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Philosophy Now ISSUE 120 June/July 2017
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Editorial Russell Now!
O
ne of the most quoted phrases in current popular
culture is six degrees of separation. It expresses the
idea that, on average, any human being is connected
with any other human being by at most six acquaintances.
While there is much debate as to whether this is literally true,
it is an interesting thought-experiment, as well as the basis for
many fun parlor games. One of these is entitled Six Degrees
of Kevin Bacon, in which film fans try to connect the afore-
mentioned actor with any other movie star with as few links as
possible.
I have been thinking of launching a similar parlor game
called Six Degrees of Bertrand Russell, in which any figure
from the past 200 years or so could be connected with Russell
in as few steps as possible. Why Russell rather than, say,
Ludwig Wittgenstein (who after all had a stated interest in
games)? For two reasons: first, Russell lived to the ripe old age
of ninety-seven, and thus had the time to interact with a wide
variety of people; and second, he was for most of that long life
a celebrity, who rubbed elbows with all manner of individuals,
many of whom were either celebrities themselves at the time
or came to be celebrated later. Russells list of acquaintances
stretched from Lenin (V.I.) to Lennon (John), from the
Bloomsbury Set of the 1920s to the Doomsday Prophets of the
1960s, from William Gladstone to Harold Wilson.
Russells contributions to technical philosophy are
inestimable. He played a pivotal role in changing the very
nature of Anglo-American philosophy. But he also was a
major figure in popularizing philosophy. For instance, the
1957 collection by Russell entitled Why I Am Not a Christian
and Other Essays on Religion and Related Matters, which
gathered together his many musings on the topic of religion,
continues to this day to have a major effect on many people.
Russell had a rare gift for taking abstruse, highly complicated
philosophical issues and turning them into clear arguments
that any intelligent reader could follow, regardless of his or
her background. This was no doubt why his 1945 book A
History of Western Philosophy became a bestseller. Its breezy
style infuriated those who felt that philosophy should only be
for the technically inclined, but it proved nonetheless that
there is a hunger for philosophical knowledge among hoi
polloi, a hunger that the analytical school did little to appease.
Besides his contributions to religious polemics, Russell
made many other important contributions to popular
philosophy. In the 1967 Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Paul
Edwards takes an editors prerogative by devoting twenty four
pages to the entry on Russell. Considering the fact that Plato
only gets twenty pages, this is perhaps a bit extreme, but it
does show the importance which Edwards placed upon
4 Philosophy Now June/July 2017
Russells entire philosophical oeuvre, including the popular
writings. Edwards admits that What is generally considered
Russells most important work in philosophy was done
between 1900 and the outbreak of the First World War, yet
he is by no means dismissive of the content of such later
volumes as Marriage and Morals, On Education, and The
Conquest of Happiness. He writes:
It is safe to say that not since Voltaire has there been a philosopher
with such an enormous audience. Russell also shares with Voltaire a
glittering and graceful prose style and a delicious sense of humor.
One must remember that for much of the second half of
his life Russell made his living as a writer. He did not have the
luxury, for most of this time, of drawing upon an academic
salary to pay for his and his familys upkeep. His wonderful
ability to write memorable copy on a deadline is not
something one should easily dismiss. Especially in the 1950s
and 1960s, through his social activism, frequent media appear-
ances and nonstop issuance of manifestoes, he made
philosophy exciting and relevant to a new generation. Russell
became the stereotypical image of a philosopher in the minds
of many non-academics, much as Einstein became the stereo-
typical image of a scientist. Both showed that one could be a
deep thinker and still be passionately involved in lifes
struggles (and even have an active sex life, too).
The following articles by members of the Bertrand Russell
Society aim to show why, almost fifty years after his death, he
remains both an important figure in the history of philosophy
and a role model for those who in the spirit of Philosophy
Now want to make philosophical inquiry accessible to all.
To what extent does Russell continue to have a significant
influence on modern times? A generation has passed since
Russells death, and the number of people who knew him by
direct acquaintance is dwindling. Recently, in my capacity as
President of the Bertrand Russell Society, I received a call
from a woman who had seen a listing for the Society in which
my phone number was given. Are you Bertrand Russell? she
asked me. I was rather taken aback (albeit flattered) that
someone could even ask such a question. While I cant in
good faith claim to be Bertrand Russell, I can honestly say Ive
shaken the hand of people who shook his hand. Two degrees
of separation!
DR TIMOTHY J. MADIGAN 2017
Tim Madigan is the President of the Bertrand Russell Society and
has been known to shave those who do not shave themselves,
including himself. For information on the Bertrand Russell Society
please see bertrandrussell.org
 Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
author dies French Prez was assistant to Paul
Ricouer Hawking recommends leaving Earth
News reports by Anja Steinbauer.
Robert Pirsig
Robert Pirsig, author of Zen and the Art of
Motorcycle Maintenance, died on 24 April.
At the heart of the book is a fictionalised
account of a motorcycle journey across
America made by Pirsig and his young son
Chris in 1968. The novel combined reflec-
tions on Greek philosophy, Zen
Buddhism, technology and culture in a
profound inquiry into the nature of values.
Pirsig wrote it mainly in the small hours of
each morning and had immense difficulty
finding a publisher. On publication in
1974, it immediately became enormously
popular, selling 5 million copies.
Macronomics
The newly-elected President of France,
Emmanuel Macron, who has a degree in
philosophy, was once an assistant to the
famed French philosopher Paul Ricouer
(1913-2005). In the acknowledgements of
his last book La Mmoire, lHistoire, lOubli
(Memory, History, Forgetting), Ricouer
thanks his editorial assistant for a pertinent
critique of the manuscript. That assistant
was the man who has now been elected to
occupy the lyse Palace. This fact has set
the media asking what influence Ricouers
ideas had on Macron, and whether this can
provide clues to the likely course of
Macrons presidency. Ricouer was best
known for using the methods of
hermeneutics (the interpretation of texts)
to probe the relationship between the self
and all kinds of cultural phenomena and
symbols.
Killing Animals
People become more likely to support
killing animals when they are reminded of
death, regardless of their attitudes about
animal rights, according to new research
from the Psychology Department at the
University of Arizona. Lead researcher Uri
Lifshin explains, If youre an animal lover
or if you care about animals rights, then
overall, yes, you are going to support the
killing of animals much less; however
when youre reminded of death youre still
going to be a little bit more reactive.
Though the study didnt include overt
animal rights activists, it covered a range
of attitudes towards animals. Gender did
not make a difference in the results.
The study, based on the departments
existing work on terror management
theory provides new insight into the
psychology behind humans willingness to
kill animals and could also potentially help
scientists better understand the psycholog-
ical motivations behind the murder and
genocide of humans, said Lifshin: We
dehumanize our enemies when there is
genocide. There is research in social
psychology showing that if you go to
places where genocide is happening and
you ask the people who are doing the
killing to try to explain, theyll often say
things like, Oh, theyre cockroaches,
theyre rats, we just have to kill them all.
So if we ever want to really understand
how to reduce or fight human-to-human
genocide, we have to understand our
killing of animals.
Hubert Dreyfus
Reports of my demise are not exagger-
ated, was the message posted on Hubert
Dreyfuss Twitter feed shortly after his
death from cancer on 22 April at the age of
87. Harvard educated, Dreyfus taught at
UC Berkeley for nearly 50 years. He was
known not only for his numerous publica-
tions but also for being an excellent teacher,
introducing his students to the ideas of
Martin Heidegger, Michel Foucault,
Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Sren
Kierkegaard. Though he had formally
retired in 1994, he continued teaching until
his last class in December 2016.
Dreyfus is famous for his cogent criti-
cism of AI. Based on the work of Heideg-
ger and Merleau-Ponty, Dreyfus shed
doubt on the assumptions of first genera-
tion AI work concerning the ability of
computers to play chess, solve mathemati-
cal theorems and mimic all aspects of the
human psyche. In his first book What
Computers Cant Do: A Critique of Artificial
News
Reason (1972) he argued that computers
would never be able to emulate human
thought as he believed higher mental func-
tions not to be rule-governed. Dreyfuss
other acclaimed writings include the NY
Times bestseller All Things Shining (2011)
which he wrote with Harvard philosopher
Sean D. Kelly; Being-in-the-World (1991)
and the 2001 essay series On the Internet.
His work on Heidegger inspired the 2010
documentary Being in the World.
Plantinga Wins Templeton Prize
Philosopher of religion Alvin Plantinga,
who is Emeritus Professor at the Univer-
sity of Notre Dame, has been awarded the
2017 Templeton Prize. The award,
founded by Christian businessman and
philanthropist John Templeton, is given to
individuals who have made an exceptional
contribution to affirming lifes spiritual
dimension, whether through insight,
discovery, or practical works. Previous
winners include Mother Teresa, Aleksandr
Solzhenitsyn, Charles Taylor, Jean Vanier,
Desmond Tutu and the Dalai Lama.
I am honoured to receive the Temple-
ton Prize, Plantinga said. The field of
philosophy has transformed over the
course of my career. If my work played a
role in this transformation, I would be very
pleased. I hope the news of the prize will
encourage young philosophers, especially
those who bring Christian and theistic
perspectives to bear on their work, toward
greater creativity, integrity and boldness.
Hawking Recommends Leaving
Earth Within Next 100 Years
Astrophysicist Stephen Hawking says
humans will have to start colonising other
planets soon. He believes that within the
next 100 years the existence of humanity
will be under treat due to climate change,
asteroid impact, epidemics and population
growth. The Earth may become uninhab-
itable. It is not the first time that Hawking
has recommended leaving Earth, however,
previously he thought a realistic time
frame to be 1,000 years.
June/July 2017 Philosophy Now 5
Russell
The Passionate
Bertrand Russell
Peter Stone reveals the deep and varied passions of the analytic philosopher.
P
hilosophy today is intimately associated with the life
of the mind with intellect, thought, and reason.
Because of this, it is often thought to be opposed to
emotion, feeling, spirit to passion. It is thought to be
a bloodless occupation, practiced by bloodless men and women.
This has a lot to do with how philosophy has come to be prac-
ticed in universities, particularly the analytic philosophy which
has dominated the Anglo-American philosophy world over the
past century. And perhaps nobody is more closely associated
with analytic philosophy than Bertrand Russell (1872-1970).
As such, one might expect Russell to be the exact opposite of
the man of passion. And indeed, many people have viewed Rus-
sell this way. Will Durant, for example, once described Russell
as cold-blooded a temporarily animated abstraction, a for-
mula with legs (The Story of Philosophy, 1926, p.519). But was
Russell really such a stranger to passion?
In fact, the opposite is the case. Russells life is actually very
instructive about the relationship between reason and passion.
For Russell proved that a life of the mind can be fully compati-
ble with a life of great passion and adventure. He managed to
fit more passion into his life than most people could handle. (It
probably helped that he lived to be ninety-seven years old.)
Of course, theres no place for passion in your life unless you
can find something about which to be passionate. What were
Russells passions? In the opening words of his Autobiography,
Russell tells us that
Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed
my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbear-
able pity for the suffering of mankind.
(The Autobiography of Bertrand Russell: Volume I, 1967).
The easiest way to get a handle on the emotional side of
Bertrand Russell is to consider each of these three passions in
turn. To understand these passions is to understand Russell.
Russells Quest For Truth
Russell was of course a philosopher by trade, and so it makes
sense to begin any discussion of Russells passions by consider-
ing his search for knowledge.
As a boy, Russell was introduced to mathematics by his older
brother, Frank. Russell loved the subject, but he was disap-
pointed to learn that mathematics rested upon axioms ideas
which were assumed to be self-evident, but which were not
proven, such as 1+1=2, or parallel lines never intersect. He
went up to Trinity College Cambridge in 1890, hoping for
something better, but he was very disappointed with what he
found there. To him, mathematics as practiced at Cambridge
seemed to be nothing more than a toolkit of technical tricks
used to solve problems. It functioned with only a vague and
intuitive understanding of some of the central concepts that lay
6 Philosophy Now June/July 2017
at its core, such as number, limit, and infinity. He was there-
fore delighted to learn that there were mathematicians else-
where in the world great minds such as Georg Cantor, Karl
Weierstrass, and Richard Dedekind who were actively tack-
ling these difficult philosophical questions. This led Russell into
the area of work which would establish his intellectual reputa-
tion the philosophy of mathematics.
Along with his friend the Cambridge philosopher G.E.
Moore, Russell became one of the founders of analytic philoso-
phy. This movement was inspired by the idea that many con-
cepts of ordinary language are vague, and that the proper method
of philosophy is to make our concepts more precise, thereby
advancing our ability to establish which ideas are true and which
are false. This attitude is clearly visible in Russells attitude
towards mathematics and his desire to more rigorously define
the central concepts of the discipline. Then Russell became
acquainted in 1900 with the work of Giuseppe Peano, an Ital-
ian mathematician who had created a set of axioms which were
suitable for deriving the results of traditional arithmetic. Rus-
sell was inspired by this work and believed that it could be
extended to show that all of mathematics could be derived from
a few foundational concepts of logic. He had already been tin-
kering with the idea of writing a book on the foundations of
mathematics; his encounter with Peano gave this work a defi-
nite direction. To this end, Russell wrote a book entitled The
Principles of Mathematics (1903).
He hoped to write a sequel to advance the ideas in this book
further, and to tie up a number of philosophical loose ends,
and so he teamed up with his old mentor at Cambridge, Alfred
North Whitehead. Whitehead had also written a book on the
foundations of mathematics, called A Treatise on Universal Alge-
bra (1898), and also wished to publish a sequel. So Russell and
Whitehead began collaborating on a work that eventually became
the three-volume Principia Mathematica, finally published in
1910, 1912, and 1913. It is a long and difficult work, and no one
can doubt its level of rigor: it is not until midway through the
second volume that Russell and Whitehead are able to establish
that 1+1=2. (After proving this result, they quip in a footnote,
The above proposition is occasionally useful.)
Unfortunately this work, although impressive, did not accom-
plish what Russell had hoped, which was to place all of mathe-
matics on the secure foundation of fundamental concepts of
logic, in particular, the logic of sets. Indeed, his work uncovered
a number of deep and difficult philosophical problems, one of
the most important of which would become known as the Rus-
sell Paradox. Briefly, the paradox arises when one considers sets
or classes of things, some of which might be other sets or classes.
Some sets are members of themselves: the set of all sets is itself
a set, and so is a member of itself. Other sets are not members
of themselves: the set of all shoes is not itself a shoe. But sup-
pose one considers the set of all sets that do not belong to them-

RUSSELL PORTRAIT KATY BAKER 2017
Bertrand Russell
by Katy Baker 2017
selves. Does this set belong to itself? If it does belong to itself,
then it cannot belong to itself. But if it does not belong to itself,
then it must belong to itself. Hence a paradox.
The problems that were uncovered in the writing of the Prin-
cipia Mathematica suggest that the project of finding logical foun-
dations for mathematics which was motivating Russell and
Whitehead might well be impossible to achieve. Indeed, Kurt
Gdels famous Incompleteness Theorem is often interpreted
as proving precisely that.
Russells quest for certainty in mathematics might not sound
like the stuff of passion, but Russell felt otherwise. Russell lost
his faith in religion as a teenager, and remained an agnostic
throughout the rest of his life. Intellectual certainty would, he
hoped, provide a sort of surrogate satisfaction. I wanted cer-
tainty, he wrote in his Autobiography, in the kind of way in
which people want religious faith. I thought that certainty is
Russell
more likely to be found in mathematics than elsewhere (Vol-
ume III, 1969, p.326). This is the reason why Russells biogra-
pher Alan Wood wrote that, I believe the underlying purpose
behind all Russells work was an almost religious passion for
some truth that was more than human, independent of the minds
of men, and even the existence of men (Bertrand Russell: The
Passionate Skeptic, p.192, 1957. Another good source on this
topic is Stefan Andersson, In Quest of Certainty, 1994.) Russells
failure to achieve this ambition surely counted as a sort of spir-
itual disappointment for him.
Russells Quest For Love
When Russell wasnt seeking knowledge he was often seeking
love. Like his quest for certainty in mathematics, his quest for
love had its ups and downs. He was married four times. His first
marriage, to the American Quaker Alys Pearsall Smith, was
effectively doomed to failure when, during an infamous bicycle
ride, he suddenly realized he was no longer in love with her
although the couple did not divorce for twenty years.
His second marriage, to Dora Black, resulted in two chil-
dren. Anxious to avoid the religious and nationalistic propa-
ganda pervading traditional education, the couple founded a
progressive school called Beacon Hill, to educate their own chil-
dren, and others. Beacon Hill never achieved the fame of A.S.
Neills Summerhill, but it made its mark in educational circles
nonetheless.
Russells marriage to Dora was an open one: both had numer-
ous affairs, and Dora bore two children with another man. These
children were a critical factor in the failure of this marriage.
Russell was intensely proud of his aristocratic heritage, and he
hated the idea of his lineage being continued by a child who
wasnt a real Russell!
Russells third wife, Patricia (Peter) Spence, was thirty-eight
years his junior, and had been a governess to his children dur-
ing his tumultuous second marriage. This marriage produced a
third child, but it also ended badly.
Only Russells fourth marriage, to a longstanding American
friend named Edith Finch, proved lasting. Russell began his
autobiography with a very touching poem dedicated to her.
Russells four marriages did not exhaust his passionate search
for love. He had numerous affairs, both during and in-between
his various marriages. Among his more famous lovers were Lady
Ottoline Morrell, whose salon was attended by many leading
writers and artists of her day; Lady Constance Malleson, actress
and writer, who used the stage-name Colette ONeil; and T.S.
Eliots wife, Vivienne.
Russells Quest For Peace
But even the quest for certainty and an active love life werent
the only outlets for Russells passion. He also found time to
demonstrate unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. As
a child, his grandmother gave him a Bible inscribed with her
favorite verses, including Exodus 23:2: Thou shalt not follow
a multitude to do evil. It was a principle that Russell would
have opportunities to abide by many times in his life.
Although Russell was politically engaged throughout his adult
life, it was during World War I that he first had the chance to
resist the multitude. He became extremely active in anti-war
June/July 2017 Philosophy Now 7
Russell
work, focusing his energies on supporting the conscientious
objectors who resisted being drawn into Britains war effort.
Even Will Durant acknowledged that during World War I,
the Bertrand Russell who had lain so long buried and mute
under the weight of logic and mathematics and epistemology, by Melissa Felder
suddenly burst forth, like a liberated flame, and the world was
shocked to find that this slim and anemic-looking professor
was a man of infinite courage, and a passionate lover of human-
ity (The Story of Philosophy, pp.523-524). I would argue that
the passion was there all along, even if Durant did not see it.
Russell paid a considerable price for his anti-war efforts, how-
ever. He lost his position at Cambridge; alienated numerous
friends, notably his mentor, Alfred North Whitehead, whose
son perished fighting in the war; he was arrested twice; and
he spent six months in prison.
Politically Russell was on the Left, but he was never a Com-
munist. After World War I ended, he paid a visit to the newly-
formed Soviet Union, during which he had a personal audi-
ence with Lenin. After this visit, he wrote a highly critical book,
The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism (1920), which alienated
him from many left-wing friends star-struck by the new social
experiment in Russia. He remained a staunch anti-Commu-
nist throughout his adult life.
In the 1950s Russell became more and more involved with
the movement against the atomic bomb. Unlike many peace
activists, Russell did not believe it was enough to Ban the
Bomb. Instead, he thought that in the atomic age, it was war
itself that must be abolished. He advanced this position through
a variety of activities, through his famous Mans Peril radio
broadcast at Christmas 1954; through the release of the Rus-
sell-Einstein Manifesto in 1955 and the founding of the Pug-
wash Conferences in 1957 [see later in this issue, Ed.]; through
his public exchange of letters with Nikita Khrushchev and John
Foster Dulles in 1957-1958; through his book Common Sense
and Nuclear Warfare (1959); and through his activism with the
Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament and with the Committee
of 100. This led to his second jail term, for civil disobedience,
at the age of 89. How many philosophers can claim a criminal
record at that age?

Russells Quest With Zest

In a little book called The Conquest of Happiness (1910), Russell
argued for the importance of zest, which he pronounced the
most universal and distinctive mark of happy men. Certainly
Russell himself had a zest for life, which he amply demonstrated
through his three great passions.
Russells way of life may not be for everyone, but it certainly
proves that reason and passion can coexist inside a great man
leading a great life.
Bertrand Russell a formula with legs? Hardly!
DR PETER STONE 2017
Peter Stone is an assistant professor of political science at Trinity
College Dublin.

This article contains excerpts from Introduction: Who Was Bertrand

Russell? in Bertrand Russell, Public Intellectual (Tiger Bark Press, 2016),
edited by Tim Madigan and Peter Stone. Readers interested in Russell SIMON + FINN CARTOON MELISSA FELDER 2017 PLEASE VISIT SIMONANDFINN.COM
are encouraged to learn more about him through this book.

8 Philosophy Now June/July 2017


Bertrand Russell on
The Value of Philosophy for Life
John R. Lenz tells us why Russell thought philosophy worthwhile.
B
ertrand Russell did a disservice to philosophy by defin-
ing the word. Early in his career he defined philoso-
phy as the logical-analytic method. This definition
was so restricting that although he spent the next fifty
years writing one book after another on topics such as war,
peace, happiness, science and society, and the future of mankind,
it forced him to describe most of them as popular or non- voiced an equally, or more, important credo concerning the
philosophical. In fact, he gradually developed an alternative
view of philosophy and its value for humanity.
His many popular books are unfairly ignored by historians
of ideas and those interested in Russell as a philosopher. Of
course, his many-sided activities, popular writings and work
for peace are well-known and beloved. But these are usually
left for his biography as opposed to his supposed real academ-
ically-valid, philosophical work. Pick up a book such as The
Cambridge Companion to Bertrand Russell or a recent hundredth-
anniversary commemoration of The Problems of Philosophy. You
would never know from these that Russell held theories of
human nature; that he repeatedly (from at least 1916 into the
late 1960s) advanced utopian proposals for the future; and that
he passionately advocated the value of philosophy and the philo-
sophic life in more traditional terms, that is, as a road to hap-
piness and wisdom. Academic study favors the analytic Rus-
sell, especially his work in the first decade of the twentieth cen-
tury. The academy should be broader than that. He was.
Russell trumpeted his formal contribution to philosophy as
revolutionary. The logical-analytical method he helped pio-
neer is a tool to cut the Gordian Knot of traditional philosoph-
ical problems. He developed this scientific method in works
such as Our Knowledge of the External World (1914). As that title
suggests, here the theory of knowledge took center stage. Phi-
losophy had become the science of separating true from false
knowledge, beliefs, and statements.
Philosophy Beyond Analysis
Philosophers today debate the origins of analytic philosophy,
partly to ground their own view of the field. Tom Akehurst
offers a fresh insight. He argues in his 2010 book The Cultural
Politics of Analytic Philosophy that British (and thence American)
analytic philosophy purported to ignore politics, but in fact took
for granted British liberalism (and imperialism). Analytic phi-
losophy flourished within a cultural consensus because Britain
and America did not suffer the ideological unrest that racked
the Continent. It was safely non-ideological, concerning itself
with formal statements, not with life, not with revolution, not
with Hegelian-inspired radicalism. It had no interest in revolu-
tion, because Hegels logic was wrong.
Russell contributed greatly to the development of analytic
philosophy himself, but never limited the scope of his interests.
His break with Hegelian philosophy is not unrelated to his
British-socialist approach to matters of social progress in his
first book, German Social Democracy (1896). He remained equally
Russell
interested in pursuing both logical analysis and social science,
while recognizing that the latter was not yet a science. As an
atheist, he perhaps exemplifies Karl Marxs dictum that the crit-
icism of religion is the beginning of all criticism. For him phi-
losophy pointed to a new and better way of life.
Even before raising the logical-analytic flag, Russell had
value of philosophy. The concluding chapter of The Problems
of Philosophy, especially its last six paragraphs, still embarrasses
Russells more strictly academic admirers by its gushy praise of
philosophys spiritual value. Apart from its utility... philosophy
has a value perhaps it chief value through the greatness of
the objects which it contemplates, and the freedom from nar-
row and personal aims resulting from this contemplation, he
writes, adding that through philosophic contemplation of the
vast impersonal universe, a philosophic life is calm and free.
The sentiment is thoroughly Socratic, and close to Stoicism.
Peace of mind comes after an escape from the prison of desire,
ego, passion. Sure, Russell adopted much Platonic language even
after he rejected Platonic philosophy. We know that in this period
he talked of spiritual matters in a futile effort to find common
ground with his lover, Ottoline Morrell. But it would be wrong
to dismiss this by saying that this is Russell the person speaking
rather than Russell the philosopher. Indeed, he held this view
of philosophy until the end of his long life. Just two years after
announcing his scientific method, in the midst of war, Russell
wrote, The world has need of a philosophy... which will pro-
mote life (Principles of Social Reconstruction, 1916). This was his
lifes work. As he later said: What the truth on logic is does not
matter two pins if there is no one alive to know it (interview,
1964, in R.W. Clark, The Life of Bertrand Russell, p.504).
Philosophy Beyond Practicality
After analysis comes wisdom. Russell typically ends his popu-
lar books with a warning that puts in perspective the technical
matters he has been analyzing. In, for example, the concluding
Chapter 17 of The Scientific Outlook (1931), Science and Val-
ues, he distinguishes between two kinds of knowledge: We
may seek knowledge of an object because we love the object or
because we wish to have power over it. The former impulse leads
to the kind of knowledge that is contemplative, the latter to the
kind that is practical. In the development of science the power
impulse has increasingly prevailed over the love impulse. Sci-
ence has achieved practical success, but it is merely instrumen-
tal, a means to an end. What is a higher end? Contemplative
knowledge, inspired by love, allows us to know and come to rest
in higher purposes that give delight or joy or ecstasy. Philoso-
phers (among others) seek the ecstasy of contemplation. The
lover, the poet and the mystic find a fuller satisfaction than the
seeker after power can ever know. The lover includes the lover
of truth, that is, the philosopher, although many individual paths
are possible.
June/July 2017 Philosophy Now 9
 Bertrand Russell
by Athamos Stradis 2017

10 Philosophy Now June/July 2017


Such high praise of a life of reason is not incompatible with
his view of logical-analytical philosophy, which is meant to
achieve impersonal truth; but he certainly goes far beyond it in
preaching wisdom: It is this happy contemplation of what is
eternal that Spinoza calls the intellectual love of God. To those
who have once known it, it is the key of wisdom. By eternal,
the famous atheist means something outside human life, some
end which is impersonal and above mankind, such as God or
truth or beauty (Principles of Social Reconstruction, 1916). Russell
never deviated from this view, although he would later tone down
the metaphysical imagery. In the conclusion of his book on the
future of science he regrets that the triumph of practical science
apparently entails a loss of the sense of wonder, of love of the
universe, of those human values that metaphysics previously pro-
vided. So Russell offered a philosophy that, he hoped, would
remedy this loss.
At first it seems paradoxical for Bertrand Russell the great
secularist to talk this way. However, contrary to a popular
assumption, philosophers inclined to metaphysical materialism
do not usually espouse materialist values think of the Epicure-
ans; whereas, conversely, we are used to seeing the spiritually-
inclined practicing real-world materialism. Russell mocked
unimaginative materialism: he said that most human activity
consists of altering the position of matter at or near the earths
surface (In Praise of Idleness, 1932). And Pragmatism appeals places and other times. When he considers the world in which
to the temper of mind which finds on the surface of this planet
the whole of its imaginative material. (Pragmatism, 1909).
This was the basis of his objection to Utilitarianism, which
he (unfairly) regarded as purely practical. He thought that a
philosophy, or a philosophy of science, or an educational the-
ory, which only advocates practical success or utility, arises from
the power impulse and purveys merely a governmental view
of truth. Therefore education should train not good citizens
of the state, but citizens of the world. Considered sub specie
aeternitatis [under the aspect of eternity], the education of the
individual is to my mind a finer thing than the education of the
citizen... Such individuals bring a cosmic perspective to the
improvement of society. (Think of the philosopher escaping
Platos Cave and then returning to teach its denizens a higher
wisdom.) Both the individual and society reap the rewards of
contemplation, of being citizens of the universe on a grand
scale. Of course, we perpetually need to remind the universi-
ties of this principle of a liberal education.
Russell the secularist does not stop at quietism. This is a phi-
losophy of action: action is best when it emerges from a profound
appreciation of the universe and human destiny he wrote (Useless
Knowledge, 1932). Or, The good life is not contemplation only,
or action only, but action based on contemplation, action attempt-
ing to incarnate the infinite in the world (The Perplexities of John
Forstice, 1912 in Collected Papers, v.12). The wise person has, so to
speak, one eye on the city, and one eye looking beyond it.
Philosophy Beyond Space & Time
Later Russell toned down his rather Platonic language of the
contemplation of eternal universal truth. However, he contin-
ued to make ambitious claims about the effectiveness of philos-
ophy, and therefore, about what philosophy is. In the tri-
umphalist final chapter of his History of Western Philosophy (1946),
Russell
he even avers that the benefits of the impersonal scientific
philosophical method extend to the whole sphere of human
activity, producing... a lessening of fanaticism with an increas-
ing capacity of sympathy and mutual understanding. He con-
cludes, philosophy does not cease to suggest and inspire a way
of life thus readmitting a traditional aim of philosophy as the
consequence of his method. (Indeed, writing a history of phi-
losophy in relation to society is not itself a logical-analytic activ-
ity.)
The Duty of a Philosopher in this Age (1964) is one of Rus-
sells last writings on the topic. In this essay he describes, indeed
he defines, the philosopher as a public intellectual. This model
individual charts the same course Russell himself had taken.
First: I shall suppose that, until his education was finished, he
was too much absorbed in the technicalities of modern philos-
ophy to concern himself with the political problems of his own
time. Later, more is demanded of him and of philosophy:
There is, perhaps, one duty which falls specially within the
province of philosophy, and that is to persuade mankind that
human life is worth preserving.... Then: How, in our modern
world, should a philosopher live? Some of the lessons of phi-
losophy are ancient and timeless. He should endeavour to view
the world, as far as he is able, without a bias of space and time,
without more emphasis upon the here and now than upon other
he has to live, he must approach it as if he were a stranger
imported from another planet. Such impartiality is a part of the
duty of the philosopher at all times. Such a philosophical state
of mind gives the philosopher the credentials both to be logi-
cal and to take a beneficent position on world problems.
Philosophy Beyond The Academy
True, Russell often adopts a prophetic and utopian tone. A late
work of his of the nuclear age, Has Man a Future? (1961), for
example, ends with provisional predictions of the transition
period... to the new world that would be in process of being cre-
ated. Yet behind such seeming fantasies, including elaborate
schemes for world government, lie Russells unwavering advo-
cacy of reason, his theory of human nature, and his related the-
ories of education and the proper pursuit of science.
Russell put what was most important to him into his popu-
lar books. Fortunately, he himself burst the bonds of his self-
imposed mathematical-logical straitjacket. Human life had a way
of intruding, not only into his eventful biography, but into his
philosophy. Looking back in old age, he said that in 1901 the suf-
fering of a friend had filled him with a desire almost as profound
as that of the Buddha to find some philosophy which should make
human life endurable (Autobiography, 1967). He knew this vitally
important philosophy of life could not be entirely scientific,
although he always aspired to found it on reason. Over many
decades he fleshed out his view of the good life and of the future
of humanity and of the world. In doing so he continued to use
philosophy in a broad sense and to insist that a universal, impar-
tial perspective results in wiser, happier individuals and is the only
path to a more perfect world.
DR JOHN R. LENZ 2017
John R. Lenz is a former President of the Bertrand Russell Society
and teaches Classics at Drew University.
June/July 2017 Philosophy Now 11
Russell
To be happy,
one must first not be unhappy
Tim Delaney finds joy in Bertrand Russells The Conquest of Happiness
I
n 1930, Bertrand Russell published The Conquest of Hap-
piness, a book that predates the contemporary fascination
with self-help publications by decades. It was described
by Russell in the Preface as not addressed to highbrows,
or to those who regard a practical problem merely as something
to be talked about (p.ix). Russells use of the word conquest
in the title emphasizes his primary contention that, except in
rare cases, happiness does not simply present itself to people,
but rather must be achieved. He argues that the multitudes of
men and women who suffer from unhappiness could achieve
happiness if they heed the advice he offers in the book.
Unhappiness
Russell spends more time in Conquest discussing the causes of
unhappiness than he does the causes of happiness. He acknowl-
edges that some of the many causes of unhappiness have their
root in the social system, and others
are the result of ones own psychology.
For Russell the social system creates
war, economic exploitation, and
unequal access to high-quality educa-
tion, and employs fear tactics to dis-
orientate people about their place in
society. Elaborating on war, Russell
states that social systems cannot avoid
war when men are so unhappy that
mutual extermination seems to them
less dreadful than continued
endurance of the light of day (p.15).
Addressing the issue of individual
psychology, Russell states that here
unhappiness is caused largely by mis-
taken views of the world, mistaken
ethics, mistaken habits of life, leading
to destruction of that natural zest and
appetite for possible things upon
which all happiness, whether of men or animals, ultimately
depends. These matters lie within the power of the individual,
and I propose to suggest the change by which his happiness,
given average good fortune, may be achieved (p.16).
To that end, in Chapter 2 Russell describes Byronic unhap-
piness. The concept of Byronic unhappiness harks back to the
characteristics and poetry of the English Romantic poet Lord
Byron, especially his romanticism, melancholy, and melodra-
matic energy. Essentially, the Byronic individual has a self-
absorbed, brooding personality: the term may further describe
a proud, moody, cynical, defiant and lonely person.
Russell depicts Byronic individuals as truly unhappy, but also
proud of their unhappiness, which they attribute to the nature
12 Philosophy Now June/July 2017
of the universe and consider to be the only rational attitude for
an enlightened man (p.25). Russell however counters that there
is no superior rationality in being unhappy, and the wise indi-
vidual should allow himself to be happy as circumstances per-
mit. And unless you are Byronic, you will try to avoid being
around those who are happy with being unhappy, since their
negative attitudes may rub off on you.
Russell believes that the greatest threat to happiness is com-
petition. He speaks of people who work so much that they ignore
the simpler things in life that can bring happiness. Boredom is
another source of unhappiness he discusses. He thinks that bore-
dom is an exclusively human emotion. Animals may become list-
less, pace up and down, and yawn; but what they experience is
not boredom.
According to Russell, the opposite of boredom is excitement.
Thus, if we are not excited by our environment or circumstances,
we are bored by them. He writes, The
desire for excitement is very deep-
seated in human beings, especially in
males. I suppose that in the hunting
stage it was more easily gratified than
it has been since (p.57).
Fatigue also contributes to unhap-
piness. Russell says fatigue can be a
grave evil. In common with modern
views, Russell also links stress and anx-
iety to fatigue. As a piece of great
advice, he says that a great many wor-
ries could be diminished by realizing
the unimportance of whatever is caus-
ing the anxiety. Thus, a key to happi-
ness is not caring about what others
think of you or what others think is
important. (This makes me think of a
sign I once read on the wall of a
mechanics garage: An emergency on
your part does not make it an emergency on my part!)
Russell then states, Next to worry, probably one of the most
potent causes of unhappiness is envy. Envy is, I should say, one of
the most universal and deep-seated of human passions (p.82). As
Russell alludes, if we compare ourselves only to people who have
achieved or have more than we have, we are likely to be unhappy.
In Chapter 7, Russell describes the sense of sin as one of the
most important psychological causes of unhappiness due to the
corresponding feeling of unease. Remorse takes residence within
ones consciousness through reflection upon an act that violates
ones own code of conduct. As Russell writes, Nothing so much
diminishes not only happiness but efficiency as a personality
divided against itself (p.107). Remorse is also likely to make

one feel inferior. Worse yet, the unhappy person is likely to act
out in a number of harmful ways, including setting unrealistic
expectations on others behaviors, or holding grudges against
those who seem superior.
The last two sources of unhappi-
ness described by Russell are persecu-
tion mania, where people envision that
others wish to kill, imprison, or oth-
erwise injury them, and a fear of pub-
lic speaking. Of the fear of public
speaking, Russell states, Very few peo-
ple can be happy unless on the whole
their way of life and their outlook on
the world is approved by those with
whom they have social relations, and
more especially, by those with whom
they live (p.126).
Happiness
Russells description of the causes, or
more accurately the sources, of happi-
ness begins with zest. He equates zest
with a thirst for life. Among the exam-
ples he provides to illustrate the concept, is the idea that while
many people eat their daily meals as a chore to be completed,
others approach the preparation and consumption of a meal
with gusto. As a bachelor who eats most of his meals alone, I
see a meal as something that is nuked
in a microwave, and find relatively lit-
tle pleasure from the experience. On
other occasions, however, when
preparing a meal for companions or
going out to dinner with friends, espe-
cially where a favorite meal is about to
be served, dining takes on an entirely
new meaning. It adds zest to my life.
Russell points out that the more
things a person is interested in, the
greater the opportunities for zest, and
so, happiness. He especially promotes
the value of affection, both toward and
from others. As he explains, One of
the chief causes of lack of zest is the
feeling that one is unloved, whereas
conversely the feeling of being loved
promotes zest more than anything else
does (p.176). Moreover, those who
face life with a feeling of security are
much happier than those who face it with a feeling of insecu-
rity. It is affection received, not affection given, that causes this
sense of security, Russell writes, though it arises most of all
from affection which is reciprocal (p.178).
A solid and rewarding family life is another great source of
happiness. As sociologists oft explain, the family serves as a pri-
mary agent of socialization, and plays a hugely significant role
in personal security, affection and happiness.
Russell further points out that having work is not only a mark
of being a productive member of society, it can bring a great
Russell
sense of happiness. He states that provided work is not exces-
sive in amount, even the dullest work is to most people less
painful than idleness (p.209). And certainly, almost anyone who
has been, or is currently, unemployed, can
attest to the unhappiness that unemploy-
ment can bring. Work, therefore, is desir-
able and provides us with many opportu-
nities for happiness.
Another source of happiness is the pur-
suit of impersonal interests. Impersonal
interests are those pursuits which help to
fill ones leisure time and afford relaxations
from the tenseness of the more serious
preoccupations of family, work and
finances. Reading a book, watching games,
going to the theatre, and playing golf are
among examples that Russell provides
here.
The key to Russells view of happiness
resides in the idea that except in very rare
cases, happiness is not something that sim-
ply happens; rather, it is something that
must be achieved through effort con-
quered. This makes me think of the saying that good things do
not come to those who wait. Instead, they come to people who
actively seek happiness and strive to conquer the obstacles that
come between their pursuit of happiness and happiness itself.
Perhaps surprisingly, resignation also has
a part to play in the conquest of happiness,
and this part is no less essential than that
played by effort. Thus Russell argues that a
wise person will learn to resign from the
pursuit of desired but unattainable forms of
happiness, so as not to interfere with pur-
suing the attainable forms. He says, for
example, Nothing is more fatiguing, nor,
in the long run, more exasperating, than the
daily effort to believe things which daily
become more incredible. To be done with
this effort is an indispensable condition of
secure and lasting happiness (p.241).
So Russell recognizes that happiness
depends partly upon external circum-
stances and partly upon oneself. Some peo-
ple are born with certain advantages; and
yet we all, potentially, have the possibility
of attaining happiness. The happy person
is someone who has affections, wide inter-
ests, pursues life with zest, is free from suffering, is a citizen of
the universe, and doesnt give a damn either about what others
think of them or what others think is important.
DR TIM DELANEY 2017
Tim Delaney is a professor and the department chair of Sociology at
the State University of New York in Oswego. He has published nine-
teen books: please visit his website BooksByTimDelaney.com
This article contains excerpts from Friendship and Happiness and the Connec-
tion Between the Two by Tim Delaney and Tim Madigan (McFarland 2017).
June/July 2017 Philosophy Now 13
Russell
The Philosopher & The Scientist
Tony Simpson tells us how the Russell-Einstein manifesto led to Pugwash.
H
e was not only a great scientist but a great
man, a man whom it is good to have known
and consoling to contemplate. With these
words Bertrand Russell concluded his Pref-
ace to Einstein on Peace (1960). Down the years, Russell and Albert
Einstein had met from time to time, but they did not see much
of each other except in 1943, when they were both living in Prince-
ton. Then they would meet weekly at Einsteins house to discuss
various matters in the philosophy of science. Wolfgang Pauli
and Kurt Gdel also attended. I found these informal discus-
sions very illuminating and exceedingly valuable, said Russell.
Later, the US hydrogen bomb test at Bikini Atoll in the
Pacific Ocean in March 1954 had spread radioactive fall-out
across wide areas, contaminating Japanese fishermen and their
catch aboard the Lucky Dragon fishing boat. Both the United
States and the Soviet Union now had the hydrogen bomb. So
in February 1955, Russell sent Einstein a proposal:
In common with every other thinking person, I am profoundly dis-
quieted by the armaments race in nuclear weapons. You have on var-
ious occasions given expression to feelings and opinions with which
I am in close agreement. I think that eminent men of science ought
to do something dramatic to bring home to the public and govern-
ments the disasters that may occur. Do you think it would be possi-
ble to get, say, six men of the very highest scientific repute headed
by yourself, to make a very solemn statement about the imperative
necessity of avoiding war?
Notwithstanding his failing health, Einstein responded
enthusiastically:
I agree with every word in your letter of February 11 This might
be best achieved by a public declaration, signed by a small number,
say, twelve persons, whose scientific attainments (scientific in the widest
sense) have gained them international stature and whose testimony
will not be blunted in its effectiveness by their political affiliations.
Russell replied promptly, agreeing with Einsteins suggestion
to make sure of two signatories in addition to yourself and me
and then to send the draft appeal to selected persons. Russell
wished to leave the choice to Einstein and his associates as you
know the scientific world much better than I do. Einstein duly
wrote to the physicist Niels Bohr, suggesting he contact Russell
directly. Dont frown like that! was how Einstein began his
letter to Bohr: This is not about our old physics controversy,
but about a matter on which we are in complete agreement.
He explained that Russell sought to bring together a small group
of renowned scholars to warn of the perilous situation created
by atomic weapons and the arms race. As he explained, Unless
I miss Russells purpose, he wants to go beyond a highlighting
of the peril; he proposes to demand that the governments pub-
licly acknowledge the necessity for renouncing any solution of
14 Philosophy Now June/July 2017
problems by military means. He had understood Russells inten-
tion very well. However, Einstein hesitated about making wider
contacts, because, as he said to Russell, I am not clear about the
role you intend them to play. Einstein continued to Russell, it
seems to me that, to avoid any confusion, you should regard your-
self as the dictator of the enterprise and give orders. He signed
off, rather obligingly, Awaiting orders.
Russells reply of 5th April 1955 his last letter to Einstein
emphasised that scientists feel that they have a special responsi-
bility since their work has unintentionally caused our present
dangers. For this reason, Russell thought it better to approach
only men of science and not those in other fields, such as the
historian Arnold Toynbee, whom Einstein had mentioned.
Widening the field would also make it much more difficult to
steer clear of politics.
Einstein died on 18th April 1955; but not before hed writ-
ten to Russell to say that he was gladly willing to sign your
excellent statement. Einstein also agreed with Russells choice
of prospective signatories.
This last letter from Einstein only reached Russell when he
arrived in Paris by plane from Rome. During the flight, the pilot
had announced the news of Einsteins death, and Russell felt
shattered, not least because his plan would fall through without
Einstein as the scientist alongside the philosopher. As Russell
remarked, signing the Appeal was one of the last acts of Ein-
steins public life.
Without Einstein, Russell clearly felt the need of another sci-
entists close collaboration. He had first met the medical physi-
cist Professor Joseph Rotblat in April 1954 at the BBC, for a
televised discussion about the hydrogen bomb. Russell was espe-
cially impressed by Rotblats work uncovering the dirty bomb
tested by the Americans at Bikini Atoll. Some weeks after the
Russell-Einstein Appeal was launched in London in July 1955,
Russell wrote to Rotblat at the Medical College of St
Bartholomews Hospital:
When I began approaching scientists I had reason to expect Ein-
steins co-operation but this was diminished by his illness and ended
by his death. I feel that further steps among scientists ought to be
taken by scientists and that any further work by myself ought to be
rather in the political field.
In Russells words, Rotblat was brave enough to take the
chair at the press conference to launch the Manifesto. Thus
began an enduring collaboration which first alighted on Pug-
wash, Nova Scotia, in July 1957, as the venue for 22 participants
from ten countries, including the US, USSR and China, to gather
under the auspices of shared support for the objectives of the
Russell-Einstein Manifesto. Pugwash was the home of Cyrus
Eaton, an industrialist who paid the expenses for the initial con-
ference, and the name has stuck. Sixty years on, the Pugwash
Conferences on Science and World Affairs are held up as a bea-

con of hope. Joseph Rotblat personally nurtured the movement
throughout his long life, for which he and the Conference
received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1995. In 2003, two years
before his death aged 96, Rotblat urged Pugwash to open up
and collaborate with others in alerting the public to the dan-
gers of nuclear war in the context of the invasion of Iraq.
Now the world is faced with climate change as well as esca-
lating nuclear proliferation. The aridity line spreads south across
PORTRAIT OF EINSTEIN DARREN MCANDREW 2012
Russell
Africas Sahel, south of the Sahara Desert, destroying the basic
means of livelihood. People flee the affected countries where
conflict often accompanies drought. Here another scientific
imperative compels action on a global scale. Shall we remem-
ber our humanity, and forget our differences?
TONY SIMPSON 2017
Tony Simpson is the Editor of Climate of Peace? (Spokesman 134)
published by the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation: spokesmanbooks.com.
June/July 2017 Philosophy Now 15
Russell
Are People Rational?
John Ongley investigates what Bertrand Russell thought about human reason.
T
he economist John Maynard Keynes once said of
his Cambridge friends in the years before World
War I including the philosophers Bertrand Rus-
sell and G.E. Moore that while their conversa-
tions were all bright, amusing and clever, there was no solid
diagnosis of human nature underlying them. His friends, he
claimed, had believed that the human race consists of reliable,
rational, decent people, influenced by truth and objective stan-
dards, failing to see that there were insane and irrational
springs of wickedness in people. Keynes thought this view
was nave. Bertie in particular, Keynes said of Russell, sus-
tained simultaneously a pair of opinions ludicrously incompat-
ible. He held that in fact human affairs were carried on after a
most irrational fashion, but that the remedy was quite simple
and easy, since all we had to do was to carry them on ratio-
nally (Keynes, Two Memoirs, 1946, pp.99-103).
But how fair is this to Russell? In fact, Russell seems to have
held a decidedly less-than-rosy view of human nature early on,
one which saw people as neither rational nor decent. Its not just
human affairs that he thought irrational; he thought people are
irrational, and he seemed to think that were never likely to change.
Russells view of human reason is one confirmed by recent
research in psychology. In what is called cognitive dissonance the-
ory, psychologists today maintain that we tend to avoid uncom-
fortable truths by replacing them in our minds with more com-
forting fictions. This was Russells view of human nature, as well.
Lying To Ourselves
More specifically, cognitive dissonance theory is the view that
people feel uncomfortable holding inconsistent beliefs, espe-
cially about themselves, and that to dispel the inconsistency and
the accompanying discomfort, they will modify their beliefs,
even to the point of adopting false ones. For example, most of
us like to think of ourselves as decent people. If we treat some-
one shabbily, that will conflict with our self-image. So we might
rationalize our action, say, by deciding that the person we mis-
treated is a bad person and deserved the shabby treatment, and
in fact, we were really standing up to this bad person and so
doing the right thing. This rationalization is not particularly
rational behavior, but it makes us feel better. Nor are such ratio-
nalizations intentional. We almost always believe them usu-
ally with great conviction.
Psychologists began studying this idea experimentally and
accumulating evidence for it in the 1950s. But one can find Rus-
sell asserting the same idea as early as 1908, and continuing to
use it throughout his life. For example, in a March 1908 letter
from Russell to Lucy Donnelly, when Russell was preparing the
final draft of the three volume Principia Mathematica for the
printer, he wrote:
Since September, I have written about 2,400 pages of the MS of
our book, and I am still only in the third of eight parts. I suspect that
16 Philosophy Now June/July 2017
we shall both die before anyone reads it through, but people will read
bits, and they will have to praise it, for the same reasons for which
people praise Clarissa Harlowe, because otherwise they would have
been wasting their time.
(The Collected Papers of Bertrand Russell, vol.6, 1992, p.xiv.
Clarissa Harlowe is said to be the longest novel in English).
Just as people tend not to acknowledge that they treated some-
one shabbily, they wont want to admit that theyd been wast-
ing their time reading Principia Mathematica, Russell says, so to
justify the expenditure of time they will claim (and believe) that
the book is a great one.
Note that cognitive dissonance theory diverges at times from
behaviorism. Behaviorism predicts that if you reward someone
for certain behavior, they will repeat it, punish them, and they
will avoid it. Release dog food when the dog presses a lever, and
it will press the lever again; shock it when it presses the lever,
and it will avoid pressing it again. But dissonance theory, like
Russell in the letter to Donnelly, predicts that in certain cases,
if people experience some discomfort to achieve something, they
will value it more highly, to justify the effort, than if they had
gotten it without a struggle. Fraternity hazing rituals and army
boot camp are based on this fact.
In 1959, to test this theory, students at Stanford were invited
to join a discussion group about sex; but first had to pass an
embarrassment test, ostensibly to insure that they werent too
embarrassed about discussing sex to participate. Some were given
a very embarrassing test, others a mild one, still others the
control group none. Afterwards, the subjects listened to a tape
of the discussion group that was calculated to be boring, and
were then asked to rate what they had heard on the tape for
attractiveness: dull to interesting, unintelligent to intelligent.
Those who had undergone the embarrassing test rated the
groups attractiveness significantly higher than those in the mild
test group or the control group. Dissonance theory predicts
these results, behaviorism does not (Aronson and Mills, The
Effect of Severity of Initiation on Liking for a Group, Journal
of Abnormal and Social Psychology 59, 1959).
Many other appeals to cognitive dissonance, besides Russells,
can be found in popular culture. For example, in his Autobiogra-
phy, Benjamin Franklin refers to the old maxim that He that has
once done you a kindness will be more ready to do you another
than he whom you yourself have obliged. The idea may well
have been standard long before it was taken up by psychologists
in the twentieth century.
Ruling Fictions
Another use of cognitive dissonance in Russells early writings
can be found in his 1910 pamphlet Anti-Suffragist Anxieties, which
is an extended argument that women should be given the right
to vote. In the pamphlet Russell points to a problem that arises
whenever one group has power over another, namely To inflict
 ARE PEOPLE RATIONAL?
KEN LAIDLAW 2017
PLEASE VISIT WWW.KENLAIDLAW.COM
TO SEE MORE OF KENS ART
Russell
a special disability upon one class in the community is in itself
an evil, and is calculated to generate resentment on one side and
arrogance on the other. In other words for men to have the vote
and yet deny it to women creates resentment among women and
arrogance among men.
The arrogance Russell refers to here is what is called a rul-
ing class fiction the self-justification a dominant class makes
to be comfortable about mistreating another group. Typically,
they rationalize their domination by asserting that the subordi-
nate group is not competent to rule society, while the dominant
class is. And while the fact that power is withheld from one group
by another is itself unjust, there is in such cases, Russell says, an
even greater injustice which also requires rationalizing, namely
that the dominant class is unlikely to pursue the interests of a
subject class, but only its own. Russell asserts this when he says,
from defect of imagination and good will no class can be trusted
to care adequately for the interests of another class, and in
fact womens interests have been unduly neglected by men.
The idea of a ruling class fiction is a common one among
political scientists and historians. For example, Robert Dahl,
dean of American political scientists in the second half of the
twentieth century, asserted that heads of non-democratic
regimes have usually tried to justify their rule by invoking the
ancient and persistent claim that most people are just not com-
petent to participate in governing a state. Most people would
be better off, this argument goes, if they would only leave the
complicated business of governing to those wiser than they a
minority at most, perhaps only one person. In practice, these
rationalizations were never quite enough, so where argument
left off coercion took over (On Democracy, 1998).
To sum up, a ruling class must rationalize its dominance of
another group in order to think well of itself and avoid acknowl-
edging that its dominance is not in the interest of the other group.
This rationalization is the ruling class fiction, and it is a form of
arrogance because it will assert in some way that we are better
than them, and they are not competent to govern themselves or
others, while we are. In each case, self-justification is driven by
a desire to avoid the dissonance caused by the need to think well
of yourself on the one hand and the knowledge that you are mis-
treating people on the other.
A Cloud of Convictions
Russell held other pessimistic views about human nature besides
the belief that people are irrational self-justifiers. He also
believed, for example, that people enjoy persecuting other peo-
ple. The pleasure people take in war, along with their rational-
izations to justify it, especially by demonizing those on the other
side, was, after his experiences as a pacifist during WWI, some-
thing Russell warned us of all his life. We will see examples of
other views he held about the irrationality human nature inter-
twined with his view that people are typically self-justifiers.
Russell develops his view of the irrationality of human nature
in his 1919 essay Dreams and Facts, which begins:
The influence of our wishes upon our beliefs is a matter of com-
mon knowledge and observation, yet the nature of this influence is
very generally misconceived. It is customary to suppose that the bulk
of our beliefs are derived from some rational ground, and that desire
18 Philosophy Now June/July 2017
is only an occasional disturbing force. The exact opposite of this
would be nearer the truth: the great mass of beliefs by which we are
supported in our daily life is merely the bodying forth of desire, cor-
rected here and there, at isolated points, by the rude shock of fact.
Man is essentially a dreamer, wakened sometimes for a moment by
some peculiarly obtrusive element in the outer world, but lapsing
again quickly into the happy somnolence of imagination. Freud has
shown how largely our dreams at night are the pictured fulfilment
of our wishes; he has, with an equal measure of truth, said the same
of day-dreams; and he might have included the day-dreams which
we call beliefs.
And in general, Russell asserts that every man, wherever he
goes, is encompassed by a cloud of comforting convictions,
which move with him like flies on a summer day.
Russell then gives examples of convictions people carry
around in order to avoid uncomfortable thoughts. Here is one:
There can be no doubt that, in the autumn of 1914, the immense
majority of the German nation felt absolutely certain of victory for
Germany. In this case fact has intruded and dispelled the dream. But
if, by some means, all non-German historians could be prevented
from writing during the next hundred years, the dream would rein-
state itself: the early triumphs would be remembered, while the ulti-
mate disaster would be forgotten.
If we cannot justify an uncomfortable belief to our satisfac-
tion, we simply erase it from memory, or at least avoid think-
ing about it as much as possible. This is called willed ignorance.
In another example, Russell says: Voluntary workers in a
contested election always believe that their side will win, no
matter what reason there may be for expecting defeat. After
these examples, Russell describes whole hierarchies of self-jus-
tifications that people make to avoid mental discomfort.
To return to the example of the Germans and their defeat,
one might wonder: is it really true that if Germans historians
alone wrote histories of the Great War, they would have
described the victories and forgotten the defeat? Can a nation
really believe it is a mighty military force headed for victory
against a puny enemy, lose the war, and then ignore, forget, or
otherwise rationalize the loss, and continue thinking that it is
mightier than its enemies, or even that it really won the war, or
would have won it except for some unusual circumstance, say, a
stab in the back? By way of an answer, let us look again at psy-
chological research on cognitive dissonance.
So far, only one experiment with cognitive dissonance has
been described, and that was a canned (in vitro) laboratory
experiment with college students. But does it actually work that
way in the real world? Interestingly, the first scientific study of
dissonance theory was a real-world social psychology study by
Leon Festinger. In 1954, Festinger and his colleagues infiltrated
a religious cult led by a charismatic woman who claimed to have
had visions that the world would soon end (in a great flood),
but that the sects members would be picked up by flying saucers
beforehand, and saved. On the assumption that she was wrong,
Festinger used dissonance theory to predict that group mem-
bers would rationalize their error when the prophecy failed, and
even deny that they had been wrong.
 Russell
As the day of destruction approached,
some cult members quit their jobs and gave
away their possessions they wouldnt need
them in outer space but others did not go
so far. As the reader may have guessed, on
the eve of the fateful day no spaceship
arrived to pick them up. At first the cults
members were very worried, but then their
leader had a new vision that due to the
impressive faith of the group, God had
decided to spare the world. The members
were elated, and many became even more
active in proselytizing for the group than
before. In particular, those who had suf-
fered most, by quitting their jobs and get-
ting rid of their possessions, were especially
active in the group after the initial
prophecys failure, while those who had
been less committed and kept their jobs and
possessions ceased to believe and drifted
away, just as dissonance theory would pre-
dict (Festinger, Riecken, Schachter, When
Prophecy Fails, 1956; recounted in Tavris
and Aronson, Mistakes Were Made, 2007).

FACEBOOK HIM AT CLINTON.INMAN

In a similar way, a group of people can
ignore the fact that they lost a war.

Can Men Be Rational?

After Dreams and Facts, examples of self-
justification in response to uncomfortable
feelings abound in Russells writings. In fact,
from 1919 on he takes it for granted that
humans justify nearly every questionable

RUSSELL PORTRAIT CLINTON INMAN 2017

thing they do. How persistent is our will to
be unreasonable? About this, Russell says in
his 1923 essay Can Men Be Rational?: The
bias produced by such causes [as irrational
desires] falsifies mens judgments as to facts
in ways that are very hard to avoid. In other
words (because it is very hard to avoid), dont
count on people giving up biased thinking
soon.
In addition to thinking that people are
not particularly scrupulous about the truth when it makes them
feel uncomfortable, Russell also thinks that people are not par-
ticularly nice to one another. Unsurprisingly, then, he frequently
asserts that conventional morality is often just a cover-up and
justification for bad human impulses and behavior, as in his 1925
essay What I Believe, where he writes: In the ordinary man
and woman there is a certain amount of active malevolence, both
special ill will directed to particular enemies and general imper-
sonal pleasure in the misfortune of others. It is customary to
cover this over with fine phrases; almost half of conventional
morality is a cloak for it. Russell continues with examples of the
malevolence we use morality to justify. They include the glee
with which people repeat and believe scandal the unkind treat-
ment of criminals in spite of clear proof that better treatment
would have more effect in reforming them the unbelievable
barbarity with which white races treat Negroes, and the gusto
with which old ladies and clergymen pointed out the duty of mil-
itary service to young men during the War. (reprinted in Why
I Am Not a Christian, 1957).
Russell also finds moral cover-up and self-justification work-
ing together in education. For example, in 1926 he writes: The
essence of education is that it is a change (other than death)
effected in an organism to satisfy the desires of the operator. Of
course the operator says that his desire is to improve the pupil,
but this statement does not represent any objectively verifiable
fact (Psychology and Politics, reprinted in Sceptical Essays, 1928).
And in 1932, adding the rationalization of bad behavior to edu-
cation, he says: The elements of good citizenship that are empha-
sized in schools and universities are the worst elements and not
the best citizenship, as generally taught, perpetuates traditional

June/July 2017 Philosophy Now 19


injustices... Wherever an injustice exists, it is possible to invoke
the ideal of legality and constitutionality in its support (Educa-
tion and the Social Order, 1932).
Here are two more examples from Russells later writings of
the assertion that conventional morality is a cover up and fre-
quently less that rational (both reprinted in Unpopular Essays,
1950). In 1937 we see him saying, One of the persistent delu-
sions of mankind is that some sections of the human race are
morally better or morally worse than others (The Superior
Virtue of the Oppressed). And in 1946, in the essay Ideas That
Have Harmed Mankind, he asserts: I think that the evils that
men inflict on each other, and by reflection on themselves, have
their main source in evil passions rather than in ideas or beliefs.
but ideas and principles that do harm are, as a rule, though not
always, cloaks for evil passions. And so on. Russells assumption
of human intellectual dishonesty stretches across his entire career.
Group Self-Deceit
In a last example, we find Russell saying in 1953 essentially what
he asserted 1910 about the self-justifying behavior of dominant
classes, but here more clearly:
Holders of power, always and everywhere, are indifferent to the
good or evil of those who have no power, except in so far as they are
restrained by fear. This may sound too harsh a saying. It may be said
that decent people will not inflict torture on others beyond a point.
This may be said, but history shows that it is not true. The decent
people in question succeed in not knowing, or pretending not to
know, what torments are inflicted to make them happy.
(What Is Democracy? in Fact and Fiction, 1961).
Again, this situation is like the case where one person mistreats
another and rationalizes the act, only now we have one group
mistreating another group, with the dominant group creating
what we have called a ruling class fiction to avoid the discom-
fort that recognizing its own injustice would cause it.
As well as being an excuse for mistreating the subject people,
a ruling class fiction typically includes a rationalization that the
subjects were actually being treated well, or at least were not
mistreated, by the ruling class. Any sort of excuse for ignoring
or not knowing of ones own injustices is willed ignorance, that
is, desired ignorance, even if it is not consciously desired or cho-
sen. The passage by Russell above describes willed ignorance.
Conclusion
We began with the view of John Maynard Keynes that before
World War I, Russell, along with others at Cambridge, overesti-
mated the degree to which people are rational. Based on the pas-
sages by Russell quoted above, however, one might think instead
that throughout his life Russell overstated the degree to which
people are irrational. But as has at least been suggested with a
few examples of psychological research, current psychology seems
to support a third view that Russell had it just about right.
DR JOHN ONGLEY 2017
John Ongley, with Rosalind Carey, is the author of Russell: A
Guide for the Perplexed, winner of the 2014 Bertrand Russell
Society Book Award. He currently teaches Philosophy at Lehman
College, CUNY, in New York.
20 Philosophy Now June/July 2017
Philosophical Haiku
LUDWIG WITTGENSTEIN
(18891951)
World as facts, not things
Understand without knowing.
On the other hand...
I
t takes a brave man to declare that his ground-breaking work that
people had hailed as a revolution in philosophy was muddle-headed,
but thats exactly what Wittgenstein did.
Born into a fabulously wealthy family in Vienna, as a young man he
went to Britain, where at first he studied engineering at Manchester. At
this time he noticed some intractable problems in the foundations of
mathematics, so he decided to make them more tractable. After visit-
ing Gottlob Frege in Jena, he nipped to Cambridge to see what Bertrand
Russell thought. Russell thought he was crazy, but also a genius. Then
WWI intervened, and so Wittgenstein headed back home, to end up
fighting the Brits. Luckily for him, he was taken prisoner: he used this
leisure time to write his first masterpiece, the Tractatus Logico-Philo-
sophicus, which described how he then thought language and logic
worked. For one thing, he said, the world is not made up of things, it is
made up of facts what are called states of affairs, or the way things
relate to each other. In short, after several thousand years of fruitless
endeavour on the part of all his hapless predecessors, Wittgenstein
claimed that he had solved all philosophical problems. And so, with
nothing more to be done in philosophy, he went off and became a
school-teacher for six years in the wee Austrian village of Puchberg am
Schneeberg (imagine his homework assignments!).
Then he began to have second thoughts: maybe he hadnt solved
all of philosophys problems! So he decided to go back to Cambridge.
But first he had to overcome a very unphilosophical problem he had
no money. Having inherited a vast amount, hed given it all away because
he thought it would hinder his thinking (I find it works the other way,
myself). A collection was taken for him, and he got back to work. Not
published until after his death, his Philosophical Investigations chal-
lenged his earlier work to its very foundations.
Wittgenstein taught that in the end philosophy seeks not knowledge,
but understanding. Whether they understood him or not, later philoso-
phers were happy Wittgenstein hadnt solved all of philosophys prob-
lems. Theyd all be unemployed if he had.
TERENCE GREEN 2017
Terence is a peripatetic (though not Peripatetic) writer, historian and
lecturer. He holds a PhD in the history of political thought from
Columbia University, NYC, and lives with his wife and their dog in
Wellington, NZ. He blogs at hardlysurprised.blogspot.co.nz

Bertrand Russell on Something
Landon D.C. Elkind explains why Russell believed logic can set thought free
U
sing Bertrand Russells remarks on something as a foil,
I shall try to explain why he thought studying logic and
philosophy is valuable.
As almost any Russellian knows, Russell abhorred teaching
Aristotelian logic, also called traditional logic. To take two quotes:
If you wish to become a logician, there is one piece of advice which
I cannot urge too strongly, and that is: Do NOT learn the traditional
formal logic. In Aristotles day, it was a creditable effort, but so was
Ptolemaic astronomy. To teach either in the present day is a ridicu-
lous piece of antiquarianism.
(The Art of Philosophizing, and Other Essays, 1990, p.38)
I conclude that the Aristotelian doctrines with which we have been
concerned in this chapter are wholly false, with the exception of the
formal theory of the syllogism, which is unimportant. Any person
in the present day who wishes to learn logic will be wasting his time
if he reads Aristotle or any of his disciples.
(The Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, 2009, p.257)
Russells criticism was tempered by praise for Aristotles
achievement in advancing logic beyond what his predecessors
had achieved (p.251). But I am not concerned with delivering
justice to Aristotle. I want to consider what Russell believed
about modern logic that so sets it apart from the logic of Aristo-
tle, and about philosophy itself. And an apt illustration of the
value of modern logic is Russells treatment of something.
Doubts about Something In Logic
In their monumental Principia Mathematica, Russell and his co-
author Alfred North Whitehead attempted to create a logically
sound basis for mathematics. In it their primitive proposition
9.1 implies that at least one individual thing exists. It follows
that the universal class of things is not empty. This is stated
explicitly in proposition 24.52. Whitehead and Russell then
remark: This would not hold if there were no instances of any-
thing; hence it implies the existence of something. (Principia
Mathematica, Volume I, 1910, 24). Here then, logic seems com-
mitted to the existence of something.
By 1919 Russell took a different view. From his prison cell
he wrote: The primitive propositions in Principia Mathematica
are such as to allow the inference that at least one individual
exists. But I now view this as a defect in logical purity (The
Basic Writings of Bertrand Russell, p.156). Now Russell views the
logical proof that something exists quite negatively.
It may seem curious that Russell held that the existence of
something, even of just one something, was too bold a commit-
ment for a logician. That at least one thing exists seems mani-
festly true, even obvious, to most any of us. There appears no
difficulty in presuming what is patently true, even in logic. So
why does Russell object to the primitive propositions of logic
proving that there is something? Why hesitate over the obvious?
Russell
Russells Concept of Logic
Russell objected to the apparent logical implication in his ear-
lier work that something exists because it is antithetical to his
conception of logic. For him, logic stands apart from the blithe
acceptance of the intuitively obvious, even the innocent-seem-
ing thesis that something exists.
Consider Russells take on another obvious truth: that all
humans are mortal:
...there is nothing self-contradictory about an immortal man. We
believe the proposition [All men are mortal] on the basis of induc-
tion, because there is no well-authenticated case of a man living more
than (say) one hundred and fifty years; but this only makes the propo-
sition probable, not certain. It cannot be certain so long as living men
exist. (ibid., p.253)
For Russell, certifying the obvious is not the task of logic.
Logic should not dogmatize about the obvious because this runs
the terrible risk of mistaking the obvious for the true. As Russell
wrote in Our Knowledge of the External World (1914), The logic
which thus arises is not quite disinterested or candid Such an
attitude naturally does not tend to the best results (p.56).
For earlier logicians the function of logic is to exclude all pos-
sibilities save for one and then declare that the world must be
in whatever way remains (p.18). The modern logic Russell advo-
cates can instead show us new possibilities:
Modern logic has the effect of enlarging our abstract imagina-
tion, and providing an infinite number of possible hypotheses to be
applied in the analysis of any complex fact. In this respect it is the
exact opposite of the logic practised by the classical tradition. In that
logic, hypotheses which seem prima facie possible are professedly
proved impossible, and it is decreed in advance that reality must have
a certain character. In modern logic, on the contrary, while the prima
facie hypotheses as a rule remain admissible, others, which only logic
would have suggested, are added to our stock, and are very often
found indispensable if a right analysis of the facts is to be obtained.
The old logic put thought in fetters, while the new logic gives it wings.
(p.68, emphasis added).
This last sentence aptly expresses what Russell sees as the
function of logic. Modern logic does not preclude perfectly
respectable possibilities like immortal humans. Modern logic
strengthens our critical capacities by forcing us to set aside feel-
ings of obviousness as our guide in critical inquiry. Modern logic
thus enables us to see the truth through the haze of the obvi-
ous. As Russell writes, Thus, while it [modern logic] liberates
imagination as to what the world may be, it refuses to legislate
as to what the world is (p.19).
Russells later view of logic thus explains why he objected to
his own earlier proof that something exists. Logic should not
be tasked with proving this, because is not self-contradictory to
June/July 2017 Philosophy Now 21
CARTOON BILL STOTT 2017 FOR MORE, PLEASE VISIT WWW.BILLSTOTT.CO.UK
Russell
suppose that there is not something. Where logic proves that
some real possibility cannot be, we know we have regressed into
practicing the misguided traditional logic.
The Essence of Philosophy
Chapter II of Russells book Our Knowledge of the External World
is titled Logic as the Essence of Philosophy. In it Russell claims
that every philosophical problem, when it is subjected to the
necessary analysis and purification, is found either to be not
really philosophical at all, or else to be, in the sense in which
we are using the word, logical (p.42).
Lets focus on one aspect of this fascinating feature of Rus-
sells thought: he held that the value of philosophy itself is the
same as the value of modern logic. Philosophy, too, is valuable,
because it can expand our critical capacities and cause us to crit-
ically reflect on what seems at first obvious or necessary. The
value of philosophy as well as of modern logic is therefore to
free our imprisoned thoughts from inherited prejudices and
feelings. And the reward of those that study philosophy and
modern logic is uncertainty. As Russell writes in The Problems
of Philosophy (1959):
The value of philosophy is, in fact, to be sought largely in its uncer-
tainty. The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life
imprisoned by the prejudices derived from common sense, from the
habitual beliefs of his age or his nation, and from convictions which
have grown up in his mind without the co-operation or consent of
his deliberate reason. To such a man the world tends to become def-
inite, finite, obvious; common objects rouse no questions, and unfa-
miliar possibilities are contemptuously rejected. As soon as we begin
to philosophize, on the contrary, we findthat even the most every-
day things lead to problems to which only very incomplete answers
can be given. Philosophy, though unable to tell us with certainty
what is the true answer to the doubts which it raises, is able to sug-
gest many possibilities which enlarge our thoughts and free them
22 Philosophy Now June/July 2017
from the tyranny of custom. Thus, while diminishing our feeling of
certainty as to what things are, it greatly increases our knowledge as
to what they may be; it removes somewhat the arrogant dogmatism
of those who have never travelled into the region of liberating doubt,
and it keeps alive our sense of wonder by showing familiar things in
an unfamiliar aspect. (pp.156-157, emphasis added).
This intellectual expansion is the tremendous boon of study-
ing philosophy and modern logic. Such expansion was neces-
sary to generate every idea that anyone has tried to lift off the
ground, including a few ideas that Russell himself advocated: a
world without nuclear weapons and even without war; a world
free from want, with a universal basic income for all; womens
suffrage; an end to retributive punishment for crimes; free uni-
versity education for all who desire it, and so on. Perhaps immor-
tality will eventually join the ranks of such ideas. But if were
not prepared to sacrifice our antiquated ideas and customary
habits for a bold vision of the possible, we will never know for
certain.
There is nothing logically contradictory about a world with-
out war, without sickness, without poverty, without want, with-
out fear, even without death. It is through the study of philoso-
phy and particularly of logic that such possibilities become open
to us, that we are startled into critical reflection on what the
past has allotted to us; and then startled into action. It was for
these reasons that Russell was so strongly opposed to the tradi-
tional logic inspired by Aristotle and so ardently devoted to
modern logic. Modern logic and philosophy can save us from
the unhappy tyranny of uninspired thought, so long as we are
willing to question even our most natural suppositions, such as
human mortality, or the existence of something.
LANDON D. C. ELKIND 2017
Landon D.C. Elkind is a doctoral student in philosophy at the Univer-
sity of Iowa. He is also a board member of the Bertrand Russell Society
and of the Society for the Study of the History of Analytic Philosophy.
Is The Age Of I n d i v i d u a l i s m
Coming To An End?
Michael Foley says that perhaps we are all becoming more sociable.
T
he revelation came in the popcorn queue of a mul-
tiplex. Looking around at the posters, it suddenly
occurred to me that movie heroes used to be singu-
lar the lone private eye walking down those mean
streets, or the lone stranger riding down those main streets
but now the lone hero has been largely replaced by the buddy
pair or the team. Even those ultimate individuals, the super-
heroes, now prefer to fight evil in groups. This idea connected
in my mind with many other cultural developments to suggest
that the age of individualism, which seemed so permanent, may
instead be temporary, an overreaction against constraint and
repression that is now correcting itself.
Individualism, the idea that individual freedom and rights
are paramount, has become so culturally entrenched that it
seems like a universal, absolute and eternal truth. In fact the
idea is not universal but largely confined to the West; not abso-
lute but a contingent development; and far from being eternal,
may be losing its appeal.
The Growth of Individualism
The creation myth of individualism is that in Eighteenth-Cen-
tury Enlightenment Europe a few courageous champions of
reason broke the shackles of religious repression and set the
individual free to find, express, and fulfil a true self. But the
development of individualism began much earlier, and was much
more gradual and complex. Many factors, religious and mate-
rial as well as intellectual, contributed. Along with the Enlight-
enments intellectual demand for liberty, the growth of com-
merce created a middle class of merchants, prosperous farmers
and urban craftsmen who believed in private property and unhin-
dered individual wealth accumulation. So individualism was a
partnership of ideas and business such as contemporary univer-
sities dream of. But underlying both factors in this revolution-
ary development was Christianitys even more revolutionary
idea a shocking novelty in the classical world that all human
beings are of equal value. This had never occurred to philoso-
phers, and, given the hunger of Homo sapiens for hierarchy and
distinction, perhaps need never have occurred to anyone. But
eventually the demand for political and personal liberty turned
a founding belief of the Church against the Church, a develop-
ment pithily summarised by historian Larry Siedentops remark
that Secularism is Christianitys gift to the world.
In the Nineteenth Century the commercial and intellectual
strands of individualism separated into capitalist
entrepreneurism and Romantic individualism, the latter being
a rejection of the materialist herd in favour of solitary com-
muning with sublime nature on rugged coastlines and moun-
tain tops. At the end of the Nineteenth and the first half of the
Twentieth Centuries, Romanticism morphed into bohemian
individualism, which recolonised the city or a limited area of
it as a refuge from the morals, conventions and conformities
of bourgeois society.
All these overlapping and intermingling developments
remained elitist, influencing mostly artists, intellectuals and
political radicals, until, at the end of the 1960s, they combined
in a youth mass culture that spread around the world to pro-
duce expressive individualism, which added to the rejection of
authority and conformity the need to discover your true self
and do your own thing.
This has been the prevailing mood of recent times: the high
point of individualism was probably the 1970s and 80s. Scien-
tific and political theories, while asserting themselves to be time-
less, objective truths, usually reflect the zeitgeist the spirit of
the age. Just so, at its height, individualism was ratified by two
influential theories. The first was neo-Darwinism in biology,
which interpreted evolution as a competition for survival won
by the strongest and/or most cunning individuals; and the sec-
ond, neo-liberalism in economics, which drew on the first to
argue that markets should be free to develop, like nature, in an
unhindered competition between individuals.
The Decline of Individualism
But the zeitgeist has changed and both these theories have now
been challenged. Many evolutionary theorists argue that cooper-
ation is as important for survival as competition, if not more so;
and many political theorists argue that the free market has pro-
duced a widening inequality that is damaging to the winners as
well as to the losers. Individualism has also been undermined at
its very source by neuroscientists who claim that the individuals
sense of a unitary self is an illusion created by the brain to pro-
vide the comfort of stability and continuity. So Margaret
Thatchers famous claim that there is no such thing as society has
been matched by the opposite claim that there is no such thing
as the individual. The self is not an essence to be discovered but
an ongoing process of interaction with the environment, and
according to the theory of extended mind is at least partly in the
environment. Philosophers such as Charles Taylor support this
idea by arguing that the most important environmental influence
is other people, and that personal identity is developed not so
much by looking inwards to find a true self, as in either accep-
tance of or resistance to the identities others attempt to impose.
We are expected to develop our own opinions, outlook, stances
to things, to a considerable degree through solitary reflection.
But this is not how things work with important issues, such as the
definition of our identity. We define this always in dialogue with,
sometimes in struggle against, the identities our significant oth-
ers want to recognize in us. And even when we outgrow some of
the latter our parents, for instance and they disappear from
our lives, the conversation with them continues within us as long
as we live (from The Ethics of Authenticity by Charles Taylor, 1992).
June/July 2017 Philosophy Now 23
 An icon of Romantic individualism:
Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog,
Caspar David Friedrich, 1818
Even physics, which believes itself to be the most objective
of disciplines, has altered its theories on the nature of reality to
suit the changing mood. In the late Nineteenth and early Twen-
tieth Centuries an atomistic approach understood reality as con-
sisting of elementary particles that created relations with each
other, but by the end of the Twentieth and the start of the
Twenty-First this had completely reversed to an interpretation
of reality as a field, a swarm of continuous interactive processes
that create and destroy particles. Now the relations are often
believed to create the particles rather than the other way round.
The theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli recently wrote: There
is no reality except in the relations between physical systems. It
isnt things that enter into relations but, rather, relations that
ground the notion of thing. (Reality Is Not What It Seems: The
Journey to Quantum Gravity, Carlo Rovelli, 2016). This is Tay-
lors view of individuals applied to elementary particles.
The New Interconnectivity
The decline of individualism is evident in practice as well as
theory, in the proliferation of social networks, urban tribes,
friendship groups, festivals (still spreading faster than Japanese
knotweed), cosplay and gaming conventions, and all kinds of
group activity including group dancing, singing in choirs, team
games and themed parties. With the fashion for communal tables
and benches and sharing plates, the trend is apparent even in
restaurants. Even reading, that most quintessentially solitary
practice, has become a communal endeavour, in reading groups.
There is also evidence from religion, with the growing popu-
larity of Pentecostal churches, which reduce the emphasis on
individual religious observance and instead encourage group par-
ticipation in singing and dancing.
In the politics of both right and left there has been an even
more dramatic rejection of the assumption that democracy is
based on the liberal ideology of individual rights. The rise of
right-wing populism has been based on a renewed belief in
nationalism, and is expressed in mass rallies that provide the
24 Philosophy Now June/July 2017
same reassurance of belonging as a congregation of ecstatic
believers, while on the left there is a new form of humorous
group anarchism. In his 2008 book Infinitely Demanding: Ethics
of Commitment, Politics and Resistance the philosopher Simon
Critchley writes, In my view, anarchism what we might call
actually existing anarchism is a powerfully refreshing and
remotivating response to the drift and demotivation of liberal
democracy. In particular it is the carnivalesque humour of
anarchist groups and their tactics of non-violent warfare that
have led to the creation of a new language of civil disobedience
and a recovery of the notion of direct democracy. Critchley
specifically rejects an individualist anarchism for something
more social: The conception of anarchism that I seek to defend
is not so much organised around freedom as responsibility.
Here Critchley identifies the problem that has caused indi-
vidualism to lose its allure. Personal freedom, the essential fea-
ture of individualism, is not the universal gift it appeared to be.
Back in the heady Sixties and Seventies, the era of popular
demands for liberation and rights, it seemed that being free was
all that was needed to enjoy a fulfilling life. But, as the populists
have noted, full freedom is available only to the few who can
afford it. And many of these fortunate few have discovered that
total freedom is not liberation but a new kind of burden. Infi-
nite choice is thrilling in theory but exhausting in practice,
requiring every decision to be worked out from first principles,
often by those without principles. And the thrilling possibility
of refusing obligation and commitment in order to live by and
for ones self has also turned out to be less than fulfilling.
The Seeds of Rage
The evidence was already there in the lives of the founding
fathers of individualism: Baudelaire (1821-67), the most influ-
ential modern poet; Flaubert (1821-80), the most influential
modern novelist; and Nietzsche (1844-1900), the most influ-
ential modern thinker. All three lived alone, were vehement in
their insistence on solitude and freedom, their rejection of mar-
riage and democracy, and their contempt for what they described
as the common herd. As Flaubert once put it: I have built
myself a tower and let the waves of shit beat at its base.
The free solitary life should have provided peaks of creative
exaltation on a plateau of serenity, but it seems instead to have
provoked rage. The three seminal individualists were constantly
seething. Nietzsche, the most detached, living alone in Turin,
with no social life whatever, was also the angriest, blaming all
his problems on his home nation and upbringing, writing abu-
sive letters to his family and friends, quarrelling with his loyal
publisher, and demanding to have the Kaiser publicly executed.
The problem is that intellectual exaltation encourages con-
tempt for the people at the base of the tower and a growing cer-
tainty in the superiority of ones own convictions, which the
world in its stubborn stupidity fails even to acknowledge, much
less accept. The result is rage.
A more recent example of this syndrome is the poet Philip
Larkin, who refused to commit to any of his lovers or to engage
in any social activity that did not suit him. He lived alone and
for himself alone, yet described himself in later life as boiling
with rage. The irony is that Larkin protected his freedom to
have time to write, but succeeded so well he had nothing to say
and dried up.
The Sense of Change
To preserve sanity it seems to be necessary to keep a tension
between the need for individual freedom and the demands of
others. The constraints of traditional society were impossibly
binding, but the opposite extreme of refusing all constraint has
not been the answer. Once we suffocated in the prison of con-
formity, then we drowned in the ocean of choice.
Nietzsche understood the necessity of maintaining dualities
of every kind, but especially between Apollo, the symbol of
social order and limit, and Dionysus, the symbol of freedom
and intoxication. Keeping contradictory forces in tension can
be a source of strength:
Let us suppose a man who deemed it impossible to resolve this con-
tradiction by destroying the one and completely unleashing the other
power; then, the only thing remaining to him would be to make such a
great edifice out of himself that both powers can inhabit it, even if at
opposite ends; between which are sheltered conciliatory powers pro-
vided with the dominant strength to settle, if need be, any quarrels that
break out. (Friedrich Nietzsche, Human, All Too Human, Section5.).
Nietzsche failed to take his own advice, but there now seems
to be an unconscious rebalancing between individualism and
social life, which is a rejection of the excesses of freedom as well
as of traditional conformity. The key seems to be involvement
in new types of group that are chosen rather than imposed, tran-
sient rather than lasting, and informal rather than requiring
official membership.
As with many forms of social change, the waning of individ-
ualism provides reasons to be fearful the rise of populism and
nationalism as well as reasons for hope the more benign
small-group ethos. And it effects most of us, often unconsciously.
I realise that Im too much of a Twentieth-Century individual-
ist to join any organised group, but at least Ive come down from
the tower to the street and the urban crowd no longer the
common herd despised by Baudelaire, Flaubert and Nietzsche,
but a group of sorts, albeit the most fluid and transient, and
offering a sense of belonging, albeit the most tenuous. As well
as the proliferation of new group activities there has been a
steady proliferation of new public spaces where people can see
and be seen the communal open-plan eating areas of malls;
the outdoor tables colonising pavements and squares; and the
continuing spread of coffee shops. In the mode of Baudelaire,
Flaubert and Nietzsche I have previously interpreted this as evi-
dence of narcissistic attention-seeking. But it is also possible to
see it as a new form of togetherness, a new form of community
a paradoxical community of strangers. There is something
oddly fulfilling in looking on as people, mysterious, unknow-
able and seething with deep forces and passions, go about their
urgent but inscrutable business. It is the urban equivalent of
watching the sea.
MICHAEL FOLEY 2017
Michael Foley has published novels, poetry and non-fiction books,
most recently Isnt This Fun? Investigating the Serious Business
of Enjoying Ourselves (Simon & Schuster 2016). His website is
michael-foley.net.
CALLE DE PRECIADOS MANOLO GOMEZ 2008
June/July 2017 Philosophy Now 25
 Arresting Thoughts
Maeve Roughton asks if its becoming a crime to think the wrong thoughts.
Y
ou are what you eat, but are you also what you think?
Most legal, philosophical, and psychiatric minds
would say no; but in the wake of hacking scandals
that have exposed everything from politicians sex-
ual indiscretions to flesh-eating fantasies, public perception
nips at the contrary.
For proof of this, we neednt look any further than the case of
former NYPD officer Gilberto Valle, dubbed the Cannibal Cop
by New York Citys ever-creative bold-face journalists. After pub-
lic outrage demanded the criminal prosecution of an imagina-
tion that was wholly bizarre but hardly unlawful, he was con-
victed in 2013 of conspiracy to kidnap and for illegally accessing
NYPD databases to engage in graphic online communications
about kidnapping, killing, and eating women, crimes that he had
never acted upon. In December 2015, the 2nd US Circuit Court
of Appeals concluded that Valles actions werent criminal, over-
turning his conviction, and declaring, We are loath to give the
government power to punish us for our thoughts and not our
actions. That includes the power to criminalize an individuals
expression of sexual fantasies, no matter how perverse or disturb-
ing. Fantasizing about committing a crime, even a crime of vio-
lence against a real person whom you know, is not a crime.
Thought crime is not a new concept. George Orwell intro-
duced the idea to us through his Thought Police in Nineteen
Eighty-Four, and Philip K. Dick made our sci-fi psyches tick
further with Minority Report and its Precrime Division, which
penalized crimes that hadnt yet happened. Forty-five states in
the US have hate crime laws that heavily penalize bias-moti-
vated violence over thoughtless brutality. Now, theres a big dif-
ference between dystopian storytelling and real-world rights
infringement, but as our planet becomes more electronically
interlaced, is that line blurring? Is the digital age ushering in a
true age of thought policing?
PLEASE VISIT CARTERTOONS.COM
JON CARTER 2017
CARTOON
26 Philosophy Now June/July 2017
There is definitely a tradition of going after crimes before
they are committed, so its not a difficult analogy to draw that if
we have conspiracy and attempted crimes, that thought crimes
are punishable too, Youngjae Lee, Professor of Law at Ford-
ham University, told me recently. Standard legal doctrine says
there is a commitment to not punishing people for having
thoughts, he continued. The demonstrable motivation behind
an action might lead to a heavier penalty, however, to clarify,
nobody has ever been criminally charged for their thoughts alone.
In criminal law the idea that you have to do something before
you have committed a crime is called The Act Requirement. With-
out the act its just a thought, and, to echo the Court of Appeals,
even really bad thoughts arent themselves criminal offenses. But
thats where it gets tricky today. How do you differentiate between
curiosity and intent in a sea of web searches? Are we to be morally
or criminally bound to our browser histories?
Public Thinking
At the very least, we shouldnt be shocked at our lack of privacy;
from the government, from hackers, or from lovers. As Ethan J.
Lieb, also a professor of law at Fordham University, puts it, this
information is there and is being collected by someone, and you
have to be nave to not realize its being collected, and that youre
vulnerable (Friend v. Friend: The Transformation of Friendship
and What the Law Has to Do with It, 2011).
But is searching the web for tips on how to commit murder
with trash bags, a crowbar, and bleach the same as shopping at
the hardware store for trash bags, a crowbar, and bleach the
day your boss was killed? In the eyes of the law, it may be. As
Lee explains, if your only act consists of writing things down
in your own diary, [punishing people for] that seems very close
to punishing people for having bad thoughts, but when people
start making these diaries quasi-public in some way, through
different forums on the Internet, would it be fair for us to think
theyve crossed the threshold of private thoughts to potentially
harmful acts? In the eyes of jilted wives, husbands, and lovers,
it seems fair to assume that posting to the net is equivalent to
taking action. After all, why register on a hook-up site if you
arent looking to hook-up?
Sexual indiscretion, however partners define it, existed long
before the dawn of the digital age, but it was relegated to meet-
ups on Lovers Lane or seedy out-of-the-way motels, or phone
calls in the middle of the night. Once upon a time, exploring
and even acting on fantasy left little trace, save what your own
stupidity allowed. Today, however, as Lieb says, weve got our
heads in the sand if we dont assume that what we put on the
Internet is being collected and watched. And while the judicial
system has a burden of proof to meet to indict and convict you
of crimes, thought-based or otherwise, your boyfriend, girl-
friend or spouse is probably not going to afford you such con-
sideration. Nor will the general public.
The court of public opinion often dictates societal norms,
drawing lines in the sand to define right and wrong. As our inner
thoughts and deepest secrets are given new havens throughout
the digital landscape chat rooms for cheating partners, fetish
forums, seemingly anonymous peer-to-peer conversation
theyre also given new pedestals to stand on, and fall from. Like-
minded people are now able to find like-minded people in droves,
in all four corners of the world, and covering all sorts of predilec-
tions. But that freedom of connectivity is marred by a lack of
digital privacy, making information-artillery out of every
thought, fetish, and fantasy you type, send, and save, all of which
could be used to shoot holes in your good name.
Moreover, public perception may not discriminate between
you pursuing a cause, an interest, an activity, or just your own
curiosity. People go to a party or social club they would never
consider being a part of but want to hear the rhetoric What
do they focus on, are they accurate, are they as awful as my friends
say they are? But if someone finds out you went to that meet-
ing, all of a sudden your commitments and values are in ques-
tion, commented Jonathan Jacobs, Professor of Philosophy at
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, when I interviewed him.
It could be a mob mentality that leads everyday people to
high-jump to such misinformed conclusions. All it takes for
one person to break from the pack for group sentiment to shift.
Is it too much of a stretch to think that the same can happen
in legal proceedings?
On the surface, yes. In a liberal political order, the state is
not in the business of requiring people to have certain condi-
tions of character the state cant require you to have certain
interests or commitments, Jacobs explains. What the state
cares about is whether you obey the law, not whether you obey
the law because youre avoiding punishment or think the law is
morally just or because you were raised to respect authority
The government doesnt care why you toe the line, just so long
as you do. That is, until you dont: When we punish people,
or at least sentence them, considerations of character are rele-
vant: Is he completely remorseless, does he show callous uncon-
cern for his victims, does he appear to be completely unmoved
by the fact that he was found guilty of a serious crime? Even
though having bad character is not itself a violation of the law
the state cant punish you just for having a depraved imagina-
tion nonetheless, if you break the law you can have an addi-
tional quantum of punishment heaped on you if you seem to
have a really bad character, Jacobs analyzes.
The Digital Dissolve
But before we lose all hope of flying our freak flags on the net with
unimpeded glory, whats happening in courts of law and public
opinion is that we, as a culture, are adapting. The veils of anonymity
On Reading Kant
Eerie in its grandeur.
Sublime in its mystique.
Passing understanding.
Thrillingly opaque.
So abstract that its concrete.
An edifice of blocks
of monumental marble:
words as hard as rocks.
Space and time. Causation.
Perception. Apperception.
Notion. Intuition.
Dialectal. Transcendental.
Unity. Totality.
Faculty. Plurality.
Noumena. Phenomena.
Categories. Antinomies.
And - the crowning glory -
the synthetic a priori.
Its like the language of a race of superior beings.
Reading its like stumbling under glimmering stars
over a vast expanse of twilit marshes.
Or wandering through an unknown, dimly-lit cathedral,
at evensong, without your glasses.
BRANDON ROBSHAW 2017
Brandon Robshaw is an Associate Lecturer at the Open
University and runs a Philosophy class for the WEA. He is
crowdfunding a philosophical novel for Young Adults with
Unbound: unbound.com/books/adam-gowers
and the possibilities offered by web-based communication arent
just appealing to criminals, conspiracists, and cheaters, theyre
attractive to everyday users who want to blur the line between
reality and fantasy, imagination and order, what is and what could
be. As Lieb points out, People are adjusting their moral sensibil-
ities as theyre learning that theyre one of the millions.
The Internet is the new Wild West, and depending on where
you sit at the digital roundtable, that is an empowering/frighten-
ing/curious truth. Yet in the era of cannibal cops and fifteen-year-
old sexting pedophiles, how far is too far? At what point does a fan-
tasy become a conspiracy, or a sexual inquiry become a lewd act?
Furthermore, at what point do thoughts, interests, and persua-
sions cease to be entirely yours and become fodder both for the
world and for the legal system? Perhaps its the moment they
leave your mind and enter a chat room, status update, or email.
Perhaps its when they cross the threshold between personal con-
templation and public declaration. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps
And perhaps we shouldnt even care, because as Lee so aptly notes,
even the harmful and voluntary [statements] ought to be pro-
tected; thats what it means to live in a free society.
MAEVE ROUGHTON 2017
Maeve Roughton is a writer, artist and strategist living and working
in downtown New York City.
June/July 2017 Philosophy Now 27
Berkeleys & Humes
Philosophical Memoirs
David Berman looks for similarities and differences in the aims of the two thinkers.
T
here are interesting points of both agreement and dis-
agreement in the lives of George Berkeley (1685-1753)
and David Hume (1711-1776), arguably the two great-
est British philosophers. I also think we have an out-
standing philosophical memoir from each, summing up their work,
especially in respect of their ruling passions. Both memoirs con-
tain the philosophers very last philosophical words, which can be
naturally read as their final philosophical testaments. Yet for all
that, I dont think that this has been noticed by their biographers,
or by those who have written on them philosophically.
George Berkeley
by Alfred A. Hart, 1858
28 Philosophy Now June/July 2017
All students of philosophy should know of Humes memoir,
My Own Life, which he wrote the year he died, 1776, and which
was published a year later. But what is Berkeleys counterpart?
It is the last section, 368, of his Siris, his last philosophical work,
published in 1744.
As a memoir in the fuller sense, My Own Life tells us a great
deal about Humes character. He portrays himself as cheerful
and content, sociable, studious, and independent-minded, also
philosophical, by which he seems to include being even-tem-
pered or stoical as well as concerned with philosophy per se. In
the course of the memoir he also shows
himself to be witty and humorous. All of
this comes out explicitly in his own
description of his character in the final
paragraph:
I am or rather was a man of mild dispo-
sitions, of command of temper, of an open,
social, and cheerful humour, capable of attach-
ment, but little susceptible of enmity, and of
great moderation in all my passions. Even my
love of literary fame, my ruling passion, never
soured my humour (p.174).
It is indicative of their styles that while
both memoirs are succinct, Berkeleys is
even more so. Indeed, it is short enough
to quote here in full:
The eye by long use comes to see even in the
darkest cavern: and there is no subject so obscure
but we may discern some glimpse of truth by
long poring on it. Truth is the cry of all, but the
game of a few. Certainly, where it is the chief
passion, it does not give way to vulgar cares and
views; nor is it contented with a little ardour in
the early time of life, active perhaps to pursue,
but not so fit to weigh and revise. He that would
make a real progress in knowledge must dedi-
cate his age as well as youth, the later growth
as well as first fruits, at the altar of Truth.
Cujusvis est errare, nullius nisi insipientis in errore
perseverare: Cicero [It is the fate of every man
to err, of none but a fool to persist in error:
trans, Vincent Denard].
Although Berkeley does not write in
the first person, I think it is evident that
he must be talking about himself; first
about his ardour for truth in the heroic
years, circa 1707-13, in which he produced
his three philosophical masterpieces, the New Theory of Vision Hume means by this is not the metaphysical detachment of Plato
(1709), Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) and Three Dia- or even Berkeley, but the serenity and lack of fear in the face of
logues (1713); then of his concern to weigh and revise, shown death arising from his naturalism and disbelief in a next life.
partly in his second great phase of authorship, between 1732- Here too, in his placid attitude to death and personal oblivion,
1735, but even more, finally, in his Siris, where he dedicates his Hume is the prophet of the new educated consensus.
old age he was then 59 at the altar of Truth, as he did in his Two final points of similarity between Berkeley and Hume might
early life, when he was in his middle twenties. So the first fruits be mentioned. Both were great writers, although Berkeley seems a
as well as the later growth. One point of agreement between more natural one who did not place the same value on style as
the two philosophers is that Hume, like Berkeley, published his Hume clearly did. They also agree in expressing reservations about
major work, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), in his twen- their early work: Hume in his memoir, and more emphatically in
ties. But their key common point is in what Berkeley calls his his 1777 Advertisement to his Essays and Treatises (p.2); Berkeley
chief passion, and Hume twice calls his ruling passion (Mem- in the section from Siris I quoted above. But in neither case have
oir, pp.170 and 174), and which Hume comes back to again and they been much heeded by their commentators.
again. However, contrary to Berkeley, Humes passion was his DAVID BERMAN 2017
desire for literary fame (ibid). Thus Hume says that almost Davids works include Alciphron in Focus (Routledge, 1993). A
the whole of my life was spent in literary pursuits (p.169). short account of his present work and method of doing philosophy can
The first thing we should observe here is Humes great hon- be accessed at artisanphilosophybrochure.wordpress.com
esty in confessing that his chief passion
was for literary fame not for truth. So David Hume
although Humes core desire was not truth by David Martin, 1770
(which would perhaps be expected from
a true philosopher at that time), he shows
his commitment to perhaps the next best
thing for a philosopher truthfulness.
For Hume, then, as well as valuing the
array of admirable civil virtues mentioned
above, the greatest good is worldly hon-
our. For Berkeley it is attaining truth
gaining light in this dark cavern which
, as he makes clear in earlier sections of
Siris (e.g. 263, 340), alludes to Platos
allegory of getting out of the cave of igno-
rance and ascending into the realm of
truth. In line with their respective philo-
sophical testaments presenting two very
different ideas of the highest good, the
two philosophical memoirs differ consid-
erably in tone. Humes is urbane and
polite; Berkeleys more fervent.
I would also say that their respective
ruling passions reflect the change that has
taken place in philosophy especially since
the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries, when the truth the traditional
aspiration of philosophers ceased to be
the cry of all. So Berkeley can be heard as
voicing the last authentic cry of the ide-
alistic (as well as idealist) tradition in phi-
losophy that goes back to Plato, whereas
Hume can be seen as the prophet of the
new consensus; a herald of the socio-lin-
guistic philosophers of our own time.
The only statement in Humes mem-
oir which might be thought to go against
my worldly honour rather than truth
interpretation of him, is where he says It
is difficult to be more detached from life
than I am at present (p.174). But what

June/July 2017 Philosophy Now 29

Experimental Philosophy versus
Natural Kind Essentialism
Mark Pinder puts Hilary Putnams essential philosophical theory to the test.
T
he stereotypical philosopher sits in an armchair care-
fully thinking through difficult conceptual prob-
lems. As with any stereotype, however, there are
exceptions, and in recent years a number of self-
styled experimental philosophers have expressed unhappiness with
this armchair methodology. These philosophers have got up
out of their armchairs, and are performing experiments and
doing other empirical research to put a variety of philosophical
views to the test.
This turn of events may be surprising. After all, philosophy is
not science. Whereas we can experimentally verify scientific
hypotheses, it does not at first seem possible to experimentally
verify philosophical views. For example, whereas DNA has been
used to verify the hypothesis that humans are closely related to
chimpanzees, there is no empirical evidence that could be used
to verify the utilitarian view that the morally right action is
whichever choice leads to the most overall happiness, since we
cannot observe morality or experimentally determine what is
morally right. Likewise, while particle physicists have used the
Large Hadron Collider at CERN to test their prediction of the
existence of the Higgs boson, the philosopher cannot test the
sceptical view that we dont really know whether there is an exter-
nal world. That view seems instead to depend principally on where
one puts the bar for real knowledge, and so is not subject to empir-
ical verification or falsification. At face value, philosophical views
arent the sort of views that can be experimentally tested.
Nonetheless it turns out that empirical evidence is relevant
to at least some philosophical views. In order to see this, lets
look at one example in depth. The example I will focus on is a
philosophical view called Natural Kind Essentialism, which you
may already know of in connection with the infamous Twin
Earth thought experiment. (More on that shortly.) After intro-
ducing the view, I will show you how a recent empirical study
bears importantly on the issue and so why not every philoso-
pher can rest easily in their armchair.
Natural Kind Essentialism
Natural Kind Essentialism is, unsurprisingly, a view about nat-
ural kinds. But what are natural kinds?
There are various different kinds of things in nature. For
example, objectively speaking, one molecule of water is the same
kind of thing as another molecule of water, but it is a different
kind of thing from a molecule of ethanol. This means that water
and ethanol are examples of natural kinds. There are many other
examples. Cats are an objectively and naturally different kind
of thing from great white sharks; hearts are an objectively and
naturally different kind of thing from kidneys; protons are an
objectively and naturally different kind of thing from electrons;
and so on. So all these things are examples of natural kinds.
If nature really is divided up into objectively different kinds
30 Philosophy Now June/July 2017
of things, then we can try to understand what the differences
are, or what makes one kind of thing different from another.
Natural Kind Essentialism aims to do just that, by saying that
natural kinds have essences, and then trying to discover what
these essences are. For example, the essence of water is typi-
cally said to be its chemical composition, H2O, so that H2O is
the only thing that counts as water. On this view, then, a molecule
of ethanol is not water because ethanol does not have the right
chemical composition. Similarly, the essence of the species cat
might be its genome; the essence of the heart might be the func-
tion to pump blood; and the essence of the proton might be its
composition two up-quarks and a down-quark. According to
Natural Kind Essentialism, every natural kind has an essence.
Perhaps the most famous argument for Natural Kind Essen-
tialism is Hilary Putnams Twin Earth thought experiment, to
be found in his essay The Meaning of Meaning (1975). It
goes like this. Imagine that, far across the universe, theres a planet
remarkably similar to Earth in many ways, which we will call Twin
Earth. At first sight, Twin Earth is just like Earth: there are human-
like people living in cities, who comb their hair in the mornings
and go to work as accountants, builders, teachers, philosophers,
etc.; there are similar varieties of trees and plants that cover the
land; and there are vast oceans filled with a clear colourless liquid
that, after desalinisation, quenches thirst. However, it turns out
that there is no H2O on Twin Earth. Rather, the liquid that fills
the oceans and comes out of taps has a very different chemical
composition, for which we will use the formula XYZ.
Now ask yourself: Is there any real water on Twin Earth?
According to Putnam, the intuitive answer is no. He tells us
that the meaning of the word water is fixed by the chemical
composition of whatever liquid we usually call water. And, as
the liquid we usually call water is H2O, Putnam concludes that
water means H2O. If Putnam is right here, then it straightfor-
wardly follows that all water is H2O, and all H2O is water. It also
follows that a molecule of XYZ, or of ethanol, or of anything
else, wont count as water, just because it doesnt have the right
chemical composition, however similar it might otherwise appear
to water. So, as theres no H2O on Twin Earth, theres no water
on Twin Earth. The conclusion is that water has an essence,
namely its chemical composition, H2O. Putnam argues that
theres nothing special about water: we could run parallel argu-
ments for ethanol, cats, hearts, protons, and other natural kinds,
saying that for each kind there is a distinction between the appear-
ance and the essence. And if we did run these arguments, then
we would have an argument that each natural kind has an essence,
that is, an argument for Natural Kind Essentialism.
Empirical Evidence
Lets see how empirical evidence is relevant here. Notice that
in arguing for Natural Kind Essentialism, Putnam uses the intu-
itive premise that water means H2O. But
word meaning does not depend on Putnams
intuitions. Rather, the meaning of a word
depends upon how that word is convention-
ally used in a linguistic community. So,
although Putnam would sit in his armchair
arguing that the meaning of water is fixed
by its chemical composition, or that the
meaning of cat is fixed by its genome, etc.,
these are in fact empirical issues about how
the words are actually used by speakers of
English. And the empirical evidence suggests
that Putnam is wrong.
Lets consider an empirical study carried
out by Jussi Jylkk, Henry Railo and Jussi
Haukioja, Psychological Essentialism and
Semantic Externalism: Evidence for External-
ism in Lay Speakers Language Use (2009). This
aims to determine, in two stages, how the
meaning of a word is fixed.
In the first stage of the study, the experi-
menters presented participants with ideas
along the following lines:

There is a yellowish, bitter-smelling, fragile min-

eral common in Serbia, that scientists believe to
have chemical composition ABC. It is called zir-
caum. Furthermore, a deposit of a yellowish, bit-
ter-smelling, fragile mineral, which scientists
believe to have chemical composition ABC, has
recently been found in Norway.

The experimenters asked their partici-

pants to say whether they thought the
recently-discovered mineral found in Nor-
way was zircaum. The majority judged that
it was zircaum.
The second stage is where it gets interest-
ing. The experimenters told the participants
that the scientists in the story had been wrong
about the mineral in Norway. Contrary to
what the scientists originally thought, the
mineral actually had the chemical composi-
tion KLM. The participants were asked
whether, reflecting upon this new informa-
tion, their first judgement that the mineral
was zircaum had been correct, incorrect, or
correct in one sense and incorrect in another.
If Putnam is right about how words mean
what they do, we should expect participants
to say that their first judgement had been incorrect: they would although 48% of participants judged in accordance with Put-
think that zircaum means ABC, while the mineral found in nams intuition, the majority of them the remaining 52%
Norway has turned out to be KLM, and so the mineral found did not share Putnams judgement.
in Norway was not zircaum after all. The actual results, how- How can we make sense of the data? I think that the best
ever, were as follows: 22% said that the original judgement was interpretation is that zircaum is ambiguous: the word can have
correct, 48% said that the judgement was incorrect, and 17% multiple meanings. Sometimes its meaning is fixed by its chem-
said the judgement was correct in one sense and incorrect in ical structure, and sometimes by its surface properties being
another. The other participants felt that they couldnt say. So, a yellowish, bitter-smelling and fragile mineral. That is why

ILLUSTRATION: ROUGH SEA STEVE LILLIE 2017 PLEASE VISIT WWW.STEVELILLIE.BIZ

June/July 2017 Philosophy Now 31
some participants understand zircaum to mean ABC, some
participants understand zircaum to mean yellowish, bitter-
smelling, fragile mineral, and some participants recognise that
zircaum can be understood in either way, and that we cannot
objectively say that any one use of the word is better than any
of the others.
Although there is no such thing as zircaum, the word zir-
caum is just like water and cat in the relevant respect that things, each kind with a distinctive essence. For example, all
they are all understood by the relevant language users to be
words for natural kinds. So, just like zircaum, we can expect
water and cat to be ambiguous. Sometimes people will use
water to talk about H2O, and at other times people will use
water to talk about any clear, ocean-filling, thirst-quenching
liquid. Sometimes people will use cat to talk about animals
with the relevant genome, and at other times people will use
cat to talk about aloof, mouse-catching creatures of a certain
type of appearance that people take as pets. And so on. The
empirical evidence from this study, then, suggests that Putnam
is wrong about the meaning of words for natural kinds. His
premise that water always means H2O is false.
Consequences
To see what becomes of Putnams argument, we need to think
about how it is affected by the discovery that sometimes water
means clear, ocean-filling, thirst-quenching liquid.
Often this happens precisely when people are discussing Twin
Earth. For example, many people find it natural to describe
Twin Earth by saying The water in its oceans isnt H2O, but
XYZ. And in flashes of imagination, it can be just as natural
for them to include such embellishments as, We can imagine
that Twin Earth operates under totally different physical laws,
and that the only H2O on Twin Earth isnt water at all, but a
rare mineral used in luxury shampoo. But those statements
wouldnt make sense if water was being used to mean H2O.
Rather, here water is being used to mean clear, ocean-filling,
thirst-quenching liquid; which, when were talking about Twin
Earth, is XYZ. Taking these uses of language into account, it is
easy to see that some water isnt H2O namely, the water in
the oceans on Twin Earth and some H2O isnt water namely,
the H2O used in shampoo on Twin Earth. So it cant be the case
that to be water is to be H2O, nor that H2O is the essence of
water. The consequence is that were not going to be able to
Would the real zircaum
please stand up?
32 Philosophy Now June/July 2017
argue for Natural Kind Essentialism on the basis of what water
means. That is to say, in light of the empirical evidence we have
been discussing, it seems that we should give up on Putnams
argument for Natural Kind Essentialism, after all.
Does it follow that Natural Kind Essentialism is false? No.
Regardless of the evidence weve been discussing, nature might
nevertheless be divided up into objectively different kinds of
H2O might have one essence (characterised by being H2O) and
all XYZ another (characterised by being XYZ). What the empir-
ical evidence has shown us is that Putnams argument for Nat-
ural Kind Essentialism, using what words mean, fails. If you
think that Natural Kind Essentialism is true, youre going to
have to find a new way to argue for it.
Conclusions
The above discussion shows that empirical evidence can be rel-
evant to philosophy, even to the abstract sort of views usually
confined to armchair theorising. Natural Kind Essentialism
posits essences in an attempt to understand the objective dif-
ferences that we find in nature. But, according to the empirical
evidence weve looked at, Putnams argument for Natural Kind
Essentialism fails. Of course, a single study doesnt settle the
empirical facts, and so we would perhaps need to look at many
more experiments or studies before finally consigning Putnams
argument to the scrapheap.
This is just one example of how empirical evidence can be
useful in philosophy. Philosophers are increasingly using exper-
imentation as an objective basis to test their intuitions and argu-
ments. Evidence has already been deployed in a wide range of
philosophical debates, for example about consciousness, free
will, moral responsibility, race, the mind-world relation, and
knowledge, and the list is growing. It is fair to say that we can
expect this trend to continue.
All of this suggests that, somewhat surprisingly, philosophy
may not be so different from science after all. Philosophers are
taking a more empirically-minded approach to their quest for
knowledge, getting up and going out to perform experiments
and studies. And so, if nothing else, you may just see a few more
second-hand armchairs for sale over the next few years.
DR MARK PINDER 2017
Mark Pinder is a Visiting Professor at the University of Hertfordshire.
 The Morality of Getting Divorced
Justin McBrayer considers when divorce is morally permissable, and when it isnt.
I
ts almost impossible to find someone whose life has not
been significantly affected by divorce. Given this, the deci-
sion to end a marriage may be one of the most significant
moral decisions a person ever makes. So under what condi-
tions is it morally permissible to get a divorce?
To say that something is morally permissible means that there is
no moral obligation requiring you to act differently. So getting
divorced will be morally permissible only if you can do so while
meeting all your moral obligations. So what are the moral obliga-
tions that might make ending a marriage morally problematic?
What Makes Marriage Morally Special?
Many ethicists agree that getting married generates special moral
obligations that one would not otherwise have. It makes some
actions required that would otherwise not be, for example, sacri-
ficing something for your partners sake, and makes some actions
wrong that would otherwise not be, for example, having sex with
a non-partner. But what explains the fact that when two people
marry, new moral obligations are created?
Marriage creates moral obligations primarily because it
involves promise-making. Promise-making is a way of generat-
ing moral obligations if I promise to pick you up at the airport,
then I have taken on a moral obligation to do so. And whatever
else a wedding ceremony may be, it is an event during which two
people make promises to one another. It follows that getting mar-
ried is a way of generating new moral obligations.
Some ethicists resist this line of thought. They insist that mar-
riage promises have no power to create new moral obligations.
According to these philosophers, this is because marital vows are
promises to feel a certain way or to have certain emotions towards
ones partner, but we have no control over our feelings or emo-
tions, and it makes no sense to say that someone is morally obli-
gated to do something that is beyond her control. Thus, promis-
ing to do something the doing of which one cannot control does
not result in a new moral obligation.
There are at least two good reasons to reject this analysis.
First, it is plausible that in the marriage context we are promising
to do things that are in our control or over which we have indirect
control. For example, when we get married we pledge to do our
best to bring about a certain emotional state, or make an uncon-
ditional commitment to another person. Second, and more
importantly, anyone who has been to a wedding can see that
although there are often emotional components to marital vows,
there are obvious behavioral components as well. In fact, most of
us see getting married as a promise to do something for our part-
ner. Consider the following wedding vow, taken at random from
an online search:
I, [name], take you, [name], to be my [husband/wife], my constant
friend, my faithful partner and my love from this day forward. In the
presence of God, our family and friends, I offer you my solemn vow to
be your faithful partner in sickness and in health, in good times and in
bad, and in joy as well as in sorrow. I promise to love you uncondition-
ally, to support you in your goals, to honor and respect you, to laugh
with you and cry with you, and to cherish you for as long as we both
shall live.
Notice how heavily this vow focuses on actions compared to
emotions: support ones partner, honor ones partner, respect ones
partner, and so on. Even the emotional content is easily under-
stood in a behavioral sense: to be a faithful partner in sickness and
health clearly has a behavioral component. To see this, imagine
the following thought-experiment. Suppose Landon makes the
aforementioned promise to Hannah. Suppose next that he feels
all the right things toward her (for example, he is in love with her),
but that his behavior is wildly erratic he sleeps around, is ver-
bally abusive to Hannah, abandons her when she is ill, etc. Would
anyone be willing to say that Landon has fulfilled his wedding
vow? Surely not. This shows that we see wedding vows as
promises not simply to feel a certain way, but primarily as
promises to act a certain way.
So marital vows do create new moral obligations. Further-
more, we typically think that the strength of the moral obligation
generated by making a promise varies with the seriousness of the
promise-making, the clarity of the promises made, and the con-
sequences of breaking the promise. Marital promises score high
in all three categories. A wedding vow, celebrated with all the
pomp and circumstance many people can afford, is one of the
most serious promises most people ever make. And although the
clarity of wedding vows is not universal, many couples carefully
construct the wording of their vows, spending a long time talking
through what they are and are not willing to promise one another.
Finally, breaking a marriage promise often has devastating effects
for numerous people. In all, then, it appears that the marriage
promise creates a strong and special obligation between the mar-
riage partners.
Illegitimate Promises
Marriage obligations exist because of promises, then. So in order
to determine whether divorce is morally permissible, we need to
June/July 2017 Philosophy Now 33
determine whether it would violate marriage promises.
First, it follows that divorce is morally permissible if marital
promises have failed to generate special moral obligations in the
first place. We noted that making a promise does usually generate
moral duties. However, not all promises generate obligations. In
particular, promises generate new obligations only when the per-
son making the promise is autonomous, and informed, and does so
willingly. Otherwise, the promise is morally illegitimate. We
might say that it is not a real promise.
Sometimes a partner is coerced into marriage. Such coercion
affects the condition that the marriage promise be made willingly.
When angry parents force a scared pregnant girl to marry the
father of her unborn child, it is implausible that either she or he
does so entirely willingly. Alternatively, a marriage partner might
be too young, too mentally undeveloped, or otherwise incompe-
tent to make a morally binding pledge such as is required for a true
marriage promise. In such cases, the promises are not made by a
fully autonomous agent. When a thirteen-year-old girl marries a
much older man, as is common in some cultures, it is implausible
that she is emotionally and intellectually developed enough to
give fully autonomous consent to the kind of promise made
between partners in a marriage. Finally, a marriage partner might
have been too ignorant of the situation or nature of the other part-
ner, or even blatantly deceived by them. In such a case, the promise
is not made by a suitably informed agent. For instance, when a girl
deceives her partner about the fact that she is HIV positive, such
deception annuls their marital promises.
In all of these cases, the marital promises are illegitimate, and
hence they create no special moral duties between the partners.
And if there are no such special moral duties, then it is morally per-
missible to sever the relationship through divorce.
Bilateral Divorce
If I promise to pick you up from the airport, but you find another
ride, you may release me from my promise. Just as making a legit-
imate promise creates an obligation, releasing someone from a
promise eliminates an obligation. Thus, one straightforward way
for divorce to be morally permissible would be for both partners
to release the other from their respective marital promises. Call
that a bilateral divorce a divorce by mutual consent.
34 Philosophy Now June/July 2017
You might think that even if the two partners agree to end a
marriage, it is still wrong to do so if their promises were made
before God. However, a promise before someone is different than
a promise to someone. A promise made before you makes you a
witness, whereas a promise made to you makes you a beneficiary.
You dont have to get Gods permission in a case where He is not
the beneficiary.
It is important to note two more things. First, even though a
bilateral divorce is typically morally permissible in other words,
it is morally permissible all other things being equal sometimes
all other things are not equal. An obvious example of this kind of
case involves families with children. Parents have moral obliga-
tions to their children as well as to each other. Insofar as these
obligations require that parents refrain from doing what is bad
for their children, and insofar as divorce is bad for children, then
other factors notwithstanding, these same parental obligations
require that parents refrain from getting a divorce, at least while
the children are young enough to suffer harm from it.
Second, many people are troubled by apparently cavalier
divorces. Hollywood stars who get married apparently on a whim
and divorced six months later provide typical examples. These
cases appear to be cases of bilateral divorce, and hence they are to
that extent morally permissible. So what do we find so troubling
about them? My suggestion is that there seems something amiss
with the moral character of people who behave in this sort of way.
What they do may, strictly speaking, be morally permissible, but
the apparent attitude behind it reveals a moral vice: that they are
quick to make promises that they are unable or unwilling to keep.
People who casually make and abandon marital promises are not,
morally speaking, the kind of people we want to be. This is not
moral behaviour in the wider application of the term.
Divorce When A Partner Cannot Fulfill Their Duties
Moral philosophers often say that ought implies can. What they
mean is that if you really ought to do something, this implies you
must be able to do that thing. In other words, it is conceptually
confused to say of someone that he ought to do something if it is
impossible for him to do it. This principle is relevant to divorce in
the following way: if you become unable to do what you have
promised to do, then you cannot have a moral obligation to do that
thing. And hence divorce will be morally permissible any time one
of the partners is literally unable to keep the marital promise.
However, determining whether a divorce is permissible for this
reason requires being clear about what marital promises are about.
In many cases, marital promises are about goals over which we
have indirect control. Two plausible candidates for the goals that
marital promises are aimed at are: (A) the goal of fostering a lov-
ing relationship between the partners, and (B) the long-term goal
of making a partners life better.
Suppose that these are both plausible candidates for what we
are pledging when we get married. If the goal is (B), we have the
following interesting result: when staying together does not make
your partners life better, in the long run, then your marital
promises do not obligate you to stay together. For example, sup-
pose one of the partners becomes involved in an extramarital
affair, and that she and her lover are happy building their lives
together. In this case, it is morally permissible for the other part-
ner to initiate a divorce on the grounds that his promise to his part-
ner was aimed at making her life better and he is unable to do so
given the current situation. Because he cannot do so, he has no
moral obligation to do so. Thus, in this sort of circumstance it may
be morally permissible to formally mutually end the relationship.
Unilateral Divorce
A unilateral divorce happens when only one of the partners
desires the dissolution of the marriage. Since promises produce
moral obligations, the obligations from marital promises make it
morally wrong to seek a unilateral divorce in many cases. Con-
sider the case of a man who wants to divorce his wife on the
grounds that she has been recently diagnosed with a chronic
degenerative disease. This is not a morally permissable ground
for divorce. In particular, neither non-reciprocation nor the lack of
happiness of one of the partners justifies unilateral divorce.
Many people who divorce cite the fact that their partners did
not reciprocate in certain ways as justification for the divorce.
Their partners werent doing their part in the relationship.
Whether this counts as a morally adequate reason to get a divorce
depends on whether the marriage promises were unconditional
or conditional, and the nature of the conditions. Take, for
instance, the promise to be sexually faithful to ones partner. On
an unconditional reading, this promise says, No matter what
happens, I promise to be sexually faithful to you. However, on a
conditional reading, the promise might say, I will be sexually
faithful to you so long as you are sexually faithful to me. On the
unconditional reading, one has a moral reason to be sexually
faithful to ones partner regardless of what he or she has done. On
the conditional reading, one has a moral reason to be sexually
faithful to ones partner if and only if he or she has also been sex-
ually faithful. Generally, if marital promises are conditional, then
the non-reciprocation of a partner in such a way would cancel out
the moral obligation generated, and hence a divorce would be
morally permissible. But if marital promises are unconditional,
then the non-reciprocation of a partner is morally irrelevant, and
hence a divorce would be morally impermissible.
Does happiness, or the lack of it, count as a valid condition for
divorce?
Regarding the (supposed) right to be happy, many people cite
their ongoing unhappiness as the justification for their divorce.
The idea is that if it becomes impossible for a person to be gen-
uinely happy while married to their partner, it is morally permis-
sible for them to divorce that partner.
Two things should be noted in response to this line of thought.
First, a right to be happy is at best a negative right: it is at best the
right to pursue happiness as long as you can do so without violating
the rights of others. But this sort of right doesnt mean that a
divorce is morally permissible, even if it is true that one cannot be
happy without a divorce. Compare this with the negative right to
own a car (that is, the right to take steps to own a car as long as you
can do so without violating the rights of others). This right doesnt
mean that stealing a car is morally permissible, even if it is true that
you cannot get one without stealing it. The crucial issue in both
cases is whether the action in question would violate a moral obli-
gation, and in both cases it would: breaking a marital promise in the
first case, and the obligation not to steal in the second. Second, we
dont ordinarily think that one can get out of a promise, like any
other sort of contract, simply because performance of the promise
SAD CHILD JAVAD ALIZADEH 2007
or contract will cause one unhappiness. Consider a standard com-
mercial contract: one business cannot renege on a contract with
another business even if doing so would be crucial for the profits or
success of the first business. Or suppose I promise to pick you up
from the airport, but on the appointed day realize that I would be
happier doing other things. This does not mean that I no longer
have a moral obligation to pick you up from the airport. By the
same reasoning, ones happiness, or lack of it, does not on its own
make breaking a marital promise morally permissable.
Thoughts To Take Away
Many divorces are morally permissible. These include cases in
which the marriage promise was illegitimate, scenarios in which
one of the partners is unable to fulfill the promises, and considered
bilateral divorce. But many divorces are also morally wrong,
including those in which the partners have other obligations that
require them to stay together, at least for a time, and unilateral
divorces in which one partners non-reciprocation or ones right to
be happy is cited as the sole reason for the divorce.
There are two take-away thoughts. First, we should be very
careful with the promises that we make to our marriage partner
on our wedding day. These promises ground special moral obli-
gations, and yet they are all too often vague, unclear, or impossi-
ble to fulfill. Partners entering into a marriage should have
explicit conversations about their expectations for the future, the
promises they are willing to make to one another, and the uncon-
ditional or conditional nature of such promises. Second, we
should also be very careful about the decision to get a divorce.
Whether a divorce is morally permissible depends on a great
many things, including the content of the promises made
between the partners.Merely citing a right to be happy does not
dissolve the moral obligations we have in other areas of life. Nor
does it on its own obviate the moral obligation we have to stick
with a spouse when doing so makes us unhappy.
DR JUSTIN P. MCBRAYER 2017
Justin McBrayer is a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Innsbruck
and Associate Professor of Philosophy at Fort Lewis College, the liberal
arts college for the state of Colorado.
June/July 2017 Philosophy Now 35
Street Philosopher
Acceptable In Amsterdam
Sen Moran tiptoes tolerantly through the tulips.
T
he bearded man wearing a white
wedding dress in my photograph
seems to be smoking a joint.
Since this was Amsterdam, he
attracted no negative attention, as far as I
could see. According to a 2015 EU survey,
the Netherlands is among the most tolerant
countries in Europe with respect to LGBT
issues and ethnic background,alongside
Sweden, Denmark and Ireland. Though
even in the Netherlands things are changing,
as I discovered chatting to locals who would
know, and observing Dutch politics.
Intolerance seems to be on the rise inter-
nationally. The election of Donald Trump
in the USA and the Brexit vote in the UK
may be partly due to an increasing unwill-
ingness to tolerate difference. We have
found the right way to live, and will not put
up with others who are different.
But, you might ask, why shouldnt we
tolerate the man I photographed? As long
as passers-by didnt inhale too deeply, he
offered no threat to anyone. And his image,
though unconventional, is harmless. Indeed
a beard is virtually compulsory (for males)
in some quarters: in the pogonophilic
beard-loving districts of Shoreditch,
London, and Brooklyn, NY, for example,
where it is an essential part of the hipster-
lumberjack look. But beards can also
provoke hostility pogonophobia in areas
where facial hair denotes radicalisation.
Other aspects of my subjects lifestyle could
be attacked too: on ethical, medical, reli-
gious, political, or aesthetic grounds.
That goes for all of us, though. No matter
what you look like or how you behave, there
will be someone, somewhere, who would
take exception to you and would express
their bigoted judgements aggressively. Only
recently I was loudly upbraided by another
McDonalds customer for having the temer-
ity to read Aquinass Summa Theologiae while
drinking coffee. It was just my reading a
book in public that provoked his ire, not any
specific quarrel with Thomistic meta-
physics. If you spotted someone holding
Philosophy Now you could be pretty sure that
youd have much in common. This marker
of intelligence and sophistication would
signal their membership of our tolerant clan.
Unless, of course, they were using it as
kindling for a public book-burning.
36 Philosophy Now June/July 2017
The Progress of Toleration
The word toleration comes from the Latin
tolerare, to put up with. Medieval philoso-
phers defined toleration as permissio negativa
mali a negative permission of evil
putting up with wrong-ish things. In later
centuries, states began tolerating some theo-
logical differences. The Maryland Tolera-
tion Act (1649), for example, allowed a
measure of religious freedom to citizens (but
prescribed the death penalty for anyone
denying the Trinity). In A Letter Concerning
Toleration (1689), the English empiricist
philosopher John Locke advocated permit-
ting individuals to hold any private beliefs
apart from Catholics and atheists, that is.
Nowadays, the term toleration suggests
reluctant permission, while tolerance indi-
cates a more kindly, liberal sentiment; but
they are practically synonymous. On a
personal level, they both inhabit the concep-
tual region between our approval and our
condemnation. This willingness to live and
let live seems a benign way to go about our
day. But while it is an improvement on intol-
erance, there is something slightly patronis-
ing about this attitude of acceptance. The
German writer Johann Wolfgang von
Goethe said that Tolerance should be a
temporary attitude only: it must lead to
appreciation. To tolerate means to offend
(Maximen und Reflexionen, 1829). In tolerat-
ing people, we secretly disapprove of them,
even as we outwardly feign acceptance. This
dishonesty is vaguely insulting, so we should
engage instead in dialogue. After such an
encounter, we may no longer look down on
them, but start to see things from their
perspective, and perhaps show some solidar-
ity. Goethe has a point. Still, nobody likes
having their lifestyle examined too closely,
even individuals of the same tribe.
In a sense, tolerant people are members
of a tribe too a tribe that others find intol-
erable. And the feelings are mutual: the
tolerant can be vicious when anyone
disagrees with them. So the French epithet
bien-pensant right-thinking is increas- because to their ears, foreign languages
ingly used pejoratively against the tolerant
tribe, implying hypocrisy, especially
concerning matters of the freedom of
thought.
Granted, it is sometimes easy to mock
open-minded, tolerant practices unthink-
ingly. At an Oxford conference I was at last
year, the chair sensitively asked participants
to introduce themselves and state their
preferred gender pronoun, specifying
whether we should call them he, she,
they, or another term. It was an inclusive
gesture to transgender and non-binary dele-
gates, but there were some raised eyebrows.
However, we should bear in mind UK
research showing that nearly half of trans
people under 26 said they had attempted
suicide (The Guardian, 2014). Having the
good manners to use the requested pronoun
is a small but important mark of respect
which costs the user nothing but avoids
adding to the discomfort of those who may
be suffering daily from hostile misgender-
ing, exclusion, and abuse by intolerant
strangers.
Keeping up with the terminology is a chal-
lenge for the penseur who aspires to be bon,
though. The abbreviations of identity politics
are becoming increasingly all-encompassing.
The longest Ive seen in print is LGBTQI-
AGNC, which stands for Lesbian, Gay,
Bisexual, Trans, Queer, Intersex, Asexual,
Gender-Non-Conforming. Even this leaves
out some variants, such as Pansexual and
Questioning. Some people advocate stream-
lining all of these into the acronym GLOW
(Gay, Lesbian, Or Whatever), but this is
rather dismissive of the Whatever folks.
How about the Irishism Quare, instead?
Group Toleration
Othering the stranger and those who are
different has a long history, because xeno-
phobic sentiments do have a sort of logic
behind them (although they have outlived
their usefulness). Back in Paleolithic times,
someone from outside ones own hunter-
gatherer tribe, or just out of step with its
norms, represented a threat. Through the
lens of survival value, therefore, it served us
well to view the unfamiliar and the unusual
with suspicion. The Ancient Greeks called
people from other places barbarians
sounded like bar bar bar. Regarding them
as other as not fully human removed any
residual guilt at mistreating or enslaving
them. The Third Century BCE Roman
writer Titus Plautus expressed this de-
humanising of the stranger tellingly: homo

homini lupus est; man is a wolf to man that
is, to those who dont know him.
The tribal shibboleths that differentiate
friend from potential foe can be very subtle.
Sigmund Freud wrote of the narcissism of
minor differences. We think so highly of our
own tribe that even slight deviations from our
norms become unduly
important. In the Monty
Python film Life of Brian
(1979), we see the mutual
hatred between the Judean
Peoples Front, the Peoples
Front of Judea, and the
Judean Popular Peoples
Front.
Its easy to be smug.
When Tony Blair was UK
Prime Minister, he said in a
2006 speech to Muslims,
Our tolerance is part of
what makes Britain, Britain.
Conform to it; or dont come
here. His word conform
betrays the intolerant moti-
vation of some apparently
benign pleas for tolerance.
Such talk demonises certain
other groups as being intol-
erant, as opposed to our
tolerance. And there is
something self-refuting
about showing intolerance
towards the allegedly intol-
erant. Like (real) lumber-
jacks inadvisedly sawing off
the branch upon which they
sit, those intolerant of intol-
erance will fall from their
lofty perch, having forgotten
their own principle.
Tempering Toleration
But of course some things
are intolerable. Cruelty, for
example. So what is a
reasonable stance to take
towards a world that
presents us with multiple
annoyances, of various
levels of seriousness?
Perhaps the Aristotelian
notion of good temper is
one solution. In his Nicomachean Ethics, Aris-
totle placed this virtue at a mean between the
twin vices of irascibility and inirascibility
(roughly, apathy). Much like the UK comedy
character Victor Meldrew (catch phrase: I
dont believe it!), the irascible person is
easily provoked to angry disapproval. At the
other extreme, apathetic people are totally
Street Philosopher
indifferent to whatever they observe. No evil neering) tolerance. (The technicians also
can rouse them to righteous anger. The helped many Jews to survive, earning Leitz the
middle way, good temper, is the virtuous title the photographic Schindler.) In modern
disposition. production, components whose measure-
Since were discussing intolerable evil, its ments fall outside specified limits will typically
inevitable that Godwins Law will apply and be rejected. Not so in the heyday of precision
the Nazis will appear (Mike Godwin claims hand assembly. Neighbouring components
were modified slightly to
accommodate the out-
of-specification part, so
that the finished camera
mechanism operated
smoothly.
How far out-of-spec-
ification are each of us?
Even if we disallow
having a specified
essence to live up to,
there is still the matter of
our socially-constructed
self being out of kilter
with the society that
constructed it. Either
way, we are probably less
socially perfect than we
could be. Answering his
own question What is
tolerance?, the Eigh-
teenth Century French
philosopher Voltaire
suggested that since we
are all formed of frailty
and error, let us pardon
reciprocally each others
folly. The deal is that we
find a modus vivendi a
way of accommodating
the foibles of others,
while they in turn over-
look our peculiarities.
We should all perhaps
show an Aristotelian
good temper.
In his book Leviathan
(1651), the English
political philosopher
Thomas Hobbes
proposed that A fifth
Law of Nature is
Compleasance; that is to
say, That every man
strive to accommodate
himself to the rest. If we
that the probability of this approaches one the extend Hobbes definition to embrace the full
longer a discussion continues). I use vintage spectrum of men and women square and
Leitz cameras to take the photographs for quare, smooth, bearded, or shaven it seems
this column; the oldest was made in Germany like a tolerably good principle to follow.
in 1932, just before Hitler came to power. DR SEAN MORAN 2017
But while the Third Reich was notoriously Sen Moran is in Waterford Institute of Tech-
intolerant, the Ernst Leitz factory techni- nology, and is a founder of Pandisciplinary.Net, a
cians had an interesting approach to (engi- global network of people, projects, and events.
June/July 2017 Philosophy Now 37

Often Reasonable
DEAR EDITOR: Eugene Earnshaw in
Issue 119 provides a lively discussion of
induction. Precise definition is essential
to both deduction and induction. Con-
sider deduction: all who commit murder
should be hanged; he committed mur-
der; he should be hanged. Unless we
define murder precisely, the conclusion
might be that someone who uninten-
tionally killed by misadventure should
be hanged perhaps not what even the
most ardent supporter of capital punish-
ment would want. Or take the inductive
argument that all swans are white; there-
fore the swans on your lake will be
white. But your lake is in Australia,
where they are black. We would have
avoided the error with a more precise
definition of all swans: it should be that
all swans so far seen in the Northern
hemisphere have been white.
When we define the premises of a
deduction precisely it appears that some
deductions are really inductive argu-
ments. All humans die; Socrates is
human; so Socrates will die. But we can
only say that up till now all humans have
died. So it assumes that the future will
be like the past when we say Socrates
will die.
Once the past has been adequately
defined we must assess the probability
that the future will be like it. At least
three considerations affect that. How
extensive is our experience of the past
situation in question? Billions of humans
have died, and only millions of white
swans have been seen. So it is safer to
bet that Socrates will die than that we
will never see coloured swans. Second,
does past experience illustrate a univer-
sal rule? The set of humans belongs to
the larger set of multicellular animals,
which have all died so far. The set of
swans belongs to the larger set of birds.
They are not all white. That is another
reason why it is safer to predict death
than the whiteness of future swans.
Third, we must determine the reason
38 Philosophy Now l June/July 2017
Letters
When inspiration strikes, dont bottle it up!
Write to me at: Philosophy Now
43a Jerningham Road London SE14 5NQ U.K.
or email rick.lewis@philosophynow.org
Keep them short and keep them coming!
why the past has been what it is, and
consider why that reason might cease to
apply. The reasons swans are white and
humans die are both biological, mainly
genetic. Scientists are busily working to
prolong human life. Sadly there is no
interest in breeding red swans. So from
that point of view it is safer to bet on the
continued whiteness of Northern hemi-
sphere swans than on certain death.
Those three reasons make it a safe
bet that a dropped wineglass will fall to
the floor. But precise definition is still
necessary. It will fall provided that the
intervening medium is no denser than
the glass, and no one catches it.
ALLEN SHAW
LEEDS
DEAR EDITOR: Dr Earnshaw has many
witty and suggestive things to say in
Issue 119, not just about Humes prob-
lem, but about philosophys problem-
solving problem. However, his squaring-
the-circle argument is neither deductive
nor persuasive, though it does capture
enough of our modern notion of proba-
bility to appear reasonable.
His main arguments two premises,
that an individual will be randomly
selected from the population, and that
most members of the population blow
the bugle beautifully, presume a future
event and a current state of affairs respec-
tively. The very form of the argument
begs the question of a possible logical
connection between past events and
future occurrences. Further, each
premise individually takes continuity
over time for granted: the second
premise does so by presupposing an
ongoing stable population with a fixed
characteristic; the first stipulates as cer-
tain an even less knowable future state.
Thus there is little to the argument that
is deductive besides its ostensible struc-
ture, and a whole lot of implicit induc-
tive reasoning going on.
The key question in any case is: Does
induction require a logical justification?
Humes profound insight that induction
is a settled habit of mind suggests not.
Thinkers as diverse as Thomas Reid and
Ludwig Wittgenstein have argued that
belief in natural continuity is part of our
fundamental way of seeing the world.
Since rational argumentation takes this
conceptual framework for granted, it
doesnt itself require any form of ratio-
nal justification. Inductions deep-seated
ubiquity helps explain why Dr Earnshaw
cant avoid using the unjustified conti-
nuity of nature as his arguments pri-
mary building block.
For those still insisting on the need
to rationally justify induction, the fol-
lowing might be as good as it gets:
P1: We think the future will be like the
past (even if we sometimes get it
wrong).
P2: We have no reason to think the
future will not be like the past (we have
no reason to think that we will always
get things wrong).
C: Its therefore rational to go on think-
ing the future will be like the past.
At least, this seems logical to me...
ROBERT SAWYER
LONG BEACH, CALIFORNIA
DEAR EDITOR: In his Brief Life of
David Hume in Issue 119, Sir Alistair
MacFarlane says that causal reasoning is
older than the use of formal logic, since
even stone-age man would reason that
one stone is able to splinter another
stone. However, surely that man could
not reason, or even think at all, without
the use of deductive logic? For after
forming the causal (inductive) hypothe-
sis that certain stones splinter other
stones, he then must logically deduce
that this particular stone will splinter
this other stone. He would then be
employing the hypothetico-deductive
method, which, as its name implies,
involves deduction.
Indeed, we can even infer that deduc-

tion predated induction, since if one
caveman told his family that a rabbit is
behind the bush then they could logi-
cally deduce that the rabbit is not in
front of the bush. This does not require
knowledge of any causal regularity.
Causal reasoning is a type of thinking;
but logic is a prerequisite for language
and thought to be possible at all.
DAVE S. HENLEY
GRAAFF-REINET, SOUTH AFRICA
DEAR EDITOR: Answering your recent
reader survey, I asked for more on David
Hume and less lads stuff like references
to The Matrix, a film which few elderly
ladies like me have seen.
Although I dont normally do things
like this, I thought I would write and
congratulate you on having both Hume
and The Matrix in the current issue,
although I cant remember where I
found The Matrix mentioned. Hume, of
course, was on the cover.
I am also grateful to Dr Earnshaw for
resolving Humes problem, but I find it
quite easy to deduce that the future will
be like the past and that The Matrix will
turn up again in the next issue.
ANITA MILLER,
ALTON, HANTS
Genetic Variation
DEAR EDITOR: The article Informing
People About Their Genetic Risks by
Jan Deckers and Dominic Hall (Issue
119) arguably takes too narrow a view of
the ethical issues around genetic testing
by presenting an unrealistic scenario and
misrepresenting the joint account
model of genetic information proposed
by Parker and Lucassen (British Medical
Journal 329, 2004).
The scenario described by Deckers
and Hall involves the disclosure to a
patientss relatives of the presence in the
patient of a specific APOE genotype
which increases the risk of late-onset
Alzheimers Disease. Deckers and Hall
suggested that this disclosure could
come out of the blue. Firstly, at least in
the UK, clinical geneticists would be
very unlikely to contact relatives of any
patient out of the blue. Any contact
would normally depend on the individ-
ual having shared their genetic results
with relevant relatives. Secondly, given
that it is a late onset condition with no
treatment, where the risk is probabilistic
rather than absolute, and the limited
predictive value is further complicated
by the likely existence of modifier genes,
APOE is almost the paradigmatic case
where contacting relatives would be
likely to cause more harm than good.
The major network of genetic testing
laboratories in Britain (UKGTN) has no
laboratories prepared to offer APOE
testing in the context of Alzheimers
(although testing is available for APOE
genotypes in the context of hyperlipi-
demia, where treatments are available).
The joint account model is accused by
Deckers and Hall of asserting that
geneticists should inform family mem-
bers of their own genetic risks as a matter
of course and of using the ludicrous
analogy that genetic information is like
the information held on a joint bank
account, where all parties are informed
by the bank about financial affairs as a
matter of course. Actually the discussion
by Parker and Lucassen is much more
nuanced. Firstly, they use a more realistic
scenario, involving the female carrier of a
serious X-linked condition (Duchenne
muscular dystrophy, usually only affect-
ing males) who refuses to share this
information with her pregnant sister.
Their discussion includes the potential
harm of non-disclosure to the pregnant
sister, as well as the potential harm of
disclosure to the original patient. Where
the harm to the patient of sharing the
information is relatively small, they say it
could be argued that justice demands
the routine sharing of the benefits of
genetic information except in exceptional
circumstances. Considerations of auton-
omy do not only apply to the first mem-
ber of the family to be tested. Though
every case will be different, and the rela-
tive harms of different courses of action
must be carefully weighed, the joint
account model is an important and work-
able approach that takes into account the
unique features of genetic risk.
DAVID BOURN
NEWCASTLE UPON TYNE
Remembering Wonderland
DEAR EDITOR: Professor Tallis says
(Issue 119) that there is no way that the
brain, even with its estimated 86 billion
neurons, countless trillions of synapses
and various specialised areas, can fully
account for our episodic memories. He
proposes instead that there is a part of us
ungoverned by the laws of physics which
somehow does what is necessary.
Letters
Now I know that your columnist does
not think much of computer analogies as
explanations for the working of the
mind, so let us start with old technology.
If I had kept paper diaries of my lifes
twists and turns, and wanted to know
more about what happened on a particu-
lar day, I could look at the relevant diary
to find out what had happened and any
feelings I had recorded. If though I had
kept my diaries in electronic form then I
could go further and find out when I last
mentioned, say, eating jelly and ice-
cream, and then read the entry in full to
find out what I had recorded about that
episode. To achieve this, the data would
have to be in a searchable form. As a
minimum, each day should have a few
relevant key words allocated to it which
the software could match with the search
terms. If, as I would suggest, this is an
in-principle description of how our
minds work then, contrary to Professor
Talliss assumption, I would not have to
know in advance what the entire entry
looked like, or even that there was an
entry, in order to find data which may
correspond in some way with the sort of
thing I was looking for. Of course, I may
be disappointed, if the keyword jelly
were in fact a reference to gelignite.
Equally important is the reason for
starting to look for such an entry in the
first place. The recall of my episodic
memories seems to be prompted by
events currently going on around me,
including other memories playing out in
my mind. The point is that I dont delib-
erately search for memories out of the
blue, wholly unrelated to my present cir-
cumstances. This therefore means that I
dont have to first remember what it is I
want to remember, as Professor Tallis
says. I would suggest instead that memo-
ries are automatically retrieved in a con-
tinual, contextual, necessarily imprecise,
search process. Professor Tallis says that
having memories triggered by events
would result in chaos because, in his
view, everything is in some way related
to everything else. But this presumes a
search process which is far less sophisti-
cated than, for instance, Google has
managed to create to make money from
us. Precisely how my memories are
indexed and the search criteria applied I
do not know, but I see no infinite regress
in describing the process in this way.
THOMAS JEFFREYS,
COLESHILL, WARWICKSHIRE
June/July 2017 l Philosophy Now 39
Letters
Multiple Multiverse Problems
DEAR EDITOR: I was interested in Rui
Vieiras article Can the Multiverse Give
You An Afterlife in Issue 119, but I
believe Vieira is placing wishful thinking
above likelihood for the following reasons:
1) The Multiverse is only one theory to
explain quantum mechanics. However,
since there is no observational evidence
for the Multiverse, we should use Ock-
hams Razor and test other theories that
explain quantum mechanics before
accepting multiple universes.
2) It can be claimed that there is an infi-
nite number of substantial entities in an
infinite Multiverse. However there is
also an infinite number of conceivable
entities. The question is, are these two
sets of entities identical are all the
members of one of these sets in the other
set? According to Cantors Paradox one
infinite set can have more members than
another infinite set (for example, the set
of real numbers has more members than
the set of integers, even though both sets
have an infinite number of members).
Thus all members of the set of conceived
entities do not have to be a member of
the set of substantial entities. Thus it
does not inevitably follow that all possi-
ble arrangements of energy/matter will
be realised an infinite number of times.
Rather, nature follows the principle of
minimising energy in producing entities.
3) Given the problem outlined above, if
the replacing of first person conscious-
ness can take place, our first person con-
sciousness is more likely to be replaced
by another first person consciousness
than to do the replacing. This likelihood
increases as we age, as the number of
available identical bodies in parallel uni-
verses decreases with time due to the
myriad possible ways we have succeeded
in escaping the Grim Reaper. For exam-
ple, how many times have we avoided
being hit by the bus which eliminated
one of our doppelgangers?
4) Our bodies have built-in obsolescence,
so all Vieira is offering is a delay in our
inevitable demise rather than an afterlife
in any conventional use of that term.
We should focus on our real footprint,
our effect on the world we leave behind,
rather than dream of immortality.
RUSSELL BERG, MANCHESTER
Social Rights
DEAR EDITOR: Jesse Tomaltys great
opening article in Issue 118, Is There A
40 Philosophy Now l June/July 2017
Human Right To Internet Access?, dis-
tinguishes between natural and legal
rights. The notion of natural rights,
however, seems to me a wholly unnatural
thing. She says that natural rights are
held universally by all humans simply in
virtue of being human and that, in con-
trast, legal rights are social constructs.
Can this be true? Since natural rights are
supposed to be in the interest of at least
an overwhelming majority, it is difficult
to see how they could be independent of
the societies out of which they sprang.
Consider freedom. Freedom is only
actively sought after because our soci-
eties impose some restrictions upon indi-
vidual human beings. Because the con-
cept does not make sense outside of a
society, it follows that natural rights are
society-dependent and, therefore, social
constructs, like legal rights.
To avoid the conclusion that estab-
lished natural rights evolved with soci-
eties, one needs to make natural rights so
vague as to equate them with survival
instincts, which would be unhelpful. A
more useful distinction might oppose
legal to desired rights; realised versus
unrealised; compromised implementa-
tion versus uncompromised ideas, etc.
PEDRO GRILO, LONDON
Imagining Kafkaland
DEAR EDITOR: After reading San
Morans Daydreaming in Prague in
Issue 118 (Prague being Kafkaland, by the
way), Im reminded of a distinction made
by Coleridge between fancy (a rough
equivalent to mind-wandering) and imag-
ination (a rough equivalent to focused
daydreaming). As Coleridge also said:
Its alright to build castles in the air. The
idea is to build foundations under them.
Moran complements this by recognizing
the import of both fancy and imagination
and how they interact. However, in both
cases, the focus is on the creative act. But
Id argue its bigger than that: consider
the coup that fancy, via consumer capital-
ism, has imposed on our culture and the
damage it will do if left unchecked by
imagination. As Moran rightly points out,
fancy or mind-wandering is essential to
any creative act for the very reason that it
opens us up to unforeseen possibilities
and gets us beyond ourselves. But, as its
critics note, it is lazy in nature and prone
to baser impulses. At its most innocuous,
it leads to the basement overmen who sit
in environmentally-controlled caves, their
faces blazing in the glow of computer
screens as they get ready for action in
some post-civilization future. But even
more problematic is the way its exploited
through the media. Capitalism has per-
fected the art of selling possibility, with
ads saturating us with visions of lives we
could lead if only we bought the right
products. Meanwhile, the culture of
celebrity holds us in awe and reality TV
and YouTube dangle the possibility that
our lives could be so interesting as to gain
us our fifteen minutes of fame.
With all this mental wandering, and
minimal effort to anchor it, its no won-
der that America (with collateral effects
for the rest of the world) is looking at a
presidency that galloped in on what felt
like a Quentin Tarantino revenge fan-
tasy; one that was and is propped up not
so much on alternative facts as by the
unchecked fancies of the alt-right.
Fancy and imagination mind wan-
dering and focused daydreaming are not
just about how we create; they are about
how we come to engage with our world.
D. TARKINGTON, NEBRASKA
Midgleys Far Reach
DEAR EDITOR: Another brilliant (double)
essay from Mary Midgley (Issues 116,
117). She rightly argues that matters of
fact must intrude on some matters of
value; but she doesnt quite go the whole
hog to state that David Hume was plain
wrong when he claimed that you cant
get an ought from an is. We can gain
ethics from the practicalities of trying to
meet our wants and needs, bearing in
mind the commonality of those needs,
the need for cooperation in meeting
them, and the fact that ones happiness
does not usually rest on anothers misery.
The real obstruction is that many dont
find the result of this process of thinking
emotionally satisfying or convincing. But
is that a fair reaction? This approach puts
morality on a solid footing for the first
time. Its also worth remembering that it
does not involve compulsion. Thats why
we have prisons.
Midgley also provides excellent criti-
cism of over-specialisation in philoso-
phy. One crosses a line into nonsense if
one assumes that sound philosophical
procedure only ever involves the mental
microscope and never the wide angle
lens, or that wider intelligibility is of no
consequence.
DARYN GREEN, LONDON
IMAGE BY CAROL BELANGER GRAFTON
The Philosopher as Historian
Peter Adamson on Russells History of Western Philosophy
B
ertrand Russell was many things: logi-
cian, mathematician, anti-war activist,
atheist, and, unexpectedly, historian of
philosophy. Unexpectedly, because we tend to
think of philosophy especially the sort of
technical analytic philosophy that Russell
helped pioneer as an ahistorical discipline. Its
an attitude epitomized by a note the philoso-
pher Gilbert Harman pinned to his office door:
The history of philosophy: just say no! But
the immediate occasion was more parochial
than Harmans slogan suggests. He was
protesting the idea that philosophy students at
Princeton should be required to study the his-
tory of philosophy. He later remarked that
although he has nothing against history of phi-
losophy, he sees it as distinct from philosophy
itself.
Most would probably disagree with
Harman on the teaching curriculum, yet agree
with that last point. At the very least, we dont
expect great philosophers to be great historians
of philosophy. This despite the fact that some
of the greatest philosophers have indeed sur-
veyed the history of their discipline.
The earliest case in the European sphere
would be Aristotle, whose reports on the Preso-
cratic philosophers are invaluable. But precisely
because he was a great philosopher, his presen-
tation tends to distort and obscure the views of
these thinkers, since he classifies them in pursuit
of his own agenda, for instance by reading their
cosmologies as so many attempts to determine
the correct number of principles in nature. A far
more informative source on the Presocratics is
the lesser thinker Simplicius. He had an agenda
of his own, but it was not a philosophical one.
Rather, he wished to record what was for him
already ancient pagan thought, before it was
lost in the rising tide of Christianity.
Russell might have sympathized with Sim-
plicius as far as Christianity was concerned, but
otherwise he seems more comparable to Aris-
totle, since he was another great philosopher
who set out to be an historian of philosophy.
The result was A History of Western Philosophy,
published in 1946 [for which he won the Nobel
Prize for Literature, Ed]. To be frank, the book
does have its flaws. For one, Russell has a habit
Philosophy Then
of telling us that certain things are not worth
taking seriously. A notorious case, at least in the
circles I run in, is his pathetically brief and ill-
judged chapter on Mohammedan Culture and
Philosophy. His summary judgment is,
Arabic philosophy is not important as original
thought. Men like Avicenna and Averroes are
essentially commentators. These are lines I
have heard quoted numerous times at confer-
ences on Islamic thought, and obviously not
with approval. Few other chapters are so dis-
missive, but many offer little more than sketchy
notes on the subject at hand.
Hypatia: a distinguished lady. Almost the
only woman thinker to get even a mention.
Yet in at least two respects Russells History
remains admirable, and worth reading. The
first is not so unexpected: he is a brilliant
philosopher, and makes incisive points, often
only in passing. To take just one example, when
talking about Descartes famous I think,
therefore I am, Russell observes that skepti-
cism must stop somewhere and that the stop-
ping point is provided not only by indubitable
facts but also by indubitable laws of inference.
This is a useful observation, for it reminds us
that Descartes method of global doubt does
not affect the rules of logic.
As one might expect, Russell also offers stri-
dent opinions on subjects such as Aristotelian
logic. In these passages he moves easily from the
history of philosophy to expressing his own phi-
losophy: substance, in fact, is merely a conve-
nient way of collecting events into bundles.
Many of the philosophers he covers are not to
his taste, as he is unafraid to say: he deems
Fichtes idealism insane. His antipathy to ide-
alism and subjectivism is a leitmotif of the whole
book. Yet Russell also often finds something to
value in such thinkers. Schopenhauer, despite
inconsistency and a certain shallowness,
offers a bracing corrective to the widespread
tendency of Western thinkers to think that all
evil can be explained away.
A second virtue of the book is one Russell
himself emphasizes in his Preface: there is a lot
of history in this History of Philosophy. He does
the obvious thing of offering potted biograph-
ical sketches of each thinker, emphasizing con-
nections between the life and the thought. He
finds Plotinus inspiring as a personality, for
instance, while convicting Schopenhauer of
hypocritical selfishness. But more than that, he
is constantly surveying the historical context in
which philosophy unfolded; he even highlights
this as the main feature that distinguishes his
history of philosophy from others. The afore-
mentioned chapter on the Islamic world, brief
as it is, finds room for an overview of the early
history of Islam, and much is said elsewhere
about historical topics such as Sparta, the
Roman Empire, and the Reformation.
Certainly Russells history is very selective.
He is more than happy to skip from one major
thinker to the next, so that many fascinating
figures are not mentioned at all. He says as
much, also in the Preface: I have omitted
men who did not seem to me to deserve a
fairly full treatment apparently taking it for
granted that no women thinkers deserve such
treatment. Nor, as the title intimates, does his
History venture beyond Western thought.
So Russell certainly does not cover every-
thing. But what he does cover is put in some
sort of historical context, even as it is evalu-
ated from a philosophical point of view. How-
ever obsolete Russells judgments on particu-
lar texts and traditions, however large his
blind spots, one does get a sense from reading
him that Harman was wrong; he shows that
the history of philosophy can be philosophy,
while also being history.
PROF. PETER ADAMSON 2017
Peter Adamson is the author of A History of
Philosophy Without Any Gaps, Vols 1, 2
& 3, available from OUP. Theyre based on his
popular History of Philosophy podcast.
June/July 2017 Philosophy Now 41

Books
I Find That Offensive
by Claire Fox
IN THIS PITHY, EBULLIENT
addition to Biteback
Publishings Provoca-
tions series, Claire Fox,
the director and founder of the British think-
tank the Institute of Ideas, makes a rousing
appeal to Generation Snowflake to throw
off their bubble wrap and embrace the liber-
ating responsibilities of adult life. To those
of us born before 1980, its mind-boggling
that the age-old wisdom Fox dispenses in
this book should be considered provoca-
tion at all. Consequently, readers like
myself who have not yet been lobotomized
by the culture of adult colouring books and
naval-gazing mindfulness can almost smell
the authors refreshing irony lurking in the
subtext of every page. However, the author
is not content to simply sneer at an entire
generation by dubbing them Snowflakes
and cry-babies, because this does not
explain why their prickly tendency to take
offense is happening on such an epic scale.
She delves deeper into the new cultural
norm of fragility to identify its root causes
in the privileging of victimhood.
The Triumph of Victimhood
Fox recalls how before the corpses of the
Charlie Hebdo journalists had even grown
cold, many who had initially defended the
principle of free expression had U-turned to
denouncing as inflammatory and offensive
the cartoons that catalysed the incident,
implying that the Hebdo staff were themselves
to blame for the violence they suffered. So
low has the tolerance bar fallen that one no
longer has even to be conscious of her own
racism, sexism, homophobia, cissexism
or Islamophobia in order to be guilty of
these thought crimes. Microaggressions
theory has sprung up to diagnose your
unconscious bias, and to legitimise victims
feelings of being macro-aggrieved. Hate-
speech legislation, such as in Britain, only
bolsters this imbalance of power between
victim and perpetrator, by defining hate
speech as any speech that someone claims is
42 Philosophy Now June/July 2017
Terri Murray isnt offended by Claire Foxs book about
the politics of being offended and Les Reid has a creative
response to a book on the philosophy of creativity.
racist, etc, irrespective of the speakers inten-
tions or the context of his speech. Who needs
blasphemy law when weve got the free-
wheeling, arbitrary, and unlimited redefini-
tion of terms such as racism? So broad now
is the scope of the term it could feasibly apply
to just about anything touching on race. This
is particularly worrying because, if racism can
mean everything, then it ceases to mean
anything. Anti-racism should be a vivid,
living ethic, not a dead dogma that we
unthinkingly apply more promiscuously than
a two-peckered billy goat.
Fox observes how todays self-defined
victims acquire perverse authority through
adopting an oppressed status, to the extent
that even mild criticism of their beliefs can
be tantamount to hate speech, effectively
giving them or their beliefs special immunity
from criticism. In a politicised version of this
behaviour, notes Fox, groups historically
denied equal rights all-too-often now cast
themselves as perennial victims. Thus the
legitimate progressive ideal of universal
equal treatment has degenerated into
victim-privileging, and whereas past libera-
tion struggles focused on uniting people
across cultural, gender, ethnic, and religious
lines, todays pseudo-progressives relent-
lessly compete to out-rank one another for
Shut up Maryam,
youre scaring us!
cultural recognition, using victimhood as
currency to gain resources and power. For
veteran leftist social justice activists, the ease
with which the younger generation of
would-be liberal left progressives fall into
divisive in-fighting is vexing. What theyre
really doing is accomplishing the rights task
for them, by destroying liberalism from
within. A good example Fox cites is the
vicious unrelenting civil war between femi-
nists on social media, as womens move-
ments splinter into ever pettier, narrower
identity grouplets.
Additional erosion of liberal politics can
be seen in multiculturalisms annexation of
anti-racism. With state support linked to
cultural identity, Fox cites a case where a
group of mainly ethnic minority women
artists was encouraged to self-identify as a
Muslim group (none of them were religious)
and subsequently focus their output on
Islamophobia in order to merit considera-
tion for future funding. Then there was the
feminist organization at Goldsmiths
University in London that allied itself with
a group of men from the Islamic Society who
wanted to shut down ex-Muslim feminist
and human rights campaigner Maryam
Namazie when she attempted to address a
campus meeting. If the Muslim men really
MARYAM PORTRAIT BREAD & ROSES 2014
Book Reviews

Shaun King, activist for the
Black Lives Matter movement
felt that their safety was threatened by
Namazies free speech, it would have been
easier not to attend a meeting that was
intended for secular humanists anyway.
What they wanted was to ensure that the
humanists could not listen to Namazie, not
that they be protected from her impious
discourse. Although Fox does not spell it
out, the bigger picture is that multicultural-
ism currently trumps all other progressive
left values. And since religious authoritari-
anism flies under the multiculturalism
banner, waving it will ensure fast-track entry
into the public arena, while liberal values
must politely stand aside. So no longer do
we appeal to universal human reason to win
an argument. Having a better argument is
less important than being the right type of
person. Its a kind of ad hominem fallacy in
reverse: what one says is less important than
who says it.
Those without sufficient victim status try
to compensate by empathizing with victim
groups, as though other peoples suffering
might rub off some credibility. According to
Fox, this explains the escalating trend for
privileged liberals to be especially offended
on behalf of victim groups and dress it up as
a form of social justice political activism.
Many of those traditionally associated with
left-wing movements have hopped on this
bandwagon, resulting in a pre-emptory
refusal to criticise minority groups that has
chilled discussion and paralysed interven-
tion in cases such as the systematic sexual
exploitation of young girls in some British
Book Reviews
towns. Self-censorship is rife on issues that
are perceived as culturally sensitive, from
FGM and child marriage to religious satire.
Making victimhood into a valued social
commodity has led to an endless search for
it, resulting in screwball scenarios where
some cash in on what author Michelle
Malkin describes in her blog as the cult of
oppression chic. Fox cites the Black Lives
Matter campaigns Shaun King, scourge of
white privilege, who was disgraced when his
supporters conceded that his birth certifi-
cate describes him as white, despite passing
himself off as a person of colour. Then there
was the bizarre story of Rachel Dolezal, who
built her entire career as an African-Ameri-
can civil rights activist despite being born
Caucasian. Interestingly, Dolezal began to
publicly identify as black after losing a
lawsuit in which she accused Howard
University of discriminating against her for
being white.
Safe From Harm?
To further explain what has generated
offense-susceptible students, Fox points the
finger at us, their elders, for socialising them
into a culture of health and safety mania in
which we catastrophise lifes challenges and
obsess on health scares and child protection.
Perhaps the Baby Boomers and Gen-Xers
who led relatively free-range childhoods
watched too many Hollywood disaster
movies about endangered kids and heroic
parents, because their offspring, born after
1980, got a consistent message that life is
dangerous, but adults will do everything in
their power to protect you from harm.
Examples Fox gives are the UK Chief Medi-
cal Officer calling obesity a national threat
on a par with terrorism, and British Labour
MP Keith Vaz declaring a war on sugar in
Parliament. An hysterical zeal for childrens
safety has become a clich, spiraling into an
outright moral panic in which the child
protection industry actively encourages
children to see potential abuse everywhere.
Childrens charities and NGOs, in
constantly broadening definitions of abuse,
actively encourage children to be suspicious
of such harmless tensions as being pres-
surised or manipulated into making deci-
sions or when someone (such as a parent)
tries to control you or push you too hard.
It is hardly surprising, says Fox, if our chil-
dren have internalised the climate of distrust
and fear that we have institutionalised, and
become hypersensitive to potential offense.
In a culture where expanded definitions of
bullying routinely link it to the psychological
realm and mental illness, Fox fears the anti-
Books
bullying industry is becoming the real danger
to young peoples states of mind. Instead of
helping young people to put unpleasant
experiences into perspective, we emphasise
how traumatic they are and encourage chil-
dren to over-react. Widening the scope of
bullying to include everything from
spreading rumours to just being ignored
creates an environment where kids are
discouraged from developing coping mech-
anisms and are taught to exaggerate minor
emotional growing pains as so devastating to
their mental health that they need psycho-
logical support to cope. But disappointment,
stress, and frustration are integral parts of
life, not mental illnesses. It is no wonder that
Generation Snowflake goes off to college
preoccupied by their wellbeing and prone to
seeing themselves as victims. We have
pathologised what were once considered
basic experiences of student life, including
being broke, staying up all night to get an
essay finished, and periods of loneliness.
The over-protection of children by a risk-
averse culture has also blurred the line
between physical and psychological harm.
Until very recently, liberals followed John
Stuart Mill (1806-1873), the architect of
modern liberal political philosophy, in
defining mental harm rather narrowly.
Mill saw mental harm as involving impair-
ment of an individuals development, for
example, refusing to let children have an
education. He regarded this as much more
serious than merely having ones feelings
hurt which often does help us to develop,
say, resiliance. Mill also understood harm as
something that happens against our will.
When we find someone offensive we can
avoid them and continue our lives with no
John Stuart Mill
June/July 2017 Philosophy Now 43
 Books
damage done. As for the claim that we are
harmed by the mere existence of people who
live in ways of which we disapprove, Mills
response is that our interest in not being
offended is relatively less important than our
interest in not being physically injured,
detained, or criminally deceived. Fox urges
people to get back to this more robust
understanding of harm one that leaves
room for legitimate parental discipline and
proper academic pressure.
The Politics of Protection
Not only have over-protective policies made
a health fetish of purging life of all discom-
forts, they have also begun to medicalise
student politics. Fox points to how univer-
sity culture is dominated by therapy-style
political discourse whereby demands to ban
speakers are framed in the language of
psychiatry. All manner of political disagree-
ment are labelled as phobias (e.g. Islamo-
phobia, homophobia), conveniently making
rational argument with the diseased oppo-
nent (the patient) pointless. The demand
for self-examination levelled against anyone
who disagrees with the status quo is
emotional blackmail reminiscent of repres-
sive Soviet-style medicine.
Even childrens informal activities are
organised and supervised, and free time
structured and monitored. Helicopter
parents have abandoned their duty of social-
ising children to become self-reliant. Instead
they nurture childrens expectations to be
reliant on outside intermediaries, encourag-
ing them to wallow in dependency, thereby
furnishing them excuses to avoid grown-up
responsibilities. The younger generation
gain a false sense of empowerment from
external agencies and institutions on which
they are dependent and there is an insidious
paternalism in this trend. Reduction of
young peoples responsibility and autonomy
fetters them to external authorities and
undermines their liberty.
Fox identifies other culprits in the
creation of a generation of entitled narcis-
sists. Among them are student voice and
self-esteem. Fee-paying students now see
the teacher-pupil relationship in terms of
customer service. Viewing teachers primar-
ily as service providers undermines their
authority and ignores the fact that teaching
involves an unequal relationship. Lecturers
who have the temerity to actually lecture
have missed the memo from todays
academic CEOs that requires them to be
co-learners. Teachers are told that in order
to engage their pupils they should make all
subject matter relate to them. The aim of
discovering in literature or art something
transcendent and universal about the human
condition which binds our experiences to
44 Philosophy Now June/July 2017
people throughout history is secondary to
finding ways to turn the gaze of art and liter-
ature inwards on what is specific to being me.
Thus, Generation Snowflake is being told
that thousands of years of literature, philos-
ophy and historical insight are to be side-
lined to accommodate their identities. This
approach gives students opinions, however
childish or poisonous, a sense of privilege.
The demand to express unconditional posi-
tive regard for young peoples views, says
Fox, effectively destroys the intergenera-
tional duty of passing on knowledge, setting
boundaries for behaviour, and the broader
task of socialisation. Consequently,
students never learn to cope with disap-
pointment or accept criticism essential
skills that they will need as they grow up (if
they do).
Fox concludes her book with a rousing
address to Generation Snowflake itself. The
harsh reality, she says, is that their rebellion
is not against the prevailing orthodoxies.
These rebels are kicking an open door,
singing from the cultural relativists PC
hymn sheet, and in doing so are tools of
those in authority. Their youthful zeal lends
credibility to existing policies that leave real
progressive causes floundering. Authentic
rebels need the kind of moral autonomy and
independence that is achieved through
genuine intellectual argument, not just by
smearing your opponent or by depending
upon infantile authoritarian protection
from his or her reasoning.
Todays zeitgeist, says Fox, venerates the
vulnerable victim form of personality, such
that strength is demonised as arrogance or
misrepresented as violence. What then is to
be done? First, instead of taking misan-
thropic negativity as a premise, why not
foreground human potential by looking to
the individuals strength instead of promot-
ing his weakness? To progress beyond a
victim culture, the young will need to coura-
geously wage war against all those forces
that stress security above civil liberties and
free speech, forging their own philosophies
but also shamelessly standing on the shoul-
ders of giants. And they will need to grow a
backbone to face down all those who will
want to shut them up.
DR TERRI MURRAY 2017
Terri Murray is a graduate of New York Univer-
sitys Film School. She has taught Film Studies at
Hampstead College of Fine Arts & Humanities
in London since 2002, and is author of Feminist
Film Studies (2007).
I Find That Offensive, by Claire Fox, Biteback,
2016, 9.99, 208 pp, ISBN: 1849549818.
The Philosophy of
Creativity ed by Elliot Paul
& Scott Barry Kaufman
EDUCATION IS A POLITICALLY
contentious subject. Systems
of education are continually being pro-
posed, implemented, regretted and reor-
ganised. There are arguments over reli-
gious segregation, the usefulness of various
subjects, rote learning versus other meth-
ods of learning, the role of the teacher, and
so on. Disagreements about purpose and
methods in education have a long history:
Plato and Aristotle held very different
views, and philosophers as diverse as
Locke, Rousseau, Kant, Russell and Rorty
have added their own ideas. One facet of
education, however, seems to have escaped
controversy, and now enjoys general assent
creativity. Today we expect schools at all
levels to nurture creativity, especially in lit-
erary composition and art, but also in
problem-solving, critical thinking, media
production, music, and dance. We seem to
think that it is good to cultivate creativity,
not only because personal development
requires self-expression, but also because
society is changing all the time and so we
value the ability to respond to new chal-
lenges creatively. We want our education
system to produce individuals who do not
merely replicate ideas, but are capable of
having new ones, whether commercial,
artistic, scientific, or otherwise. So creativi-
ty is a good thing.
But what kind of a thing is creativity?
The essays in this anthology explore many
of its aspects, presenting familiar philosoph-
ical issues in less familiar contexts, which is
an encouragement to take a fresh look at
those issues and perhaps rethink our opin-
ions. Creativity is looked at in relation to lit-
erature, music, audience response, charac-
ter, imagination, the unconscious. and artifi-
cial intelligence. There are also essays on
psychological experiments and teaching,
and more. The compilers of the anthology
are to be congratulated on its range and
variety.
Some myths about creativity are scruti-
nised and deflated. One Romantic tradi-
tion emphasises the flash of inspiration
the Eureka! moment when the act of cre-
ation allegedly occurs. Simon Blackburn is
very sceptical about accounts of creativity
which make the process sound miraculous.
He points to the years of learning, study
and practice which preceded compositions
which are said to have arrived out of the
blue. Without those years of preparation,
Book Reviews

the achievements of Poincar, Darwin, or
Mozart would have been impossible.
Blackburn tells us about a pianist who was
complimented on his luck by a well-inten-
tioned fan. Yes, he replied, and the tions in music and art, and they can invent
more I practise, the luckier I get.
There is also a common belief that cre-
ativity is hampered by conscious delibera-
tion. Creative ideas are supposed to well
up from the unconscious like spring water
from subterranean strata. This idea was
popular with the Surrealists, and it also
explains the Victorian interest in automat-
ic writing, where a pen is moved ostensi-
bly without conscious control. It was given
credibility by statements from some artists
and composers, for example Mozart, who
said Whence my ideas come, I know not,
nor can I force them. However, as report-
ed in the essay by Baumeister, Schmeichel
and Dewall, evidence from psychological
experiments points to the opposite conclu-
sion: that conscious processes are integral
to creative behaviour. It is difficult to gen-
erate real creativity in a laboratory setting,
so the experimental results are admittedly
not a proof. Nevertheless they do incline
us to the view that intentional awareness
must play a significant role in highly com-
plex creative activities. Unthinking reac-
Portrait of a Young Woman,
Jeanne Goupil
Paul Gaugin, 1896
Book Reviews
tions will not qualify as creativity.
That last point leads directly to the
question whether computers can be truly
creative. They can produce novel composi-
new strategies and winning combinations
of moves in chess. Such activities have an
appearance of creativity; but Margaret
Boden is not impressed by them. She sees
them as a tribute to the creativity of the
programmer, not of the machine which
performs the function. However, she is
more impressed by genetic algorithms
programs that can make random changes
in their own basic rules. The random
changes are then subject to a fitness selec-
tor, which keeps the best altered rules and
discards others. In this way, program
development emulates biological evolu-
tion. A graphics program by Karl Sims
operates in this way to produce novel
images which look unrelated to each other.
Such developments in computing are tan-
talising, says Boden, but they are a long
way off creativity. Computers lack some
key ingredients: autonomy, intentionality,
consciousness, values, and emotions. Even
the novel outputs of genetic algorithms do
not constitute autonomy, because they are
based on random changes, not deliberate
Books
choices. The key ingredients of true cre-
ativity require levels of operational com-
plexity far beyond present computing capa-
bilities. Boden concludes that the question
whether computers can (eventually) be cre-
ative is currently unanswerable, but is still
open.
Computers may be struggling to be cre-
ative, but what about us? Surely human
beings are good at being creative? Every day
we respond to things others say or to the
events of the day by inventing new combina-
tions of words. What we say is unscripted
and unrehearsed; we simply make up an
utterance on the spur of the moment! Even
more creatively, we often initiate a discus-
sion ourselves, as I have done writing this
paragraph; and we launch it into a social
nexus: in this case an angry mob of Philosophy
Now readers who are already firing off
apoplectic rebuttals to the Letters page!
Berys Gaut provides a very positive
assessment of the human capacity for cre-
ativity. Not only are we normally pretty
good at it, but we can be helped to be bet-
ter at it. She shows how creative problem-
solving in mathematics can be improved by
following the strategies devised by George
Plya in his book How to Solve It (1971).
The strategies include drawing a figure,
considering special cases, looking for a
related problem, and breaking down a
complex task into simpler ones. Gaut
shows that some of the strategies recom-
mended in creative writing courses are
similar. That is surprising, given the cate-
gorical difference of subject matter, but
less so if one thinks of creativity as a skill
which can be honed by practice. The
strategies prepare the combustible materi-
als which must be there if the creative
spark is going to ignite anything.
I liked this book. The general direction
of the essays sits easily with my libertarian,
Humanist outlook, and the wide variety of
topics it addresses has refreshed my inter-
est in aesthetics, philosophy of education,
and home improvement. But thats my cre-
ative response to the book (see the essay by
Noel Carroll). Yours will be different. I
just hope that you get some enjoyment and
enlightenment from it before you pen that
angry rebuttal.
LES REID 2017
Les Reid teaches a course on Humanism as part
of the Edinburgh City Council adult education
programme.
The Philosophy of Creativity, edited by Elliot Paul
and Scott Barry Kaufman, OUP, 2014, 326 pages,
34.49, ISBN 9780199836963
June/July 2017 Philosophy Now 45

Television
U
ncanny is a word with which
were all familiar, but perhaps
slightly misunderstand. We
often say that when something
or someone is similar to another something
or someone, the resemblance is uncanny,
especially if it is one person doing an
impression of another. In many ways this is
accurate, but its normally used in a positive
way in this instance. Its uncanny! we may
say in wonder. However, when something
is truly uncanny there are few things more
unsettling.
The concept of the uncanny has been
explored for centuries, but it was popu-
larised by Ernst Jentsch in his essay On the
Psychology of the Uncanny (1906) and
Sigmund Freud in Das Unheimliche [The
Uncanny] (1919). It is the idea of something
that is familiar but just outside the realms
of being the same. The etymology of the
word uncanny stems from the Anglo-
Saxon ken (still used in the Scots dialect)
meaning understanding or knowledge;
thus uncanny is outside of understand-
ing. Essentially it is something we do not
quite understand.
We all know the feeling of the uncanny
when someone or something is not quite
right. People have reported feeling this in
the presence of psychopaths who act in a
socially acceptable manner but whom they
can instinctively tell are pretending. The
disjunct is unsettling. This aligns with an
idea that our sense of the uncanny may
46 Philosophy Now l June/July 2017
W E S T W O R L D
Leo Cookman performs an Unheimlich manoeuvre to
review a disturbing android saga.
have evolved in order to help us avoid dan-
gers revealed by that which is not quite
right, including selecting better mates. Its
posited that this also ties in with our dislike
of seeing a cadaver; something that looks
human but which has no life inside it.
However or whyever it was developed,
its a feeling we all know: a fascinated yet
uncomfortable feeling of wariness. This
repulsion of all that is uncanny is part of our
awareness of the world and is part of our
consciousness, the very thing that makes us
us. To use the language of the philosopher
Hegel, the uncanny is a breakdown or blur-
ring of the lines between that which is our
Self and that which is Other; between what
we understand and what we do not.
For all its possible evolutionary expedi-
ence, even today the uncanny prompts
some difficult questions. The subject brings
up a deeply uncomfortable and shameful
aspect of human behavior: how we often
shun those who fall into our own category
of uncanny. Thus people with mental or
physical disabilities are often ostracised,
patronised, or gazed at in rude wonder. For
example, the autistic often learn patterns of
interaction that they use at perhaps the
wrong time: this is seen as not-quite-right,
and makes some people uncomfortable. I
see this in my nephew who is on the spec-
trum, and who rather wonderfully, hugs
everyone he meets. The feeling of the
uncanny could even to some extent explain
racism: we see another person, but with a
Visiting
Uncanny
Valley
different cadence to their speech or unfa-
miliar proportions to their facial and other
features, and feel an immediate but uncom-
fortably familiar distance from them which
can far too often quickly become a feeling
of distrust or dislike.
Uncanny Culture
The most famous description of the phe-
nomenon in modern times, is what we
have come to know as the Uncanny Valley.
The term comes from a graph originally
plotted by robotics professor Masahiro
Mori in the 1970s to explain the strange
sensation, known technically as abjection,
people have when (between certain limits)
the more recognisable or lifelike a robot
becomes, the more we are repulsed by it.
That is, we will accept a robot or an ani-
mated character whilst they are still recog-
nisably not human, or if they are not
recognisably not human, but as they
approximate near realism our acceptance,
our like of the machine, drops off steeply.
On a graph, this plotting of human resem-
blance against acceptability looks like a
valley in this region of the uncanny.
The concept of the uncanny is used a
lot in fiction, both in literature and film,
most often and most effectively in the hor-
ror genre, particularly those we dub
weird or macabre. Think of all the
killers in masks or with faces hidden by
hair; children behaving just a little oddly;
women bent backwards or moving in a jit-
tery way; long, uncomfortable stares; and
so on. These are all great examples of the
uncanny something which resembles
humanity or is even enacted by a human
but is clearly not quite normal.
It is especially seen in horror films from
Japan. It is interesting that the uncanny is
so prevalent in Japanese culture and that
its usage is a tradition there. Their use of
masks in certain religious ritual dances and
theatre is to many Western eyes distinctly
odd, as is the make up of a geisha.
Interestingly, when Japanese horror films
are remade for Western audiences, they
often have a far poorer, less scary effect,
usually because the remake has lost the

WESTWORLD IMAGES HBO/WARNER BROS TELEVISION 2016
A twenty-
first century
facelift
sense of the uncanny that the original
dwelled on. With a better developed sense
of the uncanny Japanese film-makers are
able to access a far deeper level of connec-
tion through their art: their use of detach-
ment and abjection makes our attachment
and closeness to the real world all the
more palpable. If you want to see people
react to something uncanny, just put on a
mask with almost human features and then
interact with them in an everyday setting.
Youd be surprised at the visceral reactions
this elicits, especially if youre wearing a
Japanese Kagura mask, which is uncanny
enough in itself.
Do You Believe?
Another good recent example of the
uncanny, and probably one deliberately
aligned with an awareness of its true psy-
chological meaning, is seen in HBOs
excellent series Westworld.
Westworld was originally a book and
film written and then directed by the late
WESTWORLD FILM POSTER MGM 1973
Beneath the mask
Michael Crichton in 1973. It was about a
theme park full of robots who become
homicidal. The movie featured Yul
Brynner as a killer android whose face
eventually falls off, disturbingly revealing
the workings within. (Its surely no coinci-
dence that Jasia Reichardt and Moris
Uncanny Valley essay is from the same
decade.) The new TV series takes this sce-
nario of deadly androids as a jumping-off
point, but uses it to look more deeply at a
bigger question: What does it mean to be
human? This is a fairly abstract philosoph-
ical question, but is rendered much more
real and accessible by comparing and con-
trasting humans with the android so-called
hosts. An element of what constitutes
humanity is considered in how we differ-
entiate between human and host. And
through this meditation a more thorough
exploration of the uncanny is also enacted.
The performances in Westworld are
excellent, in particular those actors playing
the robots. It is the subtleties of acting a
little off that generate our uneasy aware-
ness of their difference from the humans,
yet it is even more shocking when this
awareness is subverted, leaving us unsure
who is what. The scenes that were most
horrific and disturbing to me as a viewer
were not when the show was bloody or
violent, but when a host malfunctioned, to
be left twitching, staring, suddenly freez-
ing all motion, or screaming but with no
facial expression. The list of shudders is
endless throughout the series.
In the case of horror, what unsettles us
most is the idea that the possibility pre-
sented can exist in our own world. Never
does this feel more pertinent than with the
progress of artificial intelligence and
robotics. This is why Westworld is astute in
presenting us with the dichotomy of that
Television
which is simultaneously both Ourselves
and not Ourselves, giving us pause to think
about what we accept as real or even
human. The staff who are building and fix-
ing the hosts in Westworld are reprimanded
by the owner of the theme park (Anthony
Hopkins), for covering up hosts with
sheets, perhaps to hide their modesty; but
is that modesty for the robots or for us,
unused as we are to the sight of nudity?
Westworld frequently uses a quote from
Romeo & Juliet: These violent delights
have violent ends. Interestingly, in that
same speech, Friar Laurence goes on to
neatly encapsulate this idea of the uncan-
ny, saying, The sweetest honey / is loath-
some in his own deliciousness / and in
taste confounds the appetite.
Uncanny Reflections
The uncanny uses an outline, a stencil for
our reality and our perception of the
world, and yet does not quite fit into this
shape, and so is strange and disturbing to
us. Abjection is our response. Natural his-
tory has taught us to fear what we dont
understand; but I would say, to better
understand ourselves, we must better
accept and study the outliers. For example,
psychologists will tell you the best way to
study and understand the normal human
mind is to study abnormal psychology.
The robots in the TV series are engaged
in a journey toward consciousness, but even
humans have yet to understand what con-
sciousness is. Part of the search to under-
stand consciousness is what David
Chalmers has called the hard problem;
how there can be subjective experience. But
our first step in understanding ourselves
would be to confront our in-built fear and
rejection of that which we do not under-
stand of the uncanny. This could be the
hardest problem of all.
So far, we dont really know what we are,
but we definitely know what we are not.
LEO COOKMAN 2017
Leo Cookman is a writer living in Kent. His
poetry has been published in Penguins Poetry
of Sex, The Best of Manchester Poets,
Black Sheep Journal, Ladybeard Magazine
and BlankPages Magazine, among others.
June/July 2017 l Philosophy Now 47
Brief Lives
Denis Diderot (1713-1784)
Martin Jenkins considers a black sheep of the French Enlightenment.
T
he three outstanding writer-philosophers of the
Eighteenth Century French Enlightenment are
Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot. The first two are
relatively well known in the English-speaking world.
Diderot is not. In fairness, it should be said that his legacy is
somewhat contested even in France. Voltaire and Rousseau were
inducted into the Panthon at the end of the Eighteenth Cen-
tury; Diderot had to wait until 1913 before he was suggested for
that honour, and then the National Assembly voted down the
proposal. He still has not made it.
Life
Denis Diderot was born in Langres in Champagne in 1713. He
was intended to succeed to the canonry held by an uncle, and so
was tonsured at the age of thirteen. However, after completing
his studies he entered into a bohemian life in Paris. In 1741 he
met a linen maid named Antoinette Champion. Denis father dis-
approved of the liaison and had him imprisoned in a monastery.
He escaped and married Antoinette in 1743. He then settled into
a respectable existence, supporting himself through translating
from English. He may not have been a strictly faithful husband,
but his liaisons with Madame de Puisieux and Sophie Volland
seem to have been primarily about his need for intellectual com-
panionship. In Le Neveu de Rameau he wrote, Mes penses, ce sont
mes catins My thoughts are my strumpets. sations), and many of these involved his contemporaries. Some of
In his lifetime Diderot was mainly known as an art critic and
as one of the editors of the Encyclopdie. The latter role was polit-
ically uncomfortable. The Encyclopdie was licensed, banned,
unbanned, rebanned in France, until the editors gave up and
announced that the final volumes would be officially published in
Switzerland. In 1766 the printer of the Encyclopdie was sent to the
Bastille.
Diderot was imprisoned for a few months (at Vincennes, not
the Bastille). In this context his Entretien avec la Marchale (1776)
is revealing. Here Diderot seeks to convince his pious interlocu-
tor that an atheist such as himself can be a decent human being
(un honnte homme). But the conclusion reads:
La marchale: By the way, if you had to give account of your princi-
ples to our magistrates, would you admit to them?
Diderot: I would do my best to spare them a vicious act.
La marchale: Ah, coward! And if you were on the point of death,
would you submit to the ceremonies of the church?
Diderot: I would not fail to do so.
La marchale: Fie! Hypocritical rogue!
In 1765 Diderot sold his library to Empress Catherine of Rus-
sia in return for a lump sum and a pension, plus the use of it for the
rest of his life. This transaction eventually led to his only journey
outside France. From 1773 to 1774 he travelled first to Holland,
then to Saint Petersburg, then again to Holland.
Diderot seems to have been of an easy-going nature. He col-
48 Philosophy Now June/July 2017
laborated with Rousseau for fifteen years before they quarrelled
(Rousseau quarrelled with everybody) and then managed to carry
on working with him for another year.
Having become financially secure, Diderot spent the last years
of his life in reasonable comfort. He outlived both Rousseau and
Voltaire, and died of natural causes in 1784. He had ensured the
future of his only surviving child, Marie-Anglique, through her
marriage, and it was his son-in-law, Vandeul, who finally pub-
lished Diderots (almost) complete works in 1796.
Writing Career
Diderot published almost none of his philosophical writings dur-
ing his lifetime, although he read them to his friends and circu-
lated them in manuscript.
There were a number of reasons for Diderots mostly posthu-
mous publication. Firstly, the ideas which he put forward were
potentially dangerous. He came as close as he dared to setting out
a materialist (and by implication, atheist) position; even Voltaire,
although anti-clerical, claimed to be a deist [the idea that there is a
God, but one not interested in human affairs, Ed]. Even putting an
atheist view into the mouth of a fictional speaker risked entangling
the writer with the church and state authorities. By the end of his
life Diderot had had enough of that. Also, he presented his ideas in
dialogue form (or, as he preferred to call them, entretiens conver-
these dialogues, such as Mystification, seem to have been worked-up
versions of real conversations. Finally, Diderot was a perfectionist
(or a tinkerer): he kept revising his dialogues, until he was satisfied
(more or less). As a result, editing Diderot has become a major chal-
lenge in French scholarship.
His earlier dialogues are fairly straightforward. Here Diderot
appears as a character and puts forward his views. A good example
is the Entretien Entre M. dAlembert et M. Diderot (1769). In this
work, Diderot advances a thoroughly materialist position, includ-
ing an argument carried on through several pages that rocks may
possess a degree of consciousness [see Issue 117, Ed]. In later dia-
logues Diderots technique becomes more subtle, one might even
say quirky. At the end of the dialogue I just cited, dAlembert
accepts the strength of Diderots arguments but insists that he will
stick to his own position. But in the later Le Rve de dAlembert
(1769), dAlembert becomes the mouthpiece for Diderots own
views, albeit that he does so while sleeping in an armchair. Dr Bor-
deu and Mlle de lEspinasse then discuss what dAlembert has
been saying in his sleep, and when he wakes up, tell him to go back
to sleep, or simply not to interfere with their conversation. (In the
continuation of the dialogue, they manage without dAlembert
altogether.) This format reflects Diderots very modern belief
that it is in our unconscious that we will find our true thoughts,
whereas our mind edits them to be presentable to our conscious-
ness. Therefore, what dAlembert has uttered in his unconscious
state is what he really believes. However, reality is more complex
than this.
 Denis Diderot
Portrait by Louis-Michel van Loo, 1767
Involved Conversations
The finest example of Diderots conversational philosophy is the
Supplment au Voyage de Bougainville (1772). In this dialogue
Diderot confronts one of the major theories of the Eighteenth
Century, which concerned the state of nature in which primitive
humanity was supposed to exist, and the noble savage who was
supposed to live in it. Rousseau had approached the idea of the
primordial state of man from a theoretical perspective; he
hypothesised what primitive man would have been and how
mankind had arrived at the civilized state he has now achieved.
(Bear in mind those male pronouns; they will be relevant.)
Diderot, on the other hand, starts from a real example
Bougainvilles description of Tahitian society. (However, rather
cheekily, he claims to be quoting what Bougainville omitted from
his published account!)
Unusually for Diderot, the participants in this dialogue are
anonymous. Theyre identified only as A and B. It might be pre-
sumed that B is Diderots representative, since he has a lot more
to say. But as we shall see, this is not a safe presumption.
The starting point of the dialogue is the purported speech of an
aged Tahitian chief denouncing European intervention in native
customs. It is a splendid piece of Rousseauesque rhetoric (Diderots
own speech is never rhetorical), and it provokes A to comment that
it sounds rather European. To this B replies that it was translated
from Tahitian into Spanish and thence into French. He then adds
that the chief gave the text to his translator Orou the night before
June/July 2017 Philosophy Now 49
Brief Lives
he delivered it so that Orou could
translate it into Spanish in order Resolution & Adventure in Matavai Bay
that Bougainville could have the William Hodges, 1776
Spanish version in his hand while
the diatribe was being pronounced.
Even this start undermines the
nave idea of the noble savage.
Firstly, the translation of the
speech reminds us that the concept
itself has been filtered through
Western sensibilities by way of
translation that we see the noble
savage through European specta-
cles. Secondly, it suggests that the
noble savage is not so artless or
spontaneous as Rousseau would
have us believe, but is, for example,
perfectly capable of constructing
an appropriate speech in advance.
The bulk of the speech consists
of a dialogue between Orou and
Bougainvilles chaplain. The chap-
lain has been assigned to lodge with
Orou, and Orou offers him the choice of his three daughters or his and they give themselves to you. One suspects that the first part
wife as sexual partners. The chaplain protests in the name of his of the sentence is more accurate than the second. Diderot contin-
religion and his celibacy. Orous youngest daughter begs him to ually emphasises that the result of sexual freedom is pregnancy: in
oblige her, on the basis that her elder sisters both have children other words, that the man has only the pleasure, while the woman
and she has none, which embarrasses her. The chaplain yields, also suffers the consequences. On this model, living in a state of
while feeling guilty (he will later have sex with both other daugh- nature may be a far better option for men than for women.
ters, and, out of politeness, with Orous wife too). In the dialogue Moreover, if the ladies might be saying something other than
which follows Orou argues for his sort of morality, in which peo- they think, can we be sure that A and B are themselves expressing
ple make free choices in their relationships, whereas the chaplain their true thoughts? All that is lacking from this conversation is
is forced to admit that by contrast, Europeans make relationship the disclaimer: The views expressed in this dialogue are not nec-
promises which they do not keep. essarily those of the author or of the speakers.
However, in the middle of this dialogue, at the request of A, B
breaks off to recount the story of Polly Baker (as adapted from a True Philosophy
report by Benjamin Franklin). Initially seduced and impregnated Voltaire and Rousseau knew what they thought and tried to con-
by a local man, Polly Baker went on to bear five children out of vince others to think the same. Denis Diderot probably knew what
wedlock, whom she considered a benefit to New England, he thought; but in his later dialogues he puts forward different and
although she was regularly condemned in the courts. contending views, then subtly undermines them. This shows that
At the end of this dialogue it is suggested that A and B should Diderot was a philosopher a lover of wisdom in the truest sense.
join the ladies. The following exchange is interesting: He loved facts, and collected them for the Encyclopdie; but he also
explored ideas, recognising that unlike facts, they are not final, and
A: Suppose we read them the conversation between the chaplain and that people often omit to consider ideas that might contradict
Orou? their own. Rather than telling us what we ought to think, Diderot,
B: What do you think they would say about it? like Socrates, encouraged us to think for ourselves. He would, on
A: I really dont know. that basis, probably have sympathised with those who voted
B: And what would they think about it? against admitting him to the Panthon. In fact, he might well have
A: Perhaps the opposite of what they would say. voted with them.
MARTIN JENKINS 2017
Were suddenly reminded that the dialogue between Orou Martin Jenkins is retired community worker and Quaker in London.
and the chaplain, the bulk of the text, has been between two
males; that the only female voices which have been heard are A Note On Texts
those of Orous youngest daughter and of Polly Baker; and that Diderots philosophical dialogues are not readily available in
Polly Baker challenged a patriarchy which tolerated her seduc- English translation, with the exception of the Penguin Classics
tion but condemned her attempts to live with the results. Orou is edition of Rameaus Nephew and dAlemberts Dream. The most
also a patriarch. In respect of his women he says to the chaplain, convenient French edition is that of Jean Varloot, Le Neveu de
They belong to me, and I offer them to you; they are their own, Rameau et Autres Dialogues Philosophiques, by Folio Classique.

50 Philosophy Now June/July 2017

Lovely to see you Professor Tallis, to talk
about your new magnum opus, Of Time
and Lamentation. What were your moti-
vations for writing this book?
Well, its part of a much bigger project.
As a secular humanist, I feel Ive
managed to liberate myself from super-
natural accounts of humanity, but the
alternative for many people is a natural-
istic account the idea that were just
pieces of nature. One aspect of that is
the notion that the natural sciences are
ultimately going to give us a complete
account, not only of the rest of the
universe, but of ourselves in it. Its this
scientism that has been one of my targets
over many years, and its one of the
drivers for writing this book about time.
There are other motives. But the scien-
tific reduction of time to little t is a
very good example of where scientism
gets us, and its a rather dismal place.
By t you mean representing time as a value
rather than as something real?
I mean as a pure quantity of a variable; as
a mere dimension, one of four dimen-
sions, the other three being space x, y,
and z as a result of which our notion of
time is seriously impoverished. The
scientific account of time is of course
extraordinarily useful. It has enabled us to
predict physical events and control them
in a way we could not have imagined in a
prescientific age. The danger is that this
success leads us to believe that the physics
of time, or time as seen in physics, is the
last word on the subject that physics of
time is its metaphysics as well.
Think about the things you can do to
t. You can multiply it by itself. You can
put it under another parameter as a
denominator, as when youre measuring
velocity [= d/t, Ed]. You can marry it up
to the speed of light to measure inter-
stellar distances, and so on. Now these
are the kinds of things you can do to
time when its been stripped of all that
we associate with it in human life. But
think of trying to put a bargain break
weekend as a denominator, or multiply-
ing a happy afternoon by itself. Its not
possible, and it makes you realise what
has been stripped away from time when
it has been reduced to t.
So the scientific conception of time as a
quantity doesnt relate to the human experi-
ence of it?
Interview
It doesnt, and in many ways we often
think that clock time is the last word so
that if I quarrel with the clock about how
much time has passed, then the clock in
the end must be right. But of course, the
clock only measures quantity and time is
much more rich and complex than that.
So the book first of all addresses the
reduction of time to a quasi-spatial
dimension, as in relativity theory, made
explicit in Minkowskian four-dimensional
space-time. Ultimately this geometrises
time, folding it into the geometry of
space and as a result much is lost. In the
book, I examine how time seems to be
reducible to t only if we somehow erase
the observer, if we forget that in order for
time to be measurable, it has to be
measured by someone. So even on its
own terms, the physics of time gives an
incomplete account of its operations.
I want to put the human experience of
time at the centre of time. Thats quite
difficult, because if you seem to say that
the very existence of time depends on
humanity, then youre rejecting an awful
Raymond
Tallis
lot of what we know from science, partic-
ularly that there was a temporal sequence
of events before there was any conscious-
ness, never mind human consciousness.
The Big Bang came before the emer- Our columnist has just
gence of the planets, and the Earth came
before there was life, and life came before released a major book on
there was conscious life. So clearly time
antedates human consciousness. So Im the philosophy of time.
not implying that physical time is internal
to human consciousness, because that
Grant Bartley interviews
would then put me in a very difficult him about Of Time and
position in regards to what we know
about the history of the universe. Lamentation.
How does the physicists mathematical
picture relate to reality itself?
Thats a really interesting question and
one that I must address, because if Im
saying that t isnt really the essence of
time, Im claiming that the quantitative
approach to the world, although extraor-
dinarily effective, doesnt fully grasp
reality. In the book I explore three views
of why mathematics has been so success-
ful in physics, and why physics has been
such a powerful science. The first is that
mathematics is just a very useful tool for
dealing with a particular aspect of real-
ity, namely its quantities. The second is
the much bolder claim that, essentially,
mathematics is not a partial portrait of
the world, but is the complete portrait of
June/July 2017 Philosophy Now 51
the world, the most faithful portrait.
And finally, there is industrial-strength
Pythagoreanism, which says essentially
that the world consists of mathematical
objects. In the end I think Im with the
majority of physicists in seeing mathe-
matics just as an incredibly powerful
tool, giving quantitative answers to
quantitative questions. The world,
however, doesnt consist solely of quanti-
tative answers to quantitative questions.
Mathematics is very powerful because it
reduces places to decimal places, but
places arent decimal places; theyre
more than that. Those who think that
the world consists of mathematical
objects are making the famous mistake
of confusing the map and the terrain.
Why do scientists so resolutely want to hang
onto time as a pure quantity, do you think?
Its part of the whole project of physical
science from Galileo onwards, that it
takes quantities to be the real deal, as it
were, and dismisses qualities as things
that are merely of the mind and are not
fully real. Dont mistake me, I think
physics is the greatest cognitive achieve-
ment of humanity, and it has delivered
many practical benefits for us in terms of
life expectancy, health expectancy and so
on. But what it doesnt deliver is a
rounded account of even the material
world, even less of the human world, the
world in which physicists live and do
their physics. Thats why the second part
of the book is devoted entirely to lived
time. I look at the three tenses, past,
present and future, and also glance at
eternity as well, because I think thats
quite interesting. I look at the tenses in
turn, after defending tensed time against
the scientific claim that tenses are illu-
sory, and against some philosophers who
think that tensed time is simply a by-
product of the relationship between
language and the world. They think that
when were talking about the past were
really talking about an event thats prior
to the statement that is being made. For
example, if I say that something
happened last week, what Im really
saying is that that event happened a
week before my present utterance. I
dont think that reduction works, for all
sorts of reasons that I discuss. So I
defend tensed time against the philoso-
phers, and against the physicists, and
then examine the tenses in turn. I begin
52 Philosophy Now June/July 2017
with what seems at first sight the easiest
one, which is the present.
Is there a present, and if so, is it specious?
To me the most specious notion is the
idea of the durationless instant, or atom
of time. I think it was William James
who pointed out that no-one would
spontaneously think that time was made
of durationless instants. The instant, as
A.N. Prior said, is purely a construct.
If you look at the present, at now, it
is quite puzzling. Since Classical times,
people have said the present is the line
between that which has not yet
happened and that which has already
happened, and the line, as it were, has
no width. And if you look at time as seen
by physicists, it is composed of unex-
tended points. But the present isnt
made out of durationless instants. Any
given moment of consciousness is
already reaching into the future and
drawing on the past. This is something
that was made much of by phenomenol-
ogists such as Husserl, but I develop this
idea to a greater degree.
Could you tell us what you mean by reaching
into the future and drawing on the past?
As Im looking at you now I recognise
your face. Your face makes sense to me
because of my past experience, and
because of the reason weve come to
meet, which makes sense of what is
happening. The very intelligibility of the
present draws on the past. But in addi-
tion, the intelligibility of the present
arises from its being pregnant with
whats going to happen next. Our being
here gives me a sense of whats going to
happen in the next few minutes, and
beyond. The intelligibility of the present
not only draws on the past, but also on
the ongoingness of the present, of whats
going to happen next, and indeed, what
is expected of me.
How do the past and the future relate to now?
This is one of the most interesting ques-
tions: What is the status of tomorrow,
today? What of tomorrow is here
already? There are certain items that
definitely are here already. For example,
there are ongoing processes, thatll still
be ongoing in five minutes time. There
is the room in which we are sitting,
which will be the furniture of tomorrow
as well as of today. What isnt already
existing are future events. Of Time &
Lamentation discusses logical fatalism.
This derives from an interesting argu-
ment by Aristotle that goes as follows:
either its true that there will be a sea
battle tomorrow, or its true that there
wont be a sea battle tomorrow. If one of
these statements is true, it must be true
already in which case, the future is
already fixed. The question is, are we
logically stitched up? In other words, is
the future already determined?
The way one deals with this is to
look very critically at the assertions that
are made in the argument. The reality
is, when youre talking about a future
sea battle, youre not talking about any
actual event, youre talking about a class
of possible events, and those events
couldnt all be possible together,
because one sea battle might include
Able Seaman Jones dying and another
sea battle Able Seaman Jones not dying.
So clearly, the referent of the proposi-
tions in the argument couldnt be a real
event. But the future still has a reality in
terms of present, stable, objects, and
ongoing processes.
To come back to the present, just as
the present sometimes seems to be
squeezed out by the past and the future,
the opposite danger is that the present
swallows up the other tenses. There is a
strong philosophical movement called
presentism, which is the idea that only
that which presently exists is real, and
therefore there is only one tense, the
present tense. But if the only reality
were the present, then how could there
be things that are true of, or false of, the
past? How could I say truly that Socrates
was an Athenian, and say falsely that
Socrates was an Englishman? If the past
has no reality, there can be no truths
about it, because truth supervenes on
being. So the past has its own reality,
and its a very complex reality. Theres
the past of direct recall, and then the
past of the whole lattice of facts that we,
the human race, curate collectively the
past of history.
Does tensed time necessarily require a human
observer, or a conscious observer at least?
Yes, it certainly does, but that doesnt
mean it has a second-rate type of exis-
tence. It doesnt make it any more second
rate than colours, for example, which
also depend on observers.
Interview
Raymond Tallis
Portrait by Gail Campbell, 2017

Interview June/July 2017 Philosophy Now 53

Does it make sense to ask about time itself
as opposed to a sense of time?
I think thats the most difficult question,
and the most interesting one. I do
explore it at great length, and in the
end, I havent reached a resolution. But
let me throw out a few thoughts. It
seems to me that the notions of earlier
and later must presuppose conscious-
ness. Thunder isnt aware of being later
than the lightening. It doesnt connect
itself with the lightening. The thunder
occurs when it occurs, the lightening
occurs when it occurs, there is no
earlier or later. There isnt a sequence everlastingness endless time or is it
except when that sequence is observed
by an individual who is linking the two
events. If being earlier or later were a
constitutive or intrinsic property of
events, then the world would be a real
mess, because each event would be
earlier than millions of events and later
than millions of other events. So even
earlier-and-later time so-called B-
Series time, as John McTaggart called it
does seem to require consciousness to
bring together two events, to locate
them in a temporal relation. Its much
easier to deal with tensed time: its
perfectly obvious that past, present and
future do appear to require human
consciousness. Having said that, we
know that there are objective sequences
of events that took place before
consciousness, as we discussed. So we
have the problem of human time being
contained if you like in physical time;
and physical time being extracted from
the universe by human consciousness.
This is a situation that Quine refers to as
reciprocal containment.
In an observerless universe, could there still
be an order of events, but not in terms of a
temporal order as we understand it? So you
could say that events are in spacetime
ordered in a particular sequence, but its
only when you put a human being in that
you get what we might call time?
Maybe. It seems that if you try to remove
the human observer, and you try to
assume what Nagel called a view from
nowhere an impossible view, because it
would be a view without a viewpoint
you would have the sum total of the
space-time continuum. But one doesnt
know what the space-time continuum is
in the absence of an observer. Some
philosophers have said that everything
54 Philosophy Now June/July 2017
co-exists in the space-time continuum,
which is nonsense, because that would
mean that opening the door and closing
the door were occurring at the same
time; or perhaps, not occurring at any
particular time, or (as Herman Weyl
suggested) not occurring at all.
What about an eternal experience? Is that
idea coherent?
The whole idea of eternity is a difficult
one. Both religious and non-religious
notions of eternity have lots of prob-
lems. First of all, what is eternity? Is it
metaphors, and we see what were left
timelessness? That ambiguity becomes
particularly pressing when we think
about people entering eternity, either at
a particular moment, or at the end of
their lives because you then have to
enter eternity, which may be timeless,
at a particular time, which is clearly a
paradox. And by the way, living in eter-
nity is a pretty bleak business, because in
order for things to go on forever they
mustnt change, and if theres no
change, nothing as messy as metabolism
can happen, and nothing as messy as
needs can be felt. I dont think unbeliev-
ers like me are missing out on much.
Do you not think it might make sense for
there to be a higher dimension of time from
which you could see the flow of time?
This seems to invite the question: If
time is flowing, how quickly is it flow-
ing, and what is it flowing in? And the
answer is, Well, its flowing at one
second per second; and as for what its
flowing in, it must be flowing in second-
order time. Very unsatisfactory. You
cant have the kind of measure that has
the same dimension on the numerator
and the denominator [t/t], because they
cancel each other out. Someone might
say, So time doesnt flow: that must
mean that its static, and indeed, the
universe is static. The answer is no: just
because something isnt flowing doesnt
mean to say its static. Likewise, just
because prime numbers arent very
nutritious doesnt mean that theyre a
very poor source of nutrition. I believe
it is a category mistake to think of time
as flowing or as static. So you may ask,
why do we find the idea of time as flow-
ing irresistible? Its because we project
into time itself the dynamism of events,
including the events by which we
measure time. So we watch the clock
hand moving, and we think thats time
flowing.
If flowing isnt a good metaphor, what
would be a good way of phrasing the change
or movement of or through time?
I can give you any number of bad
metaphors: the idea of time as a growing
block, time as a moving spotlight, and so
on, but none of these work for all sorts
of reasons which I go into in the book. I
think weve got to do without
metaphors. Basically, we scrape off the
with. Then we start by looking for some
very pared-down, parsimonious defini-
tion of time and actually, we fail again.
Look at some of the definitions that have
been given: time is our perception of the
sequence of events; time is the direction
of causation; or time is that which
permits change without contradiction so
that I can say of you that youre in
London and youre in Edinburgh, and
thats not a contradiction because youre
in London one time and Edinburgh
another. But if you look at all those defi-
nitions, they end up being circular. For
example, the one that says time is that
which permits change as the world
cannot have two states at once, you have
helped yourself to at once, a temporal
notion. The idea that time is our percep-
tion of the sequence of events is even
more obviously circular: the sequence is
a temporal sequence. Theres no non-
circular definition of time. This doesnt
worry me, because the very fact that it is
something real and sui generis [uniquely
of its own kind] means it cant be
reduced to anything else.
Maybe we can say we know what the move-
ment of time is because we experience it?
Im not too sure we do experience the
movement of time. We notice events
which are dynamic, and we also notice a
certain subgroup of events, which are
the movements associated with the
measurement of time with clocks. But
I dont think we have a direct experience
of the movement of time in the way in
which we have a direct experience of
movement in space. Rather, we experi-
ence that certain things happen at a
particular time; that certain things take a
certain time; and that something
happened before something else; and
Interview

that something was in the past and that
other something was in the future. But
theres nothing non-temporal, as it
were, that these things add up to.
Is time inextricably linked to change?
Well there have been lots of thought
experiments imagining a world in which
all change stopped, including some very
cunning ones, involving somehow imag-
ining that you can look at whats
happening in that world. If everything
stopped universally at once, then no-one
could make observations, so Sydney
Shoemaker suggests we should imagine
a situation where a third of the world
freezes periodically, and then another
third freezes periodically, and then the
third third of the world freezes periodi-
cally, but they have a different periodic-
ity of freezing, such that once in sixty
years the whole world froze. The ques-
tion is, would there then be a change in
time? And there are reasons for thinking
not. First of all, there would be no
measures of changing time. Secondly,
there would be no way of determining
the period for which time is frozen:
there would be no difference between
an instant and an eternity. So it would
seem that in some sense time is insepa-
rable from change but allowing for the
fact that time is equally present in things
that are stable.
How is human freedom linked to time?
I think tensed time is absolutely central
to human freedom. Creatures who live
and experience tensed time uniquely,
human beings are not identical with the
physical moment that they are in. So as
Im sitting here now, the very intelligibil-
ity of the experience Im having means I
am to some extent rooted in my past, and
reaching towards a future. And not being
identical with a particular moment in the
physical world is the very seed and source
of our freedom.
To me this links up with what Sartre said
about a human being being a for-itself and
not an in-itself, meaning that consciousness
is a type of freedom from material reality.
Theres certainly a link. But his view was
too general; I look at freedom more
specifically, and in fact I look at real
actions and real agency. Firstly, any real
action has to make sense to the agent;
and secondly, it wouldnt have occurred
Interview
Interview
if it didnt make sense to the agent. Basi-
cally, whenever I act, Im putting
together a very large number of physical
events that wouldnt have co-occurred if
it hadnt been for the sense from the
past of what I want to do, and the sense
of the coming future of what I want to
achieve. This is that not being identical
with the moment, which is, if you like,
an instantiation of Sartres notion of the
for-itself not being what it is and being
what it is not.
How was your thinking about time influenced
by the ideas of time of other horosophers,
such as Immanuel Kant, John McTaggart,
A.N. Whitehead or D.H. Mellor?
I found that Kants assumption that time
was one of the forms of sensible intu-
ition wouldnt stand up against the fact
that we know there are genuine tempo-
ral sequences before human conscious-
ness. When it comes to McTaggart, I
disagree both with his rejection of
tensed time, and his use of that rejection
to deny the reality of time. D.H. Mellor
was one of my favourite interlocutors, as
he writes so beautifully and succinctly.
We disagreed on tensed time, and I also
disagreed with his notion that time is
the causal dimension of space-time.
Before I finally ask what is time, can I ask
you, what is time not?
Having scraped off all the metaphors
and having restored living time, I say,
well, lets look at some definitions. One
definition is, time is our perception of
the sequence of events; but that has
problems, as weve discussed. Secondly,
time is something that permits change.
Here time is purely permissive for, as it
were, logical reasons: it allows some-
thing to be both round and square by
being round at one time and square at
another. But this definition assumes we
have the notion of time built in already:
basically it says that object A can be red
at time t1 and blue at t2. So weve
already used time in our definition. Also,
permissive time is dangerously close to
the idea that time itself is a cause. If time
had causal efficacy, then every event
would have two causes: one would be its
own private cause, of which it is an
effect, and the other would be time. So
thats an overdetermination of causes.
Another definition is that, as Richard
Feynman jokingly said, time is what
happens when nothing
else happens. This is
unhelpful, because essen-
tially it assumes we can have
time in the absence of change and events.
And theres a whole pile of other defini-
tions of time. Their failure makes a
Wittgensteinian approach to the defini-
tion of time appealing. Nevertheless, I
resist the notion that time is a term that
refers to a cluster of concepts that may
have a family resemblance but dont add
up to anything in itself. Wittgensteins
approach is more compelling when we
apply it to items such as games. His ques-
tion was, what do the Olympic Games and
Ludo have in common that makes them
both games? And his answer was, not very
much, so were foolish to think that theres
something shared by all games that makes
them games, even if they do have family
resemblances one to another. But I think
there is something corresponding to time.
Its not a mere construct out of the shad-
ows cast by words. But its none of those
things Ive just discussed. In my long look
at time I try to put together all the differ-
ent things we may say about time, all the
ways of approaching it, and paint a
portrait that does justice to its complexity.
I conclude that time is both real and irre-
ducible to other things. Im very much
with Lee Smolin, who said that if
anything is absolutely fundamental in the
universe, it is time.
That brings us to the $64,000 question:
What is time, Professor Tallis?
Time is not reducible to anything else, and
therefore cant be captured in a definition.
It has many aspects and it cannot be trans-
lated into a mere dimension comparable to
length. Even those who deny the impor-
tance of its lived reality must accept that it is
never going to be simple, never just one
thing. The most ardent reductionist has to
accept the difference between temporal
order, temporal duration and temporal
location. This is evident when we consider
real events. Agincourt occurred after the
Battle of Hastings; Agincourt lasted for a
day; and Agincourt took place in 1415.
Complexity beyond little t! PN
Grant Bartley edits Philosophy Now.
Raymond Talliss new book Of Time and
Lamentation: Reflections on Transience was
published in May 2017 by Agenda Publishing.
June/July 2017 Philosophy Now 55
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June/July 2017 Philosophy Now 57

 Philosophy Incarnate
Sheldon Currie watches Socrates take on the modern academy.
A
reincarnated Socrates showed up needing work to sus-
tain his eating and drinking habits, so he applied for a
job teaching philosophy at a modern university.
Not a lot of students interested in the liberal arts these days,
the Dean said. But we do have a small group on a course, and
yesterday the professor ran off with one of the secretaries.
Where did you get your degree?
Athens.
Can we get a recommendation from your professor?
I dont think so. Hes dead.
Our previous philosophy professor dropped dead himself
last year which is why we got his successor, who turned out to
be a dedicated skirt hound. Ill tell you what: Well give you a
short term trial contract. Renewable if it works out. Hows that?
How short?
Pretty short. Until the student evaluations. A few weeks.
All right. I need the money. When do I start?
Theres a class scheduled for this afternoon. This semester
the students are studying ethics, although what ethics has to do
with philosophy is beyond me. Ive got a PhD in Business. Ill
introduce you.
This is your new teacher, Socrates, the Dean said, then left.
A young man in the front row let his hand drift above his
head and asked: Where you from, Soc?
Athens.
Wer zat?
We get to zat later. But lets get started. Our topic today is
murder. And well start with a question: Is murder wrong? If
so, why is it wrong? What do you think?
Another student, in a far corner of the room, in a baseball
cap with the peak pulled down to obscure his eyes, blurted out,
Definitely wrong.
Does everybody agree? Twelve hands flew toward the ceiling.
Okay. Why? Why is murder wrong? Please move your
chairs to form a circle. Discuss the question Why is murder
wrong? Find an answer. Im going to take a break, if you dont
mind. Gods know, I need a drink. Ill be back for your answer
in twenty minutes. Sometimes in philosophy there are multi-
ple answers. Sometimes not. When you get the answer, or maybe
answers, appoint a spokesperson.
Okay. Here we go. Whos doing the talking?
A tall young woman in short-shorts and a tank top raised her
hand and stood up with a face full of confidence. We decided
on two answers, she proclaimed. First of all, no answer is nec-
essary. Everybody knows murder is wrong.
Well, Socrates said, then everybody must know why. Or,
at least, somebody you, for example, must know, if everybody
knows. So. Why is murder wrong?
Well... its in the Bible. The Commandments.
Whats the Bible?
The book God wrote.
Oh. Which god?
Theres only one God.
I dont think so. What about the gods of history, music, war,
and, well, dozens more?
Theyre all rolled up into one. Jesus. And He wrote the
58 Philosophy Now June/July 2017
Commandments.
Okay. So what do the Commandments say?
Thou shalt not kill.
But does it say, thou shalt not murder?
She thrust her hands out toward Socrates: Murder involves
killing.
Well, if you were a mother of two children and an intruder
got into your house and threatened to kill your husband and
abduct the two kids, and youve got a weapon and you kill the
intruder to prevent it, is that murder?
I guess so. But its justified.
If its justified, its not wrong, then, is it?...
This is frustrating, blurted out the young man in the cap.
Is it? Socrates smiled. Good. So far so good. Lets con-
tinue: If youre the commander of an army unit guarding the
capital, and the Spartans attack, what do you do?
The Spartans! You mean the football team? the baseball
cap man answered.
No. I mean the army.
You have to shoot them, maybe kill them if they keep coming,
dont go away.
So. Is that murder?
Youre the teacher. You tell us. Thats your job.
Yes. I am the teacher. And I am doing my job, asking you ques-
tions. Youre the students. Answer the question. Thats your job.
Im outta here. I got ball practice.
Okay, Socrates said. Thats all for today. Well try again
next week.
Socrates stood in front of the Deans desk. The Dean read the
names on the piece of paper he held in his hands and asked:
Thats a list of all the students in your class on ethics?
Yes.
You failed them all? Why?
They didnt learn anything.
I interviewed each one of them. They said you didnt teach
them anything.
Thats not true.
They said you didnt answer any questions in class.
It was them. They didnt answer any questions.
What questions?
The questions I asked them.
Well, thats because you didnt give them any answers.
Thats true. Why should I give them answers?
So they could answer the questions.
That doesnt make any sense.
Really. So what did you teach them?
I taught them what they dont know.
They already knew what they dont know.
Thats not true. But they do know that now. Thats a start.
If the students dont pass their courses, they wont come
back. Then theyll never know. And well be out of a job.
Is that so? Thats a pity.
So, heres the thing, said the Dean. The students must
pass, or the professor loses his job.
The students did not pass. Therefore the professor lost his job.
SHELDON CURRIE 2017
Sheldon Currie is a novelist and critic based in Nova Scotia.
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