The Philosopher’s Attic

When is egoism permitted and when is it not? What is egoism in a relationship? And do we need to save ourselves before we can save someone else?

I am somehow not quite happy with Carry Tennis’ advice to Negotiating (a woman married to an alcoholic who has not accepted his problem as of yet) on Salon.com.

The major question is whether Negotiating should just leave or give her husband an ultimatum to get sober. Her problem is that she doesn’t know whether she can stay with him even if he gets sober:

Somehow, announcing that I am leaving unless he gets sober, then leaving even if he does, seems wrong. However, if I just announce that I am leaving because of his drinking, I don’t think he’ll have any motivation to quit. He is still the father of my children and still someone I care about even if I am having serious doubts about the marriage at this point.

Tennis advises:

The effect of your escape on this man is not something we can predict in advance. So do not premise your escape on any agreements with this man or any expectations about his future. He is not a person you can make agreements with. He is not a person whose future is predictable. He is, for the moment, a hopeless alcoholic. All you can do is save yourself.

It is a general rule that we cannot help anyone as long as they do not accept our help. In the case of addicts (psychos etc.) this means that, if the person in question has not accepted their problem and actually wants to change something, there is simply no way for external help to have any effect. In most cases it can be counter-productive even.

But isn’t it normal for a responsible person to reflect their own decisions and deliberate on the effects their actions might have on the people around them: their family, their friends? For all we know the fact of Negotiating leaving her husband and taking the kids with her, might be another notch in her husbands addiction. This does not imply any responsibility on her part. But its a fact that social isolation makes addiction even more hard to beat.
It’s normal for her not to know how she will feel about her marriage once he would be sober. How could she? If there are other doubts about the marriage and anger involved, they are clouded over by the most important problem: the addiction.
Why do people expect themselves to have it all figured out all the time? Leaving to reconsider and then after reconsidering would be a perfectly possible solution for Negotiating. But Tennis simply tells her to leave, be egoistic and save herself. This advice is perfectly fine for the acute problem. But is it the best way from a moral point of view?

I very much doubt that. To shed people because of their problems, their weaknesses or their ‘incompatibility’ is the easy way out. It is much harder to stick with them, love them anyway, fight with them and for them.

Analysing one’s actions and their impact on others is not simply a way to avoid a decision, it is also a way to appreciate the people around us. But everybody has their own free will to decide what to do or not to do. So even if I am concerned by somebody else’s decision, I can decide to have it affect me or not. And if my decision could affect someone else negatively, it does not imply any responsibility per se. Of course this is only valuable in ‘normal’ cases of decisions or actions, meaning: cases where the basic principle of benevolence for another person are satisfied. If I want to hurt someone, the hurtful act is surely my responsibility.
But we choose by what we are affected.It can be painful or rewarding. Being reflective about it doesn’t make us egoists, but concerned individuals.

While checking my log and referral files it has become obvious that some of you are still entering my page being automatically referred by my old address at http://yseult.blog-city.com

The automatic referral is due to some code I had in my header when I changed my blog. My Blog-City blog has been deleted since (no worries, all my entries have been migrated here) and I have no idea why the redirect is still working.

However, I would prefer if you could update your bookmarks to the actual address http://yseult.mediaevaliter.com since I have no idea if Blog-City will delete the page completely sometime in the future, which will leave you without a bookmark to me.

Thank you very much and a great day to you all!

Apparently I am not the only one having problems with Mr. Pinker. In Science and Spirit, Susan Greenfield⁽¹⁾ says this in her interview with the editor Chris Floyd (unfortunately there is no date provided with the article):

And there is another, perhaps more serious problem with attempts by Dennett and others to explain consciousness by purely mechanical processes, she says. “The problem is that he tends to conflate mind with consciousness. I think you can talk about mind being something enduring, something that involves the configuration of your brain cell circuitry. But we know that this personalization of the brain can be divorced from consciousness, because you can lose your mind and still be conscious, you can blow your mind and still be conscious. You can also go to sleep and become unconscious, but you haven’t necessarily lost your mind. So I think the two are separate. But as far as I know, Dennett has not really been fierce about those distinctions.”

No, Dennett certainly has not been as fierce as Pinker is now. But this quote shows two interesting things: a) the connection between personal identity, consciousness and the mind and that b) scientists are sometimes so much more philosophical than philosophers themselves…

1. Neuroscientist from the University of Oxford: her profile at wikipedia. [back]

Part three of my critical analysis of Steven Pinker’s latest highly acclaimed article in TIME.

I left off in my last post with the following question regarding Steven Pinker’s style in his latest article: Why? Where lies the reason for the continuous omissions of critical questioning of modern neuro-research findings? I will add another one here: What is he trying to accomplish?

The double-minded agenda - Steven Pinker is pursuing a hidden agenda of his own with the Time.com article. One that I hope will not just disappoint me - as someone who had always appreciated his efforts - but also every philosopher that identifies him-/herself enough with their work in philosophy to follow a certain code of honour in their work and their publications. So far I have not come across any reaction to Pinker’s article from professional philosophers, let alone critiques. All I have encountered is baffled awe by lay people at the so-called results Pinker depicts.
My critique of a double-minded agenda behind “The Mystery of Consciousness” is based on the following:

Whatever the solutions to the Easy and Hard problems turn out to be, few scientists doubt that they will locate consciousness in the activity of the brain. For many non-scientists, this is a terrifying prospect. Not only does it strangle the hope that we might survive the death of our bodies, but it also seems to undermine the notion that we are free agents responsible for our choices–not just in this lifetime but also in a life to come. (…)
My own view is that this is backward: the biology of consciousness offers a sounder basis for morality than the unprovable dogma of an immortal soul.⁽¹⁾

First, let me point out the obvious: when stating “few scientists doubt…” it is clearly suggested that there are scientists that would contest this. Who are they? Again, there is a total absence of reference to follow up on.

Second: since when has physical reductionism been accepted? Or let me rephrase: the biological side of consciousness is just the physical side of the phenomenon. This is exactly when John R. Searle states that even tough conscious states and beliefs can be traced to certain brain patterns, it is not automatically clear that they can be reduced exclusively to this biological phenomenon. Science simply does not permit this. While biologists will simply talk about the biological aspect of consciousness, the philosophers throughout history have been talking about the soul. Does it mean that they have been talking about two different things? No. It simply means that they addressed an issue from several, different and distinct sides. Reducing one aspect to another will certainly not be the way to a better understanding of consciousness in particular or the human mind in general.

Third: Based on the second point, how did the undying soul come into the equation all of a sudden? (This is where I start to get a philosophical hiccup that will very well turn in to nausea in a moment.) When Arabic interpretations of Aristotle’s work arrived in Europe, they sparked a huge commentary tradition - largely due to the unclear passages of Aristotle’s texts themselves, but also because namely Averroes and Avicenna had adopted Aristotle’s ideas about epistemology (De anima) in a way that would do exactly what Steven Pinker hopes for neurophysiology: they endangered the idea of an undying human soul. And without an undying soul, there is no afterlife. Based on Aristotle’s description of the soul as eternal, undivided and immaterial, Averroes concluded that the intellect could not be located in the human being himself (since it is material), but rather that the human being - while having an act of intellection - would be linked to the only eternal, immaterial thing in the universe: God. This of course would annihilate any idea of a personal, human intellect and thus was a hard nut to crack for the Christian world view.

While in the 12th century the human soul and thus immortality was endangered by making intellection purely godly, now again it is tried to be annihilated, but by making it purely physical. For a specialist in the theories of intellection, this borders the comic relief. As to the question how Pinker can be completely unaware of the parallels in history, well, maybe it’s the idea that a colleague calls the good trait of amnesia of the history of philosophy in analytical philosophy. (How he manages to stay earnest and actually mean it, is beyond me…)

Not enough that Pinker actively ignorant of any critical points of views on his project of reducing consciousness to mere brain function, not enough that he doesn’t feel ridiculed by ignoring over 800 years of philosophical discourse, he manages to top it all off with a nice punch against religion:

And when you think about it, the doctrine of a life-to-come is not such an uplifting idea after all because it necessarily devalues life on earth. Just remember the most famous people in recent memory who acted in expectation of a reward in the hereafter: the conspirators who hijacked the airliners on 9/11.

And now, I guess we all get the greater picture at last. This is not an article to show us the latest research in neurophysiology or the sciences. This is not a philosophical pleading for reductionism, against the pseudo-problems of metaphysics or even different ideas about consciousness. This is simply a personal vendetta against the idea of an undying soul, an afterlife and religion, motivated by a political agenda that in my view has no place in philosophy of mind.

All that remains for me to say is this: Steven Pinker is another 9/11 casualty. A walking wounded of a conflict that he doesn’t have the means to address (nor does he seem to have any will to address it in it’s proper terms), a philosopher lacking the basic decency of respect for anybody else’s beliefs, a professional engaging in simple partisanship.

We see it happening every day. Seeing it here - where a brilliant philosopher is concerned - is a tragedy.

1. Steven Pinker, “The Mystery of Consciousness”, Time.com; Jan. 19, 2007; p. 6. [back]

A Happy Burns Day to you all around! Bon appétit with the Haggis…

Scotland the Brave

This is part two of my critical analysis of Steven Pinker’s latest highly acclaimed article in TIME.

We have seen how Steven Pinker synthesizes the last decades of neurophysiological research and the theoretical problems philosophy has had with them.

While addressing the Hard problem of consciousness Pinker neglected to offer the side of John Searle who had addressed physical reduction conscious states to neuronal patterns for quite a while now. This is the underlying problem with Pinker’s article. He simply picks what he likes and leaves out 50% (read 90%) out of the picture.
I understand that everyone writing an article for a popular magazine needs to edit things and limit his scope to certain points. But - as I was taught when I was still working for a daily newspaper and then at University - there is no shame in telling your readers exactly that. “Sorry, limited space and all… I’ll keep to the basics.”
Instead Pinker offers the illusion of a clear picture of the actual and current state of research. Added to this is the fact that he very rarely criticizes the ideas offered by natural scientists. He rarely adds a possible doubt anywhere, or a even rises a possible objection to a dangerously short conclusion. I somehow feel betrayed. Steven Pinker is not doing his job. Or at least not the job I was taught to do, when I studied Philosophy. Let me offer an example:

Take the famous cognitive-dissonance experiments. When an experimenter got people to endure electric shocks in a sham experiment on learning, those who were given a good rationale (”It will help scientists understand learning”) rated the shocks as more painful than the ones given a feeble rationale (”We’re curious.”) Presumably, it’s because the second group would have felt foolish to have suffered for no good reason. Yet when these people were asked why they agreed to be shocked, they offered bogus reasons of their own in all sincerity, like “I used to mess around with radios and got used to electric shocks.”

What is wrong with this picture? The basis of this experiment is the following: I let a bunch of scientist physically abuse me. Even without a rationale, let alone a strong one like the advancement of science, it is clear that there is a moral problem wrapped up in the cognitive one. And Pinker - a philosopher - passes it by like a homeless person in the street: “Ignore it long enough and it will go away”. Is it possible that the people who did get the strong rationale for the experiment felt stronger because they knew that scientists (who are supposed to have higher morale standards) were inflicting them pain in order to advance their science? And would it be possible that the once with a feeble rationale simply felt that something was wrong being inflicted pain without any apparent reason? Once again, the experiment is the problem. Not just the execution. Without knowing it - I hope - the scientists were manipulating their own findings. And all of that because of an absence of moral consideration from their part. And why do we even pay ethical committees in universities?

Apart from the blatant ignoring of critical points in the physical theories he is synthesizing, there is something off in Pinker’s vocabulary.
While talking about consciousness for instance, he always seems to be referring to perception, as if perception was the only thing that made up our consciousness. In fact our consciousness is like a an ever changing picture that can be made up of various conscious states: remembering, reasoning, talking, intellection… thinking. None of them is a purely perceptive state in it’s proper sense, but they require consciousness in a very basic way (as in “I am awake”-conscious) and a more complex way where one conscious state triggers another one (as in “I see a blue car and it reminds me of my first car…”).
On a general basis it can be said that Steven Pinker in addition to ignoring conflicting attitudes to his favorite naturalistic explanations and having a vocabulary that is far from being precise, he also shows an impressively devious motivation. Yes, I dare call Steven Pinker a devious manipulator. Two elements push me towards such a harsh judgment. One is completely inherent to the field of current philosophy and the other is of a more general order. The two are nevertheless intricately linked.

The “I don’t see you, so you don’t see me…” style - The attentive reader will have had a doubt about this tactic from the moment I quoted John Searle’s book The Mystery of Consciousness in the first part of my article. Pinker chooses the same name for his article as one of the great books in the field of the Philosophy of Mind, but not once makes reference to it, probably because citing this book would contest some of his quick drawn conclusions. This tactic is repeated in enough places to just be a simple omission. For instance here:

Sure, you and I both call grass green, but perhaps you see grass as having the color that I would describe, if I were in your shoes, as purple. Or ponder whether there could be a true zombie–a being who acts just like you or me but in whom there is no self actually feeling anything. This was the crux of a Star Trek plot in which officials wanted to reverse-engineer Lieut. Commander Data, and a furious debate erupted as to whether this was merely dismantling a machine or snuffing out a sentient life.

The neat little pop-cultural reference cannot hide the fact that again he is staying quiet about half a library of literature on Zombies as an object of philosophical thought experiments. Since Thomas Nagel published several articles on the nature of philosophical zombies - the oldest dating back as far as 1970⁽¹⁾ (sic!) - there has been a line of texts treating Commander Data, Robots and what not as possible sources of explaining consciousness⁽²⁾. As for the “…what does is feel like…”, the same Thomas Nagel has started that discussion as well with his now famous article “What Is it Like to Be a Bat?”⁽³⁾ and the responses to it are numerous.

So the question at this stage is the following: Why? Cui bono? Where lies the reason for this style and the continuous omissions?
The answer is far more disappointing that anyone could have anticipated. Let me give you a little hint with Goethe: “… one feels the evil intent and feels displeased…”⁽⁴⁾

1. Thomas Nagel, “Armstrong on the Mind”, Philosophical Review, 79 (1970) , pp. 394-403 [back]
2. The latest in the line is Robert Kirk’s Zombies and Consciousness, Oxford University Press, 2006. [back]
3. Thomas Nagel, “What Is it Like to Be a Bat?” in Philosophical Review LXXXIII, 4, (1974); pp. 435-50. [back]
4. J.W. Goethe, Torquato Tasso. [back]

I successfully made the update to Wordpress 2.1 and everything seems to be working like a charm. (Except that my browser will not reflect some of the sidebar changes I made… something to do with the caching system of WP which makes the page quicker to load?)
Even the WYSIWYG Editor looks good now and maybe (just maybe!) I can stop working directly in HTML…

Since WP are not very quick when it get to making new buttons to display on a blog page, I made one myself.

100px x 100px

<a href="http://wordpress.org/download/" title="DownloadWordpress2.1" target="_top"><img src="http://www.YOURURI.com/wp21button_100x100.png" name="WP2.1download" alt="WP2.1download" height="100" width="100" /></a>

120px x 120px

<a href="http://wordpress.org/download/" title="DownloadWordpress2.1" target="_top"><img src="http://www.YOURURI.com/wp21button_120x120.png" name="WP2.1download" alt="WP 2.1 download" height="120" width="120" /></a>


140px x 140px
<a href="http://wordpress.org/download/" title="DownloadWordpress2.1" target="_top"><img src="http://www.YOURURI.com/wp21button_140x140.png" name="WP2.1download" alt="WP 2.1 download" height="140" width="140" /></a>

If you would like to include this button yourself, all you have to do is the following:

1. Right-click on the WP button of your liking. Choose “Save picture…” and save the picture to the root folder of your Wordpress blog. Upload to your server root (http://example.com => where all your wp-admin etc. folders are for those that have WP in a different subfolder.)
2. Copy the code according to the button you chose
3. Paste the code into the template (sidebar.php, index.php etc.) of your theme where you would like your button to appear.
4. Change YOURURI to the URI of your blog.
5. Save and upload the themplate file to your server.
6. DONE.