agnitio gnitio The Duke Undergraduate Journal of Philosophy
Volume IV :: Issue I Spring 2010
A G N I T I O
:: staff
Editors-in-Chief Rui Dong, Philosophy 2011 Halley Hu, Philosophy 2010
Faculty Advisor Andrew Janiak
Editorial Board Donnie Allison Daniel Fishman Drake Glesmann Gabriele Grossl Kenneth Hoehn Michelle Kelsey Nick Schwartz Eddie Wu
From the Editor:: The Duke Agnitio was founded in 2006 by a group of Duke undergraduates as a forum for undergraduate philosophical discussion. Our aim has been and continues to be to provide an opportunity for students to engage in meaningful philosophical reflection and discourse. As such, the papers that were selected for this issue are ones that embody those goals of meaningful reflection, and that successfully engage readers. This year, we were particularly impressed by the strength and breadth of the papers that were submitted. The five papers that you see in this issue were chosen from a group of over thirty submissions representing over twenty undergraduate philosophy programs from across the country. The purpose of philosophical reflection is not to answer questions, but rather to impel further inquiry. We hope that the following pages—encompassing topics ranging from Kant to liberalism, from eros to the extended mind hypothesis—will do just that. Finally, we hope that you will come away from these articles with insights and questions of your own, that you will keep the dialogue going, and perhaps even decide to contribute to our next issue. As always, if you have questions about our journal or have comments to contribute, please feel free to email: dukeagnitio@gmail.com. Reflect, engage, and above all, enjoy!
Rui Dong Co-Editor-in-Chief May 2010
About Duke Philosophical Society (DPhS):: Over tea and coffee, the Duke Philosophical Society was born in the fall of 2009. As an organization that promotes the study of philosophy, we have gathered a small but dynamic group of students who engaged in weekly philosophical salons. In the upcoming semesters, we hope to further expand our activities, extending our reach into the Duke community and beyond. This journal is one of our first steps. We are excited to carry on the tradition of Agnitio, Duke’s very own undergraduate journal of philosophy. We hope that you will enjoy the five works showcased here, and that they may prompt you to engage your life with philosophical thinking. You can find us online at http://dukegroups.duke.edu/dphs. Though the website itself—like our club— continues to be a work in progress, you will be able to keep track of the happenings in philosophy at Duke. I’m done now—go on! Philosophy awaits. Eddie Wu President, Duke Philosophical Society May 2010
Table of Contents:: The Logical Sublime: Kant, Frege Ian Wells Cornell University
5
Eros Unquenchable, or Platonic Restlessness
28
The Fundamental Commitments of Liberalism and the Ticking Time Bomb Hypothetical
40
Extended Too Far? A Response to Adams and Aizawa’s Objection to the Extended Mind Hypothesis
50
“A spark of the divine”: The Kantian Sublime as Distinct from and Indispensable to Moral Feeling
60
Andrew Wells-Qu University of Chicago
Isaac K. Neill University of Chicago
Javier Gomez-Lavin College of Charleston
Eric Teszler University of California, Berkeley
The Logical Sublime: Kant, Frege Ian Wells Cornell University
ABSTRACT Debate about Kant’s treatment of arithmetic, in its relation to “logic,” has for the most part been limited to analytical discussions of the first Critique. Likewise, debate about whether late 19th and 20th century attempts to give a purely logical account of arithmetic succeeded in overturning Kant’s claim that mathematics is grounded in intuition, i.e. that its principles take as their source of validity a “third thing” from pure intuition, and are, as such, “always synthetic,” is usually divorced from talk of the third Critique (KdrV, B194/A155, B16). This paper intends to reroute such debates to regions within Kant’s critical edifice often untouched by issues of logic and mathematics. In particular, this paper examines how the question of whether we can frame our concept of number without recourse to intuition impacts Kant’s Analytic of the Sublime. The result of transposing such debate onto the third Critique opens up the seemingly paradoxical possibility of a unique brand of sublimity engendered by non-intuitional, logical propositions alone.
I. Preliminaries Debate about Kant’s treatment of arithmetic, in its relation to “logic,” has for the most part been limited to analytical discussions of the first Critique.1 Likewise, debate about whether late 19th and 20th century attempts to give a purely logical account of arithmetic succeeded in overturning Kant’s claim that mathematics is grounded in intuition, i.e. that its principles take as their source of validity a “third thing” from pure intuition, and are, as such, “always synthetic,” is usually divorced from talk of the third Critique (KdrV, B194/A155, B16). This paper intends to reroute such debates to regions within Kant’s critical edifice often untouched by issues of logic and mathematics. In particular, this paper will examine how the question of whether we can frame our concept of number without recourse to intuition impacts Kant’s Analytic of the Sublime. The result of transposing such debate onto the third Critique opens up the seemingly paradoxical possibility of a unique brand of sublimity engendered by non-intuitional, logical propositions alone.2
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Our project, then, will advance accordingly: first, a reading and formulation of Kant’s mathematical sublime, and second, a rewiring of this formulation in line with Fregean quantifier logic, in order to sketch a preliminary theory of the logical sublime. At the juncture of these two trajectories, there will be a brief outline of the predicate calculus necessary for an examination of the logical sublime.
II. The Mathematical Sublime in Kant In this section, I will present what I take to be the most intelligible reading of Kant’s division of the Analytic of the Sublime on the mathematical sublime. I pose this reading not so much as a criticism or evaluation of the theory, but more as a rough sketch – a blueprint – of the ideas central to Kant’s thought. Nevertheless, there are moments of ambiguity and possible inconsistency in the text which make such a formulation resistant to perfectly lucid, disinterested summary. These moments warrant some degree of interpretation, and we will treat them as they come. a. Magnitude––Measurement Kant draws a distinction between two ways of measuring magnitude in nature: aesthetic and mathematical measurement. For Kant, estimation of magnitude always involves the incorporation of “something else” – a unit – through which one can measure the given magnitude (KdU, 5: 248). The two ways of measuring differ in what they deploy as that “something else.” The aesthetic measurement of magnitude is an estimate, “made by eye,” of how many times greater or smaller the perceived object is than some aesthetically-grasped unit of measure (5: 251). The mathematical measurement of magnitude, on the other hand, is an estimate, “by means of numbers,” using the numerical concepts of the understanding. Kant claims that all mathematical measurements of the magnitude of objects in nature presuppose an aesthetic measurement.3 He presents his argument for this claim as a reductio at the outset of §26. I sum it up informally below: Suppose we obtain determinate (i.e. absolute) concepts of given magnitudes in nature through mathematical measurement alone (hereafter referred to as claim Em). So we might say that some appearance, x, is n-many units of y, where y is some mathematical value determined by one of the numerical concepts of the understanding. But if we are to truly measure x we would need to know not only the quantity n of y contained within x, but also the measure of y itself (the measure of the numerical concepts involved). This, in turn, would be determined by yet another quantity n1 of y1, presenting the need to measure y1 itself, ad infinitum. Since this iteration of units predicated of magnitudes, magnitudes predicated of units, could go on forever (in virtue of the fact that the progression of natural numbers is infinite), “we can never have a primary or basic fundamental measure, and hence we can never have a determinate concept of a given magnitude” (5: 251). Rather, purely mathematical estimation leaves us with a merely comparative (indeterminate) estimate of the magnitude of the object. Thus, our initial supposition Em (that we obtained a determinate concept of a given magnitude by mathematical measurement) is contradicted and, by reductio, we can safely assume its negation. Now, since we know that Em is false, as well as Kant’s initial premise that either Em or Ea, where Ea Agnitio 6
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The Logical Sublime denotes a claim parallel to Em but for aesthetic measurement, then Ea follows validly. Therefore, the only way to mathematically measure the magnitude of objects in nature is to first conduct an aesthetic estimation, i.e. to grasp in intuition the size of a unit, not based on any other mathematical measure, and compare this sensible perception to the perception of the object.
This argument is premised on Kant’s view, as articulated in the first Critique, that mathematics (in particular, number theory/arithmetic) is a synthetic a priori science. In other words, Kant held that the validity of mathematical principles is grounded in pure intuition (KdrV, A10/B14). Accordingly, any mathematical measurement of magnitude via numerical concepts of the understanding must ultimately rest upon something intuitive: namely, a basic intuitive unit. Rudolf Makkreel summarizes this point: The concept of number not only has a pure intuitive content produced by the imagination as the faculty of a priori intuition, but also presupposes a given intuitive measure or form as its standard (Makkreel 1984, p. 123).
This basic intuitive unit is a sensuous standard by which the understanding is able to define its numerical concepts. Since a basic intuitive unit does not depend on anything else besides the immediate givenness of sense-data, the thought is that it provides an absolute determination of magnitude, a sensible snapshot equal only to itself. In contrast, a mathematical measure can provide only a relative determination of magnitude, “by means of comparison” with other numerical concepts (KdU, 5: 251). But how do we obtain this basic intuitive unit which Kant takes to be necessary for making absolute determinations of magnitude? For Kant, it is the imagination that initially picks out (alternatively: prehends/grasps, fassen) a basic unit in intuition (5: 252). Next, the imagination participates in the activity of apprehension, whereby the basic intuitive unit is deployed as the iterated unit in a numerical series. Apprehension, the representation of successive parts/units, goes on forever in virtue of the imagination’s ability to always represent the next part in a numerical series. So there is no problem here in deploying the basic intuitive unit as the iterated unit in a numerical series. However, comprehension, the activity of intuiting the numerical series of basic units as one coherent whole, is quite different. Comprehension reaches its limit when it grasps the highest number of basic intuitive units that can be represented in one intuition. When the number of basic intuitive units required to grasp the magnitude of a whole exceeds the number of basic intuitive units that can be represented in one intuition, some of the basic intuitive units overflow (i.e. we grasp new units only at the expense of previously-grasped units) and we lose the impression of the whole (5: 252). Thus, if we fassen a basic unit of measure within our visual field that is too small for a given magnitude – i.e. a unit that, when iterated in accordance with a numerical progression, makes for prolonged apprehension of the magnitude in which previously-apprehended parts fall out of view – then we will fail to comprehend that magnitude in toto, as one whole in intuition. Thus, Kant deduces, the aesthetically-grasped basic intuitive unit must be proportionate to the magnitude in need of measurement. As the magnitude to be measured increases, so too must the basic intuitive unit.
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The Logical Sublime Now in the aesthetic judging of such an immeasurable whole, the sublime does not lie as much in the magnitude of the number as in the fact that as we progress we always arrive at ever greater [i.e. larger] units [5: 257, my emphasis].
If we are, then, presented with a (seemingly) infinite magnitude, any basic intuitive unit that we grasp in the imagination will always pale in proportion to the magnitude, and it will be impossible to get into view, at one time, a distinct image of the unit and a distinct image of the whole magnitude (i.e. it will be impossible to comprehend). We are, in this way, confronted with a stalemate – an inexorable tension – between the need to remain visually conscious of the absolute unit which grounds the numerical series (in order for our measurement to be absolute and not merely comparative) and the desire to comprehend the magnitude in one intuition, as a whole.4 We inevitably fail to satisfy both branches of this tension at the same time, and this inevitable failure bears testament to the futility of our efforts and the limitations of the imagination in achieving its task. It is precisely this act – the attempt to measure a seemingly infinite magnitude – which precipitates the experience of the mathematical sublime. Of course, we never actually perceive an infinite magnitude in nature – everything appears limited/bounded, even very large things like the diameter of the earth. As Paul Guyer points out, the fact that we never see the infinite in nature – i.e. that we never intuit empirical infinity – is the driving premise in Kant’s resolution of the first two antinomies of pure reason in the first Critique (Guyer 2005, p. 158). So how, we might ask with Malcolm Budd, “is the infinite… implicated in the generation of the experience of the sublime when I am confronted by an immense object, but not by the limitless whole of the universe” (Budd 2003, p. 127)? In other words, how do we get the idea of infinity – of an unlimited regress – from looking at nature when, on Kant’s own account, nothing we perceive in nature is actually perceived as infinite? b. Aesthetic Comprehension––Logical Comprehension The answer to this question lies in Kant’s distinction between comprehensio logica and comprehensio aesthetica (5: 254). The idea is that, with logical comprehension, the imagination receives help in its unification of “the many in one intuition” from the understanding, whereas in aesthetic comprehension, this unification process is pursued by the imagination alone. Let us treat logical comprehension first, aesthetic second. For Kant, the imagination has no problem logically comprehending any physical magnitude through the mathematical iteration of absolute units, as long as the understanding is assigned to this task: “the imagination is adequate for the mathematical estimation of every object, that is, for giving an adequate measure for it, because the numerical concepts of the understanding, by means of progression, can make any measure adequate for any given magnitude” [5: 255, my emphasis]. This statement assumes, of course, that the “given magnitude” is finite, which it always will be, on Kant’s account. For example, suppose that we are given in intuition a very large, but finite, object. Our understanding then scrolls through the possible numerical concepts, generating larger and larger concepts “in accordance with an assumed principle of progression,” e.g. “n + 1,” and stops when it reaches a mathematical value appropriate for representing the given magnitude – and it will stop, since the magnitude is physical and hence never perceived as infinite (ibid.). The understanding, in harmonious conjunction with the imagination, then picks out this numerical concept and successfully measures the magnitude given in intuition. The result is Agnitio 8
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logical comprehension of all the parts/units of the intuition as a united whole, under a numerical concept. No problem here; no sublimity. In the case of logical comprehension, the fact that we never actually perceive anything as infinite in intuition makes for a happy unity of the understanding and the imagination in estimating even very large magnitudes. This discussion of logical comprehension may seem at odds with Kant’s earlier claim that mathematical estimation presupposes aesthetic estimation, and the claim that mathematical estimation never gives a determinate measurement. However, we may be able to make sense of Kant’s claims if we read them as saying that, with logical comprehension, the understanding is in control, and, thus logical comprehension does not require absolute estimation. That is, insofar as the understanding is concerned, a numerical estimate of a finite physical magnitude will serve perfectly well, as long as an asterisk denoting “relativity” is added. Relativity, or comparative measurement, only becomes a problem with aesthetic comprehension, which we will treat next. The moment of frustration (or discord) comes when we try to aesthetically comprehend a finite physical magnitude that cannot be intuited in a single image which simultaneously includes both the parts and the whole. In other words, we become frustrated when we fail to measure a finite physical magnitude using the imagination alone.5 In this case, the imagination simply cannot present a unified representation which clearly depicts both the unit of aesthetic measurement (e.g. a portion of rock) and the entire expanse (the whole cliff). However, the imagination must be able to do this, since Kant takes himself to have already proven that we estimate the magnitude of objects in nature aesthetically – i.e. that in order to make an absolute estimation, not merely a relative one, we need to grasp a basic intuitive unit, in the moment of estimation, which can then serve as the sensible grounds for a numerical series. Likewise, we must intuit the whole object simultaneously, without letting the basic intuitive unit out of our visual Fassung, a need which stems from the demands of reason. We will further elucidate this intervention by the ideas of reason in the next section. For now, it will suffice to say that on Kant’s account, the conflict between the demands of reason and the demands of the imagination manifests itself as the inability to aesthetically comprehend a given magnitude. Thus, it is not as much the size of the object, as it is the position of the viewer in relation to that object which sets in motion the impossible task of aesthetically comprehending both the basic intuitive unit and the whole simultaneously.6 In order to get the full emotional effect of the magnitude of the pyramids one must neither come too close to them nor be too far away. For in the latter case, the parts that are apprehended (the stones piled on top of one another) are represented only obscurely, and their representation has no effect on the aesthetic judgment of the subject. In the former case, however, the eye requires some time to complete its apprehension from the base level to the apex, but during this time the former always partly fades before the imagination has taken in the latter, and the comprehension is never complete (5: 252).
It is this relation between object and viewer that evokes the idea of infinity (theoretical infinity rather than empirical infinity), and with it sublimity. It is explicitly not the limitless magnitude of a perceived infinite object that evokes the idea of infinity. After all, the notion of an infinite (empirical) object is self-contradictory; we simply do not perceive infinity in the world. Budd misses this point in his criticism of Kant’s formulation of the mathematical sublime:
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The Logical Sublime The question that Kant gives no satisfactory answer to is this: ‘Given that I am concerned to form an aesthetic estimate of the magnitude of an object that confronts me, why should its immense size impose upon me the requirement to attempt to estimate aesthetically, not its own magnitude, but an infinite magnitude, a task that requires an impossible aesthetic unit of measure and so violates the imagination?’ (Budd, p. 128)
It is a mistake to take Kant as saying that the “immense size” of the object given in intuition “imposes upon me the requirement to attempt to estimate aesthetically” an infinite magnitude. In fact, Kant explicitly says that the feeling of sublimity – the tension invoked by what seems to be an infinite magnitude – does not turn on the size of the object, but the “disposition of the mind,” even though larger objects may be more predisposed to facilitating this disposition (5: 250). The key is that the object must be located such that the viewer cannot simultaneously apprehend both the basic parts and the whole. Furthermore, Budd is wrong to associate the impossibility of aesthetic comprehension with our inability to generate an “impossible [i.e. infinite] aesthetic unit.” Although it is indeed impossible for the imagination to intuit an infinite aesthetic unit, this is not the source of our failure to aesthetically comprehend a magnitude. After all, as Budd rightly posits, the magnitude to be measured will never itself be infinite, and thus its measurement will never require an infinitely-large unit to be measured with. The source of our failure to aesthetically comprehend is, on the contrary, much more nuanced. What the imagination needs to do, when faced with a finite magnitude, is intuit a unit big enough to see, but small enough to keep the whole magnitude within the frame of sight. Only when we fail to reach this middleground of size (not, as Budd suggests, a “unit of measure” which has “no end”) do we fail to aesthetically comprehend a magnitude. It is precisely this failure that precipitates the feeling of the sublime. Thus, even finite magnitudes (beyond which there is nothing else given to us in perception) can lead to an experience constitutive of the sublime. c. The Whip of Reason––Sublime Masochism Returning to Budd’s initial question, we may agree with him that the idea of infinity is not “implicated” when the mind is confronted with an “immense” yet finite physical object (Budd, p. 127). But this failure of implication occurs only when the understanding is deployed in the comprehension of the object, i.e. when we logically comprehend it as a whole constituted of parts, using determinate numerical concepts. The idea of infinity that is so necessary to the experience of sublimity is indeed “implicated” when the imagination alone tries to comprehend the magnitude of the object. In this case, the imagination fails to deploy a basic intuitive unit appropriate for determining the magnitude of the object and representing the object as a whole. Contrary to Budd, this does not entail the necessary fassen of an infinite sensible unit, as we have shown. Now the imagination, bereft of assistance from the understanding, is driven on by the whip of reason, “which requires totality for all given magnitudes.” Reason demands that the imagination present all of the conditions for this conditioned physical magnitude, so that it may be presented as an unconditioned totality.7 But to do this would be to perceive “infinity [aesthetically] comprehended” – an impossible and “self-contradictory concept.” Herein lies the displeasure characteristic of the mathematical sublime – the moment at which the imagination and “the voice of reason” tumultuously converge. There is, to be sure, a pleasurable side to the feeling of sublimity – albeit a side that Kant characterizes only as “respect” (5: 257). As we try in vain to present the strictly rational Agnitio 10
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idea of an “absolute whole,” continuously failing yet always driven on, our imagination at once recognizes its enslavement to this idea, and hence to the noumenally-oriented faculty of pure reason in general, recognizing both “its limits and inadequacy” and “its vocation for adequately realizing that idea.” While the former recognition (of inadequacy) is characterized by a feeling of displeasure, the latter recognition (of our vocation) leads to the acknowledgement of our “law”-like Bestimmung dedicated to the realization of rational ideas despite sensible constraints. Through this acknowledgment, we arrive at a certain respect for the fact that our faculty of reason takes precedence over – indeed, exceeds the capacities of – the “greatest sensible faculty”: a fact manifest in our perpetual “striving for” reason’s elusive ideas (5: 257). Thus, in some sense, we take pleasure in the pain provoked by the inadequacy of our imagination to keep pace with reason, which, when looked at from the point of view of our human condition in general, gestures toward the preeminence of reason – that distinctly human faculty – over nature. We enjoy the perpetual strikes of reason’s whip against the back of sensibility, because of our (somewhat masochistic) respect for the driving domination of ideas over the natural world. This sublime masochism is enabled precisely because the human, for Kant, is at once a split being, a composite of three disparate and only sometimes coordinated faculties. ………………………. There is admittedly more to be discussed in regard to the character of the feeling of sublimity in Kant.8 However, let us stop here in order to steer our discussion in a somewhat different direction. Up to this point, we have attempted to expose the inner machinery of the mathematical sublime in Kant. Specifically, we have been concerned with the processes through which certain physical magnitudes are taken in by an array of minutely-individuated functions of the imagination vis-à-vis the ideas of reason, engendering a “disposition of the mind” characteristic of sublimity. Nowhere, in this conglomeration of sensual input, imaginative mechanism, and rational impetus, does Kant engage the possibility of a nonphysical stimulus for sublimity. This is to be expected; the point of the sublime is that it is issued as an aesthetic judgment, and, therefore, that it results from the entanglement of intuited, sensible appearances, the faculty of imagination that renders and synthesizes these appearances, and the ideas of reason driving our comprehension of those appearances. Kant, although not an empiricist, is still an aesthetician. I wish, despite these considerations, to engage the possibility of a non-physical stimulus for mathematical sublimity. I find Kant’s formulation of the mathematical sublime, with the exception of two deep-seated Kantian premises, mostly susceptible to this possibility, against all appearances. In Part III, we will examine this possibility in light of late 19th and 20th century developments in mathematics and the philosophy of logic. Specifically, we will be concerned with Gottlob Frege’s project of logicism, which attempts to derive all arithmetic from pure logic, using logical operators and functions to strip arithmetic of its dependence on intuition. I will argue that, although the project of logicism neither addresses nor hints at the topic of sublimity, it does open the theoretical landscape upon which a new discussion of mathematical sublimity may unfold. Furthermore, it is within this landscape that we may not only locate the possibility of a sublimity catalyzed by logical propositions alone, but even begin a preliminary formulation of how it may take shape in the human subject. I take as my grounds for conducting this reexamination of the mathematical sublime (a) the surprising susceptibility of Kant’s own formulation, as presented in Part II, to a Agnitio 11
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complementary theory of logical sublimity, and (b) the apparent applicability of a strand of thought in post-Kantian logic to concepts within the field of aesthetics, which has, as far as I know, gone unnoticed, or at least deemed unworthy of careful elaboration.9
III. The Fregean Turn In order to commence a preliminary formulation of the logical sublime, we must first determine the context in which the term “logical” is being used. This entails an examination, first, of precisely what Kant means by “pure general logic,” and, second, of how Frege overturns the Kantian conception of logic (KdrV, B78/A54). Once this foundation is established, we can more easily determine the means by which Frege is able to recast the concept of number. Frege’s new formulation of the natural numbers will enable us to envision a logical sublimity (characterized by mechanisms and processes structurally analogous to those involved in Kant’s mathematical sublimity) which finds its source in logical propositions of a certain determinate form that demand of the intellect the impossible comprehension of an infinite regress. This regress, however, will not be of sensible parts, but of logically-conceived numbers, of numbers without intuitive correlates. Let us begin, then, with some background on Kantian logic. a. Kantian Logic, Mathematics: Grammar––Formality Kant classifies two types of logic: (1) “special” or “applied” logic – designating a class of many logics – and (2) “pure general logic” – designating a single logic (KdrV, A52/ B76). Applied logics are more aptly called “psychologies,” insofar as they concern themselves with “how things usually work in our understanding,” i.e. how we experience the workings of the understanding in their relation to other faculties (Logic, p. 21). General logic, on the contrary, “segregate[s] the understanding from the other powers of the mind and contemplate[s] what it does by itself.” Thus, general logic concerns itself only with the “absolutely necessary rules of thinking, without which no use of the understanding takes place” (KdrV, ibid.). Insofar as it is pure, general logic “abstracts from all the empirical conditions under which our understanding is exercised” (KdrV, A53/B77). For Kant, the relation between pure general logic and thought is like that between “grammar” and natural language (Logic, p. 15). The analogy (logic : thought :: grammar : language) holds because Kant ascribes to both grammar and pure general logic the condition of formality. Grammar abstracts from the content of determinate statements and attends only to their form (e.g. the syntax of subject and predicate, the location of connectives), disregarding the content of the statement (the meanings of the nouns and predicates involved). Similarly, general logic abstracts from the content of thoughts (i.e. the intuited appearances constitutive of empirical reality) and attends only to their form. By doing so, logicians derive the “necessary laws of the understanding.” We may designate Kant’s formality thesis for logic thus: Formality Thesis: Logic is purely formal. It abstracts from empirical appearance, and, as such, has no content – no domain of objects.10 Mathematics, on the other hand, does not satisfy the condition of formality. This is because, for Kant, it does not abstract completely from empirical objects (or, the conditions necessary Agnitio 12
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for such objects, i.e. pure intuition). In this way, mathematics falls under the heading of a synthetic science, i.e. a science whose practitioners must use their imagination in order to check the validity of their principles (KdrV, A10/B14). We find the locus of Kant’s claim for the syntheticity of mathematics within his concept of number. b. Kantian Logic, Mathematics: Number A number, on Kant’s account, is merely a rule for representing the magnitude of some quantum. As such, number is bound up with intuition from the start. The concept of number is, in this way, intuitive, since it represents a procedure for the construction of a quantum (i.e. an extended object). However, numbers do not name any existing quanta in particular, but rather serve as symbols which tell us precisely how to conduct the construction in intuition (KdrV, A717/B745). Therefore, when presented with a number (suppose it is 4) we are given a rule by which we may successively construct, in accordance with time and space, four strokes 1..1..1..1 in sequential order. The formation of this sequence depends on the intuitional idea of an iterative procedure, in which one and the same part (in this case, the stroke 1) is repeated. The number, then, is just the rule governing the repetition of this iterative act, either on paper (literally in time and space) or in our imagination (in pure intuition). This construction is not just spatial, but also temporal, insofar as the actual construction is achieved not only by drawing strokes from left to right in space, but also by drawing strokes successively in time. When the construction guided by a number is done only in pure intuition, ‘in our heads,’ then this rule gives us a specific guide, not for space, but for inner sense – namely, time.11 The successive construction of iterated strokes in pure intuition, then, is governed by the time it takes to accomplish such a task. When done on paper, space comes into the picture as well. In either case, the concept of number presupposes the pure forms of time, and (sometimes) space. In Kant’s terms: There is a certain concept which in itself, indeed belongs to the understanding but of which the actualization in the concrete requires the auxiliary notions of time and space (by successively adding a number of things and setting them simultaneously side by side). This is the concept of number, which is the concept treated in arithmetic.12
Therefore, Kant continues: However we might turn and twist our concepts, we could never, by the mere analysis of them, and without the aid of intuition, discover what is the sum [7 + 5] (KrV, B16).
We need to draw out seven strokes in our “mind’s eye,” and then add to them five more strokes. Only after doing this, and measuring the quantum of time it takes, do we arrive at the sum of [7+5]. Therefore, as Wing-Chun Wong notes, “[for Kant] the meaning of the number-concept cannot be grasped by abstract thought alone (e.g., theory of description), but must be ‘exhibited’ by an intuitive construction” (Wong 1999, p. 10).13 It is here that we find the connection between Kant’s concept of number as an intuitive notion (and, accordingly, the iterative process of counting in numerical series) and his claim of mathematical syntheticity. Because mathematics attends to this fundamentally intuitive notion of number, it too becomes a science built upon construction in the imagination. Frege, however, holds a much different view. In his Begriffsschrift (1879) and Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik (1884), Frege calls into question two of Kant’s central tenets: (1) the Agnitio 13
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Formality Thesis for logic, and (2) the formulation of mathematics as a synthetic science. We have seen how Kant’s concept of number as a vehicle for intuitive construction provides the basis for his claim that mathematics is synthetic. Similarly, Frege’s unique concept of number grounds his inversion of (1) and (2). However, in order to understand Frege’s concept of number, we must first provide an abbreviated outline of the logical system which provides the necessary framework in which he may propose this formulation. c. Frege’s Predicate Calculus: Nested Quantifiers––Second-Order Propositions When Kant discussed “pure general logic,” he had at his disposal only Aristotelian term logic (‘S is p,’ etc.), combined with an archaic system of disjunctives and hypotheticals (P or Q; if P then Q).14 In the Begriffsschrift, Frege introduced a much more nuanced logical system – which became the foundation of our modern predicate calculus. In this system, quantifiers and quantified variables may be stacked upon one another, in order to form the nested quantifiers necessary for formulating the natural numbers using pure logic alone.15 Frege split his predicate calculus into two basic groupings: variables (x, y, z…) and functions (F, G, H…). Functions range over concepts, and variables range over objects. For Frege, like Kant, objects fall under concepts. So the expression F(x) denotes an object falling under the concept F. When applied, we get formulae like ‘Male(Al)’, which denotes that Al falls under the concept male. In natural language, the formula expresses the thought “Al is a man.” Now, Frege’s formalization of quantifiers (“every,” “some”) within this artificial language allows for sentences expressing quantity (“some bachelors are male”) to be translated into logical notation [x (Male(x) Bachelor(x)].16 The latter expresses the thought “there is some x in our domain of discourse such that x is both male and a bachelor.” Here, no determinate object (like Al) is designated by the functions “Male” and “Bachelor.” Rather, the variable is bound by the quantifier (), in order to say that “there is some male bachelor” without nailing down precisely who that male bachelor might be. For Frege, quantifiers can be used in such a way to form complex thoughts that, in Kant’s age, could not have been expressed in terms of pure logic. Frege’s calculus allows for one quantifier to fall within the scope of another. In this case, the quantifiers are said to be “nested,” and the resulting proposition looks something like: x (Male(x) y (Female(y) Married(x,y))) which expresses the thought “for every x, if x is male then there is some y such that y is a female and x is married to y.” In natural language, “every man is married to a woman.” The formulae and sentences described above are all first-order propositions, since they deal only with concepts and objects. However, Frege’s system also allows for secondorder claims in which concepts themselves become the variables bound by quantifiers and nested quantifiers. This looks something like: F Fx which expresses the thought “there is some concept F such that x falls under F.’ Notice that this statement does not specify any one object falling under F, nor even any one concept F. When concepts themselves are deployed as bound variables in quantified sentences, Frege’s logic Agnitio 14
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becomes second-order. Thus, we can begin to see how Frege’s system involving quantification, nested quantifiers, and second-order propositions provides a logical framework in which much more complex ideas can be expressed through pure logic. One of these complex ideas, to which Frege devoted much attention in Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik, is that of number. d. Frege’s Predicate Calculus: Number––Gleichzablig Against Kant, Frege claims that the concept of number can “be grasped by abstract thought alone” (KrV, B16).17 He attempts to prove this using the logical apparatuses of the predicate calculus sketched in Section C. For Frege, every statement about number is actually a proposition about a concept (GdA, §46). The only way to understand the question “How many…?” is to recast it as “How many Fs…?” where F is any given concept. For example, when we ask “How many planets are there?” we are really asking “How many objects fall under the concept being a planet?” Thus, any answer to such questions must be given as a statement about the concept involved. These statements will be second-order, on Frege’s account, because they subsume a first-order concept (e.g. being a planet) under a second-order concept (e.g. being a concept under which nine objects fall): the concept being a planet falls under the concept being a concept under which nine objects fall.18 As Edward Zalta notes, Frege analyzes “statements of numbers…as predicating second-level numerical concepts of first-level concepts” (Zalta 1998). In this way, Frege begins to bring the discussion of ‘number’ away from intuitional processes of counting/constructing and toward pure conceptual analysis. With this description of statements involving number in place, Frege introduces a new logical operator, #, in order to designate “the Number which belongs to the concept F.” Of course, it is up to Frege to give a satisfactorily logical definition of #. He does so by employing the notion of equinumerosity [Gleichzablig] between concepts. The Number which belongs to the concept F [#] is the extension of the concept “equinumerous to the concept F.” (GdA, §68)19
By “extension,” Frege means the set of objects that fall under a given concept. So, when we speak of the “number which belongs to the concept F [#],” we are speaking of the set of objects that fall under the concept “equinumerous to the concept F.” Now, what does Frege mean by “equinumerous” In order for any two concepts F and G to be equinumerous, Frege says that there must be some relation R (R) that holds between every unique object x (x) falling under F and some unique object y (y) falling under G. Correlatively, this relation must also hold between every unique object falling under G and some unique object falling under F. This is a rather tedious notion, which is most comprehensible when represented visually.20
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Let the ovals represent concepts, and let variables [a [a-f] f] represent objects that fall under those concepts. The arrows represent a given relation R1. Suppose that we are wondering whether the concept being a dog is equinumerous with being a mouse. We would then need to find some relation between these concepts such that each actual dog and each actual mouse could be correlated according to this relation. Let us pick as our relation “bigger than.” Now, it may be the case that every individual dog is bigger tthan han some individual mouse. However, unless there are precisely the same number of dogs and mice, then we cannot say that this relation holds for every dog and mouse, since if there are, for example, more mice, then some mice will not be able to be related to a unique, individual dog (since every dog will already be “bigger than” than some mouse). This makes more sense, again, when it is represented visually.
Here, the extensions of concept G (variables e, g, f and h)) could never all be related, individually, to an extension of the concept F,, since there are fewer objects falling under F than under G.. Now, from Frege’s initial definition, it follows that if we cannot find a single relation between dogs and mice that hholds in such a way (one-to-one one correspondence), then the concept being a dog is not equinumerous to the concept being a mouse. Here, it becomes evident that in such a case, the number of dogs must not be the same as the number of mice. So, we have gone from m a purely conceptual definition of a logical condition, namely equinumerosity, to a claim about the actual number of things. Of course, nowhere in this definition of equinumerosity do we refer to anything except concepts and relations, with variables designating possible objects falling under concepts. Here lies the import of Frege’s reformulation of number. Frege goes on to deduce some more “well “well-known known properties of numbers” (c.f. GdA paragraphs immediately following §69) from this definition of #. Howeve However, r, for our purposes, this much is enough. Through our exploration of Frege’s attempt to use his second-order order predicate calculus to give a purely logical definition of number, with no recourse to Agnitio 16
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intuition, we have seen how far Frege’s concept of number differs from that of Kant. Thus, on Frege’s account, when we operate with numbers (for example, measure things numerically or do arithmetic), we need not rely on any sensible or purely intuitive basis: everything goes on in the understanding. This is a radical inversion of the Kantian thesis, as presented in Section B, that posits number as a mere rule designating a particular way to construct, in pure intuition, a quantum. Frege’s number is not a rule, but an object unto itself. Further, it is not rooted in any aesthetic unit: it is “self-subsistent” (GdA §55). The self-subsistence of numbers meant, for Frege, that they should be considered “logical objects,” arrived at and dealt with through pure abstraction alone.21 These conceptual “entities” (which includes not just numbers, but other logical notions) comprised the seemingly paradoxical abstracted content of Fregean logic.22 Clearly, a logic with its own content would, on Kant’s account, be a contradiction: the very term “logical object” appears selfcontradictory. In this way, Frege challenges both the Kantian notion of number, and, in turn, the Formality Thesis for logic. ………………………. What does all this mean for the mathematical sublime? We now have the framework in place to envision a new shape for the sublime, enabled by Frege, which falls in line with many of the cognitive processes requisite for mathematical sublimity as formulated by Kant and outlined in Part II.
IV. The Logical Sublime at Stake in Frege Frege’s nuanced second-order predicate calculus (as developed in his Begriffsschrift) and novel definition of number (Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik) serve as the foundation for a realignment of mathematical ideas in terms of pure logic. One such mathematical idea is that of a “dense order.” I will argue that, in trying to think the condition of density in Fregean terms, there arises a conflict of the faculties reminiscent of Kant’s mathematical sublime. However, in this case, the disharmony is not between imagination and reason but between the understanding and reason. a. Density In mathematics, an order is said to be dense if, for any two points x and y in the order, there is some other point, z, “between” those two points.23 Consequently, there will be another point, z1, between z and y, and so on. Here, denseness is a property of mathematical orders (e.g. the rational numbers). On the Kantian model, if we were to think about this condition of density, so conceived, we would invoke intuition to spatially construct a line in space (or even a number line) and perform the requisite operations on it. However, we can abstract density from this mathematical instantiation, leaving a strictly conceptual notion of a condition that could hold for any relation (not just “between,” as with points on a line). It seems possible, then, using Fregean nested quantifiers, to represent density in terms of pure, Fregean logic. A relation R is dense if and only if (x)(y)(Rxy (z)(Rxz Rzy))
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In other words, for every x and y, if x and y are in a relation R, then there is some z such that x and z are in R and z and y are also in the same relation R. Let us call this proposition Dense Order, or Do. Do is a frustratingly vague notion, but importantly so. After all, it must not specify any particular, physical manifestation of the condition it expresses. To clarify, of course, we might replace R with some relational two-place predicate (for example, “in front of,” as on a line). Our new sentence says that for any x and any y, if x is in front of y, then there is a z that is spatially between the two (i.e. x is in front of z and z is in front of y). If there is a z, then we must substitute z in for x, which in turn brings us to a new z`, and so on. We could do the same for the rational numbers, and that is why the rational numbers are said to be a dense ordering (there is always some number between any two numbers, ad infinitum). However, the point is that Do does not specify any one particular relation (”in front of,” “greater than,” “larger than,” etc.), let alone any material relation (as in space) or mathematical relation (as in a series of numbers). It also does not specify any particular function R, nor any particular object x or y, nor what the nature of x or y might be. The point is that Do attempts to define denseness qua denseness, in terms of pure logic, independent of any definite facts about the sensible manifold given in intuition, or even about our aesthetic capacities (the pure forms of space and time) in the imagination. It does so by using only nested quantifiers, functions and bound variables in its definition. Friedman 1992 notes: It is the dependence of one quantifier on another [nesting]… that enables us to capture the intuitive idea of an iterative process formally: any value x of the universal quantifier generates a value y of the existential quantifier, y can then be substituted for x, generating a new value y`, and so on. Hence, the existence of an infinity of objects can be deduced explicitly by pure logic alone (Friedman 1992, p. 63; my emphasis).
As we might imagine, without quantifiers, Kant had to frame denseness as a sensible notion which might only be represented through intuition (e.g. as the infinite divisibility of a line in space).24 We must construct a line in intuition, take any two points, and see that there is a point between those two points in every instance. Without the nested quantifiers of Frege’s predicate calculus, any other way of expressing the existence of “an infinity of objects” using logic alone would seem futile. MacFarlane sums this up nicely in a footnote: [Kant] cannot express [the condition of denseness] in a way that would allow us to infer from it, using logic alone, the existence of as many objects as we please. If we start with the categorical propositions ‘Every pair of rational numbers is a pair of rational numbers with a rational number between them’ and ‘<A,B> is a pair of rational numbers,’ then we can infer syllogistically ‘<A,B> is a pair of rational numbers with a rational number between them’. But Kant’s logic contains no way to move from this proposition to the explicitly existential categorical proposition ‘Some rational number is between A and B’ (MacFarlane 2002, p. 25).
In MacFarlane’s example, we move syllogistically to a conclusion about the nature of the set <A,B>. However, this conclusion lacks any “explicitly existential” import. Without the existential quantifier, we cannot say that there is some number between A and B, only that these given numbers fall under the concept having a number between them. Further, we cannot say that this holds for any number in the set of rational numbers, since we lack the universal quantifier. Therefore, this Aristotelian, syllogistic deduction does not adequately represent the infinite regress to which Do lays claim. Kant clearly recognized this, and concluded that logic alone cannot account for our notion of density. Agnitio 18
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However, what if density could be accounted for by logic alone, as Frege suggests? What then would go on in the mind? What cognitive processes would be engaged in an attempt to cognize the formal definition Do? b. Apprehensio Logica Just as Kant distinguished between logical comprehension and aesthetic comprehension (with the latter offering the clue to the feeling of the sublime precipitated by sensible objects), I will distinguish between aesthetic apprehension (“apprehension” simpliciter for Kant) and logical apprehension. The latter notion will offer the clue to the feeling of the sublime precipitated by non-sensible objects. Likewise, just as aesthetic comprehension was a function of the imagination alone (in contrast with logical comprehension, which was a function of the understanding), logical apprehension [apprehensio logica] will be a function of the understanding alone. This means that when we logically apprehend something, we think it without any recourse to the imagination or to intuition – we participate in purely conceptual, a priori mental activity.25 Now, say we are given (x)(y)(Rxy (z)(Rxz Rzy)) as a condition for the density of R. In order to logically apprehend this condition, we might think of it as applying to a series of numbers. Let us plug in any two numbers (suppose they are 3 and 2) in place of x and y. Do says that if 3 and 2 are in relation R (for example, “>”), then there is some other number such that 3 is greater than that number, and that number is greater than 2. Since 3 > 2, then there is such a number: for example, 2.5. Now, 2.5 must be substituted back into the condition, for x or y, in virtue of the universal quantifier which demands that this condition hold for every x and every y. So we have a new relation, 2.5 > 2, which, in turn, demands that there is some other number such that 2.5 is greater than it, and it is greater than 2: namely, 2.25. And so the regress commences, ad infinitum. What we are ultimately triggered to logically apprehend, then, is an infinite continuum of numbers: the existence of “an infinity of objects” (Friedman 1992). Our understanding could scroll through these numbers indefinitely, in virtue of the density, i.e. boundlessness/endlessness, of the mathematical set of rational numbers. Just as aesthetic apprehension could go on forever, without running into any difficulties with other faculties, so too could logical apprehension. We simply keep reapplying the formula with the next number posited by the existential quantifier, scanning through an endless continuum. The only difference is that logical apprehension, as defined here, proceeds under the jurisdiction of the understanding alone. Further, we are not, in this case, logically apprehending empirically-bound Kantian numbers, but rather Fregean “logical objects,” which are conceptually-derived numbers bereft of intuitive correlates. This last point will play a critical role in our efforts to logically comprehend the series initiated by Do. c. Logical Comprehension Recall from Part II that, for Kant, all mathematical estimation of magnitude presupposes aesthetic estimation. This point is grounded in his intuitional notion of number, as shown in Part III. For Kant, when we say that a cliff is 10 feet high, the “10” part means nothing. It is the physical unit – the foot – that matters, since the unit grounds the meaning Agnitio 19
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of this measurement. And it is not enough to merely redefine feet in terms of another number of units (for example, 12 inches), since this too is relative. Kant says that we must physically intuit a fundamental aesthetic unit, which we can grasp in intuition, in order to get an absolute measurement not predicated upon anything else. Once we visually apprehend this unit, keeping it in our Fassung, then we can use the understanding to generate a numerical sequence which takes this aesthetic unit as its base (rather than just some other numerical value). However, on Fregeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s account, it seems that the intuition of a basic aesthetic unit is not necessary for estimating magnitude. For Frege, as we have seen, a statement of number is not grounded in intuition. Rather, a statement of number is grounded in concepts which can be defined solely in terms of functions, relations, and variables: there is no need for recourse to construction in the imagination or to intuition of physical phenomena, and no basic aesthetic unit necessary. Thus, when we logically apprehend the infinite parts of a numerical continuum signaled by Do, we are not presupposing any intuitive base. Each number is determined conceptually, not aesthetically. In trying to comprehend the entirety of this numerical regress, this endless splitting of numbers within numbers, we need not aesthetically comprehend (i.e. grasp the basic unit and the whole at once) the whole. Rather, we need only logically comprehend the whole, which entails a mathematical estimation of the whole magnitude, i.e. an estimation according to some number. For Kant, when looking at a physical object, our effort to logically comprehend through an endless number-series is satisfied. This is because every physical object is perceived as finite: we never see infinity in nature. Thus, we can always come up with a concept of some number, however high it might be, under which we might subsume some finite physical mass. However, we are no longer dealing with a physical object. Rather, Do is a determinate proposition which denotes not a finite magnitude, but an infinite regress of parts. Thus, what enabled us to logically comprehend natural objects is completely lacking in non-intuitional propositions like Do. Accordingly, any effort to logically comprehend the infinity of numbers initiated by Do will ultimately fail â&#x20AC;&#x201C; as our understanding cannot find a numerical concept that adequately represents the infinite parts as a whole. (This seems to demand of us that we come up with the concept of a number n such that n = n + 1). d. The Whip of Reason 2.0 Let us recapitulate where we are at, cognitively speaking, in the process of thinking Do. It should be noted that, in the very first moment, we observe Do as a physical thing â&#x20AC;&#x201C; the literal array of ink-marks on a piece of paper. But this does not make our interaction with it aesthetic. The physical ink-marks are just a symbol, a trigger, precipitating purely conceptual thought isolated to the understanding. Barring the initial intuited appearance of the inkmarks, the part of our cognitive structure that is to be concerned is our understanding.26 Now, when we merely think things, we apprehend them not aesthetically in pure intuition, but logically in the understanding. Thus, in thinking Do, our understanding begins to logically apprehend such a condition. When we apply this condition to something familiar, namely numbers, we are at once presented with the intellectual task of enumerating more and more numbers between numbers, indefinitely. At this point, there is no trouble. We could go on logically apprehending the infinite regress implicated by Do forever, just as, in the mathematical sublime, we could go on aesthetically apprehending an infinite amount of parts forever. Agnitio 20
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However, we run into a problem when we try to logically comprehend that infinite regress as one coherent whole. Our effort to do this is dictated by pure reason, which, just like in Kant’s mathematical sublime, demands of us a presentation of all the conditioned parts as one unconditioned whole. The only way to do this, under the jurisdiction of the understanding, would be to come up with the concept of a number that is large enough to subsume the amount of parts posited by Do under it. While this would be possible for a finite amount of parts (as in the case of any physical magnitude), it is impossible for the infinite amount generated by our immaterial proposition. We have no concept of a number requisite for the amount of parts that we logically apprehend in thinking Do. Nevertheless, the demands of reason drive us to find the number equal to infinity, the elusive n = n + 1,, compelling us to represent the amalgam of parts as one coherent whole. Just as in Kant’s mathematical sublime, we bear witness to the futility of one of our faculties in completing such a task. This time, however, it is the understanding. We are driven, as a result of this strange mental peregrination through the logical condition Do and the resultant disharmony between our cognitive systems, to admit, in awe, the supremacy of our wayward, yet inextricably human, capacity for reason.
V. The Timbre of a New Sublime Thus, it seems that we find the blueprint for a novel formulation of the sublime buried within Frege’s quantifier logic and his reinvented concept of number. In this novel formulation, certain logical propositions become the “object” responsible for a feeling of sublimity in the apprehending subject. We might imagine that the precise phenomenological character of this sublimity is distinct from that of Kant’s mathematical sublime, since the disharmony is located between the understanding and reason, rather than between the imagination and reason. This much may be a worthy topic for future studies.27 For now, it will suffice to say that the logicist project, if forced from its well-established residence within the philosophy of mathematics and the philosophy of logic, appears to carve out the possibility of a purely logical sublime. We hear, in the unuttered echo of Frege, the timbre of a sublime that has perhaps been overlooked, but always been felt: a disposition, familiar to mathematicians and philosophers alike, which confronts our understanding in its effort to logically comprehend, not a finite sensible object, but an infinite logico-mathematic condition such as that expressed by the purely conceptual definition of density.28 Nevertheless, it was Kant who created a system susceptible enough to accommodate, with some tweaking, the possibility of this non-intuitional sublime. This possibility was a direct consequence of Kant’s deliberately anti-Burkean move to resituate the sublime from within the object to within the subject. There is a lot we have not considered in this preliminary sketch of the logical sublime. For one, we have not treated the veracity of those particularly Fregean theses which threaten to uproot Kant’s vision of logic and mathematics.29 It should be noted that Frege was widely criticized, and much of his logicist project disproven, in the years following the publication of the Begriffsschrift and Grundgesetze der Arithmetik.30 However, Frege’s prototype, his initial gesture, has been the subject of adaption, reinvention, correction, and revision ever since its momentous publication. In this way, we may imagine the Fregean injunction to be still alive. Accordingly, we may demand that the implications of his theories of number, logic, and mathematics be carried out to their fullest. At the very least, our deductions have shown that discussions over the viability of logicism, and the many permutations of Frege’s Agnitio 21
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â&#x20AC;&#x153;logico-mathematicalâ&#x20AC;? edifice, may have serious consequences, not just for logic and mathematics, but for the texture of how we feel in general.
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Notes 1.
C.f. MacFarlane 2002 on the contrast between logicism and Kantianism with regard to mathematics; Pierris 1988 on the treatment of a priori knowledge in Frege and Kant; Laserna 2000 on Frege, Kant and the sources of “geometrical knowledge,” to name just a few.
2.
To be sure, my argument is not positing what Kant should have said about the sublime, nor what he could have said. Rather, I intend to trace the implications of certain advances in logic after Kant to the theoretical field of the sublime. My claim is not so much about whether these advances are right as it is about what is at stake for the mathematical sublime if they are right. Nevertheless, my formulation of the “logical sublime” should cast new light upon the very shape of Kant’s mathematical sublime and its abnormal susceptibility to such an adaptation.
3.
Here, my reading of the argument as it is presented at §26, passages 5:251-5:252, falls in line with both Rudolph Makkreel’s and Malcolm Budd’s, though some nuances need clarification (Makkreel 1984, p. 304; Budd 2003, p. 123). Makkreel uses the term “presupposes” in describing the relation between mathematical and aesthetic estimation, suggesting a sort of explanatory dependence; Budd makes the ostensibly stronger claim that “all estimation of the magnitude of natural objects is ultimately aesthetic,” suggesting a more concrete collapsing of the two modes into one. Although the difference in their readings is not particularly pivotal for our discussion at hand, I tend to side with Makkreel’s view of a presupposition-relation (this becomes evident when Kant’s argument is coupled with that of the first Critique, as we will see). Makkreel, however, does not outline Kant’s actual reductio in support of this claim. Budd summarizes it somewhat confusedly in the third paragraph of his section II. I try to make sense of it in the subsequent indented paragraph.
4.
The imagination, it should be noted, does not come up with this desire itself; rather, it is the reason which drives the imagination to aesthetically comprehend the massive magnitude in one intuition. We will discuss this in more detail in Section C.
5.
Textual support for the claim that aesthetic comprehension, which, in its failure, brings about the idea of the infinite, operates without the aid of the understanding comes at the end of §26: “Thus it must be the aesthetic estimation of magnitude in which is felt the effort at comprehension which exceeds the capacity of the imagination to comprehend the progressive apprehension in one whole of intuition… with the least effort of the understanding” [5: 255, my emphasis].
6.
It is this stripping of the object’s import that serves as the driving force behind Kant’s claim that the sublime, being absolutely great, cannot be found in nature, but rather revolves around “our ideas” and the “disposition of the mind” – i.e. our faculty of reason and the feeling it generates in us: “true sublimity must be sought only in the mind of the one who judges” (5: 250; 5: 255; 5:256). Francis Ferguson aptly locates Kant’s move here as a deliberate distancing of his theory of the sublime from empiricist accounts, such as Burke’s, whereby objects themselves can be said to be sublime (Ferguson 1992). Ferguson goes on, however, to locate the kernel of Kant’s injunction in his relocation of sublimity from the empirical object to the strange nexus of empirical object and mathematical representation (of numerical series) – representation characterized by a lack of “empirical correlates,” mathematical formulae “without reference” (Ferguson, p. 85). To be sure, the claim that Kant takes mathematical representation to have no “empirical correlates” is wrong. Mathematical representation, for Kant, does have empirical correlates, as is made painfully clear in the first Critique: arithmetic, number theory, and the like are all synthetic sciences, taking as their ground of validity pure intuition and sense-experience. However, there is definitely some value in Ferguson’s claim that mathematical representation plays a vital – and, ironically, often underestimated – role in Kant’s account of the mathematical sublime. In Part II, we will explore mathematical representations and their relation to sublimity in detail.
7.
Kant discusses the spatial application of this idea – reason’s drive to find the complete set of conditions for every conditioned thing, all the way down to the unconditioned – in the first Critique (c.f. KdrV A412-13/B439-40).
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8.
The process of “subreption,” discussed at the outset of §27, in which we project our respect for reason as a respect, or awe, for the object in nature via a weird inversion of feeling, certainly warrants examination. I will have to treat this discussion as peripheral to my main aim in this paper, which is to present a possible analog, or amendment, to Kant’s theory of the mathematical sublime, whereby certain non-sensible, logical propositions become ‘objects’ in their own right for the mathematical precipitation of the sublime in he who ‘logically apprehends’ them.
9.
Logicism, it should be noted, is usually framed in its opposition to aesthetics, and aesthetics to logicism – as equally uncomfortable passengers in the same boat (C.f. Wollen’s description of this classification in “Cinema/Americanism/the Robot,” reprinted in Modernity and Mass Culture, p. 68). Indeed, Frege is widely-considered the father of modern analytic philosophy. Correlatively, the field of aesthetics within philosophy has, on some generalized accounts, become the grounding force for contemporary literary criticism and critical theory. The upshot of my deductions in what is to follow does not, unfortunately, undermine this opposition. My project is simple – a mapping of concepts from one science onto the other, and an analysis of how the aesthetic concept of sublimity might be reconceived in accord with the logicist project initiated by Frege.
10. This definition of Kant’s Formality Thesis is adapted from a revised version of a talk by Øystein Linnebo, reprinted as “Frege's Conception of Logic: From Kant to Grundgesetze,” 2003. 11. Wong 1999 argues that, for Kant, it is temporality that plays the biggest role in a number’s “rulegiving.” Makkreel 1984 also discusses in length how much of the imagination (construction, synthesis, etc.) is bound up with temporality, for Kant. 12. Immanuel Kant, Immanuel Kant: Theoretical Philosophy, p. 390. 13. For the most rigorous account of Kant’s concept of number, see Wing-Chun Wong’s “On a Semantic Interpretation of Kant’s Concept of Number” (1999, Synthese). For our purpose, however, suffice it to say that Kant’s concept of number turns on the notions of (1) iterative procedure in the imagination, (2) temporal sequence, and (3) construction in intuition – all of which render numbers fundamentally intuitive. 14. C.f. MacFarlane 2002 for a clear summary of the discrepancy between Kant’s and Frege’s logical resources. 15. The subtitle of this work itself illustrates, explicitly, what Frege aimed to create: a “formula language of pure thought modeled upon the formula language of arithmetic.” 16. Note: I am using modern notation for the quantifiers and connectives. Frege used his own, more opaque notational schematic in the Begriffsschrift. 17. Frege has separate definitions for, first, the cardinal numbers, second, ancestry (the relational concept x is an ancestor of y in the R-series), and, finally, the natural numbers (GdA §76, §79). For our purposes, I will present only a brief overview of his deductions concerning cardinal numbers, as they provide the grounding from which he proceeds to deduce the other definitions necessary for a purely logical formulation of number in general. Thus, when I say “number,” I am referring more specifically to the cardinal numbers. For a more detailed summary of Frege’s proof, see Zalta 1998, “Frege’s Logic, Theorem, and Foundations of Arithmetic.” 18. This may seem painfully circular. After all, Frege appears to be analyzing statements like “there are nine planets” as “the concept being a planet falls under the concept being a concept under which nine objects fall.” And both statements seem to involve the concept nine. To avoid circularity, then, Frege must analyze the second-order concept, being a concept under which nine objects fall, without recourse to the concept nine. He does so by analyzing being a concept under which nine objects fall in purely logical terms, using existential and universal quantifiers. Thus, being a concept under which nine objects fall is just any concept F that satisfies the following criterion: there are distinct things a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h and i that fall
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The Logical Sublime under the concept F and anything else that falls under the concept F is identical to either a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h or i.” (c.f. Zalta 1998). The modern notation for this expression is long and tedious, but the point is captured in the notation for the concept being a concept under which two objects fall: ∃x∃y(x ≠ y Fx Fy ∀z(Fz → (z=x ∨ z=y)))
19. J.L. Austin translates Frege’s invented term Gleichzablig as “equal,” but footnotes some other possibilities. I adopt “equinumerous,” as it seems to denote a relation more bound up with number than, simply, the ‘equal to’ relation (GdA, p. 79). 20. This visual is taken from Zalta 1998. 21. C.f. Schirn 2003 for a discussion of numbers as logical objects in Frege (p. 24).
22. This is the controversial conclusion of Frege’s endeavors. How can logic be a system that both abstracts from all objects and, at one and the same time, takes certain abstracted forms as its content? This debate is highly contested by logicians and mathematicians. C.f. Harold Hodes’s critique in “Logicism and the Ontological Commitments of Arithmetic,” 1984. 23. I use the spatial relation “between” here just to be colloquial. Properly speaking, we may say that there is some z such that x and z are in a relation R and z and y are also in the same relation R. I use this more precise definition below. 24. C.f. Friedman, Kant and the Exact Sciences, for a thorough discussion of density from Kant to the modern day; pp. 61-70. 25. My formulation of “logical apprehension” falls in line with Frege’s notion of logical (as opposed to psychological) abstraction. I use “logical apprehension” in order to show the corollary to Kant, and to highlight its application to the mathematical sublime. Schirn discusses how logical abstraction works, for Frege, in detail (Schirn 2003, p. 24). 26. This point is supported by the fact that we could just as well remember the formula and think it on our own, without looking at the paper – a fact that Kant himself would probably agree on, based on his distinction of a “pure,” “impure,” and “absolutely pure” cognition (KdrV B1). It seems that cognition of Do would probably not be “absolutely pure” – on Kant’s account – but it would be “pure.” 27. Further discussion also may center on the precise moment at which the aesthetic intuition of the inkmarks composing a logical proposition transmogrifies into pure, a priori conceptualization – that is, the seam at which the imagination and understanding meet – asking (a) how this moment unfolds in the mind, and (b) how it helps determine (if it does) the feeling of sublimity evoked thereafter. 28. Indeed, mathematicians throughout history have hinted at the aesthetic component of their discipline (through seemingly opaque statements like “this proof is beautiful”). Although these “value” judgments have been thought by some to be literally meaningless (c.f. the logical positivists), I hope to have provided some motivation for thinking that judgments of the form “this logical proposition is sublime” are not nonsense. In fact, they refer to complex, determinate mental processes which, one would imagine, evoke equally complex, determinate psychological states. Thus, part of my project has been to provide a more detailed defense of the role of aesthetic judgments within mathematical practice – one which takes its cue from the raw inclination of some mathematicians to describe their material in aesthetic terms. I have, in part, been providing support for the view, held by Bertrand Russell among others, that mathematics and logic “possesses not only truth, but supreme beauty — a beauty cold and austere, like that of sculpture, without appeal to any part of our weaker nature, without the gorgeous trappings of painting or music, yet sublimely pure, and capable of a stern perfection such as only the greatest art can show” (Russell 1919, pp. 60). 29. Another issue we have not considered is whether the fact that Do is man-made, drawn out of our own minds, affects the character of our sublime disposition in these cases. Future studies may treat this
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The Logical Sublime issue in relation to Kant’s discussion of subjective universality (universal assent). It may be charged, against my account, that Do could never precipitate a Kantian-esque feeling of sublimity since it is man-made, and Kant takes man-made objects to be too determined/bounded/rigid, in virtue of their purposiveness, to be objects evocative of sublimity – art’s human interference prevents it from, in Derrida’s terms, “overspilling” in a way requisite for sublimity (The Truth in Painting, p. 122). I will say in response only that we must not too hastily construe the purposiveness engendered by man-made pieces of art with the purposiveness of immaterial propositions. Lastly, it should be noted that my account only specifies one logical condition evocative of logical sublimity – though I do not mean this to be an exhaustive index. Future studies may investigate whether other logical conditions evoke the same mental processes constitutive of logical sublimity.
30. Probably the most well-known example is Russell’s letter to Frege, written in 1903, showing the inconsistency of his system.
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Works Cited Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Guyer, Wood. Cambridge University Press: 1998. Immanuel Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment, trans. Guyer, Mathews. Cambridge University Press: 2000. Immanuel Kant, Logic, trans. John Richardson; W. Simpkin and R. Marshall: London, 1819; digitalized 2007. Immanuel Kant, Immanuel Kant: Theoretical Philosophy, 1755–1770, trans. David Walford in collaboration with RaIf Meerbote (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). Gottlob Frege, Begriffsschrift, eine der arithmetischen nachgebildete Formelsprache des reinen Denkens, Halle a. S.: Louis Nebert, 1879; translation by S. Bauer Mengelberg as Concept Notation: A formula language of pure thought, modelled upon that of arithmetic, in J. van Heijenoort, From Frege to Gödel: A Sourcebook in Mathematical Logic, 1879-1931, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press Gottlob Frege, Die Grundlagen der Arithmetik: eine logisch-mathematische Untersuchung über den Begriff der Zahl, Breslau: w. Koebner, 1884; translated by J. L. Austin as The Foundations of Arithmetic: A Logic-Mathematical Enquiry into the Concept of Number, Oxford: Blackwell, second revised edition, 1974. Rudolf Makkreel, “Imagination and Temporality in Kant’s Theory of the Sublime,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 1984. Jacques Derrida, The Truth in Painting, trans. Geoff Bennington and Ian McLeod (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993). Matthias Schirn ed., The Philosophy of Mathematics Today, Oxford University Press, USA (November 5, 1998) Edward N. Zalta, “Frege’s Logic, Theorem, and Foundations of Arithmetic,” 1998, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. John MacFarlane, “Kant, Frege, and the Logic in Logicism,” The Philosophical Review, Vol. 111, No. 1, January 2002. Paul Guyer, “Kant on the Purity of the Ugly,” reprinted in Values of Beauty: Historical Essays in Aesthetics, Cambridge University Press, 2005 Malcolm Budd, “The Sublime in Nature,” reprinted in Paul Guyer, Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment, Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 2003. Øystein Linnebo, “Frege's Conception of Logic: From Kant to Grundgesetze,” Manuscrito 26:2 (2003), 235-252 (special issue on Frege edited by Marco Ruffino) Wing-Chun Wong, “On a Semantic Interpretation of Kant's Concept Of Number,” Synthese, Volume 121, Number 3, December, 1999. Michael Friedman, Kant and the Exact Sciences, Harvard University Press, 1992. Frances Ferguson, Solitude and the Sublime: Romanticism and the Aesthetics of Individuation, Routledge: New York, London, 1991. Peter Wollen, “Cinema/Americanism/the Robot,” reprinted in James Naremore, Modernity and Mass Culture, Indiana University Press, 1991. Bertrand Russell, “The Study of Mathematics,” Mysticism and Logic: And Other Essays. 1919, Longman.
Agnitio 27
Eros Unquenchable, or Platonic Restlessness Andrew Wells-Qu University of Chicago
ABSTRACT For eros, Plato offers two seemingly contradictory accounts: Diotima of Symposium's transcendental ascent and Republic Book IX's lawless descent. The lover's ascent seems teleological, and the tyrant's descent seems aimless. However, neither truly quenches their eros with satisfying objects. Since lover and tyrant share this erotic restlessness, Plato's two accounts are ultimately consistent on eros. Neither lover nor tyrant is satisfied by what they seek because they do not know what they really want.
I. Introduction Plato does not give us a clear picture for eros.1 In fact, he confronts the reader with two accounts of the desire that are seemingly incompatible: with Diotima in Symposium, it is a philosophical urge driving the lover toward 'good and beautiful things;'2 and in Republic IX, it is a madness driving the tyrant toward lawless things. Although the question remains of what the things' ownership really means for the owner, these accounts fit the typical Platonic model where the desirer seeks for her desire a satisfying object. These erotic objects for Symposium include poems, laws, honor, and offspring, while for Republic IX they include wealth, power, food, and sex. Different objects are pursued by the lover and by the tyrant, and their difference would seem to imply that the lover and the tyrant experience completely different types of eros. The two accounts thus seem incompatible. Yet their limited sets of objects are insufficient to fully describe the corresponding desires. The two accounts do not clearly explain what desiderative principles are separately followed that permit their certain objects and not others; that is, the two accounts leave unclear why their different objects must be selected so, and not being thus differentiable, the accounts are not clearly incompatible. After all, it is still possible that the different objects are selected for the same principle, like beauty. Both lover and tyrant may be driven by a common aesthetic, and the difference between their objects could be explained by their different circumstances, by luck.3 Until the ideas uniting the accounts' respective objects are defined, their compatibility on eros cannot be judged conclusively. If Socrates is right, then how we make sense of eros bears on the Agnitio 28
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correct path to virtue.4 These ideas of eros must be clarified, or else we risk following the tyrant's unhappy path. Certainly, the accounts are alike in refusing to settle on one definite object for eros. That is, if eros is defined as a desire for something,5 neither account fully explains what the objective 'something' is. At least for those who desire goodness, this 'something' is eudaimonia.6 Eros, however, is seen much more ambivalently. In neither Symposium nor Republic IX is the erotic desire presented as a straightforward pursuit of a single object, but rather as a spiraling escalation: as soon as eros achieves the immediate goal, it redirects its gaze to some higher conquest. Its object appears to change with every turn as the lover ascends and the tyrant descends. The two accounts certainly concur that general Platonic desire is motivated by the lack of a specific object, and the desire is quenched when its object is acquired7â&#x20AC;&#x201D;yet in both dialogues, eros is never quite quenched. [At least for the most part. I will explore Diotima's possible solution later.] I contend that Platonic eros is inherently unquenchable. Whereas most desires have a single definite object, eros is the singular desire defined by its lack of a definite object. Neither beauty nor wealth nor sex is sufficient; these are merely false objects. Without a definite object, the only way to characterize eros is by its condition: restlessness. 'Something' drives both Republic IX's tyrant and Symposium's lover to keep ceaselessly searching for a satisfactory object, and their inability to define that 'something' in human terms is why eros is a uniquely ambivalent desire, leading to both virtue and vice. Any possible object can justifiably attempt to satisfy eros. This view recognizes the irony of eros: the lover does not know what she wants except whatever will soothe her pain, and nothing will. Aristophanes is right when he declares of lovers, â&#x20AC;&#x153;These are the people who finish out their lives together and still cannot say what it is they want from one another... It's obvious the soul of very lover longs for something else; his soul cannot say what it is, but like an oracle it has a sense of what it wants, and like an oracle it hides behind a riddle.â&#x20AC;?8 Eros is a condition of lacking that cannot explain what is lacked, and this is a lacuna common to both dialogues. Because eros itself is a condition of ambivalence, the two dialogues are similarly unclear, presenting ambivalent accounts of the erotic object. In their idea of eros, the two accounts are therefore compatible. I will examine how eros contravenes the standard conventions for Platonic desire, first seeing in each dialogue how the erotic restlessness is perpetuated when apparently erotic objects turn into false idols [parts II - III]; and then comparing how the dialogues' lack of self-sufficiency remains despite Diotima's transcendental solution [part IV]. In both accounts, then, eros can only be identified with restlessness.
II. Diotima of Symposium and False Idols Plato usually assigns objects whereby the corresponding desire is satisfied, but this is contravened by both Symposium and Republic IX for eros. Instead, both accounts have eros constituted by objects that categorically fail qua object when they are revealed as false idols. Without satisfying objects, eros is therefore tied to a characteristic restlessness. That the accounts are consistent in this manner appears to be implausible since the tyrant's mad descent into lawlessness does not precisely parallel the lover's virtuous ascent toward beauty. However, their spiraling escalations project an internal consistency that is illusory: neither has a set of objects that is truly continuous. Eros incites the afflicted to seek relief in objects, but the absence of any lasting relief9 shows that the supposed objects do not really belong to eros, but are merely successive failed guesses. [This is not to imply that a correct answer Agnitio 29
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exists to even be guessed at. As we will see, human eros is incurable.] Once possessed, true objects of desire would quench the desire, but none of these supposed erotic objects (wealth, sex, pretty boys, etc.) quench eros. Since they are not thus united through eros, these objects are unrelated, bearing a deep discontinuity that cancels the apparent contrast between the escalations; even the notion of escalating progress is now deceptive because there is no measurable progress between objects. In the Symposium, Diotima defines correct eros as apparently unitary, organized as a continuous movement toward transcendental communion, but this neglects to explain how the lover is motivated to move from each object to its successor.10 When Diotima says that each object succeeds in pushing the lover towards the next object, she cannot also maintain that each object fails. This kind of escalation is repeated over three transitions: body/soul, multiplicity/unity, and human/divine. First, if the leader [eros] leads aright, [the lover] should love one body and beget beautiful ideas there; then he should realize that the beauty of any one body is brother to the beauty of any other and that if he is to pursue beauty of form he'd be very foolish not to think that the beauty of all bodies is one and the same. When he grasps this, he must become a lover of all beautiful bodies, and he must think that this wild gaping after just one body is a small thing and despise it.11
The lover first sees physical beauty, which leads to the beauty of character; then the beauty of one soul, which leads to the beauty shared by many souls; then the beauty of human creations, which leads to the beauty of immortal ones. Each time the lover arrives at her object, it fails, and she is freshly impelled to seek anew. But the transitions have no logical connection with each other because they involve not just different objects in the same category, but totally different categories. Physical beauty has no immediate connection to the abstract beauty of character; neither does one soul naturally lead to many souls. One might ask Diotima, â&#x20AC;&#x153;When one object proves insufficient, how can it correctly point the lover to a different kind of object?â&#x20AC;? Diotima might object that the objects do satisfy at first, but become dissatisfying when a better object is found. Yet this notion would forfeit the motivation necessary for eros to escalate. The first object must fail in order to motivate the lover to search further, or else the lover would be completely satisfied with the very first object, so Diotima might then qualify the objects as only partially satisfying. This notion of partial satisfaction would provide true erotic objects, since they satisfy somewhat; and it would also provide restlessness, since the objects leave something to be desired. This would remove the paradox from restless escalation. However, if the objects were all truly proper to eros, then the lover would have no need to become disgusted with what she once loved, 'despising' it. If we grant Diotima objects that are partially satisfying, the lover would see the old objects as merely satisfying less relative to the new objects. These new objects would be better, but they would not exclude the old objects altogether as they do with eros, where old objects are false idols. This reversible valuation of an object bespeaks a kind of relativism which suggests that eros is an unstable desire, or perhaps just a word that describes multiple contradictory desires. Diotima even calls eros the son of Penia and Poros12, or Poverty and Resource. This speaks to eros as restlessness: it is resourceful in finding its object, but impoverished in that the objects are always false idols, leaving the lover always seeking and always unsatisfied. The failure of each successive object is concealed by Diotima because she relies on conflicting functions for erotic restlessness. On the one hand, restlessness motivates the lover to move to the next object, so each erotic object functions as a goad to ever more Agnitio 30
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abstract manifestations of beauty. This kind of motivation is necessary because otherwise, the lover would have no idea whatsoever about where to go to relieve eros. On the other hand, since objects do not satisfy (and therefore fail), restlessness prevents the lover from even formulating the mental category for erotic objects. Other than their similarity a posteriori, Diotima cannot explain how each failed object connects to its successor a priori. That is to say, since each successive object must fail qua object by being reduced to 'a small thing' before the lover is newly motivated, these same objects cannot then teach the lover to move in any clear direction. Instead, the idea of eros begins anew with each object in isolation. There is no erotic category that refines itself by accumulating objects over the course of the lover's ascent, growing more accurate in its continuous trajectory. When the lover in her route hits a dead end, Diotima defies logic to claim that the lover is thereby directed to the correct route in another object. Once the first object has failed, the lover should instead be motivated to disregard its direction and turn around. Unlike Republic IX, Diotima's account ignores the false idols that should derail the ascent. Contrast Diotima's account with the desire for goodness: good objects succeed in satisfying the desirer, so they belong together in the same unifying category as the Good. Since the gods are satisfied, meaning they do not lack eudaimonia,13 they are no longer motivated by desire for good objects. Even for humans, there need not be an escalation in the desire for the Good because good objects usually satisfyâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;false idols result only from ignorance,14 not from knowledgeable desire for the Good. Contrarily, the erotic lover lacks true objects to formulate a prescriptive category for eros, and she is therefore permanently ignorant. The tyrant is not prima facie wrong in stumbling from one object to another restlessly.
III. Republic IX and False Idols In Republic IX, it seems that the tyrant is unlike the lover because there is no teleology to necessitate restlessness. This account seems incompatible with Symposium because eros here differs from the desire for the Good, inciting behavior in the tyrant opposite to the lover's. It might be that tyrannical eros differs from the lover's eros given that the tyrant's soul is corrupted relative to the lover's soul. Of course, the tyrant is left miserable in the end, which would indicate that his objects did not satisfy him. [If humans can satisfy their true desires then, like the gods, they should be happy.] But the tyrants could be miserable by chance, merely because his eros is satisfied apart from his desire for goodness; or, the desire for goodness outweighs eros. While he might then be miserable because his viciousness leaves the desire for goodness unsatisfied, it does not appear certain that he cannot be otherwise satisfied insofar as his eros has been obeyed. However, Republic IX does present a congruent model for eros because the tyrant, like the lover, does not know how to quench his erotic desire, and he follows a similar kind of directedness. Eros seizes control of him and refuses to let any object satisfy him, instead pushing him to wildly pursue vice much like the lover pursues Beauty.15 Like the lover, the tyrant has objects that are discontinuous from one another, and while they may not represent precisely the lover's 'progressive' escalation over clear transitions, they do represent a similar escalation by restlessness. Crime is followed by yet worse crimes. Admittedly, vice does not represent an ideal Form like Beauty, so the descent cannot be said to follow a proper teleology. But the tyrant's restlessness cannot be explained with an errant desire for goodness alone, which would involve ignorance of which moral objects truly satisfy. Even if his moral Agnitio 31
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ignorance resulted in partially satisfying objects, which would explain some of the restlessness, ignorance would simply motivate the tyrant to seek new objects in random directions—but it would not drive the tyrant in a fixed lawless direction. Since the ignorance of a perverted desire for the Good is insufficient to motivate the tyrant's descent, it can only be the same erotic restlessness as Symposium that motivates the tyrant. The tyrant is not merely afflicted with stable lawless desires, but with something indescribable. Callicles from Gorgias offers a glimpse of how lawless desires would work without eros: he likens such a soul to a jar full of holes, continually desiring and being satisfied. But in Republic IX, eros is depicted as a foreign desire, seizing control of the tyrant's other desires. Socrates explains: Then, when those clever enchanters and tyrant-makers have no hope of keeping hold of the young man in any other way, they contrive to plant in him a powerful erotic love, like a great winged drone, to be the leader of those idle desires that spend whatever is at hand.16,17 [...] Is this the reason that erotic love has long been called a tyrant?18
Since desires come from the lack of objects, the tyrant is driven to fill his lack: he pursues “feasts, revelries, luxuries, girlfriends, and all that sort of thing.”19 If the tyrant's desires conform to the standard Platonic paradigm given by Callicles, there should be no conflict. The desires for food, wealth, sex, et cetera are easily satisfied for a tyrant. Even if these limited desires grow as large as possible, following Callicles' lead, the tyrant should not encounter epistemic frustration in pursuing them, and eros should be satisfied. In fact, the desires do grow: And driven by the stings of the other desires and especially by erotic love itself (which leads all of them as its bodyguard), won't he become frenzied and look to see who possesses anything that he could take, by either deceit or force?20
'Frenzy' does not quite match the image of the lotus-eating21 hedonist that Callicles first imagined because it is not individual desires growing larger, but rather the number and variety of desires. Eros and its gang of desires are out-pacing the ability of their objects to satisfy, which makes little sense for a tyrant with abundant resources. It can only be explained by erotic restlessness: the tyrant is dutifully seeking objects for his desires, and his desires are not quenched but rather inflamed. Finally: Then a tyrannical soul—I'm talking about the whole soul—will also be least likely to do what it wants and, forcibly driven by the stings of a dronish gadfly, will be full of disorder and regret.22
The tyrant is perfectly miserable because he cannot satisfy his endlessly multiplying desires. Without eros, his desires would be theoretically manageable (albeit his inalienable desire for goodness would not be satisfied). Once stricken by eros, however, the tyrant cannot quench his desires. For him, as for the lover, the objects have all become false idols. It is at this point that the eros of Symposium has been called an inversion of Republic IX. After all, whereas Diotima's account ends in bliss, this account ends in misery, in 'disorder and regret.' However, while the lover might have goodness, her desire for goodness thus being quenched, she is like the tyrant in that neither has quenched eros, and they are accordingly both miserable, albeit to different degrees. [The tyrant would be doubly miserable owing to both eros and the desire for goodness.] This explains why Diotima asks, Agnitio 32
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â&#x20AC;&#x153;Don't you see what an awful state an animal is in when it wants to reproduce? Footed and winged animals alike, are all plagued by the disease of Love.â&#x20AC;?23 If the lover's eros were different from the tyrant's eros, the two would not display the same manic restlessness. Eros is unquenchable for everyone alike because it does not constitute a lack of any specific thingâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;and that is why those afflicted by eros are motivated to satisfy it through other desires. Yet the lover and the tyrant are both mistaken to believe that satisfying other desires will also satisfy eros. The two accounts accord on the resulting restlessness: while the lover may happen to fix on the desire for goodness (in the rational part of her soul), the tyrant happens to fix on lawless desires (in a different part of his soul, whatever it is), but both are still blindly groping for the erotic object. Therefore, it is true that the lover's desire for goodness can overlap with eros, but the two desires remain distinct insofar as one can be quenched without the other. It thus turns out that eros has no correct objects to distinguish the lover's ascent from the tyrant's descent; whatever false idols they take are only judged by Plato according to the peripheral desire for goodness.
IV. Of Transcendental Solutions and Self-Sufficiency We have now seen that Symposium is no different from Republic IX on eros because both the lover and the tyrant are driven to restlessly seek more and more objects external to themselves. Normal desires would contrarily be satisfied when their objects are acquired. But the accounts cannot be declared compatible just yet: a new problem is raised when Diotima gives her transcendental solution. Eros does seem to be finally satisfied at the summit of the lover's ascent when she comes to rest in the Form of Beauty. If this solution works, providing a truly satisfactory object for eros, then despite initially sharing false idols, the two dialogues are ultimately incompatible. The tyrant is left miserable, and the lover is left blissful, and there seems to be no way to reconcile the two outcomes. However, the lover's apparent satisfaction nonetheless contravenes standard desire. Whereas quenching most desires would improve self-sufficiency, even the supposed quenching at the lover's summit leaves her less self-sufficient. Even when she has reached the abstract ideal of the erotic object, Beauty, she is unable to lay aside her desire because neither Beauty nor the concomitant immortality can be attained and internalized. This erosion of self-sufficiency demonstrates that eros is permanently unquenchable: not only do both accounts initially share false idols, but they ultimately agree that no erotic objects are even attainable by humans. The two accounts are therefore compatible throughout in how eros erodes selfsufficiency. Desire is normally depicted by Plato as the lack of a definite object. By attaining this object, the desirer can quench her corresponding desire. Furthermore, quenching the desire should make the desirer both less vulnerable against its stings and more self-sufficient.24 A good instance of this standard desire can be seen, as usual, in the desire for the Good. [Since this desire is universal and inalienable, it always participates in decisionmaking.] This desire can be satisfied when the desirer correctly acquires the appropriate objects, such as through courage, temperance, wisdom, or justice. Socrates does this when he practices philosophy, improving his soul and amending vice. With each object, the desirer quenches more of the desire and becomes accordingly more self-sufficient against the need to pursue its objects. Self-sufficiency thus allows Socrates to remain stoic about his own death in Apology, given that he has already provided for its needs. This also explains why the gods have no desire for the Good: they have attained every good object and lack nothing. Happiness is the result of Agnitio 33
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self-sufficiency. Eros, meanwhile, does not fall into this standard category. For the tyrant, eros produces an utter lack of self-sufficiency. He undoubtedly obeys eros as his personal 'tyrant,' but no objects satisfy him, and he is plunged ever deeper into restlessness. Where the gods are happy and have no desires, the tyrant is miserable and inflamed desires. As we have seen in parts II and III, the tyrant and the lover seem to give compatible accounts in that neither is satisfied by their objects. Yet it is against the tyrant's descent that Diotima contrasts the lover's transcendental summit. The real possibility for erotic satisfaction is presented when Diotima claims that eros can instead be satisfied in a rational (that is to say self-sufficient) soul, assimilating eros to the desire for the Good. After ascending through the beautiful objects, the lover will be allowed at the summit to behold the Form of Beauty,25 and then be able to “give birth to true virtue.”26 [This solution is transcendental because it passes beyond the human world and enters divine abstraction.] By assimilating the two desires this way, the transcendental solution would seem to quench eros. The ascent would appear fundamentally different from the descent not only because it provides satisfaction, but also because the interwoven desire for the Good is opposed to the tyrant's viciousness. However, as we will see, this transcendental solution unjustifiably confuses eros with the desire for goodness without explaining their necessary disparity; and the solution still erodes the lover's self-sufficiency, inflaming erotic desire to pursue more objects rather than quenching it. When the transcendental solution improperly assimilates eros with the desire for the Good, it neglects to account for eros proper and merely fills in its gaps with the other desire. The resulting patchwork is inconsistent, failing to separately classify the two desires or their objects. Diotima originally assimilates eros to the desires for goodness, providing a transcendental solution that combines Beauty with virtue, because Socrates is unable to follow the original reasoning through beauty alone.27 She asks, “The lover of beautiful things has a desire; what does he desire?” Socrates replies that there was no way he “could give a ready answer to that question.”28 So she changes tack, opting instead for something he will understand: “Suppose someone changes the question, putting 'good' in place of 'beautiful.' ” And “this time, it's easier [for Socrates] to come up with the answer,”29 which is eudaimonia. The inconsistency of Diotima's assimilation appears when, unlike the typical desire for goodness, eros leads to the desire for immortality. Diotima asserts: What Love wants is not beauty, as you think it is, [but rather] reproduction and birth in30 beauty. [...] Now, why reproduction? It's because reproduction goes on forever; it is what mortals have in place of immortality. A lover must desire immortality along with the good, if what we agreed earlier was right, that Love wants to possess the good forever. It follows from our argument that Love must desire immortality.31
If eros is the same as the desire for goodness, it is puzzling that it should not simply be satisfied by good objects but need to birth beautiful ones as well. The connection between the two desires is not made explicit; rather, Diotima can be fairly accused of vague ambiguity. She might mean that beauty merely signals objects for the desire for the Good, but the two kinds do not always describe the same objects; beauty is even seen by the tyrant in bad objects. [It would be circular to counter-claim that only the already rational souls can see beauty properly in order to become virtuous, given that beauty should unconditionally benefit rationality.] Moreover, if the desire for goodness is the same as eros, then why is it not simply drawn to immortality by itself, without eros? Diotima leaves unexplained what Agnitio 34
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additional motivation is provided by Love. Socrates asserts in Apology that virtue could instead be continued in the afterlife as eternal conversation with great herosâ&#x20AC;&#x201D;it is only in Symposium that we are given this strange preference for worldly continuation. These objections are inconsequential next to the larger problem of self-sufficiency. Since immortality can never be satisfied but vicariously, immortality is unsatisfying and therefore damaging to self-sufficiency. Granted, immortality would seem to be satisfying because the lover can produce her own desiderative objects, things like poems, laws, and offspring. Yet these objects makes her desire permanently unquenched because she is always looking toward eternity, desiring future life in these external objects. Remember, Diotima must still somehow maintain the requisite restlessness for eros, so traditional objects must remain unsatisfying. She might say that rather than the produced object, it is reproduction itself that matters, but this would necessitate only one birth for satisfaction, and she talks of more than one, as if the desire is never quenched. The truth is, nothing human can guarantee vicarious immortality, but even if such a guarantee could be achieved, what the lover births are really just hopes for remembrance in the future. Since the future is infinite, her desire will never be decisively quenched. The lover can never look back and say that her desire is ended. The desire for immortality is actually a desire for godhood, which is unachievable. Immortality presents flaws that only compound the shortcomings of the transcendental solution: neither immortality nor the Form of Beauty are truly attainable, which dooms the lover's self-sufficiency. The lover might reasonably hope for selfsufficiency from the Form of the Good, since its desirer would be satisfied with each truly good object and become more inured to external objects, internalizing happiness. But the Form of Beauty does not encourage this kind of self-sufficiency, even after setting aside the problems with immortality. On a practical level, the immediate problem is that the Form of Beauty might only be accessible to the gods. On a theoretical level, the restlessness indicates that objects are not satisfactory, yet only objects can traditionally quench desires. That the Form of Beauty cannot satisfy through instantiated objects means that Diotima is completely breaking with prior standards of desire at the transcendental summit. The Form of Beauty is an abstraction, not something to be attained or internalized for humans, and this means that it cannot make the lover self-sufficient. The lover is thus dependent even at the summit: her desire cannot be quenched unless she remains in the presence of the Form. The lover is made to be as dependent as the tyrant, or even more so, because she is not a god.
V. Conclusion The inability to define the erotic object stems from the unquenchable nature of the erotic desire itself: being a madness with no human cure, there is only restlessness over false idols, hindering self-sufficiency. This idea is shared by both Symposium and Republic IX, rendering the two dialogues compatible in their common ambivalence. Diotima's transcendental solution does not solve because it merely mimics the desire for goodness without bridging the lack of desiderative self-sufficiency. Unlike the desire for goodness, which pursues the Form of the Good instantiated in objects of earthly virtue, eros has no stable objects, or has only divine objects like beauty that are unattainable; and this damns the afflicted to ignorant restlessness. Eros rejects definition as something, so it can only be nothing. So when Socrates says, â&#x20AC;&#x153;The only thing I say I understand is the art of love,â&#x20AC;?32 he is Agnitio 35
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just rephrasing his typical motto: â&#x20AC;&#x153;I know only that I know nothing.â&#x20AC;? Further research can explore how the lack of a definite erotic object raises problems for Socratic Intellectualism where eros constitutes a source of motivation distinct from rational knowledge of the good (a distinction which appears with the tyrant). For now, the tyrant turns out not so different from the lover. Eros is a madness that consumes us without prejudice, and only gods could be cured of such a heavenly disease.
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Notes 1.
Eros is often translated from Greek into English as â&#x20AC;&#x153;love,â&#x20AC;? but it is understood to be passionate. This should be contrasted with the popular notion of calm Platonic love. [Thanks to my professor, Agnes Callard, and my TA, Elizabeth Shurcliff, for helping me to develop this paper's ideas. Thanks also to the editors at Agnitio for their helpful comments.]
2.
Symp. 204d. The ambivalence of the erotic object will be the subject of this paper.
3.
A potentially fruitful avenue would be to explore how this involves moral luck.
4.
Symp. 212b.
5.
Symp. 200a: Since eros is a desire, and since desires are directed toward some object, then eros must have some object.
6.
Symp. 205a.
7.
See note 8, Rep. 573e and 575a.
8.
Symp. 192c-d.
9.
Cf. Symp. 210 and Rep. 573d-e, to be explored later.
10. Although Symposium gives more than one account of eros, I will focus just on that of Diotima. 11. Symp. 210a-b. 12. Symp. 203a. 13. Cf. Lysis. 14. Cf. Gorgias. 15. Rep. 579e. It remains unclear whether eros is naturally opposed to the desire for goodness. 16. Rep. 572e. 17. This line is troubling due to its resonance with Socrates' pederastic relationship to Alcibiades. It would also suggest that eros is not a thing to be controlled, and it is only rarely understood, even by men like Socrates. 18. Rep. 573b. 19. Rep. 573d. 20. Rep. 573e. 21. Cf. Homer's Odyssey. 22. Rep. 577d. 23. Symp. 207b. 24. Cf. Republic, Gorgias.
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25. The Forms are the abstract ideals of categories like the Good or the Beautiful. They are real entities that are manifested in the world by less perfect objects. 26. Symp. 212a. 27. In my unsubstantiated view, Plato deliberately distances Socrates from Diotima, casting doubt on whether eros really follows Diotima's solution. 28. Symp. 204d. 29. Symp. 205a. 30. The Greek phrasing here is ambiguous. It could mean to give birth to beautiful objects, or perhaps to have birth induced by beautiful objects. 31. Symp. 206e-207a. 32. Symp. 177e.
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Works Cited Homer, and Robert Fagles. The Odyssey. New York: Penguin, 1997. Print. Plato, and John M. Cooper. Complete Works. Indianapolis, Ind. [u.a.: Hackett, 2005. Print.
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The Fundamental Commitments of Liberalism and the Ticking Time Bomb Hypothetical Isaac K. Neill University of Chicago
ABSTRACT In this paper, Isaac K. Neill rigorously spells out the criteria that would need to be satisfied in order for an empirical situation to qualify as one in which “the only way to avert imminent catastrophe is to torture someone.” Neill proceeds to argue that, even in such a situation, any resort to interrogational torture would be irreconcilable with the fundamental values of any ‘liberal’ society.
In the aftermath of the September 11th attacks on the world trade centers, a proliferation of discourse emerged concerning the question of whether or not there might be extreme circumstances in which we, as liberals, are morally required to resort to interrogational torture. According to the proponents of this view, such situations are exemplified by what has been called ‘The Ticking Time Bomb Hypothetical:’ a hypothetical situation in which we know that a powerful bomb planted underneath New York City—say, a hydrogen bomb— will explode within the near future, and in which we also know that the only way for us to avert this imminent catastrophe is to torture someone (usually, it is argued, a suspected terrorist) who knows where the bomb is located, in order to acquire knowledge of the bomb’s whereabouts in time to defuse it. In the first part of this paper, I will argue that there are five necessary and sufficient conditions that the ‘ticking time bomb’ scenario must satisfy in order to qualify as a situation in which “the only way to avert imminent catastrophe is to torture someone.” I will proceed to give a descriptive account of what such a situation might look like, in reality, which managed to satisfy each of these five conditions. In the second part of this paper, I will examine both the claim that, in such a situation, we are morally required to resort to interrogational torture, and the claim that interrogational torture (in such a situation) is in principle compatible with the foundational ideals of Agnitio 40
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Liberalism. I will conclude by arguing that, even in a situation where the only way to avert an imminent catastrophe is to torture someone, we nevertheless cannot possibly resort to interrogational torture without abandoning (at least) one of the most deep-seated commitments of any ‘liberal’ society. The first necessary condition for the ‘ticking time bomb’ scenario is that {C1} we know that the potential victim of torture knows where the bomb is located. This condition is needed in order to establish the claim that the application of interrogational torture techniques to the victim would be a promising first step in our attempt to neutralize the impending terrorist attack, for the simple reason that the victim cannot tell us where the bomb is located if he doesn’t in fact know. While it is often presupposed across differing formulations of the ‘ticking time bomb’ hypothetical that the victim is himself the perpetrator of the terroristic act—either being the individual responsible for planting the bomb, or at least, an active member of the terrorist organization responsible for the imminent attack—this further condition actually turns out to be unnecessary in order to establish that “the only way to avert imminent catastrophe (in this situation) is to torture someone.” All that is required by {C1} is that we know that the victim—whoever he is—is somehow in a position of epistemic authority with respect to us, in the sense that he is capable of divulging accurate information—if he so chooses—that would lead us directly to the location of the bomb. However, it is also necessary that {C2} we know that, in this specific case, the application of interrogational torture techniques to the victim would be an effective means of getting him to divulge the accurate information in time, given that he does in fact possess the relevant information. The satisfaction of this condition entails that not only is interrogational torture, in general, a potentially effective means of getting people to divulge accurate information, but also that the victim in question is not both sufficiently recalcitrant to the torturer’s demands and sufficiently hardened (though physical training, ideological convictions, or both) to be able to withstand the torturer’s assaults up until the detonation of the bomb. Thus, with {C1} and {C2} in place, we are in a position to assert: that in the ‘ticking time bomb’ scenario, interrogational torture is an effective means of getting the victim to divulge the accurate information in time, so that we would thereby be able to neutralize the impending terrorist threat. Furthermore, it is a necessary condition of the hypothetical scenario that {C3} the victim adamantly refuses to cooperate with us during standard interrogational procedures. This condition is needed simply to rule out the possibility that we could extract the relevant information from him by some means other than torture. In addition, {C4} we must know that the bomb is going to go off sufficiently soon, so that there is no chance of evacuating the area within the bomb’s radius (which, in the case of the hydrogen bomb, would be the entirety of NYC) before the bomb explodes. For, if we had enough time on our hands to effectively evacuate the entire area within the bomb’s radius, interrogational torture clearly would not be the only possible way to avert the catastrophe.1 In fact, with sufficient time, we could redirect our efforts towards further intelligence gathering, locating acquaintances, family members and potential accomplices of the apprehended victim who might know where the bomb is located, and also, be more willing to comply with standard interrogational procedures than the victim himself. Thus, as a final necessary condition for the hypothetical, we see that {C5} we must know that the apprehended victim is our only available means of acquiring the relevant information in time. This condition ensures that no other potential source of information exists through which we could extract, in a timely fashion, the relevant information needed to defuse the bomb. Thus, so long as a hypothetical situation can, in Agnitio 41
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principle, be cooked up such that it satisfies these five stipulated conditions, we are thereby entitled to the claim: “there exist situations in which the only way to avert imminent catastrophe is to torture someone.” However, as has been demonstrated over the last two paragraphs, if any one of these conditions fails to be satisfied, we cannot justifiably claim that interrogational torture is the only way to avert the impending catastrophe. Thus, the satisfaction of these five aforementioned criteria by a given hypothetical scenario is both a necessary and sufficient condition for the hypothetical to be taken to demonstrate that (in this situation) interrogational torture is the only way in which the catastrophic effects of an impending terrorist attack might conceivably be averted. In real life, such a scenario might look something like this. The CIA, by raiding the intelligence archives of a recently sacked Al-Qaeda operations base (or something closely resembling an ‘operations base’), has just gathered information regarding a detailed, longstanding plot by Al-Qaeda to detonate a time-sensitive hydrogen bomb that has already been planted underneath NYC. According to these confidential documents (which, in that this ‘operations base’ was in fact the single, infamous, long-sought headquarters for all of AlQaeda’s terrorist operations, we can safely take as indubitable), the bomb is scheduled to explode in precisely 24 hours;2 also, we somehow know (say, from experience) that it takes at least 25 hours to evacuate a sizeable majority of the population of NYC. In virtue of our access to the confidential videotapes recovered from this site, we know that a single man, Abdul-Samad, both planted the bomb3 and told no one else affiliated with Al-Qaeda where exactly he planted it.4 What’s more, we know (from watching a set of confidential videotapes detailing and assessing Abdul-Samad’s performance during Al-Qaeda’s standard ‘torture training’ procedures) that he has a particular weakness for a certain kind of torture: French style electro-torture. And fortunately for us, during the course of raiding Al-Qaeda’s operations base, we managed to capture Abdul-Samad himself. In this situation, since we know from the confidential videotapes that Abdul-Samad personally planted the hydrogen bomb, {C1} is satisfied. And given that we know about Abdul-Samad’s noted weakness for French style electro-torture (which, say, we are in a position to administer)—along with the fact that we have, roughly, 22 hours to torture him—we can take {C2} to be satisfied as well. Furthermore, we can stipulate that AbdulSamad—because of his strong ideological convictions—refuses to cooperate with us during standard interrogational procedures, so that {C3} is also satisfied. And because we know that the hydrogen bomb will explode in precisely 24 hours (as specified in the confidential videotapes), {C4} is also satisfied. And finally, provided that our intelligence gatherers have found no alternative source of information (a journal, or a computer) by which to determine the location of the bomb (which, we will stipulate, is the case), we may infer from the fact that Abdul-Samad both single-handedly planted the bomb and told no one else where he planted it that {C5} is satisfied as well. Thus, since each of the necessary conditions outlined above are satisfied by this particular hypothetical, it follows that there could be real-life scenarios in which the only way to save the inhabitants of NYC would be to torture someone, thereby extracting the single piece of information that we need in order to neutralize the impending terrorist threat. Now, even if we grant that a scenario such as this one is, in principle, conceivable, it would surely be an extremely rare occurrence in the real world. This is not to say, however, that the hypothetical scenario is completely airtight. (For instance: {C2} would fail to be satisfied if it turned out that French-style electro-torture consistently produced memory lapses in its victims, and {C1} would fail to be satisfied if Abdul-Samad actually lied in the Agnitio 42
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videotapes, for whatever reason, and secretly gave the bomb to someone else to plant underneath NYC, in a some new location that he was not aware of). For my present purposes, however, we may provisionally grant that situations like this one—in which {C1}– {C5} are all satisfied—could crop up in the real world, and we may take the hypothetical outlined above as a rough depiction of one such particular situation. My aim is neither to dispute the conceptual coherence of this particular example, nor to give an estimate of the likelihood that an event such as this one would ever occur. Rather, my aim is to assess the claim that, in a situation sufficiently like this one, we would be morally required to torture Abdul-Samad, and further, that our ‘imperative to torture’ in this case would be compatible with the fundamental commitments of a ‘liberal’ society. To this end, I will now consider how we might begin to think that, in such situations, we are morally required to resort to interrogational torture. One of the fundamental commitments of any liberal society is that the life of any human being is intrinsically valuable. By itself, this commitment does not yet entail that any particular course of action made in response to the ‘ticking time bomb’ scenario would be any more ‘right’ than another. In this sense, while this liberalist commitment is an expression of one of our basic values, it is not yet an imperative for action. However, most advocates of interrogational torture in the ‘ticking time bomb’ scenario take this commitment to be an expression of the idea that every individual human life has a value, which is in fact equal to the value placed on the life of each other (individual) human being, simply in virtue of their being human. In this sense, the initial commitment begins to take a reified form: we can now say not only that human lives are intrinsically valuable, but also that, say, the intrinsic value of five human lives is greater than the intrinsic value of one life alone. Having now cashed out the intrinsic value of human life in readily quantifiable terms that can conceivably play a part in utilitarian cost-benefit analyses, proponents of interrogational torture are led to interpret this fundamental liberalist commitment in light of what I will call the ‘consequentialist thesis,’ which states: we are morally required to act in such a way that will produce the best overall consequences (as determined by a cost-benefit analysis) for society as a whole. The adoption of this thesis is, in an important sense, mutually supported by the aforementioned reification of the value of human life: for, once the value of human life has been reconceived as set of cumulative values, the original liberalist commitment to the intrinsic value of human life naturally comes to be interpreted as a commitment to preserve, in the face of danger, as many of these actual, intrinsically valuable, concrete human lives as possible. Thus, in light of this thesis, the question of whether or not to torture Abdul-Samad in the aforementioned hypothetical situation becomes: is it worse to torture one human being (which is, perhaps, far worse of an act than simply killing him, yet conceivably not worse than killing, say, 100,000 other people) or to allow millions of human beings in NYC to die? If the former option inevitably leads to the best overall consequences for society as a whole, we will thereby be morally required to choose that course of action, by virtue of the consequentialist thesis. Therefore, so long as our utilitarian calculus takes the net loss of human lives resulting from the impending catastrophe as the greater evil (as do nearly all of the proponents of interrogational torture in such ‘ticking time bomb’ scenarios), we are thereby entitled to conclude: in such a case, we are morally required to resort to interrogational torture. In order to feel the full force of this ‘imperative to torture,’ it is necessary to consider the concomitant claim—advanced by advocates of interrogational torture in the ‘ticking time bomb’ scenario—that such an imperative is not only our moral duty, but is in fact Agnitio 43
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compatible with the fundamental ideals of Liberalism. To this end, I will now consider how we might begin to think that some forms of torture are, in principle, less objectionable than others, such that one particular form of torture might turn out to be compatible with the ideals of a liberal society. A second fundamental commitment of any ‘liberal’ society is that the deliberate infliction of unnecessary harm by one individual upon another should be prohibited absolutely. Thus, in so far as cruel acts essentially involve the deliberate infliction of unnecessary harm by one individual upon another, this second commitment entails that acts of cruelty simply cannot be tolerated by any liberal society, irregardless of the character of the aims to which such acts may be taken to be in service. As a consequence of this prohibition, liberal societies have historically viewed practices of torture as essentially incompatible with their most deep-seated values, in so far as acts of torture have always been understood as being essentially cruel. However, while acts of torture essentially involve, “the deliberate infliction of suffering and pain” by one individual upon another, this description alone is not yet sufficient to characterize acts of torture as ‘cruel;’ for, while it is essential to any violent war that the soldiers on the ground are deliberately inflicting great pain upon their enemies, it is not necessarily the case that such a violent war—if it is fought justly—is also cruel. Instead, what makes acts of torture essentially ‘cruel’ is the way in which they unnecessarily exploit the intentional infliction of great pain upon a victim—in the context of a distinctive social setting—in order to enact a tyrannical relationship of absolute domination and submission between the torturer and the tortured (Luban 1429-30). Following David Sussman, we might call this distinctively tyrannical relationship that practices of torture necessarily invoke the ‘characteristic interpersonal structure’ of torture; also, we can further note that, irregardless of the character of the ‘greater aim’ to which any act of torture may be taken to be in service, in so far as we have at our disposal any other means by which to achieve this aim, the invocation of this ‘characteristic interpersonal structure’ of torture—as a means by which to achieve this aim, and, given its intrinsically tyrannical character—will always be unnecessary (Sussman 14). In this sense, it is precisely because acts of torture essentially (and unnecessarily) involve this distinctive kind of tyrannical relationship that they are characterized as intrinsically ‘cruel;’ and it is because of this intrinsic cruelty that acts of torture have historically been taken to be incompatible with the fundamental ideals of a liberal society. In this sense, the claim that interrogational torture can (in fact) be made to be compatible with the ideals of liberalism hinges upon the claim that—unlike traditional forms of torture—purely interrogational torture is somehow not cruel. This conception of purely interrogational torture is what David Luban has called the ‘liberal ideal of torture’ and it differs from traditional forms of torture in three important respects. First, {L1} the victim is not utterly powerless before the torturer, in so far as he can bring the torturer to a halt at any given moment simply by divulging the confidential information that he is presumed to know. In this sense, it is argued that the victim of purely interrogational torture is never placed in a position of absolute submission—as are victims of traditional forms of torture— in so far as this victim always maintains a power—despite his physically defenseless state— to end the torturer’s assaults if he so chooses. Secondly, {L2} the liberal torturer’s sole motivation for torturing the victim is to extract this information. Rather than being moved (even in part) by sadistic desires or other tyrannical political aims, the liberal torturer tortures solely out of a sense of unrelenting duty: he recognizes the ‘imperative to torture’ in the given situation—which is to say, he recognizes that (in this situation) it is only by resorting Agnitio 44
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to interrogational torture that an impending catastrophe can be averted—and responds beneficently, even if the performance of the act itself appalls him. Finally, in that the liberal torturer is only inflicting pain upon his victim in order to get him to divulge confidential information—as opposed to inflicting pain upon him as a form of punishment, or of intimidation—it is essential that {L3} the liberal torturer inflict only as much pain upon his victim as is necessary in order to achieve this end. In this sense, the liberal torturer must be able to regulate the amount of pain he inflicts, so as to ensure that he does not inflict any ‘excess’ pain over and above the minimum amount necessary to cause his victim to divulge this information (Luban 1440-44). Thus, it is argued that for these three reasons, interrogational torture in accordance with the ‘liberal ideal’ fails to enact the distinctively tyrannical relationship that characterizes traditional forms of torture—i.e. the ‘characteristic interpersonal structure’ of torture—and thus, cannot be said to be intrinsically cruel. And if this is indeed the case, such forms of torture may very well be compatible with the fundamental ideals of liberalism. However, closer inspection reveals that this ‘liberal ideal of torture’—as applied to the ‘ticking time bomb’ scenario—is not only empirically problematic, but is also conceptually incoherent. First, in order to see why the ‘liberal ideal’ is empirically problematic, we need only observe that there is always the possibility that that the victim could lie, repeatedly, about the location of the bomb. In this case, if the liberal torturer is to remain true to the ‘liberal ideal,’ he must stop and check each incorrect location that the victim gives before returning to torture him. This is because if he didn’t stop, and it turned out that the victim had indeed told the truth, not only would the victim have been in a position of absolute submission during that interim period (since he wouldn’t have had any new information to give up to halt the torturer’s attacks), but in addition, the pain inflicted by the torturer would have clearly been ‘excessive,’ simply because the victim had already broken down and given up the confidential information to the torturer. As a result, both {L1} and {L3} would have failed to be satisfied. Thus, it seems that the ‘liberal ideal’ of torture will only be applicable to empirical situations (satisfying {C1} – {C5}) in which we already know, somehow, that the potential victim of torture will not be deliberately lying to us at any point during the standard interrogational inflictions of torture.5 Furthermore, even if {L2} and {L3} were satisfied in such a given situation (where we somehow knew that the victim would not be deliberately lying to us at any point during the projected interrogational procedure), {L1} would still fail to be satisfied if the victim at any point happened to suffer from either of what Darius Rejali has called ‘lapses in memory’ or ‘illusions of knowing.’ In the former case, as a result of the victim’s traumatic experiences of great pain, the victim temporarily becomes utterly unable (physically) to remember clearly any specific fact that he learned only within the recent past, and thus, that has only been registered by the parts of his brain involved in ‘short-term memory.’ In this case, he would be unable to divulge the accurate information to his torturer (and thus, to satisfy {L1})) simply because he would be unable to remember the accurate information in the first place. In the latter case—again, as a result of the victim’s traumatic experiences of great pain—the victim becomes progressively more and more certain of the accuracy of false information; and thus, while he may intend to give up the correct information to his torturer during the course of the interrogation (so as to bring the torturer’s blows to a halt), he would nevertheless fail to be a reliable indicator of whether or not the information suggested to him by his torturer (or even, suggested to him by his own frantically inquiring consciousness) was accurate or not (Rejali 466-69). Thus, in this case, the victim would be unable to divulge Agnitio 45
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the accurate information to his torturer (and thus, to satisfy {L1}) simply because he would be unable to determine which information was, in fact, the relevant information that his torturer desired to know. Furthermore, according to Rejali’s statistical studies, both of these phenomenon have actually been matters of course (rather than abnormalities) over the course of documented practices of interrogational torture in the past; and given the limits imposed by the time constraint ({C3}) upon the conceivable forms of interrogational torture that might be of use to liberals in the ‘ticking time bomb’ scenario—which is to say, given that (in such a case) in order to be effective, the method of interrogational torture employed must be able to get the victim to talk fast—it seems that precisely the sort(s) of interrogational torture methods that would need to be employed during the ‘ticking time bomb’ scenario would actually run the greatest risk of maximizing the frequency of occurrences of these two phenomenon (and thus, of causing {L1} not to be satisfied), rather than minimizing them (Rejali 468-69). Thus, we see that the necessary conditions of the ‘ticking time bomb’ hypothetical come into conflict (empirically) with the demands imposed upon the application of interrogational torture techniques by the ‘liberal ideal’ of torture. It is in this sense that the application of the ‘liberal ideal’ of torture to the ‘ticking time bomb’ scenario turns out to be empirically problematic. But more importantly (as to the ‘liberal ideal’s’ ‘conceptual incoherence’), the ideal simply assumes that pain is something quantifiable, and thus, that it is something that can be distributed in a controlled, scientific manner. It is precisely by conceiving of pain in this way—as on a uniform, graded scale—that the ‘liberal ideal’ can be thought of as imposing limits upon the suffering inflicted upon the victim of interrogational torture (in satisfaction of {L3}), so that while the torture would certainly involve the deliberate infliction of pain and suffering upon the victim, the extent of this pain and suffering would be limited in such a way that the act of torture would not yet qualify as an act of cruelty. However, pain simply cannot be divided up into such a uniform, graded scale, for three reasons. First, {P1} our subjective perceptions of pain are not constant across even our own differing bodily and mental states. For instance, consider how our perception of the intensity of a bodily pain decreases the longer the pain endures. The fact that professional doctors are brought in to heal the wounds of torture victims, only so they can be tortured again (this time, with a renewed consciousness of the violence being inflicted upon their bodies), is evidence that professional torturers are in fact aware of this phenomenon. Secondly, {P2} there are many different categorically distinct kinds of sensations that all qualify as pains, and when more than one of these kinds are simultaneously experienced, they do not simply add up to a cumulative sensation of ‘net pain.’ Rather, some pains may disturb certain individuals more or less than others, some pains may actually function to distract the subject from his perceptions of other kinds of pains (that he is simultaneously experiencing), while other kinds of pains may combine to have a synergistically distressing effect upon the victim. Finally, {P3} some human beings are capable of enduring extreme pains far easier than others, and the ability of a given person to endure a pain depends essentially on the type of pain that is being inflicted upon them. In this sense, ‘pain’ just isn’t a single kind of sensation that can be modeled and controlled in terms of a graded scale; the word stands for a multiplicity of experiences that can interact in complex ways, and whose scope and intensity is essentially dependent on the subject who is enduring the particular pain experiences under consideration.
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As a result, the infliction of pain upon a torture victim cannot possibly be a matter of scientific calculation and implementation. In light of this obstacle, Rejali argues that torturers—in order to be effective in practice—are inevitably led to observe two simple rules: first, that since everyone will break at some point (and since, in the ‘ticking time bomb’ scenario, they are acting under a time constraint), it is best to inflict as much pain as possible, from the very beginning; and second, since different people have different thresholds and responses for different sorts of pain, it is best to use a ‘scattershot approach’ in which a wide variety of torture techniques will be spontaneously applied at will to the victim, rather than just the routine application of one or two chosen techniques (Rejali 447-50). In this light, it is clear that the application of the ‘liberal ideal’ of torture to the ‘ticking time bomb’ scenario is not only empirically problematic: in this case, the ‘liberal ideal’ itself turns out to be a fullblown, conceptually incoherent myth. The interrogational torturer, simply in virtue of trying to be effective at his job, necessarily pushes up against the limits of the pain he is able to inflict upon his victim, thereby enacting Sussman’s ‘characteristic interpersonal structure’ of torture—between himself and his victim—that characterizes all acts of torture as intrinsically ‘cruel,’ and thus, as fundamentally illiberal. In this sense, purely interrogational torture—so long as it is to be an effective, information-gathering tool in the ‘ticking time bomb’ scenario—is in no way compatible with the fundamental ideals of any liberal society. But, back to the ‘ticking time bomb’ scenario. If interrogational torture is, in principle, fundamentally incompatible with the ideals of any liberal society, then we cannot possible be morally required, as liberals, to resort to interrogational torture in the case of the ‘ticking time bomb’ scenario. However, if we adopt the ‘consequentialist thesis’ (and if the ensuing cost-benefit analysis concludes that torturing Abdul-Samad would indeed have better consequences for society as a whole than would allowing the bomb to go off underneath NYC), we might argue that we are still morally required to resort to interrogational torture in this situation, and thus, to abandon our most fundamental commitments as liberals. Note, however, that once these values have been abandoned, the flood-gate has thereby been opened for purely consequentialist arguments that interrogational torture is, in principle, a viable option for a wide variety of alternative situations in which the possible application of interrogational torture techniques have hitherto never been considered. For instance: how would it change the hypothetical scenario if the potential victim of torture were an innocent child? Or what if we had 50 people to be tortured, but only one of them knew where the bomb was located (and we had no way of figuring out, in advance, which one)? Or what if we thought, out of those 50 people, it’s likely that at least one of them would know where bomb is located? And just how likely would it have to be? These are questions that I cannot address in this paper. I present them only to suggest that while we may still argue that we are morally required to resort to interrogational torture in the ‘ticking time bomb’ scenario—even while acknowledging that our fulfillment of this requirement would entail our abandonment of one of the most deep-seated commitments of any liberal society—in doing so, we would be embarking upon a very slippery slope whose consequences for our everyday moral reasoning would be far more radical than we might, at first, be so much as willing to believe.
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Notes 1.
Some advocates of the moral necessity of interrogational torture in the ‘ticking time bomb’ scenario have included other ‘economic’ costs—in addition to the loss of human lives—that are to be weighed in as part of the ‘catastrophic effects’ of the impending attack. While evacuation would clearly not offset any of these costs, I will assume that such costs alone could not serve as a justification for torture in the ‘ticking time bomb’ hypothetical—thus, they may be overlooked at present.
2.
To my knowledge, no such “infamous, long sought headquarters of all of Al-Qaeda’s terrorist operations” exists at present. However, it is conceivable that Al-Qaeda (or some other terrorist organization) might very well become so politically unified as to facilitate the development of some such ‘operations base’ in the future—thus, this stipulation of the hypothetical situation, as a hypothetical, could very well turn out to be satisfied by a concrete situation in the real world.
3.
Note that we are assuming that the terrorist was able to acquire a hydrogen bomb that could be transported safely by one man, and thus, that the creation of such ‘portable’ hydrogen bombs is technologically possible.
4.
In fact, we can say that he was explicitly instructed (as the planter of the bomb) to keep the information absolutely private, so as to minimize the likelihood of anyone being captured by the CIA and induced through interrogational torture to divulge the confidential information.
5.
For now, I will leave the question as to whether or not such empirical situations might conceivably exist in the real world up to the reader.
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Works Cited Luban, David. "Liberalism, Torture, and the Ticking Time Bomb." Virginia Law Review. 91.6 (2005): Print. Rejali, Darius. Torture and Democracy. 1st. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007. Print. Sussman, David. "What is Wrong About Torture?." Philosophy and Public Affairs. 33.1 (2005): Print.
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Extended Too Far? A Response to Adams and Aizawa’s Objection to the Extended Mind Hypothesis Javier Gomez-Lavin College of Charleston
ABSTRACT In Andy Clark and David Chalmers’ 1998 paper, ‘The Extended Mind’, they posit that, in certain circumstances, mental states can extend outside the skull. For example, in said circumstances, particular environmental artifacts, such as iPhones and notebooks, can become part of the vehicles of beliefs and desires. Needless to say, some people, including Adams and Aizawa (2001), have issues with this thesis. Their objection relies on a distinction between intrinsic and derived mental contents and their respective roles in cognition. In this paper Javier Gomez-Lavin critically assesses and responds to this objection, proving it overly restrictive, and thus defends Clark’s thesis.
I. Introduction In this paper I first outline a brief sketch of Andy Clark and David Chalmers’ Extended Mind Hypothesis [EMH] via a slight variation of the original ‘Otto & Inga’ thought experiment as proposed in their 1998 paper, ‘The Extended Mind’. I then summarize Adams and Aizawa’s cognitive candidacy objection – which relies on a division of intrinsic and derived content – along with Clark’s reply. Finally, I provide a section of original analysis defending the EMH from this objection. In Andy Clark and David Chalmers’ original paper, they argue that the mind is not simply ‘in the head’, as commonsense would have it. Rather, for Clark and Chalmers (hereafter referred to as C&C), the mind engages in a form of cognitive discourse with the world around it. The mind can, at times, extend out of the skull and couple with parts of the environment which then take on a piece of the cognitive burden – this is the essence of the EMH. Agnitio 50
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The notion of an agent referencing or manipulating its environment for some benefit is not foreign to members of several disciplines: For example, behavioral and primate research. Indeed, C&C and later Andy Clark in his 2008 book, Supersizing the Mind, reference several studies examining the various methods used by both animals and humans when they engage in a cognitive rapport with their respective environments.1 Yet, in the field of Philosophy and the Cognitive Sciences, the idea that the mind can extend out into the world and engage in cognitive discourse with its environment, to the extent that the environment becomes an integral component to the process involved, is novel. Folk intuition – coupled with the theories of philosophers past – would have us believe that the mind is rooted in the skull, with mental states supervening on brain states. C&C challenge this long held assumption by suggesting that the agent is not merely using its environment as a tool, or viewing it as an obstacle that it must navigate; rather, they argue that the environment not only partakes in the cognitive processes but also becomes a vehicle of the mental content of the agent. Even the humble notepad of a student becomes a component of his cognitive system; capable of harboring propositional attitudes – such as beliefs and desires. Understandably, the view that we have an ill-defined, constantly shifting locus of mind is troubling to some. Among the criticisms leveled at the EMH, Adams and Aizawa’s (hereafter referred to as A&A) stands preeminent. In their 2001 paper they attempt to keep the mind firmly in the skull by arguing that cognitive processes generally invoke representational states that have intrinsic content. However, notebooks and other external vehicles rely on representations that have derived content, such as words and numerals. Following this observation one can trace A&A’s logic in stating that external vehicles cannot be part of the cognitive processes of the agent utilizing them. The dependence of A&A’s argument on the intrinsic/derived distinction is problematic. The notions of intrinsic and derived content are notoriously difficult to pin down, but they do provide adequate fodder for a discussion concerning their constituent roles in the cognitive system. Clark notes this difficulty and agrees that the distinction presents concerns to the EMH proponent. He is willing to grant that: External vehicles of mental content, such as the aforementioned notebook, contain only derived content, while some unspecified parts of the cognitive system deal solely with non-derived, intrinsic, content (91). If one were to grant that the derived/intrinsic distinction is not accommodated within the EMH, it would entail the presumption that, “…no proper part of a properly cognitive system can afford, at any time, to trade solely in conventional [i.e., derived] representations” (91).2 Thus the line is drawn and the litmus test revealed. For the critics of the EMH to prevail, they must demonstrate that all mental representations involved in cognitive processes must only utilize intrinsic content.
II. Background As mentioned in section one, the EMH holds that mental content can exist outside the skull. Following this proposition one can see that EMH allows for ordinary environmental artifacts such as notepads, excel spreadsheets, and even iPhones to be imbued with mental content in the form of derived representations.3 These objects can then play a role in certain cognitive processes, such as belief formation. To demonstrate this point I propose a slight variation of the original thought experiment put forth by C&C, which is the focus of A&A’s criticism.
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C&C first introduce Inga, a normal healthy adult female with a normal healthy brain. When a friend informs her of an art exhibition at date X and location Y Inga simply thinks about it for a second and ‘poof’, via a lengthy causal-chain of events, the information is stored in her long-term memory. One would allow this internal memory encoding to function both as a viable part of her belief formation process and as a vehicle of mental content. When needed, the belief that there is an art exhibition at date X and location Y is pulled from her long-term memory and brought to mind, allowing Inga to act upon it. Deviating from the original thought experiment, let us consider Into.4 Into would have been a regular, healthy individual but for a tragic turn of events in his childhood. He was injured in a horrific car accident that led to the complete destruction of his long-term memory. Aside from this lesion, his brain is virtually identical to Inga’s. Fortunately for Into, his father works for the top levels of government and is able to rebuild him, better and stronger than before. In a secret lab, top scientists implant an artificial silicon-based neuralnetwork designed to mirror the long-term memory of a healthy individual. After a period of convalescence, Into is sent back to his family to mature until he’s ready for his top-secret government directive. All kidding aside, given that we had no problem granting that Inga’s long-term memory is a proper vehicle of mental content – we must do the same for Into. Naturally, if he was informed of an art exhibit at date X and location Y he would think about it and ‘encode’ it in his silicone-based memory resulting in a dispositional belief identical to Inga’s. Likewise, memory recall would be analogous between the two individuals – the belief formation process would remain the same. We now see that the implant serves as a vehicle of mental content and the neural/silicone distinction becomes merely superficial. Finally, C&C introduce Otto. Otto’s long-term memory is completely destroyed, but unlike Into, the cause is due to an advanced case of Alzheimer’s disease. In order to retain some semblance of autonomy Otto is given a regular run-of-the-mill notebook and pen and trained to ritualistically write down and check information that is central to his daily routine. When a friend tells him of an art exhibit at, once again, date X and location Y, he reaches for his pen and writes the information down. As the date nears, Otto checks his notebook and comes-to-know that there is an art exhibit and decides to act on the information. The notion that Otto’s notebook plays the same functional role as Into’s implant or Inga’s memory is central to C&C’s EMH. They are all vehicles that manage mental content, namely the dispositional belief of the time and place of said art exhibit. Inga and Into both have their vehicles of mental content in the head, but the spatial/temporal distinction between Inga and Into’s intracranial vehicles and Otto’s external notebook is merely superficial; functionally, they are the same. Thus, one must grant that vehicles of external mental content can exist outside the ‘organismic skin-bag’.
III. The Objection In A&A’s move to keep cognition in-the-head, they attempt to uncover the ‘mark of the cognitive’. Through an appeal to orthodoxy they settle on the intuitive binary present in derived versus non-derived (i.e., intrinsic) contentful representations, a distinction which will be fleshed out later on (Clark 89). It is their view that a cognitive system trades solely in intrinsic representations; not in publicly derived representations (e.g., Otto’s notebook). Following is a sketch of A&A’s cognitive candidacy objection:
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(1) If the EMH - as drawn out by C&C - is correct, then vehicles of mental content utilizing derived contentful representations can play a role in the cognitive system. (2) But, according to A&A, “Cognition involves particular kinds of processes involving non-derived representations” (Adams and Aizawa 53). Furthermore, they offer the corollary, “whatever is responsible for non-derived representations seems to find a place only in brains” (63). (3) Therefore the EMH must be flawed, as it draws heavily on systems and vehicles imbued with derived content. In performing a modus tollens on the EMH, A&A have succeeded in two respects: They force Clark to confront premise (2), which might be done by forming a narrative explaining the role of derived content in a cognitive system. On the flip-side, they put themselves in the awkward position of asserting that “…no proper part of a properly cognitive system can afford, at any time, to trade solely in conventional [e.g., derived] representations” (Clark 91). Before I examine Clark’s reply, I will provide a brief overview of a few important concepts central to the cognitive candidacy objection. III-a. As mentioned above, the intrinsic/derived distinction is far from clear-cut. However, for the remainder of this paper, it seems sensible to define intrinsic content on two dimensions: firstly, as all non-derived content and secondly, as private and thus independent of the mental states of other individuals.5 Ergo, my contentful representation of ‘cat’ comes from my own experiences, which formulate an array of associations between neural groups, leading to a particular token brain-state. The content of this brain-state is independent of other individuals’ brain-states and satisfies the distinction of being intrinsic. On the other hand, contents and representations that are dependent on the mental states of others are derived. So, my representation of a map on which eating utensils and straws function as place-holders for roads while salt-shakers function as landmarks, imbues these artifacts with public meaning and content derived from my internal mental state. Another example is present in natural language. The content of words and sentences are derived from the normative, “…public practices of coordinated use” (Clark 91). Consequently, the meaning of the word ‘cat’ is determined by how a language community actually uses the word; for example, in the Anglophone community we token the representation ‘cat’ in the presence of Felis catus. These examples are not meant to provoke a discussion better suited to the realms of Linguistics or the Philosophy of Language; they are only meant to motivate the distinction. In summary, individual brain-states are thought to possess intrinsic, private content; while language and other public systems of representation rely on derived content for their meaning. With regard to the Otto/Inga thought experiment described in Section two, we can now see how Inga’s vehicle of mental content, namely her natural long-term memory, formulates dispositional beliefs with intrinsic content. Otto, on the other hand, uses the humble notebook and language, with its publicly derived contents and meanings. If intrinsic content is a necessary condition for a process to be truly cognitive – it then follows that Otto’s notebook should be excluded from his belief formation process and is therefore not a proper vehicle of mental content.
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As we will see in Clark’s response to A&A’s objection, Clark makes use of the Parity Principle to extend the realm of cognitive systems to include vehicles reliant on derived contents. The Parity Principle states that if an external vehicle of mental content were taken from the world and transplanted into the head to yield the same functional result as it did out in the world, it then must count as a part of the cognitive system regardless of its spatial/temporal placement.6 Given our understanding of these concepts we can now move on to dissect Clark’s reply.
IV. The Reply Clark rejects A&A’s claim that all cognitive processes make use of only intrinsic content. As mentioned in section one, he is willing to accept that some unspecified processes token mental states that only utilize intrinsic content. However, he thinks that if he can demonstrate that some parts of the cognitive system make use of derived content he will be able to defang A&A’s objection. Thus, with the use of the Parity Principle, Clark formulates a scenario whereby a Martian species possesses an adaptive biological feature allowing them to store bitmapped images of text (Clark 91). These bitmapped images that help augment the Martian’s longterm memory system are also located in their ‘brain’. When necessary, they access and interpret the images, using them in their cognitive processes. If a friend told our Martian of an art exhibit, ‘he’ would store the information in the same way that Otto would, using words. This mirrors Otto’s notebook, while placing the derived contentful words not on paper, but directly in the ‘brain’. Therefore, at least some content utilized in cognitive processes, such as belief formation, might be derived. Clark’s reply is difficult to accept because it is evasive. Rather than directly addressing the concerns present in premise (2) – specifically those regarding the innate differences between intrinsic and derived content – he evokes the Parity Principle, which, like the firing of a smoke screen, acts to obscure the discussion, enabling Clark to sidestep addressing the objection altogether. As mentioned above, the Parity Principle simply states that a vehicle of mental content can count as part of a cognitive system if it serves the same functional role regardless of which side of the cranial barrier it lies on. The Parity Principle does not suggest that a vehicle’s content shifts from derived to intrinsic simply because one can place it in-the-head. Furthermore, one could respond to Clark by stating that the cognizing agent just uses the derived contentful representations, regardless of where they reside, as prompts or reminders that invoke the proper intrinsic contents which then perform their specific functional roles in cognitive processes, a point I will address later on. Obviously, it seems that we might need to refine Clark’s reply in order to defend the EMH.
V. Analysis In my analysis I attempt to counter A&A’s objection in two ways. First, I examine and extend their objection through a reductio ad absurdum and conclude that it is overly strict, leaving us with cognizing agents that are blind, deaf and dumb. Secondly, I sketch out the beginnings of a positive account of what I perceive to be the inexorable relationship between intrinsic and derived contents. Following from A&A’s objection, specifically premise (2), we can conclude that no truly cognitive system can utilize derived contentful representations in any cognitive process. Agnitio 54
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This leaves us with two distinct problems: (1) removing derived contentful representations en masse from the cognitive system results in scenarios where agents are no longer able to perform certain cognitive processes and (2) the conclusion itself seems to result in a redundancy. If derived contents cannot play a role in cognitive processes, why are they there? Why do we, as cognizing agents, utilize them in quotidian interactions? Something intuitive appears to be missing in A&A’s account. I discuss each problem in turn. Assume that A&A’s premise is true and remove the derived contents from our cognitive landscape. If we were to take away poor old Otto’s notebook, would he still be able to successfully interact with his environment? Would he be able to live independently? Crucially, would he be able to form and carry dispositional beliefs about the world around him? Both functionally and intuitively the answer seems to be a resounding, ‘no’! He would live trapped as an invalid, performing only perfunctory and involuntary functions. For without the ability to intentionally characterize the time and space around him, he inhabits a greatly diminished cognitive role. All it took to reduce the functioning of this cognitive agent was to take away his notebook. Taking this notion a step further: Would the mathematician, the logician or the composer have been able to hammer out their theorems, proofs or opuses without the use of pencils, chalkboards, symbols, notes, words or numerals? Once again it seems that the intuitive answer is ‘no’. Surely the words, notes etc. aren’t in and of themselves cognitive; however, without the properties inherent in their derived contents (e.g., public, normative, reproducible and so forth) it’s doubtful that many of the greatest known achievements of cognitive systems could have been realized.7 Indeed, the further one extends this argument, the more it seems that derived contentful representations are an essential component of advanced cognitive systems. Yet, A&A view these contents as inessential; which leads us to the questions of their ontology and apparent redundancy. Taking A&A’s account to heart, if derived contents are inessential, why are they here? To answer this A&A must deconstruct the intuitive ‘illusion’ of the ubiquity and usefulness of these contents. Needless to say, it seems like a difficult task. I propose that there is, in fact, no redundancy. In essence A&A’s objection and account of mental contents is simply too strict. It’s obvious that the pervasiveness and usefulness of derived contents has tracked the evolution and growing complexity of the human cognitive-system over the past 50,000± years. Coming back to C&C’s original point, I would argue that derived contentful representations exist to amplify and extend an agent’s cognitive resources past their inherent biological capacities.8 Hence, cognitive systems have learned to unload parts of the cognitive burden of certain mental processes out into the world. V-a. In furthering my case against A&A’s objection, I feel that one must motivate a deeper inexorable relationship between derived contentful representations and their related intrinsic contents. Reaching back to Clark’s reply, it’s apparent that the Martian’s bitmapped images, much like the words in Otto’s notebook, require the interpretive capacity of an agent; indeed, Clark notes this requirement: “Upon retrieval, that [bitmapped] image, too, would need to be interpreted to yield useful effects” (Clark 91). Potentially the derived contents of the words in Otto’s notebook invoke the proper intrinsic contents and representations that play a role in belief formation. However, this example fails to demonstrate the proper equivalency necessary to collapse the intrinsic/derived divide with Agnitio 55
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regard to the cognitive system. Rather, I propose an example which illustrates this relationship more clearly. Consider the math student, aptly named Derin. Derin has just finished his first college level calculus class, having learned and obtained proficiency in the use of integrals and derivatives. To Derin, the integral is an extraordinarily useful function that allows him to calculate the area underneath a curve with the simple press of a button on his calculator. Through this action he is able to obtain the necessary information to finish his problem sets. Yet, for Derin, the integral represents and carries the intrinsic content: “the area underneath a given curve”. Let’s call this belief P. P is equivalent to his internal representation of the integral function. The derived content that invokes this mental state is, for the sake of argument, the classical integral symbol used in higher math: ∫. Therefore, as Derin encounters this symbol in the world, the belief that P is invoked and he acts accordingly.9 Derin ultimately makes a masochistic choice in academic judgment and takes a class on numerical analysis. In numerical analysis he is introduced to the Taylor series. His newfound knowledge of the complex mathematical properties of the Taylor series allows him to appreciate the indeterminate nature of the integral. Derin now realizes that his calculator does not really find the exact area underneath a given curve; rather it uses a Taylor series to approximate said area. This newfound knowledge forces Derin to revise his simplistic belief that P to include the notion of indeterminacy. So, for Derin, the integral now represents and carries the content: “the area underneath a given curve as approximated by a Taylor series”. Let’s call this modification belief P1. This new understanding of the public, derived, content of the integral prompts a change in Derin’s internal beliefs and thus a change in his intrinsic contentful representation of the integral. With this in mind, let’s, once again, return to our discussion of Otto. We now see that the beliefs stored in derived contentful representations in his notebook serve to form, assist and manipulate intrinsically contentful states that would otherwise not exist. To remove Otto’s notebook from the casual role that it plays in his belief formation process is unfair; for without it, as we’ve already noted, his cognitive process would fail.10 Therefore, one must grant that his notebook plays a crucial role as a vehicle for his dispositional beliefs in his cognitive landscape.
VI. Conclusion Given the examples and arguments presented, I believe A&A may have crafted an unnecessary and unsupported position. A&A’s overly restrictive case forces them to demonstrate that derived contents cannot play a role in cognitive processes. Surely, derived contents are not independent of public, normative influence; however, as argued above, it is difficult to remove them from the cognitive system. Derived contents and their associated mental states help shape and guide intrinsic contents, and thus must play a role in the cognitive dialogue of an agent. It is now up to critics of the EMH to prove otherwise. For proponents of the EMH, further research needs to be carried out to determine the functional character of mental content. Perhaps we need to revisit the Parity Principle and work out its effects, if any, on mental content.11 Potentially, once the Parity Principle has been reworked, we might come to see it – when utilized by a cognitive system – as a sufficient condition for a representation’s having intrinsic content. Lastly, and to the possible chagrin of many, I suggest that supporters of the EMH attempt to form a new narrative of
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mental content, thus finally muting the distinction with respect to the extended cognizing agent.12
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Notes 1.
A brief example which Clark provides us is that of a spiderâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s web. By building a web, the spider utilizes its newly constructed environment to enhance its fitness; it now has a dedicated passive food supply, an extended range of perception (it can feel vibrations throughout the web) and possible webbased forms of camouflage (Clark 61).
2.
Emphasis in the original.
3.
See D. Chalmersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; foreword to Supersizing the Mind, page ix.
4.
This intermediary individual between Inga and Otto is based on discussions with Whit Schonbein of the College of Charleston.
5.
Some philosophers would not accept that intrinsic content is necessarily private. Intrinsic contents being private is not essential, it merely serves as a heuristic to help us better understand the objection.
6.
For an example refer to Into.
7.
Or we might just have not heard of them, since without publically traded representations and contents it is unlikely that we would have any record of said achievements.
8.
Take long-division as a limited example. Surely, most folk could not manage to divide 642 by the root of 132, or even 784 by 13. However give a child a pencil, a piece of a paper, and bit of numeral training (i.e., rudimentary arithmetic) and they will manage to work it out, line by line. By unloading the some of the cognitive burden out into the world, the child can maximize her inherent cognitive resources thus solving the task with relative ease.
9.
Essentially, he presses a specific button on his calculator.
10. This wording is not meant to provoke an ethical discussion with regard to Otto. Though interesting, such a discussion may lie outside the bounds of this paper. 11. I have a suspicion that the intentional posture of an agentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s approach to a derived contentful representation, such as a word, may distort some of the properties inherent in that representation, potentially transforming it from derived to intrinsic. 12. Thanks to Brian Everett and Whit Schonbein for their helpful edits.
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Works Cited Adams, F. and K. Aizawa. "The bounds of cognition." Philosophical Psychology 14.no. 1 (2001): 43-64. Clark, Andy and David Chalmers. "The Extended Mind." Analysis 58 (1998): 10-23. Clark, Andy. Supersizing the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008.
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“A spark of the divine”: The Kantian Sublime as Distinct from and Indispensable to Moral Feeling Eric Teszler University of California, Berkeley
ABSTRACT The discussion of the sublime in Kant's Critique of Judgment is often overlooked or regarded as wholly derivative of other aspects of Kant's work—and in particular, Kant's moral philosophy—by those few philosophers who do engage with it. Eric Teszler finds this treatment of the Kantian sublime to be unfortunate, as he believes it may shed light on other aspects of Kant's philosophy. This paper is thus an attempt to defend the Kantian sublime in its own right, as well as to provide a few remarks on its broader significance for Kant's philosophy, with special (though still cursory) emphasis placed on his moral views.
This paper is motivated by two general aims: as its title suggests, I will first argue that the feeling of the sublime does not reduce to moral feeling1, and so may be appreciated in its own right as distinct from moral feeling. My second aim is to then demonstrate how the feeling of the sublime is nonetheless intimately related with moral feeling; I do so by emphasizing in particular the quality of the supersensible involved in both feelings. Thus, taken together, my two aims are respectively to show how the feeling of the sublime is distinct from, though still quite related to, moral feeling. In putting forward this characterization of the relation between the two feelings, I also argue that the feeling of the sublime contributes both significantly and indispensably to any understanding of Kant's moral views, and perhaps even his overall critical project. My first task is thus to show how the feeling of the sublime does not reduce to moral feeling. I will go about this task by first entertaining a number of reasons as to why one might think that the former reduces to the latter, but I then go on to show how one cannot Agnitio 60
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consistently maintain those reasons without at the same time undermining Kant's moral views. Because one would presumably not wish to undermine those views, one would thus be constrained to admit that the feeling of the sublime does not reduce to moral feeling. Once that has been proven, we will then be in a position to appreciate further qualitative differences between the two feelings. Let us then begin by considering the reasons as to why one might think that the feeling of the sublime does reduce to moral feeling. Perhaps one of the most convincing reasons to think so has to do with the fact that Kant himself appears to suggest that we may presuppose the feeling of the sublime in persons only because we may first presuppose moral feeling in persons. This is essentially Kant's deduction of the sublime that occurs in §29 of the third Critique; or at least this is what Henry Allison takes to be Kant's deduction for the sublime since it deals with the modality of judgments of the sublime, and hence seeks “to ground the demand for agreement connected with such judgments” (Allison 332). More formally, the deduction for the sublime can be stated syllogistically in the following way: (a) we may presuppose morality in persons; (b) we may presuppose the predisposition of the feeling of the sublime to morality; therefore (c) we may presuppose the predisposition to the feeling of the sublime in persons (Ak.2 266, Allison 334). For Kant, this effectively shows how a judgment of the sublime “has its foundation in human nature” (Ak. 265). (I will not provide reasons for or against the claim that this argument is logically sound here. For even if it is, I will still be able to later show how this argument does not sufficiently demonstrate that the feeling of the sublime reduces to moral feeling.) In light of this argument, one may begin to see how it might be thought that the feeling of the sublime reduces to moral feeling, since it is moral feeling that legitimizes our presupposing the feeling of the sublime in persons. Put another way, it would appear that the latter is derived from the former. Kant affirms this thought at various points throughout his “General Comment” following §29: at Ak. 268, Kant states that “[t]he judging [of the sublime] strains the imagination because it is based on a feeling that the mind has a vocation that wholly transcends the domain of nature (namely, moral feeling)” (my emphasis); at Ak. 271, we are told that “what we call sublime...becomes interesting only because we present it...by means of moral principles” (my emphasis); lastly, at Ak. 276 we find that “if [a mental attunement] has its basis in moral ideas...[then] the mental attunement [is] sublime” (my emphasis). What all of these quotations suggest is that, again, the feeling of the sublime is “based on,” or derived from, moral feeling. It is because of considerations like these that Paul Crowther, in his The Kantian Sublime, thinks that Kant “links sublimity and morality rather too closely” (Crowther 166), and even goes so far as to suggest that judgments of the sublime are, to borrow a phrase from Patricia Matthews, merely “thinly disguised moral judgments” (Matthews 165). Hence, Crowther believes it would be wrong to think that judgments of the sublime are a form of pure aesthetic judgment. Further evidence which supports this thought is the fact that, as Matthews also notes, there is a qualitative similarity between the feeling of the sublime (in both its mathematical and dynamical forms) and moral feeling: in each case, there is a transition from pain to pleasure, or respect (if the two—that is, pleasure and respect—may be roughly equated for the purposes of this discussion). In the moral case, one gets a feeling of pain when she strikes down a sensible desire she wishes to satisfy, but immediately thereafter experiences a feeling of pleasure, or respect, in the act of her will's upholding the moral law (Matthews 176). In the case of the mathematical sublime, one feels a sense of pain when her imagination unsuccessfully attempts to provide her with a single intuition of an Agnitio 61
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object which is physically too large—such as the “starry sky” (Ak. 270)—to be cognized in a single intuition (Allison 318). This displeasure is immediately succeeded by a feeling of pleasure in that while one is unable to “intuit” such an object, one can, through her faculty of reason, at least “think” about the fact that it is too large to be intuited by one's self (Ak. 254, Allison 322). That is, we are pleased with, or respect, the mental state occasioned by an object in which one experiences “an expansion of the mind that feels able to cross the barriers of sensibility [i.e. anything we can intuit]” (Ak. 255). In the case of the dynamically sublime, one, as a sensible being, feels a sense of “terror,” or pain, in the viewing of an object—such as a rampant storm—which exhibits a sheer power that one (again) cannot intuit (Ak. 261). At the same time, the non-physically-extended, or purely “rational” (Ak. 210), part of one's self can in no way be threatened by such sheer (physical) power. In this regard, one is “independent of” and therefore “superior over nature” (Ak. 261). The recognition of this superiority over nature in turn affords one pleasure, or a feeling of respect; and in particular, it is a respect for this non- or super-sensible self (Ak. 264). (Kant acknowledges that if the feeling of respect for one's supersensible self in either case of the sublime sounds too “high-flown” (Ak. 262), or implausible, he is at least willing to admit that “we are not always conscious of” (Ak. 262) what exactly occurs when we experience a feeling of the sublime. This might well include that very recognition of one's rational self as independent from and superior to nature.) It is thus clear that both in moral feeling and the two cases of the sublime, one experiences a “transition from pain to pleasure [or respect]”; but for Crowther this “makes the sublime too much like moral feeling” (Crowther 132-3). And that, in conjunction with the fact that the feeling of the sublime for Kant is “based on” (Ak. 268) moral feeling, only gives Crowther further reason to conclude that the two feelings are so similar precisely because the feeling of the sublime is entirely derived from moral feeling. Hence, every judgment of the sublime is merely a “thinly disguised moral judgment,” but not every moral judgment necessarily involves the feeling of the sublime. Kant's deduction in §29 shows us how moral feeling is more fundamental than the sublime to the human constitution. Having shown why one might think that the feeling of the sublime reduces to moral feeling, I now turn to consider what might be problematic about such a view. The first step in doing so is to note a crucial difference between moral feeling and the feeling of the sublime—granting that both involve a transition from pain to pleasure. Moral feeling, as Matthews puts it, involves a determination of one's will by her faculty of reason out of reason's respect for the moral law (Matthews 165, 169). Thus, one experiences moral feeling when acting as an agent engaging in practical deliberation and ultimately deciding that one ought to undertake some course of action or other in order to uphold the moral law (Matthews 176). By contrast, the feeling of the sublime is a spectator's emotion felt as a result of simply observing particular objects (Allison 327). Furthermore, the determination of one's will by her faculty of reason has nothing to do with the feeling of the sublime; rather, the feeling of the sublime is solely engendered by the relationship between the inadequacy of the imagination's ability to intuit the physical size or power of a particular object and nonetheless being able to use her faculty of reason to formulate an idea (however vague) of just how large or powerful that object is. The difference between the two feelings is therefore obvious: moral feeling requires “practical activity” (Matthews 176) on behalf of an individual, whereas the feeling of the sublime requires only being an “uninvolved spectator” of a particular object (Allison 331).
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Notwithstanding this point, someone like Crowther might respond by stating that this only shows how moral feeling and the feeling of the sublime are perhaps not as closely related as he or she originally thought. However, he would argue, the fact remains that the latter is “based on” (Ak. 268) the former, and would therefore remain inclined to maintain that every judgment of the sublime involves—however “indirect[ly]” (Crowther 131)—moral feeling, but not every moral judgment involves a feeling of the sublime. Allison, however, has a reply to this response which not only demonstrates how one can make a judgment of the sublime without its involving moral feeling, but also how certain judgments of the sublime cannot be said to involve moral feeling without at the same time undermining Kant's moral views. The example he elaborates upon is actually one that Kant cursorily states at Ak. 263; Kant writes: “when [one] compare[s] the statesman with the general, as to which one deserves the superior respect, an aesthetic judgment decides in favor of the general. Even war has something sublime about it if it is carried on in an orderly way and with respect for the sanctity of the citizens' rights. At the same time it makes the way of thinking of a people that carries it on in this way all the more sublime in proportion to the number of dangers in the face of which it courageously stood its ground” (my emphasis). What we see here, and just above this quote at Ak. 262, is that Kant admits the possibility of one's judging a warrior and/or war sublime. But this is a complicated example that requires some explanation. First, one might think that the examples of the warrior and war are inconsistent with the ones Kant has been providing as those which may occasion the feeling of the sublime. That is, we might have thought that only “natur[al]”(Ak. 246) objects—such as the “starry sky” (Ak. 270) in an experience of the mathematical sublime, or “thunderclaps” (Ak. 261) in an experience of the dynamical sublime—could “prompt” (Ak. 280) the feeling of the sublime. But Kant makes it clear that, “properly speaking,” (Ak. 280) “true sublimity must be sought only in the mind of the judging person” (Ak. 256, my emphasis). Thus, it would be incorrect to think that objects themselves are sublime, as it is rather the case that certain objects (like the starry sky or thunderclaps) can “prompt” a certain mental state that is the feeling of the sublime. Hence, this feeling may be “aroused in us” insofar as an object we judge “strains the imagination to its limit, whether of expansion (mathematically) or of its [the object's] might...(dynamically)” (Ak. 268). Of course, what is problematic about such a characterization of such sublime-feeling-inducing objects is the fact that it is unclear what, exactly, can be said to “strain the imagination.” Presumably, immensely large or powerful objects such as the starry sky or thunderclaps may have this effect, while objects such as a cup or a gust or wind would be less likely to strain the imagination. Perhaps war, and by extension, the warrior, which appear from Ak. 262 to 263, can be regarded as immensely powerful objects which one's imagination cannot entirely intuit and thus can each arouse in us a feeling of the sublime. Having thus shown how the warrior and war are objects which may arouse the feeling of the sublime in persons, there is now a further question as to whether they do so in a way that is consistent with the moral law (and hence whether they would stand in tension with a moral judgment). If one were to solely consider Kant's statement that “war has something sublime about it if it is carried on in an orderly way and with respect for the sanctity of the citizens' rights” (Ak. 263), one might think that war could be said to prompt Agnitio 63
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the feeling of the sublime only if it is “carried on” in an “orderly way,” which might be taken to mean that it does not involve immoral conduct, such as pillaging. But in the next sentence, Kant states that “at the same time,” what makes the warrior “all the more sublime” is the “number of dangers in the face of which [one] courageously stood [one's] ground.” This might be thought to show that what actually makes war and the warrior candidates capable of inducing a feeling of the sublime is not whether the war is carried on in a morally permissible way, but rather, how dangerous the effort is, and how courageously the warrior stands his or her grounds in the face of those dangers—indeed, such an effort is what makes the war and the warrior “all the more sublime” (or, properly speaking, this is what makes them all the better of candidates for prompting the feeling of the sublime). Hence if courage exhibited (instead of moral appropriateness) is what ultimately makes war and the warrior “all the more sublime,” one can then find a morally impermissible act of war as that which may prompt the feeling of the sublime insofar as that act required sheer courage for its undertaking. Though this is not to say that an act of war must be morally impermissible in order to be “all the more sublime,” for it is conceivable that a warrior's preventing the pillaging of his town would require sheer courage. The point is rather that an act of war need not be morally permissible in all cases in order to be considered an object which may prompt the feeling of the sublime; because again, all that is required is the exhibition of “sheer courage,” which might been interpreted as—and is therefore of a piece with—a type of immense power exhibited in a case of the dynamical sublime. With these points established, we are finally in a position to see how we may form a judgment of the sublime without involving moral feeling. One such case may be the one described just above, where one experiences a feeling of the sublime as a result of witnessing the sheer courage exhibited by a warrior who risks his life to pillage the town of his enemy. The pleasure one feels in forming this judgment is exclusively the result of one's rational self not being threatened by the great physical force exerted by the warrior (Allison 331). The pleasure in this experience of the sublime is thus in no way connected to a feeling of respect for the moral law. In fact, we could not insist that the pleasure we feel in this particular experience of the sublime does, “however indirect[ly]” (Crowther 131), involve moral feeling without at the same time undermining Kant's views on morality. For to put it syllogistically, (1) this experience of the sublime is prompted by the sheer courage exhibited by a warrior who pillages a town; but (2) pillaging is morally impermissible; hence (3) we cannot regard this experience of the sublime as involving moral feeling in any way unless we regard something that is morally impermissible (pillaging) morally permissible—yet doing so would presumably undermine Kant's moral views. Hence if we want to keep Kant's moral views intact, it must be conceded that this experience of the sublime neither does nor can involve moral feeling (Allison 331-2, 342). To generalize from this point, we see that not all judgments of the sublime do or can involve moral feeling without at the same time undermining Kant's moral views. Crowther is thus wrong to suggest that every judgment of the sublime involves moral feeling. We may continue along this line of thought in order to appreciate still other differences between the feeling of the sublime and moral feeling, thereby reinforcing the point that a judgment of the sublime can entirely be an aesthetic judgment, and in no way a “thinly disguised moral judgment.” At Ak. 272, Kant states that we experience certain “affects” which are “aesthetically sublime.” Now the sublime, “with which the feeling of emotion is connected” (Ak. 226), is a type of affect. Furthermore, “an affect is an agitation of the mind” (Ak. 272, my emphasis). This vocabulary hearkens back to the beginning of the Agnitio 64
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Analytic of the Sublime, where we were told at Ak. 247 that the sublime “carries with it...a mental agitation.” The agitation involved in a judgment of the sublime is the result of the “violen[ce]” (Ak. 245) done to one's imagination by an object that is too large or powerful to be intuited in a singular intuition. Now an affect is also “aesthetically sublime” because it too “strains” the imagination toward that which is beyond (without actually going beyond) “presentations of sense” in a singular intuition (Ak. 272). Kant holds that two examples of agitations are “enthusiasm” and “anger” (Ak. 272). But in and of themselves, Allison notes in his 46th footnote in his chapter on the sublime, such affects “hardly...have any moral worth,” because instead of promoting the moral law, they are the very things which ought to be (in Matthews' phrase) “struck down” (Matthews 176, my emphasis) in order for one to uphold the moral law. Hence, the nature of and existence of affects provide further evidence in favor of the claim that the feeling of the sublime does not reduce to moral feeling, as affects (which are “aesthetically sublime”) “impede” (Ak. 272, footnote 39) rather than facilitate moral deliberation and action. There are also further and even more obvious reasons to think that judgments of the sublime and moral judgments (along with their attendant feelings of the sublime and morality, respectively) may come apart. At the very beginning of the Analytic of the Sublime (Ak. 244), Kant notes how judgments of the sublime are, like judgments of beauty, aesthetic because they are disinterested, are based on a judgment of reflection, refer to indeterminate concepts, and are judgments which involve feeling in their formation which can nonetheless demand universal validity. Moral judgments differ from judgments of the sublime in literally every one of these respects. Taking these in turn, moral judgments result from a determination of the will by one's faculty of reason, whereby reason is interested in upholding moral law (Allison 327). And as we saw earlier, judgments of the sublime in no way involve a determination of one's will by reason, but rather merely involve the relationship between the imagination's inability to intuit to an object and the reason's having an idea of that object (Ak. 254). But, Matthews thinks, just what it means for a judgment to be considered disinterested is that it does not result from a determination of the will by reason (Matthews 177). Thus moral judgments are unlike judgments of the sublime in that they are interested while judgments of the sublime are not. Moral judgments also differ from judgments of the sublime in that the former are considered logical, or cognitive judgments while the latter are considered judgments of reflection. This point is very much related to the fact that judgments of the sublime do not refer to or make recourse to a determinate concept, whereas moral judgments do refer to a determinate concept. In fact, it is because moral judgments refer to a determinate concept that they are considered a form of logical judgment (Ak. 203-4). Now in a judgment of reflection, one's faculties are in a state of “contemplation,” or reflection, that is not “determined” in the way that one's faculties are determined by a concept in a logical judgment (Ak. 204, Matthews 167). Furthermore, despite the fact that both moral judgments and judgments of the sublime involve a feeling of pleasure (which, again, I have roughly equated with respect), there is still a crucial qualitative difference between the two types of judgments. In the moral case, the feeling of pleasure or respect is the result of a (cognitive) judgment—not its determining ground (Matthews 165). That is, one feels pleasure or respect precisely because one's will has been “conceptual[ly] determin[ed]” (whence the cognitive nature of the judgment) by reason in accordance with the moral law when forming the moral judgment. By contrast, judgments of the sublime do involve a particular feeling in the formation of the Agnitio 65
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judgment; hence, one does not necessarily get that feeling as a result of the judgment (Matthews 176). But judgments of the sublime do not thereby reduce to a “judgment of the agreeable” which also involve a feeling in the formation of a judgment (Ak. 206-7). For while both judgments of the agreeable and the sublime involve feeling in the formation of a judgment, only the latter may legitimately proclaim universal validity (Ak. 244). The argument for this is closely linked with the earlier discussion concerning the deduction for judgments of the sublime that occurs in §29. We there saw how we may presuppose the feeling of the sublime in all persons. In light of this, if one experiences the feeling of the sublime in viewing an immensely large or powerful object, she, as a person, is thus entitled to demand that everyone else also ought to get a feeling of the sublime in viewing that same object. Judgments of the agreeable, however, cannot make a similar demand for universal assent because one forms such a judgment merely on the basis of one's own desire for and pleasure in an object (Ak. 206). All of this has been a means to show that not only can the feeling of the sublime not reduce to moral feeling—because, as we saw, if it did, it would undermine Kant's moral views—but also that there are a number of other reasons why the feeling of sublime (as per its aesthetic nature) differs from moral feeling. At the same time, one does not want to pull the two feelings too far apart, as one still has to make sense of the apparently intimate connection between the feeling of the sublime and moral feeling; for as we saw in the deduction for the sublime in §29, the feeling of the sublime is “based on” (Ak. 268) moral feeling. Thus the challenge is to now show how the two feelings are intimately related with one another—or at least are related enough for the deduction in §29 to work—but are not such that the feeling of the sublime reduces to moral feeling. Matthews provides an insightful thought to keep in mind in approaching this challenge. She writes: “the feeling of sublimity is closely related to moral judgment but is not identical to moral feeling, just as the feeling of beauty is related to cognitive judgment but not identical to the feeling of pleasure following cognition” (Matthews 166). By citing this quote I do not mean to suggest that I will construct the parallels between these two sets of feelings and judgments. Rather, I cite it partly to note how understanding the relationship between moral feeling and the feeling of the sublime provides a challenge that is at least not entirely unique in Kant's aesthetic theory, as we see from Matthews' remark that there apparently also is something of a challenge in getting entirely clear on the relationship between the feeling of beauty and the pleasure following cognition. Had this issue with the sublime been unique, we may have been all too happy to acknowledge it as yet another aspect of the problem of integrating the Analytic of the Sublime into Kant's overall aesthetic theory. But because it is not unique in this regard, it seems worthwhile to understand the nature of these two relationships in understanding Kant's aesthetic theory. Again, here I will only discuss the relationship between the sublime and moral feeling in an attempt to better understand that aspect of Kant's aesthetics. That said, I also find that Matthews' quote provides hope of showing how the feeling of the sublime is related to, but not exactly identical to, moral feeling as much as it helps orient the place of such a discussion within Kant's aesthetic theory. My strategy to bring this relationship into sharper focus is to show how the feeling of the sublime, qua aesthetic feeling, adds something indispensable to at least Kant's moral views. To that end, the first thing I want to argue is that the feeling of the sublime provides one with a concrete experience of, or at least the most “vivi[d]” (Crowther 167) thing a person can hope to experience with regard to, supersensibility. Now whether one Agnitio 66
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experiences an instance of the dynamical or mathematical sublime, one's imagination strains towards that which “transcends the domain of nature,” fails in its attempt to intuit that which transcends nature, and yet one is still able to “think” about that transcendent experience (Ak. 268). We have seen that this particular relationship between one's faculty of reason and the imagination is just what gives rise to the feeling of the sublime. It is worthwhile here to reflect on just what this feeling entails. Lest we have forgotten from the points expressed above, the feeling of the sublime is aesthetic in nature. As Matthews notes, just what this means (to state a relatively obvious, though nonetheless significant point) is that “[t]o be an aesthetic judgment, the judgment must be ultimately based on feeling” (Matthews 165, my emphasis). This of course contrasts with a cognitive judgment, in that such a judgment is “ultimately based on” a concept. But what is the nature of that feeling? When one inquires about this matter, one seems to encounter an inconsistency: the judgment of the sublime is based on a feeling, yet part of the nature of the feeling of the sublime is that it at least gives one an idea of supersensibility—but there at moments at which Kant appears to state that there is a sense in which one has a “feeling” which is “supersensible” (see especially Ak. 257). The question thus becomes how, exactly, can one feel that which is supersensible; for one can presumably only feel that which is sensible—not supersensible. But rather than dismissing this condition of supersensibility on one's decidedly sensible experience of the sublime (given the feeling's aesthetic nature) as absurd, I would like to provide Kant as charitable reading as one can with regard to this issue. Now for all the disagreement I have with Crowther, I do agree with him on a few points of his positive account of the sublime (though the feeling of which he still refuses to see as aesthetic, and which I refuse to see as anything less than aesthetic). In particular, I find insightful his view that the sublime experience, insofar as it is supersensible, is felt “from the inside. This might [in other words] be interpreted as a secular exemplar of the old adage that every human being possesses a spark of the divine” (Crowther 173). I think Crowther is right to say that the sublime is felt “from the inside,” after all, it is aesthetic in nature. Yet more interesting I feel is his describing the feeling as something akin to a glimpse, or “spark,” “of the divine.” This too seems to me to be right. Or at least I think it is a reasonable way to parse what Kant could possibly mean by stating that we feel something supersensible. One passage that would appear to ground these admittedly abstract claims can be found on Allison's page 322. There he sheds light on the nature of our inability to grasp in a single intuition an object in its “totality” (Ak. 244) which can occasion the feeling of the sublime. He holds that if one possessed a divine, or “intuitive,” intellect like God, one would be able to grasp such an object in its totality in a singular intuition. But we have also time and again noted how we can still well, through our faculty of reason, think of the object as that which is too great to be intuited. This, in turn, is what manifests a “supersensible capacity” in our human intellects despite their finitude (Allison 322). Thus, while we are not wholly divine because we lack intuitive intellects, our finite intellects do get something of a glimpse into what having an intuitive intellect would look like in experiencing the feeling of the sublime—hence the manifestation of “a spark of the divine” in us humans. At the same, and to continue in Crowther's phrase, this “spark” is felt “from the inside” precisely because we get this glimpse in virtue of experiencing the feeling of the sublime. This is meant to throw into sharp relief Crowther's further claim that the experience of the sublime “vivifies” (Crowther 167) supersensible experience. This might be all that I am able to say in the service of resolving the tension of feeling a supersensible experience. Even if it is not wholly satisfying, I hope one can begin to see how it might be understood. Agnitio 67
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If that may be granted, I then want to consider the broader significance of this point. Here, I assert again the importance of the fact that the feeling of the sublime, because of its aesthetic nature, “vivifies” supersensible experience; not least of all because as Barry Stroud states as an axiomatic truth, the best way to ground one's belief that one knows x is to directly perceive x (Stroud3 566). But the feeling of the sublime, which is in part supersensible experience, is directly perceived by one's senses—indeed, it is felt “from the inside.” Therefore, if Stroud is correct, we can come to know something about supersensible experience, or at least the most “vivi[d]” (Crowther 167) thing a person can hope to directly experience that is supersensible, through the feeling of the sublime. This in turn is significant if Matthews has in her Ph.D. dissertation successfully defended Kant's “blunt statement” in §57 at Ak. 346 that the “various notions of the supersensible are really one and the same...[that i]n effect, theoretical and practical reason point to the same supersensible” (Matthews 169-70, and her 9th footnote on page 179). For if this is true, that all of Kant's notions of the supersensible are “really one and the same” such that the same notion of supersensibility can be viewed from different standpoints (for example, the theoretical or practical standpoint), then certainly understanding something about the feeling of the sublime is indispensable to understanding something about supersensibility. This is because as we just saw, Stroud holds that there is no better way to know something than through direct sensible experience. But we experience supersensibility directly (or as close to directly as one could hope to experience supersensibility) through the feeling of the sublime. Thus, although viewing or experiencing supersensibility from the standpoint, or through, the sublime is but one another way of viewing supersensibility (provided Matthews successfully defends Kant on this point), it is perhaps the most instructive way to view supersensibility. The next question is then why might supersensibility be significant for Kant's views. I do not mean to suggest that I will here provide an exhaustive answer to this question. Rather, I wish to make a more modest claim about supersensibility; in particular, I want to cursorily note its relation to Kant's moral views, and how the feeling of the sublime should be included in the understanding of that relation. Crowther, on his page 28, states that “for Kant moral consciousness is grounded on our rationally autonomous supersensible being” (my emphasis). This dovetails with my general understanding of Kant's practical philosophy as that which is heavily informed by (more so than in the first Critique) the supersensible, or noumenal, self. Thus given that supersensibility (at least in relation to oneself) “ground[s]” Kant's moral views, and because we saw that the feeling of the sublime may well offer the most instructive way to consider supersensibility, it follows that one is able to understand something crucial about Kant's moral views—namely, supersensibility—by way of understanding the feeling of the sublime. But perhaps this warrants an even stronger claim: one cannot fully understand Kant's moral views unless one also understands Kant's notion of the sublime, for the sublime provides the most instructive way to view supersensibility, qua aesthetic feeling. Continuing in this line of thought, one might stick one's neck out even further to state that because Kant's overall critical project employs the notion of supersensibility, one would necessarily need to understand something about the sublime in order to understand Kant's references to supersensibility throughout his critical project. I will not insist on this further claim. I do however want to emphasize the point that the sublime contributes something indispensable to Kant's moral views.
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If that much may be granted, it should thus not be surprising that the feeling of the sublime and moral feeling should be so intimately related to one another. Allison in fact writes at the end of his chapter on the sublime on page 343 that “the sublime puts us in touch (albeit merely aesthetically) with our 'higher self'; and, as such, it may help to clear the ground, as it were, for genuine moral feeling and, therefore...function as a moral facilitator.” This might be seen to come with the territory of the feeling of the sublime's being “based on” (Ak. 268) moral feeling. At the same time (as was argued for in the first portion of this paper) the feeling of the sublime neither does nor can reduce to moral feeling without at the same time compromising Kant's moral views, which thus encouraged a closer look at the feeling of the sublime in its own right. Having made the attempt to do so in the second portion of this paper, it is my hope that we can now regard the sublime as that which is at once distinct from and yet indispensable to moral feeling. That is, contra Crowther, we may regard the sublime as a decidedly aesthetic feeling; though in accordance with Crowther, we may regard it as that which can provide a manifestation of “a spark of the divine” in us humans.
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Notes 1.
That is, “the feeling of the sublime” and “moral feeling” according to Kant.
2.
Every occurrence of Academy Pagination (Ak.) in this paper refers to the Critique of Judgment, and specifically Werner Pluhar's translation.
3.
"There is no better reason for believing and claiming to know that p than seeing or otherwise perceiving that p.” Stroud, Barry. "Scepticism and the Senses."
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Works Cited Allison, Henry E.. Kant's Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (Modern European Philosophy). New York: Cambridge University Press, 2001. Crowther, Paul. The Kantian Sublime: From Morality to Art. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. Kant, Immanuel, and Werner Pluhar. Critique of Judgment. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1987. Matthews, Patricia. “Kant's Sublime: A Form of Pure Aesthetic Reflective Judgment.” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. 54.2 (Spring 1996): 165-180. Web. 27 Nov 2009. <http://www.jstor.org/stable/431088>. Stroud, Barry. "Scepticism and the Senses." European Journal of Philosophy 17.4 (2009): 559-570. Web. 28 Nov. 2009. <http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgibin/fulltext/122424878/PDFSTART>.
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