: 273-275] substantially anticipates my argument. Consider: Oddie's Trolley: A runaway trolley with one occupant is speeding down a track. If Jones does nothing, the trolley will hit another (empty) trolley resulting in the occupant's death. If Jones pulls a lever, the trolley will be diverted onto another track and hit a different wall also resulting in the occupant's death. Suppose Jones pulls the lever because he desires to kill. The passenger is going to die anyway. So Jones might as well satisfy his desire. The hypothesis that killing is no worse than letting die "has an obvious but possibly disturbing implication.... [T]here is no value-difference between the two. Some may be unwilling to agree...." However, Oddie thinks this is mistaken: [One can] explain away the recalcitrant intuition.... [A] prime candidate for so acting would be malice (perhaps the thought, "I want to be directly involved in the cause of his death") which would be lacking if you simply let him die. But such a thought could only constitute maliciousness if you believed your killing him was doing him some harm that letting him die would not do.... Killing him might be motivated by malice, but not necessarily. If it were it... could only exist where the participant himself believed that killing in itself is worse than letting die. Oddie's diagnosis extends to my examples. Reply: Imagine Jones is an error theorist. He doesn't believe any act is right or wrong or worse than any other. He knows that whether he kills his cousin or lets him die it will not change the amount of pain his cousin experiences or is harmed. It is just that Jones would be utterly delighted to be the hand at which his cousin's life is ended and would be terribly disappointed if he could only get the inheritance by remaining uninvolved. Or imagine Jones is a Nietzschean. He believes that whether he kills his cousin or merely lets him die, it won't change how much he is harmed. Nevertheless, Jones believes it is morally better to kill than let die because killing most expresses the will to power and letting die is weak, sickly, and unbecoming of a good Übermensch. Jones in these cases lacks the belief that killing is worse than letting die. But his act is worse than his act in Accident. Furthermore, Oddie's diagnosis is inconsistent with the variants of utilitarianism advocated by Rachels, Singer, and Oddie. As Rachels [1986: 5] puts it: My approach... sees being moral... as a matter of doing what is best for those who are affected by our conduct. If we should not kill, it is because in killing we are harming someone. That is the reason killing is wrong. The rule against killing has as its point the protection of the victims. But these examples do not differ with respect to the degree of harm to the victim. There is only a difference in Jones' beliefs about harm and the wrongness of death. As Singer [2003: 527] puts it: "I favour preference utilitarianism.... The right act is the one that will, in the long run, satisfy more preferences than it will thwart." But these examples are not different with respect to which of the victim's preferences are satisfied. That just leaves Jones' preferences. And if Jones really would prefer to kill his cousin, then Singer's view implies that it would be better for Jones to kill his cousin. As Oddie and Menzies [1992: 512-513] put it: [T]he primary notion for moral theory is given by what is best (or, as we will say, what has greatest objective value) regardless of how things seem to the agent. The version of objectivism which we will defend is this: the correct regulative ideal for the moral agent is that of maximizing objective value. But, given Oddie's diagnosis, whether Jones kills or lets die, there is no difference in the objective value of the consequences of his action. The only difference is in how things seem to Jones. So if Oddie's diagnosis is correct, then the main proponents of the hypothesis that killing is no worse than letting die are still without an explanation of why Jones' act in Accident + Murder is worse. Ninth Objection: Oddie [1997: 275} also discusses variations of Oddie's Trolley in which the utility of killing is a bit higher than the utility of letting die. In one of the variants, killing the passenger will preserve his modest belongings and allow them to be passed on. In the other variant, killing the passenger will prevent a modest amount of pain that he would experience if one were to merely let him die. Oddie suggests that "In both these cases a comparatively small difference in value could tip the balance of value in favour of diverting." Reply: There are two main audiences for the Bare-Difference Argument. First, some people deny that euthanasia is permissible. They think that killing is so much worse than letting die that even if a terminally ill patient will experience extra suffering if one lets them die, it is better than killing them. The Bare-Difference Argument is brought in to convince people who do not already have the intuition that preventing significant amounts of suffering outweighs the badness of killing. The thought is this: once these people see that when everything else is equal, killing is no worse than letting die, they will realize there is no point in allowing the suffering of terminally ill patients to continue. If one tries to save the Bare-Difference Argument by conceding that in such a case killing is worse and then pointing to a case in which someone suffers a bit more if you let them die and then proclaim that since even a bit of suffering outweighs the badness of killing so therefore killing must not be that much worse than letting die, then no one who opposes euthanasia is going to be persuaded. And they certainly won't think killing someone in order to pass on their modest belongings would be permissible. Second, some people accept that euthanasia is permissible. They grant that the prevention of large amounts of suffering is sufficient to make killing a terminally ill patient permissible. But they are simply interested in whether killing is at least a bit worse than letting die given that other things are equal. For this audience, there is no point in considering cases in which everything is not equal. For they already agree that when everything is not equal killing may be better than letting die. What they remain to be convinced of is whether killing is in itself worse than letting die. Tenth Objection: It is plausible that with a little work the hypothesis that killing is no worse than letting die can explain the difference between the acts in the relevant cases. Reply: First, my main aim in this paper is to show that the Bare-Difference Argument is unsound. It is commonly held that Rachels' argument shows that killing is worse than letting die. If I have shown that the hypothesis that killing is worse than letting die provides at least as good an explanation of the relevant contrast cases as the hypothesis that killing and letting die are equivalent, then I have done my job. For in that case Rachels' argument is unsound. Second, the most prominent argument for the hypothesis that killing is no worse than letting die is Rachels'. I have argued that it is unsound. There is also Oddie's [1997] Clear-Difference Argument. But Oddie recognizes that his argument does not bear on views according to which killing is absolutely forbidden. And Carlson [2001: 539]shows that "[a]lthough [Oddie] has closed some avenues for the moderate [i.e. one who thinks killing is worse than letting die but not absolutely forbidden], there is still room for maneuver." If I am right about Rachels' argument and Carlson is right about Oddie's, then there is no motivation for the view that killing is no worse than letting die. If there is no motivation for a revision to commonsense morality, then that revision to commonsense morality should be rejected. The view that killing is no worse than letting die requires a revision of commonsense morality. So it should be rejected. Eleventh Objection: Rachels [1975: 79] identifies features of Murder and Accident that support the idea that killing and letting die are not different. His remarks apply equally to Accident + Murder: If the difference between killing and letting die were in itself a morally important matter, one should say that Jones's behavior was less reprehensible than Smith's. But does one really want to say that? I think not. In the first place, both men acted from the same motive, personal gain, and both had exactly the same end in view when they acted. It may be inferred from Smith's conduct that he is a bad man.... But would not the very same thing be inferred about Jones from his conduct...? Moreover, suppose Jones pleaded, in his own defense, "After all, I didn't do anything except just stand there and watch the child drown. I didn't kill him; I only let him die." Again, if letting die were in itself less bad than killing, this defense should have at least some weight. But it does not. Such a "defense" can only be regarded as a grotesque perversion of moral reasoning. Reply: It is certainly true that it would be "a grotesque perversion of moral reasoning" if Jones were to try to defend himself by saying something like this. But the reason this defense has no weight isn't because Jones' act is morally equivalent to Smith's. It is instead because people who say things like this are trying to get themselves completely off the hook as if they had done nothing wrong at all. Compare: If I could have killed someone but instead I sawed off one of his fingers, it would be bizarre and infelicitous for me to say "After all, I didn't do anything except saw off his finger. I didn't kill him; I only sawed off his finger." But the source of the infelicity here is not that killing is no worse than sawing off fingers. It is instead that it sounds like I'm suggesting I am completely off the hook for sawing off his finger. Second, it is true that Jones in both cases acted from the same motive. But imagine I can get a million dollars by either killing someone or sawing off his finger. No matter which act I perform, my motive is the same. I wish to receive a million dollars. Nevertheless, the killing is worse than sawing off fingers. Third, it is true that one can infer from the conduct of Jones in both cases that he is a bad person. But if I saw off someone's finger, it may be inferred from my conduct that I am a bad person. Still, murder is worse than sawing off fingers. Twelfth Objection: In his book, Rachels [1986: 113] expands on what he says in the original article. He adds "the results of their conduct were the same-in both cases, the cousin ended up dead and the villain ended up with the money." Reply: In Murder and Accident + Murder, a result is that the cousin is murdered. In Accident, a result is the cousin is allowed to die. Supposing that that difference in results is morally irrelevant simply begs the question. The Bare-Difference Argument is supposed to convert those who think there is a difference between killing and letting die. If it turns out that the argument depends on the claim that an outcome in which someone is murdered is morally equivalent to an outcome in which someone is allowed to die, then the argument will not convert anyone who thinks killing is worse than letting die. Thirteenth Objection: In the passages just discussed, Rachels is not appealing separately to sameness of intention, then sameness of consequences, etc. He is instead appealing to the general principle that if two actions are identical with the exception that one is a case of doing and the other is a case of allowing, then those acts are morally equivalent. Reply: It is not charitable to suggest that Rachels starts out arguing that killing and letting die are equivalent on the basis of the equivalence of Jones' acts in Accident and Murder and then goes on to defend the equivalence of those acts on the basis of a principle that says there is no difference between doing and allowing. If that were Rachels' argument, he could have left out the examples about Jones. He could have just said this: There is no moral difference between doing and allowing. The only difference between killing and letting die is that killing is an instance of doing and letting die is an instance of allowing. Therefore, there is no moral difference between killing and letting die. Anyone who thinks killing is worse than letting die is not going to persuaded such an argument. The whole point of Rachels' methodology is to test whether doing and allowing are different by looking at cases in which everything else is the same. And when we do that by comparing Accident and Accident + Murder, we see that there is a difference. Fourteenth Objection: I construe Rachels' argument as dependent on: Rachels' Principle: If a case of killing is equivalent to (worse than) an otherwise similar case of letting die, then killing is equivalent to (worse than) letting die. But Oddie [1997] and Kagan [1998] have raised doubts about it. Furthermore, Oddie [2001] argues that one can get Rachels' result with a less controversial assumption: Oddie's Principle: If killing is equivalent to (worse than) letting die, then any case of killing will be equivalent to (worse than) an otherwise similar case of letting die. I need to explain which bare-difference principles I endorse. Reply: I accept three principles relevant to this discussion: Kagan's Principle: If a case of killing is equivalent to (worse than) an otherwise similar case of letting die, then there is a presumption in favor of the view that killing is equivalent to (worse than) letting die. The act in Accident + Murder is worse than the otherwise similar act in Accident. So by Kagan's Prinicple, there is a presumption in favor of the view that killing is worse than letting die. I also accept: IBE: If a hypothesis is the best explanation of an observation, then that observation is evidence for that hypothesis. We have as observations Oddie's trolley examples and my Rachels-inspired examples. Each observation consists of cases that are morally different. I have argued that the hypothesis that killing is worse than letting die is the best explanation of these observations. So by IBE, there is evidence for the hypothesis that killing is worse than letting die. Finally, I accept: Conservativism: If a proposition is a part of commonsense morality, then, in the absence of defeaters, one should believe that proposition. The proposition that killing is worse than letting die is part of commonsense morality. And without Rachels' argument or Oddie's argument, it has no defeaters. So, given Conservativism, we should believe that killing is worse than letting die. 4. Conclusion Objections to Rachel's argument have been presented by Judith Jarvis Thomson (1975), Shelly Kagan [1988] and [1998], Philippa Foot [2002], and Winston Nesbitt [1995]. It is worth considering how my argument is an improvement. Thomson's objection raises doubts about the method of the argument. I raise doubts about the application of the method. Thomson claims that if the Bare-Difference Argument were valid, it would imply that chopping off someone's head is morally equivalent to punching them in the nose. I do not question the validity of the argument. Instead I question the premise that the only difference between Murder and Accident is that Jones let his cousin die while Smith killed his cousin. I endorse the responses Rachels [1986: 121-123] and Tooley [1983: 205-206] offer to Thomson's objection. Foot [2002: 84] and Kagan [1998: 99] discuss a Compromise View according to which there is a difference between killing and letting die in some cases but not others. My criticism does not make this compromise. Rachels' [1986: 123-8] discusses the Foot/Kagan objection at length in his book. Nesbitt argues that Rachels and Tooley make their examples too similar whereas my objection is that their examples are not similar enough. Kuhse [1998] and Perrett [1996] argue that Nesbitt's objection confuses issues about character with acts. Kuhse also argues that Nesbitt overreaches by claiming that any case of killing is worse than letting die. My objection does not have the features that Kuhse and Perrett criticize. I focus on act and not character evaluation. And I do not claim that in any case whatsoever killing is worse than letting die. I claim instead that other things being equal killing is worse than letting die. I endorse Kuhse's and Perrett's criticisms. Kagan's [1988] objection allows that the acts in Murder and Accident are morally equivalent but that it does not follow from killing vs letting die not making a difference in those cases that it doesn't make a difference in any cases. However, he thinks it does establish a presumption that killing vs letting die makes no difference in any case. My objection, unlike Kagan's, allows for no such presumption on behalf of the view that killing and letting die are equivalent. And it does not allow that even in the cases Rachels discusses does killing vs letting die fail to make a difference. Acknowledgements For comments and discussion I thank Charles Cardwell, Steve Davey, Haoying Liu, Trish Magalotti, Nick Wiltsher, and an audience at the 2017 Tennessee Philosophical Association conference. Special thanks to Mike Bertrand and the two referees for AJP. References Carlson, E. 2001. The Badness of Killing and Letting Die. The Journal of Value Inquiry. 35/4: 535-9. Foot, P. 2002. Moral Dilemmas: And Other Topics in Moral Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press. Hauser, M., Yong, L., and Cushman, F. 2008. Reviving Rawls' Linguistic Analogy: Operative Principles and the Causal Structure of Moral Actions, in Moral Psychology Volume II: The Cognitive Science of Morality: Intuition and Diversity, ed. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press: 107-144. Oddie, G and Menzies, P. 1992. An Objectivist's Guide to Subjective Value. Ethics. 102/3: 512-33. Oddie, G. 1997. Killing and Letting-Die: Bare Differences and Clear Differences. Philosophical Studies. 88/3: 267-7. Oddie, G. 2001. Axiological Atomism. Australasian Journal of Philosophy. 79/3: 313-32. Kagan, S. 1998. The Additive Fallacy. Ethics. 99/1: 5-31. Kagan, S. 1998. Normative Ethics. Boulder: Westview Press. Kuhse, H. 1998. Critical Notice: Why Killing is Not Always Worse-and Is Sometimes Better-Than Letting Die'. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 7/4: 371-4. Nagel, T. 1979. Mortal Questions. New York: Cambridge University Press. Nesbitt, W. 1995. Is Killing No Worse Than Letting Die?. Journal of Applied Philosophy. 12:1 101-6. Perrett, R. 1996. Killing, Letting Die, and the Bare-Difference Argument. Bioethics, 10:2 131-9. Rachels, J. 1975. Active and Passive Euthanasia. New England Journal of Medicine, 292/2: 78-80. Rachels, J. 1986. The End of Life: Euthanasia and Morality. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schaffer, J. 2000. Causation by Disconnection. Philosophy of Science, 67/2: 285-300. Thomson, J. 1975. `Killing, Letting Die, and the "Trolley Problem"'. Monist, 59/2: 20417 . Tooley, M. (1983). Abortion and Infanticide. New York: Oxford University Press. Institutional Affiliation Auburn University | {
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(Preprint version. Rivista di estetica 2019,2) Literature and Action. On Hegel's Interpretation of Chivalry1 Giovanna Pinna The presence of literature in Hegel's philosophy takes many forms and its role goes well beyond the reflection on an artistic form in a strictly aesthetic context. All of Hegel's work, starting from the fragmentary texts of his juvenile years, is interwoven with literary references, both classic and contemporary, whose function is rarely one of mere adornment or exemplification. In the years of Frankfurt and Jena, Hegel shared Hölderlin's and Schelling's interest in Greek tragedy in the period in which a canon of modern literature was being elaborated, in the context of a Querelle des anciens et des modernes, updated on a speculative basis2. A paramount example of the above is the Phenomenology of Spirit. In this self-styled, speculative history of conscience, images and figures from literature enter directly in the philosophical discourse, contributing to the structure of the argument of the self-understanding process of the spirit. Thus, besides Sophocles' Antigone, which represents and enacts a specific configuration of the relation between the action of the individual and the ethical context in which it takes place, we find Diderot's Le neveu de Rameau as the central reference for the analysis of the relation between Bildung and the Enlightenment, or, Jacobi's Woldemar, as the starting point for the figure of the beautiful soul. What the above literary motifs have in common, and this is true of many others that surface here and there in Hegel's writing, from Goethe's Faust to Don Quixote, is that they always revolve around individuals who, through their actions, actualize the ethical principles and the intellectual presuppositions that regulate the relations of the subject with the life-world. It is no chance that the concepts of action and agency as the underlying structure of Hegel's conception of literature have been studied mostly in relation to the Phenomenology of Spirit3. One could object that this work differs from other works of Hegel, to the point of having been considered a literary work, or at least a work with a highly developed narrative dimension, in which the category of action is therefore structurally intrinsic to the ductus of the argument4. One should therefore consider whether and to what extent the concept of action is useful to explain the meaning and function of literary texts also in contexts in which literature is dealt with as such, in which it is the explicit object of the analysis, as in the Lectures on Aesthetics. The purpose of the present paper is to show how the concept of action remains crucial to the interpretation of literary phenomena in the Aesthetics, but assumes different configurations in relation to the historical transformation of the concept of subjectivity. In particular, to verify the specifically aesthetic import of concepts such as action and recognition, which technically belong to the ethical-political sphere, I will examine the theme of chivalry, which is present in various areas and with different functions in the structure of the Aesthetics. This topic has been little studied but offers an interesting perspective on some problematic points of Hegel's theory: the controversial relation between the structural dimension of the concept of art (form-content relation) and historical development of artistic forms, the apparently univocal paradigm of classic beauty, and the definition of artistic modernity. Chivalry and the associated system of cultural values is a fundamental part of the intellectual history of the West, and occupy a significant part of Hegel's theory of historical forms of art. Its fundamental 1 This paper is connected to the research project Historia Conceptual y Crítica de la Modernidad (FFI2017-82195-P der AEI/FEDER, UE). 2Notwithstanding all his reservations on the romantic movement and the Schlegel brothers, Hegel never questions this canon, which he includes among the "moderns," Dante, Ariosto, Shakespeare and Cervantes indeed adopts it, using it as the basis for the historical-systematic framework he constructs for his philosophy of art. 3See for example Wiehl 1971, Gethmann-Siefert 1984: 310f. and Speight 2001. 4A review of the discussion on this topic is provided by Garelli 2009. 2 thematic nuclei correspond to so many stages in the development of the autonomy of subjectivity in the modern world. Following the development of the theme of chivalry from its origins up to its satirical re-elaboration in Ariosto and Cervantes, Hegel sees a parallel development from the mundane and intersubjective sphere of the Christian Middle-Ages to the affirmation in the modern era of a self-determining free subjectivity, for which exteriority becomes contingent and casual. In the aesthetic domain this casual quality translates into a «free disposition» of the exterior element in the artistic creation, characterized by literary re-utilization, pastiche and the prevalence of comedy, parody and humour. There are of course also contextual reasons for Hegel's interest in this type of texts. The Romantics in Hegel's time, and Herder before them, had made medieval literatures the focus of critical and aesthetic attention, stressing, according to the case, the folk quality or the romantic-adventurous aspect of this dawning phase of modern literary culture5. One can reasonably state that Hegel did not have an accurate first-hand knowledge of medieval chivalric romance cycles and his approach to this tradition was mediated by its historiographical systematization undertaken by the Schlegel brothers: Friedrich, with whose work he was certainly familiar already from the time of Jena, but also and especially August Wilhelm, whose lectures on Romantic poetry (Berlin 1801-1804) had an enormous diffusion in all Europe and were crucial for the reception and interpretation of the Middle Ages in European Romanticism6. Herder, of whom Hegel cites the (pseudo) translation of the Cid, was instead Hegel's main mediator for the Hispanic side of Medieval chivalric romance7. The Orlando Furioso and Don Quixote, instead, which are also key works for the Romantics, were literary masterpieces that Hegel knew well. In any case, Hegel rarely has an analytic and formal approach to literature and, in general, to the artistic materials that are incorporated in his discourse on aesthetics. They represent, rather, materials for the reconstruction of the history of consciousness, or, in other words, of the intellectual world-vision of a period8. Hegel therefore adapts to his interpretive and theoretical design the canon of European literature established by the Schlegels, in which Romance literature and the theme of chivalry, mediated or direct, play a dominant role. We could say that Hegel's conception of literature is part of his theory of subjectivity. His literary characters have the prerogative of cogently representing the dialectic relation between subject and the life-world, that is, of providing a synthesis of the ethical conceptions of a given period through the representation of actions. Hegel's philosophical analysis of literary materials is based on the categories of individuality and action. The first one, « individuality interpreting and determining itself in its activities»9, constitutes the central figure in the theory of the subject, and takes on different characteristics in the classical world and in the modern one. This difference affects the specific relation between form and content in historical forms of art. In the case of the heroic in ancient Greece, Hegel speaks of a beautiful individuality, meaning by this a subject that through his action expresses a position within an ethical horizon that is still not consolidated in a system of external norms. What moves the individual to action is pathos, that is the emotional and rational embracing of an ideal principle that forces him to clash with an opposite and equally legitimate principle. Pathe for Hegel are the manifestation of universal ethical powers; it is significant that Hegel speaks of pathos exclusively in relation to the classic world where he does not limit it to tragedy. One of the models of this substantial universality is Antigone, whose character coincides with pathos, without any split between subjective interiority and the horizon of values in which her existence takes place. But this interpretive scheme is applied in general to the figures of the Greek heroic universe. From this derives, 5In reality Hegel did not fully share the Romantic enthusiasm for the Medieval and in general he seems quite critical of works of the German Middle-Ages such as the Nibelungenlied. See for example Hegel 1986 1: 308; transl. 238. 6 See Schlegel 2008, 66-143. 7Der Cid (1803-1804), in Johann Gottfried Herder, Werke, vol. III, hrsg. von U. Gaier, Frankfurt a. M 1990:545-694. 8The prevalence of historical and political issues in Hegel's aesthetics is discussed in Pippin 2008. 9 Rósza 2012:179. 3 among other things, the secondary role that the subjective-personal motif of love has in classic tragedy. In the modern world, instead, the individual is on the one hand a single, self-referential and selfreflective subject, and on the other hand defines himself essentially through relations with other individuals. Singularity and personality are therefore conceptual specifications of a subject whose relations with other individuals develop against the background of a complex system of norms and institutions. An individual who positions itself as independent in relation to the objective world, a subject defined by the contrast between the absolute affirmation of interiority and the immediacy of his existence. The second category, that of action, although clearly Aristotelian, is not intended in Hegel as a formal element of dramatic literature, but as expression of subjectivity observed in its process of selfobjectivation in the life-world and in relation to other subjects. Hegel does not speak of the imitation of an action, like Aristotle, but tends instead to identify the action with the content (Gehalt) of the work 10. In the literary text, through their actions, individuals make explicit what is implicit in the historical structure of the world. Hegel underlines how art as an instrument for understanding the world uses specific figures, which are nothing other than the actual moment of action. In any case, the complexity and intrinsic processuality of the interaction of the subject with the situation ensure that the concept of action refers primarily to poetry: «Now the presentation of the action, as in itself a total movement of action, reaction, and resolution of their struggle, belongs especially to poetry, for it is given to the other arts to seize only one feature in the course of the action and its occurrence»11. This dynamic quality of literary representation and in general its semantic complexity is what, in the context of a cognitivist aesthetics like that of Hegel, determines the intrinsic superiority of poetry to other artistic forms. In the ancient world, the aesthetic subjectivity manifests itself in the action of the heroic individual, which serves as a moral and institutional foundation. In this case, what the action determines is a mode of collective operating and feeling, which manifests itself ritually in ceremonies and religious feasts. In the modern world, instead, we have the action of an individual subject who presupposes the acknowledgement of a given historical situation, yet positions itself as independent of it. The chivalry of Medieval epic cycles occupies in this scheme and intermediate position between the ancient and the modern proper. It becomes part of modern literature, instead, in the phase Hegel calls the dissolution of the Romantic, in which the characters and atmospheres of those poems become at once the object of nostalgia and of parody, as in Ariosto and Cervantes. The primary thematic context of the Romantic world, according to Hegel, is that of Christian religiosity, that is the representation in sensible intuition «of the absolute history of the spirit that conceives itself as such» 12. The religious sphere expresses the interiority of the spirit itself, which tends towards the negation of naturalness. From this exclusive relation with the self and with divinity, the Romantic subject emerges through what Hegel calls in the lesson of 1826 «the affirmative reflex of the interiority of spirit», that is, spirituality manifesting itself in the virtues of the subject13. This is precisely the context in which the central values of chivalry -love, loyalty, honor, courage come to the foreground, defining the properly mundane sphere of the Romantic. The transition from the religious dimension to the historical-mundane one of Romantic art may be described «by saying that subjective individuality (Einzelheit) now becomes explicitly free as individuality independently of a reconciliation with God»14. 10See Hilmer 1998: 98-104. 11 Hegel 1986 I: 285; transl. 219. 12Hegel 2004: 159. 13 See Hegel 2004: 135. 14Hegel 1986 II: 171; transl. 553. An analysis of the role of freedom as the key element of the concept of action in the modern world is provided by Pinkard 2010. 4 In the Medieval chivalric romance the object of artistic representation is the personal relations among individuals, against the background of an historical world in which the process of formation of social and political institutions is based on the capacity of some individuals to become leaders and attract within their orbit other individuals. These relations, both in the private sphere and in the public one, have an affective component and are characterized by the needs for the self to be acknowledged by another subject which, no longer rooted in a natural ethos, seeks for a positive essentiality in the mundane and intersubjective sphere. Especially in chivalric narratives of the Romance area, in the Arthurian cycle, the Carolingian cycle, the Cid, Hegel sees the expression of an ideal universe in which the spirit exists essentially in its relation with the other, a relation that manifests itself in the arbitrary exclusiveness of love, in the sense of honor or in bonds of loyalty. This attitude of the subject presupposes that the virtue towards which actions are oriented are no longer ethical virtues in the proper sense, that is based on a common idea of family, state, motherland, but rather private virtues, associated with the life of the individual15. The romantic-chivalrous virtues are the positive form of the mundanization of religious conscience. Hegel calls them «forms of the romantic self-filled inwardness of the subject»16. On these virtues, a mode of action is based that defines the transition from the classic individuality of intersubjectivity as the self-overcoming of the isolated individual17. The motifs of love, honor and loyalty are considered as modes of the development of a subjectivity that no longer has in front of it «any mythology, any imagery, any configuration lying there already cut and dried for it to express them" and can freely concentrate on itself18. Honor is a particularly significant manifestation of the absolute autonomy of individual subjectivity. It is the expression of the personality and especially of its own self-representation. The subject's goal is to have others acknowledge his value, without there being any connection with an objective ethical foundation: The measure of honor thus does not depend on what the man actually is, but on what this idea of himself is19. The affirmation of the virtue of honor finds a particularly favorable environment in a world characterized by the absence of a codified law in which «the mightiest and most overpowering individuals get into the position of being fixed centres; i.e. leaders and princes, round which others group themselves of their own free will»20. Hegel insists on the difference between the chivalrous conception of honor and the motivations for the actions of the Greek hero Achilles' rage in response to Agamemnon's offense -, which has to do with the fact that honor is directly associated with the individual's personality, whose value the individual wants to be acknowledged, and not with the material aspects of one's social existence, such as property, duty or status. The individual can of course include these elements in the sphere of his honor, but what is at stake for him is «the affirmative conscience of his infinite subjectivity», which is independent of the concrete content. Honor in this sense is only a reflection of this infinity. The appearance of the subject here has a central role, as evident from a passage in the 1820-21 lectures: «what in my honor as such is offended is my appearance (Schein). I am an infinite and therefore my appearance too is infinite, and my appearance is my existence (Daseyn), because through my appearance I am for the others and this appearance is the identity of my existence and of my self as an abstract subject»21. The same holds for the relation between subjectivity and love, one of the fundamental motifs of Romantic art, also very present in chivalric culture. In this case too we find a centrality of the individual and an arbitrariness of attraction that is unknown to the ancients: romantic love «is only 15 Hegel's interest for he chivalric literature is connected to the conception of action as expression of right in a broad sense, which intrinsically involves recognition. See f. i. Houlgate 2010. In-depth discussion of the recent literature on Hegel's concept of action in the domain of practical philosophy, and of its relationship to aesthetics, would be interesting, as an anonymous reviewer rightly points out, but has to be left for further research, as it would exceed the scope of this article also due to space limitations. 16Hegel 1986 II: 171; transl. 553. 17On the transition from the religion-oriented subjectivity to intersubjectivity see Hilmer 1998: 202. 18Hegel 1986 II: 173; transl. 556. 19 Hegel 1986 II: 177; transl. 558. 20Hegel 1986 II: 192; transl. 570. 21Hegel 2015: 105. 5 the accidental passion of one person for another and, even if it be widened by imagination and deepened by spiritual profundity, is still not the ethical relation of marriage and the family»22. The mutual recognition that is at the basis of the love relation does not translate however, as in the ethical sphere proper, into a family union, but aims instead at merging the two interiorities overcoming any external obstacle23. And it is the negative dialectic between passion and obstacle that determines the genuinely poetic and literary import of the love motif, in contrast with the ordinariness that results from the successful establishing of the love relation. In chivalric literature, the basic indifference towards ethical institutions such as marriage is often accompanied by the idea of sacrifice as a demonstration of fidelity and humiliation, functioning as a mundane transposition of the humiliation in front of God. Love and honor represent in different forms a thematization of intersubjectivity: Love –Hegel writes in his Aesthetics– is «the realization of what was already implicit in honour because honour needs to see itself recognized, and the infinity of the person accepted, in another person»24. On this basis the Romantic artist constructs figures and situations in which reality is transfigured into the intimacy of feeling. After honor and love, Hegel mentions fidelity as an essential moment in the mundane sphere of Romantic subjectivity. It is in primis fidelity towards one's lord, therefore a relation with a single individual. It does not concern the general interest of a political body, but the mutual interests of the two subjects: the lord and the vassal. Its ethical character is therefore only apparent. As a paradigmatic example of this relation, Hegel mentions Charlemagne and the knights of his circle. If, on the one hand, the relation of fidelity institutionalizes the advantages of the subjects involved, on the other hand it is a relation conditioned by subjective arbitrariness since «every individual takes it that the persistence of his obedience along with the persistence of the universal order is dependent on his pleasure, inclination, and private disposition»25. Aesthetically speaking, it is a very productive motif, since it creates the possibility for a series of clashes with other inclinations or subjective motifs, such as love, friendship or offenses to one's honor, which allow for an infinite number of narrative situations. The Cid's turbulent relation with his king represents for Hegel the paradigmatic example of such a clash, which highlights the sense of the Romantic value of the human (der Humanus), which is for Romantic art, what the sacrality of the collective ethos founded on the Olympic religion was for the classic artistic world26. In the lectures of 1826, Hegel added to the above virtues, audacity (Tapferkeit), which he saw as associated with the adventurous and fantastic dimension of the Romantic epos. We are not talking about the, so to speak, physical, natural courage of Homeric heroes, but of a disposition that is rooted in one's interiority, in the se sense of honor which is, once again, conditioned by the relations of the subjects with themselves. It applies to finalities of a religious-fantastic nature, as in the case of Parsifal, or to any heroic action, even the most gratuitous one, that is aimed at affirming the value of the individual. In general, we can say that audacity represents for Hegel a subjective attitude that pervades the entire chivalric culture, from its Medieval origins to its Renaissance and modern reelaborations, representing, in light of its independence from any material motivation, its most clearly Romantic trait. The conceptual delimitation of the mundane sphere of Medieval art and of the specific 'virtues' of the chivalric world falls within the classic-romantic opposition, within which two different historically determined structures of self-consciousness take form. However, if one considers the same thematic nexuses from the perspective of the speculative theory of literary genres, and of the epic in particular, the opposition appears as much more nuanced in the case of Medieval chivalric literature. Medieval chivalric matter appears rooted in the world of objective values which also characterizes the 'natural' culture and the ethos of the classic world. The reason for this partial shift 22Hegel 1986 II: 172; transl. 554. 23The term recognition is used in a broader sense than in the Phaenomenology of Spirit. See Ferrarin 2016. 24Hegel 1986 II 182; transl. 562. 25Hegel 1986 II. 192; transl. 570. 26On the category of the human as the new sacred of romantic art, see A. Gethmann-Siefert 1984: 319f. 6 in perspective lies in Hegel's very definition of epic poetry, which includes Homer as well as the narratives of the adventures of Medieval knights: «The epic, having what is as its topic, acquires at its object the occurrence of an action which in the whole breadth of its circumstances and relations must gain access to our contemplation as a rich event connected with the total world of a nation and epoch»27. We must first of all note that for Hegel what defines the epic genre is not the style of the exposition or the chronological structure of the narrative, but rather the content, that is the conception of the world that it expresses. What Hegel is interested in is the necessary conditions for epic poetry, the historical-cultural conditions that make it relevant in certain periods28. The epic is, in short, the narration of a collective state of things through the actions of individuals. The objectivity of the narrative and the connection between individual action and collective interests are conditions that occur in the Iliad as well as in the histories of Charlemagne. This would seem at first glance in contrast with the process of subjectivation of art that Hegel finds in chivalric literature. How then can one reconcile the general definition of epic poetry with Hegel's above interpretation of chivalric 'virtues' as the expression of a self-referential subjectivity? The explanation is that for Hegel the chivalric universe occupies an intermediate position between the ancient and the modern, both in terms of the philosophy of history (which is no doubt an essential component of Hegel's philosophy of art) and in terms of the more strictly aesthetic aspect of the literary form. As of the philosophy of history, in general, the necessary conditions for the epic are provided by a world that has already developed, but whose institutional organization is still forming. This is a phase in the development of nation in which a social identity, so to-speak, has already developed but is present as a general state of mind, not yet as a social or religious dogma. Because these relations still have not been objectified in a system of rules, the intellect cannot place them in contrast with the sphere of passions and of individual inclinations. This objectivation, which Hegel calls the «prose of the world», is an historical phenomenon characteristic of the modern period and is reflected in the opposition between the prosaic aspect of existence and the imaginative leap that is at the basis of modern literature and, in particular, of its epic form: the novel, including comic or novelesque reelaborations of the chivalric matter. The Medieval epic poet shares with the classic poet and adherence to the spiritual universe depicted in their work. The ethico-political dimension in which the chivalric conception develops is still tied to the formation of a national conscience (the reference here is mostly to the Spain of the Reconquista). For Hegel it has an aesthetic correlative in the 'objective' treatment of the poetic matter, which the writers see as an active component of their intellectual conscience and not as alterity or a ancient or fantastic past. This is the beautiful chivalry (das schöne Rittertum) of the Medieval cycles (Ariosto's «cavalieri antiqui»), in which the action of the individuals is conceived as a moment in the process of development of forms of collective aggregation, whether ethical, political or religious. The vassal's loyalty to his lord, for example, which represents for Hegel an exemplary case of romantic loyalty, is attributed a greater value insofar as «on it depends the chief bond of a community's connection and its social organization»29. This associates the deeds of the Cid or Charlemagne's paladins to the actions of the Homeric heroes, and it not casual that Hegel uses the adjective 'beautiful' for this phase of chivalry, to indicate that adequacy between interiority and exteriority that is typical of classic art. With the dawn of the modern age, these literary works become material to be re-used, its stories and characters become, so to speak, building blocks for the fantastic and melancholic adventures of the characters of Ariosto and Cervantes. Adventure for the adventure's sake is the romantic-modern trait of the reinvented chivalric literature, which could be present but was not dominant in the original Medieval works in which instead «the imagination is not content to invent chivalric hero-figures and adventures altogether apart from the rest of the real world, but links their deed to great saga-centres, outstanding historical persons and decisive battles of the period, and in this way acquires, in the most 27 Hegel 1986 III: 330; transl. 1044. 28On this aspect of Hegel's conception of poetry see Bungay 1984, 113. 29See Hegel 1986 II 192. 7 general way at least, some basis, as is indispensable for epic»30. This universal nucleus is precisely what is lost in the evolution of the epic forms, that is, in the transformation into the novel, which is the expression of an autonomous and individual subjectivity. In terms of poetics, what really distinguishes the classic from the romantic for Hegel is the distance between the matter and its literary elaboration or, in other words, between the ideal horizon of the poet and the objective characteristics of the world he describes. In romantic art the immediate represented object is de-sacralized, and the subject positions himself as something separate from the prosaic reality of his vital context31. For Hegel this subject is formal or abstract insofar as he concentrates prevalently or exclusively on his interiority, and relates himself the the historical world as a combination of materials, lacking any objectively valid connection other than through the medium of reflection. This position of the subject must not necessarily be seen as an impoverishment of art or as a decrease in its capability of giving shape to the intuition of the world. Indeed, through the prevalence of reflection, the artistic form acquires a complexity of content and a cultural stratification that reflects itself in the formal sophistication of modern works32.According to Hegel, «it is the effect and the progress of art itself which, by bringing before our vision as an object its own indwelling material, at every step along this road makes its own contribution to freeing art from the content represented»33. Summarizing, the denaturalization of the artistic process, which becomes selfconsciously mediated and self-reflexive, corresponds to a complete availability of materials and a radical historicizing of artistic production. There are two ways in which this formalism of subjectivity manifests itself in art and in literature in particular in the phase of the dissolution of the Romantic, that is in modernity proper. The first is the concentration on the autonomy of the character, which becomes the focal point and only motor in the action of Shakespeare's dramas. The second, the one which interests us in this context, has to do with the paradigm of formalism or abstract subjectivity a parte obiecti, that is as Freilegung or unloosening of the exteriority from concrete historical ties. The world becomes an infinitely varied ensemble of situations and possibilities. In other words, it becomes the result of a free dialectic interaction of actions and circumstances. If one considers objectivity in its historical configuration, the free arrangement of materials by the fantasy of the individual corresponds first of all to an oppositional stance in regards to the overall values of a period. This situation manifests itself in particularly significant ways in the literary thematization of a chivalric past in fantastic, comic, or ironical terms: «when the Middle Ages were closing, Ariosto and Cervantes began to turn against chivalry»34. Chivalry becomes the distorting mirror that reflects the contrast between the Self and the world at the dawn of modernity: «The romantic world has only one absolute work, the spread of Christianity. The legends are taken from this. The wordly work is the expulsion of the Moors, the Crusades. However, the deeds of these works too are instead adventures, and the remaining subject matters consist of the adventuruous deeds of the heart as such, dedicating itself to one thing and another, to rescuing innocence and performing acts that involve only the subjective interests of exhibiting themselves»35. In his playful reduction of the chivalric universe to the gratuitous adventure, Ariosto unveils the basic incongruence between the religious goal (the defense of Christianity) and the mundane desire for conquest. The Medieval world is represented in its exterior forms, its values and its virtues are seen through the lens of a light comedy, which follows the thread of events that result exclusively from personal interests or sensual desires. In his poem L'Orlando Furioso – Hegel writes in the Aesthetics – which «still moves within the poetic aims of the Middle Ages», Ariost «in a purely hidden way 30Hegel 1986 III: 409; transl. 1105. 31This process includes of course as its initial phase Medieval religious art which, unlike Greek art, does not identify representation with its object (the divinity). Paradoxically, it is precisely in Medieval religious works that the religious function of art begins to be lost. 32The main artistic consequence of this disconnection of the artistic form from the content can be called, following Rutter 2010: 120-169, virtuosity. 33Hegel 1986 II: 234: transl. 604. 34Hegel 1986 II: 234; transl. 605. 35Hegel 2015:196; transl. 346. 8 makes the fantastic merrily destroy itself within by incredible buffooneries»36. Since the subject follows exclusively the caprice of his inner self, low and high finalities are placed on the same level and digression acquires the status of a narrative method. Adventure, which in all its arbitrariness and variety becomes the center of this poetical universe, is nothing but the extension of the abstract subjectivity or the absolutization of individuality. In this fashion, the dissolution of chivalry, the more or less radical ironic re-elaboration of the constellation of values on which the chivalric universe was based, is consciously grasped and becomes itself the object of art. For Hegel, Ariosto represents the historical-literary phase that immediately precedes the passage to the modern phase of the romantic, in which the real conditions of the world are foregrounded in contrast to the ideal universe and interiority of the subject37. Don Quixote is another step forward in this process of abstraction: chivalry is no longer the object of a playful vision, but is rather filtered trough a «true irony», which comically dissolves its original signification, highlighting instead the contrast between the elevated character of the protagonist and his pursuit of goals that are at once noble and incongruous, in circumstances that make the whole situation ridiculous38. In a much more radical fashion than Ariosto, Cervantes distils the true form of the chivalric ethos, whose epical model is the Cid, projecting it on the system of relations that regulate the concrete existence of the modern individual. It is the explicit and negative presence of reality that marks the difference between the epos and the novel. For Hegel, the modern novel is the expression of the split between a free and autonomous subjectivity and an objectivity devoid of an ideal foundation. It is in the transformation of the epos in the novel that chivalry, as a manifestation of the individuality of the subject, of his desires and imaginative projections is no longer a theme among many: «This romantic fiction is chivalry become serious again, with a real subject-matter»39. The chivalric literature satirized in Don Quixote is for Hegel a sort of prefiguration of the Bildungsroman, of which the contemporary model is Goethe's Wilhelm Meister. It is these young protagonists of these novels, «these modern knights who must force their way through the course of the world which realizes itself instead of their ideals"40. These antiheroes of the modern novel possess, as a characteristic of their age, the idealism that in Don Quixote is represented by the protagonist's ties to a bygone age. The conflict shifts from the explicitly historical context, in which the subject's noble ideals are shown to be unsuited to his period, to a biographical context, in which the protagonists refuse to bend themselves to the conventions and requirements of bourgeois society, only to achieve in the end a more or less sarcastic integration in the «prose of the world», professional and familial41. The adventurous spirit of Medieval knights, having gone through the erotic-warlike fantasies of Ariosto, the lyrical and religious themes of Tasso and the comic heroic desperation of Cervantes, relive in the peregrinations of the young protagonists of the modern novel in search of the essence of their Self in the wilderness of civilization. 36Hegel 1986 III: 411; transl. 1007. 37 On the reception of Ariosto in Hegel's Aesthetics see Stierle 1986 and Rivoletti 2014, 311-321. 38 For an accurate analysis of the use of the comic in the chivalric theme of the Don Quixote see Hebing 2015, 402406. 39Hegel 1986 II, 219; transl. 592 40Hegel 1986 II, 219, trans. 593. 41See on this Szondi 1974, 458. 9 REFERENCES BUNGAY, S. 1984, Beauty and Truth. A Study of Hegel's Aesthetics, Oxford: Oxford University Press FERRARIN, A. 2016, Hegel on Recognition. Self-Consciousness, Individuality and Intersubjectivity, in in L. Ruggiu and I. Testa (Eds), "I that is We, and We that is I." Perspectives on Contemporary Hegel, Leiden, Brill: 253-270. GARELLI G. 2009, Pensare per figure. Hegel e la Phänomenologie come romanzo dello spirito, in A.L. Macor, F. Vercellone (Eds.), Teoria del romanzo, Milano, Mimesis: 169-187. GETHMANN-SIEFERT, A. 1984, Die Funktion der Kunst in der Geschichte, Bonn, Bouvier. HEBING, N. 2015, Hegels Ästhetik des Komischen, Hamburg, Meiner. HEGEL, G. W. F. 2015, Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Kunst (1820-21, 1823), ed. by N. Hebing, Hamburg, Meiner. (transl: Philosophy of Art. The Hotho Transcript of the 1823 Berlin Lectures, ed. and transl. by R. Brown, Oxford, Oxford Oxford University Press.) 1986, Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik, I, II, III, in: Werke, Studienausgabe, ed. by E. Moldenhauer, and K. M. Michel, Frankfurt a. M., Suhrkamp, vol. 13,14,15. (transl.: Aesthetics. Lectures on fine art, transl. by T.M. Knox, Oxford, Oxford Oxford University Press 1975.) 2004 , Philosophie der Kunst oder Ästhetik. Nach Hegel, im Sommer 1826. Mitschrift von Kehler, ed. by A. Getmann-Siefert and B. Collenberg-Plotnikov, München: Fink. HILMER, B. 1997, Scheinen des Begriffs. Hegels Logik der Kunst, Hamburg: Meiner. HOULGATE, S. 2010, Action, Right and Morality in Hegel's Philosophy of Right, in A. Laitinen and C. Sandis (Eds.), Hegel on Action, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan: 155-175. PINKARD, T. 2010, Freedom and the Lifeworld, in A. Laitinen and C. Sandis (Eds.), Hegel on Action, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan: 137-154. PIPPIN, R. 2008, The Absence of Aesthetics in Hegel's Aesthetics, in F. Beiser (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Hegel and Nineteenth-Century Philosophy, Cambridge, Cambridge Oxford University Press: 394-418. 10 RIVOLETTI, C, Ariosto e l'ironia della finzione, Venezia, Marsilio. RÓZSA, E. 2012, Modern Individuality in Hegel's Practical Philosophy, Leiden-Boston, Brill. RUTTER, B. 2010, Hegel on the Modern Arts, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. SCHLEGEL, A.W. 2007 Vorlesungen über die romantische Literatur, in Id., Kritische Ausgabe der Vorlesungen, ed. by E. Behler, vol. II,1, Paderborn.München-Wien-Zürich, Schöning. SPEIGHT, A. 2001 Hegel, Literature and the Problem of Agency, Cambridge U.P. STIERLE, K.-H. 1986, Malerei und Literatur der italienischen Renaissance in Hegels Aesthetik, in A. GethmannSiefert, O. Pöggeler (Eds.), Welt und Wirkung von Hegels Ästhetik, Bonn, 327-340. SZONDI, P. 1974, Hegels Lehre von der Dichtung, in Id., Poetik und Geschichtsphilosophie, Frankfurt a. M. 1974, vol. I. WIEHL, R. 1971, Über den Handlungsbegriff als Kategorie der Hegelschen Ästhetik, "Hegel-Studien" VI: 135170. | {
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Realismo pitagóRico y Realismo cantoRiano en la física cuántica no Relativista1 pitagoRic and cantoRian Realism in the non-Relativistic quantum physics Rafael Andrés Alemañ Berenguer2 Resumen El carácter fundamentalmente probabilista de la teoría cuántica cuestionó el realismo como filosofía básica de la ciencia, si bien ciertas interpretaciones instrumentalistas podrían no amenazar por sí solas la existencia de un mundo exterior e independiente de nuestra conciencia. La falta de un valor definido para tales magnitudes antes de la medición alentó la suposición de que tales valores "no existen" antes de la medida. Una reinterpretación de nuestras ideas sobre las magnitudes físicas, considerándolas formalmente representadas por conjuntos de valores en lugar de valores numéricos concretos, ayudaría a disipar toda sombra de irrealidad física. Palabras clave: Objetividad, función, medida, magnitud, distribución. abstRact The probabilistic character of quantum measures put in question the proper role of the realism as basic philosophy for science, even though certain instrumentalist interpretations might not threaten by itself the existence of an external world independent of the observer conscience. The lack of a defined value for such magnitudes previously to the measure encouraged the supposition that such values "did not exist" before there being measured. A reformulation of our ideas about physical magnitudes, regarding them as formally represented by sets of values instead of sharp numeric values would help to dissipate any unreality shade in physical sciences. Keywords: Objectivity, function, measurement, magnitude, distribution. 1 Recibido: 31 de marzo de 2012. Aceptado: 25 de septiembre de 2012. 2 Universidad Alicante, España. Correo electrónico: [email protected]. Alemañ Berenguer, Rafael Andrés [62] Alemañ Berenguer, Rafael Andrés Revista Colombiana de Filosofía de la Ciencia 12.25 (2012 julio-diciembre): 61-82 1. intRoducción Las discusiones sobre la interpretación más adecuada de la física cuántica apenas han cesado desde su mismo nacimiento. Sobre la mejor manera de entender sus fundamentos se han pronunciado muchos y muy eminentes autores, sin que todavía se haya llegado a un acuerdo general. Desde la concepción estadística propugnada por Alfred Landé hasta la concepción realista del potencial cuántico de David Bohm, pasando por la versión muchos universos de Hugh Everett, la explicación de Wigner basada en la conciencia del observador (Jammer 1974; Wheeler & Zurek 1986; Jammer 1996), o las interpretaciones modales, los sistemas cuánticos siempre tienen valores bien definidos en algunas propiedades físicas (Van Fraasen 1974, 1991; Albert & Loewer 1990; Elby 1993; Dickson 1994; Bene & Dieks 2002; Berkovitz & Hemmo 2006) infringiendo el tradicional vínculo "autoestado-autovalor". Quizás por ello muchos físicos suelen adoptar una pragmática duplicidad, suscribiendo una opinión realista a efectos heurísticos (exploración de nuevos modelos, discusión de experimentos, uso de imágenes intuitivas de los microbjetos individuales), y replegándose hacia una interpretación minimalista basada en conceptos estadísticos (según la cual la teoría cuántica no es más que un manual de instrucciones para operar con datos experimentales) cuando habían de afrontar cualquier cuestionamiento epistemológico (D'Espagnat 2006, 225). En su vertiente científica -que es la que aquí nos concierne-, el realismo consiste en una actitud epistémica acerca del contenido de nuestras teorías científicas, la cual recomienda creer en la validez tanto de los aspectos observables como los no observables del mundo descrito por las ciencias (Musgrave 1992). En una interpretación probabilística mínima, la teoría cuántica se concibe como un formalismo cuyo fin consiste en el cálculo de probabilidades correspondientes a las frecuencias pronosticadas para los resultados de medidas llevadas a cabo en sistemas preparados idénticamente. Así pues, si el estado obtenido tras la preparación viene dado por el operador ρ y la magnitud observable E se asocia con una POM (medida de operador positivo) en una σ-álgebra Σ de subconjuntos X del espacio de valores Ω, la medida de probabilidad asociada p es {X ∈ Σ} → pEρ(X ) ≡ tr[E(X )] ∈ [0, 1]. Tomando partido por una interpretación realista en el sentido anterior, la física cuántica sería una teoría completa cuyos enunciados tienen como referentes sistemas individuales (no colectivos estadísticos). Se supone que el papel principal de cualquier interpretación en esta controversia consiste en proporcionar una regla que determine, para cada estado, qué cantidades físicas poseen valores [63] Realismo pitagórico y realismo cantoriano en la física cuántica no relativista definidos que representan propiedades genuinas -o "elementos de realidad", como veremos más adelante- del sistema cuántico estudiado. En relación con ello, en este artículo se propondrá un punto de vista interpretativo no muy extendido, pero que acaso sea digno de una ulterior profundización a causa de sus prometedoras posibilidades explicativas. De acuerdo con esto, ha de atribuirse valor ontológico a las superposiciones cuánticas de autoestados en pie de igualdad, aunque en otro sentido, con los autovalores de tales estados. Con ese fin, la primera parte analiza los distintos significados concedidos a la función de onda cuántica según el marco interpretativo escogido, y las célebres paradojas vinculadas con dichos significados. La segunda analiza si en verdad resulta inevitable someterse a la interpretación idealista de la teoría cuántica. La tercera presenta y defiende una alternativa. Las repercusiones ontológicas de esta propuesta, así como las cuestiones que deja abiertas serán comentadas en las siguientes dos partes. Por último, un sucinto resumen de las conclusiones cerrará el presente trabajo. 2. la función de onda y las paRadojas cuánticas En el marco de la teoría cuántica no relativista, suele tomarse como punto de partida en estas discusiones la afirmación de que la función de onda contiene toda la información susceptible de obtenerse en un sistema cuántico. En la práctica, esta información se logra aplicando a dicha función de onda una determinada operación matemática (operador cuántico) de tal forma que cada dato (posición, velocidad, energía, etc) tenga asociado un operador específico (operador de posición, de velocidad, de energía, entre otros). En la formulación usual de la teoría cuántica (restringiéndonos a un espectro de valores no degenerados), un observable típico viene matemáticamente representado3 por un operador hermítico A = ∑m am Em, con autovalores am, y Em el operador de proyección sobre el autovector |am>, que satisface Em 2 = Em. El conjunto de operadores de proyección {Em} se conoce como la resolución espectral de A. Un estado mecano-cuántico se expresa mediante un vector de estado4 |ψ> sometido al requisito de normalización <ψ|ψ> = 1. 3 En general no se distinguirá en este trabajo entre un observable típico A y su representación matemática por medio de un operador hermítico Â. Esta pequeña negligencia en las distinciones entre ontología y epistemología resulta menos comprometedora que la identificación usual entre "estado (cuántico)" y "función de onda". 4 Por simplicidad, la discusión subsiguiente no se ocupará de los estados mezcla ni de sus operadores de densidad ya que nada añaden a la cuestión aquí planteada. [64] Alemañ Berenguer, Rafael Andrés Revista Colombiana de Filosofía de la Ciencia 12.25 (2012 julio-diciembre): 61-82 El carácter vectorial de estos estados cuánticos concuerda con el llamado principio de superposición, que afirma la aditividad de dos estados de modo que la combinación lineal c1|ψ1> + c2|ψ2>, adecuadamente normalizada, constituye un posible vector de estado si |ψ1> y |ψ2> lo eran por separado. Una importante aplicación de este principio es la posibilidad de representar un vector de estado arbitrario como una combinación lineal de autovectores de un observable A, es decir, |ψ> = ∑mcm|am>, ∑m |cm| 2 = 1. Estos vectores de estado son elementos de un espacio vectorial lineal, o más concretamente, de un espacio de Hilbert. La regla de Born nos proporciona la distribución de probabilidad de los resultados de medidas realizadas para un observable A en un cierto estado |ψ> según la igualdad pm = |<am|ψ>| 2, donde la cantidad numérica <am|ψ> es la amplitud de probabilidad. En estas condiciones, el valor medio de los resultados de una serie de medidas, sería <A> = ∑mpm am = <ψ|A|ψ>. La evolución temporal viene dada por la ecuación de Schrödinger dependiente del tiempo iħ∂|ψ>/∂t = H |ψ>, donde H es el operador hamiltoniano (en lo sucesivo se tomará, como es habitual, ħ = 1). Si no depende explícitamente del tiempo, la solución de la ecuación de Schrödinger puede escribirse |ψ(t)> = e−iHt |ψ(0)>. La linealidad de esta ecuación garantiza la validez del principio de superposición. El llamado "postulado de proyección (o de reducción) de Von Neumann", que suele tomarse no pocas veces como parte del formalismo típico de la teoría cuántica no relativista, establece que durante la medida el estado cuántico cambia de un modo no contemplado por la ecuación de Schrödinger. En concreto, se supone que durante la medida de un observable típico A que conduce a un resultado am, el vector de estado |ψ> sufre una transición discontinua5 |ψ> = ∑mcm|am> → |am>. Cuando efectuamos una medida del sistema cuántico, el valor de la función de onda cambia repentinamente; puesto que entonces se concreta su estado, la descripción física del sistema ya no puede contener probabilidades. Así, el coeficiente de la función correspondiente al estado en que el sistema no se encuentra se hace cero, con lo que el otro coeficiente se iguala a 1, pues una probabilidad igual a la unidad equivale a la certeza. Así ocurre si las probabilidades se interpretan como medida de la información o de la ignorancia acerca del estado preciso en el que se encuentra el sistema, esto es, si se trata de probabilidades gnoseológicas que cambian al modificar el estado 5 Esta es la versión "fuerte" del postulado. La versión "débil" considera todos los resultados posibles en lugar de uno, y desemboca en un estado final descrito por el llamado "operador de densidad". [65] Realismo pitagórico y realismo cantoriano en la física cuántica no relativista de conocimiento del observador6. Aquí radica la famosa paradoja del gato de Schrödinger (1935), según la cual -si el sistema total evoluciona de acuerdo con la ecuación de Schrödinger- un hipotético felino podría encontrarse en un estado de superposición entre la vida y la muerte, ψ(gato) = (1/√2) ψ(gato vivo) + (1/√2) ψ(gato muerto), en una proporción del 50 % cada uno (Stapp 1971; Busch et ál. 1996). Esta paradoja ilustra una triple dificultad en la teoría cuántica; a saber, (a) la controvertida interpretación física atribuible a la función de onda, (b) la carencia de un criterio definido que marque la transición desde el mundo cuántico al mundo clásico, y (c) la posibilidad de que los sistemas físicos posean propiedades bien definidas en contra de las predicciones de la teoría cuántica que, por tanto, sería incompleta en el sentido expuesto por Einstein. De acuerdo con la posición realista adoptada en este trabajo, consideraremos en lo sucesivo que la función de estado en la teoría cuántica representa, al menos en algún sentido, ciertas características objetivas de los microbjetos, a los cuales nos referiremos en adelante como "cuantones" a fin de usar un término tan neutral como resulte posible (Bunge 1967a). Hay entonces dos visiones contrapuestas sobre el significado de la función de onda. La interpretación epistemológica afirma que esta contiene la información que un observador posee sobre un sistema cuántico; diversos observadores pueden tener información diferente sobre el mismo sistema cuántico. Parafraseando a Einstein, se tendría en este caso una descripción "incompleta" del sistema físico real. Por su parte, la interpretación ontológica sostiene que la función de onda codifica las propiedades físicas reales de un sistema cuántico. Por esta razón, todos los observadores7 que analicen de forma correcta el mismo sistema cuántico deben coincidir en el contenido físico -más allá de la forma matemática- de su función de onda. La cuestión pareció decidirse a finales de 2011 gracias a un artículo de Pusey et ál (2011) donde se presentaba un teorema -denominado ya "teorema PBR"- destinado a probar que la visión epistemológica es incorrecta. En la demostración del teorema PRB, estos autores establecen que si dos observadores utilizan dos funciones de onda diferentes representativas del mismo 6 Esto no es así si se adopta una interpretación ontológica (propensiva) de la probabilidad, como medida de una tendencia objetiva, aunque dicha interpretación sufre de diversos inconvenientes, como la dificultad de hallarle una pertinente extensión relativista. En todo caso, el problema filosófico de las interpretaciones de la probabilidad no se limita a la física cuántica. 7 A juicio de los autores del teorema PBR, el observador no tiene que ser macroscópico e incluso el "vacío cuántico" puede ser un observador válido. [66] Alemañ Berenguer, Rafael Andrés Revista Colombiana de Filosofía de la Ciencia 12.25 (2012 julio-diciembre): 61-82 sistema cuántico, porque parten de datos iniciales diferentes, entonces es posible construir un protocolo de medida en particular tal que los resultados físicos obtenidos difieran para ambos observadores. En concreto, para ciertas preparaciones del sistema cuántico, uno de los observadores afirmará que hay una probabilidad no nula de observar un resultado imposible (cuya probabilidad por construcción es siempre cero). Los autores del teorema PRB concluyen que dos observadores no pueden asignar dos funciones de onda diferentes al mismo sistema, aun cuando sean aparentemente compatibles con todas las medidas. Siempre resultaría posible demostrar que una de esas dos funciones carece de validez. Por tanto, la función de onda es "real" (lo que para estos autores significa ontológicamente independiente de los observadores) y no se trata de una mera elección epistemológica. Por otra parte, las teorías de variables ocultas, opuestas a la interpretación convencional de la física cuántica, sostienen que la conducta del electrón no es intrínsecamente fortuita e impredecible, sino que su aparente aleatoriedad se debería a factores físicos inadvertidos. La idea esencial que inspiraba esta alternativa había sido propuesta por Einstein, Podolsky y Rosen, lo que inspiró la llamada "paradoja EPR". En cuanto al tema que aquí nos atañe, el artículo que presenta la paradoja EPR comienza dando un criterio de completitud para cualquier teoría física. Una teoría se juzgará completa si "todo elemento de la realidad física ha de tener una contrapartida en la teoría física" (Einstein et ál. 1935, 777). Ahora bien, ¿qué consideraban un "elemento de la realidad" Einstein y sus colegas? Se trata de un punto esencial en el debate, y sobre ello se decía unas líneas después: "Si podomes predecir con certeza (es decir, con probabilidad igual a la unidad) el valor de una cantidad física sin perturbar el sistema en modo alguno, entonces existe un elemento de rea1idad física correspondiente a esa cantidad física" (Einstein et ál. 1935, 777). Semejante afirmación se presenta como una condición suficiente para atribuir realidad a una magnitud física, no como una definición rigurosa de la realidad física en sí misma. Sin embargo, multitud de experimentos en una serie iniciada por el científico francés Alain Aspect y sus colaboradores (Aspect et ál. 1982) parecen respaldar más allá de toda duda razonable esta última opinión, lo que confrontó a los físicos con el problema de explicar cómo es posible que una medición efectuada sobre un fotón afecte a otro tan alejado del primero que ninguna señal física pueda conectarlos. [67] Realismo pitagórico y realismo cantoriano en la física cuántica no relativista 3. ¿es inevitable el subjetivismo cuántico? Una respuesta imparcial a esta pregunta debería buscarse como se haría con cualquier otra teoría física, esto es, analizando los referentes del formalismo propio de dicha teoría. Y si obramos de ese modo, no hallaremos el menor rastro de "mentes", "observadores" o "conciencias" en el corazón de la física cuántica, más allá de la fraseología empleada por algunos autores. Sustituyendo la palabra "observable" -un legado del positivismo lógico dominante a comienzos del siglo XX- por "magnitud física", el ámbito de aplicación y el poder predictivo de la teoría cuántica quedan intactos. Y no puede ser de otra manera porque ni las referencias al yo ni a sus aptitudes para colapsar estados pertenecen en rigor a la teoría cuántica. Se trata de interpretaciones adventicias de los referentes de la física cuántica así como de sus procesos de medición (Bunge 1982, 69-70, 95-100). El papel desempeñado por los símbolos matemáticos es idéntico en la física clásica y en la cuántica. En ambos casos, se trata de conceptos formales cuyos referentes son las propiedades de los objetos físicos que componen el mundo natural (Bunge 1967b), aunque en muchos casos tales propiedades resulten asombrosas. Tampoco se justifica la opinión de que la teoría cuántica destierra la causalidad del corazón de la física. Únicamente debemos renunciar al determinismo laplaciano, pero no a la existencia de leyes naturales bien definidas (ecuaciones de evolución, como la de Schrödinger, o teoremas de conservación, como el de la energía) que obviamente también se dan en el mundo cuántico (Fock 1958). Las restricciones impuestas por las desigualdades de Heisenberg se refieren solo a la descripción clásica de los fenómenos subatómicos; la descripción puramente cuántica no está sometida a tales limitaciones. Por ejemplo, las distribuciones de probabilidad -una propiedad específicamente cuántica- pueden calcularse con precisión siempre creciente en proporción directa al refinamiento de nuestras teorías sobre el micromundo (Omelyanovskij et ál. 1972). No obstante, para salvar la noción realista clásica, se recurre a la intervención de un presunto sujeto cognoscente responsable de tales limitaciones. Pero sucede que para señalar los límites de validez en la aplicación de los conceptos clásicos al mundo cuántico no se necesita de subjetividad alguna; basta con prescripciones puramente físicas sin más referentes que los de la propia teoría (Bunge 1985, 79-95). Parece, pues, que sí es posible interpretar la teoría cuántica mediante una perspectiva realista y objetiva (Bunge 1977) que no considere su formalismo como un simple artificio matemático para pronosticar datos experimentales, [68] Alemañ Berenguer, Rafael Andrés Revista Colombiana de Filosofía de la Ciencia 12.25 (2012 julio-diciembre): 61-82 ni como un imparable generador de mundos alternativos, ni como expediente legitimador de una fantasmagórica intervención de la mente sobre la materia. La física cuántica, en suma, no es necesariamente positivista, contra la opinión todavía hoy manifestada en los escritos de algunos de sus expertos (ÁlvarezGalindo y García-Alcaine 2005). La física clásica, es bien cierto, se ha identificado siempre con las cuatro demandas típicas de la filosofía realista (Rescher 1987, 121-125): (R1) Sustancialidad: identidad permanente de las cosas físicas. (R2) Fisicalidad: todo objeto existente debe ser susceptible de incorporación al esquema físico de la naturaleza. (R3) Accesibilidad: los objetos físicos pueden ser conocidos de modo parcial, inexacto y siempre perfectible. (R4) Independencia existencial: la existencia de las cosas físicas es autónoma con respecto al entorno (observadores inteligentes, otros objetos físicos, entre otros). Rechazar los enunciados (R1) y (R3) supondría en la práctica vedar toda posibilidad de discusión racional sobre la naturaleza, por lo cual no insistiremos en ellos. Por el contrario, el requisito (R2) se ha confundido, tradicionalmente y sin necesidad de ello, con el de ubicabilidad; es decir, que todo objeto posee una localización concreta -"puntual", diríamos- en el espacio y el tiempo8. La teoría cuántica renuncia a la ubicabilidad, es cierto, pero en modo alguno abandona también la fisicalidad. Sucede que el esquema cuántico del mundo es radicalmente diverso del clásico, aunque no por ello es menos real. Por último, (R4) es el que mayor controversia ha generado, en cuanto que los resultados de los experimentos sobre correlaciones EPR se han interpretado erróneamente como una negación de este requisito. Los observadores someten a prueba las distribuciones probabilísticas pronosticadas por la teoría cuántica con independencia de los observadores; sus experimentos las confirman en todo caso, pero no las crean. 8 Se considera concretamente la ubicación espacio-temporal -cuando el problema del valor definido concierne a todas las propiedades de los sistemas cuánticos- porque la ubicabilidad, con su transposición clásica inmediata (la posición de un objeto), fue una de las cuestiones que más inflamó los primeros debates sobre la interpretación de la física cuántica. [69] Realismo pitagórico y realismo cantoriano en la física cuántica no relativista 4. Realismo "pitagóRico" y Realismo "cantoRiano" En el corazón de la mayoría de las controversias sobre el realismo y el idealismo en la interpretación de los bien confirmados fenómenos cuánticos, parece hallarse un supuesto implícito al que pocas veces se presta la atención debida. Recordemos que, según el criterio EPR, una propiedad física se considera "real" si posee un valor concreto expresado formalmente mediante un número real. Ya que la violación experimental del teorema de Bell indica que semejante opinión es insostenible, mediante un silogismo implícito no pocos autores han inferido de ello que la teoría cuántica refuta el realismo como trasfondo filosófico fundamental de la ciencia física. Sin duda quienes así piensan tienen razón si reducimos el significado de "realismo" a lo que, en sentido estricto, deberíamos denominar "realismo fisicista clásico", a saber: la suposición de que las propiedades de los sistemas físicos solo pueden quedar matemáticamente definidas mediante números reales concretos, negando toda legitimidad a cualquier otra opción. ... Si los proyectores, las magnitudes, no pueden estar completamente definidos, habrá que aceptar una imagen de la realidad microscópica en la que las cosas están en situación de indefinición, de cierta ambigüedad. . . . No puede mantenerse la imagen de un mundo completamente determinado. No podemos pensar que la realidad existe ahí afuera sin que la observemos (Cassinello 2007, 47). Nótese el descarnado salto lógico que se da en la cita precedente, pues de la indefinición de las magnitudes cuánticas se pretende deducir la imposibilidad de una realidad extramental no observada. Teniendo en cuenta que el realismo clásico suele abarcar otras premisas, como el requisito de separabilidad (refutada por las correlaciones EPR), sería más adecuado buscar un nombre específico para este aspecto concreto relacionado con la expresión cuantitativa de las propiedades físicas. Tal vez una denominación apropiada sería "realismo pitagórico" por cuanto la clave de la distinción reside en la naturaleza del objeto matemático -números reales- que se hace corresponder necesariamente con cada propiedad física (aunque Pitágoras hubiese abominado de este tipo de números). Esquemáticamente expresado, en el realismo pitagórico se afirma que a cada propiedad p de un objeto físico cualquiera O corresponde un número real x al que llamamos valor de dicha propiedad, de lo cual deducimos que p solo tiene existencia objetiva si existe un x con el cual hacerla corresponder. [70] Alemañ Berenguer, Rafael Andrés Revista Colombiana de Filosofía de la Ciencia 12.25 (2012 julio-diciembre): 61-82 Por tanto, con los argumentos previos se nos invita a aceptar subrepticiamente una cadena de implicaciones muy determinada: Realismo ⇔ Realismo pitagórico ≡ Asignación de valores concretos (números reales) a las propiedades físicas. Teniendo en cuenta que las magnitudes cuánticas carecen en general de estos valores concretos, se nos exige la renuncia al realismo en su sentido más amplio. Sin embargo, hay una alternativa muy clara que surge con naturalidad de la propia teoría cuántica, según la cual bastaría con admitir que las magnitudes físicas solo pueden asumir conjuntos de valores, continuos o discretos, en lugar de valores únicos y aritméticamente aquilatados (sharp values). En este caso, asignar a la propiedad física p -antes de ser medida- un subconjunto de los números reales S, que bien podría ser un intervalo continuo (cuando los valores permitidos a una magnitud cuántica forman una serie continua) o un conjunto discreto (si el rango permitido recorre valores discontinuos), no debería considerarse menos real que la tradición clásica consistente en asociar valores numéricos unívocos a cada propiedad física de un sistema. La alternativa que aquí se defiende implica aceptar que la superposición cuántica de estados permitidos para un cierto sistema es tan real como cuando se encuentra en un autoestado cuyo autovalor para una propiedad determinada coincide con un resultado clásico. Es decir, para una propiedad física cualquiera, las superposiciones de valores permitidos, continuos o discretos, son tan objetivamente reales como los estados unívocamente caracterizados por un autovalor tras efectuar una medición. Es de crucial importancia destacar que con esta decisión estamos otorgando un valor ontológico, no solo gnoseológico, a los conjuntos de valores de las magnitudes cuánticas. Una elección tal merece su propia denominación que, por contraste con el nombre escogido con anterioridad, podría denominarse "realismo cantoriano", dado que ahora operamos en principio con conjuntos de valores que pueden ser tanto continuos como discretos. Con ello han de considerarse objetivamente reales las superposiciones de estados, y por tanto objetivamente real también la situación en que una propiedad física no se caracteriza por un valor numérico unívoco sino por un conjunto -continuo o discreto- de valores posibles, cada uno de ellos multiplicado por un coeficiente que determina su grado de participación en la superposición global. Para cada cuádruplo 〈O, p, t, f 〉, donde O es un objeto o sistema físico cualquiera, p una propiedad física de O, t un instante del tiempo y f un marco de referencia, la física clásica asignaba siempre, en principio, un número real x ∈ R. Podía darse el caso de que las técnicas experimentales no pudiesen [71] Realismo pitagórico y realismo cantoriano en la física cuántica no relativista medir esa magnitud concreta, tal vez porque el objeto en cuestión formase parte de un colectivo muy numeroso (como en la mecánica estadística), pero nunca se ponía en duda que tal propiedad poseía por definición un valor numérico aquilatado. En la física cuántica, por el contrario, a ese mismo cuádruplo se le puede asignar en general un conjunto de valores S, continuo o discreto, el cual queda reducido tras el proceso de medida a un único valor que en ocasiones coincide con un valor clásico de algunas magnitudes físicas. Por primera vez en la historia de la ciencia, encontramos una teoría cuya cuantificación de las propiedades fundamentales de la naturaleza no se realiza primariamente mediante números individuales. Antes de la teoría cuántica, siempre se daba por sentado que el uso de las probabilidades y la estadística compensaba una dificultad de cálculo debida a nuestra ignorancia de la gran cantidad de factores implicados. Pero, después de la teoría cuántica, sabemos que en la naturaleza puede haber probabilidades primarias irreducibles que no encubren nuestra ignorancia sobre multitud de datos bien determinados. Si hasta ahora, durante la evolución temporal de cada magnitud clásica se le asignaba un valor numérico en cada instante del tiempo, en el mundo cuántico a cada instante corresponde todo un conjunto de valores del cual podemos obtener ulteriormente una distribución de probabilidad mediante los procedimientos usados en esta teoría. Por eso, la teoría cuántica sí es realmente extraña comparada con la física clásica porque sus referentes básicos son entidades sin parangón en el mundo macroscópico clásico. Estas puntualizaciones sirven como defensa del realismo no clásico frente a los intentos de asentar una postura positivista radical en el regazo de la física cuántica (Gleason 1957; Jauch & Piron 1963). Uno de ellos se apoya en el teorema desarrollado en 1967 por Simon Kocher y Ernst Specker sobre la compatibilidad de los valores observables (Kochen & Specker 1967), cuya interpretación vulgarizada afirma que los resultados de las magnitudes físicas observables en un sistema físico "no existen" antes de ser medidos (ÁlvarezGalindo & García-Alcaine 2005; Cassinello 2007). La verdadera finalidad del teorema es demostrar la contextualidad cuántica: el hecho de que la adjudicación simultánea de un valor preciso a todos los observables (magnitudes físicas) de un sistema cuántico conduce a una contradicción (para espacios de Hilbert de dimensión mayor o igual a tres) y, por tanto, la adjudicación simultánea de un valor preciso a los observables de un sistema cuántico solo puede efectuarse consistentemente para los observables de un contexto (Bub 1997). Sin embargo, persiste una línea de pensamiento para la cual antes de admitir la existencia de un valor concreto de una propiedad física se considera un requi- [72] Alemañ Berenguer, Rafael Andrés Revista Colombiana de Filosofía de la Ciencia 12.25 (2012 julio-diciembre): 61-82 sito indispensable la exigencia de que dicho valor no dependa de la mencionada contextualidad. El criterio de realismo EPR, por ejemplo, se opone a esa interpretación contextual. El corazón de la controversia radica, una vez más, en lo que entendamos por "existir antes de ser medido". Si concebimos únicamente datos clásicos -expresados como números reales- la respuesta es negativa. Pero si atribuimos a las propiedades cuánticas un carácter matemático distinto -no hay valores individuales antes de la medición, sino conjuntos de tales valores-, entonces las magnitudes físicas existen objetivamente en todo momento aunque no siempre como números reales aquilatados9. Tomemos el caso típico idealizado de un cuantón en una caja unidimensional, que pese a su carácter puramente ilustrativo servirá bien a los propósitos de esta discusión. Sea ψ(x) la función de estado de ese cuantón, con las consabidas condiciones de contorno, de cuyo cuadrado obtenemos la densidad de probabilidad de localización |ψ(x)|2. Un positivista diría que el cuantón no posee un valor concreto de la propiedad "posición" hasta que es medido, y a consecuencia de ello infiere que dicha propiedad no es real. Ahora bien, si aceptamos el realismo cantoriano, debería replicarse que en efecto el cuantón carece de una localización concreta -que sería una exigencia típica del realismo pitagórico-, pero aun así a la propiedad "posición" corresponde todo el conjunto continuo de puntos permitidos del espacio dentro de la caja, en cada uno de los cuales la densidad de probabilidad asociada se calcula mediante el cuadrado de la función de onda. Tener en cuenta solamente la posición equivale a elegir un solo contexto, de manera que la discusión de la contextualidad cuántica no procede. Cuando se quieren determinar diversas propiedades incompatibles del sistema a la vez, por ejemplo la posición y el impulso, resulta entonces que cada uno de los respectivos conjuntos de valores -Sq y Sp, por ejemplo- viene estipulado por las bien conocidas desigualdades de Heisenberg, dependiendo del modo en que se haya preparado físicamente el sistema en cuestión. ¿Qué sucede cuando tenemos un sistema cuántico individual en una superposición de dos estados? Escojamos por simplicidad el caso de un cuantón en una combinación lineal de dos estados energéticos discretos, ψE = c1f1 + c2f2. Tradicionalmente se afirmaría que los cuadrados de los coeficientes de esta combinación, |c1| 2 y |c2| 2, representan tan solo la probabilidad de encontrar el sistema en uno de esos dos estados al efectuar una medición, sin otro signi9 Cada estado puro es una combinación lineal no trivial de autovectores de magnitudes cuánticas con las cuales el operador de densidad asociado (la proyección unidimensional) no conmuta. Por ello, los valores de esas magnitudes quedan indefinidos. [73] Realismo pitagórico y realismo cantoriano en la física cuántica no relativista ficado físico más que el meramente instrumental. Desde la perspectiva del realismo cantoriano, sin embargo, la propia superposición posee valor ontológico, y los cuadrados de sus coeficientes expresan la participación de cada uno de esos estados componentes en el proceso -todavía desconocido- que opera la transición hasta un resultado único (autovalor), el denominado "colapso de la función de onda". 5. RepeRcusiones ontológicas Al considerar la cuestión de qué podría constituir una condición necesaria para que una propiedad fuese juzgada real, no estaría de más detenerse a reflexionar someramente sobre el significado de términos como "real". Una cosa (en latín res) posee la facultad de hacerse notar ejerciendo algún tipo de influencia a su alrededor; esto es, actúa de alguna manera sobre su entorno. Por tanto, el carácter real de una propiedad perteneciente a un objeto implica la capacidad de influenciar otros objetos (en especial, los aparatos de medida) de una forma típica de esa propiedad. Esta condición necesaria y suficiente para la realidad de los objetos físicos y sus propiedades aquí sugerida concuerda con ciertos requerimientos de la experiencia objetiva, de espíritu kantiano, basados en las categorías de sustancia, causalidad e interacción (Mittelstaedt 1975; 1994). En nuestro caso, las propiedades de interés son las magnitudes físicas de un sistema cuántico. En ausencia de una cierta propiedad, la acción del sistema sobre el entorno -su conducta, en suma- será distinta de la que exhibiría con esa propiedad presente. Aplicado al contexto de las mediciones, en el cual la interacción se da entre el sistema y una parte de su entorno (el dispositivo de medida), esto significa que una propiedad se considerará real cuando la medida proporcione el valor de la magnitud sin ambigüedad. Esta prescripción, que ha recibido el nombre de condición de calibración (Busch et ál. 1996), se adopta como criterio definitivo en el reconocimiento de que un proceso determinado ha sido de hecho la medida de una cierta magnitud cuántica. Su incorporación en la física cuántica se hace posible si el carácter real de una propiedad se identifica con el hecho de que el sistema se halle en el autoestado asociado. Los teoremas de irresolubilidad iniciados por Wigner (Busch & Shimony 1996; Busch 1998) recogieron algunas interesantes implicaciones de esta cuestión. Estos teoremas presuponen una dinámica lineal y unitaria para los estados cuánticos, el criterio de realidad suministrado por el vínculo autoestado-autovalor, y la regla de que todo proceso físico de medida ha de finalizar [74] Alemañ Berenguer, Rafael Andrés Revista Colombiana de Filosofía de la Ciencia 12.25 (2012 julio-diciembre): 61-82 con un resultado concreto. Según los teoremas de irresolubilidad, estos tres requisitos tomados en conjunto desembocan en contradicciones. Una razón más, tal vez, para modificar el criterio de realidad en la dirección señalada por el realismo cantoriano. En síntesis, las ideas que en la actualidad configuran la teoría cuántica de la medida sugieren la adopción del vínculo autovalor/autoestado como el criterio básico de realidad en la física cuántica. Pero se trata precisamente de un criterio legado por el realismo clásico (pitagórico) que en modo alguno resulta obligatorio admitir. Aceptando desde una posición realista cantoriana que los estados de superposición expresan una ontología propia, es decir, poseen su propio estatuto de realidad, se extinguirían los problemas asociados al debate sobre el realismo en los objetos cuánticos. Esta alternativa ontológica debe distinguirse con claridad de las versiones remozadas de la dicotomía aristotélica entre "potencia" y "acto". El término "potencialidad" fue recuperado por Heisenberg (1958, 53) para expresar la tendencia de los fenómenos cuánticos a actualizarse durante las medidas. Una idea similar fue defendida por Popper (1959) con la palabra "propensividad", refiriéndose a las probabilidades cuánticas como tendencias inmanentes de los microbjetos. Desde la perspectiva del realismo cantoriano, no hay tendencias ni potencialidades puesto que las superposiciones lineales de los autoestados gozan por sí mismas de una consideración ontológica de realidad con pleno derecho, y no remiten a un devenir que convierte las potencias en actos, ni a propensiones inherentes a la intimidad incognoscible de los cuantones. En todo caso, del realismo cuántico también se desprende la capacidad de encajar en su marco interpretativo el indeterminismo de los resultados de las medidas realizadas sobre magnitudes cuánticas. Si una propiedad carece de un valor concreto -en el sentido antes expuesto-, todo lo que una medida puede hacer es inducir el acaecimiento aleatorio de uno de los posibles resultados. Es decir, el resultado individual de la media no viene impuesto por causa identificable alguna, si bien dicho resultado individual sí obedece a una causalidad de tipo estocástico (la regla de Born). Esta idea descansa sobre la premisa de que las medidas y la obtención de sus correspondientes resultados son procesos físicos correctamente descritos y explicados por la propia teoría cuántica, lo cual está muy lejos de hallarse claro en el momento presente (Mittelstaedt 1998). [75] Realismo pitagórico y realismo cantoriano en la física cuántica no relativista 6. cuestiones pendientes La interpretación expuesta hasta este punto deja sin respuesta algunos de los interrogantes esenciales de la teoría cuántica, tres de los cuales -tal vez los más relevantes- la acompañaron desde sus inicios. El primero de ellos se refiere a la naturaleza física de la función de onda, o más objetivamente, función de estado cuántico. Sigue pendiente esclarecer a qué clase de realidad conciernen las propiedades formales de dichas funciones, en buena parte a debido a que las funciones Y se consideran pertenecientes a un espacio funcional abstracto (espacio de Hilbert) con el cual nuestro espacio-tiempo físico guarda una relación muy lejana y controvertida. Por tanto, queda todavía en la penumbra dilucidar cuál es el referente físico de las funciones de estado típicas de la teoría cuántica. Tampoco se aclara dónde podemos encontrar la genuina transición desde el ámbito cuántico al clásico, cuestión ejemplificada por la archiconocida paradoja del gato de Schrödinger10. No sabemos cómo se produce -si es que se produce- el así llamado "colapso" de la función de onda, por la cual una superposición lineal de diversos estados se reduce a uno solo, aquél que de hecho obtenemos en la medida. Obviamente, si admitimos un encadenamiento de sucesivos colapsos nos veremos enfrentados a un claro dilema: o bien no hay un colapso final y todo el universo sigue evolucionado según la ecuación de Schrödinger (interpretación de "muchos mundos" de Everett), o bien hemos de poner al final la conciencia de un observador (versión del "amigo de Wigner") y cargar sobre ella la responsabilidad de restaurar la realidad. Pero con ello tan solo probamos nuestra ignorancia del colapso cuántico como proceso físico genuino, independiente de recursos extrafísicos, como supuestas mentes o conciencias reductoras de la función de estado. La recurrente mención de los observadores o los actos de observación ha arraigado en la literatura especializada hasta el punto de que su improcedencia pasa completamente desapercibida: 10 Pero el colapso no es suficiente para explicar la transición de lo cuántico a lo clásico: una superposición de dos autoestados del espín en la dirección x, por ejemplo, se convierte en uno de los dos autoestados debido al colapso, pero no puede decirse aún que se haya pasado al mundo clásico puesto que el espín es una magnitud cuántica sin análogo clásico alguno. Por ello, la discusión se refiere a aquellas magnitudes cuánticas con una contrapartida clásica. El espín no satisface dicha condición, aunque -si bien puede incluirse por puro expediente empírico como un número cuántico más- surge de una combinación entre requisitos cuánticos y relativistas. Este trabajo, no obstante, se ciñe a la cuantización no relativista efectuada tomando variables clásicas y sustituyéndolas por operadores cuánticos. [76] Alemañ Berenguer, Rafael Andrés Revista Colombiana de Filosofía de la Ciencia 12.25 (2012 julio-diciembre): 61-82 El teorema [de Kochen y Specker] que hemos demostrado prueba que las propiedades de los sistemas microscópicos no están defi nidas hasta que nosotros las observamos. Los proyectores, las magnitudes, permanecen en estado de indefinición hasta que los observamos, los medimos . . . (Cassinello 2007, 47). Basta con un somero examen del citado teorema (Cabello et ál. 1996) para comprobar que en su formulación rigurosa solo aparecen nociones como la de proyector, espacio n-dimensional o magnitud física. Por ninguna parte se mencionan observadores, actos de medida o algo similar (Bunge 1971). Por último, otra de las dificultades que no resuelve la adopción de un realismo cantoriano como base interpretativa de la física cuántica involucra la conciliación entre las características propias de los fenómenos cuánticos y los requerimientos derivados de la relatividad especial. Pese a las repetidas afirmaciones de que la teoría cuántica de campos resuelve esta cuestión, lo cierto es que no se llega a trazar una imagen plenamente espacio-temporal de los sistemas físicos en ella tratados (Bohm & Hiley 1993). Sin duda diversos teoremas prohíben la transmisión de señales a velocidades hiperlumínicas mediante las correlaciones EPR, pero tampoco cabe dudar que nadie ha logrado obtener una genuina descripción covariante del colapso de la función de estado en términos del espacio-tiempo de Minkowski. De hecho, observadores en movimiento mutuamente inercial que participen en un experimento de tipo EPR, aunque no puedan comunicarse a velocidades mayores que c, obtendrán de sus respectivas medidas (y consiguientes colapsos de la función de estado) imágenes del mundo físico difícilmente compatibles entre sí. La solución a este problema suele esperarse de una futura gravitación cuántica, fundada sobre algún tipo de estructura cuántica para el espacio-tiempo, de modo que el espaciotiempo clásico y los objetos clásicos emergerían como configuraciones a gran escala. Mediante las álgebras C*, por ejemplo, las coordenadas espacio-temporales aspiran a convertirse en variables cuántica, dando lugar con ello al concepto de espacio-tiempo cuántico (Doplicher et ál. 1995; Bahns et ál. 2003). En tanto las coordenadas espacio-temporales devengan no conmutativas, el marco natural para las medidas espacio-temporales podría ser el perfilado por el realismo cantoriano. 7. conclusiones Las interpretaciones idealistas y subjetivistas de la teoría cuántica en cualquiera de sus versiones suelen argumentarse a partir de un supuesto implícito [77] Realismo pitagórico y realismo cantoriano en la física cuántica no relativista relacionado con la asignación de valores numéricos unívocos a las propiedades físicas que se juzgan inherentes a cada sistema físico (realismo pitagórico). Este problema puede soslayarse sin más que aceptar el valor ontológico de los conjuntos, discretos o continuos, de valores propios de las magnitudes cuánticas (realismo cantoriano). De ese modo, no resultará obligado considerar irreal una propiedad física por el hecho de que carezca de un valor concreto estipulado mediante un número real. Aun así, quedan en pie los problemas relacionados con el significado físico de la función de estado, la reducción o "colapso" de dicha función, así como la incoherencia entre la descripción espacio-temporal de los fenómenos físicos, típica de la relatividad especial, y la descripción estocástica no espacio-temporal, propia de la física cuántica. Podría ocurrir que tanto la física clásica como la cuántica fuesen casos límites de una teoría más general y abarcadora, que sería la responsable de asignar distintos dominios de validez a estas dos teorías. Uno de los escenarios intelectuales donde se persigue este objetivo surge al aplicar el formalismo de las álgebras C* a la formulación de teorías físicas. Con este método, la estructura del álgebra de las magnitudes físicas -"observables", para muchos autores- puede ser o bien abeliana (representativa de las situaciones clásicas), o bien irreducible (fenómenos cuánticos), o incluso intermedia. Este último caso parece corresponderse con sistemas cuánticos en los que operan reglas de superselección, que pueden aflorar en teorías relativistas de campos cuánticos o en teorías cuánticas de sistemas macroscópicos. En suma, es perfectamente posible una interpretación realista y no local de la física cuántica (Bunge 1967b), considerada a su vez como una teoría completa -en el sentido de suponer la inexistencia de variables ocultas subyacentes- aunque no definitiva, pues no permanecerá como la teoría final de los procesos microfísicos, aunque solo sea porque habrá de modificarse para clarificar el colapso de la función de estado e incorporar la gravitación. Parece excesivo pretender que la teoría cuántica en solitario -con su cortejo de problemas interpretativos- es el marco fundamental y último para la explicación de la realidad física, como en algún momento afirmó Heisenberg. Sin duda, fenómenos tan asombrosos como las correlaciones EPR, y otros del mismo jaez, nos obligarán antes o después a modificar nuestra concepción de la naturaleza mucho más radicalmente que la propia revolución cuántica. [78] Alemañ Berenguer, Rafael Andrés Revista Colombiana de Filosofía de la Ciencia 12.25 (2012 julio-diciembre): 61-82 tRabajos citados Albert, David & Loewer, Barry. "Wanted dead or alive: two attempts to solve Schrödinger's paradox", Proceedings of the Philosophy of Science Association 1 (1990): 277-285. Álvarez-Galindo, Gabriel & García-Alcaine, Guillermo. "Localidad einsteiniana y mecánica cuántica". Revista Española de Física 19.1 (2005): 43-50. Aspect, Alain; Dalibar, Jean & Roger, Gerard. "Experimental tests of Bell s inequalities using time-varying analyzers". Physiscal Revew Letters 49 (1982): 1084-1087. Bahns, Dorothea; Doplicher, Sergio; Fredenhagen, Klaus & Piacitelli, Gherardo. "Ultraviolet Finite Quantum Field Theory on Quantum Spacetime". Commun. Math. Phys. 237.1-2 (2003): 221-241. Bell, John S. Lo decible y lo indecible en mecánica cuántica. Madrid: Alianza, 1990. Bene, Gyula. & Dieks, Dennis. "A perspectival version of the modal interpretation of quantum mechanics and the origin of macroscopic behavior", Foundations of Physics 32 (2002): 645-671. Berkovitz, Joseph & Hemmo, Meir. "Can modal interpretations of quantum mechanics be reconciled with relativity?". Philosophy of Science 72 (2005): 789-801. Birkhoff, Garrett & Von Neumann, John. "The Logic of Quantum Mechanics". Annals of Mathematics 37 (1936): 823-843. Bohm, David & Hiley, Basil. The Undivided Universe. An Ontological Interpretation of Quantum Theory. Londres: Routledge, 1993. Bub, Jeffrey. Interpreting the Quantum World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. Bunge, Mario. Foundations of Physics, New York: Spinger-Verlag, 1967a. -. Quantum theory and reality. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1967b. -, ed. Problems in the foundations of physics. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1971. -. The Furniture of the World. Dordrecht-Boston: Reidel, 1977. -. Filosofía de la Física. Barcelona: Ariel, 1982. -. Epistemología. Barcelona: Ariel, 1985. [79] Realismo pitagórico y realismo cantoriano en la física cuántica no relativista Busch, Paul. "Can «Unsharp Objectification» Solve the Quantum Measurement Problem?". Int. J. Theor. Phys. 37.1 (1998): 241-247. Busch, Paul; Lahti, Pekka. & Mittelstaedt, Peter. The Quantum Theory of Measurement. 2a ed. Berlin: Springer, 1996. Busch, Paul. & Shimony, Abner. "Insolubility of the quantum measurement problem for unsharp observables". Stud. Hist. Phil. Mod. Phys. 27.4 (1996) 397-404. Cabello, Adán; Estebaranz, José M & Garcia, Guillermo. "Bell-KochenSpecker theorem: A proof with 18 vectors". Physics Letters. A 212 (1996): 183-187. Cassinello, Andrés. "La indeterminación en mecánica cuántica". Revista de la Real Sociedad Española de Física 21.4 (2007): 42-53. D'Espagnat, Bernard. On Physics and Philosophy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006. Dickson, Michael. "Wavefunction tails in the modal interpretation". Proceedings of the Philosophy of Science Association 1 (1994): 366-376. Doplicher, Sergio; Fredenhagen, Klaus & Roberts, John E. "The quantum structure of spacetime at the Planck scale and quantum fields". Commun. Math. Phys. 172.1 (1995): 187-220. Einstein, Albert; Podolsky, Boris & Rosen, Nathan. "Can quantum-mechanical description of reality be considered complete?". Physical Review 47 (1935): 777-780. Elby, Andrew. "Why «modal» interpretations of quantum mechanics don't solve the measurement problem". Foundations of Physics Letters 6 (1993): 5-19. Fock, Vladimir A. "Remarks on Bohr's article on his discussions with Einstein". Usp. Fiz. Nauk, 66 (1958): 599-607. Gleason, Andrew M. "Measures on the Closed Subspaces of a Hilbert Space". Journal of Mathematics and Mechanics 6 (1957): 885-893. Gottfried, Kurt. "Does Quantum Mechanics Carry the Seeds of its own Destruction?" Quantum Reflections. Eds. D. Amati D, J. Ellis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. 165-185. Halvorson, Hans & Clifton, Rob. "No Place for Particles in Relativistic Quantum Theory?". Philosophy of Science 69 (2002): 1-28. [80] Alemañ Berenguer, Rafael Andrés Revista Colombiana de Filosofía de la Ciencia 12.25 (2012 julio-diciembre): 61-82 Heisenberg, Werner. Physics and Philosophy. New York: Harper & Row, 1958. Hiley, Basil J. "Foundations of Quantum Mechanics". Contemporary Physics 18 (1977): 411-414. Jammer, Max. The Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics: The Interpretations of Quantum Mechanics. An Historical Perspective. New York: John Wiley & Sons, 1974. -. The Conceptual Development of Quantum Mechanics. New York: McGrawHill, 1996. Jauch, Josef M & Piron, Constantin. "Can Hidden variables be Excluded in Quantum Mechanics?". Helvetica Physica Acta 36 (1963): 827-837. Kochen, Simon & Specker, Ernst. "The Problem of Hidden Variables in Quantum Mechanics". Journal of Mathematics and Mechanics 17 (1967): 59-87. Mackey, George. The Mathematical Foundations of Quantum Mechanics. New York: Benjamin, 1963. Mittelstaedt, Peter. Philosophical Problems of Modern Physics. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1975. -. "The Constitution of Objects in Kant's Philosophy and in Modern Physics". Kant and Contemporary Epistemology. Ed. P. Parrini. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1994. 169-181. -. The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics and the Measurement Process. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Musgrave, Alan. "Discussion: Realism About What?". Philosophy of Science 59 (1992): 691-697. Omelyanovskij, Mykhailo E; Tagliagambe, Silvano & Geymonat, Ludovico. L' interpretazione Materialistica della Mecánica Quantistica. Milán: Feltrineli, 1972. Popper, Karl. "The Propensity Interpretation of Probability", British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 10 (1959): 25-42. Pusey, Matthew; Barrett, Jonathan & Rudolph, Terry. "The quantum state cannot be interpreted statistically". Quantum Physics (2011). En línea. <http://xxx.lanl.gov/abs/1111.3328v1>. Rescher N. Scientific Realism. A Critical Reappraisal. Dordrecht: Reidel, 1987. [81] Realismo pitagórico y realismo cantoriano en la física cuántica no relativista Schroedinger, Erwin. "Die gegenwärtige Situation in der Quantenmechanik", Naturwissenschaften 23 (1935): 807-812; 823-838; 844-849. Stapp, Henry P. "S-Matrix Interpretation of Quantum Theory", Physical Review D 3 (1971): 1303-1320. Van Fraassen, Bas. "The Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen paradox", Synthese 29 (1974) 291-309. -. Quantum Mechanics. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1991. Von Neumann, John. Mathematische Grundlagen der Quantenmechanik. Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1932. Wheeler, John A & Zurek, Wojciech H., eds. Quantum Theory and Measurement. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983. | {
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Das Verhältnis von Selbstwerdung und Gott bei Sören Kierkegaard – eine kritische Bestandsaufnahme Thomas Park Publication Note This is a draft prior to publication. The forthcoming publication will be available in Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook. (https://www.degruyter.com/view/j/kier) Abstract In his Fear and Trembling Søren Kierkegaard (alias Johannes de Silentio) wrote that Abraham wanted to sacrifice Isaac for God's sake as well as for his own sake. Drawing mainly on what Kierkegaard wrote (alias Anti-Climacus) in his Sickness unto Death I disclose that Kierkegaard construes Abraham as someone who becomes a true self, that is, as someone who becomes transparent before God. What this means and how our relationship to God is supposed to be involved in the process of becoming a self is the focus of my paper. While various papers have been written on that topic, my aim here is to give the most charitable interpretation of Kierkegaard's theses and the theological concepts involved. In Kierkegaards Furcht und Zittern (veröffentlicht unter den Pseudonym Johannes de Silentio) heisst es, dass Abraham Isaak um Gottes Willen und durchaus identisch damit um seiner selbst willen opfern wollte. 1 Wollte Abraham seinen Sohn denn nicht aus reinem Gehorsam gegenüber Gott opfern? Was für intrinsische Gründe könnte Abraham denn sonst noch für diese Tat gehabt haben? Was in Furcht und Zittern nur angedeutet wird, macht Kierkegaard (unter dem Pseudonym Anti-Climacus) in seinem Buch Die Krankheit zum Tode explizit. Er behauptet, dass es eine Verbindung des Selbst mit Gott gibt. Wie diese nach Kierkegaard 1 Vgl. SKS 4, 153 / FZ, 64. aussieht und v.a. inwieweit man durch ein Verhältnis zu Gott man selbst wird, möchte ich in diesem Artikel kritisch begutachten. I. Das Selbst Um die Beziehung Gottes zur Selbstwerdung bei Kierkegaard zu klären, muss erst darauf eingegangen werden, was dieser als ‚Selbst' versteht. Kierkegaards berühmte Definition besagt: „Das Selbst ist ein Verhältnis, das sich zu sich selbst verhält, oder ist das an dem Verhältnisse, dass das Verhältnis sich zu sich selbst verhält"2 . Kierkegaard bezieht sich, wie er in den folgenden Sätzen schreibt, auf die Tatsache, dass zum Menschen sowohl ein Körper als auch eine Seele gehören und dass man sich auf beide beziehen kann.3 Merk-würdig ist Kierkegaards Unterscheidung zwischen Seele auf der einen Seite, und Selbst bzw. Geist auf der anderen Seite 4 , denn wenn ‚Seele' ein Sammelbegriff für alle mentalen Phänomene ist, würde man erwarten, dass das Selbst ein Teil der Seele ist. Was Kierkegaard selbst unter ‚Seele' versteht, macht er nicht explizit. Disse vermutet, dass Kierkegaard darunter v.a. die menschlichen Triebe und Gefühle verstand. 5 Und was auch immer Kierkegaard mit ‚Selbst' meint, sicher ist, dass er damit weder Körper noch Seele noch 2 SKS 11, 129 / KT, 8. 3 Im Folgenden wird versucht, auf die komplizierte Terminologie Kierkegaards zu verzichten, da eine Erläuterung der mehrdeutigen, unklaren und z.T. theologisch vermittelten (vgl. Michael Theunissen, „Anthropologie und Theologie bei Kierkegaard", in Kierkegaard Studies. Monograph Series 1, hg. von Niels Jørgen Cappelørn und Hermann Deuser, Berlin und New York 1997, S. 182ff.) Bestandteile des Selbst (Unendlichkeit und Endlichkeit, Möglichkeit und Notwendigkeit, Ewigkeit und Zeitlichkeit) den Rahmen dieses Artikels sprengen würde. Im Folgenden konzentriere ich mich deshalb v.a. auf das Selbst als Synthese von Körper und Seele sowie von Abhängigkeit und Freiheit. Vgl. SKS 11, 145 / KT, 25. 4 In Abgrenzung zur Seele beschreibt Kierkegaard das Selbst auch als Geist; vgl. SKS 11, 129 / KT, 8. 5 Vgl. Jörg Disse, „Menschliche Psyche und Gottesverhältnis: Kierkegaard versus Freud", Theologie und Philosophie, Bd. 78, 2003, S. 520. Vgl. auch Jörg Disse, Kierkegaards Phänomenologie der Freiheitserfahrung, Freiburg und München 1991, S. 88, wo Disse (noch) annahm, dass sich ‚Seele' bei Kierkegaard sowohl auf die Empfindungen und Gefühle als auch auf das Denken und Wollen des Individuums bezieht. deren Kombination meint. „Das Selbst ist nicht das Verhältnis, sondern dass das Verhältnis sich zu sich selbst verhält"6. Der Mensch ist Körper und Seele, wisse aber gleichzeitig, dass er dieses Miteinander der zwei verschiedenen Dinge ist. Er gehe in diesen also nicht auf, sondern könne sich dazu verhalten. Solche Formulierungen lassen vermuten, dass mit ‚Selbst' Selbstbewusstsein, also das Vermögen, Gegenstand des eigenen Bewusstseins zu sein, gemeint ist. Aus dem, was folgt, wird aber deutlich werden, dass das ‚Selbst' nicht einfach für solch ein kognitives Vermögen steht, sondern teleologisch und theologisch verstanden wird: als ein Streben oder Wollen, dessen von Gott bestimmte Aufgabe es ist, sich selbst zu verwirklichen.7 Das ist wichtig, weil manche Interpreten Kierkegaard so lesen, als ob er uns (unter pseudonymer Autorenschaft) eine nicht-theologische, phänomenologische Beschreibung dessen liefert, wie sich menschliche Freiheit ausdrückt, nämlich in Angst (in Der Begriff Angst) oder Verzweiflung (in Die Krankheit zum Tode), dann aber nicht erklären können, warum Kierkegaard glaubt, dass es einer Gottesbeziehung bedarf, um frei zu sein bzw. ein (freies) Selbst zu werden.8 Dass Kierkegaards Beschreibung des Selbst theologische Annahmen voraussetzt, und nicht etwa – missverstanden als naturalistische Theologie – zu zeigen vermag, dass der Mensch von einem Schöpfergott geschaffen wurde, zeigt sich u.a. daran, dass er eine naturalistische Erklärung des Selbstbezugs des Menschen nicht in Erwägung zieht. Er postuliert einfach, dass das Selbst nicht vom Körper oder der Seele abgeleitet und somit keine ‚negative Einheit' sei, sondern „das positive Dritte"9, etwas Ursprüngliches, etwas Unableitbares.10 6 SKS 11, 129 / KT, 8. 7 Vgl. SKS 11, 146 / KT, 25. Vgl. Disse, Psyche, S. 520, 521, 523 und S. 526. 8 Ich denke hier u.a. an Christian Danz, dessen Erklärungsversuche (zumindest mir) unverständlich sind. Der Leser möge sich selbst ein Bild machen und die betreffenden Stellen lesen. Siehe Christian Danz, „Die Durchsichtigkeit des Selbst im Gottesverhältnis. Kierkegaard und Schelling über die menschliche Freiheit", in Theologie zwischen Pragmatismus und Existenzdenken: Festschrift Für Hermann Deuser Zum 60. Geburtstag, hg. von Gesche Linde, Richard Purkarthofer, Heiko Schulz and Peter Steinacker, Marburg 2006, S. 484-485. 9 SKS 11, 129 / KT, 8. 10 Vgl. Joachim Ringleben, Die Krankheit zum Tode von Sören Kierkegaard. Erklärung und Kommentar, Göttingen 1995, S. 66, 68 und S. 79. Wenn das Selbst aber weder aus Körper noch der Seele hervorgehe, dann müsse es woanders seinen Ursprung haben. Für Kierkegaard ist das Selbst von einem Anderen gesetzt, d.h. es verdankt sein Sein etwas Anderem. Kierkegaard setzt diesen Anderen letztlich mit Gott gleich.11 A. Äusserungen des Gesetztseins Dass das Selbst sich nicht selbst gesetzt hat, dass man sich nicht aussuchen kann, wie man ist (bzw. sich nicht ausgesucht hat, wie man ist), zeigt Kierkegaard anhand der Möglichkeit (A), verzweifelt man selbst sein zu wollen, als auch anhand der Möglichkeit (B), verzweifelt nicht man selbst sein zu wollen.12 Beide Formen der ‚Verzweiflung' sind Phänomene, denen eine Vereinseitigung der eigenen Freiheit oder der eigenen Begrenztheit zugrunde liegt.13 Eine verzweifelte Person der Kategorie (A) will so sein wie ihr eigenes Idealbild: ein mutiger Kämpfer, ein fürsorglicher Vater, eine geniale Wissenschaftlerin. Sie verkennt dabei, dass ihr Charakter, ihr Verhalten und ihr Schicksal nicht allein in ihrer Macht stehen. Triebe, soziale Zwänge und unliebsame Gewohnheiten machen uns deutlich, dass wir, oft entgegen unserem Selbstverständnis, keine vollkommene Kontrolle über uns haben, bzw. dass das eigene Verhalten von mehr als nur dem eigenen Willen oder den eigenen moralischen Vorstellungen bestimmt wird. Eine verzweifelte Person der Kategorie (A) will das nicht wahrhaben, sondern 11 Vgl. SKS 11, 143 / KT, 23; SKS 11, 146 / KT, 25f. 12 Vgl. SKS 11, 130 / KT, 9. 13 Vgl. SKS 11, 138ff. / KT, 18ff. möchte sich von einem Teil ihrer Gedanken, Gefühle oder Handlungen distanzieren und damit nicht wirklich sie selbst sein.14 Der Unterschied zu (B) besteht in der Überzeugung, man könnte sein Selbst selber ändern. Auch Verzweifelte aus (B) wollen nicht akzeptieren, dass sie sich ihren Charakter und/oder die sozialen und raumzeitlichen Grundbedingungen des eigenen Lebens nicht aussuchen können. Sie hadern mit ihrem Schicksal und wollen nicht akzeptieren, dass man immer schon in eine bestimmte Familie und eine bestimmte Gesellschaft hineingeboren wird, und oft bestimmte Charakterzüge aufweist, die man sich nicht ausgesucht hat. Während die verzweifelte Person der Kategorie (A) ein bestimmtes Ideal anstrebt, nimmt jene aus (B) zwar hin, dass sie sich nicht ändern kann, akzeptiert aber trotzdem nicht ihr So-Sein.15 Aus solch einer mangelnden Kontrolle als auch der Tatsache, dass wir uns nicht aussuchen können, ob wir überhaupt frei sein wollen 16 , schliesst Kierkegaard, dass wir Menschen nicht autonom, sondern abhängig bzw. ‚gesetzt' sind. Weder das eine noch das andere beweist aber, dass wir von Gott geschaffen wurden. Kierkegaards implizite Gleichsetzung von Gesetztsein mit Kreatürlichkeit ist also eine theologische Annahme, und nicht etwas, das sich aus den existentiellen Tatsachen ergibt. B. Drei Bedeutungen von ‚Selbst' bei Kierkegaard 14 „Über sich verzweifeln, verzweifelt sich selber los sein wollen, ist die Formel für alle Verzweiflung, so dass daher die zweite Form von Verzweiflung, verzweifelt man selbst sein wollen, zurückgeführt werden kann auf die erste, verzweifelt nicht man selbst sein wollen" (SKS 11, 136 / KT, 16). 15 SKS 11, 170 / KT, 54. 16 Vgl. Michael Theunissen, „Das Menschenbild in der »Krankheit zum Tode«", in: Materialien zur Philosophie Søren Kierkegaards, hg. von Wilfried Greve und Michael Theunissen, Frankfurt am Main 1979, S. 505. Kommen wir zurück zum Begriff des ‚Selbst'. Bei Kierkegaard lassen sich mindestens drei Bedeutungen von ‚Selbst' unterscheiden.17 Wenn er das Selbst als ein Verhältnis beschreibt, das sich zu sich selbst verhält, bezieht er sich auf die allgemeine menschliche Struktur, zu der sowohl die Möglichkeit gehören, sich zum eigenen Körper und zur eigenen Seele zu beziehen, als auch die sich aus dem Selbstbezug ergebende Freiheit und die Grenzen der eigenen Kontrolle. Als zweites spricht Kierkegaard aber auch davon, dass jemand, der anders sein will, als er ist, sein Selbst nicht akzeptiert. Obwohl hiermit z.T. auch die Struktur des Selbst gemeint ist, stellt das ‚Selbst' hier in zweiter Linie die individuelle körperlich-geistige Verfasstheit des Subjekts dar, zu der auch die Bedingungen gehören, unter denen es geboren bzw. aufgewachsen ist (soziale Herkunft, finanzielle Lage, Gesellschaftsordnung, etc.). Der dritte Sinn von Kierkegaards ‚Selbst' setzt Kierkegaards Glaube in die göttliche Bestimmung eines jeden Einzelnen voraus. Kierkegaard glaubt, dass das Dasein eines jeden Lebewesens einen höheren Zweck hat.18 In einer seiner erbaulichen Reden schreibt er: „Mit der Geburt eines jeden Menschen tritt eine ewige Bestimmung für ihn ins Dasein, für ihn besonders. Treue gegen sich selbst ist in Bezug auf jene Bestimmung das Höchste, was ein Mensch üben kann".19 Die einem jedem Menschen gestellte göttliche Aufgabe ist für Kierkegaard aber nicht nur das ‚Höchste', sondern auch eine Pflicht.20 Diese drei Aspekte führen zu drei unterschiedlichen Vorstellungen der Selbstwerdung, die in den Abschnitten II, III und IV herausgearbeitet werden. In den jeweiligen Unterpunkten wird erläutert, wie ein Mensch das nach Kierkegaard bewerkstelligen kann und was für eine Rolle Gott bzw. der Glaube dabei spielt. 17 Für eine alternative Interpretation der verschiedenen Verwendungsweisen von ‚Selbst' bei Kierkegaard siehe Disse, Phänomenologie, S. 116. 18 Vgl. SKS 11, 31f. / LF, 54f. 19 SKS 8, 198 / ERG, 99. 20 Vgl. SKS 11, 182f. / KT, 68; SKS 11, 146 / KT, 25f. II. Selbstwerdung als Akzeptanz der Struktur des Selbst Wie im letzten Abschnitt beschrieben bezieht sich ‚Selbst' im ersten Sinne auf die allgemeine menschliche Struktur, zu der u.a. die sich aus dem Selbstbezug ergebende Freiheit gehört. Selbstwerdung besteht in diesem ersten Sinne in der Akzeptanz der allgemeinen menschlichen Struktur. Die Akzeptanz der eigenen Freiheit als einen Teil der Struktur des Selbst kann man gut an ihrem Gegenteil darstellen. So verfehle der Fatalist seine Bestimmung, weil er glaubt, dass alles vorherbestimmt ist und die ihm gegebene Freiheit leugnet. Der Fatalist ist verzweifelt, hat Gott und somit sein Selbst verloren; denn wer keinen Gott hat, der hat auch kein Selbst. Der Fatalist aber hat keinen Gott, oder was das gleiche ist, sein Gott ist Notwendigkeit; denn gleich wie alles möglich ist bei Gott, so ist Gott dies, dass alles möglich ist. 21 Auf den Bezug zu Gott und das Gottesbild Kierkegaards wird weiter unten eingegangen. Wichtig ist erst einmal, dass man für Kierkegaard dann ein Selbst ist, wenn man die einem gegebene Freiheit annimmt und an der eigenen Zukunft mitarbeitet. Auf der anderen Seite ist eine Person eben auch Kreatur, Resultat seiner Gene und Sozialisation. Sie hat keine vollkommene Kontrolle über sich selbst, inklusive dessen, was sie will. Man vergisst Vergangenes, ist ungeduldig, hat eine hässliche Nase oder eine chronische Krankheit, isst Süsses, um über schlechte Nachrichten hinwegzukommen oder putzt die 21 SKS 11, 157 / KT, 37. Wohnung, um nicht lernen zu müssen. Das alles ist Ausdruck dafür, dass der Mensch keine totale Kontrolle über sich selbst hat. Hinzu kommt, dass es nicht bzw. nicht allein in der Macht des Individuums liegt, wie sein Leben verläuft, ob es gesund bleibt, ob es seine Ziele verwirklichen kann, etc. Als Beispiel für jemanden, der seine Grenzen leugnet, führt Kierkegaard einen Träumer an. Ein solcher Mensch verliere sich in phantastischen, utopischen Plänen, anstatt sich unter das Notwendige im eigenen Selbst zu beugen.22 Sein „Unglück ist: er wurde nicht aufmerksam auf sich selbst, dass das Selbst, das er ist, ein ganz bestimmtes Etwas ist und somit das Notwendige."23 Indem der Träumer seine Ausgangssituation ignoriert, will er im Prinzip wie Gott, d.h. allmächtig sein.24 Er will alles machen können und all das sein, was er möchte. Zur Selbstwerdung gehöre aber gerade auch, einzusehen, dass man nicht allmächtig ist, sondern dass man Grenzen hat. Walter Dietz weist darauf hin, dass dazu auch die Akzeptanz des Leibund Triebhaften gehört.25 A. Angewiesenheit auf Gott Nach Kierkegaard kann der Mensch diese Einheit jedoch nicht alleine bewerkstelligen. Die verschiedenen Teile, aus denen der Mensch besteht, streben alleine auseinander und müssen zusammengehalten werden, wenn es nicht zu einer Überbetonung der Freiheit oder der Grenzen kommen soll.26 Ähnlich wie Augustinus glaubt Kierkegaard, dass man Gott braucht, um sich 22 Vgl. SKS 11, 152 / KT, 33. Vgl. auch Marc C. Taylor, Journeys to Selfhood. Hegel & Kierkegaard, New York 2000, S. 237. 23 SKS 11, 152 / KT, 33. 24 Vgl. Walter Dietz, Sören Kierkegaard. Existenz und Freiheit, Frankfurt a. M. 1993, S. 73. 25 Vgl. Walter Dietz, „Selbstverhältnis und Gottesverhältnis bei Augustin und Kierkegaard", Kierkegaardiana, Bd. 17, 1994, S. 121. 26 Vgl. Frederick Sontag, „The Self", Concepts and Alternatives in Kierkegaard, hg. von Lars Bejerholm und Marie Mikulová Thulstrup, Copenhagen 1980 (Bibliotheca Kierkegaardiana), S. 105. so akzeptieren zu können, wie man ist, und damit Ruhe und Gleichgewicht zu erlangen.27 Nach Kierkegaard kann „das Selbst durch sich selber nicht zu Gleichgewicht und Ruhe gelangen oder darinnen sein..., sondern allein dadurch, dass es, indem es sich zu sich selbst verhält, zu demjenigen sich verhält, welches das ganze Verhältnis gesetzt hat" 28 bzw. „indem es durchsichtig in Gott gründet."29 B. Der Glaube an die eigene Kreatürlichkeit Was ist mit ‚durchsichtig gründen in Gott' gemeint? 30 Laut Romano Guardini meint Kierkegaard damit, dass man aus tiefster Seele, einem selbst transparent aufhört, sich selbst für „eigenseiend, ontisch autonom"31 zu halten, sondern sich als relatives Wesen, als Geschöpf zu verstehen. Aber ein Selbstverständnis als Geschöpf geht über die Akzeptanz der eigenen ontischen Abhängigkeit hinaus. Denn Menschen sind ja z.B. von der Anerkennung anderer 27 „[T]he fact that the source of self's desired equilibrium lies outside of itself is the most difficult source of despair to attack. As is well known, S.K. presupposes God as the Power which has grounded the self" (Sontag, Self, S. 106.). Auch Disse interpretiert Kierkegaard so, dass dieser das Ziel der menschlichen Existenz in der Überwindung der Spaltung des Selbst in – Disse benutzt hier Freudsche Kategorien – ein Ich und ein Über-Ich sieht; vgl. Disse, Psyche, S. 527-528. Vgl. auch Dietz, Selbstverhältnis, S. 121. 28 SKS 11, 130 / KT, 9. Vgl. auch SKS 11, 146 / KT, 25f. 29 Dietz, Selbstverhältnis, S. 121. Auch wenn dieses Zitat den Anschein erweckt, als ob das Heil letztlich in der Hand des Individuums liegt, betont Kierkegaard auch immer wieder, dass das Individuum für sein Heil auf die Begegnung mit Gott und dessen Gnade angewiesen ist; vgl. Christian Kopp, Relative Theozentrik. Gottesvorstellungen und Selbstwerdung des Menschen bei Søren Kierkegaard, Berlin 2015 (zugleich Diss., Univ. Kiel, 2014), S. 399, n. 90. Andrew Torrance arbeitet dies gut heraus für Kierkegaards Schriften unter dem Pseudonym Climacus. Er betont, dass für Climacus nicht allein der in einem wirkende heilige Geist wichtig für die eigene Erlösung ist, sondern auch die Begegnung mit Jesus Christus als Gott-Mensch; vgl. Andrew B. Torrance, „Climacus and Kierkegaard on the Outward Relationship with God", Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2014, S. 168. 30 In SKS 11, 130 / KT, 10 heisst es: „Folgendes ist nämlich die Formel, welche den Zustand des Selbst beschreibt, wenn die Verzweiflung ganz und gar ausgetilgt ist: indem es sich zu sich selbst verhält, und indem es es selbst sein will, gründet sich das Selbst durchsichtig in der Macht, welche es gesetzt hat." (meine Hervorh.) Die Übersetzung von Hirsch ist hier missverstänndlich, denn im Dänischen heisst es „og i at ville vaere sig selv grunder Selvet gjennemsigtigt i den Magt", was mit „und indem es es selbst sein will, gründet das Selbst durchsichtig in der Macht" (meine Übersetzung) übersetzt werden sollte. Das „sig" aus „sig selv grunder" ist also kein Reflexivpronomen des Verbs gründen. Ich danke Heiko Schulz für diesen Hinweis. 31 Romano Guardini, „Der Ausgangspunkt der Denkbewegung Sören Kierkegaards", in Sören Kierkegaard, hg. von Heinz-Horst Schrey, Darmstadt 1971, S. 58f. Menschen abhängig32, und sind damit von Anderen ontisch abhängig, ohne dass damit bereits ein Verhältnis zu einem Schöpfer(gott) gegeben ist. Wie in Abschnitt I.A. angeschnitten, folgt aus der Tatsache der Begrenztheit der eigenen Macht über sein So-Sein nicht, dass es eine höhere Macht gibt, die einen erschaffen hat.33 Dietz bemerkt richtig, dass mir der Ursprung meiner eigenen Freiheit phänomenologisch gar nicht transparent ist, „denn phänomenologisch ist nur darauf zu verweisen, dass die Freiheit sich als vorausgesetzt erfährt, d.h. aktuell gar nicht auf ihr Gesetztsein rekurriert, sondern auf ihr Dasein, ihre Faktizität. In gewisser Weise erfährt sie nur sich selbst, aber nicht ihren Grund"34. Und selbst wenn man von der Begrenztheit der eigenen Macht und/oder dem SichEntscheiden-Müssen auf eine höhere Seinsmacht schliesst, muss diese nicht unbedingt einem persönlichen, dem Menschen zugewandten höchsten Wesen entsprechen. Laut Disse kann so eine Seinsmacht „als anonymer Zufall, als dunkles Schicksal, als zorniger Richter oder aber als die geoffenbarte Trinität, Gott als Liebe, aufgefasst werden."35 In Die Krankheit zum Tode sei mit dem Verhältnis zum Anderen bzw. zur setzenden Macht hingegen immer das christliche Gottesverhältnis gemeint, und keine allgemeine Erfahrung des Numinosen, in der kein Wissen von einem sich offenbarenden Schöpfergott besteht.36 ‚In der Macht gründen, die einen setzte' entspricht für Kierkegaard daher vielmehr dem Glauben, durch Gott geschaffen worden zu sein. 37 Die eigene Kreatürlichkeit ist keine Erkenntnis, die das Individuum erlangt, indem es das eigene Selbst und seine Ausdrucksformen beobachtet, sondern eine Glaubensannahme über den eigenen Ursprung, die eine (partielle) 32 Vgl. Axel Honneth, Kampf um Anerkennung. Zur moralischen Grammatik sozialer Konflikte, Frankfurt a. M. 1992. 33 Vgl. Theunissen, Theologie, S. 182. Dass „jemand sein will, was er nicht ist, ein konstruiertes, im wesentliches erfundenes Selbst... kann er sein wollen, ohne sich auf einen Gott zu beziehen." (Theunissen, Theologie, S. 185). Vgl. auch Theunissen, Menschenbild, S. 505. 34 Dietz, Existenz, S. 63. 35 Disse, Phänomenologie, S. 131. 36 Vgl. Disse, Phänomenologie, S. 122 und S. 128. 37 Vgl. Theunissen, Theologie, S. 187. Antwort auf die wichtige Frage nach der eigenen Identität liefert. 38 In jedem Fall scheint Kierkegaard davon auszugehen, dass Selbstwerdung in unserem ersten Sinne, d.h. die Akzeptanz der eigenen Freiheit als auch der eigenen beschränkten Macht, nur dann glückt, wenn man sich selbst als geschaffene Kreatur versteht. C. Sündenbewusstsein bzw. realistisches Selbstbild durch Gott als Massstab Zur Selbstwerdung in diesem Sinne gehört für Kierkegaard als Christen auch die Akzeptanz der eigenen Sündhaftigkeit. Weil Gott durch seine Allwissenheit alle Gedanken und Taten kennt, könne man vor ihm und damit auch vor sich selbst nichts verheimlichen. Man müsse sich seine Schwächen eingestehen und gewinne ein realistisches Selbstbild. Das passiert natürlich nur dann, wenn man an einen (allwissenden) Gott glaubt, und sein Handeln damit an einem entsprechenden Massstab misst. „Ein Selbst ist qualitativ das, was sein Massstab ist"39, schreibt Kierkegaard, und es erhalte ‚eine unendliche Realität', wenn es sich Gott zum Massstab macht.40 Was bedeutet es, ein Massstab (für das Selbst) zu sein? Es beinhaltet einerseits, dass man sein Handeln an diesem Massstab orientiert und sich an diesem Massstab messen lässt. Je bewusster einem wird, ‚für Gott' zu sein, d.h. in ihm seine Bestimmung zu haben41, und ‚vor Gott' zu sein, d.h. sich vor ihm verantworten zu müssen42, desto mehr entwickelt sich nach 38 Vgl. SKS 11, 160 / KT, 43f.; Dietz, Existenz, S. 145. 39 SKS 11, 225 / KT, 114. 40 Vgl. SKS 11, 193f. / KT, 78f. 41 Ein religiöser Mensch lässt Gott oberste bzw. unbedingte und nicht bloss relative Priorität zukommen. Religiosität wählt Gott absolut und „realisiert darin, was für menschliche Freiheit immer schon gilt: dass ihr Horizont Gott selber ist, d.h. dass sie in ihm ihren Grund...und ihre Bestimmung hat." (Dietz, Existenz, S. 60). 42 Dadurch dass sich ein Selbst vor Gott als dem Richter seines Tuns weiss, bekommt es eine neue Qualität; vgl. Disse, Phänomenologie, S. 123. Kierkegaard das Selbst. Dass Kierkegaard darunter eine dem Menschen angemessene Demut versteht, wird in seinem Kommentar zu Luk 18, 9-14 deutlich, in dem er beschreibt, was es heisst, vor Gott zu sein43: Erst wenn ich Gott als Einzelner entgegentrete, werde ich gewahr, wie weit entfernt ich von Gott und seiner Heiligkeit bin.44 Negativ lässt sich das am Beispiel des Pharisäers ablesen, der deshalb nicht als Einzelner vor Gott steht, weil er sich mit anderen Menschen vergleicht und sich durch seine Gesetzestreue für etwas Besseres als sie hält.45 Auf diese Weise tritt er vor Gott mit einem gewissen Stolz, anstatt, wie es sich bei der unendlichen Differenz zwischen dem sündigen Menschen und dem heiligen Gott geziemt hätte, demütig. Der Zöllner dagegen richtet seinen Blick nach unten, denn im Angesicht der Herrlichkeit Gottes wird er sich der eigenen Sündhaftigkeit bewusst, und schämt sich. Auf diese Weise kommt der Zöllner nach Kierkegaard in Kontakt mit Gott: „in Demut sah der Zöllner niemanden,...mit niedergeschlagenem, mit nach innen gekehrtem Blick war er in Wahrheit: vor Gott."46 Der Zöllner vergleicht sich nicht mit anderen Menschen, um den eigenen Selbstwert zu steigern, zu bestätigen oder um Verfehlungen zu relativieren. Er gesteht sowohl seine ethische Unvollkommenheit, als auch – mehr oder weniger implizit – seine Freiheit, das Gute tun zu können, ein. Zu dem Eingeständnis kommt es nach Kierkegaard aber gerade nur, weil der Zöllner Gott bzw. dessen Gebote zum Massstab hat. Indem er nicht auf andere Menschen achtet, ist er mit Gott und sich selbst ehrlich. Er beschönigt nichts, sondern gesteht ein, dass er egoistisch, schuldig, ein Sünder ist. Der Stolz, die Sicherheit und die Selbstzufriedenheit des Pharisäers dagegen entfremden diesen von Gott.47 So „wenig wie das Wasser...die Berge hinauffliesst, so wenig kann es einem Menschen gelingen, zu Gott sich zu erheben – durch 43 Vgl. SKS 11, 264ff. / KT, 148ff. 44 Vgl. SKS 11, 265 / KT, 149: „in dem Verhältnis zu Gott ist es so, dass es dich, wenn mehrere zugegen sind, bedünkt, du seiest Gott näher, und erst, wenn du buchstäblich mit ihm allein bist, entdeckst du, wie ferne du bist....Sobald da jemand zwischen Gott und dir ist, täuschest du dich leicht, so als ob du nicht so ferne wärest". 45 Vgl. SKS 11, 265 / KT, 149: „Eben darin bestand des Pharisäers Stolz, dass er stolz die andern Menschen gebrauchte, um seinen Abstand von ihnen zu messen, dass er den Gedanken an die andern Menschen vor Gott nicht wollte fahren lassen, sondern ihn festhalten, um alsdann stolz für sich zu stehen – in Entgegensetzung gegen die andern Menschen; doch das heisst ja nicht für sich stehen, und am wenigsten heisst es für sich stehen vor Gott." 46 SKS 11, 266 / KT, 151. 47 Vgl. SKS 11, 267f. / KT, 152. Stolz."48 Wenn man ehrlich zu sich selbst ist, und sein Tun an Gottes Geboten misst, kann man nach Kierkegaard eigentlich nur eins vor Gott tun, nämlich sich selbst anzuklagen.49 Mehr Selbst durch Gott als Massstab bedeutet für Kierkegaard also ein realistischeres Selbstbild, nämlich sich selbst als Sünder zu verstehen.50 D. Vergebung Die Einsicht in die eigene Sündhaftigkeit kann natürlich verheerend sein. Wenn (der christliche) Gott der eigene Massstab und Jesus damit51 das Vorbild des eigenen Handelns wird, würde man aufgrund des eigenen moralischen Fehlverhaltens verzweifeln.52 Gemessen an den Geboten Gottes ist man ja ein Verbrecher, ein Lüstling, ein Unwürdiger. Wie könnte man sich da noch selbst akzeptieren? Die Selbstwerdung schliesst für Kierkegaard deshalb sowohl die Akzeptanz der eigenen Sündhaftigkeit als auch die Aneignung göttlich angebotener Vergebung ein.53 Jetzt gelte es, Gott zu vertrauen und „nicht an der (Möglichkeit der) Vergebung der Sünden zu verzweifeln"54. Die frohe Botschaft des Christentums besteht ja gerade darin, dass Gott dem Menschen die Sünden vergibt. Um des „Menschen willen kommt Gott auf die Welt, lässt sich gebären, leidet, stirbt; und dieser leidende Gott, er bittet diesen Menschen nahezu kniefällig, doch die Hilfe entgegennehmen zu wollen, die ihm angeboten wird!"55 Akzeptiert man die 48 SKS 11, 268 / KT, 152. 49 Vgl. SKS 11, 268 / KT, 152f. 50 Vgl. SKS 11, 194 / KT, 79. 51 Vgl. Dietz, Existenz, S. 146. 52 Vgl. SKS 11, 229 / KT, 117f. 53 Vgl. Taylor, Selfhood, S. 256. Man werde dann ein Selbst, wenn man Christus glaubt, dass Gott einem vergibt und zur Seite steht; vgl. Taylor, Selfhood, S. 257. 54 Dietz, Existenz, S. 146. 55 SKS 11, 199 / KT, 84. Vgl. auch SKS 11, 223 / KT, 112. Vergebung, wird man nicht von eigenen Selbstverwürfen zermalmt, sondern kann in Frieden sein.56 III. Selbstwerdung als Akzeptanz des persönlichen Selbst Wie in Abschnitt I.A. beschrieben bezieht sich ‚Selbst' im zweiten Sinne auf die jeweils eigene körperlich-geistige Verfasstheit und die Bedingungen, unter denen das Individuum jeweils geboren bzw. aufgewachsen ist. Ein Selbst zu werden, bedeutet in diesem Kontext weniger, dass man die eigene Freiheit und die eigenen Grenzen akzeptiert, sondern dass man seine eigene, individuelle Lebenssituation als Teil seiner Identität annimmt.57 Dazu gehört z.B., dass man die eigene Heimat, die eigenen Eltern, die eigene Hautfarbe, etc. nicht verleugnet. Ein gutes Beispiel stellt Lieutenant Dan aus dem Film Forrest Gump dar. Als dieser im Vietnamkrieg angeschossen wird und ihm beide Beine amputiert werden müssen, will er nicht wahrhaben, dass er als Krüppel weiterleben muss, da ihm angeblich vorherbestimmt gewesen sei, wie seine Vorfahren im Krieg zu sterben. Als er zurück in die U.S.A. fliegt, fängt er an zu trinken, weil er sich nicht damit abfinden kann, dass er keine Beine mehr hat. Immer wieder klagt er Gott an. Während eines Unwetters schreit er seine ganze Wut raus und hadert mit Gott bzw. seinem Schicksal. Doch schliesslich akzeptiert er, dass die fehlenden Beine zu ihm gehören, und findet so Ruhe. Kierkegaard würde behaupten, dass Dan erst als er sein So-Sein akzeptierte, er selbst geworden ist. 56 Vgl. Disse, Phänomenologie, S. 155. 57 Vgl. Anders Moe Rasmussen, „Kierkegaard und die Subjektivitätstheorien der Gegenwart", Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 1998, S. 355. Rasmussen zitiert hierzu Habermas: „[I]ch muss mich in einem paradoxen Akt als das wählen, der ich bin und sein möchte" (ibid.). IV. Selbstwerdung als Verwirklichung der eigenen Berufung Wie in Abschnitt I.A. beschrieben bezieht sich ‚Selbst' im dritten Sinne auf die von jedem Einzelnen zu verwirklichende göttliche Vorsehung. Selbstwerdung besteht in diesem dritten Sinne also nicht in einer (passiven) Akzeptanz bestimmter Tatsachen, sondern in der (aktiven) Verwirklichung der einem gegebenen Möglichkeiten. Ein Selbst im dritten Sinne ist bzw. wird man, wenn man (freiwillig) der göttlichen Vorsehung folge, und Gottes Plan für die eigene Person verwirkliche. Dazu gehört, dass man seine Talente nutzt und die einem zur Verfügung stehenden Möglichkeiten, inklusive der Freiheit, Gutes zu tun, verwirkliche. Das Gegenteil stellt für Kierkegaard ein Mensch dar, der seine Entscheidungen nicht selbst, sondern fremdbestimmt trifft.58 Als Beispiel führt Kierkegaard die idealtypische Figur des Don Juan an, der in seinem Handeln vom Ziel der Lustgewinnung bestimmt wird. Nach Kierkegaard ist dieser verzweifelt, weil er ein vergängliches Gut, nämlich die Lust, zu seinem Ein und Alles gemacht hat59, weil er „schwach genug hat sein können, dem Irdischen so grosse Bedeutung beizulegen, und... [er derart] das Ewige und sich selbst verloren hat"60. Das Streben nach (vergänglichem) Genuss ist nach Kierkegaard nicht per se schlecht. Der Vorwurf der Fremdbestimmung besteht weniger darin, dass das Subjekt nach Vergänglichem strebt, sondern dass es sich von Trieben und Lustempfindungen leiten lässt, obwohl dem Subjekt eigentlich klar sein sollte, dass ihn das sinnlich-triebhafte Genussstreben nicht erfüllen kann. Kierkegaard würde heute z.B. auf die Rolling Stones verweisen, die all denen, die ihr Glück in Drogenkonsum, Sex oder Ruhm suchen, mit dem Lied ‚I can't get no satisfaction' verkünden, dass man so keine Erfüllung findet. Wer sich eingesteht, dass ihn Genuss nicht glücklich macht, 58 Vgl. Taylor, Selfhood, S. 231f. und S. 237. 59 Vgl. SKS 11, 176 / KT, 60. 60 SKS 11, 176 / KT, 61. der sollte sein Handeln nicht von Trieben und Empfindungen bestimmen lassen, sondern danach streben, was ihn tatsächlich glücklich macht – was auch immer das erst einmal sei. In der ‚absoluten Wahl' entschliesst man sich, dem eigenen Streben nach (wahrem) Glück zu folgen, wobei es „nicht so sehr auf das an[kommt], was man wählt, als auf ‚die Energie, den Ernst, das Pathos, mit denen man wählt'"61. Don Juans Verhalten wäre somit fremdbestimmt, weil er nicht danach strebe, was ihn wirklich glücklich macht. Kierkegaards zweites Negativbespiel für ein Leben, das nicht selbstbestimmt ist, ist das des Spiessbürgers. Dieser vergisst, sich nur um alltägliche, weltliche Dinge kümmernd und sich nur nach vorgegebenen Normen verhaltend, „sich selbst, ...getraut sich nicht an sich selber zu glauben, findet es allzu gewagt er selbst zu sein, und weit leichter und sicherer so zu sein wie die andern, eine Nachäffung zu werden, eine Ziffer zu werden, mit in der Menge."62 Mehr noch als das Verhalten von Ästheten wie Don Juan ist das Verhalten des Spiessbürgers extrinsisch motiviert, denn wichtiger als das eigene Glück sind für diesen die Meinung der anderen. Der Spiessbürger hört nicht einmal auf seine eigenen Lustempfindungen und verfehlt damit auf andere Weise das ihm mögliche Glück des Einzelnen. Beide, der Ästhet als auch der Spiessbürger, seien sich ihrer Idealität, Möglichkeit und Freiheit nicht bewusst und können diese folglich auch nicht wahrnehmen.63 Der dritte Aspekt der Selbstwerdung entspricht also einem Prozess, bei dem man sich von der Anziehungskraft angenehmer Zustände löst, d.h. ihnen nur eine relative Bedeutung zukommen lässt, sich von den Erwartungen und Vorgaben anderer Menschen distanziert und wichtige Entscheidungen bewusst und eigenständig fällt. Erst wenn der Mensch seine Entscheidungen nicht fremdbestimmt trifft, sondern mit leidenschaftlicher Entschlossenheit an 61 Disse, Psyche, S. 527. Vgl. SKS 3, 164 / EO2, 178. Das bedeutet aber nicht, dass das Ziel des jeweiligen Strebens bzw. der Leidenschaft für Kierkegaard irrelevant ist. Wie er z.B. in seiner pastoralen Schrift Eine Gelegenheitsrede deutlich macht, kann das Eine, dem man oberste Priorität in seinem Leben zuerkennt, nicht in Genuss, Ehre, Reichtum oder Macht bestehen, sondern letztlich nur im Guten bzw. in der Liebe zu Gott und dem Nächsten; vgl. SKS 8, 142ff. / ERG, 32ff. 62 SKS 11, 151 / KT, 30. 63 Vgl. SKS 11, 155ff. / KT, 37f. seinen Idealen festhält, kann er trotz der Diskontinuitäten des Lebens seine eigene Lebensgeschichte schreiben und eine Identität aufbauen.64 A. Selbstwerdung als Nachfolge Christi Kierkegaard denkt natürlich nicht an beliebige Ideale, sondern sieht in Christus offenbart, wie man ein wahrhaftiges Leben führt.65 Diese Offenbarung enthält neben den ethischen Geboten die Notwendigkeit und die Möglichkeit einer Beziehung zu seinem Schöpfer. Für das individuelle Heil ist es nötig, dass diese Beziehung diesseitig ist.66 Die Möglichkeit dazu sieht Kierkegaard in Christus gegeben, der uns offenbart, wie wir leben sollen, wenn wir das ewige Leben erlangen wollen. 67 Glaube ist für Kierkegaard nicht das Ergebnis einer Reflexion, sondern eine Entscheidung bzw. das Ergebnis einer gewollten Aneignung. Dieser Schritt stelle eine absolute Entscheidung dar, d.h. entweder glaube man oder man nimmt Ärgernis an Christi Forderungen.68 Dass der christliche Glaube, mit Gott eine intime Beziehung führen zu können und von ihm gehört zu werden, nicht empirisch nachgewiesen und somit auf diesem Weg nicht Gewissheit über deren Wahroder Unwahrheit erlangt werden könne, spricht Kierkegaard in 64 Vgl. Taylor, Selfhood, S. 241f. und S. 252. 65 Vgl. Taylor, Selfhood, S. 104 und S. 106. Siehe auch Fussnote 61 in diesem Artikel. 66 Vgl. SKS 7, 336 / AUN2, 73. 67 Vgl. Taylor, Selfhood, S. 138. Auch Fabro weist auf den Bezug zu Christus hin. Wie oben beschrieben, werde ein Mensch frei, indem er vor Gott wählt, was das Wichtigste in seinem Leben ist. „Daraus folgt...seit der Ankunft Christi...Der Mensch muss sich auf absolute Weise entscheiden gegenüber Christus" (Cornelio Fabro, „Kierkegaards Kritik am Idealismus. Die Begründung der Metaphysik in der Wahlfreiheit", in Der Mensch vor dem Anspruch der Wahrheit und der Freiheit, hg. von Josef de Vries, Frankfurt am Main 1973, S. 175). „[I]m wesentlichen [geht es] um die Wahl des letzten Zieles, dessen, was im klassischen Denken die umfassende Glückseligkeit war und was im christlichen Denken die Annahme der geschichtlichen Offenbarung Gottes in Christus ist" (Fabro, Idealismus, S. 171). 68 Vgl. SKS 11, 197f. / KT, 82ff. seiner Analogie vom Tagelöhner aus.69 Der christliche Glaube entspreche einer inwendigen, d.h. nicht empirisch zu verifizierenden oder falsifizierenden Wirklichkeit, so dass es dem Glauben überlassen bleibt, den Mut aufzubringen, an diese Botschaft zu glauben. Der „Glaube selber [ist] die einzige Tatsächlichkeit"70. B. Selbstwerdung durch Relativierung diesseitiger Ziele & Vertrauen auf Gott Um selbstbestimmt handeln zu können, um frei und gelassen zu sein, darf man sich nach Kierkegaard nicht von scheinbar beglückenden, irdischen Dingen abhängig machen lassen. Um aber von sinnlichen Freuden unabhängig zu werden, müsse Gott und die Einhaltung seiner Gebote das Wichtigste im Leben des Gläubigen werden. Warum soll eine solche Bindung an Gebote etwas Befreiendes und nicht eher eine Fessel sein? Dietz gibt zwei Antworten. „Zum einen entbindet Gottes-Abhängigkeit von Weltverhaftung, befreit davon, sich absolut zum Relativen zu verhalten."71 Solange man sich nicht dem höchsten Gut verpflichtet, werden einen Geld, Macht, Anerkennung, Sex, materielle Güter, etc. in den Bann ziehen und unfrei machen. Im Gegensatz dazu werde der Mensch frei, wenn er darüber nachdenkt, was für ihn das Wichtigste im Leben ist, und sich entscheidet, 69 Vgl. SKS 11, 198f. / KT, 83f. 70 SKS 11, 198 / KT, 84; Theunissen betont, dass der Glaube bei Kierkegaard deswegen aber nicht auf eine menschliche Konstruktion reduziert werden kann. Obwohl es nach Kierkegaard ohne ein Verhältnis zu sich selbst keins zu Gott gebe, ist das Gottesverhältnis bei Kierkegaard – im Gegensatz zu Feuerbach – nicht identisch mit dem Verhältnis eines Menschen zu sich selbst; vgl. Theunissen, Theologie, S. 179. Dass Kierkegaard Theologie nicht in Anthropologie auflöse, zeige sich nach Theunissen daran, dass der erste Abschnitt von Die Krankheit zum Tode, in dem Kierkegaard die Verzweiflung und das Gesetztsein des Menschen scheinbar rein anthropologisch bzw. philo-sophisch aufzuzeigen versucht, in Wahrheit den zweiten, indem er theologisch argumentiert, voraussetzt. (Vgl. Theunissen, Theologie, S. 180f.) Kierkegaards Anthropologie lägen seine theologischen Überzeugungen schon immer zugrunde: „Indem Kierkegaard die Verzweiflung im zweiten Abschnitt für Sünde ausgibt, enthüllt er das menschliche Selbst als ein vor Gott stehendes." (Theunissen, Theologie, S. 181) Auch eine Letztbegründung der Termini Notwendigkeit und Möglichkeit könne erst theologisch gegeben werden; vgl. Theunissen, Theologie, S. 183f. 71 Dietz, Existenz, S. 78. danach zu handeln. Indem man solche eine existentielle Wahl trifft, verlieren andere Dinge ihre Verlockungskraft. Wenn man Gott bzw. der Nachfolge Christi oberste Priorität einräume, dann werde man frei von der Sorge ums Überleben, um irdische Güter und Anerkennung zu werden.72 Die so erlangte Leichtigkeit verhelfe dem Menschen, so Dietz, „wahrhaft er selbst zu sein (gerade durch die Abstraktion vom neidischen Vergleich mit dem andern): Er wird wahrhaft Mensch, indem er sich damit begnügt, Mensch zu sein Mensch als Exemplar dieser Gattung, sowie dieser bestimmte Mensch"73. Gott zum absoluten Ziel seines Lebens zu machen, befreit also deshalb, weil es vom hektischen Streben nach scheinbar wichtigen Dingen bzw. von der Sorge um deren Mangel befreit. Kierkegaard beschreibt die befreiende Kraft des Glaubens u.a. in seiner Schrift Die Lilie auf dem Felde und der Vogel unter dem Himmel. Die Schrift bezieht sich auf das sechste Kapitel des Matthäusevangeliums, in dem Jesus die Menschen dazu auffordert, dem Trachten nach dem Reich Gottes und seiner Gerechtigkeit und nicht der Sorge um das tagtägliche Überleben oberste Priorität einzuräumen. Dabei soll man sich das unbeschwerte Vertrauen des Vogels und der Lilie zum Vorbild nehmen. Nach Kierkegaard vertrauen sowohl der Vogel als auch die Lilie schweigend darauf, dass ihnen alles zum Überleben gegeben wird, anstatt sich, in der irrigen Annahme, ihr Überleben hänge einzig von ihrem eigenen Handeln ab, ständig um den Alltag zu sorgen. Genauso soll der Mensch zu einem Nichts werden, soll still werden und auf Gott vertrauen: „In diesem Stillesein verstummen gottesfürchtig die vielen Gedanken des Wünschens und Begehrens; in diesem Stillesein verstummt gottesfürchtig der wortreiche Dank." 74 Das Ideal ist also eine Person, die irdischem Genuss nur relative Bedeutung zukommen lässt und die darauf vertraut, das Gott sich um ihre Sorgen und Nöte kümmern wird. 72 Vgl. Fabro, Idealismus, S. 175. 73 Dietz, Existenz, S. 78. 74 SKS 11, 17 / LF, 37. Zum Stillsein gehört hier auch, vor dem Hintergrund der göttlichen Vorsehung sich und seine Pläne nicht so wichtig zu nehmen.75 Diese von den Tieren und Pflanzen praktizierte Einfalt befreie sie nicht nur von Sorgen, sondern verleihe ihnen auch eine unbedingte Freude.76 Vertraue man auf Gott, folge man seinen Geboten und werfe all seine Sorgen auf Gott, dann werde man zufrieden, denn das „ist die unbedingte Freude: die Allmacht anbeten, mit welcher Gott der Allmächtige alle deine Sorge und Betrübnis leicht trägt als ein Nichts. Und auch das ist die unbedingte Freude, das daraus Folgende...: anbetend glauben dürfen, ‚dass Gott für dich sorgt'."77 In Furcht und Zittern heisst es ebenfalls: „der Glaube ist überzeugt, dass Gott sich um das Kleinste kümmert."78 Arnold Come verweist darauf, dass das Wahrnehmen der eigenen Freiheit generell Mut und Vertrauen voraussetzt, weil die einem zur Verfügung stehenden Möglichkeiten immer ein Wagnis darstellen79 und sowohl die Qual der Wahl als auch die Furcht zu scheitern beinhalten.80 Ein Vertrauen in die Zukunft ist nach Kierkegaard v.a. da nötig, wo man um die Fragilität des eigenen Lebens weiss. Das eigene Glück, die Verwirklichung der eigenen Träume und sogar das eigene Überleben hängen ja nur bedingt von einem selbst ab. Um nicht in Ohnmacht, Existenzangst oder Schwermut zu verfallen, müsse man an eine Macht glauben, die die Welt zum Guten lenkt.81 Zu einem solchen Glauben gehören nach Disse zum einen die Möglichkeit des höchsten Gutes und die Überwindung von Tod und Schuld im Jenseits. Zum anderen beinhaltet er aber auch die Vorstellung, dass Gott unmittelbar in das konkrete Leben des Menschen eingreift. Solch ein Glaube kann also befreiend wirken. So schreibt Kierkegaard: 75 Vgl. SKS 11, 23 / LF, 44. 76 Vgl. SKS 11, 42f. / LF, 66f. 77 SKS 11, 46 / LF, 72. 78 SKS 4, 129 / FZ, 32. 79 „It requires one to transcend...the security of the concrete actuality of what one already is." (Arnold B. Come, Kierkegaard as Humanist. Discovering My Self, Buffalo and London 1995, S. 129). 80 Vgl. Come, Humanist, S. 129f. 81 Vgl. Disse, Phänomenologie, S. 152ff. Die Existenzangst werde dadurch überwunden, dass die Vorstellung vom Schicksal als einer unbestimmten Macht, die den Weltverlauf zugleich mit Notwendigkeit und durch Zufall bestimmt, in Vorsehung umschlägt; vgl. Disse, Phänomenologie, S. 153f. Der Tollkühne stürzt sich in eine Gefahr, deren Möglichkeit auch die und die sein kann; und widerfährt diese ihm dann, so verzweifelt er und geht unter. Der Glaubende sieht und versteht menschlich gesprochen seinen Untergang..., aber er glaubt. Darum geht er nicht unter. Er stellt es ganz Gott anheim, wie ihm da geholfen werden solle, aber er glaubt, dass alles möglich ist bei Gott. 82 Damit der Mensch seine Bestimmung verwirklichen kann, muss er also auch in den ausweglosesten Situationen darauf hoffen dürfen, dass bei Gott alles, d.h. Rettung, Vergebung und Befreiung, möglich ist.83 Um in der Endlichkeit in konkreter Freiheit zu existieren, bedarf es nicht nur der Aussicht auf ein höchstes Gut, sondern immer auch einer endlichen Möglichkeit, auf die man hoffen kann. Das Bewusstsein ständiger Offenheit der immanenten Zukunft aber setzt das Bewusstsein voraus, dass für Gott alles möglich ist, dass Gott in seiner Allmacht jederzeit aus jeder Lage zu befreien vermag. 84 Disse interpretiert Kierkegaards Aussage, dass bei Gott alles möglich ist, als das Vertrauen auf den diesseitigen Beistand Gottes, bei dem sogar die Brechung von Naturgesetzen möglich ist.85 Jedem Christen sollte aber bewusst sein, dass Gott kein Superheld ist, der einem alle Bösewichte vom Hals hält, und dafür sorgt, dass man unversehrt durchs Leben kommt. Disse räumt deshalb auch ein, dass sich der Gläubige akzeptieren muss, dass „die Vorsehung ihn aus unerfindlichen Gründen bis in das letzte, aber niemals endgültige Grauen stürzen kann."86 Die 82 SKS 11, 154 / KT, 36. 83 Vgl. SKS 11, 155f. / KT, 37. 84 Disse, Phänomenologie, S. 156. 85 Vgl. Disse, Phänomenologie, S. 157f. 86 Disse, Phänomenologie, S. 155. historischen Fälle von christlichen Märtyrern machen deutlich, dass das ‚letzte Grauen' durchaus Folter und Tod sein können. Das positive Gottesverhältnis setzt das Bewusstsein voraus, dass für jeden Menschen, ob gut oder böse, jederzeit alles möglich ist. Wer nicht das radikale Wagnis auf sich nimmt, wer sich nicht bewusst ist, dass jedes seiner Vorhaben ebenso gut gelingen wie auch misslingen kann, verhält sich nicht wahrhaft zu Gott, hat nicht das wahre Vertrauen. 87 Nach Disse hat die im Glauben weiter bestehende Ungewissheit die Funktion, „das Individuum daran zu hindern, die absolute Ausrichtung auf das Absolute aus den Augen zu verlieren."88 Wenn Gott nun aber nicht bei jeder inneren oder äusseren Gefahr hilft, scheint sich das Vertrauen in Gottes Beistand gegen eine naive Zuversicht nur abgrenzen zu lassen, indem die Hilfe ins Jenseits verlagert wird. Nicht ins endgültige Grauen zu stürzen, hiesse demnach, nach dem Tod vom Leid erlöst zu werden. Wir würden Kierkegaard aber falsch verstehen, wenn wir das Vertrauen auf Gott rein eschatologisch verstünden. Michael Theunissen interpretiert Kierkegaards ‚Alles ist möglich' deshalb auch als Trost und als Hoffnung auf ein gutes Leben im Angesicht widriger Umstände.89 Wenn z.B. die eigene Firma bankrottgeht, der geliebte Partner stirbt, man durch einen Unfall querschnittgelähmt wird oder man die bevorstehende Prüfung nicht schafft, hat man das Gefühl, dass nichts mehr, d.h. ein gutes Leben nicht mehr möglich ist. Man verzweifelt bzw. will man 87 Disse, Phänomenologie, S. 151. Dass für jeden Menschen alles möglich ist, versteht Disse hier so, dass auch ein Mensch, der versucht, ein tugendhaftes Leben zu führen, zu schändlichen Taten fähig ist. Derjenige, dem seine Sündhaftigkeit bewusst ist, wisse, „wie wenig sein eigenes Bemühen um Tugend ihn davor bewahren kann, in eine Situation zu geraten, in der er zu noch viel Schlimmerem fähig wäre, ja in der er die grösste Dummheit begehen könnte, ja in der er sich vielleicht sogar...zu Mord und Totschlag, Quälerei oder Folter verleiten lassen könnte." (Disse, Phänomenologie, S. 150). 88 Disse, Phänomenologie, S. 147. Disse spricht auch davon, dass die Angst hier einer Angst vor der Angst im Unglauben entspricht, sich der Gläubige also davor ängstigt, in die Angst des Ungläubigen zu verfallen und sich dadurch gegen sich selbst zu wenden; vgl. Disse, Phänomenologie, S. 148. 89 Vgl. Theunissen, Theologie, S. 186f. sich nach Kierkegaard vom Ewigen nicht trösten und heilen lassen. Das Vertrauen darauf, dass alles möglich ist, entspricht nach Theunissen dem Glauben, dass trotzdem alles möglich ist, dass sich letztlich (hier verstanden als vor dem biologischen Tod) alles zum Guten wenden wird. „Das »Alles ist möglich« des Glaubens reagiert auf das »Nichts ist möglich«."90 C. Freiheit durch Sinn Um selbstbestimmt handeln zu können, muss man aber nicht nur daran glauben, dass alles gut wird, sondern auch daran, dass das eigene Handeln bedeutungsvoll ist. Nach Cornelio Fabro ist ein Mensch auch deshalb auf Gott angewiesen, weil er, seine Freiheit überbetonend, das Leben ansonsten für sinnlos und nichtig halten und daran verzweifeln könnte, dass es scheinbar nichts wirklich Wichtiges bzw. Notwendiges gibt.91 Kommt es zu einer Relativierung der Werte, wird auch die eigene Verantwortung relativiert, so dass es immer weniger Gründe gibt, der eigenen Verantwortung und Freiheit gerecht zu werden. 92 Ohne Gott und seine Gebote droht das menschliche Leben zu einem Spiel zu werden, in dem das eigene Verhalten letztlich keine Rolle mehr spielt. Wenn der Mensch sich jedoch Gott gegenüber weiss und sich ihm gegenüber für seine Taten verantworten muss, ist sein Handeln nicht bedeutungslos, gewinnt das Dasein nach Kierkegaard seinen Ernst.93 Der Mensch werde ein Individuum, 90 Theunissen, Theologie, S. 188. 91 Vgl. Fabro, Idealismus, S. 155f. Vgl. auch Heinz-Horst Schrey, „Die Überwindung des Nihilismus bei Kierkegaard und Nietzsche" in, Sören Kierkegaard, hg. von Heinz-Horst Schrey, Darmstadt 1971, S. 92ff. 92 Das Gegenteil zu Kierkegaards verantwortungsvollem Individuum stellt der extrinsisch motivierte Massenmensch dar, der nur das tut, was von ihm verlangt wird. Dieser entmündigt sich selbst, indem er das eigene moralische Fehlverhalten damit entschuldigt, dass ja alle dieses Verhalten zeigen. Ausserdem zerstreut er seine Gedanken über den Sinn seines Lebens, indem er sich in das Getriebe des geschäftigen Lebens einspannen lässt. 93 Schrey, Nihilismus, S. 101f. sofern er das Bewusstsein der Transzendenz hat, sofern er als Glaubender ein Einzelner wird. Dieser Einzelne ist der Mensch, der das Fürchten und Sollen gelernt hat – nicht die knechtische Furcht des in seiner Sünde Gebundenen, sondern das Fürchten dessen, der um den weiss, der Leib und Seele verderben kann in die Hölle. 94 Cornelio Fabro als auch Heinz-Horst Schrey interpretieren Kierkegaard so, dass man erst dann, wenn man sich seinem Schöpfer und Richter gegenüber wähnt, das eigene Leben ernst nimmt, sein So-Sein akzeptiert, für die eigenen Handlungen Verantwortung übernimmt und damit zum bewussten Subjekt des eigenen Lebens wird. Dies scheint für Kierkegaard immanent nicht denkbar zu sein, da der Glaubende aus der Welt herausgerufen werden müsse, um ein Individuum zu werden.95 Dass der Glaube notwendig ist, damit das Leben sinnvoll ist, wird bei Kierkegaard u.a. in Furcht und Zittern deutlich. Kierkegaard spricht dort von der Bewegung der Unendlichkeit (α) und der der Endlichkeit (β) als den zwei Schritten zum Glauben.96 Unter Schritt (α) versteht Kierkegaard, dass sich der Mensch bewusst wird, dass alles Diesseitige endlich und letzten Endes, im Angesicht des unendlichen Universums und der immensen Dauer der Weltgeschichte, bedeutungslos ist.97 Unter Schritt (β) versteht Kierkegaard, dass der Mensch, nachdem er das Streben nach lustvollen Zuständen, Reichtum, Ehre, Freundschaften, Familie und Liebesbeziehungen aufgegeben hat, trotzdem an ihnen festhält. Der ideale Gläubige wird nach Kierkegaard trotz der Irrelevanz des eigenen Lebens für das Weltgeschehen weder zynisch noch hält er alles für trivial.98 Er hält an den irdischen Dingen fest, erfreut sich an diesen.99 Das kann er nach Schritt (α) aber nur, weil Dinge wie lustvolle Zustände, Ehre oder Freundschaften 94 Schrey, Nihilismus, S. 104 (meine Hervorh.). 95 Vgl. Schrey, Nihilismus, S. 105. 96 Vgl. SKS 4, 134 / FZ, 36. 97 Vgl. SKS 4, 140f. / FZ, 46f.; SKS 4, 143 / FZ, 49f. 98 Vgl. SKS 4, 135 / FZ, 40; SKS 11, 155f. / KT, 37. 99 Vgl. SKS 4, 143 / FZ, 50. nicht (mehr) Endziele des eigenen Handelns, sondern quasi gottgegebene Begleiterscheinungen des religiösen Lebens darstellen. D. Bestimmung und Gehorsam Der Sinn des eigenen Lebens spielt bei der Selbstwerdung noch eine weitere Rolle. In Die Lilie auf dem Felde und der Vogel unter dem Himmel beschreibt Kierkegaard eine Lilie, die zwar dazu bestimmt ist, lieblich auszusehen, die aber ihrer Bestimmung scheinbar nicht gerecht werden kann, weil sie an einem Ort steht, an dem sie keiner sieht bzw. weil sie gemieden wird.100 Kierkegaard glaubt daran, dass das Dasein dieser Lilie bzw. jedes Lebewesens einen höheren Zweck hat und dass man diesen Zweck nur erfüllen, dass man nur man selbst sein kann, wenn man Gott unbedingt gehorsam ist. „Denn die Lilie ist, der Umgebung zum Trotz, sie selbst, weil sie Gott unbedingt gehorsam ist; und weil sie Gott unbedingt gehorsam ist, deshalb ist sie unbedingt unbekümmert.... Nur bei unbedingten Gehorsam kann man unbedingt genau ‚die Stelle' treffen, an der man stehen soll"101. Während Pflanzen und Tiere ihren Zweck mehr oder weniger automatisch, da instinkthaft erfüllen, müssten Menschen Gott bzw. seinen Geboten gehorchen, um den ihnen zugedachten Zweck zu erfüllen. Das Paradebeispiel stellt Abraham dar, der nach Kierkegaard nicht durch die Prophezeiung er selbst, d.h. der Stammvater aller Gläubigen, wurde, sondern dadurch, dass er Gott gehorchte und auf ihn vertraute.102 100 Vgl. SKS 11, 31f. / LF, 54f. 101 SKS 11, 32 / LF, 55. 102 Erst durch diese Prüfung habe er Isaak als das Geschenk Gottes erhalten, erst dadurch wurde Abraham zu dem, was er ist, erst dadurch habe er Zeugnis gegeben von seinem Glauben und von Gottes Gnade; vgl. SKS 4, 118f. / FZ, 20f. „[W]er aber mit Gott streitet, ist grösser als alle." (SKS 4, 113 / FZ, 14) Und „dass du [d.h. Abraham] Die Frage, warum Abraham laut Kierkegaard Isaak auch um seiner selbst willen opfern wollte, lässt sich nun beantworten. Für Kierkegaard stellt Abraham den Prototypen eines gelungenen Selbst vor Gott dar. Abraham akzeptiert sein Selbst erstens im Sinne der allgemeinen menschlichen Struktur, d.h. seine Freiheit als auch seine beschränkte Macht. Dazu gehört auch, dass Abraham wie Hiob akzeptiert, dass er als Mensch das Handeln des Schöpfergottes nicht (immer) verstehen kann, was sich darin äussert, dass er (zumindest in der Darstellung in Furcht und Zittern) nicht hinterfragt, aus was für Gründen Gott ihm den Befehl gibt, Isaak zu opfern.103 Abraham akzeptiert sein Selbst auch im zweiten Sinne, denn in Furcht und Zittern wird betont, dass Abraham sich niemals darüber beklagt hat, dass Sara bis ins hohe Alter kein Kind gebar.104 Abraham ist für Kierkegaard aber v.a. deshalb der Prototyp eines gelungenen Selbst, weil er ein Selbst im dritten Sinne ist. Abraham erhält von Gott eine Prophezeiung darüber, was seine Bestimmung ist, nämlich durch Isaak der Stammvater der Gläubigen zu werden. Und Abraham tut alles, um diese göttliche Vorsehung zu verwirklichen. Er geht sogar so weit, den Befehlen Gottes dann zu gehorchen, wo diese das ursprüngliche Versprechen zu unterlaufen scheinen. Denn wie kann Abraham durch Isaak der Stammvater der Gläubigen werden, wenn er genau diesen Isaak opfern soll? Aber in Furcht und Zittern zögert Abraham nicht. Er vertraut darauf, dass bei Gott alles möglich ist, und dass Gott sein Versprechen wahr machen wird. Er hundert Jahre brauchtest, um einen Sohn des Alters zu bekommen wider Erwarten, dass du das Messer ziehn musstest, ehe du Isaak behieltest" (SKS 4, 119 / FZ, 22; meine Hervorh.). Vgl. auch SKS 4, 114f. / FZ, 14f. 103 Zu der Frage, ob Gott so etwas von Abraham oder anderen Menschen überhaupt fordern kann, und der damit verbundenen epistemologischen Frage, woher man als Empfänger eines solchen Befehls überhaupt sicher sein kann, dass es Gott ist, der einem diesen Befehl gibt, vgl. C. Stephen Evans, Kierkegaard's Ethic of Love: Divine Commands and Moral Obligations, Oxford und New York 2004, S. 304-318; R. Zachary Manis, „Kierkegaard and Divine-Command Theory: Replies to Quinn and Evans", Religious Studies, Bd. 45, 2009, S. 289-307; R. Zachary Manis, „Kierkegaard and Evans on the Problem of Abraham", Journal of Religious Ethics, Bd. 39, 2011, S. 474-92; Philip L. Quinn, „Divine Command Theory", in The Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory, hg. von Hugh LaFollette and Ingmar Persson, 2. Aufl., Chichester 2013 [2000], S. 81-102. Ein Grund, warum Abraham laut Kierkegaard Gottes Befehl nicht hinterfragt, ist, dass Gottes Befehl für Kierkegaard eine hinreichende Bedingung dafür ist, dass eine Handlung (moralisch) verpflichtend ist; vgl. Manis, Divine-Command Theory, S. 299f. 104 Vgl. SKS 4, 114f. / FZ, 14f. nimmt dieses Paradox an, ebenso wie seine Bestimmung, und wird dadurch tatsächlich zu dem, was ihm verheissen wurde. Dass wir dieses Ideal Kierkegaard selbst zuschreiben können, auch wenn er Furcht und Zittern unter einem Pseudonym veröffentlicht hat, sieht man u.a. an einer Passage in dem nichtpseudonymen Werk Der Liebe tun. Dort fordert Kierkegaard nämlich genau die Art von Gehorsam Gott gegenüber, die Abraham an den Tag legte: Aber Gott sollst du in unbedingtem Gehorsam lieben, selbst wenn das, was er von dir fordert, dir dein eigener Schade[n] scheinen müsste, ja schädlich für seine Sache; denn Gottes Weisheit hat kein Vergleichsverhältnis zu der deinen, und Gottes Lenkung hat keine Verpflichtung zur Verantwortung in Bezug auf deine Klugheit; du hast bloss liebend zu gehorchen. 105 V. Selbst und Gott Nachdem erläutert worden ist, was Kierkegaard unter Selbstwerdung versteht und inwiefern der Mensch dazu auf eine Beziehung zu Gott angewiesen ist, soll in diesem Abschnitt kurz auf das Gottesbild Kierkegaards eingegangen werden. Kierkegaard hat seine Vorstellungen von Gott nicht in einer systematischen Gotteslehre zusammengefasst. Aus bestimmten Aussagen Kierkegaards kann jedoch auf ein spezifisches Gottesbild geschlossen werden. Auffallend sind u.a. Kierkegaards Bemerkungen zur Verschränktheit von Selbstund Gottesverhältnis: Das Selbst ist „ein Verhältnis, das sich zu sich selbst verhält, und, indem es sich zu sich selbst verhält, zu einem Andern sich verhält."106 Wie in II.C. beschrieben ist mit dem Verhalten zu 105 SKS 9, 28 / LT, 24. 106 SKS 11, 130 / KT, 9 (meine Hervorh.). einem Anderen der identitätsstiftende Massstab gemeint, an dem man sich orientiert und misst. Nicht jedes Selbstverhältnis enthält also ein – wie implizit auch immer geartetes – Gottesverhältnis. Deutlich wird das auch an dem Satz, den Kierkegaard ein paar Zeilen später schreibt. Das Selbst kann nicht „durch sich selber...zu Gleichgewicht und Ruhe gelangen oder darinnen sein..., sondern allein dadurch, dass es, indem es sich zu sich selbst verhält, zu demjenigen sich verhält, welches das ganze Verhältnis gesetzt hat."107 Kierkegaard deutet hier an, dass sich nicht jeder Mensch, indem er sich zu sich selbst verhält, sich auch zu demjenigen verhält, welcher das ganze Verhältnis gesetzt hat. Denn Kierkegaard geht ja davon aus, dass die meisten Menschen nicht zu innerer Ruhe gelangt sind, sich aber trotzdem (zumindest ab und an) zu sich selbst verhalten. Ich würde Kierkegaards obige Bemerkung zur Verschränktheit von Selbstund Gottesverhältnis deshalb so verstehen, dass hier vom Selbst im dritten Sinne gesprochen wird, also weder als einer Struktur, die allen Menschen gemeinsam ist, noch als einer bestimmten körperlich-geistigen Verfasstheit, sondern als eines gläubigen Menschen, der sich selbst als geschaffene Kreatur versteht und aufgrund seines Glaubens die in ihm angelegte Freiheit, das Gute zu tun, verwirklicht. Im Gegensatz dazu interpretiert Joachim Ringleben Kierkegaard so, dass es „kein Selbstverhältnis [gibt], das nicht an ihm selbst schon ein Verhältnis zu Gott wäre (wie unausdrücklich und ungewusst auch immer)"108 – eine These, die nicht weiter begründet wird. Nach Ringeleben schliesst Kierkegaards oben erwähnte These mit ein, dass es „kein Gottesverhältnis [gibt], das sich nicht als Selbstverhältnis vollzieht bzw. im Selbstverhältnis seine Gestalt hat."109 Das sei der Fall, weil man unausweichlich auf sich selbst verwiesen wird, wenn man sich zu Gott verhält. Die durch Gottes Allmacht ermöglichte Freiheit des Menschen, d.h. die Fähigkeit, sich zu sich selbst verhalten zu können, impliziere, dass sich Gott zurückzieht 107 SKS 11, 130 / KT, 9. 108 Ringleben, Krankheit, S. 80. 109 Ringleben, Krankheit, S. 80. und den Menschen Mensch sein lässt. Deshalb werde dem Menschen der Weg zu Gott als seinem Grund verstellt; er lande wieder bei sich selbst. „Gott verhält sich so zu mir, dass ich infolge dessen mich zu mir selbst verhalte.... In diesem Verhalten Gottes zu mir liegt aber genauestens die Unmöglichkeit, mich zu ihm zu verhalten, ohne mich zugleich zu mir selbst zu verhalten."110 Ringleben veranschaulicht das an dem Bild des absoluten Spiegels, d.h. eines Spiegels, in dem man nur sich selbst, aber nicht den Spiegel sieht. Gott „ist als Spiegel (d.h. spiegelnd) gerade bei mir, indem ich in ihm nur mich selbst sehe....Weil ich im Spiegel unmittelbar nur mich (nicht aber ihn als ihn selber) sehe, ist er mir genau darin entrückt, dass er mich zu mir vermittelt."111 Weil sich über Gott positiv nur beschränkt Aussagen machen lassen, weil er kein Objekt ist, das man direkt wahrnehmen kann, interpretiert David Law Kierkegaard als Vertreter einer negativen Theologie.112 Kierkegaard gehe davon aus, dass eine Kenntnis Gottes nicht auf empirischem Weg erlangt werden könne, sondern an die Beziehung zu ihm gekoppelt sei.113 Ihn kennen, heisse in Beziehung zu ihm stehen. Gott entspreche nicht einer Ich-Er-Beziehung, d.h. etwas Objektivierbarem, sondern sei nur in einer persönlichen Ich-Du-Begegnung kennen zu lernen.114 Die Offenbarung Gottes finde im Inneren des Individuums bzw. in seiner ethischen Selbstentwicklung statt, bis Gott für die Person zur wesentlichen Realität werde. 115 Metaphorisch gesprochen nähert man sich Gott an, je ethischer man wird, d.h. je mehr man sich 110 Ringleben, Krankheit, S. 82f. 111 Ringleben, Krankheit, S. 82. 112 Christian Kopp stimmt Law zu, insoweit Kierkegaard tatsächlich betone, dass man Gott nicht objektiv erkennen könne; vgl. Kopp, Theozentrik, S. 434. Aber er wendet gegen Laws apothatisches Verständnis von Kierkegaards theologischer Anthropologie ein, dass es nicht möglich sei, sich (z.B. im Gebet) mit irgendetwas, worüber man keine Aussagen treffen könne, ins Verhältnis zu setzen, sondern bereits existierende Gottesvorstellungen nötig seien, um sich Gott zuwenden zu können; vgl. Kopp, Theozentrik, S. 609. Kopp forschte intensiv zu den Gottesvorstellungen bei Kierkegaard, und kommt zu dem Schluss, dass Gott für Kierkegaard Liebe, der Barmherzige, der Richter, der Erzieher und der Hilfe, Schutz und Rat gewährende Vater ist; vgl. Kopp, Theozentrik, S. 610, n. 21. 113 Vgl. David R. Law, Kierkegaard as Negative Theologian, New York 2001, S. 180. 114 Vgl. Law, Negative Theologian, S. 180. 115 Vgl. Law, Negative Theologian, S. 179. Jemand, der Gott sucht, tut dies nicht ausserhalb seiner selbst, erschafft ihn nicht in seinen Begehren, sondern findet ihn in seiner Innerlichkeit; vgl. Pap. V B 227. der eigenen Freiheit und Verantwortung bewusst wird und je mehr man die eigene egozentrische Perspektive verlässt. Auf pastorale Art und Weise beschreibt Kierkegaard das in Die Lilie auf dem Felde und der Vogel unter dem Himmel. Indirekt schreibt er, dass man, indem man schweige, also seine egoistischen Wünsche vergisst116 und sich selbst zurücknimmt117, Gott vernehmen kann.118 Später präzisiert Kierkegaard: „Auch wenn Er nicht spricht, dies, dass aus Ehrfurcht vor ihm alles schweigt, wirkt ja auf einen, als ob er spräche."119 Ausserdem werde man sich in der Natur bewusst, dass man vor und für Gott sei120 bzw. dass man Gott lieben und ihm allein dienen solle.121 Gott offenbare sich also, wenn man aus Ehrfurcht verstumme, wenn das eigene Streben in der Natur zur Ruhe komme, wenn man wie in IV.C. beschrieben sein Leben vertrauensvoll in die Hand des allmächtigen Schöpfers lege und seine eigenen Grenzen akzeptiere.122 In der Stille, dort, wo kein anderer Mensch zugegen ist, wo man mit sich allein ist, werde deutlich, wie nahe Gott einem ist.123 „Gott aber...ist dir noch näher, unendlich viel näher, als zwei Liebende einander sind, er, dein Schöpfer und Erhalter, er, in dem du lebest, webest und bist, er, aus dessen Gnade du alles empfängst."124 Die Nähe Gottes ist nicht räumlich zu verstehen, sondern geistig. Wird Gott zur Bestimmung und zum Ziel der Freiheit, ist er einem nahe. „Dass der Massstab zugleich das Ziel (die Erfüllung) der Freiheit ist, bedeutet, dass er [Gott] nicht als ein ihr äusserlicher Massstab gedacht werden kann: Gott ist...alles umfassende Wirklichkeit und deshalb jedem Einzelnen unendlich nah."125 Gott als Sinn des Lebens bzw. als Ziel der Freiheit zu verstehen, entspricht 116 Vgl. SKS 11, 17 / LF, 37. 117 Vgl. SKS 11, 23 / LF, 44. 118 Verstummt man, könne man im gottesfürchtigen Gebet oder im Schweigen der Natur die Stimme der Gottheit vernehmen; vgl. SKS 11, 17-19 / LF, 38f. 119 SKS 11, 22 / LF, 43. 120 Vgl. SKS 11, 22 / LF, 43. 121 Vgl. SKS 11, 29 / LF, 52. 122 Vgl. Dietz, Existenz, S. 73 und S. 80. 123 Vgl. SKS 11, 28 / LF, 50. 124 SKS 11, 28 / LF, 50. 125 Dietz, Existenz, S. 59. nach Dietz einer existenzdialektischen Interpretation der Allgegenwart Gottes, die impliziert, dass Gott in jedem Menschen gegenwärtig ist.126 Dass die Freiheit des Menschen erstens durch Gott konstituiert ist, dass sie sich zweitens vor Gott realisiert, d.h. in Gott ihren Massstab hat und dass Gott drittens die Bestimmung und das Ziel der Freiheit darstellt, ist nach Dietz das, was sich nach Kierkegaard positiv über Gott sagen lässt.127 A. Der äussere, historische Gott Wie in IV.A. angedeutet, gibt es bei Kierkegaard neben dem im letzten Abschnitt erwähnten Gottesverhältnis (Religiosität A) noch das der Religiosität B. In der Religiosität A antworte man nach Kierkegaard immanent auf den Widerspruch, ewige Seligkeit in der Zeit durch ein Verhältnis zu einem anderen in der Zeit zu erwarten128, indem man sich aufgrund der eigenen moralischen Unfähigkeit unter eine höhere Macht erniedrige und Gott damit ex negativo postuliere.129 Gott wäre, wenn man Laws Auslegung folgt, hier also der Ich-Du-Beziehung immanent. Kierkegaard glaubt daneben aber sehr wohl an einen ‚äusseren' Gott, der jenseits solcher Ich-Du-Beziehungen existiert(e). Denn in der Religiosität B ist Gott bzw. das Ewige nicht Teil des menschlichen Selbst. Die Religiosität B 126 Vgl. Dietz, Existenz, S. 59, Anmerkung 8. 127 Vgl. Dietz, Existenz, S. 59, Anmerkung 4. 128 Vgl. SKS 7, 518 / AUN2, 281. 129 „Die Religiosität A akzentuiert das Existieren als die Wirklichkeit, und die Ewigkeit, die doch in der zugrunde liegenden Immanenz das Ganze trägt, verschwindet in der Weise, dass das Positive am Negativen kenntlich wird....für die Religiosität A ist nur die Wirklichkeit der Existenz, und doch ist das Ewige beständig von ihr verborgen, und verborgen zur Stelle." (SKS 7, 519 / AUN2, 282f.; meine Hervorh.). setzt den Gegensatz zwischen der Existenz und dem Ewigen absolut; denn gerade das, dass das Ewige in einem bestimmten Zeitmoment ist, ist der Ausdruck dafür, dass die Existenz verlassen ist von der verborgenen Immanenz des Ewigen. In dem Religiösen A ist das Ewige überall und nirgends..., aber verborgen von der Wirklichkeit der Existenz; im Paradox-Religiösen ist das Ewige an einer bestimmten Stelle, und das ist gerade der Bruch mit der Immanenz. 130 Obwohl Christus auf die Welt gekommen ist, ist er den Menschen insofern nicht immanent, als dass seine Inkarnation sich nicht aus dem Selbst, der menschlichen Verstrickung in Schuld oder der Unterordnung unter eine höhere Macht ergibt. Hans Martin Junghans, Übersetzer von Kierkegaards Werk Abschliessende unwissenschaftliche Nachschrift zu den philosophischen Brocken, merkt an: das Ewige ist hier „nicht mehr in der menschlichen Existenz, sondern zeigt sich ausserhalb des Menschlichen, als etwas ‚Transzendentes', in der Geschichte, als ein historisches Faktum."131 In der Religiosität B geht man von der paradoxen Vorstellung aus, dass sich Gott in einem Menschen inkarniert hat, dass er zum Objekt und damit sichtbar wurde, dass das Ewige in die Zeit gekommen ist, dass die Worte und Taten eines Menschen die Offenbarung Gottes darstellen. VI. Fazit und Kritik Nach Kierkegaard kann der Mensch nur durch den (christlichen) Glauben ein selbstbestimmtes, verantwortungsvolles und ausgeglichenes Wesen werden. Nachdem ihm seine Freiheit und 130 SKS 7, 519 / AUN2, 283. 131 AUN2, 404, Anmerkung 761; vgl. auch AUN2, 400, Anmerkung 712. seine Begrenztheit bewusst geworden sind, müsse er seine Kreatürlichkeit, seine Sündhaftigkeit und die göttliche Vergebung annehmen. Dann könne er seine Freiheit und seine Grenzen leichter akzeptieren und seine ihm gebotenen Möglichkeiten wahrnehmen. V.a. müsse er sich explizit zu Gott verhalten, d.h. das eigene Leben als göttliche Aufgabe verstehen, sich an Gottes Geboten messen lassen und den Gottesdienst zum wichtigsten Ziel seines Lebens machen. Vertraue er entschlossen auf Gott und gehe gehorsam den Weg, den Christus vorgezeichnet hat, dann entwickle sich der Mensch geistig und werde frei, um Gutes zu tun. Auch wenn ich hier versucht habe, Kierkegaards Anthropologie so undogmatisch wie möglich darzustellen, ist sie doch grundlegend theologisch geprägt und unterscheidet sich z.B. massgeblich von einer philosophischen oder sozio-biologischen Anthropologie. Die These z.B., dass man von Gott gesetzt wurde, weil man sich nicht aussuchen kann, ein Mensch, d.h. u.a. frei zu sein, und genau dieser Mensch zu sein, ist eine nicht zu verifizierende Glaubensannahme. Ob nur (der christliche) Gott bzw. der (christliche) Glaube den Menschen aus der Verzweiflung retten kann, kann u.a. aus den folgenden zwei Gründen bezweifelt werden. Erstens scheint unsere heutige (säkulare) Gesellschaft einen Weg gefunden zu haben, wie man ein authentisches und (relativ) glückliches Leben leben kann, auch ohne sich den radikalen Forderungen Christi zu beugen. Zumindest in Deutschland glauben wohl nur die wenigsten Menschen daran, dass die Gebote Gottes für sie absolut gelten. Sowohl in der nichtreligiösen Pädagogik als auch in der Psychotherapie wird den Menschen nahe gelegt, zu akzeptieren, dass sie rigiden Geboten nicht gerecht werden müssen, weil es normal ist, Fehler zu machen. Die menschliche Schwäche wird zu integrieren versucht, anstatt hohe ethische Forderungen zu stellen und das Scheitern durch göttliche Vergebung abzumildern. Kierkegaards Vorstellung ist nun problematisch, weil sie unterstellen muss, dass all diese säkularen Leute nicht nur verzweifelt sind, bewusst oder unbewusst, sondern auch unglücklich.132 Ich vermute aber, dass die meisten Leute so ein Urteil über sich selbst ablehnen würden. Im Angesicht ihres (wahrscheinlichen) Widerspruchs aber darauf zu beharren, dass sie sich irren, ist eine anmassende These, die einer undogmatischen Rechtfertigung bedürfte. Kierkegaard könnte aber natürlich darauf insistieren, dass er von einer Freiheit und einer Seligkeit spricht, die Durchschnittsbürger nicht erreichen, und dass der scheinbare Widerspruch nur deshalb zustande kommt, weil beide Parteien etwas anderes mit ‚Glück' meinen. Das führt mich zum zweiten Kritikpunkt. Wenn wir den Massstab des Glücks so hoch legen, dass nur wenige Heilige so einen Zustand erreichen, bleibt unklar, warum so einen Zustand nur christliche Heilige erreichen sollten. Begegnungen mit anderen Religionen verdeutlichen, dass es Heil und Glück auch ausserhalb des Christentums gibt. Das sollte es nach Kierkegaards Vorstellung aber nicht geben, v.a. dort nicht, wo es keine Vorstellungen eines liebenden und gleichzeitig richtenden Schöpfergottes gibt. Wie unplausibel solche exklusivistischen (im besten Fall inklusivistischen) Heilsvorstellungen sind, zeigen u.a. John Hick 133 und Perry Schmidt-Leukel134 auf. 132 Vgl. Disse, Psyche, S. 523. 133 Vgl. u.a. John Hick, „Religious Pluralism and Salvation", in Philosophy of Religion. An Anthology of Contemporary Views, hg. von Melville Y. Stewart, Boston 1996, S. 713-726; John Hick, An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent, 2. Aufl., New Haven 2004 [1989]. 134 Vgl. Perry Schmidt-Leukel, Gott Ohne Grenzen: Eine christliche und pluralistische Theologie der Religionen, Gütersloh 2005. | {
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Sergio CREMASCHI 36 Sergio CREMASCHI Università "Amedeo Avogadro" SIDGWICK'S COHERENTIST MORAL EPISTEMOLOGY Abstract I discuss the ideas of common sense and common sense morality in Sidgwick. I argue that, far from aiming at overcoming common-sense morality, Sidgwick aimed purposely at grounding a consist code of morality by methods allegedly taken from the natural sciences, in order to reach also in the moral field the same kind of "mature" knowledge as in the natural sciences. His whole polemics with intuitionism was vitiated by the a priori assumption that the widespread ethos of the educated part of humankind, not the theories of the intuitionist philosophers, was what was really worth considering as the expression of intuitionist ethics. In spite of the naïve positivist starting point Sidgwick was encouraged by his own approach in exploring the fruitfulness of coherentist methods for normative ethics. Thus Sidgwick left an ambivalent legacy to twentieth-century ethics: the dogmatic idea of a "new" morality of a consequentialist kind, and the fruitful idea that we can argue rationally in normative ethics albeit without shared foundations. Key words: Sidgwick, Henry; moral epistemology; common sense morality; coherentism; applied ethics 1. The first truly academic work in moral philosophy? According to an often-quoted sentence by Brand Blanshard, Sidgwick was an attractive figure «not because he showed surprising individual traits but because he did not»1, and an eminent figure of AngloAmerican ethics such as John Rawls declared that The Methods of Ethics was «the first truly academic work in moral philosophy which undertakes to provide a systematic comparative study of moral conceptions, starting with those which historically and by present assessment are the most significant»2. Bart Schulz's recent biography has turned this image upside 1 Blanshard, 1974, p. 349. 2 Rawls, 1981, p. v. Sergio CREMASCHI 37 down by presenting Sidgwick as a troubled, problematic, and even disquieting figure, somewhat closer to a fin-de-siècle sceptic and cosmic pessimist such as Friedrich Nietzsche undoubtedly was than to Rawls's idea of the modern professional moral philosopher3. I will discuss how Sidgwick's ambivalent attitude, somewhat in between that of a positivist and that of one more death-of-God mourner has much to do with many of his own uncertainties on quite central points of ethical theory, namely: (a) the nature and method of philosophy in general and moral philosophy in particular; (b) his ill-defined notion of "common sense", (c) his even less defined idea of a "common sense morality", (d) his invention of a straw-man named "dogmatic intuitionism". But I will argue also that, the positivist self-image of his own work and the pessimist and sceptical conclusions he reached on the possibility of a rationally justified normative ethic notwithstanding, Sidgwick's discovered one important idea that he left as a legacy to David Ross, John Rawls, and Beauchamp and Childress, namely the idea of coherentist procedures for amending, improving, and reconciling contrasting moral judgements with each other. 2. The decisive and most important task of philosophy The Methods of Ethics is a strange book that has been interpreted in almost opposite ways, either as a classical utilitarian work or as the modern formulation of ethical intuitionism. In order to find a way out of such opposite interpretations I suggest that we should try reading it from the starting point provided by Sidgwick's pre-comprehension of his own task. While reconstructing the biographical path that had lead him to The Methods of Ethics he says that as a young man he started feeling that traditional moral rules he had been taught exerted «external and arbitrary pressures»4 and were «doubtful and confused»5. Such traditional morality seemed to him to be identical with the one Whewell presented in his Elements of Morality and the compulsory reading he had to do of the work as a Cambridge student left him with the impression that «intuitionist 3 Schultz, 2004. 4 Sidgwick, 1907, p. xv. 5 Ibid. Sergio CREMASCHI 38 moralists were hopelessly vague (in comparison with mathematicians) in their definitions and axioms»6. On the other hand the kind of utilitarianism that had been formulated by John Stuart Mill seemed to him attractive for its earthly and empirical character, even if far from convincing mainly because of Mill's defective attempt a providing a "proof" of the principle of utility. Besides, he found good reasons in favour of intuitionism in Butler and in Kant, but also others in favour of utilitarianism in Butler himself, his intuitionism notwithstanding, and finally reasons in favour of "common sense morality" in Aristotle, Reid, and Spencer. As a remedy to his own doubts and uncertainties he resorted to the project of studying, without trying to establish the correct ethical principles first, the kind of connections subsisting between various ethical principles and their consequences. He believed that moral philosophers had made the mistake of starting with the search for correct moral principles and believed that his project resembled the purely theoretical attitude that should be characterize the philosopher, or better the scientist, «the same disinterested curiosity to which we owe the great discovery of physics»7. The task of ethics would be then just «considering which conclusions we will rationally reach starting with certain ethical premises»8, that is, «to discuss the considerations which should... be decisive in determining the adoption of ethical first principles», not «to establish such principles; nor... to supply a set of practical directions for conduct»9. In order to understand what he precisely meant when he proposed the adoption of the disinterested curiosity allegedly inspiring the inquiries carried out by natural scientists, it is important to reconstruct Sidgwick's idea of science, philosophy, and knowledge. His first claim is that philosophy is a kind of «scientia scientiarum»10; the second is that the goal pursued by philosophy is systematisation, a «fully unified knowledge» or a «consistent whole» of «rational human thought»11; the third is that it suffers from a lag when compared with the sciences, that it is still «in a rudimental state in comparison with the more specialised studies of those field of 6 Ibid.; on Sidgwick and Whewell see Cremaschi, 2008. 7 Ibid., p. vi. 8 Ibid., p. xix. 9 Ibid. 10 Sidgwick 1902. 11 Ibid., p. 34. Sergio CREMASCHI 39 systematic knowledge that we name sciences»12, we cannot meet the same «consensus among experts that may be found in issues of geometry, physics, botanic»13. Up to now, all this sounds much like Herbert Spencer's Positivism; other claims seems to be of a rather different nature. One is that the borderline to be established between "knowledge" (that is, a belief considered to be well-founded) and "common sense", that is, those beliefs that, even if sharing «the characteristic of general acceptance»14, yet «do not present themselves as self-evident or derived from self-evident premises»15. Philosophy has its own method, partly similar and partly different from the method of the sciences: it is based on intuition, error, and amendment of error by means of reflection (in turn consisting of consensus with other qualified individuals plus introspection and analysis of language). Sidgwick adds that he does not rule out that «philosophy may use the introspective method»16, and in fact, when faced with two alternative claims, he declares that he finds «both such beliefs fundamental» in his own thinking «with as much clarity as may be found in the process of introspective reflection»17. Another claim quite incompatible with Spencer's Positivism is that the whole of human knowledge includes not only theoretical but also normative beliefs. According to Spencer, the sciences yield knowledge of «what exists or has existed or will exist». According to Sidgwick we cannot consistently claim that the task of moral or political philosophy is establishing the coexistence and succession of phenomena, and that we should accordingly acknowledge that philosophy in general should also treat the «principles and methods for rationally determining what ought to be»18. Practical philosophy is a field different and parallel to the one Spencer named "philosophy", but the «decisive and most important task of philosophy»19 is precisely solving the «problem of coordinating these two partitions of its subject and connecting fact and ideal»20. Yet, not all of 12 Ibid., p. 12. 13 Ibid., p. 5. 14 Ibid., p. 172. 15 Ibid. 16 Ibid., p. 49. 17 Sidgwick, 1889, p. 43. 18 Sidgwick, 1876, p. 24. 19 Ibid., p. 30. 20 Ibid. Sergio CREMASCHI 40 ethics is philosophy. casuistry, not unlike law and politics that are more "arts" than sciences, «certainly is not philosophy»21; the proper task of philosophy in the practical domain is «"unifying" the principles and methods of reasoning that lead to practical conclusions»22 like philosophy in the theoretical domain unifies the principles and methods of the sciences of nature. The source whence we extract the «principles and methods» is only «common sense» or «the thought which we all share»23, since we «want to preserve harmony with common sense»24, and on some occasions we just cannot adopt some particular conclusion for the simple reason that we are not prepared to betray «our deepest convictions»25. In other words, philosophy uses primarily what I would call the dialectical method, that is, the method of reflection on the thought we all share, by means of symbolism we all share, that is, language26. Accordingly, what philosophy can afford in the practical domain is: (i) finding "intuitions" that may be justified; (ii) reflecting on the body of beliefs "we" share; (iii) detecting inconsistencies in such body of beliefs; (iv) looking for inconsistencies between the above and the whole of natural sciences as a body of knowledge with which the beliefs of common sense should be made compatible27. And yet, how much real "knowledge" may actually be produced in this way is one of the points about which most of Sidgwick's doubts concentrate. 21 Ibid., p. 26. 22 Ibid., p. 31. 23 Sidgwick, 1902, p. 40. 24 Ibid., p. 215. 25 Ibid. 26 Ibid., p. 49. 27 For more detailed discussion see Cremaschi, 2006. Sergio CREMASCHI 41 3. What is properly Common Sense? The idea of "common sense", frequently mentioned by Sidgwick, is an idea with a respectable traditional philosophical pedigree dating back to the Stoics and Cicero, an idea that was rescued by the Scottish philosophers, first among them Thomas Reid. Sidgwick may have met it first in William Hamilton, who had tried to combine the Scottish with the Kantian philosophy and was the target of one of John Stuart Mill's attacks as a dogmatic thinker. Mill contended that his "introspective" method was unable to account for the genesis of common sense beliefs in as plausible a way as James Mill's associationist theory was allegedly able to do, and accordingly empiricism was the right and "progressive" approach while all aprioristic approaches were just devious devices for confirming traditional prejudice. The same idea was assigned a central role by Cambridge critics of utilitarianism, namely Samuel Taylor Coleridge, John Grote, John Frederick Denison Maurice, in so far as it was believed to be able to provide a justification for religion and traditional morality against the utilitarian attack28. The idea was only marginally accepted by another Cambridge critic of utilitarianism, William Whewell who emphasized instead rational (partly a priori) knowledge. He claimed, like Richard Price, that morality arises out of «intellect, not out of Sense»29, but added also that «no system of morality may be true unless it is a system according with Common Sense of humankind»30. Common sense was rescued by Mill as a consequence of his controversy with Whewell as a means of making utilitarianism less contrasting with traditional moral doctrines31. In Utilitarianism he argued in fact that the experience of humankind has accumulated a body of moral rules that have been selected on criteria suggested by some kind of «unaware utilitarianism»32, an idea that was later taken over by Sidgwick, and indeed was still shared by George Edward Moore himself. 28 See Cremaschi, 2006b. 29 Whewell, 1854, p. 1 30 Ibid., p. 11. 31 See Cremaschi, 2006b. 32 Mill 1838, p. 93; see also Mill, 1861, pp. 241-246. Sergio CREMASCHI 42 4. What is properly Common Sense Morality? Granted the view of philosophy and its method that has been described above, Sidgwick gives a rather consistent answer to the question: what can philosophy do in the practical field? The answer is as follows: (i) singling out "intuitions" which may be eventually justified; (ii) reflecting on the body of beliefs that "we" share; (iii) hunting for inconsistencies within such a body of beliefs; (iv) ferreting out inconsistencies also between the above and the whole of results of the natural sciences qua body of well-founded and consistent beliefs with which the beliefs of common sense should be harmonized. The first part of the task was believed by Sidgwick to be quite easy. In fact he writes: it only requires a little reflection and observation of men's moral discourse to make a collection of such [the intuitionists' formulae] general rules, as to the validity of which there would be apparent agreement at least among moral persons of our own age and civilisation, and which would cover with approximate completeness the whole of human conduct. Such a collection, regarded as a code imposed on an individual by the public opinion of the community to which he belongs, we have called the Positive Morality of the community: but when regarded as a body of moral truth, warranted to be such by the consensus of mankind, – or at least of that portion of mankind which combines adequate intellectual enlightenment with a serious concern for morality – it is more significantly termed the morality of Common Sense33. The points deserving comment in the quote are the following: first, the shift from common sense morality to moral knowledge is made by systematisation; second, positive morality may looked at as either (i) a historically determined code of conduct, (ii) corpus of moral truths; third, the consensus about such corpus is by one part of mankind; fourth, such part of mankind has been singled out because of its (alleged) intellectual and moral superiority; fifth, the problem seems to Sidgwick to be less devastating than it is in fact because of his belief in ongoing moral progress by which errors will be amended and a more consistent and comprehensive 33 Sidgwick 1907, book III, ch. I, sect. 5. Sergio CREMASCHI 43 moral view will be attained, and this implies not "just change" but "progress". 5. What is precisely dogmatic intuitionism? Sidgwick became famous in the Anglo-American world primarily for his (allegedly final) critique of so-called dogmatic intuitionism, constantly referred to as to the reason for not discussing any more William Whewell's and Richard Price's rationalist ethical theories, indeed a task to which Anglo-American moral philosophers have applied themselves with remarkable discipline for more than one century. In fact, in Sidgwick's Methods no attempt is made to discuss the ethical theory of intuitionism, either in Price'se version or in Whewell's, in a way comparable to the one in which utilitarian theory, as it had been presented by Bentham and Mill, is discussed in detail. An important point never mentioned by Sidgwick is that for Price and Whewell – unlike other less rationalist intuitionists, for example Thomas Reid – common sense has a marginal relevance, in so far as their own intuitionist theory starts with a set of self-evident propositions which are rationally justified in so far as they may be assumed to be undeniable without lapsing into contradiction. This is an assumption rather different from the different idea, accepted by the later Stoics Cicero, Reid, Coleridge, Morice and Grote, of a set of beliefs virtually shared by mankind at all time and place. As a consequence, Sidgwick's undeservedly famous expression "dogmatic intuitionism" seems to connote something that is his own creation, and he never gives a precise denotation to the terms, that is, he neither makes it clear who the proponents of "dogmatic intuitionism" are nor what are precisely the claims of such doctrine. The suspicion is not unjustified that, more than a historically given philosophical current, "dogmatic intuitionism" is for Sidgwick some kind of a figure of Absolute Spirit, or a step in the path of Sidgwick's own intellectual career, or a partner in his dialogue with himself that he had created just in order to refute it. Instead the famous book III of the Methods has been revered as the alleged last word on any kind of dogmatic and absolutist system of morality to the point that the Italian translator of The Methods, Maurizio Mori, has written that Sidgwick Sergio CREMASCHI 44 proves that, when one formulates a principle in a clear and precise way, one has to acknowledge that it always admits of exceptions. Thus he spells out for the first time the claim that there are no absolute duties, that is, in technical jargon, that all duties are prima facie duties34. Yet, an important circumstance is that the book is not a criticism of Price's and Whewell's theories but instead a demolition of a straw-man, filled up mainly with items taken from Reid and other common-sense philosophers, not from such rationalist philosophers as Price and Whewell. But Reid's common sense is not Price's and Whewell's intellect, and, even if also Reid may be classified as an intuitionist, he is not the proponent of the kind of ethical intuitionism that was being defended in the eighteenthcentury British discussion. In other words, what Sidgwick did is having recourse to the widespread rhetorical trick of attacking one really existing partner in the discussion – in his case, Whewell – by demolishing some other weaker target that is partially resembling the real target. 7. Sidgwick's exploded project of a scientific ethic, and how to make the best of its failure 1. I started mentioning the fact that Sidgwick won in the AngloSaxon world a fame as the author of the «most beautiful ethical treatise» that was ever written, or at least as somebody who succeeded in «creating the prototype of a modern treatise of moral philosophy»35 thus giving «to the problems of ethics the form that has been dominating in British and American moral philosophy from his time on»36, of a writer with an absolute impartial and scientific attitude, and more recently of a more credible putative father of analytic ethics than Moore may be37. Sidgwick's intentions were in fact different; what he wanted to carry out was first of all a refutation of Samuel Coleridge's, Frederick Denison Maurice's, John Grote's morality-based theodicy. In his anti-theodicy Sidgwick treats ethics not as a primary topic, but as a secondary topic, the primary one being the possibility of believing in a moral world-order. He did not succeed in his secondary project of founding a scientific ethic, but he apparently succeeded in his primary project of proving the non-existence of a moral world-order. 34 Mori, 1995, p. xxi. 35 Schneewind, 1977, p. 1. 36 Ibid., p. 422 37 Gauthier, 1970, p. 7. Sergio CREMASCHI 45 It is strikingly that he ignored, albeit while mentioning often its author, the different answer given by Kant to the same question. This answer carried the impossibility of any theodicy, the necessity of the moral law and, as a condition of possibility of the moral law, a solution to the problem of theodicy based on rational faith or on the postulates of practical reason. 2. Sidgwick's fame of impartiality and objectivity is undeserved, since he was "impartial" in the rather limited way a sceptic may be, in so far as his way of proving his own claims is the rather devious device of throwing down – how effectively is a different question – the claims he takes as his own targets one after the other. This image of Sidgwick's work depends partly on the editorial aspect of his main work, that is, on its systematic structure following the model of the scientific treatise that was becoming fashionable in the age of Positivism. Besides, it may depend on the very fact of being a terribly boring book, as Sidgwick apparently knew too well in so far as he declared that it could not «fail to be somewhat dry and repellent»38. Adoption of such a model, far from being anti-rhetorical, was itself a cunning rhetorical move. It amounted to saying: I present my argument without any rhetorical flourish because I am a scientist, unlike my predecessors who were rhetoricians. 3. The book, besides being far from impartial and objective, is more an essay than a treatise in so far as, far from covering systematically all the topics of such as an established subjects as Ethics, it develops instead an argument on one point (i.e., theodicy on a moral basis). One might add that it is far from well-documented and exhaustive on the theories it discusses, first of all intuitionism. This does not depend on unfairness or parti pris, but simply on the circumstance that his target was not discussing in a fair and comprehensive way what he believed to be the competing ethical doctrines of his time, but a different one, namely examining the promises and failures of common-sense morality. 4. The proposal advanced by David Gauthier and others to date back analytic ethics to Sidgwick's time needs be carefully considered. There are a number of reasons for under-stressing Moore's originality vis-à-vis Sidgwick and for thinking that The Methods is in a sense a treatise in metaethics. But there are also reasons for refusing such presumption of fatherhood in favour of Sidgwick. One is that also Kant's Foundation and Critique of Practical Reason are pure metaethics, and accordingly Kant 38 Sidgwick, 1906, p. 295. Sergio CREMASCHI 46 should be recognized instead to be the true father of analytic ethics. Another is that those anti-empiricist elements which mark the break between Mill and Sidgwick and give the latter's work its meta-ethical flavour are borrowed first from Whewell, and to a lesser degree from the British neoHegelians (in both cases without due acknowledgement), and the very idea of a "philosophy of morality" is Whewell's own idea, which would imply that it is Whewell, not Sidgwick, who should be acclaimed as the father of analytic ethics. 5. An odd legacy left by Sidgwick's war on intuitionism is the idea of "common sense morality", a recurrent idea in analytic ethics that has been showing up in two different versions: a) the version adopted by those who, like Peter Singer, argue the case for a "new morality" and stress the inadequacy of "common sense morality", its inability in providing solutions, and the non-existence of unconditionally valid precepts; b) the opposite one adopted by those who, like David Ross and John Rawls, stress the idea that the data of ethical theory are what "we" (the writer and the reader) "know" and that a theory holds if it succeeds in systematising already shared "intuitions"39. I believe that both alignments create more troubles than they are able to settle, and that the right thing to do would be getting rid of the very notion, since, once taken out of the context of the eighteenth-century British discussion, "common sense morality" does not denote anything, or better, it connotes in an undue way something that is quite familiar but may do without such an odd name. It is a thing that sociologists and anthropologists had started examining precisely in the decades between the first and the seventh edition of the Methods. Such an examination yielded in the first decades of the Twentieth century a discussion on cultural relativism that would have been unconceivable for euro-centric Victorian philosophers. The thing studied by anthropologists in fact was not just one thing, but instead it consisted of several different things, namely the moral codes of various societies. The "new anthropology", that is Franz Boas and Bronislaw Malinowski, realized that the distinction – an obvious one for such Sidgwick's contemporaries as Edward Tylor and James George Fraser – between "more advanced" and "less advanced" societies or cultures is less obvious than the Victorians used to believe and that differences in moral codes adopted by different societies depend on more complex reasons than "advancement". One discovery was that such codes are dependent on 39 As noted in Singer, 1974. Sergio CREMASCHI 47 constellations of factors, namely economy, family, religion and more. Another was that accordingly they are, in a sense, all of them functionally justified and, to a point, "rational"40. They are not the result of an accumulation of mankind's experience, as the Victorians, including such opposite camps as Samuel Coleridge and his followers on the one hand, and John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer on the other, tended to believe. In fact all the Victorians shared, albeit for different reasons, the uncritical belief that what comes after unfailingly succeeds in replacing what came before and that what humankind needs is just some more time, so that either divine revelation or empiricist philosophy and the positive sciences may carry out their own job of progressively enlightening it. 6. Moral "intuitions", if they exist, exist in at least two different senses, that is, either as axioms, for example such principles as a duty to keep promises that needs no justification besides the fact that it is in the very nature of a promise to be kept, or as considered opinions accepted in reflective equilibrium, for example such principles as religious freedom or some more or less equalitarian criterion of distributive justice. It is as well to note that neither axioms nor considered opinions have much to do with "common sense morality" or with the historically given moral codes of different societies. 7. And yet, while following a path that he believed would lead toward a solution to the problem of theodicy, Sidgwick made a couple of suggestions for settling issues that are indeed relevant to ethics, and I would say more relevant than any answer to the unanswerable questions of theodicy. First, Sidgwick worked out a coherentist procedure for overcoming moral disagreement; second, he even discovered something rather close to reflective equilibrium. The useless ballast with which he overloaded both discoveries was made of such typical nineteenth-century paraphernalia as introspection, belief, common sense, scientific truths. What we can do of Sidgwick's discoveries is not using coherentist procedures for building a rational, or even worse a scientific, ethics, as Sidgwick wanted to do. We may use them for a more modest and somewhat different project, the project of defining, if not "methods of ethics" at least "procedures of applied ethics". These are procedures for arguing and reaching virtuous compromises between partners who have reached partially 40 See Cremaschi, 2007. Sergio CREMASCHI 48 different ethical conclusions on general issues, and yet still share at least some moral judgements on particular subjects. The discovery of such procedures is the great discovery, or the obvious platitude, or the Columbus's egg on which applied ethics rests. This discovery works comparatively well when it is not overloaded with theoretical assumptions or with attempts at proving general theoretical truths that may be left for further discussion, for example such claims as that there are no unconditional duties, or that old morality is useless, or that ethics is more healthy without religion. To sum up, not unlike Cristoforo Colombo who first believed he had discovered Catai and was disappointed later on in discovering he had not, also Sidgwick, after sailing in search of the moral world order, at the end of his own voyage reached the disheartening conclusion that «any attempt at framing a perfect ideal of rational conduct» is «foredoomed to inevitable failure»41. In fact he could have been a little bit more euphoric, since he had discovered, if not a new continent, at least Columbus's egg of applied ethics. REFERENCES Blanshard, B. (1974). "Sidgwick the Man". The Monist, 58, pp. 349-70. Cremaschi, S. (2006a). "Sidgwick e il progetto di un'etica scientifica". Etica e Politica/Ethics & Politics, 7/1, pp. 1-36 available at http://www2.units.it/etica/2006_1/CREMASCHI01.pdf Cremaschi, S. (2006b). "The Mill-Whewell controversy on ethics and its bequest to analytic philosophy". In E. Baccarini S. Prijic Samaržja (eds.), Rationality in Belief and Action, Rijeka: University of Rijeka, Faculty of Arts and Sciences Croatian Society for Analytic Philosophy, pp. 45-62. Cremaschi, S. (2007). "Il relativismo etico fra antropologia culturale e filosofia analitica". in I. Tolomio ed., Rileggere l'etica tra contingenza e principi, Padova: CLUEP, pp. 15-45. Cremaschi, S. (2008), "Nothing to invite or to reward a separate examination. Sidgwick and Whewell". Etica e Politica/Ethics &Politics, 10/2, pp. 137-181 available at http://www2.units.it/~etica/2008_2/CREMASCHI.pdf 41 Sidgwick, 1874, p. 473 Sergio CREMASCHI 49 Cremaschi, S. (2011), "Like Boys Pursue the Rainbow. Whewell's Independent Morality vs. Sidgwick's Dogmatic Intuitionism". In P. Bucolo, R. Crisp, B. Schultz (eds.), Proceedings of the Second World Congress on Henry Sidgwick. Ethics, Psychics, Politics, CUECM, Catania, pp. 146-235. Donagan, A. (1974). "Whewell's Elements of Morality". Journal of Philosophy, 71, pp. 724-736. Gauthier, D. 1970. "Introduction". In Gauthier, D. (ed.), Morality and Rational Self-Interest, Englewood Cliffs (NJ): Prentice-Hall. Grote, J. (1870). An Examination of the Utilitarian Philosophy, ed. by J.B. Mayor. Cambridge, Grote, J. (1876). A Treatise on the Moral Ideals, ed. by J.B. Mayor. Cambridge. Mill, J.S. (1838). "Bentham". In Mill (1967-), vol. X, pp. 75-116. Mill, J.S. (1861), "Utilitarianism". In Mill (1967-), vol. X, pp. 203-259. Mill, J.S. (1873). Autobiography. London: Longman. Mill, J.S. (1967-). Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, ed. by J.M. Robson et al. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Mori, M. (1995). "Il significato dei Metodi dell'etica di Henry Sidgwick per la morale contemporanea". In H. Sidgwick, I metodi dell'etica, Milan: Il Saggiatore 1995, pp. viixlv. Schneewind, J.B. (1977). Sidgwick's Ethics and Victorian Moral Philosophy. Oxford: Clarendon. Sidgwick, H. (1874). Methods of Ethics. In Sidgwick (1996). Sidgwick, H. (1907). Methods of Ethics. 7th edition. In Sidgwick (1996). Sidgwick, H. (1906). Henry Sidgwick A Memoir. In Sidgwick (1996). Sidgwick, H. (1889). "On some fundamental ethical controversies". In Sidgwick (2000), pp. 35-46. Sidgwick, H. (1876). "Professor Calderwood on intuitionism in morals". In Sidgwick (2000), pp. 23-26. Sidgwick, H. (1902). Philosophy. In Sidgwick (1996). Sidgwick, H. (1996). Works, 15 vols. Thoemmes Press, Bristol 1996. Sidgwick, H. (2000). Essays on Ethics and Method, ed. by M.G. Singer. Oxford: Clarendon. Rawls, J., (1981). "Introduction". In H. Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, Indianapolis. Hackett. Schultz, B. (2004). Henry Sidgwick. Eye of the Universe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Singer, P., 1974, "Sidgwick and Reflective Equilibrium". The Monist, 58\3, pp. 490-517. Sergio CREMASCHI 50 Whewell. W. (1845 [1861]), Elements of Morality, 1st ed., 2 vols. Harper, New York. Whewell. W. (1865). Elements of Morality , 4th ed., 2 vols. London, Parker. Sergio Volodia CREMASCHI (Bergamo 1949) is Associate professor of Moral Philosophy at the "Amedeo Avogadro" University (Vercelli). His research interests are the history of ethics, Kantian ethics, Utilitariansim, and economics and philosophy. He authored, besides a number of papers in such journals as Journal of Pragmatics, History of Political Economy, European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Science in Context, books in English (Normativity Within the Bounds of Plural Reasons. The Applied Ethics Revolution, Uppsala: Northern Summer University Press, 2007) and in Italian (A Short History of Ethics, Rome: Carocci 2012); Modern ethics, Rome: Carocci, 2007; Nineteenth-century ethics, Rome: Carocci, 2005; The Wealth System. Political Economy and Method in Adam Smith, Milan: Angeli, 1984; Automaton spiritual. Spinoza's Theory of Mind and Passions, Milan: Vita e Pensiero, 1979). Address: Sergio Volodia Cremaschi Dipartimento di Studi Umanistici, Università "Amedeo Avogadro", Via Galileo Ferraris 109, 13100 Vercelli, Italy Email: [email protected] | {
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Aesthetic Adjectives Lack Uniform Behavior* Shen-yi Liao, Louise McNally, Aaron Meskin Inquiry (forthcoming)† The goal of this short paper is to show that aesthetic adjectives-exemplified by "beautiful" and "elegant"-do not pattern stably on a range of linguistic diagnostics that have been used to taxonomize the gradability properties of adjectives. We argue that a plausible explanation for this puzzling data involves distinguishing two properties of gradable adjectives that have been frequently conflated: whether an adjective's applicability is sensitive to a comparison class, and whether an adjective's applicability is context-dependent. §1 introduces the distinction now commonly made in the linguistics literature between relative and absolute gradable adjectives (Kennedy and McNally 2005): very roughly, relative gradable adjectives have varying standards of application, but absolute gradable adjectives do not. §2 uses an experiment to introduce a new diagnostic, the question felicity test, which shows that aesthetic adjectives do not behave like relative gradable adjectives. §3 presents corpus data involving "for" phrases consistent with the experimental results. But then §4 discusses three other existing diagnostics, two on which aesthetic adjectives do behave like relative gradable adjectives and another on which, again, they do not. §5 presents an explanation of the collectively puzzling data. The key insight of this explanation is that we must distinguish two senses in which a gradable adjective might be called "relative". Aesthetic adjectives are like relative gradable adjectives in one sense-their standards of application derive from comparison classes-but they are unlike relative gradable adjectives in another sense-the relevant comparison classes are not contingent on the immediate situational context. 1. Relative and Absolute Gradable Adjectives Gradable adjectives can be operationally defined as adjectives that can be modified by comparative constructions (e.g. "more [adj.] than..."). A core parameter in the typology of gradable adjectives concerns their context-sensitivity. Some gradable adjectives, such as "long" and "tall", are typically interpreted relative to a contextually-determined comparison class. Other gradable adjectives, such as * The authors' names are ordered according to their contributions. Shen-yi Liao's work was supported by a European Community FP7 Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship, grant PIIF-GA-2012-328977. Louise McNally's work was supported by Spanish MINECO grant FFI2013-41301-P, AGAUR grant 2014SGR698, and an ICREA Academia award. We thank Stacie Friend and the London Aesthetics Forum for giving us the initial opportunity to discuss the issues covered in this piece, and Carla Umbach and two anonymous reviewers for comments on an earlier version. † PENULTIMATE VERSION. For citation and reference, please see the final version forthcoming in Inquiry. 2 "spotted" and "flat", typically are not. Following Kennedy and McNally (2005), we will call the former kind relative gradable adjectives (or "relative" for short) and the latter kind absolute gradable adjectives (or "absolute" for short).1 The majority, if not all, of evaluative aesthetic adjectives-exemplified by "beautiful" and "elegant"-are gradable adjectives, as seen in the fact that they appear in comparative constructions (e.g. "Lionel Messi's style of play is more beautiful than Cristiano Ronaldo's").2 In assessing aesthetic adjectives' place within the gradable adjective taxonomy, we will focus on diagnostics that have been used to distinguish between relative and all varieties of absolute gradable adjectives.3 We will show that aesthetic adjectives pattern unstably-sometimes like relative adjectives and other times not-with respect to a range of diagnostics.4 2. Question Felicity Recall that while relative adjectives are typically interpreted relative to a contextually-determined comparison class, absolute adjectives typically are not. The question felicity test makes use of the following premise: because the standard for an absolute adjective does not depend on a contextually-determined comparison class, it should as a rule make sense to ask whether an absolute adjective can be predicated of an object without further qualification. In contrast, if relative adjectives cannot be ascribed without taking into account a comparison class, it should typically makes less sense to ask whether an object can be truthfully described with a relative adjective unless a unique relevant comparison class is salient in the context. The reason is that, with relative adjectives, different comparison classes might deliver conflicting verdicts. Whenever there is this indeterminacy of comparison classes, the 1 Dichotomizing gradable adjectives thusly is, of course, a simplification. First, it ignores distinctions between three kinds of absolute adjectives: lower-closed (minimal-standard), upper-closed (maximal standard), and closed (minimaland maximal-standard) (cf. Cruse 1986; Kamp and Rossdeutscher 1994; Yoon 1996; Rotstein and Winter 2004; Kennedy and McNally 2005). Second, it ignores a kind of context sensitivity exhibited in so-called "loose talk", such as calling France "hexagonal" (cf., e.g., Unger 1975; Lewis 1979; Lasersohn 1999; Kennedy 2007). 2 Sibley (1959) famously characterizes aesthetic terms as those expressions which require "taste or perceptiveness" for their application in ordinary or critical discourse. Sibley's examples of terms that predominantly function this way include "graceful", "delicate", "dainty", "handsome", "comely", "elegant", and "garish". There has been a longstanding debate among aestheticians about Sibley's characterization of aesthetic terms (cf., Kivy 1973; Cohen 1973). In particular, as Sibley himself noted and is commonly acknowledged, there can be non-aesthetic uses of characteristically aesthetic terms, as well as aesthetic uses of characteristically non-aesthetic terms. However there is general agreement that there is an important category of adjectives or associated concepts that are central to the criticism and evaluation of art. We have chosen two relatively uncontroversial characteristically aesthetic terms: "beautiful" and "elegant". 3 Toledo and Sassoon (2011) and Burnett (2012) provide helpful summaries of the diagnostics that have been proposed in the literature. As Burnett notes, some diagnostics only distinguish between, say, relative and one species of absolute adjectives. For example, while the accentuation test (Kennedy 2007; cf. Unger 1975) distinguishes relative adjectives from upper-closed absolute adjectives, it fails to distinguish relative adjectives from lower-closed absolute adjectives. 4 One diagnostic that we will not discuss in this paper is Kristen Syrett and colleagues' presupposition assessment task (Syrett et al. 2006, 2010). Using multiple experimental studies, Liao and Meskin (in press) show that aesthetic adjectives exhibit a pattern of behavior on the presupposition assessment task that is in between relative and absolute adjectives' patterns of behavior. In other words, on this diagnostic it behaves neither like relative nor like absolute adjectives. This puzzling behavior is, in fact, the original motivation for our current investigation into aesthetic adjectives' behavior on other diagnostics. 3 question of whether an adjective can be predicated of an object should generate some hesitancy or puzzlement-that is, it will be somewhat difficult for addressee to make sense of the question without further qualification.5 For example, when presented with a round disc with thirty-seven spots on it and a 10-cm diameter, the question (1) Is this spotted? [absolute] is entirely felicitous insofar as it can be answered without reference to any additional information from the context. However, the question (2) Is this big? [relative] is expected to be somewhat puzzling-that is, to be harder to make sense of than (1)-because in order to answer it, the addressee will need to know the answer to a second question: "Compared to what?". Our intuition is that aesthetic adjectives pattern as absolute on this diagnostic: it makes every bit as much sense to ask (3) Is this beautiful? [aesthetic] as it does to ask (1). To test whether ordinary English speakers share our intuition, we conducted an experimental study online to show that aesthetic adjectives pattern as absolute on the question felicity test.6 For this study, we used the following object / adjective combinations: Relative Absolute Aesthetic "long" "spotted" "beautiful" (verdictive) "elegant" (substantive) Figure 1: Stimuli for the Question Felicity Test Study Participants were shown, in random order, each object and the corresponding question "Is this [long / spotted / beautiful / elegant]?" shown in Figure 1. 5 There is another possible cause of the question not making sense: the presence of a category mistake. For example, it does not make sense to ask whether the number 42 is spotted. Hence, a background assumption of the question felicity test is that there is no category mistake involved in the question. 6 50 US-based paid participants were recruited via Amazon Mechanical Turk. After excluding participants who failed an instructional manipulation check (cf. Oppenheimer et al. 2009), 45 participants remained (median age = 38; 66.7% women). 4 Participants were then asked to make a question felicity judgment, concerning whether it makes sense to ask the question shown. Participants responded to the statement "It makes sense to ask this question" on a 7-point scale that is anchored from strongly disagree (= 1) to strongly agree (= 7). Figure 2: Results for the Question Felicity Study The means for the adjectives tested are shown in Figure 2 and as follows: relative ("long") M = 4.00, SD = 1.784; absolute ("spotted") M = 5.16, SD = 1.999; aestheticverdictive ("beautiful") M = 5.38, SD = 1.696; and aestheticsubstantive ("elegant") M = 5.47, SD = 1.471. We first observed a difference across all adjectives tested. Repeatedmeasures one-way ANOVA revealed a statistically significant main effect of adjective on question felicity judgments: F(3, 132) = 9.148, p < 0.001. We then looked for differences between specific pairs of adjectives. As expected, a planned contrast revealed a difference between "long" and "spotted": F(1, 44) = 9.652, p = 0.003, effect size r = 0.424. More importantly, additional planned contrasts revealed differences of a similar magnitude between "long" and "beautiful", and between "long" and "elegant": F(1, 44) = 27.123, p < 0.001, effect size r = 0.617; and F(1, 44) = 32.464, p < 0.001, effect size r = 0.652. Simply put, on the question felicity test, aesthetic adjectives behave unlike relative adjectives. 5 3. Corpus Data on Compatibility with "for" Phrases Still further evidence of a difference between aesthetic adjectives and relative adjectives comes from the fact that aesthetic adjectives, while felicitous with explicit mention of a comparison class via a "for a(n) N" phrase, as in the following examples, in fact virtually never appear with such phrases.7 (4) (a) Anyone who calls someone "beautiful for an older woman" does not get my love. (b) Elegant for a Best Western There are no such examples of "for" phrases with "beautiful" in the 450-millionword Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA; Davies 2008), and only 4 in the 1.9-billion-word Corpus of Global Web-based English (GloWbE; Davies 2013). There are none in either corpus for "elegant". Interestingly, both of the examples in (4) suggest that the adjective would not apply under ordinary expectations. In other words, someone who is described as beautiful for an older woman is so called presumably because the unqualified adjective would not apply; and in the case of (4b) one naturally infers that the author of the post would not consider the Best Western in question to count as elegant by some more commonly used standard. Note that relative adjectives do not behave the same in these aspects. For example, occurrences of e.g. "tall," "short," "big," and "long" with such "for" phrases are easily findable in COCA and GloWbE. This contrast indicates that even if we might have some general idea of what counts as "tall" or "long" for a particular kind of individual (for example, we might be inclined to accept that 2 meters is tall for a person) when we look at subkinds of those individuals (e.g. 15 year old males, or people who grew up during the Spanish Civil War), those standards are highly susceptible to variation because height distribution varies considerably between subclasses, and therefore explicit mention of the comparison class of interest is necessary. Moreover, the form with the "for" phrase does not consistently yield the implication that the unmodified adjective does not apply to the individual in question: (5a), from COCA, does not suggest that (5b) holds (5) (a) It rides on a 104-inch wheelbase – long for a small car... (b) The wheelbase is not long. To sum up, the corpus data on aesthetic adjectives in combination with "for" phrases suggest that they behave unlike relative adjectives. 7 (4a) is from http://web.archive.org/save/https://twitter.com/charabbott/status/309378554217521152 and (4b) is from http://web.archive.org/save/http://www.tripadvisor.com.sg/ShowUserReviews-g31393-d226761-r118515504BEST_WESTERN_PREMIER_Grand_Canyon_Squire_Inn-Tusayan_Arizona.html. 6 4. Additional Diagnostics for the Relative/Absolute Distinction 4.1. Compatibility with "Very" Kennedy and McNally (2005) claim that "very" is restricted to combining with relative adjectives (6a). If it modifies an absolute adjective, the result is either infelicitous (6b) or the adjective is reinterpreted as relative, with a standard based on a comparison class. (6c), for example, describes the baby as generally alert, rather than in a state of a high degree of wakefulness, for which the phrase "wide awake" would be used. (6) (a) a very long movie (b) # a very closed door (c) a very awake baby Kennedy and McNally argue that this selectiveness is due to the fact that "very" influences the comparison class that the adjective uses to determine its standard, restricting that class to individuals to which the adjective truthfully applies in the context, following proposals in Wheeler (1972) and Klein (1980). If an adjective does not use a contextually-determined comparison class to determine its standard, as is the case, by hypothesis, with absolute gradable adjectives, "very" will not be able to exert its intended semantic effect and will thus not combine felicitously with the adjective. Now consider the following examples of aesthetic adjectives in combination with "very". (7) (a) a very beautiful performance (b) a very elegant sculpture The examples in (7) seem as natural as (6a). On this diagnostic, aesthetic adjectives behave like relative adjectives. 4.2. Comparative Form to Positive Form Entailment Kennedy and McNally (2005) also observe that absolute and relative adjectives differ in their entailment patterns. Absolute adjectives whose standard is a lower endpoint on the relevant scale typically license entailments from the comparative form to the positive form for their subject argument, because to have any degree of the property in question entails that the property will truthfully apply, and to have more of a property than some other individual entails having a non-zero degree of that property. For example, (8a) entails (8b). (8) (a) This disc is more spotted than that disc. (b) This disc is spotted. 7 Absolute adjectives whose standard is the upper endpoint on the relevant scale license entailments from the comparative form to the negation of the positive form for the entity in the than clause. This is so because to have a non-maximal amount of the property entails that the adjective will not truthfully apply, and thus if X manifests the property to a higher degree than Y, the degree to which Y manifests the property cannot be maximal. For example, (9a) entails (9b). (9) (a) This door is more closed than that door. (b) That door is not closed. In contrast, relative adjectives typically do not license entailments of either sort. For example, (10a) entails neither (10b) nor (10c). (10) (a) This man is taller than that man. (b) This man is tall. (c) That man is not tall. This shows that the standard for relative adjectives falls somewhere between the minimum and maximum degrees to which the property they describe can be manifest: in such a situation, we have no way of knowing a priori for two individuals that manifest a non-zero degree of such a property whether one, both, or neither falls above the standard. Aesthetic adjectives, like relative adjectives, typically do not license such entailments.8 There is no entailment from the (a) examples to the (b) or (c) examples in either (11) or (12). (11) (a) This disc is more beautiful than that disc. (b) This disc is beautiful. (c) That disc is not beautiful. (12) (a) This man is more elegant than that man. (b) This man is elegant. (c) That man is not elegant. This shows that the standard for aesthetic adjectives cannot be simply the manifestation of a non-zero degree of the aesthetic property, nor does an aesthetic adjective truthfully apply only if a maximal degree of the property in question is held (if, indeed, it even makes sense to say that one can be maximally beautiful or elegant). On this diagnostic, aesthetic adjectives behave like relative adjectives. 8 This test is less reliable when it comes to negatively-valenced adjectives, possibly due to pragmatic factors. In general, negatively-valenced adjectives license the entailment from the comparative form to the positive form, irrespective of their context-sensitivity (Bogal-Allbritten 2011, though see Bierwisch 1989 for an earlier discussion that underscores the complexity of the data). For this reason, we focus on positively-valenced aesthetic adjectives here. 8 4.3. Compatibility with "Almost" The general consensus in the literature is that relative adjectives generally sound odd when modified by "almost", whereas absolute adjectives generally do not (cf. Rotstein and Winter 2004 and references cited there). (13) (a) The room is almost empty. (b) # The room is almost big. For example, in the absence of context, (13a) sounds relatively natural but (13b) sounds less so. However, it is also generally agreed that there are exceptions to this generalization. Rotstein and Winter (2004: 280) propose the following two conditions on the acceptability of "almost" with adjectives. First, the interval almost A is located on the scale below the standard value of A. Second, the standard value of A is its default value (if there is any) or else is recoverable from the context. When Rotstein and Winter say "default value", they are referring to adjectives with minimum or maximum standards; by "recoverable from context" they mean that a precise value for the standard is contextually available. In the latter such cases, "almost" can combine with a relative adjective. For example, in a context where it is known and accepted that 2 meters counts as tall, if we know that Sam's height is 1.9 meters, then we can assert that he is almost tall.9 Aesthetic adjectives, such as those in (14) sound markedly more natural with "almost" out of context than do examples such as (13b): (14) (a) The cemetery was almost beautiful. (b) The rooms were clean and almost elegant. On this diagnostic, aesthetic adjectives behave unlike relative adjectives. 5. Discussion Although there might be a range of alternative explanations for the results of each diagnostic described above, we can have a unified and elegant account of the puzzling data presented therein by distinguishing two features that have been associated with relative adjectives. As we noted in §1, relative adjectives are typically defined as those gradable adjectives that are interpreted relative to a contextuallydetermined comparison class. Note that there are two components to this definition of relative adjectives: (a) the standard for these gradable adjectives is relativized to a comparison class, and (b) that comparison class is contextually-determined. We think 9 Sometimes this phenomenon is characterized as "coercion" of the adjective (e.g. Burnett 2012). Whether this is an appropriate characterization or not, we note that the co-occurrence of relative adjectives with "almost" is not infrequent. A brief inspection of COCA reveals more than two dozen examples of "almost" with adjectives such as "giddy", "angry", "obsessive", "sweet", "quaint", "happy" and various others that are not obvious candidates for absolute adjectives. "Beautiful" occurs 21 times with "almost", and "elegant" occurs 14 times with "almost". 9 that the puzzling behavior of aesthetic adjectives shows that these two features should be teased apart. Aesthetic adjectives behave more like relative adjectives than like absolute adjectives on diagnostics that signal interpretation with respect to a comparison class. Aesthetic adjectives are compatible with "very" (§4.1) because it is possible to use "very" to restrict the comparison class to those individuals to which an adjective truthfully applies in a specific context. Aesthetic adjectives lack entailments from the comparative to positive form (§4.2) because their standards of application are not minimum or maximum values on a scale. However, aesthetic adjectives behave less like relative adjectives on diagnostics that signal appeal to not just any comparison class, but rather to a comparison class that is not contingent on the immediate situational context. First, recall the question felicity test (§2): it makes sense to simply ask "Is this beautiful?" with little or no prior context because the comparison classes for aesthetic adjectives are not as a rule contextually-determined. Second, this fact also explains why aesthetic adjectives typically do not occur with "for" phrases (§3): typically such phrases are used to explicitly give a comparison class where the context offers none, but typically aesthetic adjectives already come with comparison classes that do not vary from situation to situation; rather, they seem to vary primarily according to the types of entities they apply to. Third, aesthetic adjectives' compatibility with "almost" (§4.3) indicates that, even out of context, aesthetic adjectives have recoverable standards of application; this can only be if those standards are specified by comparison classes that are not determined by the situational context. To conclude, while a comparison class is essential for the evaluation of aesthetic adjectives, the default salience of the choice of class and the uniformity with which arbitrary subsets of the class members manifest a range of degrees of the property in question together effectively render aesthetic adjectives less context dependent, all else being equal.10 Aesthetic adjectives can therefore be said to be "relative" in a broad sense of the term-they have standards that are established in relation to a comparison class-but not so in a narrow sense of the term-they do not have standards that are obviously context-dependent. In this short paper, we have focused on "beautiful" and "elegant" for the diagnostics we have discussed. Note that these adjectives contain an evaluative component. We have set aside here adjectives that are commonly used in critical discourse but appear to be purely descriptive, such as style terms (e.g. "cubist" and "brutalist"). It remains to be explored whether other evaluative aesthetic adjectives exhibit the same linguistic properties as "beautiful" and "elegant"; the reader is invited to test other aesthetic adjectives using the diagnostics we have presented. We also hope that the more nuanced characterization of gradable adjectives we have developed can shed light on the puzzling behavior that has been observed in other classes of gradable adjectives, such as predicates of personal taste, moral 10 We stress the all-else-being-equal clause here because we do not want to exclude the possibility that there can be other sources of context-dependence that do not involve a comparison class. 10 adjectives, and color terms.11 For example, Hansen and Chemla (manuscript) have found that color terms behave similarly to aesthetic adjectives on another diagnostic, the presupposition assessment task (Syrett et al. 2006, 2010; cf. Liao and Meskin in press). It remains to be explored whether color terms and these other classes of gradable adjectives pattern in a similarly unstable fashion across a full range of diagnostics. 11 McNally and Stojanovic (in press) argue that aesthetic adjectives are distinct from predicates of personal taste (e.g. "fun" and "tasty"), which have been much more widely discussed. 11 References Bierwisch, Manfred (1989). "The Semantics of Gradation." In Dimensional Adjectives, edited by Manfred Bierwisch and Ewald Lang. Berlin: SpringerVerlag. Beavers, John (2008). "Scalar complexity and the structure of events." In Event Structures in Linguistic Form and Interpretation, ed. Johannes Dölling and Tatjana Heyde-Zybatow. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. Burnett, Heather (2012). "The Puzzle(s) of Absolute Adjectives." UCLA Working Papers in Linguistics, Papers in Semantics 16: 1–50. Cohen, Ted (1973). "Aesthetic/Non-Aesthetic and the Concept of Taste," Theoria 39: 113-152. Cruse, D. A. (1986). Lexical Semantics. 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Kennedy, Christopher, and Louise McNally (2005). "Scale structure and the semantic typology of gradable predicates". Language 81: 345–381. Kivy, Peter (1973). Speaking About Art. The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff. Klein, Ewan (1980). "A semantics for positive and comparative adjectives." Linguistics and Philosophy 4 (1): 1–45. Lasersohn, Peter (1999). "Pragmatic Halos." Language 75(3): 522–551. Lewis, David (1979). "Scorekeeping in a Language Game." Journal of Philosophical Logic 8: 339–359. Liao, Shen-yi, and Aaron Meskin (in press). "Aesthetic Adjectives: Experimental Semantics and Context-Sensitivity." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. DOI: 10.1111/phpr.12217 McNally, Louise (2011). "The relative role of property type and scale structure in explaining the behavior of gradable adjectives." In Vagueness in Communication, ed. R. Nouwen, R. van Rooij, & U. Sauerland (pp. 151– 168). New York: Springer. McNally, Louise, and Isidora Stojanovic (in press). "Aesthetic Adjectives." In J. Young (ed.), Semantics of Aesthetic Judgement. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 12 Morzycki, Martin (2012). "Adjectival extremeness: degree modification and contextually restricted scales." Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 30(2): 567–609. Rotstein, Carmen, and Yoad Winter (2004). "Total vs. partial adjectives: Scale structure and higher-order modifiers". Natural Language Semantics 12: 259– 288. Sassoon, Galit W. (2013). "A typology of multidimensional adjectives" Journal of Semantics 30:335-380. Sibley, Frank (1959). "Aesthetic Concepts." The Philosophical Review 68(4): 421–450. Syrett, Kristen, Evan Bradley, Christopher Kennedy, and Jeffrey Lids (2006). "Shifting standards: Children's understanding of gradable adjectives." In K. Ud Deen, J. Nomura, B. Schulz, and B. D. Schwartz (eds.), Proceedings of the Inaugural Conference on Generative Approaches to Language Acquisition North America (GALANA), Honolulu, HI (pp. 353–364). 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"The Beautiful, The Dainty, and the Dumpy." British Journal of Aesthetics 35: 317–329. | {
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ON THE FACTIVITY OF IMPLICIT INTERSUBJECTIVE KNOWLEDGE ALESSANDRO GIORDANI Department of Philosophy, Catholic University of Milan Abstract. The concept of knowledge can be modelled in epistemic modal logic and, if modelled by using a standard modal operator, it is subject to the problem of logical omniscience. The classical solution to this problem is to distinguish between implicit and explicit knowledge and to construe the knowledge operator as capturing the concept of implicit knowledge. In addition, since a proposition is said to be implicitly known just in case it is derivable from the set of propositions that are explicitly known by using a certain set of logical rules, the concept of implicit knowledge is definable on the basis of the concept of explicit knowledge. In any case, both implicit and explicit knowledge are typically characterized as factive, i.e. such that it is always the case that what is known is also true. The aim of the present paper is twofold: first, we will develop a dynamic system of explicit intersubjective knowledge that allows us to introduce the operator of implicit knowledge by definition; secondly, we will show that it is not possible to hold together the following two theses: 1) the concept of implicit knowledge is definable along the lines indicated above; 2) the concept of implicit knowledge is factive. Keywords: epistemic logic; possible worlds semantics; explicit knowledge; implicit knowledge; logical omniscience; factivity; inference. 1. The concept of implicit knowledge The lack of knowledge of an agent can be modelled by introducing possible alternative situations. Indeed, if we do not know whether p is the case, then we can both imagine that the actual world is a world in which p is the case and imagine that the actual world is a world in which p is not the case. In addition, if we are in a position in which it is impossible to exclude either that the world is such that p is the case or that the world is such that p is not the case, then we lack knowledge about p. As a consequence, the knowledge of an agent can be modelled by introducing possible alternative situations and by assuming that an agent knows that p just in case all the situations that are not excluded by the agent are situations where p is the case. This intuition provides the basis to introduce the current modal definition of the knowledge operator 1 . 1.1. Systems of implicit knowledge The previous idea can be made precise by using a possible worlds semantics. Let P be a set of propositional variables. The set L(P,K) of epistemic formulas is inductively defined according to the following rules: := p | | ' | K(), where pP. 1 See [8] and [10] for standard introductions to this topic. 2 The other propositional connectives are defined in the usual way. Intuitively, a formula like K() says that the epistemic agent knows that . Definition 1.1: frame. A frame for L(P,K) is a pair F = (W,R), where i) W is a non-empty set of worlds ii) R WW is the accessibility relation on W. Definition 1.2: model. A model for L(P,K) is a pair M = (F,V), where i) F is a frame for L(P,K) ii) V: P (W) is a modal valuation on W. Definition 1.3: truth at a world in a model (M,w |= ). Truth at a world in a model is inductively defined as follows: M,w |= p <=> wV(p) M,w |= <=> not M,w |= M,w |= ' <=> M,w |= and M,w |= ' M,w |= K() <=> vW(R(w,v) => M,v |= ) If is a formula, ||– states that is valid in the class of all frames. The definition of frame does not put any condition on R. By imposing conditions on R it is possible to get additional properties of knowledge. These properties are then reflected by systems of axioms that describe the valid formulas in classes of frames that satisfy the conditions. It is well-known that the following axioms characterize the conditions: T: K() R reflexive 4: K() K(K()) R transitive 5: K() K(K()) R euclidean It is generally acknowledged that a suitable system of knowledge should lie between the system KT4 and the system KT5. Indeed, it is a distinctive characteristic of knowledge that the proposition that is known is also true, as stated by axiom T, and it is commonly admitted that knowledge is subject to a certain kind of introspection, so to allow the introduction of axiom 4, stating that what is known is also known to be known. 1.2. The problem of logical omniscience 3 The foregoing characterization is subjected to the logical omniscience problem. In particular, it is not difficult to show that each instance of the following rules turns out to hold: Omni1: ||– => ||– K() Omni2: ||– ' => ||– K() K(') Omni3: ||– ' => ||– K() K(') Omni4: ||– K( ') (K() K(')) It is also evident that even a moderately idealized epistemic agent is incapable of knowing all the valid propositions, all the consequence of what she knows, and all the propositions that are logically equivalent to the propositions she knows. Hence, the concept represented by the operator K is not identified with the common concept of knowledge and the classical solution to the problem of identifying the concept of knowledge represented by K is to distinguish between implicit and explicit knowledge. In this way, the modal operator can be construed as capturing the concept of implicit knowledge, where implicit knowledge is introduced as the epistemic disposition to assent to all the consequences of what is explicitly known. 2 Still, once this distinction is introduced, it becomes possible to try to model an operator of explicit knowledge directly and to introduce the operator of implicit knowledge by definition, so that a better understanding of the logical characteristics of this kind of knowledge becomes available. In what follows we will develop a logical system for explicit ad implicit intersubjective knowledge (section 2), show that such a system is sound and complete with respect to a suitable semantics (section 3), and show that within such a system factivity of implicit knowledge is not derivable (section 4). Finally, we will discuss a second way of coping with the problem of logical omniscience and conclude that factivity can be obtained only at the cost of a huge amount of idealization (section 5). 2. The concept of explicit intersubjective knowledge To define an appropriate concept of explicit knowledge is a difficult task. One way to accomplish it is to model explicit knowledge by 1) limiting the set of inferential steps the agent can do; 2) limiting the set of inferential rules the agent can apply; 3) limiting the set of propositional contents the agent can handle. 2 See [7], [8] and [12] for an introduction. In [7], pp 317-8, we find: "To represent the knowledge of agent i, we allow two modal operators Ki and Xi, standing for implicit knowledge and explicit knowledge of agent i, respectively. Implicit knowledge is the notion we have been considering up to now: truth in all worlds that the agent considers possible. On the other hand, an agent explicitly knows a formula if he is aware of and implicitly knows . Intuitively, an agent's implicit knowledge includes all the logical consequences of his explicit knowledge". A similar characterization is given in [4], p.11, and [14], pp. 241-2. 4 Let CR be the operator of logical closure relative to a certain set R of rules. Let CR n be the operator that returns the set of propositions obtained by n successive applications of all the rules in R to a set of propositions. Once CR n is defined, we can constrain the inferential power of an agent by simply choosing a limited set of rules and a bound for the number of inferential steps the agent can take. Hence, we can define explicit knowledge by stating that a proposition is explicitly known just in case it is in CR n (X) for a certain set X of initial propositions. 3 Still, even in this case, the agent turns out to be a perfect, though limited, knower, since she gets: 1) perfect knowledge relative to a limited set of inferential rules. 2) perfect knowledge relative to a limited set of inferential steps. 3) perfect knowledge relative to a limited set of propositional contents. As a consequence, such an approach is not succeeding in representing the explicit knowledge of an actual epistemic agent. A suitable strategy to overcome this difficulty is the one adopted and developed in [5] and [6]. The basic idea is that, if an agent explicitly knows all the propositions of a certain set and is explicitly aware of all the rules of a certain kind, then she is able to progressively deduce all the conclusions that are implicit in the initial propositions on the basis of the available rules. This idea can be implemented by making epistemic logic dynamic. Intuitively, an agent is viewed as a dynamical system capable of improving the set of known propositions, where the improvement is accomplished by steps, each step consisting in applying a deduction rule to some known propositions. If the aim is to characterize implicit knowledge as knowledge concerning what is deducible from explicit knowledge, then both the number of steps and the rules according to which the steps are accomplished are not to be bounded. Thus, the best way to construct such a dynamical system is to introduce a unique modal operator modelling the fact that a proposition is true after any inferential process accomplished by the agent. This operator corresponds to an accessibility relation linking a possible world w to a world v just in case the set of known propositions at w is deductively improved at v. 4 A final consideration on the concept of explicit intersubjective knowledge is in order: intersubjective knowledge is characterized by the assumption that it concerns stable 3 This kind of approach is proposed in [13]. See [1] and [11] for further developments. 4 The system introduced in the following section is a modification of the system DES4 of dynamic epistemic logic described and discussed in [6]. DES4 was introduced without an appropriate semantics, but a Kripke style semantics was then presented in [1]. This system has some shortcomings, due to the fact that not every formula of the language in which the system is formulated is implicitly knowable: in particular, not every axiom is implicitly knowable. This limitation is counterintuitive and hinders a direct interpretation of implicit knowledge as knowledge deriving from a possible chain of inferential steps, since every axiom is surely accessible in a unique inferential step. However, it is worth noticing that the system we are going to introduce is more powerful than DES4, so that the limitative conclusions we will prove are valid with respect to DES4 as well. The present modification originates in the works about explicit logic of knowledge presented in [2] and [9]. Actually, the operator of implicit knowledge can be viewed as the existential generalization of the explicit operators adopted in these papers. 5 propositions, i.e. propositions that cannot change their truth value over time. The basic idea is that propositional knowledge is intersubjective when it is intersubjectively assessable, i.e. assessable by a scientific community, and this implies being dependably communicable, e.g. being communicable through a scientific journal. Thus, the content of intersubjective knowledge is not only true, but also cumulative in principle. In this sense, intersubjectively knowable propositions have to be expressed by sentences whose truth value is time invariant. To be sure, in order to be intersubjectively assessed, and so known, the truth value of a sentence has not to be relative to the situation in which the sentence is uttered, since that situation (i) could not be present to the agent that assesses the proposition and (ii) could change over time, so that our knowledge would not be communicable in a dependable way, since the time we spend in communicating it could be in principle sufficient for its truth value to change. Thus, all the information depending on the situation in which the sentence is uttered, e.g. the information about the time and the context of the utterance, has to be incorporated into the sentence itself, so to produce a sentence whose truth value is time invariant. In conclusion, a sentence expressing an intersubjectively knowable propositions is a sentence whose truth value is independent of the situations in which it is uttered, i.e. a sentence expressing a complete, and so stable, proposition. In what follows, we will exploit this assumption in a limited version only, according to which intersubjective knowledge is about propositions whose truth values persist through any inferential step an agent can take. 2.1. The language of dynamic epistemic logic. The language L of dynamic epistemic logic is defined as follows. := p | | ' | k() | [F], where p is in P. The other connectives are introduced according to the usual definitions. k() is interpreted as stating that is explicitly known, while [F] is interpreted as stating that is true after any inferential course, where an inferential course is conceived of as a sequence of basic inferential steps. In addition, we will use F as the dual of [F], so that F says that is true after at least one inferential course. As a consequence, a proposition like Fk() is interpreted as stating that is explicitly known after a certain number of inferential steps. We can then introduce the following Definition 2.1: explicit knowledge. A formula is explicitly known := k(). Definition 2.2: implicit knowledge. A formula is implicitly known := Fk(). 6 2.2. The basic system The basic system DE of dynamic epistemic logic for explicit and implicit intersubjective knowledge consists of three groups of axioms. Group I: propositional axioms and rules: all propositionally valid formulas |– and |– ' => |– '. Group II: modal axioms and rules: F1: [F](') [F] [F]' F2: FF F F3: F RF: |– => |– [F] Group III: mixed axioms and rules: FK1: Fk(') Fk() Fk(') FK2: k() [F] FK3: k() Fk(k()) RFK: |– Fk(), provided is in AX = the set of axioms in Groups I-III. Axioms of Group II characterize [F]. Hence, on the assumption that there are steps in which no inference is performed and that sequences of inferential steps can be chained, axioms F2 and F3 are justified. Axioms of Group III characterize k. FK1 states that, if the agent is able to perform both an inferential course that ends with the knowledge of ' and an inferential course that ends with the knowledge of , then she is always able to perform an inferential course that ends with the knowledge of '. Thus, an agent is assumed to be always able to store the conclusions obtained by performing different inferential courses and develop new inferences on the basis of them. FK2 introduces the crucial condition to the effect that knowledge concerns stable propositions, i.e. that it is intersubjective. Finally FK3 states that knowledge can be acknowledged, while RFK states that all axiom instances are knowable. 5 Proposition 1: the following theorems are derivable. 5 As a referee pointed out, a consequence of axiom FK2 is that, if a proposition is knowable, Fk(), then it is not possible to explicitly know that is not explicitly known, kk(). This consequence is acceptable insofar as the concept of knowledge captured by k is the concept of intersubjective and stable knowledge. Indeed, knowledge of k() is not stable, provided that is assumed to be knowable. 7 1.1: |–DE k() . Straightforward, by F3 and FK2. 1.2: |–DE k() Fk. Straightforward, by F3. 1.3: |–DE Fk() Fk(k()). |–DE k() Fk(k()), by FK3. |–DE Fk() FFk(k()), by RF and F1. |–DE Fk() Fk(k()), by F2. 1.4: |–DE Fk() Fk(Fk()). |–DE Fk(k() Fk()), by RFK from F3. |–DE Fk(k()) Fk(Fk()), by FK1. |–DE Fk() Fk(Fk()), by 1.3. 1.5: |–DE Fk() Fk([F]). |–DE Fk(k() [F]), by RFK from FK2. |–DE Fk(k()) Fk([F])), by FK1. |–DE Fk() Fk([F]), by 1.3. Proposition 2: internalization. RFK!: |–DE => |–DE Fk(). The proof is by induction on the length of derivations in DS4. Base: is an axiom instance. The conclusion follows by RFK. Step 1: is derived from ' and ' by modus ponens. By induction hypothesis, |–DE Fk(') and |–DE Fk('). Hence |–DE Fk(), by FK1. Step 2: has the form [F]' and is derived from ' by RF. By induction hypothesis, |–DE Fk('). Hence |–DE Fk([F]'), by proposition 1.5. 8 Step 3: has the form Fk(') and is derived from ' by RFK. By induction hypothesis, |–DE Fk('). Hence |–DE Fk(Fk(')), by proposition 1.4. Proposition 3: the following rules are derivable. RFKI: |–DE ' => |–DE Fk() Fk('). RFKE: |–DE ' => |–DE Fk() Fk('). Straightforward, by proposition 2 and FK1. RFK! is a crucial rule, since it declares that the set of derivable formulas is closed with respect to the operator of implicit knowledge. Hence, RFK! corresponds to the rule Omni1 above. In addition, RFKI, RFKE and FK1 reflect Omni2, Omni3 and Omni4, so that, in accordance with our expectations, all the rules on omniscience are valid with respect to the concept of implicit knowledge. 6 Proposition 4 (consistency): |–DE Fk() Fk(). |–DE Fk() Fk() Fk(), by RFK! and FK1. |–DE k() (), by FK2 and F3. |–DE Fk() F(), by RFK! and FK1. |–DE F(), by RF. |–DE Fk(), by propositional logic. |–DE Fk() Fk(), by propositional logic. Proposition 4 states the intuitive principle that implicit knowledge is consistent. 2.3. Note on the basic system The system introduced above in based on a syntactic approach, since explicit knowledge is modelled on the basis of sets of formulas assigned to possible worlds, and allows us 7 (1) to construe implicit knowledge in terms of explicit knowledge (2) to interpret a standard KT4 system of implicit knowledge (3) to use nested epistemic operators It is worth noting that the internalization theorem is necessary to interpret a standard KT4 system of implicit knowledge and that the mixed axioms and rules in Group III 6 As suggested by a referee, we should say that RFK! and the other rules and axioms corresponds to the dynamic versions of the omniscience principles. Still, if one accepts the interpretation of K in terms of Fk, the correspondence is complete. 7 As suggested by a referee, the approach we follow is probably the only one which provides us with (1)-(3). Indeed, the current syntactic approaches either introduce the explicit operators only as primitive, but do not treat nested operators (see [1], [5], [6], [11]), or treat nested operators, but introduce implicit and explicit operators as primitive (see [7], [15], [16], [17]). 9 are necessary in order to prove the internalization theorem. This is why we have chosen the present system as the basic one. Still, the limitations we are going to display affect any system that is intermediate between our basic system and the very weak one determined by axioms in Group I, Group II and the following Group III*. Group III*: mixed axioms and rules: FK1*: k(') k() Fk(') FK2*: k() , where has no occurrences of [F] or k. FK3*: k() Fk(k()), where has no occurrences of [F] or k. RFK*: |– Fk(), provided is in AX = the set of axioms in group I + FK2*. 3. Semantics The basic idea underlying the semantics for the present system of explicit and implicit knowledge is to model explicit knowledge by associating with each world w the set of formulas that are explicitly known at w and then to use definition 2.2 in order to introduce implicit knowledge. 8 Definition 3.1: frame. A frame for L(DE) is a triple F = (W,R,K) where 1) W is a non-empty set. 2) R WW is a pre-order on W. 3) K: W (L(DE)) is a selection function on W. Intuitively, a selection function K assigns to each world the set of formulas that are explicitly known by the agent at that world. In addition, R and K have to respect the following conditions (where K*(w) = {K(v) | R(w,v)}). K1): ,'K*(w) => 'K*(w) K2): K(w) => k()K*(w) KAX): AX => K*(w) Definition 3.2: model. A model for L(DE) is a pair M = (F,V), where i) F is a frame for L(DE) ii) V: P (W) is a modal valuation on W. 8 The idea of assigning set of formulas to worlds in order to model what is explicitly known is proposed in [7] and developed in [8], [9] and [2] in different directions. 10 Definition 3.3: truth at a world in a model (M,w |= ). Truth at a world in a model is inductively defined according to the following rules: M,w |= p <=> wV(p) M,w |= <=> not M,w |= M,w |= ' <=> M,w |= and M,w |= ' M,w |= [F] <=> vW(R(w,v) => M,v |= ) M,w |= k() <=> K(w) Notice that M,w |= Fk() <=> v(R(w,v) and K(v)) <=> K*(w). Definition 3.4: admissible model. An admissible model for L(DE) is a model M satisfying KAD): K(w) and R(w,v) => M,v |= Hence, an admissible model is a model in which the propositions that are known at a given world w are true at every world accessible to w, in particular at w itself. Theorem 1: DE is sound with respect to the class of all admissible models. Proof. Soundness is proved by induction on the length of derivations. The proof of the validity of the axioms and rules of the first two groups is standard, while the validity of the axioms and rules of the third group is a straight consequence of conditions K1-KAX and KAD. We only check the validity of FK1. FK1: ||– Fk(') Fk() Fk('). Suppose M,w |= Fk(') and M,w |= Fk(). Then 'K*(w) and K*(w). Thus 'K*(w), by K1, and so M,w |= Fk('). Theorem 2: DE is complete with respect to the class of all admissible models. Proof. Completeness is proved by canonicity. If X is a DE consistent set of formulas, then X can be extended to a maximal consistent set x by a standard procedure 9 . In what follows w, v, and so on, will range over maximal DE consistent sets. Definition 3.5: canonical model. Let w/[F] = { | [F]w} and w/k = { | k()w}. The canonical model is the tuple W,R,K,V, where – W is the set of maximal DE consistent sets. 9 The standard modal parts of the proof of completeness are omitted. See [3], ch. 4, for details. 11 – R is such that R(w,v) <=> w/[F] v. – K is such that K(w) = w/k. – V is such that V(w) = {p | pw}. Fact 1: w/[F] is a DE closed set. Suppose w/[F] |–DE . Then w |– DE [F], by the definition of w/[F]. Thus [F]w, since w is maximal consistent, and so w/[F], again by the definition of w/[F]. Fact 2: Fk()w <=> v(w/[F] v and v/k). Fk()w <=> [F]k()w, since w is complete Fk()w <=> k()w/[F], by the definition of w/[F] Fk()w <=> not w/[F] |–DE k(), since w/[F] is closed Fk()w <=> v(w/[F] v and k()v), since w/[F]{k()} is consistent Fk()w <=> v(w/[F] v and v/k), by the definition of w/[F] Lemma 1 (truth lemma): for all w, M,w |= <=> w. The only non standard case is when a formula has the form k(). In this case: M,w |= <=> K(w) <=> w/k <=> k()w. Lemma 2: W,R,K,V is a model for DE. R is a pre-order. Standard, by F2 and F3. K1): ,'K*(w) => 'K*(w). By fact 2, it suffices to prove that Fk(')w and Fk()w => Fk(')w. Suppose Fk(')w and Fk()w. Then Fk(')w, by FK1. K2): K(w) => k()K*(w) By fact 2, it suffices to prove that w/k => Fk(k())w. Suppose k()w. The conclusion follows by FK3. KAX): AX => K*(w). By fact 2, it suffices to prove that AX => Fk()w. Suppose AX. Then |–DE , and so Fk()w, by RFK. Lemma 3: W,R,K,V is an admissible model for DE. KAD): K(w) and R(w,v) => M,v |= By lemma 1 and fact 2, it suffices to prove that w/k and w/[F] v => w, i.e., k()w and w/[F] v => v. 12 Suppose k()w. Then [F]w, by FK2, and so v, since w/[F] v. This concludes the proof. 4. Limitations In this section we show that in DE the concepts of implicit and explicit knowledge are different. In particular, in DE it is not possible to derive Fk() k(). Moreover, in DE it is not possible to derive Fk() . Theorem 3: Fk() k() is not derivable in DE. In order to prove it, let us introduce the following model. – W = {w1,w2} – R = {w1,w1,w1,w2,w2,w2} – K is such that K(w1) = and K(w2) = the smallest set X such that – AX X – ,'X =>'X – X => [F]X and k()X – V is such that V(p) = W and V(p') = , for p' different from p. In a picture: We first show that W,R,K,V is an adequate model for DE. It is plain that R is a preorder on W and that K: W (L(DE)). In addition, R and K respect K1)-KAX) and the condition KAD). First of all, notice that K(w1) = and K*(w1) = K*(w2) = K(w2), by the definition of K*. K1). ,'K*(w) => 'K*(w). Suppose ,'K*(w), where w{w1,w2}. Then ,'K(w2), and so 'K(w2), by the definition of K(w2). Thus, 'K*(w), where w{w1,w2}, since K*(w1) = K*(w2) = K(w2). K2). K(w) => k()K*(w). Suppose K(w), where w{w1,w2}. If w = w1, then the conclusion follows, since K(w1) = . If w = w2, the conclusion follows, since k()K(w2) = K*(w2), by the definition of K. KAX): AX => K*(w). Straightforward, since AX K(w2) = K*(w1) = K*(w2). w1 w2 p p 13 KAD): K(w) and R(w,v) => M,v |= . Suppose K(w) and R(w,v), where w,v{w1,w2} If w = w1, then the conclusion follows, since K(w1) = . If w = w2, then the conclusion follows by induction on the definition of K(w2). Indeed, it is not difficult to see that every axiom instance in AX is verified at w2 and that, if M,w2 |= and M,w2 |= ', then M,w2 |= '. Suppose, then, that K(w2), where coincides with [F]'K(w2) for a given 'K(w2). Then, by inductive hypothesis, M,w2 |= ' and, since w2 only accedes to itself, M,w2 |= [F]'. Suppose, finally, that K(w2), where coincides with k(')K(w2) for a given 'K(w2). Then, by truth definition, M,w2 |= k('). Conclusion: M,w1 |= Fk(pp) and M,w1 |= k(pp). i) not M,w1 |= k(pp), since K(w1) = . ii) M,w2 |= Fk(pp), since R(w,v) and ppAX K(w2). Theorem 4: Fk() is not derivable in DE. Suppose |–DE Fk() . |–DE Fk(k(pp)) k(pp). |–DE Fk(pp) k(pp), by proposition 1.3 Hence, we obtain a contradiction by the previous theorem. In conclusion, implicit knowledge, as previously defined, is not generally factive. This conclusion is noteworthy, since factivity is assumed in almost every system of implicit knowledge and the definition of implicit knowledge as knowledge concerning the consequences of what is explicitly known is a customary one. 5. Eliminating the distinction between implicit and explicit knowledge Let us consider the extension DEI of DE obtained by adding the following axiom: FKI: Fk() k() FKI (for idealized knower) captures the idea that the epistemic agent has infinite inferential power, in the sense that she knows all the propositions she is able to infer from what she currently knows. Thus, if a proposition is implicitly known, Fk(), then it is also explicitly known, k(). The corresponding semantic condition is: KI): K*(w) = K (w). 14 It is not difficult to show that the logic so obtained is both sound and complete with respect to the class of frames characterized by KI. 10 The important point is that the implicit knowledge operator Fk is now eliminable in favour of k. Accordingly, implicit knowledge becomes factive, but only at the cost of idealizing human knowledge in such a way that the distinction between implicitly and explicitly known propositions is eliminated. Moreover, the standard KT4 epistemic logic of implicit knowledge can be embedded in the fragment of DEI concerning the knowledge operator. To be sure, let us consider the following translation function *: i) p* = p ii) ()* = * iii) (')* = * '* iv) (K())* = k(*) Fact 4: X |–KT4 <=> X* |–DIE *. From left to right: straightforward, by RFK!, FK1-FK3, FKI and F3. From right to left: suppose not X |–KT4 . Then, since KT4 is sound and complete with respect to the class of all the frames in which R is reflexive and transitive, there is a model M = W,R,V, where R is reflexive and transitive, and a world w such that M,w |= X and not M,w |= . In order to obtain our conclusion it is then sufficient to show that, given M, it is possible to produce a model M' and a world w' such that M',w' |= X* and not M',w' |= *. Let M' be the model W',R',K',V' such that 1) W' = W. 2) R' = R, so that it is a pre-order. 3) K' is defined by K'(w) = {* | M,w |= K()}. 4) V' = V. Notice that K'*(w) = {K'(v) | R(w,v)} = {{ | M,v |= K()} | R(w,v)}. However, since M,w |= K() and R(w,v) implies M,v |= K(), we have that K(w) K*(w). It is not difficult to prove that conditions K1), K2), KAX) are satisfied and a straightforward induction on the length of a formula shows that M,w |= <=> M',w |= *. Indeed, the only interesting case is the modal one, which is treated as follows: M,w |= K() <=> *K'(w) <=> M',w |= k(*) <=> M',w |= (K())* 10 FKI provides us with a second strategy to copy with the problem of logical omniscience. As highlighted in [14], p. 242, there are two general strategies for facing the problem. According to a first one, we can extend the ordinary concept of belief by introducing the distinction between explicit and implicit belief. This is the strategy commonly proposed. According to a second one, we can extend the ordinary concept of agent, by idealizing her epistemic power along the lines proposed here. 15 Since M,w |= <=> M',w |= *, for any formula , we have both that M,w |= X if and only if M',w |= X* and that M,w |= if and only if M',w |= *, whence the conclusion. A consequence of fact 4 is that the KT4 system of implicit knowledge can be equated with the pure epistemic portion of the system of dynamic epistemic logic in which the distinction between implicit and explicit logic is neglected on the basis of the assumption that ascribes to the epistemic agent an infinite inferential power. Conclusion We have shown that it is possible to model the distinction between explicit and implicit knowledge in a consistent way and that in the proposed model implicit and intersubjective knowledge turns out to be non-factive. In particular, we have shown that, if implicit knowledge is conceived of in the usual way, i.e. in such a way that a proposition is implicitly known just in case it is a consequence of a set of explicitly known propositions, and implicit intersubjective knowledge is about stable propositions, then non-factivity is a consequence of the distinction between explicit and implicit knowledge and the assumption that knowledge is potentially introspective, i.e. such that, if we know , then we can infer the truth of k(). In conclusion, if we do not eliminate the distinction between implicit and explicit knowledge and the fact that the knowledge of implies the possibility to infer the truth of k(), then we are committed to the denial of the general validity of K() . Hence, since knowledge, in strict sense, is factive, this conclusion is to the effect that we are in need of an additional analysis toward an accurate logical characterization of the concept of knowledge. Such an analysis should conciliate, or constrain, (i) factivity, (ii) positive introspection and (iii) the definition of implicit intersubjective knowledge in terms of explicit intersubjective knowledge. As far as I can see, a preliminary step in this direction should consist in developing more explicit versions of the system DE, based on the introduction of explicit proofs operators, thus following the intuitions in [2], [15], [16], [17] so to check the possibility of recovering factivity by limiting the operators that give rise to intersubjective knowledge. References [1] ÅGOTNES, T. and N. ALECHINA, The Dynamics of Syntactic Knowledge, Journal of Logic and Computation 17, 2007: 83–116. [2] ARTEMOV, S., The Logic of Justification. The Review of Symbolic Logic, 1, 2008, 477-513. [3] BLACKBURN, P., M. DE RIJKE, and Y. VENEMA, Modal Logic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2001. 16 [4] CRESSWELL, J., Intensional Logics and Logical Truth, Journal of Philosophical Logic, 1, 1972: 2-15. [5] DUC, H. N. Logical Omniscience vs. Logical Ignorance on a Dilemma of Epistemic Logic. Vol. 990 of Lecture Notes in Computer Science. pp. 237–248, Berlin – New York: Springer 1995. [6] DUC, H. N., Reasoning about rational, but not logically omniscient, agents, Journal of Logic and Computation 7, 1997: 633–648. [7] FAGIN, R. and HALPERN, J. Y., Belief, awareness, and limited reasoning, Artificial Intelligence, 34, 1988: 39-76. [8] FAGIN, R., HALPERN, J., MOSES, Y., VARDI, M., Reasoning About Knowledge, Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press 1995. [9] FITTING. M., The logic of proofs, semantically, Annals of Pure and Applied Logic, 132, 2005 :1–25. [10] HOEK, W.v.d. and MEYER, J.J., Epistemic Logic for AI and Computer Science, Cambridge: CUP 1995. [11] JAGO, M., Epistemic logic for rule-based agents. Journal of Logic, Language and Information, 18, 2009: 131–158. [12] LEVESQUE, H.J., A logic of implicit and explicit belief, Proceedings AAAI-84, Austin, Texas, 1984: 198-202. [13] KONOLIGE, K., A Deduction Model of Belief. S. Francisco: Morgan Kaufmann 1986. [14] STALNAKER, R., Context and Content. Oxford: Oxford University Press 1999. [15] VAN BENTHEM, J., Merging observation and access in dynamic logic. Journal of Logic Studies, 1, 2008: 1–17. [16] VAN BENTHEM, J. and VELÁZQUEZ-QUESADA, F.R., The dynamics of awareness. Synthese 177 (Supplement-1): 2010: 5-27. [17] VELÁZQUEZ-QUESADA, F.R. Inference and Update. Synthese 169, 2009: 283-300. | {
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Seeing With the Two Systems of Thought-a Review of 'Seeing Things As They Are: a Theory of Perception' by John Searle (2015) Michael Starks ABSTRACT As so often in philosophy, the title not only lays down the battle line but exposes the author's biases and mistakes, since whether or not we can make sense of the language game 'Seeing things as they are' and whether it's possible to have a 'philosophical' 'theory of perception' (which can only be about how the language of perception works), as opposed to a scientific one, which is a theory about how the brain works, are exactly the issues. This is classic Searle-superb and probably at least as good as anyone else can produce, but lacking a full understanding of the fundamental insights of the later Wittgenstein and with no grasp of the two systems of thought framework, which could have made it brilliant. As in his previous work, Searle largely avoids scientism but there are frequent lapses and he does not grasp that the issues are always about language games, a failing he shares with nearly everyone. After providing a framework consisting of a Table of Intentionality based on the two systems of thought and thinking and decision research, I give a detailed analysis of the book. Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my article The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language as Revealed in Wittgenstein and Searle 59p(2016). For all my articles on Wittgenstein and Searle see my e-book 'The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Wittgenstein and Searle 367p (2016). Those interested in all my writings in their most recent versions may consult my e-book Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization Articles and Reviews 2006-2016 662p (2016). As with Wittgenstein (hereafter W), everything that Searle (hereafter S) writes is a treasure and it is wonderful that he remains sharp as he nears 80. Unlike most, even his early work is still relevant and he is working on several other books. I also suggest his 100 or so lectures and interviews on youtube, vimeo etc., which, though inevitably a bit repetitious, contain many statements not in his writings. I have read almost all of his work, and listened to all the lectures, most of them 2 or 3 times. These are of special interest as (like Wittgenstein) he does not read from notes, and so each is unique and not a replica of a paper, and he is a superb extemporaneous speaker who mostly uses unpretentious language (both so different from most others). The recent lectures given at European Universities are superb, but don't miss the old ones such as the BBC lecture "A Changing Reality-the science of human behavior", which gives an excellent account of why the lawful repetitious causality of the brain's fast automatic, nonlinguistic system 1 (S1) is fundamentally different and not describable in the same way as the limitless complexity of reasons characterizing the slow deliberative, linguistic conscious system 2 (S2), which generates a combinatorial explosion not usually representable in a useful way by scientific laws. The dual system (S1, S2) method of describing thought used in this review, common to reasoning research for some 20 years now, is my own and not Searle's. Since I have recently written a 75p article analyzing Searle's work in comparison with that of Wittgenstein (The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language as Revealed by Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle) I will not repeat it and will concentrate on this book only. First, let us remind ourselves of Wittgenstein's (W) fundamental discovery –that all truly 'philosophical' problems (i.e., those not solved by experiments or data gathering) are the same-confusions about how to use language in a particular context, and so all solutions are the same-looking at how language can be used in the context at issue so that its truth conditions (Conditions of Satisfaction or COS, a term not used by W and popularized principally by S) are clear. The basic problem is that one can say anything but one cannot mean (state clear COS for) any arbitrary utterance and meaning is only possible in a very specific context. Thus W in his last masterpiece 'On Certainty' (OC) looks at perspicuous examples of the varying uses of the words 'know', 'doubt' and 'certain', often from his 3 typical perspectives of narrator, interlocutor and commentator, leaving the reader to decide the best use (clearest COS) of the sentences in each context. One can only describe the uses of related sentences and that's the end of it-no hidden depths, no metaphysical insights. There are no 'problems' of 'perception', 'consciousness', 'will', 'space', 'time' etc., but only the need to keep the use (COS) of these words clear. It is useful to keep in mind two comments by W that summarize scientism. "The confusion and barrenness of psychology is not to be explained by calling it a "young science"; its state is not comparable with that of physics, for instance, in its beginnings. (Rather with that of certain branches of mathematics. Set theory.) For in psychology there are experimental methods and conceptual confusion. (As in the other case, conceptual confusion and methods of proof). The existence of the experimental method makes us think we have the means of solving the problems that trouble us; though problem and method pass one another by." Wittgenstein (PI p.232) "Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer questions in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics and leads the philosopher into complete darkness."(BBB p18). More than most, S avoids scientism but there are frequent lapses which I have pointed out in my many reviews of his work and in spite of his being perhaps the best all around philosopher since W, he does not fully grasp that it is all about language games, a failing he shares with nearly everyone. As so often in philosophy, the title not only lays down the battle line but exposes the author's biases and mistakes, since whether or not we can make sense of the language game 'Seeing things as they are' and whether it's possible to have a 'philosophical' 'theory of perception', which can only be about how the language of perception works, as opposed to a scientific one, which is a theory about how the brain works, are exactly the issues. The subtitle (A theory of Perception) is likewise contentious (for Wittgensteinians at least) since W warned repeatedly against theorizing and even insisted it was impossible to produce theories about behavior, as everyone would agree with them-i.e., they would be truisms about our use of language. Anything that looks like a theory of higher order thought (mind, behavior) is really just a description of what we do, unless of course they are making the near universal mistake of giving a scientific theory of how the brain or the world works-a different kind of 'philosophy' entirely-i.e. 'Scientism'. Searle is well aware of this and has commented on it many times, insisting W is wrong about theories, but I don't think so. Only science has theories, i.e., propositions that can be shown true or false and often new evidence leads us to change or even abandon them, while philosophy proper (the elucidation in a given context of a language game describing our higher order behavior) will be obviously correct and not subject to revision as we all recognize it as true-i.e. as a correct use of language. But if S wants to call his generalizations about language use 'theories' that's fine, just so long as we are not led astray. I have dealt with these issues at length in my other writings and in particular my review of Carruther's 'The Opacity of Mind'. It is very useful to read the little volume 'Neuroscience and Philosophy' where Searle, Dennett, and Bennett and Hacker have at one another over which language games should be played. Bennett and Hacker have given the most detailed exposition of these games in 'Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience'(2003) which is continued in Hacker's recent 3 volumes on Human Nature. W insisted that there are no new discoveries to be made in philosophy, nor explanations to be given, but only clear descriptions of behavior (language) in a particular context. Once one understands that all the problems are confusions about how language works, we are at peace and philosophy in W's sense has achieved its purpose. As W and S have noted, there is only one reality, so there are not multiple versions of the mind or life or the world that can meaningfully be given, and we can only communicate in our one public language. There cannot be a private language and any 'private inner thoughts' cannot have any role in our social life. It should also be very straightforward to solve philosophical problems in this sense. "Now if it is not the causal connections which we are concerned with, then the activities of the mind lie open before us." Wittgenstein "The Blue Book" p6 (1933). In our modern idiom, perception is the automatic, causally self-reflexive (Searle), rapid, true-only mental states or presentations (Searle) of System 1 (S1), while most of what we 'mean' by the 'mind' are the deliberate, slow, reasoned dispositions with public true or false representations (conditions of satisfaction-COS) of System 2 (S2). Searle waits until p45 to present the most recent version of a table he has used before. I have been expanding it for some years and as I find it critical to understanding behavior, I begin by presenting its most recent version here. In accord with W's work and Searle's terminology, I categorize the representations of S2 as public Conditions of Satisfaction (COS) and in this sense the 'phenomena' of S1 such as perceptions do not have COS. In other writings Searle says they do, but as noted in my other reviews, I think it is then essential to refer to COS1 ("private" presentations) and COS2 (public representations). Likewise, I have changed his 'Direction of Fit' to 'Cause Originates From' and his 'Direction of Causation' to 'Causes Changes In'. After half a century in oblivion, the nature of consciousness is now the hottest topic in the behavioral sciences and philosophy. Beginning with the pioneering work of Ludwig Wittgenstein in the 1930's (the Blue and Brown Books) to 1951, and from the 50's to the present by his successors Searle, Moyal-Sharrock, Read, Hacker, Stern, Horwich, Winch, Finkelstein etc., I have created the following table as an heuristic for furthering this study. The rows show various aspects or ways of studying and the columns show the involuntary processes and voluntary behaviors comprising the two systems (dual processes) of the Logical Structure of Consciousness (LSC), which can also be regarded as the Logical Structure of Rationality (LSR-Searle), of behavior (LSB), of personality (LSP), of Mind (LSM), of language (LSL), of reality (LSOR), of Intentionality (LSI) -the classical philosophical term, the Descriptive Psychology of Consciousness (DPC) , the Descriptive Psychology of Thought (DPT) –or better, the Language of the Descriptive Psychology of Thought (LDPT), terms introduced here and in my other very recent writings. I will make minimal comments here since those wishing further description may consult my articles and reviews of books by Wittgenstein, Searle and others on academia.edu, philpapers.org, researchgate.net, vixra.org and abbreviated versions on Amazon. The ideas for this table originated in the work by Wittgenstein, a much simpler table by Searle, and correlates with extensive tables and graphs in the three recent books on Human Nature by P.M.S Hacker. The last 9 rows come principally from decision research by Johnathan St. B.T. Evans and colleagues as revised by myself. (Involuntary –automated-Rules R1) Thinking(Cognition)(No gaps) (Voluntary-deliberativeRules R2) Willing (Volition)(3 gaps) Dispositions* Emotions Memory Perception Desires PI** IA*** Actions/Words Cause Originates From**** World World World World Mind Mind Mind Mind Causes Changes In***** None Mind Mind Mind None World World World Causally Self Reflexive****** No Yes Yes Yes No Yes Yes Yes True or False(Testable) Yes T only T only T only Yes Yes Yes Yes Public Conditions of Satisfaction Yes Yes/No Yes/No No Yes/No Yes No Yes Describe a Mental State No Yes Yes Yes No No Yes/No Yes Evolutionary Priority 5 4 2,3 1 5 3 2 2 Voluntary Content Yes No No No No Yes Yes Yes Voluntary Initiation Yes/No No Yes No Yes/No Yes Yes Yes Cognitive System ******* 2 1 2/1 1 2 / 1 2 1 2 Change Intensity No Yes Yes Yes Yes No No No Precise Duration No Yes Yes Yes No No Yes Yes Time,Place(H+N,T+T)***** *** TT HN HN HN TT TT HN HN Special Quality No Yes No Yes No No No No Localized in Body No No No Yes No No No Yes Bodily Expressions Yes Yes No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Self Contradictions No Yes No No Yes No No No Needs a Self Yes Yes/No No No Yes No No No Needs Language Yes No No No No No No Yes/No FROM DECISION RESEARCH Subliminal Effects No Yes/No Yes Yes No No No Yes/No Associative/Rule Based RB A/RB A A A/RB RB RB RB Context Dependent/Abstract A CD/A CD CD CD/A A CD/A CD/A Serial/Parallel S S/P P P S/P S S S Heuristic/Analytic A H/A H H H/A A A A Needs Working Memory Yes No No No No Yes Yes Yes General Intelligence Dependent Yes No No No Yes/No Yes Yes Yes Cognitive Loading Inhibits Yes Yes/No No No Yes Yes Yes Yes Arousal Facilitates or Inhibits I F/I F F I I I I Public Conditions of Satisfaction of S2 are often referred to by Searle and others as COS, Representations, truthmakers or meanings (or COS2 by myself), while the automatic results of S1 are designated as presentations by others ( or COS1 by myself). * Aka Inclinations, Capabilities, Preferences, Representations, possible actions etc. ** Searle's Prior Intentions *** Searle's Intention In Action **** Searle's Direction of Fit ***** Searle's Direction of Causation ****** (Mental State instantiates--Causes or Fulfills Itself). Searle formerly calls this causally selfreferential. ******* Tversky/Kahneman/Frederick/Evans/Stanovich defined cognitive systems. ******** Here and Now or There and Then It is of interest to compare this with the various tables and charts in Peter Hacker's recent 3 volumes on Human Nature. One should always keep in mind Wittgenstein's discovery that after we have described the possible uses (meanings, truthmakers, Conditions of Satisfaction) of language in a particular context, we have exhausted its interest, and attempts at explanation (i.e., philosophy) only get us further away from the truth. He showed us that there is only one philosophical problem-the use of sentences (language games) in an inappropriate context, and hence only one solution- showing the correct context. EXPLANATION OF THE TABLE System 1 (i.e., emotions, memory, perceptions, reflexes) which parts of the brain present to consciousness, are automated and generally happen in less than 500msec, while System 2 is abilities to perform slow deliberative actions that are represented in conscious deliberation (S2D-my terminology) requiring over 500msec, but frequently repeated S2 actions can also become automated (S2A-my terminology). There is a gradation of consciousness from coma through the stages of sleep to full awareness. Memory includes short term memory (working memory) of system 2 and long term memory of System 1. For volitions one would usually say they are successful or not, rather than true or false. S1 is causally self-reflexive since the description of our perceptual experience-the presentation of our senses to consciousness, can only be described in the same words (as the same COS Searle) as we describe the world, which I prefer to call the percept or COS1 to distinguish it from the representation or public COS2 of S2. Of course the various rows and columns are logically and psychologically connected. E.g., Emotion, Memory and Perception in the True or False row will be True-Only, will describe a mental state, belong to cognitive system 1, will not generally be initiated voluntarily, are causally self-reflexive, cause originates in the world and causes changes in the mind, have a precise duration, change in intensity, occur here and now, commonly have a special quality, do not need language, are independent of general intelligence and working memory, are not inhibited by cognitive loading, will not have voluntary content, and will not have public conditions of satisfaction etc. There will always be ambiguities because the words (concepts, language games) cannot precisely match the actual complex functions of the brain (behavior), that is, there is a combinatorial explosion of contexts in sentences and in the brain states), and this is why it's not possible to reduce higher order behavior to a system of laws, which would have to state all the possible contexts –hence Wittgenstein's warnings against theories. This is a special case of the irreducibility of higher level descriptions to lower level ones that has been explained many times by Searle, Daniele Moyal-Sharrock (DMS),P.M.S. Hacker, Wittgenstein and others. About a million years ago primates evolved the ability to use their throat muscles to make complex series of noises (i.e., primitive speech) to describe present events (perceptions, memory, reflexive actions) with some Primary or Primitive Language Games (PLG's). System 1 is comprised of fast, automated, subcortical, nonrepresentational, causally self-reflexive, intransitive, informationless, true-only mental states with a precise time and location, and over time there evolved in higher cortical centers S2 with the further ability to describe displacements in space and time of events (the past and future and often hypothetical, counterfactual, conditional or fictional preferences, inclinations or dispositions-the Secondary or Sophisticated Language Games (SLG's) of System 2 that are slow, cortical, conscious, information containing, transitive (having public Conditions of Satisfaction-Searle's term for truthmakers or meaning which I divide into COS1 and COS2 for private S1 and public S2), representational (which I again divide into R1 for S1 representations and R2 for S2) , true or false propositional thinking, with all S2 functions having no precise time and being abilities and not mental states. Preferences are Intuitions, Tendencies, Automatic Ontological Rules, Behaviors, Abilities, Cognitive Modules, Personality Traits, Templates, Inference Engines, Inclinations, Emotions (described by Searle as agitated desires), Propositional Attitudes (correct only if used to refer to events in the world and not to propositions), Appraisals, Capacities, Hypotheses. Some Emotions are slowly developing and changing results of S2 dispositions (W- 'Remarks on the Philosophy of Psychology' V2 p148) while others are typical S1- automatic and fast to appear and disappear. "I believe", "he loves", "they think" are descriptions of possible public acts typically displaced in space-time. My first person statements about myself are true-only (excluding lying) –i.e. S1, while third person statements about others are true or false –i.e., S2 (see my reviews of Johnston 'Wittgenstein: Rethinking the Inner' and of Budd 'Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Psychology'). "Preferences" as a class of intentional states --opposed to perceptions, reflexive acts and memories-were first clearly described by Wittgenstein (W) in the 1930's and termed "inclinations" or "dispositions". They have commonly been termed "propositional attitudes" since Russell but it has often been noted that this is an incorrect or misleading phrase since believing, intending, knowing , remembering etc., are often not propositional nor attitudes, as has been shown e.g., by W and by Searle (e.g., cf Consciousness and Language p118). Preferences are intrinsic, observer independent public representations (as opposed to presentations or representations of System 1 to System 2 – Searle-Consciousness and Language p53). They are potential acts displaced in time or space, while the evolutionarily more primitive S1 perceptions memories and reflexive actions are always here and now. This is one way to characterize System 2 -the second major advance in vertebrate psychology after System 1-the ability to represent (state public COS for) events and to think of them as occurring in another place or time (Searle's third faculty of counterfactual imagination supplementing cognition and volition). S1 'thoughts' (my T1-i.e., the use of "thinking" to refer to automatic brain processes of System One) are potential or unconscious mental states of S1 --Searle-Phil Issues 1:45-66(1991). Perceptions, memories and reflexive (automatic) actions can be described by primary LG's ( PLG's -e.g., I see the dog) and there are, in the normal case, NO TESTS possible so they can be True-Onlyi.e., axiomatic as I prefer or animal reflexes as W and DMS describe. Dispositions can be described as secondary LG's ( SLG's –e.g. I believe I see the dog) and must also be acted out, even for me in my own case (i.e., how do I KNOW what I believe, think, feel until I act or some event occurs-see my reviews of the well known books on W by Johnston and Budd. Note that Dispositions become Actions when spoken or written as well as being acted out in other ways, and these ideas are all due to Wittgenstein (mid 1930's) and are NOT Behaviorism (Hintikka & Hintikka 1981, Searle, Hacker, Hutto etc.,). Wittgenstein can be regarded as the founder of evolutionary psychology and his work a unique investigation of the functioning of our axiomatic System 1 psychology and its interaction with System 2. After Wittgenstein laid the groundwork for the Descriptive Psychology of Higher Order Thought in the Blue and Brown Books in the early 30's, it was extended by John Searle, who made a simpler version of this table in his classic book Rationality in Action (2001). It expands on W's survey of the axiomatic structure of evolutionary psychology developed from his very first comments in 1911 and so beautifully laid out in his last work 'On Certainty' (OC) (written in 1950-51). OC is the foundation stone of behavior or epistemology and ontology (arguably the same as are semantics and pragmatics), cognitive linguistics or Higher Order Thought, and in my view (shared e.g., by DMS) the single most important work in philosophy (descriptive psychology) and thus in the study of behavior. Perception, Memory, Reflexive actions and Emotion are primitive partly Subcortical Involuntary Mental States, that can be described in PLG's, in which the mind automatically fits (presents) the world (is Causally Self Reflexive--Searle)--the unquestionable, true-only, axiomatic basis of rationality over which no control is possible). Preferences, Desires, and Intentions are descriptions of slow thinking conscious Voluntary Abilities- that can be described in SLG's-in which the mind tries to fit (represent) the world. Behaviorism and all the other confusions of our default descriptive psychology (philosophy) arise because we cannot see S1 working and describe all actions as the conscious deliberate actions of S2 (The Phenomenological Illusion-TPI-Searle). W understood this and described it with unequalled clarity with hundreds of examples of language (the mind) in action throughout his works. Reason has access to memory and so we use consciously apparent but often incorrect reasons to explain behavior (the Two Selves or Systems or Processes of current research). Beliefs and other Dispositions can be described as thoughts which try to match the facts of the world (mind to world direction of fit), while Volitions are intentions to act (Prior Intentions-PI, or Intentions In Action-IA-Searle) plus acts which try to match the world to the thoughts-world to mind direction of fit-cf. Searle e.g., Consciousness and Language p145, 190). Sometimes there are gaps in reasoning to arrive at belief and other dispositions. Disposition words can be used as nouns which seem to describe mental states ('my thought is...') or as verbs or adjectives to describe abilities (agents as they act or might act -'I think that...) and are often incorrectly called "Propositional Attitudes". Perceptions become Memories and our innate programs (cognitive modules, templates, inference engines of S1) use these to produce Dispositions-(believing, knowing, understanding, thinking, etc., -actual or potential public acts such as language (thought, mind) also called Inclinations, Preferences, Capabilities, Representations of S2) and Volition -and there is no language (concept, thought) of private mental states for thinking or willing (i.e., no private language, 20 thought or mind). Higher animals can think and will acts and to that extent they have a public psychology. Perceptions: (X is True): Hear, See, Smell, Pain, Touch, Temperature Memories, Remembering: (X was true) Preferences, Inclinations, Dispositions: (X might become True) CLASS 1: Propositional (True or False) public acts of Believing, Judging, Thinking, Representing, Understanding, Choosing, Deciding, Preferring, Interpreting, Knowing (including skills and abilities), Attending (Learning), Experiencing, Meaning, Remembering, Intending, Considering, Desiring , Expecting, Wishing , Wanting, Hoping( a special class), Seeing As (Aspects), CLASS 2: DECOUPLED MODE-(as if, conditional, hypothetical, fictional) Dreaming, Imagining, Lying, Predicting, Doubting CLASS 3: EMOTIONS: Loving, Hating, Fearing, Sorrow, Joy, Jealousy, Depression. Their function is to modulate Preferences to increase inclusive fitness (expected maximum utility) by facilitating information processing of perceptions and memories for rapid action. There is some separation between S1 emotions such as rage and fear and S2 such as love, hate, disgust and anger. We can think of them as strongly felt or acted out desires. DESIRES: (I want X to be True-I want to change the world to fit my thoughts) : Longing, Hoping, Expecting, Awaiting, Needing, Requiring, obliged to do INTENTIONS: (I will make X True) Intending ACTIONS (I am making X True) : Acting, Speaking , Reading, Writing, Calculating, Persuading, Showing, Demonstrating, Convincing, Doing Trying, Attempting, Laughing, Playing, Eating, Drinking, Crying, Asserting (Describing, Teaching, Predicting, Reporting), Promising , Making or Using Maps, Books, Drawings, Computer Programs–these are Public and Voluntary and transfer Information to others so they dominate over the Unconscious, Involuntary and Informationless S1 reflexes in explanations of behavior (The Phenomenological Illusion, The Blank Slate or the Standard Social Science Model--SSSM). Words express actions having various functions in our life and are not the names of objects nor of a single type of event. The social interactions of humans are governed by cognitive modules-roughly equivalent to the scripts or schemata of social psychology (groups of neurons organized into inference engines), which, with perceptions and memories, lead to the formation of preferences which lead to intentions and then to actions. Intentionality or intentional psychology can be taken to be all these processes or only preferences leading to actions and in the broader sense is the subject of cognitive psychology or cognitive neurosciences when including neurophysiology, neurochemistry and neurogenetics. Evolutionary psychology can be regarded as the study of all the preceding functions or of the operation of the modules which produce behavior, and is then coextensive in evolution, development and individual action with preferences, intentions and actions. Since the axioms 21 (algorithms or cognitive modules) of our psychology are in our genes, we can enlarge our understanding and increase our power by giving clear descriptions of how they work and can extend them (culture) via biology, psychology, philosophy (descriptive psychology), math, logic, physics, and computer programs, thus making them faster and more efficient. Hajek(2003) gives an analysis of dispositions as conditional probabilities which are algorithmatized by R & L(1999), Spohn etc. Intentionality (cognitive or evolutionary psychology) consists of various aspects of behavior which are innately programmed into cognitive modules which create and require consciousness, will and self, and in normal human adults nearly all except perceptions and some memories are purposive, require public acts (e.g., language), and commit us to relationships in order to increase our inclusive fitness (maximum expected utility or Bayesian utility maximization). However, Bayesianism is highly questionable due to severe underdetermination-i.e., it can 'explain' anything and hence nothing. This occurs via dominance and reciprocal altruism, often resulting in Desire Independent Reasons for Action (Searle)which I divide into DIRA1 and DIRA2 for S1 and S2) and imposes Conditions of Satisfaction on Conditions of Satisfaction (Searle)-(i.e., relates thoughts to the world via public acts (muscle movements), producing math, language, art, music, sex, sports etc. The basics of this were figured out by our greatest natural psychologist Ludwig Wittgenstein from the 1930's to 1951 but with clear foreshadowings back to 1911, and with refinements by many, but above all by John Searle beginning in the 1960's. "The general tree of psychological phenomena. I strive not for exactness but for a view of the whole." RPP Vol 1 p895 cf Z p464. Much of intentionality (e.g., our language games) admits of degrees. As W noted, inclinations are sometimes conscious and deliberative. All our templates (functions, concepts, language games) have fuzzy edges in some contexts as they must to be useful. There are at least two types of thinking (i.e., two language games or ways of using the dispositional verb "thinking")-nonrational without awareness and rational with partial awareness(W), now described as the fast and slow thinking of S1 and S2. It is useful to regard these as language games and not as mere phenomena (W RPP Vol2 p129). Mental phenomena (our subjective or internal "experiences") are epiphenomenal, lack criteria, hence lack info even for oneself and thus can play no role in communication, thinking or mind. Thinking like all dispositions lacks any test, is not a mental state (unlike perceptions of S1), and contains no information until it becomes a public act or event such as in speech, writing or other muscular contractions. Our perceptions and memories can have information (meaning-i.e., a public COS) only when they are manifested in public actions, for only then do thinking, feeling etc. have any meaning (consequences) even for ourselves. Memory and perception are integrated by modules into dispositions which become psychologically effective when they are acted upon-i.e., S1 generates S2. Developing language means manifesting the innate ability of advanced humans to substitute words (fine contractions of oral or manual muscles) for acts (gross contractions of arm and leg muscles). TOM (Theory of Mind ) is much better called UA-Understanding of Agency (my term) and UA1 and UA2 for such functions in S1 and S2 –and can also be called Evolutionary Psychology or Intentionality--the innate genetically programmed production of consciousness, self, and thought which leads to intentions and then to actions by contracting muscles-i.e., Understanding is a Disposition like Thinking and Knowing. Thus, "propositional attitude" is an incorrect term for normal intuitive deliberative S2D (i.e., the slow deliberative functioning of System 2) or automated S2A (i.e., the conversion of frequently practiced System 2 functions of speech and action into automatic fast functions). We see that the efforts of cognitive science to 22 understand thinking, emotions etc. by studying neurophysiology is not going to tell us anything more about how the mind (thought, language) works (as opposed to how the brain works) than we already know, because "mind" (thought, language) is already in full public view (W). Any 'phenomena' that are hidden in neurophysiology, biochemistry , genetics, quantum mechanics, or string theory, are as irrelevant to our social life as the fact that a table is composed of atoms which "obey" (can be described by) the laws of physics and chemistry is to having lunch on it. As W so famously said "Nothing is hidden". Everything of interest about the mind (thought, language) is open to view if we only examine carefully the workings of language. Language (mind, public speech connected to potential actions) was evolved to facilitate social interaction and thus the gathering of resources, survival and reproduction. Its grammar (i.e., evolutionary psychology, intentionality) functions automatically and is extremely confusing when we try to analyze it. This has been explained frequently by Hacker, DMS and many others. As W noted with countless carefully stated examples, words and sentences have multiple uses depending on context. I believe and I eat have profoundly different roles as do I believe and I believed or I believe and he believes. The present tense first person use of inclinational verbs such as "I believe" normally describe my ability to predict my probable acts based on knowledge (i.e., S2) but can also seem (in philosophical contexts) to be descriptive of my mental state and so not based on knowledge or information (W and see my review of the book by Hutto and Myin). In the former S1 sense, it does not describe a truth but makes itself true in the act of saying it --i.e., "I believe it's raining" makes itself true. That is, disposition verbs used in first person present tense can be causally self-reflexive--they instantiate themselves but then they are not testable (i.e., not T or F, not S2). However past or future tense or third person use--"I believed" or "he believes" or "he will believe' contain or can be resolved by information that is true or false, as they describe public acts that are or can become verifiable. Likewise, "I believe it's raining" has no information apart from subsequent actions, even for me, but "I believe it will rain" or "he will think it's raining" are potentially verifiable public acts displaced in spacetime that intend to convey information (or misinformation). Nonreflective or Nonrational (automatic) words spoken without Prior Intent (which I call S2A-i.e., S2D automated by practice) have been called Words as Deeds by W & then by Daniel Moyal-Sharrock in her paper in Philosophical Psychology in 2000). Many so-called Inclinations/Dispositions/Preferences/Tendencies/Capacities/Abilities are Non-Propositional ( NonReflective) Attitudes (far more useful to call them functions or abilities) of System 1 (Tversky and Kahnemann). Prior Intentions are stated by Searle to be Mental States and hence S1, but again I think one must separate PI1 and PI2 since in our normal language our prior intentions are the conscious deliberations of S2. Perceptions, Memories, type 2 Dispositions (e.g., some emotions) and many Type 1 Dispositions are better called Reflexes of S1 and are automatic, nonreflective, NON-Propositional and NON-Attitudinal functioning of the hinges (axioms, algorithms) of our Evolutionary Psychology (Moyal-Sharrock after Wittgenstein). Thus when Searle introduces some terminology on p6 of STATA we see that VisExp(it is raining) is S1 while Bel(it is raining) or Assert(it is raining) is S2. We have only one set of genes and hence one language (mind), one behavior (human nature or evolutionary psychology), which W and S refer to as the bedrock or background and reflecting upon this we generate philosophy which S calls the logical structure of rationality and I call the descriptive psychology of Higher Order Thought (HOT) or, taking the cue from W, the study of the language describing HOT. The only interest in reading anyone's comments on philosophical aspects of human behavior (HOT) is to see if its translation into the W/S framework gives some clear descriptions which illuminate the use of language. If not, then showing how they have been bewitched by language dispels the confusion. As Horwich has noted on the last page of his superb 23 'Wittgenstein's Metaphilosophy'(see my review) : "What sort of progress is this-the fascinating mystery has been removed--yet no depths have been plumbed in consolation; nothing has been explained or discovered or reconceived. How tame and uninspiring one might think. But perhaps, as Wittgenstein suggests, the virtues of clarity, demystification and truth should be found satisfying enough." Nevertheless, W/S do much explaining (or as W suggested we ought to say "describing") and S states that the logical structure of rationality constitutes various theories, and there is no harm in it, provided one realizes they are comprised of a series of examples that let us get a general idea of how language (the mind) works and that as his "theories" are explicated via examples they become more like W's perspicuous descriptions. "A rose by any other name..." When there is a question one has to go back to the examples or consider new ones. As W noted, language (life) is limitlessly complex and context sensitive (W being the unacknowledged father of Contextualism), and so it is utterly unlike physics where one can often derive a formula and dispense with the need for further examples. Scientism (the use of scientific language and the causal framework) leads us astray in describing HOT. "Philosophers constantly see the method of science before their eyes and are irresistibly tempted to ask and answer questions in the way science does. This tendency is the real source of metaphysics and leads the philosopher into complete darkness."(BBB p18). Unlike so many others, S has largely avoided and often demolished scientism, but there is a residue which evinces itself when he remarks in various writings that we can understand consciousness by studying the brain or that he is prepared to give up causality, will or mind. W made it abundantly clear that such words are the hinges or basic language games and giving them up or even changing them is not a coherent concept. As noted in my other reviews, I think the residue of scientism results from the major tragedy of S's (and nearly all other philosopher's) philosophical life --his failure to take the later W seriously enough (W died a few years before S went to England to study). "Here we come up against a remarkable and characteristic phenomenon in philosophical investigation: the difficulty---I might say---is not that of finding the solution but rather that of recognizing as the solution something that looks as if it were only a preliminary to it. We have already said everything.---Not anything that follows from this, no this itself is the solution!....This is connected, I believe, with our wrongly expecting an explanation, whereas the solution of the difficulty is a description, if we give it the right place in our considerations. If we dwell upon it, and do not try to get beyond it." Zettel p312-314 "Our method is purely descriptive, the descriptions we give are not hints of explanations." BBB p125 It follows both from W's 3rd period work and contemporary psychology, that `will', `self' and `consciousness' are axiomatic true-only elements of the reptilian subcortical System One (S1) composed of perceptions, memories and reflexes, and there is no possibility (intelligibility) of demonstrating (of giving sense to) their falsehood. As W made so wonderfully clear, they are the basis for judgment and so cannot be judged. The true-only axioms of our psychology are not evidential. Philosophers are rarely clear about exactly what it is that they expect to contribute that other students of behavior (i.e., scientists) do not, so, noting W's above remark on science envy, I will quote from P.M.S Hacker (the leading expert on W) who gives a good start on it and a counterblast to scientism. "Traditional epistemologists want to know whether knowledge is true belief and a further condition ..., or whether knowledge does not even imply belief ...What needs to be clarified if these questions are to be answered is the web of our epistemic concepts, the ways in which the various concepts hang together, the various forms of their compatibilities and incompatibilities, their point and purpose, their presuppositions and different forms of context dependency. To this venerable exercise in connective analysis, scientific knowledge, psychology, neuroscience and self-styled cognitive science can contribute nothing whatsoever." (Passing by the naturalistic turn: on Quine's cul-de-sacp15-2005) Before remarking further on 'STATA' I will first offer some essential comments on philosophy and its relationship to contemporary psychological research as exemplified in the works of Searle (S),Wittgenstein (W), Hacker (H) et al. It 24 will help to see my reviews of S's PNC (Philosophy in a New Century), Making the Social World (MSW) and W's BBB(Blue and Brown Books),PI (Philosophical Investigations), OC(On Certainty), and other books by and about these geniuses, who provide a clear description of higher order behavior, not found in psychology books, that I will refer to as the W/S framework. As noted in my other reviews, philosophical mistakes are of interest since they are the universal defaults of our psychology, due the fact that our language lacks perspicuity, as W first noted in the BBB (Blue and Brown Books) 3⁄4 of a century ago. A major theme in all discussion of human behavior is the need to separate the genetically programmed automatisms from the effects of culture. All study of higher order behavior (HOT) is an effort to tease apart not only fast S1 and slow S2 thinking --e.g., perceptions and other automatisms vs. dispositions, but the extensions of S2 into culture (S3). Searle's work as a whole provides a stunning description of higher order S2/S3 social behavior, while the later W shows how it is based on true-only unconscious axioms of S1 which evolved into conscious dispositional propositional thinking of S2. S1 is the simple automated functions of our involuntary, System 1, fast thinking, mirror neuron, true-only, nonpropositional , prelinguistic mental statesour perceptions and memories and reflexive acts including System 1 Truths and UA1 --Understanding of Agency 1-and Emotions1such as joy, love, anger) which can be described causally, while the evolutionarily later linguistic functions are expressions or descriptions of voluntary, System 2, slow thinking, mentalizing neurons. That is, of testable true or false, propositional, Truth2 and UA2 and Emotions2 (joyfulness, loving, hating)-the dispositional (and often counterfactual) imagining, supposing, intending, thinking, knowing, believing, etc. which can only be described in terms of reasons (i.e., it's just a fact that attempts to describe System 2 in terms of neurochemistry, atomic physics, mathematics, make no sense--see W, S, Hacker etc.). The investigation of System 1 has revolutionized psychology, economics and other disciplines under names like "cognitive illusions", "priming", "framing", "heuristics" and "biases". Of course these too are language games so there will be more and less useful ways to use these words, and studies and discussions will vary from "pure" System 1 to combinations of 1 and 2 (the norm as W made clear), but not of S2 only, since it cannot occur without involving much of the intricate S1 network of "cognitive modules", "inference engines", "intracerebral reflexes", "automatisms", "cognitive axioms", "background" or "bedrock" --as W and later S call our Evolutionary Psychology (EP). The deontic structures or `social glue' are the automatic fast actions of S1 producing the slow dispositions of S2 which are inexorably expanded during personal development into a wide array of automatic universal cultural deontic relationships so well described by Searle. I expect this fairly well abstracts the basic structure of behavior as described in my other reviews. So, recognizing that S1 is only upwardly causal (world to mind) and contentless (lacking representations or information) while S2 has content (i.e. is representational) and is downwardly causal (mind to world) (e.g., see my review of Hutto and Myin's `Radical Enactivism'), I would translate the paragraphs from S's MSW p39 beginning "In sum" and ending on pg 40 with "conditions of satisfaction" as follows. In sum, perception, memory and reflexive prior intentions and actions (`will') are caused by the automatic functioning of our S1 true-only axiomatic EP as modified by S2 ('free will'). We try to match how we desire things to be with how we think they are. We should see that belief, desire (and imagination--desires time shifted and decoupled from intention) and other S2 propositional dispositions of our slow thinking later evolved second self, are totally dependent upon (have their Conditions of Satisfaction (COS) originating in) the Causally Self Reflexive (CSR) rapid automatic primitive trueonly reflexive S1. In language and neurophysiology there are intermediate or 25 blended cases such as intending (prior intentions) or remembering, where the causal connection of the COS with S1 is time shifted, as they represent the past or the future, unlike S1 which is always in the present. S1 and S2 feed into each other and are often orchestrated seamlessly by the learned deontic cultural relations, so that our normal experience is that we consciously control everything that we do. This vast arena of cognitive illusions that dominate our life Searle has described as `The Phenomenological Illusion' (TPI). "Some of the most important logical features of intentionality are beyond the reach of phenomenology because they have no immediate phenomenological reality... Because the creation of meaningfulness out of meaninglessness is not consciously experienced...it does not exist...This is... the phenomenological illusion." Searle PNC p115-117 Disposition words (Preferences--see above table) have at least two basic uses. One refers to the true-only sentences describing our direct perceptions, reflexes (including basic speech) and memory, i.e., our innate axiomatic S1 psychology which are Causally Self Reflexive(CSR)-(called reflexive or intransitive in W's BBB), and the S2 use as disposition words (thinking, understanding, knowing etc.) which can be acted out, and which can become true or false (`I know my way home')--i.e., they have Conditions of Satisfaction (COS) and are not CSR(called transitive in BBB). "How does the philosophical problem about mental processes and states and about behaviorism arise? – The first step is the one that altogether escapes notice. We talk about processes and states and leave their nature undecided. Sometime perhaps we shall know more about them-we think. But that is just what commits us to a particular way of looking at the matter. For we have a definite concept of what it means to learn to know a process better. (The decisive movement in the conjuring trick has been made, and it was the very one we thought quite innocent).- And now the analogy which was to make us understand our thoughts falls to pieces. So we have to deny the yet uncomprehended process in the yet unexplored medium. And now it looks as though we had denied mental processes. And naturally we don't want to deny them. W's PI p308 "...the basic intentional relation between the mind and the world has to do with conditions of satisfaction. And a proposition is anything at all that can stand in an intentional relation to the world, and since those intentional relations always determine conditions of satisfaction, and a proposition is defined as anything sufficient to determine conditions of satisfaction, it turns out that all intentionality is a matter of propositions." Searle PNC p193 "The intentional state represents its conditions of satisfaction...people erroneously suppose that every mental representation must be consciously thought...but the notion of a representation as I am using it is a functional and not an ontological notion. Anything that has conditions of satisfaction, that can succeed or fail in a way that is characteristic of intentionality, is by definition a representation of its conditions of satisfaction...we can analyze the structure of the intentionality of social phenomena by analyzing their conditions of satisfaction." Searle MSW p
Like Carruthers and others, S sometimes states (e.g., p66-67 MSW) that S1 (i.e., memories, perceptions, reflex acts) has a propositional (i.e., true-false) structure. As I have noted above, and many times in other reviews, it seems crystal clear that W is correct, and it is basic to understanding behavior, that only S2 is propositional and S1 is axiomatic and true-only. However since what S and various authors here call the background (S1) gives rise to S2 and is in turn partly controlled by S2, there has to be a sense in which S1 is able to become propositional and they and Searle note that the unconscious activities of S2 must be able to become the conscious ones of S2. They both have COS and Directions of Fit (DOF) because the genetic, axiomatic intentionality of S1 generates that of S2, but if S1 were propositional in the same sense it would mean that skepticism is intelligible, the chaos that was philosophy before W would return, and in fact if true, life would not be possible. It would e.g., mean that truth and falsity and the facts of the world could be decided without consciousness. As W stated often and showed so 26 brilliantly in his last book On Certainly, life must be based on certainty--automated unconscious rapid reactions. Organisms that always have a doubt and pause to reflect will die--no evolution, no people, no philosophy. Another crucial notion clarified by S is the Desire Independent Reasons for Action (DIRA). I would translate S's summary of practical reason on p127 of MSW as follows: "We yield to our desires (need to alter brain chemistry), which typically include Desire -Independent Reasons for Action (DIRA--i.e., desires displaced in space and time), which produce dispositions to behavior that commonly result sooner or later in muscle movements that serve our inclusive fitness (increased survival for genes in ourselves and those closely related)." And I would restate his description on p129 of how we carry out DIRA2 as "The resolution of the paradox is that the unconscious DIRA1 serving long term inclusive fitness generate the conscious DIRA2 which often override the short term personal immediate desires." Agents do indeed consciously create the proximate reasons of DIRA2, but these are very restricted extensions of unconscious DIRA1 (the ultimate cause). Obama and the Pope wish to help the poor because it is "right" but the ultimate cause is a change in their brain chemistry that increased the inclusive fitness of their distant ancestors. Evolution by inclusive fitness has programmed the unconscious rapid reflexive causal actions of S1 which often give rise to the conscious slow thinking of S2 which generates endless cultural extensions, and which produces reasons for action that often result in activation of body and/or speech muscles by S1 causing actions. The general mechanism is via both neurotransmission and by changes in neuromodulators in targeted areas of the brain. The overall cognitive illusion (called by Searle `The Phenomenological Illusion', by Pinker `The Blank Slate' and by Tooby and Cosmides `The Standard Social Science Model') is that S2 has generated the action consciously for reasons of which we are fully aware and in control of, but anyone familiar with modern biology and psychology can see that this view is not credible. A sentence expresses a thought (has a meaning), when it has clear COS, i.e., public truth conditions. Hence the comment from W: " When I think in language, there aren't `meanings' going through my mind in addition to the verbal expressions: the language is itself the vehicle of thought." And, if I think with or without words, the thought is whatever I (honestly) say it is as there is no other possible criterion (COS). Thus W's lovely aphorisms (p132 Budd-Wittgenstein's Philosophy of Psychology) "It is in language that wish and fulfillment meet" and "Like everything metaphysical, the harmony between thought and reality is to be found in the grammar of the language." And one might note here that `grammar' in W can usually be translated as EP and that in spite of his frequent warnings against theorizing and generalizing, this is about as broad a characterization of higher order descriptive psychology (philosophy) as one can find-beyond even Searle. "Every sign is capable of interpretation but the meaning mustn't be capable of interpretation. It is the last interpretation" W's BBB p34 Though W is correct that there is no mental state that constitutes meaning, S notes that there is a general way to characterize the act of meaning-- "Speaker meaning... is the imposition of conditions of satisfaction on conditions of satisfaction" which means to speak or write a well formed sentence expressing COS in a context that can be true or false and this is an act and not a mental state. Hence the famous quote from W: "If God had looked into our minds he would not have been able to see there whom we were speaking of (PI p217)" and his comments that the whole problem of representation is contained in "that's Him" and "...what gives the image its interpretation is the path on which it lies," or as S says its COS. Hence W's summation (p140 Budd) that "What it always comes to in the end is that without any further meaning, he calls what happened the wish that that should happen"..." the question whether I know what I wish before my wish is fulfilled cannot arise at all. And the fact that some event stops my wishing does not mean that it fulfills it. Perhaps I should not have been satisfied if my wish had been satisfied"...Suppose it were asked `Do I know what I long for before I get it? If I have learned to talk, then I do know." W can also be regarded as a pioneer in evolutionary cognitive linguistics. He dissects hundreds of language games showing how the true-only perceptions, memories and reflexive actions of system one (S1) grade into the thinking, remembering, and understanding of system two (S2) dispositions, and many of his examples also address the 27 nature/nurture issue explicitly. With this evolutionary perspective, his later works are a breathtaking revelation of human nature that is entirely current and has never been equaled. Many perspectives have heuristic value, but I find that this evolutionary two systems view is the best. To paraphrase Dobzhansky's famous comment: "Nothing in philosophy makes sense except in the light of evolutionary psychology." W recognized that 'Nothing is Hidden'-i.e., our whole psychology and all the answers to all philosophical questions are here in our language (our life) and that the difficulty is not to find the answers but to recognize them as always here in front of us-we just have to stop trying to look deeper and to abandon the myth of introspective access to our "inner life" (e.g., "The greatest danger here is wanting to observe oneself." LWPP1, 459). Incidentally, the equation of logic or grammar and our axiomatic psychology is essential to understanding W and human nature (as Daniele Moyal Sharrock (DMS) but afaik nobody else, points out). Our shared public experience becomes a true-only extension of our axiomatic EP and cannot be found mistaken without threatening our sanity. That is, the consequences of an S1 'mistake' are quite different from an S2 mistake. A corollary, nicely explained by DMS and elucidated in his own unique manner by Searle, is that the skeptical view of the world and other minds (and a mountain of other nonsense including the Blank Slate) cannot really get a foothold, as "reality" is the result of involuntary axioms and not testable true or false propositions. In spite of the fact that most of the above has been known to many for decades (and even 3⁄4 of a century in the case of some of W's teachings), I have never seen anything approaching an adequate discussion in behavioral science texts (i.e., philosophy, psychology, sociology, anthropology, literature etc.) and with rare exceptions there is barely a mention. It should be obvious from the above that the issues are always about mistakes in language used to describe our universal innate psychology and there is no useful sense in which there can be a Chinese, French, Christian, Feminist etc. view of them. Such views can exist of philosophy in the other sense but that is not what philosophy of mind (or to W, S or me what any interesting and substantive philosophy) is about. As often occurs, S's discussion is marred by his failure to carry his understanding of W's "background" to its logical conclusion and so he suggests (as he has frequently) that he might have to give up the concept of free will, which I find (with W) incoherent. Not that we ought not to give it up but there is no sense that can be made of such a suggestion anymore that one can give up running, desiring, intending, hoping etc. Likewise, nobody can give arguments for the background (i.e., our axiomatic psychology), as our being able to talk or to live at all presupposes it (as W noted frequently). Yes it's also true that "reduction" along with "monism", "reality", etc., are complex language games and they do not carry meaning along in little backpacks! One must dissect ONE usage in detail to get clear and then see how another usage (context) differs. The 20,000 pages of W's nachlass are hands down the best lesson on how this has to be done. One needs to remember that dispositions (e.g., thinking, knowing) that state a COS are thereby true or false and a function of S2 (as opposed to S1 which are true only). And the "radical underdetermination of meaning" aka "the combinatorial explosion" was first solved by W who noted that S1 can be true only. In another recent volume S comments "The heart of my argument is that our linguistic practices, as commonly understood, presuppose a reality that exists independently of our representations", to which I would add "Our life shows a world that does not depend on our existence and cannot be intelligibly challenged." Now that we have a framework, we can consider Searle's comments on the nature of perception. 28 As one expects from any philosophy, we are in deep trouble immediately, for on page 4 we have the terms 'perception' and 'object' as though they were used is some normal sense but we are doing philosophy so we are going to be undulating back and forth between language games have no chance of keeping our day to day games distinct from the various philosophical ones. Again you can read some of Neuroscience and Philosophy' or 'Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience' to get a feel for this. Also a quick review of the table of Intentionality above will place his terms, 'causally self-reflexive' etc. in context. Sadly like nearly all philosophers, Searle (S) has not adopted the two systems framework so it's much harder to keep things straight. So on p6, Believing and Asserting are part of system 2 which is linguistic, deliberative, slow, with no precise time of occurrence and 'it is raining' is their public Condition of Satisfaction (COS2) (Wittgenstein's transitive) –i.e., it is propositional and representational and not a mental state and we can only intelligibly describe it in terms of reasons , while Visual Experience (VisExp) is system 1 and so requires (for intelligibility, for sanity) that it be raining (it's COS1) and has a determinate time of occurrence, is fast (typically under 500msec ), nontestable (Wittgenstein's true-only), and nonpublic, automatic and not linguistic i.e., not propositional and presentational and only describable in terms of causes of a mental state. In spite of this on p7 after crushing the horrific (but still quite popular) term 'propositional attitude', he says that perception has propositional content, but I agree with W that S1 is true-only and hence cannot be propositional in anything like the sense of S2 where propositions are public statements (COS) that are true or false. On p12 keep in mind that he is describing the automaticity of System 1 (S1), and then he notes that to describe the world we can only repeat the description which W noted as showing the limits of language. The last sentence on to the end of the paragraph middle of p13 needs translating (like most of philosophy!) so for "The subjective experience has a content, which philosophers call an intentional content and the specification of the intentional content is the same as the description of the state of affairs that the intentional content presents you with etc." I would say 'Perceptions are System 1 mental states that can only be described in the public language of System 2." And when he ends by noting again the equivalence of a description of believing with that of a description of our perception, he is repeating what W noted long ago and which is due to the fact that S1 is nonlinguistic and that describing, believing, knowing, expecting, etc. are all different psychological or intentional modes or language games played with the same words. On p23 he refers to private 'experiences' but words are S2 and describe public events, so what warrants our use of the word for 'private' S1 'experiences' can only be their public manifestations-i.e., language we all use to describe public acts as even for myself I cannot have any way to attach language to something internal. This is of course W's argument against the possibility of a private language. He also mentions several times that hallucinations of X are the same as seeing X but what can be the test for this except that we are inclined to use the same words? In this case they are the same by definition so this argument rings hollow. On p33 his 'basic forms' of intentionality are S1 while the 'derivative forms' are S2 and the two modes 'seeing' and 'thinking' as used here are S1 and S2 but the universal problem is that these words can be used for either S1 or S2 and nobody keeps them distinct. On p35 top he again correctly attacks the use of 'propositional attitude' which is not an attitude to a sentence but an attitude (disposition) to its public COS, i.e., to the fact or truthmaker. Then he says "For example, if I see a man in front of me, the content is that there is a man in front of me . The object is the man himself . If I am having a corresponding hallucination, the perceptual experience has a content, but no object. The content can be exactly the same in the two cases, but the presence of a content does not imply the presence of an object." The way I see this is that the 'object' is normally in the world and creates the mental state (S1) and if we put this in words it 29 becomes S2 with COS2 (i.e., a public truthmaker) and this does entail the public object , but for an hallucination (or direct brain stimulation etc.) the 'object' is only the similar mental state resulting from brain activation. On p37 as usual in describing human behavior it seems to me very useful to try to keep S1 and S2 separated so here we can refer to the perception of something as P1 but when we describe it we can refer to the perception as P2. As W showed us, the big mistake is not just about understanding perception but not understanding language-all the problems of philosophy proper are exactly the same-failure to look carefully at how the language works in a particular context so as to yield clear COS. On p53 what exactly is the test (COS2) that shows that the cause of or mental state of an hallucination is the 'same' as that when there is no hallucination? Even if we 'see' our long dead mother, with a few possible rare exceptions of insanity, brain damage etc., we know it's not her-i.e., it's false and we take the failure to distinguish the two as a sign of illness. So the COS2 in hallucination is only that we feel as if she were present, though we (normally) know it cannot be, while the COS2 when she was alive is that we can confirm by a public test it is her. But he is correct that there is a more or less common percept in the two cases so that the presentation or COS1 is similar and conceivably could sometimes be as identical as any two mental states, thoughts, feelings etc. ever get-i.e., not very. On p59 I believe that the argument from transparency originated with W. "The limit of language is shown by its being impossible to describe a fact which corresponds to (is the translation of) a sentence without simply repeating the sentence ..." (Wittgenstein CV p10). At the bottom of the page, once again the presentation is S1 and the description or representation is S2. Middle of p61 we see the confusions that arise here and everywhere when we fail to keep S1 and S2 separate. Either we must not refer to representations in S1 or we must at least call them R1 and realize they have no public COS-i.e., no COS2. On p63 nondetachability only means that it is a caused automatic function of S1 and not a reasoned, voluntary function of S2. This discussion continues onto the next page, but of course is relevant to the whole book and to all of philosophy, and it is so unfortunate that Searle, and nearly all in the behavioral sciences, cannot get into the 21 st century and use the two systems terminology which renders so many opaque issues very clear. Likewise with the failure to grasp that it's always just a matter of whether it's a scientific issue or a philosophical one and if philosophical then which language game is going to be played and what the COS are in the context in question. On p64 he says the 'experience' is in his head but that is just the issue-as W made so clear there is no private language and as Bennett and Hacker take the whole neuroscience community to task for, in normal use 'experience' can only be a public phenomenon for which we share criteria, but what is the test for my having an experience in my head? At the least there is an ambiguity here which will lead to others. Many think these don't matter, many think they do. Something happens in the brain but that's a scientific neurophysiological issue and certainly by 'experience' or by 'I saw a rabbit' one never means the neurophysiology. Clearly this is not a matter for investigation but one of using words intelligibly. On p65 indexical, nondetachable, and presentational are just more philosophical jargon used instead of System 1 by people who have not adopted the two systems framework for describing behavior (i.e., nearly everyone). Likewise for the following pages if we realize that 'objects and states of affairs', 'visual experiences', 'fully determinate' etc., are just language games where we have to decide what the COS are 30 and that if we just keep in mind the properties of S1 and S2 all of this becomes quite clear and Searle and everyone else could stop 'struggling to express' it. Thus (p69) 'reality is determinate' only means that perceptions are S1 and so mental states, here and now, automatic, causal, untestable (true-only) etc. while beliefs, like all dispositions are S2 and so not mental states, do not have a definite time, have reasons and not causes, are testable with COS etc. On p70 he notes that intentions in action of perception (IA1 in my terms) are part of the reflexive acts of S1 (A1 in my terms) which may originate in S2 acts which have become reflexive (S2A in my terminology). On the bottom of p74 onto p75, 500 msec is often taken as the approximate dividing line between seeing (S1) and seeing as (S2) which means S1 passes the percept to higher cortical centers of S2 where they can be deliberated upon and expressed in language. Regarding p100, see W's 'On Certainty' and DMS's papers and books on it or just my brief analysis of their efforts in my LSR paper. On p101 we can usually substitute COS for 'truth conditions'. On p100-101 the 'subjective visual field' is S2 and 'objective visual field' is S1 and 'nothing is seen' in S2 means we don't play the language game of seeing in the same sense as for S1 and indeed philosophy and a good chunk of science (e.g., physics) would be different if people had realized they were playing language games and not doing science. On p107 'perception is transparent' because language is S2 and S1 has no language as it's automatic and reflexive so when saying what I saw or to describe what I saw I can only say "I saw a cat". Once again W pointed this out long ago as showing the limits of language. On p108 we can say that deliberate acts (A2) always must happen by activating S1 just as must reflexive acts (A1). On p109 we might rephrase '...whenever you consciously perceive anything, you take the cause of your perceptual experience to be its object' as 'perceptions, like all functions of S1 are nontestable'. P110 middle needs to be translated from SearleSpeak into TwoSystemsSpeak so that "Because presentational visual intentionality is a subspecies of representation, and because all representation is under aspects, the visual presentations will always present their conditions of satisfaction under some aspects and not others." becomes "Because the percepts of S1 present their data to S2, which has public COS, we can speak of S1 as though it also has public COS". On p111 the 'condition' refers to the public COS of S2, i.e., the events which make the statement true or false and 'lower order' and 'higher order' refer to S1 and S2. On p112 the basic action and basic perception are isomorphic because S1 feeds its data to S2, which can only generate actions by feeding back to S1 to contract muscles, and lower level perception and higher level perception can only be described in the same terms due to there being only one language to describe S1 and S2. On p117 bottom it would be much less mysterious if he would adopt the two systems framework so that instead of "internal connection" with conditions of satisfaction (my COS1), a perception would just be noted as the automaticity of S1 which causes a mental state. On p118 if W did commit the Bad Argument it was in the TLP and not his later work, and in any case the 'fact' is the COS (the representation) or the truthmaker of S2 stated by a sentence which is just the right description. On p120 the point is that 'causal chains' have no explanatory power because the language games of 'cause' only make sense in S1 or other non-psychological phenomena of nature, whereas semantics is S2 and we can only intelligibly speak of reasons for higher order human behavior. One way this manifests is 'meaning is not in the head' which enmeshes us in other language games. On p121 to say it's essential to a perception (S1) that it has COS1 ('the experience') merely describes the 31 conditions of the language game of perception-it is an automatic causal mental state. On p 122 I think "First, for something to be red in the ontologically objective world is for it to be capable of causing ontologically subjective visual experiences like this." is not coherent as there is nothing to which we can refer 'this' so it should be stated as " First, for something to be red is just for it to incline me to call it 'red' "-as usual, the jargon does not help at all and the rest of the paragraph is unnecessary as well. On p123 the 'background disposition" is the automatic, causal, mental state of S1 and as I, in agreement with W, DMS and others have said many times these cannot intelligibly be called 'presuppositions' as they are unconsciously activated 'hinges' that are the basis for presuppositions. Section VII and VIII (or the whole book or most of higher order behavior or most of philosophy in the narrow sense ) could be titled "The language games describing the interaction of the causal, automatic, nonlinguistic transient mental states of S1 with the reasoned, conscious, persistent linguistic thinking of S2" and the background is not suppositional nor can it be taken for granted but it is our axiomatic true-only psychology (the 'hinges" or 'ways of acting' of W's 'On Certainty') that underlie all suppositions. As is evident from my comments I think the whole section, lacking the two systems framework and W's insights in OC is confused in supposing it presents an "explanation" of perception where it can at best only describe how the language of perception works in various contexts. We can only describe how the word 'red' is used and that's the end of it and for the last sentence of this section we might say that for something to be a 'red apple' is only for it to normally result in the same words being used by everyone. Speaking of hinges, it is sad and a bit strange that Searle has not incorporated what many (e.g., DMS an eminent contemporary philosopher and leading W expert) regard as maybe the greatest discovery in modern philosophy- W's revolutionizing of epistemology in his 'On Certainty' as nobody can do philosophy or psychology in the old way anymore without looking antiquated. And though Searle almost entirely ignored 'On Certainty' his whole career, in 2009 (i.e., 6 years before publication of this book) he spoke at a symposium on it held by the British Wittgenstein Society and hosted by DMS, so he is certainly aware of the view that has revolutionized the very topics he is discussing here. I don't think this meeting was published, but his lecture can be downloaded from Vimeo. It seems to be a case of an old dog who can't learn new tricks. Though he has probably pioneered more new territory in the descriptive psychology of higher order behavior than anyone since Wittgenstein, once he has learned a path he tends to stay on it, as we all do. Like everyone, he uses the French word repertoire when there is an easier to pronounce and spell English word 'repertory' and the awkward 'he/she' or reverse sexist 'she' when one can always use 'they' or 'them'. In spite of their higher intelligence and education, academics are sheep too. Section IX to the end of the chapter shows again the very opaque and awkward language games one is forced into when trying to describe (not explain as W made clear) the properties of S1 (i.e., to play the language games used to describe 'primary qualities') and how these feed data into S2 (i.e., secondary qualities'), which then has to feed back to S1 to generate actions. It also shows the errors one commits by failing to grasp Wittgenstein's unique view of 'hinge epistemology' presented in "On Certainty". To show how much clearer this is with the dual system terminology I would have to rewrite the whole chapter (and much of the book). Since I have rewritten sections here several times, and often in my reviews of Searle's other books, I will only give a couple brief examples. The sentence on p129 "Reality is not dependent on experience, but conversely. The concept of the reality in question already involves the causal capacity to produce certain sorts of experiences. So the reason that these experiences present red objects is that the very fact of being a red object involves a capacity to produce this sort of experience. Being a straight line involves the capacity to produce this other sort of experience. The upshot is that organisms cannot have these experiences without it seeming to them that they are seeing a red object or a straight line, and that "seeming to them" marks the intrinsic intentionality of the perceptual experience." Can be rendered as "S1 provides the input for S2 and the way we use the word 'red' mandates it's COS in each context, so 32 using these words in a particular way is what it means to see red. In the normal case, it does not 'seem' to us that we see red, we just see red and we use 'seem to" to describe cases where we are in doubt." On p130 "Our question now is: Is there an essential connection between the character of things in the world and the character of our experience?" can be translated as "Are our public language games (S2) useful (consistent) in the description of perception (S1)?" The first paragraph of Section X 'The Backward Road' is perhaps the most important one in the book, as it is critical for all of philosophy to understand that there cannot be a precise 1:1 connection between or reduction of S2 to S1 due to the many ways of describing in language a given event (mental state, i.e., percept, memory etc.). Hence the apparent impossibility of capturing behavior in algorithms (the hopelessness of 'strong AI') or of extrapolating from a given neuronal pattern in the brain to the multitudinous acts (language games) we use to describe it. The 'Backward Road' is the language (COS) of S2 used to describe S1. Again I think his failure to use the two systems framework renders this quite confusing if not opaque. Of course he shares this failing with nearly everyone. Searle has commented on this before and so have others (e.g., Hacker) but it seems to have escaped most philosophers and almost all scientists. Again Searle misses the point in Sect XI and X12 –we do not and cannot 'seem to see' red or 'seem' to have a memory or 'assume' a relation between the experience and the word, but as with all the perceptions and memories that constitute the innate axiomatic true-only mental states of System 1, we just have the experience and "it" only becomes 'red' etc., when described in public language with this word in this context by System 2. We know it's red as this is a hinge-an axiom of our psychology that is our automatic action and is the basis for assumptions or judgements or presuppositions and cannot intelligibly be judged, tested or altered. As W pointed out so many times, a mistake in S1 is of an entirely different kind than one in S2. No explanations are possible-we can only describe how it works and so there is no possibility of getting a nontrivial "explanation" of our psychology. As he always has, Searle makes the common and fatal mistake of thinking he understands behavior (language) better than Wittgenstein. After a decade reading W, S and many others I find that W's 'perspicuous examples' , aphorisms and trialogues usually provide greater illumination than the wordy disquisitions of anyone else. "We may not advance any kind of theory, There must not be anything hypothetical in our considerations. We must do away with all explanation, and description alone must take it's place." (PI 109). "Philosophy simply puts everything before us, and neither explains nor deduces anything." (PI 126) "In philosophy we do not draw conclusions" (PI 599) "If one tried to advance theses in philosophy it would not be possible to debate them, because everyone would agree to them" (PI 128) On p135, one way to describe perception is that the event or object causes a pattern of neuronal activation (mental state) whose self-reflexive COS1 is that we see a red rose in front of us, and in appropriate contexts for a normal English speaking person, this leads us to activate muscle contractions which produces the words 'I see a red rose' whose COS2 is that there is a red rose there. Or simply, S1 produces S2 in appropriate contexts. So on p136 we can say S1 leads to S2 which we express in this context by the word 'smooth' which describes (but never 'explains') how the language game of 'smooth' works in this context and we can translate "For basic actions and basic perceptions the intentional content is internally related to the conditions of satisfaction, even though it is characterized non-intentionalistically, because being the feature F perceived consists in the ability to cause experiences of that type. And in the case of action, experiences of that type consists in their ability to cause that sort of bodily movement." as "Basic perceptions (S1) can lead automatically (internally) to basic reflex actions (A1) (i.e., burning a finger leads to withdrawing the arm) which only then enters awareness so that it can be reflected upon and described in language (S2). 33 On p150, the point is that inferring, like knowing, judging, thinking, is an S2 disposition expressed in language with public COS that are informational (true or false) while percepts are non-informational (see my review of Hutto and Myin's book) automated responses of S1 and there is no meaningful way to play a language game of inferring in S1. Trees and everything we see is S1 for a few hundred msec or so and then normally enter S2 where they get language attached (aspectual shape or seeing as). Regarding p151 et seq., it is sad that S, as part of his lack of attention to the later W, never seems to refer to what is probably the most penetrating analysis of color words in W's "Remarks on Colour', which is missing from nearly every discussion of the subject I have seen. The only issue is how do we play the game with color words and with 'same', 'different', 'experience 'etc. in this public linguistic context (true or false statements-COS2) because there is no language and no meaning in a private one (S1). So it does not matter what happens in the mental states of S1 but only what we say about them when they enter S2. It's clear as day that all 7.6 billion on earth have a slightly different pattern of neural activation every time they see red and that there is no possibility for a perfect correlation between S1 and S2. As I noted above it is absolutely critical for every philosopher and scientist to get this clear. Regarding the brain in a vat (p157), insofar as we disrupt or eliminate the normal relations of S1 and S2, we lose the language games of intentionality. The same applies to intelligent machines and W described this situation definitively over 80 years ago. "Only of a living being and what resembles (behaves like) a living human being can one say: it has sensations; it sees; is blind; hears; is deaf; is conscious or unconscious." (PI 281) It is a sign of Wittgenstein's unique genius that even though I have spent many years reading the best philosophers and psychologists of our times, I always have to resist the urge to throw the book down and go back to the master, and when I come to a quote from him it is like coming upon a glass of cold water while trudging through the desert. Chapter 6: yes disjunctivism (like nearly all philosophical theses) is incoherent and the fact that this and other absurdities flourish in his own department and even among some of his former students who got top marks in his Philosophy of Mind classes shows perhaps that, like most, he stopped too soon in his Wittgenstein studies. Also we all start with default language use which is full of confusions or as W likes to say it is not 'perspicuous'. On p188, yes veridical seeing and 'knowing' (i.e., K1) are the same since S1 is true-onlyi.e., it is the fast, axiomatic, causally self-reflexive, automatic mental states which can only be described with the slow, deliberative public language games of S2. On p204 -5 we are reminded that the first and maybe best refutation of mind as machine was given by W in the 30's. Representation is always under an aspect since, like thinking, knowing etc., it is a disposition of S2 with public COS, which is infinitely variable. Once again I think the use of the two systems framework greatly simplifies the discussion. If one insists to use 'representation' for 'presentations' of S1 then one should say that R1 have COS1 which are transient neurophysiological mental states, and so totally different from R2, which have COS2 (aspectual shapes) that are public, linguistically expressible states of affairs, and the notion of unconscious mental states is illegitimate since such language games lack any clear sense. Discussions of blindsight (p209), like those of split brains (commissurotomy) and so much else in cognitive science are typically incoherent due to the fact that the phenomena are new and the usual language games are not applied in a clear and consistent way. Bennett and Hacker, among others, give some excellent discussions of this. 34 Sadly, on p211 Searle for maybe the tenth time in his writings (and endlessly in his lectures) says that 'free will' may be illusory, but as W from the 30's on noted, one cannot coherently deny or judge the 'hinges' such as our having choice, nor that we see, hear, sleep, have hands etc., as these words express the true-only axioms of our psychology, our automatic behaviors that are the basis for action. Libet's famous experiments have been debunked in various ways by philosophers and by other experiments. On p214 the reflexes referred to are the formerly deliberative conscious actions of S2 which have become automated and part of S1 which I call S2A (automated) as distinct from S2D or those which remain deliberative and conscious. On p219 bottom and 222 top-it was W in his work, culminating in 'On Certainty' who pointed out that behavior cannot have an evidentiary basis and that its foundation is our animal certainty or way of behaving that is basis of doubt and certainty and cannot be doubted (the hinges of S1). He also noted many times that a 'mistake' in our basic perceptions (S1) which has no public COS and cannot be tested (unlike those of S2), if it is major or persists, leads not to further testing but to insanity. P222 section II brings us again to the definitive statement on this foundational issue which W addressed in 'On Certainty'. Searle makes further comments in the 5 th of his audiotaped lectures on the Philosophy of Society (see youtube). Phenomenalism p227 top: See my extensive comments on Searle's excellent essay 'The Phenomenological Illusion' in my review of 'Philosophy in a New Century'. There is not even any warrant for referring to one's private experiences as 'phenomena', 'seeing' or anything else. As W famously showed us, language can only be a public testable activity (no private language). And on p230 the problem is not that the 'theory' 'seems' to be inadequate, but that (like most if not all philosophical theories) it is incoherent. It uses language that has no clear COS. As W insisted all we can do is describe-it is the scientists who can make theories. P233. The most basic of the primary qualities or axioms of our psychology are time, space, event, object etc., which following W, we can call the basic hinges, but it does not seem clear how to distinguish these from color, shape, size etc. See the excellent recent papers and books of DMS on this. The bottom line is that this is classic Searle-superb and probably at least as good as anyone else can produce, but lacking understanding of the fundamental insights of the later Wittgenstein, and with no grasp of the two systems of thought framework, which could have made it brilliant. | {
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This is the accepted version. Please cite the published version in History of Philosophy Quarterly, 2017. The objects of Stoic εὐπάθειαι Doug Reed Abstract: The Stoics claim that the sage is free from emotions, experiencing instead εὐπάθειαι ('good feelings'). It is, however, unclear whether the sage experiences εὐπάθειαι about virtue/vice only, indifferents only, or both. Here, I argue that εὐπάθειαι are exclusively about virtue/vice by showing that this reading alone accommodates the Stoic claim that there is not a εὐπάθειαι corresponding to emotional pain. I close by considering the consequences of this view for the coherence and viability of Stoic ethics. Keywords: Stoics, emotions, moral psychology Two characteristic aspects of Stoic philosophy engender two corresponding challenges for interpreters of Stoicism.1 First, Stoic philosophy is replete with paradoxes. Thus, one task of an interpreter is to begin at their paradoxical conclusions and work backwards in order to determine how and why the Stoics came to them. Anyone who can do this with a charitable spirit will be rewarded with important insights, even if ultimately disagreeing with the Stoics's reasoning. Second, Stoic philosophy is systematic, and so consists in a network of interconnected and mutually supporting claims. Because of this, during the course of unraveling one Stoic paradox a scholar often comes up against new puzzles in want of consideration. Identifying these new puzzles is, thus, a second task of an interpreter. Although this undertaking rarely pays immediate dividends, it is an indispensible part of plumbing the depths of the Stoic system. My primary aim in this paper belongs to the first sort of interpretive task, though, as is often the case, its successful conclusion constitutes the onset of the second task. The particular issue that I set out to investigate here stems from the Stoic claim that happiness requires the extirpation of emotions (πάθη). Although certainly paradoxical, this claim does not entail that the sage-the only person who is happy and free from emotions- 2 is devoid of affective states. Instead, the Stoics tell us, the sage will experience what they call 'εὐπάθειαι,' or 'good feelings.' Unfortunately, our Stoic sources are unhelpful with regard to the question of what gives rise to these feelings in the sage. That is, based on the reports, we cannot be certain of what the sage will feel εὐπάθειαι about. This is an exegetical mystery because although we know that εὐπάθειαι are based in true evaluative judgments, we do not know whether εὐπάθειαι come from all such judgments, or only from some subset of them. And, since there can be true evaluative judgments about what is truly good/bad, and what is truly indifferent, we cannot be certain whether εὐπάθειαι arise in response to the presence of virtue/vice, indifferents, or either. But given the important difference between virtue/vice and indifferents, these three options offer three disparate pictures of εὐπάθειαι. Without a way to adjudicate between these three pictures, we are left with a significant blind spot in our understanding of the Stoic sage, and so, in our understanding of the entire Stoic system.2 Fortunately, as I shall argue, through careful consideration of the implications of indubitable Stoic commitments we can reconstruct their solution to this interpretive puzzle. Although I will consider all three possibilities, below I shall provide conclusive arguments proving that for the Stoics, virtue and vice are the sole objects of εὐπάθειαι. As we shall see at the end of the paper, however, this conclusion does not come without a cost, or at least an apparent cost, for the appeal of Stoic ethics. 1 The problem of the objects of εὐπάθειαι Before embarking upon our investigation into the εὐπάθειαι we must first understand the Stoic complaints with emotions. The Stoics defined emotions as "excessive impulses which 3 are disobedient to reason" (LS 65A). In order to appreciate this definition fully, and so see why the Stoics dismissed emotions, we must familiarize ourselves with the basics of their axiology and moral psychology. Beginning with the former, the Stoics maintained that virtue is the only true good, vice the only true evil. Everything aside from these is indifferent, although some indifferents are preferred, like health and money, and others, like illness and poverty, are dispreferred.3 Corresponding to virtue is real value, while corresponding to preferred indifferents is 'selective value.'4 As for the latter, the Stoics maintained that the soul is unitary, consisting in reason alone. Accordingly, they held that motivation or impulse for action is nothing other than judgment or belief about value.5 Given that most of our evaluative beliefs are false-we mistake what is indifferent for what is good-they go against our human nature, and, for this reason, are irrational.6 Tying these two theories together, we can see that emotions are false evaluative beliefs about what is good. As a result, emotions are irrational, and, since they cannot be controlled by reason, they cause us to react more violently than we should, and so, are excessive.7 In light of these theories and the Stoic complaints about the emotions, we can begin to fill out a picture of the εὐπάθειαι. Based on the foregoing, it must be the case that εὐπάθειαι, which the sage has in place of emotions, are not excessive, and arise from true and rational judgments.8 Although a fine starting point, this stands in need of clarification. In particular, the notion of 'true and rational evaluative judgment' must be disambiguated. As we have seen, the Stoics countenance two different types of value: the (real) value of virtue and the selective value of preferred indifferents. Thus, true evaluative judgments might be about importantly different things: they might be about what is really good/bad, namely, virtue/vice, or they might be about what is really selectively valuable/disvaluable, 4 namely, preferred/dispreferred indifferents. We shall now endeavor to sort out which judgments constitute the εὐπάθειαι of the sage. 1.1 Three interpretations of the objects of εὐπάθειαι Since there are two non-mutually exclusive types of evaluative judgments according to the Stoics, there are three possible interpretations of the objects of εὐπάθειαι. The first possibility is that the true judgments in question are about what is really good/bad, that is, about virtue/vice. In this case, all εὐπάθειαι would be true judgments about virtue/vice.9 On this view-call it the 'virtue-only view'-an example of a positive εὐπάθεια would be a sage judging that she presently is virtuous. 10 The second possibility is that the true judgments constitutive of εὐπάθειαι are about indifferents rather than about virtue/vice.11 On this view-call it the 'indifferents-only 12 view'-a sage experiences a positive εὐπάθεια when for instance, she judges that her state of sound health is a preferred indifferent (and in this situation it is appropriate).13 Finally, the third possibility is that the relevant true judgments can be about both what is really valuable/disvaluable and what is merely selectively valuable/disvaluable.14 Thus on this view-call it the 'comprehensive view'-the sage would experience a positive εὐπάθεια either when she thinks about her virtue, or, for instance, she judges that her current state of sound health is a preferred indifferent (and in this situation is appropriate). Initially each interpretation considered on its own seems plausible, as all three ascribe to the sage true, rational beliefs. Further, none of the views gives any indication that the judgments would be at all excessive. However, a moment's reflection makes clear that the merits of the indifferents-only view end here. For although this view must be 5 correct in assuming that there are cases where the sage correctly judges about indifferents, which implies that she would have evaluative beliefs and, hence, εὐπάθειαι about them, it also leads to an insuperable difficulty. The problem is that if the indifferents-only view were correct-and εὐπάθειαι were exclusively about indifferents-then the sage would not have any affective responses to what is really good, virtue. Thus, the Stoics would be saddled with the view that a sage has an affective response to an indifferent-indeed something that the sage herself recognizes to be indifferent-but is left like a stone in response to virtue. Surely this cannot be correct, since a sage would judge virtue to be valuable. Hence, the sage must experience an evaluative judgment in response to virtue, which means that she would have a εὐπαθητικός response to virtue. Since the indifferentsonly view cannot accommodate this, it is not a viable interpretation. Although we have set it aside, let's take stock of how the indfferents-only view fared with an eye toward adjudicating between the two remaining interpretations. The indifferents-only view fails as a proper reading of the εὐπάθειαι because it entails that the sage does not experience affective states in response to real value. Yet, to its credit, the indifferents-only view can account for a sage's affective response to indifferents. Pulling these two results together, it looks like we need an interpretation that covers affective responses to virtue as well as to indifferents. This, of course, suggests that the comprehensive view provides the correct interpretation of the objects of εὐπάθειαι. In spite of the foregoing, which speaks in its favor, there is an immediate difficulty for the comprehensive view. The problem is that this interpretation appears to be committed to the claim that a sage would feel the same about virtue-the only true good- and about, for instance, securing some financial gain in a situation in which it is 6 appropriate. But it is implausible (and perhaps even psychologically impossible) that someone, a sage or otherwise, would experience the very same affective response to something that she recognizes to be truly good as she would experience to something that she recognizes to be indifferent. For instance, I am not a Stoic sage, but I, like most other people, think that some things are truly good and others are indifferent. Accordingly, I would not experience the same affective response, for instance, to learning that two dear friends are getting married to one another (something really good) as I would, for instance, to hearing that they are holding the ceremony on an even-numbered day of the month (something indifferent). Indeed, if I found out that another friend felt the same emotion (e.g., felt equally pleased) about both pieces of news, I would think she either does not really appreciate the pending union or that there is something wrong with her. Surely, the Stoics would agree with my diagnosis. Thus, the Stoics should deny that a sage would experience εὐπάθειαι about both virtue and indifferents. Hence, it looks like the comprehensive view cannot be correct. A proponent of the comprehensive view might reply by suggesting that εὐπάθειαι can vary by degree of intensity.15 That is, the sage might have more intense εὐπάθειαι regarding what is truly good and less intense-but nonetheless still the same in kind- responses to preferred indifferents.16 Furthermore, although the sage would experience a more intense εὐπάθεια in response to virtue than to an indifferent, since she is a sage, it would fall short of being excessive. Thus, with this response, it looks not only like the comprehensive view remains a live option, it once again appears to be superior to the virtue-only view. However, as we 7 now turn to the Stoic discussion of the possible εὐπάθειαι, we shall find definitive reason to favor the virtue-only view.17 1.2 εὐπαθητικός pain on the comprehensive view and the virtue-only view In spite of falling short of sagehood themselves and apparently never knowing one, the Stoics had plenty to say about a sage's psychology. Indeed, we have several sources that set out and describe the different εὐπάθειαι a sage would experience. From these sources we know that for the most part the Stoics posited a εὐπάθεια corresponding to each emotion. The four general emotions18 they discussed are: pleasure, the emotion related to a present apparent good; pain, the emotion related to a present apparent evil; desire, the emotion related to a future apparent good; and fear, the emotion related to a future apparent evil. For the Stoics, the corresponding general εὐπάθειαι are: joy (χαρά), the εὐπάθεια related to a present good; volition (βούλησις), the εὐπάθεια related to a future good; and caution (εὐλάβεια), the εὐπάθεια related to a future evil. Notice that whereas there are four emotions, there are only three εὐπάθειαι (see figures 1 and 2 below). But why? Where is the εὐπάθεια corresponding to pain? In order to answer these questions, let's consider how both the comprehensive view and the virtue-only view must characterize the content of these judgments. emotions Present Future Apparent good pleasure desire Apparent evil pain fear Fig. 1 8 εὐπάθειαι Present Future Good joy volition Bad caution Fig. 2 If the comprehensive view were correct, then εὐπάθειαι would be about virtue as well as indifferents. So, positive εὐπάθειαι would be about virtue and preferred indifferents, while negative εὐπάθειαι would be about vice and dispreferred indifferents. If this were the case, the sage would feel joy in response to present virtue or a present preferred indifferent, feel volition at the prospect of future virtue or a future preferred indifferent, and finally, feel caution about the prospect of future vice or a future dispreferred indifferent. Good so far. But what about present vice or a present dispreferred indifferent? According to the comprehensive view, we would expect that the presence of either of these would give rise in the sage to the εὐπαθητικός correlate to pain. But as we have seen, according to the Stoics there is no such affective response open to the sage. While it makes sense that the virtuous sage would never have vice present in her own self,19 surely she could have dispreferred indifferents present to her. Sages are, after all, not immune to sickness, pains, financial misfortune, or any other dispreferred indifferent. Thus, it is a fact about the world that the sage will at times have dispreferred indifferents present to her. But, if we accept the comprehensive view, she would not have an affective response to them. Yet, the comprehensive view seems to suggest that she would. After all, on this view the sage would have an affective response to present and future preferred indifferents as well as to future dispreferred indifferents, 9 which, according to the comprehensive view are sufficient for joy, volition, and caution, respectively. So, by parity of reasoning it seems that since other indifferents give rise to εὐπάθειαι in the sage, so too should a present dispreferred indifferent. But, if there were such an affective response, it would have to be a εὐπάθεια corresponding to pain, which the Stoics deny exists. Thus, the comprehensive view is committed to the opposite of the Stoic claim that there is no εὐπάθεια corresponding to pain.20 A proponent of the comprehensive view might try to resist this objection by pointing to what the Stoics say about the happiness of the sage. According to the Stoics, the sage, on account her virtue and wisdom, alone achieves happiness. Moreover, and more importantly for present purposes, the happiness of the sage is secure to the point of impregnability,21 and so, is permanent.22 Thus, on the current reply, it follows from the Stoic view of happiness that there would not be a εὐπάθεια corresponding to pain, as such a state would disrupt the sage's happiness.23 Hence, the sage will not feel anything negative, even when she has a dispreferred indifferent present to her, as this would disrupt her happiness. This, then, explains why there is not a εὐπάθεια corresponding to pain. So, since we have an explanation for why the Stoics discount the possibility of such a state, the comprehensive view can consistently maintain that the sage would not experience any εὐπάθεια corresponding to pain even if she has a dispreferred indifferent present to her. Although this rejoinder is correct in identifying an intimate relationship between the Stoic belief that the sage is always happy and their denial of the existence of a εὐπάθεια corresponding to pain, it misconstrues the order of explanation between these claims. The proper order of explanation must be that the absence of a εὐπάθεια corresponding to pain 10 explains why the happiness of the sage is permanent; she never experiences an affective state that would disrupt her happiness. The order of explanation cannot be that the fact that the sage is always happy explains why there is no εὐπάθεια corresponding to pain. This is not a genuine explanation at all; it is at best a mere stipulation. Notice, however, that this is precisely the sort of explanation that the comprehensive view relies on. To spell out this point in another way, as we have seen, on the comprehensive view either vice or a dispreferred indifferent is sufficient for a negative evaluative judgment, and so, a negative εὐπάθεια. Hence, a present vice or dispreferred indifferent-the former of which is impossible for the sage while the latter is possible-would be sufficient for a εὐπαθητικός version of pain. Thus, the comprehensive view must account for why the Stoics, who accept that the sage would have present to her dispreferred indifferents, and accept that indifferents give rise to εὐπάθειαι, would have nonetheless denied that the sage would experience a εὐπάθεια about a present dispreferred indifferent. The only resource the proponent of the comprehensive has at her disposal is the claim that the happiness of the sage is unshakeable. Thus, this is why, according to the comprehensive view, there is no εὐπαθητικός correlate to pain. But as we have seen, this inference is wrongheaded. The correct inference is that because there is no εὐπάθεια corresponding to pain, the sage is always happy. Thus, the comprehensive view does not have a non-ad hoc way to explain why the Stoics denied the possibility of a εὐπάθεια corresponding to pain. Let's now turn to the virtue-only view to see if it fares any better. If the virtue-only view were correct, then all εὐπάθειαι would be about virtue and vice. So, the positive εὐπάθειαι would be about virtue, while the negative εὐπάθειαι would be about vice. If this is the case, then the sage would feel joy at her present virtue, volition 11 at the prospect of her future virtue, and caution at the prospect of future vice. Now the million-dollar question: What about an affective state corresponding to pain? On the virtueonly view such a state could only arise in response to vice presently in the sage. However, the sage is perfectly virtuous and so cannot have vice present in her. Given this, it makes sense that on the virtue-only view there would be no εὐπάθεια corresponding to pain. Thus, the virtue-only view has the resources to explain why there is no εὐπάθεια corresponding to pain.24 And unlike the comprehensive view, which must misappropriate the Stoic claim that the sage has permanent happiness in order to explain the absence of such a state, the virtue-only view makes sense of why the Stoics believed that there was no εὐπαθητικός version of pain to disrupt the sage's happiness. Thus, for these reasons, the virtue-only view should be accepted. 2 In defense of the virtue-only view We have just seen that the virtue-only view alone can accommodate the Stoic claim that there is no εὐπάθεια corresponding to emotional pain. In this final section I consider and respond to the two strongest objections to the virtue-only view.25 2.1 Motivation about indifferents on the virtue-only view One concern for the virtue-only view is that since εὐπάθειαι are about virtue and vice, affective responses to indifferents are crowded out. At first this might not seem like a problem; the sage judges indifferents to be just that, indifferent. But that it is troublesome becomes clear when we recall that for the Stoics all actions are motivated by evaluative judgments and impulses. That is to say, that every action is preceded by an impulse, and 12 so, an evaluative belief. Thus, given that the sage would act in ways relating to indifferents-for instance, a sage will pursue a preferred indifferent in a situation in which doing so is appropriate-there must be a class of impulses and affective responses that relates to indifferents. But sages do not have any emotions, and if the virtue-only view is correct, then all εὐπάθειαι are about virtue and vice. Accordingly, it seems that the virtueonly view is either wrong or incomplete, since it appears to be incapable of accounting for the fact that sages act regarding indifferents. Tad Brennan has presented what I take to be the correct response to this sort of concern (The Stoic Life: Emotions, Duties, and Fate, 97-110).26 Brennan points to certain passages27 to show that the Stoics countenanced a third class of impulses, in addition to emotions and εὐπάθειαι, regarding things that one28 takes to be indifferent. We need not detail these impulses, which Brennan calls 'selections,' as it suffices for our purposes here to point out that they provide a response to the present concern by allowing that the sage can be moved to pursue or eschew indifferents. 2.2 The problem of caution on the virtue-only view The more serious concern for the virtue-only view is similar in spirit to the strongest reason to favor this interpretation. Recall that the main strength of this view is that it can explain why the Stoics did not posit a εὐπαθητικός version of pain, namely, because the sage would never have true evil present to her. The following question now arises, though. Why would the sage ever experience caution, which on the virtue-only view would be a εὐπαθητικός response to a belief about her own future evil?29 This question becomes even more pressing when considered in conjunction with how the Stoics characterized the sage. Since, as we 13 have seen, the Stoics maintained that the soul is wholly rational, they took virtue to be a type of knowledge. They also maintained that in order to have this knowledge, one must have a completely consistent set of true beliefs (see Brennan, The Stoic Life: Emotions, Duties, and Fate, ch. 6). Hence, they believed that a sage will have a 'firm and unchangeable reason' (LS 61B8) which will guarantee that she does everything well (LS 61G). Even this brief characterization of the sage brings into focus the full force the present worry. Given her consistent set of true beliefs, and the fact that these beliefs guarantee good action, it is impossible that the sage would ever act viciously in the future. But, if the sage could never act viciously in the future, she would never have a belief about her own future vice. Hence, there should not be a εὐπάθεια corresponding to fear. Thus, it seems that if the virtue-only view is correct, then the Stoics ought not to have included any εὐπάθειαι relating to future evil. But, since the Stoics do have such a εὐπάθεια, it seems that the virtue-only view cannot be correct. Of course, the comprehensive view has no trouble accommodating caution. After all, the sage, just like anyone else, faces the prospect of future dispreferred indifferents. Those of us fortunate enough to live awhile into the future will undoubtedly catch a cold or otherwise get sick at some point. Although this speaks in its favor, the comprehensive view still faces the problem regarding present evils, the very reason we rejected it above. So, it seems that if we cannot find a solution to the present worry about caution for the virtue-only view, then the Stoics have a deep inconsistency in their moral psychology. Fortunately, there is a way to explain caution on the virtue-only view. In order to articulate an account of caution for the sage, we can begin by considering its emotional 14 counterpart, fear. Fear is the belief about a future apparent evil. Since non-sages mistake dispreferred indifferents for what is truly bad, most fears are about falling ill, losing money, and the like. Thus, if we apply this model to caution, we would expect a sage to feel caution about an actual future evil, and so, about becoming vicious someday. However, as we have noted, this does not seem possible. It is here worth mentioning that in spite of the characteristics of the Stoic sage outlined above, in fact it may have been the case that one prominent Stoic believed that the sage could lose her virtue. Diogenes Laertius reports that Chrysippus maintained that a sage could become vicious by, for instance, drinking to excess, or through depression (LS 61I). Thus, if this report is correct, it seems that just as a non-sage fears falling ill, a sage might experience caution about, as it were, falling vicious. If we accept this, then it looks like there is no problem for the virtue-only view, as it seems to be possible that the sage may lose her virtue in the future. And so, the sage would have reason to be cautious even on the virtue-only view. Setting aside questions about the veracity of Diogenes Laertius's testimony, we still have reason to doubt that the sage could experience caution about the genuine possibility of losing her virtue. In addition to the fact that Chrysippus's claim seems to conflict with the views of other Stoics on this issue, it also seems to conflict with the picture of happiness and the characteristics of the sage central to Stoic philosophy. After all, if, as we have seen, the sage will always be happy and does everything well, it seems impossible that she could ever lose her virtue.30 Hence, in spite of Chrysippus's claim, we are brought back to the opinion that the sage should never feel caution about her own future vice. Thus, we still need to find a suitable explanation for why a sage would experience caution. In order to do 15 so, we must replace the simplistic understanding of caution with a more refined account. To this end, let's consider exactly how the simplistic understanding of caution considered so far goes wrong. The trouble with the suggestion that the sage would feel caution about becoming vicious is that unlike catching a disease (a paradigm object of fear), which is often outside of a person's control, becoming vicious would be entirely up to the sage; it would require the sage to change her own beliefs. Even if Chrysippus were correct, for the sage to become vicious by getting drunk, she would first have to misjudge that it would be proper to drink to excess. 31 But the sage never misjudges anything, and so, would never have any motivation to engage in such activities in the first place. Thus, we cannot accept this as an example of caution. Notice, though, that the scenario under consideration involves a sage deliberating about an activity with a manifest evil result (the loss of her virtue) where there are only two options-perform or refrain. That is, such a scenario requires that the sage actually consider engaging in an action that she realizes is evil. But, if she realizes the action is evil, then performing it will not be a live option, and so, she would not have caution about it. However, many situations involve more than two options. And in such cases few of the options present themselves as evil or good. Further, although a sage is wise, she is not omniscient. Thus, a sage may have to deliberate on several available actions, and, in doing so may come to see that one of the available actions entails some evil, which though not obvious at first, is foreseeable if the scenario were played out. In response to grasping this possibility, the sage would form the judgment that such an action would be truly bad. Of course, upon so judging the sage would avoid this action. But recall 16 that εὐπάθειαι are nothing other than evaluative judgments. In this case, since the judgment regards a future evil, it could be properly characterized as what the Stoics call 'caution.' In addition to providing the virtue-only view with an explanation of the Stoics's inclusion of a εὐπάθεια regarding future evils, this suggestion has two further strengths. First, it provides us with a way to read Chryssipus's claim about the loss of virtue that is consistent with the Stoic orthodoxy.32 If the present suggestion is correct, then there are situations in which it is true that if the sage acted a certain way, then she would become vicious. This is Chrysippus's claim. However, he can maintain this claim along with the following: due to the psychological makeup of a sage, she would never perform such an action. Second, this suggestion explains why the sage would never act so as to satisfy the antecedent of the conditional. Thus, this suggestion explains why the sage will enjoy permanent happiness. That is, given that the sage, after deliberating, will judge certain available actions to be bad, she will experience caution. Accordingly, she will refrain from these actions, maintaining her virtue, and with it, happiness. Conclusion At the start of this paper I identified two interpretive tasks for the commentator on Stoic philosophy. Let's take stock of where we stand in regards to the first task. Faced with a puzzle about the objects of the sage's affective states I have argued that the sage would experience εὐπάθειαι only about true goods and evils, namely, virtue and vice. The major strength of this view is that it alone can accommodate the fact that the Stoics did not identify a εὐπάθεια corresponding to pain. I believe that this fact, however, also brings us 17 to the doorstep of a new puzzle. Accordingly, I wish to close by venturing a start to the second interpretive task. As we know, the Stoics believed that the only true good is virtue and that the only true evil is vice. Yet, as we have just seen, the Stoics also maintain that the sage never experiences any εὐπάθεια regarding present evil. One contributing reason for this must be-as we have been assuming all along-that the sage is only motivated by her own virtue and (counterfactual) vice.33 Students of philosophy have long been unsettled by the fact that the pain of others, even those she loves, would not affect the sage. But the problem turns out to be worse than we have thought. For, since the Stoics believed that physical suffering, financial distress, and the like are indifferent, it should not be surprising that the sage would not be affected by these states in others. But what is unsettling about the Stoic view is that it appears that the sage would not be affected even when others she cares about suffer from true evil, vice. Further, this aspect of Stoicism seems to run into conflict with their theory of οἰκείωσις, which entails that humans should (and so the sage has) pull the whole of humanity into our innermost circle.34 That is, it seems impossible that the sage could truly care about another human in the way that she should and still lack an affective response to viciousness in that person. This at-least-apparent inconsistency cannot be resolved by asserting that the sage would not allow her happiness to be disrupted by evil in others.35 For, as we have seen, such a response gets the order of explanation wrong. The fact that a sage never experiences any negative affective state should explain why she would always be happy, not vice versa.36 Thus, I offer that we need a new investigation into why the Stoics affirmed both their theory of οἰκείωσις and their view that there is no εὐπάθεια corresponding to pain.37 18 References Becker, Lawrence. 2004. "Stoic Emotion." In Stoicism: Traditions and Transformations, edited by K. Strange and J. Zupko, 250-276. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brennan, Tad. 1998. "The Old Stoic Theory of Emotions." In The Emotions in Hellenistic Philosophy, edited by T. Engberg-Pedersen and J. Sihvola, 21-70. Dordrecht: Springer. Brennan, Tad. 2003. "Stoic Moral Psychology." In Cambridge Companion to the Stoics, edited by B. Inwood, 257-294. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brennan, Tad. 2005. The Stoic Life: Emotions, Duties, and Fate. New York: Oxford University Press. Graver, Margaret. 2007. Stoicism and Emotion. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Inwood, Brad. 1985. Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Irwin, Terence. 1998. "Stoic Inhumanity." In The Emotions in Hellenistic Philosophy, edited by T. Engberg-Pedersen and J. Sihvola, 219-242. Dordrecht: Springer. Lesses, Glenn. 1993. "Austere Friends: The Stoics and Friendship." Apeiron 26, no. 1: 57-75. Long, Anthony and Sedley, David. 1987. The Hellenistic Philosophers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Meyer, Susan. 2008. Ancient Ethics: A Critical Introduction. New York: Routledge Nussbaum, Martha. 1987. "The Stoics on the Extirpation of Emotion." Apeiron 20, no. 2: 129-177. Rubarth, Scott. "Stoic Philosophy of Mind." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Sandbach, Francis. 1975. The Stoics. London: Chatto and Windus. Sorabji, Richard. 2002. Emotion and Peace of Mind: From Stoic Agitation to Christian Temptation. New York: Oxford University Press. Sorabji, Richard. 2009. "Did the Stoics Value Emotion and Feeling?" The Philosophical Quarterly 59, no. 234: 150163. Stephens, William. 1996. "Epictetus on How the Stoic Sage Loves." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 14: 193-210. 19 Striker, Gisela. 1983. "Following Nature: A Study in Stoic Ethics." Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 9: 1-74. 1 I would like to thank Aaron Garrett and an anonymous referee for their helpful comments on this paper. I also thank Jacob Klein for comments on an earlier version of this paper presented at the APA Pacific 2014, as well as Dan Devereux and Dominic Scott for discussion at the early stages of the paper, and Jenny Reed for her help on several drafts. 2 This issue is rarely considered in the secondary literature. It is, however, touched on by Sandbach (1975, 67-68) and Inwood (1985, 174-175). Brennan (1998), from which my paper has benefitted considerably, raises it in the course of a general discussion of the Stoic theory of emotions and in fact sketches an ancestor of the view I spell out and defend below. 3 The thought is that given our human nature, some things are suited to us but other things are not. Hence, for something to be a preferred indifferent is for it to be the sort of thing that is in accord with our nature as human beings. See LS 58C, as well as Long and Sedley (1987, 358) and Brennan (2005, 130-131). 4 I use this term following Brennan (2003, 263-4). I do so with an appreciation that there is no scholarly consensus over whether or not indifferents have any actual value (in spite of what terms the Stoics themselves may have used to try to talk about these things). See Nussbaum (1987, 133135). 5 Since the Stoics themselves apparently disagreed about whether the emotion (which is to say, impulse) is the judgment or the result of the judgment (see LS 65K), I agree with Striker (1983, 63), that it is safest to assume that for the Stoics πάθος, or as I have it, 'emotion,' refers to both. With this acknowledged, and since nothing in my interpretation rides on this issue, for the sake of simplicity, I will continue to write as if an affective state is the judgment/ belief (cf. note 10 below). We should also be safe to distinguish between judgment and impulse on the one hand and the phenomenological feeling of an emotion on the other hand. For a discussion of this issue, see Brennan (2005, 90-94). 20 6 See LS 65J: "irrational...refer[s] to this movement: the movement contrary to nature..." and "irrational must be taken to mean disobedient to reason" (LS 65J4, my emphasis). See Irwin (1998, 222-224). 7 Chrysippus puts it vividly: "When someone walks in accordance with his impulse, the movement of his legs is not excessive but commensurate with the impulse, so that he can stop or change whenever he wants to. But when people run in accordance with their impulse, this sort of thing no longer happens. The movement of their legs exceeds their impulse, so that they are carried away and unable to change obediently, as soon as they have started to do so. Something similar, I think, takes place with impulses, owing to their going beyond rational proportion" (LS 65J6-8). 8 While most commentators maintain that εὐπάθειαι are not emotions, Brennan (1998, 34), Graver (2007), and Becker (2004, 250) conceive of them as a subset of emotions. (Sorabji 2003, 47) thinks that some εὐπάθειαι are emotions, while some are not. I do not-and need not-take a stand on this issue. 9 See Inwood (1985, 174-175), cf. Sandbach (1975, 67-68). Sorabji (2003, 47-53) also seems to endorse this view, as does Striker (1983). Of the proponents of this view, the only to offer an argument for it is Brennan (see, for instance, Brennan (1998, 26-28, 54-57)). 10 There is much debate in the secondary literature over whether an emotion/εὐπάθεια requires a single judgment (e.g., This is a good thing present to me), as I have it here, or several judgments (e.g., (1) This is good thing present to me. (2) It is appropriate for me to move my soul in such a way). For a discussion of the first understanding, see Graver (2007, 40, 44-5). For the view that they require more than a single judgment, see Sorabji (2009, 154), Sorabji (2002, ch. 2), and Nussbaum (1987, 146). Since my view is amenable to either a single judgment or several judgments, I do not intend to take a stand on this issue. In his helpful comments at the Pacific APA 2014, Jacob Klein forwarded the reading that some Stoic sources indicate that the emotion/εὐπάθεια is the second judgment (e.g., It is appropriate for me to move my soul in such a way). I am not sure I agree, but fortunately it does not affect what is really at stake or my analysis. If Klein is correct-and the content of the emotion/εὐπάθεια judgment is the appropriateness of the soul's movement-then the central question in this paper need only be reworded from 'what are the objects of εὐπάθεια' to 'what objects ultimately give rise to εὐπάθεια' with no effect on its significance or centrality to our understanding of Stoicism. 11 Meyer (2008, 162-164) is a proponent of this view, as is Nussbaum (1987, 172). 21 12 Brennan (2005) uses similar terminology (i.e., 'indifferents-only') to discuss the question of how the sage deliberates. My apologies to the reader for any confusion here, but I hope it is clear that we are employing the terms to different ends. 13 The Stoics maintained that although preferred indifferents have selective value, it is not always appropriate to pursue them. Alternatively, although dispreferred indifferents have selective disvalue, it is not always appropriate to avoid them. For instance, although money is a preferred indifferent, if a certain amount would interfere with the acquisition or maintenance of virtue, it would not be appropriate to pursue it. It is irrelevant for my purposes whether we should understand the judgment about appropriateness of the indifferent as a separate judgment (so that the sage would have two distinct judgments here: health is a preferred indifferent and in this situation it is appropriate) or whether there would be a single judgment (so that the sage would have only one judgment here: in this situation health, a preferred indifferent, is appropriate). 14 It is somewhat surprising that there are no obvious proponents of this view. Indeed, in setting out the options, the comprehensive view is usually disregarded (see, for instance, Sandbach (1975, 67)). The one scholar I have seen come closest to endorsing this view is Rubarth. However, it is possible that some scholars who seem to endorse the indifferents-only view in fact intend to endorse the comprehensive view. 15 The Stoics recognized that in addition to the general εὐπάθειαι, there were sub-species of each. Accordingly, a complementary rejoinder on behalf of the comprehensive view is that the sage might feel one sub-species of εὐπάθεια about what is genuinely good and another sub-species of εὐπάθεια about what is indifferent. For instance, perhaps the Stoics would say that the sage feels affection (agapêsin) about what is genuinely good and warmth (aspasmon) about preferred indifferents. As we shall see, even if such a response saves the comprehensive view from the current concern, there is a decisive reason to reject the view, which I discuss below. 16 Indeed, as an anonymous referee pointed out, the characterization of a εὐπάθεια as a 'well-reasoned shrinking or swelling' (LS 65F) suggests that εὐπάθειαι come in degrees. Since shrinking and swelling can come in degrees, so too, presumably, can εὐπάθειαι. Cf. Rubarth. 17 To be clear, the virtue-only view is also consistent with the view that εὐπάθειαι come in degrees. Εὐπάθειαι can come in degrees even if their objects are exclusively virtue and vice; a sage can experience 22 more or less of a good feeling (though never too much, as εὐπάθειαι are not excessive) for any number of reasons (e.g., the wise action she performs is more or less significant). So, the fact that εὐπάθειαι come in degrees does not lend particular support to the comprehensive view. 18 'General' because, as noted above (note 15), the Stoics also recognized sub-species of these emotions and εὐπάθειαι. Here, it is clearer and more fruitful to restrict our discussion to the general states. 19 Of course, as an anonymous referee pointed out, in one sense vice will be present to the sage; she will be surrounded by vicious people and unjust institutions. But being surrounded by vice is not the same as having vice present in oneself, just as being surrounded by money is not the same as having money in the way required for a non-sage to feel pleasure. One must possess the money in order to experience pleasure from it (see LS 65L). Thus, in order for vice to give rise to an affective response in the sage, it would have to be her vice. I raise the question of why only the sage's own virtue matters to her in the conclusion of this paper. By way of preview, I think that this is a major problem for the Stoics. As far as I can tell, the only other commentators to consider this question are Sorabji (2003, 50) and Graver (2008, 55). Neither seems bothered by it, however. 20 This criticism also provides further reason to reject the indifferents-only view. 21 LS 63L: 'Yet no one can be happy without a good which is secure, stable, and lasting... We want the happy man to be safe, impregnable, fenced, and fortified, so that he is not just largely unafraid, but completely." 22 LS 63M: "So, the wise man's life is always happy." 23 It is obvious that this reply assumes that that if there were a εὐπαθητικός version of pain, it would take away from the sage's happiness. Yet, given that the sage experiences caution, it mustn't be the case that all negative evaluative judgments (i.e., negative εὐπάθειαι) detract from a sage's happiness. More on this below. 24 Cf. Brennan (1998, 34-35). 25 In addition to the two concerns considered here, one might object that non-sages can have feelings about their own present vice or about the prospect of having virtue in the future (cf. Sandbach (1975, 67) and Inwood (1985, 174-175)). So, it might seem that non-sages can experience εὐπάθειαι. Accordingly, one might be tempted to think that the virtue-only view incorrectly makes εὐπάθειαι available to non-sages. 23 Indeed, as we know from Cicero (Tusc. 3.77-78), the Stoics did think it was possible for a non-sage to have an affective response to true evil. In the case that Cicero discusses Alcibiades is pained at his current vice. But even in this case the non-sage does not experience a εὐπάθεια about true evil, but instead experiences an emotion (pain). The explanation for this is that these sorts of beliefs in non-sages, although true, fall short of rationality because non-sages have inconsistent beliefs sets (see Brennan (2005, 96) and Sorabji (2003, 49)). At any rate, in reply to this concern it suffices to point out that although all εὐπάθειαι are true evaluative beliefs, not all true evaluative beliefs are εὐπάθειαι. 26 Cf. Brennan (1998, 35-37). 27 See, for instance LS 58B as well as D.L. 7.104. For further discussion, though, see Brennan (2005, 97110). 28 Both sages and non-sages alike can take things to be indifferent, and so, have these sorts of impulses. 29 Brennan (1998, 60-61) considers this problem in a note. While I agree with him that there is a suitable response, I spell out in detail exactly how the sage could feel caution. Sorabji (2009, 156) also raises a related issue but his discussion focuses on whether there is a feeling associated with the εὐπάθεια, rather than analyzing how the evaluative belief in question is possible. 30 Indeed, most commentators assume that the sage will always maintain her virtue. See, for instance, Striker (1983, 67). Lesses (1983, 59-60) explicitly discusses the issue and sides with the majority. 31 The case of depression would similarly be up to the sage. Since the Stoics believe that the soul is wholly rational, depression could only come about through false beliefs about what is valuable. 32 Cf. Brennan (1998, note 29). 33 Our discussion is not unique in making this assumption, as it is one accepted by all commentators of Stoic ethics and is supported by Stoic texts (cf. note 19 above). 34 LS 57G. The problem is exacerbated if the Stoics believed that we should pull everyone (or even just some people) into the center, so that we care about them just as much as we do ourselves, which is a going interpretation of οἰκείωσις in the secondary literature. See, for instance, Becker (2004, 272). 35 This is the usual explanation offered by commentators regarding the sage's apparent disinterest in the suffering of others, as exemplified by Stephens (1996), cf. Sorabji (2009, 156). Most of these discussions, however, focus on the suffering from dispreferred indifferents. I believe that if the problem is presented on 24 the Stoics's own terms-and vice is seen as the only real evil-then it is more pressing than commentators have appreciated. 36 Even if we allow this-that is, the fact that the sage is always happy-to explain why the sage would not have an affective response to vice in others, there is still a problem. After all, we know that the sage can experience a εὐπάθεια about something negative in the future (hence, caution) without thereby disrupting her happiness. Thus, it cannot be that negative εὐπάθειαι in principle disrupt happiness. Furthermore, given that εὐπάθειαι are not excessive, it seems that even a εὐπάθεια correlating to pain would not be excessive. Thus, this also cannot be the reason that the Stoics thought that such an affective state would disrupt the happiness of the sage. 37 This new puzzle may seem to undermine my claim that the virtue-only view is superior to the comprehensive view because the former is consistent with and can explain the absence of the εὐπαθητικός version of pain. But this is not so. Whereas on the comprehensive view the Stoics have an internally inconsistent theory of the emotions and εὐπάθειαι, the virtue-only view renders theory internally consistent. So, I have offered a resolution of a puzzle in Stoic moral psychology but in doing so uncovered a puzzle in their larger ethical theory. | {
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Forthcoming in the Journal of Mathematical Psychology A Hyper-Relation Characterization of Weak Pseudo-Rationalizability Rush T. Stewart September 13, 2020 Abstract I provide a characterization of weakly pseudo-rationalizable choice functions-that is, choice functions rationalizable by a set of acyclic relations-in terms of hyper-relations satisfying certain properties. For those hyper-relations Nehring calls extended preference relations, the central characterizing condition is weaker than (hyper-relation) transitivity but stronger than (hyper-relation) acyclicity. Furthermore, the relevant type of hyper-relation can be represented as the intersection of a certain class of its extensions. These results generalize known, analogous results for path independent choice functions. Keywords. Binariness; choice function; hyper-relation; multi-preference; path independence; weak pseudo-rationalizability 1 Introduction Standardly, choice theory is concerned with choice functions defined over subsets of a universal set of options, X, that can be rationalized by some binary relation on that universal set. Hyperrelations provide a more general perspective (Aizerman and Malishevski, 1981; Nehring, 1997; Danilov et al., 2015). These relations encode preferences, not just over options (or elements of X), but over menus (or subsets of X) as well. Hyper-relations have served various theoretical purposes. For example, they have been gainfully employed in studying certain aspects of freedom of choice. Alternative conceptions of what it is for one menu to provide more freedom of choice than another have been explored and characterized (Pattanaik and Xu, 1990; Sen, 1991; Nehring and Puppe, 1999; Bossert et al., 2009). When there is uncertainty about future tastes, preferences over opportunity sets might be taken to express "preference for flexibility" (Kreps, 1979).1 A second application of hyper-relations, and the more relevant one for this note, is to the study of non-binary choice functions, that is, choice functions that cannot be rationalized by a binary preference relation on X. Nehring, for instance, proposes taking hyper-relations to serve "as canonical 'preference structure' to rationalize choice-functions" in part because the notion of "extended preference relations unifies the general abstract theory of choice-functions. In particular, all rationalization is of one kind" (Nehring, 1997, p. 405). By contrast, multiple distinct rationalizability concepts are appealed to when abstract choice theory is developed in terms of binary relations on X (see, e.g., Moulin, 1985). 1It would be interesting to bring a recent strand of philosophical literature on "transformative experience" (Paul, 2014; Pettigrew, 2020) into closer contact with the literature on preference for flexibility. 1 Path independent choice is one prominent form of non-binary choice (Plott, 1973). Hyperrelations associated with path independent choice functions have interesting and nice mathematical properties, and have recently been exploited in matching theory (Chambers and Yenmez, 2017, 2018).2 Path independence is equivalent to pseudo-rationalizability, also called multipreference rationalizability (Moulin, 1985). Such choice functions can be thought of as selecting from a menu the optimal elements according to a set of linear orders. Danilov and Koshevoy observe that path independent choice functions constitute a very natural generalization of the class of rational choice functions. One reason is that path independent choice function "is the join of special rational (namely, linear) functions" (2005, p. 247). The class of weakly pseudo-rationalizable choice functions-the focus of this note-lifts the restriction to the special case; that is, any weakly pseudo-rationalizable choice function is the join of rational choice functions, and any join of rational choice functions is a weakly pseudo-rationalizable choice function. Weakly pseudo-rationalizable choice functions are those that can be rationalized by some set of acyclic relations-rather than only by a set of total orders, as in the case of pseudo-rationalizability. In standard presentations of choice theory, choice functions that can be rationalized by just some (acyclic) binary relation or other are cleanly distinguished from those that can be rationalized by a weak or linear order or some other specific type of binary relation. It is natural to seek an analogous development of the multi-preference theory. Weak pseudo-rationalizability is the multi-preference analogue of rationalizability simpliciter. There are multiple candidate interpretations. Weak pseudo-rationalizability can be seen as a minimal standard of rational choice for individual agents. On the one hand, some see "no analytical reason, nor any practical necessity" in imposing stronger constraints on a preference relation than acyclicity (e.g., Sen, 2017, p. 455). On the other hand, a number of different studies appeal to multiple preference relations to rationalize choice (e.g., Aizerman, 1985; Levi, 1986; Kalai et al., 2002; Manzini and Mariotti, 2007). Weak pseudo-rationalizability allows both generalizations simultaneously: choice functions can be rationalized by multiple relations without imposing more than acyclicity on those relations. In the context of social choice, a weakly pseudo-rationalizable choice function can be interpreted as selecting those options that are choice-worthy according to some relevant social rationale. In the context of bounded rationality, such choice functions can be interpreted as a type of competition filter that restricts attention to those options that are maximal along at least one relevant dimension (Lleras et al., 2017). Connections between rationalizability by a hyper-relation and the notion of multi-preference rationalizability-the latter prominently associated with the work of Aizerman and others (Aizerman and Malishevski, 1981; Aizerman, 1985; Aleskerov et al., 2007)-have been studied (Nehring and Puppe, 1998; Bossert et al., 2009; Danilov et al., 2015). In particular, it has been shown that a choice function is rationalizable by the type of hyper-relation that Nehring calls a transitive extended preference relation (or extended preference ordering) if and only if the choice function is path independent/pseudo-rationalizable. By ascending to hyper-relations, all of the information in a pseudo-rationalizable choice function can be summarized by some binary (hyper- )relation after all. The present note generalizes this observation to weakly pseudo-rationalizable choice functions (Theorem 2). One notable fact about the relevant sort of hyper-relation is that 2Path independent choice functions induce hyper-relations that form a lattice on subsets of X, have intimate ties to closure operators, and can be used to generate so-called abstract convex geometries (Koshevoy, 1999; Johnson and Dean, 2001). The set of path independent choice functions also has a natural lattice structure (Monjardet and Raderanirina, 2004; Danilov and Koshevoy, 2005). I plan to investigate generalizations of these constructions and results in future research. 2 the central property in the characterization is stronger than Nehring's generalization of acyclicity, but weaker than his generalization of transitivity (Lemma 1). For binary relations on a set, properties intermediate between transitivity and acyclicity have played distinguished theoretical roles. For example, Sen establishes certain possibilities for social choice for quasi-transitive social preference relations (1969). Suzumura consistency, to take another example, characterizes those binary relations that have compatible weak order extensions (Suzumura, 1976). This suggests that investigating properties between transitivity and acyclicity for hyper-relations is worthwhile. The results below identify one such property and so contribute to the elaboration of the theory of hyper-relations. A representation of the relevant sort of hyper-relation as an intersection of a certain class of its extensions is also obtained (Theorem 3). Given that weak pseudo-rationalizability is a natural construction for non-binary choice and fills an obvious gap in multi-preference choice theory, it is an interesting case to study for the program of using hyper-relations to unify general abstract choice theory. 2 Preliminaries Let X be a non-empty finite set. For any binary relation R ⊆ X × X, let PR and IR denote the asymmetric and symmetric factors of R, respectively (we drop the subscript when it is clear from context).3 A (set-valued) choice function on X is a mapping C : 2X → 2X such that, for all S ⊆ X, C(S) ⊆ S and C(S) = ∅ if and only if S = ∅. Certain axioms of "internal consistency" have played central roles in the development of choice theory. Unless otherwise quantified, all of the properties listed below are intended to apply for all x, y ∈ X and all S, T ⊆ X. S ⊆ T =⇒ S ∩ C(T ) ⊆ C(S) (α) S ⊆ T, x, y ∈ C(S), and x ∈ C(T ) =⇒ y ∈ C(T ) (β) C(S) ∩ C(T ) ⊆ C(S ∪ T ) (γ) Nehring calls α "the mother of all choice consistency conditions" (1997, p. 407). Together, properties α and γ characterize the class of binary choice functions. For a binary relation R and any menu S ⊆ X, let M(S,R) be the R-maximal elements in S: M(S,R) = {x ∈ S : ¬∃y ∈ S yPx}. Binary choice functions are those for which there exists R such that, for all S ⊆ X, C(S) = {x ∈ S : ¬∃y ∈ S yPx} = M(S,R). It is not difficult to see that only acyclic relations can rationalize choice functions. This distinguished role for acyclic binary relations is one motivation for studying weak pseudo-rationalizability, introduced just below. Properties α and β characterize those choice functions that are rationalizable by a weak order, i.e., a complete and transitive relation. Weak pseudo-rationalizability generalizes the Aizerman and Malishevski decomposition in terms of a set of total orders-complete, transitive, and antisymmetric relations-to a decomposition in terms of a set of acyclic binary relations. Say that a choice function is weakly 3Symmetric: xRy implies yRx Asymmetric: xRy implies ¬yRx Antisymmetric: xRy and yRx implies x = y Acyclic: for all k ∈ N x1Px2, x2Px3, . . . xk−1Pxk implies ¬xkPx1 Complete: xRy or yRx for all x, y ∈ X Transitive: xRy and yRz implies xRz Quasi-transitive: xPy and yPz implies xPz 3 pseudo-rationalizable if there exists a set of acyclic relations {Ri : i ∈ I} such that, for any S ⊆ X, C(S) = ⋃ i∈I M(S,Ri). (1) Stewart (2020) introduces the following weakening of property γ in order to characterize the class of weakly pseudo-rationalizable choice functions. C(S) = {x} and x ∈ C(T ) =⇒ x ∈ C(S ∪ T ) (Weak γ) Theorem 1. (Stewart, 2020) A choice function C on X is weakly pseudo-rationalizable if and only if C satisfies α and Weak γ. For our purposes, a hyper-relation is a binary relation = ⊆ 2X × X that "compares" menus/opportunity sets and options. The quick interpretational gloss that Bossert et al. provide is "S = x" means "x is an unacceptable choice in the presence of S \ {x}" (2009, p. 240). Or, as Nehring puts it, the menu S is strictly preferred to the option (or degenerate menu) x (1997, p. 407). We can generalize rationalizability of a choice function by a binary relation on X to rationalizability of a choice function by a hyper-relation as follows. S = x⇐⇒ x /∈ C(S ∪ {x}) (2) Following Nehring and Bossert et al., we impose the following properties on hyper-relations throughout. S = x and S ⊆ T =⇒ T = x (MON) S = x =⇒ [S \ {x} 6= ∅ and S \ {x} = x] (IRR) MON essentially says that expanding the menu cannot hurt. IRR is an extension of irreflexivity: {x} = x implies that {x}\{x} 6= ∅, which is a contradiction. When a hyper-relation is recovered from a choice function by 2, it automoatically satisfies IRR. Call a hyper-relation satisfying MON and IRR an extended preference relation. As Bossert et al. point out, when = is an extended preference relation, 3 and 4 are equivalent. C(S) = {x ∈ S : ¬∃T ⊆ S such that T = x} (3) C(S) = S \ {x ∈ S : S = x} (4) If = is "revealed" by C as in 2, then it will regenerate C using 4. Both 2 and 4 will play central roles in the following sections. A hyper-relation that also satisfies the following (slightly weakened) form of acyclicity due to Nehring will be called an acyclic extended preference relation (Nehring also calls an acyclic extended preference relation an extended sub-order). S 6= ∅ =⇒ ∃x ∈ S ¬(S = x) (ACY) Transitivity can likewise be extended to hyper-relations. S ∪ {y} = x and T = y =⇒ S ∪ T = x (TRA) An extended preference relation that satisfies TRA is an extended partial order. Rationalizability by an extend partial order is equivalent to path independence/pseudo-rationalizability (Nehring, 4 1997, Theorem 1.ii, Theorem 6). When a hyper-relation satisfies the following "binariness" condition, ACY and TRA reduce to the standard notions of acyclicity and transitivity for binary relations (Nehring, 1997, Fact 4). S = x =⇒ ∃y ∈ S {y} = x (BIN) A consequence of some of Nehring's observation that we appeal to in the proof of Lemma 3 below is that the rationalizability of a choice function in the standard sense is equivalent to the rationalizability by an extended preference relation satisfying BIN and ACY (1997, Facts 1 and 5.v). The main result here is a correspondence between extended preference relations satisfying the following property and weakly pseudo-rationalizable choice functions. [∀y ∈ S \ {x} S = y and ¬(T = x)] =⇒ ¬(S ∪ T = x) (WGM) WGM is an obvious relational analogue of Weak γ for hyper-relations. Theorem 2 below generalizes the characterization of path independent (alias pseudo-rationalizable) choice functions using transitive extended preference relations already recorded in the literature. 3 Results For extended preference relations, we can locate WGM between TRA and ACY. Lemma 1. If = is an extended preference relation, then TRA =⇒ WGM =⇒ ACY. However, the converse implications do not hold. Proof. First, suppose = satisfies TRA. Let x ∈ X be such that, for all y ∈ S \ {x}, S = y and ¬(T = x). Suppose for reductio that S ∪ T = x. If S = ∅, then S ∪ T = T , which implies T = x, a contradiction. So, S 6= ∅. If x /∈ S, then S = y for all y ∈ S. Since TRA implies ACY (Nehring, 1997; Bossert et al., 2009), and S 6= ∅, again we have a contradiction. So, let x ∈ S. If T = ∅, then S ∪ T = x implies S = x. So, again, S = y for all y ∈ S. Since TRA implies ACY, this is not possible. So T 6= ∅. Now, by MON, S∪T = y for all y ∈ S \{x}, so we have S∪T = y for all y ∈ S by the assumption that S ∪ T = x, too. Let {y1, . . . , yk} be an enumeration of the elements of S such that yk = x. By IRR, (S ∪ T ) \ {y1} = y1. For any yi, i ∈ {2, . . . , k}, [(S ∪ T ) \ {y1}] ∪ {y1} = yi. So, by TRA, (S ∪ T ) \ {y1} = yi. Similarly, for any i ∈ {3, . . . , k}, [(S ∪ T ) \ {y1, y2}] ∪ {y2} = yi and [(S ∪ T ) \ {y1, y2}] = y2. Thus, (S ∪ T ) \ {y1, y2} = yi. In general, using TRA and IRR, (S ∪ T ) \ {y1} = yi, i ∈ {2, . . . , k} (S ∪ T ) \ {y1, y2} = yi, i ∈ {3, . . . , k} ... (S ∪ T ) \ {y1, . . . , yk} = yk. Since (S ∪ T ) \ {y1, . . . , yk} ⊆ T and (S ∪ T ) \ {y1, . . . , yk} = x, by MON, T = x, which is a contradiction. So, ¬(S ∪ T = x). Next, suppose that = satisfies WGM. Let S 6= ∅. Suppose for reductio that S = x for all x ∈ S. Fix such an x. Choosing T = {x}, it follows S ∪ T = x. Using the contrapositive of 5 WGM, either there is some y ∈ S \ {x} such that ¬(S = y) or T = x. The former disjunct is inconsistent with our assumption that S = x for all x ∈ S. By IRR, the latter disjunct implies T \ {x} 6= ∅, which is a contradiction. So, there must be some y ∈ S such that ¬(S = y). Thus, = satisfies ACY. Now, we construct extended preference relation counterexamples to ACY =⇒ WGM and WGM =⇒ TRA in turn. Example 1. Let X = {x, y, z} and consider the following choice function on X. Choice sets for singletons are singletons. C(X) = {x} C({x, y}) = {x, y} C({x, z}) = {x, z} C({y, z}) = {y} Define = from C by 2. Then, = automatically satisfies IRR. Since C satisfies α, = satisfies MON (see the second direction of the proof of Theorem 2 which does not rely on this sub-claim of the lemma being established now). So, = is an extended preference relation. It is also clear that = satisfies ACY since there are no empty choice sets for non-empty menus for C. To see that = does not satisfy WGM, observe {y, z} = z and ¬({x, y} = y), but {x, y, z} = y. 4 Example 2. Let X = {x, y, z}. Choice sets for singletons are singletons. C(X) = {x} C({x, y}) = {x} C({x, z}) = {x, z} C({y, z}) = {y} Again, define = from C by 2. Again, = automatically satisfies IRR, and, since C satisfies α, = satisfies MON. So, = is an extended preference relation. Since C is binary, it certainly satisfies Weak γ, and so = satisfies WGM (see the proof of Theorem 2 which does not rely on this sub-claim of the lemma being established now). To see that = does not satisfy TRA, observe {z} ∪ {y} = z and {x} = y, but ¬({x, z} = z). 4 We can now state and prove a characterization of weak pseudo-rationalizability in terms of hyper-relations. Theorem 2. If = is an extended preference relation that satisfies WGM, then C as defined by 4 is a weakly pseudo-rationalizable choice function. Conversely, if C is a weakly pseudorationalizable choice function, then the hyper-relation defined by 2 is an extended preference relation that satisfies WGM. Proof. Let = be an an extended preference relation satisfying WGM, that is, = satisfies MON, IRR, and WGM. Let C be defined from = as in 4. First, by Lemma 1, = satisfies ACY which implies C(S) 6= ∅ when S 6= ∅. Conversely, C(S) = ∅ when S = ∅ by the construction of C. 6 Similarly, by construction, we have C(S) ⊆ S, so C is a well-defined choice function. Next, we need to show that C satisfies α and Weak γ. To check α, suppose that S ⊆ T and let x ∈ S ∩ C(T ). By the construction of C, ¬(T = x). By MON, ¬(S = x). So, x ∈ C(S) and C satisfies α. To show Weak γ, suppose C(S) = {x} and x ∈ C(T ). By the definition of C in 4, S = y for all y ∈ S \ {x} and ¬(T = x). WGM now implies that ¬(S ∪ T = x), so x ∈ C(S ∪ T ). Hence, the induced choice function C satisfies both α and Weak γ and, by Theorem 1, is therefore weakly pseudo-rationalizable. Let C be a weakly pseudo-rationalizable choice function, that is, C satisfies α and Weak γ. We need to show that = as defined from C in 2 satisfies WGM, MON, and IRR. For WGM, suppose S = y for all y ∈ S \ {x} and ¬(T = x). If S = ∅, then ¬(T = x) implies ¬(S ∪ T = x) and we're done. So assume S 6= ∅. If x /∈ S, then S = y for all y ∈ S. This implies that C(S) = ∅, which is a contradiction. So let x ∈ S. From the definition of =, we have C(S) = {x} and x ∈ C(T ∪ {x}). By Weak γ, it follows that x ∈ C(S ∪ T ∪ {x}) = C(S ∪ T ), since x ∈ S. This, in turn, implies that ¬(S ∪ T = x), as desired. To verify that = satisfies MON, suppose that S = x and S ⊆ T . By the construction of =, x /∈ C(S ∪ {x}). Since S ∪ {x} ⊆ T ∪ {x}, if x ∈ C(T ∪ {x}), α implies x ∈ C(S ∪ {x}), which is a contradiction. So, x /∈ C(T ∪ {x}), which means T = x. Thus, = satisfies MON. To show IRR, suppose that S = x. So, by 2, x /∈ C(S ∪ {x}). Since C({x}) = {x} by our definition of a choice function, S \ {x} 6= ∅. Since (S \ {x}) ∪ {x} = S ∪ {x}, we have x /∈ C((S \ {x}) ∪ {x}) = C(S ∪ {x}), that is, S \ {x} = x. Hence, = satisfies WGM, MON, and IRR. Next, we can establish that any extended preference relation satisfying WGM can be represented as the intersection of a certain class of its extensions. Let A be the set of acyclic binary relations on X. Let C be the set of choice functions rationalizable by a binary relation on X. Since rationalizability by a binary extended preference relation reduces to rationalizability by a binary relation (for the way choice functions are defined here), for a binary relation = on X, we put S = x if and only if there is some y ∈ S such that {y} = x. An extension of a hyper-relation = is a relation =′ such that = ⊆ =′. Call a choice function C ′ a refinement of C if C ′(S) ⊆ C(S) for all S ⊆ X. I write C ′ ⊆ C for short. A choice function C is called subrationalizable if it contains a refinement C ′ ∈ C . That is, there is a rationalizable C ′ such that C ′ ⊆ C. First, let's note a couple of close connections between the extensions of a hyper-relation and the class of choice functions that witness the subrationalizability of a choice function. Lemma 2. If = ⊆ =′, then C ′ ⊆ C, where C and C ′ are defined from = and =′, respectively, by 4. Conversely, if C ′ ⊆ C, then = ⊆ =′, where = and =′ are defined from C and C ′, respectively, by 2. Proof. Suppose that = ⊆ =′. Let C and C ′ be defined from = and =′, respectively, by 4. Suppose that x ∈ C ′(S) (which implies x ∈ S). By the construction of C ′, ¬(S =′ x). From the assumption it follows that ¬(S = x). By 4, it follows that x ∈ C(S). Suppose that, for all S ⊆ X, C ′(S) ⊆ C(S). Let = and =′ be defined from C and C ′, respectively, by 2. Assume that S = x. Then, we have that x /∈ C(S ∪ {x}). It follows that x /∈ C ′(S ∪ {x}). By 2, this in turn implies that S =′ x. Lemma 3. If = satisfies = = ⋂ {=′ ∈ A : = ⊆ =′}, (5) 7 then C as defined by 4 satisfies C(S) = ⋃ {C ′(S) : C ′ ∈ C and C ′ ⊆ C}. (6) Conversely, if C satisfies 6, then = as defined by 2 satisfies 5. Proof. Suppose that = satisfies 5 and that C is generated from = by 4. First, assume that x ∈ C(S). By 4, this implies that ¬(S = x). By 5, ¬(S =′ x) for some =′ ∈ A such that = ⊆ =′. Thus, x ∈ C=′(S), where C=′ is the choice function generated from =′ by 4. Moreover, from Lemma 2, it follows that C=′ ∈ {C ′ ∈ C : C ′ ⊆ C}. Hence, x ∈ ⋃ {C ′(S) : C ′ ∈ C and C ′ ⊆ C}. Second, assume that x /∈ C(S). By 4, S = x. By 5, we have S =′ x for all =′ ∈ A such that = ⊆ =′. So, x /∈ C=′(S ∪ {x}) for all =′ ∈ A such that = ⊆ =′. For any C ′ ∈ C such that C ′ ⊆ C, the relation =′ defined from C ′ by 2 is in A and, by Lemma 2, = ⊆ =′. Thus, x /∈ ⋃ {C ′(S) : C ′ ∈ C and C ′ ⊆ C}. Now suppose that C satisfies 6. First, assume that S = x, where = is defined from C using 2. So, x /∈ C(S ∪ {x}). Then, by 6, x /∈ C ′ for any C ′ ∈ C such that C ′ ⊆ C. If =′ ∈ A is such that = ⊆ =′, then, C=′ ∈ C and, by Lemma 2, C=′ ⊆ C. So, x /∈ C=′(S ∪ {x}). Hence, for any =′ ∈ A such that = ⊆ =′, S =′ x. Thus, = ⊆ ⋂ {=′ ∈ A : = ⊆ =′}. Second, assume that ¬(S = x). By 2, x ∈ C(S ∪{x}). By 6, for some C ′ ∈ C such that C ′ ⊆ C, x ∈ C ′(S ∪{x}). By 2, ¬(S =′ x). But =′ ∈ A and, by Lemma 2, = ⊆ =′. Therefore, (S, x) /∈ ⋂ {=′ ∈ A : = ⊆ =′}. Thus, ⋂ {=′ ∈ A : = ⊆ =′} ⊆ =. It follows that a hyper-relation can be represented as the intersection of its acyclic binary extensions if and only if it is an extended preference relation that satisfies WGM. Theorem 3. A hyper-relation = is an extended preference relation that satisfies WGM if and only if = satisfies 5. Proof. By Lemma 3, = satisfies 5 if and only if C (as defined from = by 4) satisfies 6. But 6 is weak pseudo-rationalizability. So the claim in the theorem is equivalent to the following one, established by Theorem 2: = is an extended preference relation satisfying WGM if and only if C is weakly pseudo-rationalizable.4 References Aizerman, M. and A. Malishevski (1981). General theory of best variants choice: Some aspects. Automatic Control, IEEE Transactions on 26 (5), 1030–1040. Aizerman, M. A. (1985). New problems in the general choice theory. Social Choice and Welfare 2 (4), 235–282. Aleskerov, F., D. Bouyssou, and B. Monjardet (2007). Utility Maximization, Choice and Preference, Volume 16. Springer Science & Business Media. Bossert, W., M. J. Ryan, and A. Slinko (2009). Orders on subsets rationalised by abstract convex geometries. Order 26 (3), 237–244. Chambers, C. P. and M. B. Yenmez (2017). Choice and matching. American Economic Journal: Microeconomics 9 (3), 126–147. 4Thanks to Benedikt Höltgen, Michael Nielsen, two anonymous referees, and consulting editor Reinhard Suck for very helpful comments. 8 Chambers, C. P. and M. B. Yenmez (2018). On lexicographic choice. Economics Letters 171, 222–224. Danilov, V. and G. Koshevoy (2005). Mathematics of plott choice functions. Mathematical Social Sciences 49 (3), 245–272. Danilov, V., G. Koshevoy, and E. Savaglio (2015). Hyper-relations, choice functions, and orderings of opportunity sets. Social Choice and Welfare 45 (1), 51–69. Johnson, M. R. and R. A. Dean (2001). Locally complete path independent choice functions and their lattices. Mathematical Social Sciences 42 (1), 53–87. Kalai, G., A. Rubinstein, and R. Spiegler (2002). Rationalizing choice functions by multiple rationales. Econometrica 70 (6), 2481–2488. Koshevoy, G. A. (1999). Choice functions and abstract convex geometries. Mathematical Social Sciences 38 (1), 35–44. Kreps, D. M. (1979). A representation theorem for "preference for flexibility". Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society 47 (3), 565–577. Levi, I. (1986). Hard choices: Decision making under unresolved conflict. Cambridge University Press. Lleras, J. S., Y. Masatlioglu, D. Nakajima, and E. Y. Ozbay (2017). When more is less: Limited consideration. Journal of Economic Theory 170, 70–85. Manzini, P. and M. Mariotti (2007). Sequentially rationalizable choice. American Economic Review 97 (5), 1824–1839. Monjardet, B. and V. Raderanirina (2004). Lattices of choice functions and consensus problems. Social Choice and Welfare 23 (3), 349–382. Moulin, H. (1985). Choice functions over a finite set: a summary. Social Choice and Welfare 2 (2), 147–160. Nehring, K. (1997). Rational choice and revealed preference without binariness. Social Choice and Welfare 14 (3), 403–425. Nehring, K. and C. Puppe (1998). Extended partial orders: A unifying structure for abstract choice theory. Annals of Operations Research 80 (0), 27–48. Nehring, K. and C. Puppe (1999). On the multi-preference approach to evaluating opportunities. Social Choice and Welfare 16 (1), 41–63. Pattanaik, P. K. and Y. Xu (1990). On ranking opportunity sets in terms of freedom of choice. Recherches Économiques de Louvain/Louvain Economic Review 56 (3/4), 383–390. Paul, L. A. (2014). Transformative Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pettigrew, R. (2020). Choosing for Changing Selves. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Plott, C. R. (1973). Path independence, rationality, and social choice. Econometrica: Journal of the Econometric Society 41 (6), 1075–1091. Sen, A. (1969). Quasi-transitivity, rational choice and collective decisions. The Review of Economic Studies 36 (3), 381–393. Sen, A. (1991). Welfare, preference and freedom. Journal of Econometrics 50 (1-2), 15–29. 9 Sen, A. (2017). Collective Choice and Social Welfare (Expanded Edition). Penguin. Stewart, R. T. (2020). 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Philosophical Quarterly, DOI: 10.1093/pq/pqw030 Composition as Identity. Edited by A. J. COTNOIR and DONALD L. M. BAXTER (Oxford: OUP, 2014. Pp. ix + 259. Price £40.00.) This book is a collection of essays that concern the hypothesis that wholes are identical with their parts. This hypothesis is called 'composition as identity' (or CAI). It is motivated by and meant to capture the intuitions of the following examples. Example 1: a farmer intends to sell his property, but before he puts it on the market he subdivides it into six lots. If the farmer sells his six lots, common sense tells us he has sold his farm. Example 2: I hope to purchase a six-pack of beer at the supermarket. Common sense tells us I am entitled to line up in the 'six-items or less' lane. The shop keeper would not say I have seven items. The six-pack is the six beers, just like the farm is the six lots. In general, a whole just is its parts. There are three major variants of CAI under examination in this book: Strong-CAI: a whole is numerically identical with its parts collectively. Weak-CAI: the relation between a whole and its parts taken together is analogous to numerical identity. Strange-CAI: a whole is numerically identical with its parts collectively and individually. David Lewis famously endorsed weak-CAI to expound his mereology (and not, incidentally, to convert his opponents). Donald L. M. Baxter first defended strangeCAI in the late 1980s. Strong-CAI, on the other hand, has been more readily dismissed. The contributions in this book that investigate the prospects of strong-CAI fill an important gap in the literature. The book has five parts. Part I contains a useful introduction by A. J. Cotnoir, and a history of CAI from Boethius to Hobbes by Calvin G. Normore and Deborah J. Brown, which is most appropriate given that metaphysicians should be sensitive to their past. In part II (Ontological Commitments of CAI) Achille C. Varzi and Katherine Hawley explain how mereology, along with CAI, does not entail that we are ontologically committed to a whole if we are ontologically committed to its parts. Varzi assumes weak-CAI within a 'Quinean approach' to ontology and proposes that: 'commitment in one's ontological theory to the truths about the fusion amounts to the same as commitment to the truths about those things, individually and collectively' (p. 63, his italics). Hawley thinks ontological innocence is best understood as the thesis that commitment to the whole does not affect the cost of the theory with respect to parsimony (p. 86). Ross P. Cameron argues that strong-CAI cannot explain why mereological facts supervene on non-mereological facts and proposes an alternative that does. He says composition is not an internal relation. Rather, it is a superinternal relation. A relation 2 is superinternal iff necessarily the existence of one relatum grounds the existence of the relation and the existence of the other relatum and the fact that the relation holds between both relata. So the parts ground the whole as well as the composition relation holding between the parts and the whole. We can then say mereological facts supervene on non-mereological facts because the former are grounded in the latter (p. 102). In part III (Metaphysical Commitments of CAI) Meg Wallace defends strong-CAI against the objection that it entails that wholes have their parts essentially. Her response involves an ontology according to which objects are spread out across worlds just as much as they are spread out across space and time. Qualitative difference of world-bound-parts of trans-world objects accounts for the fact that ordinary objects can gain and lose parts (p. 118). Kris McDaniel argues that defenders of CAI are not entitled to presuppose one fundamental, most natural, or definitionally basic relation of parthood because Examples 1 and 2 do not motivate us to embrace such a presupposition. Examples 1 and 2 merely motivate us to introduce some version of CAI and are thus silent on the 'unitary or non-disjunctive nature' of parthood per se (p. 142). He also demonstrates the many ways CAI is compatible with the view that there is more than one fundamental, most natural, or definitionally basic relation of parthood. Einar Duenger Bohn defends the following version of strong-CAI: these xs compose y =df. these xs are identical with y. He argues that this definition entails unrestricted composition. The deduction hinges on an inference from xx = xx to $y(xx = y). You might object that this inference is invalid: the existence of a self-identical plurality does not imply that there is some one thing identical with the plurality. Bohn thinks this worry stems from a thick notion of something, but he uses a thin notion of something and a thin notion of object. An 'object' in the thin sense is 'something we can singularly quantify over, however unnatural a sort of thing it is' (p. 151). It is not clear what the rationale is for grouping these chapters exclusively under the heading 'Metaphysical Commitments' of CAI. Indeed, Cameron's essay could have easily been inserted in this part. In part IV (Logical Commitments of CAI) Byeong-uk Yi uses a semantical theory of plurals to argue that it is logically impossible for a single object to be one thing and many. In a plural language, a plural term like 'A and B' cannot refer to some one thing. On his view, it is logically false that some things that are many are identical with some one thing (p. 179). Paul Hovda constructs a Normal Plural Logic and argues that Yi's objection is wrong: we need only replace the relevant axiom schemes with weakened alternatives that do not contain the 'is one of' predicate (p. 208). Theodore Sider, in his contribution, states that strong-CAI entails Collapse: 'something is one of the Xs iff it is part of the fusion of the Xs' (p. 211). As a result, 'there are fewer pluralities than one normally expects' (p. 213). 'There don't, for example, exist things such that something is one of them iff it is human. "The humans" is an empty plural term' (p. 216). Sider uses this result to reject an argument against CAI offered by McDaniel elsewhere in the literature. 3 In part V (Indiscernibility and CAI) Jason Turner regiments strange-CAI into a formal language against the backdrop of Baxter's metaphysics of aspects and counts. Turner explains that on Baxter's view we can count the six-pack as one thing or we can count each beer as one thing. In fact, the whole does not exist in the same count as its parts. Strange-CAI identifies a whole as a part with that part. This is cross-count identity. 'Each of my arms is cross-count identical to an aspect of me, and those aspects are intra-count identical' (p. 236). Turner raises worries for strange-CAI but postpones decisive evaluation. Baxter argues that we should preserve the common sense intuitions of Examples 1 and 2 by saying that the whole and its parts are the same thing counted in different ways. He then presents his theory and argues that CAI must explain (1) that a whole is a single thing, (2) that its parts are several things, (3) that if some thing is one, it is not many, and (4) that if something is many, it is not one. Strange-CAI is the only variant that explains these facts (p. 252). Part V would have read better if these essays were switched around. This book is evidence that discussion of CAI has reached critical mass. It is a timely contribution and advances debates in meta-ontology, fundamentality, mereology, and plural logic. It is most suitable for a (post)graduate seminar on metaphysics and should be of keen interest to metaphysicians, philosophical logicians, and philosophers of language who study plurals. It is a book in a specialized area of metaphysics, but this does not imply that its impact will be localized. A. R. J. Fisher Queen's University, Canada | {
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euroPeAN JourNAl For PHIloSoPHY oF relIGIoN 5/1 (SPrING 2013), PP. 109-124 COSMIC PURPOSE AND THE QUESTION OF A PERSONAL GOD ANDREW PINSENT University of Oxford Abstract. Purported evidence for purposeful divine action in the cosmos may appear to warrant describing God as personal, as Swinburne proposes. In this paper, however, I argue that the primary understanding of what is meant by a person is formed by the experience of 'I' – 'you' or second-person relatedness, a mode of relation with God that is not part of natural theology. moreover, even among human beings, the recognition of purposeful agency does not invariably lead to the attribution of personhood in the usual sense. 'Person' is therefore a misleading term to use of God on the evidence of cosmic purpose alone in the absence of suitable revelation. INTroDuCTIoN I begin with an extract from John Wisdom's influential paper 'Gods', published in the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society in 1944: Two people return to their long neglected garden and find among the weeds a few of the old plants surprisingly vigorous. one says to the other 'It must be that a gardener has been coming and doing something about these plants.' upon enquiry they find that no neighbour has ever seen anyone at work in their garden. The first man says to the other 'He must have worked while people slept.' The other says 'No, someone would have heard him and besides, anybody who cared about the plants would have kept down these weeds' ... each learns all the other learns about this [what happens to gardens generally without attention] and about the garden. Consequently, when after all this, one says 'I still believe a gardener comes' while the other says 'I don't' their different words now reflect no difference as to what they have found in the garden, no 110 ANDreW PINSeNT difference as to what they would find in the garden if they looked further and no difference about how fast untended gardens fall into disorder.1 Wisdom's 'parable of the gardener' achieved fame in the twentieth century principally through its reformulation in an article by Anthony Flew, 'Theology and Falsification', an article published initially in an undergraduate journal while Flew was still unambiguously an atheist. Flew gave the parable a more polemical edge than the original version, articulating the challenge in the starkest terms, 'Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?'2 For Flew, therefore, theological utterances about purposeful divine action in the cosmos are incapable of falsification and endemically evil, a judgment that was described as continuing to haunt the discussion of religious language nearly three decades later.3 Perhaps surprisingly, considering that Wisdom offered a parable rather than a proof, responses to the challenge of falsification have often tacitly accepted the premise that the cosmos does in fact present an ambiguous face to those seeking evidence for divine action.4 In recent 1 J. Wisdom, 'Gods', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 45, New Series (January, 1944), 191-192. 2 Flew's commentary was first published at oxford in the first issue of an ephemeral undergraduate journal called University, which is now difficult to obtain, but the reprinted material can be found in Antony Flew and Alasdair C. macIntyre, New Essays in Philosophical Theology (london: SCm Press, 1955), pp. 96-108. Flew gave the parable a polemical edge, describing explorers attempting to detect the gardener, whom no one has ever seen, by surrounding the clearing they have found with an electrified barbedwire fence and patrolling it with bloodhounds. Such additional elements were, of course, gratuitous: advocates of physicalism are, of course, perfectly content to accept invisible and intangible causal agents provided they are sufficiently regular and well-behaved: gravitational fields and neutrino beams being contemporary examples. Flew's views on God apparently changed later in life; see Antony Flew, There is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, 1st ed. (New York: Harperone, 2007). 3 larry r. Churchill, 'Flew, Wisdom, and Polanyi: The Falsification Challenge revisited', International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 3, no. 3 (1972), 185. 4 Hence in the years following Wisdom's paper, a great deal of work was done on the philosophy of perception and the gestalt that is sometimes associated today with righthemispheric cognition of the world. For some subtle early work on the philosophy of perception, see michael Polanyi, Science, Faith and Society (london: Geoffrey Cumberlege, oxford university Press, 1946). For an account of religious belief shaping a person's 'seeing as' experience of the world, see, for example, John Hick, God and the Universe of Faiths: Essays in the Philosophy of Religion (london: macmillan, 1973), especially chap. 3. For neuroscientific evidence that may reinforce the importance of perceiving some kind 111CoSmIC PurPoSe AND THe QueSTIoN oF A PerSoNAl GoD decades, however, there have been some unexpected challenges to this assumption. In particular, contemporary physics has suggested that the relative values of many cosmic variables, their so-called 'fine-tuning', seem absurdly precise, rather as if the observers in Wisdom's parable have found that certain of the plants in the garden are growing in perfect rows, aligned to subatomic precision. As a consequence, although the reality and meaning of fine-tuning are still matters of fierce debate, the question of the discernment of divine, purposeful action in the cosmos has remained a surprisingly vigorous one.5 Without attempting to adjudicate this debate, I want in this paper to examine critically an inference that is often made or implied by the purported discernment of such action. most discourses about a 'first cause' in natural theology or philosophy, such as an 'unmoved mover' or 'necessary ground of being' or 'that greater than which nothing can be conceived', do not in themselves convey any sense that this first cause could or should be described as personal. Cosmic purpose is different, since purpose is often associated with personal agency in daily life. of gestalt as well as individual facts, see the account of the effects of right-hemispheric brain damage in Iain mcGilchrist, The Master and his Emissary: the Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (New Haven; london: Yale university Press, 2009), chap. 2. Note also Churchill's comment, that a believer, in order to communicate the difference made by a religious perspective on the world, will 'always and of necessity employ myths, parables, metaphors and sketches', that is, modes of discourse that communicate contextual frameworks and evoke embodied experiences: Churchill, 'Flew, Wisdom, and Polanyi: The Falsification Challenge revisited', p. 185. Yet as contemporary talk of 'selfish' or 'selfless' genes and other examples testify, the association of the objects of science with grand narratives and metaphors that are not in themselves falsifiable is scarcely unique to a religious perspective and may be an important, even indispensable aspect of what it means to cognize the world in any kind of ordered manner. As examples of divergent grand narratives applied to similar scientific facts, see richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition, 3rd revised ed. (oxford: ouP, 2006) and Charles Foster, The Selfless Gene: Living with God and Darwin (london: Hodder & Stoughton, 2009). 5 For contrasting views and an overview of some of the strengths and weakness of the multiverse proposal, see robert J. Spitzer, New Proofs for the Existence of God: Contributions of Contemporary Physics and Philosophy (Grand rapids, mich.; Cambridge, uK: William b eerdmans Publishing Co, 2010) and Victor J. Stenger, Fallacy of Fine-Tuning (New York: Prometheus, 2011). For a good overview of the range of philosophical positions regarding fine-tuning, see ernan mcmullin, 'Anthropic explanation in Cosmology', Faith and Philosophy, 22, no. 5 (2005): 601-614. It should be noted that theoretical physicists do tend to see fine-tuning as a 'problem' at present; see, for example, lee Smolin, The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next (New York: Houghton mifflin Harcourt, 2006), especially chap. 11. 112 ANDreW PINSeNT In Wisdom's parable, for example, the invisible agent who may or may not be causing change in the garden is not a mere inanimate force, a living being or even some complex machine that weeds and waters automatically. A gardener, invisible or not, is a personal agent, applying abstract thought, combined with artistry to achieve some goal. When a garden shows evidence for such action, we therefore have no hesitation in classifying the agent responsible as 'someone' rather than 'something', to adopt Spaemann's phrase.6 Can the same inference be made for God? In other words, if the evidence shows that the cosmos has been put into an unexpectedly ordered state as a result of purposeful action by a rational agent, would it be reasonable to infer that this agent is also best described as 'someone' rather than 'something'? of course, one could simply define persons in terms of their capacity for rational, intentional action, as, for example, Swinburne does, In personal explanation the occurrence of an event E is explained as brought about by a rational agent or person P, having the intention J to bring about E ... Clearly the theist, in claiming that there is an omnipotent spirit, God, who makes or brings about (or permits the bringing-about of) all logically contingent things apart from himself, is using personal explanation.7 In Swinburne's approach, it seems that a rational agent intending to bring about some state of affairs is a 'person', and God is therefore personal on the basis of divine action of this kind, but I fear that such a definition begs the question. In addressing this issue, however, I make the following caveats. First, 'purposeful' action is an ambiguous concept, part of a broad spectrum of apparently teleological actions in nature. When ancient artefacts such as the Antikythera mechanism are discovered, we have no hesitation in concluding that these objects were deliberately designed and constructed for some purpose, yet the term 'purpose' is also frequently attributed to agents that are not normally regarded as persons. 6 robert Spaemann, Persons: The Difference Between 'Someone' and 'Something' (oxford: oxford university Press, 2006). 7 richard Swinburne, The Coherence of Theism, rev. ed. (oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), pp. 137, 141-142. See also The Existence of God, 2nd ed. (oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004), pp. 21, 35–45 in which Swinburne defines personal explanation as an explanation of a phenomenon as brought about intentionally by a rational agent, a 'person' who has 'at least the complexity of sensations, desires, beliefs, etc. typical of human beings'. 113CoSmIC PurPoSe AND THe QueSTIoN oF A PerSoNAl GoD many non-human animals are naturally described as showing evidence of voluntary, 'purposeful' action and some even use tools to achieve complex goals.8 At a broader level of generalisation, even plants have been found to 'select' growth strategies to attain goals conducive to their flourishing, as in the case of the dodder plant that can distinguish wheat and tomato plants at a distance.9 At the broadest level of all, immanent end-directed action is increasingly recognised as an irreducible property of complex dynamical systems that are not even living.10 The only category of 'purpose' relevant for considerations of possible divine cosmic action, however, must be that which involves the understanding and selection of abstract principles and goals, such as those pertaining to the formal relations of purported fine-tuning. These kinds of purposeful actions are reasonably easy to identify when examining the actions of biological beings. birds, for example, display great intelligence in navigation and building nests but they do not bury their dead, build astronomical mechanisms or construct their nests in the gothic style. To give another example, a rabbit may decide to eat a carrot, but not every third carrot.11 Such activities require understanding and intending abstract goals, capabilities that are, among animals, uniquely attributed to human and hence personal agency. The question is whether the same attribution of personal agency could also be made of God on the basis of purposeful action involving abstract principles and goals in the cosmos. Second, the objection could be made that the notion of a person and a personal God first arose in the context of theology, specifically 08 The Antikythera mechanism is a highly complex artefact of some thirty interlocking bronze gears discovered northwest of Crete at the beginning of the twentieth century. Although there is still some doubt as to its intended use, there is no doubt that this artefact was brought about by a rational agent or agents who had the intention to create it for some purpose. See, for example, Derek De Solla Price, 'Gears from the Greeks: The Antikythera mechanism – A Calendar Computer from ca. 80 b.C.', American Philosophical Society, 64, no. 7 (1974), 1-70. For an argument that the term 'purpose' is also warranted in interpreting the actions of non-human animals, see, for example, mary midgley, 'Why the Idea of Purpose Won't Go Away', Philosophy: The Journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, 86, no. 338 (october 1, 2011), 545-561. 09 Daniel Chamovitz, What a Plant Knows (oxford: oneworld Publications, 2012). 10 See, for example, Gianfranco basti, Filosofia Della Natura e Della Scienza, vol. I (rome: lateran university Press, 2002). 11 The example of the bird building a nest in the gothic style is taken from Gilbert Keith Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (london: Hodder & Stoughton, 1925), chap. 1. I am grateful to John Haldane for the example of a rabbit eating every third carrot. 114 ANDreW PINSeNT Christian revealed theology.12 Given that pre-Christian philosophy did not conclude that God is personal, it would seem plausible that natural theology would also fail to reach this conclusion more generally, if the doctrinal and cultural influences of revealed theology were stripped away. The response could be made, however, that the question is still an open one for two reasons. First, at least some of what is said of God in pre-Christian philosophy could be construed as personal language, such as, for example, the notion of following in God's company or friendship in Plato's later writings.13 Second, although historically the idea of a personal God developed from the working out of Christian revelation, this fact does not in itself rule out the possibility that such an insight might have been derived by natural reason alone in some other way, sooner or later. Third, there are many on-going controversies surrounding the question of whether or not the notion of a personal God is coherent, drawing from the dissimilarities between God's existence and our own, such as atemporal versus temporal existence.14 In this paper, however, I restrict myself to a more basic issue. If divine action in the cosmos can be identified and if such action is purposeful, involving the selection of abstract principles and goals, is it reasonable to conclude on this basis that God is personal? If so, then a debate can still take place over the coherence of the term 'person' in the light of the other purported attributes of God, such as simplicity. If not, then it is unlikely that the question is going to arise anyway, since it is cosmic purpose that seems the most promising basis on which to conclude that God is personal on the basis of natural theology alone. either way, examining the link between the discernment of purpose and the ascription of personhood is an important one. THe ASCrIPTIoN oF PerSoNHooD on what basis do we call some being a 'person'? A definition is not straightforward since persons are not a subdivision of some broader 12 'We began to speak of God as a person only when we began to speak of three persons in one God.' Spaemann, Persons, p. 40. 13 See, for example, Plato, Laws, IV, 716a-b. 14 For some recent criticisms of the coherence of the notion of a personal God, especially as presented in the arguments of Swinburne, see Herman Philipse, God in the Age of Science? A Critique of Religious Reason (oxford: oxford university Press, 2012), pp. 109-119. 115CoSmIC PurPoSe AND THe QueSTIoN oF A PerSoNAl GoD genus in the way in which man is a 'rational animal' in the biological world. boethius' famous definition of a person as an individual substance of a rational nature has long been recognized as unsatisfactory and one cannot rely on equating being a person with being human if the issue to be examined is the personhood of God.15 much contemporary philosophical discussion about persons is framed in terms of ethics, an example being Timothy Chappell's description of persons as belonging to the 'primary moral constituency'.16 With this focus, the main tasks of philosophical argumentation have been to determine the extent of application of the term 'person', starting from the basis that all or at least some human beings are 'persons', and to examine what this attribution means for ethical decisions. In these discussions, personhood is the 'whatever it is', if anything, that is added to being a human being to warrant the dignity of belonging to the 'primary moral constituency'. Contemporary discussions of whether certain higher animals can be considered 'persons' are essentially of the same kind, that is, ethical questions in disguise, and insofar as they give a definition of 'person' they tend to fall back on locke's identification of personal identity with a distinct, persisting incommunicable consciousness.17 Such discussions do not, however, bring us any nearer to a resolution of the issue of whether God can be considered personal, since God is not a member of our species, or any species. Furthermore, even if locke's approach to personal identity is not problematic in itself, it does not seem especially helpful for the problem at hand. Attempting to adjudicate on the personhood of God using the criterion of distinct, persisting incommunicable consciousness seems both inherently challenging and difficult to relate to purported evidence of cosmic divine action. Are there any other ways to address this question? on this issue, I refer to Spaemann, who excels in highlighting the many peculiarities of the term 'person'. Persons, he notes, are not simply members of a class and 'do not share personhood as a common attribute, 15 boethius, De persona et duabus naturis, c. 2. For some early criticisms of boethius' definition of a person by richard of St Victor, see Spaemann, Persons, pp. 29-30. 16 Timothy Chappell, 'on The Very Idea of Criteria For Personhood', The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 49, no. 1 (2011), 1-27. 17 An example is the discussion of whether some animals could be considered as 'persons' in Peter Singer, How Are We To Live? Ethics in An Age of Self-Interest (oxford: oxford university Press, 1997), pp. 110-111. See also John locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, II.27, 'of Identity and Diversity' (1690). 116 ANDreW PINSeNT in the way that human beings share humanity'.18 For example, there is no doubt that 'I' refers to something real, but, When we say 'I', we are not referring to 'an ego' – a pure invention of the philosophers! – but to a particular living creature, a particular human being identified by other speakers with the use of a personal name. but when this particular human being identifies the selfsame person that he or she actually is, the term 'I' is used.19 Spaemann goes on to point out various peculiarities with this selfidentification, notably that there is no unclarity about what 'I' refers to, regardless of any qualitative features whatsoever, even to the extent of someone forgetting who he is, robbed of memory and even forgetting that he is a human being. This latter point sets up an argument that being 'I' and being a human being are not simply interchangeable, a point reinforced by the fact that person (hupostatis) was specifically distinguished from having a nature (phusis) in the development of the early Christology and Trinitarian theology from which the concept of a 'person' first emerged.20 He also highlights the inherent uniqueness, subjectivity, singularity, irreducibility and incommunicability of the one who says 'I', from the perspective of the one who says this. This 'I' is a relational uniqueness, since, according to Spaemann, this is defined by a 'place' in the universe relative to everything else that can never be that person.21 These observations serve to underline how my own personhood, at least, is not something that is reducible to an objective state of affairs, even being a member of the human species, but what about the personhood of others, which is the key issue in addressing the question of the personhood of God? To what, or rather to whom – the distinctiveness of the grammar manifests the distinctiveness of the task – can 'I' or anyone else who self-identifies as 'I' ascribe personhood? Some clues from the language we use to denote persons may help to shed light on this problem. In many languages, the third-person forms are ambiguous, that is to say, the same grammatical structures can be used to describe the states of affairs of both personal and impersonal beings, and the reports of the actions of a distant agent may or may not lead us to infer that this agent is a person. The second-person forms are different. To use the 18 Spaemann, Persons, pp. 16, 62. 19 Ibid., p. 9. 20 Ibid., pp. 10, 28. 21 Ibid., p. 37. 117CoSmIC PurPoSe AND THe QueSTIoN oF A PerSoNAl GoD 'you' form is to acknowledge that one is addressing a person, who is also irreducible and unique, and 'I' and 'you' are paired in language, a point to which martin buber famously drew attention.22 So what are the circumstances that shape the use of the second-person forms in grammar? This question is not easy because in the standard ways of expressing how we know others, that is, theorizing that a thing has a mind or a particular kind of internal causal structure, it is unclear how exactly 'it' becomes 'you', a point Jane Heal has mentioned. For this reason among others, some researchers have suggested that the origins of the distinctive second-person grammatical forms are to be found in varieties of interpersonal relatedness that precede the acquisition of language and which go under the name of joint attention.23 examples of such interactions include pointing out objects to others, reciprocal smiling, lifting hands to be picked up and so on, activities that have been described as a 'sharing an awareness of the sharing of the focus' with another person, arguably the primordial mode of interpersonal communication in a human life.24 A close association of joint attention and second-person relatedness is also suggested by the fact that an inhibition of the former is often correlated with difficulties in learning and using the second-person forms of grammar correctly.25 experiences of joint attention are not just important for shaping the use of the second-person form in grammar, however, but are, I suggest, the primary experiences for shaping our understanding of persons generally. As Iain mcGilchrist has argued, every word, sooner or later, has 'to lead us out of the web of language, to the lived world, ultimately to ... something that relates to our embodied experience'.26 In the case of the word 'person', when we hear or read this word, our understanding is shaped by our embodied experiences of persons. A plausible candidate for the most significant of these embodied experiences is second-person 22 martin buber, Ich und Du, 1 aufl. (leipzig: Insel-Verlang, 1923). 23 See, for example, Jane Heal, 'Joint Attention and understanding the mind', in Joint Attention: Communication and Other Minds: Issues in Philosophy and Psychology, ed. by Naomi eilan et al. (New York: oxford university Press, 2005), pp. 34-44 (p. 41). 24 Naomi eilan, 'Joint Attention, Communication, and mind', in eilan et al., Joint Attention, pp. 1–33. The phrase 'sharing an awareness of the sharing of the focus' is from Peter Hobson, 'What Puts Jointness into Joint Attention?', also in Joint Attention, pp. 185–204 (p. 185). 25 Andrew Pinsent, The Second-Person Perspective in Aquinas's Ethics: Virtues and Gifts (New York; Abingdon, uK: routledge, 2012), pp. 47-49. 26 mcGilchrist, The Master and his Emissary, p. 116. 118 ANDreW PINSeNT relatedness or joint attention, since these experiences are uniquely with other persons, play a crucial role in human development from a very young age and continue throughout life for as long as a person is in any kind of social setting. All kinds of other experiences may, of course, be associated with the term 'person', but it is, I suggest, this experience of relating as an 'I' to a 'you' that is primary for most of us in grounding the meaning of the word and which also, it has been argued, underpins much of the ethical significance of the term 'person'.27 At first glance, therefore, it seems that any possibility that God can be regarded as personal on this basis can and should be dismissed within natural theology. God's divine nature is spiritual and is not present to our senses the way that human persons are. In addition, the kinds of activities that might be interpreted as enabling second-person relatedness to God by other means, such as inspired narratives, covenants, liturgies, and modes of relation associated with the Incarnation, seem to be exclusively the prerogative of revealed or supernatural theology.28 moreover, even the use of second-person forms to address God is uncommon in classical philosophical texts that refer to divine matters, in marked contrast to the frequent use of 'you' to denote God in later Christian writings, such as those of Augustine. These structural and grammatical differences arguably underline that second-person relatedness to God pertains exclusively to revealed theology.29 Nevertheless, the situation is not entirely hopeless. There are many human beings, for example, whom we have never met and may never meet, who we still regard as persons insofar as we are members of the same species, the typical perfection of which includes the ability to relate in a second-personal way as circumstances allow. moreover, our experience of persons also teaches that those beings to whom we relate second-personally are also the ones uniquely capable of abstract reasoning and goals. Given that all the beings that we know to be capable 27 A recent argument for the importance of second-person relatedness in grounding ethics is Stephen Darwall, The Second-Person Standpoint: Morality, Respect, and Accountability (Cambridge, mass.; london: Harvard university Press, 2006). 28 For a recent study of key Scriptural narratives interpreted in the light of secondperson relatedness to God and others, see eleonore Stump, Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (oxford: Clarendon Press, 2010). 29 Classical texts tend to refer more or less exclusively to God in the third-person, for example, Aristotle, Metaphysics, XII, 7, 1072b14-30. by way of contrast, see, for example, the famous prayer, 'late have I loved you', in Augustine, Confessions of St. Augustine, Books I-X, trans. Francis J. Sheed (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1942), X.27. 119CoSmIC PurPoSe AND THe QueSTIoN oF A PerSoNAl GoD of such reasoning are also personal beings, is there any warrant for describing God as personal on the same basis, namely the discernment of purposeful divine action involving abstract reasoning in the cosmos? Adjudication is not easy, because agents capable of abstract reasoning and goals are almost invariably identified as persons in the normal way, to the extent that it may be hard to imagine an alternative classification. Nevertheless, some intriguing exceptions have emerged from recent work in experimental psychology. Peter Hobson describes an experiment that tested sixteen children and adolescents with autism and sixteen others without autism who were similar in age and linguistic ability. These children were shown an experimenter performing a variety of actions with some simple objects and, at a later time, they were given the same objects and asked to use them. Although most of the children repeated most of the actions they had seen the experimenter perform, a marked difference emerged as to how they used the objects. In Hobson's words, The children without autism were imitating the person of the experimenter, and in so doing they assumed his style as well as his approach to accomplishing each goal. The children with autism watched and imitated the action rather than the person doing the action.30 Those with autism therefore cognized the purposeful actions of these agents to the point of being able to imitate their actions readily, but they did not cognize the agents as persons in the normal way. Some caveats and clarifications are needed. Those with autism do not have any particular difficulty in recognising that persons are unique kinds of beings in the world, and perform just as well as those without autism in distinguishing persons from non-persons.31 Those with autism do not, however, generally engage in joint attention activities such as pointing and, as they learn language, they have a peculiar difficulty in using the 'I' and 'you' forms in grammar correctly, a phenomenon known as pronoun reversal.32 As a result, the primary metaphoric understanding of the term 30 Hobson, 'What Puts Jointness into Joint Attention?', p. 200. 31 Ibid., p. 191. 32 leo Kanner, 'Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact', Nerv. Child, 2:220 (1943); reprinted in leo Kanner, 'Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact', Acta Paedopsychiatrica, 35, no. 4 (1968), 100-136. For a comparison of pronoun reversal in autistic and Down's syndrome children, see, for example, Helen Tager-Flusberg, 'Dissociations in Form and Function in the Acquisition of language by Autistic Children: Studies of Atypical Children', in Constraints on Language Acquisition: Studies of Atypical Children, ed. by Helen TagerFlusberg (Hillsdale, N.J.; Hove: erlbaum, 1994), pp. 174-194 (p. 184). 120 ANDreW PINSeNT 'person' that is, for most of us, drawn from the experience of secondperson relatedness, is absent from their worldview, an absence manifested in the way they are sometimes described as not 'seeing' persons at all.33 What is striking about these results is that the situations being described involve only human persons carrying out human actions in human ways, and yet the recognition of purposeful agents does not invariably lead to an ascription of personhood in the way that the term 'person' is understood typically. In the case of cosmic divine action, the situation is disproportionately more challenging. even if we discern the intelligent order we expect of purposeful action, perhaps with the bonus of perceiving a certain artistry in the cosmos – as might be claimed of the elegance of the laws of physics or of beautiful fractal structures such as the mandelbrot Set – this is not the same as discerning the purpose.34 Indeed, many theists and atheists concur that what the divine purpose is or even whether this purpose is good in terms of ultimate human (or other) flourishing are notoriously difficult to determine on the basis of our natural knowledge of the world alone.35 moreover, if there is a God who has acted in a purposeful manner in creation, the ways in which any such purposes are achieved seem, to the best of our knowledge, very different to the ways in which human persons go about achieving their goals. So there seems to be little warrant for describing God as personal on the basis of the discernment of purposeful action in the cosmos alone. The use of the term 'person' may even be misleading, since the metaphoric understanding of the word is shaped by experiences of second-person relatedness that are inapplicable to a relationship to God in the absence of divine help. If there is any hope of connecting the 33 Clara Claiborne Park, The Siege: The First Eight Years of an Autistic Child (With an Epilogue, Fifteen Years After) (boston, london: little, brown and Company, 1982), p. 93. 34 Heinz-otto Peitgen and Peter H. richter, The Beauty of Fractals: Images of Complex Dynamical Systems (berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1986). 35 As an example from a theistic perspective, Newman claims that we cannot gain knowledge of God's purposes simply from the study of the cosmos, as shown by his claims in the following passage, 'religion, it has been well observed, is something relative to us; a system of commands and promises of God towards us. but how are we to be concerned with the sun, moon, and stars? or with the laws of the universe? ... They do not speak to sinners at all. They were created before Adam fell. They "declare the glory of God", but not his will.' See John Henry Newman, 'Sermon XXIV: The religion of the Day', in Parochial and Plain Sermons: Volume I, New ed. (london; New York: longmans, Green, 1891). As an example from an atheistic perspective, see Philipse, God in the Age of Science?, pp. 256-278. 121CoSmIC PurPoSe AND THe QueSTIoN oF A PerSoNAl GoD discernment of cosmic purpose with the discernment of the personhood of God, the most promising approach may in fact work in the opposite direction. Cultures shaped by the revelation of a personal God with whom second-person relatedness is possible may tend to perceive the cosmos in certain beneficial ways, for example with the expectation that it is ordered and that at least some aspects of this order can be known by us. Such a perspective seems prima facie to be a more promising starting point than a deep-rooted belief in cosmic disorder, accidental order, or a remote and unknowable deity.36 An argument may then be possible that resembles Pascal's wager, insofar as a commitment to faith in a personal God may be seen to be a fruitful cultural wager for understanding and representing the natural world, for example in art.37 Nevertheless, such a method is at best likely to yield only certain fruitful signs rather than anything approaching a rigorous proof. 36 For an early example of this perception of cosmic order in the light of revelation, see, for example, this text from what is perhaps the earliest authentic Christian document outside of the New Testament, the First Letter of Clement, 20, 'The heavens, revolving under his government, are subject to him in peace. Day and night run the course appointed by him, in no wise hindering each other. The sun and moon, with the companies of the stars, roll on in harmony according to his command, within their prescribed limits, and without any deviation. The fruitful earth, according to his will, brings forth food in abundance, at the proper seasons, for man and beast and all the living beings upon it, never hesitating, nor changing any of the ordinances which he has fixed.' Note that at end of the first century, when the Christian community was small and threatened, this letter communicates a surprising sense of the order and harmony of the cosmos on the grandest scales in the light of the new Christian revelation. The translation is from James Donaldson and Alexander roberts, eds., The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, vol. I, Ante-Nicene Christian library: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325 (edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1867). 37 Correlation is not, of course, causation and a variety of narratives could be told to explain the same facts about the fruitfulness or otherwise of a culture, but art is instructive because it provides an insight into the context or gestalt, often shaped by faith, within which the world is cognized by a society. Second-person relatedness to God as a theme of art, with nature perfected, is a central theme of Van eyck, Ghent Altarpiece or The Adoration of the Mystic Lamb, completed in 1432. The emphasis on the themes of revelation gradually faded in the sixteenth century, a transition seen in Joachim Patinir, The Penitence of St Jerome, completed c. 1518, and Pieter bruegel the elder, The Harvesters, in 1565. In later centuries, themes of nature alone often dominate, as in Constable, The Hay Wain, 1821, but disintegration of form and loss of hope sets in at least by the time of Van Gogh, Wheatfield with Crows, painted in 1890 and Pollock, Enchanted Forest, painted in 1947, which has no discernible features left. on balance, the earlier faith-based perspectives on the world, rooted in second-person relatedness to God, seem to have inspired greater order and beauty than their less faith-based successors. 122 ANDreW PINSeNT CoNCluSIoN Although we are justified in attributing the production of sophisticated artefacts, showing evidence of abstract reasoning and goals, to personal agency, this attribution is only ever indirect, namely that such artefacts are thereby revealed as being the work of human beings and hence of persons such as ourselves. In the case of God, no such attribution can be made, since God is not, by divine nature, a member of our species or any species. moreover, even if we succeed in uncovering evidence for purposeful divine action in the cosmos, involving abstract reasoning and goals, the term 'person' is only justified thereby in a Swinburnian sense. Since the meaning of the term 'person' is shaped, for most of us, primarily by the experience of second-person relatedness, the attribution of personhood, whether to other human beings or to God, cannot follow simply from evidence of purposeful agency if there is no pre-existing capacity for second-person relatedness with the agent concerned. In the case of God, such a capacity can only come about as a divine gift. Hence, evidence of cosmic purpose does not in itself warrant us concluding that God is personal in the absence of such a gift.38 bIblIoGrAPHY Augustine, Confessions of St. Augustine, Books I-X. Translated by Francis J. Sheed (New York: Sheed & Ward, 1942) basti, Gianfranco, Filosofia Della Natura e Della Scienza. Vol. I (rome: lateran university Press, 2002) buber, martin, Ich und Du. 1 aufl. (leipzig: Insel-Verlang, 1923) Chamovitz, Daniel, What a Plant Knows (oxford: oneworld Publications, 2012) Chappell, Timothy, 'on The Very Idea of Criteria For Personhood', The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 49, no. 1 (2011), 1-27 Chesterton, Gilbert Keith, The Everlasting Man (london: Hodder & Stoughton, 1925) Churchill, larry r., 'Flew, Wisdom, and Polanyi: The Falsification Challenge revisited', International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 3, no. 3 (1972), 185-194 Darwall, Stephen, The Second-Person Standpoint: Morality, Respect, and Accountability (Cambridge, mass.; london: Harvard university Press, 2006) Dawkins, richard, The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition, 3rd revised edition (oxford: oxford university Press, 2006) 38 This paper was originally presented in munich, at a conference for the Analytic Theology Project, generously funded by the John Templeton Foundation. 123CoSmIC PurPoSe AND THe QueSTIoN oF A PerSoNAl GoD Donaldson, James, and Alexander roberts, eds. The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus, Vol. I. Ante-Nicene Christian library: Translations of the Writings of the Fathers down to A.D. 325 (edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1867) eilan, Naomi, Christoph Hoerl, Teresa mcCormack, and Johannes roessler, eds. Joint Attention: Communication and Other Minds: Issues in Philosophy and Psychology (oxford: Clarendon Press, 2005) eilan, Naomi, 'Joint Attention, Communication, and mind', in eilan et al., eds. Joint Attention, pp. 1–33 Flew, Antony, There is a God: How the World's Most Notorious Atheist Changed His Mind, 1st ed. (New York: Harperone, 2007) Flew, Antony, and Alasdair C. macIntyre, New Essays in Philosophical Theology, (london: SCm Press, 1955) Foster, Charles, The Selfless Gene: Living with God and Darwin, (london: Hodder & Stoughton, 2009) Heal, Jane, 'Joint Attention and understanding the mind', in eilan et al., eds. Joint Attention, pp. 34-44 Hick, John, God and the Universe of Faiths: Essays in the Philosophy of Religion, (london: macmillan, 1973) Hobson, Peter, 'What Puts Jointness into Joint Attention?', in eilan et al., eds. Joint Attention, pp. 185-204 Kanner, leo, 'Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact', Acta Paedopsychiatrica, 35, no. 4 (1968), 100-136 mcGilchrist, Iain, The Master and his Emissary: the Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (New Haven; london: Yale university Press, 2009) mcmullin, ernan, 'Anthropic explanation in Cosmology', Faith and Philosophy, 22, no. 5 (2005), 601-614 midgley, mary, 'Why the Idea of Purpose Won't Go Away', Philosophy: The Journal of the Royal Institute of Philosophy, 86, no. 338 (october, 2011), 545-561 Newman, John Henry, 'Sermon XXIV: The religion of the Day', in Parochial and Plain Sermons: Volume I, New ed. (london; NY: longmans, Green, 1891) Park, Clara Claiborne, The Siege: The First Eight Years of an Autistic Child (With an Epilogue, Fifteen Years After) (boston, london: little, brown and Company, 1982) Peitgen, Heinz-otto, and Peter H. richter, The Beauty of Fractals: Images of Complex Dynamical Systems (berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1986) Philipse, Herman, God in the Age of Science? A Critique of Religious Reason (oxford: oxford university Press, 2012) Pinsent, Andrew, The Second-Person Perspective in Aquinas's Ethics: Virtues and Gifts (New York; Abingdon, uK: routledge, 2012) Polanyi, michael, Science, Faith and Society (london: Geoffrey Cumberlege, oxford university Press, 1946) 124 ANDreW PINSeNT Price, Derek De Solla, 'Gears from the Greeks: The Antikythera mechanism – A Calendar Computer from CA. 80 b.C.', American Philosophical Society, 64, no. 7 (1974), 1-70 Singer, Peter, How Are We To Live? Ethics in An Age of Self-Interest (oxford: oxford university Press, 1997) Smolin, lee, The Trouble with Physics: The Rise of String Theory, The Fall of a Science, and What Comes Next (New York: Houghton mifflin Harcourt, 2006) Spaemann, robert, Persons: The Difference Between 'Someone' and 'Something' (oxford: oxford university Press, 2006) Spitzer, robert J., New Proofs for the Existence of God: Contributions of Contemporary Physics and Philosophy (Grand rapids, mich.; Cambridge, uK: William b. eerdmans Publishing Co., 2010) Stenger, Victor J., Fallacy of Fine-Tuning (New York: Prometheus, 2011) Stump, eleonore, Wandering in Darkness: Narrative and the Problem of Suffering (oxford: Clarendon Press, 2010) Swinburne, richard, The Coherence of Theism, rev. ed. (oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993) Swinburne, richard, The Existence of God, 2nd ed. (oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004) Tager-Flusberg, Helen, ed., Constraints on Language Acquisition: Studies of Atypical Children (Hillsdale, N.J.; Hove: erlbaum, 1994) Wisdom, J., 'Gods', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 45, New Series (January, 1944), 185- | {
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RE VI SE D PA GE P RO OF S Developmental Systems Theory Paul E Griffiths, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia Adam Hochman, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia Based in part on the previous version of this eLS article 'Developmental Systems Theory' (2001) by Paul E Griffiths. Advanced article Article Contents • Introduction • Epigenesis • Distributed Control • Extended Inheritance • Evolution • Criticisms of DST Online posting date: 15th October 2015 Developmental systems theory (DST) is a wholeheartedly epigenetic approach to development, inheritance and evolution. The developmental system of an organism is the entire matrix of resources that are needed to reproduce the life cycle. The range of developmental resources that are properly described as being inherited, and which are subject to natural selection, is far wider than has traditionally been allowed. Evolution acts on this extended set of developmental resources. From a developmental systems perspective, development does not proceed according to a preformed plan; what is inherited is much more than DNA; and evolution is change not only in gene frequencies, but in entire developmental systems. Introduction The phrase 'developmental system' was introduced by the biologist Conrad Waddington to refer to the dynamical system constituted when the totality of the genes in an organism, and their products, interacts with one another in development (Waddington, 1952). The developmental system is the locus of the epigenetic processes by which the genotype gives rise to a phenotype (Waddington, 1940). Waddington contrasted classical genetic approaches, which merely correlate genotype and phenotype, with his own epigenetic approach, which sought to understand the mechanism connecting the two (Waddington, 2012 [1942], p. 10). The term 'epigenesis' originated in the seventeenth century and refers to the view that the embryo comes into existence during development, rather than existing in miniature as suggested by the opposing preformationist theory. The developmental psychobiologist Gilbert Gottlieb advanced a more radically epigenetic eLS subject area: Bioethics & Philosophy How to cite: Griffiths, Paul E and Hochman, Adam (October 2015) Developmental Systems Theory. In: eLS. John Wiley & Sons, Ltd: Chichester. DOI: 10.1002/9780470015902.a0003452.pub2 perspective than Waddington, distinguishing between what he termed 'predetermined' and 'probabilistic' epigenesis (Gottlieb, 1970). In predetermined epigenesis, the contents of the fertilised egg largely determine the course of development, and the environment provides mainly nonspecific support for the unfolding of the epigenetic process. In probabilistic epigenesis, the course of development depends on the interaction between each stage in development and environmental factors at that stage. Research into this kind of sensitive dependence of development on the environment is characteristic of the developmental psychobiology research tradition and embodies what Gottlieb came to call the 'developmental psychobiological systems view' (Gottlieb, 2001). See also: Epigenetic Variation in Humans; Epigenetic Factors and Chromosome Organization; Baer, Karl Ernst von Developmental systems theory also has roots in a tradition of scepticism about the innate/acquired distinction in American comparative psychology (Johnston, 2001). This culminated in an influential critique by Daniel Lehrman, which set the agenda for much research in developmental psychobiology (Lehrman, 1953). Lehrman's research, like Gottlieb's, set out to document the dependence of development on very specific interactions between the developing organism and its environment. Behaviour that had previously been labelled 'innate' would turn out to depend on environmental influences in nonobvious and sometimes surprising ways. To label behaviour as 'innate' or 'instinctive' is misleading because, as psychologist Zing Yang Kuo argued, it raises the further question, 'How are our instincts acquired?' (Kuo, 1922). Susan Oyama added an important element to development systems theory with her book The Ontogeny of Information: Developmental Systems and Evolution (Oyama, 1985). The ideas of genetic information and genetic programs have provided important theoretical support for the idea that epigenetic processes are predetermined by the contents of the fertilised egg. Oyama argued that the phenotypic significance of a single developmental factor, genetic or otherwise, is a function of its role in the larger developmental system. She analysed how the idea of genetic information has been used to minimise the impact of accepting that all phenotypes develop through the constructive interaction of genes and other developmental resources, typically lumped together as 'environmental'. See also: Geneticisation: Concept; Geneticization: Debates and Controversies The phrase 'developmental systems theory' was introduced by Donald Ford and Richard Lerner as the title of a book setting eLS © 2015, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. www.els.net 1 RE VI SE D PA GE P RO OF S Developmental Systems Theory out a systematic research agenda for developmental psychology which incorporated many of the themes introduced above (Ford and Lerner, 1992). It was soon applied to Oyama's critique of the idea of genetic information (Griffiths and Gray, 1994), and in many areas of biology the phrase is primarily associated with this idea (a more detailed history developmental systems theory can be found in Griffiths and Tabery, 2013). Epigenesis It is a truism that all traits are produced by the interaction of genetic and environmental factors (Kitcher, 2001). DST goes beyond this conventional interactionism and aims at a truly epigenetic view of development in the sense described above. The life cycle of an organism is not prefigured in a genetic program, but is constructed at each stage in development through the interaction of organism and environment. Even the production of functional products from a DNA sequence requires an interaction between the current state of the genome and the cellular environment, both of which are products of earlier stages in development, a view that has been termed 'molecular epigenesis' (Stotz, 2006). The acceptance that every trait depends on both genes and environment sometimes seems to amount to no more than admitting that every organism must have some environment and some genes. With that out of the way, the real business of settling what is due to nature and what to nurture can continue. A whole range of methods, from the study of twins to Genome Wide Association Studies (GWAS), can be used to estimate the correlation between genes and phenotype in a population. The stronger the correlation, the more the genes are said to be responsible for the trait. However, these correlations are not legitimate measures of causal responsibility; nor do they indicate how much a trait can be modified by environmental changes. Heritability measures can be increased by choosing a population who all live in similar environments. Conversely, heritability can be reduced by choosing a population of genetically similar organisms. Neither of these manipulations can reasonably be supposed to alter the relative causal role of genes and environment in the growth of the trait and neither has any bearing on how easy it is to modify the trait by manipulating nongenetic factors. So heritability measures are a very bad way to measure 'how genetic' a trait is, or how much it is due to nature rather than nurture. See also: Genome-Wide Association Studies; Nature/Nurture – A Philosophical Analysis; Genotype-Phenotype Relationships; Twinning; Twin Studies; Complex Multifactorial Genetic Diseases The idea that the genome contains a program for development makes it hard to give due weight to context sensitivity and developmental contingency. As long as the DNA is thought of as containing information about developmental outcomes, it will seem sensible to inquire whether outcomes occur because they are represented in the DNA, or whether they are due to other, merely material causal influences. Once an outcome is seen as an expression of the genetic information that controls development, it acquires a special status. It represents what the organism is 'meant to be', and deviations from it are misrepresentations of the true nature of the organism (Linquist et al., 2011). From this perspective, the effect of context on development appears as interference with the basic pattern of biological causation. For DST, however, context sensitivity is what should be expected from the nature of development. Developmental outcomes are not preformed or represented in the fertilised egg, but emerge through the interaction of each stage of the developing organism with its surroundings. See also: Evolutionary Developmental Biology: Developmental Bias and Constraint; Environmental Heterogeneity: Temporal and Spatial A key way in which DST tries to improve on the truism that there is an interaction between genes and environment is by rejecting that dichotomy itself as inadequate. There are many influences on development and many ways to group the interactants together. The distinction between genes and every other causal factor in development ('environment') is just one of many possible distinctions. Moreover, there is a fundamental 'parity' (see Box 1) between genes and other causes. The roles classically played by DNA and RNA sequences are sometimes filled by other developmental causes. For example, DNA-coding sequences determine the order of amino acids in proteins, but environmental signals can also determine this order by causing alternative splicing or editing of an mRNA transcript. Conversely, some DNA sequences play roles more usually associated with a nongenetic factor. For example, chromatin insulator regions of DNA play a role in the facultative modification of chromatin to regulate gene expression. Their role is more like the role of epigenetic mechanisms such as DNA methylation than the role played by coding regions of the DNA. See also: Imprinting (Mammals); Genetics, Reductionism and Autopoiesis Another way in which DST tries to move beyond conventional 'interactionism' is by recognising that development is a process of dynamic interaction (Ford and Lerner, 1992). It is dynamic in the sense that development at each stage builds on the results of development at an earlier stage. The components built by interaction at one stage of development are the components which do the interacting at a later stage: 'The interaction out of which the organism develops is not one, as is so often said, between heredity and environment. It is between organism and environment! And the organism is different at each stage of its development' (Lehrman, 1953, p. 345, emphasis in original). Not only the organism but also the environment changes as a result of development. For example, male sexual development in the rat depends on differential licking of the genital area of male and female pups by the mother. However, her response to male pups depends on differences in their urine, which are the result of earlier processes of sexual differentiation (Moore, 1992). The presence of this environmental influence is a feed forward from earlier development in the pup itself. See also: History of Developmental Biology Distributed Control As an epigenetic account of development, DST rejects the widespread idea in contemporary biology that development is guided by information contained within a 'genetic program' (see Box 2). According to Ernst Mayr, 'genes are merely the units of the genetic program that governs the complicated process of development, ultimately resulting in the phenotypic character' 2 eLS © 2015, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. www.els.net RE VI SE D PA GE P RO OF S Developmental Systems Theory Box 1 The Parity Thesis Susan Oyama (2000a, pp. 200–203) called for parity of reasoning when genetic and other causes play similar roles in development. The 'parity thesis' is the claim that if some role is alleged to be unique to nucleic acids and to justify relegating nongenetic factors to a secondary role in explaining development, it will turn out on closer examination that this role is not unique to nucleic acids, but can be played by other factors. Parity is often referred to as 'causal democracy' (Kitcher, 2001), although Oyama herself rejects this label (Oyama, 2000b). Causal democracy is the principle that when an effect depends on many causes, it is legitimate to investigate the significance of any of those causes, and in particular, that nongenetic causes of development are not a priori less significant than genetic causes (Kitcher, 2001, p. 290). Both parity and causal democracy are alleged by critics to amount to a refusal to accept that any cause can ever be more significant or explanatory than another (e.g. Waters, 2007, Weber, 2006). Advocates of DST have made repeated attempts to rebut this charge (Griffiths and Gray, 2005; Griffiths and Knight, 1998; Oyama, 2000b, Griffiths, in press). Box 2 The Phylogeny Fallacy In 1990, Robert Lickliter and Thomas Berry identified the phylogeny fallacy: the conflation of proximate and evolutionary explanation (Hochman, 2012). The phylogeny fallacy is committed when an evolutionary 'why' answer is given to a proximate 'how' question. Explanations that appeal to 'genetic programs' are often instances of the phylogeny fallacy because they tend be evolutionary explanations for why the trait should be considered an adaptation, rather than proximate explanations concerning the mechanisms underlying that trait. The 'genetic program' concept is deduced from the modern synthesis, it is not an object of empirical investigation. From a DST perspective, assuming adaptations to be preprogrammed into genes is a bad empirical bet. (Mayr, 1970, p. 163). This has been the consensus view ondevelopment since the modern synthesis. The most obvious way to defend talk of genetic programs and genetic information is to argue that these concepts are intended in some unproblematic sense to be related to information theory. Two coherent accounts of 'genetic information' can be found in the literature: a causal account and an intentional account (Sterelny and Griffiths, 1999). Yet, neither account can sustain the view that genes can be privileged as uniquely informational, or as the locus of a programme-controlling development. The causal account of information stems from mathematical communication theory. According to this account, information flows through a channel connecting a sender to a receiver. There is a channel between two systems whenever observing the state of the receiver reduces uncertainty about the state of the sender. Channel conditions are other factors that must be in place to connect the sender and receiver. The channel that connects the ignition key to an engine has many channel conditions, including the spark plugs, rotor and ignition coil. However, while it seems natural to treat turning the key as a 'signal' for the engine to start, and the spark plugs, rotor and ignition coil as channel conditions, this is a product of our position in the system, not a fact about the world. For an auto mechanic, the ignition is often not the signal source. When testing the ignition coil, for instance, it becomes the signal source, rather than a channel condition. Fundamental to information theory is the fact that the role of signal source and channel conditions can be switched. On the causal account, information is simply covariation. The attempt to privilege genes as uniquely informational on the causal account of information fails, as this account creates parity between DNA and other resources that affect development. By keeping a matrix of developmental resources constant, genes can covary with, and therefore give us information about, phenotypes. However, keep genes constant, and change another developmental factor, and that factor will give us information about the phenotype: 'there is no difficulty in saying that a gene carries information about adult form; an individual with the gene for achondroplasia will have short arms and legs. But we can equally well say that a baby's environment carries information about growth; if it is malnourished, it will be underweight' (Maynard Smith, 2000, p. 189). What was previously considered a channel condition now provides the source of information. 'Information talk' is thus equally applicable to nongenetic causal factors in development, according to this account of information. Maynard Smith (2000) suggested that the causal account of information does not capture what is really meant when biologists talk about genetic information. According to Maynard Smith, biologists use information in a semantic rather than a causal sense – a gene has an intended meaning rather than just causal consequences. This allowed him to accept that genes are not the only developmental causes and not the only factors that are inherited, while maintaining a fundamental asymmetry between eLS © 2015, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. www.els.net 3 RE VI SE D PA GE P RO OF S Developmental Systems Theory genes and other factors. Maynard Smith proposed a 'teleosemantic' account of information in biology: a gene contains intentional information about the phenotype that it has been selected to produce. The selective retention of advantageous genetic variation over time produces a 'genetic program' in which genes generate the developmental outcomes that they were selected for. The problem with this view is that nongenetic developmental factors have selective histories of their own, and as such they too contain information about the developmental outcomes in virtue of which they were selected. The zygote, the first cell formed when a new organism is produced by means of sexual reproduction, is a matrix of inherited structures, including basal bodies, microtubule organising centres, DNA methylation patterns, cytoplasmic polarities, membranes and organelles, all of which were designed by natural selection. For example, chemical gradients in the zygote activate a small suite of embryonic genes, determining the basic organisation of the body (front and back, up and down, etc.). They must also carry intentional information. 'Information talk', once again, is equally applicable to nongenetic causal factors in development. Hence, like previous accounts of developmental information, Maynard Smith's teleosemantic account does not achieve its stated aim of generating a distinction between the role of genes in development and the roles of other causal factors (Griffiths, 2001, Shea, 2007). See also: Genes: Definition and Structure; Function and Teleology Extended Inheritance A traditional way to privilege genes over other causes in development is to argue that genes are the only things organisms inherit from their ancestors. Hence, the biological nature of organisms must be in the genes. DST insists on a principled definition of inheritance. Humans inherit half of their DNA from their mother, and half from their father. However, we also inherit an extended set of factors, limited by the number of reliably present resources that are 'passed on' and out of which a life cycle can be reconstructed. Some of these resources are familiar, such as chromosomes, nutrients, ambient temperatures and childcare. Others are less familiar, despite the recent explosion of work on epigenetic inheritance (Jablonka and Lamb, 2005). These unfamiliar ingredients include the chromatin-marking system that regulates gene expression, cytoplasmic chemical gradients and endosymbionts. Epigenetic inheritance is the transmission of phenotypic variations to subsequent generations of cells or organisms that do not stem from changes in DNA base sequences (Jablonka and Raz, 2009). There are two senses of epigenetic inheritance: cellular epigenetic inheritance and broad epigenetic inheritance. 'Cellular epigenetic inheritance' refers to epigenetic transmission (either organism to organism, or cell to cell) of intracellular resources (organelles, DNA/histone modifications, feedback loops and membranes). This includes transmission of chromatin marks and RNAs (e.g. Wu and Morris, 2001), self-sustaining metabolic loops and chromatin inheritance in bacteria (Jablonka and Raz, 2009) and inheritance of alternative protein conformations such as prions (e.g. Uptain and Lindquist, 2002). Broad epigenetic inheritance is the transmission of nonmolecular features of the developmental system. This includes, but is not limited to, prenatal signals to the developing foetus (Gluckman and Hanson, 2004), parental effects generated through developmental interaction with offspring (e.g. Weaver et al., 2004), symbolic communication (Richerson and Boyd, 2005) and social learning (Avital and Jablonka, 2000). See also: Genomic Imprinting at the Transcriptional Level 'Niche construction' is an emerging area of biological research which draws attention to the importance of extended inheritance (Odling-Smee et al., 1996). However, developmental niche construction must be distinguished, at least conceptually, from ecological niche construction (Stotz, 2010). In ecological niche construction, organisms modify the selection pressures acting on their descendants by choosing or constructing the environments in which they and their descendants live. By this means they influence the direction of evolutionary change. For example, earthworms modify the soil to provide an aqueous niche. By doing this, earthworms have evolved very little since migrating to a terrestrial environment over 50 million years ago (Turner, 2000). In developmental niche construction, organisms structure the environment in which their descendants will develop, and thus exert environmental as well as genetic influences on the phenotypes of their descendants. Niche construction in this sense is the same thing as extended inheritance. The idea of developmental niche construction was independently suggested by developmental psychobiologists Meredith West and Andrew King (West and King, 1987) who developed the notion of the 'ontogenetic niche' to highlight the importance of the ecological and social legacies that are inherited alongside the zygote. This ontogenetic or developmental niche consists of all the resources that must be present in addition to the genome if a normal life cycle is to occur. See also: Ecological Development Biology; Life History Theory; Morphological Evolution: Epigenetic Mechanisms; Endosymbionts; Chromatin Remodelling and Histone Modification in Transcription Regulation; Sociobiology: A Philosophical Analysis Evolution 'An animal is, in fact, a developmental system, and it is these systems, not the mere static adult forms which we conventionally take as typical of the species, which become modified in the course of evolution' (Waddington, 1953, p. 155). DST expands the domain of evolutionary explanation. Evolution is not confined to changes in gene frequency, but encompasses changes in many classes of developmental resources. In the earliest stages of DST, one of Lehrman's primary targets was the idea that only 'innate' traits are explained by evolution, while 'acquired' traits must be explained by individual experience. The issue of whether a trait has an evolutionary explanation is quite separate from the issue of whether its development depends on specific features of the environment. As Lehrman argued, Natural selection acts to select genomes that, in a normal developmental environment, will guide development into organisms with the relevant adaptive characteristics. But the path of development from the zygote stage to the 4 eLS © 2015, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. www.els.net RE VI SE D PA GE P RO OF S Developmental Systems Theory phenotypic adult is devious, and includes many developmental processes, including, in some cases, various aspects of experience'. (Lehrman, 1970, p. 36) The 'normal environment' to which Lehrman refers is the 'developmental niche' discussed in the previous section. The developmental niche is not merely somewhere that the genome finds itself. It is actively constructed through the activities of earlier generations, especially parents, and the activity of the developing organism itself (West and King, 1987). These activities, as well as the genes with which they interact, are products of evolution. DST has been criticised for replacing the clear boundaries of an organism (but see Bouchard and Huneman, 2013) with the vague and indeterminate boundaries of a 'system'. This criticism seems less telling if we think of the system as a genome plus the developmental niche. It is uncontroversial that evolution did not simply design the genome and leave the rest to chance. The 'aspects of experience' to which Lehrman refers are also the result of evolutionary design – obvious examples include nests, breast milk and parental care. More broadly, all elements of the developmental niche that mediate adaptive parental effects must, by definition, have been designed by natural selection (Mousseau and Fox, 1998). However, the role of evolution in designing the niche goes beyond this. Nearly all mammals can synthesise ascorbic acid (vitamin C). So the presence of vitamin C in their physical environment is not part of their developmental niche. However, primates like ourselves evolved to replace endogenous production of vitamin C with environmental sources (Jukes and King, 1975), thus making that aspect of the environment part of the developmental system. While DST expands the developmental process to incorporate neglected elements of the developmental system, it limits those elements to those resources whose presence in each generation is necessary for the characteristics that are stably reproduced in the lineage. Enthusiasts and sceptics about the evolutionary significance of extended inheritance often seem to agree that its significance depends on how reliably nongenetic factors are inherited across evolutionary time, and on thus how similar nongenetic resources are to genes (Jablonka and Raz, 2009). DST takes a rather different perspective. For DST, extended inheritance is simply one aspect of how developmental systems reproduce themselves. It is not important because it is a separate evolutionary process in which nongenetic factors evolve in a way that parallels genetic evolution. The primary reason that extended inheritance matters is because genetic and nongenetic factors evolve together as components of evolving developmental systems (Griffiths and Gray, 2004). It is uncontroversial to point out that when parents influence offspring phenotypes through nongenetic means, this must be included in a population genetic model, if that model is to make correct predictions about either phenotypic or genetic change (Wolf and Wade, 2009). So from the DST perspective, nongenetic heredity is not important because it mirrors genetic heredity. It is important because the mechanisms of heredity, whatever they are, affect the dynamics of evolution. See also: Developmental Evolution; Evolution of Development; Lorenz, Konrad Zacharias Criticisms of DST Through its focus on causal interconnectedness DST makes actual causal analysis impossible If, in order to analyse development, one has to analyse the entire developmental system, DST would be doomed to failure by its own inclusiveness. However, DST takes a more strategic approach to complexity. As Oyama (2000b) has argued, DST does not render causal analysis impossible; on the contrary, it makes it more precise and more ample: more precise by discouraging overgeneralisations, more ample by broadening the scope of potentially significant developmental resources. Any investigation of complex phenomena requires a certain amount of 'black boxing'. Developmental systems theorists practice 'tactical' black boxing, in that it is always provisional and driven by pragmatic concerns. DST is 'armchair philosophy' This criticism seems to derive from a simple misunderstanding. Developmental systems theorists include philosophers, psychologists and biologists. They have often published in philosophy journals on the merits of DST. However, the disciplinary home of DST is not philosophy but biology and psychobiology (see Introduction). DST is not a philosophical offering to biology, but rather an attempt to abstract a theoretical framework from the work of a set of developmentally minded scientists (Griffiths and Gray, 2005). DST makes no specific predictions In a particularly strong attack on DST, Tooby et al. claim that 'developmental systems theory makes no specific predictions of any sort and thus is useless as a scientific theory' (Tooby et al., 2003, p. 860). This criticism may in part derive from the name 'developmental systems theory'. DST is not a 'theory' in the hypothetico-deductive sense. Rather, it is a biological framework (Godfrey-Smith, 2001). The fact that it makes no specific predictions is not a problem. The same could be said of evolutionary developmental biology, or of the 'genes-eye view'. However, like those other perspectives it does make general predictions: that development has no single locus of control, that the impact of any given cause is contingent upon the state of the system as a whole, that the notion of the 'genetic program' is of little heuristic value, that the study of heredity will benefit by an inclusive approach and that Lehrman's 'aspects of experience', as well as genes, can be explained by natural selection. References Avital E and Jablonka E (2000) Animal Traditions: Behavioural Inheritance in Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Bouchard F and Huneman P (2013) From Groups to Individuals: Evolution and Emerging Individuality. Cambridge and Massachusetts: MIT Press. eLS © 2015, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. www.els.net 5 RE VI SE D PA GE P RO OF S Developmental Systems Theory Ford DH and Lerner RM (1992) Developmental Systems Theory: An integrative approach. Newbury Park, California: Sage. Gluckman P and Hanson M (2004) The Fetal Matrix: Evolution, Development and Disease. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Godfrey-Smith P (2001) On the status and explanatory structure of developmental systems theory. In: Oyama S, Griffiths PE and Gray RD (eds) Cycles of Contingency: Developmental Systems and Evolution, pp. 283–297. Cambridge and Massachusetts: MIT Press. Gottlieb G (1970) Conceptions of prenatal behavior. In: Aronson LR, Tobach E, Lehrman DS and Rosenblatt JS (eds) Development and Evolution of Behavior: Essays in Memory of T. C. Schneirla, pp. 111–137. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman. Gottlieb G (2001) A developmental psychobiological systems view: early formulation and current status. In: Oyama S, Griffiths PE and Gray RD (eds) Cycles of Contingency: Developmental Systems and Evolution, pp. 41–54. Cambridge and Massachusetts: MIT Press. Griffiths PE (2001) Genetic information: a metaphor in search of a theory. Philosophy of Science 68 (3): 394–412. Griffiths PE and Gray RD (1994) Developmental systems and evolutionary explanation. Journal of Philosophy XCI (6): 277–304. Griffiths PE and Gray RD (2004) The developmental systems perspective: organism-environment systems as units of development and evolution. In: Massimo Pigliucci and Katherine Preston (eds) In Phenotypic Integration: Studying the Ecology and Evolution of Complex Phenotypes, pp. 409–431. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Griffiths PE and Gray RD (2005) Three ways to misunderstand developmental systems theory. Biology and Philosophy 20 (2): 417–425. Griffiths PE and Knight RD (1998) What is the developmentalist challenge? Philosophy of Science 65 (2): 253–258. Griffiths PE and Tabery JG (2013) Developmental systems theory: what does it explain, and how does it explain it? Advances in Child Development and Behavior 45: 65–94. Griffiths PE (In Press) Proximate and ultimate information in biology. In: Couch M and Pfeiffer J (eds) Festschrifft for Philip Kitcher. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hochman A (2012) The phylogeny fallacy and the ontogeny fallacy. Biology and Philosophy 28 (4): 593–612. Jablonka E and Lamb MJ (2005) Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life. Cambridge and Massachusetts: MIT press. Jablonka E and Raz G (2009) Transgenerational epigenetic inheritance: prevalence, mechanisms, and implications for the study of heredity and evolution. The Quarterly Review of Biology 84 (2): 131–176. Johnston TD (2001) Towards a systems view of development: an appraisal of Lehrman's critique of Lorenz. In: Oyama S, Griffiths PE and Gray RD (eds) Cycles of Contingency: Developmental Systems and Evolution, pp. 15–23. Cambridge and Massachusetts: MIT Press. Jukes TH and King JL (1975) Evolutionary loss of ascorbic acid synthesizing ability. Journal of Human Evolution 4: 85–88. Kitcher P (2001) Battling the undead: how (and how not) to resist genetic determinism. In: Singh R, Krimbas K, Paul D and Beatty J (eds) Thinking About Evolution: Historical, Philosophical and Political Perspectives (Festchrifft for Richard Lewontin), pp. 396–414. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kuo ZY (1922) How are our instincts acquired? Psychological Review 29: 344–365. Lehrman DS (1953) Critique of Konrad Lorenz's theory of instinctive behavior. Quarterly Review of Biology 28 (4): 337–363. Lehrman DS (1970) Semantic and conceptual issues in the nature-nurture problem. In: Lehrman DS (ed) Development and the Evolution of Behaviour, pp. 17–52. San Francisco: W. H. Freeman and Co.. Lickliter R and Berry TD (1990) The phylogeny fallacy: developmental psychology's misapplication of evolutionary theory. Developmental Review 10 (4): 348–364. Linquist S, Machery E, Griffiths PE and Stotz K (2011) Exploring the folk biological conception of human nature. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 366: 444–453. Maynard Smith J (2000) The concept of information in biology. Philosophy of Science 67 (2): 177–194. Mayr E (1970) Populations, Species, and Evolution: An Abridgment of Animal Species and Evolution. Belknap: Press. Moore CL (1992) The role of maternal stimulation in the development of sexual behavior and its neural basis. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 662: 160–177. Mousseau TA and Fox CW (1998) Maternal Effects as Adaptations. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Odling-Smee FJ, Laland KN and Feldman MW (1996) Niche construction. American Naturalist 147 (4): 641–648. Oyama S (1985) The Ontogeny of Information: Developmental Systems and evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Oyama S (2000a) The Ontogeny of Information: Developmental Systems and Evolution, 2nd edn. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. Oyama S (2000b) Causal democracy and causal contributions in developmental systems theory. Philosophy of Science 67: 332–347. Richerson PJ and Boyd R (2005) Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Shea N (2007) Representation in the genome and in other inheritance systems. Biology and Philosophy 22 (3): 313–331. Sterelny K and Griffiths PE (1999) Sex and Death: An Introduction to Philosophy of Biology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Stotz K (2006) Molecular epigenesis: distributed specificity as a break in the central dogma. History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 28 (4): 527–544. Stotz K (2010) Human nature and cognitive-developmental niche construction. Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 9 (4): 483–501. Tooby J, Cosmides L and Barrett HC (2003) The second law of thermodynamics is the first law of psychology: evolutionary developmental psychology and the theory of tandem, coordinated inheritances: comment on Lickliter and Honeycutt. Psychological Bulletin 129 (6): 858. Turner JS (2000) The Extended Organism: The Physiology of Animal-Built Structures. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London: Harvard University Press. Uptain SM and Lindquist S (2002) Prions as protein-based genetic elements. Annual Review of Microbiology 56 (1): 703–741. Waddington CH (1940) Organisers and Genes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Waddington CH (1952) The evolution of developmental systems. In: Herbert DA (ed) Proceedings of the Twenty-eighth Meeting of the Australian and New Zealand Association for the Advancement of 6 eLS © 2015, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. www.els.net RE VI SE D PA GE P RO OF S Developmental Systems Theory Science, pp. 155–159. Brisbane, Australia: A.H Tucker, Government Printer. Waddington CH (1953) The "Baldwin Effect", "Genetic Assimilation" and "Homeostasis". Evolution 7 (4): 386–387. Waddington CH (2012[1942]) The epigenotype. International Journal of Epidemiology 41 (1): 10–13. Waters CK (2007) Causes that make a difference. Journal of Philosophy 104 (11): 551–579. Weber M (2006) The central dogma as a thesis of causal specificity. History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 28 (4): 595–609. Weaver ICG, Cervoni N, Champagne FA, et al. (2004) Epigenetic programming by maternal behavior. Nature Neuroscience 7 (8): 847–854. West MJ and King AP (1987) Settling nature and nurture into an ontogenetic niche. Developmental Psychobiology 20 (5): 549–562. Wolf JB and Wade MJ (2009) What are maternal effects (and what are they not)? Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, B: Biological Sciences 364 (1520): 1107–1115. Wu C and Morris J (2001) Genes, genetics, and epigenetics: a correspondence. Science 293 (5532): 1103–1105. Further Reading Bateson P and Gluckman P (2011) Plasticity, Robustness, Development and Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Gissis S and Jablonka E (2011) The Transformations of Lamarckism: From Subtle Fluids to Molecular Biology. Cambridge: MIT Press. Griffiths P and Stotz K (2013) Genetics and Philosophy: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Maestripieri D and Mateo JM (2009) Maternal Effects in Mammals. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Michel GF and Moore CL (1995) Developmental Psychobiology: An Interdisciplinary Science. Cambridge: MIT Press. Moore DS (2003) The Dependent Gene: The Fallacy of "Nature Vs. Nurture." New York: Henry Holt and Company. Moore DS (2015) The Developing Genome: An Introduction to Behavioral Epigenetics. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. Oyama S (2000c) Evolution's Eye: A Systems View of the Biology-Culture Divide. Durham, North Carolina: Duke University Press. Robert JS (2004) Embryology, Epigenesis and Evolution: Taking Development Seriously. New York: Cambridge University Press. eLS © 2015, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. www.els.net | {
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© Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, 2008 DOI: 10.1163/187219108X300019 Societies Without Borders 3 (2008) 209–227 www.brill.nl/swb S W B Mexican Immigration Scenarios Based on the South African Experience of Ending Apartheid Edward Murguia and Kim Díaz Texas A&M University, College Station, Texas, USA Received 19 November 2007; accepted 5 December 2007 Abstract How can we ameliorate the current immigration policies toward Mexican people immigrating to the United States? Th is study re-examines how the development of scenarios assisted South Africa to dismantle apartheid without engaging in a bloody civil war. Following the scenario approach, we articulate positions taken by different interest groups involved in the debate concerning immigration from Mexico. Next, we formulate a set of scenarios which are evaluated as to how well each contributes to the well-being of the populace both of Mexico and of the United States. Th e South African scenario model has proven to be an effective tool in times of political disagreement. It fosters a common language among competing groups, non-hierarchal communication among groups, and acknowledgement of the concerns of each group involved. Keywords Mexican immigration, apartheid, scenarios, human betterment, policy Introduction On February 2, 1990, President F.W. de Klerk of South Africa signaled the transition away from apartheid by asking, "What will the new South Africa look like?"1 Before South Africa ended apartheid in 1994, groups of South Africans worked together using a scenario approach to understand what needs had to be met and what options were available to the nation at that critical period. In phase one of the scenario approach, leaders of different interest groups were brought together to state their needs and concerns. 1) Gailer 2004. p. 373. 210 E. Murguia, K. Díaz / Societies Without Borders 3 (2008) 209–227 During this stage, participants did not argue or negotiate about a particular outcome; they only stated their positions. In phase two, preliminary scenarios were developed as to what could happen in the future to South Africa, with varying interest groups developing scenarios reflecting their divergent interests. Each participant took a 'learning journey' to be able to see the different realities at play and to notice how the world looked from other perspectives. Th e last phase of the scenario model was scenario development by the entire team of participants where, depending on what was done or not done in South Africa in the present, a final small number of scenarios were developed by all the participants working together. Out of the final set of scenarios, one was selected as optimal in that if followed, life chances for most people would be enhanced.2 Th e scenario model presented here is a heuristic version of what ideally could take place among different interest groups involved in the current debate on immigration from Mexico. To do this, we first develop the different interest groups' positions as robustly and fairly as possible. We then develop four scenarios that address the concerns of the different interest groups, each of these four predicting a different outcome. We then select one as having the greatest potential of improving the quality of life for the greatest number of people in Mexico and in the United States. We believe the South African scenario model to be a valuable tool, not only for offering solutions to political problems, but also for building a community of people who care about finding lasting solutions based on mutual agreement. Th e scenario model is a useful approach both on an empirical/practical basis given its effectiveness in South Africa, but also on a theoretical level. It reflects the Jeffersonian democratic sensibility of the United States at its best, namely, an emphasis on the value of community, and of non-hierarchical communication effective for obtaining consensus. In this context, the only intolerable stance is intolerance itself. As opposed to other contexts where participants holding entrenched positions operate in a winner-take-all mode, the scenario model allows participants involved to meet one another on neutral ground, that is, on hypothetical ground. Participants project their interests into the future where they consider possible consequences of actions taken at present. In this way, participants become aware that their positions might not be totally fair to others. One of the virtues of the scenario model is that it acknowledges that everyone has a legitimate voice in the conversation. 2) Beery, Eidinow, and Murphy nd; Le Roux and Maphai nd; Gailer 2004. E. Murguia, K. Díaz / Societies Without Borders 3 (2008) 209–227 211 Scenario thinking should not be confused with attempts simply to forecast the future; in scenario development, two or more futures are developed. Interestingly though, there is a better chance of actually predicting the future using a scenario approach because multiple futures are developed. Using scenario thinking, the future is addressed considering numerous factors, and this, in itself, leads to a more sophisticated analysis of what is likely to happen. After all is said and done, often one scenario comes to be seen as optimal by participants and this is the scenario that either overtly or covertly becomes both descriptive (describes what might happen) and, importantly, prescriptive (describes what ought to happen), and is supported by most of the participants. Th e most famous set of South African scenarios were the "Mont Fleur" scenarios, led by Professor Pieter le Roux of the University of the Western Cape in May 1992 and held at that University. A core group of five people, including Professor le Roux, organized the meetings. As opposed to meetings at conferences where experts present and audiences listen, this series of meetings was organized in a different way. A multi-disciplinary team of 22 participants, including politicians, academics, union officials, and business people was brought together. Also invited was Adam Kahane, a recognized expert in scenario planning.3 Th e intent was for participants to study the nature of the South African crisis from economic, social, and political perspectives; there was a realization that simultaneous intervention in all three areas was needed. Originally, thirty scenarios were brainstormed by the Mont Fleur team, which were reduced to nine based on both on scenario plausibility and internal consistency. Finally, the nine were further reduced to four, and highly descriptive and memorable avian names were given to the four, namely, Ostrich, Lame Duck, Icarus, and Flight of the Flamingos.4 An ostrich in time of trouble, as ancient myth based on the Roman writer, Pliny the Elder, has it, refuses to face danger, instead inserting its head in sand in time of trouble. Also, it is unable to fly. In this case, the Ostrich Scenario described a situation where it was hypothesized that the de Klerk government would simply stop negotiations with native African groups and would stubbornly attempt to maintain the status quo, including apartheid, into the future. 3) Beery, Eidinow, and Murphy, nd; Le Roux and Maphai nd; Gailer 2004, pp. 375–6. 4) Gailer 2004, p. 376; Jimenez, nd. 212 E. Murguia, K. Díaz / Societies Without Borders 3 (2008) 209–227 A lame duck describes a bird with a broken wing not able to fly very far. Th e Lame Duck Scenario envisaged a future where the South African government saw a need for reform but did not follow through with needed changes, and where liberation movements froze in place because of fear of continued repression. Given international sanctions imposed on South Africa at the time, no international investment would flow into South Africa in the future without its abandonment of apartheid, thus blocking its economic development. According to Greek mythology, Icarus, with wings fashioned by his father, Daedalus, and exhilarated by his ability to fly, flew too high and the sun melted his wings, causing him to fall to his death. Th e Icarus Scenario described a future where too much is done too quickly. A complete change in government exclusively in favor of blacks in South Africa, according to Mont Fleur participants, would lead to dramatically increased and unsustainable social spending. Th is, in turn, would create economic and social imbalances resented by whites formerly in power, leading to economic and social disintegration. Ultimately, this breakdown of South African society would lead to reactionary authoritarian rule by whites. Flamingos beginning their flight tend to take off relatively slowly, but they fly together, and together they eventually attain great heights. Th e Flight of the Flamingos Scenario, therefore, foresaw a South Africa marked by inclusive democracy marking the end of apartheid and the end of economic sanctions by the international community. Th e result would be a condition of sustainable economic change and growth in South Africa.5 Th e significant impact of the Mont Fleur scenarios after they became very well known in South Africa can be measured by President de Klerk's comment, "I am not an Ostrich."6 As indicated, the first phase of the scenario model calls for participants who hold differing positions to state their concerns. Ideally, this scenario planning would take place in actuality, but due to the limits of this article, this is done theoretically, and we only consider seven positions. However, some points of contention advocated by other groups overlap with those of the seven interest groups represented here. Th e positions we consider are those held by the socially conservative right, the economic right, liberal Democrats, Latino advocacy groups, Mexico's elite, undocumented work5) Gailer 2004, pp. 376–77. 6) Jimenez nd. E. Murguia, K. Díaz / Societies Without Borders 3 (2008) 209–227 213 ers themselves, and by culturally nationalist Chicano groups. Th e following is our best attempt to articulate objectively each of these groups' interests. Each position was written by us and in the first person to facilitate understanding of seven differing stances. Positions Represented Th e Socially Conservative Right We are concerned with the immigration issue on several levels. One of our concerns is that the United States is losing its national identity. We believe that with so many Mexican immigrants coming into the US, Mexicans are taking over our country. Th is creates a 'clash of civilizations,' a clash of languages and values that undermines legitimate US national identity. We are concerned with protecting our national identity, our language, and our culture. We are in the US after all; Mexicans already have their own country. It is not right for them to violate our laws by coming into the US illegally. We should make illegal entry into our country a felony and we should make assisting illegal aliens a felony as well. Also, since they accept low paying jobs with wages near the minimum wage, a number of employers hire them rather than American citizens. Th is causes the unemployment rate among Americans to be higher than otherwise, since Americans have to compete with immigrants for jobs. Because of 700,000 illegal immigrants coming into our country per year (Passel 2005), more and more Spanish is being spoken in America whose official language should be English. We acknowledge that we are a nation built upon the work of immigrants, but other immigrants have assimilated to the American culture and have learned to speak our nation's language. On principle, we do not agree with Mexicans coming into our country illegally; it is not fair to those immigrants who have had to wait by seeking entry through the legal process. Furthermore, we are concerned with Mexicans' resistance to assimilation into the American culture. If Mexicans want to immigrate into the US they must do so legally; if they want to be part of our community they must share our American values and speak our language. Additionally, it is not fair for Americans to pay, through our taxes, for illegal immigrant access to education and to hospitals in the US. Our taxes should insure the well-being and growth of our communities; our people 214 E. Murguia, K. Díaz / Societies Without Borders 3 (2008) 209–227 should come first. Th ere are plenty of us who are here legally, who work legally, who pay taxes, and who also need federal help or welfare. We believe that the best way to solve this problem is by building a wall that spans the entire length of the US-Mexico border. Our current policies are not effective in keeping Mexicans from illegally coming and staying in our country; therefore we must seek added methods of law enforcement. We need to train and to station many more border patrol agents. Th is will create more jobs and benefit the local economies. Th is will be a positive side-effect of our main goal – to protect our country and our national identity from illegal immigrants. It is also a matter of national security. It is our patriotic duty to protect our borders from terrorist groups whose intentions are to undermine America and American values of democracy and freedom. Everyone coming into the United States should be carefully checked, and enemies of our country as well as those who attempt to break our laws by entering illegally, must be jailed. Huntington (2004) is an example of a book written from the "Socially Conservative Right" position.7 Th e Economic Right: Th e US Business Community We want to further the economic interests of the United States by employing Mexican labor both in Mexico and in the US. We have invested in the Mexican economy by employing Mexican people in maquiladoras (factories) located in Mexico. We have been able to do this through economic partnerships such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Our corporations benefit from investing in Mexico's economy by providing jobs in Mexico because the cost of labor in Mexico is $2.63 dollars/hr. compared to the US which is $23.65 dollars/hr.8 Our corporations save money by paying less on wages, on employment benefits, and less in the process of manufacturing generally speaking because of relaxed environmental regulations in Mexico. We believe that it is in the American public's best interest to capitalize on immigrant labor for our companies in the United States. Mexican immigrants are hardworking people who are willing to take jobs that most Americans do not want. Th ey are an integral part of our economy. We support the guest-worker program because it would allow our businesses to 7) Huntington 2004. 8) US Department of Labor 2007. E. Murguia, K. Díaz / Societies Without Borders 3 (2008) 209–227 215 benefit from immigrant labor. We believe that this is the best way to monitor the labor of immigrants, and we believe that this program would benefit immigrants themselves. Th e guest-worker program would grant some degree of workers' rights to immigrants, whereas currently, undocumented workers have no workers' rights. Th is is the least we can do to acknowledge their contribution to our economy. Th eir government does not represent or seem to care about their interests, and immigrant workers have to take care of their families solely through their own hard work. For an example of the 'Economic Right' position, see Bush.9 Progressive Democrats We believe that undocumented immigrants who have worked in this country, who have contributed to our economy, and whose children are now American, have in fact become part of the American community. We think that we should provide them with the opportunity to legalize their status. Th is opportunity would become available to them if they go through a series of steps such as passing a background check that insures the safety of our community. We support a guest-worker program that would legalize their work, would provide them with workers' rights, and would benefit our economy. See Kennedy (2007) for an example of this position.10 Latino Advocacy Groups We believe that immigrant workers have earned the right to join the American community through their labor. We want immigrant workers to be granted workers' rights. Th ey need to be paid at least the minimum wage and they need to have the same rights as other workers. Th ey should have the right to ask for a raise after a period of time or after increased productivity. Th ey should be able to call in sick without fear of being fired, and they should have the right to report abuses at the work place. All of these are workers' rights which they do not currently have. It is not fair that the different treatment of workers is justified by a set of 'laws' that allow the abuse of undocumented workers. Th e morality of these laws is questionable since they allow the dehumanization of a hard working group of people. Mexican immigrant workers take jobs that Americans do not want or 9) Th e Whitehouse Office of the Press Secretary. 2004. 10) Kennedy 2007. 216 E. Murguia, K. Díaz / Societies Without Borders 3 (2008) 209–227 find degrading, jobs such as dishwashers, maids, janitors, or jobs in agriculture, in construction, or in the meat packing industry. Th e least we can do is acknowledge the value of their labor by granting them workers' rights. We oppose the criminalization of illegal immigration and the criminalization of those who help undocumented workers in their struggle, such as kind individuals in the public sector, in the Catholic Church, and within our own families. We oppose building a wall to keep Mexicans from immigrating into the US. Such a wall would be insulting, degrading, and useless. We support a guest-worker program that legitimizes the labor of guest workers from Mexico by giving them workers' rights and benefits. See, for example, National Council of La Raza (2007).11 Mexico's Elite We support both amnesty for undocumented workers currently in the United States, as well as a guest-worker program for workers from Mexico. Immigrants should be granted amnesty if they meet requirements as set forth by the U.S. government. A guest worker program would allow Mexican laborers the opportunity to work legally in the US, at the same time being able to legally return to Mexico to be with their families. Th is would eliminate the current vicious black market of human trafficking as well as the deaths of roughly 500 immigrants per year who die attempting to cross the US–Mexico border.12 Mexicans emigrate to the US because wages are higher in the US than in Mexico. People are attracted to the possibility of earning more money than they could earn in Mexico. We currently are working to develop our economic infrastructure by creating more jobs; however, at this time, we cannot compete with the higher wages the US offers, and with the lure of making a great deal of money in a very short time in the United States. We oppose the building of a wall along the US–Mexican border. A wall would be a unilateral decision in the part of the US, ignoring our preferences as well as ignoring the needs of communities along the US–Mexican border. Mexico's elite is the group of people who would be legally representing the Mexican people at a US–Mexico bargaining table. For an example of this perspective, see Baker (2007).13 11) National Council of La Raza. 2007. 12) US Government Accountability Office: 2006. 13) Baker 2007. E. Murguia, K. Díaz / Societies Without Borders 3 (2008) 209–227 217 Undocumented Workers We are only doing what any other human being would do in our situation. It is difficult to provide for one's family in Mexico. Our immigration into the US is not a complete act of free agency; our decision was in some ways coerced by the economic oppression we suffer in Mexico. It is very painful for us to leave our families behind and leave the place we call home. To do so, it is either because we have no choice in that we need to feed our families, or that we see the prospect of a better life, especially for our children, in the United States. Perhaps both of these reasons drive us north to find work. We are simply doing what any caring parent, son, or daughter would do for their family, that is, to help put bread on the table. Th e economic landscape in Mexico is injurious towards us in the working class. In Mexico, we worked in agriculture, or in maquiladoras that are foreign owned; however wages in Mexico are not enough to support a family. Th is economic problem goes hand in hand with a social problem that we have in Mexico and share with most developing countries, namely that of openly displayed corruption. Unfortunately, corruption, although it exists to some extent in all governments, is ever present in Mexico. Th is makes it difficult for us to remain in a country run by an elitist government that often does not have our interests in mind. We feel that our labor is exploited by foreign corporations and that our own government is so unreliable that it is easier for us to risk our lives crossing a desert and start from scratch in the US than to remain in Mexico. We are economically coerced into immigrating to the U.S where our labor is further exploited because of our illegal immigrant status. We have no rights, neither worker rights, nor legal rights; we do not speak the English language so we are not even able to make our voices heard. We cannot complain of any abuses, whether these are at the workplace or in any other areas of our lives. To whom do we go to complain when we are being abused? To whom do we complain when our basic human rights are being violated? Our illegal status becomes the justification for our subhuman treatment. We contribute to the US economy by doing work that Americans find degrading and prefer not to take because of low pay and harsh working conditions. Also, we pay sales taxes and we have money taken out of each paycheck that we will never claim as long as we remain illegal. Because we pay taxes, we do contribute directly to the communities and to the nation in which we now live, but unlike other workers we are not able to share the benefits of living in the US. As a result, in terms of rights and privileges 218 E. Murguia, K. Díaz / Societies Without Borders 3 (2008) 209–227 that people have in the US, we exist in a social class lower than the lower class. We want our work ethic to be acknowledged, not criminalized. We are hard-working people who care about our families and simply want the opportunity to be able to work legally. We are not asking for a hand-out or to be given free money or to receive economic aid. We are asking only for the opportunity to be able to work for our living. We need worker's rights, and we need amnesty. We need policies that allow immigrants to come into the US; that allow us to work, and if we work hard for the benefit of the US for a given length of time, that fact should allow us to stay. We no longer want to risk our lives swimming across a river or crossing the desert. We do not want to risk our safety by being at the mercy of coyotes (people smugglers). We stand alone in this struggle. It has become clear to us that the Mexican elite do not have our interests in mind when recommending domestic or foreign policies. Th e Mexican government prefers for us to leave Mexico for two reasons. First, we send back an average of $18.1 billion dollars in remittances annually, and this is the second largest contribution to the national income after oil and followed by tourism (World Bank, 2006). Second, once we are out of the country, we are no longer in Mexico investing the energy necessary to create social reform. We can not, therefore, challenge the policies of the Mexican elite in Mexico when we are busy paving roads and picking grapes in the US to make enough money to send back to our families. Th is position is best articulated by advocacy groups such as the National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights (2006).14 Chicano Cultural Nationalists We believe that current laws concerning immigration from Mexico have not been ethical and must be changed so that Mexican people are treated with human dignity. We need to acknowledge the history of the US. Europeans drove the Native American people out of their land into reservations. Anglos not only stole the land from Native Americans, they also invaded Mexico in 1846 and proceeded to take land that now constitutes the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, and Utah from Mexico (Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo 1848). Mexicans 14) National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights 2006. E. Murguia, K. Díaz / Societies Without Borders 3 (2008) 209–227 219 have lived in the southwestern part of the US even before the United States was established. We were already here; this is our country. It was the US who stole this land from Mexico and decided to incorporate us into their country. We need laws that reflect this historical fact. We should not be treated as foreigners in our own land. We feel a strong sense of cultural nationalism and are not apologetic about it. We do not feel that there is anything wrong in having a sense of cultural pride and as such we intend to continue teaching our children Spanish and to pass on our cultural values to them. We believe that schools should consider and reflect the needs of their communities. We want our children to have access to dual language programs which best meet their needs and encourage their development. Dual language programs acknowledge the legitimacy of both English and Spanish as forms of communication. According to a Latino scholar, "the rapid loss of parental languages unaccompanied by English fluency is associated with negative consequences, including poor self-esteem and a more common sense of shame at their parents' culture."15 When a child's (or any person's) language is disparaged, language is not the only entity that is disregarded. Along with our language comes a world view which is dismissed as not having the same value as the American or 'English' world view. Th is creates feelings of inadequacy and/ or lack of intelligence among us which, needless to say, is detrimental to our healthy development. Th is approach is best explicated in Murguia,16 – and best currently represented by Mexica.17 Four Scenarios of Mexican Immigration to the United States Based on the seven positions on Mexican immigration to the US described above, we develop four scenarios of possible outcomes concerning this issue. As in the case of the Mont Fleur Scenarios, we also use an avian typology. Th e four scenarios we developed are: Caged Birds, Unrestrained Birds, Trained Birds, and Soaring Eagles. Th e four scenarios are briefly defined and we analyze each scenario from the point of view of human betterment. 15) Portes and Rumbaut 2001, p. 134. 16) Murguia 1975, pp. 6–9. 17) Mexica 2007. 220 E. Murguia, K. Díaz / Societies Without Borders 3 (2008) 209–227 Caged Birds In the Caged Birds Scenario, being in the United States illegally would be a felony, and assisting anyone who is in the United States illegally also would be a felony. A wall would be built along the US border with Mexico, and the border would be increasingly militarized with augmented numbers of border patrol agents, assisted by national guard units of the US military, stationed along the border. Unrestrained Birds Th e Unrestrained Birds Scenario would minimize, as the scenario's designation indicates, border restrictions. Th ere would be a relatively free flow of people to and from Mexico similar to the free flow of goods as authorized by the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Permits to work in the United States would be relatively easy to obtain by Mexican nationals, and citizenship would follow after a relatively short time in the United States. Trained Birds Th e Trained Birds Scenario describes the situation that we have now. Undocumented workers are apprehended in the United States are sent back to Mexico. Businesses caught employing undocumented workers face fines. Undocumented workers labor in the United States, but with the fear of being deported. Because they are undocumented, they are at the mercy of their employers, who are free to exploit them. Soaring Eagles In the Soaring Eagles Scenario, discussions occur between the United States, with a national symbol of the American bald eagle, and Mexico, with the symbol of the golden eagle. In this scenario, the United States government would shift from emphasis on 'center-right' policies to 'centerleft' policies. Center-right policies are favorable to businesses, large corporate businesses in particular. Center-left policies address challenges that go beyond the production of consumer goods by corporate America. For example, John F. Kennedy, during his campaign for the presidency and influenced by John Kenneth Gailbraith's Th e Affluent Society, stated that while America had solved the challenge of providing sufficient consumer goods for its people, what remained were "those problems which lie largely E. Murguia, K. Díaz / Societies Without Borders 3 (2008) 209–227 221 in the realm of public action – bad housing, poverty, recessions, unemployment, discrimination, crowded and obsolete schools. . . . polluted air and water."18 Approximately fifty years later, identical problems remain in the United States. Both governments engage in wide ranging discussions with one another with the goal of moving both nations toward prosperity. Mexico receives what it needs to progress from being a "developing nation" toward becoming a "developed nation". Th e United States receives what it needs in terms of labor and manufactured goods. Th e two nations meet as equals and treat each other as equals. In the discussion, all groups in the United States are given a voice, but since the goal is mutual prosperity, solutions that lead toward criminalization are rejected in favor of those that lead toward human betterment of people both in the United States and in Mexico. What is proposed is a model where differences between the two nations are minimized as has happened in the European Union, making cooperation possible between nations such as Germany, France, and Spain that had been at war for centuries. Th ese nations now have a common currency, a unifying rail system, and common economic policies. From an economic point of view, it is in the best interests of political and corporate leaders to acknowledge how dependent the United States is on the labor of immigrants in order for it to compete globally, and also to acknowledge how deeply its economy would suffer should undocumented workers decide to hold strikes. Center-left governments concerned with furthering the well-being of their constituents would be the optimal political background for the Soaring Eagles Scenario. Center-left governments favor social programs that help the middle, working and lower classes, whereas center-right governments are characterized by limited social spending, allowing corporations maximum autonomy, maximal military spending to enable corporations to obtain and secure new markets, and tax cuts for the rich. A historical example of a center-left government in internal affairs is Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal, although Roosevelt also had to deal internationally with fascist governments in World War II during the latter part of his presidency. A second example of center-left policies would be those implemented by President Lyndon Johnson related to his War on Poverty in the 1960's, although, again, his efforts would be affected by war, this time the War in Vietnam. 18) Collier and Horowitz 1976, p. 411. 222 E. Murguia, K. Díaz / Societies Without Borders 3 (2008) 209–227 A center-left government benefits non-elites to a greater extent than does a center-right government. As outlined by Bottomore, the poor stay very poor because of unemployment and illness.19 Th ey lack affordable medical care, or may find themselves employed only to be able to pay back debt accrued by reason of illness. Center-left governments support government assistance for social programs that create jobs and thereby assist people to move from unemployment into the workforce. As unemployment rates diminish, more people have access to affordable medical care. An important trait of Center-left governments is that they transfer some wealth from the very rich to the middle, working, and lower classes when the wealth of the extremely rich becomes excessive. Center-left governments, according to Bottomore, support progressive income taxes, capital gains taxes, and inheritance taxes so that some of the wealth of the rich who have what they need in the private sector is transferred to the public sector to support entities such as public schools, public parks, and public transportation. Th ose who benefit most from the social structure and laws in the United States should shoulder their fair share of taxes which then go toward the human betterment of the non-elite. When the choice is between allowing the rich to purchase a second yacht versus providing affordable housing or buying expensive alcohol versus feeding hungry children, there should be no doubt as to what the United States should do. An inheritance tax is particularly important because wealth going to the children of the very rich is not based on merit but is based on chance. Without a center-left government, the difference between the private and public sectors becomes increasingly pronounced. Generally speaking, the elite do not want to help finance social programs to benefit the public sector and the lower classes such as programs to assist public schools, public housing, and public parks. A situation of extreme concentration of wealth among the elites benefits them but damages the lower classes by limiting their opportunities for upward mobility as well as for a decent life.20 19) Bottomore 1991. 20) Galbraith 1999. E. Murguia, K. Díaz / Societies Without Borders 3 (2008) 209–227 223 Our Analysis of Each Scenario Caged Birds Analysis We believe that the Caged Birds Scenario is the most damaging to the betterment of people in both nations of the four scenarios and therefore this scenario is the least recommended by us. Th e outcome of this scenario is the least humane in that it criminalizes what is most important to most people, namely, a deeply felt need to support one's family. Th is scenario is injurious as well to those who through their hard work assist their families by sending money back to Mexico. It also harms undocumented workers who live in the US and who work to support their families who are currently in the United States. It damages as well the morally conscientious citizens who assist undocumented workers by offering shelter or other assistance, and it harms religious groups who recognize this unethical situation and provide food or shelter to undocumented workers on their church grounds. We do not believe that a 20 foot wall along the US border with Mexico will serve as a deterrent towards immigrants, but it certainly does send a message indicating that Mexicans are not wanted in the US. A wall will symbolize a subjugation of one group of people by another; already this is the case given the militarization of the border. Why, one might ask, is the US-Mexico border being militarized while this is not the case with the U.S./Canadian border which provides an equivalent opportunity for the illegal entry of undocumented individuals? A wall would also divide what, in a desert, a river naturally brings together. A large section of the US–Mexican border is along the Rio Grande and the communities in this region do not see themselves strictly as being only American or only Mexican. Communities on both sides of the border have symbiotic relationships with communities on the other side of the border. For example, many people who live on the border have extended families with relatives on the other side. Th is fact, however, is not grasped by legislators who have no understanding of what life along the US–Mexico border is like. A more subtle but more pernicious aspect of this scenario is the subordination of one country by another, both symbolically because of the proposed wall, as well as directly by imprisoning undocumented workers and those who assist them in the United States. Were this scenario to actually occur, it would signal a unilateral decision that completely disregards what Mexicans have to say concerning this issue. It sends a message that the US 224 E. Murguia, K. Díaz / Societies Without Borders 3 (2008) 209–227 does not care what Mexicans have to say about their relationship with the United States. Unrestrained Birds Scenario Analysis Th e Unrestrained Birds Scenario, while admirable in terms of its faith in human nature and in the belief that human beings can live in peace with only minimal regulation, would be the least liked by non-Mexicans in the United States. Without regulations as to the flow of people entering the United States, because of the difference in wages in the two countries, it could be that numerous Mexican nationals would rush to the US. Consequently, the price of labor would fall because of a labor surplus, perhaps leading to an economic crisis in the United States. Non-Hispanic Americans would feel inundated by what they would consider the "third world". Th e status quo in the United States would change and non-Hispanics would feel a loss of privilege that could fuel a counter movement toward extremely strict policies against immigration from Mexico and against immigrants themselves. Trained Birds Scenario Analysis Concerning the Trained Birds Scenario which describes the current situation, we believe that existing polices are not the best approach in the immigration debate. We can point to the different positions that we represent in this paper as examples of popular dissatisfaction with current policies. We violate human rights in so far as we continue to support governments that allow the suffering of so many people to go unnoticed. Roughly 500 people die each year trying to cross the border from Mexico to reach their destination in the North. Th is situation is clearly a human rights violation by both of our governments that continue to create policies that perpetuate a situation that undermines the flourishing of so many human beings. In terms of workers rights, current policies are also a violation of human rights; they dehumanize people and allow them to be exploited for their labor. As mentioned previously, the current laws can be seen as legalities that justify dehumanization. In other words, they are unethical laws that are subject to criticism in that they justify dehumanizing and oppressive behavior. Soaring Eagles Scenario Analysis We believe that the Soaring Eagles Scenario is the best of the four scenarios because of its ability to bring about conditions that will enhance the life E. Murguia, K. Díaz / Societies Without Borders 3 (2008) 209–227 225 chances of individuals both in the US and Mexico. Th is scenario espouses bilateral agreements between the United States and Mexico, crucial on so many levels. It assumes that the government of the United States will move from its current Center-right stance to a Center-left approach after the 2008 election in the US. It also assumes that the US Center-left government in 2008 will be able to influence the current Center-right government in Mexico to shift its policies away from big business toward funding a socially progressive agenda, including increased funding for schools, medical care, and other programs necessary for the well-being of non-elites in Mexico. On a practical level, by coming to a bilateral agreement, both countries commit themselves to working together to understand the causes of immigration from Mexico, and to develop viable solutions. Only by means of a bilateral effort will we be able to examine and solve current immigration problems in a way that benefits people in both nations. By developing communal effort and a sense of community between both countries, this scenario has the greatest potential of success of the four proposed. Most importantly, this scenario proposes recognition of undocumented workers, by both the United States and Mexico, as human beings who deserve to be treated with dignity and respect. It is important here that we be specific as to how we can move from the present situation that is not satisfactory because it leads to fear, exploitation, and, in some cases, death for undocumented workers. Th e three elements of a better plan as to how to resolve some of the current issues relate to 1) amnesty, 2) a guest worker program, and 3) access to both sides of the US-Mexico border for residents of the border. Concerning amnesty, we believe that the undocumented who have been here for at least 5 years and who can demonstrate their stay here for this length of time should be eligible for amnesty, assuming that they have contributed to the economy and that they have not been involved in serious criminal activity during that time. If they have been in the United States for less than 5 years, they would be eligible for an Employment Authorization Document (a temporary work permit) which would allow them to work in the United States. After they have completed 5 years in the United States, they would be eligible for a Permanent Resident Card (a green card) which would allow them to reside and to work in the United States. Concerning a guest worker program, we have never liked the idea of guest workers because this sends the message that we value people only for their labor, but we do not value them. However, a guest worker program does have a positive side to it. It would allow workers from Mexico to labor in the United States legally, instead of the situation that we have at present with 226 E. Murguia, K. Díaz / Societies Without Borders 3 (2008) 209–227 deaths in the desert, and exploitation of workers by employers because the workers are undocumented. Th erefore, if we had a guest worker program but with the possibility of gaining a Permanent Resident Card after 5 years, we believe that the positive aspects of this plan would outweigh the negative. Concerning Mexican citizens who are residents of the border region, a visa allowing them to move through the region in the United States and back again legally would be optimal. Th e same option would be available to US citizens who live along the US–Mexican border. Th is would return the border cities and towns to the symbiotic relationships that they have had in the past. Conclusion We have studied the scenario approach used by South Africans to end apartheid and to move toward greater democracy to enable us to understand immigration from Mexico to the United States. We elaborated the arguments and positions of the different interest groups engaged in this question. From these positions, we formulated four possible scenarios, and we chose the Soaring Eagles' Scenario as the most promising in terms of human betterment both in Mexico and in the United States. We are convinced that Center-left governments in the US and in Mexico would be optimal for the development of international infrastructure which would benefit all except for the hyper-rich in both countries. We believe that the United States and Mexico should work together as equals to address root causes of immigration from Mexico to the US. Both governments should address root causes of the immigration. Social and economic conditions need to be constructed which would, on the one hand, move Mexico toward first world conditions and, on the other hand, allow migrants from Mexico to contribute to the economy of the United States. A demonstration of contributions by immigrants should be rewarded with a path to citizenship in the United States. References Baker, Peter 2007, 'Calderon Admonishes Bush on Th orny Issues,' Washington Post, March 14, p. A09. Retrieved September 9, 2007 (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wpdyn/content/article/2007/03/13/AR2007031300169.html). Beery, Jenny, Esther Eidinow and Nancy Murphy, eds. n.d., 'Th e Mont Fleur Scenarios: What Will South Africa Be Like in the Year 2002?' Deeper News 7:1–22. Retrieved, June 27, 2007 (http://www.arlingtoninstitutes.org/future/Mont_Fleur.pdf ). E. Murguia, K. Díaz / Societies Without Borders 3 (2008) 209–227 227 Bottomore, Tom 1991, Classes in Modern Society, United Kingdom: Routledge. Collier, Peter and David Horowitz 1976, Th e Rockefellers: An American Dynasty, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Galbraith, John Kenneth [1958] 1999, Th e Affluent Society, United Kingdom: Penguin. Gailer, Graham 2004, 'Scenarios of Change in South Africa', Th e Round Table, 93, 375: 369–383. Huntington, Samuel p. 2004, 'Th e Hispanic Challenge.' Foreign Policy, 141: 30–45. Jimenez, Luis n.d., Th e Role of Scenarios in Developing Strategy. Retrieved, September 30, 2007 (http:www.upu.int/upu_strategy/spg/en/2005-1 0-1 3_the_role_of_scenarios_in_ developing_strategy__en_ppt). Kennedy, Edward M. 2007, 'Working for Comprehensive Immigration Reform.' Retrieved September 9, 2007 (http://kennedy.senate.gov/issues_and_agenda/agenda_item.cfm?id= 95847980-8 07c-44fe-99b8-6 1e93daf302c). Le Roux, Pieter, and Vincent Maphai n.d., 'Th e Mont Fleur Scenarios,' in Jenny Beery, Esther Eidinow and Nancy Murphy, eds. 'Th e Mont Fleur Scenarios: What Will South Africa Be Like in the Year 2002?' Deeper News 7:7–22. Retrieved, June 27, 2007 (http://www.arlingtoninstitutes.org/future/Mont_Fleur.pdf ). Mexica Movement 2007, Indigenous Liberation for Anahuac. Retrieved September 9, 2007 (http://www.mexica-movement.org/). Murguia, Edward 1975, Assimilation, Colonialism, and the Mexican American People, Austin: Center for Mexican American Studies, University of Texas at Austin. National Archives 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo. Retrieved September 9, 2007 (http://www.ourdocuments.gov/doc.php?flash=true&doc=26). National Council of La Raza 2007, 'Questions and Answers about NCLR's Immigration Position.' Retrieved September 9, 2007 (http://www.nclr.org/content/faqs/detail/43266/). National Network for Immigrant and Refugee Rights 2006, 'National Statement to Support Human and Civil Rights for All Immigrants and Oppose Compromise Immigration Reform Proposals.' Retrieved September 9, 2007 (http://www.nnirr.org/projects/ immigrationreform/statement.htm). Passel, Jeffrey S. 2005, 'Unauthorized Migrants: Numbers and Characteristics,' Pew Hispanic Center. Retrieved August 31, 2007. (http://pewhispanic.org/files/reports/46.pdf). Portes, Alejandro and Ruben G. Rumbaut 2001, Legacies: Th e Story of the Immigrant Second Generation, Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. United States Department of Labor 2007, 'A Chartbook of International Labor Comparisons: Th e Americas, Asia-Pacific, Europe.' Retrieved August 31, 2007 (http://www. dol.gov/asp/media/reports/chartbook/chartbook_jun07.pdf ). United States Government Accountability Office 2006, 'Report to the Honorable Bill Frist, Majority Leader, US Senate. Illegal Immigration: Border-Crossing deaths have doubled since 1995; Border Patrol's Efforts to Prevent Deaths Have Not Been Fully Evaluated.' Retrieved August 31, 2007 (http://www.gao.gov/new.items/d06770.pdf ). Th e Whitehouse Office of the Press Secretary 2004, 'Fact Sheet: Fair and Secure Immigration Reform.' President George W. Bush. Retrieved September 9, 2007 (http://www. whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/01/20040107–1.html#). Th e World Bank. 2006, 'Migration Can Deliver Welfare Gains, Reduce Poverty, Says Global Economic Prospects 2006.' 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The Deflationary Theory of Ontological Dependence By David Mark Kovacs (this is a draft; please cite the version forthcoming in Philosophical Quarterly!) Abstract. When an entity ontologically depends on another entity, the former "presupposes" or "requires" the latter in some metaphysical sense. This paper defends a novel view, Dependence Deflationism, according to which ontological dependence is what I call an aggregative cluster concept: a concept which can be understood, but not fully analyzed, as a "weighted total" of constructive (roughly: mereological in the broadest possible sense) and modal relations. The view has several benefits: it accounts for clear cases of ontological dependence as well as the source of disagreement in controversial ones; it gives a nice story about the evidential relevance of modal, mereological and set-theoretic facts to ontological dependence; and it makes sense of debates over the relation's formal properties. One important upshot of the deflationary account is that questions of ontological dependence are generally less deep and less interesting than usually thought. Keywords: cluster concepts, deflationary ontology, determination, grounding, ontological dependence, symmetric dependence 1. Introduction When some x ontologically depends on some y, x in some metaphysical sense "requires" or "presupposes" y: sets are thought to depend on their members, wholes on their parts, structured facts on their constituents, tropes on their bearers, holes on their hosts, and so on. Ontological independence has traditionally been regarded as a criterion of metaphysical self-sufficiency, and for this reason sometimes also of substancehood. Recent years witnessed a surging interest in ontological dependence.1 I should flag at the outset that 'dependence' has also been used in a broader sense in metaphysics. Functional realisation, micro-basing, and most recently grounding, are sometimes described as "dependence relations", though it would be 1 See, e.g., Simons (1982), Mulligan, Simons & Smith (1984), Fine (1995), Correia (2005), and Koslicki (2012). 2 more accurate to call these determination relations.2 If ontological dependence is a kind of presupposition, determinative notions are linked to a kind of metaphysical explanation. Although dependence and determination have something in common (they both impose a kind of non-causal priority), it's a mistake to automatically assume that x determines y iff y ontologically depends on x. To begin with, there are plausible counterexamples to both sides of this biconditional. Against the "only if" part: disjunctive facts are widely thought to be grounded (and so determined) by their true disjuncts, but they don't always depend on this disjunct. For example, Pv~P may be determined by contingent fact P but doesn't depend on it; the disjunction is a logical truth and doesn't "need" or "presuppose" such contingent facts in any way. Against the "if" part: suppose facts ontologically depend on their constituent individuals and properties (cf. section 5). Take an arbitrary fundamental fact, e.g. that a certain electron has negative charge. This fact may ontologically depend on its constituents, but since it's a fundamental fact, it lacks a metaphysical explanation and so isn't determined by anything (given a widespread definition of fundamentality).3 The aforementioned cases are resistible, as counterexamples usually are. But there is also a general reason why dependence isn't the converse of determination. Ontological dependence involves a (perhaps, but not obviously, modal) constraining of the prior thing by the posterior thing. By contrast, determination relations involve 2 See Melnyk (2003: Ch. 1), Kim (1998: 80–7), and Bliss and Trogdon (2014), respectively, for introductions to these relations. 3 See also Schnieder (forthcoming: §4.6) for further counterexamples to a similar equivalence thesis (he uses slightly different terminology). 3 a similar constraining of the posterior thing by the prior thing. This constraining runs in opposite directions in the two cases, and we shouldn't simply assume that they systematically coincide. Perhaps there is some subtler connection between grounding and ontological dependence4; here I just warn against their straightforward conflation. In the present work, I will exclusively focus on ontological dependence: the kind of metaphysical presupposition/constraining that can be traced back at least to Aristotle and was later revived by Husserl – not grounding, not non-causal explanation, and not "dependence relations". Until recently, most philosophers offered analyses of ontological dependence in terms that were usually thought better understood than the idioms of dependence (in what follows: a conservative analysis). For example, taking inspiration from Husserl, Simons (1982) developed a modal-mereological account of ontological dependence. More recently, Brian Ellis proposed a supervenience-based definition (2001: 82–3). However, by far the most well-known such account has been the (Modal Analysis): For any x and y, x ontologically depends on y iff, necessarily, if x exists then y exists.5 Unfortunately, the Modal Analysis is subject to counterexamples. For instance, as Fine (1995: 271) has pointed out, it implies that Socrates ontologically depends on 4 See Correia (2005: 66), Tahko and Lowe (2015: §5), Jansson (2017: 34–9), and Schnieder (forthcoming: §3, §5.1) 5 Moravcsik (1965: 107), Tlumak (1983), Hoffman and Rosenkrantz (1994: 95–6), Simons (1998: 236) 4 his singleton set, and that everything ontologically depends on any necessary existent (e.g. Socrates on the number five).6 Most philosophers find these consequences unacceptable, and as a result either accept ontological dependence as an indispensible primitive7 or analyze it in terms of a non-modal notion of essence8 or grounding9. In what follows, I will collectively refer to these as heavyweight approaches. Since heavyweight views presuppose controversial pieces of ideology, conservative alternatives are of considerable interest.10 For one, notions like necessity and parthood are often considered well understood and independently needed. For another, while ontological dependence requires a sui generis epistemology on heavyweight views, conservative accounts allow us to refer back to the epistemology of the analysans notions.11 One alternative to the heavyweight orthodoxy is that the very notion of ontological dependence is unintelligible.12 I don't find this promising (unintelligibility claims are generally hard to defend). A less radical approach would be to understand ontological dependence in relatively uncontroversial terms we already need for other purposes. This was the ambition of the Modal Analysis, and is also what I will try to 6 See also Correia (2005: 39–46) 7 Thomasson (1999: Ch. 2), Potter (2004: 39–40), and Barnes (2012: 879) 8 Fine (1995: 273); cf. Fine (1994), Koslicki (2012) 9 Correia (2005: 66) 10 My own view, which I won't defend here, is that the notion of grounding is explanatorily redundant Kovacs 2017), and that pace Fine, essence is amenable to a straightforward modal analysis. On the latter count, I'm influenced by Cowling 2013; see also Wildman 2013. 11 Cf. Hofweber (2009: 273–4) 12 Daly 2012: (99–100); cf. Hofweber (2009) 5 do. I will defend Dependence Deflationism, the view that ontological dependence can be explained in modal and broadly constructive terms (I will later explain what the latter means). I will argue that while these concepts cannot give us a reductive analysis of ontological dependence, in an important sense they can make the notion fully intelligible. I won't try to persuade committed heavyweight theorists to prefer this view to their own, but I hope to convince them that the theory deserves their attention. The rest of the paper will go as follows. Section 2 will explain the notion of an aggregative cluster concept, a concept that can be understood, but not fully analyzed, in terms of the various relations it "aggregates". Section 3 will propose the hypothesis that ontological dependence is an aggregative cluster of modal and constructive relations. In section 4, I will test this hypothesis against several examples and argue that it can account not only for clear cases of ontological dependence but also for the source of disagreement in controversial ones. In section 5, I will offer two supplementary arguments for my view, one revolving around the epistemology of ontological dependence and another based on the relation's formal properties. Before proceeding, I should make explicit two methodological assumptions. First: some philosophers ("pluralists") distinguish various kinds of ontological dependence: rigid and generic, de re and de dicto, existential and essential, etc.13 Others ("generalists") simply talk about ontological dependence and don't make these 13 Lowe (1994), Thomasson (1999: Ch. 2), Correia (2005, 2008), Schnieder (2006), Koslicki (2012, 2013), and Tahko and Lowe (2015) 6 distinctions.14 Though I have something to say about the specific types, I will mostly focus on the general notion, for two reasons. First, though the generalist conception will be my starting point, ultimately I won't rely on it: as I will show in section 3, Deflationism can also account for various species of ontological dependence. Second, I will argue in section 5.2 that the main motivation for pluralism stems from problems with generalism my view can handle at least as well. Second: I aim to provide an account that can accommodate a wide range of views about what depends on what, but the theory is not intended as a neutral arbiter consistent with any first-order position.15 For example, since I reject non-modal notions of essence, one would search in vain for a discussion of essential dependence in this paper. When speaking of ontological dependence, I'm interested in a concept that strikes a good balance between fitting our intuitions and certain theoretical desiderata. Such desiderata include conceptual links to other metaphysical notions, flexibility about the relation's formal properties, and a simple epistemology. While I think the deflationary view does well on these counts, it might end up capturing something that doesn't completely coincide with the standing notion of ontological dependence. In that case, you should read this paper in a revisionary spirit: we should use 'ontological dependence' to express the concept I will describe, since the theoretical benefits are worth it. 2. Aggregative cluster concepts 14 Cameron (2008), Schaffer (2009), Paseau (2010), Jenkins (2011), and Barnes (2012, forthcoming) 15 Thus my approach is closer to Peramatzis's (2011) than to Correia's (2005: 9–11). 7 An important class of concepts – aggregative clusters, as I shall call them – can be understood as "weighted totals" of certain relations, in terms of which they nonetheless cannot be analyzed. Consider is bigger than. Whether some x is bigger than some y is a function of various factors having to do with comparative size. Simplifying somewhat, let's say it's a function of the pattern in which they instantiate is taller than, is wider than, is longer than, and is heavier than. Call these relative bigness factors. When x and y instantiate a relative bigness factor, this speaks in favour of (but doesn't entail) x being all things considered bigger than y. Call the set of principles telling us how the relative bigness factors between any x and y weigh against each other the rules of aggregation. Of course, the concept shows a certain amount of indeterminacy, as there is no fully specific set of rules governing it. But some cases are obvious: for instance, if x is longer, taller, wider and heavier than y, it's also bigger. This preliminary characterisation needs some adjustments. First, to figure out whether some x is bigger than some y it's not enough to know whether x is taller, heavier, longer, or wider than y. It also matters how much taller, heavier, longer or wider x is. I take it that this is an accidental feature of is bigger than, not an essential feature of aggregative clusters, and results from the fact that most of the properties we are in the habit of referring to are gradable. In what follows, I will ignore the gradability of the relative bigness factors, since this feature of the example is irrelevant to my present purposes (however, see footnote 26). Second, whether is bigger than applies on an occasion is sensitive to whether the putative relata instantiate relations along sufficiently many dimensions. These relations don't necessarily have to be relative bigness factors; they could also be 8 symmetric relations in the vicinity, for example being as long as or being as heavy as. If there are too many dimensions along which two entities instantiate no comparative size relation (too many unsaturated dimensions), they won't stand in any all-in relative bigness relation. For example, no ordinary object stands in any such relation with the empty set, since they don't instantiate relative bigness factors along any dimension. More controversially, compare a 1.25x1.25 feet two-dimensional surface with an ordinary bowling ball. I would say that the surface and the ball bear no comparative all-in size relation to each other because there are too many unsaturated relative bigness dimensions between them. Bearing these qualifications in mind, we can say that is bigger than is an aggregative cluster that applies to some x and y just in case taking into consideration their weight, height, length, width, x is all things considered bigger than y. It's reasonably clear why these factors yield a notion of all-in comparative size: to be heavier is to be bigger with respect to weight, to be longer is to be bigger with respect to length (etc.), and to be bigger simpliciter is to be bigger all things considered.16 But why is it that it's these factors, rather than some others, that yield an all-things-considered notion of relative bigness? After all, weight and extension are 16 An anonymous referee reports different intuitions about a cognate notion I used in an earlier version, is larger than, and thinks that to be larger than something is simply to have greater volume. I find 'is bigger than' harder to hear so as to only track relative differences in volume; to those who disagree, the best I can offer are counterexamples. Here's one: when sensing danger, various species of animals inflate themselves. We colloquially say that when they do so, they look bigger, which strongly implicates that they don't actually get bigger. But they would if 'is bigger than' simply meant having greater volume. 9 very different kinds of dimensions, so we shouldn't expect them to yield a particularly unified relation. The answer is that, so far as I can see, this is how the concept works in ordinary discourse. Our judgments of relative bigness are indeed a mishmash of judgments about such disparate relations; as a result, the concept is rarely used in theoretical contexts but may still serve as a useful heuristic, absent more precise means of comparison. Since this characterisation of is bigger than leaves the rules of aggregation unspecified, it doesn't amount to a reductive analysis. Still, there is an important link between is bigger than and the relations it aggregates: the former can be explained in terms of the latter, where the force of 'explanation' is conceptual. This is primarily an epistemological thesis: it implies that is bigger than can be made intelligible in terms of the relations it aggregates. Suppose someone describes two animals you have never heard of, A and B. Knowledge of the comparative relations of mass, height, length and width between them would put you in a position to know, within the limitations set by the indeterminacy in the rules of aggregation, whether A is bigger than B. This last qualification is important because there are cases in which even once all the factors are in, you couldn't decide whether A is bigger than B. Importantly, such cases can exist even if you are fully competent with the concept is bigness than. Perhaps if there were further rules guiding our use, you would be able to decide whether x is bigger than y. But there aren't, so in certain cases you cannot possibly know whether the concept applies to an ordered pair.17 17 Following an anonymous referee's suggestion, I note that the situation is analogous to the Problem of the Many. Even if being fully competent with the concept chair implies that we know there is only 10 Given the large number of ways in which the rules of aggregation for relative bigness could have been specified, it's natural to think about the hard cases in the following way. There are lots of abundant relations in the vicinity of is bigger than.18 They aggregate the same factors but differ in how much weight they assign to them: for instance, being bigger than1 treats height as more significant, being bigger than2 assigns more importance to weight, etc. Moreover, it's indeterminate which of these relations 'is bigger than' refers to. In borderline cases, the rules of aggregation could be made more precise in ways compatible with either verdict. 'Is bigger than' also plausibly displays a certain amount of context-sensitivity: it expresses different abundant relations in different contexts, each with its own weighing of relative bigness factors. (Note that this is compatible with the claim that the expression picks out an aggregative cluster concept even within each context.) To demonstrate some features of aggregative clusters, I used the example of is bigger than. Many other notions also carry the mark of aggregative clusters; examples may include beating in a battle, colouring, spicing up, and others. But why worry so much about these concepts? Aggregative clusters provide an interesting case study of how conceptual unanalysability can come apart from theoretical indispensability.19 Relative bigness is a case in point: in theoretical contexts, any information conveyed in terms of relative bigness could be conveyed more accurately in terms of the relative bigness factors. This doesn't mean that the concept is completely useless, one chair where there is a collection of particles arranged chair-wise, we don't thereby know which particular collection composes a given chair. 18 See Lewis (1983) on the distinction between sparse and abundant properties and relations. 19 See Dorr (2004: 157) for similar remarks on predicates that are unanalysable because they are vague. 11 since overall bigness comparisons convey some information, and in certain practical settings we care about convenience more than about accuracy. But in theoretical contexts, questions about what is bigger than what tend to be less interesting than specific questions about comparative size along some particular dimension. 3. Ontological dependence as an aggregative cluster Above I characterised aggregative clusters through the example of is bigger than. I now propose the hypothesis that ontological dependence, too, is an aggregative cluster concept of modal and constructive relations, as listed below: 1) Necessarily, if y exists then x exists (in short: y rigidly necessitates x), but not vice versa 2) Fx and necessarily, if y exists then there is a z such that Fz (in short: y generically necessitates x), but not vice versa 3) x is a constituent of y, but not vice versa Clauses 1)-3) comprise what I mean by "modal relation". My use of "constructive relation" and "constituent", however, requires more explanation. As a first approximation, take the view that parthood and composition are category-neutral relations. On a radical version of this view, the composition relation obtains not only between material objects and their proper parts, but also between objects and their properties (for example, on a bundle theory of objects), structured 12 facts and their constituent individuals and properties, and even sets and their ancestral members.20 While I'm sympathetic to this radically category-neutral conception of composition, I won't presuppose it. So I will use the word 'constructive relation' as a general expression for relations that that hold between various types of compound entities and their constituents: material composition, ancestral set membership, property-bundling, the relation between facts and their individuals and properties, and perhaps more. Thus, while a category neutralist can simply say that 3) covers asymmetric parthood, category restrictionists can replace this with reference to whichever relations category neutralists lump under parthood (restrictionists will differ on what these exactly are). The choice between category-neutral and restricted views makes no difference to the forthcoming account of ontological dependence. Nor does the frequency with which constructive relations are instantiated, though of course this does have a bearing on the extent of ontological dependence (e.g., ontological dependence is never instantiated between composite material objects and their parts if the former don't exist). I think there is an intimate conceptual connection between the relations listed under 1)-3) and ontological dependence. A view in the vicinity of mine – Deflationary Pluralism, as I will call it – would contend that 1)-3) are a species of ontological dependence. According to the view I favour, they are species of another 20 See Fine (2010) for the view that ancestral set membership is a kind of parthood; see also Simons (1987), Armstrong (1997), McDaniel (2001), and Paul (2002) for other neutralist views. Most category neutralists accept compositional pluralism, the (logically independent) view that parthood comes in various kinds. 13 (non-ontological) kind of dependence, which licenses ontological dependence claims in a more indirect way. I will first present my own view and return to Deflationary Pluralism in section 5. The relations listed under 1)-3) plausibly track some kind of dependence, even if not full-blown ontological dependence. Each of the following claims has some attraction: (a) If the existence of y rigidly necessitates the existence of x, but not vice versa, then y rigidly modally depends on x (b) If the existence of y generically necessitates the existence of x, but not vice versa, then y generically modally depends on x (c) If x is a constituent of y, but not vice versa, then y constructively depends on y. As I understand (a)-(c), they state not controversial theses about ontological dependence but rather obvious truisms about other notions of dependence. This is because they track a sort of hierarchical structure in which the entities higher up presuppose and require, in some metaphysical sense, the entities lower down, and such structures by themselves license 'dependence'-talk. Take asymmetric rigid and generic asymmetrical necessitation. Before encountering Fine's counterexamples, these were frequently identified with species of ontological dependence. If we want to avoid symmetric dependence, the most natural view in the modal account's vicinity would replace them with their asymmetric versions (Correia 2005: 35). Moreover, even opponents of the Modal Analysis take 14 seriously the idea that the analysis captures some notion of dependence, if not the metaphysically significant notion contemporary metaphysicians are interested in.21 My point can be buttressed by considering some locutions frequently used to express dependence: when A depends on B, A's existence requires and presupposes the existence of B (or something of B's kind); for A to exist, B (or something of its kind) needs to exist; and so on. Fine's counterexamples taught us not to understand these locutions modally; they nonetheless clearly have a purely modal reading. It's harder to argue with full generality that constructive relations convey a sense of dependence, since to convince some category restrictionists I would need to go through the entire (possibly open-ended) list of constructive relations they distinguish from parthood. Instead, I will argue that both asymmetric parthood (between material objects) and a relation all category restrictionists distinguish from parthood, ancestral set membership, induce a kind of dependence. Most philosophers think that wholes ontologically depend on their proper parts22, while Schaffer (2010) argues for priority monism, the view that every material object ontologically depends on the cosmos. I will discuss this view in section 4; for now, I will confine myself to a brief remark. Even if priority monism were true, it would remain correct to say that wholes depend on their parts mereologically. In a purely mereological sense, proper parts are always prior to the wholes they compose; the question is whether priority and dependence in this sense coincide with the 21 See, for instance, Correia (2008: 1023), Hoeltje (2013), and Tahko and Lowe (2015: §1); cf. Peramatzis (2011: 234–5) on a modal notion of dependence in Aristotle. 22 See Kim (1994: 67), Conee and Sider (2005: 68), Markosian (2005: §3), Cameron (2014), and Skiles (2015). 15 relation of ontological dependence most metaphysicians are interested in.23 If Schaffer is correct, then an object's parts can ontologically depend on the object they compose, yet this wouldn't prevent the whole from also mereologically depending on the parts. Similar remarks apply to ancestral set membership. In the cumulative hierarchy, sets "come after" and "presuppose" their ancestral members. This is a kind of dependence, even if not the kind Fine posits between Socrates and his singleton set. According to Incurvati's minimalist view, for instance, there is nothing more to the iterative conception of a set than the narrative convention that introduces sets as occurring at various levels of the cumulative hierarchy (2012: 82). Incurvati emphasizes that this doesn't imply that sets ontologically depend on their members. I agree. But to my mind, the convention does suffice for sets to depend on their members in some sense, even if not the ontological sense. For this reason, we can say that sets depend on their members at least in a purely set-theoretic sense. As I said, (1)-(3) are notions of some kind of dependence, albeit not ontological dependence. This is important to emphasize because it also clarifies the sense in which my account is reductive and the sense in which it isn't. If (a)-(c) are correct, explaining ontological dependence in terms of 1)-3) can be successful only because we already have some understanding of dependence simpliciter. So, we are explaining ontological dependence in terms of other kinds of dependence, rather than concepts that have nothing to do with dependence. This feature is unobjectionable, and is one my account shares with the Modal Analysis. The Modal Analysis was once 23 See Hall's (2010: Supplement) remarks on the "mereological hierarchy"; cf. Paul (2012: 221–2). 16 considered plausible precisely because rigid necessitation is an implicitly dependenceinducing concept. Fine's great insight was that this dependence was not of the ontological sort we have been looking for (Fine himself would probably disagree with this assessment).24 What about the plethora of "dependence relations" frequently discussed in metaphysics as well as in the philosophy of mind, such as micro-based determination, functional realisation, or the determinable-determinate relation? Shouldn't they also be treated as implying at least some non-ontological kind of dependence and added to our list of 1)-3)? No. Recall that by 'ontological dependence' I mean the (family of) relation(s) targeted in the specialized literature. This differs from the various determination relations often misleadingly branded as "dependence relations". That said, one might want to be more liberal about what counts as a dependence factor and still accept a view in the spirit of Deflationism. I think such liberal approaches are likely based on conflating dependence and determination, but won't argue the point here. Suffice it so say that I will proceed with the meagre list of factors I drew above. Two further clarifications before I give the official statement of my view, both familiar from section 2. First, although ontological dependence aggregates modal and constructive relations, I cannot say exactly how it aggregates them – the rules of aggregation are somewhat indeterminate. Second, whether ontological dependence applies 24 My point is analogous to one Cameron (2012) made about analysing modality: instead of worrying about whether a purported analysis is "implicitly modal", we should focus on whether the concepts in its analysans are concepts in good standing that we need anyway. Mutatis mutandis for accounts of ontological dependence (thanks to an anonymous referee for forcing me to be clearer here). 17 to some x and some y is sensitive to whether the putative relata instantiate relations along sufficiently many "dependence dimensions". Similarly to the case of is bigger than, symmetric relations in the vicinity of (1)-(3) can saturate a dependence dimension between x and y. For example, improper parthood and symmetric rigid or generic necessitation don't contribute to either of x or y ontologically depending on the other, but might help establish enough of a connection between them so that another relation that qualifies as a dependence factor could tilt the direction either way. This phenomenon also helps us understand why Socrates doesn't ontologically depend on the number five: although each dependence factor between them speaks in favour of Socrates depending on the number five, no non-modal dependence dimension between them is saturated. Hence, there isn't enough of a connection between the two for the modal factors to establish ontological dependence. (In this regard, the situation is similar to the case of the two-dimensional surface and the ball from section 2.)25 Now we are in a position to state the deflationary position. Ontological dependence is an aggregative cluster concept: a concept that applies to some x and y just in case taken into consideration all the dependence factors, x depends on y. How so? Each 25 Should we say that ontological dependence always requires the presence of some constructive dependence factor? I'm undecided: I'm reluctant to build such a strong claim into the official theory, but it's hard to think of counterexamples. An anonymous referee suggests that physicalists might say that a phenomenal experience depends on a brain state without the two instantiating any constructive relation. I'm not convinced; I think the proper physicalist doctrine is that phenomenal states are determined by brain states, not that they depend on them. This is especially plausible on non-reductive views, which allow for multiple realisability. 18 of 1)-3) by itself implies some kind of dependence, and we can aggregate these to get an all-things-considered notion. So, just like with other aggregative clusters, the relation between ontological dependence and the dependence factors is conceptual explanation. This implies that complete knowledge of the pattern of modal and constructive relations by x and y would put you in a position to know, within the constraints posed by the indeterminacy in the rules of aggregation, whether x ontologically depends on y.26 By now it should also be clear what makes this view deflationary. My dependence factors don't form a very unified class; analogously to 'is bigger than', judgments of ontological dependence turn out to be a mishmash of judgments about modal and constructive relations. Moreover, since we could have specified the rules of aggregation in a number of ways, the aggregate notion displays some indeterminacy. But then, any question of the form "Does x ontologically depend on y?" ultimately boils down to two sub-questions. First, which dependence factors are instantiated in the case at hand? This question is metaphysical, but it can be addressed without any mention of ontological dependence itself; all we need to focus 26 In section 2, I put to the side the complication that relative bigness admits of degrees. It's worth pointing out that the disanalogy with ontological dependence is less clear-cut here than appears at first glance, since one might want to allow for indeterminate parthood, fuzzy set membership, and even indeterminately true modal claims. This would lead to a notion of ontological dependence that admits of degrees. Koslicki (2015: 127) has recently argued that the (historically related) notion of substance admits of degrees, and also attributed that view to Aristotle. Unfortunately, I lack space to explore this issue in further detail here; in the main text, I will keep focusing on the all-or-nothing notions of ontological dependence and the dependence factors. 19 on are the patterns of modal and constructive relations instantiated by the putative relata. Second, what do the rules of aggregation say about how these relations should be weighed against each other? This question is semantic/conceptual, and no deeper than the analogous question about is bigger than. In light of these considerations, we can say that the account of ontological dependence I'm offering is deflationary or "lightweight".27 The general characterisation of Deflationism ends here. This is a good place to say a few words about the specific types of ontological dependence pluralists often distinguish in the literature. Barnes (forthcoming) has recently argued that these distinctions are arbitrary and best seen as attempts to explain away counterexamples to the asymmetry of ontological dependence. I agree that the standard distinctions are rather arbitrary, and now we can also explain why: they result from singling out a relation within an aggregative cluster and imposing it on the cluster. For example, rigid existential dependence can be defined as follows: x rigidly depends on y =def (1) x ontologically depends on y, (2) the existence of x rigidly necessitates the existence of y Thus understood, rigid dependence is on par with is bigger and taller than – an admittedly artificial-looking concept. However, as we will see in Section 5.2, we don't need such distinctions to resist putative counterexamples to asymmetry. Not that we have to 27 Notice the analogy with modal neo-conventionalism (Cameron 2010, Sider 2011: Ch. 12), according to which there are plenty of different things we could have meant by 'necessary', 'possible', etc., and the way we use these words isn't superior to other, non-actual, uses. 20 resist them; Deflationism can accommodate a wide variety of views about the formal properties of ontological dependence. But I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's see first how the theory fares in practice. 4. Dependence Deflationism at work: some cases In this section, I will discuss some putative cases of ontological dependence. My goal is to illustrate that Deflationism fits our intuitive judgments of ontological dependence and can also explain disagreement over controversial cases. A. Socrates and {Socrates}. Intuitively, {Socrates} ontologically depends on Socrates, but not vice versa. There is a constructive dependence factor: Socrates is an ancestral member of {Socrates}, but not the other way round. Moreover, there is a modal connection that isn't a dependence factor but saturates a dependence dimension (and thus prevents a situation in which there aren't enough saturated dependence dimensions): Socrates and {Socrates} rigidly necessitate each other. Finally, no dependence factor favours the dependence of Socrates on {Socrates}. So, we have a good case for thinking that {Socrates} ontologically depends on Socrates. This is one of the most uncontroversial cases of ontological dependence: the few who deny that Socrates ontologically depends on {Socrates} do so due to their general scepticism about the notion (e.g. Incurvati 2012). I think this is no coincidence: the ontological dependence of {Socrates} on Socrates is uncontroversial because the dependence factors they instantiate are uncontroversial and unambiguously point in the direction of {Socrates} depending on Socrates. B. Priority monism vs. priority pluralism. A more controversial case is the ontological dependence of material wholes on their parts. To simplify things a bit, I 21 will focus on two restricted theses that are relatively easy to contrast: the view that the cosmos ontologically depends on its simple parts (call it pluratomism), and the view that every simple ontologically depends on the cosmos (call it monatomism).28 Which dependence factors speak in favour of which thesis? Most obviously, there is a constructive dependence factor that speaks in favour of pluratomism: the cosmos is composed of the simples. What about the modal dependence factors? That hangs on whether there are "gunky" worlds that contain infinitely divisible objects (gunk) and "junky" worlds with no maximal mereological sum to qualify as the cosmos. If there are no gunky worlds, the cosmos generically necessitates the simples. And if there are no junky worlds, the simples generically necessitate the existence the cosmos. If generic necessitation goes only in the first direction, that's a dependence factor in favour of pluratomism; if only in the second direction, that's a dependence factor in favour of monatomism; and if it goes both ways, that saturates a dependence dimension without tilting the direction of dependence either way. Thus we get the best distribution of dependence factors for pluratomism if there are junky but no gunky worlds, and for monatomism if there are gunky but no junky worlds. In the latter case, we have only one dependence factor (composition) supporting the dependence of the cosmos on its simple parts, and another one supporting the dependence of the simple parts on the cosmos. Now, Schaffer (2010: 61–5) offers an argument for priority monism, the view that every proper part of the cosmos depends ontologically on the cosmos, based on the 28 I will assume that there are simples and that mereological essentialism is false. Relaxing these assumptions would make the discussion more complicated in tangential ways. 22 possibility of gunk and the impossibility of junk.29 So, the above result shouldn't be too surprising, although it ought to be qualified in two ways. First, Schaffer's gives several other arguments for priority monism, which rely on substantive links between fundamentality and other metaphysical relations, for example emergence (2010: 55– 57). My deflationary framework cannot make sense of these arguments, but I don't think it should, either. Schaffer doesn't recognize my distinction between grounding and ontological dependence, and uses 'grounding' and 'dependence'-talk more or less interchangeably. As a result, he conflates two distinct theses: (1) that the proper parts of the cosmos ontologically depend on the cosmos, and that (2) (facts about) the proper parts of the cosmos are grounded in (facts about) the cosmos. The argument from gunk is naturally construed as supporting the first thesis, whereas Schaffer's other arguments concern grounding/determination, rather than ontological dependence strictly understood. While Dependence Deflationary confirms that whether gunk, but not junk, is possible is relevant to the debate, it doesn't imply that such a combination would settle the debate in Schaffer's favour – rather, it would leave us with one dependence factor supporting monatomism and another one speaking against it. I consider this the right result. For even if Schaffer turned out to be right about the relevant modal and mereological facts, pluratomism wouldn't stop seeming somewhat plausible. The previous section suggests an explanation of why this is so. There are many abundant relations that could have been meant by 'ontological dependence'. If Schaffer is right about the direction of ontological dependence, this is because the rules of 29 Bohn (2009) objects to the argument on the basis that if gunk is possible, so is junk. 23 aggregation happen to assign more weight to generic necessitation than to asymmetric parthood (of course, Schaffer himself would disagree with this diagnosis). I don't know whether this is the case; through the lens of Deflationism, it doesn't really matter. For the deflationist, once all the modal and constructive facts are settled, asking what depends ontologically on what is like investing a lot of time and money in comparing the mass, diameter and volume of two planets and, once all the data are in, pressing the question: "Okay, but which one is bigger?" C. Tropes and their bearers. Tropes are often thought to ontologically depend on their bearers, but only by those who believe that tropes are non-transferable: necessarily, if a trope exists then so does its bearer, whereas the bearer could exist without most of its tropes.30 Matters are less straightforward in the case of necessary tropes. Some, like Simons (1994), argue that trope-bearers and their necessary tropes mutually ontologically depend on each other. I reject this possibility (though see section 5.2), but I'm sympathetic to the idea that the rigid necessitation of a necessary trope by its bearer weakens the case for its ontological dependence on that bearer. The importance of modal connections becomes even more evident when we focus on views that deny the non-transferability thesis. These come in many flavours31; what matters is that their advocates tend to think of tropes as the most 30 Mulligan, Simons and Smith (1984: 290–1), Simons (1987: 304), Correia (2008: 1015–6), Koslicki (2012: 201), Tahko and Lowe (2015: §6.3) 31 See Williams (1953), Campbell (1981, 1990), Schaffer (2003), and Cameron (2006), among others. 24 basic kinds of things32, and of material objects as bundles of tropes. I cannot get into further details here; suffice it to say that if objects are bundles of tropes, this creates some pressure to say that they ontologically depend on these tropes. I'm not alone in with this verdict: Koslicki (2012: 189, f4), too, notes that bundle theorists with reductive ambitions should claim that it's the bearers that ontologically dependent on their tropes, rather than the other way round. In conclusion, we can say that the claim that (at least contingent) tropes ontologically depend on their bearers seems the least plausible if tropes are both transferable and constituents of the objects they are tropes of, and the most plausible if neither is the case. This meshes not only with Deflationism, but also with the thinking of actual trope theorists. D. Facts and their constituents. Structured propositions, facts and events are often thought to ontologically depend on their constituents.33 For simplicity's sake I will focus on facts, but much of what I have to say also applies to other structured compounds. Take the fact that John loves Mary – in usual notation: [John loves Mary]. This fact has as constituents John, the relation of loving, and Mary. Why think it ontologically depends on them? For one, the fact is constructed out of these things (perhaps by having them as parts, perhaps by a sui generis fact-constituency relation). For another, the fact has these constituents necessarily: [John loves Mary] cannot exist unless John, Mary and the loving relation do (the reverse isn't true: John, Mary and loving could exist without [John loves Mary] existing). So both a constructive and 32 Williams (1953), Campbell (1990) 33 See Fine (1995), Thomasson (1999: 26), Correia (2008: 115), Koslicki (2012), among others. 25 a modal dependence factor speak in favour of facts ontologically depending on their constituents. (As Fine points out, there is two-way necessitation in the case of existential facts: [Socrates exists] exists iff Socrates does (1995: 271). Likewise for facts involving individuals and their necessary properties. I'm happy to concede these points, since (1) the constructive dependence factor still holds, which – along with a saturated modal dimension might be enough to secure the facts-on-constituents direction, and (2) it does strike me as somewhat less obvious that such facts ontologically depend on their constituents than that ordinary ones do.) Not everyone accepts this view. Armstrong (1997) also believes in structured facts, but he often seems to take them to be basic things. How can we reconcile this with Armstrong's "Tractarian" ambitions? Barnes (forthcoming) has recently suggested that we interpret Armstrong as defending the view that facts and their constituents ontologically depend on each other. Instead I would argue that Armstrong has been misled by his doctrine of ontological free lunch, according to which supervenient entities are "no addition of being". More precisely, (1) he thinks that supervenience is sufficient for (something in the vicinity of) ontological dependence, but (2) uses a mistaken definition of supervenience, which (3) leads to an implausible view about ontological dependence. Armstrong uses the following definition of supervenience: '[E]ntity Q supervenes upon entity P if and only if it is impossible that P should exist and Q not exist, where P is possible' (1997: 11) 26 As Bricker (2006: 267–8) notes, this definition is fairly non-standard. Supervenience is usually understood as a covariance relation, but Armstrong's definition is neither necessary nor sufficient for any interesting kind of covariance. In fact, Armstrong's definition identifies supervenience with the right-hand side of the Modal Analysis, supplemented with an extra possibility condition. This is remarkable because it means that whenever the Modal Analysis predicts that A depends on B, Armstrong's view will predict that B depends on A. It shouldn't be surprising, then, that his verdict about facts and their constituents also runs counter to orthodoxy: this is to be expected when something close to the once-standard definition of ontological dependence is used to define the converse of the same relation! For this reason, I think that given his other views Armstrong was simply wrong to think that a fact's constituents depended on that fact.34 However, this doesn't mean that "facts first" views can't be defended. One could do so by denying that facts are structured in the first place. This is exactly the view of Turner (2016: Ch. 1), who has recently tried to place a broadly Tractarian approach on firmer footing. While Turner doesn't quite say that individuals and properties ontologically depend on facts in my narrow sense of 'ontological dependence' (he doesn't even officially commit himself to individuals and properties), he clearly denies that the dependence holds in the other direction. From a deflationary perspective, he has grounds for doing so: once we deny that facts are structured, the only remaining dependence factor speaking in favour of the dependence of facts on objects and properties will be asymmetric rigid necessitation. 34 See Ellis (2001: 65) for a similar criticism. 27 And at that point the deflationist can insist, with some plausibility, that there are too many unsaturated dependence dimensions for such dependence to obtain. This closes my discussion of particular cases. I obviously couldn't give a complete overview, and some readers will inevitably feel that they had problem cases I haven't discussed. For now, we can at least conclude that Deflationism does a good job explaining why widely cited cases of ontological dependence are plausible, and why others are more controversial. 5. Two arguments for Deflationism Above I argued that Deflationism explained some widely cited, as well as some more controversial, cases of ontological dependence. I will now build on this conclusion to give two positive arguments for Deflationism. 5.1. The epistemic argument In the various first-order debates, modal and constructive relations are widely regarded as evidentially relevant to the direction of ontological dependence. Yet few think that the presence of any of these relations by itself settles what depends ontologically on what. Deflationism explains this practice: the dependence factors constitute evidence in favour of dependence claims because ontological dependence aggregates them; yet none of these relations settles the presence and direction of ontological dependence, since ontological dependence doesn't require any particular 28 relation in the cluster. So, we have reason to think that Deflationism is true. Call this the epistemic argument.35 Now, I'm not claiming that Deflationism is the only way to make sense of the evidential role of the relations I consider dependence factors. But it provides an especially simple explanation and uses less controversial resources than rival views. For example, Fine understands both necessity (1994) and ontological dependence (1995) in terms of essence. While this view might explain the evidential relevance of necessitation to ontological dependence, it does so at the cost of relying on a controversial non-modal notion of essence. Moreover, it does little to explain the evidential relevance of constructive relations. The epistemic argument also highlights an advantage of my view over Deflationary Pluralism, which treats the dependence factors are species of ontological dependence. Deflationary Pluralism explains why certain relations are evidentially relevant to ontological dependence but yields a radically revisionary view about their evidential weight. Few think, for instance, that the mereological facts alone settle whether wholes ontologically depend on their proper parts (otherwise we couldn't make sense of the debate over priority monism). My view, by contrast, implies only that if x is a part of y but not vice versa, this counts in favour of y ontologically 35 Bennett (2017: 141–3) gives a similar argument against primitivism about relative fundamentality in the context of building relations. Like many others, Bennett draws no sharp distinction between dependence and determination, and her notion of building is meant to have some features of both. Wilson (2014) defends a similar view about grounding as a disjunction of "small-g" grounding relations; she too uses 'grounding' and 'dependence'-talk interchangeably. 29 depending on x, but other factors might ultimately render the dependence claim false. If priority monism is true, this is exactly the case with the cosmos and its parts. 5.2. The argument from formal properties In this section, I will demonstrate two further advantages of Dependence Deflationism. First, it can stay neutral on the formal properties of ontological dependence. Second, it can explain why philosophers often disagree about these formal properties. Ontological dependence is widely thought to be asymmetric: for any x and y, if x ontologically depends on y then y doesn't ontologically depend on x.36 But in some conceivable cases x bears R to y, y bears R' to x, and both R and R' are dependence factors. A deflationary pluralist who takes the dependence factors to be species of ontological dependence cannot avoid concluding, then, that x and y ontologically depend on each other. For example, perhaps the cosmos is composed by some atoms, which rigidly necessitate the cosmos.37 Or perhaps properties conceived as Aristotelian universals generically necessitate their instances (they cannot exist uninstantiated), but the instances rigidly necessitate at least their essential properties.38 36 See Lowe (1994), Cameron (2008), and Koslicki (2013), among others. 37 Bennett (2017: 26–9) raises a similar worry about the general notion of building. See also her discussion of why it's not a promising strategy to insist that only one species of building can hold between any two relata; the same considerations apply to ontological dependence. 38 Lowe (1994) 30 One answer to these worries is that ontological dependence simpliciter is a very general relation, so it's not that bad if it fails to be asymmetric. What matters is that each species of ontological dependence is asymmetric, and with sufficiently finegrained distinctions, we can ensure that no two things bear the same species of ontological dependence to each other (e.g., the standard answer in the second case is to say that Aristotelian universals generically depend on their instances, which in turn rigidly depend on their essential properties).39 I don't see how this response addresses the main worry. Compare is bigger than. George the Great Dane is taller, but narrower, then Mike the Mastiff; yet they aren't bigger than each other. If someone thought they were, it wouldn't help to emphasize that the specific comparative size relations they bear to each other are asymmetric; this wouldn't by itself make the intuition that is bigger than is also asymmetric go away. The same goes for ontological dependence. If we started out with an asymmetry intuition about a particular case, it's unclear why this intuition should go away just because ontological dependence is a general relation comprising more fine-grained asymmetric species. Deflationism can reconcile the possibility of opposing dependence factors with the asymmetry of ontological dependence. Let me immediately add that we don't need to assume that ontological dependence is asymmetric. So far I have been assuming that it is, but Deflationism also allows us to make sense of revisionary views. Roughly, we can distinguish three positions in the extant literature: (a) ontological dependence is asymmetric, (b) it isn't asymmetric, and not even antisymmetric: some 39 See Lowe (1994: 38–40), Fine (1995: 286), and Correia (2005: 45, f11); cf. Bennett (2017: 27–8). 31 things ontologically depend on each other; and finally, (c) ontological dependence is antisymmetric but reflexive: everything trivially depends on itself. All along I have been assuming (a), but this choice wasn't mandatory. Deflationism can accommodate (b)-type views, since nothing in the notion of an aggregative cluster requires such concepts to be asymmetric. Is bigger than is asymmetric, but is at least as big as isn't. If ontological dependence were more like the latter, it could allow for mutual dependence. Better yet, once we recognize that aggregative clusters needn't be asymmetric, we can help ourselves to a conciliatory resolution of the dispute between (a) and (b)-type views. 'Ontological dependence' displays a certain amount of indeterminacy: there are several abundant relations that could have been meant by it, some of which allow for symmetric aggregation while others rule it out. Perhaps the linguistic conventions favour one candidate over the other. Even so, the rival party's mistake is fairly superficial, and they are free to just stipulate a notion of ontological dependence with the desired formal properties. This resolution dovetails nicely with many putative examples of symmetric dependence, which usually cite opposing dependence factors.40, 41 40 This is the case, I believe, with many of Barnes's (forthcoming) putative examples of symmetric dependence, though I lack space to go over them in any detail here. 41 One might worry that no notion of ontological dependence is asymmetric. Take a (simplified) toy model according to which the dependence factors are R1, R2 and R3, and something ontologically depends on another thing if the former bears a majority of dependence factors to the latter. Then we can construct a case in which x bears R1 and R2 to y, y bears R1 and R3 to z, and z bears R2 and R3 to x. The rules of aggregation and the transitivity of ontological dependence imply a violation of asymmetry (as well as irreflexivity). I think this objection does show something significant: the rules of 32 What about (c)-type views? I stipulated that each dependence factor was asymmetric, but we can cook up a concept – ontological dependence*, say – that aggregates non-symmetric modal and constructive relations, for example proper-orimproper parthood and (non-symmetric) rigid and generic necessitation. Presumably, everything bears to itself a significant subset of these "dependence* factors", so it's plausible that everything ontologically depends* on itself. The debate between (a)and (b)-type views can thus be understood as one about whether 'ontological dependence' means ontological dependence or ontological dependence*. Although this diagnosis implies that the participants themselves misconceive the nature of their debate (they think they are talking about the same relation, but they aren't), I find it attractive.42 While most philosophers assume that ontological dependence is irreflexive and asymmetric, others write as if it was obvious that everything depended aggregation won't by themselves ensure the asymmetry of an aggregative cluster concept. However, that doesn't mean that we cannot rule out such loops on an independent basis. Let's assume (for simplicity's sake) that the three factors are rigid asymmetric necessitation, irreflexive parthood, and ancestral set membership. Suppose x rigidly asymmetrically necessitates y and y is a proper part of x, and y rigidly asymmetrically necessitates z and z is an ancestral member of y. To complete the loop, z would need to be both a part and an ancestral member of x, which seems impossible. While I lack space to go through every logically possible combination of dependence factors, I'm yet to be convinced that we can find one that yields a loop. (Thanks to Mike Raven for raising this concern.) 42 Elsewhere, I defended a similar diagnosis of putative cases of self-grounding as a trivial limiting case, rather than a genuine departure from the orthodox irreflexive conception; see Kovacs forthcoming. 33 on itself.43 Since everything plausibly ontologically depends* on itself, it's natural to understand them as using 'ontological dependence' for ontological dependence*. Let me wrap up. There are various notions, guided by different rules of aggregation, which result in different constraints on the formal properties of ontological dependence. Which of these comes closest to the standing notion of ontological dependence is a question I cannot conclusively settle here, but the deflationary framework can explain why any of the extant views could appear reasonable to its proponents. 6. Concluding remarks In this paper, I attempted to spell out Dependence Deflationism in some detail and offered some reasons for taking it seriously. If the deflationary view is correct, we arguably shouldn't structure our inquiries around the notion of ontological dependence, since the questions we formulate in terms of it could be asked and addressed with more precision in modal and constructive terms. 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POLISH JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY Vol. III, No. 1 (Spring 2009), 111-126. Responsibility: distinguishing virtue from capacity Nicole A Vincent Philosophy, TU Delft, Netherlands Abstract. Garrath Williams claims that truly responsible people must possess a "capacity ... to respond [appropriately] to normative demands" (2008, p. 462). However, there are people whom we would normally praise for their responsibility despite the fact that they do not yet possess such a capacity (e.g. consistently wellbehaved young children), and others who have such capacity but who are still patently irresponsible (e.g. some badly-behaved adults). Thus, I argue that to qualify for the accolade "a responsible person" one need not possess such a capacity, but only to be earnestly willing to do the right thing and to have a history that testifies to this willingness. Although we may have good reasons to prefer to have such a capacity ourselves, and to associate ourselves with others who have it, at a conceptual level I do not think that such considerations support the claim that having this capacity is a necessary condition of being a responsible person in the virtue sense. 1. Williams on responsibility as a virtue When we call someone "irresponsible" this typically involves a negative kind of evaluation of their character, and when we criticize a person for being irresponsible in this sense we do not just criticize them for some specific bad thing that they have done, but rather we criticize their character. Naturally, we may be prompted to call someone "irresponsible" because of something that they have done or because of their general history of doing those sorts of things, however this only reveals our epistemic position – i.e. we come to know that someone is irresponsible by building up a picture of their history; a picture which, if sufficiently consistent, arguably reveals things about their character – but it does not show that when we criticize a person for being irresponsible we are only criticizing some specific act. On the other hand, when we call someone "responsible" in the sense which is opposite to the term "irresponsible," this is a positive evaluation of their character – an accolade – and when we praise a person for being responsible in this sense we again do not just praise them for some specific good thing that they have done, but rather we praise their character. Garrath Williams suggests that when 112 Nicole A Vincent "irresponsible" and "responsible" are used in this way, what we have in mind is "responsibility as a moral virtue" (2008, pp. 456, 457). Here are some character traits which Williams associates with people that have this virtue: (i) a person who has this virtue is reliable, (ii) she has commitment toand carries through with projects once she has started them, (iii) she has initiative, (iv) she can exercise her own judgment, (v) she is trustworthy, (vi) she identifies with her actions and omissions, (vii) she can answeror is accountable for her actions and omissions, (viii) she makes up for her actions and omissions, (ix) she is conscientious in discharging her responsibilities, (x) she recognizes and deals appropriately with her various and sometimes-conflicting responsibilities, (xi) she can judge whether others are fulfilling their responsibilities, (xii) she can judge who should hold whom responsible for their actions and omissions (2008, pp. 459-462), and (xiii) if appropriate she steps in when others neglect their responsibilities by reporting this to the relevant authorities so that appropriate measures can be taken, and maybe she even takes on those responsibilities herself if no one else can take those measures (2008, p. 467).1 Many of these character traits relate to the idea that a person who is responsible in this virtue sense will discharge their responsibilities2 - i.e. that they will see to it that the things that it is up to them to do get done. But since our responsibilities stem from a possibly wide range of different sources – for instance, although "[r]oles define and clarify [some normative] demands upon us, ... the imperatives of basic human decency" impose their own distinctive normative demands upon us too (2008, p. 467) – Williams therefore schematizes the virtue of responsibility with the suggestion that "responsibility represents the readiness to respond to a plurality of normative demands" (2008, pp. 459, 469). Much of what Williams says above about responsibility as a virtue strikes me as right; I take issue, however, with something else which he says: namely, his claim that in order to be responsible in the virtue sense a person must actually possess the capacity to respond in the appropriate way, as opposed to, for instance, merely having the right intentions and a history that testifies to such intentions. Williams writes that although when we talk of this virtue "we are also concerned with an agent's will to employ his abilities" (i.e. whether they have the right intentions, or whether they are well-meaning), he insists that "responsible agents can, and must, judge for themselves," and hence he argues that "an account of responsibility has to take seriously the capacity of responsible agents to 1 Similar characterizations of responsibility as a virtue are also offered by others (e.g. Haydon, 1978; Williams, 1995; Bovens, 1998; Duff, 1998, p. 291). 2See Robert Goodin's (1986; 1987) discussion of this use of the term "responsibilities." Responsibility: distinguishing virtue from capacity 113 judge. [T]he responsible agent must appreciate and weigh these demands, and try as best she . . . can, to negotiate an appropriate response to them" (2008, p. 462, emphasis changed). However, merely trying does not seem to be enough for Williams to grant someone the accolade "a responsible person," since he repeatedly describes this readiness in terms of capacity or ability: for instance, even in his concluding comments he talks of "an agent's capacity to manifest responsibility," and he says that "[t]o speak of 'responsible agents' presupposes that those agents are able to judge" (2008, p. 469, emphasis added). The thought that people must not only be well-intentioned but that they must also possess Williams' capacity in order to be truly responsible – i.e. that possession of this capacity is a condition of having this virtue – is attractive. However, at the same time I also think that there is something wrong about this idea. Thus, in §2 (immediately below) I first comment on what I think is right about it, but then in §3 I explain why I think that this suggestion should ultimately be rejected. On my account, pace Williams, to possess the virtue of responsibility a person needs only to be earnestly willing to do the right thing and to have a history which testifies to that willingness, but they need not actually possess Williams' capacity. 2. What's right about Williams' suggestion? Two things seem right about the suggestion that possession of Williams' capacity is indeed a condition of being a truly responsible person in the virtue sense: firstly, we probably have good reason to want to be like that ourselves (i.e. to have that sort of capacity); and secondly, we also probably have good reason to prefer to associate ourselves with people who have that capacity rather than with those that do not. Here are some reasons why we might prefer to be the sorts of people who possess Williams' capacity rather than to be the sorts of people who have a deficit in this regard. Firstly, such a capacity might make us more independent, since we won't always have to ask others to tell us what's right and what's wrong. Secondly, we might be better-behaved if we have such a capacity, since it will enable us to work out how we should behave in a given situation, and perhaps that will also mean that we will get in trouble less often for doing the wrong thing. Thirdly, those who possess this capacity might be smarter and more sophisticated. Fourthly, if we have this capacity then others might see us (perhaps rightly) as more trustworthy, dependable and accountable, and hence they may be more willing to put us in charge of various projects – i.e. they might be more prepared to give us our own responsibilities – and that might increase our autonomy. But perhaps most importantly, the possession of Williams' 114 Nicole A Vincent capacity may be thought of as a condition of having a distinctively human dignity, because without this capacity we might be less than fully-fledged moral agents. These are just some brief reflections – none particularly novel – about why we might prefer to be the sorts of people who possess Williams' capacity rather than to lack it. And here are some reasons why we may prefer to associate ourselves with others who also have Williams' capacity - and again, I do not take any of the points that follow to be particularly novel either. Firstly, we might trust those who have this capacity more than we trust those who don't, since we might think that those who do have it are more likely to accurately assess their own abilities, and hence that they are therefore also more likely to later deliver on their promises. Secondly, we might think that people who have this capacity are more dependable, perhaps because they are less likely to be distracted away from doing their duty (maybe because they can better appreciate the importance of discharging their duties) than others who lack this capacity. Thirdly, if this capacity is indeed a condition of moral agency, then we might also be more justified in expecting those who possess it to do what they ought to do, and that in turn might make us feel more secure about interacting with and relying upon such people. Fourthly, we might only be justified in holding people to account for their actions, for their omissions and for the outcomes of their actions and omissions, and to make up for their wrongdoings, if it was legitimate for us in the first place to expect them to do those things, and that too might make us feel more secure about interacting with such people (perhaps because we might feel that if they do mistreat us in some way then at least we will have a legitimate claim against them to now compensate us for our troubles). Finally, such people's commitment to the cause – i.e. the fact that they will even take on additional responsibilities in order to make sure that things go according to plan rather than falling apart when someone else neglects their responsibilities – might also make them into attractive people to have as partners, as friends, as colleagues and as cohorts. In fact, as Williams points out, modern liberal societies presuppose a certain system of checks and balances which is only possible when the people and organizations that constitute those societies possess this capacity. One of the main points of his paper, I take it, was to point out that "[r]esponsibility ... is necessary both to sustain [liberalism's institutional] order and to address its inevitable failures in achieving all that we demand of it" (2008, p. 457). Thus, here again there is a conceivably wide range of reasons to prefer to associate ourselves with people who possess Williams' capacity rather than with people who have a deficit in this regard. There are many reasons to prefer ourselves to beas well as to associate ourselves with people who have Williams' capacity. People who Responsibility: distinguishing virtue from capacity 115 have that capacity as well as the character traits which Williams associates with this virtue are paragons of responsibility, and we have much reason to admire them. But the question that needs addressing is not whether we should hold this capacity in high regard or admire the people who have it, but it is rather whether to be a responsible person in the virtue sense one needs to have this capacity, and that is the question to which I now turn. 3. What's wrong with Williams' suggestion? Williams asserts that in order for someone to be responsible in the virtue sense, they must actually possess the capacity to appropriately respond to a variety of normative demands - i.e. he claims that the possession of this capacity is a condition of being a responsible person. However, in this section I argue for the following two claims: firstly, that we should distinguish between two different responsibility concepts that I will call virtue responsibility and capacity responsibility; and secondly, that having capacity responsibility is not a condition of being virtue responsible. The second of these two claims is a denial of Williams' suggestion, and so if this section's arguments are sound then Williams' suggestion should be rejected. 3.1. DISTINGUISHING CAPACITY RESPONSIBILITY FROM VIRTUE RESPONSIBILITY Consider the following example about my two children, Jane and John: Jane is 8 years old and very well behaved. She gets up in the morning all by herself, she washes and gets dressed and even makes her own lunch, she doesn't fight with other kids at school, after school she does her homework, she cleans up after herself, she helps me make dinner, and she even looks out for her older brother John. However, despite the fact that Jane is such a responsible little girl, I also know that she is ultimately only a little girl – she still lacks the mental capacities that one needs to have in order to be a fully responsible person – and so I do not really blame her when she sometimes fails to do these things. Jane is a responsible person, even though she is not yet a responsible person; or put in a less ambiguous way, Jane is a responsible little girl, even though she is not yet a fully responsible person. Now consider John, Jane's older brother. John is 17 years old and not at all like his much younger sister - some would call John an irresponsible young man. He wags school, he won't make his own lunch even though bought lunch is much more expensive, if and when he gets to school he always gets in some kind of trouble with the teachers, his 116 Nicole A Vincent bedroom is a pigsty and we are always cleaning up after him in the rest of the house; he can not even be trusted to look after his little sister. Nevertheless, despite the fact that John is an irresponsible young man, we all know him well enough to know that he is actually a fully responsible person – we've seen what he is capable of doing when he puts his mind to things – and that is precisely why we are so very dark on him for his constant misbehaviour. John is not a responsible person, even though he is a responsible person; or put in a less ambiguous way, John is an irresponsible young man, even though he is in fact a fully responsible person. Here are some claims about Jane and John which strike me as intuitively plausible - I will use this opportunity to introduce some new terminology (italicised), the meaning of which should become apparent from its use here and in subsequent paragraphs. Firstly, as regards their capacity responsibility, Jane is not yet a fully responsible person but John is a fully responsible person. Secondly, as regards their virtue responsibility, Jane is a responsible little girl and John is an irresponsible young man. Thirdly, as regards their role responsibilities or things that it is up to each of them to do, Jane has fewer responsibilities than John, and this is at least partly because her capacities are lower than his.3 And finally, as regards their outcome responsibility4 or the sorts of things 3 See the discussion towards the end of this sub-section for an important qualification. Role responsibility, like virtue responsibility and capacity responsibility, is a term of art; it is not my intention to suggest that we only acquire responsibilities through our more formal roles like parent, teacher, partner and so on, since I agree wholeheartedly with Williams' plurality claim - i.e. that our responsibilities stem from a possibly wide range of different normative sources (see §1 above). Robert Goodin also mentions and employs this kind of responsibility concept in his own analysis of responsibility, though he calls it "task responsibility" (1987, p. 168). 4 Outcome responsibility is another term of art, and I take it to be roughly equivalent to what Williams' calls "retrospective responsibility" (Williams, 2008, pp. 457, 459, 460, & 467). Antony Duff also uses the term "retrospective responsibility" to refer to this backwards-looking responsibility concept (Duff 1998). However, there is no agreement on what terminology should be used to refer to this concept since others have called it a variety of different things. For instance Fischer & Ravizza refer to it as "moral responsibility" for actions, for omissions, or for their consequences (1998b), though I am not fond of this expression because it still fails to adequately differentiate between our forward-looking responsibilities with respect to our actions, omissions and outcomes (our "role responsibilities" comprise some of these, though as I argue elsewhere (Vincent, 2006, p. 90) we also have other forward-looking responsibilities which I call "liability responsibility") and our backward-looking responsibility for those things (what I have called above our "outcome responsibility"). Also, Peter Cane calls this backwards-looking responsibility concept "historical responsibility" (2004, p. 162), Thomas Scanlon seems to call it "responsibility as attributability" (1998, p. 248), and Christopher Kutz calls a component of this backwards-looking responsibility concept "causal responsibility" (2004, p. 549). I, however, prefer Stephen Perry's term "outcome responsibility" (2000, p. 555), Responsibility: distinguishing virtue from capacity 117 (outcomes or more generally states of affairs) for which they can be blamed, John can be blamed for more than Jane, and this is at least partly because his greater capacities mean that we may justifiably expect more of him than we can of her - i.e. John has more and/or greater role responsibilities in virtue of his greater capacity responsibility,5 and because the scope and degree of his role responsibilities is expanded he can therefore be outcome responsible for more things. Although my intuitions about these things are not unshakeable or indisputable, I do think that they are at least relatively plausible, and indeed some of my intuitions in this regard – especially the ones about the relationship between capacity responsibility, role responsibility and outcome responsibility – are shared in one form or another by others. For instance, as regards my claim about the link between outcome responsibility and role responsibility, Goodin argues that "different people have different [task] responsibilities [my role responsibilities], ex ante, because they are allocated different duties and tasks. And people bear differential ex post responsibilities for outcomes, on this account, depending on the role that they played or should have played, pursuant to those ex ante task-responsibilities, in producing or averting those outcomes" (1987, p. 179, original emphasis). Secondly, as regards my claim about the link between role responsibility and capacity responsibility, Goodin writes: "I shall say little about the bases upon which these task-responsibilities [my role responsibilities] get assigned to the particular people they do. No doubt part of the story – no doubt a large part of it – has to do with people's differential capacities for performing the tasks and duties at issue" (1987, p. 180, emphasis added). The picture painted by Fischer and Ravizza also suggests that similar relations obtain between these responsibility concepts; for instance, while talking about the responsibility of young children, they argue that their "gradually expanding range of responsiveness [to reasons - i.e. my capacity responsibility] indicates the class of actions for which the child is properly held accountable" (1998b, p. 80), which is an expression of the same sort of relationship between capacity responsibility and outcome responsibility that I endorsed above. And in an earlier discussion of their "tracing approach," Fischer and Ravizza point out that the reason why capacity responsibility matters to outcome responsibility is because someone with adequate capacity "can reasonably be expected to have known" how they ought to have behaved - i.e. that capacity responsibility bears on role responsibilities (1998b, p. 50, they develop these ideas further in Chapters 4 and 5). In any case, in the discussion that follows I will treat these since it cleanly captures the idea of a form of responsibility which looks backwards in time towards states of affairs (outcomes) that were brought about. 5 See the discussion at the end of this sub-section for an important qualification. 118 Nicole A Vincent intuitions about the different kinds of responsibility claims that can be made about Jane and John, and about the relations which obtain between these different responsibility concepts, as veridical. The first thing which I hope to highlight with the Jane and John example and the related intuitions and discussion is that it is one thing to talk about whether someone is a responsible or an irresponsible person in the virtue sense of the term "responsibility" (i.e. what I call "virtue responsibility"), and that it is quite another thing to talk about whether they are fully responsible or not fully responsible in the capacity sense of the term "responsibility" (i.e. what I call "capacity responsibility"). As regards their virtue responsibility, Jane can be praised for the fact that she is such a responsible little girl, and John can be criticized for the fact that he is such an irresponsible young man; but as regards their capacity responsibility, something quite the opposite is the case - the right thing to say about Jane is that she is not yet a fully responsible person, and the right thing to say about John is that he is a fully responsible person. Thus, saying that someone is a virtue responsible person need not yet tell us anything about whether they are capacity responsible (think of Jane), and saying that they are a capacity responsible person need not yet tell us anything about whether they are virtue responsible (think of John). If capacity responsibility and virtue responsibility were the same concepts, then whenever we assess a person we should find that our judgments about their capacity responsibility and their virtue responsibility coincide. However, as the intuitions in the Jane and John example demonstrate, our judgments about capacity responsibility and virtue responsibility can come apart - Jane is a (virtue) responsible little girl even though she is not yet a (capacity) responsible person, and despite the fact that John is a fully (capacity) responsible person he is nevertheless an (virtue) irresponsible young man. Although a paragon of responsibility might be both capacity responsible and virtue responsible at the same time – i.e. they might possess Williams' capacity as well as have a consistent history that testifies to their admirable character traits – and there might also be others who lack Williams' capacity as well as having a consistent history of bad behaviour, there is no reason to suppose that capacity responsibility and virtue responsibility must always coincide like that. I take the fact that our judgments about capacity responsibility and virtue responsibility can come apart like this to entail that capacity responsibility and virtue responsibility must be different responsibility concepts. The second thing which I think this example and the related intuitions show, is that claims about capacity responsibility can play a very different functional role in our thinking about what other responsibility claims can be made about that person, than claims about their virtue responsibility. On the one hand, claims about a person's capacity responsibility might Responsibility: distinguishing virtue from capacity 119 affect the sorts of things for which we can blame that person – i.e. they might affect our judgments about the things for which they are outcome responsible – and as I suggested above with support from Goodin's as well as Fischer and Ravizza's analyses, they do this by affecting our judgements about that person's role responsibilities. The thought here is that we can only legitimately blame someone for doing something bad if it was reasonable to expect them not to do it in the first place – for instance, if they had the capacity to realize that they shouldn't have done that – but since we can only legitimately expect people to do things which they can actually do (though see the discussion almost immediately below for an important qualification), capacity responsibility is therefore a condition of outcome responsibility in the sense that a lack of capacity responsibility can reduce the extent of a person's blame or outcome responsibility. Put another way, people can be excused for doing certain things when the reason why they did those things is because they lacked the capacity to not do them and they were not responsible for this reduced capacity – e.g. because due to their young age they lacked the capacity to realize that they shouldn't have been doing that – and so claims about capacity responsibility can under the right circumstances perform an excusing role in our judgments about blame and outcome responsibility. On the other hand, claims about a person's virtue responsibility do not play an excusing role, although they can give us reasons to forgive someone for something bad that they have done and perhaps even to reduce their punishment or whatever other harsh treatment we think is appropriate given what they did. For instance, if John had previously been a model citizen and this was the only thing that he had ever done wrong, then his one slip might perhaps be forgiven - he would still be outcome responsible and blameworthy for what he did, though we may decide to let him off on this occasion since everyone is entitled to a few slip-ups here and there. But given that claims about capacity responsibility play a very different role to claims about virtue responsibility – i.e. claims about a person's capacity responsibility can play an excusing role, whereas claims about a person's virtue responsibility may only affect whether we forgive them for what they have done – that is therefore another reason to suppose that these are in fact two very different responsibility concepts. Before drawing my intended conclusion though, that capacity responsibility and virtue responsibility are two different responsibility concepts, I must first address two worries: the first relates to an important qualification of the claim that role responsibilities depend on capacity responsibility, and the second has to do with what we might legitimately be entitled to say of someone who seemingly lacks the capacity to stop making wounding remarks (however caused - e.g. by an old head injury) and others like them. On the first point, my suggestion that role 120 Nicole A Vincent responsibilities depend on capacity responsibility should not be misunderstood as the claim that our role responsibilities are determined by our capacity responsibility, since for instance if someone is responsible for the fact that they now have some incapacity, then that incapacity can not be cited by them to divest themselves of their responsibilities and thus to avoid blame for having done whatever it was that they did. Fischer and Ravizza comment on this in the context of discussing their "tracing approach" according to which "when an agent is morally responsible for an action that issues from a mechanism that is not appropriately reasonsresponsive, we must be able to trace back along the history of the action to a point (suitably related to the action) where there was indeed an appropriately reasons-responsive mechanism" (1998a, pp. 50-51, original emphasis). In other words, on their account if someone is responsible for the fact that the mechanism from which their actions stem is not reasons responsive, then the fact that their actions were produced by a mechanism that is not reasons-responsive would not exculpate them of their responsibility. However, although the fact that certain histories – namely, those in which the agent is outcome responsible for their own reduced capacity responsibility – prevent us from citing certain incapacities as exculpatory factors, this does not pose a problem for the point which I am presently advancing, since my point is not that reduced capacity always necessarily excuses the incapacitated person (such a claim would be patently false, for instance, in cases where the person is outcome responsible for their own reduced capacity responsibility), but it is rather that while considerations of reduced capacity can provide excuses, claims about a person's virtue responsibility can not play this role. This is an important part of the reason why I do not claim that our role responsibilities are determined by our capacity responsibility but rather why I only claim that there is some kind of a dependence relationship between them.6 On the second point, I do not intend any of what I said above to entail that someone who seemingly lacks the capacity to stop making wounding remarks can not be criticized as "nasty" or "spiteful" or whatever else might seem appropriate, even if the reason why they are like this is (for instance) because of an old head injury for which they were not responsible. On my account such criticisms may be perfectly fitting, however they will only be such as long as those criticisms are intended as criticisms of their character - i.e. as statements about their lack of virtue responsibility. However, on my account such criticisms would be inappropriate if they were intended as attributions of outcome 6 I discuss these and related points in detail elsewhere (Vincent, 2006, pp. 87-123; Vincent, 2008, p. 202). Responsibility: distinguishing virtue from capacity 121 responsibility or blame to the person concerned, and the reason why I think that this would be inappropriate is precisely because a person whose capacity responsibility is reduced might not satisfy the requirements for being a legitimate target for attributions of blame and outcome responsibility for their actions, omissions and for the consequences of their outcomes and omissions (on the proviso that they are not responsible for their reduced capacity responsibility). And far from this being a lamentable feature of my account of the relations between the different kinds of responsibility concepts that were listed above – most importantly for the present discussion, of the relationships between capacity-, roleand outcome responsibility – I take this to be a virtue of that account since it allows us to say the intuitively correct thing about whether such a person can be criticized as nasty, spiteful or whatever else (yes, they can be criticized for the sort of person that they are), but at the same time it also respects the intuition that such a person may fail to be a legitimate target for attributions of blame and outcome responsibility for the things that they do. Thus, in summary, there are two reasons to suppose that capacity responsibility and virtue responsibility are two different responsibility concepts: firstly, our judgments about a person's capacity responsibility and their virtue responsibility can come apart; and secondly, while claims about a person's capacity responsibility can perform an excusing function, claims about their virtue responsibility can only play a forgiving role. 3.2. CAPACITY RESPONSIBILITY IS NOT A CONDITION OF VIRTUE RESPONSIBILITY So far I have argued that capacity responsibility and virtue responsibility are two different responsibility concepts. However, that does not yet show that Williams' claim that the capacity to respond to a plurality of normative demands – undoubtedly an important component of capacity responsibility – is not a condition of being a virtue responsible person. The mere fact that capacity responsibility and virtue responsibility are two distinct concepts is not yet a reason to suppose that those concepts might not be related to each other in some way - for instance, Williams might accept what I have said about these being two different responsibility concepts, but yet he might still nevertheless claim that being responsible in one sense (i.e. capacity responsible) is a condition of being responsible in the other sense (i.e. virtue responsible). Nevertheless, I will now argue that no such relationship between capacity responsibility and virtue responsibility obtains. The claim that capacity responsibility is a condition of virtue responsibility is ambiguous; it might mean either (i) that capacity 122 Nicole A Vincent responsibility is a necessary condition of virtue responsibility, or (ii) that capacity responsibility is a sufficient condition of virtue responsibility, or even (iii) that capacity responsibility is a necessary and sufficient condition of virtue responsibility.7 However, given the Jane and John example and the related intuitions, I do not think that any of these claims can be sustained. Firstly, might capacity responsibility be a necessary condition of virtue responsibility? Not if we want to retain the intuition that Jane is a responsible little girl - something which I take to be an example of a claim about her virtue responsibility. If capacity responsibility were a necessary condition of virtue responsibility, then since Jane lacks capacity responsibility – after all, she is still only a little girl and she has not yet developed the capacities of a fully mature adult8 – she therefore could not be said to be a virtue responsible person. Furthermore, if capacity responsibility were a necessary condition of virtue responsibility, then in light of the fact that Jane is a virtue responsible little girl we would also have to conclude that she is a capacity responsible person - if capacity responsibility were a necessary condition of virtue responsibility, then a virtue responsible person would have to be capacity responsible. But if that were so (i.e. if Jane was capacity responsible) then since capacity responsibility is also a condition of outcome responsibility, we would therefore have to conclude that Jane should not be excused when her behaviour fails to come up to her usual high standards. However, Jane's early age and the associated deficit of capacity is precisely the sort of consideration that would normally be taken into consideration when we determine whether someone is to blame/outcome responsible for their bad behaviour, or whether they should be excused for it.9 Thus, if we wish to retain the intuition that Jane is a responsible little girl, and if we do not wish to be forced to say that she is fully outcome responsible for the things that she does – or at least if we want to leave open the possibility that her outcome responsibility may sometimes be reduced on account of her young age and thus her reduced capacities – then we'd better not insist that capacity responsibility is a necessary condition of virtue responsibility. 7 I do not mean to imply that Williams thinks that capacity responsibility is a sufficient condition of virtue responsibility, but I do think that this is one possible interpretation of the claim that capacity responsibility is a condition of virtue responsibility, and so for this reason I consider it here along with the other two interpretations of the claim that capacity responsibility is a condition of virtue responsibility. 8 I stipulate this as part of my example; for instance, she is not a precocious developer or anything of that sort. 9 Though please note my qualifications towards the end of §3.1. above. Responsibility: distinguishing virtue from capacity 123 Secondly, might capacity responsibility be a sufficient condition of virtue responsibility? Not if we want to retain the intuition that John is an irresponsible young man - this too is an instance of a claim which I take to be an example of a claim about someone's virtue responsibility. If capacity responsibility were a sufficient condition of virtue responsibility, then since John is fully responsible in the capacity responsibility sense – this is again something which I stipulate as part of my example – he therefore should be fully responsible in the virtue sense too. However, John is patently irresponsible – he is anything but an example of a virtue responsible person – and so for this reason I urge that we should not suppose that capacity responsibility is a sufficient condition of virtue responsibility. Finally, might capacity responsibility be a necessary and sufficient condition of virtue responsibility? Apart from everything else that was already said above, a further reason why we should reject the suggestion that capacity responsibility is a necessary and sufficient condition of virtue responsibility is because by saying this we would have to deny that irresponsible people (i.e. those who, like John, are not virtue responsible) can ever be blamed for what they do (i.e. that they can be outcome responsible). If capacity responsibility were both necessary and sufficient for virtue responsibility, then claims about a person's capacity responsibility would track claims about their virtue responsibility - for instance, if we said that John is irresponsible then this would entail that he must therefore lack capacity responsibility. However, as I said earlier, claims about a person's diminished capacity responsibility can also perform an excusing function - i.e. the fact that someone lacks capacity responsibility can under the right circumstances (if they are not responsible for this state of affairs) be cited as a legitimate reason to (at least partially) excuse them of their outcome responsibility. But if claims about a person's irresponsibility entailed that they must lack capacity responsibility, and claims about diminished capacity responsibility reduced the extent of their blame or outcome responsibility, then by transitivity claims about a person's irresponsibility might end up excusing them for the bad things that they do!10 But if anything, the fact that John is an irresponsible young man is a reason to hold him in even lower regard rather than it being a reason to excuse him for the bad things that he does, and so for this reason I do not think that capacity responsibility is a necessary and sufficient condition of virtue responsibility. 10 Heidi Maibom has recently run this kind of argument in the context of discussing the responsibility of psychopaths (Maibom, 2008). In essence, her claim seems to be that psychopaths should not be excused for the bad things that they do just because they are bad, since a claim like "I couldn't help killing them - after all I'm bad" is not a legitimate excuse. 124 Nicole A Vincent Capacity responsibility is neither a necessary, nor a sufficient, nor a necessary and sufficient condition of virtue responsibility, and so Williams' suggestion that to be virtue responsible one must also be capacity responsible should be rejected. 4. Conclusion Linguistic conventions are just that – i.e. conventions – and we could conceivably decide that we are only prepared to give the accolade "a responsible person" (an instance of praising a person for how responsible they are in the virtue sense) to someone who actually possesses Williams' capacities as well as an earnest willingness to do the right thing and a history that testifies to that willingness. Put another way, we could simply stipulate that for someone to have "responsibility as a virtue" they must have both my capacity responsibility and my virtue responsibility. However, after briefly explaining in §2 of this essay why this suggestion might sound attractive, in §3 I argued that doing this would be unwise because there is an important distinction to be drawn here which would unfortunately be obscured by doing this. Among the various responsibility concepts which populate debates about responsibility there are two similar-sounding but ultimately very different responsibility concepts - i.e. virtue responsibility and capacity responsibility. The distinction between these concepts is visible once we realize that claims about capacity responsibility and virtue responsibility can come apart, and also when we notice that each of these two kinds of claims plays a very different functional role in justifying further claims about responsibility. Furthermore, I also argued that there are good reasons to suppose that having one kind of responsibility (i.e. capacity responsibility) is not any kind of a condition of being responsible in the other sense (i.e. virtue responsible). Thus, if we really wish for some term that will allow us to refer to people who are both virtueand capacity responsible, then my suggestion is that we should call such people "paragons of responsibility." Our language must make it possible to criticize someone for the fact that they are irresponsible (that they lack virtue responsibility) but at the same time to also attribute responsibility to them for the things that they do (on account that they possess capacity responsibility), or to praise someone for the fact that they are so responsible (that they possess virtue responsibility) but without this necessarily having to entail that they are legitimate targets for attributions of responsibility for the things that they do (since they may lack capacity responsibility). Put another way, our language must make it possible to criticize someone's character without this entailing that they are not responsible moral agents, and it must allow Responsibility: distinguishing virtue from capacity 125 us to praise someone's character without this entailing that they are responsible moral agents. However, these things can only be done if we clearly distinguish the concepts of capacity responsibility and virtue responsibility rather than blurring their boundaries as Williams does. Thus, I now conclude that, pace Williams, to be virtue-responsible a person needs only to be earnestly willing to do the right thing and to have a history which testifies to that willingness, but that they need not actually possess Williams' capacity. References Bovens, M. (1998). Two concepts of responsibility. In The Quest for Responsibility: Accountability and Citizenship in Complex Organisations (2242). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Cane, P. (2004). Responsibility in Law and Morality: Book Symposium, Author's Introduction. Australian Journal of Legal Philosophy, 29, 160-163. Duff, R. A. (1998). Responsibility. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (vol 9, 290-294). E. J. Craig (Ed.). New York : Routledge. Fischer, J. M., & M. Ravizza (1998a). Moral Responsibility for Actions: Weak Reasons-Responsiveness. In J. M. Fischer and M. Ravizza (Eds). Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility (28-61). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fischer, J. M. and M. Ravizza (1998b). Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Goodin, R. E. (1986). Responsibilities. Philosophical Quarterly, 36, 50-56. Goodin, R. E. (1987). Apportioning Responsibilities. Law and Philosophy, 6, 167-185. Haydon, G. (1978). On Being Responsible. The Philosophical Quarterly, 28, 4657. Kutz, C. (2004). Chapter 14: Responsibility. In J. Coleman and S. Shapiro (Eds). Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law (548-587). Oxford: Oxford University Press. Maibom, H. L. (2008). The Mad, the Bad, and the Psychopath. Neuroethics, 1, 167-184. Perry, S. R. (2000). Loss, Agency, and Responsibility for Outcomes: Three Conceptions of Corrective Justice. In J. Feinberg and J. Coleman (Eds.), Philosophy of Law (6th Ed.) (546-559), Belmont: Wadsworth/Thompson Learning. Scanlon, T. M. (1998). Chapter 6: Responsibility. In What We Owe to Each Other (248-294). United States of America: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Vincent, N. (2006). Responsibility, Compensation and Accident Law Reform. Discipline of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. Adelaide: University of Adelaide. 126 Nicole A Vincent Vincent, N. (2008). Responsibility, Dysfunction and Capacity. Neuroethics, 1, 199-204. Williams, B. (1995). Voluntary acts and responsible agents. In B. Williams, Making sense of humanity (22-34). Cambridge; Cambridge University Press. Williams, G. (2008). Responsibility as a Virtue. Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 11, 455-470. | {
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The Ethical Patiency of Cultural Heritage Robert Francis John Seddon Current treatments of cultural heritage as an object of moral concern (whether it be the heritage of mankind or of some particular group of people) have tended to treat it as a means to ensure human wellbeing: either as `cultural property' or `cultural patrimony', suggesting concomitant rights of possession and exclusion, or otherwise as something which, gaining its ethical signi cance from the roles it plays in people's lives and the formation of their identities, is the bene ciary at most of indirect moral obligations. In contrast, I argue that cultural heritage, as something whose existence can go well or badly, can itself qualify as a moral patient towards which we may have obligations which need not be accounted for in terms of subsequent bene ts to human beings. Drawing inspiration from environmental ethics and suggesting that heritage, like an ecosystem, is a complex network of interrelations which invites a holistic understanding, I develop a framework for thinking about cultural heritage which shows how such a thing can feature in our ethical re ections as intrinsically worthy of respect in spite of its most obvious dierences from the `natural' world: the very human origins of cultural heritage and its involvement with human life in all its forms. As part of the development of this framework I consider the epistemic di culties which arise when for all our holistic sophistication we do nd ourselves in the predicament of having to judge the moral worth of some item of heritage, possibly someone else's heritage and possibly something which we nd ourselves disposed to value more because of than despite any mysteries surrounding it. I conclude by oering some tentative illustrations of how such a framework might operate in the practical course of normative moral reasoning about what should be done with items of cultural heritage.
The Ethical Patiency of Cultural Heritage Robert Francis John Seddon Submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Philosophy Durham University
Contents Abstract 1 Statement of Copyright 8 Acknowledgements 9 Dedication 11 Nomenclature 13 I. These Things Called Culture and Heritage 15 1. Introduction 19 1.1. The Development of the Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 2. The Practical Background 29 2.1. `Looting' and The Market In Antiquities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 2.2. Stories, Styles and Symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 2.3. Fan Cultures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38 3. The Philosophical Background 43 3.1. `Cultural Property' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 3.2. `Cultural Heritage' . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 4. What Is Needed 57 5. `Part of Our Culture' 65 5.1. Loss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 5.2. Other Kinds of Cultural Item . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 6. The Identity of a Culture 79 6.1. Authenticity, Distortion, and Culture As Network . . . . . . . . . . . 83 5 Contents 7. Origins and Traditions 91 7.1. Tradition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91 7.2. Origins . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 II. Contours of a Moral Landscape 107 8. `Value'? 111 8.1. Intrinsic and Nonintrinsic Value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114 8.2. Harding On Value and Experiences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 8.3. The Search for Alternatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125 9. A Topography of Value? 129 9.1. Valuable to Whom and for What? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 9.2. Value Taxonomy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132 9.3. Network and Value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 9.4. Some Possible Objections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 140 10.The Role of Categorisation 145 10.1. Some Complications: Arbitrariness and Bias . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148 10.2. Continuing the Search for Value . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153 11.Heritage and Human Interests 159 11.1. Biases and Bigotry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159 11.2. A Uni ed Hierarchy of Value? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 162 11.3. Questions of Priority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168 III. In Conversation With Cultures 171 12.Testimony and Authority 175 12.1. Whom Shall We Call? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177 12.2. The Panel of Experts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179 12.3. Spokesmen and Leaders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186 12.4. Observers and Organisers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 188 12.5. Plan B . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 190 12.6. But Whom Shall We Call? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194 13.The Mysterious In Heritage 197 13.1. Is There a Special Problem of Mystery? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199 13.2. Is There a Special Solution? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203 6 Contents 14.Encounters With Heritage 207 14.1. The Presence of History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208 14.2. The Cultural Entanglement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212 15.Pulling the Threads Together 217 16.The Framework In Action 221 17.Concluding Prospects 229 Bibliography 235 Index 248 The chart The Flowering Staircase: 1435-1935 by Timothy Stotz ( rst published in Stotz, 2006) appears on p. 138. 7 Statement of Copyright The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation from it should be published without the prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. 8 Acknowledgements This project was begun in a bright and warm October as the trees displayed the last of their greenery, and completed nearly four years later in what has turned out to be a nervous time for academia and for the discipline of philosophy. I am grateful to the many people who both nourished my thoughts and kept me in good cheer as the thesis grew slowly longer. I could not have wished for a more supportive supervisor than Georey Scarre, a scholar and a gentleman from whose o ce I always emerged after meetings feeling freshly reinvigorated. As secondary supervisor, Simon James gave me insightful comments on some of my Eidos seminar presentations of research in progress; he, moreover, oversaw the work conducted during part of my M.A. studies which turned out to be the initial seed from which this doctoral research project germinated. Other departmental sta whose comments helped me at various points include Andy Hamilton, Nick Zangwill, Benedict Smith and Andreas Pantazatos. The Department of Philosophy also gave me grants of money in the rst and third years of research which helped to distance me from abject poverty. The birth-pangs of Chapter 12 were partly soothed by attendees at the inaugural conference of the Centre for the Ethics of Cultural Heritage in July 2009, `Appropriating the Past: The Uses and Abuses of Cultural Heritage'; I recall stimulating questions from David Cooper and James O. Young. It is especially di cult to single out individuals for thanks from amongst the Durham department's postgraduate community, some of whom oered camaraderie and moral support, some their incisive philosophical critiques, and two or three the insistence that aspects of my project were fundamentally misconceived. Ian Kidd and Amanda Taylor-Aiken have been my philosophical contemporaries at St. John's College, Durham, since my earliest undergraduate days; Richard Stopford, Claire Graham and Guy Bennett-Hunter I rst met when we studied together on the old Taught M.A. course. Alex Carruth, Colin Baker and Tom Bunce in successive turn presided tolerantly when I presented at the Eidos postgraduate seminars. Other suppliers of scholarly inquisition or friendly collegiality or most often both have included Liz McKinnell, Donnchadh O'Conaill, Ulrich Reichard, Arlette Frederik, Bevis McNeil, Liat Netzer, Olley Pearson, David Kirkby, Owen Earnshaw, Sam Cane and Beckie Broadbent; letting my memory drift more languorously back to post-Eidos discussions in the local pubs over the past four years would easily enable me to expand the list. 9 Timothy Stotz generously allowed me to include his chart The Flowering Staircase on p. 138. Lastly, I should like to thank my family, and particularly my mother Madeline Seddon, who lives in the eternal hope that her son will do something useful with his life. Thank you for all your patience and support. 10 To the memory of my father; I hope it would have made him proud. 11 12 Nomenclature The following terms are used throughout the present work. Readers are asked to note that my distinctions, in particular in employing references to culture and the cultural, may dier from other writers', including those quoted in the text. Antiquity (When referring to an object) an artefact from the ancient world. Artefact Any physical object of human manufacture, especially in an archaeological context, and including but not limited to antiquities. Association Between cultural items, any link such as e.g. that one book inspired another, or, that two paintings were produced by the same studio. Cultural group A collective of people distinctively sharing some culture in common. (I invoke no especial subcategory of `Indigenous peoples'.) Cultural item A (roughly) discrete thing, concrete or abstract, or a group of related things considered as a discrete thing, or a practice or combination of practices, which is distinctively connected to one or more cultures for whatever reason. This may refer to either a token (an individual object, &c.) or a type (a class of objects; a repeating festival; the sort of propagating theme or idea sometimes called a `meme';1 &c.). Strictly speaking it is not quite true that the thing qua cultural item is the thing simpliciter ; they may, for example, have dierent persistence conditions, such that an object may be destroyed but persist in the collective remembrance of a cultural group. Cultural heritage One or more cultural items considered as a cohesive collection, either as a general phenomenon (what is sometimes styled the `heritage of mankind') or as the speci c cultural heritage of some cultural group. (In many cases my usages of culture and heritage come close to co-referentiality, but technically the two phenomena have some dierent properties: for example, cultures, but not heritages, may be `living' or `dead'.) Culture An intersubjective context for meaningful activity, considered either as a general phenomenon (`culture') or as a distinctive whole within it (`a culture'; `the culture of ' some people). For a more discursive commentary see Chapter 5. Unlike some other writers on culture and cultures, I never use the word with the sense in which I speak here of a cultural group. 1Although see Midgley, 1999, contra memetics. 13 Elgin Marbles Those of the Parthenon Marbles which were removed on Lord Elgin's orders. Heritage The same as cultural heritage unless otherwise quali ed. Insider A member of whatever cultural group is under discussion. Moral Patient An object of moral obligations. (What makes an obligation moral is a topic largely outside the scope of this document.) Outsider Anyone not a member of whatever cultural group is under discussion. Parthenon Marbles Any parts of the Parthenon frieze, including but not limited to the Elgin Marbles. 14 Part I. These Things Called Culture and Heritage
...[A] curiosity,a desire after the things of the mind simply for their own sakes and for the pleasure of seeing them as they are... This is the true ground to assign for the genuine scienti c passion, however manifested, and for culture, viewed simply as a fruit of this passion... Matthew Arnold (2006, p. 33)
. Introduction It does not at rst come naturally to speak of acting for the good of a cultural heritage, even where the heritage in question is in some sense one's own. Even if we are minded to expand the moral circle (Singer, 1985, pp. 9-10) to include some non-human animals; even if we endorse an `ontocentric' ethics that accords some minimal worth to all things in existence (Floridi, 2004, p. 10), we shall ordinarily do so on the basis that these entities exhibit some morally salient features in their own right: if we admit certain animals into the moral circle, for example, it may be because we believe their capacity to feel pain makes them moral patients.1 But when in addition to noting any inherent features a thing may have, we then observe that it quali es as cultural heritage, one naturally supposes that what we are saying has everything to do with the interests of human beings. To be cultural heritage involves a relation, that of being the heritage of somebody; one no more expects to speak of the value of cultural heritage without reference to the people dwelling within cultures than one would look for value in a text without reference to readers. Small wonder then that it is tales of clashing human interests that ll the ethical literature on heritage: we hear of disputes over the ownership of antiquities with murky pasts, or over whose practices should determine the fate of human remains. Sarah Harding has defended the claim that cultural heritage has intrinsic value and that there exist duties towards it (Harding, 1999), but (although she says much with which I am in sympathy) it turns out that her conception of the `intrinsic value' of heritage is rooted in its role within a ourishing human life, and that the duties which it generates regarding heritage are grounded in human self-respect.2 Since any world of which humans can conceive will be a world of human concepts, and since our concepts and our cultures are closely related, it is not surprising that when we ask what it is about heritage that animates our concern, we seem invariably to come back to the interests of human individuals. It is not the act of imputing a potential for bene t and harm to the items a heritage may include that creates this di culty in thinking otherwise. Items of 1If one does go so far as to act `for the sake of' inanimate things, perhaps out of a virtuously gentle character, one may still deny that they have `moral status', a good of their own which could be a source of obligations (James, 2011). 2For discussion see Chapter 8. 19 1. Introduction human invention carry with them familiar teleologies, and so we may without obvious personi cation say that it is good for houses that they should be dwelt in and well maintained, bad for them to be left derelict and vandalised; good for stories if they are told and retold, bad for them to be forgotten, or worn so thin in the retelling that their themes are reduced to cliché; good for the library of some historical gure to be kept together as an aid to scholarly interpretation of the former owner, and bad for it to be broken up and dispersed without a trace. Yet the ease of this manner of speaking, which evokes echoes of the Aristotelian nal and formal causes without any de nite ethical implications in the modern mind, seems to fall swiftly away when we turn to consider buildings, stories and libraries as items of cultural heritage; for who but human beings has a culture or a heritage, and what else, therefore, could invest such a thing with the possibility that anything `good' or `bad' could befall it? More securely in the sphere of culture than anywhere else, we might well expect man to be the measure of all things. The purpose of the following is not a call to abdication from concern for human interests but a defence of a certain general view of the place which cultural heritage should occupy in our moral landscape: that heritage itself counts as a moral patient, not sui generis but also not merely dependent on the aggregated needs, interests or preferences of human individuals. This does not diminish the interests that human beings do have in what happens to the heritage of their own and other humans' cultures; on the contrary, I shall argue that one of the tasks to be faced by an ethics of cultural heritage ought to be the reconciliation of our obligations to each other where they involve heritage, and our obligations concerning the treatment of heritage independent of any direct or indirect duties towards other people. I shall not be laying out a complete and all-encompassing normative theory of heritage ethics; quite apart from the sheer scale of such an undertaking, it would inevitably balance on so many foundational premises as to become unsteady, or unwieldy, unless a basic framework should rst be developed which grounds the core of such a theory with some measure of security. Suppose, for example, that I had approached the topic of aesthetic value in heritage by selecting my favoured accounts of the nature and value of aesthetic phenomena, and had woven these into my overall account of heritage ethics. (This would not have been an altogether senseless way to proceed, since the choice of which accounts of aesthetics, of history, of language, &c. to favour will aect the questions which arise when one comes to integrate them into a discussion of cultural heritage at large: for example, it is only if one a rms the autonomy of art that one might need to explain how autonomous art might be brought under the broad umbrella of heritage.) As a result the entire edi ce would have been made a hostage to fortune: a new breakthrough or a change 20 of academic mood in the eld of aesthetics might have cast sudden doubt upon my general account of cultural heritage in the eld of moral philosophy, probably not fatally damaging it but forcing an expansive re t. This threat would have been mirrored in any incorporation of assumptions about law, religions, history, language, sports, cuisine, and myriad other relevant matters in which I am in no way expert. Far better, then, to ensure as best I can that as many assumptions as possible about such related phenomena can be plugged in and switched around without threatening the plausibility of the core theory; although it is inevitable that this core will not be wholly pure and independent of broader assumptions about the nature of culture and cultural heritage. Since what I have to oer is a framework, a core theory with slots reserved for additional elements, in what follows I shall say little that is decisive about what our obligations concerning heritage precisely are, and still less in the way of exact and casuistical advice to moral agents grappling with planned alterations to some Grade II listed building, or squabbling over antiquities of murky provenance. Nevertheless, as usual in a work with the eventual aim of contributing to practical moral guidance, my argument will be heavily shaped by re ection on cases which exemplify the ethical di culties that arise within the ambit of cultural heritage; and in the closing chapters I shall sketch, under certain broadly plausible assumptions, how a recognition of heritage as a moral patient might play out in some exemplary cases, showing how the present work can therefore be of assistance to more directly applied moral philosophy. Meanwhile, in the second chapter I shall continue to set the scene by surveying the practical background to this enquiry: examination of a range of cases will illustrate the broad scope of `cultural heritage' while starting to tell a story about why a moral philosopher might want to get involved, and why these fairly disparate cases might start to look related when we begin talking about cultural heritage. The third chapter shifts to the philosophical background, situating my work in the context of the existing literature and introducing some critical discussion of current approaches to thinking normatively about heritage, principally the in uential model of `cultural property'. In Chapter 4 I oer further consideration of what criteria a theory of the ethics of cultural heritage, and more speci cally a theory that advertises itself as a framework, ought to ful l in order to be considered successful. If the Scylla for discussing this notoriously vague concept of `culture' is terminological imprecision, the Charybdis, in light of my comments about the need for a minimal core with frugal assumptions, may well be excessive exactitude, for culture can mean anything. Dierent conceptions of the term are embedded in various disciplinary and national traditions. By 1952, the 21 1. Introduction anthropologists A.L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn tracked down about 164 separate usages, and since then, needless to say, many more have accrued. (Jusdanis, 1995, p. 24) Clearly it would be inviting trouble for me to rely on the applicability of any one of the 164. No doubt discussion of cultural heritage has not con ned itself neatly to any single one; and so, with a neat and simple de nition of culture not obviously within reach, I must oer instead a philosophical re ection on what we may understand culture, or a culture, to be when we need to grasp what it then means for something to fall under the banner of cultural heritage. Chapter 5 therefore asks what it is that we suggest when we declare, `That's part of our culture!' What makes a culture one's own, and what is involved when we consider items to be associated with one culture or another? Chapter 6 considers the identity of cultures, particularly over time: can cultures split or merge, and if they can, what does that portend for questions of which items are whose heritage? Can a culture become `distorted' or `inauthentic'? Chapter 7 addresses a dierent aspect of temporality: the role of origins and traditions in debates about cultural heritage, the one concerned with tracing items' history back to some critical point of emergence, the other with their gradual accumulation of layers of signi cance. Some current disputes concerning the proper fate of objects, particularly between archaeological and museological perspectives on the custody of unprovenanced antiquities, may be partly unravelled if we understand them to be drawing on low-level conceptual dierences; and in discovering two clashing ways of seeing an object as existing in time, we have a further indication of what it might mean to talk about `heritage', a word inherently suggestive of acts of inheritance. Chapter 8 moves to direct consideration of the moral salience of cultural heritage, chie y through the prism of value, which has previously been employed philosophically by James O. Young (Young, 2007) and Janna Thompson (Thompson, 2003). Clearly many people think heritage is important, but are there solid grounds for thinking that the interests we take in items of heritage tie together in some philosophically interesting fashion into a question about `cultural heritage' and its moral importance in general? I begin to develop my position on the matter, and distinguish it from earlier work by Sarah Harding on cultural heritage as a repository of intrinsic value. Chapter 9 continues the discussion, developing the claim that cultural items may possess what we might think of as quasi-intrinsic value: although their moral standing is not intrinsic in the full sense in which we might call, for example, human persons intrinsically valuable (and indeed their very nature as cultural heritage is bound up with human deeds and concerns), I develop the view that by virtue of participation in a wider phenomenon of culture they count 22 as bearers of moral standing and recipients of direct obligations: as constituents of a genuine moral patient.3 Chapter 10 expands this theme in an exploration of the role played by categorisation: what happens when we consider the various ways in which we put items together and track their interactions and interrelations? It is plain enough that people are concerned with the literary genre, the artistic movement, the historical era, &c. in their evaluations of cultural items, but how are we to go about incorporating such things into our moral thinking? In the later part of the chapter I defend the view that cultures possess a patiency which is linked to their capacity for ourishing. Given an account of heritage as a moral patient, then, Chapter 11 asks what we are to say about its interactions with other moral patients and agents. If I should expand the group of patients with potentially con icting interests without oering even a preliminary indication of how these con icts might be resolved, that might be considered a somewhat regrettable outcome; but I shall contend that even at the framework stage there are reasons to be optimistic. Chapter 12 returns to the topic of value, and explores the associated moral epistemology. Given that members of a given cultural group presumably have an epistemic advantage in discovering where value lies in their own culture's heritage, what kind of authority might they possess exactly, and what are outsiders to do if they disagree? Examining knowledge from a dierent angle, Chapter 13 then wonders: what about those cases where a sense of mystery and antiquity beyond our complete grasp, far from being inimical to it, seem central to our appreciation of some item of heritage? Does appreciation of the mysterious in heritage not sit awkwardly with the epistemological aspirations of the previous chapter? The more directly experiential and sometimes quite emotional ways in which we may encounter heritage are further pondered in Chapter 14, which cautiously suggests that these may be a source of morally salient understanding; or at least, that they are aspects of our lives with which he have got to deal. The concluding chapters pull the threads together and demonstrate how they might be applied to some practical examples, before nishing with a re ection on how this enquiry might be expanded or re ned if I or anyone else were to build on the ideas presented herein. 3We would not, of course, say that anyone had duties towards my arm not to harm it, or that it was possible to act for the good of my arm; but it might not sound so strange to say that my arm participates in my moral patiency. Similarly, cultural items might derivatively be called moral patients, although the patiency in which they participate is in fact a broader one, and the same is true of any `good' which they possess or ` ourishing' of which they are capable. 23 1. Introduction 1.1. The Development of the Project Those ideas did not, of course, come into being in the order in which they are presented here, and it may help to account for them if I brie y explain their genesis. Their roots most clearly lie with the environmental ethics of `deep ecology'; like Harding, I am much impressed by the work done by environmental philosophers to extend our understanding of what can possess moral standing. For J. Baird Callicott, the very possibility of a distinctive domain of environmental ethics depends on the possibility of nonanthropocentrism, of discovering an intrinsic value4 in the environment and an ethics which could not be reduced to human-to-human obligation (Callicott, 1995). At around the same time I was reading items by two legal scholars based in the U.S.A., Lawrence Lessig and James Boyle, who were raising concerns about the duration of modern copyright,5 and its eects on the preservation, dissemination and creation of cultural items. Since `the vast majority of our lm heritage remains under copyright... general freedom to build upon the lm archive of our culture... is now a privilege reserved' for those who can aord to clear the rights (Lessig, 2004, p. 107). Copyright law can uselessly leave creative works without continuing commercial value to sit `in vaults gathering dust' (ibid., p. 224), or even to be lost altogether: [B]y the time the copyright for [ lms from the early decades of cinema] expires, the lm will have expired. These lms were produced on nitratebased stock, and nitrate stock dissolves over time. They will be gone, and the metal canisters in which they are now stored will be lled with nothing more than dust. (ibid., p. 225) Copyright can thereby become a self-defeating institution, and a culture-defeating one, even given the capacity for storage and transmission of which we have become technologically capable: Now that technology enables us to rebuild the library of Alexandria, the law gets in the way. And it doesn't get in the way for any useful copyright purpose, for the purpose of copyright is to enable the commercial market that spreads culture.6 No, we are talking about culture after it has lived its commercial life. (Lessig, 2004, p. 227) 4For discussion of this term see Chapter 8. 5Fourteen years for authors, renewable once, under the 1710 Statute of Anne, compared to a minimum of life plus fty years for signatories to the 1908 Berne Convention. Meanwhile Lessig, 2004, p. 134 outlines thirteen extensions of U.S. copyright terms from 1831 to 1998. 6I concur with this view of what it takes to justify copyright, but other putative 24 1.1. The Development of the Project Where Lessig uses the language of culture and heritage,7 Boyle has advocated a rhetoric drawn from the language of the environmental movement. The di culty for intellectual property minimalism was in conceptualising the `public domain', the space of intellectual material which is not subject to division between intellectual property rights holders: how do you frame a negative concept so as to proclaim its positive value? Do you perhaps speak of a commons, as Boyle sometimes has, and compare intellectual property maximalism to the enclosure movement (Boyle, 2003)? Then you must be ready to explain why the `tragedy of the commons', in which the uncoordinated exploitation of a shared resource results in its depletion and everyone's disadvantage, does not apply (ibid., pp. 35-6). What sort of commons do you mean, in any case: would you sooner conceive of this intellectual commons as commonly owned, thereby possibly encouraging its common owners to oppose raids on it (Drahos, 1996, p. 66), or as truly unowned and in that sense free? Or shall we speak of the commons as a resource, `an unusual resource in that it grows in strength through use and exploitation', to which duties of preservation and nurture relate (ibid., pp. 63-4)? In searching for an analogy for the public domain, for a way of talking about why it matters, Boyle looked to environmentalism: Why talk of `an environment' or `environmental harm?' Why not simply list the pros and cons of each particular piece of development, type of technology, aspect of land use? ... Why reify these individual loci of potential harm into a single entity called `the environment?' Part of the answer, of course, is rhetorical. The idea of the environment seems to add a moral overtone to the discussion, to counterbalance the arguments about `progress' and `growth' and `modernity.' And this is hardly an unimportant function. But that is not all there is to it. The environmental movement also gained much of its persuasive power by pointing out that [in existing legal and scienti c] conceptual systems, the environment actually disappeared; there was no place for it in the analysis. Small surprise, then, that we did not preserve it very well. In other work, I have argued that the same is true about the public domain... The idea of the public domain takes to a higher level of abstraction a set of individual ghtsover this chunk of the genome, that aspect of computer justi cations have been defended. For comparison with an account inspired by John Locke's theory of property, see Hettinger, 1989. For comparison with the droit d'auteur prominent on the Continent, see Goldstein, 2003, p. 135. I comment further on this topic in 3.1. 7Admittedly I have just quoted his sole use of the word `heritage' in the entire book. 25 1. Introduction programs, this claim about the meaning of parody, or the ownership of facts... The concept of the environment allows, at its best, a kind of generalized re ection on the otherwise unquestionable presuppositions of a particular mode of life, economy, and industrial organization. At their best, the commons and the public domain can do the same in helping us to reimagine creation, innovation, and speech on a global network. (Boyle, 2003, pp. 70-4) Part rhetorical armament, part conceptual model: it seems improbable that Boyle's `environment' is also Callicott's. Yet suppose we try pushing the model further than Boyle himself might wish to: suppose we ask ourselves whether some of the methods and ideas of environmental philosophy might in fact be applicable to a concept like `the public domain'. Suppose we go further, and take Lessig at his word when he writes of `unintended consequences for the cultural environment' (Lessig, 2004, p. 129). Suppose we note that Michael F. Brown has recommended `an ecological approach, one that moves constantly between speci c problems and the larger whole' (Brown, 2010, p. 570), when considering `the links between indigenous rights in heritage and parallel debates about the future of the public domain' (ibid., p. 570): Analogies between culture and the problem of environmental contamination are not as implausible as they might seem at rst glance. Molecules are often mobile, combining readily with air and water, thereby incorporating themselves into living things. So, too, do elements of culture memes, if you like which subdivide and spread via global media and informal personal contacts in ways that are not readily subject to collective control... No society can accurately be said to enjoy autonomy over its cultural resources, although communities do have a modest ability to encourage and defend elements of culture that they value highly. The limits of this control are evident in the declining use of many Native American languages despite the unstinting eorts of tribal governments to preserve them. (ibid., p. 571) Might this cultural environment too be a candidate for moral patiency, a possible object of moral obligations in its own right? Recall that Callicott was anxious to discover a nonanthropocentric moral worth in the natural world; and recall my earlier remarks about how very anthropocentric the notion of a culture or a cultural heritage looks. The di culty has perhaps been best expressed by Holmes Rolston III, in whose view `culture' is precisely what is to be contrasted with `nature', if the latter term is to be employed in a sense of interest to environmental ethics (Rolston, 1999, pp. 151-2). 26 1.1. The Development of the Project Rolston, like Callicott, believes that value exists in the natural world prior to the arrival of any human valuers. This holds, he argues, for plants as well as animals: We are misled to think that all the value of the tree, instrumental or intrinsic, must be subjectively conferred, like the greenness, a secondary quality, or even a tertiary one. A simpler, less anthropically based, more biocentric theory holds that some values, instrumental and intrinsic, are objectively there, discovered not generated by the valuer... Even those who think that all the tree's intrinsic value has to be conferred by humans still think that matters can be better or worse for the tree, and this amounts to saying that the tree on its own has its goods and harms. (Rolston, 1994, p. 19) Organisms act to sustain themselves, and so we may say that they value themselves (ibid., p. 15.). In somewhat like fashion, species propagate themselves (ibid., pp. 20-2); in ecosystems we encounter `a spontaneous order' (ibid., p. 23); and even at the planetary level what we nd is a biosphere, a self-sustaining planetary ecology (ibid., p. 26). One respect in which Rolston's views dier from Callicott's, however, is in his disinclination to naturalise culture (Rolston, 1999, p. 153). Wild animals do not form cumulative transmissible cultures. Information in nature travels intergenerationally on genes; information in culture travels neurally as persons are educated into transmissible cultures. The determinants of animal and plant behaviour are never anthropological, political, economic, technological, scienti c, philosophical, ethical, or religious. (ibid., p. 152) Living organisms and ecosystems are one thing, lifeless cultural items another: We can value collections, as of stamps, but this is just the aggregated value of individual stamps. Still, an ecosystem, if it exists, is rather dierent. Nothing in the stamp collection is alive; the collection is neither self-supporting nor self-maintaining. Neither stamp nor collection is valuable on its own. (Rolston, 1994, p. 22) This in turn is where my thinking parts company with Rolston's. To be sure, the creation and maintenance of a stamp collection depend wholly on human actions; the collection itself engages in no activity which we might interpret as self-valuation. However, it `isn't at all clear why there is anything special about life... Perhaps only living things can be injured, but non-living things can quite easily be damaged' (Christopher Belshaw, quoted in James, 2011, p. 389), and when it comes to cultural 27 1. Introduction items we need not even characterise this damage in terms of their strictly physical properties, and also need not be concerned by the thought that from `the point of view of the Universe (if such a phrase has meaning), the event of the chipping [sc. of a vase] would seem to constitute not damage but simply a value-neutral change from one state of aairs to another' (ibid., p. 390). A stamp collection has a structural integrity both as a collection and as an instance and a part of a wider milieu of philatelic practices. The creative human input which allows us to see a stamp collection, not just an assortment of brightly coloured sticky things, is itself responsive to this structure and this milieu, lling in gaps in the collection or sorting stamps according to rarity. Now of course, it is human beings who decide to prize certain kinds of postage stamp and adopt certain approaches to arranging them. There are, as Michael Flanders observed in At the Drop of Another Hat, only two kinds of stamps. English stamps, in sets, at the beginning of the album; foreign stamps, all mixed up at the other end. Any Gibbon can tell you that. The philatelists of other nations, however, may recognise dierent taxonomies. Nevertheless, the possibilities for organisation of which they make use notably suitability for being arranged in sets, but also unplanned features such as printing blemishes are discovered in the stamps themselves. Collector and collection act upon each other. As I discuss further in Chapter 10, our talk of cultural heritage is frequently concerned with quite overt examples of collection and categorisation: the literary genre, the artistic movement, the museum exhibition, and so on. Indeed, in calling something an item of cultural heritage one implicitly relates it to other such items, all set against a common cultural backdrop. Perhaps, I thought, if there is value for the moral philosopher to discover in cultural heritage it lies only derivatively in the individual items which sometimes become objects of controversy, and should in the rst instance be sought in the various clusters which these form: in precisely the structures of our cultural worlds which we presuppose when we ask what would be the right and best thing to do with respect to some item of cultural heritage. 28 2. The Practical Background The design of my desk (functional, mass-produced, at-pack self-assembly); the construction of my shoes (rugged-soled, suitable for the great outdoors, imperfectly comfortable because of my uncommon size and tting); the sound in my earphones (a classically styled remix of some decade-old videogame music): each of these falls readily under the grand banner of the cultural in its widest sense, a heading so expansive that it engulfs positively all human activity. Indeed, one of the bene ts of the intellectual work discussed in the next chapter has been to show how ostensibly diverse and distinct ethical problems, such as those concerning the ownership of archaeological nds and those involving outsiders' copying of indigenous peoples' artistic motifs, may be fruitfully brought together under such headings as `cultural appropriation'. In the present chapter my purpose is not to embark at once on any systematic treatment of the various manifestations of the cultural (for which see Chapters 5 and 6), but to give an early and broad indication of how the language of culture and heritage can start to look applicable to a considerable range of morally salient topics. For this reason, some of the following cases will be familiar to and expected by anyone broadly familiar with the contexts in which `cultural heritage' and `cultural property' are discussed, while others with which they rub shoulders will be less predictable: the Elgin Marbles commune with amateur software modi cation, and language conservation sits alongside the avour of New Coke. Beginning in the most familiar of territory, I discuss controversies over the market in antiquities without archaeological provenance, drawing particularly on the sometimes antagonistic positions of James Cuno, until recently President and Director of the Art Institute of Chicago and now President and C.E.O. of the J. Paul Getty Trust, and the archaeologist and peer Colin Renfrew (2.1). This is a debate conventionally framed in terms of `looting', but it turns out to be a disagreement about whether there is much left to appreciate once an antiquity's archaeological context is lost; here I prise open the question, which will occasionally hover over later chapters, of whether such a proprietorially tinged term as `loot' is conceptually helpful. If proprietorial thinking is questionable where physical objects are concerned, it is even harder to say in what senses intangible heritage belongs to a culture (2.2): cultures lack obvious boundaries within which a story or an artistic motif might 29 2. The Practical Background be kept. Moreover, if we did somehow manage to assign every cultural item in the world to the culture to which it principally belongs (a fanciful task in itself), our labours would still not be over: as the case of `fan culture' demonstrates (2.3), it is in the nature of cultural items that they occasion new creativity and new forms of cultural participation, to the extent that we may wish to say that new cultures and subcultures are emerging. In later chapters I shall speak of the ourishing of cultures; here, then, are some of their buds. 2.1. `Looting' and The Market In Antiquities `Why focus on looting? Because it is believed possible to stop it.' (Cuno, 2009, p. 3) These words were written by a museum director, but the `looting' in question does not involve the stealthy pillaging of art museums after hours. It involves digging antiquities out of the ground: `what today we would often call looted ' objects (ibid., p. 7) are those which have been subjected to `the illicit, unrecorded and unpublished excavation of ancient sites to provide antiquities for commercial pro t' (Renfrew, 2000, p. 15). To speak of the clandestine excavation, sale and export of antiquities as illicit acts, as `looting', has become commonplace, and it is worth asking at the outset why this should have been so. The mystery is not that it attracts condemnation when artefacts are unceremoniously pulled from the soil in pursuit of a ready pro t, but that excavation of objects from vanished civilisations and long-forgotten generations, of objects which can with no exaggeration be called abandoned, should be spoken of with a vocabulary suggestive of theft. The word does not always refer to freshly excavated objects, of course, and its usage has not been forever unchanged and uncontested. The Elgin Marbles had long stood in public view when they were removed from their monument, and their removal may have been given o cial sanction (Williams, 2009, p. 71, but see Rudenstine, 2002); nevertheless, one legal commentator has felt quite able to write that `Great Britain shamelessly looted and exported much of the sculptured integrity of the Parthenon' (Kelly, 1995, p. 34). Meanwhile Kwame Anthony Appiah, commenting on `the looting of the palace of King Ko Karikari' (Appiah, 2009, p. 72) which was undertaken by British troops in 1874, notes that the o cer overseeing the deed regarded it quite dierently: it was done honestly and well, without a single case of looting. Here was a man with an armful of gold-hilted swords, there was one with a box full of trinkets and rings..., yet in no instance was there any attempt at looting. (Robert Baden-Powell, quoted in ibid., p. 72) Looting is an illicit activity, the reasoning must have gone, and the routine actions 30 2.1. `Looting' and The Market In Antiquities of the military could not therefore be looting. These examples highlight another aspect of the word `loot' which is even less obviously applicable to illicit excavation: its potential to suggest `that objects were taken by the victors of battle (physical or ideological)' (Glass, 2004, p. 119; see also Merewether, 2003, p. 87). Perhaps this apparent mystery is little more than a lexicographical puzzle; perhaps, if we may fairly use the language of plunder to refer to the `grave robbers' of any place and time, then to employ such a word as `loot' even when less deliberately deposited artefacts are taken is merely pragmatic and convenient. Archaeological condemnation of looting has been centrally concerned not with the fact that objects have been carried away but with damage to archaeological sites, and with the destruction of the contextual information contained in them. Whenever we archaeologists speak to the general public, it is important for us to stress that the purpose of archaeology is not just to recover pretty objects from the ground; it is to reconstruct the history of the human past. Indeed, some of the most useful information for archaeologists comes from items that have no monetary or aesthetic value at all: pottery shards, pieces of charcoal, human and animal bones, even seeds and pollen. Through the scienti c study of a site, we can learn what people ate, what type of houses they lived in, which diseases they died from. We can learn about their social organization, their religious beliefs and rituals, and patterns of trade and migration. All the information that could be obtained by scienti c excavation is irreparably destroyed every time an archaeological site is plundered. At best we are left with a few objects, beautiful but silent. (Papa Sokal, 2006, p. 2) No clearly proprietorial attitudes are evident here, unless they concern the lost information as a common good which has been snatched from all of us. James Cuno concurs that `the archaeological context is, like any other, important, and anything that causes its destruction should be discouraged. Museums and archaeologists agree on this.' (Cuno, 2009, p. 3) As we saw above, the language of looting and plunder sits comfortably in his vocabulary too. Somehow, whether through linguistic accident or through tacit sympathy, museums and archaeologists alike are speaking as though the sites of buried objects were merchant ships eeing pirates o the Spanish Main (cf. Renfrew, 2000, pp. 77 & 79), when in fact they are alike concerned with the preservation of information, the only dierence in emphasis being Cuno's worry that a purely archaeological perspective disregards other ways in which antiquities can be meaningful (Cuno, 2009, p. 5.). 31 2. The Practical Background Pause. As everyone knows, this isn't how the script is supposed to play out; everyone knows that when the chairs are laid out for great debates about the custody of sites and the transfer and acquisition of antiquities, Cuno should be seated on one side of the table, an archaeologist on the other. Cuno will criticise archaeological collusion with `nationalist retentionist' (Cuno, 2008, p. xxxii) political schemes that employ archaeological nds in the service of governments' myth-making (ibid., pp. 913), all at the expense of encyclopaedic museums and the public they serve (ibid., pp. xxxi-xxxii & 123-4). Archaeologists will counter that if looting is to be prevented, the market in antiquities must be controlled so as to prevent the sale of items without a demonstrably legitimate provenance (see below). Tables will be pounded. Books will be sold. Everyone knows this. What everyone knows is substantially correct: there are genuine problems, and genuine dierences of opinion over the solutions. Cuno, with other museum curators, has put much energy into demonstrating both the narrowness of calling decontextualised antiquities `silent' and the length of the spoon required when inviting regulation by national governments. He observes that there are contexts other than the archaeological which invite study and veneration: that a piece of ancient craftsmanship may remain t for appreciation as an aesthetic object (Cuno, 2009, p. 7) (whatever happens to Marina Papa Sokal's charcoal and pollen), or may possess a history which enlightens us regarding the interplay of cultures (Cuno, 2008, p. xxxi), most eectively when displayed in a universal museum wherein the ingenuity of these dierent cultures may be compared (ibid., p. xix.). He warns us, too, that the interests of the governments that (to greater and lesser degrees) regulate archaeological digging and the export of nds are not grounded in the priorities of archaeological science, and that these governments may prove false friends. Looting is a problem, he agrees, but restricting the legitimate market in antiquities simply loses unprovenanced objects to the black market (ibid., p. 127). States have ulterior motives in asserting proprietorial interests in the objects discovered in their soils: archaeological objects may prove useful in massaging popular sentiment, folded into domestic political narratives intended to present modern nation-states as the rightful and proper successors of the regimes of antiquity (Cuno, 2009, p. 28). Or a narrative of cultural patrimony may simply help to `retain cultural property within the territorial boarders of the nation-state for the bene t of the nation and not to share it with the world for the bene t of the world' (Cuno, 2008, p. 126). In Cuno's judgment this way of approaching antiquities misrepresents the historical importance of cultural cross-pollination (2009, p. 27); and when states prove willing to impose strict policies of retaining antiquities found on their lands within their borders, indulging politicians' willingness to make use of archaeological 32 2.1. `Looting' and The Market In Antiquities objects becomes injurious to the comparative and universal understanding of human culture which is embodied in the encyclopaedic museum. There are archaeologists, and others, who put no less vigour into defence of positions unsympathetic to Cuno's. For those concerned primarily with the preservation of the archaeological record, the matter is pragmatic: looting must be prevented, and since demand drives the market, demand for unprovenanced antiquities must be checked. If only items known to have been scienti cally excavated are in demand, then only these will be supplied. It is necessary to place restrictions upon the antiquities trade simply because, as Lord Renfrew has put it, to diminish or eliminate clandestine excavation in the country of origin... is no easy task. It is desirable that each nation should have strong laws protecting its antiquities and a sound and well-informed antiquities service... [but] in many countries this desirable infrastructure is lacking... The second approach to the problem is to tackle the distribution and consumption of illicit antiquities. The role of the academic community... is to persuade the informed public that the purchase of unprovenanced antiquities has the inevitable consequence of funding the ongoing looting process. (Renfrew, 2000, p. 16) Antiquities may of course be valuable as works of art, but looters are poor custodians of art history, willing to reduce a coherent assemblage to `a number of isolated... items occurring individually on the market' (ibid., p. 24). It is irrelevant from such a point of view [as Renfrew's] whether [looting] is carried out in Italy by professional tomboroli, by amateur treasurehunters in the U.K. or by local community pot-hunters in Bolivia. It is equally irrelevant whether the material retrieved belongs to the state as in Italy, to the landowner as in the U.K., or to a commune as in Bolivia. All are equally guilty of damage to the archaeological record. (Carman, 2005, p. 18) Where information has been wilfully destroyed (and sometimes it is more than information which is destroyed in the search for marketable antiquities buried in the ground), it is irrelevant even whether items were excavated for the export market or whether they ended up in domestic national museums; Renfrew is scarcely more inclined than Cuno to approve of `the chauvinism which besets many national governments' (Renfrew, 2000, p. 62). Indeed, he writes that `in the archaeologist's book looted is worse than stolen precisely because it means that the excavation has been clandestine and unrecorded' (ibid., p. 58; see also p. 79, on which a similar 33 2. The Practical Background distinction is drawn between stolen and illicit antiquities).1 Ownership, in all its forms, is a secondary concern: Renfrew is prepared to write that `in a sense' it is not looting `when a landowner [in the U.S.A.] leases his own land out to a professional pot hunter and allows an ancient site to be bulldozed for pro t. But the eect is the same.' (Renfrew, 2000, p. 81) We cannot, then, accuse Lord Renfrew of thinking too much in proprietorial terms. If anything he says too little about private property: the privacy of private owners through whose hands antiquities may pass carries little apparent weight with him even as an argument to be countered (ibid., pp. 33 & 37). Which makes it no less curious that in his vocabulary, as in Cuno's, the destruction that contrasts with common-or-garden theft is called looting. It may be that questions of custody lend themselves readily to proprietorial language; this may also explain the popularity of the term `cultural property', which I discuss in the next chapter. In neither Cuno's nor Renfrew's thinking, however, is this term `loot' unambiguously being used as though by analogy with private (or state) property. Rather, each of them seems to have in mind something which can be plundered, through being wrongfully depleted, but something more like a resource (and a public one at that) than like somebody's estate. For Renfrew the resource in question is the archaeological record, the `historic heritage' which is the `world's archaeological resource, ... our principal source of knowledge about the early human past' (ibid., p. 9). For Cuno, it is the visible antiquities market from which museums acquire their collections for subsequent display and mutual loan, contrasted with the underground market into which artefacts may disappear when the visible market shrinks. In both we encounter visions of a fragile whole, something vulnerable to depletion; in fact, with Renfrew in particular we may have found ourselves further from private property than from Boyle's `information commons' (Boyle, 2008, p. xv). This is what the language of loot partly obscures; and in later chapters I shall be suggesting that the holistic language of cultural heritage might have brought it forth more fully. 1See also p. 37: `I do not doubt that nearly all dealers genuinely try to avoid selling objects that have been stolenthat is to say removed from the collection of an individual owner or a museum. The case of looted objects is very dierent, however: these have been clandestinely removed from the ground and have never had an eective owner, even if the landowner at the time of the removal is in a legal sense the owner of such goods. In many countries the law determines that it is the state itself which is the owner of buried antiquities, but the state as rightful owner is the last to hear of it when they are illicitly exported.' 34 2.2. Stories, Styles and Symbols 2.2. Stories, Styles and Symbols If the author is indeed dead, one may sometimes have the sense that the cultural group from which his work emerged would like to replace him. Sometimes the author in question is both identi able and literally deceased: the papers of Franz Kafka, for example, have been the subject of a long-running legal battle for possession. The o ce of the Israeli Prime Minister contends against other claimants that they are `valuable for the history of the Jewish people and the State' (Schneider, 2010); one infers that in its judgment Kafka, a Czechoslovakian Jew who wrote in German, was more critically a Jewish than a Czechoslovakian or European or global literary gure. The case of folklore, in contrast, oers one in which there is often no known author and no xed and nal form of a work, which develops within the ongoing life of a community (UNESCO/WIPO, 1999). The impossibility of identifying individual authors of what are sometimes styled `traditional cultural expressions'2 (including stories, symbols, ceremonies, designs and other intangibles) has not impeded claims that their use by cultural outsiders may in some cases constitute an invasion of privacy (Brown, 1998, p. 193), a source of oence (Young, 2008, p. 129.), or a threat to the source people's distinctive existence as a cultural group (Coleman and Coombe, 2009, pp. 178-9). In some cases recognisably culture-based arguments cut both ways: news reports in 2006 of legal action by the Chilean Mapuche people against Microsoft, arising from Microsoft's production of a version of its Windows operating system in the Mapuzugun language of the Mapuche, had the complainants stating that `Mapundungun is a fundamental part of [their] culture and it is [their] right as an indigenous nation to preserve and develop [their] cultural heritage' (Oiaga, 2006), while Microsoft had sought to `open a window so that the rest of the world can access the cultural riches of this indigenous people' (Reuters, 2006). Intangible cultural items introduce distinctive complications. Tangible cultural heritage such as Kafka's papers, considered as unique physical objects distinct from whatever their contents may be can likewise be subject to claims of continuing interests by the cultural groups within which they originated, or by people claiming close association with those groups (for example, because of lineal descent; for more on the identity of cultures over time see Chapter 6). The archaeologist Zahi Hawass, formerly Secretary General of Egypt's Supreme Council of Antiquities and later a Minister of State with the corresponding portfolio, has repeatedly called for the repatriation of the Rosetta Stone to Egypt from the British Museum, not because of concerns about present-day looting (the Stone was removed from Egypt in the Napoleonic era) but in explicit service of the Egyptian nation: `It is an 2A term favoured in the WIPO literature; see http://www.wipo.int/tk/en/folklore/ (retrieved 24th January 2010). 35 2. The Practical Background icon of our Egyptian identity and its homeland should be Egypt.' (Quoted in Bradley, 2009.) A similar line of thinking about national identity animates Greek demands for the return of the Elgin Marbles to Athens (Gillman, 2006, p. 15). In the case of intangibles, however, there are no discrete objects to possess or surrender: appropriation need not involve expropriation. When the artistic style of an Australian Aboriginal artist is appropriated by someone outside the Aborigine's cultural group, if it is done skilfully enough `there is no reliable way for viewers to tell, just by looking at a painting, whether it is by a member of an aboriginal culture or by an outsider' (Young, 2008, p. 39). The Aboriginal artist does not lose the ability to produce artworks in this same style; if something is lost to the Aborigine and his cultural group, it is the distinctiveness of the style as a style of that group. The idea that an individual creative can be plagiarised, and thereby wronged, is familiar enough; it is when collectives claim to have been wronged or harmed through outsiders' use of their intangible cultural heritage that controversy may arise. Examples may be found of claims that if all and sundry are permitted to represent a cultural group in their writings (for example, in a novel whose characters are members of the group), then market saturation will deprive its members of an audience when they try to tell their own stories (ibid., pp. 114-8); or that inaccurate representation by outsiders may a ict insiders' own understanding of their culture, weakening its distinctive identity (ibid., p. 118.); or that appropriation and commercialisation by outsiders threaten to dilute the signi cance, including any religious signi cance, of cultural items, converting the sacred and hallowed into mere commodities (Osborne, 2003, pp. 205-6). The various suggested mechanisms of collective harm have been assessed by other commentators, and their plausibility does not directly concern me in this discussion; indeed, in some of these cases it is not immediately obvious whether anything notably distinguishes harms to cultural groups from harms to, for example, racially de ned groups, which might also be subject to representation which is oensive or a source of market saturation. Why then do we nd people writing about cultural appropriation, or about the representation in the arts of cultural groups in particular? Some con icts are no doubt partly rooted in conceptual dierences and misunderstandings between cultures: for example, authorship and ownership may turn out to be understood dierently within dierent cultural groups (Nicholas and Bannister, 2004, p. 329, although see Young, 2008, pp. 76-7). Thus disputes may arise in which the dividing lines are most clearly drawn in cultural terms. If, say, some cultural group lays claim to collective ownership of a tangible or intangible item, and thereby to the rightful authority to restrict cultural outsiders' access 36 2.2. Stories, Styles and Symbols to or use of it, through appeal to `laws or traditional practices' which `are said to make ancient (unattributed) works collective property' (ibid., p. 74), then the di culty arises that the outsiders whose actions the law or traditional practice aims to restrict are precisely those who do not participate in the culture within which the law or traditional practice exists. They may have reasons for respecting the insiders' wishes, but they cannot share the insiders' own reasons; and an outsider cultural group without great sympathy for collective ownership of artistic styles, for example, will not necessarily be inclined to make exceptions as a principle of charity to cultures other than its own (ibid., p. 81). On other occasions, the active concern appears to be for the viability of the culture and, accordingly, of the cultural group in question: here the thought is that a culture is something which can be susceptible to assimilation into another, more widespread, more powerful culture, and that when this occurs, even if it should occasion some great outburst of creativity in which elements of the donor culture nd themselves invigorated through mingling with elements of the engul ng culture, nevertheless something is lost when the smaller culture loses its distinctiveness and integrity.3 Such concerns are not limited to indigenous peoples in Australasia or the Americas, as long-lived British anxiety about Americanisation demonstrates. Sometimes speci c aspects of certain cultures are the objects of concern, as for example when language extinction is presented as a problem because it represents the loss of information encoded within linguistic conventions (F.f.E.L., 1.2); but one also encounters suggestions that culture is itself a human good (Appiah, 2005, pp. 120-30). It is in the context of such concerns as these that intangible cultural heritage tends to loom large: the Rosetta Stone or a Kafka manuscript can be only in one place at a time, and consequently is readily treated as property, but no such natural restrictions prevent an artist from happening (not necessarily even consciously) to draw some stylistic inspiration from another culture's traditional artistic forms, or even from independently happening to reinvent them by chance. If we regard cultures as capable of possessing boundaries (which would be a controversial view in itself; see Chapter 6), we shall have to acknowledge that such boundaries are porous in the extreme. Somehow, we need to be able to talk not only about cultural heritage at large, the cultural heritage of mankind, but also about the heritage of distinct cultures, even as we question what makes one culture distinct from another. Somehow, moreover, we need to be able to talk about one culture or another without arti cially reifying cultures into rigidly bounded blocks, and 3For discussion of what it means for the identity of a culture when it merges with another, see Chapter 6. 37 2. The Practical Background likewise without implausible rei cation of intangible heritage in its various and often amorphous forms. 2.3. Fan Cultures The cases discussed in the previous two sections have tended to take cultural identity as more-or-less given and then concern themselves with what it portends for cultural items: we want to know whether the Egyptian origins of the Rosetta Stone can form the basis of a sound argument for its repatriation, and what we should make of Israeli claims on Kafka's papers given that Kafka was a Jew but not an Israeli. However, things do not always happen this way round: sometimes the item comes rst (as a product of one or more cultures), and subsequently a new and distinctive cultural group forms around it, often producing further cultural items in turn. This is most clearly so in the case of fan culture: fandom selects from the repertoire of mass-produced and mass-distributed entertainment certain performers, narratives or genres and takes them into the culture of a self-selected fraction of the people. They are then reworked into an intensely pleasurable, intensely signifying popular culture that is both similar to, yet signi cantly dierent from, the culture of more `normal' popular audiences. (Fiske, 1992, p. 30) Moreover, fans often turn [their] semiotic productivity into some form of textual production that can circulate among and thus help to de ne the fan community. Fans create a fan culture with its own systems of production and distribution that forms... a `shadow cultural economy' that lies outside that of the cultural industries yet shares features with them which more normal popular culture lacks. (ibid., p. 30) It is with respect to these forms of fan activity that controversy sometimes arises. Take the case of fanction, the simple act of telling and sharing stories using settings and characters from a favourite novel or lm or other authored source: there are many writers who hate fan c. Some argue that fans have no business appropriating their characters and situations, that it's disrespectful to imagine your precious ctional people in sexual scenarios, or to retell their stories from a dierent point of view, or to snatch a victorious happy ending from the tragic defeat the writer ended her book with. (Doctorow, 2008, p. 90) 38 2.3. Fan Cultures Look, but don't touch: instead of claims made by a cultural group on its products, here we have claims by individual creatives about the proper limits of cultural activity forming around their creations, about what a fan culture may include. This is a fairly striking form of interaction between producers and customers; compare the disastrous introduction of New Coke in 1985, when the Coca-Cola Company decided to change the taste of Coke. `Half a million letters and telephone calls later, Coke bowed to consumer demand; under the circumstances, pretty quick timing for a gigantic organization previously convinced that it controlled the brand. Coke Classic was back just sixty days after New Coke was introduced.' (Biel, 1997, p. 201) Perhaps the `sublimated essence of America' (quoted in Chidester, 1996, p. 750) attracts a devotion more powerful than fandom; perhaps dierent industries simply have dierent approaches to customer relations. In either case, no culture of Cokedrinkers is noticeably involved in the account (although we may wish to talk about the place of Coke in American culture). It would perhaps be rash to deny outright that `the Coke-drinkers' as a cultural group exist and were culturally aected, but the story is rst and foremost one about individuals' gustatory experiences and their reactions. The case of fanction is dierent, at any rate once it is distributed among fans: writing presupposes an audience, and fanction not written purely for one's own amusement is consequently born into an environment of cultural interchange between the fans whose shared love of whatever it draws inspiration from enables them to interpret and appreciate it as fanction. Changing the taste of Coke produced dissatis ed customers; if the fan c-hating authors to whom Doctorow refers were granted their wish, the activity of entire (albeit small) cultural groups would cease. The moral questions which arise are not only those of business ethics, authors' rights, and so on; we have to talk about cultures. Let me illustrate the point with a speci c example: one which blurs the distinction between initial authorial creation and fan modi cation even more than the case of fanction does. When you count yourself as a fan of something translated from a foreign language, and no o cial translation of its sequel proves forthcoming, what is to be done? If any members of the fan community are competent to produce a translation of their own, the solution is obvious. Western fans of anime (Japanese animation) were trailblazers here, developing elaborate production and distribution networks for `fansubs' (recordings subtitled by fan translators) to provide where the market did not, with schemes of `fansub ethics', admittedly contested and often honoured in the breach, to distinguish the practice from ordinary copyright infringement (Hatcher, 2005, pp. 531-3). (This has not always resulted in success in avoiding legal entanglements (Clements, 2009, p. 102).) One writer has noted with retrospective approval that `unlike other crazes that grew out of clever, professionally 39 2. The Practical Background guided merchandising concepts, anime [in the West] is a phenomenon that was discovered by the fans, nurtured by the fans (despite professional dismissal), and rmly established by the fans' (Patten, 2004, p. 45). What if the foreign object of desire is not a video recording but a piece of software? This was the problem facing the EarthBound video game fan community in recent years, as it became gradually apparent that the only English version of the sequel Mother 3,4 and therefore the only opportunity for Anglophone players to uncover its narrative, would be one they made themselves. The scenario was far from unprecedented: ROM hackers trace the history of their translation projects back to 19935. Some computer games have been designed to facilitate and encourage modi cation (Kushner, 2003, pp. 165-9 & 193), but others are editable only as blobs of binary numbers extracted from the physical storage medium (the ROM, for `Read-Only Memory') on which the game was sold. Many ROM hacks, like fansubs, provide otherwise unavailable translations (or aim to oer more faithful translations than the o cial ones); some x bugs or add functionality; and some make sweeping changes to create parodies, fan-sequels, &c. By their nature, however, they all require a copy of the original commercial ROM's data (which can then be modi ed and played, usually using computer emulation6 of the hardware for which the ROM was made); usually the hacks themselves are distributed as `patches' to be applied to the ROM data by users, so that distributors avoid liability for unauthorised distribution of copyrighted ROMs. The eort required is considerable: making a translation patch for a ROM involves working out how it stores its text data, creating a full translation into a language which may have a wholly dierent writing system from the original (Mother 3 was originally scripted in Japanese), then devising a means of neatly inserting the new text and making it display correctly. All of this has to be done by reverse-engineering an agglomeration of numbers: viewed in a hex editor (hexadecimal, i.e. base sixteen, being often more manageable than binary), program code and data alike have all the obvious meaning of 74-68-65-73-65-20-77-6F-72-64-73. During the development of the hack, http://mother3.fobby.net/ would regularly broadcast status reports 4EarthBound is the name under which Mother 2 was released in North America. The rst game in the series (supposedly named in reference to a John Lennon song) was, like Mother 3, never released outside Japan. 5http://www.romhacking.net/transhistory/ (retrieved 1st February 2010) 6The programming of emulators also poses challenges; http://arstechnica.com/gaming/news/2011/08/accuracy-takes-power-one-mans-3ghzquest-to-build-a-perfect-snes-emulator.ars (retrieved 10th August 2011) oers comments on the di culty of accurately replicating the performance of the original hardware, which is particularly important if the emulator is being written with preservational purposes in mind. 40 2.3. Fan Cultures concerning the arcana of proportional fonts. A considerable eort presumably entails considerable perceived value, but what value might that be? There is of course the straightforwardly Utilitarian account: a view concerned with the eects on happiness at large, treating the game as a repository of instrumental value. Or the translation project could be regarded as action to put the culmination of a series into the hands of those who have an emotional investment in it, and whose aection gives them interests of some sort in it; under this interpretation the focus shifts to the fans in particular. Or it could be considered an eort to ensure that a worthy creation receives the international appreciation it deserves (and on this account the focus shifts from gamers' bene t to that of the game and its creators)if we are agreed that anything can be meaningfully said to be `good for' a creative work. No doubt a mixture of those things is involved, and perhaps more besides; but our understanding of the project would be clearly lacking if we did not take into account that it was the concern of an established EarthBound fan community: one whose dedication to maintaining visible interest in the series, when a Western release for Mother 3 still seemed possible, had extended to compiling and circulating a 268page printed book of commentary and fan-art, with accompanying DVDs, in a bid to reignite the curiosity of the specialist press.7 And we cannot consider such a fan community without recognising that through such activities it both shares and sustains the fan culture which de nes it. If, then, we want to ask about the ethics of appropriation by fan communities that take it upon themselves to translate or expand upon other creators' output, we cannot avoid talking about the fan cultures which are nourished by their own cultural activity in its various forms. We need, in fact, to possess an account of how culture assumes a place in our moral landscape in order to arbitrate not only between the competing demands of separate cultures, as in the previous section, but also between culture and subculture. In addition to sometimes having to ask just whose heritage an object or practice is, we shall also have to take into account the potential of cultural items to foster the development of new and dierent cultural forms. Shortly after the Mother 3 translation was completed, another hack by other people turned out to enjoy less toleration, or to have less luck: Crimson Echoes, intended to be a fan-continuation of the largely dormant Chrono series, was stopped in development by a cease-and-desist letter from the copyright holders of the Chrono franchise. There is a point of view from which this is nothing more than the law acting as intended; but from another perspective it may seem that the ourishing of 7http://starmen.net/ebanthology/ (retrieved 2nd February 2010). 41 2. The Practical Background subcultures, and the viability of fan cultures, risk bring left out of the analysis and of policy considerations, much like Boyle's public domain. The language of rights and permissions does not always t easily together with the shared dynamism of culture; and who would ever have thought that items of any sort of property could inspire the germination of new and creative cultural enclaves? 42 3. The Philosophical Background In thinking about the ethics of cases such as those cited in the previous chapter, the available philosophical literature itself stands against and interacts with a much wider legal, political and professional backdrop. One cannot reasonably claim that within this broad intellectual milieu there is nobody thinking philosophically, and accordingly not every name in which I shall draw in this chapter (or elsewhere) is that of someone predominantly purporting to be, or employed in academia as, a philosopher; but the suggestion may still be and is sometimes made that dedicated, specialist philosophers have a distinctive contribution to make, the absence of which is still too often felt. The editors of The Ethics of Archaeology, for example, observe that there has been much good and innovative writing on the ethics of their discipline by archaeologists themselves... That is just as it should be, since ethical problems in archaeology are the problems of archaeologists... But whilst archaeologists may have the advantage of relevant experience, few are also moral philosophers, with the conceptual tools and analytical skills that have been developed in that tradition over centuries. (Scarre and Scarre, 2006, p. 1) When it comes to the ethics of cultural heritage in general, similar and starker comments may be found: The last decades have seen an improvement in awareness about these ethical problems, and there has been a corresponding increase in the number of publications dealing with these issues. However, a sizeable proportion of output has been unsystematic, ad hoc or little better than special pleading, and most display scant knowledge of current work in theoretical ethics. There are few dedicated research centres in the area of archaeological and cultural heritage ethics, though the need for them is great. (C.E.C.H., 2009) This chapter must therefore survey both the contributions philosophers have made to the eld and, to some extent, the intellectual context in which they have done so. Aspects of this intellectual background inevitably seeped into the previous chapter, 43 3. The Philosophical Background but here the focus shifts from the kinds of problem that emerge to the conceptual apparatus which has been developed to address them. Some topics will be more fully developed in later chapters: in particular, discussion of the nature of culture(s) will take place mainly in Chapters 5 and 6, while value is explored in Chapters 8 and 9. My rst concern in the present chapter (having already struck some cautionary notes about proprietorial thinking) is to examine what is probably the predominant scheme for organising our thoughts about ethics, law and politics concerned with cultural items, that of `cultural property'. Its ubiquity is demonstrated by, to give just three noteworthy examples, the 1954 Hague Convention for the Protection of Cultural Property in the Event of Armed Con ict, the 1970 Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, and the International Journal of Cultural Property. Since so many disputes involving cultural items are concerned with control and who should have it, it is hardly surprising to see them analysed in terms of `property'; but when emphasis is placed, like mine, on a holistic conception of cultural heritage which refuses to begin with discrete cultural items, the atomising implication of property, of division into lots subject to rights of exclusion, is at the very least worthy of a closer and quizzical look. If `cultural property' arouses my suspicions, what then of the term I prefer to use, `cultural heritage'? Heritage by implication is somebody's heritage: have I not let propertisation slip in through the back door? I will agree that a measure of caution is needed, although I remain inclined to think that talk of heritage does at least sit more comfortably with the conceptions of holism and moral patiency which I seek to develop. 3.1. `Cultural Property' Unlike real, personal, or intellectual property..., cultural property is a descriptor or a valence rather than an exclusive label. Property belonging to any other established category can concurrently be cultural, and its status as cultural property can develop or fade over time... Nevertheless, in some disputed cases political pressure and moral persuasion have been eective in restoring property to claimants oering superior cultural arguments. (Sca di, 2008, pp. 684-5) `Cultural property' as a term of art was born with the 1954 Hague Convention (Mezey, 2007, p. 2009), making it an instrument of legal and diplomatic thinking from the (quite recent) outset; but its use has spread, and in the hands of philosophers outside the legal academy it has oered a starting point for critical 44 3.1. `Cultural Property' re ection. Karren J. Warren has expressed misgivings about `so-called cultural properties ' (Warren, 1999, p. 1), contending that `it is at least an open question' whether concepts of property and patrimony capture `the relevant information about the relationship of all people to their cultural history' (ibid., p. 15). (I am unconvinced, however, by the stronger claim that since `there are alternative ways to conceive the debate and to resolve the con icts over cultural heritage issues, the dominant perspective [sc. of cultural property] seems inadequate by itself' (ibid., p. 21); it is unclear to me why the existence of multiple possible frameworks, even where they hold dierent details to be relevant, should automatically entail a need for synthesis.) Janna Thompson, in `Cultural Property, Restitution and Value', has taken the cautiously phrased line that `there is a plausible conception of cultural property which can be used to justify some restitution claims' (Thompson, 2003, p. 252). James O. Young, in `Cultures and Cultural Property', takes the `notion that a culture can be the collective owner of cultural property' (Young, 2007, p. 111) initially as a given, in order to examine what might or might not oer a basis for a justi able claim on some item by a cultural group. It is worth noting that in the paper in question Young introduces `what may be called the cultural signi cance principle' (2008, p. 122; italics in original), de ned in terms of cultural property, in order to address claims of ownership through the prism of value (for more on which see Chapter 8); but in an earlier publication of the same period, concerned more speci cally with the ownership of archaeological items, this was the `cultural property principle', then de ned in terms of archaeological nds (Young, 2006, p. 25). `Cultural property' is thus present in both permutations, but its shifting presence gives the impression that Young does not consider it de nitionally central to his principle or principles; it serves, perhaps, to characterise the principle's scope of application. Indeed, recent work by Young has tended to emphasise not so much the state of being cultural property as the appropriation of cultural items and the various forms which it may take (Young, 2008; Young and Brunk, 2009; Young and Haley, 2009). In his taxonomy, acts of cross-cultural transfer of physical objects, of stories or songs or other `content', of styles, or of motifs can, though clearly dierent and demanding dierent analyses, all be understood as falling into subcategories of `cultural appropriation' (Young, 2008, pp. 5-7). Even the depiction of members of one cultural group in artistic works by members of another ( ction or nonction) counts as a form of such appropriation (ibid., p. 7). The consequent impression is of a concern for the aspects of possession involved in the very concept of appropr iation, but with the possession under discussion being a decidedly diverse and manifold phenomenon. 45 3. The Philosophical Background If philosophical re ection has sometimes made pragmatic use of `cultural property', more as a useful piece of terminology or as a starting point for ethical re ection than as a perfect t for any gap in our moral vocabulary, it may be that this pragmatism has been for the best. `When we're trying to interpret the concept of cultural property,' writes Kwame Anthony Appiah, `we ignore at our peril what lawyers, at least, know: property is an institution, created largely by laws' (Appiah, 2009, p. 82). Moreover, the term's application has not been restricted to clearly xed boundaries: When comparing today's discussions of cultural property with those taking place only two decades ago, one is immediately struck by the radical broadening of the eld's scope. Prior to the early 1980s, `cultural property' was invoked largely to denote portable works of art and architectural monuments that embodied the history and identity of particular peoples or nation-states. Today the expression is applied to things as disparate in their scale and characteristics as human remains, art genres, and regional landscapes. Indigenous-rights advocates have gone so far as to identify biological species (as distinct from plant or animal populations) as items of cultural or intellectual property. (Brown, 2005, p. 40) If we want to know what cultural property is, we cannot analyse it like a natural kind; however, this is not to say that it must go unscrutinised, or that even pragmatic use necessarily carries no hidden complications. In the judgment of one legal commentator, the yoking of `culture' to legalised `property' is itself not without cost: The problem with using ideas of cultural property to resolve cultural disputes is that cultural property uses and encourages an anemic theory of culture so that it can make sense as a form of property. Cultural property is a paradox because it places special value and legal protection on cultural products and artifacts, but it does so based on a sanitized and domesticated view of cultural production. (Mezey, 2007, p. 2005) What Naomi Mezey considers paradoxical, John Carman criticises in stronger terms: It is by treating the heritage as an object of ownership that its reduction to a commodity is eected and the gift increase that represents the creation and maintenance of the community is thereby taken away. If `Property is Theft'... then the category of Cultural Property should be considered no less than the theft of culture. (Carman, 2005, p. 44) 46 3.1. `Cultural Property' Carman is drawing here on Lewis Hyde's conception of an opposition between `gift' and commodity: `art is in danger from economics' (ibid., p. 42) because the `value1 of a commodity is xed by the value given for it, while gifts are bound to increase in value as they move, especially when a circulation of gifts creates community out of individual expressions of goodwill' (Carman, 2005, p. 43). Thus commoditisation devalues the `gift' element in artistic creation, and may in turn undermine its role in the generation and sustenance of communities. For both Carman and Mezey, in somewhat dierent respects, there is something in the very idea of `property' which is fundamentally unsuited to being applied to culture. Elsewhere, though, one sees it questioned whether `cultural property' is in fact a wholly unitary concept: the legal scholar John Henry Merryman is willing enough to employ the term, but in his 1986 paper `Two Ways of Thinking About Cultural Property' he sought to draw a distinction between cultural nationalism, with its emphasis on control of cultural items by source nations, and `cosmopolitan' cultural internationalism, which is `protective' but not `retentive' (Merryman, 1986, p. 846). Both ways of thinking about cultural property are in some measure valid. There are broad areas in which they act to reinforce each other's values. Those are the easy cases. The interesting ones arise when the two ways of thinking lead in dierent directions. Then distinctions have to be made, questions require re nement and it becomes necessary to choose. (ibid., p. 852) Merryman's worry that debate about `cultural property' has tended to tilt excessively towards cultural nationalism (ibid., p. 850), and his `regulatory imperatives' of `preservation, truth and access' (quoted in Cuno, 2008, p. 13) in which `truth' is concerned with `historical, scienti c, cultural, and aesthetic truth' (quoted in ibid., p. 13) have been an in uence on James Cuno, whose edited volumeWhose Culture? concludes with a reprint of one of Merryman's papers. It may therefore occasion surprise to see Renfrew , not a man one might expect to see set alongside one of Cuno's heroes, sharing the criticism of John Carman: In attempting to resolve the problem of the illicit trade in antiquities and the `retentionist' policies of states, Merryman does not challenge the basis on which these phenomena operate but instead responds in kind: to a problem of ownership he responds with an increase of ownership opportunities. By the same token, Renfrew responds to a problem of ownership by placing ownership in the hands of a single authorised entity. 1Elsewhere Carman distinguishes between several dierent kinds of value; but I defer discussion of the topic of value to Chapter 8. 47 3. The Philosophical Background [In reality,] it is the notion of ownership itself which is the problem in our treatment of ancient remains. (Carman, 2005, pp. 27-8) I suggested in 2.1 that Cuno and Renfrew were in fact united by the proprietorially tinged language of `looting', and indeed Carman regards Merryman's enthusiasm for a licit international market in antiquities not as an internationalist corrective to excessive nationalism within the space in which the `interesting' debates happen, but as little more than proprietorialism in another form. I have little more to say about `cultural property' in this discussion, since much of what has been written on it is chie y of legal (or sometimes political) rather than directly philosophical interest, but I must close the present section with a nod towards what is sometimes called `cultural intellectual property'. I noted in 2.2 that abstract items, being naturally nonexclusive and nonrivalrous, pose especial di culties for parties who would rather see some of them more tightly controlled; and where control can be asserted, questions of who may permissibly wield it may arise. `Acts of taking and using traditional knowledge beyond the cultural context where it originated have become increasingly complex and contested, particularly when commercial exploitation is involved' (Bannister and Solomon, 2009, p. 143): opponents of appropriation argue that knowledge and resources are being `stolen' from indigenous communities, eroding their cultures and the ecosystems on which they depend, interfering with cultural responsibilities (e.g. to past and future generations) and undermining Indigenous rights to traditional resources, intellectual property and cultural heritage. (ibid., p. 144) In response to controversies concerning control over `traditional knowledge' and `traditional cultural expressions' (see also p. 35 above), we see movements towards the adoption of what are in eect intellectual property regimes in which cultural groups become recognised as rights-holders; and this development in turn has begun to generate theoretical critique. The journal Current Anthropology, for example, has carried articles with titles one might have expected to nd instead in the speculative corners of the legal academy: `Can Culture Be Copyrighted?' (Brown, 1998) and `Copyrighting the Past?' (Nicholas and Bannister, 2004). As the former points out, while such measures may have been proposed with the aim of bene ting indigenous peoples for example, as an attempt to undo the coercive information-gathering which characterised the ethnography of the colonial era (Brown, 1998, pp. 199201) it is unclear how a line could neatly be drawn around `designated folkloric populations' and `certi ed indigenous peoples' (ibid., p. 203). At worst (recalling Boyle), the outcome might be a hyperparochial `impound[ing of] knowledge in a 48 3.1. `Cultural Property' new reservation system: reservations of the written word, an apartheid of the mind' (ibid., p. 204). Among philosophers there has been discussion (for example, by Will Kymlicka, noted for his work on social minorities and `group-dierentiated rights') of whether members of certain cultural groups possess `cultural rights', and whether culture is in some sense a good which may be due to them (Appiah, 2005, pp. 120-30), but less on the speci c theme of cultural groups' control over their members' intellectual products. Young has addressed the matter in the course of his Cultural Appropriation and the Arts, dismissing objections to the appropriation of stories or songs in broadly economic terms: When a corporation patents a medicine or crop varietal they are pro ting at the expense of the culture in which the patented item originated. The insiders have been stripped of the opportunity to patent something. On the other hand, we see a Pareto improvement when artists appropriate a story or a song. That is, the outsider artists (and their audiences) bene t, but the insiders are not made worse o. (Young, 2008, p. 94) Conrad Brunk is more open to the idea that it is a peculiarly post-Enlightenment `knowledge paradigm', a particular conception of the nature of knowledge and its universality, that leads people operating within it to conclude that `anyone who claims that a bit of knowledge about the world is their domain, or property, over which they have exclusive rights of revelation and control, appears to be claiming the indefensible, if not the incomprehensible' (Brunk, 2009, p. 163). (Similar doubts about whether the assumptions undergirding current intellectual property regimes are anything but parochial animate Rosemary Coombe's criticism of `the imperialist claims of the Romantic author' (Coombe, 1997, p. 78).) Brunk draws on a Lockean conception of property (Brunk, 2009, p. 163), and by implication, I think, on a Locke-inspired way of thinking about intellectual property, to claim that according to a `scientistic-rationalist paradigm' much knowledge is `owned by no-one, because it is not knowledge that has had value added to it' (ibid., p. 165). It is unclear to me whether his pluralistic stance on dierent cultures' conceptions of knowledge is supposed to cast doubt on not only Locke-inspired but also what are sometimes called utilitarian justi cations of intellectual property (which I myself favour over the Locke-derived, as mentioned in note 6 on p. 24); these appeal more to pragmatic considerations, to the usefulness of limited intellectual property regimes in enabling pro t to act as an incentive to publication, than to any supposed natural right. Locke's place in the history of not owning intellectual items is less clearly signi cant than Thomas Jeerson's much-quoted observation: 49 3. The Philosophical Background If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possess [sic] the less, because every other possess [sic] the whole of it. He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. (Quoted in Boyle, 2008, p. 20) On a view of intellectual property grounded in public utility, the objection to recognising a cultural group's claims to proprietorship over such knowledge as an understanding of the medical potency of local plants is not that `Indigenous peoples clearly have not mixed their labour with this knowledge in a way that adds value in the Western sense of the term' (Brunk, 2009, p. 165). It is that the optimal length of an intellectual property right is precisely that duration which will act as an incentive to intellectual work and its publicationand no longer. It does of course follow that the knowledge which a cultural group has brought forth is not in any way still undiscovered and available for, say, a multinational pharmaceutical corporation to close o and monopolise; and so Brunk still has a point when he questions whether, when a cultural group already has knowledge of the medicinal bene ts of a given plant, the conversion of this knowledge into a scienti c form is such as to warrant the granting to those performing the research of an intellectual property right in the results (ibid., pp. 165-6). Despite his overemphasis of the Locke-derived tradition in intellectual property, Brunk does in fact recognise the Jeersonian contention that intellectual items are nonexclusive and nonrivalrous (ibid., p. 167). His reply is that the appropriation of `traditional knowledge' can amount to a depletion of a culture or cultural group itself: of `the security of the culture and the landscape or ecosystem that has been shaped by the culture, and upon which the identity and very existence of the culture and its people depend... In this respect there is a de nite taking of something to which the culture has a rightful claim, insofar as it has a right to its cultural identity' (ibid., p. 167). I do not know what a right to cultural identity might be (though I suspect the in uence of Kymlicka), or whether this is supposed to be a universal right rather than a parochially post-Enlightenment, Lockean natural right; the nature of cultural identity still awaits my analysis, and must continue waiting until Chapter 6. 50 3.2. `Cultural Heritage' 3.2. `Cultural Heritage' What, in the meantime, of those who prefer to speak not of cultural property, but of cultural heritage?2 Derek Gillman, in the opening paragraphs of The Idea of Cultural Heritage, sees no apparent di culty in simply drawing on Merryman's `Two Ways of Thinking About Cultural Property': Merryman's cosmopolitan internationalists (see p. 47) are those `who seek to promote the idea of the heritage of all mankind ', and they are contrasted with `cultural nationalists for whom art, architecture, theatre, music and food are always a part of someone's particular heritage' (Gillman, 2006, p. 1). In the quoted passage Gillman apparently regards Merryman's comments on cultural property and his own work on cultural heritage as wholly compatible parts of the same conversation. The full story, however, may be less simple. Gillman writes that `two parallel debates have occurred with respect to public policy on heritage. The rst has involved cultural o cials, museum administrators, archaeologists, anthropologists, collectors and lawyers.' (It is with this debate that he associates Merryman.) `The second debate takes place between political philosophers especially liberal and communitarian thinkers of various shades who argue about human agency, and which has primacy in the political arena: the individual or community.' (ibid., p. 1) Merryman's own stated view is that `cultural heritage' is a loaded and nationalistic term which is consequently inferior to what he takes to be the comparative neutrality of `cultural property': Partisans, secure in their cause, substitute romance for reason and advocacy for scholarship. The resulting literature is liberally salted with prejudicial terms like `patrimony', `repatriation' and `heritage'... To assert that an object is part of the cultural `patrimony' of Peru or Greece or Indonesia implies, since Byron, that it has a `patria', a homeland, a nation to which, and in which, it belongs. If found abroad it should, accordingly, be `repatriated', returned to the national territory... To suggest that an object is part of the cultural `heritage' of a nation has a similar paralytic eect. (Merryman, 1990, p. 521) In order to retain terminological neutrality, such terms as cultural `object' and cultural `property' neither term is ideal, but the English language lacks a better equivalent for `beni culturali' are preferable; they do not assume the answer to the question. (ibid., p. 522) 2I largely gloss over the third term one typically hears, `cultural patrimony', since it does not strike me as having any particularly distinctive features in its own right. 51 3. The Philosophical Background Now what are we to do? In the last section I noted claims to the eect that it amounts to distortion to shoehorn culture into a property-based model; now we hear that `cultural property' is as close to a neutral terminology as we can hope to get, and that it is talk of cultural heritage that threatens to smuggle bias into our thinking. We should note at once that the cultural objects which Merryman has principally in mind are antiquities, artworks, and so forth; it seems unlikely that he intended his criticism to catch, say, Janna Thompson's conception of `Environment As Cultural Heritage' (Thompson, 2000).3 (Sometimes one does see the term `heritage' employed in a strongly restricted sense: for example, in Avishai Margalit's assertion that `shared memory can be expressed in a legacy that is, a memory of abstract things such as attitudes and principles or in a heritage, which consists of concrete objects such as buildings and monuments' (Margalit, 2002, p. 61).) One nds it contended by other legal scholars that `the existing legal concept of property does not, and should not try to, cover all that evidence of human life that we are trying to preserve: those things and traditions which express the way of life and thought of a particular society; which are evidence of its intellectual and spiritual achievements. [Moreover,] property does not incorporate concepts of duty to preserve and protect.' (Prott and O'Keefe, 1992, p. 307) Others in turn have replied that what we really need is `a stewardship model of property' (Carpenter, Katyal and Riley, 2009, p. 1022, abstract). Heritage may imply ownership inasmuch as it suggests inheritance (though insofar as we concern ourselves with the import of English terms, we may note that traits or characteristics as well as possessions may be inherited), but arguably it lacks some of property 's connotations of division and allotment: one might speak of a wilderness, a local festival, or an attitude towards one's neighbours as cultural heritage, but conceived of as property they emerge as land, `traditional cultural expressions' and the sheer implausibility of claiming restricted English ownership of jokes made at the expense of the Welsh. I agree, accordingly, that heritage is in part a romantic notion, but am not immediately persuaded that the stu of culture is unromantic. What then is it, this phenomenon styled `cultural heritage', if the term is intensionally and perhaps extensionally unlike `cultural property'? Atle Omland, examining conceptions of `World Heritage' as enshrined in the work of UNESCO and its list of World Heritage Sites, regards even this more speci c term as ambiguous: emphasis may be placed in its interpretation on `global obligations to preserve or on rights of access [or on] our shared world history' (Omland, 2006, p. 249). In this 3One does, of course, also see `cultural' and `natural' heritage elsewhere presented as contrasting categories. 52 3.2. `Cultural Heritage' third interpretation the `World Heritage is taken to consist of memorials to historical periods and events that connect the people of the earth, past and present' (ibid., p. 249).4 Du2an Pokorný strikes some related notes: Speaking of a nation, the reference [of `cultural heritage'] is essentially to the cultural objects created by its members, found on its territory, or lawfully acquired elsewhere. In addition, objects of a state's cultural heritage that are of `outstanding universal value' become part of the `world's cultural heritage'...5 In turn, `heritage' evokes continuity and succession. The artifact is seen as testifying to the historically developed, and developing, identity of a human group. But `world cultural heritage' quickly reminds us that a cultural object does not bear witness only to the identity of its creators. it also sheds light on `who were' and, therefore, on `who are' their neighbors, the communities or societies with which the producers exchanged ideas and techniques; and the more contacts are established among previously isolated groups, the wider the circle of `cocreators' becomes. On a rebound, as it were, the object contributes to the formation of identity on the part of the beholders, be they of the same culture or a dierent one. Ultimately, the artifact testi es to the identity of mankind. (Pokorný, 2002, p. 356) Sandra Dingli associates the notion of `the common heritage of mankind' precisely with what is not open to claims of ownership, drawing on Grotius's conception of the seas as open to common use but not to appropriation (Dingli, 2006, p. 222). `If the past can be considered to be owned by no one, it could be seen as representing the cultural heritage of all beings who have ever lived on earth or will live on it in the future' (ibid., p. 223, italics in original). I am not sure I wholly follow this inference (even if we assume that in referring to `all beings who have ever lived on earth' Dingli in fact has only humans in mind); it seems to suggest that there is a connection between the negative state of being unowned and the ostensibly positive state of being (representative of) everyone's cultural heritage. Compare Drahos, 1996, pp. 65-6 on positive and negative conceptions of community and the commons (including the sea-bed as common heritage): that which is open to anyone's appropriation versus that which is held jointly. Perhaps, though, the di culty lies precisely in my taking `common heritage' to imply something like a stake in the commons; perhaps the idea is that cultural items are everyone's responsibility, even or especially if nobody has staked a claim of ownership. Dingli 4I discuss heritage in relation to temporal continuity in Chapter 7. 5Here Pokorný is referring to the UNESCO Conventions. 53 3. The Philosophical Background comments that Emmanuel Agius `draws attention to the fact that the concept of common heritage does not involve a new theory of property but implies the absence of property. He views the key consideration as being access to common resources rather than to ownership.' (Dingli, 2006, p. 235) Certainly one routinely encounters the language of stewardship, particularly in archaeological contexts (Bendremer and Richman, 2006, p. 100; Groarke and Warrick, 2006, p. 163). Dingli endorses it, citing Warren (Dingli, 2006, pp. 2356). Michael Brown agrees that `the most promising approach' to some disputes over cultural items is that which judges that `frameworks based on joint stewardship are preferable to models based on rights and rules', on the pragmatic grounds that joint stewardship `implies a willingness to compromise, which is essential for hammering out workable agreements between parties who may hold incompatible attitudes toward the proper use of information' (Brown, 1998, p. 205). A more sceptical note is struck by Yannis Hamilakis: while stewardship is commonly accepted (and enshrined in various archaeological codes of ethics and practice) as the archaeologist's primary ethical and professional responsibility, [it] is increasingly recognized as ontologically and epistemologically problematic and ethically self-serving. The `record' has not been entrusted to archaeologists, who then become its stewards; rather, archaeologists are instrumental in producing that record out of the fragmented material traces of past social practices. Their self-appointed role as stewards of that record, therefore, is ethically spurious and may imply the desire to exclude others from engaging with the material traces of the past... If the concept of stewardship is therefore an inadequate basis upon which to discuss issues of ethics and responsibility, the notion of shared stewardship (involving various indigenous groups and publics as well as archaeologists) that Nicholas and Bannister propose can be equally problematic. It simply extends the authority of archaeologists' own problematic concepts to incorporate indigenous groups and publics rather than imagining new concepts and forging new modes of engagement. (Critical comment included in Nicholas and Bannister, 2004, pp. 343-4.) Groarke and Warrick, meanwhile, contend that `the principle of stewardship is an unsatisfactory basis for an archaeological ethics because it: (1) is vague and di cult to apply in practice; (2) confuses ethical and political concerns; (3) has inconsistent implications in circumstances in which dierent groups vie for control of archaeological resources; and (4) does not properly recognise those aspects of archaeological ethics which transcend (and sometimes limit) stewardship' (Groarke 54 3.2. `Cultural Heritage' and Warrick, 2006, pp. 163-4). David Lowenthal, perhaps thinking less speci cally of stewardship of the archaeological record, adds a further complaint: `Stewardship saves the past from decayand robs it of majesty and mystery.' (Lowenthal, 1998, p. xvi) For those of us who look with suspicion on talk of `cultural property' and its owners, then, alternative models are available: we can speak of cultural heritage, even the cultural heritage of mankind or of the world, and we can speak of stewards where we judge questions of particular ownership to be doubtful. Yet such moves may in turn attract censure (and we may note in passing that at least one commentator has recommended extracting the culture from cultural property, replacing concerns about cultures with a stakeholder model (Wilk, 1999)). Since the purpose of the present work is to defend an understanding of cultural heritage itself as a moral patient, the language of cultural property is, if not outright uncongenial, at least too limited; and accordingly I favour that of cultural heritage more or less by default. All the same, when I read Dingli calling for eorts `to conserve and protect that which has become a rapidly diminishing resource' (Dingli, 2006, p. 238), or when it is suggested that the `shared global responsibility' implied by the World Heritage concept `reveals itself as an interest (in some cases as a right) of the world community to claim access to shared cultural resources' (Omland, 2006, pp. 246-7), I cannot escape the suspicion that in this `resource' model we have a subtler and more cosmopolitan form of propertisation on our hands. Which is not to say that there is automatically anything wrong with being subtle or cosmopolitan; but in the end it remains unclear to me whether the dierences between conceptions of cultural heritage and cultural property have tended in practice to be great or small.
. What Is Needed What a varied and complicated thing cultural heritage turns out to be: this thing called cultural heritage, which may or may not be equivalent to cultural property, manifests itself in items (concrete and abstract) which are owned by, or resources for, or embody or symbolise the spirit of, one or more cultural groups, or nations, or mankind as a whole, as a result of which they nd themselves under the sometimes contested in uence of states, or indigenous peoples, or private owners, or UNESCO, or some combination. In spite of these uncertainties, that heritage bene ts human beings seems to be widely agreed: `our global cultural heritage strengthens identities, well-being, and respect for other cultures and societies' (Salzburg Global Seminar, 2010, p. 609); `cultural heritage is a powerful tool to engage communities positively and, as such, is a driving force for human development and creativity' (ibid., p. 609); `an appreciation of diverse cultural heritage and its continuity for future generations promote [sic] mutual understanding between people, communities, and nations' (ibid., p. 609); `parts of the cultural or natural heritage are of outstanding interest and therefore need to be preserved as part of the world heritage of mankind as a whole' (UNESCO, 1972); `intangible cultural heritage [is] a mainspring of cultural diversity and a guarantee of sustainable development', and is `invaluable... as a factor in bringing human beings closer together and ensuring exchange and understanding among them' (UNESCO, 2003). Accordingly, `deterioration or disappearance of any item of the cultural or natural heritage constitutes a harmful impoverishment of the heritage of all the nations of the world' (UNESCO, 1972). With all this eulogistic eusion for the capacity of heritage to bring human beings `closer together' in `mutual understanding', one could be forgiven for wondering how it can be that there are still ethical controversies to write about. Nevertheless, the previous two chapters have noted profound dierences in both practical judgment and conceptual understanding of cultural heritage. If a litany of ways in which heritage bene ts humans has not calmed all storms, what then can a moral philosopher hope to oer; and what will be my criteria for success or failure? You will recall from Chapter 1 that I propose to defend a conception of heritage not primarily as a source of bene t to human beings but as itself a moral patient, and thereby to oer a framework (see p. 20) for thinking 57 4. What Is Needed about what our moral obligations are towards cultural heritage, and what it means for things to go well or badly for it. Since my intention is to develop a framework which will require supplementary theorising before any casuistical conclusions can be drawn in any given case, I do face the question of how to tell whether the framework actually works. In Chapter 16 I shall sketch out some possible scenarios given plausible-looking assumptions about the sort of supplementary principles that might be employed; but this will demonstrate (1) that what I propose can give rise to action-guiding results, and (2) that these are not obviously misconceived, i.e. they collectively possess cogency. Whether these prescriptions are right or not will remain open to challenge. The problem of how to tell when a theory's prescriptions get it right (or, perhaps more problematically, wrong) is of course a standard one for moral philosophy. Intuitions have their defenders as a court of moral appeal (and their critics, e.g. John Cottingham (2009, p. 243) on the risk that intuitionism robs moral re ection of any truly transformative potential), but I rather take it that there is no shakier ground for intuitionistic thinking than that which occupies the borderlands between cultures, as so many debates over cultural heritage do. (See also Chapter 12 on the di culties of cross-cultural moral epistemology.) Neither does extrapolation from `easy' cases seem promising as a method; it is unclear that where heritage is concerned there are any thoroughly non-trivial cases of settled consensus from which to argue by analogy, and indeed the cases that come to the attention of moral theorists are bound to be the `hard' ones on which no general consensus has been forthcoming at all. For me the di culty is compounded by the fact that what I am trying to put together is (and for reasons of time and space must be) less than a complete normative system: formal cogency (what one might style an `internal' success criterion) will not con rm that I am moving in a productive direction. I noted earlier that the present work on its own is not intended to be a complete philosophical kit for arriving at casuistical conclusions about moral problems concerning heritage; but in the absence of a de nitively chosen collection of the other parts of such a kit, I risk ending up with the perhaps unsatisfying conclusion that mine is a grand project only partway to completion when this thesis is done, and that only in a future in which I possess the complete kit will I be able to prove the proverbial pudding and say with certainty whether my framework is `externally' successful, i.e. whether it is helpful in solving moral problems. Let me try a dierent tack. Whom am I trying to convince? Is it someone (let us imagine) who does not already possess some sense of cultural heritage as a repository of worth, and therefore as morally salient? Someone who (prior to receiving the 58 enlightening ministrations of philosophy) sees nothing in culture(s) but means to his present ends? Imagine a complete and utter philistine: a being who perceives in culture (in all the diverse senses of the word) absolutely nothing of any value that is not merely functional value as a means to obtain whatever such a being may be assumed to want. Not merely an entity who disregards `high' culture in favour of binge-drinking culture, say, but one for whom all forms of human communion and creativity are of no more than pragmatic interest. I confess myself inclined to doubt whether such a being could exist in human society; or, if indeed anyone could live with such a minimal sensibility, whether philosophers of psychiatry might not be better placed to understand him. Perhaps the complete and utter philistine inhabits the same regions of thought as the complete amoralist who denies that moral claims have any hold on him, or even the philosophical zombie. It may be possible to make the c.a.u.p. slightly less of an unattractive and two-dimensional prop if we imagine him to be still receptive to natural wonder, some combination of feral child and Rousseauesque `natural man' for whom the mediations of Wordsworth are simply a useless encumbrance when looking at daodils; but to imagine this being divorced from all appreciation for `culture' in its wider senses, as well as from `civilisation',1 would nevertheless require us to imagine an unsettlingly alien sensibility towards all human concourse: a kind of psychopathy for the arts, for language, for human arti ce at large. Is the c.a.u.p. the limiting case whom I should be seeking to (imagine that I) persuade? It is not clear that the challenge need be so strong. The gure of the amoralist casts a shadow over moral philosophy precisely because the authority of ethics is not transparently obvious (Williams, 1985, p. 25) and because the attractions of immorality are easily catalogued: Suppose now that there were two... magic rings [sc. conferring invisibility], and the just put on one of them and the unjust the other; no man can be imagined to be of such an iron nature that he would stand fast in justice. No man would keep his hands o what was not his own when he could safely take what he liked out of the market, or go into houses and lie with any one at his pleasure, or kill or release from prison whom he would, and in all respects be like a God among men... For all men believe in their hearts that injustice is far more pro table to the individual than justice... If you could imagine any one obtaining this power of becoming invisible, and never doing any wrong or touching what was another's, he would be thought by the lookers-on to be a most 1I do not necessarily mean the words to be taken in the senses given by Johann Gottfried Herder to Kultur and Zivilisation. 59 4. What Is Needed wretched idiot, although they would praise him to one another's faces, and keep up appearances with one another from a fear that they too might suer injustice. (Plato, 1888, pp. 39-40) Perhaps the praises sung to cultural heritage which I quoted earlier owe something to the attitudes of these `lookers-on', inasmuch as diplomacy such as that practised at the United Nations is never far from self-interest; but it is doubtful in the extreme that a disinclination to care for cultural heritage typically carries an attraction comparable to theft. There is simply no systematic pro t in it. There are pro ts to be had in certain speci c cases, and here we certainly do encounter, for example, the illegal looting discussed in 2.1. A subtler pro t motive is in play when people neglect (to employ an admittedly loaded term) their ancestral languages in favour of more widely spoken tongues that might more easily gain them employment. What we nowhere see, however, is a systematic and comprehensive disregard for culture and cultural heritage in all possible respects. The closest we might come would be those cases where one cultural group has attempted to destroy the culture of another by forcefully imposing its own: the imperial Japanese occupation of Korea, for example, or former Australian governments' abduction of Aboriginal children. Certainly these demonstrate that it is disturbingly possible to bear ill will towards a whole culture, which is something even stronger than a disregard for it; but we are still some way from an encounter with the complete and utter philistine. If the c.a.u.p. is such an unlikely threat, then, need we, even we philosophers, be troubled by the thought of him? It is not obvious what a justi cation of the ethical life should try to do, or why we should need such a thing. We should ask a pretended justi cation three questions: To whom is it addressed? From where? Against what? Against what, rst of all, since we must ask what is being proposed as an alternative to the ethical life. It is important that there are alternatives to it. `The amoralist' is the name of somebody. (Williams, 1985, p. 23) Applying Bernard Williams' three questions to the more speci c case of the ethics of cultural heritage, and having cast some doubt already on the possibility of a being living a recognisably human life who presently sees only functional value in culture, how might we answer the other two questions? My work is not, of course, in practice addressed to a c.a.u.p.; it is most immediately addressed to my examiners, and more widely to philosophers at large and to anyone interested or embroiled in moral problems concerning heritage. Cuno and Renfrew, for example, evidently see enough value in antiquities to disagree passionately about just what aspects of 60 them are truly valuable: Cuno nds a plurality of values where for Renfrew the informational value of a contextualised archaeological artefact is what matters, but we can hardly call either of them a philistine. Neither sees cultural items simply as means to his own or his party's own satisfaction; and neither, it seems, sorely needs to be told that heritage possesses value. `From where' am I speaking? Presumably I am speaking from the position of someone already thinking there are ethical questions in need of answering about how we should act towards cultural heritage (hence not from the position of a c.a.u.p.); but if I am trying to justify a particular approach to thinking about cultural heritage in moral terms `from the ground up, what is the ground?' (ibid., p. 28) What can we take for granted? Presumably that cultural heritage (their own and the world's at large) is something about which a great many people are immensely concerned, albeit in a great variety of ways and not always for the same reasons: that human life, everywhere, takes forms within which culture matters to us, and so its custody and transmission matter to us too. Consequently, I need not undertake to produce a rigorous demonstration from rst principles that culture ought to matter to anyone; if ought implies can, then cannot nulli es ought, and it is reasonable to suppose that culture cannot but matter to us. Yet it is no less plain that not every aspect of a culture will be felt to be something that matters by every participant in that culture: not every participant in British culture cares a whit for trainspotting on Britain's railways, for example. Observing that culture matters does not permit me to take it as a given that any particular aspect of culture matters, or ought to matter, to anybody. This is a di culty faced both by my attempt to cast cultural heritage as a moral patient and by anyone preferring a purely anthropocentric approach towards a general view of heritage ethics: to get from the observation that culture (in general) matters to people to any prospect of drawing speci c ethical advice out of this starting point requires, at a minimum, an account of how the cultural speci cs of, say, British trainspotting relate to British culture considered as a totality.2 So: to return to this chapter's original questions, what is needed from a framework such as mine, and how will I know when the needs are met? The problem is not predominantly one of showing that my approach is more helpful (that is, that it produces the foundations of clearer or otherwise better moral guidance) than some alternative: if I can show with reasonable plausibility that cultural heritage is a moral patient, then that becomes one of the basic data which work on heritage ethics ought to take into account (or to undertake to refute), and so it counts as no genuine advantage to some account which limits itself to considering only 2On the relations of constituents of cultures to cultural wholes, see Chapter 5. 61 4. What Is Needed human patiency if it should lead to clearer or more intuitively correct or otherwise more palatable guidance, since this would come at the cost of overlooking the actual moral standing of our topic, cultural heritage. A revised answer to one of Williams's questions would therefore be: there is an alternative to what I am peddling, namely an anthropocentrism which assumes that all the moral patients an ethics of cultural heritage need take into account are human beings (and hence that whatever value cultural heritage may possess boils down to human interests), but if I am correct then its prescriptions will simply be grounded in mistakenly narrow assumptions. All the same, it is of course not su cient just to contend that heritage is a moral patient and leave it at that, since it is clearly one of a somewhat dierent sort from human moral patients. I should have created something very ragged-ended if I were simply to announce that the patiency of heritage must perforce be taken into account, but to drop the requirement into other philosophers' laps without giving them some reason to expect that the framework will deliver practical e cacy. What is needed from me, in substantial part, is therefore an exploration of cultural heritage which helps to show how it could t as a moral patient into the sort of ethical landscape suggested by Chapters 2 and 3. The ` t' may well be as sketchy as the landscape, since it is obviously not my intention to suggest that thinking of heritage in this way is without implications for the moral prescriptions we expect a framework for heritage ethics to help to generate. Consequently I do not anticipate some kind of seamless t that changes nothing. What is needed is more an elaboration of the moral status of cultural heritage by means of which we can start to make sense of the very possibility of taking heritage into casuistical account when we are trying to address particular ethical questions concerning it. What counts as success for an elaboration? Given how many assumptions must be involved in even the most intentionally minimal of frameworks (see p. 20), there is already worryingly little to prevent my simply tweaking the parameters into whatever constraints I might desire. If I conscientiously manage to impose constraints that guard against that possibility, might the result not be that we end up with either results which are too rigid and arti cial to re ect the complexities of the real world (and not much of an elaboration after all, perhaps), or results too vague to be of any evaluative use? Including examples of how the framework might operate in practice (in Chapter 16) will be of some help in demonstrating its practical e cacy, but will not prove it to be generally e cacious (and in any case it will not be a complete and free-standing toolkit). This means that I nd myself having to demonstrate the potential for e cacy: to show that my line of thinking is promising. But what does `promising' work look like? What systematic methods exist for determining whether a line of philosophical thought is moving in the right 62 direction? It seems reasonable to suspect that `promising' belongs with `interesting' and `important' in the category of terms of approbation which are either outright subjective or most securely applied in retrospect. (At least one philosophical journal overtly declares itself to have the aim of selecting submissions based on their estimated long-term signi cance. I have no idea what method of estimation is used.) Yet we cannot simply give up hope, since after all, every completed piece of philosophical work was once an incomplete one whose author had to judge how best to continue; every well-trodden area of research was once virgin territory which somebody realised was worth exploring; and every ostensibly completed work of philosophy is, no doubt, capable of extension or embellishment in some respect, when somebody realises how it might be made use of. The very fact that we can go about doing philosophy indicates that we can, however imperfectly, perceive where the fertile soil is and in which directions one might set about ploughing it. A happy thought, but imperfectly so given my scepticism about intuitionism on p. 58. I am reluctant to cross my ngers and simply hope that my readers share my perceptions of what is philosophically promising. On the other hand, I am also reluctant to devote yet more space to metaphilosophical re ection. What I shall perhaps have to do is indicate the parsimonious appeal of a way of thinking about cultural heritage which at least eshes out how `heritage' can emerge as a morally salient idea, and which can still promise to escape fragmentation and serve us as a general account when we try to apply it to moral re ection about the variety of domains within which we talk about `cultural heritage'.
. `Part of Our Culture' It is probably impossible to come up with an account of cultural heritage which would satisfy all the various ways in which people have spoken of `culture' and `heritage'. Simply in asking what kinds of phenomena are to be counted as cultural heritage, for example, we would arguably have already distanced ourselves from a view like David Lowenthal's, of heritage as a way of engaging with the past which complements the practices of the historian but remains strictly distinct from them: `not an inquiry into the past but a celebration of it' (Lowenthal, 1998, p. x) which, `no less than history, is essential to knowing and acting' (ibid., p. xv). Then, of course, there are the 164 dierent usages of the word `culture' (recall p. 21). We can nd disagreement over usage even within a speci c domain of enquiry; as long ago as 1944, David Bidney observed that some anthropologists maintain that culture consists of acquired capabilities, habits or customs and that culture is a quality or attribute of human social behaviour and has no independent existence of its own. From a philosophical point of view, this position may be designated as realistic since culture is regarded as an attribute of actual or real individuals and societies which exist independent of the observer. Other anthropologists. . . tend to de ne culture in terms of `communicable intelligence', `conventional understandings' or `communicated ideas'. Their implicit presupposition seems to be that the distinguishing feature of culture is the fact that it is communicated knowledge. Philosophically, this position may be described as epistemological idealism, since those who hold it maintain that culture is to be de ned primarily in terms of ideas. (Bidney, 1944, pp. 30-31) He went on to note that while the `realists' `hold that culture consists of the body of material artifacts and non-material customs and ideals', some `idealists' `maintain that the social heritage is a superorganic stream of ideas and that any particular culture is an abstraction from the historical complex of ideational traditions' (ibid., p. 31). Faced with such a cornucopia of semantic variation, what is a poor moral philosopher to do? I cannot uncontentiously select any one conception of culture to depend on, and it would be di cult if not impossible to establish what all 65 5. `Part of Our Culture' these dierent conceptions of `culture' have in common. Still, my project is not anthropological, or lexicographical; I need to know not so much how to classify cultural heritage as what place it is tted for in our moral lives. When we speak, often so passionately, about cultures and their heritage, what kind of thing is it that our words evoke? It is perhaps doubtful that labelling something as somebody's cultural heritage can be a purely descriptive act. Of course, there must be some descriptive aspect, since claims about whose heritage some item is invite defence (and attack) by means of appeal to facts about the world: who descends from whom, where an item was made, and so on. (The di culties inherent in pinpointing origins are discussed in 7.2.) So initially it may look as though identifying what counts as a cultural group's heritage should be a matter of applying the concept of `heritage' with exactitude, having rst arrived at some sort of consensus on how the word should be applied with the speci city of a term of art. The task of the moral philosopher would then be to establish what ought to follow from identi cations of a cultural item as someone's heritage: rstly, to work out what prima facie moral demands these identi cations might place on us regarding who (if anyone) should own the item, whether the owner might permissibly destroy it, and so on; and secondly, to determine how these prima facie demands might interact with others, such as those implied by legal ownership. An `ethics of cultural heritage', on this account, would take its subject matter already as a given. The complication for the moral philosopher, however, is that ethics must take account of the rst-personal predicament of the moral agent as well as the thirdperson viewpoint of the neutral observer; and as agents we not only do things but make commitments and projects of what we do. An ethics of parenthood, for example, may well consider `being somebody's parent' not only as a biological relationship between organisms and as a matter of social expectations, but moreover as a part of life which someone can commit to doing well. More generally, we speak not only of being alive but of leading our lives; not only of being ourselves (and already we think that `to be oneself' is to opt to do something) but of making something of ourselves. And this business of living is the stu from and in which culture emerges: Alasdair MacIntyre, discussing those especially pronounced fusions of personality and social role which he calls characters, writes that the culture of Victorian England was partially de ned by the characters of the Public School Headmaster, the Explorer and the Engineer; and that of Wilhelmine Germany was similarly de ned by such characters as those of the Prussian O cer, the Professor and the Social Democrat. Characters have one other notable dimension. They are, so to speak, 66 the moral representatives of their culture and they are so because of the way in which moral and metaphysical ideas and theories assume through them an embodied existence in the social world. Characters are the masks worn by moral philosophies. (MacIntyre, 1982, p. 28) Far from having to be sorted out prior to the work of moral philosophy, `culture' as MacIntyre speaks of it turns out to have moral philosophies already incorporated into it and made concrete through it; and if we accept that ethics manifests itself as a part or aspect of culture, then the prospects for sorting out what cultures and their heritages are before we begin to do any moral thinking suddenly start to look shaky. Any ethical conclusions I might eventually draw, after all, will not so much operate on cultures as (should they be remotely in uential) be propagated into and through them. What then is it exactly that will hopefully receive my conclusions: what is the nature of the cultural environment with which an ethics of cultural heritage must be concerned? And what does it mean to belong to, or to be part of, a culture? `Exorcisms are part of our culture' (John, 2005); `Foie gras is part of our culture, declare the de ant French' (Ganley, 2005). We sometimes say a practice is `part' of someone's culture, or that an item is `part' of somebody's cultural heritage, and perhaps both we and `the de ant French' have in mind something more actionguiding than a strictly descriptive claimsince presumably we say such things without meaning to imply that a culture is readily conceived of as a mereological sum. But what exactly might we mean by it? If you ask a simple question such as `is toothpaste part of culture?' then [Johann Gottfried] Herder would say `de nitely not, though maybe it is part of civilisation'. [Matthew] Arnold would also say no, adding, however, that the toothpaste deployed by Pam Germ in her prizewinning `Portrait of a Tape-Worm' is part, though perhaps a regrettable part, of the national culture. The professor of cultural studies will probably reply `of course toothpaste is part of culture', since after all toothpaste is a way in which people form and express their social identity and the decision to use or not to use it is a decision directed towards others. (Imagine America without toothpaste!) (Scruton, 2005, p. 4) Even if we posit arguendo the idea (pace e.g. Seyla Benhabib, who regards cultures as `complex human practices of signi cation and representation, of organization and attribution, which are internally riven by con icting narratives [and] are formed through complex dialogues with other cultures' (Benhabib, 2002, p. ix)) that cultures are things of a kind which can have rigid boundaries, we do not seem to speak of 67 5. `Part of Our Culture' them as things which are capable of division: what on Earth would half a culture look like? Cultures may be capable of impoverishment, of a diminution of the sum total of those things which may be considered to make up their heritage; but while there are no doubt viable alternative ways of making possible sense of `That's part of our culture!' as a descriptive statement, such as by drawing on the sense in which we can identify an item as `part' of a shop's inventory, or on the sense of `part' which we use when speaking of a mixture of one part cordial to ve parts water (take a glass of liquid, pour out part of it and you're left with less liquid, without ever having to worry about `half a liquid'), the sort of interpretation we are left with leaves us some way short of understanding why a de ant cry of `x is part of our culture!' should qualify as headline material. Consequently I am inclined to suspect that in practice such a claim typically is not purely descriptive, but more like a warm reference to someone who has become a close friend as `quite part of the family now', with all the tones of value-laden endorsement and human aection that involves. To label an item part of one's culture accordingly looks like an evaluative act, and typically (though this need not be so1) it conveys the thought that for the culture to lose the item, as when anything loses an integral part, would be felt as loss rather than mere lack and would amount to damage to the integrity of the culture. 5.1. Loss If we conceive of a culture or cultural heritage as simply an aggregation of practices or objects, as a kind of inventory (which arguably is implicit in the label `cultural property'), then we may nd ourselves doubting whether cultures can ever suer loss of items other than in the routine sense in which property can be lost. Yet this routine sense does not exhaust the ways in which the possession of cultural items can be a salient matter for us: Young writes, for example, that Stonehenge is what is sometimes called the `mana' of the English. It is part and parcel of who the English are as a culture and they ought to have it. Its sale to an American businessman, and relocation to Druidworld in Southern California, would have been scandalously wrong. (Young, 2007, p. 121) 1I remark on the possibility that some aspects of a culture may be morally unpalatable and best abandoned in Chapter 11. 68 5.1. Loss If this `mana' has anything to do with common-or-garden property and its potential for loss, its possessor seems more closely to resemble the sentimentally valuable family heirloom2 than whatever other items a person may happen to own. If we are properly to understand what it is to be part of someone's culture, then, we may take it that a successful account will pay heed to this potential for loss of a `scandalously wrong' variety. But what exactly does it mean for a culture to suer loss? There is of course a perfectly routine sense in which a cultural item can drop out of existence: the world's culture has suered the loss of most of the plays of Sophocles, for example, in the straightforward sense that none of us has them or has access to them, because no known copies exist anymore. Practices, similarly, can die out when people cease to participate in them. What we must note, however, is that these lost plays do play a cultural role for us: not the roles they could if they survived, to be sure, but a role which enables us to think of them precisely as objects of cultural loss. The things themselves are gone, but as cultural items they seem to enjoy a kind of subsistence: they retain their associations with other cultural items, and can even acquire new ones, such as the link I just created to the lost Sophoclean plays by employing them as an example. If we take `x is a part of culture c' to mean something like `x plays a role in culture c', then it turns out to be entirely possible to be part of a culture without actually existing in the world. Other things play cultural roles by possibly still existing: the legends surrounding the post-Biblical fate of the Ark of the Covenant, for example, gained one fairly concrete instantiation in our cultural life with the production of Raiders of the Lost Ark, while in the real world Ark-hunters have followed possible leads indicating a resting place in Ethiopia (Raaele, 2007) or Zimbabwe (van Biema, 2008). The religious importance of the Ark assures its cultural signi cance; the absence of the physical object aects the role it plays for us, making it a mysterious thing of ancient worshipful repute rather than another artefact available for museum display and examination, but in a very real sense the absent Ark does play a role in our culture. The Holy Grail, meanwhile, inspired a large portion of Arthurian literature, and entered cinematic culture through both Indiana Jones and Monty Python; the crown jewels King John is supposed to have lost in the Wash are the stu of national legend; and so on. 2It need not follow that we can always pinpoint exactly which items are at stake; we can regard as a cultural loss the destruction by re of roughly 500,000 volumes in the Bucharest University Library during the revolution of December 1989 (Raven, 2004, p. 5) without having at hand a list of precisely what books were lost. Some of them might indeed be replaceable, non-unique tokens (copies) of a given type (edition); but in such a case as this, it is not only certain individual volumes which are lost but the painstakingly accumulated collection and the institutional memory it embodies. To replace a substantial library collection from its catalogue is no trivial task. 69 5. `Part of Our Culture' All of these, of course, are nonetheless quite de nitely `lost' in the bluntest of senses. Other items may be said to have been lost in the sense that they have been expropriated, but here, too, they can continue to play a cultural role; it is precisely because he claims that the Rosetta Stone is an `icon of... Egyptian identity' (quoted in Milmo, 2009) that Zahi Hawass has previously demanded its repatriation to Egypt from the British Museum. This is not a question of the Stone's survival, or to a large extent of access (since it can be viewed by any Egyptian able to travel to London), but of possession. But possession of what? Not merely of the Stone qua stone, but of a particular item of importance in the history of Egyptology: the Stone qua cultural item (and, according to Hawass, qua icon). Yet it is precisely the Stone qua stone that is clearly in the possession of the British Museum; whereas it is not at all clear that the Stone qua cultural item is altogether in its grasp. I have already noted that the persistence conditions of a cultural item do not seem to be limited to those of the actual thing with which we should ordinarily take the cultural item to be identical. The persistence of a cultural item as such depends on memory; this is most obvious in the case of events, which, having passed, play their cultural roles purely through the recollection that they once occurred. (Strictly speaking, it is perhaps an act of convenient rei cation to speak of them as `cultural items', but for our purposes as moral philosophers it does appear reasonable to speak of one or another more-or-less distinct event and of its roles within the recollections of a culture.) Another thing which is made plain by abstract cultural items (remembered events, artistic styles, and so on) is that cultural items need not necessarily have any de nite location; and while concrete objects clearly do for as long as they persist, when we consider them as cultural phenomena, embedded into one culture or another by virtue of the roles they play within this culture at large, what we have in mind is precisely a sphere of in uence exerted beyond the objects' physical bounds. It is trivially true, of course, that the Rosetta Stone is extended in space, composed of granite, and located within a certain building in London; but we need hardly say the same thing about the iconicity of the Stone in which Hawass is interested. The Stone is iconic precisely because its image is so widely recognised: the Stone in this sense is everywhere. It is nevertheless the case, of course, that people go in droves to see the physical stone directly; evidently its omnipresence as an icon in no way eclipses the object itself. Something is understood to be important about actual places and actual things; and an encounter with this something, whatever it is, is removed as a possibility when an object is `lost' in any way, in spite of the persistence of the object's cultural presence. Without the object itself, we have a kind of echo, with a reduced productive potential: we can have various thoughts about the ancient 70 5.1. Loss comedyMargites, not least the thought that it's a great pity we know it only through fragments, but we cannot even arrange a performance of the work, let alone (for example) adapt it for cinema. Practices, too, can cease to be living possibilities even as they are remembered: I can make a donation to a church, but I cannot genuinely pay tithes to it. Burke A. Hendrix observes that a cultural group, in seeking or being encouraged to maintain its practices, may nevertheless appear to lose `authenticity' (though in his judgment this notion of `authenticity' is in fact `problematic' (Hendrix, 2008, p. 181)); he gives the example of the Pintupi people of Australia, whom the Australian government recognises as a distinct and semi-autonomous group. Among the concrete manifestations of this recognition is the gift by the government of fourwheel drive Toyotas to Pintupi men founding outstation communities (ibid., p. 190). `Are the Pintupi still authentically dierent,' Hendrix asks, `if state laws help to keep them that way?' (ibid., p. 190) The idea seems to be this: political, legal and other circumstances may make it advantageous for a group for its culture to appear to have, and hence actually to take, a form which is held together through these external nudges as well as (or even instead of) through the persistence of any inner cultural life. When, for example, a regime which aims to help indigenous peoples, and consequently rewards the persistence of outward signs of traditional, indigenous distinctiveness, props up cultural forms or community boundaries which might otherwise have passed into history or developed dierently, an examination of minority cultures existing as legally protected bubbles may begin to feel like a tour of Barn County. In eect, the culture itself becomes a sort of socio-legal theme park, whereupon it becomes questionable whether it is actually deserving of special preservation anymore.3 Nothing has unambiguously been lost in such a scenario (and the Pintupi have gained some bene ts), but the introduction of new incentives from outside portends an alteration in the reasons for which people act. The customary practices of a culture may be apparently unchanged (indeed, they may in eect be fossilised), but the rationales which formerly supported them will have undergone some degree of replacement. From one point of view, therefore, a practice may be continuously part of a culture, while from another (if we think that the same practice is persisting at all), it may eectively become moribund and lose its `authentic' reality, leaving behind another kind of echo. In asking what it is to be part of a culture, it seems we must attend not only to practices themselves but (again) to the roles they play within a culture as a whole. 3Of course, there is a danger that excessive concern for `authenticity' might also have perverse results; one must be careful to avoid acting like a romanticising tourist in pursuit of the raw, authentically indigenous experience. 71 5. `Part of Our Culture' This is not to say that the `parts' of cultures are cemented together into wholes entirely by reasons or roles; I said earlier that `That's part of our culture!' seems to me to be as much endorsement as description, akin to being called `part of the family'. Just as a loss experienced by a family is in no way a matter simply of biological and socially recognised associations, the loss of a culturally important artefact or social practice is not simply a matter of lost potential for role-playing to which we react aectively as emotion springs suddenly forth; rather, the social role played by the artefact or practice is already loaded with aective salience for those involved in the culture. As for `cultural property'the law recognises the family dog as `property', but that fact is of little relevance when the dog is lost, and in no way precludes the dog's also and more signi cantly being `part of the family'. If any literalistic analysis of cultural parthood is indeed partly mistaken in something like the way in which it misses the point to point out that man and wife do not literally `become one esh', has it got me any closer to understanding what these things called cultures are to enquire what their `parts' are and how these may be lost? (Or should I just sidle quietly away from the half-unwoven rainbow and wander o home, bearing a renewed suspicion about surface language?) Certainly I am barely closer to a totalising theory of culture, but I never intended to produce one, or even much of a demysti cation. What has come to the fore, I think, is the sheer di culty of drawing any but a fuzzily de nitive boundary around a cultural item: the very act of pointing out a piece of `cultural heritage' to which some moral status or signi cance might be ascribed turns out to be far from a straightforward matter, precisely because of the associations with a culture at large which enable an item to be `cultural'. Since the exact roles which an item plays within a culture may be obscure and mutable, it may consequently prove di cult to say precisely where the cultural item as such begins and ends. In part, of course, this follows from the myriad ways (themselves developed in culturally speci c circumstances and possessed of histories of their own) in which humans have learnt to put items into categories; I discuss this further in Chapter 10. Shakespeare's The Tempest ; D'Avenant and Dryden's derivative play The Tempest, or, The Enchanted Island ; Peter Greenaway's cinematic adaptation Prospero's Books; `Shakespeare's problem plays '; `Elizabethan and Jabobean theatre'; `English literature': all of these overlapping and interrelated things can be regarded as cultural items,4 and 4It is trickier to say whether principles of transitivity apply. It may be, for example, that a Titian painting is part of Renaissance art; Renaissance art is part of our culture; therefore a Titian painting is part of our culture. But of course I immediately face the objection that here I am simply using the word `part' in two dierent senses: if being part of Renaissance art were qualitatively similar to being part of a culture, the question of what it is to be part of a culture would, we may suspect, not have occupied me for so long to begin with. 72 5.2. Other Kinds of Cultural Item consequently none of them in isolation can be altogether adequately understood as such. One further upshot is that there is limited scope for attempting any wholly ahistorical treatment of culture, as though, whatever being part of a culture meant, it had to depend purely on the formal properties of cultures, and not at all on how something might become part of a culture. Items insinuate themselves into our ways of life and thereby spread ripples beyond their immediate presence; and the network (to mix metaphors in anticipation of 9.3) which results from this acquires a shape which is not determined by any one of its nodes. We can speak meaningfully (though loosely) of `Internet culture', for example. Web sites are constantly coming online and going o ine, and in the face of these changes to the Web and the other parts of the Internet it remains entirely possible to refer to Internet culture as though to an undivided whole. What then might make a Web site part of Internet culture? Consider the quotation database at bash.org, which collects excerpts of conversations using `chat' and `messaging' software protocols which range from the humorous to the plain obscene (more of the latter, admittedly). An explanation of why it might seem natural and reasonable to call bash.org `part of Internet culture' might have proceeded by noting that this website is part of the Internet (on the grounds that it is accessed through a public-facing Web server, is identi ed by a domain name, &c.) and that it collects and archives snippets from (among other protocols) Internet Relay Chat, so that its content comes from discourse elsewhere on the Internet. One might additionally note the existence of occasional references to the quotation database elsewhere on the Internet. The role of the quotation database in Internet culture has not, however, been simply a matter of the formal relations it exhibits with other parts of the Internet. Rather, the existence of the quotation database has given online chat discourse generally the potential to end up in the public database: the site's role in `Internet culture' is grounded in what it portends for people who might nd their (often unintentionally) humorous comments preserved on bash.org and in consequence readily available for reference by other people elsewhere. Here we see a history of growth and entanglement with the Internet at large which is obscured if we attempt to take a snapshot of Internet culture today and ask what might make a Web site a part of it. 5.2. Other Kinds of Cultural Item Perhaps it is because cultures are so inescapably part of our lives (to employ possibly yet another sense of `part') that we nd ourselves so readily reifying them with our language. (Indeed, according to the anthropological theorist Ruth Benedict, 73 5. `Part of Our Culture' `cultures... have a distinctive essence because key values are learned by individuals as members5 of particular cultures' (Moore, 1996, p. 63); though perhaps we ought to avoid reading `essence' in the light of its fullest metaphysical connotations.) One has to wonder whether there is anything that is not part of some culture. If being part of a culture involves playing a role within it, am I part of a culture? Admittedly, when I try to bring to mind particular persons whom we might wish to say were partly constitutive of British culture, I nd myself coming up with people whose `cultural' credentials seem de ned by their public roles: the Queen qua Sovereign; Churchill qua wartime Prime Minister; Shakespeare qua playwright; Morecambe and Wise qua performers; and so on. These people like artefacts, practices and so forth seem `cultural' by virtue of the prominent roles they play for others, rather than on account of qualifying for a place in British culture simply through participating in it in the sense that Britons generally might be thought toBritish culture being shared amongst the population at large, including the altogether less famous majority of us. Yet on the other hand, the place of Morecambe and Wise in our culture is clearly bound up with their particular personalities and accomplishments in a way that cannot be reduced to the role of `comedian': nobody would say that another professional comedy duo was interchangeable with Eric and Ernie. Your or my own particular personalities and accomplishments may be more narrowly broadcast, but we have them and they serve to bind us into our cultural networks through the ways in which we interact with other people who share in those cultures. Our local and everyday actions make up the aggregate demographic trends of which we take note when we recall how Hume's Treatise `fell dead-born from the press' as most of the world ignored it, and how Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther was received with a `Werther fashion..., a Werther fever, a Werther epidemic, a longing for suicide' (Unseld, 1996, p. 21). We look, in short, very much like cultural items. Yet if the category of `cultural items' breaks the common-or-garden bounds of `cultural heritage' or `cultural property' so that it is unclear what (or even whom) it does not encompass, where does that leave any eort to talk about ethics concerning cultural heritage? Of course there is a minimal sense in which everything (or rather, everything knowable) is cultural, in that the conceptual apparatus by means of which we can have any knowledge of things consists of hand-me-downs which have developed within certain cultural milieux. (I commit myself to no relativism here: we can speak perfectly well of scienti c cultures or mathematicians' culture without any such implications.) There may consequently be a minimal sense in which everything 5Recall that I prefer to say that cultural groups have members, but some writers are happy to speak of the members of cultures. 74 5.2. Other Kinds of Cultural Item is cultural heritage (at least, insofar as we know about it); but this observation threatens to dilute rather than to heighten our grasp of what exactly we have in mind when we speak of `the heritage industry', or of `the culture sector', or indeed of an ethics of cultural heritage. Suppose that persons can be heritage; it seems unlikely, all the same, that we shall soon see Her Majesty's Government imposing an export ban on Alan Bennett, even though [h]e is, according to the papers, a national treasure. Also a `national teddy bear' (Francis Wheen), `prose laureate' (David Thomson), `curmudgeon laureate' (Mark Jones), and Oracle of Little England (Matthew Norman). (Edemariam, 2004) At least human beings share with artefacts the property of having an identi able physical location. There are more abstract things which we may wish to call parts of cultures, and some of them carry the additional complication for moral philosophy that they are in some respect normative. Entering the search term `cultural norm' into Google Scholar reveals it to be in widespread use,6 although I have experienced di culties in locating a de nition. In recent years there has been some political commentary on `British values', which were even considered as a topic for the school syllabus (B.B.C., 2006). More recently still, the Abbot of Worth has stated in opposition to Disney that `[w]here once morality and meaning were available as part of our free cultural inheritance, now corporations sell them to us as products' (quoted in Wynne-Jones, 2008). Can such things norms, values, moralities themselves be considered parts of (a) culture? It is certainly easy enough to think of rules and standards which we might associate with particular cultural backgrounds: bodies of laws; parliamentary rules; manners and etiquette (and British queueing practices); linguistic conventions and local variations on them; and so on. All these are parochially constructed rules, rather than universal `laws of logic'; moreover, they developed gradually through co-operative processes, rather than being products of individual genius. Often there are epistemic headaches to take into account, not least when we try to distinguish between a norm and an implementation or interpretation of a norm. It is probably correct to say that our culture includes rules themselves: that it is not only true as a matter of empirical fact that on British roads people drive on the left, but moreover it is the case that on British roads one follows the rule of driving on the left. Yet things begin to look awkward once one recalls that statutes require interpretation, languages require analysis for their grammatical structure to be discovered, and so on. (Is it a rule of Western storytelling that at the end of 6http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=cultural+norm&hl=en&btnG=Search&as_sdt=2001 (retrieved 2nd August 2010) produced about 1,030,000 results. 75 5. `Part of Our Culture' modern fairy tales `they all lived happily ever after'? A convention? A cliché?) We face not only an epistemological problem how do we establish just what the rules are in any given domain of regulation (by applying higher-level rules?), and can we con dently identify them as parts of a culture if they persistently resist our certain knowledge? but also a di culty in identifying where there are determinate rules in play at all. This, however, is not a particular di culty I propose to explore further (the Wittgensteinian tradition alone having produced a considerable volume of analysis of what exactly it might mean to follow a rule), although some of my general comments on epistemic matters in Chapter 12 will be of relevance. Assume then that we are able to get some reasonable purchase on what norms are active within a culture. Take such rules governing general behaviour morals,7 manners and so on as we might expect to be widely internalised, expounded and upheld against deviants. Such things possess an ostensibly public character, frequently made manifest through outright vocalisation: `Thou shalt not kill', to take a famous and culturally loaded example of a verbal rule intended to govern moral conduct. As for etiquette, entire books are available for those needing to know the proper way to open a letter to the widow of the second son of a duke; and few things are more notoriously culturally speci c than etiquette. If anything is part of a culture, these things look like promising candidates; but often it is at most in the latter case, that of a rule of etiquette, that the content of the rule stays comfortably within the bounds of the culture of which the rule is ostensibly a part. `Thou shalt not kill' may originally have been understood to be part of a speci cally Judaic covenant, but Christianity, as a missionary religion, ascribes to it a universal signi cance: its content, therefore, is supposed to apply outside Christendom. This has the upshot that for us to regard it as `part of Judaeo-Christian culture', as though it were as unassumingly parochial a thing as a letter-writing convention, looks rather strikingly at odds with the import attributed by believers to the commandment itself. We can adopt such a stance, for even someone who regrets the existence of any non-Christian cultures will accept that in fact there are some; but simply and without quali cation to call such a commandment a part of Christian culture, as though it were some colourful local custom or item of regional cuisine, fails to acknowledge its universally normative import. Once again, I nd myself minded to draw the inference that the cultural items under examination cannot be strictly identi ed with their manifestations: that there is an Alan Bennettish nexus within British national culture, and that there is a vivid Decalogical tinge to the colour of Christian culture, but that in pointing to these 7By `morals' in this context I mean those things which are taken to be morally correct in a given culture, which are not necessarily identical with what is morally correct (given the assumption that cultural relativism in ethics is false). 76 5.2. Other Kinds of Cultural Item we are reminding ourselves of what each portends for the form and development of its culture as a whole, and only indirectly to the actual Mr. Bennett or to a certain normative injunction. After all, while we cannot predict with certainty that Alan Bennett will be made immortal by his work, we can be con dent that it, and consequently his cultural stature, will not be snued out when his life ends; and meanwhile `Thou shalt not kill' comes as part of a pack of ten to begin with, and enjoys further and wider resonances with other parts of biblical exegesis and Christian practice. The upshot for ethics of all this is that it becomes di cult to talk, except in the interests of convenience, about the cultural signi cance or value of a thing when the role which the thing in question plays within a culture is so vaguely and expansively bounded. This is not to say that there is no sense to be made of questions about what should be done with, for example, the Elgin Marbles. It is to say that we cannot escape the need for a holistic approach to cultural heritage which considers the value of a given cultural item to be derivative of what value we can ascribe to the wider cultural milieux and trends and genres in which it participates. I shall expand on this theme in Chapter 9; but in the meantime I want to address a few brief points concerning how it is, if we are to conduct our moral philosophy in light of a strongly holistic and contextual conception of what it is to be part of a culture, that we nd ourselves able to disentangle and distinguish between dierent cultures at all, let alone discover any semblance of persistent identity in them as they mutate and blend and divide over the course of time.
. The Identity of a Culture One sometimes hears politicians, businessmen and others speak of the creation of a culture as an objective. What I think they have in mind in practice is something less grandiose: the alteration of some aspect of organisational, local or national culture by way of the endorsement of certain standards of behaviour, rather than the actual creation of a culture outright or even of a subculture contained within an existing one. Yet the language is telling nonetheless: culture emerges as a malleable thing in the service of administrative ends and policy aims, rather than as an environment within which living some human sort of life becomes possible. Here is a vision of `culture' which has little to do with the inheritance of conceptual resources and their concomitant conceptual horizons, or with our profoundest sense of who we are and what shared identity envelops us: a culture, under this conception, is almost a sort of bureaucratic project, a thing which can be brought into being (and, presumably, dismissed from it again) through an act of organisational willpower. RCN general secretary Peter Carter said: `It is up to child protection services to create a culture where it is acceptable for sta to express their concerns and reservations if they suspect a child is at risk...' (Ford, 2008) Though the amount of the awards are not so impressive (top prize is $500), the ministry still hopes to inspire young Christians to take up the pen and promote the Christian worldview through ction and create a culture of quality writing re ecting that worldview. (Chan, 2008) The handbook, Promoting Transformative Innovation in Schools, aims to support education practitioners to create a `culture of innovation' in schools by detailing resources designed to help teachers to be innovative, both in and out of the classroom. (Education Executive, 2008) The people behind these statements clearly think that at least some things which can be brought under the word `culture' are such that we can have fairly de nite and considerable causal in uence over the shape they take, and know when we have accomplished our aims in constructing them. Yet even if we are indeed dealing with a dierent and a narrower sense of the term `culture' than is employed elsewhere in 79 6. The Identity of a Culture this document (almost a given, given the di culties in de ning the word; see p. 21), questions nevertheless are already lined up to beset the creator of such a `culture' which threaten ourselves to at least as great a degree. What could it mean to say that a distinct culture has been brought into being? What distinguishes a `culture of innovation' from mere circumstances in which innovation is found to occur? What distinguishes one culture of innovation from another one? What links a culture of innovation found at t1 with a subsequent culture of innovation at t2? These are not questions, in light of the very di culty of agreeing upon a de nition of culture in the rst place, to which I shall be furnishing ready-made and allpurpose answers, even to assist those people for whom it can seem that `culture' means something like `working environment'. My comparatively modest objective in this chapter and the next is to continue with the emphasis on a holistic and contextual approach which was partly established in the last one, and to ask whether and to what extent it leaves us able even to speak of distinct cultures existing, at present or across spans of time. Suppose we allow the principle, defended in the previous chapter, that qua cultural item the Rosetta Stone exists not only in the British Museum but wherever it is acclaimed, discussed and otherwise held signi cant. What eective scope is left for drawing cultural boundaries, if the Stone can be so held not only in Britain or France or Egypt but moreover in Vietnam or The Gambia? Only imsy epistemic limitations on how many things can be widely known would seem to prevent everything from ending up as part of the culture of the world at large; and while it is not immediately obvious that this should be an unacceptable conclusion, the very fact that we do routinely speak of dierent cultures should be su cient to make us pause and draw breath. Our position remains insecure when we contrast, for example, the culture of 16th Century and 20th Century England. Are we to consider these as two distinct cultures (for there are certainly dierences between them), or as two phases of a roughly continuous `English culture'? It is not even clear to what extent the term `English' has a historically continuous meaning, given that the England of the 20th Century had become formally part of the United Kingdom, geographically much the same but politically rather dierent. Nebulous as they are, and capable of spawning oshoots and absorbing foreign in uences, cultures compound the usual problems of identity through change because of their unsuitability for obvious metaphysical characterisation. What could we call the essential characteristics of English culture? Even the link to a presently existing England is inessential; if England should sink into the sea in some seismic cataclysm, we should hardly have warrant to infer that her survivors had undergone an instantaneous change of cultural identity. If the survivors were scattered in small groups all over the Earth, and formed separate 80 communities of which each developed its inherited `English' culture in markedly dierent directions, none of them (after some time) looking closely similar to English culture as we know it presently, then at length we should probably nd ourselves inclined to deny that English culture survived as a living phenomenon; but while cultural groups persisted that looked recognisably English in their ways of life, even if they did so in markedly dierent ways (we can imagine, perhaps, the Old Etonian exiles, the Mummerset exiles, and so on, with the appropriate cultural stereotyping), then we should not be in an obviously strong position to question their Englishness.1 Presumably it is necessary that England should have existed for one could hardly pretend that `English' culture is only accidentally associated with the geography and history of England, and might conceivably, if impractically, have been otherwise instantiated in some other place and under dierent conditions but this observation is of limited use: many dierent cultural phenomena can emerge (and many indeed have emerged) in such a place as England, and we are concerned not with all the English cultures that could have existed in alternative possible histories, but with English culture as it has in fact come down to us. This is the tricky double aspect of such a phenomenon as `English culture': it is contingently English, in that if the English tend to like X and the French typically prefer not-X then we call these respective traits of English and French culture just as surely as we should say the reverse if the English favoured not-X and the French X. Yet at the same time `English' is in no way a purely geographical expression, and the culture of England can only with the utmost arti ciality be abstracted from the settings in which it emerged and to which it has responded. (What `English culture' would we be talking about if we tried to ignore any mention in its literature, history, folklore and so on of the actual geographical setting we call England? Taking the case of songs alone, o the top of my head I can bring to mind bluebirds over the White Clis of Dover, ferrying 'cross the Mersey and Mike Harding's complaint that `It's hard being a cowboy in Rochdale'.) Should we then seek to distinguish cultures not in essentialist but in historical terms? If we do then we shall nd ourselves grappling with the complexities of history. It may initially look attractive to draw parallels with memory-based theories of human personal identity, and to make some form of `cultural memory' a criterion of cultural identity and its continuity, but while a human individual has one past and one future (except in split-brain thought experiments and the like), cultures are perhaps more closely 1Unless, perhaps, they were to forget what the origins were that gave them their characteristics. In his book Forgotten Fatherland, Ben MacIntyre reports that the people he met in the Paraguayan colony of Nueva Germania, originally founded as a `new Germany' by Elisabeth Nietzsche and her husband, retained some cultural dierences from their neighbours but had largely forgotten the original ideological basis for them. 81 6. The Identity of a Culture analogous to waterways, with multiple sources or tributaries and, perhaps, multiple outlets. Which aspects of the past can be remembered as `our own' cultural heritage, and which are remembered as someone else's? To answer such a question we should need a prior conception of who `we' are as a cultural group. What are we to say of the elements which English culture takes from the classical world of the ancient Greeks and Romans, or those it has seeded in Britain's former colonies? There are causal, historical links here no less than between the cultures of 16th and 20th Century England herself; so it seems that either we allow the bounds of English culture to be drawn at an eectively meaningless level of inde nitude, or we make the perhaps arbitrary judgment that cultural identity should be subject to geopolitics, precisely contradicting Mary Midgley's contention that cultural boundaries cannot be drawn like those of nations (Midgley, 1991, p. 84). Now, if it is indeed possible for policymakers in some sense to ordain that a culture of innovation shall be created in schools, then it may be tempting to suspect that there can be an element of convenient pragmatism in the circumscription of cultures. Yet if it can mean anything in the rst place to speak of the creation of one sort of culture or another, then the boundaries of that culture must be drawn at least partly in accordance with some criteria more principled than arbitrary human whim. This is not, however, a promising juncture at which to delve into the question of whether culture is a natural kind; and even if it can be, we can hardly suppose that English or any other particular culture is of such a kind. The development of any culture clearly depends to a substantial degree on the choices individuals make: the choice of whether to write poetry or take up crochet; the choice of whether to publish a book of poems or reject the manuscript; the choice of whether to purchase such a book; and similarly through other threads of cultural life. A culture is voluntarily cultivated even in the sense that one can choose to contribute to one's culture with, for example, an entry into the traditions of English literature. To do this, of course, one must already believe that one belongs to or is otherwise in a position to contribute to the culture in question, and herein lies the rub: there is a voluntary aspect to the de nition of a given culture, but the act of volunteering comes with certain presuppositions about who is and is not quali ed to volunteer. What determines who may or may not volunteer? Why, the candidates' relation to the culture which we are hoping to see delineated; and so we had better hope that the circularity is of a virtuous sort. 82 6.1. Authenticity, Distortion, and Culture As Network 6.1. Authenticity, Distortion, and Culture As Network For my present concerns, however, the central point of interest is that if we cannot delineate a culture strictly by reference to features of the environment within which it exists and came into existence (that is, to features of the natural world and of what we are already certain are other cultures which dier from the one under examination2), then at least some of the criteria which we employ must themselves in fact qualify as features of the culture itself; and indeed, since cultures are inhabited by thinking human beings it is hardly surprising that a culture should incorporate resources for its own de nition. What does it mean to be English? We can hardly avoid looking to the various English people who have addressed this question before us, be it with ardent patriotism or embarrassment or any other attitude; and though of course it must be grudgingly admitted that other and particularly neighbouring nations may also have something to say on the matter, the English inevitably are in a position to possess a certain expertise by default,3 as well as the greatest power to determine what being English shall mean into the future. What are the characteristics of these internal features that contribute to the identity of a culture? If practically anything can be `part of' somebody's culture, then there is no evident reason to suppose that any of these parts is automatically excluded from contributing to the delineation of what that culture is. What form then does the contribution take? When Vergil identi es the Romans as the togawearing race (AEneid I.282), whether we understand him to be straightforwardly reporting a discovery or received opinion about what it was to be Roman, or whether we consider his words to play at least a partly stipulative role, what we can say with historical con dence is that his judgment itself, as part of the AEneid, forms a part of Roman culture and was propagated into it (and indeed has outlasted the Roman Empire). In short, it is itself a part of the very culture it seeks to characterise. As a part of a culture, it accordingly has the features of a cultural item discussed in the previous chapter: it consists not so much of a judgment in the long-dead Vergil's mind (and consequent act of poetic writing) that Romans can be identi ed as the 2One easy case might be the germination of new cultures expressly based on earlier ones. A member of a philosophical reading group in one town who moves to another where there is no such group, and undertakes to start one, will model it in large part on that of which he has been a member, and may very well hope (whether consciously or not) that the culture of the new group shares characteristics with that of the older. The express aim, of course, is to found a society rather than a culture, but this is a case in which a desire to `create a culture' may not appear so very implausible; it is fairly straightforward that there will be a culture of the new reading group, and that one can form certain desires about the characteristics which it will exhibit, some of which may include explicit reference to the cultures of other groups. 3See also Chapter 12 on the epistemic authority of a cultural group. 83 6. The Identity of a Culture toga-wearers as it does of an inde nitely reduplicated slogan tied to no particular event or circumstances. If it follows from the inde nite nature of cultural items that parts of a culture cannot easily be kept within that culture's `boundaries', then it becomes tricky to say that a certain culture exists to have parts in the rst place. Do we not care merely about whether Vergil was correct or not? We do of course care about that, which is why it concerns us that such a judgment can have the character of a self-ful lling prophecy: it was with a quotation from Vergil that Augustus decreed that the toga must be worn to the Forum, according to Suetonius in his Lives of the Twelve Caesars (Aug. 40.5). In the very act of making such a judgment Vergil commenced its in uence on the subsequent development and selfre ection of the very culture it was a judgment about. Perhaps, then, a decision to `create a culture' is not so strange after all; perhaps our judgments about what de nes a given culture or at least one's judgments concerning one's own culture, or what one believes to be the identity of one's own culture inescapably possess a creative element. We should certainly, I think, be reluctant to charge people with `getting it wrong' in developing their culture in whichever ways they desired, although the question of `authenticity' raised by Hendrix (see p. 71) indicates that we might not feel completely inhibited from so doing, at least when we come to consider the temporal continuity or discontinuity of a culture between two points in its history. Maybe the object of concern here is a thought that somebody's culture, as a form and expression of somebody's identity, is subject to the demands of somebody's collective autonomy: that the culture of group x ought, in order to qualify as such, to be really and deliberately endorsed by group x as its proper way of life, and that there are standards by which such a judgment may itself be judged. James O. Young, drawing on work by Thomas Hurka, considers the possibility that a culture might become `distorted' through outside in uence in particular: [Hurka] is particularly concerned about the danger that small, indigenous cultures will be overwhelmed by the voices of outsiders. He considers the case of a white author who writes about a First Nation culture and, through ignorance, distorts the culture's symbols. `If the white's novel is read by Natives, they too may understand the symbols inauthentically. The Native artist then can't speak even to his or her own people.' Native artists will have lost some of their cultural identity. They and, perhaps, some of their audience will be partly assimilated into the majority culture. This strikes Hurka (and me) as objectionable harm. (Young, 2008, pp. 118-9) At face value this suggestion seems problematic, in that it looks as though 84 6.1. Authenticity, Distortion, and Culture As Network it implies a kind of essentialism for cultures those wildly mutable, endlessly permeable things as though a culture were a phenomenon with some sort of natural and normatively `correct' trajectory of development. (How, indeed, might we distinguish between cases in which symbols simply undergo changes in meaning, with or without external in uence, and cases in which groups become collectively mistaken about their meaning?) The di culty is compounded if, as I have just suggested, in looking for those features of a culture which can be judged to be de nitive of it we nd ourselves regarding a collection of cultural items. (Recall my suggestion in the last chapter that the inde nitude of cultural items rather calls for a holistic approach to understanding the roles they play.) If the roles of the parts are to be understood in terms of the whole, where are we to look in order to judge whether the whole has developed authentically and undistortedly, so as to have become `actually dierent [sc. from other cultures] in the right kind of ways' (Hendrix, 2008, p. 191)? Hendrix, at at least one point, seems to advance the suggestion that the identity of the agents originating changes to a culture is of greater signi cance than the changes themselves: `Are the identities at stake merely political artifacts, created by ethnic entrepreneurs seeking wealth and political power, or are they authentic expressions of an ongoing collective life?' (ibid., p. 181) Yet his conclusion is that `the real character of groups is generally di cult to recognize, and that authenticity is a problematic notion even in the abstract' (ibid., p. 181). I am not at all sure what a cultural identity that was `merely' a political artefact could look like: to speak of such a thing conjures up images of people utterly duped or bewitched into believing themselves to be united by a cultural identity, without even so much wilful endorsement of their self-identi cation as is required for self-deception; but for whom is a sense of cultural identity a strictly passive aair? There can, perhaps, be a reasonable presumption in favour of frank collective self-examination and historical investigation, whereby we might be able to advance counterfactual judgments to the eect that if some cultural group had been better informed about what exactly it had inherited, its members might well have chosen to develop their culture dierently. All the same, counterfactual speculation is risky, and if we do not rein in this criterion somehow it will lead us to conclude that in fact all human culture is distorted or inauthentic, on the grounds that our self-knowledge (historical and otherwise) is always imperfect. As a moral matter, it may well be that a cultural heritage can in eect be tainted by the ways in which it is employed in the subsequent development of a culture, such that we might wish to say that it had been distorted. We might want to say, for example, that the Nazis' construction of a German race myth actually besmirched 85 6. The Identity of a Culture German folklore, the history of the Teutonic Knights, and so on, not through making any retroactive changes to what had happened (which would be impossible), but through the way in which the Nazis appropriated and distorted historical treatment of German culture at t1 in forming a mythology for their own unpleasant t2 culture. (That the Nazis were themselves German i.e. that these agents were very far from being cultural outsiders may seem scarcely relevant; in this example, at least, no outsider/insider distinction seems to diminish the taint.) Yet this ethical observation is of limited import when we just want a way to tell whose culture is whose: Nazism and its cultural trappings simply are a tragic episode in German history. What we can perhaps say, however, is that the history of a culture's development is not straightforwardly cumulative: the Germans of today are free to repudiate the Nazis and their interpretations of Teutonic history and folklore, and to draw directly on those same cultural resources whilst rejecting their development through Nazism as a dead and disgraceful oshoot rather than part of an overall historical continuity. It is exactly this, in part, which makes it di cult to formulate judgments about the `continuity' of a culture. It is tempting to think, as beings which exist from moment to moment in linear time, that our cultural memory must develop like our mental recollections, imaginable as the steadily progressive narrative of a life.4 Yet the inde nitude of cultural items is smeared across time as well as space: the conception of an item may long precede its inception (see the discussion of origins in 7.2), and an object may be long remembered after its destruction, or an event after its termination. Our age can still (just about) read Chaucer, and regards Shakespeare as a central element of its own curriculum, not as a matter of historical interest alone but as part of a living practice of aesthetic appreciation; a complaint that `only the naïve or the unschooled can now engage in whole-hearted communion with folk from any past' (Lowenthal, 1985, p. 375) depends on a decidedly high (or low) expectation of what background familiarity must be in place for `wholeheartedness' to be a possibility. Moreover, a modern interpretation of the AEneid need not be cumulative with Dryden's verse translation of 1697: historical and linguistic dierences will blunt the immediacy of the encounter, to be sure, but Dryden acquires no priority as an interpreter over the classicists of our day. It is more the case that they undertake to reach back to Vergil than that his work exists for them as a thing of the present day (although of course there is a straightforward sense in which it does persist, and in which other creations do not). In relation to 4Of course, cultures do come into being and develop within the course of human history, and so there is a narrative aspect to understanding what makes a given culture what it is. The strongest version of such an observation, which I associate particularly with the work of Seyla Benhabib, is of a sort which associates `culture' with the construction of narratives contributing to what one understands to be one's identity. 86 6.1. Authenticity, Distortion, and Culture As Network the cultural resources out of which it continues to construct itself, our age is not so much the most recent layer of a palimpsest as the current con guration of a shifting network of jumbled cultural items (cf. 12.5).5 So far this has been a fairly inconclusive chapter, and as such it turns out to mirror its subject matter: it is not in the nature of cultures that they surge purposefully forward through their developing history like a military column. It is not invariably a criterion of philosophical success that the reader should be left feeling con dently enlightened, and hopefully any lingering perplexity about culture-spotting be ts the scale of the di culties involved; but if we do conceptualise cultures and cultural interchange after the image of a network, then where we see a striking density of interconnected nodes that is, where a noticeable cluster of cultural items seems to emerge by virtue not of what items exactly they individually are but of their collective in uences on one another, as we familiarly encounter in the artistic movement or the literary genre then perhaps we have no worse a warrant for labelling this cluster as the culture of a coterie or a social grouping or even a whole nation than we do for looking at a con uence of narrowly separated contour lines on a map and applying the label `mountain' as though mountains were neatly separated from the surrounding landscape. Imagine cultural items marked as points on some sort of geohistorical chart, with connecting lines wherever one item has in uenced another: there will be lines all over the place, and some of them will be very long (re ecting cross-cultural in uences remote in time and space), but it will be possible to pick out clusters of especial density, even if we cannot strictly de ne them. To conceptualise time as another dimension across which nodes in the network may connect may demand some further imaginative eort, but it oers a potential characterisation of change within a culture which escapes a need to explain what it essentially is that persists while undergoing changes in its inessential aspects: instead of identifying English culture at t1, and then asking what features of it might let us identify an English culture at t2, we escape the metaphysical quandary by regarding English culture as a cross-temporal network of linked cultural items to begin with, i.e. as one which already incorporates nodes existent in dierent eras, with the present state of English culture amounting to a cross-section of a `thing' which properly cannot be understood to exist in instants from moment to moment. (Again, contrast the case of personal identity: if I lose my sense of who I am by coming to suer total amnesia, I nevertheless have a physical existence right now and can coherently believe that I exist right now. A somewhat less extreme case would be suggested by Galen Strawson's repudiation of any `diachronic', as opposed to 5Of course, items come into being predominantly under the in uence of what counts as the past at the time of their creation, but they can also be in uenced by anticipated futures: the case of science ction most clearly illustrates this. 87 6. The Identity of a Culture `episodic', sense of personal identity (Strawson, 2004): a sense of having a past and a future, he thinks, is simply not a requirement. But I am deeply uncertain what it would involve to conceive of a culture's existing in the moment, as it were.) It is not simply that Shakespeare's-works-now are part of our culture; Shakespeare's works when he wrote them are part of our culture, more precisely our cultural history. (And if it is the case that we can harm or wrong long dead persons at the time at which they were living, through a retroactive implication of our actions (Scarre, 2003, p. 240.), then it is worthwhile to wonder whether such a principle of moral community might be extended beyond the anthropic and directly person-aecting spheres of action.) Since duration, albeit a vague duration which can dwindle as the links become sparser, is built into our understanding of what to look for in a culture, and since at any temporal stage in its existence a culture can and will draw directly on the cultural resources oered by other stages, the question of continuity becomes in the rst instance the epistemic one of exactly how to identify intra-cultural links across time. This line of thinking also allows us to acknowledge that attempting to capture what it is for cultures to merge or diverge over time need not amount to saying that at one point we have a clearly uni ed culture and at another we have two quite dierent ones, and then trying to isolate the approximate period during which the branch or join occurs. Things need not be so straightforward: English culture can draw on its Roman in uences even though `the Roman world' no longer exists for it to be part of, and it can draw on more recent Italian in uences too. Cultures for the most part do not so much join or separate as blur and smudge at the edges, and they can at once have both deep and shallow roots coexisting. Can such a model capture distortion and authenticity, or must we conclude that we have to jettison the concepts? We can say, I think, that the in uence of one cultural cluster upon another has a vector rather than a scalar character: in uence, whether it is welcome or unwelcome, comes from somewhere and is received somewhere else. Import and export (of both material and intellectual cultural items) are indeed part of the ordinary life of a non-isolated culture, and we should not regard them as inherently suspicious. Neither is it automatically worrying when a cultural group's self-image is in uenced by the thoughts of outsiders; indeed, especially when not trying to `create a culture' from scratch we are always in uenced by others, our predecessors, who are often but not necessarily our genetic ancestors. (If we do not think Vergil is a cultural outsider, it is presumably because his in uence on English culture has been consecrated by the ages, and the Roman military conquest no longer upsets anyone.) One of the capacities of a human cultural group is that of collective self-re ection, 88 6.1. Authenticity, Distortion, and Culture As Network in which the arrows of cultural in uence are turned upon their own source as the group undertakes both to understand and to develop itself.6 It would be too strong a requirement to demand that this practice should be fearlessly and invariably complete and accurate; if it is automatically a problem for a cultural group to possess a slightly rosier view of itself and a slightly more selective view of its past than might be strictly warranted, then we are probably all in trouble. Yet we might have cause for disquiet if, within a given culture, the practice of self-re ection came to depend so heavily upon imported intellectual resources that a recognisably home-grown cultural introspection became eectively impossible. Something like this disquiet, I suspect, underlies the concerns about both distortion and authenticity: the thought that perhaps some culture or other exists, as clearly and de nitely as any culture exists, but its self-knowledge, and consequently the historical trajectory chosen for it, are pulled about so strongly by the `gravity' of another culture that no unmediated self-re ection (or self-criticism) can realistically take place. It is as though we could know ourselves only through our reputation among foreigners; and if we agree with Socrates that it is a good to know thyself, then we are likely to take the same attitude towards cultural self-knowledge. Thus a culture may remain distinctively identi able and yet lack the resources fully to appreciate and develop its own identity : what it will lack is not adherence to some supposed essential nature and trajectory, but a secure capacity for the people whose culture it is to employ self-examination and impose checks on its development. A cultural group may of course pick any course it sees tbut it will need a corrective mechanism to ensure that the development of its culture is indeed on that course, and this mechanism too can be vulnerable. Here we have at least a possible approach to understanding how concerns about distortion and authenticity might reasonably be raised without any implicit appeal to cultural essentialism, and within a `network' model of cultural identity as I have sketched it; although I make no claim to have set forth a grand theory of either, and indeed it seems reasonable to doubt that the terms in their broader usage admit of any very systematic treatment: Since this is a book about cultural authenticity, we knew that we would be expected to provide a foundational de nition of cultural authenticity to frame the book. This undertaking seemed appropriate and important to us, until we attempted to draft a de nition. We then realized why 6I am reluctant to go so far as to say that a human culture must exhibit self-re ection, less still critical re ection; I do not think it is clear that this is implied by our (various) notions of `culture'. However, I suspect that we should be hard pressed to discover a human cultural group (some subcultures perhaps excepted) which did not in some manner re ect upon its own nature as culturally constituted, whether or not it employed a concept directly resembling that of `culture' in order to do so. 89 6. The Identity of a Culture so many authors and educators who discuss cultural authenticity are reluctant to de ne it in formulaic or prescriptive terms. We found ourselves agreeing with Rudine Sims Bishop, who argues that cultural authenticity cannot be de ned, although `you know it when you see it' as an insider reading a book about your own culture. (Fox and Short, 2003, p. 4) 90 7. Origins and Traditions If the content of the last chapter had sketched out all that we needed to consider when enquiring into the nature of cultures as they develop over spans of time, we should have headaches enough; but there are two further aspects of temporality which demand especial attention. The rst is that of tradition, in which the very fact of continuity becomes an arguable reason to hold whatever it is that is traditional in a particular esteem and, perhaps, to resist some forms of change in it. The second is concerned not so much with what happens to cultural items over time as with tracing them back to some de nite point of origin, since many of the moral di culties which we face, particularly if we are disposed to think in terms of `cultural property' and by implication of a rst rightful possessor, involve attempting to chart the changes in ownership of a cultural item as we seek to identify the most recent legitimate owner or owners. 7.1. Tradition According to T.S. Eliot, writing in his essay Tradition and the Individual Talent, No poet, no artist of any art, has his complete meaning alone. His signi cance, his appreciation is the appreciation of his relation to the dead poets and artists. You cannot value him alone; you must set him, for contrast and comparison, among the dead. (Eliot, 1920, p. 44) Discussion of what is required in order to value a cultural item as such must await the following chapters, but notice that while Eliot's characterisation of the artist's aesthetic-historical role appears at rst glance to t easily into my model of culture as networked, his decision to employ the idea of a `tradition' creates a di culty. For to speak of tradition implies at least a moderately strict continuity (albeit not necessarily a perfect continuity of uninterrupted changelessness), and this in turn implies a determinable phenomenon with persistent (we might even venture to suggest, essential) features, accumulating a regular series of routine layers. When it came to cultures at large and what it might mean for one to persist over time, I suggested a conceptual model of cultures as concentrations in a `network' of interrelated cultural items: by avoiding a way of thinking about cultural 91 7. Origins and Traditions development in which each instant in a culture's existence forms another successive layer in an open-ended series, I hoped to avoid any awkward implication of cultural essentialism, since there would be no such series, and hence no clearly persistent structure for a culture essentially to possess. On such an understanding as this, little could be easier than to place a present-day artist among the dead, for there is no need to regard their respective epochs as stages in the development of a sort of palimpsest; the artistries of past eras are already present and accessible to us (and we should indeed be hard pressed to shake o the modern-day background assumptions which we bring to their interpretation). Tradition is therefore a potential source of di culty for me, for it is plain enough that people do participate in and therefore presumably value various cultural traditions, and it is implicit in the very nature of a tradition that it is temporally extended, so that what particularly matters is not just this year's festival but the whole series of recurrent festivals of which it forms an instance. (Another similarity between traditions and cultures is that traditions too can decay and dwindle into nonexistence, and if anyone should try to revive them, or persist with them in considerably changed contexts, we may end up wondering whether that is something that can be done `authentically'. It may be, too, that traditions, like cultures, are capable of splitting or merging.) A tradition, in short, is exactly what I hoped to nd a culture need not be. There is probably no awless conceptual model for anything as nebulously de ned as culture, and so it need not shock me that my favoured model is not one with which the phenomenon of tradition looks ideally compatible; besides, if we consider a tradition to be a (composite) cultural item, it should hardly surprise us at all that such a cultural item, perhaps unlike the culture which contains it, should endure and sometimes change over the course of time while exhibiting fairly de nite and persistent features. Traditions would not, indeed, demand so much of my attention if it were not for the distinctively normative aspect of their continuity: a tradition demands continuation and is valued (at least in part) on account of its continuity. Among our contemporaries, I suggest, we frequently look upon dierence and variety as grounds for preservation: for example, people seeking to preserve or at least document endangered languages may aim not just to preserve one or another particular language, but over and above that to preserve the world's linguistic diversity. Between generations, on the other hand, dierence amounts to rupture: historical studies of mediaeval worldviews may be interesting, certainly, but even rm believers in society's moral progress will not necessarily nd it a happy thought that our own ancestors of even a few generations back had somewhat alien ways of getting to grips with the world. The thought puts us in the uncanny position of having to acknowledge our intellectual (and biological) debt to them while at the 92 7.1. Tradition same time having to recognise this kind of estrangement from our own recent kin. What then is it that we have in common with our ancestors, apart from the things we inherit from them in the biological and legal senses of the word? We also inherit customs, and most obviously we share participation in traditions, which may help to account for the concern we often have for them; we may not have quite the same understanding of just why we do things one way or the other, but perhaps no one generation can have an exhaustive understanding of a tradition. What we share is not so much the understanding that things shall be done in a certain customary way, but more the understanding that the way in which we customarily do things shall be sensitive to what we do inherit and pass on. This is not to say that we maintain traditions for the sake of past generations, although there may indeed be an element of remembrance, perhaps most clearly evident in such a tradition as the annual commemoration of the fallen soldiers of the World Wars. Since it is with past generations that we share participation in traditions, cultivation of those traditions, including the recognition of whatever value and cultural roles they possess, is a transgenerational project. Alas, it would be fair to suspect that not every commentator has a uniform conception of `tradition' in mind. Like `culture', the term is slippery. Appiah writes that a tradition is `not so much a body of doctrine as a set of debates' (Appiah, 2001, p. 235) (although when this description appears again in The Ethics of Identity, he quali es it and speaks speci cally of `intellectual traditions' (Appiah, 2005, p. ix)). Scruton identi es tradition with a `tacit understanding' which `mediates between the individual and society', adding that it `involves a willing submission to what is socially established' (Scruton, 1991, p. 6). Alasdair MacIntyre seems to mean by `tradition' something about as broad as `historical narrative': `What I am... is in key part what I inherit, a speci c past that is present to some degree in my present. I nd myself part of a history and that is generally to say, whether I like it or not, whether I recognize it or not, one of the bearers of a tradition.' (MacIntyre, 1982, p. 221) More speci cally, however, he thinks that there are `vital' traditions which embody `continuities of con ict' (perhaps akin to Appiah's `sets of debates'), contrasted with others which are `dying or dead': a living tradition `is an historically extended, socially embodied argument, and an argument precisely in part about the goods which constitute that tradition' (ibid., p. 222). For David Lowenthal, the type of signi cance which is attached to tradition depends on whether persistent historical sources are available to a cultural group: The earliest common use of the past was to validate the present. This practice is still habitual in `traditional' societies lacking a written language and wholly reliant on folk memory. In such societies empirical 93 7. Origins and Traditions enquiry seldom revises received views, and tradition is the pre-eminent guide for behaviour... Societies that have written and printed records remain attached to tradition, but not in the same way or to the same degree. They continue to validate many attitudes and actions by reference to former practices... But to believe tradition perpetuated unbroken from remotest antiquity they would have to deny historical changes implicit in their annals... In most history-conscious societies, `tradition' denotes not total or unswerving stability but the value of particular precedents, the unfolding of practice from immemorial speci c instances. English common law re ects such a use of tradition. (Lowenthal, 1985, p. 369) On the other hand, Shirley Robin Letwin suggests that tradition need not have a great deal to do with the past at all: [Matthew Arnold] appears to be defending tradition because he seems to teach a reverence for the past. But reverence for the past is incidental to what is central to the idea of tradition. And the clue to that is the literal meaning of the word, which is `handing down.' A tradition is a practice that remains coherent not through changelessness but through continuity. What constitutes a tradition is a conception of how things should be done, a manner of understanding and dealing with certain matters, a complicated cluster of criteria and skills that cannot be captured in simple formulas of [sic] diagrams. A tradition, in other words, is a practice perpetuated without formal de nitions of standards, without formal acknowledgment of anyone's authority to set and maintain standards. That is why the personal association of parent and child, teacher and pupil, has been considered essential to the transmission of a tradition. (Letwin, 1982, p. 337) Edward Shils, meanwhile, asserts that tradition `means many things. In its barest, most elementary sense, it means simply a traditum; it is anything which is transmitted or handed down from the past to the present... The decisive criterion is that, having been created through human actions, through thought and imagination, it is handed down from one generation to the next.' (Shils, 1981, p. 12) (To `be regarded as a tradition in the sense of an enduring entity' a `pattern' must `last over at least three generations' (ibid., p. 15).) There appears to be a fairly lively tradition of thinking about tradition, and not at all a univocal one; for my present purposes, the predominant object of interest is the perpetuation of a tradition through time as a series of more-or-less similar events or practices, and the potential which this 94 7.1. Tradition creates for a tradition to be deliberately conserved or (wilfully or accidentally) allowed to die away. There may be people for whom the entire phenomenon of reverence for traditions conjures up deadening images of the gloom of Gormenghast; but there will be others who make nicer distinctions (and perhaps even some who might wish to invoke exible traditions of change and progress and reinvention). Not every practice, at any rate, can be extended into the modern day through the medium of a tradition: a set of conceptual structures for categorising and organising the world can be remembered, in a kind of intellectual and even scholarly cold storage, long after falling out of conventional use (the ideas and practices that made up the alchemical tradition being in this situation), but a living tradition is impossible wherever taking it in any manner seriously would depend on accepting the ways of understanding the world within which it emerged and developed, and these are ways which have proved themselves susceptible to decay and abandonment. In the case of alchemy there is no obvious loss when we have gained its further development into chemistry,1 and to keep up the practices of alchemical enquiry for the sake of tradition would be at best a playful performance of `living history', at worst deluded and ridiculous (and perhaps, recalling 6.1, inauthentic). It is not (of course) impossible to be an alchemist in Britain in the modern day, but few of us, perhaps, could adopt the practice with sincerity. Yet there are other traditions which it seems possible we do value, not only for instrumental reasons (as for example in Edmund Burke's defence of tradition as a means of maintaining public freedoms), but by virtue of the fact that they are our traditions, from swan-upping on the Thames to patterns of intercollegiate rivalry. The former, at least, has (like alchemy) a practical purpose, but it is also a recurring occasion, and is permeated by a sense of occasion grounded in a long-established pattern. Institutional rivalries, on the other hand, tend to be embodied in neither pomp nor circumstance, but they have a certain momentum of their own; it is not, after all, as though each new generation of Durham undergraduates spontaneously adopts certain characteristic attitudes towards Hat eld College which just happen to resemble those of their predecessors. 1Of course, it is a matter of judgment to what extent we should speak of a single tradition of scienti c chemistry: certainly scienti c enquiry incorporates a great many abandoned ideas of its own, such as phlogiston theory, but we are typically happy enough to treat these abandoned theories as part of a narrative of scienti c progress, indicating that abandonment is not the sole reason why we commonly regard alchemy as a precursor to the narrative. 95 7. Origins and Traditions Eliot writes that tradition `cannot be inherited,2 and if you want it you must obtain it by great labour' (Eliot, 1920, p. 43). Sir Karl Popper strikes similar notes: `Certain types of tradition of great importance are local, and cannot easily be transplanted. These traditions are precious things, and it is very di cult to restore them once they are lost.' (Popper, 1963, p. 163) Traditions are capable of decaying and becoming lostalthough their capacity for transformation makes it contestable whether, for example, the alchemical tradition is in some sense preserved by the practice of scienti c chemistry, or whether the discontinuity constitutes the loss of the former (Shils, 1981, p. 14). I suspect that it depends on our chosen emphasis in making the judgment: if we regard alchemy as a practice of investigating how the kinds of matter that make up the world may be manipulated, then we are likely to be most impressed by its continuity with chemistry, whereas if our emphasis is on the place of self-puri cation in alchemical practice, we are equally likely to note the absence of a comparable role for the professional or academic ethos of a scientist of the present day. In neither case is it apparent that we have grasped the true essence of the alchemical traditionwhatever such a thing might be. Must it arouse our concern, then, that a tradition may dwindle and disappear, or is this, ceteris paribus, simply a feature of routine cultural change and intellectual progress? It is of course interesting to note that a tradition, being characterised by continuity, and not only pastbut also future-oriented, is a thing aiming at preservation and self-perpetuationeven more so than human beings, with our less extensible lifespans. (Arguably the very practice of siring and rearing children is itself a tradition.) Yet it does not clearly follow that the proper lifespan of a tradition is in nite as well as inde nite, any more than this is true of ours. Traditions of alchemical practice faded away in an environment which simply ceased to be intellectually hospitable to alchemy, and there is no obvious reason to mourn their passing; we retain, after all, a measure of historical knowledge about them. If we have reason to care about cultural items then we have reason to care about traditions insofar as they are themselves cultural items, but must we care not only about the cultural item `this year's festival' (which of course draws on the cultural resources oered up by memories of previous years'), but additionally about the continuity into which it falls? Depending on our conceptions of what a tradition is, there may be a case for allegations of double counting. Not that a tradition is merely a sequence of inde nite extent. A tradition is an inescapably normative phenomenon, whether overtly so or not (ibid., pp. 235), in light of what it excludes as well as what it perpetuates: to say that a 2I think that by this he means that tradition cannot be passively inherited like a right of possession, i.e. the only way to have it is to participate in it with the right kind of `historical sense'. 96 7.1. Tradition practice or proposal is alien to our traditions (or more generally, to our established customs) can be not merely an observation but an objection. Traditions provide contexts for meaningful activity which can be ruptured, so that a philosopher who veers far enough away from the Analytic and towards the Continental traditions, for example, will be withdrawing from one conversation in favour of another by becoming progressively less readily intelligible to his former colleagues, and sharing less in their understanding of what philosophy is and how one conducts it. Traditions constrain us, not by limiting what we can think (for after all it is possible to change one's opinions about what it is and should be to do philosophy, to draw on intellectual resources which initially were alien to oneself), but because we cannot very well escape participating in and in uencing their development in ways that get out of our control, so that as soon as one opens one's mouth and expounds one's ideas in public they become mixed up into the ebb and ow of `the great conversation'. From what I can gather the process goes something like this: in year one you come up with an argument that x, in year two someone else voices agreement that x, and by year three the x ites are defending their shared position against others who would like to advance their careers through refutations of the new x ist movement; some years later x ites have ceased to seem radically exciting, but several people have built parts of their careers on x 's supportability or lack thereof, and the tribal conferences are always convivial; and eventually, once the x question is a familiar feature on undergraduate courses and the original generation of x ites has largely passed away, someone will begin an exegetical debate by analysing your initial paper afresh and contending that what you had in mind at the time bore practically no relation to how the great x debates ended up. The practical methodological upshot for a philosopher such as myself, unlikely to found a school of thought on any signi cant scale with the present work but wandering through the territory of quite a number of them, is that a tradition is not something one can quarrel over the ownership of like an object in a museum.3 Participation in traditions is to a great extent unlike possession of objects, or even participation in discrete events: it involves the assertion of one's place in a living continuity, whether as inheritor or merely as admitted guest, and it likewise involves participation in this continuity in speci c contradistinction to any competing or alien ones. All of which creates a bit of a complication for my conception of culture as network-like: whether we consider a tradition to constitute a cultural item in its own 3Another matter of methodological diversion for me is the observation that when I set out to talk about cultural heritage, of course I include intellectual heritage, including the very intellectual traditions within which I stand and on whose resources I draw in order to talk about heritage ethics. 97 7. Origins and Traditions right,4 or whether we think that it amounts to a special form of interaction between cultural items, the forward-pointing, cumulative, sometimes contrastive nature of tradition makes it look as though there is rather more to the constitution of cultures than normatively neutral interrelations between normatively inert cultural items. Of course, no metaphysicalised conceptual model of culture is ever going to oer an adequate insight into what culture means to us, and a dry and objective characterisation of what a tradition is inevitably falls short of accounting for what it means to participate in a tradition and to be tasked with either perpetuating it or letting it fall away. (I think that MacIntyre, for example, would reject my account of tradition as too much concerned with bare sequentiality over narrative; I have tried to be somewhat minimalist, and to avoid requiring anything comparable to his wider concern with virtue.) Given that I have been taking as a paradigmatic example of a cultural item the kind of artefact which nds itself subject to ownership disputes between governments, museums and other bodies, it is hardly surprising that `the cultural item' has tended to appear in my theorising as an object of my philosophical inspection, a thing to examine and evaluate. Yet perhaps recognition of even our intellectual heritage for what it is entails that the proper relation to heritage should be one of engaging with it in something more closely resembling a dialogue, or at least a hermeneutic process. Heritage would then emerge less as an object for my theories to act upon, lying still on the slab for examination and appraisal, and more as something persistently able to talk back (as it were) and demand reappraisal even at an abstracted, theoretical level; and as such, to engage in philosophising about heritage would not be to aim at parcelling up a neat, completed package of methods for generating prescriptions in normative ethics, but would itself constitute standing within a tradition of thinking philosophically about heritage, and not necessarily expecting to arrive at conclusive solutions.5 For the moment, however, I shall leave methodological re ections aside in order to consider an aspect of the temporality of cultural heritage which looks very dierent from the inde nitude of tradition. 4See Chapter 10. 5Need all this present a problem? One might respond, after all, that if we aspire to assess tradition philosophically it is a positive boon that nobody could do so with greater experiential authority than we can; and in any case similar situations arise across the philosophical board, as you would expect from a discipline purporting to examine the fundamental questions of being human, and as it happens logicians go on thinking logically, moral philosophers endure not being amoral creatures, and phenomenologists working on embodiment are seldom heard complaining about a lack of experience of being disembodied. Nevertheless, I take the matter to invite caution. 98 7.2. Origins 7.2. Origins With respect to the ways in which we talk about the temporal aspects of heritage (that is, how the nature of things as heritage, and often as overtly inherited, relates to their existence across dierent times and changing circumstances), traditions and origins seem in some respects to be in opposition to one another. In the case of traditions, sequential continuity is the critical de ning aspect (and that continuity may be fairly loose in some cases): recall that for Shils, we have a tradition wherever we have a `pattern' passed down between three or more successive generations (Shils, 1981, p. 15). So long as we can identify some sort of continuity between the stages of its existence in which we are presently interested, a tradition need not have any point of origin which is clearly recalled or identi able; if anything, a tradition that stretches back into time immemorial may carry a certain attractive mystique (on which see also Chapter 13). In contrast, sometimes we want to talk very de nitely about origins; sometimes a great deal in the ethics and politics of cultural heritage depends on the possibility of tracing objects, ideas and practices back to their roots. Most obviously, acts of restitution and repatriation are grounded in the notion that (1) the object being returned has a place or people which is demonstrably its source, and from which it has been displaced; (2) some desirable end is served by returning it to this source; and (3) such a return is possible, i.e. there exists a place or a people which can be reliably identi ed with the source place or source people, even after the passage of however much time. In many cases the demand for return is grounded in a claim about what is due to the source peoples: a demand of justice where the removal was such as to wrong them, or a demand for the cessation of harm where the continued estrangement of the displaced item is in some respect harmful to the cultural group from which it was taken. At other times the aim is oriented towards the future, towards discouraging those obliged to make the return from further participation in the market for looted antiquities. Yet in addition to these themes one sometimes sees it suggested that there is something about the original setting of a cultural item which is especially tting for it, and hence that there simply are ceteris paribus grounds for favouring an item's source nation, city, &c. as its proper place of repose. In what sense, if any, is it good for cultural objects to be situated in their places or communities of origin? Writing in a recent issue of Museum International, George Anastassopoulos, the Permanent Delegate of Greece to UNESCO, advances what we might call a symbolistic objection to universal museums: their very accessibility, he claims, `has unfortunately led numerous objects to acquire a status not of universality but of familiarity, which progressively erodes the singularity and inherent symbolic value of cultural objects'. In consequence, `if we do not anchor 99 7. Origins and Traditions these objects in their original environment and history, we run the risk of depriving them of their universal quality and beauty by making them familiar objects of consumption' (Anastassopoulos, 2009, p. 9). Whatever could it mean to anchor museum pieces in their `original environment and history'? Anastassopoulos speaks of a `vision of culture, as a series of concentric circles with at the centre the community of origin, [which] challenges traditional conceptions of universalism. It emphasizes the organic bond that links the work of art or artefact and the location where it was created.' (ibid., p. 9) I am decidedly unsure whether anyone else actually does think of culture in such terms (perhaps I lack adequate knowledge of the Hellenophone literature on the subject), but the idea of an environment of origin as an especially tting site for a cultural item has certainly underpinned much of the o cial Greek rhetoric concerning the Parthenon Marbles, culminating in the New Acropolis Museum, a building in physical proximity to the Parthenon but nevertheless removed from it. The Marbles cannot be replaced on the monument of which they `were conceived and designed from the outset as integral parts' (Papazoi, 2000, p. 2), but the Greek government has contended that nevertheless `the cultural, historical, archaeological and aesthetic values of the Parthenon are most closely interwoven with the city in which it was created, Athens' (ibid., p. 2). But what do we mean by the origin of an object, or a practice? Or rather (since I doubt much in heritage ethics is going to be settled by appeals to Kripke), what sense can we make of the various things we might mean which will prove morally illuminating? In part, of course, we mean a more-or-less speci c point in time (`1832'; `the Renaissance'; `the Neolithic period') and space, where our geographical points of reference may be both physical (`the Shetlands'; `Australia') and sociopolitical (`the U.S.S.R.'; `rural England'). Some familiar di culties have a lot to do with the frequent disinclination of our familiar sociopolitical ways of dividing up the world to line up conveniently with the era in question, as in Appiah's example of the Nok sculptures which were made in a geographical area we now call Nigeria, but long before the nation-state of Nigeria came into being (Appiah, 2009, p. 74). We need not, however, be speaking only of the time and place at which some item came into being: when we say that Western philosophy began with Thales of Miletus, we clearly do not mean that Western philosophy happened to pop into existence at the point which was then occupied by Thales. In speaking of the origins of manmade things (as we are when we nd ourselves concerned with any item of non-natural cultural heritage) we are dealing with agency, and sometimes we shall have to deal with the involvement of multiple agents through multiple acts in making 100 7.2. Origins a thing what it is. What sort of origins, then, do we mean to speak of when we ask where some cultural item came from? Where physical objects are concerned, we might mean the sources of the object's constituent material(s). I doubt this very often is what's meant, but it might be suggested by some Peruvians' suggestion that Peru has a claim on coins found with the shipwrecked Black Swan, a wreck discovered on the seabed near Portugal, because Peruvian metal, taken during the colonial era, was used to mint them (Jones, 2008). Spain's claim is based on the form imposed on the material, Peru's on the source of the material itself. However, attempting to draw any general rule out of this line of thinking seems likely to lead us to the novel conclusion that the best setting for parts of Stonehenge would be the Preseli Mountains in Wales, despite the fact that the original builders of Stonehenge evidently reached a dierent conclusion. We might mean the place or people among whom the idea of an item arose, before the item itself was brought into being in consequence; after all, it would be natural enough to say of some project that it had its origins in its preparatory planning, and speci cally in the formation of the earliest plans and suggestions. I have trouble coming up with cases where such a thing has clearly been meant, however, unless perhaps we suppose that some of the broader kinds of appropriation, such as that of styles and motifs (Young, 2008, pp. 6-7), can be brought under this heading, where there is a reasonable enough sense in which the token may be thought to originate with an already established type. Certainly, when we talk of origins we have to recognise what connections the objects and practices under consideration have to previous and contemporary cultural milieux. However, at the same time we must acknowledge that the origin of an object is not simply that of the ideas which it embodies: the origins of rocketry may be in ancient China, but this hardly invalidates our calling the Soyuz launcher a Russian rocket. The di culty in appealing to the ideas which give rise to items' creation, then, is that it is hard to identify a principled stopping point at which we can say that we have found the idea Let's make an x , and therefore found the origins of that x, while clipping away as strictly irrelevant all the preceding thinking about x -style items which served to create the context within which this plan in particular was able to take shape. If we want to talk about origins in terms of plans and ideas, we are likely to arrive at the conclusion that the notion of an origin is in fact not a crisply delineated one at all; and probably there is something in that, but it would be rash to reject so soon the starting expectation that there would be some noteworthy distinction between the temporality of origins and that of traditions. The Soyuz launcher is of Russian origin. 101 7. Origins and Traditions We might mean the environment in which an object was rst constructed, sculpted or otherwise given form in the case of abstract objects we might think of the setting in which a document was written, a festival rst held, &c. but then, a lot of objects begin their existence in a workshop or studio with the intention that they should be moved elsewhere on completion. For example, a ship is supposed to sail from port to port, not stay in the dockyard. In these cases, even if we consider the place of creation an important aspect of an item's history it is unlikely to gure signi cantly and automatically in our judgments about what should happen to the item now. We might mean the setting for which an object was made, or for which a practice was devised: the Parthenon Marbles, for example, were non-trivially integrated into the structure of the Parthenon.6 The performances involved in the State Opening of Parliament were overtly devised for the Palace of Westminster, with its spatial and constitutional division into Houses of Lords and Commons. This cannot very well apply in every case, however, simply because many things are devised without an intended setting very much in mind, while others acquire such very dierent histories from those intended for them that one has to doubt the signi cance of those initial intentions in any deliberation about their fate. (The Antikythera Mechanism, a piece of ancient technology now held by the National Archaeological Museum in Athens, was perhaps en route to Rome when its ship sank; we cannot know whether that was what its maker rst envisaged for it, and nobody has suggested that what little we can guess of its intended destination after manufacture should determine who has a legitimate claim on it in the present day.) Again, then, it would be excessively hasty to conclude that this criterion is never relevant, but it seems very doubtful that it consistently is. We might mean the setting in which an object was discovered; recall Renfrew's emphasis on the archaeological site as the setting of epistemic signi cance which gives artefacts their meaning. This cannot be the only origin of which we might wish to speak, however, since archaeologists clearly take an interest not only in where an object was found but in questions of how it came to be there. Becoming somewhat sceptical about the prospects for a straightforward general criterion of origin-possession, then, we might seek to introduce more socially determined elements: perhaps we should say that origins of the kind we are interested in, for the purposes of developing an ethics of cultural heritage, are not the origins of an item per se, i.e. the environments and conditions within which it was brought into being as the thing that it (physically) is, but rather its roots as an 6Some of the Marbles, but not others, are presently situated within their city of origin; and here we observe a related problem, that of when buildings, cities, countries of origin, &c. should be seen as salient. Perhaps this question was what animated Anastassopoulos's concentric circles. 102 7.2. Origins item of somebody's speci cally cultural interest. (By way of comparison: what are the interesting origins of a signed rst edition of a book? There are at least two: the occasion of printing that makes it a rst edition instead of a later one, and the act of signing by the author after the book was printed, which turns the rst edition into a signed rst edition.) We need perhaps concern ourselves, then, merely with the question of when and by whom the item in question rst began to be appreciated in some manner relevant to its status as cultural heritage. That it may previously have emerged from some anonymous workshop, for example, and lain for a while in a shop window is a matter of merely historical interest; if the item of interest is, let us say, the typewriter which was used by Cormac McCarthy to write his novels and which was sold at auction in December 2009,7 then of course our interest in it as cultural heritage will have everything to do with what we think of McCarthy's writing as (someone's) cultural heritage, and nothing to do with its existence before he even purchased it.8 Unfortunately, this again leaves us obliged to wonder whether origins really can be tied down to reasonably discrete events in time and space. `Man acquires typewriter' describes an act, but not an especially exciting one. `Man acquires typewriter in order to pursue a career as a novelist' is perhaps an improvement, if the ensuing career is one of interest to us; but even supposing we have reliable grounds for thinking that this was his intention at the time of the acquisition, there is no obvious improvement over `Man acquires typewriter in order to write neater shopping lists; as it happens, later on he uses it to pursue a career as a novelist'. Our interest, clearly, is not in the act of acquisition itself, even given what we know about how the typewriter was subsequently used, but in the gradual and cumulative process of writing with which the typewriter was involved; there was no baptismal moment at which it was suddenly transformed from an everyday typewriter into a piece of literary history.9 Perhaps, however, my choice of example has led me to be excessively demanding; in many cases, notably when dealing with antiquities, when we ask about the origins 7I assume that, being auctioned as a piece of literary memorabilia, the typewriter may fairly be considered of cultural interest and hence suitable as an example, although no concern for it under the heading of cultural heritage has interfered with its being disposed of as an item of private property. 8Or almost nothing, since as an example of a certain model it may hold some interest for people who nd themselves diverted by the history of typewriter manufacture. However, the importance then attached to it as an example would depend on how many other such examples were in existence, whereas, since McCarthy used one typewriter continuously throughout many years of work, we are considering a particular item, the very typewriter used to write certain literary creations. 9Wemay, indeed, be reminded of traditions at this point, there typically being no baptismal moment at which sombody says, `Let's start a tradition!' 103 7. Origins and Traditions of some item of cultural heritage we should be thrilled to obtain an answer so precise as to have been pinned down to the span of a speci c person's life. Frequently we must be content to learn merely the approximate era, region and societal context in which an object was made. Similarly, the historical record may give us only a general idea of the era across which an item came to possess cultural import; but at this level of precision, maybe that is all we need. So long as we have some (even vaguely delineated) portion of time and place to point to, we can talk about origins to a degree of precision that depending on our needs may be good enough. With this in mind, then, can we say that the origins of an item of heritage are to be found in those circumstances which made it an object of cultural interest and appreciation (somewhat as we might say that someone's schooldays `were the making of him', when in a physical sense they clearly were not)? Once again, there is no doubt something in this that does capture what we are frequently concerned with, and the di culties arise when we try to draw out a general guiding rule concerning origins. If our requirement is that members of a cultural group must recognise an item as the possessor of some appropriate kind of status within their culture, and not retrospectively but at the time at which the item has its origin qua item of whatever kind of (more than ordinarily interesting) cultural heritage, then we have created a criterion which turns out to be remarkably exacting. Suppose some other wellknown writer, McDarthy, also uses a typewriter, but this fact happens never to become public during his lifetime. Many years later, when his descendants have nally nished squabbling over the larger details of his estate and the existence of this typewriter comes to public light, then we may say that the cultural item we know as `the very typewriter used by McDarthy to write his famous novels' has originatedyears after his life and career nished and his novels became widely read in the rst place. The origin of this, the typewriter as a cultural item, would therefore come after the very events which made it of greater interest to the reading public than an everyday typewriter. However you might object we are quibbling over a mere epistemic inconvenience: the reading public, we may reasonably believe, would most certainly have acknowledged a cultural interest in what they could have known (had they thought of it) under the de nite description `the implement used by McDarthy to write his novels'. That they did not even know he used a typewriter, rather than a pen or pencil or computer, and that they did not know which typewriter, prevents them merely from knowing which object in the world answers to the description in question. Since the typewriter does and did answer to it, however, nothing requires us to locate the typewriter's origin as a cultural item of literary signi cance only at 104 7.2. Origins the moment of its public identi cation. This point is correct, but too limited: we have become dependent on a counterfactual assumption, the judgment that members of the reading public during McDarthy's life, or at least as soon as he became famous, probably would have taken an interest in the implement he used had its identity ever arisen as a topic of commentary. Sometimes we can make reasonable counterfactual judgments about what people might have thought and done, but even if we admit this into our thinking about cultural heritage ethics (and there are of course reasons to be wary of doing so, given the epistemic uncertainties which invariably attach themselves to counterfactual judgments of any historical complexity), can we seriously claim that the origin of an item qua item of recognised cultural interest is to be found at the (earliest possible?) temporal point at which people in dierent (ideal?) circumstances would have shown suitable interest in it? Surely not its origin within the world we do in fact inhabit. Enough: by this point it seems reasonably plain that an understanding of origins which both re ects our interests when enquiring into cultural heritage ethics and looks reliably applicable across the various diverse cases that might concern us is not within our ready grasp. (No wonder, when it can become so tricky to distinguish between questions of fact and questions of value: we nd ourselves in di culties precisely because the question of which sort of origin best re ects our priorities cannot escape the question of what our priorities ought to be, but the question of what we should prioritise in our deliberations cannot readily do without a substantive conception of what cultural items we are dealing withand whence they came.) Need we worry about that, or should we merely endorse renewed wariness when faced with claims concerning the origins of a cultural item? What I actually want to do here is shift focus away from the question of where exactly we might locate the origins of an item of cultural heritage, and back towards the question of why it might seem important to identify them in the rst place: speci cally, my suspicion here is that underlying some of the disputes over heritage is a kind of conceptual dierence of judgment about how heritage should be conceived of as subject to the passage of time, so that (drawing the divisions loosely) a traditionalistic tendency regards the status of an item of heritage as cumulative, its identity as cultural heritage a matter of open-ended development; whereas an originalistic tendency conversely tries to pin down a de nite starting point and assess all subsequent events in light of it. The latter inclination is manifest in restitution cases in the claim that, from a given starting point, an object's history ought to have been dierent, and the timeline it ought to have had is the one towards which its future history should be brought as close as possible. The former is indicated 105 7. Origins and Traditions by Cuno's narrative tactic of tracking the changing uses of an artefact through time, destabilising the notion that any one of them has strict priority in order to advance the cause of the universal museum as an environment suited to housing and comparing artefacts in all their multiform status. Now if it is the case that (even assuming standard Western conceptions of linear time, &c.) we can perceive possible roots of disagreement in basically dierent conceptions of a given object10 as a temporal thing, then we cannot very well avoid the question of which, if any, is `right' or `best' in any given case; and possibly some movement in the direction of picking favourites could be made, by means of linking into my emphasis on thinking about cultural items in holistic terms, and asking how a best t might be attained: does it best accord with the place which a given item has received within wider human culture to regard it traditionalistically or originalistically? (I wonder, though, whether appealing to an item's prior reception would tend excessively towards conservatism not only as a matter of moral prescription, which I suppose is at least unsurprising where cultural heritage is concerned, but moreover as a matter of conceptual favouritism, giving unbalanced favour to just one way of conceiving of an object in temporal terms, to the exclusion of whatever others there might be. I should be nervous of bringing about the latter as a side-eect.) Yet I am inclined to think that it makes more sense to be neutral between dierent ways of construing the temporality of heritage: clearly things do have origins, but it would be rash to expect these to imply strict limits on what can rightfully be done with them. The question of present interest, therefore, is whether such low-level conceptions of temporality are reconciliable, or whether we shall nd ourselves obliged to be pluralistic about them. To make further, progress, however, I think that I had better expand the discussion from considering what cultures and cultural heritage are like to directly trying to understand what kind of morally salient roles they play for us. 10A physical object, of course, cannot itself be a tradition, but it can be associated with traditions, or just with changing uses which may be without a clear point of origin, and therefore it can be subject to what I have styled `traditionalistic' thinking. 106 Part II. Contours of a Moral Landscape
To say, `I had whooping cough when I was four years old' supposes a thousand projects, in particular the adoption of the calendar as a system of reference... Jean-Paul Sartre (2003, p. 519)
. `Value'? The legal scholar Sarah Harding has written, The monetary value of cultural heritage encourages preservation rather than destruction. But despite the physical survival of cultural heritage, we frequently destroy much of its intrinsic value by reconstituting it in radically limited and instrumental terms. We tend to focus on its scienti c, educational, political, and market value, to the exclusion of its more fundamental value. The problem lies not in the existence of these instrumental forms of value but in their domination over other forms of value. (Harding, 1999, p. 293) Conceptions of value seem to have become, if not necessarily the supremely dominant currency in thinking about the ethics of cultural heritage and the various forms of signi cance which items thereof might possess, at least a widely recognised coin. No doubt UNESCO is in large part responsible for this state of aairs, with the formula of `outstanding universal value' forming a critical element of the Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage (UNESCO, 1972); `value' is also a term employed repeatedly in the Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property (UNESCO, 1970). Philosophers, however, have adopted it largely with approval. For Janna Thompson, value of a certain sort (or values; in the following quotation the two words seem to be employed with a purely grammatical distinction) oers a starting point for further re ection: Appeals to rights of cultural property support some restitution claims but not others. However many of those who think that museums ought to resist demands for restitution are claiming that there are values at stake that can justify refusing demands for restitution even when they are legitimate. They are not pitting the claims of one collectivity against another. They are not claiming that the acquisitions of a museum have become over time the cultural property of the museum or the people of their countrythat, for example, the [Elgin] Marbles are by now truly British. They are insisting that museums are the protectors of 111 8. `Value'? values that transcend rights of cultural property, including the right to restitution. The values mentioned in the Declaration [sc. on the Importance and Value of Universal Museums] of the museum directors are education and the advancement of knowledge, and to this we can presumably add aesthetic worth. These values are assumed to be of signi cance to all of humankind and I will call them `values for humanity' (or in short, `human values'). AEsthetic worth is a notoriously contested concept and not every society believes in the value of scholarship or values the kind of education that the museum directors have in mind. But I will assume that these values can be given an adequate defencethat dierences in aesthetic taste do not prevent considerable agreement about what is of aesthetic worth and that education and advancement of knowledge are things that people ought to value. The argument advanced by those who think that museums are within their rights to resist restitution claims is that some artefacts are of such great value for humanity that it is justi ed to restrict or override rights of cultural property in order to promote or protect this value. (Thompson, 2003, p. 257) `When cultural property is central to a collectivity's practices,' she concludes, `its rights are not trumped by appeals on behalf of human values. But not all cultural property is central to a collectivity's practices. If artefacts have only a marginal importance to the collectivity and their human value is considerable, then its rights become more di cult to defend.' (ibid., p. 260) The term `values for humanity' is an overtly anthropocentric one, and it seems fair to take it that Thompson understands the value of items of cultural heritage to be a type of instrumental value (of which more later), at least insofar as aesthetic value, say, is instantiated in a particular cultural item: what makes the item valuable are its aesthetic properties, and what makes those valuable is the role they play `for humanity' as a whole. Whereas Thompson emphasises cases in which she believes that `human values' should be understood to override ownership rights, James O. Young has defended the claim `that cultures sometimes are the rightful owners of cultural property, even when they have not inherited, made, purchased or been given the property.' He believes `that the basis of a culture's claim on cultural property can simply be the great value that some property has for members of a culture.' (Young, 2007, p. 120) According to such a view, the value of a cultural item (and speci cally the value it holds for a certain cultural group) may sometimes serve to give that group a particular claim on the item (though theirs will typically not be the only rights 112 which ought to be considered (ibid., p. 122)). The lesson which Young draws from this is summarised in his `cultural signi cance principle' (otherwise the `cultural property principle'; see p. 45): `When an item of cultural property has aesthetic, historical or other value to the members of some culture, then the culture has some claim to the ownership of the property in question. The strength of the claim will be proportional to the value the property has for members of the culture.' (ibid., p. 122) Thompson and Young thus both recognise value of a relevant sort which can be of multiple types: aesthetic value is the sole example which they both employ in the quotations above. Each seems to acknowledge relations of some complication between such value and rights (principally, rights of some sort of ownership of `cultural property'); Thompson, however, tends to emphasise the potential of `values for humanity' at large to mitigate the particular rights and associated claims of particular cultural groups, whereas Young has taken an interest in the potential of value for particular groups to be a source of rights for them. These positions are not necessarily incompatible, and neither philosopher presents the implications for normative decision-making as uncomplicated. Nevertheless, when we notice that value apparently can play so exible a role in our thinking about what claims may be made on cultural items and by whom, it seems a suitable moment to pause and ask once again what might have made this term `value' appear a helpful or important one to introduce to the conversation. I suspect that some of the appeal lies in the resolutely anthropocentric ground upon which debates about the moral questions concerning cultural heritage, not only its nature but by implication its value too, tend to be conducted. Since the very status of an item as a cultural item depends upon its having acquired a place within some form of culture, and since culture (whatever else it is) is a phenomenon of our existence in human collectivities, it seems entirely natural to construe the very nature of cultural heritage in terms of relationships between a given cultural item and some or all of the human species, and no less natural to expect that our ethical involvement with cultural heritage must be somehow grounded in, or at least involved with, these relations. Yet the mere fact that cultural items originate with human collectives implies and explains little; a great many akes of dead skin have originated with my very body, but nobody would take me seriously if I tried to make them the objects of personal restitution claims. It cannot follow simply from the fact of their origins that (some or all) cultural items play or ought to play any interesting part in anybody's moral life. Neither can it straightforwardly be said that we have need of them, since biologically speaking we have no such needs. There are points of view according to which culture ought to be considered a human good (Appiah, 113 8. `Value'? 2005, pp. 120-30), either basically or in the necessary service of such other goods as autonomy or a sense of identity, and according to which without culture the good life is unattainable or only arduously so; but it is likely to prove to be no trivial task to advance from any such claim about culture in general to conclusions about the proper fate of a given cultural item, should anybody aspire to make the attempt. It would not be a trivially mistaken account of the life worth living for a man of Athens which claimed that among its constituent aspects would be the uni cation of the Parthenon Marbles, but scholars of other conceptions of the eudaimon life might well be taken aback by it. What then can we minimally say about our involvement with cultural items which might help us to think about them in ethical terms? A blunt and observable matter of fact about the way in which some of them animate our concern is just that: they do animate our concern. We care about some cultural items; or, reversing the formula, they (apparently) matter to us. The word `value' captures both formulations, for to say that something has value is to imply that it is such that there is reason to give it some form of special treatment, while to say that something is valued is to imply that someone responds to it by judging that it commands some special treatment. It is not plain that we need commit ourselves to deploying the language of value in just one way or the other (although we can, of course, be outright projectivists if our doctrine is that this value has its source in human sentiment), and so we can be comfortably anthropocentric in casting human beings as the party actively doing the valuing, while remaining open to the possibility that there is much more than an appeal to sheer human caprice to be said about which items warrant being valued, and why some might warrant it more than others. Hence the putative taxonomies of value which appear in the quotations above: this `value' is not the counterpart of some blind, romantically impulsive act of valuing, but value of sorts which are particularly capable of manifesting themselves in such a phenomenon as cultural heritage. 8.1. Intrinsic and Nonintrinsic Value What then could be the nature of this value? A familiar distinction for moral philosophers is that between intrinsic and nonintrinsic value. Shelly Kagan identi es two general ways of construing such a distinction (Kagan, 1998, pp. 278-9). One (which I suspect is loosely a counterpart to Kant's distinction between categorical and hypothetical imperatives) considers the relations which a thing has with other things: if the value it has is dependent on a relation to something else, this value is nonintrinsic (and most of us would probably call it extrinsic), whilst if the thing in 114 8.1. Intrinsic and Nonintrinsic Value question would retain its value even if it were the only thing in the universe, then the value is intrinsic. The other way of framing the distinction (which is reminiscent of Aristotle) is concerned with means and ends: what has value as an end in itself has intrinsic value, and what is valuable as a means to some other end has nonintrinsic value which would typically be called instrumental value. Kagan's conclusion is that it is a dubious intellectual move to unite these ideas under the single label `intrinsic value' (ibid., p. 280), and in fact one of the examples he cites in the course of building his argument could easily be recast in the language of cultural heritage: `the pen used by Abraham Lincoln to sign the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves'. If this has intrinsic value by virtue of being what it is, it has it as a result of having played a certain causal part in history, in turn as a result of being one of many items which possess instrumental value for signing documents. Thus, Kagan suggests, we have a case in which an object's intrinsic value plausibly depends on its instrumental value (ibid., pp. 285-6). The critic of established conceptions of intrinsic value whose work is most pertinent to my own is not Kagan, however, but the legal theorist Sarah Harding, who has defended `a way to think about cultural heritage that focuses on its intrinsic value' (Harding, 1999, p. 295) (or at least, a way to think about `important cultural heritage, heritage that we could classify as nearly indispensable' (ibid., p. 343)); like me, she has drawn inspiration from environmental ethics (ibid., p. 316, note 109), although unlike me she distinguishes her points of inspiration from those which concern themselves with human-independent ecological ethics (ibid., p. 329, note 159). Where we most obviously dier is in what we take to be the role of human beings in grounding this intrinsic value: Harding associates herself rmly with the anthropocentric mould which associates value with the satisfaction of the needs and wants of minded human beings (although my use of the label is, though tting, in another respect unfortunate: it is Harding, in criticising R.M. Hare's contention that `only those things capable of valuing and capable of having interests can have morally relevant value', who calls it `an excessively anthropocentric view of value' (ibid., p. 317)). In her judgment, any `suggestion that a potlatch dance or [a] da Vinci manuscript has value independent of human valuing or human experience is incoherent; cultural heritage is valuable precisely because it is an expression or an intimate part of human experience' (ibid., p. 317). Accordingly, she sets out to `explore the possibility of isolating a category of intrinsic value that is embedded in, rather than distanced from, human experience, without being limited to human experiences' (ibid., p. 321). If Harding had wholly succeeded in ascribing some form of intrinsic value to cultural heritage, then while my non-anthropocentric approach might remain a 115 8. `Value'? technically plausible alternative, its interest as a source of normative guidance would be substantially diminished unless, perhaps, it turned out to imply strikingly dierent conclusions. However, I do not believe that Harding's approach altogether succeeds in its intended aims, although it does go some way towards showing how such an approach might proceed. Harding, like Kagan, is concerned to unpick the exact meaning, or meanings, of the term `intrinsic value'. She takes note of suggestions that what has intrinsic value is an end in itself; that (as in G.E. Moore's work) intrinsic value depends solely on intrinsic properties; and that intrinsic value is simply `value which is independent of the valuation of a valuer' (ibid., pp. 316-17).1 In her judgment, however, `it is not clear that intrinsic value is restricted to these ideas' (Harding, 1999, p. 317); and if they do not provide an exhaustive de nition, then room may remain for alternatives within `our shared understanding of intrinsic value' (ibid., p. 317). The objective value theory holds that something has intrinsic value only if it can be said to have value independent of our personal or collective value assessments. Under such an approach, intrinsic value is completely divorced from our inclinations to appreciate something. The test for such an approach is often framed by the following question: would x continue to have value even after the disappearance of humans (and any other valuing agents)? Setting aside the di culty of even imagining the existence of value or inherent worth in the absence of all humans, Vermeer's The Girl With a Pearl Earring, the Parthenon Marbles or a Suyá song are clearly not valuable in such a situation. Thus, under the objective value theory, cultural heritage cannot be intrinsically valuable. (ibid., p. 318) I should say that the second sentence is not necessarily true and the conclusion is certainly false, but enough of me for the time being. Harding continues: What happens if we take the opposite approach, that only those things that are valuable because we think them so are capable of being intrinsically valuable[?] In other words, intrinsic value is comprised of only those things that are the subject of human assessment, a subjectivist 1Such a literature survey could be continued. Besides the distinctions made by Kagan and Harding, there are also Christine Korsgaard's `two distinctions in goodness. One is the distinction between things valued for their own sakes and things valued for the sake of something elsebetween ends and means, or nal and instrumental goods. The other is the distinction between things which have their value in themselves and things which derive their value from some other source: intrinsically good things versus extrinsically good things.' (Korsgaard, 1996b, p. 250) 116 8.1. Intrinsic and Nonintrinsic Value approach. [R.M.] Hare would argue that if we reject the objectivist argument and take a subjectivist approach, we are forced back into his positionthat only humans have intrinsic or, in Hare's words, morally relevant value... Needless to say, such a theory also makes it impossible to view cultural heritage as intrinsically valuable. But if we take a subjectivist approach as originally stated, that human assessments are the only sources of value, are we committed to Hare's position? That is, even if humans are the only sources of value, are we then tied to the conclusion that only humans or human states are intrinsically valuable? There is, as far as I can tell, no necessary connection between these two statements. (ibid., pp. 318-19) Reacting next to conceptions of intrinsic value which de ne it wholly in terms of its dependency only on intrinsic properties, Harding suggests a counterexample: what is ascribed to the Zuni War Gods, fetishes created by the Zuni people and ritually left exposed to the elements to decay, is a value `dependent on their situation with respect to humans', but `given the God-like status granted to these fetishes, the Zuni believe their value extends beyond their usefulness or ability to satisfy human desires', making it a non-instrumental form of value (ibid., p. 320). Cultural heritage is also cited as a counterexample to the idea that what has intrinsic value must be an end in itself, for the `idea of an end invokes abstraction and conclusion..., and yet the value of cultural heritage, not unlike the value of the environment, exists in its embeddedness in our lives.' (ibid., p. 321) Items of cultural heritage are `things that may not have self-justifying value but nonetheless resist being reduced to mere means.' (ibid., p. 321) Drawing on work by Joseph Raz, Harding suggests that we can additionally construe intrinsic (as opposed to instrumental) value in terms of independence of consequences (while still allowing that some things may alternatively be intrinsically valuable on account of, say, being ends in themselves): a thing has intrinsic value if the value it has is not possessed solely on account of what the thing can be used to bring about. Thereby, she says, we `broaden the concept' of intrinsic value2 `to include an entirely dierent category of goods' (Harding, 1999, p. 322). These goods are characterised by constituency, or embeddedness, within other goodsultimately, within a good life. The value of goods that are deeply and fundamentally embedded in other 2This, incidentally, makes Harding's approach to the taxonomy of value actually opposed to Kagan's, the latter's 1998 paper having concluded that we would be better o not trying to use the term `intrinsic value' to cover two distinguishable concepts (or perhaps, we should now say, at least two). 117 8. `Value'? intrinsically valuable goods goes well beyond any consequences they might produce and thus they can be considered intrinsically valuable. So, anything which is an element of something which is intrinsically valuable in the rst few senses objectively or non-relationally as an `end' is itself intrinsically valuable albeit relational and contingent. (ibid., p. 322) 8.2. Harding On Value and Experiences We are invited to presume `that the least controversial of intrinsic goods is a ourishing human life' (ibid., p. 322); it then follows, the argument runs, that the constituents of this also have intrinsic value. Harding contends that certain kinds of experience, which she identi es as `aesthetic' and `cultural' experiences, are among these constituents of the ourishing life; that cultural heritage, or at any rate important cultural heritage, is in turn one of the constituents of these experiences; and accordingly that cultural heritage is intrinsically valuable. Cultural heritage, then, is supposed to inherit intrinsic value from the cultural and aesthetic experiences in which it features as a constituent, which in turn inherit their intrinsic value from the ourishing life by virtue of being constituents of it. I have no wish to disagree that a ourishing human life will involve cultural heritage; although I suspect that this has at least as much to do with its being a recognisably human life as with its being eudaimon, and of course I cannot help recalling the Aristotelian observation that everyone agrees that the goal of life is eudaimonia, yet there is ample disagreement about exactly what it is. (No doubt a great many vandals and iconoclasts have believed themselves to be acting for the furtherance of living the good human life as they understood it.) Clearly, however, a great deal will depend on how exactly we are to understand these relations of constituency or embeddedness or elementality. Harding does not, I think, intend us to be convinced that if x has intrinsic value, then whatever is a part of x also has intrinsic value.3 That would certainly be an unlikely claim. Imagine that I have fallen swooningly in love with some woman on account of her charming character, her intellectual fascination, her physical beauty, and so on. Only the occasional minor demerit detracts from the overall vision of loveliness: her fondness for trashy breakfast television, perhaps, or the atness of her singing in the shower. Assume that mine is not the blind love of poetic fancy in which I am unable to perceive these de ciencies; it is not, indeed, even the kind in which I am intellectually aware 3Nevertheless, Korsgaard observes that `it is common to identify a part of an intrinsically valuable whole as having contributive value' (Korsgaard, 1996b, p. 252). 118 8.2. Harding On Value and Experiences of them but my experience is so constituted that they do not matter to me. When she sings, we shall suppose, I lunge for my earplugsbut I love her nonetheless. Since in this sketch I truly love her, no doubt I value her, and no doubt as an end in herselfbut does it follow from my valuing the whole that I must value each aspect of her after the same fashion, including that awful singing? I see no reason to think so, and I doubt that Harding expects me to. The most obvious interpretative move to make at this point is, I think, to note that we can perfectly well imagine my imaginary love cured of her imperfection (by means of some singing lessons, perhaps) without her having in any way lost her already existing merits or undergone a change in identity. If the attachment of her singing to her overall person is disanalogous to the embeddedness of cultural heritage in a ourishing human life, then, we shall suspect that this is because cultural heritage is necessarily or essentially a component of the ourishing life, something which it must contain in order eectively to qualify as the ourishing life. (At one point Harding calls cultural heritage `the essence of cultural experience' (Harding, 1999, p. 338), and shortly thereafter she asserts that the `rich context provided by cultural heritage is essential to a continuous and meaningful cultural experience' (ibid., p. 339) with `cultural experience or a stable cultural context' (ibid., p. 340) in turn featuring, along with aesthetic experience, as an aspect of the ourishing life but I cannot tell whether she intends this talk of essence to be taken at all metaphysically. Elsewhere she calls cultural heritage `an indispensable aspect of cultural experience and the evolution of cultures' (ibid., p. 340), where `indispensable' probably implies some sort of necessity.) Perhaps it is for this reason, then, that in valuing the ourishing life intrinsically we are supposed also to value cultural heritage intrinsically. This has a ring of some plausibility about it, but I think that the complications involved in talking about `a ourishing human life' may be obscuring something. Let's return to Kagan's example of Lincoln's pen, and note that it is introduced to us under a de nite description: `the pen used by Abraham Lincoln to sign the Emancipation Proclamation, freeing the slaves' (Kagan, 1998, p. 285). Since `any of a large number of other pens near Lincoln could have done just as well' (ibid., p. 286), it is manifestly a matter of historical as well as metaphysical contingency that this particular pen answers to the description. In this case, then, not only each part of it separately but even the collective whole is only contingently to be identi ed with the pen as it interests us and as Kagan invites us to consider it to have intrinsic value. This should give us pause. It seems that if a thing may have value speci cally under a certain description and here let us note that `the ourishing life for human beings' is a description then in making any attempt to construct a mereology of 119 8. `Value'? valuables we are at considerable risk of becoming entangled in complications ideally left to metaphysicians and logicians. There may indeed be a sense in which cultural heritage is necessarily part of the ourishing life, but I should imagine that this would prove to be more a practical than a metaphysical necessitywhich may, in all fairness to Harding, be precisely why she opted for the rather dierently evocative language of embeddedness in the rst place. She called, after all, for a subjectivist approach, although I am not certain whether she had in mind something along the exact lines of Christine Korsgaard's de nition of subjectivism: that it `identi es good ends by or with reference to some psychological state' (Korsgaard, 1996a, p. 225). If a more practical interpretation of this embeddedness is required, then what exactly might it be? What manner of embodiment is Harding speaking of when she refers to cultural heritage's `essential, irreducible value that rests in its embodiment of aesthetic and cultural experiences' (Harding, 1999, p. 340)? The mere existence of cultural items will not do. (Admittedly there can be cases in which something can be of quite literally vital bene t to us without our necessarily happening to know about it, as in the case of vitamins or even oxygen, but in these examples there are clearly causal mechanisms at work, and accordingly the value we ascribe to these substances will be instrumental; the embeddedness we need to understand must be of a dierent nature.) It is consequently unsurprising that Harding concerns herself with cultural and aesthetic experience as aspects of the ourishing life. On her account, items of cultural heritage can be constituents of cultural and aesthetic experiences, and these experiences in turn are constituents of the ourishing life. `Although it is possible for some cultural objects to have no aesthetic value, all artistic objects have some cultural value. We might in fact say the aesthetic is a personal experience of the cultural' (ibid., p. 330), whereas cultural experiences emphasise collectivity and social interrelations. Considering aesthetic experiences rst, Harding writes: The real controversy in aesthetic theory appears to focus on whether aesthetic experience is the ultimate experience not whether it is an intrinsically valuable experience. In either case, it is intrinsically valuable and art or artistic objects are a constituent of this experience. As a constitutive component, art is itself intrinsically valuable. Thus, that part of cultural heritage that can be called art and that evokes wonder, is thus [sic] intrinsically valuable... (ibid., p. 333) The focus then shifts to the role of cultural experiences in the ourishing life. `Although aesthetic experience is determined by culture, it is an intensely personal experience, one infused with wonder, whereas cultural experience is social, re ecting our need for shared experiences and values.' (ibid., p. 340) Harding commences with 120 8.2. Harding On Value and Experiences a discussion of Will Kymlicka's brand of post-Rawlsian liberalism, in which culture provides a `context of choice' within which we are able to pursue our life-plans. As Harding reads him, when Kymlicka writes about the importance of cultural structures he might as well be saying that cultural experience is intrinsically valuable because `it is a constituent of something that is foundational, human well-being' (ibid., p. 335). When Kymlicka writes that liberals `should be concerned with the fate of cultural structures,4 not because they have some moral status of their own,' but because of the choices they make us aware of (quoted in Harding, 1999, p. 335; italics Harding's), this is taken to imply that cultural experience lacks `independent moral status', but lacking this status does not reduce its signi cance to our `sense of worth' (ibid., p. 335). I have to say that to me it sounds more like an endorsement of cultural heritage as instrumentally valuable, but Harding in any case does not take all her cues from Kymlicka; after discussing the ideas of other theorists about the bene ts of culture, including Charles Taylor's emphasis on `the dialogic nature of the relationship between individuals and culture' (ibid., p. 336), Harding concludes that culture, `whether as a context or as a dialogic counterpart, is of fundamental signi cance to our identities and individual well-being. It is through culture that we nd expression and give meaning to our lives.' (ibid., p. 338) Experiences, whatever they precisely are, are things which happen to minded beings in the course of their lives; accordingly I agree that whatever the ourishing life for human beings precisely is, it will involve experiences of certain kinds. Presumably we are to take it that items of cultural heritage not only cause certain kinds of experience, but feature within them in some manner. In trying to understand what precisely is meant by `experience' as Harding employs the term, and what it would then mean for an item of heritage to feature as a constituent of such an experience, I nd myself initially tempted to suppose that perceptual or sensory experiences will be the paradigmatic case: when I stand in an art gallery and gaze at a painting, then, my perceptual experience of the painting will constitute both my aesthetic and my cultural experience of the painting, which presumably features as the (intentional) object of those experiences. So far, so plausible: few of us, I think, would wish to say that when I gaze at the White Clis of Dover, say, the Clis themselves merely cause certain sensations in me,5 and that there is no interesting sense in which I behold the Clis. Sightseeing would be very odd if we thought of our perceptual practices in such a way. 4The published text of Harding's article incorrectly turns `structures' into `structure' here; while this technically changes the meaning, by making `liberals' the only possible subject of `have', I have no reason to think Harding ever misread Kymlicka's statement in this way. 5More precisely, the Clis re ect photons of white light, which stimulate my retinae..., &c. 121 8. `Value'? Harding's borrowing of Kymlicka's idea of culture as context makes me pause, however. A context is something that lurks in the background of our experiences: a context for something else which manifests itself in the foreground. Perhaps, then, it is a mistake to take so much inspiration from the case of perceptual experiences with direct intentional objects (whatever the role of aesthetic experiences might suggest). Such cases may be too episodic for our needs: Harding appears to be thinking of far more gradual roles for culture when she says that the `rich context provided by cultural heritage is essential to a continuous and meaningful cultural experience' (Harding, 1999, p. 339; emphasis mine), and when she asserts that `cultural experience or a stable cultural context is intrinsically valuable' (ibid., p. 340; emphasis mine). If at least some cultural experiences are more diachronic and less directly concerned with encountering cultural items as their objects, then an alternative example might perhaps be, say, that of the experience of life within the Church of England: an ongoing experiential process (indeed, an aggregate of many episodic experiences) within a certain cultural environment. Yet if this is so, then what could it mean for the Church (or the Church-asenvironment) to feature as a constituent of the experience? There is an everyday sense in which the experience is `of' the Church, but we must be able to say something more exact about such a very vaguely de ned environment if we are to be con dent that it can inherit intrinsic value from experiences of it. In the rst place, such an example risks proving too much: why delineate anything as speci c as experience of life within the Church of England, when we could simply speak with even greater holism of the experience of living the ourishing life? There must be some meaningful criteria by which experiences are to be individuated. In the second place, we are going to be left wondering how we are to bridge the gap between these sweeping and indistinct experiences and whatever more discrete items of cultural heritage we are interested in: how we get from ascribing intrinsic value to the Church of England (as someone experiences life within it) to evaluating, say, the Sanctuary Knocker of Durham Cathedral. I suspect, therefore, that we cannot aord to get too strongly carried away with this sort of sweepingly diachronic line of interpretation: if we are anxious to speak of the value of discrete and often concrete cultural items, and if we make experiences central to our account of how they acquire this value, then insofar as we would like to appeal to notions of context and dialogue our best hope might be to employ some form of idea that such experiences can have complex objects of which the cultural context is one aspect. (Since I do not know whether Harding would endorse a solution of this sort, I do not intend to develop it further.) Still, the question remains: does the type of value which we ascribe to an 122 8.2. Harding On Value and Experiences experience surely transfer to the object of that experience? This is certainly a tempting line of inference, when after all the experience is itself of the object; but I am hesitant to ascribe powers of value-transfer to anything like intentionality in this fashion. Subjectivism in the Humean mould, with its famous gilding and staining of the world, has no obvious need to complicate itself with talk of embeddedness and intrinsic value. Since intrinsic value under Harding's conception of it is not supposed to attach itself to items considered in isolation from the rest of the universe, and since indeed it apparently does attach itself speci cally to items inasmuch as they play roles in certain kinds of experience, I am not sure that there is a great deal of scope for saying that each such item itself inherits intrinsic value from the intrinsically valuable experiences, when it is only insofar as it plays a role within those experiences that the item comes to be considered as a candidate for the inheritance of this value. We should have, I suppose, to invoke some form of dispositional characterisation: such-and-such an item is such that it is apt to feature in our aesthetic or cultural experiences, and if we ascribe intrinsic value to it on the occasion of actually having those experiences then we ought to ascribe such value to it outright. Once we start talking about aptness and potentialities in this sort of fashion, however, I am not sure how much still signi cantly separates us from talking about causes and consequences (which threaten to lead us back to the territory of instrumental value). In either case we nd ourselves saying something to the eect that if some item is present in a given set of circumstances then something (such as an experience) will come about. The matter is complicated by the fact that, as Harding notes, while the `rich context provided by cultural heritage is essential to a continuous and meaningful cultural experience' (ibid., p. 339), her `argument does not entail the existence of any speci c objects of cultural heritage, but rather the assurance that there will in fact be some cultural heritage' (ibid., pp. 330-31) (and that `it would make sense to ensure the existence of the best forms of cultural heritage' (ibid., p. 331)). Now of course we should be asking too much if we demanded a list of exactly those cultural items which the ourishing life requires. The mind which cannot imagine the universe without the Bateau ivre or the Ancient Mariner belongs to the imagination of Borges; while we do of course hear the Parthenon Marbles (for example) described as `the soul of the Greek people' (quoted in Evans, 2001, p. 218), and while I certainly do not seek to downplay the ways in which the loss of cultural items may in some cases be genuinely and grievously detrimental to a people, I am not out (and so far as I am aware nobody else is) to defend the idea that some particular cultural item could be so irreplaceably crucial that with it the ourishing life could be lost forever. Yet it is not the bare abstract category `cultural heritage' that features as the object of 123 8. `Value'? our cultural experiences,6 and neither is it `some cultural heritage', as though some kind of transcendental existential quanti er stood interposed between mind and world. Whatever cultural experiences we have, they will involve particular items, be these concrete or abstract: a poem by Basho or the constellation of Orion or the conventions for telling a `knock, knock' joke. Is there some manner in which we can experience each of these various and particular things under the aspect of cultural heritage (contrasted with simply having, say, perceptual experiences of an item combined with believing that it quali es as cultural heritage)? Certainly my earlier suggestion that cultural experiences might have complex objects could point in this general direction. I think Harding may intend the idea of a cultural experience to have the implication that there is some delineable manner of having experiences which so frames our involvement in the world that it makes items manifest themselves as salient qua cultural heritage, although her use alongside cultural of aesthetic experience makes me doubtful. (If it is strictly the de ning characteristic of cultural experiences that they lend items salience as cultural heritage, then it is unclear why we should want to consider a distinct class of aesthetic experiences in this context. Whatever cultural experiences can be like, presumably they are not necessarily supposed just to be sensuous in the fashion that aesthetic experiences may be said to be.) Since a given item may have a great many relational properties besides those we identify as pertaining to culture, the mere fact of its being a cultural item will not make any experience of it a cultural experience; if there are `cultural experiences', it is not su cient to make them so that they are experiences and that the items of which they are experiences qualify as cultural heritage (or are believed to qualify as cultural heritage by the person having the experience). Yet Harding cannot be concerned solely with what it is to experience an item in a certain light, for she declares herself concerned with important cultural heritage in particular. Cultural experiences of pencil shavings and bubble wrap, then, will not do; the cultural experiences in which we are interested are supposed to be cultural experiences of certain kinds of cultural heritage and not of others (or not to the same extent). Accordingly, our role cannot be to project cultural salience onto things in the world; it must be to pick out those features of certain things in the world which make them particularly tted to play roles within our cultural experiences. This, however, returns us to my recent comments about the workability of a dispositional analysis. Insofar as our intrinsically valuable cultural experiences simply require some 6Excepting perhaps experiences within the sort of culture in which people think abstractly about cultural heritage: that is to say, mine. 124 8.3. The Search for Alternatives cultural heritage to be experiences of, these items of heritage look so interchangeable that no particular item of cultural heritage looks like a candidate for inheriting intrinsic value from the experiences in which it happens to play a part. Insofar as it is certain noteworthily particular items that play their parts in our cultural experiences, such that it is in culturally experiencing King Lear or the Venus de Milo or Westminster Abbey that we are distinctively interested, it is doubtful that we can consider them intrinsically valuable by simple virtue of their being included in the ourishing life, because there is no such particular item without which the ourishing life is impossible. At most we can say something to the eect that certain items of cultural heritage are especially well suited to featuring in the cultural experiences which the ourishing life requires; but it is not at all obvious that this shows more than that these particular items are useful means to having experiences of `some cultural heritage'. 8.3. The Search for Alternatives There are surely further strategies which might be employed in defence of a position like Harding's, but (having already done some speculatively reconstructive work in order to imagine how she might clarify her position in response to objections) I hope to have persuaded you that it is at least by no means redundant to look for alternatives. I should like to conclude this chapter by brie y asking what, if we nd the idea that cultural heritage may possess intrinsic value at all attractive (or for that matter, if we treat the idea with scepticism but wish to ensure that we have given it the fairest possible hearing), we might consider doing dierently. What do I have to learn from the approach taken in Harding's argument? Harding's subjectivist conception of intrinsic value was supposed to enable her to avoid having to entertain the idea that an item of cultural heritage could possess intrinsic value without its consequently needing any form of dependence on the humans to whose cultures it belongs. Since what it is to be cultural heritage is by de nition bound up with human practices and inventions, such a line of thinking tends to run, the same must be true of any value which we might ascribe to items of cultural heritage as such; and consequently the value of heritage qua heritage must depend on human interactions with it, or at least on the possibility of such interactions. It is true, of course, that cultural heritage is unimaginable other than by reference to beings like us, who inhabit cultures;7 and it is likewise true that value of any sort which is possessed by anything must not be altogether alien to our 7We may, however, be able to imagine cultural heritage which outlasts the existence of the human race, and I imagine we should still be content to call it (an absent someone's) cultural heritage in such circumstances. 125 8. `Value'? species if it is to feature in our moral lives. Yet there is a gap between saying that the existence of cultural heritage depends on human activity, and saying that its continuing value depends on the same. For all the reasons given above, I am reluctant to let an argument for the intrinsic value of cultural heritage depend so crucially on a taxonomy of human experiences, or on the exact nature of the ourishing life for the human species. Yet I can nevertheless appreciate all too well why the ourishing life seemed to oer the attractions of (as Bernard Williams might have put it) an Archimedian point: a secure and uncontroversial foundation from which to construct an argument to more surprising or contentious conclusions. As one commentator in the tradition of Aristotle rather tartly puts it: `Why is education valuable? Because it is the principal necessary condition for freedom. Why is freedom valuable? It is part of a good life. Why is a good life valuable? Don't ask ridiculous questions.' (Sharvy, 2007, p. 19) Or as P.H. Nowell-Smith observed, there is a certain manifest oddness in saying, `You have told me what the Good Life is and I agree with everything you say. Now tell me what I ought to do. ' (Quoted in Skorpen, 1968, p. 140) For anybody hoping to reach conclusions at all similar to Harding's by alternative means, it would certainly be nice to have a comparably persuasive starting point. It is also easy enough to see why Harding found it appealing to involve the value of experiences in her argument, given both the centrality of experience to our lives as (among other things) moral agents and deliberators, and the ways in which items of cultural heritage are so often praised for the eects they are capable of having on human minds. Along these lines we might think of artworks and their stimulations of sensuous experience; religious environments and the attitudes of prayerful devotion they inspire in the faithful; historical sources and archaeological artefacts, and the illuminations of knowledge which they make possible. I doubted whether we were entitled to say that such items possessed intrinsic value as Harding understands it; but certainly it is not easy to envisage any way of ascribing value to cultural heritage which makes no reference at all to the experiences and understanding which various forms of heritage make possible. (Who would be mad enough to evaluate literary heritage without reference to readers, or musical heritage without caring about performances?) Experiences, therefore, cannot be dismissed as unwanted traces of subjectivism; on the contrary, the myriad possible experiences which the many forms of heritage excite collectively form a topic with which I must take great care. Another thing to which I shall have to attend is the distinction between showing that cultural heritage as a collectivity or category has value and showing that any given item has value on account of being cultural heritage. Unless we think (as I 126 8.3. The Search for Alternatives do not, and as far as I know nobody does) that every cultural item qua cultural item is equally valuable, it will be necessary to say more than that items of cultural heritage fall into a valuable category. Nice though it would be to conclude with a simple syllogism (`Items of cultural heritage are valuable; this is an item of cultural heritage; therefore this is valuable'), we shall of course have to recognise, as Harding evidently does, that there is more to be said about the distribution of value among the many things we call cultural heritage.
. A Topography of Value? What is the value of value for my purposes? What is to be gained, that is, from adopting the language of value in ethics as my own when asking how cultural heritage might t into our moral thinking? Elsewhere in this dissertation, after all, I am to be found speaking of the moral patiency of cultural heritage, something which other philosophers who have considered its value have not found it necessary to do in order to support their normative advice about what should be done with cultural items of various kinds; so if I want to talk about value then why bother with patiency, and if I remain concerned about patiency then why say so much about value? I think that part of the answer must be that it is one thing to show that cultural heritage is the kind of thing that can be an object of concern for us, and another thing besides that to show that at least some items of cultural heritage indeed ought to animate our concern. At any given time only some of a doctor's patients will need medical treatment and care, and only some cultural items will invite ethically charged action on anybody's part. Patiency is a binary notion: something either has it or does not, and so if not all patients of a given sort are to be treated equally then something, such as a scale of value, is needed in order to explain why this should be so. Value, conversely, can prove to be a very complicated bundle of notions indeed; on top of the taxonomic questions considered in the previous chapter, we often talk not of value simpliciter but of value for someone, or value in respect of certain properties of an object (which may themselves be extrinsic). In this fashion, a family heirloom may be valuable for me because it has the property of having been passed down to me through previous generations of my family. When we are dealing with all the complications which a concept like value can lay at our feet, there are ready attractions in the prospect of being able to speak of cultural heritage collectively and declare that items of cultural heritage possess moral patiency, in turn warranting our concern at least to pause to consider the question of what value they might have. 9.1. Valuable to Whom and for What? A concept of value is relational, as concepts of moral patiency arguably are not, not only in that it implies the potential for there to be a valuer (which is no doubt 129 9. A Topography of Value? why Harding was sceptical about the coherence of thinking that an object could retain intrinsic value if nothing else existed in the universe), but moreover in that we routinely speak of value in a restricted fashion as value for someone or being valuable to somebody. In some cases the implication is transparently one of instrumental value (the value of medicine to the sick, for example), but the case of cultural heritage oers us numerous instances in which it is less than obvious precisely which purposes might be served when we talk about, say, the value of the Parthenon Marbles to the Greeks, or of Noh drama to Japan. Where we are able to give a name to the further goods which cultural items such as these are able to oer their constituencies, it is sometimes di cult not to think that we have reduplicated the mystery: what would Socrates have to ask us, we might wonder, about what precisely we mean if we speak of senses of identity or the prevention of cultural collapse? I do not (of course) pretend that these are questions which no philosopher has seen t to address; Kwame Anthony Appiah has re ected at some length on questions of identity, for example (Appiah, 2005), while Jonathan Lear has written on `ethics in the face of cultural devastation' (Lear, 2008). I note merely that even where concern for some item of cultural heritage does seem to be in the service of some further desired end, we may not be looking at the kind of exact ends which heritage might serve exhaustively as means. In the case of sickness, the end is the restoration of health, and a drug which accomplishes it exhausts the need for any further medicines; in contrast, it is hard to imagine any cultural group deciding that its artists, scholars and others have now produced enough re ections on its collective identity, and that any further such meditations would be redundant.1 (No wonder Harding sought to construe cultural heritage as something contributive to human ourishing by being part of it rather than a means to it.) In consequence, however satis ed we may be that talking about value for somebody and for some good is axiomatically reasonable, it can prove di cult to describe such relations precisely, let alone exhaustively. We cannot deploy the category of instrumental value without nding ourselves called on to explain just what kind of instruments these are which aim at such inde nite purposes without ever conclusively satisfying them. If we suspect that the value which we have under our microscope is of a nonintrinsic but not instrumental sort, then we shall have our work cut out explaining what exactly it might be, and would be well advised to cast about for alternatives rst. If we think that we are dealing with intrinsic value (by which I mean the traditional sort, insofar as such a thing is identi able, rather than Harding's additional, `constituent' value), whatever our preferences when it comes 1I do not claim here that no society could imaginably judge itself to have accumulated a needless glut of memorials, or to have developed an excessive xation with collective introspection; but such cases suggest objections beyond sheer redundancy. 130 9.1. Valuable to Whom and for What? to `the somewhat vacuous (something worth having for its own sake), circular (something good in itself because of its own intrinsic properties), and negative (something whose good is not a means to anything else) ways in which [sc. G.E.] Moore and [sc. W.K.] Frankena de ne the concept of intrinsic value' (Skorpen, 1968, p. 139), then we face the task of explaining how the intrinsic value of cultural items could be relational in such a way that an item can enjoy a distinctive value for a given culture. Under either of the rst two de nitions this is evidently problematic because relational properties are explicitly ruled out as grounds for intrinsic value; while under the third the `good' of the intrinsically valuable item presumably can be good for somebody, but if it is a good which serves no further purpose then we should expect not to be able, or required, to oer any further explanation for it (by saying, for example, that a given item is important for a sense of cultural identity). It may therefore seem tempting to doubt that there is any systematic way in which value may attach itself to cultural items; or to suspect that if there is then we are looking not at a single kind of value but at such a mixture that we should not necessarily expect to be able to disentangle it. I agree, indeed, that cultural heritage in its manifold forms may serve a wide variety of human purposes, from securing the position of political regimes (as in James Cuno's critique of the use of the past for propaganda) to increasing the footfall of tourists; and in Chapter 11 I shall have more to say about the ways in which our evaluation of cultural heritage as a matter of ethical concern ought to deal with human interests. However, much as the many ways in which the natural world may serve human purposes (not least that of tourism) have not prevented the development of distinctively ecological approaches to ethics such as Holmes Rolston's (recall Chapter 1), it need not deter us to note that cultural heritage can be put to many purposes. Still, from the premise that many items of cultural heritage possess value which depends on their status as heritage, it does not trivially follow that cultural heritage in all its forms has value of a uniform kind. In non-moral terms it is plain that some cultural items are valuable for the tourist trade, some for the perpetuation of national pride, and so forth (and we may in turn ascribe various valuables and disvaluables to tourism and national pride). When heritage is put to so many diverse purposes, why should an ethics of cultural heritage do any more with them than acknowledge their diversity? I propose to address this line of potential criticism by agreeing with itafter a fashion. There are indeed many and various ways in which we can ascribe value to items which fall under the umbrella of cultural heritage. What we do not necessarily need to do, however, is try to assign value (of whatever sorts and whatever degree) to each discrete and separate item in turn, and thereafter look at the results and ask ourselves what the point might be of tying all the individual valuations together 131 9. A Topography of Value? into an overarching judgment about the value of cultural heritage and a single scale of value for cultural items. There is an alternative, and it arises from the very web of interrelations which may incline us to say that an item belongs to some culture in the rst place. 9.2. Value Taxonomy Let me rst say a little more about the variety of forms of value with which we shall have to deal. According to the UNESCO Conventions there is such a thing as (outstanding) universal value, and presumably this is to be contrasted with one or more other, parochial forms of value. What might be the nature of the distinction? It is, I suppose, possible that there are things which are valued by every (sentient and adequately rational) being in existence, along the lines of Rawlsian `primary goods'; but even if Will Kymlicka is correct in injecting culture into the Rawlsian model as a fundamental requirement for our wellbeing (see p. 121 above), it may be a little optimistic to expect that a given cultural item, no matter what its merits, will be valued by all who are aware of its existence and have rationally considered the matter. We should have to help ourselves to some rather contentious presuppositions if we wanted to contend that a person disvaluing the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle as uninteresting or the Mona Lisa as ugly was a icted by an outright failure of reason. What makes such valuations `universal' is instead, I think, at a minimum that it is open to anyone to judge one way or the other. In contrast, an example of parochial value might be that implied by the phenomenon of ancestral pride (with a corresponding disvalue implied by ancestral shame): it makes no sense for me to take ancestral pride in someone from whom I do not claim descent.2 Parochial value, attached to family or hometown or nation or other familiar things, depends on who one is, and it is only gradually that one can become naturalised into a new climate and acquire a new web of associations, while some associations, such as the identity of one's own biological parents, can never be changed at all. The AngloSaxon Chronicle no doubt has considerable and distinctive parochial value for the English, but one does not have to be English to ask whether it holds interest as a historical document; the Chronicle is a potential repository of universal value in the sense that it is open to anyone at all to take an interest in the history of England. A Tibetan or Egyptian who nds the English fascinating is hardly making a mistake. Someone inclined to link concepts of heritage to those of inheritance might be 2I can, however, both recognise and respect as a matter of general principle that ancestral connections of their own are things which may matter to people generally. Anyone might value there being a world in which such ancestral connections are possible, and by extension value such connections generally as manifestations of the possibility. 132 9.2. Value Taxonomy forgiven for expecting that whatever made cultural heritage valuable would make it parochially so; but to sustain such a point of view it would be necessary to explain away the ways in which some cultural items address themselves to a universal audience. Perhaps the clearest example of what I mean is oered by missionary religions such as Christianity, whose doctrines are supposed to concern not only the faithful but all those yet unconverted. A secular example might be suggested by the verse inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, `Mother of Exiles': `Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp! cries she / With silent lips. Give me your tired, your poor... ' Here the message is addressed not to those who are (already) American but to the foreigner and the potential immigrant. To say in cases such as this that we are dealing with a heritage which is of (potential) value only to those within a certain church or nation or other group in question sits ill with the missionary implications of such messages (which is not, of course, to say that anybody must endorse Christianity or the U.S.A., or even approve of their existence). It would, I suppose, be dimly possible to draw a distinction between those whose heritage the trappings of the Church or of life in America are and those to whom they are being oered (making them potential heritage), but the very notion of oering or advertisement implies some potential recognition of value on the part of the audience. So we must nd some room for universal value, if we seek to talk about the value of cultural heritage; but what exactly might give something universal value qua item of cultural heritage? Universal value must be value for no culture in particular in a world in which any cultural dierences, any more cultures than a single monoculture, exist at all. Can we discover such value? Someone might wish (though not uncontroversially) to say that certain, scienti c discoveries transcend cultural particularity in that they concern themselves with the measurement and prediction of natural phenomena; and someone might wish to add that it is precisely for this reason that they count universally as human achievements, without cultural circumscription. At any rate it is not instantly obvious that we add anything of great import when we say that something is outstandingly artistic and beautiful, or of outstanding historical interest, and immediately thereafter add that for this reason it is an outstandingly important part of everybody's cultural heritage. Why should we not be content with praising things for their beauty and historical interest and whatever else? The answer, I think, is that it is frequently only within an arti cial sort of isolation that we are able to pick out a certain sort of value as it manifests itself in a certain particular item and speak of this value without any explicit reference to the context in which we have found it. As a matter of linguistic convenience, we might say of a certain object that it is historically interesting; but of course this is quite dierent 133 9. A Topography of Value? from saying that it is white or solid. By implication we are asserting that we stand in a certain relation to the object, and not to it alone but to a vast range of other objects, along with historical practices, concerns, projects, and so on, which in combination form the backdrop against which it is possible for us to judge that an object is historically interesting. (Why might we care about Magna Carta, with its list of feudal grievances, and only three articles still in statutory force (Hansard H.C. 17th March 2011, Vol. 525, Col. 140W.H.)? For its illumination of and symbolic importance within the broader narratives of the political history of England.) A piece of historical source material might be interesting not even for what it con rms but for what it confounds, by undermining in uential theories about the past and thereby plunging us back into a feeling of acknowledged ignorance; the interest which we nd in this source will come about as a consequence of the intellectual predicament into which we have got ourselves, rather than because the source has the property of being interesting simpliciter. What then of aesthetic value, for example, where the matter is less obvious? Historical or historic value is meaningless without history, and our knowledge of history involves practices of investigation; but while many forms of aesthetic appreciation clearly do involve knowledge of one sort or another (in our understanding of allegorical literature, for example, or of caricatures), when it comes to their evaluation one might recall Hume's dictum that `to enable a critic the more fully to execute this undertaking, he must preserve his mind free from all prejudice, and allow nothing to enter into his consideration, but the very object which is submitted to his examination' (Hume, 1757, 21): `considering myself as a man in general,' I am to `forget, if possible, my individual being and my peculiar circumstances' (ibid.). Where then is the cultural backdrop which might inform our evaluations? I am, Hume writes, to let my judgments be informed by awareness that a given work was perhaps executed for `persons of a dierent age or nation' (ibid.), but this is as close as the Humean critic comes to anything akin to James Cuno's delight in the complex histories of ancient works of craftsmanship. This is not the place to chart the changes and debates in aesthetic thought since Hume, or to remark except in passing on his own cultural particularities. All I need really note is that, while it might be the case that sensuous aesthetic experiences are possible without enculturation (for newborns, perhaps), the matter need not concern us, because all those whom I might nd myself addressing (i.e. people who communicate in some formalised language and are acquainted with at least one culture) will have cultivated whatever tastes they possess within some cultural environment. Hume presumably urges his readers to judge art objects in isolation precisely because he knows that this requires deliberate eort. I am, indeed, entirely 134 9.3. Network and Value willing to countenance the possibility that not all of what can be said about aesthetic value need have reference to culture; the question is settled quite adequately in favour of (sometimes) talking about aesthetic value in relation to cultural heritage if we can be satis ed that much aesthetic value falls under the cultural umbrella. Our need to understand some forms and manifestations of value by reference to culture, then, is one which arises out of the myriad ways in which items can be associated with one another. Perhaps the most striking examples, to which I shall give special attention in the following chapter, are those implied by such grand categories as the artistic movement, the literary genre, and the historical epoch; but the building blocks of these sweeping categories are binary relations of in uence between cultural items and their creators: a inspires b; c contains criticism of d ; e is based on a suggestion by the author of f. In 6.1 I suggested that our understanding of what cultures are and how we as moral philosophers might pro tably view them might be enhanced by emphasising the ways in which the interplay of cultural phenomena can be construed in terms of the interconnections between nodes within a vast and vastly complex network. What I should now like to suggest is that by invoking this image of the network we may better understand not only the nature of cultural phenomena but also (and of more immediate importance for moral philosophy) the place of value amongst them. 9.3. Network and Value In order to illustrate what I envisage, let me begin with an arti cially simpli ed model. Set aside for the moment the complexities of life and production in which creators inspire and lampoon and compete with and otherwise react to one another in their works, and suppose that our interest is strictly and uniformly in the spatial and temporal relations between the items they create. Suppose, further, that we are interested in these items exclusively at (what we can least implausibly make out to be) their moments of creation. We could represent these relations abstractly, by cartographic means for relations of geography and with the familiar device of a timeline for the temporal. Now let us begin by plotting the genesis of a few cultural items. St. Paul's Cathedral in London, to start with: the rst stone is said to have been laid in 1675, giving the Cathedral an early position on a timeline starting (let us say) in 1600. On a map of the world we shall nd the Cathedral conveniently close to Greenwich. The Palace of Westminster will occupy practically the same position on the map owing to its geographical proximity, but since almost all of the present Palace dates from after the re of 1834 which destroyed the earlier one, we have reason to position 135 9. A Topography of Value? it much further along the timelinenot far, in fact, from the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, which will be a little further along the timeline but still much less so than, for example, the Sydney Opera House. In selecting space and time for this preliminary exposition (while carefully ignoring all the questions of shifting natural and political boundaries, among a great many other things, which complicate the actual cultural a nities of anything and anywhere we might care to mention), I have sought to recall, however crudely, suggestions that a cultural item may have a place to which it properly belongs (and that some such items perhaps ought to be repatriated), and controversies over the impact of time and change on an item's cultural a nities now that (for example) the Egypt of the Ptolemies, and even of Napoleon, is no more. The results of so simpli ed an abstraction are, I confess, apt to raise more eyebrows than spirits, since what they reveal is that neither geography nor time alone discloses a great deal about an item's cultural a nities. Thus the Palace of Westminster, home of British parliamentary sovereignty, ends up visibly closer on the timeline to a French monument commissioned by the Emperor Napoleon than to the geographically neighbouring and equally British St. Paul's. Meanwhile, on the map both British icons are practically next door to Paris, while the Sydney Opera House of Australia, which shares among other things a language and a monarch with the United Kingdom, is decidedly geographically remote from London. Neither the succession of the eras nor the con nes of geography might seem to reveal very much about cultural connections. Things should get more enlightening, however, with the addition of more cultural items; the timeline will indicate that Britain and France have indeed been uneasy neighbours since long before the colonisation of Australia, and on the map it will turn out that St. Paul's and the Palace of Westminster not only happen to be proximate but form parts of a single and major conurbation. This state of aairs has come about, of course, precisely because spatiotemporal proximity is only part of the story; if, during certain periods as indicated by our timeline, we notice dense clusters of little dots at the points on the map corresponding to Bloomsbury or the Parisian Left Bank, we shall in no way mistake these phenomena for the products of random chance. Cultural items are created by people, and likeminded people mingle together. Overleaf: The Flowering Staircase: 1435-1935, courtesy of Timothy Stotz.
.3. Network and Value The mingling of minds can also be charted: such a possibility is exempli ed by The Flowering Staircase, a visual representation of master-apprentice and teacherstudent relationships between artists which is reproduced opposite by the kind permission of Timothy Stotz (and rst published in Stotz, 2006). This chart of who worked with whom over a period of ve centuries traces some of the historical connections by means of which each gure may be placed among the others (recalling T.S. Eliot's remarks on tradition from p. 91); if we are interested in any one of them, we shall naturally be interested in the surrounding structure of the lines of in uence. If our interest is in Goya, for example, we shall note the line of pedagogical descent from Francesco Albani and before; or if our focus is on the art of the 1600s, our attention might fall on the con uence of lines linking Simon Vouet to other gures. Above all, the visual impression is of the sheer intricate interconnection of the history of art, even when only certain speci c kinds of association are charted. Suppose then that we take such a chart as this as our inspiration when we imagine plotting out a collection of cultural items, arranging them spatiotemporally or by whatever other rule we might please, and drawing lines between them representing not only pedagogy and collaboration but still more generally association in its manifold forms: thus on such a chart Nietzsche's Zarathustra would be connected to that of Strauss as the inspiration for the latter, and Proudhon's The Philosophy of Poverty would be linked to Marx's The Poverty of Philosophy. The result, if the sheer number and variety of interconnections between cultural items of any appreciable number did not leave us with an impenetrably tangled mess of ink (as it surely would if we tried to chart all the items and interconnections that might capture our interest), should be that certain clusters emerge. The works of Shakespeare, for example, will be linked by virtue of their shared authorship, and to them in turn will be linked every one of the numerous pieces of scholarly literature on Shakespeare, every item of criticism of every performance of one of the plays, and in turn even commentaries on the phenomenon of what is sometimes called the Shakespeare industry. When we enquire after the role of Shakespeare in culture, the structure of this cluster will await our notice. Put aside for one moment any niggling suspicion that not all associations are created equal.3 Insofar as we can declare ourselves interested in certain ways in which one cultural item is associated with another, so that we concern ourselves with an author's entire oeuvre or with a whole body of scholarship, we shall expect 3I discovered recently that Friedrich Nietzsche was an intellectual cousin of the visionary engineer R. Buckminster Fuller: `Bucky' was in uenced by the legacy of his aunt Margaret Fuller, a friend and collaborator of her fellow Transcendentalist Ralph Waldo Emerson, whose works were read enthusiastically by Nietzsche. Whether this remotely illuminates the thought of either man is, I confess, doubtful. 139 9. A Topography of Value? to discover that certain identi able clusters of interconnection emerge. There exists a topography of cultural interchange, if you like: where the cumulative mutual reinforcement of related cultural items is frequent, the `elevation' will be noticeably greater. When we turn to questions of the value of cultural items, then, it would be a remarkable turn of aairs if we suddenly brushed aside all thought of the associations between items which contribute to making them interesting; and in practice, of course, we do not do this: recall Cuno's emphasis on the cross-cultural interplay which can be brought to light in the universal museum, or Renfrew's concern with the contribution made by archaeological artefacts to the sites in which they are found in oering us contextualised information about past epochs. My suggestion, therefore, is that instead of taking each item singly as a repository of value, and then seeking to explain this value in light of the item's participation in a wider contextual network, we have available to us the alternative option of taking the contextual cluster to be the primary value-bearer, and judging individual items to be derivatively valuable. Recalling the idea of ecosystems as repositories of value, as discussed in Chapter 1, we would then understand ourselves to be investigating a sort of topography of value, in which we certainly should remain able to say that certain cultural items possess more value than others, but we should do so in the light of the structure and interconnectedness of the cultural environments within which discrete cultural items exist. This, I suggest, would better equip us to deal with the roles which might be played in our evaluative thought by the historical collection, archaeological context, traditional festivities, and so on: these structures of association would constitute some of the ways in which items can come together in mutual involvement to form cultural heritage. In the next chapter I shall re ne this suggestion by drawing on the roles of categorisation within our involvement with cultural heritage; but rst I should like to anticipate some initial objections. 9.4. Some Possible Objections To begin with, there is the fairly obvious rejoinder that it may be foolhardy to expect that, having lumped together the numerous forms of interconnection that can exist between cultural items under the vague heading `association', we are going to nd ourselves in any promising position when it comes to actually assigning value to any given case of association between items. Firstly, because the myriad individual cases with which we should have to deal (if we consider, for example, the size of the index of this text alone, not to mention all the references in the texts which it references, and so on without manageable limit) will be too varied and too particular to reduce 140 9.4. Some Possible Objections to any helpfully algorithmic means of evaluation. Secondly, because it remains to be shown that in fact they consistently imply the presence of value at all; perhaps we shall nd ourselves more inclined to say that some associations imply disvalue, and that others are simply neutral. The only response to the rst objection is to be a thoroughgoing holist: my aim, indeed, cannot be to replace the aggregation of cultural items A, B, C, &c. in my reckonings of value with aggregation of A-B associations, B-C associations, A-C associations, and so on. I agree that evaluating associations between items is at best no easier than evaluating those items themselves, and it is of course no more my proposal that we ought to chart a value topography in so impracticably laborious a fashion than it could be anyone's suggestion that we should judge the worth of a tapestry by rst establishing that of each individual thread (or, indeed, each point of contact between threads). Again, recall Rolston's discussion of ecological value at diering levels: there is indeed the level of the plant, but the value of an ecosystem cannot be discovered by simply adding together the value of the organisms that compose it. Still, merely declaring myself a holist about the value of cultural heritage does not go so far as to explain how this is to be accomplished when it comes to making practical evaluative judgments; some matters of moral epistemology I want to defer to Chapter 12, but I accept that I presently owe the reader some explanation of how it is possible to make judgments about the value of cultural heritage at the level of the genre or the tradition or the local custom. I accept, moreover, that I cannot get away with simply implying that associations between cultural items, as a rule, are positively contributive to the value of anyone's cultural heritage. There are perhaps few more brazenly direct forms of association than that of actual reduplication in the form of plagiarism; who among us would say the plagiarist was making a positive contribution to his culture? At best such imitation is culturally worthless, we might say; at worst, by introducing misinformation it renders itself disvaluable. Meanwhile, what are we to say about a gra to scrawled one night on the surface of a historic statue? Such a thing is very materially associated with the surface which it defaces, and we can quite easily imagine that the scrawler may have employed the gra to precisely in order to express his opinion of the sculpture whose appearance he has undertaken to transform; but whether we nd ourselves the better for his contribution will be doubtful. By way of a less unhappy example, consider the case of two books, with dierent authors, publishers and subject matter, which happen to nd themselves reviewed (by dierent people) in the same periodical: undoubtedly there is an association there, albeit a decidedly weak one, but are we therefore to conclude that the two books now reinforce each other's position within literate culture, or shall we 141 9. A Topography of Value? say simply that we are dealing with a case of evaluatorily neutral coincidence? Such thoughts carry some weight. We cannot make lazy assumptions about what our conclusions will be when we do come to evaluate some cultural item against the background which contextualises it; the immediate question for would-be holists is, how are we to fathom the shape of that background, if not through a process of iterative aggregation? Here I think that our moral epistemology had better take advantage of one very helpful feature of human cultures: the way in which they already help us think about who we are, tell stories about ourselves, and orient ourselves within a shared social world containing people who think sometimes similarly to ourselves and sometimes less so. We will not, after all, begin from rst principles and discover the prominence of Shakespeare and the abundance of scholarship that surrounds his creations; the appreciation of literature has an established heritage of its own within our culture, meaning that for the purposes of a putative philosophical framework this is one wheel which we certainly need not reinvent. It is in these resources for re ective and re exive thinking that I hope to nd the raw materials for a potential moral epistemology to suit the framework of moral philosophy I need, and it is on this that I shall expand in subsequent chapters. Merely insisting that it is not for me to become a critic of the arts or any other branch of culture does not, of course, remove the nagging suspicion that not all works of criticism are insightful and not every popular legend has the ring of utter truth; the resources which cultures make available for their own self-re ection, though as cultural items themselves they must be taken into account, are not necessarily so de nitive that they cannot nd themselves revised or even rejected in the light of new evidence or new thinking from within or without the culture that created them (Midgley, 1991, p. 81.). Not all such critique, however, will be the business of moral philosophy, and much of what is will fall outside the purview of an ethics of cultural heritage. What is left to me is, in substantial part, to account for the ascription of any moral salience to judgments, be these `universal' or `parochial', about aesthetic value or historical value or value of some other ostensibly non-moral kind, and to do so in a suitably holistic manner. It is not, in fact, immediately obvious that these requirements are mutually compatible, and it is here that I face another potential objection: for whilst we ascribe value of such kinds to discrete items all the time, might we not often be inclined to hesitate to apply judgments of a similar sort to an entire genre or corpus or body of local customs? The person who says, `I like high fantasy novels' may well be ready to agree that many examples of the genre are poorly written, and may not even wish to contend that most are of readable quality; and so such a person may readily say of a favourite book that it is imaginative, moving, &c. without being 142 9.4. Some Possible Objections remotely so willing to extrapolate any judgment of this sort to apply to the overall genre into which the book falls. We have some reason to doubt, therefore, that evaluative judgments pertaining to cultural topography will be qualitatively similar to those which concern individual cultural items; if we can arrive at a holistic account of the former which we can t into moral philosophy, we may still be left some way from being able to account for the latter. At the root of such a line of objection, I think, will tend to be a thought to the eect that there is something methodologically and perhaps even ontologically odd about attempting to shift from the categorical to the particular, rather than vice versa. Must we not, after all, conceive of individual cultural items as more basic than associations between them? Of course I can react by ying the ag of holism; but then it will no doubt be pointed out to me that although we certainly make reference to the context in which we discover something when we call it valuable qua cultural heritage, nevertheless we do not necessarily want to say that the value of this something is to be explained in terms of a wider whole. Perhaps, for example, we nd ourselves enquiring into the nature of Shakespeare's acknowledged importance within the canon of English literature: it would be an outcome worthy of a raised eyebrow if we did not conclude that this is in substantial part explained by his skill as a playwright. The countless acts of quotation and reinterpretation and reverence which Shakespeare enjoys are at root to be accounted for, one might say, by the fact that he was a great playwright whose works shed tremendous light on the human condition; and consequently it gets things back to front to insinuate that the value of his corpus is to be accounted for by the fruit it has borne. This is another point which I must acknowledge to be forceful; yet at the same time we must note that greatness is entirely compatible with obscurity, and while of course the forgotten work of genius has value as something which can potentially be discovered, read and brought to light, until that happens it remains tucked away in an unswept corner of culture instead of enjoying the responses of an audience either as an object of experience or as a fruitful source of new creativity. I do not mean to say that an object can become a cultural item only once it comes under the gaze of some sort of public; it would ascribe a remarkably great signi cance to the moment of discovery to suggest, for example, that a hitherto unknown archaeological object becomes part of anyone's cultural heritage just at the point of being unearthed, when the features which make it scienti cally interesting in the rst place did not spring into being at that moment. Yet on the other hand I think it would be no less rash to suppose that there is no relevant dierence between fame and obscurity. Whatever culture is, it is something to be shared among the members of a cultural group; a given cultural item certainly need not be shared among or even known 143 9. A Topography of Value? to every member of any such group, but nevertheless `culture' has connotations of publicity and community which cannot be smoothly disregarded when we come to consider the most obscure and overlooked of cultural items. It would be both trite and implausible to suggest that fame consistently goes to the things that deserve it, especially when our conception of desert is being employed in the course of doing moral philosophy; I am unaware of anyone who equates sheer popularity with moral worth. No doubt many cultural items are more obscure than they deserve to be (in a non-moral sense of desert), and others less; no doubt many could have been immensely fruitful and have inspired many derivative creations in dierent circumstances. Yet such counterfactual fates of cultural items are no more part of our history (until those which survive are unearthed and appreciated) than those of any number of mute, inglorious Miltons; a counterfactual culture and heritage make no more apparent sense than a counterfactual heirloom handed down by ancestors we never had. This places me in a troublesome position. In assessing the value of an item qua cultural heritage, I cannot straightforwardly appeal to the attention which it merits, since it may not have the role within a culture which it merits. There will then be a case for the critic or the historical scholar or someone else to make that it ought to be dragged out of obscurity and better appreciated, and from this it will follow fairly readily that in order for such things to happen the item had better be preserved and cared for; but we remain some way from being able without complication to import talk of aesthetic value or historical value or religious value or whatever else our value taxonomy may contain into our thoughts about cultural heritage. Yet it would result in a curiously pared-down understanding of the nature of cultural heritage and human interest in it, and one of doubtful assistance for debates about the fate of cultural items, if we concluded that we as moral philosophers would have to take no account of a given item's being appreciated because of its outstanding beauty and artistry, or because of its tremendous historic signi cance, and that instead we have little left to do besides acting as cheerleaders for what has already enjoyed popular acclaim. It would also have troublesome repercussions for any distinction between universal and parochial value, for if we are doing little besides counting heads, how much signi cance is going to attach itself to the question of whose heads to count? In the next chapter I shall explain how attending to the role of categorisation in our understanding of cultural heritage can prevent a `network' approach to evaluation from descending into a populist free-for-all. 144 10. The Role of Categorisation In the previous chapter I suggested that we should primarily look for the value of cultural heritage in the intricate network of manifold associations which bind cultural items together within and into cultures, and that we should only secondarily and derivatively attempt evaluation of discrete and individual cultural items. Moreover, I suggested, closely associated groups of cultural items may be said to cluster together in a way which lets us talk about something akin to a topography of value. Yet it is plain enough that I have explained `association' only vaguely and sketchily: the problem is not so much imprecision in explanation, which if the idea is sound would require only additional detail to address, but a more profound worry that our judgments in taking an interest in one kind of association over another may themselves presuppose certain conceptions of what is valuable; and if these judgments are not evaluatively neutral in their foundations, then `value' threatens quite to run away from us. Perhaps we think that the common authorship of two texts is an important connection between them; perhaps we judge it to be interesting that one sculptor trained under the guidance of another; perhaps we think that an object takes on a special signi cance if it has passed through the ownership of a famous person, making it an item of `memorabilia'. Why do we think these things? Must we think these things? The former question we must leave to the human sciences; the latter we cannot very well ignore, since if our judgments about what constitutes an important association between cultural items are themselves artefacts of our cultural backgrounds, then we are at risk of nding ourselves in a terrible tangle. I take it to be plausibly false that we must take an interest in, say, shared authorship in order to live a recognisably human life, or indeed at least a minimally good life (even assuming that `authorship' is not a culture-speci c concept). So my question is more along the lines of this: are there objective criteria, with rationally persuasive grounds, for deciding which forms of association between cultural items we ought to consider to be of interest? At once it becomes clear that this is not a question which I shall be answering in the course of everything else I am trying to do. It would involve trying to gauge the importance of entire intellectual disciplines. Fortunately, however, I believe that it will prove possible to make a virtue out of necessity and accept the conventions of evaluative practice which we nd, not as 145 10. The Role of Categorisation foundationally grounded and correct everywhere and for all time, but as cultural items in their own right, and consequently as objects of evaluation themselves. How then are they to be evaluated? Or, if we prefer to think more holistically: how are we to discover any topography of value to begin with if even familiar standards of evaluation are admitted to be part of what invites evaluative scrutiny? If anyone hopes for some sort of vantage point of neutrality which exists outside any culture, then disappointment is going to be the most likely outcome. As I shall explain in Chapter 12, I doubt that we can expect to nd ourselves in any position not to take the testimony of a cultural group as our starting point in trying to discover the value of its heritage; and when we enquire after `world heritage' and `universal value', the number of contrasting voices is likely to be greater rather than smaller. It would be a poor state of aairs, however, if in the end we had nothing to oer but the most unsophisticated sort of subjectivism; to conclude that the evaluation of cultural heritage amounts to little more than a cacophony of opinions, besides implying that philosophy turns out to be startlingly helpless to assist, would involve a curious insensitivity to the depth of the re ection in which people may actually engage when making judgments about the value of cultural items. What makes it possible in the rst place to make judgments about cultural heritage and the value thereof? It is probably asking rather too much to demand that such judgments must be made in the light of some concept denoted by the English term `cultural heritage'; as I have noted before, especially in 3.2, it is uncertain that there is any one concept to which the term straightforwardly applies. At a minimum, however, I think we can reasonably demand that judgments should be made in some sort of contextual light in order to qualify as judgments about items qua cultural heritage. An item must be judged against some sort of socio-historical backdrop, rather than in an arti cial isolation and strictly as a disconnected physical or abstract object, if what we call culture is to make its presence felt at all. What sort of backdrop, exactly? A backdrop, at its most basic, against which one cultural item may be compared to others: one which enables us to make judgments of similarity (The stonework of this building resembles that of nearby contemporary architecture...) and dierence (...and is unique to its period and geographical region). In order to be interested in any form of association (or lack thereof) between items, we must have the basic conceptual resources to put them into groups; and so from asking how judgments about cultural items are possible we come (though not in a terribly Kantian fashion) to think about categorisation. Our thinking about cultural heritage is full of categories, starting with the category of the cultural itself. Our culture; their culture; high and popular culture. Traditional cultures. Local and national cultures. Indigenous cultures. Oral culture; 146 literary culture. Zoom in on one of these and you nd yourself working with categories again: myths, legends, Arthurian romances; folklore, folk tales, folk heroes, tales about Robin Hood. We divide literature and cinema into genres, painting (among other arts) into movements, and the year into seasons which we speckle with festivals. Our history we divide into epochs and eras, which a suitably venerable tradition may in turn unite by spanning the divisions, making us feel somehow connected to its past practitioners when we partake in it. Our more informal practices become customs and manners, whilst our languages encompass the accents and dialects by means of which one spots a Geordie or a Brummie or a to. In all of these categorisations, of course, there is a great deal of cultural contingency. People in a part of the world with a dierent climate and dierent agricultural practices may have entirely dierent ideas about how the year should be divided: thus India has its rainy season, the Monsoon, whereas Britain does not. The sonnet is no more native to Japan than the haiku is to Europe. Naturally, then, categories such as these themselves qualify as cultural items; but they are nevertheless indispensable for making any sense of our human cultures and their heritages. This is in particular because these categories themselves have histories:1 thus we point, for example, to the development of the sonnet through Petrarch, Shakespeare, Spenser, Wordsworth and other poets. This gives us some early clues about value: if we assume that a given object or practice has value of a sort that seems to warrant our interest, then we have the makings of an argument to the eect that we rationally ought to value the categories by means of which we comprehend what this object or practice is and how it relates to the culture into which it falls. (If we are interested in the history of the object or practice, moreover, we ought to be similarly interested in the history of the ways in which it has been categorised.) The value which the category inherits may prove to be of a complex sort, for it both de nes the cultural item which falls into the category (indicating intrinsic value) and is employed by us in the service of understanding and appreciating the cultural item (indicating instrumental value). Greater complication still is implied if we begin to suspect that inheritance may operate in both directions: if valuing a category, which grants us the possibility of thinking about things in a certain way, leads us to ascribe new value to the things which fall into it. Nevertheless, in these observations about categorisation we may perceive the beginnings of a typological hierarchy of cultural items and a corresponding structure through which value possessed by one cultural item may trigger value in another. 1Cf. Charles Taylor: `in the course of their slow development and rami cation, a set of practices gradually changed their meaning for people, and hence helped to constitute a new social imaginary (the economy)' (Taylor, 2004, p. 30). 147 10. The Role of Categorisation 10.1. Some Complications: Arbitrariness and Bias Let me deal at once with certain di culties. In the rst place, someone might reasonably doubt that all categories are created equal. Are we interested only in those categories which arise within a given culture in order to describe its own fruits, or does value also routinely attach itself to the categories employed by a neighbouring cultural group, or a visiting foreign anthropologist? (A cultural group is usually likely to know something of how others think of it, but within its own culture it may accord limited respect to their opinions.) As for history, are the categorisations which the modern historian may employ to examine an event of the same status, considered as cultural items, as those of the contemporary chronicler? We may very well harbour doubts, for example, about exhibiting no preferences between the categories of the colonised and those of the colonial, or where we sense that history is being written as propaganda; categorisation is done with purposes in mind, whether deliberately or subconsciously, and as such it may re ect partisan interests which hold doubtful value for those of dierent parties. Even where the motivation is in no way sinister, we may expect to witness more of con icting perspectives than of whole, unvarnished truths. This leads me to the second di culty: there is no obvious limit to the variety of ways in which humans can contrive to divide up the world and creatively manipulate it. Even someone sympathetic to pluralism in ethics might raise an eyebrow at the explosion of emergent value which is implied if every new circumscription of items within a category implies even the merest and most minimal addition of new value to the world. If on a whim I take a sudden interest in the category of `objects on the left side of my desk', and play at shu ing objects into and out of this category, are we supposed to think that I have created new value with these acts of categorisation,2 or even that I have added value to objects which I have so categorised? One should note at once that a biased or somewhat arbitrary category is not necessarily without value. We should hardly be able to understand the operations and the histories of human societies without investigating both the schemes of categorisation which people have employed and the motivations which lay behind them; and while it is certainly improbable that anyone will ever think with interest 2We might, depending on our philosophical commitments, take the view that the category of `objects on the left side of my desk' exists eternally (or at least that there is a nonindexical reformulation of it that does), and that all my playfulness has accomplished is to recategorise certain objects from and to the category of `objects not on the left side of my desk'. When I make reference to creativity I have in mind intellectual development in human history: there is certainly a point in history, for example, at which the category `ecosystem' came into use, and it need not derail a discussion of its role in the ethics of cultural heritage, or indeed those of environmental ethics, if we have not resolved the question of whether, strictly speaking, it was invented or discovered. 148 10.1. Some Complications: Arbitrariness and Bias about divisions of the top of my desk (unless, of course, my use of such a division as an example in this chapter has caused it to become a minimally interesting part of our cultural heritage), the fact that people play a game called Trivial Pursuit, and have been known to purchase books with such titles as Schott's Original Miscellany, indicates that arbitrariness and triviality are not problems in and of themselves. If there is a problem with bias, it is that some biases become dominant enough to blinker us; if there is a problem with arbitrariness, it is that without some limiting principle it threatens to run out of control, until an in nity of possible divisions of my desktop starts to imply, if each of these is permitted to be even in nitesimally valuable, an in nity of value in the corner of my room alone. If we are not to nd our heads swimming as we contemplate inde nite in nities of value, then some principle must be found to distinguish those categories which rightly fall under the grand category of `cultural heritage' from all the other categorisations which pass through our minds in the light of momentary interests. The solution, I think, is to be found nowhere other than in the ostensible problem of bias: the conceptual divisions which we draw embed themselves within our cultures precisely where they enter into the struggles and narratives of human history and enable or even force us to see things dierently. The border between two nations, for example, may follow principles of geography (rivers are convenient markers of borders) or applied geometry (straight lines are straightforward), but it is the border as a concrete geopolitical fact, and perhaps even as an object of contention and outright warfare, that will contribute to the national identities of people living on either side of it, and hence to their cultural development. More abstractly and more peacefully, the category `citizen' is part of the conceptual apparatus which makes it possible to construct certain forms of society and political community (indeed, certain ways of civic life), and the category `website' forms part of a whole collection of ideas, norms and technological standards by means of which we communicate electronically. Each of these examples serves certain interests, sometimes con icting interests. A national border can be a source of great contention, particularly if the state on either side has, or has had, expansionist tendencies; or if some of the people encircled by the borders of a nation had not historically thought of themselves as nationals of such a political body. Competing political doctrines have made citizenship as much an ideal as a description, most obviously in the use of `Citizen' as a title in revolutionary and post-revolutionary France. The Internet, meanwhile, has already been the focus of at least one economic bubble in which there were very de nitely winners and losers. These categories' connection with contests, however, if anything reinforces their claim to be important pieces of our cultural heritage. When we 149 10. The Role of Categorisation parcel up land into dominions, or promulgate ideas of the individual as citizen, or begin to put pages online in order to make them accessible across the globe, we make history and we change culture: national cultures, civic cultures, online community cultures. The invention of these categories was part of learning to see the world in new ways.3 From the fact that some categories are contested and nonetheless historically important it does not of course follow that there is no problem of bias. This problem may, indeed, take on deeply unpleasant forms. The categories of schemes of `scienti c' racism (as employed, for example, by the Nazi race theorists who had to work out what degrees of Jewish ancestry implied Jewishness, with all the legal, political and eventually mortal implications which that carried under the Nazi regime) are undoubtedly of historical importance; equally undoubtedly they enabled people to see the world in a new way; but the way of seeing which they enabled was misguided and perverted, helpful in our own society only as a horrible warning. I want to defer discussion of these unpalatable cultural phenomena, and the ways in which we might and might not be willing to call them valuable, to the next chapter, in which I consider the ways in which the value of cultural heritage may not always sit neatly alongside other values and priorities in human life. In this chapter I am concerned, in part, with less drastic, but nevertheless sometimes potentially harmful, consequences of insu ciently nuanced categorisation. Young has expressed concern at least since 1994 about what he calls `distortion' as an aspect of cultural appropriation (Young, 1994, p. 416); recall my discussion in 6.1 above. By and large he has in mind the risk that a cultural group may be poorly served by the ways in which outsiders represent its culture and cultural stylings in their own creative works; but another source of what we might reasonably call distortion may arise from the ways in which cultures and cultural items nd themselves categorised, particularly where the power of bureaucratic indierence is involved. I have in mind such cases as the following: [A]n institutional arts policy generated in Britain in the last quarter of the twentieth century... establish[ed] a separate category and publicfunding structure that seemed to de ne the role of the black artist from outside. Such terms as `ethnic arts', `ethnic minority arts', `non-British arts' and `multi-ethnic arts' were used... (Rhodes, 2000, p. 216) Here we have categorisation gone bad in such a way that it threatens to sully the integrity of the `ethnic' artist who, out of an understandable desire not to accept starvation as the cost of creativity, follows the money. The problem is not simply 3I shall return to this point in 12.5, following some discussion of moral epistemology. 150 10.1. Some Complications: Arbitrariness and Bias that these categories fail to classify anything. Even completely arbitrary ones, like `pastel works by European or Sri Lankan artists featuring a cat and at least two persons, one of them clad partly in blue', do pick things out, assuming that anything exists to fall into them. The potential problem is that they assist the bureaucratic tail in wagging the artistic and culturally illuminating dog. Where categories are not misguided they may still be awkwardly partial, and indeed many of the debates over the proper fate of items of cultural heritage can be characterised as classi catory disputes of a kind. Take for example the Codex Gigas, a richly illustrated Bible and the largest manuscript in the world, which began its existence in a Bohemian monastery and after changing hands several times was eventually plundered by Swedish troops during the Thirty Years War. A few years ago it was loaned to Prague's Klementium Gallery following a request from the Czech Prime Minister. Our thoughts on what counts as the proper resting place of the Codex, one of so many objects to have changed hands in questionable circumstances during distant epochs, are going to be interwoven with what we take to have the highest priority among the various ways in which it can be categorised: shall we take it to be rst and foremost a Czech creation, a Swedish possession (for about 350 years), a Benedictine work, a Christian scriptural work, or something else besides? It is precisely the fact that these are all reasonable categories under which to consider the Codex that makes it di cult to reach any conclusion about what its fate would optimally and ideally be. `The origin of ideas is not the kind of thing to which purity happens easily' (Sen, 2006, p. 132), and the same is true of their material manifestations. The example of the Codex, then, implies that when asking ourselves how a cultural item is to be evaluated, we ought frequently to be prepared to look to its membership of a multiplicity of categories; but the example of `ethnic arts' implies that there are limits to how pluralistic and ÷cumenical we should be prepared to be. Yet the category of `ethnic arts' is itself a cultural item, an aspect of British creative industry during a certain historical period which, indeed, has had a concrete impact on the production of cultural items through its role in public funding mechanisms. Is the problem simply that the use of this category, as Colin Rhodes has it, `seemed to de ne the role of the black artist from outside'? We should have to dismiss a great many inoensive categories from our thoughts about the value of cultural items if we permit this to count as a blanket objection. Thales of Miletus certainly did not categorise himself as a pre-Socratic philosopher; we categorise him thus from the outside. Jean-Paul Sartre did adopt the mantle of `Existentialist philosophy', but neither he nor Simone de Beauvoir was initially enthusiastic; despite its not beginning as a self-description in the work of Existentialist philosophers, however, 151 10. The Role of Categorisation the term has become part of our standard lexicon. Such examples could easily be multiplied. Is the problem then that a category of `ethnic arts' is aesthetically stupid, an invention of bureaucratic convenience and political expedience with no sensitivity towards what artists are trying to do and what the art-viewing public gains from experiencing? We are probably getting closer, but one of the things to which we are getting closer is a lengthy debate about what art is for, and rather than get sucked into it I had better note that one thing an account of the value of cultural heritage had better be able to handle is the existence of in uential opinions dierent from our own, even when from our perspective there are clearly di culties with them. It may indeed be empty to talk about `ethnic arts'; and in some people's opinion it is empty to talk about the visitations of angels; but there are aspects of our cultural heritage which are certainly infused with the angelic as people have believed in it, and if an account of the value of these cultural items must take the existence of their originators' belief as a given then it is not obvious that the case of `ethnic arts' in bureaucratic thinking warrants a dierent treatment. I suspect, in fact, that at the root of what Rhodes objects to is not so much the category of `ethnic arts' per se but the institutional dominance which was unthinkingly bestowed upon it, so that in the thinking of the bureaucracy it threatened to eclipse other ways of thinking about what black artists were creating. The threat thereby comes to look like an epistemic one rst and foremost: if I cannot think about the art objects in front of me other than through this prism of `ethnic arts', then it is only from that perspective that I shall be able to think about their value under the broader category of cultural heritage. If I am blinkered in such a fashion, then my search for the culturally valuable will be inhibited: much as seeing environmental harms requires a conceptual ability to see the environment (if you recall James Boyle's example from p. 25), seeing certain kinds of cultural harm, and certain manifestations of cultural value, may require us not to be limited to certain conceptual resources. When it comes to the conceptual categories into which we place the items which make up culture and cultures, we may indeed wish to employ a principle of plentitude, desiring not only a healthy supply of cultural items but to devise the broadest possible suite of ways of appreciating them too, lest any value possessed by any cultural item should go unnoticed. The problem then will lie in dealing with a potentially in nite demand for new tools of intellectual categorisation; but I want to deal with further epistemic complications in later chapters. 152 10.2. Continuing the Search for Value 10.2. Continuing the Search for Value The chief worry hanging over Chapter 9 was that ultimately, if we locate the value of cultural heritage not primarily in cultural items themselves but nebulously in the presence of associations between them, then perhaps all that we are doing is crudely measuring activity which may be called cultural and then simply ascribing morally salient value to whatever turns out to enjoy popularity. However, whilst society as we know it certainly does take a great interest in popularity and its possessors, nevertheless the ways in which cultural items may enter into popular culture or niche subcultures, or into mass culture or highbrow culture, are more nuanced than an outright game of numbers. Economies grow; cultures ourish. It is this possibility of ourishing that catches my eye. Not necessarily the ourishing of any person (although it is entirely conceivable that the two may go hand in hand), but in the sense in which we talk about the ourishing of the arts.4 One thinks of the Golden Age of Hollywood, or the Augustan Age, or the Jazz Age, or La Belle Époque; of the Harlem Renaissance, or the Scottish Enlightenment, or the Latin American Boom. The thing to note at once is that one thinks of cultural ourishing (and decline) in the light of certain categories: in these examples, categories of geographical space and historical duration. A limitation of a `network' model of culture on its own is that it is heavily quantitative, inviting us to reckon the number of cultural items which form each loose cluster: insofar as we can meaningfully bring anything from a painting to a turn of phrase, to a tacit convention about what constitutes personal space, together under such a very generic label as `cultural item', we can say some interesting things about the distribution of these cultural items once we have (somehow) individuated them, but one could be forgiven for thinking that in so doing we have set aside what makes culture important to begin with. Can there be so little to comparing cultural items that we need only consider where clusters of cultural productivity may be found and how cultural items are abstractly associated? Are we to get excited at the notion that cultural item x inspired cultural item y without even asking whether x and y were novels or philosophical theories or doomsday cults or whatever else they might be? No wonder the previous chapter ended facing the worry that there might be little to be said for the value of cultural items besides commentary on an unedifying popularity contest. 4Entering the query ourishing of the arts into the search engine Google (http://www.google.co.uk/) on 29th May 2011 produced about 132,000 results. For example, a `future ourishing of the arts and heritage' is a stated desideratum in written evidence submitted by the Local Government Association to the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee (`Funding of the Arts and Heritage: Vol. II' H.C. (2010-11) 464-II Ev 191). 153 10. The Role of Categorisation Once we acknowledge that some of these cultural items are the very conceptual categories by means of which we individuate cultural items and navigate the cultures that contain them, we have the makings of a less arti cial and more familiarly diverse and colourful model of culture which nevertheless retains the attractions of holism. Instead of a barely dierentiated mass of cultural stu which undergoes unquali ed changes, we see artistic movements develop, political ideas take hold, fashions pass in and out of vogue; we witness technological advancements enable wider travel and faster communications, in turn enabling accelerated interchange of ideas; and we behold the development of new words, new ideas and new disciplines of study as humanity tries to keep up with the task of making sense of itself. We can use the stu of culture itself to see culture in a more dynamic light: less like the shifting of dunes in a sea of featureless sands, and more like what is sometimes called a creative ecosystem. A culture cannot but be dynamic, whether its strongest tendency is towards change and development or towards continuity and conservation, simply because it is people that live with their cultures, and new generations of people who inherit them. The pressing question for moral philosophy is still, of course, that of where amongst this cultural verdure we might hope to uncover ethically salient value. If we are not setting out to measure sheer cultural activity, or the sheer popularity of cultural items, what then can we hope to assess in order to discover where the peaks and troughs of value lie in the cultural topography? One thing we can say with con dence is that our assessment will not be conducted from some ideally distanced and culturally neutral vantage point; we, indeed, must nd ourselves excellently placed to concur with Thomas Nagel's observation in The View From Nowhere that when we take up the objective standpoint, the problem is not that values seem to disappear but that there seem to be too many of them, coming from every life and drowning out those that arise from our own. (Nagel, 1986, p. 147) To think about cultures is not to transcend culture but to appreciate how saturated with it we are. `Culture' is itself a grand and sweeping category, one with its own history of development through usage and one not trivially naturalised; any conceptual model of it which we might develop would inevitably bear the traces of its (and our) own cultural in uences. As such, it is not strictly correct to say that it can aect the value of cultural items to bring them under one category or another, since we have no epistemology free of cultural trappings and therefore no way of already having individuated and evaluated these items.5 I do not mean 5Arguably the most apposite label for this point would be that of `perspectivism', but I am 154 10.2. Continuing the Search for Value that we have to be cultural relativists in either epistemology or ethics. We can be realists about science or moral facts or whatever else; we can agree that in these domains of knowledge there are phenomena which are discovered rather than invented; but discoveries as much as inventions may qualify as cultural items. The history of science is full of them: some even bear the names of the discoverers, such as Kepler's Laws or the Planck constant. Moreover, in addition to having a scienti c heritage we encounter science as a creative theme in the production of new cultural items: the stock character of the mad scientist in works of ction, or the endless and arti cial `science versus religion' debates, or the dissemination of tabloid `Scientists say' stories about what may or may not cause cancer. The most robust cases of our having knowledge about the world may thereby exhibit the trappings of the cultural. Categories, then, do not merely contain other cultural items but partly constitute them. When it comes to evaluation, how does this help us avoid an awkward and unedifying popularity contest? One might very well object (with a weary sigh, recalling just how readily new categories may be devised and disseminated) that the contest has merely shifted, and that now we shall have to concern ourselves with the question of which categories, which manners of thinking, are most thoroughly pandemic. Perhaps the hour has nally come for the `Superphilosophy... with the greatest philosopher being the one who can contain the greatest number of other people's personal philosophies' (Pessoa, 2001, p. 83), as we struggle to distill a multitude of categorical insights into a single evaluative conclusion. Perhaps; and it would be remarkable if we gave no thought at all to how widespread a reception a category has enjoyed; but this need not mean taking a static snapshot of some culture at a given moment and reckoning the breadth of in uence of a given category within it. There is limited scope for an ahistorical treatment of cultures (see p. 73 above), and especially so if we want to acknowledge the possibility of a ourishing of culture, which is inescapably a temporal phenomenon. The same is true of cultural decline; it is true, as well, of the sheer continuity which we call tradition. In 10.1 I suggested that unenlightened categorisation, suitably combined with bureaucratic dominance, might inhibit the creative expression of a cultural group; the corollary, then, is that less narrowly arti cial categorisation has a role to play in allowing such expression to ourish. Temporality, of course, is itself not uncomplicated and culturally neutral. I concluded Chapter 7 by noting that in thought about cultural heritage we can identify at least two tendencies, which I styled traditionalistic (emphasising continuity and potential perduration) and originalistic (emphasising delity to a not satis ed that its usage is su ciently straightforward, and I am hardly attempting to ally myself with Nietzsche. 155 10. The Role of Categorisation de nite point of creation); it is not obvious, I added, that these two ways of approaching a cultural item are reconciliable when it may not be evident which would (in typical circumstances) better suit a given item. If we now identify these as forms of categorical thinking then we need not be hugely worried, since a single item may be brought under many categories; but this observation on its own will hardly dissolve or resolve the matter and move us closer to knowing whether origins or continuity ought to be emphasised in deciding the fate of one or another cultural item. That would require a grasp of which understanding of the item's often various roles in a developing cultural history best allows us to appraise them, and that in turn requires our approach to appraisal to take account of cultures' dynamism both in creating new cultural items and in nding new roles for old ones. Just what, then, are we talking about when we speak of cultural ourishing, or decline, or progress? (What precisely might it mean, for example, to observe that it `is axiomatic for Quebec governments that the survival and ourishing of French culture in Quebec is a good' (Taylor, 1992, p. 58)?) This, troublesomely, is not a question whose answer can fall entirely within my present purview. It implies judgments not merely of temporality but of teleology: not only of what has value qua cultural heritage but of what is the right and proper direction in which a given cultural group might take its collective life. This necessarily involves a wide range of ethical, political and other questions. One person may judge that a progressive culture is one that secularises itself, while another may work for a revival of popular religiosity; one may be a defender of `high' culture, whilst another regards its trappings as a rightful target of class warfare; one may defend freedom of expression in the most liberal of terms where another will favour tighter regulation of the press in the interests of public morals. Even where debate concerns the nature of a culture itself at a fairly abstract level, the focus will inevitably be wide. Re ections on cultural heritage certainly ought to have something to contribute to discussions about the trajectories, the intersections and the mingling of cultures (and philosophy can certainly help to clarify and re ne concepts of cultural purity, dilution, and so on; recall 6.1 on `authenticity' and `distortion'), but such discussions are seldom conducted in strict isolation from other social and political questions. We nd ourselves concerned with immigration patterns and the reception of refugees, and with whether policies of multiculturalism worked in practice as well as in theory; we ponder `Americanisation' as an aspect of geopolitics as well as in the media; we keep one eye on the politics of propaganda and popular in uence when we consider the power of the media barons, or the costs and bene ts of state patronage for the arts. It would be di cult, and perhaps arti cial, not only to reify `culture' as we conceive of it but moreover 156 10.2. Continuing the Search for Value to attempt a complete and comprehensive account of what it means for cultures to ourish without extensive reference both to the many forms of vitality which cultures may enjoy and to the range of questions about what, ultimately, counts as a healthily enduring culture (though admittedly it may be more clearly apparent when a culture, or for that matter an ecosystem, is endangered, and ourishing is altogether conspicuous by its absence). We should no more expect to develop universal and abstract criteria for cultural ourishing than we should anticipate the unveiling of an account of what it is for ecosystems to ourish which easily manages to encompass both the wilderness and the cottage garden. In the next chapter I shall have some more to say about interconnections between the value of cultural heritage and other human values; but nothing in this dissertation can conclusively tell anyone whether a culture of the wilderness or of the garden is the more tting aim. (Some cultures may even incorporate their own teleologies or narratives of progress, or even eschatologies. The Kuhnian model of scienti c culture, for example, might be said to take it to ourish through crises.) What then is there left to say about the value of items of cultural heritage, if enquiry into what it means for a culture to ourish threatens to slip through our ngers? What is left, I think, is the observation that cultural heritage oers the resources by means of which such re ection can occur; to decide what to become you must rst know who you are, and for a cultural group that means both having an understanding of the shared culture which de nes it as a collectivity, and making use of the categories which have emerged within its culture for the purposes of collective selfre ection (along, perhaps, with some new tricks learnt from foreigners). Put like that, this may sound as though the value which I ascribe to cultural heritage is in the end strictly instrumental, a means to human autonomy and communal selfdetermination; but that need not be all there is to the value of culture. It is not, after all, as though there is Culture, standing apart from those whose culture it is like some vast warehouse of resources awaiting retrieval, and then there is Re ection, to be conducted by a grand committee somewhere else. No act of cultural selfre ection can stand outside culture, and no altogether adequate understanding of culture can exclude the possibility of re ection as an aspect of the life of a cultural group. Cultural dynamism nds itself interwoven with implicit cultural re ection (little or none of which particularly requires an explicit concept of culture): Wouldn't it be nice if there were such a thing as well dressing? 6 Do you think many people would buy pictorial postage stamps? Isn't it a shame that fewer people go to church nowadays? 6The traditional practice, especially in the Peak District, of decorating wells with murals made of petals. 157 10. The Role of Categorisation Thoughts such as these, as much as the acts which sometimes ow from them, are part of the life of cultures, and it is in the light of this that we must approach the question of their value. Enquiring after the value of re ection to culture, I suggest, is similar (not thoroughly analogous, but close enough) to asking after the value of health for the body, or the value of currents to the ocean. Such a question is not wholly without meaning, if we understand the human body or an aquatic ecosystem to be an intricate system which may in reasonable senses be pure or polluted, and be vibrant or in decline; but we shall not get very far at all if we imagine that in reifying any such phenomenon we are talking about something su ciently dissociable from its medium to possess independently instrumental value. Tides in the aairs of men, as with those of the seas, invite a more holistic understanding. What does this imply for the value of cultural heritage at large? (I have been singing the praises of holism and fuzzily distributed value for quite a lot of pages now, after all, and conclusions helpful to people arguing over what should be the fate of this artefact or that traditional practice are still not obviously in the o ng.) Something quite dialectical, I think, in a sense which is indebted more to Plato than to Hegel: we cannot hope to sidestep or cut short a process of re ection which is neither individual nor wholly scholarly nor entirely philosophical, since it would be a mistake, as it turns out, to approach the moral epistemology of cultural heritage as though what an item was its place within a culture could have been already pristinely established, and evaluation of its value for ethical purposes could be a completely distinct second stage. What philosophy can oer, however, is aid in navigation of the moral landscape which emerges once we shift from expecting to evaluate cultural items strictly in the light of human purposes and needs, to asking ourselves what in a broader sense is good for (human) culture. 158 11. Heritage and Human Interests We can of course hardly forget that humans do have purposes and needs, and it would be a strangely worshipful approach to human culture which would never countenance the sale of any family silverware in order to ll human mouths; however much there is to be said about the value or even the patiency of cultural heritage, nobody imagines that there are no other values or moral patients which we need to take into account. In this, in some respects something of an intermezzo chapter but nevertheless a necessary one, I want to pick up where I broke o within 10.1 and consider some of the ways in which an enthusiasm for cultural heritage may collide with other morally important concerns. 11.1. Biases and Bigotry Among the complications which I discussed in the last chapter was the fact that dividing the world up in categorical terms is always done for some purpose, and sometimes the purposes are not altogether upstanding; sometimes, indeed, the biases which embed themselves in categorical thinking can be downright unsavoury. More generally, not everything which a cultural group brings about and which subsequent generations inherit is necessarily a tting object of reverence or even approval; some things will be morally disvaluable, and some of those which are not may be aesthetically ugly,1 or narrow-minded, or simply dull. To expunge these from what we acknowledge as heritage, however, risks what is sometimes derogatively called a whitewashing of history, or at least an excessive romanticism when we re ect upon ourselves, our ancestors and relations with our neighbours. I shall not be attempting to identify a golden mean between historical blindness and collective hand-wringing, but I do have cause to worry about what this portends for talk of the value of items qua cultural heritage. 1Here, too, the attitudes which dierent generations take towards their heritage may complicate matters: it comes as news, for example, that Stanford students have been exhibiting increasing preferences for music recordings containing barely audible MP3 compression artefacts. `All that sizzle is a cultural artifact and a tie that binds us. It's mostly invisible to us but it is something future generations looking back might nd curious because these preferences won't be obvious to them.' (Dougherty, 2009) 159 11. Heritage and Human Interests It is probably desirable to employ some principle of epistemic humility which acknowledges that we will not always know for sure which of the items of conceptual apparatus which are presently available to us will most closely t reality; but we are unlikely to wish to be so sceptical as to suppose that we have no grounds for treating phlogiston and Ptolemaic epicycles as historically rather than scienti cally interesting. When we speak of value, we shall want to be mindful of such qualitative distinctions; at the same time, when we are hoping to be able to make practical normative decisions about what to save, what to repatriate and so on we are likely to nd ourselves hoping that some broadly uni ed scale of value is within our grasp. Yet it does leave an unpleasant aftertaste in the mouth to nd oneself suggesting, for example, that the categories of segregation embodied in the Jim Crow laws are culturally valuable. One perhaps wishes to say instead that the remembrance of them is what has value.2 However, remembrance of a historical event is itself (in whatever concrete form it may take) a historical event, and hence a (categorisable) cultural item in its own right, so we face some risk of a troublesome demand that we explain how there can be value in remembering x without its being implied thereby that there is value in x, even though there could be no remembrance of x without a history of x. Conceptually, I think the di culty is that it looks contradictory to say that (1) something has positive value, and (2) the world would have been a better place without it. We can readily agree, I think, that some items and some categories have served the most pernicious of interests, and that these things have thereby proved themselves to be instrumentally disvaluable for morally good agents. We might add, in support of this conclusion, that we have in mind not necessarily categories which have been perverted to some malign cause, as when religious or patriotic fervour, or the simple and accurate observation that there exist dierences between men and women, have been manipulated in the service of ignoble ends, but rather categories whose malignant teleology is implicit within them: it is one thing to observe that racial variations exist within the human race, for example, and another thing altogether to interpret this observation in hierarchical terms. Admittedly, where the categories which we employ are as unashamedly constructed as legal ctions are it will be tricky to disentangle the benign from the base. We shall hardly be content to follow in the footsteps of the legal arguments 2Thus, instead of saying that a history of involvement in slavery is valuable, one might say that it is valuable to remember the slave trade, which sticks in the craw rather less. Yet I suspect that in such an instance as this `valuable' will tend to be a word which might helpfully be replaced either by one more obviously non-moral, such as `instructive', or by one with a dierent moral avour: It is our proper obligation to remember the slave trade, one might alternatively wish to say. I shall have more to say about approaches to history in Chapter 14. 160 11.1. Biases and Bigotry which just happened to construe the categories of private property in such a way that Australian Aborigines could be said to possess no title to their land, because they neither fenced nor cultivated it; at the same time we need not conclude that property is indeed theft; but we can hardly underestimate the scholarly complexities which face any jurist who would tease the good from the bad, and this will be true not only of law but of other and less codi ed customs too. Let us grant, however, that we have some ability to pinpoint where there is evident instrumental disvalue built into a category, visible in light of the objectionable ends to which it is far from accidentally tted. What of instrumental value's counterpart, intrinsic value? The immediate reaction is very properly likely to be repugnance at the idea that anything so thoroughly corrupt and dangerous can be a repository of any, let alone an intrinsic, sort of value; but it is here that I play my holism card again. Recall that the (intrinsic) value of cultural heritage is on my account supposed only secondarily to attach itself to discrete cultural items, including the abstract cultural items which categories are; primarily it manifests itself diusely and non-speci cally within sprawling cultural networks. Although I have begun to indicate that there are discernible patterns of value-inheritance between abstract categories and the cultural items which fall into them, in both cases this value is derivative; cultural items (including categories) have value on account of clustering together into the vaguely de ned phenomena which we call cultures. One of the implications of this is that malignity also need not be discretely localised; where a moral cancer exists, it is unlikely to be restricted to a single cultural item. There certainly are senses in which one malign item can be said to possess value for the context in which it exists: one might meaningfully say that their white hoods have value for the Ku Klux Klan, and whether one means by this that they are instrumentally valuable for the Klan's purposes, or that they play some sort of role within Klan culture which leads Klan members to value them non-instrumentally, there is nothing particularly controversial in our ascribing value to the hoods so long as we are talking about value for the Klan rather than what we ourselves endorse as valuable. In doing this, however, we ascribe value to the hoods (as discrete cultural items), or to `Klan hoods' as a type (of which individual hoods are tokens), in light and by virtue (if the unfortunate turns of phrase are pardonable) of the place which they occupy within a broader milieu. Once again, the value of a cultural item is derived from its context; if we now wish to ascribe disvalue to the Klan hoods, this likewise will be because of their disvaluable context (i.e. one disvaluable from the point of view of a more enlightened moral vision than is enjoyed within Klan culture itself). How then are we to determine which cultural items should nally be judged to be 161 11. Heritage and Human Interests valuable or disvaluable or simply neutral? Perhaps we nd ourselves, in the end, in comfortably familiar philosophical territory, asking ourselves what constitutes the good life (including the morally good life) for human beings in general. Perhaps (we might think) Harding did have an insight in making the value of cultural heritage strictly subordinate to the value of the good human life. If we could merely solve the problem of what that is to everybody's satisfaction (and I hope that you will be understanding if I do not address it in the present work), then we might expect to be able to proceed from the most general to the most particular of cases, and derive the disvalue of the Klan, and that of all its aspects as anything other than an unpalatable memory, from our most general understanding of what is good for humanity. 11.2. A Uni ed Hierarchy of Value? There is, however, a lingering problem. Suppose we generalise the suggestion that, from the fact that their white hoods are valuable to Klan members, it in no way follows that Klan hoods have value outside the context of Klan culture, even though they play an important part in that culture and the Klan is evidently a cultural group with a heritage.3 We might very reasonably expect it to follow that it is similarly uninformative to observe that rock art has value for Australian Aborigines, or that the Bible has value for Christians, or in any case at all that anything has parochial value for anybody. If we arrive, in seeking to evade the implication that Klan hoods might possess cultural value outside their immediate context, at the view that we can comfortably avoid this outcome by noting that Klan culture (with the corresponding category `Klan cultural items') itself makes a negative contribution to the good life of humanity, then presumably consistency requires us to judge all cultures in terms of this good of humanity, and then to work out the value of their cultural items in light of this, proceeding always from the most general to the most particular (with the network in terms of which I earlier described culture coming to look more like a strict categorical hierarchy). There are hopefully not that many who would dispute the counterfactual claim that the world would have been better o without the Klan and its culture; but there are plenty of other cultural phenomena which could not be so readily dealt with. What is the net contribution to humanity of Australian Aboriginal cultures, or Christian culture, or European culture? It is not di cult, for example, to nd 3Note my shift from `white hoods' to `Klan hoods'; in other cultural contexts, a white hood might be part of a ghost costume for Halloween. Another case in point would be the Swastika, a symbol much older and with more uplifting import than the Nazi regime which appropriated it and in connection to which it is best known in the West. 162 11.2. A Uni ed Hierarchy of Value? people who turn to the Bible for revealed Truth and moral guidance, and other people who regard `religion' as a class as something from which humans ought to liberate themselves; and if we have to wait for these parties to conclude their debates before we can judge the value of Christian cultural in uence, and in turn evaluate the myriad cultural items in which Christian in uence manifests itself, then we had better be prepared to wait perhaps literally until Doomsday. Not that we have much genuine hope of somehow isolating `Christian culture' for evaluation. Even our hope of isolating `Klan culture' may begin to evaporate once we realise that it participates in the much wider and more various phenomena of `racist cultures' (being, of course, more strongly and directly involved in some than in others), and that no simple algorithm will unweave attitudes towards and conceptions of race from the broader cultural contexts in which they sit; the subtlest scholar of literature could not tell us how a pleasanter Shylock in a dierent Merchant of Venice might have featured in a counterfactual history of the English theatre. The headaches continue to multiply when we realise that among the things whose contribution to the good of humanity we might wish to evaluate are the very intellectual resources by means of which we come to know the human world as we consequently do know it. I accept that there can be reasonable judgments, in ethics and of other sorts, made across cultural boundaries (Midgley, 1991, p. 81.); presumably, then, if I aspire to cast judgment on Indian approaches to aesthetics, or conventions of political debate in the Philippines, I shall require only an adequate intellectual grasp of the topics involved, and this may well not require me to have undergone a thoroughgoing immersion in Indian or Filipino culture. To some substantial degree, then, it is possible to judge culturally speci c intellectual categories `from the outside'. What must be involved, though, in making historically counterfactual judgments about a way of construing some aspect of the world? What does it take to determine whether the overall good of humanity would have been better served or worse if nobody had ever had the ideas of `popular music', or `management', or `utopian colonies', or any among innumerable others? Once we have understood the question we shall nd ourselves quite unable to forget the category which we are expected to imagine out of the universe. We can no doubt imagine histories in which no managers or pop acts or utopian communities ever arose to create a need for the conceptual apparatus which we employ in talking about them; but it is a separate question whether humanity gains or loses something from our having devised these categories rather than others, and it is doubtful that we have any prospect of returning, even in our most exible of human imagination, to more innocent conceptual pasts. People certainly have thought that such gaps could be scrutinised, if not altogether 163 11. Heritage and Human Interests bridged: the most familiar example for many philosophers might be Martin Heidegger's fretting about the eects of scienti c and technological thinking on the ways in which we nd ourselves in the world. He worried about the di culty of escaping from technological blinkers, the risk of becoming unable to see the forest for the timber, even as he sought in his philosophical work to uncover what he understood to be other forms of existential engagement with the world and particularly with the natural world, distinguishing the `primordial' from the `derivative' (Cooper, 2005a). Compared with his anxieties mine look almost mild: I merely need to know, given the expectation that intellectual categories are cultural items and that cultural items are subject to evaluation by moral philosophers, how it might be that we can enquire after the value of any given categories within a culture and receive an answer more nuanced than that they are presently indispensable. There are, it is true, entire scholarly careers founded on projects of critiquing conceptions of race, or gender, or class, or other categories through which we classify and navigate our social environments; and while it is beyond my present task to comment on either success rates or motivations, the existence of such projects, and that of less politically charged enquiries down to the abstrusest reaches of ontological theorising, indicates that humans are able to re ect critically on all manner of things. (It also indicates that the process may be long and controversial.) Yet critique of this sort, though it certainly may arise from moral concerns, is not moral evaluation of quite the sort I have in mind; my present concern, after all, is with the cultural heritage that we have, rather than with the future teleology of anyone's cultural or social development.4 A critical reappraisal of, for example, literary representations of class consciousness is itself a cultural item and part of at least one cultural heritage; and this will be so, and we shall nd ourselves faced with the question of its value qua cultural heritage, whether or not it emancipates anybody from the shackles of a prejudiced past. As usual, there are no doubt many more points which could be raised and challenged and defended in turn, but I hope that I have done enough to indicate that it would be no straightforward matter to envisage some sort of uni ed hierarchy of values, in which (1) Klan hoods are subordinate to (2) Klan culture in general, which is subordinate to (3) racist culture more broadly, and since (3) makes a negative contribution to (4) the good life for humanity it follows that (2) and (1) are likewise to be negatively appraised. I am still left, then, with the problem of how to integrate value qua cultural heritage into our wider moral economy in such a way that it will 4Technically my interest in the ourishing of cultures blurs this line: in particular, there are political questions about who in a given culture is in a ready position to make in uential contributions to the culture and its recorded heritage. I maintain, however, that there is a meaningful division of intellectual labour in the examination of cultures. 164 11.2. A Uni ed Hierarchy of Value? neatly t alongside our other ethical concerns, so that we can talk about the value of cultural heritage while accepting that some aspects of some heritages are, in straightforward moral terms, nasty. I want to make what I fear may initially appear to be a sophistical distinction, or at least one which will perhaps be more readily accepted in academic circles than in the wider world in which cultures exist and develop and occasionally clash, but nevertheless a distinction which I think both ts sensibly into my earlier sketches of valuation and categorisation, and oers some reasonable hope of acknowledging how certain cultural items may at once be valuable (qua cultural heritage) and so thoroughly disvaluable that we should prefer that they had never been. We frequently make evaluations which depend on the contribution of some aspect of a thing to what it is as a whole, and sometimes these judgments are not straightforwardly obvious: thus a rip in the canvas of a painting will be reckoned to reduce its value on the art market, while a rare blemish in a run of stamps may increase their value for philatelists. When it comes to our moral judgments, where our own cultural resources have long suggested the possibility of a felix culpa and of narratives of redemption, matters may become more nuanced still. We certainly do not see it suggested that the ugliness which they confront should count against either the aesthetic or the moral merits of To Kill a Mockingbird or Mississippi Burning, or that the horrors which it records serve to blemish Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl, even though these cultural items could not have come into existence but as a response to awful circumstances. Neither will we necessarily be eager, when we turn to consider the kind of human interests with which we deal in our lives, to judge that the value of a human life is established strictly by its cleavage to saintliness; a hierarchical ranking of value, so tempting and tantalising a prospect when we try to extend our ethics to encompass the whole panoply of cultural items, from the most exquisite artworks to the advertising yers that daily make their rapid way from letterbox to bin, may meet with far more hesitation when we are confronted byWilliam Godwin's infamous choice between the Archbishop's rescue and the chambermaid's. When it comes to moral patients among our own species, suddenly a rigid scale of value becomes a less attractive prospect. We presumably agree that both the Archbishop and the chambermaid must be taken into account as moral patients; it may nevertheless be unremarkable if we hold one of them dearer on account of personal ties, but it might well take a long and harrowing history of unrepentant evildoing on the chambermaid's part for us to have no qualms whatsoever about preferring to save the life of Archbishop Fénelon. The distinction which I wish to make is between value simpliciter (or as simplex 165 11. Heritage and Human Interests as accounts of value ever get in moral philosophy) and value considered as a contribution to a broader moral patiency. I suggested in 9.0 that patiency, in contrast with value, is a binary notion, something which an entity either has or lacks; no wonder, then, that we may be reluctant to discard any human moral patient, even in favour of another. If we are to approach cultural heritage with the thought that it may count as a moral patient and if we are prepared to accept that it is collectively possessed of a morally salient value which does not ultimately amount to the service of human ends, then that is a conclusion which we shall nd ourselves with no trivial grounds for evading then heritage, too, may be tarnished without thereby being debased. Consider a physician who undertakes to save the life of a patient in the medical sense of the word, knowing that the person undergoing treatment is one who harbours some defect of moral character: a hooligan, say, or a serial adulterer. In order to save the person as a whole, the doctor must salvage this defect along with all other traits of the surviving patient's character; it is regrettable to prolong a career of hooliganism or unfaithfulness, but we hold it noble nonetheless to save the life of a human being. There is of course no direct analogy with culture, because culture and cultures resist ready individuation where human beings do not: one cannot easily say what it would mean to preserve a culture as a whole. Insofar as we nd ourselves capable of con dently pointing to some local or national or otherwise delineable culture, however, we may well nd that so interwoven and interdependent are its constituent aspects that it is no simple business to tease apart those deserving our approval and those not. It will be helpful, therefore, to distinguish between an active moral cancer and the scars which may linger after its removal; a culture of any antiquity is likely to have borne witness to many unlovely deeds, some mercifully far removed, so that we can look upon slavery in Roman Britain, for example, with disinterestedly historical curiosity. What must happen, then, when wrongful currents are still manifest and active in a culture? The cultural group ought to reform itself, much as the hooligan or the adulterer ought; and in order to do this it must tease out and expel, however painfully and awkwardly, those aspects of itself which are morally condemnable. It is subject to an overriding moral imperative to change itself into something for which its malignant aspects have no value of any kind and in any sense. That there presently is some sense in which they have value for their cultural setting will be no eective argument against reform; cultures, after all, are dynamic in many ways. There are cases in which appeals to culture may be supposed to act as a defence in morally charged disagreements: for example, in controversies involving practices of circumcision or other genital mutilation. However, I doubt that the logic in such 166 11.2. A Uni ed Hierarchy of Value? cases is often imagined to boil down simply to `It's morally wrong, but it's part of our culture, therefore it's not morally wrong', or even to a not much less contradictory version, `It would be morally wrong, if it weren't part of our culture'. Where those involved are agreed that a practice is unethical, then, its persistence within some culture will not count as an eective argument for allowing it to fester. Not every trace of human vice within a culture is a dangerously active cancer and an impending moral horror, however; humans and human cultures being what they are, we shall inevitably encounter cultural items which re ect divergence from utopia, but we shall not necessarily have grounds for judging that they are wholly without value qua cultural heritage. We need not and perhaps should not be comfortable with any echoes of anti-Semitism we discern in The Merchant of Venice, but here and elsewhere to have a culture, to preserve it, to let it ourish through the creativity of those whose culture it is, will sometimes bring reminders of human moral frailty. The doctor who saves the life of the hooligan or adulterer thereby preserves certain unwholesome traits; we should not call these valuable dispositions to possess, but in spite of this they make a contribution to the patient's personality as a whole, to who this person is. It is not a happy contribution, to be sure, and we may rightly hope for future repentance and reform; but if we wish to say (and presumably we do) that persons have value of a kind of which moral philosophy ought to take account, then it would involve a crude approach to the complexities of human lives and personalities to add as a disclaimer `...but not the nasty bits'. If we approach the human moral patient as a repository of value, then in valuing the whole we value even the more unsavoury aspects which contribute to there being a whole person to value; and when we look for value in cultural heritage, our predicament is a similar one. If valuing a culture's heritage meant simply something close to totting up its merits and deducting its demerits from the total, or scavenging within a heap of accumulated cultural items and polishing up just those which seemed still serviceable, then little would preclude our urging a cultural group to keep only the straightforwardly good and abandon all traces of the bad; but the evaluation of cultural items will seldom, if ever, be so neat. There is, then, a sense in which even Klan hoods may be said to have value as parts of the wider cultures (American, Anglophone, &c.) within which they have their existence: they make a contribution (for which we need not be grateful) to what, as a matter of historical fact, is the intricately interwoven heritage of these cultures, and if the whole is to be valued then the parts will inherit some of that value. Happily, however, an acceptance in this light of the less palatable items of a culture's heritage need not prevent anyone's seeking to ensure that the only home 167 11. Heritage and Human Interests in which their contributive value can be realised is a museum. 11.3. Questions of Priority Less unpalatable than the foregoing, but still awkward when they arise, are the questions which we must face when positive obligations towards other people threaten to clash with obligations involving the treatment of cultural items. Sometimes these involve the allocation of scarce resources: funds spent by a government on public support for `the arts and culture' are funds not allocated to health, road maintenance or other public goods.5 Sometimes they involve changing circumstances, as when migrants nd that not every aspect of their ancestral culture is easily maintained among their new neighbours. Sometimes they involve clashes not of `value' but of `values', including those of justice, in the sense that limits on what may lawfully be done with listed buildings, for example, embody values of conservation but at the cost of values of liberty, speci cally the liberty to enjoy one's own property without interference.6 I do not anticipate that in my search for a framework for thinking about the ethics of cultural heritage I shall incidentally be generating a simple little formula which neatly arbitrates between concern for culture and concern for every other important aspect of life. Nevertheless, it would be helpful to have something to say about where to start looking for normative guidance; and this, of course, will have to be consonant with my statement a few paragraphs ago that our approach to the value of cultural items will not look much like an accountancy of merits and demerits. Certainly I cannot readily envisage weighing up Heritage against Tra c Safety in some uni ed moral scales.7 What then are we to do? The amorphous nature of cultures and consequently of their heritage threatens to sit ill with a concern for the interests of the human individual, and in some cases may not sit a great deal better alongside the interests of 5Of course, other than under a narrow de nition roadworks and the preservation of health are aspects of culture. (See p. 67 above.) Indeed, some roads have an excellent claim to be persistent items of cultural heritage: parts of the A2 and the A5 follow the route of Watling Street, anciently paved by the occupying Romans. However, we can frequently distinguish between actions performed in the deliberate service of what can be called cultural interests, such as giving money to a museum of local history, and deeds done in the service of other interests, such as the preservation of human life through medical intervention or the prevention of tra c accidents. 6Here, of course, one might appeal to cultural traditions of liberty, including that of an Englishman's home being his castle. 7Even a Utilitarian might well have di culty adopting a straightforwardly Benthamite stance when it comes to heritage; if anything is a `higher' pleasure, the satisfactions arising from a secure sense of cultural identity are plausible candidates. 168 11.3. Questions of Priority human collectivities. Part of the problem is indeed epistemic, and the closing parts of the next chapter will help to show how to avoid letting culture become an invisible patient in our moral thinking, enveloping us with such inescapable omnipresence that we become unable to perceive it when engrossed in the making of ethical judgments. Even quite familiar and local cultures may slip easily into the background of our thoughts when the house which forms part of a locality's history and landscape is still more familiarly `my house'; construed as a cultural item, however, its boundaries may be rather broader than the acreage attached to `my house'. An ethics with its focus on stewardship, such as has become popular with respect to archaeology (Pantazatos, 2010, p. 96; Wylie, 2005; and see p. 54 above), could help broaden the temporal horizons of our thinking to take into account a transgenerational ethics which expands concerns from `my house, my property, for as long as I hold onto it' to at least considering whether there might be lingering interests of past inhabitants, and those of future ones, which should enter into our judgments. So too might an `intergenerational social contract' (Thompson, 2000, p. 253), or a view of cultural heritage as a focus of trustees' obligations (Dworkin, 1985, p. 233). Approaches of this sort, however, are incomplete at best unless they are linked to an understanding of just what manner of thing it is which is entrusted to the steward, or controlled by the contract or the obligations of trusteeship (which perhaps partly explains why stewardship has found a particular niche in archaeological ethics); and the interconnectedness of cultural heritage implies that a cultural item is a vaguely de ned sort of thing insofar as it quali es as a thing at all. Actually, the same is in many ways true of that deceptively simple-looking formula `my house'. `House' is probably the easier part o the formula; there are various diverting questions to be asked about what properties an enclosure must have in order to be a house, but the architectural metaphysics is su ciently free of mystery for us to distinguish with adequate competence between house and not-house. How often, however, do we approach a house with its properties as a material object uppermost in our minds? To approach and enter our own, a friend's or even a stranger's dwelling is another experience entirely. Does the garden maintain the tone of the neighbourhood? Will guests think our wallpaper is tasteful? As soon as we nd ourselves at home with such questions of social convention, it becomes plain that we have landed straight back within the sphere of the cultural; and this only gets plainer when we turn to examine the `my' in `my house', part of the `system of exchange, ownership, payment, debts... and in general... rights and obligations' (Searle, 2007, p. 6) which gives rise, among other things, to the monetary price for which the house could be sold on, part of the `important and objective class of 169 11. Heritage and Human Interests entities that only exist because we think they exist' (ibid., p. 4). Such re ections alone will not dissolve the frustrations of the homeowner who wants to add a conservatory to a listed building; but they may encourage a shift in perspective once one comes to acknowledge that both `sides' of the question are suused with culture, and hence that cultural heritage is not merely the persistence of the past but presupposed by the meaningful social environments within which we put down our own roots. I do not mean merely that culture is a good for us although in many cases and in many ways it is, and any attempted weighing up of goods would have to take that into account but that in setting priorities where heritage and human interests are concerned, it is rst of all necessary to have re ected upon the complex mutual involvement of the two, and for this to happen it is necessary that heritage should be understood as more than a collection of nice (though luxurious) things. Perspectives and shifts therein are all very well, of course, but will they bring us genuine illumination and the prospect of acquiring ethical knowledge and profound normative guidance? We had better wait no longer before turning to questions of moral epistemology. 170 Part III. In Conversation With Cultures
[O]ur rampant nostalgia, our obsessive search for roots, our endemic concern wih preservation, the potent appeal of national heritage show how intensely the past is still felt. Yet new historical perspectives have outmoded once customary ways of feeling and using it. Wholehearted faith in tradition, the guidance of past examples, empathetic communion with great gures of antiquity, the solaces of a golden age, evocative ruminations over ruins and relicsthese modes of engaging with bygone times have largely ceased to be credible. History has made them obsolete. David Lowenthal (1985, p. xxiv)
. Testimony and Authority Who speaks for cultures? Who are the authorities in the quest to reckon the value of cultural items? Any moral epistemology must somehow deal with the fact that ethical disagreement is commonplace in human life; and any that claims the ability to help us grapple with the modern world must oer some way of responding to cultural dierence. Cultures not only dier but sometimes clash, and not only over the contrasting ways of life which they accommodate: now that law and politics have taught philosophy to speak of `cultural property', and philosophical interest has been growing in the moral ought which it seems to put to work, we shall naturally nd ourselves wondering how we are even to discover what signi cance an item has for a culture before we begin to determine what actions ought to follow. This is in part a problem of cross-cultural understanding, but disagreements may and do arise within cultures as well as between them. When the former Afghan (Taliban) government pursued the destruction of pre-Islamic artefacts, while Afghan museum curators urged their preservation (Appiah, 2009, p. 80.), how were nonAfghans to react, when neither party to the dispute could be reckoned by outsiders to be more properly Afghan than the other? Henry Kissinger wanted to know whom to call if he wanted to call Europe,1 but for the purposes of political communication he at least had the ability to address national governments. Who speaks for European culture, or (modern) Afghan culture, or any other culture that may have a heritage? If we do not know whom to call, then we face an epistemological problem. Suppose that we need to determine what should be done, or what permissibly may be done, with some item, physical or abstract: a recently excavated ancient potsherd, let us say. Suppose that we know that the culture within which it was created is a surviving one,2 still the culture of some identi able group of people, and we consequently nd ourselves with the thought that we have a piece of these people's cultural heritage on our hands. In any case in which their culture is not ours, it will be natural for us to suppose that they possess an epistemic authority which we inescapably lack 1Supposedly. According to http://blogs.ft.com/rachmanblog/2009/07/kissinger-neverwanted-to-dial-europe/ (retrieved 22nd April 2010) the story is apocryphal, but it remains nicely illustrative. 2For the purposes of this chapter I shall gloss over the vexed question of just what conditions that might involve (having pondered some related di culties in Chapter 6): perhaps biological descent, continuity of practices or institutions, &c. 175 12. Testimony and Authority when considering questions about what it is to inhabit this culture (particularly where the questions are not of a sort which could be settled by appeal, for example, to archaeological evidence). It will be quite natural for us to think that this applies to some questions of a normative sort: if we are of the view that an object can have value for a culture, and value of such a nature that action-guiding moral conclusions may follow from this, then we shall want to know what value (if any) our potsherd holds for its originating culture and the people whose culture that is, and the obvious next thought is: we should ask them. But whom to call; and what to make of disagreement if it should arise? The mere possibility of dispute should make us pause if we do not know how to deal with it; a merely fortuitous consensus oers limited epistemic surety. Suppose then that we were to hold a general ballot (wanting to be sure that we were not hearing only the loudest or the most socially dominant voices): if our results resembled those of a survey in which members of the Zuni people were asked for their views about `the value of Zuni peach folk varieties and control over them' (Soleri et al., 1994, p. 29), what should we make of it? The rst question asks `Is it important to make sure that old Zuni peach varieties are not lost? Why?' Out of 25 answers, 24 were `yes' and 1 `don't know'... The second question is `Should non-Zunis be given seeds of Zuni Peaches? Why?' Out of 24 answers, 17 said `no', 5 said `yes', and 1 said `don't know'. (ibid., p. 29)3 On the one hand, we see clear majorities, and one case of near-unanimity. Yet we also nd not only that there is disagreement about the second topic, but moreover that in each case someone is claiming not to know how to answer. In an opinion poll this is understandable, but if we set out expecting to uncover the self-knowledge of cultural insiders then the emergence of a `don't know' contingent is disappointing at best. `With care and attention,' James O. Young has written, `it will be possible to determine how much value something has for a culture. Moreover, the epistemological di culties here are no greater than we normally confront in making moral judgements.' (Young, 2007, p. 123) This may indeed be so, and in this chapter I am not concerned to dispute the comparative scale of the challenge, but rather to enquire after the distinctive features that emerge when we introduce this thing called cultural heritage into our moral epistemology. The time seems ripe to esh out what exactly it is towards which our care and attention must be directed. Predictably, in light of the content of recent chapters, I shall imagine that we are out to ask a question about the value of some cultural item or other. I make this 3(17 + 5 + 1) does not total 24, but the error is in the original. 176 12.1. Whom Shall We Call? choice partly in reaction to other philosophers who have employed the term before me (including Young as quoted in the previous paragraph), partly because of the use to which I have put it myself, and partly because I suspect that surveys asking about patiency would result in rather more scratching of heads. In any case, in asking an inescapably evaluative question, yet nevertheless one concerning how a cultural group in fact relates to a cultural item, we cannot but keep the celebrated fact/value distinction in view. (It is when we seek a moral epistemology for cultural heritage that we are perhaps least able to draw a breezy line between knowing what we ought to do and having knowledge of other kinds, and least entitled to con dence in declining to submit to putative experts, even where dierent judgments (Hills, 2009) might be made about more domesticated varieties of ethical problem, or where we nd ourselves receiving direct advice about what course of action we morally ought to take.) Much of what I shall be saying need not, however, have a bearing only on this particular view of how to go about doing heritage ethics; people who take, for example, a more resolutely deontological approach, or a needs-based approach, may nd themselves grappling with quite similar di culties. I shall now proceed to esh out the problem a little more, and to discuss and cast doubt on various potential solutions; in the concluding section of the chapter I shall return to developing an alternative line of thought, one of perspective shifts and holism, which might lead our enquiries in a more pro table direction. 12.1. Whom Shall We Call? If we are committed to the view that there is some fact of the matter to be sought, i.e. that an item such as our potsherd does either have or lack value for its source culture which we could and ought to take account of in our moral theorising, then where we see disagreement arise among cultural insiders we must take the view that at least one party to the dispute is mistaken. But which party? We hoped not only to establish what the potsherd's worth might be as part of the heritage of mankind, something which we as human beings presumably grasp at least as thoroughly as the man on any street in the world, but furthermore to learn what value it might hold for a culture in which we outsiders do not participate.4 4Assuming the predicament of the clear cultural outsider of course leads me to take an antireductionist/credulist (Hopkins, 2007, p. 628; Pritchard, 2004, pp. 328 & 333.) stance (of a presumption in favour of accepting testimony unless we nd reasons to doubt its e cacy), or at a minimum the view that ceteris paribus we are in no position to overrule insiders' own testimony even when we have reasons for not actually accepting it: we are in search of and will be dependent upon the particular knowledge of others, not reasons for believing which we could adopt as our own. In Philip Nickel's taxonomy of moral testimony, we are subject to substitutive dependence: `A's utterance of M gives B 177 12. Testimony and Authority It may well be the case, where disagreement occurs, that some of those surveyed simply have superior understanding to the others I hardly want to suggest that `culture' functions as some magic word that invites us to jettison what we know about the ordinary epistemology of disagreement but we cannot rest assured that it will be a straightforward task to discover whose understanding of his culture is best. Perhaps we might nd ourselves tempted to adopt a sceptical position: that even if there is a fact of the matter, not even cultural insiders can be relied upon to know what it might be. We might even suspect that such a scenario as a `don't know' vote could arise because there is in fact no common or cumulative insider knowledge to be had: that if you thrust a piece of pottery at people, tell them their ancestors made it and ask what cultural value it has for them, then no matter how securely monocultural the group you question, what you will get is a range of culturally in uenced perspectives, not a window onto some kind of cultural hivemind or reservoir of collective self-knowledge. Or maybe the knowledge once existed, but it is no good asking after it long after a cultural item has been estranged from its source culture, especially if many such items have been thus estranged. In this light it is suggested that `the absence of [certain] artifacts from Peru results in modern Peruvians having less knowledge of and appreciation for their history and culture. Likewise, the [Elgin] Marbles' presence in England deprives Greek citizens of their cultural heritage and an ability to connect with their past.' (Chimento, 2008, p. 216; emphasis mine) Perhaps so; but if we are agreed that co-participants in the same culture possess some shared understanding of it, then it would be rash to conclude so quickly that it is not just our own epistemic practices that are at fault. If you want to know what gift-giving practices are accepted in Cameroon, say, or which way one passes the port at a formal dinner in England, it is obvious enough whom to ask; and so unless the entire discipline of anthropology is mistaken, obtaining cross-cultural information about matters of fact is possible. It is not clear (or at any rate not yet) that we have positive grounds for thinking that questions of value must be so very dierent. I suggested that we might favour a general ballot as a means of discovering the vox populi across a cultural group; but a ballot, after all, is the kind of process that typically gets employed when we already recognise that we aren't going to get a consensus on some question, like `who should be in government?', and yet as a practical matter we nevertheless have to reach some sort of broadly acceptable conclusion. Such a process is geared predominantly towards procedural political acceptability, rather than towards convergence on a consensus, or towards a reason to believe M, which serves as a substitute for an independent (non-deferential) justi cation' (Nickel, 2001, p. 255). 178 12.2. The Panel of Experts uncovering the latent knowledge and insight of the general public. In that case, we have a problem of practical epistemic procedure: we need to know who can speak with epistemic authority on behalf of a group de ned by its culture. In fact, we face epistemic problems as soon as we set out to identify the members of a cultural group, especially where the culture in question does not explicitly incorporate strict or uncontested criteria for membership. If we accept a conception of cultures in which there is `no watertight boundary' around one (Midgley, 1991, p. 83), since cultures `do dier, but they dier in a way which is much more like that of climatic regions or ecosystems than it is like the frontiers drawn with a pen between nation states' (ibid., p. 84), then there is no obviously decisive way to draw a distinction between members and non-members of a cultural group, between insiders and the rest of us. Even among the categories of people a community is apt to contain, Steven Lukes lists `identi ers (that is, those who identify themselves as belonging to it), quasi-identi ers, uncertain identi ers, ex-identi ers, non-identi ers, multi-identi ers and anti-identi ers' (Lukes, 2003, p. 20). Taking account of people's own sense of belonging or not belonging is a tricky business, but it would nevertheless be a risky one to ignore. In this chapter I shall assume that such di culties are surmountable; and similarly, and pace my own concerns in 11.1, I shall assume we can ignore problems of bias and ulterior motives (for example, claiming cultural value in something with the actual motive of founding a tourism industry on it), awkward though it is that we may nd ourselves so reliant on self-reported claims which would be di cult to prove false (Young, 2007, pp. 122-3). Likewise, I shall not dwell upon the possibility that cultural knowledge might be unevenly distributed according to the diering concerns of, for example, men and women, or subject to practices of initiation.5 Assuming good faith and competent understanding of our questions on the part of our consultees, and that they possess whatever freedom and self-determination is needed in order to engage in re ection of this sort, how shall we consult them once we have identi ed them? 12.2. The Panel of Experts We may, not unreasonably, worry that asking a member of a cultural group what has value for his culture is not wholly like obtaining information about, say, the material properties of tungsten by means of consulting an expert. In principle, anyone of reasonable intelligence can become at least a knowledgeable if not a truly expert chemist. Yet when we look in the direction of the arts, for example, we may 5For an anthropological discussion of themes of this sort see La Fontaine, 1986. 179 12. Testimony and Authority already nd ourselves suspecting that `whereas there may be no more to knowing and understanding a given scienti c theory than is involved in an intellectual grasp of the inferentially connected body of propositions which comprises that theory... it seems possible in the case of aesthetic knowledge to recognise some shortfall between any grasp of discourse and aesthetic appreciation' (Carr, 1999, p. 243). An awkward predicament for the moral philosopher seeking crisp knowledge of value for a culture; Humean reassurances of critics' keen ability to converge on ranking the rstabove the fth-rate may leave us still perplexed at what to do with our single potsherd. Seeking knowledge across cultural boundaries only adds further complication. `In its strong form,' Robert Merton wrote in 1972, the claim is put forward as a matter of epistemological principle that particular groups in each moment of history have monopolistic access to particular kinds of knowledge. In the weaker, more empirical form, the claim holds that some groups have privileged access, with other groups also being able to acquire that knowledge for themselves but at greater risk and cost. (Merton, 1972, p. 11) Reacting in particular to the suggestion that `as a matter of social epistemology, only black historians can truly understand black history, only black ethnologists can understand black culture, only black sociologists can understand the social life of blacks, and so on' (ibid., p. 13), he continues: [I]t would appear to follow that if only black scholars can understand blacks, then only white scholars can understand whites. Generalizing further from race to nation, it would then appear, for example, that only French scholars can understand French society..., the list of Insider claims to a monopoly of knowledge becomes in nitely expansible... and to halt the inventory of socially atomised claims to knowledge with a limiting case that on its face would seem to have some merit, it would then plainly follow that only sociologists are able to understand their fellow sociologists. (ibid., p. 13) A suspicion that people may possess a critical epistemic privilege concerning their own cultures need not, however, be a radically exclusionary one,6 and it is towards the weaker thesis of epistemic privilege that I propose to turn. No doubt there are limits to the human ability to know what it is like to belong to some other people and its way of life, and if we were conducting research in order to write a novel then greater trepidation might well be in order (although see Young, 2008, pp. 34-41); 6We should be cautious, in any case, about any suggestion that cultures can be regarded as hermetically sealed unities (Lukes, 2003, pp. 20 & 34). 180 12.2. The Panel of Experts but knowledge that an item has such-and-such a value for a culture is hopefully more open to translation. Are there, perhaps, certain classes of expert, members of which could potentially even be drawn from the ranks of cultural insiders, to whom we could turn for information about the value of cultural items?7 There are certainly respects in which cultural items may be said to be distinctively valuable,8 and for these there are frequently corresponding domains of expertise which are not obviously limited to cultural insiders, and in which most cultural insiders will not themselves be expert. To determine whether an object is of historical interest, for example, we might reasonably seek the opinion of a historian, and it takes suitable methodological training rather than an insider's particular sensitivities to acquire expertise qua historian. If we want to know about aesthetic importance, we may turn to an art critic. And so on. Appointing experts in the course of a cross-cultural enquiry has its additional challenges, admittedly. Even amongst the experts of one cultural group, debate may concern not only speci c claims (e.g. among historians, the causes of this war or that shift in population) but their conceptual underpinnings (e.g. in theories of historiography); in extremis people have even resorted to doing philosophy. Cultures other than ours may of course incorporate their own established theoretical stances on what constitutes a historical account, a work of art, and so on, as I indicated in Chapter 10; and enquiry into the value of an item for a culture can hardly be expected to stand apart from these. The di culty is not that we may hold these frameworks misguided; we need not share the doctrines of a religious community, say, in order to grasp that what it holds sacred will have value for its members as a group. Sometimes we may even decide on the basis of inter-cultural encounters that, for example, `we need to revise somewhat the fundamental conceptions of symbol, signi cation, reference, and perhaps even art-object that are generally accepted in Western aesthetics' (Deutsch, 1969, p. 349). Rather, our enquiry is complicated 7We would not, of course, necessarily acknowledge these people as `moral experts' from whose general guidance in life we might expect to pro t; it might indeed happen in some instance that even after we had learnt what cultural items are valuable for their group, further re ection would lead us to the conclusion that their whole culture was a cesspit of moral horrors. (See 11.1 above.) We will not necessarily look upon them as expert moral agents even with regard to the case at hand; what they know about the value of a cultural item will be only one of the resources upon which subsequent moral re ection must draw. (Contrast Jones, 1999, pp. 64-5 and Driver, 2006, p. 625. on domain-speci c moral expertise.) We may nevertheless wish to say, however, that expertise of this kind amounts at least to insight of a sort that plays a moral role, and that for this reason we are not in the presence simply of another kind of wholly non-moral expertise. 8Some broadly systematic taxonomies of value have been developed for application to cultural heritage (e.g. Carman, 2005, pp. 49-61 for archaeological artefacts). Recall my discussion of value in Chapter 8 above. 181 12. Testimony and Authority when we ask our experts what value an item has for some culture, but having selected them for their expert grasp of theoretical apparatus which may carry no such quali cation. Where such a framework stipulates, `this is what cuisine is', or `this is what counts as a performance', and does not humbly append, `...for this particular culture', we shall seem to be inviting, even demanding, a curious and sudden switch from the universal to the parochial; and this tinge of universal prescription may be present even where speci c judgments are concerned, as in Kant's notorious dictum that a judgment of beauty demands universal assent. Arguably such judgments may nonetheless be called subjective (Makkai, 2010), but that leaves them still some way from looking like judgments of value `for a culture'; and if, with Deutsch, we favour the broadening of conceptual horizons in light of cultural interchange, it is unclear where any acknowledgement of culturally parochial value is then supposed to t. There is of course an alternative possibility: Heikki Saari invites us (in an exposition of Wittgenstein) to assume that some tribesmen produce beautiful carvings and ritual masks that the anthropologist describes as `works of art', although they neither describe them as `works of art' nor respond to them in the manner we respond to works of art (say, they destroy some of the best carvings and ritual masks on some ritual occasions).9 We are inclined to say that they do not share our concept of art, which derives its meaning from the uses it has within our sophisticated aesthetic discourse. If the anthropologist describes these native artefacts as `works of art', he is being ethnocentric, because he attributes to them a concept which they do not use, when they are talking about carvings and ritual masks produced in their society. (Saari, 2005, p. 153) Fair enough, we may decide: let us seek out experts in this culture's distinctive practices of carving and mask-ritual. Yet now the risk is that we are getting too parochial: that we demand to know the value of an item not only for its source culture but for a particular purpose within that culture. Wherever cultural groups have ingeniously declined to limit each item to some clearly de ned and delineated use, we may have cause to wish that we had been more exible. We must immediately take warning, moreover, that with heritage as with any aspect of life, even experts with apparently similar domains of interest notoriously may not form a uni ed chorus of agreement. As you may recall from 2.1, when James Cuno tells us that antiquities `have much to teach us about the past, about art, about material properties and manufacture, about human aspirations, and 9Compare Young, 2008, p. 19 on the Zuni `War God' sculptures, which are ritually left to decay naturally. 182 12.2. The Panel of Experts about distant cultures and times' (Cuno, 2009, p. 2), he is doing so in explicit opposition to a view of antiquities according to which their value as a source of information lies almost wholly in knowledge of the archaeological context in which they were discovered (Renfrew, 2000, pp. 19-20). We can have little con dence that convening a panel of experts will be any more likely than consulting hoi polloi to provide us with a consensus, or that balloting our experts will surely pool their knowledge eectively (Sorensen, 1984). They may not even be able to tell us whether we are asking about the right people; `[p]erfect ethnographic knowledge of the 18th Century people of Toledo District, even direct observation with a time machine would not tell us if they were the true cultural ancestors of the modern Kekchi or Mopan' (Wilk, 1999, p. 372). Introducing a concept of `expertise' may indeed just provide us with one more epistemic di culty, for we have still to choose our experts, and this too may prove epistemically tricky. In some elds... objective evaluations of expertise are feasible. The performance of weather forecasters, for example, is routinely evaluated against observed weather during the forecast period... [However, in other cases] an environmental criterion cannot be speci ed, even in theory. Claims of expertise in elds such as philosophy, art, ethics, literature, or mathematics, must necessarily be based on measures other than the correspondence of the judgement with the environmental criterion (e.g. consensus, coherence, or command of a factual knowledge base). (Mumpower and Stewart, 1996, pp. 192-3) Furthermore, it seems doubtful that any kind of specialist expertise confers the last word when it comes to a judgment that such-and-such an object is aesthetically or historically or religiously or otherwise valuable and moreover it therefore is culturally valuable for a people (and as a matter of moral importance, at that). We may look doubtfully upon, for example, `epistemic inclusion' in archaeology `the idea that professional, trained archaeologists have no privileged, let alone sole, authority in establishing, interpreting and disseminating truths about the past that fall within their discipline's compass' (Cooper, 2006b, p. 131) and nevertheless think that when we talk about valuable cultural heritage the privileged position of the expert is less secure. Imagine some council of the great and the good proclaiming (if they could ever combine their own areas of expertise to reach a uni ed conclusion): `Dear people of England, after careful consideration in our experts' conclave we have discovered that Stonehenge is not a valuable part of your heritage after all...' If the masses should disagree with such an assessment, it will be di cult to insist that they lack a sensitive enough nger on the pulse of their own culture, and not only because considerations of justice perhaps demand that they receive their day in court. 183 12. Testimony and Authority Education (in a narrow sense) is no doubt crucial for an appreciation of what is sometimes called élite or `high' culture, but culture in the broader senses of the word looks decidedly demotic, in that expert and layman may equally well be said to participate fully in any culture they share. Culture, that is, resists appropriation by expertise of the sort we have in mind: there are views from inside a culture as well as from outside, and if it can be called expertise to have practical knowledge of the ways of one's people then those living on the inside possess, in terminology introduced by Bruce Weinstein, an expertise which is at least partly performative. It is certainly possible to study a culture and thereby gain knowledge of it, and thus attain some epistemic expertise; but it is not through setting out to accumulate knowledge about it that one comes to belong to a culture, and a lack of epistemic expertise need not usually be an impediment to so belonging.10 `Epistemic and performative expertise', in Weinstein's taxonomy, `parallel the epistemological distinction between knowing that and knowing how..., and like those two forms of knowing, they are conceptually and logically distinct from one another.' (Weinstein, 1993, p. 58)11 The cultural insider as performative expert, then, would (somewhat like an Aristotelian phronimos, or failing that a master of techne; cf. Carr, 1999, p. 243.) be adept at acting in whatever manner is understood to be t a member of the cultural group in question. If we stack our consultation panel with epistemic experts (since we are, after all, in pursuit of received knowledge, albeit hopefully action-guiding knowledge), then we rely on the assumption that this kind of expertise is wholly su cient for the epistemic authority we seek. Can that be so? We had better err on the side of doubting it. The perspective of an epistemic expert is one that opens up certain aspects of an object for example, a historian will have insight into how it ts into and challenges current historical theories and topics of academic dispute but if the people at large decide that some item is historic irrespective of how much historical dierence it makes, it would be rash to expect that it is their perspective that misses out something crucial. Moreover, for them and us alike beliefs about the value of an item for their culture are liable to be action-guiding (and indeed, if we are successful, morally informative) in a way which disinterested judgment concerning its aesthetic merits, for example, will typically not be; and consequently we may reasonably doubt that the question 10The actual practices of anthropologists may blur the distinction, and of course the experts you are being invited to contemplate might themselves be imagined to be insiders, i.e. members of the cultural group being consulted; but the distinction remains possible to draw. 11Given that Weinstein goes on to say that performative experts include `mathematical prodigies who are unable to explain how they perform their astonishing calculations' and `jugglers who cannot say precisely how they juggle' (Weinstein, 1993, p. 58), we had better hope that knowledge about the value of heritage need not be wholly tacit. 184 12.2. The Panel of Experts is wholly open to the (hopefully) cool and neutral authority of expert judgment. Robert Pierson uses the example of expert medical advice to suggest that any claim with respect to how `I' ought to govern `my' life can only be rationally determined, assuming I am relatively sane, by `me'. It may be that my heart needs professional attention, but surely the decision as to whether it will get it should be mine, for only I can assess whether the bene t in having my heart attended to is worth the cost of not ful lling any one of my other priorities. My priorities are mine, they are not variables within the control of, or even accessible to, experts. (Pierson, 1994, p. 403) Inasmuch as the normativity implied by a concept like `value' directs the actions of agents inside or even outside an item's source culture, the layman who bears the risk and responsibility of action has some reasonable room to exercise his own judgment; he can and sometimes probably should consult, as we are imagining ourselves to be doing, but consultation is not heteronomy. If a cultural group can have collective autonomy (and whether this is a kind of group that can is a question outside this dissertation's scope), then we may well think that we ought to respect it, even in some epistemic matters. If epistemic expertise is too limited (though perhaps part of any putative solution), is performative competence in belonging to a culture something one can possess to a greater or lesser extent? Might we convene a panel of performative experts? Despite my remarks above about the demotic nature of cultures, there is some room for thinking that there are degrees of belonging. If the borders of cultures are indeed fuzzy, then presumably cultural groups may have partial members (Lukes's `quasi-identi ers'?), or less engaged members, or comparatively estranged members, or recently arrived probationary members, or people who in some other sense live in the borderlands. Perhaps, then, there are also degrees of belonging which are greater than is usually reached, although how we would judge who had attained them is unclear. Therein lies the critical di culty; even if we could assemble such a panel, the justi ability of the panellists' claims to expertise would be determined not by these excellent few themselves but by the very public from whose ranks we plucked them. It is impossible to be (to give a trivial example) a performative expert in middle class English table manners without reference to what is popularly understood by the English middle classes to constitute good table manners; and so once again the masses have the last word, and we are back where we started. A potential further di culty for any attempt to make use of other people's performative knowledge lies in its precise relation to the sort of general claims that might be made about the value of a cultural item. David Carr notes that `it would 185 12. Testimony and Authority be clearly barking up the wrong tree to suppose that aesthetic knowledge provides a theoretical basis for artistic expertise in the way that at least some scienti c theory might be said to inform technological practice' (Carr, 1999, p. 243). The artist works with some broad theoretical knowledge (of perspective, for example), but the merits of an individual artist's style resist capture in some general guideline. Expanding from the case of practical expertise in art to that of performative expertise at participating in one's culture at large, we may wonder whether performative experts would be well placed to tell us, as a general claim, how much value for their culture our potsherd has (in contrast with grasping its importance for certain particular uses within their culture). They may very well know what to do with it in any given situation. What they do may be, like a deft innovation by an artistic genius, `an inspired touch'; but we cannot share in their inspiration except as appreciative (or bewildered) observers, and if their inspired touches no more generalise into broad claims about the role and hence the value of a cultural item than the deftest brushwork of the genius generalises into guidelines about how to paint as though by numbers, then it may remain unclear how we are supposed to respond to them within our moral theorising. 12.3. Spokesmen and Leaders If expertise fails to provide enough of the kind of epistemic authority we need, then maybe in place of a messy plebiscite or hand-picked panel what we require is a suitably representative spokesman or -woman. After all, when we hear about disputes raging over the fate of cultural items, frequently we hear that a national government, perhaps even a Minister for Culture, has claimed that some object is part of the nation's cultural patrimony; or we hear that the leader of an indigenous group has defended a practice as part of the group's culture. It would be nice if appeal to representatives would work as an epistemic resource, because instead of importing methods of consultation it would let us look to whatever means of selecting leaders have come to be endorsed within a culture itself. Conrad Brunk observes that cultures `have understood the concept of knowledge in a myriad of ways. All of them have had to develop criteria for determining what counts as knowledge (and its relationship to truth),12 and who in the community has the authority to apply the criteria and say when they have been met (the priests, the shamans, the chiefs, the judges, the scholars).' (Brunk, 2009, pp. 161-2) Unfortunately, even overtly representative methods of selecting leaders do not 12This again suggests an even more uncomfortable view of disagreement among insiders: disagreement about what they know and about what it is to know it. 186 12.3. Spokesmen and Leaders necessarily guarantee epistemic authority; I noted above that electoral practices most readily suggest themselves precisely where we are resigned to disagreement. People select their leaders, if indeed they do have a free choice in selecting their leaders, for any number of reasons, and these may not include the candidates' familiarity with the various currents of the culture within which they exist. (A state might even voluntarily submit to the suzerainty of a foreign power with a quite dierent culture, which would therefore wield politically legitimate power but not epistemic authority with respect to the culture of the vassal state.) Where we can point to a stable political identity, and even where we can associate it with a distinct culture, we must remember that [n]ations are created in the course of political struggles, or as the result of deliberate political policies. Even members are likely to be in disagreement about the properties that distinguish their nation from others or in their reasons for valuing their national identity. (Thompson, 2003, p. 257) Where politics becomes involved, then, we risk encountering two dierent yet very closely related and sometimes barely distinguishable disputes: one about what matters for a culture, and one about what matters for a political identity. We readily speak of German, French and Italian `national culture', but the nations which we designate with these same words were fully uni ed only in the Nineteenth Century (Germany, Italy) or existed as monarchies of one form or another before they became republics (all three). The cultures which we associate with them are (allowing for gradual changes) in each case of much greater age. That cultures frequently are intertwined with politics is a fact which we shall have to deal with; but we must wonder how rm a grip politics can get on them, particularly under any remotely liberal regime. Even democratically representative leadership, much like consultation by direct ballot, may not have the epistemic characteristics we seek. Elizabeth Anderson has endorsed an understanding of democracy, drawn from the thought of John Dewey, which emphasises its capacity for `pooling widely distributed information about problems and policies of public interest' precisely `by engaging the participation of epistemically diverse knowers' (Anderson, 2006, abstract). When we are in search of the commonly held knowledge of a group de ned by its shared culture (albeit including dierent perspectives on that culture and perhaps even identi able subcultures), we do not necessarily want to emphasise `collective... learning from the diverse experiences of dierent knowers' (ibid.) any more than is strictly necessary, whether the democracy in question is direct or representative. According to Anderson `an important part of the epistemic case for democracy rests on the 187 12. Testimony and Authority epistemic diversity of voters' (ibid., p. 11); but while of course dissensus and some epistemic diversity exist within nevertheless identi able cultures, in looking for the knowledge held in common within a culture and in trying to avoid having to deal with con icting answers we inevitably emphasise what is shared over what is open to variation. Anderson even suggests that `culture' (not `a culture', but clearly not an unrelated usage) may have to change in order for democracy to work in the rst place (ibid., p. 14): hostile to traditionalism, democracy is itself `a way of life' as well as a collection of institutional and procedural mechanisms (ibid., p. 15). We might say, possibly, that people aim to elect representatives likely to safeguard the electors' interests, that if a cultural item possesses value as part of the electorate's heritage then the electors have an interest in it, and therefore that those whom they elect are likely to recognise the value of the item (or at least more likely than the other candidates to have the necessary competence and attentiveness) as part of the act of safeguarding the interests of their constituents. There are perhaps multiple practical di culties with this sunny picture of representative government, but one drawback should be su cient to note: a representative who sets out to safeguard the interests of his entire constituency, not just the portion that voted him into o ce, will nd himself in a position very close to our own, unsure what to do when disagreement breaks out among squabbling factions; worse, his political career may depend on the continued support of some of those factions. Even for the most thoroughly paid-up of cultural insiders, this would be an awkward predicament. Even if we were to arrange a special election in which the electorate voted to select those candidates whom they deemed most culturally knowledgeable to act as our advisers (which presumably is how we should have had to go about appointing our brace of performative experts), it is not clear that we should be doing any better than if we asked them to vote on questions directly. 12.4. Observers and Organisers If asking people questions still looks problematic, maybe we should observe their actions instead. If we ask why, for example, J.R.R. Tolkien's legendarium might be deemed an important part of the heritage of fantasy literature, we are probably going to end up pointing to all the subsequent authors who thought his themes were worth adopting and turning into cliché. In uence and popular familiarity are matters of fact out there in the world: in our investigations, then, perhaps they could function both as justi cation for claims about the value of cultural items, by integrating items into cultural interaction, and as evidence of that value, by acting as observable marks of cultural activity. If we want to know whether a group perceives 188 12.4. Observers and Organisers value in some ancient potsherd, therefore, maybe we could nd out how they usually treat bits of ancient pottery dug up locally. We should certainly have grounds to raise a dubious eyebrow aloft if what people were telling us conspicuously did not coincide with how we saw them living. Yet the di culty which continues to beset us as cultural outsiders is that actions, to be understood, have to be interpreted, with all due sensitivity to their cultural context... and you can see that once again we are encumbered with a further epistemological problem. Might purely epistemic expertise be su cient for this task, allowing us to convene yet another panel of experts, this time to interpret other people's actions and make inferences about what has value for them as cultural heritage? Besides the complicating element that `purely' epistemic expertise will at some stage draw and depend on the non-expert testimony of the cultural group under observation (if we take it that our experts in this case will be, for example, anthropologists informed by prior eldwork), it is doubtful that we could reasonably accord these experts the nal word, for the reasons given previously. We should not assume, of course, that a group's collective self-image is always a better t with reality than the impressions of even a non-expert disinterested observer, but neither can we outright discount what a group's members believe about their collective selves when enquiring after the value of a cultural item. Principles of charity require us to acknowledge people's interpretations of their own actions; and even where we are convinced that word and deed fail to coincide, it does not instantly and without complication follow that the former (even if it re ects aspiration or optimistic preference more than it reliably does action) is less really a part of a culture than the latter and less an indication of what a people holds valuable. Part of the di culty seems to be that in asking people to make an appraisal under the status of being members of a certain cultural group, we are eectively asking them both to draw on personal experience and at the same time to make an impersonal judgment, one in which they consider themselves as members of the cultural group as a whole and lay aside any questions of whether as a matter of psychological fact they nd themselves individually doing something that might be called valuing. Psephological enquiry leaves us with the problem of disagreement, and spokesmen also have their drawbacks, but might there be other ways of organising the people we are questioning so as to bring forth what they (may) collectively know? Social epistemology routinely ascribes knowledge to collectives, as we do when, in Alvin Goldman's example, we talk about what the C.I.A. did and didn't know about terrorist plots before September 11th occurred (Goldman, 2004, p. 12). If what we are interested in is the knowledge of a collectivity, rather than the aggregated 189 12. Testimony and Authority knowledge of particular persons, then balloting individuals, or seeking representative testimony from the leader backed by the dominant factions of a group, starts to look insu ciently holistic. Perhaps, then, we should concern ourselves not only with the composition of the group in terms of who counts as a member, but also with its organisation. Margaret Gilbert has argued that the collective belief of a group need not be an aggregate of its members' beliefs: she gives the example of a court with a brace of judges on the bench who happen to form a poetry discussion group in their spare time. If the court had to consider the merits of a poem in connection with some legal action, she says, the conclusion it reaches might be completely independent of the conclusions of the poetry discussion group, even though the same people are deliberating in both cases (Gilbert, 2004, p. 98). When in search of the knowledge of a cultural group overall, then, perhaps we ought to look to the various forms the group can take and to the kind of conversations that can go on within them. Perhaps. An alternative inference would be that this, the horrifying possibility that we can assemble our cultural constituency with the most scrupulous of vetting procedures and still not be sure that the answer we get is not in some way an artefact of the very practices of enquiry we arti cially imposed, gives us nothing more than another excellent reason to throw in the proverbial towel. Before we do so, however, it may be worth seeing whether we can salvage something of the foregoing when we look again at the epistemic practices already surrounding cultural heritage. 12.5. Plan B In Invisible Cities Italo Calvino describes the anthropically named city of Clarice, a mass of shifting objects where parts of the city's earliest architecture have been preserved through being found convenient for new uses in new contexts: And then the shards of the original splendour that had been saved, by adapting them to more obscure needs, were again shifted. They were now preserved under glass bells, locked in display cases, set on velvet cushions, and not because they might still be used for anything, but because people wanted to reconstruct through them a city of which no one knew anything now... There is no knowing when the Corinthian capitals stood on the top of their columns: only one of them is remembered, since for many years, in a chicken run, it supported the basket where the hens laid their eggs, and from there it was moved to the Museum of Capitals, in line with other specimens of the collection. The order of the eras' succession has been lost; that a rst Clarice existed is 190 12.5. Plan B a widespread belief, but there are no proofs to support it... (Calvino, 1997, pp. 96-7) So much for origins, this rather Borgesian ourish says; so much for pristine historical knowledge. Yet the patchiness of their historical record does not prevent the ctional people of Clarice from appreciating that they have a heritage, any more than gaps and uncertainties in the historical records of the real world prevent us. Specimens are placed in this Museum of Capitals not after being held up for appraisal one by one and receiving the approval of people already comfortably in touch with their heritage as a whole, but because of what they oer through the ways in which they can be organised in search of a faint and fragile history.13 When we hear about the preservation of cultural heritage, frequently what people are concerned to preserve are not only objects but their organisation, at least until this organisation can be recorded: thus the archaeological site as an information resource which can be damaged even if all the objects in it are individually preserved (Renfrew, 2000, p. 19); thus the library of a person or an institution as more than just some books in physical proximity and combined ownership. It is this kind of organisation which Clarice has lost; but her citizens have responded by themselves organising the artefacts in what we are invited to regard as a form of epistemic practice: the exhibition, the very act of arranging objects for appreciation as (in eect representative of) the city's heritage, is presented as an act of historical reconstruction. Treatments of the museum or gallery as constructive sometimes make the matter sound rather sinister, presenting exhibition as an `ideological framework' that `in uences the public perception of art and society' (Jeers, 2003, p. 108), but Calvino seems to be taking a more optimistic view of human agency. Instead of recognising value in heritage objects and then, in consequence, elevating them to the status of museum pieces, the people of Clarice make museum pieces of them precisely in order to understand and appreciate their heritage. This is a practice not only of observing and appraising but moreover of actively, stipulatively and to a degree even creatively categorising objects, and for this it is possible to discover parallels in the real world. Take the example of outsider art. This is art created by people outside the artistic mainstream (i.e. cultural outsiders of another sort), and sometimes so far removed from it that they may not even possess the concept of `art' as a label for what they are doing. Among the rst to be identi ed as outsider artists (more precisely as creators of art brut, of `raw 13Meanwhile, much of what we do in the name of posterity re ects our concern to make a contribution to the shared memory of our people which reduces that fragility: the point of raising a monument of any kind is that it should stand as an enduring record. 191 12. Testimony and Authority art' unconditioned by cultural currents and traditions) were psychiatric patients (Rhodes, 2000, p. 7). This categorisation is a normative judgment: it a rms that what the outsider artist has created is not just symptomatic of personal eccentricity or mental illness, but is worthy of the name of Art, worthy of being appreciated for its aesthetic qualities. It thereby turns the worrisome risk of categorical bias noted in 10.1 into a chance for a rmation. Recognition of outsider art as an aesthetic category not only depended on `the critical visual framework laid down by modern Western art' (ibid., p. 8), and on `claims by [outsider art's] apologists about the artists' fundamental dierence' from `a supposedly dominant cultural norm' (ibid., p. 15), but also involves a positive claim about the consequent aesthetic qualities of outsider art, its `purity' of expression preserved by the `absence of deviousness or cynical manipulation of fashionable taste' (ibid., p. 16). It is thus in one respect a privative category, its boundaries partly determined by the scope of what counts as aesthetically `mainstream', but also one to which `apologists' ascribe positive characteristics. Outsider art is not merely the `artworld's' other, then, but subject to positive construction as an aesthetic category. Indeed, the category has been criticised for exactly that reason: at least one commentator is outright sceptical about the idea that there is anything more to `outsider art' than that some outsider creations happen to qualify as art objects (Davies, 2009). As with any form of art, appreciation is not guaranteed. `One man spent 15 years encrusting his entire garden with sculptures and sea shells, only to have it pulled down by his son with a J.C.B. when he died.' (Bell, 2007) Hence the perceived need for `a network of small organisations in both Europe and the United States devoted to the preservation of such works and the support of their creators' (RawVision website). If someone were to make an utterance along the lines of `Outsider art is worth preserving', it would strike me as a perfectly intelligible one: it looks thoroughly meaningful (albeit uncomfortably general), and perhaps is true. But if we say that some piece of outsider art, qua example of `outsider art', should be preserved, what are we pointing to? Notice that `outsider art' by de nition is not a genre or movement after the fashion of, say, `French Impressionism'. In the latter case it is comparatively easy to see why the category as a whole should be an object of concern: we take an interest in how one Impressionist in uenced another, how they understood their own work in comparison with their predecessors', and so on. (Cf. 9.3) No such collective self-understanding permits us to talk in general terms about the work of outsider artists; no wonder the category is vulnerable to scepticism. Yet what we do have (recalling Chapter 10) is the very category 192 12.5. Plan B itself, along with the scholarship associated with it. `Outsider art' as a category is constructed by observers outside the outsiders and imposed by them upon wildly disparate creationsand for our present purposes that's ne: items of outsider art are valuable as outsider art, to people disposed to care about outsider art, in that they have lent themselves to being studied and admired as outsider art. The category is thoroughly arti cial, shot through with social contingency, and laced with the categorists' open agenda not merely to describe but to validatebut none of that necessarily implies, even if the aesthetic category should prove to be conceptually problematic, that any and all cultural value we could nd in outsider art as a class must automatically be somehow unreal. So the emergence of cultural heritage within our practices of organising and classifying may indeed be respectable. What does this portend for our knowledge of it? Consider now, as we previously saw on p. 25, what makes environmental ethics possible: that we are able to adopt ways of looking upon the ecological surroundings we inhabit which let us grasp the intricate interrelations of their parts and thereby understand them as complex organic systems. We have got our hands on a powerful conceptual ratchet which irrevocably alters the frames through which we encounter these parts: `not my lake, but The Environment ' (Boyle, 2003, pp. 71-2). Why talk of `an environment' or `environmental harm?' Why not simply list the pros and cons of each particular piece of development, type of technology, aspect of land use? ... Why reify these individual loci of potential harm into a single entity called `the environment?' ... The environmental movement... gained much of its persuasive power by pointing out that there were structural reasons for bad environmental decisionsa legal system based on a particular notion of what `private property' entailed, and a scienti c system that treated the world as a simple, linearly-related set of causes and eects. In both of these conceptual systems, the environment actually disappeared; there was no place for it in the analysis. Small surprise, then, that we did not preserve it very well. ... The concept of the environment allows, at its best, a kind of generalized re ection on the otherwise unquestionable presuppositions of a particular mode of life, economy, and industrial organization. (ibid., pp. 70-4) It makes no dierence for our prospects of untwisting the ratchet whether or not we then nd ourselves sympathetic to the conclusion that an ecosystem may possess `systematic value' (Rolston, 1994, p. 25). We cannot unsee the biosphere once we have come across it. Neither, I suggest, can we expel cultural heritage from our 193 12. Testimony and Authority moral imagination once we have thought of it.14 We shall certainly continue to argue both about what exactly it is and about how it ts (or awkwardly declines to t) into the rest of our lives as moral agents, much as we continue to have a need for environmental philosophy. What we cannot do is act as though being cultural heritage were sheerly a matter of meeting a set of conditions for membership of the category. Holism is inescapable if we are to replicate the successes of environmental ethics with respect to the cultural ratchet; but now we have a vantage point oered to us by the very idea of cultural heritage itself. 12.6. But Whom Shall We Call? What then for our consultation? We do, after all, speak of objects as items of cultural heritage (and ascribe value to them as such); but what I have been hitherto assuming in this chapter, and perhaps should now reconsider, is that we ask a straightforward question (which of course may not be an easy question) when we ask cultural insiders to ascribe value to each cultural item singly. If we look not only at cultural items themselves but at the way in which a cultural group sees t to organise them, then evaluation of cultural heritage understanding and appreciating objects as cultural heritage comes to look like an ongoing exploratory, investigative and in some respects even creative practice: one within which the categories into which items can be placed, and even the category of `cultural heritage' itself, an organisational category by means of which we nd ourselves able to re ect on what we are doing when we cart objects away and place them in museum cases, appear not so much in the foreground of our moral landscape as in the frame which lets objects appear for us in light of them. To pose questions about the moral salience of items of cultural heritage is, perhaps, to invite ourselves to consider them together under this category and at length to discover in what ways this lets us identify value in their interrelationshipsor, to put it another way, in the network within which they cluster together as aspects of culture. There is still a role for testimony and expertise, for as I said above, actions must be interpreted; and this goes for actions which are themselves interpretative. When we ask what practices of cultural construction and recombination and appreciation exist amongst the members of a cultural group when we walk, for example, through the galleries of a museum and understand ourselves to be strolling through applied historical epistemology, itself already in the course of posing questions such as ours we shall of course need guidance as much as we ever did; but we shall understand 14Janna Thompson has previously drawn a link in the opposite direction, suggesting that some environmental phenomena may qualify as cultural heritage and for that reason warrant ethical concern (Thompson, 2000). 194 12.6. But Whom Shall We Call? this guidance to be closer to the hermeneutician's than to the pollster's. The arrangement of an exhibition facilitates certain conversations, much as geometry of a legislative chamber, for example, subtly in uences the kind of debates that can take place within it and so is `not silent relative to our moral epistemologies' (Preston, 2009, p. 178); but inevitably they remain conversations rather than utter promulgations, dialogues without foregone conclusions. You might be forgiven for nding such a conclusion disappointing, especially when we begin to wonder whether in appealing to (this time) curatorial expertise we have smuggled in an eyebrow-hoisting élitism, or for that matter whether we have once again failed to establish what to do when two institutions seem to have been set up to encourage diering responses. The New Acropolis Museum in Athens, `a kind of polemic in glass and concrete, conceived as an argument by the Greek government to bid for the return of the Elgin [M]arbles' (Lacayo, 2007), invites outright contrast in its agenda with the encyclopaedic aspirations of `universal museums' (in particular the British Museum, the Marbles' current possessor) and their `collections meant to represent the world's diversity, [whose curators] organize and classify that diversity' (Cuno, 2008, p. 140). The wrangling over the Marbles' fate cannot but be vastly more political than epistemic. These are genuine concerns, and only a fuller and lengthier treatment of museological themes could lay them wholly to rest;15 but as philosophers we know at least that dialectical conversations need not be unenlightening. Well, then: given that any sophisticated culture (which is practically to say, anything we can recognise as a culture) will contain re ective people who no doubt already have been long devising forms of appreciation for the heritage of the culture within which they exist (whether or not they know it by the name of `heritage'), can't we still just parachute in our pollsters, our interviewers and our observers for a weekend check of the local temperature, relying on precisely that re ective sophistication and sensitivity of our hosts to have already mapped the paths to the information we desire? (If the map is still markedly incomplete, on the other hand, should that not give us grounds to consider our scepticism reinforced?) We can indeed talk about the ethics of cultural heritage, and we can no doubt make use of the concept of value within it; but when it comes to holding up individual objects or isolated practices and enquiring after the value of each single one as cultural heritage without great contextual sensitivity, and when it comes to seeking answers which we cultural outsiders can readily absorb and bolt onto our moral philosophies, we shall continue to face the various di culties noted in the previous sections. 15I should reiterate, however, that I am treating museums merely as an example of such kinds of epistemic practice; other kinds may be less institutional. 195 12. Testimony and Authority In Clarice, however, the very act of organising objects as museum pieces is an epistemic one, not only in the narrow sense that a museum facilitates learning things, but as a window onto a lost past and therefore onto the very possibility of a heritage for the city. If the practices through which we approach our and others' cultural heritage resemble those of imaginary Clarice, so that the things we do with museum pieces and monuments and all the other things we might place under the grand heading of `cultural heritage' turn out to be bound together in what are already partly epistemic activities, then what we might do in probing after knowledge of the value of that heritage turns out to be what might best be thought of as moral meta-epistemology: a complementary scheme of epistemological enquiry which is capable of standing back and understanding the pursuit itself as a collection of practices embedded into and contributing to one culture or another. It may indeed be that what we do when we pay our care and our attention is already inclined in this direction. Philosophical re ection oers a vantage point which promises to be at once respectful of the particularities of every such activity, as it makes its exploration into history or art or theology or any other matter, and capable of interpreting these practices as aspects of an enquiry into ethical knowledge about a culture and its heritage. It is in this direction, then, that I tentatively suggest development of a robust moral epistemology for cultural heritage ethics might turn. Treating the practical epistemic explorations which such a scheme would complement as themselves culturally embedded need not commit me to the view that there are no objective matters of fact, t for universal recognition, about which are the items that possess value for a given culture. Neither does it obviously prevent us from asking how much value something has for a culture; we shall have to expect answers which are often intricate and heavily contextualised, and yes open to contestation and reconsideration, but nobody, I imagine, has ever really asked such a question in anticipation of a response given in points out of ten. Items invariably turn out to be `unique in certain respects, and valuable for certain purposes' (Coningham, Cooper and Pollard, 2006, p. 261). As an approach to moral epistemology for the ethics of cultural heritage this does at least suggest an answer to the question of whether the former Afghan government or the Afghan museum curators had the greater authority to judge what was valuable for Afghan cultural heritage: we ask, in the rst place, which party was engaged in the more thoroughly, sincerely and humbly epistemic, enquiring practice, and we have good reason to favour the curators by default. 196 13. The Mysterious In Heritage Ignorance, though allegedly identi able with bliss, is seldom advertised as a repository of value; but mystery and the unknown have another avour, and ancient mystery a powerful attraction. What the historian or archaeologist perceives as a gap in knowledge yet un lled, to another cast of mind may be wondrous just because it is unfathomed. Though science (in the broadest sense) has wonder of its own, and philosophy need hardly unweave rainbows, we cannot brush aside the claim of mystery to gure as a good; and if the quest for knowledge which lled the previous chapter does not exhaust the ways in which we may nd ourselves approaching cultural heritage, then we had better be prepared to tell a still more intricate story. Yet if the mystery to which we are receptive is indeed a good then it is one unlike any other, wildly unyielding to the taxonomic tools which uncover intrinsic value and instrumental value and so on. What exactly is it, after all, in which we uncover the mysterious and which we might therefore take to be a candidate for inclusion in our moral economy? Mystery, at least in David Cooper's view of it, `cannot already be invested with an all-too-human ontology of things' (Cooper, 2002, p. 285). It seems, certainly, that we can after some fashion locate mystery, acknowledging that we have found ourselves in its presence if we are suitably attuned, as in Rudolf Otto's theological re ections on the holy: Let us follow it up... wherever it is to be found, in the lives of those around us, in sudden, strong ebullitions of personal piety and the frames of mind such ebullitions evince, in the xed and ordered solemnities of rites and liturgies, and again in the atmosphere that clings to old religious monuments and buildings, to temples and to churches. If we do so we shall nd we are dealing with something for which there is only one appropriate expression, mysterium tremendum. The feeling of it may at times come sweeping like a gentle tide, pervading the mind with a tranquil mood of deepest worship. It may pass over into a more set and lasting attitude of the soul, continuing, as it were, thrillingly vibrant and resonant, until at last it dies away and the soul resumes its `profane', non-religious mood of everyday experience. It may burst in sudden eruption up from the depths of the soul with spasms and 197 13. The Mysterious In Heritage convulsions, or lead to the strangest excitements, to intoxicated frenzy, to transport, and to ecstasy. It has its wild and demonic forms and can sink to barbaric antecedents and early manifestations, and again it may be developed into something beautiful and pure and glorious. It may become the hushed, trembling and speechless humility of the creature in the face ofwhom or what? In the presence of that which is a Mystery inexpressible and above all creatures. (Otto, 1923, pp. 12-13) For Otto, indeed, mythologies and even ghost stories are explicable as oshoots of this responsiveness to mystery (ibid., pp. 15 & 16). It is unlikely to prove easy to take account in a piece of moral philosophy of `the atmosphere that clings to old religious monuments and buildings, to temples and to churches', but if we aim to take cultural environments seriously in the course of constructing an ethics of cultural heritage then there is little prospect of escape. In the next chapter I shall have some more general remarks to make about what is involved in experiences of encountering heritage, particularly where the presence of history makes itself felt; in the present chapter, with the last one's re ections on moral epistemology still fresh in memory, I should like to address the question of what we are to do when we begin to suspect that sometimes what is most valuable in an item of heritage may lie in what we do not and perhaps cannot know about it. I have suggested in Chapter 12 that we have a decidedly slippery branch of moral epistemology on our hands. I now wish to confess that I understated the di culties. The problem is not merely one of getting our hands on this knowledge, but of seeking to do so precisely where mystery, the very veiling and shadowing of clear and crisp nuggets of knowledge, may manifest itself not as the kind of problem we can aord to eradicate, but as a source of value in its own right. In many of its aspects this theme of mystery is a well churned battle eld, and it is not for me to add another volley to the famous clashes of secular and sacred, or of supposedly mystical Orient and soi-disant rational West. It would indeed be strange to do so, when it is hardly sun-worshippers alone whom Stonehenge draws to gaze on the circle of ancient standing stones which `has stood on Salisbury Plain for thousands of years, evocative and enigmatic, arousing awe and wonder in each generation that has gazed upon it' (Stonehenge Visitor Centre website, emphasis mine). Rather, I propose to talk about the challenge for moral epistemology which we must face when we take seriously our human openness to the mysterious, and when we nd that we must render it commensurate with our practical ethical decisions as beings living within cultures. We know already, of course, how to talk about Stonehenge as a thing which we value after an antiquarian fashion: we say that it is a piece of heritage, or even (if we are in a legalistic frame of mind) 198 13.1. Is There a Special Problem of Mystery? that it is an item of Britain's cultural property. We want to know how this thing called heritage might nd a place within our ethical lives, but mystery by its nature resists interrogation; or rather, it invites it without end. The true meaning of this ancient, awe-inspiring creation has been lost in the mists of time. Was it a temple for sun worship, a healing centre, a burial site or perhaps a huge calendar? How did our ancestors manage to carry the mighty stones from so far away and then, using only the most primitive of tools, build this amazing structure? Surrounded by mystery, Stonehenge never fails to impress. (English Heritage website) 13.1. Is There a Special Problem of Mystery? Taking account of archaeological knowledge in our moral philosophies is problematic enough, when the interpretative authority of scholars may nd itself contested (Cooper, 2006b); and it is not only in antiquarian surroundings that we may nd ourselves seeking an appreciation of the mysterious. According to Cooper, mystery may also be found in that most domestic and quotidian branch of culture, horticulture: `The Garden, to put it portentously, is an epiphany of man's relationship to mystery. This relationship is its meaning.' (Cooper, 2006a, p. 145) I must acknowledge, as I tiptoe around the edges of this topic of mystery, that we have probably even less hope of isolating a class of mysterious items than we have of listing the world's historically interesting things. There are, of course, a great many identi able mysteries in the sense that there are many known gaps in our knowledge: the fate of Lord Lucan, for example. The fact of his disappearance leaves us mysti ed (already in the wake of a `murder mystery', moreover), but without a sense of mystery, and it would be no loss to us to gain knowledge of what happened. Not all such gaps in our knowledge are mysteries of this purely epistemic sort. The `Voynich Manuscript' has come to be styled the world's most mysterious manuscript not only because its text has thus far resisted all attempts at decipherment,1 but also because of the perplexity engendered by its illustrations, which include strange balneological scenes involving `nymphs' apparently caught up in bulbous, organic plumbing. A meaningful interpretation of the text would it is hoped explain these images, along with the unidenti able plants and the manuscript's other peculiarities; but it is conceivable that something, particularly in the aesthetic experience of looking at the manuscript, would evaporate with the dawn of understanding. 1Some ancient scripts, such as Linear B and Egyptian Hieroglyphics, have undergone decipherment in which mystery has been traded for knowledge. 199 13. The Mysterious In Heritage Other manifestations of the mysterious have little to do with puzzlement. No amount of theological exposition is guaranteed to detract from the sacred mystery of Otto's monuments and churches; and archaeological and astronomical investigations into Stonehenge have done little to dispel the enigmatic aura of the ancient site. In the former case, one who believes that the `Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath prepared for them that love him' (1 Cor 2:9, K.J.V.) will not expect that here there is a puzzle which can be fathomed. In the latter, though we may not approach the site as a sacred one, its very antiquity marks it as a solemn survivor of a vastly distant age. When items of our cultural heritage are thus mysterious, what are we to conclude? As the previous chapter ended by observing, we face ample enough di culties, and cannot hope for exact and accountant-like answers, when we have to enquire after something's value in light of its contribution to history, to art, and so on. Perhaps it ought not to faze us when we additionally realise that we shall not be neatly folding our Lord Almighty and Heavenly Father into our framework for heritage ethics this afternoon, or when we recall that in reading the list of names inscribed upon some village war memorial we are not merely enjoying some helpful soul's contribution to public information, but nding ourselves invited to open ourselves up to meditations on death, on sacri ce, on gratitude and more. The sacred, in particular, may well seem to resist being treated as `just' another category, and that is a di culty to which I shall return in the nal chapter; but for now my anxiety is simply that in having to grapple with mystery in our evaluations of cultural items we run the risk of attempting, in the well worn formula, to e the ineable. Indeed, someone might reply, and no less so when you talk about the beauty of the Yorkshire Moors, or a sense of belonging engendered by participation in a traditional festival. It is true, the critic might continue, that mystery resists even a basic taxonomy, in that we might be taken aback if asked to compare (for example) the mystery of Stonehenge to the mystery of the Pyramids of Egypt; but again our ordinary manner of talking about beauty makes it clearly a partner in crime, and we are happy enough to talk about the beauty of a ower, of a sunset, of a face, of an act of kindness. Just what, then, is so special about mystery? There are tempting lines of response to the approximate eect that mystery owes less to sensuous experience (or its debt is less direct); that accordingly it looks less open to explanation even partly grounded in terms of natural properties, so that whereas we should expect somebody's account of the beauty of a painting to dwell on colour and the like, we might be surprised if a discourse on mystery took the same course;2 and in consequence that even attempting a supervenience-based account 2In practice, matters will tend to be more nuanced. If we are of the view, for example, 200 13.1. Is There a Special Problem of Mystery? of mystery might well look like an arti cial rei cation for the purposes of a naïve reductionism. I think that there is something to be said for such a strategy, but I fear that it might stumble headlong towards what might be styled the autonomy of mystery, in which mystery not only serves no further end (plausibly true) but stands quite distinct and even estranged from other domains of human experience (plausibly false). We shall not rashly wish to claim, I suspect, that there is after all no very signi cant link between the mysterious and the aesthetic, or religious mystery and other elements of a religious life. We must indeed recall that mystery may be a quite quotidian aair, whose frequent insinuation into everyday goings on ought to be compatible with any putative account of it. As I noted above, according to Cooper even the humble enjoyment of a garden may bring us into contact with the mysterious; according to Otto, the ghost story is its oshoot. Clearly not every encounter with mystery is signalled by involuntary shudders (for who wishes a garden to be uncanny?), and not every one invites attitudes of reverence or solemnity. Even so, presumably not every situation has mysterious aspects, since otherwise there would be no distinctive phenomenon of mystery to talk about. (It is presumably easier to open oneself to mystery in some settings than in others: try feeling mystical during an exam, or while dodging drunks on a Saturday night.) No doubt we nd ourselves emotionally moved by mystery when a sense of it comes upon us; someone who claimed straightforwardly to perceive mystery, as though it were simply a feature of certain situations which was reliably there to be noticed by the observant critic, might strike us as a rather alien sort, or at least one falling short of the fullest appreciation of experiences which, as Otto puts it, `may burst in sudden eruption' upon those receptive to them. Yet this too, after all, is a feature of many and varied situations: many things move us to emotion, and the emotions are called passions for a reason.3 Mystery may occupy some special place in our experiences, but that place is one which is troublesomely tricky to pin down for my present purposes; we cannot, after all, go out to a mystery that mathematics belongs to a scienti c or rationalistic compartment in our thoughts, or simply one which is ruled by the exactness of accountants, then we may be happy to grant that it would be an odd soul who thought that the mystery of Stonehenge emerged from its geometric properties. If, on the other hand, we nd ourselves sympathetic to any of the various traditions, going back at least as far as the Pythagoreans, in which the mathematical and the mystical are interlinked, then our surprise might well be rather less. We must acknowledge, at the least, that the shape of Stonehenge is not wholly irrelevant; but we must also recall that both erosion and human intervention have in uenced that shape over time. 3The reason being that it often feels to us as though we are passive in the face of profound emotion; I do not intend accidentally to discount the sort of voluntarist account of emotion which appears in the early Sartre and subsequently in the writings of Robert Solomon. 201 13. The Mysterious In Heritage gallery to look at exhibited enigmata, and if we headed out even onto the Salisbury Plain (on a mystery tour, perhaps) with the attitude of a botanist or a butter ycatcher, I suspect that that very attitude would ensure that we caught no mysteries. We can talk about mysterious places or mysterious artefacts, but it is quite another matter to establish quite what makes them so. What then might a distinctive problem of mystery look like, if it is tricky to say much more than that some items of cultural heritage are mysterious (and that this may contribute to their value)? I suggest that the problem of mystery lies precisely in the fact that we cannot investigate mystery, which will seep out of our hands if we snatch at it, in the ways in which we might approach an interrogation of historical sources, for example. This may not look as though it ought to be a particularly awkward problem for me, because my account of cultural heritage as a repository of value is set up to emphasise the variously networked associations between cultural items, and we can say that mystery emerges in the writings of one or another mystic, which were commented on by some other writer, &c. However, as I took some pains to suggest in 10.2, evaluation is not purely a matter of measuring cultural activity without needing to consider what a cultural item is or what it signi es. On the contrary, I said, heritage and the cultural re ection which it can involve are altogether bound up with the ways in which we categorise the world; and it is here that mystery looks conspicuously awkward, for what could t less readily than the mysterious into crisply categorical thinking? Of course, we can talk about mysterious places, events, phenomena, experiences, &c. and clearly in doing so we are talking in categorical terms; but what we accomplish in so doing is not so much the development of a way of carving up the world as the delineation of an aspect of the world which resists the ready application of conceptual thought altogether. Now it is true, of course, that in spite of all that a great deal has been said and written both about mystery in general and about speci c mysteries. We can point to clusters of cultural items surrounding mysteries even when we admittedly can barely grasp what lies at the heart of them. Consequently it may be tempting to treat mystery like phlogiston: a genuine aspect of culture, in history and formerly in science, even though the thing itself is inaccessible (in the case of phlogiston, because it never existed in the rst place). Yet phlogiston is within our conceptual grasp; we know that no phlogiston has ever appeared in the experimental investigation of combustion precisely by virtue of being able to tell what it would take for a substance to answer to the description of phlogiston. Mystery is not like this, and in consequence we face the daunting task of trying to reckon the cultural value of writings and other creations which concern mystery without having any secure 202 13.2. Is There a Special Solution? and con dent grasp of what it is that they are about. If we tried to examine, for example, the culture of string theorists and to appraise their papers and conferences as cultural items without having the slightest grasp of what their contribution was to physics; or if we attempted to evaluate the contribution to their culture of the Balagtasan debating poets of the Philippines while possessing only a rudimentary comprehension of Tagalog poetics; or (heaven forfend) if someone sought to lay down the law concerning the contributions of philosophy to our heritage whilst armed only with a brace of Very Short Introductionsany conclusions might be felt to be not automatically credible. In these cases expertise is required not for the reasons considered in Chapter 12, but simply because many subjects are di cult and sometimes obscure or unfamiliar; and mystery oers a similar clutch of di culties without the comforting thought that there exists an obviously corresponding branch of expertise on which we might draw. 13.2. Is There a Special Solution? Mystery, then, is distinctively awkward. That said, I concluded Chapter 12 with the observation that nobody expects re ection on the value of items of cultural heritage to produce numerical scores; this is a region of moral epistemology in which there are not only no formulaic or straightforward answers but also few prospects of reaching conclusions in disciplinary isolation.4 If this is what awaits us whatever aspects of cultural heritage we aspire to investigate, does mystery pose so special a problem that it demands a special solution? If it does, is there any special treatment with which we might meet this demand? I think the answer to the rst question is, again, that even our most re ned investigative practices run into trouble when up against the mysterious: our interventions will either annihilate mystery or leave it untouched. Someone who learns that the layout of Stonehenge is partly a product of modern human intervention may never again be quite able to feel a sense of mystery when looking upon the ancient stones; someone else may remain as open to the monument's mystery as before; but in neither case have we reason to think that the act of arrangement has helped anybody to penetrate into this mystery in anything akin to the ways in which the arrangement of objects in a museum or art gallery might aim in the direction of visitors' enlightenment. If there are things which are not to be looked at steadily the Duc de la Rochefoucauld listed death and the sun then mystery enjoys an impeccable candidacy, and this rather confounds any hope that walking 4Here, too, mystery may prove especially inconvenient; it may be possible to experience a shared encounter with mystery, perhaps even as part of a cenobitic life of mysticism, but any suggestion of a shared research project may look like a taller order. 203 13. The Mysterious In Heritage among ancient standing stones could be, as I said in 12.6 of strolling through the galleries of a museum, a tour of `applied historical epistemology'. Mystery may cling to objects with a tenacity which survives transition to a museum, but our ability to investigate objects which are mysterious, though perhaps it can destroy one mystery or another, or put it beyond our reach, has a doubtful claim to insight into mystery itself, especially if our investigations are to be bounded by a particular concern for cultural heritage. Whether or not we have an anthropological sense of `culture' particularly in mind, what we mean must be human culture and accordingly will not be easily reconciled with any gesture towards something `beyond the human'. Those last four words will... be taken as indicating what is beyond conceptualization and articulation: the ineable or mysterious, in eect. [By implication they are] referring to what, if anything, lies beyond human practices, purposes, perspectives, evaluations and whatever else constitutes our distinctively human existence. [This existence can be] answerable to what lies beyond such practices etc., beyond in eect the form or forms of human life. (Cooper, 2005b, p. 127) So, whatever are we going to do about it? Well, rstly, we can take heart from the fact that on my holistic account, the value of cultural heritage is in general only derivatively to be found vested in particular objects, ideas and practices; since we are already dealing with value which manifests itself amidst the intricate interactions of networks of cultural items, the refusal of mystery to be readily tied down for evaluation as the mystery of something in particular need not come as an utter shock. If we can be relaxed about not being quite able to say where the boundaries of a historic landscape might be (though we con dently think it beautiful), or what precisely constitutes the setting of a historic building (though we remain keen to preserve it in its setting), then it need not greatly alarm us that sometimes we can say little more about the role of mystery in making particular cultural items what they are than that mystery `clings', for example, to Otto's old religious buildings. The resistance of mystery, indeed, need not count entirely as a negative aspect thereof. In a way it too signals something which is more weakly manifest in cultural heritage more broadly, and which I have at times sought to indicate by drawing a comparison with ecological ethics: that despite being thoroughly human cultural heritage it escapes sheer human whim as soon as it comes into being, and may indeed outlast the civilisations which created it. Cultural heritage, in its way, resists human caprice; and sometimes (and not infrequently when we encounter the remnants of those dead civilisations) it so resists even our epistemic practices that we are left with feelings of utter mystery. 204 13.2. Is There a Special Solution? It is at this point that I think we had better frankly admit the limitations of `value' as a conceptual tool in moral philosophy, and turn again to patiency. I noted in 11.2 that calculated evaluations may not strike us as greatly helpful when we are forced to choose, say, between saving two human lives; yet even though we cannot peer into the minute inward workings of a human soul and act as though sitting in divine judgment, moral philosophers have on the whole not given up hope that philosophical guidance can help us to make choices with the limited information we can possess. We cannot forget that there is more to an individual human life than a set of rights or virtues or felici c contributions; and we cannot forget that there is more to Stonehenge than some historically diverting architecture; but in neither case need we be prevented from proceeding on the basis of what we can know and express. How then to proceed, when asked what should be done with a cultural item where heritage touches mystery? We can scarcely hope, I think, to address mystery itself as though, where x is a cultural item, `the mystery surrounding x ' might count as another cultural item. Instead, then, we must contrive to note those cases in which mystery clings to cultural items, and consider those items in the light of their mysterious characteristics, in eect acknowledging that they possess a concealed dimension which we cannot adequately grasp.5 At the same time we must bear in mind that this dimension is not completely concealed; if it were we could hardly know about it, and it would be wholly detached from human culture. If we cannot very readily investigate a given case of mystery in the manner of a research project, then any grip we might manage to get on it will presumably come not through detached and disinterested intellectual scrutiny but through the passionate, emotional engagement of people with their heritage; and it is to this, the matter of what is involved in encounters with cultural heritage, that I turn in the next chapter. 5I return to the religious aspects of this theme in Chapter 17.
. Encounters With Heritage When talking in general terms about culture and cultures and cultural items, it is easy to nd oneself thoroughly adopting a stance of critical or anthropological detachment. In many cases, and in some ways, this is bene cial, helping those trying to navigate what is sometimes a deeply emotive subject area to evade the temptation of political tantrums; and frequently we must simply acquaint ourselves with controversies over heritage without ourselves feeling any of the yearnings and grievances which they may involve, nding ourselves heavily reliant on the testimony of others (see Chapter 12 above). Yet it can hardly escape our attention that to belong to a culture is not a purely intellectual endeavour, and that encountering both our own and our neighbours' cultural heritage is sometimes a matter of profound emotion. I do not mean merely that cultural items may elicit feelings of approval or disapproval. No doubt the contributions of cultural items to human happiness (and sorrow) are among those human interests which we ought to take into account; but it is not distinctively interesting to note that culture may feature in utilitarian calculations. Neither am I especially concerned in this chapter with the deeper and more exact ways in which culture may be thought to contribute to human wellbeing: by supporting self-respect, community, autonomy and so on.1 I mean rather that there are forms, or perhaps aspects, of engagement with cultural heritage which demand special attention not for the knowledge which they bring to either expert or layman, or purely for the sensuous or sentimental experiences their aesthetics may occasion, but particularly for the possibility which they open up not merely of perceiving or observing or investigating cultural items but of encountering culture as something to live with. The bulk of anybody's involvement with culture is made up of engaged, everyday, often tacit involvement in what are sometimes called forms of lifeand moreover, it is not only in stepping back for the sake of science or criticism or indeed moral and philosophical re ection that we nd ourselves being jerked out of that most central of cultural practices, the act of going about our daily business. Other phenomena are involved when we stand in awe, as in the previous chapter, at the sheer enigmatic antiquity of Stonehenge; or when we open some antique volume 1Recall, for example, Sarah Harding's discussion of heritage and the good life, as described in 8.2. 207 14. Encounters With Heritage among the library stacks and feel as though we have entered into conversation with our precursors; or when we participate in even the most minor of ways in some local tradition, and feel that in so doing we reinforce a sense that we belong to the locality and its community, whether we are continuous residents or `returning to our roots' or newly arrived and welcomed.2 What are we supposed to make, for example, of a sense of belonging? (Can we insert it directly into our value taxonomy: `communitarian value', or something of that nature? We should remember before we try that people are not always glad to belong where they feel they do.) What I principally want to note is that our experience is not one of forming the belief that we belong somewhere, and consequently developing proprietorial feelings towards that place's heritage. That of course can happen, but it is not the experience I have presently in mind. On the contrary, it is through an encounter with this cultural heritage which we believe to be ours that the feeling of belonging emerges. We go to the festival; we open the old ledger; we tour the stately home (provided we are not treating it purely and merely as entertainment, on a par with channel hopping); but there is an element of dependency in feeling that we are participating in things which are wider and inscrutably older than ourselves. 14.1. The Presence of History Here, heritage emerges not as an instrument by means of which we acquire valuable experiences, but something through which we are confronted by our place in the wider world. This is perhaps most clearly evident in attitudes towards history. Of course, even the work of academic historians is not exhausted by dispassionate theorising about how and why things happened as they did: when someone judges that landowners mistreated their tenants during the Irish Potato Famine, for example, or indeed that historical gures ought to be judged by the standards of the times in which they lived, that person is clearly concerned with history and historical evidence, but the matters most critical to the judgment are normative ones and in 2Guests in the locality will of course experience a dierent form of welcome and dierent feelings. I assume for simplicity's sake that feelings of this sort are not easily mistaken, though of course it may happen that people come to revise their beliefs about where they belong. Certainly our knowledge of ourselves and of how we t in amongst other people can be deeply awed: if we can make mistakes about whether we are boring our present company or whether we can rely on those we consider our friends, perhaps we can also be mistaken in our sense of belonging. Similarly, the realisation that one has misjudged somebody is a commonplace experience; maybe, then, we can be mistaken in our sense of whether somebody is fully `one of us'. (There may also be a normative aspect to such deliberations: do people who have lived in a neighbourhood for ve years therefore deserve to be considered locals, for example?) 208 14.1. The Presence of History some respects moral ones. From here it is quite a short step to wondering how much we inherit of both ancestral glory and ancestral guilt, since after all the past conduct of those with whom we associate ourselves is frequently not a matter of fact from which we can readily detach ourselves; regrettably, grudges can be heritage too. This in turn has its eects on what it means to encounter remnants of the ancestral past. In 13.1 I brie y used the example of coming upon a war memorial, the historic importance of which is that it records the names of `our glorious dead' not so much in order to inform the public as to act as part of public memory, as a proclamation and a focus for common re ection. (Indeed, public monuments tend, inevitably, to be in some respects political: their existence re ects political priorities concerning the organisation of public space and the distribution of public funds.) Such a monument, of course, is still constrained by strict demands of accuracy: imagine the reaction if one of the recorded names had been found to be misspelt. In partial contrast, perhaps there are aspects of cultural heritage which are subject to less stringent requirements of exacting veridicality: what we might call the legendarian. Commenting on Alois Riegl's addition of `age-value' to the other kinds of value ascribed to monuments, so that their very signs of visible aging and decay create a potential for impact on the observer, Stephen Bann remarks that `the poets, novelists and indeed historians who were tinged by the antiquarian sensibility were able to carry their intuitions further by articulating new, colourful, dramatic narratives of the hitherto neglected past' (Bann, 1990, p. 131). Colour and drama need in no way entail historical ction; but to poets we ascribe poetic licence, and in general we do not necessarily place stringent demands of accuracy on a hagiography or an elegy. The legendarian objective is not so much knowledge qua enterprise of fact-collection and the cultivation of theoretical understanding, but more of an engagement with or involvement in the past, and often speci cally and signi cantly in one's own past: sometimes making our folk heroes and villains present to us, sometimes laying our collective ghosts to rest. Commenting on Alexander Etkind's discussion of cultural recollection (Etkind, 2009), Eli Zaretsky contends that `there are two dierent ways to understand memory: the rst conceives of memory as the recollection of an event, the other insists that the act of remembering is not completed until the event is situated into a meaningful, coherent narrative, one that is constantly changing in response to changes in memory...' (Zaretsky, 2009, p. 201) Collective memory, for Zaretsky, means not merely commemoration but the establishment of `meaningful narrative[s]' (ibid., p. 203). Whatever it exactly means to engage in remembrance in this sense, the aim in representation of the past is not so much simply to know history as a body of factual knowledge as to come to terms with it: Etkind's `cultural 209 14. Encounters With Heritage memory' embedded in our surroundings `multiple types of signi ers: from memoirs to memorials; from historical studies to historical novels; from family albums to museums and archives; from folk songs to lms to [the I]nternet' (Etkind, 2009, p. 189) is accordingly not only a source of information about the past but moreover a collection of ongoing practices of commemoration. What resides in historical records and other sources, then, is not merely information in its thoroughly dry and truth-apt sense, but more broadly material for the assemblage of historical imagery. A legendarian approach to historiography will of course be constrained by the expectation that its treatments of history be they elegiac, hagiographic, epic, tragic or whatever else will in outline re ect the way things came to pass,3 and as such it can be concerned to re ect truths, but broadly so, taking an interest in `the historical, scienti c, cultural and aesthetic truth that [an] object and its context can provide' (John Merryman, quoted in Gillman, 2006, p. 30). Bann again (1990, p. 102, this time commenting on Nietzsche's The Use and Abuse of History for Life): `The antiquarian attitude is not an imperfect approximation to something elsewhich would be the maturity of scienti c, professionalised historiography. It is a speci c, lived relationship to the past, and deserves to be treated on its own terms.' The legendarian attitude is perhaps likewise such a `lived relationship'. `For the traditionalist,' Avishai Margalit writes in the related context of inherited remembrance, `the [collective] memory itself matters a great deal, while its veracity counts for less.' (Margalit, 2002, p. 61) Such lived relationships can at times be fraught, and the past can prove a di cult thing to manage. Sticking fairly close to home in considering how past events may cast long and discomforting shadows, to avoid having to deal with the complication that cultures markedly unlike ours might incorporate likewise dissimilar historiographies, we have the recent example of the Bavarian State government's attempts to prevent the reprinting of items of Nazi propaganda by the British publisher Peter McGee as part of his Zeitungszeugen series of facsimiles. Glossing over the legal details Bavaria attempts to use copyright law to restrict the circulation of (unannotated) Nazi propaganda, having taken possession of the publication rights after the War we can see two divergent attitudes towards the same area of historical knowledge and study emerging. The Bavarian government has an interest in preventing certain malignant aspects of the mid-20th Century from seeping back into the present: it has engaged in a kind of appropriation of the past (in a more direct sense than that suggested by Germany's usual restrictions of Nazi material in its Criminal Code) in order to keep it at bay. Other parties to the 3In contrast, the narrative genre of historical ction is constrained more by historical plausibility: the setting requires verisimilitude, but the plot need barely even be inspired by real events. 210 14.1. The Presence of History dispute regard publication as educational and `scienti c' (Moore, 2009): as a matter of making information publicly accessible. In part, this falls into the usual template of anticipated `media eects' versus freedom of information and scholarship; but it also re ects dierent ways of treating the historical information available (or not) in propaganda documents. Here is a possible interpretation: the Bavarian government is in the position of needing to facilitate a kind of `safe' popular relationship with the Nazi era that permits soul-searching (and scholarship) while at the same time rmly dissociating it from present-day German culture. Consequently it nds itself acting as a kind of historical gamekeeper, and gatekeeper: its moral stance towards German history takes priority over its interests in historical scholarship. An educational publisher, on the other hand, will not necessarily take an amoral stance towards history, but will be engaged rst and foremost in the enterprise of looking at historical evidence and presenting it for public examination. For the one, the material and written heritage of the Nazi era forms part of a political narrative of de-Nazi cation and emancipation from the legacy of the period; for the other, that very same heritage represents an object of study and analysis. Thus a great deal of what we do with history not only diverges from the practices and priorities of historical scholarship but on occasion may come to practical blows with them. There is indeed a profound normative question of what ought to be kept alive in popular memory and what may safely be left to the attention of academic specialists, and of what treatment is due to each member of the former class: nobody commemorates what took place at Senlac Hill (though schoolchildren are certainly expected to learn about 1066) in quite the way in which we commemorate the Armistice. Margalit even suggests that remembrance amongst a collectivity can be a loosely networked phenomenon in which memory is shared through a division of labour, thereby nding echoes in my own use of the idea of a network in conceptualising culture: A young man I met in Prague knew vaguely that something awful and sinister happened in Lidice during the war, but he didn't quite remember which war and what exactly happened. What happened was a retaliatory massacre of the male residents of Lidice after the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, the Nazi governor in Prague, by the Czech underground. This young man, however, is plugged into networks of shared memories that can ll in the missing information. It is less likely, though, that he is plugged into a network that can ll in the details of the retaliatory massacres by the Nazis at roughly the same period in 211 14. Encounters With Heritage Oradour-sur-Glane, France, or Puten, Holland. (Margalit, 2002, pp. 545) In ceremonies of remembrance, in shared classroom curricula, or in amorphous networks of shared memory, history makes its presence felt. It is precisely this power which in rather dierent ways impresses both the Bavarian State, which would like to keep recollection of the Nazi era on a short leash, and James Cuno, in whose eyes political interference in historical narratives is an unnerving prospect. Sartre remarks with typical cynicism that narratives of the past are created `in order to gain the adherence of the masses... [who in turn] demand a political project which illuminates and justi es their past' (Sartre, 2003, pp. 521-2). History is an entanglement, a hereditary predicament interpreted and reinterpreted and argued over in a multitude of moral and political lights. 14.2. The Cultural Entanglement It is not uniquely true of its historical aspects that culture is in many ways a predicament which reaches metaphorically out to wrap its tendrils around us; it is no doubt wholly possible to make a conscious decision to `integrate' into a cultural group, but it is also possible to nd that one has `gone native', and that is always how we nd ourselves belonging to the cultures into which we are born. I am not about to attempt a phenomenology of cultural belonging; it would be immensely di cult, and perhaps sheer folly, to attempt such a thing as though `what it is like to understand oneself be an x ' must conform to the same general template whether x happens to be `Enlightenment metaphysician' or `Tom Lehrer fan' or `12th Century Chinese farmer' or whatever else. It hardly follows, however, that we are licensed to pretend that all these experiences are merely secondary to culture, and therefore of limited importance until we seek to weigh up the sort of human interests considered in Chapter 11. We are participants in culture and cultures. Certainly there are cultural items, most obviously material objects, which may persist as such, out of sight and mind alike at the back of some drawer, and nevertheless in some small way part of culture (not least through membership of the category `things lurking in the recesses of drawers', when many of our homes abound with forgotten clutter). Certainly, it is possible to reify and talk in abstract terms about all manner of practices and behavioural traits without being much obliged to give thought to what it is to live with them: manners, nervous habits, mental disorders, dialects, gestures, and so on. Nevertheless, insofar as a culture (or more precisely what is sometimes styled a `living' culture) is something in which people participate and to 212 14.2. The Cultural Entanglement which people belong, their experiences of this participation are, if not parts of their culture (recall Chapter 5), at least deeply involved therein. What then are we (within our limitations) to say about such experiences? (The choicest-looking examples, after all, may well prove on closer examination to be the exceptional cases, much as the atmosphere in which we live and breathe is always most noticeable when the weather is chokingly humid or the cold wind is biting, though this atmosphere is no less present at any other moment in our lives.) Perhaps we should ask instead what must befall a moral philosopher who hopes to set such matters aside. You might think that I would be the best placed to be that philosopher, since it is my declared project to construe cultural heritage as a moral patient in its own right, and since it is I who thought that `Heritage and Human Interests' would make a nice title for a single chapter (Chapter 11) of this document. That may be sobut I am also the philosopher who thought it worthwhile to include an entire section (2.3) on fan cultures; clearly I do not think that culture is on the whole a spectators' sport. There is no need for me to detach culture wholly from human individuals, any more than environmental ethics must construe `the environment' or `nature' or `the natural world' as though humans belonged to the altogether unnatural. What then would be lacking if I paid no great attention to the experiential aspects of belonging to cultures? More speci cally, what would impede my attempts to produce a framework for so thinking about the ethics of cultural heritage as to be moving in the direction of moral illumination? What we would lose, I think, is a sense of cultural heritage not only as something which is physically or abstractly there for us to notice (when we stumble upon some dilapidated old building, or a plough turns up some ancient coins, or we catch ourselves humming along to some nostalgic tune on the radio), but as something to which we can be attuned (or not) and which can exert a pull on us (if we are prepared to respond). We cannot suppose, for example, that the experience of the Amish youth deciding whether he will make a life for himself among the pre-electrical technologies of the Amish community, or whether out in the world beyond, amounts to a choice between certain pros and cons, with his self standing equally aloof from both. The predicament is one of deciding how to respond to one culture which already has a grip on him, and to another which is possibly beckoning, possibly indierent. True, one generally cannot (without bathos) renounce one's choice of aftershave or one's taste in wine or one's preference in board games, even though all of these may reasonably be looked upon as parts of culture; but where renunciation becomes a possibility (and it does so even in the merely recreational commitments involved in supporting a sports team), and where we think either that it is possible to renounce a cultural heritage or that 213 14. Encounters With Heritage it is signi cantly and constrainingly not possible to leave one behind, we shall we hard pressed to account for the phenomenon unless we are willing to entertain the idea not only that we can cling to culture, but that culture can take hold of us. Suppose we grant, then, that culture may involve a calling; that consequently it may present itself to us as a source of demands; and that in further consequence we may nd ourselves with a moral phenomenology which apparently asks us not only what culture can do for us, but what we can do for our cultures. Do we then have grounds for thinking that we are getting closer to learning what our actual moral obligations pertaining to cultural heritage may be? (No doubt people have existed who sincerely experienced the K.G.B. or Savonarola's Bon re of the Vanities as a source of demands for commitment; and it is notoriously hard to renounce the Ma a. What keeps people inside, in this last case, may be fear, but the employment of fear for this purpose is itself part of the culture of the Ma a.) I certainly do not imagine (and the length of this document is the proof) that the callings people suppose they nd in their cultures are always either virtuous or veridical. To perceive such a calling is properly a starting point for moral re ection, the conclusions of which cannot be presupposed, since it is always open to the human individual to be conservative or revolutionary, and to prefer to stay at home or to leave it (although of course some individuals have considerably more freedom than others to act on these preferences, and it is true that freedom of choice is itself not altogether distinct from cultural practice). It is in our practical experiences of culture, however, that we are most immediately confronted by the context within which our decisions must occur; and if we nd our relation to culture put in question, we naturally will be hungry for answers. The case of the imagined Amish youth, of course, is the exception to a rule which more frequently sees us easily and unre ectively oat with the currents of custom; the very impossibility of a life outside any culture ensures that we shall put far less in question than we continue to presuppose as we cook our meals (cuisine) and take our evening strolls (recreation) and indulge in gossip-mongering (social propriety). Some of the most noteworthy cultural experiences, meanwhile, do not put anything obviously in question; among these are experiences of the sort noted in the previous chapter, such as awe at the mysterious vista of Stonehenge, which leave us fumblingly bereft of answers, but not necessarily in possession of adequate questions either. When we sit down as moral philosophers, however, in order to consider cultural heritage, we must commence this by acknowledging not only the knowledge which people share about the value of items of their own cultures (as in Chapter 12 above) but also the normative predicaments into which even the possibility of such knowledge may place them. Thus culture emerges not only as an object of our 214 14.2. The Cultural Entanglement enquiry but as something which may resist our indierence and make searching demands of us. It emerges as a moral patient not at the point at which we decide that it does need to be looked after, and start wondering what that may mean, but earlier, when we realise both that things can go well or badly for cultures and their heritage and that cultures do not take this quietly.
. Pulling the Threads Together According to the rst-century scholar Josephus, the children of Seth, the third son of Adam, raised two great pillars, one of stone and one of brick, upon which they inscribed their astronomical discoveries; for their grandfather had prophesied that two great cataclysms would be visited upon the world, one of water and one of re, and the Sethites were anxious to protect their knowledge from destruction. If existent, these pillars would have been an early example both of redundant backup storage and of empirical testing on an industrial scale: those who later found a lone pillar of stone would learn from its antediluvian writings not only of the heavens but also that a pillar of brick had once existed, and they would come to know thereby that the world had already perished in the deluge of water that carried the sibling pillar away, while the disaster of re was yet to come.1 What most impressed those later writers, however, in whose retelling the number of pillars expanded to fourteen, after the seven liberal arts (Stephens, 2005, p. S69), appears to be the very `struggle of memoria literarum against the forces of obliteratio... Not only does the Flood menace both life and culture, but writing, the vehicle through which human culture is transmitted across time, must fend for itself.' (ibid., p. S69) This is not a tale with a human hero, or the story of a dynasty or nation; its protagonist is a concrete record of collective memory, and the narrative is one of artefacts' endurance under assault by the elements. The Sethites of course are supposed to have addressed their writings to future readers, thereby making a gift of their knowledge to later human beings. No doubt there is also the wish to live in memory, immortalised through one's works; Horace, whose writings were preserved by copyists rather than on mighty pillars, considered them a monument more durable than bronze (Odes III.30). Yet the abiding image in the story is not of the speculative hopes of the antediluvian benefactors or of the gratitude of their later bene ciaries, but of the very monuments tasked with carrying knowledge through the disaster. The legendary Sethites created an artefact more resilient than themselves. 1Walter Stephens suggests that the Sephites sought to ensure that one pillar would survive whichever catastrophe came rst (Stephens, 2005, p. S65); presumably, if re had been rst the heat might have cracked the stone but it would merely have rebaked the brick. However, it seems uncertain whether the bidirectional interpretation is necessitated by Josephus' text. 217 15. Pulling the Threads Together I promised readers a defence of the idea that cultural heritage quali es as a moral patient; and on p. 62 I suggested that this would require an `elaboration' of the place of cultural heritage in our moral landscape. In accordance with this view, my style of argumentation has at times resembled the progression of an incoming tide more than it has a brisk route march from premises to conclusion; as I indicated in 12.5, I have aspired not so much to proceed deductively, or indeed inductively, as to progress towards a `conceptual ratchet' which will help cultural heritage to make itself manifest before our moral vision in something akin to the way in which environmental philosophy allows us to perceive ecological problems not only in isolation but moreover as aspects of broader phenomena of environmental harm. So culture emerges as a loosely agglomerative network of intricate interconnections (9.3), and then as a collection of categories like some sort of multidimensional matryoshka doll (Chapter 10), not as the culmination of some grand metaphysical schematisation2 but in order to demonstrate how we can think holistically about culture and employ our `value' toolkit while doing so. In Chapter 7 I suggested that disputes over the fate of some cultural item, such as a controversially excavated artefact, frequently involve two broad ways of thinking about an item's passage through time. To originalistic thinking, the point of interest is the point of origin (or for some, notably archaeological, purposes, the point of discovery), and it is this that provides a standard against which the rightness of subsequent transactions may be judged. A strong form of originalism may so associate an item with the genius of its originating cultural group as to suggest a sort of cultural droit moral, in which insofar as an item may move about outside its source group it remains nevertheless tied to it on a sort of deontic leash; in consequence, especially when the item in question is something as abstract as a style or motif, we run swiftly into controversies involving appropriation (i.e. which transactions, involving what items, are permissible in light of the point of origin) and, where the source group undergoes noticeable changes, of authenticity (see 6.1 above). Traditionalistic thinking exhibits less interest in origins as indications of a standard of rightness; its emphasis is on continuities and the persistence of cultural items through changing contexts. There are no doubt cases in which a preoccupation with origins will readily appear to take `cultural property' beyond its reasonable bounds: to ask whether the Taliban were the culturally correct people to be destroying pre-Islamic artefacts in Afghanistan might seem akin to enquiring, on nding a child being beaten to death by its foster parents, whether the adoption papers were fully in order. In other cases 2While talking about culture will always tend to involve some measure of rei cation, it is hard enough just to work out what we mean when we declare something to be `part of our culture', as Chapter 5 indicated. 218 our originalistic sympathies may be stronger: this is particularly so in the case of religious artefacts, which will hardly lose their connection to the devout through any transfer of worldly ownership. To judge what reactions t which circumstances is a formidably thorny task, and my aim has not been to sidestep it but to step back and to ask what holism might contribute by placing less emphasis on the individual cultural item and its history, and more on the ourishing of culture and cultures at large. Since individual cultural items do exist, and some of them are of great importance for many people, this approach is clearly not going to sweep away all previous ways of framing problems and dissolve all current controversies (alas!), but again a comparison can be drawn with environmental ethics: ecological thinking certainly does not so transform our thinking as to remove particular trees and lakes and marshes from it, but hopefully it oers us a ner understanding of how they and their vulnerabilities are interrelated. Culture is not composed of artefactual atoms. It is not even built out of items and their interrelations, although this is a more helpful model (hence 9.3 above). Cultural items presuppose culture even though sometimes, buried in long-untouched soil until some archaeologist unearths them, they are all that remains of a culture. Culture is always, implacably there, and much of any moral philosopher's task in investigating it must be to bring this omnipresent background to centre stage. What then of cultural `heritage'? Heritage is decidedly not always and implacably there. Heritage, crucially, is something that can be lost (5.1 above). Heritage plainly can be damaged or neglected, stolen or abandoned, underfunded or forgotten: it takes the role of trees and lakes in a cultural ecosystem. It was never obvious that we had to talk about `cultural property' or `heritage' or `patrimony'. People can and usually do consider the looting of archaeological sites without reference to the appropriation of traditional stories, and think about the impact of copyright law on archival work without having the protection of material culture during warfare hovering in the backs of their minds. Yet we nd ourselves in a world in which disparate topics such as these sometimes are discussed under the grand umbrella of cultural heritage; and when we consider them under the light of this notion of the cultural, we may indeed begin to see them not as wholly isolated problems but as aspects of something else. Much as we cannot simply forget, after being exposed to ecological thinking, that on top of there being trees and lakes and so on there is `the environment', I suggest that we similarly cannot just forget to see cultural heritage in all its holistic splendour. A tree, after all, can grow in a glasshouse in a little soil, but nothing can be a cultural item altogether on its own. My claim, then, is that consideration of our dealings with this thing we call cultural heritage invites us to enter into a certain sort of holistic view which 219 15. Pulling the Threads Together emphasises the grand and sprawling whole (culture and cultures and cultural heritage) over the individual component (this artefact, our creation myth, my song). It is not, I readily admit, clear what could prove either the helpfulness or the plausibility of such a conceptual ratchet (so we nd ourselves in a rather awkward predicament if it really is impossible to go back); neither is it obvious what could possibly refute it, which may cause consternation for minds of a Popperian bent. The same is true of my further claims: that the `value' with which moral philosophers might hope to deal is no less fuzzily distributed than culture itself, and that we can go further than talk of value and understand this manifold, holistic phenomenon of cultural heritage to count as a moral patient in its own right, bound up by nature with human existence but a potential object of moral obligations which need not be explained in terms of what some collection of humans happens to need or want or favour. My approach is not, however, intended as a mere appeal to the like-minded: these are my intuitions and surely you (under ideally rational re ective conditions) would share them too. Culture, after all, incorporates the very ways in which we carve up and categorise the world (Chapter 10 above); as such it incorporates resources for re ection upon itself. In thinking about this thing called culture, then, we come at length to realise that we are deploying and developing conceptual tools which themselves are built from cultural resources. The very practice of philosophically re ecting, in general terms, on how culture is involved with ethics will thereby tend to lead us towards the lofty viewpoint from which culture becomes able to look not only like a complex collection of many interacting items, but like something capable of dynamic and organic-seeming growth and decay, of budding and bursting into creative splendour and, in short, of ourishing. We do not have to perceive culture as capable of ourishing, as possessing any more form and integrity of its own than a sand dune receives from the winds and the laws of physics. We do not have (at least, allowing certain assumptions about reductionism in the sciences) to say that a tree is alive, let alone that it is doing well or badly, when physical and chemical descriptions will su ce; and we certainly do not have to talk about environments and ecosystems and biospheres when we do ask whether organisms in the world around us are doing well or badly. Yet we do so, and it makes ample sense for us to do so as beings which both live and lead their own lives, and whose lives therefore proceed and ourish not only biologically but socially and economically and creatively. We nd ourselves not only among plants but living within an environment, and that environment emerges for us as a potential recipient of care. Another thing within which we live is culture, and it too is something which can bene t from human care. 220 16. The Framework In Action I promised you a framework for thinking about the ethics of cultural heritage (see p. 20 above), and the previous chapters have indeed laid out the shape of one, albeit and inevitably with a great deal of space left for cross-pollination with other domains of thought and with the re ective practices distinctively found in particular cultures. After all this talk of network models of culture and cascading categories and museum exhibitions as concretely embodied cultural self-examination, however, it will be understandable if you are uncertain whether this holistic framework is eventually going to be of any practical use in advising people who have to deal with the very particular problems of deciding who gets to exhibit this artefact or sing that song or prevent some archives from crumbling to dust. Help had therefore better be at hand; I cannot, of course, describe in detail how any given case might go from the application of a framework to speci c normative guidance, but I can indicate the ways in which a few exemplary cases might play out.1 It may appear that my conception of culture, with its emphasis on dynamic interactions and associations between cultural items, incorporates a universal, builtin preference for disclosure and publicity, for the mingling and creative merging of ideas, and in general for the cosmopolitan. In fact, while this may be true as a general tendency, we may nd ourselves requiring a more nuanced casuistry. Even the darkest of secrecy may have its place in a culture: Freemasonry, for example, positively thrives as an esoteric body around which rumour and speculation may freely swirl. Moreover, in conceiving of culture as akin to a network which has a topography and in which we may loosely discern clusters of closely related items, I am clearly not so cosmopolitan as to disavow any endorsement of the distinctively local. Dierence and distinctiveness are themselves associations after a fashion, and both similarities and contrasts lend colour to culture. I believe, nevertheless, that what I have to oer, though nimble and exible in its applications, is not so multiply pliant as to be useless. Its stance regarding temporality distances it a little from both originalistic and traditionalistic tendencies, since associations between items may span epochs, leapfrogging both points of origin and successions of continuity. It similarly distances itself from a 1These sketches do not necessarily embody my detailed views on what tend to be complex questions; in particular, they largely ignore questions of human interests. 221 16. The Framework In Action narrow focus on the possession and control of `cultural property', since its construal of each cultural item as a nexus of associations makes that appear rather like an obsession with the ownership of some individual railway junction, which ought never to be allowed to eclipse the operations of the railway network in the disputants' attention. I gestured towards one piece of speci c normative judgment at the very end of Chapter 12, when I wrote: As an approach to moral epistemology for the ethics of cultural heritage [mine] does at least suggest an answer to the question of whether the former Afghan government or the Afghan museum curators had the greater authority to judge what was valuable for Afghan cultural heritage [and whether pre-Islamic artefacts ought to be destroyed]: we ask, in the rst place, which party was engaged in the more thoroughly, sincerely and humbly epistemic, enquiring practice, and we have good reason to favour the curators by default. Since, given my views on culture and categorisation, a cultural item is not altogether distinct from the categories into which it nds itself placed, and accordingly not from the practices of investigation and re ection which are bound up with these, what the curators possess is not a purely and modestly epistemic authority. After all, in that chapter I was asking a question heavily concerned with moral epistemology, and with who possesses the authority to make pronouncements about value with which moral philosophy can work. Practices of enquiry in this direction, and the characteristics (striking a note mildly suggestive of virtue epistemology) which bring about success in them, are hardly sequestered from re ection on what moral agents ought in fact to do. Of course, the chances are high that readers of this document are already in favour of not wantonly destroying signi cant and irreplaceable artefacts, so at this point I am not breaking any very new ground or reaching any controversial conclusions. Nevertheless, the case at least shows that mine is an approach within which it is possible for conclusions to emerge when the proper fate of some cultural items is under dispute, and that the conclusions which do emerge in this case have the appearance of plausibility. It is predictable enough that a framework which emphasises the interconnections between cultural items will seldom be a cheerleader for their destruction, but what of disputes over where an item ought to be or who ought to control it? A reduced emphasis on individual cultural items and on the trappings of `cultural property' hardly permits me to ignore the disputes that do arise over such questions. Yet one might anticipate that I would say either that many associations between items are 222 not subject to spatiotemporal limitations, and hence that it matters little where things are and in whose hands, or that everything eventually becomes local as it associates itself ever more strongly with its present home and owners. The former possibility might imply that the Rosetta Stone, for example, is just as much a product of Ptolemaic Egypt however close to Egypt it is now ; but of course nobody disputes that anyway, and the modern symbolism and iconicity, and by (also contestable) implication the ownership, of the Stone remain topics of disputation. The latter might seem to endorse a sort of universal ` nders keepers' rule for cultural heritage; and no doubt it is true that cultural items settle into their new homes however they came to be there, but it might be felt to overlook certain important questions of propriety if that proved to be all I had to say. In fact, what I say diers somewhat from both these alternatives. In the case of the Rosetta Stone, rst of all I would distinguish between the Stone as artefact and the Stone as cultural item: clearly there are important supervenience relations between the two, but it is not immediately obvious that the physical origins of the Stone are of critical normative interest, and the political information which it carries, though of interest in its own right, is not what makes the Stone iconic. The Rosetta Stone is remembered for the world it opened up, and this is its most crucial connection to Ancient Egyptian culture more broadly; but for whom did it open up this knowledge of Egyptian hieroglyphics? For anybody; the Stone is practically the antithesis of esoteric writing. What it oered to the French and British scholars who worked on interpreting it happily ful lled its function as a multilingual proclamation and a meeting between cultures: a sort of linguistic border-stone; a cosmopolitan, connective nexus even by design. What then of a certain other exhibit in the British Museum, formerly a temple frieze for the enjoyment of the gods? The case of marbles ripped from an architectural setting which still exists, but to which they cannot practicably be restored, is certainly a troublesome one. You may remember from p. 100 that, though an enthusiast for cultural `topography', I expressed some unease at the idea that we might be able to draw `concentric circles' around some focal point of cultural interest; no doubt there is usually some sort of gradual attenuation of what is sometimes called local interest, but I do not think that we are actually being asked to suppose that it follows a linear or inverse square or other such law. That aside, I see no overall di culty in accepting that Athens has a genius loci with which the Elgin Marbles are anciently associated, albeit one weakened outside the Parthenon itself. The Marbles are celebrities among internationally expropriated artefacts, and that contributes to making them a troublesome case: much of their fame (or notoriety) 223 16. The Framework In Action rests only indirectly on their aesthetics and on what they tell us about ancient Athens, and rather more immediately on a modern dispute between the Hellenic Republic and the British Museum. I nd myself positively tempted to suggest that the place for which they are recognised within modern culture is not at all inappropriately served by their placement in the same collection as other imperial spoils (implying, perversely, that campaigns for their return constitute a reason to leave them where they are). Still, this was not their cultural role for most of their existence, and it need not be so forever. I am inclined, therefore, to look forward to the Marbles' proposed futures, and to wonder (echoing my remarks about the case of Afghan curatorship) what sorts of enquiry and re ection might be opened up, or narrowed, by their being surrendered. Clearly the Marbles' links to Athens are strong, and the exhibition of the New Acropolis Museum would constitute a closely knit cluster of related cultural items which, particularly with the Marbles' inclusion, ought to constitute a peak on the topography of cultural value. On the other hand, I share some of James Cuno's disquiet about political intervention (discussed above in 2.1), and this leads me to think that we might wish to know, once the New Acropolis Museum is no longer quite so new, whether it will principally be seen as an archaeological museum or as a repository for beautiful antiquities or as a predominantly political project. As I noted on p. 195, it has certainly invited a political interpretation: Bernard Tschumi's delicate exercise in blending contemporary architecture into a weighty historical context carries a political message from the Greek government. It is an argument for bringing home the Elgin Marbles. (Ourousso, 2007) Everyone agrees that the New Acropolis Museum is the best argument for the return of the Marbles. (Vardas, 2009) Tschumi's museum is a kind of polemic in glass and concrete, conceived as an argument by the Greek government to bid for the return of the Elgin marbles... (Lacayo, 2007) Aside from the fascinating idea that a work of lasting architecture can function as an argument2 (making the museum itself an interesting example of cultural heritage whose signi cance is bound up with its particular situation), these observations incline me to wonder to what extent the Marbles would thrive in their new home as the focal point of a ourishing cultural cluster, and to what degree they might 2Or at least, as something which is argumentative. In fairness we should note a dissenting comment: `The new museum, designed in pastiche Corbusian style by... Bernard Tschumi, is not so much an argument as a punch in the face. It is big and brutal, like something own in overnight from Chicago.' (Jenkins, 2009) 224 nd themselves suddenly employed as the centrepiece of a project of political hagiography. Patriotic fervour is no doubt a ne thing, and its reinforcement a possible use of the Parthenon frieze; but if indelicately done it can be suggestive less of popular cultural self-re ection than of narrow political interests. I have things to say, then, about the proper fates of material objects from antiquity; what of intangible cultural heritage, often so eortlessly replicated and adapted by comparison? What am I going to say to the Aboriginal artist (recall p. 36 above) who desires not secrecy from cultural outsiders but stylistic exclusivity? It would be fairly accurate to anticipate that I will see great potential for cultural ourishing in the speed with which intangible heritage can travel and blend; but if we nd ourselves asking whether `a culture' is ourishing, we are certainly going to be concerned with the extent to which it enjoys a distinctive existence. Intangibles certainly enjoy the potential for what looks like vibrant ourishing, beyond the endorsement of their creators and perhaps in spite of their disapproval: recall my discussion of fan cultures in 2.3, and the acts of translation and creative reinterpretation and world-expansion which a cult item may enjoy quite outside its commercial life. Culture, as it is just now unfolding within my Web browser, takes the form of a video panel split into quarters: in each quadrant a hacked copy of Super Mario World so arranges its terrain as to send Mario hurtling forward in such a way as to produce carefully planned sequences of sound eects, and together the four `instruments' provide an accompaniment to Queen's `Don't Stop Me Now'.3 Employing the taxonomy Lawrence Lessig uses in his Remix, this intricately meshed piece of creative reworking with its precarious legal status may be considered an example of `Read/Write' culture; in expanding on its cosmopolitan potential, Lessig in turn draws on a term employed by Henry Jenkins in the latter's book of the same name, Convergence Culture. Read/Write culture `is at; it is shared person to person'. Its converse is Read Only culture, with a lesser emphasis on `performance, or amateur creativity, and more comfortable (think: couch) with simple consumption' (Lessig, 2008, p. 28). If nding an audience is indicative of creativity that contributes to the ourishing of a culture, nding an audience inspired to redistribute and translate and even adapt and creatively build on what it loves is undoubtedly a still more promising sign; there can scarcely be a more convincing indication of a ourishing culture than the budding of subcultures and the growth of cultural items into fan cultures which produce further cultural items in their own right. Particularly when it comes to intercultural in uence, however, there is a caveat: I associate the manifestation of value within culture with a `topography' of cultural activity, and there can be 3http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vDWJFMXOY88 (retieved 26th July 2011). 225 16. The Framework In Action no topographical peaks if the landscape is attened and undierentiated.4 For this reason there remains some scope to argue that the appropriation by other cultural groups of Australian Aboriginal artistic styles and motifs, for example (again recalling p. 36), constitutes a threat if it portends a signi cant dissolution of one culture into a neighbouring one; although I share Young's scepticism about whether the actual consequences of appropriation alone are likely to be so dramatic, even where art plays a notable role in signifying social identity (Young, 2008, pp. 1234). An ultimate cosmopolitanism in which all the world's cultural variations were smoothed out would not produce a world in which value had everywhere reached its maximum potential in culture. If we mix red and blue paint we shall expect, not interesting patterns of red and blue marbling, but a great expanse of purple; and while purple is a ne colour, there is no systematic sense in which it is superior to red or to blue or even to both together. There is also no universal sense in which a cultural `melting pot' is the optimal state of human aairs. Despite all the problems (which you may recall from 6.1) with notions of authenticity, distortion, and the like, there are grounds for thinking that on occasion ourishing will require some measure, if not of isolation, at least of neighbourly discretion. What follows from this observation, in any given case, will of course be a complicated matter, particularly when the liberty of individuals enters our vision; where people welcome what looks to us like assimilation, we cannot simply scold them for it, less still stamp our feet and demand that they better regulate themselves in order to enforce purity. It will be di cult, moreover, to ask people what their self-re ection as a cultural group tells them when it is the very de nition of the boundaries of their culture which has been brought into question by its increasing blurriness. `If the Pintupi cease to burn the vehicles of dead persons and begin to sell them like other Australians' (Hendrix, 2008, p. 189), must that matter? Perhaps it would reveal deep thanatological shifts; perhaps it would be a minor loss of economic distinctiveness. It seems, at any rate, that someone trying 4Suppose some object o becomes subject to a disagreement of some kind a patrimony dispute, perhaps between two cultural groups, A and B, and the ostensible value of o to A is equal in degree to its relevant value to B. Yet A is a small and impoverished group, whereas B is a large and prosperous society in whose cities one can barely turn a corner without being confronted by a museum or an art gallery. In such a circumstance as the one imagined, A would no doubt point to the value of o as a proportion of the total value of the comparatively small number of extant cultural objects available to A. B, by contrast, would perhaps contend that nothing could be better for o than to be integrated into the vibrant cultural and intellectual milieu of B, with its already imposing cluster of cultural items. Even with both sides talking about value, then, we might expect to see the concept put to dierent and con icting uses; but there will at least be a case to make that A's possession of o would be the more striking spike in a cultural topography. 226 to make use of a framework such as mine will be able to talk both about the general bene ts to culture of cross-pollination and about the threats to speci c cultures and distinctive localisms. That at least gives us reason to hope that such a person would be equipped to ask pertinent questions about what, in each speci c case, is truly good for cultures.
. Concluding Prospects This has not, in every respect, been a work of philosophy of the sort which neatly lays out its foundational premises and upon them erects a weighty column or pyramid capped with inexorably demonstrated conclusions. What I have sought to show, as Chapter 15 indicated, is not so much that reason compels one to adopt a position such as mine as that, once one does imaginatively enter into it, it is hard to forget having done so and there is little evident appeal in so doing. It is hard to forget having once comprehended the ourishing of an ecosystem, and not obviously pro table; it is more interesting and even promising, perhaps, to forge onwards and even to irt with the ethical visions of the Deep Ecologists. So it is too, I propose, for the ourishing of culture and cultures and cultural heritage: undoubtedly people will continue to wrangle over what will continue to be called cultural property, but I hope that this piece of philosophy has made it easier to embrace and articulate visions of culture in philosophical ethics which are more holistic and less concerned with erecting encircling fences. John Cottingham has written that `it is by tapping into the imagination, or whatever we call that partly inaccessible creative core of ourselves, that we are suddenly able to see the vision of the world that has energised the speaker' (Cottingham, 2009, p. 254). My emphasis is less on the epiphany than on the after-image. I hope, too, that in employing a form of argument which appeals as much to the imagination as to more abstractly calculating forms of reason, I have made it easier to see why we need not nd some straightforwardly malign consequence for human happiness before we can talk about harms to a cultural environment. If we nd ourselves asking, our imaginations not only sparked by science but subsequently sodden with what Christine Korsgaard wryly labels the Modern Scienti c World View, how it is that a bag of molecules such as myself or my dog can have moral standing and how, by extension, there can be such a thing as moral standing we have set ourselves up to ask a hard (though not a worthless) question. If, in a Humean mood, I wander outside to play with my dog in the sunshine, then for these two bags of molecules the problem will dissolve at once, not because I have switched psychological gears from Philosopher to Man, but because I am by disposition a philosopher (and a man) whose cosmos has among its fundamental phenomena lolling tongues and wagging tails and sprawling on the grass in Summer. 229 17. Concluding Prospects To see my dog as other than a proper recipient of care and aection is something my imagination can never entirely recall how to compass. My cosmos is also one in which there are packed library shelves and catchy tunes and terrible puns and arguing about philosophy, not to mention other people with dierent opinions to argue with and sometimes learn new things from; and I do not think I am truly unusual in nding it little harder to treat a book with respect than to treat a dog so. I shall treat them very dierently, for dogs are meant to be dog-eared, but psychologically I have never found that my disinclination to mistreat books, even badly written ones, amounted simply to my having a `pro-attitude' towards books, or altogether to a gentleness on my part (James, 2011), or to my being what results when a child is born to two workers in the public library service. I should like to think that in this respect my psychological dispositions have been a sound guide for philosophical judgment, and have provided an imagination capable of bearing witness to a cultural environment which requires and rewards human care. With a philosophical framework in hand, then, what next? Clearly a great deal more work would have to be done to expand the sketches of the previous chapter into anything resembling exact and detailed policy advice, and in particular there is much more to be said than Chapter 11 could contain about how human interests interact with human responsibilities towards cultural heritage. There are, however, a few things in particular which I must admit to feeling I am obliged, at any rate for the present, to leave hanging. Foremost among these is the role of religion, signi cant in T.S. Eliot's and in many ways in Matthew Arnold's conceptions of culture (Rees, 1967, p. 107.), and in Roger Scruton's view of `common culture' and particularly `high culture' (Scruton, 2005, pp. 5-21). I have tiptoed around this topic, and indeed around one of its most perplexing aspects, in my remarks on mystery in Chapter 13, but elsewhere in this dissertation I have perhaps allowed myself to give the impression that what is religiously valued could constitute just one more item on the open-ended list of ways of nding value in cultural heritage. If we inform the devout believer that his worship constitutes a collection of practices which together with their writings, their sacred places and so on make up the culture of his co-religionists, and that the capacity of these things to act as repositories of religious signi cance is one of the respects in which they moreover possess cultural value, I do not know whether he would agree or not, but I should not be surprised if he replied that we were missing the point. Like other aspects of culture, religion provides a context within which we can (hopefully) make sense of our lives, but when one thinks of `religion' one immediately calls to mind the transcendental associations which the word possesses; whereas `culture', 230 though it perhaps can imply something greater than the here-and-now, is a word that lends itself altogether more easily to usage in a worldly and frequently an anthropological manner. Of course, the major driving point behind the epistemological anxieties of Chapter 12 was that it is not for me to lay down a list of cultural valuables in an armchair exercise; and from that point of view religious value looks no more my problem than aesthetic value or historical value. Yet religion tends to burrow down into the life and outlook of its adherent, and declare how the world is constituted and what are the important things in it, to such an extent that it threatens quite to undermine the status of any nice little secular theory of heritage ethics. This is of course a concern for pretty well all secular moral philosophy, and so I need not apologise for not having laid it fully to rest in the course of my project; but in light of the fact that so many cultural artefacts and practices are inescapably of a religious nature, and that depending on one's own religious outlook one may deem such an object or practice to be anything from sacred to blasphemous, I must admit that I do seem to be particularly ill-placed to evade the complications of the matter. Should I have aimed at a purely secular theory that treats all matters of transcendental importance as external to itself? The answer must simply be that this was never an option: I want to incorporate historical value, but much (most obviously biblical) history has been written religiously; I want to incorporate aesthetic value, but so much artistic creativity and aesthetic appreciation of the world is religiously informed; and we could no doubt continue in this fashion and end up concluding that within strictly secular bounds I must have practically nothing to talk about at all, once my holistic emphasis on cultural interconnection is taken into account. Ruling all religiously tinged questions out of order was plainly not going to work; and taking religiosity seriously precludes treating `faiths' as though they were merely lifestyle preferences, although of course my theories still have to be neutral with respect to them. Since the value which I have been asking about is not simply a manifestation of subjective human preferences, conferring value on items through the sheer psychological act of valuing, I do not have to assume that if something is valued within the culture of a religious community then that automatically contributes to its value as cultural heritage, even its value as heritage for that community speci cally. Neither must I necessarily assume that even things created for religious purposes depend on their place within the practices and doctrines of a living religion in order for their religious origins to tint their place within a culture. The Pyramids of Egypt, for example, are products of the beliefs and burial practices of a religion no longer practised in Egypt or anywhere else, so that (distant transgenerational 231 17. Concluding Prospects a nities aside) we do not have to concern ourselves with the kinds of moral worth which worshippers of Anubis and Osiris placed upon them; but inasmuch as they re ect the widespread human transcendental concern with what happens to us after death, and insofar as we have any sensitivity at all to the mysterious (again recalling Chapter 13), it is perhaps arguable that we have a kind of distant sympathy with the predicament of the ancient pyramid-builders and are capable of appreciating their creations not merely as sublime pieces of architecture but moreover as re ective of the religious impulse in mankind. All of which is all very well, but (with the possible exception of the Positivist `Religion of Humanity' associated with the later Auguste Comte) nobody builds temples in worship of human impulses. I do not anticipate, given the broad space for epistemic consultation and re ection which I have left open, that any of the manifold religions of the world is very likely to force a complete rethink except insofar as it also demands a very dierent way of life from that which most of us live; such demands, however, are not unprecedented, even if few of us care to heed them, and even our more worldly existences are hardly free of the echoes of the transcendent. For a celebration of this-worldly cultural production such as mine, the heritage of religious lives continues to raise profound questions. Another thing which I think might repay further and closer examination is the phenomenon of what might be called anti-heritage: separation from a heritage not through unthinking neglect but through an act (or in practice more of a deliberate process) of renunciation or excommunication. We may doubt that this is even possible; though when holding a culture together through extreme changes can be so hard, as Jonathan Lear shows it to be in his thoughts on how the Crow people of North America sustained their culture through externally enforced changes to their way of life (Lear, 2008), it need not be so hard to believe that sometimes cultural change happens because people simply choose to let go, or to banish the unwanted.1 (Michael Brown writes that commodi cation of `indigenous identity' has produced `heartbreaking stories of communities disenfranchising members through the sudden imposition of more restrictive membership rulesthe goal being, apparently, to reduce the number of people with whom the new wealth must be shared' (Brown, 2010, p. 576).) The question, rather, is whether outright voluntary cultural separation is a possibility, or whether in practice every counter-culture movement sustains more (in its language, its cuisine, and so on) than it rebels against. If it is possible to renounce or be forcibly parted from even part of an ancestral culture (perhaps to `go native' in another, adopted culture), then various questions follow: 1It might be interesting to examine practices of censorship and Bowdlerism in this light. 232 are the exile's immediate ospring also unable to call the ancestral culture theirs?2 Might the exile retain some claim, as a sort of estranged cousin, on the material heritage of the lost culture if it otherwise dies out? For me, especially, there is a question which other conceptions of culture and heritage may not have to face: if we are agreed that estrangement of this sort does seem to be possible, how then can this be so, if culture is a boundless network whose tendrils extend inde nitely? I have occasionally remarked, especially in 14.2, on the possibility of turning one's back on some cultural practice or other, but the possibility (insofar as it really is a possibility) might reward further thought. Lastly, and in view of my metaphilosophical remarks above, I suspect that the human imagination may oer further space for methodological exploration; according to Lady Warnock, only in the writings of Sartre do we nd a method which `actually uses imaginative inventions to make us accept philosophical points' (Warnock, 1994, p. 60). I invited you to imagine culture as a network, but here again there might be further yet to venture, and I conclude with a metaphor from both an eminent philologist and an in uential author of ction. In the re ections of J.R.R. Tolkien on our narrative inheritance, there is indeed an `intricately knotted and rami ed history of the branches on the Tree of Tales' (Tolkien, 2008, p. 39), not quite a network but at least a pedigree; but there is also a Cauldron of Story, containing a common stock to which sometimes new ingredients are added, and some of which is every so often ladled from the pot and served (ibid., p. 46). If we cannot draw borders in soup, we nevertheless may gaze inexhaustibly on storytellers' `shoreless seas and stars uncounted' (ibid., p. 27). 2A related case is that of certain secret information given to a white scholar, but not to the sons whom they judged unworthy, by the elders of the Australian Aranda people. `Although the elders might have considered their sons unreliable guardians at a time when Aboriginal culture was being challenged and to some extent destabilized by the intruding white culture, what of their grandsons, who may want to re-establish their tribal identity and take pride in their unique heritage?' (Prott and O'Keefe, 1992, p. 315)
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Index Aborigines of Australia, see Australia, Aborigines of Aeneid, see Vergil Afghanistan, 175, 196, 218, 222 age-value, see value of aging Agius, Emmanuel, 54 alchemy, 95, 96 Amber, see dog, the author's America and Coca-Cola, 39 Crow people of, 232 migration to, 133 Americanisation, 37, 156 Amish, 213, 214 Anastassopoulos, George, 99 Anderson, Elizabeth, 187 anime, 39 anti-heritage, 232 anti-Semitism, see Merchant of Venice, The; Nazis Antikythera Mechanism, 102 antiquarianism, 209, 210 antiquities, 13 looting of, 3034 market in, 3234, 48 Appiah, Kwame Anthony, 30, 46, 93, 100, 130 appropriation, 29, 36, 45, 4850, 53, 101, 150, 162, 226 and fanction, 38, 41 of the past, 210 Aranda, see Australia, Aranda people of Arc de Triomphe, 136 archaeology and stewardship, see stewardship context in, 31, 33 epistemic inclusion in, 183 ethics of, 43 Ark of the Covenant, 69 Arnold, Matthew, 17, 67, 94, 230 art, 33, 72, 165, 181182 `ethnic', 150152 and artistic style, 36, 37, 225, 226 as insignia, 226 autonomy of, 20 expertise in, 186 fan, see fandom history of, 139 intrinsic value of, 120 outsider, 191193 perceptual experience of, 121 state patronage of, 156, 168 assimilation, 37, 84, 226 associations, 13, 69, 72, 132, 135, 139 143, 145146, 202, 221 and place, 223 development of, 223 not spatiotemporally limited, 221, 222 Athens, see Greece; New Acropolis Museum; Parthenon Marbles Australia, 136 Aborigines of, 36, 161, 225, 226 Aranda people of, 233 Pintupi people of, 71, 226 authenticity, 71, 8485, 8890, 92, 95, 218, 226 authorship, 35, 36, 139, 145 Automatic Mario, see Super Mario World Bamiyan, Buddhas of, see Afghanistan banishment, see culture, excommunication from 249 Index bash.org, 73 Bavaria, 210 Benhabib, Seyla, 67, 86 Bennett, Alan, 75, 77 books, disinclination to mistreat, 230 Boyle, James, 2426, 34, 42, 193 Britain, 74, 136, 150 British Museum, 35, 70, 80, 195, 223, 224 Brown, Michael F., 26, 46, 48, 232 Brunk, Conrad G., 4950, 186 Bucharest, 69 Buddhas of Bamiyan, see Afghanistan Burke, Edmund, 95 Callicott, J. Baird, 24 Calvino, Italo, see Clarice Carman, John, 4648 categories, 145158, 162164, 192, 193, 202, 218, 222 cultural heritage as one of, 194 morally troubling, 159161 privative, 192 Cauldron of Story, 233 Chaucer, Georey, 86 Chile Mapuche people of, 35 Christianity, see religion circumcision, see genital mutilation Clarice, 190191, 196 Coca-Cola, 39 Codex Gigas, 151 commemoration, see memory commons, the, 25, 34, 53 complete and utter philistine, see philistine, complete and utter context archaeological, see archaeology, context in Coombe, Rosemary J., 35, 49 Cooper, David, 197, 199, 204 copyright, see property, intellectual Cottingham, John, 58, 229 Crimson Echoes, 41 Crow, see America, Crow people of cultural appropriation, see appropriation cultural heritage, see heritage cultural property, see property, cultural culture, 13, 21, 29, 6577, 7990, 168, 219 assimilation of, see assimilation contributions to, 82 convergence, 225 distortion of, see distortion excommunication from, 232233 fan, see fandom ourishing of, see ourishing, of cultures fuzzy borders of, 72, 80, 82, 84, 179, 185, 226 geek, see anime; fandom; fanction; fansubs; ROM hacking Internet, 73 nature and, 27 Read Only, 225 Read/Write, 225 remix, 225 renunciation of, 213, 232233 topography of, see value, topography of Cuno, James, 29, 3134, 47, 61, 106, 182, 212 democracy, 187188 desk, the top of the author's, 148149 dialectic, 158 dialects, 147 Dingli, Sandra, 5355 disagreement, see value and moral epistemology distortion, 8485, 88, 89, 150, 226 through abuse of history, 85 dog, the author's, 229 Dryden, John, 72, 86 EarthBound, see Mother 3 Egypt, 35, 70, 136, 223, 231 Elgin Marbles, see Parthenon Marbles Eliot, T.S., 91, 95, 139, 230 England, 68, 8083, 88, 132, 134 Church of, 122 250 Index environment, see ethics, environmental epistemology, see value and moral epistemology; museums as epistemological experiences ethical patiency, see patiency ethics, 43 environmental, 2427, 115, 141, 193, 213, 219, 220, 229 ethnic arts, see art, `ethnic' etiquette, see manners excommunication, see culture, excommunication from expertise, 177, 179186 moral, 181 performative, 184186 fanction, 3839 fandom, 3841, 213 fansubs, 39 ourishing, 41 of cultures, 23, 153, 155157, 164, 167, 219, 220, 224226, 229 of human life, 19, 114, 117123, 125, 126, 145, 162, 164, 220 of the arts, 153 Flowering Staircase, The, see Stotz, Timothy folklore, 35 framework, 20, 21, 45, 57, 62, 142, 168, 213, 221 France, 67, 136, 156 Freemasonry, 221 Fuller, R. Buckminster, 139 gardens, 199 genital mutilation, 166 Germany, 8586, 210 Gilbert, Margaret, 190 Gillman, Derek, 51 Godwin, William, 165 Goldman, Alvin, 189 good life, see ourishing of human life Gormenghast, 95 gra ti, 141 Greece, 36, 100, 123, 178, 195, 224 Gyges, Ring of, 59 Hamilakis, Yannis, 54 Harding, Sarah, 19, 24, 111, 115123, 125, 126, 130, 162 Hare, R.M., 115, 117 Hawass, Zahi, 35, 70 Heidegger, Martin, 164 Hendrix, Burke A., 71, 85 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 59, 67 heritage, 13, 14, 19, 20, 5155, 219 intangible, 3637, 225 of mankind, 13, 53 tangible, 35 world, 52, 55, 57, 146 history, 31, 52, 65, 133, 134, 139, 148, 173, 181, 184, 191, 208212 and cultural identity, 81 of a category, 147 whitewashing of, 159 holism, 106, 141, 143, 161, 194, 229 Holy Grail, 69 Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus), 217 Houses of Parliament, see Palace of Westminster Hume, David, 134 Hurka, Thomas, 84 iconicity, 70, 223 imagination, 87, 163, 194, 229, 230, 233 intellectual property, see property, intellectual intuitions, see philosophy, intuitions in Invisible Cities, see Clarice Jeerson, Thomas, 50 Josephus, see Sethite pillars justice, 99, 168 Kafka, Franz, 35 Kagan, Shelly, 114115, 117 Korsgaard, Christine, 116, 118, 120, 229 Ku Klux Klan, 161164, 167 Kymlicka, Will, 49, 50, 121, 132 languages, 26, 35, 37, 60, 92 without written forms, 93 251 Index Lear, Jonathan, 130, 232 legendarian, 209, 210 Lessig, Lawrence, 2426, 225 library re, 69 Lidice, 211 Lincoln, Abraham, 115, 119 Locke, John, 25, 49, 50 looting, see antiquities, looting of Lowenthal, David, 55, 65, 86, 93, 173 Lukes, Steven, 179 MacIntyre, Alasdair, 6667, 93, 98 manners, 75, 76, 185 Mapuche, see Chile, Mapuche people of Mapuzugun, 35 Margalit, Avishai, 52, 210, 211 Masons, see Freemasonry McCarthy, Cormac, 103 McDarthy, 104105 memes, 13, 26 memorials, see monuments memory, 13, 52, 70, 81, 86, 93, 160, 191, 209, 210, 217, see also network of shared memories institutional, 69 living in as immortality, 217 Merchant of Venice, The, 163, 167 Merryman, John Henry, 47, 5152 Merton, Robert, 180 metaphilosophy, 6263, 233 Microsoft Corporation, 35 Midgley, Mary, see culture, fuzzy borders of; memes migration, 133, 156, 168 monuments, 130, 191, 200, 209, 217 moral patiency, see patiency morality, see ethics Morecambe and Wise, 74 Mother 3, 4041 museums, 31, 111112, 191 as epistemological experiences, 194 encyclopaedic, see museums, universal universal, 32, 33, 99, 106, 195 mystery, 197205 Nagel, Thomas, 154 nature, see ethics, environmental; culture, nature and Nazis, 8586, 150, 162, 165, 210211 network, 26, 73, 74, 8789, 91, 97, 153, 194, 221, 233 of shared memories, 211212 New Acropolis Museum, 100, 195, 224 Nietzsche, Elisabeth, see Paraguay Nietzsche, Friedrich, 139 Nigeria Nok people of, 100 Nok, see Nigeria, Nok people of norms, cultural, 7576 Nueva Germania, see Paraguay Omland, Atle, 52 origins, 35, 48, 49, 91, 99106, 113, 151, 155, 176, 191, 218219, 221, 223 of a cultural group, 81 Otto, Rudolf, 197198 outsider art, see art, outsider Palace of Westminster, 102, 135 Paraguay, 81 Parliament, Houses of, see Palace of Westminster part of the family, 72 Parthenon Marbles, 14, 30, 36, 102, 111, 178, 195, 223225 patiency, 14, 19, 20, 62, 129, 165167, 205, 215, 220 pen used by Abraham Lincoln, see Lincoln, Abraham Peru, 101, 178 philately, see stamp collection philistine, complete and utter, 5961 philosophy contribution of to heritage ethics, 43, 196 intuitions in, 58, 220 traditions in, 97 phlogiston, see science pillars, see Sethite pillars Pintupi, see Australia, Pintupi people of 252 Index Plato, 59 Pokorný, Du2an, 53 Popper, Sir Karl, 96, 220 property, 36, 37, 42, 52 collective, 37 cultural, 44222 intellectual, 2426, 39, 40, 42, 48 50 and Nazi propaganda in Bavaria, 210 private, 34, 103, 161 public domain, the, see property, intellectual Quebec, 156 racism, 165, see also Ku Klux Klan; Merchant of Venice, The; Nazis ratchet, conceptual, 193, 218, 220 Raz, Joseph, 117 religion, 156, 163, 181, 197, 200, 201, 230232 missionary, 76, 133 ownership of artefacts pertaining to, 219 remembrance, see memory Renfrew, Colin, 29, 3334, 47, 61, 102 renunciation, see culture, renunciation of Rhodes, Colin, 151, 152 Rolston, Holmes, 2627, 141, 193 ROM hacking, 4041, 225 Rosetta Stone, 35, 70, 80, 223 as icon, see iconicity Sartre, Jean-Paul, 109, 201, 212, 233 science, 50, 95, 96, 133, 155, 160, 202, 229 cultures of, 74, 157 Scruton, Roger, 67, 93, 230 Searle, John, 169 Sethite pillars, 217 Shakespeare, William, 72, 86, 88, 139, 142143, 163, 167 Shils, Edward, 94, 99 Shylock, see Merchant of Venice, The Spain, 101 St. Paul's Cathedral, 135 stamp collection, 2728, 165 Statue of Liberty, 133 stewardship, 52, 5455, 169 Stonehenge, 68, 101, 183, 198201, 203, 205 Stotz, Timothy, 139 Strawson, Galen, 87 style, see art and artistic style subsistence of absent cultural items, 69 Super Mario World, 225 Swastika, 162 Sydney Opera House, 136 Taliban, see Afghanistan Taylor, Charles, 121, 147 Thompson, Janna, 45, 52, 111113, 194 toga, 8384 Tolkien, J.R.R., 188, 233 toothpaste, 67 topography, see value, topography of tradition, 52, 9199, 103, 105, 106, 139, 147, 155, 173, 208, 210, 218, 221 of liberty, 168 traditional cultural expressions, see folklore typewriter, see McCarthy, Cormac; McDarthy UNESCO, 52, 57, 111 United Kingdom, see Britain value, 27, 41, 61, 91, 93, 111144, 154, 155, 157, 159161, 167, 197, 231 aesthetic, 20, 33, 112, 113, 134 and moral epistemology, 175196, 222 instrumental, 27, 41, 111, 112, 115, 120, 130, 147, 160, 161 intrinsic, 19, 24, 27, 111, 114123, 125, 126, 130131, 147, 161 limitations of, 205 mystery as a source of, 198 253 Index objective, 2627 of aging, 209 of contextual clusters, 140 of re ection to culture, 158 of religious artefacts, &c., 230 parochial, 132, 133, 144, 162, 182 relational nature of, 129 topography of, 140, 141, 143, 145, 146, 154, 221, 224226 universal, 53, 111, 132, 133, 144, 146, 182 vandalism, 141 Vergil (Publius Vergilius Maro), 83 84, 86, 88 Virgil, see Vergil Voynich Manuscript, 199 Warren, Karren J., 45 Weinstein, Bruce, see expertise, performative Williams, Bernard, 60, 62 world heritage, see heritage, world Young, James O., 45, 49, 68, 84, 112, 113, 150, 176, 226 Zuni peaches of, 176 War Gods of, 117, 182 | {
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doi: 10.5007/1808-1711.2012v16n3p417 CONTENT, OBJECT, AND PHENOMENAL CHARACTER MARCO AURÉLIO SOUSA ALVES The University of Texas at Austin Abstract. The view that perceptual experience has representational content, or the content view, has recently been criticized by the defenders of the so-called object view. Part of the dispute, I claim here, is based on a lack of grasp of the notion of content. There is, however, a core of substantial disagreement. Once the substantial core is revealed, I aim to: (1) reject the arguments raised against the content view by Campbell (2002), Travis (2004), and Brewer (2006); (2) criticize Brewer's (2006, 2007, 2008, 2011) attempts to defend the object view; (3) refine Pautz' (2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011) arguments against the object view, which mainly resort to the fact that it cannot account for the grounding role of hallucinatory experiences; (4) and finally adjudicate in favor of the content view and against the overestimation of the naïve intuition. Keywords: Content view; object view; representational content; phenomenal character; naïve intuition. Introduction The view that perceptual experience has content became a current orthodoxy. Recently, however, the very idea of experiences having contents was challenged and this is now a debating point in philosophy of perception. Part of the dispute, or so I claim here, is based on misunderstanding concerning the notion of content. There is, however, a core of substantial disagreement. My aim here is, first, to reveal where the real issue lies, and, then, to evaluate the main alternatives. The paper is organized in the following way. (I) First, the two views in conflict are introduced: the content view and the object view.1 (II) Then, some arguments against the content view advanced by Campbell (2002), Travis (2004), and Brewer (2006), are considered and rejected; (III) The object view is then refined, following Brewer's version of it, and some arguments in its favor (involving mainly his account of illusion) are criticized; (IV) I finally consider the hallucinatory case and a crucial argument against the object view: the grounding intuition;2 (V) The last section summarizes the debate and adjudicates in favor of the content view. 1. The notion of content The views in dispute here are theories concerning the nature of perceptual experience. As I use the term perceptual experience, it necessarily has a phenomenal charPrincipia 16(3): 417–449 (2012). Published by NEL - Epistemology and Logic Research Group, Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Brazil. 418 Marco Aurélio Sousa Alves acter, or what it is like to undergo that experience. If I taste a passion fruit, smell roses, run my fingers over a velvet coat, hear a violin, or see a ripe tomato, in each of these cases I am the subject of different experiences. For perceptual experiences, there is always something it is like to undergo them. In what follows, I will be mainly concerned with the following question: what accounts for the phenomenology of our perceptual experiences?3 Perceptual experiences are typically classified by philosophers in three types: veridical perception, illusion, and hallucination. In a veridical perception, the perceived object is as it appears to be. If I see a red and bulgy tomato before me, for instance, and there is in fact a red and bulgy tomato there, I have a veridical perception. In cases of illusion, the perceived object is not as it appears to be. If, for example, a yellow and crescent-shaped banana before me looks rather like a red and bulgy tomato, I am having an illusion. In a hallucination, contrary to the other kinds of perceptual experience, there is no perceived object. Though there is no genuine contact with particular objects in the world on the hallucinatory occasion, hallucinations involve a conscious portrayal of the world as being some way: I have the visual experience of a red and bulgy tomato before me, for example, though there is nothing there. Our experiences of (veridically) seeing,4 having an illusion, or hallucinating, all have a certain phenomenal character (the way they look like). All these types of experience (veridically seeing a red and bulgy tomato, or illusory seeing a banana as a red and bulgy tomato, or hallucinating a red and bulgy tomato) can share, I assume here, the same phenomenal character. The very same phenomenology of visually experiencing a red and bulgy tomato can be present in all these cases, but in the first case the tomato is really there, in the second a yellow banana is actually perceived, and in the third case there is no object at all being perceived. I am concerned here with the best account of the phenomenal character of our sensory experiences, which can possibly be shared among veridical perceptions, illusions, and hallucinations.5 The content view characterizes the phenomenal character of a perceptual experience in terms of the contents (properties, objects, and relations) that are represented by that experience. The subjective quality (or the what-it-is-like) of a perceptual experience is (at least partly) equated with what is represented by that experience.6 When I see a red and bulgy tomato before me, for example, the phenomenal character of that experience can be (at least partly) explained by the fact that my experience represents some color and shape properties (redness and bulginess), as well as a certain object (the tomato) and a relation (being in front of me).7 Details apart, the core idea of the content view is that the phenomenology of a sensory experience is (at least in part) explained by what is represented by that experience. Understood as an intentional relation, representing is not committed to the representata being actually instantiated before the perceiver. In the case of a veridical perception of a red Principia 16(3): 417–449 (2012). Content, Object, and Phenomenal Character 419 and bulgy tomato, the object and properties being represented are actually there. In this case, the representational content is not merely intentional, but it is also actual. However, in nonveridical cases (i.e., illusions and hallucinations), the represented properties and/or objects are nonactual, or merely intentional. If I illusorily perceive a yellow banana as being red, for example, the property redness is represented by my experience, though it is not instantiated before me. And when I hallucinate a red tomato, both the property redness and the object (the tomato) are represented by my experience, even though they are nonactual. According to the content view, both veridical and nonveridical cases can share the same content: they can all represent the same properties, objects and relations.8 The possibility of having a shared content accounts for the possibility of having a shared phenomenal character, since the content view consists exactly in explaining the phenomenal character in terms of the representational content.9 The object view, on the other hand, characterizes the phenomenal character of a perceptual experience in terms of obtaining a direct relation between subject and external objects and their properties. As Martin (2004, p.64) famously put it, when one sees, the external objects and their properties "shape the contours of the subject's conscious experience". This metaphor of "shaping the contours" must be interpreted here in a constitutive sense, as opposed to a merely causal one. If, for example, the contours of a certain landscape are altered by the event of an earthquake, the earthquake itself does not constitute the landscape, though it may have caused some drastic changes (the mountains are now lower, for instance, and the lake changed its location). The relevant sense here, however, is that in which the hills are said to shape the contours of a landscape. The hills constitute the contours, or they are the contours. This is the sense in which the object view claims that external objects and their properties shape the contours of our perceptual experiences. Campbell (2002, p.116) also has this constitutive sense in mind when he claims that "the phenomenal character of your experience, as you look around the room, is constituted by the actual layout of the room itself". First of all, it must be noted that the object view is primarily concerned with veridical perceptions. When I veridically see a red tomato, for instance, I am directly related to the tomato and its redness, and the obtaining of that relation accounts for the phenomenal character of my experience. So far nothing was said about nonveridical experiences. In the following sections, we will see how the object view can be extended to account for the phenomenology of illusory and hallucinatory experiences. Secondly, it must be highlighted that the object view appeals to a direct relation.10 The obtaining of a direct relation between subject and things perceived is what accounts for the phenomenal character of an experience. The relation is direct, in the relevant sense here, if it cannot be obtained in the absence of the perceived things. Principia 16(3): 417–449 (2012). 420 Marco Aurélio Sousa Alves The object view gives a fundamentally relational account of phenomenal character: our sensory phenomenology is accounted for in terms of a relation whose relata are a subject S, on the one side, and external objects and their properties, on the other side. The second relatum is not an intentional object, or a representatum, but worldly objects and properties themselves. The direct relation must be understood as a primitive relation, which cannot be reduced to any more basic relation. As a consequence, being directly related to certain objects and properties cannot be equated with perceptually representing certain objects and properties. The direct relation, in opposition to the representational relation, can only obtain if actual objects and properties are instantiated before the perceiver. Consequently, the crucial difference between the content and the object views concerns how they understand the way in which external objects and properties determine the phenomenal character of perceptual experiences. According to the content view, the subjective qualities are "properties the experience represents things as having" (Dretske 2003, p.67), and "the world needn't contain them [properties and things one is aware of] in order to be represented as containing them" (Dretske 2003, p.71). The content view characterizes the phenomenal character as the property of a given experience of representing some properties and objects. The representational relation holds even if the represented properties and objects do not exist or are not instantiated in the perceived scene. According to the object view, on the other hand, it follows from the content view that "the contours of the subject's conscious experience will not be shaped by the actual layout of the world, but rather by the layout the world is represented to have" (Fish 2009, p.14). The gap between represented things and the things themselves is taken very seriously by the object view. Michael Tye (1992, p.160) once said that on a bright sunny day on the beach in Santa Barbara he found himself "transfixed by the intense blue of the Pacific Ocean". The content view, espoused by Michael himself, says that the peculiar phenomenology of that experience consists in representing the color property "intense blue" as instantiated. Even if Michael had seen no Ocean at all (he was, say, actually at home doing some experiments with mescaline), or if the Pacific Ocean were actually light green and Michael had the illusion of it being intense blue, all those experiences could share the same content and, therefore, the same phenomenal character. By contrast, the object view claims that the intense blue experienced by Michael could not be the very instance of the Pacific Ocean's color if it could still be experienced in illusory or hallucinatory cases. As it may be clear by now, the content and object views do not exhaust the theoretical space. The object view is not simply the negation of the content view. There is plenty of space for alternatives that reject both views. However, the object view seems to imply the rejection of the content view: the role played by the representational content in determining the phenomenal character of perceptual experiences Principia 16(3): 417–449 (2012). Content, Object, and Phenomenal Character 421 is central to the content view, and it is explicitly denied by the object view. This denial is sometimes put in the following way: the object view denies that perceptual experiences have representational contents. The claim that perceptual experiences have contents seems to be central to the dispute. My first effort here is to offer an interpretation of this claim that makes it worth discussing. As an upshot of this effort, we will reach a better grasp of what the content view amounts to. As noticed by Pautz (2009), some current conceptions of content trivialize the debate whether or not experiences have contents. What makes these conceptions trivial is the fact that they do not concern directly the phenomenal character of perceptual experiences. In other words, these conceptions do not state explicitly that the phenomenal character is at least part of what is being explained by the notion of content. Pautz (2009, p.483) detects two such trivial approaches: the appears-looks conception and the accuracy conception. The only conception, he claims, that makes the debate substantial, is the identity conception. I expound now these conceptions and why a more theory-laden notion of content is necessary to avoid trivializing the debate.11 According to the appears-looks conception, the content of an experience is given by the analysis of appears-looks reports. Byrne and Hilbert (2003, p.5), for example, affirmed that "the proposition that p is part of the content of a subject's visual experience if and only if it visually appears to the subject that p". According to this conception, a given experience has the proposition p as its content if, in having that experience, it appears-looks to the subject that p. For example: if it appears-looks to me that a tomato is red, then my experience has the content <a tomato is red>. It is stipulated that an experience is veridical if and only if its appears-looks contents are true: if my appears-looks report that a tomato is red is true, then my corresponding experience is veridical. As it stands, the appears-looks conception trivializes the debate over whether experiences have contents. Given the stipulative equation between appears-looks reports and the contents of perceptual experiences, the claim that perceptual experiences have contents is equated with the trivial claim that experiential episodes are associated with appears-looks reports. Pautz (2009, p.487) claims that the appearslooks conception turns debates about representational contents uninteresting because "they will amount to debates about the truth-values of appears-looks reports in ordinary English". Of course, such debates are worth pursuing in their own right. The claim here is that the very fact that perceptual experiences have contents becomes trivial in this conception.12 The accuracy conception, on the other hand, defines content in terms of accuracy conditions. Siegel (2006, p. 361), for instance, claims that "the content of an experience is given by the conditions under which it is accurate". Like beliefs or maps, perceptual experiences have contents, and just as the contents of beliefs are conPrincipia 16(3): 417–449 (2012). 422 Marco Aurélio Sousa Alves ditions under which a belief state is true, and the contents of maps are conditions under which a map is an accurate depiction of a spatial area, so the contents of perceptual experiences are conditions under which the experience is accurate. The accuracy conception claims, therefore, that experiences are the kind of things that can be accurate or inaccurate, and that their contents are conditions under which they are so. If something is accurate, then there is something else in relation to which it is accurate. In the case of a perceptual experience, it is inaccurate if there is a mismatch between experience and perceived scene. In the absence of any mismatch, the experience is accurate. Given the stipulations above, there is a shortcut argument for the claim that experiences have contents: experiences are accurate or inaccurate (intuitive premise); therefore they have accuracy conditions; and (by definition) these conditions determine their contents.13 The obvious questions are how we are going to determine the accuracy conditions (and therefore the content), and how they are supposed to account for the phenomenal character of experience. In the accuracy conception, accuracy is simply defined as successful depiction of bits of the world. But this notion of content is also trivial for our purposes: it simply follows from the unqualified (or ordinary) idea that experiences can be accurate or inaccurate. Different theorists can give radically different accounts of something "being accurate". The mere platitude that experiences can go wrong is a datum with no theoretical weight. It is, of course, open to any theorist to give his or her favored account of this piece of common sense. Travis (2004), for instance, accounts for misperception in terms of higher-order states, such as beliefs and judgments, that mistake the perceptually given for something else. Even in a view along these lines, we can be misled by experiences. From this platitude, it does not follow any substantive thesis concerning the very existence of representational contents. The crucial problem of the appears-looks and the accuracy conceptions is that they don't specify how experiences are associated with contents. If the theorist is free to offer any account whatsoever of this connection, the claim that experiences have contents becomes theoretically uninteresting. If experiences trivially have contents, what is being denied by those who reject this claim? It is also unclear what explanatory role the notion of content is supposed to be playing. Something more substantial must be at stake. The relevant disagreement between content-friends and content-enemies, as noted by Pautz (2009, p.491), concerns the thesis that "the 'subjective character' of perceptual experience is to be given by its representational content". This way of putting things highlights the explanatory role played by the notion of content: it explains, or gives the real definition, of phenomenal character. In order to have this explanatory power, and to be nontrivial, Pautz (2009, p.492) claims that the connection between content and experience must be of identity: having an experience Principia 16(3): 417–449 (2012). Content, Object, and Phenomenal Character 423 is identical with standing in a certain relation to its content. This is what he labels the identity conception. Given that conception, my first-pass definition of the content view becomes more precise now: the phenomenal character of a perceptual experience is (at least in part) equated with its representational content.14 And that is precisely what is denied by the object view. 2. Missing the target: Campbell, Travis, and Brewer I consider in this section some arguments against the content view that, for various reasons, are not sound. Given the nontrivial interpretation of the claim that experiences have contents, discussed in the last section, I argue that the arguments considered below simply misfire. They aim at denying the thesis that experiences have contents, but they miss the relevant target. First I examine the main argument presented by Campbell (2002).15 He claims that the content view cannot give a satisfactory account of what makes it possible for us to have thoughts about singular external objects.16 If you are to know what my use of a demonstrative expression such as "that tomato" refers to, when I say that "that tomato is bulgy", you must be able to perceptually single out the relevant object that I am talking about. Perceptual singling out seems required for us to have knowledge of the reference of demonstratives. Assuming that we can have knowledge of this kind, it follows that an adequate account of perceptual experience must explain what grounds this kind of knowledge. In Campbell's (2002, p.45) terms, the conscious perceptual attention to an object "must be thought of as more primitive than thought about an object", since the first ability grounds the second one. According to Campbell, the content view treats perceptual experience as just one way among many of being intentionally related to contents. If I think about a certain tomato or if I have a visual experience of that tomato, for instance, both states have the same content, and there is nothing about the perceptual relation, understood in intentional terms, that distinguishes the perceptual relation from the intentional relation of thinking about the tomato. However, if experience is to explain our capacity to think about particular objects, the kind of relation between subject and perceived object must be more primitive or more direct than the intentional relation between thoughts and their objects. Because of that, Campbell believes that only the object view, in defending a kind of direct relation with perceived objects, can satisfactorily account for the grounding role of perception. The kind of direct perceptual relation defended by Campbell can only take place if the object perceived exists and is properly related to the subject. In discussing the difference between veridically perceiving a dagger and hallucinating a dagger, Principia 16(3): 417–449 (2012). 424 Marco Aurélio Sousa Alves Campbell (2002, p.117) says that "in the case in which there is a dagger, the object itself is a constituent of your experience. The experience is quite different in the case of hallucination, since there is no object to be a constituent of your experience". However, as noted by McLaughlin (2010, p.244), the mere idea of perceived objects being constituents of experience does not capture the essential difference between the content view and the object view. As it stands, it is still open for to the content view to maintain that in veridical perception the objects are constituents of the experience. Nothing blocks the content view from maintaining that, in a veridical perception, the subject bears a direct relation to the perceived object. The relation of veridically seeing an object, for instance, can be defined as essentially containing the object as the relatum of that relation. McLaughlin (2010, p.244) stresses that Campbell's remarks leave open "whether the visual perceiving of the object is identical with the visual experience with the representational content or is instead distinct from it". Since the content view can go either way on that issue, Campbell does not offer a compelling reason against the content view. Campbell's case against the content view relies on the premise that the content view is "committed to saying that it is in virtue of its representational content that experience can play its explanatory role" (Campbell, 2002, p.147), and the key explanatory role that he has in mind is that of "explaining our ability to think demonstratively about perceived objects" (p.114). However, as emphatically stated by McLaughlin (2010, p.250), this premise is "simply wrong". The explanatory burden addressed by Campbell is transversal to the dispute between the content and the object views. The content view can perfectly maintain that the fact that an experience is an experience of a certain object explains certain matters, and the fact that the experience has a certain representational content explains certain other matters. McLaughlin (2010, p.251) accuses Campbell of mistakenly assuming that the content view is committed to the idea that "whatever an experience explains in virtue of being an experience of an object (or of a certain object), the experience explains in virtue of its representational content". The content view, as we saw in the last section, is a thesis about the phenomenal character of perceptual experiences. It says that phenomenal character is (at least partly) equated with representational content. Nothing that Campbell says seems to directly affect this thesis. Being an experience of a certain object and being an experience with a certain representational content can play different explanatory roles. The fact that the grounding role is not explained in terms of representational content does not mean that the content view has no other means of satisfying this explanatory demand. What makes my experience of that tomato, for instance, the experience that it is goes much beyond the fact that that tomato is part of its representational content. Other intentional attitudes, like thinking about the tomato, can share the same content. These two states (perceiving the tomato and thinking Principia 16(3): 417–449 (2012). Content, Object, and Phenomenal Character 425 about the tomato) cannot be distinguished by their representational contents: both have the same content, namely the same tomato. The two states also do not differ in whether or not they are intentional, since both states are defined as intentional by the content view. Nonetheless, they may differ in various other ways. The perceptual and the thinking relations may, for instance, incorporate different kinds of intentionality, which may differ, among other things, in their higher-order functional roles. The object of perception can be the input of a thought, but the pure object of a thought cannot become the sensible object of a perceptual experience. This asymmetry may be used to differentiate functionally different kinds of intentional states, one being, in a certain sense, more "primitive" than the other. Even if that explanation is not satisfactory, it cannot be simply assumed, as Campbell does, that any intentional relation must be of a single kind, in every respect. Moreover, as qualified in the last section, the content view claims that perceptual experiences are relations to contents. The relation between subject and perceived object is, in part, representational, and that part accounts for the phenomenal character of experiences. But nothing in the content view requires that the only admissible relation between subject and perceived object is representational. Besides representing certain things, experiences can also, for example, be caused by worldly objects, and this causal connection can be used to ground the capacity to refer demonstratively to worldly objects. This is, as a matter of fact, the standard explanation of demonstrative thought associated with the content view.17 The causal account is, in a certain sense, analogous to the causal theory of proper names: my capacity of thinking about Aristotle may be grounded in the causal chain that links my thoughts to Aristotle himself. On the same token, my capacity of thinking about a particular tomato may be grounded in the tomato causing my perceptual experience of it. It is surprising that Campbell does not argue against any alternative explanation open to the content view. He (2002, p.116) wants to deny the view according to which "the phenomenal character of your experience is constituted not by the way your surroundings are, but by the contents of your representational states", but his arguments do not touch the content view itself, understood as a theory about phenomenal character. Moreover, I share with McLaughlin (2010) the opinion that Campbell does not motivate his version of the object view against the classical challenge raised against it: if phenomenal character is accounted for by a direct relation with worldly objects and their properties, as he seems to defend, then what explains the phenomenal character of illusions and hallucinations? He is silent on that matter, and he is not entitled to be so. I consider now the arguments raised by Travis (2004) against the content view. Travis (2004, p.57) characterizes his target as the view that "a (given) perceptual experience has a (given) representational content". He is particularly concerned with the claim that perceptual experiences are the kind of things that can be true or false. Principia 16(3): 417–449 (2012). 426 Marco Aurélio Sousa Alves Truth and falsity, he insists, arise only in beliefs or judgments; perception itself is not capable of error. He credits this view to Austin (1962), from whom he quotes the following passage: "though the phrase 'deceived by our senses' is a common metaphor, it is a metaphor [. . . ]. In fact, of course, our senses are dumb [. . . ], our senses do not tell us anything, true or false" (Austin 1962, p.11). For the sake of exposition, I divide his main argument in two parts. According to Travis, the attractiveness of Austin's view comes in part from the impossibility of determining the representational content of a given experience. This is the first part of his argument. But this impossibility, he claims, should not be seen as a problem. After all, "for what I perceive to be misleading, nothing needs to be represented as so" (Travis 2004, p.64). Travis insists that the notion of representational content is not necessary to explain misperception. This is the second part of his argument. First part: Travis assumes that the content view is committed to explaining how the content of a given perceptual experience is determined. He also assumes that this specification procedure consists in analyzing ordinary looks-reports. According to Travis, by analyzing the use of the term "looks" (and other terms that we may use to speak of how things look), we may try to determine the content of particular experiences. This procedure, in order to work, depends on the hypothesis that content is "looks-indexed" (Travis 2004, p.63). If content is "looks-indexed", then it can possibly be extracted from the way things are said to look (through some kind of linguistic analysis of looks-reports). After investigating our looks-reports, however, Travis (2004) concludes that they cannot index content. The existing reports either fail to isolate a strictly phenomenal element, as when one says that "that tomato looks expensive", or they are a matter of "factive meaning" (or things indicating to the perceiver that the perceived scene is so-and-so), as in the case of a ring on a tree trunk representing a year's growth. Travis (2004) then claims that in the only kind of looks-report that seems to be relevant, representing collapses into indicating. According to Travis (2004, p.78), "what things look like on this use of 'looks' is thus a matter of what things mean factively, or indicate", and this, he insists, is "precisely not a matter of things being represented as so".18 Travis' assumptions, that (i) the content view must provide a procedure for determining specific contents of given experiences, that (ii) this procedure must involve the analysis of looks-reports, and that (iii) this analysis depends on contents being looks-indexed, are all of them controversial. In fact, I don't feel inclined to accept any of them. Given the rejection of the appears-looks conception of content (discussed in the last section), the failure of a looks-index account of content should not be worrisome at all. That is why Pautz (2009, p.497) and Byrne (2009, p.444) simply grant that Travis (2004) is right here: content is not looks-indexed. This claim, however, has hardly any effect on the substantial thesis that experiences have contents.19 In order to be as charitable as possible, I propose the following interpretation of Principia 16(3): 417–449 (2012). Content, Object, and Phenomenal Character 427 Travis' first point. The linguistic-analysis surface of his argument actually points to a deeper issue concerning the very nature of representation. Travis (2004, p.62) sees perception as a source of information of the surroundings. In this sense, representations can be committed or uncommitted. Perception, he claims, is a kind of uncommitted representation, in a sense akin to the sense in which sentences in English are not committed to things "being some way rather than another" (Travis 2004, p.61). Take for instance the sentence "Pigs swim". An assertion of this sentence is committed to things being thus and so, but the sentence itself (or the embedded proposition) cannot be said to be true or false, since it is not committed to the world being any particular way. Indeed, the English sentence "Pigs swim" may be used for stating that pigs swim, but in itself the mere embedded proposition is not committed to things being any particular way. The distinction between committed and uncommitted representations motivates Travis' (2004, p.62) claim that perceptual experiences have no face value: "with uncommitted representation, there is nothing either to accept or reject; nothing purportedly so". According to Travis (2004), perceptual experience is a kind of "natural representation", and natural representation is simply not the kind of representation implied in the notion of representational content. The "occurrence" or "instancing" of an uncommitted representation does not mean anything by itself. It may indicate many things, but the job of taking it as representing anything at all must be done by the representer. Travis (2004, p.62) compares perception with the following case of natural representation: the bald patches on a cat can be taken as indicating that it has mange. The patches themselves don't mean anything. Analogously, perceptual experiences do not mean anything themselves. They are symptoms of the world, and they can be taken by a representer as indications of various different things: that the cat has mange, or that it has burns all over the body, or that it played with a razor, etc. In the more charitable interpretation proposed here, the analysis of looks-reports are simply used to suggest that the very notion of representational content (or the idea that perceptual experiences are representational states) is misguided. When properly understood, the notion of representational content collapses into the idea that experiences simply indicate how the world is.20 Second part: Travis (2004, p.64) defends Austin's idea that "rather than representing anything as so, our senses merely bring our surroundings into view; afford us some sort of awareness of them". In that respect, "senses are dumb": they are not the kind of things that can be in error. Error is a matter of misjudging, or "failing to make out what I confront for what it is" (Travis 2004, p.65). If I see bald patches on a cat and misjudge that it has mange (when, in fact, the cat was born that way), my senses do not misrepresent anything. It is me who failed to make out what I see for what it is. That is an error of judgment, not an error of perception. The main point here is that misperception can be accounted for without any appeal to representaPrincipia 16(3): 417–449 (2012). 428 Marco Aurélio Sousa Alves tional content. It is the very scene perceived that is misleading. The misjudgment that things are thus-and-so cannot be simply equated with taking a perceptual content at its face value. Misperceiving, according to Travis (2004), consists in taking certain misleading information as erroneously indicating something that is not the case. Perception is informative only in the sense of bearing factive meaning (like the patches on a cat, or the rings in a tree trunk). But factive meaning does not allow error. If the cat with bald patches does not have mange, the patches do not misrepresent anything. The patches are simply misleading. The difference between "factively meaning" and "indicating" is spelled out by Travis (2004, p.66–7) in the following way: "if A factively means B, then (if) A, B"; while "A, in indicating B, may be misleading just in virtue of what it might have been expected to mean". Travis' strategy, in a nutshell, is the following: there is no non-arbitrary way of determining the content of a given experience. No problem, he says: it has no content. The purportedly explanatory job of representational content (explaining misperception, or perceptual error) cannot be done by this notion anyway. But this job can be done, he claims, by the notion of indicating. Perceptual error, contrary to the content view, is a matter of misjudging misleading perceptual information (information that is not itself true or false; that has no face value). The upshot is that representational content is not a consistent notion, but we don't need it anyway. Travis' argument, nonetheless, even in its more charitable interpretation, fails to make a relevant point against the content view. He may bring some insights concerning an alternative account (a certain version of the object view), but his denial of the content view misses the target.21 Even if we ignore the assumption that the method for determining contents must be the analysis of appears-looks reports (which, we granted, does not work), the mere requirement of having any such method seems misplaced. I fail to see why the content view should be obliged to offer a general procedure for determining specific contents for given perceptual experiences (or some kind of detailed explanation of everything that is represented in particular perceptual experiences).22 In what concerns the claim that there is a problem with the very notion of representational content, I believe that it equally fails to touch upon the content view itself. Why is the content view in trouble if representational contents are understood as uncommitted representations? Why would this be any relevant to the account of phenomenal character? The motto "perception itself is not capable of error" is orthogonal to the very notion of content. Travis (2004) just assumes that contents must explain perceptual error, but that is wrong. Content explains (or constitutes) the phenomenal character. Content is not (directly) in the business of explaining perceptual success, at least not necessarily. The idea that perceptual experiences, in some sense, cannot be true or false, is perfectly compatible with the content view.23 Most part of the disagreement here, it seems to me, is merely verbal. It depends on one's favored use of terms like "being veridical", or "being in error". Principia 16(3): 417–449 (2012). Content, Object, and Phenomenal Character 429 In a certain sense, perception is not true or false; in another sense, it is trivially the case that one can go wrong in perception. If in one's favored terminology "being in error" is used only for judgments, fair enough. If the predicate "being false" cannot be attributed to experiences, that is fine too.24 And finally, even if some substantive point lies behind these verbal disputes, the content view is neutral on any substantive account of perceptual success. I finally consider some of the points that Bill Brewer (2006, 2007, 2008, 2011) raised against the content view. He substantially improved upon ideas that were very sketchy in Campbell (2002) and Travis (2004). He developed recently a fairly detailed version of the object view and offered a substantial account of illusion. In this section, I consider one of his arguments against the content view: the generality problem. An overall assessment of his positive proposals will be done in the next section. Brewer (2006, p.166) claims that the content view is based upon the spurious extension of two features of the contents of thoughts to the contents of perceptions. The first one (i) is that contents can be true or false; the second (ii) is that contents involve a certain generality. Brewer believes that both features are problematic when applied to perceptual experiences. Concerning the first feature, Brewer develops an alternative framework in which the idea of content cannot be made to have any interesting use. That will be discussed in the next sections. In this section, I focus on one of his arguments against the second feature. According to Brewer (2006, p.173), perceptual content is general because the properties it represents stand for indefinitely qualitatively distinct things, that fall within the range determined by the general property. Take, for example, Michael's experience of intense blue (or blue27, say). His experience represents a certain shade of blue, but this property is general, since it stands for qualitatively distinct hues: blue27,2, blue27,33, etc. According to Brewer, the represented property in Michael's example stand for hues within a certain range (between blue26,5 and blue27,5, say), consequently it is a general property, and not the particular intense-blue which is actually instantiated by the Pacific Ocean. Brewer (2006, p.174) argues against the generality of content in two ways. First, he appeals to the "fundamental intuition" that in perception constituents of the physical world are presented to the subject.25 This point involves an important intuition, the naïve intuition, which will be further discussed in the next sections. For the time being, I focus on his second point: the circularity argument. Brewer (2006, p.175) claims that the content view is circular: "perceptual experience is to be characterized by its representational content, which is in turn to be identified by a certain procedure which takes as its starting point a worldly situation in which that very content is supposed to be determined as true". He (2006, p.175) assumes that the "procedure" for determining the range covered by a certain general content is some Principia 16(3): 417–449 (2012). 430 Marco Aurélio Sousa Alves "kind of generalization from a paradigm instance of its actual truth". The problem, then, is that in order to know if the paradigm case is true, we must know which general property is being represented, whereas in order to know the property, we need the truth-conditions of the paradigm case. Given this circularity, there is no way of determining the accuracy-conditions that define perceptual content. The circularity argument is clearly based on the assumption that perceptual content is determined by its accuracy conditions. The accuracy conception of content, however, was already rejected in the last section. Content is not in the business of explaining (alone) which experiences are accurate. Content (sorry for repeating this mantra) explains, among possibly other things, the phenomenal character of perceptual experience. Whatever (general properties or what not) constitutes the contents of experiences, it does not have to account (directly) for the accuracy of particular experiences. Moreover, as remarked before, the content view is not committed to provide a "procedure" for determining the contents of perceptual experiences. Consequently, the circularity argument misses the point and does not touch upon the content view itself. 3. Naïve intuition and illusions The content view gives an elegant and straightforward explanation of the phenomenology of nonveridical experiences. The content (and thus the phenomenal character) can be the same among veridical and nonveridical experiences. The subjective indistinguishability between those experiences, in the content view, is explained in terms of a shared content. Since perceptual experience is seen as a relation to content, and contents are, in a sense, representata, the phenomenology of experience is explained even in the absence of any mind-independent physical object being actually perceived. This possibility of having the relation to content in the absence of the perceived object gives to the content view a very easy time dealing with the classical arguments from illusion and hallucination. Absent objects or uninstantiated properties pose, in principle, no problem to the content view. The common factor element that explains the phenomenal character possibly shared among veridical and nonveridical experiences is simply the content. Since no actual objects (physical objects, sense data, or any entity of some funny ontological kind) are needed to explain the phenomenal character of perceptual experiences, the content view avoids (at least in part) some well-known ontological difficulties. Given all these virtues, it is no surprise that the content view has been widely regarded, since the downfall of the sense-data theory, as the best account of perceptual experience. Contrary to orthodoxy, Brewer argues, first, that there is an alternative view, second, that this alternative is better, and, finally, that the content view has problems in its own right to explain illusions. Principia 16(3): 417–449 (2012). Content, Object, and Phenomenal Character 431 The object view, as characterized in the first section, says that the phenomenal character of a perceptual experience is characterized by a direct relation with mindindependent physical objects. But why should someone defend this view instead of the content view? We have just listed some of the various virtues of the content view. A quick look at the object view shows that it will have a hard time dealing with nonveridical experiences. In order to understand the seductiveness of the object view, we have to adopt a different starting point. First, we must acknowledge a crucial intuition: "perceptual experience presents us directly with the objects in the world around us themselves" (Brewer 2006, p.167). This intuition, in its interesting sense, concerns also the phenomenology of perceptual experiences. Since, in perceptual experiences, we are directly presented with worldly objects, why aren't the objects phenomenally manifest to us, in a direct way? Why isn't the phenomenal character explained, directly, by the encounter with objects in the world? According to Brewer (2006), the underlying reason why the content view cannot do full justice to this intuition is its original motivation: the phenomenal content is, in important respects, similar to the content of thoughts. Given that similarity, Brewer (2011, p.56) argues that the notion of content cannot "account for the fundamental difference between perception and thought: perception is an experiential presentation of the physical world around us", whereas thought is not. This is, in a nutshell, the naïve intuition.26 I want to emphasize the phenomenological reading of the naive intuition: it concerns the very nature of phenomenal character. Pautz (2010, p.295) remarks that slogans to the effect that objects must be "directly present in experience", or must "constitute essentially experience", are imprecise and may lead to confusion. The only sense in which the naïve intuition is relevant to the content view is as concerning the phenomenology of perceptual experiences. The naïve intuition is taken by Brewer as a datum: any theory of phenomenal character is committed to accommodate this intuition. Starting from this acknowledgment, Brewer builds up his positive account of phenomenal character. Brewer's account of illusion follows an important insight from Travis (2004): the phenomenology of nonveridical experiences is to be explained by the fact that perceived objects "have the power to mislead us" (Brewer 2006, p.168). The phenomenology of illusions, which is an obvious challenge for the object view, is explained in terms of the subject's response to the world. An explanation of illusion along these lines can save the intuition that mind-independent physical objects are presented to us in experience, though, maybe, in misleading ways. Brewer's (2006, p.172) account of the phenomenal character of perceptual experience has two levels: first, there is "the mind-independent direct object itself", as constitutive of the phenomenal character; and, second, there is "the way in which the object is perceptually taken". The "way the object is taken" includes a given point Principia 16(3): 417–449 (2012). 432 Marco Aurélio Sousa Alves of view, a particular sense modality, and certain circumstances of perception (such as lighting conditions, for example). All the elements that determine the perceptual condition amount together to a third relatum of perceptual experience: a subject S experiences object o in way W. I quote now two excerpts in which Brewer states his account: A mind-independent physical object, o, looks F to a subject, S, in virtue of the fact that S is consciously visually acquainted with o from a point of view and in circumstances of perception relative to which o has visually relevant similarities with paradigm exemplars of F, where visually relevant similarities are similarities of the various kinds to which the physical processes enabling visual perception respond similarly, as a result of both their evolutionary design and their development over the course of our lives. (Brewer 2011, p.118). From various points of view, and in various circumstances of perception, physical objects have visually relevant similarities with paradigms of various kinds of such things. These may intelligibly lead us to take them as instances of such kinds [. . . ]. Illusions are cases in which the direct object of experience has such similarities with paradigms of a kind which it is not in fact an instance. (Brewer 2007, p.91). Some of the ideas contained in these passages need to be unpacked. Consider Brewer's (2011, p.120) own illustration. Subject S sees a duck. Relative to a given viewpoint and circumstance of perception, the duck has visually relevant similarities with paradigm ducks, and thus it looks "ducklike". The "relevant similarities" are de facto similarities between physical objects, and the relation of "being visually similar with some paradigm exemplars of a kind F" should not be confused with the application of a certain concept. The kind F, that determines a range of paradigm exemplars, is not, strictly speaking, a concept. A kind F is some sort of gestalt property ("being ducklike", for instance), and it is used to ground the application of properly associated concepts by concept-users (the concept <duck>, for instance). In this sense, something "being similar to a paradigm exemplar of a certain kind" does not involve the application of concepts (at least not directly). Given that qualification, perceptual experiences of sentient creatures that are not concept-users (such as infants and animals) pose no particular problem to the theory. If, for instance, subject S is in Twin-Earth and sees a twin-duck, or if, in the actual world, S sees duck2 (a perfect replica of the first duck), Brewer's theory is committed to saying that S has different experiences in each case (since the objects are different, and the perceived objects constitute the phenomenal character). Assumed that viewpoint and perceptual circumstance are kept constant, Brewer claims that the subjective indistinguishability of these experiences is accounted for in terms of Principia 16(3): 417–449 (2012). Content, Object, and Phenomenal Character 433 the objects having the same visually relevant properties (and thus, by consequence, the same relevant similarities with paradigm exemplars of the same kind F). In all these cases (duck, twin-duck, duck2), whatever object is perceived, it looks ducklike. Looking ducklike accounts, thus, for the subjective indistinguishability of all these different experiences. The "relevant similarities" are determined by the objective capacity of mind-independent objects to affect our sensory systems in certain ways. A fully developed explanation of what relevantly affects our perceptual system may include evolutionary design, cognitive capacities, or whatever is found to be empirically relevant to account for our encounter with objects in the world. What makes some similarities relevant is, according to Brewer (2011, p.102), a "largely empirical" question. A question that involves some properties of physical objects (such as light reflectance), the operations of our sensory system, some evolutionarily developed abilities, some cognitive skills, and so on. As I said before, Brewer does not restrict himself to formulating a positive alternative view: he also claims that the content view fails to account satisfactorily for illusions. Consider the classical case of the Müller-Lyer illusion. Brewer claims that the content view describes the case roughly in the following way: a subject entertains a perceptual experience that consists in being related with a certain representational content. The content (that gives the phenomenology of the experience) represents two lines of unequal length. Brewer (2006, p.169) then asks: "how exactly would the world have to be for the purported perceptual representation to be veridical?" The question here should not be confused with the requirement of a general procedure for determining representational contents. The point pressed here is that the content view faces a dilemma: either the content is not determinate (which conflicts with the thesis that perceptual content is maximally determinate) or the content is impossible. Since none of the horns is any promising, Brewer concludes that the content view faces a serious challenge.27 Consider the second horn of the dilemma. According to Brewer (2006), in the Müller-Lyer experience, the endpoints of the lines are seen in their exact right place, though the lines are represented as having unequal lengths. This is an impossible combination, of course. Given the impossible (contradictory) combination of represented elements, there is no way the world could be to make this content true. But if an illusion has an impossible content, then one could know by reflection that it is nonveridical. This would eliminate the illusory character of the experience. The impossible content could not be representing the world, since there is no way of changing the world and making the content veridical. However, the account suggested by Brewer is not the only one available to the defender of the content view. One possibility, offered by Pautz (2009, p.498), is to deny that the representational content is false, and claim that the lines look unequal only because the perceiver is "disposed to believe falsely that they are different in length". Principia 16(3): 417–449 (2012). 434 Marco Aurélio Sousa Alves This reply, however, is "quite implausible", according to Brewer (2011, p.65): "the illusory look remains even for perceivers with no such inclination because they are fully aware of the illusory nature of the diagram". But Brewer's reply does not settle the matter. Pautz could appeal to a mere disposition to believe, which does not amount to actually believing anything. In this case, knowledge of the illusory nature of the diagram would function as a defeater of the inclination to believe that the lines are in fact unequal in length, but the inclination itself could still remain. Maybe the most important point here is not how good the alternative formulated by Pautz is, but how Brewer's argument is not compelling. It leaves the content view with many options. Consider, for instance, the following alternative. The representational content may be regarded as relative to what is consciously attended to. Attending to the endpoints of the lines is one experience, with a certain representational content; attending to both lines at once is another experience, with another content. None of the experiences in isolation have an impossible content. Brewer (2011, p.69) acknowledges this alternative, but insists that "since the whole combination is not possible, the content view is indeed committed to impossible overall representational contents". But now I fail to see the problem. Impossible combinations of different experiences are ordinary phenomena. When we have seemingly contradictory experiences, we just take a second look and check if we have got something wrong. In the Müller-Lyer case, if the perceiver, in fact, consciously attends to the endpoints of the lines, then attends to both lines at once, and finally compares both experiences, she will be puzzled (assuming that memory is working fine, and so on). Maybe she will think that there is an illusion going on, that one of her experiences (or both of them) misrepresents the diagram. What I fail to see is why the Müller-Lyer diagram must keep its illusory powers of inclining the perceiver to a false belief, no matter how she looks at it, or how hard she works on comparing its various looks. From a certain perspective, in certain conditions, and being attended in certain ways, the illusion is robust. And that is all that needs to be accounted for. Brewer (2011) also formulates another argument. The content view, he argues, lacks the adequate resources to account for the boundaries distinguishing illusions from hallucinations. I call this the illusion-limits argument. After a certain point, it is unlikely that an experience is illusory, instead of hallucinatory. Depending on the degree of mismatching, an experience can lose the right to be illusory. In an illusion, an object o illusorily looks F, while in a hallucination no object is presented, so nothing looks any way. In the first case, according to Brewer, the object itself has an "objective look", or de facto similarities with paradigms, and, under certain conditions, it can be illusorily perceived. Still, asks Brewer (2011, p.73), can the Müller-Lyer lines look like a perfect circle, or can a rabbit some feet away look like the Eiffel Tower? According to Brewer, (2011, p.73), "perceptual presentation is in general incompatible with extreme error". If a particular object o is, in fact, being Principia 16(3): 417–449 (2012). Content, Object, and Phenomenal Character 435 presented, it is not the case that any error whatsoever can occur. After a certain point, the very presentation of that object is implausible: it becomes implausible that the phenomenal character is really due to the object presenting itself in the experience. Contrary to hallucinations (which are not cases of objects being presented), illusions have limits. And the content view, unlike the object view, cannot explain these limits. Brewer (2011, p.74) considers the following reply. The limits, may say his opponent, are "merely contingent upon the nature of the environment and the workings of subjects' perceptual systems". Though Brewer agrees that the limits are, in great part, a contingent empirical matter, there is a sense in which, given a fixed situation (viewpoint and circumstance of perception), some phenomenal experiences are just not compatible with the genuine presentation of certain particular objects. In fairly ordinary perceptual conditions, a rabbit cannot look like the Eiffel Tower. This cannot be a case of the subject being perceptually acquainted with a rabbit. The very idea of "objects being presented in experience", or "subjects being perceptually acquainted with objects", cannot be reasonably applicable to such cases. The main idea here, says Brewer (2011, p.74), is that "there are limits beyond which an object fails to be genuinely presented in perception regardless of its causal involvement in the production of a representation with the relevant false content". That there are such limits, insists Brewer, is a datum, and the content view lacks the adequate resources to account for that. Though thought-provoking, the illusion-limits argument is another case of misunderstanding of the explanatory role of content. Content does not have to account for what makes an experience an experience of a certain object. As far as content goes, there are no limits to how extreme an illusion can be. However, the content view is free to adopt any account of what makes an experience an illusion. It can pick, for instance, the view that the various powers of objects to produce certain phenomenal experiences, given certain experiential conditions, explain the bounds of illusion. This is, of course, a massively empirical question, and the content view is perfectly compatible with any such empirical explanation. The only difference between the accounts of the illusion-limits of the content view and the object view, it seems to me, is that the former locates the constraints in contingent causal facts concerning the relation between perceiver and world, whereas the latter takes the contingent facts (relevant similarities, or perceptual conditions) to constitute the experience itself. Both theories give massively empirical explanations of the illusion-limits, and nothing bars any of the theories from adopting the best empirical explanation available in their frameworks. The defender of the content view is free to give any account of "being suitably connected to an object", and that account can perfectly explain the relevant datum. Pautz (2010, p.287) also remarks that, in order to be an experience of an object, causation is surely not enough: a "suitable degree of match between the object and the experiential content" is also necessary. The explanation given by Principia 16(3): 417–449 (2012). 436 Marco Aurélio Sousa Alves the object view to this matching relation is at least as complicated and involves as much contingent empirical facts as the ones available for the content view. 4. Hallucination, the grounding intuition, and negative disjunctivism Though Brewer does not have a compelling argument against the content view, as I argued in the last section, it may still be the case that his positive account fares better than its competitors. For the sake of argument, I grant that Brewer offers a satisfactory account of illusion within the object view framework. But what about hallucinations? I believe that hallucinations pose a much deeper challenge for the object view. As I use this term here, the grounding intuition is the pretheoretical intuition that, in hallucinating, the subject can, in principle, acquire the capacity to have novel beliefs involving phenomenal properties (colors, shapes, etc.). I slightly modify Pautz' (2010) formulation and spell out the grounding intuition in the following way: intuitively, if an individual who has the capacity to have beliefs has a hallucinatory experience, this individual can (possibly) thereby acquire the additional capacity of having novel general beliefs.28 The force or compelling character of this intuition is well illustrated by Johnston (2004).29 In the course of investigating the nature of hallucinatory states, Johnston (2004) defends, among other things, the thesis that hallucinations can secure original reference to qualities, and, by so doing, hallucinations can ground de re knowledge of qualities. According to Johnston (2004, p.130), "Frank Jackson's Mary could come to know what red is like by hallucinating a red thing or by having a red afterimage". The idea here is that, intuitively, Mary can, by means of a hallucination, come to grasp new properties that can ground beliefs of the following kind: "this shade of red is different from that shade of blue". Phenomenal qualities, argues Johnston (2004), are directly presented to the hallucinator: this explains how hallucination can ground de re knowledge of qualities. If some kind of de re knowledge can find its ground on hallucination, there must be a res to which hallucination is a relation to. There must be, in this sense, an object of hallucination that constitutes its content. Johnston (2004) also presents an interesting experiment that supports the grounding intuition. After being exposed to a bright monochromatic unique green light in a dark room for a certain time, the room is illuminated and the subject afterimages a small red patch, which is then superimposed on a small red background, causing the subject to have a supersaturated red afterimage.30 The supersaturated red is more saturated than any visible red in normal circumstances. This is a color that can never be (veridically) seen, but only afterimaged. This experiment supPrincipia 16(3): 417–449 (2012). Content, Object, and Phenomenal Character 437 ports the thesis that novel qualities can be experienced by means of hallucinatory experiences.31 The pressing question is how the object view can possibly account for the grounding intuition. Or, in other words, how can the object view account for the nature of hallucinatory experiences? In what follows, I do not argue against any possible account of hallucination available, in principle, for the defender of the object view. My immediate target will be a specific kind of approach: the negative disjunctivist account of hallucination. Disjunctivism is characterized in many different ways in the literature.32 As I use this term here, it comprises, among possibly other things, a claim concerning the phenomenology of perceptual experience. What is accounted for disjunctively is the very nature or "real definition" of perceptual experience, and that includes the phenomenal character. The association of the object view with disjunctivism is a very natural one.33 The object view takes the naïve intuition as its starting motivation. According to the naïve intuition, the phenomenology of perceptual experiences is determined by worldly objects presenting themselves in experience. Given that there are no such objects being presented in hallucinations, we have an obvious problem. The way out of this problem is to explain the phenomenal character of hallucinatory experiences in some different way.34 The object view is then committed to adopt some sort of disjunctivist approach: the phenomenal character of perceptual experience is a matter of either a physical object being presented in experience or something else that accounts for hallucinations. But what could substitute the something else in the second disjunct? The answer to this question distinguishes positive from negative disjunctivist accounts. The negative version characterizes hallucinatory experiences in terms of some relation to veridical cases. The positive version, on the other hand, explains hallucinatory experiences in terms totally independent of veridical cases.35 In this paper, I confine myself to the negative account.36 This restriction of scope, of course, makes my argument here incomplete. But the elements that can be extracted from this restricted debate are, I believe, enough to suggest a strong charge against the object view. Moreover, most defenders of the object view, Bill Brewer included, adopt some version or other of negative disjunctivism.37 The following characterization of the negative disjunctivist account of hallucination, defended by Brewer, will serve as a working definition: Hallucinatory experiences have to be characterized by giving a qualitative description of a more or less specific mind-independent scene, and saying that the subject is having an experience that is not distinguishable by introspection alone from one in which the constituents of such a scene are the direct objects. (Brewer 2010, p. 110). The grounding intuition, it seems to me, is not compatible with the negative Principia 16(3): 417–449 (2012). 438 Marco Aurélio Sousa Alves disjunctivist account of hallucination. According to the grounding intuition, the subject is perceptually introduced to novel properties, or properties that can endow her with a newly acquired capacity to have beliefs involving this property. How can a merely negatively defined state (i.e., "having a hallucination is not having such-andsuch") explain the apparently substantial nature of hallucination? As well remarked by Dancy (1995, p.436), negative disjunctivism characterizes hallucination "solely by saying that it is like what it is not". But such characterization leaves the very nature of hallucinatory states totally obscure. The crucial question is what accounts for the phenomenal character of hallucinatory experiences. The novel properties introduced by hallucinations may not have been experienced before by the subject, as illustrated by Mary's hallucination of a red patch or by the afterimage of supersaturated red. As it stands, the negative account does not explain why hallucinations have the phenomenology they have, or how they can be like veridical perceptions. My argument here goes as follows: (premise 1) having a hallucinatory experience can endow the subject with a new capacity; (premise 2) a merely negative condition cannot account for that novel capacity; (conclusion) a hallucinatory experience cannot be equated with a merely negative condition. Premise 1 simply sates the grounding intuition.38 Premise 2, however, is more controversial. According to my working definition of negative disjunctivism, that I took from Brewer (2011, p. 110), the relevant condition for being a hallucinatory state is characterized as "being indistinguishable by introspection alone" from veridical cases. This condition describes a relation that may hold or not: if it holds, on one side, we have a veridical experience, and, on the other, we have a hallucination. What matters here is that the very nature of the second relatum is defined negatively in terms of the first one. This is so because the relation is defined in purely negative terms. Pautz (2010, p.278) argues that the mere failure to satisfy the negative condition (i.e., "being indistinguishable by introspection") can hardly explain the positive attributes of hallucinations. As Pautz (2010, p.278) remarks, "irrelevant counterexamples aside, if a's possessing F explains a's possessing G, then if a had not possessed F, a would not have possessed G".39 In the case at hand, A having a hallucination explains A having the capacity to have certain beliefs (given premise 1), then, ceteris paribus, had A not had the hallucination, A would not have the capacity to have these beliefs. But now, if we consider the negative condition ("being indistinguishable by introspection"), we see that it is not intuitively true that if A had not been in an state that is indistinguishable by introspection from so-and-so, then A would not have the capacity to have certain beliefs. The conclusion of the argument (i.e., negative disjunctivist accounts of hallucination are not consistent with the grounding intuition) should not be surprising. Negative disjunctivists emphasize veridical perceptions and try to explain nonveridical cases in terms of the veridical ones. Consequently, nonveridical cases (such as Principia 16(3): 417–449 (2012). Content, Object, and Phenomenal Character 439 hallucinations) cannot add any new (substantial) element that cannot be somehow extracted from the veridical ones. Surely, hallucinations cannot introduce new objects to thoughts, since there are no objects being presented in hallucinations. But, as Pautz (2010, p.279) stresses, "there do not merely exist particular objects; there also exist such things as general properties".40 The object view is happy to use the grounding intuition when it comes to objects, but they adopt an "unjustified double standard" when it comes to properties.41 Brewer (2011) argued later against the use of the grounding intuition against the negative account of hallucinations. He (2011, p. 112) claimed that "'negative conditions' are often perfectly explanatory, as, for example, when an accident is explained by a driver failing to spot a cyclist". Though negatively defined, he insists that "hallucinatory conditions are not blank". Brewer interprets the negative disjunctivist strategy as a mere theoretical characterization of a class of thick things: namely, the hallucinations. Having a hallucination, in this thick sense, is being in some condition or other. The negative characterization ("being in an state that is indistinguishable from so-and-so") is a mere theoretical delineation of a class of things that cannot be given a unified definition, since they don't fall under any substantive general class. The negative definition is the only one that can capture what, by its nature, is a class of diverse things. Concerning the role of grounding beliefs, Brewer (2011, p.112) asks: "If it is perfectly clear how, had the subject's condition been one of actually seeing an F instead, this would have explained her capacity for beliefs whose content contains F, then why would a condition indistinguishable from this not have served equally well?" The cyclist example given by Brewer is infelicitous. If we are after a material explanation of a certain event (say, an accident), the lack of attention of the driver cannot enter in the picture. In this kind of explanation, the relevant cause is, say, the car moving in a certain direction, or the arms of the driver doing this-and-that, and so on. The kind of explanation that is pressed by the grounding intuition involves the capacity to have certain de re beliefs. The lack of something cannot explain that. The rhetorical question that closes the last paragraph also misses the point. The grounding intuition asks for a constitutive explanation of how one can have certain beliefs. If the mere fact that hallucinating is subjectively indistinguishable from seeing is enough to explain the grounding problem, then hallucinations should also be allowed to ground de re beliefs about unicorns, dwarfs, and Santa Claus. The grounding problem does not concern what one may take to be the case, but the very nature (or constitution) of mental states. Without the appropriate res, de re attitudes are just not available. Brewer also attacks premise 1, or the grounding intuition itself. He (2011, p.113) claims that having beliefs involves certain cognitive abilities and the use of concepts. Suppose that the subject A believes that the object o is red. This can only happen Principia 16(3): 417–449 (2012). 440 Marco Aurélio Sousa Alves if the concept <red> is at A's disposal. The term concept is used here in a broad sense: it may either be a thick concept (which implies that A is a concept-user and can use the concept <red> in thoughts), or a thin concept (which involves some specific cognitive ability, such as tracking certain objects or properties, or grasping a gestalt property). Either way, Brewer argues that hallucinations fail to provide the required concept. In a hallucination, there is no tracking of any existing object or any instantiated property to ground concept-possession. As a consequence, there is no concept <red> (be it thick or thin) that can possibly be provided by hallucinations. Indeed, if properties like <being red> are to be understood as de re, or as being reducible to worldly stuff, then the possession of the thick concept <red> must be grounded by the grasp of some thin concept, and that is exactly what is being denied. Mere hallucinations, concludes Brewer, cannot provide the necessary material to ground beliefs: they are not cognitively robust enough for that. Brewer's point can be further supported by the case of agnosia. The visually agnosic can identify some features of the object, but he fails to identify visual kinds. If an agnosic looks at a duck, he has a certain phenomenal experience, but he lacks the capacity to have beliefs involving gestalt properties such as <being ducklike>, or <being roundish-like>. The use of agnosia to support Brewer's point seems straightforward: hallucinatory experience, like the agnosic's experience, has a certain phenomenological character, but it lacks the capacity to ground beliefs. Pautz (2009, p.39) offers a convincing reply to the agnosic case. Whatever impoverished experience the agnosic has (say, the duck looks like "a lot of grayish dots"), it endows him with the capacity to have de re beliefs involving these impoverished experienced properties. The agnosic can have beliefs such as "these dots are darker than those ones". Though the agnosic does not acquire gestalt concepts, he comes to grasp new de re elements for reference. The upshot of this reply is that the grounding intuition still stands with the mere capacity to ground non-gestalt-based beliefs. Brewer, it seems to me, tends to equate cognitively loaded processes with ground-floor perceptual experiences. The strictly perceptual element is thinner than Brewer's coarse cognitive apparatus. Consider now what Pautz (2008, p.46) calls the tracking requirement, which consists in the cognitive requirement that, in order to have a belief concerning a certain property (<being red>, say), the believer must have tracked actual instances of objects with that property. As we have seen above, Brewer (2011) appeals to such requirement in his argument against the grounding intuition. The requirement seems unproblematic to him because the property in the belief is equated with a gestaltlike property, and acquiring a gestalt-like property involves attentional tracking of objects that keep the relevant property (<being roundish-like>, say) unchanged across variations in viewing conditions. Only this kind of cognitive item, he believes, can ground demonstrative reference. Given the absence of any trackable particular Principia 16(3): 417–449 (2012). Content, Object, and Phenomenal Character 441 in hallucinations, Brewer (2011, p.112) concludes that, contrary to the grounding intuition, hallucinatory experiences cannot offer items for demonstrative thoughts. The tracking requirement, however, is not a legitimate requirement. On that matter, Pautz (2008, p.47) appeals to intuition: the grounding intuition is stronger than this heavily-theoretically-loaded requirement. But, as I see it, the intuitive response is unsatisfactory. Brewer is explicitly denying this intuition. Empirical evidence plus a bit of theorizing can, in principle, show that an intuition that is pretheoretically entrenched does not survive further evidence. I thus propose another line of attack. Even if we grant, for the sake of argument, that tracking a gestalt-like property is essential to acquiring a new de re belief including that property, it is not clear that the mere tracking attitude cannot take place in hallucinations. The putative object of a hallucination (e.g., Macbeth's dagger) has all the attributes necessary for being the object of a tracking attitude.42 The dagger can, for instance, keep its properties unchanged across variations in viewing conditions and perceptual circumstances. If the relevant gestalt-like property is the property of <being dagger-like>, Macbeth's dagger can perfectly fit the bill. This is even a consequence of defining hallucinations as subjectively indistinguishable from veridical perceptions. The only difference is that, in seeing, we track a real dagger, and, in hallucinating, Macbeth tracks a hallucinatory dagger.43 My point here is that the tracking requirement collapses into the issue concerning what object is being tracked. The tracking attitude itself can be present in hallucinations. What is not there is the tracked object. But, remember, the whole point here concerns the possibility of hallucinations providing de re properties, not objects (of course). Even if the capacity of consciously perceiving properties in fact requires some kind of tracking attitude, hallucinations can perfectly provide that.44 The grounding intuition, I conclude, does present a convincing argument against the negative disjunctivist account of hallucination. The object view is, as a consequence, in real trouble. The negative account of hallucination gave to the defender of the object view the hope of an easy way out of the classical metaphysical difficulties faced by the positive accounts of hallucinations, but this hope, as I argued here, is illusory. 5. Closing remarks The naïve intuition is the main motivation for the object view. In fact, given all the difficulties that the object view faces (principally concerning the account of hallucinatory experiences), the naïve intuition seems to be the only potential argument for this view. Can the content view accommodate the naïve intuition? Pautz (2010, p.291) offers good reasons to doubt that.45 In its deepest sense, the naïve intuition implies Principia 16(3): 417–449 (2012). 442 Marco Aurélio Sousa Alves an account of phenomenal character that is entirely at odds with the content view. The pressing question, then, is the following: Can we reject the naïve intuition? As a matter of fact, there is a prima facie plausibility in the naïve intuition. It is a real intuition. It is, as Pautz (2010, p. 286) remarks, "built into our very concept of seeing". We intuitively think that the objects of our experiences really constitute the experience's phenomenology. Though very intuitive, no specific explanation is given to how, or in which sense, objects constitute one's phenomenology. Maybe the whole idea behind this intuition is some sort of Austin-Travis tendency of giving too much importance to the way we ordinarily speak of perception. The intuition may be simply built in the way we talk of "seeing". More importantly, the naïve intuition is in itself unclear. Pautz (2010, p.296) remarks that the whole idea that phenomenal character is the way it is "by-virtue-of" the presentation of the object is entirely obscure. The "by-virtue-of" relation is not spelled out. And even if one attempts to do so, the precise account will not come out naturally from the intuition: the precise definition of the "by-virtue-of" relation will be a theoretically-loaded claim that could hardly be said to follow from the original pretheoretical intuition itself. The reason why this is not explicitly accounted for, I think, is simply because it is, in fact, just a mere intuition. It is based, maybe, on the way we ordinarily talk about perception. As far as the intuition goes, the locution "by-virtue-of" can be spelled out in various ways. The theorist is completely free to do the job: the intuition itself does not settle the matter. The main idea here is that the intuition itself does not directly support any specific claim concerning the determination of the phenomenal character of perceptual experience. If we move beyond the pretheoretical layer, which springs from the way we talk and intuitively think about these matters, we realize that our pretheoretical understanding can hardly serve as a guide. If the naïve intuition is all the defender of the object view has to offer, I conclude that he is in serious trouble. The object view is a huge effort to save the naïve intuition, but the payoff of this attempt has been shown to be meager. Campbell (2002) and Travis (2004) do not argue convincingly against the content view and do not offer any alternative (in particular, they are very vague or say nothing about illusions and hallucinations). More sophisticated versions of the object view, as the one advocated by Brewer, don't offer a convincing account of nonveridical experiences. There are, surely, other alternatives in the philosophical space. The current map of philosophy of mind is too complex and full of alternatives: conclusive arguments are more and more unlikely to happen. If anything, I want this paper to be a contribution to the huge inference to the best explanation that still supports, as far as I can see, the content view.46 Principia 16(3): 417–449 (2012). Content, Object, and Phenomenal Character 443 References Austin, J. 1962. Sense and Sensibilia. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brewer, B. 2004. Realism and the Nature of Perceptual Experience. Philosophical Issues 14: 61–77. ---. 2006. Perception and Content. European Journal of Philosophy 14: 165–81. ---. 2007. Perception and its objects. Philosophical Studies 132: 87–97. ---. 2008. How to Account for Illusion. In A. Haddock & F. Macpherson (eds.) Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ---. 2011. Perception and Its Objects. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Byrne, A. 2001. Intentionalism Defended. Philosophical Review 110: 199–240. ---. 2009. Experience and Content. The Philosophical Quarterly 59: 429–51. Byrne, A. & Hilbert, D. 2003. Color Realism and Color Science. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 26: 3–21. Byrne, A. & Logue, H. 2008. Either/Or. In A. Haddock & F. Macpherson (eds.) Disjunctivism: Perception, Action, Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Campbell, J. 2002. Reference and Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ---. 2009. Consciousness and Reference. In B. McLaughlin & A. Beckerman (eds.) Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dancy, J. 1995. Arguments from Illusion. Philosophical Quarterly 45: 421–38. Dretske, F. 2003. Experience as Representation. In E. Villanueva (ed.) Philosophical Issues, Vol. 13: Philosophy of Mind. Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview, p.67–82. Fish, W. 2009. Perception, Hallucination, and Illusion. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harman, G. 1990. The Intrinsic Quality of Experience. Philosophical Perspectives 4: 31–52. Hawthorne, J. & Kovakovich, K. 2006. Disjunctivism. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 80 Supp.: 145–83. Hinton, J. 1973. Experience: An Inquiry into Some Ambiguities. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Hurvich, L. 1982. Color Vision. Sunderland, MA: Sinauer Associates. Jackson, F. 1977. Perception: a Representative Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Johnston, M. 2004. The Obscure Object of Hallucination. Philosophical Studies 120: 113–83. ---. 2006. Better than Mere Knowledge? The Function of Sensory Awareness. In T. Szabo Gendler; J. Hawthorne (eds.) Perceptual Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kalderon, M.; Travis, C. 2009. Oxford Realism. In M. Beaney (ed.) Oxford Handbook of the History of Analytic Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Martin, M. 2002. The Transparency of Experience. Mind & Language 17: 376–425. ---. 2004. The Limits of Self-Awareness. Philosophical Studies 120: 37–89. ---. 2006. On Being Alienated. In T. Szabo Gendler & J. Hawthorne (eds.) Perceptual Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press. McDowell, J. 1986. Singular Thought and the Extent of Inner Space. In J. McDowell; P. Pettit (eds.) Subject, Thought, and Context. Oxford: Clarendon Press. McLaughlin, B. 2010. The Representational vs. the Relational View of Visual Experience. Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 67: 239–62. Nielsen, E.; Lyon, M.; Ellison, G. 1983. Apparent hallucinations in monkeys during aroundthe-clock amphetamine for seven to fourteen days. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 171: 222–33. Principia 16(3): 417–449 (2012). 444 Marco Aurélio Sousa Alves Pautz, A. 2007. Intentionalism and Perceptual Presence. Philosophical Perspectives 21: 495– 541. ---. 2008. How Visual Consciousness Reaches to the World. Unpublished. Available online at https://webspace.utexas.edu/arp424/www/index.html?uniq=tpfy1b (07/26/2012). ---. 2009. What Are the Contents of Experiences? Philosophical Quarterly 59: 483–507. ---. 2010. Why Explain Visual Experience in Terms of Content? In B. Nanay (ed.) Perceiving the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ---. 2011. Can Disjunctivists Explain Our Access to the Sensible World? Philosophical Issues 21: 384–433. Siegel, S. 2006. Subject and Object in Visual Experience. Philosophical Review 115: 355–88. ---. 2010. Do Visual Experiences Have Contents? In B. Nanay (ed.) Perceiving the World. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Travis, C. 2004. The Silence of the Senses. Mind 113: 57–94. Tye, M. 1992. Visual Qualia and Visual Content. In T. Crane (ed.) The Contents of Experience: Essays on Perception. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, p.158–76. ---. 1995. Ten Problems of Consciousness: A Representational Theory of the Phenomenal Mind. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. ---. 2000. Consciousness, Color and Content. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. ---. 2007. Intentionalism and the Argument of No Common Content. Noûs 41: 589–613. MARCO AURÉLIO SOUSA ALVES The University of Texas at Austin Philosophy Department 1 University Station C3500 Austin, TX, USA, 78712 [email protected] Resumo. A tese de que experiências perceptivas possuem conteúdo representacional, ou a teoria do conteúdo, tem sido alvo dos defensores da chamada teoria do objeto. Parte da disputa, conforme argumento nesse artigo, apóia-se na incompreensão da noção de conteúdo. Mas esse desacordo deve-se também, em parte, a questões substanciais. Uma vez que o núcleo substancial da disputa é trazido à tona, pretendo aqui: (1) rejeitar os argumentos levantados contra a teoria do conteúdo por Campbell (2002), Travis (2004) e Brewer (2006); (2) criticar as tentativas de Brewer (2006, 2007, 2008, 2011) de defender a teoria do objeto; (3) refinar os argumentos de Pautz (2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011) contra a teoria do objeto, que apelam principalmente para o fato dela não conseguir explicar o papel fundacional das experiências alucinatórias; (4) e finalmente julgar a questão a favor da teoria do conteúdo e contra a superestimação da intuição ingênua. Palavras-chave: Teoria do conteúdo; teoria do objeto; conteúdo representacional; caráter fenomênico; intuição ingênua. Notes 1 I borrow this terminology from Brewer (2004), but I use these terms in a proprietary way. Principia 16(3): 417–449 (2012). Content, Object, and Phenomenal Character 445 2 I elaborate here on the arguments advanced by Pautz (2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011). 3 I confine myself here to perceptual experiences. Other phenomenally conscious states such as bodily sensations (e.g. feeling pain, feeling an itch, feeling hungry, feeling dizzy), emotions (e.g. feeling fear, love, jealousy) or moods (e.g. feeling happy, depressed, calm) fall beyond the scope of this paper. 4 Though this paper aims at a general point concerning any kind of perceptual experience (through any of the senses), I focus almost exclusively on visual examples. I follow the common practice of doing that, and I share the belief that no danger comes from this onesided diet of examples. 5 The sharing of the same phenomenal character by veridical and non-veridical experiences will be covered in more detail in section III. 6 My characterization of the content view assumes that the intentional relation established between subject and content is that of representing. I use the terms intentional content and representational content interchangeably. I am aware that there are non-representational intentional accounts of perceptual content, but I ignore this possibility here, as these views are marginal in the current debates in philosophy of perception. If my terminology bothers you a lot, fell free to replace every use of 'representational' and its cognates for 'intentional'. I don't think it will affect my purposes here in any relevant sense. 7 What contents are admissible for perceptual experiences is a highly polemical issue. Though I include properties, objects and relations in my rough characterization here, I am not committed to any particular view on that matter. I am also neutral on any specific account of representational content (as conceptual or nonconceptual, Russellian or Fregean propositions, sets of possible worlds, property-complexes, or whatever). Given my purposes here, I can perfectly be neutral on all that. Fell free to fill in the details with your favored accounts. 8 As a matter of fact, it is controversial whether particular objects are represented in perceptual experiences. Even if they are represented in veridical perceptions, it is less likely that they can also be represented in hallucinatory experiences. I leave these issues aside, as I am not after a detailed theory of representational content here. 9 I tried to characterize the content view in very rough terms, so that a wide range of philosophers could be counted as defending something along these lines. I have in mind people like Drestke, Tye, Lycan, Shoemaker, Byrne, Siegel, Pautz, among many others. 10 The term acquaintance is the most commonly used to name this relation. I prefer, however, to use the more neutral term direct relation. 11 Pautz (2009) also wants to determine what the contents of perceptual experiences should be like. He is after a notion of content that does not trivialize both the debate concerning whether or not experiences have contents, and the question concerning what the contents are (whether they are purely general or singular, if they include natural kinds or not, and so on). Since I am not concerned here with the second part of his project, I focus exclusively on the attempt of making the first debate nontrivial. Since my scope is more restricted, the whole structure of his arguments will be properly modified so as to fit my more modest objectives. 12 Moreover, the appears-looks conception faces the challenge of isolating (by the analysis of linguistic marks alone) the specifically phenomenal use of looks-appears reports. Only this use of reports should be any relevant to determining the contents of experiences, and there is no clear way of telling the various uses apart. If I say, for instance, that a tomato looks Principia 16(3): 417–449 (2012). 446 Marco Aurélio Sousa Alves expensive, this looks-report seems irrelevant to determining phenomenal contents. It seems that the specifically phenomenal element of appears-looks reports can hardly be isolated in a non-arbitrary way. 13 See Siegel (2010, p.34). 14 For present purposes, I can be neutral on the strong or weak versions of this thesis. The weak version only claims that the phenomenal character is partly equated with the content. This can be contrasted with the strong claim that "phenomenal character (or what it is like) is one and the same as a certain sort of intentional content" (Tye 1995, p.137, emphasis mine). The weak claim leaves it open if qualia (or any other nonrepresentational element) also affect the phenomenology of perceptual experience. The weak version is enough to make the conception of content nontrivial, and that is all I need here. 15 McDowell (1986) advances a similar argument, but I focus here exclusively in Campbell's version. 16 What Campbell (2002) calls the "Representational View" corresponds to what I call the content view. He contrasts this view with the "Relational View", which is a version of what I call the object view. To avoid misunderstanding, I will, in what follows, stick to my favored terminology. 17 Pautz (2010, p.284) draws an important distinction between the "phenomenal question", answered by the content view, and the "success question", concerning the "nature of successful perception". The account of (veridically) perceiving something as having a relation to a content plus a certain causal relation between content and object perceived, though the standard view, is not obligatory for the defender of the content view. As far as the content view goes, veridically perceiving can be a radically different state from nonveridical experiences. 18 Byrne (2009) remarks that Travis (2004) ignores the most promising use of the term "looks", that was labeled by Jackson (1977) the "phenomenological use". But adding more subtlety to the linguistic analysis will hardly change the verdict that content is not looksindexed. This will certainly not affect the point that I want to make here. 19 Byrne (2009, p.444) stresses that the content view "is not a claim about how we talk". Phenomenal character is not a linguistic phenomenon. Whatever support there may be for the content view, it is not to be found in subtleties concerning the use of certain words. 20 Byrne (2009, p.440) notices that "on one popular account, representation (and perceptual presentation in particular), precisely is a matter of what things indicate (under certain conditions)". Tree rings and cat patches are used, ironically, to motivate the notion of representational content. In what follows, I prefer to press a different point, but this comment by Byrne is suggestive of the fact that the view defended by Travis does not touch upon the core of the content view. As far as the content view goes, different accounts of what representing amounts to can fit the bill. 21 I prefer this argument against Travis (2004) than the one proposed by Byrne (2009). Byrne (2009) rejects Travis' (2004) position on the grounds that it cannot adequately account for illusions. Take the Müller-Lyer diagram, for instance. Byrne (2009, p.445) claims that Travis is committed to saying that the lines look "as if they are unequal". The illusory experience, nonetheless, "does not imply that I have some tendency to believe that" (Byrne 2009, p.445). The power of indicating something is, according to Travis (2004), an objective fact concerning things in the world. Things just have an "objective look". Travis (2004, p.68) says, for instance, that the Müller-Lyer lines "do not just seem to have that look; that Principia 16(3): 417–449 (2012). Content, Object, and Phenomenal Character 447 is actually the way they look. (Witness the 'robustness' of the illusion)". Byrne (2009, p.446) presses the point that, according to Travis' account, the lines, properly speaking, do not look unequal: their "objective look" indicates that they are unequal (or they just look as if they are unequal). But "looking as if" is an epistemological attitude that involves judgment: the Müller-Lyer lines can look unequal even if they don't look as if they are unequal. This is the case if the subject does not believe that they are unequal; if, for instance, the subject is aware of the illusory nature of the experience. Byrne (2009, p.447) concludes that Austin's idea (that perception "simply places our surroundings in view") immediately puts the explanation of illusion as a challenge. Byrne (2009) is certainly right that the defender of any version of the object view has the theoretical burden of explaining the phenomenology of illusions. But, as noted by Pautz (2009, p.496), there are disjunctive accounts of illusion on the market that may fit the bill. Giving no account of something does not mean that no account can be given. Travis' (2004) proto-version of the object view is certainly very schematic. It is, in fact, just a collection of insights. The underdeveloped nature of his ideas, however, can hardly make Byrne's criticism interesting. Byrne's point is too easily vindicated because his opponent is not in the business of developing a full-fledged account of illusion. Instead of the quick-and-easy criticism advanced by Byrne (2009), I prefer to investigate how, and to what extent, Travis' argument actually concerns the content view. 22 Pautz (2010, p.287) claims that the content view is not committed to provide a "reductive psychosemantics", or some kind of procedure for determining content. This is a massively empirical enquiry, and the defender of the content view can be neutral about the details of such vastly empirical investigation. 23 Pautz (2009, p.498) makes the same point and claims that the content view is perfectly compatible with error being a matter of false beliefs instead of false contents. 24 Whatever terminology one chooses, the "metaphors" mentioned by Austin (1962, p.11) can be properly paraphrased. Sometimes it is hard to separate, in Travis (2004), the substantive claims about the nature of perception from the mere verbal issues concerning the use of some locutions. 25 Brewer (2006, p.174) claims that the general way in which things are represented in the content "trades direct openness to the elements of physical reality themselves, for some intellectual act of classification or categorization". A lot here seems to depend on a substantial metaphysical account of properties. I prefer not to deal with this massive (and very complicated) topic here. Hopefully, I am right in believing that the relevant point of this paper can be satisfactorily motivated without any appeal to such matters. 26 The naïve intuition concerns what Brewer calls the "fundamental difference" between perception and thought. There are, certainly, other remarkable differences between them. Many emphasize, for instance, that perceptual experiences themselves do not necessarily involve concepts, whereas thoughts do. If, for example, I look at a duck and it looks duck-like to me, it does not require my possession of the concept <duck>, whereas thinking that it looks duck-like does. This distinction will be further explored in what follows. For the moment, I want to highlight that Brewer is simply bringing our attention to a putative difference between perception and thought: a difference that he takes to be deeply important. 27 The object view, on the other hand, accounts for the Müller-Lyer illusion in roughly the following terms: given a certain perceptual context (viewpoint, circumstance of perception), a Müller-Lyer diagram has relevant similarities with paradigms of lines of unequal length. Principia 16(3): 417–449 (2012). 448 Marco Aurélio Sousa Alves Consequently, the perceiver is misled by the diagram. The object view, according to Brewer, has no difficulty to explain this case. 28 Contrary to Pautz (2010, p.266), I adopt a weaker version of the grounding intuition. Pautz needs a stronger version (i.e., necessarily, if the individual who has the capacity to have beliefs has a hallucinatory experience for a sufficient period of time, then he thereby has the additional capacity to have novel general beliefs) because he is also arguing against nonrelational (qualia) accounts of hallucination. My argument has a narrower scope. I am not committed to hallucinatory states being (necessarily) externally-directed. The weaker claim that hallucinations can (possibly) endow individuals with the capacity to have beliefs that they could not have before is enough for my present purposes. 29 Pautz (2009, 2011) credits the grounding intuition to Johnston (2004). But, according to Pautz (2011, p.20), Johnston's version has an epistemological character (i.e., it concerns the justification of beliefs about the world). This strikes me as wrong. Johnston (2004) is also concerned with the res that makes de re beliefs of phenomenal properties possible. This deeper motivation is not merely epistemological, but concerns the very possibility of having certain beliefs. 30 Johnston (2004, p.141) takes this experiment from Hurvich (1982, p.187). 31 This experiment also suggests that the content of hallucinatory experiences cannot be fully explained in terms of the contents of veridical experiences previously undergone by the subject. The supersaturated red can never be experienced in actuality, though it can be hallucinated. This case suggests that the content of a hallucination is not simply brought to that state from an earlier veridical state and memory. The same point can be made by the thought experiment in which Mary hallucinates red patches in her black-and-white room and is thereby capable of having colorful thoughts. 32 Martin (2006), for instance, defines disjunctivism in terms of "fundamental kinds" of experience; Byrne and Logue (2008) in terms of different "mental states". See Pautz (2010) for a criticism of these views and for a detailed analysis of the various kinds of disjunctivism. 33 Kalderon and Travis (2009) trace the historical origins of this connection. They believe that, while Austin was not explicit about that, he was committed to a disjunctivist view. Only after Hinton (1973) this connection became fully explicit. 34 I am neutral here on whether or not illusions should also be dealt with disjunctively. I grant, for the sake of the argument, that illusions can be accounted for together with veridical experiences, in a Brewer-like kind of approach. 35 The positive disjunctivist account can characterize hallucination in terms of relations with non-physical entities (e.g., sense data, or Meinongian entities), or in nonrelational terms (e.g., qualia). 36 I leave the rejection of positive disjunctivist accounts of hallucination to another opportunity. Some versions of this view involve heavily loaded metaphysical questions that I prefer not be entangled with at this moment. 37 Brewer (2011) follows mainly Martin (2004) on that matter. 38 A defender of the object view may argue that this premise is question-begging. I agree with Pautz (2010, p.278) that this premise is based upon a deeply entrenched intuition, and simply rejecting it cannot be done without "a serious cost". Moreover, the defenders of the object view are happy to start their whole theoretical enterprise motivated by an intuition (namely, the naïve intuition). They are not entitled to deny the right of intuitions to motivate Principia 16(3): 417–449 (2012). Content, Object, and Phenomenal Character 449 theorizing. The object view takes the naïve intuition as a datum that must be accommodated: by the same token, the grounding intuition has all the rights to be a datum. 39 Pautz (2010, p.278) credits this argument to David Chalmers. 40 An independent support for the idea that the world is not only made of objects, but also of general properties, comes from the fact that it is not entirely clear that all perceptual experiences are directed towards particular objects. Byrne (2009, p.448) notices that it is not clear that in smelling and tasting there is a particular object that instantiates the relevant properties. The content view can easily account for such cases by using some sort of quantified proposition, or property-complexes. 41 The grounding intuition concerning objects is, curiously, the main argument used by Campbell (2002) to reject the content view. 42 Objecting that the verb "to track" is a success-verb like "to see" is obviously besides the point. I am not making a linguistic remark about the use of the term "to track" in English. 43 It may be objected that we have a good grasp of the idea of tracking physical objects, but it is entirely mysterious what the tracking conditions for hallucinatory objects would be like. However, I believe that we have a fairly good grasp of the notion of tracking in such cases. Take, for example, empirical evidence on animals' hallucinations. Nielsen et al. (1983) studied the behavioral effects of the administration of amphetamine to monkeys and concluded that they had hallucinatory experiences based, among other things, on observed behaviors such as "attack or sudden threat reactions directed at invisible objects", or "visual tracking of invisible objects, sometimes involving coordinated patterns of 'eating behavior"'. The observed behaviors can be considered hallucinatory because no eliciting stimuli could be determined for their occurrence. If the administration of a hallucinogenic drug leads a monkey to visually track invisible objects, we have quite good reasons to believe that the invisible objects being tracked are hallucinatory ones. (Thanks to the anonymous reviewer for bringing attention to this problem). 44 The deeper reason why Brewer cannot accept the grounding intuition is, in my opinion, his commitment to a certain metaphysical theory. He (2011, p.81) explicitly adopts a nominalist view of general properties, and therefore he denies their genuine existence in the mindindependent world. He does not argue for this view, though. 45 Siegel (2010) and Tye (2007) claim that the naïve intuition can be accommodated by the content view. However, they seem not to have in mind a strictly phenomenological understanding of the naïve intuition. If the naïve intuition is understood as the mere claim that, in veridical experience, the subject is directly in contact with the perceived object, then the intuition becomes much weaker and it can be accommodated in various ways by the content view. However, as it is understood in this paper, the naïve intuition amounts to the claim that the phenomenal character of perceptual experience is nothing but the direct presentation of objects in experience. 46 This paper was funded by Capes Foundation, Ministry of Education of Brazil. Principia 16(3): 417–449 (2012). | {
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A TECHNIQUE FOR DETERMINING CLOSURE IN SEMANTIC TABLEAUX by Steven J. Bartlett Visiting Scholar in Philosophy and Psychology, Willamette University and Senior Research Professor, Oregon State University Website: http://www.willamette.edu/~sbartlet KEYWORDS: semantic tableaux, rules of closure, counterexample constructions, proof theory This paper was originally published in the Netherlands, in Methodology and Science: Interdisciplinary Journal for the Empirical Study of the Foundations of Science and Their Methodology, Vol. 16, No. 1, 1983, pp. 1-16. Methodology and Science ceased publication in the mid-1990s and all rights to this paper reverted to the author. This electronic version supplements the original text with internet-searchable keywords. The author has chosen to re-issue this work as a free open access publication under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercialNoDerivs license, which allows anyone to distribute this work without changes to its content, provided that both the author and the original URL from which this work was obtained are mentioned, that the contents of this work are not used for commercial purposes or profit, and that this work will not be used without the author's or his executor's permission in derivative works (i.e., you may not alter, transform, or build upon this work without such permission). The full legal statement of this license may be found at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/legalcode © Steven James Bartlett, | {
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LOGOS & EPISTEME, VII, 1 (2016): 75-81 A FAILED TWIST TO AN OLD PROBLEM: A REPLY TO JOHN N. WILLIAMS Rodrigo BORGES ABSTRACT: John N. Williams argued that Peter Klein's defeasibility theory of knowledge excludes the possibility of one knowing that one has (first-order) a posteriori knowledge. He does that by way of adding a new twist to an objection Klein himself answered more than forty years ago. In this paper I argue that Williams' objection misses its target because of this new twist. KEYWORDS: defeasible reasoning, Peter Klein, second-order knowledge, John N. Williams This is a reply to John N. Williams' paper "Not Knowing You Know: A New Objection to the Defeasibility Theory of Knowledge."1 That paper argues that Peter Klein's defeasibility theory of knowledge excludes the possibility of one knowing that one has (fırst-order) a posteriori knowledge. Klein himself answered a version of this objection in "A Proposed Defınition of Propositional Knowledge."2 Williams' paper adds a new twist to the objection Klein answered more than forty years ago. I will argue that Williams' objection misses its target because of this new twist. 1. The Old Problem and the Old Solution When fully spelled out, Klein's analysis of knowledge comes down to this: (Defeasibility) S knows that α iff (1) α; (2) S believes that α; (3) S is justifıed in believing that α; (4) there is no truth, d, such that the conjunction of d and S's justifıcation, j, fails to justify S in believing that α.3 1 John N. Williams, "Not Knowing You Know: A New Objection to the Defeasibility Theory of Knowledge,"Analysis 75 (2015): 213-17. 2 Peter Klein, "A Proposed Defınition of Propositional Knowledge,"The Journal of Philosophy (1971): 471-82. 3 Since a truth may misleadingly suggest the falsehood of something one is justifıed in believing truly (as in the Grabit Case introduced in the literature by Keith Lehrer and Thomas Paxson, "Knowledge: Undefeated Justifıed True Belief," The Journal of Philosophy 66 (1969): 225-37. In that case the truth "Tom's mother said that Tom has an identical twin who is also in the library" misleadingly suggests that "Tom stole the book" is false.), Klein's view incorporates a distinction Rodrigo Borges 76 Towards the end of his paper,4 Klein considered the following objection to Defeasibility:5 If the defınition were accepted, it would never be true that S knows that she knows that x because she could never know that the fourth condition held. In reply to this objection Klein points out that, given Defeasibility, S knows that she knows x if and only if S knows "S knows that x" satisfıes each of the necessary conditions in Defeasibility. In other words, S knows that she knows that x if and only if each of the following statements is true: (I) S knows that x (II) S believes that S knows that x (III) S is justifıed in believing that she knows that x (IV) There is no truth, d, such that the conjunction of d and one's justifıcation, j, fails to justify S in believing that S knows that x. As Klein6 points out, because knowing entails that there is no defeater of one's justifıcation, S is justifıed in believing she knows that x only if she is justifıed in believing there is no defeater of her justifıcation for believing that x. In other words, III is true only if S is justifıed in believing there is no defeater of her justifıcation for believing x. In the same paper Klein argued that there is no reason to think that S is never justifıed in believing there is no defeater of the justifıcation she has for her fırst-order belief. This, in a nutshell, is Klein's solution to the old problem. Before we look at John Williams' new version of this objection, let me substantiate Klein's reply by between truths that actually defeat one's justifıcation (i.e., genuine defeaters) and truths that only appear to defeat one's justifıcation (i.e., misleading defeaters). Only the former truly defeats. In this paper I will refer only to genuine defeaters, but will drop the qualifıer "genuine" for ease of exposition. Nothing in my exchange with Williams depends on this issue. See Peter Klein, Certainty: A Refutation of Scepticism (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1981), 148-166 for his treatment of the distinction. 4 Klein, "A Proposed Defınition," 480. 5 Even though I follow the argument in Klein, "A Proposed Definition" here, I have updated the nomenclature he used in that paper to a more current one, in line not only with Klein's later work (e.g., Klein, Certainty and Peter Klein, "Useful False Beliefs," in New Essays in Epistemology, ed. Quentin Smith (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008)) but also with more widespread use in current epistemology. The nomenclature in Klein, "A Proposed Definition" followed closely the nomenclature in Roderick Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 1966). Nothing of substance hinges on these changes. 6 Klein, "A Proposed Definition," 481. A Failed Twist to an Old Problem: A Reply to John N. Williams 77 providing a logically possible case in which I through IV are all true. This should establish that Defeasibility does not exclude second-order knowledge. As I look up I undergo the experience as of something being a computer screen in front o f me. I thereby form the belief that (p) there is a computer screen in front of me. Since this is a normal case of perceptual experience, I satisfy all conditions in Defeasibility, i.e., (I*) I know that p.7 Suppose further that I reflect on whether I know that p, realize that it is a normal case of perceptual experience, and come to believe I do know it. That is, the following is true: (II*) I believe I know that p. I* and II* entail that I have a true second-order belief. Now, according to Klein, S is justifıed in believing that α if and only if, given S's evidence, S's belief in α satisfıes some (perhaps contextually determined) threshold for knowledge-grade justifıcation.8 This means that I know I have knowledge-grade justifıcation for believing there is a computer screen in front of me only if I know that my justifıcation for believing that there is one is not defeated. But my total evidence bearing on the issue of whether I am justifıed in believing that p includes not only my knowledge that p, but also my knowledge that this is a normal case of perceptual experience, that I am not drugged or otherwise visually impaired, and so on. Thus, we may plausibly argue that, given my evidence, I am in a position to know that there is no defeater of my justifıcation for believing that p. Defeaters prevent one from knowing by preventing one's justifıcation from satisfying the (perhaps contextually determined) threshold for knowledge-grade justifıcation. They prevent S's justifıcation from satisfying this threshold by either undermining the support her evidence provides to her belief, or by making probable the denial of what she believes given her evidence.9 In the case at hand, there would be a 7 Although this is a case of non-inferential knowledge, the same could be said, mutatis mutandis, about inferential knowledge. 8 This is, roughly, what Klein means by his notion of confirmation, which is the centerpiece of his account of justifıcation. See Klein, Certainty, 61-7. 9 According to the nomenclature popularized by John Pollock, the fırst kind of defeater is an undermining defeater, while the latter kind of defeater is a rebutting defeater. See John Pollock, "Defeasible Reasoning," in Reasoning: Studies of Human Inference and Its Foundation, eds. Jonathan Adler and Lance J. Rips (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008) for a recent statement of Pollock's view. Rodrigo Borges 78 defeater of my justifıcation for believing that there is a computer screen in front of me if, for example, I had taken a drug which causes hallucinations 80 percent of the time, or if ¬p were true. But, by assumption, nothing like that is true in this situation. In other words, both III* and IV* are true: (III*) I am justifıed in believing I know that p. (IV*) There is no truth, d, such that the conjunction of d and my justifıcation, j, for believing that I know that p fails to justify me in believing that I know that p. Claims I* through IV* all seem to be true in this case; so, it is plausible to think that I know that I know that p. The upshot is that Defeasibility does not make it impossible for there to be second-order knowledge. I conclude, then, that contrary to what Williams would have us believe it is logically possible for Klein' Defeasibility to be true and for one to know that one has fırst-order a posteriori knowledge. 2. Williams' New Twist Williams' new twist to the old objection comes in the form of a principle about concepts he fınds "plausible:" 10 (CLAIM) If the satisfaction of a condition at least partly constitutes an instance of a concept, then knowing that such an instance obtains requires you to know a priori that the condition is satisfıed.11 10 Williams, "Not Knowing," 215. 11 Although Williams does not explicitly formulate CLAIM as requiring a priori knowledge, one must read CLAIM in this way lest his argument against Klein be made invalid (see below), for Williams explicitly requires that S know a priori that she satisfıes the no-defeater condition in order for her to know that she knows. If I am wrong about this and Williams' argument is invalid, then so much the worse for his argument. More precisely, this is what I take to be Williams' argument: 1. If the satisfaction of a condition at least partly constitutes an instance of a concept, then knowing that such an instance obtains requires you to know a priori that the condition is satisfıed. [CLAIM/Assumption] 2. If the satisfaction of a condition at least partly constitutes an instance of knowledge, then knowing that such an instance obtains requires you to know a priori that the condition is satisfıed. [KLAIM/ from 1] 3. The satisfaction of the no-defeater condition partly constitutes instances of knowledge. [from Defeasibility] 4. For any instance k of knowledge, if you know that k obtains in case C, then you know a priori that the no-defeater condition is satisfıed in case C. [from 2 and 3] A Failed Twist to an Old Problem: A Reply to John N. Williams 79 To get a feel for how CLAIM works, consider Williams' own example:12 since x being three-sided partially constitutes x being a triangle, I know that x is a triangle only if I know that x is three-sided. Now, CLAIM and Defeasibility together entail that one knows that one knows α only if one knows a priori that one's justifıcation satisfıes the no-defeater condition. Williams then argues that, since one cannot know a priori that one's knowledge that α satisfıes the no-defeater condition, one cannot know that one knows that α. This is Williams' new twist to the old objection: it is not enough that S knows that her fırst-order knowledge satisfıes all conditions on knowledge, if she wants to know that she knows, she must know a priori that her fırst-order a posteriori knowledge satisfıes all the conditions on knowledge. Let us look more closely at CLAIM and at Williams' new twist. Our assessment will reveal that CLAIM and the instance of this principle Williams applies to knowledge are both false. Suppose that satisfying the condition (*) S can prove (some) mathematical theorems partially constitutes the concept mathematician. The assumption is plausible because we commonly think of mathematicians as people who can prove at least one mathematical theorem. Now, consider Timmy, who is a freshman in college and not particularly math-savvy. If Timmy were confronted with a proof of a mathematical theorem he would not be able to follow it; he would not even be able to grasp any of the concepts in the proof. Now, suppose Timmy's Calculus professor, a skillful mathematician, satisfıes condition (*), and that on the fırst day of class she tells Timmy and all the other students in Timmy's class that she can prove many mathematical theorems. Intuitively, Timmy knows his teacher is a mathematician even though this concept is partially constituted by condition (*) and his knowledge that the professor satisfıes (*) is a posteriori, for it is based on his experience as of something being his calculus professor telling him she satisfıes (*). But if that is the case, then CLAIM is false on account of the fact that Timmy knows the concept mathematician is instantiated by his professor, even though he does not know a priori t hat the professor satisfıes a condition that partially constitutes that concept. As a matter of fact, it seems to me that Timmy would know a posteriori that his professor is a mathematician even if she had not told the class that she satisfıes (*), 5. You cannot know a priori that the no-defeater condition is satisfıed in C. [Assumption] You do not know that k obtains in C. [from 4 and 5 by modus tollens] 12 Williams, "Not Knowing," 215. Rodrigo Borges 80 but told them only that she is a mathematician. Either version of the case counterexemplifıes CLAIM. Now, consider CLAIM as it applies to knowledge: (KLAIM) If the satisfaction of a condition at least partly constitutes an instance of knowledge, then knowing that such an instance obtains requires you to know a priori that the condition is satisfıed. KLAIM is false because of Williams' new twist. To see that, let us look at what happens when we apply KLAIM to the other traditional conditions on knowledge (i.e., the justifıcation, belief, and truth conditions). Take justifıcation and belief fırst. If KLAIM is true, then one cannot know a posteriori that those conditions are satisfıed. This is a bad result because our secondorder knowledge that those conditions are satisfıed is sometimes justifıed a posteriori. I am completely ignorant of quantum mechanics, but if Stephen Hawking were to tell me that q is a testable prediction of the theory, then, assuming this is a normal case of transmission of knowledge via testimony, I not only come to know that q is a testable prediction of quantum mechanics, but I am also in a position to know both that I believe that q and that I am justifıed in believing that q. The problem for KLAIM is that my justifıcation for believing that I believe that q with justifıcation is arguably a posteriori, for it includes the justifıcation that emerges from my undergoing a particular experience: if I had not experienced Stephen Hawking, the celebrated physicist, asserting to me that q, I would not have believed that q, nor would I have been justifıed in believing that q. Things get worse when we apply KLAIM to the truth condition on knowledge. Williams faces a dilemma: if KLAIM is true, then, necessarily, either there is no second-order knowledge or no fırst-order a posteriori knowledge. That there is such a dilemma should be reason enough to reject KLAIM and Williams' argument, which relies on it. No epistemology that accepts either (or both) of those horns should be deemed satisfactory. Here is how KLAIM forces this dilemma on Williams. As before, let "p" stand for the claim that there is a computer screen in front of me. Also as before, suppose that I know that p and that I know that p in virtue of my true belief being suitably related to my experience as of something being a computer screen in front of me. As a result, the justifıcation for my knowledge that p is a posteriori. Suppose I reflect on the question of whether I know that p and come to believe I do know it in virtue of reliably assessing my perceptual experience as veridical. Now, a condition on knowledge is that the known proposition be true. Because knowledge entails truth, it follows from KLAIM that I know that I know that p only if I know a priori that my belief that p satisfıes this condition; that is, given KLAIM, I know that I A Failed Twist to an Old Problem: A Reply to John N. Williams 81 know that p only if I know a priori that my belief that p is true. But if one knows that a belief is true, then one knows the truth the belief is about. So, given KLAIM, I know that I know that p only if I know a priori that p. But, by assumption, I know that p a posteriori. We have derived a contradiction from KLAIM by applying it to a seemingly innocent case. Something's gotta give. I think KLAIM has got to go. If KLAIM is true, then either my knowledge that p is not a posteriori or I can't know that I know that p. The fırst horn of this dilemma seems false on its face, and the second one leads to a curious form of skepticism: considering that there is nothing special about this case, the result of this argument generalizes to all cases of fırstorder a posteriori knowledge. 3. Conclusion In sum, John Williams' new twist on the old problem for Defeasibility fails. His problem for Defeasibility arises only when the requirements for iterative knowledge are made too high. What is more, this lesson applies to a number of other views that also incorporate a no-defeater clause in their defınition of knowledge.13,14 13 e.g., Keith Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge 2nd ed. (Boulder: Westview Press, 1990), John Pollock and Joseph Cruz, Contemporary Theories of Knowledge (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefıeld, 1999), and Marshall Swain, Reasons and Knowledge (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1981). 14 I am very grateful to Cherie Braden, Peter Klein, and John N. Williams for discussion and feedback on different drafts of this paper. I am happy to acknowledge that the research in this paper was partly funded by the CAPES/Fulbright Commission. I am also grateful for the partial support my research received from the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) through grant 2015/02419-4. | {
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www.argument-journal.eu Published online: 21.12.2015 Argument Vol. 5 (1/2015) pp. 275–284 e ‐ISSn 2084 –1043 ISSn 2083 –6635 PHILOSoffer'S LenSe / OKIem FILOZoffA * Doktor habilitowany nauk humanistycznych, adiunkt w Instytucie Filozofii, uniwersy‐ tet Jagielloński w Krakowie. e ‐mail: [email protected]. Dwa raporty Piotr BArtuLA* AL ‐utrAB W KrAInIe KALOPÓW (rAPOrt nr 1) Kiedy Al ‐utrab przybył na wyspę Kalopów, zarządzaną przez ministerstwo nau ki i Społeczeństwa Wiedzy [mniSW], poczynił sporo ciekawych obserwa‐ cji. Konstytucja Społeczeństwa Wiedzy głosiła, iż wszystkie dzieci, począwszy od dziecka prezydenta, senatora, posła aż do najniższego Kalopa, są jednakowo nauczane w systemie demokratycznej edukacji, zgodnie z zasadami sprawie‐ dliwości społecznej. Każdy etatowy pracownik społeczeństwa wiedzy był ele‐ mentem wielkiej machiny produkcji naukowych sprawozdań, które podlegały corocznej wycenie. Chcący więc zachować posady kalo ‐intelektualiści uczyli się starej sztuki ketmana pracy zawodowej, uprawiając różnego rodzaju gry z edukacyjnym Księciem. Aby uniknąć otwartej z nim konfrontacji, stawali się politykami, pragmatykami, strategami, kalkulatorami, dyplomatami, le‐ galistami lub cynikami. Wszechobecną w krainie Kalopów strategię ketmana pracy zawodowej Al ‐utrab stwierdził przede wszystkim podczas konferencji poświęconej zagadnieniu prawdy w życiu publicznym. Kolejni mówcy wygłaszali tam filipiki przeciwko idei względności norm, albowiem w Kalopei królował wszechobecny esencjalizm pojęciowy rodem z filozofii Platona. Czyniąc ko‐ lejny „przypis" do filozofii tego wielkiego myśliciela, rada nocna sympozjonu ketmaniła za kulisami, poza zasięgiem monitoringu Centralnego Komitetu Cy‐ towania i Punktowania [CKCiP]. W tym konkretnym przypadku rada była złożona z reprezentantów dwóch zaprzyjaźnionych prowincji Kalopei i Kasła‐ cji należących jednak do Wspólnoty Demokratury Praw Człowieka [WDCP]. 276 Piotr BARTULA Wzajemne publikowanie w sąsiednich prowincjach WDPC pozwalało im bo‐ wiem uzyskać potrójne przebicie rodzimej waluty punktacyjnej na demo ‐cytaty i człeko ‐publikacje. Jedna Kalopka wygłosiła na bankiecie rady nocnej toast: „Cytuj innych tak, jakbyś chciał, aby i ciebie cytowano zgodnie z założeniami powszechnego prawa, które ministerstwo Społeczeństwa Wiedzy wysoko sobie ceni jako nowy rodzaj agonalnej i egzystencjalnej konkurencji o posady". Al ‐utrab uczestniczył także w konferencji pt. Tworzenie fikcji w życiu publicznym. Zgodnie z postulatem głoszenia prawdy główny organizator konfe‐ rencji w ramach strategii ketmana pracy zawodowej sugerował bez ogródek tak‐ tykę wzajemnych cytowań oraz wolną i bezgotówkową wymianę recenzentów przez bratnie ośrodki, w ciężkich czasach kapitalizowania punktów warunkują‐ cych awans w krainie Kalopów. Dodać wypada, że ilość tytułów i stanowisk do zdobywania w ciągu całego życia była w Kalopei wystarczająca: mgr asystent, dr, asystent, dr adiunkt, dr adiunkt hab., docent, profesor uczelniany, prof. nad‐ zwyczajny, prof. zwyczajny, prof. tytularny. Zdobywanie tych stanowisk i ty‐ tułów było traktowane w Kalopei jako panaceum na domniemane lenistwo i stagnację umysłową pracowników człeko ‐kalo ‐humanizmu, członków nowej klasy próżniaczej. Podczas konferencji wyżsi stopniem przemawiali do niższych stopniem, ci zaś do tych, którzy nie zdążyli jeszcze wyjechać na kolejną między‐ narodową konferencję - ze względu na wysokość punktacji innych w Kalopei nie było - przy czym wszyscy otrzymywali certyfikaty udziału w obradach jako jednakowe dla wszystkich wynagrodzenie. Okazało się także, iż pod koniec każdego roku do Centralnego Komitetu Cytowania i Punktowania słały kopie owych certyfikatów oraz sprawozdania punktacyjne całe zastępy kalopskich humanistów młodego i starszego poko‐ lenia, a także Kalopowie średniego pokolenia. Do CKCiP spływały też oceny kalopskich studentów, gdyż w Kalopei nauczyciele byli oceniani przez uczniów, których zachęcano do tego nagrodami pieniężnymi, zgodnie z formułą demo‐ kratycznej partycypacji i deliberacji. Wiązało się to przede wszystkim z zanie‐ chaniem dawnego zwyczaju pisania esejów, gdyż podnosiło to ryzyko oskarże‐ nia Kalo ‐profesora o odchylenie subiektywistyczno ‐indywidualistyczne. Jaką bowiem obiektywną miarą oceniać młodych ludzi, skoro styl to człowiek, a sty‐ lów w świecie humanistyki jest dostatek, a nawet nadmiar. tedy w ich miejsce wprowadzono powszechny test na kartach skanerowych, który - z punktu widzenia wymogów sprawiedliwej oceny - był o wiele bezpieczniejszy, albo‐ wiem licząca punkty maszyna była bardziej nieprzekupna niż sam maximilien de robespierre i bardziej obiektywna niż transcendentalny rozum Immanuela Kanta. rychło okazało się także, iż w krainie Kalopów zakazano również pi‐ sania w pierwszej osobie liczby pojedynczej, traktując to jako objaw anarchii, libartarianizmu i kontrkultury. Pewna Kalopka po dwustopniowych studiach humanistycznych zwierzyła się Al ‐utrabowi, że nawet w listach do narzeczo‐ nego operuje zwrotami w rodzaju: 'mówimy', 'stwierdzamy', 'konkludujemy', Dwa raporty 277 dodając do maili liczne przypisy, by nie być przed ślubem posądzoną o plagiat. narzeczony był już bowiem po obronie pracy naukowej, przy czym za prace naukowe uznawano w Kalopei tylko takie, których autor udowodnił, że nie ma ani jednej własnej myśli. „Czy Pan to napisał" - pytał niejeden spolegliwy kalo ‐profesor swojego kalo ‐magistranta ‐licencjanta, a na odpowiedź: „tak, to ja", doradzał: „Istotnie, widać, że Bóg nie poskąpił Panu literackich talentów, ale nie na tym sprawa polega. niech Pan teraz napisze, u kogo Pan to prze‐ czytał, bo Człeko ‐Kalo ‐Komisja tego nie uzna". W ten sposób wprowadzał go w arkana uniwersyteckiego ketmana pracy zawodowej. W krainie Kalopów wprowadzono z czasem obowiązek pisania prac w uni‐ wersalnym języku globalnej Demokratury Człekowiska, a to w celu ułatwienia wszystkim prowincjom zaznajomienia się z rodzimą myślą filozoficzną, poli‐ tyczną i społeczną Kalopów. myśliciele kalopscy spędzali zatem wiele czasu na pisaniu wypracowań pod ogólnym tytułem „Coś u Kogoś", byle z euroatlantyc‐ kiego Centrum rozwoju Wiedzy. Była to logiczna konsekwencja zdobycia przez to centrum imperialnej władzy nad światem (i zarazem promocja Końca Histo‐ rii); centrum prowadzące nota bene liczne wojny w imię idei wiecznego pokoju. Było to dosyć oczywiste i logiczne, nie od dzisiaj wiadomo było Al ‐utrabowi, że granicą wpływu i władzy każdego Imperium jest narzucany przezeń język urzędowej humanistyki. W krótkim czasie okazało się, że zgodnie z tym obo‐ wiązkiem najwięcej punktów zebrały zakłady, w których zatrudniono metoj‐ ków, ci bowiem, pisząc w językach krajów swojego urodzenia, uzbierali ogrom‐ ną ilość punkt dla tubylców. Z czasem zatrudnianie metojków na kalopskich uniwersytetach stało się zwyczajem powszechnym, zgodnym z nieuchronnymi procesami globalizacyjnymi. Pociągało to za sobą umiędzynarodowienie licz‐ nych komisji badających jakość i ilość powstających w Kalopei sprawozdań, czy aby spełniają one kryteria awansu. W ramach zdrowej konkurencji z metojkami Kalopowie tak byli zajęci tłumaczeniem swoich tekstów na języki obce, że prac swoich kolegów nie mieli już czasu czytać, a tym bardziej o nich dyskutować. niejeden Kalop zdawał sobie zresztą dobrze sprawę, że jego kolega - w ra‐ mach ketmanu pracy zawodowej - streszcza myślicieli zagranicznych, i nie czytał tych sprawozdań, lecz - nie tracąc czasu - także streszczał innych myślicieli celem gromadzenia odpowiedniej ilości punktów. W ten oto sposób każdy obywatel Kalopei, dążąc do realizacji własnego interesu, kierowany jakąś niewidzialną ręką, nie czytał innego Kalopa, podnosząc w ten sposób poziom publicznego dobra. Ponieważ jednak nad mniSW powiewał sztandar z mo‐ bilizującym napisem „Publikuj albo giń", w licznych zakładach i instytutach trwała permanentna produkcja artykułów i książek, których, jak opowiedział Al ‐utrabowi przydrożny mędrzec, siedzący przy dziurze w drodze z błędnie ustawionym kalo ‐drogowskazem: „nikt odpowiednio nieopłacony nie czytał, bo nie było po temu żadnych innych powodów. Wszędzie książek było bardzo dużo, co stanowiło przeszkodę docierania do rzadkich pozycji wartościowych". 278 Piotr BARTULA Kalopowie dowiedzieli się też od swoich szpiegów zza granicy, iż w Kraju Powszechnej Demokratury - w ramach wielokulturowego państwa - zdarza się niekiedy, że o awansie decydują okoliczności pozamerytoryczne, mające po‐ zytywny wpływ na ranking uczelni, na przykład płeć lub kolor skóry, pocho‐ dzenie etniczne, polityczne szkody w przeszłości. Przez jakiś czas trwały starania Kalopów o objęcie ich akcją afirmatywną jako postkomunistycznych kalo‐ ‐europian Powszechnej Demokratury, w ramach polityki nacjonalizmu ofiar. Wtedy musieliby być przymusowo wykładani i czytani oraz kupowani. Jednak w Centrali Praw Człowieka zapadła decyzja na „nie" i w związku z tym myślicie‐ le zagraniczni również nie czytali kalo ‐streszczeń swoich własnych publikacji. Kiedy Al ‐utrab rozważał problem nowego ketmana i jego skutków, w Ka‐ lopei wpadła mu w rękę książka dziewiętnastowiecznego podróżnika, niejakiego pana de tocqueville'a, który z kasandryczną precyzją ujawniał skryty despotyzm demokratycznej władzy w przyszłości: „Bierze ona w swoje opiekuńcze i potężne dłonie każdego człowieka po kolei i ulepiwszy go wedle własnego upodobania, pochyla się z kolei nad całym społeczeństwem. Oplątuje je siecią małych, zawi‐ łych, drobiazgowych i jednolitych reguł, których zerwać nie potrafią nawet naj‐ oryginalniejsze umysły i najżywotniejsze duchy, chcące wznieść się ponad tłum. nie łamie woli, lecz ją osłabia, nagina i opanowuje. rzadko zmusza do działania, lecz zawsze staje na przeszkodzie wszelkiemu działaniu. nie niszczy, lecz dba by nic się nie rodziło. nie tyranizuje - krępuje, ogranicza, osłabia, gasi, ogłupia i zamienia w końcu każdego człowieka i każdy naród w stado onieśmielonych zwierząt, których pasterzem jest rząd". „Ameryka!" - wykrzyknął Al ‐utrab, a szeptem dodał: „ale w Kalopei". I w obawie przed monitoringiem CKCiP czym prędzej do swoich notatek jął dodawać przypisy. rÓWnOŚĆ VERSUS SPrAWIeDLIWOŚĆ (AL ‐utrAB W KALOPeI, rAPOrt nr 2) Wprowadzenie: na konkretnym przykładzie sporu o pensum (klasyczny w kraju Kalopów wa‐ riant „sporu o miedzę") Al ‐utrab przedstawia ogólny problem identycznych uprawnień dwóch równych sobie Kalopów - marcina i Piotra - do pożąda‐ nego przez nich w równym stopniu tego samego dobra. Obu cechuje ograniczo‐ ny altruizm; nie są ani aniołami, których nie kusi samolubna chęć postawienia na swoim, ani diabłami, którzy chcą niszczyć innych nawet kosztem zniszczenia samych siebie. Jako ludzie działający w świecie ograniczonych dóbr są równo‐ cześnie na tyle słabi fizycznie i intelektualnie, że żaden z nich nie jest w stanie trwale ujarzmić drugiego i poddać go władzy samolubnych rozkazów. Wszystko to sprawia, iż każde rozstrzygnięcie tego sporu sprawia, że zysk jednego jest Dwa raporty 279 stratą drugiego. Powstaje pytanie, czy sprawiedliwość - w warunkach przy‐ bliżonej równości Kalopów, ograniczonego altruizmu i/lub samolubstwa oraz ograniczonych zasobów - jest aby w ogóle w Kalopei możliwa. Występują: marcin i Piotr. Przez lata prowadzili zajęcia na kalo ‐kopistyce, dzieląc się trzema grupami: Piotr od zawsze miał dwie grupy po 60 godzin, marcin od zawsze jedną. Sy‐ tuacja się jednak skomplikowała, albowiem jedna grupa została zlikwidowana i z trzech grup zostały dwie. (Podobieństwo osób dialogu do realnych postaci jest czysto przypadkowe). Z listu Kalopata: Drogi Piotrze, witam Cię po zimowych wakacjach i życzę wszystkiego najlepszego z okazji roz‐ poczęcia nowego roku 2013! Właśnie dowiedziałem się od myślącej maszyny, że na kalo ‐kopistyce będą tylko dwie grupy wykładowe, a nie jak dotychczas trzy. Ponieważ prowadzę te zajęcia już 10 lat i zależy mi na ich kontynuacji, mam do Ciebie gorącą prośbę, abyśmy podzielili się tymi dwoma wykładami, tak abyś wziął jeden wykład, a ja drugi, każdy kurs po 60 godzin przez cały rok. Z góry serdecznie dziękuję i mam nadzieję, że zgodzisz na taki podział po połowie, bo przecież od lat prowadzimy te zajęcia dla bez wyjątku równie inteligentnych i równie uroczych kalo ‐kopistek i na ogół jednego równie jak one inteligentne‐ go i uroczego kalo ‐kopisty. Drogi marcinie, dziękuję za życzenia, które w równym stopniu odwzajemniam, sądzę, że w nowym roku będzie wiele więcej podobnych, urzędowych spraw do omówienia, módlmy się tedy, ażeby starczyło nam czasu na intelektualne konwersacje, a nie tylko ciułanie awan‐ sowych punktów. Co do zajęć na kalo ‐kopistyce, to przy podziale 1/1 gr. powstałby poważny problem z moim pensum, albowiem rezygnacja z jednej grupy skazuje mnie na zajęcia gdzie indziej, rozproszenie tematów, a także terminów, co ma pewne zna‐ czenie, gdyż w minionych dobrych czasach mogłem skondensować zajęcia w jednym dniu - jedne po drugich. Prosiłbym zatem, abyś, jak konserwatysta konserwatyście, zostawił mi komfort prowadzenia obu grup zgodnie z tradycją. Piotrze, proszę jednak, abyś raz jeszcze to rozważył, bo ja też miałbym problem z pen‐ sum, poszukując innej grupy o nowym profilu tematycznym. Pod tym wzglę‐ dem nasze sytuacje są równe sobie, tak co do przyszłego komfortu, jak i ewen‐ tualnego dyskomfortu. Bardzo cię zatem proszę o podzielenie się połową z tych dwóch grup, bo przecież od lat zgodnie współpracujemy na tym polu. Z góry serdecznie dziękuję za zrozumienie, bo nie chcę robić Ci trudności i kłopotów, tym bardziej że twoja tradycja równa jest mojej tradycji. marcinie, nie wiem doprawdy, jak ten kłopot rozwiązać, tym bardziej że jestem równie zgodny i uległy wobec powszechnie podzielanych wartości, jak i ty. Sytuacja podziału 1/1 jest 280 Piotr BARTULA dla mnie jednak najgorsza z możliwych. Wolałbym już zostawić tobie obie grupy na kalo ‐kopistyce i mieć analogicznie dwie gdzie indziej, bo to dałoby mi możność skon‐ densowania zajęć, ale myśląca maszyna informuje nas obu, że to nie wchodzi w grę. W proponowanej sytuacji musiałaby znaleźć dla mnie 60 godzin. Piotrze, zawsze okazywałeś mi niezwykłą życzliwość, na którą sobie nie zasłużyłem bar‐ dziej niż ty. Czy mogę zatem potraktować sprawę za załatwioną i podjąć ustale‐ nia dotyczące harmonogramu? mam przejąć obie grupy? Proszę o wybaczenie, że okazuję się tak uparty. marcinie, chyba opacznie mnie zrozumiałeś, ja tylko rozważałem - symulując myślącą maszy‐ nę - czysto teoretyczną możliwość. Jak słusznie zauważyłeś swoim bystrym (kon‐ genialnym mojemu) umysłem, prawa do zysku i straty tych 60 godzin, jak również kłopotów z ich utraceniem mamy takie same, powinniśmy zatem rzucić monetą. W tej patowej sytuacji tylko takie rozwiązanie jest niemal sprawiedliwe, a w każdym razie do sprawiedliwości, rozumianej jako zdepersonalizowana bezstronność, przy‐ bliżone. Jeżeli tego nie uczynimy, nigdy nie wybrniemy z tej klasycznie merkantyli‐ stycznej („zysk jednego jest stratą drugiego") sytuacji i będziemy toczyć poniżający nas spór o miedzę. uważam, że oddanie się niemiłosiernemu, bezosobowemu losowi uwzniośli i uszlachetni nasz - bagatelny przecież z punktu widzenia spraw istotnych - konflikt interesów. Los, któremu się rzucimy w objęcia w jakiejś kawiarni lub na krakowskich błoniach, nie będzie miał dla naszych interesów żadnych względów i podniesie nas na wyższy poziom kultury. Chyba że chcemy dalej wykonywać ruchy niegodne filozofów. A zatem odwagi, Drogi Przyjacielu - kiedy i gdzie rzucamy mo‐ netą? Ja jestem gotów na tę straszną chwilę - wybór monety należy do Ciebie. Aha, skoro jesteśmy przy „monetach", mógłbym Ci też zaoferować miniumowę społeczną i następującą transakcję: Wyszacuj wartość swojego komfortu i podyktuj kwotę, któ‐ rą będę musiał zapłacić za twoją rezygnację; ja od razu powiem, że zrezygnuję, jeżeli zapłacisz mi 20 zł za jeden miesiąc, to znaczy koszt dojazdu tramwajem na inne zaję‐ cia i 50 zł za stracony czas. Słyszałem jednak, że idee kontraktualizmu, ekonomizmu i libertarianizmu są ci obce. Piotrze, istotnie, uważam, iż ekspansja metod ekonomicznych na obszary nauk społecz‐ nych i humanistycznych, jak również ich inwazja w świat opartych na przy‐ jaznych uczuciach wspólnot akademickich jest nas niegodna; nie ulegajmy imperializmowi doktryn ekonomicznych. W imię obrony wartości wyższych, chronionych wszak przez uniwersytet, na które tak ja, jak i ty przysięgaliśmy (spondeo ac polliceor) - nie mogę się zgodzić na przeliczniki materialne dla war‐ tości wyższego rzędu. Brzydzę się tym. Skoro jednak mówisz o wolności, to patrząc z perspektywy Wydziału Kalo‐ ‐Kopistyki, lepiej byłoby, gdyby dwie osoby prowadziły zajęcia po połowie niż tylko jedna osoba z wykluczeniem drugiej. Wtedy studenci mają większy wy‐ bór. Dlatego wolałbym pozostać przy swoim zdaniu, mieć jedną grupę, a nie rzucać monetą. Dwa raporty 281 marcinie, to, czy wykład dla jednego roku powinna prowadzić jedna czy dwie osoby, to jest spra‐ wa sporna i chyba nierozstrzygalna, kto wie, czy nie lepiej byłoby, aby studenci byli równi wobec kryteriów wyznaczonych przez jednego wykładowcę. Wtedy byliby równi wobec koherentnego prawa z jednym jego egzekutorem, którym posłużyć się może myśląca maszyna. Ponadto twoja propozycja - jak trafnie zauważyłeś (a co mojej uwadze również nie umknęło) - jest związana z wolnością, a nie ze sprawiedliwością. najlepiej byłoby więc, żeby zgodnie z ideą „sprawiedliwości rynkowej" rozstrzygnęli o wszystkim głosujący nogami studenci, stojący za zasłoną niewiedzy na nasz temat. Byłoby to jednak możliwe, gdyby system był całkowicie rynkowy i nie istniał limit górnych przyjęć na zajęcia. tak jednak nie jest, bo myśląca maszyna wygenerowała już kiedyś nowy system sprawiedliwości społecznej, czyli odgórnej dystrybucji dóbr. Dochodzą także plotki i niesprawdzalne opinie przekazywane o nas przez dawnych uczestników i uczestniczki naszych kursów. Piotrze, sądzę, że jako doświadczony dydaktyk bez trudu poprowadzisz coś innego i no‐ wego, weź też pod uwagę, że ja kończę ważną książkę i mam jeszcze do napisania ponad 200 stron, podczas gdy ty właśnie książkę wydałeś. marcinie, ty masz coś ważnego do napisania i ja mam coś ważnego do napisania; myślę, że obaj mamy równe do tego prawa, tak jak i nasi równi sobie inteligentni czytelnicy, których jest zresztą coraz mniej. nierówności znaczenia i wartości naszych publikacji, a tym bardziej hierarchii umysłowych pomiędzy nami i naszymi czytelnikami nie zakładam. gdyby nawet takowe były, to lepiej tego nie zdradzać, bo zgodnie z obowiązującym dzisiaj paradygmatem równości władze mogłyby nas skierować - po uprzednich ba‐ daniach tomograficznych - na czasochłonną terapię domóżdżania gwoli wyrównania któremuś z nas szans awansu. Zawsze będzie wszak sprawą sporną, komu więcej czasu potrzeba do napisania tych 200 (czy 2) stron, które z nich są ważniejsze i dla kogo; nie da się określić, za kim stoi społeczna sprawiedliwość wyrównawcza, komu przysługuje akcja afirmatywna. ty też jesteś doświadczonym dydaktykiem, byłbym megalomanem, sądząc, że gorszym ode mnie. Jesteś tak samo dobry jak ja. Piotrze, rozumiem wszystkie twoje racje, ale mnie jest bardzo trudno rezygnować z za‐ jęć, które prowadzę od lat. Zważ, że rezygnując z jednego wykładu, tracisz tylko połowę swego kursu, a gdy ja zrezygnuję - wówczas tracę wszystko. Dlatego nie chcę składać mojego wykładu na ślepy los lotu pieniądza. Czy w przypadku kary śmierci, którą się zajmowałeś, też można losować winę? Konserwatywna zasada głosi, że wola prawodawcy wiąże i rozstrzyga, a nie waha się. Proszę jeszcze raz o łaskawy namysł. marcinie, co do kary śmierci, to - jak wiesz - stworzyłem testamentową teorię tej kary, pole‐ gającą na tym, że każdy z nas (o ile zechce) pisze w testamencie, co ma się stać z jego ewentualnym oprawcą. Jeżeli takowy się znajdzie, zostanie ukarany zgodnie z wolą 282 Piotr BARTULA konkretnego testatora. Jest to zatem dla przestępcy sprawa losowa: jeżeli zabije on łaskawego marcina, zostanie ułaskawiony, a kiedy surowego Piotra, będzie zgładzony przez Lewiatana wypełniającego wolę każdego z tych konkretnych testatorów. Jest to nominalistyczna koncepcja nierównej sprawiedliwości. Jednocześnie jest to także rów‐ na sprawiedliwość, bowiem wszyscy ewentualni oprawcy każdego testatora podlegają takiemu samemu testamentowi. Piotrze, podziwiam twoją erudycję i filozoficzny zapał, ale proszę o łaskawość związaną z wieloletnią przyjaźnią, a do to tego nie potrzeba filozofii. mam nadzieję, że nie zechcesz narażać mojego poczucia spełnienia prośby, które powziąłem na początku dialogu, na bolesny zawód. marcinie, teraz wprowadzasz do naszego spotkania w dialogu „wojnę serc", a to nie podnosi nas na wyższy poziom cywilizacyjny. Doprawdy nie rozumiem, dlaczego nie chcesz roz‐ strzygnięcia losowego, które jest podobne do sprawiedliwości, bo - przy podzielonych racjach - poddajemy się takiemu samemu ryzyku. W ten sposób unikamy osobistych urazów niszczących naszą przyjaźń opartą na wysokich i wzniosłych uczuciach moral‐ nych, na które żeśmy przysięgali. Jeszcze raz apeluję do Ciebie o łaskę podniesienia poziomu naszego sporu ponad zwykły upór i prywatę. Piotrze, udam też, że nie czytałem twoich słów o prywacie i uporze, wolę odwołać się do zasady sprawiedliwości: 1. Istnieją dwie grupy na kalo ‐kopistyce. 2. Obaj mamy prawo do tych zajęć od lat. 3. Sprawiedliwość nakazuje więc podzielić się równo. 4. rzut monetą jest korzystny dla Ciebie, bo masz już jedne zajęcia plus los może dać Ci jeszcze drugie, ergo losowanie jest niesprawiedliwe, bo możesz zyskać wszystko, a ja tylko połowę. marcinie, co do udawania, to nie ma co dalej już udawać, albowiem wszystko w naszym „spotka‐ niu w dialogu" zaczyna się sprowadzać do zwykłego: ja tak chcę, mnie się należy. twój wywód o sprawiedliwości jest czysto werbalny i mało ma wspólnego z rze‐ czywistością. Po pierwsze sytuacja jest taka, że z naszej wspólnej puli znikło 60 godzin i ktoś z nas musi je stracić na rzecz drugiego. Inaczej być nie może. Straty są równe je‐ dynie nominalnie. Ja, tracąc jedną grupę, mam do prowadzenia dwa tematy: jeden sta‐ ry, a drugi nowy. ty zaś tracąc swoją grupę, masz do zrealizowania nadal jeden temat. Z tego punktu widzenia twoja strata jest mniejsza, a moja jest większa. W sytuacji, gdy ja przy równym ryzyku losu (a nie na zasadzie: „ja tak chcę, mnie się należy") wy‐ grywam, rzeczywiście nie mam strat, ty zaś masz nadal jeden (być może nowy) temat do realizacji. tak więc porównawczo rzecz biorąc, ja, tracąc grupę, mam więcej nowej dobrej roboty, a ty po nominalnie identycznej stracie masz jej i tak realnie mniej. Po‐ nadto sprawiedliwość nie polega na tym, aby dzielić się po równo (to jest egalitaryzm), ale proporcjonalnie, i to z poddaniem się stron sporu temu samemu, niezależnemu od Dwa raporty 283 ich partykularnej woli arbitrowi. takim bezosobowym arbitrem nam nieznanym i nas nieznającym jest los (moneta lub coś innego). Przed rzutem monetą jesteśmy równi wobec losu, równi wobec jednego kryterium niezależnego od prywaty i uporu każdej ze stron. Ponieważ ja mam dalej do pracy i jestem dość chorowity, to uważam też, że zajęcia powinny być tak rozłożone, ażeby było to z korzyścią dla najbardziej poszkodo‐ wanego przez los. Piotrze, nie jestem zwolennikiem teorii rawlsa. masz tylko częściowo rację, owszem pro‐ cedura rzutu monetą jest sprawiedliwa, ale rezultat tej procedury sprawiedliwy już nie jest. Skoro nasza dyskusja nie zmienia sytuacji, to proponuję poddać się pod osąd innego arbitra niż los: niech zdecyduje mądry Pan Pensum i sam przydzieli nam zajęcia tak, jak to zawsze sprawiedliwie robił przez całe lata. możemy do niego napisać równocześnie dwa takie same maile, z prośbą o rozsądzenie sprawy. Później poddamy się jego decyzji. na rzucanie losu nie zgadzam się, tym bardziej, że jak już, to trzeba by rzucać o obydwa wykłady, bo dlaczego tylko jeden miałby być osądzony losem, a drugi już nie. może los chciałby, abym poprowadził całość? marcinie, los powinien rozstrzygnąć o grupie spornej, a nie zastępować obdarzonych uniwersal‐ nym (i dodatkowo uniwersyteckim) rozumem ludzi w sprawach, które mogą być roz‐ strzygnięte bezkolizyjnie. Ponieważ musimy uciąć nasz spór w określonym czasie (pół godziny), przyjmuję twoją propozycję. Co prawda, obarczamy osobę trzecią naszym problemem, co jest wobec niej nie fair, ale w zaistniałej sytuacji zgadzam się na wa‐ riant rozstrzygnięcia naszego sporu przez władze. Zaczniemy od Pana Pensum, a w razie uchylenia się: Dyrekcja, Dziekan, a jeśli i oni zaczną naśladować Piłata, to zawsze zostaje minister Szkolnictwa Wyższego, potem Bruksela i Strasburg. Wszak jestem Kalopem i tak jak i ty lubię pieniaczyć. Czy możemy już zwrócić się o arbitraż? Zgodnie uznamy opinię zewnętrznej władzy dla dobra wspólnego, dla dobra uniwersytetu, dla dobra Kalopei i europy oraz Królestwa Bożego na świecie. Wysyłamy równocześnie. teraz! Piotrze, oczywiście, ale zróbmy to tak, ażeby nie było różnych wersji wysłanych w róż‐ nym czasie. trzeba, aby komputer wysłał to samo w tym samym czasie, w na‐ szym wspólnym imieniu. tak, teraz. Start. niech żyje Lewiatan, który uwolni nas od trudu samodzielnego decydowania. marcinie, tak, niech żyje Lewiatan, wobec którego będziemy zawsze równi. SŁOWnICZeK WYrAZÓW uŻYtYCH W teKŚCIe Al ‐utrab - Bartula demokratura - neologizm opisujący sytuację, w której funkcjonują fasadowo struktu‐ ry demokratyczne, ale faktyczną władzę sprawują korporacje infiltrujące, korumpujące i uzależniające od siebie wszystkie struktury państwa. Wizja ta będąca dotąd przewodnim 284 Piotr BARTULA motywem powieści z gatunku political fiction, staje się niebezpiecznie realna w wersji władzy oligarchii urzędników. kalo ‐kopista - polonista kalo ‐kopistka - polonistka kalo ‐kopist yka - polonistyka Kalop - Polak Kalopea - państwo dobrobytu, które w Australii założył król Bolesław Śmiały wraz ze swo‐ ją drużyną. gutkowski, W. (1817). Podróż do Kalopei. Warszawa: towarzystwo Przyjaciół nauk. ketman - specyficzna metoda obrony przed zniewoleniem wewnętrznym obrana przez ludzi, którzy przymusowo lub dobrowolnie połknęli pigułkę murti Binga (mongolski filozof z po‐ wieści Witkacego Nienasycenie), czyli dostarczony im drogą organiczną światopogląd i kry‐ teria awansu społecznego. Ketmana nie należy mylić ze zwykłym oportunizmem. termin ten spopularyzował swego czasu znany uciekinier z Kalopei, zatrudniony na uniwersytecie amerykańskim mimo braku stopnia naukowego (Czesław miłosz, Zniewolony umysł). mędrzec - Bronisław Łagowski, autor artykułu Błędne drogowskazy rawls John - guru globalistyki (czyt. filozofii euro ‐atlantyckiej), obowiązkowy w Kalopei teoretyk sprawiedliwości. tocqueville Alexis de - autor O demokracji w Ameryce, w tym rozdziału pt. Jaki rodzaj despotyzmu zagraża demokratycznym narodom? | {
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Review of Christopher J. Insole, Kant and the Creation of Freedom: A Theological Problem (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013). How can human beings act freely, if divine creation determines their nature? This ground-breaking book provides incontrovertible textual evidence that Immanuel Kant was pre-occupied with this traditional theological problem throughout his career. The book's ten chapters offer a thoroughgoing overview of Kant's entire corpus, covering the whole range of his published and unpublished works. After a general introduction outlining the book's uniqueness-namely, its sustained focus on how Kant resolved the apparent incompatibility between divine action and human freedom-Chapters 2-4 set out various aspects of the pre-Critical background of the problem, Chapters 5-7 focus on the solution offered by the mature Kant through his discovery of transcendental idealism, and Chapters 8-10 clarify and draw various theological inferences from Kant's position. The concluding pages (pp.229-244) set the whole study in the context of the recent "'affirmative' trend" in interpreting Kant's philosophy of religion: while overwhelmingly substantiating the tendency of recent interpreters to see Kant as a serious contributor to Christian theology, the book poses a problem to any Kantian who wishes to maintain an orthodox position on divine-human interaction. The "theological problem" that Christopher Insole highlights throughout this book is that Christian orthodoxy adopts a "concurrence" account of the compatibility of divine action and human freedom, while Kant's Critical philosophy appears to defend the "mere conservationist" account (p.10 and Chapters 9-10). The latter, sometimes associated with deism (pp.63, 202), portrays divine action as consisting in creating noumenal substances (e.g., human beings) and "conserving" their existence, but without intervening in day-to-day interactions between created beings. Traditional theists prefer a more robust understanding, whereby divine action "concurs" with causal chains that human beings initiate, the two functioning as partners in a single cause. Kant's commitment to the conservationist position, Insole argues, explains why he thinks "it would be a contradiction to say that God is the creator of appearances" (CPrR 5:102)-a passage quoted repeatedly throughout the book. Kant the conservationist believes that making human beings the sole creator of appearances (as required by transcendental idealism) is the only way to preserve human freedom while at the same time affirming that human beings (as noumenal selves) were created by God. But Insole worries that most Christian theologians, being concurrentists, will regard this solution as worse than the problem it attempts to solve. While Kant's mature, Critical phase introduced a marked change in his view of human agency and freedom, his position on the nature of divine freedom remained constant throughout his career (p.13): unlike human beings, God is not free to do otherwise; rather, because "Kant does not think that the divine nature is external to the divine will" (p.28), divine freedom requires God to create a world that corresponds to the highest moral good. This is simply what it means to be a holy being. Because God's nature (or "God's understanding", as Kant and Insole sometimes put it) is the ground of all possibility, according to Kant, the implementation of God's holy will in creating a world is necessarily limited to options that will result in the created world being good. What changes with the discovery of transcendental idealism is that in Kant's pre-Critical writings God can freely choose how substances interact, whereas transcendental idealism seems to make us the sole cause of phenomenal interactions. Insole's discussion of Kant's view of divine freedom (Chapter 3) has an interesting outcome: "our 'ability' to do otherwise" turns out to be "not so much a capacity, as a failing" (p.57). Apparently, Kant's view of human goodness as being necessarily limited to virtue pertains only because (or insofar as) human freedom fails to imitate God's self-determination by the moral law-though Insole only hints at how the holiness-virtue distinction relates to all of this. The core problem that Kant faces (and that his solution presents to the theological tradition) is that, unlike God, we can be influenced by "alien causes". Insole portrays Kant as moving from the pre-Critical (traditional theological) view that God is within us and that we, like God, can act freely without being able to choose otherwise, to the Critical (theologically problematic) view "that God is an alien cause" and that we must be able to choose otherwise in order to act freely (p.60). While the scanty evidence Insole provides does not convince me that Kant ever regarded God as an alien cause, he clearly did regard human claims about God's will as examples of heteronomous motivating factors. With this minor modification, Insole's insight is profound: Kant insists that God is not the creator of appearances because appearances are the source of the heteronomous causes that limit human volition to a quest for virtue, preventing us from participating in divine holiness. Insole admits to reading Kant's texts selectively, searching only for passages that discuss Kant's stance on this particular theological problem. Thus, after noting that Kant's mature theory of "practical freedom" may be "metaphysically less ambitious" than his theory of "transcendental freedom" (pp.73-74), he sidesteps the former, without acknowledging that for Kant the practical always has primacy over the theoretical. Surely Kant's doctrine of the primacy of practical reason merits further attention; indeed, less theologically-inclined readers might object that it renders superfluous the whole speculative issue that is the focus of this book. In general, however, this book's weaknesses are minor: occasional typos include an accidental omission of most of one sentence (p.24); the style is sometimes frustratingly repetitive; and key points in the argument rely on unpublished essays even though published works on the relevant topics were available. Insole sometimes uses key terms in unKantian ways, as when he calls "things in themselves" and "noumenal substance" a "category" (pp.99,116-120). Perhaps most significantly, his valiant attempts to align Kant's multifarious claims with predetermined labeling schemes (see e.g., pp.16-18,50-51,81-84,220-223) lack appreciation for the inherently perspectival character of Kant's thought. These weaknesses are far outweighed by the considerable strengths of the book's core chapters: Chapter 5 establishes the central importance Kant gave to the much-maligned doctrine of "noumenal affection"; Chapter 6 demonstrates how the incoherence that plagues Kant's claim is unavoidable in significant ways; and Chapter 7 defends the seriousness and coherence of Kant's claim to believe in a real God. Through the compilation of insurmountable textual evidence, Insole portrays Kant as a firm believer in noumenal causality, who never regarded it as conflicting with the Critical limitation of the principle of causality to the phenomenal world; rather, "noumenal first causation" is the elegant solution that transcendental idealism provides to the problem of preserving human freedom while affirming divine creation. The degree of incoherence that plagues interpreters of Kant's theory should be welcomed as an attractive application of Kant's "apophaticism" (pp.134,237). If so, doesn't the fact that this solution bars God from direct involvement in creating appearances seem like a relatively small sacrifice? Insole thinks not. Making a big deal out of this sacrifice, Chapter 8 "drills down" so deeply into the basis for Kant's claim (pp.9,172) that the significance of the whole study risks slipping through the cracks. Chapter 9 (especially p.215) argues that, although Kant nominally defends a kind of divine concurrence, he allows it only for the noumenal realm, not for the phenomenal (including moral actions that occur in time)-and this is insufficient for traditional Christian theology. However, as I read the relevant passages, Kant never positively denies natural concurrence; his arguments are consistently perspectival. When we interpret the world (and ourselves) from the theoretical standpoint, viewing God as the creator of appearances would constitute what Ryle called a category mistake. Insole is right that "Kant insists that we should regard ourselves as created only with respect to our noumenal existence, but as appearances we should not regard ourselves as created" (p.173); while Kantian concurrence allows God to complete an action that a human being initiates, the human aspect of the action "must be untouched by divine action, if the human act is to have moral worth" (p.217). This troubles Insole only because he does not acknowledge the perspectival nature of Kant's vision: from the theoretical standpoint we also should not regard ourselves (or appearances) as not divine creations; our theoretical ignorance of the transcendent prevents us from dogmatically asserting either position. That divine creation plays no constitutive role in our empirical knowledge or in our practical reasoning does not prevent it from playing a regulative role-a possibility Insole does not adequately explore. This book's greatest shortcoming stems directly from its greatest strength: due to the tremendous breadth of his coverage of Kant's corpus, Insole pays relatively little attention to the theological positions adopted in (or implied by) Kant's Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason. As a result, he overlooks or downplays strands of Kant's thought that can be read as being far more sympathetic to a robust theory of divine-human agency than his portrayal of Kant suggests. Even in his concluding attempt to "offer a possible reconstruction" of Kant's position (p.233), Insole finds Kant lacking; but a closer look at Religion would reveal more in-depth discussions of doctrines such as divine grace and the Trinity than Insole acknowledges (pp.232-240). Two of the various theories meriting further discussion are Kant's doctrine of the "true church" (whereby God timelessly founds the "invisible church", while human beings construct specific "visible churches" that exemplify its predetermined formal structure) and his theory of conscience (whereby God's noumenal judgment of human beings works through the phenomenal agency of humanity's inward moral compass). A perspectivally-nuanced affirmative interpretation views grace not merely as "a supplementary action" (p.238) in the phenomenal world, but also (from the noumenal standpoint) as the divine gift of humanity's overall moral predetermination (Bestimmung). Viewed as such, divine-human concurrence constitutes a partnership that could not be more robust. Stephen R. Palmquist, Hong Kong Baptist University | {
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NASCIMENTOS DA PSICOLOGIA: A NATUREZA E O ESPÍRITO Paul Mengal1 [p. 355] RESUMO: Desde sua constituição como domínio do saber no fim do século XVI, a psicologia divide-se rapidamente em duas tendências com orientações diferentes. A primeira, de inspiração naturalista, situa-se no prolongamento do comentário da Física aristotélica e se desenvolve principalmente nas universidades protestantes de Marburgo e Leiden. Nesses estabelecimentos onde reinava então um espírito humanista, racionalista e tolerante, toma lugar a primeira forma de dualismo da alma e do corpo. Mas na mesma época, em círculos místicos e herméticos, desenvolve-se uma outra concepção da psicologia, cujo método interpretativo inspira-se na exegese bíblica e emprega procedimentos terapêuticos, cuidados [cure] da alma e cuidados magnéticos2, sustentados sobre a influência psicológica. NASCIMENTOS DA PSICOLOGIA: A NATUREZA E O ESPÍRITO 260 Hoje frequentemente se discute a questão: a psicologia é uma ciência da natureza? E caso sim, quais devem ou podem ser suas relações com a biologia? O estudo das condições de nascimento da psicologia durante o século XVI pode aclarar o debate: com efeito constata-se, como tentaremos mostrar, que um primeiro nascimento se produz no próprio seio das ciências da natureza, no seio do que se chamava então de filosofia natural ou Physica. Mas ao mesmo tempo uma outra psicologia nasce como a imagem invertida da precedente: ela é filha do hermetismo, e não cessará de reivindicar também sua legitimidade. Enquanto teoria geral do vivo, designada pelo nome de Psychologia, nasce no século XVI o projeto de estudar a alma e suas faculdades, tal como os anatomistas estudaram o corpo e seus órgãos. O modelo, a ciência de referência desse projeto é a anatomia, cujo brilhante sucesso nesse século a designou como novo modelo do saber. Portanto, é ao mesmo tempo inspirando-se na anatomia, e se demarcando diante dela, que tal psicologia delimita as fronteiras de seu campo próprio de investigação. [p. 356] I – SÉCULOS XIII-XIV: O TRATADO DA ALMA DE ARISTÓTELES É UMA PARTE DA FÍSICA Desde a antiguidade, e essa tradição se perpetua até a época moderna, o De Anima de Aristóteles, retomado pelo tomismo (doutrina oficial da Igreja cristã desde o fim do século XIII), integrou-se a um conjunto de textos constituídos como domínio de estudo: a Physica. Além dos oito livros da REVISTA IDEAÇÃO, N. 32, JUL./DEZ. 2015 261 Física propriamente dita, a Physica agrupa o tratado Do céu, os dois livros Da geração e da corrupção, os Meteoros, os três livros Da alma, História dos animais, Partes dos animais, Do movimento dos animais e da marcha dos animais, Da geração dos animais e enfim os Parva Naturalia (que agrupam pequenos tratados discutindo a sensação, a memória, o sono, a vida e a morte e a respiração). A esse conjunto os medievais e renascentistas acrescentam o De mundo, um tratado pseudoaristotélico - na verdade de inspiração neoplatônica -, cuja inclusão na Physica permite, ao lado de alguns outros textos, o desenvolvimento de um sincretismo que pretendia considerar platonismo, aristotelismo e estoicismo como momentos privilegiados de um mesmo processo evolutivo culminado na filosofia cristã. Qualquer que seja a composição da Physica, constatamos que o discurso sobre a alma é parte integrante de uma ciência da natureza, de uma ciência da vida. A Physica engloba portanto o conjunto das ciências naturais e, desde o aparecimento das primeiras escolas de medicina, ela se torna naturalmente a disciplina preparatória por excelência. O médico, frequentemente designado pelo nome de Physicus, é quem estudou o comentário da Physica. Quando, a partir do século XIII, as universidades desenvolvem nas faculdades de Artes um ensino filosófico menos diretamente ligado ao da teologia, a Physica ocupa ali um lugar cada vez mais importante. Particularmente, o comentário dos tratados de história natural de Aristóteles ganha tamanho lugar que a Igreja tenta diversas vezes, mas sem sucesso, impedir seu ensino3. O ensino do Estagirita é tão popular entre os estudantes que a Igreja acabou preferindo empregar uma estratégia de recuperação, propondo uma interpretação cristã dessa doutrina. NASCIMENTOS DA PSICOLOGIA: A NATUREZA E O ESPÍRITO 262 A Physica se define como ciência teórica ou contemplativa, não apresentando nenhuma característica que poderia designála como ciência [p. 357] experimental. Ocorre o mesmo para os numerosos comentários do De anima que circulam na época, e cujo programa segue passo a passo o texto de Aristóteles: depois de estabelecer que a alma é a forma do corpo, examinase sucessivamente as funções vegetativa, sensitiva e intelectiva da alma. A Igreja é particularmente cuidadosa em preservar a crença em uma alma única, pessoal e imortal, e combate sem descanso qualquer interpretação que criticaria essa posição doutrinal. Uma leitura hábil do texto de Aristóteles e a rejeição categórica de alguns de seus comentadores4 permitiram a ela salvaguardar facilmente o dogma cristão. A Physica é uma disciplina propedêutica aprendida nos primeiros anos de estudo, antes de [o ensino] voltar-se à teologia, ao direito ou à medicina. Os cursos são dados mais frequentemente por professores que aspiram a uma cadeira de medicina - mais prestigiada - e se satisfazem com esse ensino (menos bem pago) esperando uma promoção. Isso quer dizer que não cabe considerar esse domínio do saber como uma ciência em pleno desenvolvimento; assim, o comentário do tratado Da alma não sofre nenhuma modificação importante até o século XVI. Entretanto, São Tomás de Aquino havia feito notar que seria conveniente reorganizar os estudos de tal modo que as sete artes liberais – que segundo ele não dividiam corretamente a filosofia teórica – incluam a teologia e a Physica ou filosofia natural, esta devendo compreender também a medicina5. Desse modo, a filosofia natural tendia a ter lugar cada vez mais importante no cursus universitário no decorrer da segunda metade do século XIII. REVISTA IDEAÇÃO, N. 32, JUL./DEZ. 2015 263 Em 1399, a universidade de Pádua se divide em dois estabelecimentos autônomos: a Universitas iuristarum e a Universitas artistarum. Os artistae, que se consagram a Tomás de Aquino (canonizado em 1323), são formados nas artes liberais, dentre as quais a Physica ocupa um lugar cada vez mais preponderante. Considerando o papel decisivo que a universidade de Pádua desenvolverá na formação dos médicos nos séculos XV e XVI, pode ser interessante seguir a evolução da filosofia natural ocorrida ali. Essa evolução se efetua conforme duas direções principais: a importância crescente da observação, conduzindo ao questionamento das autoridades quando as observações não coincidem com os textos, e a [p. 358] nova forma de considerar as relações entre fé e razão, sublinhando a independência de uma diante da outra e contestando sua feliz harmonia construída pelo empreendimento tomista. Como Siger de Brabant já sublinhara: En effet, nous cherchons seulement, ici, l'intention des philosophes et surtout celle d'Aristote, même dans le cas où le Philosophe serait d'une autre opinion que ce qu'affirment la vérité et la sagesse par la révélation au sujet de l'âme et qui ne peut etre decouvert par les raisons naturelles6 Doutrina da verdade dupla, diz-se; talvez, sobretudo, uma afirmação da independência metodológica da filosofia e da teologia. A influência dessa nova atitude se mede pelo desenvolvimento de uma concepção naturalista da ciência, que limita estritamente o empreendimento científico à pesquisa das causas segundas dos fenômenos observados e reenvia as interrogações metafísicas ao domínio da teologia. A anatomia será a principal beneficiária desse novo estado de espírito. NASCIMENTOS DA PSICOLOGIA: A NATUREZA E O ESPÍRITO 264 II – NASCIMENTO DE UMA PSYCHOLOGIA, TEORIA GERAL DO VIVO A – A DESCONSTRUÇÃO DO TRATADO DA ALMA POR PHILIPPE MELANCHTHON. O primeiro a tirar as consequências dos trabalhos dos anatomistas padovanos para o conhecimento da alma humana é sem dúvida Philippe Melanchthon (1497-1560), protestante convicto, próximo de Lutero, mas igualmente favorável aos ideais humanistas e grande organizador do ensino na Alemanha reformada. Em 1540, Melanchthon publica um Commentarius de anima, cujas numerosas edições atingem o conjunto dos países reformados. Esse texto é verdadeiramente inovador, pois longe de se contentar com o habitual comentário da obra de Aristóteles, ele reserva um lugar de destaque às observações mais recentes sobre a estrutura e o funcionamento do corpo humano. Olhando de perto a organização do texto de Melanchthon, percebe-se que ele revirou completamente o ordenamento tradicional das partes da alma: o Commentarius de anima se abre sobre um longo tratado de anatomia, que apresenta as partes do corpo e sua função. Essa inovação nos comentários do De anima [p. 359] reintroduz nas concepções da alma um naturalismo que a Idade Média havia de certo modo desfeito. As funções vegetativas e sensitivas são reconduzidas a funções orgânicas, distinguindo-se radicalmente da alma intelectiva, imaterial, única a ser considerada como independente de todo funcionamento orgânico. A alma intelectiva não é um órgão, mas ela age sobre o corpo por intermédio do cérebro que, na nova anatomia, tende cada vez mais a substituir o coração na realização dessa função hegemônica. Os instrumentos dessa comunicação entre a alma e os órgãos são os espíritos animais, REVISTA IDEAÇÃO, N. 32, JUL./DEZ. 2015 265 atribuídos de animar o corpo, aos quais Melanchthon confere grande importância. Segundo a tradição médica do século XVI, o espírito animal ou spiritus, constituído nos ventrículos cerebrais, transmite ao corpo as injunções da alma. Portanto, o spiritus é, em sentido estrito, uma ligação entre o espírito (a alma) e a matéria (o corpo), ele próprio sendo composto de uma matéria eminentemente sutil e portanto não observável. A concepção de Melanchthon desencadeará a desconstrução da clássica representação tripartida da alma, substituindo-a por um modelo dualista que opõe o corpo (com suas funções vegetativas e sensitivas) à alma, sede do pensamento. A ciência da alma deve, portanto, ser reconstruída nessa nova perspectiva. Não causa espanto que seja no campo dos opositores mais determinados à filosofia de Aristóteles que se desenvolveram as soluções mais ousadas. É Johann-Thomas Freigius (15431583), um discípulo próximo de Pierre Ramus (chamado então de Aristotelomastix, o algoz de Aristóteles [le fouet d'Aristote]), quem vai propor uma nova organização da Physica na qual aparece, talvez pela primeira vez7, uma Psychologia para designar a ciência geral do vivo. Assim, para bem compreender hoje a natureza das relações complexas e difíceis da psicologia contemporânea com a biologia, é preciso insistirmos sobre esse ponto: quando a psicologia se definiu como novo domínio do saber, ela se identificou completamente à ciência geral do vivo. Na classificação de Freigius, a categoria do animatum, da qual a Psychologia deve tratar, compreende o conjunto dos corpos vivos: vegetais, animais e seres humanos. A alma natural é comum a esses três grupos, mas apenas os indivíduos do último grupo possuem uma alma racional. Nessa Psychologia deve, então, tomar lugar uma ciência particular que dê conta NASCIMENTOS DA PSICOLOGIA: A NATUREZA E O ESPÍRITO 266 dessa dupla natureza do homem, possuidor de um corpo material e de uma alma imaterial: essa ciência particular é a [p. 360] Anthropologia8, ciência do homem, articulada por sua vez em duas partes, estudando respectivamente o corpo e a alma intelectiva. Essa classificação conhece um grande sucesso nas universidades protestantes e reformadas da Alemanha e dos Países Baixos. Essas novas concepções se desenvolverão principalmente em Marburgo e Leiden. Os dois estabelecimentos apresentam diversas semelhanças: criado em 1527, o primeiro é a primeira universidade protestante da Alemanha; o segundo, inaugurado em 1575, saúda a tomada de poder dos calvinistas nas Províncias Unidas. Junto com a teologia, os dois estabelecimentos desenvolvem um importante ensino médico e acolhem professores formados em Pádua. As duas universidades conhecem também embates da mesma natureza: uma oposição entre aristotélicos e partidários de Pierre Ramus e também, questão mais importante, uma querela duríssima entre humanistas liberais - partidários da tolerância religiosa - e teólogos rendidos aos ideais da teocracia. É nesse clima conflituoso que se desenvolve a Psychologia, e onde em breve seu sentido primeiro já vai se infletir. Construir uma teoria geral do vivo reunindo ao mesmo tempo as plantas, os animais e a parte corporal do homem é provavelmente uma ambição desmesurada para esse fim do século XVI. A teoria dos humores (onipresente no domínio médico), bem como as concepções do processo da geração, impedem a construção de um modelo fisiológico comum às plantas e aos animais. Tão logo formulado, o projeto [de psicologia] se choca, portanto, com dificuldades impossíveis de superar, requerendo então reajustamentos. REVISTA IDEAÇÃO, N. 32, JUL./DEZ. 2015 267 B – RUDOLPHUS SNELLIUS, A PSYCHOLOGIA, CIÊNCIA DA ALMA No domínio da Physica, outros trabalhos adquirem autoridade nesse fim do século XVI: os de Rudolphus Snellius ou Rudolph Snel van Roijen (1546-1613), um dos mestres de Leiden. Seu modo de articular a nova psychologia com a ciência do vivo e a teoria da alma é um pouco diferente de Freigius. Ele, certamente, define a psychologia como ciência dos corpos animados, nela incluindo (como seu predecessor) os vegetais, os animais e o homem; mas ele acrescenta em sua definição, por sinédoque e tomando a parte pelo todo, que a psychologia é também a ciência da alma. Não haveria aí contradição ou dificuldade se, na mesma época, uma outra distinção de ordem metafísica não viesse a modificar [p. 361] a maneira de colocar os problemas. Já formulada por Aristóteles9 em sua Metafísica, essa distinção indicava que existe uma ciência da alma ligada ao corpo, pertencente à Física, e uma ciência da alma separada do corpo, reservada à Metafísica. Numa breve passagem do De anima10, Aristóteles evoca o caráter separado do intelecto agente e, uma vez separado, sua imortalidade. Em seu cuidado de recuperar o pensamento do Estagirita, o mundo cristão tem interesse em destacar essa distinção, sob seus olhos afeita ao dogma da imortalidade da alma. Ao lado da metafísica, encontra-se portanto uma psicologia, ciência da alma intelectiva quando esta se une com o corpo, abandonando-se à medicina e à anatomia o discurso sobre as funções psicológicas inferiores. É nesse contexto, em parte teológico e em parte médico, que se deve analisar uma obra de Rodolphus Goclenius de Marburgo, que desde há muito figura como o primeiro livro de psicologia. NASCIMENTOS DA PSICOLOGIA: A NATUREZA E O ESPÍRITO 268 C – A PSYCHOLOGIA DE RODOLPHUS GOCLENIUS (1547-1628) OU A QUESTÃO DA ORIGEM DA ALMA. Publicada em 1590, a Psychologia hoc est hominis perfectione, animo...11 é antes de tudo um manifesto a favor da concepção criacionista da alma. O objeto da obra é o animus, desde muito tempo oposto à anima, tal como a alma se opõe ao espírito ou à razão nas doutrinas inspiradas no estoicismo antigo. A obra de Goclenius, que de fato não passa de uma compilação de escritos de teólogos e médicos favoráveis à tese defendida por ele, opõe o criacionismo ao traducionismo da alma. A primeira doutrina afirma que a alma é uma criação individual renovada por Deus a cada concepção de um ser humano, enquanto a segunda sustenta que a alma da criança provém da alma de seus pais. Essa segunda doutrina, formulada nos primeiros tempos do cristianismo por Tertuliano e retomada por Lutero e alguns teólogos protestantes, foi sempre vigorosamente combatida pela Igreja católica. O perigo é duplo: o traducionismo permite sustentar que o pecado original é um simples mal hereditário, transmitido pelo processo de geração a toda a descendência de Adão; e igualmente, abre-se a porta para todas as interpretações materialistas da alma: se a alma provém da semente, fica fácil sustentar que ela é da mesma substância. Goclenius combate o traducionismo [p. 362] nesses dois fronts. Em outras obras12, ele partilha amplamente as posições dualistas de seu amigo Snellius, posições implicadas pelas opiniões criacionistas. O dualismo teológico da alma e do corpo se seculariza, portanto, num empreendimento de edificação de uma antropologia bicéfala, dividida em anatomia e psicologia. REVISTA IDEAÇÃO, N. 32, JUL./DEZ. 2015 269 Essa antropologia opera (já!) o primeiro deslocamento do objeto da psicologia, no qual a alma não é mais somente o princípio de animação comum aos seres vivos, mas uma substância imaterial e imortal sobrevivendo ao corpo: anima separata. A psychologia é, portanto, a ciência dessa alma quando ela é conjunta ao corpo, e a metafísica a ciência da alma quando ela se separa dele através da morte. III – A POSTERIDADE DA PSYCHOLOGIA As escolas de Marburgo e Leiden não parecem ter conhecido uma posteridade claramente afirmada, caso se julgue a escassa referência feita a elas logo em seguida. Goclenius foi o único a não cair totalmente no esquecimento, por ter redigido o primeiro dicionário de filosofia. Mas suas outras obras e as de seus contemporâneos evocadas por nós são desconhecidas, livros raros, às vezes de único exemplar. Entretanto, as razões desse esquecimento devem ser buscadas nas lutas da época e seu resultado, e não na indiferença atual pela história das ciências do homem. Os filósofos humanistas de Marburgo e Leiden perderam a batalha na qual estavam engajados a favor da tolerância religiosa e da racionalidade filosófica. Desse modo, em Leiden, as decisões do sínodo de Dordrecht, que pôs fim em 1618 à controvérsia entre arminianos e gomaristas13, provocaram a derrota do partido liberal que lutava por essa tolerância. Mas, não contentes com a vitória no plano teológico, os calvinistas mais rigorosos se opuseram à distinção clara, reclamada pelos liberais, entre as competências da Igreja e as do Estado. Em Marburgo, as querelas teológicas entre os luteranos e os filipistas14 ou NASCIMENTOS DA PSICOLOGIA: A NATUREZA E O ESPÍRITO 270 "cripto-calvinistas" abertos à reunificação das Igrejas cristãs, seguiram a favor dos primeiros e desencadearam o declínio da universidade. Mas, mais do que nos Países Baixos, o enfraquecimento desses liberais racionalistas se acentuou no momento em que a Alemanha vivenciou a guerra dos Trinta Anos, afundando [p. 363] na desordem e na guerra civil. Essa violência foi acompanhada de um forte retorno da irracionalidade, colocando brutalmente fim à edificação da psicologia, cujos momentos decisivos retraçamos brevemente. Malgrado essa derrota dos ideais liberais que serviam como seus vetores, os ensinamentos dos filósofos de Marburgo e Leiden deixaram alguns rastros detectáveis no pensamento do século XVII. Pensamos que eles exerceram uma influência decisiva em duas direções principais: a primeira contribuiu para com a distinção entre movimento e vida; a segunda favoreceu a substituição da relação clássica entre matéria e forma pela [relação] que liga o órgão e a função. Na tradição escolástica, a alma é um princípio de animação, isto é, de movimento. Certamente Snellius, Goclenius e outros não renegam esse princípio, mas eles tendem com sua linguagem a distinguir entre movimento - empregado por eles preferencialmente para falar de astronomia e cosmologia - e vida - utilizada para tratar os fenômenos relativos às plantas, animais e ao homem. Sabe-se que Wittenberg, no mesmo lugar onde Melanchthon ensinou durante vários anos, acolheu favoravelmente as ideias de Copérnico e contribuiu para a difusão da nova cosmologia. Esse interesse pela nova mecânica celeste provavelmente contribuiu para dissociar os domínios da cosmogonia e o das ciências da vida, até então estreitamente unidos na Physica. Portanto, as próprias REVISTA IDEAÇÃO, N. 32, JUL./DEZ. 2015 271 renovações teóricas no interior desse domínio contribuíram para seu colapso. Por sua vez, os progressos da anatomia fizeram as relações entre forma e matéria passarem para o segundo plano. Numa perspectiva anatomo-fisiológica, os Padovanos e seus numerosos alunos estrangeiros rapidamente propagaram uma nova maneira de conceber a relação entre as partes do corpo e seu funcionamento. O caráter eminentemente analítico da decomposição anatômica do organismo permitiu colocar em relação cada parte ou órgão com o exercício de uma função particular. Esse novo modo de ver foi empregado no estudo da alma. Bem mais do que concebê-la como uma forma organizadora da matéria corporal, o método analítico, por analogia, inclina a tentar decompor a alma em suas diversas faculdades, que por sua vez se colocariam em relação com as partes do cérebro. Para a época, esse programa é impossível de realizar sobre as duas dimensões da estrutura e da função. Sobre a dimensão da função, verse-á esse projeto se completar parcialmente, no momento da edificação de uma psicologia das faculdades por Otto Casmann ( ?-1607)15, um aluno de Goclenius. Edificação depois continuada por Leibniz e Christian Wolff. [p. 364] IV – TERRITÓRIOS E FRONTEIRAS Definida como ciência geral do vivo e englobando os mundos vegetal, animal e humano, a Psychologia pretendia unificar domínios tão vastos quanto a botânica, a zoologia e a antropologia. É claro que os meios de realizar essa ambição falharam amplamente. Reconduzindo seu projeto NASCIMENTOS DA PSICOLOGIA: A NATUREZA E O ESPÍRITO 272 a proporções bem mais modestas, as de uma antropologia dividida em anatomia e psicologia, ela restringiu os limites de seu território apenas ao estudo da alma racional, abandonando à medicina e à fisiologia o estudo das funções orgânicas não mentais, pelo menos na perspectiva da época. Portanto, definindo seu novo território a psicologia se choca com a metafísica, que por sua vez pretende se apropriar do discurso sobre a alma racional. Eis então a psicologia, desde seus começos, fragmentada entre dois objetivos: seja o de se instalar no centro da ciência do vivo e buscar analisar as faculdades da alma como a anatomia o fez com os órgãos do corpo, seja pertencer à metafísica e especular sobre a alma humana, como se faz sobre Deus e os anjos. Ora, esse último empreendimento pertence sobretudo ao discurso teológico, considerando a alma não como um objeto de ciência mas como objeto próprio de uma doutrina da salvação. Para distinguir a Psychologia de uma interpretação metafísica da alma, Snellius isola em uma de suas obras16 uma disciplina metafísica, a Pneumatologia, nomeada por ele assim para acentuar a diferença com a Psychologia: com efeito, o pneuma, que é traduzido por spiritus segundo certo uso teológico antigo, exprime a natureza incorporal da razão; mas essa tradução não faz mais do que aumentar a confusão terminológica, visto que spiritus também se refere aos espíritos animais. A divisão da antropologia em anatomia (ciência do corpo), e psicologia (ciência da alma unida ao corpo) se perpetuará ao longo do século XVII e mesmo além, até se tornar lugar comum do discurso, permitindo introduzir comodamente diversos tratados de anatomia. [p. 365] REVISTA IDEAÇÃO, N. 32, JUL./DEZ. 2015 273 Ao lado dessa concepção naturalista da psicologia persiste, sob o nome de pneumatologia ou pneumatica, uma ciência da alma separada do corpo que permanece sendo no domínio de competência dos teólogos. Encontramos a clara expressão dessa divisão na metafísica de Scipion Dupleix: Or l'asme peut estre considerée en deux manieres. L'une avec relation à la nature et comme forme qui avive le corps tant en ceste vie qu'apres la resurrection. L'autre à part soy et sans nulle relation à la matiere, ains plutost comme une substance separée d'icelle. L'asme considerée en la premiere sorte est de l'object de la Physique, à cause qu'elle est une partie d'un tout naturel: aussi en avons-nous discouru amplement en la Physique, là où nous avons descrit toutes ses facultez ou puissances avec leurs objects, les organes, fonctions, proprietez, conditions et circonstances d'icelles. Mais l' asme estant prinse en la seconde maniere, est purement de l' object de la Metaphysique, parce que nous la considerons simplementet absoluëment en soy, hors de la matiere et hors de la contagion des choses naturelles, estant par ce moyen une chose toute spirituelle et surnaturelle17 Quando se trata de abordar as faculdades da alma separada, Scipion Dupleix indica que apenas falará sobre as faculdades intelectivas, pois a potência [puissance] vegetativa e o sentimento não sobrevivem à morte: Car elle [1' âme] a deux facultez ou puissances qui ont tant de commerce avec les organes du corps, que sans iceux elles ne sçauroient nullement exercer leurs fonctions; c'est à sçavoir la faculté vegetative et sensitive avec celles qui sont comprises sous elles18 NASCIMENTOS DA PSICOLOGIA: A NATUREZA E O ESPÍRITO 274 Nesse texto, encontramos bem a distinção estabelecida pelos filósofos de Marburgo e Leiden: as faculdades vegetativa e sensitiva pertencem aos órgãos corporais diante dos quais não passam de funções, sendo apenas as faculdades intelectivas independentes de qualquer órgão. Pode-se então compreender mais facilmente as razões do conflito que não tardará a irromper, quando a psicologia tentará se reapropriar do estudo das funções sensoriais, do sentido comum [du sens commun], da imaginação e da memória, isto é, de tudo o que dependia da faculdade sensitiva. Ela se chocará então com o domínio médico, e mais tarde biológico, ao qual ela havia deixado toda a competência sobre esses assuntos. As guerras de reconquista são difíceis, e a psicologia de hoje precisou com muita dificuldade delimitar para si própria terrenos comuns, designados pelo nome [p. 366] genérico e composto de psicofisiologia, para indicar que eles pertencem a dois proprietários. V – ABERTURA DO CAMPO: UM OUTRO NASCIMENTO A – TRADIÇÃO HERMÉTICA E PSICOLOGIA A psicologia que vimos se desenvolver no quadro da Physica é de inspiração naturalista e racionalista. Mas esse fim do século XVI vê florescer igualmente uma filosofia hermética que constituirá uma outra fonte de inspiração. Fortemente tingido de neoplatonismo, esse movimento se propagou nos primeiros tempos do humanismo por filósofos como Marsílio Ficino e João Pico della Mirândola, que fazem o mundo ocidental conhecer o Corpus Hermeticum, cuja REVISTA IDEAÇÃO, N. 32, JUL./DEZ. 2015 275 inspiração remontava, conforme se dizia, ao deus Hermes em pessoa. O hermetismo renascente integra no Corpus Hermeticum igualmente elementos de Cabala, e Pico della Mirândola se destaca propondo uma versão cristã da Cabala judaica. Mais tarde, acrescenta-se a essa tradição uma dimensão mágica, difundindo-se a ideia de que a filosofia, assim concebida, não serve unicamente para compreender e reconstruir racionalmente o mundo e o homem, mas ela pode igualmente conferir poderes a quem a pratica. Nesse espírito, a medicina de Paracelso convida o praticante a agir não apenas sobre o corpo, mas também sobre a imaginação dos pacientes para obter sua cura [guérison]. Em Marburgo, é o sucessor de Rodolphus Goclenius à cadeira de filosofia quem propaga uma doutrina muito próxima do hermetismo. Esse sucessor é o próprio filho de Goclenius (igualmente chamado Rodolphus, o que faz aumentar a confusão); ele se constitui como defensor ardente dos tratamentos [cures] magnéticos19 e engaja, no terreno já estabelecido por Paracelso20, uma longa controvérsia com o jesuíta Jean Robert. Essa tradição filosófica, cujos numerosos adeptos se mostram insensíveis à destruidora crítica de Isaac Casaubon21 ao Corpus Hermeticum, se interessou por um dos conceitos "psicológicos" chave [p. 367] do hermetismo, a imaginação, desenvolvendo sobre ela uma teoria bastante diferente da noção tradicional de phantasia. Em Aristóteles e nos escolásticos, a phantasia é uma função da alma sensitiva, que oferece ao intelecto (e sua função abstrativa) imagens ou representações elaboradas a partir de informações sensoriais. Os hermetistas preferem considerar a imaginatio como um meio pelo qual a alma humana pode agir sobre a alma do NASCIMENTOS DA PSICOLOGIA: A NATUREZA E O ESPÍRITO 276 mundo, na medida em que a imaginatio de Deus depositou em cada ser da criação um signo ou assinatura que deve ser pesquisado, interpretado ou utilizado para agir sobre os seres. Entre os signos que se oferecem a essa interpretação, a linguagem [langage] ocupa evidentemente lugar destacado. Assim, em um de seus documentos fundamentais22, os RosaCruz difundem a ideia de que o mundo entra no ciclo planetário de Mercúrio, identificado por eles como a era da linguagem [langue]. Eles são partidários fervorosos da reconstrução de uma língua [langue] adâmica, a Ursprache, conhecida não apenas pelo primeiro homem mas igualmente pelos animais e plantas. Essa língua é evidentemente motivada, isto é, nela as relações entre os signos e os referentes não são arbitrárias. A partir do conhecimento dessa língua original, torna-se possível ao homem decriptar os signos do divino, que preenchem a natureza. Encontra-se aqui um dos princípios fundamentais da mística, segundo a qual o mundo físico é apenas a figura representativa, a tradução exterior do mundo invisível. Nessa representação, a parte escondida tem certamente maior importância do que a parte visível. Nessa misteriosa correspondência do patente e do latente, ao lado da imaginação, a simpatia desempenha um papel bastante destacado. É a simpatia ou participação que assegura um vai e vem incessante entre as representações mentais construídas pela imaginação e os movimentos mais sutis da matéria, garantindo assim o poder sobre os fenômenos naturais e as representações das outras pessoas. Sobre esse modelo interativo do sujeito e da matéria, fundamse as práticas divinatórias e premonitórias. Por exemplo, as imagens do sonho influenciam realmente os acontecimentos que lhe sucederão, e assim os eventos sonhados se produzirão na realidade. REVISTA IDEAÇÃO, N. 32, JUL./DEZ. 2015 277 Nesse sistema hermenêutico complexo, a alegoria desempenha um papel particularmente importante. Diretamente transferida do neoplatonismo ao [p. 368] domínio da hermenêutica bíblica, depois secularizada pelos filósofos hermetistas, a alegoria forma por si mesma um verdadeiro método de interpretação, pois permite reconduzir à unidade a diversidade do sensível. Com efeito, cada elemento particular do sensível não passa, no fim das contas, de uma das figuras possíveis da totalidade do Um. Para utilizar um vocabulário mais psicológico e mais contemporâneo, cada elemento do patente é apenas o sintoma de um latente, gerador único. Para reconhecer a fonte, para reconduzir a diversidade dos signos ao Um originário, o iniciado deve colocar-se em estado de receber a iluminação, efetuando um retorno a si e renunciando às ilusões do sensível. Esse procedimento se exprime frequentemente pela alegoria mística do itinerário espiritual, mas também por aquela, mais médica, do cuidado das almas23 [cure des âmes]. O luteranismo estende aos laicos essa técnica de direção espiritual, até então reservada aos religiosos sob o nome de Seelsorge. Do lado da Reforma, as Cartas de direção de João Calvino preconizam um procedimento bastante parecido e, na análise feita por J. B. Benoit, sustenta-se que a direção espiritual "não passa da manifestação no domínio religioso de um fato essencialmente humano, [que] ela é uma aplicação particular da lei de influência"24. Se o método se seculariza, é porque o objeto ao qual ele se dirige - a alma - e o projeto que o justifica também se secularizaram. O cuidado da alma [cure d'âme], dirigido pela perspectiva da salvação eterna, transforma-se em reflexão sobre si mesmo. Essa constituição autônoma do si [du soi] está no centro da teosofia de Jacob Boehme: retemos dela NASCIMENTOS DA PSICOLOGIA: A NATUREZA E O ESPÍRITO 278 principalmente as Quarante questions de l'âme (1620), cuja tradução latina carrega o título revelador de Psychologia Vera25. É nessa obra que Boehme introduz o termo Ungrund - traduzido diversamente por "absoluto indeterminado", "nada indeterminado" ou "infundado" -, e que se encontra colocado na origem de um sistema teosófico tomado de empréstimo, ao mesmo tempo, da exegese do Gênese, da medicina alquímica de Paracelso, da Cabala e da mística da Renânia. Aqui, nos contentaremos em insistir sobre o papel desse termo negativo de Ungrund, fundamento último, mas igualmente ponto de partida do processo de evolução [p. 369] do ser que culmina na verdadeira consciência de si. O Ungrund se confunde com o Deus de antes da revelação, da manifestação ou do desvelamento. Deus realiza esse desvelamento por uma exteriorização identificada com a palavra de seu Filho. É sobre o mesmo princípio de diferenciação por superação dos opostos que se constituem paralelamente a natureza e a pessoa humana. É preciso que a morte do eu [moi] fictício se realize, para que o homem reencontre a si mesmo: L'aneantissement, le renoncement au "moi", à la Selbheit, à l'égoisme qui separe l'ame de son fondement divin; l'abandon du monde dont l'ame "se sépare" pour retoumer en elle-meme, pour se replonger dans son fond incréé (l'Ungrund éternel): le thème de la Entleerung [évacuation, vidange] par laquelle l'homme se détruisant lui-meme (détruisant la fausse individualite qui appartient à ce monde) fait en lui-même le rien, le vide, retrouvant ainsi dans ce néant de soi-meme le Néant éternel de Dieu qui, se substituant à l'individualité disparue, en prend la place26. REVISTA IDEAÇÃO, N. 32, JUL./DEZ. 2015 279 A fortuna da filosofia de Boehme será grande na Alemanha. Em suas Lições sobre a história da filosofia27, Hegel o saúda como o Philosophus teutonicus e, se o qualifica de filósofo bárbaro, ele também o considera como um dos fundadores da filosofia alemã. À filosofia de Boehme faltava-lhe o conceito, e Hegel se encarregará de introduzi-lo. Os românticos alemães o farão de herói, esse que foi um dos primeiros a encarnar o espírito de independência e de revolta28. É em Boehme que eles buscarão os argumentos que permitem afirmar sua germanidade contra o universalismo das Luzes. Enfim, Carl Jung se inspirará amplamente na teoria do Ungrund para construir sua noção de inconsciente coletivo29. Em relação ao modelo da Psychologia dos filósofos de Marburgo e Leiden, a Psychologia Vera de Boehme constitui uma ruptura completa. Escrita em alemão numa época em que os intelectuais formados na universidade escreviam em latim, a obra de Boehme marca uma clara rejeição de toda a tradição escolástica tardia. Ela propõe uma psicologia que resolutamente se distancia das ciências da natureza, buscando sua inspiração nas referências teológicas e filosóficas marginais. Sobre o plano epistemológico, a tradição mística e teosófica propaga uma teoria do [p. 370] conhecimento que descarta toda origem empírica do saber e ao mesmo tempo nega o poder da razão de conduzir à verdade. Reencontra-se aí a distinção entre o que Renaudet, comentando Charles de Bovelles, chamava de filosofia racional e de filosofia intelectual30. A primeira é feita para organizar nossa relação com o mundo, enquanto a segunda visa a relação a si; a primeira formula conjecturas, a segunda conduz à verdade; a primeira é lógica, a segunda analógica. Sobre o plano institucional, os místicos e os teósofos mostram-se relutantes quanto aos sistemas clássicos da certificação universitária. Às relações distantes entre mestre e NASCIMENTOS DA PSICOLOGIA: A NATUREZA E O ESPÍRITO 280 alunos, eles preferem as relações mais fusionais do profeta ou do mago com seus adeptos pouco numerosos. Os grupos místicos que se assentam frequentemente nas fronteiras da heterodoxia criam facilmente novas heresias, provocando por sua vez novas exclusões. Desse modo, as tendências são tão numerosas que é sempre imprudente falar da mística ou da teosofia como uma teoria geral. B – A PSICHOLOGIE DE NOËL TAILLEPIED À margem das tradições naturalista e hermética, o fim do século XVI vê surgir uma psicologia da qual apenas se pode constatar alguns traços esporádicos no curso dos séculos XVII e XVIII; conforme desenvolvido no texto de F. Parot apresentado neste mesmo volume (p. 417-44331), ela conhecerá entretanto um extraordinário desenvolvimento desde a segunda metade do século XIX sob o nome de espiritismo. O próprio título da obra de Taillepied referida aqui é bastante revelador: Psichologie, ou traité de l'apparition des esprits, à sçavoir des âmes séparées, fantosmes, prodiges et accidents merveilleux qui précèdent quelquesfois la mort des grands personnages ou signifient changement de la chose publique (1588)32. Desconcertante para o leitor contemporâneo, esse texto reúne escritos maravilhosos onde almas de célebres defuntos mudam o curso da história ou anunciam acontecimentos importantes. Conforme à doutrina da Igreja, essas almas separadas não apenas sobrevivem ao corpo depois da morte, mas podem também interagir com o mundo dos vivos. Tais prodígios não estão ao alcance de qualquer alma: como os corpos que as hospedaram durante a vida terrestre, somente as almas bem nascidas e possuidoras de seu quinhão de nobreza dispõem dos poderes evocados no título do livro de Taillepied. [p. 371] REVISTA IDEAÇÃO, N. 32, JUL./DEZ. 2015 281 Noël Taillepied é um religioso formado em teologia, do qual também se conhece as Oeuvres de philosophie, um resumo sucinto da Dialética, da Física e da Ética de Aristóteles redigido para uma dama da nobreza. Se o resumo é às vezes tão sucinto que beira a caricatura, a fidelidade ao pensamento de Aristóteles é bastante assegurada, e os únicos desvios da doutrina do Estagirita são comandados pelo respeito à fé cristã. Em sua breve exposição sobre o Tratado da alma, Taillepied sublinha até o excesso a unicidade e imortalidade da alma racional, apoiando-se no texto aristotélico para mostrar o quanto essa doutrina é compatível com o cristianismo. Na margem da primeira página desse livro encontrase uma lista de nomes que provavelmente nos indicam as fontes de sua Psichologie. Dentre outros nomes, com efeito lê-se ali os de Melanchthon, Pierre Ramus e J. T. Freigius, isto é, os fundadores da Psychologia. É portanto verossímil que Taillepied tenha tomado emprestado deles esse novo nome para designar a ciência da alma, se bem que o projeto de nosso religioso seja bem diferente. O projeto de Taillepied ultrapassa aqueles da Pneumatologia ou da Metafísica, que se limitam em afirmar a existência das almas separadas do corpo pela morte e sua capacidade de exercer as funções intelectivas. As obras de pneumatologia ou de metafísica geralmente não se aventuram no terreno delicado da intervenção das almas separadas na vida dos vivos. As histórias de Taillepied não são exatamente histórias de diabos como são, por exemplo, as de Pierre Le Loyer33 publicadas em 1586, mesmo que se possa estabelecer pontos comuns entre os dois gêneros de relatos. Nos testemunhos relatados por Taillepied, os espíritos não são nunca celestes ou infernais; são almas humanas de qualidade que se manifestam aos vivos, seja de modo sensível ou durante os sonhos. Portanto, NASCIMENTOS DA PSICOLOGIA: A NATUREZA E O ESPÍRITO 282 encontramos aqui uma psicologia no limite da Pneumatologia e de uma ciência das manifestações das almas separadas ou dos signos enviados por elas, que devem se tornar objeto de uma interpretação. Essa concepção de psicologia permanece bastante marginal; temos como prova nada menos do que o desaparecimento da palavra psicologia na reedição da obra de Taillepied em 1600. *** Desde suas origens, os territórios da psicologia já estão divididos: dois objetos, dois métodos e dois projetos estão em concorrência. O primeiro projeto, oferecendo-se como teoria geral do vivo, deve logo em seguida revisar suas ambições por baixo, inscrevendo-se rapidamente [p. 372] em um novo saber sobre o homem, a anthropologia. Esse homem é duplo, formado de um corpo e uma alma, e assim é preciso fazer duas vezes a ciência: anatomia e psicologia, mas com um mesmo método analítico que tenta detalhar as faculdades da alma tal como são separadas as partes do corpo no teatro anatômico. Entretanto, como objeto primeiro para uma ciência nova, essa alma é disputada pelos teólogos com os Psycotomists or Anatomists of Souls, tal como os qualifica Samuel Haworth34, que propõe em 1680 uma Anthropology dividida em Somatology e Pneumatology, para melhor afirmar que a natureza imaterial e espiritual da alma deixa ela imprópria a qualquer dissecação. Um compromisso será encontrado: a psicologia fará a ciência da alma unida ao corpo; e a pneumatologia, a da alma separada. Essa visão naturalista da psicologia opera, então, principalmente sobre o plano do método, pois os filósofos de Marburgo e de Leiden jamais questionam a imaterialidade da alma racional35. O segundo projeto é aquele inspirado na mística e no hermetismo. À alma racional, os místicos opõem a REVISTA IDEAÇÃO, N. 32, JUL./DEZ. 2015 283 proeminência da intuição ou intellectus em um sistema não mais dualista, mas de três níveis: corpo, razão e espírito, analogia trinitária evidente. Esses objetos irredutíveis apenas podem se aproximar por métodos diferentes: diante da abordagem empírica e racional dos naturalistas, opõe-se o itinerário místico em direção à iluminação. Ao postulado dos primeiros, de transparência do mundo, responde o princípio de opacidade dos segundos, cego à vista dos não iniciados. Frente à razão discursiva dos primeiros, apreendida pelo entendimento, os segundos preferem a compreensão imediata pela visão interior ou intuição. Diferindo tanto pelo objeto quanto pelo método, essas psicologias apenas podem nutrir projetos diferentes. A transparência do corpo anatomizado impõe a transparência das almas e de toda uma sociedade. Goclenius sublinha várias vezes o quanto a psicologia é útil ao direito, à medicina, à teologia, enfim, ao governo dos homens. A mística não cultiva nada de tais intenções; o itinerário do iniciado é uma questão antes de tudo pessoal. O caminho não se percorre senão na solidão, no máximo com a ajuda discreta do diretor de consciência, mas [p. 373] cedo ou tarde será preciso romper essa relação. Os místicos vivem às margens das comunidades, portanto não espanta que a psicologia desenvolvida por eles tenha estabelecido suas vizinhanças às bordas da psicologia institucional. nOtaS 1Traduzido de Mengal, Paul. Revue de synthese : IVo S. N° 3-4, julho-dezembro de 1994, por Marcio Luiz Miotto (UFF-RPS) e revisado por Pedro Cattapan (UFF-RPS). Autor e revista recomendaram a conservação da numeração original das páginas. NASCIMENTOS DA PSICOLOGIA: A NATUREZA E O ESPÍRITO 284 2No texto, "cure d'âme et cure magnétique". A proximidade presente no texto com o Sorge alemão ou o cura animarum latino, mencionados adiante, conduziu à opção de traduzir ora por "cuidado", ora por "tratamento", mantendo a palavra original entre colchetes. O mesmo recurso dos colchetes foi utilizado no emprego de outras palavras, quando oportuno (N. do T.) 3A história dessas disputas é contada na obra de Femand VAN STEENBERGHEN, La Philosophie au XIII siècle, Louvain, Publications universitaires, 1966 4Os comentários combatidos pela Igreja são sobretudo os de Alexandre de Afrodisia e Averrois. O primeiro permitia afirmar a morte da alma com a morte do corpo, e o segundo sustentava o caráter coletivo do intelecto agente, o que contradizia a afirmação cristã segundo a qual cada homem tem uma alma pessoal. 5Cf. Expositio super librum Boethii de Trinitate, ed, Bruno DECKER, Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1955, p. 163 e 165 : "Communiter dividitur philosophia in septem artes liberales, inter quas neque naturalis, neque divina continetur. [...] Septem liberales artes non sufficienter dividunt philosophiam theoricam. [...] Scientia medicina pars physicae est". [Tradução livre: "Em geral divide-se a filosofia em sete artes liberais, entre as quais não constam nem as naturais e nem a divina. (...) As sete artes liberais não dividem adequadamente a filosofia teórica. (...) A ciência médica é parte da física". Na Idade Média, as Sete Artes Liberais, divididas em trivium (lógica, gramática e retórica) e quadrivium (aritmética, geometria, música e astronomia), dedicavam-se à completa formação humana, para além das preocupações simplesmente técnicas do mundo cotidiano. N. do T.] 6SIGER de BRABANT, De anima intellectiva, aproximadamente 1272, Cap. III, citado in IMBACH e Maryse-Hélène MÉLÉARD, Philosophes médiévaux des XIIIe et XlVe siècles, Paris, Union générale d'éditions, 1986, p. 153 [tradução livre: Com efeito, aqui, buscamos apenas a intenção dos filósofos e sobretudo a de Aristóteles, mesmo no caso em que o Filósofo seria de opinião diferente do que afirmam a verdade e a sabedoria pela revelação a respeito da alma e que não pode ser descoberto por razões naturais, N. do T]. 7Atualmente, a primeira ocorrência da palavra psychologia figurada em uma obra impressa consta no Ciceronius Ioann. Thomae Freigiin quo: Ex Ciceronis Monumentis ratio instituendi locos communes demonstrata & eloquentia cum Philosophia coniuncta, descripta est libris decem, Basileae, por Sebastianum Henricpetri, 1575. 8É um dos mestres de Snellius e Goclenius (cf. infra) chamado Bruno Seidel REVISTA IDEAÇÃO, N. 32, JUL./DEZ. 2015 285 (1530-?), médico formado em Pádua e professor de Physica em Erfurt durante a estadia de Goclenius em 1565, que introduziu uma anthropologia dividida em anatomia, ciência do corpo, e psychologia, ciência da alma. 9Aristote, Métaphysique, liv. L, 7, 1073a. 10Id., De anima, liv. III, 5, 430a. 11Rodolphus GOCLENIUS, Psychologia, hoc est hominis perfectione, animo et inprimis ortu ejus, commentariones ac disputationes quorundam Theologorum et Philosophorum nostrae aetatis, quos proxime sequens praefationem pagina ostendit. Philosophiae studiosis lectu iucundae et utilis, Marpurghi, ex officina Egenolphi, 1590 [Ψυχολογια: isto é, sobre a perfeição do homem, sobre a alma e, principalmente, sobre a sua origem: comentários e discussões de alguns dos Teólogos e Filósofos de nossa época, seguindo as páginas que mostram o prefácio. Leitura e estudo de Filosofia fecunda e útil, N. do T. em tradução livre.] 12Esse ponto de vista se sustenta em Rodolphi Goclenii Physicae Disputationes in septem libros distinctae, Francofurti, Zacharias Palthenius, 1598 e em numerosas disputationes entre estudantes de Goclenius, segundo o que pudemos consultar. 13Os partidários dos teólogos de Leiden, Arminius e Gomarus, opondo-se entre si pela interpretação da predestinação, amplificaram essa querela ao ponto de conduzir o país à beira da guerra civil. Por trás dessa questão teológica (de fato assaz menor) ocorre um afrontamento mais sério, sobre a questão das relações entre a Igreja e o Estado. 14Termo relativo a Philippe Melanchthon, N. do T. 15Otto CASMANN, Psychologia anthropologica sive humanae animae doctrina, methodice informata, capitibus dissecta, singulorumque capitum disquisitionibus, ac controversarum quaestionum ventilationibus illustrata, Hanoviae, apud Guilielmum Antonium, impensis Petri Fischeri, 1594 et 1596. A obra compreende de fato dois volumes, datados respectivamente de 1594 e 1596, mas na maior parte das vezes ligados entre si. 16Rodolphi Snellii in Physicam Cornelii Valerii annotationes cum lectissimis aliorum observationibus graviter collatae.Ad calcem adjecta sunt notae Rudolphi Goclenii ad ipsum Physices contextum pertinentes: Item Pneumatologia Snellii, Francofurti, ex officina typographica Ioannis Saurii, impensis haeredum Petri Fischeri, 1596. A obra é portanto um comentário da Physica seu de naturae philosophia institutio de Cornelius Valerius (ca 1512-1578), adotada em Marburgo por Goclenius e reeditada em 1591 por seus cuidados. 17Scipion DUPLEIX, La Métaphysique ou science surnaturelle. Paris, 1610. NASCIMENTOS DA PSICOLOGIA: A NATUREZA E O ESPÍRITO 286 Citamos a edição de Rouen, de Louys Du Mesnil, 1640, reed., Paris, Fayard, 1992, p. 307. [Tradução livre: "Ora, a alma pode ser considerada de duas maneiras. Uma, com relação à natureza e como forma que aviva o corpo tanto nessa vida quanto depois da ressurreição. A outra, à parte e sem qualquer relação com a matéria, bem mais como uma substância separada dela. A alma considerada do primeiro modo é objeto da Física, pois ela é uma parte de um todo natural: também já discorremos amplamente sobre isso na Física, onde descrevemos todas as suas faculdades ou poderes [puissances] com seus objetos, órgãos, funções, propriedades, condições e circunstâncias. Mas tomada do segundo modo, a alma é puramente objeto da metafísica, pois a consideramos simplesmente e absolutamente em si, fora da matéria e fora do contágio das coisas naturais, sendo por esse modo uma coisa inteiramente espiritual e sobrenatural"] 18Ibid., p. 379 [Tradução livre: "Pois ela [a alma] tem duas faculdades ou poderes [puissances] que possuem tanto comércio com os órgãos do corpo que não saberiam exercer sem eles suas funções: a saber, são a faculdade vegetativa e a sensitiva, incluindo as faculdades compreendidas sob elas]. 19Rodolphus GOCLENlUS (le Jeune), Tractatio de magnetica curatione vulneris, Marpurgi, 1609. 20Constam menções de tratamentos [cures] magnéticos num texto de PARACELSO publicado em torno de 1526: herbarius, De la vertu des plantes, des racines, des semences, etc., d'Allemagne, sa patrie et de l'Empire, trad. Francesa por Horst Hombourg e Ch. Le Brun, Paris, Dervy-Livres, 1987, p. 83-93. 21Por demanda do rei da Inglaterra Jaime I, Isaac CASAUBON empreende uma crítica dos Annales Ecclesiastici de César Baronius. Nesse texto publicado em 1614, Casaubon demonstra sobre a base de argumentos linguísticos e históricos irrefutáveis que o Corpus Hermeticum contém um conjunto disparatado de textos datados dos séculos II e III depois de Jesus Cristo. 22Confessio fratemitatis der hochlöblichen Brüderschaft vom Rosenkreutz; publicado em Cassel em 1615. Mesmo que numerosas hipóteses tenham sido desenvolvidas, o ou os autores desse texto jamais foram formalmente identificados. Segundo Frances YATES, Giordano Bruno and the Hermetic Tradition, Londres, Routledge and Keagan Paul, 1964, os Rosa-Cruz poderiam ter uma ligação estreita com os Giordanisti, partidários de Giordano Bruno, espalhados na Alemanha depois da estadia de Bruno em Wittenberg entre 1586 e 1588. A ideia da língua acadêmica será retomada por Comenius, que REVISTA IDEAÇÃO, N. 32, JUL./DEZ. 2015 287 a transmite por sua vez a Krause e a Herder, de onde alcançará os românticos alemães, Schlegel, Novalis e Tieck. 23A cura animarum, cuja prática foi teorizada por Cesário de Arles no século V, é realizada pelos spirituales medici [médicos espirituais] para designar os diretores de consciência, numa concepção que assimila a doença ao pecado e a cura [guérison] à redenção [rachat]. 24J. B. BENOIT, Lettres françaises de Calvin, p. 11, citado em Jean-Baptiste NEVEUX, Vie spirituelle et vie sociale entre Rhin et Baltique au XXIIe siècle, Paris, Klincksieck, 1967. Interessante notar que é nessa época que o termo influência ou influx perde pouco a pouco sua significação astrológica de fluído provindo dos astros e agindo sobre o destino dos homens, para adquirir valor de ação psicológica de um indivíduo sobre o outro. 25Jacob BOEHME, Antwort auf die 40 Fragen von der Selen, 1620, trad. Em latim por J. A. Von WERDENHAGEN, Psychologia Vera, Amsterdam, 1632. 26Alexandre KOYRÉ, La Philosophie de Jacob Boehme, Paris, Vrin, 1929. Citamos a segunda edição de 1971, p. 483. [Tradução livre: "A nadificação, a renúncia ao "eu" [moi], ao Selbheit, ao egoísmo que separa a alma de seu fundamento divino; o abandono do mundo no qual a alma "se separa" para voltar-se a si mesma, para mergulhar em seu fundo incriado (o Ungrund eterno); o tema da Entleerung [evacuação, esvaziamento] pela qual o homem, destruindo-se a si mesmo (destruindo a falsa individualidade pertencente a esse mundo) faz em si mesmo o nada, o vazio, reencontrando assim nesse nada de si mesmo o Nada eterno de Deus que, substituindo-se à individualidade desaparecida, toma seu lugar"] 27Georg Wilhelm Friedrich HEGEL, Leçons sur l'histoire de la philosophie, t. 6: La Philosophie moderne, trad. E anot. Por Pierre GARNIRON, Paris, Vrin, 1985, p. 1297-1378. 28J.-B. NEVEUX, em op. cit. supra n. 21, vê em Boehme um emblema das reivindicações de autonomia política, social e religiosa que agitam a Lusácia, sua região de origem 29Lidia PROCESI, "La théosophie du fondement chez Böhme", in Recherches sur le XVIe siècle, vol. 5, Paris, Éd. Du C.N.R.S., 1982, p. 93-99. 30Augustin RENAUDET, Préréforme et humanisme à Paris pendant les premières guerres d'Italie (1494-1517), Paris, Librairie d'Argences, 1953, p. 411. O texto de Charles de Bovelles é In artem oppositorum introductio, escrito em torno de 1501 e inspirado na obra de Nicola de Cusa. NASCIMENTOS DA PSICOLOGIA: A NATUREZA E O ESPÍRITO 288 31O autor se refere à edição-fonte da Revue de Synthèse (N. do T.) 32Tradução livre: Psichologie, ou tratado da aparição dos espíritos, a saber das almas separadas, fantasmas, prodígios e acidentes maravilhosos que precedem algumas vezes a morte de grandes personagens ou significam mudança da coisa pública, N. do T. 33Pierre Le LOYER, Quatre livres des spectres et apparitions et visions d'esprits, anges ou démons se monstrans sensiblement aux hommes, Angers, Georges Nepveu, 1586. [Quatro livros de espectros e aparições e visões de espíritos, anjos ou demônios mostrando-se sensivelmente aos homens, N. do T.] 34Anthropologia or a Philosophic Discourse Concerning Man Being the Anatomy Both of his Soul and Body wherein the Nature, Origin, Union, Immateriality, Immortality, Extension, and Faculties of the One and the Parts, Humours, Temperaments, Complexions, Functions, Sexes and Ages, Respecting the Other Are Concisely Delineated, [Tradução livre: Antropologia, ou um Discurso Filosófico sobre o Homem, sendo a Anatomia de sua Alma e Corpo nas quais a Natureza, Origem, união, Imaterialidade, Imortalidade, Extensão e Faculdades de uma, e as Partes, Humores, Temperamentos, Complexões, Funções, Sexos e Idades do outro são concisamente delineados] By S[amuel] H[aworth], student in Physic, London, printed for Stephen Foster, at the Sun and Bible on London Bridage, 1680, p. 52. 35Essa atitude é ainda a de Gassendi, que concebe a alma vegetativa e sensitiva como um corpo sutil, mas mantém a ideia de uma alma racional incorporal. Paul MENGAL, Université de Paris XII, Av. du Général-de-Gaulle, 94010 Créteil Cedex (maio de 1994) RECEBIDO: 11/03/2015 APROVADO: 01/06/ | {
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COMMENTARY Translating Trial Results in Clinical Practice: the Risk GP Model Jonathan Fuller1 & Luis J. Flores2 Received: 5 March 2016 /Accepted: 25 April 2016 /Published online: 4 May 2016 # Springer Science+Business Media New York 2016 Keywords Prediction .Knowledge translation . Translational research . Translationalmedicine . Implementation science . Risk . Generalization . Probability . Clinical trials . Clinical reasoning Abbreviations AR Absolute risk ARR Absolute risk reduction CVD Cardiovascular disease KT Knowledge translation Risk GP Risk generalization-particularization The medical research community is fairly unanimous in its agreement that Btranslating scientific discoveries^ and Btranslating research findings^ is important, but achieving translation remains a challenge [1]. There exists a research literature on strategies for knowledge dissemination or transfer [2]. In comparison, an equally important aspect of translation, the incorporation of research findings in clinical reasoning, has been all but ignored. What does a Brelative risk reduction of 20 %^ in a population of clinical trial participants tell us about whether the drug will work for a particular patient outside the trial? In this article, we examine the logic of translating therapeutic study results (e.g., clinical trial findings) in clinical practice. The kind of translation we have in mind is often called knowledge translation (KT) or T2 [1]. Although little explicit attention is given to the logic of translation, we argue that a particular model of translation is implicit in most KT activities; we call it the Risk Generalization-Particularization (Risk GP) Model. Here, we describe the model, including its limitations. Elsewhere, we argue that the Risk GP Model is the standard model of prediction in prognosis and therapy [3]. In therapy, prediction requires making an inference about a patient's response to treatment. In the Risk GP Model, this involves translating study findings in two stages. In the first stage, generalization, translation involves transportation of the group-level effect size from the trial to a target population. The preferred measures of effect size, particularly in cardiovascular research, are derived from the absolute risk (AR), and include the relative risk (RR) and absolute risk reduction (ARR). For instance, in a meta-analysis of trials, the RR of cardiovascular disease (CVD) events due to a cholesterollowering statin was approximately 0.8 [4]. In the Risk GP Model, the evidence user generalizes this RR of 0.8 to a target population (e.g., patients at high risk of CVD in the USA). In the second stage, particularization, translation involves transformation of the effect size into a change in outcome for a patient in the target population. Thus, we call this model the Risk GP Model. The inference from populations to individual patients (particularization or Bindividualization^) has received virtually no attention, yet is presupposed whenever clinicians Bapply^ study results to particular patients. When the effect size is derived from the AR (which quantifies the relative frequency of outcomes/events), the output of particularization is the change in probability of the outcome for the patient. Thus, if a patient in the high risk target population has an untreated CVD risk of 25 %, we predict that a statin with a RR of 0.8 will lower their probability of CVD to 20 %. The slip in the meaning of Bmedical risk^ at this stage often goes unnoticed. The RR or ARR measured in the trial is Associate Editor Craig Stolen oversaw the review of this article * Jonathan Fuller [email protected] 1 Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada 2 Department of Philosophy, King's College London, London, UK J. of Cardiovasc. Trans. Res. (2016) 9:167–168 DOI 10.1007/s12265-016-9694-0 derived from the absolute risk, the relative outcome frequency. The clinician particularizes the RR or ARR to determine the change in individual risk [5], or outcome probability for a single patient. It is individual risks or probabilities that are directly relevant to clinical decision-making (e.g., in balancing risk of benefit with risk of harm). The translation metaphor, though useful, is potentially misleading. Generalization and particularization are not simply a matter of rewriting effect sizes in a different language; they are inferences. Like all models, Risk GP relies upon assumptions. Generalization invokes a Brepresentativeness^ or Bsufficient similarity^ assumption: The trial and target are assumed to be sufficiently similar in the right ways. Widespread worries about the external validity of efficacy trials can be understood as worries that the representativeness assumption fails. Meanwhile, particularization's assumptions include the premise that the patient in question is a randomly presenting member of the target population, an assumption that often hangs on an uncertain diagnosis. A further concern about particularization is that the target populations we define in practice are not particular enough, and thus particularization ignores relevant patient details. Put differently, oftentimes the change in a particular patient's individual risk should not equal the effect size in a heterogeneous population. The personalized and precision medicine movements aim to address this concern in the research phase. The Risk GP Model and its assumptions (which are frequently problematic) deserve far greater attention. Medicine needs more advanced approaches to translating trial results, which might include Bayesian approaches to modifying risk estimates [3]. More radically, clinicians must sometimes call upon prediction models that do not require translating trial results, such as physiological mechanistic reasoning, n-of-1 studies, and reasoning from clinical experience. We call this strategy of using multiple models Bprediction model pluralism^ [3]. Researchers and clinicians must pay closer attention to the logic of knowledge translation if they hope to develop a rigorous science of translational medicine. BClosing the research-to-practice gap^ requires first understanding how to close the inferential gap between study populations and real-world patients. Acknowledgments JF gratefully acknowledges funding support from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. LJF is thankful for funding from the Chilean National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research (CONYCIT). Compliance with Ethical Standards No human studies and no animal studies were carried out by the authors for this article. Conflict of Interest The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest. Sources of Funding Canadian Institutes of Health Research and Chilean National Commission for Scientific and Technological Research (CONYCIT). References 1. Woolf, S. H. (2008). The meaning of translational research and why it matters. JAMA, 299(2), 211–213. 2. Fixsen, D. L., Naoom, S. F., Blase, K. A., Friedman, R. M., & Wallace, F. (2005). Implementation research: a synthesis of the literature. Tampa: National Implementation Research Network, University of South Florida. 3. Fuller, J., & Flores, L. J. (2015). The risk GP model: the standard model of prediction in medicine. Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 54, 49–61. 4. Baigent, C., Keech, A., Kearney, P. M., Blackwell, L., Buck, G., Pollicino, C., et al. (2005). Efficacy and safety of cholesterollowering treatment: prospective meta-analysis of data from 90,056 participants in 14 randomised trials of statins. Lancet, 366(9493), 1267–1278. 5. Dawid, P. (2015). On individual risk. Synthese. doi:10.1007/s11229015-0953-4. 168 J. of Cardiovasc. Trans. Res. (2016) 9:167– | {
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Freshest Advices on What To Do With the Historical Method in Philosophy When Using It to Study a Little Bit of Philosophy That Has Been Lost to History Bennett Gilbert Portland Oregon December the 10 , 2011.th www.porlockspensum.com The historical method in philosophy is the study of the history of philosophy as a means of thinking about philosophical issues for the sake of the practice of original philosophical work. Formerly it was widely thought that the historical method was indispensable to the practice of philosophy. Those opposed to this view, whom I'll call "presentists" in this paper, hold that,1 whatever notions the historical method and original philosophical work might have in common as rational rigorous and honest inquiries, the subject matter of the two studies is at heart different, on various accounts, and therefore that the history of philosophy is of little benefit, if not positively harmful, to the This use of the word "presentist" is to be rigidly distinguished from 1 "presentism" as a position in the metaphysics of time. 2 practice of philosophical inquiry. Those whom I'll here call the "traditionalist" view the historical method as indispensable, claiming that philosophical practice that does not include the history of philosophy and its problems misses some things (variously described by various writers) that are of the essence in philosophy. I shall not here directly evaluate these claims as to the critique one makes of the other. My attitude is irenic. I see only harm in arguing that any method is essential to the practice of philosophy in any sense such that work done without it is to be disparaged or dismissed on this sole ground or by any clever reasoning from this ground directly for the exclusion of work made by other methods of philosophical inquiry. Since varying methods are actually practiced within the domain of philosophy, we must say that features of philosophy present in any practice are understood in an indispensable way by use of the historical method and can be lost to our awareness, with loss to civilization, if the historical method is rejected. Varying methods being compatible, no one method can consistently dispense with the historical method. It is my conviction that just this much of a claim in favor of the historical method is true, and to convince you of this I shall presently make clearer what I take the historical method in philosophy to be and to do and how it ought to be applied. The kind of historical method I most esteem in this regard, and my reasons for its worth, are, however, not based on a traditionalist approach to historiography. In the next week after this writing, I will begin a long research project on 3 a very tiny shard from the history of philosophy. Actually, I began this project some months ago-first, by finding and specifying the subject and then by a chosen range of preparatory reading. But now I begin the close reading and the lucid writing, so hard to fight for, in which I intend to use a species of the historical method, devised according to my accumulated thoughts on the matter. I am to confront some or all of the ideas about methods in history and in philosophy, and their connections, that I have hitherto convinced myself of, and to take these as far as I can into a topic from which they did not arise and in which they will be applied to occasions of facts, logic, and communication far more fastidious and final than those they meet merely within my own deliberations. No matter what I want to believe, I cannot scorn any actuality. This essay is an initial methodological memoir to myself, not so much because I might forget my own instructions to myself- though I certainly have done so once research is underway-but also because I'll be thankful to figure out, if I can, what is wrong and what is right in my method of inquiry. But there is another reason for putting this to paper. At the moment of this writing I am in some ways clearer as to my beliefs, or let us say more innocent as to actualities, than I ever again will be, both in the life of this research project and henceforward altogether as a conscientious thinker and writer. Every project of research or thought that I have done so far has been such a one-way transit into more confusion or more clarity or both. The present project will be no different in this regard. Therefore this is a good opportunity to sum up what I 4 think I know about the historical method in philosophy. Because these words are vulnerable to undoing at any and all points from the very next steps to the last surprise in the plot, I had ought to be rather firm in surveying my starting position both for my perusal and before the scrutiny of others. I, being in transit, must speak confidently of my notions and at the same time must abandon portions of my confidence for the sake of an honest start. This is, I think, a conflict common to most uses of the historical method in philosophy. The conflict sometimes makes for an impossibility, or rather a queered possibility; but what I must account for is that possibility above this impossibility which philosophizing historically gives us. The alternation of claim and doubt is at the front line of historical work. One of the first and most basic question one asks oneself at the beginning of address to an historical project is, putting the matter very broadly, to what extent do I regard the thoughts and deeds of those who lived in earlier times to be the sort of thing I can come near to understanding? Or to what extent do I regard them as another sort of thing from the conscious life that my contemporaries and I know? At the present point in history our view of the commonalities of human life across time is blessed with great richness and great doubts, which each of us mixes in some way that we must bring to consciousness and justify in thinking about virtually everything including history. The consequences of Thomas Kuhn's ideas of translation from the thought of one era into the thought of another have greatly darkened this 5 picture, whether he intended this or not, along with the work of a great many historians in whose points of view the idols of our philosophers were scattered amidst a thick jungle of monuments on the plane of time. The past is both near and far. Michel de Certeau's phrase, that history is "a transparent caesura," helps neatly to sum this up. Obstacles of an invisible or a mental nature break into one's sighting historical time. If objects from the past we have right before our eyes are difficult to understand, events from the past are as a general rule yet more difficult to figure out. Even the thoughts of other persons trouble confidence in our own comprehension from the second they are uttered. My research project concerns a text that is lost. We must be certain that it existed but do not know if it was ever written down in any large measure or was always an oral text of which we have a few reminiscences. This text, if it exists anywhere in writing, is hidden behind those opaque obstacles representing historical time itself-sand and dirt and rubble. Wherever any fragment of it might now be, we cannot see it. Therefore this task of research is to reconstruct, or to restore, the thoughts of the philosopher, rather than the words, in connection with some view of the known thoughts of that philosopher and others in position to enlighten us on the matter. In this project the motions of knowing and of not knowing, of postulating and discarding, of claiming and doubting, of theory and fact that are basic to memory and to the study of historical time-this generation of alternation-are magnified by the unchanging presence of the 6 thoughts under study in so minimal a quantity of words as to be as much absence as presence. One result of the magnified view is that from the beginning to the end of such a project one's sense that the results are bits of news from the front of inquiry, rather than conclusions, draws upon the curiosity or wonder or profound demand that spark inquiry where something fresh is to be explored. In so far as historical time is the object of restoration or reconstruction it is something new one advances into, just as are non-historical researches. The concept of discovery as an experience the inquirer lives through at her own front line of advance is at least one thing both the historian of philosophy and the philosopher have in common. This argues that they have deep motives, profoundly rooted in their lives, for this peculiar work. Also, then, the difficulties and joys of finding new knowledge and new understanding out of our difficult material is common to the two the modes of philosophical activity-"doing philosophy" and "doing the history of philosophy," as someone once awkwardly but accurately phrased it-that have come into opposition. I venture to say that the presence or absence of texts to which philosophical thought is trained to respond is not a crisis-inducing defeater of the claim that both modes are fundamental and necessary to inquiry into philosophical questions. I have so far claimed that both history of philosophy studies and original philosophical work have two things in common by virtue of being human rational discourses. These are the difficulties of communication and the 7 situation of being in the front line of acquiring new learning. My claim is sufficiently harmless that no fluster need arise in the dovecote. One of the difficulties of communication is however more provocative-the one I have specified at some little length, that of communication, if we can call it that, between those of the present age and those of past times. It is the claim of a number of philosophers that this sort of communication need not trouble those doing original work in philosophy. But all original work requires standings and holdings as to some parts of the work done by others in fields, varying or similar, during historical time. As I have pointed out, textual exegesis is not the only sort of commitment to the ideas of others that is qualified to be in relation to historical time. Nor can any discredit of the authority of earlier thought, either as to truth-value or as to use-value, make diachrony disappear. If anyone claims that we are to think that older thought has been superceded and can appear only as witchcraft and wizardry where we want science and reason, that person's claim includes a construal of thoughts (or words or events) from historical time in an intelligible form that has advanced in verity beyond any such construal made in historical time by comprehensive reflection. This construal is indefeasible if any such claim is to be made. On almost any understanding of historical thought, the goal is to fit what we don't yet know, what we shall presently learn, and that which we can but guess at into an intelligibility more comprehensive (or higher, if you will) than that we have from any or all of these sources. To use de Certeau's notion of the 8 "transparent caesura," though the energetic motion has ceased to be intelligible to some faculties of our understanding it continues to be understandable by us, so that by some faculty historical thought and practice attempt to link the bare facts that peak on either side of the gap. This work can, of course, reveal divisions as well as commonalities in the lives of those persons and communities which any historian studies. Thus, every project of historical research involves something like reconstruction or restoration of what has been lost or become unclear. This is not to say that what is studied was ever stable in its own day or subject to finished and perfected understanding at any time, past present or future. A specific model of what I have in mind is the textual lacuna: a missing piece of any bit amidst extant bits of text, prior or following or both. Of course, the lacuna is too simple a model to explain very much of what historians of philosophy, much less any historians, do, not least because of the complexity of the thought needed to guess at the briefest textual lacunae. However, the notion of the lacuna does direct our attention to something that seems rarely to be considered in discussion by philosophers of the uses they have for history. Every critical employment of historical research includes intellectual acts of reconstruction and of restoration. I use these two words to refer to different though related things, and I'll consider "reconstruction" first. Whenever we make a statement about anything in historical time we are reconstructing what is otherwise in some measure of disarray in our minds. If this were not the case, such statement would not be about "historical" time. 9 Philosophers who discuss ideas and movements in historical time are reconstructing them, by using their critical skills, to make sense of the bits or swathes of philosophical history of interest to them, even when these are extensively documented. Along with all the theories in the world about contingency and necessity in history, there are just three basic methods of historiographic reconstruction from given materials: first, one can work in narrow focus to eliminate everything less likely in order to build up what is most likely to be the case at the situation under investigation; second, one can work from the mass of facts in the large context of the period and all the later opinions as to the period in which the matter was situated in order to come to a sense of the case; or third one can induct in a backward direction from the present day, in order to fix what was the case by its factual consequences. These types of reconstruction proceed by way of what is unlikely, by way of what is likely, and by way of what is induced. The practice of original philosophy necessarily involves reconstruction in at least two ways. First, when it is based on advancing understanding of prior thought-supposing for the moment that is not always but only sometimes the case-it maintains a reconstruction of some diachronic movements in thought in some structural relations to one another. This is, as it were, its idiom: historical time as its idiomatic region. Second, original philosophical practice seeks its own necessity. The philosopher finds the way of thinking she suggests, or the solutions to problems she pursues, to be at least not less 10 reasonable than any other solution or point of view. The similarities of philosophical reasoning to the repair of lacunae is clear enough, being derived from the tendency of thought itself to reflect upon past thought and to proceed by, or toward, self-reflective reason. If this is the case, philosophers ought to consider their methods of reconstruction of philosophy in historical time. However unwillingly or partially they are involved with the history of philosophy, women and men doing original work exercise one or more of the methods I have mentioned in proceeding toward better solutions to philosophical issues. Philosophers work on or within a gigantic net of lacunae left both by their predecessors and by their contemporaries in every field. However irrelevant a philosopher considers the history of philosophy, she is acting not only upon her view of this history but also upon some definite method of reconstructing that history so as to arrive at her point of view. If she doubts the value of historical study in philosophy claimed by the traditionalist, she would at this point respond that she, having studied the history of philosophy, has concluded that this body of thought is in the end archaic by virtue of being verifiably erroneous, or superseded, or misconceived, such that it is of negligible use in her original work as a philosopher. She might add, to the agreement of many, that an intelligible account of the history of philosophy means that either it must be understood mainly to be wrong, or not to be a thoroughly intelligible account, quite without respect to how much it has or has not been part of the body of knowledge she now commits herself to 11 increasing or whether much her historical studies have influenced her manner of practicing philosophy. The task of rational inquirers who do not wish to be historians, she might say, is to reconstruct nothing but rather to construct something truthful and beneficial; and although historical scholarship seeks truth and benefits us as well, the object of its study is different from that of the inquiry into the nature and advancement of current knowledge. One can sweeten this position in various ways, but the core of it must be tough if it is to be a position at all: that original work in philosophy is of a nature such that it gains little from a knowledge of the history of philosophical ideas entailing no authority, because the study of error is insufficient to the discovery of truth. My query about the methodology of reconstruction of historical time up to this point has served, agreeably or not, to do little but sharpen the contradictions between presentists and traditionalists. It does in fact do more than this, but certainly the analogy to lacunae fails to fit what creative philosophical research is beyond a certain point. To extend the reach of my idea, consider the second of the historiographic actions mention above, restoration. One may take the word broadly, as a near-synonym to reconstruction, just as reconstruction can signify in areas other than the historiographic, but the use of the word to describe a craft of reconstruction helps to focus on whether and how one uses past philosophy as authority. Restoration is a specific type of historical reconstruction, which one readily pictures for the present purposes by using our common notions of what the restorer of a 12 painting does to paintings in need of restoration, and of what the restorer of furniture does to cabinetry in need of restoration, and of what the restorer of bindings does to bindings in need of restoration. Restoration involves physical labor for both the aesthetic and structural goals we propose in doing restoration. The restorer must think about both artistic matters, including the history of art and theories of beauty, and very practical matters such as chemistry and geometry. Like all reconstruction of things from historical time (including events, facts, narratives, texts, and objects), the restorer works according to theories of restoration, and his or her work shows the effects of the chosen approach. In the restoration of objects there is theory. The first rule is, like the physician's, to do no harm. The restorer also wants to prevent future harm, if she can. But as to what state an object ought to be returned by restoration the cardinal rule offers no guidance, for if some change the object underwent is removed in favor of an earlier state one may argue that, something of the actual history object-something of both material and social import-having been lost, the restorer has harmed the object. A similar problem arises when a successor regime renames city streets, or cities themselves, to return to a more ancient name, undoing the evidence of a later, often revolutionary, ideological program, however hated, loses something from historical time. It might be pleasant to forget bad things, but it might also be very unwise to do so no matter how sweet the triumph over them by a political restoration. In these 13 antinomies no course of action is altogether satisfying. Any change to what presently exists may deceive as to the truth of what has existed. Any policy of restoration is guided by a theory of what is better, and not merely by the maxim of prudence; and all such theories represent a critical and philosophical point of view chained to the complications of the actual accretions in historical time onto the object of work. The "perfect" state is under the control of the interpreter and not that of the object. Even the first state of an object, fresh from a creator's hands, may be flawed either as to the creator's own intention or as to the historical circumstances that the object must be taken to represent in order for us to understand it. If it is flawed in the later way, clearly we must amend our understanding of the day or epoch in question by means of the evidence the object gives us. But that evidence of course is retrievable only by scraping away the rust of time. The right or best way to do this is governed by the theories that govern works of restoration. Ideas match these requirements we make of our handling of specimens and artifacts. Even completely "idealized" restorations express large philosophical commitments that are arrived at through the various ways we try to answer ultimate questions -including by thinking them through from within the context of objects. It appears at first that the history of philosophy has no such tangible objects as the restorer has. In one sense this is true but in other senses quite false. Texts are objects of active thought. The restorer of a Renaissance painting is not supposed to lighten a darkened spot by applying a blob of orange 14 paint with a three-inch brush, nor is the furniture restorer supposed to take a balpeen hammer to the work of the eboniste. Historians in general are guided by the prudential maxims of the restorer. The historian is not supposed to violate facts by her reading of the history of philosophy. But the philosopher doing original work also has a theory of restoration. To the thought of the past she is permitted to blob on orange paint with a three-inch brush or take wide swings with a balpeen hammer. She too has a theory of restoration. Though the object is materially different, it is still the object of the philosopher, both because philosophers are necessarily engaged with the historical past of philosophy for the reasons I have mentioned, but also because the philosopher thinks about all the theories by which we strive to make the world around us intelligible. A philosopher's judgment about ideas is an interpretation, implicit or explicit, of the historical past of philosophy. Let her interpretations be as wild as may be in the historian's view: no matter, for misunderstanding are our stock-in-trade. Instead of "do" no harm to their own history, philosophers raise hell with it. Raise hell, but do it accurately. Yet the standard of accuracy-its meaning and content-is the philosopher's subject, it is her own work, and it is hers to call. But call it we must. For whom do we make original philosophy? Not for the historian but for ourselves in our pursuit of truth. All theories of restoration presume philosophical claims, and all philosophical claims presume some theory of the history of philosophy. In the case of philosophy, there is no one to say that the 15 intentions of a philosopher are this and are not that, because any such claim is based on just those wider philosophical beliefs that are being thought through by philosophers. If as regards material objects from historical time we find the notion of truly perfect restoration to slip away on account of the intransigence of history as it clings to things, so much the more does every practicing philosopher cling to the invisible past. Our situation is that of imperfection. There is no progress without gross imperfection. Original philosophical work can little judge success or failure in interpreting the history of philosophy as an objective empirical matter, but it has not freed itself from consideration of philosophy in historical time. In the matter of studying the history of philosophy we as philosophers make this study whether we know it or like or not. We make a study that is perfectly free to be utterly imperfect with respect to the history of philosophy as a result of its endeavors to become more perfect as to true understanding of philosophical issues. The situation urged upon us by the traditionalist is, as a presentist might say, somewhat ridiculous. But it is unavoidable. That is the fuller truth of the matter. This conflict is familiar: is logic a straight and neutral course? Or is philosophy in truth driven by something else? If the former is the case, perhaps advocacy of my idea is a hopeless, for these larger controversies are great battlefields harrowed by the mightiest weapons, in which a small cause is likely forgotten. But on the other hand it is the great capability of moral positions that they can stand and prevail without legions on their side. The 16 case here will become in the end the moral imperative for philosophers to study the history of philosophy. The capacity for ethical import in all philosophical work drives this question in part, for the valid normative foundation of moral understanding is one of the two oldest and most important question in Western philosophy. The other is, what is real?-the question taken up by ontology. From the beginning these two-the descriptive and the prescriptive foundations-have been linked. In consequence, it makes little sense to talk of the method of philosophy without considering the role of these two issues in the historical time of philosophy. The presentist, as I have described her, tends to argue that evidence and logic alone are the limiting conditions of philosophical practice and therefore that the authority of scientific truth so far we now establish it deflates the value of the study of the history of philosophy in the practice of philosophy. The quasi-traditionalist position I advocate shifts the focus from authority (via verifiability or logic) to the cultural and social contexts of philosophical work. In this view, philosophy has an illuminative relationship to all culture, just as do book-binding, cabinet-making, and oil painting; but the relationship has distinct features of conspectus and abstraction. It serves to summarize all the rest of culture in its phases and aspects, in its parts and wholes, through a kind of inquiry using singularly complete concepts, though imperfectly so, and singularly useful because it provides for working with these concepts. I stress this broad sense of usefulness. By this I mean the ways in which philosophical 17 work leads to the growth of knowledge, to the increase of wisdom, and to the new as it rolls through culture from the future. Consequently, it makes no sense to say that philosophy has no subject-matter and no methods special to itself. These claims about philosophy as a whole are broader than I can argue in the present essay. However, there is something more to the quasi-traditionalist argument. The shift from authority to context that I advocate secures history of philosophy studies from superannuation and uselessness, but an affirmative and constructive belief about philosophy as a whole is connected to the position I am taking, arising from the notion of context that I am using. With respect to the role of historical knowledge in original philosophy, my claim here is simply this: that the arrow of philosophy does not fly unfletched. Thinkers with widely varying evaluations of philosophy share notions of its historicality similar to this claim. Some of these thinkers are not philosophers and tend not to see much reason to regard philosophy as an activity distinct from its fractal forms in society, technology, and the arts. Some historians and theorists of culture take this position. Richard Rorty2 argues with considerable justness that (a). "rational reconstruction," i.e., dehistoricized logical readings, fail, and that (b). what we call philosophical discourse in the honor-roll of philosophical royalty is no more philosophical Leslie Kurke's Aesopic Conversations: Popular Tradition, Cultural Dialogue, and the2 Invention of Greek Prose (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011) is a superb and fascinating recent example of this kind of New Historicist reading applied to, and against, the origins of philosophical discourse and what she calls its Platonic (and, later, Hegelian) selfregard in modern historiography (esp. pp. 241-264). 18 than many, or every, other sort of discourse. Other non-relativist approaches, such as those of Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre, hold, like, Rorty, that there is more to philosophy than the analysis of concepts. Because the influences of cultural and social life naturally penetrate philosophical practice we must study the history of philosophy in order to excavate what has informed any current practice, endogenously as well as exogenously, and thereby become clearly aware of what one is doing. In both Rorty, on the one3 hand, and in Taylor and MacIntyre, on the other, one sees that very different estimations of philosophical practice (and very different notions of truth) together highly value the self-knowledge to which the historical method ought to lead. That "what one is doing" in philosophy is contingent and particular can come to mean that it is wholly contingent and particular and yet is a distinct form of inquiry or knowledge just because it is contingent and particular. This is Quentin Skinner's view, and he is correct to point out that historiographic reconstruction can have immense interest for philosophers by shedding light on the nature of action. 4 My metaphor of the fletched arrow is consistent with these four views, but I mean something else as well that they miss or do not mean. I refer here to essays by these philosophers in R. Rorty, Q. Skinner, and J. B.3 Schneewind, eds., Philosophy in History: Essays on the Historiography of Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984): Richard Rorty, "The Historiography of Philosophy: Four Genres" (pp. 49-76); Charles C. W. Taylor, "Philosophy and its History" (pp. 17-30); and Alasdair Macintyre, "The Relationship of Philosophy to Its Past" (pp. 31-48). For this see Skinner's early essay "Meaning and Understanding in the History of4 Ideas," in History and Theory, vol. 8, no. 1 (1969), pp. 3-53, esp. pp. 49-53. 19 Reconstructions are all ideal, that is, they are all developed from the ideas of the historian or restorer, who also is an actor in history. This actor works through methods that give results by way of the unlikely, the likely, and the logically necessary. These are provisional results, often incompatible with other conclusions and speculations; or, to put it more fully, historical thought is inevitable but inconclusive, and is an unavoidable subversion of the practice of philosophy, no matter whether the topic for thought is as abstract as mathematics or as concrete as matters of ethics. Good, useful reasons for studying the history of philosophy-such as Taylor's and MacIntyre's-do not explain a principle common to both the practice and to the historiography of philosophy that abides in the person of the inquirer. Reasons arising from the situated position of the inquirer-such as Rorty's and Skinner's- are very good reasons. But we are in need of the out-loud articulation of a level deeper than the methodology of scholarly and academic work. If philosophy has a relation to the rest of human culture that distinguishes it from anything else, then the history of philosophy is important for reasons other than the benefits of the methodology. The history of philosophy, in my view, is witness to something that is not social but individual, something close to the core hope and hunger of the person who decides to pursue problems with such unrelenting honesty and energy that her inquiry becomes what we call philosophical. The calmly calculated reasons for "doing" history of philosophy do not take us into the impossible, conflicted reasons that produce philosophical practice. It is these 20 reasons that philosophy reproduces in its history. Every philosophical practice is a reproduction of them. My claim sounds larger than it is: it excludes nothing but the denial of history; everything else is included just because philosophy is self-referential. The word I will use for one aspect of the particular self-referentiality of philosophy is prolepsis. Philosophical thought is sometimes believed, especially in its systematic forms, to align the future direction of human activity and thought with itself, sometimes by claiming that the dissemination of a set of ideas does or will influence matters in such a way as to bring about effects that the ideas predict or advocate. Philosophical work generally is exhortatory; often it is protreptic;5 but prophecy by philosophy seems to lead to esotericism. For the presentist, the philosopher as prophet must stand among the worst effects of immersing original work into the influences of historical time. An inclination to think of one's ideas as part of a plan unfolding throughout history, best seen by one's self, requires a suitably manipulated plan of past time in order to manage future time in the desired way. Mantic operations require the manipulation of terms to form a pseudo-empirical method of predicting the future, an ars generalis of future and past truth. It is irrationalist and obscurantist. This looks to be not at all reasonable and therefore no part of an honest labor of thought. The proleptic capacity of philosophy is not a claim about the outward This thought owes much to the ideas of Prof. Eric Schliesser in his discussion at5 www.newappsblog.com/2011/03/philosophic-prophecy-and-the-history-of-philosophy.html and at related links. 21 world but an inward experience of discovery. Prolepsis is finding in the present or the past something that ordinarily belongs in the future (including one's own present) rather than in the present or the past. The exemplary capacity of philosophy grows from its proleptic capacity. The former is a specialized but necessary form of the latter. It is specialized because the good example set by strong moral force-in projects either of thought or of action-has effect only in those highly distinctive circumstances in which the moral force of personal example perilously moves someone out of his or her ordinary way. Inspiration is double-faced: it may mean finding a cave of treasures, and it may mean having a rag-bag of unhappy surprises and selfobsessive hoarding attached to one's self. Response to this virtually infinitely complex product of recollections, judgments, motives, fears, and hopes best comes as the profound action of conscience, which in all its ramifications is the final mystery addressed by philosophical ethics. Nothing in the world can enforce the discipline of rigorous honesty upon a philosopher, or anyone else, beside personal commitment to the inquiry that exposure to strong moral and intellectual example brings. The exposure tends to evoke the commitment: this is its value, strength, and limit. This is the decision made by moral agents, each and every philosopher being a moral agent. By fortune, the strongest good examples of conscientious and courageous honesty are not all of one's own time. By fortune, we sometimes require the distance of time, with the knowledge of circumstances and consequences it gives us, to see clearly which 22 persons are to be our moral exemplar. By fortune, we are sometimes lucky enough to recognize them in the same hours under the sun in which we live. But by necessity there is no way towards rigorous honesty except by one's commitment to the personhood of moral agency. This necessity abides with or without the benefit of being inspired by personal example because we are imperfect and exist in limiting circumstances. The philosopher is situated just like everyone else in the imperfect results of human historical time. On the proleptic approach to the use of the history of philosophy in the practice of philosophy, a form of the traditionalist view prevails but only at the cost of the most rigorous honesty on the part of the inquirer in considering the whole moral and intellectual force of the parts of philosophical history with which one's project demands encounter. At first this might seem to leave all the choices in the hands of the practicing philosopher, where of course they certainly ought to be. But the proleptic approach also requires a significant change from the presentist approach for the original philosopher. It is this: that reception of the full moral and intellectual force of the philosophers or philosophical ideas one encounters requires an awareness of all parties' personal historical situations, especially his or her own. So even the presentist stands, if her method be fully understood, at personal face-to-face risk before the powerful intellectual and moral forces of great philosophers and of other thinkers and actors, and she ought to be committed to receiving these forces with rigorous honesty by being fully open to them as well as fully and 23 independently critical. Independence is the free point of view not only in relation to the common philosophical trends of her day but also to the received opinions of the day about philosophers and philosophy in historical time. To fulfill this one must actually work on studying the history of philosophy. The study of the history of philosophy is therefore a part of the vulnerability one individually takes on when honestly confronting profound thought, by great thinkers: their inescapable challenge puts us at a certain kind of personal risk, from person to person rather than from one set of social conditions to another set. Prolepsis is a name for this risk, this threat or promise; also, it connotes accident, incommensurability, and mystery. Philosophers necessarily confront a history that is no less demanding of our response to the force of other persons than are the material objects that they, among others, made or lived and died by. These are the non-physical aspects of objects. I suggest that the student of philosophy look upon the history of philosophy rather as the student of the history of material culture looks on objects: take into regard philosophical texts from historical time and the history of ideas as a kind of material object, being unavoidable fact, and then take into regard its strong intangible significances-the kinds of meaning, comprehensive and consequential, that philosophers trace even when the object of study has the form of a modern standard edition or is invisible or is lost. Even in such circumstances, a philosopher is a restorer of the imperfect understanding with which we look back into historical time, looking at reality 24 by way of what is unlikely to be, what is likely to be, and what must be. I am about to study something lost but chosen by me for the consequences of its topical interest and the critical questions it poses as to philosophical method. My thoughts come from my past experiences and my first experience in this research, and they are challenged at every moment by reflection on the method being applied to the topic. On the question of method, the subject of my research being a liminal case, it will, I hope, cast light on matters common to all methods of philosophy, for what is necessary to my project of research seems to me to say something about what is necessary and important in most philosophical work. This is not a command to be obeyed, but a tension that never goes away even when ignored. Therefore my freshest advice is to understand ideas as things absent from the actual world but as being in a special, illuminating relation to the world-just like historical time itself. | {
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WHITEHEAD'S PRINCIPLE BEN BLUMSON AND MANIKARAN SINGH Abstract. According to Whitehead's rectified principle, two individuals are connected just in case there is something self-connected which overlaps both of them, and every part of which overlaps one of them. Roberto Casati and Achille Varzi have offered a counterexample to the principle, consisting of an individual which has no self-connected parts. But since atoms are self-connected, Casati and Varzi's counterexample presupposes the possibility of gunk or, in other words, things which have no atoms as parts. So one may still wonder whether Whitehead's rectified principle follows from the assumption of atomism. This paper presents an atomic countermodel to show the answer is no. 1. Introduction Some things are connected, and others are not – right now I am connected to my chair, but when I stand up, my chair and I will be disconnected. The oceans are connected to the Earth, since they lie on its surface, but the Moon is not, since it orbits in space. The Northern hemisphere is connected to the Southern hemisphere, since they meet at the equator. In contrast, the North temperate zone is not connected to the South temperate zone, since they are separated by the tropics. Many more specific examples are easy to find. But when in general are two things connected? An intuitive answer to this question is Whitehead's principle, according to which two things are connected if and only if there is something which overlaps both of them, and Date: March 31, 2020. 1 2 BEN BLUMSON AND MANIKARAN SINGH which is such that every part of it overlaps one of them.1 So according to Whitehead's principle, Europe and Asia, for example, are connected because Russia overlaps both Europe and Asia, and because every part of Russia overlaps Europe or overlaps Asia. Intuitive as it is, Whitehead's principle is incompatible with the possibility of scattered objects or, in other words, things which are not self-connected.2 New Zealand, for example, is divided into two disconnected parts – the North island and the South island. Nevertheless, there is something which overlaps both the North island and the South island, and every part of which overlaps either the North island or the South island – namely, New Zealand itself. So Whitehead's principle falsely implies that the North and South islands are connected after all. This suggests that what seemed intuitive about Whitehead's principle might instead be captured by Whitehead's rectified principle, according to which a pair of individuals is connected if and only if there is something selfconnected which overlaps both of them, and every part of which overlaps one of them. So according to Whitehead's rectified principle, Europe and Asia, for example, are connected because mainland Russia is self-connected, mainland Russia overlaps both Europe and Asia, and every part of mainland Russia overlaps either Europe or Asia. Roberto Casati and Achille Varzi have presented a counterexample to Whitehead's rectified principle inspired by the Cantor set, the Cantor bar, which consists of an individual which has no self-connected parts, or is entirely scattered (Casati and Varzi 1999, p. 61). As we explain in detail 1See Varzi 1996, p. 267 and Casati and Varzi 1999, p. 11. Whitehead's application of the principle was to "junctions" of events, rather than connection of individuals. See Whitehead 1919, p. 102 and Whitehead 1920, p. 76. 2See Casati and Varzi 1999, pp. 12-13. For scattered objects see Cartwright 1975, pp. 157-9 and Chisholm 1987. Biro 2017 denies there are scattered objects. WHITEHEAD'S PRINCIPLE 3 in section (7), the Cantor bar presupposes not only the possibility of scattered objects, but also the possibility of gunk, or individuals which are not composed of any atoms. The complexity of the example naturally raises the question of whether Whitehead's rectified principle is provable in the context of atomism. This paper presents a very simple, albeit counterintuitive, atomistic countermodel to show that it is not. We conclude that the truth of Whitehead's rectified principle is logically independent from the question of atomism – both atomistic and atomless mereologies are consistent with the acceptance or rejection of Whitehead's rectified principle. 2. Classical Extensional Mereology The difficulties for Whitehead's principle are starkest in classical extensional mereology. Roughly speaking, classical extensional mereology is the combination of two theses – extensionalism, according to which no things compose more than one thing, and universalism, according to which all things compose at least one thing.3 In particular, universalism is inconsonant with Whitehead's principle because, as we shall see, they jointly entail that everything is connected to everything else, thus trivialising the relation of connection. To be more precise, we follow Casati and Varzi in axiomatising classical extensional mereology with a single primitive relation P , where Pxy is interpreted as meaning that x is an improper part of y.4 It's assumed that parthood is reflexive, antisymmetric, and transitive: (1) Pxx Reflexivity (2) Pxy ∧ Pyx→ x = y Antisymmetry (3) Pxy ∧ Pyz → Pxz Transitivity 3For this characterisation see, for example, Lewis 1991, pp. 72-3 and Lando 2018. 4See Varzi 1996, pp. 260-5 and Casati and Varzi 1999, pp. 29-47. 4 BEN BLUMSON AND MANIKARAN SINGH Then, a pair of individuals are defined as overlapping if and only if there is something which is part of both of them: (4) Oxy =def (∃z)(Pzx ∧ Pzy) Overlap Egypt overlaps Asia, for example, because Sinai is part of Egypt and part of Asia. With the definition of overlap in hand we can state the axiom of strong supplementation, according to which if something is not part of another, some part of the latter does not overlap the former: (5) ¬Pyx→ (∃z)(Pzx ∧ ¬Ozy) Strong Supplementation Since Egypt is not part of Africa, for example, there is some part of Egypt, viz. Sinai, which does not overlap Africa. Together with antisymmetry, strong supplementation captures the extensionalist aspect of classical extensional mereology.5 The universalist aspect of classical extensional mereology is captured by the axiom schema of fusion, according to which for any satisfied predicate, there is something which overlaps all and only the things which satisfy that predicate: (6) (∃x)ψ(x)→ (∃x)(∀y)(Oyx↔ (∃z)(ψ(z) ∧Oyz)) Fusion Since there is an ocean, for example, there is something which overlaps all and only things which overlap an ocean. Then the fusion or general sum of things which satisfy a predicate (which is unique in the context of extensionalism), is defined as the thing which overlaps all and only things which satisfy that predicate: (7) (σx)ψ(x) =def ( ιx)(∀y)(Oyx↔ (∃z)(ψ(z) ∧Oyz)) General Sum 5Some axiomatisations use weak instead of strong supplementation. See Simons 1987, p. 41; Varzi 1996, p. 265 and Casati and Varzi 1999, pp. 45-7. However, this fails to capture extensionalism, except in the presence of a stronger version of the fusion axiom. See Pontow 2004; Hovda 2009; Varzi 2009 and Varzi 2019. The relationship between antisymmetry and extensionalism is emphasised in Cotnoir 2010 and Cotnoir 2016. WHITEHEAD'S PRINCIPLE 5 The Ocean, for example, is the thing which overlaps all and only things which overlap an ocean. (Further definitions of classical extensional mereology will be introduced as we need them). 3. Whitehead's Principle With these definition in hand, Whitehead's original principle, according to which a pair of individuals is connected if and only if there is something which overlaps both of them, and every part of which overlaps one of them, can be stated (using Cxy to mean x is connected to y) as: (8) Cxy ↔ (∃z)(Ozx ∧Ozy ∧ (∀w)(Pwz → (Owx ∨Owy))) According to Whitehead's principle, Asia is connected to Africa, for example, because Egypt overlaps Africa, Egypt overlaps Asia, and every part of Egypt overlaps Africa or Asia.6 Whitehead's principle has the advantage that if it were true, it would provide a reductive analysis of connection in purely mereological terms.7 In particular, Whitehead's principle offers an analysis of connection in terms of just parthood and overlap, which is itself defined in terms of parthood. So if Whitehead's principle were true, there would be no mystery about when two things are connected – or at least, any mysteries about when two things are connected would reduce to questions about when one thing is part of another. This is a considerable theoretical advantage. However, in the context of classical extensional mereology, Whitehead's principle is completely unacceptable, since it entails that everything is connected to everything else. To see why, define the sum of two individuals as 6See Varzi 1996, p. 267 and Casati and Varzi 1999, p. 51 7In some systems, parthood itself is analysed in terms of connection (see Clarke 1981, Varzi 1996, pp. 276-7 and Casati and Varzi 1999, pp. 63-4). In this case, Whitehead's principle would provide a reciprocal rather than reductive analysis of connection, where connection and parthood are both analysed in terms of each other. 6 BEN BLUMSON AND MANIKARAN SINGH the individual which overlaps all and only individuals which overlap the first or overlap the second: (9) x+ y =def ( ιz)(∀w)(Owz ↔ (Owx ∨Owy)) Sum The sum of Europe and Asia, for example, is Eurasia – the individual which overlaps all and only things which overlap Europe or overlap Asia. In classical extensional mereology, it follows by substituting z = x∨z = y for ψ(z) in the fusion axiom schema that every pair of individuals has a sum (which is unique in the context of extensionalism): (10) (∃z)(∀w)(Owz ↔ (Owx ∨Owy)) Sum Closure Since Europe, for example, is identical to Europe or identical to Asia, it follows from fusion that there is something, viz. Eurasia, which overlaps all and only things which overlap Europe or overlap Asia. Then Whitehead's principle is trivial in classical extensional mereology because its right hand side is always satisfied – the sum of x+ y overlaps x and overlaps y, and every part of x+y overlaps x or overlaps y. Consider, for example, India and Australia. According to classical extensional mereology, India and Australia have a sum, Indo-Australia. Indo-Australia overlaps India, and Indo-Australia overlaps Australia. Moreover, every part of IndoAustralia overlaps India or overlaps Australia. So, according to Whitehead's principle, it follows that India is connected to Australia. To put the problem another way, we noted in the introduction that Whitehead's principle is incompatible with the existence of scattered objects. But classical extensional mereology exacerbates this problem, because it entails that whenever two individuals are not connected, their sum is a scattered object. So unless all individuals are connected, classical extensional mereology entails that there are scattered objects. So unless all individuals are connected, classical extensional mereology is incompatible with Whitehead's principle. WHITEHEAD'S PRINCIPLE 7 4. Classical Extensional Mereotopology The problem just raised with Whitehead's principle is that whereas Russia and Egypt are self-connected, Indo-Australia is scattered, so the fact that Indo-Australia overlaps both India and Australia does nothing to connect them. But what is the difference between individuals which are selfconnected, like mainland Australia, and individuals which are scattered, like the Indonesian Archipelago? This question cannot be answered in mereological terms alone, but can be answered by introducing connection as an additional primitive.8 In particular, classical extensional mereotopology is the theory which extends classical extensional mereology with an additional primitive relation C, where Cxy is interpreted as meaning x is connected to y, and is governed by the following axioms: (11) Cxx Reflexivity (12) Cxy → Cyx Symmetry (13) Pxy → (∀z)(Czx→ Czy) Monotonicity Here, monotonicity is responsible for capturing the relationship between parthood and connection.9 With connection adopted as an additional primitive, self-connection can be defined in terms of connection and summation. According to this definition, an individual is self-connected if and only if for every way of partitioning it into a sum, the summands are connected: (14) SCz =def (∀x)(∀y)(z = x+ y → Cxy) Self-Connection New Zealand, for example, is not self-connected according to this definition, because New Zealand is the sum of the South Island and the North Island, but the South Island and the North Island are not connected.10 8See Varzi 1996, p. 268; Casati and Varzi 1999, pp. 12-13. 9For classical extensional mereotopology see Grzegorczyk 1960; Smith 1993 and Smith 1996. For this axiomatisation see Varzi 1996, p. 271 and Casati and Varzi 1999, p. 58. 10For this definition see Varzi 1996, p. 271 and Casati and Varzi 1999, p. 58. 8 BEN BLUMSON AND MANIKARAN SINGH 5. Whitehead's Rectified Principle With the distinction between self-connected and scattered individuals in hand, it appears that Whitehead's principle can be corrected. In particular, according to Whitehead's rectified principle, a pair of individuals is connected if and only if there is something self-connected which overlaps both of them, and such that every part of it overlaps one of them: (15) Cxy ↔ (∃z)(SCz ∧Ozx ∧Ozy ∧ (∀w)(Pwz → (Owx ∨Owy))) So Europe is connected to Asia, for example, not only because mainland Russia overlaps Europe, mainland Russia overlaps Asia, and every part of mainland Russia overlaps Europe or Asia, but also because mainland Russia is self-connected.11 Whitehead's rectified principle, unlike its predecessor, cannot serve as a reductive analysis of connection in purely mereological terms, since it analyses connection partly in terms of self-connection, which is not purely mereological, since it is itself defined in terms of connection. Nevertheless, if Whitehead's rectified principle were true, it could still provide a reciprocal analysis of connection, where connection and self-connection are both analysed in terms of each other. So it could still provide partial illumination on the question of when two things are connected. Moreover, the right to left direction of Whitehead's rectified principle is a theorem of classical extensional mereotopology. To see why, define the product of two overlapping individuals as the individual all and only parts of which are part of both of them: (16) x× y =def ( ιz)(∀w)(Pwz ↔ (Pwx ∧ Pwy)) Product Sinai, for example, is the product of Egypt and Asia, since something is part of Sinai if and only if it is part of Egypt and Part of Asia. In classical extensional mereology, every pair of overlapping individuals has a product (which is unique in the context of extensionalism): 11See Varzi 1996, p. 271 and Casati and Varzi 1999, p. 61. WHITEHEAD'S PRINCIPLE 9 (17) Oxy → (∃z)(∀w)(Pwz ↔ (Pwx ∧ Pwy)) Product Closure Since Malaysia overlaps Borneo, for example, there is something – namely, East Malaysia – all and only parts of which are part of Malaysia and part of Borneo. Moreover, in classical extensional mereology, if an individual overlaps two others, then its product distributes over their sum: (18) (Oxy ∧Oxz)→ x× (y + z) = (x× y) + (x× z) Distributivity Since Turkey overlaps Europe and Asia, for example, the product of Turkey with Eurasia is the sum of the product of Turkey with Europe and the product of Turkey with Asia.12 Finally, the right to left direction of Whitehead's rectified principle follows from the definition of self-connection, distributivity and monotonicity: (19) (∃z)(SCz ∧Ozx ∧Ozy ∧ (∀w)(Pwz → (Owx ∨Owy)))→ Cxy Proof. Suppose z satisfies the right hand side of Whitehead's rectified principle. Since every part of z is part of x or part of y, z is part of x + y, so z = z × (x + y). And since z overlaps x and z overlaps y, it follows from distributivity that z = z × (x + y) = (z × x) + (z × y). Then since z is self-connected it follows from the definition of self-connection that z × x is connected to z× y. But z×x is part of x and z× y is part of y, so it follows from the monotonicity of connection that x is connected to y.13 However, as we will see, the left to right direction of Whitehead's rectified principle is not provable, even in a theory stronger than classical extensional mereotopology.14 12For a detailed proof of distributivity see Pietruszczak 2018, pp. 102-4 13For this theorem and its proof see Casati and Varzi 1999, p. 61. 14Varzi 1996, p. 271 mistakenly suggests that the left to right direction of Whitehead's rectified principle is provable in closed extensional mereotopology, a weaker theory in which fusion is replaced with sum and product closure. 10 BEN BLUMSON AND MANIKARAN SINGH 6. closure conditions Casati and Varzi favour a stronger theory they call classical extensional mereotopology with closure conditions (abbreviated GEMTC), which adds to classical extensional mereotopology axioms inspired by the Kuratowski closure axioms of mathematical topology.15 In order to state these conditions, we say that something is an internal part of another if and only if the former is a part of the latter and everything connected to the former overlaps the latter: (20) IPxy =def Pxy ∧ (∀z)(Czx→ Ozy) Internal Part Bolivia, for example, is an internal part of South America, since Bolivia is part of South America and everywhere connected to Bolivia overlaps South America. Brazil, on the other hand, is not an internal part of South America, since the Pacific is connected to Brazil but does not overlap South America.16 In terms of internal parthood, the interior of an individual can be defined as the general sum of its internal parts: (21) i(x) =def (σz)IPzx Interior Supposing that the countries of South America are its atomic parts, for example, then the interior of South America is the sum of Bolivia and Paraguay. With these definitions in hand, we can define GEMTC as the theory which extends classical extensional mereology with the following axioms: (22) P (ix)x Inclusion (23) i(ix) = i(x) Idempotence (24) i(x× y) = i(x)× i(y) Product 15See Varzi 1996, p. 273 and Casati and Varzi 1999, p. 59. 16See Varzi 1996, p. 268 and Casati and Varzi 1999, p. 55. WHITEHEAD'S PRINCIPLE 11 GEMTC, according to Casati and Varzi, "may be considered the archetype of a mereological theory" (Casati and Varzi 1999, p. 59).17 Nevertheless, as we shall see in the next two sections, the axioms of GEMTC are still too weak to entail Whitehead's principle. 7. The Cantor Bar In order to show that the left to right direction of Whitehead's rectified principle is not a theorem of GEMTC, Casati and Varzi give as a counterexample the Cantor Bar, which they describe as follows: ... the creation of the Cantor Bar. The first step is to remove the middle third of a self-connected bar. The next step is to remove the middle of each of the remaining bars. Repeating this over and over again creates a scattered object with no self-connected parts (Casati and Varzi 1999, p. 61). Casati and Varzi's idea is that after countably many steps every self-connected bar will have been divided into two, and so the remainder will have no selfconnected parts.18 Since it has no self-connected parts, the Cantor Bar is a counterexample to the left to right direction of Whitehead's rectified principle. As Casati and Varzi write: ... if x has no self-connected parts, then there may be things to which x is connected (e. g. x itself) without there being 17See also Varzi 1996, p. 273. Note that axiom (22), inclusion, is redundant, since it's provable in classical extensional mereotopology (Casati and Varzi 1999, p. 59). 18Casati and Varzi's example is inspired by the Cantor Set, which is constructed as follows. Let E0 = [0, 1], each En = En−1 3 ∪( 2 3 + En−1 3 ), and the Cantor set C = ∞⋂ i=1 Ei. The Cantor set with the subspace topology inherited from the usual topology on the real line is a Hausdorff space. And the collection of nonempty regular open subsets of a Hausdorff space is a model of classical extensional mereotopology (Grzegorczyk 1960; Gerla 1995, p. 1021; Varzi 1996, p. 272). So the collection of nonempty regular open subsets of the Cantor set is a model of classical extensional mereotopology. 12 BEN BLUMSON AND MANIKARAN SINGH any self-connected z doing the job required by Whitehead's principle (Casati and Varzi 1999, p. 61). The problem is that although the Cantor Bar is connected to itself, the only things which overlap the Cantor Bar, and which all parts of which overlap it, are parts of it – but none of these are self-connected. Notice that in order to be an individual with no self-connected parts, the Cantor Bar must be composed of "gunk" or, in other words, must have no atoms as parts.19 To see this, define an atom as an individual which has no parts other than itself: (25) Ax =def (∀y)(Pyx→ x = y) Atoms Fundamental physical particles, for example, are atoms under this definition, since fundamental physical particles have no parts other than themselves.20 Then in classical extensional mereotopology, it follows that all atoms are self-connected (Masolo and Vieu 1999, p. 243): (26) Ax→ SCx Proof. Suppose x is an atom. To show x is self-connected, we have to show that for all y and z, if x = y + z then y is connected to z. So suppose x = y + z. It follows from the definition of a sum that everything which overlaps y overlaps z, and so it follows from strong supplementation that y is part of x. But then since x is an atom, it follows from the definition of an atom that y is x. By the same reasoning, it follows that z is x. So it follows from the reflexivity of connection that y is connected to z. So in order to be a counterexample to Whitehead's rectified principle, no atoms can be part of the Cantor Bar.21 19For a summary of the debate over the possibility of gunk see Hudson 2007, pp. 297-9. 20For this definition see Masolo and Vieu 1999, p. 240. See also Simons 1987, p. 41. 21Note that in the model of classical extensional mereotopology provided by the collection of nonempty regular open subsets of the Cantor set is atomless, since although { 1 4 }, for example, is a subset of the Cantor set, it is not a regular open subset. WHITEHEAD'S PRINCIPLE 13 8. An atomic countermodel So the example of the Cantor bar raises the question of whether the left to right direction of Whitehead's rectified principle is provable from an additional axiom, according to which everything is composed of atoms: (27) (∀x)(∃y)(Ay ∧ Pyx) Atomism This axiom would rule out the Cantor Bar, for example, since no part of the Cantor Bar is an atom.22 But there is a very simple countermodel to show that even under the assumption of atomism, classical extensional mereotopology does not entail the left to right direction of Whitehead's rectified principle. Suppose everything is composed of just four atoms a, b, c and d, none of which are connected to each other. And suppose that a+ d is connected to b+ c, and that no other individuals are connected without overlapping. In this model, everything has its atoms amongst its interior parts, so since everything is the general sum of its atoms, everything is its own interior. So the axioms of GEMTC are all satisfied. However, in this model nothing is self-connected except the four atoms, since because the atoms aren't connected to anything except themselves, everything else may be partitioned into a sum in which one summand is an atom to which the other summand is not connected. And none of the four atoms overlap both a+d and b+c, so there is nothing self-connected to satisfy the right hand side of Whitehead's rectified principle. Hence, Whitehead's rectified principle is not a theorem of classical extensional mereotopology with closure conditions, even under the assumption of atomism. To make the countermodel more intuitive, imagine, for example, that a and c are protons, whereas b and d are electrons, so that a + b and c + d are hydrogen atoms (in the chemical sense) which connect to form a H2 22For this characterisation of atomism see Masolo and Vieu 1999, p. 240. See also Simons 1987, p. 42; Varzi 1996, p. 265 and Casati and Varzi 1999, p. 48. 14 BEN BLUMSON AND MANIKARAN SINGH molecule (where we think of connection in terms of chemical bonding, rather than contact). Then although the two hydrogen atoms are connected, there is nothing self-connected which overlaps both of them, and so, according to the example, Whitehead's rectified principle is false. 9. Additional Axioms A striking feature of the atomic countermodel is that a + d is connected to b+ c, without being connected to b or connected to c (and likewise, b+ c is connected to a+ d, without being connected to a or connected to d). So one might consider adding to mereotopology an axiom according to which if an individual is connected to a complex, then it is connected to a proper part of that complex, viz.: (28) ¬Ax→ (∀y)(Cyx→ (∃z)(Pzx ∧ z 6= x ∧ Cyz)) To be connected to Australia, for example, a region must be connected to an Australian state or territory. If the number of individuals were finite, then this axiom would entail the left to right direction of Whitehead's rectified principle, since for any two complex individuals which are connected, we could keep applying the axiom until we reach two atoms which are connected to each other. The sum of these atoms would be self-connected, and every part of it would overlap one of the original two individuals, and so it would satisfy the right side of the rectified principle. However, there are countermodels in which the number of individuals is infinite. Suppose, for example, that there are countably many atoms, and so continuum many individuals in total. And suppose two individuals are connected if and only if either they overlap or else they are composed of infinitely many atoms. In this model, only atoms are self-connected, since any other individual may be partitioned into a sum in which one summand is an atom to which the other summand is not connected. So although (28) is satisfied, the left to right direction of Whitehead's principle is not, since WHITEHEAD'S PRINCIPLE 15 disjoint individuals composed of infinitely many atoms are connected, but not overlapped by anything self-connected. A stronger axiom would require that if two individuals are connected, then they have atomic parts which are themselves connected: (29) Cxy → (∃z)(Az ∧ Pzx ∧ (∃v)(Av ∧ Pvy ∧ Czv)) This axiom would entail the right to left direction of Whitehead's rectified principle. For suppose z is connected to y. It follows there exists atoms z and v such that z is part of x, v is part of y and z and v are connected. Then z + v satisfies the right hand side of Whitehead's rectified principle. Notice that axiom (29) is very strong, since it entails atomism. For letting x and y be the same, the consequent of (29) follows from the reflexivity of connection, and so it follows that in order to be connected to itself, every individual must have an atom as a part, as atomism requires. Thus, axiom (29) rules out not only the example of the Cantor bar, as it is required to do in order to entail the left to right direction of Whitehead's rectified principle, but rules out the possibility of gunk altogether. Moreover, even under the assumption of atomism, (29) is stronger than it needs to be in order to entail the left to right direction of Whitehead's rectified principle. It entails, for example, that the closed interval [0, 1] cannot be connected to the open interval (1, 2), since no point in [0, 1] is connected to any point in (1, 2). But the connection of [0, 1] to (1, 2) is not a counterexample to the left to right direction of Whitehead's rectified principle since, for example, it is satisfied by the interval (.9, 1.1). 10. Whiteheadian Mereotopology Is there an axiom which can be added to classical extensional mereotopology that entails the left to right direction of Whitehead's rectified principle, but which does not entail anything which the left to right direction of Whitehead's rectified principle does not entail? The most obvious answer is the left to right direction of the principle itself: 16 BEN BLUMSON AND MANIKARAN SINGH (30) Cxy → (∃z)(SCz ∧Ozx ∧Ozy ∧ (∀w)(Pwz → (Owx ∨Owy))) Casati and Varzi call the mereotopology reached by adding axiom (30) to a mereotopology its "Whiteheadian extension" (Casati and Varzi 1999, p. 61). As it must in order to exclude the countermodel of the Cantor bar, the principle entails that there is no scattered gunk or, in other words, that everything has a self-connected part: (31) (∀x)(∃z)(SCz ∧ Pzx) Proof. Letting x and y be the same, it follows from the reflexivity of connection and the left to right direction of Whitehead's rectified principle that there is z such that SCz ∧ Ozx ∧ (∀w)(Pwz → Owx). Then suppose for reductio that z is not part of x. It follows from (5) strong supplementation that there exists v which is part of z and does not overlap x. But every part of z overlaps x, so this is a contradiction. It follows that SCz ∧ Pzx, thus concluding the proof.23 The atomic countermodel above has already shown that the converse is not the case, and the left to right direction of Whitehead's rectified principle does not follow from (31), the inexistence of scattered gunk. But since that countermodel is atomic, one naturally wonders whether (31) does entail the left to right direction of Whitehead's rectified principle under the assumption of atomlessness, according to which everything has a part other than itself: (32) (∀x)(∃y)(Pyx ∧ x 6= y) Atomlessness This axiom would rule out the atomic countermodel, since the atoms in that countermodel do not have any parts other than themselves.24 For an atomless countermodel to the entailment from (31) to the left to right direction of Whitehead's rectified principle, imagine there are just four 23Casati and Varzi say that "The thesis that everything has at least one self-connected part ... would then be a theorem of any such [Whiteheadian] theory" (Casati and Varzi 1999, p. 61). But we cannot reconstruct the proof without using strong supplementation. 24For the characterisation of atomlessness see Simons 1987, p. 42; Varzi 1996, p. 266; Casati and Varzi 1999, p. 48 and Masolo and Vieu 1999, p. 240. REFERENCES 17 pizzas, every slice of which may be sliced in half, but only along the radii of the pizzas, so that every slice is connected to all the other slices of the same pizza at that pizza's center. Atomlessness is satisfied because every slice of pizza may itself be sliced in half. But (31) is also satisfied, since every slice of pizza is self-connected, and everything has a slice of pizza as a part. Now in order to complete the countermodel imagine that the four pizzas play the role of the four atoms in the simple atomic countermodel. In other words, imagine that none of the pizzas are connected to each other, but – contrary to (28) – that the sum of the first two pizzas is connected to the sum of the second two pizzas. Then although the two pizza sums are connected, nothing which overlaps both of them is self-connected, and so there is nothing to satisfy the left to right direction of Whitehead's rectified principle.25 References Biro, John (2017). "Are There Scattered Objects?" Metaphysica 18.2, pp. 155– 165. doi: 10.1515/mp-2017-0007. Cartwright, Richard (1975). "Scattered Objects". Analysis and Metaphysics: Essays in Honor of R. M. Chisholm. Ed. by Keith Lehrer. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 153–171. doi: 10.1007/978-94-010-9098-8_9. Casati, Roberto and Achille C. Varzi (1999). Parts and Places: The Structures of Spatial Representation. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. 25This paper originated from a project in automated theorem proving for Google Summer of Code (via Australian Open Source Software Innovation and Education or AOSSIE). We thank Bruno Woltzenlogel Paleo for his help with this project. A version was presented at the Joint Meeting of the Philosophy and Religion Association of Thailand and the Philosophical Association of the Philippines in Bangkok in July 2019; we especially thank Victoria Harrison and Jeremiah Joven Joaquin for their comments. Finally, we're grateful for comments from Zach Barnett, Bob Beddor, Joshua Goh, Felix Jantz, Ethan Jerzak, Melvin Ng, Michael Pelczar, Abelard Podgorski, Wu Qiangtong, Neil Sinhababu, Saranindranath Tagore and Weng-Hong Tang. 18 REFERENCES Chisholm, Roderick (1987). "Scattered Objects". On Being and Saying: Essays for Richard Cartwright. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press. Clarke, Bowman L. (1981). "A Calculus of Individuals Based on "Connection"." Notre Dame Journal of Formal Logic 22.3, pp. 204–218. doi: 10.1305/ndjfl/1093883455. Cotnoir, Aaron J. (2010). "Anti-Symmetry and Non-Extensional Mereology". The Philosophical Quarterly 60.239, pp. 396–405. doi: 10.1111/j. 1467-9213.2009.649.x. – (2016). "Does Universalism Entail Extensionalism?" Nous 50.1, pp. 121– 132. doi: 10.1111/nous.12063. Gerla, Giangiacomo (1995). "Pointless Geometries". Handbook of Incidence Geometry. Ed. by F. Buekenhout. Amsterdam: North-Holland, pp. 1015– 1031. doi: 10.1016/B978-044488355-1/50020-7. 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"A Note on the Axiomatics of Theories in Parthood". Data & Knowledge Engineering 50.2, pp. 195–213. doi: 10.1016/ j.datak.2003.12.002. Simons, Peter (1987). Parts: A Study in Ontology. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Smith, Barry (1993). "Ontology and the Logistic Analysis of Reality". Proceedings of the International Workshop on Formal Ontology in Conceptual Analysis and Knowledge Representation. Ed. by Nicola Guarino and Roberto Poli. Italian National Research Council, pp. 51–68. – (1996). "Mereotopology: A Theory of Parts and Boundaries". Data & Knowledge Engineering. Modeling Parts and Wholes 20.3, pp. 287–303. doi: 10.1016/S0169-023X(96)00015-8. Varzi, Achille C. (1996). "Parts, Wholes, and Part-Whole Relations: The Prospects of Mereotopology". Data & Knowledge Engineering 20.3, pp. 259– 286. doi: 10.1016/S0169-023X(96)00017-1. – (2009). "Universalism Entails Extensionalism". Analysis 69.4, pp. 599– 604. doi: 10.1093/analys/anp102. – (2019). "On Three Axiom Systems for Classical Mereology". Logic and Logical Philosophy, pp. 1–5. doi: 10.12775/LLP.2018.014. Whitehead, Alfred North (1919). An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Natural Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. – (1920). The Concept of Nature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. doi: 10.1017/CBO9781316286654. | {
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Signos Filosóficos, vol. xxii, no. 43, January-June, 2020, 34-57 An ApproAch to the influence of SenecA in SpinozA'S philoSophy Alberto luis lópez ORCID.ORG/0000-0002-0312-0708 Universidad nacional aUtónoma de méxico FacUltad de estUdios sUperiores acatlán [email protected] Abstract: It is important in philosophy to know the influences between philosophers because of that it depends to have an accurate and more complete knowledge of their proposals. An example of this are the investigations about the stoics origins of Spinoza's philosophy, which has been increasing in the last decades but it is still necessary to inquire in greater detail, author by author and idea by idea, what kind of stoicism and what part of it influenced the Dutch philosopher. In this paper I examine, particularly from explicit references, the influence of the Stoic Seneca in Spinoza's philosophy, for which I review, analyze, and compare several passages of both philosophers' works. Keywords: ethics; political philosophy; wisdom; happiness; death reception: 28/07/2019 AcceptAnce: 23/01/2020 Signos Filosóficos, vol. xxii, núm. 43, enero-junio, 2020, 34-57 lA influenciA de sénecA en lA filosofíA de spinozA: unA AproximAción Alberto luis lópez ORCID.ORG/0000-0002-0312-0708 Universidad nacional aUtónoma de méxico FacUltad de estUdios sUperiores acatlán [email protected] Resumen: En filosofía es importante conocer las influencias entre los filósofos porque de ello depende tener un conocimiento más completo y preciso de sus propuestas. Ejemplo de esto son las investigaciones sobre los orígenes estoicos de la filosofía spinoziana, que se han incrementado notablemente en las últimas décadas, pero aún hace falta indagar con mayor detalle, autor por autor e idea por idea, qué tipo de estoicismo y qué parte del mismo influyó en el pensador neerlandés. En este artículo examino, a partir sobre todo de las referencias explícitas, la influencia del estoico Séneca en la filosofía de Spinoza, para lo cual reviso, analizo y cotejo diversos pasajes de las obras de ambos pensadores. Palabras clave: ética; FilosoFía política; sabidUría; Felicidad; mUerte recibido: 28/07/2019 AceptAdo: 23/01/2020 Alberto luis lópez 36 Signos Filosóficos, vol. xxii, núm. 43, enero-junio, 2020, 34-57, ISSN: 1665-1324 introducción No es inusual que los filósofos sean leídos de acuerdo con los intereses del intérprete y de la época, basta recordar el prólogo de Jarig Jelles a la edición de la Opera posthuma de Spinoza (1677), donde presenta al filósofo como un cristiano convencido: "Todo este prólogo es un gran esfuerzo por conciliar la filosofía de Spinoza con el cristianismo" (Tatián, 2009: 17-18); sin embargo, si se quiere comprender correctamente la propuesta filosófica de un autor, es fundamental conocer su obra así como las posibles influencias en su pensamiento. En relación con esto, sabemos que Spinoza no se dedicó de pequeño al estudio de los clásicos greco-latinos, sin embargo, su acercamiento a la escuela de Francis van den Enden le permitió subsanar esa carencia porque en ella se cultivaba el estudio del pensamiento filosófico de las escuelas helenísticas, hecho que propició que se viera influido por la lectura de autores y corrientes del pensamiento antiguo (Israel, 2012: 207 y ss.). Dentro de esas escuelas el estoicismo resultó especialmente relevante para Spinoza, pero como "tenemos que admitir que el estoicismo, a diferencia del epicureísmo, nunca fue una iglesia monolítica" (Long, 2003: 24), mi objetivo no es mostrar aquí toda la influencia estoica en el neerlandés, algo imposible de hacer en este artículo, sino únicamente exponer algunos aspectos del pensamiento de Séneca que, dadas las evidencias, es plausible afirmar que influyeron en Spinoza y están presentes en su obra. Para ello dividiré mi trabajo en tres partes: primero, las obras estoicas en poder de Spinoza; luego, las alusiones explícitas al estoicismo y, por último, la presencia de Séneca en su pensamiento. lAs obrAs estoicAs en el Acervo personAl de spinozA Aunque ya Leibniz en Two Sects of Naturalists (1677 o 1680) calificó a Spinoza y Descartes como líderes de "la secta de los nuevos estoicos" (Long, 2003: 9),1 1 Anthony Long retoma esta cita del artículo de Donald Rutherford (2003), quien a su vez la cita de la edición de la Akademie (1999), A VI.4: 1384-1388, y de la edición de Ariew y Garber La influencia de Séneca en la filosofía... 37 Signos Filosóficos, vol. xxii, núm. 43, enero-junio, 2020, 34-57, ISSN: 1665-1324 Wilhelm Dilthey fue el primero en analizar rigurosamente la influencia del estoicismo en Spinoza en su obra Weltanschauung und Analyse des Menschen seit Renaissance und Reformation (1914),2 en donde señala la presencia de fuentes estoicas en la obra del neerlandés a través de comentarios como los siguientes: Grocio, Descartes, Spinoza, restauraron, sobre la base del estoicismo, la autonomía de la razón moral y científica. [...] La dependencia del estoicismo romano se marca profundamente en la psicología y en la política de Hobbes y de Spinoza, en el panteísmo de Spinoza y de Shaftesbury. [...] En Hobbes y Spinoza la influencia del estoicismo se uniría, como lo demostraré, al poder del conocimiento natural fundado por Galileo. [...] Cómo de esta masa de ideas de tinte estoico pudo surgir el brillante cristal del sistema spinoziano, con arreglo a qué ley se constituyó, podrá verse una vez que se haya estudiado la relación de Spinoza con el movimiento científico-natural y con Giordano Bruno. (Dilthey, 1947: 26, 106, 193 y 308) La interpretación de Dilthey, pese a ser interesante y aguda, tiene marcadas deficiencias porque busca "una explicación genética de los sistemas metafísicos a partir de la concepción del hombre en diversas épocas históricas" (Benito, 2012: 136), lo cual no le permite hacer una distinción clara entre lo que pertenece a la (Leibniz, 1989: 281-284). Véase, además, la edición de Gerhardt (1890), GP VII: 333-336. Citaré los libros de Spinoza en la forma convencional: "E" para la Ethica (Ética), seguido del número de libro en romanos, 'P' (prefacio), 'D' (definición), 'p' (proposición), 'd' (demostración), 's' (escolio), 'A' (apéndice) y 'c' (corolario); "TTP" para el Tractatus Theologico-Politicus (Tratado Teológico Político), seguido del capítulo y la página; "TP" para el Tractatus Politicus (Tratado Político), seguido del capítulo y parágrafo; "Ep" para Epistolae (Correspondencia), seguido del número de carta y la página y "TIE" para el Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione (Tratado de la Reforma del Entendimiento), seguido del parágrafo y la página. Las páginas se citan de la edición de Gebhardt (1925) siguiendo las traducciones de la edición de Gredos para la "E" y el "TTP" y la de Atilano Domínguez para el "TP" y el "TIE". 2 La obra aparece en el segundo volumen de las obras completas de Dilthey, cuya primera edición en español fue publicada en 1944 y la segunda en 1947, ambas a cargo de Eugenio Ímaz, con el título Hombre y mundo en los siglos xvi y xvii. Alberto luis lópez 38 Signos Filosóficos, vol. xxii, núm. 43, enero-junio, 2020, 34-57, ISSN: 1665-1324 historia de la filosofía y lo específico de la biografía y el pensamiento spinoziano, como bien indica Inmaculada Hoyos (2013: 431-460). Pese a su encomiable labor, después de Dilthey pasaron varias décadas para que los estudios acerca del estoicismo de Spinoza cobraran fuerza y se robustecieran, lo cual por fortuna sigue sucediendo. Para conocer mejor la influencia de Séneca en Spinoza, es tan importante revisar las publicaciones sobre el tema como tener presente su vida y el catálogo de su biblioteca personal, conformado por 159 volúmenes según Servaas van Rooijen (1888: 119 y ss.),3 porque gracias a éste podemos saber cuáles eran las obras estoicas, o al menos algunas de ellas, que poseía Spinoza. Al respecto, sabemos que tenía el Enchiridion de Epicteto con el respectivo comentario de Simplicio al mismo (1560), las Tragediae, Epistolae y De brieven van Seneca (cartas) de Séneca4 y las cartas de Cicerón conocidas como Epistolae ad Atticum. Además, tenía obras de autores influenciados por el estoicismo o considerados neoestoicos como De satisfactione Christi adversus Faustum Socinum (1617) o De imperio summarum potestatum circa sacra commentarius (escrito entre 1614-1617 y publicado póstumamente en 1647), ambos de Hugo Grotius; poseía las ediciones de Justus Lipsius de la Opera omnia de Tácito (1574) y de la Philosophi Opera de Séneca (1605);5 las Obras de Francisco de Quevedo que contenían su ensayo sobre Epicteto6 (1660) y La philosophie morale des stoïques avec le manuel d'Epictète del traductor de Epicteto Guillaume du Vair, publicada anónimamente en 1585 y reeditada en un volumen mayor titulado La Sainte Philosophie (1600). 3 Véanse también Villiaud, 2012: 160 y ss., y Miller, 2015: 17 y ss. 4 En su ya clásico artículo, Omero Proietti especifica las dos ediciones que Spinoza tenía de las Cartas de Séneca: la latina de Lipsio (1649) y la holandesa de J. H. Glazemaker (1654). Véase Proietti, 1989: 54, nota 6. 5 Recomiendo el interesante artículo de Jan Papy (2002: 859-872), porque al analizar la presencia de Séneca en la temprana modernidad, sirviéndose del Manuductio ad Stoicam philosophiam (1604) de Justus Lipsius, aporta elementos que ayudan a entender mejor cómo se dio su influencia en autores modernos como Spinoza. 6 El ensayo se titula Epicteto y Phocílides en español con consonantes, con el Origen de los estoicos y su defensa contra Plutarco, y la Defensa de Epicuro contra la común opinión (1635). La influencia de Séneca en la filosofía... 39 Signos Filosóficos, vol. xxii, núm. 43, enero-junio, 2020, 34-57, ISSN: 1665-1324 Como menciona Alan Gabbey respecto a la biblioteca de Spinoza, la cantidad de obras que alguien posee no muestra "las capacidades intelectuales del dueño" (2006: 149), pero sí evidencia, al menos, el interés que la persona tiene en esos temas. Por ello, si bien es cierto que el hecho de que hubiera obras estoicas en la biblioteca de Spinoza no garantiza que las haya leído, ni que su comprensión sobre las propuestas estoicas haya sido la adecuada o que hayan sido determinantes en su pensamiento -como señala Jon Miller (2015: 9)-, la existencia de tales obras y las referencias a ellas en sus escritos demuestran claramente su interés por el estoicismo y por algunos pensadores de la época que suscribían e impulsaban esa corriente. Alusiones explícitAs Al estoicismo Si pasamos del catálogo de la biblioteca a la obra de Spinoza, dejando de lado su correspondencia donde hay referencias claras al estoicismo, por ejemplo, en las cartas con su compatriota Hugo Boxel,7 las referencias explícitas a la corriente estoica son solamente dos. La primera aparece en el Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione, donde Spinoza critica la concepción estoica del alma al decir que "algunos estoicos", mezclando confusión e imaginación, concibieron que el alma es un cuerpo sutil e inmortal (TIE, 74). La segunda referencia está en la Ética, donde Spinoza, quien parece referirse al Enchiridion de Epicteto (Hoyos, 2013: 445; cfr. Carnois, 1980: 260)8 aunque no lo menciona abiertamente, critica la tesis estoica de la fuerza de la voluntad frente a los afectos al decir que: [...] los estoicos creyeron, sin embargo, que los afectos dependen absolutamente de nuestra voluntad y que nosotros podemos dominarlos absolutamente [...] 7 Véase, por ejemplo, Ep. LV a Boxel. Esta correspondencia es interesante porque al contener referencias a autores antiguos permite hacerse una idea de la visión spinoziana sobre la filosofía antigua. 8 Véase, por ejemplo, el comentario 1, 8 y 31 del Echiridion. Alberto luis lópez 40 Signos Filosóficos, vol. xxii, núm. 43, enero-junio, 2020, 34-57, ISSN: 1665-1324 [aunque después] se vieron obligados a confesar que para reprimirlos y gobernarlos se requiere no poco ejercicio y empeño. (E, V, P) Estas líneas tienen que ver con el hecho de que los estoicos aspiraban a orientar la existencia humana mediante la evolución moral del individuo, para lo cual era fundamental "vivir en armonía con la naturaleza y de conformidad con el orden universal" (Séneca, 1998: xxiii). Además de referencias explícitas al estoicismo en general, también hay menciones a filósofos estoicos en particular. Al respecto, Spinoza alude a Cicerón y Séneca. Respecto al primero, se cita en la Ética al tratar el tema de la ambición, entendida como un deseo inmoderado de gloria que mantiene y fortifica todos los afectos. Spinoza dice lo siguiente: La ambición es un deseo por el cual son sustentados y fortificados todos los afectos [...] Aun los mejores, dice Cicerón, son muy atraídos por la gloria. Incluso los filósofos que escriben libros sobre el desprecio de la gloria, inscriben en ellos su nombre, etc. (E, III, D44)9 Aunque Spinoza se refiere a Cicerón como ejemplo de un pensador que analizó la relación entre ambición y pasiones, debe considerarse que el interés del pensador de Arpino por estos asuntos se debía a su preocupación por "el conflicto en torno a la explotación de las fabulosas riquezas del vasto imperio pudiera causar la ruptura de la unidad en el seno de la aristocracia" (López Barja de Quiroga, 2014: 8). A Cicerón, por tanto, no le interesó analizar la avaricia y la ambición como pasiones connaturales a la psique humana, sino que su interés radicó en analizar los efectos perniciosos, prácticos, que traían consigo y que propiciaban, entre otras cosas, la decadencia de la ciudad. La otra referencia a Cicerón aparece en el Tractatus Politicus cuando Spinoza habla del poder dictatorial. Para analizar el asunto se remite nuevamente al 9 La cita de Cicerón corresponde a las Disputaciones tusculanas, I, 15, 34: "¿Y nuestros filósofos? ¿No ponen sus nombres precisamente en los libros que escriben sobre el desprecio de la gloria?" (Cicerón, 2005: 135). La influencia de Séneca en la filosofía... 41 Signos Filosóficos, vol. xxii, núm. 43, enero-junio, 2020, 34-57, ISSN: 1665-1324 filósofo realista romano, cuyo interés por lo concreto y práctico, en oposición a lo abstracto y especulativo tan propio de los griegos (como él mismo sostuvo en De republica),10 le resultaba tan aleccionador a Spinoza que escribió: Y, no obstante, el rumor del dictador, por citar las palabras de Cicerón, resultaba desagradable a las personas de bien. Y con razón, pues, como esta potestad dictatorial es exactamente la misma que la de un rey, puede transformarse, no sin gran peligro para el Estado, en monárquica, aunque sólo sea por breve tiempo. (TP, X, 1)11 Spinoza, más interesado en la política real que en la mera especulación teórica, conocía bien las típicas formas de organización del Estado: monarquía, aristocracia y democracia, y comprendía igualmente bien -quizá por influencia del propio arpinate- las tendencias autodegenerativas hacia la tiranía de cada una de las formas de gobierno. Su interés en estos asuntos lo acercaba a las posturas de Cicerón, quien, a pesar de mostrarse receptivo con la monarquía, rechazó el sistema dinástico. El gobernante debía distinguirse por su capacidad, virtud, sapiencia y no por el abolengo. Ello le llevó a inclinarse claramente en favor de la constitución política, es decir, de la república, porque de alguna manera integraba las tres formas clásicas y era fruto de muchos hombres, no del genio de uno solo (Santa Cruz, 1965: 163 y ss.). lA presenciA de sénecA en lA obrA de spinozA Spinoza tenía en su biblioteca varias obras de Séneca, entre ellas sus cartas y tragedias; por referencias a él, así como algunas similitudes entre las tesis de ambos, podemos afirmar que tenía un buen conocimiento de la obra del estoico. Ahora cabe preguntarse, ¿qué aspectos del pensamiento de Séneca influyeron en Spinoza? (Séneca, 1998: xxxvii-xxxviii, xlvii y l). Algunos de los conceptos y temas 10 Véase, por ejemplo, De republica 1, 30; II, 9; II, II, 21. 11 La referencia a Cicerón está contenida en la Correspondencia con su hermano Quinto, iii, 8, 4. Alberto luis lópez 42 Signos Filosóficos, vol. xxii, núm. 43, enero-junio, 2020, 34-57, ISSN: 1665-1324 estoico-senecanos que influyeron y fueron retomados por el neerlandés, pese a haber profundas diferencias entre ambos, son: 1) la relación entre el Oikeiosis estoico y el conatus spinoziano para explicar el comportamiento, persistencia y esencia de animales y plantas (oikeiosis) y de todos los seres (conatus), así como el impulso de autoconservación y la naturaleza del progreso moral (Miller, 2015: 101 y ss.); 2) la decisión voluntariosa del individuo de educarse sobre todo en el plano moral (Séneca, 1980: carta lxxx, vv. 4-5); 3) la vida en armonía con la naturaleza y bajo una gozosa serenidad (carta lix, vv. 16-17);12 4) la importancia de educar el intelecto o razón para alcanzar la sabiduría (carta xc, vv. 1-2 y 44; carta cxvii, vv. 11-12);13 5) el esfuerzo por lograr el equilibrio entre el interior y el exterior, es decir, por alcanzar la felicidad, consistente en el sosiego y la tranquilidad permanentes (carta xcii, v. 3);14 6) lo conveniente de desarrollar un sentimiento de altruismo porque implica un servicio a la sociedad como un deber moral del ciudadano (Del ocio, iii, vv. 2-5) (cfr. TP, III, 10, 12); 7) el amor intelectual a Dios al entender que por encima de "la cumbre suprema de la virtud" sólo está el espíritu divino (carta cxx, v. 14) (cfr. E, V, p32c y p33); 8) el rechazo a una concepción antropomórfica y antropocéntrica de Dios al concebirlo como inteligencia, supremo bien, razón creadora y causa de sí mismo (cartas lxxxvii, v. 21; lxv, v. 12).15 Hay, entonces, diversos temas senecanos presentes de alguna manera en la filosofía de Spinoza. Sin embargo, si nos centramos en sus escritos sólo encontramos tres referencias explícitas al estoico cordobés, dos en el Tratado teológico político y una en la Ética. 12 Confróntese esta idea con Spinoza, TP V, 5. 13 Compárese esta tesis con el siguiente pasaje: "En la vida es, pues, ante todo útil perfeccionar, cuanto podamos, el entendimiento o la razón y en esto solo consiste la suma felicidad o beatitud del hombre" (E, IV, p73, cap4). 14 Cfr. E, IV, p21-24; E, IV, p73, Acap4; TTP, Praef. 15 Véase toda la primera parte de la Ética, referida a Dios (E, I), además Miller, 2015: 16, 54 y ss. La influencia de Séneca en la filosofía... 43 Signos Filosóficos, vol. xxii, núm. 43, enero-junio, 2020, 34-57, ISSN: 1665-1324 sénecA en el trActAtuS theologico-politicuS En cuanto al TTP, obra redactada por Spinoza cuando los Países Bajos sufrían las consecuencias de los conflictos entre los partidarios de la familia Orange, la Iglesia calvinista y los seguidores burgueses del liberal Jan de Witt, la primera referencia a Séneca aparece en el capítulo v, donde Spinoza recurre al autor de las Consolaciones para apoyar su tesis de que ninguna sociedad puede subsistir sin autoridad, como tampoco sin leyes que moderen el ansia de placer y controlen los impulsos desenfrenados: Resulta de esto, que ninguna sociedad puede subsistir sin una autoridad, sin una fuerza, y por consiguiente sin leyes que gobiernan y dirijan el desenfreno de las humanas pasiones. Sin embargo, la naturaleza humana no se deja sujetar enteramente, como dice Séneca el trágico; a nadie es dado hacer subsistir un gobierno violento; la moderación sólo engendra la estabilidad. El que sólo obra por miedo, y en todo contra sus inclinaciones sin discutir si es útil o necesario lo que se le manda, no intenta sino salvar su cabeza y escapar al suplicio que le amenaza. Yo afirmo que es imposible a los súbditos, en caso semejante, no alegrarse del daño que suceda al señor, aunque este mal recaiga sobre ellos mismos, no procurarle toda clase de infortunios, ni alegrarse de los que le sobrevengan. Todos saben que nada nos parece tan importante como estar sujetos a nuestros semejantes y vivir bajo su ley, y que es sumamente difícil quitar al hombre la libertad, si una vez se le ha dado. (TTP, V: 73-74)16 La segunda referencia explícita a Séneca aparece en el capítulo XVI de la misma obra, donde el autor reitera con otras palabras la idea contenida en la cita anterior: 16 Respecto de esta cita, en las notas a pie de página de la edición de Gredos se indica que Spinoza piensa en Las troyanas de Séneca, específicamente en la intervención de Agamenón del acto II, vv. 258-259. Cfr. Spinoza, 2011: 371, nota 85. Hay que recordar que tras la victoria sobre Troya, luego de diez largos años, Agamenón reconoce: "Que lo grande en un momento es sepultado, venciendo lo aprendí. ¿Nos hace Troya engreídos y demasiado altaneros? [...] Lo reconozco, alguna vez tiránico y soberbio por mi poder, yo mismo me llevé más alto" (Séneca, 1998: 59). Alberto luis lópez 44 Signos Filosóficos, vol. xxii, núm. 43, enero-junio, 2020, 34-57, ISSN: 1665-1324 Por esto sucede raras veces que imperen altos poderes absurdos, pues a ellos mismos incumbe, para prosperar y conservar el imperio, consultar el bien común y dirigirlo todo según los consejos de la razón. Los imperios violentos, como ha dicho Séneca, no han durado nunca. (TTP, XVI: 194)17 Spinoza estaba preocupado por los conflictos sociales y políticos de su época que, sumados a la peste de 1664 y a la segunda guerra con Inglaterra (16651667), generaban un entorno inestable, propicio para atacar las libertades de opinión y de culto conseguidas por el Estado liberal republicano de su país. Esto quizá lo lleva a servirse de Séneca en las citas mencionadas y a tener en mente, en específico, la tragedia Las troyanas, obra que al versar sobre "la intransigencia y moderación, enfrentadas modalidades de la soberbia y de la sabiduría" (Séneca, 1998: xlix), así como sobre los abusos del vencedor y los excesos contra los vencidos,18 le brindó elementos útiles en su disquisición acerca de la importancia de que el gobierno ejerza su autoridad para hacer respetar la ley y defender las libertades frente a aquellos que, interesadamente, manipulan las pasiones de la gente. Si Spinoza conoció esa tragedia, es muy posible que haya conocido la de Hércules delirante, donde, más allá de la infamia cometida por Hércules, ocasionada por su madrastra Juno, aparece un interesante trasfondo político al mencionar el gobierno usurpador y tiránico de Lico. Ese gobierno ilegítimo que para hacerse del poder se aprovechó maliciosamente de la ausencia de Hércules, le permitió a Séneca introducir frases políticas que bien pudieron influir en Spinoza, por ejemplo: "Que profunda paz a los pueblos nutra; que a todo hierro retenga el trabajo del campo inocuo, y que las espadas se oculten [...] Que ni crueles ni fieros tiranos reinen" (Séneca, 1998: 34). Además de esta obra, es factible pensar que Spinoza revisó el diálogo senecano De la tranquilidad del ánimo, donde teniendo en mente la figura despótica de Nerón el filósofo estoico censuró los excesos del monarca, mostrándose partidario 17 Al igual que la cita anterior, en varias notas a pie de página se indica que Spinoza piensa en Las troyanas v. 258. Cfr. Spinoza, 2011: 482, nota 268. 18 Sobre esto, Agamenón recalca en su interlocución con Pirro: "Primeramente conviene conocer esto: qué debe hacer el vencedor; el vencido soportar" (Séneca, 1998: 59). La influencia de Séneca en la filosofía... 45 Signos Filosóficos, vol. xxii, núm. 43, enero-junio, 2020, 34-57, ISSN: 1665-1324 de la unión entre autoridades y súbditos para conservar la paz romana. A partir de estos casos, unos constatados y otros hipotéticos, puede colegirse que Spinoza utilizó la obra de Séneca, o parte de ella, para consolidar su análisis acerca del poder de las pasiones en la política y para revalidar su postura sobre la imposibilidad de conservar un gobierno, más aún un Estado, mediante la coacción y la violencia. sénecA en lA ethicA La tercera referencia explícita a Séneca aparece en E, IV, p20s, cuando habla de su suicidio y critica en general la concepción estoica del mismo. Recordemos que la noción senecana del suicidio está relacionada en cierta medida con su apreciación del sabio, es decir, del hombre idealizado, quasi perfecto, capaz de ser imperturbable, autárquico, libre, generoso, valeroso, sobrio, virtuoso, honrado y feliz, que mitificó sirviéndose de la figura de Catón (Martín, 1985: 75-76). Entre otros rasgos distintivos del sabio -a los cuales volveré más adelante- está el que lo muestra como un individuo capaz de sublimarse frente al mundo y a la vida superándolos, esto es, en función de las circunstancias puede ejercer su libertad de abandonarlos, lo que conlleva el acto del suicidio. Este acto de sublimación y superación denota una superioridad del sabio respecto de quien no lo es, porque mientras aquél vive hasta que su voluntad lo determina, éste (el necio o no sabio) lo hace hasta que la vida misma se lo permite, por lo que siempre termina anhelando más: tiempo, vida, deleites, etcétera. La idea de la superioridad del sabio frente a los necios, o no sabios, pero sobre todo frente a la vida misma, se ve en la carta 70, donde Séneca señala: [...] el sabio vivirá mientras deba, no mientras pueda [...] Considera sin importancia alguna darse la muerte o recibirla, que ésta acontezca más pronto o más tarde: no la teme como a una gran pérdida. Nadie puede perder mucho cuando el agua se escurre gota a gota. (Séneca, 1980: 70, 4-5) Por otra parte, en la carta 77, el estoico presume que "no es un gran asunto la vida; todos tus esclavos, todos los animales viven. La gran proeza estriba en morir con honestidad, con prudencia, con fortaleza" (1980: 77, 6). Frente a esta Alberto luis lópez 46 Signos Filosóficos, vol. xxii, núm. 43, enero-junio, 2020, 34-57, ISSN: 1665-1324 afirmación senecana de la muerte, incluso del suicidio, Spinoza reacciona contra el estoico al sostener, a partir de su idea de conatus, que nadie lo realiza por la necesidad de su naturaleza (cfr. E, III, p7; E, IV, p18e), sino sólo porque ha sido vencido por causas exteriores y contrarias a ella; por eso el suicidio de Séneca sólo puede explicarse y entenderse -desde la perspectiva spinoziana- como obligación, esto es, por haber sido un mandato del tirano Nerón, no porque su propia naturaleza le dictase llevarlo a cabo.19 Nadie, pues, descuida apetecer lo que le es útil, o sea conservar su ser, sino vencido por causas externas y contrarias a su naturaleza. Nadie, digo, por necesidad de su naturaleza, sino compelido por causas externas, aborrece los alimentos o se mata, lo que puede ocurrir de muchas maneras, a saber; uno se mata compelido por otro que le tuerce la diestra, en la cual tiene asida casualmente una espada, y le obliga a dirigir el arma contra su propio corazón: otro, porque es compelido, como Séneca, por la orden de un tirano a abrirse las venas, esto es, porque desea evitar un mal mayor con otro menor; otro, en fin, lo hace porque causas externas ocultas disponen su imaginación y afectan su cuerpo de tal manera que éste adopta otra naturaleza contraria a la primera y cuya idea no puede darse en el alma [...]. Pero que el hombre, por la necesidad de su naturaleza, se esfuerce en no existir o en mudar su forma por otra es tan imposible como que algo se haga de la nada, según cada cual puede percibirlo a poco que reflexione. (E, IV, p20s) La crítica de Spinoza a Séneca, y al estoicismo en general, por la manera de concebir la muerte y el suicidio, permite ver una diferencia importante entre ambas concepciones filosóficas, pues -retomando a Hoyos (2013: 453)- mientras el moderno concibe la filosofía como una meditatio vitae al afirmar la vida frente a la muerte, el antiguo la entiende más como una meditatio mortis, al aceptar gozoso la muerte y el suicidio mismo. La comentarista justifica su aseveración 19 Τras ser descubierta la conspiración para asesinar al emperador Nerón, se le dio muerte al cabecilla Gayo Calpurnio Pisón, sin embargo, como en la indagatoria apareció el nombre de Séneca el propio emperador le ordenó que se quitara la vida, acción que su antiguo mentor realizó en una villa de los suburbios de Roma en el año 65 d. C., cfr. Séneca, 1998: xxxi. La influencia de Séneca en la filosofía... 47 Signos Filosóficos, vol. xxii, núm. 43, enero-junio, 2020, 34-57, ISSN: 1665-1324 apoyándose en Fokke Akkerman (1989: 26), de quien retoma la idea de que tal diferencia se colige de la cuarta parte de la Ética, donde Spinoza afirma, quizá considerando la epístola 26 de Séneca acerca de la preparación para la muerte, que "el hombre libre [que vive según el dictamen de la razón] en ninguna cosa piensa menos que en la muerte y su sabiduría no es una meditación de la muerte, sino de la vida" (E, IV, p67). Si seguimos la argumentación de la fuente original, es decir, del propio Akkerman, y nos remitimos a la carta 26 del estoico, entonces la contraposición parece clara: Es incierto el lugar en que te aguarda la muerte, por ello aguárdala tú a ella en todo lugar. [...] 'Es una gran cosa aprender a morir'. Piensas, quizá, que es superfluo aprender aquello que nos ha de ser útil una sola vez: es ésta precisamente la razón que nos impulsa a meditar; [...] 'Medita sobre la muerte'. Quien esto dice, nos exhorta a que meditemos sobre la libertad. Quien aprendió a morir, se olvidó de ser esclavo. (Séneca, 1980: Ep. 26, 7-10) A la carta mencionada por el comentarista neerlandés, añado -en beneficio suyo- la carta 30, donde Séneca, hablando de la muerte de Aufidio Baso, le recomienda a Lucilio que haga suya la presencia de la muerte: "para no temer nunca a la muerte, piensa siempre en ella" (1980: Ep. 30, 18). A pesar de este, en apariencia, claro contraste en ambas posiciones, si revisamos con mayor detalle otros fragmentos del estoico tendremos que matizar un poco esa dicotomía; si bien es cierto que Séneca admite la libertad para quitarse la vida, eso no significa que apele a ello como parte habitual de su discurso; tan no lo hace que reconoce algunas situaciones especiales, como la violencia externa y el infortunio, como motivos suficientes y de peso para cometer suicidio: Así que no se puede decidir de forma general si hemos de anticiparnos a la muerte o aguardar su venida, en el caso de que una violencia externa nos conmine con ella; existen diversas circunstancias que pueden decidirnos por una u otra alternativa. (Séneca, 1980: Ep. 70, 11) Es verdad que esta cita no elimina la dicotomía planteada por el especialista neerlandés, simplemente nos obliga a matizar algunas aseveraciones que incluso Alberto luis lópez 48 Signos Filosóficos, vol. xxii, núm. 43, enero-junio, 2020, 34-57, ISSN: 1665-1324 en los temas de la muerte y el suicidio permiten acercar, más que separar, a ambos filósofos. sénecA en el tie y otrAs referenciAs complementAriAs: el sAbio Además de las tres alusiones mencionadas, gracias a la biblioteca de Spinoza sabemos que además de las tragedias el neerlandés conoció las Epistolae o, en su edición holandesa, De brieven van Seneca conocidas como Cartas a Lucilio, y por la evidencia textual es muy probable que hayan influido en la confección del TIE, obra inconclusa que contiene -entre otras cosas- una crítica a la concepción estoica (senecana) del alma. En el TIE, Spinoza distingue con claridad imaginación de entendimiento, es decir, separa lo falso, confuso y azaroso de lo verdadero, claro y necesario, respectivamente (TIE 86-90: 32-33). Para él, no hacer esta distinción es negativo porque produce un extravío epistemológico y práctico en el entendimiento, lo cual se traduce en un gran daño para el individuo y, por ende, para la colectividad, por eso arguye: [...] algunos estoicos [...] oyeron por azar la palabra anima y, además, que es inmortal, pero sólo confusamente imaginaban ambas cosas. Por otra parte, imaginaban y, al mismo tiempo, entendían que los cuerpos sutilísimos penetran los demás y no son penetrados por ninguno. Como imaginaban todas estas cosas a la vez, manteniendo simultáneamente la certeza del axioma anterior, se convencían de inmediato de que el alma (mens) era aquellos cuerpos sutilísimos, de que estos cuerpos no son divisibles, etc. (TIE 74: 28) La referencia de Spinoza a "algunos estoicos" remite a las Cartas de Séneca, específicamente a la titulada "Los movimientos instintivos", donde el estoico sostiene: [...] así también el alma que se compone de un elemento muy sutil no puede ser aprisionada, ni magullada en el interior del cuerpo, sino que gracias a su sutileza se abre camino a través de los mismos objetos que la oprimen. [...] así el alma, todavía más sutil que el fuego, escapa a través de un cuerpo cualquiera. Por lo tanto, con La influencia de Séneca en la filosofía... 49 Signos Filosóficos, vol. xxii, núm. 43, enero-junio, 2020, 34-57, ISSN: 1665-1324 relación a ella hemos de investigar si puede ser inmortal. Pero ten esto por cierto: si sobrevive al cuerpo, no puede ser aniquilada en modo alguno, ya que ninguna inmortalidad es tal con reservas, ni menoscabo alguno sufre lo que es eterno. (Séneca, 1980: Ep. 57, v. 8) La crítica de Spinoza a "algunos estoicos", incluido Séneca, se debe sobre todo al modo confuso en que -en su opinión- concibieron el alma y su inmortalidad. Como indica Hoyos (2013: 450), el estoico parte del axioma de que "los cuerpos sutilísimos penetran los demás" y, siguiendo ese principio, lo aplica al alma, concebida como un cuerpo sutil que, gracias a esa sutileza, penetra el resto de cuerpos sin ser penetrada por ellos. Así es como Séneca explica el alma y su inmortalidad; sin embargo, para Spinoza, ese razonamiento es erróneo porque se basa en un engaño, lo cual busca demostrar con el siguiente argumento: Ese engaño surge de que [los estoicos] conciben las cosas de forma demasiado abstracta, puesto que es por sí mismo evidente que lo que yo percibo en su verdadero objeto no puedo aplicarlo a otro. Ese error surge, finalmente, también de que no comprenden los primeros elementos de toda la Naturaleza; de ahí que, como proceden sin orden, y, pese a que los axiomas son verdaderos, confunden la Naturaleza con las cosas abstractas, se confunden a sí mismos y trastocan el orden de la Naturaleza. Nosotros, en cambio, si procedemos del modo menos abstracto posible y comenzamos lo antes posible por los primeros elementos, es decir, por la fuente y origen de la Naturaleza, no habremos de temer en absoluto tal engaño. (TIE, 75: 28-29) De la cita se desprende -siguiendo a Hoyos- que para Spinoza los estoicos yerran en la doctrina del alma y su inmortalidad por dos razones: i) porque conciben las cosas de forma demasiado abstracta, lo que los lleva a mezclar confusamente elementos diversos, y ii) al hacerlo de esa manera no comprenden bien los primeros elementos de la Naturaleza y terminan pervirtiendo su orden. A pesar de que Spinoza rechaza esta concepción del alma y de su inmortalidad, algunos comentaristas arguyen (Hoyos, 2013: 451; Proietti, 1989: 52) que es posible tender puentes entre ambos pensadores, porque las ideas senecanas acerca de la inmortalidad del alma, aunque ambiguas, están marcadas como en los cínicos por una Alberto luis lópez 50 Signos Filosóficos, vol. xxii, núm. 43, enero-junio, 2020, 34-57, ISSN: 1665-1324 preocupación eudemonista que incluye la moral.20 En relación con esto, al final de la Ética parece haber un acercamiento con Séneca: "aunque no supiéramos que nuestra alma es eterna, la moralidad y la religión y, absolutamente hablando, todo lo que en la cuarta parte hemos mostrado que se refiere a la firmeza y la generosidad, lo tendríamos, sin embargo, como primordial" (E, V, p41). Aunque Spinoza critica la concepción estoico-senecana del alma, lo mencionado en la última cita referente a la moralidad, firmeza y generosidad conecta directamente con el tema del sabio (tema al que sólo me aproximaré). Como se indicó antes, para Séneca y Spinoza, preocupados por igual tanto por cuestiones éticas como políticas, es central la figura del individuo (sabio) que aprende a dirigir su pensamiento y a moderar su comportamiento porque al hacerlo alcanza una vida virtuosa y serena. Este interés común en dicha figura se muestra en los primeros parágrafos del TIE y en las dos últimas proposiciones de la Ética (41 y 42), así como en la carta 5, donde Séneca menciona: "de la misma manera que apetecer cosas refinadas supone voluptuosidad, rehuir las corrientes y asequibles sin gran dispendio supone desatino" (Séneca, 1980: Ep. 5 v. 5); no se trata entonces de abandonarse uno mismo y olvidarse del mundo, sino de servirse de éste y esforzarse con tenacidad por ser "cada día mejor" (Séneca, 1980: Ep. 5 v. 5). Esta idea senecana aparece también en los primeros parágrafos del TIE (1-11: 5-8), en los que se reconoce que la riqueza, el honor y el placer no son banales ni detestables salvo cuando se vuelven fines en sí mismos, porque en ese caso se convierten en un estorbo para alcanzar lo realmente importante, a saber, la felicidad o "verdadero bien".21 A pesar de las semejanzas, también hay ciertas diferencias en la concepción de cada autor respecto al individuo virtuoso o sabio. Por ejemplo, para ambos 20 La doctrina de los cínicos "sostenía que la virtud es fundamento de felicidad y ésta era resultado de la acción virtuosa; así, los placeres en nada contribuían a conseguir aquélla; además, la felicidad era enseñable" (Séneca, 1998: xxiv). 21 El tema de la moderación, así como el abandono de placeres y riquezas vacuos, presente al inicio del TIE, puede compararse con la defensa de la humildad frente a la ambición y riquezas en obras senecanas como Hércules delirante vv. 192-200 o Fedra vv. 202-215 (cfr. Séneca, 1998). La influencia de Séneca en la filosofía... 51 Signos Filosóficos, vol. xxii, núm. 43, enero-junio, 2020, 34-57, ISSN: 1665-1324 filósofos el sabio, en tanto ser reflexivo, busca ponderar los deleites para alcanzar la sabiduría, sinónimo de felicidad; empero, parece que el sabio senecano es un individuo aislado del resto, hecho que lo alejaría de la concepción spinoziana. En relación con esto, dice Séneca: "éste [el sabio estoico] lleva por igual sus bienes intactos a través de ciudades incendiadas, ya que él se contenta consigo mismo; a este límite circunscribe su felicidad" (Séneca, 1980: Ep. 9, 19). Esta misma idea parece reforzarse en el diálogo Sobre la firmeza del sabio, donde el pensador estoico arguye que "el sabio no está expuesto a ningún ultraje; así pues, no viene a cuenta cuántos dardos le arrojan, cuando a todos es impenetrable. Igual que la dureza de algunas piedras [el sabio] es inexpugnable al hierro" (Séneca, 2013: iii, 5). Al contrario de este individuo, en apariencia solitario y distante, el sabio spinoziano se decanta por la sociabilidad y por eso mismo considera importante transmitir el conocimiento alcanzado: "a mi felicidad pertenece contribuir a que otros muchos entiendan lo mismo que yo, a fin de que su entendimiento y su deseo concuerden totalmente con mi entendimiento y con mi deseo" (TIE, 14: 8). Es importante matizar ahora esta distinción, porque podría pensarse, erróneamente, que hay una concepción casi dicotómica entre ambos pensadores con relación al sabio. Si bien hay diferencias en sus concepciones la brecha no es tan amplia, y para mostrarlo remito al propio Séneca, quien reconoce en la misma carta -acercándose a Spinoza- que el sabio debe ensimismarse mas no aislarse ni alejarse de los otros, esto es, una cosa es el recogimiento interior para poder dialogar consigo mismo y contrastar su vida con la razón y otra cosa es la automarginación, algo que el estoico rechaza (Martín, 1985: 77-78). Actuemos así: sigamos una vida mejor que la del vulgo, no la contraria; de otra suerte, a quienes deseamos corregir los ahuyentamos de nosotros y nos los enemistamos; y conseguimos también esto: que no quieran imitar nada de lo nuestro [...] Esto es lo primero que garantiza la filosofía: sentido común, trato afable y sociabilidad, objetivo éste del que nos separará la desemejanza. (Séneca, 1980: Ep. 5, 3-4) Por otro lado, también encontramos semejanzas entre ambos pensadores si se piensa en el tema de la virtud, disposición tan característica del hombre sabio. En cuanto al filósofo romano, ésta se entiende como "fortaleza de ánimo y apego a lo justo" y aparece sólo en el sabio, por ser quien soporta pasiones y dolores Alberto luis lópez 52 Signos Filosóficos, vol. xxii, núm. 43, enero-junio, 2020, 34-57, ISSN: 1665-1324 mientras supera obstáculos que estorban su bienestar (Séneca, 1998: 47). Esta idea la expresa en la carta CXX al hablar sobre las diferencias entre un hombre de bien y un virtuoso estoico, a quien -por cierto- caracteriza como: [...] siempre idéntico, en toda acción igual a sí mismo, bueno no ya por sus designios, sino que por sus hábitos había llegado a tal disposición que no sólo podía obrar el bien, sino que no podía obrar más que el bien. Hemos reconocido que la virtud era en él perfecta [...] era necesario dominar las pasiones, reprimir los temores, prever las obras a realizar, repartir a cada uno lo que es debido. (Séneca, 1980: Ep. 120, 10-11) Para Séneca, la virtud se reconoce por el propio orden, belleza y armonía que impone a sus obras y a quien las ejecuta (el sabio), y eso la hace valiosa en sí misma, "hemos entendido aquella felicidad que discurre plácidamente, señora por completo de sí misma" (Séneca, 1980: Ep. 120, 10-11). Por su parte, el sabio spinoziano también se identifica con esta actitud vital del sabio senecano, por eso Spinoza arguye que "La beatitud no es el premio de la virtud, sino la virtud misma; y no gozamos de ella porque reprimamos nuestras concupiscencias, sino, al contrario, porque gozamos de ella, podemos reprimir nuestras concupiscencias" (E, V, p42). Para Spinoza, el individuo sabio tiene como rasgo distintivo poseer una sabiduría que no le puede ser arrebatada porque le es inherente; eso es lo que le permite decir que el sabio [...] en cuanto se lo considera como tal, difícilmente se conmueve en su ánimo, sino que consciente de sí, y de Dios y de las cosas, con una cierta necesidad eterna, nunca deja de ser, sino que siempre posee la verdadera satisfacción del ánimo. (E, V, p42s.)22 22 Resulta interesante el tema de la necesidad, con una cierta necesidad eterna, porque tanto el sabio senecano como el spinoziano tienen que lidiar con la necesidad y la libertad, y ser capaces de asumir, como acto de su libre voluntad, la determinación en ellos del destino (Séneca) y de la necesidad (Spinoza). La influencia de Séneca en la filosofía... 53 Signos Filosóficos, vol. xxii, núm. 43, enero-junio, 2020, 34-57, ISSN: 1665-1324 Por último, conviene señalar, esta misma idea es defendida por Séneca en Sobre la firmeza del sabio, donde afirma -en concordancia con Spinoza- que [...] el sabio nada puede perder: todo lo ha basado en sí mismo [...] no perderá nada que vaya a notar que ha desaparecido, pues está en posesión de la virtud sin más, de la que no se le puede apartar, lo demás lo tiene en precario y ¿quién se trastorna por la pérdida de lo que no es suyo? (Séneca, 2013: Ep. 5, 4-5) comentArios finAles Para hablar del conocimiento que Spinoza tuvo de Séneca y del estoicismo habría que tener en cuenta 1) que conoció varias de sus doctrinas, como la del conatus, la del control de las pasiones o la teoría crisipiana de la mezcla,23 2) las consideró tan relevantes como para referirse a ellas en sus escritos y 3) se sintió tan seguro de su conocimiento que se atrevió a criticarlas. Por estos tres motivos difiero de Jon Miller cuando afirma: [...] debido a que no es posible saber con plena certeza qué supo y pensó Spinoza del estoicismo, tenemos otra razón para pensar que las comparaciones entre ambos [Spinoza y el estoicismo] son mejor si se hacen conceptualmente que no causal o históricamente. (2015: 23) Si bien la comparación conceptual es necesaria y útil, la considero insuficiente para confirmar si lo intuido acerca de la relación teórico-vital entre Spinoza y Séneca, e incluso con el estoicismo en general, tiene fundamento o no. El 23 Sobre esta última, recordemos que para Crisipo la generación de los cuerpos naturales se da por una mezcla de los cuatro elementos, lo que se resume en el concepto de pneuma, el cual, en tanto sustancia primigenia y fuerza creativa, se equipara con Dios que es todo lo existente (Crisipo de Solos, 2006). En relación con esto, hay algunos estudios que, de manera somera, acercan a Crispo con Spinoza, dando luz sobre otra influencia estoica en el neerlandés. Cfr. White, 2003; Long, 2003; Miller, 2015; Hoyos, 2017. Alberto luis lópez 54 Signos Filosóficos, vol. xxii, núm. 43, enero-junio, 2020, 34-57, ISSN: 1665-1324 acercamiento contextual, me parece, mejora y enriquece la lectura conceptual (textual), porque al dar indicios, mostrar ideas o referencias no tan evidentes, incluso aparentemente ajenas al texto, confirma intuiciones y mejora las interpretaciones. Esto permite tener acercamientos más precisos y certeros en filosofía, por eso que sólo haya tres referencias directas a Séneca en la obra de Spinoza podría interpretarse como si lo hubiese leído quasi aliud agenda, es decir, no como un verdadero interlocutor, sino como un autor más; sin embargo, si se consideran las referencias indirectas o soterradas, la semejanza al tratar ciertos temas ético-políticos, la propia biografía del autor y los libros de su biblioteca, entonces se cuentan con más elementos para completar la interpretación y afirmar, sin reserva, que Spi-noza no sólo conoció varias obras de Séneca y del estoicismo en general, sino que además el estoico cordobés influyó en su pensamiento, sobre todo -pero no únicamente- en asuntos éticos y políticos como los referentes a la figura del sabio, al control de las pasiones, la vida en concordancia con la naturaleza, el ejercicio del poder, la violencia estatal hacia los súbditos o gobernados, etcétera. 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Benito Olalla, Pilar (2012), "Algunos destellos de la luz de Spinoza: de una metáfora de Dilthey al relámpago en Romain Rolland", Éndoxa, núm. 29, pp. 133-164. La influencia de Séneca en la filosofía... 55 Signos Filosóficos, vol. xxii, núm. 43, enero-junio, 2020, 34-57, ISSN: 1665-1324 Brooke, Christopher (2012), Philosophic Pride: Stoicism and Political Thought from Lipsius to Rousseau, Princeton, Princeton University Press. Carnois, Bernard (1980), "Le desir selon les Stoiciens et selon Spinoza", Dialogue. Canadian Philosophical Review, vol. 19, núm. 2, pp. 255-277. Cicerón, M. Tulio (2005), Disputaciones tusculanas, Madrid, Gredos. Cicerón, M. Tulio (2003), Correspondencia con su hermano Quinto, Madrid, Alianza Editorial. Cicerón, M. Tulio (1984), Sobre la República, Madrid, Gredos. Crisipo de Solos (2006), Testimonios y fragmentos, Madrid, Gredos. D'Angers, Julien Eymard (1976), Recherches sur le Stoïcisme aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles, Nueva York, Georg Olms Verlag. Dilthey, Wilhelm (1947), Hombre y mundo en los siglos XVI y XVII, México, Fondo de Cultura Económica. Gabbey, Alan (2006), "Spinoza's natural science and methodology", en Don Gerret (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Spinoza, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 142-191. Hoyos, Inmaculada (2017), "La influencia de Descartes en la interpretación spinoziana del estoicismo", en María Luisa de la Camara y Julián Carvajal (eds.), Spinoza y la antropología en la modernidad, Hildesheim, Georg Olms Verlag, pp. 91-98. Hoyos, Inmaculada (2013), "La presencia de la filosofía antigua en el pensamiento de Spinoza: las referencias explícitas", Anales del Seminario de Historia de la Filosofía, vol. 30, núm. 2, pp. 431-460. Israel, Jonathan (2012), La ilustración radical, México, Fondo de Cultura Económica. Leibniz, Gottfrieb Wilhelm (1989), Philosophical Essays, Indianapolis, Hackett Publishing. Leibniz, Gottfrieb Wilhelm (1978 [c. 1875-1890]), Die philosophischen Schriften von Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, edición de C. I. Gerhard, 7 vols., Hildesheim, Georg Olms. Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm (1923-), Sämtliche Schriften und Briefe. Ed. Preussischen (Deutsche) Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin, Darmstadt/Leipzig/Berlín, Akademie-Verlag López Barja de Quiroga, Pedro (2014), "Cicerón y el imperio: una lectura poscolonial", Auster, núm. 19, pp. 33-44. Alberto luis lópez 56 Signos Filosóficos, vol. xxii, núm. 43, enero-junio, 2020, 34-57, ISSN: 1665-1324 Long, Anthony A. (2003), "Stoicism in the philosophical tradition. Spinoza, Lipsius, Butler", en Jon Miller y Brad Inwood (eds.), Hellenistic and Early Modern Philosophy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 7-29. Martín Sánchez, María Fátima (1985), "El sabio, como proyecto de vida, según Séneca", Taula Quaderns de Pensament, núm. 3, pp. 75-83. Miller, Jon (2015), Spinoza and Stoics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Miller, Jon y Brad Inwood (eds.) (2003), Hellenistic and Early Modern Philosophy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Papy, Jan (2002), "O Manuductio ad Stoicam Philosophiam (1604): de Lipsius e a Recepção do Estoicismo e da Tradição Estóica no Início da Europa Moderna", Revista Portuguesa de Filosofia, vol. 58, núm. 4, pp. 859-872. Proietti, Omero (1989), "Lettres à Lucilius. Une source du De Intellectus Emendatione de Spinoza", en Pierre François Moureu y Jacqueline Lagrée (eds.), Travaux et documents du Groupe de recherches spinozistes, vol. I: Lire et traduire Spinoza, París, Presses d'l'Universite de Paris-Sorbonne, pp. 39-60. Rutherford, Donald (2003), "Patience sans espérance: Leibniz's critique of stoicism", en Jon Miller y Brad Inwood (eds.), Hellenistic and Early Modern Philosophy, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 62-89. Santa Cruz Teijero, José (1965), "Notas sobre 'De republica' de Cicerón", Revista de Estudios Políticos, núm. 139, pp. 155-172. Séneca, Lucio A. (2013), Séneca, Madrid, Gredos. Séneca, Lucio A. (1998), Tragedias, I, México, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Séneca, Lucio A. (1980), Cartas a Lucilio, México, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. Spinoza, Baruch (2011), Spinoza, Madrid, Gredos. Spinoza, Baruch (1988), Tratado de la reforma del entendimiento, Madrid, Alianza Editorial. Spinoza, Baruch (1925), Spinoza Opera, en Carl Gebhardt y Carl Winter (eds.), Heidelberg, Universitäts Buchhandlung Heidelberg. La influencia de Séneca en la filosofía... 57 Signos Filosóficos, vol. xxii, núm. 43, enero-junio, 2020, 34-57, ISSN: 1665-1324 Strange, Steven K. y Jack Zupko (eds.) (2004), Stoicism: Traditions and Transformations, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. Tatián, Diego (2009), Una introducción a Spinoza, Buenos Aires, Editorial Quadrata. Van Rooijen, Servaas (1888), Inventaire des livres formant la bibliothèque de Bénédict Spinoza, La Haya, W. C. Tengeler. Villiaud, Paul (2012), Spinoza d après les livres de sa Bibliothèque, París, Malassis. White, Michael (2003), "Stoic natural philosophy (physics and cosmology)", en Brad Indwood (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Stoics, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, pp. 124-152. Alberto luis lópez: Miembro del Sistema Nacional de Investigadores, nivel I. Profesor visitante en The University of Western Ontario (2020). Posdoctorado en Filosofía Política moderna en la Universidad de Québec en Trois-Rivières, Canadá (2016). Doctor en Filosofía con Mención Honorífica por la Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (2013). Ganador de la Medalla Alfonso Caso (2015) y del Premio Norman Sverdlin (2014). Estancia de investigación en el Trinity College de Dublín, Irlanda (2012). Maestro en Filosofía por la Universidad de Barcelona (2008) y Licenciado en Filosofía por la Universidad de Salamanca, España (2006). Áreas de especialización: Berkeley, Locke, Filosofía moderna (epistemología, ontología, religión), Filosofía novohispana y mexicana. Áreas de competencia: Filosofía de la Ilustración, Hermenéutica, Romanticismo alemán, Historia Moderna y Poscolonialismo en México. Ha publicado varios artículos especializados en revistas arbitradas e indexadas y en libros colectivos. d. r. © Alberto Luis López, Ciudad de México, enero-junio, 2020. | {
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International Journal of Education and Social Science 2 (10), Oct 2015 <www.ijessnet.com> Development of Cultural Consciousness From the Perspective of a Social Constructivist International Journal of Education and Social Science 2 (10), Oct 2015 Gregory M. Nixon Associate Professor Philosophy & Education University of Northern British Columbia Prince George, BC Canada Abstract: ______________________________________________________________________ In this condensed survey, I look to recent perspectives on evolution suggesting that cultural change may alter the genome. Since theories of development are nested within assumptions about evolution (evodevo), I next review some oft-cited developmental theories and other psychological theories of the 20th century to see if any match the emerging perspectives in evolutionary theory. I seek theories based neither in nature (genetics) nor nurture (the environment) but in the creative play of human communication responding to necessity. This survey finally looks to more recent work to do with the appearance of independent self-consciousness in the individual following empathic group awareness. The result of such self-created group awareness and symbolic communication is seen to be cultural consciousness, unique to humanity, from which individual consciousness and personhood derive. I conclude by noting the general implications for these approaches in our schools, politics, and in ultimate ontological questions. 1. Introduction Despite the rhetorical encouragement in curriculum guides toward cooperative projects and group learning, it seems most schooling in the English-speaking world remains largely competitive and individualistic. Considering the predominant theories of human development, learning, and the evolution of the human mind, this should be no surprise. Evolutionary or developmental theories have concentrated either on the species or on the individual, in either case reducing it to a pattern that determines the "nature" of said species or individual. Despite recent work on the emergence of altruism (e.g., Fletcher & Doebeli, 2009; de Waal, 2008), there have been few evolutionary or developmental theories that give precedence to group dynamics as the ground of unique human behaviour and individuality. In the last century, behaviourism tended to see the individual as a hedonistic cipher blindly pursuing pleasurable feelings and avoiding painful ones. Evolutionary theories (especially the neo-evolutionists who followed Darwin) also emphasized the selfishness of the individual who sought only to be the fittest, survive the longest, and reproduce the most. So, very broadly speaking, both nurture – the environmental conditioning aspect of behaviourism – and nature – our genetic inheritance – see the 119 ©Research Institute for Progression of Knowledge www.ripknet.org individual as a self-seeking monad, which fits quite well into the ethos of a capitalist economy driven by the enlightened self-interest of Adam Smith (1776/1994). This could be coincidental, or not. There is little question that the predominant metaphors for the human mind these days are the computer and the brain. Yes, the brain, for no matter how many neuroscience images of the brain in action we see, we are still not seeing experiential consciousness. To experience consciousness, we must be subjectively conscious. These two metaphors continue the idea of the isolated human being, in this case, the human mind, exhibiting behaviours that arise in isolation and could, in theory, be fully understood once we understand the computational brain. The brain's functioning "wetware" is seen as equivalent to the "hardware" of a computer (or computer networks). Thus much of learning theory, from brain-based learning to standardized tests, caters to this neural-computational metaphor, implying that behaviour and thought are predetermined by the material substrate that supports them. Thus education should be based on the information processing of the individual via the tried and true transmit and test model of education. 1 Social psychology and evolutionary anthropology are still very active and a good deal of research is being done into the communal origins of the human mind, but such things do not receive the media attention that any new discovery linked to evolutionary psychology, computer consciousness, or headed with the prefix neuroautomatically attracts (cf. LeGrenzi & Umiltà, 2011). Check any newsstand to see the titles of lead stories. It seems we are more comfortable imagining ourselves as software programs on the neurochemical hardware of the brain or as conditioned by our genes than we are imagining ourselves as the product of the choices we make together. This is the aim of this excursus – to trace the breaks in this pattern of individual isolation and determinism and see where cultural creativity has occasionally broken through, especially in evolutionary theory and in theories of human development, and to outline three major researches that indicate the communal origin of human conscious experience - that is, cultural consciousness as the singular human achievement that is the source of individual consciousness and personhood. My second section below is a condensed survey through the history of evolutionary ideas with special attention to the visionary ideas of Jablonka and Lamb (2006). The third section runs through developmental theories, seeking hints of cultural creativity with a trajectory that should be easy to follow. Following this, the fourth section focuses on the recent research of Tomasello and Rochat that brings cooperation, shared identity, and language back into evo-devo theories. Finally, I will conclude by noting the implications of these researches in education, politics, and, speculatively, an ontological worldview. 2. Evolution 2.1 Survey First, many have seen parallels between long-term evolution of the human species and short-term development in the individual human being – in other words, ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny. Without This is in spite of so-called brain-based learning that, in general, vastly exaggerates the plasticity of the brain and 1 encourages education based on experience and novelty (see Nixon, 2013), just as John Dewey recommended in 1916. 120 International Journal of Education and Social Science 2 (10), Oct 2015 <www.ijessnet.com> getting into this in detail, this recapitulation has not been shown to be exact, not even in the close resemblance of the human zygote to that of a fish, but, generally speaking, patterns of individual development do seem similar to those that we know from human evolution, especially in early childhood development (Rochat, 2009; Tomasello, 2014). So it can be seen that the way evolution is understood will have a bearing on the way we view individual development. This macrocosm/microcosm pattern is colloquially known as evo-devo. Darwin proposed natural selection with an emphasis on the individual organism, but it should be noted that the other originator of evolutionary theory, Alfred Russel Wallace, emphasized group selection and even went so far as to suggest evolutionary change worked in a manner that current systems theory suggests (Kottler, 1985; Maturana & Varela, 1980). This indicates that research into developmental theories might look to group dynamics more than to the genetics and motivations of the individual. Darwin wrote before the discoveries of Gregor Mendel in genetics that explained the mechanisms through which evolutionary change occur, but he would have been helped immensely by this knowledge, especially including genetic mutations, of which only a very few prove to be fortuitous. However, Mendel did not recognize learning as having an evolutionary effect (Bowler, 2003). It's the early neo-Darwinists like Thomas Huxley and Herbert Spencer, and, later ones like Richard Dawkins, who push the hard line that evolution is random, without purpose, and rarely affected by the life experience or learning of individual or sub-group species members. It should not be forgotten that Darwin's original theories did not rule out the suggestion of Lamarck that a single life's experience can alter the traits that are passed on in evolution (Bowler, 2003). Neither did original Darwinism deny the possibility that learning in life by a small group or an individual could prolong the life of a species long enough for it to accommodate such learning and for evolution to take place, as in the simultaneous theorizing of American palaeontologist Henry Fairfield Osborne, English psychologist Conway Lloyd Morgan, and American psychologist James Mark Baldwin in what became somewhat unfairly known as the "Baldwin effect" (Baldwin, 1894; Jablonka & Lamb, 2006). More recently, however, systems theory indicates that any identifiable system (including evolution) is open and subject to change from within, known as autopoiesis in the theories of Humberto Maturana and Francisco Varela (Maturana & Varela, 1980; Cull, 2013). This implies the potential for self-inspired creation (Capra, 1996). Geneticist Mae Wan Ho (2003) has reinvigorated vitalism by suggesting that evolutionary change results from multiple causes, some of them in one lifetime, as in Lamarkism. Furthermore, the meaningless, random nature of evolution has been questioned by noted philosopher Thomas Nagel in his little book, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinist Conception of Nature is Almost Certainly False (2012), in which he presents arguments for a natural (non-deistic) teleology or purpose in evolution. Biologist Stuart Kauffman (2008) has made the case for nature's processes being less subject to the "laws" of nature than to nature's creativity, which he calls the natural sacred, no God or gods required. 2.2 Jablonka and Lamb 121 ©Research Institute for Progression of Knowledge www.ripknet.org There have been many others who have let some fresh air into the random determinism of neo-2 Darwinian evolutionary theories, but the recent of work of Jablonka and Lamb, Evolution in Four Dimensions: Epigenetic, Behavioural, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life (2006), goes so far as to accept the likelihood of a self-constructive humanity, especially with regard to cultural change affecting fundamental evolutionary genetics. This is a watershed book, though its ideas remain controversial for mainstream science. As can be seen from the title, the strict neo-Darwinism of it's all in the genes and genes determine human nature is rejected in favor of four dimensions that change genetic inheritance. These dimensions are not randomly chosen but appear as the result of a great deal of thought and research by the authors, each of whom is well-recognized in her field. Jablonka is a Professor at the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas at Tel Aviv University, and Lamb was Senior Lecturer at Birkbeck College, University of London, before her retirement. Previously, they have published widely on epigenetics. Jablonka and Lamb describe the four dimensions in order, beginning with most widely accepted image of evolution as based in DNA transfer and recombination, subject to random mutations. The second dimension, epigenetics, is their specialty and thus a good deal of the book is dedicated to it. Epimeaning after is an appropriate name for structurally altered DNA found to have occurred after birth or, in rare cases, just before it. The epigenetic effect on the immune system has been well established, but some have dismissed it as occurring only very early after birth (or possibly before) in response to the primary caregiver (Dean & Maggert, 2015). Jablonka and Lamb see epigenetic alteration as a possibility all through life and suggest the plasticity of neural functioning as an example of it. Many other researchers (e.g., Meaney, 2010) accept that epigenetics in child development is proof of the interdependence of gene and environment in the regulation of phenotype. The third dimension is behavioural learning found in the animal kingdom (which includes humanity). When an individual animal or small groups of them manage to learn a successful new way of dealing with a situation through either breakthrough insight as in gestalt (Köhler, 1927) or the trial and error of the learning curve, such learning, if shared through mimesis, will be carried on and eventually alter the genetic propensity for such behaviour. A good example of this is the Japanese macaque monkey (Macaca fuscata) that learned to keep warm in winter by bathing in open hot springs. Macaques now appear to unhesitatingly enter such hot springs without having been previously exposed to them (Kawamura, 1959). The final dimension is symbolism, as in symbolic interaction, which the authors base on the estimable philosophic project of Ernst Cassirer (e.g., 1944). Such symbolism (mostly due to language – though music, math, art, etc. are mentioned as other symbolic systems) is found primarily in human beings though the authors are amenable to extending this franchise to certain primate populations, like bonobo, that have been reared by humans. Seemingly based solely on work with bonobos by Sue SavageRandom because in neo-Darwinism genetic mutations occur randomly and evolution is regarded as purposeless, and 2 determinism because evolutionary genetics determines what each individual life will be like. 122 International Journal of Education and Social Science 2 (10), Oct 2015 <www.ijessnet.com> Rumbaugh (e.g., Savage-Rumbaugh & Lewin, 1994; Savage-Rumbaugh, Shanker, & Taylor, 1998), they take the long, slow, early evolution of language approach. They do, however, cite the highly regarded Terrence Deacon (1997) to indicate that language and the brain co-evolved, that is, each influenced the development of the other. In this view, language emerged naturally and gradually from earlier communication systems based, apparently, in mimesis and nominative indications (such as pointing, gesturing, signalling, or various codes of behaviour) rather than from teaching, as formal symbolic (abstract) systems require. The authors seem unacquainted with the post-Saussurean structuralist tradition in which formal language structures – words and phrases – are understood as self-referential, an important and often ignored insight. As this theory would have it, meaning or semantics is only possible within an already complete language system. Language itself is the background referent, not the external world. If this is so (and it is controversial), language could not have slowly evolved but must have, instead, appeared comparatively suddenly – say, over generations rather than millennia – and grown rapidly as new vocabulary and syntactic elaborations were desperately sought to appease the now abstractly thinking human mind – seeking causes for effects and other narrative explanations mainly in mythic sources. French postmodern linguist Julia Kristeva (1989) declared, [N]o matter what the moment and the circumstances of its appearance in the animal scale were, language could only have been born in a single stroke. Objects couldn't just start to signify progressively. After a transformation ... a passage was effected from a stage where nothing made sense to another where everything did. (p. 46) This seems to me worth noting, for such a perspective takes the invention of language by the symbolic species (Deacon, 1997) out of the natural unfolding of genetic evolution and sees cultural creativity as changing our hominid heritage. This has the advantage of admitting that the human species is different in kind from all other species, a position made unpopular today by cognitive science, sociobiology, and evolutionary psychology. But being qualitatively unique for being in possession of a reflexive symbol system that can direct cultures and alter genes need not result in magnified anthropocentrism. Instead we could feel the fear and trembling of those who must bear the awful responsibility of playing a role in the ongoing biological evolution on this planet. But even this sounds unnecessarily grandiose. The fact is that humans give evidence of their uniqueness in private, daily practices like, say, feeding wild birds in winter, which neither increases social status nor enhances the likelihood of passing on their genes. Be that as it may, the inclusion of symbolism as an evolutionary determinant is a breakthrough idea, at least in the sciences, and, though sometimes resisted by the authors, it recognizes the unique status of humanity on this planet, the creature who influences its own evolution, realizing that human culture and lived experience are constructing the next moment (unlike Savage-Rumbaugh's captive bonobo, in spite of their occasional symbol use). The role we already play in the planet's future is readily apparent. If the authors are correct in their current interpretation of evo-devo (evolution + development, each influencing the other) – and they certainly make a very strong case – then the scientism of the extreme neo-Darwinists, sociobiologists, or evolutionary psychologists must certainly make room in their 123 ©Research Institute for Progression of Knowledge www.ripknet.org theorizing for the fact that experience, learning, and human symbolic interaction influence not only development but also epigenetic and thus genetic evolution. Our future is neither random nor predetermined, in this case, but it is indeed in our hands and the choices we make as a people. Finally, their last two dimensions of evolution help to explain and evaluate theories of development. 3. Development 3.1 Nature versus Nurture This is not the place to review all major theories of development or theories of learning related to development, but I will continue my theme by looking at major theories that include social factors in learning and possibly allow for cultural creativity. I see such cultural creativity as not necessarily growing out of environmental factors, as in behaviourism, or genetic factors, as in evolutionary biology. Cultural creativity may appear out of nothing but necessity. From what has gone before, we can see that 3 such cultural creativity, if maintained over generations, may actually change the genome and become part of the human heritage. This is not recognized in the review of most developmental theories that follows. From the late 19th century onwards, we see the great antagonists, nurture and nature, proceeding on their agendas. Pavlov began his work on training dogs to salivate to demonstrate the power of environmental conditioning even as the early neo-Darwinists reached an epitome of influence in scientific circles. It seemed to many that either "man" was a machine (La Mettrie, 1748), albeit an evolved one, or he was a hapless product of social conditioning. At this time, a new force, psychology, became evident in the work of Freud, and now humans were seen as hapless products of the sexual repressions of the unconscious mind, the repressions being nurture but the sexual libido being nature. In fact, Freud developed a "psychosexual" developmental theory in which the individual had to maneuver between the Scylla of social repression and the Charybdis of the uncivilized id or libido to attain appropriate genitalcentered sexuality in maturity (Freud, 1915/2011). There is no other choice but neuroses. No choice seems to be the underlying theme of most evo-devo theories that see human beings as products. Other developmental or learning theorists who have had an influence on education can often be placed into either the environmental or the genetic determinist camp with only a few seeing cultural or individual creativity, often based in the acquisition of formal language structures, as an alternative camp of its own that by definition is never pre-determined. Among the early perspectives to perceive that complex social communications allowed for the possibility of humanity expressing the creative freedom that is already present in nature is the philosophy of Henri Bergson (1911/83) in France and simultaneously that of the major pragmatists in the United States. The latter group sometimes included the early social behaviourists who refused to be confined within the stringent restrictions of the emerging environmental conditioning theories of behaviourism that denied that humans had free will and even that human consciousness was an illusion (Watson, 1913; Skinner, 1972). 3.2 Behaviourism and Environmental Determinism The Ancient Greeks regarded necessity as the Goddess Ananke (Hillman) – so overwhelming were her powers of creating 3 the pathological anxiety that results in necessary actions (cf. Hillman, 1980). 124 International Journal of Education and Social Science 2 (10), Oct 2015 <www.ijessnet.com> Nearly everything that can be said about the vast canvas of behaviourism has been said. It certainly makes the strongest case for environmental determinism against the influence of instincts, inherited character traits, and genetic influence in general. As noted, it works by assuming all animals, including humanity, are basically hedonistic, that is, pleasure seeking and pain avoiding. In this way, any animal, individually or in groups, can be trained in any way conceivable if someone controls how and when those pleasurable rewards are given or withheld. For this reason – the unfairness inherent in the idea of there being the trainers and the trained – behaviourism has received much opprobrium. However, there is little doubt that infants, toddlers, and young children need to be trained for they do not have the wherewithal to make informed choices. There is also little doubt that, in spite of all sorts of liberated classrooms and enlightened teachers who cater to individual needs, the structure of the school system is itself based on the principles of behaviourism (and the military). If one works hard and succeeds, one may do well in school subjects and be rewarded by moving upward through the grades. If one does not, one will eventually be forced out of the system. This is not even to mention the rewarding warmth and praise bestowed by teachers and parents on those children who do well and the lack of same for those children who do not. So behaviourism (which prospers these days under the sobriquet of neobehaviourism in which it is admitted that people do have minds but only the illusion of choice-making) is a suitable way to manage animals and young children in accord with the third dimension of evolution in Jablonka and Lamb (2006). But biological constraints on behavioural conditioning, in accord with Jablonka and Lamb's first two dimensions, must be admitted, including autoshaping, inherited behaviours that appear without regard for reinforcement, and instinctive drift, the tendency of organisms to revert to instinctual, unlearned behaviours (LeFrançois, 2011). Recent work on the appearance of altruism (Erikson, 1980; Fletcher & Doebeli, 2009; Tomasello 1999, 2015) also denies the fundamental self-serving drive on which behaviourism depends. Most of all, however, it is the fully human symbolic activity whose complexity allows for degrees of free agency and cultural creativity – the final evolutionary dimension in Jablonka and Lamb – that reveals that behaviourism is not a suitable explanation for human action, 4 and that such training certainly should not be the sole means of education for maturing students. No doubt in our culture the enormous power of behaviourism's conditioning techniques will continue to be employed in advertising, election campaigning, and propaganda. Behaviourism as neobehaviourism opened the way to (and was often replaced by) social behaviourism (Mead, 1934), social psychology (Lewin, 1935), and social learning theory (Bandura, 1977; Vygotsky, 1978), all of which put the community before the individual in the development of the self, as will be seen below. But before I continue on the trajectory to current research into the development of unique self-consciousness in humans (Rochat, 2009) and the shared intentionality (Tomasello, 2008) that allows for such self-consciousness, speech (Tomasello, 2005), thinking (Tomasello, 2014), and human morality (Tomasello, 2015), the opposite trend to environmental determinism must be outlined, i.e., genetic determinism. It should be noted that it was the publication of linguist Noam Chomsky's "A Review of B. F. Skinner's Verbal 4 Behaviour" (1959) that rang the death knell on the huge influence behaviourism had been enjoying. 125 ©Research Institute for Progression of Knowledge www.ripknet.org 3.3 The Cognitivist Revolution and Genetic Determinism The evolutionary genetic camp has come a long way since the early neo-Darwinists found influential footholds in sociobiology (Wilson, 1975) and evolutionary psychology (e.g., Buss, 1999). It may have reached its apogee of influence in the 1990s with the publication of The Bell Curve (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994) and the claim that inherited intelligence is the primary determiner of social success. The rise of cognitive science carried this position forward both in neuroscience and, perhaps surprisingly, in the artificial intelligence program of computer science. In either case, the human individual is often regarded as a cipher without free will who only carries out its programming either on the wetware of the brain (e.g., Bridgeman, 1990) or the metaphoric hardware of the brain-as-computer. For example, the seemingly unpredictable behaviour of teen-agers can now apparently be explained through studies of teen-age brains, as revealed in two popular periodicals (Dobbs, 2011; Giedd, 2015). Though in a very broad and less determinist fashion, evolutionary materialism as found in cognitive science or, simply, cognitivism as it is known in much of today's educational psychology literature, is flourishing today as the dominant developmental and learning theory (see, e.g., Gelman, 1978; LeFrançois, 2011; Bigge & Shermis, 2004; Woolfolk, 2012). Cognitivism, however, comes in many varieties, from the human brain as individual serial computer to the human brain as a parallel network information processor that learns and adapts to its learning. All cognitivism, however, depends on the assumption that the brain is what learns and adapts in human beings, the implication being that humans are essentially physically carapaces around their central processing organ, the brain, which functions on computational principles to determine which actions to take. Such information processing may include an element of free will, at least in terms of the choosing which information to process; that is, one may choose a focus for one's attention to some degree. However, there remains the problem of fully explaining how such independent information processors, as brains are assumed to be, can connect with other brains and, though such connectionism, learn such things as shared intentions, altruism and morality, which are usually considered value-laden judgments to do with sensed meaning. It was Jerome Bruner, one of the most influential developmental theorists, who made the switch from structural information processing to narrative meaning making in the 1970s and 1980s in a series of memorable books and articles, beginning with "Beyond the Information Given" (1973). It had been Bruner's intention to make the break from behaviourism by illustrating how humans create their own conscious selves and make their own meaning through shared narratives (Bruner, 1987, 1990a), but he inadvertently opened the door to cognitivism instead when his theories of meaning making were reduced to information processing, in which consciousness is not necessarily required. "We were not out to 'reform' behaviourism but to replace it" (p. 3), wrote Bruner (1990b). "There is no one explanation of man," [and no explanation of the human condition can make sense] "without being interpreted in the light of the symbolic world that constitutes human culture" (p. 138). Bruner here is clearly in accord with the uniquely human fourth dimension in the evolutionary approach of Jablonka and Lamb (2006), so, as such, he becomes the inheritor of the ideas of Cassirer (1944, 1946) with regard to the transcultural importance of symbolism in the revelation of the human mind. 126 International Journal of Education and Social Science 2 (10), Oct 2015 <www.ijessnet.com> He is also carrying forward the formative suggestions of Mead (1934), who posited the sense of self as arising only through social interaction, and Vygotsky (1978), who saw the self as a social construction that could then act to influence the society that called it forth. His emphasis on symbolic narratives in the construction of the human world seems inspired by the sociological theories of Goffman (1959), Berger and Luckman (1967) and Blumer (1969), as well as the important theories of dynamic memory construction in Bartlett (1932) and Halbwachs (1925/1992). These theories do not name cultural consciousness but often assume it. How could the need for meaning determine neural processing in the individual monad of the isolated human brain? Cassirer's emphasis on myth and Bruner's emphasis on narrative indicate the understanding that human brains connect to each other through symbolic communication channels that allow a cultural network to function as an extension of individual brains. As a well-known linguist wrote: "When language is made overt, as in speaking and writing, it is able to provide a link between what would otherwise be independent nervous systems, acting as an imperfect substitute for the synapses that fail to bridge the gap from one mind to another" (Chafe, 1994, p. 41). Bruner's revolution was "an all-out effort to establish meaning as the central concept of psychology – not stimuli and responses, not overtly observable behaviour, not biological drives and their transformation, but meaning" (1990b, p. 2). But this emphasis was shanghaied by the cognitive revolution in which the key idea was changed from constructing meaning to processing information, and the dominant metaphor for human decision-making changed from social-emotional engagement to the computer. It is probably fair to say that neuroscience and the computer analogy remain the dominant paradigms in development theory today, each supporting the other and both failing to acknowledge the power of symbolism and relational intersubjectivity in the formation of individual consciousness. 3.4 Social Constructivists Before meeting two current researchers who provide strong experimental evidence for the intersubjective origin of symbolic community and thus for human self-consciousness, in all fairness it should be noted that throughout the 1980s and onward, strong theories emerged that continued to support the primacy human interrelations and the vital importance of shared intentionality in a community. Erikson's identity crisis notions (1980), first published in 1959, leave the responsibility for choosing the right path through such crises with the individual and the influences upon him or her. Bandura (1977, 1986, 1991) with his social-cognitive theory of development is an important transitional figure who found a mediating path between cognitivism and social learning theory. Kegan's (1982) processes of human evolution and development (evo-devo) strongly emphasize how creative insight allows one to incorporate past stages and advance forward into a less self-constricted, more transcultural sense of being. Fogel (1993) makes a very strong but not widely read case for relationality as essential for the emergence of the individual. Neisser (1993) through inspired psychological experiments demonstrates that our self-perception is learned from the environment and others. The current research trajectory that I now review opposes the reductionist determinism of both the environment and genetics. 5 Though often given credit for social constructionism, I leave out Piaget here for his stage theories ultimately rest in his 5 background in biology, which he considers the source of cognition (e.g, Modgil & Modgil, 1982; Pfeiffle, 2008). I feel the credit should go instead to Mead (1934), Lewin (1935), and Vygotsky (1978). Aside from Kristeva (1989), I do not make mention of continental philosophy or the postmodern movement either, in spite of their embrace of the language-isconsciousness position, for I am following rational empiricism here, something most postmoderns reject (cf. Curtler, 1997). 127 ©Research Institute for Progression of Knowledge www.ripknet.org 4. Current Research in Evo-Devo 4.1 Introduction Aside from being relatively more current, the research and writing of Michael Tomasello (1999, 2005, 2008, 2014, 2015) and Philippe Rochat (1999, 2001, 2009, 2014) have also undergone extensive investigation both in the laboratory and the field, often using innovative experiments, before interpretive theory began, unlike many of the less grounded theories mentioned above. Their work is both empirical yet insightfully interpretive. Both work with patterns in phylogenetic evolution and ontogenetic development; however, Rochat's research has been more explicitly developmental in early childhood. Rochat more boldly rejects the neuroscientific and the evolutionary paradigms as the determining factors in individual development and looks to cultural creativity, but, in spite of his declared allegiance to evolutionary psychology, I suggest Tomasello inadvertently moves into the social constructionist camp himself. 4.2 Tomasello Tomasello has been something of a publishing industry on his own these passed 20 years or so. Admittedly, as the co-director of the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology in Leipzig, Germany, he must have numerous graduate assistants or laboratory researchers to assist him in his efforts. He straddles both sides of the evo-devo world, "his work – combining studies on large apes and children – is unparalleled in the field" (Pléh, 2014, p. 979). Tomasello is also notable in that his basic theoretic position – that humanity diverges from other animals including the great apes because of their evolved cognitive ability to focus attention together – has undergone several revisions over the years as new experiments with children or with apes have revealed shortcomings to him. His willingness to adapt and revise is to be lauded. At this point, however, he remains unwilling to loosen his credentials as an evolutionary psychologist (at least according to Pléh, 2014) and reconsider his allegiance to the controversial "theory of mind" perspective, so popular today. This effects his final position in that he must explain the natural evolution of cognition as preceding the appearance of speech, and, according to Tomasello, what led to the unique advance in human cognition was the human need to work together in such things as the hunt and in maintaining social cohesion as families united to become tribes (Tomasello, 1995, 1999). Early on, he called this unique cognitive ability shared attention, but when shared attention was shown to be fairly commonplace among great apes that were studied, he made the significant adaptation to instead referencing shared intentionality (2005, 2008) as the unique human ability. The difference is important since a group of apes may have their attention on the same activity but still be stuck in selfish egocentricity. A good example is the group monkey hunt of the chimpanzees. At first glance, they seem to work in coordinated fashion to isolate and corner an individual monkey, but a closer look reveals that each chimp is hunting only for himself, seeking to be among the first to render the poor monkey and get to the meat or be among the first of the secondary beggars, who usually know who to approach for hand-outs. There is no food-sharing or bringing back the spoils to the village, which, amongst early humans, is the signature of a cooperative culture. Such coordinated hunting strategy, sometimes lasting days or even weeks, and the subsequent sharing of the spoils is what 128 International Journal of Education and Social Science 2 (10), Oct 2015 <www.ijessnet.com> Tomasello means by shared intentionality. It must be noted that the give and take of first level gestural speech requires such cognitive abilities so both the sender and the receiver can imagine the intention of the other. Second level speech, however, in which formal linguistic structures with both semantics and syntax and the ability to speak of the past, future, and the far away demands a degree of cultural cooperation and symbolic passing of traditions for which evolution can not be given credit. This perspective on human communication and language thus basically turns the Chomskian [genetic] proposal on its head, as the most fundamental aspects of human communication are seen as biological adaptations for cooperation and social interaction in general, whereas the more purely linguistic, including grammatical, dimensions of language are culturally constructed and passed along by individual linguistic communities. (Tomasello, 2008, p. 11, my italics) It is Tomasello's turn toward cultural construction that tends to separate him from the evolutionary biologists. It's strange he still accepts a version of the theory of mind (ToM) perspective. Crudely, a ToM assumes that a fully established mind or self is in each individual and that this self or mind can only mentally infer a similar self or mind in others by observing their behaviour and elaborating a theory of mind for them based on noting the similarities with one's own behaviour. The idea that the self comes with the body seems to be inherent to both behaviourism and sociobiology, but there is no reason to make such an assumption. As neuroscientist and philosopher, Alva Noë (2009) states in another context: [ToM] takes for granted from the start that all that is available to us is the mere behaviour of others; it takes for granted that minds are hidden and private. It also takes for granted that the minds of others are real for us only as a kind of theoretical device to help us manage our dealings with others. (p. 30) That fact that Tomasello sees shared intentionality as necessary for first level symbol exchange found in gesture and sign (probably carried on for millions of years amongst hominids and shown to be occasionally present amongst great apes and cetaceans brought up in captivity) might have implied to him that a shared social identity could have preceded individual identification. That is, there is no need to posit a ToM by isolated selves if the isolated self-identity is preceded by identification with each other as a tribe, as is indicated in other evo-devo theories (e.g., Bruner, 1987; Mead, 1934; Vygotsky, 1978). This idea is occasionally acknowledged by Tomasello (2014) himself when he cites Vygotsky and Bakhtin as his intellectual antecedents and when he moves into his recent discussions of the now renamed joint intentionality and, the next step, collective intentionality. The latter apparently concerns humanity after the advent of fully self-referential, syntactically and semantically-driven formal language in symbolically interactive cultural groups. At this point, "cooperative communication became conventional linguistic communication" (2014, p. 5), so differing viewpoints could assume a neutral, objective stance to win adherents. "Because the collaboration and communication at this point were conventional, institutional, and normative, we may refer to all this as collective intentionality" (pp. 5-6, italics in original). Tomasello avoids the "c" word, consciousness, likely because of controversies in that field, but I suggest joint intentionality might be understood as cultural consciousness, and collective intentionality as social consciousness; or, better, considering Tomasello's move into moral philosophy, as social conscience. 129 ©Research Institute for Progression of Knowledge www.ripknet.org Perhaps it should not be surprising that this latter concept has been thoroughly resisted, especially in the United States, as the word "collective" is felt to be anathema to the Ayn Rand, Adam Smith sort of individual competitiveness that is the cornerstone of capitalism. Such selfish individualism is the primary assumption of behaviourism and neo-Darwinism too, but the whole notion of an intersubjective collective preceding self-identity as an individual undermines all of these perspectives. Perhaps predictably, in Tomasello's most recent book (2015), he applies these principles to an explanation for the conventional morality found in cultural groups. With his background researches, he makes a strong case. His view that joint intentionality and, later, collective intentionality are not only how we discern altruistic morality but are also the foundation for all that makes us uniquely human must be taken seriously. However, when he assumes that evolutionary cognitive development must have been in place before the phylogenetic appearance of formal language, one must be more critical. As above, it is conceivable that out of necessity humans invented linguistic forms that could refer to the origins of identity in the distant past, envision the far away and the yet to come, and create narrative myths to express meaning to themselves (cf. Barfield, 1977; Dewart, 1989; Nixon, 2010). The cultural invention of, first, gestural representation millions of years ago, and of formal language about 60 to 100 thousand years ago, could have led to later evolutionary changes, or at least to the co-evolution of language and the brain, as in Deacon (1997). This would match Jablonka and Lamb (2006). 4.3 Rochat Rochat is more radical in his approach, specifically dealing with the evolution and the development of consciousness, and daring to suggest that, as self-conscious persons, we each arise from our own mutuality. In general, his work has been less concerned with the evolutionary background than Tomasello, but his extensive work with infants has led him to postulate that uniquely human selfconsciousness results from the mutual interaction of the infant's body with objects and ultimately with other people. It is an ecological-phenomenological approach that sees the early child as both reactive to the world around it and in an important sense independently creative in its response to it. Selfconsciousness is the continuing sense of identity that comes with long-term memory that is, in turn, enabled through the emergence of early speech patterns learned from others. In his recent book most relevant to this monograph, Others in Mind: Social Origins of Self-Consciousness (2009), Rochat considers both the "evo" part of the evo-devo pairing while also daring to break scientific habit by taking questions of self and consciousness seriously, both in individual development and in the evolutionary emergence of "modern" behaviours in H. sapiens (especially after the emergence of formal language structures). As the title indicates, Rochat is addressing the origins of self-consciousness, not the self as an assumed entity per se. "There is no such thing as a 'core' or an 'individual self'," Rochat declares. "I propose instead that what develops and is unique to human ontogeny is a sense of self that is co-constructed in relation to others" (p. 3, italics in original). Being conscious of one's self in relation to others is found only in human development, and Rochat makes this clear from the beginning. Though once a student of 130 International Journal of Education and Social Science 2 (10), Oct 2015 <www.ijessnet.com> Piaget, Rochat more takes his cue from such as Dewey (1916), Mead (1934), Goffman (1959), and Vygotsky (1978), when he declares: I start from the simple fact that without others, we would not be. As infants we would not have survived. As adults, we would not have any explicit sense of who we are; we would have no ability, nor any inclination to be self-conscious. (p. 2, italics in original) In other words we have an overwhelming desire to be with others, to be recognized by them, and to share in social intimacy. The other side of the coin of desire is fear, and for Rochat, "The fear of social rejection is the mother of all fears" (p. 3). One's sense of self becomes deformed under the umbrage of such rejection, and the earlier it takes place, the more powerful its influence. In short, "[S]elfconsciousness stands for the representation we hold of ourselves through the eyes of others." Continuing with words that could have come from Mead, "[T]his representation is in essence a social construction, as opposed to an individual elaboration. ... [It] originates in relation to others" (p. 3, italics in original). Very early in this book, Rochat sets out his parameters. The rest of the book is a fleshing out of these ideas, with some philosophical elaboration and some examination of unusual situations and possible applications. It should be noted that, in spite of his theoretic predecessors, Rochat's views derive from many years of close study of infants, toddlers, and young children, beginning in the early 1980s. By the end of the 1990s, he was working with others on a version of social psychology involving symbolic interaction (Tomasello, Striano, & Rochat, 1999). In short, Rochat's theories have grounding. Rochat does not veer off into drawn-out discussions on the nature of consciousness, though he does agree with philosophers like Merleau-Ponty that consciousness, or, better, awareness, exists as embodied experience in a pre-self-conscious manner, what some call phenomenological consciousness. For Rochat (and others) self-consciousness creates the objective self – the self as seen from the imagined perspective of others – that "becomes increasingly external as it refers more and more to the evaluative eyes of others" (p. 11). Such an objectification involves higher mental functions that are not in any way determined by the brain, though one may admit they are limited by it. At such levels, each brain functions amongst a network of brains. Rochat, echoing Chafe (1994), writes: The brain is indeed adapted and shaped to live in a society of minds. If the brain of an individual can be anatomically described as a distinct entity, it can hardly be described as such at most levels of higher functioning, including self-reflection or self-conceptualization. Most of what the brain allows an individual to perform is done in conjunction with other brains, particularly performances such as thinking and talking, even thinking and talking about the self. This basic fact questions the validity of construing the locus of conscious phenomena in the brain of the individual since most of these phenomena depend on conjugate functioning with other brains. (p. 10) This is an explicit statement that marks the move into cultural creativity (aka cultural construction) as a source outside the brain for the brain's neural functioning. The focal point and apparent source of all our thinking, reflection, and recognition is the self each of us knows as I or me. Rochat is not the first to 131 ©Research Institute for Progression of Knowledge www.ripknet.org emphasize that this self is created as we become conscious of it from the perspective of others, and that this self-consciousness is projected by our pre-reflective, embodied awareness: [T]he sense and concept of self cannot be conceived independently of the sense and concept of others. They are mutually defining as the two sides of a coin. The basic intuition is that when we think of ourselves, we always and inescapably have others in mind. (p. 14, italics in the original) Rochat has tested his views by comparing multicultural perspectives, including Melanesian children in Vanuatu, and finds evidence amongst the symbolic speech patterns, ritual behaviours, and taboos for the need to be recognized and included and the deep fear of isolation and rejection. Key to such understanding is always found in language and symbol, as in all cultures. But only the human animal is able to attain such a full symbolic capacity all the time. And this is concomitant upon the ability to become co-conscious with other members of the group. This applies in both evolutionary and developmental stages of consciousness. It must be remembered that Rochat sees these stages first emerging in the individual at a very young age, and, after crossing from one to the next, the emerging self will often slip back to former stages of consciousness throughout his or her life as each new stage is nested in those that went before. Rochat's list of levels or stages of "consciousness" follows (and these stages are what his make his views so unique and important): 1. Non-conscious states of the mind are by definition unknowable but may be equated with lower life forms or dreamless states of sleep. 2. Unconscious states of mind are understood to be mental contents that have been forgotten or repressed or otherwise ignored. Here he ignores the deeper Jungian theory of a collective unconscious in favour of a more Freudian view. 3. Aware mind states are just that, awareness without differentiation into mental categories or selfreflection. 4. Co-awareness seems to apply to many animals, including warm-blooded mammals; it refers to the simple awareness of the presence of others in the group but without the mind-to-mind links provided by symbols. 5. Consciousness, Rochat notes, derives from the Greek suneidesis meaning "communal knowledge" (p. 50), and I must add from the Latin conscius, meaning "knowing together". It refers to emotional knowing in the individual being. "It exists and vanishes with the body" (p. 52). 6. Co-consciousness, however, is the unique human achievement, which should by now be clear in meaning. "I know with others in mind: I become co-conscious" (p. 54, italics in original). It need hardly be said that being co-conscious with other minds in a group is a dynamic process, so it must involve shared avoidances as well as shared intentions, which was made clear in my discussion of Tomasello. It must be admitted that these theoretic stages do not emerge directly from Rochat's research and are, in fact, idiosyncratic. From the perspective of consciousness studies, this list is not likely to receive wide acceptance. The most notable contribution is his concept of co-consciousness: the mutuality of minds that occurs after one behaves as a conscious organism, according to Rochat. However, as seen above, the word conscious already implies "knowing together" (Latin: con + scire), and it may well be that such 132 International Journal of Education and Social Science 2 (10), Oct 2015 <www.ijessnet.com> knowing together precedes the consciousness of self, just as Bruner (1987) indicated. This suggests co-6 consciousness might be better understand as, simply, cultural consciousness. To the extent that coconsciousness can be equated with cultural consciousness, its boundaries seem to fluctuate as do the individuals in an identifiable group, but such boundaries certainly exceed individual embodiment. So, though individual phenomenology may "vanish with the body", co-consciousness, i.e., cultural consciousness does not. In any case, it can be seen that conscious behavioural learning is in accord with the third dimension of evolution in Jablonka and Lamb (2006). Furthermore, human co-consciousness is made possible only with the emergence into symbolic interaction, which depends on the group, so Rochat's final stage of individual development matches the fourth dimension of evolution found in Jablonka and Lamb. This is sufficient coverage of Rochat for now to serve my purpose. It should be clear that Rochat's views on the origin of self-consciousness lie beyond the individual brain in co-consciousness – which I feel is better identified as cultural consciousness – thus in cultural creativity or construction. For such mutuality of identity to emerge, some form of symbolic communication (or interaction), such as language, is necessary as the basis for what might even better be called symbolic communion. In this way, we might be seen as the self-creative species, the species that has achieved cultural consciousness at least some of the time. Other times, admittedly, our self-created cultures find themselves hostile to each other (or within each other) and the biggest threat to human existence becomes other human existents. 5. Conclusion I have undertaken this compressed survey to demonstrate how a line of thinking that I have called cultural creativity, akin to cultural constructivism, began between the polar extremes of environmental determinism, i.e., behaviourism, and genetic determinism, i.e., neo-Darwinism, the latter of which dominates evo-devo theories today in a less deterministic fashion in the guises of sociobiology, evolutionary psychology, and the information processing model of cognitivism. I have traced the line that emphasizes human creativity in the face of nonspecific necessity (perhaps in the nature of an existential crisis) through revisionist evolutionary theories, social behaviourism, social psychology, symbolic interactionism, constructive theories of memory, autopoietic systems theory in biology, and through narrative theories in linguistics. Finally, I have shone a light on recent research that emphasizes the attainment of degrees of freedom via the complexities of symbolic culture – especially in Jablonka and Lamb (2006), Tomasello (2008, 2014, 2015), and Rochat (2009). Such cultural creativity implies the possibility that we have entered the level of consciousness in which we are able to direct our own evolution and development (perhaps in the creative unconscious), but I have also hinted that the failure to rise to such terrible responsibility could be humanity's undoing. Mead (1934), as often, anticipated this viewpoint. Philosopher Paul Ricoeur later made the strong case for individual 6 subjectivity (self-consciousness) arising from intersubjectivity, a primary identification with others, in Oneself as Another (1995). Learning the social codes of language already implies being drawn into otherness (Cassirer, 1944; Deacon, 1997; Kristeva, 1989). Identifying with others before we learn to objectively identify our selves with our embodied experience means such positions as the cognitivist theory of mind and philosophic solipsism become absurd. 133 ©Research Institute for Progression of Knowledge www.ripknet.org I would like to bring this survey to close with a very brief look at the implications of accepting and applying this recent research into cultural creativity in the fields of education, politics, and ontology. However, the major authors I've cited have directly endorsed none of these implications. In education, it need only be said that fostering joint or collective intentionality requires a firm mastery of expressive symbolic interaction, especially language, to leave childhood's behavioural third dimension of Jablonka and Lamb (2006) and enter the symbolic fourth dimension. To attain the independent agency that comes with full self-consciousness requires that we accept our dependence on and responsibility to others with whom we must learn to relate cooperatively or in the rationally based manner of fair-play competition. We need to be taught social conscience, which is already presaged by the infant's primary empathy. This recalls the suggestions that have been made for decades to do with guided group work or group projects that involve joint intentions or even social engagement projects that call upon collective intentions. Education would have to be based in real experience and built on democratic principles. Sound familiar? It should, but the progressive theories of John Dewey (1916) and others have never been implemented across the curriculum or throughout the nation. Entering the emerging age of the Internet may change all that. In politics, to the evident distress of many, the work cited above points to the vital importance of collective action, putting community needs before those of the individual and distributing the wealth fairly but not necessarily equally amongst the population. This appears to be the way that our ancestors first created cultures and self-conscious persons within those communities, with the added necessity of self-referential symbolic communication, of course. The faith in "enlightened self-interest" now appears to be a recent invention based in the misinterpretation of nature as found in social Darwinism and used by the privileged ever since to justify their unequal hoarding of wealth and power. What's most natural to humans, however, is sharing and living together for the good of all, i.e., cultural consciousness and social conscience. There are ontological implications of these evo-devo theories of cultural creativity, too. This is not the first time that cultural creativity as opposed to genetics alone has been given credit for the awakening of symbolic human culture (cf. Bergson, 1983; Cassirer, 1944; Dewart, 1989; Greenspan & Shanker, 2004; Richerson & Boyd, 2005). But cultural creativity could not be the creation of creativity; creativity did not make its first appearance with culture but in fact must be assumed to be an aspect of evolution, the primary mover of the universe itself (cf. Baldwin, 1894; Bergson, 1911/1983; Capra, 1996; Ho, 2003; Maturana & Varela, 1980). Kauffman (2008) refers to creativity in nature as sacred while Nagel (2012) sees it as implying a teleology, a purpose, in evolution; both identify themselves as atheists. In this way, creativity itself is seen as the autopoietic source of destinies – as the strange attractor of systems theory – and should be respected as such if not held in awe (though A. N. 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/03/12 02:43Jethro Masís / SIMULACRO: APUNTES SOBRE NIETZSCHE | ADAMAR Página 1 de 9http://adamar.org/ivepoca/node/1157 J E T H R O M A S Í S / S I M U L A C R O : A P U N T E S S O B R E N I E T Z S C H E © C. Dolores Escudero En su 'Ensayo de Autocrítica', Nietzsche mismo ha dado una respuesta a la pregunta por el motivo central de Die Geburt der Tragödie, si bien a manera interrogativa: ¿Qué significa, justo entre los griegos de la época mejor, más fuerte, más valiente, el mito de lo trágico? ¿Y el fenómeno enorme de lo dionisíaco? ¿Qué significa, nacida de él, la tragedia? –Y por otro lado: aquello de lo que murió la tragedia, el socratismo de la moral, la dialéctica, la suficiencia y la jovialidad del hombre teórico– ¿Cómo? ¿No podría ser justo ese socratismo un signo de declive, de fatiga, de enfermedad, de unos instintos que se disuelven de modo anárquico? ¿Y la 'jovialidad griega' del helenismo tardío, tan sólo un arrebol de crepúsculo? ¿La voluntad epicúrea contra el pesimismo, tan sólo una precaución del hombre que sufre? Y la ciencia misma, nuestra ciencia –sí, ¿qué significa en general, vista como síntoma de vida, toda ciencia? ¿Para qué, peor aún, de dónde– toda ciencia? ¿Cómo? ¿Acaso es el cientificismo nada más que un EN LA RED DESDE EL AÑO 2000 * IV ÉPOCABuscar 10/03/12 02:43Jethro Masís / SIMULACRO: APUNTES SOBRE NIETZSCHE | ADAMAR Página 2 de 9http://adamar.org/ivepoca/node/1157 miedo al pesimismo y una escapatoria frente a él? ¿Una defensa sutil obligada contra la verdad? (2000: 26-27). En efecto, en el primer libro de Nietzsche se anuncian ya los temas más característicos de su trayecto filosófico, pero es sobre todo el talante genealógico, destructivo y desmantelador de la investigación nietzscheana, el que se manifiesta en su primera obra. Nietzsche mismo puedo haber equivocado el carácter de su obra, y de ahí deviene comprensible el que la comunidad de filólogos haya manifestado un expreso rechazo a Die Geburt der Tragödie. En una misiva dirigida a Ritschl el 30 de enero de 1872, Nietzsche expresa su extrañeza ante el silencio del maestro ante su obra: "Supongo que no tomará usted a mal mi asombro por no haber recibido de usted una sola palabra sobre mi libro recientemente publicado, ni tampoco la franqueza con que me dispongo a expresárselo. Siendo mi libro algo así como un manifiesto, incita a todos menos al silencio. Quizá se maraville usted cuando le diga la impresión que suponía habría de producirle a usted, mi respetado maestro" (1999: 103). Nietzsche estimaba éste su manifiesto como una obra neurálgica; una obra preñada de esperanzas "para nuestra ciencia de la Antigüedad y para la ciencia alemana" (1999: idem). Y sus pretensiones no eran menos ambiciosas: "Quiero, ante todo, influir de modo determinante sobre la joven generación de filólogos, y consideraría ignominioso para mí el no conseguirlo" (1999: idem). Ritschl responde evasivamente quince días después: "Soy demasiado viejo para buscar caminos de la vida y del espíritu completamente nuevos. Por naturaleza pertenezco en lo principal a la dirección y consideración históricas de las cosas humanas, y ello de modo tan decidido, que no me parece que la redención del mundo se haya encontrado nunca en uno u otro de los sistemas filosóficos" (1999: 103104, n. 93). Pueden sacarse dos conclusiones de la respuesta de Ritschl. En primer lugar, su mención a los sistemas filosóficos y a la redención del mundo, sugiere el ámbito que ha de colocarse el libro de Nietzsche: la metafísica y la especulación, que para un hombre de talante científico como Ritschl siempre resultan vacuas e insustanciales. Pero en segundo lugar, es clara la falta de franqueza del maestro ante el discípulo. En su diario personal, al que solamente, al parecer, confiaba Ritschl la verdad, escribe el viejo profesor: "Carta increíble de Nietzsche (= megalomanía)" (2 de febrero, 1872). Pero ya el 1871, apenas terminada la lectura del texto, había escrito en su diario: "Libro de Nietzsche. Nacimiento de la Tragedia (= ingeniosa borrachera)" (31 de diciembre, 1871). La violenta reacción subsecuente del panfleto de Wilamowitz-Möllendorf, ¡Filología del Futuro! Una Respuesta al Nacimiento de la Tragedia, se explaya con mucha mayor exención en la denuncia. Nietzsche, básicamente, es un mal filólogo y un helenista incapaz; no conoce a Homero, lee mal a Eurípides, e ignora, de la misma forma, a los trágicos, teniendo el descaro de estar impartiendo a la sazón un curso sobre Las Coéforas de Esquilo, etcétera. Reproduzco a continuación las palabras con que Wilamowitz-Möllendorf cierra su diatriba contra Nietzsche (en que también se acusa al profesor de Basilea de borracho): Verdaderamente, yo no soy un místico ni un hombre trágico, para mí todo eso no podrá ser nunca otra cosa que un 'accesorio divertido, nada más que un tintineo, del que sin duda se puede prescindir, añadido a la seriedad de la existencia', y también a la 10/03/12 02:43Jethro Masís / SIMULACRO: APUNTES SOBRE NIETZSCHE | ADAMAR Página 3 de 9http://adamar.org/ivepoca/node/1157 seriedad de la ciencia: sueño de un embriagado o embriaguez de un soñador. Una cosa exijo, sin embargo: que el señor Nietzsche se atenga a lo que dice, que empuñe el tirso, que vaya de la India o a Grecia, pero que baje de la cátedra desde donde debe enseñar la ciencia; que reúna tigres y panteras a sus pies, pero no a la juventud filológica de Alemania, la cual debe aprender, en la ascesis de un trabajo en el que renuncia uno a sí mismo, a buscar únicamente la verdad (citado por Barrios, 2002: 131). La primacía de la mentira Con todo, ¿sabe el filólogo científico, que, de forma tan oronda y petulante se escandaliza, de qué va eso de la verdad? Nietzsche lo niega rotundamente, puesto que lo que no sabe quien se adscribe a la verdad incondicionalmente es que la verdad no acusa su fundamento y no es más que algo superficial y mero resultado. En Sobre Verdad y Mentira en Sentido Extramoral (1873), afloran más expeditamente las tesis paradójicas nietzscheanas ya trabajadas genealógicamente en su primer obra: la verdad no se funda en la verdad, el fundamento de la moral no es, de suyo, moral, lo mismo que el origen de la razón no es racional. (Aplicaciones ulteriores podrían versar así: la ciencia no puede ser investigada científicamente, el problema de la técnica no es, a su vez, técnico, etcétera). El proyecto investigativo fundado por Nietzsche ciertamente no es científico, pero ello, no porque la ciencia carezca de importancia o porque nos hallemos en busca de oscuridades místicas y sentimiento ebrios oscuros, sino sólo porque la ciencia no es más que la superficie del algo que la filosofía debe investigar. La inversión llevada a cabo por Nietzsche significa lo siguiente: lo fundante, el fondo genuino de toda verdad, es un error. La mentira es lo primero, y no la verdad. Pero la tesis aquí no es una mera broma o una ingeniosa borrachera, sino que se cubre de un fuerte carácter ontológico afirmativo, porque lo que hay es, ciertamente, mentira, ilusión y ficción; y ello en un sentido positivo, es decir, ponente, creativo y potenciador. La verdad en sentido extramoral significa redimensionarla en sus contornos estéticos. En un sentido antropológico, esto significa caer en la cuenta de todo lo artístico y creativo que hay en el ser humano. El carácter ontológico del esteticismo nietzscheano implica concebir la primacía del arte no como una tesis de Nietzsche, sino más bien como un dato antropológico, es decir, como algo cuyos derechos han de ser reconocidas de suyo. ¿Cómo se miente el ser humano? Fundando la verdad como un presunto des-ocultamiento de un ámbito en-sí. Pero lo en-sí no es más que un antropomorfismo. Sólo hay, en efecto, para-sí. En este sentido, "el filósofo es de la opinión de que, desde todas partes, los ojos del universo están dirigidos telescópicamente a sus obras y pensamientos" (1990: 41). Desde un punto de vista afirmativo, la primacía creativa y estética implica que el arte de la ficción alcanza su punto máximo en el ser humano, y esto no quiere decir sino que ha de adscribírsele una primacía ontológica a la metáfora. Ahora bien, repitamos el apotegma nietzscheano controversial con el fin de clarificarlo: en último término, las verdades del hombre no son más que sus errores irrefutables. ¿Qué quiere decir que la verdad sea un error? No, ciertamente, que haya algo así como 'el error' en contraposición con 'la verdad', como si el error por sí mismo tuviese el contenido y el estatuto de aquello en-sí. Que la verdad sea un error quiere decir que se sustenta de 10/03/12 02:43Jethro Masís / SIMULACRO: APUNTES SOBRE NIETZSCHE | ADAMAR Página 4 de 9http://adamar.org/ivepoca/node/1157 una ficción, aunque se trata de una ilusión productiva y que produce resultados prácticos. Esta ficción se manifiesta en el concepto que, por una parte, supone un estrechamiento de lo real. Aquí hemos de entender el concepto del lado de la verdad y la mentira del lado de lo metafórico, pues el concepto no es más que una metáfora extrapolada que, en cuanto tal, se ignora en tanto mentira, es decir, en tanto ficción. En el error de la verdad, el ser humano se ignora a sí mismo en tanto ese poderoso creador creativo, es decir, en tanto esteta y creador de metáforas; se emboba, así, en la torpeza del concepto y cae en la verdad de las pretendidas certezas. Es claro que hay motivos para la admiración cuando se cae en la cuenta de que el ser humano es un inventor de realidades y que ha dominado la realidad por el recurso a lo metafórico. Pero el escarnio nietzscheano se sustenta en el señalamiento de que, con todo, si nos olvidamos del trasfondo estético de la existencia, cabe la peligrosa posibilidad de la esclerosis, a saber, del embotamiento y la rigidez que estorben la prodigación del sentido ad infinitum. El concepto es una metáfora cristalizada que, correlativamente, funda una realidad igualmente rígida, es decir, una pretendida realidad. Nietzsche aclara la génesis del concepto como sigue: Todo concepto se forma igualando lo no igual. Del mismo modo que es cierto que una hoja nunca es totalmente igual a otra, asimismo es cierto que el concepto de hoja se ha formado al prescindir arbitrariamente de esas diferencias individuales, al olvidar lo diferenciante, y entonces provoca la representación, como si en la naturaleza, además de hojas, hubiese algo que fuese la 'hoja', una especie de forma primordial, según la cual todas las hojas hubiesen sido tejidas, dibujadas, calibradas, coloreadas, onduladas, pintadas, pero por manos torpes, de modo que ningún ejemplar hubiese resultado correcto y fidedigno como copia fiel de la forma primordial (1990: 44). Desde un punto de vista positivo, es lo metafórico y la capacidad para la ficción lo que puede tenerse como dato antropológico por antonomasia. Ante el absolutismo de la realidad (Blumenberg), según el cual el ser humano no tenía ni mucho menos las condiciones determinantes de su sobrevivencia, el concepto representa un salto de la imaginación. La imaginación, en efecto, trueca el horizonte lejano en una esperanza duradera de dar alcance hasta lo que era ignoto. Hablamos acá de un rendimiento extra de la metáfora y de la mentira: de la capacidad de prevención, del adelantamiento a lo aún no ocurrido, del enfoque hacia aquello que está ausente en el horizonte, es decir, paradójicamente de una suerte de intencionalidad sin objeto, posibilitado por el trabajo de la metáfora y de la capacidad de la ficción. En esto, el concepto viene precedido por un estado de prevención, de incertidumbre y de angustia. Las intuiciones de Nietzsche se entroncan en la tradición de antropología filosófica que, de Herder a Gehlen, había definido a ser humano como un Mängelwesen, es decir, como un ser carencial. Pero es de la carencia, de la falta de especialización de sus órganos, desde donde se potencia la imaginación humana. Basta echar, al respecto, una mirada a la técnica y al conjunto de creaciones espirituales del hombre: la técnica se funda en la imaginación. Un tractor que derriba escombros es una gran mano, aunque superada (superación de órganos); el burro de carga, precisamente, descarga de la pesada labor de llevar por kilómetros un peso insoportable (descarga de órganos), las alas de un avión sustituyen aquellas de que el ser humano carece (sustitución de órganos). 10/03/12 02:43Jethro Masís / SIMULACRO: APUNTES SOBRE NIETZSCHE | ADAMAR Página 5 de 9http://adamar.org/ivepoca/node/1157 El ser humano, en cuanto artista por antonomasia, se ha valido de la imaginación y de la ficción para superar su carácter inespecífico. De ahí la afamada definición antropológica de Nietzsche: el hombre es el animal no fijado, o como dice Scheler, el gran NO de la realidad. Es a partir de la imaginación que el hombre ha vivido y sobrevivido abriéndose espacios habitables, es decir, creando mundo. La verdad, en este caso, sería una función existencial, porque permite la conclusión de que hay algo familiar en lo inhóspito y hostil, de la misma forma que hay explicaciones para lo inexplicable y nombres para lo innombrable e innominado. Lo que se identifica con nombres es liberado de su carácter extraño y alienante a través del trabajo de la metáfora y la narración de historias moldea ulteriormente el sentido que el ser humano da a su existencia. El homo pictor, digámoslo con Blumenberg, "no es únicamente el productor de pinturas rupestres para prácticas mágicas de caza, sino también un ser que juega a saltar por encima de su falta de seguridad mediante una proyección de imágenes" (2003: 16). Si hay ulteriores motivos de escarnio, no es a causa de que Nietzsche sea un irracionalista destructor porque sí del concepto y de la razón, sino porque la razón que no se dimensiona a partir de su fundamento estético tiende naturalmente a una teologización alienante: la de no reconocer el trabajo de la metáfora. Si alguien esconde una cosa detrás de un matorral, después la busca de nuevo exactamente allí y, además, la encuentra, en esa búsqueda y en ese hallazgo no hay, pues, mucho que alabar. Sin embargo, esto es lo que sucede al buscar y al encontrar la 'verdad' dentro de la jurisdicción de la razón. Si doy la definición de mamífero y luego, después de examinar a un camello, digo: 'Fíjate, un mamífero', no cabe duda de que con ello se ha traído a la luz una verdad, pero es de valor inmediato, quiero decir que es antropomórfica de pies a cabeza y no contiene ni un solo punto que sea 'verdadero en sí', real y universalmente válido, prescindiendo del ser humano (1990: 46). En la teologización alienante del saber, el ser humano no se reconoce en su obra. Las verdades científicas se le manifiestan alienantes, es decir, desconectadas de su fisiología. Estamos, así, a las puertas de la dimensión epocal de esta problemática: el nihilismo como la definitiva instalación de una objetividad que carece de conexión carnal. El Nihilismo Contrariamente a las opiniones que circulan del nihilismo como una actitud subjetiva de algunos filósofos foráneos, el nihilismo del que hablamos, no es la postura ni el criterio de nadie. El nihilismo es algunas veces asociado periodísticamente con la pérdida de los valores supremos (aquí en un uso moralista del término) o del fundamento inconcuso, de la piedra de toque de todo conocimiento absoluto; también con la muerte de Dios, el ateísmo moderno, el desplazamiento hasta una 'x' y todos los descentramientos que se puedan pensar (aunque nuestra época siga siendo ampliamente teológica y moralista, precisamente por nihilista). Diríase que, cuando así se concibe, hay aquí un resabio de la resonancia filosófica del término que se asocia a la acuñación nietzscheana de la transmutación de todos los valores. Es a Nietzsche, en efecto, a quien se debe la expresión 'nihilismo europeo' (cf. 'Der europäische Nihilismus', KGW VI 2, 426; KGW VIII 2, 313). Digo 'periodísticamente', como cuando 10/03/12 02:43Jethro Masís / SIMULACRO: APUNTES SOBRE NIETZSCHE | ADAMAR Página 6 de 9http://adamar.org/ivepoca/node/1157 se remite al nihilismo a una suerte de corriente aciaga, o movimiento filosófico antimoderno, pasible de ser reducido a lemas y a tesis. El nihilismo sería una pose postmoderna, irremediablemente relativista e incluso reaccionaria (en tanto, según el criterio de Jameson, lógica cultural del capitalismo tardío). Digo, de nuevo, 'periodísticamente', porque estamos hablando de filosofar y la palabra 'nada', de la que deriva el 'nihil' del nihilismo, se mantiene aquí impensada, si bien tiene una tradición de discusión milenaria. ¿Quién es el nihilista: el que no cree en nada y abiertamente se refugia en el relativismo y en un confesado ateísmo o, más bien, el que cree en todo, en Dios, en la Democracia y en los pretendidos grandes ideales de Occidente? Voy a dar unas razones apresuradas (de carácter filosófico) con el fin de sostener que, de alguna forma, el cuestionamiento es falso, porque el nihilismo no es, no puede ser, la pose de nadie, ni la decisión de nadie, ni atañe a la perspectiva subjetivista de nadie. Es, por así decirlo, un acaecimiento historial. En concordancia con las reflexiones tardías de Nietzsche al respecto, el nihilismo es el rasgo distintivo de la cultura europea que, ahora lo sabemos bien, se ha expandido por toda la tierra. Se trata de la 'ciencia' (Wissenschaft) ni más ni menos, o de lo que ha posibilitado la actividad científica: la teoría. Que sepamos, es Nietzsche el primero en (α) trazar el parangón entre la teoría y la contemplación, y en (β) descubrir su núcleo esencialmente platónico. (α) En su primer libro de espanto, Die Geburt der Tragödie (1872), Nietzsche encuentra en la decadencia de lo trágico una suerte de ejercicio ficcional mediante el cual el espectador tiene la posibilidad de ver su propio destino de frente, ante sus ojos, y sin que lo implique, toque o involucre. Es el nacimiento de la 'representación' (Darstellung) que trueca en objeto el propio destino y causa, en quien así está contemplando, la ficción de la libertad respecto del destino. La actividad teorética se erige, por tanto, haciendo de la distancia ocular el principio de la objetividad. Se puede hablar aquí, como dice bien Sloterdijk, de una 'ontología ocular' (cf. 2001: 287). Visto esto desde una lógica del resultado (Logik der Resultat), las invectivas contra la teoría serían intempestivas, es decir, salidas de tiempo, porque cuestionan lo que una época engalanada con un dominio técnico inexpugnable reconoce como el logro más ingente del saber. (β) El platonismo, en añadidura, significa la reducción de la inmediatez de la vida a la Idea. Es una estrategia reduccionista en que se priorizan las ideas generales de las cosas aún en detrimento de las cosas tal como nos aparecen en las conexiones vitales. Aunque Nietzsche insista que no hay una sola línea recta en la naturaleza, la teoría no ve más que lo que puede reducirse a lo general y lo que se adecua a una teoría lógicamente consistente. Y así muestra su rostro nihilista: lo general ha de ser puesto como lo verdadero ante la multiplicidad de lo único e irrepetible. Sócrates reencarnará, para Nietzsche, el ideal de hombre europeo: el hombre teorético que inquiere, no por este acto justo o por aquél, sino por la justicia misma, por la Idea. El fenómeno del Cristianismo como 'platonismo del pueblo' involucra, a su vez, una suerte de 'tecnología del yo' (por hacernos aquí de una prestación de Foucault, cf. 2000: 45-94) en que las costumbres son también estimadas o valoradas desde una generalidad abstracta y no desde la vitalidad de los individuos. En toda teoría, que es presuntamente la gloria de Occidente que ha conducido a la era tecnológica, yace también la miseria europea. Así, la matematización de la naturaleza, el pensamiento calculador que todo lo categoriza, es al mismo tiempo la más grande 10/03/12 02:43Jethro Masís / SIMULACRO: APUNTES SOBRE NIETZSCHE | ADAMAR Página 7 de 9http://adamar.org/ivepoca/node/1157 conquista del pensamiento europeo y su más grande miseria. Es miserable porque se funda en un error (¡aunque funciona y brinda réditos prácticos innegables!) y porque trueca la vida en una mera apariencia. Todo esto, por lo demás, está tratado a fondo en La Crisis de las Ciencias Europeas de Husserl, en que se lanza la grave acusación de que la ciencia se mantiene en la preciencia cuando trata de dar cuenta de sí misma, porque, presionada por el afán de los resultados, desecha el sentido y tira la historia de su sentido por la borda. La ciencia se absolutiza a sí misma en una metodización de sus resultados, se formaliza, y se tecnifica al punto de que ya no puede dar cuenta de su arraigo en el mundo de la vida. La tecnificación resultante se manifiesta como una «metodología de utilización técnica» que «ha podido naturalmente heredarse, aún en ausencia de la aptitud de la evidencia originaria» (Hua VI: 377). Pero este destino del saber, habita in nuce en las reducciones del decir. 'Nunca nos libraremos de Dios mientras sigamos creyendo en la gramática' (según el afamado apotegma de El Ocaso de los Ídolos) significa que hay allí una estructura lógica general que se prioriza y convierte el lenguaje en un sistema controlable de reglas. El pensar simplificador grato a todo nihilismo teorético-reductivo hace del lenguaje un sistema reglamentario sobre el que habría que volverse para explicar también la inteligibilidad del mundo, y tiene por tesis el que en el lenguaje habita el sentido, pues, ¿no es ahí donde decimos lo que decimos? El problema no es el lenguaje, sino la creencia en su estructura apriórica y los falsos problemas lógicos, traslapados a la ontología, que derivan de ahí. La pregunta levantada en el seno de la filosofía analítica (la filosofía fundada en la superstición de la proposición como átomo del significado), how does language hook onto the world?, es, por tanto, falsa, y se asienta sobre una indiscutida dicotomía entre el sujeto y el objeto, pero sobre todo en una injustificada primacía de la presencia, esto es, del resultado, de lo apofántico. Casi se trata de un problema medioeval analógico, no ya entre Dios y el mundo, sino entre el mundo y el otro supersujeto que ha sustituido a Dios en la modernidad: el hombre. Antropoteísmo idolátrico transliterado, traducido, y vestido con los nuevos ropajes de los problemas de una teoría del conocimiento. Por ello, cabe la cuestión: ¿No habla Nietzsche también una lengua humana y no tiene que remitirse a los vocablos generales de un lenguaje compartido? ¿No pone también Nietzsche una tesis aunque se dirija furiosamente contra el nihilismo? Nietzsche lo sabe. Él sabe que sus aserciones pueden tomarse como sentencias que, a la vez, negarían o refutarían otras sentencias, sin salir de aquí del juego de las razones y de sus refutaciones. No saldríamos ni por mil años del problema de la tesis siempre que, al hablar, nos veamos obligados a la afirmación. Por eso, hay dos apariencias contradictorias que pululan de los textos nietzscheanos: por un lado, Nietzsche mismo ha afirmado ser 'el primer nihilista perfecto' de Europa. De ahí el que se repita tantas veces el disparate de que Nietzsche es un pensador nihilista. Pero también, a partir de lo ya argumentado en esta reflexión, hay la apariencia certera de una acérrima crítica del nihilismo. La contradictio in adjecto es una paradoja no ignota para Nietzsche y guarda un cierto carácter necesario. Aquí no hay ningún predicador crítico, cuya doctrina salvaría del nihilismo. El nihilismo es un acaecimiento historial infranqueable. En el juego lógico de las razones argumentadas y de las sonadas refutaciones actúa la voluntad de poder que se quiere universal y objetiva, sin saberse como voluntad y, en esto, como mera perspectiva. Ante esto, tan mal está quien aplaude las pretendidas razones de Nietzsche como su refutador; y 10/03/12 02:43Jethro Masís / SIMULACRO: APUNTES SOBRE NIETZSCHE | ADAMAR Página 8 de 9http://adamar.org/ivepoca/node/1157 ello porque enfrentan el texto como creyentes: bien para asentir con entusiasmo, ora para lanzar una invectiva ácida. El problema sigue siendo la tesis del decir que, al afirmar, podría conducir al asentimiento general y a la invocación de la presencia. Empero, al parecer toda respuesta al problema del nihilismo, en tanto afirma, puede ser ella misma nihilista, aunque critique al nihilismo. ¿Cómo criticar, entonces, al nihilismo sin ser absorbido por sus garras? ¿Cómo decir algo del nihilismo? O, si me permiten ahondar el cuestionamiento: ¿Cómo decir? ¿Se puede decir sin conceptuar? ¿Cómo decir, sin más? Desnudada la cosificación nihilista, es decir, la cristalización del concepto que se ignora como fundado en la mentira, ¿cómo decir sin cosificar? Estamos ante la paradoja de la tesis en la estela del nihilismo que cuestiona cómo enfrentarse con palabras contra la determinación operada por un sistema lingüístico inevitable sin que, al mismo tiempo, caigamos en contemplación teorética y absoluticemos la tética sin siquiera tocar la prototética. Como ha dicho Josef Simon, «[l]a objeción habitual de que un enunciado como el de que la 'verdad' es una 'especie de error' se contradice a sí mismo performativamente, puesto que según su forma tiene a su vez efectivamente una pretensión de verdad, no puede derribar la inquietud de Nietzsche, como tampoco puede hacerlo la objeción de que Nietzsche se dirige contra 'la' moral con una actitud moral» (1994: 101). Nietzsche está plenamente consciente de esta paradoja, o del carácter paradojal de la tesis. Y lo que tenemos en sus textos es un testimonio de un decir sin decir, de un decir sin querer decir, sin prédicas ni aserciones generales sobre el mundo ante las que cabría agachar la cabeza y persignarse. Si el problema son las cosas, ¿cómo las digo allende las explicaciones teoréticas? ¿Cómo evitar toda reificación reductiva? Responderemos, quizá de forma un tanto poética, que hay que dejar que se digan a sí mismas o que habría que escuchar su decir; un decir que ya siempre hemos escuchado al estar consignados a ellas. Empero, todo esto, es cierto, no deja de ser problemático. La respuesta de Nietzsche es una vuelta a aquello estético y fundante de ser humano, puesto que aún, podría decirse, sigue molestándonos nerviosamente la cuestión del decir: ¿Cómo decir? Diríase que sólo estéticamente. Nietzsche solía comparar sus textos con obras musicales. Sus textos serían como partituras que exigirían del lector la ejecución por parte propia. Nietzsche invita a un decir que prodigue el sentido, que lo multiplique. Sólo de esta forma, sabemos que estamos trabajando genuinamente: desde el fundamento imaginativo que, en principio, es el origen de todo lo conceptual. BIBLIOGRAFÍA Ansell-Pearson, Keith (1987) "Nietzsche's Overcoming of Kant and Metaphysics: From Tragedy to Nihilism". Nietzsche-Studien. 16, 310-339. Barrios, Manuel (2002) Voluntad de lo Trágico. El Concepto Nietzscheano de Voluntad a Partir de El Nacimiento de la Tragedia. Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva. Figal, Günter (2001) Nietzsche. Eine philosophische Einführung. Stuttgart: Philipp Reclam. Fink, Eugen (1960) Nietzsches Philosophie. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. Gerhardt, Volker (1994) "La Pregunta de Nietzsche Acerca del Sentido". Trad. C. Lambert. Seminarios de Filosofía. 7, 45-62. Habermas, Jürgen (1989) El Discurso Filosófico de la Modernidad. Trad. M. Jiménez Redondo. Madrid: Taurus. 10/03/12 02:43Jethro Masís / SIMULACRO: APUNTES SOBRE NIETZSCHE | ADAMAR Página 9 de 9http://adamar.org/ivepoca/node/1157 Heidegger, Martin (2000) Nietzsche. (Dos volúmenes). Trad. J. L. Vermal. Barcelona: Destino. Nehamas, Alexander (1985) Nietzsche. Life as Literature. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Nietzsche, Friedrich (1990) Sobre Verdad y Mentira en Sentido Extramoral. Trad. L. Valdés & T. Ordúa. Madrid: Tecnos. _____. (1998) El Ocaso de los Ídolos. Trad. E. Echavarren. Barcelona: Tusquets. _____. (1999) Epistolario. Trad. L. López-Ballesteros. Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva. _____. (2000) El Nacimiento de la Tragedia o Grecia y el Pesimismo. Trad. A. Sánchez Pascual. Madrid: Alianza. _____. (2001) La Ciencia Jovial. Trad. G. Cano. Madrid: Biblioteca Nueva. Putnam, Hilary (1994) Cómo Renovar la Filosofía. Trad. C. Laguna. Madrid: Cátedra. Rojas Peralta, Sergio (2004) "Discusión sobre '¿Existe una Teoría del Conocimiento en la Filosofía de Nietzsche?' de J. M. Romero Cuevas". Revista de Filosofía de la Universidad de Costa Rica. XLII (106-107), 133-146. 211-213. Romero, Cuevas, José Manuel (2004) "¿Existe una Teoría del Conocimiento en la Filosofía de Nietzsche?" Revista de Filosofía de la Universidad de Costa Rica. XLII (106-107), 133-146. Simon, Josef (1994) "Nietzsche y el Problema del Nihilismo Europeo". Trad. M. de la Maza. Seminarios de Filosofía. 7, 91-105. Volpi, Franco (2007) El Nihilismo. Trad. C. del Rosso & A. Vigo. Madrid: Siruela. Fuente: PhiBLÓGsopho Subir | {
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* Bacharel em Direito pela Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Especialista em Direito Público pela Faculdade Meridional (IMED), Mestre em Filosofia pela UFRGS, Doutorando em Filosofia pela UFRGS. Analista do Banco Central desde 2011, lotado no Departamento de Supervisão de Cooperativas e de Instituições Não Bancárias (Desuc). A Crise Moral: a responsabilidade de administradores de instituições financeiras e o argumento da inevitabilidade Ramiro de Ávila Peres* Introdução: a explicação cognitiva e a explicação moral da crise financeira. 1 A crise inevitável. 1.1 A tese-alvo: o argumento a partir do inevitável. 2 Krishna, Shakespeare e Tuld: do fatalismo à teoria da decisão racional. 2.1 Resultado e considerações de responsabilidade pessoal. 2.2 Fatalismo e absurdo. 2.3 O paradoxo do agente fatalista. Conclusão. Resumo Este ensaio argumenta, mediante análise conceitual, contra uma objeção a reprovações dirigidas a financistas após a crise de 2007/2008: a ideia de que não poderiam ter agido de outra forma (ao menos não racionalmente) e de que ninguém deve ser responsabilizado por um fato que não poderia ter evitado. Se correta, ela ameaçaria a justificabilidade da responsabilidade social da empresa e da responsabilidade jurídica de administradores. Identificada como a "tese da inevitabilidade", essa objeção é ilustrada por uma análise do filme Margin Call (2011) e associada a outras investigações sobre ética e responsabilidade. A tese-alvo decorre de uma confusão entre diferentes noções de responsabilidade (por uma tarefa, por uma decisão, por causar um evento e por repará-lo) e conduz a uma forma incoerente de fatalismo. Sugere-se, por fim, que a invocação da 16 Revista da PGBC – Brasília – v. 10 – n. 2 – dez. 2016 – p. 15-35 Ramiro de Ávila Peres "inevitabilidade" pode ser uma forma de racionalizar a decisão, obscurecendo as razões em contrário. Palavras-chave: Ética. Inevitabilidade. Responsabilidade. Responsabilidade Jurídica. Racionalidade. Teoria da Decisão. The Moral Crisis: responsibility of financial institutions' managers and the inevitability argument Abstract This essay argues, through conceptual analysis, against an objection to reproaches addressed to financiers after the Crisis of 2007-8: the idea that they could not have acted otherwise (at least, not rationally) and that no one should be blamed for a fact one could not have avoided. If correct, this would threaten the justifiability of corporate social responsibility and legal responsibility of directors. Identified as the "thesis of inevitability", this objection is illustrated by an analysis of the film Margin Call (2011) and associated with other investigations on ethics and responsibility. This target-thesis follows from a confusion between different notions of responsibility (for an assignment, for a judgment, and causal and liability responsibility) and leads to an inconsistent form of fatalism. It is suggested, finally, that invoking the "inevitability" can be a way to rationalize the decision, obscuring reasons against it. Keywords: Ethics. Inevitability. Responsibility. Liability. Rationality. Decision Theory. [...] But their jobs often entailed exploiting others or living off the results of such exploitation. There was individualism but no individual responsibility. [...] society cannot function well if people do not take responsibility for the consequences of their actions. "I was just doing my job" cannot be a defense. (STIGLITZ, 2010b) Artigos 17 A Crise Moral: a responsabilidade de administradores de instituições financeiras e o argumento da inevitabilidade Introdução: a explicação cognitiva e a explicação moral da crise financeira Anos após a quebra do conglomerado financeiro Lehman Brothers, ainda se contam, pelo menos, dois tipos de história sobre a "Grande Recessão" (KLING, 2010), a primeira grande crise econômica do século XXI. Segundo a "explicação cognitiva", a crise foi ocasionada por um "problema epistemológico": os executivos de instituições financeiras (além de reguladores, auditores e o restante do mercado) subestimaram os riscos incorridos e o grau de alavancagem das instituições. Isso foi agravado pela falta de conhecimento público do volume de obrigações "fora do balanço" (off-sheet balance) e dos riscos sistêmicos decorrentes da engenharia financeira, como a securitização de créditos hipotecários (que, supostamente, deveriam mitigar riscos, ao permitir sua diluição dentro do mercado). Seria, portanto, um caso especial de falha no gerenciamento de risco, que ou poderia ter sido prevenido mediante níveis maiores de capital para absorver possíveis perdas, ou, numa visão mais pessimista, simplesmente não poderia ser prevenido de qualquer forma – afinal, as análises de economistas são incapazes de lidar com o que Taleb & Martin (2012) chamam de "cisnes negros" (uma classe de eventos imprevisíveis com consequências devastadoras)1. Por outro lado, de acordo com o que chamaremos de "explicação moral", a estrutura de remuneração dos executivos de instituições financeiras os teria estimulado a colocá-las em risco excessivo a fim de, no curto prazo, auferir bônus maiores (STIGLITZ, 2010). Trata-se, portanto, de uma falha de governança, e o desastre poderia ter sido evitado se a estrutura organizacional dessas instituições ensejasse maior transparência e controles efetivos em relação às decisões dos gestores, ou se eles houvessem agido de forma mais responsável – adotando, por exemplo, níveis mais prudentes de alavancagem. A segunda linha de explicação é bastante popular e tem sido politicamente explorada desde o início da crise. Ela exemplifica a usual crítica de economistas políticos ao fato de que economistas e analistas de mercado, em geral, ignoram 1 Isso não significa que Taleb e Martin privilegiem a explicação cognitiva; na realidade, ela seria complementada pela explicação moral. Eles escrevem, por exemplo, que a "melhor regra de gerenciamento de risco" já escrita é a prescrição, pelo Código de Hamurabi, da condenação do construtor à morte, caso uma casa caia, matando seu morador (TALEB; MARTIN, 2012, p. 50). É o que chamam de "heurística da pele em jogo" – i.e., regras que garantam que os responsáveis pela criação e pelo gerenciamento de um risco suportem as consequências do acontecimento. 18 Revista da PGBC – Brasília – v. 10 – n. 2 – dez. 2016 – p. 15-35 Ramiro de Ávila Peres restrições morais (vide, e.g., SEN, 1977; DELFIM NETTO, 2016, A02). Ainda, fundamenta o recente debate na política americana (uma rara convergência entre o programa de democratas e republicanos) sobre a adoção de uma legislação mais rigorosa (como a divisão de grandes bancos e a reintrodução da plataforma Glass-Steagall) no setor financeiro (WEISSMANN, 2016), bem como, no nível internacional e no Brasil, a ênfase na adoção de princípios de governança corporativa e de responsabilidade social por parte das instituições financeiras (a exemplo da Resolução no 4.327, de 25 de abril de 2014, do Conselho Monetário Nacional). Por outro lado, há quem defenda que, mesmo que a "explicação moral" seja verdadeira, isso não justifica a reprovação dirigida aos financistas. Richard Posner (2010, p. 111), e.g., comenta, de forma crítica, o clamor público gerado pela crise financeira de 2007-8: "Calling bankers greedy for taking advantage of profit opportunities created by unsound government policies is like calling rich people greedy for allowing Medicare to reimburse their medical bills". Posner chama atenção (corretamente) para a necessidade de que o governo e seus oficiais assumam responsabilidade moral – afinal, é dever dos reguladores estabelecer normas (e dos supervisores, aplicá-las) a fim de evitar, dentro do possível, eventos desse tipo. Mas esse autor parece pressupor que tal dever exclui a responsabilização dos homens de negócios – dos quais só se pode esperar que ajam visando a maximizar seus próprios interesses e os dos respectivos acionistas; desde que observem a legislação, eles podem alegar que estavam apenas "fazendo seu trabalho". Nossa hipótese é que essa tentativa de isentar os agentes econômicos dessa reprovação é fundamentada por um tipo de argumentação (chamemo-la de argumento da inevitabilidade) mais geral sobre o conceito de responsabilidade: uma vez que um agente acredita, justificadamente, que um fato ocorrerá e que ele não o pode evitar, é permitido contribuir para com esse fato, a fim de colher os respectivos benefícios – donde seria injustificado imputar-lhe responsabilidade pela ocorrência do referido fato. De uma maneira mais sintética, "se x não pode evitar a situação S, x não é responsável por S". A solução desse problema é relevante tanto para uma teoria da responsabilidade social da empresa quanto para a teoria da responsabilidade pessoal (civil, ou mesmo criminal) de administradores. Afinal, se a tese da inevitabilidade fosse Artigos 19 A Crise Moral: a responsabilidade de administradores de instituições financeiras e o argumento da inevitabilidade correta, a instituição de disposições jurídicas que incorporem a "heurística da pele em jogo" (como a responsabilidade solidária dos administradores por danos causados durante sua gestão, em caso de liquidação da instituição financeira, prevista no art. 40 da Lei no 6.024, de 13 de março de 1974, e a punição pelo crime de gestão temerária – art. 4o, parágrafo único, da Lei no 7.492, de 16 de junho de 1986) e de uma cultura de business ethics seria moralmente injustificável – mesmo que constituísse uma maneira eficiente de incentivar comportamentos desejados. Ao expor a tese da inevitabilidade na seção a seguir, buscaremos ilustrá-la com algumas cenas extraídas do filme Margin Call (2011); a partir daí, traçaremos um paralelo com os comentários de Amartya Sen (2006) em Ideas of Justice sobre o diálogo entre Arjuna e Krishna no épico religioso Baghavad-Gita. A comparação permite mostrar que a tese da inevitabilidade depende de uma confusão entre diferentes noções de responsabilidade e de alguma forma de fatalismo – como analisado nas seções 2.1 e 2.2. Concluímos com a aposta de que o eventual defensor da tese da inevitabilidade não pretende aceitar a consequência desse tipo de fatalismo: o esvaziamento da própria noção de deliberação. 1 A crise inevitável Duas cenas do filme Margin Call (2011) podem ilustrar o que está em jogo: na primeira, executivos de um banco de investimentos de New York debatem sobre o que fazer diante da descoberta de que a volatilidade dos seus derivativos securitizados por hipotecas está prestes a superar os níveis históricos (i.e., o valor de mercado desses ativos tende a cair em breve); considerando a alavancagem da firma, isso os levará à falência. John Tuld (interpretado por Jeremy Irons), CEO da instituição, decide desfazer-se de todos esses títulos o mais rápido possível, mesmo que isso implique contaminar seus clientes (e o mercado em geral), e justifica sua decisão com o consagrado "lema do filme": there are three ways to make a living in this business: be first, be smarter, or cheat. Em outra cena, mais próxima do fim do filme, Tuld é confrontado por Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey), chefe dos traders, o qual, com remorso por ter participado da venda dos ativos (precipitando uma crise financeira e causando a ruína de investidores que confiavam na firma), pede demissão. O CEO responde 20 Revista da PGBC – Brasília – v. 10 – n. 2 – dez. 2016 – p. 15-35 Ramiro de Ávila Peres diminuindo a gravidade do que fizeram: é o mesmo que vinham fazendo há anos; e enumera diversas crises econômicas ao longo da história, aduzindo sua inevitabilidade – tudo que eles poderiam fazer seria aproveitar a oportunidade: John Tuld: It's just money; it's made up. Pieces of paper with pictures on it so we don't have to kill each other just to get something to eat. It's not wrong. And it's certainly no different today than it's ever been. 1637, 1797, 1819, 37, 57, 84, 1901, 07, 29, 1937, 1974, 1987 [...], 92, 97, 2000 and whatever we want to call this. It's all just the same thing over and over; we can't help ourselves. And you and I can't control it, or stop it, or even slow it. Or even ever-so-slightly alter it. We just react. And we make a lot money if we get it right. And we get left by the side of the side of the road if we get it wrong. Tuld não está sendo cínico (ao menos não completamente2); ele não enxerga qualquer razão para recriminação em sua conduta – vide a ênfase dada na dissociação anterior em relação ao "trapaceiro". A firma estaria apenas agindo de acordo com as regras e a ética do mercado, fazendo o necessário, o que qualquer outro faria; e, se isso vier a causar algum infortúnio geral, Tuld não se responsabiliza por isso. A forma de pensar de John Tuld não é uma exceção; em boa medida, ele pode ser identificado com a conduta de executivos do Banco Goldman Sachs, o qual, no início da crise de 2008, vendia derivativos atrelados a créditos hipotecários a seus clientes e, simultaneamente, comprava swaps apostando contra esses derivativos – o que lhe rendeu um processo da Securities and Exchange Comission, encerrado por um acordo de U$550 milhões (SOLOMON; MORRISON; WILHELM JR., 2012). Tuld não é sequer um ideólogo do livre mercado – mesmo porque sua visão sobre o ciclo de negócios é pessimista. Ele poderia ser como o financista (e filantropo) George Soros, o qual traça uma distinção entre sua atuação como agente de mercado e como um cidadão. Enquanto agente no mercado financeiro internacional, o qual compete com os demais visando a maximizar seus ganhos, Soros é um conhecido especulador, famoso por ter lucrado em ao menos duas crises financeiras de consequências internacionais – a da "quarta-feira negra" da 2 Contudo, estamos omitindo uma cena em que Tuld discute com dois executivos subordinados e revela que, na realidade, eles sabiam do risco dos ativos em questão. Isso não altera o cerne da posição de Tuld (i.e., a escusa de que não violara qualquer regra regendo mercado), apenas exclui uma possível alegação de ignorância. Artigos 21 A Crise Moral: a responsabilidade de administradores de instituições financeiras e o argumento da inevitabilidade Libra de 1992 e a crise financeira da Ásia de 1997 (o que ele comenta em SOROS, 2000, p. 208-9). Se agisse de outra forma, ele seria suplantado pelos demais agentes3. Porém, enquanto cidadão e intelectual, Soros critica o "fundamentalismo de mercado" e defende que o Estado deve regular e supervisionar o sistema financeiro, além de dispor de instrumentos para evitar que a ganância individual leve a situações desastrosas – o que ele considera, atualmente, a maior ameaça à democracia (SOROS, 2008, p. xi-xii). Sua posição, portanto, reflete parcialmente o argumento de Posner, exposto na Introdução supra. Tanto Tuld quanto Soros estão "tirando o corpo fora": desde que ajam de acordo com as regras do jogo, eles não se consideram responsáveis pelos resultados a que deem causa – em especial porque, caso deixem de aproveitar as oportunidades de lucro, outros o farão (como diz John Tuld, be the first), donde a abstenção não teria efeito prático, ou seja, não é que estejam apenas expondo um argumento a ser sopesado contra outras razões em contrário, como numa deliberação prática usual; na verdade, essas outras razões4 sequer são consideradas, donde o próprio conflito moral e o remorso que o personagem de Sam Rogers alega experimentar não teriam razão de ser. Nesse aspecto, podemos ser tentados a associar Tuld com o personagem de Trasímaco, o grande vilão do Livro I da República de Platão, para quem a justiça seria apenas o interesse do mais forte (PLATÃO, I, 338c): [...] o homem justo é em todos os lugares inferior ao injusto. Em primeiro lugar, no comércio, quando se associam um ao outro, nunca descobrirás, ao dissolver-se a sociedade, que o justo ganhou, mas que perdeu; em seguida, nos negócios públicos, quando é preciso pagar contribuições, o justo paga mais do que os seus iguais, o injusto menos [...]. Por isso, Sócrates, a injustiça levada a um alto grau é mais forte, mais livre, mais digna de um senhor do que a justiça e, como eu dizia a princípio, a justiça significa o interesse do mais forte e a injustiça é em si mesma vantagem e lucro. 3 Investidores agem sob uma forma de pressão evolucionária: "stockbrokers who do less well than their competitors go bust. The rules-of-thumb that stockbrokers use are therefore subject to the same kind of evolutionary pressures as the genes of fish or insects" (BINMORE, 2007, p. 16-17). 4 Da perspectiva desse agente, elas sequer são reconhecidas como razões, já que não têm qualquer função na deliberação. A contrapartida "meta-ética" dessa discussão é precisamente se só podemos chamar de razões aquilo que o agente toma como tal (ou que ele tomaria, em seu juízo perfeito) – i.e., o subjetivismo e o internalismo – ou se há razões que não dependem desse reconhecimento pelo agente – i.e., uma teoria objetivista. 22 Revista da PGBC – Brasília – v. 10 – n. 2 – dez. 2016 – p. 15-35 Ramiro de Ávila Peres É claro que Trasímaco defende algo um pouco mais pérfido que Tuld, o qual se recusa a trapacear. Mas os dois são semelhantes quando, no cerne de seus respectivos argumentos, apresentam a situação que se avalia moralmente como um cenário determinado: é um fato, para John Tuld, que haverá crises, e que os primeiros (os que as precipitam) "limpam a mesa"; também é um fato, afirma Trasímaco, que os injustos se saem melhor que os justos. Por isso, Simon Blackburn identifica Trasímaco como o ancestral de uma forma perniciosa de pensar: No drama platônico, Trasímaco na verdade é o porta-voz dos emissários atenienses5. Eles representam os homens maquiavélicos da real politik, sabendo que vivem num mundo onde as pessoas se entredevoram adaptando-se a ele. Eles e seus sucessores deixam um longo rastro rubro na história humana [...]. São os ancestrais diretos da blitzkrieg, do terrorismo, da adoração ao livre mercado e da ética da escola de comércio. São também os ancestrais diretos do "neoconservadorismo" norte-americano [...]. No século XIX, Trasímaco recebeu um grande impulso com o advento do darwinismo, que muitas vezes foi interpretado como uma demonstração de que o mundo dos que se entredevoram não apenas é moralmente justificável, mas também de alguma forma inevitável [...] (BLACKBURN, 2006, p. 42-3). 1.1 A tese-alvo: o argumento a partir do inevitável A ideia geral ora atacada é a seguinte: dada a situação fática S (o mercado de capitais, a vantagem do injusto, o conflito bélico, o estado de natureza etc.), segue-se inevitavelmente o resultado/estado de coisas R; e, dado que R é (relativamente ao agente) inevitável, R é (moral ou praticamente) justificado – ou, alternativamente, é justificado (ou correto, melhor, de direito natural, permitido, obrigatório: um termo normativamente carregado qualquer) contribuir para/agir 5 Blackburn, ao mencionar os "emissários atenienses", está se referindo referindo ao episódio da Conferência de Melos, contado por Tucídides (1874) no Capítulo XVII da História da Guerra do Peloponeso, em que os emissários atenienses fizeram uma "proposta irrecusável" à cidade de Melos (uma pequena ilha mediterrânea inofensiva): a rendição incondicional ou a destruição da cidade. Os Mélicos resistem, e os atenienses cumprem a ameaça: matam todos os homens adultos e escravizam as mulheres e crianças. Artigos 23 A Crise Moral: a responsabilidade de administradores de instituições financeiras e o argumento da inevitabilidade de acordo com R –, de modo que as razões que eventualmente houver em contrário são irrelevantes6. Formalizando o raciocínio, pode-se provar que a tese da inevitabilidade leva à conclusão radical de que ninguém é responsável por um evento, a menos que sua ação seja uma condição necessária deste: i) Se S ocorreria sem o agente x, x não é responsável por S [inevitabilidade]. ii) Se S ocorreria sem o agente x, também ocorreria sem o agente y7 [i.e., nenhum sujeito é condição necessária para S]. iii) S poderia ocorrer sem o agente x [equivale a "S é inevitável"]. iv) Conclusão: ninguém é responsável por S [por (i), (ii) e (iii)]. A conclusão em "iv" é uma consequência válida das premissas; contudo, ela é inaceitável: há diversas situações em que um evento decorre das ações de um conjunto de agentes, sem que qualquer deles seja essencial para que ele ocorra. O que a tese da inevitabilidade acarreta é que tratemos essas situações de forma semelhante a eventos naturais: ninguém é responsável por elas. Imaginemos alguém justificando sua participação num linchamento: "não foi culpa minha; o sujeito morreria de qualquer forma...". Portanto, só nos resta negar uma das premissas – e a candidata mais plausível é o condicional em "i". Não são apenas os "vilões" de nossa história intelectual, enumerados por Blackburn, que pensam assim; alguns "heróis" da filosofia moral aceitam o argumento, mas aduzem que, em alguma situação relevante, a premissa "iii" não é verdadeira – i.e., o agente pode e deve fazer algo para evitar S. Um exemplo da tradição contratualista é Thomas Hobbes (o qual, tendo traduzido Tucídides antes de escrever suas obras políticas, estava a par do argumento dos atenienses na Conferência de Melos); no capítulo XIV dos Elements of Law, ele deduz que, no estado de natureza, todos têm "direito a todas as coisas" (HOBBES, 2002, p. 95) e que o forte tem o direito de subjugar o fraco (HOBBES, 2002, p. 96-97), 6 Isso não nega, óbvio, que o agente tenha uma motivação para produzir R; o ponto é se existe outra alternativa racional. Nessa linha, a argumentação de Trasímaco é mais completa do que a de Tuld, pois aquele assume explicitamente a premissa de que o autointeresse é a única motivação do agente racional – e Sócrates vai atacá-lo, mostrando que ou essa teoria da motivação é factualmente incorreta (dando o exemplo do médico, cuja arte motivação ao bem do paciente), ou a concepção egoísta de autointeresse é (normativamente) incorreta – o que dá o tema da continuação do diálogo, após a intervenção de Trasímaco: a teoria da superioridade da vida do homem justo. 7 Note como esse "passo indutivo" equivale a "S poderia ocorrer sem x, ou sem y, ou sem z..." – i.e., nenhum agente em especial é condição necessária para S. Não se trata, pois, da generalização universal "S poderia ocorrer sem x, e sem y, e sem z..." – o que implicaria "S poderia ocorrer sem ninguém". 24 Revista da PGBC – Brasília – v. 10 – n. 2 – dez. 2016 – p. 15-35 Ramiro de Ávila Peres usando como premissa a noção de "necessidade da natureza" (HOBBES, 2002, p. 94) e uma análise ao estilo da teoria dos jogos8. Dessa forma, o estado de natureza levaria a algo que Hobbes (2002, p. 96) chama de "contradição", uma vez que o "direito de todos a tudo" coloca os homens em conflito, deixando todos em pior situação; assim, quem desejasse viver nesse estado, contradiria a si mesmo – razão por que devem fazer o possível para passar ao estado civil. 2 Krishna, Shakespeare e Tuld: do fatalismo à teoria da decisão racional 2.1 Resultado e considerações de responsabilidade pessoal Podemos ilustrar melhor nossa argumentação traçando um paralelo entre a discussão de Sam Rogers e John Tuld com o diálogo entre o General Arjuna, que hesita em tomar partido na guerra entre Pandavas e Kauravas, e seu conselheiro Krishna (na realidade, o avatar do deus Vishnu), conforme narrado no BhagavadGita9 – parte do épico religioso hindu Mahabharata. Talvez seja sobejo alertar: não nos interessa, evidentemente, fazer uma exegese do hinduísmo ou da filosofia oriental (mesmo porque não é de nossa competência), nem sugerimos que advogados, economistas ou outros cientistas sociais devam fazê-lo a fim de compreender ou criticar a atuação de financistas; nossa analogia visa a comparar as propriedades formais das duas discussões. A interpretação clássica da obra é que se trata de um confronto entre uma concepção consequencialista de moralidade, professada por Arjuna (o qual lamenta o sofrimento que a guerra trará), e a ética do dever defendida por Krishna. Mas essa exegese tradicional de Krishna como "o deontologista máximo", focado apenas no dever, e de Arjuna como um "consequencialista típico", constituiria uma interpretação assaz estreita, segundo Sen (2009, p. 216), na medida em que obscurece as considerações de Arjuna sobre a ideia de que uma pessoa deve assumir responsabilidade especial pelas consequências de suas ações: 8 Não à toa, os teóricos dos jogos apelidaram algumas situações beligerantes, nas quais os agentes atacam por medo de serem atacados (os "dilemas de Schelling"), de "armadilhas hobbesianas" (v. Baliga & Sjöström, 2012). 9 Uma vez que se trata de um texto clássico, indicaremos a referência ao Baghavad-Gita por BG, seguido da informação do capítulo e dos respectivos versos. Artigos 25 A Crise Moral: a responsabilidade de administradores de instituições financeiras e o argumento da inevitabilidade The issue of responsibility is central to the debate between Arjuna and Krishna, though the two present quite different interpretations of how Arjuna's responsibilities should be seen. Arjuna argues that the results of one's choices and actions must matter in deciding what one should do, whereas Krishna insists that one must do one's duty no matter what happens, and that the nature of one's duty can be determined, as in this case, without having to examine the consequences of the chosen actions (SEN, 2009, p. 213). Para Krishna, uma vez que o dever de um agente está plenamente determinado pelo seu papel e por seu destino, a responsabilidade desse agente pode ser definida simplesmente em função do cumprimento desse dever. Analisa-se primeiro se o agente observa a conduta devida; se sim, ele não pode ser reprovado pelas consequências decorrentes (as quais não desempenham papel direto na determinação desse dever). Essa é uma noção de responsabilidade. Segundo Dworkin (2011), há pelo menos quatro noções distintas (mas compatíveis) de responsabilidade de um agente – responsabilidade causal (por causar um evento), responsabilidade "decisional" (judgemental – i.e., a responsabilidade que toda pessoa assume ao tomar uma decisão), por uma tarefa (assignment), e responsabilidade pela reparação de um evento (liability): A person is causally responsible for an event, we say, if some act of his figures (or figures substantially) in the best causal explanation of that event. I would be causally responsible for an injury to a blind beggar if I shoved him to steal his money or collided with him absentmindedly or while drunk or deranged or even just accidentally. But not when someone else has pushed me into him, because then no act of mine has contributed to the injury. (My body is part of the causal chain, but I am not.) Someone has assignment responsibility for some matter if it is his duty to attend to or look after it. The last person to leave a room, we say, is responsible for turning off the lights, and the sergeant is responsible for his platoon. Someone has liability responsibility for an event when he is required to repair, compensate for, or absorb any damage flowing from the event. I have liability responsibility for the damage I cause by my careless driving; an employer may have liability responsibility for any damage his employees cause. Causal, assignment, and liability responsibility are all, finally, to be distinguished from judgmental responsibility. Someone has 26 Revista da PGBC – Brasília – v. 10 – n. 2 – dez. 2016 – p. 15-35 Ramiro de Ávila Peres judgmental responsibility for some act if it is appropriate to rank his act on some scale of praise or criticism. I have judgmental responsibility for walking past the beggar, giving him nothing, but not for the harm when someone else pushes me into him. These different senses of relational responsibility are conceptually independent: an employer may have liability responsibility for damage caused by his employees' negligence even though he is neither causally nor judgmentally responsible for that damage (DWORKIN, 2011, p. 103). Arjuna está referindo o que poderíamos chamar de "responsabilidade causal" – a relação causal entre o agente e o evento10; ao passo que Krishna privilegia a noção de responsabilidade como tarefa ou atribuição (assignment) – a ideia de que analisar a responsabilidade moral do agente implica avaliar se cumpriu um determinado papel (o que independe das consequências e dos antecedentes de sua ação). A tensão entre os dois pontos de vista só é resolvida, em definitivo, no Livro XI, quando Krishna, após comover Arjuna com revelações sobrenaturais (do universo como um todo), mostra seu aspecto temível e destrutivo da Vishvarupa (a famosa "forma universal" de múltiplos braços) a devorar os soldados que combaterão na guerra (BG, 11: 26-27) e demanda que o general se submeta a seu destino: Lord Krishna: I am death, the mighty destroyer of the world. I have come here to destroy all these people. Even without your participation in the war, all the warriors standing arrayed in the opposing armies shall cease to exist. Therefore, get up and attain glory. Conquer your enemies, and enjoy a prosperous kingdom. I have already destroyed all these warriors. You are a mere instrument, O Arjuna11 (BG 11:32-33). 10 Essa noção de responsabilidade causal também não é isenta de problemas, mormente quando se tem em conta a diferença entre fatores que aumentam o risco relativo de um evento ("carne processada causa câncer"), fatores que aceleram sua ocorrência (catalizadores ou hasteners), fatores que o precipitam (a "última palha que quebra as costas do camelo"). Isso não nos concerne, contudo, já que, nos exemplos usados, o agente é um caso paradigmático de responsável causal. 11 Trata-se de uma passagem particularmente conhecida por ter sido citada por J. Robert Oppenheimer (que, versado em sânscrito, afirmara ter sido altamente influenciado pelo texto) numa entrevista em que falava sobre a sensação de testemunhar o primeiro teste nuclear. Disponível em: <www.youtube.com/watch?v=lb13ynu3Iac>. Acesso em: 18 ago. 2016. Artigos 27 A Crise Moral: a responsabilidade de administradores de instituições financeiras e o argumento da inevitabilidade 2.2 Fatalismo e absurdo Agora podemos explicitar melhor a analogia entre Arjuna e Sam Rogers: ambos, preocupados com suas participações como protagonistas do desastre, questionam a aparente falta de sentido de suas ações e reprovam a participação num evento desastroso. Ao passo que tanto Tuld quanto Krishna, detentores de um conhecimento privilegiado12, respondem com fatalismo e com uma instigação à "glória" – ou, no caso de Tuld, ao lucro. Para o executivo, o prejuízo dos investidores já é uma realidade – assim como o é, para Krishna, a morte dos guerreiros13. Metafísicos costumam objetar ao fatalismo alegando que é inaceitável que o futuro esteja "determinado". Isso é irrelevante para nossa discussão; o que nos concerne é a tese moral de que o fatalismo esvazia a noção de que as ações do agente têm alguma relação especial com o resultado ("you are a mere instrument", segundo Krishna), caso ele seja inevitável. O valor da ação torna-se totalmente dependente, na realidade, da forma como ela está inserida numa "visão cósmica", em alguma concepção de como o mundo "realmente é" – o que quer que isso signifique. E, sem esta, a conclusão é o nihilismo; o agente se enxerga numa situação afim à do Rei Macbeth diante da notícia da morte de sua esposa: "ela teria morrido em outro momento. [...] A vida [...] é um conto narrado por um idiota, cheio de som e fúria, que não significa nada" (SHAKESPEARE, Ato V, Cena 5, versos 15-25, tradução livre). Essa relação especial entre o agente e o resultado é capturada pelas noções de responsabilidade causal e "julgamental" (judgemental). É isso que nos permite compreender, e.g., a tragédia de Otelo; o fato de que ele é o responsável (causador) pelo homicídio de Desdêmona lhe dá uma perspectiva distinta da de qualquer outro agente (SEN, 2009, p. 220). Ele não lamenta apenas a morte da esposa, ou ter realizado uma ação censurável, mas principalmente por ser o autor do fato. A descoberta da culpa de Iago é tão incapaz de afastar essa responsabilidade 12 Em outra passagem, Tuld menciona que é justamente por 'adivinhar' antes dos demais o que está para ocorrer que ele é o CEO da empresa: "John Tuld: I'm here for one reason and one reason alone. I'm here to guess what the music might do a week, a month, a year from now. That's it. Nothing more. And standing here tonight, I'm afraid that I don't hear – a – thing. Just... silence". 13 Claro, a diferença fundamental é que, enquanto Krishna alega que somos todos instrumentos de uma vontade divina, vivendo num ciclo ilusório de nascimento e morte (a samsara), Tuld nos apresenta como entregues ao sabor do ciclo de negócios, das crises financeiras (algo análogo à samsara), num mundo onde os perdedores são deixados à sarjeta. Embora a "visão cósmica" (e o que Tuld talvez não perceba é que seu pessimismo, se não é uma "visão cósmica", cumpre a mesma função) da realidade seja diferente em cada um dos casos, a forma dos dois argumentos é idêntica, assim como a consequência – a anulação da noção de responsabilidade pessoal. 28 Revista da PGBC – Brasília – v. 10 – n. 2 – dez. 2016 – p. 15-35 Ramiro de Ávila Peres quanto o seria a descoberta de que Desdêmona teria uma vida curta de qualquer maneira (por uma doença incurável, ou porque seria assassinada por Iago de outra forma); Otelo não pode dizer, como Macbeth, "ela teria morrido em outro momento", pois, embora ele haja sido um instrumento de Iago, o qual previra exatamente como o mouro reagiria, as decisões e ações cruciais ainda foram de Otelo – e podemos reprová-las na medida em que expressam falhas de seu caráter (i.e., de traços de sua personalidade que são passíveis de avaliação moral, como virtudes e vícios – MICHELON JR., 2006, p. 49). 2.3 O paradoxo do agente fatalista Um "fatalista" pode tentar escapar a essa noção de responsabilidade decisional; imagine que Tuld alegasse que a própria decisão era inevitável: ela era a única possibilidade consistente, segundo a teoria dos jogos (ou outra teoria da decisão racional), já que maximizava a utilidade esperada – a sua, a dos acionistas, a dos demais executivos e empregados, até a da própria firma, na medida em que melhor satisfazia as preferências desses agentes. Na melhor das hipóteses, uma alegação do tipo seria circular; afinal, em teoria dos jogos, "preferência" é um termo técnico: segundo a tese da preferência revelada, o comportamento de escolha é primitivo – i.e., a escolha revela a ordenação de preferências do agente (trata-se, pois, de uma relação lógica, e não causal – BLACKBURN, 2010, p. 12); apenas pressupõe-se que essa ordenação seja consistente e, pressupondo a comparabilidade dessas preferências, agir de forma consistente pode ser descrito como maximizar uma propriedade formal chamada utilidade (BINMORE, 2007, p. 7). Dizer "agirei de tal maneira porque isso maximiza minha utilidade" é, portanto, circular – equivale a dizer "agirei de tal maneira porque é o que decido fazer". Isso sugere que uma teoria da decisão não deve pretender ser, simultaneamente, normativa e preditiva (ou descritiva); em especial, ela não pode modelar uma deliberação – ao menos não uma que contenha alguma forma de dilema, em que a pergunta "o que devo fazer?" precisa ser respondida depois de "o que quero, ou o que devo querer fazer?". Ou, como argumenta Blackburn: Artigos 29 A Crise Moral: a responsabilidade de administradores de instituições financeiras e o argumento da inevitabilidade [...] in game theory as it is now being conceived, nothing can be translated into advice. For suppose we are "advised" to follow the dominant strategy. This is null advice, equivalent to: behave so that a tautology is true of you. So if we don't follow the advice, then our choice reveals that it wasn't that game. But if it wasn't that game then the advice was inapplicable, and if the advice was inapplicable, then there was no point in following it in any event, for the game theorist had failed to model the situation properly. As Wittgenstein might have said, anything could accord with the advice, and that means that no advice was given. The economists' slogan "Maximize!" turns out to be no injunction at all, for nothing could count as failing to follow it (Blackburn, 2010, p. 20). Logo, em nosso exemplo, o que John Tuld poderia afirmar seria um "imperativo hipotético" do tipo "se desejo sobreviver à crise, devo fazer tal coisa", mas não poderia apresentá-lo com uma "roupagem" categórica, como em "devo fazer tal coisa". Antes de decidir, Tuld não pode considerar que a premissa do condicional já é verdadeira, já que suas preferências (no sentido técnico) estão em questão tanto quanto suas ações – e avaliar e formular essas preferências é a finalidade da deliberação moral. Ele lembraria um exemplo de Cohen (2008, p. 67) de um sequestrador que dissesse "Gee, I'm sorry, but the fact is that, unless you pay, I will not release your child" – o que indica um estranhamento de suas próprias intenções. Seria necessário, portanto, mergulhar mais fundo no fatalismo, alegando algo como "sou assim, não poderia ter agido de outro modo". Ocorre que uma proposição desse tipo não tem função numa deliberação moral (DENNETT, 1984); um agente não pode acreditar, ao deliberar, que suas preferências (no sentido técnico) já estão definidas de modo independente de suas escolhas, nem que é impossível escolher entre agir ou não de determinada forma. Nesse caso, não parece haver sequer a ilusão de uma deliberação: um sujeito que tentasse agir dessa forma não estaria propriamente deliberando, mas tentando apenas prever suas ações14 – ou talvez seja melhor dizer "o que ocorrerá com seu corpo". 14 Podem-se imaginar exceções, no estilo do episódio "Ulisses e as sereias" da Íliada. Por exemplo, um prisioneiro antecipa que, torturado, confessará, ainda que não queira fazê-lo. Mas, nesse caso, ou ele está: a) prevendo que a tortura vai torná-lo um "animal guinchante", sobre o qual não é capaz de exercer controle, o que explica que visualize a confissão de forma "descompromissada", como um "fato objetivo" (ou como a ação de um estranho), e não como uma ação propriamente sua; ou b) está considerando que a tortura quebrará sua força de vontade, colocando-o numa situação usual de akrasia – uma situação que, embora levante discussões filosóficas por si só, não costuma lançar quaisquer suspeitas sobre a ideia de responsabilidade. Ou seja, em "a", não há ação que se possa atribuir ao sujeito (poderíamos dizer que a identidade pessoal ao longo do tempo foi rompida); em "b", há ação, mas trata-se de um caso ordinário de responsabilidade. 30 Revista da PGBC – Brasília – v. 10 – n. 2 – dez. 2016 – p. 15-35 Ramiro de Ávila Peres Segundo Dworkin (2011, p. 223-224), não há como um agente (i.e., alguém que age) comportar-se como se, de fato, acreditasse nisso. Essa posição absurda não é consequência de uma "metafísica determinista", mas da incompatibilidade entre conceber a si mesmo, simultaneamente, como um objeto cujo movimento pode ser previsto de uma perspectiva inteiramente paramétrica ou "externa" e conceber essa mesma previsão como uma razão para agir da maneira prevista – o que revela, novamente, um raciocínio circular. Esse é um problema antigo – presente, e.g., na interpretação de tragédias gregas cujos personagens frequentemente agem sob a égide de oráculos e profecias: Could Eteocles say, "It has been fixed by the gods that I shall do it, so my decision is that I shall do it?" As a decision, surely, this is incoherent. Agamemnon indeed put on the harness of necessity – he could do it, and there was a reason for him to do it. But he could not have put it on for the following reason: that he had seen that he was already wearing it. It is something like this that Eteocles would be doing if we read his last line as at once recognising an externally imposed necessity and offering it as a reason for his decision. (WILLIAMS, 1993, p. 137-138 – grifo nosso). Segundo Williams, nas tragédias não é a previsão contida na profecia que é uma razão para agir, mas uma obrigação sobrenatural do personagem de atender ao destino traçado pelos deuses15 – como no exemplo supra de Arjuna. Isso, porém, é confrontado com as demais razões que o agente tem – as quais, porém, são mais fracas que essa razão sobrenatural; é isso que nos permite enxergar as ações previstas como verdadeiras ações. De forma análoga, ao invés de conceber a argumentação de Tuld como excluindo a possibilidade de ações alternativas, é mais simples descrevê-la como algo semelhante ao que Hoffrage et al. (2012) chamam de "cegueira ética": o agente faz uma racionalização de sua escolha descrevendo a situação de uma forma que obscurece sua avaliação; os exemplos usuais são de homens de 15 Isso é ilustrado com a hesitação final de Orestes, na tragédia Coéforas, antes de matar Clitemnestra como uma forma de cumprir uma obrigação para com o Oráculo: "Orestes hesitates at the last instant before killing his mother and turns to Pylades – "Shall I do it?"; and he, in his one intervention, says, 'Where will the trusty oracles of Loxias be for the rest of time...?' thus linking obedience to the oracle's commands with saving its predictive credibility. There is complexity here, and an obscurity that comes with the very idea of an oracle, but in the Choephoroi Aeschylus revolves the elements of prophecy, supernatural plan, human motive, and divine command with an assurance that prevents them from falling together into immediate fatalism" (WILLIAMS, 1993, p. 140). Artigos 31 A Crise Moral: a responsabilidade de administradores de instituições financeiras e o argumento da inevitabilidade negócios que exageram a gravidade de suas ações comparando o mercado a uma guerra, ou que, no outro extremo, diminuem essa gravidade comparando tudo a um jogo (como Tuld quando diz a Rogers que é "apenas dinheiro", "it's made-up": "são apenas notas coloridas..."). Algo semelhante ocorre quando uma pessoa apresenta suas escolhas como fatos inevitáveis. Segundo Jackall (1988, p. 39), executivos racionalizam suas decisões dessa forma: "decisions are only made when they are inevitable" – i.e., quando a decisão "faz a si mesma". Uma afirmação desse tipo, numa situação cotidiana, pode ser aceita como uma figura de linguagem, como uma forma mais dramática de dizer "era a melhor coisa a fazer"16 – mas, nesse caso, ela pressupõe uma escolha e a possibilidade de deliberação (e, com isso, a responsabilidade pela ação). Eis o principal contraste entre Tuld e Rogers: este se questiona se é melhor assumir o risco de falir, ou destruir o mercado. Conclusão Williams (1993, p. 164) observa que Napoleon remarked to Goethe that what fate was in the ancient world, politics was in the modern, and in the same spirit Benjamin Constant said that the significance of the supernatural in ancient tragedy could be transferred to the modern theatre only in political terms. De fato, Napoleão e Constant, tendo atravessado um dos períodos mais turbulentos da idade contemporânea, têm motivos para tal afirmação: para eles, a política, e não apenas a diplomacia (parafraseando o aforisma de Clausewitz), era a continuação da guerra por outros meios. Em nossos tempos, poder-se-ia atribuir ao mercado esse papel de "pano de fundo trágico", com uma vantagem: enquanto comunidades e instituições políticas podem ser vistas como 16 Como observa Roger Ebert em uma resenha do filme, a própria vida de suas personagens torna-se desprovida de significado: "I think the movie is about how its characters are concerned only by the welfare of their corporations. There is no larger sense of the public good. Corporations are amoral, and exist to survive and succeed, at whatever human cost. [O elenco] reflect the enormity of what is happening: their company and their lives are being rendered meaningless". Disponível em <http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/margin-call-2011>. Acesso em: 19 out. 2011. De fato, o espectador atento pode notar como, por vezes, nos diálogos, os personagens mencionam que "não tinham escolha" – embora estejam se referindo a casos paradigmáticos de decisão racional. 32 Revista da PGBC – Brasília – v. 10 – n. 2 – dez. 2016 – p. 15-35 Ramiro de Ávila Peres agentes racionais (ao menos em teoria, ou de forma idealizada), donde se lhes pode atribuir a capacidade de deliberação racional e pública, o mercado é visto como um agregado de decisões individuais, imprevisível e desprovido de intencionalidade. Defendemos supra que esse cenário "trágico" não afasta a responsabilidade moral de seus agentes – mesmo porque sequer a causalidade sobrenatural excluía dos heróis das tragédias antigas a responsabilidade por suas decisões. Guerreiros não podem isentar-se da responsabilidade por seus atos de guerra alegando a inevitabilidade desta – eles podem (o que é muito diverso) tentar alegar que agiram sob circunstâncias especiais justificatórias (o que corresponde, no direito, ao estado de necessidade – circunstâncias que tornam uma ação correta) ou exculpantes (circunstâncias que precluem a atribuição de culpa, em consideração às limitações humanas do agente – como, alegadamente, seria o caso da "névoa da guerra"). Essas são distinções usuais para juristas e filósofos morais. Algo semelhante vale para investidores: mesmo que John Tuld estivesse correto ao dizer que não podemos prever, nem evitar, as crises financeiras, que só podemos "reagir", isso não implicaria que a única forma de reagir é sendo o primeiro. Ele e Rogers tinham razões para agir de outra forma, e poderiam tê-lo feito; poderiam ter escolhido até mesmo falir a precipitar a "destruição" do mercado. Uma última comparação entre o filme e o épico hindu: não é o argumento fatalista de Krishna que põe fim à discussão do Baghavad-Gita, mas a aceitação de sua autoridade sobrenatural por Arjuna (que assim aceita seu próprio papel naquela "visão cósmica"). De forma distinta, Rogers se despede de Tuld reiterando que não concorda com ele, que não foi seu monólogo que o convenceu a ficar; ao invés disso, ele se conforma e permanece no emprego apenas porque precisa do dinheiro. Contrariamente à citação inicial de Posner, a reprovação a financistas gananciosos é justificada, na medida em que é uma consequência do reconhecimento de que tomaram decisões criticáveis; isso não significa que essa reprovação seja útil: Posner, um pragmático confesso, quer dizer, na realidade, que o risco de ser alvo de reproche não constitui incentivo suficiente para evitar a ganância. Contudo, saber que essa reprovação é adequada nos permite defender uma cultura de ética corporativa, além de instituições que visem a dissuadir, por meio da coerção ou da responsabilização civil, condutas gananciosas socialmente deletérias. Artigos 33 A Crise Moral: a responsabilidade de administradores de instituições financeiras e o argumento da inevitabilidade Referências BALIGA, S.; SJÖSTRÖM, T.. The Hobbesian Trap. Oxford Handbooks Online, 2012. Disponível em: <http://www.oxfordhandbooks.com/view/10.1093/ oxfordhb/9780195392777.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780195392777-e-5>. Acesso em: 18 ago. 2016. BINMORE, Kenneth G.. Game theory: a very short introduction. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007. BLACKBURN, Simon. A República de Platão: uma biografia. Trad. Roberto Franco Valente. Rio de Janeiro: Jorge Zahar, 2006. . Practical Tortoise Raising. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010. COHEN, Gerald A. Rescuing Justice and Equality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008. DELFIM NETTO, Antônio. O espírito democrático da tecnocracia. Valor Econômico, São Paulo, 19 de julho de 2016. Caderno A02. DENNETT, Daniel C. I Could not have Done Otherwise – So What?. The Journal of Philosophy 81, no. 10 (1984): 553. Disponível em <http://www.jstor. org/stable/2026255>. Acesso em: 18 ago. 2016. DWORKIN, Ronald. Justice for Hedgehogs. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2011. HOBBES, Thomas. Os Elementos da Lei Natural e Política. Trad.: Fernando Dias de Andrade. São Paulo: Ícone, 2002. JACKALL, Robert. Moral Mazes: the world of corporate managers. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988. KLING, Arnold. The Financial Crisis: Moral Failure or Cognitive Failure? Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy, Volume 33, no 2, Spring 2010, pp. 507-18. PLATÃO. República. Trad. J. Ginsburg. São Paulo: Difusão Europeia do Livro, 1965. POSNER, Richard. The Crisis of Capitalist Democracy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010. 34 Revista da PGBC – Brasília – v. 10 – n. 2 – dez. 2016 – p. 15-35 Ramiro de Ávila Peres PRASAD, Ramananda. The Bhagavad-Gīta – the Song of God: with Introduction, Original Sanskrit Text and Roman Transliteration. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass Publishers, 1996. Disponível em: <http://www.gita-society.com/ bhagavadgita_english.html>. Acesso em: 18 ago. 2016. SEN, Amartya K.. Rational Fools: A Critique of the Behavioral Foundations of Economic Theory. Philosophy & Public Affairs 6, no. 4 (1977): 317-44. Disponível em: <http://www.jstor.org/stable/2264946>. Acesso em: 18 ago. 2016. . The Idea of Justice. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2009. SHAKESPEARE, William. MacBeth. Disponível em: <http://shakespeare.mit. edu/macbeth/>. Acesso em: 24 jul. 2016. SOLOMON, Steven M. Davidoff; MORRISON, Alan D.; WILHELM JR., William J. The SEC v. Goldman Sachs: Reputation, Trust, and Fiduciary Duties in Investment Banking, 37 J. Corp. L. 529 (2012). Disponível em <http:// scholarship.law.berkeley.edu/facpubs/2307>. Acesso em: 18 ago. 2016. SOROS, George. Open Society: reforming global capitalism. New York: Public Affairs, 2000. STIGLITZ, Joseph E. The Stiglitz Report: Reforming the International Monetary and Financial Systems in the Wake of the Global Crisis. New York, N.Y.: The New Press, 2010a. Disponível em: <http://www.un.org/ga/ econcrisissummit/docs/FinalReport_ CoE.pdf>. Acesso em: 18 ago. 2016. . Freefall: America, free markets, and the sinking of the world economy. New York: W.W. Norton & Co, 2010b. TUCÍDIDES. The Peloponnesian War. Trad. Richard Crawley (1874). Disponível em <http://classics.mit.edu/Thucydides/pelopwar.5.fifth.html>. Acesso em: 24 jul. 2016. WEISSMANN, Jordan. The GOP Platform Calls Up Big Banks. Seriously!. Artigo publicado em 18 de julho de 2016. Disponível em: <http://www.slate. com/blogs/moneybox/2016/07/18/trump_campaign_says_gop_platform_will_ call_for_breaking_up_big_banks.html>. Acesso em: 16 ago. 2016. Artigos 35 A Crise Moral: a responsabilidade de administradores de instituições financeiras e o argumento da inevitabilidade WILLIAMS, Bernard. Shame and Necessity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. . Moral: uma introdução à ética. Trad. Remmo Manarino Filho. São Paulo: Martins Fontes, 2005. | {
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Confessions of a Frigid Man A Philosopher's Journey into the Hidden Layers of Men's Sexuality Masahiro Morioka CC BY-ND 4.0 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. This book is also available at Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.it, Amazon.es, and Kindle stores. Confessions of a Frigid Man A Philosopher's Journey into the Hidden Layers of Men's Sexuality Masahiro Morioka Tokyo Philosophy Project Tokyo Originally published in Japanese by Chikuma Shobō Ltd., Tokyo, in 2005 and 2013 (ISBN:4-480-06221-1, ISBN:4-480-43057-1) Copyright: © 2005, 2013 by Masahiro Morioka English translation: CC BY-ND 4.0, 2017 by Robert Chapeskie and Masahiro Morioka Translated by Robert Chapeskie (Preface, Chapters 1 through 5, Afterword–2004) and Masahiro Morioka (Foreword, Epilogue, Afterword–2017) Published in Japan by Tokyo Philosophy Project, Waseda University, 2-579-15 Mikajima, Tokorozawa, Saitama 3591192, Japan www.philosophyoflife.org/tpp/ First edition: January 20, 2017 Contents Foreword to English Readers 1 Preface 7 Chapter 1 As Long as There's a Miniskirt I Don't Need a Flesh and Blood Woman!? 11 Chapter 2 Men Who Avert Their Eyes from "Male Frigidity" 23 Chapter 3 Why am I Attracted to School Uniforms? 57 Chapter 4 Delving into the Psychology of Men with "Lolita Complexes" 85 Chapter 5 Moving Beyond Being a "Frigid Man" 133 Afterword – 2004 165 Epilogue Further Thoughts on a Frigid Man – 2013 167 Afterword – 2017 193 1 Foreword to English Readers This book was published under the title A Frigid Man (Kanjinai Otoko) in Japanese in 2005. It soon stirred controversy over the nature of male sexuality, male "frigidity," and its connection to the "Lolita complex," an adult male sexual obsession with young teenage girls. Today, this work is considered a classic in Japanese men's studies. The most striking feature of this book is that it was written from the author's first-person perspective. I am a professor who teaches philosophy and ethics at a university in Japan, and in this book I talk about my own sexual fetishism, my feeling of emptiness after ejaculation, and my huge obsession with young girls and their developing female bodies. I undertake a philosophical investigation of how and why sexuality took such a form within a person who had grown up as a "normal," heterosexual man. This may be the first case in which a philosopher delves deep into his own sexuality and poses an ambitious hypothesis about the formation of male "frigid" sexuality, which might actually be shared by many "normal" men in our society in a hidden way. Reading this book, female readers will come to know, for the first time, some hidden aspects of male sexuality which men have skillfully submerged in a deep layer of 2 their psyches. In Chapter One, my fetish for women's miniskirts is discussed. I argue that the reason why men are attracted to miniskirts is not because they wish to see under the miniskirt, but because they wish to see the dynamic tension between concealment and revelation which is automatically created by the lively movement of the hemline of a skirt. The development of this fetish is driven by a desperate, craving search for something that is supposed to provide men with intense pleasure but can never actually be found anywhere in this world. This is one of the most basic psychological/mental grounds of frigidity in men. In Chapter Two, I discuss ejaculation on the basis of my own experience. I can feel a momentary pleasure during ejaculation, but almost immediately afterward I am engulfed by an overwhelming feeling of collapse and emptiness. I call this "male frigidity" and argue that many men, like myself, actually suffer from this kind of symptom. While many men tacitly know this fact, they usually look away from it and try to believe the false statement that ejaculation is nothing but heavenly pleasure. Psychiatric medicine has recognized the concept of "male orgasmic disorder;" however, "male frigidity" does not fall under this category. I also emphasize that frigid men's way of consuming pornography is fundamentally twisted and obsessed; hence, it should be considered a kind of self-injury. In this chapter, readers gradually come to understand the basic concept of "male frigidity" and an outline of frigid men's way of thinking. 3 Chapter Three discusses the fetishization of junior high and high school girls' uniforms, which is said to be prevalent among Japanese adult men. Since Englishspeaking readers may not be as familiar with this phenomenon, I would like to make a brief comment here. In Japan, a majority of girls in junior high and high school wear uniforms to school. If you are a fan of Japanese manga or anime, you may immediately recall a young heroine wearing a jacket and a miniskirt at school. There are a number of adult men who are sexually attracted to these school uniforms. This mindset seems to begin prevailing among people around the world who love manga/anime. And I confess that I am no exception. However, the reason why so many men are attracted to school uniforms has not been made clear in men's studies. I analyze my inner sexuality and conclude that my fetishism has a close connection with my deep-rooted "male frigidity." I argue that behind school uniform fetishism there lurks a strong desire to brainwash girls in uniforms, and closely examining this desire reveals another desire-to virtually transport myself into a girl's body, which is possible only in the world of my imagination. Chapter Four is the most controversial part of this book. I confess that I can understand erotic feelings towards young girls around the age of twelve. It is very unusual to read such words in a published book, but this is the starting point where my journey of exploration into the mystery of my strange and twisted sexuality begins, and readers will be strongly perplexed to read my analysis of why such sexuality has taken 4 form inside me. I withhold writing its details here and leave them to the readers' future enjoyment, but again I want to stress that my "male frigidity" plays an important role in the formation of my Lolita complex. I then discuss why some frigid men imagine having intercourse with young girls around the age of puberty. Although my hypothesis sounds very strange, it seems to be possible that my discussion might valuably contribute to the investigation of the pathology of adult men desiring preteen girls. In Chapter Five, I undertake an investigation into my body image and discern that the idea that "my male body is dirty" has been deeply inscribed in me. This idea was formed when I first experienced wet dreams and masturbation. I became a frigid man when I was a junior high and high school student. And my experiences in my college-student days eloquently show what it is like to be a frigid man. I encourage men like me to frankly acknowledge the "frigidity" of their bodies and then try to find a way to dismantle their body image so as to become liberated from their obsessed sexuality. The epilogue was written eight years after the book was first published. Readers can see what has happened in my actual life. I reply to some of the representative comments and criticisms that have appeared in the mass media, on the Internet, and in personal communications. I explain the method of "life studies" which was used in the book. This is a study method that can only be accomplished by "never detaching oneself from the subject being investigated." 5 You can find more information about the method of "life studies" in section two of the epilogue. Confessions of a Frigid Man is a philosophical experiment of applying this study method to the author's own sexuality.
Preface In this book I am going to write about the idea that men may not feel much sexual pleasure or satisfaction, and that it is because of this lack of feeling that they become absorbed in sexual fantasies involving things like miniskirts, uniforms, "lolicon" [a Japanese term for "Lolita complex"], and rape. In order to support this assertion I will speak extensively about myself. I intend to consider this issue not in terms of a general theory of male sexuality but rather from the point of view of my own specific case. But I hope male readers read this text as if it were written just for them. I hope female readers read it with a sense of urgency, imagining that the man they are with may be subject to some of the same psychological workings it describes. I have resolved to speak with complete frankness; I intend to explore this unknown world without any fear or reservation. Here I would like to say a few words about how this book came to be written. I wrote two essays on miniskirts and pornography in academic journals (Japanese Journal of Addiction and Family, Vol.17, No.4, (2000), The Japanese Society of Studies on Addictive Behaviors / Women's Studies, Vol.10, (2003), The Women's Studies Association of Japan). Since these journals are for experts in this field, I assumed these essays would only be read by a very small number 8 of people, but after their publication they elicited a surprisingly large response. This response went well beyond academia; part of my essay on miniskirts was even read on a late night television show with passages of text appearing directly on the screen. I was baffled by the extent of this reaction, but one day someone pointed out to me that it was probably because I talked about sexuality in the first person, using "I" as the subject. Most books talk about sex in terms of general statements like "men are like this" or "women are like this" with the author's own sexuality being kept off limits, and among such texts my writings stood out because I said "I am like this" without any sense of shame. This was what made my essays interesting. I thought this sounded quite plausible, and was greatly encouraged by it. I thought it might be interesting to try to write a whole book from the perspective of "I am like this." This book is the result of that attempt. With some minor alterations, the two papers I mentioned above became chapters one and two respectively. At times, I wondered whether it was really appropriate for an academic to write these sorts of things. On the other hand, however, I also had the feeling that it is indeed academics like myself who ought to be engaged in this kind of experimentation. When thinking about male sexuality, what currently serves as the best point of reference is the approach taken by feminism. Feminists argue that throughout this society an unequal structure has been put in place that allows men to dominate women to their own 9 advantage. And when it comes to sex, too, our ways of thinking and feeling have been formed under the powerful influence of this kind of structure. In this book, however, I will not introduce these sorts of theories. Instead I will begin developing my own way of thinking and hypotheses right from the start. The decision to take this approach was not an easy one, but I ultimately elected to do so because I thought that the value of this book would lie in the presentation of a way of looking at sexuality that had never been tried before, that is, a new perspective that could provide an "opportunity" to examine these issues from a variety of different angles. In this book I have written many things that may seem strange or contrary to common sense, but for me they are the truth. I hope that at least some of what I have to say will resonate with my readers as well.
Chapter 1 As long as There's a Miniskirt I Don't Need a Flesh and Blood Woman!? 1 The falsity of "this is how men are" The term "sexuality" refers to an individual's deeply ingrained ways of thinking and feeling about sex. The sexuality of men is difficult to examine. Recently, Jun'ichi Watanabe has discussed this topic in The Nature of Men (Otoko to Iumono, Chūkō Bunko, 2001, originally published in 1998), but his approach involves only a broad generalization of "how men are." In Watanabe's mind, a man's sexuality does not change at all from the time he is born. My sexuality, however, changed significantly after I entered my thirties. This change shook my identity at its roots and profoundly altered how I live my life. This experience has given me first-hand knowledge of the falsity of general claims about "how men are." The phrase "this is how men are" is nothing more than a compact between men to tell each other that "this is how men are" and thus make things easier for ourselves." The study of male sexuality has just begun. In this chapter, I would like to address one of the topics I have 12 been thinking about for a long time: why do I feel desire for (get turned on by) miniskirts? I will write about this in the first person, because not all men are attracted to miniskirts. It seems to have been empirically verified, however, that a large percentage of men do indeed find this article of clothing sexually arousing. In manga [Japanese comic books, often aimed at adults] and other forms of entertainment, scenes of a man's attention being captured by a miniskirt are often depicted. Miniskirts are the standard attire of event models at trade fairs and expos and "race queens" [scantily clad women who appear at motorsport events]. The exploration of one's own sexuality involves a great deal of pain and shame. This is no doubt true for both men and women. I have long interrogated myself on the subject of miniskirts. Some of my questions have been answered, but many remain. In some cases the mystery has been solved and I have been cured of what was bothering me. To begin with, let me present two interesting examples. Example one: As part of a program on NHK educational television, I was once filmed visiting a transvestite bar in the "Ni-chōme" area of Shinjuku [a well-known gay district in Tokyo]. Inside the bar, men dressed as women drank and chatted. Each of the men had their own distinct style, and I enjoyed talking with them. While I was conducting an interview, one of them stood up from the sofa where he had been sitting. He was wearing a tight-fitting miniskirt, and the line of 13 his legs and hips was just like that of a woman. When I saw his legs, I felt attracted to them without thinking. This was a shocking experience. I was there to shoot footage of a transvestite bar, so I had presumably looked at him with the assumption that he was biologically male. But I nevertheless responded strongly to his miniskirt-clad form. I had been well aware that I liked miniskirts. Until this event, however, I had thought that what I liked was "women wearing miniskirts." This belief had now been completely upended. Even if the person wearing it was a man, as long as he had beautiful legs like a woman I was still turned on by the sight of a miniskirt. What exactly was going on here? Example two: This is something I first noticed when I was quite young. Say I am on a train, for instance, and there is a woman in a miniskirt sitting down. As she is wearing a miniskirt, my eyes keep straying to her thighs. This excites me and I start to get turned on. When she stands up to get off the train, however, I notice that what I had thought was a miniskirt was actually a pair of shorts (culottes). In that instant, my desire is completely extinguished and replaced with a powerful feeling of disappointment. What is going on when this sort of thing occurs? Whether she is wearing a miniskirt or shorts, the exposed surface of her legs is presumably the same. Short culottes present the same silhouette as a miniskirt when seen at a distance. In other words, there should be almost no change in the way the lower half of her body appears. What changes is only something in 14 my head; in my mind there is a drastic shift from the fantasy of "she's wearing a miniskirt" to the disappointment of "she's wearing shorts." 2 Discrepancies in understanding between men and women What can be understood from these two examples? It would seem that the central issue is the "process of meaning attribution" (the process by which we try to attach meaning to what we see in front of us). The key point here is my (mistaken) attribution of the meaning "she is wearing a miniskirt, not shorts" to what I am seeing. In other words, short hemlines are not the only significant characteristic of miniskirts. What is important is the fact that the fantasy of catching a glimpse of a woman's underwear below the hem of her skirt runs through men's minds. After talking to women about miniskirts, I realized that many of them did not understand this sensitive pressure point of my sexuality. When I ask a woman why she thinks men are turned on by miniskirts, the most common answer is "because miniskirts make a woman's legs look beautiful." Of course, when I see slender, shapely legs I do indeed find them appealing. But this is different from the feeling I get when I am turned on by a miniskirt. There is a phrase in Japanese that translates to "discrepancy in understanding between men and women" and it seems apropos in this case. The general opinion among women is that men are attracted to the beautiful legs exposed by a 15 miniskirt. Some women then want their own legs to look good and receive this kind of male attention. What is really important for me, however, is just the possibility of seeing a woman's underwear. 3 The importance of the presence or absence of a "will to keep something hidden" Let us shift our perspective slightly and consider tennis outfits. When the players move, what they are wearing under their skirts is completely exposed, but this does not turn me on at all. I can't see these outfits as anything other than sportswear. So what is the difference between a tight miniskirt and a tennis outfit? Professional female tennis player Martina Hingis had a product logo printed on her under-skirt. This is a clue. Tennis outfits are designed with the intention of publicly "exposing" what is under the skirt. That is why they do not turn me on. In other words, my sexuality has been constructed in such a way that I am not attracted to what is deliberately "left in plain sight" in this manner. In a sense, it may be similar to the sexuality of a rapist. Rapists are said to only feel strong desire for women who are unwilling. There may be a significant point of similarity between rapists whose arousal depends on whether a woman is "willing or unwilling" and men like me whose arousal depends on whether something is "hidden or in plain sight." But if it is better that what is under the skirt be hidden, shouldn't a long skirt be just as good as a 16 miniskirt? With long skirts the concealment is complete. I must therefore rephrase my explanation with greater precision. What is important is that what is under the skirt may be exposed even though there is an intention to keep it hidden. In the case of Hingis, seeing what is under her skirt is not arousing because no attempt is being made to conceal it. The "body conscious" miniskirts that became very popular in the 1990s were a type of clothing that strongly stimulated my apparatus of sexual desire (the mechanism by which I become sexually aroused). This item of clothing is indeed not very tasteful so I am a bit embarrassed to admit that it turns me on, but since it is the truth, there is no avoiding this admission. The appeal of the body conscious miniskirt lies in the fact that when a woman moves or sits down, it tends to ride up her thighs. This occurs because they are made of materials with a great deal of elasticity. Here the idea of the miniskirt finds its supreme embodiment: even if a woman pulls it down with both hands, her hemline rises on its own in opposition to her will. Although she tries to prevent us from seeing what is under her skirt, it becomes almost visible again when she releases her hands. When my eyes are drawn without thinking to this state of affairs, a feeling of sexual desire directed towards the miniskirt arises within me. 4 Under the miniskirt: white panties So what exactly is being hidden underneath a miniskirt? Female genitalia? But it is not that simple, 17 because there is the question of what happens if the woman is not wearing anything under her skirt – if she is not wearing any underwear. Here we are faced with another difficult problem. A miniskirt with no underwear beneath it is another mechanism that arouses sexual desire in men. I can understand this form of arousal. Here we must consider what is occurring more carefully. To begin with, let us assume that the woman's genitals would be visible when I catch a glimpse under her skirt. Would I be turned on by this? The answer is "no." I would not be sexually aroused. My apparatus of desire only functions if she is wearing white panties. My sexuality views female genitals as "something that must be wrapped up." They must be solemnly covered by white cloth so that we cannot know what is underneath. And this whole package must be positioned in such a way that it may be seen at any moment beneath the miniskirt. In other words, the core of this mechanism can be interpreted as "the covered form itself (white panties) seems about to be revealed." Am I particular about the genitalia covered by underwear? As it turns out I am not. Remember the first episode I recounted: I felt the same kind of sexual attraction to a miniskirt being worn by a man dressed as a woman. At the time, I was well aware that the person wearing the miniskirt was biologically male. So I did not for a moment think that what was under the panties was female genitalia. Even so, I felt sexual desire. 18 At the same time, however, we must not overlook the fact that the man in question was dressed as a woman. If a kilt, a skirt worn by men as part of the traditional Scottish costume, were shortened, would it turn me on? I suspect it would not. If so, the important point must indeed be the relationship between skirts meant for women and underwear meant for women; as long as I can confirm that what I am looking at is the image of a woman in a miniskirt, the rest doesn't matter. Even if in fact it is a man wearing the skirt, as long as it looks as though it could be a woman, there is no problem, because what I am sexually attracted to is not the flesh and blood human being under the clothes. The interpretation of this phenomenon from a feminist perspective may be that men are turned on by the sense of superiority or domination they feel when they see a woman made vulnerable by her miniskirt and high heeled shoes. This is indeed one possible interpretation. When it comes to miniskirts, however, does this kind of explanation based on superiority and domination make sense? While I think this kind of explanation may be the best approach to understanding things like rape or confinement, regarding miniskirts it fails to completely explain what occurs. 5 In the case of dolls, anime and manga, what is it that I find arousing? Let us proceed on the basis of what has been set out above. If it is true that I am really not attracted to the 19 female body inside the skirt, then could I be turned on by a mannequin in a miniskirt? I probably could. The strength of my arousal would be reduced, however, because the mannequin does not move. As there is no motion, the defining characteristic of the miniskirt, the dynamism between concealment and revelation, becomes difficult to perceive. In the case of a mannequin, I must therefore supply this dynamism through the use of my imagination. Without the use of my intellectual faculties it is impossible for me to be turned on by a mannequin. Nonetheless, there are silicon mannequins called "RealDolls" created using techniques developed by Hollywood special effects artists, and it might be quite easy for me to feel desire for one of these dolls dressed in a miniskirt. In fact, it seems that there are some people who develop a fixation on these dolls. So what would happen if there were a mechanically animated mannequin in a miniskirt? Say, it could walk around and sit down like a human being. In this case, I suspect I would feel the same sort of desire triggered by a real woman. Since realistic female robots constructed using leading edge technology are already in the research and development stage, it seems plausible that eventually they will be produced and sold for general consumption. When this happens, I think many men will dress them in miniskirts. There is a sex scene involving a mechanical female doll in Fellini's Casanova. It is interesting to note that Casanova chooses a doll-like automaton as the final stop on his journey of erotic encounters. 20 Anime [a style of animation originating in Japan and often aimed at adults] and manga can of course arouse desire in similar ways. Anime can portray movement, and nearly all of the women who appear in Neon Genesis Evangelion, for example, wear microminiskirts. Among these short skirts, the micro-mini worn by the character named Misato Katsuragi is particularly striking. We must not overlook the fact that the women who appear in this animated masterpiece, a work that skillfully depicts the struggles deep in the hearts and minds of young people, all wear miniskirts. New generations of men form their sexuality through such animated series; as long as they have female characters like Misato Katsuragi, they can feel powerful desire even without a flesh and blood woman. When it comes to manga, motion must be introduced in order for the mechanism of the miniskirt to function. An example of how this has been successfully accomplished can be seen in Hiroki Yagami's G-Taste series (Kōdansha). Yagami is also particular about dressing all of his female characters in very short miniskirts. The extremely colorful women he depicts wear uniforms and "body conscious" outfits. He also draws women nude, but the nude body is not what he prefers to portray; his women are always covering their bodies with something. Yagami's aim is to perfectly depict the materials they use to cover themselves. In order to introduce a sense of motion in his manga artwork, he developed a technique of drawing countless tiny wrinkles in a miniskirt. He 21 imparts motion to a miniskirt by giving it many more wrinkles than would actually exist, and by doing so succeeds in expressing the dynamism between concealment and revelation. 6 As long as there's a miniskirt I don't need a flesh and blood woman Underwear is something that covers and hides female genitalia. Why am I turned on when a glimpse of this fabric that covers female genitals seems about to be revealed? This is a difficult question to answer, but one thing I can say is that it is not because I think I may be able to see the woman's genitals under her skirt. On the contrary, I am aroused knowing that even if the skirt flew all the way up, the woman's genitals would presumably be covered and hidden by her underwear. I feel a shudder of excitement to think that I cannot see them no matter how hard I try. I have also noticed that being on the edge of catching sight of a woman's underwear, without this revelation actually occurring, can give rise to religious feelings. This is because people have traditionally seen the form of "god" in sublime things they are able to glimpse briefly but cannot reach. Here we find the reason that the underwear beneath the miniskirt must be the sacred color "white." The sight of something wrapped in white cloth appearing and disappearing from view beneath the edge of the miniskirt is full of religious connotations. Men find miniskirts alluring because they have the 22 sense that something breathtakingly wonderful which transcends this world can be glimpsed beneath them in the shape of underwear. When this happens, the flesh and blood woman who wears the skirt, a woman with her own will and emotions, is nothing more than an obstacle to the men experiencing this sensation. The gaze of a man staring at a miniskirt is uncomfortable for a woman not because he views her as a miniskirtwearing slut or whore but because she is struck by the way his exclusive fixation on her skirt implies that as long as there is a miniskirt the woman wearing it is unnecessary. Those who possess this discomfiting gaze are "frigid men," and this contemporary pathology is also behind the emergence of other phenomena such as "lolicon" and the fetishizing of school uniforms. 23 Chapter 2 Men Who Avert Their Eyes from "Male Frigidity" Section 1 What is "Male Frigidity"? 1 My experience of pornography In what follows I will conduct a methodical search for the secrets of "lolicon" and "uniform" fetishes, but before beginning this inquiry in this chapter, I will consider men's sexual sensations. It may seem an overserious and slightly somber discussion, but I ask the reader to bear with me because I do not think it is possible to talk about male sexuality without addressing this subject. At a symposium held by the Japan Women's Studies Association in 2002. I gave a presentation on pornography and "frigidity" from a male perspective. As I was speaking before renowned feminists, I was quite nervous. I asked the audience to refrain from recording my presentation because I intended to speak at length about my own experiences. Instead of a recording, I published the content of my talk in the 24 journal Women's Studies Vol.10 (2003). In this chapter I have revised the content of this lecture and attempted to present it in a more accessible form. The theme of the symposium was "men and pornography." I decided to speak based on my own experience of pornography because there is great diversity within male sexuality and it is therefore impossible to say "this is how it is when it comes to men." At this point, all I can say is "this is how it is in my case." This is also why I have decided to write this book using the subject "I" (in what follows I write from a heterosexual perspective, but this is only because I myself am attracted to women. I do not in any way mean to disregard homosexuality). When it comes to pornography, I can state that what I prefer are the sorts of photographs and videos that are extremely common; what I want to look at is the sort of pornography that is normally sold. As a result, even if I am only speaking of my own experiences, what I have to say may presumably also apply to the majority of men who share my preferences. So under what sorts of circumstances do men look at pornography? Taking myself as an example, to begin with, there are times when for some reason I start to feel like viewing pornography. Regarding what happens when I view pornography, while there are times when looking is enough and I then go out for dinner or do something else, there are also times when I masturbate while viewing. Masturbation often ends in ejaculation. Of course, there are also times when I view pornography with the clear aim of ejaculating. 25 2 Afterwards there is a feeling of having been left alone Here let us consider the question of what men do with pornography after they have ejaculated. After they have masturbated and ejaculated, what do they do with the photographs or videos they have been viewing? Looking at my own case, there is only one answer. Once I have ejaculated, it is inconceivable that I would continue to look at the pornography I had been viewing. After ejaculation, I quickly close the magazine or book of photographs I have been looking at, or stop the video I have been watching. I want to get the pornography I have been viewing out of my sight as quickly as possible. After ejaculation, it is transformed into something I do not want to see again, at least not until some time has passed. I often have an urge to go outside and get some fresh air in order to change my mood. Why do I feel this way? In order to understand what is happening, we must first understand the "experience of alienation" (a sense of being expelled from a place of comfort and left completely alone). There is a myth that ejaculation is extremely pleasurable and allows men to experience supreme bliss. There are many people who think that ejaculation gives men a feeling of supreme ecstasy; women, in particular, may be likely to believe this. But there is a dangerous trap here. Based on my own experience, the idea that ejaculation produces a sensation of supreme bliss 26 seems preposterous. Ejaculation brings only the pleasure of expelling a liquid; the sensation might be described as "feeling refreshed now that everything has come out." Here I would like you to consider for yourself whether there are any men who are "moved to tears" by ejaculation, who find themselves "unable to stand," whose "mind goes completely blank," or who are so stricken with pleasure that they find themselves "unable to speak properly," and, if some men do indeed experience these states during sex, whether they are really caused by ejaculation. While there are of course differences between individuals, it seems that there are at least some women who experience the kind of extreme pleasure described above. I, however, have never experienced such pleasure during ejaculation. If I reflect on the moment of ejaculation, I note that I continue to be aware of my surroundings. Ejaculation is experienced as a twitching convulsion in my genitals, during which I remain able to support myself using my muscles and maintain a state of clear awareness of everything going on around me like a soldier holding a gun. After ejaculation my excitement rapidly dissipates. The sexual excitement I had been feeling disappears, leaving only a sense of indescribable emptiness. Immediately after ejaculation, a steady sense of balance and full mobility return. I am immediately able to get up and find my underwear or go to the toilet without any difficulty. I am not even given enough time to feel the "lingering aftertaste of sex" throughout my whole body because as soon as I ejaculate my feeling of 27 sexual pleasure is extinguished. If I am to be completely honest, then based on my own experience, I can only conclude that this is how my male body is made. 3 "Ejaculation is an act of excretion" It has already been pointed out many times that men do not feel all that much pleasure during ejaculation. Author Yang Sok-il, for example, has asserted that "ejaculation is an act of excretion." He writes, "Men's sexual desire is similar to a desire to urinate when one's bladder is full. It therefore follows that just as you feel relieved after urinating, after ejaculating a man's sexual desire is for the time being suppressed" (Men's Nature [Otoko no Saga], Gentōsha Autorō Bunko, 1999, p.86, p.180, originally published in 1992). Psychologist Wilhelm Reich writes that for men without the ability to feel [sexual pleasure] "the sexual act is nothing but an evacuation, followed by a reaction of disgust." (The Function of the Orgasm, Souvenir Press, 1973, p.164, originally published in 1948). Columnist Michael Ventura writes that "ejaculation is a muscle spasm that many men often feel with virtually no sensation but the twitch of a spasm" and "many ejaculations for many men happen without any sensation of coming." (Michael Ventura "Coming" in Keith Thompson (ed.), To Be a Man, Jeremy P. Tarcher, 1991, p.124). Jun'ichi Watanabe writes the following about the 28 feeling after ejaculation: "The instant a man ejaculates everything is over . . . in other words, if a man experiences strong pleasure while ejaculating, afterwards all that remains is a feeling of emptiness that can only be described as making one think of death" (The Nature of Men, p.152). Examining my own experience, I find that when I am sexually excited I think that ejaculation will transport me to a world of great pleasure, but after I actually ejaculate, this promise is always betrayed and I feel as though I have been left alone in the middle of a barren desert. In Life Studies Approaches to Bioethics (Seimeigaku ni Naniga Dekiruka?, Keisō Shobō, 2001). I refer to this experience of alienation as "male frigidity." There is indeed pleasure during sex and at the time of ejaculation, but it is in no way the sort of pleasure that "leaves my mind blank" or "fills me with profound happiness." When I ejaculate all I feel is the localized pleasure of convulsions and seminal fluid flowing out of my penis, and I am continually forced to acknowledge the fact that there is no "deep sense of emotional fulfillment " (pp. 278-279). This is how I experience ejaculation. Of course, there can be pleasure that causes me to forget myself, but it occurs before ejaculation – it is only something I experience on an emotional level during sex. 29 4 What lies at the core of "male frigidity" I use the term "male frigidity" to refer to two phenomena. One is ejaculation not being accompanied by any great feeling of pleasure; for "frigid" men, there is only the brief pleasure of excretion. The second is a rapid loss of excitement after ejaculation accompanied by a sensation of collapse throughout the entire body and a desolate feeling of emptiness. In my case the second problem is the more serious. I say this because while by prolonging the process before ejaculation I can experience sexual excitement for quite a long time and by using special techniques I have been able to slightly increase the pleasure I feel when ejaculating, no amount of effort has allowed me to reduce the sudden loss of arousal and feeling of emptiness that immediately follows ejaculation. Watanabe's phrase "a feeling of emptiness that makes one think of death" is apt. Ejaculation always resulting in this feeling of despair is what lies at the core of "male frigidity." I do not know what percentage of men suffer from "male frigidity." All I can be certain of is that I do. I refer to this condition as "male frigidity" because I am sure that if I were a woman and told a doctor of my symptoms, I would be diagnosed with "female sexual arousal disorder," i.e., "frigidity." So what is ejaculation like for men who do not suffer from male frigidity? If ejaculation is more than a "pleasurable excretion," and if following ejaculation a man's entire body is filled with a feeling of blissful fulfillment that lingers for a considerable period of time, 30 and if he never experiences a feeling of emptiness, then I would say he is not "frigid." But this is not how ejaculation is for me. 5 A repeating cycle of a feeling of potency => pleasure => a feeling of failure The following can be said regarding the relationship between "erection" and "ejaculation." To begin with, when I have an "erection" my entire body is suffused with a sense of potency. I am filled with an urge to insert my penis into a woman's body. At this time I feel almost no sense of self-negation or selfrejection. There may even be a sense of triumphant pride in being a man. But my "erection" is ended by "ejaculation." There is then the momentary pleasure of excretion followed by an inescapable feeling of emptiness. In other words, the process leading from "erection" to "ejaculation" begins with an "I'm good enough" sense of potency, passes through a brief feeling of pleasure during ejaculation, and then abruptly inverts itself and plunges into feelings of collapse, emptiness and failure. This precipitous fall awaits me whenever I engage in sex or masturbation. After ejaculating, I feel a desire to turn away from anything related to sex for a while, but as time passes, my sexual appetite begins to return and I begin the cycle once again. Repeating this feeling of descent into despondency over and over again throughout one's life is the defining symptom of "male frigidity." Of course, there are times when I feel 31 wholeheartedly that having had sex was a good thing. But this is an emotional sense of satisfaction or happiness that I was able to have sex with a woman I love. It is in no way a feeling of bliss brought on by ejaculation. As it is unpleasant to look directly at this feeling of collapse, I tend to focus instead on the activities that lead up to ejaculation. Men depicted in pornographic videos slip out of the frame as soon as they have ejaculated, or in some cases, the video itself ends. Pornography cannot succeed unless it banishes what happens after ejaculation from our thoughts. When I have sex with a woman I love, my feelings of affection for her can emotionally compensate for the feeling of emptiness that follows ejaculation. In such cases, I am left with the sense that the sex was good. But this is only because I have been able to use my emotions to divert my consciousness from the physical sensation of collapse. I have this feeling of falling inward even when the sex itself has been emotionally satisfying. 6 Men who avert their eyes from "male frigidity" In psychiatry, the term "male orgasmic disorder" (DSM-IV:302.74) is used to describe a condition in which a man cannot ejaculate or requires an inordinate amount of time to ejaculate when having sex normally, but the "male frigidity" I am describing does not fall within this definition. When it comes to men's sexual health, attention is 32 given to three major problems: erectile dysfunction, premature ejaculation, and delayed ejaculation. The focus is on whether or not a man can get an erection and whether or not he can ejaculate with desirable timing. In comparison, the question of whether or not he feels pleasure while ejaculating is seen as a minor issue. Evidence for this can be seen in the fact that one of the standard textbooks in the field of sex therapy, Helen Singer Kaplan's The New Sex Therapy (1974), restricts male sexual difficulties to these three conditions. "Male frigidity" is not mentioned. In the clinical world, the biggest problem for men is thought to be erectile dysfunction while the biggest problem for women is thought to be female sexual arousal disorder or "frigidity." I believe that "male frigidity" is just as big an issue as "female frigidity," but very few experts share this view. In the Japanese Encyclopedia of Psychotherapy [Shinririnshōdaijiten revised ed. Baifūkan, 2004], for example, the entry for "frigidity" reads as follows: "Frigidity is a female sexual disorder characterized by an absence or extreme weakness of sexual feeling and inability to achieve orgasm." This is followed by a more detailed description of this disorder, but nothing is said about it occurring in men. In most cases, the term "frigidity" is used synonymously with "female frigidity" and is employed to describe an illness for which treatment is required. 33 *Note on my use of "male frigidity" While this term has been used by others, it has in most cases referred to "male orgasmic disorder." Kaplan addresses "partial ejaculatory incompetence" but this is not the condition I refer to as "male frigidity." It seems that other terms such as "orgasmic dysfunction" and "anorgasmia" are now often used instead of "frigidity" (see William H. Masters et al., Human Sexuality 5th ed. Harper Collins, 1995, p.586). In my book, however, I use the term "male frigidity" idiosyncratically to describe something quite different from what is referred to by the terms discussed above. There is some kind of mechanism at work here. While the idea that "ejaculation is more or less just like urinating" is talked about quietly here and there, social strictures seem to have been engineered such that we must never say things like "if ejaculation is no more pleasurable than peeing, is this not a sign of frigidity?" in front of other people. To assert this publicly is akin to saying "the emperor has no clothes"; such a thing is out of the question in a society in which men are placed in a position of superiority. To get a proper erection in front of a woman and to give her sexual pleasure: these are the trials a man must pass. Things are arranged so that men are made to feel self-respect and self-affirmation by being able to do these things well. No matter how empty a man feels 34 after ejaculation, his mind is so occupied with whether he performed well as a man and whether he gave the woman pleasure during sex that he is incapable of delving deeply into subjects like "male frigidity." In this way, the problem of "male frigidity" is banished from a man's consciousness before he is aware of it. Furthermore, the phrase "male frigidity" indicates that regarding sexual pleasure it is men and not women who are to be the object of treatment. Even if becoming the object of treatment is not necessarily implied, this phrase indicates at very least that it is in a man's sexual pleasure that the fundamental problem lies. For a male dominated society, this is an uncomfortable way of thinking. Such a society will presumably ignore "male frigidity" as much as possible. Returning to what I said earlier, I think that deep within the minds of "frigid men" there is a "feeling of defeat." They "feel defeated" because no matter what they do, they can never experience the kind of pleasure felt by women. In one of her books, Chikako Ogura correctly asserts that men experience feelings of awe and fright in the face of women whose sexual response is full and powerful, think that "women's sexual pleasure is several times stronger than men's – men are just tools," and as a result harbor unease and anxiety (Myths about Sex Dismantled [Sekkusu Shinwa Kaitai Shinsho], Chikuma Bunko, 1995, pp.70-71, originally published in 1988). In men's minds there is the fantasy that "women feel extraordinary pleasure during sex." This idea arises because in films and pornographic videos women are 35 depicted having multiple orgasms and experiencing intense pleasure. Men will presumably compare their own ejaculation to what women are shown to be experiencing in these scenes. Various surveys have shown, however, that quite a large number of women do not experience a clear orgasm during sex. (According to a report published by Shere Hite, only 26% of women are always able to reach orgasm during sex. Orgasm itself also differs among individuals). Nevertheless, women in pornographic videos are always writhing in pleasure. As long as men continue to watch these sorts of videos, this fantasy regarding female pleasure will never be removed from the back of their minds. Sex between "frigid" men and women might thus be an activity in which each thinks "the grass is greener on the other side of the fence" without ever saying so. 7 Men's rules for talking about sex I suspect that quite a large number of men are vaguely aware that their bodies are "frigid." You can easily come to this conclusion by listening to how men talk about sex. The rules for discussing their sexual experiences hold that while they may talk proudly about how hot the girl was at the "soapland" [a kind of brothel] they visited yesterday, for example, and how tight she was, they will say almost nothing about how heavenly it felt when they ejaculated. While they talk in detail about how a woman's body responded, they do not speak about their own wonderful experiences of 36 ejaculation. The same can more or less be said of the "fūzoku" [sex trade] reports found in men's magazines and tabloids. Their authors hold forth at great length on the details of a sex worker's body and sexual technique with a grandiloquence that suggests they have something to hide. Almost nothing is said about the actual sensations that the man who is telling the story experienced during ejaculation. There is much talk of "so and so is great in bed" and "her such and such technique is amazing," but these sorts of phrases begin to sound like invocations meant to ward off an evil spirit. The evil spirit that must be kept at bay here is "male frigidity." Kazunori Taniguchi writes the following about how he felt after paying for sex: "I was hurting myself. Ejaculation was nothing more than an excretion . . . . I was nauseated by my own existence" (Men Who Buy Sex [Sei wo Kau Otoko], Pandora, 1997, p.25). This is a truly frank confession. I do not have any personal experience of paying for intercourse or other sexual services, but I can easily imagine what Taniguchi is trying to express. I understand "male frigidity" very well because it is something I have experienced myself. There are probably many men who, having read this far, would say that they themselves are not "frigid." Of course, I do not believe that every man is "frigid." What I want to suggest is that until now there has been far too little discussion of "male frigidity." Some may object to what I have been saying on the grounds that men's and women's bodies are put together differently and as such it is strange to compare 37 them in a straightforward manner; it is silly to say that men are frigid because they do not experience pleasure the way women do. This may be the case, but my sense of emptiness after ejaculation and feeling of "coming down" as my excitement rapidly dissipates cause real suffering. Since the man in question himself complains of mental or physical suffering, should what he is experiencing not indeed be seen as a "medical condition" in a wide sense of the term? (To say that it is a medical condition, however, does not necessarily imply that it should be treated – I will return to this issue in Chapter 5). I think it would be interesting to see what would happen if men talked frankly and shared their thoughts on how they feel during and after ejaculation and how these feelings affect their sexuality. The scales would presumably fall from their eyes and they would come to understand the diversity of male sexuality. In any case, I set out to write this book based on my own experiences. Even when I do speak about men in general, I have tried to avoid saying "this is how men are" whenever possible. It has been my intention to write with the utmost respect for men whose sexual sensitivity differs from mine. 8 Kinsey was aware of "male frigidity" There is an academic field, "sexology," in which scientific research into male and female sexuality is conducted. So how have men's sensations during sex been viewed within this field up until now? Here, 38 things may get a bit technical, but as this is a very important point, I think close consideration is warranted. Alfred Kinsey published Sexual Behavior of the Human Male in 1948 after conducting a statistical survey. This remains the largest study on sex ever conducted. Kinsey used the technical term "orgasm" to describe the climax of sexual arousal. Orgasm involves sexual excitement reaching its peak, muscular convulsions, and a rapid decline in arousal. And since in the case of males this sexual response occurs at the time of ejaculation, Kinsey held that "ejaculation = orgasm." Kinsey did note that the physical orgasm and the pleasure caused by an orgasm should not be equated. He also stated that there are different levels of sexual satisfaction, including cases in which ejaculation brings almost no pleasure. Kinsey was aware of one aspect of "male frigidity." What is surprising is that immediately following his acknowledgment of this phenomenon Kinsey writes as follows: But we have no statistics on the frequencies of physiologic differences, or of the various degrees of satisfaction, and, in the present study, all cases of ejaculation have been taken as evidence of orgasm, without regard to the different levels at which the orgasms have occurred. (Alfred C. Kinsey et al., Sexual behavior in the Human Male, 1948, pp.159160.) 39 With this declaration, Kinsey, the father of modern sexology, established the "ejaculation"="orgasm"= "sexual climax" formula. The problem of "male frigidity," that is to say, the possibility that the whole process of ejaculation may not be all that pleasurable, then disappeared from the central discussion in the field of sexology. This initial misstep has had farreaching implications. 9 Influence of the "ejaculation = orgasm" formula William Masters and Virginia Johnson conducted scientific observations of men and women actually having sex and published their findings in a book entitled Human Sexual Response in 1966. This text has come to be viewed as the "bible" of sexology. In Chapter Fourteen the authors discuss the psychological state of men during ejaculation, but what is addressed is the sensation experienced when seminal fluid is expelled and the relationship between intensity of pleasure and volume of ejaculate. No mention is made of a feeling of emptiness following ejaculation. (William H. Masters and Virginia E. Johnson, Human Sexual Response. Little Brown and Company, 1966, pp.214217). In 1981, Shere Hite administered a detailed survey on male sexuality to more than seven thousand American men and published the results in The Hite Report on Male Sexuality (Knopf, 1981). This is the most detailed set of self-reported data on male 40 sexuality currently available. Hite, however, employed Kinsey's formula without alteration, and asked men about their experiences with the assumption that "ejaculation = orgasm." As a result of this mistake, she failed to elicit men's thoughts on "male frigidity." Not only does her study come up short in this regard, but it also concludes without obtaining clear answers concerning what exactly men feel during orgasm and how these sensations differ from what is experienced by women. So what about the field of sex therapy? The magnitude of Kinsey's influence can also be seen in Helen Singer Kaplan's The New Sex Therapy (Brunner/Mazel, 1974). A later text published in 1992, Bernie Zilbergeld's The New Male Sexuality, contains the following passage: Although many people use ejaculation and orgasm synonymously, I find it useful to draw a distinction between them. Ejaculation is the physical part, the propulsion of seminal fluid. Orgasm is the peak feeling in sex. (Bernie Zilbergeld, The New Male Sexuality, Bantam Books, 1992, p.95). Zilbergeld thus corrects Kinsey's thesis, reaffirming that there are some men who do not experience much pleasure during ejaculation. Regarding what men feel after ejaculating, however, he writes only that they "experience lassitude and deep relaxation" (p.96). This 41 is the only mention of how men feel after ejaculation in this five hundred and eighty page explication of male sexuality. The paucity of discussion of this topic is singular. "Male frigidity" remains completely unexplored. Section 2 Analyzing the "Sensation of Something Piling Up" 10 Where does the feeling that "something is piling up" come from? Men describe ejaculation as "release [nuku]." I do not know who first came up with this expression but I think it is very apt. Using the image of the air being energetically "released" from a tautly inflated balloon to describe ejaculation is not far off the mark. Here we should note that "release" requires something to have been "pent up" to begin with. Feeling that "I really want to ejaculate" is close to the sensation of needing to "release" something that is building up within one's body. So what exactly is it that is "pent up" inside us? The normal response would be that it is sperm or seminal fluid that is piling up: if nothing is done, these fluids build up inside us, so we must expel them from our bodies on a regular basis. Tai Hikosaka expresses this as follows: "You have to release materials that pile up inside you. If you hold them in 42 too long, they become poisonous for your body. Let them come spurting out! Unlike women, men cannot endure abstinence. This should be obvious, since our bodies are constructed differently." (Myths of Masculinity [Dansei shinwa], Komichi Shobō, 1991, p. 157). But from a scientific point of view, it is incorrect to say that sperm "piles up" if it is not released; unused sperm are naturally broken down and absorbed by the body. But this does not explain the feeling, the irritating sensation, that something is piling up. I think this "piling up" sensation has both physiological and mental causes. As a physiological cause, it is speculated that there are changes in the levels of sex hormones and other physiological materials in the blood. I am told that heavy smokers have unbearable urges to smoke when the level of nicotine in their blood drops. Materials carried in our blood can affect our thoughts and feelings. When it comes to sexual desire, the involvement of androgen is suspected. Stimulation caused by seminal fluid within the prostate might also be involved. So what about mental causes? Let me reflect on what happens in my own case. In what sort of circumstances do I get the urge to masturbate? To begin with, I often get this urge after being stimulated by an erotic movie or manga. This is an extremely straightforward reaction. But this is not all. 43 11 A sense of "unease" and a feeling of "wanting to harm" Upon careful reflection, it seems that I sometimes masturbate when I have a sense of "unease" or "anxiety." I think erotic thoughts and masturbate when, for any number of reasons, I feel a sense of unease that will not go away even if I listen to my favorite music or eat delicious food. I also do this when I feel like there is "no way out" of problems I am facing at work or in my personal life. It may be that I masturbate when there is a problem I need to deal with but I feel crushed by my inability to do anything about it and the feeling of powerlessness this creates. In such situations I want to take my mind off the problem in front of me. Using the sexual organs easily at hand to accomplish this seems reasonable. Another situation that comes to mind is when I have a feeling of "wanting to harm." When I am on edge and feel a desire to abuse or hurt someone, I feel like this gets bound up with sexual desire. Upon reflection, however, I note that whenever I masturbate because I am anxious or feel that there is "no way out," or because I have an "urge to harm," all this leads to is the feeling of desolate emptiness that follows ejaculation, an inevitably depressing outcome. This is "male frigidity" at its worst. 12 Why "release"? Thinking about it in this way, in my own case at 44 least, it is not as though I masturbate because I like it so much I cannot resist. I don't particularly want to do it, but since things have "piled up," they "must be released." I masturbate and "release" this pressure because if I do not do something about what piles up inside me, I become frustrated and irritable, lose my ability to concentrate, have the urge to break things, and cannot contain myself. Of course, there are also times when I masturbate because I want to feel the excitement and elation of having an erection, but even in such cases there is indeed a feeling within me that I am doing it out of necessity. When I say this, it may seem as though I am claiming that "male sexuality is determined from birth." Feminists have warned against the view, which they call "essentialism," that "the feelings and behavior that accompany sexuality are determined biologically from birth," because it inevitably leads to a defiant posture of "men are born this way so there is nothing we can do about it." This is a very important point regarding everything discussed in this book, so I want to explain my thoughts on it quite clearly. I think male sexuality includes both elements determined biologically from birth and elements learned later in life. When it comes to the feeling of emptiness after ejaculation, I think innate, biologically determined elements play a very large role. The actual sexual behavior of men, on the other hand, seems to be largely influenced by what the individual learns growing up (this is indicated by research on feral children). 45 It may be impossible to cure "male frigidity," but the sexual behavior of men can and must be changed. This is what I want to express throughout this book. When I write about "lolicon" and pornography, I do not see these as rooted deeply in the minds and bodies of men and thus impossible to change. I think it should be possible for men to shift their sexual behavior in a different direction by carefully analyzing what has been etched into their own minds and bodies. Section 3 What is Pornography to Men? 13 When watching pornography makes a man "want to do it" Next I would like to take a look at how "male frigidity" affects the way men enjoy pornography. Even without watching pornography, it is possible for men to masturbate just by imagining erotic scenes on our own. There are times, however, when we want to do it while watching pornography. In what sort of circumstances does this urge arise? To begin with, when a man cannot be with the woman he is seeing, he sometimes satisfies himself by projecting her image onto the women who appear in pornography. There are also cases when a man is not in any sort of sexual relationship and must instead make do by having virtual sex with adult video actresses. 46 In other cases, men view pornography, even though they are married or have a partner, often doing so on the sly without their wife or partner knowing. They do this in order to satisfy their desire to have sex with a different type of woman than the one they are with. They may also look at women in pornography in order to fantasize about having sex with the kind of young, beautiful women they do not normally encounter. These are uses of pornography that any man can understand. There are also other, hidden motivations behind male masturbation using pornography. Let us look at a few of them. First, it can satisfy an "urge to hurt women." In the previous section, I mentioned a desire to "hurt someone" as one reason to masturbate. Pornography can also be used as a means of satisfying this desire to abuse or hurt someone. In pornography, women are fundamentally portrayed as slaves to men's sexual desire. They must do whatever men tell them, and even if they temporarily resist, they are eventually made to obey men through violence or sexual technique. A great deal of pornography has been produced in which a man forces a woman who resists him to do his bidding. While making the woman do as he says, in the end he forces her to experience sexual pleasure, and, saying things like "this is what you wanted all along," shifts all blame in her direction. In this way men escape any feelings of guilt. They can even delude themselves into thinking that the woman has unconditionally 47 surrendered because of their power as men. Feminists have pointed out that misogyny and a desire to subjugate women lie at the root of this kind of pornography. I think this is correct. So where do these feelings come from? 14 The misogyny of "frigid men" "Male frigidity" is, I suspect, one of the causes of this hatred of women. I say this because every time he ejaculates, a "frigid man" is confronted by the awareness of his own lack of ecstatic pleasure, and if he compares himself to a woman, he may start to wonder why only women can feel such ecstasy. An anger that women are allowed to feel such profound pleasure when men can only feel a relief similar to that of urination may begin to arise within him. He cannot abide the existence of "women who feel pleasure." In this way, "men who can't feel pleasure" begin to carry a resentment of women deep within themselves. This gives rise to feelings of "misogyny." When it comes to "misogyny," many possible causes have already been suggested, including resentment of mothers who dominated the man in question when he was an infant and of women in society who are more successful than he is, and to these I would like to add "male frigidity" as another reason men may come to resent women. Men in the grip of this "misogyny" want to get some kind of revenge against "women who feel pleasure." This is also one reason they watch pornography. By 48 watching pornography in which a man dominates a reluctant woman, forces her to do whatever he wants, and gains control over her sexual pleasure, a man can enjoy an illusion of superiority. Men seek to dominate women to exact revenge for the pleasure only women can feel. A similar psychological mechanism can be seen in rapists. Rape is an act in which violence against women takes a sexual form. It has been said that in some cases rape is committed in order to take revenge on women, and I think one motivation for this may be a desire to exact retribution on "women who feel pleasure." And this retribution is directed towards the organ that provides this pleasure, the female genitals. When a high school girl was killed and buried in concrete in Tokyo in 1988–89, it was discovered that the men who raped her, in addition to brutally punching and kicking her, inflicted multiple acts of unimaginable violence on her genitals. In cases of rape and murder during war, too, there have been many reports of this kind of violence, including objects being shoved into the genitals of the women who have been killed. Rather than "hatred of women," in these cases is it not perhaps more accurate to speak of "hatred of the organ that gives women pleasure"? This is retribution against the organ that allows women to feel pleasure. I firmly believe there is a deep connection between violence directed towards female genitals and "male frigidity." This is how deeply rooted a phenomenon "male frigidity" can be. (There are many texts that address battlefield rape, including Susan Brownmiller's 49 Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, Simon and Schuster, 1975, and Tai Hikosaka's Myths of Masculinity [Dansei Shinwa], Komichi Shobō, 1991. Satoshi Sugita's The Politics of Rape [Reipu no Seijigaku], Akashi Shoten, 2003, is essential reading on men who commit rape). 15 Watching pornography as an act of "self-harm" A second motivation for masturbation using pornography is that it satisfies a desire to "harm oneself." This can be dubbed "pornography as selfharm." It is possible to steal a moment of pleasure and relief by hurting oneself. Many times while watching pornography I have thought to myself, "Perhaps I am taking pleasure in harming myself by watching this." The type of scene that gives rise to these sorts of thoughts is one in which a woman who at first resists is aggressively pursued and ends up writhing in pleasure. This is perhaps the most common scenario found in pornographic videos, but as I watch it unfold, I am beset by a feeling of masochistic pleasure as if I were somehow hurting myself repeatedly and mercilessly. A careful analysis shows that this masochistic pleasure comes in two forms. One is the pleasure of watching something you cherish being smashed into pieces. This is a psychological mechanism I suspect readers will find easy to understand. Take, for example, a beautiful girl in a high school uniform. Even though we want to keep 50 her just as she is, pretty and innocent, in pornography there are often scenes in which such girls have their uniforms torn off and are mercilessly raped. When I watch such scenes, I feel the masochistic pleasure and excitement of seeing the girl in a uniform I wanted so badly to protect being brutally destroyed. In order for this pleasure to be maximized, the girl should be depicted as being exquisitely delicate and beautiful at the start. Once viewers have been made to empathize with a vulnerable and beautiful girl, they will then feel a much stronger sense of masochism when she is brutally raped. The use of scenes like those normally found in "idol videos" [non-pornographic videos featuring teen "idols"] at the beginning of pornographic videos is presumably an attempt to achieve this effect: "To think that such an innocent girl could end up like this!" This is often described as the pleasure of defiling what is sacred; Georges Bataille, for example, goes as far as to assert that "taboos exist only to be broken" (Georges Bataille, Eroticism, Japanese translation, Chikuma Gakugei Bunko, 2004, p.103. Originally published in 1957). 16 Men who wallow in the masochistic pleasure of watching "women who can experience ecstasy" The second form of masochistic pleasure is completely different. When I watch pornography that follows the "golden pattern" in which a woman resists at first but ends up writhing in ecstasy, I feel an unmistakably masochistic pleasure at the sight of a 51 woman experiencing such bliss. This is something that is not normally remarked upon so I would like to examine it in some detail. With this idea in mind, reflecting on the pornography I have seen I am struck by the fact that there are many scenes in which the man relentlessly asks the woman who is being raped, "This actually makes you feel good, doesn't it?" He will not stop asking her this until she admits to feeling pleasure; it is like a kind of ritual. This ritual can of course be interpreted as a way of confirming that the man "controls" the pleasure of the woman. I think this is indeed correct. The man may also feel pleasure by projecting himself onto the woman who is experiencing ecstasy. There seem to be some men who manipulate their own awareness in this way. In addition, however, we must also take note of another hidden psychological mechanism that underlies this ritual. This can best be described as the man watching the woman's ecstasy and needling himself over and over again with the thought that he himself cannot feel this kind of pleasure, or in other words, with the thought that he is a "frigid man." Since for a man to force an unwilling woman to feel pleasure means facing the fact that he himself cannot do so, the effect is therefore that of a man tormenting himself. So why do "frigid men" nevertheless pay money for pornography? There is only one answer: because they want to experience the masochistic pleasure of torturing themselves. I think this kind of psychological mechanism lies deep within 52 the minds of "frigid men," even if they are not aware of it. This is a form of self-harm: "I want to see a woman feel more and more pleasure, and I want to hurt my frigid self more and more by watching her." By watching pornography, a man burns the image of a woman feeling pleasure into the back of his mind, and in doing so goes on hurting himself by driving home again and again the fact that he is a "loser" who cannot feel this kind of ecstasy himself. When a deep psychological wound has been suffered, further injuring oneself in the same spot can bring intense pleasure. Women who have unwillingly accepted violent treatment at the hands of their husbands sometimes confess this kind of masochistic pleasure, and it is true that there is a pleasurable melting sensation that can be felt by wallowing in selfpity. Women who engage in "cutting" (making small cuts on their wrists) experience a sense of relief when they cut themselves. Once someone has experienced the pleasure of masochistic acts or self-harm, it is a very difficult practice from which to escape. It is my hypothesis that this kind of mechanism is also present in pornography. In nearly all pornographic videos, it is arranged so that in the end the woman feels pleasure. The more pleasure the woman feels the more masochistic pleasure the men watching her enjoy. This hypothesis that there is "enjoyment of pornography as a form of self-harm" does not seem likely to find immediate acceptance. But this is the significance of pornography when viewed from the perspective of 53 "male frigidity." 17 What is the idea at the root of pornography? Thinking about pornography in this way, its essential elements seem to be "a woman being harmed" and "a man harming himself by watching." It is because of this essential idea of "causing harm to human beings" that pornography has not developed as a healthy form of popular entertainment. Pornography is rooted in the darker side of the human psyche, the desire to feel pleasure by causing harm. The desire to cause someone harm is an evil that lies, to a greater or lesser extent, within everyone, man and woman alike. Pornography is a flower that grows out of this malevolent soil. When I presented this idea at a symposium, one of the female participants commented that if pornography has established a foothold at such a deep level of the male psyche, it will be extremely difficult to get rid of it. I think this is indeed the case. But there will presumably also be those who argue that pornography is not such a dark or evil thing. They will say that there are also pornographic videos in which people happily enjoy mutually pleasant sex and erotic novels and movies that couples can enjoy together. These forms of entertainment are sometimes also referred to as "erotica." (Examples of this genre include Michele Slung (ed.), Fever: Sensual Stories by Women Writers, HarperCollins, 1994, and Lonnie Barbach (ed.), Pleasures: Women Write Erotica, Doubleday, 1984). 54 If we look at the vast amount of adult magazines, videos, and Internet sites, however, we cannot help but conclude that a large majority of such materials treat women as toys of men's sexuality and are created to satisfy the selfish desires and fantasies of men. I became keenly aware of this as I conducted research in the course of writing this book. Susan Brownmiller writes that "like rape, [pornography] is a male invention, designed to dehumanize women, to reduce the female to an object of sexual access" (Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape, p.392), and I think this is indeed accurate. Within the mountains of pornographic materials that have been produced, those that depict men and women having mutually pleasurable, equitable sex are no more than a handful, and it is impossible to form an accurate image of the whole by putting just this tiny segment under a microscope. Before proceeding any further, there is something that must be noted: the level of coercion, reluctant participation, pregnancy, and STD infection in the places where these photos and videos are actually produced has been estimated to be much higher than we normally assume. Presumably this kind of harm is not easily brought into the open because society is largely indifferent to the welfare of women who appear in pornography. There is also a good chance that these productions are funded by organized crime, and there are deep connections to prostitution. Before talking about whether pornography should be regulated, we need a system to protect women working in this 55 industry from coercion and mistreatment. Presumably most men who watch pornography do not want these women to actually have their human rights violated. To begin with, we need some means of ensuring such violations do not occur. We must then think about what is to be done within our society about the desire to watch depictions of people being sexually tormented, molested, harmed or made to cry. These desires can be found in women as well as in men. It is something that needs to be addressed by both sexes. In this chapter, my priority has been the elucidation of "male frigidity," and I have not attempted to address whether pornography itself is good or bad. As some readers may be left with the impression that I have no problem with the content of pornography as it currently exists, I would like to state explicitly that this is not the case. It is true that I myself have used pornography, but this is in no way something I can endorse. I think the circumstances surrounding pornography must be changed. I hope to eventually consider this issue in greater detail. "Male frigidity" is not simply an "orgasm disorder" of the genitals of the sort addressed within the fields of psychiatry and sex therapy. The scope of this condition extends far beyond the physical genitals themselves, shaping how men think and behave regarding sex, influencing their relationships with women, and deeply affecting their relationships with other people in general. As I have stated, "frigid" men seek revenge against women who are capable of feeling pleasure and attempt 56 to attain a position of superiority over them. But this is not all. "Frigid men" reject their own bodies to such a great extent that in some cases they even try to escape from them. In the following chapters I will carefully examine some of the secrets of these men that have until now avoided direct scrutiny. 57 Chapter 3 Why am I Attracted to School Uniforms? Section 1 The "Psychological Structure" of Men Who Are Attracted to School Uniforms 1 Girls' school uniforms In April of 2004, Kazuhide Uekusa, a well-known economist, was arrested for allegedly (he maintains his innocence) being caught in the act of using a mirror to look up the skirt of a first-year public high school student. During his trial at the Tokyo district court, it was revealed that he possessed many photographs and videos of women in school uniforms. Uekusa was fortythree years old at the time of his arrest and thus belongs to my generation. I have attended conferences with him and cannot view this incident as involving someone totally outside my circle. There are thought to be many men who, regardless of their own age, are attracted to girls' junior high and high school uniforms. A "school uniform" genre of pornography has been established, and there are presumably a very large number of men who 58 masturbate while looking at photographs or videos of girls in their school uniforms. Even looking at the flyers for sexual services deposited in my mailbox, I have noticed some that offer to send an adult prostitute in a school uniform to your home. An editor once whispered to me in the back of a taxi, "Why are school uniforms so sexy?," and this comment has remained lodged in my mind ever since. Flight attendants and "office ladies" [a Japanese term for women who perform clerical and administrative tasks in an office setting, sometimes abbreviated as "OL"] also wear uniforms, but the iconic "girl in a uniform" is the female school student. This is evinced by the fact that if you do a multi-term search [in Japanese] for "uniform" and "photograph" on the Internet, ninety percent of the results returned will be for sites featuring images of girls' school uniforms. In order to further investigate the mysteries of the "frigid man," in this chapter I will delve as deeply as possible into the question of why men are attracted to girls' school uniforms. I myself understand the feelings of men who are attracted to school uniforms. I do not commit these sorts of crimes or collect uniforms, but I have no trouble understanding the psychological mechanisms at work in men who find uniforms alluring. I would like to put these mechanisms under a microscope and examine them very closely. I suspect a startling "psychological structure" will emerge as a result. 59 2 The refreshing and thrilling properties of girls in school uniforms One day while I was investigating the question of where the appeal of school uniforms lies, I visited Matsumoto City to attend a symposium. I had some free time, so I took a walk near the train station and discovered a building with a high school uniform hanging in a display window. This uniform was comprised of a white shirt with a red ribbon attached to the collar, a blue vest, and a pleated plaid skirt. I stood in front of the window looking at the display. As I did so, a sensation of refreshing coolness filled my body, as though a crisp breeze had blown through my chest, along with the shiver-inducing thrill of looking at something shameful. I wondered what exactly was causing these sensations. After looking at the display, I continued walking to a café in the train station, and on the way there, I passed many girls in school uniforms. But these somehow grownup-looking girls, or in other words real, living and breathing girls in their school uniforms, gave me almost none of the refreshing, thrilling sensations I had felt moments before. They were flesh-and-blood girls with physical bodies, and I could not feel in them any trace of the aura created by the uniform in the display window. When my work was done and I returned home, I found that collections of photographs of girls in school uniforms I had ordered to aid in the writing of this book had arrived. I opened them and right away began 60 to look through them. They were full of images that brought on the same feelings of refreshing coolness and excitement I had felt when looking at the display. The girls smiling out at the viewer were flawlessly pretty. The girls in these collections of photographs were much better-looking than normal high school and junior high school students. In other words, in order for a girl in a school uniform to be thrilling and refreshing, she must be good-looking, with a pretty face. In the real world, one almost never encounters such girls. But if I did come upon such a beautiful girl among the students in uniforms walking down the street, I might feel in her the appeal of the school uniform. The allure of a school uniform is completely dependent on the face of the girl wearing it. 3 The way in which I am drawn to school uniforms Fixation on uniforms has, it should be noted, been thought of as a form of "fetishism." "Fetishism" involves being sexually aroused by clothing or shoes worn by the opposite sex. The classic image of fetishism is probably that of a man who develops a bizarre attachment to women's high heels, collects them, and masturbates while touching them. I suspect that uniform fetishism is often understood in the same way. But the way in which I am attracted to school uniforms is quite different. If a large number of uniforms were lined up in front of me, for example, I would not be aroused by these articles of clothing themselves. My attraction to uniforms is limited to cases in which they 61 are able to evoke the image of a girl wearing them. Let me return to what happened when I saw the uniform on display in Matsumoto City. I experienced a thrill and sensation of refreshing coolness while looking at the uniform. At the time I was looking past the uniform itself at the image of a "virtual schoolgirl" with perfect looks wearing it. Of course, I did not form a concrete picture of this girl's appearance and personality. But it is true that I did see a kind of hallucinatory vision of this "virtual schoolgirl" somewhere beyond the uniform on display. In other words, simply having a uniform placed before my eyes is not enough. Beyond the uniform itself I must be able to see the hallucinatory vision of a "virtual schoolgirl" wearing it. When this hallucinatory vision is created, the uniform ceases to be just a piece of fabric and begins to have a life of its own. So what sorts of sexual urges arise within me when I get this kind of thrill and feeling of refreshment from looking at a school uniform? I suspect it may be an urge to ejaculate on it. There may well be, somewhere inside me, an urge to splatter semen on the uniform and watch it soak into the material. This is not a desire to ejaculate on the skin of the girl in the uniform; what I want my semen to soak into is the cloth of a uniform being worn by a girl. To be more precise, what I want to ejaculate on is not simply the cloth itself but the whole situation of "a girl wearing a school uniform." The desired result of this is for the semen to land on the fabric of the uniform. This sense of unattainment in not having the semen reach the skin of the girl is very 62 important (this physical sensation can perhaps be seen as having been raised to the level of art in the form of the "bachelors" in Marcel Duchamp's The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even [The Large Glass]). 4 A uniform, a pretty face, and white panties The most important elements of the "girl in a school uniform" are the uniform, her face, and white panties. It goes without saying that the uniform is important. Regarding her face, it is indeed essential for the girl in the uniform to be pretty, and she must also be smiling or wearing an expression of artless innocence. In collections of photographs of girls in school uniforms there are very few pictures showing only the body of the girl from the neck down. When men masturbate while looking at pictures of a girl in a school uniform, what part of her body are they looking at? I suspect that when most men ejaculate they are looking at the girl's face. That is how important it is. The white panties serve to connect the school uniform to the pretty face. The question of whether or not panties can be seen is the front line in a war between the creator of the collection of photographs and the reader, and the instant the reader catches a glimpse of white panties underneath a girl's skirt as he flips through the pages he experiences a moment of catharsis and a feeling of satisfaction at having obtained the book or magazine. In chapter one, I mentioned that the panties 63 beneath a girl's miniskirt must be white, and this is also an iron rule of collections of photographs of girls in uniforms. In two magazines featuring photographs of girls in school uniforms, Kuriimushashinshū 2 (Wairea, 1995) and Kuriimushashinshū 5 (1998), there are a total of fourteen photographs in which panties are visible, and in every case they are white. The same trend can be seen in other books and magazines. The "white panties rule" can indeed be described as inviolable. There is a photograph in which the girl's panties are visible on page 103 of Kuriimushashinshū 2, and the accompanying captions read as follows: "Tomomi looked great in her sailor-style school uniform, didn't she? It was great when she bent over and we could see her panties." "Catching a glimpse of her panties is very exciting, isn't it? I would love a pair of Tomomi-chan's pure white panties!" It is evident that photographs of white panties are intentionally staged by the creator of the photo collection. If you ask young people they will tell you that in reality very few girls wear white panties under their school uniforms. Evidently the "white panties" rule is nothing more than a self-centered male fantasy. 5 What is on the other side of the pristine white panties? So why do men like white panties? In Chapter One I focused on "white" as a "sacred color." Here I would also like to point out the following. In most of these photographs, the white panties used are made of 64 cotton. White cotton panties get dirty easily. If the girl in the uniform is wearing white cotton panties they must presumably get at least a little bit dirty. But the panties in these photographs are always sparkling white without the slightest stain. In other words, the significance of catching a glimpse of white panties is that it allows the viewer to meticulously confirm that what should normally be dirty is in fact perfectly clean. For me there is the sense that what must be on the other side of the panties is perfectly smooth skin; in other words, the complete absence of genitalia. It is because there are no genitals under the white panties that they remain clean. In short, the reason pristine white panties are important is that they provide the most incontrovertible evidence for the delusion that "there might not be any genitals under the panties of the girl in the school uniform." Of course, in collections of photographs of girls in school uniforms, the majority of photographs do not reveal panties. But even if underwear is not visible, when we look at these sorts of pictures we assume that under her skirt the girl is wearing white panties, and it is because we look at them in this way that girls in school uniforms are so attractive. Evidence for this hypothesis can be seen in the fact that the instant I imagine the girl in a photograph is wearing smooth red panties, for example, the aura projected by the girl in a school uniform transforms into a different kind of erotic appeal. For this reason, "unseeable white panties" can be said to exist at the core of photographs of girls in school uniforms even when no glimpses of 65 underwear are actually revealed. Thus far, I have made little distinction between the images of girls in school uniforms in photography collections and actual girls in school uniforms. Reflecting on this, I am struck by my own inability to properly distinguish between an image and reality. I get almost the same thrill and refreshing sensation looking at a girl in a book of photographs as I do looking at a pretty girl in a school uniform in real life. The inability to distinguish reality from fantasy in the dimension of sexuality may be one of the characteristics of "frigid men." Men who confuse fantasy with reality often cause great harm to women. There are men who approach girls wearing school uniforms in the street and try to buy sex, and there are men who are arrested for trying to look up girls' skirts. These men think of flesh and blood women as nothing more than walking images of girls. They forget that the woman they are looking at has her own thoughts, feelings and volition. In the following chapters, I hope to thoroughly examine the murky sexuality of these sorts of men. 66 Section 2 Seeing "School" in a Girl Wearing a Uniform 6 Why am I attracted to school uniforms? After coming this far, we at last reach the main question concerning school uniforms: why do I experience a thrill and feeling of cool refreshment when I see a girl in a school uniform? What exactly is the appeal of a "uniform"? Various things have been said about this appeal. For example, there is the assertion that because uniforms are designed to remove individuality by standardization they easily stimulate fetishism based on clothing. This may indeed be the case when it comes to men who are attracted to the uniform itself. It has also been suggested that the sense of oppression conveyed by students being made to wear their uniform gives pleasure. Another idea is that they acquire value through scarcity as they are only worn during junior high and high school. Still another hypothesis is that it reminds men of when they themselves were students or brings to mind memories of girls they liked at that time. I think all of these explanations are reasonable. As I myself understand these feelings well, I too was tempted to say these explanations are enough, but after conducting extensive analysis concerning school uniforms I noticed that there is another completely 67 different psychological mechanism operating within me. I will lay out a step-by-step explanation of this mechanism, but I am sure that as I proceed many readers will balk at what I am saying. I ask you to put your reservations aside and continue reading to the end of this chapter. What lies submerged beneath my consciousness may be very distinctive or unique, but I believe it can serve as a point of reference for you as you examine your own sexuality. I hope you will be able to use it as an entry point in order to more deeply explore your own experience. 7 Are girls the source of the appeal? Or perhaps the color of the uniforms? To begin with, the uniforms in question are worn by girls. It therefore follows that the appeal of uniforms may in fact be the appeal of the girls wearing them. Uniforms are bound up in the image of a school-aged girl in ways that make the two difficult to distinguish from each other, so it is possible that when I am attracted to a uniform I am actually attracted to the girl who is wearing it. This hypothesis is soon proved false, however, if I test it by comparing a photograph of a girl in a uniform with another photograph of the same girl in different clothing. In almost all cases the thrill and feeling of refreshment is much more powerful when looking at a photograph of the girl wearing a uniform. The secret to the appeal lies not in the girl but in the uniform itself. So if the secret is to be found in the uniform, where 68 exactly is it hidden? School uniforms worn by girls in Japan can be broadly divided into "sailor" and "blazer" style garments. When I was a student all girls' uniforms were sailor style, but in the years since then the number of junior high schools and high schools adopting "blazer" style outfits has increased and nowadays this style is predominant. Is there some sort of secret contained in these forms of dress? Looking at collections of photographs we see that, regardless of whether the uniform in question is sailor or blazer style, in the overwhelming majority of cases the colors used are white and navy blue. Is the use of these two colors perhaps the key? Dark blue is, however, also widely used in other uniforms such as those worn by flight attendants and "office ladies." It can be described as Japan's "uniform color." Given the fact that school uniforms do not have a monopoly on the use of navy blue, we are not likely to find the secret of their special appeal in their color. Here I would like to conduct a thought experiment. Suppose that sailor and blazer style outfits have disappeared, and throughout Japan female junior high and high school students are instead dressed in camouflage-patterned schoolgirl uniforms. Imagine that this state of affairs has persisted for twenty years. Would the men who had been sexually attracted to sailor and blazer outfits now feel the same attraction to the new camouflage uniforms? In my own case I suspect that I would indeed feel sexually attracted to the new outfits. I say this because when I was in school I almost never saw blazer and pleated skirt uniforms; 69 nearly all school uniforms were sailor style. But as the times changed and blazer/pleated skirt outfits became the norm, a sexual sensitivity to these sorts of uniforms grew naturally inside me. This being the case, it can be assumed that if camouflage uniforms became prevalent, the sexual sensitivity within me would alter and become responsive to this new stimulus. 8 "Uniform adoration" is another name for "school adoration" What we have seen so far is that my attraction to sailor and blazer outfits is the result of their being "designated as uniforms" by schools. There is nothing special or mysterious about these forms of dress themselves. If things change and a different kind of outfit becomes designated as a school uniform, I am sure that I will begin to be sexually attracted to this new "designated uniform" as well. One of the secrets of my attraction to school uniforms lies in the fact that junior high and high schools make the wearing of these outfits obligatory. I see "school" when I look at "a girl in a uniform." Let me propose another thought experiment. There are some young women who enter the workforce directly after graduating from junior high school instead of attending high school. Suppose that one day the Japanese government decided that these girls should be forced to wear a special uniform. They would have to go to work wearing this uniform until they reached the age of eighteen. Girls wearing this uniform 70 would thus be the same age as girls attending high school. In this scenario, would I also be sexually attracted to the uniforms of these girls who work rather than go to school? Think carefully about your own feelings and try this thought experiment for yourself. While the answer may of course differ depending on the nature of the outfit in question, in my own case I suspect I would not be especially attracted to the uniforms of these girls who are not in school. I say this because it would not be possible to see "school" behind the image of these uniformed girls. To sum up what I have stated thus far, I experience a thrill and feeling of refreshment when I look at a girl in a sailor uniform or school blazer because I see "school" through her image. In other words, for me "uniform adoration" is another name for "school adoration." (The original Japanese for "uniform adoration" is "seifuku moe." The word "moe" means a "romantic and/or sexual feeling" toward imaginary characters.) 9 What girls in uniforms mean to teachers Here I see a connection to another issue. Why do some people employed by schools seek to buy sex from students? In the last few years there have been many incidents in which people actively employed as teachers or school board members have been arrested for paying junior high or high school students for sex. There has been case after case in which a teacher or school employee paid several high school students for sex or 71 gave students money to appear in pornographic videos. A particularly shocking incident involving violence committed by a junior high school teacher against a student occurred in 2001. The teacher met the first year junior high school student through a "terekura (telephone club)" [a service that allows men to contact women for the purpose of paying for sex]. She accidentally fell out of his speeding car with her hands bound in handcuffs and died after being struck by another vehicle. In his testimony the teacher stated: "I was happy to learn that she was a junior high school student." Where exactly does this happiness come from? My own speculation is that for this teacher the fact that the girl was a junior high school student was of great importance. I suspect that he was excited not just because she was a young girl but also because she attended a junior high school. Presumably many of the men who choose to become a junior high or high school teacher have a strong affinity for these institutions. There are no doubt more than a few male teachers who become infatuated with "school" itself, love "school" from the bottom of their hearts, and see the meaning of life as being involved in "school." The education system is supported by this kind of passionate teacher. But what happens when this affection for school overflows into the dimension of sexuality and becomes uncontrollable? Might they not then select female junior high and high school students in uniforms, who seem to be a physical embodiment of "school," as their 72 sexual prey? These men love "school," but since they cannot actually have sexual relations with "school" itself, they try to have sex with girls in uniforms who constitute a physical representation of this institution. For them, sexually assaulting girls in school uniforms is equivalent to ejaculating on the "school" they love and having intercourse with "school" through the girls in school uniforms. It has been reported that many of the men involved in these incidents of prostitution at schools were dedicated, enthusiastic teachers. This hypothesis may seem a bit strained, but I think the large number of incidents in which teachers pay female students for sex is very difficult to understand if we do not interpret them in this way. To simply say that many teachers suffer from "lolicon [Lolita complex]" does not constitute an explanation. Here some readers may think, "I'm not a teacher so this has nothing to do with me." But this phenomenon is in no way limited to teachers. There are in fact many men who are fixated on "school" even though they do not teach at one. This is something that may affect all men. Here some readers may say that they hated school, but if you raise this objection I would ask you to consider the possibility that this would not be the case if you were in the position of a teacher rather than that of a student. You might hate being taught, but is there really no possibility that you might enjoy teaching young girls? Of course, here I suspect many readers will argue that they have never had any sort of desire to ejaculate on "school," but I hope they will be able to put 73 aside their reservations and keep reading just a bit further. Section 3 Uncovering the Secrets of the Uniform 10 Why do men feel sexual desire for "school"? When I am sexually attracted to a girl in a school uniform, this sexual desire is in fact for "school" itself in its manifestation as a schoolgirl. This has been made clear by my examination of the issue thus far. So what exactly is this "school" that manifests itself by borrowing the form of a girl in a uniform? I have not found any text that provides an answer to this question, and while this means that I will have to proceed by piling hypothesis on top of hypothesis, I intend to do so as carefully and circumspectly as possible. What is often discussed in this context is nostalgia for youth. We savor the bittersweet memories of our time in junior high and high school. It may indeed be possible to assert that a sad longing to return to this time in one's life lies at the bottom of a fixation with school uniforms. During this highly impressionable period, we spend most of our time at school. Entrance exams, sports days, gymnasiums, afternoon classes, after-school activities, going to school by bicycle, classmates, the school gate at twilight, and graduation: this is the period during which both boys and girls 74 acquire secondary sex characteristics, fall in love, and feel their hearts begin to pound. Collections of photographs of school-aged girls are in fact full of images that stimulate this kind of nostalgia. Classrooms after school and gymnasiums are obvious choices for a backdrop, but what we must take note of is the fact that old-fashioned houses and traditional Japanese style tatami-mat rooms are also used as locations for these photo shoots. Why are there so many pictures of a smiling girl wearing a school uniform sitting on the veranda of an old-fashioned Japanese house or standing in a traditional tatami-mat room as soft sunlight streams in from outside? I can only assume it is because these photographs are created for a generation that feels nostalgia at the sight of an "old-fashioned veranda" or a "traditional tatamimat room." I do, in fact, get a nostalgic feeling when I see a photograph of an old-fashioned veranda. A girl in her school uniform sitting on a veranda seems less like a young girl living in the present day than a girl who existed in a nostalgic past, specifically the era in which I attended school. I then experience the illusion that she is smiling and looking out at me here in the present. The old-fashioned veranda plays the role of stirring melancholy desires to return to that time in the adult viewer. The creators of these sorts of photographs seem to be aware of this effect. The following passages of text appear in Supika Vol.1 (Mediaboy 2001). "Remember being in high school. It was normal for you to take part 75 in activities with high school girls, and on sports days you frolicked with these girls in their "bloomer" exercise outfits. Uniforms were just a nuisance that took away your freedom. It is a period that is burned so deeply into our minds in the form of bittersweet memories that we find it hard to forgive ourselves for having been so oblivious to its importance at the time." "Bloomers in a gymnasium. This is obvious. It is a situation that almost seems to have been created for magazines devoted to beautiful girls." "A girl standing on a veranda is also a classic scenario." "A depiction of the world that elicits nostalgia." (pp. 99-101) Undoubtedly, there are deep feelings of nostalgia for "school" at work behind the sense of excitement created by photographs of girls in school uniforms. Nevertheless, I find it impossible to believe that the secret of uniforms can be completely explained by nostalgia alone. It is clear that an even deeper mystery lies hidden further down in our psyches. We must try to bring this more profound mystery to light. 11 School as a place where "brainwashing" occurs While it may be the result of my own bias as a teacher at a university, when I hear "school" the image that comes to mind is that of a place where students are taught. In other words, "schools" are places of teaching and learning. If this is the case, then feeling sexual desire for "school" is equivalent to feeling sexual desire for "teaching and learning." What does this mean? One of 76 the most significant characteristics of junior high and high school education in Japan is that the content of what must be taught is determined in quite fine detail by the Ministry of Education, Sports, Science and Technology. All textbooks must receive government approval, and the scope of what is left to the teacher's discretion is exceedingly small. In this regard, these schools differ considerably from universities. A great deal of freedom is allowed regarding the content of what is taught at a university, and, particularly in the humanities, it can often be observed that the content of a course will change completely when it is taught by a different professor. Particularly inept instructors can even find themselves abandoned by their students. In contrast to this state of affairs, classes where all students are taught the same fixed content form the main part of the curriculum at junior high and high schools. In other words, junior high and high school education is essentially indistinguishable from simply pouring knowledge and values into students' heads, i.e. "brainwashing." When it comes to junior high and high school, "school" is fundamentally a place where "brainwashing" occurs. Could this fact have something to do with the secret of sexual attraction to school uniforms? Looked at in this way, junior high schools and high schools seem like very dangerous places where experienced adults are given license to gang up on and "brainwash" highly impressionable young people (the same can also be said of elementary schools, something I will touch on in the next chapter). "School" is in fact a 77 place where the essentially very dangerous and shameful activity of reprogramming the minds of young people is carried out publicly in broad daylight. Of course, since at junior high and high schools students are given opportunities to freely debate with teachers and time for discussion and independent study, we cannot apply the label "brainwashing" to everything that occurs at these institutions. But as the fundamental goal of these schools is to pour into students' heads the precise content of the textbooks approved by the Ministry of Education, Sports, Science and Technology, we cannot avoid saying that this system is essentially indistinguishable from "brainwashing." This is also the reason there have been increasing calls for the teaching of "patriotism" and "respect for masculinity and femininity" at schools, because the most effective means of ensuring these values take root is to have them taught, or instilled via brainwashing, at these institutions. Thinking about things in this way leads us to a possible interpretation of the seemingly nonsensical idea of a sexual desire for "school": it is a sexual attraction to the act of "brainwashing" school-aged girls (here I am writing from the perspective of a heterosexual man). 12 I want to "brainwash" schoolgirls in uniforms! With this perspective in mind, I notice something when I look at collections of photographs of schoolgirls. The girls in these collections put on uniforms, look at 78 the camera and smile. Or they are photographed staring at the viewer with an expression of childlike artlessness. To me they seem to be saying, "Brainwash me!" or "It's ok to brainwash me in whatever way you like!" The secret of the thrill and feeling of refreshment imparted by girls in uniforms is now revealed: it is the delusion I hold that it's OK for me to brainwash this girl, that I have permission to reprogram the contents of her brain, use "mind control" on her so that she really loves me, and make her do my bidding as though she were my servant, and that no one will criticize me for doing such a dangerous thing because the girl herself actually desires it. The feeling of refreshment arises out of my viewing the girl as a "blank slate" before brainwashing. The thrill comes from the sense of transgression (doing something that should not be done) that accompanies reprogramming her brain or reshaping her personality. Attraction to "school" turns out to be excitement at the thought of brainwashing young girls. The desire to ejaculate on "school" is a desire to ejaculate on the idea of brainwashing girls. Thinking about it in this way should make it slightly easier to understand, and I hope readers will agree that this is by no means a desire held only by teachers. I am confident that there are a great many men who can understand the desire to brainwash a young girl and turn her into an obedient servant or maid. It would not be surprising if this desire were indeed wriggling and squirming inside every man who feels a twinge of excitement when he sees photographs of a girl in a 79 uniform staring out him. So how does this differ from the reverence for virgins or veneration of pure young girls that has been with us since ancient times? To begin with I would point out that in contemporary society reverence for virgins on a physical level is not very strong. The number of sexually experienced female junior high and high school students has increased, and it is thus unlikely that men are expecting girls in school uniforms to be virgins in a physical sense. Instead of a physical virgin, what men want is a girl with a "virgin brain": a girl who is sexually "unbrainwashed" and onto whose brain any number of things can still be printed. Men want a girl who is this sort of "brain virgin"; they want a girl who seems to be herself desirous of brainwashing, saying "It's OK to brainwash me." The uniform she wears is evidence of this desire to be brainwashed. In other words, when these girls walk around in their uniforms, from a man's perspective it is as though they are walking down the street publicly saying, "It's ok to brainwash me in any way you like." It may not be easy to understand, but I think this is the kind of self-centered thought process at work in men who are attracted to girls in school uniforms. 13 Breaking down the desire for "brainwashing" So what exactly is the nature of this desire to brainwash young girls? It is a desire to put knowledge and values in her 80 head that are convenient from my own point of view, and to place her thoughts, feelings and behavior under my control. If I can succeed in doing so, I will be able to make her do as I like. I can use her to satisfy my desires like a servant or a slave. I can also manipulate her via "remote control" and enjoy watching her do my bidding. If we divide domination into external domination, like that of a body chained down, and internal domination, like that of a heart or mind restrained, "brainwashing" is clearly domination of the latter kind. There is a desire to enter deep into the girl's mind and acquire the ability to manipulate her from the inside at will. So why is it so important to be able to control her mind in this way? To solve this mystery, let us consider it from a different angle. How would one go about gaining complete internal domination over the brain of a young girl? To put it another way, what is the most complete form of "brainwashing"? It would, I submit, be to have my brain surgically removed and transplanted into the girl's skull, that is to say, to replace her brain with my own. In other words, it would be for me to put myself right inside her head. By doing so, I would become able to completely control her thoughts, feelings and behavior. What would happen if her brain were replaced by mine? I would presumably be able to enter her body like a spirit and go on living inside her. Her body would become my body; if I touched my chest I would feel her 81 still-small breasts, and if I looked in a mirror I would see reflected in it the face of a pretty young girl. I would be able to live inside her, and therefore I would be able to completely dominate her and manipulate her in any way I chose. This is the most perfect form of "brainwashing." In other words, it seems that the desire to brainwash a young girl is the desire to abandon my own body, transplant myself into her body, and manipulate this pretty body in accordance with my own will. But since this cannot actually be achieved, I have no choice but to settle for a fixation on the "uniform" that so strongly evokes the image of "brainwashing." When a girl with a pretty face is smiling and wearing a uniform, it is as though she is saying, "Go ahead and enter my brain. Come and live inside my body!" Among the men who open books and magazines full of photographs of girls in uniforms, there are undoubtedly many who, as they turn the pages, wonder excitedly, "What sort of girl will I enter and live inside today?" 14 Semen as a bridge to a young girl Earlier I mentioned a desire to ejaculate in the direction of an image of the brainwashing of young girls. I did not explain, however, why men cannot be satisfied with the image alone and need to progress all the way to ejaculation. The answer to this question can be found, however, if we understand the meaning of "brainwashing" to be "transporting oneself into her body." In order to transport myself into a girl I am 82 looking at, whether a flesh-and-blood human being or a girl in a photograph, I require a "medium" (means of transport) to carry me inside her. A bridge spanning the divide from this side to that side: this is the role played by a line of semen emanating from the penis. Like a spider proceeding along a line of silk spun between a pair of trees, I follow the line of semen emanating from my penis to the girl in a uniform in an attempt to get inside her and live within her body. A "uniform fetish" must be consummated with ejaculation. At the start of this chapter, I described a state of affairs in which a "virtual girl" emerges from beyond a school uniform I see in front of me, and my accompanying desire to release my semen in the direction of this whole situation. After considering this at length, the identity of this "virtual girl" has at last become clear. The girl I am looking at is an image of "another me" after I have transported myself inside her and begun to live inside her body. When I am about to expel semen in the direction of the girl I am looking at, the target of this emission is in fact an image of "another me" that has succeeded in entering her body and is now looking back at me. In other words, my "uniform fetish" is an attempt to create a sexually solipsistic world (a world where only my self exists) by directing my ejaculation towards myself. Here my interaction with the "ideal girl" culminates in an "interaction with myself." Flesh-andblood girls are only needed as raw materials for the construction of this world, and once this construction 83 has been completed, they are no longer necessary. In the solipsistic world of the uniform fetish, to be treated as nothing more than disposable pawns is the ultimate fate of living and breathing girls. 15 A feeling of revulsion toward the muscle-bound, dirty male body A "uniform fetish" is a desire to become a schoolaged girl. Here some may object that if this is the case then a man with this fetish should enjoy dressing up in women's clothing. But for me, to become a woman is not the answer; even if I dress my muscle-bound, dirty body in girls' clothing I will never be able to love it, and it is not as though I want to become a woman of my own age. This being the case, why did this desire to become a girl arise within me to begin with? What gave rise to this desire to transplant myself inside a girl and take over her body? I suspect that at the root of this longing is a prayer-like plea for release: "Let me out of this muscle-bound, dirty body!" This kind of self-negation exists at the center of my feelings about my own body. If I could transport myself into the body of a pretty girl and live inside it, what would I do? I would presumably begin by caressing the soft new body that has become mine. I would savor again and again the sensations of having sensitive breasts and soft, responsive skin I was experiencing for the first time. And then, while looking at my naked body in a mirror, I would begin to look for all of the hidden pleasure spots. 84 For the first time in my life, I would feel love for my own body. I would know deep in my heart what it is like to experience this kind of love. All of the strange desires I have discussed so far are based on this "delusion": I want to feel profound love for my own body by leaving my original body and entering that of a girl. It is here that the secret of my "uniform fetish" is ultimately to be found. 85 Chapter 4 Delving into the Psychology of Men with "Lolita Complexes" Section 1 Japan, a Great "Lolicon" Power 1 Japan, a Great "Lolicon" Power Japan has become a "leading nation" when it comes to lolicon. This country has long been known internationally for its production of pornography featuring young girls. But pornography is not what I want to talk about here. Mainstream television and other media are full of instances in which young girls are viewed sexually to such an extent that the current state of affairs seems to me quite bizarre. Yukiko Hayami has identified lolicon as the "national illness" of Japan (Men Who Cannot Love [Ren'ai Dekinai Otokotachi], Daiwashobō, 2002, p. 40). In this chapter I will examine lolicon, but this is a problem that is very difficult to discuss. Feminism views lolicon as an illness of adult men. This is of course not incorrect, but in fact it is not only men who are sexually attracted to pretty young girls; I am personally acquainted with adult women who are 86 sexually attracted to beautiful young girls, and it is a well-known fact that young female entertainers acquire many adult women as fans. One young woman told me that other women look at her with sexual interest. Young girls seem to be the sexual targets of both men and women. It may be assumed, however, that there are significant differences between cases in which men are sexually attracted to young girls and cases in which women feel this kind of attraction. Putting aside these differences as a topic for future inquiry, here I would like to begin by examining, with myself as an example, what occurs in the minds of men like me when they are attracted to young girls. 2 "I" understand how men with lolicon feel In this book I am attempting to look deep inside myself and examine my own internal sexuality. By dispassionately analyzing what goes on inside myself, I hope to contribute to the elucidation of male sexuality. When it comes to the topic of lolicon, however, this examination of my own internal sexuality is extremely difficult and painful, because in order to pursue it I must publically acknowledge that I understand lolicon, or, in other words, that I have experienced sexual attraction to young girls. I will discuss this in more detail later on, but I must begin by admitting that I have experienced erotic feelings towards still-innocent young girls around the age of twelve. I am also a professor at a university. For someone even slightly 87 connected to education to openly declare that he is sexually attracted to young girls is one of this society's greatest taboos. But this is something I want to publicly admit. I understand the feeling of lolicon. Without acknowledging this, it would be impossible to elucidate lolicon's internal psychological aspects. Of course, I have never actually engaged in sexual relations with a young girl or attempted to do so. But I cannot avoid acknowledging the fact that, however slight, this kind of sexual interest exists within me. As I mentioned in Chapter 3, one of the professions that makes it hardest to publicly admit this kind of thing is that of a "teacher" at a school. Even if this kind of sexual interest in young girls exists within a teacher, at school he must act as if it does not, and he cannot discuss it even when he goes drinking with friends. These men's lolicon swells under this pressure and may eventually erupt in the form of sexual behaviors like peeping or prostitution involving young girls. Of course, I have no desire to defend the men who commit these sorts of crimes. Individuals working in the field of education must indeed hold themselves to a higher moral standard in this regard. If so, should we then say that "teachers" must not feel sexual attraction to young girls? Or that if they do have such feelings they must bury them deep inside themselves and never discuss them openly with other people? I myself do not have a definite answer, but sometimes I think that our response to these questions must simply be "yes." But before arriving at this 88 conclusion, I would like to thoroughly clarify the essential nature of the lolicon that existed within me. I would also like you to ask yourself whether there is not even a slight sexual attraction to young girls (or cute young boys) within you, and carefully examine whether you are being entirely truthful when you say "I find them cute but I am not sexually attracted to them at all." 3 Girls harmed by lolicon men Here I must note that there are many young girls who are sexually harmed by men with lolicon. There is an extremely large number of women who have painful memories of being molested by strangers or groped on the train when they were young, or who were repeatedly sexually abused by their fathers or other family members. The harm done to these women is indeed great. Detailed accounts of individual cases can be found in the excellent reportage of Takako Yoshida (See Children and Sexual Harm [Kodomo to Seihigai], Shūeisha Shinso, 2001). As it is difficult to talk about this kind of incident with other people, there are presumably many women who have kept this damage they received as children to themselves and continue to carry it long after they have become adults. Some of the readers of this book may be women who have had this kind of experience, and others may have such individuals among their acquaintances. What will these women think when they read this chapter? Other readers may have a family 89 member who was the victim of abduction by a lolicon criminal. When I imagine these sorts of readers I am reluctant to continue writing this chapter. But in the end I keep going, because I think that in order to reduce these crimes it is necessary for us to better understand what is happening in the minds of men with these tendencies and how the mechanisms that give rise to these sexual crimes spread throughout society. For the sake of eliminating this kind of harm we must uncover, to the greatest extent possible, what lies buried in the minds of lolicon men. I do not want to conduct this investigation by harshly condemning these men from a distance while turning a blind eye to the susceptibility to lolicon I have within myself. 4 Dividing lolicon into two types I would like to begin with a bit of clarification regarding the concept of lolicon. Lolicon is a mental state of being sexually attracted to young girls. The word is also used to refer to men who have this mental state (in this chapter I focus mainly on lolicon men). Here I would like to divide lolicon men into two types. One type actually sexually abuses young girls or pays them for sex. There is nothing to stop us from describing these men as criminals who prey on actual young girls to satisfy their own physical desires. In Men in the Dark [Maend i mørket] (Tiderne Skifter, 2003), Jacob Billing reports on the actual state of affairs regarding pedophiles in Denmark. I cannot in any sense support these individuals who tear apart the lives 90 of real, flesh and blood children without compunction in order to satisfy their own desires. What I write in this chapter is in no way intended to defend these sorts of men. The other type of lolicon men is those who feel sexually attracted to young girls but do not actually engage in sexual relations with them. This category includes men who collect photographs of young girls and videos of "idol bands." Among such men, there are presumably those who are satisfied with consuming only images, those who refrain from engaging in sexual relations with young girls through rational self-control, and those who simply have not yet considered having sexual relations with an actual young girl. The chance that these men will at some point become criminals is of course not zero. There may indeed be this kind of "reserve corps" of sex criminals. What I want to discuss in this chapter is mainly the second type of lolicon men. They cannot be called criminals, but it is because of them that the "loliconification" of society as a whole continues to progress. Such people may indeed be unimaginably numerous. They include the majority of men who like "idols" ["aidoru" in Japanese; cute young girls, mostly singers or actresses, who appear in various popular media including music, film and television]. I would not deny having belonged to this category myself. I hope that you too will reexamine what exactly your own feelings are as you read what follows. Research has been carried out concerning the psychology of people who commit sex crimes involving children, but up to 91 now almost nothing has been said about this more general form of lolicon. I want to make this my objective here. With this end in mind, I will also discuss the psychology of criminals when necessary, as there is a great deal of overlap between what goes on in the minds of both of these types of lolicon men. 5 How old are the girls on whom lolicon men fixate? So how old are the "young girls" I have been talking about? In his novel Lolita, Nabokov makes Lolita twelve years old. A website called "Moeeki" has put together a survey of the age distribution of young female anime and video game characters (characters who appear to be young girls). The results show five characters who are nine years old, nine who are ten, fifteen who are eleven, twelve who are twelve, nine who are thirteen, nine who are fourteen, and seven who are fifteen. It seems safe to conclude that popular characters of this type in Japan are mainly eleven and twelve years old, and the age range of girls who inspire lolicon is roughly ten to fourteen. This range extends from the fourth year of elementary school to the second year of junior high school. It is very interesting to note that on average Japanese girls begin to menstruate at twelve years and a half of age. This almost perfectly fits the age range of girls who are the target of lolicon; lolicon men are fixated on girls who are just beginning to menstruate. In other words, these men could also be seen as impatiently waiting until girls are capable of bearing 92 children. I would like to put this idea aside for now and return to it later. Here I should note that men who are sexually attracted to girls (or boys) under the age of ten or so are often referred to as "pedophiles" and distinguished from lolicon men. Lolicon and pedophilia are completely different. I myself cannot imagine what kind of feelings or thoughts exist in the minds of pedophiles. I will therefore limit my discussion in this chapter to lolicon, something I can discuss based on my own experiences. 6 Why are they drawn to young girls? I would like to note at the start that lolicon has been explained as being the result of immature men who cannot have romantic relationships with full grown women seeking to use young girls who are weak and obedient as sexual outlets. There are almost certainly some men who molest or sexually abuse young girls for this reason. This pattern may be especially prevalent in pedophiles who molest young girls who have just started elementary school. At the same time, however, this does not seem an adequate explanation of the attraction to girls in junior high school or the upper years of elementary school. The teachers and school board employees arrested for buying sex from schoolgirls, for example, are often men who occupy a position of high social status and have families. These men bought sex with young girls while at the same time engaging in sexual relationships with 93 adult women; they cannot be described as immature men who approach young girls because they cannot have a relationship with a full-grown woman. In 2001, Tokyo High Court judge Yasuhiro Muraki was arrested for paying for sex with girls between the ages of fourteen and sixteen and sentenced to prison by the Tokyo District Court. Muraki was forty-three years old at the time. There is almost no position with a higher social standing than that of judge, and by the normal standards of society Muraki was a very successful man. A few years later, in 2004, a reasonably successful movie director named Akiyoshi Imazeki was arrested on suspicion of paying for sex with two girls aged twelve and fourteen and sentenced to prison by the Yokohama District Court. Why would Imazeki, who had produced a solid body of work as a film director, become involved in child prostitution? He is forty-four years old and therefore belongs to my generation. These men presumably sought out young girls because they were looking for something they could not find in adult women. We must try to clarify what this something is. 7 Is lolicon an "illness"? The desire to gaze at and admire a pretty young girl you see in front of you is presumably a very normal emotion. However, lolicon men begin fantasizing about going on a date with her, becoming her lover, bringing her home, or making her their younger sister or daughter. As for how far these sorts of fantasies go, 94 they eventually reach the point of wanting to touch the girl and ultimately ejaculate on her. Put this way, most men would presumably say that lolicon is clearly an illness and something that has nothing to do with them. But what happens if you think about it in a different way? For example, imagine that an adult woman who is "your type" is standing in front of you dressed in a way you find attractive. Upon seeing her, you will presumably feel a spark of excitement and your heart will begin to beat a bit faster. Now imagine you are alone with her on a date. You have dinner, chat while staring into each other's eyes, and go for a drink. It would not be strange for the idea that if possible you would like to have sex with her to begin to form in your mind. After dinner you take her for a ride in your car, and this is an implicit invitation. You may even want to take her somewhere right away if she doesn't have any strong objection. You may have an erection at this point. An expectation of sexual intercourse and ejaculation begins to build in the mind of a man in this situation. There are surely few people who would criticize as an "illness" this kind of physical response in a man when it is directed toward an adult woman. When a woman you find attractive appears in front of you and you notice this and your heart begins to beat faster, I think this is because in some corner of your mind you have a vague feeling that "I might have the chance to have sex with this woman and ejaculate, and it would be great if I could." Even if you know that there is no way it could actually happen, a fleeting fantasy nevertheless crosses your mind. It is this vague 95 feeling of anticipation that makes a man's pulse quicken. But since the man is in a slightly excited state of mind, it is hard for him to be consciously aware of this psychological mechanism. 8 What lies at the bottom of the "feeling of excitement" When a pretty young girl appears before the eyes of a lolicon man, or when he sees the image of a pretty young girl on TV, a DVD, or in a magazine, or even when he views a representation of a pretty young girl in manga, anime, or computer-generated animation, his pulse quickens and he experiences a "feeling of excitement" towards her just as described above. When a lolicon man feels this excitement, it is not as though he immediately gets an erection and wants to take the girl somewhere right away. This feeling of excitement fills his mind and he enters a slightly paralyzed, trancelike mental state; in nearly all cases this is all that occurs. At the same time, however, when a man has this "feeling of excitement" towards a young girl, he begins to focus a thin, vaporous desire to have sex and ejaculate – a desire so indistinct he himself may not be consciously aware of it – on the young girl in question. This is exactly the same mechanism that operates when a man is attracted to an adult woman. Of course, there are presumably very few men who actually carry out these sorts of acts. But a man may have a vague sense of anticipation in the back of his mind even if he would never actually engage in these sorts of actions. This is 96 the essence of the sexual gaze directed towards young girls. Lolicon men are men who experience this "feeling of excitement" toward young girls or images of young girls. And I think that at the bottom of this "feeling of excitement" there is a hidden desire, not easily perceived even by the man in question himself, for sexual intercourse and ejaculation. If we redefine "lolicon" in this way, we cannot help but conclude that a truly enormous number of adult Japanese men are in some sense affected by this condition; Japanese mass media, including TV and magazines, skillfully portray young girls in a sexual light, and we are unknowingly being refashioned into people with the mental disposition to take pleasure in viewing them in this way. Section 2 Adults Who Skillfully Package "Young Girls" 9 The "young girls filled with sexual desire" message Nationally renowned idol groups such as Morning Musume are representative of this phenomenon. Morning Musume was formed in 1997, and in 2000, when a girl of the lolicon target age of twelve joined its ranks, it became a group that attracted attention throughout Japan. In 2003, XYX [Jikkusu], a group comprised of Mari Yaguchi and five girls in elementary 97 school, made its debut. Its members included elementary school students as young as eleven. Around the same time a different company produced SweetS, a group of five elevento thirteen-year-old girls, and in 2004, Berryz Kōbō, a group of eight young girls, made its debut. The latter's members included two sixth-year elementary school students, four fifth-year elementary school students, one fourth-year elementary school student, and one third-year elementary school student; the lowering of the age of members included in such groups had finally led to the appearance of a nine-yearold. Superficially, these groups are sold with the image of cheerful young girls who like to sing, but under the surface, the "young girls filled with sexual desire" message is cunningly and subliminally constructed. This is immediately evident if we look at the debut photograph of XYX, for example, in which girls who are still in elementary school are dressed in feminine, revealing clothes of the sort normally worn by adult women and their navels and bared midriffs are emphasized. Adult men have been trained to automatically read "women filled with sexual desire" into images of this sort, and the result is that sexual gazes are concentrated and directed toward girls who are still in elementary school. The same can also be said in the case of SweetS. These girls are photographed wearing adult clothing, baring their legs beneath miniskirts, and giving inviting, "come hither" looks towards the camera. The message that permeates these photographs is, "We are sexually 98 mature children." The title of their debut single, "LolitA," is clearly suggestive. The elementary school students in Berryz Kōbō also wear full makeup like adult women, and present an appearance that would make it difficult, if you looked only at their photographs, to imagine they are elementary school students. Their audience is given the message that, although they are still in elementary school, their bodies are already those of adults; they are to be seen as women capable of fully engaging in romantic relationships. And the age of the girls presented in this way is getting lower every year. There have of course been child actors and celebrities in the past. Idol groups like those mentioned above, however, do not appear in the media simply as children. They are presented as sexually awakened young women; they are, in other words, portrayed and constructed as women with whom you, the viewer, could conceivably have a sexual relationship. The clothing of a mature woman, full makeup, seductive gestures and glances, miniskirts, exposed midriffs, bare thighs: all of these things are part of a scheme that inundates the viewer with subliminal messages. How many men are there who, when they see these girls in the mass media, actually view them just as "cute little girls"? I suspect that quite a large number of men have a somewhat shameful feeling towards these girls when they look at them. I have asked men I know about this, and there do indeed seem to be men for whom this is the case. In discussions on Internet forums like "2channeru" it is taken for granted that groups like 99 Morning Musume are to be targets of sexual desire. 2channeru, the largest online forum in Japan, is a rare space where people can freely declare their lolicon feelings, and sexual fantasies involving young female idols are discussed there openly and explicitly. 10 Skillful creators of young female "idols" In this way, "sexual gazes" directed toward girls around the age of twelve have been skillfully cultivated in the popular media, and this is now one of Japan's largest industries. What men see when they look at these idols is nothing other than the "sex" of these young girls, skillfully presented and wrapped in a candy-like atmosphere. I made this point at a meeting attended mostly by women and asked for their reaction. Many of these women responded that they had never noticed that idol groups are viewed sexually. Here we see the magic of mass media; both men and women are shown the same images, but what they take from them is very different. Upon seeing a model in a miniskirt, for example, the reaction of many women is to think, "What beautiful legs she has!", while the reaction of a man who likes miniskirts is a shiver of excitement at the way in which her panties are hidden but seem about to be revealed. In the same way, when an actress of elementary school age appears on TV wearing red lipstick, while a normal woman may simply think, "Little girls are so precocious nowadays. How cute!," a lolicon man superimposes an adult, fully mature woman on this red lipstick, reads it 100 as a sign that it is OK to approach her sexually, and may for an instant even imagine her genitals, which presumably gleam with the same color. The creators of young female idols make optimal use of this kind of "perception gap" (different messages being received by different viewers). They surreptitiously bury messages of sexual temptation beneath images of healthy young girls. As a result, lolicon men consume the images of cheerfully cavorting young girls they see on television as public displays of underage pornography. 11 The hidden message in a Minimoni video An example of the sort of thing discussed above can be seen in a music video called "Minimoni – Jankenpyon!" (Zetima-Sony 2001) featuring members of Minimoni, a spinoff of the idol group Morning Musume. This was the video for a song that was a big hit when it was released, and it was frequently broadcast on Japanese television. Minimoni is a group consisting of four members of Morning Musume, all of whom are under 150 cm in height. In the first half of the video, there is a scene in which two members of the group who lose a game of "jan ken pon" (rock, paper, scissors) are made to drink milk. Against a backdrop of footage of copious amounts of milk being poured, close-ups of the girls' faces are shown as they drink milk from bottles with their eyes closed. The gleam of the girls' lips after they have finished drinking is striking. What this imagery of 101 young girls drinking a white liquid signifies is obvious enough to require no explanation. Another message of a very different nature has thus been skillfully buried beneath the superficial narrative of "Mari Yaguchi hates milk, so let's make her drink some if she loses the game." The video incorporating this message was broadcast over and over again on television (the same year also saw the release of a controversial collection of photographs in which idol Ryoko Hirosue was splattered with milk on her face). What is the result of being subjected to many of these sorts of messages on a daily basis? The idea that "these girls are sexually mature, and they want you to view them sexually just as you would an adult woman" presumably becomes lodged in the back of men's minds. These images of idols also function as a kind of template that ordinary young girls are supposed to imitate. Girls are brainwashed into thinking it is cool to project their sexual value like these idols who are as young as they are. These messages operate selectively on the men and young girls who consume popular media. Even though they see the same images, there may be many adult women and mothers who do not perceive the existence of these messages at all. Adult women may get no further than being intoxicated by the excitement of superimposing their younger selves on idols and thinking, "How cute!" 102 12 Sexual presentation used in collections of photographs of beautiful young girls When it comes to other media like books of photographs, here too a large number of works that can be seen as targeting lolicon men have entered circulation. For an example of this sort of publication, let us look at an idol photograph collection published in 2000 (I will refrain from giving its title). This is a collection of beautiful photographs of a young female celebrity I will refer to as S who has also appeared in movies and TV programs. At the time the book was published, S was an eleven-year-old elementary school student, and the advertising sleeve wrapped around the book proclaimed "The debut of a very beautiful young girl." There is indeed nothing false about this claim. On the cover of the book there is a close-up of S, and her lips, set in a somehow adult-looking face, are covered in pink lipstick. She is wearing an elementary school uniform with shoulder straps. While employing the power of the uniform discussed in Chapter Three, the message that "even though this girl is still an elementary school student, sexually she is already an adult" is broadcast to the reader. This is the main theme of this photograph collection. Turning the pages we find several pictures taken in the yard of what appears to be S's elementary school. Unlike the first photograph, in these shots she does not appear to be anything other than a young girl in elementary school. But the pink lipstick is still carefully applied. One photo that stands out in this series shows 103 S spraying water from a hose in the schoolyard. She is smiling mischievously as she enthusiastically shoots water from the hose, and the navy blue skirt of her school uniform is being blown quite high by the wind. The shot is contrived in such a way that while nothing is revealed anyone seeing it will wonder what is under her skirt. The subliminal intention of this photograph is clear. A girl with her skirt hiked up and water being energetically emitted by the hose. This can only be interpreted as an image of ejaculation towards the genital area of this young female elementary school student. The photographer presumably took a large number of photos in the schoolyard, and we cannot help but discern the intention of the creator of this collection in the selection of this particular shot. Next there are several photographs taken at the school's swimming pool. S is sitting on the diving board wearing a white blouse and a navy blue pleated skirt with shoulder straps. The toes of her bare feet are extended as though she is trying to touch the surface of the water in the pool. She is staring fixedly in the direction of the viewer, and her skirt is pulled up above her thighs in an unnatural manner that we can only suppose was the result of it being intentionally hiked up by the photographer or one of his assistants when the photograph was being taken. Her oddly bared legs and lipstick visible even at a distance combine to produce a sense of coquettishness. It is a photograph designed to have the viewer look at this elementary school student as they would an adult woman. Her uniform, hiked-up skirt, made-up face, and round eyes 104 staring in the direction of the viewer – this sort of "presentation of a woman" is being extended even to a young girl still in elementary school. Around the middle of the collection of photographs, the same girl is shown in regular clothing (not a uniform) standing in front of a traditional Japanesestyle candy store. Her hair is braided and she is wearing a high-waisted cotton dress that emphasizes the fact that she is a child, but what she is holding in her hand is a freshly opened bottle of milk. She is bringing the bottle of white milk to her lips as though about to drink from it. Here the "young girl drinking milk" motif that appeared in the Minimoni video is once again being employed. There are all kinds of juices and soft drinks in the candy store's fridge, so why did they decide to have her drink "milk"? I can think of only one reason. It does not need repeating. Of course, this collection also includes many photographs portraying the everyday life of an innocent elementary school student. These include images of a pretty young girl playing and having fun. Amongst these, however, "contrived" shots like those described above are slipped in very naturally. This naturalness allows a subliminal message to circumvent our conscious judgment and imprint itself on our brains as we look at the photographs in the collection. The message is that this young girl is a child but sexually available; it signals to men that she is prepared to accept their semen. Presumably, the men who receive this message subconsciously get a mysterious "feeling of excitement" 105 from looking through the photographs in this collection. This "feeling of excitement" is an arousal born of their looking at a young girl sexually. I think it is the intention of the producers of these books to stimulate this sense of excitement and thereby cause men who see the photographs to buy the book without really knowing why. You do not have to go to some kind of specialty store to buy the book of photographs I have been discussing; you can easily find it in any bookstore's "idol corner." The girl who is the subject of its photographs is a "junior idol" who appears on TV and in films. The current state of Japanese society is thus one in which the gradual encroachment of this subliminal scheme occurs even in the broad daylight of mainstream culture. 13 Bold pink lipstick on a nine-year-old girl Let us look at another book of photographs. This beautifully presented collection was published in 2004 and features a nine-year-old model I will call "K" (I will once again refrain from stating the title of the book in question). Like the book discussed above, this collection can also be found in regular bookstores. On the cover there is a picture of a young girl dressed in a white gymnastics outfit and navy blue bloomers, smiling at the camera. Her face does indeed look innocent and like that of a nine-year-old girl. But her lips are covered in lipstick. "First collection of photographs of this new little elementary school student junior idol" is written on the book's 106 promotional sleeve, and on the inside cover her date of birth is listed along with her height of 129 cm. Turning the pages, we find several photographs of this girl dressed in regular clothing (not a uniform) and staring into the camera. Her hair has been neatly blowdried and she has had makeup applied to such an extent that looking only at her face you might mistake her for a junior high or high school idol. Her immature body, however, is immediately recognizable as that of a child. The names of the hair and makeup professionals involved are listed on the book's title page. The impression created is that this nine-year-old model has been photographed using the same sort of production techniques employed at a junior high or high school "idol" photo shoot. Next comes the most shocking photograph. The girl has been made up like an adult woman with thick pink lipstick and mascara, and she has been posed staring at the camera with a red "randoseru" (a leather satchel or backpack used by elementary school students in Japan) strapped to her back. Her outfit of sneakers, white socks, a checkered skirt, and a red ribbon around her collar resembles a school uniform; a recorder and a stuffed animal hang from her randoseru, and she is staring at the camera with a seductive expression on her face, her eyes languidly half closed and her red mouth half open. With makeup the face of this young girl becomes that of an adult woman. While taken outdoors in the street, no matter how you look at it, this photograph cannot be seen as anything other than a sexual invitation to male readers. This sort of 107 expression and pose is often seen in photographs of adult idols, but here exactly the same look is being given to a girl in elementary school. The large randoseru makes her body look small by comparison and heightens the sense of innocence and youth. She is nine years old; this means that she is a third-year elementary student. Next comes a series of pictures in which K is posed holding a recorder. There are shots of her holding it in both hands and shots of her lying sprawled out on the veranda of an old-fashioned Japanese dwelling clutching the instrument and staring provocatively at the camera. The red randoseru is still strapped to her back. One the next page there is a photograph of her lying sideways on the veranda with her head resting on the randoseru. She is holding the recorder in front of her chest and staring up at the camera directly above her with her mouth half open. In this shot, the viewer's perspective is that of someone looking directly down on the young girl's upturned face and body stretched out on the veranda. It is as though the viewer is standing astride her and looking down at her body splayed out below him. Her skirt is hiked up exposing her white thighs. The next shot is a close-up showing her face as she softly places the thick tip of the recorder between her lips. The gaze of the girl with the recorder in her mouth is focused directly on the camera, the sunlight is blocked as though someone is standing over her, and her stuffed animal is tucked under her shoulder. The meaning of this series of photographs is once again obvious enough to require no explanation. 108 Next there are many typical school swimsuit shots and idol photographs. As I mentioned earlier, the creator of this collection demands from K exactly the same poses and clothing normally seen in books devoted to junior high or high school idols. Is it strange for this girl who clearly has the body of a child to show this kind of adult coquetry, or nowadays is it indeed not so strange? Towards the end of the book comes the most unequivocal close-up. Wearing a red blouse, the girl looks directly at the camera as she inserts a freshlypeeled banana into her mouth. Her lips are wide open and look as if they are being pushed apart by the white flesh of the banana. What more need be said? In the collection's final photograph she is wearing a swimsuit and staring provocatively at the camera with her thighs open. 14 What are the parents of these girls thinking? What I have discussed above constitutes just a tiny sample of the many "junior idol" photograph collections that are currently in circulation. A solid market for these sorts of publications has been established, and they are openly sold in normal bookstores and online shops. On seeing these sorts of photographs, one cannot help but wonder what the parents of these girls could be thinking. Of course, there are presumably some cases where the girl's parents are deeply in debt or are somehow threatened or coerced. But it is impossible to believe that such circumstances always exist. We can only speculate 109 about the reasons parents would consent to their children being photographed in this way, but it may be that mothers superimpose themselves on their daughters, who as "idols" will presumably enjoy public adulation and the glow of the mass media spotlight, and in doing so vicariously experience a feeling of achievement as a woman. But what about these girls' fathers? Do they not object to this sexual treatment of their daughters? If we consider the age of fathers with nineto fourteen-yearold daughters, however, they will presumably be somewhere in their late thirties to mid-forties. That's right – the same age group as the man arrested on suspicion of looking up the skirts of high school students and the man sent to prison for paying a twelve-year-old girl for sex mentioned earlier. In other words, there is a possibility that the fathers of these girls are lolicon men. These fathers themselves may be turned on by these photographs of their daughters. Considered in this light, the situation is extremely disturbing. The parents make no objection and the girls themselves are happy to have their pictures taken. The reach of "junior idol" photo collections and DVDs will thus presumably expand and continue to drive the loliconification of society as a whole. 15 People who flock to "child pornography in disguise" The phenomenon discussed above is currently limited to a certain type of photography collection, but in the future its range may expand to include the 110 mainstream media. Morning Musume has already opened this door. With lolicon having permeated teachers, scholars, film directors, and people in other such influential professions, and taken hold among men in the age group that forms the central pillar of Japanese society, it feels as though there may even be no going back. What is to be done if lolicon has deeply and silently penetrated the men whose age gives them social responsibility for advocating and embodying social norms? Of course, even today there are more explicit photographs and videos of the sexual abuse of young girls circulating below the surface of this society. These images violate the human rights of the girls involved in their creation, and have the potential to lead the inveterate lolicon men who buy them to further criminal acts. Pornography depicting the sexual abuse of young girls must be strictly prohibited. This is something I would like to make absolutely clear before proceeding any further. Having said this, what I would like to focus on in this chapter involves a force that is promoting the loliconification of society by a completely different route. This is the force that disseminates, in the form of perfectly legal photography collections and TV programs that on the surface carry no hint of sexuality, the kind of subliminal sexual presentation of young girls I have described, and, without running afoul of any laws, engages in large scale advertising of these "big hits," openly marketing and selling this "child pornography in disguise." 111 As our society values freedom of expression and freedom of taste, as long as no young girls are actually being sexually abused it is difficult to regulate these products. The result of this is a structure in which many men quietly draw shameful sexual pleasure out of works that on the surface bear no sign of being child pornography. This is the scheme I see when I look at projects like Morning Musume. I cannot see it as "the story of a group of happy and cheerful young girls learning to sing and dance." We who have an internal psychological response to this "child pornography in disguise" and seek sexual gratification on the sly while saying, "Aren't those girls cute?" must take a hard look at ourselves. 16 The loliconification of society won't stop!? So far we have looked at books of photographs and DVDs, but the same state of affairs can also be observed on the Internet. For example, there is a certain site that offers access to photographs and videos of girls under fifteen years of age for a fee. The youngest girls featured are ten years old. The images include photographs of girls in school uniforms and swimwear, and here too girls can be seen wearing makeup. In the title sequence of the sample video, a girl in a school swimsuit, her thighs open, is shown from the waist down, and the message being sent to viewers is extremely direct. Another related site also markets girls under fifteen, and once again the youngest girls shown are ten years old. These Internet sites are not so112 called "adult" websites. Anybody can view them without restriction, and their presentation is clean and cute. The models appear to be Japanese "junior idols." Recently, even photography collections of the sort I have discussed are often sold together with a DVD. It would seem that going forward there are various routes by which videos of young girls will be disseminated for sexually oriented consumption. This is how things stood as of the summer of 2004. The entertainment industry changes very quickly, so the specific circumstances surrounding the commoditization of young girls can shift in a very short period of time. The viewing of young girls in a sexual light, however, seems certain to continue for the foreseeable future without any fundamental change. What will happen if the degree to which "child pornography in disguise" permeates the mainstream media steadily increases? For one thing, it seems likely that these girls will be troubled when they become adults and realize the meaning of what they did as children. This is a major problem that is not openly addressed. Second, just by watching normal TV programs and reading normal magazines, men will be subjected to a barrage of stimulation from this "child pornography in disguise," and as a result, even men who do not acquire actual child pornography will gradually and unknowingly develop a sexual sensitivity to young girls. There is thus a danger that the loliconification of society as a whole will continue unabated, with ever larger markets for products related to young girls being created and ever more skillful 113 schemes of stimulation being implemented. Section 3 Why Do Lolicon Men Desire Young Girls? 17 Analyzing the thoughts and desires of lolicon men Now let us attempt to look inside the minds of people with lolicon, because the causes of this phenomenon are to be found not only within society but also within the minds of the individuals who experience it. In order to bring these causes to light, I will attempt to dispassionately analyze the lolicon feelings I myself have experienced. In The Frequently Occurring Prostitution of Young Girls: Men Who Buy Children (Tahatsusuru Shojyokaishun: Kodomo wo Kau Otoko, Shinhyōron, 2001), Setsuko Inoue examines men who buy young girls both in Japan and overseas. In her book she speculates as follows on the reason these men pay young girls for sex: [W]hen a woman cannot build a strong interpersonal relationship with the man to whom she is married, she tries to find a substitute for this in her son, a person of the same gender as her husband, and becomes an "education mama" [a Japanese term for mothers who are obsessed with ensuring their children's educational achievement] who, in the name of 114 what is best for her son, pursues her own selfrealization through her child. While at first glance this behavior may appear to be motivated by love for the child in question, these actions are in fact those of a mother who cannot attain independence stoking her own self-love. As a result, in order to sever this emotional connection with their mothers, these sons try to protect themselves by engaging in behaviors that separate love from sex. One of these behaviors is engaging in child prostitution. (pp.79-80) This alone, however, does not explain why these men turn to "young girls" rather than "adult women." Elsewhere Inoue writes that "men who like cute little girls are themselves childish and immature" (p.79), but this seems to be a weak explanation of why the sexuality of these men is focused on little girls (Inoue's focus on a son's separation from his mother in her investigation of the cause of child prostitution is interesting, however, and I will return to it later). Steady progress has been made in research on men who sexually abuse young girls. One of the things this has brought to light is the existence of a "cycle of abuse" in which men who were sexually abused as children go on to sexually abuse young girls when they grow up. Other psychological factors such as leading an isolated lifestyle and having an underdeveloped self have also been identified (see, for example, Chapter Five of Yoshiyuki Ishikawa's Sexual Abuse by Relatives (Shinzoku ni yoru Seigyakutai, Minerva Shobo, 2004). 115 This kind of work must continue in order to reduce the number of young girls who become victims of sexual abuse, but one troubling aspect this of research is that its focus is almost entirely limited to men who have actually committed sex crimes. What I want to address in this book is the psychology of men who have never committed a sex crime but nevertheless carry lolicon thoughts and desires in their minds. The issue I want to examine is that the large number of men whose lolicon does not take them as far as breaking the law are promoting the loliconification of society and creating an environment in which young girls become objects of sexual consumption. 18 The "dangerous" cuteness of young girls So what does lolicon feel like? Men who have abducted young girls have sometimes stated that they took them "because they were cute." I can understand this feeling well. Girls in elementary school and junior high school are unfailingly cute, at least when seen from a distance. And this "cuteness" already contains a sexual element, because for me the feeling of "cuteness" elicited by a young girl is clearly different from the feeling of "cuteness" elicited by a young boy of the same age. When it comes to boys there is a straightforward feeling of "isn't he cute!", but when it comes to girls, in addition to this sort of feeling there is also the sense of a "dangerous" cuteness that cannot easily be put into words. This awareness of a "dangerous" cuteness comes from something being shaken deep within me, and 116 intuitively it seems that it must be something sexual. As I have already noted, lolicon men seem to most desire girls around the age of eleven or twelve. This corresponds to girls in their last year of elementary school and first year of junior high school. While this age marks the peak of desirability, the range of girls that lolicon men may be attracted to extends roughly from nine to fourteen. In the photography collections discussed above, girls of nine and eleven years of age wear makeup and clearly noticeable lipstick. And in photos of them in their swimsuits and other outfits, they adopt the same sorts of sexy poses and expressions normally used by adult idols. What should we make of this? Sometimes girls around this age put on their mother's lipstick and pretend to be grown-up, and one interpretation would be that these photographs are a depiction of this sort of behavior. But this cannot be anything more than a poor excuse offered by those who produce these images. Another interpretation is that making these elementary school students look like adult women implicitly signals that it is OK to have sex with them. This message appeals directly to the sexual interest of lolicon men, and accurately expresses the intentions of the producers of the photographs. The use of adult makeup such as mascara is saying to the viewer, "this girl is still a child, but you can treat her like an adult woman." Lipstick, adult makeup, and provocative poses are all forms of "impression management" (deception through appearance) designed to raise the perceived age of the young girl in question. 117 Conversely, there are also "lolicon photos" taken using models that are over eighteen, and in such cases an exactly opposite phenomenon occurs; "impression management" is used to make the models appear as though they might be very young. These girls are photographed with braided hair, hardly any make-up, and intentionally innocent expressions. These models' bodies are inevitably adult in shape, and this adultness must be obscured and their apparent age lowered through their hairstyle and clothing. As for how far this reverse aging is intended to go, for the most part these girls appear as though they might be junior high school students. 19 The meaning of "secondary sex characteristics" So what is the significance of this age of eleven to twelve years old? What I would like to focus on here is the fact that this is the age when girls begin to show "secondary sex characteristics" and is also the average age at which girls begin to menstruate. Both of these facts are deeply significant, and I will address each of them in turn. Secondary sex characteristics arise when gonadotropins are released by the pituitary gland and a child's body transforms into that of an adult. In the case of girls their breasts grow larger, their bodies become more curvaceous, and their waists begin to narrow in comparison with their hips. For example, a certain website that sells photographs of girls under fifteen features the 118 following text about a twelve-year-old girl I will refer to as "A": "Her eyes look straight ahead, emitting the light possessed only by young girls who remain unsullied. This earnest charm made me feel 'she really is still a child,' but on the other hand her slightly averted gaze when she posed in her school swimsuit and her slightly melancholy look in her school uniform gave me a foreshadowing of her transformation into an adult woman that made me very excited." The following was written about the ten-year-old "T" on a different website: "But looking at this girl's face and silhouette without focusing too sharply, it seems that before much time has passed she will begin climbing the stairway out of girlhood, and I felt as though these photographs might just have captured this exquisite moment." What can be seen from these descriptions is the obsessionlike desire on the part of the creators of these photography collections to witness the transformation from girl to woman occurring in eleven and twelveyear-old girls. It would seem that this desire is also shared by the people who buy these books of lolicon photography. In other words, lolicon men have a strange fixation on the moment of transformation when a girl becomes a woman. They are not fixated on "grown-up women" but rather the "moment" at which an adult woman comes into being. So why do they feel such a strong attraction to this moment of transformation? Feminism may see a cause of this obsession in patriarchies that place a special value on the possession of virgins, but I would like to look at it from a different angle. 119 Secondary sex characteristics arise during the period in which girls' bodies become "feminine" and boys' bodies become "masculine." The state of affairs before secondary sex characteristics begin to emerge is thus one in which the bodies of boys and girls, while their reproductive organs differ, are quite similar in size and general appearance. Statistics show that up until around the sixth year of elementary school the average height of boys is almost exactly the same as that of girls (146 cm for sixth-graders). At this point in their development most boys have not yet acquired much muscle and most girls' bodies are still skinny and linear. In fact, during this period, a boy dressed up in female clothing could pass for a cute girl. In Japan there used to be a custom of dressing young boys in the sort of attire normally worn by women. And since at this age boys' voices have not yet begun to change, there is little discernible difference between the voices of male and female children. There may of course be differences in behavior and ways of playing between boys and girls, but when it comes to children's bodies themselves there does not seem to be a pronounced difference between the sexes. While boys and girls at this age are well aware of the differences between their bodies, compared to the split that occurs when secondary sex characteristics begin to appear these differences are negligibly small. Considering customs like dressing boys in the clothing of the opposite sex, it can be suggested that at this age both boys and girls have a seemingly "unisex" body (a body of 120 undifferentiated sex) that could still become either male or female. It is the emergence of secondary sex characteristics, triggered by the release of gonadotropins, that all at once transforms this unisex body into either a "female body" or a "male body." From a state of affairs like that of a bud whose ultimate form is unknown, a "male body" or "female body" suddenly blossoms. Images of puberty of this kind are evocatively depicted in many books and movies. It is an experience everyone can relate to. A young girl is a being who, at the point of puberty's bifurcation into "man" or "woman," is attempting to bend itself towards the body of a woman. Lolicon men are those who carry aspirations toward girls in this state and fixate on them. So why are these men so interested in this moment when a child begins to turn towards the "female side"? 20 The idea of having grown into a "man's body" by mistake I will use my own case as an example. There is an idea that has settled at the bottom of my consciousness. This idea is that at the point of bifurcation during puberty I may have taken the wrong path. Perhaps I was supposed to have blossomed into a "female body" but by some mistake I took a wrong turn toward the "body of a man," or, to put it more accurately, I was forcibly compelled to take the path leading to the body of an adult male without my conscious will having any 121 say in the matter. This is the sort of thing you often hear from people with gender identity disorder. I would speculate, however, that a much wider range of men are also able to understand this feeling. As for why I have this idea of having grown into a man's body by mistake, I think it is because ever since I hit puberty and my body began to change I have been unable to affirm myself as a being with a "man's body." As my body became that of an adult, it began to produce male hormones, grow muscles, acquire a more rugged, angular shape, grow more hair, and dirty itself with seminal fluid, and a strange odor began to emanate from somewhere inside me. That I was becoming this sort of body was something I could not accept at all during my adolescence. Even now I cannot honestly say that I am really happy to have the body of a man. Of course there is nothing to be done about it now, but I suspect there are in fact many men who feel as I do. They have perhaps remained silent about it because it is an extremely difficult thing to say out loud. They also probably try not to think about it very much, as in our society, having sufficient confidence in one's own male body is connected to male honor. Deep down inside me, there is a longing to return to the body I had when I was a young boy, a body that had not yet been transformed by male hormones, muscles, body hair, and semen. There is also a longing to take the other path, if I could, at the point of bifurcation during puberty and make a sharp about-face towards a "female body" that does not have any of these attributes. Deep within my consciousness I ruminate on these 122 longings over and over again. And I am drawn to the bodies of eleven and twelve-year-old girls that stand at puberty's point of bifurcation and are just beginning to turn towards a "female body." I think to myself, "I wish I could have taken that other path like the body of this young girl," and I feel a desire to slip my consciousness into her body and while inhabiting it experience her puberty from the inside. This is how my lolicon mentality arises. Here we see once again the psychological mechanism described at the end of Chapter Three. 21 "I am the young girl, the young girl is me" I wish I could try living in a girl's body. Uniform fetishes and lolicon have this sentiment in common. I am the young girl, the young girl is me. Uniforms and lolicon are the things that can, for a brief moment, make this aberrant fantasy come true. Most men have not spoken about this psychological secret out loud, but there must in fact be many who will immediately understand what I am trying to say. In his well-known book Folklore of Young Girls (Shōjo Minzokugaku, Kōbunsha, 1989), Eiji Ōtsuka writes, "Inside of me, and inside of you, the reader, there is a 'young girl'" (p. 112), and I think the true meaning of this statement must be understood in the sense described above. Regarding the cause of lolicon, my hypothesis is thus that it can be found in lolicon men's inability to affirm their own bodies. In his imagination a lolicon man escapes his own body and secretly transports 123 himself into the body of the young girl in front of him. It is said that most male "otaku" [geeks] are lolicon men, and this hypothesis can explain both why these men tend to be extremely indifferent to their own appearance and why they have a tendency to identify themselves with young girl characters on the Internet (on this identification with young girl characters see Hiroki Azuma, ed., Net Speech Revision F [Mōjyō Genron F Kai], Seidosha, 2003). Through this identification with young girl characters, a male otaku succumbs to the illusion that his appearance is that of a young girl and thus becomes indifferent to how he actually looks to others. I would also suggest that these lolicon men spend a lot of time every day surfing the Internet, looking at magazines, and watching anime in search of bodies of young girls worth transporting themselves into. Mamoru Oshii's animated film Ghost in the Shell (based on a manga series by Masamune Shiro) depicts a world in which a mind or spirit that has lost its own body can move from one new body to the next. The creator of this work calls these replacement bodies "prosthetic bodies" ("gitai" in Japanese), and for lolicon men I suspect that the bodies of young girls or young girl characters appear to be their own "prosthetic bodies" (in this sense, the final scene of Ghost in the Shell can be described as a rendering of a lolicon man's dream come true). With this in mind, the new meaning of "moe" becomes clear. When otaku see a young female anime character or figurine and say they feel "moe," they are 124 saying that they would like to implant themselves within the object of this attraction; they want to "wear" the body of a beautiful young girl. It is thus the wearing of a young girl's body that constitutes the core of an otaku's "moe." A transvestite wears women's clothing, but a lolicon man wears a young girl's body. Here I would like to mention The Murder of Childhood (Penguin Books, 1995), a book by Tim Tate and Ray Wyre about a British sex criminal named Robert Black. Black was reputed to have sexually abused hundreds of girls and killed at least a few of his victims. One very interesting passage reads as follows: But tucked away at the end of the section, question 27 and 28 asked whether Black had ever enjoyed transvestism or sought to be a transsexual. Slowly he nodded. As to transvestism, he had sometimes dressed himself in little girls' clothes. And as to seeking out the life of a transsexual, Black simply recorded: 'Yes. I always wanted to dress up as a girl.' . . . The second, and in some ways corollary, force was a powerful yearning not to be what he was, a young boy growing into a man. He would far rather have been born a girl: certainly he did not want, much less like, his own penis. (pp. 8586) In the mind of this lolicon criminal, the authors discovered a reluctance to become an "adult man" and a strong desire to have been born a girl. This agrees 125 with what I have asserted so far. Tate and Wyre, however, do not seek a more penetrating explanation of why these feelings exist. I must go beyond their analysis and conduct a deeper investigation. I suspect there will be critics who dismiss analysis such as that I have engaged in above as pertaining only to the lolicon tendencies of feeble "weaklings" who failed to become "real men." But how would they explain the fact that a sense of having not wanted to become a man and a desire to have been able to experience being a girl has also been found in the mind of a brutal murderer like Black? It seems clear that a similar structure exists in the minds of lolicon men regardless of whether they are "well built" or physically weak. I am sure there are also some readers who would doubt my account and suggest that, far from being unable to affirm their own bodies, most men on the contrary think too highly of their own powerful physiques, and it is because of this that they view women with contempt and commit rape. I will analyze these points in greater detail while referencing my own case in the next chapter. 22 What wriggles at the deepest level of the desire for young girls We have seen that lolicon superimposes a wish to have been able to take the path towards a female body on top of young girls on the verge of making this transition from the unisex body of a child to that of an 126 adult woman. This alone, however, cannot explain why lolicon men attempt to become "sexually" involved with young girls, and why they are "sexually" aroused by their photographs, because if superimposing themselves on the body of a young girl is all they want then simply fantasizing about transporting themselves into a girl's body and being absorbed in that delusion while having a cup of tea should satisfy them. It should be enough to quietly savor this kind of fantasy as one might enjoy sitting in the South of France and taking in the beautiful scenery depicted in Van Gogh's landscapes. But the lolicon feeling I myself have actually experienced is not so calm and gentle. There is a shameful, thrilling sensation, as though sex with a young girl were always tacitly being assumed from the start. As I stated earlier, since I experience the same feelings towards a young girl that I feel during sexual contact with an adult woman, I cannot help but admit that ultimately these fantasies terminate in sexual intercourse and ejaculation. To unravel this further, let us recall what has been pointed out so far. "Secondary sex characteristics" appear in girls between the ages of eleven and twelve. This age range is nearly identical to the "average age of first menstruation." I have already sufficiently examined "secondary sex characteristics," so here I would like to focus my investigation on the "average age of first menstruation." From this perspective, lolicon men exhibit a strange attachment to the age at which girls normally 127 menstruate for the first time. What is the significance of this? A girl getting her first period means she is capable of becoming pregnant. Her body is now able to take semen from a man, combine it with an egg, and conceive a child. Presumably this is what lolicon men are fixated on. Now I will attempt to enter the deepest levels of lolicon desires. Please read the following as nothing more than a single hypothesis aimed at better understanding lolicon. I think that what is hidden in the deepest level of the minds of lolicon men like me is a desire to be the first to insert their semen into a young girl who has now become capable of ovulation and make her pregnant by combining her egg with their sperm. So whose child would be born if this happened? Let us think about it one more time. What do I see in the young girl in front of me? The answer is already clear. In the young girl's body in front of me I see nothing other than an image of myself. In the body I am looking at, I see an image of "another me" that would have become a cute young girl if by some quirk of fate I had gone the other way at the point of bifurcation during puberty. If this is the case, then my desire to have the young girl I am looking at give birth to my child is actually a desire to have "another me," in the form of the young girl, give birth to my child. I want a child created by the synthesis of my sperm and the egg of another me. This would indeed be nothing other than my own rebirth; a 128 new me born without the intervention of anyone else other than me. This is the drama that unfolds at the deepest levels of my consciousness when I feel a desire to have sex with a young girl and ejaculate inside her. And this sexual intercourse must occur at the point of pubescent bifurcation when she is just beginning to turn down the path to the other side, because it was at this decisive moment I took the wrong path toward a "male body" and only by thus starting over again from this bifurcation will I have the opportunity to affirm myself. In other words, what is in the back of my mind is a desire to have sex with "another me" in the form of a young girl and in doing so give birth to myself once again without the intervention of anyone else. 23 Why do I want "myself" to be reborn? So what kind of self-affirmation could be achieved by having sex with a young girl and giving birth to myself once again? My thoughts on this are as follows. Since the new me would be conceived using my sperm and my egg and would be born out of my own belly, this newly reborn me would be completely cut off from any external "mother." It would be "I," not my "mother," who gave birth to this me, and there would in fact be no "mother" involved in my birth. By giving birth to myself, I would be able to affirm my existence in a way that has no connection to a "mother." I would thereby be able to completely separate myself from any kind of "mother." This sort of drama is being played out 129 inside lolicon men like me. It is often said that men who cannot psychologically separate from their mothers become "lolicon men" (for example, one proposed explanation of lolicon is that men whose wives rebuff their demands for mothering may try to have these needs met by their daughters. See Yoshiyuki Ishikawa's Sexual Abuse by Relatives, p. 243). But does this explanation not have it completely backwards? Is lolicon not in fact an attempt, in the convoluted manner outlined above, to achieve a separation from one's "mother"? There are certain things that come to mind when the phenomenon is considered in this way. I first came to know lolicon feelings directly when I was around twenty years old. At that time, so-called "lolicon magazines" and "lolicon manga" were beginning to be available at bookstores, it wasn't until I reached this age that I suddenly started to pay attention to them. I first left the countryside and came to live on my own in Tokyo around this time, and it was a period of sudden self-awakening for me. For the first time in my life I was attempting to stand on my own two feet. And I began to fight with my mother. I will refrain from discussing the specifics here, but it was when I began fighting with my mother and severed my ties with her that lolicon feelings, as if to replace her, arose within me. In other words, the struggle with my real mother was over but the battle with "mother" as an abstract concept took the form of lolicon and continued within me after that. If you really want to understand the feelings of 130 lolicon men, I think you must attempt to understand psychological mechanisms of this kind from the inside. It is wholly inadequate to simply view this phenomenon as sexual violence committed against weak young girls by immature men who cannot obtain an adult female partner. Yukiko Hayami's Men Who Cannot Love, for example, contains interesting reportage on lolicon men, but seems unable to break free of this prevailing picture of immature, "mother complex" men abusing young girls who cannot put up much resistance. Of course, it goes without saying that the "rebirth theory" I have proposed cannot explain everything either. This hypothesis should, however, offer one means of more deeply elucidating the lolicon mind. I have said that the ultimate goal of lolicon men like me is to transport ourselves into the body of a cute young girl who is at the point of pubescent bifurcation, live inside it, savor the experience of being inside it to our heart's content, dress it up in various outfits and interact with other people from within it, be treated gently as something precious by other people, and come to truly love our own bodies. I then want to ejaculate into the girl's womb from inside her, become pregnant, and give birth to myself. By doing this I will finally be able to escape from my mother's sphere of influence. I will become an entity born of myself, and in doing so obtain absolute freedom without ever needing to be subordinate to anyone. I will obtain the physical ideal of the body of a young girl, feel self-affirmation towards my own body, and also obtain the internal 131 freedom of psychological independence. The world will bless me, I will bless myself, and my existence will become one of perfect self-fulfillment and satisfaction. But I cannot attain self-affirmation by clinging to this conceptual drama – life is not that easy. Lolicon results in a self-enclosed world in which this convoluted drama of self-affirmation is repeated over and over again like a tape playing in an endless loop. It is I who impregnate, it is I who am impregnated, and it is I who am given birth to. It is a self-centered labyrinth of extreme self-reference with no way out. A flesh and blood young girl is used as nothing more than a trigger or prosthetic body; once she is no longer needed she is to be discarded. She is also to be molested, abused, commoditized, and subjected to severe trauma. These are the consequences of lolicon. There is indeed no escaping them.
Chapter 5 Moving Beyond Being a "Frigid Man" Section 1 The Experience of "Ejaculation" and the Sense of Self-negation 1 "Men's bodies are dirty!" My investigations thus far have revealed two fundamental problems that exist within me. The first is that "I am frigid," and the second is that "I cannot affirm my own body." Ill fruits such as an attraction to miniskirts, a uniform fetish, and lolicon have flourished in this soil. There is an incident I keep coming back to when thinking about these issues. It occurred at a meeting of a certain group. There were about twenty men and a few women in the room, and we were discussing issues like prostitution. The participants talked frankly about their own experiences and engaged in discussion in a relaxed atmosphere. One middle-aged man revealed that he sometimes hired prostitutes. There was a moment of tension, but without anyone criticizing him, those in attendance then began to talk about the nature of a desire to hire a prostitute. The discussion turned 134 towards pornographic videos. When someone was talking about how a woman's naked body is sexually arousing, one of the women in the group asked, "What about a man's naked body?" Immediately the man who had admitted to hiring prostitutes exclaimed, "But men's bodies are dirty!" As soon as I heard this, I felt as though something had suddenly become clear to me. At the root of behaviors like buying women and becoming obsessed with pornography, there is a powerful sense that one's own body, one's male body, is dirty. This could be said, I thought, not just of this particular man but also of a majority of men. Reflecting on my own feelings, it was clear that a sense that my male body was dirty lurked within me as well. To put it more precisely, this is not a sense that male bodies in general are dirty, but that "my own body," which is male, is dirty. I now suspect that in my case this awareness transformed itself into an urge to get out of my body and slip into the body of a young girl, and this in turn ultimately led to my lolicon and uniform fetish. In the case of the man discussed above, it seems that this same awareness led him to pursue pornography and sex with prostitutes. When he said, "But men's bodies are dirty!" I thought to myself, "That's right, they are." Body hair grows thickly, the color of the skin is bad, bones jut too prominently, and muscles bulge grotesquely. There is a penis and pubic hair around it, both dirtied by semen. I have an unavoidable sense that my body is extremely dirty. 135 2 The origin of the "my body is dirty" feeling When I analyze my own psychological mechanisms more carefully, the following picture emerges. When I feel that my body is dirty, the part I perceive as being the dirtiest is the area around my penis. To put it more bluntly, it is the area around my penis after semen has been released, because after I have ejaculated, whether during sex or masturbation, some semen always remains stuck to this part of my body. I have to wipe this semen off afterwards. This is when I find my body most dirty. I feel dirty in this situation because the act of wiping off my genitals brings me back to when I first started having wet dreams as a junior high school student. One morning I woke up to a strange feeling between my thighs and the presence of a white, sticky substance. I didn't know what to do. In the end I had to wipe the semen off with a tissue but I couldn't get the stain out of my underwear. I continued to periodically have wet dreams even after I had learned to masturbate. I always woke up at the moment I was ejaculating in the dream. When this happened my first thought would be that I had soiled my underwear again. Wiping off the area between my thighs with a tissue as I rubbed my sleepy eyes and going to the basin to wash my dirty underwear were painful experiences. No matter how many times I washed them, I could not get the yellowish stain out of my underwear. Even though I made a point of masturbating before I went to sleep to avoid wet dreams, there were nights when I had them anyway. 136 My experience of wet dreams gave rise to a sense that "my body is dirty." Presumably, my mother noticed what was happening, but she didn't say anything. I thus had no choice but to face my sexual awakening on my own as a junior high school student. At school, boys whispered about wet dreams amongst themselves. But there was no serious counseling. I can still clearly remember one of my friends saying, "Hey, is something bothering you?" when I was standing on the classroom veranda looking out at the schoolyard and wishing I could give up being a man. I had to face the experience of my first ejaculation, the central event in the emergence of male secondary sex characteristics, in a state of complete isolation. I had to deal with these things on my own, with neither the opportunity nor the inclination to discuss them with anyone else. I could not affirm having been born into a body that had to have wet dreams, and I could not affirm my own body that was changing inexorably into that of a man. I now think that the experience of having wet dreams is very important for boys. The starting point of sex education for boys should be how they can welcome their first ejaculation positively (listening to the accounts of other men, it seems that some men experience their first ejaculation in a wet dream like I did, while others ejaculate for the first time while masturbating). So what about girls? Even today some mothers cook "red rice" to celebrate their daughter's first period. In any case, when a girl begins to menstruate, this is 137 accepted by those around her and considered a blessing. This is how girls begin their sexual maturation. When boys begin to have wet dreams, on the other hand, this fact itself is completely disregarded by those around them. Everyone vaguely senses that it is happening, but no one will talk about it out loud. Boys deal with their wet dreams on their own, ignored by everyone around them, and as a result, there is a danger that negative feelings about their bodies will take root inside them. When I presented this idea at a seminar, one of the women in attendance pointed out that when a girl's first period is celebrated it is only her ability to give birth to a child and become a mother that is being recognized as a blessing. I agree that this is indeed the case. When it comes to boys, however, their wet dreams are not celebrated as a blessing even in this sense, and for this I think they are to be pitied. 3 My masturbation experiences Around this time I started to masturbate. I would masturbate while imagining erotic scenes or remembering erotic images from manga I had read, but after ejaculation my arousal would quickly dissipate and a feeling of regret would begin to grow within me. I should have stopped doing it because I always felt regret afterwards, but during my junior high and high school years my libido was incredibly powerful. Sexual urges would well up inside me like lava inside a volcano, and there was nothing I could do about it. If I went to bed without masturbating I would have a wet dream. 138 As a result I masturbated before going to bed. This was a vicious circle. And to escape the depressing feelings that followed ejaculation, I would try to fall asleep as quickly as possible. In this way the "frigid man" sexuality of "quickly releasing something that has built up" was constructed inside me. It was through masturbating in junior high and high school that I fully realized I was "frigid." In the pornography I began to read around that time, adult women writhed with a pleasure so powerful it rendered them delirious, and in comparison my own experience of ejaculation was distressingly pedestrian. I was confronted by this disparity every time I masturbated. I once attempted to escape from this situation by ceasing to masturbate. I think it was around the time I entered university that I decided to stop masturbating and endure the ensuing sexual frustration. After a while I had a wet dream, but I continued to refrain from masturbating. I had another wet dream. I managed to keep this up for about a month, but at that point it became impossible to endure. A strange odor began to emanate from my body, and it was impossible to suppress the urge to ejaculate any longer. The sensation I had at that time of something lava-like welling up inside my body is something that can in no way be explained by social constructionism (the view that social phenomena, human behaviors, and ways of feeling are socially constructed). Many times I thought to myself, "If only there were some medicine that could get rid of these sexual urges." And I began to yearn for a chance, if it were possible, to 139 go back to the time in junior high school when I started masturbating and having wet dreams, and relive the moment of bifurcation between male and female in the other direction. I suspect that my uniform fetish and lolicon grew out of this yearning. I felt that it would be impossible for me to ever affirm my own body and sexuality unless I could go back to that time and relive the moment differently. In short, the dirtiness of my semen when I had a wet dream led to the formation of a sense that "my body is dirty," and the feeling of emptiness that followed ejaculation led to the awareness that "I am frigid." As a result of these two factors, I became unable to affirm myself. 4 Ejaculation: a fundamental event for men There may be some readers who find it difficult to believe I cannot affirm my body as a whole and my own sexuality just because of semen stains on my underwear and a feeling of emptiness after ejaculation. But I think the event of "ejaculation" has sufficient power to determine how a man thinks and feels about sex. The erect penis, referred to as "the phallus," has come to be thought of as the most powerful symbol of manhood. But I think that "ejaculation" is perhaps more essential to men than "erection." There must be many psychological problems that can be better clarified by viewing "ejaculation" rather than "erection" as being of central importance. Looking back at my childhood, I started getting 140 erections in the upper years of elementary school. I can remember talking innocently with other boys about how that part of our bodies got hard and increased in size. But at that time, secondary sex characteristics had not yet arrived. My body still had its unisex mien. It was after I had entered junior high school and started ejaculating that my body took a sharp turn towards that of a "man." As a result of the male hormones that had begun to course powerfully throughout my entire body, my body hair began to grow and my voice changed. When my body began to radically transform itself from unisex to "male," it is not "erection" but "ejaculation" that most accurately symbolized this transformation. It seems to me that for an adolescent man it is indeed "ejaculation" that is the most powerful symbol of the fact that he is a man. And it was this "ejaculation" that I could not accept affirmatively. It was because of this stumbling block that I was not able to love my body that was becoming that of a man as a whole. This is the reason I cannot love my own body. Section 2 How Did I Become a "Frigid Man"? 5 Birth of a "macho" man What did I do when I fully realized I was unable to love my own body? To fill the emotional void inside myself I turned to "masculinity." Since I couldn't become a "woman," in order to be able to affirm myself 141 as a man I had to make the body I had more "masculine." And not only my body but also my mind and behavior had to become more "virile." If I could succeed in achieving this, I would surely be able to affirm my own body and sexuality. This was how I thought about it at the time. I felt like a drowning man grasping at straws. I began to heavily apply "make-up" to my mind and body. I tried to paint over and cover up the parts I didn't like. In this way, I constructed a man who pretended to be completely confident in his body and his sexuality even though he did not love himself. This was the birth of a "macho" man. The process by which I came to grasp at "masculinity" may be quite particular to me. What I will describe next may not apply to most of my male readers. I will take the liberty of writing about it anyway, however, because it played a very important role in the formation of the person I am today. I hope male readers, if their experience was different from mine, will think about what happened in their own case and how they themselves went about becoming "masculine" and "confident." The study of sexuality based on one's own experiences can only begin with each individual engaging in this kind of introspection. We must not demand answers that apply to everyone at once. 6 Approaches from gay men and older women When I entered university and began living alone, I 142 tried to escape from the world of masturbation and wet dreams. I looked for opportunities to meet women, wandering the streets and participating in "gōkon" [a kind of group date, usually involving five or six members of each sex]. What I encountered, however, was a series of completely unforeseen events. I wanted to go out with girls my own age, but they showed no interest in me. The people who did show sexual interest in me were gay men and older women. I was bewildered. My first approach from a gay man was quite intense. I had skipped class and gone to see a movie in Shibuya. Soon after the film started a man sat down beside me. Just as I was thinking that this was a bit strange, since there were many empty seats in the theater, the man began to slowly press his leg against mine. When I, not understanding what was happening, tried to shift away from him, he pushed up against me even harder. Panicked, I stood up and fled to the theater's balcony. That was my first experience of sexual contact with another person. My first sexual contact coming in the form of unwanted touching in a public place was quite a shocking experience (incidentally, the film I had gone to see was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid). This experience has allowed me to understand, if only to some small degree, the anxiety and trauma suffered by women who are groped on trains. For a while after this incident, I would immediately get up whenever a man sat down beside me on a train or in another public place. Having a man sitting beside me produced an unbearable anxiety. 143 But this incident was nothing more than a prelude to the advances from gay men I was to receive later. At a bar I was approached by a man I did not know who straight away asked me to go to a hotel with him. Even at university I was abruptly handed a long love letter from another male student; line after line he spelled out his passionate feelings in meticulous handwriting. Among such incidents there was one that was particularly intense. It happened when I was attending a research meeting in a suburb of Tokyo. I was riding a bus from the train station to the location of the meeting. The number of people on the bus gradually declined until finally only I and one other male passenger remained. I got off at the penultimate stop, after which a ten-minute walk along a riverside embankment would bring me to my destination. I walked along the picturesque riverbank. There was no one else around. It was a sunny afternoon. Suddenly I heard the sound of rapid footsteps approaching. The footsteps got closer until they were right behind me. I looked over my shoulder. The man who had remained on the bus until my stop was walking behind me. He leaned in close to my ear and said, "How about joining me for a cup of coffee?" We were the only ones on the embankment. I felt a chill run down my spine. "No, thank you," I said. He stopped walking and before I knew it he had disappeared. I kept walking along the embankment without looking back. My heart was pounding. I was afraid. It was frightening for me to be pursued in this way. Of course, looking back on it afterwards, I felt as 144 though I had treated him badly. It must have taken a lot of courage for him to come up and speak to me. But more than guilt, I felt fear to think that I was being targeted from places unknown and that this targeting was sexual in nature. Here I would like to state once again that I do not have any negative feelings toward gay men; I have met many homosexuals and I know from personal experience that they are normal men who can be found in all walks of life. In almost all cases, there is nothing that noticeably sets them apart from straight men. For this reason, I hate the prejudice and discrimination against gays that can often be seen on television and elsewhere in this society. (Sexual harassment and assault must not be permitted, of course, regardless of whether or not the perpetrator is gay). 7 The misapprehension that men must be "hunters" Returning to my original topic, through these experiences I was forced to acknowledge that I was a "pursued body." At the time, this was extremely difficult for me to bear; I was supposed to become a man who "pursues women," but instead I was being pursued by gay men. I was occasionally approached by women, but they were always quite a bit older than me. And when I tried to approach women around my own age, they were almost completely unresponsive to my advances. The fact that I was a pursued body weighed heavily on me. I had to transform myself from a body that was 145 targeted to a body that targeted others. I believed without question in the prevailing idea that men should be "hunters." I therefore had to become more "masculine." Up until that time my extremely skinny body had not developed much in the way of muscles, but by doing simple physical training every night before going to bed, I managed to gradually put a little more meat on my bones. Thanks to this training I became able to swim the breaststroke. I was generally quite passive in my dealings with other people, but I thought it was necessary to be able to take the lead with women so I resolved to become better at being the one to suggest things and make decisions. I studied maps of good restaurants and bars to take women on dates and read books on how to please women during sex. In this way I ploughed ahead towards my goal of becoming a "macho man" with a "body that pursues." I wanted to be a man who could make clear declarations about things, not one who was weak and irresolute. I wanted to become a man who could invite others rather than waiting for someone to invite him. I thought I had to obtain the composure and enough money to be able to suavely pay for everything rather than sharing the check. I thought I had to become the kind of person who is never timid and who remains calm and imposing no matter what happens. Without doing this, it would be impossible to attract women. And in the event I managed to find a girl and get married, I would have to become a "head of the household" who could support and protect his family. 146 I tried to turn myself into the kind of man who is always capable of taking the lead when it comes to his relationships with women. I tried to become the kind of man who can please women and make them happy. This is what I thought "masculinity" was. And in order to convince myself that my body was not dirty, I also began to pay attention to how I dressed. In this way, a man was constructed who, although he secretly still bore his "frigidity" and "self-rejection," skillfully presented himself as though he were completely confident in his own body and sexuality. As early as my twenties, I had already become a fully formed "frigid man." (This personality was later to be demolished through a complicated process, and I encourage those interested in how this came about to read Painless Civilization (Mutsū Bunmei Ron, Transview, 2003). 8 What are "frigid men" like? Up until now, I have used the terms "frigid man" and "male frigidity" with similar meanings, but here I would like to make a clear distinction. "Frigid men" are men who, while carrying "male frigidity" and "selfnegation" hidden within themselves, avoid acknowledging these traits as much as possible and behave as if they did not exist. Here I would like to take a moment to briefly summarize some of what I have said about "frigid men" thus far. A frigid man suffers from male frigidity. If he could 147 accept this condition as it is, he would be better off, but in practice he is unable to do so. He attempts to ignore it as much as possible and thinks it may be possible to find astounding sexual pleasure elsewhere. A "frigid man" thinks his body is dirty. He is thus unable to love his own body and sometimes wishes he could escape from it. He also thinks he might be able to love himself if he could become more "masculine." This kind of sexuality casts a dark shadow over his relationship with women. To begin with, he knows he cannot surpass women when it comes to feeling pleasure so he tries to dominate and control their pleasure in order to place himself above them. By dominating women he attempts to attain a sense of superiority that will cancel out his frigidity. Strangely, it is experienced as a kind of healing. But when this domination fails, he begins to have a desire to punish and take revenge on women who are capable of feeling pleasure. This is when the urge to rape arises. And when the desire to escape from his own dirty, frigid body becomes stronger, uniform fetishes and lolicon tendencies begin to emerge. This is discussed in greater detail in the preceding chapters. The result of this process is men who use women for their own ends by foisting their own self-centered images and desires upon them. While on the inside these men are full of insecurities and self-negation, outwardly they may appear to be full of confidence, sympathetic to women, or wear an expression that says, "I too am being hurt." And when a problem arises they do not try to directly face women to solve the problem 148 but instead try to discard them cold-bloodedly and onesidedly. For these men, the image of a fantasy woman on which they are fixated is more important than the flesh and blood women they meet in real life. This imaginary woman has no will or feelings of her own and is thus easy to control. So why are frigid men a problem? First, if their desires get out of control, there is a danger of their committing rape or sexual crimes against young girls. We must fully acknowledge this fact. Second, these men live their lives without being able to affirm themselves or love their own life. I think they normally try not to think about these issues, but at some point, the misery they cause becomes impossible to avoid. Third, there is the risk of their forming unhealthy, twisted relationships with the women they become intimate with. Both parties can end up carrying on with these relationships even though deep down they find them difficult and painful. This is roughly how I see this issue. As I said earlier, I have no idea how many "frigid men" there are. Based on what I see every day, I suspect the number of men who have at least one of the symptoms described in this book is quite large. There are of course many fully formed "frigid men" and many men who have only one foot across this threshold. There are also presumably "frigid men" who have neither a uniform fetish nor lolicon and vice versa. In my case, these conditions happen to overlap, but I suspect this is not something that can be said to hold true in general. Not all lolicon and uniform fetishes, 149 therefore, can be explained by the "desire to escape from one's own dirty, frigid body" hypothesis. This is an area in which future research is needed. Section 3 Begin by Accepting "Male Frigidity" 9 In order to move beyond being a "frigid man" So how are we to move beyond being "frigid men"? I would like to approach this question by considering men who have symptoms similar to mine. To begin with, men like me must frankly acknowledge the "frigidity" of our bodies. We must fully accept that there is nothing to be done about our urination-like ejaculations and post-ejaculation feelings of emptiness. To accept our frigidity is also to accept that we were born biologically male. One approach we can take is to face up to this fact and declare, "I am frigid, but that isn't a problem at all." I definitely suffer from male frigidity, but no treatment is needed. Because the fact that they cannot experience much sexual pleasure is something frigid men cannot accept for what it is, it becomes twisted in strange ways and leads to the emergence of problems like attempts to punish women who can feel pleasure and the desire to hurt oneself or to inhabit the body of a young girl. This is also one of the roots of discrimination against women. There must presumably be a way of preventing 150 these sorts of problems by unreservedly accepting one's own lack of sensation and escaping from the negative feelings that it causes. In order to be able to acknowledge the frigidity that we carry within ourselves, we must somehow find a way to heal our memories of sexual activity that have been scarred by ejaculation. It may be necessary for a frigid man to have a place where he can share his experiences and discuss with other men the fact that he is not the only one who feels misery, emptiness, deep regret, listlessness, and anxiety after ejaculation. We will presumably feel much better if we come to believe that the tendency to have these sorts of sexual feelings is part of what it means to be born into a male body, and that there is thus no need to view our experiences negatively. 10 People who promote ancient sexual techniques There are some people who, taking the opposite approach to mine, assert that if you don't like being frigid you should study sex that enables you to feel true pleasure. They maintain, for example, that true male sexual pleasure can be attained through traditional sex techniques such as those found in Chinese Taoism and Indian Tantra. Here I would like to take a brief look at this approach. In The Multi-orgasmic Man (Thorson, 1996), authors Mantak Chia and Douglas Abrams Arava advocate the modern resurrection of traditional Chinese sexual techniques. They draw a distinction 151 between "orgasm" and "ejaculation." They then claim that with practice men can learn to experience "orgasm" many times without "ejaculating." In concrete terms this is done by cultivating inner energy (qi in Chinese) within the body, developing the muscles around the genitals, and using these muscles to prevent the flow of semen when ejaculation seems imminent. In this way you can savor ejaculation-like pleasure without actually emitting semen. By experiencing pleasure without ejaculating over and over again, you will eventually become able to experience ecstasy so powerful it is like your body is becoming one with the universe. They claim that since no semen is expelled, you can avoid the feeling of depletion that follows ejaculation. If you feel unable to hold it in, you can apply pressure with your finger at the base. Charles and Caroline Muir's Tantra: The Art of Conscious Loving (Mercury House, 1989) offers an easy to understand introduction to Tantra. They too distinguish between "orgasm" and "ejaculation." Using Tantric sexual techniques it is possible to have sex for as long as you like and regain your erection quickly with little recuperation time required after ejaculation. As a result, once sufficient proficiency is attained, you will be able to have sex that makes you one with the universe. But they do not encourage the physical prevention of ejaculation. On the contrary they state that this may lead to illness. After ejaculation, your penis must be left inside the woman's body for an extended period of time, because through controlling your breathing while remaining in this position, it is 152 possible to suck the sexual energy you have released into her back inside yourself. I understand the motivation of these people who want to resurrect these traditional sexual techniques in the modern era. They presumably intend to somehow provide relief from miserable heterosexual intercourse in which the only aim is male "ejaculation." They seem eager to tell everyone about the amazing experience of a man and a woman coming together to achieve oneness with the universe. I suspect they may also want to avoid the sense of emptiness that follows ejaculation. In Platonic Animal (Puratonikku Animaru, Jōhōsentā Shuppankyoku, 1992), Tadashi Yoyogi also distinguishes between "orgasm" and "ejaculation," maintaining that men can attain true orgasms by removing their male armor and destroying their own egos. He then goes on to suggest that if everyone on Earth could experience genuine orgasms, the world would be a better place to live. 11 Pitfalls latent in the pursuit of pleasure I do not reject the efforts of these authors. But I would like to take a different approach, because if you set off, like them, in pursuit of true orgasms, there is a danger that you will only increase your "desire for sexual pleasure" while maintaining your distorted sexuality and interpersonal relationships as they are. In concrete terms, there is a risk that in attempting to help men attain greater sexual pleasure, we may inadvertently encourage men to have a lot of sex with 153 prostitutes (in fact, one man who is engaged in efforts to spread the adoption of Tantra has written an essay in which he speaks proudly of the supremely pleasurable tantric sex he had with a prostitute in India). It is also easy to imagine a man who has gained the ability to have multiple orgasms without ejaculating becoming a peerless hunter, felling his prey one after another. This is not the kind of man I want to become. I therefore think it is necessary to first think very carefully about how to deal with my twisted sexuality and how to avoid being manipulated by the sexual desire that exists within me before pursuing an orgasm that will make me one with the universe. Furthermore, as I discussed in How to Live in a Post-religious Age (Shūkyōnakijidai wo Ikiru Tameni, Hōzōkan, 1996), I used to belong to a "Qigong" group, and there was a time when I felt drawn toward the Aum Shinrikyō cult. I have seen with my own eyes the potential for evil harbored by people with a longing for ultimate pleasure and a feeling of oneness with the universe. There are indeed pitfalls awaiting any man who seeks pleasure. Gradually and without his knowing, the pursuit of pleasure can transform itself into the pursuit of power and greed. I therefore think the best approach is to begin by humbly acknowledging "male frigidity" and accepting it as something that can be affirmed. 12 Towards a "frigidity" that opens into "gentleness" "Frigid men" are by nature not eager to 154 acknowledge their own frigidity. But what happens when a "frigid man" accepts his frigidity with dignity? I think he may then have an opportunity to escape from being a "frigid man." If he becomes able to deeply affirm and love his frigid self he will no longer be a "frigid man"; while remaining unable to experience intense pleasure he will nevertheless become able to be unreservedly happy to have ejaculated, and, along with the feelings of emptiness and isolation that follow ejaculation, tender feelings will also spread within him and he will begin to have a desire to cherish humanity and the world. What I am looking for, I think, is this sort of experience. In this book, I have used the term "frigidity" because I thought it would be comforting to treat it as a medical condition in a broad sense rather than to treat it as a personal or private concern. But "frigidity" is not necessarily something that requires medical treatment; it is possible to live a fulfilling life with this condition. One way to do this may be to remember once again the sort of relationship you originally wanted to have with the woman you love. A man can say, "I suffer from frigidity, but I want to be gentle," and attempt to live his life by this maxim. If "frigidity" opens into gentleness, can it not then be wholeheartedly welcomed rather than shunned? Even when you have no sexual partner, it might be better for you to attempt to fill your heart with kind feelings towards other people immediately after you masturbate. The key is a "gentleness" that can only be shown because you are "frigid." I am confident that this experience of frigidity, 155 which has a tendency to lead to feelings of "defeat," "self-negation," and "revenge," can also be made to inspire feelings of "gentleness" towards beings that have life and are easily harmed. Making frigidity a source of gentleness: this is the opening through which we can escape from being "frigid men." There must be a way in which a man can first acknowledge his frigidity for what it is, recover a body and mind that enable him to have gentle feelings after ejaculation, unravel the kinks in his sexuality and interpersonal relationships, and then attempt to discover sexual pleasure. The most important thing is to build tender relationships with the people you love and who are important to you, relationships in which you are able to respect and cherish each other. If it is required in order to support the creation of this kind of relationship, you should explore the furthest reaches of sex together with your partner. A great deal of information relevant to this kind of exploration is easily available. I think you should not have excessive expectations regarding sex when it is not absolutely necessary in order to foster gentleness or when you do not have a partner. In any case, the most important thing to avoid is having sexual pleasure become your goal and its pursuit come to dominate your life. More than anything, what is needed to begin with is for each man to take a hard look at himself and figure out what practical approach would suit him best. 156 13 Dissolving the sense that "my body is dirty" The second thing a frigid man must do is thoroughly dissolve his sense that "my body is dirty." Men who continue to have sex while thinking that their own bodies are dirty tend to harm not only their female partners in various ways but also themselves. But it does not seem likely that this problem can be solved by lifting weights and paying more attention to fashion, because there are cases in which men continue to hold on to the idea that their bodies are dirty while working far too hard to make themselves more physically attractive. It is perhaps necessary for each individual to analyze the source of this "my body is dirty" feeling. In my case, the fact that I could not affirm my experience of wet dreams was very important. I encourage readers to think about how things went in their own case. In order to change this feeling, it may be helpful to have a partner you can trust. You could open up to this partner about what bothers you about your own body, and if she accepts what you say sympathetically, then you could talk your problems over with her and try to find a way to solve them. There should be ways of coming to better understand each other and gradually share with each other the fact that your body is not really dirty and there is no reason to have a negative feeling about that. There are many things that can be gained by gently touching each other's bodies and sharing your feelings. Concerning the above, I think it might be better if it 157 were customary for experienced adults to provide sexual guidance to both girls and boys when they reach junior high school age. Rather than only providing sex education in a classroom setting, would it not be better to have a culture in which adults with strict self-control acted as practical advisors, talking with children about worries and difficulties associated with sex and providing assistance regarding their sexual development and behavior? I don't think it is absurd to suggest that adults should share their experiences, failures, and lessons learned with children before they develop a distorted sense of the human body and how people have sex through the Internet and other media. Here something else comes to mind. I would like to ask my male readers if they can imagine their own fathers masturbating and ejaculating. I suspect most of them will feel somewhat disgusted when they try to imagine this kind of scene. There may even be some who find it nauseating. You can imagine your father heartily slurping up a bowl of noodles without difficulty, so why can't you imagine him masturbating? The reason this is so difficult is that you yourself cannot fully affirm masturbation. Your father almost certainly masturbated, and it was from his sperm released during sex that you were created. It is important to think about these things a little bit more deeply. Men often talk with great feeling about the fact that they were born out of their mother's womb, but when it comes to the fact that they were also created by their father's ejaculation, this is something they tend to thoroughly avoid acknowledging. It seems likely that 158 both the problem of male frigidity, which is connected to ejaculation, and the problem of men finding their own bodies dirty lie behind this tendency. 14 Freedom from the illusion of "tremendous pleasure" The third thing a frigid man must do is liberate himself from the delusion that there is "something tremendous" hidden in targets of fixation such as sex with young girls, rape, uniforms, and what is underneath a miniskirt. "Frigid men" are particularly prone to this kind of delusion, because being unable to find pleasure within themselves, they suspect that "something tremendous" may lie hidden in some "unknown territory" beyond their own bodies. For example, they may imagine that if they rape a girl who is still in elementary school, they will attain the kind of "tremendous pleasure" they have never been able to feel in the past. Getting excited by just looking at a miniskirt or uniform may not be so terribly bad, but when the search for tremendous pleasure leads to actually paying a young girl for sex or raping her, it becomes a serious problem. The incident that occurred in the Akasaka area of Tokyo in 2003 in which female elementary school students were abducted and held in captivity can be seen as a model example of this kind of case. The man who committed this crime killed himself with the girls still being held captive, and presumably he wanted to use these girls to experience, even if only once before his death, "tremendous pleasure" of a kind he had 159 never known. In order to eliminate rape and sex with young girls, men must be freed of the delusion that "tremendous pleasure" must exist in some unknown territory. This is something that I believe is extremely important. To this end, it is important that the mechanism of things like miniskirts, uniforms, lolicon, and rape be made clear in a way that anyone can understand. This book is one attempt to realize this goal. I hope you will delve into your own experiences while using what I have said as a reference. Even if it is only for a brief instant, if you can get a bird's-eye view of the mechanisms of the sexual labyrinth in which you are trapped, it should make it easier for you to see the route to the exit. The clarification of these mechanisms will require further research in addition to the investigations conducted in this book. Joint efforts between men's studies and women's studies in this area are eagerly awaited. 15 To people who are troubled by what I have been saying Among the readers of this book, I suspect there are some who feel an indescribable sense of discomfort with what I have been saying. It may seem as though this male author has been indulging in undisciplined discussions of male sexuality for his own satisfaction. Some may suspect that I have in fact just been affirming the status quo while writing in a style that suggests I am criticizing it. Feminist women may ask 160 why they should have to listen to a man preach about sexuality at this point. I did in fact receive this kind of criticism from some of the participants when I gave a presentation at a meeting of the Women's Studies Association of Japan. Their criticism was that since a social structure in which men dominate, despise, and inflict violence upon woman has been put in place when it comes to sex, any theory of sexuality that does not include self-criticism of this fact is like a middleaged man lecturing a bunch of women with his fly open. This book may also come in for criticism from those who do not think sex should be discussed so lightly. Others may wonder why this author talks so arrogantly about sex without studying the structures through which men dominate women that have been elucidated by feminism. I have in fact received this sort of criticism. My writings may feel like yet another case of a man sidling up to women. There will no doubt be derisive claims that what men say cannot be trusted at all. Regarding the above, there is only one thing I would add. My "men's studies" began as a direct and earnest response to the impact of feminism and women's liberation. Feminist Mitsu Tanaka once stated that she wondered if the time will ever come when men will talk about their own pain in their own words, and I think men's studies begins with the sincere undertaking of this task. For an example of my engagement with feminism and women's liberation see my Life Studies Approaches to Bioethics (Keisō Shobō, 2001). I find feminism's depiction of structures of male 161 sexual domination very persuasive. Men must change in order for these structures to be broken down. In particular, men's sexuality must change. I believe that my first-person narrative of unspoken aspects of male sexuality can bring its essence into the light and provide an opportunity for the dismantling of these structures of sexual domination from the male side. In this book I have made various attempts toward this end. These have included topics that may invite misunderstandings and issues that are dangerous to address. But I have never taken the attitude, all too common among young intellectuals, that it is fine to go no further than making superficial and pedantic discussions about this or that subculture (such as, for example, the way otaku talk) while affirming the current state of affairs. At the same time, however, I would also like to make a clear distinction between my views and the sort of conservatism that supports the "restoration of fatherhood." At first glance, this book's approach of affirming "the state of being a man" may seem similar to the conservative assertion that men must "go back to being more manly." Conservatives lament that recently men have started to become weak like women. They preach to young men that it is important for them to have more self-confidence and become dignified and imposing "Japanese men." What I believe, however, is that on the contrary it is tremendously harmful to try to forcibly shape yourself in accordance with the sort of "masculinity" demanded by society. Affirming oneself and regaining the sort of "masculinity" prescribed by 162 society are completely different things. This must not be misunderstood. On the other hand, I may also be criticized for dwelling exclusively on the miserable side of male sexuality in this book. This sort of criticism would hold that no amount of this sort of wallowing will help damaged men recover their courage. A harsh critic might even say that he or she does not want to listen to a discussion of men based on my deficient sexual sensitivity, sexual experiences, and delusions. But what I have written here is what is true for me. In this book I have indeed not been able to say very much about the bountiful side of sex. I would like to acknowledge this here; there is indeed a fulfilling side to sex. But I believe there are things that absolutely must be done before I can discuss it. I wanted to focus on these things that are not normally discussed. I believe that after having succeeded in these efforts, various forms of sexual relationships in which other people are not merely tools in the service of your own desire will emerge. I think these will include a truly diverse range of sexual relationships and approaches to sexuality. 16 As questions for each individual... In this book I have said many things about myself and proposed many extreme hypotheses. What I hope you, the reader, will do now is begin to ask yourself how things stand in your own case. As for researchers, I hope that if they find my hypotheses incorrect they will propose new ideas of their own to replace mine. 163 When it comes to questions of sexuality there are no universal answers. Each reader must continue to think about these issues on his or her own. As for my own case, I have now gotten to the point of being able to publicly acknowledge male frigidity. This took a long time, but I think I have at last managed to do so. I no longer think that there is some kind of tremendous pleasure lying hidden and waiting to be discovered. Instead I have come to think that since having frigidity is not really a problem, what I want to strive for is becoming a kind and gentle man in the truest sense of these words. Regarding my own body being dirty, this is something that I have not yet been able to overcome. I have come to understand what a surprisingly large impact wet dreams and masturbation had on me. As a result I have not even come close to reaching a state of mind in which I can affirm and love my body. This is my task going forward. As for my uniform fetish and lolicon, by coming to understand their mechanisms I think I have finally been able to free myself from them. Of course, I still feel an attraction when I see a pretty girl in a uniform. But because I am now able to dispassionately view my emotions from a distance, I am no longer at the mercy of these feelings. I have come to clearly understand how consuming image after image of women causes flesh and blood women to suffer. I have also come to realize that people can build good relationships by understanding and sharing each other's feelings. I can testify that it is possible for a man's sexuality to change 164 in any number of ways. While there are many things that still need to be discussed, for now I will stop here. 165 Afterword – 2004 I set out to write a book about male sexuality that would be easy to read, enlightening and enjoyable. As the writing progressed, I realized that the topics I was dealing with were quite difficult and painful, and many times I found myself struggling to continue. Mustering all my strength, I pressed on until I had managed to put something on paper, but how did this effort turn out? In any case, I think it contains many discussions you cannot find in any other book, and I hope that what I have written is not too far off the mark. Regarding the specific contents of this book, I can only ask that you read the main text, but I think that until now there have been hardly any attempts to approach sex from this angle. When I brought this book to Chikuma Shinsho, my original idea was to target female readers because I thought that most women have no knowledge of the "men's secrets" I was planning to write about. After having finished writing it, however, I began to want men to read this book as well as women, because men do not necessarily know themselves completely, and particularly when it comes to these sorts of topics we have a tendency to intentionally look away. There is one thing for which I think I must offer an apology. It concerns what it means for someone who is a teaching professor at a university to write this kind of 166 book. I would not want to in any way limit my own academic freedom, but I suspect this book might make some of the young university students I teach uncomfortable in various ways. I would like to take this opportunity to apologize for this. I hope they can forgive me. I have no intention of touching on any of the things I talk about in this book in my classes. For those interested in the intellectual background of this book I highly recommend reading my previous work Painless Civilization (Transview, 2003). Reading Painless Civilization should help you understand why I think it is necessary to consider issues of male sexuality from the perspective I have taken. I think this book can also be seen as a good example of "life studies" in a slightly relaxed or casual form. This is something that would be interesting to examine further. I would like to express my gratitude to Chishū Ishida, Yuka Orii, Yasuhito Kaneko, T. Kael, Kumi Tsukahara, Rio Numaoka, Ichiro Numazaki, and WAKKI for the valuable comments I received when this book was at the manuscript stage. I would also like to offer my thanks to Hiroyuki Ishijima who oversaw publication of this book at Chikumashobō. October, 2004, while on a rooftop looking at the moon before sunrise. Masahiro Morioka 167 Epilogue Further Thoughts on a Frigid Man – 2013 Section 1 What Has Happened to Me Since I Published the Book? 1 This book was published in February 2005. As soon as it appeared in bookstores, it attracted huge attention, and a number of comments were posted on the Internet. This was the unprecedented confession of an incumbent college professor about his sexuality, the content of which ranges from male frigidity to the Lolita complex. This explains why the reaction was so vast. First, I would like to tell you that after the publication of this book, I was assailed by tremendous psychological depression. Of course I had expected it beforehand, but the actual psychological stress was really beyond my imagination. My mind and heart became unstable; even little things stirred up my emotions, and I was overwhelmed by intense anxiety. Imagine a situation in which a book about your sexual 168 confessions goes public in front of the whole country. Whenever I searched for the title of my book, various comments struck my eyes. I saw many comments sneering at my sexuality. I saw a comment saying, "I don't want to go out with a man like the author." Since the book sold well at the college bookstore, whenever I saw students in my classes I felt embarrassed. I felt as if whispers such as "Oh, so that's the kind of man Morioka is!" were coming from all directions. News of the publication extended to a surprising place. In 2006 I gave an academic presentation at a bioethics conference in the US. An American male professor who chaired our session introduced me to the audience with a broad smile, saying, "Professor Morioka is a scholar who studies not only bioethics but also why men do not feel in sexual intercourse and why he is sexually aroused by young girls!" I presume he must have said it to entertain the audience, but at the time I was truly embarrassed and had no idea how to react to his words. I suppose readers must want to know what has become of my sexuality since publication. 2 First, there has been no change in the empty feelings after ejaculation and the feeling of descent and collapse. I still have them just like before. There were some who kindly advised me how to improve the techniques of masturbation and sex in order to enhance sexual sensitivity. They recommended that I take 169 plenty of time to make the skin of my whole body sensitive, stimulate my prostate, or take several days to enhance my sexual feelings with my partner. The sensitivity to sexual pleasure could perhaps be developed, and the feeling of emptiness after ejaculation might disappear, by using those techniques. We can read such reports of success in various books and magazines. I never deny their results, but I myself had no desire to follow in their footsteps. It seemed somehow wrong to resolve the problem of "male frigidity" by enhancing sexual pleasure, and that is why I could not follow their advice. I was searching for a way to embrace "male frigidity" and affirm myself just the way I am. "I am frigid, but this is no problem at all. I want to try to find a way to reweave my sexuality by affirming myself just the way I am." This was my real intention. Then what about the tendency to get attracted to school uniforms? Honestly speaking, I still feel attracted to school uniforms. I feel very nice when I see junior-high or high school girls wearing uniforms, and I must say I can have sexual feelings toward their uniforms. At the same time, I want to emphasize that I have come to be able to observe my sexual feelings from a distance in a calm way, because after writing this book, the mechanism of why I am attracted to school uniforms became very clear to me. I became able to see my arousal process with a cold eye. For me, the psychological drive toward school uniforms has gradually shifted from an incomprehensible emotion to a clearly comprehensible one. 170 3 Then what about lolicon (the Lolita complex)? I think girls in junior high school and the upper years of elementary school are really cute. I do not deny that I still have a tendency to be sexually attracted to them. However, I am now able to observe my sexual feelings from a distance in a calm way because the mechanism of why I am attracted to those girls became very clear to me. An "aha!" experience came to me, and I was deeply relieved. Regarding actual girls, I have come to have a kind of parental feeling, wishing these girls to survive safely and grow soundly in our society filled with sexual gazes. Although as a person who has been on the side of exploiting them, and may still be on the same side, I might not be qualified to say this, I strongly hope that they will be able to live their lives without being exploited by adults' sexual desire, and I strongly believe that a social environment in which they will be able to live in happiness should be created and maintained. Clarifying the mechanism of being attracted to young girls has given me another transformation. I have gradually become attracted to adult women. I have come to feel wonderful from the bottom of my heart when seeing an experienced, intellectual, independent, and beautiful woman. Sometimes I am attracted to female politicians or scholars who are older than I, and sometimes the attractions are sexual. The clarification of that psychological mechanism by logical 171 thinking has brought me an enormous expansion of the age range of women I am sexually attracted to. I do not know the reason why, but nonetheless, it has actually happened to me. 4 What about the idea that my male body is dirty? Unfortunately, in this realm no transformation has yet been achieved. I still think that my male body is dirty. The wish to escape from this body into another one still clearly exists inside me. It is not as easy to transform a view of the body that has permeated my mind for such a long time. This will become a bigger and bigger problem as I get older. Recently I have had an experience of providing nursing care for members of my family. People are inclined to regard their own body as dirty when they get old. People surrounding them, too, start to see them that way. Is it possible for us to grow old with dignity in a space where it is presupposed that old people's bodies are dirty? Perhaps I am going to confront a new problem as I get older because I have not been liberated from the belief that my body is dirty. To summarize, the publication of this book has brought me a decisive structural transformation of my sexuality. And this transformation has made me unable to go back to my former state of mind. My sexual sensitivity is probably almost the same as before, but in spite of this, the fundamental structure of my sexuality has been transformed, and a completely new scene is 172 now beginning to unfold before my eyes. The basic tone of this new scene is made up of my heartfelt prayer that every human being in this world lives in peace and safety. Even if in a sexual situation there swirl abnormal desires, there exist unequal relationships, or there is pain and subordination, I really wish that the people involved are never deprived of their dignity, and that all sexual activity can be woven into peaceful human relationships based on mutual respect and consent. And I myself really wish to become gentle and kind, as much as possible, to the woman I love, and this wish has become stronger than ever before. Section 2 Frigid Man and Life Studies 5 While almost all books dealing with male sexuality have been written from a general viewpoint, "men are like this," this book was written from a first-person perspective: "I am like this." As a result, the content came to resemble the author's "confessions." Arguments were put forth both for and against this methodology. On the one hand, there were compliments: the author's courage deserved the highest applause because there was no precedent for a man with high social status so deeply investigating his own sexuality based 173 on his naked confessions. But on the other hand, there appeared many criticisms that the author's discussion lacked objectivity because all he did in his book was just to unload his sexual obsessions onto his readers and hence there was no guarantee that his arguments could be applied to men in general. I say yes to both comments. I needed enormous courage to write this book, and also no objectivity is guaranteed, because what I discovered can perhaps be fully applied only to my case. First of all, I wrote this book not because I wished to clarify the objective truth on male sexuality in general, but because I seriously wanted to know the true origin of my pain and distress concerning my sexuality. Delving into our own sexuality is accompanied by unavoidable pain because it also casts a clear light on our "weak points" and makes us look straight at what we have secretly hidden inside ourselves. Since we do not want to face our weak points squarely, we have hidden them not only from other people, but also from ourselves; but without casting a clear light on them, we cannot hold onto the most essential part of our sexuality. I thought that by completing the above process before the eyes of other people in the form of a book, I would probably be able to encourage others who had embraced weakness or pain similar to mine, and by connecting those people with the thread of "weakness," we would be able to open up a new world in front of us. I exposed my weakest points in public, but as a result, I created a situation in which anyone could easily come 174 to stab them at any time. This was indeed one of the reasons why I became depressed after publication. However, this book had to be written in the form of a "confession." With regard to the criticism that confessions are not science, I would like to answer that they are certainly not included in the category which we presently regard as science. There was something more important to me than keeping up the appearances of science as we know it. That was to live my whole life without regret and to try to communicate with people who were seeking goals similar to mine. 6 I have just used the term "science as we know it." By this I mean intellectual activities that seek to acquire "objective" knowledge that can provide truth to all of us who observe the world. In science as we know it, the lack of "objectivity" is considered a fatal flaw. Of course, I do not want to deny the worth of this definition of science. It is one of the most wonderful accomplishments the human race has ever achieved. However, at the same time, I am imagining that there could be sciences or studies which are basically liberated from the restraint of this kind of "objectivity." In other words, I am imagining "a network of intellectual activities that is to be thoroughly utilized for each of us to be able to live our whole limited life without regret." While present sciences seek to acquire objective knowledge, our new sciences or studies try to figure out what it would mean to live our whole limited 175 life without regret, try to discover how we can live our life in that way, and try to have intellectual communication with others who have similar motives and objectives. Thus, here, to engage in intellectual activities and to actually live our own life are considered two sides of the same coin. I have long called such intellectual activities "life studies." A life study is an activity that tries to open up the possibility of another type of science, the methodology of which is completely different from existing ones. I believe the method of "confession," in which a person delves deeply into his or her own inner world and personal history, will be necessary for the accomplishment of this kind of studies. Of course, you do not have to make confessions before the eyes of other people. In this book I did it publicly, but please keep in mind that this is never a standard way. I will recommend that you do this work in solitude, in silence, facing only yourself, never thinking about others or an audience. The reason why I employed a method of making confessions in front of others was that I wanted readers to watch the actual process of the investigation of my "self" using this method. I wanted to share the process with the readers, not only the good aspects of the process, but also the bad ones. I have called this kind of process a study method of "never shelving oneself"-a method of study that can be carried out only by "never detaching oneself from the subject being investigated." Many people put themselves aside to discuss a problem; however, when we do life studies, we have to tackle the problem while 176 never shelving ourselves, always including our own actual ways of life as part of the problem. We make confessions in order to never detach ourselves from the problem under discussion. 7 The book Confessions of a Frigid Man was written using the methodology of "life studies" discussed above. I would be grateful if people perceived this book not as a tacky confession meant to expose my own private life to others, but as an intellectual trial of opening up an alternative possibility in the realm of the sciences. I have explored the method of life studies in my past several books, although in an insufficient manner. The first book written from a life studies approach was How to Live in a Post-Religious Age (1996), which dealt with the Aum Shinrikyo incident, an incident in which members of a religious cult group attacked the Tokyo subways with homemade sarin gas, leaving thirteen people dead and more than 6,000 injured. At first, Aum Shinrikyo was a small group aspiring to gain the truth by practicing yoga, but they got off track somewhere and transformed themselves into religious fanatics who wished to destroy the entire system of our society. Just after the incident, I began research on them, but the more I investigated their crimes and their backgrounds, the more I came to believe that I could have become a person like them, because I found a number of similar thoughts and passions between some of the top senior cult members and myself. I could not 177 avoid asking who I was and what I was all about. In order to investigate the question, I looked back along the path of my life up until then, and tried to excavate from the deeper layers of my memory my past bitter experiences, my strong attraction to religions, and the setback that I was nevertheless unable to follow the path of religion. I confessed these experiences in the book and tried to figure out how a person, myself, who had not been able either to become a scientist or to follow a religious path, could live his whole life without regret. 8 After that, in the year 2003, I published the book Painless Civilization. This is the most important book I have ever published, which has had a deep influence on those who are interested in philosophy and sociology. In this book, I thoroughly examined the essence of contemporary civilization and raised an alarm that in our civilization, which lures us to avoid pain and suffering and to concentrate on pursuing pleasure and pleasantness, we are inevitably driven to the verge of losing the joy of life in exchange for the satisfaction of our desires. I called the whole structure of our civilization which provides us with pleasure and pleasantness, makes us avoid pain and suffering, and as a result deprives us of the joy of life, "painless civilization." And this structure permeates not only every corner of our society but also the deepest layers of our inner selves. The word "civilization" reminds us 178 of systems or devices outside ourselves, such as social systems, mechanical devices, and food production systems, but this is no more than one side of the story. In order to think seriously about the trap of painless civilization, we have to gaze squarely and earnestly at what lurks inside us who try to become adjusted to a painless civilization. In order to accomplish this, I used the method of confession. I resolved to take up my own life as material for discussion and delved into the deepest core of my inner world, which I had never wanted to see or touch. Then I tried to make it clear in front of readers what kind of life I had led in contemporary civilization, what kind of identity armor I had been protecting myself with, what it was that I had been most afraid of, what it was that a painless civilization had protected inside me, and what it was that a painless civilization had deprived me of in exchange for that protection. I adopted the method of studying the researcher himself in order to investigate the most essential mechanism of contemporary civilization, and this became the second publication in life studies. And through the investigation of my inner self I came to realize that it was nothing but my own desire that had generated the very basis of the painless civilization that had provided me with pleasure, pleasantness, and comfort, and hence that in order to transform the painless civilization surrounding us, we have to transform ourselves first of all. Then, during the period of writing, I was repeatedly forced to dismantle the inner core of my self, until finally I was 179 dismantled from within and at last an unanticipated self appeared. Strangely enough, during this period my sexuality was also deeply transformed. Aggression and violence in my sexuality gradually disappeared from me, and a new sexuality filled with gentle and kind emotions started to take form at the bottom of my heart. Looking back from the present, I believe this transformation in sexuality must have laid the groundwork for the idea of the "frigid man." In Painless Civilization I used the term "the self-trapped corpus cavernosum penis" to describe the true nature of painless civilization, which seems to strongly suggest a close relationship between the function of a painless civilization and that of male sexuality. Painless Civilization is a thick book of philosophy that deals with a variety of issues in contemporary society; hence it is impossible to summarize the book's contents here. But at least it is certain that it was this book that prepared the basic idea and framework of Confessions of a Frigid Man. We can say that life studies has developed first in the field of religious studies, second in the field of civilization studies, and third in the field of gender and sexuality studies. It is impossible to explain life studies in a word. I want to say instead that the central concept of life studies will emerge with clarity from a careful reading of these three books, How to Live in a Post-Religious Age, Painless Civilization, and Confessions of a Frigid Man, which comprise the trilogy of Morioka's "life studies." 180 9 Life studies has continued to develop since the publication of Confessions. In 2008, the book Lessons in Love for Herbivore Men (Media Factory) was published, in which I sent young men who were inexperienced in romantic love the message that it is not necessary to become "masculine" in order to build romantic relationships with women. The term "herbivore men" became a buzzword just after the publication of this book and spread around the world. I wrote in Chapter Five of Confessions of a Frigid Man that "since having frigidity is not really a problem, what I want to strive for is becoming a kind and gentle man in the truest sense of these words." The reason I wrote this was that in the process of writing this book I came to fully realize that there lurked an inevitable and overwhelming tendency towards violence in the sexuality of one, myself, who had been born and brought up as a man. I then began to think that this tendency toward violence in my sexuality should be dismantled, and I began to hope from the bottom of my heart that young men who were about to set out on a journey into the world of romantic love and sex would explore alternative paths of enjoying them in as nonviolent a way as possible. I really hoped that I would be able to convey the knowledge and wisdom that had accumulated within me to young men who resembled me as I was almost thirty years before, and that they would grow into men who were really able to develop and nurture gentle and kind relationships with 181 their partners. At first sight, Lessons in Love for Herbivore Men appears to be a practical manual that illustrates in detail the way to success in romantic love, but underneath appearances, there was also a message of the sort described above. 10 I recall the following sentence in Painless Civilization. "It is the person who has thoroughly reduced his or her pains and sufferings by artificial means who least perceives others' pains and sufferings, least lends an ear to others' pleading voices, and least recognizes the fact that others are being unilaterally crushed under his or her own foot when it is actually happening" (p.33). The person who has made him/herself insensitive to pain and suffering in order to protect him/herself becomes a person who can exercise the most brutal violence toward other people. Frigid men, herbivore men, and violence caused by avoiding pain are connected in a straight line here. However, herbivore men may not be completely innocent of violence. If nonviolent people such as herbivore men become adapted to painless civilization and support it, they passively share in the responsibility for the violence of painless civilization that aims to deprive people of their joy of life, and even if the time comes when herbivorous men have to fight against painless civilization, their herbivorousness might prevent them from resisting painless civilization by force. This is a completely new topic of discussion. 182 We will have to give it thorough contemplation. I am now also looking for a new way of thinking in the field of philosophy of life and death. I am planning to create, in contemporary philosophy, a new genre of "philosophy of life" in which we can think philosophically about the meaning of birth, death, and nature against the background of contemporary society and technology. The most basic idea of the philosophy of life is, "I am really glad that I have been born." I call it "birth affirmation." I am investigating the meaning of this idea and imagining what kind of view of society, the world, and nature will loom large when we place this idea at the center of philosophy of life. This is also one of the thoughts that has been handed down from Confessions. As I wrote in Chapter Four, I had not been able to affirm, at a deep level of the self, the fact that at puberty's fork in the road I turned towards a male body. This was one of the reasons why I have grappled with various problems relating to sexuality. However, it is impossible for me to go back to that point of bifurcation and live my life over again. I have already lived more than half of my life. Is it really possible for me to live from now on with a sense of affirmation of my whole life? Is it really possible for me to truly bless the fact that I have been born to this life, with its particular content? I want to think philosophically about this kind of problem in depth. I have published some papers on "philosophy of life" in Japanese. I am now writing a thick book on the philosophy of life that deals with the meaning of life from the perspective of 183 "birth affirmation." As described above, Confessions of a Frigid Man was a book that came into existence as a necessary result of my thought process up until then, and it is a book that will surely prepare the basic groundwork for my future thoughts and publications. Section 3 Public Responses to Confessions of a Frigid Man 11 A variety of questions have been posed since the publication of Confessions. I would like to answer some of these questions here. 1) "Male frigidity can be explained biologically." I wrote in the book that the causes of "male frigidity" and of "the sensation of something piling up" can be explained in two ways: biologically and psychologically. Some readers advised me to study recent scientific discoveries because the cause can be fully explained by biology. For example, they said "male frigidity" was explained by evolutionary biology: it comes from the instinct of male animals who have to quickly stand up after ejaculation to guard their mates against other males or predators. Or, they said that the 184 "sensation of something piling up" can be explained by the concentration of androgen in the blood and the quantity of semen in the prostate gland. As I pointed out in this book, I do not deny that there may be biological causes for those phenomena. What I want to stress is that it is not a good idea to think that "only biological causes are to be considered" or that "there is no such thing as social causes." Psychology and brain research have discovered that what is thought to have been created by biological causes may also have been influenced by the social environment, and what is thought to be created by social causes could also be influenced by biological processes or substances. The very idea that biological causes can be clearly separated from social causes and vice versa may be completely wrong. Therefore, to the criticism that "male frigidity can be explained biologically," I would like to reply, "There may be some aspects of male frigidity that can be explained biologically." 12 2) "I am not frigid." "For the first time I have come to know that men do not have pleasure in sex." In this book I have made an investigation using myself as an example, and I have repeatedly emphasized that my theory cannot necessarily be applied to men in general. However, there were male and female readers who had the wrong impression 185 after reading this book that my conclusion was, "All men, without exception, are worried about frigidity." Actually, there were male readers who argued, "I'm not frigid!" and female readers who expressed the feeling that "It was really shocking to find out how men feel during sex." With regard to this point, I have to confess that there were actually some misleading statements in the book, and I deeply regret that I did not express myself better. While I was writing this book, I was never confident that there really were men whose sexuality was similar to mine. While writing about myself sincerely, I was really hoping somewhere in my mind that other men who had feelings like mine actually existed, at least somewhere in this world. Such emotions probably influenced me to write sentences which could be read as if I were generalizing my own sexuality. After publication, several men who confessed that their sexuality was similar to mine sent me sympathetic opinions. On the Internet, too, there were men who wrote: "Oh, this is just like me!" Here I write down the fact that reading those comments I came to know I was not alone; there were fellow men who lived their lives in a similar situation. And by knowing that I was deeply consoled and encouraged. 13 3) "Sickening because the author idealizes women too much." 186 There were criticisms that women were overidealized throughout the book. For example, when "male frigidity" was discussed, the fabulousness of female sexuality was overemphasized, and when "lolicon" was discussed, the girl's body that begins to show secondary sex characteristics was depicted as something unimaginably beautiful, so beautiful that it lured a frigid man to slip his consciousness into her body. One reader commented that this was sickening. If they had read carefully, such readers would have easily understood that my point was not that I wanted to know whether or not a woman's body or sexuality was actually fabulous; what I wanted was to make clear why the idea that "a woman's body or sexuality is fabulous" had been inscribed inside me. I wanted to clarify where the inclination to idealize women came from, if such an inclination really existed in me. And I searched for the cause of this inclination in the sense of emptiness after ejaculation, in the thought that this male body of mine is dirty, or in my having the thought that I had developed in the wrong way. Some female readers expressed the criticism that the images of women's bodies described in this book were very superficial and never reflected women's reality. Now, I think this may be correct. It is almost impossible for a man to understand what it is to actually live in a woman's body. However, the same thing can be said about women's understanding of men's bodies. Hence, it is very important to encourage the quest for mutual understanding between women 187 and men about their bodies and sexualities. Of course a number of unimaginable obstacles will arise in this pursuit, but I believe the time has come for collaborative work between the two sexes. (I have suggested such activities in the book Lesson in Love for Herbivore Men, as far as I could.) I have received a number of comments from LGBT readers. Some of them were critical that this book was written from a heterosexist perspective, paying no special attention to the gay or queer point of view. Basically I agree with their criticisms, but I would like to add some words here. The basic backbone of my own sexuality is heterosexual; hence, when I examined my own sexuality, there was no other way to do it but from a heterosexual point of view. This does not mean that gays' or queers' perspectives were belittled or ignored. There were other people who praised my courage in making my sexuality open and public. According to them, there had been many people who had confessed their own sexualities in a straightforward manner, but almost all of them were members of sexual minorities; it was very exceptional for a person who was considered a member of the sexual majority to publish a book like this. This comment moved me because that was just one of my motivations for writing this book. However, after publication I became confused about whether or not I really was a member of the sexual majority, because many readers pointed out that the descriptions of the mechanism of my "lolicon" sexuality sounded very strange and peculiar; hence my sexuality could never be thought of as "ordinary" or "normal." 188 14 4) "I do not understand why photography books of sexy young female idols are morally wrong." In this book I criticized the publication of young girls' photographs in which sexual messages are tacitly inscribed. However, a number of opinions came out, especially on the Internet, saying that the reason why such photographs are morally wrong is not clear. They said that there was no explicit image of genitals in the photographs, and clear consent was given by the girls themselves and their parents, so no problems could be found at all, and if we regulated those photographs it would violate "the freedom of expression" and cause a huge problem. I object to this kind of opinion once again. Even if a girl herself consents, it is highly unlikely that every such girl is able to clearly understand the implications of the sexual messages inscribed in her photos, especially in the case of an elementary school girl. There is a danger that when she grows into an adult woman, and for the first time is able to understand every meaning of the sexual messages, she will realize that the images of her own body have been consumed as a sexual tool in an unbearable manner, and it will cause serious damage to her mind and body. I believe we should never make young girls take such a risk, even if their parents have given consent for it. Readers might wonder how such a thing can happen in Japan. Current 189 Japanese society is very permissive toward sexualized images of young girls. If you come to Tokyo and enter a bookstore in Akihabara, you can see a number of photography books filled with images of sexy junior high and/or elementary school girls, as described in Chapter Four. Since these are all legal, you can buy them even in ordinary bookstores. Since the publication of this book, photo books of sexy young female idols have been replaced by DVDs, and in these videos the "child pornography in disguise" I described in this book has started to proliferate. I will refrain from writing the details, but videos in which the producers make junior high and/or elementary school girls act almost exactly like sexy adult actresses are sold in broad daylight, as if they were ordinary commercial goods. On December 24, 2005, I published an essay entitled "Is It Really Permissible to Commodify the Sex of Small Children? Lolicon Society, the Source of Crimes, and a Series of Murder Cases of Young Girls" in the Asahi newspaper, the Osaka evening edition. I pointed out that we were able to buy a DVD of an eightyear-old girl legally on the Internet, the cover photo of which was filled with sexual connotations in every detail. In the essay, I stressed that it ought to be regulated as a kind of child abuse to commodify photographed images of early elementary school girls in a sexual context, even if their parents have given consent. My aim was to legally ban the use of the images of young girls in a pornographic context. There was almost no public response to my essay. 190 There were some responses on the Internet, but all of them were objections to my argument from the viewpoint of the freedom of expression. I asked feminists, but they did not show special concern. I must say that current Japanese society is very insensitive to the danger of putting the images of young girls in a pornographic context. We have to continue discussing this problem seriously in our society. People do not talk out loud about the fact that a successful promotional video of the young female idol group AKB48, which made its debut in 2005 and has now become the Japanese national icon, was only one step away from "child pornography in disguise." (You can see in that video, which was aired repeatedly on TV, at least one of the member girls in her underwear; she was under 18 at the time.) 15 On this very subject, I am now worrying about the possible effects of my own book. I sincerely wrote that I have the susceptibility to be sexually attracted to young girls. However, by publishing this confession in a book, there arises the possibility that actual girls might suffer great psychological damage by reading my words, because in my book there is a clear declaration that even a teacher like me has the tendency to see young girls as sexual objects. Learning of this, girls might be overwhelmed by the relentlessness of the sexual gazes directed toward them and even feel fear about living in our society. My book itself could be part of the same 191 problem as photography books of sexy young female idols. I became aware of this problem when the mother of a young girl pointed it out to me. I still do not know how to solve this problem. Perhaps one solution could be to restrict this book to adults only, but this does not lead to a fundamental resolution. There are those who think that we do not have to worry so much about it because as girls grow up into adult women, they deftly adapt themselves to the sexual gazes surrounding them. However, there are probably an unknown number of girls who get hurt and drown in the sea of sexual gazes, so this is never a small problem at all. I would like all of you to think about this difficult issue once again from the beginning. Section 4 Conclusion 16 The most moving comment from readers was, "I determined to delve into my own sexuality after reading Confessions of a Frigid Man." Hearing these words, I had the feeling that every effort I had poured into writing this book was truly rewarded, because I really wished first of all that every reader recognize the problem of sexuality as his or her own existential issue, and be inspired to explore his or her inner world of sexuality in a sincere manner. Delving into your inner world is accompanied by 192 pain and risk. I do not recommend it to all people. However, when you have gone through it, driven by some sort of "necessity," and you understand the meaning of your accomplishment, a completely new world you would never have imagined can open itself before you. Writing this book was, for me, indeed nothing but this kind of experience. 193 Afterword – 2017 Confessions of a Frigid Man was published in Japanese in 2005, and a revised edition in the form of a paperback book was published in 2013, together with the newly written Epilogue. A Korean translation was published in 2005, the same year of the publication of the first Japanese edition. In 2012, I began working with Robert Chapeskie to produce an English translation of the book. We tried hard to convey the shades of meaning in the original Japanese into English as much as possible; however, here and there, we added additional information for an international audience to better understand the cultural background behind the discussions in this book. And in this process, I made a number of small revisions in the translated English text. As I have noted in the epilogue, this book constitutes the third of the trilogy of "life studies." Trilogy of Life Studies Book 1 How to Live in a Post-Religious Age (1996) Book 2 Painless Civilization (2003) Book 3 Confessions of a Frigid Man: A Philosopher's 194 Journey into the Hidden Layers of Men's Sexuality (2005) As a translation of How to Live in a Post-Religious Age has been half finished, readers will be able to read it in some form in the near future. A translation of Painless Civilization is currently under way, but now I strongly feel that I will have to write Part II of this book in Japanese, hence, it might take long time to finish the translation of the entire book. The contents of these three books are closely interconnected. I hope readers will become interested in the method of "life studies" through these three books. After I finished writing the trilogy of "life studies," I turned to the field of philosophy again, and began writing a series of books on philosophy of life. The first book was published in Japanese in 2013 under the title, Manga Introduction to Philosophy. This is a book that discusses hard problems such as "What is time?" "What is being?" "What is I?" and "What is it to live?" in the form of manga (cartoon), the original drawings of which were drawn by me. This is not a usual introductory book. This is a book entirely made up of my original philosophical thinking on the above themes. A translation of this book is also under way, hence, readers will be able to read it in the future. I am now writing two other books on philosophy of life, which are also deeply interconnected with each other. 195 Book 1 Manga Introduction to Philosophy (2013) Book 2 Philosophy of Birth Affirmation (To be published) Book 3 What is Philosophy of Life? (Tentative title. To be published) It seems to me that it will take at least several years to finish Philosophy of Birth Affirmation, but I believe this will be the most important book of my entire works. With regard to Book 3, I am not sure when I will be able to start writing it. These three books are envisioned as another trilogy, the trilogy of the "philosophy of life." By the way, after finishing a first draft of the translation of Confessions, I spent a long time wondering whether I should send it to publishers and pursue the possibility of commercial publication, or self-publish it in the form of an e-book. After careful consideration, I decided to choose self-publishing via ebook and on-demand platform first, because I really wished to convey the message of the book directly to international readers without any alterations for commercial purposes, which sometimes occur in the publication of the translation of foreign books by commercial publishers. In our translation, readers can read almost the same content as the Japanese edition, although many minor changes have been made for reasons described above. 196 Since the publication of the Japanese edition, I have received a number of emails and messages from around the world that encouraged me to publish an English translation so that international readers can read the content of the whole book. I really wish that this book reaches unknown readers who are worried about their sexualities and the philosophical meaning of their lives. I would like to thank Annie Gottlieb for her longtime encouragement and professional suggestions, and thank the editor of the Japanese edition, Hiroyuki Ishijima, for publishing this controversial book at the publishing house Chikuma Shobō. *This research was supported by MEXT KAKENHI Grant Number JP23520029. 197 About the Author Masahiro Morioka, Ph.D., is a professor at Waseda University, Japan. He teaches philosophy and ethics. His specialties include philosophy of life, bioethics, gender studies, and civilization studies. He was born in Kochi Prefecture, Japan, in 1958. He graduated from the University of Tokyo and worked for the International Research Center for Japanese Studies and Osaka Prefecture University before he came to Waseda. He is considered by many to be one of the leading philosophers in the current Japanese philosophical community. Books In English Masahiro Morioka, (ed.). Reconsidering Meaning in Life: A Philosophical Dialogue with Thaddeus Metz. Journal of Philosophy of Life. 2015. In Japanese An Invitation to the Study of Life. Keisō Shobō. 1988. Brain-Dead Person: Human Relationship–Oriented Analysis of Brain Death. Tokyo Shoseki. 1989. 198 Consciousness Communication. Chikuma Shobō. 1993. Reconsidering the View of Life. Chikuma Shobō. 1994. How to Live in a Post-Religious Age. Hōzokan. 1996. An Intellectual Method of Facing Oneself. PHP Publications. 1997. Life Studies Approaches to Bioethics: A New Perspective on Brain Death, Feminism, and Disability. Keisō Shobō. 2001. Life Torn Apart. kinokopress.com. 2001. Painless Civilization: A Philosophical Critique of Desire. Transview Publications. 2003. Confessions of a Frigid Man: A Philosopher's Journey into the Hidden Layers of Men's Sexuality. Chikuma Shobō. 2005. Life Studies for Beginners: A Philosophy for Facing Oneself. Transview. 2005. Lessons in Love for Herbivore Men. Media Factory. 2008. Herbivore Men will Bring Your Last Love. Magazine House. 2009. The 33rd Stone: A Philosophy for a Wounded Age. Shunjū Sha, 2009. Connecting the Living and the Deceased. Shunjū Sha. 2012. Manga Introduction to Philosophy. Kōdan Sha. 2013. Philosophy, Trauma, Sexuality: Book Reviews 19862001. Kinokopress. 2015. A Philosophical Inquiry into Personhood, Dignity, and Brain Death. Kinokopress. 2015. 199 Papers "Reconsidering Brain Death: A Lesson from Japan's Fifteen Years of Experience." Hastings Center Report Vol.31, No.4 (2001):41-46 "Is it Morally Acceptable to Remove Organs from Brain-Dead Children?" Lancet Neurology, Vol.6 (2007):90 "Narrative Responsibility and Moral Dilemma." Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics, Vol.32, No.2 (2011):91-99, with Takanobu Kinjo. "Natural Right to Grow and Die in the Form of Wholeness." Diogenes, Vol.57, No.3 (2011):103-116 "Human Dignity and the Manipulation of the Sense of Happiness." Journal of Philosophy of Life Vol.2, No.1 (2012):1-14 "A Phenomenological Study of 'Herbivore Men.'" The Review of Life Studies, Vol.4 (2013):1-20 "Is Meaning in Life Comparable?: From the Viewpoint of 'The Heart of Meaning in Life.'" Journal of Philosophy of Life Vol.5, No.3 (2015):50-65 and others in Japanese or in English. Current Positions as of 2017 2015Professor of philosophy and ethics at the School of Human Sciences, Waseda University, Japan. 2015 Emeritus professor at Osaka Prefecture University, Japan. 2010Editor-in-chief, Journal of Philosophy of Life. 200 Website http://www.lifestudies.org Contact address Please visit: http://www.lifestudies.org/feedback.html | {
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