[Another post I'm working on reminded me of this note from last September that I never got around to posting...]
Is philosophy itself alienating? Excessive concern to achieve the 'view from nowhere' seems like an occupational hazard. Especially if one embraces an 'ideal agent'-type metaethic, this may lead to constantly second-guessing oneself: "would others ideally endorse this?" (Would I?) Perfection is too high a standard to try to live up to. But it's kind of hard to ignore if you spend all day thinking about it!
One worry is that many of our actual sentiments might not be expected to survive the idealization process. Yet ignoring or suppressing them may not be such a good idea. Someone in class today mentioned the 'bad squash loser' case: ideally, the loser should walk over to graciously congratulate the other player. But suppose that, due to his anger, were he to try he would more likely lash out violently. So he really should just walk away and cool off. That at least shows why we can't just ignore our contingent flaws. Is there a similarly clear argument against suppressing unwelcome emotions (e.g. if the squash loser were capable of distancing himself from his anger)? It seems a non-obvious empirical question what the consequences of this are likely to be. [I made a similar point in my recent post on the question whether to attempt to reshape a non-conforming child's gender preferences.]
A second worry arises from the concern for universal convergence. Many of our tastes may be thought idiosyncratic or merely 'subjective', but it would be unfortunate to devalue them for that reason alone. Perhaps we can resolve this by taking tastes as 'given', exempt from rational criticism, and recognize as universalizable the general desire to derive enjoyment from one's tastes (whatever they may be). Or, if such subjectivism is too extreme, at least allow for a plurality of standards of good taste.
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Aspiring to Objectivity
Thursday, May 08, 2008
Authentic Development
“If we allow people to unfold and give them the freedom to be who they really are, we engender health. And if we try and constrict it, or bend the twig, we engender poor mental health.” -- Dr. Diane Ehrensaft
I'm sympathetic to this as a developmental approach. But there's something deeply puzzling about the central concept of the authentic self, or "who they really are". It seems intuitive at first, but when you stop and think about it, what does this really mean?
(1) One thing it might mean is that we are all born with a particular Platonic 'form', template, or image of the specific adult we ought to become. We might call this form our "soul", or "true self". Environmental influences which bring our earthly bodies to more closely resemble the ideal form of our souls thereby enhance our "authenticity". We are then "inauthentic" insofar as we come to diverge from the soul's template.
(2) Here's a more sensible, naturalistic alternative: at any given time, we have certain dispositions concerning our future development. We may define the most "natural" developmental path as that which is most supported by our current dispositions. It is, in this respect, the "path of least resistance". You may be able to eventually reprogram those dispositions, in which case the end result will no longer be 'inauthentic' (because you will now have new dispositions which support your new character and lifestyle). But there is some sense to the idea that at the start of the reprogramming process, you were "going against the grain", and not developing in the way that would have been most natural for you at the time.
Does this matter? It's hard to see why it should have any intrinsic import, if things turn out just as well either way. But Ehrensaft's suggestion is, I take it, more pragmatic. She thinks things turn out better when we help people to develop in line with their existing dispositions, rather than trying to shape them against the grain ("bend the twig").
(3) A third view would be to understand 'authenticity' in more extrinsic terms, as a matter of "nourishing one's individuality" in the relational sense of being different from other people. To be authentic, on this view, is to be quirky, eccentric, and unique (perhaps in a way that's in line with your natural dispositions, as per #2 above). Normality is inauthentic.
I feel a little bit of a pull towards this just because the "normal" life in our society is so base. But it's not the normality itself that's the problem. It's what normality here happens to consist in. (Even if everyone else was more nerdy and interesting, I can't really see the newfound "oddity" of being a drunken frat boy as any kind of virtue.) Though perhaps we need to look at this in a more fine-grained way, since there's arguably something about the little quirks in each person that we think expresses their distinctive individuality, and that we value accordingly.
Any thoughts?
Sunday, May 04, 2008
In Defence of Impractical Philosophy
A friend passed along the link to this vituperative rant against (a certain kind of) academic philosophy:
What possible use or relevance to human life can a discussion like this have? ... What a terrible waste of brainpower... How selfish. The author apparently feels no obligation towards others on behalf of his abilities. There is a longstanding tradition in several religions and many moral systems that to whom much is given much is expected: people of ability... who nonetheless spend it playing intellectual games are depriving others of what those abilities might be able to accomplish. They are indulging their own narrow and selfish desires, and perhaps flattering their own vanity: but they are allowing their abilities to bear no fruit for others.
The blogger, 'Protagoras', elaborates in comments:
I think that one central justification for theory in the sciences is that it can--and indeed has--proved itself to bear on practical concerns at some point, even if we don't know now how that will come about. My beef with this article, as with much, though not all, of academic philosophy today is that it has no similar justification going for it.
This strikes me as incredibly misguided, for several reasons:
(1) History teaches us that it's very difficult to predict in advance which areas of theoretical inquiry will ultimately yield practical payoffs. Who would've guessed that philosophical theorizing about the limits of formal logic and mathematics would eventually bring us the personal computer? Not every academic can be an Alan Turing, admittedly, but the sophisticated consequentialist will keep in mind the big picture. We should design our academic institutions so as to have the overall effect of producing important knowledge (even if that means that many individual academics end up doing "pointless" work, considered in isolation). This is the basic argument for academic freedom: we can expect the best results if we give academics free reign to inquire as their intellectual curiosity sees fit, rather than limiting them to socially "approved" avenues of inquiry.
I trust that most academics are the best judges of what intellectual endeavours are worth their time and effort. (Cf. J.S. Mill's arguments for liberty.) But even if not, the few exceptions -- the Turings of the world, whose theoretical passions lead to invaluable insights -- are arguably so momentous as to justify the whole system that enables them.
(2) For this reason, among others, it is not generally 'selfish' or otherwise immoral to pursue your personal passions. On the contrary, I think it is to be encouraged. See my post 'Value, Alienation and Choice' for more detail.
(3) The particular article in question tackles deeply interesting issues at the intersection of epistemology and philosophy of mind, arguing that:
the best bet for defending an internalist epistemology against Williamson's attack is to take there to be a tight, intimate connection between (to take one example) our experiences and our beliefs upon reflection about the obtaining of those experiences, or between (to take another example) the rationality of our beliefs and our beliefs upon reflection about the rationality of those beliefs.
As an anonymous commenter explained, [edited lightly:] the nature of rationality and our ability to know our own minds are topics 'relevant to human life.' Indeed, they concern our basic condition as humans. One suspects that Protagoras' incredulous response to the paper ("You have to be kidding me") is simply due to his not actually understanding what it says.
(4) There's something incoherent about the crassly 'utilitarian' (in the non-philosophical sense) stance according to which things must be 'useful' to be of value. Note that useful things must be instrumental to some end or ultimate value. The ultimate ends, on the other hand, need not serve any other purpose, for they are valuable in themselves. They are that for which we do the instrumental act. But the confused instrumentalist is blind to non-instrumental values, and thus the point of the whole endeavour. He will thus criticize the direct realization of the ultimate good because it is not instrumental to something else. How backward!
Now, intellectual inquiry, truth and understanding are arguably among the intrinsic goods (i.e. the things we should value non-instrumentally). It would seem to me base and ignoble to deny this. But if this is so, it is backwards to demand that philosophy serve other purposes. (It happens that it does, as per my #1 above, but one shouldn't demand it.) To end on a provocative note: Depending on how it balances against other values, I think it entirely possible that society ought to be set up to serve philosophy!
What say you?
Saturday, April 26, 2008
Philosophical Journeys and Destinations
Andrew raised some interesting questions in this week's PhilSoc discussion: why do we care about truth? Is there a risk of 'truthaholism', taking a good thing too far (to the detriment of other values)? Is it perhaps the process of inquiry, the journey rather than the destination, that we find most valuable in philosophy?
Of course, the truth will sometimes have great instrumental importance, as in medical science. But it's less clear what really hangs on the outcome of certain abstract philosophical debates. It may be that the truth here doesn't really matter for any other purpose at all. The question then is whether it matters for its own sake.
Jack suggests a helpful thought experiment. Suppose you had a magic 8-ball that would tell you the true answer to any philosophical question. Would this be a good thing? Bracket any instrumental benefits that the truth might yield. Just so far as the intrinsic value of philosophy is concerned, would it be a good thing for philosophy to come to an end in this way? Intuitively, there seems something deeply appalling about this scenario. This suggests that it's really the process of philosophical inquiry, rather than the end-point of truth, that we most value.
But I wonder. Perhaps the thought experiment has the wrong end in mind. There does seem something cheap and superficial about the "truths" delivered by a magic 8-ball. But this is not all that we usually have at the end of inquiry. Our best philosophy does not culminate in a mere 'yes' or 'no' answer. Rather, it gives rise to a deeper level of understanding; an appreciation of why the answer is what it is. (Or perhaps not even that -- just a deeper understanding of the question, and the various possible answers, may be plenty valuable in itself.)
So suppose you could get a brain implant that would provide you with a full understanding of a philosophical topic, without the investment of time and effort that is usually required to obtain such learning. Is that a good thing?
I don't think the answer is entirely obvious. But I lean towards thinking that it would be good. I think it really is the end-point of understanding which I most value, and not the struggle of getting there. What do you think?
Saturday, March 08, 2008
The Grim Aesthetic
A motivational poster tells you to "Be Positive!" Do you take the message to heart, or roll your eyes? Which response would you recommend? Which is more reasonable?
One occasionally hears things like this:
[C]onsistent enthusiasm contributes a lot to everyone’s happiness. We non-joyous types suck energy and cheer from the joyous ones. We rely on them to buoy us with their good spirit and to cushion our agitation and anxiety.
At the same time, because of a dark element in human nature, we’re sometimes provoked to try to shake the joyous ones out of their fog of illusion—to make them see that the play was actually stupid, the money was wasted, the meeting was pointless. Instead of shielding their joy, we blast it. Why is this?
Perhaps we think that reality matters, and that people shouldn't waste their lives in a "fog of illusion". On this view, there's something intrinsically valuable about really grappling with the grim facts of reality. The "blissfully ignorant" are really experiencing false happiness. To intentionally seek this out is essentially to abdicate the project of living, in the truest or most authentic sense. So goes the grim aesthetic: false smiles are ugly.
On a related (if slightly different) issue, see this old post at The Enlightenment Project:
I thought these [church] women were sickening. They had the best of intentions and, from the moral point of view were better people than me, but I found their interest in the minutia of other peoples lives, particularly their interest in other people's various miseries, incomprehensible and their compassion and smarm disgusting. They weren't merely gossips and they certainly weren't malicious--they were really interested in people's affairs, really cared and really wanted to help which is surely good from the moral point of view--but from the aesthetic point of view, in my very gut, I was nauseated...
Reading lots of liberal stuff, I'm amazed at how denatured many liberals are--how they fail to understand the natural tendency for violence and the aesthetic appeal of toughness, how they just don't get the fact that we're carnivorous, that rage is our natural condition, and how they utterly fail to understand the contempt and disgust most us feel for the Daughters of the King, for smarm, whining, softness, weakness, and what passes as "compassion."
Much of the liberal denaturing program seems clearly desirable. We should certainly hope to become less violent, enraged, etc. Vegetarianism is admirable. Isn't compassion? (I can certainly identify with the aesthetic which finds 'soft smarmy concern' repellent. But is this a perspective we can really endorse on reflection? Only if the 'compassion' in question is really a self-centered desire to be personally helpful, rather than a more abstracted desire that others be as well-off as possible. Note that the former preference may have bad consequences, e.g. if the best way to help is to earn lots and give money to Oxfam, rather than volunteer one's labour directly.)
Perhaps there are troubling trade-offs between the virtues. Those who focus on compassion and sensitivity may neglect inquiry into uncomfortable truths (the recognition of which may even lead to long-term gains in human happiness). So it may be desirable to have people of all types. (Another example: increases in apparent vices like aggression and pride might also make one work harder and so become more efficacious. Happier people might be lazier, etc. Cf. 'Excellent Imbalance'.) As H.E. put it:
The fault of the Church is in taking a particular personality type as virtue, not recognizing that this kind of character is morally neutral and can be directed to good or ill, and maybe even more than that, failing to recognize that lacking this kind of character isn't in and of itself a moral defect.
Another possibility is that our personalities are not so malleable in any case, so telling a naturally grim person they ought to "be positive" is effectively to say that they shouldn't be themselves -- hardly helpful advice.
What do you think?
(Perhaps the 'getting involved in other people's lives' point is independent of the 'always look on the bright side' question. But I suspect both stances are, in practice, correlated with a certain down-to-earth, sociable outlook. Grim, hard-headed intellectuals, on the other hand, are notoriously reclusive!)
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Consciousness and Time
Inspired by the discussion at Pea Soup, let's distinguish:
(1) the external, physical duration of a phenomenal experience,
(2) the internal, felt duration of the experience, and
(3) the believed duration of the experience.
To illustrate the differences: Experience machine A gives you pleasant experiences for 100 years. Machine B (allegedly) gives you all the same experiences, feeling exactly the same from the inside, but packed into just a single real-time day. Machine C gives you one day of pleasure, and then simply implants in you the false belief that it felt like it lasted for 100 years.
A key question is whether dimension (2) is stable and independent of the others, i.e. whether Machines B and C are really distinct. But first, we must consider whether qualia (conscious experiences) are to be identified with brain states or their contents:
Our talk of conscious experience risks conflating two distinct objects: the qualities (properties) of the vehicular experience or representation itself, versus the qualities represented in the experience. It's plausible to think that we can access only the latter. For information to be available to us, it must be represented in our minds...
This includes experience itself: there may be facts about it of which we remain unaware. This is plausibly true of the temporal properties of our experiences, for instance. It seems to me that I experience A before experiencing B, but in actual fact all I have access to is my mental representation as of "A followed by B"... I don't really have a "mental eye" in my head to tell me what's going on in there, independently of what eventually enters into a conscious representation. Our introspective capabilities are hence severely limited.
Clearly, the brain states themselves last only a day in Machine B's case. But they represent 100 years' worth of happenings. How are we to describe this? Here are two options:
(i) What you experience is the brain state itself, and hence lasts for only a day; it's just that you're left with the false impression that it lasted longer than that. Machine B was misdescribed: in fact it is no different from C.
(ii) What you experience is the content as represented by the brain state, viz. 100 years. It is truly the same content/experience as given by Machine A; it's merely the physical bases of the experiences which differ, and that's nothing to care about.
I'm inclined towards (ii). But if experiences can so radically come apart from their underlying brain states, we may question whether Machine C is actually as deceptive as we'd assumed. If the implanted belief changes the contents represented in our phenomenal states, perhaps this actually gives us 100 years of experiences?
One reason for doubting this is reflection on the paucity of the representation. It's one thing to write a story which says "100 years passed", and quite another to fill out the details for 100 years' worth of fictional events. So, if we think of Machine A as taking a long time to impart rich informational content (lots of pleasure), and Machine C as taking a very short time to impart a very thin representation (very little pleasure), the question whether Machine B imparts a lot or only a little pleasure comes down to the richness of the representations it implants. Sound right?
Friday, January 11, 2008
Excellent Imbalance
As someone who is very good at some things, and extraordinarily incompetent at others, I sometimes wonder whether it's preferable to be more balanced and 'normal' all round. Here are three blog posts from others that touch on the issue...
(1) Alex Tabarrok writes:
All personality differences increase in developed economies. If Chris Rock were a Bangladeshi rice farmer he might still be funny but he'd also have to be a hard-working, diligent rice farmer and that would push his personality closer to the mean of all rice farmers. The division of labor both opens up the possibility of becoming who you truly are and it magnifies and extends who you can be.
Aside: can anyone clarify exactly what is meant by such talk of "who you truly are"? What does the authenticity of a life, or being "true to yourself", consist in? It's intuitively very important, but seems difficult to pin down. Perhaps the idea is that we have certain deep-rooted characteristics that will influence what sorts of situations we best flourish in. Being "true to yourself" is then a matter of recognizing these unalterable facts, rather than forcing yourself to live as a round peg in a square hole, or however the saying goes. Is that it? (Or is inauthentic flourishing possible? Perhaps the thought is that we ought to nourish our individual differences and eccentricities whenever possible, so that someone who failed to do so - and lived a happily normal life in consequence - thereby failed to fully develop their individuality, the quirky unique version of them hidden within? That seems much more controversial.)
(2) Ben Casnocha discusses Marcus Buckingham, "someone who believes that cultivating your strengths is a better approach than trying to fix your weaknesses." I take it this depends upon being able to find the right niche, i.e. where your particular strengths are very important, and your particular weaknesses are not. Easier to change your environment than yourself, and all that.
(3) For a contrasting view, Steve Gimbel proposes that human excellence is a sign of mental illness:
To be more than good, but truly great requires sacrifice that would make most normal (and I would argue, rational) people say, "No, thank you." I posit that "love of the game," whether the game is football, academic scholarship, attaining political power, seeking social change, or whatever else one might engage in, will only get you to really good. To become great requires more and that more requires the willingness to step away from that which would make your life, writ large, well lived.
I've always been more sympathetic to the 'perfectionist' claim that excellence has increasing marginal value. It's nice to go from mediocre to good, but a descriptively "equal" improvement (however one measures these things) from great to outstanding is of greater value. What matters most is the peak of attainment. So it can be worth 'specializing' as a person, sacrificing some areas of our lives in order to truly excel in others. We all recognize the remarkable value of the lives of Beethoven, Gandhi, etc., despite their manifest flaws. A world without such greatness, but a much higher average happiness, would be the poorer for it.
Is that such a crazy view?
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Death's Deprivations
Galen Strawson writes:
When I... suppose that my death is going to be a matter of instant annihilation, completely unexperienced, completely unforeseen, it seems plain to me that I – the human being that I am now, GS – would lose nothing. My future life or experience doesn’t belong to me in such a way that it’s something that can be taken away from me. It can’t be thought of as possession in that way. To think that it’s something that can be taken away from me is like thinking that life could be deprived of life, or that something is taken away from an existing piece of string by the fact that it isn’t longer than it is. It’s just a mistake.
I find this very puzzling. Surely if the piece of string had the opportunity to be longer, but we cut it short, then something -- the extra length -- is "taken away" from it in virtue of this.
Perhaps Strawson is assuming mereological essentialism, such that if an object were to have additional parts, it would ipso facto be a different object. It would then be metaphysically impossible for anything to be longer than it actually is. But this is surely not true of persons, or the kind of (perhaps metaphysically 'loose') identity we care about. We are not time-of-death essentialists: my Grandad could have lived an extra day, and he would still have been the same guy (in any sense that matters). If that extra day would have contained many joyful experiences that would have enriched his life, then it seems clear that death harmed him by depriving him of these experiences.
So I wonder what Strawson would make of the following simple argument:
(1) One is harmed by an event if said event makes one's life go worse than it otherwise would have.
(2) Death deprives one's life of certain experiences that it would otherwise contain.
(3) Experiences may enriched our lives, and so depriving us of experiences may make our lives go worse than they otherwise would have.
Thus: (C) Death can harm us.
He seems to want to deny premise 2, what with all his talk about how we don't "own" our futures. But that seems indefensible. Consider:
(i) My Grandad could have lived an extra day (were it not for his dying when he did).
(ii) If he had lived an extra day, he would have had certain additional experiences, which he did not actually have.
Thus: (iii) My Grandad's death meant that he did not have certain experiences that he would otherwise have had. [i.e. premise 2 above.]
What step of this argument could the death apologist possibly deny?
Sunday, November 04, 2007
Caring about Time's Reality
Do debates in the metaphysics of time affect what we should care about? If eternalism is true, for example, should we be more or less obsessed with non-present events? If presentism is true, can that justify temporal bias (in favour of the near future, say)?
David Velleman ('So it goes', p.20) writes:
We can't stop the self from seeming to endure, or stop time from seeming to pass, but we can cope with these phenomena better, given the knowledge that they are merely phenomenal...
I have a disconcerting tendency to live different parts of my life all at once -- to relive the past and pre-live the future even while I'm trying to live in the present. And even as I relive my past in a memory, it is at the same time speeding away from me, as there comes bearing down on me a future that I am pre-living in anticipation. It's as if too many parts of my life are on the table at once, and yet somehow they are continually being served up and snatched away like dishes in a restaurant whose wait-staff is too impatient to let me eat...
The realization that I am of the moment -- that is, a momentary part of a temporally extended self -- can remind me to be in the moment.
But why is this? I guess the thought is that if the past no longer exists, our emotional attachment to it may tempt us to imaginatively "bring" it into the present. Eternalism reassures us that the past is safe and sound right where it is, so we need not be so clingy. On the other hand, as a classmate pointed out to me, we may think that the eternal reality of a past event is all the more reason to dwell on it. (I'm more inclined to the view that the metaphysics makes no difference either way. But that may just be because I can't really see what the dispute amounts to -- presentism seems inconceivable to me.)
What of temporal bias? Could "the moving now" better justify the relief we feel when bad events are past? Parfit (R&P, p.180) suggests an argument:
Suppose we allow the metaphor that the scope of 'now' moves into the future. This explains why, of the three attitudes to time, one [the bias towards the near] is irrational, and the other two [biases towards the future, and the present] are rationally required. Pains matter only because of what they are like when they are in the present, or under the scope of 'now'. This is why we must care more about our pains when we are now in pain. 'Now' moves into the future. This is why past pains do not matter. Once pains are past, they will only move away from the scope of 'now'. Things are different with nearness in the future. Time's passage does not justify caring more about the near future since, however distant future pains are, they will come within the scope of 'now'.
But, likewise, however distant past pains are, they have been within the scope of 'now'. Why isn't that enough to make them matter? (After all, concern for the future precludes one from claiming that pains matter only while they are present.) So the mere fact (if it is one) that 'now' moves into the future doesn't explain why past pains do not matter.
One might introduce a "growing block" theory to introduce the needed asymmetry between past and future. On that view, the past exists, whereas the future is still open. But this seems to give precisely the wrong result. Assuming we should care more about existing pains than non-existent ones, the growing-block theorist is committed to favouring the past over the future!
Monday, October 29, 2007
Persons as Voluntary Assocations
Another challenge for temporal neutrality may be posed by those who deny the commonsense view there is an enduring self or ego that persists through time while being wholly present at each moment. For the alternative is to see personal identity as a mere construction of sorts, perhaps consisting in nothing more than the right sorts of physical and psychological connections between various temporal parts, or momentary time-slices of a person. In that case, it may seem that what I am, at the most fundamental level, is not a whole temporally-extended person at all, but just a momentary time-slice. The relation my momentary self bears to my future selves then rather resembles the relation my person bears to other - more or less similar - persons. However, most of us think that it may be quite rational to be personally biased, in the sense of favouring some persons (e.g. ourselves and those close to us) over others. So why is it not likewise rationally permissible to favour some momentary time-slices (e.g. our present moment, and those close to us-now) over others?
I grant the underlying metaphysical picture, and will remain neutral on whether full-blown personal neutrality is rationally required. So I agree that if one were to psychologically self-identify with one’s momentary time-slice only, then bias against later time-slices could reasonably follow. For in such a case, one would arguably no longer be a person with a future at all. This is implied by the following endorsement condition (EC) on the construction of personal identity:
(EC) Any temporal proper part of a person must (at least implicitly) endorse its incorporation into the temporally-extended whole.
The sort of implicit endorsement I have in mind is satisfied by conceiving of oneself as a temporally-extended person, for example identifying with the subject of one’s memories, anticipating future experiences, etc. We may imagine someone - call her Mini - who, upon rejecting endurantism about the self, goes on to purge herself of all such thoughts. By failing to imaginatively project herself beyond the confines of her present moment or otherwise consent to incorporation into a temporally extended whole, Mini’s person would extend no further than the time-slice. The subsequent time-slices will of course bear various relations to her, being continuous in many notable respects, but they no more comprise a unified person than do people with similar interests automatically comprise a club. Persons, on this view, are voluntary associations.
Mini is not biased against her future, then, because she has no future. We do better to describe the situation as one in which she is biased against the people who later inhabit her body. If we reject the strict requirements of personal neutrality, then we may consider Mini to be reasonable in her bias. But it is not fundamentally temporal bias. It is just an unusual case of personal bias.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Cultural Richness
Modern societies have developed such an incredible breadth and depth of culture that any one individual can possess only the slightest sliver of it. Should we view this division of cultural labour as a good or a bad thing?
Compare pre-literate societies, where each individual may possess almost the entire collective wisdom of their age, passed along in shared myths and practices. There is an important sense in which such an individual is culturally richer than any of us could hope to be today. She is a generalist, with broad knowledge and capabilities covering the entire expanse of life as she knew it. There is surely something to be said for the coherence and completeness of her cultural wealth. (I do not mean the empty "completeness" of being totally ignorant, or in full possession of an impoverished culture. There's clearly nothing grand about knowing "all of nothing". Rather, I assume that the shared culture is sufficiently rich that it really does outstrip, on some broad measure, what any individual in our society grasps.)
Modern individuals, by contrast, are cultural specialists. We each know a great deal more about a great deal less. Our individual lives are arguably the poorer for it (all else equal; obviously there have been instrumental benefits), but together we constitute a civilization of such cultural richness as to dwarf those that have gone before.
We may find this trade-off intrinsically satisfying only insofar as we go beyond individualism and conceive of society at large as a locus of value.
Saturday, September 22, 2007
Evaluating (and Enumerating) Pains
What matters: the objective quality and duration of a pain, or our subjective conception of it? Suppose you undergo (1) 30 seconds of intense pain; or (2) 35 seconds of intense pain, followed by 5 seconds of milder pain. It turns out that most people prefer the second type of experience; afterwards, it seems to them to have been more bearable. Does that make it less bad for them in fact, or are they simply irrational/mistaken?
I'm drawn to the subjectivist option. (Plausibly, if anything is subjective, pleasure and pain most surely are.) What matters is subjective suffering, not the objective qualities of pain. It just turns out to be a curious fact about human psychology that you can make us suffer less by inflicting additional (if attenuated) pain.
Parfit seems to assume the contrary view in arguing against temporal neutrality in Chp 8 of Reasons and Persons. In his 'Case Two', you wake up the day after a painful operation, though you cannot remember exactly how long it was. A nurse tells you there are two possibilities: (1) You had 5 hrs of pain, but the operation is now over; or (2) You had just 2 hrs of pain yesterday, and have another hour still to come. Parfit suggests that the first seems preferable, despite being worse for your life as a whole. But, it seems to me, one episode of extended pain may have a roughly constant disvalue no matter its actual duration, at least if you cannot subjectively tell the difference. If this is so, then the first option is actually better for your life as a whole. It contains merely one episode of pain, whereas the alternative contains two.
One objection to my position is that memory flaws may distort our retrospective understanding of how bad a pain really was at the time. (This seems to be what Daniel Gilbert thinks of the attenuated pain case, based on his remarks in a talk last week.) I'm not sure what to make of this suggestion. But even if we're drawn to a more objective theory of hedonistic evaluation, we may only wish to count as distinct experiences those that are qualitatively distinct. (We would then think that duplicate universes, or Nietzschean eternal recurrence, would make no difference to the value of the world.) Most of the time, even intrinsically identical pains are embedded in discernibly different experiences, and so count as recognizably distinct. But in Parfit's hospital case, it seems like the duration doesn't introduce sufficient qualitative differences. After a while, many moments of hospitalized agony all blur together, and we may think the reason for this is precisely that there is truly nothing in the experiences to distinguish them. And so they count for just one.
My intuitions on these cases are all over the place, so I'd love to hear what others think. For any who prefer a more practical example, consider Michael Vassar's past comment:
One potentially important example of experiences that may be identical enough not to stack and may not be comes from factory farms. It's plausible that factory farms aren't all that bad, but also plausible that they are good candidates for "worst thing ever". I'd definitely like to know which is true.
What do you think? Is it true that (a) qualitatively (sufficiently) identical experiences only count for one? and (b) many animal pains are (sufficiently) qualitatively identical?
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
Accommodating Unreason
Is it ever appropriate to manipulate people on the assumption that they are unreasonable? It strikes me as problematic, but it's also exceedingly common. Just think of all the white lies we tell to avoid causing offense, or the rhetoric of a political partisan who doesn't trust her compatriots to listen to reason alone, or the general practice of trying to impress people through non-rational means, say by dressing up. (Monogamy itself may be another example.) I assume none of these would be necessary if people were just a bit more reasonable. But if our pessimistic predictions are accurate -- as they often are -- is that enough to justify acting on them?
I suggested before that the assumption of unreason denies agency to the target. Sure, people are often unreasonable. But not inherently so. Anyone could do better, if they made the effort. And wouldn't they be the better for it? The choice is theirs, and insofar as people live up (or down) to expectations, we should do our bit to help them make the best choice, by expecting nothing less of them.
The alternative is to treat them as a mere object, disrespecting their rational autonomy. By taking it upon yourself to effectively make their decisions for them, you turn them into something less than fully human. Unless, I suppose, they were already that way to begin with. If someone truly is unreasonable, then they have no rational autonomy for you to usurp. They are animals already; you may as well make them comfortable.
What about the more realistic case of a person who is merely unreasonable in a few particular respects? (That presumably covers all of us!) Are we to pretend that we're all perfectly rational agents? That seems dishonest, and silly besides - the pretense surely wouldn't last long. Still, it at least seems like an ideal to aspire to; and cause for mild embarrassment insofar as we fall short. Anyway, the question is: how should others relate to us in those specific cases where we are predictably unreasonable? Two responses suggest themselves.
(1) They could accommodate our unreasonable natures, as is standard practice. But, as noted above, this seems disrespectful -- at least if they cannot be certain that we wouldn't have risen to the occasion.
(2) They could demand perfection from us. (It would be ridiculous to expect perfection always, of course. Nobody can deliver that. But perhaps it is reasonable to demand the best in each particular case, even recognizing that there's no way we can manage this in all of them. Note the difference: we are bound to screw up sometimes, but not any time in particular.)
Given the fundamental value of autonomy, perhaps what really matters here is ensuring that we improve in this respect as much as possible. It's then an empirical question what the most productive response to failure is.
Or is it unreasonable of me to place such value on reason?
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Does everyone hate drudgery?
H.E. writes on the badness of work:
I looked at the women in the background, while Howser was interviewing the manager, sorting avocados and it wasn't that hard to imagine their lives. 8 am you go to work, get out onto the floor and start sorting the avocados--the ones and twos. And that's what you do for the next 8 hours--ones in this bin, twos in that one. Nothing to learn, no way to achieve, nothing of interest, no future, no way to excel, no chance of advancement, no scope for originality, no long-term goals, and nothing to show at the end of the day. Then you go home and cook, do some cleaning, go to bed, wake up and the cycle starts again. That's life, that's all there is. How can anyone watch this and not be moved--this is the life most people live and only a few of us, by plain dumb luck, have managed to escape it.
This is work--and I'm agin' it. I'd pay 10 times as much in taxes to see to it that no one is forced to do that work day after day, year after year with no hope and no possibility of escape--largely I suppose because it could so easily have been me: sorting avocados, scanning groceries, inputting data, working fast food. People look at pictures of starving kids and are moved. They read sob stories in women's magazines about dying children, feel compassion, and give until it hurts. Somehow they can imagine poverty and sickness, and empathize, but they can't seem to imagine the sheer misery of being locked into a life of endless drudgery, which is most people's lot. How can anything make up for being trapped in a restricted space for 8 hours a day, doing a job like this, buried alive?
It sure sounds intolerable to me. But then, so does small talk, partying, etc. Fortunately enough, my incomprehension doesn't seem to stop others from enjoying those activities. Perhaps mundane work likewise isn't the tragedy it initially seems, so long as it allows for social interaction. I've heard rumours, for instance, of people who enjoy their jobs more for their co-workers than the work itself. And I suppose those who lack Peter's "will to excellence" may even prefer to gossip than to excel. What if the avocado-sorters are among them?
The pursuit of excellence is so central to my vision of the good life, I'm not sure what to think. It's certainly depressing to think of human potential being squandered by circumstance. Indeed, a major reason why I like the idea of a basic income is that it would enable more people to actively pursue their interests and develop their talents. But would they? (Or would they just get drunk and watch TV, like your average college student?) The only thing more depressing than thwarted ambition is no ambition at all. But it seems common enough, don't you think?
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Camus on White Lies
Camus' 1955 'Afterword' to The Stranger
A long time ago, I summed up The Outsider [a.k.a. The Stranger] in a sentence which I realize is extremely paradoxical: 'In our society any man who doesn't cry at his mother's funeral is liable to be condemned to death.' I simply meant that the hero of the book is condemned because he doesn't play the game. In this sense, he is an outsider to the society in which he lives, wandering on the fringe, on the outskirts of life, solitary and sensual. And for that reason, some readers have been tempted to regard him as a reject. But to get a more accurate picture of his character, or rather one which conforms more closely to his author's intentions, you must ask yourself in what way Meursault doesn't play the game. The answer is simple: he refuses to lie.
Lying is not only saying what isn't true. It is also, in fact especially, saying more than one feels. We all do it, every day, to make life simpler. He says what he is, he refuses to hide his feelings and society immediately feels threatened. For example, he is asked to say that he regrets his crime, in time-honoured fashion. He replies that he feels more annoyance about it than true regret. And it is this nuance that condemns him.
So for me Meursault is not a reject, but a poor and naked man, in love with a sun which leaves no shadows. Far from lacking all sensibility, he is driven by a tenacious and therefore profound passion, the passion for an absolute and for truth...
There's something quite endearing about Meursault's blunt honesty. (Though his indifference to worldly matters is often disturbing.) Consider the following passage from Chp.5:
That evening, Marie came round for me and asked me if I wanted to marry her. I said I didn't mind and we could do if she wanted to. She then wanted to know if I loved her. I replied as I had done once already, that it didn't mean anything but that I probably didn't. 'Why marry me then?' she said. I explained to her that it really didn't matter and that if she wanted to, we could get married. Anyway, she was the one who was asking me and I was simply saying yes. She then remarked that marriage was a serious matter. I said, 'No.' She didn't say anything for a moment and looked at me in silence. Then she spoke. She just wanted to know if I'd have accepted the same proposal if it had come from another woman, with whom I had a similar relationship. I said, 'Naturally.' She then said she wondered if she loved me and well, I had no idea about that. After another moment's silence, she mumbled that I was peculiar, that that was probably why she loved me but that one day I might disgust her for the very same reason. I didn't say anything, having nothing to add, so she smiled and took my arm and announced that she wanted to marry me. I replied that we'd do so whenever she liked.
What do you think of him? Does Meursault illustrate a good way to live, or should we be more embracing of the need for white lies?
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Self-Idolatry
It seems plausible that a person should try to be the best that they can be, and that their "idealized self" serves as a normative ideal. But this runs the risk of self-idolatry, by which I mean a fetishistic concern for the mere image of virtue. We've previously seen one example of this: the 'Rambo fantasy' that leads some conservatives to care more about looking "tough on terror" than in actually achieving security. See also Laurence Thomas on "conceited good intentions":
With conceited good intentions, it is about “Look how wonderful I am for having helped you”. With genuine good intentions, by contrast, the accent is on you — and not that I have helped you...
When I think of white liberals, I am stunned by how interested they (initially) are in helping me and how much they admire me just so long as I underwrite their image of a white who just adores people of color.
Most significantly, I am stunned by how annoyed most white liberals are when it becomes manifestly clear that I can do rather well on my own.
Another case: I've always been bothered by the right-wing argument that private charity is morally superior to government aid. Surely the policy focus should be on helping those in need, not providing rich people with opportunities to be "virtuous"! (It's like pushing the Lifeguard aside so you can be the one to save the drowning victim. Ugh.)
Finally, for a more commonplace kind of example, see Publius' post at Obsidian Wings, about how self-described "Moderates" can be manipulated by partisan ideologues who exaggerate their position in order to shift the middle ground in their direction. I'm more sympathetic to this case: I can feel the attraction of bipartisan moderation as an ideal, and the heuristic of locating the truth in "the middle ground" may work more often than not. Still, heuristics are fallible, and in this case open to abuse. Moderation is itself an ideology, and no substitute for the hard work of honest inquiry and critical discernment.
It's easy enough to pick the position that looks, superficially, like what a reasonable person would endorse. Suggest a compromise, applaud the middle-ground (but not too loudly!), and you'll look good. These actions support a self-image that resonates with your vision of virtue. The only problem is that appearances can be deceiving. A deeper level of moral seriousness would require us to actually be that reasonable person, i.e. actively exercise our faculty of reason in assessing the first-order issues on their merits.
This gets better results. Further, it avoids the vice of self-idolatry. We find that the actual exercise of virtue involves an outward focus. You support X on its merits (due to appreciating its right-making features), not just because it reflects your desired self-image.
So, it seems, there's a sense in which we shouldn't fundamentally aim to be ideal agents after all. We should instead conceive of virtuous character as a mere means, a kind of guiding ideal that will help us realize true value in the external world (which is what really matters). This conception will hopefully make us less susceptible to 'image' hang-ups. Sure, we should all try to be better people, but it isn't the goal -- it's merely a first step.
Thursday, May 31, 2007
How the Internet Enhances Autonomy
[Part Four in a series: Reading Benkler's Wealth of Networks.]
We’ve seen that a networked information environment can enhance citizen autonomy in two key respects:
- It empowers citizens to express their creativity through the production of social media (from amateur film and music “mashups” to critical blogging).
- Better access to information (including “niche” information) enables citizens to consider a wider range of alternatives, and so make better informed decisions.
Benkler (pp. 138-9) elaborates on the first point:
In the industrial economy and its information adjunct, most people live most of their lives within hierarchical relations of production, and within relatively tightly scripted possibilities after work, as consumers…
The emergence of radically decentralized, nonmarket production provides a new outlet for the attenuation of the constrained and constraining roles of employees and consumers… We are seeing the emergence of the user as a new category of relationship to information production and exchange. Users are individuals who are sometimes consumers and sometimes producers. They are substantially more engaged participants, both in defining the terms of their productive activity and in defining what they consume and how they consume it. In these two great domains of life—production and consumption, work and play—the networked information economy promises to enrich individual autonomy substantively by creating an environment built less around control and more around facilitating action.
The emergence of radically decentralized nonmarket production in general and of peer production in particular as feasible forms of action opens new classes of behaviors to individuals. Individuals can now justifiably believe that they can in fact do things that they want to do, and build things that they want to build in the digitally networked environment, and that this pursuit of their will need not, perhaps even cannot, be frustrated by insurmountable cost or an alien bureaucracy. Whether their actions are in the domain of political organization (like the organizers of MoveOn.org), or of education and professional attainment (as with the case of Jim Cornish, who decided to create a worldwide center of information on the Vikings from his fifth-grade schoolroom in Gander, Newfoundland), the networked information environment opens new domains for productive life that simply were not there before. In doing so, it has provided us with new ways to imagine our lives as productive human beings. Writing a free operating system or publishing a free encyclopedia may have seemed quixotic a mere few years ago, but these are now far from delusional.
He adds: "Human beings who live in a material and social context that lets them aspire to such things as possible for them to do, in their own lives, by themselves and in loose affiliation with others, are human beings who have a greater realm for their agency. We can live a life more authored by our own will and imagination than by the material and social conditions in which we find ourselves. At least we can do so more effectively than we could until the last decade of the twentieth century."
As for the second point:
The emergence of the networked information economy makes one other important contribution to autonomy. It qualitatively diversifies the information available to individuals. Information, knowledge, and culture are now produced by sources that respond to a myriad of motivations, rather than primarily the motivation to sell into mass markets. Production is organized in any one of a myriad of productive organizational forms, rather than solely the for-profit business firm. The supplementation of the profit motive and the business organization by other motivations and organizational forms—ranging from individual play to large-scale peer-production projects—provides not only a discontinuously dramatic increase in the number of available information sources but, more significantly, an increase in available information sources that are qualitatively different from others. (p.162)
This diversity of information sources is important, because our autonomy is enhanced by putting the full diversity of human experience on display. Why? Because learning about other ways of life is vital for making a fully informed and reflective decision about our own:
In order to sustain the autonomy of a person born and raised in a culture with a set of socially embedded conventions about what a good life is, one would want a choice set that included at least some unconventional, non-mainstream, if you will, critical options. If all the options one has—even if, in a purely quantitative sense, they are “adequate”—are conventional or mainstream, then one loses an important dimension of self-creation. The point is not that to be truly autonomous one necessarily must be unconventional. Rather, if self-governance for an individual consists in critical reflection and re-creation by making choices over the course of his life, then some of the options open must be different from what he would choose simply by drifting through life, adopting a life plan for no reason other than that it is accepted by most others. A person who chooses a conventional life in the presence of the option to live otherwise makes that conventional life his or her own in a way that a person who lives a conventional life without knowing about alternatives does not. (p.151)
By making it possible for many more diversely motivated and organized individuals and groups to communicate with each other, the emerging model of information production provides individuals with radically different sources and types of stories, out of which we can work to author our own lives. Information, knowledge, and culture can now be produced not only by many more people than could do so in the industrial information economy, but also by individuals and in subjects and styles that could not pass the filter of marketability in the mass-media environment. The result is a proliferation of strands of stories and of means of scanning the universe of potential stories about how the world is and how it might become, leaving individuals with much greater leeway to choose, and therefore a much greater role in weaving their own life tapestry. (p.175)
Creative Media
[Part Three in a series: Reading Benkler's Wealth of Networks.]
Creativity is a key value promoted by the new media environment. The enhanced capacity for both individual- and peer-production enables our transformation from passive consumers to engaged producers of social media. This is not to wholly replace polished, professional ("Hollywood") production, as Benkler notes (pp.55-6):It does not mean that there is no continued role for the mass-produced and mass-marketed cultural products—be they Britney Spears or the broadcast news. It does, however, mean that many more “niche markets”—if markets, rather than conversations, are what they should be called—begin to play an ever-increasing role in the total mix of our cultural production system. The economics of production in a digital environment should lead us to expect an increase in the relative salience of nonmarket production models in the overall mix of our information production system, and it is efficient for this to happen—more information will be produced, and much of it will be available for its users at its marginal cost.
The point, again, is to supplement commercial mass-media products. Peer-produced niche products and information may prove valuable to diverse audiences, but – no less importantly – their production engages the creative capacities of their amateur producers, which – as every amateur hobbyist well knows – can be an extraordinarily empowering and meaningful human experience. As Benkler (pp.134-5) writes: [Home-made film] Jedi Saga will not be a blockbuster. It is not likely to be watched by many people. Those who do watch it are not likely to enjoy it in the same way that they enjoyed any of Lucas’s films, but that is not its point. When someone like Cejas makes such a film, he is not displacing what Lucas does. He is changing what he himself does—from sitting in front of a screen that is painted by another to painting his own screen. Those who watch it will enjoy it in the same way that friends and family enjoy speaking to each other or singing together, rather than watching talking heads or listening to Talking Heads.
Social media creates communities, and empowers the participants. They become contributors to their culture, rather than passive “consumers” of an (often imported) mass-media. Such cultural engagement exemplifies the core ideals of democracy, whereby active citizens work together to build a society, sharing their individual and collective experiences.
Thursday, May 24, 2007
Blogging, Masks and Self-Expression
There's an interesting article at Inside Higher Ed about "risky writing", or self-disclosing essays, in English classrooms:
I was still their teacher, but I had now become another member of the class, one who was struggling, like everyone else, with a personal issue. I had never used the word “intersubjective” in class, but the classroom suddenly became a space where every person, including the teacher, was sharing aspects of his or her own subjectivity with each other.
It's curious how thoroughly impersonal most philosophy (that I'm aware of) is, in contrast. Especially as it seems that one of the deepest philosophical questions is that which immediately confronts us in life, namely, how to live? We discuss abstract moral dilemmas, and formulate broad theories and principles, all from an emotionally disengaged, "God's eye" perspective. Such work is plenty valuable in its own right, of course; but I don't know how often it really helps anyone to live better. So I wonder whether insights might also be gleaned by grappling more directly with the human condition, confronting the problems we struggle with in life, and thinking about how best to respond to them. Is this not a proper role for philosophers? (Should we engage with emotions, as well as reasons?)
Maybe self-disclosure in the public sphere is problematic, though. I'm reminded of Nagel's 'Concealment and Exposure', where he defends social conventions of reticence and non-acknowledgment:
The trouble with the alternatives is that they lead to a dead end, because they demand engagement on terrain where common ground is unavailable without great effort, and only conflict will result. If C expresses his admiration of D's breasts, C and D have to deal with it as a common problem or feature of the situation, and their social relation must proceed in its light. If on the other hand it is just something that C feels and that D knows, from long experience and subtle signs, that he feels, then it can simply be left out of the basis of their joint activity of conversation, even while it operates separately in the background for each of them as a factor in their private thoughts....
In a society with a low tolerance for conflict, not only personal comments but all controversial subjects, such as politics, money, or religion, will be taboo in social conversation, necessitating the development of a form of conversational wit that doesn't depend on the exchange of opinions. In our present subculture, however, there is considerable latitude for the airing of disagreements and controversy of a general kind, which can be pursued at length, and the most important area of nonacknowledgment is the personal -- people's feelings about themselves and about others. It is impolite to draw attention to one's achievements or to express personal insecurity, envy, or the fear of death, or strong feelings about those present, except in a context of intimacy where these subjects can be taken up and pursued. Embarrassing silence is the usual sign that these rules have been broken. Someone says or does something to which there is no collectively acceptable response, so that the ordinary flow of public discourse that usually veils the unruly inner lives of the participants has no natural continuation.
These concerns only seem to apply in social settings, though, where others are physically trapped in the same room as you. Written discourse may be ignored at will, and left "unacknowledged" in subsequent settings where it might otherwise cause conflict. (Though the unspoken awareness could still cause tension, I suppose.) Blogs, especially, are addressed to no-one in particular -- the audience is purely voluntary and self-selecting -- so they arguably provide a distinctively unassuming form of self-expression. Anyone who doesn't wish to read it can simply stop.
So much for other-regarding concerns, then. How about prudential objections? Most obviously, you might not want your personal struggles to be public knowledge. But why not, exactly? We're all human, it would hardly be reasonable for anyone to hold it against you. On the other hand, people can be unreasonable, and it's at least possible that your future employer (for example) will be one of them. Unscrupulous characters may even seek to use your disclosures against you. So there's some risk. Enough that we should be deterred from self-expression in this context?
This raises a prior question: would one already face comparable risks in discussing controversial topics? One's views are, perhaps, revealing in their own way, though it would seem more conducive to free inquiry for others to refrain from explicitly drawing attention to this in practice. Cf. the very public shaming of a well-meaning libertarian blogger, here:
Ironically for a series of posts concerned with the boundaries of public displays of private sexual behavior, the disturbing thing about EV’s post was that I felt I was getting a window into his mind that I really, really didn’t want to look into. Somebody close the drapes up in here!
Ouch! Though the writer did qualify her criticism somewhat:
[I]n real life, we share polite acquaintanceship with all sorts of people who think all kinds of wrong and crazy stuff. We just don’t usually have to hear about those crazy things. At a party we will edge away from the crazy “let me tell you about my views on minarchy RIGHT NOW” guy. Then again, we might have a great time discussing the latest Italian election results, say, or poor draft choices recently made in the NFL, with someone who was, in fact, a crazy minarchist, but who didn’t go out of his way to tell you about it. Unfortunately, the blogosphere is like an extended drunken party in which the probability of you having to hear the crazy minarchist’s theories about government asymptotically approaches 1. But while it’s appropriate to get into high dudgeon if one of the Catallarchy guys says something you find morally repugnant, it isn’t necessarily a good idea to start picturing him to yourself as some sort of moral monster, slavering away in a basement.
Given my contrarian sympathies, I can't help but feel that there's something disturbingly oppressive about accusations of "thought-crime", and subsequent witch-hunts. But then, I'm kind of attached to the free exchange of ideas, even "wrong and crazy" ones. (I'm sure J.S. Mill wrote a word or two on this once.)
Back to the main issue, consider Nagel's observation:
We don't want to expose ourselves completely to strangers even if we don't fear their disapproval, hostility, or disgust. Naked exposure itself, whether or not it arouses disapproval, is disqualifying. The boundary between what we reveal and what we do not, and some control over that boundary, are among the most important attributes of our humanity.
Velleman notes that deliberate self-exposure doesn't undermine one's status as a self-presenter in this way, though. So it's still unclear why that would be a problem. Perhaps there's a clue in the following:
[O]thers cannot engage you in social interaction unless they find your behavior predictable and intelligible. Insofar as you want to be eligible for social intercourse, you must present a coherent public image.
Would multiple masks/"public images" undermine this coherence? I shouldn't think so. Nagel discusses the example of an author engaging in polite small talk with their harsh reviewer. They both refrain from acknowledging the potential source of conflict, even though it is out there in the public domain. They wear different "masks" at the cocktail party than at the publishing house, and know not to confuse the two.
Still, I've a niggling feeling that I'm missing something really obvious here. So here are two questions for the reader:
(1) Is there anything essentially problematic about public self-disclosure? (See also my related discussion, on a different kind of self-exposure, here.)
(2) Would the world be a richer place if more such (unobtrusive but openly accessible) self-expression took place? Or is it better to keep it locked away in the strictly private sphere?