Philosophy

Ok I will start things off.

To take the last part first. I agree that freedom requires discipline and the highest form of freedom is self-discipline. Anarchy is not freedom but the slavery of the many who are dependent on the capricious whim of the few. Even the few are not free because they are slaves to their untrammelled appetites and the whims of the even fewer.

Self-discipline requires one to act ethically because one wishes to and that means interacting with society. Ethics is determined by the mores and norms of the culture one inhabits. There is no Kantian, universal and noumenal set of ethics – it varies through time and place.

But, don’t people find freedom, particularly in unfree societies, through withdrawing into their own thoughts? Some might see this as communion with God; others escapism, but it is real enough for the individual, I would suggest. So, is freedom really public and social rather than private and egotistical?

Freedom implies choice , if your character is such that you do not desire to break any societal norms can you truly be said to be virtuous ?

If we accept that character is determined by the interplay of genes and the lived world , then isn’t the virtuous soul really only inheriting the benefit of happy circumstances ?

The circumstances that inform good character may not be happy ones for the individual , but they nevertheless drive that individual to desire good conduct from themselves .

SpaceP:

Welcome. Good to see you back. I hope you comment on the QM article summary I have posted.

What do you think of the new site?

Can I summarise your position as: ‘If I do something that is generally beneficial to society but to my personal disadvantage, then I am being virtuous?’

I will write a summary of another article in the recent NS on evolution and altruism, which might interest you.

Aristotle seems to think that eudaimonia (happiness, the good life) necessarily has a social dimension. This is at the heart of the Virtue Ethics that Anscombe was so keen to revive. Apppalled by the consequentilism (a term she coined, I believe) of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, aware that there was no longer any kind of religious consensus she turned to Virtue Ethics.

Aristotle, ‘The perfect good must is self sufficient . By self-sufficient we mean not what is sufficient for oneself alone, living a solitary life but something that includes… fellow citizens, for man is a social being.’

I don’t really object to much of what Mark says, but I find his language unnecessary. Need God, Religion, or Ethics be capitalized?

Capitalizing the word God changes the “All” I use below into something else, makes it seem more “separate,” isolated, (but then our language does this to nearly everything); capitalizing the word Religion does the same, creating a special category of life, while capitalizing Ethics removes its essence from that which already exists — a natural and spontaneous knowing of what is best for self and others.

The “way of living” of many religions does involve beliefs and belief systems, so I can’t completely agree with him there — if your way of living requires you to accept, say, Jesus Christ as your personal savior, necessary for your way of living, how does that not involve beliefs?

The idea of fulfillment is one I do quite agree with, but again, must this be placed under a capitalized Religion?

When Mark says: “Incidentally, this view is also the opposite of the Cartesian way of thinking, in which the spiritual is private: for Descartes individuals reach their spiritual selves by withdrawing from the community into themselves, not by engaging with it.”

I can’t agree. This ignores those practices — meditational, not of prayer or traditional Catholic contemplation — that require an inward focus.

Such practices don’t necessitate withdrawal from the community — few do this at all hours of the day and night in a solitary cell or cave, while communities exist and have existed consisting of those who focus inwardly — at times.

In fact, the more I ponder Mark’s statements, the more I perceive him to be somewhat oblivious to the possibilities of such practices, and how they can lead to an immediate apprehension or experience of what has been called soul, the relation between self and soul comparable to the relation between soul and what Mark refers to as “God.”

Meanwhile, such experiences generate an awareness of connectedness — but these often take place in silence, without any language whatsoever, so I can’t agree with his ideas of community and meaning, either, although certainly language is essential for community in the usual sense.

I’d say, then, that there is a deeper connection that that of language and meaning, and this runs through everything and everyone.

I spoke with a minister not so long ago about my use of “All” instead of “God” and what that means to me, how we are all expressions of All and so on.

This bothered him; it sounded to him as though I were describing a great soup in which all individuality was lost.

Divinity students I’ve discussed this with once accused of me being nihilistic — how could the “divine” be everywhere, in everything? They couldn’t imagine this as being anything but chaotic, with no central figure to impose order.

To the minister I replied that the individual was still sacred, not lost in a soup, that All was no soup, really, and that it contained patterns of experience, but he wasn’t interested in hearing anything more from me.

To the divinity students — who wished to place Jesus Christ in a position of sacred authority and couldn’t imagine any other belief, I suggested they could treat their own soul, their non-material self, as an inner, personal authority, and that they, as expressions of their own soul, would find that region of self incredibly close at hand, ever present, but their idea of soul seemed to be of something hidden and secret that fluttered out of their bodies at death, something to which they had no present access.

I would demystify both “soul” and “God,” make them easily accessible immediate experiences, but even though I have learned to reach my own soul in various ways (I don’t claim to have easy access to what some traditions call the godhead, the self consciousness of all, but have no trouble conceiving of this as a furthering of what I’ll call the soul experience, its most expansive variation), I can’t do this for anyone else.

I don’t know if it’s even possible.

I’ve met a number who claim gnosis, but they are unable to convey their actual experience to anyone else — they can only speak of it, which of course is not the same.

I believe accessing the soul is easier to enable or accomplish — this is no grand enlightenment.

Bill

I agree that the “new atheists” get hung up on beliefs. They are really not that important, unless they are beliefs that inform behaviour. Dawkins in particular seems to get het up about folk believing ridiculous things, but personally it doesn’t bother me in the slightest if someone believes in the virgin birth and burning bushes. Why would it? It doesn’t make any difference to anything does it?

Isn’t it really control freakery in disguise?
You shall not believe these things because *I* don’t and I don’t want anyone else to either.

Or am I missing something?

Like you, Biskie, I have no problem with people believing what they wish to, whether there is evidence for it or not, provided they do not inflict it on me.

The trouble with strong belief systems is just that, they are systems that force people to conform. Those outside the system are seen as a threat and must be made to conform or be eliminated.

History is littered with such examples and the surest way to guard against it is to live in an open society like ours. But there is nothing natural about an open society and most people are not lucky enough to live in one.

I think we sometimes (most of the time?) take our freedoms in this area for granted but it is not the normal human condition. Humanity is naturally tribal and hostile to other value systems. This can be seen daily in an anodyne version on CiF.

There is also a larger problem with western-style supernatural religions (the so-called faiths of the book) in that ‘Evidence’ is vested in subjective and interpretative form. In other words the ‘Book’ on which the belief is founded has no independent supporting evidence for its pronouncements and it is complex and contradictory enough to require interpreting. Those that are custodians of of these interpretations wield enormous power, as can be seen in any Islamist society today. The Mullahs can and do bend huge populations to their will using their interpretation of Allah’s will as either threat or promise. Christian societies of the recent past did likewise.

Religious societies of this nature generally exist for longer and run much deeper than oppressive non-religion based regimes.

Boltonian :

My point was really that even taken at a coarser grain than atomic determinism , does free will actually mean anything ?

If character is set by circumstances and genes then how can virtue be a quality of the personal “I” , when that “I” is epiphenomenal at best ?

SpaceP:

I agree but the whole of our social systems are based on the concept of free will. But it does not stand up to scrutiny.

Following the death of George Best I had an interesting discussion on this subject with a friend. His view was that he (Best), through is own free will, had abused the chance of a longer life from a liver transplant and that somebody else could have made better use of it. But when we examined it carefully, he had no choice but to act as he did. For example his mother died an alcoholic after abstaining for most of her life. Addiction was clearly a genetic inheritance; add to that social pressures, temptation, career stress, being in a foreign environment at a very young age, and so on.

We cannot really take any credit for acting virtuously or blame for behaving reprehensibly. But we do (even if we intellectualise it thus) and it is critical (I would argue) for our survival as social creatures. Without this belief no morals and without that murder without retribution.

Allow me to act as devil’s advocate here…is determinism an illusion that we create in order avoid the responsibility of freely chosen actions?

Gordy:

Could be but I doubt it. We live in a blame and praise society. Listen to almost any conversation or read even the most intellectual of newspapers. They are all full of gossip. And of what does gossip comprise? Blame and praise; in that order. I speak as a gossip-lover.

Trace any action through its causes and effects and you will reach determinism in the end.

I think it’s an interesting little piece as a summary of McCabe’s little book. I won’t say much about it directly – the comments have grabbed my attention – except for noting one rather vague thing.

“Incidentally, this view is also the opposite of the Cartesian way of thinking, in which the spiritual is private: for Descartes individuals reach their spiritual selves by withdrawing from the community into themselves, not by engaging with it.”

Gordy has already underlined the more social dimensions of Aristotelian ethics (than a lot of the ways we speak about and frame ethics nowadays). In addition, the underlying framework is rather different too. In a roughly Aristotelian system, it is the material principle through which organisms gain individuality. But individuality isn’t, of course, denoting what we understand as individuality (wearing really outrageous t-shirts and generally doing what you want). The material aspect of being is one of spatio-temporal limitation, by virtue of which (in part) we can speak of individuals. The non-material aspect – ‘form’ (which it is helpful to think of as principle of organisation) – is a more creative or expansive aspect of being. For someone like McCabe who likes both Wittgenstein and Aristotle, the contrast with Descartes still stands (even though I have no idea what he thinks precisely on the metaphysics of form and matter): language is not obviously material. I only add this to counter what one often encounters (metaphysics is pointless): it seems to me to have profound ethical or ‘practicial’ significances, even if sometimes hard to discern at first.

___

Boltonian – I am (I don’t know why) surprised by your thoughts on freedom and discipline. (It is not wholly the opposite of, say, Augustine’s). I am with you on this. Unlike SpacePingu, I don’t think freedom might need to imply breaking norms.

(One complicating point might be distinguishing first and second order desires: my desire to x and my desire – or reflections – on my desire to x. My point here is this: certainly the crude sense of ‘choice’ that one can discern in certain consumer loci seductively offers freedom – choose the sexiest undies/swankiest car blah blah blah – and, in another sense, seems precisely to act against freedom. It almost numbs our capacity to reflect upon our desires – rather, we just indulge them, or at best, reflect on how best to indulge them. Of course, part of a toddler’s immaturity lies in a poorly developed capacity wrt second order desires (though, to be fair, they are also spontaneously loving at times). Thus, this set up, in its most exagerrated forms, is infantilising).

I used to hang out with chronic societal norm shatterers: forgive me sounding all crusty, but it entails a predictable combination of sex, drugs, rock n roll etc. It doesn’t seem to be ‘more’ free. (Possibly, less so).

(Sorry SpaceP – this is not much of an argument offered against you: my mind isn’t in best whack).

But the other question Boltonian broaches is the dreaded free will one. I can’t disentangle my locks on this one. But, I’d note a couple of things.

We might suggest (I think McCabe would go along with this) that any human ‘freedom’ lies in our being language users. Not just capable of communication – as all manner of animals have to be – but of very complex representations of the world (and ourselves) to ourselves (and the world). One particularly vital area here is best pointed to by looking at a technical grammatical point: modal verbs (our cans and can’ts and musts etc). We can speak modally(?): that is, we can envisage both possibility (and thus different possible courses of actions) and necessity.

I haven’t though this through enough, but I think it’s well worth considering.

In addition, perhaps the ‘free will’ debate might hinge less on thinking about causation (or perhaps this can be the same) but we could also do more to reflect on our ‘experience’ of free will.

Finally, I do have some complications (in my mind) about the causation line. Suppose I write a letter because I want to tell my wife (who is abroad) how much I love her. To explain this, I don’t know if we so much give a cause (in the sense we often speak of causes), but a reason. If we’re after explanations along the lines of cause and effect (again, as we nowadays think of these), does this have (bad) consequences for thinking of reasons for action? I wonder whether we might wish to say, rather than we want a cause for everything, instead we want a because for everything (and reasons can be becauses).

This is all v off the cuff. No doubt, straight after posting it, I will have qualms with this or that part. Such is life. Could I have done any different?

ChooChoo:

This is very good stuff and I just wonder if this is not the beginning of an article for publication on ‘Metaphysics?’

How about it?

I am sure there will be others eager to contribute.

Simon for one.

I will offer to provide provoking comments from the sidelines.

DaddyO?

PG?

boltonian :

Your George Best example is a good one . His genes combined with his circumstance determined his behaviour . Genes expressed in his brain interacted with sense data over time and at no point was there an “I” to tickle this or that neural circuit in order to change his thinking .

You are right though , we must act as if each person is a volitional agent . Otherwise we would bring about circumstances that , as you say , lead to moral outcomes we cannot allow .

ChooChoo :

I must have expressed myself quite badly , my point was that whether virtuous or reprehensible our actions are never freely chosen in the libertarian sense . That is there is no ‘true’ self or soul that is responsible for our moral behaviour and can be credited or blamed for such .

When we are judging someone’s character we are modelling the result of a life , lived up until the point of judgement , of sense data affecting changes in neural states of the judged .

While what I have written above is true as far as I know , I recognise the sheer inadequacy of trying to see someone as a collection of neural states . It rings hollow and when push comes to shove I still think my ex is being a cow . The gap between a functional account of brain states and the richness of a literary description of an experience is startling . The gap between the language of neuroscience and lived experience is , in my view , insurmountable . This is why I am a mysterian . Note mysterian , not Mysterion … that didn’t work out so well .

boltonian; My apologies for picking you up on something said a while ago, I’m trying to work my way through the thread (but the unaccustomed intellectual effort, compared to CiF, is near to making my ears bleed).

I’m interested in your comment (Nov 7, 2:17pm) that “The trouble with strong belief systems is just that, they are systems that force people to conform. Those outside the system are seen as a threat and must be made to conform or be eliminated”

First it’s not clear to me whether the people in the first sentence are the those outside of the second. I could ‘understand’ the idea that strong belief systems require those inside the belief system, i.e., believers, to conform, which would seem to be another way of saying that strong belief systems have internally authoritative doctrines, whether expressed explicitly or not.

Ditto, I think I could ‘understand’ the idea that ’strong belief systems’ tend to be expansive which I think is what you’re saying. These do seem to be two separate concepts though. Have I understood corectly?

If I have, then although I could understand them, I probably wouldn’t agree as a general statement, at least with the second part.

Assuming you’re not tautologously defining a ’strong belief system’ as one having the characteristics you mention but rather as a belief system strongly held, would you concede initially the ‘possibility’, even if it’s unusual, that a strong belief system ‘could’ include within it a belief that it should not force itself on outsiders and force them to conform?

Speaking personally, and coming here from the Quaker tradition I find the issue fascinating. You see, if I consider the founder of the Quakers, George Fox, I think it is fair to say that he’d be considered nowadays a Bible thumping Christian fundamentalist. BUT, remember he was essentially preaching at a time where a supposedly single strong belief system, i.e. (Western) Christianity was tearing itself apart over internal doctrinal issues. His insight, it seems to me, was to separate doctrinal statement from the belief system itself. Hence Quakers reject having a credal statement, not (always) because they can’t decide what they believe but because they believe that such doctrinal statements are damaging.Without a creed however, there isn’t obviously anything to be forced on outsiders, what would you be being forced to conform to? Within the general Christian tradition, the core beliefs are generally the same. It seems often to be the non-core which are used as lines in the sand which people are required to conform to most rigorously. Quakers avoid such lines in the sand to both roll with the punches when expected to conform to others doctrinal statements as well as provide a rather blurred outer definition making the boundary really rather hard to determine. Perhaps during the later 18th C and early 19th C shunning was a method used to force internal conformity but interestingly when that became the practice the movement started to shrink and only began to re-expand when those pressures were removed again.

Whether the original strong belief system can be maintained without an apparent doctrine is interesting. It’s only been 350 years so far so the jury’s still out on that one.

The other issue which I would find interesting is to what extent can a strong belief system be flexible over time yet still maintain the original characteristics. Again this may be a definitional issue. A strong belief in an evolving relationship with God ‘might’ allow doctrinal flexibility which reduces prssure even internally to conform.

I have to say I think you’re also laying it on a bit thick suggesting it’s a flaw in the Abrahamic faiths that their Books need interpreting. To be honest I don’t see how it could be anything else. If the Bible, for example, didn’t lay down principles requiring interpretation Moses would be on his third quarry by now and still chipping away;

God: “Commandment No. 113,527: Thou shalt not tase thy bro”
Moses: “Thou shalt not what?
God: Never mind, they’ll understand it by the time you get down this hill”

Isn’t the whole point of a ‘belief system’ that it provides only a skeleton which needs interpretation. What you’re really criticising is the tendency for, I’m not sure of the word I want, hegemonic (?) interpretation within the adherents. Again, interestingly, George Fox explicitly rejected that, “the priesthood of all believers”.

Sadly, I’d agree with your last point, noting that the only reall attempt I know at an alternative, a non-oppressive religion based regime was equally short-lived (early Pennsylvania)

I’d also be cautious in the free will issue, it’s very easy to assume determinism which on closer examination leads to X happened therefore it must have been deterministic, The only way to distinguish would be to make a deterministic complete predictive model for an individual and copmpare the prediction with the actual choice. The problem is avoiding assuming that if outcome did not match prediction the diference was not writen off to just having an incomplete model.

peitha:

Thanks.

Lots of stuff here to respond to, so please forgive me if I do not address each of your points in one post.

I will try to explain what I meant first of all and see how far this gets me.

Starting with free will, I see no evidence to suggest that the world is not determined at a fundamental level. Where is the ‘I’ that makes these judgments? It seems to me to be a shorthand for everything that creates an outcome (ie the decision) but of what is that comprised? We are the sum total of our genes and experiences – where is the gap within which individual will lives that is not part of this? If it is not and stands outside these things, where is the evidence for it?

Our genes are inherited, so no room for will there. Experiences are a combination of circumstances outside our control and our response to these stimuli. The stimuli are not of our (individual) making and so cannot be part of will. our response is driven by genes (see above) and learnt behaviour from previous experiences. Again there is no room for will. If one takes the learnt behaviour and say that the previous experience was driven by choice, so that was caused by will fairly soon one will reach an infinite regress.

That is not to deny the crucial importance of a belief in free will as a society but that is a different thing.

I cannot speak about Quakerism because I know no more than what has been posted here over the last few months.

I know more about the denominations I was brought up with: Methodism, Congregationalism (now United Reformed), Church of England and RC, with a dash of hellfire Pentecostalism thrown in for good measure. My late father was agnostic verging on atheist and my mother still is a sceptical agnostic. They were more than happy for me to go to church whenever I wished, which I did quite often, the choice depended on my social circle at the time.

Since then I have made a reasonable study of the historical biblical periods (Old and New Testaments), including evidence for the historical Jesus, and the development of the early church. But I am neither an expert nor a scholar. The stimulus for this was the lack of answers to the numerous questions I asked. I was, I am sure, that irritating child who kept asking difficult questions and was never satisfied with the replies. That was 40 years ago and I am still asking questions and still learning.

Sorry about autobiographical diversion and back to the subject. What I meant by a strong system is that a society develops a set of values through which it coheres and helps prevent it from murdering itself out of existence. Those values are imposed and reinforced through a system of rewards and punishments. That, though, is often insufficient. If people are seen to ‘Get away’ with bad behaviour it will encourage everybody to behave anti-socially to the detriment of the society. (I will be posting a summary of a NS article on the evolutionary aspects of this soon in the philosophy of science category).

So, how can the ‘Rules’ be enforced? Well, every society has a belief system and most, not all, have a strong supernatural element. The tribal priest or monarch (or whoever) has special powers to call on the supernatural force and inflict punishments and dish out rewards. This supernatural entity has to be believed in unquestioningly by the tribe, otherwise it will not work. This, therefore, must be the truth. It will also help as a motivator for that tribe in its battles with others for resources.

This then is the unquestioned truth. What if tribe A begins trading with tribe B, to both their material advantage, but they each have different (and incompatible) versions of the truth? Tension is the answer and if the threat from this to the tribe overcomes the benefits of trade war will result. We cannot have our value system, based on the truth, undermined, so we will force the other tribe either to accept our truth or we will destroy them.

Enough for now. I will return to interpretation, and the problems therein, and other issues you raise a little later.

I’m not convinced re the George Best example.

Go to any AA or NA (Narcotics Anonymous) meeting and you will hear horror stories of abusive upbringings, alcoholic parents etc. Some people conquer their addictions, some don’t. I don’t think you could accurately predict those that will, or point to those that certainly won’t due to their genes and life history/circumstances.

I was in a brief relationship with someone who had had an intravenous drug habit for more than fifteen years. At the time my drug of choice was cannabis, which I indulged in on a daily basis. I realised that it was hypocritical of me to expect him to sort out his addiction when I was equally addicted to a different substance. I left him (I moved away to do so – I really liked the guy) and gave up smoking dope. I didn’t think he would ever sort himself out and I didn’t want to be with an addict.

Well, several years later I found out through a mutual friend that he was clean. He remains so today, nearly fifteen years later. Most people didn’t think he would do it.

George Best made decisions the same as we all do. He just made some wrong ones – the right ones were there all the time.

I sound a bit snotty at the end there. I don’t mean to. There is no freedom without choice is all.

I’m not that great at self-discipline. When it’s a choice between switching the pc on and doing the housework….well, I don’t often make the right decision myself.

Biskie:

‘George Best made decisions the same as we all do. He just made some wrong ones – the right ones were there all the time.’

My question, ‘What caused him to make those choices when others in comparable (but not the same) situations make different ones?’

Each of us is unique, comprised, as we are, of a genome and a set of experiences. Why, therefore, should we expect the same output from different inputs?

Where is the will? What is it that is different from genes and experiences that creates the ability to make free choices? Where, in other words, does the will reside? If in the body, where is it? If not, what is it and how does it get into our brains to enable those decisions to be made?

Biskie:

You did not sound snotty to me at all.

The interesting point for me is that we have to live our lives as if free will existed. We have no choice in that we believe we have choices.

I think and act as if I had freedom of choice all the time. It is only when I examine the causes of that choice that I realise I had no option but to act as I did. But that is not how I live my life most of the time.

One benefit of being a determinist, though, is that I tend to allocate blame less than I used to, although I have not eradicated it entirely. It is a work in progress. :-}

peitha:

Re-interpretation. There are degrees and also levels of enforcement.

Quakerism, I know, has no dogma. That, I would suggest, has not been the norm for the Christian religion throughout its history. Each of the 22,000 sects and churches (Encyclopaedia Britannica) calling themselves Christian has a different interpretation of the Bible. Most are intolerant of other interpretations.

As my German Lutheran friend put it, ‘One buys the whole message, you cannot just pick out the bits of the doctrine you like.’ This approach is that adopted by most of the mainstream churches. And, until recently, the sanctions for non-conformance were severe.

So, how come so many interpretations? Well, there are literalists out there, who believe that the Bible is the unvarnished word of God and, as such, it is perfect and does not require interpretation – it just is. But even a cursory glance would demonstrate the absurdity of such a position, which is why most Christians have gradually retreated from this position.

Now, if we allow interpretation who does the interpreting and on what basis? It is a very recent phenomenon that individuals have been able and permitted to read the Bible and come to their own conclusions (and that in a very limited sense).

It needed an elite to sit between God and the rest of humanity to explain what was really meant by x or y. But what if somebody else down the road said, ‘No,no, no – it means z?’ Conflict and, eventually, schism. This country and others have been riven with such conflicts over the centuries.

Also, the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD was a cobbled together political compromise to get as many people inside the tent as possible so that those left outside could be coerced or destroyed.

The Holy Trinity is a political compromise with the same objective. There is no reference to this strange concept in the NT (the one obscure reference has been shown to be a later editorial insertion). And yet it has become the core doctrine for most mainstream churches.

If the bible were left as a series of historical documents which are free to be used and interpreted as people wished that would be fine but Christianity, like Islam, is a doctrinaire (not to say dogmatic) religion.

Most churches are not, and historically have not been, as civilised as Quakerism (or Unitarianism for that matter).

This is one reason why I prefer Buddhism as a belief system – it is non-doctrinaire and, largely, non-supernatural (a supreme being is not part of the religion). This is not what I would call a strong belief system because it is not inimical to other faiths. I am not Buddhist myself, btw, for several reasons.

Peitha: “Isn’t the whole point of a ‘belief system’ that it provides only a skeleton which needs interpretation. What you’re really criticising is the tendency for, I’m not sure of the word I want, hegemonic (?) interpretation within the adherents.”

I would first consider those beliefs nearly universally shared before delving into the more deliberate or constructed systems of beliefs, their adherents, their strength or imposition on others, and so on.

These are extremely basic and deal primarily with identity within physical embodiment. Most consider these as givens, but what if that isn’t the case?

Doing this could radically change any thoughts on the more organized belief systems and how someone relates to them.

Boltonian:

I don’t accept the idea of determinism beyond certain obvious parameters, and then seeing that more as influence, believing choice is almost always available, while also believing in the existence of what I’ll call “inner” choice, that is, choices made by self but not by conscious, egoic self. (This would include parents, era of birth, and moment and circumstances of death.)

Hiring a hypnotist and utilizing his or her services is one way to access the region of self where such choices are made, but not the only way, but we aren’t likely to be engaging in sessions with hypnotists while posting to these threads; we are restricted to words and reasoning.

Therefore I will shut up for a while, get back to work, and ponder this later.

Bill

(Before I start, I just want to express thanks to Boltonian and Gordy for this wonderful relocation. It’s a bit complicating, in a sense, but I think it’s worth the extra effort. Am glad to see newer faces – well, pseudonyms – too: I read Peitha’s recent CiF comments with great interest and am glad to see his/her comments here. [Working out genders from pseudonyms is not always the easiest of tasks. Indeed, nor are parentheses within parentheses]).

SpacePenguin:

“I must have expressed myself quite badly , my point was that whether virtuous or reprehensible our actions are never freely chosen in the libertarian sense . That is there is no ‘true’ self or soul that is responsible for our moral behaviour and can be credited or blamed for such.”

Can I avoid the question of free will and libertarianism for the time being? I need to think about this more (I think I’m in a terrible muddle on this). As I mentioned to Boltonian on the evolution article thread, am going to a talk by a philosopher on free will next month: perhaps we can resume then?

I would, briefly, like to add one thing on ’self’, not as a challenge or anything, but just a vague thought. Post Descartes – and whether or not we are Cartesians, his influence on modernity is huge – we think of the ’self’ in a v specific way. I am tempted to identify myself with a specific organism. (I am my body and all that – is that a Merleau-Ponty thing?). When a dog does x – let’s say sees the bone and runs to pick it up – it’s not the brain or eyes or legs which do the various part, but the dog as a unified whole. (Of course, the added complication are those queer beings who speak of Is and Thous).

“While what I have written above is true as far as I know , I recognise the sheer inadequacy of trying to see someone as a collection of neural states . It rings hollow and when push comes to shove I still think my ex is being a cow . The gap between a functional account of brain states and the richness of a literary description of an experience is startling . The gap between the language of neuroscience and lived experience is , in my view , insurmountable . This is why I am a mysterian . Note mysterian , not Mysterion … that didn’t work out so well .”

Forgive me for reproducing all of this, but I think it’s brilliant (and includes an important reference to the abortive Mysterion project). Here’s the rub: if you’ll let me phrase it like this, your ex is still being a cow. The ‘gap’ of which you speak is, I agree, apparently insurmountable. Might I add a possibly complicating line of thought related to the above? We don’t view others as a bundle of neural states because we’re not just embodied brains, but whole beings?

Boltonian

I woke up at 430 this morning and could not get back to sleep because of your comments regarding free will.

I readily concede that our ability to make decisions can be curtailed by a variety of reasons be they nature or nurture. (Ahh! George Best! How fondly I remember my dear Dad taking me to Kenilworth Road to watch Best, Marsh and Moore playing for Fulham against poor old Luton…The main attraction for my Dad was Best. How many blokes of my Dad’s age would have wanted to buy that man a drink?) I also note Biskie’s point that others in similar situations seem to make it through.

The case against free will as I understand it: There is no evidence for any kind of free will decision making mechanism. It’s not at all clear what such a thing would be. We experience the appearance of free will but this must be an illusion. It serves an important evolutionary purpose it gives us an evolutionary advantage.

One conclusion that is drawn from this is that our minds are capable of being deceived hundreds of times every day on every occasion we believe we have made a choice.

The logical difficulty it seems to me is this: the conclusion that our observations are extremely faulty are based upon…observations which are extremely faulty…moreover it’s based upon a lack of observations which we know to be fallible.

As I see it there seems to be a determinism of the gaps at work here. Our inability to understand how decision making works is regarded as sufficient reason for denying its existence in the first place.

On the other hand I can’t stop thinking about this…

Gordy:

Yes, it is working much better now.

Firstly, I am sorry for being the unwitting cause of your sleep deprivation.

I don’t think there is a determinism of the gaps because there are no gaps. If everything obeys strict laws and we, and the rest of the world, are made up these things we must be subject to these laws (whatever they might be).

I don’t think Biskie’s argument stands up because George Best and her friend were/are different people with all that entails – different genome and set of experiences. The only reason they are at all comparable is a common tendency to addiction. Well, lots of people have that and some get over it and others do not – but they are all different. Also, tendency to addiction is stronger in some than others. Some are more tenacious and determined than others. Some love life more than others. Etc etc. George Best, for example, said a few years before he died that he really couldn’t care if he died sooner rather than later. It’s like comparing two people of the same height and suggesting that they should behave in identical ways.

The problem is that I cannot see a gap into which free will fits. I know it is counter-intuitive but so is much of life.

You have made the case for determinism very eloquently above and given a very sound reason for our belief in free will.

I think much of the intellectual argument for free will is driven by wishful thinking (I also think that much religious belief falls in that category). Wishful thinking should not be underestimated because it is a very powerful motivator. This is why science is superior to most forms of enquiry because it does not depend on the collective wishes of a particular group. It can be distorted for a time (as some have argued has happened with string theory) but not for long. And science tends to point towards determinism.

Best was of my era in the days when I was mad about football. He was brilliant – there was nobody like him. the only one to come close in recent times is Maradonna. The pity is that he was only at his best for about three seasons. There were always flashes thereafter but not the scintillating genius of his young days.

Boltonian – I keep meaning to pingpong on (perhaps) free will and also on religion and history. Keep ‘no timing’. Will endeavour tonight.

But, I did stumble across something which might just pertain to the question you pose on interpreting scripture etc (on a serious note, I’m not so sure I agree that Christians have “graduallly retreated” from literalism: I wonder whether literalism – in the sense we know – is a more early modern thing. When I think of late antique sermons – often pertaining v specifically to a scriptural text – while they might give rationalist historians some fuel for their astute observations (credulous fool etc etc), they do not appear to be ‘literalist’). Anyhow, here it is:

http://www.catholic-pages.com/grabbag/hermeneutics.asp

ChooChoo:

Thanks for the link.

What I meant by a gradual retreat is that the church (of whatever denomination) has resisted anything that could be seen as a threat to its doctrine. And, because they were powerful in former times, that resistance was prolonged and often painful. One thinks of Galileo. Descartes was driven from France (and he was trying to prove the existence of God). Spinoza was excommunicated by the Jewish religious hierarchy. Etc etc.

I call to mind Bishop John Colenso’s challenging of the Pentateuch and Joshua in the nineteenth century. He simply pointed out the inconsistencies, contradictions and unlikely occurrences within those six books. For this he was roundly castigated by the establishment and called, ‘The wicked Bishop.’ All because he dared to apply logic and common sense to the Bible.

The scientific community is not immune from this tendency to buttress the prevailing orthodoxy and denigrate alternatives but it is less easy to sustain here. Human beings like certainty and we are uncomfortable with anything that challenges these beliefs.

Boltonian – the free will question is still bothering me though I am yet to make head or tail of it.
I hope I’m excused for copying and pasting – found this interesting:

“Our genes are inherited, so no room for will there. Experiences are a combination of circumstances outside our control and our response to these stimuli. The stimuli are not of our (individual) making and so cannot be part of will. our response is driven by genes (see above) and learnt behaviour from previous experiences. Again there is no room for will. If one takes the learnt behaviour and say that the previous experience was driven by choice, so that was caused by will fairly soon one will reach an infinite regress.”

First: was recently flicking through a short little book called ‘A Guide for the Perplexed’ by E.F. Schumacher. He reproduces an hardly original idea about ‘levels of being’. I wonder whether this might of some relevance or interest here.

One primary division might be between the animate and the inanimate, or between the living and non-living. It seems to me that most of us accept this. (Precisely and succinctly defining this difference is not easy: and I don’t think that a definition of an animate thing can be couched literally in terms of the matter from which it is composed: the distinction lies, partly, in the whole being that is constituted). Thereafter, he goes on to make some further distinctions which are not wholly unfamiliar: there are different ‘levels’ of animate things.

There are ‘nutritive’ things: plants etc. These respond to stimuli but in – relatively speaking – ‘limited’ ways (which is not to say these might not be complex or wondrous to behold). Then, there are ’sensitive’ things: for want of a better word, animals. These also respond to stimuli, but seem to have both more powers of things like locomotion etc and, also, more ‘interiority’. The precise parameter demarcating these two categories need not overly vex us (nor their names): a comparison between an average shrub and an average shrew suffices to bring the distinction out. (Within each vague category, there might be subdivisions: compare a fish with a bonobo etc).

Finally, there is another level: perhaps we might say the human animal. (In the Aristotelian scheme, the category would probably be ‘rational’). The point here is not that animals cannot ‘reason’ in some senses: they can problem solve etc. But it does seem to be the case that human animals have greater ‘interiority’ insofar as we can, for example, represent the world to ourselves in complex ways. Obviously a defining mark – it is often said – is our linguistic capacity. Now, it might be objected, various animals have language systems, means of communications. And so they do. But a distinctive mark – among others – of human language use – and the capacities it embodies – is our capacity for modal language: considering possibilities, necessities, might have beens etc, and conveying these to one another. (Incidentally, this might seem overly separating of humans from other animals, a great sin in today’s day and age! Suppose an animal – a dolphin, say – were shown to be able to, for instance, use modal verbs, the proponent of such categories might be quite happy to include dolphins).

I raise this to complicate your point that we are, in a sense, a mix of our genes and our environment. The distinction between inanimate and animate presupposes a distinction between something which is only acted upon extrinsically (a stone) and something which also has an internal dynamic (anything animate). Of course, you might retort that this internal dynamic is solely response to stimuli (or genes playing out) etc. I don’t yet feel well placed to tease out any further tensions, but wonder what you think.

Second: not unrelated to the above and repeating (perhaps to the level of tedium) something I’ve mentioned before: reasons. The question forming in my mind is: suppose we are *just* the outcome of a complex interplay between our genes and our environment, what happens to reasons for action? Are they rendered redundant?

To use an overused example: ‘why is she writing?’ I can’t see how an intelligible – or at least illuminating – answer can be given at the level of interplay of genes and environment, which takes efficient causation as the explanation par excellence. The answer has to be in the form of a reason: ’she is finishing her book entitled “Meta-Eta: Postmodernism and Terrorism”‘ or whatever. This is not precisely a cause – or, it isn’t a cause in the way I think you mean ’cause’ – but I certainly don’t think it’s unreal or whimsical. It really is why she is writing. And I don’t think her writing can adequately be explained simply by reference to genes and environment.

Indeed, suppose our postmodernist is debating x with someone else. Certainly, (roughly speaking) genes and environment might be most illuminating: (to border on the flippant) a congenital speech disorder means her interlocuter speaks intelligibly with great difficulty; or, her interlocuter has had family killed by terrorists or whatever. (I know this is not what you quite mean by genes and environment). But, the precise arguments they are having – the reasons offered, the presuppositions, the conceptual frameworks – it seems to me that these are really exchanged in dialogue and, again, they are not explicable or describable in terms of environment and genes (even if without nature and nurture they would be incapable of such a discussion).

You have – interestingly – raised the question of causation in relation to free will. You effectively mean what Aristotle would call efficient causation. To crib from Wikipedia:

“The efficient cause is that external entity from which the change or the ending of the change first starts. It identifies ‘what makes of what is made and what causes change of what is changed’ and so suggests all sorts of agents, nonliving or living, acting as the sources of change or movement or rest. Representing the current understanding of causality as the relation of cause and effect, this analysis covers the modern definitions of “cause” as either the agent, agency, particular causal events, or the relevant causal states of affairs.”

Yet, it seems to me that day to day we accept ‘hermeneutics’, or the fact of having to interpret, or explanations/descriptions of things which are not ‘causal’ in this sense, and we assume, in varying ways, these to be ‘real’. To be sure, there are all sorts of things we do every day which are simply responses to stimuli etc. But there are also other things which are more stubborn in the face of attempting to explain them in such terms: perhaps what we are doing in posting and discussing at this wonderful little glade is an example. I wonder whether we can truly speak of ‘beliefs’ – you refer, intriguingly, to the possibly importance of belief in free will to a society regardless of the possibility of free will – which are not obviously connected to frameworks / contrasting beliefs / presuppositions etc in a way that is analogous to cause and effect in the sense of motor responses to stimuli etc, if we seek for and admit only ultimate explanations of the latter variety (efficient causation).

Why have I wasted so much space on this? McCabe, if I understand him correctly, connects the possibility of having what we nowadays call ‘free will’ to our being language users (of a certain kind): we certainly comprehend actions through our language (to the point not only of describing others’ actions by giving reasons – and implying certain ideas of agency – but also of describing other things in an almost ‘anthropomorphic’ way: the selfish gene, the bees wanting to protect their hive etc). It is the extent to which, through languages – OR, through our capacities as embodied in our being language users – we can form reasons about our actions and also consider what we might do or might have done, for example, that there is, to my mind, a problem for considering ‘free will’ as illusory because of the necessity of causation along the lines of environment and genes.

Forgot to say – the ‘hermeneutics’ link posted above is, er, a joke. (I quite like it because it’s one of those little witty pieces of prose to which someone like me chortles along, despite not quite ‘getting’ everything, and gives into the temptation to think he’s clevererererererer than he is (a terrible flirt, this, by the way), before realising this truth about said piece and self: good lesson in humility. And it’s funny).

ChooChoo:

Thanks.

Taking your last point first, I realised that it was a clever and humorous way of making a serious point. I enjoyed it – thanks.

You raise lots of issues, so in no particular order here goes.

You mention a categorisation – a hierarchy of existence starting with inanimate objects, then to plants etc. I would say that this is a purely human, language-driven need for labelling. My guess is that no such hierarchy exists in nature. Complex organisms such as us are the exception and, usually, the least successful in terms of longevity.

PG would have something interesting to say about this. PG – you are needed.

The example you give about writing a book, or whatever, does not, in my view, decrease the likelihood of determinism. There is an intentionality, a compulsion even, an idea, the assembly of the means of production etc. Each of those has a prior cause (yes, I mean efficient cause in Aristotle speak). What that work becomes is what he would call the final cause. But few people use the word in all the senses he did. What I mean is the immediate antecedent. I am also aware of the causation trap – most eloquently expressed by Hume. But this does not refute the argument that the world is governed by laws and we, as part of that world, are subject to them also. We do not stand outside the world and view it objectively, we are a part of it.

My broad point is that it is really difficult to point to an action without those prior causes. Our ability to reason is, in part, an ability to search for those causes (asking the question, ‘Why?’). Language itself might point to ‘Interiority’ but I think relative brain size is just as good a guide. The ability to use complex language does not, I think, have any bearing on the free will argument.

hey Boltonian – interesting thoughts as usual.

On the categorisation – you used ‘hierarchy’, not me! (Though I am not averse to using it myself, I must admit). I’m risking tedious repetition, but I’ll try to explain why I think this particular (of course, not the only) way of thinking about organisms etc might be of interest.

First, how would you distinguish between living and non-living things? Another way of thinking about this is what precisely is the difference between an organism when alive and after death? What do you make of my tentative suggestion that this distinction – which, I assume, you take to be a real one – cannot be couched in terms of material constituents? I am increasingly inclined to think that a vaguely Aristotelian bent is quite cogent here (which is not to say Aristotle is right on everything or that his ’causes’ are unproblematic). To distinguish between living and non-living it seems to me that adopting – vaguely – some sort of ‘final cause’ or organic telos is not out of order (consider the indispensability of notions of ‘ends’ in medicine, for example: in order for a doctor to treat a patient, she must – not unreasonably – assume a certain ‘correct ordering’, a certain kind of end to which the whole organism – the person – which she is treating is directed).

Another corollary of this is noting, to reiterate, the actions of living things are not wholly explained in terms of the working of extrinsic causes: there are internally directed causes, even if responses to stimuli (we speak of a plant responding to stimuli, but not a stone). (I do not have anything on free will in mind here).

Second, the distinctions between, say, ‘nutritive’ and ’sensitive’ organisms are blurry. at the boundaries, there are difficult cases. It is not a precise distinction in the way we might distinguish odd and even numbers. But, even if through a glass darkly, it does seem to exist ‘in nature’. There really is, I think, a difference between the capacities of your average plant and your average animal, human or otherwise: and, as you note, there are differences in complexity here. By complexity, I don’t mean in a mechanical sense: but in terms of capacities (locomotion, communication, cognition etc). (Incidentally, I think I’ve mentioned this before, but scholastics like Aquinas – interestingly – had no qualms with calling humans ‘animals’).
_

On McCabe, I didn’t quite reflect what he seemed to think. (I’m just trying to report here, rather than argue for it).

McCabe speaks of ‘free decision’. Consider a senstive will and sensitive interpretation of the world, and a rational will and a rational interpretation of the world. (To use McCabe’s examples and terms), a hungry dog might see and smell a juicy steak. She interprets it as edible
and – barring some sort of training – “cannot but try to get at it and eat it”. Suppose I – hungry and non-vegetarian – see this steak. I might share with the dog some sort of sensitive interpretation based on sight and smell. But I can also “talk to myself” about the steak: it’s rare (my fave), or it’s full of cholesterol, or it’s Zubin Mehta’s not mine, or there are other ways I might get protein into my diet etc etc. (The reality of this ‘talking to oneself’ is not, I think, questionable).

Following someone like Aquinas, McCabe seems to consider that it is in this ‘talking to oneself’ that any sort of human freedom lies. He writes, “there are limits to the operations ot the nervous system, but no limits to talk.” [I am still thinking about this latter point: certainly, should limits to talk exist, they are far more open-ended than limits to sensitive interpretations of the world].

McCabe would say that, unlike the dog, I can make a “decision” whether or not to eat the steak. He understands decision as “a complex dialectical interaction of the practical understanding and willing, all of which belongs to the linguistic network, the deployment of words or concepts (which are the meaning of words). For this reason, no non-linguistic animal [in this, I think, Wittgensteinian understanding of linguistic] can come to a decision.”

He is saying that non-linguistic animals cannot think or decide about what to do (practical reason) in the way linguistic-animals (i.e. us) can: we can represent to ourselves (and others) contingency (what is but might not be, or with what is not but might be).

[This is from 'The Good Life'].

I don’t completely know what to make of all of this. (My knowledge and grasp of someone like Aquinas on ‘free decision’ is poor). But the distinction he makes between linguistic and non-linguistic animals does seem to reflect experience.

On my scepticism – I should stress that I’m in a terrible muddle on free will, so this is half playing devil’s advocate – about the cogency of taking ‘reasons’ in a framework that requires, ultimately, explanations couched in terms of efficient causation, with reference to genes and environment, I see you do not share it! My tentative hunch is that talk of ‘reasons’ is rendered incoherent or dispensable in such a frame: ‘reasons’ for action are not reducible, I venture, to efficient causation. And I take our power to reason to be real. It’s not just practical problem solving exactly. Consider the thread on quantum physics – and the work of scientists in which it is interested. I can’t see the cogency of an explanation for what scientists are doing in discussing QP couched in terms of efficient causation with genes/environment etc. To reiterate, we refer to the arguments, the rationalities etc they are marshalling. Moreover, here’s a bolder thought: these capacities by which we interpret the world – linguistic capacities in some senses – might not just impose meaning onto dead matter in motion: they – when (more) right – do pick out features of what is going on. (Going by your thoughts, you’d agree that, per se, intelligibility is not just a illusionary construct). I wonder – genuinely not sure – whether your position requires that we identify ‘reasons’ (or reasoning) with brain states (thus facilitate talk of ’causes’): but brain states really do not seem to share identity with, say, chains of reasoning about quantum.

On language users: I guess it seems that I am more struck by this – and possible distinctions that might stem from it – than you. Like you, I am not uninterested in differing brain sizes and structures. But what is more interesting to me is that while comparing brain structures and sizes of a human and non-human animal might reflect certain quantitative differences, the language use point is, for all that I can see, a qualitative difference.

ChooChoo:

I apologise for putting words in your mouth.

I honestly do not know whether our distinction between living and inanimate is real or not. Do not rocks react to stimuli and change as a result, admittedly over a longer period of time than, say, plants. Are viruses alive? Is DNA a prerequisite for life? And, if so, is that a real distinction or one we have thought up to try to make sense of the world?

If that is a summary of McCabe’s position then I do not agree. There are degrees of linguistic sophistication, most of which we do not understand and, therefore, greatly underestimate. You mentioned dolphins earlier but I think we understand little of the linguistic complexity of most animals. Also, language is but one form of communication and not necessarily the most articulate. I acknowledge, though, that philosophers have been rather obsessed with the role of language, at least since the Tractatus.

Not sure, either, whether reasoning is solely a function of brain states. This moves us towards a debate on consciousness. But I am not convinced by dualism either.

Why can our ability to reason not be rooted in problem-solving? Surely understanding why something is as is it is helps us to solve not just that problem but others of like hue also. Is that not the essence of human reasoning?

Quantum physics uses exactly these tools to try to solve problems. Interpreting the data is where we have problems – what does it all mean? That is an extension of our formidable problem-solving capability – that we can take some facts, create a scenario and transfer that scenario to other situations bearing some similarity. Pattern recognition and examining deeper reasons for something help us get better at solving problems. This could also explain our need for categorisation and paradigms.

Please correct me if I have misconstrued or misunderstood your argument.

BTW when did ‘She’ replace ‘He’ as the impersonal pronoun. I have noticed this tendency recently. Why the change and what improvement has it made to the language? But then I am an old fuddy-duddy in these matters.

Boltonian – please don’t worry about misconstruing – you haven’t. I only highlighted that you mentioned ‘hierarchy’ because I deliberately didn’t use the word: it confirmed to my mind that this is what ostensibly seems to be implied by such a categorisation (or at least presentation).

On problem solving – I retract what I said and see what you’re saying.

On free will, including McCabe’s position – I admire the clarity of your position. Mine is far more vermicellied. Perhaps I’ll ease off free will discussions until that seminar. (I must add that I disagree with you on the importance of our being linguistic beings of a particular sort).

On the living/non-living distinction: here, I’m surprised. It seems to me that a distinction between the animate / inanimate is something which is both startlingly real and startlingly difficult to put into words precisely. If I may be a bit of a scoundrel, surely you see a difference between you and a stone to the extent of making some sense of an animate/inanimate distinction? (Or indeed, between Mr. X alive and Mr. X no longer alive). Viruses are ostensibly difficult. Bearing in mind my own terrible ignorance of our precise knowledge in such areas, I wonder whether an extrinsic / intrinsic cause distinction might still work here.

Finally, on the impersonal pronoun – this will be terribly cowardly and hypocritical, but I’m with you. There’s a good little polemical essay on this by Roger Scruton in a book published in the early 90s called The State of the Language. (It remains my favourite 2nd hand bookshop stumble find: it’s a collection of essays on various aspects of English: section of essays on various Englishes – Amy Tan on Chinese English for example; etc etc. Scruton’s essay comes after about two or three ‘feminist’ essays – one of which is fascinating and one could almost be a satire. Scruton, of course, defends the use of ‘he’ as an impersonal pronoun). Writing on CiF and also being supervised by a scary female supervisor one time have pushed me – coward that I am – over to the ’she’ (or alternating) camp. I guess an ‘argument from Scruton’ won’t command much respect on CiF. In these more temperate climes, perhaps my hypothetical interlocuter will be less fussed about such things, even if he (im)personally uses ’she’…

ChooChoo:

I am quite knackered so this might not make much sense. I should wait until the morning but what the hell!

Alive vs not. Atoms are (almost ) indestructible; we are composed of atoms; so are rocks etc; we are subjective beings. Who decides what is alive and what is not? Photons (or electrons) seem to make a decision in the the two slit experiment. What is the definition of life?

Just a few jumbled thoughts.

Boltonian – perhaps like you I am still as interested in but also exhausted by discussing this. Not that I’m tired of it. I am just unsure of many things to the point of making it rather difficult to set out my thoughts clearly. Will go on free will sabbatical for a while. (Incidentally, it seems, my confusion notwithstanding, we disagree on several things: it’s characteristic of this setting, your site, however, that this brings out distinctly enjoyable discussion, as opposed to points scoring. Thank you!).

There is one area, though, on which I’d like to continue discussion: living/non-living.

This is not a sufficient argument in itself, but I’d note – and you’d agree? – that this is a distinction which we all seem to take as real without much thought: it doesn’t take much thought for me to suppose my imaginary wife is alive, but the earring on her ear isn’t. Oh wait, bad example. If you’ll accept, this holds – or is assumed without much thinking – for your wife and her earrings.

You mentioned material constituents:

“Atoms are (almost ) indestructible; we are composed of atoms; so are rocks etc; we are subjective beings. Who decides what is alive and what is not?”

(At the risk of being puerile, couldn’t we substitute all sorts of other things for ‘alive’?)

We certainly are composed of atoms, as are rocks (and all manner of other kinds of things – the hitherto unique ACG is another example I guess). But it seems to me that the whole of the biological sciences, while hardly contradictory of particle physics, are not couched in terms of particle physics. How could they be? At the level of things, their reality does not simply lie in the fact that everything is composed of atoms. There is a unity about various things. This is clearer at the level of organisms. I quoted him on CiF, but I think it suffices to quote him again (simply because it’s one interesting attempt to define what a living thing is):

“[A living thing has] an intrinsic functional organization in virtue of which its movements are explicable in terms of ends to which they are directed.” [a bloke called John Haldane]

That is, it’s not just that living things (organisms) are constitued of matter, but how this is organised and arranged; and, further, there is a certain teleology within living things – growth, nutrition, reproduction (and striving after these things) – which marks them out from inanimate things. One aspect of the distinction, then, is motility: in however limited a sense, there is some locomotion (even a limpet moves – or has bits that move) which is not solely described in terms of the working of extrinsic forces (nor material consituents): a stone will never move itself, but a dung beetle will. I don’t know what you make of the sort of distinction attempted above. But, I would say that understanding biological processes etc presupposes that we do not reduce to particle physics: we explain things at another ‘level’, at the level of organisms, and this ‘level’ of explanation is no less real than atoms. (Indeed, to most of us, who have to take particle physcis on authority, it may *appear* more real). This, to my mind, tells against your scepticism of the living/non-living distinction on the grounds of material constituents (atoms etc).

ChooChoo:

Two things here that I find fascinating. The first is how we distinguish what is real and what is a convenient label for us. I am reading an interesting book on numbers at the moment that tries to explore this area – does the concept ‘Two,’ for example, really exist in nature?

The second area is how we define ‘Living.’ I am trying to understand what is assumption here. You are right to rail against my reductionism – life is a function of organisation. But non-living things also display complexity. Your point about internal motion is interesting – rocks don’t move of their own volition etc. So, is there a sharp dividing line and, if so, is it real? I would say that this is probably as good as we will get to an actual distinction.

This is putting to one side issues of perception, consciousness and time frames. By the last I mean that we are capable of observing change at a pace close to our own scale but not of that over vast expanses of time.

When, though, does an organisation of matter become living?

Lastly, I am not sure about your teleological point – it almost presupposes a plan.

Hey Boltonian – I guess I want to be stubborn on this point (though I hope I wasn’t railing!).

I must confess to some surprise that you aren’t so taken by the fact of there being a living / non-living distinction (if not my attempted definition). To reiterate: I assume that you don’t want to consider the vitality of a stone. And, at the same time, if you don’t accept it for anything else, you do – I imagine – consider that you are alive. And that this distinction is not just fanciful or conventional.

Of course, I agree that there might be things it is useful for us to consider as real when they are not. At the very least, suppose this is true of a living / non-living distinction (which is assumed, rather than argued, most of the time), what, out of interest, are the reasons for why it might be held, even if not real?

You have raised ‘time-frames’, perspectives etc. Granted to a point.

Perhaps one way of thinking about the distinction between living and non-living things, what about death? Is this just a convenience? I saw a beautiful, as it happens, fox in the garden last night. Suppose I see it ‘dead’ now. Does the earlier assumption that it is alive (an assumption that goes without saying) and the new sense that it is dead have no bearing on reality, is it a useful ploy?

By the way – we moderns are so silly really. We are scared off by ‘teleology’. I mean this in a v modest way: i.e. related to the ends to which the motions of a living being are directed [i.e. find food, growth, mate etc] and by which the motions of a living thing become explicable. There is, sadly, no endsological in English! It is not meant to be a stealth argument for God or something. I just think that any robust, realist distinction will have to incorporate this (perhaps put in better terms than I have).

Finally:

“When, though, does an organisation of matter become living?”

Indeed. Was discussing this with cynicalsteve on CiF. The interesting thing is not just the ‘mechanism’, but also the very conceivability of the mechanism; and – if we’re realists about living/non-living – what it does to the nature of our descriptions of things.

(Thanks again. I hope this is not tiresome for you. V interesting for me).

ChooChoo:

No, not tiresome just brain stretching (that is not to say that my brain does not need stretching). There are a lot of negatives in that sentence but if I turn them into positives it does not mean the same. Is language non-commutable, therefore, or only sometimes?

I will return to this (living vs non-living, that is)anon.

Grr , lost a post when I forgot to put in the anti-spam word .

Reading the above a thought occurred to me , we seem to have a great deal of difficulty with classification at boundary points .

To speculate freely (and probably incorrectly)…

Lets assume everything is a more or less complex arrangement of matter . We can define complexity as the length of a computer program that would be required to describe the thing .

In the most complex arrangement we know we have human brains , that is concious beings . In the least complex arrangement we have matter with no information content other than their own properties .

In both cases , conciousness and the most fundamental particles , the only classifications we have are property lists that don’t resonate as knowledge in the same way simply saying the word “life” or “rock” does .

I wonder does this tell us more about our classification systems or the world in which they operate ?

I should point out that complexity alone doesn’t necessarily produce conciousness . A society is , as an assemblage of complex parts , more complex that each component yet I would not say society is concious . That could lead to questions such as , what is it like to be a country ?

SpaceP:

Good post.

Here are a few random thoughts.

The problem I am wrestling with is what in our language describes something real from our need to classify.

Your idea about information is good. Information, as we know, is not knowledge. Is knowledge only available to conscious beings? In other words, is knowledge either a by product or an essential ingredient of consciousness? Can a single cell organism have something we would describe as knowledge?

This is separate from the idealism/materialism debate, I think. I am assuming, for the purposes of this discussion, that there is a material world out there.

If living/non-living is a real divide (taking ChooChoo’s definition of motility) what is it that determines this point of separation?

Your mention of complexity is interesting. When does a collection of things become one being? We are a collection of cells, bacteria and other things but something pulls it all together to form a conscious being – is it the DNA molecule? And, if so, how did that evolve to harness so much control? Also, does that mean that everything containing DNA has a consciousness of some kind?

Is a bee colony one conscious being or a collection of individuals that just happen to share a common purpose?

If the evolution of groups that I posted earlier is anywhere near correct might this not indicate either a collective consciousness, or at least the potential?

boltonian :

A single cell organism reacts according to its biochemistry . Presumably a brain does as well . Is the knowledge of knowledge just another few clicks up on a complexity ratchet ? I think we are getting into the qualia argument here .

I’m not sure there is a clear cut definition of life . We think instinctively that there is something inherent to life that non-life doesn’t have , but I can’t think of a definition of life that would exclude a sufficiently complex robot . Instinctively we don’t think of robots as possessing ‘life’.

There is a thought experiment that goes something along the lines of this :

Imagine the population of China is given telecommunication equipment and a set of rules the combination of which exactly models the action and communication of a neuron . So some act like neurons in the optic nerve , some like neurons in the hearing system etc.

Under the assumptions of neuroscience the gestalt formed would be concious .

Hi, I have just discovered this blog, via CIF, looks fascinating and I will probably lurk frequently, and comment when I can.

I have decided to believe in freewill on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays, determinism the rest of the week.

Wait a minute, did “I” really decide that? Bother!

Enkidu:

You are very welcome and I hope you become a regular contributor.

The next exciting installment to look out for on the blog is a collaborative effort on Buddhism. Coming to a thread near you – soon!

SpaceP:

Very remiss of me for not replying.

I think you are right to introduce qualia here. I also agree about the hazy boundaries of life/non-life (although I do like ChooChoo’s definition).

I am not sure if a collection of humans could be described as conscious, although mob behaviour is obviously suggestive. When people are interviewed about their antics after a riot, say, and they see their own behaviour (from a video or some such) they are often incredulous and do not recognise themselves.

Maybe I am agreeing with you after all.

Good result for the Cherry and Whites on Saturday.

Boltonian – as it happens, I’m probably not going to be able to make it to that free will seminar I mentioned some time back. (The reason is irritatingly banal – I can’t swap shifts at the bookshop and my manager’s not budging on letting me change days without swapping with someone else).

Just a further thought on the living / not living distinction. Well, actually, I think I mentioned it earlier. Questions pertaining to robots etc are interesting, but what about a more mundane example: to think of an example of a family member, my great grandmother some years back was still alive. And then she died (at a ripe old age). Am I not reasonable in being a realist about her death, about the qualitative difference between her living and her no longer living?

ChooChoo:

That is a real pity – I was looking forward to your learned exposition.

I am not sure that a hard and fast line between living and non-living is objectively real. Of course it is for us but that is not the same thing.

Your grandmother’s body was changing (as it always had) from one arrangement of matter into another. Simply because you were unable to perceive self-willed activity does not mean that there is objectively a sharp dividing line.

Take light, as an example. Firstly we could only perceive the visible spectrum (and that was all there was for us), then we improved our technology to be able to detect parts of the invisible spectrum (and then that became all there was to light) and finally we realised that light is in fact electro-magnetic radiation. That would have been impossible to perceive a couple of hundred years earlier. It is, of course, even more complex than that: wave/particle duality; light can be bent etc.

For now, I think your earlier definition of life is very useful and for everyday purposes quite possibly always will. But like Newtonian physics, in the larger context it might not be the whole story.

We are limited by our perceptive and intellectual equipment That is not to say that these will not expand over time, as we have seen with at least the natural sciences.

Boltonian – a real pity indeed (not getting to go, as opposed to not gifting you with my ‘profound’ thoughts).

On the living/non-living point – I hope I don’t seem antagonistic in pursuing this – I am genuinely interested (and find it interesting that we do disagree, at least in nuance, if not also in substance).

“I am not sure that a hard and fast line between living and non-living is objectively real. Of course it is for us but that is not the same thing.”

I don’t think this is what you (partly) have in mind, but I’d like to clarify quickly. Defining the precise moment of death (complicated by the contexts in which we discuss this – bioethical, for instance) is not a straightforward task. Various definitions are offered. In one sense, these might appear to be splitting hairs. On the other hand, they are not simply a question of pinpointing a precise moment in a temporal sequence, but also of adequate description. But this is not quite what we are discussing. Rather, what is the basis for calling things dead and alive (as opposed to when they die) – my grandmother, for example. (I don’t mean to beg the question here).

You acknowledge, I think, that the presupposition of the cogency of our senses of things as dead and alive is characteristic of our being in and relating to the world. We take this for granted, at least hazily, I think. The question is: is this ‘real’?

Now, I appreciate your point about light: effectively, we take it (reasonably) that we know some things (better) now, which we didn’t before. Sure. I would add that this sort of thing is invoked – again, not unreasonably – in all sorts of contexts. But I think it is something to bear in mind rather than an argument. (I think neuroscience/philosophy of mind is a good example: a reductionist materialism, for example, may well be right, but I don’t think it will simplistically be ‘proved’ by our inevitable advances in neuroscience: it will still require – if this is possible – philosophical argumentation. Anyhow, let’s not get sidetracked by this for now).

Back to life: it is, I think, v difficult to define precisely (though that difficulty does not tell against its reality per se. A controversial example – I wonder what you make of it – might be love – damn hard to pin down but I am a realist when it comes to love – but that’s for another time).

“Your grandmother’s body was changing (as it always had) from one arrangement of matter into another. Simply because you were unable to perceive self-willed activity does not mean that there is objectively a sharp dividing line.”

As above, I agree that the dividing line is – for sake of argument – a bit hazy (moment of death business and all that). (It might be helpful to consider that one criterion for death – medically accepted all over but perhaps not precise enough – is wholesale bodily decomposition). But I do think that I can reasonably speak of real and qualitative difference in her before and after the fact.

Sure, she or, let’s say, her body is materially composed from her very beginnings. And this material constitution is constantly changing. But the vital point is to do with the precise organisation of this matter. If I am right (or headed in the right direction in terms of definitions of life), then there is a certain unity about organic beings: they are wholes greater than the sum of their parts. One way I might be able to put this into sharper relief is to think of the way we describe different kinds of things.

When individuating things, we would (among other things) be able to answer questions of the sort: ‘how many x’s’. In so doing, we presuppose a certain unity in the x in question. There are twelve sheep in the pen, or thirteen rivers in the county.

With some things, the unity attributed is relative to our interests – fields, or rivers etc etc. (All manner of things come into this).

There are other things to which, I think, we attribute a real unity. (We can get sidetracked here: various human artefacts – machines – might count, but I’ll ignore these functional unities for the time being). And animals are a prime example. Moreover, their being is fundamentally indivisible: split a stone into two and you get two stones. Split a dog into two and you get a mess (and, if I’m right, there’s no dog as before).

I don’t think that positing the individuality of animals – of living things – is an interpretive device we map onto the world, but a response to a real feature of what we encounter. And this indivisible individuality is related to their being vital, alive.

To go back to my great grandmother – sure, her body through her life is the same body that later decomposes – though in a manner of speaking. For Aristotle, I think, said that ‘flesh’ is used homonymously when it comes to corpses: that is, we use the same word, but there is a difference. And I think he’s onto something. My grandmother’s corpse does not have the same unity she had when alive (hence, among other things, its decomposition). Or, if I may use a macabre example, there is a profound difference between the ragged men and women led into the gas chambers and the corpses that were later dumped into incinerators. I don’t think this is just a human projection: there really is a profound difference.

Finally, I am inclined to note that the biological sciences require and presuppose a certain realism on this point: death – and its avoidance – and reproduction – the creation of new life – are linchpins of various ways of thinking about evolution.

Come on, Boltonian, be a realist on living/non-living or else I’ll kill you! Though, that said, more fool me: perhaps you won’t recognise any distinction

ChooChoo:

The reason why I am not a realist is partly because what seemed incontrovertibly real yesterday is not so today – and it seems absurd now that we could ever believe that it was. Bleeding as a cure-all, for example. I could cite many more, as I am sure you could.

What you are asking me to do, I think, is to predict how our view of life might change in the future. I cannot do that – my analogy of light will show why. Aristotle, for example, could never have predicted that one day we would understand light as electro-magnetic radiation.

If you killed me it would make no difference to me (probably), only to those who remained. ‘No man is an island, entire unto itself…’ But I might be wrong about that.

I could predict that we will build robots that will be indistinguishable from humans (or animals) and that we will imbue them with our own feelings and qualities, whether they are sensate or not, because we are compulsively anthropomorphic. But I might be wrong.

I could predict that we will create whole new virtual worlds that we put ourselves into – in fact we might be in one now. But I would probably be wrong.

I could further predict that we will be capable of such prodigious feats of genetic engineering that we will effectively design ourselves to whatever specification we wish. We might already have done such a thing (we might be prototypes or an early trial, therefore imperfect). But I would almost certainly be wrong.

All of the big things that have shaped us have been the result of discontinuities. Things that could never have been predicted, so how can I, a mere intellectual speck in the cosmos, be expected to tell you that what seems real to us now is objectively real and will be so forever. I do not have that confidence in our intellectual capability.

So, to return to the life/not life split; provided we accept the fuzziness at the boundary we have a reasonably coherent and agreed working definition, considering the state of our current knowledge. It is a useful division, given that our small brains have need of such categorisation it seems. I cannot go further than that.

ChooChoo:

A thought occurred to me re-your dog/rock differentiation but I not sure of the relevance.

Cut a worm in half and it supposedly regenerates (I am not sure how true this is) but a lizard’s tail certainly will. Our skin regenerates all the time and all of our organs repair themselves with new cells throughout our lives to some degree.

In fact, like Theseus’ famous ship, what is ‘Me’ when every cell in my body has been replaced at some point, and most many times over? Am I a merely a plan; or one molecule replicated many times in the shape of a double helix?

According to Kaku’s recent fascinating TV series we are very close (within 20 years or so) of being able to replace every gene in the genome with better ones. What would I be in this case? What is the me? This is not just replacing faulty genes but improving on the model by arresting, and even reversing, the ageing process, regenerating lost limbs, improving ours senses etc. In fact, designing ourselves anew.

Let’s suppose that this were a reality today – what is to prevent us regenerating the two halves of the dog to create two dogs, as with the rock. Now where is the dividing line?

Your earlier definition (to which I keep returning) is a very useful one at this moment in our development. The problem I have (and have had all along) is that it is immutably and objectively true for all time. My glib summary might be something like this, ‘Truth is relative.’